#only paul gives into jane and john doesn't to cyn

[pauls1967moustache]

Having another thought about girl Paul being in this interesting spot where as an extremely beloved and powerful celebrity she has unique access to women sexually but is perhaps cut off to them emotionally by that dynamic and by the time she settles down with Linda has probably wrestled with a lot of guilt and loneliness. And maybe something she appreciates is she feels Linda doesn't judge her for her history or her layers of artifice and they can just be human beings together, especially if that kind of relationship has seemed so impossible to her before.

oh absolutely. i actually thought a lot about her relationship to other women in her life, bc i think it's really interesting. like paul joins a band with boys and because she wants to be taken seriously she goes "not like other girls" mode and distances herself from more feminine things, but it leaves her isolated from most of her female peers. the closest women to her are basically the WAGs, but cyn would be naturally suspicious because she's not dumb, and i think cyn would end up warning off any future girlfriends from trusting paul entirely. it's that story of how she told pattie the wives would never have what the beatles have with each other, but in this universe cyn's like "paul can be a friend when she wants to be, but she's theirs not ours."

and then obviously paul is having sex with women, but this is still the '60s and she's still mostly closeted, so it's not like she can have a steady relationship with any of them, not to mention the power imbalance, like you said. the only women she really has access to are women who idolise her to a sometimes dehumanising degree, so i think the only time she can really connect with other women is when they're also in the industry and they Get It, so like mary hopkins or marianne faithfull.

i think even before linda, jane is the main person who fulfills this sense of female connection for her, but like in real life it's very fraught because paul is in a different stage of her life. she obviously can't date jane openly, but i think they fall into a sort of homoerotic girl best friends situationship for a few years, where they're sort of dating but sort of not, while everyone assumes paul's going to marry peter asher one day or something. i don't think either of them take the possibility of an actual relationship seriously, because it's just kind of unfeasible from where they stand in their public images, but jane is known as paul's closest female friend and they get the Gal Pals treatment. but everything's very vague and confusing between them personally, and paul still sleeps around as much as irl, and also jane hates paul's relationship with john even more because with the added element of friendship in paul and jane's relationship, jane has to suffer that age old problem of "why is my beautiful perfect friend so hung up on this terrible man? i hope jakey dies".

and then after jane gets fed up with the john of it all, and everything starts breaking down, paul finally comes to a place where she just wants something real that she can solidly rely on, which is where linda comes in. and linda is industry-adjacent so she Gets It, but is also not hung up on public perceptions the way an actress or another musician might be, so it gives paul the space to worry less about it, and focus more on being loved.

#asks #girl paul

[recallthename]

We always come back to ourselves because we never change.  We might be A plus One when One equals gray suits.  That would be the gray-suit cycle.  Then A plus Two when it's floral shirts.  But we're always there all the time as A.  Then you finish up A plus Dead.  Excuse all the clever stuff.  I just get carried away talking.  But all the changes, you see, the physical ones are superficial.  You go into a cycle, but you don't get carried away forever by it, because the more you know, the less you know.  And there's always each other as safety valves. The thing is, we're all really the same person.  We're just four parts of the one.  We're individuals, but we make up together The Mates, which is one person.  If one of us, one side of the mates, leans over one way we all go with him or we pull him back.  We all add something different to the whole.

Paul McCartney, The Beatles by Hunter Davies

#kat reads the beatles #the beatles #paul mccartney #john lennon #george harrison #ringo starr #they all belong to each other #the danger of being very enthusiastic #i want to crawl inside his brain #but like... in a normal way #i just find the way he speaks so fascinating #having john and paul's chapters back to back at the end of this book is... a lot #cyn's 'they need you less than you need them' #followed by jane talking about how different paul is with the beatles as opposed to when it's just them #cyn and jane both wanting similar things from john and paul #only paul gives into jane and john doesn't to cyn #god now i'm making myself emo