Hanging With ... Gloria Gaynor

Gloria Gaynor doesn't have her glasses on.

"Instruck bronze," she says, squinting at the bottom of a bottle of nail polish, trying to read the name of the brownish color she's considering for her fingertips.

"Instruck bronze? Instruck bronze, I guess. I don't know what that means."

It's a few hours before Gaynor,the voice of the 1979 disco hit "I Will Survive," is scheduled to hit the Bank of America Pavilion stage with KC and the Sunshine Band. The gap between morning interviews and a late afternoon sound check is just enough time for a manicure and acrylic fill-in, and Gaynor, 57, has stopped at My Nail Salon in the Back Bay for a quick fix.

"They're very fragile. They break," she says of her long nails, which are getting shabby at the ends. "They tear up my stockings. I put a thumbnail in my Spanx this morning."

"Where are you from?" she asks the manicurist.

"Vietnam."

"I was supposed to go to Vietnam last year, but something happened," Gaynor says. The woman nods and smiles but doesn't seem to recognize Gaynor. "I did get to Hong Kong. Have you been to Hong Kong? You have to go to Hong Kong to shop. It's wonderful."

Gaynor takes a closer look at the polish bottle under the light and it clicks.

"Innsbruck Bronze," she says, as in the city in Austria.

Gaynor's longtime friend Denise Hereden hands her a pair of spectacles so she can read the lunch menu from a restaurant down the street.

Hereden, who lives near Boston, is one of the reasons Gaynor appreciates tour dates in Massachusetts. The women met in 1973, when Hereden was dating a member of Gaynor's band.

"We just became instant friends," Gaynor says.

Gaynor chooses the fish tacos, explaining that she stopped eating most meat a few years ago. She's even given up Popeyes, cq one of her favorites.

"Me and four friends went to Ruth's Chris Steak House," she says. "That was our 'goodbye meat' night."

I'm on a pedicure chair, and Gaynor leans over, noticing that I'm covering my toes. I have "freak toes," I explain.

"Oh please," Gaynor says. "I have freak toes."

Apparently, Gaynor has hammertoe. A doctor told her to wrap her feet to straighten out her joints, but it didn't work well and was excruciatingly painful.

Now, after a career in heels, she sticks to flats. At the moment, she's wearing bright gold slipper-like shoes. It's no accident they're not open-toed, she says. When Gaynor can find closed-toed summer shoes, she buys a few pairs at a time -- they're hard to come by.

"They should give them a name -- like espadrilles. If there was a name for them, they'd make them every summer."

The girl talk continues when Gaynor is asked if she has children.

"No," she answers, adding that of seven siblings, she's the only one who wanted to have children -- and the only one who didn't have any. "I'm not the spinster aunt, but I certainly am the childless aunt."

Gaynor's sister even wound up with children -- even though she was a tomboy and Gaynor grew up wearing "lace and frills."

Gaynor plans to close her show that night with "I Will Survive." She won't even have to sing it -- her audience usually belts out the lyrics for her. Even fans who weren't born when the song was released know the words.

That's because it never stopped being an anthem for getting over it and moving on, Gaynor says. The song has made its way from record players to tape decks to CDs to iPods; VH1 chose it as the No. 1 dance song of the 20th century. The network still airs the original video, in which Gaynor wears a sparkling black getup and serenades a woman on roller skates.

She imagines that this is why she occasionally gets recognized by kids. She tells a story about a few young boys who spotted her in the city and mistakenly called her "Diana" and "Dina" until they realized who she was -- "It's Miss Gaynor," they said.

She says she's even seen young children lip synch the lyrics to "I Will Survive" during her shows.

"You're 6 years old. What have you survived? You've survived birth," Gaynor says, laughing. "Although, that could be a harrowing experience."

The automatic nail dryer shuts off, signaling the end of girl time.

"And we're done," she says, admiring her nails, which are now long and perfect, glistening like an Innsbruck mountainside under fluorescent lights.

Meredith Goldstein can be reached at mgoldstein@globe.com.