Please don’t forget that this never ever ever happened—this is merely a pleasantly odd export of my tiny little mind. Thanks! ;)

 

I’ve Just Seen A Face

 

“Huh.” John cast a skeptical eye over the clean and well kept, if somewhat dated, interior of the tiny motel check-in office. “Is this where we’re gonna sleep tonight, or does somebody just have to stop in the gent’s before we get to the real hotel?”

“Aw, come off it, John,” moaned George from next to the door. “At this point I don’t care if we sleep in a ditch at the side of the road, as long as I get some sleep.” He shook his head to try and dislodge some weight from his eyelids.

George felt terrible. If exhaustion were water, he’d be drowning. As it was, his entire frame drooped as though thoroughly sodden. It wasn’t that nobody had warned him that this leg of the tour would be particularly hectic. It was just that it had actually been particularly hectic. Just this week he’d been dragged by the guitar strap to over twice as many concerts as usually filled their itinerary. Twice as many overcrowded nuthouses where nobody gave you a moment’s leave to play properly, let alone think; twice as many manic adolescents swarming about them everywhere, surging against the crowd barriers, arms outstretched like one huge human millipede; twice as much of the thousands of hysterical shrieks joined into one great filling-disjointing monotone it was almost impossible to escape from. Say what you will about it, George was adamant on this point: A good portion of the time, being a Beatle was simply awful.

“Big wicker-goods convention in town,” interjected Vernon “Vern” Miller, proprietor of the Riverside Motel, from behind the desk as he handed the boys their keys. “You fellas got the last buncha rooms in all of Peskistopheles, Iowa. And the best,” he added with tangible self-importance. “Gwendy? You like these boys, don’cha? You get the honor of showing ‘em their rooms.”

Gwendolyn Marjoribanks Miller glanced at her father, rather annoyed, over the top of her glasses and her annotated Chaucer. It was true that she was somewhat of a Beatles fan, but only, as it were, in passing; she listened to some of their music—“Love Me Do”, “Roll Over Beethoven”, “Do You Want To Know A Secret?” and “Don’t Bother Me” were among her particular favorites—but considered herself rather better than all the screaming and jumping and fits of hysteria indulged in by so many of her more…ignorant…peers. She was well-read; she was intelligent; she was mature. After all, she was eighteen and a half years old. Nearly.

She tossed her rust-red hair and sighed theatrically. In case she hadn’t yet properly expressed her disdain for all things parental, she added, “I sup-po-o-o-ose I’ll have to—”

And then…

She Saw Him Standing There.

Up to this point the only feeling Gwen had ever associated with the rougher sex was vague distaste, as if she suspected they weren’t housebroken. Now her heart hammered at the back of her teeth, her gut felt as though she’d swallowed an assortment of live amphibians, and if she hadn’t already been sitting, she was dead sure her knees would’ve buckled and she would’ve fallen face-first to the floor, limp and helpless as—as—Oh, now she knew something was amiss, when even her vocabulary (a sizable one, or so she said herself) forsook her. She couldn’t even think straight anymore. And she liked it. Oh, and how she liked it.

This had never happened to her before.

He was just gear. That was the first word that floated to the fore of her mind to describe him: “gear”, followed closely by “fab” and “yeah”. He was handsome and clever and kindhearted—Wait, how did she know he was clever and kindhearted? Well, he looked clever and kindhearted, and that was good enough for her. She’d find out how right she was later, when they started their life together. Images flooded her mind as she imagined her future with her one and only sweetheart, the musician and all-around nice guy whose name was now writ large upon her soul, the one, the only—

“Gwendolyn Marjoribanks Miller, quit dilly-dallyin’ and get a move on!”

Gwendolyn scowled at her father. He had no respect for true love. No respect at all.

“Yes, let’s do,” George heard John interpose. “Get a move on, I mean.”

Something about the tone of that last “Yes, let’s do” piqued George’s rather strained interest, and he blinked the sleep from his eyes as he looked up.

Just as Barrymore had his Hamlet and Groucho Marx his Captain Spaulding, so too did John Lennon have his signature role. Behind his back, the other boys called it “King Leer”. Sure enough, John was putting on a grand performance for the somewhat attractive young lady behind the check-in counter. And in front of her father, too, he noted. Judging from the look on her face, it was going to be a long night for John. Gwendy had gone positively glacial. He might have better luck with the silk flowers on the counter, thought George to himself.

The breadth—the depth—the sheer magnitude of John’s enthusiasm for the fairer sex never failed to amaze George. Here was John exercising the utmost of his charms after a brutal week of touring; while George himself, younger by a couple of years and ostensibly peppier (and by no means below par in his pursuit of la femme, he noted with a touch of self-satisfaction), couldn’t at this point even imagine doing anything in a bed that didn’t involve being alone, inert, and unconscious for the next eight hours. A few loud, hearty, revolting nasal snores would be fine too, for preference.

After a short pause, her father declared: “On second thought, your sister’s going with you. I don’t want you alone with those”—he cast a suspicious glance at the four boys—“European types. Birdy?” he called over his shoulder into the back room. “You get out here and help your sister.”

“Coming, Dad-dee.”

She was blond, yes, if one discounted the quarter-inch or so of dark red at the roots; her makeup, unlike her sister’s, was an elaborate, multilayered affair with shades and tints covering the entire cosmetic color spectrum—a fact of which, her face told you, she would likely remind you several times before the evening was over.

Her face tactfully omitted to reveal her intense distaste at the nickname her father had used for her. She hated being called “Birdy”—it was an appellation from a first-grade play that had unfortunately stuck too fast for removal at this juncture—but she nonetheless preferred it to her given name, the only thing bequeathed her branch of the family by her foul-tempered grandmother, Helga.

Whatever her name, the young lady that actually answered her father’s summons drew decidedly mixed reviews from the group as a whole. Paul, for example, thought her a veritable vision of loveliness in that outfit she was quite nearly wearing. It must be very convenient, he mused, to be able to share her wardrobe with her Barbie dolls.

George, who had noticed her roots and whom fatigue and lack of sleep had made slightly irritable, felt that to use “vision” would be to miss a crucial opportunity to use a word like “hallucination”.

Ringo thought they both rather looked like dowels with makeup on, but, mindful of the potential difference between his personal criteria for physical attractiveness and everyone else’s, let the matter rest.

John was busy at the moment mentally roughing out a long-term strategy (that is, thirty minutes or more into the future) for use to woo the fair Gwendolyn; for, despite what his teachers had once said about him, he could apply himself to the task at hand—under certain conditions.

 

 

 

               ***Authoress’s note: If you’d like to use this story for anything or take it someplace, please ask me first. It’s just one little email, not too much trouble, and the odds are in your favor for a yes if you ask me nicely. I just want people to recognize the story as mine, okay? ;-)