Fish food

I suppose it was my time to give back to the fish community. For years, I have mindlessly absorbed their Omega 3's, nibbled their sweet flesh and crunched on their crispy tails. I have eaten them raw, broiled, baked, barbecued, boiled, fried, chowdered and, most recently, live. I've sucked their shells, devoured their eggs and removed their succulent cheeks with surgical precision.

So, in the name of 'what goes around comes around,' I allowed dozens of fish to chow down on me. In fact, I paid for the privilege.

Up until I actually did it, I thought getting a fish pedicure was an absolutely brilliant idea. Going to a spa, sticking my feet into a little bath and letting dozens of fishies nibble off the dead skin sounded like a perfectly bizarre, only-in-Japan, experience. I held on to these positive feelings up until I was actually faced with the tub of fish. Remember the shrieking and the carrying on I did trying to get up the nerve to eat the live fish? Well, this was like that...x10.

I don't know what these insatiable fish eat in their natural habitat, but it seems they are positively mad for human foot skin. It's pretty much their favorite food. As soon as I lowered my foot into the bath, those little fuckers absolutely swarmed it, like Barbra Streisand walking into a gay bar. They immediately latched on, opening and closing their creepy little fish beaks, gorging themselves on my delicious calluses. It was repulsive. It really tickled. I became hysterical: laughing uncontrollably, squealing with disgust and causing my friends to look at me like I had lost my mind.

But it's sandal season and I really wanted my pedicure, dammit, so I managed to keep my feet (OK, only my heels, I couldn't handle the entire foot) in their food bowl for about 20 minutes. And you know what? Those fish did a horrible job! Despite the fact that they treated my feet like an all-you-can-eat-salad bar at the Sizzler, they weren't even a teeny tiny bit smoother.



The moral of this story: What goes around comes around: You eat the live fish, the live fish will eat you.

The reality of this story: Fish? Not so good at giving pedicures.