I promised.

Meme time.


Reply to this post, and I'll tell you at least one reason why I like you.

Then you need to put this in your own journal, and spread the love.

cryptic, teasing, yet ultimately non-naughty

Darn it, I forgot the check my hips for fingertip bruises this morning.

sensible shoes

(super-duper rough draft)


When I was fifteen, I walked everywhere. The town I lived in was one and a half miles wide and three miles long. The buses only went clockwise; the counterclockwise route was killed by budget cuts. School was counterclockwise. Downtown was counterclockwise. I walked. I walked to school, I walked to the library, I walked downtown to hang out in casual restaurants with my friends. This was before there were coffeehouses on each block. There was a coffeehouse two years later, the first one. It put flavored syrup and ice into a glass of milk and called it French. But when I was fourteen, there was only broccoli and cheddar soup and roast beef sandwiches and cafeteria style, which meant the waiters would never kick you out.

There were still smoking sections in those days.

When I was fifteen, I had lived through nearly ten years of twisted ankles, and I was on the other side, walking. The last time I twisted my ankle was sliding into second base during softball. I made it past the tag. I wasn't out. I was the slowest kid in the class and I wasn't out. I had hustle. I made it.

When I was fifteen I wore cute little brown wedges. Why not? I was fifteen, maybe there was still time for me to turn into a girl, maybe if I bought the right shoes people would see me as a girl. I still owned make-up, though I didn't wear it. I hadn't cut my hair. I still never wore skirts.

Brown wedges and blue jeans and walking everywhere and there came the day when the bottom of my feet burned, every day. It hurt to walk but I was too young to drive so what else was I going to do? I walked my best friend home from downtown to the farthest corner of my town, past the library, past the grocery store. Later I would pierce his ears with a sewing needle dipped in peroxide, but not this night. We never kissed. Then I walked home. It took an hour and a half. I walked.

I never got my driver's license.

These were the debut days of the Walkman, and I had one. I used to make my own tapes, never mixed, only whole albums. My friend complained that New Order's tempos were all the same, every song, and I confessed that's why I liked them -- I could walk, step step step, they kept my pace. Song after song.

This friend, he's different than the other friend. He lived a block away. I never pierced his ears. But neither of them liked New Order.

When I was fifteen I went to the doctor to ask about the pain in my feet. He pulled out a thick book on sports medicine and pointed to a diagram of tendons, bundled together, inflamed. He told me a name that I didn't remember. He told me that the next step was bone spurs. He told me that usually only athletes suffered from my condition. This was a lie, but I believed it with glee. I was kind of like an athlete. I walked. I was in shape. I was fat but I had powerful legs. I could walk to the next town if I wanted. Except that my feet hurt.

He told me to buy new shoes.

When I was fifteen my parents took me to an orthopedist's shop and bought me new brown shoes with a round toe. Sensible shoes. Brown shoes. These shoes came in one color. These shoes came in one style. These shoes had no frills, no fun, no lightness to them. They were my future. No frills. No fun. No lightness. Humorless shoes. Practical shoes.

I know what everyone thought of me already. Now they could see it in my shoes.

It's a long time since fifteen. I still don't drive. My feet still hurt when I wear wedges or heels. You can still see me in my shoes.

What do you see?

Part Two

(still extremely rough, and where are we going, exactly?)

Fat girls and shoes. If you're a fat girl, you already know about shoes. If you're not fat, maybe this is still a secret. An open one. Want stellar shoe advice? Ask a fat girl. Fat girls are into shoes in a crazy fabulous way. Fat girls are into shoes because most fat girls can still wear shoes. They can go shoe shopping with their best girl friends and some home with something fabulous, instead of standing by the dressing room door while everyone else gets to try something on. I am not the first to say this, nor am I the best, but trust me: fat girls and shoes have a special relationship.

A pair of great shoes, like lipstick in just the right shade, can dress up any outfit.

I saw an old friend, a fabulously stylish fat girl, and she told me that her doctor had ordered her out of high heels. If she were a man, she would have said she felt emasculated by her (still stylish) flats. As it was, she waved her hands in the air and said "you know what I mean? Shoes were all I had left!"

You have to understand that my history is different. You have to understand that I have always worn sensible shoes. You have to understand that femininity has always been a foreign territory for me. I have always been locked out of that kingdom. I am gender aphasic,. It's all a jumble of meaningless cues. It's a foreign language, and I have always been bad at every language but my own.

Fat girls and shoes have a special relationship. Except when "girl" is in question, that is.

Part Three

(rough! babbly! self-conscious! Who has this much to say about shoes? What does it all mean? Is there a point? Does this make any sense at all? Does any of it fit? Fuck it. Consider it free writing. Usually we don't share free writing with the universe at large, but so what.)

And all of this sounds like a tragedy. Poor little fat girl with bad feet, never went to the prom, had to wear ugly shoes instead of glass slippers, ended up frumpy and bitter and dour.

And the route to redemption is this: she found she wasn't all that girly anyway, and bought a pair of men's wingtips and a can of black shoe polish, and lived happily ever after.

And I did buy a pair of men's wingtips. And then I found out that men's shoes are too wide for me to wear every day. My foot splays out and the pain in my heel returns full force.

What I wanted to write was a defense of sensible shoes. Sensible shoes! Let us hail the roomy toe box and the slight rise to the heel! The rocker sole, the cork instep! Let us honor the nurse and the line cook and their sturdy black clogs. Except now you can get those clogs in strawberry and in cream.

My co-worker, a retired nurse, once caught me browsing a pair of white patent platforms with a red cross on the side. She liked them. I didn't buy them.

My sensible shoes are not a political statement, they are not a fashion statement. They are not a repudiation and they are not a capitulation. They are not a failure. They are not a success.

They are not a choice.

And yet, vanity.

And yet, self-love.

And yet, strawberry and cream.

And my shoes today slip on. They are shiny black patent. They are as far away from brown and sturdy as I can walk. I hated those shoes. I love these shoes.

Practical, not sensible, is what I want to say.

But I don't know if it's true.