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JILL_AND_YOKO

                                                        May 19, 2015

  Jill Johnston, "Could I Kiss His Wife?"
  August 5, 1971, _Admission Accomplished_

  Writing in a mode more Kerouac than
  her more usually cited Gertrude Stein,
  Johnston talks about visiting the
  John and Yoko estate/complex in the UK.

  Johnston makes it clear that in the old
  days, pre-John Lennon, she had been
  something of a contact to be cultivated
  by Yoko Ono-- Jill Johnston spent the
  60s covering the avant-performance
  scene in New York, writing for the
  Village Voice.  Now, clearly, their         This was back in the days when
  positions were reversed and they're         John and Yoko were engaged in
  essentially just hanging around             an experiment in living where
  together for a day-- and Johnston           they would refuse to be
  expects it's just this one day (as she      seperate from each other for
  comments, she's never invited back).        even a moment.  Johnston
                                              describes them as acting like
      Johnston, as she describes it,          Siamese twins.
      spends much of the time flirting
      with Yoko.                                   Johnston:

                                                   "That must be because
                                                   they are their selves
                                                   only with them selves
                                                   since everybody else has
                                                   ulterior motives ..."

  Jill Johnston is intentionally on the edge
  of coherence, and her veracity is not to be
  insisted on (in just this one piece, she
  twice quotes people accusing her of making
  stuff up, and she doesn't bother to defend)--

  But there's one fragment of an anecdote
  alluded to here that I absolutely love,
  which I will outline as though fact:

    Jill Johnston had been invited to
    a women's meeting uptown.

    Gloria Steinam was in attendance.

    Johnston decided to bring Yoko Ono.

    Yoko Ono inisted on bringing John Lennon,
    though she was told not to.


  Just imagine the scene... the uber-fems of the
  nascent Second Wave, the very first among the
  Correct, debating what to do about John Lennon
  at their meeting.

  The rules say Eject, but I imagine they lacked a
  Sergeant At Arms, and went off into side issues
  talking about pacifism, fielding suggestions to
  dissolve the meeting, or move it to a new,
  undisclosed location--

     Or perhaps they were paralyzed by
     politeness, furiously whispering to
     each other in the corners...


  But all the while, no matter how fanatic about
  the cause, no matter how separatist, pretty
  much every one of them would've wanted to hang
  out with John Lennon for a while.




      Yoko Ono released "Woman is the Nigger of the World"
      in the following year (1972).



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