I love absolutely every single detail about my beautiful wife—except for two things. There are just two little things that, no matter how hard I try, I just can’t get past them. In fact, if I’m completely open and honest, these two little details really turn me off. Sometimes they can even make me gag a little. You see, my wife, whom I love, has … I hesitate to admit this publicly … feet.
I know, I know, everybody has feet. We all have to stand on something, but that doesn’t mean I need to see my wife’s boney, little, disgusting feet out in the open in front of God and everyone. Isn’t there any shame anymore? Did the world suddenly run out of socks?
What’s worse than seeing her feet is the chance of accidentally touching them. Blech! I’m sorry to say it, but, obviously, feet are just not my thing. I have heard there are men who have these perverted fetishes for feet. In fact, there are entire websites devoted to foot fetishes. I am NOT one of those perverted men! I have no need for bare feet in my life. I love my wife; I just want her to hide her feet from me. If I were king, women would be required by statute to wear bikinis with cowboy boots. Don’t get me wrong: Women are beautiful and their bodies should be celebrated, but everything between their heels and toes should be covered at all times by a minimum of three layers. I just think feet are gross.
In the early throws of our relationship, I was hesitant to communicate my abhorrence of my then-girlfriend-soon-to-be-wife’s yucky feet. You can’t tell a woman, “I want to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you … as long as you never take your shoes off in front of me again.” Instead of admitting to her what I thought about her feet, I purchased gifts trying to encourage her to cover those nasty feet up. In the wintertime, I would get her wool socks, and in the summertime, more wool socks. She never really got the hint. She just assumed I was a terrible gift giver, which is an accurate assumption.
While we were dating, I started intentionally picking recreational activities that didn’t involve being barefoot. I would suggest things that people would absolutely never do without shoes, like snow skiing or touring a glass factory. She didn’t find glass factories very interesting, so instead she would suggest we take walks on the beach. Barefoot on the beach was absolutely not what I was hoping for, so I would counter with, “Want to go bowling instead? Let’s rent you some shoes!”
She would argue, “No, I want to walk on the beach and see the sunset.”
“OK, the beach it is,” I would give in. “But we have to wear shoes. You know there are drug addicts who leave HIV-positive needles lying in the sand. You could get stuck in the foot and die of AIDS.”
(You, too, have heard this same beach/needle rumor, and now you know the source. I personally started this urban legend in 1994 while attempting not to see my girlfriend’s feet. It may sound ridiculous now, but back in 1994, due to innumerable government public-service announcements, all teenagers were convinced they would die of AIDS before the age of 30.)
She was undeterred by the dangers of HIV-ridden beaches and placed her 10 little naked toes into the sand, and she hasn’t worn shoes since. I married her anyway and, unfortunately for me, my wife is a California girl who goes everywhere barefoot. This shoeless-ness has limited her career opportunities. There are only a few jobs in the world in which she can go to work barefoot: a lifeguard at a water park or a cadaver donating her body to science. Since she hasn’t died yet, the cadaver job is off the table. She ultimately did find employment as the stereotype of barefoot and pregnant while raising our two kids. This was a great thing for her because the kids didn’t judge her for walking around the house with naked feet. It was normal for them; it was what they grew up with, they didn’t know any better.
Throughout our marriage, no matter how many pairs of Doc Martens boots I bought her for Christmas, she preferred to walk the earth religiously barefoot. Her feet remained constantly nude because, deep down, she just doesn’t believe in shoes. She doesn’t even believe in flip-flops. She likes to have her feet planted directly on the ground—the dirty, dirty, germ-ridden ground. This has not helped our relationship.
The ground is filthy and gross, and, by direct contact, the bottoms of my wife’s feet get filthy and gross, too. I’m already of the opinion that feet aren’t awesome, so her very dirty feet really turn me off. Every once in a while I accidentally catch a glimpse of the bottoms of my wife’s feet and they are as black as the night and covered in grime. In my imagination, the black grime could be any number of disgusting things, like road tar, bird feces, rodent feces, fragments of gum, human phlegm, and AIDS. Sure, this may seem unreasonable to you, but you don’t lie in bed next to those dirty feet at night. She even refuses to wear shoes to bed!
Inevitably her disgusting black feet with those boney 10 toes start to wander around under the sheets searching for warmth. My wife’s feet aren’t just gross looking; they are also cold as icebergs. When the stars are out, her feet are like parasites looking for a host to keep them warm—the only available host being my poor, indefensible bare legs. My wife has the foot temperature of a dead person who was found in an icy river. When I’m almost asleep, I feel a dirty, dead-cold foot touch my legs. I scream! She thinks it’s cute and continues to rub her dirty feet all over my tender, warm victim-of-circumstance legs. She calls it “flirting.” My legs and I consider it “assault and battery.”
Rob thinks any film depicting a woman’s bare foot should be rated NC-17. Contact him through the editor at [email protected].
