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

them closed, Gloria urging her to take step after step. It was like the blind leading the blind: the Navajo girl who had just miscarried and Gloria, our dorm manager, lonely and confused.
    â€œThis is what happens when you’re fifty, sweeties,” and Gloria would pull the elastic belt on her robe and let it snap back. We were never quite sure what this demonstration was supposed to divulge, but she would follow it up by pointing at her face and remarking on the disgusting enlargement of her pores. “Don’t let anyone kid you,” she’d tell us. “Life only gets uglier, meaner.” She lived at the far end of the hall in a special apartment. She had a patchwork rug she had made herself, and a small TV with large rabbit ears. She continually complained about the reception, and raised hell if the stairwells weren’t kept clean. Though she often mixed up our names and got the dates for our fire drills confused, Gloria did well that night, letting the Navajo girl lean against her in the darkness cut only by stars and pine tops.
    I don’t know why I have to see these things: the Navajo in the bathtub, the miserable way we reconcile ourselves to our lives. I was going to take a shower. I had shaved my legs and washed my hair. I could hear them beating on the door nearby, calling for her to come out. The water on my back was hot and furious, yet the commotion called me, too. When they broke the lock and opened the door, the milky steam rolled out upon the cold hall air.
    Sometimes it takes years to fully see things. I think back upon this scene and see the small things: the soap, the toenails painted red, Gloria’s hands as they attempted to comfort.
    We went back to our rooms and talked about it, how they have to stop the bleeding, sometimes with drugs, sometimes surgically. “It’snature’s way,” Dawn Kramer added, though we all ignored her, for what this prima donna from Chicago knew about nature wouldn’t have filled a single page. For weeks after, I thought about the Navajo girl and the way she closed her eyes, what she was shutting in or shutting out.
    Like I said, none of us ever used that bathtub again, which was an unfortunate thing, for baths are healthy and soothing. They enfold us, they bring light to the mind, and they emulate the water from which life so warily crept millions of years ago.
    Gloria returned in her Valiant the next morning, hushing us, telling us to mind our own business. The Navajo girl, she finally said, was fine, though she left school permanently for her home in Window Rock. I’ve never been there, but I like that name. I like the idea of a window in a rock—an opening in a black, hard space—a sliver’s passage into the soul.

Dixon
    F irst, it is not true that my brother Dixon went crazy in Vietnam—chewed his fingernails completely off and gutted a Huey helicopter in a rage when his R and R was suddenly bagged. Hell, Dixon never was in Vietnam. His three years in the Air Force were mostly spent in Biloxi where he was assigned to the motor pool and stayed long weekends in Gulfport on windy beaches with sand in his eyes and his shoulders constantly sunburned. He’s buried now in a small cemetery called Dutchman’s Acre, a place so quiet and green that it doesn’t rightfully belong to this earth. Yeah, sure, he was big enough to gut a helicopter, but Dixon was slow and calm, and he always respected what wasn’t his.
    That’s why the story about Dixon and Misty Waters doesn’t make any sense either, because Misty was somebody else’s wife, and Dixon may have liked to tease her—he might have even thought she was pretty—but as he used to say to me, his oldest sister, “It’s clear as day on the insurance form. She’s somebody else’s beneficiary.”
    I’ll tell you—crudeness does not know when to stop. There are versions of the Dixon-Misty story that put