was getting a pedicure and no, I cannot really even fucking begin to tell you how uncomfortable the very word “pedicure” makes me- I don’t think I’ve ever sat in that chair willingly, outside of weddings and other social obligations and okay, okay i will stop disavowing. I am really just trying to figure out what the fuck kind of things people do when they have money to spare. And, I’ll be honest, this was one of the first things that came to mind.
I have already tried buying an air conditioner and that turned out great except I always feel guilty with it on. I tried buying clothes but it still feels like a waste of money and suddenly I can’t find anything I like and I get uneasy and overwhelmed and leave. I tried traveling, that was nice but I still feel like I don’t deserve it and that ultimately, it’s a distraction. I try, and succeed, in buying books but then I get nervous with all the ones I haven’t read yet lying around and taunting me and so I have cut myself off.
I have been trying to think of better, more clever ways to spend my money, but I honestly can’t really think of any.
(I eyed my toothbrush this morning and thought, Ha! I should buy a toothbrush! That is something I can buy!)
(Is that how it happens to people?)
And so I looked at my feet in yoga and they were as ridiculous as always so I called my dear friend and we went happily and got to sit still for an hour or so while it rained outside and talk about Things.
She is happy with something and I asked her how the others felt about it and she said Chris wondered what it was like to hear me and her talk lately, “When you and Meaghan talk do you just scream SWOON back and forth to each other?” And she told him that no, I say “swoon” and she says “zomg” until we reach a fever pitch and then try to remind ourselves that this is not, necessarily, a bad thing.
I smiled and swooned and rolled my eyes and kept watching the Polish women try to figure out the air conditioner.
One woman was getting a manicure with curlers in her hair and I looked at the others, flopping around in their wedge flip flops and kitten heel slingbacks, carrying with them a near-guarantee of visible panty line. I sort of fell in love with all of them, with the frosted hair and heavy makeup and ill-fitting undergarments. They reminded me of the way I thought about femininity when I was just discovering it— sparkly barrettes, lots of trying.
It killed me that I couldn’t understand them, so I still tried to laugh when they did, which is crazy I know, and they were so tan and their clothes were so tight and they had so many things about them that needed tending to here- hairs, nails, toes, etc- all the different fights we fight when we are making it a point to try to Be Better.
I have those same things, but I guess they are more elementary. Sometimes I wonder, what would someone who had someone that loved them do? Do people in love wash their sheets a lot? Is that a way I can be better? Should I fold my laundry at the laundromat and then I will be better? If I was a Real Person would I have some backup toothbrushes in a drawer somewhere? Do Good People never have crappy underwear they only wear when they haven’t done laundry, and oh, jesus, how do you hide all these things from people if you want them to love you?
I thought these women must have men at home who love them, this one has pearls on for fuck’s sake, this woman is strutting around with her tanned legs and she knows she is the one with the big boobs, and maybe they hang out together here all day trying to be more beautiful for their husbands who I hope tell them they are and by the time I am trying to figure out what they look like naked (in the least perverted way possible?), my silly toes are finished and, relieved, I go to stand up but someone rushes over and kneels at my feet and blows on my toes. Blows! And the most sex kitteny one of the bunch says, “No, a few minutes,” very cautiously and quietly because I think she is insecure about her English or about me or who knows but so I nod and smile ingratiatingly and then two of them hold court over my feet without a word and pick up my 5 dollar flip flops and one holds my foot and the other slowly, slowly, millimeter by millimeter, moves my foot towards my shoe and then into it, with a little cheer. Once I have figured out what is going on, I am unsure what to do or say, how to help. Should I clench my toes together or splay them apart? should I take my shoe from them and do it myself? Should I sit perfectly still? Instead of choosing any of these things I do them all, and terribly, and awkwardly, and cringingly.
After what could only have been two full minutes both shoes are on and they are clapping. “You are so good. You are really so, so good!” the sexy one tells me.I cannot believe they don’t hate me! “Yes! So good!” the other one claps. “Yayyy…,” I add nervously, still shaked and still wondering if they take credit cards.
After I pay an amount that is so small I am almost disappointed that I haven’t wasted more money, we leave and there I am, walking around with paper towels woven through my toes, walking around Greenpoint, losing all my street cred, waving my hands around as I cross the street and literally exclaiming, “i am losing all of my street cred!”, but still on a high because they told me I was Very Good and my bed has new sheets on it and my toenails are pink and I swept my floor today and well, maybe I can just pay more than I have to this month on my student loans and trick someone, maybe even myself, into loving me.
