Walk Like A Man

I bought a new pair of shoes yesterday.

That shouldn't be news, but it is for me. I've always had a problem getting over to the shoe store and making a purchase. Like most real men, I only own a few pairs of shoes. A black pair for the suit, a running pair for the street, and a pair of sandals for everything else. I have never owned a brown pair of shoes in my life, not because I don't like the color brown, but because I don't have a brown belt to go with them. As for Oxblood, the name alone turns me off, and besides, red shoes are for Judy Garland.

My shoe-buying process goes something like this:

1) a girl tells me that women will only go out with men that have good shoes. This is their friendly way of saying that my shoes are either out of style, or look ragged enough to have participated in the Bataan Death March.

2) A few weeks go by, and I don't go to the shoe store. Eventually, one of the soles comes apart. (This happened with my most recent pair. I sat down on my haunches to pick something up, and SNAP, one of the soles broke in half).

3) I flop around on the broken sole for a couple of days, always meaning to go to the shoe store, but never getting around to it.

4) I go to the mall to pick something up. I walk by a couple of shoe stores, and the thought crosses my mind to go in. Then I don't.

5) I go to the mall again, and really want to buy a pair, but can't because I'm wearing sandals and, of course, I have no socks.

6) Finally, on a whim while picking up the new issue of Maxim, I stroll into the shoe store and buy one of the first pairs I see.

But not this time.

After the sole snapped, a lot of my friends complained that I needed a new pair of wheels. Let it be said here that I have big feet. Size twelve or thirteen, depending on the brand. Most of the people I know call my feet 'boats,' and whenever I retort with "You know what they say about a guy with big feet?", I usually get a response of, "Big mouth."

Anyway, I was at the mall in Rio and I thought, "Hell with it, I am going to buy a new pair of shoes." I had just come from the beach and I was wearing sandals, but I didn't care. I was going to walk in there and buy the best damn shoes they had. My last pair were Hush Puppies, and all the chicks said they made me look like a clown (because my feet are big, not because the Puppies were red). So I was going to wow them with my sense of style.

I don't speak Portuguese, but it didn't matter. I walked into the shoe store and sure enough, there was a guy there who understood what I meant when I pointed at a pair of shoes, then held up twelve fingers. He looked at my bathing suit, then my bare feet, and shrugged, motioning me to sit down.

Ten minutes later, he came out with four boxes. A real salesman. I guess he thought he was going to take the dumb Yankee for a ride. He handed me a pair of socks and told me to try the shoes on (this sock thing is pretty cool; I mentioned it to a friend later and asked her how long they had been lending people socks in case you wanted to try on shoes while wearing a bathing suit; she looked at me like I was a complete idiot).

I tried the shoes out. Pointy ones, square-toes ones, slip-on ones, and tie-up ones. It didn't matter much, because they were all too big. The guy had screwed up the conversion. He muttered that I was a size 43. (This was a tremendous ego boost. "You know what they say about a guy with REALLY big feet?") Then he disappeared and came back with four more boxes.

I tried them all on. They looked pretty good to me. I have absolutely no idea what good shoes are supposed to look like, so as long as they are black and don't seem too 'clownish,' they're all right with me. I stood in front of the mirror and checked them out, then glanced through the window and into the mall hallway. Every hot Brazilian chick that walked by was looking at me as if I were indeed a clown. It wasn't the shoes that made them smirk. It was me examining myself in a mirror in a pair of beige socks, black shoes, white hairy legs, and a bathing suit. No one can commit social suicide quite as well as I can.

I liked one pair. They weren't as pointy as the Italian elf shoes that are ready-made for nose picking, but neither were they bulbous enough to get me a job with the Ringling Brothers.

I bought them. They weren't too pricey, but they were pricey enough. I even bought a new belt to go with them. Don Juan on the way.

Later that night I went to a party and listened to Samba music and danced like a fool. I got a lot of good comments about my shoes. One girlfriend said she was 'proud of me.' Man, those Hush Puppies really must have been crap.

It was a great night. My shoes were a hit and made me feel ten feet tall. They fit perfectly and felt as if I wasn't even wearing them. They made me feel so good that when a friend and I left the bar and walked down to Copacabana Beach, I hardly noticed when the Atlantic Ocean gave them a free bath.

Shit.