SHOESGALLERY
These shoes were made for . . . FUN!
One cold March night in our comfy apartment on Waller Street in San Francisco, Tandy woke up in the middle of the night, sat awhile at the kitchen table and then came and woke me up. He showed me a pencil drawing on a tissue, the hard kind of tissue, like you'd hold a donut with. "Here's what we're doing for next Halloween," he announced, showing me the sketch. Then he put it on the night-stand, curled up with satisfaction, and followed his smile to sleep. To me it looked only vaguely like a shoe with a curious bow on the toe, even by light of sun-up. But he had that gleam in his eye I'd learned not to question.
We couldn't start making the shoe costumes, though, until he found the exact same shoes in our sizes. It was essential that we wear the same shoes on our feet as on our torsos. The search might as well have been for a glass slipper. Every day we saw the sketch on the kitchen table and made plans to go looking tomorrow ... or next weekend. Halloween crept up on us, and we hadn't found the required shoes. But in mid-afternoon on Halloween day luckily we did find them and there were two pairs that actually fit our feet -- no slicing or dicing was required!!
At the bottom of the spiked heels were the actual heels from a pair of black leather boots. We formed cardboard into the rounded shape. Tandy did his magic with that. The body was made with plain old thick black coat hangers for rigidity (the kind that seems to have disappeared now, yeilding to a more plastic culture) which required pliers and elbow grease to get shaped right. The contours of wire supported molded foam core over which we glued the black velvet fabric.
The soles of cardboard were "sewn" by shoe laces to the body of the shoe. That took hours, and was my contribution, other than lending a hand when Tandy ran out of his own two. We made them sturdy enough that we could "sit" the shoes down, by kneeling and leaning back on the heel section, so our faces disappeared under the "nylons" -- the sheer almost transparent fabric Tandy'd had secretly stashed months before. Our arms folded together like straps. It was the straps that had made finding look-alike shoes so difficult.
Walking around was pretty easy, with a shortened gait and mindfulness about the potentially dangerous heels sticking out behind us. Getting them in and out of cabs turned out to be the trickiest part of our Halloween adventure. We should have gotten a limo, so we could have emerged as shoes, instead of men with big black weird objects. Ah, hind-sight -- the lack of which led to more than one innocent by-stander getting smacked by our protruding heels, until we learned how much space we needed behind us.
The shoes on our feet may be what really won us the most coveted prize in San Francisco at the Beaux Arts Ball. Because we had the gauzy shiny-silver "nylon" material over our faces (as though casually tucked into the shoes), we couldn't see much of anything with spotlights in our eyes. Well, Tandy slipped off the runway. The audience caught him, and someone handed him the shoe that had come off. He held it in the air for balance as we continued down the ramp.
Anyway, the crowd went crazy when they saw the shoe in his hand was identical to the costume. It was a large ballroom, and it was only a size 8 shoe, so those in the back began to stand to see what caused the swelling applause, so it became a standing ovation (or in-ovation, since it spread from the back to the front).
We limped off the runaway and waiting a short time to collect our balance and our top prize. We hit a dozen or so bars and parties that night. We'd go into a party, give folks a "kick," let the jokes and laugher subside then kneel down and rest on our heels (you know, cooling our heels <grin>) until the room changed over. Sitting/kneeling inside the pumps, we just looked like props. Then, for the new people, we'd suddenly get up and start dancing. It never failed to bring shrieks of delight and pointing laughter.
Only one prize we didn't get to collect: a leather bar bouncer thought pumps were just not appropriate amidst the chains and leather, but as he tried to get us out, a minor uproar erupted among those who caught a glimpse of us, so he decided to let the crowd at least see us, before shoe-ing us away. (Don't leathermen ever watch Cabaret?!! Black stilettos and leather are perfect for each other! Well, maybe our heels just weren't sharp or shiny enough.) Well, it was fun navigating yet another stage anyway.
Since we were in the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band and Twirling Corps, which had become ambassadors for the Gay Community (indeed, for the city itself), when the band was invited to perform for the California Podiatry Association, we brought out the shoes. The costumes nearly demanded that they be danced in! We wanted the tap dancers to dance in them. They had regular tap shoes, but they were a big hit anyway. And what a perfect venue. After all, high heels gotta be a Podiatrist's best friends -- I'm sure walking in high heels brings them many clients, and in San Francisco, especially men.
We sold the shoes for $20 to a neighbor who was part of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, so maybe they'll show up here and there in years to come.
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