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Scott Nichols
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NO, YOU CAN’T REALLY SEE THEIR TITS
an ovel by Scott Nichols
chapter one
Once upon a time I had a little money so I took off walking down Foothill Boulevard looking for
the Word of God in my life. Not having any direction I immediately found myself lost in downtown Glendora.
It was like a safari, if a safari featured a library, a dialysis center, and a tea
cottage, and if the men heading the safari left clues under bus benches like old napkins pointing
to the Word of God.
I traipsed back and forth across the street looking under mailboxes and Mormons and
bus benches and oak trees, hoping to find something tangible, like:
PSSSSSST!!
THIS WAY
chapter two
It soon became obvious that someone was tailing me in my quest for the Word of God,
and of course, it happened to be a cop.
Excuse me, son. You got anything in your pockets I might want to know about?
Like hash browns or coffee or a pound of coke.
No, I said.
You sure?
He looked at me the way a deacon looks at himself in the mirror after a terribly
cold shower.
Where you coming from?
School?
What?
You go to school, boy?
Like it was wrong to come home from school at 3am.
I study anthropology.
Around then the wind started tugging at my ear like it was an old blind dog finally
learning to fetch clues for his master. Everything started to go black.
chapter three
I remember once sitting in at an open mic night at a rather hep coffee house
and wanting desperatley to fuck the singer chick who organized it. She looked vaguely like
Sara McLachlan, if Sara McLachlan had done it with a lamppost and the kid that came out said,
Hey, can you sing tonight at six and then hobbled down the road alone.
The vibes of those times stick to me like cellophane. At some point I think I
actually went home and shot myself in the leg for ever thinking that, but I guess I didn’t.
chapter four
The chorus of the play still plays sometimes in my head and I think about the
paperboard airplane in the Christmas festival in grammar school. The airplane flew back and
forth without stopping, like an old wig that suddenly sprouted the wrong hair.
Sin, sin, sin, you old wig! the hair would say.
The wig would crawl up into a hole big enough for a ghost and flutter away.
chapter five
Nowhere is a wig’s pain more evident than in a hair factory. The factory foreman might say:
WELL, YOU’RE JUST TOO OLD FOR THE JOB. WE’RE A GROUND-LEVEL OPPORTUNITY.
Imagine what the wig might say. How dramatic that might be.
chapter six
In my dreams there is an infirmary where all of my friends gather to talk about invisible ink.
There is a nice pond outside and many gorgeous redwoods but for now we’re all commissioned to sit inside
and chatter, or color in invisible ink coloring books.
chapter seven
Eventually I woke up and found that not only had Jesus left the building, but he had left
the building in a black BMW. Imagine Jesus having a breakdown in the Mojave, maybe the battery died,
the radiator blew, all because the son of God could only get a Corolla.
My dad and I sat out talking and drinking beers one night years later. I told him my
hypothesis that Phil Ochs and Buddy Holly were the same person and that at least one of them was Bobby
Fuller. He shook his head.
A funny little pomegranate fell off the tree in the yard behind us, and our dogs nosed it
into a corner of the yard like it was a beat-up copy of
Gift From the Sea. My older dog pawed at it with clenched fists but the younger dog seemed
like it might be a cool thing to eat.
I told my dad about the Jesus search and how it didn’t exactly pan out.
He shook his head again.
You know, Dad, Jesus drives a BMW.
No shit! Good for Jesus!
THE END
11.10-11.99
los angeles, CA
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