My Love, My Drug, My Release

Late November, 1968

I'm probably the only person in the world who doesn't remember the November of 1960 for the release of the White Album. In my adolescent brain, the plot to run away with Brandon seemed far more important. But it was getting harder and harder to figure it all out. He insisted on only talking about it in person and in private (our rendezvous outside my school weren't secure enough), and those meetings were getting progressively less frequent due to spending more time with Paul and Linda.

They were taking Jack and me everywhere to the point of us both feeling smothered, even if I was less vocal about it. More than being tedious, it just didn't make sense. If they were pursuing a sexual relationship, why all the group activities? 

Even the best aspects of it, like getting to spend time with the rest of the Beatles and watch them make music, was starting to lose its appeal. I'd been mostly indifferent to it from the start, but Jack had loved it, so seeing him start to grow bitter over being dragged to every other recording session was more impactful than even my own boredom. 

Before meeting them, the Beatles always seemed like a multi-headed monster, one unit made up of four separate parts, and perhaps that had been true at a time. Now, there was nothing but infighting with the occasional moments of productivity and peace. What started as some passive-aggressiveness was genuinely bubbling over into full-on rage right before my eyes.

"No, if she can stay, you can stay," Paul told Linda in the foyer of Abbey Road studios. Since they'd been together, he'd started growing out a beard and looked much more rugged than before.

"Yes, but I don't want to," she whined. "They stare at me, and I'm not a musician."

"Neither is she. Last time I checked, shouting into a recording device doesn't count as music."

"Be kind to her, Paul," Linda chided. "She's going through a... hard time."

They talked about it as if we didn't know that Yoko had a miscarriage. It was so blatantly obvious on everyone's face it was almost insulting that Linda was trying to use code around Jack and me. 

"Can we just pick, in or out," Jack snapped.

Paul exhaled heavily from his nostrils and gestured for us to enter the studio. He'd been getting visibly more irritated with my brother the longer we lived with him, and Jack showed no signs of letting up.

"I don't like this disrespectful attitude you've been developing recently, sir," Linda said, removing her winter jacket and sitting on a bench in the corner of the room.

"Whatever," he said, pulling out a pack of Parliaments.

"Nope, none of that. Especially not after how rude you've been."

Jack stuffed the pack back in his jean pocket without protest, but his hands were tangibly shaking. This new style of parenting our step-mother had been trying out was clearly vexing him. The worst part was that it was almost certainly for Paul's benefit. She wanted to show him that she wouldn't tolerate anyone criticizing or embarrassing him in even the smallest or most rational of scenarios. I'd hardly spoken to them or about them or at all in the past couple months, so, when I sat down next to her, she stroked my hair lovingly. I was still a good child.

"Let's not make this over-complicated," Paul was saying about whatever track they were workshopping for the next LP. "Not everything needs to we wild and avant-garde."

"What's that supposed to mean?" John snapped.

"Nothing man, it's just what I said."

"You know, you're too old for the cute thing," John said, before turning to storming out. "Now you're just a royal prick."

After a moment of silence, Ritchie chimed in, "I think that's a new record."

It was something I could tell people wanted desperately to laugh at, but just couldn't find the good humor in themselves. I drifted over to where Yoko was sitting, having not followed John out after his tantrum. She was wearing a white, long-sleeved shirt and no bra, her hair loose and frizzy as usual.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm fine, and you?"

"Fine."

She nodded, twisting a string hanging off the throw pillow to her side. "When I first came to live in England, it would always confuse me when people would say that: are you okay? I would think, do I not look okay? You lived in New York; do you find things like that funny?"

"Yeah, I do, idioms that don't translate well. In the states, people are much more likely to say, 'How are you?' than, 'Are you okay?' I don't know why." After a long silence, though not an unpleasant one, I couldn't help but blurt out, "If I tell you a secret, will you promise me not to tell anyone, not even Paul and Linda, especially not Paul and Linda?"

"Yes, of course."

My mind raced, trying to figure out what I wanted to tell Yoko. Well, what I wanted to tell her, to tell anyone, was that Brandon was trying to get me to elope with him. A part of me wanted someone to know so that I could be stopped, but most of me was too determined to go through with it. Like a car driving full speed off a cliff, too close to the edge to slam on the breaks. But I needed to say something, anything, that would help alleviate this weight on my chest.

"I'm in love," I said breathlessly. "I'm in love with someone I'm terrified of, and my love terrifies me."

Without speaking, Yoko stared at me, hardly blinking, mouth a straight line. "May I ask one question?" 

I nodded, indicating for her to continue.

"Is he the one you love?" 

When I turned around to see who she was pointing to, I found myself staring at Paul, his tummy chub visible under his beige turtle-neck, tugging at a beard he wasn't totally comfortable with, listening to George rant about something. 

"Him?" I stammered, looking back at her. "No, of course not, he's, like, essentially my dad at this point." 

I could tell I was lying, or at least not being 100% truthful, because there was no way I thought of him as a father figure. Linda had been in my life since I was six when she started dating my dad, I'd never really known my actual mother, and I'd been living with Linda as my primary guardian since I was ten, and it was still not until I was eleven or twelve that I'd really started to consider her a mother figure. To that very day, I didn't call her 'Mom'. So there was not way in hell I could already think of Paul as my dad, especially when I still had one, absentee as he may be. But telling someone, you think of a person as a father or a brother was the most reliable to make people think you didn't like that person, other than proclaiming you're gay.

Yoko only gave a shrugging smile, picking up a coke bottle with a bendy straw in it to take a sip. "Sorry, my mistake, I just figured I would ask."