“Look at this,” the woman says, placing a sliver of ingrown toenail slightly larger than a dinosaur bone on the towel before me. “Look at what I have to dig out of you.”
I am at a spa receiving the first pedicure of my 41 years, and I say nothing in response to my gnarly toenails, for I am at peace. But I know she’s right. My toes are, clinically speaking, a nightmare.
And yet here I am, not only flaunting them in the middle of a spa but having them cleaned and polished by a professional who is rightly flabbergasted at what I’m giving her to work with. And so far, she’s only worked on the nails, all ten operating under various stages of growth and/or putrescence.
She hasn’t even gotten to the craggy surface of my heel, with its alkali lakebed-texture making it look like some kind of alien moon. When she gets there, her exasperation boils over to impatience. “You need to soak longer,” she tells me as she walks away, but not before gently placing my feet back into a bowl of what I can only assume is industrial-grade solvent.
Meanwhile, my eight-year-old daughter is jubilant as she has her piggies worked on in the next chair over. She has selected an electrically sparkly shade of blue for her toenails, and there are heavy hints afoot that she may ask daddy to get his painted to match.
Daddy will not, at least on this trip.
This pedicure was a first for me, but I was not the first for them. “Are you kidding me?” responds the woman when I ask if she gets a lot of men in here. “Man, woman … everyone loves a pedicure.”
It’s hard to argue with her. Once she’s finished, my feet almost resemble those of a human being. Say what you will, males with fragile egos and those suffering from masculinity poisoning, but it’s not a bad way to spend half an hour. And as far as being the only guy, I’m way behind the curve.
“It’s good for your soul,” said local Mike Hayes, who is no stranger to the pedicure chair. “And I feel like a woman is more comfortable with a guy who’s in touch with himself. Because if you’re okay with it, you’ll probably end up taking her out for a pedicure as well.”
Hays, a bartender at the Tiki Hut and island institution in his own right, started getting regular pedis when a female acquaintance invited him along for a spa day. “I went with her, sat down, and I was like, ‘This is the (best).’ They’re rubbing my feet, cleaning them up… I’m on my feet 10-15 hours a day, and after that, my feet just felt better,” he said. “I decided next time I’m going all in.”
Going all in meant crossing the bridge I wouldn’t: getting his piggies painted. Going well beyond just a simple solid color, he gets a little creative with it, testing out designs from the stars and stripes to the South Carolina flag on his toes. “I’ve bounced around to a few places, and now I go to Lash and Nail in Shelter Cove,” he said. “The girl who does my toes, Kim, is almost an artist.”
But what about his guy friends? Surely, he catches 10 shades of hell from them, right?
“Oh, 1000 percent. Especially when we’re 75 miles offshore fishing,” he said. “But there’s male confidence, and then there’s male ego. Confidence is knowing who you are, and I know who I am.”
His confidence is catching, as he’s since been able to convince a handful of his guy friends to join him for a man date at the spa. “My buddy Nate [Zeedyk] has some of the worst toes I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Hays, since he hasn’t seen mine. “But when he went the first time, he loved it.”
Like a lot of guys, Zeedyk had to get over himself somewhat before he could brave the chair and the lingering notion that men don’t get pampered. “That’s what we grew up with. That was always a known thing, that guys don’t do that,” Zeedyk said. “Then you realize it’s just relaxing. It feels great. I have no problem doing that. I’m comfortable enough with myself.”
And like me, Zeedyk had another hurdle to get over: showing off his nasty toes in public. “The first time I went, I felt really bad,” he said. It’s a huge difference the first time between when you go in and when you leave.”
He’s a relatively newbie, but he’ll be back. He might even bring a few more converts who are secure enough in their manhood. “We’ll just have a guys’ day where we can relax, talk about sports, whatever,” he said. “I was talking it up to a buddy of mine and he said, ‘Next time, I’m in.’ So, we’re up to four.”
So let this be a lesson to my fellow men. It’s okay to relax. It’s okay to be pampered. It’s okay to let a stranger try to straighten out the mess you’ve made of your feet. You may catch a little grief from the other guys, but let them walk a mile in your shoes and realize how much more comfortable you are in them.
It’s not about feeling girly. It’s about feeling your best, and maybe spending a few hours talking about sports. What could be manlier than that?
