While Priscilla Presley’s parents didn’t always approve of her relationship with Elvis, they grew to accept it. Priscilla moved in with Elvis while she was still in high school, so she went for a long stretch of time without seeing her parents. When she did see them, they were naturally curious about her famous boyfriend. Priscilla felt she couldn’t be honest with her parents about her relationship.
After Priscilla had been living with Elvis for two years, her parents moved back from the United States after a stint in Germany. Now that they were closer, Priscilla had an increased ability to visit them. While she missed her family, the prospect of being in a room with them was daunting. She felt that any time apart from Elvis would strain her relationship. She also didn’t think she could answer any of her parents’ questions honestly.
“I wasn’t being honest about my relationship and style of life,” she wrote in her book Elvis and Me. “Anticipating uncomfortable questions about my future, I spent most of the time in my room. However, the questions came.”
Most of her parents’ questions were innocent, asking her about what Graceland was like or if innocuous rumors about Elvis were true. Priscilla wanted to dodge all of them.
“I felt their probing was an invasion of my privacy, my personal life, and I gave them guarded answers,” she wrote. “My parents didn’t appreciate my attitude or my defensiveness. They were just showing a natural interest in me, and a concern for my well-being, when they asked how I’d done in school, what kind of grades I’d gotten, and if I’d brought my report card.”
At this point in her life, Priscilla valued her relationship with Elvis above all else and perceived her parents’ curiosity as a threat.
After Priscilla visited her parents at their temporary residence in Connecticut, they moved to Sacramento. As she frequently traveled to California with Elvis, she had more opportunities to see them. She didn’t want to, though.
“After that weekend, I tried to avoid my parents,” she wrote. “But they knew I joined Elvis in Los Angeles while he was filming, and they wanted me to spend weekends with them in Sacramento. This created a problem.”
Priscilla didn’t want to give up any second with Elvis. At the same time, though, she didn’t want her parents visiting her. She wanted to keep them apart from Elvis.
“I couldn’t think of sharing my time with anyone but Elvis, especially weekends when he wasn’t working,” she wrote. “Still, I’d make occasional trips to Sacramento, because if I didn’t visit my parents, they’d visit us. I knew Elvis was very touchy, and I was never sure what might set him off.”
A visit from her parents posed another problem for Priscilla. They believed that she and Elvis had separate bedrooms, so Priscilla had to stage someone else’s room as her own.
“I ran into the house in a panic because I knew I’d have to show them around,” she wrote. “I certainly couldn’t tell my parents that I slept with Elvis, and I decided to try to fool them into believing that I had my own room.”
She dragged as many of her clothes as she could carry into an employee’s bedroom. When her parents toured the home, they didn’t question the living situation. Still, Priscilla didn’t think they fully believed she slept in her own bedroom.