The Feet Next Door

I would be a shoe whore if it weren't for one small problem that has nothing to do with money: my feet defy my every shoe wish and dream. They look normal enough. If you asked my neighbors what they thought about my feet they would probably say things like "They were really unobtrusive, you know, you would never have guessed about them the way they just kept to themselves." or "They always seemed normal. Not weird at all."

Or if you were to ask my friends and family they might say things like "Well, we knew they weren't size 5's, but we had no idea that feet could be so secretly WIDE." or "I was never more flabbergasted than when I found out what difficult big shits they were to Angelina. Seriously, I wouldn't put up with that kind of crap from feet."

This is the way people always talk about serial killers after they've been caught.

I have shoe lust. If I had unlimited funds I would never have ugly shoes. At least, that's what I tell myself when I really need to believe in God or some other holy intervention. Then I remember that whatever powers that be gave me these damn feet in the first place for which I'm not thanking anyone.

I have major shoe problems. I think that my foot and shoe problems give me some old lady cred that I intend to stretch as far as I can. When you don't buy the foot troubles I'll break out my broken hip card.

• First of all, my feet are only size 9. Or at least they would be if any size 9 shoe came in the custom width ESFW (Extra-Stupid-Fucking-Wide). I have had men's boots custom made for me in double D's that I managed to blow out* within a year. Since most shoes, even shoes labeled "wide", aren't remotely wide enough for my feet, I usually wear a size 9.5 or 10.

• The fact that I have, for most of my life, had to wear shoes a size too long for me my shoes develop interesting creases at the toe. Like clown shoes. I've been known to trip over my own damn shoes.

• It's not enough that I have ESFW feet, but my arches are insanely high. Most shoes are made for people with relatively flat feet. Because of this I experience a lot of foot fatigue. And pain.

• But that's not all...no, that's not all. In addition to all this fun I seem to have developed calcium deposits on the joints of my big toes which when wearing any shoes not in complete compliance with my orthopedic needs will cause almost unbearable pains to shoot up my feet for hours. Pains that are so sharp and long they sometimes reach my arms and slap me in the face.

• But the frosting on my foot-cake is that my feet are prone to fungal infections. FUNGUS PRONE.

So when I sit next to friends with dainty feet shod in gorgeous shoes I find it very difficult to keep my equilibrium. In fact, I once broke up with a boyfriend mostly because he made too many comments about my business partner's very small exquisite feet which I secretly wished would shrivel up and fall off her legs. She also had high arched brows and no brain farts which helped with her overall allure.

Is it any surprise I have trouble finding shoes that fit? That's not the only problem though. You thought that was it, because that's certainly enough. The other thing is I have a great number of opinions on shoe fashion. Here is a sampling:

• I hate toe "cleavage". I think it's crass and make shoes look like they don't fit properly. I hate the expression "toe cleavage" almost as much as I hate the expression "camel-toe" with regards to pants.

• I hate strappy spiked shoes which means I hate most shoes on the market today. I think they make women's feet look awful. Yes I do. I realize that I am going against an almost universal style obsession and I don't care.

• I love boots. Work boots, mostly. Sometimes I get romanced by the look of riding boots.

• I don't like experimental heel shapes. Basically if the heel looks like it was designed before the sixties there's a good chance I will like it. After that? Pfffffft! No way.

• I love Ghillie brogues. The lace up kind. I'm on my second pair. The first pair lasted me five years** (I had them resoled at least twice) and I love them. Men's shoes, when they're not repulsive, tend to fit me well. I've owned many. I've had my recent pair for five years as well. I was actually thinking of wearing them for the wedding.

A few years ago I found this pair of Chinese Laundry shoes on sale at Macy's. It is my dream pair of shoes. Except that I almost never wear such a tall heel.*** Gorgeous, red, with lovely details, a 1940's kind of vibe to it, and they were about 70% off...

IN MY SIZE!!

I didn't have anywhere to wear them but I bought them. I've opened the box many times over the years and just admired their shiny goodness saying to myself "some day I'm going to wear these and look smashing!" never realizing that my freak feet would defy me in the end. I planned on wearing them with my wedding ensemble. Finally the perfect occasion to humiliate myself in tall heels but look fabulous while crashing to the ground in an Olympic trip and twist maneuver. I pulled them out of their box. Still brand new. Never worn.

I pushed my toes in to try them on again after all these years and then, when the rest of my feet wouldn't follow, I experienced the full weight of my shoe misfortune. I will never wear these gorgeous heels. Either my feet have continued to get wider over the years or the fat has finally reached my feet. Either way- my Imelda dreams are crushed.

I have visited every shoe shop between here and Portland and found nothing to go with my proposed outfit. How can this country be so devoid of shoes for me? I have the world's most normal looking freak-feet.

Next I will show you what they did to me at the MAC cosmetic store- they definitely achieved a bit of the fat cross-dressing prostitute type of look especially loved by the John Waters crowd. My family is going to absolutely LOVE IT!






*Not the same as a hair "blow-out". Blowing out the sides of your shoes means your shoes aren't wide enough for you and your feet are cracking the leather open. Manly, huh?

**A phenomenally long time for a person who usually destroys shoes between two months and a year.

***Because I can't walk elegantly in them.

The orthopedic age

(Because being crazy just isn't enough)

Do I look like a Birkenstock babe? Do you imagine that a person who wears a tiara for fun is the kind of person who would waltz through life wearing negative heel sandals that aren't even as pretty as the ancient Romans probably wore? I can't deny that there are sunny pictures of me as a naked "flower child". Proof of my initiation into a life of carob treats and endless bowls of granola with apple juice and adults sitting around in mushroom clouds touching base with the "cosmos".

I'm pretty sure I remember saying at least once in my life: "I WILL NEVER WEAR SHOES AS HIDEOUS AS BIRKENSTOCKS. NEVAH!"

I wasn't accounting for the nature of my feet. As far as feet go, they aren't unattractive. They have a pretty nice shape. The toes are well formed, not too long, not too stumpy. I have an elegant high arch. All in all: pretty good feet. Except for the fact that they are a DD width and though they are a size 9 in length, I have had to wear mostly size ten shoes to accommodate the width. Which means my shoes are almost always too long for me. And even when I wear size 10's, usually they still aren't wide enough. I've experienced an extraordinary amount of foot pain and blisters. Not to mention, that "elegant" arch of mine, never gets support. Shoes have not been my friends.

Which is why I think it's understandable that I loathe the expression "If the shoe fits..."

BECAUSE IT NEVER EVER DOES, DAMMIT.

To top things off, I have been experiencing, in the last few months, a periodic sharp pulsing pain in the ball of my left foot. Completely random. Impossible to ignore. It's been getting progressively worse. I haven't gone to the doctor because this is the type of thing they typically can't figure out, or if they do it results in amputation. I don't like going to the doctor because it makes me feel like a hypochondriac.

My mom has exactly the same problem with her feet. Wanna know what is the matter with hers? She has calcium deposits on her big toe joints. Yeah, and they can't do anything to help her. You know what eases the pain considerably? Wearing Birkenstocks. Or any shoe with a negative heel which takes the pressure off of the ball of your foot. Except that almost no one besides Birkenstock makes such shoes.

Now, it's true that Birkenstock has worked hard to come up with less hideous designs for their product. But I still hate them. I hate them because in order to make my feet feel better I have to spend a fortune on their shoes. I feel like I'm being punished for having special shoe needs. I feel like they are taking advantage of people like me. I bought a pair yesterday at my local "comfort" shoe store. I had to spend $160.00*. You know what kills me about spending such money on a pair of shoes? I have a very special talent that few people know about:

I can ruin the highest quality sturdiest shoes in a matter of months. Without even trying. I know, I'm amazing aren't I? I've got all this daintiness without losing my ability to crush good shoes in superhero time. Some of us are just born with more gifts than others. I try to remain humble.

I like to say (often) how aging doesn't bother me. Which I think annoys people who find aging upsetting. While I'm going to stick to my stance that getting older doesn't worry me, I will admit that while I don't care about my grey hair or my wrinkles, I'm pretty worried about the fact that I managed to break my hip at thirty five years of age, and have reached the orthopedic shoe stage at thirty seven years old. You can tell me that all I need is to limber up with a steady regimen of yoga because it's the panacea of our time, but I always injure myself doing it. Oh yeah, the back problems don't make me feel invincible either.

With all this foot pain, back pain, and recurring hip pain, I limp around like an eighty year old. So no, being thirty seven is not exactly old, but with the way my body is aging I seriously wonder if I'm going to have to use a cane permanently by the time I'm forty. How am I going to make that look cool?

Not that I'm obsessed with looking cool or anything that shallow. My cool factor is at an all time low. You know what I'll probably have to get next, to really cement my cool factor? I will probably be getting a pair of those "Crocs" for gardening in. Yeah, rubber clogs are just about the height of hippie chic. (I'm a boot chick. Always have been. I love work boots. Really tough ones. My favorite boots of all time were my Justin's. Oh boy, those babies were expensive too. But at least they came in my width.) I've been longing for a good pair of boots again. Now I'm not sure they will be good for my feet. The nice thing about garden clogs is that you can just rinse them off when you're done. A plus if you manage to get as dirty as I always do. I wonder if there's a way I could make them look like Dutch peasant-wear? If I don't mind looking like a huge potato I'm sure I could pull that off.

So I suppose I will now spend a tremendous amount of time looking for discounted Birkenstocks and Keens online. As if I have nothing better to do with my time.

On another subject... I have been thinking about the merits of starting a second blog to dedicate to weight issues. Lots of people have second blogs and they don't seem that appropriate for me because I like randomly jumping from subject to subject right here in one place. The only reason why I am considering it is because I won't stop needing to talk about that issue until it is no longer an issue in my life. This could be a long time from now. I feel a little self conscious about it though because for many people this is just a tired tedious subject. I need a place to give myself pep talks and to record progress. I could always start one and not tell anyone. I don't know. (By the way, I'm not considering this because of Oprah. I was considering this BEFORE she mentioned it in this month's issue of O.)

Speaking of magazines... I finally got a copy of Romantic Homes magazine. The one with the article about Alicia Paulson's house. I think we can all agree that is a great sign of my endless maturity that all I will say about it is: what a pretty house she has. All that sweetness didn't make me want to rip my own arm off at all. I will definitely not be writing scathing poems about it either. Because I am a very mature human being. Quite advanced, really. You know, evolved to the max.


*See, how can a person be thrifty when even your feet demand the most expensive shoes? That's not fair.

The Unknowable Future

I'm fast forwarding a bit to a better time in my life. I was a wee twenty-two years old. (I promise I won't talk about fat or diets for a while. At this point every one must be just about as tired of my ass as I am.) I was living in Corte Madera with three room mates. I was costuming with my friend/room mate Autumn Adamme. We started a company together called Dark Garden. At least, at the time I considered us business partners. Time would reveal that I was basically Autumn's contract sewer/drafter. She's still in business for herself and doing really well, though her business has changed quite a lot since I was working with her.

As you can see for yourself, Autumn is still completely untouched by time, gravity, or immoderate food and drink consumption. She's going to be a hottie when we're both eighty years old and I'm spitting my dentures out every time I talk and have to continually shove my left eyeball back into its socket. I work really hard to not resent her for having so much self discipline.* Anyway, in the picture above I am pretty happy all in all. I loved the costuming, though I burnt out within a year of this photo. I'm headed for a professional as well as a personal epiphany. I'm about to discover that the entire world is out there for me to explore. I had previously only considered fashion, costuming, and writing as possible life paths.

I suddenly realized I could go be poor with Irish people in Ireland and write really bad poetry. I was already writing the really bad poetry and I was super poor, so why not go somewhere new to do it? Or I could become a cruise director. This was a really vibrant fantasy of mine that I would dream about while drinking wine in our covered porch. I love uniforms. I let myself dream up every crazy possibility and it freed something in me. It was the first time in my life that I realized I was at the helm of my own ship.

I was also coming to terms with the fact that I would forever be the friend of hotties like Autumn who have horrifyingly small feet and that all the men I would ever date would talk about her small feet to me as though they were precious pearls.** This sounds so sad. For a while I felt really sorry for myself. Just because I have giant normal sized feet doesn't make me less mysterious and sexy than other women. (It's actually the verbal vomit that dispels all mystery and makes my sex appeal magically vanish.) But I started to realize that I could live a really happy life without a partner. It took longer to make myself believe this than I expected. Yet I learned to relish my untangled personal life. I started planning my life with forty cats.


The person you see in the picture above would have been very surprised to find these things out about her future self and life:

• That she would not only not be single at forty (knock on wood), but that within a year of this photo being taken, she would be married.

• That her dignity could be so disposable.

• That she would get not "fat", but FAT.

• That she would give birth to the next great American dictator.

• That she would still not be a published author at the age of thirty-seven touring Paris coffee houses smoking filterless Drum cigarettes.

• That Beyonce, Mandy Moore, Jamie Pressly, Elle McPhereson, and Gwen Stephani would all become fashion designers before her.

• That she didn't die already. (Though, by this time my faith in my ability to live past thirty was considerably improved)

• That she would turn out not be an urban girl at all but a small town chick with a hankering for more dirt. Always dreaming of more dirt.

• That she will buy and sell several homes.

• That she will become a housewife instead of a femme fatale type man killer.

• That she will learn to enjoy math and discover its romantic side.

• That she will piss a lot of people off.

*I still consider her a good friend. I don't actually resent her at all.


**I knew Philip was the right man for me when he failed to be enchanted by Autumn's magic feet and thought they were not as charming as my large normal ones.