By My three-year-old has just hit that amazing stage where he only needs to hear a word once before it permanently enters his vocabulary. Two days ago, for instance, he strolled into our kitchen and addressed me as ‘dude’. Then last week he told his baby brother to ‘shut the fuck up’ because he’d apparently overheard me telling someone else to shut the fuck up. Please do send all your Father Of The Year awards to the usual address.
He’s also just learned the word ‘disgusting’. And he uses it to describe three – and only three – things. First are skunks, because skunks smell disgusting. Second are mushrooms, because mushrooms taste disgusting.
Third are my feet.
To be fair, the kid’s got a point. Next weekend I’m walking 105km around the circumference of the Isle of Wight for charity, and the training has left my feet unrecognisable. My heels are cracked and red. The balls of my feet are blistered and weeping. I have tiny little scabs on six of my ten toe-knuckles. And, most disgustingly of all, I’m almost certain that I’m about to lose my left big toenail. It hurts and it’s gone purple and it can only really be a matter of days before it pops off in my sock.
In short, I am the living embodiment of the argument against flip-flops. In a fair and just world, close-up photos of my big toe would be erected in the boardrooms of every flip-flop manufacturer in the world, just to convince them to shut up shop. Every shoe seller should be legally obliged to have a picture of the blister I recently developed on my other big toe – the one that looked like a superglued Haribo; the one I had to lance with a kitchen knife – next to the counter to remind all potential flip-flop customers of the error of their ways.
Esquire readers: you don’t need convincing of the villainy of flip-flops. An anti-flip-flop ideology has long been carved deep into your heart. It’s your raison d’être. It’s what motivates you in the morning. You wake up, punch a picture of some flip-flops as hard as you can and then go to work. To you, the flip-flop is a crime against God. If dressing well is a form of good manners, then to you the flip-flop is a full-force fart to the face.
And yet. Against this wisdom, against the Twitterstorm that swirled last week around this very subject,
No, really. I don’t know this for a fact, but I’d estimate that I own more pairs of flip-flop than any other type of footwear. I’m indiscriminate in my acquisition. I’ve got paper-thin two-quid flip-flops I bought from a shop at the seaside. I’ve got ‘sporty’ flip-flops. I’ve got Birkenstocks by the bucketload. I once had a bespoke pair of artisinal flip-flops handmade for me in Capri. I know, I want to punch myself in the mouth just as much as you do.
Why do I own so many flip-flops? The reasons are numerous. It’s because I like the feeling of air tickling my feet. It’s because I like the spontaneity of flinging them on and racing outside. It’s because, if I’m honest, it’s only sunny for six days a year here and every summer I always forget that I already own flip-flops.
But when I wear flip-flops, I’m also making a statement. For too long, men have been shamed into hiding their feet from society. They’re ugly, we’re told. They’re badly-kept. They’re an affront to anyone with working eyes. Well, I’m not standing for it any longer. What you see as ugliness, I see as functionality. These are feet that have proudly propelled me across thousands of miles, in different climates and continents, upon every conceivable type of terrain. These feet have worked, goddamnit, and now it’s time for their day in the sun.
Let me have this. When the sun comes out, just let me show my feet. That’s all I’ll show. You won’t have to see my hairy back. I won’t make anyone look at the weird mole on my armpit. Nobody has to stare at the impenetrably dense velcro jungle that is my bumcrack. But my feet are a dealbreaker.
I am a 37-year-old man. I have earned the right to some comfort. That’s why, next time the sun comes out, wild horses couldn’t stop me from wearing flip-flops in public. Although, if my toenail really does come off before then, I promise to at least try and remember to wear a courtesy plaster.
