Awhile back, I had the rather illuminating notion that I would be quite stressed this week and could use a pre-Christmas trip to the spa. However, being that we’re going to New Orleans in two weeks and it is after all Christmas, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to spend the $200 on a pedicure, a manicure, and a facial. But then one morning, I was driving to work and I heard an ad for a beauty school that had a ‘spa package’ including a mani, a pedi and a facial for the low, low, price of $19. At that price, I would be insane INSANE not to take advantage of it. And at $19, I could pay for my drunken mama too, and then she’d stop making claims that I’ve been avoiding her (which is not the case, I’m just really busy and working a lot. If I’m avoiding her, then I’m also avoiding my husband, my home, and the concept of sleep.)
Cool. I made two four-hour appointments for Friday and patted myself on the back for thinking ahead. Because sometimes, I am just thrilled at how clever I am. It was too easy. Really. That should have been my first clue.
I called my mom and asked her what she was doing on Friday. ‘Working.’ She replied, and then began upon her personal campaign for martyrdom (gee, I wonder if that’s genetic? Mofo DNA.), including her hope that St. Peter does not make a mistake and bodily consume her into Heaven before she makes her rent payment.
So scratch going to the spa with Mom. Then I promptly forgot about it until Friday morning when I flipped to my Dec 20 page and saw ‘M,P, & F’ with the time from 1:00 to 4:00 blocked out. Fuck. I considered just canceling the appointment, but at that moment, my fingernails looked like crap and I still had a dob of blue nail polish on each of my big toes from Poolapalooza ’02, so a bit of pampering sounded really good.
I called Mo and explained what it entailed, offered it to her, my treat, as a Pre-Christmas Stocking Stuffer. She did have the afternoon off, coincidentally beginning at 1:00 pm, so she quickly agreed.
We met at the beauty school (oh, excuse me, ‘Cosmetology College’) and I soon learned why it cost one tenth of the real spa experience I had last January. At the spa, my facial was performed in a candlelit private room, where I lay on a padded massage table and was draped with Martha Stewartesque nubby spa blankets. At the Costmetology college, our facials were performed in a curtained off area (think hospital ward) containing two plastic chaise lounges (we likened it to the Emergency Room’ On a Cruise Ship). At the spa, I had the sounds of Enya and waterfalls. At the Cosmetology College, we had the sounds of blow dryers, a badly-tuned radio, and some old lady talking about her bunion surgery. At the spa, my welfare was constantly being questioned’ ‘Is this warm enough for you? Are you comfortable? Can I get you a Diet Coke or naked man to rub your feet?’. At the Cosmetology College, my student talked with Mo’s student about what she and her boyfriend were buying each other for Christmas.
I continued to beat myself up about how tacky and cheap the entire thing was, but nothing oh nothing prepared me for the pedicure room. It reminded me of an airport terminal during a snowstorm. People were shoved in left and right, but the only difference was that they all were in various states of shoelessness.
Feet squick me out faster than any other body part. Forget ear wax, forget anything groiny. I’d even touch someone’s bum before I’d touch their feet. It’s just that way with me. It makes me even a little light-headed to think about touching a stranger’s foot. But this room’ this room was the stuff of nightmares.
First of all, the largest demographic of clients at the Cosmetology College seems to be old ladies. And for whatever reason, one of the scariest things to me is Old Person Feet. I don’t know why, but for some reason, baby feet are far less scary than, say, eight-year-old feet. I think my entire foot legacy is linked to the times when I’d spend weekends at my great grandparent’s house. Every night, while we watched Dallas, my grandfather would strip off his sweaty polyester dress socks and out would come his scary old man feet. His toenails were yellowed but the rest of his foot looked like that of a drowned man, having spent all day in synthetic fibers and non-breathing loafers. And then he’d grab his trusty institutional-sized pump bottle of Vaseline Intensive Care, which had a yellowish tinge, like rendered fat. I can still hear the sound of the lotion glurping out into his hand. It was like the very bottle itself was trying to distance itself from the grisly task, saying SssIcck Icck Icck. Then he’d rub his palms together and proceed to anoint his feet with the yellow pus-colored cream. Rubbing over and over, between his toes with their sharp talons, slicking the hair on his toes down with the lotion.
I know. I know. Sometimes I get too descriptive. But you didn’t live it! You don’t know what it was like to see that display every night in the flickering light of the television. Even if I tried heartily to concentrate on Patrick Duffy’s face, I could still hear the slick flicking sounds of the steady application occurring. And when I thought I could barely stand it, I’d hear SssIcck Icck Icck as he lubed up his hands for the other foot. It’s a wonder I didn’t pass out right then from fright.
So when I walked into the pedicure/manicure room at the Cosmetology College and saw Old Person feet to the left of me and Old Person Feet to the right, saw little nineteen year old beauty students taking files to their eighty-year-old calluses and watching as the dead skin fell off onto the floor and no sign of a Haz Mat team appeared, it was all I could do to maintain consciousness.
Mo had a similar crisis when she realized that she had not shaved her legs and was sporting a dual set of leg warmers. ‘The itch’ we called it, in homage to Abby’s ridiculous comment about Mo’s stubbly leg tasting like itch. Mo apologized forty times to her student. I would have gloated but I was trying to find a place I could look where I wouldn’t see varicose veins or hammer toes.
Mo chose a shocking electric blue toenail polish. I opted for a bright red, since I spent the entire summer with blue toes. We both picked the same color for our hands, much to our chagrin (we’ve never really gotten over the need to be different) of Bogata Blackberry. Unfortunately, I had polish on my fingers already, so my student was then forced to try to remove my excellent two layers of black cherry polish and protective layer of Tough As Nails MegaShine top coat with the beauty school’s cheap ass polish remover. Therefore, Mo was well on her way to a second coat of fingernail polish when my clever little student looked at me and said ‘Do you want to put your shoes on now before I do your nails?’
Of course I did. That’s when I learned that some random student had slopped foot water into my left shoe. Foot water. Old lady foot water. And it was cold. I started to hyperventilate. ‘Someone slopped foot water into my shoe!’ I said horrified. No one said anything. I repeated it, expecting a rush of sympathy, an accusation to the offending party and then a tearful apology, anything! But that’s what you get for $19.00. You become beauty cattle.
Then Mo made her squinched up face at me. It’s a face that I have come to learn always comes with something that I will detest. She makes the face in order to look as pathetic as possible. ‘Oh nooooooooooooooooooooo!!! My shoooooooooooooooooooes!!!!’ She said, looking at her bare feet with the beautiful toenails.
‘So?’
‘You’ve got to put on my shooooooooes and socks for me!’ She cried, as though she’d just asked me to save her from a burning building.
‘No I don’t. You can wait.’
‘Noooooooooooooooo! I’ve got wet fingernails.’
‘You’re going to have to wait anyway.’
‘Come on.’
‘Oh god’ and you’ve got the itch! The ITCH!!’
‘Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!’
If there was ever an Olympic event in whining, my sister would be disqualified from participating because she’s already a well-established professional.
So I talked myself into it. Because I’m an adult. And I knew that her feet were clean because I had just seen her soak in a foot bath for 15 minutes. But by the time I had nodded and began to reach for her socks, I realized that her socks and shoes were NOT clean, they had been worn for some hours and were well into the Land Of Squick. In fact, I could see a slight foot pattern on the bottom of her sock even, which told me that she had sweated. FOOT JUICE! The socks were a foot juice sponge. I carefully with the tips of two fingers eased her foot into the sock without touching her foot, the scary portion of the sock or The Itch. Then I refused to touch the inside of her shoe, but she managed to get it on somehow. And all of this while my own shoe was saturated with the cold foot water of some stranger and I was breathing in powdered Essence Of Foot from hundreds of pedicures.
Seriously, if that doesn’t get me into Heaven right there, I’m going to be working in the uniform department of Hell, helping the damned sort through a football stadium full of used shoes and the only shoe horn available will be my tongue.
Gah.
