There are some things in life that I never purchase for myself. For example, ever since I met Sam, I have not had to buy a single bottle of hair products, as Sam has an endless supply of shampoos, conditioners, and styling gels at the ready. I also don't remember the last time I actually went out and purchased a pen or pencil. Just one of those perks of working in a corporate office, I guess.
I also rarely, if ever, purchase my own shoes. I have reached a point in my life where my parents no longer know what to buy me for Christmases and birthdays, and though I always tell them that I don't want anything (and don't even know what I would want anyway), they tend to default to shoe purchases for one reason or another. Hardly an exciting gift, but out of the last four pairs of shoes they bought me, three are still with me and worn on a regular basis.
The fourth one, though, a pair of black Hush Puppies I wear to work every day, had to be put out of their misery. The bottoms had worn thin, and the insole had come unglued from the shoe itself, two flaws I could have tolerated were it not for the third: the once black tone of the leather had turned gray in patches, as if the color had been scuffed off by a scouring pad. I caught myself hiding my feet under my desk when my boss came to talk to me the other day, and I knew I had to do something, and since my birthday had just passed and Christmas is still five months away, I had to do the unthinkable: go shoe shopping.
I met up with Sam a few days ago during lunch while he was working in Union Square, and we walked over to the DSW store (which I always thought stood for "Discount Shoe Warehouse," but the 'D,' it turns out, stands for "Designer," which then, after too much recent exposure to shoe-snobbery on Sex and the City, begs the question: why would anyone looking for designer shoes go to a store with the word "warehouse" in it?). Down the stairs hidden behind a non-descript doorway tucked to the far left of the store sat the clearance section; shoe snob I am not, and while Carrie may routinely buy $400 shoes, I budgeted a fraction of that amount for my off-brand ones.
And, without much ado, after trying on the second pair I saw with a $35 price tag and a 40% markdown, I walked out with a brand new pair of black dress shoes, much like the ones I took off and threw away shortly after leaving the store. And as I walked back to my office, feet clad in brand new footwear, I stopped at an intersection and looked down. There they were, black and shiny, twinkling in the sun like two stars in their heaven. In a strange way, I was proud of them, the first pair of shoes I've purchased on my own in a long time. So shiny. And I felt shiny in them, important and debonair. I have never wanted people to look at my feet more. I may have even strutted more confidently, held my head up higher because of them.
Sometimes, the clothes do not make the man; George Michael was right. Sometimes, it's the shoes.
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