#i think he’s a little stingy w money though i think he would turn bright red and ask to split the check hahhaha
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♡⃣ v a l k y r i e ’ s simple affection is shown by…𖥔 ˑ ִ ֗ ִ ۫ ˑ 𖥻 ִ ۫ ּ
….basking in your presence. mika is content anywhere as long as you’re the person beside him. running errands with you goes beyond being a favorite pastime of his, it’s a genuine honor of his to be allowed to spend the most mundane hours of life with you. holding your grocery bags while talking about the colors in the advertisements you’ve seen in store windows, making up names and stories for puppies seen tied to cafe tables outside, predicting the weather, discussing how intelligent humans are for inventing things for even the smallest of inconveniences—in the silence between topics mika thanks that god over and over again that someone could love a half broken product like him. he feels truly blessed by you, especially if you find the right time to rub his head or scratch under his chin. in the small times you spend together, he blushes so much around you that you begin to believe he really is just a cherry cheeked kind of boy
….pinching your cheek and clicking his teeth. only you can hear the care in shu’s nagging, the softness in his correction. only he can see the hair on your head that’s out of place, the tag sticking out of your shirt. brushing a hair out of your face while your hands are full, fastening your necklace for you after you’ve fumbled with the latch for a minutes or so, retying your shoes for you mumbling about how childish you truly are—shu can’t admit it but he really does enjoy just taking care of you. you’re a precious artifact to him, something that needs delicate hands and a proper home. taking note of the colors you wear often, the times of year you sneeze the most, the kind of drinks that you cringe at, whether or not you enjoy the guitar and if he should find ways to incorporate into his work..even in his own little world, there remains a spot for you. somehow you’re approval has also become vital to his projects, knowing you believe in his genius gives his a sense of pride like he’s never felt when he’s done this alone. after so many years of safe and cold porcelain skin, shu never realized how strong his craving was to feel something so warm and inviting until now
#hello……..not me having issues writing itsuki again 🥴 hi#but i said before itsuki’s affection is all corrective….well thts all i can find it in me to say rn#kagehira is both catlike & golden retriever-like in a way i can’t put into the right words#like ‘eager to please’ but ‘throughly enjoys parallel play’ hahah#idk i think he’s sweet is all#i think he’s a little stingy w money though i think he would turn bright red and ask to split the check hahhaha#but itsuki would pay even if he didn’t have the money bc he’s delusional (doesn’t know how money works) (or doesn’t care abt how money works#very very removed from reality….ah okay no more talking abt itsuki 😵💫#idk i don’t have anything else to say#things written#ensemble stars#enstars fanfic#valkyrie enstars#enstars fluff#mika kagehira#mika kagehira x reader#shu itsuki x reader#valkyrie x reader#shu itsuki#valkyrie ensemble stars#enstars#itsuki shu#kagehira mika#enstars headcanons#mika kagehira fluff#shu itsuki fluff#mika kagehira headcanon
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Floriography
Megamind/Roxanne, outside perspective, K rating
prequel/sequel to Poetry and Flowers
A florist in Metro City helps an odd man with an unusual watch put together a very strange and weirdly specific bouquet.
AO3 | FFN
It’s almost closing time at the florist shop when the man walks in. As the bell over the door jingles, Aubrey puts on their best customer service smile and represses a groan.
Everybody in Metro City seems to have suddenly remembered that Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, the collective citizenry has been descending on the florist shop in a non-stop desperate horde of romantic procrastinators.
The shop is, by now, extremely picked over, nothing left but floral odds and ends, a circumstance that the last six customers did not hesitate to complain about bitterly. Aubrey had bitten their tongue and refrained from pointing out that it was their own damn fault for waiting so long to buy flowers.
This guy, at least, walks purposefully towards the counter, instead of meandering around the shop, which, Aubrey thinks, is one point in his favor.
“Hi, how can I help you?”
“—I would like to order a bouquet of flowers please,” the guy says in a rush, the words running together.
Aubrey blinks in surprise, and the man winces, his dark skin flushing. He’s holding a slim dark blue book in his hands, turning it over and over again restlessly.
“Sorry,” the guy adds. “Thank you.” He grimaces again, a pained look in his disconcertingly bright green eyes.
“…sure,” Aubrey says, feeling a rush of sympathy at the guy’s clear nervousness. “Did you—have something specific in mind? I’m afraid we’re all out of roses, but we’ve got a few carnations left—I can show you what we have in stock, still—”
“Not roses,” the man says, with a quick, dismissive wave of his hand. “Much too ordinary for—red tulips; do you have those?”
“We do,” Aubrey says, turning to retrieve the tulips from the shelf behind them, “but only a couple—”
“That’s fine,” the guy says. “Clematis?”
Aubrey gives him a sidelong look, but wordlessly adds the showy pink clematis flower to the tulips, diplomatically not pointing out that the pairing is…not really visually ideal.
“Gardenias.”
Ah, okay, that looks a little better, Aubrey has to admit. The white gardenias pull the classy tulips and ostentatious clematis together, and help balance the color scheme.
“Daffodils.”
Aaand there goes the harmony of the bouquet; the bright yellow daffodils make it just look weird again.
“Iris.”
Purple? Really? With the daffodils, okay, or with the white gardenias, or with the red tulips. But not with all of them, and pink clematis in the bargain—
“Apple blossoms. Peach blossoms.”
“Er—which?” Aubrey asks, hand hovering between the two.
“Both.”
Aubrey winces and adds them both. This bouquet is going to be such a mess; should they warn the guy how much of a mess this is going to be? A really expensive mess, too—
“Cypress,” the man says, mouth twisting as if he’s tasted something bitter.
Maybe he’s realized how bad this bouquet looks, Aubrey thinks. The guy doesn’t say anything, though, so Aubrey goes ahead and adds the christmas-y green cypress to the bouquet.
The man hesitates, after that.
“Do you have anything—blue?” he asks, sounding uncertain for the first time.
“Blue?” Aubrey asks. Surely this bouquet doesn’t need another color—
The man’s mouth twists again, his eyes falling.
“—yes,” he says. “Blue.”
“…I mean, we’ve got bluebells,” Aubrey says.
“Bluebells. Thank you. Yes.”
Aubrey adds the bluebells.
“That’s all,” the man says.
Aubrey blinks in surprise; somehow, they’d felt as if the guy might just keep on adding flowers to the bouquet forever. They glance down at the bouquet in their hands.
—huh. It actually—doesn’t look that bad.
Vividly colored, and more than a little bit odd, but not actually bad.
What had the guy said before, about roses? Too ordinary for whoever this bouquet was meant for? Well, this certainly isn’t any kind of ordinary.
“Great!” Aubrey says, with another customer service smile. “We have complimentary cards to put in the bouquet, if you’d like to add a message or a signature. Pens and cards are on the counter to your right!”
They turn away to tie up the bouquet and add the plastic card holder; when they turn back around, the man is looking down at a blank card, pen in his hand, biting his lip as if uncertain what to write. Finally he writes a crisp M on the paper, pushes the card across the counter to Aubrey, and replaces the pen in the cup.
“Would you like to pick out a vase?” Aubrey ask.
“A—oh—yes—I—”
The man swallows visibly, his hands moving restlessly, fingertips running along the spine of the book.
“That—that one,” he says, pointing at a tall, clear vase on the shelf behind Aubrey.
Aubrey puts the flowers in the vase and sets them on the counter. The man fumbles in his pocket and pulls out his wallet.
“And will you be taking the flowers with you?” Aubrey asks. “Or would you like them delivered?”
“I—I—” the man looks even more nervous now than when he first walked into the shop.
There is a long, strangely fraught silence, the man’s expression of anxiety deepening until finally— his whole expression twists, not just bitter or worried this time, but absolutely anguished and filled with despair.
He shakes his head with a sudden violence, breath hissing through his teeth.
“—god,” he says, “never—”
Aubrey takes half a step back in shock, and then the man yanks a handful of bills from his wallet and tosses them on the counter.
“—forget it,” he says rapidly, “forget it; forget it; never mind—”
He almost runs for the door.
“But—” Aubrey says. “Are you sure you don’t want—”
“Keep it,” the man says, “keep it; keep the flowers; keep the money; thank you for trying—”
“Your change—”
The man shakes his head violently again, and disappears out the door.
The bell over top of it jangles as it closes. Aubrey stares after him for a moment, and then looks back down at what is really entirely too much money on the counter. Their eyes widen as they count it, then they give a low whistle.
The guy had been severely weird, but he certainly hadn’t been stingy. He technically hadn’t even had to pay for the bouquet at all; Aubrey’s had customers before who made them go through the whole production of making a bouquet only to refuse to pay at the end when they decided they didn’t want it after all. And certainly none of them had tipped Aubrey afterwards.
Aubrey glances at the bouquet, pulls the card from it, and looks at it curiously. M.
They wonder if whoever M had meant this strange bouquet for would have liked it, and feel a little twist of melancholy. It’s too bad, really. Aubrey had liked the guy, in spite of the weirdness. Even before the tip.
They shake their head, shaking off the sympathetic sadness, and put the card down on the counter.
It’s closing time, and Aubrey is more than ready to go home.
The next day is even more hectic; there are three other people working behind the counter with Aubrey today, all of them making bouquets out of odds and ends for customers who have suddenly decided that Valentine’s Day is some kind of emergency.
It’s actually Clarissa who answers the phone call.
“—Wayne Scott,” she says, pausing in filling out the delivery form. She gives a panicked little laugh. “Well—I’m afraid we don’t—we don’t have a very wide selection left, Mr. Scott; I—oh. Oh. Um. That’s—all right, then, let me just—”
She cradles the headset between her head and shoulder and looks around frantically for something to scrounge up. His reassurances that it doesn’t really matter what the bouquet looks like notwithstanding; she can’t give Metro Man’s girlfriend something that’s—”
Her eyes fall on the already made up bouquet, leftover from yesterday. An odd selection of flowers, but it doesn’t look quite so bad as the things they’ve been forced to make up today. She swiftly adds up the total and reads it off to Mr. Scott, punches in his credit card number after he recites it for her.
As soon as she hangs up, another customer comes in—and Clarissa forgets to finish filling out the form, and to write a card for the holder. And then another customer comes in, and then the phone rings again and—
When José comes in to pick up the next batch of flowers to be delivered, she’s on the phone again, and she mimes desperately at him to pick up the vase and the form.
The card Aubrey put down on the counter last night is still there, beside the vase. Seeing it, José assumes that it must have fallen, and goes to replace it in the bouquet’s plastic holder. Then he hesitates, uncertain as to if the letter on the card is meant to be a W or an M.
He glances at the form, but the sender’s name has been left off.
He looks back at the card.
M. It looks more like an M.
He puts the card in the plastic holder.
There are a lot of deliveries to make; a lot of bouquets. By the time José puts that particular vase of flowers down on Roxanne Ritchi’s desk, he’s forgotten all about the question of the card.
(There’s a slim blue book on her desk already. José puts the vase down on that.)
“—what made you think the flowers were from me?” Megamind asks, sitting on Roxanne’s couch beside her three weeks later. “Besides the card?”
“Oh!” she says, and laughs. “Well—okay, so the card, yeah, and then the poems seemed like you, and then—okay, so, honestly, I looked up the flowers that were in the bouquet, and the florigraphic meaning of all of them was—”
Megamind’s expression goes steadily odder as she describes the bouquet.
“—but I mean,” Roxanne says, “you can see why I thought that they were from you, right? I don’t sound completely—”
“They were.”
Roxanne tilts her head curiously.
“They—Wayne said the florist told him they just—gave you whatever they had, right?” Megamind says.
Roxanne nods.
“They—they must not have thrown it away,” Megamind says, a happy, incredulous smile beginning to curve the edges of his mouth.
“What are you talking about?” Roxanne asks, smiling bemusedly back at him.
Megamind laughs, a breathless, wondering sound—and then he explains.
...the end.
notes:
The flower language interpretation of the bouquet that Megamind has them make up for Roxanne is:
apple blossom - temptation
iris - a message
peach blossom - I am your captive
clematis - mental beauty
gardenias - secret love
daffodils - unrequited love
cypress - despair
red tulips - a declaration of love
bluebells - (the color is a symbol for Megamind)
It basically translates to:
"A message for you, Temptress. You are brilliant and I am your captive. I've been in love with you secretly, and I know you don't love me back, but I'm telling you now that I love you."
-Megamind
Happy day 5 of my birthday fic month! I hope you are all enjoying it!
Someone asked if all of the stories for my birthday fic month would be new ones, or if any of my in-progress stories would be updated. Scroll down if you would like to know the answer; don't scroll down if you'd rather be surprised!
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Most of the stories will be new ones, but this one is obviously a sequel to another story; another day's update will be an additional chapter to one of my one-shots; one will be a multi-chapter sequel to one of my one-shots; one will be a new chapter of Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue; and one will be the first chapter of the next story in the Safe If We Stand Close Together series.
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For the Want of a Nail
Why did someone have to go and invent fingerless gloves?
When I’d originally decided on what I would do this week, it seemed pretty innocuous. After all, I didn’t have make any prior arrangements or worry about people bailing on me. Women all around the world did it everyday and none of them experienced any consternation about the process. Not to mention it was always something I kind of wanted to do. Painting your nails was just another avenue of self-expression and I was certainly down with that. I’d pierced my ear, shaved my head, tattooed my skin, worn colour contacts and experimented with facial hair. I’d been to Pride. I’d visited drag bars on at least three separate occasions. I was hardly the embodiment of raw, beer-swilling masculinity.
So how did I now find myself hands-deep in coat pockets, shuffling around public transport in my very own metaphorical straightjacket?
It’s not like I hadn’t anticipated that I might get cold feet/hands. So naturally, I planned a contingency. Worst came to worst- if the glares and comments from strangers were too much to bear- I could throw on my gloves and no one would be any wiser that I was wearing a full coat of Silver Moonlight underneath. It was still early spring. Gloves were still a thing. My plan seemed equally foolproof as I darted out the door this morning, a pair of winter gloves balled up in my bag. It is only as I board the tram and the first pair of commuter eyeballs strike me that I remember. Fingerless gloves. I always wear fingerless gloves. Crap.
I take a seat on the relatively empty tram. No one else really seems to care about my nails, thankfully. It suddenly occurs to me that I’m living in Melbourne, my apartment a mere 10 minutes out of the city. This was supposed to be the mecca of alternative hipsterdom. What on Earth was I afraid of? Just as the thought starts to take hold in my mind, I spy a pair of curious eyes trained on my nails. They belong to a middle-aged woman in a black down jacket, her brows quizzically furrowed. Ah yes, that’s what I’m afraid of. Even though her eyes have now relocated, the damage is done. I’m already doubting my immersion idea and I don’t even have any gloves as a security blanket. My silver, glitter-encrusted fingers retreat into my pockets.
The significance of keeping my nails hidden gnaws at the back of my mind. I remember that first Caitlyn Jenner interview with Diane Sawyer, where Caitlyn revealed that she used to paint her toenails and keep them concealed. The first episode of her docuseries, where the camera would often linger on her painted magenta nails in a way uncharacteristic of talking heads: a symbol of how far she’d come. It occurs to me how much meaning painted nails have and just how much of a self-representation they are.
Suddenly my nails feel off, like I’m hijacking something important that’s not mine. Even as I reassure myself that I’m doing this in good spirits, I can’t shake the feeling that this is more of a dare than an experience, akin to a bloke wearing a bra to a buck’s night. A thousand questions spin around in my mind as the tram shudders to a halt at my stop. The doors open, unleashing an exodus of the now crowded tramcar onto the street. Unlike on my other commutes, I take in every pair of painted nails I see. There’s French tips and nail art and stiletto nails that would make Lana Del Rey proud.
And then it finally hits me, the reason why they’re wearing their nails proudly and I’m not. Their nails are a reflection of them. Mine aren’t. I’d chosen mine for shock value. Someone else had painted them for me.
If I’m going to wear nail polish, I need to wear the nail polish I would wear.
Back when cracked nails were all the rage, I remember hounding my sister about how awesome she’d look wearing them. In hindsight, me playing backseat beautician was probably my not-so-veiled way of saying how much I wanted to wear them instead. To me, cracked nails were the cosmetic equivalent of those little porridge eggs that magically turned into dinosaurs when you added milk: a harmless and fun novelty. Yet, it had never actually occurred to me in my 14-year-old mind that I’d ever be in the position to wear them and get away with it.
Now that I’m actually invested in the process of painting my nails, it occurs to me that I don’t even know where to begin. I’d always seen sections for them at pharmacies but I can’t imagine a pharmacy having a particularly large selection. I finally settle on the idea of Big W. I know they have a cosmetics section and if anywhere would have a great, affordable selection of nail polish, it would be a giant department store.
The cosmetics section of Big W is divided into five or six stations, each for a different major brand. I stand there overwhelmed. How had I not already decided on the brand I was going to buy beforeshowing up? I inconspicuously file down the aisle, giving each section the Goldilocks treatment. Maybelline- too expensive. Garnier- not enough range. L’Oreal- don’t they test on animals or something? Revlon… this could do it. A large display of wholesome and diverse colours spans out in front of me- it’s a nail polish display that takes up at least a third of its section and has at least three separate categories. The prices? 14 dollars each, apparently. I bite down a wave of stinginess. It’s an investment, Jeremy, it’s an investment.
The freedom feels maddening, like I’m a child picking out face paint at a strip mall. It’s a curious question to ask myself: what colour do I love enough to literally paint myself with? It has to be blue, I think instinctively. Ice blue, specifically. My eyes immediately begin skimming the shelf in search of it. I’m fascinated with how something as simple as this, as mundane as this, is already filling me up with glee. I’m going to get to look at my favourite colour all the time. I’m wondering how arbitrary it is, that something this hedonistic is limited to one gender, when-
There.
A greyish, slate blue. Not too bright, not too dark and just matte enough. If you could bottle an overcast day at the beach, this would be it. As I turn the tiny glass bottle over in hands my mind flashes back to that episode of Lizzie McGuire where Miranda gets arrested for shoplifting. Self-consciousness in over-drive, I grab a shopping basket from the pile near the entrance and dump a few non-descript items in it. Good. Now at least if I look questionable, I’ll look law-abiding and questionable. I go back to the Revlon aisle, basket in tow. The blue alone isn’t quite enough. It’s too plain and straightforward, so I add a standard black bottle to the mix. Perfect.
Half the battle won, I turn around to pay at the makeup counter like the sign had directed me to. Except- I can’t find the makeup counter. Yep. As I pace through the Pac-Man maze that is Big W cosmetics, the vital “cosmetics counter” only becomes more elusive. After nearly two straight minutes of attracting the subtle attention of onlookers, I manage to locate an abandoned money till shrouded by a pile of boxes. Wait, so there’s no cosmetics counter? But the sign explicitly said that I needed to come here to pay for cosmetic products.
“There’s no cosmetics counter” chimes a grinning 20-something girl with dip-died hair, apparently sensing my confusion. “Just ignore the signs”.
I hushedly thank her, still taken aback at the sudden interjection.
“Oh and- nice choices” she adds encouragingly as I carry my basket over to the register.
I feel half-embarrassed, half-assured as I pay for my things. On one hand I’d come off looking like a complete novice, which is never a nice feeling. But on the other, I’d just found encouragement where I’d expected judgement. Maybe, this whole time, I’d been getting myself worked up over nothing.
I click open the first nail painting tutorial that comes up on YouTube. The perky voice in the video tells me that I need to start off with a base coat. I borrow a bottle of my mom’s that apparently doubles as a topcoat as well. This is starting to feel more like a game of Jenga than a beauty ritual. How many layers will I need to put on? Trusting the chirpy voice, I proceed to paint on a layer of base coat, followed by two layers of each respective colour on every other nail, and finish up with topcoat. After about 10 minutes of waiting, curiosity gets the cat- and the “cat” trawls straight through the wet cement I’d spent half an hour applying. Yep, my nails are still wet.
A further 30 minutes later, I sit back and admire the final result. It’s pretty sloppy. The colour flows out of and around my nails, swallowing up my cuticles. My lack of patience is embroidered on every nail in the form of various fingerprints, indentations and scratches. Each surface undulates and ripples as if it were hand-painted by a tiny Jackson Pollock. If my nails were a colouring book, I’d have drawn quite decidedly outside of the lines. Yet, somehow, I love them. For the first time I’m actually grateful for this experience, for giving me the running jump I needed to get out of my comfort zone.
My following week wearing the 2.0 version of my nails is surprisingly enjoyable. The excess polish on my skin even moults off after a couple of showers, much like arthropod assuming its final form. Despite this, the rest of the polish somehow remains intact. Nail polish: 1, Entropy: 0.
Walking into my first lecture of that week with my nails on full display, I feel completely at ease. I stroll in- comfortably on time for once- along with everyone else and spot not even one pair of pupils aimed at my nails. How about the guy sitting next to me, sporting a magnificent mane of thick brown hair? Nope, he’s scrolling through Facebook on his laptop. It’s at this point that I realize that I myself hadn’t stopped to gawk at his long hair. Here we both are, defying gender norms in our own understated ways, and neither one of us could care less. Pulling my laptop out of my bag, I let my hands roam free. Be they clacking on the keyboard or resting inquiringly on my chin, my fingertips are out and staying out. It’s not exactly “woman wears pants in the 50s” but it feels cool to be a pioneer in my own miniscule way.
By the end of the week, I realize that I’ve pretty much dropped the guise of an immersion essay entirely. When people ask why I’m wearing nail polish, I tell them it’s because I want to: that’s not untrue, after all. The last day of my week comes and I finally receive a question from a friend that I’ve been putting off asking myself.
“So now that your assignment is done are you…is that it for the nails or…?”
I stop and think for a moment about the prospect of parting with my slate-blue companions.
One might be interested to know that slate, in addition to being a shade of blue, is also a low-grade metamorphic rock. What this means is that, despite its hardy appearance, slate is one of the finest-grained rocks around. In fact, a well-placed knock is enough to split apart its surface entirely. However, far from rendering it useless, this fragility uncovers a vast array of layers hidden beneath its surface. Slate is a surprising rock- an unconventional and sensitive rock but ultimately, one that is profoundly useful and unique.
“You know what?” I reply. “I think I might hang on to them for a few more days.
#for the want of a nail#nonfiction#short story#nail polish#male polish#jeremy c.north#guyawks#immersive writing#writer#author
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For the Want of a Nail
Why did someone have to go and invent fingerless gloves?
When I’d originally decided on what I would do this week, it seemed pretty innocuous. After all, I didn’t have make any prior arrangements or worry about people bailing on me. Women all around the world did it everyday and none of them experienced any consternation about the process. Not to mention it was always something I kind of wanted to do. Painting your nails was just another avenue of self-expression and I was certainly down with that. I’d pierced my ear, shaved my head, tattooed my skin, worn colour contacts and experimented with facial hair. I’d been to Pride. I’d visited drag bars on at least three separate occasions. I was hardly the embodiment of raw, beer-swilling masculinity.
So how did I now find myself hands-deep in coat pockets, shuffling around public transport in my very own metaphorical straightjacket?
It’s not like I hadn’t anticipated that I might get cold feet/hands. So naturally, I planned a contingency. Worst came to worst- if the glares and comments from strangers were too much to bear- I could throw on my gloves and no one would be any wiser that I was wearing a full coat of Silver Moonlight underneath. It was still early spring. Gloves were still a thing. My plan seemed equally foolproof as I darted out the door this morning, a pair of winter gloves balled up in my bag. It is only as I board the tram and the first pair of commuter eyeballs strike me that I remember. Fingerless gloves. I always wear fingerless gloves. Crap.
I take a seat on the relatively empty tram. No one else really seems to care about my nails, thankfully. It suddenly occurs to me that I’m living in Melbourne, my apartment a mere 10 minutes out of the city. This was supposed to be the mecca of alternative hipsterdom. What on Earth was I afraid of? Just as the thought starts to take hold in my mind, I spy a pair of curious eyes trained on my nails. They belong to a middle-aged woman in a black down jacket, her brows quizzically furrowed. Ah yes, that’s what I’m afraid of. Even though her eyes have now relocated, the damage is done. I’m already doubting my immersion idea and I don’t even have any gloves as a security blanket. My silver, glitter-encrusted fingers retreat into my pockets.
The significance of keeping my nails hidden gnaws at the back of my mind. I remember that first Caitlyn Jenner interview with Diane Sawyer, where Caitlyn revealed that she used to paint her toenails and keep them concealed. The first episode of her docuseries, where the camera would often linger on her painted magenta nails in a way uncharacteristic of talking heads: a symbol of how far she’d come. It occurs to me how much meaning painted nails have and just how much of a self-representation they are.
Suddenly my nails feel off, like I’m hijacking something important that’s not mine. Even as I reassure myself that I’m doing this in good spirits, I can’t shake the feeling that this is more of a dare than an experience, akin to a bloke wearing a bra to a buck’s night. A thousand questions spin around in my mind as the tram shudders to a halt at my stop. The doors open, unleashing an exodus of the now crowded tramcar onto the street. Unlike on my other commutes, I take in every pair of painted nails I see. There’s French tips and nail art and stiletto nails that would make Lana Del Rey proud.
And then it finally hits me, the reason why they’re wearing their nails proudly and I’m not. Their nails are a reflection of them. Mine aren’t. I’d chosen mine for shock value. Someone else had painted them for me.
If I’m going to wear nail polish, I need to wear the nail polish I would wear.
***
Back when cracked nails were all the rage, I remember hounding my sister about how awesome she’d look wearing them. In hindsight, me playing backseat beautician was probably my not-so-veiled way of saying how much I wanted to wear them instead. To me, cracked nails were the cosmetic equivalent of those little porridge eggs that magically turned into dinosaurs when you added milk: a harmless and fun novelty. Yet, it had never actually occurred to me in my 14-year-old mind that I’d ever be in the position to wear them and get away with it.
Now that I’m actually invested in the process of painting my nails, it occurs to me that I don’t even know where to begin. I’d always seen sections for them at pharmacies but I can’t imagine a pharmacy having a particularly large selection. I finally settle on the idea of Big W. I know they have a cosmetics section and if anywhere would have a great, affordable selection of nail polish, it would be a giant department store.
The cosmetics section of Big W is divided into five or six stations, each for a different major brand. I stand there overwhelmed. How had I not already decided on the brand I was going to buy beforeshowing up? I inconspicuously file down the aisle, giving each section the Goldilocks treatment. Maybelline- too expensive. Garnier- not enough range. L’Oreal- don’t they test on animals or something? Revlon… this could do it. A large display of wholesome and diverse colours spans out in front of me- it’s a nail polish display that takes up at least a third of its section and has at least three separate categories. The prices? 14 dollars each, apparently. I bite down a wave of stinginess. It’s an investment, Jeremy, it’s an investment.
The freedom feels maddening, like I’m a child picking out face paint at a strip mall. It’s a curious question to ask myself: what colour do I love enough to literally paint myself with? It has to be blue, I think instinctively. Ice blue, specifically. My eyes immediately begin skimming the shelf in search of it. I’m fascinated with how something as simple as this, as mundane as this, is already filling me up with glee. I’m going to get to look at my favourite colour all the time. I’m wondering how arbitrary it is, that something this hedonistic is limited to one gender, when-
There.
A greyish, slate blue. Not too bright, not too dark and just matte enough. If you could bottle an overcast day at the beach, this would be it. As I turn the tiny glass bottle over in hands my mind flashes back to that episode of Lizzie McGuire where Miranda gets arrested for shoplifting. Self-consciousness in over-drive, I grab a shopping basket from the pile near the entrance and dump a few non-descript items in it. Good. Now at least if I look questionable, I’ll look law-abiding and questionable. I go back to the Revlon aisle, basket in tow. The blue alone isn’t quite enough. It’s too plain and straightforward, so I add a standard black bottle to the mix. Perfect.
Half the battle won, I turn around to pay at the makeup counter like the sign had directed me to. Except- I can’t find the makeup counter. Yep. As I pace through the Pac-Man maze that is Big W cosmetics, the vital “cosmetics counter” only becomes more elusive. After nearly two straight minutes of attracting the subtle attention of onlookers, I manage to locate an abandoned money till shrouded by a pile of boxes. Wait, so there’s no cosmetics counter? But the sign explicitly said that I needed to come here to pay for cosmetic products.
“There’s no cosmetics counter” chimes a grinning 20-something girl with dip-died hair, apparently sensing my confusion. “Just ignore the signs”.
I hushedly thank her, still taken aback at the sudden interjection.
“Oh and- nice choices” she adds encouragingly as I carry my basket over to the register.
I feel half-embarrassed, half-assured as I pay for my things. On one hand I’d come off looking like a complete novice, which is never a nice feeling. But on the other, I’d just found encouragement where I’d expected judgement. Maybe, this whole time, I’d been getting myself worked up over nothing.
I click open the first nail painting tutorial that comes up on YouTube. The perky voice in the video tells me that I need to start off with a base coat. I borrow a bottle of my mom’s that apparently doubles as a topcoat as well. This is starting to feel more like a game of Jenga than a beauty ritual. How many layers will I need to put on? Trusting the chirpy voice, I proceed to paint on a layer of base coat, followed by two layers of each respective colour on every other nail, and finish up with topcoat. After about 10 minutes of waiting, curiosity gets the cat- and the “cat” trawls straight through the wet cement I’d spent half an hour applying. Yep, my nails are still wet.
A further 30 minutes later, I sit back and admire the final result. It’s pretty sloppy. The colour flows out of and around my nails, swallowing up my cuticles. My lack of patience is embroidered on every nail in the form of various fingerprints, indentations and scratches. Each surface undulates and ripples as if it were hand-painted by a tiny Jackson Pollock. If my nails were a colouring book, I’d have drawn quite decidedly outside of the lines. Yet, somehow, I love them. For the first time I’m actually grateful for this experience, for giving me the running jump I needed to get out of my comfort zone.
***
My following week wearing the 2.0 version of my nails is surprisingly enjoyable. The excess polish on my skin even moults off after a couple of showers, much like arthropod assuming its final form. Despite this, the rest of the polish somehow remains intact. Nail polish: 1, Entropy: 0.
Walking into my first lecture of that week with my nails on full display, I feel completely at ease. I stroll in- comfortably on time for once- along with everyone else and spot not even one pair of pupils aimed at my nails. How about the guy sitting next to me, sporting a magnificent mane of thick brown hair? Nope, he’s scrolling through Facebook on his laptop. It’s at this point that I realize that I myself hadn’t stopped to gawk at his long hair. Here we both are, defying gender norms in our own understated ways, and neither one of us could care less. Pulling my laptop out of my bag, I let my hands roam free. Be they clacking on the keyboard or resting inquiringly on my chin, my fingertips are out and staying out. It’s not exactly “woman wears pants in the 50s” but it feels cool to be a pioneer in my own miniscule way.
By the end of the week, I realize that I’ve pretty much dropped the guise of an immersion essay entirely. When people ask why I’m wearing nail polish, I tell them it’s because I want to: that’s not untrue, after all. The last day of my week comes and I finally receive a question from a friend that I’ve been putting off asking myself.
“So now that your assignment is done are you…is that it for the nails or…?”
I stop and think for a moment about the prospect of parting with my slate-blue companions.
One might be interested to know that slate, in addition to being a shade of blue, is also a low-grade metamorphic rock. What this means is that, despite its hardy appearance, slate is one of the finest-grained rocks around. In fact, a well-placed knock is enough to split apart its surface entirely. However, far from rendering it useless, this fragility uncovers a vast array of layers hidden beneath its surface. Slate is a surprising rock- an unconventional and sensitive rock but ultimately, one that is profoundly useful and unique.
“You know what?” I reply. “I think I might hang on to them for a few more days.”
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