"Pick color"

Last week, I attempted to make another stand for myself, dear readers. About ten years ago, along with not wearing clothes intended for exercise when not exercising, I used to get my nails done every Saturday. I had been coveting a fellow mother's neatly manicured fingertips, nails coated in a rich fall brown and I thought to myself, "This wearing real clothes thing is working out quite well, why not start getting my nails done again?" So after cleaning out the attic all day Saturday, I decided to reward myself and hot-footed it to the local nail salon before they could close, ready to re-enter the world of nail art.

Those of you on the east coast will be familiar with the Korean nail salons that pepper every town and hamlet, usually managed by a middle-aged woman who speaks the most English of the crew. You walk in and search the row of faces, covered by surgical masks, trying to catch the eye of The Boss who will ask what service you want, nod, scream out something in Korean, then instruct for you to "pick color" and you sit down and wait. The timing of my decision was not great. Any woman over the age of eighteen knows when you go to the nail place within and hour of closing, it's going to be you and all the other schmucks who put it off until the last minute, waiting almost an hour, vying for the most recent Us Weekly and the last bottle of Ballet Slippers. I almost laughed out loud when a teenager walked in after me saying she had called ahead and made an "appointment". Sure, and I have a bridge you might be interested in buying. You can call these salons, and if you can decipher the heavily accented English, you will be told the wait is "not long" or you can come at a specific time, but no matter what you've been told, you're waiting with the rest of us, sister. These places are all about high volume. You want an appointment, go somewhere where they pay their workers a living wage and there's not a rice cooker in the bathroom.

I had brought two library books with me, so the wait was not an issue. Thirty minutes later, I was called and taken over to the pedicure chair, or as H call it, "the throne". Back in the day, H once had to bring my the car keys while I was getting my nails done. He crept in like a thief, so terrified was he of this foreign-run, female oasis, but got enough ammo in that two minutes to call me "your highness" for a month after seeing me in an elevated chair with a tiny Asian woman working on my feet. And speaking of men and nail places, H did it right. He ran in and ran out. I find men in nail salons so intrusive. They throw off the entire energy of the place. Whether they are in there getting their nails done, which is WEIRD even if the guy is a hand model, or even worse, paying for their female companion to get hers done, like they can't just hand her the cash and take a walk around the block, instead of sitting there propriertarily, like a pimp, men do not belong. And it is so awkward when a guy works there. You can see all the women trying to place themselves out of The Bosses line of sight when the male technician becomes available hoping to dodge that bullet. I don't want to hold hands worth any man but my husband, thanks.

I remove my shoes and climb into the massage chair, hoping the woman doesn't grimace at the state of my feet. Running develops quite a thick layer of calluses so my feet could pretty much be called hooves. Also, my lack of pedicure time, coupled with my penchant for open-toed shoes, requires a lot of at-home jobs. This lack of time also extends to doing my nails myself, which become a crisis every other Saturday night when I have, yet again, forgotten to freshly paint my toes, and not wanting to alter my shoe selection, am forced to slap yet another coat of polish over the existing chipped one, creating several strata of polish of varying colors for the technician to remove.

Eight hundred cotton balls and a gallon of acetone later, my naked tootsies are plunked into the tub. Now, maybe it's been too long since I had my feet done, but I thought the packet of green powder this gal poured into the water was to disinfect it, but instead it was some kind of aloe gel and my feet have been submerged in what I can best describe as feeling like a tub of fresh vomit. Am I supposed to be enjoying this sensation? Mercifully, she adds another packet a minute later that dissolves the puke bath and returns it to liquid state. Then another surprise. Just when I am expecting the gal to start rubbing in what I thought was lotion, and start the heavenly calf massage, she starts scraping the skin of my shins with this grainy scrub instead. Do some women have ridiculously rough skin on their legs? I'm going to leave with road rash! Eventually we do get to the rubby part, but GODDAMN, that hurt.

There is scraping and clipping, and the most humiliating - having someone dig out the nasty shit under your toe nails, which you know smells like death and you swear you will begin to clean this area daily from this point on. Not going to happen. Then the gal separates and wraps my toes in their little toilet paper muffler, that I can never seem to get duplicate at home, to keep them separated during painting, and finally, we get to the shellacking part which, thankfully, does not involve humiliation of any kind. Next, I am whisked off to the manicure station.

The pedicure station is rife with the weirdness of having someone work closely on what can arguably be described as one of the dirtier parts of your body that is not an orifice. Manicures, however, are awkwardness defined. Imagine sitting across from someone, holding hands with them, in fact, and not speaking a word or making eye contact. The last time I did that I was in eighth grade and we were watching Back to the Future. I used to feel rude maintaining this silence, and would try, in vain, to engage the nail tech in some light banter. I quickly figured out this was as much of a pain in the ass for her as it was for me. She would much rather cluck to her neighbor in Korean, probably about me ala Elaine on Seinfeld, than talk to me about the weather. Also, it felt false to me. Like, let's pretend earning three dollars an hour and possibly working off some kind of indentured servitude, is your life's calling and you want to hear all about me and my suburban problems. I always imagine the workers who have to listen to the ladies who don't have a clue, and keep babbling about their lives, have a fantasy about stabbing them in the throat with a cuticle clipper. Sure, there are regulars who have developed relationships with their usual gal, but those ladies are typically getting acrylics, which seeing how long that process is, I'd have to crack too and learn Myung's family tree too.

Regardless of conversational status, come manicure time, the ladies are always horrified by how short I keep my nails. I had some serious talons in high school, but now with three kids, long nails are only another area for feces and random grossness I touch daily to get trapped so they had to go. They always half-heartedly file my nails, as if they're not even worth the effort. My cuticles, on the other hand, are a job and a half. Bathing kids and wiping asses causes some pretty raggedy hands. As my gal begins to snip away with the clippers, I, once again, wish I had remembered to bring my own tools, so I don't wind up with one of those hideous staph infections from dirty nail tools I read about in magazines. I'm not fooled into believing two minutes in that light box cleans these tools any more than I am that swishing them around in that blue water they label as "disinfectant" does the job.

I wise up when I see my tech wielding a squirt bottle with that same gritty shit they put on my legs. Knowing I will not be bale to hide, red, raw forearms, as I will my abraded legs, I quickly stop her and ask her to use regular lotion instead. This is the best part of any manicure - the hand massage. I try not to let my head hit that piece of foam covered in wrapping paper and packing tape that my forearms are resting on, as I almost doze off, only to have to pull myself into instant alertness to stay awake for the polishing. One errant hand movement can totally screw up your gal's handiwork, causing much Korean muttering.

I make the lumbering walk to the drying station in my paper slippers, as the nail tech follows behind, clutching my car keys (which I have, for once, been smart enough to take out of my bag, preventing the mortifying experience of having a stranger rummage through Goldfish, broken crayons and unraveling tampons in the bottom of my purse), shoes and coat. More uncomfortable non-conversant time, as I sit face-to-face with a fellow client, where we briefly make eye contact, smile and both agree to pretend the other is not there and stare into space.

After a few minutes, I am bored, since I can no longer read my books, and starting to wonder if H knows to feed the kids dinner, or if our offspring are starving because of my vanity. I paint on the ingenious nail oil these salons use to create a slick barrier on your nails to prevent any nicks on the way out the door. FYI, this is an east coast thing apparently, since in California one time, they looked at me like I had three heads when I asked where it was. Seeing me preparing for departure, my tech runs over with a roll of plastic wrap. She paints my toes with the same oil and swathes my feet in cellophane, like bizarre leftovers, and shoves my shoes back on.

Thrust back into the world, I am half-effective. I turn the car key gingerly in the ignition. I walk slowly for fear of jamming my feet into the front of my shoes. Once home, I can't open juice boxes or wash a dish without thinking about wrecking my nails. This goes on for two days. By the third day, I give up and return to my nail destroying ways, and my polish looks like I've stuck my hands in a Cuisinart. Sadly, I think this new leaf is not going to stay turned over.

I see weekly manicures as somewhat akin to Chinese foot binding - a symbol of a woman's ability to not participate in household labor. I don't mean this as judgement, I'd LOVE to participate, but right now, it's just not going to happen. I can't find the stay-at-home equivalent of dialing my phone with a pencil (which I am always fascinated by) to save my nails. Sure, I will still get my nails did for special occassions, and enjoy the forty-eight hours they actually look good. I will put well-kept nails in the same box as blown-out hair, to be unpacked when everyone is in school full time and able to wipe their own asses. But I'd I'll probably break a nail using my bare hands to open it, rendering them unpaintable.