A work in progress by Ira Cox (11-20-02) I got home and my feet were soaked like a pair of pilings dredged up from the lake. I sat on my bed in socks that used to be white but now were gray on the sides and filthy black on the bottom. They dripped like sponges as I pulled them off, turning inside out so the grit and broken glass wouldn’t drop off the bottoms and onto the floor. As I massaged my clammy red feet, all I could do was laugh. I got these new shoes the other night, white Nike sneakers with dark blue paten-leather highlights. You know I can’t afford to buy new shoes, so you’re probably asking “Where did you get a pair of brand new sneakers, did you pull them out of a dumpster behind the Niketown store?” I take no offense, but you’re wrong, the shoes actually given to me by Joe, a good friend of mine who didn’t want to wear them cause they didn’t go with his straight-legged indy-rock style. He didn’t buy them either, he got them from another friend who didn’t want them for some other reason, like he was a millionaire and went through a pair of shoes every week. Joe and I were hanging out at this sort of social club just like every other Thursday night, and it got to be that time when I was looking to head home. “Before you leave,” he told me as I was gathering up my belongings, “I wanted to give you something.” The following situation may seem strange to you if you didn’t understand that my friend Joe is the most generous guy in the world; he’d get more satisfaction out of giving you his most prized possession than keeping it himself. So he pulled out this pair of snowstorm colored shoes with streamlined soles and spit shined blue boomerang Nike logos, and held them out to me, one in each hand. “Uh, thanks,” I told him. I didn’t want to say straight out that they were completely atrocious and the same kind of shoes wore by guys who tried to beat me up in high school. That’s not the kind of thing you say when someone offers you a gift. “If you don’t want ‘em that’s ok too,” he said. He must have seen the look on my face. “I got them for free,” he assured me. I took the shoes in my hands. They could have been made of Styrofoam they were so light. They were blindingly white, and smelled like the kind of carpet they have in shoe stores. “No, they’re alright,” I told my friend, “Let me take them for a test drive.” I pulled off my beat canvas shoes and slipped on the new puffy leather ones. Used to heavy rubber soles, my feet sank happily into the matrix of arch supports and cushioned air pockets. I looked down at my feet. The sneakers next to the cuffs of my dirty blue jeans was like putting spaceship fins on an old worn-out car. I got up and walked around the room, past the couches and coffee tables full of chatting people. I figured that three random opinions would be enough to determine whether or not the shoes suited me. I walked up to a blond pretty girl that I didn’t know. “Hi,” I said to her. “Hi,” she responded. “What do you think of the shoes?” I asked her. She made a face like I had asked her opinion on two different brands of dog food. “Just give me your honest opinion on these shoes,” I said in my best soothing voice. “It’s ok if you don’t like them, I didn’t pay for them.” She smiled, trying to figure out if I was stupid. “They look alright,” she said, “they match your jeans.” She paused, then asked, “do you trust my fashion advice?” I’m a bad judge of fashion, which was why I asked in the first place, but she looked cute enough that she must have been doing something right. “Yes,” I told her, and “Thanks.” I looked down my legs and realized that the shoes did kind of match my jeans. I turned my left heel out, did a little dance move that no one else would notice. I tucked my cuff over the back of the right shoe. Then I asked a guy named Phil that I know pretty well. “They’re really white,” he told me. “Yeah, but do you like ‘em?” “They’d be cool if they stayed that white. They kind of look like skate shoes.” When I was younger I defined myself by the fact that I skateboarded, so when he said that it made me like the shoes better. If you’ve ever skateboarded, you’d know that the white Nikes would not stay white for a minute, and soon they’d look like they’d been hit with a belt grinder. “Think about how many little brown hands have touched those things,” Phil said as I was about to walk away. By this he meant that the shoes were made in Asian slave factories. Nike does have that reputation. A while ago Nike did this promotion where you could order shoes from their website and customize them. Where it usually says “NIKE” under the swoosh symbol you could have it say anything. Well so many people were pissed off at Nike’s human rights record that they got a bunch of orders for “SWEATSHOP” and “Child Labor.” I had to consider this. A sizable portion of the socially conscious crowd are young, passionate, attractive women. How does this balance out with free, luxurious footwear? Mulling this over in my head, thinking about the various sacrifices I have made in the name of responsible consumerism, I wandered off in search of a final consultant. Luckily, I ran into another acquaintance. Abe is kind of a strange kid, but he has sensibilities that I trust. “Those shoes make you look like a townie,” he said. “A townie? What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked him. It didn’t sound positive, but in Abe’s usual fashion, the response was too cryptic to judge. “You look like a tool,” he said. My face must have betrayed my disappointment, because he added, “Either that or you look like hip-hop livin’ large.” Although Abe’s sense of humor is made out of razorblades and acid, he’s a nice guy at heart. Abe kept a straight face. He probably knew that deep down, even though I’m incredibly white and not from the city, I’ve always wanted to look a little more hip-hop livin’ large. Either way the shoes had two endorsements out of three, and they were a little cooler than I initially though. Nobody was going to look at me funny for wearing them, and once the hip activist girls realized how socially conscious I was, they might even think my Nikes where ironically chic. When I left that night it was wet outside. The rain had stopped after making everything look like it had just gone through a cheap carwash with no drier function. I walked toward home, looking at the way everything was shiny under the streetlights. The air pockets in my new shoes cradled and massaged the soles of my feet. This is luxury, I thought, this is livin’ large. I did a step that I saw in a rap video. Two blocks from my house, I turned into the alley, a shortcut that I always take. I felt a spring in my step, and began to strut down the narrow corridor past the wet brick walls and chain links fences, keeping my eyes down on the glowing white leather under my pant cuffs. I didn’t notice that someone had turned the corner and was walking toward me until I was close enough to smell his breath. There I was, standing in this dark alley at night with rain drizzling down, and my back was pushed up against the wall so the drips from the overhang were pouring down into my sweatshirt. This solid looking guy with veins standing out of his neck looked right into my eyes. “Take off the shoes,” he said. His eyes had red lines in them. When you peel the shell off of a red Easter egg and the red dye has seeped through, that is what his eyes looked like. I thought back to stories I heard on the news about guys getting jumped for their expensive basketball shoes. I choked. These shoes are not expensive, I wanted to scream, these shoes are not even that nice and they were free! Don’t take my shoes, I wanted to tell him, I’ve never had shoes like this and I really want to see how they work for me now that I’ve decided that I like them! “What?” is all I said, and most of the word got sucked up in my throat. He stared for a second. Then he snapped open a triangular blade and there was no question as to what he wanted. “Don’t play with me or you’re dead,” the thug deadpanned. I lifted my right leg and began to untie the laces. I didn’t want to take my eyes off of the knife. I wobbled on one foot and tried to remove the glowing white shoe. The thug’s face didn’t move. I set the shoe on the ground. Water seeped up into my sock when I put my foot down, and I could feel little pieces of broken glass poking through the wet cotton. I removed the other shoe and set it next to its mate. “Walk away,” The thug said. I didn’t wait to ask which direction. I didn’t look back. I just squished off down the alley as fast as I could in my saturated socks. I walked all of the way home before I realized my old shoes were still in my backpack. [<]Back to the North Avenue Traffic Report... |