Indulgent Next Door Neighbor – Part I 15 min read

12/06/04 – True Story

Shortly after law school I took on a job with my state attorney general’s office. I was working in the corporations division, looking to maybe make some connections and land myself something on the corporate side down the road. As such I was willing to take the job even though it only paid $30,000 a year (that’s about $600 a week) as an entry level government employee.

I found a sweet little studio, emphasis on the word little, in the heart of the hippest neighborhood in the city. Cost was $1200 bucks a month so, after paying my rent and my school loans, I was living on take home of about $200 a week.  That had to cover clothes, food, utilities, everything. Needless to say, there was not much budget for entertainment. I did work part time at a gym, mainly so I could work out for free, but that barely paid for supplements.

My apartment was on the top floor of a four story building overlooking the trendy street. It was one of those set ups with posh retail space below, two buzzer locked doors to access the residential area, with one apartment on the first retail level, and two apartments with doors facing each other at each landing on the other three levels. The front side apartments were tiny studios. The rear side apartments were huge 2 bedroom apartments. Both types though had a small kitchenette type entry way, such that if you walk in, you are in the so-called kitchen and can almost touch both walls at the same time. There was a shallow counter, fridge, sink and shallow cooktop.

I noticed upon moving in that my next door neighbor had to be a woman since there were always all sorts of expensive shoes left on our tiny shared landing. A lot of pumps which she apparently wore to work. Names like Manolo Blahnik, Dolce & Gabbana, Jimmy Choo, etc. Each one of these was like a week’s pay for me as I later found out.

Mostly business attire, nothing higher than 3 – 3.5 inches, but some of the stuff was really funky too, like a pair of black pumps with a silver metal heel and a few pairs with cut outs, ankle straps, cuffs. There were only about 4 feet between our two apartment doors and the landing was about 3.5 to 4 feet wide. Her shoes were encroaching way over to my side, to the point where they filled the whole wall at the top of the landing.

She was actually pretty cute with a generally nice body. One of those types that is probably an 8 but eeks out an 8.5 to 9 because of the grooming. She did spin classes and road races and stuff so her body was in pretty good shape.

When she first knocked and introduced herself to me, she apologized for her shoes taking up the whole landing and offered to move them if they were in my way. But I did not complain. I had of course actually touched, smelled, licked them on a few weekend or late night occasions. So I had no complaints. ‘Don’t worry about it, I said, they are such nice shoes, they raise the value of what’s in my apartment,’ which was 10 year old furniture that I had lugged from college, to law school to here. She chuckled. I added, ‘It’s not like they are smelly old sneakers or anything, they are actually very nice to look at,’ figuring I would go a little out on a limb. She put me at ease by saying, ‘Oh, I am glad, because I have no more room behind my door. I have so many shoes I can barely open it. I have such a shoe fetish.’ My ears perked up like a pack dog. ‘What do you mean,’ I baited.

She then invited me to come see for my own eyes, and showed me the pile of shoes, literally almost two feet high behind her door, preventing it from opening more than 45 degrees. She had the same tiny kitchen as me, but it opened to a huge living area that fit a table for dining as well as couches and chairs. She had one couch along the same shoe wall behind the door, a short, cozy white canvas thing about five feet long. Further in was nicer pottery barn type stuff, leather with wood legs and open underneath. Nice airy sparse look. She had a big TV, a thin one. Unlike my apartment, her floors looked brand new and her bathroom looked all redone with stone surfaces (marble or something) and one of those toilets that connects to the wall but not the floor. Best of all, she showed me how she used her second bedroom as a closet. Filled! She could have opened a shoe boutique.

I began to learn when the safe times were to make my moves on the stairway platform. What a great find this apartment was. One Saturday while I was in my kitchen, I heard her door open and peeped through the peephole of my door. She was going out running so I went for the kill in the hallway, cleaning the whole lot with my tongue, sniffing a few others, and doing what I had to do. As I was finishing up trying to put everything back in place, I heard noises from her kitchen. She has a guest!! Oh crap was all I could think of.

I remained dead quiet, praying the door would not open, trying to think of an explanation and having none. I could feel my heart thumping and had a sense of dread. Then I heard silence, then eventually I heard footsteps retreating, and the TV click on. Close call. I went back into my apartment, and planned to lay low for awhile. When I ran into her during the week, I asked if she had a guest over the weekend. She said, ‘Yes, my friend from Argentina was staying with me and she left today.’ So she proceeded to tell me how she studied abroad and how her family used to have kids from abroad over, etc, etc. Maybe I was in the clear.

We got to know each other a little better, mostly small talk. She was an intellectual property attorney, who had been a biochem engineer before law school. She worked one of the largest firms in the city with over 100 lawyers and just made partner on a fast track because of her unique background. From my knowledge of people in that field, and our conversations, I guessed and later learned verified that she was making over $200,000. She did not date much because she worked so much and said she had limited selection because she only dated guys that were of her own faith. I was a little perplexed about that, but she explained that she did not want a mixed marriage and wanted her kids brought up in the Jewish faith. Anyway, so a relationship was out of the question. She was not really my type anyway. Too materialistic for me, and seemed high maintenance, wore too much make up, etc. She described herself as a so-called ‘JAP’.

I had a few other scares where I forgot to lock my door, and wondered if she had gone in and seen my collection of magazines. There were a few times where my mail got put in her mail slot which was next to mine at the bottom of the stairway. It was one of those eight slot racks that only the mail courier has a key to rotate forward from the wall exposing all the tops of the locked boxes to drop mail in. On two of those occasions, I found it on my coffee table with a note that my door was open and she did not want to leave my mail sitting out in the hall where anyone could see it or take it.

I wondered if maybe she had flipped through the mail, or accidentally opened it without looking at the labels, and seen a slip, an invoice or maybe got curious about a brown paper wrapper, since one of the piles did have a fetish mag in it. The envelope was just taped shut but I could not be certain that it was not shipped that way. I figured that even if she had peaked, she would not say anything because then I would know she opened my mail. Or if she had ventured in while I was not around, maybe she took a look around and snooped into things which I did not really think I needed to cover up in the privacy of my own digs. But there was no point in worrying.

Later in time, on a Wednesday night in summer, she knocked on my door and told me she needed help and asked if I could help her. She was all dressed up from work in a nice charcoal pants suit and black pumps with a little bare foot skin showing. I said ‘Sure.’ So I go in her kitchen and she has groceries filling up what little shallow counter space there is, and says she dropped her keys and they fell behind the stove. I could not move the stove. It could have been bolted or something and was worried about breaking or tearing the line where the gas came from, and I was too short to reach or even see over the back, so I figured I could just reach through the drawer opening and fish around for them.

I sidled through the 45 degree opening in the door, shut it behind me and I proceeded to pull out the drawer under the stove and lay down on my back right next to the stove and counter, with my head near the apartment door, and my left arm reaching under the stove. I told her I could not feel anything but dust balls and crumbs back there as I blindly reached around, and asked how far over to her right they had fallen. I certainly was not going to stick my head into the drawer opening under the stove and chance it getting stuck or sucking in trace amounts of propane, and wasn’t sure it would fit anyway. Besides the position allowed me to sneak peaks at her beautiful pumps as she stood just inches away from my face.

I asked for, and she handed me a utensil, which I then used to fish around the corner to the right of the stove where I could not see. No jingle sound.

I was starting to feel a little embarrassed since strong masculine he-man neighbor that I was, I was supposed to come to the rescue of the damsel in distress. Then to my utter surprise, she says, ‘If you don’t mind me standing on you, I can peer over and guide you where to reach.’ Not needing too much more of an invitation, I said ‘OK, sure.’ She replied ‘Let me know if I am too heavy,’ as she stepped right onto my chest in order to peer over the counter. And get this, she did not even take her heels off! Unbelievable! I was dumfounded, wondering whether it was an elaborate ruse on her part. Maybe her sleepover guest had seen everything and filled her in. Maybe she had snooped around and was playing with me. Was it some kind of test? Or maybe it was perfectly innocent and she just had no qualms or second thoughts about stepping on a man with her high heel shoes. She was guiding me, telling me a little left, a little further, etc. But it was still just out of reach.

I needed to shimmy over just a hair more anyway and told her she needed to step off so I could reposition to get a little more reach and . . . . Instead, she interrupted me politely and said ‘Oh wait, don’t move, you are so close,’ and while standing on me, leaned over to open the kitchen drawer, rummaged around and got another utensil with a slightly longer handle. She handed it down to me in my right hand, still without getting off of me, and I passed it under to my other hand. She continued to peer over and I eventually got the keys but fumbled a little extra clumsily, in order to delay the end of this little scenario as long as I could.

She stepped off me, thanked me and said why don’t you stay for a glass of wine. I agreed and sat on the short canvas couch right off the kitchen while she put her groceries away. I was on the end away from the door facing the kitchenette. When she finished, she sat down with her own glass of wine and took off her pumps with a sound of relief, saying something to the effect of ‘Oh, my feet are killing me from these pumps,’ as she wriggled her toes. I was not going to offer a massage. No need to be too forward and scare her off. Besides, with her self-declared shoe fetish and her willingness to stand on my chest without thinking that she should remove her shoes first, she might continue to lead the way. I did however tell her, ‘Those are beautiful shoes.’ She picked one up, and handed it to me and proceeded to tell me it cost her $475 so she was damn well going to wear it even if it hurt. I could smell the mix of leather and sweat as I inspected it but made sure I was not too obvious. I handed it back after a cursory inspection saying, ‘Here, you better take this back. If I spill some wine on it or something, it will cost me a whole week’s pay to replace it.’ I was kind of hoping she would say something like, ‘You could just lick it off,’ but she did not. She took the shoe and put it on the floor.

She was sitting mostly facing me, upright with her back against the chair arm, and had bent her right leg so her right foot was under her left knee, and had put her left foot on the coffee table after she put the shoe down. I had also noticed she had on blue toenail polish, which was interesting so, keeping the conversation on feet, I said something like, ‘Oh, that is different, what a pretty color.’ She outstretched the left leg toward me and said, ‘You think so? I don’t really like it. I got a pedicure and they put it on for me.’ I said, ‘No I think it’s pretty.’ She said ‘Thanks,’ and told me how she gets a pedicure every week and gets a new color every week on her toes. They were beauties, and very well kept.

As we sat on her couch, the cozy little canvas one, her on the end closest the door, and me on the other end, I noticed she had this little basket of foot creams, pumice tools, and other foot related implements, including a peppermint lotion and a little thing of pure almond oil. I reached for the peppermint oil, opened it, smelled it and said, ‘Mmm, I love peppermint. Anything peppermint, ginger or almond.’ She says, ‘Ooh, give me that.’ I handed it to her and she proceeded to start massaging some of it into the underside of her right foot and then her left.

Not wanting to let things end, I fished a little further and said, ‘Oh, that smells so good I want to taste it.’ Taking the bait, she extended her left foot to me, near my face, but not aggressively, and not too close and said ‘Go ahead.’ I almost blew a) a load in my pants and b) the opportunity at this point because I did not immediately acquiesce. I just sort of froze. In the back of my mind I had thrown the bait out with the presumption that it would never, ever happen, figuring I would just get a laugh, or figuring she would hand me the bottle offering me to try some.

So I just froze, thinking then that my opportunity would slip away. Lucky for me, she said a little indignantly, ‘What? I showered this morning! It’s not like I’ve been walking around barefoot. My feet have been in the shoes all day. They’re clean.’ Needing no further risk of losing a great opportunity, I gave a little lick on the arch, just a modest one, and without even thinking, just said, ‘Wow, that is good..’ She said, go ahead, have a little more. I was amazed that I had met a woman that actually took offense for me not wanting to put my tongue on her feet. Unbelievable! She also seemed to presume that her foot sweat was not at all dirty, and that in her mind they remain ‘clean’ after sweating for 10 hours in leather pumps. What a keeper!

So I gave a few more licks, but started to feel a little embarrassed and did not want to blow it so I said ‘It has a cosmetic aftertaste that is not so good.’ This was partially true. I added in a lighthearted joking tone, feigning sarcasm, ‘No offense to your feet which I am sure would taste great without the lotion.’ She laughed and said ‘None taken.’ Then she added, maybe next time you can try the almond oil.. I was taking a sip of wine, and thinking to myself: Geez, does this get any better; she is actually the aggressor, putting me in a position to play hard to get. I later excused myself.