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FAQ | Nov 20 2001

I cut my fingernails as short as possible and have done since childhood. I don’t know what started me on this, other than that I liked it, the feeling of it, particularly during the day or so after cutting. At a certain point I realized that I could cut the hardened skin under the nail, which made it possible to cut the nail further. Then I discovered that hot water, the hot water of a shower, made the skin under the nail soft and puffy, which allowed me to cut further still. I’ve cut my fingernails this way for years, decades, to the point that they’ve become freakishly short, perhaps a quarter the length of normal fingernails, and oddly shaped, growing at the ends but not in the middle, which means that if I somehow ever neglected to cut them, the corners would grow straight into the skin.

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Not surprisingly, I never liked having fingernails; I never liked how they felt as they grew. As a kid I had an overwhelming fear, a phobia, of the nail being bent back. I haven’t a clue where this came from. No doubt it concerned control, or the lack of control, but beyond this, I’m stumped. From my earliest memory, I cut my nails as short as possible, and for reasons that seemed self-evident.

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I’m often asked if it hurts. No, it doesn’t hurt, because I’m careful. Once in a while (this is rare now) I go too far in one of the corners – invariably with the middle or ring finger – and draw a tiny bit of blood. Subsequently it’s tender there, so that it stings when I grip or push down on something in a way that involves my fingertips. But after a day or so, the cut heals and the skin hardens again. Meanwhile I try not to grip or push down on anything.

Twice such a cut has become infected. The first time a doctor sliced through the infection to drain the pus. She offered me two options. Either she would give me a local anesthetic with a needle, or skip the anesthetic and lance the finger directly. She made clear that it would hurt either way, and plenty. I liked that. Bluntness is a winning quality in a physician. I said, “Skip the needle,” and she pulled out a scalpel and made a single, steady incision halfway around the fingertip.

Beforehand, as she examined me, she turned to the nurse and said, “chronic such-and-such.” That hit home. “Chronic such-and-such.” I was doing something chronic to myself.

Having watched the doctor, I drained the second infection myself, using a sterilized razor blade. It took a long time to gather the courage to cut that deep. I’d cut a little and stop, cut a little and stop.

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The other thing I’m asked is how I feel about it. I feel sad. Sometimes I look at my fingers in disbelief. Why was this necessary? Of course it’s not the worst thing imaginable – my fingers are perfectly functional, not counting the difficulty I have opening pull-top beer cans or picking up fallen coins – but still it feels wasteful and embarrassing. A certain part of me, an ugly part, is facing out. “Once a tree grows crooked,” wrote Reich (this was in his early years, before his break with Freud), “it cannot be straightened.” A tree meaning a person. Here was Reich’s reason for giving up on people, or rather on adults: they could not be straightened. He was right, of course, but what he didn’t say or see is that trees grow crooked, to various degrees, that that’s how they grow. I need to be reminded of this sometimes.