The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (60 page)

After five years of marriage Priscilla announced to Elvis that she had fallen in love with another man and was leaving. The rival was Mike Stone, her karate teacher. Elvis was shattered; he had lost his most valuable possession. The couple separated in 1972 and divorced in 1973. Priscilla’s final settlement was $2 million.

Although the divorce was relatively amicable, Elvis was deeply wounded.

He sought to balm his wounds with drugs, women, work, and food. The most important woman to come down the pike after Priscilla was the tall, willowy Miss Tennessee of 1972, Linda Thompson. She was model-beautiful and utterly devoted to the King. She was a virgin when she met Elvis, and a gracious, good-humored Southern belle. She moved into Graceland, and the relationship lasted several years. When Elvis started dating other women—and invited Linda along as a third—the affair petered out.

In the last year of his life Elvis had an affair with 19-year-old Ginger Alden, Miss Memphis Traffic Safety of 1976. He gave her the customary Cadillac and an $85,000 ring. She was with him the night of his death.

SEX LIFE:
Elvis probably wasn’t lying when he told his stepmother that he had slept with more than 1,000 girls. And
that
was before he married Priscilla. In the beginning of his career he was shy, and more interested in succeeding for the sake of his mother than in busying himself with sex. But he soon got the hang of it. Elvis had access to countless women, all over the world, who were dying to make love to him. Between the ages of 20 and 30, when he was young and in good health, he frequently had two or three women a day. Toward the end of his life drugs dampened his desire for sex (“Bed,” he would say, “is for sleeping on”), and sometimes angry, unravished dates complained to the Memphis Mafia. However, it was strictly understood that the boys were not to fool around with a girl Elvis might still want, although their dates were fair game for Elvis.

According to the authors of
Elvis: What Happened?
, a biography written by three of Elvis’ ex-bodyguards, the King had some distinctive sexual preferences.

He was not a breast man and did not like a large bosom, but preferred shapely legs and buttocks. He liked his women petite and feminine (“girl-type girls”), and his biggest turnoff was big feet. He also detested male homosexuals. Another thing that turned him off sexually was the knowledge that a woman had been married or had had children. He once dropped a girl friend flat when he discovered she was a mother. He was also a passionate peeker. He had a one-way mirror in his bedroom so that he could secretly watch other couples; he had mirrored ceilings; and he liked to videotape his sex.

According to
Elvis: What Happened?
, Elvis had another quirk. He would give his girl of the moment a sleeping pill and put her in his bedroom. Then he would go to a nearby room, where he would watch two especially pretty prostitutes have sex. When this show had sufficiently excited him, he would “make a dead run to his bedroom and make it with his girl.”

His overall preference in women ran to the young and inexperienced, because they were less likely to compare him with other men or reject him. The King, for all his glory, was terribly insecure.

—A.W.

California Love

TUPAC SHAKUR (June 16, 1971–Sept. 13, 1996)

HIS FAME:
The son of black revolutionaries, Tupac Shakur was, and is, the

number one hip-hop artist of all time,

both in sales records and in social

importance. A thinking man’s rapper, the

socially conscious and fiercely intelligent

Shakur showed promise beyond that of

just a hip-hop artist and actor, but as a

leader of the black community, all the

way up to his untimely assassination in

the East Coast-West Coast rap wars at

the age of 25.

HIS PERSON:
Born to Black Panther Alice Faye Williams, who took the name Afeni Shakur (he never knew his father), Tupac was raised as an intellectual. Tupac considered himself effeminate and unmanly; and in the hard times of his youth he turned to acting with a theater group in Harlem at the age of 12. At 15, with the family relocated to Baltimore, he discovered his route to manhood—rap. By 1990, he had scored a gig as a backup dancer for Digital Underground; his apprenticeship was shortlived, and his first solo album, 1992’s
2Pacalypse Now
, established him as a major voice in the new genre of gangsta rap. He starred in the gang film
Juice
in the same year, simultaneously establishing himself as a major new talent in both mediums. 1993’s
Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.
was released the following year, along with Shakur’s headlining role across from Janet Jackson in John Singleton’s
Poetic
Justice
; a star had been born. However, the long shadow of his medium had followed him—Pac had found himself on the wrong end of the law after allegations of sexual misconduct and an attack on an off-duty police officer. Violence followed Tupac in higher and higher-cresting waves but he sprang back with the climax of his short career, the powerful masterworks
Me Against the World
and
All Eyez on Me
, which sold two and three million copies each, respectively. Yet it was at his pinnacle that the final blow came: after leaving a Mike Tyson fight he attended with notoriously mercenary Death Row Records president Suge Knight, Tupac was shot four times in a drive-by; he died shortly thereafter of cardiac arrest. Conspirators have suspected the involvement of not only the Southside Crips, but also Las Vegas P.D., rival rappers Puff Daddy and the Notorious B.I.G. and even Knight himself—not to mention the persistent conspiracy theory that 2Pac somehow remained alive.

In contrast to his Thug persona, Tupac wrote sensitive and vulnerable love poems to girls, many of which were published after his death in the book,
The
Rose That Grew From Concrete
.

SEX PARTNERS:
Tupac more than lived up to the virile self-image he constructed for himself in his lyrics, engaging in such legendary antics as having sex with almost all of the women who appeared in the promotional video for “How Do U Want It?” and subsequently collapsing from exhaustion. On a darker note, Shakur was controversially charged with sexual assault in December 1993; a 19-year-old woman he had previously received oral sex from in a club (half an hour after meeting her) and then had consensual sex with in his hotel room complained that Shakur had later forcibly sodomized her and then egged members of his entourage on in gang-raping her. Under testimony, the woman stated she had rendezvoused with Shakur four days after their initial sexual encounter in order to reclaim items she had left in his hotel room; after beginning a second sexual round with Tupac, his three friends allegedly barged into the room and began fondling her while Shakur grabbed her hair and stripped her clothes off, telling her that she’d been selected as a reward for his three friends and that “millions of other women would be happy to be in her situation.” Shakur maintained he had slept through the act and had failed only in leaving her alone with his friends; the judge was not particularly sympathetic to his claims. The defense’s only witness was Talibah Mbonisi, Tupac’s publicist, who stated that Tupac had been with another woman that night, and that she (Mbonisi) had been talking to Shakur later when his accuser burst into the room demanding to know who was the woman that Shakur had been with. The defense’s main argument was that Tupac’s accuser had been motivated to make false claims because she had been spurned for another woman (one of many other women). After both sides concluded their arguments, Shakur was convicted of “sexual abuse (forcibly touching the buttocks)” and sentenced to one-and-a-half years in prison; he was wheeled into the courtroom to receive his sentence the day after being shot in the lobby of Quad Recording Studios in Manhattan (as with the shooting that killed him, Shakur suspected the involvement of Sean “Puffy”

Combs and Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. the Notorious B.I.G.—Shakur, as part of his ongoing feud with Wallace, claimed to have had sex with his wife, R&B

singer Faith Evans, in the track “Hit ’Em Up.”) He was released on bail pending appeal after serving part of his sentence. Yet more than any sexual relationship, it was with the young actress Jada Pinkett (later to marry Will Smith) that Tupac formed his most lasting bond; the two were classmates at the Baltimore School for the Arts. Pinkett recalled of him at the time, “When I met Tupac, he owned two pairs of pants and two sweaters. He slept on a mattress with no sheets.” Shakur said of the pair’s apparently Platonic relationship in the posthumous documentary
Tupac: Resurrection
: “Jada is my heart. She will be my friend for my whole life”; and Pinkett said of Shakur that he was “one of my best friends. He was like a brother. It was beyond friendship for us. The type of relationship we had, you only get that once in a lifetime.”

HIS THOUGHTS:
“I’m somewhat psychotic... I’m hittin’ switches on bitches like I been fixed with hydraulics.”

—J.L.

IX

Command

Performances

The Little Corporal

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE (Aug. 15, 1769–May 5, 1821)

HIS FAME:
In 1804 Napoleon became

France’s first emperor, thus climaxing his

military triumphs on European battlefields. His rise to power was aided by

timely political patronage from French

revolutionary leaders. During his rule he

birthed the modern nation of France by

bringing major reforms to the country’s

judicial, financial, and administrative

institutions.

HIS PERSON:
A relatively obscure

artillery officer in his early military

career, Napoleon won distinction—and

a general’s rank—by capturing Toulon

(1793) from British forces aiding the

French royalists. Called to Paris in 1795, his ruthless suppression of a rebel mob saved the new republic, and he was given command of French armies in Italy.

There, in battles against the Austrian armies, Napoleon’s outstanding victories made him a national hero. Returning secretly to Paris after his Egyptian campaign (1799), Bonaparte took advantage of the Directory’s internal dissension and, aided by Abbé Sieyès, executed a coup d’état. The Consulate was then created, and as first consul Napoleon became master of France at age 30. He set up a military dictatorship, camouflaged by a constitution that gave him unlimited political power. Continental Europe fell under his domination during the ensuing Napoleonic Wars. His efforts to exclude British goods by boycott caused Spain to revolt, and other nations joined in. A disastrous Russian campaign (1812) and a crushing defeat at Leipzig (1813) led to a forced abdication and his banishment to Elba. Although Bonaparte escaped briefly to wage the “Hundred Days” struggle, his effort to regain the French throne ended in his defeat by the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo (1815). Exile for life on the island of St.

Helena followed.

SEX LIFE:
During his two official marriages, Napoleon had a dozen known mistresses. Another 20 were said to have shared his bed before he was sent into exile. By his own admission, he lost his virginity at 18 to a prostitute he picked up on a Parisian boulevard. This commercial experience did little to overcome the future emperor’s timidity toward women. In 1795, eager to wed, he courted his first real love, his sister-in-law Eugénie Désirée Clary, hoping that his brother Joseph, who was married to Eugénie’s older sister, would smooth the way. Joseph’s effort failed, and Napoleon withdrew the marriage proposal abruptly, possibly fearing he would be impotent with the young beauty who was destined to become Sweden’s future queen. Thereafter, he shifted his wooing to more mature women, making firm offers to at least five. Two were old enough to be his grandmother and mother, respectively: Mademoiselle de Montansier (age 60) and Madame Permon (age 40). Both were shocked to learn that he was deadly serious.