creative writing

Blue Hair Luke

/ Karina Pinella / 14 Comments
play on Cool Hand Luke

Image: Pixabay

Luke admires his silvery 5-o-clock shadow, which makes the dark streak in his silver-white hair look indigo. If he was just a decade or two younger, he would do a somersault. Perhaps add a few more decades. He’s never really been limber, even when at 21. Last year when he buried his dear mother and a week later, celebrated his 70th birthday, he felt like a butterfly that finally shed its cocoon. Farewell, Lucia. Welcome, Luke.

Now that he’s completed his hormone treatment to realize his true self as Luke, he’s ready to hit the club tonight and try out his new look. The blue jeans encasing his long legs and button down plaid shirt hugging his wiry torso give him the appearance of an aging Marlboro man, with a punk look since he spiked his newly cropped hair with styling gel.

Luke strides over to the bar and catches the glance of a woman playing with her pearl strands. Luke winks at her and smiles. She reciprocates. Encouraged, Luke joins her.

“Buy you a drink?” Luke signals the bartender to give the woman another of what she’s having.

The woman’s eyelids appear weighted down with layers of false lashes. Her red-painted lips separate into a smile, revealing ivory-colored veneers. “Hey, cowboy, tell me what else you can give me.”

“Another drink?”

“I’m thinking more along the lines of a back rub?” She clutches her purse, ready to leave.

“Lady’s choice.”

“I live right around the corner.” She takes his hand and they both walk a block.

Once inside, she pounces on him and starts to take off his shirt. By this time, Luke realizes how quickly he’d gotten into a situation he didn’t expect so soon. His end game was to flirt and do some heavy petting with clothes on, but this woman is turning out to be hornier than a toad, and he doesn’t have all the equipment quite yet to give her a full ride. He gently pulls away from her and says, “Whoa, why don’t we sit down for a bit? I didn’t even catch your name . . .”

Breathing hard, the woman stays standing and looks disappointed. “I guess I mistook your cues. Every man I meet at that bar has only one thing in mind and that’s why I go there. I’m sorry but I’m not into name sharing. What we have here is a failure to copulate. Nothing at all just isn’t that cool, handsome.”

[With thanks to Paul Newman’s 1960s prison classic, “Cool Hand Luke”]

NYC

/ Karina Pinella / 16 Comments

New York City

Tasty big apple
Chomp, romp, stomp all day and night
A buffet of life

Times Square, the High Line,
Central Park, Harlem, Soho,
Destinations all

Each place is unique
Many adventures to plan
See which clicks with you.

Toy Cemetery

/ Karina Pinella / 21 Comments

Frayed,
Tattered,
Faded,
Gutted,
Once glorious and shiny,
Bouncy and fun,
Now all pounced on and flattened.
Some pieces missing,
No longer enjoyed,
At the bottom of the pile
In a tomb known as a toy chest,
Where they linger
Until the next spring cleaning.

toy tomb

Image: Pixabay

The Laundromat

/ Karina Pinella / 26 Comments

Space is tight inside Lu’s Launderette. Stacey finds herself standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a man about her age. They’re both folding their shirts, pants, shorts, and undergarments. She starts feeling self-conscious as she knows it’s not her imagination that he’s been surreptitiously eyeing her lace-trimmed thongs and silk teddies. Her face reddens when he catches her eyes.

He smiles and says, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m wondering where you buy your underthongs.”

Stacey suppresses a laugh as she’s never heard such a term before, though they sound just as accurate as panties. She clears her throat to quell the urge to giggle and replies, “At Madam Madison a couple of blocks from here, actually.”

“Excellent. That’ll be my next stop, then. Hey, men wear those crotch covers too. Check this out.” He shows her a pair of black nylon thongs. “They’re comfortable, and as you know, they dry quickly.”

For a minute, Stacey doesn’t know how to respond. Then, she thinks, why not. She remembers her father wearing Speedos, why not thongs indeed?

“By the way, that’s a nice looking bra. Are those from the same place too?”

My father had man boobs, but he didn’t wear a bra, Stacey thinks. She hurriedly stuffs her last articles of clothing into a duffel bag and leaves without an answer.

Quote Challenged

/ Karina Pinella / 8 Comments

Thank you kindly, vcreationss, for nominating me for the Quote Challenge. Because I’ve already done this challenge, I’m doing something a little different. Three of the attributions below are fictional, while one is not. Your mission is to determine how quote challenged I am. Which one is quoted by another? The answer is at the bottom of the post.

“Happiness is a warm gum.”
— Comedian George Burns in his nineties

Image: Pixabay

Image: Pixabay

“Forget putting my face on the $20 bill. Just put it in my pocket.”
— a working stiff with shallow pockets

Image: Pixabay

Image: Pixabay

“We can’t make people change, but we can ask them for spare change.”
— the NYC naked cowboy
cowboy

“Spread the table with good-looking food and no one will notice you left out the salt.”
— Julia Child
foodie

 

 Answer: A working stiff (who happens to be an office colleague)

Faithless

/ Karina Pinella / 7 Comments
burnt lives

Image: Pixabay

Suicide bombing
A manipulated act
Brainwashed by cowards.

Nothing more but waste
A blight to humanity
They’re the true zombies.

Soulless, purposeless
Vessels for Satan’s bidding
Nothing more, nothing.

Spam Lookalike

/ Karina Pinella / 11 Comments

spam . . . not
Freddy is excited about lunch because he gets to try Spam for the first time. His mom told him she would serve it sometime this week and it is the end of the week, so he thinks today must be the day. He runs downstairs toward the dining room. As usual, he doesn’t wear his eyeglasses because they’re uncomfortable. But his myopic vision discerns a plate sitting on the dining table, which isn’t set but they’re an informal family. The closer he gets to the table, the better he is able to make out a pinkish, rectangular shaped piece of meat in the plate. Eagerly, he picks it up and bites down, but the texture is rubbery and the taste isn’t anything he’s ever had before.

“Dumbo!” Freddy turns around to the sound of his sister’s laughing.

“You’re eating my phone case. I left it there to soak in baking soda to get the stains off. Now, you put your teeth marks on it.” His sister charges over to him and grabs her case from his hands.

“Next time, wear your glasses, so you can see what you’re doing,” she says, as she walks away with her phone case and a faint smile.