Shoe-Ho-Ho

The things we do for girlfriends!

Especially when we know our own weaknesses. Trish called me up to go with her to the dance shoe store. She needed a pair of Zumba shoes for our latest addiction. (I'll admit to already buying mine at an online price I couldn't ignore, and felt quite proud at my savvy bargaining.)

Being the supportive friend that I am, I sucked it up and agreed to go with her, even though there is nothing that I need. In December. The month of Christmas shopping. The month of budgeting.

Now, you must understand, me and shoes...it's like putting a drug addict in a pharmaceutical closet and telling him there's no inventory tracking. But I psyched myself to be strong, cuz Trish needed me. I would do what it takes.

Close my eyes.
Hold my breath.
Think baseball.

She tried on Zumba shoes but dammit. There was one size in Size 6. My size. Coincidence? I think not. I think fate was screaming my name. Trying to give me a clue...you must buy. You only live once. Enjoy life.

“I don't need Zumba shoes,” I argued with the Rena who wears devil horns at conferences.
“But what if the bargain pair you bought gives you...bunions?” the bitch argued back.

Bunions? Holy shit, I never thought of that. I'm not even quite sure what bunions are. It's something about a blister and an onion, right? I ask my friend AnaMaria, the store owner- who by now we've talked into going to salsa with us.

“Ugly, ugglly painful growths on the side of your foot, base of ze toe. You must tape ze foot to keep them from hurting! But worse ever than the pain, they are soooo ugg-lly. A fate worse than death, a woman with uggly feet,” she says in her heavy accent. The woman speaks five languages and mixes all at least four of them together.

Tricia and I stare, wide-eyed. Horrified. Ugly feet. That is a fate worse than death.

The pain – oh, well... whatever. Every woman can handle pain. Childbirth. Breast cancer. Death, divorce, desertion.

We're supermoms.

But, Lord help me, please don't give me ugly feet. Please, please, please. I promise to be good. Forever. I'll feed the homeless. I'll foster horrible children. I'll be nice, even to the wackos. Amen.

And then I see Trish's eyes cross over in a glazed look I know too well. Oh, no. I try to think about saving her, but all too soon I'm sucked in.

My body starts to shake, my eyeballs rattling back and forth in tiny convulsions as I fight the urge to look. I continue to stare into her eyes, but get distracted by the glowing flecks of glitter reflected in them.

“...I designed these little beauties for salsa,” AnaMaria is speaking from a distance, her own voice in a fog. I can tell she's in the same zone as Trish, the pull of which I'm resisting desperately. “I saved a pair for myself. I shall wear them when we go.”

Trish starts to reach out, her hand stretching in slow motion. “Do you have 'ize Eht?” she asks in the same Italian/Portuguese/Spanglish accent of AnaMaria because her brain is not fully functioning.

I try to slap Trish's hand from the little hand-made sin of leather and rhinestones. But I make the mistake that will cost me my credit card limit increase. I look away from her eyes, and hear the little Demon Rena laughing over my shoulder, the way she always does when I sucker for curiousity.

Oooh, the pain of the glowing beauty when it hits my vision! Black, soft leather rubbed to perfection. Tiny little cutouts filled with silky black mesh, like the eroticism of smoothing black hose over your legs. Long, curling straps of elegance that wind around in criss-crosses around slender ankles. Imbedded are dainty rhinestones that twinkle in the night, adding the bling-bling in the slightly trashy way one who leans toward prostitution loves best.

My voice hasn't taken on the thickened accent of the other two yet. Instead, it comes from my throat in a monotonous, Stepford Wives quality.

“Do you have size 6?”

The most sickening part of the whole adventure is... I don't need Zumba shoes. I don't need salsa shoes. But Trish and I trudge back to the car, hampered by our huge, garbage-sized bags of boxed shoes, four pair to be exact. Guilt has stricken us both to utter silence, we're unable to even look at each other, like two junkies who fell off the wagon. Two AA members who were caught passing a flask at a meeting.

Hanging our heads down in shame, we climb in. Still taking care to place the precious shoes in gently, and strapping them into the seatbelt, lest they break during the ride home.

“You have got to be kidding.” Her daughter says from the back seat, counting the boxes, her voice dripping with disgust.

We ignore the child, knowing all to well her day is coming too.

Later that night, I text Trish.

“Are you walking around the house wearing the strappy shoes?”
“No.” she responds immediately.

It takes me a few minutes to text back.
“Oh. Me neither. Just doing the dishes.”

I hop up on the counter and guiltily unhook the winding, looping straps that grace the gentle curves of my Zumba-induced, super-model ankles.