Michel Rabagliati - Paul Moves Out
This was another book club selection - a few people had a hankering to get into some graphic novels, and we managed to confuse each other (likely mostly/all my fault) with the titles enough that we read a few different ones. This was the first we read, and they are all pretty "slice of life" stories, apparently autobiographical to some degree. I liked that the author didn't attempt to make himself a "hero" or even particularly likable, as the central character. That being said, some of the casual/lowkey racism was off-putting (after discussion with others, I'm still not sure if it's meant as a critique of the main characters - a sort of "look at how honest I am about how dumb we were" attempt at , or was simply "a product of its time," and that may be a big part of my issue).
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thinking about how weird yandere!paul atreides would be ..
he's such a freak. an absolute weirdo around you, all lingering eyes and adoring smiles flashed your way.
paul knows you think he's a little off. a little too touchy with you, following you around like a lost puppy... you don't get it. he doesn't think you would, but he also doesn't quite care.
it's in the way he stares at you, albeit from a distance. the way he smiles. how he speaks to you. how he acts. all of it is a little unsettling, in plenty of ways.
after all, you're a boy... in the eyes of other people of course.
in your defense, you never bothered to reveal you aren't biologically a guy. no one asked! no one cared! no one thought about it! you passed so naturally, it was better to just blend.
you're rugged in all sorts of ways.
when you were nothing but a child, you'd climb atop of things you shouldn't have, you'd fight the other boys with fists and teeth, not hesitating to wield a sword or gun and join battle.
certainly, your parents fully believed you were the outcast of the family. the black sheep, the freak, the one they'd stash under the stairs to hide you from the world.
it got real bad when you cut your hair and would wrap fabric around your chest just to make sure you looked more masculine in the eyes of many. surely, you were crazy? you had to have been. going out in public like that — when you're supposed to be their precious daughter, their darling baby they'd dress in ribbons and bows, all sorts of jewelry.
you weren't really interested in those things... you like fighting. you like who you are. it's so much more comfortable, you feel so much safer.
until paul atreides comes around.
when you two first met, it was cordial. he kept a distance, despite being stony faced, he'd smiled at you and offered his name, asking for yours.
the two of you shake hands, professional and solely there for business. until you're sent to arrakis, and, well, it goes sideways.
he starts following you like a stray on the street... so eager to be near you, to feel the warmth of your scarred, rough hands; to stare at you and admire all the gashes and beatings you've received from your battles.
and it's just.. ugh. you hate it. you feel like you're being stalked everywhere you go, asking him dumb questions like,
"shouldn't you be with chani??"
"you don't have anything to be tending too, at the moment...?"
"ah, are you sure you want to watch me spar and train? surely you have elsewhere to be."
it irks him, just a little bit. ever since paul had locked eyes with you, his visions changed.
would he ever say what he saw? mm, maybe not. wouldn't want to scare you off!
but until he does make those visions a reality, he'll watch you from a distance. evaluate just why he sees children that look like the perfect mix of you and himself, why he sees so many different variations of wedding rings, why he sees you sleeping beside him in bed as he dreams.
just... until then. paul swears he'll make it a reality.
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Davidwache Police Station | Painting by Klaus Voormann
Prior to being deported, Paul McCartney spends a night in the Davidwache police station.
In the meantime, the final four could start playing [at the Top Ten club] now, and move themselves into the bunk-bed accommodation at the top of the building.c Tony Sheridan was already here, possibly others too, and the Beatles were welcome to shoehorn themselves in. It was neither the Ritz nor the pits. John was the first to move. Then Paul and Pete went back to the Bambi to grab their gear.
The place was in near darkness, as usual. They had to strike a match to see their way about … and then they decided to leave Koschmider a little gift. Pete had a few “spunk bags,” and he and Paul had the idea to hang them on nails in the wall in the long concrete passageway and set light to them. “The place was dank and dark,” says Pete. “They spluttered, they stank, and OK, maybe they singed a tiny bit of tapestry on the wall. It caused nothing but a little smoke and a few scorch marks and then they went out.”41 It was the ultimate fuck you, Bruno, or so they thought.
They got to play one night in the Top Ten, and it seems to have been a good one, pulling business away from the Kaiserkeller, but it was just this one night. Having been shafted once by Eckhorn, when he’d prized away the Jets and Tony Sheridan from the Kaiserkeller, Koschmider wasn’t going to sit back and let it happen again. He might also have guessed the Beatles would make some grand gesture for his “benefit”—they could even have hinted of it—because an inspection was made of the Bambi’s rooms very quickly. When the stinkende qualmende Piedeltüten were found, he decided to form the view it was an attempt to burn down his cinema, and informed the police.
The chronology of events over the next twenty-four hours is rife with confusion and contradiction, but may have gone something like this. Paul was picked up by the police while walking along the Reeperbahn, taken by car to the Davidwache police station (two hundred meters from the Top Ten) and locked in a cell. Pete and John were also arrested. Koschmider didn’t know which of them was responsible for the “attempted arson,” so the Polizei rounded them all up. As Stuart wrote in a letter back to Liverpool a few days later:
I am living in the lap of luxury and contentment. Better than the cell I spent a night in last week. I was innocent this time though accused of arson—that is, setting fire to the Kino (cinema) where we sleep. I arrive at the club and am informed that the whole of Hamburg Police are looking for me. The rest of the band are already locked up, so smiling and very brave on the arm of Astrid, I proceed to give myself up. At this time I’m not aware of the charge. All my belongings, including spectacles, are taken away and I’m led to a cell where without food or drink I sat for six hours on a very wooden bench, the door shut very tight. I fall asleep at two in the morning. I signed a confession written in Deutsch that I knew nothing about a fire, and they let me go.42
John was also allowed to go. It was now clear who’d done the dirty deed, and for them the ordeal continued; Paul would always remember the little one-way peephole in the door of their detention room, through which he sensed they were watched. It seems he and Pete were then allowed to leave, but a few hours later—early the following morning—they were dragged out of their Top Ten bunk beds and interviewed a second time. Pete suggests they were taken to Hamburg’s main prison at Fühlsbuttel, Paul remembers it being “the Rathaus … it doesn’t mean rat house, it just felt like one.” They were interviewed by an official of the Bundeskriminalamt (Federal CID), one Herr Gerkins, and it was definitely inadvisable to snigger. Instead, they requested permission to contact the British Embassy, like people did in the films, and were refused; then they were taken for a car ride. “We tried our best to persuade him it was nothing,” Paul says, “and he said, ‘OK fine, well you go with these men.’ And that was the last we knew of it. We just headed out with these couple of coppers. And we were getting a bit ‘Oh dear, this could be the concentration camps’—you never know. It hadn’t been that long [since the war].”43
Criminal charges were not pressed, but Koschmider, inevitably, had the last laugh. It wasn’t a camp to which Paul and Pete were being taken, but the airport—and in handcuffs, according to Stuart. They were being deported, and banned from reentering Germany unless they lodged an appeal within a month. Auf Wiedersehen, Piedels! Handed their passports at the gate, they were put on the London plane, set to fly for the first time in their lives. It then got even tastier for Koschmider because Eckhorn was billed for at least part of the cost of the plane tickets. Bruno must have been rubbing his hands with joy.
—Tune In, Ch. 17 (Oct 1–Dec 31, 1960)
Sources:
41 Author interview, March 7, 1985. Pete says (Beatle!, p72) there were four rubbers and always speaks of them in plural, Paul speaks of one.
42 December 12, 1960, sent to Ken Horton. This letter provides the only suggestion that John was arrested in the roundup; he’s not mentioned in other accounts.
43 Interview by Paul Gambaccini, Rolling Stone, June 12, 1979. Rathaus means “city hall.” Instead of the main prison at Fühlsbuttel, it’s more likely Paul and Pete were taken to the remand prison near St. Pauli called Untersuchungsgefängnis (easier done than said).
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