The Heel

Just then I was thinking: if I could be any body part, I would be the heel of a limber, sensuous woman.

"Do you like feet?" she interrupted. I guess she thought she had discovered something by watching my eyes and this must've pleased her. Maybe she thought she could finally be of some use. The truth is, I wanted to leave but that seemed rude, so I just sat - what else could I do?

"Well?"

"Hmmm?"

"Do you like them?" She was holding onto her own by the toes and pushing them toward me in a ridiculous sit-up position. She was a little fat, it turns out, and this was especially difficult because her legs hung off the edge of the table in the air in front. Eventually, pivoting on her ass like that, she lost her balance and rolled backwards. That's all I needed to see.

"Some," I answered. Which meant yes, others - many others even, but obviously not hers.

"Why don't you get comfortable?"

How could I? I didn't even feel like unzipping. She was a complete turnoff. Besides, what was this late inning nonsense? Thank god for that at least, it was almost finished. I still wanted to ask her what she had swallowed. It seemed so deliberate coming to work like that. In any case, it wasn't professional. No, she was trying for something definite. She waved it around like a flag. Maybe some guys like that. Not me. Whatever was on the other end of that string was dead. I imagined her pulling it out - only there was no end and it just kept coming and changing like a magicians scarf only the magician and his whole apparatus have been pulled through a composter and that's the kind of stringy, peaty, schlucky mess and slop that's coming out with the string and dripping onto the floor. I can't help it. It just doesn't work for me. If there weren't two panels of glass between us I might be sick. But never mind the string because the whole thing is hideous. It's completely in five o'clock shadow, shaven and turned inward - a long clean slit over a smooth round abdomen. No scars, mind you, no scars, no flips, no folds, no lips - nothing to give it any shape or contour. It looks mechanical, purely functional, and it occurs to me that this might be a post-op specimen. The slit is just to clean. It's like the seam on a football, with the lacing partly unraveled, and that's not what I came here to see. Maybe some of these other guys do and that's their business once they're in, but how could she pretend it wasn't there, like I wouldn't notice?

As soon as I heard the divider panel engage and start to lower - signaling the end of the performance, the danse macabre as it were - I turned the deadbolt and was gone in record time I'm sure, what with no belts and buckles and zippers, or paper towel clean-up to contend with - not even a wilting boner to cover up, just gone. But not Finis.

I took a lap around the place. Midday, 6 or 8 variously wonderful girls in there wearing open lingerie and g-string bikinis. The ones who weren't entertaining stood on high heels in the doorways that lined the hallway maze, advertising, waiting, setting their fly traps for the next morsel. Otherwise, if a door blind was down, school was in session.

The booth for the viewer had a solid door and a deadbolt. Inside there was a shop stool, a stainless paper towel dispenser, a small black rubber trash can, a wall phone with a connection to the other side, and two money slots - one for her tip, the other for the house. I already mentioned the two glass panels - supposedly a one-way viewing system - and the divider which worked on a timer - five and a half minutes for ten dollars, and then the tip, at least ten.

On the girl's side there was a short cushioned platform at table-fucking height where she flopped around and did her stuff. No touching/inserting. Cameras everywhere, some of them said, which didn't seem to matter to the rest. But then, everyone had their approach, their comfort level, on both sides of the glass. Take that mouse catcher for instance. It must've worked for some of those guys, and while I'm not afraid to try something new, I'll take Drake over most of them any day she's on the floor.

Drake was truly gifted in that she loved her job, and she was good at it. She had a very unique way around the blatant touching rule. She used her heel. She sat down on her leg, tucked it under like a folded wing - a definite stretch, but one that she was quite good at - and grinded her parted, custom-made pussy on the round bone of her foot.

And why custom? Because her bald pussy was the most perfect I had ever seen and I really don't know how to put a face on that but trust me, it just was. If you can bear with me and imagine a perfect line, a fleshy symmetry, not stiff, and not too loose, clean, with no hang, and no chicken skin, not purple and not so pink, but in between and a perfect outgrowth of her entire complexion. Did I mention that she is a redhead with a tight round ass and a shy up-twisting smile, that she is long boned and lean, and a little trashy and smart, all at once?

The first time I saw her she pulled that heel trick on me but not before she blew a few bubbles from her clitoris. "You're getting me wet," she said. Then came the bubbles and a bright-eyed giggle. I got down close to the glass and looked for a hidden wand and a soapy solution and that's when she pulled the mount.

After that, I loaded all my tens into the machine and she went up and down on it like she needed to scratch something way up inside. I had enough to go a full hour and I did, besides, I was drunk, which kept things interesting longer. I didn't usually set out to rewrite the script on this place but I was muzzled. You see, it's a beat joint, in and out basically. It wasn't a club and it wasn't a brothel. It was more like self-serve gasoline - no extras, just pump and go. But this time I had to throw the twist. So when my money ran out and I still hadn't finished, I asked her to wait, and I zipped up and zipped out and got more cash at the lobby ATM which conveniently dispenses tens. Twice this happened, and both times I was faced with another customer outside her door, a regular, patiently waiting her out like he was in line for the father at confession, so I didn't feel so bad. It was his choice - I mean he could go elsewhere down the hall if he was in a hurry and she wasn't losing anything a long as the divider was up. Besides, I didn't see any signs posted about time limits.

On my way back in, the second time, the door was bolted, my door, someone was in there and Drake was all warmed up and probably doing the heel for them. When I rapped on the door and called out there was a hesitation and then some laughter. Drake, a little stoned maybe, might have forgotten about me and probably lied: "I'm sorry, I waited and I called you, but his name's Mac too." Not that I didn't feel cheated just then and a little hurt, but I knew that money in the slot was all that mattered here - one for the club and one for the heel - and that usually worked out pretty well, especially for the heel of a limber, sensuous woman.

Darla Otismeyer first introduced me to the world of the foot. She was a neighbor - a couple of houses up and over, across the creek - a Catholic school girl, about my age, say 14, or maybe a little younger. Anyway for a long time she was just Darla, and we weren't such good friends, but friendly enough, and as a girl she was ok - pink and a little plump, but mostly in a good way, but I never really had it in for her.

But eventually Darla had her summer, as all girls do who change forever, and now she was pushing at the seams. Even the air seemed to vibrate around her, coming off her head of blonde coils, and out her mouth about to unwire and split a lip; over her white button down blouse stretched to show support harness and burgeoning pink skin, and yes, even her Sergio's fit her differently, and caused her to walk that way, showing promise, but funny too, like she was upset.

One afternoon found us at opposite ends of the recreation room couch at her place. I forget how we got there. Boredom, I'm sure had a part in it. Perhaps I had gone in to see her brother, who I played ball with sometimes, and he wasn't home. And that's probably it. It was summer, unbearable as ever in that eastern foil of green hills like a hothouse, and timeless and unstructured like most hours of summer, especially early on, when the whole season stretches out in front of you and yawns and it is nothing to idle away a few hours on the end of a couch, or a porch swing, finding your rhythm.

I'm sure Darla wasn't intent on anything either that day, and that's how we came to be there alone, two latchkey summer kids respiring in the cool basement air, lying toe to toe, alongside those unyielding brown tweed cushions.

Whatever happens next in that moment that eludes you the rest of your life, you think you know, but you can never forecast it, no matter how many times, and that's what makes it. When two people converge, become complicit, out of the blue rather, there is a fine harmony in it, a fine resonance in the universe, even if only you can hear it.

That day on the couch I was squaring off with Darla's sex which I don't think I ever imagined before like I said. But looking up the pleated flutes of Darla's Summer Guard skirt, and her plump plum, probably still bald pussy pushing the edges of white nylon panties I was utterly aware, and somehow, lining things up now - like all those afternoons when she sat in the field and watched us play ball with a big pink grin on, girl knees together under her chin, grass stains on her saddle shoes, just smiling and gettin up and cutting through our game on her goosey thighs.

And so that mysterious little patch of Chi I like to call it was always there, smiling, waiting, innocent still, but now knowing something from the summer that girls don't come back from, never crossing fields like that again, and to a yearning young man such as myself, it is a stamp on my forehead, emblazoned with other images - of Lori Tolugas asleep on the pool chair and the little slip-side bikini pushing raw steak my way, or my mother shaking water shag out from the shower and sun streaming through, remembering the line of sight, here, always below, of the midget and the upshot camera angle of girlie magazines. And so there was Darla Otismeyer on two living pedestals like everyone else, so I took my shoes off and began rubbing her nylon crotch with my foot and finding my way by listening to her breath. She came back at me too with her fury of heel and fat toes and even though it hurt it never felt better. We lay like that for an hour, without talking, without even looking at one another, floating time, eyes passing clouds, heads pulled back, balanced on something else, hanging over the edge where dreams reside, and rubbing each other like a mad Siamese. The harder you rubbed the harder you got, rubbed and rubbing, round and round like that it went, in a blender.

When her brother came in it was close, but she heard him first, before he quieted himself down and adjusted his eyes. We both struggled off the couch like we were asleep and she got up, a little pink probably and rumpled, and made a stink about lunch. Lonny was munching something already, something he brought back from the junk vendor at the game and she grieved him over it like a good sister, while I went home and finished my nap like any good son of Judah might.

Darla and I never talked about what happened between us. Today, I can imagine that she went back to it herself after she dispensed with her brother, though I can't say at the time why this didn't occur to me. But even then we somehow knew not to confuse what we did that afternoon with something else, something that raged on over our heads usually. This was no mystery of unions, or rites; this was no fumbling around in the dark with a wad of kleenex or a sock, trying to keep the bed springs quiet because you share the room with your brothers; and though it did eventually lead me to consider the vacuum cleaner once, this was the first - the prelude to a pursuit of pleasure tacitly removed from the other, but complicit with them - or perhaps to diminishing their role to that of an object, to a fetish. In other words, it was an intellectual pursuit and this was new territory for a couple of teens overly concerned with doing it for the first time and doing it right.

Of course, one is tempted to ask, later in life especially, what do experiences like these tell us? Perhaps later in life, many of us have forgotten what it is, have forgotten the wave of bathwater that covers you in this state, have forgotten the depths of this arousal, or the location of it as much inside as out, as it enters and exits your body through every sense, through miles of pore and cilia, each one an open mouth, a ticklish hand. What does it sound like, this arousal? I'd say it's probably quiet, building a little, but mostly, it is a low vibration, a steady charge wherever the skin is concerned. Something that occurs slowly, with very few words, a subtle exchange in temperature, a skin without boundaries - not like the first time even but rather like the only time, or like time itself interminable, especially since there is no thought outside, no reference beyond the atmosphere of particles themselves that contain the you that is now larger because there is no in or out. And yet, it's also very solitary even as it presents a bond between two people, beyond allegiance or common coupling. Of course, the fleeting, high impact stuff of animals, that is it's own thing too, but this high, this other state that seemingly rearranges atoms, is rare indeed and remarkably firm by itself, a memorable, poignant, and angelic event even through time.

Of course, if you have known this even a few times, it is sometimes difficult to submit to the other with lavished interest. But isn't this what life prescribes for most of us? This upright tedium that we have accepted as a life lived and submitted to with something less than the whimper of an abandoned pup, unless, we are to consider the flipside to this in the high incidence of escape we seek, of total immersion, that is, in our substitute culture of reality tv, beat palaces and drug consumption, for example, but maybe it is all for the best, maybe the body cannot sustain such a high pitch alongside the spirit, maybe these substitutions, weak as they are, are all we can handle if we expect the world around us to maintain a certain semblance of itself.