I finally got my tooth implant after a too-long period of wearing a denture (one day, I will write about this feeling). Before the crown was put in, I had a bone graft in my upper jaw, and a titanium dental root was drilled in. The pain is indescribable. I cried all through the surgery, and then all the way home, and my poor friend J had to sit there on the tube and watch me cry self-piteously (I’d just dropped over a thousand quid on surgery – no money for taxis). And the discomfort carried on for a few days after. There is no simian swelling like the simian swelling you get after a bone graft, let me tell you. I took photos, because I am a self-obsessed millenial – and I do not say that to deflect the charge of self-obsession; it is merely a fact and anyway, if previous generations had smartphones I wager they’d do much the same – but I cannot bring myself to share them in public. My face, which has changed a lot over the course of my life, never looked as alien as it did for those few days. Everything was pronounced – even my ears changed shape briefly, the skin of the delicate shells stretched taut as the alien bovine bone worked itself out inside my face – and thrown out of whack. Imagine looking in a funhouse mirror, but the mirror/call is coming from inside the house, literally fusing itself to your bone. It is bodyhorror with a small ‘b’. Every so often I look at those photos and wince with a sort of gawping, horrified pride.
With that great augmentation done and dusted, I hungered for more change. My pain threshold is fairly high – which is handy considering the menstrual migraines that I have been blessed with (come, friendly menopause!) – but I was not looking for more pain. So I went to get my eyes checked at the optician’s and, pleasantly flushed with the knowledge that my prescription had not changed in two years, decided to pop into one of the nail salons along Mare Street. The chorus of ‘hello!’s hit me as I walked in. In the summer – the busiest period for gibbons hanging out on street corners hissing out ‘compliments’ and harassing women – you can feel the eyes of the collective rake over you as you walk through their midst. The frank appraisal those guys give you is nothing on the searchlight focus of the ladies in the nail salon. They’re checking: what does her hesitant gait suggest? Is she lost and seeking directions? Oh, she’s looking at the price board – how much will this one spend? And so I let their eyes pass over me for long seconds before announcing to the room like an idiot, “I’d like to get my nails done, please.” And one of the women turned to me and said, not unkindly, “and what do you want to do to them?” Good question, sister.
A nail salon I used to walk past at Alexanderplatz, Berlin
I have mentioned before how much I love nail varnish. For the longest time, I was not a makeup person. It seemed faffy, and for someone with blessedly great skin, somehow unnecessary. But nail polish and I? We go back like car seats. And in all the years of painting my nails, I never once had acrylic tips. I did the French manicure (and pedicure), I did the square tips and the rounded tips, I even did nail art with a free drawing tool and an inept hand. But no extensions. So I sat down in that chair and said, “acrylics, please,” and extended my hands, like a well-mannered dog does as a party trick. She put on her mask and set to work.
There was a woman at the hair salon where I used to go to get my hair braided who had the most extraordinary nails I have ever seen out in the real world – SWV’s Coko’s were next level and not of the civilian realm. These were long and curved, and never bare – her colours of choice were the black, green and gold of her motherland. Her speed never wavered. As she went down the braid, all you’d hear was the whirring of the fan and the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of her nails hitting one another on the descent. How can she do anything with those nails, I’d ask my sister, and we’d roll our eyes and sigh like old women. I remember being particularly preoccupied with hygiene. Even so, done nails are a sign of having your shit together. Having nails that are also tapered and glossily painted? Why, you’re practically Diana Ross.
I told this woman bent over my hands: not too long, please. She nodded, smiled. She cut my nails with vigour, then pushed back my cuticles before snipping away the more tenacious bits. Then she measured the acrylic tips on each finger before glueing them on. And then she cut them. Then she filed them down like a motherfucker, and that shit hurt. When I was younger and more romantic, I would sometimes go into deep thought imagining what it must be like to be the canvas on which an artist painted. I would think of myself stretching, and then being stabbed with paintbrushes until I looked just right, and then I would think of myself being ripped apart if the artist thought me unsatisfactory. This woman treated my nails like the temperamental artist I’d once daydreamed about. She worked them like they were pissing her off. Like they owed her money. Like they had kicked her cat. Every so often I would pull back my hand in surprised pain, and she would look up at me briefly, never pausing the rapid Vietnamese she was speaking to another woman over on the sofa. It’s the look every one with a Nigerian mama knows – “Are you being serious right now? Are you?” – and I would give her my hand back sheepishly.
Ms Ross
There’s a Lauryn Hill lyric on Doo Wop (That Thing) that goes: “look at where you be in/hair weaves like Europeans/fake nails done by Koreans/come again” that always stayed with me. I think it’s about acceptance – from within and without – and how the external accoutrements can cloud shit. I used to listen to that record when I wore weaves, and like Chris Rock’s made-up woman in the bit on his Never Scared album, think to myself, “[s]he ain’t talking ’bout me!” Because I believe we can wear our hair anyway we want (as long as we acknowledge just a little bit how politically deep and twisty the roots of weaves really are), and beyond that, it doesn’t have to mean that much. But sitting in that nail salon that afternoon, and seeing every woman working there was of Vietnamese origin, and then watching the clientèle come in and walk out, and none of them were, made me sit down a little less comfortably. I mean, Ghanaians braid my hair, and the dudes at the hair shop that stocks my Dark & Lovely curling glaze are Indian, and my eyebrow threader is Sri Lankan, and I mean, what are you going to do?
And yet.
The nail technician finished her torture job on my nails and then brought out a little glass ramekin with a metal lid, full of grainy white powder. I was a neophyte – what had this to do with nails? Then she dipped her brush into a liquid, picked up some of the powder and gripping my hand firmly, applied it to my nail. And it became a gel. A gel! And then it hardened. I felt like one of the dudes in a David Blaine street magic video – how did she do that?! Colour me green, friends. She did this across all my fingernails and I sat there shell-shocked. I finally understood why people took so long at the nail salon. This is transformation on a ridiculous scale. Forget the moon landings! This shit is real world science, applicable in everyday life. I could pay under £30 to turn my hands into the site of a science lesson? Why did no one tell me?
She then carried on filing the nail with her little electronic gizmo, over and over and over. I chose a grey-green nail varnish that I immediately regretted. “Lovely,” she said to my dubious face, distracted by another customer coming in. I sat with my hands splayed under the drying machine, wondering when the smarting in my fingertips would go away (two full days, FYI, and that’s with soaking them in an ice cube bath). Two-and-a-bit weeks later they were off. The process of removal is shocking and terribly traumatising to the nail plate and bed. I’m growing out the damage now, and applying castor oil every night to strengthen the weakened casualties. I don’t think I’ll ever do it again.
For two weeks though, I got to type gingerly with the pads of my fingers, like a glam secretary from the 80s (sexual objectification blissfully absent). I surprised myself by washing, and then braiding my hair with minimal trouble (long, sturdy nails are actually good for parting the hair). There were issues with my daily application of moisturiser, so I would whip my hands through the air to get out the aqueous cream from beneath my nails onto my legs. I discarded my little Vaseline tub for a chap stick when it came to moisturising my lips. There were no chips, no matter how cheap the nail polish. Varnish dried strong and bubble-free. People noticed my nails and complimented them. My nail brush has rarely seen so much action. I got to clack-clack-clack my way through everything.
And yet.
I don’t think I’ll ever do it again.
I don’t think I’ll ever do it again.
I don’t think I’ll ever do it again.
Repeat 100 times.
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