2009 Sep 28: Nice Boots!

So the work challenge is over, and it's back to trying to pass for normal. In the process of writing about my shoes, I've realized I have a lot more to say. I barely scratched the surface with those 18 posts because as casual as casual may get, I own a panoply of shoes and boots that are simply inappropriate for work. Well, unless your job is SWAT team member, or special forces. Otherwise, the boots pictured here are pretty much only appropriate for gay bars on the wrong side of town that make you stop in your tracks until your eyes can adjust to the dim light. Places too dark to see what's happening in the corners. Places where you want vibram outsoles and thick buffalo-hide between what's crawling around on the floor, and also, to protect you from germs. Places your mom, no matter how cool she is with you being gay, definitely wouldn't want you frequenting. Places that I would know absolutely nothing about...

For the record, I don't own the boots pictured here, I swiped it from a website picture of a particular pair of boots that I have been lusting after for gosh, probably ten years. It's the price that's prohibitive, I simply can't justify the cost, because I am not, in fact, a SWAT team member and 200 smackers is a lot of money for boots that won't get much use (alas...)

Which brings me tolast night.

Last night I was attending a life drawing open studio I try to make regularly, but have been missing for a lot of reasons, some lamer than others. At the end of the session, I was messing with my paper out in the lobby, cursing myself for having brought the wrong stuff, thinking I had the good watercolor paper but instead had grabbed the colored drawing paper, and in my self-chastising interlude I missed the model setting up his pose for the last half-hour session. Upon re-entering the studio, my dick takes one look at the model and announces "NICE boots!" I really do wish it'd check with my brain for social appropriateness before speaking, although I suppose the alternative, raising its hand for permission, might have been even more embarrassing.

2009 Sep 09: Dress Boots

Italian leather boots so wonderful they attract a heavenly halo of light. With a navy blue pin-stripe suit, ivory-topped mahogany walking stick, and bowler derby I shall be all set for a night on the town.

2009 Aug 07: Bostonian Black Wingtips

The first time I ever travelled to Europe, I experienced a fashion dissonance so profound it changed my life. There, out in public, men, gay men, men I knew, men I consorted with, men who are purported to be the definers of good taste, were wearing dress shoes, classic black leather shoes with leather soles, with jeans. Dungarees. Denim. It was like capers on cheez-wiz, Grandmother's pearls with a tie-died t-shirt dress. It was very unsettling, and yet, somehow, appealing. It was as if they'd gotten their American fashion sensibility from watching Hollywood movies, and in movies, they never show feet, so they were left to fill in the gap.

Today I am wearing black Bostonian wingtips, 8.5 US wide. I have a predilection towards that brand because (a) they have wide widths, and (b) they have a very traditional, almost victorian style. It's hard to find proper leather-soled shoes anymore, that don't cost hundreds of dollars.