The answer is YES. A pedicure can double as both a cluster fuck and a Guantanamo torture session. I learned this lesson just tonight and I promise to be a good girl from now on if the universe promises to never do that to me again.

First, let me set the stage. I’m not a candy ass. I’m a pretty tough chick with a fairly high threshold for pain. So, before you think, “What a baby!” know that I’m one hard bitch. 😉

Second, for those of you who’ve not had a pedicure, this is how it is described in the spa brochure: Relax your feet in a therapeutic, aromatic soak of warm, bubbling water before your nails and cuticles are gently and expertly groomed. The soles of your feet will be delicately buffed to silky softness and your lower legs and feet exfoliated during a relaxing and delightful massage. The finishing touch is your choice of polish color and a one-of-a-kind, artistic design to compliment your pretty feet. Wow! That sounds pretty damn good, right? WHO THE FUCK WOULD HAVE THOUGHT???!!!

So, I stroll my tired feet and half-polished toes into the spa prepared for an hour of delightful relaxation. I have a Starbucks in one hand and the massage chair controller in the other and I’m ready to be pampered. Here’s how it goes from there.

1. I prepare to put my feet into the pedicure basin, which is so pretty. It has a rotating LED light in it so it turns all these pretty colors and lights up the bubbles. Ahhhh… In they go. FUCK MOTHER FUCKER FUCK FUCK! I yank those suckers out as fast as I can because the water was not hot, it was just this side of boiling. Water droplets went flying everywhere and when a few landed on my pedicurist she hollered, “Ouch!” Yep, even after traveling through the cool evening air, the water was still hot enough to burn her when it landed on her arm. As I looked at my scalded feet there were red splotches all over them all the way up to just past my ankle. Yep, that shit hurt like a mo fo.
2. After she drains the cauldron and adds normal-hot water to it, I stick my feet in (now, of course, they are tender and overly susceptible to sensation), lean back and relax. She takes my right foot from the water, sets it up on the foot perch, removes the mostly missing nail polish and then starts manicuring my cuticles. Sounds good, right? NO! She attacked my feet with those nippers like she was being paid for every drop of blood she leached out of my toes. With one deft move she dug under my big toenail, pulled the razor-sharp nipper across to the top edge of my nail and yanked it out of the cuticle. WHAT THE HELL!!! I can only assume it’s some trick to make sure you don’t get ingrown toenails, but with the onslaught of blood I’m guessing she did not do it correctly. (For those of you who previously read my post about my biggest fear on earth being kicking my pedicurist in the face, know that my knee-jerk reaction almost realized this fear. I’m going to call it the “twitchy foot” so that I can easily refer to it throughout this post as it happened quite a few times.)
3. Now that I’m bleeding, she digs into her kit and pulls out what must be a bottle of salt mixed with acid and applies that to my bloodied toe. SON OF A BITCH! (Twitchy foot.)
4. Once I stopped crying (on the inside) she continued torturing, I mean, cutting my cuticles until there was no skin left on my toes.
5. Then comes time for the callous remover. Now, keep in mind you pay EXTRA for this. I paid her to do this to me. She put the callous removing lotion all over the bottom of my feet and then started shaving off my skin. Yes, shaving. SHAVING! Which is fine as long she pays attention to what she’s doing. Alas… at that very moment there infiltrates my nose a smell that is a combination of burning wood and rotten eggs. What in the unholy fuckin’ hell is that stench!!!!??? Then I see the woman in the seat next to me with a mortified look on her face. Yep, she dealt the lethal anal air blast and now realized that the smell was worse than burning flesh. Good gracious God. I thought I was going to choke to death. And lucky for me, the smell not only distracted me from my boiled and bleeding feet, but it distracted my darling pedicurist who got into a loud and raucous conversation (in another language) with the pedicurist doing the feet of Fart Woman and while not at all watching what she was doing sheared off a slice of my heel that had my twitchy foot jumping all over the place. Somehow I managed not to kick her in the fuckin’ head, but it was a struggle. I didn’t see any blood drip (yet) so I thought, “Eh, fuck it, I’ll stick it out. How much more damage can she do?” What a dumb ass I am.
6. Finally, the skin shaving is over (it was like some scene out of Criminal Minds for God’s sake!) and she places my feet back in the water-filled basin. FUUUUUUUCK!!!! Where I was missing skin from the razor debacle the hot, soapy water burned like someone was branding me with a cattle branding thingy (I don’t know what the fuck those things are called…a branding iron maybe?). Again, I got me the twitchy foot.
7. Okay, so now it’s time for the salt scrub (again, I pay extra for this) which I dearly love getting–any kind of rubby massage is my idea of heaven. But apparently, Mrs. Fart inspired my pedicurist and her neighboring pedicurist to engage in a fun and jovial conversation that was seemingly without end and again she is distracted and not even looking vaguely in my direction as she begins. So, as she applies the gritty, chunky salt to my right leg she’s so swept up in giggling that she forgets to add water to the mix and starts grinding the flesh off of my leg with what feels like the roughest sand paper ever. This SUCKED! It did not feel good, but to be quite honest, at this point the pain was actually starting to get funny. I just kept thinking that it couldn’t keep going on and on and getting worse and worse. Again, I’m a stupid fuck. After about 3 of the longest minutes of my life she realizes that she’s not added any water (though she sure as shit added more salt) and adds a bit of water. Whew… that must be what it feels like when giving birth and the baby finally comes the fuck out. Such relief that the worst of the pain is over. Oh, how could I have neglected to mention that the water-free salt scrub probably wouldn’t have been SO damn agonizing if she didn’t have the bony fingers of Death itself. It was like being massaged by the Grim Reaper. Her fingers were small razors of pain.
8. At last, we are coming towards the end of this and so far I have yet to kick her, call her a bad name or outwardly cry. Total miracle, my friends. Total miracle. As she starts wiping down my legs with a warm towel (mmm…something finally didn’t hurt like hell) I start to relax and then BAM! She does some kind of finger snapping thing on my toes and cracks my baby toe knuckle. Yep. That was it. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I HATE HAVING MY KNUCKLES CRACKED! I lost all control over my foot and where it went and I snapped it away from her as fast as my lizard brain could and missed kicking her in the face by maybe a half a centimeter. Yep. Worst fear realized. She just missed a broken nose. I didn’t do it on purpose. It was like when the doctor taps your knee with the hammer to test your reactions. You can’t help but kick out your leg. That’s what happened to me. I’d been boiled, bled-out, and sliced with a razor. I’d had my leg skin removed with a salt/sand paper massage and suffered through the worst smelling butt assault in recorded history. And dammit, my survival instinct FINALLY kicked in and I kicked out. Good news is that I didn’t make contact–but just by the hair of my chinny chin chin. So, when she asked me moments later if I wanted her to paint a design on my toe I of course agreed out of horror for almost having broken her face. I paid $10 for this:

Do you see a beautiful design? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Is there ten dollars worth of design on my big toe nails? NO! She covered up most of the design (6 stripes of black paint–yep, that is just so special and beautiful and custom and artistic) with the sparkly top coat I had requested and assumed like a fool would go under the design like it has 5,000,000 times before. And I’m not sure if you can tell, but the edges of my big toes are all red and inflamed where she, well, killed them. Ultimately, this pedicure ended up costing me a fortune and I left gimpy, bloody, smelling of chick farts and wanting to die.

Here’s what I think about their pedicure description: Relax your feet in a therapeutic, aromatic soak of warm, bubbling water (LIE! SCALDING IS NOT RELAXING!) before your nails and cuticles are gently and expertly groomed (LIE! BLOOD DOES NOT EQUAL GENTLY, NOR DOES IT EQUAL EXPERTLY). The soles of your feet will be delicately buffed (WITH A RAZOR AND ALL THE WAY DOWN TO THE BONE) to silky softness (EXPOSED MUSCLE IS NOT SILKY SOFT) and your lower legs and feet exfoliated (SKIN REMOVAL TO THIS EXTENT IS NOT EXFOLIATION, IT’S WHAT ANCIENT TRIBES USED TO DO BEFORE EATING YOU) during a relaxing and delightful massage (THE CRYPT KEEPER DOES NOT GIVE RELAXING AND DELIGHTFUL MASSAGES). The finishing touch is your choice of polish color (THE ONLY TRUE PART OF THIS BLASPHEME) and a one-of-a-kind, artistic design (REALLY? REALLY? 6 BLACK STRIPES YOU CAN BARELY EVEN SEE QUALIFY AS THIS??) to compliment your pretty (BLOODY AND SORE) feet.

Good gracious Lord…I think I need a drink. 🙂

PS: Forgive any typos. My nails are way too long and I can’t type worth a shit, but I was not about to let her have at my hands after all of this!!! 😉