Last night, my girlfriend told me that today she was planning on going to get her nails done and jokingly invited me. She said she could never see me getting a pedicure which triggered the dumber portions of my brain to assure her I would. So long story short, I was Jedi mind tricked by my girlfriend into getting a pedicure with my one condition being that I will not be held liable for accidentally assaulting a small Vietnamese woman for tickling my feet.
I decided with some encouragement from my pal @barnes to blog this excursion to provide our readers with a play by play of a pedicure from the perspective of a football guy who very much does not like being touched by strangers.
Stage 1: Arrival
We pull up to a small local shopping center and park in front of a dingy little nail place that definitely does not look like a rub n tug at all. We are greeted with a hearty “Ni Hao” from one of the employees. This confused me as I was told all these women were Vietnamese but I’m pretty sure that’s Chinese, but I digress. There’s only 2 other customers when we arrive. “This is good” I think to myself “the less people here the less people will be disturbed by my hootin and hollerin and maybe my girlfriend will even be able to come bach here when all’s said and done”.
Stage 2: I Assure You I Am Trying
After being instructed to take off my shoes and socks and roll up my shitty sweatpants, my new pal Lin gets to work. First she took out what I thought was a hairnet but what was actually some plastic jawn to line the foot tub. Lin touches my foot and I almost jump out of my chair. She laughs at me (mean) and then just asks me “good?” Over and over. Eventually I summon enough willpower to allow Lin to continue, and I promise her I am doing my best to neither jump nor kick her right in her old lady face. She cuts my disgusting toenails and then uses a series of weird tools/toe knives to get all the shit out from under there. Every now and again Lin turns to me for assurance, and I promise her that despite my squirming and clear discomfort she was doing great.
Stage 3: The Meat and Potatoes
Now we’re getting into the nitty gritty of a pedicure. After cutting and degunking my toe nails, Lin puts my feet bach in the soak and adds a blue pellet that reminds me of a tide pod. She takes my feet out and pours some weird clear goo on them out of a condiment container. I asked what it was but I do not think Lin understood me as her response to pointing at the bottle and asking “what’s that” is a smile, a nod, and a slap on the foot. Fair enough.
Lin puts my feet bach in the soak after the goo and rinses them off. Now this next part I really struggled with. Lin brings out some sort of dry eraser lookin thing, but instead of an eraser, it’s got like blue sandpaper on it. I’m sure it has a name but for the purpose of this blog it’s just gonna be the blue foot eraser thing. So, Lin hits me with the foot eraser and I jump outta the gym like I was Jamario Moon. Never thought I’d get to reference Jamario Moon in a blog. Moving on, I struggle to keep still as Lin continues laughing at me. I eventually make it through the eraser thing just for her to bring out a giant toothbrush that somehow tickled more than the eraser. Lin puts down the toothbrush and says “no more” a few times with a smile much to my relief.
Stage 4: A Happy Ending (for legs)
Now that my feet are shining like Mook’s greasy ass forehead, Lin starts shampooing my legs. I don’t think it was actually shampoo, first she started with some orange goo stuff with little beads in it then a few other lotions. I make a joke about Lin not being used to this much leg hair that did not land. Tough crowd. Even though my jokes fell flat, the leg shampoo was probably my favorite part of the whole ordeal. Lin lathered me up real good and then basically just massaged down my calf and my Achilles and feet. I ask Lin where she learned to do that and I get a laugh, though thinking back on it I’d say it’s more likely she just didn’t understand me. Lin rinses off my now pristine feet and tells me “all done!”. She eyes me up and down and feels like she’s waiting for something when I realize I think I’m supposed to tip. I have no idea how what’s customary here so I gave her a little 10 piece and that felt right to me.
All in all I probably made more of a scene than I would’ve liked, but I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say it’s worth it. My feet feel fuckin awesome right now. Got 2 clouds inside my size 10 NMDs and I feel like I could take on the world. So from this point forward, Harry Mac and The Basement are officially a pro men’s pedicure faction. I will however say that I think I need to learn Mandarin/Vietnamese/whatever language these ladies are speaking because there is a one billion percent chance they’re making fun of me right now, not that I wouldn’t also make fun of me to my face in a different language if given the chance.
