The experience on LSD stupefies me for days, so that I have no clue what to do, no clue where to go with my life. Even my creative outlet isn’t feeding me; I’ve never really written songs like John does about drugs and the like. But while John goes back for another hit, I can’t bring myself to. It seems wrong to do anything more than simply contemplate what happened, think about the way I was able to just dissolve into John’s eyes, and the way I was able to feel so connected to everything around me.
No, the drugs are killing John. His constant use is beginning to scare me, and while I know it’s very likely I’ll go back to LSD in the future, and maybe try something else even later on, I can see what such a frequent use can do to someone. Because I’m watching John become more unsure of himself in a way he never was in the past. It’s merely a few weeks after we took acid together, and I’ve already seen John take another trip, a dab of the chemical on a piece of candy landing him in a world away from me for a few hours. I watch him, sober, as he stares at the ceiling, muttering gibberish about the patterns he’s seeing, the way everything is waving into itself, the way he’s becoming a part of the world slowly, and I begin to get concerned.
There’s only so much of this sort of thing someone can take before they start to go crazy, start to forget the ways of the real world. And I’m concerned John has started losing sight of us. He gets bored sometimes now, when he’s not in the midst of a trip. I start to miss that day we sat on the top of the hill and watched the sun set. The time where he wrote songs for me instead of his drugs.
I guess it happens in every stale relationship. There comes a time where you start to notice someone’s differences more than the things you used to have in common.
But I so desperately want things between John and I to be the same as they used to be that I trip three more times with him so that he’ll go out with me and do some normal things, too. He says he likes tripping with me, because it’s the only way we can be completely honest with the world around us about our relationship. That’s hard for him, keeping our relationship a secret. So when it’s just us and the drug, he likes to pretend we’re all that matters, because, in the end, we don’t matter.
I disagree. We do matter. But on the trip, it really seems like we don’t, at least not in the same way. Maybe to the people in our society we matter, but when your ideas of that society are ripped away, it seems like you’re hardly even a little blip on the radar, barely even a single atom inside a star. And I can’t say I don’t like feeling that way. Just not all the time. Just not so much that it would make John and I further apart, instead of closer. And it really is creating a rift between us, a rift I can feel in everything: in our music, in our relationship, in our day-to-day life. But what’s scary to me is that I don’t think he sees how distant I feel from him.
So one night, after John has a particularly bad trip, I decide it’s finally time to do something I want. We’re going to go out for a dinner . . . Just a normal, ordinary dinner, where a few musicians are lined up to play. Nothing too big, but something we haven’t done in a while. A few people we know through mutual friends will be playing, and I’m hoping it will be fun to just go out, especially now that we’ve stopped touring. Maybe things will be a little less hectic, although I have my doubts there.
John is surprisingly game for the idea. I think he is finally starting to see just how bad a bad trip can be, that maybe he’s ingesting a little too much of them chemical. We both get dressed at my house, in more casual attire than usual for dates, just jeans and a semi-casual shirt. It’ll be a relaxing night for both of us. We’re both ready by quarter past seven, and then we get in my car, turn the radio on, and go.
But already, John is making comments about how much he hates his voice, how much he wishes he could sound like these people on the radio, how rubbish his new songs are turning out compared to this stuff. So I turn off the radio and look him squarely in the eye, while trying to keep an eye on the road.
“John Lennon, you created the most popular band in existence at the current moment,” I say. “We’d be nowhere without you and your amazing voice. So don’t even talk like that.”
I know John’s been feeling bad about his music lately. After Brain’s death, after dealing with keeping our relationship private, after so many bad trips, John is losing it. All I can do is try to guide the group in the right direction, try to keep us together while John sorts through what he’s going through.
“I wish I could smother my voice in ketchup,” he says. It’s not the first time he’s said it. I overheard him saying the exact same thing to George Martin a while ago in studio. It nearly physically pains me to hear it again.
“John, your voice makes me feel things I’ve never felt before. Whenever I hear you sing, it sends chills through me,” I admit. “Even if you don’t feel like you mean anything to the world, you mean something to me. And I know I don’t make up a huge portion of the world, but doesn’t it mean something that you mean something so incredible to someone?”
He looks at me and bows his head slightly.
“I wish I could pretend it still mattered,” he says. “But none of this seems to matter anymore. You know that feeling you get when you look out the window on a plane? That feeling of crazy insignificance in comparison to the rest of the world? That’s how I feel every single day. I mean nothing in the context of the world.”
“You’re wrong, John,” I say. “You just need to be a spark.”
He looks at me blankly, and I try to form the words in a way that will go through to him.
“Think about it this way . . . A single spark can start an entire fire. One vote can be the difference between law and a bill that will be forgotten in a few years. A single black hole can change parts of an entire galaxy. Something has to start a chain reaction. And you can be that thing. You are that thing, for music.”
“But what if music doesn’t matter?” he says.
“You know it does,” I laugh. “And you’re good at it. And even if it isn’t, then you find something that you do think matters. Because you do mean something.”
I reach over and squeeze his hand, and he closes his eyes and looks down.
“This isn’t the John I know. The John I know is confident and noisy and snarky.”
“But Paul . . . What does it all matter if we can’t even love each other in public? What does it all matter if we’re not enough spark to change society? I see it changing every day, for the worse. I see the Vietnam War going on, I see black people in America struggling for equal rights, I see drugs on the verge of becoming tools of oppression instead of eye-openers as we throw people in jail just for using them . . . How is a society like this ever going to accept us? They’ll just put out the spark before it can start the fire.”
“So . . . What?” I demand. “Do you just want to end this, right here? Because it doesn’t mean anything?”
I’m feeling very upset all of a sudden. I swerve the car off the road by accident, then regain control of the steering wheel and get back on the road. I take a deep breath in. I can’t be losing John. I can’t. My stomach flip-flops. I feel a dull ache. This can’t be the end.
“No, I don’t,” John says, sullenly. “But I just wish it didn’t have to be this way.”
He looks out the window, away from me, but I can see that he’s frowning. I see him push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. How did I not even see this change earlier? Looking from it from a distance, I can see how drastic it is: no more of the Beatles haircut we used to share, longer sideburns, and the glasses. And of course, the personality shift. I just pray he’ll shift back to the way he was, and if not the way he was, at least back to being happy. I just want him to be happy again. That’s when things were best.
“Me too, John,” I say. “I wish we could be public. I wish I could stand in front of a camera and kiss you or hold your hand, instead of just stealing glances at you. It’s so hard not to just reach out and touch your face sometimes when we’re out in public. You’ve got a beautiful face.”
John smiles at this, and then he turns back around and looks in my eyes.
“I guess I’ve got to be worth something if a beautiful person such as yourself chooses to love me,” he says.
I blush, and park the car at our destination. Turn to him.
“Look, we don’t have to stick with the original plan. We could just stay here and talk, or we could go on a walk somewhere we won’t be disturbed . . .”
“No, let’s go in,” he says.
So we do. We go in and watch the playing over dinner, and we talk, and it almost seems like it’s back to normal between us. I feel warm and fuzzy watching John laugh and smile, the warmth coming back into his face. And then he looks at me and gestures with his eyes that he wants out. There’s a mischievous grin on his face, and we sneak out the back door together, without saying a single word.
John doesn’t even say a word once we’re outside in the crisp outside air. He just grasps ahold of my hand, and I can hear how elevated his breathing is, see the want in his eyes. My own heart pumps faster than regular, and I allow him to guide me back to the car. He drapes me over the hood and starts to kiss me, My first reaction is of shock; I slip off the hood and look around to make sure no one is looking, and that it’s dark enough so no one will recognize us immediately. But John pushes me back onto the hood.
“No more hiding,” he whispers. “You’re too good to hide away.”
My heart beats faster now, nervously this time. His face is so close to mine as he whispers, and my lips hunger for his. My nerves subside as I succumb to this need, as we mesh together, become one.
“Let’s take this somewhere more private, Lennon,” I whisper, and he obliges. We pile in my car, still breathing heavily, and I start the engine swiftly, but John doesn’t stop kissing me, and I can’t even put the car in drive because he doesn’t even give me a chance.
Later that night, I can still taste John on my lips as I stare up at my ceiling, bewildered. I can still feel his touch on every square inch of my body, roaming, not asking questions anymore. Finally freeing us. My mind reels; I feel like I’m not even inhabiting my body anymore, like I’m floating up to the stars, up to the sky, away, forever.
And I still hear his words.
“You’re right. I’m not nothing, Paul. I’m a part of everything. I’m a part of the Earth and the stars and the sun, and you. We’re one. So see, I have to love myself. Because I love you, and I love this universe, and I love a lot of things. So really . . . I love everything.”
My heart swells, and I feel happiness crash over my body. And I close my eyes and let it fill me.