The Shoes Were Definitely Not the Problem

There are moments in a friendship when you should speak up. There are also moments when you should accept that your best friend is an adult woman who has been given all the available information and has chosen, freely and with confidence, to ignore every single bit of it. I learned the difference at Flatsfest.

This was a few years ago, and I should explain that Flatsfest is not complicated. It is outside. There is grass. There is dirt. There are wooden walkways laid over the worst bits. There are cables everywhere, food trucks, spilled beer, people sitting on blankets and, because this is Northern California, a reasonable chance that something described as “firm ground” at noon will become mud by six. None of this was secret information. Lisa had been before.

So when she came downstairs wearing a pair of black stiletto heels that must have been five and a half, maybe six inches high, I assumed she was joking. I don’t mean high heels. I mean high heels. The sort where most of the shoe seems to exist several inches above the part traditionally occupied by the ground. Tiny platform at the front. Thin ankle strap. Heel approximately the diameter of a cocktail stick.

I looked at the shoes. Then at Lisa. Then back at the shoes.

“No.”

She picked up her bag. “What?”

“You know where we’re going.”

“Yes.”

“Outside.”

“I know what outside is, Audrey.”

“There’s grass.”

“I’ve seen grass before.”

This should have been the moment I stopped. Instead, because I was younger and still believed evidence had some influence over Lisa Enzorini, I continued. I explained that there would be mud. She would walk around it. There were those wooden cable things. She could step over things. Finally I pointed out that she was wearing six-inch stilettos.

“They’re five and three quarters.”

Apparently accuracy mattered. I put on my boots. We left.

The annoying part is that for the first two hours she was completely fine. Not Lisa claiming to be fine. Actually fine. She crossed the parking area, walked down the gravel path and navigated the first stretch of grass without so much as a wobble. At one point she stepped over a thick bundle of cables with the concentration of someone defusing a bomb and then looked back at me with an expression I can only describe as legally actionable smugness.

“See?”

I said nothing. This was important. Friendship is knowing when to support someone. Best friendship is knowing when to save your energy because the ground is going to do the work for you.

By late afternoon thousands of people had walked over the same field. Drinks had been spilled. Somebody near the food trucks had apparently attempted to relocate half a cup of beer using only gravity. The grass around the main stage had developed the consistency of chocolate cake. Lisa continued. Carefully. Slowly. But continued. I was beginning to consider the possibility that she might actually win.

Then she stopped. Just stopped, one foot slightly behind the other. I took another two steps before I noticed.

“You coming?”

“Yes.”

She did not move. I looked down. One of her heels had disappeared. Not the shoe. The heel. All five and three-quarter ridiculous inches of it had gone straight into the ground until the back of her shoe was practically sitting on the grass.

I looked at her. She looked at me.

“Don’t.”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“Your face has.”

“I genuinely haven’t.”

“Audrey.”

“Lisa.”

She pulled. Nothing happened. She pulled harder. Her other heel began sinking.

This was, I admit, the point at which I stopped being useful. I had to turn around. Not because I was laughing. I would like that noted. I was being an excellent friend and looking toward the stage for several minutes while experiencing what I can only assume was some kind of respiratory difficulty.

Behind me I heard, “Oh, fuck off.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re shaking.”

Eventually we developed a system. I held her arm. She lifted her foot. I pulled the shoe out of the ground with both hands. It came free with a noise I still occasionally hear in quiet rooms. The shoe was covered in mud. Lisa stared at it. I stared at it. A man walking past looked at it. Lisa looked at him. He wisely continued walking.

“Okay,” I said.

“They’re fine.”

“Of course.”

“They are.”

“Absolutely.”

“The shoes are not the problem.”

This sentence has remained part of our friendship ever since.

For the record, she did not go home. That would have meant admitting something. Instead, we found a stall selling cheap rubber rain boots. Lisa bought a pair, put the stilettos in my tote bag because apparently I had become responsible for them, and spent the rest of Flatsfest in a little black dress and green rubber boots. She looked ridiculous. She also looked annoyingly good.

At some point after dark we were standing near the back of the crowd, eating fries out of the same cardboard tray, when she pointed at the boots and said, “Honestly, this kind of works.”

“No.”

“You’re just mad because I was right for two hours.”

“You were stuck in the earth.”

“For like thirty seconds.”

“You required extraction.”

“That is an extremely dramatic way of describing what happened.”

I still have a photo from that night. Lisa, green boots, drink in one hand, completely unbothered. You can’t see the stilettos because they’re in my bag. Naturally.

I found the picture again yesterday while looking for something completely unrelated and sent it to her. Her response arrived almost immediately:

Those shoes were fucking amazing.

I reminded her that one of them had to be physically removed from Northern California. She maintains that this was a terrain issue.

So, because historical accuracy apparently matters: Lisa would like the record corrected.

The shoes were not the problem. The ground was insufficiently prepared.

— Audrey