TKOG Who buffs her talons to perfection

This week. on Secret Society of List Addicts, a list so weird it kind of defies introduction. Masons and literature are thematized.

NTKOG #157: The kind of polished Lady Who Lipglosses who thinks nothing of dropping Jacksons and hard-fought weekend time for no other reason than sheer self-indulgent pampering.

I am: a consumer in the most literal sense of the word. When I chisel cash out of my anemic paycheck, it’s not to collect objects or adorn myself — it’s to nourish myself with food and literature.

I am not: sure my schedule can even handle any more self-indulgence. I have no kids, no pets, no mortgage, a job I can leave at the office. Everything I do is for me.

The Scene: A cut-rate nail salon across the street from the Harvard Square Peet’s (aka: my weekend office). When I saw the sign advertising $12 manicures, it struck me: Nails! Those are totally a thing I have! Probably!

I haven’t gotten a manicure since I was 17 for reasons that are, to me, obvious. I’m a woman. I use my hands every day to create my universe. Cooking, typing, scrubbing, sewing — as far as I’m concerned, the only reason so many women get their nails done at all is so their fingers can lay still for half an hour. As for me, the only time I’ve ever routinely acknowledged my nails at all was last year, when I drove six hundred miles a week and thus had many red lights at which to glop on half a coat of lacquer.

As I selected a polish color, figured the contours of my schedule: twenty minutes here, tops, five minutes for nails to dry, then back to the laptop. After all, how long could it possibly take to — oh. Oh.

Turns out when I’d been smearing Sally Hansen on my poor fingers all these years, I’d been Doing. It. Wrong. Manicurist lined up a gleaming row of … medieval dental implements?, and a dozen unlabeled bottles of translucent goo. By the time she’d started filing my nails, my clothes had already fully absorbed the smell of tenth-grade chemistry class.

When I was nine years old, I was firmly convinced that becoming A Real Woman meant wearing glossy cherry-red nail polish and high heels that clacked authoritatively even on carpeted floors. Consider this my slightly ostentatious nostalgic homage.

For the next thirty-five minutes, I watched a loop of short infomercials on the Feel Bad About Your Body Advertising Network while the manicurist soaked, buffed, lotioned and snipped away at every cubic millimeter of my nailbeds six times over.

“Move this hand” — “Go like this” — “Spread your fingers,” she barked periodically and vacantly I followed her directions. My brain floated with the chemicals in an ether, far away from my body, entranced in a slightly chemically aided meditation. (Is there any other kind in modern America?) The only two times I was jolted out of the trance: First, when she cleared about an ounce of skin clippings out of the jaws of the cuticle clipper and I, an inveterate nail chomper, realized with mournful lust, “There’ll be nothing to pick out of my molars on Monday.”

Then, after the prepping but before the painting, she slathered my hands with cherry-scented lotion and massaged my hands, brisk but intimate, touching every centimeter of the skin. As she put my hand down, she locked her eyes on mine: “You pay me now.” I like paying people to touch me in ways like this. Perfunctory and transactional; no motivations to pick apart later. I left a generous tip just for the little grimace in her voice.

All things told, the manicure took approximately an hour (AN HOUR!) and robbed me of a further hour of productivity, afraid to touch anything. My nails are hard and glossy, exquisitely coated in a shade of red so juicy I want to lick it. They look beautiful, and like all artificially beautiful things, I am a little bit afraid of them.

The Verdict: Well that was about the weirdest twenty bucks I’ve ever spent. I can’t imagine wanting to do it again. And yet — shiny! pretty! love!

Tagged as: cambridge, feminism, in which i probably think too much about banal things, indulgence, manicure, switching between the metric and imperial measurement systems WITH CARELESS ABANDON, vanity, what does it mean to become a woman anyway? (no seriously i don't know.)