“I’m like the Acropolis. In a state of ruins, but you can tell at one time I must have been splendid.” David Tidball said more than twenty years ago.

The English painter was describing himself, but I have quoted his words on many occasions to Americans without a single reply.

I attribute their lack of response to an absolute ignorance of classical ruins, for my fellow countrymen have a limited scope of history, except for sporting events.

27% of my countrymen have no idea what year the WTC collapsed in flames, so why should they remember a stack of carved stone atop a Greek hill?

No reason, but my body has lost its resemblance to a glorious marble statue of antiquity. The six-pack abs are a plastic sac of beer gut. My tight buns are sagging like melted cheese and worst my chest has ceased to be a chest. It’s man boob territory. My friends mocked my decrepitude. Women envy my 36 C Cups. I have shaved them to enhance their beauty, but I have come to see that they are missing an essential accessory.

Cigar-sized nipples.

I need an operation to enlarge them or get transplants from well-teethed teats.

The ridicule of my moobs would end the instant that I took off my shirt at the beach.

The critics would be stunned to silence by the sight of mipples hanging from my moobs like strangled worms. They will avert their gaze, except for those those possessing twisted minds, because when the weird get weirder, things get out of control and while my ruination might rival the neglected Maya pyramids of Tikal, mipples on moobs will resurrect the dead.

The photo is the glory that was 256 East 10th Street – 1978.