Snowangels and Wellies

It had been nearly two weeks since Vivienne had finished her role as a snowflake in the local ballet company's rendition of The Nutcracker. If Vivienne had to hear one more piece by Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky, she would throw her pointe shoe at the radio playing Christmas music, or the television playing car advertisements. Really Vivienne Noël didn't dislike Tchaikovsky's work, but she was very tired of it. After years of Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Romeo and Juliet, and The Nutcracker, she had developed a mild disdain for each of the pieces by the time the ballet was finished, only for it to dissipate by the next season. Each season, she was filled with wonder and excitement, and this season had been no different. She had enjoyed her role, but it was time to rest and spend the holidays with family and friends.

It struck her as odd that this year was to be different. Her birthday was two days before Christmas, and she had passed her driving test. But her parents would not get her a car, even though her mother, Veronica, had told her husband that she couldn't keep driving her around to all the ballet practices and rehearsals for one more year. Vivienne was crushed.

"Mom, seriously, I'm sixteen," she whined.

"I don't want to hear it again," Victoria said on her daughter's birthday as she was baking pecan pies and dreading Christmas in general. Her husband had recently gotten a promotion and had to work Christmas Eve, leaving Victoria, a schoolteacher, alone with the kids over the majority of Christmas break.

"But Mom!"

"NO. You are not getting a new car no matter how much you whine, end of discussion."

Vivienne called her friend Jess and whined about how much she wanted that little baby blue mustang she saw at the dealership back when her dad was contemplating the purchase of a new car. Jess said that all parents suck and she should be thankful that hers weren't divorced. Vivienne invited Jess to walk over to her house, which was in the same gated community. Jess and Vivienne threw themselves out into the 3 ft. drifts of snow, making snow angels and throwing snowballs like they did five years earlier when school had been cancelled. For one moment, Vivienne forgot all about the car.

foot popping kiss at midnight

Kate's boyfriend of a year was indeed the cat's meow. Tall, dark and handsome, he never failed to be sweet to her. He even gave Kate her childhood Christmas wish; a kitten under the tree on Christmas morning, meowing and playing in the tinsel. The adopted kitty was an affectionate 9 month-old adopted from the shelter. He was named Matisse and would slink around the apartment, scaring her superstitious roommate, Ana, who believed that the black kitty was bad luck and was ruining her love life.

On New Year's Eve, Luca, Kate's sexy boyfriend, asked her if she would love him even if he were broke. Kate said that she would, and they spent the night in, even though she had planned on dressing up in her splurge of the year; a pair of Givenchy stilettos that cost nearly a month's rent. Sadly, she put away the beautiful shoes and put on a pair of sweats, a camisole and flip-flops. At midgnight, he popped a bottle of champagne Kate's sister Jane left for her on Christmas Eve. As the university bells could be heard in the distance striking each hour, he told her that she was beautiful, and stooped down to kiss her. This was the first year that Kate hadn't been alone on New Year's Eve, and she couldn't have been happier.

maya's favorite shoes lose some of their sparkle

Maya wiggled her toes in us, her watermelon sandals, flashing her pink glitter pedicure in the warm midsummer sun. Her light blonde hair had been separated into two braids that morning and coiled on top of her head like bear ears, but now it had fallen down while she played in the sprinkler and now was a wet mass of tangled waves. Her mother took her inside the house and used a rattail comb to separate it and braided her hair so tightly that her eyebrows were pulled into an expression of perpetual surprise.

"Mom, it's too tight!" she shrieked. Her mother removed the elastic bands and fixed Maya's hair again, this time a little looser, telling Maya not to touch her hair again. Maya found her favorite doll, Cinderella, and took her outside into the sprinkler to play. Cinderella's hair was as ratted and finespun as cotton candy; Maya's mother would just get her a new one for Christmas anyway. While Maya was telling Cinderella that she was a good girl with good friends, Shayla's mom drove up to their house in her green SUV and parked it nearly diagonally in the driveway, simply because Shayla's mom couldn't park. She took Shayla out of her pink toile car seat and brought Shayla around to the backyard where Jane was watching Maya.

"Hey Jane, how are y'all?" Shayla's mom Ashley asked as she chewed mint gum in her mouth and held the toddler on her skinny hipbone.

"Fine, and y'all?" Jane asked. Ashley put Shayla down on the ground, at which point Shayla ran to play with Maya in the sprinkler. The two women chatted until they heard Maya screaming.

"Those are my shoes, Shayla!" Maya yelled. Shayla said nothing because she couldn't talk very well. She was six months younger than Maya, and not nearly as vocal. While Shayla could say simple sentences explaining what she wanted, this statement bothered her as her brows furrowed in deep thought. Shayla gave up on finding the words, shook her head in confusion, and reached out and grabbed Maya by the ankles, pulling her down on the ground, screaming the words 'no' and 'mine' as tears ran down Maya's face.

"Baby Shayla doesn't want those! She doesn't want them," Maya said as Jane and Ashley came to separate them. Maya had forgotten about the black sparkle shoes as they were replaced in the summer by sandals with flowers on them as her favorite shoes, but like an old faithful friend, Maya had remembered them as soon as she saw them on Shayla. The shoes whispered quietly, trying to explain to Maya that they were too small for her now, but Maya couldn't hear them, and after that day, shoes lost their magical powers in her mind, and would never speak again. Instead she focused her vivid imagination on her cat, Dave.

lucky shoes, lucky in love?

Ana gingerly opened the box, again, feeling slightly queasy. This was the second time that she had opened the box, only there was an outer sarcophagus made of corrugated cardboard and packing tape to cut through first. After discarding the styrofoam packing peanuts, she finally found the brown box with the white loopy type on the lid, and opened it. We were like new again, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Her shoes were brought back to life by the sorcerers at Louboutin.

She pulled us out of the box, and slipped us on her pedicured feet. She had a date, with the guy that she referred to as "Kazinsky's friend". Kazinsky's friend's name was actually Brian, but her relationships were so fleeting that she didn't really talk about men by name, but by who her friends might know who may know her date. So, this one had been dubbed Kazinsky's friend, after the incredibly geeky guy who worked in the information technology department at the university, fixing networks and recovering accidentally deleted files.

Brian dropped by her apartment later that night and picked her up in his new F-150, and took her to the city to a fairly swanky Italian restaurant with cloth napkins, oversized white plates, and candlelit tables. Everything was perfect, including us, her beautiful lucky Louboutin shoes. They played footsie under the table, and she felt that they had a connection. After the dinner was over, he asked for the check and suggested that they walk downtown and admire the canal and street performers.

"But my shoes," she said, looking down at us as she spoke apologetically.

"That's fine, I'll just get my truck from the valet and we'll just go back to my apartment. It's nearby, do you want to watch a movie?" he asked. She agreed, and after the movie, they sat on his black leather couch inside a townhouse apartment downtown. Everything was going well, and this was their sixth date. She was a rules girl and had finally felt it was time to take it to the sheets.

Afterward, she laid in his bed, falling asleep. He nudged her, and said, "Hey, I think you should go now."

"But it's 2 am, and I don't have my car here, can't I stay?" she asked, confused and bewildered.

"Yeah, well at this stage in our relationship, I don't think it's a good idea that you sleep over," he said.

"What am I supposed to do?" she asked.

"I'll call a cab," he said, picking up his phone.

"Don't bother," she said and walked to the door. It was 5 steps away, but she was there in three.

"Hey, hey, hey! Why are you leaving like this?" he asked.

"Because you're an asshole," she said, thinking about how absurd it was that he was going to send her on a $50 cab ride alone, at 2 am.

"Look, I'm sorry, I just don't feel it's appropriate at this point in our relationship," he repeated. She whipped out her cell and text messaged a friend who was in the city that night, clubbing. She then walked out the door, and waited for her friend to pick her up. There was a homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk across the street, and she pleaded to God that her friend would pick her up soon, so she could take off her shoes, shower, and go to bed.

kitten heels, baby stilettos

She was exhausted. After a long day at the salon, her feet and back were aching. The ammonia in the dyes had been particularly bad this week because she had a sinus infection, and all she wanted was to go home to her family. Her husband was great, and she had everything she wanted, except for children. She desperately wanted children, and at 33, the clock seemed as if it were already ticking. She was petrified of being barren, especially because she had wanted to have children for the past three years, and her older sister already had three of her own.

Three children was one too many, she thought. She only wanted two, but her husband still felt that it was too soon, so she was still on the pill. Every time she took the pill, it felt like another tick of the clock, and she was closer and closer to becoming barren. But she respected his wishes and didn't want to pressure him into something that he didn't want.

Besides, at this point, she had to focus on saving money so she could eventually open her own salon. First though, she would have to go to the doctor and take care of the sinus infection so she could be more focused on work, which was miserable standing in her kitten heels as her head throbbed and all she wanted to do was lie down with menthol rub underneath her nose and a warm washcloth on her forehead. Thank God tomorrow was her day off.

She drove home that night and her husband, Michael, cooked dinner for her. He cared deeply about her and after her bath, he massaged her back and feet. They went to bed, and the next morning, Julia took her birth control pill dutifully and headed to the clinic. After filling her prescription, she took the antibiotic, kicked off her kitten heel shoes, and went back to sleep.

walk a mile in her shoes, but send them to Africa first

"How could this ever happen?" Veronica thought. She was in her late 50's, and wearing probably the most sensible shoes ever made. Her husband of 35 years had just served her the divorce papers, citing irreconcilable differences. She had felt that this was coming, and sensed that he was being mentally unfaithful to her as they had raised the last of their five children and sent him off to college.

College, where they had met, was thousands of miles away in her mind. They had met during the late 60's as freshmen, and she was incredibly attractive, with her short skirts, boots, and long blonde hair that was always straight. He had fallen for her while he was an pharmacy student, and she was an art student. Opposites had attracted then, but 30 years later, they simply repelled. Since that year in college, she had settled down, and lost her slightly bohemian attitude, and entered into accounting. They became a boring couple, accustomed to each other's imperfections, and then ignoring them. That was the first thing that happened, and after that the romance died, they had sex a few times a year, and then they just stopped altogether. They still slept in the same bed every night, but the kisses were cold, hard, and without love.

Veronica sighed quietly as she drank her black coffee with two sugars. She would have to change her life and adjust to this new situation with dignity and above all, sanity. She had devoted 35 years of her life to him, marrying him when she was 21 years old, and now she was 58. Being alone scared her half to death, and the thought of dating scared her even more than being alone. She had no idea how to approach it, and then thought back to her college days when she had the horrifying experience of holding her date's bottle of Crown while he got glasses and the bottle slipped out of her hand that was wet with sweat caused by her nervousness. The bottle shattered and the guy came rushing to her, begging her to tell him that the bottle wasn't theirs.

She couldn't go through that again. She had to know herself first before she could think about dating again. She decided that the first thing that was wrong with her life was the "safe" job that she had taken because her husband had told her to be practical about her major and career. She had let him form her into his ideal woman, but that wasn't even good enough for him. He had an affair with his coworker for the past two years before he finally brought up the subject of divorce. She had known about the affair all along, but never had really believed he wanted to leave her.

She stared at her shoes and her outfit, and the diamond ring on her left finger, thinking that pinstripe suits and sensible shoes shouldn't even be her weekend uniform. The first thing to go would be the shoes. She was tired of being sensible just because her soon-to-be-ex-husband disliked frivolity and hated seeing her spend money from the joint bank account on things like clothing and shoes. She placed them in the bag hanging on her door for the African relief fund.

She looked into her closet, pulled out a pair of wide-leg denim jeans that she had bought the month before but never worn, a long-sleeved silk blouse, and a pair of black pointy-toed shoes. She put them on, took off her wedding ring, and headed to the salon for her cut and color. It was over. She could dye her hair, cut it, or do anything she wanted to it without asking for her husband's permission.

turning in her party shoes

"I must have these," Sarah proclaimed, waving the shoe wildly in the air. The shoe salesman with the receding hairline, perfectly polished brown shoes, and the tweed suit nodded in agreement. He was in a very good mood that day, because the shoe department had been very busy and his commission was very good.

Sarah paid with her platinum credit card, purchased a tube of Diorshow mascara from the Dior counter, and carried her bags to her car. Not only did she land the job position that she had wanted, she was getting paid very well for it, and while being fairly thrifty, she knew when to splurge. She worked hard, and she deserved to pamper herself once in a while. Not only had she landed the job position that she had wanted, she had also lost 30 pounds that year by taking bellydance and pilates classes, in addition to learning how to cook. Things were going incredibly well for her, and that night she would go celebrate with a couple of her closest girlfriends by going to the most popular club in the metro.

That night, she emerged from her apartment in dark designer denim, a slinky satin halter top, and her new purchase, to meet Erin, Janie, and Amanda. Erin was a nervous accountant who constantly bit her nails, Janie was a physician assistant who had recently broken up with her high school sweetheart, and Amanda was a law student who was going to graduate the next year. These were her best friends, all attractive and successful, but always wanting more.

These four women wanted everything; they wanted careers, money, and men. Often, they discussed the puzzling actions of their boyfriends and guys they were casually dating with little reservation. The best of these conversations almost always occurred after a night of drinking when they had hangovers in the morning, and drank mimosas and ate a fabulous light brunch at Sarah's swanky $900 a month loft apartment with a beautiful stainless steel and black granite kitchen. That was exactly what they were planning to do the next morning, after they left the club and slept it off.

The club was great, happening, with lots of gorgeous men. In general the night had been a success, with various men taking interest in both Amanda and Erin while Sarah and Janie had danced the night away. The next morning, Sarah woke up to find her head pounding, and beer spilled on her suede shoes. They were ruined, and so was her good mood. She got out of bed, walking around in her boxers and tank top, and began to fix breakfast. As the muffins were baking, she showered, dressed, and woke Erin who was staying over in her spare bedroom because the night before she couldn't find the keys to her apartment in her handbag.

At noon, Erin, Amanda, Sarah, and Janie were all gathered on Sarah's balcony, eating cottage cheese muffins, fruit, and drinking mimosa's. Janie, always the analytical one, dissected the conversations and come-hither moments of the night before with striking precision. She quickly summed up the night by saying, "If you date a man you met in a bar, and marry him afterward, you'll always be married to a barfly. Wouldn't it be more lucrative to meet a nice man while you're sober, without worrying that he is an immature Peter Pan prick?"

"Yes, but where would one meet this nice guy? They don't exist in their 20's, and in their 30's, they want to raise you and mold you into their own idea of the perfect woman, if they're unmarried. And most of them are married, if there's not anything wrong with them. Where do you suggest that we meet these nice men? At work, with all of the restrictions on dating coworkers?" Sarah asked, taking a sip of her mimosa.

"No no, not at work. There are lawsuits all the time dealing sexual harassment in the workplace, so much so that men are scared to make the first move," Amanda said, "but are you going to eat the last muffin? I'm starved. I don't know what's come over me."

"No no, take it," they all said.

"Seriously though, how are you supposed to meet him?" Sarah asked, thinking that all of her coworkers were sexist assholes who, when asking a question relating to safety and protocol, would always receive an answer from her at which point they proceeded to look it up and then congratulate themselves on their own intelligence. If a man had answered, they took it as the gospel truth, and still congratulated themselves on their own intelligence.

"I could fix you up," Erin said flatly, thinking of her realtor friend who was looking for someone who was smart, witty, and single. James was 28, and had just grown up when he realized that he hated his job in accounting and quit to study to become a realtor. He was successful, intelligent, soft-spoken, and was finally ready to date someone seriously.

They all groaned, and the male bashing and rapier remarks continued on for the next two hours, before they all left. Speaking to Erin, she agreed to meet James, eyeing her ruined purple suede shoes, realizing that she needed to grow up and stop partying like she did when she was a freshman in high school. It was time to put away the sexy dirtbags that always spilled beer on her shoes and broke her heart.

the breaking pointe

Coming out of her pointe class, feet shredded to nothing but skin and blood, she untied the ribbons to her pointe shoes, and removed the lambswool that was soaked with blood and sweat to survey the damage. There, on top of her smallest toe, was a blister that had popped and bled. That was the third one this month alone, and it was time for new shoes. In the meantime, she would have to wrap it or use jelly toes before the next class to keep it from breaking open. Instead, she just placed bandages on them, then slipped her feet into her new ballet flats by Bloch, the same company that made her amazing Synergy pointe shoes that made balancing en pointe a lot easier than any of the Capezios or Gambas ever did, and being the new pointe shoes that we were, she decided that she had to break us.

The next day, we were subjected to all the usual tortures that nearly all pointe shoes go through. First, she tried us on, marked where she thought the elastic should go, pinned it, and then hand-stitched it into place. After doing that, she folded down the heel of the shoe, drew a line, placed the ribbons on that line, and sewed them on us. This went on until every ribbon and piece of elastic was in its right place.

Then the real fun began. She grabbed us, put us on, and bent the place in the shoe just in front of her heel until the shank yielded to the pressure of her foot and stayed in the proper place, forming a perfect arch. After that, she took us, beat us on the ground, sending earsplitting shocks into the air that echoed throughout the room. She did this for ten entire minutes until the sounds softened. After that, she took a file and scraped the bottom of the sole to create a better grip out of the smooth leather. Finally, she applied clear nail polish to the ends of the ribbons to prevent fraying, and we were allowed to sit inside her dance bag, beaten, broken, and submissive.

the leopard flat's meow

"Shit," she said after she spilled her grande triple toffee nut soy latte on us again.
As usual, she was always running late and constantly swearing as everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. This day was rather mundane, as she wore us to the university again, simply because we were the most comfortable shoe in her closet, which was well-stocked with 5-inch heels to make up for her lack of stature. At 5'2", she was always self-conscious about her height, especially when asking professors questions, because they usually towered over her and intimidated her even more when she asked a question.

But today she wasn't asking questions. She was here to finally become serious about her studies and somehow manage to get out of the black hole of academic doom that seemed to be just people who didn't care what they were doing, and even less about what they wore. This was the day that she would finally sit down and study organic chemistry properly, so that she could pass the professor's 30-question multiple choice test with answers A-J. To pass this, she had to go to the library and study, and because in 15 minutes she had a meeting, she went to the library in the crumbling engineering building.

She walked up the stairs, into the library and I bit into the back of her heels. She stopped long enough to tuck her leggings into the back of her heels, and then she looked up and saw a set of stairs she hadn't noticed before in the year that she had been here. Curiosity, while it may kill the cat, was tempting to her and she decided to walk up the stairs into a small room over the library, filled with one or two desks. She sat and studied the chapters until she noticed she was late for her meeting. She got up really quickly, the organic book slid to the floor, and she picked it up. The guy next to her was staring at her, and as she apologized, coffee in hand, and her cell phone rang with her "Paper Planes" ringtone. She jumped, spilled coffee yet again, and looked up just in time to see probably the most handsome man she had ever seen.

"Sorry to disturb you again," she said, and walked out the door. The guy asked his friend if that was his girlfriend just walking out, and he told him that he didn't know her.

"Wait," she heard and turned around to see the handsome guy smiling at her, pen in hand. He then asked her for her number, and she didn't say much, just took the pen and a slip of paper, gave him her number, knowing that this happened all the time to her but in all likelihood he wouldn't call her.

He called her that night. I guess this one was a different breed of cat.

for the love of shoes

We were Christmas shoes, and in her mother's mind, only for holidays, church, and special days. She was only two years old when she went into her closet, took us out of the box, and said, "I want to wear my sparkle shoes."

She was a smart little girl, speaking from the age of one, in nearly full sentences, without any of the baby Einstein shows and toys that her wealthier cousin had enjoyed. She watched "Wonder Pets" on television only once a day, and had enjoyed the human interactions that few children enjoy. Her parents spoke to her and played with her, and made her the center of their lives, and she was doing incredibly well. But that all changed once her father died in an accident 6 months before her second birthday. Her mother made it a point to continue raising her as her husband had wished, so she did not work and rarely spent time away from the little girl, and the little girl had blossomed and became more intelligent, expanding her vocabulary, so it was no surprise when she was able to choose her own clothes and begin dressing herself.

She always picked us. On her second birthday, she had paired us with a silver sparkly tutu and baby blue long-sleeved shirt with snowflakes on it and a pair of white lace tights. Then, the last time she wore us, she paired us with a velvet jumper with ladybugs and ladybug socks.

"I want those shoes?" she asked, unsure that she was saying it correctly.

"Okay, baby, I'll get them down for you. Now hurry, we have to go to the new house and we have to feed Dave before we leave," her mommy said.

"Dave's a good buddy?" she asked about the big fat fluffy orange cat that her dad had adored.

"Yes, Dave is a good buddy. Baby, you're almost too big for these shoes now. We're going to have to give them to your friend baby Shayla, so she can wear them," her mother told her. It was true, the littler girl's feet were getting too big for the little black shoes, and she wouldn't be able to wear them next winter.

The little girl stuck her bottom lip out in a pout, her cheeks turned red, and tears began to form at her eyes. She began screaming, "No, no, no, no, no! Baby Shayla is too little for them! I don't want baby Shayla to have them! They're mine! Mine!"

She cried and cried, and threw herself down on her bed and cried some more. It was good to feel loved. She didn't want to leave us, but her mom thought: "The obsession starts so early."

if the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear it.

She lifted the lid of my tan box, knowing that she had just made a good investment. But like all good investments, this one had to be handled carefully. This investment had cost her a great deal of money so she gingerly unfolded the tissue paper and took me out of the box.

"God, I hope they fit," she said, thinking about the pain that cheap shoes with five-inch heels had caused in the past. She was a model when she was a teenager, mainly doing plus-sized catalogues, skincare plugs, and commercials for local businesses. But now she had to be a model of good behavior and corporate class, and I was perfect for her.

I sat in the box at the top of her closet for a week after she tried me on. Then she took me out. I mean she really took me out. We went to a fancy dinner at a swanky corporate club in a city that was a hub for the oil industry, and there was champagne and cocktails and glittering conversation, but she was really quite bored with it. This was her father's domain, not hers.

After an hour, she excused herself, got into her own mid-nineties truck parked across the street, and went across town to the other side of the tracks. There she met her friend, a bleached blonde who stuffed her bra frequently and wore low-slung bootleg jeans to showcase her butterfly tramp stamp. Worse, her shoes were the cheap PVC kind sold at the likes of Walmart. Absolutely no class, but we greeted them anyway.

She didn't exactly kick us off, but she was tired of standing in us for an hour, making polite conversation so she placed us by the door and went to the restroom to change clothes. The two girls, conversed in fluent Spanish, and watched "Sin Senos No Hay Paraíso." After watching that, they watched a couple of episodes from the 5th season of another popular show, and then they both retired to bed. The next morning, we didn't go home.

The next week, we smelled of cheap vodka and even cheaper beer as the bleached blonde sleepily pressed buttons on her cell phone as it beeped annoyingly. My heel hurt and my mate's vamp exposed a gaping wound. Eventually, the beautiful former model picked up the phone.

"Hey, how are you? I haven't heard from you in a week! I hope everything is going okay, but listen, I really can't talk right now, I'm studying for a physics test right now so can we talk later?" she asked, without breathing.

"Yeah, whatever, but listen, I have something to tell you. You left your shoes here," the trashy blonde said while picking the cuticle that surrounded her fake nails.

"What shoes?" the busy girl who hadn't unpacked her bag said.

"Well...I wore them to the club last night," the blonde said as some random guy snored on the couch. The sex was great though, she thought.

"What shoes? And why were you wearing my shoes? Don't you wear a 9 1/2? I don't think those could be mine, I wear a 7 1/2," the busy girl asked quizzically. The blonde was evading her questions, and she was getting annoyed.

"The ones with the red sole," the blonde said.

"You broke my Louboutins? What the Hell were you doing wearing my shoes to some club? Do you have any idea how much those shoes cost?"

"Whatever, I'll give you $200 for them," the blonde said defensively. Sounds like a good investment just turned sour.

"No, just send them to me," the busy girl said, and hung up the telephone.