pedicure part 2

some of you may recall a previous post i authored in which i detailed my first experience with receiving a pedicure. only the hardcorest of zombies will note that said post took place almost a year ago to the day during an attorneys' retreat to newport beach. yes, for those who have done the math, we just had our annual attorneys' retreat in newport again and, yes, i was fortunate enough to get another pedicure... but that's not all.

first, i stand by my previous assessment that pedicures are a wonderful thing and the fact that i enjoy them says nothing about my unquestionable masculinity. second, even though i have not had a pedicure since i first had one a year ago, i have been long looking forward to the newport trip so i could receive my second. finally that day came and after a bruising battle of a football game on the beach and a rain soaked biking expedition to balboa island, my esteemed male colleagues and i made our way to the local albertson's shopping center pedicure chop shop for some self-pampering.

the five of us who were secure enough with our masculinity to embark on such an endeavor entered the nail salon and were immediately greeted by a score of vietnamese women who showed us to our chairs and commenced chiseling away at the roughshod on our feet. but that wasn't all, one of the ladies asked if i wanted a neck and shoulder massage. is the pope catholic? let's do it.

next thing i knew, though, was that she was asking me in broken english to lift up my shirt. huh? then the next thing i knew is that she was not only asking me to lift up my shirt, but to remove it. huh? then the next next thing i knew was that my boss and another colleague of mine had already peeled their shirts off and were getting the rub down. so, if all your friends jump off a bridge, should you jump off the bridge, too? absolutely... if it means getting a massage. off went the shirt and on went the massage oil.

let me be clear... we weren't in private rooms tearing off our tops and getting massaged, we were in the main area of the entryway to the salon whose whole front wall was a window to a fairly busy shopping center parking lot in broad daylight. oh, and i was the one closest to the window... surprisingly, i didn't care. i guess it was the super relaxing massage i was getting that calmed my nerves and tamed my apprehensions.

in addition, there was an older lady sitting next to me and then on the other side of her were my boss and co-worker. when the tops came off and she was surrounded by some not so strapping fleshy males, she was all of a sudden smiling in a laughing at us and not with us kind of way. but, as noted above, i couldn't have cared less although it was kind of awkward... and i'm sure that anyone who might have waked in at that moment would have been beholden to quite the site. you come in, thinking you'll enjoy a people magazine, an episode of harpo the she-devil, or private viatnamese language lessons and the first thing you see is three pale white guys whose better days in terms of being in physical shape are well behind them not only sitting in your starship enterprise chair but getting a combination pedicure/massage. like i said, quite a site in that it's not quite the site you were expecting. feel free to take your patronage elsewhere.

all i'm saying is, don't hate me because i've got finely trimmed, filed, waxed, and buffed toe nails. hate me because i not only have finely trimmed, filed, waxed, and buffed toe nails, but because i've also got finely trimmed, filed, waxed, and buffed finger nails... oh, and did i mention i got all that done simultaneously with a massage. to say the least, these ladies were master salespeople. every five minutes they were asking me if i wanted something more, all while being under the influence of nail polish fumes, massage oil and the massage itself... i didn't know what to say. actually, i just kept pointing to my boss and saying, "whatever he's getting." and, of course, he was getting whatever they were proposing... at least according to them he was.

and that was just the pedicure. the rest of newport was great, too... but that's a story for another day.