SUCKING SUN

Slowly committing suicide by sucking up the sun at our apartment complex’s pool, an old bald headed me slyly looks over at the butt-flossed bouncy brown bottom of the sweet young thing lying two chairs down.

Before I know it, a half century drops away and I find myself, with a ponytail halfway down my back, starring slack jawed and wide eyed, at Barb West in all her glossy bottoms up glory.

She’s rolling a joint, that looks like a Lucky Strike, with one hand, while laying face-down on a cheap sun lounge. Next to the lounge is a bottle of baby oil spiked with iodine and Coppertone, a spray bottle of lemon juice for her hair and a foil wrapped double album of indeterminate origin.

Even though it’s still the 60s, the temperature, the humidity and the decibels are all in the 90’s. And to top it all off, there seems to be a lot more Barb than bikini.

“Got a light?” I fumble for my Zippo. Soon we’re both basting inside and out, our ponytailed heads bobbing to In-A-Ganda-Da-Vida, on the big speakers, as one thing led to another.

The next morning, sliding off the slippery satin sheets I look down at a sleeping Barb undulating on the   waterbed. I can’t help but bask in the Neapolitan wonder of her. Pale white, fringed by strips of red and then a sea of mahogany skin that George Hamilton would kill for.

“Take a picture. It’ll last longer.” I’m slammed back into today; my sly perusal of the sweet young thing, two chairs down, seems to have devolved into the aforementioned slack jawed, wide eyed countenance of my youth.

Sheepishly, I flip over on to my stomach and even though I would swear there’s none around, the smell of Coppertone fills my head.