Pump up the Volume

I’ll bet you thought this was going to be about that perverse excrescence, the breast pump.

Nope. This is about shoes. You see, last night I inadvertently insulted a friend of mine, the lovely Ms. T who, with a fresh hair cut and a white polka-dotted Jean Harlow dress, arrived on my porch last night in a moonlit glow in an aura of retro 50’s glamour. As the hour turned from late to early, she left us in a swirl of white organdy and floated backwards down the stairs. In a motherly fit of cautionary advice, I told her to be careful and not fall off her shoes. Envisioning four-inch stiletto black patent-leather pumps, I thought I was being kind. In fact, Ms.T was wearing modest 2-inch heels and the comment came out as catty as a Sigfried and Roy show.

The only explanation or excuse I have for my misspoken vision of stiletto heels is that Macy’s has a great shoe sale. I know this because I was watching TV the other night and these feet started crossing the screen in the loveliest yet most unlikely shoes: Red hemp wedges, green strappy sandals, blue Persian patterns and my favorite – the black satin pumps. They were gorgeous all of them, like a collection of jewels set on the end of impossibly long legs and elegant feet. I thought as I watched these precious leathers stroll by, “yes, but those are four-inch heels. I’ll never wear them.” This is my mantra while I’m shoe shopping. It keeps me out of the impossible and in the realm of the improbable. I generally say nothing, though, mixing my fetishism with a kind of voyeurism that loves to look at shoes but doesn’t like to wear them.

I do have a good pair of black high-heeled pumps. They are gorgeous and make me feel like Karen Walker of the show Will and Grace. I’ve worn them exactly twice, each at the opening day of the semester. I feel tall, I feel elegant and I feel like both my feet are broken. More likely to be worn are the two-inch heeled Steve Madden’s in a half size too large. I have two pair, one brown and one black, like a pair of reliable carriage horses. They are the crux of my working stable of shoes. The real oxen of the collection, though, are my Mudd boots (sold at JC Penny), crunchy, romper-stomper things that lace up the front and zip up the size. Excellent shoes for pregnancy, I could loosen the laces for my swelling feet and then just zip in and out of them. More recently, I’ve been living in a pair of Nine West black two-inch wedges from last year and two pair of flip-flops, one blue and mushy with age sporting boating stripes and the other lime green and covered in depictions of martini olives.

If Thomas Carlyle in Sartor Resartus (The Tailor Retailored) said that the clothes make the man, do the shoes make the woman? I hope not, cause if so, I’m approaching trailer trash.

The problem is that summer is here and I need new shoes but don’t know what I want or what I’ll tolerate. Fall is easy – a pair of pumps, a pair of loafers, a pair of boots. Summer is never easy as I go from strappy sandals that flay ribbons off of my pezzanovante duck feet and flat slides that look like I bought them in the men’s section. I’m old, I’ve been standing on the tiny bones of these flippers for nearly 40 years and I’m sure that my illusion of Ms. T’s 4-inch stiletto black patent leather pumps was a combination of wish fulfillment and envy. I want the stiletto heels, but mostly I want to be the kind of woman who would wear them in the moonlight like Jean Harlow.