(no subject)

Dear God,

If you in your Mighty Power could somehow arrange for me to have a different birth date, I'd be really happy. It would, in fact, be awesome.

Yours,
Christina


Dear Friends,

Okay. I am free next weekend. I am free the following weekend. Please pick one.

Yours,
Christina

ETA: It looks like Oct. 1st or 2nd. My preference is the 1st. We'll do Serenity and dinner. Who's on board?

All polish, all veneer

Two weeks ago, I did something very out-of-character. I walked into a nail salon, plunked down my Visa card, and got a set of acrylic tips. I had an excuse that time. I’ve been known to have a few bad habits (forgetting to put away the mayonnaise, drinking pickle juice straight from the jar), but nothing quite as chronic as my habit of nervous nail-biting. I was in a wedding, and I didn’t want my nubby, gnawed-off stumps for fingers in every close-up of me holding the microphone.

I was seated, and a small Vietnamese man spent about a half of an hour applying innumerable layers of base-coat and affixing goo. My new fake nails were buzzed and sawed and filed to perfection, then painted with a clean-cut French manicure. When I looked down, I didn’t recognize my own hands. I’ve never been that girl before. Never fussy, never foo-foo. Never done. I’m combat-boot girl. Nails are for princesses.

Today, I did the unthinkable: I went in for fill-ins. Yes, that’s right. I decided to keep the nails that hinder my typing, my shoe lacing, my pickle-jar opening.

There’s something quietly ritualistic about the salon experience for me. I go in, I put my name on the list. I pay to have someone hold my hand for half an hour. This particular time, it was an Asian girl named Kim, on whom I had an immediate girlcrush. She was covered in tattoos, and from my view down her shirt, her small, round breasts were decorated with delicately-drawn roses. She smelled of vanilla sugar and oranges. She massaged my hands with lotion. I had a taste of the illicit thrill that is being touched by a stranger-- her hands were small like mine, but soft.

We talked about meaningless things. I could tell by the tone of her voice that she's the type of girl who has things on her mind-- things she wants to talk about, things she needs to spill, even if it’s just to a stranger. But she never does, she keeps it all inside, pushed to the corners of her mind. She did mention that she has a four year-old son, which shocked me because she’d just mentioned that she’d just turned 22. We’d had a neat little conversation about our similar Virgoan quirks, our own internal editors.

I got another French manicure-- this time a little squarer, a little more white at the tip. More traditional. They remind me of fingernails you’d see in tasteful pornography. I get off a little on that. I tipped her graciously. We talked about the next time I come in-- I’m going to try a different style of manicure that uses ivory tips instead of white. It apparently looks very feminine, but natural.

I think I know why I went in today. My hands don’t look like my hands. They don’t look like the small, worried, rough hands that I’m used to. They look like they belong to someone else. When I think about how I’ve felt as of late, so alien even to myself, I think that it’s fitting. I don’t feel like myself, so not looking like myself only reinforces that. I can say, "It’s okay. I don’t have to admit that this is me because look-- this is not me." I’m disassociating, in a way. I don’t know if that’s textbook healthy or not, but I don’t mind it. It’s odd. It’s kind of addictive.