maybe you're just a person?
a human, making choices
On a midweek afternoon, when it’s too late to start anything meaningful, I go to the nail place. I’ve already spent more time and money than I intended to in the book shop, and so the spirit with which I go in is fuck it in nature. USA Nails is on the same side of the street as my pal’s flat and is better than US Nails on the other side she’s told me before.
There are three people in the salon, none of them paying customers. Near the front, a youngish man on his phone. Further back, at the nail station, a woman who is younger than him. At the very back of the shop an old woman sits in the massage chair. The man welcomes me in English and gestures for me to sit opposite the young woman who is wearing a leather bomber jacket and a surgical mask the likes of which we were all wearing for a while. No, I tell him when he asks, I don’t know what I want exactly. The wall behind the young woman is lined with dozens upon dozens of bottles but there’s no time to look since she’s wordlessly presented me with a plastic box of painted nails on large hoops and is gesturing for me to pick one from this selection as if we’re in a rush.
The choice is baffling I say, in part because my attention is on the nail dust gathered in the inner elbow creases of her jacket. The man translates what I’ve said or something else I haven’t said. Perhaps for me — someone who has been mostly ambivalent about nails — the best choice is plain and light and so I pick a colour that it turns out isn’t a colour at all but the gel they use to make nails stronger before the colour. I can have it on its own, the man says, and I wonder how I’ll explain this to the girls at the end of the school day.
The girls. The way I say it in my head, with two syllables (gir-ills), is not how I ever say it out loud now though a long time ago I probably did. Often, when I think this word, I hear my old therapist or my colleague speaking. I’ve decided they probably grew up in the same place which is a place not far from where I did the later portion of my growing up but far enough away that girls is a two-syllable word.
As she roughs up the surface of my nails and takes a large make up brush to them to swipe off the dust, I’m minded of how I hate nails that look thick or globby but I don’t know whether to say something since I wouldn’t want it to be heard as a criticism of her as-yet-unseen work. She swipes them with an acetone-soaked cotton pad and now I like them far better than I did when I sat down but to get up and leave would be rude so I stay.
She applies the gel with a series of finer and finer brushes and motions for me to put my hand under the lamp when all the fingers on one hand have a coat. The blue light nips and I’m annoyed for not applying factor 50 to the backs of my hands which I do daily some of the year but just now it is March and they’ve been in gloves since October. The UV pen she uses after the next coat is even sorer than the lamp. It must be illegal, I decide, since it takes no time at all to set the gel. The pain creeps in and intensifies long after she’s moved on to the next fingertip. Just like a burn, I think, and recognise that is what is happening and this is what I get for doing something on a whim.
I’m in your nail place, I text my friend when I’ve got a free hand. She jokes about it being her husband’s nail place, which it isn’t at all. This succeeds in making me laugh but then, subsequently, makes me think about the lunch I was at recently. At the lunch, I had become distracted when I noticed that a man I know well had clearly been for a manicure, his nails filed and glossy with clear polish. I didn’t know how to feel about that though of course he is entitled to do what he likes with his own hands.
The girl is finished in no time, rubbing oil across my fingertips that I want to wipe off straight away. I don’t know if it’s cash only in here but I hand some notes to her wondering whether she’ll have to pass them to the man. I step out into the wind. It’s pick-up time.
What did you get did you get cat eye
basic BIAB bitch
V nice tho and is that the first time
In years! THE LIGHT! Prob illegal levels of UVA in her wee pen haha
Yeh it stops hurting after a while dunno if that’s good
LOLZ
I mean it doesn’t hurt me anymore
The man was looking at me like I was a total wimp
I remember the first time I was like WHY IS IT HURTING
You’re an ol’ pro now. I don’t know if it hurt me in the past but 😐 whatever. It looks nice
