Zim and me: its the honest truth - Scout’s honour

One tries to retain one’s faith in human nature, but it isn’t easy. Last week, for example, I wrote about my youthful friendship with Bob Dylan – or Zimmerman as he then was – and how it ended abruptly when he chose to play a tune on women’s underwear at a boy scout jamboree.

An honest and simple story, as I’m sure you’ll agree, and movingly told, yet in the days that followed I heard from numerous readers who thought I’d made it up.

I won’t pretend it didn’t hurt to have my integrity impugned, especially after two decades of telling nothing but the truth on these pages, but those readers know who they are and I shall not sink to Trump-like levels of peevishness by embarrassing them.

Though embarrass them I emphatically could. For only this morning my phone rang.

‘‘Hello,’’ I said, ‘‘and if you’re going to accuse me of making things up I ...’’

‘‘Joe?’’ said a voice and even though it had been half a century I recognised its nasal atonality on the instant.

‘‘Zim!’’ I exclaimed, ‘‘Zim, my old mate.’’ And his voice brought such a gust of nostalgia for when the world was young and everything seemed possible that I all but wept. ’’Congrats,’’ I said to cover my emotion, ‘‘congrats on the Nobel Prize.’’

‘‘I owe it all to you, Joe,’’ said Zim, with typical honesty.

‘‘Tell me, Zim,’’ I said, ‘‘that boy scout talent show in New York, I’ve often wondered, did you win?’’

‘‘Runner-up,’’ he said. ‘‘Earned a year’s supply of toggles. But that brings me to why I’m ringing, Joe. You see, there was this one kid there, a great tow-haired bully from Queens, son of some rackrent property developer, who couldn’t keep his hands off my instrumental underwear.

‘‘Kept stroking it and saying how lovely and skimpy it was and how he liked to sneak into the changing sheds at Girl Guide swimming galas to steal knickers for his bedroom wall.’’ ‘‘What a creep,’’ I said. ‘‘That’s what I told him but it didn’t faze him. Kept boasting he was going to be a big shot and the world’s greatest Lothario. Then he produced a can of industrial strength hair-spray and sprayed my underwear.

‘‘Said it would make it more musical. Ha. Couldn’t get a note out of it after that. Sabotage plain and simple. Of course the kid went on to win, not because he had any talent, but because his old man had rigged the judges.’’

‘‘It’s not a fair world, my friend.’’

‘‘But wait,’’ said Zim, ‘‘there’s worse. The other day I turned on the telly and there was this kid again, now aged 70, with orange skin and joke hair, standing on a podium in front of a mob of baying reprobates. And guess what, Joe. ‘‘He’s running for president?’’ ‘‘Are you psychic or something? How do you know these things? Anyway I immediately realised it was my duty to do whatever I could to stop him. I mean we can’t have the walls of the White House hung with stolen knickers.’’

‘‘Well,’ I began, ‘‘there have been a few ...’’

But Zim had a story to tell and would not be interrupted.

‘‘I offered my services to the Democrats and they sent me down here to rural Pennsylvania. I don’t know if you know, Joe, but there’s a bunch of religious fundamentalists in these parts still pretending it’s the 16th century, speaking Dutch, driving around in horse-drawn buggies and refusing to use the phone.

‘‘Being conservative, they always vote Republican, but being fundamentalist, they’re opposed to all cosmetics, especially for blokes, so they’d never vote for a bloke with a spray-tan.

‘‘And any suggestion of sexual impropriety, especially creepiness with women’s underwear, would be disqualifying for them. But the problem is they don’t watch television or read newspapers, so they don’t know the truth about this clown. And it’s my job to sing it to them.’’ ‘‘Great idea,’’ I said. ‘’But I’m stuck, Joe. I’m backstage right now and on the other side of the curtain there’s a couple of thousand rural anachronisms waiting to see me, but I can’t come up with a lyric.

‘‘Whatever I sing must stress the unnatural citrus colour of the Republican candidate and suggest that he’s both a cheat and a sexual creep. It’s a tall order, I know, but can you help, my best and oldest friend? Have you still got it, Joe?’’ ‘‘Maybe,’’ I said. ‘‘Go on then.’’ ‘‘Amish! The tangerine man sprayed a thong for me.’’ ‘‘Joe,’’ said Zim, ‘‘I love you.’’ ‘‘I love you too,’’ I said. ‘‘But they’ll still say I’m making this up.’’