April 27, 2002
manicures and mezzos
I've been a busy girl, I have. Got myself my very first manicure and my very first pedicure. My fingers are pink, my toes are red, got me some earrings--
...check it out. I'm a woman.
I've never had a manicure or a pedicure before, and to be honest I was vaguely worried about the entire procedure. My roommate, who occasionally goes out on such cosmetic adventures and returns with beautifully polished toes and, occasionally, bright yellow jewel flowers, reassured me on the issue of pain.
"It only hurts a little bit," she said comfortingly. "And that's only if they're not very good."
So on one of my last days of freedom -- Thursday, that was; the countdown was four days to the new job -- I trotted up to San Francisco to visit my sister, bearing: 1) running shoes from Seattle so she could train for Bay to Breakers; 2) a solid block of mochi, home-made by Mom during the second to last day of my visit and vacuum sealed with her brand new Food Saver (tm) toy; 3) $40 to pay for a manicure and pedicure. My sister and her workplace were in a royal mood that day. One of the girls there, Mary, stalked past us both without so much as a glance of acknowledgement despite the fact that we'd had a friendly luncheon outing only a few weeks previously. My sister's boyfriend stared at me blankly for a long moment before registering my presence. "Oh, Yuh-jinski," he greeted wanly.
I have no idea why he does that. At what point did he come to believe that 'Yuh-jinski' was an acceptable alternative for my name? "Your workplace is a real joy today," I observed to Masako. She made some sort of growling sound.
"I can't go to lunch," she said savagely. "You came all the way up from Redwood City. Sorry. I have to do some of this stuff and wait until so-and-so gets back."
"I'm going to get a manicure," I told her happily, and wiggled my dull, hang-nailed fingernails at her. The dregs of the earlier Tahoe wedding polish were still making blodgy spots on them. "I'm going to get a pedicure and a manicure and that's why I'm wearing sandals. Isn't it exciting?"
She patted me on the head. There are times when I suspect that the reason our family has this chronic problem with conceptions of time is that my sister and I were, in fact, born in a temporal flux of some sort; she was meant to be the older sister, just as I was meant to be the younger sister, and in our typical Hirata fashion we managed to schedule it all wrong. "That's nice. Go get your nails done while I wait for so-and-so to get back."
I kissed her on the cheek and trotted off.
There was a nail boutique on the corner, "Union Studio Nails," and it was populated by business-like Chinese women in white lab coats. We managed to communicate to each other through interpretive dance more than actual English; my experience with foreign interpretations of English spans the gamut of Japenglish to Chinenglish, but I've yet to master the latter. After we'd managed to establish that I wanted a pedicure (I waved at my toes, pulled it out of the sandal and did a flamingo impression, wiggling them at a lab-coated attendent) we sidestepped the hurdle of whether I wanted a spa manicure/pedicure by my careful finger-stabbing on a list of services and prices hung up inside the door. Those pleasantries exchanged, one of the women ordered me to "PIG A GALLA."
"Um," said I. "What?" said I.
She gestured impatiently. "PIG A GALLA." There was a wall of fingernail polish bottles neatly arrayed behind her. "PIG A GALLA. PIG A GALLA."
Pick a color. Aha. My keen translator's mind snapped into play. "Oh," I said wittily, and dithered over the selection under her annoyed eye. I emerged triumphant with a deep wine color that wasn't too bright to be embarrassing.
"--Except," I said weakly as the women began herding me to one chair after another, in some sort of 'Hide the Sock' game played behind each other's backs with live bodies. ("YOU SID DERE." "WHAT YOU DO DERE? YOU COME HERE, SIT DIS CHAIR. YOU STAY.") "--Except I don't want to paint my fingernails. I want to...."
The lab coat ladies weren't interested. One of them came at me with a large tub of some sort, and began gesticulating fiercely. I was to put my feet in the tub. Crushed, I obeyed. Another woman came to plop down at the table next to me, and demanded I move my chair closer. Trapped with my feet in a tub, my jeans rapidly soaking up moisture, and one hand firmly clasped in her long-nailed grip o' death, I attempted to comply and got scolded for my pains. "YOUR FEED NO WATERING."
Once they'd settled me to their satisfaction, the two women bent competently and briskly to their business. I was fascinated, I admit. They buffed, they polished, they snipped, they scraped; every so often the woman at my feet would demand one foot or the other, rub it semi-dry, then do some obscure and vaguely ticklish thing to the toes. I attempted to explain to the woman doing my fingernails that I didn't want to have them turned red. "I don't want them painted," I explained, while she splashed some sort of chemical on them. "I don't like my fingernails with color."
She shook her head and said firmly, "NO COLOR ON YOUR FINGER. NATURAL BEST FOR YOU."
One stern eye glared at me in case I felt like arguing, and I found myself meekly agreeing. Apparently, I wasn't to be given a choice in the matter. Natural was best for me. Yes'm.
It was absolutely fascinating, every second of it, and I took turns inspecting my toes and my fingernails, much to the amusement of the attendents. They chattered at each other in Cantonese, before my manicurist, moved by some obscure principle of customer satisfaction, demanded to know if I was from Hong Kong. Why she'd decided I must have been from Hong Kong mystifies me still; was it because I spoke English without an accent?
"Seattle," I said, which is what I always say when people ask me where I'm from, as though I should confess to the original motherland that spawned my slant-eyed, Imperialist ancestors. Then, because I knew perfectly well what they were really asking, I added, "I'm Japanese."
The manicurist frowned. "NOT HON KON?" she demanded.
"Japanese," I insisted.
A few minutes later, my toes now tangled in some foam apparatus and wet nail polish, all my fingers scraped to bits and firmly trapped by the manicurist, I was asked to pay for my visit.
It's not my imagination, is it? Usually one's asked to pay at the beginning or at the end of a service visit, right?
Utterly cowed by my manicurist, I fished around with my free hand until I found a credit card. The manicurist eyed my open wallet and added in a hushed and determined voice, "TIP."
She'd seen the green. I had no problem paying a tip. I obligingly pulled out a five dollar bill. One minute it was in my hand; the next, it had evaporated into who knows where.
She wasn't done yet.
"FOR FEED," she said firmly, and nodded towards her colleague, now busy attending someone else.
I found five more dollars. The manicurist confiscated that as well.
Having established my financial credibility, the woman very kindly finished up my fingernails, making them shiny clean and NATURAL. I wandered up the street back to my sister's store, where I discovered her in the middle of an argument with her boyfriend and a representative from Patagonia. Ordered to go to lunch, she grabbed me by the elbow and dragged me to the bar-slash-cafe across the street, where she downed two martinis in quick order.
I told her that I'd bought them tickets to Stomp for the following Friday, John's birthday present. She blinked at me soulfully. "If John and I break up, can I take the tickets and go with you?" she wanted to know. "We separated."
"Butthead," I said. "No."
"You're a bad sister."
For several months now I've had an on-again off-again relationship with a guy named Jeff.
Jeff works for the San Francisco Opera, and once every two months, Jeff calls me to find out if I'm interested in season tickets, and if I'd like to purchase season tickets. The first time he called, I was in the middle of a financial downturn and a bit leery about spending money in the face of what looked like Excite@Home's forthcoming implosion. We had a nice conversation on the telephone about my past history with the Seattle Opera and how I really wished I'd had a chance to see the San Francisco production of Der Rosenkavalier. "I'd really love to buy tickets," I told him apologetically, "it's just that I'm not sure if I'll have a job in a couple of months, and I kind of want to save my money---"
"No problem!" said Jeff, really a friendly guy and very nice on the phone. "What say I call you in a couple of months and we see how you feel then?"
I felt a flush of gratitude. Really, he had a lovely voice. "Thanks. Would you mind?"
"Not at all," said Jeff. "I'll talk to you in a few months."
Three months later, right on cue, Jeff called. Excite@Home had just kicked the bucket; I was freshly out of a job.
"Hi," said the guy on the other side of the phone. "This is Jeff from San Francisco Opera---"
"Jeff!" I cried. Not many telemarketers get this kind of reception from the people they call. Then again, Jeff and me, we had a Thing. "I was just thinking about you. Dude, you called at a bad time. I'm so totally broke right now."
"Oh no. Really? That's terrible. What happened?"
We had a nice little conversation about my job and my defunct company. I explained to him the spectacular rise and fall of my dead company. ("It went Chapter Seven? What's that? Is that like Chapter Eleven?") and the end result was that I confessed to being utterly incapable of paying for season tickets.
"Maybe when I get a job," I said wistfully. I really wanted to buy those tickets. I wanted to watch the San Francisco Opera do its thing. Plus, I wanted to make Jeff Happy.
Jeff was understanding, which I thought was nice. He didn't hold my unemployment against me. "I understand completely," he said sympathetically. "You really should save your money. Maybe when you get another job? I'm sure it won't take you too long. Tell you what; there are some other half season series where you can pick and choose to go to only a few of the operas instead of the entire season. There are also some three-opera series that you can select which are a lot cheaper since they tend to happen on weeknights. Why don't you take a look at the brochure and online, and think about it, and I'll call back in a few months. How's that sound?"
"You're the best, Jeff," I announced. "Thanks."
We hung up. I hope he breeds someday, I thought.
Then we have this past Thursday. Just the night before I'd been speaking with my mother about my relationship with the Man from the San Francisco Opera. "He has a nice voice!" I told her.
"Don't you have a boyfriend already?" my mother asked innocently.
On Thursday morning, the phone rang. In one of those rare moments of pure telepathic congruity, I thought, I wonder if that's Jeff? and picked it up.
"Hello?"
"Hello! Is Yuhri there? This is Jeff from the San Francisco Opera."
He was a salesman whose time had come. In some sort of mad frenzy of spending, no doubt related directly to my forthcoming start date of Monday with this new job, I promptly signed up for a six-opera series. "Two tickets, Jeff," I carolled. "Balcony front, series Y."
Later, I called the Guy. "Guess what!" I told him. "Guess where you'll be going with me come June?"
All things together, he took it rather well. Of course, he's never been, but aren't men supposed to dislike going to the Opera on principle?