Memories behind the theatre curtain 11 min read

Many years ago I used to be a part of the cast/crew for (live) theatre productions. Never did anything professional but more being a background actor for some plays and musicals outside of work/school.

In addition to acting, since these weren’t professional productions and we all did it for fun, I also helped the crew with setting up the stage/props.  Occasionally I even helped the costume designer with organizing/moving stuff. I didn’t mind helping too much since a lot of the people that volunteered to do that stuff were older and I was one of the only younger guys.

Helping with the costumes, I always got flustered when the actresses asked me for an opinion on how a pair of heels/boots looked with their costume. I was never intentionally weird about it as I would not want to make a woman uncomfortable.

However the one time I gave in to temptation was when the costume designer asked me to move some boxes/racks of shoes to the women’s dressing room, and unpack them/polish them if necessary.

This was after everyone had finished using those rooms for the day, otherwise I would have never been comfortable doing that.

I was unpacking the variety of shoes – flats, heels, and boots of all types – and sorting them by size/type. At the time I had just stumbled onto stories online about people who had interests like me, and wanted to try cleaning a shoe with my tongue to see what the experience would be like. I took the cleaning part seriously too, rinsing my mouth with Listerine before I did it as part of the thrill was knowing that what I was doing was going to be useful to these women who worked so hard on the production with me. As I scraped my tongue across the soles and heels, the sensations of the textures of the soles and the grit coming off was almost overwhelming since it was my first time. After the first few, I was surprised to feel my tongue stinging a little bit – since it was my first time, I didn’t realize that some of the soles could be abrasive. However I felt committed by this point and went on to finish cleaning the rest.

I was almost done when I heard the noise of someone walking outside the door and realized someone had come back to get something! If I was smarter, I probably could have grabbed the shoe polish and looked busy doing what I was assigned, but I panicked with embarrassment since it was my first time and put the pair I was cleaning back on the rack and hid under some bales of fabric on the floor. The woman who was walking up opened the door and came in, and went to grab something she had forgotten from her cubby. As she was leaving, she looked around and muttered wondering why someone had left the lights on and flicked them off as she left, leaving me lying on the floor to reflect on what I was doing. However as I said I was committed to doing a proper job of anything people asked me to do, especially kind and beautiful ladies so I crept back out from under the fabric and sanitized all the shoes I had been cleaning, and then rubbed leather conditioner and polish into the ones that needed it. I waited a couple more minutes to make sure I didn’t hear anyone outside the door again and then tidied up and left. The next day the costume designer told me everything looked great and didn’t mention anything amiss, so I thanked my lucky stars and never said anything about it.

Over time a few of them started to notice little things that added up, like how I would pretend not to notice if they accidentally stepped on the tip of my fingers when they were trying their new shoes on (and maybe didn’t have a sense of urgency about moving them out of the way). At the time I was too shy to say anything about it; we were all tight knit and friendly so I think they also didn’t want to say anything and embarrass me but I noticed 2-3 of the women would start to have fun with it and see how far they could go.

One time during a show one of the actresses had to put on a very tight pair of go go boots with a chunky block heel and asked me for help zipping them up since the zipper went all the way down the side and she was wearing a dress and had a microphone hooked up already. I said yes, of course, but tried (and probably failed) to not look like I was too eager. Since she was already sitting in a chair, I had to kneel down on the floor in front of her to get a look since it was so dark backstage. I bent down and aligned the zipper and started fastening it back up, and as my head came back up she caught my eyes with her eyes, looking into them and giving me a slight smile, clearly enjoying having me kneeling down before her. It was an oddly intimate moment, where the crowd noise faded out and I paused for a second to remember where I even was. When I was done she thanked me sweetly, but made sure to step on my fingers a little bit when she got up out of the chair to go back on stage so I would have something to remember the moment.

Another girl I had a slight crush on – she was about my height 5’9” (1.75m), and her family immigrated from the same country as mine so she had beautiful brown skin and long hair which I didn’t see too often in the area I grew up. One day I was finishing helping up the stage crew, so wearing my beat up black jeans and t-shirt that I used for that. Kind of grubby clothes but fine since I was working back stage.  As I walked in to the green room (the rest area), that day there was no one else in the room except for her.  She had on a loose fitting white top and skinny blue jeans tucked into black, calf high boots.

They were indeed a very nice pair of fashion boots.  Black leather, about a 3 inch (7.5 cm) high heel that was 1 inch (2.5 cm) square.   Pointy toes.  A girl could wear them to work or a party / social engagement and look stylish & fashionable.

For some reason that day the only seating was one couch, and she was sitting with her back against the arm rest with her high heeled boots stepping on the couch seat while she read a book.  I could see that her heels dug deeply into the cushions so a fair bit of weight was being put on them.  It was such a pretty sight that I didn’t want to ask her to move.  Instead I grabbed some water and leaned against the wall while sipping on it.

She noticed me and asked me “what are you doing? Come sit down”. When she said this, she didn’t actually move her feet off the sofa but simply lifted both boots up in the air a bit. This meant I had to slide between them and the other arm rest of the sofa to sit down.   I ended up with her boots resting in my lap and my hands placed awkwardly on top of them.   The leather of her boots was oh-so soft.  I just wanted to sit there and caress them.  But I played it off like it was nothing.

In that position her small heels rested firmly on my thighs.  Nothing too much, just a bit of weight coming down through them.  But for me this was so exciting that I could not think straight.  As for her, she treated it like nothing and went back to reading.  It was so amazing for me that I was essentially being ignored while being her footrest.  It was so nonchalant for her as if she just routinely stepped on people as part of her daily life.

We chatted for a bit about what she was reading and how our days had gone, until one of her other friends walked into the room. Her friend jokingly said, “taking up all the space on the couch huh”.

She replied, “oh they are doing some kind of renovations today so there’s a lot of dust and paint on the ground, so I wanted to keep my new boots off the floor”. She then proceeded to lift up one of her boots to examine it.  That put her boot just inches away from my face as she twisted and turned it.  I could so clearly smell the leather.  It was so intoxicating for me.

As my friend examined her boot ever so briefly, she noticed some dust on the side of it.  Which she then proceeded to wipe off onto my black jeans.    Just used me like a cleaning rag !

It was a casual act using my clothes to remove the dirt and grime from boots.  And her actions turned me on beyond belief. She and her friend went back to chatting with a bit of a smile on their faces and catching up about their day, but I honestly can’t tell you anything they said after that.

When she eventually got up to leave, I had to take a second to compose myself so told her I was still tired and would join everyone later. From that day on she always gave me a bit of a knowing smile any time we were in that room again – thankfully, blushes don’t show up on my face very readily!

The final memory I have from this time is another time backstage, where I was helping people go in/out of a trap door to make a secret entrance/exit onstage. During the downtime I was sitting on the stairs going up/down to it. One of the actresses whom I was friends with was sitting with me. She was very tall and very slender, about 5’11” (1.80 m) with short cut brunette hair with blonde highlights. That day she was wearing brown leather boots over jeans with a wood block heel that added a couple inches (5 cm heels), and with her a few stairs above me it added to the feeling that she was towering over me. I didn’t mind that at all and was sitting so that I could turn around to face and talk to her, which left my hand sitting on a step right next to her boots.

Like I said I never tried to force a situation, but if a beautiful woman happened to step on my hand while it was dark or we were getting ready, I pretty much didn’t mind and usually had an excuse ready about how I didn’t have much feeling in my fingertips if anyone really questioned how I didn’t say anything.

I guess she had doubts about that excuse and felt experimental that day, because as I was talking to her she leaned forward so that I had to look up even more to keep eye contact, and while I was distracted she put her boot heel right on top of the fingers of my right hand and let it rest there full weight. It hurt a little bit but not too bad since she was sitting down, so I didn’t say anything.

But obviously she had to know that I knew, as she was looking directly into my eyes/face and I couldn’t pull back or look nonchalant now since my hand was trapped under her boot. She continued the conversation we were having, just with a slight smile on her face and a knowing look in her eye as she slowly increased the pressure on her heel until she was basically standing on my fingers, crushing down on them with all of her full weight, maybe 120 lbs (55 kg). At that point it finally hurt enough where I was struggling and I had to look down to see if any damage was happening.

When I quickly glanced back up after glancing down to look, she smiled as she finally had incontrovertible proof that I knew what was happening and secretly liked it. She went back to sitting down just lightly resting her boots on top of hand and we finished our conversation that way. Thankfully she never spoke a word about this to anyone else, I guess she just wanted to know for her personal satisfaction.

Whenever I sat down next to her in the future she would always “find” my fingers and rest her shoes on top of them and it became a kind of game to see if I could find a natural looking way to sit next to her feet when we were all hanging out.

I will always look back at those times with both fondness and regret, as I had a close-knit bond with many of my friends there but was too shy to express myself fully and tell them about desires like this. At the same time as you can see some of my friends were also exploring new feelings and curiosity and that’s part of what makes us who we are today.