Eat My Feet

Eat My Feet

This post is for all the guys, real and virtual, who have ever said they want to kiss, lick, bite, tickle, rub, suck, wash, or eat my feet. Gentlemen, be my guest. I have THE most disgusting feet on the planet. Dancer’s feet. There’s years of ballet and belly dance under those things. (There’s some men under there too! :O ). Actually, they’re more like tools than feet. I have hammer toes, ingrown toenails, calluses, corns, blisters, open wounds, broken bones, premature Arthritis, dead skin, and permanently blackened heels. Bunions run in my family. I walk and dance barefoot on surfaces you wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole. My feet are so gross even the podiatrist grimaces when I take my shoes off. In fact, they’re so untamable, I’ve given up on them. I no longer bother painting my toenails. That would be like putting lipstick on the proverbial pig. Besides, 90 percent of the nail polish disappears after just one show. I don’t clip my toenails either, but then again, they never seem to grow past a certain point. Hah! They probably get filed down from all the friction that occurs when I dance on wood and concrete surfaces. I still clean them every so often, although it doesn’t really make a difference. They just get dirty again. lol

I make up for the nastiness of my feet by keeping a nice manicure. One inch glue-on talons by Kiss, Sally Hansen, and Broadway. They don’t sell them in Egypt, so I replenish my stock whenever I go back to the US for a visit. I buy six or seven boxes, which last me around six months. Glue-on nails may not be the healthiest thing, but I love the length they give my short, stumpy fingers.

The last time I went shopping for glue-on nails at CVS, I came across a rack of glue-on toenails.  Imagine that. You can actually give yourself an instant glue-on pedicure! For a minute, I thought they would be the perfect solution to my unsightly feet. But I decided against it in the end—I’m pretty sure they haven’t come out with hammer toe-shaped plastic toenails yet. And, judging by what happens with my glue-on finger nails, I just know those fake toenails would pop off while I’m dancing and land in some poor person’s plate.

There was one time when glue-on toenails probably would have served me well, however. It was after a show I did at the upper-crust, membership-only Cairo Automobile Club (nadee il-sayaraat). The man who hired me, who was well into his eighties, decided to give me some feedback after my performance, as good Egyptian audience members always do. :) He said everything about my show was berrfect except for one thing. “Za nail on your big finger (he meant big toe) is too short. You need to make it long and pointy, like za classy Oriental ladies zay do it.”  

Oh. My. The old man just told me to grow some long, pointy-ass toe nails!  >*D 

“But…. WHY?” I asked him. 

“Because here in Eeejibt, a lady will not be respected if she does not have a long finger nai (toe nails). Za beeoble will say she is of za lower class. I am sorry, but you don’t want anybody to say about you that you are sharmoota (prostitute). So for the nekist barty inshallah you will make your finger nails (toenails) long.”

!!!

Wait. 

What does toenail length have to do with people thinking I’m a prostitute? If anyone thinks that about me, it is because I’m a belly dancer, not because my big toe nails are “short.”

And then I responded. “You know, back where I come from, it’s the complete opposite. Long, pointy toe nails are considered low class. Besides, I don’t think that would be too comfortable.”

As usual, I was getting nowhere with this conversation. But oh well, you know what they say.  Customer’s always right.

Now that I think of it, though, I believe the man may have had a point (pun intended). I have seen quite a few pointy toenails on women since moving here. I just never knew it was intentional, or that it was a status symbol. It was one of those things I would see and be like, okaaay, and then move on to thinking about more important stuff. Like pointy pinky fingernails (and I do mean fingernails). Indeed, one of the strangest things about Egypt is the phenomenon of the long pinky fingernail on men’s hands. If you examine the hands of many Egyptian men, you will find that they have at least one very long pinky fingernail. They keep all of their other nails short, except for that pinky nail that jets out, kind of like a small switchblade. It looks very pirate, and kind of reminds me of Captain Hook.

Now, I’ve never actually inquired into the reason(s) behind the long pinky nail, but apparently it is widespread in East Asian countries as well. So I just leave it up to my imagination. This is what I’ve come up with so far: Tooth pick, nose pick, guitar pick, Q-Tip, letter opener, weapon, teaspoon, coke spoon. Can you think of anything else?

No matter how I try to understand it, I don’t think I’ll ever get the long pinky nail. And it kind of irks me, especially when I see it on good looking guys. I mean, who wants to imagine a hottie engaging his pinky nail in the ways I described above? Definite deal breaker. On par with bad teeth, bad breath, and my bad feet.

Speaking of which, I’m pretty sure that if more men saw my feet, they would think twice about harassing me or trying to pick me up. Especially if they saw my feet right after I finish a show.  My feet are all sorts of dirty when I finish dancing barefoot. And since I usually have to run off to a gig somewhere else, there is no time for me to wash them. So I just slip them back into my socks, or sandals if it’s summer, and go about my merry way. Both the interior of my socks and the insides of my wooden sandals get black really fast, and I wind up having to scrub the life out of them when I get home. I have a special sponge for that too. There’s no way I’d use the same sponge on my body that I use on my feet. Not even if I wash the foot sponge before using it on my body. 

Because feet have the potential to get very dirty (especially in Egypt), it is considered highly insulting if you sit with your legs crossed and the bottoms of your feet are facing someone. If you do that, you might as well have insulted that person’s mother. You’ve basically just communicated to them that they are as dirty and low as your feet. Shoes are also insulting in this part of the world. Hence the famous shoe-fling at George Bush in Iraq a while back. I’m sure we all remember that. Though no one in the US would bat an eye if you called them a “son of a shoe,” this is a huge insult here. As is calling someone an actual shoe. It gets worse it if involves flip-flops. Shib-shib in Egyptian Arabic. Saying you want to hit someone over the head with your shib-shib will get them really angry.

I have to say, I never appreciated how insulting feet and shoes could be until I came to terms with how disgusting mine are. It would be plain rude for me to let anyone look at my feet, let alone put them in their mouths. Just as rude as all the creepy so-called men out there who share their nasty foot fetish fantasies with me. Too bad I’m never rude. Otherwise, I’d let them have their way.