How you’d even react, young buck, if you knew how I ogled, like some long lost uncle, that sliver of pale flesh running under the silver crucifix your girl said she’d never take off, how hard you’ve tried to anoint that sacred intersection of her chest you nuzzle in the morning shower, of course, only when you’re sporting good enough wood and not too hungover. Still, my eyes can’t help but connect the dots of all those freckles from too many lazy days like these under the August sun, the two of you laid out across dueling beach towels like a Cialis commercial, me plodding by with my surf socks and metal detector, this floppy hat and Hawaiian shirt, all that SPF 100 caked up and down my pasty ankles and knees, nose and cheeks, these big golden Wayfarers concealing our fleeting tryst, me and your girl’s tits.
Benjamin Drevlow was the winner of the 2006 Many Voices Project and the author of a collection of short stories, Bend With the Knees and Other Love Advice From My Father (New Rivers Press, 2008). His fiction has also appeared in Passages North, Split Lip, and is forth-coming at Fiction Southeast. He is the fiction editor at BULL: Men’s Fiction, teaches writing at Georgia Southern University, and lives both in Georgia and online at <www.thedrevlow-olsonshow.com>.
This was great fun. Nice work.