Am I Cooked?

Howard talks about All My Loving, and how Paul wrote it as a poem without melody at first. Paul immediately thinks Stern is implying that the song is about John for some reason.

yknow your fantastic post about closeted paul and how he's (probably) come to accept his queerness/bisexuality, but simply keeps it private for multiple reasons? what would you say was john's case?

(i personally believe he was a closeted gay man but idk how to Phrase Things. Sigh.)

oh i 10000000% believe john was a gay man with a lot of Problems. like. i know, i know, in later life he talked about liking men & women & we have that hysterical "john lennon's bisexual guide to gardening" quote but likeeeeeeeeee.... idk. here's my Speculations under the cut

several things, to me. yes, he fucked a lot of women (a lot). but of the 4 of them, during the beatles years he really didn't.... have any steady girlfriends. it's not like he was the only married one and it's not like he had any hangups about cheating, so it's really not that. the ONLY rumor there is was one that he "dated" an older woman (blanking on her name rn) and even thennnn those rumors were, afaik, just based on the fact that he was kind of sad when she died & that he viewed her as a mother figure. which is... i mean that's not convincing like at all to me.

the Three Biggest Relationships in his life w women were cynthia, yoko, and may pang. the rest were women he fucked around with as one night stands. again, as far as i'm aware. and cynthia..... well it's not really hard to see that he very much (unfortunately) did not give that much of a fuck about her. it's the most classic case of comphet i've ever seen. he dated her bc he was supposed to & then he married her bc she got pregnant and he was supposed to.

and yoko....... lord. i won't deny that he loved her. but it was, from literally everything we've seen, a very obsessive love that had less to do w their personal chemistry and more to do with Circumstances. and even with her, there's sooo many quotes of him talking about how he liked her bc she looked like a man, or looked like him in drag, or acted like a bloke/best mate. that's. not to doubt him but that's just not something someone into women says lmfao.

and that's not to mention the whole debacle w probable conversion therapy. and like. this is no hate to yoko & again i believe she was a flawed individual just like any of them were & we have truly got to embrace her morally gray status just like any man bc we can't demonize OR idealize women when women are Literally Just People. but from some of her quotes & outside sources she was very uncomfortable w the idea of his queerness. and hell, there's the "you think of rock hudson when we do it" line, which is both honestly pretty fucking homophobic but also very indicative of where john was, sexuality wise

and as for may, that whole situation was honestly so fucked up and tragic for Both of them that getting into it would take a novel but like. that wasn't exactly his first choice in partner

and in his quotes about Being Into Men, what he says is basically that with women he is fine fucking without an emotional connection but w men he needs that emotional connection & he hasn't found that with a man. which i think is him bullshitting, btw, but the core of it there that he can't fuck a man without emotions is... well that's really telling. it seems like sex with women to him is just sex, whereas sex with men to him is a deep, emotional thing. and that's, again, just not really something someone into women would be saying with their chest

i'm pretty sure he Also has a quote about never having found a woman attractive which is just telling all on its own

and as for Being Into Men...... well he talked about it himself. but also, there's at LEAST stuart, paul, and brian that would go right at the top of the list for me of men he had an incredibly close & intimate relationship with, one-sided or not. i don't think it's incidental that he referred to paul constantly as his other partner in life, his other marriage, etc while like. literally barely ever mentioning cynthia. like it's super telling, the johnandpaul of it aside, that he talks more about his Boy Best Friend when talking about past marriages than his literal wife lmfao

i think he had a LOT of internalized homophobia & anger with himself over it ("scared of his inner fag" as he said). bc of that, i don't think he let himself get as close to the men he was probably in love with as he wanted to be, or even let himself acknowledge just how emotionally attached he was to them. by the end of his life, i think he WAS coming to terms with liking men, at least. was he coming to terms with Not liking women? i don't know. probably not, although i know his and yoko's marriage was in a rough place by the end of his life so who knows really.

i would hope that if he'd lived that by now he would've found peace w his sexuality, bi or gay, but that's not the world we got unfortunately

i’ve come to a conclusion

John Lennon and Cynthia Lennon at the Peppermint Lounge in New York, 9th February 1964

Drunk John my beloved

All of them are gay in my heart AND the show

He didn't have to do any of that

paul mccartney - hear me lover/something that didn’t happen [demo]

hear me, lover / i can’t be held responsible now / for something that didn’t happen / i knew you for a minute / oh, it didn’t happen / only for a minute / your heart wasn’t in it / hear me now, lover / i can’t be held responsible now / for something that didn’t happen / i knew you for a minute / oh, it didn’t happen / only for a minute / your heart just wasn’t in it anymore, oh / hear me

Quote compilations

Because I cope with my Beatles feelings by collecting and organizing quotes in a big ass spreadsheet and I may as well post them here divided up by topic:

The breakup

Quotes from each member divided by year, showing it was never so cut and dry that Paul always wanted to stay in the Beatles and John/George always wanted out

John Lennon’s sexuality

Internalized homophobia, intentionally spreading rumours about being gay + people thinking he was joking (John Lennon invented queerbaiting in 1963 did you know?), revealing comments from John and others about his sexuality, replacing Paul with Yoko, jealousy over Paul, flirting with Paul

Quotes about the Lennon-Mccartney rivalry & John's insecurity

The ramifications of Yesterday, a fear of abandonment, ego death, and having a relentlessly productive, competitive soulmate

John not meaning what he says

"Yeah, I was lying" [laughs]

Paul hurting John

The extent to and ways in which John claimed Paul hurt him and Paul's struggle to understand wtf happened

Paul wrangling John

Paul understands the importance of public relations and affectionately straightening ties

Beatles defending each other

Only Beatles can talk shit about Beatles

Paul trying and sometimes failing to be chill about Yoko

WHO KNOWS, YOKO?

Just insane mclennon things

Shit where you're like "I can't believe that actually happened??" Often not in a good way

McLennon matching icons

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