November 5, 2001
  nails

I was writing for nanowrimo, now 5000 eclectic and utterly irresponsible words long, -- for those who can count, that's 1000 words a day, which means I'll be done with the 50,000 deadline sometime in December -- when I realized that I would much rather be spending my time writing a journal entry instead.

So here we are.

I was going to write a whole heap of stuff about funny things, about the fact that Tara is in Germany and pining for the rest of us American speakers back here in the States; about the fact that Halloween came around and I bought fourteen pounds of candy from Costco, of all idiotic ideas, only to find out the day after Halloween that the reason we didn't have any (but one) trick-o-treaters was because someone was moving out the same evening and the movers were blocking the entrances to our building; about the fact that my manager made a joke about firing me and how I'm now convinced that someone is trying to make me think my polar bear beanie baby has come to life because every time I turn around it's in a different place and doing a different thing only always staring at me with those evil shiny black beanie baby eyes.

However, Heisenburg thinks that I should do something different, instead. Heisenburg thinks that as long as I'm in a relatively serious mood, I should write a serious entry about something serious, because -- I think -- he's tired of muttering in my ears and hearing echoes, and just once wants me to do something related to actual thought so that for a change he'll have something different to listen to when he presses his head against my skull.

What the hell do I care. Damn cat's imaginary.

My fingernails have grown to intolerable lengths, and every waking moment since I noticed the white at the ends of my fingers has been spent thinking about fingernail clippers.

It turns out that I'm obsessive compulsive about my fingernails, in the way that I wish I was about clean dishes or general slobbiness around the apartment or even, hey! quality of work at, you know, work. Normal perfectionists fixate on something that's actually going to be useful in their real lives. Me, I get hot and bothered over the length of my nails.

This all goes back to childhood somehow, because everything goes back to childhood. Psychiatrists are paid thousands of dollars to tell patients that everything wrong in their lives is the fault of their parents, and they can't possibly be wrong if they're paid that much. When I was a shorter, smaller, younger me, I used to take scotch tape and stick it to my fingernails, pretending to have long glamorous claws like normal people had. I'd paint them over with white-out and pretend it was nail polish. Don't laugh. A lot of kids did that in grade school. Drag queens in training, school freaks, that sort of thing. Except they were sniffing the white-out deliberately while they did it. I just did it by accident.

Back then, anybody who wore flavored lip gloss, painted their nails, or wore plastic jewelry was a normal person. I include the males in that. Me, I always looked like a reject from the bitter bus. My fingernails were a sacrifice to the piano gods, by decree of my parents. The rest of me was a sacrifice to the hard-ass demons of adolescence, yea, those who were jealous and mighty and didn't want their flock to, you know, be socially acceptable.

Now, in my old age, being able to see more than a sliver of white at the end of my fingernails is more than adequate excuse to trigger a hysterical fit. Long nails, -- and by long nails we mean anything more than three millimeters long -- press down on my fingers. They constrict the breathing. No, not my breathing; my fingers. My fingers breathe. You didn't know that fingers breathe? Damn straight, they do. If they don't get oxygen they'd turn an ugly purple-black color, and die. The poor stupid things are asthmatic anyway so extra fingernails with all that extra weight, well.

I had to rescue them. During lunch I threw myself on my bicycle and hurtled to a drug store, where I bought a nail clipper. I sat down in the parking lot then and there, and chopped those mothers off.

Now my nails are raggedy and sharp, and they could slice through glass if I turned them the right way. My arm was itching and I scratched it without thinking; it's possible I'll carry the scar to my grave. Just the way I like my nails. Let's hear it for instant gratification.

I walked into the bathroom at 11:43 pm, feeling unwell, inspected the bathroom counter, then wandered out into the living room. My roommate was in flannel pajamas, watching Golden Girls.

"I know I'm not all that experienced with the mysteries of beauty regimens," I said, carefully, "but it seems to me that I should worry when there's a tin in the bathroom called 'Bed Head Shine Junkie.'"

She stared at me. On the television, Betty White was sitting on a bed with her on-screen boyfriend, discussing something serious within the context of their sitcom relationship. In old age, this woman looks a hundred times better than I ever would in whatever the Department of Agriculture says is my peak.

"You mean you've never heard of it?" she asked, blankly.

Crap. Was there another memo passed around to all the women of the world that I missed? Betty White would have known. She was a Golden Girl. I bet they get all the memos.