Shoebris and Nemesis.
I keep buying Dr Marten's. They are my favourite shoes. They look so cool. I have six or seven pairs. I love them. But Dr Martens fucking hate me. I have two pairs that I can't wear because I have never managed to break them in. They are beautiful and distant and cruel, cutting my feet to ribbons if I ever dare dip a toe in them like a broken bottle at a the bottom of stream.
I'm old and I want my shoes to look good. As a younger man there was a point of pride in wearing your docs into the ground, scratching them and scraping them. They had to look shabby and wrinkled and dusty and shit. I'm not sure why - it was the style of the time. I also wore my jeans out at the balls and wore the same jumper for two years. But I'm older now and I want to look smarter. Looking shit all the time is fun when you're young and thin and pretty, but now I need all the ornamentation I can muster. So I want my shoes to look nice. But by the time I have worn them in - which can take anywhere up to a year - they look rubbish.
Its a false investment. After a year of mincing around the house, hollowing them out, pressing in the tell-tale wrinkles and creases, moulding them to my terrible feet, after a year of making them habitable, comfortable, they look as shit as any of my other pairs. People tell me to beat them with sticks, trail them behind a car, hire locals toughs to do a number on them while I look the other way down a blind alley. But they have to look good. As I get worse my clothes must at least look half decent. My face says "will work for food" but my clothes say "will work for exposure". And my clothes don't appreciate the irony.
Its not really the boots fault. My feet are quaintly deformed. I have flat archless feet and cresting bone spurs on my heels of the kind that would have kept Donald Trump out of the army, if he had any and wasn't a rich coward. My deformity is the not the shoe's fault but you have to wonder why I favour the most aggressive and unyielding boots available. Is it a latent masochism? Or a really not that latent masochism? Is it because my hair-shirt no longer fits me?
On Sunday I decided to try out my new boots. I'd been wearing them round the house for three months and they were comfortable enough. They're vegan boots, not leather, so imagined they would be less obstinate. I had packed the boots with my requisites: the arch separating sole that counters my plantar fasciitis and the padded grips worn at the back to cushion my heel. I had packed a couple of compedes just in case. I felt confident.
It was misplaced. By the time I had got three hundred yards I was lying in the gutter with my boot off and staring up at Susan's exasperated face. She'd been down this road before. And she'd bought me the boots to boot.
I might try investing in a nice desert boot or something. I may be getting older but my feet don't seem to be getting any tougher. Then again I bought some four pound desert boots from an Army Supplies shop once. The glue smelled of fish and the soles fell off. Soles. There's probably a joke there.
You do it. I'm going to go and bathe my wounds.
I'm old and I want my shoes to look good. As a younger man there was a point of pride in wearing your docs into the ground, scratching them and scraping them. They had to look shabby and wrinkled and dusty and shit. I'm not sure why - it was the style of the time. I also wore my jeans out at the balls and wore the same jumper for two years. But I'm older now and I want to look smarter. Looking shit all the time is fun when you're young and thin and pretty, but now I need all the ornamentation I can muster. So I want my shoes to look nice. But by the time I have worn them in - which can take anywhere up to a year - they look rubbish.
Its a false investment. After a year of mincing around the house, hollowing them out, pressing in the tell-tale wrinkles and creases, moulding them to my terrible feet, after a year of making them habitable, comfortable, they look as shit as any of my other pairs. People tell me to beat them with sticks, trail them behind a car, hire locals toughs to do a number on them while I look the other way down a blind alley. But they have to look good. As I get worse my clothes must at least look half decent. My face says "will work for food" but my clothes say "will work for exposure". And my clothes don't appreciate the irony.
Its not really the boots fault. My feet are quaintly deformed. I have flat archless feet and cresting bone spurs on my heels of the kind that would have kept Donald Trump out of the army, if he had any and wasn't a rich coward. My deformity is the not the shoe's fault but you have to wonder why I favour the most aggressive and unyielding boots available. Is it a latent masochism? Or a really not that latent masochism? Is it because my hair-shirt no longer fits me?
On Sunday I decided to try out my new boots. I'd been wearing them round the house for three months and they were comfortable enough. They're vegan boots, not leather, so imagined they would be less obstinate. I had packed the boots with my requisites: the arch separating sole that counters my plantar fasciitis and the padded grips worn at the back to cushion my heel. I had packed a couple of compedes just in case. I felt confident.
It was misplaced. By the time I had got three hundred yards I was lying in the gutter with my boot off and staring up at Susan's exasperated face. She'd been down this road before. And she'd bought me the boots to boot.
I might try investing in a nice desert boot or something. I may be getting older but my feet don't seem to be getting any tougher. Then again I bought some four pound desert boots from an Army Supplies shop once. The glue smelled of fish and the soles fell off. Soles. There's probably a joke there.
You do it. I'm going to go and bathe my wounds.
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