Friday afternoon, I found an inexpensive but good-looking nail salon to go to. I decided I’d go in, have my nails done, and get some facial waxing done, too, to keep the Sasquatchy nature of my self from growing too evident. So I go in, and tell them I’d like a mani/pedi with french tips, and also an eyebrow and chin wax. So far, normal stuff. They have me sit down in the pedicure chair (a chair with a little basin/tub attached at the bottom) and start soaking my feet while they get prepared.
I don’t know what the normal procedure for this stuff is. Gal lets me soak my feet for a few minutes, and then pulls the right one out to start trimming cuticles/nails in preparation for the painting, and general girlification. About this time, she sees my feet – and more specifically, the heels of my feet, which are cracked, almost black with dirt, and actually have divots in them from calluses that have flaked off like dead skin.
She immediately starts jabbering in … I don’t know what, to be honest. But she’s talking a mile a minute, the other gal at the other pedicure station is looking over, and even the woman who does the waxing has come out to the front. They’re all staring at my feet, eyes wide, mouths open, and this look of horror that makes me feel, no shit, like Godzilla stomping the hell outta Tokyo. The girl working on my feet pats me on the top of the foot, then stands and scurries back to the back room. She reemerges after a minute with two grocery sacks, a jar of whitish-green goop, and a look of grim determination.
Both of my feet are pulled out of the water (where I have, in my shame, hidden them from the sight of all those who are decent and god-fearing people), and she scoops up a handful of the goop, and begins smearing it on the bottom of my feet. Timidly, I ask her, “What’s that?” She looks at me, and answers, “Callous remover. You need. You need.” That’s all she says, over and over, as she slathers my feet with this product, then ties them up in grocery sacks.
While my feet sit in the bags (is the product heat activated? does it need a closed environment to work? or did they just really not want to look at my feet, hence the bags?), she pulls my hands over. At least here, I can feel nominally human and non-evil. My nails are all clean, even the shortest of them is peeking above the top of my finger by a bit, and they look good overall. She sets to work on them, soaking and trimming and pushing, before eventually doing the french tip.
FYI – if you are not in the know (as apparently, I am not), French Tip is not the fake nails. It is where they paint a white strip on the top of your own nail, and curve it a bit, before painting the rest of the nail in a slightly pink-tinged clear polish. It looks sophisticated without the over-the-topness of huge, long fake nails.
Once done with my nails, and with my feet still fermenting in their tied up sacks, she gets out the lotion, spreads it on my arms, and gives me a “massage”. I put massage in quotes there, because I’m not entirely certain it could be called a massage. She squeezed the lotion on, and then proceeded to beat the holy hell out of my arms, smacking them with her fists frequently. I was wincing the entire time, but tried to take it as stoically as possible. After all, this was pennance for my feet.
Finally, she decided my feet had stewed in their own evil juices long enough. She drew on a pair of gloves. And just to let you know … You know that scene in movies, where the guy goes to visit the proctologist, and the doctor pulls on the rubber gloves and they *snap*? Yeah, that’s what this woman did. My feet were akin to a poop chute to her. I am mortified.
Anyways, she draws on these gloves, and takes an implement I can only describe as vaguely reminiscent of a cheese grater, and begins to scrape the hell out of my feet. At first, it tickles a bit. And I giggle, just a tiny bit. Apparently, this drives her to insane heights of rage or somesuch, because all of a sudden, there is no more gentle motion. The woman is rubbing and scraping this thing across the bottom of my feet so fast that sheer friction has my foot heating up. I begin to wince and squirm, but am now terrified of what further shows of emotion might do to her, so I keep my trap shut and just deal.
After an agonizing five minutes, she has finished with the right foot, and repeats the procedure on the left foot. Once all of this is done, I get to soak my feet once more. Presumably, this is to remove all of the disgusting whatever that the woman has been scraping off my feet. Too soon, though, this pleasure is revoked, as my legs are tapped and I timidly lift my feet once more from the water. Now comes torture – the cuticle pusher/nail cleaner/general device of hellish torment.
Just FYI – the big toe on my left foot, the nail is slightly ingrown. Not to a large extent, and not even really ingrown. Just enough that the edge of the nail is very close to the skin, and getting under it hurts a bit. This woman goes to town, digging each nail so damned free of the nailbed that they might as well have been detachable, and then scraping the hell out of my cuticles to trim them back. Once she is satisfied, she repeats the painting procedure.
I think I am done with this. I begin to relax. Then, I see her reach for that little bottle of purple lotion, and I see the devilish glint in her eye. Oh, no. Of course i am not done. She will have her revenge, by god, and I will learn better than to come in with such atrocious feet.
She squeezes out the lotion once more, and then sets to “massaging” my legs with the same vicious energy she had used on my arms. I wince and try to squirm as far back into the chair as possible, but eventually give up, and accept the pain. After all, pain is the only way that I will learn.
Finally, finally, she is done. She slides my shoes (flip flops, of course) back onto my feet with surprising tenderness, and directs me back to the waxer’s room. That portion of the trip is uneventful, on the whole, and soon I am paying my bill and bidding them good day.
I don’t know who was more scared at the end of that trip – me or them. All I know is it will likely haunt all of us for a while.
