The main problem I have in considering these explanations is that, inevitably, I just don’t have any memories of these formative experiences. I certainly don’t remember the beginning or end of my weaning. No doubt I was dismayed to be taken away from the nipple, no doubt I wanted more, but did I really lie there on the Axminster and cast about for a substitute breast? Is that why I’m the way I am? I just don’t know, but it seems unlikely.
I’m no clearer on when I saw my first naked woman. I don’t remember even seeing my mother naked. There were no sisters in the house, no precocious cousins or neighbourhood girls who ever played doctors and nurses with me. There were no visits to nudist beaches. I may have seen a few nude statues when I was a child, and later I certainly saw girly magazines. They were strange and confusing documents at the best of times, but I don’t think I tried, either psychically or otherwise, to provide these shockingly exposed women with a penis. It does occur to me that some of the women in the girly magazines were likely to have been wearing fancy high heels, but I can’t make anything out of that.
When I talk of Krafft-Ebing or Freud I am probably showing the limitations of my knowledge. There is a lot of new discussion about sexuality, and though I try my best to keep up with it, I don’t find it easy. Feminists for example are very het up about fetishism for all kinds of reasons. To start with, they’re not happy with the old definitions. If you take Freud’s line that the fetish object is a penis substitute it means that women can’t be fetishists. They don’t need to psychically provide men with phalluses because men already physically have them. And this makes feminists unhappy. They don’t like the idea that they can’t be fetishists. They don’t want to be denied an option that’s available to men. But they’re also unhappy with the whole idea that sex is solely about penises, and I tend to share their feelings.
One strain of feminism tends to believe that the accepted norms of heterosexuality and heterosexual society operate to repress women. Therefore, they reason, anything that disturbs those norms and that society must be a good thing. I’m not at all sure how I feel about this. I can see that the wilder shores of sexuality do seem to threaten many of the norms that our society holds dear, but I’m not sure if fetishism fits into that category. I think foot and shoe fetishism is an essentially conservative form.
For one thing it seems to be as old as civilization. But far more to the point, as far as I can see, it threatens nobody and nothing. It can coexist with marriage, with family life, with religion (whether organized or unorganized), with capitalism or socialism, or any other damn political system.
I don’t think of myself as inherently conservative, but I suppose I am to the extent that I quite like the world I live in. It presents enough opportunities for me to enjoy my obsession. There might be other worlds in which those opportunities would be more numerous and my enjoyment greater and, yes, I find that an attractive idea, but I’m not basically dissatisfied with the current state of play.
Or put it another way; perhaps there is a Utopian society to be found somewhere, a supposedly happier and healthier place, a place in which all sexual neurosis has been alleviated, where fetishism and deviation and perversion are wholly absent. But if so, well, thanks very much but I wouldn’t want to live there. I’m happy in the here and now, with my fetishism.
It seems to me that almost all male sexuality is fetishized to a greater or lesser extent. However catholic we may be in our sexual tastes we still have preferences. Even those men who claim to ‘love all women’ must still love some women more than others, which is to say they prefer women who possess certain qualities to the exclusion of certain other qualities. Is a man who demands a high IQ in a woman any different from a man who demands a good pair of feet? I don’t think so.
I have a feeling this may be what all sex and even all love is about. When we say, ‘I love her because she is kind,’ we are separating her kindness from all her other attributes. However much we love the whole person it’s not possible to love all a person’s attributes equally. However much we love someone there are always things about them that we like more than others. ‘I love her strength but not her short temper, her good humour but not her docility.’ We are all fetishists in these matters.
Why should that surprise us? We live in a fetishized society. We are accustomed to take the part for the whole. We are beset with graven images. We see a man driving a Rolls-Royce. We see a woman in a Chanel suit. We see someone consulting their Rolex. Is this really any different from seeing a woman in a pair of fuck-me shoes? It is not only in the sexual arena that objects speak more concisely and eloquently about people than they could ever speak for themselves.
I tried to talk about this with Catherine, and at least in the beginning she appeared to be interested, but I could feel myself sinking. The moment I said anything, the moment I asserted anything as true, it felt like a silly generalization and its opposite could be equally true.
In a last, slightly desperate, bid to make her understand I said how much simpler fetishism could make life. I said it had not been easy to find a woman with a perfect pair of feet but it had at least been possible. I had at last succeeded. If I had been looking for the perfect soulmate, someone who conformed to the idealized specifications of romantic love or spiritual need, I might have been looking for the rest of my life. Finding a woman who was perfect in one way was hard enough. How could one expect to find someone who was perfect in every way. What’s more, I insisted, having someone like me could make life much easier for the woman too. ‘Just keep your feet in good shape and wear the right shoes,’ I said, ‘and I’ll love you forever.’
That was the first time she looked really unhappy. That use of the word love really scared her.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘I think you may be a very crazy person.’
Seven
But she was wrong. In those days, as I have said, I was not a crazy person at all. And if more proof were needed of my sanity, of my essential social adequacy, I would have presented my friends. I had plenty of them; friends from work, friends from university, even the odd remaining friend from school. I had male friends and female friends, friends in couples, single friends, married friends, friends in ménages, the occasional gay friend. And especially I had Mike and Natasha. Mike and Natasha were nice people and they liked me. If I had been a true degenerate they couldn’t possibly have wanted me as their friend.
I had been at university with both of them. They met in their first year and had been together ever since. They were my best friends, both of them equally. I was fond of them and they were fond of me. They led a secure, comfortable, affluent, couply sort of life, and that was just fine by me. There was nothing there for me to disapprove of. In fact, most of the time I was extremely envious. I had no problem with the way they lived their lives, but I sensed they had a problem with the way I lived mine.
To their credit, I’m sure this came out of compassion and concern. They seemed to think I must be unhappy, or perhaps that I ought to be unhappy, since I wasn’t leading a secure, comfortable, couply sort of life like them. They thought I had a little problem that needed solving. They weren’t unsympathetic, they just wished it would go away. I know they must have speculated from time to time about why I was still single, why I’d never even lived with anyone, why I’d never made it to the sort of life they’d got. Essentially, I think they just wished I was more ‘settled’.
In the beginning I used to introduce my girlfriends to Mike and Natasha, and they tried very hard to like them, even the ones I didn’t particularly like myself. They were always warm and welcoming, they were like that. We went out together in foursomes, did things, had meals together. But I think Mike and Natasha eventually found the emotional investment too much. They’d pin all their hopes on some new woman who’d entered my life, then a month later they’d have to start all over again. Using methods of greater or lesser subtlety, they sometimes tried to find out what was going wrong.
‘Are you not seeing Angela any more?
’ Mike would ask.
‘That’s right.’
Mike would be prepared to leave it at that but Natasha would ask, ‘Why not?’
I’d shrug and say, ‘You know how it is.’
‘No,’ said Natasha. ‘Tell me.’
Trying to make a joke of it I’d reply, ‘She wasn’t Miss Right.’
Taking me more seriously than I wanted to take myself, Natasha would ask, ‘What does Miss Right look like?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t met her yet.’
‘Will you know her when you do?’
‘Sure.’
‘So what are the qualities she’ll have?’
Even then I could have talked about admiring a person’s qualities as being a form of fetishization, but mercifully I didn’t. At this point, sensing my discomfort, Mike would step in and say, ‘Hey, give the man a break.’
‘He doesn’t mind,’ Natasha would say. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
‘No,’ I’d say, though I suppose I did mind.
‘See, he doesn’t mind.’
‘I think it’ll be an instinctive kind of thing,’ I’d say.
‘Instinctive?’
‘Yes, like goalkeeping.’
‘Goalkeeping. Right. Well, thanks for clearing that one up for us.’
They liked to think I was incorrigible. They even had a spell of trying to introduce me to suitable women. I didn’t mind that particularly. My life was never so full of women that I wasn’t glad to meet one or two more, especially since these women had been screened by Mike and Natasha and deemed suitable. There was always the possibility that one of them would have great feet. But they never did.
I’d meet them, talk to them, be friendly, and the evening would go well enough, but since I was being encouraged to think of these women as potential partners and mates, I had to check their feet. And their feet were never the feet of my dreams. I can’t remember the exact chapter and verse, their foot and shoe failings were not so hideous as to be permanently imprinted in my memory, but I know they were never any good.
‘Would you like Sarah’s phone number?’ Natasha asked.
‘No thanks.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t want to phone her.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t want to talk to her.’
‘What’s wrong with her? What’s wrong with all my friends?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘It’s probably something wrong with me.’
Mike put on his German psychiatrist accent. ‘Now ziss is very interesting.’
But while I didn’t want to satisfy their curiosity, I don’t deny that I was flattered by their interest in me. I liked being a source of fascination and speculation and concern. Mike always pretended to disapprove of Natasha’s prying but I knew he was as nosy as she was.
It wouldn’t have been impossible to tell them that I was a foot and shoe fetishist. I felt sure they wouldn’t have been horrified, and I wouldn’t have been particularly embarrassed, but I never wanted to. It was simply more enjoyable if it was a part of my life that I kept to myself.
So they stopped trying to find suitable girls for me, and I stopped introducing my succession of transitory girlfriends. It suited us all fine. Mike and Natasha knew plenty of other couples but I never felt very at home with them, so when we met up it tended to be just the three of us. We were capable of doing quite blokish things together, like going to the pub to play pool or going to watch Sunday League cricket. Other times we’d be cultured and go to see new films or plays or concerts. I always felt very at ease in their company and I’d never, never felt like a gooseberry.
Occasionally Mike would turn to me and say something like, ‘How about we ditch the wife, score some cocaine, pick up a couple of harlots and shag our brains out in a sordid hovel in King’s Cross?’
But, hey, I knew he didn’t mean it. Given that Mike and Natasha had been together for about ten years, and given that they were perfectly normal people, and despite the fact that they obviously adored each other, I did wonder if they had stayed wholly faithful to each other all that time. It was only human nature to stray once in a while, whether out of curiosity or drunkenness or misplaced lust. Besides, I always felt that their marriage was tough enough to withstand a little philandering.
After I’d met Catherine, I told them I had a new girlfriend, and said I had hopes for the relationship, though I didn’t go as far as telling them her name. Mike did ask what this one had that the others didn’t and, of course, I couldn’t say that she had a perfect pair of feet. I simply said she was American, and that seemed enough of an explanation for them. Natasha said I should bring her over but we all knew that I wouldn’t.
Natasha was, no doubt, a very attractive woman. She was big hipped and big breasted, though her figure was more earth mother than hour glass. I don’t imagine she had to fight men off, but I’m sure she must have had her opportunities. For the record, her feet were nicely arched, but much too plump and short-toed for my tastes. Consequently I entertained no feelings of lust for her whatsoever. I didn’t want anything like that from her. At the time I thought that was just as well, and subsequent events would prove that I was absolutely right to think that.
Eight
In one sense, what I wanted from Catherine was entirely simple and straightforward. I simply wanted her to make her feet available to me and I would do the rest. I would be the active partner, the one in need and yet the giver. I would treat her feet well, pamper them, adore them, dress them up in beautiful shoes, just the way any lover would treat any object of desire. And, even though Catherine’s feet would be the primary sexual focus, I wouldn’t be totally selfish. I wouldn’t neglect the rest of her. I’d do my damndest to satisfy her in all the more usual ways as well. The standard components of a good conventional relationship would not be entirely absent. I had every intention of being thoughtful, considerate and generous. I would try not to be too demanding, nor too jealous.
But inevitably it would not be a strictly conventional relationship. Mine was not the kind of love that led to domesticity, joint home-ownership, marriage, babies and all that stuff. It didn’t lead to sharing a social life, to meeting friends and relatives. In fact I found it hard to imagine what it did lead to. I couldn’t quite envisage how our future lives might shape themselves around each other. Nevertheless, fragile and provisional though our relationship was, I envisaged that we would in some sense continue.
I suppose I imagined that we would go on leading our quotidian lives as we always had, though I had no idea what that involved for Catherine, and occasionally we would come together, at her place or mine (although so far she had refused to come to my home), or perhaps in some hotel or some risky semi-public place where we would drink, talk briefly, then have intense, fetishistic sex. The meeting in the wine bar when I masturbated into her shoe was only the first of several such encounters.
Faithfulness certainly didn’t seem to be important. I felt it wouldn’t have bothered me if Catherine had been involved with, or committed to, any number of other people, just so long as she continued to see me, continued to let me love her feet. I eventually realized I was quite wrong to think that, but this discovery was some way off.
As for what Catherine wanted, that was a mystery. She had not sought out a fetishist. I had simply turned up and presented myself to her. I had always imagined there might be a woman out there who was my sexual mirror-image, someone with perfect feet who was looking for a man who would adore them for her. Even though Catherine enjoyed being the object of my obsession she was not precisely that mirror-image. There was always a certain ambivalence, a certain hesitation. She obviously found my fetishism strange and unsettling, but she was ultimately not repelled by it. And her reluctance was not insuperable. Although she hesitated, although she would say she didn’t know what she was doing with me, a moment always came when she would give herself over to the perversity of the situation and, as she had shown in th
e wine bar, as she showed elsewhere, she would respond intensely.
On one of our first ‘dates’ we went along to a beauty salon and Catherine had a professional pedicure. I was there as an interested (not to say fascinated, not to say fixated) observer. The salon had some aspirations to style and modernity, though it was something of a period piece; lots of mirrors, black sinks, spotlights and networks of chrome railings that had no obvious function.
We met ‘our’ pedicurist, a young, cheerful, freckled, sturdy-looking girl not more than eighteen years old. Her badge said she was called Sophie. I saw that she was wearing some flat, open-toed sandals which weren’t at all appealing, yet the feet within them looked nice enough. The toes were good and straight, and the nails though unpainted were shapely and glossy. I was encouraged.
There were only a couple of women in the salon having their hair done, having facials and manicures, so it wasn’t crowded. Nevertheless it seemed like an all too public space. I wanted Catherine’s pedicure to be done in private and I was pleased when we were escorted away from the main area of the salon into a special pedicure section. Catherine sat down in a raised hydraulic chair, not unlike a dentist’s, although it was upholstered in white leatherette. There was a footstool and a low table from which Sophie was going to operate.
‘When did you last have a pedicure?’ she asked.
‘It’s my first time,’ said Catherine.
Sophie nodded knowingly, and said, ‘Basically we recommend a pedicure and paraffin treatment every three weeks.’
‘Paraffin?’ Catherine asked.
‘Oh yes,’ Sophie confirmed, though without explaining anything.
She began laying out her instruments, the tools of her trade: toenail clippers, toe separators, pumice stone, different grades of emery board, cotton-wool swabs, and then a variety of bottles, one or two that were labelled as nail-varnish removers or cuticle softeners, but mostly blank and inscrutable. Then she produced an enamel bowl full of water and set it at Catherine’s feet.
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