My First Heels

[Ed: As Madam is tied up (no not like that) with work these last weeks with no time to chat or post (apologies to all I hear in the background), she asked me to go through her notes and find something of interest for you to read. On trying to encipher her jottings I came across this story concerning her first pair of heels and how they were acquired. I asked if I should let it lose on the world. She was affirmative to this, as she was going to follow-up on the note she made on her Heel Collection page anyway.]

[Ed. So here it is.]

One holiday in the early 80s we were in the near from a town called Street in Somerset, the HQ of the shoe company Clarks with their so-called ‘village’. The town was just full of shoe shops and as MrsA took then, as now, every opportunity to look for shoes we spent ages checking out one shop after another. The only consolation after walking miles wearing out the ‘souls’ of our shoes looking for new ones was being allowed to go mad in a bookshop buying a backlog of 15 Terry Pratchet paperbacks.

[Ed: Checking my log this was 1982 and they hadn’t been back for quite some time and the founder of Amazon was still at high school.]

You may say that it is normal for a girl to constantly scan the shoescape, but in the case of MrsA it’s also very frustrating, as she has very small feet (2-3 UK) and finding something that looks good and fits is for her a nightmare. Usually when she is occupied rummaging around in the small sizes, I’m sent off to buy at least one pair of men’s shoes (boring) so that she doesn’t get a guilty conscience when she, on the rare occasion, finds something to take home for herself.

So when I’m told to do my own rummaging, I am always on the lookout for heels in my size, 43EU/9UK (not so boring but equally frustrating). It’s an almost hopeless situation in a "normal" shoe shop, but I look anyway. In the 80s I really don’t remember seeing anything in large sizes, these days either women’s feet are getting bigger or the manufactures and outlets are getting in on the needs of girls like us who would have to look to ‘special’ shops on- and off-line. Things are getting more liberal and these days ‘a sale is a sale’ whoever their for.

After countless shoe shops we entered a small long dingy establishment. MrsA stayed at the front in daylight and I slowly wandered to the back and there in the gloom bathed in a ray of light from a single window I saw them! It was like a vision, imagine something like the blessing / god sequence from Monty P’s Holy Grail - I didn't hear the choirs, but near enough! There on a well past its sell-by date discarded display case was a pair of black patent leather court shoes with four inch heels.
I could not believe it; they looked like they could fit! 
I started to get nervous.
So often in the past my excitement was dashed when I looked at the size. Usually 2 sizes too small and the only way I would have been able to put them on, let alone walk, was with serious toe bending!
I took a deep breath and turned them slowly over.
They were 7.5UK! Was I dreaming? That’s the largest I’d seen in a long time. But something was not quite right. 7.5UK was my boy size equivalent to a 9UK girl size, but as before they really looked like they could fit! Could they be sitting here banned to the backroom because of some production glitch? 

Just then MrsA startled me by tapping me on the shoulder. I turned round forgetting I had the shoes in my hand. She looked at the shoes and back up to me and asked “Do you want them”? I looked at her dumfounded and then heard the Monty P. choirs! I slowly nodded, without another word she took them out of my hands and went off to the front of the shop to buy them. I could have gone with her but held back being at that moment totally embarrassed, studded and excited all at the same time. I thought it would be better to say out of sight at this stage. The shoes were obviously not for her and I didn’t want the assistant to put 2&2 together. She probably did anyway, MrsA came back for me handed me the bag and we walked out of the shop with my prize clasped tightly in my arms!

I couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel. That evening I tried them on under the scrutiny of MrsA. We had been on our feet most of the day and even in those days I was having problems with my legs and plates, but swollen or not I went for it. I unpacked them and looked them over in detail; they were from Bally (petal), elegant and well made. The 4 inch heel had the angle and shape typical for the style at that time.
[Ed: Dug out this poster from 1982 to add a bit of atmosphere.]

I put them on and in semi-cramped pain I spent ages trying to strap them up. The buckles were to put it mildly on the small side and I was not use to bending over and manipulating anything on the outer side of my feet, an odd feeling I must say having Mrs.A sitting there looking on. After a few under the breath frustrated rude expressions my side, MrsA took pity on me and buckled me up.
I stood; the pain went up a notch. I walked around as best I could as the pain started to migrate towards my squashed toes. After a few wobbly minutes I sat down and when Mrs.A asked how there were, I lied through my teeth and said ‘a bit tight’ but on the whole ‘ok’. I must say I can’t remember much more about the evening only that after removing them we laughed about it, with me throwing in jokingly a few red herrings as not give her the idea I was in heaven with my very own heels!
>As they were ‘a bit tight’, next day it was decided to keep an eye out for other heels in larger sizes. No idea whose idea this was, but I was certainly game! I suspect she read me better than I thought. So for the day we repeated ‘the walking the streets of Street’ scanning for shoes. You can imagine I was in a totally different frame of mind compared to the previous day. MrsA was still looking for shoes for herself, but this time I had a mission! I took every opportunity to ‘officially’ check heels at the other end of the range and I didn’t have to wait until she and everyone else was out of sight!

After a luckless morning we went to the Clarks village and had lunch. I’m not sure when and where we found them; it was not as spectacular as with buying the patent leather ones. As you can see from the picture they were open toe sandals. They were larger than the Bally’s and so didn’t cause the level of pain as before, but they didn’t hold me that well either as I was swimming about too much in them. This made it difficult to walk in as much as I could judge within the confines of the hotel room.
No matter I had now two pairs of heels.

Since then over the last 30 years I had plenty of occasions wearing them when MrsA was not around. They became more comfortable due to the leather forming to my feet. When the opportunity arose I would combine them with tights or stockings from my mini stash. For a brief period we had in the wardrobe two lovely semi-frilly dresses one white and the other black that ‘almost’ fit me. Either MrsA had mistakenly bought them without looking at the labels or she had wanted to give them to someone, obviously not to me as a present, can’t really remember her motive. Luckily the waistbands were elastic and allowed me to pull the dresses up to my waist. The rest was just too small for my statue, although with the white one I got my arms through but my back was fully exposed the zip out of reach and anyway useless. In combination with my heels and stockings I could enjoy the look and feeling for brief periods.
After a few months we talked about them taking up space and she suggested giving them to her niece, I agreed of course, I had no real choice. I don’t think she knew or thought I was ‘wearing’ them at every opportunity and checking to see how I would react. It was just her way to ask me beforehand when giving things away. Anyway they ‘hung’ around awhile before her niece visited and took them.
I missed them a lot. Well over the years the heels stayed out of sight, I think I was too shy / embarrassed to get them out and wear them in full view, what excuse would I have had.

After time I thought she had forgotten about them but it was not so. The only time I had ‘officially’ to wear my black heels after the initial wearing, was an evening at home watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show which had come out on VHS tape. We had gone to the movies to watch it a few times and experience the audience participation with their flashlights, water guns, rice, toilet paper etc. We didn’t ‘dress up’ but had some of the props with us second time round and got into the swing of things. Quite a number of the audience took the opportunity to drag it as the characters, all great fun.
Thinking about this we decided to make an ‘event’ out of viewing the film at home. We would both dress as far as possible like Transylvanians. Well, MrsA reminded me that I had my heels which surprised me some what. Of course officially I had nothing else and so we bought some black stockings. I needed suspenders but we couldn’t find any in my size, so MrsA made me some.
Makeup was no problem and as she had lots of different nail vanishes (like I do now), we painted each other’s fingers in different colours. All this was for me more fun than watching the film! And so we had for a few hours our ‘private’ film showing dressed for the part. We never got round to dressing up again, apart from at Carnival time with classical costumes.
It’s a shame but there it is. I should have hinted in some way, talked about it while the opportunity was there, but typical me I kept silent.

The blue and red heels I threw this year, they were way over the top but I still have the black heels. The leather has, let’s say, ‘matured’ over time, the heel tips have long disintegrated and the buckles just un-do-up-able. But they were my first and I can’t throw them away can I?

Heels for Health..

ere is a so called “side effect” concerning wearing heels that I came across while shopping a while ago. It would be interesting if anyone has heard of, or experienced the effect in some way. 
I was with my wife once again in town on the lookout for shoes. As she has a very small shoe size 2-3UK / 34-35EU and wide width, it’s a nightmare trying to find anything that will fit and looking like it hadn’t come from the children’s dept. 
Fortunately there is a shoe shop that caters for very small to very large feet that we frequent to see what’s in season. As a regular customer the owner gives us a call when a new delivery is on its way. They don’t have that much of a choice and what comes in at irregular intervals is usually snapped up quickly, so timing is everything. 
As my wife was trying on shoes I wandered off in the direction of the large sizes and browsed. I held my distance as I didn’t want to bring attention to myself. After a while I wandered back. As we chatted with the owner, out of the blue she said that she had seen I had been looking at the high heels, and she asked if I would like to try them on! 
I did a double take, looked at her and said “pardon?”. Apparently she was not joking, as she repeated the question without any hint that she was anything but serious. 

Now if I would have been alone, I think I would had jumped at the chance. But I wasn’t and therefore I smiled and gave from myself a long drawn out “No…”. I must say I have no idea what my wife would have said if I had said “Yes please!” or "well ok, why not”. She would I think, have gone along with it, but I’m not sure if she would not have been inwardly or possibly outwardly embarrassed. 
I must say that when I’ve embarrassed her in some way it usually leads to her being angry with me and also angry with herself for getting embarrassed. It shows itself in a verbal shutdown for an indefinite time period. All I can get out of her in this mode, is short neutral toned monosyllable answers to anything I ask. This carries on until I start to try and apologise, which slowly coaxes her out into the open again and we talk it through. 
Anyway I had said “no” and so I will unfortunately never know what the result would have been if I had said “yes”. Of course, I could ask her what she would have thought about the situation if I had said “yes”. But I’m not sure where it would lead. 

The shoe shop owner had mentioned in the past, that a number of the local drag artists would buy shoes from her shop as well as other shoe "admirers”. This time she told us of a customer that buys heels for his bad back. He said that it made him stand up straight and that his back pain was better after a while. We laughed at the “excuse” he had made to buy.
 

We also laughed about this on the way home, of course what I did not mention was my own experience in heels in conjunction with my own back problem. I have very little chance to walk in my heels, it’s down to short runs and manoeuvres around the cellar at home or walking the 45 meter long corridor at work, after the staff has gone home and the main lights are out. Fortunately there is the emergency illumination to make sure I don’t run into doors and the odd copy machine lying about. 
I try to get in at least 3 to 4 corridor “lengths” to give me at least an idea of what it would be like to spend an elevated evening in them. I do notice that the hips have the feeling of not being where they usually are and that I have to stand up as straight as I can to help with balancing. 
With my scoliosis not an easy task, I’ve had it since my teens; I don’t look like Quasimodo back wise, but I do have to make a conscious effect to raise my head that extra few degrees to look straight ahead parallel to the floor. I can’t say my back problem feels “better” while heel-walking, different if anything. My main focus is not to lose my balance and trying to think away the pain emulating from my ankles and toes due to the unusual angle and unfortunately a half a size too small shoe. I don’t really think there was going to be any orthopaedic benefit in walking in them. 

The only thing I would call a “positive effect” was as said, having to stand up as straight as I could. Which I think for my back and stance would be in the long run beneficial for my health. I can just imagine my medical insurance company laughing their heads off after receiving a bill for reimbursement from my last heel buying attack!  
With what I have found in the literature after a short Google in the Net, is that heels are in no way healthy. Understandable when one looks at the anatomical compensation needed by the body and the dramatic increase in weight on the ball of the foot when the heel is raised. The change in posture may give the wearer an, okay let’s use the word, “sexy” enhancement and that’s quite ok. There are far more extreme measures that one can do to oneself when trying to be so called fashionable.
I'm not against heels in anyway far from it, everybody to their own. But what I cannot understand is this trend of doing aerobics in heels! I very much doubt that this will bring anything, apart from a potential sprained ankle. Ok, a short workout in reasonable heels may help you to survive an evening dancing in them, but I think that’s about it. 

I know I won't be wearing heels every day on a regular bases, just the opposite due to the pain and lack of opportunities. I am frustrated that with a shoe size half a tick away on the wrong side of 9UK/43EU/12US there is a very limited selection in relationship to other sizes. On the other hand, I am also glad, because it stops me from potential financial ruin! 

If you have any positive effects while wearing heels please let me know. It goes without saying that I’m not referring to finally being able to reach that otherwise inaccessible top shelf without the use of a ladder!