This is the story about the boy that loved my shoes too much.
Around this time six years ago, when I was still a naïve,
shy, blushing eighteen-year-old college student (do not mock me, sir!), I
bravely departed the place of my childhood and struck out on my own, going
where no man had gone before – a small town college a whole hour and a half
away. Supplied with little more than my knowledge of higher education gained
from MTV dramas and my parents’ endless supply of laundry room quarters, I was
ready to be a grownup.
Yes, I had finally gained my independence. This was going to
ROCK.
After the initial teary-eyed, crying-into-my-pillow
breakdown the first night, things seemed to be going in the right direction. I
liked my roommates, I had remarkably easy classes more comparable to Middle
School than even High School level work, and I was making friends. In fact, the
first person I befriended (after my roomie) was even a real, live native of the
3,000 population town.*
Let’s call him…Adam.
Adam was cute, so to speak, and my roommate and I met him at
a duller than dirt barbecue. We all exchanged numbers and looked forward to the
next time we could get together and “hang out”. As it would turn out, our first
experience was not the most promising of events, and I should have seen the
warning signs that hit me in the head like a lawn flamingo in a wind storm.
Basically, my roommate, her friend, and I all smashed together on a couch
opposite from Adam while he glowered at us with if-looks-could-kill eyes as “Ernest goes to Camp” played on
insufferably in the background. We were seriously reprimanded later by Adam as
he explained he had been very upset because he, quote, “was just taken by
surprise that we had invited another boy to hang out.”
Alrighty, then.
As I happen to be just about the luckiest person alive, I
was welcomed into my first Spanish class of the semester by none other than
Adam, who grinned a little like I imagine Ted Bundy would. Not wanting to be
rude, I smiled nervously in return and sat down next to him, which is how we
would remain for the rest of the semester. Behaving like his chipper,
pre-Ernest fiasco self, I let down my own defenses and slowly eased back into
pleasant conversations with him. Maybe it had been a fluke? Maybe, just maybe,
he was having a really off day that
evening. After all, he was just starting college too, and college is weird,
man.
He occasionally paid me friendly complements, and even
offered to drive me, or at least walk me, back to my apartment after class
several times, despite my living a mere block away. I learned that he had lived
there his entire life, and he missed his friends who had recently sailed off to
other destinations after graduating from High School. I felt bad, because it
didn’t seem like he had many friends. I agreed that we could “totally” be
friends, and that weird, fateful night on his parents’ couch seemed to fade
from memory.
That is, until, he wanted to wear my shoes.
Fun sized, vertically challenged, specially packaged –
whatever you want to call it, I’m short. I thought it would be a brilliant idea
to buy black, knee-high boots with large heels for the upcoming winter, so that
I could be stylish and just a mite taller in the process. I guess I hadn’t
taken into consideration that high heels almost always wreaked havoc on my
feet, and falling flat on my face on a roadway-turned-ice-skating-rink wasn’t
particularly graceful. On one of our walks back to my apartment after morning
class, I bemoaned my foot pain to Adam, and told him that because of how hard
they were to walk in, I would probably scrap them altogether and buy some
practical winter boots.
Please bear in mind that these are very feminine boots, and
could in no way be mistaken for anything other. They looked something like
this:
After a brief moment of silence, Adam spoke up. “I bet I
could walk in them,” he said jokingly. I chuckled, and raised my eyebrows in
disbelief. “I doubt it, it takes practice.” Adam didn’t seem to like the doubt
in my expression, because he then told me that he would try them on and prove
to me that he could. Still thinking he was pulling my leg, I laughed loudly and
said he could come over after school tomorrow and strut around my bedroom in
them. He agreed. I stared. “They wouldn’t fit you” I mumbled, feeling myself
beginning to shrink after he took on the proposition. Looking thoroughly
offended, Adam replied that they would too fit, even though I was a size seven
in women’s.
The following day was not significantly unusual, until there
was a knock on my bedroom door in the afternoon. I opened it to a very paranoid
looking Adam, who looked as if he were about to be caught and interrogated by
some 1950s version of communists. He had on an empty backpack, and no sooner
had I opened my door had he wedged his way nervously inside.
“Where are they?” He asked anxiously. Before I could reply,
our eyes in tandem slowly dropped to the black zipper boots sitting on the
floor next to my closet.
My spider senses were tingling. Something very weird was
about to happen…
Less than a minute later, Adam had successfully zipped the
boots up the length of his calves and was walking around my bedroom, only after
I promised to lock the door so a roommate couldn’t catch him in the act. “I
told you I could walk in them,” he said haughtily, to which I had zero
response. After a while, Adam’s faced turned hesitant again. “Can I have them?”
He almost whispered.
“Um, well. They cost me like, forty dollars”, I explained,
not fully converted to parting with them yet, and feeling increasingly
uncomfortable as each moment passed.
“That’s okay, I’ll pay for them.” Before I could protest, Adam pulled two
twenties out of his pocket and held it out to me. Not knowing what else to do,
I slowly reached out to accept the bills. Adam’s fingers suddenly clamped down
on the wad like a hungry hippo. “Are you really going to charge me?” He asked
incredulously, expecting a free gift.
I shrugged, muttering something about needing money to buy
new boots as I took it, and Adam quickly took them off his feet before stuffing
them into his backpack. Ah, so that’s what was with the empty bag. A thief in
the night, Adam sprinted out of my room and on for home, while I still stood in
shocked confusion at the foot of my bed.
It was only after class the next day when I was walking to
the Commons did I receive a text message from Adam, asking me if I had noticed
anything different about him in Spanish. I replied in the negative, and had to
re-read his reply at least three times before it sunk it. “The boots! I was
wearing them today. They’re really comfortable. Don’t tell anyone.” I bit my
lip, shook my head, and moved on.
Adam caused me to have a complex about my shoes. As in, I
became extremely protective of my footwear for a while. You see, not long
after, I did buy new shoes with the money he paid me (even though the original
boots only cost me twenty-five dollars, because I’m an evil genius), and one
day he commented on how good they looked. I responded happily until he asked if
he could try them on, at which point, I almost had myself a conniption. “I’m
sorry, but you might stretch them out.” Miffed at the audacity of my assertion,
Adam didn’t talk to me the rest of the way home. He did, however, constantly
remind me not to tell anyone about his high heeled boots, especially his
girlfriend – whom I was not even acquainted with, as she lived in the next town
over.
Yes, a girlfriend. I think a lot of you believed you knew
where I was going with this – but no.
A month passed with increasingly bizarre behavior. Besides
Adam begging me to photograph him posing in his shoes (which I reluctantly
did), he also began hounding my phone, frequently calling me at two in the
morning to talk to me about trivial matters. I did my best to lay down the law
but, nothing stuck. Whenever I didn’t respond to one of his text messages
within five minutes, he would shoot me a handful more asking me why I was
ignoring him, and who was I with? Was I hanging out with a guy? Am I mad? And
didn’t I know it was rude to ignore him?
I didn’t ignore him, but I really, REALLY wanted to.
It must have been near the end of the semester when I
finally lost my proverbial marbles. I was attending a free outdoor movie with my
roommate on a Friday night, hosted by my school in the soccer field, and we
were bundled up in blankets because of the cold. I received a text message from
Adam asking me if I wanted to go and do something, so I told him honestly that
I was actually busy at the school party. Less than thirty seconds later my
phone buzzed again, and with an angry emoji this time, Adam asked me why I didn’t
invite him. I scowled at the text, typing something snarky back, and turned off
my phone for the rest of the night.
The next couple of days were the most blissful, carefree
days of the semester, because Adam wasn’t talking to me. I thought, just
perhaps, school might become a little normal for me, until my doorbell rang. I
opened the door and rolled my eyes – doorbell ditchers. “Very mature!” I
shouted down the empty hall, before glancing down to see an envelope by my
feet. Perplexed, I took it inside and flipped it over, reading my name scrawled
across the front. It looked just like Adam’s handwriting, and my stomach
dropped.
I half-expected to find Vincent Van Gogh’s long-lost ear
inside. Instead, what I discovered when I carefully ripped open the top of the
letter was something much more startling.
A glittering ring fell out onto the counter.
I almost screamed. You can probably imagine my first
thought, considering its diamond appearance. Was I getting proposed to by Adam
via doorbell ditch? Was I going to have to move to Africa after this?
My hands may have shook a little when I opened the attached
letter, and relief swarmed through me as the words finally began to make sense.
He had written a rather uncomfortable, rambling apology, and he indicated that
he wanted me to wear the ring because it was a “friendship ring” for me.
Again, I felt bad for him, but I also felt a feeling that
had been growing louder and louder inside me – anxiety and fear. Why was he so
possessive, when he had a girlfriend? Why was he hot and cold? Why did he feel
the need to wear my shoes and call me in the middle of the night? Why did he
follow me around, and show up at my apartment even after I told him I couldn’t
go out to see him because I was trying to study?
The next day, I told him that I would forgive him but I
really needed him to give me space. He complied, but only hesitatingly. My roommate
had long since tossed him to the curb, something that I probably should have
done way before this. He did desist in hounding my phone, for which I was
grateful, and his oddities simmered down to a level that I thought I would be
able to handle.
Until that night,
when he came to my apartment sobbing because his girlfriend had broken up with
him, and he really needed someone to talk to. Not wanting to interrupt my
roommates and their movie night in the living room, I ushered him outside and
we went to go speak by his truck in the parking lot. He explained that his
girlfriend didn’t like that he was my friend anymore, because her friends lived
in my apartment complex and they said I was “coming onto him”. I tell you, if
the whole scenario hadn’t felt so much like a scene in a Stalker Lifetime
movie, I would have laughed at the assertion. Who knows, maybe I would have
still gotten out a chuckle or two if his ex-girlfriend’s friends hadn’t walked
through the parking lot at that precise moment. After sarcastically shouting to
Adam that he “really looked broken up” and calling me a number of unfavorable
names, I may or may not have strutted my stuff over to the pair and threatened their
loss of limb if they didn’t skedaddle right on out of there.
I suppose I’ve had finer moments.
Somehow, I managed to finish out the semester without getting
sent to the funny farm, and a little miracle came my way. You see, I just barely lost my free ride scholarship to
the school, despite having straight A’s and one D. The D just barely put me
below the GPA line, even though I ended up having one of the higher grades in
that class – harsh, huh? After going home for Christmas break, I decided that,
due to lack of funds, I wouldn’t return to the two-year college and instead, I would
save up money and apply to a local university, to which I was accepted.
I only returned once after the semester started, to pick up
my things.
Since he was such a fan of texting, I sent Adam a text at
two am to tell him I was gone for good. Farewell, adios amigo, arrivederci.
Let’s keep in touch.
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