Does A Somewhat Hot Podiatrist Make Podiatry Less Terrifying?

My Waterloo, my toe.

Does A Somewhat Hot Podiatrist Make Podiatry Less Terrifying?

I’m not a squeamish medical patient. I’m always just like “Hello, here is my insurance card, here is my co-pay, let’s do this.”

Visiting a podiatrist the other day for the first time in my life has forever changed me.

I live in Nevada County, California, one hour northeast of Sacramento, and one hour west of Lake Tahoe. My podiatrist’s office is in the town of Grass Valley. It is close to Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital, where most of the people I now know were born, and which I have taken the liberty of renaming “Sierra Nevada Free Spirit Production Facility.” All the specialist offices surrounding this utilitarian brick structure are housed in ugly wooden buildings with interiors like Magnum P.I. sets, minus Hawaii. The podiatrist’s office is in a two-story split-level with vertical brown siding, alongside other foot-concerned medical professionals.

In the lobby, filling out intake forms, someone said, “You sparkle.” First I realized that an old man dressed in a gray and red plaid shirt with stringy hair in a ponytail had said it, and then I realized this observation had been directed at me. I was on the verge of responding with something like, “Well, sir, I guess there are people who just project joy and emit charisma, and it’s actually not as easy as it looks, meaning there’s a downside to being this, well, shall I say vivid? is this the right word? of a human being, because, I’ll be honest with you…” and then I remembered that I was simply wearing a shiny jacket and giant earrings.

The man was in a wheelchair. He appeared to be well past the discernment phase in human communication. “Your jacket sparkles, your earrings sparkle, your belt buckle, the buckles on your boot sparkle,” the man said, his face tipped up toward the skylight, the endless, infernal, every-goddam-day, source of my sparkling. His eyes were half closed and his mouth half open, as if he were getting messages from God.