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Some Day Soon I’ll Learn to Leave the Room

Yesterday I popped into a new nail salon to get gels. You might know about my recent addiction to nail polish, I’m sad to report that nail polish is simply a gateway drug. I’m now addicted to gels. Gels are always shiny.

So I run into the nail salon that a friend promised is clean. Well, it wasn’t as clean as I’d hoped. I kept having to ask, is that new? And the guy would casually wipe the nail file with a dirty old towel and say yes. I’d sigh and ask to see the package, he’d glare at me and open a fresh whatever.

Somehow I’d turned a color change into an antagonistic affair.

Michael and I clearly detested one another. I asked him to cut my nails short, he told me that red nails need to be long. “But I type a lot, and I wash dishes. I need short nails.” I said. “Red nails don’t look good short.” He replied and proceeded to file my nails angrily. I should have walked out the door.

Finally I grabbed the clippers and showed him the length I wanted. He shook his head and told me that short nails weren’t stylish.

I finally looked up at the wall behind him and wanted to crawl out of my skin. I realized that I was sitting across the table from a filthy misogynist who was tacky as hell. At eye level there were dozens of photographs of girls who I presume are family members, but surrounding the sweet images of girls graduating everything from pre-kinder to college were business cards from half naked strippers offering free admission to the strip clubs they work in.

Oh The Valley. We’re the hub of the porn industry, and of course I somehow found the favorite manicurist of the featured dancer. I stayed and got the worst manicure of my life. I have flooded cuticles and one layer of polish too many. Every instinct I had told me to leave, my manners, my absolutely useless manners, told me to stay.

 

Misogyny

 

 

 

8 thoughts on “Some Day Soon I’ll Learn to Leave the Room”

  1. I think just the fact that the blonde’s photo is upside down (what? He can’t read the way she signed it? It’s obviously supposed to be a shot from above where whassername is lying down – see her signature) should’ve made you flee in terror.
    Sadly, I have had more than one lousy manicure because I’m unwilling to walk out too. *sigh*

  2. I can’t believe you stayed. You were way nicer than I would have been. I’ve had a misogynistic nail tech before..I thought he was going to eradicate my nail bed of my actual nail.I told him thank you for his work that far, but I wanted to retain the little bit of nail that had survived and I promptly got up and left. OF course, I had a similar nail tech give me a pedicure once and the disapproving looks at my new mom unkempt toes made me feel like the worlds biggest loser,so I sat there stifling a cry:(Damn new baby hormones. We all learn. At least now you know to never go back there again.

  3. OHHH I’ve so been there. I feel like the older I get, the more I learn to listen to my instincts and get over my hang-ups of appearing “polite.” Great story :)

  4. So ridiculous to feel the need to be polite to somoene you know is wronging you…but I know I would have done the same thing. I like to think my manners help me out more than they hurt me, but situations like this are the worst! It would be so much better to be able to turn off the manners for the yucky people we all encounter, but it usually doesn’t work like that.

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