The Shoes

      Grace Moskowitz

      Call it lust at first sight: I wanted to get fucked in those shoes from the moment I saw them, singing their siren’s song to me through the glass of the store window. I stopped, my stride arrested by the sight of them, gleaming black and beckoning me. I dragged my friends into the store with me, making them wait while I tracked down the elusive salesgirl and asked her if I could try a pair on in my size. When I slid my foot into the first one, I looked straight down and the angle of the top of my foot, criss-crossed by the broad elastic straps, made me feel my heartbeat throb in my throat. I knew these shoes would be perfect. I knew I had to have them.

      I’ve been a fan of stilettos since I met Victor, an old boyfriend who had infected me with his enthusiasm. It was from him that I learned of their power, not only over a man, but over myself as well. I thrilled to the contradictory feelings of vulnerability and power that wearing high heels gave me.

      Victor told me and showed me that it wasn’t the trampy bad-girl associations with spike heels that made the sight of a woman wearing them force thoughts of urgent and ferocious sex to course through his mind and body; for him, a woman in heels conjured up more than just thoughts of trollop/dominatrix.

      It was the contradictions inherent in a woman wearing high heels that appealed to him.

      He taught me that it was the contrast that affected him so strongly, the contrast of the woman’s elegance and grace and the vulnerability that threatened to overtake her when her pace and agility were constrained by unstable narrow heels; her gait shaky, her feet arched dramatically to show her calves to greatest effect. He can do anything to her when she’s so beautifully hampered, and she is utterly defenceless against either his need or her own stroked and fanned desires. Just as Victor saw careful construction as an irresistible invitation to deconstruction, elegance as begging for defilement, grace as needing to be disgraced, he responded to the dichotomies of femininity that were aroused when he saw a woman wearing stilettos. Both images of woman were simultaneously present, conspiring to get him hot and hard. With stilettos, a woman approaches iconic femininity and grace, underscoring the man’s rough maleness. To him, when a woman wore high heels, the extremes of masculinity and femininity were emphasised. And his response to perceived feminine weakness was twofold and immediate. Something about female vulnerability aroused both his protective tendencies and his consuming need to exploit that vulnerability, to take control of her body, her will. Her responses would be beyond her control, dictated solely by him. The shoes give her elegance and in the elegance is an invitation to defile. Lipstick is there to be smudged. Mascara is there to run. Beautifully styled hair is there to be pulled and dishevelled. High heels are a constant reminder of that ambiguity.

      At his insistence, the heels always stayed on.

      Teetering, unsteady, riven by lust, I would lean towards him, or, thrown off-centre by too sudden or swift a step, fall against him, needing to be rescued, needing to be ravished. I’d look at my legs, lengthened by the stilettos, my shiny scarlet toenails accented with the criss-crosses of strappy sandals. The arch would shorten the perceived length of my feet, feminise and round them. I felt delectable, sultry and tempting, a victorious vixen, an enchantress and goddess of the sensual: regal, commanding, hotter than hell. In short, I felt like someone completely different.

      But that was standing. It’s a paradox: standing in heels makes you more vulnerable, less steady, yet you feel more powerful, more in control, the essence of feminine supremacy. When you’re lying down in heels you are no longer in danger of falling, the physical problem of hampered mobility no longer exists, but the increase in psychic exposure rises in inverse proportion to the security of your ‘stance’. Supine, I gave myself over to sensation. I lost my authority, or let it be taken from me, as I gave myself over to drifting down the dark current of desire. I don’t know whether I surrendered myself to the Bad Girl lurking inside me or Victor turned me into one, but when I wore high heels lying down, when I glimpsed them against the mattress or the heels became tangled in the sheets, there was no doubt that I was one, that I behaved as she did, and more importantly was driven by the same always gratified desires as she was.

      Victor had encouraged my purchases and enriched my collection, which included pumps with impossibly skinny silver metal spiked heels, high-heeled and high-topped boots, lacy or strappy stiletto sandals, and criss-cross, kinky-ballerina shoes with wide leather straps to wind around an ankle and calf, inspiring thoughts of both graceful dancers and raw bondage. I discovered that it was precisely this juxtaposition of class and trash that embodied the appeal of high heels. To wear them made me ultra-feminine, graceful and ethereal; it also made me earthy and sensual, vulgar and direct. I owned several pairs of what would have been demure, ladylike pumps if not for the height of their heels or the angle to which they pitched my body. I became a high-heel devotee; hell, even my rain boots were a pair of shiny black vinyl spike-heeled ankle boots, whose heels were made of rubber.

      But it had been a long time since I had added to my shoe rack. After Victor and I had broken up, I hadn’t had someone who appreciated the allure of high heels enough to justify my breaking my budget to buy a tempting new pair. Besides, I had plenty of old favourites to wear to the theatre and to dinner, to nights out with the girls, and to enliven otherwise boring meetings. I had a good variety to wear not just to incite admiration and lust from friends, co-workers, acquaintances and strangers, but also strictly for myself, for my own sensual enjoyment, walking into a café with a magazine to grab a selfish hour of latte-fuelled dalliance, feeling inspired and inspiring as I luxuriated in decadent deviance. And in addition to the defiance of reading the latest New Yorker when I should have been working, wearing a pair of sexy shoes and drinking a rich and slightly bitter drink, I also wore them when I was back home, alone on my bed, wearing nothing else, rubbing my aching clit to a lather, pressing the heel of my hand up into my pulsing pussy. I guess you could say that Victor’s shoe appreciation had rubbed off on me.

      When I saw the pair in the window, I knew I had to have them. It had been far too long since I’d been this excited about footwear.