The most flawless article of clothing I own is right now delicately stuffed and properly packaged in my closet at home (for I would never place a toe in the kitchen of a Beaver Hill apartment or basement of a frat party with these). It is a pair of Steve Madden circa 2008 black heels. Suede runs down the sides to meet at the peep toe and wraps around until it kiss the kitten heel. They are simplicity with slimming and sleek sophistication. They are, in fact, the first pair of heels I ever bought myself. When I slip these little bad boys on, it’s as if they were crafted to hug every curve and arch on my foot, like a new pair of underarmour socks with spandex-stretch technology. I used to think they fit, as if they were my very own glass slippers in my own little fairytale.
You see, I bought them to go with this black lace, heart shaped dress that so elegantly flowed right above my knees (because I went to a strict private catholic high school) that I was going to wear to my high school’s fall dance, “The Harvest Moon.” My date was a boy whose stars were crossed with mine ever since he played on the same t-ball team as my older brother. Well, at least I had always thought so. He didn’t agree until the summer our families decided to save money and rent a house at the Jersey Shore together and we were forced to spend two weeks together in the same house, in very tight corridors. I was just out my freshman year of high school, expecting an exciting summer that I could brag to everyone about at the lunch table once school started up again, like the articles I would read in Seventeen Magazine. While he was just looking for a break from his on going baseball season. I hadn’t seen him in years, but I think the fact that I had grown into myself from the chubby, annoying friend’s little sister to now a decently proportioned and almost attractive teenage girl took him getting used to. After playing footsy under the dinner table and catching eye glances at each other in our bathing suits for a week he snuck down stairs to my room after I went to bed to knock on my door. I woke up puzzled by who was standing at my door before me and asked, “What are you doing?” and he, who looked as if he could be asking himself the same question, responds, “I just had to see you again.” Even though I had spent almost every waking moment with him, his family, and my own – my hopelessly romantic, untouched teenage heart was officially his, which I completely surrendered to him after he leaned in for our first kiss.
Fast forward a month of sneaking kisses behind closet doors and stealthily changing his name in my phone so no one would ask questions, the gig was up. My own version of one of Taylor Swift’s loved sick songs was about to get ripped to shreds because my mother caught me whispering into my phone late one night talking to him and thought it would be a “smart” idea to tell my brother. And just as Juliet Capulet's cousin, Tybalt, was fiercely defensive and quick to draw his sword on Romeo, so was my brother too easily satisfied with kicking the crap out of my Romeo—leaving him with two black eyes and bloody elbows. But unlike any other logical boy, my Romeo didn’t care. He still wanted to be with me. Even though our families now resented our relationship, my brother still had pent up anger he’d be willing to release on him at any chance he got, and all of my friends thought I was crazy for dating a senior boy –we thought us against the world was weirdly romantic in a doomed, emotionally crushing movie kind of way.
So these shoes were meant for that night under The Harvest Moon and us. The black suede well suited for I was a rebel now for not listening to mom and dad, sophisticated because I was cool enough to date an older boy, and a short heel was a safe call to make sure I wasn’t too tall and could dance in them all night long. Thankfully our fates weren’t as morbid as the original Romeo and Juliet but just like that perfect night, our dysfunctional puppy love relationship had to come to a closing. I have since upgraded to paten leather stilettos that are abused and scuffed from trucking all across Penn State’s college campus just like my hopes in finding a new Romeo. Ironically enough, I only find my Steve Madden black-peep toe-kitten heels appropriate for funerals now.
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