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Illustration by Rania Abdallah
I painted my toenails for the first time on a recent Saturday. Fingernails, too. I’m a 62-year-old gay man living in Southern Ontario in 2025 – so no big deal. Except it was.
Google has helped me with many things over the years – building cornhole boards, resizing my T-shirts and even repairing the sustain pedal on my piano. So it was no surprise that it came through when I decided to indulge in the “decoration of the self,” as the poets say.
First, the shopping: nail polish, of course, along with something called top and bottom coat and some remover. Choosing a colour was surprisingly easy. After some consideration of greens and blues, I came back to bright orange – the colour my dad painted the rec room, which has stayed in my psyche ever since. I don’t know what possessed him to choose this wild colour – perhaps the paisley in his ties wasn’t sufficient to express his character.
I learned the beauty of embracing yourself at Vancouver’s nude beach
The little bottles wound up on top of my dresser, along with “to-do” lists, old batteries and a Christmas card I was procrastinating on replying to. I guess I was waiting for an occasion to do the deed.
Admittedly, it didn’t take much. When the artistic director of the 2SLGBTQIA+ choir I was in suggested, for our final concert of the season, a dress code of “colourful tops with any and all embellishments,” I was in, baby!
After a perusal of my closet failed to deliver the oomph I was looking for, I spied the three little bottles.
Still, I hesitated. It took until the morning of the concert for me to finally open their long, slender tops. You know how sometimes you get so hung up on starting something new that you forget there are actual things to overcome within the task itself …
Like the smell – whew! I went outside. The front steps would be my studio.
I had no idea my toes overlapped as much as they did. I tried stuffing cotton balls in between them – easier said than done. The bits of cotton tended to blow away into the garden, making for a queer sight among the strawberries.
I followed Google’s suggestions, first applying a base coat, then two coats of colour and a final top coat for shine.
But I needed to find my sandals – all the better to show off my work. Do you think I could remember where I stored them for the winter? I looked under the bed (note to self: bring the vacuum up from downstairs), beside the tallboy dresser, everywhere – all the while trying not to brush up against anything with my still-wet top coat. Did I say it takes a long time to dry?
Alert. Alert. My left index finger hit a duffel-bag strap!
With time ticking, I slapped on some more colour. In the end I found a pair of old rubber shower shoes with open toes. They would have to do.
And off I went into the world.
I had to trust someone, might as well be the nice guy at the hardware store
The choir performance was a smash, although the director was caught up in a microphone crisis and didn’t even notice how closely I adhered to the dress code.
After that, the week went on. At church, my pewmate Peter cracked jokes. At coffee hour, Susan couldn’t resist offering advice on how to stop the finish from chipping. Some people just saw me. I got a text message that said I was brave and an inspiration. I don’t know about that.
I realized I would receive attention wherever I showed up. So I showed up. I think the different have a duty to flaunt it. Sometimes I waited until those near me recognized the sun reflecting off my fingertips. Sometimes I waved my fabulousness in their faces. I’m not used to the coffee-shop cashier giving me compliments, but they couldn’t help themselves, I guess, when they saw how my nails matched the sprinkles on the vanilla glazed.
While the occasion I did it for is over, I’m left with amazing nails to go shopping for pressure-treated lumber or to go to the dentist. My orange nails are with me all the time, like my sexuality – not something to put on and take off on a whim. They’re part of me, at least until I figure out how to use the remover.
David Ingard lives in Kitchener, Ont.