I never found my feet sexy. Would that make it easier to sell them on Craigslist?
Guy Bourdin
Hypothesis:
A lot of men like women's feet. Some men are obsessed with women's feet, and will happily do most anything to have some quality alone-time with them. I am a woman and have feet; ergo, I should be able to profit from them.
The idea of a foot fetish has always been funny to me. I can understand a boob man, a butt man, a leg man, but a foot man? It's always seemed like some kind of Benny Hill conceit. Anything but sexy.
And because it seemed so silly, so innocuous to me, I reasoned, doing it wouldn't feel anything like prostitution. Would I really be able to make money from just letting a guy touch my feet? And would I come to find feet sexy, as well?
Materials:
• feet (pedicured)
• a variety of stinky shoes and stockings
• the internet
• fake name/e-mail account
• gay neighbor to monitor my safety and babysit my dog
• bottle of wine for said gay neighbor
Method:
Because feet are so inherently unsexy to me, I had to do some research. A quick perusal of Craigslist revealed something of a conundrum: the preferred foot type seemed to be well pedicured — but smelly. Stinky shoes and socks, it seems, also figured prominently. I glanced at my nearly destroyed Ugg boots, moldering by the front door. Stinky shoes, check.
I contemplated my feet, trying to see them as a potential client might. I snapped a picture with my phone and considered it objectively. Not too cute. So I was looking at having to spend a little cash upfront to get a professional pedicure. And since I was getting a pedicure, I might as well get a manicure, right? So I was fifty dollars down before I even began, but now I was even more determined to see this through.
Lastly, I wanted to ensure my safety and to find a sitter for my dog. I know it sounds silly, but he's like my kid, and I couldn't bear to think of his big, brown, innocent eyes watching some weirdo lick my feet. My gay next-door neighbor seemed the perfect choice on both accounts. I knew him well enough to know that 1.) he had the requisite blasé attitude toward casual and/or deviant sexual exploits 2.) his dog and my dog were good friends 3.) he worked at home and so was there during the day, and that was when I planned to schedule appointments.
The evening before I planned to post my own ad, I took a bottle of wine to the neighbor's apartment (now I'm down another $10), and after a couple of glasses, I broached the subject with him. Far from being shocked, he was eager to share his own Craigslist exploits, sassily: "Girl, we've all been there. I'm not above letting a guy suck my dick for 400 bucks every now and then. I think you should have men worship your feet. Why the hell not? Now, let me look at those tootsies. Let's see what you're selling, sister."
As we finished the bottle of wine, he took pictures of my feet and we composed my ad.
"Like pretty feet? High heels? Ugg boots? I've got this fresh pedicure, and no one to enjoy it…"
And that was all it took. The responses were coming in fast and furious. By the time we'd finished the second bottle, I had arranged for a guy named Mark to come over the next day. And he was bringing cream puffs because, it seemed, he wanted me to step in them while wearing stilettos, after which he would lick them off my shoes. He would stay no longer than half an hour, and for this he would "donate" seventy-five dollars to me.
"To Mark!" my neighbor and I toasted.
Results:
Mark arrived precisely on time, and was well-groomed and polite to the point of obsequiousness. He handed me the pink bakery box with a slight bow, and he addressed me as "ma'am."
"Where would you like me, ma'am?" he asked, as I took the box of little éclairs, so innocently waiting their fate, to the kitchen.
"Oh, wherever you like," I answered, and quickly sensed that my answer disappointed him. He perched on the edge of the couch nervously, and something in his demeanor provoked me to chastise him: "Not on the furniture, boy!"
"Yes, Ma'am!" This seemed to please him no end, and he cheerfully sat on the floor, unable to suppress a wide grin.
"What the hell are you so happy about?" And where the hell was this coming from? My inner bitch was asserting herself as if she'd been beckoned — and maybe she had been? Was this Mark character somehow in contact with said inner bitch in a way I wasn't?
"Nothing, ma'am. I'm sorry." He tried to stifle his smile as I settled into the couch so that he was more or less at my feet — my aching feet, in their ridiculous black patent stilettos that I bought on a whim and never wore.
"I was just wondering if you'd ever done this before, ma'am." Now, this gave me pause. Obviously, he had my number.
"What the hell business of that is yours?" I tried to act outraged, but could barely stop myself from laughing. I nudged him in the chest with my pointy toe. "I asked you a question, boy."
"It's not. It's none of my business, ma'am. I'm sorry."
"Damn right, it's none of your business."
The whole thing, especially my impromptu attempt to pose as some sort of a dominatrix, was spinning into the realm of the downright silly, and the scene began to take on the feel of a '70s sitcom; I could imagine the Ropers outside, fighting over an orange glass juice held to my door, him disapproving, and her cracking wise.
"Now go get those éclairs."
"Yes, ma'am." He started to stand up.
"Who told you to stand up?" I was just being gratuitous now, but he seemed into it.
"Yes, ma'am!" He dropped to his knees and crawled to the kitchen.
"And grab the paper towels, too. You're not worth having a mess on the floor over." He came thudding back on his knees, with the role of paper towels and the bakery box. "Put them on the coffee table. Open the box, and spread the towels out on the floor." He did as he was told, and it was becoming rather difficult to ignore the obviously growing bulge in his jeans. All of a sudden it all became very real.
"What else did you bring for me?" He pulled folded bills from his pocket and handed them to me. Four twenties.
"Good boy," I said, and he mumbled something I couldn't make out.
"What was that?"
He looked down at the floor as he spoke.
"I was wondering if you had change. You know, five dollars back…"
"No, I don't have change, you idiot! What the hell is wrong with you?" This actually did irk me. "Who raised you? Were you raised like that?"
"No, ma'am. I'm sorry, ma'am." He was trying not to smirk.
"Bitch," I said, "lie down."
I put an éclair by his head and pushed my heel into it, causing the cream filling to gush out suggestively. "Oh, éclairs!" I thought, and, suddenly understanding the association, I jammed my heel into his mouth. He groaned ecstatically and sucked the pastry filling off my heel as I sat, ambivalently watching.
I alternated feet and watched the clock as he sucked and licked away at my shoes. At one point he caught my eye, moved his hands to his crotch and mimed unzipping his jeans, silently asking permission.
"Eww, no." God, I really didn't want to see that mess. He seemed to take the news pretty well, but I wondered if that was going to be part of the deal. Was I going to have to watch these guys jack off in order to turn a profit? Because getting my toes licked was one thing, but being in proximity to strange jizz was an entirely different thing.
When his thirty minutes were up, I sent Mark on his way. I agreed to see him again, but I thought it wasn't likely to happen.
With the pedicure and the first bottle of wine, I'd only made a twenty-dollar profit. I grabbed another bottle of wine and headed next door to fetch my dog. Now I was down to ten dollars.
Conclusion:
Although I did see Mark once again, I didn't let him jack off, and that clearly disappointed him. He didn't get in touch with me again, and I was kind of relieved.
Over the course of my month doing, ahem, footwork, I saw a total of five men, and exchanged emails with several dozen. I soon came to find that they all wanted to jack off, and the majority of them wanted a "foot job." (With the exception of Paolo, the Italian guy in town for business who just wanted me to trample him in stocking feet, while, he fully clothed, supine, and gasping for breath, told me stories about his childhood. God bless Paolo.) A foot job is just what it sounds like. I, naively, hadn't been aware of the existence of such a thing. The very thought of doing that, besides making my stomach turn, made my feet begin to cramp. It seemed downright painful and, frankly, exhausting.
Theoretically, the goal was to have a few "regulars" that I could rely on, so that I wasn't constantly having to find new foot guys. But in practice, it seemed, once I'd gotten a guy out of my apartment, I shuddered at the thought of him ever coming back, knowing it would be more and more difficult to stave off the dreaded jizz. I was quickly figuring out that this line of work wasn't for me.
In answer to the questions posed in my hypothesis, it does seem quite possible to make a fair amount of money by letting men touch my feet, but not by just letting them touch my feet. And I never came to have remotely sexual feelings about what was going on down there, at my feet. It was honestly more annoying than anything else.
Added to that, I got into the habit of taking a bottle of wine to my neighbor's after every appointment and wasting a couple of hours recounting what had happened. So I was barely breaking even. It was time to rinse the remnants of baked goods off my ridiculous stilettos and donate them to the goodwill.
At the outset of my experiment, I thought that because a foot fetish was so unsexy to me, the job would somehow be easier — that it would seem less like prostitution and more just like a business transaction. And while on one level that may be true, I see now that if you're going to go to all the trouble necessary to try to make money off somebody's fetish, it might as well be your own.
