The Staccato of Stilettos

Yesterday,  I was painfully attuned to the high-heels on the semi-defrosted streets, in the sort of way a graze is very sensitive to a drop of acidic lotion. A girl in tacky delicate  block heels, the sort that have only rubber height and no beauty of form, was walking unevenly before and behind me as I alternatively relaxed or speeded up my pace, enjoying the puddles in my clumpy trekking boots from a hunting shop in deep America. The advance of the heels , tak tak tak, sounded like a child cutting an awkward shape with slightly unwieldy scissors. From the other direction, the more steady, clip clip clip of a secretary’s scissors.

At the Pavlovsk park, in the company of my friends, a girl was wearing  precarious stilettos which leaned slightly on the ice, destroying any continuity of line and therefore parading the ridiculous rather than the feminine. Some  of us were worried what the stilletos would do to the rubber dinghies we planned to sled on. Nonetheless, she stalked on ahead of us like an inelegant clumsy flamingo.

There are many girls who resemble large exotic avian creatures stuttering around their cage because of their long thin legs which walk with such precipitate awkwardness. Many are extremely thin but their body fluffs out like a bird from flaring coat and bags.

Others are patently women(and not girls trapped in unflattering mimicry), or the Feminine, wearing delightfully statuesque heels and walk quite magically and naturally in their leg extensions.