“The time immediately after Christmas was always the period of my greatest personal riches when I was a kid, because of the money I would get from my grandparents. My freshman year of high school, I took my holiday windfall and went to Sage Allen (R.I.P) and bought these boots. I had been admiring them for awhile. They reminded me of psychedelic bandanas, which was not really representative of my sartorial style at the time (or ever), but I loved them, and still do. My freshman year, there was an upperclassman girl in my gym class who I was star struck by. She’d show up to gym class late, and ask me if I thought she smelled like drugs, or sex. On her, drugs and sex always smelled the same, like Spiritual Sky African Violet. One day, she saw my boots on a bench in the locker room, and begged me to let her wear them. The plan was she'd meet me in the school parking lot at the end of the day, and give them back. I'd wear her floppy Fred Flintstone Birkenstocks til then. I knew I was getting the short end of the swap, but hoped it would get me into her good graces, and open up a world to me of drugs and sex that smelled like African Violets. Of course, at the end of the day, she was nowhere to be found, and I felt weak, and foolish. She had my beautiful trippy boots, and I had her ugly Jesus of Nazareth sandals. As I was about to leave, she pulled into the parking lot in her boyfriend’s car, plumes of smoke coming out the passenger side window, and handed me my boots. They’d come back to me. They might be the oldest article of clothing I own. They are velvet, and the toes have been glued numerous times. They’ve experienced things that put the scent of that hippie girl to shame. Debauchery should smell like blood, and filth, not flowers.”
