The Foot-Fool
Tale no. 4 - The Foot-Fool
‘I am employed as a ‘foot-fool’ in the lobby entrance to an exhibition on ‘The History of Male Slavery in the Gynarchy of Barbaria’.
The exhibition is permanent and attracts many tourists on a daily basis – mainly female, and many of them from overseas. Free males are also welcome to attend the exhibition, but, unlike the women, they have to pay a small entrance fee.
The exhibition is only open to adults aged 18 or over.
My specific role is to greet all the female guests (and only the female guests) as they enter the exhibition by humbly and respectfully kissing their feet. I am secured in a kneeling position, with my head humbly bowed, over a wooden footblock on the floor on which the ladies can place their feet for kissing.
My role is to make them feel welcome, happy and relaxed. Therefore, to lighten the mood, I am forced to wear a ‘foot-fool’s’ mask. This consists of a black rubber mask which completely covers my ugly, slave face apart from slits for my eyes, nose, ears and mouth. In addition, the rubber mask has all the above facial features painted onto it in bright orange, but in a deliberately exaggerated and misshapen way in order to make me look totally ridiculous.
Thus the mouth is drawn to make me look permanently startled; the nose resembles the snout of a pig; the eyes are all wonky; and the ears are not only bright orange, but also pointy – like a fox’s ears. In addition the top of the black rubber mask has lots of little green rubbery stubs on it which make it look like I have stubbly, green hair on the top of my rubbery footslave-head.
The rubber mask also has tiny bells on it under the chin so that every time I lower my head to kiss a lady’s foot on the wooden footblock beneath my rubbery face, the bells tinkle – drawing everyone’s attention to my utter humiliation and degradation at the feet of superior women.
Finally, to complete the ridiculous and risible look, the black rubber mask has the following words written on it in bold, white, capital letters – words which sum up for the uninitiated my pathetic life as a humble ladies’ foot-fool:
‘DIRT; SHAME; STINK; SHOES; SWEAT; FOOL; SOCKS; SNIFF; LICK.’
A sign on the wall above my kneeling head further explains to the female visitors what I am there for. It says (in several different languages):
‘Women’s Foot-Fool. Ladies – please present your feet for the fool to kiss!’
As I have mentioned already, the exhibition is popular with foreign tourists, and so I am obliged to kiss the feet and footwear of women of many different ethnic backgrounds. I can normally only tell their ethnicity, however, by their skin-colour on their shapely calves and ankles as, sadly, most of my female customers do not deign to speak to me – largely because I look so ridiculous and dehumanised. I look like, and am, a freak - unworthy to engage in conversation with a superior woman. Furthermore, my female betters tend to present their feet for kissing in a rather dismissive and peremptory manner, as they are naturally keen to proceed into the exhibition proper.
Most commonly, therefore, a lady will present first her right foot on the slightly raised wooden footblock, and then, after I have placed just one respectful footkiss to her shoe leather through my startled, rubbery orange mouth, quickly replace her right foot with her left for me to repeat the humiliating process. If she is accompanied by her male partner he will normally watch and laugh at the sight and sound (remember the tinkling bells!) of me humbly kissing his girlfriend’s feet.
Even though I usually only get to kiss each lady’s feet once – and then only one quick kiss to each foot – I can usually tell a lot about the superior female standing over me just by observing the state of her feet and footwear.
Younger women in their late teens or early twenties, for example, invariably have scruffier footwear than more mature women in their thirties and forties – even if they are wearing similar ‘touristy’ styles of footwear – for example trainers and socks.
Take the young woman who has just presented her right foot for kissing to me this very moment, for example. As my bells tinkle as I lower my startled, rubbery, orange mouth to the toe of her black, lace-up training shoe, I can see through my wonky, rubbery, orange eyes that the black base of the trainer is caked with dried-in dirt and mud, and the black laces are also caked in mud, dust and dirt – giving an overall impression of scruffiness. The scruffiness of the trainers may not be so visible to the human eye, but from the perspective of a down-in-the-dirt foot-fool with his wonky, rubbery, orange eye the dirt and dust are clearly visible.
The dirt on the trainer is a sure-fire clue that this superior, young mistress is in her late teens or early twenties. A more mature woman’s black trainers would be much less likely to be quite so dirty and scruffy, in my humble, foot-fool experience.
There are, of course, other clues to my current customer’s relative youthfulness: the softness of the white skin on her ankle bones and shins; the very shapeliness of her pretty ankles; and her socks – bright, multicoloured, stripy, below-the-ankle trainer-socks; definitely the socks of a bright and bubbly young woman.
Again, the socks are displaying a degree of wear and tear – particularly at the back where the sock on her right foot, at any rate, almost disappears completely down the back of her black trainer. And even along the top of her shapely arch and instep the sock is twisted – like it has been hurriedly put on without much thought. It’s possible it might even be on inside-out!
It is, without question, a young woman’s sock.
The final visual clue to her being in her late teens to early twenties is the fashionable, beaded, ankle bracelet hanging over the top of the twisted trainer-sock. I have noticed that they are all the rage at the moment, particularly amongst young women, for I spend most of my day studying young women’s feet and footwear.
I have no choice in the matter. It’s my job!
As soon as I kiss this particular young woman’s dirty, black-trainered, stripy-socked, ankle-bracleted, right foot, she removes it from the wooden footblock and replaces it with her left foot for me to kiss. No ankle bracelet this time, but still the black trainer and training shoe laces are dirty and dusty, and the short, stripy, multicoloured ankle sock is again twisted beneath the soft, white skin of her shapely ankle bone.
The young woman appears to be with her boyfriend as I can hear him mocking me in an American accent - through my pointy, rubbery, orange ears and over the tinkling of my bells - as he puts his arm around the young lady and the happy couple head off into the male slavery exhibition:
‘Ha! Ha! What a fool!... What a dumbhead!... Having to kiss your dirty sneakers like that…I’m glad I’m not a dirty slave!’
‘Ha! Ha! I’m glad you’re not a slave like him too, honey! I’d never want a real man like you to have to grovel over my dirty sneakers!’ replies the young mistress, also in a North American accent.
As you can see, although the visitors to the exhibition rarely address me directly, they do often talk about me. And sometimes quite excitedly – like, for example, this next group of about a dozen or so noisy and excited young, female, Japanese tourists.
I can tell they are Japanese firstly because I recognise some of the Japanese words they are using ‘Arigato’; ‘Dan Tai’; ‘Kanko’. I can also tell they are Japanese just by looking at their footwear, however, as several of the young women in the group are wearing various styles of trainers with kneesocks - currently, I understand, all the fashion in downtown Tokyo - and others have Japanese writing and logos on the sides of their socks. I wish I could read what they say!
Of course, I can only tell for sure that they are talking about me (although there is a lot of suspicious giggling and pointing going on whilst they chatter and whisper to each other in Japanese) when they choose to ask questions in broken English, with their strong and very cute Japanese accents, to the exhibition tour guides stationed in the lobby entrance to the exhibition.
At least one of the young Japanese ladies, for example - who is wearing a short black skirt with plain white keds (dirty and scruffy of course) and thick, black kneesocks with a white logo in Japanese lettering at the top - appears to be unsure whether my foot-kissing services are for free:
‘Ha! Ha! Srave-o kiss Atsuko feet-o for free? Atsuko not pay?’
‘Yes, miss, that’s correct. Please just place your foot on the wooden block and the foot-fool will kiss your shoe for free!’ confirms one of the helpful exhibition guides – a young, local, female student, miss Claire, who is working part time as an exhibition ‘meeter and greeter’.
I’m not sure how much miss Claire actually enjoys her part-time job; she always seems bored to me, and I’ve heard her tell the other female guides that she doesn’t much care for the exhibition guides’ ‘uniform’ consisting of bright yellow T shirt, yellow tracksuit bottoms, plain white ankle socks, and bright, yellow trainers. She thinks the yellow outfit doesn’t go well with her Afro-Caribbean complexion.
Needless to say I have no choice but to like the female exhibition guides’ uniforms, as I frequently have to kiss their yellow trainers too, especially when they first start working at the exhibition. I am a novelty, but, sadly, the novelty soon wears off, and the more experienced guides, like mistress Claire, largely ignore me after the first few days. I suppose I’m just part of the furniture as far as they are concerned.
No matter how unstimulating she may find her job and her uniform, however, miss Claire is much too professional to be impolite or unhelpful to any of our foreign guests, and so she encourages the young Japanese woman to step forward and place her dirty, grey-white canvas sneakered and black-kneesocked foot onto the wooden footblock under my pig-shaped, rubbery, orange nose.
I can now see little balls of black sock lint stuck to the anklebone area of the young Japanese woman’s black kneesock, a sock which seems to tower above me (even though she is quite petite in stature) as I lower my startled, rubbery, orange mouth to the grey-white rubbery toe of her now arrogantly outstretched keds-style sneaker.
The tinkling of the bells hanging from my foot-fool chin seems to tickle the young Japanese lady-tourist – figuratively if not literally:
‘Ha! Ha! Srave-o kiss Atsuko dirty foot! Ha! Ha! He a fool! He a Japanese woman foot-fool! Ha! Ha!’
Speaking in broken English as she is, the young woman is clearly addressing her remarks to miss Claire again.
Or is she making those disparaging comments purely for my benefit?
Whatever the young Japanese tourist mistress’s intentions, the rest of her tour group appear to have some limited English also as, through my ridiculous, pointy, bright orange, rubbery ears I can hear them gaily repeating the term ‘foot-fool’ in their heavy Japanese accents. They appear to be congratulating miss Atsuko (for I assume that is her name) on her public foot-humiliation of the pathetic women’s foot-fool.
These young Japanese ladies have only been at the exhibition for 5 minutes and already they have learnt a new English word: ‘foot-fool’!
Miss Atsuko quickly replaces her shapely, socked, right leg with her left on the wooden footblock under my rubbery, orange, pig-snout shaped nose. Through the rubber of my snout I can smell both the rubber and canvas material of miss Atsuko’s dirty and scruffy grey-white sneaker, and the faintest hint of sweet, feminine foot sweat emanating from the lower part of the young Japanese woman’s thick, black kneesock. Not really the type of socks to wear on a hot summer’s day like today, even if they are the height of fashion back in Tokyo!
But then, who am I to criticise a superior, young Japanese woman and her footwear dress-sense? After all, I am the one who is dressed as a fool kissing her feet. I am the one forced to observe at humiliatingly close quarters the small hole in the toe of her scruffy, white canvas sneaker, and the creases in her long, black kneesock.
If anyone present is a fool – it’s me. The foot-fool.’
