Praise Where Praise Is Due (ii)
My beautiful, bible-bashing, black prison-visitor mistress is back soliciting yet more praise for her shoes and socks – only this time she is wearing a pair of grubby, pink and black sneakers and short, black cotton anklesocks (as opposed to the flat, black canvas shoes and dark nylon knee-highs she had on last time). She points to her sneakers and socks, which are crossed over at the shapely ankles beneath my kneeling face and, with whip raised threateningly in the air, demands that I eulogise her feet and footwear – only this time she requires me to focus on her dirty sneakers, rather than her socks, as she had not approved of my going off on a tangent about her nylon socks the last time. She warns me that the whip’s cruel bite awaits me if I deviate from her orders.
It will be difficult for me NOT to eulogise this particular pair of black anklesocks as they are delightfully slovenly and creased. Nevertheless I must steal myself in order to focus on, and verbally fawn over, my beautiful visitor’s street-soiled sneakers – for I very much fear the sting of the female whip, and I am, self-evidently, in no position to dodge its stinging blows!
And so, in the humblest of humble slavespeak that I can possibly muster, I once again praise this bright and intelligent, self-righteous young woman’s everyday, outer footwear:
‘Oh pray, pretty mistress, if it pleases you pretty black mistress, truly it is an honour for the likes of me to study and smell where your glorious sneakers on your feet have been, if you would be so kind and understanding, mistress, please don’t beat me mistress. Truly the grit and the grime stuck to the surfaces of your sneakers is a sight for sore eyes, and would be a feast for this prisoner-slave’s empty belly, were the mistress to be so kind as to permit him to lickshine her sneakers, if you would be so kind and understanding please forgive this slave’s presumptuousness, madam.
Oh pray, black mistress, the dirt on your sneakers is made holy by your wearing of those sneakers, madam, and this slave yearns to taste the outside world from the soles of your sneakers, madam, since he is forbidden to leave his subterranean dungeon-cell, madam, or even the set of wooden stocks in which he now kneels before you, your female blackness.
Oh pray, sweet mistress, oh pray – pray be disposed to at least permit this wretched slave to SMELL where you have been, if he may not TASTE it. For the aroma of dirty shoe is all this slave is good for, if you would be so kind and understanding, mistress, please don’t beat me mistress.
Oh pray, mistress! Oh bless! Praise be to your sneakers, madam, and to the streets they sanctify as you walk in female freedom high above this imprisoned slave!’
Her reaction to my vile attempt at ingratiating myself with her sneakers is twofold:
1) She clicks her teeth in annoyance, in the African way, and
2) She delivers several, stinging strokes of the whip to my bent-over back, chiding me for only thinking of myself and what her sneakers can do for me, as opposed to what I might do for her sneakers.
She’s right, of course – as well as righteous. I am a selfish slave and deserve to be whipped!
I take my punishment like the pathetic excuse of a sub-man that I am, and blubber and whimper for sweet feminine mercy into her divine sneakers and socks.