I both love having my nails done but really hate nail salons. Its a “Kim there are people dying” problem to have. Or maybe its because I am someone who’s nervous system cannot handle too much input (autistic). Ten loud conversations about golf teams not texting you back and wedding planners ordering the wrong chairs and daughters in law that have turned their sons against them, nail dryers blowing and the kind of country music that supposes I both love my truck, and my girl. Together it makes a cacophony of way-too-much-fucking-input. A cheese grater to my nervous system that also loves to soak my feet and get scrubbed in something that kinda stings my legs but in a good way, and square red glossy toes.
I made the mistake of bringing a Sheila Hetti book to read at the nail salon, a recipe for having a sob. My pedicurist looked up over her mask to repeatedly ask if I was ok. “I’m fine, I am just reading Shelia Hetti’s Motherhood for the third time on my kobo”. She started up at me, potentially blankly, or maybe it was because she had a mask on or maybe I am just not great at social cues (autistic). We returned to our work and went back to thinking it was normal for a grown woman to be scrubbing another grown woman’s feet while she cried softly into her e-reader. I tried not to kick her in the face and giggle when she pulled out the scrub that makes my legs sting in a good way. Laughing and crying is maniacal not cute. And may get you banned from the nail salon. I text Jacqueline “if one my person tells me they are pregnant my brain is going to explode”. There is too much to parse through in that sentence, there is too much interacting of facial expressions to do that I am not qualified to translate.
My shop day comes and I feel relief. Working for yourself the stakes are so high. I sit down in cafes to write and I send schedule client emails while trying to tempt myself to my desk “see candles make it fine to sit here” I tell myself its working. But when my shop day comes its feels liner. I am all woman in rom com movies. I could be an architect or a wedding planner all jobs with a starting salary that makes everyone confused as to how? why? can she afford the life she lives. But it is because I am rom com girl and the stakes feel low in this new life. Its exhilarating, actually. You see, I am in my rom come era, decidedly. The too muchness of being alive piles up, but instead I am in my rom com era, the too muchness of being alive is palatable, cute.
I switch on the lights, I have been holding off on the Christmas music but this week I played “Fairytale of New York” 6 times in one hour. I told myself it was cool cause Shane MacGowan had died last week and its punk to play punk. The drama of what music to listen to in the shop is quite exciting. It’s curating a highly specific vibe that can shift at any time. The stakes are high, but not life or death, but they feel that when when the wrong song comes on and the wrong customer walks in. Around 4pm things start to get weird (for me, spiritually). I had my running playlist on and a woman said “this music all sounds like my sad breakup crying music”.
Being in your rom com era is a fine art. Its about crying in unexpected places, holding it together but then falling apart the second the door closes. Its about having a job but never really going to work. The faint glimmer of an office somewhere out of sight. This woman does not have to decided to be pregnant or not, she knows what she wants in life, her wedding gets immaculately planned and while she probably cannot play golf she certainly has the proper sartorial outfit prepared in plaid for the occasion. To be in your rom com era is to both cry in the pedicure chair and spill coffee on yourself. It is for walking down the street frazzled english woman style, I may spill coffee all over my brand new winter coat but my brand new winterr coat is something I can’t afford on my starter whats-her-job-again (?) salary, the stakes are so high they are low because we never really address the actual stakes. Just my emotional landscape.
Rom coms galls know to feel happy when their friends tell them their pregnant. They don’t feel lost or abandoned on the ice floe we were fighting one. A sister in arms choosing to leave the front lines I didn’t even know we were fighting on. They have the social script and that even when things are bad, they can know and trust they will in fact look cute when they (finally) cry.
I text Heidi and Sierra and ask if they want to go for cocktails, cocktails turn into dinner, obviously and I leave the bar an hour after I thought i’d be home. I remind myself on the walk over to make us all do the Proust questionare but instead we get wrapped up in each others family gossip. True test of a rom com era is the Deep Meaningful Conversation with out some asinine structure or homework I have decided we need to complete (autism). My best friends are written for exposition, they are to move the plot forward.
On my walk home from the bar I look up at the sky and feel so struck by being alive and the Christmas lights reflecting in the rain on the road. The romanticization of life – I am finally doing it! this is what everyone is talking about! Then I try to evaluate if the man walking in front of my is going to stab be and drag me to his basement, I plot out how I’d make my escape from a basement hopper window for three blocks. I decide I should stop latest rewatch of horrific BBC crime show I have cued up when I get home. I wonder if Elizabeth Bennet contemplated how to escape a serial rapsits oubliette while she walked through the felid to Mr Darcy’s house?
I love when woman gather. I feel guilty for gossiping about my friends co-workers ex brother in law but then I remember this is what women do. We always seem to find each other, in the kitchens at parties, in bathrooms at clubs, in nail salons and doctor office waiting rooms. If there are women we will find ourselves in circle. We gather, we discuss, we evaluate, we parse each option through, we ask our nail techs, oracles, god and best friends and the waitress as we pay for our drinks, and we eventually cry. Because its all to much. It has to be too much. The constant parsing through what is me Phoebe the autistic woman supposed to do with each social situation I find myself in, flipping through the index of what to say and do next is exhausting. So I cry in the pedicure chair, if I am going to be able to see the pattern, the least I could do is break it.
At least, thats what I think a leading lady would do.
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Phoebe 💕
*typos are left to reflect the fury passion and 3D humaness of being a passionate freak in the world – and you know not a robot *beep boop* I am just a human girlie living on earth with a mortal brain 🤸♀️