Dressed to Impress. Elizabeth Coldwell

doesn’t necessitate the other. Fetish on a Fixed Income: if I’d written the book, those shoes could be the centrefold. And the fact that the shoes were cheap – literally – underscored the part of their appeal that was predicated on the fact that they were the footwear of a cheap woman – a tramp, even. These were not the classy footwear of my sueded-silk slingbacks with the gathered and pointed toes; they didn’t confer elegance or sophistication, delicacy or fine-boned, highly strung beauty. These shoes proclaimed their origins; they announced the wearer’s designs and motives. These shoes screamed of sex.

      They flaunted their low class. They revelled in their purpose: to get you hard or wet, to turn your thoughts immediately and irrepressibly to hard, grunting, animalistic fucking.

      So I bought them. And I wore them – to dinners, to parties, alone in my bed. Then I waited for the right man to wear them for.

      And waited.

      One guy I met was so self-conscious about his height that I couldn’t even wear low heels when we went out. While under some circumstances I would have enjoyed feeling like an Amazon, towering extravagantly over my lover, he, I could tell, would feel all his masculinity drain away at the sight of my stature, and I would end up envisioning him as a bug I could crush under my sexy foot.

      I thought for a little while that Arthur, a guy I dated briefly, might be in sync. But the first time I undressed yet left the shoes on, he seemed disconcerted.

      ‘Um … your shoes are still on,’ he noted.

      ‘I know,’ I purred. ‘Isn’t it hot?’

      ‘Yeah, I guess so,’ he said, dubiously.

      And then he looked anxiously at the sheets as if I’d soil or tear them. We didn’t go out long.

      Then I met Mark, a furniture restorer who was performing a miracle on a friend’s family heirloom when I first saw him, the tattoo of the 1940s pin-up, naked except for her retro pumps, smiling at me suggestively from the swell of his left bicep.

      ‘Why that tat?’ I asked, meaning, ‘What 1940s cheesecake actress do you drool over?’

      ‘Because The Shoes Stay On,’ he answered, staring into my eyes with a challenge. I felt my face get hot as I murmured something in reply. We had a chance to try out his creed. Me naked and exposed, legs spread wide, pussy open and ready; him making his way from my strong thighs, past ankles circled in leather, to the arch, lifted by the shoe, and the heel, resting on the stiletto point sheathed in leather. I admired the way my legs looked, elongated, resting on his shoulders as he plunged into me; I got hot looking at my feet, toes kept pointed, feet arched, level with his ears.

      But although Mark knew his way around my body as if he had written the owner’s manual, it soon became obvious that owners’ manuals were the only reading material he was familiar with. He thought books were for propping up stereo speakers, couldn’t tell Dante from Dentyne, and I soon said goodbye to him and his shoe admiration.

      When I had a date with Jackson, I didn’t try to bring up the topic. But after several dates I got the feeling that my shoes would be appreciated, that keeping the shoes on would go over more than all right. We had a date set for Friday night; I began on Thursday to prepare myself.

      Long ago, I differentiated between women who get fucked and women who allow themselves to get fucked. Initially, I thought I belonged to the latter. But as I reflected further, I realised that there was a third choice: that there are women who get fucked, women who allow themselves to get fucked, and women who arrange to be fucked. There is no violation for someone who is willingly violated. As I was in that last category, all my preparations were directed towards that end. Everything had, as its goal, my getting fucked. This had always been the case; I’d always assumed that the ultimate goal was to inspire lust, to make a man interested, to keep him in my thrall; but, if I were being honest, I’d have to refine that thought. I put the prep time in, not merely to attract a man and drive him mad with longing, but because, if I did it well, I’d be supremely well fucked. And I wanted that to happen.

      ‘Tell me how you prepared your pussy for me,’ Victor used to rasp. I’d tell him, and the preparations would start far earlier and be far more extensive than he’d have realised.

      ‘I wear makeup to make my eyes look dark and inviting,’ I’d say. ‘I make sure that my underwear is lacy or silky, that it teases and torments my nipples and my clit, keeping them aroused and waiting for your touch. I get Brazilian waxes, baring myself entirely to the scrutiny of a woman whose eyes I can barely meet, enduring embarrassment and discomfort so that, when I am with you, you can see everything, so that there is no barrier, not even that provided by hair, to our bodies’ coming together.’ I’d tell him that even as I lay on a tissue-paper-covered table, my fingers holding my lips open, I’d imagine it was his cock rather than hot wax that I’d feel at that invitation. I’d tell him about the rest of the hair removal, shaving my legs so they’d be soft and silky to his touch, about choosing clothes for the amount of flesh they’d reveal and conceal, about keeping an eye on how easily they could be removed. I’d tell him about choosing shoes to arouse him, and knowing that while some girls got fucked because