Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission (70 page)

I worked part-time in a men’s shoe store [in my teens] because I wanted to see what it was like to be able to kneel at men’s feet and slip shoes on and off their feet. [Later] I worked in a bookstore part-time, and there was a man delivering the magazines, a truck-driver-type guy. He was brand-new on the route, and I would go to the back door and open up to let in the deliveries. When he first came in, I said, “What happened to the other guy?” He said, “He was transferred to another route,” and I real quickly used that time to say, “Oh, that’s too bad! I used to massage his feet [and] get him a cup of coffee.” I was just watching his response; if the response was nothing, I knew not to pursue it. But his response was, “It sounds interesting.” So I said, “Well, I’ll be glad to give you a foot massage. I do reflexology.”

The second time he came I said, “Remember, if you ever want a foot massage, I’ll be glad to do it.” He said, “I remember; I definitely will.” The third time he came a little early and said, “I think I’ll take that massage this week and that coffee.” I ran and got him a cup of coffee. [When] I pulled off his shoes, he said, “They’re gonna smell.” I said, “That doesn’t bother me; I used to have to do this for my brother when I was young, and it never bothered me at all.” So I pulled off his sneakers and massaged his feet; then I put his sneakers back on. I didn’t go further than that. The next visit that he came, the same thing. I had his coffee waiting, and I said, “Are you ready for your foot massage?” He said, “Sure!” So I pulled off his shoes and did it, only this time I was a little bit more brazen. I said, “After I was done with my brother, he always used to make me kiss his feet and say thank you.” He didn’t say anything, so I said, “Is it okay if I kiss your feet and thank you?” And he said, “Go ahead, do whatever you want.” So I [did] and put his shoes back on. Then he sort of put it really together and knew what I liked and knew I was enjoying it.

The next week he came [and] said, “We’re going to do it a little different. We’ll continue with the coffee and the foot massages, but you’re going to unload the truck for me.” I said, “Sure!” I unloaded the magazines while he had coffee. I rubbed his feet and then without asking, I brought my face down and rubbed [his feet] against my face and kissed the bottoms. He looked down at me and smiled, and I put his shoes back on. It got to the point where he would come each week. I would have to carry the magazines, kiss his boots, and thank him for allowing me to work for him, and then I would have to massage his feet and smell them and kiss them and thank him. That experience was an absolute delight. It lasted for about three quarters of a year until, all of a sudden, his route was switched, and I lost track of him.

Another small, very short experience was when I bought a car. I usually go to the same place and know the manager of the dealership. I said, “I’ll be glad to buy this car if you let me get down on my hands and knees and kiss your feet and thank you.” So what was he going to do? He wanted to make the sale! He said, “Okay, go ahead.” I got down and kissed his feet and thanked him for letting me buy a car from him. That’s why I love car salesmen! I love to know that they’ll consider letting me smell or kiss their feet. They’re usually kind of amused by it.

I [may] have just a little bit of bisexual in me, but I’m mostly heterosexual. As far as my preferences, it’s mostly female feet. I will get turned on by seeing a boy’s feet, but that’s as far as it goes with men.

I’ve thought about [why I’m interested in feet] many times. I think everybody who has developed an interest in feet and other fetishes, at one time when they were young, must have had some experience happen that got them into this. I remember, very young, I was living in California, and I was standing in my driveway, and I looked across the street. There was a boy—one of my neighbors. He came out to get something on the porch, and he was in his bare feet. I saw he was wearing blue jeans, and I immediately saw his naked feet, and something just snapped in [my] mind. I said, “Oh!” I was maybe about four or five years old. It was just the nudity, the shapeliness of the feet.

I was a very shy, withdrawn child. I grew up in a dysfunctional family. My father was an alcoholic. I was different from other boys, meaning I wasn’t interested in sports. I was a skinny weakling, though I did identify with boys my age. I grew up with a low self-esteem. In fact, I had a learning problem. I’ve grown out of it since. I was placed in a special class with some other kids who were having difficulty in school. They were usually the children who couldn’t sit still. But after a period of time I was put back in a regular classroom, so I began to interface with my peers. Still, I did remain really quiet. I guess how I came out of it [was that] I just decided I’m not going to be like this anymore: I’m going to get out there and meet people and be outspoken. I’ve gone through counseling because I’ve had some failures in my life that have been disappointing; I’ve talked about how I could break out of my shell. That’s basically how I came to be the person I am now.

My first actual date didn’t come till I was 19. I wanted to get involved with the opposite sex. Other guys, they want it for their sexuality. I wanted it for my sexuality, too, but I wanted it because of their feet. So my fetish did bring me toward meeting women. I knew a girl when I was 15 or 16 years
old, [and] she used to like to go barefoot. I didn’t get to worship her feet, but I got to look at them and say, “I like that.”

I feel there’s nothing wrong with it, although I don’t go tell people about my interest. If they have an interest in this area, I’m more than willing to talk about it. [The people I’ve spoken with] have been a tremendous help in identifying what it is I like, who I want to do it with. The only thing it has not helped me with, and I think this will come in time, is actually meeting a woman who has a foot fetish or wants to have her feet serviced.

Any type of foreplay with the female foot gives me [an] erotic sensation. For me, just to envision worshiping a woman’s feet, or any situation that has to do with feet, while masturbating will give me [a] climax. At the same time, if I were to have a foot-worship session with a lady, at this point, I really wouldn’t care what happened after that ended.

I am not at all interested in boots or leather. The only things that I really find sexy, as far as footwear, are sandals or some kind of open-toed shoes or a black pump or a flat. I like those because oftentimes most girls who wear flats wear them without socks, and they’re fitted where they can just easily be slipped off at any time.

It’s kind of silly, but I’ve always dreamed of a woman removing my shoes and socks and fondling my feet. Maybe going over to a friend’s house, and there’s a swimming pool in her backyard, and I accidentally fall in, and the woman says, “Let me get those wet clothes off,” and she removes my shirt, and then she goes for my shoes and socks and finds that my feet are sexually arousing her, and she ends up having a foot-worship session with my feet. My ultimate fantasy is [to] make foot worship my business: I would love to get a chance to have a bunch of women model for me and take pictures and make videos and sell them.

My ideal session would be meeting with a young woman, between the ages of 18 and 40, preferably white but it could be a black female as well. We would get together, we would discuss what we like about feet, and she would casually begin to tease me, slip off her shoe and tickle my face with her foot. I would slowly remove her hose and begin to sniff and caress and to kiss her toes and lick them and just really get into that. And then, while I’m getting into that, she would be doing the same thing, so it would be kind of a mutual session [where] we’re both enjoying each other’s feet. [This] has not happened [yet]. The closest I’ve come to foot worship is with my girlfriend. I haven’t told her [that] I am a foot fetishist, but she knows that I like her feet, and many times I will ask, “Should I give you a foot massage?” [Or] I’ll raise her bare feet up to my face, and I’ll sniff them. But as far as meeting somebody who is into feet themselves, it hasn’t happened yet.

I realized I wasn’t alone [only] about a year ago. I was in Cleveland, and I picked up this publication. It was free, and I looked in the back, and there was this ad saying they want handsome men to model shoes, socks, and bare feet. I was unemployed at the time, and I really needed the money … and to see that key [term],
bare feet
! I immediately sent pictures and [Douglas Gaines] called me and told me what he was about. So I went and talked to him, and he started with the modeling of my feet and introduced me to several magazines that are exclusively for leg lovers and foot lovers.

Because it has been estimated that about 10 percent of the population harbors some kind of foot fetish, I encourage people if they do have this interest to try to explore and come out with it. A lot of people like me are looking for others who want to share [the interest]. A lot of us foot fetishists feel trapped. We’re in a closet, [and] we don’t want to be. We’d like it to be recognized that this is an interest we have and that this is okay.

I don’t have a lot of interest in [D&S] issues. I am interested in normal women but find myself attracted to women amputees with greater vigor. I also have a strong interest in women’s legs and feet. I certainly think about [these things] regularly, daily, and [they] lead me to certain activities—like I’m a volunteer with a support group for amputees. I try to get out and make contact with new amputees when I can. That’s not always easy. An amputee isn’t someone you tend to see every day.

If I meet somebody who I get along with real well and enjoy talking with, then that may be the way into a relationship, but a lot of the time you’re looking for people you’d like to meet based on what they look like. If she’s an amputee, that’s very powerful, [or] if she’s just generally attractive and likes to take off her shoes, then that’s interesting, as well. If a woman has a real pretty pair of feet, that is inherently a sexy thing to me. I want to watch her feet and play with her feet and touch her feet. Getting a glimpse of a woman kicking her shoes off at a local pub and going out on the dance floor and dancing—that’s
very
interesting to me. It’s particularly interesting if the woman’s in a situation where she wouldn’t normally be barefoot, like women that kick off their shoes at work or at trade shows, out on the convention floor, [when] they’re standing all day and their feet get tired. I really like that. I’d rather the shoes weren’t there anymore. [But this is] much less interesting than the amputee fetish.

[It’s] about three years since I made the decision to get involved in volunteer activities to try to enhance my chances of meeting somebody. That was a tough decision for me. I wondered, Am I only doing it because of the interest? If so, is that right? Is that good? I finally came to the conclusion that
if I’m doing some net benefit to people, if it’s not just me going in and gawking and doing dumb things, if good things are actually happening, then it’s probably okay. We can deal with the other problems later. I’ve firmed that [belief] up a little now. I think there are a lot of people out there who have this interest [but] who don’t do anything positive with it—they just sit and dream about it, or follow women around with cameras and binoculars, that sort of thing.

At times it’s seemed like a relationship [will never] happen; the few times that it seemed possible, the failures have been quite frustrating. The first woman amputee that I actually asked out on a date seemed interested at the time but later canceled. I found that very difficult because it felt like, “Oh, gosh; you’ve got this one chance—you better not blow it!” I don’t trust that response [in myself] anymore. [It’s] really dangerous for that to set in; [it] leads to going out and finding somebody whose single characteristic is having a stump instead of all four limbs. That’s not good enough. I really need somebody who I can click with on a whole lot of levels. So while I’m pursuing this a little more actively, actually winding up with an amputee is becoming a little less important. The main thing is it’s got to be a person I have a good rapport with and things in common with, things that I find interesting in a whole lot of other ways.

I have romantically pursued a couple of amputee women, but it’s never gone much beyond a date or two. So I’m still wondering what it really is like. There’s a sense of intrigue and wonder: Uh-oh, what’s underneath the skirt; what’s inside that empty pant leg or empty sleeve? What does the stump actually look like, feel like; what would it be like, touching me in various ways? That sense of mystery seems to be a strong part of it, [as well as] the visual appeal of somebody walking along with crutches or hopping to get around.

[A sexual relationship] would probably be a lot of good old-fashioned vanilla sex, but there would be some sexual aspects to the stump touching parts of me and various things—masturbation, [other] things—to experiment with. Contact between the stump and my genitals would be very interesting. But the vast majority would be very vanilla to most people.

I’m not sure how far back it goes, but I can’t really remember a time in my life when [I wasn’t attracted to amputees]. It goes back to play fantasies when I was six or seven. There was a friend that I met, a fellow who was born without legs, and that may have given me the idea. I don’t remember when it occurred to me that this is strange and different, but that’s a theme through part of my life. It’s something that I guess I’m bringing back into myself with me. It makes a better part of me now than it did 10 years ago. Let’s say I’m walking along the street and a pretty woman with one leg comes by on
crutches. I don’t know if I’d want to trade that kick for the feeling of being just like everybody else. And then is there anybody out there who’s really just like everybody else? I don’t know that there’s all that many people out there who are really “normal.”

I’ve wondered if it’s some kind of a “Oh, poor thing; let me help you” reaction. I don’t think [so]. I want a strong, equal partner, but at the time when my sexual interest was developing, that wasn’t necessarily the way I [felt]. Maybe there’s something there from then. [As if], “Maybe I’m not good enough to get a real woman; maybe I can get an amputee.” I don’t know that it is. It’s a theme [in] one book that I read, but I don’t know that I believe that’s really behind it. And if it [were], that’s a long ways in the past.