Nobody Wants To Know Him

LIII - It's Johnny's Birthday

Tuesday 9th October 1973
Liverpool, England
9.23am

It was October. After two weeks of abysmal weather, it had miraculously cleared up over the last couple days. It was just over fifteen degrees, summer now having come to what seemed to be an official close as we drifted into autumn, and the sun was trying its best to poke through the clouds. I was downstairs, tending to the cats, and John was still asleep, naturally.

October ninth. It was John's birthday today.

Of course, I wouldn't have forgotten - and it's not as though I could've done, what with him going on about it for the past week.

"Another year, ______. I'm gonna be another year older. Thirty-three!"

When I asked John what he wanted, he jokingly said 'three more cats and... like, maybe a combine harvester.' Then it turned out that he had decided that there wasn't actually anything he wanted, and he wouldn't have minded doing nothing for the day.

But most of the time for John, 'I don't mind' was really code for 'I actually do mind, but I don't want to say that.' John would never reject a party or gifts, so I knew I had to do something, and by mid-September, my plans were already underway. I knew he'd appreciate me planning something for him as well, and I really did feel like emphasising how much he meant to me. This was the first birthday he'd be spending with me, after all!

I started with what was meant to be the easy bit: getting him a gift. When you think about it, buying a present is supposed to be far more straightforward than actually planning an entire party, but of course, things regarding John never were as anticipated.

What was I meant to get a man who could have practically anything he wanted? There wasn't anything he specifically desired to a great extent, so I had to really get thinking.

I thought about things he enjoyed and was interested in. Naturally, John was an avid reader and writer, but he had an entire library to read through, and what could I really get him to do with writing, aside from a nice ink pen and some ink? It was probable that if I bought him a book, he would've already read it, or it'd be in the library already. Sure, I could've gotten him a nice notebook, but I wanted something a bit more meaningful than that; a notepad seemed like too default of a gift for John.

Realistically, I was sure that John would like anything that I got him, but I didn't want him to just like it. I wanted to get him something that lit up his face when he saw it, that he'd think about in twenty years with a smile and be like, 'remember that?'. It didn't have to be overly personal or sappy, but I just wanted to put a lot of thought into something for him, and make it clear how much he meant to me.

Art? He loved to draw; every piece of paper he touched was always filled with doodles or sketches. Sometimes he'd sit in the garden and draw by himself quietly, either alone or with one of the cats beside him. Most of his work was pencil drawings, but he did dabble in paints and watercolours occasionally. But all that stuff he already had. He had a large abundance of sketch pencils and pads, paints, watercolours, brushes, charcoal sticks. What more would he want? A new sketchpad was out of the question; he had about six extra ones which hadn't been touched at all. And he already had enough supplies to last three lifetimes over.

Really, I should've considered music earlier. John, the same John who could barely sit still for a half hour, could be completely silent for at least three hours so long as he was devoting himself to creating music. If he had his guitar with him, and a notepad, he'd be pretty much set for anything (or so he liked to believe. The struggle without a television in Wales made me think otherwise).