Intimacy
As I reminisce and write about the time I’d spent with Lemmy I realize that there were many meaningful moments with him, some exhilarating, some bittersweet and yet, still, I wonder, “did I have a deep and enduring connection with him or was it all in my imagination?”
Instinctively, I always knew that he appreciated and needed my adoration, but that he never felt he could live up to my image of him. With Lemmy I read between the lines because I knew he was not at ease with his emotions and he was unable to express his feelings. Even so, I could feel the subtle messages of love, largely unsaid if I let go of my uncertainty. I reflected on our youth when we both felt perfectly comfortable just sitting together with little to say to one another. I was an audience to his thoughts and he would, so sweetly, show me all the things he loved, his drawings, his music, little things that pleased him, and in later years his latest acquisition of WW2 German weapons.
I knew him and loved him long before his fame as a musician. His music was not the motivation for me, but I imagine it was for most of the women he attracted. I was not the typical female Motörhead fan by which he was surrounded.
My unconditional love for him meant that I had no expectations of him. For me, intimacy means really connecting on a soul level. In the earlier days the passionate kissing was very intimate, not just physical stimulation, but now he preferred peripheral pleasures that avoided real intimacy.
For many years now we had had a sexual relationship. I wondered though, why he avoided the more intimate acts of love and asked him the forthright question. He said he thought it was rather silly, less dignified, “you know, bouncing up and down” he said with a grin. I know it went deeper though. It seemed to me like a reason to avoid real intimacy.
My psychic Susan said “Energetically, not consciously, traumas from the past would rise up when he’d feel love for me and it scared him.” He would think “I can’t be everything she thinks I am.” She said I was absolutely the love of his life in that, when all is said and done, I was the purest and truest person in his life.
I still have a hard time believing that, even though I’d want it to be true. Were we both so self deprecating that neither one of us could express our feelings fully? Susan said I brought grace into his life. I hope that was true.
One beautiful summer day when I went to see Lemmy at an outdoor festival in Massachusetts, as usual there was a sexual encounter. Afterwards, I suddenly said, without forethought “I shouldn’t have done that!”
“Why not?” he asked, and I said ”Because you’ll have no use for me for the rest of the day”. He didn’t respond, but I immediately knew that I had hurt him down to the core. I don’t know why I said it. I knew I meant more to him than just someone available for sexual gratification. Why I would express that to him, of all people, is beyond me.
But perhaps it was a truth that needed to be said. It seems to me that physical pleasure is often more the point for many men rather than the intimate, romantic connection women tend to want.
Anyway, it was never quite the same after that. Something shifted. According to Susan, he was afraid to know himself better and that’s what I was asking him to do. In that moment he could have reassured me that that wasn’t the case, that I meant more to him than that. But I offended him, certainly.
Always the gentleman, he never again asked anything of me… except the last time I saw him. I knew he loved my soft touch. He had told me that many years before. This would not be sexual, but pure love touching his body. My heart spilt into him through my fingertips as I ran my fingers over his frail body.
I’ve often wondered about his song “I Ain’t No Nice Guy After All”. The lyrics suggest that he was aware that he withheld his feelings in relationships. He may have been rude to other women but he never was with me, although there was a time in Atlantic City after that fateful day, that he walked away from me rather dismissively when I’d found him in the casino. I had met Patricia, Lemmy’s son Paul’s mother. She said he wasn’t especially nice to her.
My loyalty and love for Lemmy never wavered. I saw Lemmy hardening into an icon as their popularity grew, and then began to wither as his age and sicknesses caught up with him, but his “shine never wore off as time wore on” for me, as he said in the song. I wish I had told him that.
Always, though, I went back and forth between believing he loved me and thinking “No, surely he didn’t really care.”
I realize I had internalized a message channelled from John Lennon to my friend Jane many years ago, while still holding some skepticism, not wanting to delude myself.
John said:
“Ok Cynthia… Ah, a woman after me own heart… in love with a rock and roller!
You may not know this, but Lemmy needs your love and that is why you love him so on a much deeper level than either of you realize. He needs you to keep loving him. That you hold him in your heart is a treasure to him… one that he may not see, but one that he needs. The kind of love you have for him is very, very, very special. You need to see him in this light. He’s missing something and you are giving it to him with your unconditional love.
So if you think of letting him go…don’t!!! Love him all the days of your life. You may want him physically, but he needs you spiritually. Love you!”
I have had a series of dreams with Lemmy over the years and they always felt like a visitation. Not all of them were comfortable or nice. Some of them were dreams of him ignoring me, as he did in Atlantic City, or rejecting me, my greatest fear. But there were many mornings that I woke up feeling bathed in love by seeing him in my dreams.
These dreams have sustained me through the bittersweet sorrow of missing him.
There was one especially interesting one in which I was carrying him on my back, protecting him from a crowd of people. We were in a rugged and foreboding terrain. He was weak and unable to escape from the threat and I felt the weight of him as I struggled to get him away and out of danger. He was draped over my back, his arms dangling over my shoulders and his legs hanging limp behind me.
In the most memorable one, which I’ve mentioned before, but it’s worth mentioning once more, Lemmy was hovering in the sky. He had voluminous glowing angel wings, the delicate pink and blue color and light of clouds sometimes are at sunsets.
Surrounding him, the sky was dark and cloudy and the atmosphere was ominous. I saw Lemmy floating about the clouds. Suddenly he swooped down and scooped me up. He enfolded me in his wings and flew away with me feeling safe and loved in his embrace.
That will always be my most enduring image of Lemmy and Me, feeling his deep love enveloping me and protecting me.
“In the chilly hours and minutes of uncertainty, I want to be in the warm hold of your loving mind…Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind.”
