There may be many respects in which I am a cliche of a woman, but my shoe count is not one of them. Regardless of their socio-economic status, most women seem to have pairs of shoes numbering in the dozens. Women speak about their shoes the way men talk about their past lovers - with intimate fondness and perhaps the faint wish of making the listener jealous.
I am a shoe monogamist. I only buy shoes when I have to, and that is usually when the shoes that I have been wearing faithfully every day for the past year finally fall apart beyond all repair. Then I set out reluctantly to find a replacement, knowing that whatever I manage to find will not be the same. Shoe shopping is thus bittersweet.
Every season has it's shoe, of course. The boots for fall and winter, the slides for spring and summer, the black stiletos for evenings. But sometimes there is an unprecedented occasion needing a kind of shoe that is not to be found in my meager shoe wardrobe, sending me out to the stores in search of something I would not otherwise have sought to aquire.
For example, a silver lame minidress requires a certain kind of shoe, which is something I did not realize until I bought a silver lame minidress. Oh, and if you're wondering why I would purchase a silver lame minidress, let me tell you: I don't go running 4 miles a day so I can look good in sweatpants and Uggs.
So then. Store after store I searched for something that could conceivably work with a silver lame minidress to make it an outfit instead of a costume. And would you believe it, such a thing was harder to find than a silver lame minidress. But finally, after a few hours and a dozen or more stores, I discovered something that just might work...a grey suede stileto booty in a provocative design, with subtle metallic croc skin accents. It was an interesting shoe on its own -- the kind of shoe that makes me think I might become a shoe polygamist after all - but most importantly, it could work with the silver minidress.
I asked if they had them in my size, with some trepidation. I am a size 8, and apparently so is every other woman in this city, because most of the time stores are out of the shoes I want in my size. They come out from the back room apologetic and empty-handed.
So I was ecstatic, if somewhat confused, when the sales girl came out with not one box, but two.
"Here it is in a 7.5 and 8.5," she said.
Because, apparently, two pairs of shoes with sizes that average to the right size are just as useful as the pair of shoes in the right size. Truly, I was so impressed with her logic and math skills that I almost forgot to be disappointed that they didn't have the shoes in my size. Perhaps that was the effect she was going for.
I explained to her that as I was not a size 7.5 or 8.5, neither of these was going to fit me even remotely, and I am not so masochistic as to go around in an ill-fitting four-inch heel. She seemed to comprehend, and went to the back room again; when she came out this time, she carried several boxes all marked clearly "Size 8." These shoes, however, were not the shoe I wanted. They were, she said, other shoes that were similar to the shoe I wanted. And here, apparently, "similar" means only that these were also objects designed to be worn on my feet, as that was about all they had in common with the shoe of my desire. I thanked her politely and bolted from the store before she could make another trip to the back room.
I found another pair of shoes in the next store. Grey suede peep-toe stiletos; not as wonderful as the other pair, but still lovely as well as actually in my size. And on sale.
And as every woman knows, nothing coordinates better with your dress, silver lame or otherwise, than shoes that are on sale.