Do Me!

It’s not hard at all to kick back and get your nails done. And what you choose to have done to your nails conveys a message to the world around you. What will it be? Buff rimmed ovals just peeking over the edge of your fingertips? Vicious blood-red daggers? The Flojo? The Flojo is true nail art. Usually defined by nails of Guinness Book of World Records length, with long canoes curving down and forward, Flojo nails stop just short of describing a complete spiral. They can be any color. In fact to be a true Flojo, they should be many colors, perhaps even with good luck charms pierced through them. Women who wear the Flojo are sometimes regarded with horror or disbelief, as though they are crippling themselves by grooming their digits into uselessness. How can they type? How can they eat? How can they open car doors? What the supremely confident Flojo wearer says to the world is that she fully expects that you will peel her grapes and open her doors.

You can’t get the Flojo at, say, the Red Door Salon. Like most cutting–edge fashion, nails like this are born in the street. Lake Street to be specific. Nail salons thrive on practically every block down Lake Street, from Nicollet Avenue to West River Road. There’s Nail It To Me, Nails For You, and my old haunt, Do Me Nails. I got my falsies done there almost every other Saturday night for two years. I thought the name was charming, and I wanted to support the businesses in my old neighborhood. I always pronounced it with a lilting Irish brogue, thereby creating a double entendre, softening the vulgarity. It may be the polish–remover fumes talking, but the first time I walked into the salon, it felt like home. Cheap wood paneling and rec-room carpet. Television and radio blaring at the same time. Kids running around bugging their moms for a treat. There were neat rows of manicure stations, and spice racks loaded with varnish of every imaginable color. I couldn’t wait to take my place at a bench and get my nails fussed over.

Usually I preferred a short frosty blue tip. It’s an affordable luxury, running about 25 dollars every two weeks.

On my last trip there, I patiently waited my turn—contemplating a palm tree-themed Flojo. The door burst open to a large white woman with tight, angry cornrows—apparently a difficult regular customer—with a Flojo emergency. She held a family-sized bag of Doritos, from which she extracted handful after handful of corn chips, working them into her mouth as she complained. “I got my nails done yesterday,” she griped bitterly. Holding her chip hand up to the light, she bellowed, “I gotta date tonight and one of the mofo nails came off! You gotta get me a new one right now—(munch)—’cause I don’t know where the other one is.” The technicians at the bench squirmed. I’m both a nail-biter and a chip-eater myself, and it occurred to me what might have happened to that false fingernail.