A New Pleasure
I’m forty-two and a half.
I don’t yet lead a life that’s entirely scheduled. Attempting to do so in the past has made me nervous, as anything outside of work or the kid’s obligations usually ended up getting rescheduled whenever I tried to do so. Things I need to do for myself are very much done in a “get in where you fit in” type of way, but I like it this way: half-scheduled, half “go where the wind blows me,” because hybrid living still allows me to still feel free, to some degree.
For years, my youngest kid and my husband took capoeira classes. Their classes were scheduled back to back. While I do not behave entirely as the Virgo that I am, after a while, it got to me that I’d be sitting there, on the days that he had to work and I was charged with kiddie chauffeur service, uncomfortably squished into the barely-there seating in the school, or out in my car for quiet, after a long day at work, watching her class and the time pass, through my windshield and the school’s big picture windows.
I feel my best when I am functioning efficiently. I feel my best when everyone I care about gets what they need. As a wife, mother, and helping professional, I have been used to making sure everyone else around me gets what they need, while my own needs often are postponed or placed on the back-burner. While waiting during one of the kid’s classes or workshops I noticed a nail salon right across the street from the school. I started going, sometimes, while she had class or was in a workshop. Since I am very hard on my hands and only get pedicures so as not to be wasteful of my resources, and since manicures don’t particularly move me, I was able to sometimes sneak in some quick much-needed self-care while I waited.
I’d drop her off in time for class, walk across the street, and if there were no wait, which typically, there was not, I’d make good use of both of our time, watching her in class, with my feet soaking, from the comfort of a lazy massage chair, from a distance, and through the two sets of windows. I did this sporadically, but enough to feel like I had somewhere to go during that pocket of time, and something to look forward to doing that was about me, related to taking care of and beautifying myself, when everything else, like things happening with my job, or with my family dynamics, or even my weight, often seemed too far gone to right, or were entirely out of my control. I might not fit into the dress size I wanted, and I might not get the Friday night date night that I wanted, or peace to do my work without interruptions, but my feet would be undeniably soft and pretty.
I’m an introvert. I enter spaces quietly. I am cordial and polite to those who cross my path, but I don’t usually speak further, or attempt to make conversation, unless spoken to directly. I am seen but not heard, as my mother raised me to be: an observer, a spectator. I fell in love with my nail salon because they didn’t try to change that about me. They’d let me come in, say just enough to get what I needed, and I could enjoy the near silence of the space, scrolling on my phone and recharging, or working out all of the things needing figuring out in my head, while reaping the benefits of safe human touch that I so desperately needed.
I don’t remember when I first experienced a pedicure by Aunt. During the years of my sporadic patronage there, I had my pedicures done by everyone who worked there or whoever was available when I presented for service. What I do know is that I made my way there one day when my heart was entirely broken: needing something and needing safe touch to pull me out of the process of emotional atrophy, and Aunt made it better.
I sat there, quietly in a state of despair, feeling the mechanized waves of the massage chair choppily traveling and kneading along the length of my back and shoulders. I wondered how many others around me were dying on the inside like I felt like I was, and then I heard the faintest, sweetest song. I listened around me to identify its origin, as it wasn’t the television or the piped-in streaming music.
Aunt was at my feet, seemingly in another world, singing in her language, as she cradled my tiny legs, one by one, forcing my lifeblood to move and bringing me back to life with her soft, wrinkled hands. Her cheerfully painted fingernails moved through what seemed to be a loving yet auto-piloted series of grips, caresses, long strokes, gentle punches, pulls, circles, and twists, all around my thin stems and long toes.
I didn’t know what the words she sang meant, but I allowed the melody to soothe me, and allowed my entire being to get lost in the feelings and sensations that she evoked in me.
She caused me to travel back in time to when I was a child and accompanied my maternal grandmother, who we lost last year, to her salon appointments, where I sometimes was allowed to get my own nails done, which made me feel grown-up and imagine that I, too, was a businesswoman.
I wanted to know Aunt’s life’s story and how she came to be able to touch others in that way. It seemed as though she sensed I needed what she was giving, and it felt as though she did it for longer than she should have or normally would have. I walked out of the shop feeling rejuvenated, thankful, and much stronger than I had when I’d walked in.
Life has changed so much since my first pedicure with Aunt. The kid is almost fourteen now and decided to stop attending her classes shortly after the school moved to a more industrial section of town. Her father and I amicably split shortly ahead of the pandemic, which my family has all thankfully survived. We somehow, and miraculously, are thriving.
One of the first places I ventured out to as things re-opened post-pandemic, was Aunt’s nail salon. I was pleased to see all types of safety precautions being taken, as I was still somewhat scared to be there, but risked it because I needed the feeling of some semblance of normalcy, as well as beautification, escape, and safe touch.
I’ve been going more regularly since, and due to safety precautions, I often must make reservations due to their reduced capacity, so they may even know my name, now. It’s different for me, but doable. When I returned for the first time, they were happy to see me, and I, them.
Aside from the safety glass and masks we wear, the place hasn’t changed a bit. The staff is all the same, the chairs still hold me tightly and ease my tension. The various white, pink, and purple orchids throughout the shop are beautiful and thriving to the point that they still look artificial at first glance. I spend my drying time studying the labels on the planters, trying to make mental notes to order some for my home, and to get the tiny clips to hold them upright, so they can grow tall and strong. Most importantly, the place still very much feels like a hideaway and rest stop for safety and refuge, as well as a hub of time travel, that helps me see how far I’ve come.
Across the street, and through the windows, the old capoeira school building looks nearly abandoned, with the actual school having become an appliances store, and then a church, since the school relocated elsewhere. The windows have been changed with privacy screens or blinds, and you can no longer see inside.
Other businesses in the strip mall property are no more, likely due to increasing rents in the area, or due to the pandemic. The only thing remaining and familiar, visually speaking, from my old life, on that side of the street, are the cheerfully painted address numbers on the glass over the old capoeira school’s door.
I remember, and can still see, in my mind’s eye, the adult students smiling, with their duffle bags full of clothes, waters, and smaller instruments, drums firmly seated on the concrete, berimbaus slung over shoulders, in their Brazilian flag patch adorned and colored cases, or perched against the windows and walls. I can still see them smiling, dapping each other up, catching up with each other since the last class, and some, practicing gingas, out front, warming up while waiting for the kids’ class to end, so they could enter to do the adult classes. I can still see the kids, progressing across the floor with high kicks, and running happily from each other, inside, without a care in the world, save for getting tagged by whoever was “it.”
I can still see my husband’s old car, parked, nearly a permanent fixture there, out in front of one of the only places that he allowed to feel like home to his heart during our time together. I am thankful that I didn’t let the glaring and bittersweet view or the pain and grief of the things I lost and that are no more, where the ghosts of the family and life I once had are more than visible in the split-screen of past and present in my mind while in that space, stop me from pulling in reliable, exceptional service providing, external means of trying to take care of myself.
By refusing to go to a different nail salon, which only would have been to avoid that lone but significant geographic trigger, I defiantly enacted another form, another level, of self-care. My decision to force my own strength for my own greater good was an act of self-love, as it has forced me to move, possibly more swiftly, into a place of acceptance, which has since allowed me to pivot and grow in ways I never thought possible over the last twenty years, in the last one and a half.
I noticed that, in returning to a post-marital and post-pandemic “new normal,” some other unexpected things have changed. Apparently, when you’re healthier and happier, things that formerly operated solely in a restorative or healing capacity can then be experienced entirely pleasurably. The same ways that Aunt touched me before, that felt soothing, comforting, and lifesaving, I now feel and experience entirely as pleasure. There is no need for her touch to resurrect me, as I am living.
Instead, I sit, feeling the massage chair wheels moving along the upper length of me, while her hands move skillfully along my lower limbs. The sensuality of her touch and my imagination leads me to intently study and try to memorize the movements she employs during my leg massage for my own personal use in evoking pleasure in private moments in the future with my lover.
I also laugh to myself, sometimes thinking that she sees my body and stoic facial stubbornness as a challenge, one that she knows she has won when I finally set my phone down on the side table, close my eyes, and allow her to see me smile with my eyes, since I’m masked for both of our safety. She watches me until she sees me respond by relaxing, not moving on to the remaining steps of my pedicure as led by a clock. I always know I have reached peak satisfaction when Erykah Badu’s “Phone Down,” has subtly started playing in my head.
When I feel guilty for using my time or resources in that way, as I suspect is related to mom-guilt and having to manage fiscally and entirely on my own, now, I remind myself that I work hard and show up for so many others, on so many days, even when I’m not feeling my best. I remind myself that I am deserving of that small, still somewhat sporadic luxury. I then allow myself to let go and FEEL. Once she finishes my legs, she then rewards me with an off-menu, brief arm and shoulder massage, that only she does, and that always turns the other patrons’ heads.
When I thank her, each time, from the bottom of my heart, I know she knows I mean it. And I know she knows I’ll be back, since as the mere act of going where you’re wanted, valued, and treated well, is a pleasure all its own.
About the Author: Deirdre Scott-Jones is a North Carolina-based social worker.
