Footsucker

Six

I have never been much of a student, certainly never much of a scholar. The world of learning, of libraries and texts, of specialized knowledge, of references and cross-references, of bibliographies and databases, has in general meant very little to me. The world of Theory means even less. Yet, partly through force of circumstances, partly through choice, I have become a scholar of my own condition. I have read the required texts. I have tried to cover the material. I have annotated. I have set up my archive. (Of which, more later.) I have tried to keep up to date. I have become an authority, if not a wholly reliable one. Above all, I have tried to understand myself.

I believe it was Krafft-Ebing who first used the term fetishism in the sense that we understand it today. His Psychopathia Sexualis is full of stories about foot and shoe fetishism and I have read them with some pleasure; stories of men forced to keep pairs of boots hidden in bed so they can fondle them and become aroused enough to get an erection with their wives, stories of men who take chickens along to their favourite prostitutes and get them to trample the birds to death in their high-heeled boots.

Krafft-Ebing is always a good read, but unfortunately he was a forensic psychologist, so he only ever became involved when a crime was committed. He may well have come across healthy, well-adjusted fetishists who led sane, normal lives, but they weren’t part of his work and they didn’t really interest him. What, I wonder, would he have made of me? Of course, I like to think he would have made nothing at all. He would have looked at me, looked at my behaviour and seen no problem. Freud, however, might have seen it very differently.

Freud, of course, has a theory about fetishism and it’s a cracker. He says that the young male child believes that everyone, male and female, has a penis, just like him. That sounds fair enough. How would he know any different? But, says Freud, a moment comes when he finally sees a naked woman, and straight away he spots that she doesn’t have a penis after all. The little boy is shocked and appalled. Someone seems to have lopped off the woman’s penis. And he realizes the same thing could happen to him. So, symbolically, he needs to provide her with a phallus, or at least a phallic substitute, a fetish object. In this traumatic moment he looks frantically around him, sees a pair of shoes lying on the floor or sees the woman’s naked feet, and thinks that’ll do nicely. A fetishist is born.

Can Freud really mean it? Can he really believe this explains anything? I mean, I fear castration as much as the next man but I don’t see how that results in a desire to attach penises to people who never had them in the first place. And I’m especially worried about the part that says the fetish object is something the patient saw at the same moment that he saw his first female genitals.

My guess is that a fair percentage of males must get their first glimpse of the female genitals either in a bedroom or a bathroom. I will admit that shoes may well be present in these places, and they’re conveniently situated, they are (arguably) more or less phallic shaped. But it’s easy to think of plenty of other things that would be present too; loofahs, bath taps, shower heads, bars of soap, all of which seem every bit as phallic as shoes, all of which would be equally good (or bad) phallic substitutes, and yet one doesn’t hear of too many soap or loofah fetishists.

Now, not even Freud’s worst enemies would say that he really thought this whole business through. But I think the clear implication of his ideas is that when I’m lusting after a woman’s foot, I’m actually lusting after a penis. As I have said before, I do like feet that are large, veiny and rippled, that have an appearance that might, I suppose, be regarded as quasi-phallic. And it’s true that I sometimes suck a woman’s big toe in much the same way that some people suck a penis. But both these are imperfect analogies. The foot is only somewhat like a penis. Neither foot nor big toe is erectile, neither is a similar size or shape to an actual penis, neither is capable of ejaculation.

More to the point, what tells me that Freud didn’t get it quite right is the fact that when I’m fondling or kissing a foot, I have no desire to be fondling a penis. And if, by some chance, I was presented with a penis, and if I sucked it, this would not be at all the same thing as sucking a woman’s foot. It would not be nearly so pleasurable. It would not satisfy any of my sexual desires. Freud thinks the foot may be a substitute for the penis, but I am here to tell him that the penis is no substitute for the foot.

Another, equally unconvincing theory is that fetishism is all about weaning. The baby is torn unwillingly from the breast. Denied what he wants, the baby is set down on the floor, down where the shoes and feet are. He looks about him for a substitute, and lo and behold he discovers feet. I find this an ingenious theory but I’m even less inclined to believe it than I am Freud. The foot and shoe seem even less convincing as a surrogate breast than they do as a surrogate penis.

The main problem I have in considering these explanations is that, inevitably, I just don’t have any memories of these formative experiences. I certainly don’t remember the beginning or end of my weaning. No doubt I was dismayed to be taken away from the nipple, no doubt I wanted more, but did I really lie there on the Axminster and cast about for a substitute breast? Is that why I’m the way I am? I just don’t know, but it seems unlikely.

I’m no clearer on when I saw my first naked woman. I don’t remember even seeing my mother naked. There were no sisters in the house, no precocious cousins or neighbourhood girls who ever played doctors and nurses with me. There were no visits to nudist beaches. I may have seen a few nude statues when I was a child, and later I certainly saw girly magazines. They were strange and confusing documents at the best of times, but I don’t think I tried, either psychically or otherwise, to provide these shockingly exposed women with a penis. It does occur to me that some of the women in the girly magazines were likely to have been wearing fancy high heels, but I can’t make anything out of that.

When I talk of Krafft-Ebing or Freud I am probably showing the limitations of my knowledge. There is a lot of new discussion about sexuality, and though I try my best to keep up with it, I don’t find it easy. Feminists for example are very het up about fetishism for all kinds of reasons. To start with, they’re not happy with the old definitions. If you take Freud’s line that the fetish object is a penis substitute it means that women can’t be fetishists. They don’t need to psychically provide men with phalluses because men already physically have them. And this makes feminists unhappy. They don’t like the idea that they can’t be fetishists. They don’t want to be denied an option that’s available to men. But they’re also unhappy with the whole idea that sex is solely about penises, and I tend to share their feelings.

One strain of feminism tends to believe that the accepted norms of heterosexuality and heterosexual society operate to repress women. Therefore, they reason, anything that disturbs those norms and that society must be a good thing. I’m not at all sure how I feel about this. I can see that the wilder shores of sexuality do seem to threaten many of the norms that our society holds dear, but I’m not sure if fetishism fits into that category. I think foot and shoe fetishism is an essentially conservative form.

For one thing it seems to be as old as civilization. But far more to the point, as far as I can see, it threatens nobody and nothing. It can coexist with marriage, with family life, with religion (whether organized or unorganized), with capitalism or socialism, or any other damn political system.

I don’t think of myself as inherently conservative, but I suppose I am to the extent that I quite like the world I live in. It presents enough opportunities for me to enjoy my obsession. There might be other worlds in which those opportunities would be more numerous and my enjoyment greater and, yes, I find that an attractive idea, but I’m not basically dissatisfied with the current state of play.

Or put it another way; perhaps there is a Utopian society to be found somewhere, a supposedly happier and healthier place, a place in which all sexual neurosis has been alleviated, where fetishism and deviation and perversion are wholly absent. But if so, well, thanks very much but I wouldn’t want to live there. I’m happy in the here and now, with my fetishism.

It seems to me that almost all male sexuality is fetishized to a greater or lesser extent. However catholic we may be in our sexual tastes we still have preferences. Even those men who claim to ‘love all women’ must still love some women more than others, which is to say they prefer women who possess certain qualities to the exclusion of certain other qualities. Is a man who demands a high IQ in a woman any different from a man who demands a good pair of feet? I don’t think so.

I have a feeling this may be what all sex and even all love is about. When we say, ‘I love her because she is kind,’ we are separating her kindness from all her other attributes. However much we love the whole person it’s not possible to love all a person’s attributes equally. However much we love someone there are always things about them that we like more than others. ‘I love her strength but not her short temper, her good humour but not her docility.’ We are all fetishists in these matters.

Why should that surprise us? We live in a fetishized society. We are accustomed to take the part for the whole. We are beset with graven images. We see a man driving a Rolls-Royce. We see a woman in a Chanel suit. We see someone consulting their Rolex. Is this really any different from seeing a woman in a pair of fuck-me shoes? It is not only in the sexual arena that objects speak more concisely and eloquently about people than they could ever speak for themselves.

I tried to talk about this with Catherine, and at least in the beginning she appeared to be interested, but I could feel myself sinking. The moment I said anything, the moment I asserted anything as true, it felt like a silly generalization and its opposite could be equally true.

In a last, slightly desperate, bid to make her understand I said how much simpler fetishism could make life. I said it had not been easy to find a woman with a perfect pair of feet but it had at least been possible. I had at last succeeded. If I had been looking for the perfect soulmate, someone who conformed to the idealized specifications of romantic love or spiritual need, I might have been looking for the rest of my life. Finding a woman who was perfect in one way was hard enough. How could one expect to find someone who was perfect in every way. What’s more, I insisted, having someone like me could make life much easier for the woman too. ‘Just keep your feet in good shape and wear the right shoes,’ I said, ‘and I’ll love you forever.’

That was the first time she looked really unhappy. That use of the word love really scared her.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘I think you may be a very crazy person.’