A Show for the World

Mar 12, 2026

people watching photos — credit to Markus Spiske via Unsplash

If you don’t think that what an artist captures with his brush can change the trajectory of humankind, or at least a single human life, then you needn’t read the rest of this story.

John Nabors was wearing his special shirt at the grand opening of his exhibit at the Northern Maine Community Center. He’d recently determined that there were a limited number of times that he could wear the shirt before it lost its special luster. Every time he washed it, harsh chemicals inflicted a modicum of damage as the special shirt danced frenetically in the tub of his washing machine like it was John Travolta’s last night at Studio 54. He figured that he could wear it maybe ten or fifteen more times before its magic disappeared.

Pitch-black like John’s hair, the shirt had metallic silver stripes of varying thicknesses that shimmered in the uneven light of the Center. There was a small, square section just over his heart where there were no lines. That stripe-less box contained golden bubbles of various sizes.

John called it his “emotions shirt.” His friends said that he always wore his feelings on his face—happiness, sadness, anger, joy, fear or grief. In his mind, the emotions that pulsated inside his heart were reflected by those golden bubbles on his shirt.

John’s belief in the supernatural powers of his emotions shirt had its genesis on the day that he’d purchased it at The Cubby Thrift Store in Presque Isle. He knew that he needed a new shirt—one with a collar and buttons—for his long-awaited presentation down in the largest metropolis in Maine. Till that point, he’d only worn T-shirts and jeans his entire life. This had been acceptable throughout public school and later on in his regular job working at the Isle Print Center where he spent his typical day making copies and sending packages for small businesses and locals.

At twenty-three years of age, John was finally going to pitch his first collection of paintings in a competition down south in Portland, Maine. The contest guaranteed the winner a showing at a major gallery.

He felt like it was a waste of time. He reckoned that most of the other contestants had formal artistic training from The Maine College of Art & Design, the University of Maine, Colby or Bowdoin. He lacked formal training besides two painting classes in high school. All the way on the bus to Portland, he felt a sense of impending doom as he stared out the window at the empty wilderness.

John’s family and friends had kept bugging him that the paintings he’d produced during his weekends were wonderful. The situation reminded him of that Harry Chapin song that he was so fond of. Chapin’s under-appreciated story-song masterpiece, “Mr. Tanner,” was about a tailor from Dayton, Ohio who sang while mending clothes. Mr. Tanner’s entourage kept encouraging him to make a go of it professionally. Eventually, he agreed to give it a shot and spent much of his limited savings to arrange a concert in New York City in an attempt to be discovered. The critics torpedoed his dreams with a concise, negative review. Smarting from the pain of artistic failure, Mr. Tanner returned to Dayton and never sang again, except late at night when his shop was closed.

If anyone was a much younger version of Mr. Tanner, it was him. Presque Isle was a much smaller city than Dayton, and Tanner probably had far more talent as a singer than John had as a painter.

You’re fooling no one! the endless procession of pine trees needled him—their spires pointing toward him while blowing in the wind as his metallic Concord Coach Lines chariot skated by. He fancied that the the entire forest was a jury that nodded in disapproval. Maybe he should just get off at the next stop, and catch the next train home with his traveling companion—ill-conceived ambition—in tow to Presque Isle.

On the big day, everything about his presentation to the panel was depressing. His answers to questions about his method were halting, and sparse. He was self-conscious about his third-hand leather portfolio case. It groaned and cracked as he opened it to take out his paintings and display them. It rudely blew dusty air at the judges as they squinted at his creations.

He thought himself to be a fool. He’d ignored his parent’s gentle observations that all of his paintings were depictions of the landscapes of the northern Maine woods, as much as they loved them. How unoriginal could he get? Maine artists had been painting the beautiful mountains, great ponds, and granite-strewn coast of Maine for centuries. His renderings offered nothing new.

The only thing that was new was his vintage black shirt with the silver stripes and gold bubbles. The elderly female judge with toasted blonde hair glanced at him quizzically as she caught him staring down at the gold bubbles on his chest. Artists are weird, but get a load of this one! he imagined she’d be telling her fellow judges later on.

So it was a great surprise that he’d received a phone call later on, indicating that the jury selected him as one of the artists to be featured in a show in Portland later that year. John figured that they’d surely must have mixed up their ballots, or it must have been an unusually weak field. Nonetheless, he felt an unprecedented thrill of accomplishment that he’d never previously experienced. In his musings about his experience, he attributed his success not to his artistic talent but to the emotions shirt.

The day he purchased his emotions shirt at The Cubby Thrift Store was notable for another reason. Given his sordid financial decision, he was agonizing over whether to buy the emotions shirt or another vintage shirt that had a cool, crimson crescent pattern. He kept holding the shirts at different heights in front of him, and continually changed his opinion about which shirt to take to the nose-ringed punk rocker at the checkout counter.

He’d lost track of time, and his shoulders ached from holding the competing black and crimson shirts aloft in the dusty light spilling from the thrift store ceiling.

“It’s an easy choice,” purred a female voice.

“Excuse me?” John grumbled, as he turned his head to see a statuesque woman in her late-twenties grinning at him.

The tall, large-chested blonde deftly removed the hanger holding the black shirt from his hand and pushed it gently against his torso.

“Come to the mirror,” she cooed.

He slinked after her as she somehow kept the shift pressed against his chest until they reached the mirror.

“See!” she smiled triumphantly as he nodded at his reflection.

“Uh huh,” John responded before she shoved him against the mirror with a full-lipped kiss.

There was indeed something magical about this shirt, John reckoned. He was no prude, but he couldn’t recall making out in a public place before, and particularly without knowing his kissing partner’s name.

A short while later, the purchased shirt hung itself in his tiny closet out of despair of being closed off from the action it took credit for while John and the thrift shop shirt-selection expert finished tossing in the ocean of lust on his single bed. Lying on his back and wondering if she was also fixated on the amoeba-like mildew stain on the ceiling above them, he figured that he’d found his first human model.

While his lack of defenses against seduction might not make his parents proud, he thought they might be relieved to see him paint something other than a Maine landscape.

The show at the Northern Maine Community Center was the third of John’s young career as an artist. He’d sold a grand total of three paintings coming out of the first two, and had earned a total of two-hundred and thirty-nine dollars to supplement his copy shop income. But he loved the thought that three humans had chosen to make those three original John Nabors pieces part of their homes.

This third show was his inaugural show in his native Aroostook County in northern Maine. Like a meek debutante at a ball, John fidgeted next to the large white placard with black letters that announced “Maine Landscapes by Presque Isle artist, John Nabors.” The placard was not entirely accurate. There were two oil paintings of a person hanging on the wall in his exhibit among the larger canvasses depicting Mount Katahdin, Beech Hill Pond, the tree-lined banks of the Aroostook River, and the granite formations at Acadia National Park.

“Stop slouching! You look like you’re facing a firing squad!” a grey-haired woman in a tan pantsuit commanded, her arm looped under the arm of her husband.

“Mom!” John protested. “C’mon, there are people here. You’re going to scare ‘em off.”

“Relax, son,” his father said, smiling at his awkward only child.

“Oh my!” his mother suddenly blurted out as she placed her right palm on her heart, staring ashen-faced at two of his paintings. “John, I’ve never seen these before.”

“I didn’t know you had, em, branched out, son.” His father grin had broadened. “Finally you figured out that there are more than trees in Maine!”

John said nothing, but looked down at his feet.

“Who is the model? Do you know her?” his mother asked, the worry infiltrating her tone.

John was surprised that his parents were unaware of the young woman that had posed for him on several occasions. “Private business” was generally a theoretical concept in northern Maine given that the population was so sparse that little went unnoticed.

This was true even though she’d only posed for him on two very special occasions after their initial meeting at The Cubby Thrift Store. Given her reputation around town, he’d not shared any information about her even with his few close friends. It was nothing to be proud of.

He felt his face reddening as his Mom searched his face for the answer that he’d declined to instantly provide.

“Nobody really,” he finally said, shrugging.

But during John’s conversation with his parents, a group of three young ladies had drifted in front of the John Nabors display like a school of rainbow trout. And from the stunned look on their faces, they all knew that the artist was lying.

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