It’s not a manicure, it’s a MAN-icure

So, yesterday I was persuaded – it didn’t take much persuasion, more on that shortly – to get a manicure.  Now I’m typing this entry with shiny, pretty fingernails with my cuticles all clean and stuff, and you know what?  I like it.  Hell yeah.  Call me a nancy-boy, revoke my man-card, whatever – I like having clean nails.  And I liked getting my hands taken care of!  Before you ask, yes, I’m going to get a pedicure the next time as well.  I know it’s all manly to have the corn-chip toenail, but that shit is gross and I like to keep my feet in good shape; they do a lot of work for me and get very little pampering in return.

I get the sense I need to explain myself a little.  OK.  I’ve been thinking about getting a manicure for a while now.  There are two reasons: the first is that I bite my nails, a habit I know is disgusting.  The reason I do that is because I really don’t like dirt under my nails.  I’m not metro but I do practice good basic hygiene, and dirt under the nails is one of the things that I just can’t ignore.  With the job I have, I do tend to get dirty nails.  Unfortunately, the times I tend to notice the dirt is when I’m stuck in traffic, or waiting at an office, or otherwise bored with time to kill and no nail clippers available.  That leads to me biting my nails, so I can get them down to where I can clean the dirt.  That biting, of course, leads to uneven nails which I need to bite down even more to straighten them out, which leads to pulled hangnails, dead skin around the nails, and occasionally even nails torn down below the quick, which bleed.  This also leads to having dull pain in at least a few of my fingers for a couple of days or more; on any day I usually have at least one finger emitting some level of nuisance pain.  Sometimes several.

Given all that, I thought it would make sense to get a manicure.  Perhaps, I thought, if I had my nails professionally taken care of that would lead to less of what I mentioned above.  It was certainly worth a shot.  The only thing holding me back, all these years, was that I am a man and manly men don’t get manicures.  Occasionally, I do indulge in that stereotype.  Also, nail salons tend to have an acid-like smell that is rough on me.  I’m fairly sensitive to odors and prefer to avoid the obnoxious ones when I can.  Now, if they could somehow make the nail salons smell like WD-40 I’d be in there every week.  Fuck, that would be awesome!  I think I’m on to something here – a man’s nail salon that has manly odors, like WD-40 and two-stroke exhaust.  With sports on TV and chicks in lingerie and checkerboard floors.

So, at the minimal persuasion of a certain someone I was with, we both went to get our nails done.  I wasn’t nervous, just curious.  It actually felt good, except for the few moments when the nailist (my word) dug into an area where I had torn out a hangnail.  That actually made it better for me; a little pain to manly it up.  There were lotions involved and solvents that I didn’t know what they were for, and even a hand massage at the end.  The best part was when the nailist gave me an oblique look  and then said to the person with me “he has big hands!”

Shameless self-promotion here: I never thought I had big hand before yesterday, but it was confirmed by two sources that I do indeed have big hands.  And no, I’m not going to show them off at work tomorrow.  You’ll have to sneak in surreptitious glances for confirmation.  I’m not a whore, at least not in person.

After all the cuticle-digging and clipping and soaking, I got the buff job and then I was done.  For the first time in my adult life, my nails were clean, neat, even and shiny.  It felt (and still feels) good!  Call me a homo if you want but I like my shiny nails.  So much so, in fact, that I will get a pedi next.  For some reason I tend towards ingrown toenails, which means I do take care of my feet, but it would be nice to have somebody else do the dirty work (even while I’m thinking how horrible a job it is to clean feet for a living…ugh).  If this makes me less of a man, then so be it, I’m less of a man.

Just remember, folks…I have big hands.  That more than makes up for everything else.