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Girl is a collection of self-contained short stories all set in the Beatles & John Lennon universe.
I'd suggest to read them in the order in which they were published, as I got more and more attached to the girl as the series progressed.
Most of the stories have an explicit rating but it's never porn without plot and I'm tagging everything accordingly.
Many thanks to all of you who have bookmarked and read my stories, left kudos and even commented. This is for you: 💕
My main resource for my writing are books. I've read (or at least skimmed through) most of the popular Beatles books out there.
I take everything with a grain of salt; I don't believe that anyone knows the absolute truth or has all the facts straight...but that's alright with me. I'm not a historian and I do enjoy reading all kinds of anecdotes and tidbits and fitting all those pieces together like a puzzle.
The more I read, the more I get a sense of what is possibly true and what's most likely fiction.
And anyway, at the end of the day, my John is a fictional character as well, no matter how accurate I aim to be in my writing.
Since the early Beatles' days are my personal favourite, my most consulted book is Mark Lewisohn's Tune In.
For the touring years, I enjoyed Larry Kane's Ticket to Ride and When They Were Boys as well as Ivor Davis' Beatles and Me on Tour.
As for books about John specifically, the most important one is of course Cynthia Lennon's A Twist of Lennon / John. I also like Larry Kane's Lennon Revealed and Being John Lennon by Ray Connelly.
More on the gossipy side, but nonetheless entertaining, are Pauline Sutcliffe's Stuart Sutcliffe & His Lonely Hearts Club Band, Tony Bramwell's Magical Mystery Tours, Lives of John Lennon by Albert Goldman, Lennon in America by Geoffrey Giuliano and my two favourites: Pete Shotton's Beatles, Lennon and Me and Living on Borrowed Time by Fred Seaman.
Of course it's best to hear it from the lads themselves, so The Beatles by Hunter Davies, The Beatles' Anthology and the 2024 All You Need Is Love by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines, the addendum to the infamous The Love You Make.
Very good books about The Beatles, Beatle People and the swinging 60s scene are Margaret Hunt's Yesterday - Memories of a Beatles Fan, Harriet Vyner's Groovy Bob and Hippie Hippie Shake by Richard Neville.
To get a better understanding of how John thinks and talks, I recommend reading - and if possible listening to - interviews, even the made up ones published in 60s teen magazines.
The main inspiration for my writing are The Beatles themselves.
Their story is endlessly fascinating to me and at least partly fits the definition of a hero's journey as depicted in Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
I just wish for John the last stage of the monomyth, the Freedom to Live, would not have been so cruelly cut short.
As for the girl, she's meant to be a somewhat typical young woman who grew up in the 50s and 60s.
She is an amalgation of all the characters and their experiences and struggles I've read about in books - coincidentally all the booksthe girl has read as well - and encountered in TV shows and films.
While some of the girl's interests and family background draw inspiration from my own experiences, she is distinctly her own person. Her personality and approach to life differ significantly from mine. In a way, she embodies qualities I admire or aspire to—perhaps she's the kind of person I'd wish to be in an alternate life, or more realistically, someone I'd like to have as a friend. I try to write her with both authenticity and a touch of wishful thinking, creating a character who feels real - and not be just another Y/N - yet remains separate from my own identity.
John and the girl's relationship is not meant to be ideal - after all it is a story loosely based on true events, and I'm aware that John was complicated and complex, flawed at times just like every other human being. And yet the girl represents my idea of an ideal partner for John. At least for a while.
So, in a way, Girl is not only a love story about John and the girl but also a whimsical declaration of love from me to John Lennon for all the joice and solace he's been giving me over the years.
Will it work out in the end? To quote Paul in Get Back, Who knows, Yoko?
We'll see, won't we?
It was my English teacher, who introduced me to John Lennon.
During that time I was particularly interested in the '68 student and anti-war movement - I was reading biographies about Robert F. Kennedy and GDR publications like Martin Robbe's Verlockung der Gewalt - Linksradikalismus, Anarchismus, Terrorismus, which were given to me by my friend's father, an old-guard hippie himself. Pretty heavy and controversial stuff for a teen-ager but I liked to be that kind of edgy.
My English teacher certainly picked up on that and one day gave me a VHs cassette to watch - john & yoko - the bed-in.
I was awestruck - despite understanding approximately only 60% of the English. There was an adult who talked about all the things I was interested in too. He wasn't preaching and being dull, he was funny. And he did it together with his wife! On their honeymoon! I found that very romantic and the idealistic us against the squares of the world spirit endlessly fascinating.
I gathered all the information - mainly interviews - about JohnAndYoko I could get my hands on and Out the Blue from John's album Mind Games became my favourite - especially this part:
All my life's been a long slow knife
I was born just to get to you
Anyway, I survived
Long enough to make you my wife
To this day I find this incredibly enchanting.
As chance would have it, my PE teacher was a huge Beatles fan and during ski gymnastics, she'd blast various Best of... albums of the lads over stereo. I didn't like it all at first because I had - naturally - this blasé attitude that The Beatles were just another boyband and I sure was above that. That changed during the course of the following weeks - also due to my other English teacher who had already instilled a love for rock'n'roll and especially Elvis Presley on me - I had to admit that their music was quite catchy and often enough John singing Help! made me laugh and got me through another round of burpees despite feeling like dying on the gym floor.
One Friday afternoon I decided to rent A Hard Day's Night as I was told that it was the very first motion picture of The Beatles.
The opener already made me laugh with George tripping and falling over. Also, they didn't remotely look as silly as The Backstreet Boys or *NSYNC. In fact, they looked rather nice and the way they were running and jumping they would've done great during ski gymnastics I thought.
When a baby duck imprints on its mother.
The scene that changed my teenage heart forever, though it only lasted a blink of an eye, was the close-up of John around 51 seconds in. I probably gasped as something clicked - I had found my very own boyband member to fawn over after all. He was good-looking, and he could definitely sing. Granted, he didn't do elaborate choreographies on stage - though he could dance! - but he played guitar and was a lyricist. A singer-songwriter, if you will.
Over the years, I discovered that many girls experienced a similar awakening to mine. It's exhilarating to realise that John Girlies have always been the same through decades, and reading their stories, memories and recollections is among my favourite things.
One Beatles account I particularly resonate with is that of Susan Ryan, printed in Linda Schultz's book Tales of The Awesome Foursome. So instead of rambling on about why John will forever be special to me, I'll let her speak. She sums it up perfectly.
I've been a Beatles fan since the summer of 1975, when I was nearly fourteen. (Perfect timing - talk about an influx of raging hormones!) I was aware of them as a child, certainly, and I do remember watching the Saturday morning cartoons, and Yellow Submarine when it came out in the theatres, but I was a bit young. The summer before my fourteenth birthday, I went to summer camp on Long Island and there was an older girl who was into The Beatles. She played their music for me and that sparked my interest.
It was John Lennon's voice that got me first - as a friend of mine has said, it sent chills directly to places unmentionable! And when I finally saw A Hard Day's Night around the time of my fourteenth birthday, that was it. I had only ever seen still pictures of John before and hadn't really heard him speak, just sing. But when I saw that movie, and saw him moving and talking and laughing - it was like tunnel vision. I didn't see anything or anyone else. I was smitten, totally and completely and utterly.
I liken it to the way a baby duck imprints on its mother - forever after, I have judged what I find sexy and attractive in men based on what I find sexy and attractive about John.
Certainly the packaging was beautiful. I think John was extremely handsome and extremely sexy... and of course his stage stance - my God, that didn't hurt, did it??
But there were other things, too - his intelligence, his wit, his charm. I have always found intelligence to be extremely sexy and the only man I ever met who lived up to the ideal I had set for myself (e.g., John - and that's a hell of an ideal for any other man to live up to, believe me!) was the man I eventually married, who is not only handsome and sexy, but very intelligent, too.
Another thing is that I owe John a lot in terms of what he gave me without ever knowing he did.
Watching him made me realize that I didn't have to be apologetic about who I was, that it was okay to be me, and to be sassy and opinionated and passionate about the things I believed in.
I think, strangely enough, that I saw a lot of things in him that I was unsure about in myself — and seeing how he handled those things made me more secure about my ability to handle similar things.
I know that John Lennon wasn't perfect — but he was beautiful, sexy, smart and honest, and those are all qualities I value very highly. My love for him is as real as any other love I have ever had, and it has never wavered, never varied, never changed since I was fourteen years old. I will love him and miss him for the rest of my life.
The photo that converted Susan's mother.
A small addendum to the above story: My mother has never quite understood my fascination with John. She knows I love The Beatles, but I sometimes get the impression that my particular infatuation for the weird one, as she once put it many years ago, has completely baffled her. But very recently, something happened that made me believe that she might just get it after all...
At the Chicago Fest for Beatles Fans, I finally made a very special purchase of an Astrid Kirchherr photograph I'd had my eye on for five years. For those of you familiar with Astrid's photos, it's the one of John standing in her attic, circa 1962, dressed in a black leather jacket, black turtleneck, black jeans and black boots, half in shadow. A truly beautiful photograph of a truly beautiful young man — at least I think so.
At any rate, I had the photo professionally framed, and when it was done I took it to my parents' house to show off my purchase. I removed the picture from the bag I had carried it in and put it in my mother's hands... whereupon she gave a sharp gasp, and then turned to me, saying, Oh, Susan... now I know what you see in him.
