Reality of the situation is, I care more about this photograph than I do about most people I have known. It was taken at a Beatles concert in Wigan, England on October 13th, 1964. At the end of last May I decided to go full-on with my obsession and start writing stories about the girls kissing in the back. I named the girls Jackie and Olivia. Jackie is on the left, and Olivia is on the right.
I hate the stupid girl yelling in the front. She is such a distraction from the intense beauty of Jackie and Olivia making out. Maybe they aren't making out. The other night my friend Chelsea and I were at a bar and these strangers asked us "What's making out?" and then a couple days later the Korean dishwasher at my work asked me "What's making out?" It's so crazy how life is like that. Nobody ever asked me what making out is my entire life and then it happened twice in one week. The answer to that question is so boring. Kissing with touching, blah blah blah. Maybe they only kissed once.
It's very easy for me to get obsessed with Jackie and Olivia because I don't know what happened but I'd like to guess what happened. My thing at the end of last May was that I decided I was going to write a story explaining every single potential backstory that could possibly explain why these two girls were either making out or kissing at a Beatles concert in 1964. My favorite of the two is always Olivia, on the right. I relate to her because she has dark hair and poor eyesight and is wearing a cardigan.
I thought that there would be four stories and the first would be that both girls were gay and that this (kissing) was a thing that happened for them both all the time but that within the loudness and splendor of the Beatles show they could just kiss like krazy in PUBLIC and nobody would notice because they were all watching the Beatles. Sad and beautiful. It started with Olivia sitting by a fountain outside of a bookstore and watching every grown-up woman, imagining herself growing up to be any of them, that they are her. The stories of these women are tragedies and when she imagines herself growing up to be one of them she is confronting the possibility of herself becoming a tragedy and it’s a dare. She is daring herself to become a tragedy.
In the second story Jackie loves Paul and Olivia loves John but only Jackie loves Paul. It's all about Olivia being totally into chicks and Jackie being stupid- "She never really knew anything about anything. It's okay." There's a part where Olivia is watching Jackie and her eyes get red and watery and I think that's an interesting thing that barely ever happens but sometimes does, when you're watching a beautiful person be beautiful. The section ends with the sentence "He cares more about moving naturally than he does about looking cool in the Beatles and that’s cool to her. And she’ll remember that, she’ll remember that about John Lennon. For the rest of her life, the rest of the Beatles."
In the third story Jackie's into girls and Olivia's into John and it only ever grew to be one sentence long, because I don't care about the character of Jackie very much. It's just a paragraph about Olivia sitting by a fountain outside of a bookstore and snapping the fabric of her cable-knit stocking against her leg and absently watching the dust fly off it.
In the last story Jackie loves Paul and Olivia loves John and they end up kissing because they wish they were kissing John and Paul but all they have is each other and, in the moment, that's good enough. I relate to that more than anything. I'd like to keep writing about that feeling, being fourteen and kissing your pal because she's the closest thing you've got to John Lennon, just by being the person you were sitting next to on the night you wanted to kiss John Lennon so bad you forgot your own name. I like looking at and thinking about Jackie's bangs, "Jackie can’t get her bangs to go the right way and it’s fucking her up and she’s late because she can’t get that kink out and eventually she realizes she has no choice but to go see the Beatles play with a kink in her bangs." Cute.
I love Olivia's shoelaces and the way she's the one who took it far enough to rest her palm on the other girl's thigh. If either of the girls in this photograph happen to be your cousin's ex-boyfriend's mother or whatever, please be in touch.
Love it!!
ReplyDeleteI know this is really old. I was trying to find out if there was any explanation for the photo since it definitely looks like they're about to kiss and that wasn't very common at the time.
ReplyDeleteBut damn, your extreme interest in the one girl on the right is something else. I've never met a fanboy/girl that obsessed over a person in a picture. All because you related to her wearing glasses and having dark hair.
It's a little weird but no judging. I agree the girl in front is almost a distraction. She looks like something has bored it's way in her skull and her head is about to explode. I guess for the time that's not too far off.