Provincetown Ekphrasis

It scared the shit out of me, the thought of running my fingers across the crass abs of those Greek gods straight out of 1970, with their pornstaches and tight pants, so much that I backed away,

Not me I thought, let someone else be the guinea pig.

Oh, come on, the jackass called, the one with the tattoo, come on, dive in, the water’s fine.

Indeed, if you looked past all that simmering man flesh, the sea was cobalt, blue as barren balls.  The other jackass, the quiet one, smiled like an idiot, nodded like a fetish doll. I expected his fucking head was going to fall off. 

All right, I said, okay, shut your mouth

and I backed up some more but this time just to get a running start and then took off and threw myself against the painting, half thinking to bounce off into the asphalt street,

but instead sailing through like an archangel onto a strange beach, into the mass of tanned male bodies and sand and heat. I landed with a roll and looked up at them.

HI, I said, hi from the future.

The sun squeezed bright. I got to my feet, brushed grit out of my hair and pushed out my chest. I smiled. They milled around, fascinated. The air was perfumed with ocean, sweat, semen.

From the future, they asked wonderingly? Really?

Their voices were like cellos, deep and tuneful.