“What do they do besides sit around sniffing each other’s shoes?” Penny wanted to know.
“That depends. Tonight there was a sort of ritual they followed. Everybody wore their oldest shoes. All the women’s shoes were thrown in one pile, all the men’s shoes in a separate pile. Then the men rummaged around in the women’s pile, and vice-versa, until everybody had come up with a pair of shoes that appealed to them. Then they made love.”
“To each other?”
“Of course not. That came later. First they made love to the shoes.”
“Just how does one go about making love to a shoe?” Penny wondered.
“That depends on the shoe,” Sappho told her. “And also on whether the one making love is a man or a woman. A man may make love to an open-toe shoe rather easily. But the man who is a connoisseur seeks a greater challenge. He may test his ingenuity and technique with a high-heeled boot or the angle of a French heel. That’s another reason he looks down on the sock-sniffer. After all, making love to a sock! It might as well be a handkerchief or something. No better than a frustrated adolescent.”
“What about the women?” Penny asked.
“That depends on how advanced they are. There was one real cute little beginner there tonight who grabbed a pair of those real pointy Spanish dancing shoes so the tip wouldn’t put too much of a strain on her. But was she ever disappointed later when she found herself paired off with the faggot they belonged to. Most of the women try to outdo each other to show they’re really with it. They go for wing-tips with lots of scrollwork.”
“What’s the scrollwork got to do with it?”
“Simple. A man’s shoe with lots of scrollwork is known as a podiatric French tickler among shoe fetishists. Other girls go for those clodhoppers with the real thick soles; sort of like they’re proving they can take on a real man. One or two masochists were quick to grab athletic shoes with spikes. One girl was real funny. She grabbed a moccasin because she said it was so limp and soft that it wouldn’t make her feel she was being unfaithful to her husband. The laugh was on her later, when it turned out to be her husband’s moccasin.”
“What did they do after they finished making love to the shoes?”
“Well, by that time everybody was all heated up from watching everybody else. So they paired off with the shoes and began necking and petting, all the time sniffing the shoes together. Pretty soon they were having sex, half of them holding the shoes in their teeth so they could smell them while they were at it.”
“I never heard of anything like that in my life,” Penny admitted. “I suppose there’s some sound psychological explanation for all of it?”
“Psychology, hell!” Sappho said, remembering. “Take me. I suppose it really began for me when I was about sixteen years old. I was taking a bath. And when I climbed out of the bathtub, I slipped and accidentally impaled myself on one of those stand-up drainpipes. From there on, it’s quite a story. . . .”
CHAPTER SEVEN
SAPPHO KUNTZENTOOKIS was a virgin before the accident. Technically speaking, she was no longer a virgin after it. But there was far more than a technical aspect to what transpired that evening.
Sappho was alone in the house when the incident occurred. At first the visible proof of what had happened made her panic. Her panic grew when she realized she was so firmly impaled that she couldn’t pull loose no matter how she strained the muscles of her legs and haunches. But it soon gave way to another sensation as her body reacted to the way in which she was squirming.
Slowly, her up-and-down movements in trying to free herself took on a decided rhythm. At first she was unaware of this rhythm, but after awhile she became so caught up in it that her downward motions became more violently insistent than her efforts to free herself. Spasms of ecstasy shook her body as it embraced the drainpipe again and again. Soon the demands of these tremors had nothing at all to do with pulling free, but only provided fulfillment after fulfillment for a desire growing insatiable.
This was the situation when Papa Kuntzentookis came home and discovered his daughter’s predicament. Under the impression that she had gotten into it deliberately, the first thing he did was slap her soundly across both cheeks.
“It was an accident,” Sappho wailed. “I was only taking a bath! That’s all!”
“Child of disgrace! This you expect me to believe? No! This I do not swallow! Saturday nights are for taking baths! Sunday night this is! How do you explain that, shameless hussy?” Hands under her armpits, he was heaving mightily now in an effort to free her.
“I was feeling grubby, that’s all. I was all alone in the house, and so I thought I would bathe. Is that so terrible?”
“Yes. What you do would be bad enough on Saturday night. A sin to bring shame on your father’s house! It would be unforgivable even on Saturday night. But on a Sunday? Never! Never on Sunday! Do you hear, you sinful child? Never on Sunday!”
“Oh, Papa, I’m sorry!” Sappho wailed.
“Sorry? What good is sorry? And I don’t believe you! You’re not sorry! If you were, the least you could do is stop when I talk to you!”
“I can’t, Papa— The music— I just have to move when I hear that music!”
“This I can understand. It is good Greek music from a good Greek radio station. No one with Greek blood in their veins can be still when hearing such music.”
“Papa! Please stop clapping your hands and help me!”
“It is the wild sound to stir the lusts of the gods!”
“Papa! This is no time for dancing. Please stop!”
“Music like this! Some good Greek wine! A healthy Greek woman! What more could a man ask?”
“Papa. Be careful! Don’t leap so high! You’ll crack your head on the ceiling!”
“Aaiiyyee-ee-ee! Smell the ripe olives on the trees! Leap for the highest branches! Embrace the hot sun goddess of the isles of Greece! Aaiiyyee-ee-ee! . . . Oomph!”
“Papa? Papa, speak to me! Oh, Papa! Now what will I do?”
Sappho did the only thing she could do under the circumstances. She resumed writhing in time to the music, forgot all about her unconscious father stretched out on the tiles of the bathroom floor, and gave herself up to the delightful new feelings she had discovered. Some hours later her father regained consciousness and succeeded in prying her loose. But by that time, the traumatic experience had firmly entrenched itself in Sappho’s subconscious.
A psychological reaction mechanism had been formed, and from that time on Sappho was helpless in its grip. She began to bathe every day, sometimes twice and three times a day. She was obsessed by her love for the drainpipe. Sometimes she would simply stand in the bathroom and devour it with her eyes, brimming over with adoration. She washed and polished the fixture constantly until it sparkled. She bought a ribbon for it, decided that was too effeminate, and substituted a necktie. She spent hours in the bathroom, caressing the drainpipe, crooning wordless songs of love to it, kissing and embracing it.
Papa Kuntzentookis objected. Not just on moral grounds, but also because it interfered with his regularity. It got to the point where whenever he felt the need to go to the bathroom, Sappho was already locked in there. He started imposing on the neighbors, and soon they too began objecting to this obsession which resulted in his ringing their doorbells at all hours with a Greek newspaper under his arm, a smelly pipe smouldering between his jaws, and his shamefaced need written clearly on his face. But no matter how much he beat Sappho, he still couldn’t keep her out of the john. Drastic measures were called for, and finally Papa Kuntzentookis took them.