Spring 2009 Issue

Wilson - "Bob Dylan's Story"

Last spring Bob Dylan came to town on tour, and we sprung for the good tickets
because, what the hey, it’s Bob Frickin’ Dylan. The man’s a legend, and with all
due respect none of us knew if we’d have another chance to see him. My friend Jan
was bringing his wife, Elise, and I was supposed to bring my then-girlfriend, Jessie,
who I’d been dating for almost a year. We had it all planned out: Jessie and I would
take a taxi to Berkeley on Saturday night, pre-party at the pub on Telegraph with
Jan and Elise, and then walk through campus to the stadium where the concert
was being held.

Trouble was, I got sick. The Friday before the show I woke up with fever dreams
and a scraped raw throat. It felt like laryngitis. Again. This had been happening
for months, often enough that I’d stopped going to the doctor. Screw the doctor,
I thought. My co-pay had bought me the same worn advice and no real meds all
winter long. Gargle with salt water, they said. Try not to use your voice. I’d had it
up to here with doctors.

I stayed home from work and pumped myself full of chicken soup, which of
course didn’t do a thing. When I woke up on Saturday I felt even worse. Jessie
came over first thing in the morning and convinced me to eat three cloves of raw
garlic and squirt some sort of a zinc supplement up my nose. I washed it all down
with a shot of DayQuil, and when that didn’t work I took another and felt pretty
decent for awhile. But in the afternoon I lost my voice and the pain moved into my
sinuses, a pressure like a grown man standing on my face. Jessie did everything
she could. She gave me a full-body massage, cooked a nice lunch, and then drove
to the store to get me juice and cough drops when it turned out I couldn’t eat solid
food. When she got back I took a shower and ended up leaning against the cold
tiles, too exhausted to wash myself, just inhaling the steam as though it might have
the power to heal me. At that point I still believed I could go to the show. I got out
and wrapped a towel around my waist and sat down on the toilet. Sometime later
Jessie woke me up and helped me to the couch in the living room.

She offered to stay home with me, which was sweet of her, really. We’d had our
share of problems. She knew I got nervous when she partied without me, and for
good reason. She’d made mistakes in the past, gone home with the wrong people
and then lied about it, and even after re-agreeing to an exclusive relationship she’d
made mistakes again. Not that I blamed her entirely. The way I saw it, Jessie was
sort of a victim too. Men would tell her practically anything to keep her attention,
and she felt bad having to say no all the time. Sometimes I even sympathized with
her, but eventually I always came to my senses. We were at the point where I’d
pretty much said all I had to say about fidelity.

Still, this was a Bob Dylan concert, a chance in a lifetime, and I thought at least
one of us should go. Jessie left me on the couch with the remote control, a pile of
cough drops, and a promise that she’d come back to my place after the show to
take care of me for the rest of the weekend.

I’m not even sure how long I lasted. I remember watching Ghostbusters for the
umpteenth time because humor is supposed to help the healing process and more
importantly when I dozed in and out of consciousness it didn’t matter. I always
knew where I was in the movie. At eleven o’clock or so a phone call woke me up,
and I did my best to answer it. My throat was so raw by then that I couldn’t even
make words. I tried and produced a growl into the dead receiver. Somehow I hadn’t
turned the phone on right. I sat there feeling like the room was swaying, like I was
sitting on the deck of a ship, and I wondered if I should take a Tylenol or some
NyQuil or something to keep the fever under control. Then I lay back down on
the couch and closed my eyes. That’s the last thing I remember.

When I woke up in the dark I heard all sorts of banging at my screen door. The
front door opened, and the lights came on. Jessie stumbled in and dropped her
keys.

“John?” she said. “You’re not going to believe what happened.” She dropped her
purse and her jacket on the floor. “John?”

I sat up on the couch when she walked by, but she didn’t see me. When she came
back I tried to tell her that I liked her new shirt, a light blue concert tee-shirt with
Dylan’s face emblazoned on the chest, but it was like I had swallowed a pucker
bush. Dry thorns fell out of my mouth. Dust.

“John?” she said. “What’s wrong? Your throat? Let me get you some more cough
drops.” She walked away, a swishy drunk walk if I’ve ever seen one. When Jessie
was in the mood she knew how to throw her hips, not exaggerated like a model,
just enough so that each round cheek drew a curve.

“John, you’re not going to believe what happened.”

I held up the notepad that I had written on with a Sharpie.

“The show? The show was great, I guess. It was so-so. We smoked a joint in line
and that was fun for old time’s sake, but then I started tripping out when we got to
the front and they searched us. But we got inside okay, and the seats were unbeliev-
able! I’ve never been so close. Oh, honey, I’m sorry you couldn’t be there.”

I shrugged. It was okay. I held up my paper again.

“The show was the show, you know? It was what it was.”

This is one of Jessie’s favorite sayings. It was what it was. The words told me
nothing and left no room for questions. I grabbed my Sharpie and wrote, “THE
MUSIC?”

Jessie sighed and patted my chest. “The man can’t sing,” she said. “I’m sorry
baby. I know you love him, but he sounds like shit.”

I rolled my eyes. People have been saying that for years.

“I’m serious, John. You can’t understand a word he says anymore. And his band
just plays louder to make up for it. But listen to this, you’re not going to believe
it.”

I held up a finger for her to pause and got up to go get myself a glass of juice. I
didn’t really want the juice, but I was frustrated at her for waking me and for being
drunk and satisfied while I felt like crap. And most of all, for not appreciating a
genius in the living flesh. I have all of Dylan’s recordings, half on vinyl, and yet she’s
the one that gets to go to the show and – and! – she doesn’t even appreciate it.

“We picked him up,” Jessie said when I got back to couch.

I shrugged my palms at her. Who?

“Bob. Bob Dylan. He came to a bar with us. I swear on my mother’s grave.”

I needed my pad of paper. I grabbed it from her and wrote, “YOU HATE YOUR
MOM.”

“I swear on your grave, then,” she said. “After the show the three of us went to
Jupiters. You know how they’ve got that tiered garden thing in the back where bands
play on weekends? Tonight, in honor of the show, they had a Bob Dylan cover band,
these kids who were like 20, maybe 22 years old, max. But they were good, you
know? They did a lot of his older stuff, his stuff from when he was young.”

I nodded. Everyone likes his early songs. No one appreciates the last three
decades.

“Elise was going out back for a smoke. Did you hear about the new smoking
ban? She can’t even smoke in the garden anymore since it’s part of the restaurant
property.” Jessie shook her head. “So everyone smokes in the alley out back, they’ve
even got a few tables out there. Anyway, I went with her.”

Jessie held up her hand like a traffic cop. “I know what you’re going to say,” she
said. “I wasn’t going to smoke. I mean, I didn’t go out there to smoke, I was just
going to keep her company so she wouldn’t have to go alone.”

Jessie cheats. She’s been trying to quit for months – or telling me she’s trying
to quit – then she gets drunk, or upset, or insecure, or somehow finds a reason to
start smoking again. At this point I’ve stopped talking to her about it. She tries to
hide it from me with mint gum and lavender hand lotion.

“We went out back, like I said, and the band had just started up again. They
were playing one of his famous ones – you know the one about Satan coming as
a man of peace?”

I knew the song.

“So anyway, we got to the alley and there were a few people there. There were
these three sorority girls all lipsticked up and this old drunk sitting on a tree stump
with his eyes closed. And then, in the corner there was this little Mexican dude
wearing a cowboy hat and a black velvet vest with silver buttons.”

Jessie was grinning big. She couldn’t tell a story with a straight face to save her
life. I put my pad in front of her and wrote, “MEXICAN?”

“He looked Mexican,” she said. “To me at least. Anyway, like I was saying, Elise
pulled out her smokes and lit one up, and we were just standing there talking and
this little Mexican dude shuffles over with his head real low and growls, ‘Got a
light?’”

“BOB DYLAN NOT MEXICAN.”

“I know, shush,” Jessie said. “I’m telling a story. So Elise dug in her pocket, for the
light, right? But I was looking at the guy, and I swear to God it was Bob Dylan. I
wouldn’t have recognized him, you know? But he has this way of holding his arms
onstage. His elbows are always bent at ninety degrees, and he has this shuffle.”

She would know, I thought.

“You know I had to ask him, right? When Elise lit his cigarette I could see he had
that funny little mustache he wears. So I said, ‘Are you Bob Dylan?’ But I said it
kind of soft so only he and Elise would hear.”

And? I thought. But Jessie was savoring the moment. She got up and went to
the bathroom and then poured herself a glass of wine before coming back to the
couch. I was still there, pretending I was healthy enough to sit up and talk to her.
When she got back I showed her my paper. It said, “AND?”

“He wouldn’t say one way or another, but I knew it was him. He made sure we
were far enough away from everyone else. Then he said, ‘Who knows who’s who
anymore,’ in that growl he’s got, and he smoked his cigarette down to the filter
and stared at his boots. When he looked up again, he nodded his head at the music
coming from the cover band and said ‘Who’s that, hmmm?’”

This sounded like a pile of horse shit to me, but to tell the truth when I get sick I
get horny, and it made me feel better to watch my drunk Jessie as she told her story.
Jessie always had energy. She spoke with her hands, her arms, her face. When I’m
sick I take whatever pleasures I can find.

I held up my paper again. “AND?”

“Well, you can imagine. I’m standing there with Bob Dylan and Elise, only Bob
won’t say he’s Bob yet, and they both finish their cigarettes. I didn’t want to walk
away so I asked for one of Elise’s cigarettes, gave one to Bob, and Elise offered to
go get us a round of drinks.”

I realized I was clenching my jaw. I opened and closed my mouth a few times
to relax.

“He asked for a bourbon with water,” Jessie said. “Elise came back with the drinks
and with Jan, of course. Jan was all bug-eyed and formal. He was like, ‘It’s a real
pleasure to meet you, Sir.’ I swear to God I thought he was going to bow.”
I had to laugh and that got me started coughing again. Coughing was useless.
There was no mucous in my throat. I rattled. I could imagine Jan making an ass of
himself, killing the tentative cool that the girls had established.

“YOU SMOKED.”

“Shush. I’m just getting started. We’ve got our drinks at one of the little tables in
the alley, right? And we smoke a few cigarettes, and Jan rolls a joint and passes it
around. There was no question it was Bob by then. His voice – his fucked up lack
of voice I should say – was so distinct. He hardly said anything and every time he
did it seemed like it hurt him. But anyway, we had our drinks and then Jan passed
around a joint and Bob hit it just to be polite I think, and we had another round
and this time Bob paid.”

“’BOB’?”

“We weren’t calling him anything until Jan started saying Sir and Mr. Dylan. Then
Bob said just to call him Bob. Anyway, we finished our drinks, and the music had
stopped, and we were getting cold. So Jan starts talking about going to The Hut.
Do you know The Hut?”

I shook my head.

“It’s this place on Solano, a jazz house that serves wine and tobacco, and you can
smoke inside because all the employees own a share of the business and have agreed
together to waive the smoking ban. It’s a loophole. Oh, you should go sometime.
They have all these different tobaccos from all over the world in big glass containers
and you choose whichever ones you want and roll them yourself.”

“I DON’T SMOKE.”

“Just for the smell you should go,” Jessie said.

“YOU DON’T SMOKE.” Bob Dylan or not, she was supposed to have quit.

“Tobacco has such a sweet smell, quality tobacco like that. You’d like it even if
you didn’t inhale.” Jessie flipped her hair out of her face and looked at me from an
angle; she knew how to use her hair as punctuation. “Anyway, Jan started talking
about The Hut and Bob said let’s go and we were like: if Bob wants to go, we’re
going.”

I tried to picture it. Jan and Elise coupling up, my Jessie hanging out with Bob
Dylan, forty years her senior, sitting next to him perhaps, touching his wrist from
time to time, sharing a bottle of Chianti, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, listen-
ing to jazz in some dive in Berkeley. It was the most pretentious thing I could
imagine.

“There’s something you’ve got to understand,” Jessie said. “Bob is a tiny man.
He’s at least an inch shorter than me, all skin and bones, shorter than Jan and
Elise for sure.”

“SO?”

“When the taxi got there the driver wouldn’t let us sit in the front seat, said it
was against regulations. I was going to argue with him, but Bob shrugged and said,
‘Looks like I’m on your lap,’ so that’s what we did. Jan and Elise sat on the passenger
side and I sat with Bob on my lap from Jupiters to The Hut.”

My girlfriend’s lap, starring Bob Dylan. Of all the women he could have sat on,
I thought, he chose my Jessie. Which didn’t make me like it, exactly, but I couldn’t
help but feel a little proud.

Jessie saw my smile and mistook it for disbelief.

“I swear to God,” she said. “He didn’t mind. And he didn’t weigh a thing. He’s
got a bony butt if you really want to know. And he kept wriggling around.”

That got me thinking. This crazy old dude, a little drunk, probably used to having
his way with the women, grinding his butt bones into Jessie’s sweet lap.

“YOU BEHAVED?”

“Shush,” Jessie said. “Let me tell my story. So we get to The Hut at like midnight.
Bob goes straight to the back corner, takes a seat in the shadows and pulls his hat
down low over his eyes. Jan and Elise get us a bottle of wine and a fistful of organic
Arabian coarse cut tobacco. There’s this rule at The Hut, no weed, right? But no
one says anything if you roll a little in with the tobacco so long as you keep it mel-
low. So Jan starts rolling and Bob starts rolling too. Bob finishes first and passes
his around, which was weird because there was plenty for everyone to have their
own, but you know damn well I’m not going to refuse a spliff from Bob Dylan. So
I’m hitting it, and I start thinking that I’m smoking the spit he used to stick the
paper together and how this man was the voice of a generation and dated Joan
Baez and hung out with every important musician in the last forty years and here
I am, smoking his spit.”

“STAR STRUCK.”

“Star struck, yeah, totally,” Jessie said. “We talked forever, and you know
what?”

I raised my eyebrows.

“He’s the nicest little man. He’s this little old man who’s kind of shy and thought-
ful and quiet. I just wanted to hug him.”

Bob Dylan is not a little old man, I thought. Bob Dylan is a leader of men and
a poet.

“You could tell sometimes that he wanted to say more about things but he couldn’t,
you know? He’s gotten used to saying everything in sound bytes. Don’t you think
that’s sad? I think that’s sad,” Jessie said.

“SAD.”

“And I got the feeling that he wasn’t saying much because no one ever listens to
what he says anyway. Isn’t that sad?”

I nodded and popped another cough drop, but I wasn’t sure I agreed. I thought
everyone listened to Bob Dylan. Maybe they didn’t hear him, or maybe they heard
him and didn’t care, but to him at least they listened.

“The only time he really opened up was after we smoked and Jan and Elise went
to the other room to look at all the tobaccos. He started talking about the lyrics
to one of his songs and wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise.”

I studied Jessie for signs that she might be lying. Dylan doesn’t talk about his
songs. He hasn’t for years. I drew a question mark on my paper. I circled it.

“What?” Jessie said. “Bob was a little stoned, he was just telling me how the
lyrics came to him, something about a motorcycle ride across New Mexico with
an Indian. Have you heard that story? They get a flat in the middle of the desert?
I don’t remember the rest of it. Something about eating a cactus? It’s so hard to
pay attention to that voice of his! I kept zoning out, staring at the brim of his hat.
I think it might have been made of crushed felt.”

“WHICH SONG?”

“Which one? Oh, I don’t know. Something to do with love? Honestly, I tried to
pay attention but....” Jessie smiled and shrugged like it was no big deal, like she
hadn’t just slept through a priceless opportunity. I had my Sharpie and my notebook
ready, but I was so stunned that I didn’t know what to write. Bob Dylan, my Bob
Dylan, explained his work to a girl like Jessie? And she didn’t listen? I put the cap
back on the Sharpie and tossed it onto on the coffee table. It clattered and slid off
the other side. With the pen gone, I had nothing more to say to her.

I covered my eyes with the heels of my hands, wishing for the night to be over,
but closing my eyes gave me the red string feeling. Fevers sometimes made me feel
like my body was all out of proportion. I’d wake up and feel like my hands were
the size of watermelons or like my head was a helium balloon attached to my body
by a bright red string. My balloon head made me feel detached from everything,
and it was only by touch that I could tell where I was. I leaned over and rested my
head in Jessie’s lap.

“Poor baby,” she said, running her fingers through my hair. “I was thinking
about you all night.”

I smiled. I knew that nobody could ever know for sure what someone else was
thinking. I buried my face in her lap and smelled her jeans and the bottom of her
tee-shirt for smoke and wine, for the scent of a rock star or perhaps of a lonely old
man.

“You okay?” Jessie said. “Your nose stuffed up?”

I stopped sniffing. I just wanted to feel better about something, anything. I was
sick of being sick, and sick of being jealous. I laid my head in Jessie’s lap and closed
my eyes and tried to be satisfied with the present, tried to focus on the rough feel
of her jeans against my face and of her fingers in my hair. I tried to believe that I
trusted Jessie, that we had a healthy relationship. But with my eyes closed my body
felt out of proportion again, and I started to wonder how much of the real story
she had told me, and how much of what she had told me had been real.

I opened my eyes just as Jessie exhaled a full breath of Chianti and mint gum.

I shook my head. The room felt cold to me, if anything. I pushed Jessie’s tee-shirt
up and rested my face against the warmth of her stomach. She adjusted herself
on the couch and pulled her tee-shirt over my head as if this was normal. It was
warm under there. It felt like something I could handle, the warmth of flesh and
her hand cupped around the back of my head. I put my lips against her stomach
and started to hum.

“John?” she said. I closed my eyes and kept humming. I felt the vibration in my
lips and knew exactly where we were. I hummed louder. We were at the end, I
thought, and we were communicating better than ever.