you really got a hold on me | john lennon

CHAPTER NINETEEN

October 9, 1959

Paul and I walked together into the Casbah hand-in-hand for John's whole birthday bash. It had taken him quite a long time to settle on a place for it to be held since he didn't want it to be at Mimi's. According to Paul, John thought that the party would be dull with all of Mimi's rules in place. So instead, he begged Mona to lend them the place for the night.

Mona was understandably skeptical at first from what I'd heard since she spent a fortune on this place — but she eventually let in only because of the crowd that the Quarrymen attracted to each of their Saturday night performances. The things these boys got her to do were unbelievable.

When I walked in, I immediately noticed how it looked no different than when they had their shows. It was a bit odd considering John had told us it was only for close friends, and there was no way he had this many of them. There were what I would think to be about a hundred people in here.

The music was blasted as loud as the sound system allowed it to be, with all these couples dancing in the middle of the room. Goodness knows that Paul and I couldn't dance at all — so the two of us just stuck to a spot at the bar, a bit farther from where all the action was going on and where we could actually hear each other without screaming.

Paul orders some beers for us, as we mostly keep to ourselves this whole time. We hadn't even seen a mere glimpse of John since we had gotten here. Probably got himself all bevvied up again to the point where he couldn't even walk properly.

"Wonder where he is."

"Who, John?"

"No, Winston Churchill." I look at him and roll my eyes before taking a long sip of my beer. "Yes, John."

"I wouldn't worry about 'im, love. Cyn's almost always watching behind him, so I think he's alright."

"He better be. Not interested in another blackout drunk John showing up on my doorstep anytime soon."

"Yeah. Wouldn't be in our best interests, would it?"

I immediately see how fast Paul's expression changed from happy to a more gloomy one at the reminder of John turning up to my house blacked out and bloodied up. That night was understandably still a generally sore spot for him to talk about freely, if not John in general. Anytime his name was uttered in one of our conversations, it always made whatever we were talking about extremely awkward.

Lighting up a ciggie, I start taking long drags at a time to calm my nerves down. Whenever Paul was like this it made me slightly nervous for whatever reason there may be — so I turned to more cigs as a reliever of that.

I better take notes for next time,

Don't talk about John.

. . .

Once Paul and I both had a few drinks in our system, we had mustered up enough courage to showcase our not-so-great dance skills for everyone to see. We danced to a couple high energy songs before it finally landed on Put Your Head On My Shoulder, one of the more slow dance type ones.

Put your head on my shoulder...Hold me in your arms, baby.

My head was nestled up in his chest as I could feel his head resting atop of mine. Paul's arms were wrapped around my waist and mine were around his shoulders. The two of us just shuffled back and forth, but it felt amazing. His embrace around me made me feel safe and I loved it.

Squeeze me oh so tight, baby...Show me that you love me too.

I lift my head up from his chest, and the both of us just look at each other's eyes while swaying to the music. And my memory serves me right, this was probably the first time we'd ever done this kind of thing together. To just stop what we're doing and just dance to the music. My cheeks flush red, and Paul smiles at me before looking down at his feet.