MAY FUNG YEE PANG ON HER NEW DOCUMENTARY

The word Mistress seems to bring fantasies of riches and great beauty, women in their youth, and with much older men. But as we learn more about the real lives of women who have been in relationships other than traditional marriage, we also learn that being a Mistress rarely lasts an entire lifetime, and that Mistresses too get older.

May Fung Yee Pang was born in 1950 and John Lennon, the famous ex-Beatle, was born in 1940, ten years earlier. He was married to Yoko Ono at the time.  She was born in 1933.  Does age matter?

My feeling is often it does, but not always. Sometimes experiencing life means a person gains wisdom, sometimes not. What strikes me is that Yoko was raised in a Japanese upper class culture in which women thought a man having a mistress was not such a big deal.  I tend to think that attitude is also because marriages were arranged or at least highly encouraged and there was not and still is not much support for a woman or a man remaining unmarried.

As May Pang says, Yoko might have been a Japanese wife but she herself was not, she was a Chinese-American woman.  (And while John was a decade older than May, Yoko was seventeen years older.)

Through her documentary, which is respected, May's place in Rock and Roll History remains.  In recent weeks a concert called The Lost Weekend took place at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, one of the clubs most associated with Rock and Roll.  May was there to celebrate the music of John Lennon.  As she says, during their time together he was especially productive writing and recording songs.

In this YouTube video, May, now officially a senior, talks about those days in her life in which she was in love with John.  In keeping with my policy not to embed videos that have commercials, I'll just give you the link.

YAHOO Inteview of MAY PANG DETAILS LOST WEEKEND

C 2023 Mistress Manifesto - BlogSpot

MAY FUNG YEE PANG REVISTED! JOHN LENNON'S MISTRESS FINALLY DOES A DOCUMENTARY ON THEIR RELATIONSHIP

Back in April 2012 I elevated May Fung Yee Pang to the Mistress of the Month pantheon here at Mistress Manifesto. And I posted when her Lost Weekend documentary was premiered in June 2022.  That film is now in theaters.  If you're a Beatles fan or a John Lennon fan or you want to hear the story from an ex-Mistress's side, make an effort to see this film. 

 VIDEO EXPIRED  TAKEN DOWN JULY 18 2023  (Check YouTube!)

May, a Chinese-American born and residing in New York, worked as a very young woman for a manager who was in the music business.  From there she was enlisted to work as a personal assistant to ex-Beatle John Lennon, who had moved into a solo music career, and was married to the artist Yoko Ono. Yoko, from an elite Japanese banking family, was a seven years older than John, had been married before, and had a daughter who was with her father and had been, shall we say, kept from her, for some time. John had started his relationship with Yoko while still married to his first wife, Cynthia, with whom he had a son, Julian. I recall reading in another book, though I can't remember the title, that John and Yoko had been nasty to Cynthia, letting her come home from a trip to find the two together in her marital home.

John Lennon's father had been missing from his life, and he was raised by an aunt, his mother's older sister. He was not much of a father to Julian. His absence from his marriage and fatherhood to Julian was, in part, because of the Beatle's traveling for performing and that career. Maybe John had moved on from this marital life and love of Cynthia, who has been married to him for about a decade but he sure didn't handle it right.  John seems to have come under a spell.

According to May, Yoko was controlling the phone messages and keeping John from Julian, as she was instructed not to tell him about calls that came in. It was not until she and John were in their relationship, living together in a smaller apartment while Yoko continued to live in the marital home, that John was reunited with his son. 

Frankly, although it may not be fair, one of the reasons that relationships in which older women get together with younger men is criticized, is the assumption that the older woman will be controlling.

May was not silent about her relationship with John or the circumstances of their breakup when she was still young and hot. It had been Yoko's wish that she have an affair with John, her husband, and May says John was her first boyfriend.  May says that at first she protested. She was an employee and one who worked extreme hours without complaint, even taking calls in the middle of the night.  (And she was never paid for the many hours she put in even before the job description got blurred by becoming John's mistress.)

As part of my research into May that is more recent, I found a video on YouTube in which Geraldo Rivera, who had his own show at the time, had May on and lambasted her for being a Mistress with his questions and moralizing tone. Thinking of what I know of Geraldo and his inability to be a faithful husband himself, his womanizing in general, it struck me as how sexist this really was, implying that May should have known better...  Well, John should have known better?  Yoko should have?

It was complicated.

Over time I've come to realize that any person who expects an employee to have disrupted sleep on their behalf is abusive.  

I want to mention this because I have believed that Yoko was entirely controlling the situation, that Yoko was entirely controlling the relationship May had with John. That Yoko was playing him like a yoyo, letting him out on a string, reeling him back in. May says Yoko was not entirely controlling of John and also that some of her reason for the documentary was that she wanted to set the record straight, so to speak, to counter things people were saying about her that was untrue.

Since Yoko suggested May and John go out, thinking it would be a better option for her if John was going to have extra-marital sex, it may as well be someone she knew, she quite possibly ended it too. May says that through the entire eighteen months - which has been trivialized as a "lost weekend"  -that Yoko called many times a day.

Because she was finally ready to do this documentary, May has gotten on various social media to promote it and has her own web site: MAY PANG OFFICIAL SITE THE LOST WEEKEND

THOSE POLYGAMOUS HUSBAND-SHARING "SISTER WIVES" : SUBJECT OF THE MONTH

You may have watched Reality TV and seen Kody, Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn Brown, or you may have heard media reports on the  Independent Fundamentalist Mormons who live in compounds in Utah.  (They're the sect that does not marry underage girls off to old Patriarchs.) 

Why talk about this at all at  MISTRESS MANIFESTO? 

Well, I wonder, do you like me see the similarities and differences between these women and mistresses of a more traditional type? 

Mistresses aren't always involved with legally married men. Sometimes they are kept by not legally married men or men who prefer to live unmarried. (And at this blog we also acknowledge that the relationships may not be heterosexual.) 

Who is or isn't a mistress these days is not so clear.

More than one wife has found out she was sharing her husband with a mistress or two, unless he asked her about bringing another woman into their lives in advance of doing so, and she maybe helped pick out the mistress, like Yoko Ono  may have when she suggested May Pang to John Lennon.  (May Pang was Mistress of the Month here at Mistress Manifesto two years ago in April 2012!)

The majority of us in the Western or First World are raised to believe that there is only one kind of marriage and that is the marriage of one man with one woman.  Any variation on that theme is considered to be wrong - bad - sinful.  Yet, divorced parents integrate their children into new families, and children take on having two fathers and two mothers.  While gay activists fight for the right to marry a member of the same sex, there are those who would like to see Polygamous marriages legal as well.  I think it will happen.

In Polygamous marriages of the Independent Fundamentalist Mormon (not to be confused with the Latter Day Saints), the first wife is the legal wife.  The other wives are married in their Church quite seriously and spiritually, but not legally, but with the full knowledge of the first and other wives. 

I do wonder how these extensive families can afford to have this lifestyle financially.  It seems that the men tend to own businesses or ranches or land and sometimes the women are also out working, supporting the family in a communal way.  There has been some controversy about how the state and federal governments determine benefits for a family of say five wives and 35 children, but there are those who say Polygamy could not be afforded without those state and federal government benefits, help with medical care, food, and other costs, because in most of these Plural Marriages there are very many children.

There are a couple books you might want to read about the subject and you can sort of try out the lifestyle vicariously and decide if maybe you should be moving to Utah and converting to the Fundamentalist Mormon Faith!

One of them is called "Becoming Sister Wives" by Kody, Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn Brown.  (It's copyright 2012 and published by Gallery Books.)  Another is called "Love Three Times" by Joe, Alina, Vicki, and Valerie Darger with Brook Adams which is copyright 2011 and published by HarperOne. 

I've read both and am interested that the people involved in these marriages talk quite a bit about it as a "calling" and very spiritual.  (Mistresses are called "Home Wreckers" and considered to be Evil, even when they preserve marriages.) 

In the case of Kody Brown, he married his first wife Meri and they were together monogamously for three years before he married Janelle.  In the case of Joe Darger, he married Alina and Vicki the very same ceremony.

As for sex, well, sometimes a man who has a Mistress is not having sex with his wife any more and that's one of his reasons for having an affair, if not a Mistress.  The fact that the wife may not be interested in having sex anymore, but wants to continue as a wife in most other ways, may contribute to the fact that she understands and accepts the Mistress.  Is there jealousy?  Sometimes, maybe often or most of the time. 

If you believe that you should have the entire focus of your spouse, any romantic relationships outside the marriage are a problem for you. I used to think that the place to find a faithful, loyal man was in church but what about this church?

Sister Wives must also be having sex with the same man at the same time and, it seems, mostly without using contraception, sometimes helping each other deliver the babies.  Some of these Sister Wives have had children born in the same years. You may even be on a schedule to see your mutual husband, to have an evening of intimacy, and have to negotiate that with the other women when you need to do something else.  Unlike many wives whose husband are off seeing someone, as a Plural Wife, you may know exactly where he is and who with all the time!  Your children will all be co-siblings.  Your daughters will probably also seek Plural Marriage.

Here is a link for the LOVE THREE TIMES site! LOVETHREETIMES.COM

Here is a link to a Blog called SISTER WIVES! THESISTERWIVES.BLOGSPOT.COM

THINKING ABOUT THIS, I would like to say that psychologists, preachers, and most parents (especially mothers) try to instill the idea that a woman deserves so very much today, and if she herself does not expect and get that so very much, the next question is of her self esteem.  But we cannot all have our own way or everything we think we want or deserve.

Some mistresses have written books heavily invested in therapy and say that no woman with self respect or self esteem can become a Mistress.  I note that these books seem to blame the women so much more than the men!

Yet, not everyone can be the Number One Priority. 

There are even real Princesses, women of privilege from birth, among us who don't find themselves as Number One in their husband's esteem. More than other women, many married women feel themselves alone and neglected because their husband is married to his business.

Missy

C 2014 All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights
Missy Rapport / Mistress Manifesto

JOHN LENNON : SURPRISE SURPRISE (SWEET BIRD OF PARADOX) THE SONG HE WROTE FOR MAY PANG

MAY PANG thought Los Angeles was so dull and boring that people needed something to do so badly that they acted out. People included John who spent several months in Los Angeles recording an album of classic rock and roll standards, drank too much, and destroyed property and even hit her in alcoholic blackouts. At the same time, though Yoko called every day and knew where they were, she didn't understand Rock and Roll, and May did. It was her kind of music. During the time May and John spent living together, he got out of his angry radical mode and it out to be very productive and successful creative period for him.

INSTAMATIC KARMA BY MAY PANG

Excerpt : Page Xii

"Most people have come to know the time that John Lennon and I spent together as "The Lost Weekend." I am always surprised at how many people are under the impression that our time together lasted only a single weekend. John and I were together "officially" for eighteen months but our relationship actually spanned ten years - from December 1970 through December 1980....

But the biggest surprise came in the summer of 1973, as I was coordinating press for Yoko's new album... Early one morning, Yoko came to my office in their apartment at the Dakota and told me that she and John were "not getting alone." It was obvious to all of us who worked there that things were a bit tense between them, so this wasn't exactly a bombshell. Yoko went on to say that John would start seeing someone new, and she wanted it to be "someone who would treat John well."...

"I think you should go out with him." ... "If John asks you out, you should go!" Yoko announced, making it sound a little stronger than a suggestion.

C 2008 May Pang. Saint Martin's Press

MAY FUNG YEE PANG : MISTRESS OF EX BEATLE JOHN LENNON - MISTRESS OF THE MONTH

Some think of her as a groupie, but if you read the latest greatest book on John Lennon called John Lennon: the Man, the Myth, the Music -The Definitive Life by Tim Riley, you'll find out otherwise. May Pang was not a groupie.

May was an employee of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's, a personal assistant handling thousands of details from making coffee to finding flies for one of Yoko's movies, working first for their manager and then in their home. Ten years younger than John, she was hesitant when she began to have an affair with John. Yoko set it up. Then John and May fell in love.

May herself has two books. One is called "Loving John" which came out years ago. In 2011 she put out a book of photographs that she took during her affair with John called "Instamatic Karma"! I read them both.

May Pang was John Lennon's mistress. She calls her relationship that. She was in his life in some capacity for ten years and continued to have sex with him or see him once in a while years after he went back to his wife, even when he and Yoko were more interested in PRing their relationship than giving May the support she deserved; she was left near penniless and her career ruined with a hard recover.

In the years that she was John Lennon's mistress, she traveled with the ex Beatle. While Yoko set out to eliminate John's relationship with his son Sean, May encouraged him to reignite it.

Many of John's friends liked her and thought she was very good for him. It was a while before May learned that Yoko had cancelled her salary, while she continued to, through all of this work hard to make Lennon's life easy. Though he was wealthy, he had no cash flow. Perhaps this accounts for how cheap the multimillionaire really was. Or maybe he just wanted to find out if May loved him even if they had no real money to spend.

When it ended, and John ended it, rather mysteriously, just when they were planning to buy a house and live together, it was not a total shock to May's mind, just to her heart. Yoko, it is said in more than one book, may have even had John hypnotised to break the relationship and have him back to her. Maybe, simply, John was a coward or passive agressive and wanted some way out.

What's strange with this picture? Yoko.

MAY PANG'S OFFICIAL WEB SITE LINKED HERE.

C 2012 All Rights Reserved Mistress Manifesto/Missy Rapport