Discomfort Zone: Where I Fear to Tread

• My foot in sunnier climes.

I had a great time at Footnight, a night for foot fetishists. Frankly, it was delightful. Nary a creepy moment. Good food, plentiful drinks, interesting conversation. Take that, Schadenfreudesters of Blogtown. Oh, I wore the knee-high boots and I got propositioned once.

After a whiskey frontload, I got off the bus at SE 39th and Powell to wander around the warren that is Angel’s, 10,000 square feet (ha!) of rooms designed for sexual frolicking (porn screening room, hot tubs, rec room with pool table and bar, cage with swing). Lovely host Catherine de Sade was orienting the foot models in the rec room before the men arrived. She told me the ladies came from “all walks of life,” and most were from Bay City Blues, a local phone-sex operation with girls working from their homes. Everyone was in high spirits as we mingled around—people were polishing their patent leather shoes, CoxxAnn was setting up a table for a silent auction of her high-heeled shoes she’d worn for three years, Tonya was showing off her smelly Converse, I was browsing the hardbound book collections lining the walls (Winston Churchill bios, old encyclopedias) and wondering how much action the booths had seen.

Learn about foot fetishes and gang bangs after the jump.

The first man to come in looked nervous and excited. One Bay City lady immediately introduced herself and showed off her “pussy-pink painted toenails.” She got herself a “session,” which means the foot fetishist pays the foot model $20 for 10 minutes of footplay, which can run the gambit from toe sucking, feet worshiping, face stepping, and being jumped and trod upon. They went off to a private room downstairs. I was still making the rounds at this point, learning stuff like:

• An estimated 70% of all fetishes are foot-related, with golden showers being a distant second.
• Foot dudes are shy, but love to talk about how they became interested in women’s feet.
• I know some foot fetishists (I saw a friend of a friend and some other guy I recognized from ’round town.)
• All the paying attendees were male, with heterosexually leaning foot fetishes.
• There is absolutely no nudity at Footnight.
• A lot of feeties (I just made that term up) have wives and girlfriends who totally don’t care if they head out to Footnight for the evening.
• Foot fetishists don’t necessarily have a thing about shoes. They like feet, pure and simple.
• They like smelly feet—there’s a lot of pheromones in dem der hooves.
• They like pretty feet. No love for blood blisters in this crowd.
• A lot of the eroticism comes from being slightly debased, being bottom, under the feet of a woman they find attractive.
• No one in the foot-fetish community knows what “shrimping” is!?! John Waters taught me this term years ago in Mondo Trasho!
• Turns out, I have no compunction about getting drunk anywhere.

I only saw two examples of footplay: One of the gals, Tonya, was sitting in a chair rubbing her feet on the chest of a man who was lying on the floor. Then, a buxom size 11 gal was celebrating her birthday—we all sat around a pool table while Catherine de Sade sprayed whip cream on her bare feet while a dude licked her soles and between her toes. Oh, and I heard some spanking/slapping sounds coming from a private room.

“But didn’t you feel uncomfortable,” you wonder? Nope, sorry. The only time I got at all squicky was during a conversation with a very nice man who started to ask about my sexual proclivity, but I ducked out kinda awkwardly. I ended up talking with about half the men—there were maybe 20 guys, with approximately 20 ladies. I think Catherine de Sade was disappointed with the turnout. Footnight has 800 people on their mailing list, and about 60 people RSVP’d for the Portland night. A lot of people get too nervous and talk themselves out of going. She said that thousands of people come to their Las Vegas and L.A. events.

I met some great people. The owner of Angel’s was a kick in the pants, a funny and salty older man who was tending bar, regaling me with stories about Angel’s gang-bang nights (“there were people fucking everywhere, hundreds of people”) to being #70-something in one woman’s bid to have sex with 150 people at a biker rally (“We never could find out who was #1. It kinda seemed like when you get new checks, you start out with check #101 instead of at #1…). He’s been one of the owners of the club for 20 years, but nothing shocks him anymore after being a cop in his previous career. Angel’s employee Warren was great too. (We had a joke going about rolling the “r”s in his name, so let it be known that it’s Warrrrrrrrren.) He’s been in the sex industry for about 20 years.

I also learned that men have a hard time telling their ladyfriends about their foot fetishes, which is too bad, it’s such a benign source of sexual pleasure. Ladies get a foot rub and men get a hard-on. Sounds good to me. I coulda used one after my wobbly walk home after four hours at Footnight. My dogs were barking.