My third night at Vanderbilt University, I slept with a 64 year old woman who claimed to have had sex with Bob Dylan in 1978. My only regret was that I never asked if the voice of a generation was good at oral sex.
Growing up, I never spent more than two years at the same school. The perennial new kid, I got used to being an outsider; by the time I found friends in one school, my parents were fighting with the administration there, and I was sent somewhere else.
I learned a lot standing in the corners of crowded rooms—sociological insights about the treatment of strangers that continue to inform my worldview today. But if there is one lesson from this period that has epitomized my existence since, it is this: nobody likes nobodies—quiet kids remain quiet kids, because people don’t listen to those without a voice.
I discovered quickly that I needed to make my presence felt. I was too fat for popularity, too guilt-ridden for a bully. My sole advantage was my ability to make people laugh.
My first day at Clayton High School, I got detention for “accidentally” including a nude photo of Eve Babitz in my “Tell me about yourself” powerpoint presentation.
My first day at Ladue High School, I was sent out of homeroom for claiming my parents were first cousins, and that I was born with a tail.
My first day at St. Louis Country Day, I was suspended two days for punching a kid who had called me a kike (his parents were big donors, and the administration took his side.) I have no reservations about that one. But I had been prepared to spread the rumor about my parents being cousins had this not happened.
College was my chance at stability. I was a freshman at the University of Rochester, starting from square one with everyone else. I remember calling my brother my first night there and saying, “You know what I’m most excited about? Being in one place from start to finish. I’ve never had that before.”
And still, after two years as a triple major in mathematics, philosophy and art history, after making the Dean’s List four semesters in a row, the school cut my funding, citing inconsistencies in my financial profile due to my parent’s divorce. I was made to transfer yet again.
Vanderbilt gave me a full academic scholarship, so I went there.
My first night at Vandy, I streaked a quarter-mile through downtown Nashville. My transfer friend Steve and I bet a quarter-mile streak on a coin flip, and it landed on tails. I sprinted faster than I had in my life—socks on, hat backwards, cock flapping wildly like a golden retriever’s tongue.
It wasn’t the reputation I wanted. But any reputation was an improvement from what I had now. I was nobody; a thin shadow in perfect midnight.
My brother Nate scolded me about this. He ranted to me about the permanent damage such an act could have on my future, about how much potential I had and how I was throwing my life away. Softly, I replied. “I know. But I’m so alone here.”
SAD PART OVER. Back to me fucking Mr. Dylan through the transitive property:
My third night in Nashville, I used my fake ID to get into Rippy’s Honky Tonk, where I met my other transfer friends Ilya and Scott. The lights were low and the music was country—we were as Southern as hayride roadhead.
Ilya was the son of a Russian oligarch, and when he was 16 he drunk-drove his father’s yacht into a dock in Malibu and caused $125,000 of structural damage.
Scott was a pre-med student with a coke problem, and was a Mormon compared to Ilya, who also had a coke problem.
I was surprised we were let in at all. Rippy’s was notorious for cracking down on fake IDs. But Ilya was 25, I was already balding, and Scott had a full beard. We looked like actors cast as college kids in 80s movies.
Before my ID was back in my wallet, Ilya had ordered us each three shots of vodka and two vodka sodas. Each. I was like, “Ilya, we’ve been pregaming for two hours. I don’t need five drinks right now.”
He goes, “Otto Fischkin, I just spent $75 on you. You’re drinking these.”
I go, “Ilya—”
He goes, “Fiiiiiish.”
I go, “Fine.”
Within the half-hour, I was shitface drunk, my slurred words more resembling Russian than English. I tried talking to women at the bar and put my foot in my mouth so much that I shat a Nike swoosh.
There was an older woman seated alone in the back corner near the band. She had bleach blonde hair and dark leathery skin that resembled an old couch full of loose nickels and paperclips. She wore her hair in a ponytail, apart from bangs that slashed diagonally across her forehead, a haircut that suggested she had asked to speak with every manager in town.
“I bet you 20 bucks I can make out with that fine beautiful slightly older but still very respectable and obviously interesting to talk to which is the only reason I’m headed over there in the first place because this appears to be one very intelligent woman, woman,” I said to Ilya, verbatim.
Ilya and I shook on it.
When I approached the woman, I assumed she’d tell me to fuck off, and I’d pay Ilya his $20, and he’d stop me and reveal the $750,000 in his checking account, which is something he actually used to do.
But to my surprise, she did that thing that women do when they’re interested in you at a bar. You know, that thing? When they kind of sit a bit taller, and turn to the side, resting one elbow on the bar, tilting their head at an angle, looking at you from the top corner of their eyes as if to say, Alright motherfucker, let’s see what kind of game you got.
That thing.
She asked me what my deal was, and I told her with a fake deep voice that I was still in school.
“Jesus,” she replied, “My grandson is probably older than you.”
Um! UM!
I had no idea what to say after that, so I asked if she lived in the area.
“Ask me a real question. Be a man,” she said with her worn, raspy voice that turned me on for some reason.
I thought about it, and asked, “What is the craziest thing that’s ever happened to you?”
Without missing a beat, this lady goes, “I once fucked Bob Dylan in the ‘70s.”
Without missing a beat, I go: owefqweaf;wehafhegfqwobqwrguiblqw32rfofWHAT!!!!!
After I came in my pants, I begged her to elaborate.
She told me that Dylan came through Tennessee in 1978 when he was touring Street Legal (which is somehow both an underrated and overrated album—people either love it or hate it but the reality is it’s just decent), and she met him randomly after a show. She was 23, and the singer was halfway between his famous first divorce and his infamous conversion to Christianity.
I wanted to know more about it, but I wanted to play it cool lest I disrupt her train of thought.
She said they got a drink, and then another drink, and then another drink. He kept singing along to the music at the bar (they were playing Hank Williams) and wore his fedora low to stay hidden. She said his breath was putrid, but the whiskey masked it, and soon both their mouths tasted of gasoline.
She said he was mostly in good spirits, but more than once he fell into long bouts of silence, pouting to himself as if alone in his bedroom. It made for an awkward date, and if he wasn’t Bob Dylan, she said she would have left. But she knew about his divorce. She thought he was cute. Oh and also, he was Bob Fucking Dylan!
And then around 4:30 AM, she was fucking Bob Fucking Dylan!
This leathery woman’s anecdote of a one night stand forty years ago excited me. I always get nervous before a kiss, but this one was extreme. Despite the hellish amount of vodka in my bloodstream, I could feel my hands shaking as I set them on her wrinkled cheeks. I, flush with Russian liquor. She, drunk with nostalgia.
We began to make out. The band ten feet away was playing Mary Jane’s Last Dance, which I remember thinking could be an apt description of this woman’s one night stand with me. Still kissing her, I opened my eyes and looked at Ilya (who was crying laughing), as if to say, That’s right motherfucker. Bring me my money.
I asked her if she wanted to leave with me, and she said yes.
The only problem was, her kids were staying with her that weekend, so we couldn’t go to her place. And I shared a dorm room with another transfer student who was in bed with the flu.
So, and I’m not kidding one bit, we split a Best Western motel (proof below.)
The sex lasted about 31 seconds, because my body had gone completely numb from Ilya’s Russian invasion of my liver. The only reason I could stay hard for even 31 seconds was because I was singing Mr. Tambourine Man in my head.
But for 31 seconds, we did have sex. And I, Otto Fischkin, became eskimo brothers with Bob Dylan.
One more interesting thing happened after I called my uber home.
She said, “I know I told you the craziest thing that has happened to me. Well, there’s one more fact about me you might find interesting.”
I was like, PLEASE tell me you blew Leonard Cohen.
She goes, “I also fucked Buddy Holly.”
But before I could ask any follow ups, my uber was there, and she was shooing me out the door. Only a couple minutes later did it dawn on me that Buddy Holly died in 1959. That would have made my lady friend 4 years old when they “fucked.”
So that night, one of two things happened: either I became Bob Dylan’s eskimo brother, meaning Buddy Holly was the most evilest man who ever played the blues, or I slept with a woman who was A) a compulsive liar or B) terribly senile.
I asked my uber driver to play Dylan’s song Quinn the Eskimo on loop the whole ride home. All I could think to myself was this: Nah, Fish the Eskimo.
I checked my phone. Ilya and Scott had been blowing me up with questions.
“Bro, did you really go home with her?”
“Dude, how old was she?”
64! I typed out, before deciding to delete it.
49, I finally sent, hoping this would help me avoid follow-ups.
30 seconds later, I felt my phone buzz. A venmo from Ilya for $20.
The next day I went to my first tailgate at the Sigma Chi house. I had met a few of the brothers and hoped they could get me in. One of them, who they called “Sack,” told me to sneak in through the back. One of the seniors was smoking a cigar there and stopped me at the gate.
“Yo, you gotta go in through the front,” he said, placing his hand not softly on my chest. “We get merked by the administration if they catch us sneaking people in.”
“He’s with me,” said Sack. Given his nickname, I doubted his endorsement carried much weight. “He just transferred here. This is Otto Fischkin.“
“Ho, fuck!” the senior exclaimed, choking on his cigar smoke. He spat a yellow wad on the dead leaves. “Are you the dude who railed some 96-year-old?”
I paused for a long second, and smiled at my feet. “No,“ I said. “You must be thinking of another guy.”
The senior laughed. He looked over both shoulders. “Alright, get the hell in here,” he said. “I gotta hear about this.”
He pressed the back gate open for me, and I was in.
Otto Fischkin is the alter ego of Sam Frank Jr. Sam is a writer and standup comedian based in New York City. He has been published in The Bangalore Review, The Gramercy Review, and his standup comedy has been mentioned in the New York Times. He was named “Best Screenwriter” at the 2021 Austin Lift-Off Film Festival. Sam is working on his debut novel about the circus industry.
Sam can be reached at samfrankjunior@gmail.com
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Disclaimer: This work is fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
i so look forward to these
A thrilling and funny read! I actually found the sad part profound.