Out of My Comfort Zone and Into the Nail Salon

So for the past 7 years I have carted Other Bill to and from appointments with a plethora of MD specialists. Dermatologists, Ocular Oncologists, and Paleontologists, because we are getting old as dinosaurs. I consider it an honor and nothing more than my husbandly duties. But throughout the Covid years, it has been especially irritating, because instead of sitting in an air conditioned waiting room, I’ve been reduced to uncomfortably squirming in my hot car for hours while he gets tortured alone by various physicians. Now and then he wants to “Do Something Special” for me, which usually takes the form of a seafood dinner or a pulled pork sandwich from our favorite barbecue place.

 

So last week he made the “Do Something Special” announcement, but it took a different turn this time. Instead of shrimp and crab claws, he said he wanted us to go get pedicures.

 

I was skeptical and hesitant. The last time I thought about anything pedicure related was when I heard the appalling news of a coworker who had to go to the hospital for IV antibiotics after a bad pedicure left her with a nasty, ugly, painful infection.

 

My response to his idea was one word: “Why?”

 

Now I’m sure there are actually some straight men who get pedicures, and I suspect there is a greater percentage of gay men who partake in foot related hygiene. I have, however, gone nearly 65 years without paying someone to touch my feet. The little homophobe I carry around in my head tells me it is just unmanly. I consider it a silly luxury done mostly by Karens who do nothing but complain, beginning with the clipping and not ending until the undertipping. Besides, people don’t want to be looking at my ugly feet. My baby toes are bizarrely curly-cued, and I have a ganglion cyst on my left ankle. They are also OLD feet, and my toenails are rapidly starting to look like the thick, yellowed clippings that Nancy Reagan, according to her diary, found in Miss Lillian Carter’s bedroom of the White House when they moved in.

 

Other Bill said there was a guy in his office who swore by pedicures and got them all the time. The guy is straight, which perplexed my little internal homophobe guy.

 

Thinking that I would be a lot happier with an all-you-can-eat stone crab claw dinner, but remembering the gift-horse-in-the-mouth thing, I figured I could gently get him to change his mind.

 

“Where do you want to get it done?” I asked, knowing he hadn’t researched anything, and I was right.

 

“I don’t know, the closest one, I guess,” he said.

 

I made a face and then described my co-worker’s infection. In vivid, full-color detail that I made up. I lied about things like purple pus, Novocaine-free incisions, and radical pain.

 

He said he would research it. The next day he came home with a name of a place. No one recommended it to him, and when I pressed him and on the location, it was, shockingly, the one that was closest to us. Clearly he had Yelped “Nail salons near me.”

 

“Let me do some research,” I said, figuring I could come up with dozens of excuses as to why it wasn’t convenient to do research. 

 

Nevertheless, I searched for the best pedicure, just in case. The highest recommended joint was in Miami Beach, a city that is closed off to people who are as unattractive as we are. They have gated checkpoints. Even if we could forge the online screening and the notarized selfie-uploading process and get an appointment, we would probably have to pay $50 more just to park.

 

The next highest rated on the list was, oddly enough, The One Closest To Us.

 

I was hoping if I said nothing, he would just forget about it and bring home a nice fish instead.

He didn’t. After asking me about my research, I told him the name of the one I found, hoping he wouldn’t put two and two together and say, “Isn’t that the one I found?” To his credit, he remained mute, but I did notice the Eyebrow Arc of Irony.

 

So he made appointments, and I reluctantly drove us there, wishing, like Elaine on Seinfeld, that I was fluent in Korean so I would know what the technicians were saying about my calloused, nasty, 65-years-of-neglect, Lillian Carter dogs.

 

So, you know those wonderful massage chairs we used to go sit in at the mall until the manager of The Sharper Image threatened to call the police unless we left? This pedicure place HAD THOSE! 

 

True, I was way out of my comfort zone at this joint, but some mechanical neck-kneading was just the thing for it.

 

So soon my technician arrived with a box of unknown liquids and tools. I told her it was my first time, and she -smiled. I sensed she didn’t understand me or, more likely, was thinking, Great, another gaebul-headed jerk who doesn’t know he’s supposed to tip me.

 

She gave me a menu of pedicure choices, one of which was a vegan pedicure, which made me wonder if I had to eat my toenail clippings. I selected the midrange one, and was prompted to order a flavor of sugar scrub. Being a native Floridian, I chose tangerine.

 

She put a foot bath condom over the soaking bucket and a towel on the footrest, and before I could blink she had clipped all my toenails with the speed of a Weed Eater. She then pointed to the water, directing me to soak my feet for a few minutes in a hot bath. It felt really good. After that she took out my left foot and held up something that looked like a dental tool, but it was a tiny spoon-shaped pedicure pusher-backer. Then with speedy precision she snipped away my ugly overgrown toenail foreskin. Amazing! 

 

The best part, though was this: After she put some sort of goop all over my feet, she whipped out this cheese grater and started painlessly scraping all my callouses and dead skin off. And there was a lot of it. Sixty-five years of it, to be exact. Other Bill pointed it out to me, and I looked down, and saw this mountain of Parmesan heaped up on a towel.

 

“Gross!” I said.

 

Other Bill, who is connected to my brain via Bluetooth, made the cheese connection and said, “We should have spaghetti for dinner tonight!”

 

Then came the orangey sugar scrub, a big glob of moisturizer that she rubbed from toes to knees, a brief leg massage, and finally, steaming hot towels. Just as if my feet were flying first class.

 

I am a changed man. I don’t care who makes fun of it. When I touched my feet, they didn’t even seem like mine. “I’ve never had soft feet before,” I told Other Bill.

 

I was allowed to remain in the chair until Other Bill was finished off. Embarrassingly, his cheese scrapings couldn’t hold a candle to what I had sloughed off.

 

I really enjoyed the whole experience. It has totally opened my mind. Now I’m wondering what other services I have missed out on that I might now experience. Waxing? Eyebrow threading? Anal bleaching? Maybe next time Other Bill wants to Do Something Special for me, he’ll hire me a muscular, curly-haired green-eyed Italian hustler for an hour or two. Or maybe…MAYBE a female prostitute.

 

Probably not. A man has to draw the line somewhere.