“The ancient custom of foot-binding in China, makes a girl feminine and helpless, and she can’t run away” Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl

This is how I found myself standing in 4″ platform open-toed spike booties in the middle of a sleet storm in Boston.

Believing, foolishly, that I would be inside and sitting through most of the AWP Conference in Boston, I packed my favorite Betsey Johnson booties, the ones that make men motion me over just so they can tell me how beautiful I looked (this happened last week at the B-Side Ballroom–I’ve never had a man compliment me on my shoes ever).  We had to go to see my friends Lexa, Jaed and Suzanne read at the Boston Public Library, and since we were one of the flagship events, I wanted to look fine.

So I wore the booties with skinny jeans and a sparkly grey sweater, strutting through the mall that connected our hotel to the conference center.  Yeah, I looked good.

But when I got outside, it was sleeting.  Matthew was also trying to look good, so he wore is Kenneth Cole shoes, which are also not designed for hoofing through Boston in the middle of a snowstorm. I clung to his arm and he tried not to slip on the sloppy sidewalks.  

I was in a bad mood already, and I give him all the credit in the world for not stranding me in the middle of the sidewalk, because I wouldn’t have made it home and would still be standing out there, ankle-deep in slush.  

And he should give me credit for not forcing him to carry me like the foot-bound beauty that I was.