Today I went to my favorite nail salon on Avenue D, some of you may recall that I blogged it upon discovery: Beauty in the Hood.
Last time I was there a man got punched right in front of the window I was looking out of as my nails dried, and I had to call 911. That was kind of a bummer, and it’s not usually that violent on the block, but there’s always some kind of action happening. I look forward to these visits because I know it’s going to be entertaining, full of remarkably dubious fashion choices and pant size errors, exotic and completely unnatural eyebrow shapes and sparkly toenail designs, all to the soundtrack of an overloud television that no one watches and people screaming at each other in Korean or ghetto slang.
Happily, this time the lady with the colostomy bag was back. She was out of the hospital and looking good! Except for her pinky finger on her right hand, which appeared permanently bent in a curved position. When the nail “technician” tried to straighten it, the lady said, very loudly and to everyone in the room, “Oh no! I broke that finger and I didn’t know it and it healed funny. Now it’s stuck in that position!”
I’m always up for what she wants to talk about, so I said, “What happened?”
She replied, “This guy spit in my face, and I punched him, and I broke my damn finger!”
Ooh, yay! Story time. I squished down happily into the pedicure chair in preparation. “Why did he spit in your face?”
She said, “Well, I was on the train with my daughter, in my wheelchair, and this Chinese guy kept talking about how big his dick is, really loud. And there are kids on the train, and it was rude and I didn’t like it, and I told him so.”
Mmm hmm…Do go on, Madame.
“I told him to shut the fuck up. And he didn’t like that. He got all belligerent and called me names, and his girlfriend told him to stop, and I said, ‘Man, you are Chinese, you got two inches and that is it, and there are kids on this train, and no one wants to hear your shit, so listen to your girlfriend and shut the fuck up.’ Then we all got off the train and onto the platform, and he spit in my face! He thought he was all badass ’cause I was in a wheelchair and he thought I couldn’t do nothin’.”
Foolish man.
“So my daughter, she’s a big girl, she starts pounding him on the top of his head, because he’s small, cause he’s Chinese! She don’t play, she will pound you down! And I got up from my wheelchair, and I punched him in the face! His girlfriend left him there and we beat on him and then I said, ‘Now you go home and tell your mom that you just got beat up by a lady in a wheelchair!'”
She waved her bent finger in the air.
“So then I had to go to the doctor two weeks later, because, you know, I have my intestines on the outside of my body, and I’m always sick. I said, ‘While you’re looking at me, my finger hurts.’ And the doctor looked at it and said it was broken and that it healed weird because I didn’t know to get it looked at. I thought back and remembered I had punched this Chinese kid on the train and that’s why it’s crooked and so you can’t straighten it when you’re doing my nails!”
I frigging love my nail salon.
MISS ANTHROPE'S HOUSE OF HIGH DRAMA 