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My manicurist has a nickname: Pol Pot. Pol Pot never notices when I gasp as he tears at my cuticles. He shoots me looks of spite when I fail to balance a pinky just so for him or forget to keep my fingers in the acetone jar long enough. I jump and grimace as Pol Pot’s dental drill smoothes the crud from under the tips. Pol Pot uses no Novocain. I wince and squirm under the merciless digging of Pol Pot’s orange stick. Pol Pot never lets up. I don’t keep coming back to Pol Pot for his people skills. I come back because his work is impeccable. Pol Pot, in a weak attempt to sound friendly, greets his clients, “Hi. How are ya.” He is usually sitting with another customer. The couple, customer and manicurist deeply engage in the details of his craft. He, the concentrated technician, wearing face mask under bright task lighting, is serious about his craft. She, the self-interested observer, watches for the detail, amazed at his competence, awaiting an error. No one speaks. Pol Pot is a professional. But is what Pot does just a craft, or is it art? Pol Pot would call it Art The nail shop is called Nail Art. What is art then? For the answer, I look to the second photograph. Above Pol Pot’s manicure station hangs a picture of the hand of a virgin. These are the natural looking nails, pink nails, whose symmetrical ovals have been tipped in white. The index finger, lissome as a willow, reaches for a single strawberry. I imagine the fantasy woman to be young, maybe just a girl, unspoiled and unadorned, but reaching for simple sensuous pleasure of a newly ripened fruit. This is the hand meant for touching, for placing in your own and caressing. Holding such a hand would not be enough, of course. One would be drawn to kiss the French manicured fingertips with tiny nibbles and sniff their virginal fragrance. But of course, these fingertips would not smell of anything human or living, or even of the nearby strawberries, but of the power of the petrochemical mix concocted by an Art of Nails technician. The girl of the strawberry just within her reach would be stronger than her looks. Her nails, had they been sharpened to points by a technician’s rotating sander, could tear into your flesh as easily as she might pinch the leafy stem from the fruit. But strawberry girl, for this time, at least, chooses sensual pleasures, though we all know she is strong enough to choose otherwise. I believe that strawberry girl is an artist at heart.
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There are things I don’t want to know about acrylic nails. I don’t want to know what my real nails look like under the acrylics I’ve worn nonstop for over two years. I’d rather not think about how microorganisms flourish in the safe environment under the nails. I don’t want to know how the fumes from the resins and the dust from the repeated filings enter the lungs of the workers. I don’t want to know how little the workers make, or about their carpal tunnel syndromes, or about their lost career opportunities due to their devotion of years to the fetishes of women. I don’t want to know how I am judged by others. She’s so down to earth, but did you see her fake nails? I don’t want to know how many starving children in Cambodia I could feed with the money I spend on my nails. I have other things to think about. My life is hard and long-lasting enough, I at least want it to be lustrous while I’m here.
Two girlish hands with pudgy fingers clutch several hundred dollar bills. The nails have been polished orange red and are longer than the driver’s. Much longer. The nails are so long that the model would probably have to pick the bills up by sliding them off the side of the table instead of picking them up like regular people do. What the owners of these hands could do besides hold money, I can’t imagine. She could not do dishes, or wash windows. She could not change a baby’s diaper, she could not insert an earth friendly applicator-free tampon. Still, these handicapped hands must be able to do something, or else why would she be able to get so much money? I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t think that she could perform many sexual favors with nails like that. I’d be surprised if she could even unbutton her own blouse. Still, like the driver, the woman in this picture holding the money not only knows what she wants but she has what she wants. She, unlike the money she holds, is unobtainable. Her nails keep predators at a distance. But she gets what she wants, and she keeps it. |
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