Bob on Tape

Before you read any further than this paragraph, subjected to my spectacular failures and bumbling glory, I need to ask a favor of you. Think of a time you had something golden, and let it slip through your fingers. In fact, tell someone all about it as well. Then, you just might find some ironic beauty in what I'm about to say.
Kyoto sits comfortably in a wide basin, gathering heat in the summer, rain in the winter, and an exceptionally high amount of dust particles all year long. There are some rivers running from north to south through the city, most popular of which is the Kamo River. At the edges of the basin are green mountains, which feature temples, shrines, and many other historical landmarks this ancient city has to offer. Up on top of one of those mountains, just above a historical landmark, sitting under some trees is where we find ourselves on this hot summer afternoon.
Sam and I climbed this mountain every Friday after school, and today was no exception. We were hot, exhausted, and thirsty, even well after we removed our shirts in the shady resting place. We would come up here and game plan for the weekend, but today was different. I could sense it in my friend's voice.
"Today, we don't go home. We need to stay out as long as possible. It doesn't matter what we do." he says to me. His voice is already exhausted from the day but still full of ambition. Neither of us have shaved in a few days, and our curly hair is a little longer and out of control in the summer heat.
I look at him and nod. "Deal." I say. Now we both have ambition.
"Kevin was thinking of studying at that coffee shop. Let's text him and head down there." he says, trading the ambition for assertive suggestion.
"That sounds like a plan." I agree in statement, and stand up in action.

It was unbearably hot in Kevin's apartment. He leaves the door open a crack and pulls out his guitar. "I have a song I want to record with you guys," he says.
We're sitting on the floor and rip open our bags of groceries as Kevin shows us his song. There are tortilla chips from Nagoya, salsa from Holland, and tiny bags of overpriced pretzels. The three of us open our cheap Japanese beers, and we try recording the song.
There's a knock on the door, and let me just let you know that the three of us know better than to judge a person. It's always too fast. Kevin goes to open the door and finds a neighbor of his. He's an older man, presumed to be in his late fifties, and from the way he is standing, speaking, and behaving, he is clearly drunk. He is tan, wrinkled, and kind of smells like cigarettes. Down the hallway we can hear Bob Dylan echoing out of an apartment with a door propped open. When the man finds out the three of us are American, he brings over some of his Bob Dylan albums.
Kevin invites the man in and offers him a beer. The man obliges, and we find ourselves sitting on the floor again, drinks and snacks in hand. We talk about beer, we talk about Bob Dylan, and we hear all about this guy. His words are slurred and inflected with dialect, but he emphasizes the important things, and we get the gist. We hear about his wife and family in the countryside he sees on the weekends, his detours to bars on the way home from work. The last thing the three of us want to do is to judge or pity this guy. We know that he had lived two of our lifetimes before we were even born. But still, we judge him. And though we're friendly and open, we judge him. There is a kind lonely desperation inside the man, one none of us had ever seen before. Desperate for what, we don't know, but we suppose it's something he passed on the road a long time ago.
He pulls out his wallet to give us his business card. As he does that, he stumbles across pictures he took with his girlfriend and pulls them out. He shows them all to us. It wouldn't have been so strange had he not told us she was nineteen years old. He didn't seem embarrassed by it one bit.
He also wasn't embarrassed when he dozed off a little later. After giving him a few minutes of peace, Kevin decided to wake him up, and the three of us carried him back to his room. His door was still open, but the Bob Dylan record had stopped spinning. We put him on his bed and closed the door behind us.
Sam and I sat quietly as Kevin made us dinner. Like news of a death, it always takes a little while for things like this to sink in for me.
"Let's check out that recording," Sam said. "Oh shit, we left the machine on."
We all looked up at one another and smiled. Sam pressed play, and we heard our take of Kevin's song, as well as the subsequent conversation.
"It's not every day you get to meet Bob Dylan," Kevin said, as he mixed around the stir-fry.
 We sipped our drinks, but we didn't snack. The air wasn't light enough. The weight of the next forty years was weighing down on us.
"I wonder if he's dreaming anything right now."
"I'll bet he's been dreaming since he clocked out from work," someone said.
It was all going to be okay. We knew that tomorrow is always a bright new day with a different lottery ticket and a different winning number.