The Purple Turtle

Music blares. The room is red, ambient lighting throughout. There’s a stage on the far wall, a bar on the other, open floor in between. Packed with people of all kinds, the room is full of fetish freaks, Boy George wanna-be’s, and the rest of us… some are ugly, some are beautiful, most are somewhere in between. Most of them wish they’d been born early enough to experience new-wave 80’s when it was actually new. Some of them were. Everyone has had a few drinks, and everyone is having a good time like only an entertained crowd can.

There’s a half naked, platinum blonde woman in an outfit Bette Paige would envy, crawling through, and then dangling gracefully from, a hula hoop, suspended from the ceiling. It’s really only slightly pornographic, and only slightly impressive. But it’s something to watch, so all eyes are on her, if not on the bottom of an empty glass… waiting to be refilled.

A young man stands in the midst of this scene, watching the woman in the hoop, watching the people around him… entirely focused on one thing. In the midst of music and mayhem, boobs and booze… he can only think about her hands. The woman standing in front of him has abnormally short middle fingers. His mind runs, and the internal dialogue, between his PC side, and his honest side, is narrated over the music:

PC self: “So what if her fingers are short!”

Honest Joe: “But they’re SO short… I wonder if it’s ever been a problem. If suddenly I woke up tomorrow, and was missing an inch worth of length in each of my middle fingers… like someone had taken out the middle knuckle section… would it matter? How would I type? What if I went to flip someone off… I can’t imagine they’d be all that threatened. Who’s afraid of a guy with stubby little too short middle fingers… it kind of makes you wonder what else they’re lacking.”

PC self: “Oh my god, shut up. They’re just fingers, and they’re not even yours… she’s probably a really nice person.”

Honest Joe: “I wonder if her middle toes are too short, too. Or maybe it’s the exact opposite… maybe they’re way too long. Maybe she’s one of those women, whose foot imprints, in the bottom of the shoes they wear regularly, are all wrong… the middle toe print hangs over the edge like a monkey foot.”

Honest Joe: “I could never date anyone with long middle toes.”

PC self: “There’s a naked woman in front of you, and you’re seriously thinking about long middle toes and stubby middle fingers?”

Honest Joe: “Stubby’s a funny word…”

Zoom in on short fingers… end scene.

- Laurel Butcher