Interpretation

In the center of the Petrie Court at the Metropolitan Museum is a statue of a male nude, probably from the fifteenth or sixteenth century.  The figure is handsome, well built and sports a very well proportioned penis which protrudes gracefully from his body not too ostentatiously but still with conviction.  I used to remark on this when I walked by with friends.  Once I was there with my cousin and after I had shown her the statue, she told me I should photograph it with my Iphone, which I then did.  Directly thereafter she said that I should use this photo as the screen saver or whatever it is called for my phone.  Of course, I had no idea how achieve this technological feat, but of course she did being of the younger generation.  So thereafter whenever I started to turned on my cellphone the beautiful body with the marvelously sculpted penis would be the first thing to appear.  If someone were to catch a glimpse of this, as sometimes happened in tight proximity such as in planes on the tarmac or in the subway, I considered that this person might imagine I had a photo of a naked friend or myself, and not the whole body either but a focus that was centered on the groin.  So I was somewhat embarrassed, and a little careful whenever I had to use the phone in those situations. One day my phone would not activate when I had returned from Europe so I went to the Apple store in Manhattan on Broadway, got an appointment at the genius bar and went for the meeting.  When I handed the young techie the phone he quickly gave it back saying primly that I would have to activate it past the point of the photo, that he did not want to look at personal porn. Here I was this old old fart with the very proper youth, and was on the verge of blushing with shame when I had the presence of mind to say in my best professorial voice: "That is a statue in the Met, in the Petrie Court," to which he replied "Oh, excuse me, I didn't look at it closely."  Well, he was faking it, since I doubt he would have known one statue from another, and I was faking it since Petrie Court or no, it was still a photo centering on the penis.  What was definitely art in the Petrie Court was probably porn on my cellphone.