Golden Boy Unmasked

By Sue Klotz DiStefano

Etched against the gray horizon, a salt-encrusted Adonis arises from the shallow swells, unbothered by the chilly, frothy sea. He sports the lean, sinewy, almost anorexic runner’s build adorned with a nest of sun-colored hair of soft, ripe avocado-yellow. Laughing seagulls form a white circle overhead, a crown of wings and raucous caws above this vision of surfer royalty in tattered shorts.

Turning toward me, the ideal fades into reality, a tobacco-damaged face that was too long caressed by the sun; an oxidized, overripe avocado whose yellow has metamorphosed to a sickly brown.

Presenting my back, truth awakened, I walk away.