“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes.
Because for those who love with heart and soul, there is no such thing as separation.”  ~Rumi

Interlude

I’ve brought myself back to the present here…this is a surreal day, watching Lemmy’s memorial. I just can’t quite grasp what is happening today. Even though I had been preparing myself for this as I watched his failing health, it still came as a shock.

As my thoughts went back to the beginning, I struggled to reconcile the unassuming, youthful musician I met the summer of 1968 with the famous heavy metal icon he had become. Here he is, revered by so many, a staggering 300,000 people watching. The memory of who Lemmy  was to me, and the times I spent with him in our youth have crystallized as one of the most meaningful experiences in my life. I had grieved over the loss of Lemmy as he was then, in spite of the happy memories. Now I was sorrowfully saying goodbye to the man he had become. “To only see you…”, Lemmy’s lyrics in “Yesterlove”, a song he wrote that summer about his own first love have echoed in my mind for 47 years.

(By the way, I love the milk commercial recently released in Norway in honor of Lemmy!)

Lemmy At Home

As I look back on those early days with Lemmy Willis, as he was back then, I know it reads like a diary of a teenage girl, and I suppose it’s silly with all the kissing but that’s how it was. This is, after all, the story of the romance of the 16 year old girl that I once was. And it was romantic! I never thought of him as my “boyfriend” and our relationship could never be described as “dating”. It was not defined and we didn’t speak of it.

I had a pure, unconditional love for him, which he clearly felt, and he had a way of making me feel loved and appreciated though saying nothing. I was very careful to not have any unrealistic expectations of him because I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle any kind of rejection from him.

I would go around to his flat, showing up unexpectedly, and he was always happy to see me, and graciously inviting. He was always alone, and even though he had roommates, I never met any of them. The kitchen was usually messy, dirty even, with unwashed dishes on the counter and filling the sink. The one big room was always fairly dark, nondescript, and nothing decorative about it except a mirror in the corner that had been painted around the edges with poetic words I can no longer recall, with a filmy cobweb-like cloth draping one corner of the glass. I have a vivid memory of him standing sideways to the mirror, assessing  himself in his new bell bottomed trousers. “What do you think?” he asked. “I love em” I said, from the top of the bunk bed. “But do I look good in them?” he asked. “You do!” I answered enthusiastically. The hip hugging trousers were tight around his thighs and calves,flaring stylishly at his feet. He had great legs…

The floor of the room was always littered with papers, drawings, photographs, cigarette boxes and the like. The beds were unkempt, just jumbles of seemingly unwashed linens. This was a quintessential “hippy pad”. It smelled of cigarette smoke, as did Lemmy. The smell a cigarettes on people’s clothing, which we hardly ever experience anymore, still puts me into a dreamy state recalling poignant, wistful feeling memories of him.

I loved being there with him. We would sit together on the top bunk, not speaking much, just being together. I loved how comfortable it was to just “be” with him. He was usually drawing intently in pen and ink, mostly fanciful creatures and scenes.

I know he enjoyed my presence. He would try to draw me into conversation, but I had little to say. Lemmy was reading “Lord of the Rings”, his favorite book at that moment, and his drawings reflected that. He spoke of it glowingly, suggesting that I read it.

I imagine he may have been speeding, or possibly tripping, but he never said as much. He was sometimes smoking hash, but I never joined him because he rolled it into his cigarettes. I wasn’t a smoker and didn’t want to be. I suppose we all have our drugs of choice and mine has always been chocolate!

I wanted to go to Lemmy’s flat all the time, but I was careful not to, fearing that I might be imposing. He was all I could think about. I’d just have withered away on the doorstep if he ever turned me away at the door, or if I found him with another girl. Thankfully, that never happened.

I was back at school now, in my third year at the Royal Ballet School. Sometimes, when I was at Lemmy’s, while  he was drawing or writing, I’d do barre work, holding onto the side of the bunk bed where he sat.  This is what I did; I was a dancer. I went through plies, tendu’s, rond de jambe en l’air, and finally an adage’, tracing up the side of my leg with my pointed foot and unfolding my leg in the air in front of me, my calf at the level of my eyes, then slowly bringing it to my side and to the back into an arabesque, and bending forward into a ponche’, with my foot pointed straight up to the ceiling.  Adage’ was my forte’ in dancing, the ever so slow movements, gracefully and smoothly shifting from one pose to another.  It requires a great deal of strength. I wanted to show him what I could do.  He watched but never commented.

I was now reading “Lord of the Rings” at Lemmy’s suggestion, and I was completely entranced with it, reading it ever so slowly because I never wanted to come to the end of it. I wanted to savor it. It was always with me and I’d be reading up until the last minute before class in the mornings.  He was on to reading “I, Claudius”. We sat together reading sometimes.

One evening I went round and there were actually people there. That was the one and only time.

He didn’t introduce me to anyone there. He took my hand and led me through the room, and out the door at the back of the room.  Now we were in an unfinished, cold, and brightly lit hallway. He opened another door and invited me to enter. As the light from the hallway filtered in I saw it was the bathroom. He walked in behind me and closed the door. There was no light. It was pitch black. We sunk down to the cold, bare floor.

I had no sense of fear, being alone with him in the dark, though I wondered what he had in mind. There I was, laying on the floor, with Lemmy on top of me, kissing me. It soon seemed clear to me that he was making no suggestion of going further onto more sexual pursuits, which allowed me to completely sink into the sensuousness of his kisses. We were completely in the moment and it was the most sensuous moment in time I’ve ever experienced before or since. We didn’t speak. Not at all. He just kissed me, voraciously now, passionately.

Many years later, when he expressed a jealousy about someone I was with, I said to him ” Don’t you know that you’re the only one?  That every man in my life has been jealous of you?  You know that quote in  the movie ” Hearts of Atlantis”? “It will be the kiss by which all others in your life will be judged… and found wanting” Well, that’s how it is, and everyone knows it.”

Lemmy thought it was a Shakespeare quote, but I don’t think it actually is.  (I’ll return to this story later in the Motorhead Years) Anyway, I didn’t say that to him, so much talking literally about his kiss, but more his place in my life.
I realize now that it was, in fact, his kisses as well.

He may have felt that with my being so much younger it would have been taking advantage of my innocence, or he may have thought I was afraid.  He always gently guided me, but not beyond where he thought I was willing to go. I’ve wondered if he wasn’t tripping that night and just got lost in kissing…

He wrote in “Grass”:

“I can break walls down if you will help me,

If I can reach you, help you to see,

All of the good things that I can give you,

If you will take them, take them from me.

Please will you trust me?  Maybe I’ll hurt you,

But I can heal it, soon as it’s done.

Give me your hand and allow me to lead you,

Out of the long grass and into the sun.”

I think that spoke to his thoughts about me, at only sixteen years old. He respected my innocence, but he knew he had something to offer.

When I left him that night my lips were actually swollen. At home I was shocked to see my bright red lips and flushed face in the mirror.  I was in a daze. I was entranced. I was so in love with him.

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