The Elephants Dance, Chapter 45
Jan. 21st, 2014 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yes_2daySouth American Tour
I feel bad about the long delay last week, so I'm posting the next chapter a day early. In this Chapter, soothing oil is poured over the blistered skin, and healing begins.
Also - I have never visited South America, but I have long wanted to. Maybe some day! So the next few chapters, in addition to telling the John and Paul love story, I am going to do a South American love story too. What a mystical and glorious place! I did as much research as I could, and could not find any evidence that either John or Paul ever went to the continent of South America prior to 1988. I do know for a fact the Beatles refused to perform there because they always refused to play in front of segregated audiences, which is why they did so few concerts in the southern states of the U.S.A. They would only play in integrated arenas. Having said all this, I do not know if Paul or John visited the continent of South America prior to 1988; I just know they did not perform there. I have heard just recently on JHP that Yoko might have gone to Columbia (Catagena) on some weird witch-odyssey organized by some weird hanger-on, but I don't know if even that is true. So if I'm wrong on this fact, I apologize. It is not really integral to the story, thankfully.
Chapter 45
Neither John nor Paul had ever ventured into South America proper. Back in the Beatles years they were offered the opportunity a few times, but all four of them had refused to perform in front of segregated audiences, and back in the ‘60s the promoters who were suggesting South American venues insisted upon segregation. Wings had never toured there either; in the 1970’s there was a great deal of unrest in most of the major South American countries and it was thought, by Europeans at least, not to be safe. While both men had vacationed in the Caribbean – and Paul had done so many times – the continent itself was a major mystery to John and Paul as their plane touched down in Caracas, Venezuela, on October 31, 1988. By then they’d been on tour since the last week in August, about 10 weeks or so. They had just survived a rough week, due to the fireworks they’d let off on each other in Rome and Madrid.
Lisbon had been the sultry quiet after a crashing storm. The morning after the Madrid performance, they had slept in until 11 a.m. Their flight to Lisbon was at 2 p.m. They both felt hung-over: John, because of the prodigious amount of whiskey he had consumed the night before, and Paul from being dragged through the emotional ups and downs of John on a rampage. Paul, at his best, could barely tolerate that kind of drama, and he certainly wasn’t at his best at that moment in time. He felt scorched by John’s fiery words and erratic conduct. And then to be the focus of all that overwrought drama with an audience of underlings was both appalling and exhausting to him. Still, ultimately, they had reached a kind of peace with each other before they went to bed.
But as each man awoke the next morning in Madrid, the cloud hanging over them – while no longer black – looked pretty grey and about to pour down rain. John could barely remember what happened the night before – he only remembered having a shouting match with Paul, or, more like, he was shouting and Paul was being his infuriating cool and collected self – and he had a bad feeling he might have done so in front of the tour manager and his staff. Meanwhile, Paul remembered all too well what had happened the night before, and he wondered how he was going to face the management team today and what he could possibly do to staunch the gossip that he was sure would emerge from the previous night’s debacle. He also knew that he had a serious conversation ahead of him with John – the kind Paul generally avoided at all costs. But it was clear that John wasn’t going to let him slide, so he knew he would be having to sit still while John verbally vomited all over him, and take it like a man. Like a man. Paul chuckled at his word choice as he disentangled himself from John’s limbs.
Paul was up and showered and packing his things when John started making groaning and whimpering noises. Paul had been just about ready to wake him up, so that they could make their flight on time. He wasn’t hungry, and he doubted very much that John would be either, so he had let John sleep in a little. After about 5 minutes of moaning, John finally spoke.
“So you slept with me last night?” he asked.
“Yeah, we slept. That’s all we did,” Paul said calmly.
“I’m not a pariah anymore?” John asked grumpily.
Paul’s Irish went up, but he forced himself not to react. At times like these, John didn’t want clever or veiled responses. Plain old direct responses were best. “You were never a pariah to me, John.”
John pushed himself up to a sitting position and felt his head pounding for all it was worth. “How much did I drink?” he asked.
“You had four triple scotches,” Paul said – “if not a fifth of scotch, nearly so.”
“Ohhhhhh…” John groaned. “Why didn’t you stop me?” His voice was actually accusatory.
Again, Paul told his Irish to sit down and shut up. “I’m not your nursemaid, John. But I did ask you to stop; you didn’t listen to me.”
John groaned again. “How on earth am I supposed to function?” he asked.
Paul walked over to the bedside and picked up the dispirin tablets and water he had left there earlier, and handed them to John. John took them, and swallowed the pills with the water chaser. “Thanks,” he said gruffly.
“I’ve packed your things for you, and I’ve left some clean clothes out. I’ll start a hot shower for you, and I suggest you go straight into it,” Paul was all business. He knew there was no reasoning with John when he was hung-over, and any real conversation at that time would no doubt end in tears.
“Ta,” John said, lapsing back into Liverpudlian speak. He carefully moved to the edge of the bed, and then slowly, ever so slowly, got up. “When’s our flight?”
“We have to leave for the airport in less than an hour – about 40 minutes,” Paul answered in a very soft voice. Loud sounds would have made John sick.
John aimed himself at the bathroom, and Paul was right behind him. John was naked, so all Paul had to do was open the shower door for him, and help him in. The hot water cascaded down John’s back as he leaned against the tiled stall. “Ahhhhh….”
Paul heard the noise in the shower and half-smiled in spite of his own subdued mood. He knew that wonderful feeling when you’re hung-over and that first hard spray of hot water hits your back. Been there, done that, many times.
The flight to Lisbon had been very quiet, and so had been the limo ride to the hotel. On the plane, John and Paul sat in first class, without talking. It wasn’t because they were angry. John kept drifting in and out of sleep. When he was awake he was nursing a massive headache. Paul was reading through some business papers and making notes for issues they needed to address for the Lisbon performance. Evan Willis and his team had already headed for Lisbon, and were no doubt already there dealing with whatever “problem” they had there (as alluded to in the previous night’s conversation). Paul was going to make it his business to find out what it was, and ensure that he approved of the resolution. And he had to think carefully about how he was going to address John’s meltdown with Willis.
As soon as they got to the hotel, John climbed in to bed. They had the day off, thankfully, so John would have time to recover from his epic drinks binge. Paul, remembering not to leave a note on the bathroom mirror (since evidently it now turned out that far from appreciating them, John was contemptuous of them), he called Willis and said he wanted to talk with him.
Naturally, Willis had been dreading this moment all day, but he knew it had to happen. He wondered if Paul was going to tell him the tour was off, or that he and John would be staying in separate hotels, or that they had to cancel the next few shows. He also knew it would be embarrassing for both Paul and him to discuss the revelations John had spouted out in front of the assistants the night before. Still, that, too, had to be faced by both of them. At least it was Paul alone; Willis didn’t think he could stand facing John Lennon at that moment to discuss such topics.
Paul came to Willis’s room pre-dinner, at about 5 p.m., and Willis had pulled out a bottle of whiskey – which he knew was Paul’s favorite tiff - and readied himself for what would probably be an excruciating interview. The world was lucky to have such brilliant artists, but boy! Was it hard to live with them! Finally, the knock came.
Paul had many years of experience – decades, really – in learning how to school his face to look blithely unconcerned when embarrassing things were happening. He’d learned how to do it when he was a child, because in his family you didn’t whine or cry in public, and even in private you didn’t bleed your emotions all over your loved ones and family members. He became one of the world’s experts at hiding behind this “bland face” (as both John and Linda called it) after enduring Lennon’s gibes, the Beatles break-up, the war of words and songs with John in the ‘70s, and horrible album reviews, not to mention all of the drug busts. So, tonight’s little conversation with the tour manager was just another one in a long list of embarrassing situations Paul had faced, many of which John had gotten them into, and out of which it was Paul’s job to extract them.
When Willis opened the door, he had a hard time meeting Paul’s eyes. But Paul looked solid and businesslike. “Good evening, Evan, thanks for meeting with me,” he said very politely, and moved easily into the room. He saw the seat at the table with the whiskey pour and he smiled his gratitude to Willis, and then joked, “Hair of the dog that bit us, eh?”
Willis laughed in relief. Thank heaven Paul wasn’t being awkward about this.
“I’m sorry about last night, Evan,” Paul said sincerely, after taking a sip of whiskey.
“It’s okay,” Willis said – but mainly because he didn’t know what else to say.
“No, it’s not okay. It was entirely unprofessional, and you shouldn’t have been dragged into it.” Paul’s words were firm and did not in any way beg for a disavowal, so Willis accepted the apology.
“How’s John?” He finally asked.
Paul laughed. “Good question,” he said, grinning. “He’s sacked out in bed, and is no doubt gone for the night.”
“He kinda overdid it,” Willis said cautiously.
“Yeah, kinda,” Paul made a comical face. He paused for a few key moments before saying what he had come to say. “I know you won’t repeat what you heard last night,” Paul said, his voice dropping to a lower, huskier, register.
“Of course not!” Willis said staunchly, and Paul believed him.
“I’m more worried about your assistants,” Paul said.
Willis’s face clouded over. “Me, too. I read them the riot act last night. I gave them the old you’ll-never-work-in-this-town-again speech,” he was reassuring Paul that he had done what he could do to encourage the young men not to violate their confidentiality agreements.
Paul nodded and then shrugged in a way that sent the message that he knew from bitter experience that it was a spilt milk situation, and all he could really do was hope for the best. “We’ll deny it if any of them go public,” Paul said honestly. He watched Willis’s eyes for a moment until Willis got the message.
“So will I,” he said.
Paul nodded and smiled. He took another sip of whiskey and said, “Do you have any questions of me?”
Willis was surprised that Paul had offered up any kind of explanation. But he had to ask the question that he’d tried to ask the night before, if only to see if he could help them salvage the tour. “If there is some way I can help you two resolve the problem, let me know what. There are millions of pounds wrapped up in this tour, not to mention your reputations and credibility. It’s been going so well. It would be terrible if some…problem…derailed it all.”
Paul nodded as Willis spoke, in silent agreement. He finally responded. “In the end, it was my fault.”
Willis looked up, surprised. It had been John who had been drunk and who had said all the provocative things. Paul had been the model of decorum. “How so?” he asked.
“Usually when John acts up, when he behaves erratically, I don’t react. I just go along, and pretend all is well. This time I didn’t. I should have just swallowed my feelings, and let it blow over. It isn’t as if I haven’t had a lifetime’s experience in dealing with John’s mercurial moods.”
Willis nodded sympathetically, and felt like he was seeing a whole side of Paul McCartney he never suspected was there.
“Anyway,” Paul said, his voice becoming more upbeat and cheerful, “I came here to promise to you that under no circumstances will I allow that to happen again on this tour.” Paul waited a moment to watch the relief pass over Willis’s face, and then he issued the clincher:
“So, Evan, tell me. What is this ‘problem’ we’re having in Lisbon?”
Ultimately, the Lisbon show had gone well. John had recovered physically from the Showdown in Madrid (as Paul had started referring to it in his own mind), but not emotionally. John was pathetically needy and emotional, constantly seeking reassurance that Paul was there next to him. Paul recognized this as part of the old pattern. John would explode all over him, say or do unforgiveable things, and then come crawling back later begging for forgiveness and terrified he’d gone too far, and that Paul would leave him. Paul had hoped they’d moved past that pattern – John’s therapy and his avoidance of mind-altering drugs had helped him make significant strides in the last few years. But this latest behavior was distressing to Paul, who began to fear again that it would always be thus with John, and maybe he had to just accept this as reality or choose to move on.
So here they were landing in Caracas, Venezuela; it was their first time on the continent of South America. Both of them were emotionally bruised, but were at least not angry at each other. As they drove to their hotel, they maintained a comfortable silence. John had moved over close to Paul, because he wanted to feel Paul’s thigh against his own. It was the most he could opt for in a car driven by a Venezuelan security guard. For all John knew, they killed homosexuals here and ate them for breakfast. Paul was looking dreamily out of the window, and periodically he quickly patted John’s thigh.
The Hotel Avila was a state of the art grand hotel circa 1988, and that is where John and Paul took over a huge sweeping suite on the top floor that overlooked the swimming pool, which was surrounded by lush vegetation. The rainy season was at its tail end, and extremely bright blue skies could periodically be seen forcing their way through skittish clouds passing over the horizon. Paul found it to be breathtakingly beautiful as he lingered on the balcony.
Because this was their first time in South America, John and Paul had decided before they left to allow themselves plenty of time in between their six concerts there. They wanted to do some old-fashioned sightseeing, and had a travel agent plan an elaborate side trip or two in each country they visited. Now that they were here, and they were licking their wounds, so to speak, Paul wondered if the sightseeing was a good idea. Perhaps John would not be up for it. The Caracas concert was to take place tomorrow night, and then they had four full days before leaving for Santiago, Chile. Their first side trip was to visit Angel Falls, in Canaima National Park, in the mountains on the tail end of the Amazon River Valley, near Venezuela’s border with Brazil. The trip in and up to the waterfall and back took at least three days and two nights. They would fly in to Canaima on a privately chartered plane, where they would stay in one of the camps that had cottages for rent, and where they would meet a private tour guide to take them on a canoe trip, and then on a hike up to view the Falls.
Paul knew he had to approach John about whether the side trip was something he still wanted to do. He found John relaxing on the giant comfy sofa in the sitting room area of the suite, eyeing the room service menu. John was looking a little perkier now that the long flight from Lisbon was over, and they were in such comfy surroundings.
John caught sight of Paul and asked, “Are you hungry babe?”
“A bit, yes. Are you sure you want to eat in, though? We could find a restaurant with some local color if you’d prefer.”
“Tonight, let’s stay in. We’ve a lot to talk about.”
Paul gulped and said, “Right.” He knew he couldn’t avoid this forever!
Paul ordered their food (because John still hated to use the telephone, and would avoid it if at all possible; at least now he would use it if there was no other alternative). As they waited for the meal to arrive, Paul poured some sparkling water for them both (trying to avoid the liquor cabinet in its entirely), and sat opposite from John in an easy chair.
John looked at the water glass quizzically, and then looked up at Paul and saw the mischievous eyebrow lift. “Very funny, luv,” John said playfully.
“I think it’s best if we have a completely sober conversation this time,” Paul chuckled. “If we’re going to do this thing, let’s do it right.”
John lifted his glass up and said “Cheers!” and Paul reciprocated. “So, Paul, we had a huge fight. Do you know what it was about?”
Paul was a little suspicious of John’s approach, but decided he couldn’t start mealy-mouthing at the start, or it would be all downhill from there. “You were mad at me about something, and I’m not clear what it is. I said the wrong thing again, but I’m not sure what wrong thing I said, either.”
John listened to this and smiled to himself. Paul was making himself sound clueless again, but really, by now – after all these years - John knew that Paul wasn’t pretending to be clueless about such things. He just was clueless. To be angry about it was like resenting the sun for going down at night. “I shouldn’t have pushed you,” John finally said. “That night in Paris. I should have just let the moment be. But I wanted more.”
“More what?” Paul asked flatly. He had no idea at all what John wanted that Paul hadn’t already given him; maybe he never had known!
“I can’t always read your mind, you know,” John said conversationally. “I can sometimes, but not all the time. What I can’t read sometimes is how you feel. I can have a general idea, but when it comes to how you feel about me, I’m completely tone deaf. I can’t read your mind about it.”
Paul was listening to John while he talked in cryptic circles. He was none the wiser by the time John limped to an end. “I didn’t understand that,” Paul said honestly. “Can you tell me in plain English what you want from me?”
John was actually surprised at Paul’s request. It was so – so – open and direct! Wonders never cease! He asked for it, so John was going to give it to him. “I want you to tell me how you feel more often. I mean, candidly and without reservation. I don’t want to be just one of your compartments, separate from all your other compartments. I want to be free to wander into all your compartments at will. I want you to let down your guard with me. Can you do that?”
“Compartments?” Paul repeated, confused.
“It’s what you do, Pud,” John said very gently. “You have everybody separated inside your life, and we only get to see glimpses of the other parts of your life very rarely. It’s frustrating, and we feel managed. It’s not a good way to feel. Has no one ever told you that before?”
Paul was staring at John, but his memory was ringing. His mother, misreading a smile on his face when he was in trouble over a naughty drawing at school, fighting off tears and pleading with him, “It isn’t funny! Why won’t you tell me why you did it?” A very upset and crying Jane Asher in 1967, begging him to “Let me in! Let me in!” Linda, at the time he was in a steep depression in 1970, telling him “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me how you feel.” And John, writing him a song in 1973 to apologize for the things he’d said about Paul to reporters, with lyrics that included: “I never could read your mind.”
“Oh.” Paul said. He sat silently, and had nothing to say. He could think of not one thing to say. He knew John was knocking on a most private door. A door he never opened for anyone, and hoped never to open for anyone. A door behind which his fear lived, a fear he wanted no one to see or know about, as if it were shameful. It was shameful to Paul. To show fear, embarrassment, sadness or anger to other people was a sign of weakness in Paul’s book. He didn’t hold anyone else up to that impossible standard, only himself. Paul had never questioned why he was like that. He just was.
“Baby, look at me,” John said softly. Paul had been staring at his hands.
Reluctantly, Paul looked up.
“You don’t have to tear down all the walls at once, you know,” John said reasonably. “All I really wanted to hear you say was how much you love me; just not the fact of it, but the why and how of it. You know - a description – like lyrics. I know you can do it. Look at Maybe I’m Amazed. That was a very concrete, specific set of lyrics. You were telling Linda exactly what she meant to you, and why. You have never done that for me. And that’s all I want for now. Once I’ve got that, though, I’m warning you, I’ll want more. But unless you take that first step, we’ll never get any deeper in our relationship.”
Paul cleared his throat and looked down at his hands. John was wrong. He had told John how and why he loved him in song. But John apparently didn’t know the song was about him. “I did write a song like that for you,” he said very quietly without looking up.
“Oh? Which one?”
“Here, There, and Everywhere.”
John was struck dumb. That exquisite, gorgeous song that everyone thought was about Jane Asher. He had thought it reeked of Jane Asher. Perhaps it was the best Beatle song ever, and it was written for him. “We all thought it was so much like Jane,” John said, stumbling on his words a bit.
“It couldn’t be about Jane. At the time I wrote it she was always off on acting tours. There was only one person in my life who was ‘here, there, and everywhere’ at that time, and that person was you.” Paul looked up and spoke to John with conviction.
“Well,” John said, not sure what to say next. “You see, I never knew that. All these years! If you’d only told me!”
Paul nodded. Yes, he was afraid to tell people how much he loved and depended on them. It made him feel so utterly vulnerable, and Paul hated to feel vulnerable. He wanted always to be in control of his life, his work, his money, and his emotions. “I couldn’t have told you then,” Paul said in an apologetic tone. “I wasn’t strong enough.” This was a huge admission for Paul to make. He, who wanted always to seem invincible while also appearing to be just a good guy sailing through life, admitting that he was too emotionally weak to proclaim his feelings for John to John.
John was eyeing Paul with compassion. He had pushed him hard, and Paul had given up a small piece of his privacy to him just then, and John thought it would be a good idea to stop torturing the poor man. After the terrible way things went wrong in Rome, John now knew that he had to learn to be grateful for everything he got from Paul, and not to compare it unfavorably to what he thought he deserved. Little by little he would unlock the compartments, and then he would be able to see the whole vista of his lover’s mind. Patience was required, and John made a vow to himself that he was going to develop patience starting that very moment.
“Thanks for telling me about that, Paul,” John said with honest gratitude. “It means a lot to me. Tomorrow, when you sing that song in concert, I will know you are singing it to and about me. That’s an amazing gift.”
That night during the concert, Paul not only sang a heartfelt ‘Til There Was You for John’s benefit, but he also sang an intensely personal and yearning testament to his love for John Lennon:
The side-trip to Canaima and Angel Falls was staggeringly beautiful and exciting. Deep in the Venezuelan jungle they helped row a canoe down one of the many tributaries and even hiked a good 30 or 40 minutes up to the vantage point. Back in the camp in Canaima, they’d had wonderful food, although Paul had a hard time persuading everyone that he really really didn’t want any meat. They all thought he was being polite, and saving the meat for others. John, on the other hand, dove into the meat with gusto. “Sorry mate!” He said cheerfully, as he placed another piece of spicy barbequed meat in his mouth. “I can’t resist!” Paul pouted a bit over it, but he could never stay mad at John. John was a force unto himself, and you more or less had to experience him, as if he was a wild weather front.
While there, in the little town, they went shopping, and studied all the native wares, unmolested and apparently even unrecognized. There were brightly colorful textiles everywhere. John was blown away by them, and ordered lengths of several of the fabrics, and had them sent to London. He envisioned using the textiles to brighten up his new London house.
Instead of going straight back to Caracas, they had their private plane drop them in the pre-Columbian territory Timoto-Cuica, where they went to see the ruins and again browse amongst the wares. John bought a number of items as gifts, and a few things for himself.
When they got back to Caracas, on their last day there before moving on to Lima, Peru, the two had gone to a museum to view pre-Columbian art, with which they’d become infatuated after visiting Timoto-Cuica, and John decided they needed to buy a piece of pre-Columbian art for their home, particularly something like one of the amazing ceramic pottery statues. In aid of this, Paul had rustled up a highly respected Venezuelan art dealer, who promised to be on the lookout for one, once he heard that price really wasn’t much of an object. Also while at the museum, they had come upon a set of ancient pre-Columbian male jewelry, including an elaborately braided piece made out of green and imperial jadite beads, almost like a full-throated necklace, that would have been sewn on to a noble man’s loincloth. Seeing this, John had turned to Paul and said, “Those were the days! Men used to get to decorate their cocks!” Paul had laughed along with John, but when he spoke to the art dealer later that night he asked him to also rustle up, along with some ceramic pottery, a beaded loincloth piece – it didn’t have to be a legitimate antiquity - that he planned to surprise John with later. It was the perfect answer to the perennially vexing question: What do you give a man who has everything?
The next day they moved on to their next stop. Lima, Peru was an exotic mixture of European grandeur and modern squalor. On one hill overlooking the city, shambled homes were built in terraces, cheek by jowl, each painted a different bright tropical color. It appeared quaint and tacky at the same time. But the cliffs that dropped down to the cold Pacific were breathtaking, the beaches were peerless, and the center city plaza was vast and surrounded by ornate European buildings. They might have been in Spain or Lisbon by the looks of those buildings, except for the fact that they were painted a gaudy mustard yellow.
Once ensconced in their top floor suite in the Hotel Bolivar, they talked excitedly about going out on the town and going to the nightclubs where Latin music pulsed, and people drank strange concoctions, featuring exotic fruits. They each dressed up to the nines, and their host – one of the promoters of the concert, a very successful and distinguished businessman from one of Peru’s oldest families – met them in the lobby and whisked them off for some first class night life. They returned to their hotel suite at 2 a.m. tipsy and giggly. They each helped each other (clumsily) divest themselves of their clothes, and eagerly jumped in to bed, where they were soon grabbing, and moaning, and sweating. It was a fast, almost animalistic joinder, but all they were doing was rubbing their cocks together, and enjoying the friction. Neither one of them was sober enough to manage the logistics of anal or even oral sex, so this was the quickest and best way to scratch where they both desperately itched. In this way they soon both came, and afterwards lay on their backs, facing the ceiling, still giggling and panting and melting into the mattress. They had gone at it so fast they’d forgotten to turn off the bedside lamp, so grudgingly Paul moved (groaning and complaining the whole time) and pulled the chain to darken the room. John turned over into Paul’s arms, and placed his arm across Paul’s chest, and they fell into an amicable and peaceful sleep.
The next day they went to visit an art gallery in downtown Lima, and had lunch in a classic European style restaurant with Peruvian overtones. John ate something that didn’t agree with him, and so they went back to the hotel. While John slept, Paul decided to go look at some Peruvian jewelry. He thought he should buy something for Linda and the girls, and maybe also John. He was only interested in antique and vintage pieces, because it was who made them and why that was important, not so much the way they looked. To wear such pieces would be like honoring the ghosts of the artisans who had originally made them, and the people who had originally worn them. What he saw in the store seriously impressed him. He ended up purchasing a temple fiber necklace for Linda, with an exquisite black onyx in the center. It was just the sort of unusual but not gaudy thing that Linda would love. For the girls he bought gold earrings with turquoise that were of a very high quality. But John – John always preferred silver jewelry, and he saw some fine imitations of Incan engraved silver bracelets. They all seemed a bit new and over the top, however, and Paul wanted something rather more ancient and unique for John. He made a note to find a jewelry dealer in Lima who dealt in genuine antiquities to see if he could find one of the silver bands with one-of-a-kind and original Incan engraving.
Paul didn’t consciously know why all of a sudden he wanted to shower John with unique and priceless gifts. But an objective observer might think he was trying to show John, through clear and unambivalent actions, how much John meant to him in a way he had never done before.
Their concert was at 8:15 p.m., and John was thankfully able to get off his sickbed and make some kind of a showing. Paul had done the sound check, and John arrived just a half hour before the show, looking green around the gills. Paul was proud of him, because he knew John still felt ill, so he told the musicians he was taking the laboring oar that night. They scotched all the songs that John sang that required strenuous singing, and then inserted as many Paul songs where he had to sing strenuously instead. On a couple of occasions, John indicated that he feared he was going to be ill, so Paul would signal the band, and they would launch into one of the songs – out of order – that Paul sang solo, so that John could inauspiciously leave the stage to use the bathroom and return by the time the song was over. The audience was none the wiser, and had a grand old time because when John did sing, it was with a dedicated intensity. Because they had switched the order of the songs all around, Paul had already sung Yesterday, which was one of their encore songs. So on this night, John and Paul sang Real Love as their final encore – leaving the more throaty and energetic closers for another night.
The moment was magic, those who attended the concert later said, because the two men had come out for their last encore, both dressed entirely in black, and the band was there, too, but recessed a bit in the back, and playing in a very unobtrusive way, with the exception of Robbie’s plaintive lead guitar. John and Paul faced each other, not the audience, at one mic, and sang to each other. They each knew who it was they were singing to, and why, and both of them were suffused by just barely concealed emotion. The audience felt the connection, and to them it was a magical ending to an amazing concert. John sang the first two verses solo, and then Paul joined in with a perfect high harmony:
I feel bad about the long delay last week, so I'm posting the next chapter a day early. In this Chapter, soothing oil is poured over the blistered skin, and healing begins.
Also - I have never visited South America, but I have long wanted to. Maybe some day! So the next few chapters, in addition to telling the John and Paul love story, I am going to do a South American love story too. What a mystical and glorious place! I did as much research as I could, and could not find any evidence that either John or Paul ever went to the continent of South America prior to 1988. I do know for a fact the Beatles refused to perform there because they always refused to play in front of segregated audiences, which is why they did so few concerts in the southern states of the U.S.A. They would only play in integrated arenas. Having said all this, I do not know if Paul or John visited the continent of South America prior to 1988; I just know they did not perform there. I have heard just recently on JHP that Yoko might have gone to Columbia (Catagena) on some weird witch-odyssey organized by some weird hanger-on, but I don't know if even that is true. So if I'm wrong on this fact, I apologize. It is not really integral to the story, thankfully.
Chapter 45
Neither John nor Paul had ever ventured into South America proper. Back in the Beatles years they were offered the opportunity a few times, but all four of them had refused to perform in front of segregated audiences, and back in the ‘60s the promoters who were suggesting South American venues insisted upon segregation. Wings had never toured there either; in the 1970’s there was a great deal of unrest in most of the major South American countries and it was thought, by Europeans at least, not to be safe. While both men had vacationed in the Caribbean – and Paul had done so many times – the continent itself was a major mystery to John and Paul as their plane touched down in Caracas, Venezuela, on October 31, 1988. By then they’d been on tour since the last week in August, about 10 weeks or so. They had just survived a rough week, due to the fireworks they’d let off on each other in Rome and Madrid.
Lisbon had been the sultry quiet after a crashing storm. The morning after the Madrid performance, they had slept in until 11 a.m. Their flight to Lisbon was at 2 p.m. They both felt hung-over: John, because of the prodigious amount of whiskey he had consumed the night before, and Paul from being dragged through the emotional ups and downs of John on a rampage. Paul, at his best, could barely tolerate that kind of drama, and he certainly wasn’t at his best at that moment in time. He felt scorched by John’s fiery words and erratic conduct. And then to be the focus of all that overwrought drama with an audience of underlings was both appalling and exhausting to him. Still, ultimately, they had reached a kind of peace with each other before they went to bed.
But as each man awoke the next morning in Madrid, the cloud hanging over them – while no longer black – looked pretty grey and about to pour down rain. John could barely remember what happened the night before – he only remembered having a shouting match with Paul, or, more like, he was shouting and Paul was being his infuriating cool and collected self – and he had a bad feeling he might have done so in front of the tour manager and his staff. Meanwhile, Paul remembered all too well what had happened the night before, and he wondered how he was going to face the management team today and what he could possibly do to staunch the gossip that he was sure would emerge from the previous night’s debacle. He also knew that he had a serious conversation ahead of him with John – the kind Paul generally avoided at all costs. But it was clear that John wasn’t going to let him slide, so he knew he would be having to sit still while John verbally vomited all over him, and take it like a man. Like a man. Paul chuckled at his word choice as he disentangled himself from John’s limbs.
Paul was up and showered and packing his things when John started making groaning and whimpering noises. Paul had been just about ready to wake him up, so that they could make their flight on time. He wasn’t hungry, and he doubted very much that John would be either, so he had let John sleep in a little. After about 5 minutes of moaning, John finally spoke.
“So you slept with me last night?” he asked.
“Yeah, we slept. That’s all we did,” Paul said calmly.
“I’m not a pariah anymore?” John asked grumpily.
Paul’s Irish went up, but he forced himself not to react. At times like these, John didn’t want clever or veiled responses. Plain old direct responses were best. “You were never a pariah to me, John.”
John pushed himself up to a sitting position and felt his head pounding for all it was worth. “How much did I drink?” he asked.
“You had four triple scotches,” Paul said – “if not a fifth of scotch, nearly so.”
“Ohhhhhh…” John groaned. “Why didn’t you stop me?” His voice was actually accusatory.
Again, Paul told his Irish to sit down and shut up. “I’m not your nursemaid, John. But I did ask you to stop; you didn’t listen to me.”
John groaned again. “How on earth am I supposed to function?” he asked.
Paul walked over to the bedside and picked up the dispirin tablets and water he had left there earlier, and handed them to John. John took them, and swallowed the pills with the water chaser. “Thanks,” he said gruffly.
“I’ve packed your things for you, and I’ve left some clean clothes out. I’ll start a hot shower for you, and I suggest you go straight into it,” Paul was all business. He knew there was no reasoning with John when he was hung-over, and any real conversation at that time would no doubt end in tears.
“Ta,” John said, lapsing back into Liverpudlian speak. He carefully moved to the edge of the bed, and then slowly, ever so slowly, got up. “When’s our flight?”
“We have to leave for the airport in less than an hour – about 40 minutes,” Paul answered in a very soft voice. Loud sounds would have made John sick.
John aimed himself at the bathroom, and Paul was right behind him. John was naked, so all Paul had to do was open the shower door for him, and help him in. The hot water cascaded down John’s back as he leaned against the tiled stall. “Ahhhhh….”
Paul heard the noise in the shower and half-smiled in spite of his own subdued mood. He knew that wonderful feeling when you’re hung-over and that first hard spray of hot water hits your back. Been there, done that, many times.
*****
The flight to Lisbon had been very quiet, and so had been the limo ride to the hotel. On the plane, John and Paul sat in first class, without talking. It wasn’t because they were angry. John kept drifting in and out of sleep. When he was awake he was nursing a massive headache. Paul was reading through some business papers and making notes for issues they needed to address for the Lisbon performance. Evan Willis and his team had already headed for Lisbon, and were no doubt already there dealing with whatever “problem” they had there (as alluded to in the previous night’s conversation). Paul was going to make it his business to find out what it was, and ensure that he approved of the resolution. And he had to think carefully about how he was going to address John’s meltdown with Willis.
As soon as they got to the hotel, John climbed in to bed. They had the day off, thankfully, so John would have time to recover from his epic drinks binge. Paul, remembering not to leave a note on the bathroom mirror (since evidently it now turned out that far from appreciating them, John was contemptuous of them), he called Willis and said he wanted to talk with him.
Naturally, Willis had been dreading this moment all day, but he knew it had to happen. He wondered if Paul was going to tell him the tour was off, or that he and John would be staying in separate hotels, or that they had to cancel the next few shows. He also knew it would be embarrassing for both Paul and him to discuss the revelations John had spouted out in front of the assistants the night before. Still, that, too, had to be faced by both of them. At least it was Paul alone; Willis didn’t think he could stand facing John Lennon at that moment to discuss such topics.
Paul came to Willis’s room pre-dinner, at about 5 p.m., and Willis had pulled out a bottle of whiskey – which he knew was Paul’s favorite tiff - and readied himself for what would probably be an excruciating interview. The world was lucky to have such brilliant artists, but boy! Was it hard to live with them! Finally, the knock came.
Paul had many years of experience – decades, really – in learning how to school his face to look blithely unconcerned when embarrassing things were happening. He’d learned how to do it when he was a child, because in his family you didn’t whine or cry in public, and even in private you didn’t bleed your emotions all over your loved ones and family members. He became one of the world’s experts at hiding behind this “bland face” (as both John and Linda called it) after enduring Lennon’s gibes, the Beatles break-up, the war of words and songs with John in the ‘70s, and horrible album reviews, not to mention all of the drug busts. So, tonight’s little conversation with the tour manager was just another one in a long list of embarrassing situations Paul had faced, many of which John had gotten them into, and out of which it was Paul’s job to extract them.
When Willis opened the door, he had a hard time meeting Paul’s eyes. But Paul looked solid and businesslike. “Good evening, Evan, thanks for meeting with me,” he said very politely, and moved easily into the room. He saw the seat at the table with the whiskey pour and he smiled his gratitude to Willis, and then joked, “Hair of the dog that bit us, eh?”
Willis laughed in relief. Thank heaven Paul wasn’t being awkward about this.
“I’m sorry about last night, Evan,” Paul said sincerely, after taking a sip of whiskey.
“It’s okay,” Willis said – but mainly because he didn’t know what else to say.
“No, it’s not okay. It was entirely unprofessional, and you shouldn’t have been dragged into it.” Paul’s words were firm and did not in any way beg for a disavowal, so Willis accepted the apology.
“How’s John?” He finally asked.
Paul laughed. “Good question,” he said, grinning. “He’s sacked out in bed, and is no doubt gone for the night.”
“He kinda overdid it,” Willis said cautiously.
“Yeah, kinda,” Paul made a comical face. He paused for a few key moments before saying what he had come to say. “I know you won’t repeat what you heard last night,” Paul said, his voice dropping to a lower, huskier, register.
“Of course not!” Willis said staunchly, and Paul believed him.
“I’m more worried about your assistants,” Paul said.
Willis’s face clouded over. “Me, too. I read them the riot act last night. I gave them the old you’ll-never-work-in-this-town-again speech,” he was reassuring Paul that he had done what he could do to encourage the young men not to violate their confidentiality agreements.
Paul nodded and then shrugged in a way that sent the message that he knew from bitter experience that it was a spilt milk situation, and all he could really do was hope for the best. “We’ll deny it if any of them go public,” Paul said honestly. He watched Willis’s eyes for a moment until Willis got the message.
“So will I,” he said.
Paul nodded and smiled. He took another sip of whiskey and said, “Do you have any questions of me?”
Willis was surprised that Paul had offered up any kind of explanation. But he had to ask the question that he’d tried to ask the night before, if only to see if he could help them salvage the tour. “If there is some way I can help you two resolve the problem, let me know what. There are millions of pounds wrapped up in this tour, not to mention your reputations and credibility. It’s been going so well. It would be terrible if some…problem…derailed it all.”
Paul nodded as Willis spoke, in silent agreement. He finally responded. “In the end, it was my fault.”
Willis looked up, surprised. It had been John who had been drunk and who had said all the provocative things. Paul had been the model of decorum. “How so?” he asked.
“Usually when John acts up, when he behaves erratically, I don’t react. I just go along, and pretend all is well. This time I didn’t. I should have just swallowed my feelings, and let it blow over. It isn’t as if I haven’t had a lifetime’s experience in dealing with John’s mercurial moods.”
Willis nodded sympathetically, and felt like he was seeing a whole side of Paul McCartney he never suspected was there.
“Anyway,” Paul said, his voice becoming more upbeat and cheerful, “I came here to promise to you that under no circumstances will I allow that to happen again on this tour.” Paul waited a moment to watch the relief pass over Willis’s face, and then he issued the clincher:
“So, Evan, tell me. What is this ‘problem’ we’re having in Lisbon?”
*****
Ultimately, the Lisbon show had gone well. John had recovered physically from the Showdown in Madrid (as Paul had started referring to it in his own mind), but not emotionally. John was pathetically needy and emotional, constantly seeking reassurance that Paul was there next to him. Paul recognized this as part of the old pattern. John would explode all over him, say or do unforgiveable things, and then come crawling back later begging for forgiveness and terrified he’d gone too far, and that Paul would leave him. Paul had hoped they’d moved past that pattern – John’s therapy and his avoidance of mind-altering drugs had helped him make significant strides in the last few years. But this latest behavior was distressing to Paul, who began to fear again that it would always be thus with John, and maybe he had to just accept this as reality or choose to move on.
So here they were landing in Caracas, Venezuela; it was their first time on the continent of South America. Both of them were emotionally bruised, but were at least not angry at each other. As they drove to their hotel, they maintained a comfortable silence. John had moved over close to Paul, because he wanted to feel Paul’s thigh against his own. It was the most he could opt for in a car driven by a Venezuelan security guard. For all John knew, they killed homosexuals here and ate them for breakfast. Paul was looking dreamily out of the window, and periodically he quickly patted John’s thigh.
The Hotel Avila was a state of the art grand hotel circa 1988, and that is where John and Paul took over a huge sweeping suite on the top floor that overlooked the swimming pool, which was surrounded by lush vegetation. The rainy season was at its tail end, and extremely bright blue skies could periodically be seen forcing their way through skittish clouds passing over the horizon. Paul found it to be breathtakingly beautiful as he lingered on the balcony.
Because this was their first time in South America, John and Paul had decided before they left to allow themselves plenty of time in between their six concerts there. They wanted to do some old-fashioned sightseeing, and had a travel agent plan an elaborate side trip or two in each country they visited. Now that they were here, and they were licking their wounds, so to speak, Paul wondered if the sightseeing was a good idea. Perhaps John would not be up for it. The Caracas concert was to take place tomorrow night, and then they had four full days before leaving for Santiago, Chile. Their first side trip was to visit Angel Falls, in Canaima National Park, in the mountains on the tail end of the Amazon River Valley, near Venezuela’s border with Brazil. The trip in and up to the waterfall and back took at least three days and two nights. They would fly in to Canaima on a privately chartered plane, where they would stay in one of the camps that had cottages for rent, and where they would meet a private tour guide to take them on a canoe trip, and then on a hike up to view the Falls.
Paul knew he had to approach John about whether the side trip was something he still wanted to do. He found John relaxing on the giant comfy sofa in the sitting room area of the suite, eyeing the room service menu. John was looking a little perkier now that the long flight from Lisbon was over, and they were in such comfy surroundings.
John caught sight of Paul and asked, “Are you hungry babe?”
“A bit, yes. Are you sure you want to eat in, though? We could find a restaurant with some local color if you’d prefer.”
“Tonight, let’s stay in. We’ve a lot to talk about.”
Paul gulped and said, “Right.” He knew he couldn’t avoid this forever!
Paul ordered their food (because John still hated to use the telephone, and would avoid it if at all possible; at least now he would use it if there was no other alternative). As they waited for the meal to arrive, Paul poured some sparkling water for them both (trying to avoid the liquor cabinet in its entirely), and sat opposite from John in an easy chair.
John looked at the water glass quizzically, and then looked up at Paul and saw the mischievous eyebrow lift. “Very funny, luv,” John said playfully.
“I think it’s best if we have a completely sober conversation this time,” Paul chuckled. “If we’re going to do this thing, let’s do it right.”
John lifted his glass up and said “Cheers!” and Paul reciprocated. “So, Paul, we had a huge fight. Do you know what it was about?”
Paul was a little suspicious of John’s approach, but decided he couldn’t start mealy-mouthing at the start, or it would be all downhill from there. “You were mad at me about something, and I’m not clear what it is. I said the wrong thing again, but I’m not sure what wrong thing I said, either.”
John listened to this and smiled to himself. Paul was making himself sound clueless again, but really, by now – after all these years - John knew that Paul wasn’t pretending to be clueless about such things. He just was clueless. To be angry about it was like resenting the sun for going down at night. “I shouldn’t have pushed you,” John finally said. “That night in Paris. I should have just let the moment be. But I wanted more.”
“More what?” Paul asked flatly. He had no idea at all what John wanted that Paul hadn’t already given him; maybe he never had known!
“I can’t always read your mind, you know,” John said conversationally. “I can sometimes, but not all the time. What I can’t read sometimes is how you feel. I can have a general idea, but when it comes to how you feel about me, I’m completely tone deaf. I can’t read your mind about it.”
Paul was listening to John while he talked in cryptic circles. He was none the wiser by the time John limped to an end. “I didn’t understand that,” Paul said honestly. “Can you tell me in plain English what you want from me?”
John was actually surprised at Paul’s request. It was so – so – open and direct! Wonders never cease! He asked for it, so John was going to give it to him. “I want you to tell me how you feel more often. I mean, candidly and without reservation. I don’t want to be just one of your compartments, separate from all your other compartments. I want to be free to wander into all your compartments at will. I want you to let down your guard with me. Can you do that?”
“Compartments?” Paul repeated, confused.
“It’s what you do, Pud,” John said very gently. “You have everybody separated inside your life, and we only get to see glimpses of the other parts of your life very rarely. It’s frustrating, and we feel managed. It’s not a good way to feel. Has no one ever told you that before?”
Paul was staring at John, but his memory was ringing. His mother, misreading a smile on his face when he was in trouble over a naughty drawing at school, fighting off tears and pleading with him, “It isn’t funny! Why won’t you tell me why you did it?” A very upset and crying Jane Asher in 1967, begging him to “Let me in! Let me in!” Linda, at the time he was in a steep depression in 1970, telling him “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me how you feel.” And John, writing him a song in 1973 to apologize for the things he’d said about Paul to reporters, with lyrics that included: “I never could read your mind.”
“Oh.” Paul said. He sat silently, and had nothing to say. He could think of not one thing to say. He knew John was knocking on a most private door. A door he never opened for anyone, and hoped never to open for anyone. A door behind which his fear lived, a fear he wanted no one to see or know about, as if it were shameful. It was shameful to Paul. To show fear, embarrassment, sadness or anger to other people was a sign of weakness in Paul’s book. He didn’t hold anyone else up to that impossible standard, only himself. Paul had never questioned why he was like that. He just was.
“Baby, look at me,” John said softly. Paul had been staring at his hands.
Reluctantly, Paul looked up.
“You don’t have to tear down all the walls at once, you know,” John said reasonably. “All I really wanted to hear you say was how much you love me; just not the fact of it, but the why and how of it. You know - a description – like lyrics. I know you can do it. Look at Maybe I’m Amazed. That was a very concrete, specific set of lyrics. You were telling Linda exactly what she meant to you, and why. You have never done that for me. And that’s all I want for now. Once I’ve got that, though, I’m warning you, I’ll want more. But unless you take that first step, we’ll never get any deeper in our relationship.”
Paul cleared his throat and looked down at his hands. John was wrong. He had told John how and why he loved him in song. But John apparently didn’t know the song was about him. “I did write a song like that for you,” he said very quietly without looking up.
“Oh? Which one?”
“Here, There, and Everywhere.”
John was struck dumb. That exquisite, gorgeous song that everyone thought was about Jane Asher. He had thought it reeked of Jane Asher. Perhaps it was the best Beatle song ever, and it was written for him. “We all thought it was so much like Jane,” John said, stumbling on his words a bit.
“It couldn’t be about Jane. At the time I wrote it she was always off on acting tours. There was only one person in my life who was ‘here, there, and everywhere’ at that time, and that person was you.” Paul looked up and spoke to John with conviction.
“Well,” John said, not sure what to say next. “You see, I never knew that. All these years! If you’d only told me!”
Paul nodded. Yes, he was afraid to tell people how much he loved and depended on them. It made him feel so utterly vulnerable, and Paul hated to feel vulnerable. He wanted always to be in control of his life, his work, his money, and his emotions. “I couldn’t have told you then,” Paul said in an apologetic tone. “I wasn’t strong enough.” This was a huge admission for Paul to make. He, who wanted always to seem invincible while also appearing to be just a good guy sailing through life, admitting that he was too emotionally weak to proclaim his feelings for John to John.
John was eyeing Paul with compassion. He had pushed him hard, and Paul had given up a small piece of his privacy to him just then, and John thought it would be a good idea to stop torturing the poor man. After the terrible way things went wrong in Rome, John now knew that he had to learn to be grateful for everything he got from Paul, and not to compare it unfavorably to what he thought he deserved. Little by little he would unlock the compartments, and then he would be able to see the whole vista of his lover’s mind. Patience was required, and John made a vow to himself that he was going to develop patience starting that very moment.
“Thanks for telling me about that, Paul,” John said with honest gratitude. “It means a lot to me. Tomorrow, when you sing that song in concert, I will know you are singing it to and about me. That’s an amazing gift.”
*****
That night during the concert, Paul not only sang a heartfelt ‘Til There Was You for John’s benefit, but he also sang an intensely personal and yearning testament to his love for John Lennon:
To lead a better life
I need my love to be here
Here, making each day of the year
Changing my life with a wave of her hand
Nobody can deny that there's something there
There, running my hands through her hair
Both of us thinking how good it can be
Someone is speaking, but she doesn't know he's there
I want her everywhere
And if she's beside me I know I need never care
But to love her is to need her
Everywhere, knowing that love is to share
Each one believing that love never dies
Watching their eyes, and hoping I'm always there
I want her everywhere
And if she's beside me I know I need never care
But to love her is to need her
Everywhere, knowing that love is to share
Each one believing that love never dies
Watching their eyes and hoping I'm always there
I will be there, and everywhere
Here, there and everywhere
As Paul sang, John’s eyes filled with tears, which he tried to hide with a pleasant smile. He wished they lived in a world where he and Paul didn’t have to hide their love behind feminine pronouns. I need my love to be here
Here, making each day of the year
Changing my life with a wave of her hand
Nobody can deny that there's something there
There, running my hands through her hair
Both of us thinking how good it can be
Someone is speaking, but she doesn't know he's there
I want her everywhere
And if she's beside me I know I need never care
But to love her is to need her
Everywhere, knowing that love is to share
Each one believing that love never dies
Watching their eyes, and hoping I'm always there
I want her everywhere
And if she's beside me I know I need never care
But to love her is to need her
Everywhere, knowing that love is to share
Each one believing that love never dies
Watching their eyes and hoping I'm always there
I will be there, and everywhere
Here, there and everywhere
*****
The side-trip to Canaima and Angel Falls was staggeringly beautiful and exciting. Deep in the Venezuelan jungle they helped row a canoe down one of the many tributaries and even hiked a good 30 or 40 minutes up to the vantage point. Back in the camp in Canaima, they’d had wonderful food, although Paul had a hard time persuading everyone that he really really didn’t want any meat. They all thought he was being polite, and saving the meat for others. John, on the other hand, dove into the meat with gusto. “Sorry mate!” He said cheerfully, as he placed another piece of spicy barbequed meat in his mouth. “I can’t resist!” Paul pouted a bit over it, but he could never stay mad at John. John was a force unto himself, and you more or less had to experience him, as if he was a wild weather front.
While there, in the little town, they went shopping, and studied all the native wares, unmolested and apparently even unrecognized. There were brightly colorful textiles everywhere. John was blown away by them, and ordered lengths of several of the fabrics, and had them sent to London. He envisioned using the textiles to brighten up his new London house.
Instead of going straight back to Caracas, they had their private plane drop them in the pre-Columbian territory Timoto-Cuica, where they went to see the ruins and again browse amongst the wares. John bought a number of items as gifts, and a few things for himself.
When they got back to Caracas, on their last day there before moving on to Lima, Peru, the two had gone to a museum to view pre-Columbian art, with which they’d become infatuated after visiting Timoto-Cuica, and John decided they needed to buy a piece of pre-Columbian art for their home, particularly something like one of the amazing ceramic pottery statues. In aid of this, Paul had rustled up a highly respected Venezuelan art dealer, who promised to be on the lookout for one, once he heard that price really wasn’t much of an object. Also while at the museum, they had come upon a set of ancient pre-Columbian male jewelry, including an elaborately braided piece made out of green and imperial jadite beads, almost like a full-throated necklace, that would have been sewn on to a noble man’s loincloth. Seeing this, John had turned to Paul and said, “Those were the days! Men used to get to decorate their cocks!” Paul had laughed along with John, but when he spoke to the art dealer later that night he asked him to also rustle up, along with some ceramic pottery, a beaded loincloth piece – it didn’t have to be a legitimate antiquity - that he planned to surprise John with later. It was the perfect answer to the perennially vexing question: What do you give a man who has everything?
*****
The next day they moved on to their next stop. Lima, Peru was an exotic mixture of European grandeur and modern squalor. On one hill overlooking the city, shambled homes were built in terraces, cheek by jowl, each painted a different bright tropical color. It appeared quaint and tacky at the same time. But the cliffs that dropped down to the cold Pacific were breathtaking, the beaches were peerless, and the center city plaza was vast and surrounded by ornate European buildings. They might have been in Spain or Lisbon by the looks of those buildings, except for the fact that they were painted a gaudy mustard yellow.
Once ensconced in their top floor suite in the Hotel Bolivar, they talked excitedly about going out on the town and going to the nightclubs where Latin music pulsed, and people drank strange concoctions, featuring exotic fruits. They each dressed up to the nines, and their host – one of the promoters of the concert, a very successful and distinguished businessman from one of Peru’s oldest families – met them in the lobby and whisked them off for some first class night life. They returned to their hotel suite at 2 a.m. tipsy and giggly. They each helped each other (clumsily) divest themselves of their clothes, and eagerly jumped in to bed, where they were soon grabbing, and moaning, and sweating. It was a fast, almost animalistic joinder, but all they were doing was rubbing their cocks together, and enjoying the friction. Neither one of them was sober enough to manage the logistics of anal or even oral sex, so this was the quickest and best way to scratch where they both desperately itched. In this way they soon both came, and afterwards lay on their backs, facing the ceiling, still giggling and panting and melting into the mattress. They had gone at it so fast they’d forgotten to turn off the bedside lamp, so grudgingly Paul moved (groaning and complaining the whole time) and pulled the chain to darken the room. John turned over into Paul’s arms, and placed his arm across Paul’s chest, and they fell into an amicable and peaceful sleep.
*****
The next day they went to visit an art gallery in downtown Lima, and had lunch in a classic European style restaurant with Peruvian overtones. John ate something that didn’t agree with him, and so they went back to the hotel. While John slept, Paul decided to go look at some Peruvian jewelry. He thought he should buy something for Linda and the girls, and maybe also John. He was only interested in antique and vintage pieces, because it was who made them and why that was important, not so much the way they looked. To wear such pieces would be like honoring the ghosts of the artisans who had originally made them, and the people who had originally worn them. What he saw in the store seriously impressed him. He ended up purchasing a temple fiber necklace for Linda, with an exquisite black onyx in the center. It was just the sort of unusual but not gaudy thing that Linda would love. For the girls he bought gold earrings with turquoise that were of a very high quality. But John – John always preferred silver jewelry, and he saw some fine imitations of Incan engraved silver bracelets. They all seemed a bit new and over the top, however, and Paul wanted something rather more ancient and unique for John. He made a note to find a jewelry dealer in Lima who dealt in genuine antiquities to see if he could find one of the silver bands with one-of-a-kind and original Incan engraving.
Paul didn’t consciously know why all of a sudden he wanted to shower John with unique and priceless gifts. But an objective observer might think he was trying to show John, through clear and unambivalent actions, how much John meant to him in a way he had never done before.
*****
Their concert was at 8:15 p.m., and John was thankfully able to get off his sickbed and make some kind of a showing. Paul had done the sound check, and John arrived just a half hour before the show, looking green around the gills. Paul was proud of him, because he knew John still felt ill, so he told the musicians he was taking the laboring oar that night. They scotched all the songs that John sang that required strenuous singing, and then inserted as many Paul songs where he had to sing strenuously instead. On a couple of occasions, John indicated that he feared he was going to be ill, so Paul would signal the band, and they would launch into one of the songs – out of order – that Paul sang solo, so that John could inauspiciously leave the stage to use the bathroom and return by the time the song was over. The audience was none the wiser, and had a grand old time because when John did sing, it was with a dedicated intensity. Because they had switched the order of the songs all around, Paul had already sung Yesterday, which was one of their encore songs. So on this night, John and Paul sang Real Love as their final encore – leaving the more throaty and energetic closers for another night.
The moment was magic, those who attended the concert later said, because the two men had come out for their last encore, both dressed entirely in black, and the band was there, too, but recessed a bit in the back, and playing in a very unobtrusive way, with the exception of Robbie’s plaintive lead guitar. John and Paul faced each other, not the audience, at one mic, and sang to each other. They each knew who it was they were singing to, and why, and both of them were suffused by just barely concealed emotion. The audience felt the connection, and to them it was a magical ending to an amazing concert. John sang the first two verses solo, and then Paul joined in with a perfect high harmony:
All my little plans and schemes
Lost like some forgotten dream
Seems like all I really was doing
Was waiting for you
Just like little girls and boys
Playing with their little toys
Seems like all they really were doing
Was waiting for you
Don't need to be alone
No need to be alone
It's real love
It's real, yes it's real love
It's real
From this moment on I know
Exactly where my life will go
Seems that all I really was doing
Was waiting for love
Don't need to be afraid
No need to be afraid
It's real love
It's real, yes it's real love
It's real
Thought I'd been in love before,
But in my heart I wanted more
Seems like all I really was doing
Was waiting for you
Don't need to be alone
No need to be alone
It's real love
Yes it's real, yes it's real love
It's real, yes it's real love...
Lost like some forgotten dream
Seems like all I really was doing
Was waiting for you
Just like little girls and boys
Playing with their little toys
Seems like all they really were doing
Was waiting for you
Don't need to be alone
No need to be alone
It's real love
It's real, yes it's real love
It's real
From this moment on I know
Exactly where my life will go
Seems that all I really was doing
Was waiting for love
Don't need to be afraid
No need to be afraid
It's real love
It's real, yes it's real love
It's real
Thought I'd been in love before,
But in my heart I wanted more
Seems like all I really was doing
Was waiting for you
Don't need to be alone
No need to be alone
It's real love
Yes it's real, yes it's real love
It's real, yes it's real love...