Sock Mouth
Regular customer-mistress, Ms Mukta madam, has left a rolled-up pair of her dirty socks inside my mouth for an overnight soaking. She says she’ll be back to collect them first thing in the morning, by which time she expects me to have sucked all her stale footsweat out of them.
It is, of course, a great honour for me to have one of my customers’ socks soaking overnight in my mouth, as I get to taste their unique and very personal foot dew, but there are a couple of disadvantages:
· It makes it difficult to sleep as, to be perfectly frank about it, the socks taste vile – a salty and vinegary mixture that only adds to my raging thirst. Oh for some clean water to rinse the vile sock taste from my throat and mouth!
· I worry about what I will do if a late-night customer appears requiring a shoelick? After all, I am a public footservant; not Ms Mukta’s personal sock-launderer. And I am never off duty. I could probably, just about, kiss a customer’s shoes or boots through the socks; but a lickshine would be impossible, unless I first spat out the socks. And then, how would I get them back inside my mouth again? I mean, I could hardly ask the customer-master or mistress to pick up the dirty, wet socks! Even Ms Mukta herself had been wearing gloves when she stuffed them inside my mouth, as she didn’t want her stinky sock-sweat soiling her delicate, feminine hands. Can you imagine how angry she would be if she discovered her dirty, unwashed socks lying on the ground when she returns to collect them in the morning? So, I guess I’ll just have to hope that the situation doesn’t arise – for it is sure to lead to my being whipped, one way or the other!
Fortunately, in the event, it doesn’t – and I even manage to catch some fitful sleep (in which I am dreaming that I am dying of thirst in the desert, only to find an oasis full of dirty socks, which, in turn, turns out to be a disappointing mirage!)
When Ms Mukta returns to collect her flowery-patterned socks from my mouth first thing in the morning (again wearing gloves) she laughs at me, expressing satisfaction at my ‘socky mouth’, and asks me how I had liked them? Were they sufficiently tarty and vinegary inside my mouth, and does the inside of my mouth now feel suitably refreshed?
Once the socks are removed, I humbly confirm to Ms Mukta madam – the owner of the socks – that I am indeed grateful for my overnight sock snack, and I genuinely express the hope that my potty mouth may have been of some service to her and her socks, in that her stale footsweat is now transferred from her socks into my mouth and stomach – where, I humbly postulate, it truly belongs?
She just laughs out loud at me again, and tells me to ‘put a sock in it’, before walking away from me. She promises to return that evening with a pair of her husband’s stinky sweatsocks for me to mouthwash overnight. I thank her kindly.
It’s a Saturday – her day off; but for me, of course, it’s just another working day of sneaker, shoe and boot licking, and soon my sock-flavoured mouth is lickshining a pair of dirty, feminine, high top sneakers. A public footservant’s work is never done!
