My wife has beautiful feet. Sometimes on weekends, our two boys, age 5 and 7, come into bed with us and then crawl under the covers to play with her feet. Yuk. The boys put their faces right close to her feet and talk about her toes. They say her pinky toes are shaped like cashews and her big toes with the red nail polish are like fat thumbs.
“Let’s have a thumb wrestle,” says the seven year old. “My thumb against your toe.”
She never says a word.
It creeps me out. A substitute for breast fondling? An Oedipal foot fetish?
“Hey guys, cut that out,” I say one morning when it has been going on for ten minutes and they start to stroke her feet and ask her if it feels good. I get up and lift them out of the bed.
“Let Mommy sleep,” I say. “Let’s go to the kitchen and see what Santa brought.”
“Is it Christmas?”
“No, it’s August, but maybe Santa came early.”
“No way,” the older one says. “You’re teasing.”
“Your toes are ugly, Daddy,” the younger one said as we walk toward the kitchen. “You should paint them like Mommy does.”
In the kitchen, there are no presents from Santa. “I guess he’s waiting until Christmas as you suspected,” I say. “But why don’t we have pancakes and bacon?”
That night my wife is reading in bed.
“Why do you let them do that with your feet?” I ask.
“It’s harmless,” she says.
“It’s weird,” I say, “I mean your legs are all bare and everything.”
“You’re being silly. But I’ll tell them to stop if it bothers you,” she says.
“I appreciate that,” I say.
“Is there anything else?” she asks.
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“Well good night then, “ she says and turns over.
Clearly I have annoyed her.
I guess she likes our sons playing with her toes under the covers. It makes me wonder who I married. Maybe I don’t know her at all. Maybe she has a secret identify. Maybe she has a tinder site where she advertises for young boys who want to play with the toes of women in their forties.
I have a dream that night that I am looking for her on Tinder. I know she’s there somewhere. I’m jealous but I’m also excited. It feels licentious and a bit thrilling. Is there another sexual world out there that my wife is part of? I don’t know how Tinder works, so I just swipe a lot because that’s what they do on TV. But I must be doing it right because some of my ex-girlfriends and my one ex-wife start popping up. One girlfriend is looking for moonlit walks. Another loves jazz clubs with dark interiors and gin martinis. The ex-wife is offering spanking services, which given our past relationship, makes a lot of sense. Then comes my wife, wearing a bikini and wiggling her toes.
The next day is Sunday. I get up early, the dream still buzzing around in my head. I make coffee and bring it into the bedroom. She’s still asleep. I crawl under the covers and cuddle up next to her. I’m feeling all sexy.
But there’s something weird under the sheets. Something hard. I pull back the sheets and there are my wife’s feet. But today they are encased in a pair of white Converse hightops. I start to giggle.
“Happy now?” she asks.
“Definitely,” I say. “What a turn on. How about I get you a pair of Air Jordans for your birthday?”
“Red ones,” she says. “I’ll wear them to bed every night, you big dope. Now I’m going back to sleep.”
I realize how lucky I am. She’s definitely the gal for me.