Member-only story
The Foot Fetish Prospect
On the romance of feet
When I was a baby, I was caught in my mother’s ribs. That was how she explained my deformed legs to me.
“There wasn’t enough room in my belly for you,” she told me while I knelt in front of the coffee table in the crappy duplex and scribbled in my coloring book. She’d removed my braces for the afternoon so I could play unencumbered. “Your legs got squished inside me.”
My mother was a leggy blond dancer, and I fantasized about growing to look just like her. I even liked her feet, which were big enough to make shoe shopping difficult. She watched TV while lying barefoot on the couch with her anxious feet swinging back and forth like a metronome, a cigarette dangling gracefully between her fingers.
When it was time for bed, she strapped me back into my braces. The pain kept me awake, but it was better than wearing them in public so kids and adults alike could stare at the white-as-bone plastic that sculpted the insides of my legs and encouraged them to grow outward instead of in.
My body still hurts. Nothing aligns the way it should. My spine is flat, my legs turn in, my knees pop like firecrackers with every motion. I can’t ride a bike. My feet hurt the most. The bones in the tops of my feet swoop upward like the backs of whales breaching the sea. I can’t run. The…
