I have never felt bigger, blacker or gayer than when I have had my nails done in a nail salon operated by Asian Americans.

I have also never felt as economically and racially exploitative as when I’ve gotten a manicure. After reading the New York Times’ deep dive into the harm inflicted upon nail salon workers, I understand why.

I came to gayness pretty late in life, and queerness even later than that, and only started painting my nails off-and-on a few months ago, in the waning months of 2014. The coming winter, the recent death of my sister and the fantastic painted fingers of a beautiful guy I used to date made me think, out of the blue one evening, that painting my own nails blue might be both a colorful distraction from my grief and a great way to expend some of the nervous energy which was keeping me from falling asleep at night. I stopped by Ricky’s, bought a bunch of fabulous polishes and had a go at it.

I didn’t do a very good job, especially while painting with my non-dominant hand. But it terms of mitigating anxiety, it worked like a charm in at least one way: painting my nails ended my 37 year habit of biting them down to the cuticles cold turkey.

But painting my nails brought up all kinds of other anxieties, some of which were welcome and healthy, and some of which were not.

I welcomed the discomfort of what having painted nails meant as a disquieting signifier of my gender and sexuality. I tried wearing fingerless gloves, mimicking the sexy genderqueer hands of my former flame, to appear both butch and feminine. I stressed about if men would be turned off. I worried about how professional I would appear, and whether I would be taken seriously in professional settings. I agonized about whether wearing nail polish on camera would earn me greater or fewer TV appearances in the future.

I even engaged in a ridiculous internal debate about whether certain shades of nail polish were masculine enough (I tended to stick to shades of deep purple or blue) or too femme (bright reds and pinks seemed out of the question). The absurdity of such an interior monologue (“Maybe this shade of nail polish isn’t too gay?”) wasn’t lost on me. It was a good exercise in examining my own internalized femmephobia and made me more empathetic to the ways in which women are regularly surveilled for their appearances. It gave me a new appreciation for the courage of queer men – especially those of color – who don’t hide their swishier side in their default setting, as I am inclined to do.

Still, I hated the toxic fumes, which gave me a headache, and I worried if there would be any consequences if I did this too often.

All of these anxieties played out, in mostly unhealthy ways, when I went to professional nail salons.

I only went twice - once in New York, and once in San Francisco - but the experiences were remarkably similar and disturbing. Both times, nearly identical things happened, and I felt totally silly as a black man getting my nails done. The staffs were made of Asian or Asian American women doing nails and men giving massages and sweeping the floors. The clients were comprised of almost exclusively white women and the odd gay white man – and me.

I felt a strange sense both times that I was flush with embarrassment about being so obviously gay, while also aligning myself with a confusing sense of racial superiority and white supremacy, in having these Asian women wait on me hand and foot. The price seemed too cheap (about $15) for all this pampering service and I couldn’t help but wonder what effects inhaling all those chemicals day in and day out would have on the workers. My nails definitely looked better than when I did them myself, but I was disturbed, on both occasions, that when I tipped the people who had worked on my body with intimate care, a man came and took their tips away from them right after.

The Times expose paints a disturbing portrait of how a $15 nail job is a bargain too good to be true. Nail salon workers are subjected to wage theft, environmentally hazardous workplaces, and various forms of racial, psychological, and physical abuse.

If I ever do paint my nails again, I’ll do the painting myself. That’s a discomfort I can live with. But I can’t live with the discomfort of the ethnic and economic exploitation which occurs in nail salons. No one deserves to work in unregulated toxic environments, nor to earn less than minimum wage. I don’t want to be working out my gender and sexuality questions from a place of economic superiority and on the backs of the exploited.