Two YouTube Finds

Like I said, I'd be back on September 4th.  Oh, wait, was that the 29th?  Can you forgive me for having misled you one more time?  Have mercy!  It was summer, and you know how hard it is to squeeze every last bit of enjoyment out of the summer months when there's so much in life that manages to get in the way.  Of course, it's now fall, which is my favorite season, but I'll at least have more time to dedicate to the blog.  I have some fantastic new additions to my collection and I'll be highlighting them soon.  In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy this video on YouTube.  You may be asked if it's okay to display "inappropriate content", although I can promise you there's nothing at all inappropriate with what you're about to see.

SuperHeroDoll seems to created one hell of a shrine to her feet.  The majority of her uploads focus on her (admittedly adorable) feet in socks, but there are a few videos highlighting her shoes.  The sandals are advertised as being for sale but don't get your hopes up, as they've already been sold.  Too bad, as I would have gladly plunked down the $50 she was asking had I known at the time.  Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of chunky sandals, but there's something mesmerizing about the way SuperHeroDoll works the elastic straps, ferociously daring the material to break apart.

Another YouTube user, chilflamorris, punishes a pair of white slingbacks in this upload.  Granted, I'm much more interested in shoes destroyed through natural wear and tear, but the way she's able to have both shoes tear each other apart in front of the camera is fascinating.

More to come.

Hot, So Hot... Pink, That Is

Ordering shoes online is a very simple and satisfying process... that is, until you find out that you need your shoes in a different size, at which point the exchange becomes tedious and time-consuming.  One of my first purchases for my own feet was a pair of Pleaser Dream 420 pumps (the 420 part is important because Pleaser has a line of Dream pumps, and they're not all the same) and since I was having a hard time with a pair of size 16s, figured I'd have to go with size 17s.  That ended up being a mistake, as they were way too large, leading me to believe I really am a size 16 and I just had some bad luck with one pair.  Between waiting for the pair of shoes to be returned to the seller, the time it took to process the return and bill me for shipping for the new pair and allowing the USPS to do its thing with the new pair, at least a month had passed.  Of course, all will be forgotten if the new pair fits.

I was a little disappointed when my Pleaser Vanity T-strap pumps arrived because the attention to packaging detail was lacking.  That particular style of shoe must be an anomaly because my Dream pumps arrived as expected, wrapped in black cloth bags surrounding a larger one for storage.

Even better, the shoes fit.  They're still a little loose but I don't think a size 15 would be comfortable.  And!  They're hot pink, which is good because my other four pairs are red and black.  I'm thinking I need one or two more pairs, maybe something in a metallic?  In the meantime, I have many shoes I plan to destroy with the 4" heels on these, which are tall and sharp enough to cause lots of suffering, but likely not tall and sharp enough to be unbearable.  Stay tuned.

High Heels & Mathematics

Mathematics can explain a lot of things, but did you ever think someone would apply such logic and reasoning to the wearing of high heels?  Well, someone did, and you can read about it here.

As I find myself using my Ellie and Pleaser shoes to inflict damage upon some of the helpless victims in my collection, understanding a bit about what's going on didn't seem like a bad idea.  You can anticipate me referencing this page a lot in the future!

My Collection: Classiques Pumps

I'll kick off the work week with a beautiful example of office pumps.  If you're like me and looking to add trashed and abused shoes to your collection, you often can't go wrong with office pumps.  You'll have to make some sacrifices- they're usually fairly plain and the heels aren't insanely high, but they're usually a hell of a lot more worn out than fancy pumps that were slipped on for the occasional date, fancy dinner or formal event.  That's because office pumps are sometimes worn on a daily basis over a period of years, racking up miles over the course of countless long days.  Some pumps are visited by the feet.  Office pumps are often lived in, such as these.

This is a pair of 7M Classiques.  Despite the French-sounding name, the logo tag on the insole proudly states these are a product of Italy.  As is the case with other pumps in my collection, the height of the heel isn't really low or high, but for the sake of simplifying things I'll list these as high heels.  Some of these photos were taken with the flash on my camera turned on and that gives them a white-ish appearance but they're actually bone.  I'm sure that made them go well with pretty much everything in the wearer's closet.

The leather uppers (yes, this time I know it's real leather because everything is leather, even the outsoles) are very wrinkled and misshapen, particularly around the areas where the shoes flex.  I'm willing to bet a lot of those wear-related defects disappear when there are two feet inside of them, and I'm thinking these will be one of those pairs I make sure get on my friend's feet for a photo session in the not-too-distant future.

A closer inspection of the leather upper reveals a mess of little cracks, which is usually a sign of aging.  I have no idea how old these shoes are but I wouldn't be shocked if they've been around fifteen or twenty years.  They don't look like anything that's been sold since at least the start of the new millennium, although a reader of this blog much more in tune with fashion trends would be better equipped to prove me right or wrong.

The pumps stink... which, of course, is a wonderful thing.  They're a few feet from me as I type this and their delicious aroma is making their presence known.  In fact, they smell a lot like the shoes I used to buy from the thrift store, so I'm wondering if the seller duped me into thinking these were her pumps, or if that smell is common to older shoes.  I guess it doesn't matter because with this kind of trashing and abuse, I'm happy to have them in my collection.  Here you can see the color having been rubbed off the lining in some spots as well as a great amount of wear having been inflicted on the insole, which is beginning to work its way loose.

It's fun to think about what a pair of shoes goes through over the course of time, starting out life being stored in a box so as not to risk them getting damaged to ending up as a disposable item.  At what point does the wearer go from avoiding puddles to walking right through them?  Gently removing them from her feet at the end of the day to kicking them off into a corner upon walking in the door?

The wearer of these pumps kept them on from the moment she left in the morning until the time she got home.  The back of the right shoe is seriously scuffed, meaning it came in contact with the floor mat in the car as she drove to and from the office.  This area on the back of the left shoe is perfectly intact.

I love the way leather outsoles wear over time.  The material seems to fray a bit, making it a little soft and fuzzy.  Leather outsoles also seem to stain very easily, leading them to appear a lot more worn than they actually are.  These are just starting to feel a little thin in the areas under the balls of the feet, but are still in great shape.

The top pieces are worn very evenly, indicating the wearer of these shoes knew how to walk in them.

Only upon looking at them from the sides is it obvious how long these shoes had been in someone's service, as the top pieces likely started out about twice as thick as they are now.  Regardless, these pumps were worn hard as one of someone's "go to"pairs but held up well in the face of everything thrown at them.  I'll be on the lookout for more just like these.

Two Good YouTube Finds

Don't worry, this blog isn't going to turn into a place where I regurgitate stuff I find elsewhere on the internet, but every once in a while my interest in this hobby leads me to some stuff I feel the need to share.

First up is a short video of some tall platform heels.  It's so short, you could very well miss it if you blink.  I'll admit to not being the biggest fan of platforms (the ridiculously thick outsoles don't do anything for me) but the pair featured in this clip is definitely one I'd love to have in my collection.  The shoes look as though they were subjected to some intentional abuse and in this case I'm okay with that because of the way the heels are bending all over the place.  Mesmerizing!

Second is a video only a little longer than the first (so again, don't blink) but equally fascinating.  This guy's girlfriend's worn slingbacks have the most downright impressive sweat stains I've ever seen on a pair of shoes.  From the looks of things, her feet create a pool of sweat on a daily basis.  I can only dream of what it would be like to shove my nose inside the pumps for a sniff or two.

Stay tuned this weekend for some more posts.  There's so much in my collection I haven't shared... yet.

Connie Celebrates No More: Part One

 

It's been a generally unsatisfying week as far as this hobby goes, as I've barely had any alone time to enjoy my collection.  It was also a slow week when it comes to additions to my collection, highlighted only by the arrival of two pairs of pumps.  One pair was purchased because the trashing and abuse I could see in the photos led me to believe it would make a fine addition to my collection and the other was purchased because it looked as though it would make for a nice target for destruction.  Note to sellers: combining shipping costs for multiple purchases leads to, um, more purchases.

The high-heeled pumps pictured here are the ones purchased so I could end their shiny little lives.  They are made by Connie and are apparently part of the company's "Celebrates"line of shoes.  I'm not sure where that causes them to fall in the Connie universe, all I know is that it's quite cumbersome as it rolls off the tongue.  Wouldn't Connie Celebrations make more sense than Connie Celebrates?  Celebrates what?  The destruction of her shoes?  Okay, I'm down with that.

Once again, I enlisted the help of my Pleaser Mary Janes.  Of all the shoes in my collection that were purchased for the enjoyment of my feet, they're the ones with the sturdiest heels.  Maybe one day I'll get destructive with the shoes with the higher heels but right now I'm sticking with what I'm most confident wearing.  Size 8 Connies, meet size 16 Pleasers.  Poor adorable things.

When I destroyed my Moda sandals, my favorite moment was when I put all of my weight on the heels of my shoes and used them to collapse the shanks of their victims.  Since then, I've purchased a few pairs of shoes with lower heels, hoping to be able to recreate that moment.  The Connies taught me that I have to keep things modest.  In this photo it appears that the heel of my Pleaser is going to bend the silver pump in half but I discovered that there is no way to stabilize a pump so that it remains upright under the weight of a heel.  After this photo was taken, the little Connie fell to either side as the heel dragged along the foam-padded insole but failed to cause any structural damage.  From now on I need shoes with low, blocky heels because at least they remain stable and upright as I stand on them.

Since the insole was already working its way loose long before I bought the pumps, I tried peeling it back so that the top piece of my Pleaser's heel wouldn't be subjected to such a slippery surface.  The end result was ultimately the same since the sharp curvature of the shank was too much and the heel still slid down, unable to remain in one spot long enough to break the shoe.  Frustrated by my lack of destructive success, I threw the Connie down on the cold, hard garage floor and stomped, kicked and dragged the life out of it.

Did I go too far?  I'm thinking it's a possibility as I'm starting to get concerned about the long-term health and well-being of my Pleasers.  The heels absorbed a massive amount of abuse with serious damage to the top pieces and even the leather covering them.  As I walked back in the house, my Mary Janes felt a little wobbly and sloppy.  An inspection revealed the heels still very tightly attached, so is it my imagination or are is the abuse only evident when my 300 pound body is walking in them?  Time will tell.

As for the Connies... well, I concentrated all of my anger on the right shoe.  The left one is completely intact right now and surely happy it's not looking like this one.  The stomping by the Pleasers resulted in the bending of the metal strip that forms the shape of the shank, which in turn has the heel bent under the shoe.

Part of the reason one of my Pleaser's top pieces is in such dismal shape is because I dragged the Connie along the course concrete floor of the garage.  This created deep scratches on the rubber outsole as well as a hole in the upper.

The stress inflicted on the shoe during the dragging session caused the upper to tear away from the outsole.  Whatever was left of the already-worn top piece shattered into many pieces, exposing the metal nail in the center of the heel that proved to be the only part of the shoe to survive the rampage completely intact.  The flash I used for this photo blacked out the background, allowing a good look at the part of the pump that suffered the most damage.

With the insole peeled back, the shoe's new holes can be seen along with the cracking of the shank near the base of the heel.  This particular pair of pumps doesn't appear to have been all that expensive, although I suppose all pumps are made this way?  (I'll have to tear apart a few more to be certain.)  The shank is made of an extremely rigid compressed paper-like material, which I assume is sufficient because of the metal strip between it and the outsole, and the heel is attached with a couple of nails.

One down, one to go.  It won't be long before I take on the self-imposed challenge of making the left shoe look worse than the right.  To be continued...

My Collection: Nine West High-Heeled Pumps

In the world of shoes, I'm only vaguely familiar with what's universally respected.  I'm sure every woman wants a pair of Christian Louboutins to join her Manolo Blahniks in the closet, and it seems there's an appreciation for most anything with the Steve Madden name.  Nine West?  I'm not so sure, but on a personal level, I have a soft spot in my heart for them.  Maybe it goes back to when I was younger and spent a lot of time in my mother's closet?  One of my favorite pairs of her pumps was made by Nine West and I always found myself going back to them.  When I was out of high school and building my first collection of trashed and abused shoes by way of the local Salvation Army thrift store, I picked up a few pairs of Nine West pumps.  They were all of the same design with the sides of the heels featuring a ever-so-slight concave scallop that gave the back of them two character lines in the form of nicely-defined creases.  The look was nothing overly dramatic, just very stylish and elegant.  This was about fifteen years ago and I imagine the shoes were about ten years old at the time, but I believe that if they were sold today, the design would look very modern and work well with just about anything.

I suppose my love of Nine West shoes brought me to these.  There's nothing very trashed or abused about them- they're worn and used but could easily be put into service by a woman looking for a pair of pumps for a formal event, night of partying or even day at the office.  The topline is low, exposing a good portion of the foot, while the pointed toe box is stylish but isn't very severe. 

The heels are probably what would be described as of a medium height, although for the sake of categorization on this blog I'll refer to them as high heels.  They taper to become very thin at the bottom, which is a look that always appeals to me.  The right shoe is leaning to the side just a bit- partially because of the somewhat uneven tile surface of my dining room table that makes for an easy place to photograph shoes with heels, and partially because the top piece is completely gone, as you'll see in a minute.

The black leather uppers are practically perfect.  There are a few scratches here and there but overall it's soft and pliable, with nice creases from lots of wear.  Nine West always seemed to use good leather for their shoes.  Then again, I'm no expert and am probably making uneducated assumptions based on my limited experiences with their products, which I admittedly don't wear (but, oh, how I dream I could).

 

I wish I could have seen these pumps in action.  They're a size 8M, which makes them almost perfect candidates to end up on the feet of a friend of mine who will be helping me with contributions to this blog in the future.  I have to decide how much I love these shoes- do I want them to survive, or do I want them to suffer?  I'm trying to come up with ways to bribe her into walking through the woods or even a gravel parking lot in these... you know, just in case I decide to pull the trigger on extreme abuse.

 

Inside, there's not much to see.  The silver linings are in great shape and still have a decent amount of cushioning beneath them.  I'm willing to bet it was a pleasure for the wearer to slide her feet into these over and over again.  I know I'd be doing that, keeping myself entertained for hours upon hours if they fit my feet.

 

The only visible signs of wear are in the quarters where the cloth-like material is starting to separate where it is joined together behind the heels of the feet.  Still, it's minimal, and has no effect on the integrity of the pumps.  To quote a popular line from eBay descriptions of trashed and abused shoes, these really do have a lot of life left in them.

 

The outsoles have shallow ridges stamped into the rubber to provide a modicum of grip on slippery surfaces and are intact for the most part, with wear being limited to the areas subjected to the weight of the wearer.  Even then, the ridges have been worn smooth but the outsoles have not lost any of their thickness.

 

  

The tips of the pointed toes are looking a little rough, as to be expected of pumps with pointed toe boxes.  It's probably quite challenging to keep them from coming in contact with everything and makes sense that they'd be among the parts of the shoes exhibiting the most wear.

However, nothing compared to the top pieces, which are worn to the nail on the left shoe and completely gone on the right, exposing the nail and the plastic structure of the heel itself.  I always wonder if the wearer knows when a top piece is missing?  I remember my wife having a pair of sandals that had a huge crack spanning the width of the outsole, yet she never knew it because she never looked at the bottoms of her shoes.  Is it possible these shoes were worn for weeks or months with the top piece missing, and only when the wearer noticed were they finally retired?  How wonderful it would be to get inside a woman's head!  I've had some interesting conversations in the past but they've just scratched the surface of my curiosity.

My Collection: More Flip Flops of an Unknown Brand

Once again, it's been a while.  I really have to work on some form of consistency with this blog.  However, in my defense, it's been a busy week and I haven't had many alone moments at the house in which to photograph shoes in my collection and when I do, it's late at night and I can't count on the help of natural light to help in my photography sessions.  I see no point in posting lackluster photos that don't do the shoes any justice, just for the sake of making sure there is something new to post.  Quantity is the goal but quality is a must.

I'm not sure if I'm really sick enough to have taken the day off from work, but I did, and now I can use some of my time alone to catch up on a few things.  First is the breaking in of my Pleaser slingbacks.  Wow.  Two inches of heel height makes one hell of a difference!  It took me no time at all to get used to 3" heels but the 5" heels of these shoes make my feet wobble, not to mention hurt quite a bit as the weight of my body is forced into the balls of my feet, which in turn squeezes my toes into the pointy toe box.  It probably doesn't help that the heels are very narrow to the point where they could probably be defined as stilettos.  On the plus side, my calves are being stretched so much that I shouldn't wake up in the middle of the night with cramps for at least a few days, and being 6'3" tall in 5" heels gives me a feeling of power.

I still don't know what I'm going to do with these shoes.  Maybe I'll feel more comfortable using them for destructive purposes if I can get accustomed to having to balance myself on the tall, thin heels but right now I feel like one wrong move will send a heel snapping off the shoe, which will in turn leave me needing another pair.  This is by no means a cheap hobby!  But anyway, being home today allowed me to not have to rush to leave work and get to the mailbox before my wife gets home because I knew today was the day I'd be adding another pair of flip flops to my collection.

I have no idea of the brand name, as only the faint remnants of letters can be seen in the heel area.  The seller advertised them as a size 9 and I believe it, because they're just barely big enough to squeeze onto my feet for short periods of time (time on me feet is how I got the straps to maintain a shape long enough for me to take some photos.)  The seller claims to have another pair just like these and just about as worn so I'm hoping to make a deal for those.  Perhaps then I could have one pair to admire with my eyes and another pair to suffer under my feet.

As I've said in the past, flip flops can be boring, but can also be extremely enjoyable.  This pair is clearly an example of the latter.  From afar, they look as though they need a new coat of paint.  There's way too much wear here for a black Sharpie to repair!

The wear to the heel areas reveals the honeycomb-like structure sandwiched between the insoles and outsoles.  The insoles feel as though they're real leather but as I've stated in other posts, can never be quite sure.  Regardless, a good portion of the leather/faux leather has been worn off, revealing a cloth-like material below.  The white marks are the remains of the brand name that was once printed on the flip flops.  Any shoes CSIs out there willing to help with the identification of these poor things?

The front areas of the shoes are even worse.  Note the long thongs that slide between the big toe and the other four.  It's almost as if the thongs were designed to extend forward from where they attach to the insoles before rising up.  Or is it possible they stretched about three quarters of an inch?  Either way, the extra long thong is part of the reason why I can massage my feet into these flip flops, so I'm not complaining.

In some areas, the lining is so worn that the cloth-like material is also worn away, revealing the rubber of the outsole.  These flip flops did not have an easy life.  In addition to having been used a lot, it seems as if the wearer wasn't very careful with them, although that could be an assumption I want to make as I fantasize about what these went through.

The front of the right one is a total mess- frayed, with all the layers of material beginning to separate from one another.  Peeling it back provides a revealing look at the sandwich of rubber, cloth and even paper that comprises the construction of these flip flops.

The straps being stretched out beyond the shape of the outsoles and under the weight of the body left permanent indentations in the leather/faux leather.  A nice touch that I discovered only after spending some quality time with the shoes.  It pays to have quiet moments where they can be enjoyed with more than a passing glance.

The straps are decorated with countless colored pieces of plastic that remind me of sequins, except rectangular instead of round.  Many are still intact but many are also missing, having left behind traces of white thread that likely held them in place.  They seem to be firmly attached so it must have taken collisions with some pretty hard objects to work them loose.

Flipping the shoes over doesn't show a ton of wear on the bottoms of the outsoles.  They're worn smooth in some spots and the honeycomb-like rubber in the heels can once again, but other than that these flip flops took most of their beating on the other side.  Here's hoping that I can soon be adding their sisters to my collection.

Ladies! Please Wear the High Heels Right!

A while back, my endless internet searching led me to a short but interesting blog post by a modeling agency in South Africa.  The "human element" is what got my attention because the woman posting mentioned feeling bad for high heels worn the wrong way.  When I started this blog, I searched for the post but had no initial luck, and for good reason: it appears the website was hacked, or otherwise compromised.  It took me a little while to come to the realization that I could use the trusty Internet Archive: Wayback Machine to find an archived version of the site.  Sure enough, it worked.  And here it is.

Anything that anthropomorphizes woman's shoes is okay in my book, and this was the first time I had seen someone else express sadness over the way some shoes are treated.  It also touches upon one of my favorite signs of trashing and abuse, which occurs when the woman wearing the shoe walks on the outsides of her feet and causes abnormal wear- in the case of high heels, top pieces worn down at an angle.  The tips for wearing high heels also makes for good reading.  Tip #7, which reads, "Never put pressure on the heels" is my favorite.  It probably has something to do with the fact that I'm starting to understand what it's like to wear heels, and maybe even the fact that I disagree with statements about not putting weight on the heels.  Maybe it's just me but I find it comfortable and pleasurable to rest my weight on the heels.  Then again, it might be easier for me to do that because I have a large foot and there is a big difference between wearing 5" heels with feet that are twelve inches long as opposed to seven inches long.  Simple geometry and physics.

Don't get too excited about the comments section.  The conversation devolves into a bunch of spam posts before it has a chance to develop into something good.  What a shame.

Two Pairs of Pleasers For My Pleasure

Please accept my apologies once again for having been quiet the past few days.  If you notice a pattern of me disappearing on the weekends, you've been paying attention.  During the week I can sneak home every once in a while and indulge in this hobby of mine but on the weekends, it's tough to do so with the wife present.  It's not that I forget about all of this, just that I'm not able to come up with much to post.  Perhaps I'll have to work on an extra post or two during the week so I can make sure the blog is updated on the weekends.  But anyway, I digress.

My quest to build a small collection of large-sized shoes started out great with the arrival of my Ellie sandals but then became a bit of a challenge.  Because a size 16 worked the first time, I figured it would work again.  That wasn't the case when I bought a similar pair of Pleaser sandals (which are now gone... in the hands of a lucky reader that I trust is having fun with them.)  Figuring that I got lucky with the Ellies, I ordered a pair of traditional pumps by Pleaser in a wide width size 17, and was frustrated when they were so large, my feet were just about swimming in them.  I sent them back for a size 16 and hoped that the other size 16's I had on the way would work after all.  Maybe the Pleaser sandals being too narrow was just a fluke?

As it turns out, that was the case, and now I am adding two new pairs of Pleasers to my collection.  The first is a pair of Seduce slingback pumps.  Since I already have black patent Ellies, I was hoping for a different color but had to settle on black patent again, as I'm guessing colors become more basic as the size of the shoes increases.  Regardless, they're extremely sexy- very simple with a thin strap to hold the back of the foot in place over towering 5" heels.  After a quick lap around the living room, I've found I can handle myself in them just fine, although another inch might make them a little difficult.

I've come to love Pleaser.  Sure, it mostly has to do with them making gorgeous shoes that fit my insanely huge feet, but there's a part of me that appreciates their attention to detail when it comes to packaging.  I'm a sucker for packaging because while it doesn't mask the faults of shoddy product, it makes good products seem even better.  Anyone who's ever bought and opened an Apple product can surely attest to that.  Pleaser shoes come in a nice black box with a red lid covered in butterflies, and the box is of a ridiculous quality considering the price of the shoes that usually go for about $50 on eBay.

Open it up and it's a sea of black, regardless of the color of the shoes.  Each shoe comes individually wrapped in a cloth bag, probably to keep them from rubbing together during shipment.  Very classy.

Even better, Pleaser provides a larger cloth bag with a drawstring to store the shoes.  Honestly, I can't see many women using this bag, as the shoes would either remain in their box on the floor of a closet or be stored on some kind of rack, but for someone like me who hides his best footwear above a ceiling tile in his man cave, the bag is a priceless part of the package.

Officially the most delicate of the pairs in my collection, I'm not sure how often I'm going to be wearing these or what I'll be able to do with them, so time will tell.  That doesn't prevent me from wanting to stare at them for hours!

My other recent arrival is a pair of Pleaser Divine Mary Jane pumps.  I couldn't resist the red patent leather that makes me think of a classic muscle car when I look at them.  These aren't as dressy as the slingbacks, but the fact that they cover more of the foot and have a thick 3" heel means they make more sense for destructive activities.  They're going to play a big role going forward, so expect to see a lot of them and the results of their actions.

The destruction of the Moda sandals with my treasured Ellies was a blast, but I think the style of the shoes brought everything to an end quicker than anticipated.  Violently stomping on something while wearing a pair of shoes that holds your foot in place with a few straps means the foot isn't held in place very well at all, and the height of the heels only made matters worse.  I'm sure I'll continue to use my Ellies for destructive purposes but I can see these shoes being better as they will hold my foot in place and the thicker heel will give me more control as well as peace of mind, as I won't have to worry so much about it snapping if I get too into the moment.  And believe me, you're going to see a lot more destruction in the future.  I've already ordered a nice assortment of shoes with low heels that I plan on making suffer under mine.

Anyone Want These Pleaser Size 16 High-Heeled Sandals?

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am trying to build a small collection of large-sized shoes for my large-sized feet.  I figured a size 16 would work just fine and it did.  Well, once.  The second size 16 I purchased and attempted to fit onto my feet didn't work as well.  I think I need a size 16 wide because while the length is perfect (or at least it seems perfect, as the shoes have open backs so it's a little tough to tell), they're much too narrow where the straps converge above the balls of my feet.  I've since purchased a few size 16 shoes in a wide width as well as a size 17 (which wasn't easy to find) and we'll see what happens.  In the meantime I am stuck with this pair of shoes that I managed to keep on my foot for all of 30 seconds.  Anyone want them?

 They're made by Pleaser, a company that seems to pride itself on sexy, well-made but reasonably-priced women's shoes, and they make shoes in all sizes so it's not like they cater specifically to the crossdressing crowd (not sure why, but I like that... maybe I like the idea of women's shoes made for women, not men?)  They're called the Flair 420 and are T-strap sandals with 4.5" heels.  The soles are covered in a grippy rubber material (making them good for someone like me who has no experience walking in high heels and is likely to take a spill at any given moment) and the inner lining is a soft, cloth-like material that feels sweet against the feet.  They look and feel very sturdy but at the same time, a towering heel is a towering heel and I'm sure it wouldn't take too many wrong moves for them to break off, just in case that appeals to you.

I'm not looking for much in exchange for them.  I paid about $50 for them on eBay and that included shipping, and I'd rather let them go for half that amount rather than toss them away.  I imagine that most guys do not have a foot as large as mine, so if you're around a 11, 12 or 13 and have always wanted to slip your foot into a sexy pair of heels, now might be a good chance.  And if you decide to have any adventures with them (non-sexual, that is), feel free to send photos and stories so they can be shared with everyone.

 Any takers?