My Love, My Drug, My Release

Paul's Perspective

The problem with the parties we'd hosted at St. John's Wood since the Beatles broke up, I realized, is that they were stagnant. People should be coming and going, slipping upstairs to shag, going out to get more booze or pot but, most importantly, the place should be filled with 100% different people from beginning to end. After everyone finally arrived, we were at about twenty-five, but everyone simply collected like dust on a mirror, mostly staying in the living room, only leaving to get another bottle from the kitchen or use the loo. Thankfully, we at least had separate conversations, Linda's groupie friends crowding around the still relevant rock stars, those especially stoned breaking off to sit near the ficus, Keith and Anita grilling Gallagher as if he were dating their daughter.

Rosie stayed near me, very near me, talking in a low voice about how she wanted to go to university, but her parents wouldn't let her and I said my father begged me to get my bachelor's, but I refused, dropping out to play in Hamburg with John and George instead.

"Turned out pretty well for you," she said with a giggle.

"Suppose it did."

Linda had gone to kneel at Ritchie and Mo's feet, listening to them ramble on amiably while she snapped pictures of them from below, a usually unflattering angle, but she pulled it off well. I wondered, if she wasn't distracted, would she notice Rosie's knee brush against mine, her nude hose, a classy option for a classy girl, sliding against my pant leg? During the first few months of our marriage, she was uncommonly jealous, but now, part of me suspected she didn't give a shit what I did, or who I did it with.

"I need a beer," I said, setting my empty tumbler onto the coffee table before standing up. "Join me?"

She nodded eagerly, looking over her shoulder nervously as she followed me as though we were sneaking off to do something naughty. Were we? I didn't want a beer; this party- if you could call it that- depressed me, and I'd prefer to drown out my emotions with hard liquor, and yet I invited her to the kitchen with me to get a Shlitz. 

"Thelma and Lo have been gone a long time," Rosie noted.

"Yeah, they have," I said bitterly.

"I wonder what they're up to."

I didn't need to ponder that for long, and I struggled not to crush the beer can in my hands. She wanted to punish me, Lo did, so she was fucking that dyke under my roof, at my party, in front of my guests. Well, two could play that game.

"You look beautiful- I don't know if I've told you that yet." I smiled as her cheeks flushed crimson, blue eyes avoiding mine. "Do you have a boyfriend?"

I worried I'd gone too far too fast, but then she said, "No, he dumped me."

"Shut up, who the hell would break things off with you?"

"He's going to Cambridge, didn't want anything to hold him back while he's there. That's why I wanted to apply to uni. I figured, if I went to Newnham, then we could still see each other."

"If he thinks that you'd hold him back he's an idiot." Rosie looked up at me with a mix of gratitude and admiration, and I felt that familiar buzzing in my lower stomach. I could believe how quickly this all came back to me; seducing birds was like riding a bike. "I don't mean to come across- well, I know I don't really know you, but I'm fairly certain you fancy me."

Sighing, she tucked a blonde tendril behind her ear. "Is it that obvious?"

"Only to some with a trained eyed." I took a step closer, feeling her body heat radiating off of her skin. "I'm sick of this bloody party. Why don't we go upstairs?"

Her face snapped up at that request, her expression almost fearful, like a doe sensing the scope of a hunter trained on her, but if faded a way to happy disbelief. "Really? I mean, yes, yeah, I think I would."

"You think?"

"No, I'm definitely sure."

This boyfriend that left her had been her first, I decided as I led her up to the second floor, just like Lorraine. Almost virgins are better than virgins, I think. All the innocence without the blood and pain. Rosie loved this boy, the one running off to Cambridge, the way Lo loved Brandon, and she wanted to forget him, she didn't want to be the girl who'd only slept with her sweetheart, and she saw this as her opportunity to graduate into the world of casual adult sex. I told myself she was using me as much as I was using her.

When we passed Lo's room, I heard low noises coming from behind the closed door, just barely audible, distinctively sexual. Rosie didn't seem to hear them, probably due to her anticipatory nerves, but they made my fists clench involuntarily.

"Is this your bedroom?" the blonde asked.

"Yeah, it's Linda's and mine." I hesitated, hand hovering over the door handle. "Listen, you won't say anything about this to her or Lo or anyone really."

"I would never," she said, touching my arm reassuringly.

And I believed her; with posh parents like hers, she probably had as much to lose as me if it got out she slept with a married man, especially the step-father of her friend, especially a rock star known for taking acid. But the guilt sprouted in me anyway, showing up before I did the deed instead of afterward for the first time. I didn't know if I'd be able to go through with this, but when Rosemary's clothes fell to the floor, the blood rushed from my brain to my cock, and there was no more room for shame in my mind.