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Too Much Rain, Chapter 6
John finishes chemo, but there are some open sores left that require healing.
Warning: A little slight slash.
Again - this is all fiction. Every bit of it.
Rating: NC - 17
Chapter 6
John’s journal had become an obsession with him. He went nowhere without his pads of paper and pencils, and often was found scribbling away furiously, oblivious to the world around him. Since John was utterly miserable, Paul was grateful for the distraction. He was curious about what John was writing, but Paul was not a nosy person, and didn’t - as a matter of principle - pry into others’ lives or affairs. Paul had watched John’s devotion to his journal with a mixture of affection and perplexity. He, himself, would not want to write about such personal things in the first person, and especially not without camouflage. He wouldn’t want a written record of such painfully private thoughts. That would feel too invasive. Of course, he had done something similar about that time he was jailed in Japan, so perhaps he would feel differently if he were the one with cancer, but Paul thought not.
John, meanwhile, was pouring his thoughts and feelings into his journal.
About two months into my treatment, I was getting downright pissy. I had reduced my private nurse to tears one too many times, and Paul was not amused. That is when he told me I was bored, and needed something to work on. That is also when he conjured up all my journals from 1955 on, and had them delivered to our bedroom. He had also hired me a few research assistants who were bright, cheerful, excited and eager to proceed. They set my teeth on edge, but they did force me to move forward when I wanted to just lie back and feel sorry for myself. I learned later that they used to go to Paul and say how mean and unenthusiastic I was, and he would reassure them that this was just my “surface” reaction, and they should just continue to do what they were doing, the way they were doing it, and all would be well.
My original thought was that I would just put the journals in order, and then read through them. I didn’t think about a memoir, I was just inventorying my life. It is something people do when they are forced to think about dying. While by this time I knew intellectually I was not going to die - at least not from the cancer - I still had this need to touch base with all the people who had touched me in my life - the ones who had meant something to me - and how better to do this than to read my own journals? I could visit the people and places that had made up my life in my own words. Thus, my project of organizing my journals came to be. It was one way I dealt with the seemingly endless negative side effects of chemo.
Speaking of which, I did finally talk with Aunt Mimi about my cancer before I went in to the hospital for my first treatment. She has been very weak lately, not in the best of health, and I didn’t want to upset her. But once it was clear the chemo was going to happen, I was more and more afraid the press would get ahold of it, and I figured she deserved to hear it from me first. So I called her up and it was like a black comedy. She could barely hear me and kept shouting my name - ‘John! Are you there!’ ‘Yes, I’m here!’ ‘What?’ ‘I said yes, I’m here.’ “Where did you go?’ ‘I’ve been here all along Mimi.’ Trying to explain my diagnosis under these conditions was literally a comedy routine. ‘I’m fine Mimi, but I’ve got cancer.’ ‘That’s good.’ ‘Good? You think it’s good?’ ‘You said you were fine.’ ‘But you missed the end bit. I’ve also got cancer.’ Silence. ‘How can you be fine if you have cancer?’ ‘I meant, the cancer isn’t serious.’ ‘You’re either fine or you have cancer. You can’t be both.’ ‘Mimi, I do have cancer, but right now I’m fine.’ I got the sense she was pissed off that I’d bothered her when I was ‘fine’.
Paul had been listening to my end of the conversation, and by the end of it he was literally rolling on the ground, holding his sides, laughing his ass off. I said to him, ‘You wouldn’t believe what she said!’ And in between great hiccoughs of laughs he managed to say, ‘I knew exactly what she was saying as if she were on a speaker phone.’ I was a bit put out. I said, ‘I’m glad you find this so amusing.’ Paul sobered up and then said, ‘you know, I just had a terrible thought.’ ‘Oh?’ I asked, stepping right into it. ‘What if you end up being just like her when you’re in your eighties? It’ll be me dealing with that crap!’ Ha ha. Very funny, Paul.
So let’s talk turkey about being sick with cancer, and going through chemotherapy. I’ve already written about the hair loss and the vomiting. But there are so many other miserable aspects to it. My teeth started turning a yellowish brown, and so did my finger and toe nails. I obsessed over this, along with the loss of my eyelashes and eyebrows and pretty soon all of my hair. Paul covered up all the mirrors in our house with brown paper to protect me from looking at myself in this degrading condition. The other thing that worries me – it really does, and I might as well share it if I’m going to be completely honest in this account – is that I have gone months with no sex drive at all.
My whole life, since I was a teenager, I have always had a terrific sex drive. I didn’t always have ways to adequately satisfy it adequately (I’m thinking of the late 70’s here), but I always had the desires and the urges. But for the several weeks I’ve been going through chemo, I have had no interest in sex at all. I don’t feel even a single impulse of sexuality. It’s as if I’m a neuter or something. Deep inside of me, I worry about Paul. Weeks on end with only Linda to have sex with, and then only when he can steal it from her when he manages to escape from under the scrutiny of my eagle-like eyes. I worry that he will lose interest in me; or, more bluntly, man-sex. He was meant to be straight, after all. He obviously isn’t going to say anything about it to me, but I’m concerned about what kind of temptations he will be subject to during the next few months. The only thing that makes it bearable is that he is almost never out of earshot from me, and when he’s not under my jurisdiction, he’s under Linda’s. But still…what’s going on in that beautiful head? It’s a fucking mystery to me.
Because it has been bothering me so much, I have been reading about this issue in articles about cancer survivors, and these survivors report that they lost total interest in sex during and for a while after chemotherapy, and many of them were unable to put their love relationships back together afterwards. Some “thing” – maybe it was the poison itself - came between them and their sex partners, and the sex between them, to the extent they didn’t break up, was never the same again. One woman wrote that her husband treated her like she was made out of fine china, and this negatively impacted their sexual relationship. One guy wrote that he had lost the impetus to be the aggressor in the sex act, and his wife ended up on top of him most of the time.
John had gone several weeks harboring these fears to himself, and had become quite obsessed and morbid about it. He had finally found the gumption to raise the issue with Paul.
“How are you satisfying yourself?” John asked him one evening, seemingly pulling the subject out of thin air.
“How’m I doing what?” Paul asked, torn away rudely from his business papers.
“Don’t you get horny for some man sex?”
Paul laughed, not quite believing John’s words. “‘Man sex?’ Really?” John continued to stare stubbornly at Paul until he responded. When it came, the response was pure McCartney. “John, let’s not go there.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not worried about me right now. I’m too busy worrying about you.”
“Well, let me know if I can lend a hand.”
Paul laughed. “If I can stop worrying long enough to consider it, I’ll let you know.”
The truth was, Paul’s sexual urges were pretty dead too. He was almost glad he wasn’t sleeping at Cavendish, because he wasn’t sure he would have been able to live up to Linda’s expectations if he had to spend more nights with her. As it was, Linda was practically doing stripteases to get him aroused on the few sneaky afternoons they’d spent alone together. Strange how sex had seemed like the most important thing in a love relationship when he was younger, but the older he got the more sex found itself falling lower on the priority chart. Somehow, with John so miserable and the fear of the cancer coming back, Paul’s mind was so constantly full of worry and anxiety, that his more atavistic urges, such as his sex drive, could not break through and take over. Everything was under the tight control of Paul’s super ego, and his id felt as though it was chained up in a dungeon.
John’s attempt to get Paul to discuss the subject had not been successful, and instead of getting angry about it, John decided to write about it.
I noted that Paul was very reluctant to discuss the issue, and changed the subject almost as soon as it came up. That was unusual for us, because we’ve always just told each other directly what was going on with us sexually, and didn’t pull any punches. Now it felt as though Paul was pulling punches on the subject. I didn’t know how to address this with him; it made me feel sicker to know that he couldn’t be open with me about this subject. In fact, he wasn’t being open about much of anything. Giving, yes; incredibly selfless and giving, yes; always strong and supportive, yes. But he isn’t opening up to me about what he is going through and it remains a mystery to me. Most of the time I don’t think about it because I’m wrapped up in my own misery. But every once in a while I catch a glimpse of him when he thinks I’m not looking, and what I see on his face in those moments almost breaks my heart.
John felt more and more tired as the treatments progressed, and it was now thought that he should stay in the hospital for 24 hours each time he received a treatment. He actually needed to sleep long hours in between the treatments, and had gotten to the point where he didn’t want people around when he was resting. While this freed up Paul’s time, it didn’t free up his overactive anxiety.
John’s chemotherapy sessions had become almost a routine. Most days Paul would take John to the hospital, and sit quietly next to him while going through his business papers as John received his chemo. John would listen to music with buds in his ears, or close his eyes and dose off. About once a week (there were three sessions a week) Julian would go with John, and the two would chat. Their relationship began to deepen and mature.
“Dad, you look so tired,” Julian said one morning, as he watched his father’s face closely.
“Yeah, I feel pretty yuck,” John said dozily.
“You’re almost done with these sessions,” Julian pointed out hopefully. “We’re only a few days away from the end.”
John waited a moment before he found the energy to respond. “Yeah, and not a moment too soon. I’m so fucking miserable. You can have no idea.”
Julian felt his father’s misery, and wished he could take it away. Lately, he had felt his father’s dependence on him, and it was as close to ‘real love’ as he’d ever experienced from his father, at least as long as he could remember. It caused him to feel protective of his father, and he wished he could erase the misery of this horrible disease and it’s even more horrible treatment. But knowing he couldn’t do that, Julian grabbed his dad’s hand and squeezed it tightly. He was overwhelmed and a little bit afraid of these feelings of compassion he felt for his father, because on one level it felt a little like another opportunity for him to get his hopes up, only to have them dashed again once his dad was through with the treatments, and back to his old querulous self again.
One evening after Paul had taken Sean and James over to visit John in the hospital, Paul returned to Cavendish absolutely tapped out. He wasn’t sure he had the energy to make it up the stairs to the bedroom, so he made it to the sitting room and collapsed on the sofa, instead. At first he only sat there, and stared blankly at the television that James had turned on. But then Paul decided he’d just take a second - just a moment, really, not too long - to stretch out on the sofa. It took what seemed like a herculean effort to pull himself to his full length on the sofa, and to adjust the sofa pillow under his head just right. He was laying stomach down, and soon he was sound asleep. The television was blasting out exploding noises, and the phone was ringing incessantly, and people were running through the sitting room on their way in and out of the kitchen, the sound of pots and pans being clanged and dropped echoed through the house, and then the bell at the gate rang, setting the dogs off, and still Paul slept through it all. His family maneuvered around him for hours as if he were a piece of furniture.
“What’s up with Dad, Mom?” James asked his mother after about 6 hours.
“He’s exhausted, James. Leave him alone.”
“Are you sure he’s not dead?” James joked.
“Not funny. Do your homework.”
“I didn’t know cancer was catching,” he commented with a wise guy smile, as he ducked his mother’s half-hearted swat and departed the kitchen. Just in case, though, he put his ear up to his dad’s mouth to make sure he could hear the breathing. Satisfied, he plopped down on the floor again and turned up the TV.
“I said homework, James!” Linda shouted from the kitchen. Grumbling, James shut off the TV, plopped down on his stomach, and half-heartedly stared at his workbook.
Paul woke up on the sofa at 3 in the morning. There was a warm blanket around him, and a soft light was thoughtfully left on. Around him in the sitting room, James had left his usual detritus, including the controls to his video game sitting smack in the middle of the room, lurking there for the unsuspecting father to trip over in the dark. Paul groaned and slowly turned himself over on to his back, and stretched. He couldn’t believe it. He had been sleeping alone. Alone. No one was next to him, needing him, touching him, demanding or even expecting things of him. He hated to admit it, but it felt good. He stared at the ceiling and took stock.
John was going to be okay. They never had found any new evidence of cancer, beyond that one cell, and the doctors had decided his chemo would end the next week, right on time. Paul looked back at the early days of John’s cancer, when it was first diagnosed, and Paul remembered the panic that filled his head. He could barely stay still long enough to think logically. He had built the cancer up like a bogeyman in his own mind, and now, as he lay there quietly in the dark, he worried that he had pushed John through a painful and unnecessary treatment just to make himself feel better. He sighed as he remembered what John had told him at the outset: they’d never know if things would have turned out differently had they made the other choice. So, Paul said to himself with unusual self-forgiveness, there was no point in beating himself up over it now.
Lord, I can sure whip myself up into a frenzy and drag people with me, Paul thought honestly. Not for him, falling into a decline on a chaise. No, he drove himself in ever-more frantic circles until he dropped! Paul grimaced at the exaggeration, but knew there was truth there along with the hyperbole. Groaning, Paul sat up. He wanted to make his way to the whiskey bottle for a jigger, but couldn’t face standing up yet, so he sat. Where did he belong? Linda was close by. He only had to walk upstairs and cuddle up with a warm, soft Linda. John was across town, and required a car ride, an underground parking garage, a traverse down a long cold corridor, only to try to sleep uncomfortably in a chair next to John’s bed. Isn’t that how it had always been for Paul though? Hadn’t it always been harder and more complicated to be John’s friend, than to be anyone else’s friend? So why on earth did he value it so? He must be a masochist. That had to be the answer. With a chuckle (he was reacting to his own melodrama) he forced himself up, and felt around for his shoes.
Shuffling at first, and then working up a head of steam, he got in the car, heading purposely for the underground parking lot, and then trailed down the long cold corridor. To John.
Finally, the chemotherapy came to an end. As he recuperated from the final session, John lay on his bed, drifting in and out of consciousness. He would be overcome by lethargy and nausea, but then he would have a burst of energy, and return to his journal:
Almost as soon as the chemotherapy stopped, I started feeling better. I could feel hairs growing all over my scalp – it itched! I began to feel as though I was coming back to life. I went to a dentist and had my teeth bleached, and then tore the brown paper off the mirror in the bathroom, so I could shave. I had to shave again, because hair was growing on my face! I was walking on air. My energy came back, such as it was, and I found myself to be interested and engaged in things outside myself again. I felt up to seeing my friends, and they would come over and we’d talk about everything under the sun except cancer. That was the one subject no one was allowed to bring up – cancer.
I remember the moment it happened. I was shaving one morning, and Paul breezed by me headed for the shower. He stripped off his towel, and stepped in, closing the door. Suddenly I realized I had a huge – I mean a HUGE – hard on! Thank heavens! I wasn’t going to be a eunuch forever! This was one of the better moments of my life, I must say. I finished shaving, stripped off my towel, and joined Paul in the shower.
Paul was concentrating on the water hitting his head, as he pushed his hair back out of his eyes with both hands when he suddenly felt a rush of cooler air, and then the sound of the shower door closing. Before he could react, he felt John’s hands running up the outside of his thighs, over his bum, until they came to rest, clasped, around his waist. John leaned up against him, and Paul felt the huge bulge pressing against his bum.
Hello! Like a miracle Paul felt his loins coming to life. It felt inside like when he watched one of those sped-up films of a seed growing from nothing to a lovely plant. Paul turned in John’s arms, and they smiled at each other. This wasn’t going to be one of those crazy out-of-control sessions; they both knew that with the first shared glance. This was going to be one of those times that they periodically shared when it felt as though they were discovering each other’s bodies for the first time.
Although I was filled with hope and energy, especially after I rediscovered by mojo, I could tell that Paul was still worrying that something bad would happen, and we’d be back in the shit soup again. He acted as though he was always waiting for the second shoe to drop. So he stayed close to me for weeks, ignoring the business, his art, his music, our friends – everything - well, everything except Linda and the kids of course. Otherwise, it was all about me. I began to worry that I would be unable to accept it when he drifted away from me again after I got better.
By the end of January 1990, my hair had started growing back. My finger and toenails were no longer yellow; my teeth looked decent since my bleaching treatments. I was still painfully thin, but was slowly putting on a little weight. I went on a full vegan diet to detox, and Paul and Linda – in solidarity – did too. Paul, of course, ended up looking even more splendiferously beautiful than he usually did. This, in turn, worked wonders on my libido.
During this whole process, Paul had transformed himself into somebody I hardly knew. He was not working. He was not on the telephone. He never left our house, and was rarely outside of shouting distance. If I wanted him to just sit with me, he would sit with me. If I wanted him to lay in the bed next to me, and talk about nonsense – whatever he could think of to say – he would do it. When people tried to draw him into business, he would tell them “I’m off the clock.” I heard him say it over and over in the next few months. I was his focal point most of the time. This had never happened before, I mean, 24/7 week after week after week. Paul does have that quality of making you feel like the center of his universe when he is with you, but then he tends to flit away to other tasks, leaving you suddenly bereft, like when the sun goes behind the clouds. He didn’t do the disappearing act even once the whole time I was going through chemo, or my recovery afterwards.
Six months had passed - six months of John’s misery, dealing with chemotherapy. And now it was January 1990, and with the New Year came new hope. Now John believed that anything was possible, and he feverishly wrote about it in his journal:
I started 1990 with hope in my heart that I could start my life over from where I left off a year earlier: “B.C.” Before Cancer I had been planning to write a new album with Paul. During my illness, Paul had been working on a classical composition in conjunction with Carl Davis, the impresario, and in honor of Liverpool’s 150th anniversary, and was working to complete it in time for a September 1991 debut in London. But he was game to start working on our next opus simultaneously, and I felt in my bones it was going to be great, if I could only think of something to actually write.
I was building my strength back slowly, and Paul nagged me endlessly to exercise. He would drag me out on walks. I don’t mind a walk when I’m going somewhere or doing something, but just for the sake of exercise – not so much. (Paul likes to tell people that my idea of exercise “is if he has to walk too far to the car; you have to pull it right up to the door…”) But I allowed myself to be dragged along the streets around Cavendish, because it was refreshing to be outdoors after all those months lying in bed and feeling punk. Of course, the paparazzi were often there, laying in wait. Paul and I would pretend not to notice them and keep walking and talking. By wearing a beret, I covered my head as my hair was slowly growing back, a bit wavier and greyer than it had been before. I actually began to feel almost human again. We would walk for 40 minutes, and then we’d go back to Cavendish and Linda would join us as we sat around the kitchen table, laughing and joking and just passing the time.
Paul had driven John to his doctor appointment one early spring morning with no worries flitting in his brain. He sat patiently in the waiting room, as John had his examination by his doctor. It was a routine visit. However, he and John would leave that visit with heavy hearts. Weeks later, John would finally be able to write about it in his journal:
It was in April 1990 that I went for a regular checkup with my doctor. He found another melanoma tumor. This was devastating to me. I was in the doctor’s office, and broke down emotionally when he told me. Sid was not used to seeing me broken down like that. Paul was called from the waiting room, and he came racing in. We sat in Sid’s office while he conferenced in the surgeon and the other cancer specialists. A decision was made to send me directly over to the hospital and the cancer specialists would diagnose the tumor on the spot. It was very tiny, and it was located not far from the original tumor site. This was not a good sign, because it indicated there must still be floating cancer cells, despite the chemo and the radiation. But at least it hadn’t landed in an organ. Paul drove me to the hospital in his car, and I wept. He was a quiet and soothing presence.
The specialists gathered around me as if they were a team of archeologists examining a newly discovered dinosaur bone. Paul sat quietly to the side, observing, and making notes. The surgeon decided to do the biopsy; he was leaning to the side of “in situ” rather than Stage I, which was better news than I had feared. He removed the tumor under a local, with me awake. At this point I was so accustomed to being pricked and prodded that I didn’t even wince. Paul and I sat glumly in the examining room while the doctors took the tumor down to the lab to be tested and examined. There really weren’t any words. At least I wasn’t weeping any more, but my head hung down off my neck. It was like I didn’t have enough energy to hold my head up. Paul got up, stood in front of me, and put his arms around me. We waited.
It was indeed a melanoma. The tumor was a Stage 0 but on the verge of becoming Stage I. We had caught it very early. The tumor itself was not a threat to me. It was the fact that I still had cancer cells roaming free through my lymph system or blood that was the cause for concern. Dr. Sid had joined us at the hospital, and we sat in the office of the Chief of surrounded by my team of doctors, and the Oncology Chief recommended another course of chemo. That was what I had been dreading. I know I cried out “No!” when the words came out of his mouth. I didn’t think I could bear to go through it again. I just kept shaking my head “No.”
Paul asked if we could have a moment to ourselves, and suggested that rather than the seven doctors leave the room, the two of us be directed to a private room instead. We were escorted to an office, and we sat down. Paul turned his chair so it was facing mine. He grabbed both my wrists in his two hands and, since my head was hanging, he leaned his forehead against my forehead. He allowed at least a minute to go by before speaking.
“Well, mate, you know what I want you to do. I want you to come out fighting. Can you do that?”
I hadn’t looked at it that way before, strangely. I’ve heard others talk about their “fight” against cancer, but I hadn’t felt that I was a capable opponent to cancer, and had assumed it was “happening” to me, and it was the medicine that was “fighting” the cancer, not me. I raised my head, and our eyes met for a good 20 seconds or so. I saw in his eyes his confidence in me. He finally winked, which made me smile. He had his answer. We went back to the doctors and Paul told them I was willing to do the chemo again, but I wanted to do it entirely from home (he added that without asking me, but he was right, of course). Ultimately, a plan of attack was drawn up, and I walked out of there like James Bond’s martini: shaken but not stirred.
I began chemo again a few days later. They were giving me a heavier dose of the poison this round. This time the nausea started right away. Again, my hair started to fall out in patches. Everything I had accomplished to recover my health was wasting away. I was fighting off an overwhelming depression. It felt like a dark sea was lapping up on the ever-shrinking shore of my spirits. Paul was working overtime to cheer me up. He implored me to “help” him write some songs.
I was not a very pleasant companion during this period. I don’t know how Paul put up with me. But he literally dragged me kicking and screaming through an attempt to write a song. He would assign me projects. This would annoy me, and I would say, “I’m an equal partner, and you don’t give me assignments!” He’d say, “OK then, pick your own assignment! But you’re letting me down by doing nothing!” And I would say, “You’re putting too much pressure on me!” Oh, we went round and round. He started playing music he had composed for me, putting it on demos, and claiming he couldn’t think of any lyrics and needed me to do them. (Yeah, right, I believe that. “I have cancer, Paul, I haven’t suddenly gone stupid on you.” To which he responded bitterly, “I wish!”) In between arguments I would suddenly vomit. I think back on it now with a kind of amused nostalgia. There we were in the living room, arguing about me not writing anything, and I would vomit in the middle of the argument, and Paul would go into autopilot, cleaning up the mess while continuing the argument without missing a beat! It should have been funny to us, because it was funny, but our senses of humor had been pushed to the breaking point.
At the time I thought he was being cruel and didn’t understand how sick I was. However, he was fighting for me, he was fighting my depression as if the depression – not the cancer, and not the chemo – was the enemy. In a way, it was. I was going to survive the chemo, and most likely I would survive the cancer, but the thing that could really get me in the end would be if I allowed depression to take me over. And Paul was having none of that.
I couldn’t believe it when the doctors told me we were finished, because I had been so busy fighting all the skirmishes with my head down that I hadn’t realized we had come to the end of the war! But the chemo was over, and I had spent so much time arguing with Paul over not writing songs that I hadn’t focused on the chemo at all. Paul’s strategy had worked. I didn’t thank him for it. For weeks I grumbled and complained to him about how badly he had treated me while I had cancer and was going through chemo. He was in the doghouse for a good three or four months after that. Poor bloke couldn’t do anything right.
By August 1990 I had lost half my hair (not all of it this time), and I looked like Skeletor and felt horrible. Though the chemo had ended, the side effects had not yet gone completely away. I told Paul I was not willing to write songs yet. Taking his life into his hands, he argued with me. He said, “You love doing it, John, and when you’re sick like this you need to do as many things as possible that you love to do; it reminds you of what you’re fighting for.” His best efforts, however, could not move me from my stubborn position.
I also didn’t like to go outside, and possibly be confronted with paparazzi. I told him I couldn’t face people looking as bad as I did. So Linda arranged for a hair stylist to come, and the guy cut my hair so that it didn’t look so straggly. I just looked like a guy going bald. Then Paul handed me one of my berets without a word, but he had that “no nonsense” look on his face that I had learned decades earlier meant I could go 10 rounds with him, but he at least would still be standing at the end of it, so I might as well give up. So we started up our 40-minute neighborhood walks again, almost always accompanied (at a not-so-discreet-distance) by paparazzi.
Getting out of the house at that moment in time was the best thing I could have done. Almost as soon as the front door closed behind me, I would feel the fresh air (even if it was a bit warm) and it set my heart free. And when Paul invited our band members over for dinner at Cavendish one night (over my strenuous objections; I was embarrassed to be seen by them in my condition) I ended up having a fantastic time. Seeing our band members again reminded me of how wonderful the music business was, and that soon I would want to be getting back to it. Paul had been right in forcing these experiences on me, but I hated to admit it.
So I didn’t admit it. I didn’t thank him for making me face the world outside again. Instead, I was bitching and nagging at him constantly. I insisted he spend most of his time with me at our home, rather than at Cavendish, and at the time he was working on a classical composition, too, and I interrupted him constantly while he was trying to work – I would be seated on the sofa, and I’d shout at him to bring me something that was closer to me than to him! I was cranky when he wasn’t right there right when I needed him, and grumbled about him working “on my time”. At one point, after a day where I had bitched and snapped at him endlessly, he turned to me and said, “I think I should go to Cavendish for a while. I think I’m just getting on your nerves, and we’ll both be better off if I just go.”
Well! You’d have thought he said, “I’m going to abandon you, and you’ll never see me again.” I flew into a rage!
“This is what you’ve been waiting for! You’ve been waiting for an excuse to leave me!” I screeched.
Paul wasn’t up to the drama. He was rolling his eyes. That pissed me off more.
“Am I boring you? Is this boring to you? You’re leaving me and you think it is boring?” I was shouting incoherently at this point.
I had made such a commotion that the security guard who was hovering outside to protect us from the ever hovering, ever enterprising paparazzi that had discovered my house, came running into the room with his gun out of its holster! Paul turned his back on me to face him…
…As soon as he did this I screamed at Paul, “Don’t you turn your back on me! How dare you turn your back on me!”
…And he calmly told the guard that we weren’t in any danger from the outside, “Although there is a possibility that John will kill me”….
…”You think this is funny?” I screamed. “Everything is going to hell and you think this is funny!”…
Chuckling at Paul’s comment, but eyeing me with trepidation, the guard backed out of the house again.
Paul had hoped to wait out my hysteria, but I showed no sign of calming down, so he made an attempt to placate me: “I never said I was leaving you, John, don’t be daft. I suggested I should go back to Cavendish for the night…”
“Daft! You think I’m fucking daft! You hate me! It’s over – isn’t it? You’re leaving me! This is just the first step! It’s the first step!” Finally, I started to cry. Paul spent the next 10 minutes comforting me. Finally, the storm had passed. After a while, sitting silently side-by-side with Paul on the edge of the bed, my breathing went back to normal. About this time the rational voice inside of me was pointing out to my irrational side that I wasn’t really mad at Paul, I was mad at fate. But Paul was there and fate wasn’t, so he was getting the brunt of my anger, fear and frustration.
After these few moments of silence, Paul, with his impeccable timing, asked “You hungry? Wanna order a pizza?” His tone of voice was so matter-of-fact - as if I hadn’t just thrown a king-hell tantrum - that I had to laugh, and the fight was over.
But I told him flat out he was NOT going to leave my side, “No matter how annoying I am. Do you understand?” He agreed. And it was a good thing, too, because the next day I was on his case about something else, and I didn’t let up for weeks. I honestly don’t know how he survived it. Or, perhaps what I still don’t understand (and maybe never will) is WHY he survived it. Why did he put up with me while I was being so unreasonable and he was getting nothing out of our relationship?
As John reread what he wrote, he thought about the crucible Paul and he had survived. And here they were, still standing. Still friends, still lovers, still partners. John wanted to wrap it up, so that it all made sense. He began to write again:
I include this episode not because I want to expose the fraying of my relationship with Paul during this period, but to point out how the stress and pressure of a long fight against cancer can damage even the strongest of relationships if you let them. I was lucky. My partner refused to be provoked, and understood that it was my fear talking, not me, so he overlooked and forgave my outrageous treatment of him. But not all partners or spouses are that mature and understanding. It is something doctors should warn a bloke about, and provide some training for, when a long course of chemo is recommended. Since they don’t do that, it is up to the cancer victim to educate himself on the subject, and see to it that his partner is also educated on it. Paul and I had our bad arguments over the 10 years since we reconciled our friendship, of course we did, but we hadn’t experienced one that had lingered and festered for months on end, but for a 6 month period in 1990, during and for a few months after my second course of chemo, we argued almost constantly – in each case, started or provoked by me. I could have done permanent damage to this, the most important relationship in my life, and I am grateful everyday that Paul was a grown up about it, since I wasn’t.
Despite the fireworks I sometimes resorted to, I have to confess that Paul was always a loving caretaker to me all throughout my cancer treatment. There were times when I was so sore, sick and tired that I could do nothing by curl up in a fetal position and moan. In such moments, Paul had a number of different strategies, each of them amazingly successful in its own way. He might hold me in his arms, and softly sing to me, or whisper sweet nothings, or tell jokes, or speak about lovely old memories that made me smile. He would give me full body massages, and I remember feeling as though I might just melt into the mattress when he was massaging me. Did I need a cool sip of water, or a hot water bottle? A fan blowing over ice cubes, or blankets warmed up in the microwave oven? Whatever I seemed to need at any moment, Paul would be there with what I needed within moments, usually without me having to ask. I was left wondering: would I have been as good a caretaker for Paul, as he was for me, if the situation was reversed?
Warning: A little slight slash.
Again - this is all fiction. Every bit of it.
Rating: NC - 17
Chapter 6
John’s journal had become an obsession with him. He went nowhere without his pads of paper and pencils, and often was found scribbling away furiously, oblivious to the world around him. Since John was utterly miserable, Paul was grateful for the distraction. He was curious about what John was writing, but Paul was not a nosy person, and didn’t - as a matter of principle - pry into others’ lives or affairs. Paul had watched John’s devotion to his journal with a mixture of affection and perplexity. He, himself, would not want to write about such personal things in the first person, and especially not without camouflage. He wouldn’t want a written record of such painfully private thoughts. That would feel too invasive. Of course, he had done something similar about that time he was jailed in Japan, so perhaps he would feel differently if he were the one with cancer, but Paul thought not.
John, meanwhile, was pouring his thoughts and feelings into his journal.
*****
About two months into my treatment, I was getting downright pissy. I had reduced my private nurse to tears one too many times, and Paul was not amused. That is when he told me I was bored, and needed something to work on. That is also when he conjured up all my journals from 1955 on, and had them delivered to our bedroom. He had also hired me a few research assistants who were bright, cheerful, excited and eager to proceed. They set my teeth on edge, but they did force me to move forward when I wanted to just lie back and feel sorry for myself. I learned later that they used to go to Paul and say how mean and unenthusiastic I was, and he would reassure them that this was just my “surface” reaction, and they should just continue to do what they were doing, the way they were doing it, and all would be well.
My original thought was that I would just put the journals in order, and then read through them. I didn’t think about a memoir, I was just inventorying my life. It is something people do when they are forced to think about dying. While by this time I knew intellectually I was not going to die - at least not from the cancer - I still had this need to touch base with all the people who had touched me in my life - the ones who had meant something to me - and how better to do this than to read my own journals? I could visit the people and places that had made up my life in my own words. Thus, my project of organizing my journals came to be. It was one way I dealt with the seemingly endless negative side effects of chemo.
Speaking of which, I did finally talk with Aunt Mimi about my cancer before I went in to the hospital for my first treatment. She has been very weak lately, not in the best of health, and I didn’t want to upset her. But once it was clear the chemo was going to happen, I was more and more afraid the press would get ahold of it, and I figured she deserved to hear it from me first. So I called her up and it was like a black comedy. She could barely hear me and kept shouting my name - ‘John! Are you there!’ ‘Yes, I’m here!’ ‘What?’ ‘I said yes, I’m here.’ “Where did you go?’ ‘I’ve been here all along Mimi.’ Trying to explain my diagnosis under these conditions was literally a comedy routine. ‘I’m fine Mimi, but I’ve got cancer.’ ‘That’s good.’ ‘Good? You think it’s good?’ ‘You said you were fine.’ ‘But you missed the end bit. I’ve also got cancer.’ Silence. ‘How can you be fine if you have cancer?’ ‘I meant, the cancer isn’t serious.’ ‘You’re either fine or you have cancer. You can’t be both.’ ‘Mimi, I do have cancer, but right now I’m fine.’ I got the sense she was pissed off that I’d bothered her when I was ‘fine’.
Paul had been listening to my end of the conversation, and by the end of it he was literally rolling on the ground, holding his sides, laughing his ass off. I said to him, ‘You wouldn’t believe what she said!’ And in between great hiccoughs of laughs he managed to say, ‘I knew exactly what she was saying as if she were on a speaker phone.’ I was a bit put out. I said, ‘I’m glad you find this so amusing.’ Paul sobered up and then said, ‘you know, I just had a terrible thought.’ ‘Oh?’ I asked, stepping right into it. ‘What if you end up being just like her when you’re in your eighties? It’ll be me dealing with that crap!’ Ha ha. Very funny, Paul.
So let’s talk turkey about being sick with cancer, and going through chemotherapy. I’ve already written about the hair loss and the vomiting. But there are so many other miserable aspects to it. My teeth started turning a yellowish brown, and so did my finger and toe nails. I obsessed over this, along with the loss of my eyelashes and eyebrows and pretty soon all of my hair. Paul covered up all the mirrors in our house with brown paper to protect me from looking at myself in this degrading condition. The other thing that worries me – it really does, and I might as well share it if I’m going to be completely honest in this account – is that I have gone months with no sex drive at all.
My whole life, since I was a teenager, I have always had a terrific sex drive. I didn’t always have ways to adequately satisfy it adequately (I’m thinking of the late 70’s here), but I always had the desires and the urges. But for the several weeks I’ve been going through chemo, I have had no interest in sex at all. I don’t feel even a single impulse of sexuality. It’s as if I’m a neuter or something. Deep inside of me, I worry about Paul. Weeks on end with only Linda to have sex with, and then only when he can steal it from her when he manages to escape from under the scrutiny of my eagle-like eyes. I worry that he will lose interest in me; or, more bluntly, man-sex. He was meant to be straight, after all. He obviously isn’t going to say anything about it to me, but I’m concerned about what kind of temptations he will be subject to during the next few months. The only thing that makes it bearable is that he is almost never out of earshot from me, and when he’s not under my jurisdiction, he’s under Linda’s. But still…what’s going on in that beautiful head? It’s a fucking mystery to me.
Because it has been bothering me so much, I have been reading about this issue in articles about cancer survivors, and these survivors report that they lost total interest in sex during and for a while after chemotherapy, and many of them were unable to put their love relationships back together afterwards. Some “thing” – maybe it was the poison itself - came between them and their sex partners, and the sex between them, to the extent they didn’t break up, was never the same again. One woman wrote that her husband treated her like she was made out of fine china, and this negatively impacted their sexual relationship. One guy wrote that he had lost the impetus to be the aggressor in the sex act, and his wife ended up on top of him most of the time.
*****
John had gone several weeks harboring these fears to himself, and had become quite obsessed and morbid about it. He had finally found the gumption to raise the issue with Paul.
“How are you satisfying yourself?” John asked him one evening, seemingly pulling the subject out of thin air.
“How’m I doing what?” Paul asked, torn away rudely from his business papers.
“Don’t you get horny for some man sex?”
Paul laughed, not quite believing John’s words. “‘Man sex?’ Really?” John continued to stare stubbornly at Paul until he responded. When it came, the response was pure McCartney. “John, let’s not go there.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not worried about me right now. I’m too busy worrying about you.”
“Well, let me know if I can lend a hand.”
Paul laughed. “If I can stop worrying long enough to consider it, I’ll let you know.”
The truth was, Paul’s sexual urges were pretty dead too. He was almost glad he wasn’t sleeping at Cavendish, because he wasn’t sure he would have been able to live up to Linda’s expectations if he had to spend more nights with her. As it was, Linda was practically doing stripteases to get him aroused on the few sneaky afternoons they’d spent alone together. Strange how sex had seemed like the most important thing in a love relationship when he was younger, but the older he got the more sex found itself falling lower on the priority chart. Somehow, with John so miserable and the fear of the cancer coming back, Paul’s mind was so constantly full of worry and anxiety, that his more atavistic urges, such as his sex drive, could not break through and take over. Everything was under the tight control of Paul’s super ego, and his id felt as though it was chained up in a dungeon.
John’s attempt to get Paul to discuss the subject had not been successful, and instead of getting angry about it, John decided to write about it.
I noted that Paul was very reluctant to discuss the issue, and changed the subject almost as soon as it came up. That was unusual for us, because we’ve always just told each other directly what was going on with us sexually, and didn’t pull any punches. Now it felt as though Paul was pulling punches on the subject. I didn’t know how to address this with him; it made me feel sicker to know that he couldn’t be open with me about this subject. In fact, he wasn’t being open about much of anything. Giving, yes; incredibly selfless and giving, yes; always strong and supportive, yes. But he isn’t opening up to me about what he is going through and it remains a mystery to me. Most of the time I don’t think about it because I’m wrapped up in my own misery. But every once in a while I catch a glimpse of him when he thinks I’m not looking, and what I see on his face in those moments almost breaks my heart.
*****
John felt more and more tired as the treatments progressed, and it was now thought that he should stay in the hospital for 24 hours each time he received a treatment. He actually needed to sleep long hours in between the treatments, and had gotten to the point where he didn’t want people around when he was resting. While this freed up Paul’s time, it didn’t free up his overactive anxiety.
John’s chemotherapy sessions had become almost a routine. Most days Paul would take John to the hospital, and sit quietly next to him while going through his business papers as John received his chemo. John would listen to music with buds in his ears, or close his eyes and dose off. About once a week (there were three sessions a week) Julian would go with John, and the two would chat. Their relationship began to deepen and mature.
“Dad, you look so tired,” Julian said one morning, as he watched his father’s face closely.
“Yeah, I feel pretty yuck,” John said dozily.
“You’re almost done with these sessions,” Julian pointed out hopefully. “We’re only a few days away from the end.”
John waited a moment before he found the energy to respond. “Yeah, and not a moment too soon. I’m so fucking miserable. You can have no idea.”
Julian felt his father’s misery, and wished he could take it away. Lately, he had felt his father’s dependence on him, and it was as close to ‘real love’ as he’d ever experienced from his father, at least as long as he could remember. It caused him to feel protective of his father, and he wished he could erase the misery of this horrible disease and it’s even more horrible treatment. But knowing he couldn’t do that, Julian grabbed his dad’s hand and squeezed it tightly. He was overwhelmed and a little bit afraid of these feelings of compassion he felt for his father, because on one level it felt a little like another opportunity for him to get his hopes up, only to have them dashed again once his dad was through with the treatments, and back to his old querulous self again.
One evening after Paul had taken Sean and James over to visit John in the hospital, Paul returned to Cavendish absolutely tapped out. He wasn’t sure he had the energy to make it up the stairs to the bedroom, so he made it to the sitting room and collapsed on the sofa, instead. At first he only sat there, and stared blankly at the television that James had turned on. But then Paul decided he’d just take a second - just a moment, really, not too long - to stretch out on the sofa. It took what seemed like a herculean effort to pull himself to his full length on the sofa, and to adjust the sofa pillow under his head just right. He was laying stomach down, and soon he was sound asleep. The television was blasting out exploding noises, and the phone was ringing incessantly, and people were running through the sitting room on their way in and out of the kitchen, the sound of pots and pans being clanged and dropped echoed through the house, and then the bell at the gate rang, setting the dogs off, and still Paul slept through it all. His family maneuvered around him for hours as if he were a piece of furniture.
“What’s up with Dad, Mom?” James asked his mother after about 6 hours.
“He’s exhausted, James. Leave him alone.”
“Are you sure he’s not dead?” James joked.
“Not funny. Do your homework.”
“I didn’t know cancer was catching,” he commented with a wise guy smile, as he ducked his mother’s half-hearted swat and departed the kitchen. Just in case, though, he put his ear up to his dad’s mouth to make sure he could hear the breathing. Satisfied, he plopped down on the floor again and turned up the TV.
“I said homework, James!” Linda shouted from the kitchen. Grumbling, James shut off the TV, plopped down on his stomach, and half-heartedly stared at his workbook.
*****
Paul woke up on the sofa at 3 in the morning. There was a warm blanket around him, and a soft light was thoughtfully left on. Around him in the sitting room, James had left his usual detritus, including the controls to his video game sitting smack in the middle of the room, lurking there for the unsuspecting father to trip over in the dark. Paul groaned and slowly turned himself over on to his back, and stretched. He couldn’t believe it. He had been sleeping alone. Alone. No one was next to him, needing him, touching him, demanding or even expecting things of him. He hated to admit it, but it felt good. He stared at the ceiling and took stock.
John was going to be okay. They never had found any new evidence of cancer, beyond that one cell, and the doctors had decided his chemo would end the next week, right on time. Paul looked back at the early days of John’s cancer, when it was first diagnosed, and Paul remembered the panic that filled his head. He could barely stay still long enough to think logically. He had built the cancer up like a bogeyman in his own mind, and now, as he lay there quietly in the dark, he worried that he had pushed John through a painful and unnecessary treatment just to make himself feel better. He sighed as he remembered what John had told him at the outset: they’d never know if things would have turned out differently had they made the other choice. So, Paul said to himself with unusual self-forgiveness, there was no point in beating himself up over it now.
Lord, I can sure whip myself up into a frenzy and drag people with me, Paul thought honestly. Not for him, falling into a decline on a chaise. No, he drove himself in ever-more frantic circles until he dropped! Paul grimaced at the exaggeration, but knew there was truth there along with the hyperbole. Groaning, Paul sat up. He wanted to make his way to the whiskey bottle for a jigger, but couldn’t face standing up yet, so he sat. Where did he belong? Linda was close by. He only had to walk upstairs and cuddle up with a warm, soft Linda. John was across town, and required a car ride, an underground parking garage, a traverse down a long cold corridor, only to try to sleep uncomfortably in a chair next to John’s bed. Isn’t that how it had always been for Paul though? Hadn’t it always been harder and more complicated to be John’s friend, than to be anyone else’s friend? So why on earth did he value it so? He must be a masochist. That had to be the answer. With a chuckle (he was reacting to his own melodrama) he forced himself up, and felt around for his shoes.
Shuffling at first, and then working up a head of steam, he got in the car, heading purposely for the underground parking lot, and then trailed down the long cold corridor. To John.
******
Finally, the chemotherapy came to an end. As he recuperated from the final session, John lay on his bed, drifting in and out of consciousness. He would be overcome by lethargy and nausea, but then he would have a burst of energy, and return to his journal:
Almost as soon as the chemotherapy stopped, I started feeling better. I could feel hairs growing all over my scalp – it itched! I began to feel as though I was coming back to life. I went to a dentist and had my teeth bleached, and then tore the brown paper off the mirror in the bathroom, so I could shave. I had to shave again, because hair was growing on my face! I was walking on air. My energy came back, such as it was, and I found myself to be interested and engaged in things outside myself again. I felt up to seeing my friends, and they would come over and we’d talk about everything under the sun except cancer. That was the one subject no one was allowed to bring up – cancer.
I remember the moment it happened. I was shaving one morning, and Paul breezed by me headed for the shower. He stripped off his towel, and stepped in, closing the door. Suddenly I realized I had a huge – I mean a HUGE – hard on! Thank heavens! I wasn’t going to be a eunuch forever! This was one of the better moments of my life, I must say. I finished shaving, stripped off my towel, and joined Paul in the shower.
*****
Paul was concentrating on the water hitting his head, as he pushed his hair back out of his eyes with both hands when he suddenly felt a rush of cooler air, and then the sound of the shower door closing. Before he could react, he felt John’s hands running up the outside of his thighs, over his bum, until they came to rest, clasped, around his waist. John leaned up against him, and Paul felt the huge bulge pressing against his bum.
Hello! Like a miracle Paul felt his loins coming to life. It felt inside like when he watched one of those sped-up films of a seed growing from nothing to a lovely plant. Paul turned in John’s arms, and they smiled at each other. This wasn’t going to be one of those crazy out-of-control sessions; they both knew that with the first shared glance. This was going to be one of those times that they periodically shared when it felt as though they were discovering each other’s bodies for the first time.
*****
Although I was filled with hope and energy, especially after I rediscovered by mojo, I could tell that Paul was still worrying that something bad would happen, and we’d be back in the shit soup again. He acted as though he was always waiting for the second shoe to drop. So he stayed close to me for weeks, ignoring the business, his art, his music, our friends – everything - well, everything except Linda and the kids of course. Otherwise, it was all about me. I began to worry that I would be unable to accept it when he drifted away from me again after I got better.
By the end of January 1990, my hair had started growing back. My finger and toenails were no longer yellow; my teeth looked decent since my bleaching treatments. I was still painfully thin, but was slowly putting on a little weight. I went on a full vegan diet to detox, and Paul and Linda – in solidarity – did too. Paul, of course, ended up looking even more splendiferously beautiful than he usually did. This, in turn, worked wonders on my libido.
During this whole process, Paul had transformed himself into somebody I hardly knew. He was not working. He was not on the telephone. He never left our house, and was rarely outside of shouting distance. If I wanted him to just sit with me, he would sit with me. If I wanted him to lay in the bed next to me, and talk about nonsense – whatever he could think of to say – he would do it. When people tried to draw him into business, he would tell them “I’m off the clock.” I heard him say it over and over in the next few months. I was his focal point most of the time. This had never happened before, I mean, 24/7 week after week after week. Paul does have that quality of making you feel like the center of his universe when he is with you, but then he tends to flit away to other tasks, leaving you suddenly bereft, like when the sun goes behind the clouds. He didn’t do the disappearing act even once the whole time I was going through chemo, or my recovery afterwards.
*****
Six months had passed - six months of John’s misery, dealing with chemotherapy. And now it was January 1990, and with the New Year came new hope. Now John believed that anything was possible, and he feverishly wrote about it in his journal:
I started 1990 with hope in my heart that I could start my life over from where I left off a year earlier: “B.C.” Before Cancer I had been planning to write a new album with Paul. During my illness, Paul had been working on a classical composition in conjunction with Carl Davis, the impresario, and in honor of Liverpool’s 150th anniversary, and was working to complete it in time for a September 1991 debut in London. But he was game to start working on our next opus simultaneously, and I felt in my bones it was going to be great, if I could only think of something to actually write.
I was building my strength back slowly, and Paul nagged me endlessly to exercise. He would drag me out on walks. I don’t mind a walk when I’m going somewhere or doing something, but just for the sake of exercise – not so much. (Paul likes to tell people that my idea of exercise “is if he has to walk too far to the car; you have to pull it right up to the door…”) But I allowed myself to be dragged along the streets around Cavendish, because it was refreshing to be outdoors after all those months lying in bed and feeling punk. Of course, the paparazzi were often there, laying in wait. Paul and I would pretend not to notice them and keep walking and talking. By wearing a beret, I covered my head as my hair was slowly growing back, a bit wavier and greyer than it had been before. I actually began to feel almost human again. We would walk for 40 minutes, and then we’d go back to Cavendish and Linda would join us as we sat around the kitchen table, laughing and joking and just passing the time.
*****
Paul had driven John to his doctor appointment one early spring morning with no worries flitting in his brain. He sat patiently in the waiting room, as John had his examination by his doctor. It was a routine visit. However, he and John would leave that visit with heavy hearts. Weeks later, John would finally be able to write about it in his journal:
It was in April 1990 that I went for a regular checkup with my doctor. He found another melanoma tumor. This was devastating to me. I was in the doctor’s office, and broke down emotionally when he told me. Sid was not used to seeing me broken down like that. Paul was called from the waiting room, and he came racing in. We sat in Sid’s office while he conferenced in the surgeon and the other cancer specialists. A decision was made to send me directly over to the hospital and the cancer specialists would diagnose the tumor on the spot. It was very tiny, and it was located not far from the original tumor site. This was not a good sign, because it indicated there must still be floating cancer cells, despite the chemo and the radiation. But at least it hadn’t landed in an organ. Paul drove me to the hospital in his car, and I wept. He was a quiet and soothing presence.
The specialists gathered around me as if they were a team of archeologists examining a newly discovered dinosaur bone. Paul sat quietly to the side, observing, and making notes. The surgeon decided to do the biopsy; he was leaning to the side of “in situ” rather than Stage I, which was better news than I had feared. He removed the tumor under a local, with me awake. At this point I was so accustomed to being pricked and prodded that I didn’t even wince. Paul and I sat glumly in the examining room while the doctors took the tumor down to the lab to be tested and examined. There really weren’t any words. At least I wasn’t weeping any more, but my head hung down off my neck. It was like I didn’t have enough energy to hold my head up. Paul got up, stood in front of me, and put his arms around me. We waited.
It was indeed a melanoma. The tumor was a Stage 0 but on the verge of becoming Stage I. We had caught it very early. The tumor itself was not a threat to me. It was the fact that I still had cancer cells roaming free through my lymph system or blood that was the cause for concern. Dr. Sid had joined us at the hospital, and we sat in the office of the Chief of surrounded by my team of doctors, and the Oncology Chief recommended another course of chemo. That was what I had been dreading. I know I cried out “No!” when the words came out of his mouth. I didn’t think I could bear to go through it again. I just kept shaking my head “No.”
Paul asked if we could have a moment to ourselves, and suggested that rather than the seven doctors leave the room, the two of us be directed to a private room instead. We were escorted to an office, and we sat down. Paul turned his chair so it was facing mine. He grabbed both my wrists in his two hands and, since my head was hanging, he leaned his forehead against my forehead. He allowed at least a minute to go by before speaking.
“Well, mate, you know what I want you to do. I want you to come out fighting. Can you do that?”
I hadn’t looked at it that way before, strangely. I’ve heard others talk about their “fight” against cancer, but I hadn’t felt that I was a capable opponent to cancer, and had assumed it was “happening” to me, and it was the medicine that was “fighting” the cancer, not me. I raised my head, and our eyes met for a good 20 seconds or so. I saw in his eyes his confidence in me. He finally winked, which made me smile. He had his answer. We went back to the doctors and Paul told them I was willing to do the chemo again, but I wanted to do it entirely from home (he added that without asking me, but he was right, of course). Ultimately, a plan of attack was drawn up, and I walked out of there like James Bond’s martini: shaken but not stirred.
I began chemo again a few days later. They were giving me a heavier dose of the poison this round. This time the nausea started right away. Again, my hair started to fall out in patches. Everything I had accomplished to recover my health was wasting away. I was fighting off an overwhelming depression. It felt like a dark sea was lapping up on the ever-shrinking shore of my spirits. Paul was working overtime to cheer me up. He implored me to “help” him write some songs.
I was not a very pleasant companion during this period. I don’t know how Paul put up with me. But he literally dragged me kicking and screaming through an attempt to write a song. He would assign me projects. This would annoy me, and I would say, “I’m an equal partner, and you don’t give me assignments!” He’d say, “OK then, pick your own assignment! But you’re letting me down by doing nothing!” And I would say, “You’re putting too much pressure on me!” Oh, we went round and round. He started playing music he had composed for me, putting it on demos, and claiming he couldn’t think of any lyrics and needed me to do them. (Yeah, right, I believe that. “I have cancer, Paul, I haven’t suddenly gone stupid on you.” To which he responded bitterly, “I wish!”) In between arguments I would suddenly vomit. I think back on it now with a kind of amused nostalgia. There we were in the living room, arguing about me not writing anything, and I would vomit in the middle of the argument, and Paul would go into autopilot, cleaning up the mess while continuing the argument without missing a beat! It should have been funny to us, because it was funny, but our senses of humor had been pushed to the breaking point.
At the time I thought he was being cruel and didn’t understand how sick I was. However, he was fighting for me, he was fighting my depression as if the depression – not the cancer, and not the chemo – was the enemy. In a way, it was. I was going to survive the chemo, and most likely I would survive the cancer, but the thing that could really get me in the end would be if I allowed depression to take me over. And Paul was having none of that.
I couldn’t believe it when the doctors told me we were finished, because I had been so busy fighting all the skirmishes with my head down that I hadn’t realized we had come to the end of the war! But the chemo was over, and I had spent so much time arguing with Paul over not writing songs that I hadn’t focused on the chemo at all. Paul’s strategy had worked. I didn’t thank him for it. For weeks I grumbled and complained to him about how badly he had treated me while I had cancer and was going through chemo. He was in the doghouse for a good three or four months after that. Poor bloke couldn’t do anything right.
By August 1990 I had lost half my hair (not all of it this time), and I looked like Skeletor and felt horrible. Though the chemo had ended, the side effects had not yet gone completely away. I told Paul I was not willing to write songs yet. Taking his life into his hands, he argued with me. He said, “You love doing it, John, and when you’re sick like this you need to do as many things as possible that you love to do; it reminds you of what you’re fighting for.” His best efforts, however, could not move me from my stubborn position.
I also didn’t like to go outside, and possibly be confronted with paparazzi. I told him I couldn’t face people looking as bad as I did. So Linda arranged for a hair stylist to come, and the guy cut my hair so that it didn’t look so straggly. I just looked like a guy going bald. Then Paul handed me one of my berets without a word, but he had that “no nonsense” look on his face that I had learned decades earlier meant I could go 10 rounds with him, but he at least would still be standing at the end of it, so I might as well give up. So we started up our 40-minute neighborhood walks again, almost always accompanied (at a not-so-discreet-distance) by paparazzi.
Getting out of the house at that moment in time was the best thing I could have done. Almost as soon as the front door closed behind me, I would feel the fresh air (even if it was a bit warm) and it set my heart free. And when Paul invited our band members over for dinner at Cavendish one night (over my strenuous objections; I was embarrassed to be seen by them in my condition) I ended up having a fantastic time. Seeing our band members again reminded me of how wonderful the music business was, and that soon I would want to be getting back to it. Paul had been right in forcing these experiences on me, but I hated to admit it.
So I didn’t admit it. I didn’t thank him for making me face the world outside again. Instead, I was bitching and nagging at him constantly. I insisted he spend most of his time with me at our home, rather than at Cavendish, and at the time he was working on a classical composition, too, and I interrupted him constantly while he was trying to work – I would be seated on the sofa, and I’d shout at him to bring me something that was closer to me than to him! I was cranky when he wasn’t right there right when I needed him, and grumbled about him working “on my time”. At one point, after a day where I had bitched and snapped at him endlessly, he turned to me and said, “I think I should go to Cavendish for a while. I think I’m just getting on your nerves, and we’ll both be better off if I just go.”
Well! You’d have thought he said, “I’m going to abandon you, and you’ll never see me again.” I flew into a rage!
“This is what you’ve been waiting for! You’ve been waiting for an excuse to leave me!” I screeched.
Paul wasn’t up to the drama. He was rolling his eyes. That pissed me off more.
“Am I boring you? Is this boring to you? You’re leaving me and you think it is boring?” I was shouting incoherently at this point.
I had made such a commotion that the security guard who was hovering outside to protect us from the ever hovering, ever enterprising paparazzi that had discovered my house, came running into the room with his gun out of its holster! Paul turned his back on me to face him…
…As soon as he did this I screamed at Paul, “Don’t you turn your back on me! How dare you turn your back on me!”
…And he calmly told the guard that we weren’t in any danger from the outside, “Although there is a possibility that John will kill me”….
…”You think this is funny?” I screamed. “Everything is going to hell and you think this is funny!”…
Chuckling at Paul’s comment, but eyeing me with trepidation, the guard backed out of the house again.
Paul had hoped to wait out my hysteria, but I showed no sign of calming down, so he made an attempt to placate me: “I never said I was leaving you, John, don’t be daft. I suggested I should go back to Cavendish for the night…”
“Daft! You think I’m fucking daft! You hate me! It’s over – isn’t it? You’re leaving me! This is just the first step! It’s the first step!” Finally, I started to cry. Paul spent the next 10 minutes comforting me. Finally, the storm had passed. After a while, sitting silently side-by-side with Paul on the edge of the bed, my breathing went back to normal. About this time the rational voice inside of me was pointing out to my irrational side that I wasn’t really mad at Paul, I was mad at fate. But Paul was there and fate wasn’t, so he was getting the brunt of my anger, fear and frustration.
After these few moments of silence, Paul, with his impeccable timing, asked “You hungry? Wanna order a pizza?” His tone of voice was so matter-of-fact - as if I hadn’t just thrown a king-hell tantrum - that I had to laugh, and the fight was over.
But I told him flat out he was NOT going to leave my side, “No matter how annoying I am. Do you understand?” He agreed. And it was a good thing, too, because the next day I was on his case about something else, and I didn’t let up for weeks. I honestly don’t know how he survived it. Or, perhaps what I still don’t understand (and maybe never will) is WHY he survived it. Why did he put up with me while I was being so unreasonable and he was getting nothing out of our relationship?
As John reread what he wrote, he thought about the crucible Paul and he had survived. And here they were, still standing. Still friends, still lovers, still partners. John wanted to wrap it up, so that it all made sense. He began to write again:
I include this episode not because I want to expose the fraying of my relationship with Paul during this period, but to point out how the stress and pressure of a long fight against cancer can damage even the strongest of relationships if you let them. I was lucky. My partner refused to be provoked, and understood that it was my fear talking, not me, so he overlooked and forgave my outrageous treatment of him. But not all partners or spouses are that mature and understanding. It is something doctors should warn a bloke about, and provide some training for, when a long course of chemo is recommended. Since they don’t do that, it is up to the cancer victim to educate himself on the subject, and see to it that his partner is also educated on it. Paul and I had our bad arguments over the 10 years since we reconciled our friendship, of course we did, but we hadn’t experienced one that had lingered and festered for months on end, but for a 6 month period in 1990, during and for a few months after my second course of chemo, we argued almost constantly – in each case, started or provoked by me. I could have done permanent damage to this, the most important relationship in my life, and I am grateful everyday that Paul was a grown up about it, since I wasn’t.
Despite the fireworks I sometimes resorted to, I have to confess that Paul was always a loving caretaker to me all throughout my cancer treatment. There were times when I was so sore, sick and tired that I could do nothing by curl up in a fetal position and moan. In such moments, Paul had a number of different strategies, each of them amazingly successful in its own way. He might hold me in his arms, and softly sing to me, or whisper sweet nothings, or tell jokes, or speak about lovely old memories that made me smile. He would give me full body massages, and I remember feeling as though I might just melt into the mattress when he was massaging me. Did I need a cool sip of water, or a hot water bottle? A fan blowing over ice cubes, or blankets warmed up in the microwave oven? Whatever I seemed to need at any moment, Paul would be there with what I needed within moments, usually without me having to ask. I was left wondering: would I have been as good a caretaker for Paul, as he was for me, if the situation was reversed?