Geoff Nicholson - Footsucker

I held her feet in my hands. They were perfect, of course; as pale and pure and cold as vellum. I kissed them, let my lips move softly and drily over their insteps, then placed them gently on the floor by the bed. I took a final long, lingering look. I wanted always to remember them this way.

Then I took a claw hammer, previously unused, all shiny burnished steel, with a rubber sheath around the handle to give grip and absorb shock. I raised it high above my head, let it balance at the peak of its apex, and then I brought it down as hard and as precisely as I could, down on to the cold, pale, white, left foot. I did it again for the right. Then several times more, again and again, until the feet were no longer perfect, indeed no longer recognizable as feet, until they were smashed, disordered, pulverized, scattered to all points of the room.

White dust hung low in the air. White fragments littered the floor, and I gathered them together, crumbling them between my fingers. Of course there was no blood, no flesh, no splinters of bone, no smashed tissue. All I had done was destroy two plaster casts of Catherine’s feet. The real ones were still intact, still perfect, although they were no longer accessible to me.

I had hoped that destroying the casts might act as a kind of therapy, as a kind of voodoo. I had hoped that destroying the replicas might also destroy the hold that Catherine’s feet had over me. As I sat on the floor, surrounded by plaster rubble, I knew that the magic hadn’t worked. I was as deeply in thrall as ever.

This is what used to happen. This is what I used to do. This is how it usually went. I stood on street corners looking presentable. I wore a good suit with a plain tie. I looked smart and clean and boyish. I had a pen in one hand and a clipboard in the other, and I tried my very hardest to look unthreatening. I tried to be charming and I tried to make my smile sincere. Then I would stop women in the street and ask if they’d be prepared to answer a few simple questions. I often stood close to a shoe shop and approached women as they came out, because I could see they’d either bought shoes or at the very least had been looking at them and trying them on. Shoes and feet were already on these women’s minds and that helped a lot.

I would tell them that I was attached to a fashion PR company, doing research on behalf of shoe manufacturers, and would they be prepared to talk to me about the kind of shoes they bought and wore.

Naturally, I didn’t stop just anybody. I only stopped women who looked right, who were wearing the right type of shoes. Of course, a certain percentage of women just said no. They were busy, or they were in a hurry, or they weren’t interested in shoes, or they didn’t like being stopped by a strange man in the street however presentable he looked, or they thought I was trying to sell them something. I always did my best to reassure them that I wasn’t a salesman, but some of them just wouldn’t be reassured. Nevertheless, a large, perhaps a surprisingly large, number of women were prepared to take the time to answer my questions.

I tried not to be intrusive. I didn’t ask for names or ages, occupations or details of income or socio-economic group, nothing like that. The first thing I wanted to know was simply how many pairs of shoes the woman owned, and what kind they were, what they were made of, how many in leather, how many in suede, how high the heels were, whether they were slingbacks or court shoes or strappy sandals, what colours they were, whether any of them came from the great and famous shoe manufacturers.

Assuming all this went well, I would move on to questions about the feet themselves, whether the woman had any problems with her feet, whether she had corns or calluses, bunions or scars or fallen arches or hammer toes. In some cases, depending on the type of shoes the woman was wearing, I could see much of this quite plainly, but it was still good to ask. Then I would enquire whether she’d ever had a foot massage or a professional pedicure, and whether she painted her toenails and if so in what colours.

At this point, rather disingenuously, I would act as though the interview was over. The woman would be surprised. She had thought it would take longer than that. She might even say, ‘Is that all?’ But then, almost as an afterthought, as though it was a matter of no consequence whatsoever, I would ask was it all right if I took her photograph in the interests of research. The woman would always say no, would turn her head, put up a hand to cover her face, say she hated having her picture taken. I would apologize for any embarrassment and say sorry, no, no, I wouldn’t ever presume to take a photograph of her face . I just wanted to photograph her feet and shoes. She would be relieved at this and usually said OK. Well, to be honest, not all of them used to say OK. For some this was going too far, was just the wrong side of strange, and they said no, in which case I let them go on their way with no argument. But again, a surprising number of women would let a strange man photograph their feet in the middle of a busy London street. Or perhaps they felt safer precisely because the street was busy and the act so public.

I would put down my clipboard and produce a serious, professional-looking camera. I would kneel at the woman’s feet, peer through the lens, focus, get a good angle, while all the time making it clear that I wasn’t trying to look up her skirt, and then I took as many photographs as I decently could. When I sensed the woman was getting bored or restless, I stood up again, put away the camera and said that the interview had gone very well indeed and that since she had been such a helpful respondent would she be prepared to answer a few supplementary questions, that is if she wanted to, if she didn’t mind, if I wasn’t delaying her too much.

Assuming she agreed, I would ask whether, in her opinion, women dress for themselves, for other women or for men. Regardless of the answer I then asked whether the man, or men, in the woman’s life appreciated the shoes she wore. Did they ever, for example, ask her to wear very high heels? If we had got this far, the answer was invariably yes. I asked her to describe the feeling of wearing high heels. She would say that she felt good, strong, high and mighty, attractive, sexy.

Then I would ask whether she ever kept her shoes on during sex. And if I was given the chance I then asked if her sexual partner ever kissed or licked her toes. Did he like her to massage his cock with her bare feet? Did he ever ask her to run her high heels over his balls and buttocks? Did he ever ejaculate into the cleavage of her toes? And so on.

It was during this phase that the interview would invariably come to an abrupt halt. Some women would simply look at me with contempt and anger and walk away. Some would call me a pathetic wanker, some threatened me with violence, either their own or their husband’s or boyfriend’s. One woman said she’d like to kick me in the balls but I was probably the kind of pervert who’d enjoy it. (She was quite wrong, incidentally.) And one or two had been known to say they were going to call the police.