Also on that same surface you find the dorsalis pedis artery, a blood vessel which splits and forms branches; namely the tarsea and metatarsea which run parallel across the top of the foot, and the interosseæ and dorsalis hallucis which run along the foot in the direction of the toes. These too stand out in low relief on a beautiful foot.
There are then the cutaneous nerves, the anterior tibial and the saphenous, which criss-cross the foot, again branching and subdividing, interweaving with bone and muscle. These are not obviously visible, yet they are responsible for making the foot so uniquely sensitive.
But an anatomist, for all his knowledge of the structure and internal workings, would not be used to making aesthetic judgements about the foot, whereas I used to spend my whole time doing precisely that.
Let me see if I can describe the perfect pair of women’s feet. Certainly they would need to be long and lean. A thick layer of fat around the foot hides its character. They should not be too small and neat in case they look too childlike and innocent, and that is anything but sexy. They should look strong and active. They should have high arches and lean, narrow ankles.
Obviously, these perfect feet will be healthy, free from growths, scars, deformities, without hard or discoloured or flaky skin. However, I am not averse to a foot having a lived-in look. A lifetime of wearing high heels and exotic shoes will inevitably leave a few traces, and these are not to be despised.
The flesh may be stark white or beautifully tanned, but as I say, in either case, the bones, tendons and veins must be visible through the skin, rippling and articulating as the foot moves. Occasionally one sees a foot that looks as taut and veined as an engorged penis. Or is it the other way round? That is the kind of foot I lust over. That is the kind of foot Catherine had.
The toes need to be long, straight and slender. They should never be plump or bulbous. Twisted or overlapping toes are hideous, and, despite the examples we see in Renaissance and Greek sculpture, I like the first toe to be shorter than the big toe.
The nails are all-important. The perfectly shaped foot can be ruined by bad nails, and the prime factor here is shape. They must not be spatulate. They should be the shape of tiny television screens rather than of sea shells. They should be large in relation to the size of the toe, centrally and symmetrically placed. They should be without ridges and free from cuticle debris. They should be kept long rather than cut short and of course they should be painted. The range of acceptable colours runs a comparatively narrow spectrum, from dark pink to deep maroon, and my personal preference is for something approaching Porsche red. White, silver, metallic and pearl finishes are totally dreadful. I always think that black polish should deliver a certain frisson, yet I find it never quite does. Greens and purples seem merely odd and unnatural, and, if it seems strange to talk about nature in this cosmetic context, I think that what we’re actually dealing with here is nature red in claw if not in tooth.
Foot jewellery has always struck me as a gilding of the lily. Likewise painting the feet with henna seems an unnecessary, and not especially sexual, complication. I can see that a small tattoo on the foot could have a certain erotic charge, but I have always felt that the perfect foot would not be tattooed, and Catherine’s feet certainly were not.
I realize, of course, that laying down laws for female beauty is an absurd and dangerous occupation. And if I sound dogmatic and impossibly demanding, all I can say is sorry but that’s how it is with fetishes. Of course, feet that do not conform to my ideal have every right to exist, have every right to be admired. Indeed I myself have admired and been intimate with feet that were a long way from perfect. Nevertheless, a man knows what he wants. And in one sense I am being descriptive rather than prescriptive, for, as I describe my idea of the perfect foot, I find that I am very precisely describing Catherine’s.
But the perfect foot is not bare. It is shod. The shoe delivers a vital aesthetic transformation. It customizes a part of the body. Whereas the perfect foot allows only one possibility, there are an infinite number of shoes that may be admired and enjoyed. And finding the right shoe is the comparatively easy part. Shoes can be bought, they can be specially made, whereas the perfect foot is a natural phenomenon like the Grand Canyon or the Victoria Falls.
Of course the shoes need to be high heeled, the higher the better within reason. I don’t personally feel any need to psychoanalyse the high heel but undoubtedly it makes women stand and walk differently. It raises their buttocks and it makes them wiggle. It makes them look dominant but at the same time it makes them quite vulnerable. It is hard for them to run away. Hence the term ‘fuck-me shoes’, or FMs as I prefer to call them; i.e., the woman is saying if you can catch me you can fuck me, and of course, any damn fool can catch a woman in a pair of shoes with six-inch heels.
This does not sound politically correct, I know; indeed it sounds downright misogynistic, but, hey, I didn’t invent the term or the concept. As a matter of fact, the first time I ever saw the phrase ‘fuck-me shoes’ in print was in Shelley Winters’ autobiography, Shelley, Sometimes Known as Shirley.
She tells how, in her early career, she and Marilyn Monroe used to steal shoes from the studio to go dancing in. They were high-heeled sandals with a kind of lattice work at the toe and an ankle strap tied in a bow, and she refers to them as fuck-me shoes. She says, ‘They really were the sexiest shoes I’ve ever seen.’
Like Shelley, I’m a great fan of the ankle strap, and even more so of the double ankle strap. I’m absolutely sure this must have something to do with bondage and restraint, and it is echoed in thongs, and even in certain kinds of laces. All these are very welcome.
Fabrics may vary, but only within certain limits. I tend to like my women’s shoes to be made of something that was once alive; leather or suede, snake or alligator-skin, tiger, antelope or, as in Catherine’s case, zebra. But I am not too dogmatic about this. I also enjoy velvet, silk and satin. Synthetic fabrics are not a source of pleasure for me. Perspex, plastic, Bakelite are not on my erotic map, and neither are raffia, wood or rubber.
Colour is again important. My taste is towards strong colours, reds and blacks above all, but purples and blues are fine too. Earth tones, beiges, yellows and greys are really not on at all, and white shoes are, of course, simply absurd.
I am something of a classicist in my choice of shoes. I like them to be bold and uncluttered. I go for the grand sweep rather than the telling detail. I like them to be hard-edged, smooth, streamlined. I really don’t have much time for fussiness, for buckles and bows, buttons, beadwork, rhinestones, sequins, artificial flowers. On the other hand, I am very prepared to be entertained by a mule, a slingback, a strappy sandal, a fur slipper. Much as I like the straight stiletto, I am still an admirer of the comma heel and the talon choc.
There is, however, a whole category of shoe that is simply unerotic. Included here are the clog, the trainer, the flip-flop, the Dr Scholl exercise sandal. We need not concern ourselves with these except to note that my dislike of them indicates the extent to which my fetishism is concerned with aesthetics, not with function or proximity. It’s not the idea of the foot or shoe that’s important to me, it’s the reality, the sight, the touch, the form.
I have nothing against boots, whether they run to the ankle, to the calf, the knee or the thigh, and I’m well aware that a whole category of fetishist worships them. But they fail to work for me simply because they enclose and therefore hide the foot. They conceal the object of desire. This might be a good thing if one’s sexual partner had ugly feet, I suppose, but how could you live with such a partner? How could you have sex with her?