Encounters of the Third Nipple

Sitting in the Hasting’s café,

My eyes shift over the rows of magazines –

Automobile, People, Time –

And I tune into the hum of the coffee machine.

I’m trying to ignore my friend

As she whines about her lackluster Valentine.

Oh, how she bores me.

I’m more intrigued by the “30 Things to do to a Naked Man”

That Cosmo is offering to teach me.

But then she asks me something brilliant.

Finally something worth my time:
“Have you seen The Boxer yet?”

A cold breath of February air bursts through the glass door of the café,

And as if on cue, Mark Wahlberg struts in,

Tall, ripped, and sexy,

Swaggering like he’s straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean,

With sweat glistening on his bare chest in the rigid 30 degree weather.

He walks past the ogling barista,

Past my star struck friend,

And up to me.

“Mark Wahlberg,” I say in a whisper, my voice trembling in his presence.

“Call me Marky Mark.”

His voice is like a lion’s – low, rumbling, and fierce.

He takes my hand, and I swoon.

I wake up to a sun beating down on me

And heating the golden sand that I lie upon.

I’m in Jamaica.

Marky Mark is next to me,

Sprawled out on a red beach towel

In those tight swim trunks that Daniel Craig wore in Casino Royale:

The one’s that only Calvin Klein models should wear.

He hands me a bottle of tanning lotion,

And as I spread the brown plaster over his bulging shoulders,

I begin to wish I had read “30 Things to do to a Naked Man.”

Slowly, he turns to me, his third nipple covered in sand,

And tells me he has a confession to make.

I brace myself for those three special words:
“I’m a secret agent,” he says.

He’s in a James Bond tuxedo,

Running across a highway with my body swung over his shoulder.

At the last second he jumps over a semi - Michael Jordan style -

And fires his Walther PPK at the bad guys.

“Hey, have you seen The Boxer yet?”

He asks me suddenly.

But it’s not the growling voice of an untamed beast this time,

It’s the obnoxious drawl of the girl sitting across the café table.

I shake my head, examining the 80 year-old-man that I had been staring at.

“No, I haven’t,” I finally say. “Wanna go read Cosmo?”