No secrets in sandals.
I’m not talking about exposing your hair-drenched toes and gnarled, yellow nails to the world. I wouldn’t know about that. My little nuggets are more like nibble-able beacons of human symmetry. Just sayin’. No, I’m finally giving shoes their due, the respect they deserve for providing an ethereal ignorance with their all-inclusive coverage of our foot skin.
If you’ve ever seen “Arrested Development” (dear Gawd, you should all answer “duh” to this inquiry) or had the misfortune of living with the sloppy pile of human quirks my current roommate and I both endured, a year apart back in college, then you are aware of the concept of the “never nude.” Regardless, it’s in the name. These nut sacks can’t – well – they can’t expose their nut sacks. Ever. I’m not quite a nudist, but this hang up certainly isn’t in my closet.
Tobias Fünke had his cut offs; my former roommate went into the shower wearing one outfit and came back out of the bathroom in another. Myself, I am down to my boxer briefs as soon as I get the door locked, my shoes off, and my bag on the floor. SNAP! WOOSH! KAZAAM! Belt – pants – shirt. There’s really no onomatopoeia when removing the latter.
I like to be stylish. I understand the importance of fashion to human expression. My clothes may be tight and I might favor tank tops, but the tease, the illusion of what’s underneath is still an erotic cog in the romantic game. My nearly nude tendency is not of a non-conformist or sexual origin. I just like to feel free.
Free to roll around, free to stretch, free to dig my toes into the ground, the carpet, against my own skin. As I spend at least eight hours a day inside a windowless office, I gulp up the opportunity of a shoeless existence. Yes, dear corporate readers, I get to wear flip-flops to work. Every day. It’s totally acceptable. Watching all of us file in, you’d think we were en route to Honors English or Advanced Algebra, not buckling down to pull in a couple million dollars for a media conglomerate.
Never in my outspoken life did I think I would be earning my first post-undergraduate income from anything potentially deemed as “The System.” But here I am, workin’ for “The Man” and he encourages a well-rounded existence, provides glorious benefits, AND allows me to continue paying only $2.50 at Old Navy for shoes. Alas, as Rome once fell, Utopia demands a high upkeep.
Now’s where you get your vengeful chuckles, drones – victims of an iron fist. I made my way to the bathroom, yesterday, a permanent smile on my face as I relished what tends to be my laziest day of the week. Fri – day – fri – day – flip – flop – flip – flop – rubber – against – skin. “Gawd I have it great,” I’m usually thinking, not wanting to forget my good fortune.
The smile continued as I stood there at the urinal, doin’ my thang. The dull beam remained as the door clicked open behind me. Just as quickly came the scratch of metal on metal as it swung back shut. And there he was, planting his wide stance just inches from my own leg. “Ah – ” I thought. “What?” My bladder is about as shy as a VH1 reality star and I could care less if anyone gets a glimpse of my wiener; but when you’re the only two people in a reasonably large restroom, is there really a need to select the urinal directly parallel to mine?
Never one to be known for keeping emotions from surfacing on my face, my eyes met my lips midway as they curled upwards, perplexed. “Oh – ” I began to shrug, internally, but my nonchalance was quickly splashed away by the spray of urine ricocheting out of the neighboring urinal and against the top of my exposed foot. “– NO!”
Oh, yes. Any observant standing pee-er should have long ago learned to master the vertical toilet. If your stream is too strong, it’s going to resist containment. It’s science, man. It’s NATURE. It’s not what I expected to be in for when I skipped socking my feet that morning.
I’m not as enlightened as you may think. I’ve had my encounters with renegade waste, just like the rest of you. But it’s one thing if it’s YOUR vigilante fluid. {shakes head} I know what you’re thinking, what’s inspiring those guttural snickers I foreshadowed. “That’s what he gets for wearing sandals.”
Accepted. Would I have laced up that morning, those golden sprinkles would have gone unnoticed atop the weathered, fluorescent canvas of my Chucks. Lesson learned, folks. But while I had to fight the urge to turn to the culprit, mouth hanging in disgust, in disbelief, to rush to the sink and plunk my foot down in the basin, dousing it in soap and scrubbing away the already invisible microbes, I would do it all over again. I will do it all over again.
Here’s hoping that’s the last time anyone relieves themselves on me without my consent, but while touting the virtues of protective layering, I stand strong for the barely clothed. After mastering the single knot it doesn’t take much to stroll through life in tennies and don’t get me started on loafers. But for us tenacious toe exhibitors, who strive for balance in “no shoes, no shirt, no service” world, an increasingly dangerous, disease-ridden place, each sandal-clad day is a worthy adventure.
