Yoko Ono’s psychic and tarot card reader reveals for the first time his account of the temper tantrums and strange disappearances that characterized rock music’s most bizarre and tumultuous marriage. John and Yoko. If only they could give peace a chance.
John and Yoko: The Final Years
Painting by Kunio Hagio
Yoko Ono ’s psychic and tarot card reader reveals for the first time his account of the temper tantrums and strange disappearances that characterized rock music’s most bizarre and tumultuous marriage. John and Yoko. If only they could give peace a chance. I first met John Lennon on Groundhog Day of 1975. I had been lured out of my Fifth Avenue burrow for the occasion by Yoko. It was, she said, an emergency.
I was used to Yoko ’s emergencies. They happened day and night. They came in two varieties: routine and titanic. “The cat is under the sofa and what should we do?” was a routine emergency. A $60 million lawsuit was the other kind.
The phone call came at an atypically civilized hour: 6:4 7 P.M. I immediately assumed the worst. Having been conditioned by long months of 2:00 A.M. calls waking me from a dead sleep to ask if I “had some time,” I instinctively mistrusted the convenience of the hour. Convenient emergencies are generally the worst kind.
“John’s home!” Yoko rasped.
This might not have qualified as an “emergency” but it certainly qualified as news. Fifteen months earlier, in October 1973, John had walked out the front door saying he was going for a paper. There had been a few phone calls since then, but for the most part his exact whereabouts during that time had been more or less a mystery. According to Yoko, his return was as sudden and unexpected as his departure. Apparently he simply showed up at the door and said, “No papers!” “And … ?” I urged, bracing myself. “And I think he ’s been poisoned!”
“And … ?”
“And you have to read for him right away. It’s an emergency.”
“I’ll be right there,” I answered, but Yoko had already hung up. She knew I would come. I got paid for this sort of thing. I was Yoko Ono ’s Grand Exalted Number One Wizard, Tarot Card Reader, and All-Round Panjandrum, on call all day and every day, and every night as well, all for the purse-wrenching fee of one hundred dollars a week.
It’s a living.
Half an hour later I was sitting with Yoko in the “White Room,” one of the ten large rooms in the Lennons’ apartment in that grand old New York landmark building, the Dakota. The White Room, so called because every last thing in it was white walls, ceiling, blinds, rug, piano, and the two large sofas that filled the corner of the room nearest the door – was the apartment’s formal living room. The fact that I was to read tarot cards there, rather than in the bedroom or the kitchen, indicated the seriousness of the moment.
“John’s here,” Yoko said, as if that explained everything.
“You said that.”
“You have to read for him.”
“You said that, too.”
“But he doesn’t know who you are.”
“Tell him,” I suggested.
“You don ’t understand! If he thinks you have the same name as he does he will be jealous.”
“I’ll leave,” I volunteered.
“No, no! You have to read for him.”
This was going to be difficult.
“Remember when John was in Florida and you kept giving me information from the cards about what he was feeling and where he was so I could always find him?”
I nodded. Guessing which motel your client ’s husband is holed up in that day is a neat trick. I was rather proud of our success. Yoko would collect the names of every likely motel in the area and then we would read cards on each one of them in succession to see where John was most likely to be. Our success rate had been good, which was important, because a call to the wrong place asking for John Lennon could easily start undesirable rumors as to why he was there and with whom. As pleased as I had been at our success, however, I was unsure as to why Yoko was referring to it now. She explained.
“Well, he asked me how I could always find him, because he thought I was having him followed and I wasn’t, you know. So I told him that it was my new psychic, because he likes psychics too, and he asked what your name was and I told him and he said, ’You know, if we ever get back together again I want you to get rid of that psychic.’ So now we ’re back together and I told him I did get rid of you, you know so now I can’t tell him who you are, so you’re Charlie Swan. That’s what I told him, see?”
“I’m Charlie?”
“Yes, you have to do it. I told him, you see? No, promise! I’ll get him now.” So saying, she launched herself from the sofa. Pausing briefly, she turned to warn me, “Remember, you’re Charlie Swan, Charlie,” and then she was gone.
She was gone only a few minutes. When she returned she was leading John like a prize Holstein-Frisian. There he was, John Lennon, somehow larger than life. There were the famous little round glasses, bent nose, and tight smile. Less expected was the curious visual impact he made: he radiated.
“Hello, Charles,” he chimed as he stuck out his hand in his best hail-fellow manner.
We clasped hands while Yoko smiled on with motherly pride. Looking straight at me, she asked, “Would you like to come to the kitchen for some coffee, John?”
Then she sucked in her breath a little to underscore her error.
“John?” whooped John. “You call ol’ Charles here John, Yoko? He’s not John, I am! He’s Charles. Aren’t you, Charles?”
“So I’m told.”
We silently made the mile-long trek to the kitchen, where John and I drew up chairs. Yoko got the coffee. No one spoke.
I was more than a little nervous. This was, of course, John Lennon, megacelebrity, and I was going to read his future with seventy-eight little pieces of cardboard the tarot deck.
“This is John ’s reading,” I said. Yoko knew spectators weren ’t allowed in tarot readings. “Perhaps you ’d excuse us?” It wasn ’t really a question.
“It ’s all right, John,” Yoko insisted. “I know what you are going to ask about: being poisoned.”
This had the effect of suddenly reminding John that he was supposedly poisoned, and that his previously buoyant demeanor was perhaps not quite the best impression to convey under the circumstances. He promptly slumped in his chair, trying to look pale, with the identifiably sickly expression of a man who had been off with his girlfriend May Pang for a year and was wise enough on his return not to appear too happy too soon. All was not forgiven.
“It’s all right, John,” pressed Yoko. “You can ask anything. We don’t have any secrets, do we?”
“Okay,” he answered. By now, he looked genuinely ill.
I shuffled the cards and laid each with care in its proper position. The result looked something like a cross between a stained-glass window and the molecular structure of a compound salt. “You’ll have to give me a minute to read this,” I said to John. “They’re not in English.”
“We think John’s been poisoned,” volunteered Yoko.
I squirmed and twitched in deliberation, following the map of cards. “Well,” I said, heaving a sigh and dragging lengthily on my cigarette for effect. “You haven’t been poisoned.”
Yoko, used to more elaborate answers, wanted more. “What else does it say? We think she put it in John’s tea.”
But there was nothing in the cards that said poison and I always trust the cards, so I chose to stand pat. John looked down at the twenty-two cards laid out on the table and I could see he wanted more. I suspected that the poison story was a ruse to get sympathy. He now stared at me mistrustfully.
“How do you know I haven’t been poisoned? ’ ’
I turned toward him so that Yoko couldn’t see my face and said, with a smile but in a very grave tone, “The same way I know it was jasmine tea.” I had made that up. No one had mentioned jasmine tea, but playing the hunch that the story was fake I used it as an opening to show John that I had found him out and wasn’t going to betray him.
His eyes grew wide with understanding. “That’s amazing,” he cooed, echoing one of Yoko ’s favorite expressions. The pact was formed. “How did you know it was jasmine tea?”
“I’m psychic.”
“It’s good you weren’t poisoned,” said Yoko, a little disappointed by the anticlimax.
“A great relief,” agreed John. Then he seemed to fall to musing, his gaze roving about the room patiently, whistling under his breath.
“I get it,” snapped Yoko. “You want me to leave the room.”
John folded his face into an engaging smile and fluttered his eyelids at her. “I’ll be in the White Room if you need me,” she huffed, and left.
“Good night, dear,” he called after her. John held his expression fixedly on the closed door, waiting for her reentry until experience told him she had passed the point of no return. Then he turned his attention toward me.
Drawing a breath and brightening, he said, “You know, Charles, this is a historical occasion. King John comes to the Oracle. You are an oracle, aren’t you?”
I nodded, not wanting to interrupt the performance, knowing that it would give me time to study him.
“You know, I’ve met a lot of psychics.” He proceeded to tell me of a card reader he had met who had to look up the meanings of the cards in a book. Then there was a girl in India who could tell how much change you had in your pocket just by looking at you. Mystics and magicians, Lennon had met them all.
“And they don’t fool me, you know. I can see right through an act when I see one. So if you got any plans about being the next Maharishi, I’d just forget it.”
“If I wanted followers I would have incarnated as a mother duck,” I assured him.
He smirked and was off again. “Do you believe in UFOs? I saw one, you know! I was up on the roof, about nine in the morning, doing my usual, watching the people go to work, when I saw this thing, this ship. It wasn’t much of a ship, maybe big enough to hold two people. It didn’t make any noise, just glided along above the East River, heading downtown.” I could tell that he enjoyed this story. It was another test, a different mesh to sift me through.
“Were there any reported sightings that day?” I asked when he had finished.
“How the hell should I know? I’m not an enthusiast, you know. I don’t go following this sort of thing. I just saw it. I sure as hell wasn’t going to report it. ’Headline: EX-BEATLE SEES SAUCER. ’ Oh, that’s good. What was he on? … 80000, what’s your opinion, dear witch doctor?”
“You see a saucer, I see a ghost, and somebody else sees a bird, a plane, or Superman – or nothing at all. What you see depends directly upon what you’re looking for. It’s called selective perception. You see what you choose.”
“But what was really there?”
“Beats me. I didn’t see it.”
“Do you ever give a straight answer to anything?”
That was my opening. I picked up the cards. “Questions?”
“Yeah, okay. What about career?”
“What about it? The more specific the question, the more specific the answer.”
“Okay.” He seemed to be warming to the reading a little. “I’ve got a record I’m going to release. I want to know how it’s going to do.” He explained that he was talking about an album to be called Rock ’n’ Roll. It was to be a collection of classic songs from the early days of rock.
So I spread and read the cards, spread after spread, hour after hour. I read on the record’s distribution, its promotion, its radio support, and anything and everything else I could think of.
The cards didn’t look good, so I tried to be as succinct as possible. “It says you got the three of shit, the four of nothing, and the five of get-out-of-town. You’re unsure about distribution and there’s no organized promotion. You mistrust half the people you’re working with and aren’t even sure who the other half are. You have created a series of events through calculated neglect, which will cause the ruin of the project that you claim to love.” This was the first warning of trouble with this album, which a year later would have John facing a lawsuit for $42 million.
“Christ, don’t spare my feelings.” He stood and walked around the back of his chair, wrestling with the information and resenting it.
Finally he asked, “And what do you suggest I do about it?”
“Correct it, change it.”
“How?”
“Well, I ’d start out by remembering that you ’re John Lennon… “
“Not anymore, I ’m not.”
“Then who are you?”
“Oh, right, sure, I’m John Lennon, alright. But it’s not what you think. I’m not the heavyweight rock star anymore. You think, sure, go make a record, sell a billion copies, just like that. But it’s not like that. The record companies don’t care that much anymore. The quote, fans, unquote, don’t care that much either.” He wasn’t spinning UFO stories now. He meant it. “I hate the whole damn business.”
“So quit,” I suggested. “Why bother? You’ve made it.”
“You don’t understand. It’s expected of me.”
“By whom?”
“By me, and fuck you very much!”
“So, do it.”
“ ’So, do it, ’ says Little Mystic Sunshine.” He mimicked my tone sarcastically. “Well, I can’t do it. I don’t know how anymore. It’s gone. My muse is gone. Poof! Up the chimney. Up your ass. Gone. You got any answers for that, Oracle?”
“Is that a question? Do you want me to read on it?”
He sighed and sat down. “No, I’m tired. I don’t want to play anymore.”
He sat beside me, looking magnetic no longer. I waited, and in a moment he changed again.
“You know, Charles, of all the mystics and psychics or seers or whatever it is you people call yourselves …“ He paused. “Sensitives! I guess that’s the word that sums you all up. I think you’re the best I’ve met so far.” He meant it as a compliment, showing he wasn’t angry with me. “Well, you know, Charles,” he intoned playfully, anyone can go out and buy a deck of cards and call themselves a reader, but that doesn’t make them one.”
“And anyone can go out and buy a guitar and call themselves a rock star and that doesn’t make them one either.”
He snorted, even laughing a little. The reading over, I swept up the cards. “I always like this part. It makes me feel like a croupier in the Twilight Zone.”
Yoko burst into the room. “Oh, Charlie,” she called, “before you go I have a few questions that I need to ask you.”
“I bet,” said John in an exaggerated stage whisper. Then with great formality, he rose and turned to me. “Well, Charles, it certainly has been an unpleasant experience. I hope we don ’t have to repeat it.”
Back inside the White Room and resubmerged in the sofa, Yoko zeroed in on me.
“What did he say?”
“About what? ’ ’ I was determined to play dumb. “About me, to start with.”
“Well … “ I thought about it. “I don’t recall that he said anything about you at all.”
“You recall very well. You have a perfect memory.”
“You wouldn’t want me to betray a confidence, would you?”
“Yes. I pay you, don’t I?”
I shuffled the cards. “Perhaps it would help if you asked specific questions.”
I was baiting her and she knew it.
“I want to know how John feels about me.” She spoke slowly, with exasperated care.
I laid out the cards. “I’d say he loves you.”
And he did. Over the next five years I was to have the opportunity of seeing John demonstrate that love in many ways.
“WE ’RE PREGNANT!”
On a fine April afternoon, I got a phone call from Yoko.
“Guess what?” she teased happily.
“I wouldn’t dare,” I said seriously.
“We’re pregnant! Isn’t it amazing? Now, I have to see you right away. I haven’t told John yet, because I need to know how he’s going to take this. I’m in a phone booth on the street outside the doctor’s office. I’ll be right over to see you.” Click.
Visits from Yoko were rare and my apartment was hardly in shape to receive a client. Quickly I folded up the bed, picked up socks and other flotsam, and attempted to create at least some illusion of order. I was thus engaged when I heard her knock at the door.
I let her in and she went directly to the reading table, settling herself into one of the director’s chairs and hugging herself in her mink jacket while I got out the cards. “Okay, we’re pregnant and we’re going to have the baby, understood?” she announced as the consultation began. Then came the inevitable barrage of questions. Will it miscarry? Boy or girl? Retarded? Deformed? She puffed furiously at her cigarettes. Most importantly, how was John going to take the news?
“He’ll be thrilled,” I predicted. And he was, as I learned the following evening when I went to read for him.
“Charles “ said John. “Have you heard the good news, Charles?” he said as he walked into the White Room. “We’re pregnant!” He sat down across from me on the sofa, obviously in a serious mood. “I’m going to be a father again, Charles,” he began, “and I’m not prepared for this new beginning. I’ve got too many ends, too much unfinished business. Particularly with May. You know, I never really settled things with her. I don’t see her anymore but she’s still around. She calls sometimes but I don’t talk to her. Even so, it makes Yoko crazy. I guess you’ve heard all about that from her, haven’t you?” I nodded. “I’m not being fair to May. I know it and it bothers me. She didn’t do anything wrong.”
“So … talk to her. The silent treatment is probably hurting her more than anything you could say.”
“I can’t. I’m afraid. If I called, she’d ask me to come and see her. I can’t say no, can I? I can never say no. So I’d go see her and even if I didn’t sleep with her it would ruin things here … this life, this marriage. I can’t risk that. There’s going to be a baby. I have to straighten things out. I mean, I don’t know if May is waiting for me or wants to tell me to go fuck myself, which she certainly has the right to do, or what. ’ ’
“What did you tell her when you went away?”
“Didn’t. I didn’t really know I was leaving. I never do. I mean, it was in the air: ’Someday he’ll go back to his wife. ’ Then one day I realized that someday was today and I was here.
“I never really go away from things, you know. I go to things. I never realize what I’ve left ’til I get where I ’m going.”
“You left Yoko,” I interjected.
“No, not really, and she didn’t throw me out either. I’d been doing my Mind Games album and it really had me going. I was going all the time. Yoko and I were bothering each other but I was on the go and didn’t notice how much. So one night I was just going to get a paper. Then I realized what I was actually doing was going for a walk. Then, while I was walking, I realized what I was really doing was going to see May. I was seeing May and that was going on ’til I realized that I was going to stay with her awhile. That’s how I realized I’d left Yoko and that’s when I realized that I was going to get back together with her … ‘someday. ’ Now I’m back, and I’m going to stay, I’m going to not call, write, or going otherwise do anything to upset this particular apple cart, as it were. May wasn’t just a bit of fun on the side, you know. She knows Yoko, too. It was Yoko’s idea to hire her.
“Like I said, Yoko and I were having our problems, sexual, among others. Yoko suggested that May would work for me. If anything went on between the boss and the secretary (and knowing the boss, there would be!), well, so be it.
“It sounded like a good idea. The marriage had its problems and May was there. But as always happens, it got involved. May got involved with me and started feeling loyal and protective toward me, which I love. She stopped her reports to the wife, for which I will be eternally grateful. That’s when it stopped being a good idea. I couldn’t be married to one woman and sleeping with another. I was fragmented as it was. I needed a whole something in my life.”
“And do you have that whole something now? ’ ’ I asked.
“Well, three quarters of a something, maybe. But as the baby proves, Yoko and I do sleep together. Besides, I’m not convinced that a perfect relationship is a whole one. To be perfect it has to have a few holes, doesn’t it? And that still leaves us with May.”
As he talked I sorted and shuffled the cards. When he finished, I laid them out in a spread that was designed to answer a how-to question. “You said that May was hired. That means you paid her?”
“Yes.”
“And what you want to do is communicate to her without writing to her or telling her that you are not going to see her again?”
“Exactly.”
“You ’re still paying her, aren’t you?”
“Well, the office is.”
“As long as you continue to pay her, she has to expect that you want something. If you don’t want anything from her, stop paying her.”
“You mean fire her?”
“‘Lay off ’ might be a better phrase,” I answered, unsure how he would respond to the idea.
“That’s brilliant! Fire her! That ’s fuckin ’ brilliant! That tells May it’s over, it makes Yoko feel secure, and it lets me off the guilty hook! That’s great!”
THE CHOCOLATE DIET
“John’s impossible,” Yoko confided one sunny afternoon in late June, as we sat at the kitchen table for one of our frequent sessions. “He watches me all the time. If I go to the toilet, he follows me. He’s afraid I’m stuffing myself with garbage but I’m not. I just need to eat more now.” She was eating a fistful of chocolate.
“But you’re the one who insisted that you keep a strict macrobiotic diet.”
“I know, I know, but every once in a while I need a little change.” I lit her cigarette. “I think it’s healthy to have a little variety. I think John is just trying to upset me because he doesn’t want the baby.” This was a constant theme.
“He wants the baby, and you know it. Why are you investing so much negativity in this event? Be joyous!”
“You know very well why. It ’s because this baby has to be perfect. This baby is going to change the world. If a messiah were going to be reborn today, he would choose rock stars as parents so he could have access to the media. Everything is perfect for a new prophet. It’s the right time and we are the right parents. Everything we are doing is perfect: exercises, meditation, diet. I just hope the baby isn’t retarded. You want to read on that again?”
“Yoko, we always read on that! There is no reason to suspect that you will have anything other than a perfectly normal baby.”
“Normal?” She sounded hurt. “Our baby can’t be normal! We would hate a normal baby! No, she has to be perfect.”
“She?”
“Now don’t be stubborn, Charlie. I know that you said ’a boy ’ but this time the messiah has to be a woman. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Last time a man, this time a woman. That’s the economy of the universe.”
“A retarded lady messiah?”
“I don’t think that is anything to laugh about.”
“You have been tested by your doctor and you passed.”
“I’m getting another doctor. He won’t believe me about the baby. He insists that there is nothing wrong. And he humiliates me! He says I have to be careful because of my age! That’s very insulting.”
“Then why not try a woman doctor?”
“Because they’re no good. Now I have some names I want you to check so we will get a good doctor this time.” She reached for the phone. “Yes, I want you to bring me some tea, and some noodles, and an orange… What?… No! No honey-sugar is bad for you, you know.” Then she had some chocolate while she waited for her snack.
AND BABY MAKES THREE
The Lennons’ son was born on John ’s thirty-fifth birthday, October 9, 1975. Later John would claim with a smile that he had actually planned it that way. But that was later. In the days immediately following the birth John was not in the mood for humor. The child had had to be delivered by cesarean section and Yoko was required to stay in the hospital some two weeks to recuperate. John haunted the hospital during visiting hours and banged around his ten-room apartment the rest of the time.
Late one night during this period, John called me. In the wee, small hours I listened to him relate how the event could have been happier as far as he was concerned. more like I’ve lost a wife!” he complained. “Nothing’s worked out the way it was supposed to, you know. We had it all planned out. We’d have the baby at home, we said. I would be there for the delivery, we said. Natural birth, no problems, we said. So what happens? Off she goes to the hospital, telling me she doesn’t want me there, and the doctors perform a cesarean section. Now they’re keeping her for observation because of ’complications. ’ It ’s good we planned everything so carefully. Birth classes and health foods and now they’re shooting her full of some damned drug. What was it all about, all the talk, all the plans? What did we get out of it?”
John’s anxieties regarding his son, Sean, grew. When Yoko and the baby came home to the Dakota, John began disappearing sporadically for several hours at a stretch. During the evenings, he caroused with cronies or ladies of the night. When not so engaged he moped around the house, finding fault with almost everything and collecting newspaper clippings on Sean’s birth.
A few days before Thanksgiving 1975, I found him sitting in the kitchen with a pile of these articles telling of Sean, Yoko, and the proud father. I had come to give him his reading but he had no questions that afternoon, only comments, as he thumbed through his stack of papers.
“Well, it’s done,” he said morosely. “Our nine-day-wonder ceases to amaze. I suppose it couldn’t last but it was nice while it did.”
“You could have made more press if you’d wanted.”
“Ah, not true, Charles. The press is a strange beast and I have spent the better part of my adult life learning its habits. It comes sniffing and yipping up to your door begging for yummies, but if you offer it the wrong treat, it will turn on you.
“For a while I didn’t think anyone loved me, really. This year I got three nice spots. Hosting the Grammy Awards. That was nice musician honors his peers. Then the Lew Grade special that was also nice. Now Sean, and they ’re being very nice about this, too. I don’t want to blow it. I just wish I had more of it, but that I can’t have unless I have something to say, which I don’t.”
“How about ’father and son seen in park, ’ that sort of thing?”
“Not wise, wizard. First of all, that sort of thing doesn’t work for someone in my position. The public expects me to be doing something and strolling with the baby, playing family man, isn’t something. Even if they did take the copy, it is really more Sean’s press than mine. There’s going to be enough competition later on. We don’t have to rush it.
“Look at these.” He waved the clippings. “I mean, it’s great that the press beast loves the baby, but I used to be in the papers every day. Now, three shots in a year. I feel as though the factory closed and I got laid off.”
“Do I detect a note of jealousy?”
“You detect a whole symphony of it, Charles. Look at this one, the whole story of how Sean’s birth saved John from deportation. The government gives me a break because the wife’s knocked up. That doesn’t sound like I played a very important role, does it? Whatever whoever was going to say about the album got swallowed up by the baby, and perhaps that’s just as well.”
Just two weeks after Sean’s birth, John had released his album Shaved Fish. The public response to it had been cool. Placed on the market with minimal promotional support, Shaved Fish was not selling well, as the all-important first month’s sales receipts showed. For the press, the story of Sean was better copy.
“There’ll be no hits this year,” John continued sadly. “I’m lucky the press beast didn’t start howling, ’Lennon’s had it. ’ Lucky for me I can still make babies. Maybe I should do it again.”
“I don’t think that’s really the best idea.” “Neither do I, actually.” He paused, looking back to his collection of clippings. “Can you see it? Sean’s first long pants. Sean in school. Sean will be so famous no one will remember who his father was.”
“That’s a little hard to believe.”
“Wait and see. The press beast is a weird critter and the public loves babies.” He paused resentfully. “When Julian was born, all they loved was me.”
Poor Sean, I thought.
TEMPER TANTRUMS
“I had to send him away,” Yoko was telling me. “He was destroying everything.” It was summer and as usual John had gone to the ocean to swim and sunbathe in the nude. “H ’s been wanting to get away since the early spring. He’s like this every year. As soon as the sun comes out he has to be in it. I said that we couldn’t leave just yet and that made him angry and he got very quiet and you know how dangerous that can be. Finally it got so bad he attacked the baby. It was terrible.”
“Attacked?” John was a screamer and had a habit of yelling at Sean to stop crying, but attack sounded more serious.
“Yes, he kicked him. We were in the bedroom, having our meditation. We were doing it almost every night because it was good for family harmony. We would sit naked in a little triangle, because that ’s the symbol of ascension, and just meditate, and if anyone had anything to say they could just say it. Well, Sean can ’t really say anything but he can make little sounds and he has as much right to make those sounds as we have to talk, and usually John was very good about it. But on the last night we did it Sean was crying, and John hates it when the baby cries, but I felt that that was Sean ’s right to express himself. I mean, if John wanted to cry or I wanted to cry, then that would have been all right.
“I didn’t really notice how angry the crying was making John, because I was very deep into my meditation, but all at once he stood up and I opened my eyes and saw him walk toward Sean, and I thought he was going to step on him but he just brought his foot up and kicked him! It was very vicious. Then he just stood there, looking stupid, and the baby was screaming and I didn’t know what was going to happen next. So I jumped up and grabbed Sean and took him to his room. I didn’t even stop for a robe or anything, I was in such a hurry. I was afraid that he was going to kill the baby. I stayed with Masako [the Lennons’ nurse] and the baby for a little while. But then I got afraid of what John might be doing, so I thought that I had better get back and see what he was up to.
“He was still just standing there. And I thought, ’He’s gone crazy. He’s going to kill us! ’ So I sent him to Long Island.”
“But you sent Sean out there with him.” “Yes, John wanted to take him and I think Sean wanted to go, too. He has Masako to look after him and I think he should be safe. As long as John gets what he wants, he usually isn’t too dangerous. Maybe you should read on it and see if Sean is all right out there.” I cast the cards and all seemed well. “John is like that, you know. He has that side of him you never see. He kicked me before, too, you know. He even kicked me once when I was pregnant with Sean. I didn’t want to tell you, because I thought that it would be bad for John, but you know how worried I was that there would be something wrong with the baby. Well, it was because I didn’t know what kind of damage he might have done.” I didn’t know whether to believe her or not.
“Fortunately nothing was wrong.” I was being cautious.
“Yes, thank God. I think that it was because of all the prayers and the magic. But still there might be some damage that we don’t even know about, something that won’t show itself until much later. Things like that can happen, you know.”
The pattern was invariable. John would attack, revel in his cruelty, more to justify it than because it gave him any actual pleasure. Then guilt would shoot him down. He would try to make up by showering Yoko with attention and presents. In time frustration would send him out on the prowl again. And when that happened I was sure to hear about it. My phone rang a few nights later, interrupting a “Late Show” rerun. It was Yoko.
“Charlie, this is an emergency, very important. John just called.”
“From where?” I stretched and groaned and pulled out the cards for another predawn session.
“I don’t know, he just called and said that he was somewhere and he didn’t know where it was but that he was tripping and watching these three lesbians making it and that he hoped they would make it with him next. But more than that he wanted me to come and get him, but I don’t know where he is – he just hung up!” I could imagine the wicked smile on John’s face. “Where do you think he is? What should I do? This could be very dangerous, you know! … I want you to pray for him.”
So I did. “Dear Lord, as long as she’s going to be crazy and I’m not going to get any sleep, at least let John have a good time.”
