The continuing story...

Well, by now you can probably guess that after my wife warmed up to the idea of me wearing my toenails polished, she realized that sharing this interest together might actually be a good thing - for several reasons:
1) I could no longer give her grief when she went on a polish-buying binge (ever happen to you?)
2) We would spend more evenings together (painting our nails, and we've even started playing cards together while they dry).
3) She had something unique and cool to tell her friends about (this just keeps getting better...)
4) We could enjoy having pedicures together, which really means that she would get to enjoy more pedicures than she did before because now I was on her side of the perspective.
5) We could pool our resources and polish collections so we both had more choices.
6) My feet were no longer in their grundgy typically dry and calloused condition because when you wear your nails polished, you have to take care of them!

Okay, maybe she didn't realize all of these benefits right away, but they became apparent pretty quickly.

So, when I told my sister that my wife actually liked both the color and me wearng it, she went out and bought us a bottle and sent it to us! Now, if you have never experienced that before, I can tell you that for a guy, it is a pretty cool deal to receive a bottle of nail polish from someone because they think it looks good on you! Gals, you have this pretty well nailed (pun intended) because you buy, trade and gift this kind of stuff to each other all of the time - no big deal. But when it happens to a guy, it's a rare treat. Guys just don't give each other presents out of generousity (not often enough anyway), so you make a HUGE impact when you do it for a guy. I still can feel the excitement when we opened up the box and it contained not just one, but three nail polishes that she thought we could both wear. One was China Glaze X, and the other was OPI DS Glamour. The first one I liked, the second I really liked, but was not ready to wear something quite that feminine looking, so my wife claimed that one.

I still did not openly wear polish regularly for some time after that, only on occasion and mostly when traveling (or just in private). At that time, it was just something that my wife and I enjoyed. But as I became more comfortable with it, and it was heading into summer, I began to wear sandals more often and I decided that I just didn't want to hide it anymore. Besides, it was a lot of work (fun work, though!) to do a quality job and I was getting tired of having to remove it within only a day or two if I was going to wear sandals somewhere.

Crimson Shimmy had to wait though because I started with wearing 'safe' colors for a guy like greys, silvers (not chromes) and a few darker greys (not quite black), and then moved into the deeper reds (like Lincoln Park and Midnight in Moscow) and blues. Surprisingly, it was quite a while before I tried green, maybe because I couldn't find a good "guy green", and partly because my wife didn't think it would look good on me.

There was even a period I went through where I would wear just about anything privately. I tried her reds, pinks, purples, golds and then began to get a feeling for what I liked and what I didn't. It pretty much came down to I could wear almost any color, but the shade made a difference whether my wife and I liked it. Yeah, there are even some purples that work for me too!

But my first introduction to some awesome colors that expanded my pallette came from my good friend Ladybug Lexus. She is an absolute goddess of frankens! I complimented her on some of the custom mixes she had on her blog, and she responded by offering to send a few to me, and asked what I liked. I told her about my difficulty in finding good colors for guys, especially greens, and she got to work mixing up some awesome deep greens for me - some with sparkles, some with shimmers, and then she added a few black/holo/silvers (one she even named "James Bond" because it really looked like what a secret agent would wear!) and boxed them up and sent them off. When the box came, I was expecting 2 - 3 bottles, but when we opened it up, there were maybe 25 - 30 colors!! She was even so considerate to send a few custom mixes for my wife, which of course impressed her to no end.

I then realized that maybe this really was something that I could be proud of, wear openly and even promote it for guys (girls, you do your own promotion pretty well already!). So, that is basically how I got started on my "mission" to convince more men to take better care of their feet and just enjoy wearing their toenails polished, and encouarge more women to encourage their guys to try it!

Yeah, once in a while I catch some crap from a few folks who think it's gay or cross-d, but all the kind and positive comments from most people pretty much wipes the little bit of negative away. And after a while, I developed the attitude that if someone doesn't like it, it's their issue, not mine, because I honestly enjoy having great looking nails. And it doesn't take a lot of thinking to see many parallels to this with men wearing earrings and other jewelry (besides a wedding ring), longer hair, brighter colored clothing, and even sandals!

I guess when I saw a few male celebs who wore their toenails polished (Keith Urban matches his nails to the color of his album placement on the charts: gold, silver, platinum), it told me that this style was on it's way to becoming widely accepted and more common for guys.

But, what I did not expect was the wonderful support and kindness shared by the many other nail bloggers and fanatics - like you!! It has been a sincere pleasure to exchange viewpoints and opinons, color and brand preferences, and even swap a few polishes with others who are creative, fun and caring.

Okay, I'm off for now, but I'll be back with a few more accounts since I've been wearing my nails polished.

And, keep an eye on your in-box because I intend to interview and feature your stories here as well! Nihrida had the consideration to ask me for an interview for her blog a while back and it was truly a wonderful experience. Lots of interest and comments were generated on her site from this, and I think a few minds may have even opened to the idea, one of which was her's!! Before the interview, she thought that any guy who would wear his nails polished was a 'fairy'. But during the interview, she admitted to me that if done well, maybe this wasn't such a bad thing after all, and that there might be something to the developing style because it has given her a different viewpoint on the whole guy-gal barrier that we too often create between us.

Anyway, enough babble for now. Thank you again for your kind and supportive comments. And feel free to tell your friends about my site, as I will yours. Nail polish is definitely more fun when shared, don't you think?

Jake