LMP-JANE-INTERVIEW-PG1

"Aren't you going to get in the tub with me, husband?"
Joshua Lyon of New York is pleased to announce his engagement to Lisa Marie Presley of Graceland. The bride, a singer, is
the daughter of Elvis Presley, The King, and Priscilla Presley, an actor and Scientologist. Her previous three marriages
ended in divorce.

I'm nestled in a park-view suite at the Ritz-Carlton on Central Park and asking my bride-to-be Lisa Marie Presley, the former
Ms. Jackson (if you're nasty), what color satin she wants to use for our top-secret ribbon-binding nupitals.
"Um, black. It seems appropriate right now," she says.
Much like her hush-hush Dominican Republic marriage to Michael Jackson, there are no photographers here, and our only
witness is her preppy bodyguard (though I had a minister waiting on call), who cased my room before the ceremony.
Lisa, 35, has reservations about becoming my wife, and we haven't even discussed changing her name yet. But she's
surprisingly cooperative, particularly considering my weird behaviour. I mean, if some stranger tried to bind my wrists in an
empty hotel room, I'd probably, well, I'd probably let them. Bad comparison. But the fact that she's willing to take a chance on
me is a massive testament to her sense of humor, especially given the media feeding frenzy that happens every time she
walks down the aisle.

OUR COURTSHIP
I first lay eyes on LMP (as we in her inner circle refer to her on paper) at 8 a.m. on a cold, rainy morning. We're in the
outdoor courtyard of the Today show, where she's performing three songs from her album, To Whom It May Concern, which
she describes as "pop, but mostly rock." Her singing voice is low, delicious and melancholic- like deep-fried, honey-dipped
corn fritters on a lazy summer morn. Like coming home.
Dressed all in black with heavenly neon-purple streaks in her hair, she smiles to the huge crowd of tourists who are frantically
waving at her. I feel a surge of protectiveness when I spot an unsavory middle-aged man clutching an 8-by-10
black-and-white baby photo of her. "That was probably something my mom put out there, for some 'regular shot of my child
sitting pretty' photo," Lisa tells me later when I ask why there are posed studio portraits of her floating around. I have to
remind myself that being respectful of the fans is an important trait in a celebrity spouse. I'm in the VIP pen right in front of the
stage, so I whip up a banner that says LISA MARIE, MARRY ME and I start jumping up and down like a freak. She's wearing
sunglasses, so I can't tell if she sees me. But the moment is pure magic.
Halfway through the show, she starts down the stage to sing directly to her fans, but the steps are wet from morning drizzle
and she slips and falls. Everyone gasps in horror. Then she gets right back up, grinning defiantly, and resumes singing.
And there you have a symbolic reenactment of her tabloid love life.

THE PROPOSAL
After the show, her handler ferries me up to her dressing room (adjacent to Matt Lauer's office), warning me she's "pretty
crabby" about the slip. But as soon as I step into the room, we lock eyes and she heads right over. I tell her the show was
amazing, and she looks at me and says, "Yeah, right, I fucking fell. But if I'm gonna blow shit, it might as well be on national
TV right?" That's my girl. She's talking tough, but the look in her kohl-rimmed eyes lets me know that even though she's
upset, she knows it's dumb to make a big deal of it.
"Yeah, so, you wanna get married?" I ask. She laughs and rolls her eyes. "Let's just see how it goes." I'm glad she's not
throwing one of the bagels lying around at me and screaming, "No!" And as any 6-year-old will tellyou, maybe means yes.
That afternoon at our photo shoot, she modestly makes everyone leave the room when she slips out of her robe and into the
bubble bath. "You gonna get in the tub with me, husband?" she calls out. I'm too stunned to come up with a saucy retort and
find myself blushing like a nervous virgin. By now, all the tabloids are calling to ask if Lisa had fallen midperformance
because she was drunk. It was 8 a.m.! It's my first media scandal witnessed from the inside, and I'm surprised that (1) their
first assumption is so sordid and (2) they're even bothering to turn it into a story. I want to start punching reporters for her.
In my little bed that night, I toss and turn with her face burned into my mind, and the next morning her assistant calls to tell me
LMP has, in fact, accepted my proposal.

OUR BIG DAY
"This is very typical of a marriage," she says, sighing when the black ribbon we're using gets tangled up and we have to start
our ceremony over. I'm sitting on the edge of the hotel room's bed and she's tucked into an armchair next to me, soaking wet
from a walk in Central Park. She's wearing athletic pants, a yellow sweatshirt and a black baseball cap with no makeup, the
way I like her best. I had spurned unimaginative Tiffany and Co. and picked up three different rings for her to choose from at
a sidewalk vendor on a street where all the preteen faux punks hang out. Each ring is loaded with symbolic meaning. There's
a thick silver band for shackle-like commitment, a skull for good times and partying, adn one with two small interwoven knots
for companionship. She selects the last and it fits her ring finger perfectly.
After I snap a few Polaroids of our hands for our wedding album, we sit down to our reception feast of American Spirits (hers)
adn Winston Lights (mine) and get to know each other better. First and foremost, I want to know what kind of guy (besides
me) she goes for, since her taste seems pretty all over the map. "I get attracted to something that's different, that sticks otu.
It's always an artist. One of my first boyfriends who I actually fell in love with just sold me out. He cheated and lied and was
just the biggest player, drug addict, drug dealer, crazy-ass motherfucker. He was the only one that was really ever diabolical
with me."
She met husband No.1, musician Danny Keough, soon after. Back when they were still just dating, he left her for someone
else. "She was this Italian girl with hairy armpits that couldn't speak English. My best friend used to run around witha wig
under her armpit, yelling, 'Ciao Danny,' just to give me shit." But they reconciled, got married and had two kids, Danielle and
Ben, now 14 and 10. She's still tight with Danny, and they raise their kids together. "I go crazy when they're not around," she
says. I ask her how aware they are that their grandpa is an international icon whose face crops up on everything from
Franklin Mint paraphernalia to Designing Women reruns. "I don't want them to be taken by it," she says emphatically. "I am
so glad that my mom protected me from that. She didn't want me to get caught up in who I am, which I am so thankful for now.
It was a huge part of my grounding process, and I really want the same thing for them." It's a good thing Priscilla was so
strict, since Lisa's pop famously spoiled her whenever she visited Memphis. Once, he even flew her to Idaho for 30 minutes
after she told him she'd never seen snow.
Her next marriage, to Michael Jackson, produced a lot of speculation about their sex life. And not just because of that "You
Are Not Alone" video in which they frolic nearly naked at a Roman bath. While she never actually moved to Neverland Ranch,
she says they still did mundane married-couple things, like watch TV together. "I remember Alanis [Morissette] broke like a
bat out of hell back then. I pulled him into a room adn said 'You've gotta listen to this.'"
"Did he like her?" I ask.
"Yeah, and then when she took the Grammy, he goes, 'Well, that's your girl, you were on it.'"
Since Lisa has said that their 1994 MTV Video Music Awards kiss was a stunt dreamed up by Michael's manager, I want to
know how Lisa's "people," and how much these "people" participate in the day-to-day dealings of a relationship. "It's a
strange thing, but the camps either work or they don't. You have to deal with those people's agendas, and if you're a threat
to them and what they are trying to do, those people will start to get in the other one's ear and you have to be really
hyper-perceptive to all of that."
"What about that Club Cracker commercial, where one of the Keebler elves dresses up like Elvis?"
"I just saw that too-I freaked out!" she says, her eyes widening in disbelief. "Thanks for reminding me. I'm going to kill
whoever approved that one." And she probably can, since she's the owner and chariman of the board of Elvis Presley
Enterprises, a worldwide licensing company worth an estimated $500 million.
When her marriage to MJ fell apart after 20 months, so did she. "I was insane, and nobody could tell me what was wrong. I
was trying to pull myself out of somebody else's world, somebody else's way of thinking." At the time, she went under the care
of a doctor who sounds totally psyco. "She was the most treacherous soul, she was like fucking Nurse Ratched. She gave
me too many pills, which created a problem with my stomach, which led to my gall bladder failing. So, I get it taken out, and
she came into the hospital and said [using a spooky voice], 'It was the most beautiful gall bladder I've ever seen.'"
Last year, Lisa married for the third time, to Nicolas Cage. They divorced after three months. At the time, she said, "We
shouldn't have been married in the first place. It was a big mistake." I ask her what she thinks of the cruel tabloid assumption
that their marriage was a chance for Nic to own, as one paper put it, the ultimate Elvis collectible. "[Nicolas] is so fucking
talented and he's got an Academy Award, but no, he's got to be downcast to an Elvis fanatic, you know? As if I was some sort
of artifact. It's demeaning and completely unfounded."

OUR MARRIED LIFE
When I show up the next morning at the gigantic warehouse space where she's shooting her video for the song "Sinking In,"
Lisa waves to me from across the crowded room and yells out, "Hi! I took off my ring, sorry!" grinning widely at me. I tell her
it's okay, even though earlier that morning, almost without thinking, I had put n the "commitment" wedding ring she hadn't
chosen the day before. I'd asked Lisa yesterday how I could be a good husband to her. "Any relationship requires respect,
admiration, emotional support and trust," she answered. "I don't know, I have no consistencies." In light of her many failed
romances, I'm starting to want to really be all these things for her. Luckily, I find out she's already getting strong emotional
support, and not just from her kids. Lisa's friends, like Luke, who's traveling with her and has a Mohawk that changes color
several times over the course of a few days, are often summoned (by Paige, longtime friend and assistant) to the "Situation
Room."
"It's my back patio [in L.A.], where we all congregate when something is going down, either good or bad," she says when we
steal away to a linoleum-floored room for lunch. So much for a honeymoon. "If I ever fall apart, it's almost like a call to arms
happens. The way I live, it's sort of like a compound. Some of my friends live there with me. If something's going on, if I lose
it, suddenly they're all there for me."

OUR DIVORCE
After our three-day whirlwind romance and marriage, it becomes apparent that we'll have to divorce quickly and quietly, but
amicably. She finds out I've been cheating when she starts asking about my personal life. I confess I'm in another
relationship, but she's truly interested in talking about it, and even offers some advice about a problem I'm going through with
my boyfriend.
"So for real," I ask, "now that we're divorced, where are you with your love life?"
"I'm nowhere," she says, picking her veggie-filled salad. "It hasn't happened very often that I've actually given my heart.
Sometimes I can be completely smitten, but I'll still keep it back at arm's length. Because if I do give it to someone and I get
hurt, it's tragic. It incapacitates me. I have to be really careful of that. But that's not to say I wold be opposed to falling in love
with somebody."
I nod, realizing that I sort of just did.