Apocalypse Nail

I come from a long line of women who do their own nails. I remember as a child, on Sunday afternoons, my mom would stop the world from spinning so she could do her own manicure. She would sit down in the kitchen under the strongest light next to the telephone and pull out her nail kit. It contained nail files, clippers, polish remover, cotton balls, and the polish. Moms is a pink frosted girl, and has never once strayed from that. It looks great on her tan hands and accentuates her flawlessly shaped, strong nails.

I was born with wimpy nails. I bit them as a wee HellCat as an act of defiance (and also as an outlet for my anxiety), and never once admitted to wanting them painted. I fought it, even though my mom wanted to pass on the tradition to me. Instead, I just sat with her after the process was finished while she was waiting for them to dry. We talked about life, my dad, and the reason that my nails were so weak. She suggested that I clip them continuously with a strong nail clipper and never file them. I tried for years to follow her advice, but it never worked. So eventually I gave up and resigned myself to having shitty nails.

Two years ago I worked where one of the higher-ups was a super duper Valley Girl princess. She had beautiful blonde hair, a cute ass, the perfect jeans, and flawless nails. One day I took a deep breath and asked her what she did to make them look so beautiful (as I hid the ten little train wrecks I called my digits).

"I only go to the best place in town." Followed by an implied, "Duh."

"Oh. How do they make your hands so...pretty?"

She explained the process of getting acrylics, and taught me right off the bat that they didn't have to be fire-engine red talons like I originally thought. I kept listening, and she kept talking, and my hands and I unwittingly entered a new phase in our time together.

I now get my nails done every two weeks.

I went to the place the Valley Girl recommended, and she was right about it being the best. There, they have fake cherry trees adorning a classy, serene salon where the women are all calm and the nail lacquer knows no earthly limits. Soft asian tunes (you know, lots of strings) play on the speakers. Endless photos of celebrities grace the walls, saying things like "Tammy, you saved my LIFE. Seriously. Take my first born. Love, Courtney Love." It's an impressive joint.

It's also so fucking expensive it makes my face hurt.

So, even though the work is without equal, my pocketbook requested that I attempt to look for another place. What I discovered was...well, not pretty. The women who work at the Valley Girl's salon are endlessly nice and take good care of their customers. Everyone else does not.

All the women working in every shop I've ever gone in are Vietnamese. And they pick only certain phrases to speak in Enlglish. Among some of them are:
-"What you need?"
-"French tip cost 5 dolla extra."
-"You want pedicure with that?"
-"You pay me now."

The rest of the chatter is exclusively in another language. This makes me uncomfortable enough. But to further my discomfort is the fact that I am sitting in a chair having a woman one-third my size wash my feet. I have just enough proletariat in me to believe that there is something wrong with that picture. And I think these women see it, too. So they talk in their native tongue (most likely about us) to blow off steam.

I like to picture subtitles underneath their faces, translating what they say. As Linn scrubs at my calluses, she says, "This one have feet like ox." She switches feet. "She will never marry and disgrace her family." The woman rubbing lotion into my hands giggles. "She probably likes women anyway. Family already disgraced." And their laughter floats through the acetone-scented air like cotton balls in a light breeze.

Then there's the fingernails. Here's where things get intense. I have silk put on my fingernails to strengthen them without making them look too "done." The result is thin, natural, and just strong enough that they look nice and don't break. The only problem is that this is the one way to get your nails done that reasserts the Vietnamese's victory in the war.

The excess silk extending from the tops of my nails always has some nail glue on it that has gone astray. It will stick to the skin surrounding my nails, resulting in the skin needing to be pushed back and away from the silk. In the war, POWs got bamboo shoots shoved under their fingernails. Today, in many salons around the United States, innocent women are undergoing the same thing, but with orange sticks or, in some cases, the manicurists' fingernails.

It is pretty intense. And I just keep thinking, as I am wincing from the tiny little pinches, that this kind of pain without pretty nails at the end must have been really terrible.

I try not to go to these other lesser establishments, because the Valley Girl's salon is the only one I have been to where I don't feel as though I'm being punished for dropping Agent Orange on the manicurists' families. The good news is that in the lesser salons, sometimes their attitudes change dramatically when you treat them like human beings! Gasp! If you ask their name, tell them thank you, or throw a smile in there, things might be different. I am reminded that performing such a service in a city where most people think it's their RIGHT to have people wait on them must be pretty shitty. So maybe this miniscule form of torture is just character-building for them.

But for me, I just want us all to be buddies. I want my white tips thin and gleaming. And I also don't want to have to go all Martin Sheen on their ass during a fill. Or maybe that's just triggered by waxing. Hmm.

this is the end. g