I Saw Him Standing There

Candy Schulman

Word Count 636

My friend Lori and I were trekking home through Washington Square from our jobs as drug abuse counselors in the roughest schools in East New York, Brooklyn -- when I saw him standing there. He was near the fountain, and of course, my heart went boom. It was 1973, and his hat gave him away: a black Beatles’ cap that had become their trademark. I was 20; he was 33.

We were the only ones who noticed; he blended into the guitar strummers and pot dealers, an amalgam of faded bell bottoms and tie-dye shirts. We inched closer, as star-struck as when we were teenagers screaming to hold their hands. Staring into John Winston Lennon’s round wire-rimmed glasses, I was speechless.

“Hullo,” the Liverpudlian slurred, drunk or stoned, or both.  Playfully he plopped his hat on top of my head.

“Where do you girls live?” asked John’s cohort, a bearded bloke, obviously with the devil in his heart.

Miraculously, we all started walking together, our own fab four, toward my fifth-floor walk-up on Eighth Street.

“Want to come up?” Lori asked.

She said what I was thinking but was too nervous to ask. I shared a two-bedroom with a pre-med student. In a half hour, I was due at NYU, where I was studying for a Master’s in Psychology.

A moment later, we were climbing the creaky winding staircase to my apartment—with this boy!  As soon as we were inside, John’s buddy pounced on Lori. She was petite to the point of looking frail, but she was no pushover. Her liaisons with men, women, and combinations were far more brazen and widespread than mine, yet she kept pushing him away. ” I smiled wanly at John in my living room, which resembled nothing so much as a Post-College Dorm: mismatched furniture handed down from Florida grandmothers.

It won’t be long, I fantasized, till I belonged to him. I began to lose control. What could John possibly be thinking? Not much. He was nodding out, devastated by his break-up with Yoko. 

Lori fended off John’s lascivious companion. You say yes, I say no. I say stop, and you say go go go. It was a critical juncture in my young life: we were either going to sleep with John and his nameless sidekick, or we were going to throw them out.

Lori threw them out.

I was incredulous. She was the untamed id of our friendship. I don’t know what I would’ve done if we’d allowed them to stay. Even though I doubted that John was capable of doing anything much that night—except passing out. 

John’s accomplice shrugged, guiding wobbly John out.

What were we thinking?

“Wait. Your hat,” I managed to say, placing it back on his head.

What was I thinking? I’m a looo-ooo-ooo-ser….that’s what.

John smiled. The only word he’d uttered had been “hullo.” Hello hello…I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello.

“What’re we…crazy?” I shrieked to Lori. “Do you realize who we just forced to leave?”

Lori could have taught a Ph.D. in one-night stands and kinky sex. Why did she decide to be so damn moral that night?

“His friend was a pig,” she said, and then she, too, started having misgivings.

She grabbed my arm, and we raced down five flights of stairs and into Washington Square Park…searching….  

It won’t be long now, but no John. Not on Sixth Avenue. Nor Waverly Place. Nowhere Man.

John and Yoko would make up soon after ending his eighteen-month “Lost Weekend” period, but they’d live happily ever after for only seven more years.  

I enjoyed repeating my John Lennon story to friends and family. It was a hit at parties. Friends gawked: You met John Lennon? …and he got away?

But…I just had to let it go. Otherwise, I’d cry.

If John had stayed that night, would my life have been different?  You may say I’m a dreamer…A girl could imagine. Or would my John Lennon story have been better?  I’m glad, even relieved, that our brief encounter ended in a pure, innocent way. Although I wish I’d kept his hat. 

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Candy’s essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, The Cut, Longreads, Oldster, Brevity, among others. She is a creative writing professor at The New School in Greenwich Village and a private writing coach. One of her favorite John Lennon songs is “Jealous Guy.”