A Brief History of Male Nudes in America by Dianne Nelson, Dianne Nelson Oberhansly Page A

hair—thick and wavy, the kind you want to run your hand through for good luck. More than once, he was mistaken for the Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz, and sometimes, good-naturedly, he’d play along and say that going for the gold isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
    It was only natural that people at his funeral were shocked when they saw Dixon. For a while I heard the stuff about the whole top of his head having to be sewn back on, but the worst was about his ears—plastic imitations that would surely outlast the rest of him. I know how it went on from there—how he was flying on LSD and ran straight toward the lights of that truck—you know, the old moth to the flame. How my mother tried to climb into the coffin with her onlyson when she first walked into the memorial service. How the big heart-shaped arrangement of tulips was secretly from the fire chief’s wife. The problem is, if you were mining any of that for the truth, you’d be digging all the way to China.

    Tony Ramirez told us one day that it is an endless path, this karate. I didn’t have forever, though, so I asked him if I could double up on classes—take two a week. He shrugged and said, “Take three a week, but it may not happen any faster.”
    I had been his student for several months, and I knew his whole lecture about the most formidable opponent being ourselves, but that did not change what happened in Kentucky Fried Chicken last Friday night. I was waiting for a 15-piece bucket when Jenner walked in—a pair of dusty Dingo boots and a big moth-eaten suede hat—that’s how I saw him. He didn’t acknowledge me in any way, just kept looking at the menu board as if this was the biggest decision of his life. I hated that he wouldn’t look at me.
    People don’t get to choose when things happen, and if you ask me, real talent is taking events as they occur and making them count. Luck would have had me running into Jenner in a couple of months, but happenstance put the two of us right there that night with a big black and red picture of the Colonel smiling down at us. The counter girl delivered my bucket of chicken, and as I turned to head toward the door I said “hey” to Jenner. He looked down, kind of startled, and what I did next surprised even me. I walked over to the straw dispenser, not much more than a wooden box, and I gave it an edge-of-hand strike and the box splintered and a few straws rolled down onto the floor. Just a few plastic straws, but God, they were beautiful to me. I stared over at Jenner, didn’t say a word, actually couldn’t. I was gritting my teeth against the white hot pain in my hand, but he didn’t know that. All he knew—and I could tell this from his big fool blue eyes—was that Heaven and Earth were on their way.
    Tony Ramirez looked at my hand and this week he’s making me practice with the twelve- and thirteen-year-old beginners, but I don’t care. There is a certain satisfaction I get in towering over all of my classmates. And my karate shout is the strongest one in this class.
    I’m not like some of the people in this town who have grown radar ears, but I do hear things. Eleanor Goodway, one of my mother’s oldest friends, came into my insurance office the other day. I was surprised because she has both term and whole life policies up to her ears, but she was there for a different reason. “Hillary,” she said, bending over my desk, lowering her voice as if this was privileged information, “chicken is nothing to lose your head over. I know these fast food places gyp you every once in a while—more legs than breasts, or the biscuits are a day old—but to break a plate-glass window over ten dollars worth of food . . .” She shook her head at me the way she’s been shaking her head at this whole town for the last fifty years. She took a handkerchief out and dabbed at her nose and the smell