When I was in Barcelona, I saw a pair of boots. I see a lot of pairs of boots. I love them, although they are usually too expensive for me to take home and adore properly.
I mean, I have a few pairs. Two pairs of black knee highs, one black midcalf, then two pairs of cowboy boots…one that’s sort of super-pointy and punky (with nasty gold studs on top, so they’re only useful under long pants) and one traditional pair, with bullet strap spurs I bought at a western store in Berlin, Connecticut…which almost got me arrested going through LaGuardia airport once.
The black ones are very specific in terms of use. One knee-high pair has super-pointy toes and very, very high, slim heels. It’s quite obvious that no human testicle could withstand the wrath of those babies. The heels however, prove problematic—not necessarily just in terms of comfort, of which there is really very little to speak of, but rather in terms of aesthetics.
I am, by nature, curvy. Or voluptuous, or statuesque, or womanly, or husky, or healthy, or doughy, or just plain jiggly, if you prefer. Placing such an indelicate object upon such a slight structure, no matter how stable, creates a strange and incongruous form…like putting a wad of mom’s greasy meatloaf into a Venetian wine glass. Like Michael Moore reciting John Dunne.
The second pair has a square toe and no heel. These boots allow me to streamline my “artsy lesbian” routine. I put on a black turtleneck, roll-up my jeans and slap those bitches on my feet and voila…even my most arbitrary criticism seems somehow eloquent. I walk with a clack clack clack that says “this angry vagina has no patience for any dead white man.” I eat a lot of tofu in those suckers.
The half-calf pair is from Aerosoles, I bought them with a gift certificate Abe got me for my birthday. Suede with a silver buckle. They’re my “how the fuck are you pulling that off and looking so good” boots. I wear them everywhere, where most high-heels pinch and ache…where lesser mortals revert to sneakers and flats. During the end rehearsals of a production, when everyone else looks like moldy dinner-rolls, I like to wear them with biznass skirts and tons of eye makeup, making people wonder how I haven’t, like the others, been defeated. The sound of the footfalls has two syllables: “fuck you, fuck you, fuck you”.
I tried on these boots in Barcelona, at a store called Casas. From what I could tell, it was a chain much like our own Aldo, with professional escorts browsing alongside pale, pudgy career-girls—who tend to try on their boots deep in the corners of the store, so as to curse their meaty, prohibitive calves in private.
Lots of trash.
After examining rows of unnecessary leather fringe captoes and multicolored stackheel slouchers, I found it, standing alone and souvereigne in its simple radiance. One gorgeous silhouette stark against so much expensive cheapness.
With trembling hand, I touched it, lifted it, turned it over. My heart melted. A thirty-nine, and only EU 148, a full hundred less that its vastly inferior siblings, both in Spain and in Germany.
I slid my hand over the perfectly curved toe, examining the minimalized wingtip overlay, a perfect heart beaming up at me, letting me know that my desperate, needful feelings were held in reciprocation. My fingers traced the seam where upper meets heel, feeling the proudly pouting backedge, my touch following down the sturdy, yet delicate bow until met with the rough delight of sole.
My breathing was shallow, possibly stopped altogether as I moved my knuckles up and down the shaft, tickling the zipper. I slowly tugged it open, exposing the supple brown within.
I sat down. My mid-calf Aerosole looked crumpled and rejected next to the bench, where I’d thrown it absently…removing it with one hand so as not to break touch with this smooth dream.
The toes of my right foot slipped in first, filling the ankle of the upper. I tugged gently on the splayed leather, and my heel slid into the footbed with a light, timid thud. Soft brown gave way to muted, cracked black as I slowly worked the zipper up my leg, feeling it resist slightly the more leather met leather.
It was on. I stood up. If the fallen Aerosole could’ve crawled under the bench of its own volition it would have, in defeated tribute to the unmitigated magnificence coating the right side of my person from toe to knee.
I took off the boot and replaced it on the shelf. We stared at each other guiltily as I vacantly tugged the suede half-calf back on. Then I grabbed my things, stood, and left.
A day later, a few hours before I was due to fly back to Berlin, I sat with a good friend Rebecca, drinking coffee in a shady square. She saw that something was on my mind.
“You’re sad to go?” Well yes, of course I was, but that was unavoidable.
“You’re worried about work?” Sort of, I mean, that anxiety stays with me like some half-witted yet snarky Siamese twin with Tourette’s Syndrome.
“You’re not feeling well?” I stared at her. I had to tell someone. I couldn’t let it end like this.
I told her about the boot. She nodded slowly, asked for the check, told me it’d be okay.
We went back to Casas.
At first I couldn’t find it. A horrid metallic taste washed over my tongue and my eyes started to burn. Then I saw it, moved to a different shelf, sandwiched between several particularly ugly models of Clarks (the continuing popularity of which will never cease to perplex me). It seemed an odd place to display such a sublime object. The salespeople at Casas were obviously philistines.
My chest tightened with another thought. What if someone else had put it there? What if someone else had tried on my boot—my perfect, slick, delicious boot, and then dumped it there amidst the Clarks as some kind of symbol of malicious scorn.
My next thought made me lightheaded…what if someone buried the boot in the tacky Clarks not out of ignorance or spite, but out of slyness. Some stuttering, lazy-eyed Spanish chica was probably on her way back to Casas at that very moment, fresh from the cash machine. It was too much.
During my private (and some might rightfully say psychotic) mental pageant, Rebecca had asked a salesgirl with a spectacularly unfortunate dye-job (think radioactive hay) for the second boot.
I sat heavily, overwhelmed. The second was even more beautiful than the first.
“You have to buy these,” Rebecca said to me. Echoes of Mr. Miyagi.
I couldn’t. I told her about my financial situation. About my unfortunate addiction to spending 3 Euros several times a day for mixtures of milk and espresso in varying degrees of strength and foulness. About the new glasses I’d had to buy to the tune of EU 300, not realizing they made me look like Scooter from the Muppet Show as a result of the fact I’d been functionally blind at the time of purchase. The GEZ guy, the Telecom bills, the trip to Barcelona purely on credit, the pants, jacket and scarf I’d bought earlier in the day…
“You have to buy these boots, Lydia. That way you’ll go back to Berlin, and if anyone ever gives you shit about anything, you’ll know you have these. These are special. These will be your Spanish boots.”
The idea of protection and beatification through footwear was both completely absurd and unspeakably attractive. I knew that she was feeding me a line of absolute bullshit, and she knew it was exactly what I needed to hear. That’s friendship.
I could’ve sworn I heard my American Express card groan as I slapped it into the fleshy palm of the patiently observing salesgirl. She’s undoubtedly seen many such scenes during that one workday alone. Maybe it was just my eyes finally adjusting to her hair, but I distinctly remember the room growing lighter—blessing the exchange.
Here in the Berlin apartment, the left boot stands on the kitchen table, the right on a stool in the hall. That way, from basically anywhere I stand or sit, I can see one. I’m not sure that I can wear them out in public, for fear of blinding the masses with their deadly hotness.
But sometime, someday when I really need them, I know where they’ll be. My Spanish boots.
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