Nail-Biter

I stopped biting my nails by wearing gloves.

I stopped biting my nails by wearing gloves taped to my hands, around my wrists, with duct tape, with the deep grey duct tape that you can only get at the hardware store, and as soon as I walked into the hardware store, the man behind the counter took one look at me and said--

“You need to stop biting your nails.”

He offered to cut off my hands, but that seemed extreme to me, so I just asked for duct tape instead, and then I went back to the car, where my second wife taped the gloves we had purchased at the Salvation Army to my hands.

The problem was solved.

I felt relieved.

We drove home and ate chicken cacciatore and drank red wine and made love, but it was strange, because I couldn’t feel my wife, because of the gloves. I couldn’t feel her effete skin or caress her in the way she enjoys, because I didn’t want to rip off the tape and take off the gloves and risk biting my nails again.

She told me it didn’t matter, and that she loved me, and the next morning, she was gone and gone in a way I knew meant she would never be back.

Weakness is one thing, but weakness that you control only by giving up control over something else is unforgivable, and no priest would disagree with that.

I sat in the house eating the leftover cacciatore, but the fork was hard to hold, because the gloves were not gloves at all, but mittens, and so, I had one large finger and then my thumbs, but the mittens were too small for my hands, because the Salvation Army doesn’t have a diverse size section of mittens to choose from, so we guessed at it, me and missing wife, and we picked mittens that were a bit too small, and now my hands feel numb all the time, and I can barely taste the cacciatore.

I’m sorry I lied to you when I said I stopped biting my nails by wearing gloves when really it was so much more complicated than that and led to the dissolution of my marriage.

I shouldn’t lie to you.

I should promise that I won’t lie anymore this year.

How can I stop lying?

Can someone tape my mouth shut?

I can’t do it, because of the mittens, and my wife can’t do it, because she left, and when I went back to the hardware store, the owner had sold it to a yogurt store, not a yogurt place where they let you fill up a cup, but a yogurt store, where all they sell is packaged yogurt, but not coconut yogurt, because the owner is allergic and she would not tape my mouth shut no matter how loud I yelled and made the other yogurt-buyers uncomfortable.

The police were called, but I fled the scene. I ran all the way back home. I hadn’t driven there, because driving with mittens taped to your hands is very difficult.

Other things that are difficult to do with mittens taped to your hands--

1. Using the bathroom
2. Making a salad
3. Operating pliers
4. Making love to your wife
5. Driving

Sorry, we had covered driving.

My anxiety is affecting my memory.

I can’t do anything about my anxiety, because in the past, my anxiety was dealt with by biting on my nails, and I failed to come up with a more positive anxiety-reducing mechanism before asking my wife to solve the problem in a base and unimaginative way.

Sort of like pulling out your tooth by tying a string around it and slamming a door shut the way my father removed all his teeth when they rotted out after he spent years eating nothing but acidic foods like lemon bars and pineapple slices.

My father got the most beautiful dentures, and soon, every woman in town wanted him, and he left my mother, and me, and we never saw him again.

So yes, addiction destroys families.

I would never eat acidic foods, but I did begin biting my nails, and when my mother saw me do it, she locked me in the most appealing room in our house. This grand ballroom that was attached to our meager little home, because the architect who designed our home was mad, totally mad, and while he didn’t care if he lived in a nice house or not, he would be damned if his home wasn’t attached to a stunning ballroom, and so he built the ballroom, then died of exhaustion, and then we moved in, and when my mother saw me biting my nails, she promptly locked me in the ballroom, in the hopes that the refinement of the space would help me forget about my anxiety and my lost father and how I had flunked out of school because I couldn’t spell ‘opal’ and the teachers found that unacceptable.

Being locked in the ballroom didn’t make me forget any of that, but I did teach myself to waltz, and it’s come in handy on several occasions.

Do you know how to waltz?

I gave up waltzing last year.

That was easy, because it requires focus and elegance and while you’re doing it, you’re stressed about it, or at least I always found myself stressed about it, and so giving it up was easy, and I didn’t need any help, or any duct tape, and I was very proud of myself for walking away so easily, even though it disappointed my mother, because she loved dancing with me in the ballroom attached to our house.

I can feel my nails growing.

I can feel them growing so long they’ll get nice and sharp and poke right out of my mittens and then my hands will be mittens with claws and I’ll terrify everyone around me and I’ll have to live in the forest and eat whatever animals I can catch and kill and I’ll live like Tarzan I’ll live like Mowgli I’ll live but I won’t live, because how is that living?

Nobody will take these mittens off me.

They’ll see how badly I need to conquer this thing, this habit, this bad habit, and they’ll see that what’s best for me is to vanquish it, even if it leads to me becoming a wilderness fellow.

When I get home, I clean the place from top to bottom, because if I have to leave and move to the forest, I don’t want the next person to move in thinking I was a slob.

Cleaning was never an issue for me.

I could always clean and stay clean and keep things around me clean.

But once everything was clean, I looked around for something to do, and there were my nails.

And they were always too long. There was dirt under them, and you couldn’t get to it, unless you bit away at the edges. They were jagged and a little gnawing could even them out. They should be short. Nails should be short. Fingernails should be short. I never even looked at my toenails. Some people bite their toenails too, but what freaks those people must be. I wasn’t one of them. I was better. Much better than them. If I ever bit my toenails, it wouldn’t take much at all for me to stop, and I believe that, even though I’m not sure I should.

I clean the house and it’s hard with my mittens, but I still get it done.

Then, as I sit there, in a clean house, with no ballroom to visit, I begin to chew at the duct tape that secures the mittens that are the only thing standing between me and the weakest person that has ever lived.

The duct tape is not the same as the crisp, tense fingernails that I’m used to.

But maybe I could get used to something new?

What do you think?

Do you think I could?

I’d love to know if you believe in me.

It shouldn’t make a difference, since we don’t know each other, but for some reason, it does.

It makes all the difference in the world.