The thing about fiction is, you get to make the event better than it was. You get a lot closer to your subject, like John Lennon, and you get to talk about things with him, and of course the conversation is personal and deep and significant. And maybe afterwards you go out for a drink with John, maybe meet Yoko upstairs, and things go on from there to a sublime level.

Reality sucks, because it’s mundane.

My own meeting was a passing one that the years have threatened with wistful expansions and stretches of credulity. Thank God I have people around me to keep the truth from morphing into a tall tale, from where it would go down the slippery slope into folk tale, then legend, and then from there into a God-almighty myth. It sucks to keep the record straight, because with a little fiction it’d be a much better story, but I owe it to Truth, especially in an age where she gets abused like a cheerleader walking through a frat house every day, to put it down right, the way it did happen.

It was June 1980, a Saturday. I was riding my bike in Central Park, and that afternoon I just wasn’t up to doing the whole circuit on the Park Drive, so at 72nd Street I took the exit. Central Park West, for all the traffic, is a straight and level ride back up the West Side, and I just wanted to go home.

As I got to the corner where the Drive comes out of the park, I took the turn slowly. There on the opposite side of the street I noticed a guy walking south, down Central Park West towards 72nd. He wore brown; brown pants, a light brown jacket. His hair was up from his face. The wire glasses were a dead giveaway.

I was too damn busy trying to get up to speed on my bike to do more than get a glance, and when it hit me that that was John Lennon, I started to wobble a little on the bike. If the M10 bus that was coming up behind me didn’t give a good beep, I might have fallen off there.

If this were fiction, this is where the pedaling would have been firmer as I turned the wheels, or where the near collision would have drawn John’s attention --

I straightened out and kept pedaling, and went on home.

Why, you ask, didn’t I try harder? Hey, for one, this is New York. I don’t know how you do it at home, but here we don’t gawk at people on the street, no matter how famous they are. He came here to fit in, to be part of the neighborhood, because New Yorkers weren’t prone to making assholes of themselves. And I’m a New Yorker -- maybe not the best or most authentic of New Yorkers -- but enough of one to just say, "Hey, whadaya know?" and go back to my business.

Two, I had a life. I still do, and always will. Yes, it was a chance to meet one of the Beatles, talk to him and all, but I was living my life. People get tired, they have other things to do, they set priorities that have to be met. Rest, food, bathroom; in reality, those do take priority over meeting a Beatle.

Third reason was simple: He lives on the West Side, I live on the West Side. We’re pretty close to each other, so there’s going to be another chance, right? All that going for me, there’d be another chance.

There wasn’t.

James Ryan has been on the verge of actually being recognized as a writer in the past; who knows, someday it may happen.... His work has appeared in such places as Dragon magazine, Lacunae, the Urbanite, the New York Times, and some of the better men's room walls across the state of New York. Until he gets the chance to follow the program for disenfranchised neurotic writers, he's doing the regular job and grad school schtick. His wife Susan and son Jamie just nod and smile when he starts to rant, which, all said, makes things that much easier.