I remember when I was John Lennon's best friend.
When all night long we could just talk. Or just sit there, not talking. And that would be okay. Because we could.
When anytime either of us had to do something, the other always tagged along. Every time.
You could see it. I don't know what was there, but I know it'll never be repeated.
And then, when people started knowing more things about us then we did, we knew it wasn't really because of us any more. Other people were catching on too. But they never had a clue.
None of them did. They had no idea of what we said after we disappeared into the hotel room. No clue of what we talked about. What we did.
None of them.
Every single person on earth thought they knew us.
Not a single person in the universe had the slightest thought of what we really were.
You know that person, inside of you, that really you only act like when you're completely and utterly alone? That you swore up and down you could never be around another person?
It was kind of like that. But different. Because it wasn't like being around someone else. It was like being around an exact replica of yourself, only he was everything I wasn't, and I was everything he wasn't.
It was like black and white, or math and reading, or night and day, or the angel and the devil. We were opposites, but when you put two opposites together you get the whole. And that was what we were. A whole. Sure, the other two were like added on pieces. Superglued on, very tight, very close. But we had that special. That nobody else ever had before. And it was magic.
So when we broke up... you know how it feels to argue with yourself. It leaves you tired and tried and annoyed and generally not in a good mood. So when we split...
It was like losing your heart. Only worse.
Much worse.
But it was like getting that heart transplant when you desperately needed it, when we started talking again. It was hesitant, slowly but surely, and with a couple of problems along the road, as if you were adjusting. But then it was bliss. Pure bliss, being whole again, when we weren't fighting and arguing and hating each other. It was happy. Pure, undiluted happiness.
But it didn't last.
And then, when he was shot, I didn't know right away. That killed me.
"Yes, we have to say it. Remember, this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous perhaps of all the Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival. Hard to go back to the game after that news flash, which, in duty bound, we have to take."
The game. The game in which everybody found out before I did. I found out much later, later that night. Around one in the morning.
Everyone in the world knew before I did. And they had no idea who he was. I did. And I found out last. Or so it felt like.
"Paul?"
He spoke.
He told.
I died.