The children of the night

Somebody had brought their not-really-wanted nail polish to the queer social event I was at last night, encouraging people to use or take home anything they liked.

And just because I was sitting at the table near them for a while without much to do, and because I like bright colors, I ended up painting my nails. Bright yellow. (I was drawn to it because it looked like a fluorescent hi-vis yellow in the bottle. Once it was on it's "just" a nice bright primary yellow (someone else looked at it on me and said "I wore that color for a Simpsons drag show once," to give you an idea of what yellow it is), but that's still good.

I used to love nail polish, that and really chunky colorful jewelry were the only "girly" things I ever got excited about. And even then, my mom was always trying to steer me toward soft pinks and stuff and I chose more blue and green and the most "unnatural" colors.

But I haven't done my nails since before I left my old house. I was...busy, and then for a long time it felt too femme, like I struggled so much to get people to stop misgendering me, I didn't want to make that any more likely. And by the time that stopped being a concern I was well and truly out of the habit and all my nail polish that hasn't been touched in five or six years should probably be thrown away.

But here I did my nails very happily. It was nice that it didn't feel weird or feminine at all now. It just felt queer.

Also while making dinner tonight, I realized that when I'm chopping vegetables it's way easier to tell where my fingers end and the peppers or whatever begin if the ends of my fingers are bright yellow.

Not that I usually struggle with this, I'm used to doing it mostly by feel. It was weird that my eyes could help out!

That got me thinking about starting to acquire new nail polish (the old stuff I have needs to be thrown out really) based on what colors are easy for me to pick up!

The yellow has already half chipped off, so I'll have to see if there's any nail polish remover in the house that works! But this probably won't be the last time I paint my nails.