The Virgin Review

When I was younger, my mother used to always tell me that you don’t have to drink in order to have fun – she didn’t, mind you, ever warn me about getting too involved in soles, which is probably what she should have been doing, seeing as that’s my one true vice – and this coming from a woman who lives to drink margaritas and whose lasting impression of New York was the sangria we drank at the Yucca Bar.  Okay, so she’s not a whino by any standards, but we all know what happens when your parents tell you not to do something.  

As a young adult and throughout my college career I drank at every social function I attended, though I might make the argument here that my use of alcohol then wasn’t to aide in my fun factor, though I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t use it to lubricate the murky waters of some rather awkward social encounters. How many times have you said, “I need a drink” only minutes after entering your office Christmas party?  Drinking makes socializing easier, whether you’re a social butterfly or a wallflower.  If only I knew then what I know now.  

My real “ism” as most of you well know is not liquid courage, but rather a much more reliable source of love and affection and the only thing that truly makes me feel good when everything else seems lost.  Here’s the story of how I used my “lovah” to “lubricate” a very promising mystery social encounter.

The setting: I was sitting at a bar in Port Vell with a group of girlfriends when the cocktail I was sipping on ran dry.  The rest of my crew was still happily slurping along, so I went up to the bar for a refill and pulled up a stool as I waited for my new drink…

“Nice shoes,” he says, as he pulls the empty bar stool next to me and straddles it haphazardly.

Out of instinct I look down, though I know exactly what shoes I’m wearing – cherry red espadrilles with satin metallic silver ties that I’ve wrapped more than a dozen times under the sole and around my arch instead of the cut-off-your-legs mistake of up the ankle.   “Thanks,”  I say, pressing the satin pleats of my olive green skirt down and switching the cross of my legs to point into to him.  He was cute and even with the stereo blasting some old school Britney Spears, I could hear that he was British.

“They’re the reason I came over here,”  he says. With this he smiles and his nose scrunches up, making his gentle orange freckles mesh into a messy ameba across the arch of his nose.

“My shoes,” I ask, looking down once more?

“Yeah.”

“Really?”  I curl the side of my left lip into a downward scowl.  Now, I’m skeptical.  I look around the bar, half imagining my girlfriends to be snickering in the corner, mocking me with their half-assed plan to lure some poor guy unknowingly into a hook line and sinker with flattering lines about my shoes.  “Who sent you?” I pull my knees back so they are pointing straight forward. 

He fumbles.  “Well, not just the shoes,” he says, loosing his cocky charm as he stumbles to recover what he thinks might be a loss.

I laugh.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told – by girlfriends, boyfriends, family, and random acquaintances – that I’m intimidating and not in a sweet, independent, tough girl kind of way.  My friends may put it nicely, but the end resolve seems to be that I’m “kind of” a bitch.  It is not a purposeful disposition I can assure you, but none-the-less.  

“What,” he asks in response to my laughter.  “What?”

“Guys don’t notice girls shoes.”  Unless they’re gay.  I only think this as I try to avoid that “kind of” bitch behavior.

“I bet guys notice your shoes.”

“Okay, seriously, who sent you?  Did my friends put you up to this?”  I look around the bar again and spot the girls huddled around a high top, sipping in order of appearance a rum and coke, vodka soda and something – not a cosmopolitan – that is pink.  Someone must have paid this guy to shoe flatter me as a joke – which was almost equal to pure flattery in my book – but if they had, wouldn’t they be watching their game unfold?

“Who are you looking for?”

I look back down at my shoes – they were pretty cute – and then up to him – he was cute too.  Still, what straight guy notices a girls shoes?  “Are you gay?”  Whoops.

“Ouch!”

“It’s not an offensive comment,” I say, wiping the rim of my vodka tonic.  “So?”

“So, what?  Am I gay?”

“—-”

“No.”

“Good, because I think my shoes have a crush on you.”  

Okay, so the truth is that I’m drinking a vodka tonic as this story unfolds, but did you see how I made my shoes do the flirting. That’s how alcohol met its wing man shoes.  The perfect Batman and Robin team to fly the cloudy skies of girl meets boy in bar.    Shoes really are the most solid of friends.

“Do your shoes want to dance,” he asks with a grin?

Who needs alcohol or a wing man when you have really cute shoes?

*This piece was originally published by The Shoe Dish.