Pedi-Curious

When we were on our honeymoon, Marty and I had a couple’s pedicure in the resort’s spa. Marty loved it. He basked in the pampering, and admired his own feet for days afterward. Since then – for years – I have encouraged him to have another one. “No! Pedicures are for girls.” When he sits in the living room clipping his toenails, shards a-flyin’, he often remarks, “I should get a pedicure.” I get tired of hearing it, because he never gets one. Apparently he thinks a pedicure will strip him of his manhood. 

Finally, he schedules one. So there it was. The man is ready. But not ready enough to go alone. He asks me to chaperone. 

Helen gives the best pedicures in the world from a little room in a bungalow-turned-day-spa in a residential neighborhood. Marty hikes his dress pants to his knees, gets in the big leather chair and slides his feet in the hot pool of water below. He figures out the keypad for the massage feature of the chair. I sit opposite him at the manicure table, chaperoning.

Marty picks up a magazine and starts to page through it. After a while, he tells me with interest, about the Peach Cobbler Bar recipe he is reading. He even turns the magazine around to show me the photograph, like someone reading Green Eggs and Ham to a kindergarten class. “See the crumble on top?” I see the crumble. I also see Marty is in a vibrating pedicure chair, pants hiked to his knees reading recipes in Martha Stewart Living. Maybe he was right about the manhood thing.

While Marty relaxes in the delights of a magic exfoliating sugar scrub, I gaze at the wall of nail polish - a rainbow of girly dreams. I rummage through them. “You picking your next color?” Helen asks me in her Vietnamese accent. “Helen, do you know the names of all these colors?” There were over 300 bottles. “Most, yeah,” she replied. I quizzed her on reds: Chick Flick Cherry, Red Hot Rio, We’ll Always Have Paris. She got them all right. Remarkable in its own right, but even moreso since English is not her first language. Also impressive are the elaborate and ridiculous names of the colors, my favorite of which was Fresh Frog of Bel Air – a glittery green I can’t imagine anyone wearing.

Marty’s talons are soon trimmed and buffed and we are ready to go. With his pants still bunched at his knees like knickers, we walk out. On the sidewalk, he poses in his flip flops and admires his lavender-scented feet. "When are you coming back?" I ask. He is enthusiastic: "Every month!" We'll see about that.