Benny Jay: Positively 4th Street

July 1st, 2009

I fly to New York City to look at schools with my wife and younger daughter, who somehow or other got old enough to apply to college, and we’re sitting in a conference room, packed with teenagers and their parents, listening to the admission’s officer sell the deal.

She’s doing a great job — the kids are all jazzed up, raising their hands, asking all sorts of spirited questions, as though they’re already going to the school.

Meanwhile, the parents are largely sitting in glum and somber silence, occasionally asking nervous, almost edgy, questions about tuition, deadlines and other procedural stuff. I know what they’re thinking cause I’m thinking the same thing: How the hell am I going to pay for this?

Afterward, this lovely young theater major — with a sunny disposition and bright red hair — gives a bunch of us a tour. We visit the library, a dorm, a classroom and so on. My daughter’s hooks up with this kid she knows — call him Larry. They’re sharing dreams and devising plans.

We wind up walking through Washington Park in the heart of Greenwich Village, and, of course, I start thinking about Bob Dylan. He used to hang around here — singing songs while he passed the hat — back in the early Sixties, when he was new to town from Minnesota. I start singing to myself: “You got a lot of nerve, to say you are my friend….”

Can’t get that song out of my mind.

As I recall from various books and documentaries, Dylan was an arrogant and cocky kid. He was like a magpie, taking books, records, ideas, women and throwing them away when he was done. I guess you can get away with a lot of nasty shit when you’re a genius.

We run into Larry and his mother, sitting on a bench by the fountain. Right away I start in with the typical parental spiel, moaning to the mother about tuition. She cuts me off to tell me that she’s got it all figured out. Turns out she’s a divorcee running a business that’s not making much money. But her ex — he’s a surgeon. And you know how surgeons do — the dude’s got a pile of dough. The thing is — Larry’s in her name. As far as the college knows, he’s impoverished. And what the college doesn’t know — heh, heh, heh — won’t hurt them. Get it?

I’m trying not to look at her like she’s out of her freaking mind. I mean, is she for real? Does she think the college is so stupid that they won’t, you know, ask to see papa’s tax returns? What — are they going to pretend that the kid was conceived by immaculate conception? God, I hate this crap — it brings out the worst in us all.

I keep my mouth shut — it’s none of my business — I figure she’s just shooting off her mouth. We say good by and head off. Closer to the fountain, a quartet of musicians stands clustered around a guitar case, open to collect coins and cash, playing New Orleans jazz. They got this sweet-looking young woman with red, low-cut Converse All Stars blowing the trombone. Man, that girl can play.

I swear to God I can feel the spirit of young Bobby Dylan, singing his songs by the fountain. We start out playing our music in the park and wind up devising schemes to pay the bills….