My Haven of Misanthrophy

I have a confession to make. I have more footwear than a straight guy is supposed to have. I’ve got one canvas pair of Adidas sneakers, two pairs of Pumas (the basic suede sneakers, I even had three pairs, I gave one pair up) two pairs of Doctor Marten’s boots (one black and one brown), one pair of Teva sandals, a pair of Spartan slippers, a pair of Islander slippers, a pair of formal shoes that I keep in a plastic bag for special occasions, a pair of really good knock-off plaid chucks that I acquired from my significant other, my trusty combat boots which I still wear on occasion and lastly 14 pairs of Converse Chuck Taylors. Yes… FOURTEEN (more on this later).

This collection did not arise overnight. I never had the intention of becoming the male Imelda Marcos or anything like that.

I got through most of my elementary years owning just two pairs of shoes: one pair of sneakers which would be used for dressed-down occasions and for all PE related bullshit (because it is a well-known and undeniable fact that anything related to PE and sports in general is bullshit) and one pair for school and formal occasions. I never got to choose my own shoes. If they weren’t gifts from my aunts, they would be chosen for me by my mother, who would take measurements of my feet by having me step on a piece of bond paper and then tracing the outlines of my feet.

Those shoes they picked NEVER fit me right. The slippers I was provided with were always too small. Whenever I got home I’d always toss my shoes aside because of the pain I was in and go barefoot, not using my ill-fitting slippers. I used to even walk around outside our apartment in Iloilo barefoot, and we lived near the heart of the city. Wearing slippers became regular to me only when we moved to Bacolod in 1993. I never complained about my tortured feet, nor did I ask for new shoes when I needed them for fear of being labeled a greedy, materialistic pig.

And in addition, I did not always have sneakers. And there was this time that I had them and lost them. "Them" being a pair of white, canvas Tretorns, the type popular among the yuppie set back then.

It was a fateful late afternoon back in January 1992, when I was still living in IloiloCity. I was in the first grade at the time. It was Dinagyang, and like almost all Pinoy celebrations and piestas, there was an area set aside with tables and kiosks serving food and (this is important) alcohol. The area happened to be the street fronting the old SM Iloilo compound. The roof of one of the SM buildings was converted into a stage so performers (with Sharon Cuneta heading the whole thing) could entertain the people eating and drinking below.

My family occupied one table and my dad later on went to another nearby table to sit with his colleagues from the company he worked for at the time.

Free events with alcohol attract all kinds of jackasses. And it was really crowded. People who couldn’t sit were standing elbow-to-elbow. There were fights breaking out all over. People were throwing beer bottles at each other. People were throwing beer bottles at some of the performers and at the cops trying to keep order. My dad was doing some of the throwing! It was insane.

After one of the acts had finished, Sharon Cuneta went up, with a policeman escorting her and implored the crowd to calm down. Then all of a sudden, her police escort fired a warning shot into the air.

People went apeshit.

There was a stampede, with the general direction being away from the stage of course. Tables were being overturned, yellow rice and chicken being cast into the street and gutter. Some people tried to avoid the crush of sweaty, blood-soaked humanity by climbing on tables, one of which, I distinctly remember collapsing under the weight of people. I don’t know where my family went, but they seemed to have vanished at the first sign of trouble. I didn’t do anything. I was stunned and awed. I was just standing there, with people running past me.

Then I was knocked down.

Before I even had time to realize I’d been knocked down and almost trampled, I felt someone pick me up. It was a stranger, and he was bleeding a lot from his head. His blood stained my shirt. It happened to be my favorite shirt at the time, this blue button-down thing that had prints of apples, oranges and bananas on it.

He carried me to a part of the sidewalk away from the direction of the stampede. He set me down and ran off somewhere. I looked at my bloodied shirt and wondered for a while if the blood was my own. Then I looked down. I was missing a shoe. I started to cry.

I would only get to own another (complete) pair of sneakers when I was in the fourth grade (we already moved to Bacolod). This new pair of course, did not fit me well and continued not to fit me well until the seventh grade, when I’d thrown them out because my feet had grown too big.

Seventh grade, I was given these pretty expensive Spalding ‘Olajuwon’ basketball shoes by my dad. Which is weird, because I hated (and continue to hate) basketball with a passion and never played the stupid game out of my own volition. I dreaded every time we had to play basketball for PE. I sometimes made sure I didn’t have my complete PE uniform so I wouldn’t have to play. Since these shoes didn’t fit (of course) and were made out of some space-age material, they fell apart in less than two years. Why my dad decided to splurge on pricey basketball shoes (for me, no less) that year is a mystery.

So for this awkward period in 2nd year and 3rd year high school, I had no sneakers or any kind of rubbers shoes. The Christmas of the year my Spalding basketball shoes were obliterated, I was given a pair of casual brown leather loafers. While grateful, I realized I would have looked too fucking dorky for words if I used them or my school shoes with my PE uniform. My ‘solution’ was to constantly show up in PE class with no complete PE uniform and take my sanctions. Of course I couldn’t do this every week. I had to wear my PE uniform at least SOME of the time. Realizing that it would be a waste of effort to bring my loafers, I wore my formal shoes with my PE uniform. The sad plight of my being an overweight dork in high school was emphasized by the sight of me wearing formal black shoes with my PE shorts and t-shirt.

Then that Christmas my mother gave me an unbranded Made-in-Marikina pair of basketball shoes. I saw the price sticker on the box. Even though it a pentel pen mark obscuring the figures I saw that it was worth 800 Php. Perhaps it was wrong to feel it but I was pissed off, and had thought that Christmas should be the time you get things you want, not the things you need. Seeing the state I was in, my sister ruefully commented that our parents gave her a schoolbag and pencils as her birthday gift when she went to Philippine Science High School in Manila. Putting on the shoes, I was not surprised to discover that they were too tight.

By the February of the New Year, those shoes were no more. They literally disintegrated from a few weeks worth of activity. I got really enraged and cursed Providence for not providing me with the proper kind of shoes. Then I finally did something I never done before. I went to my dad showed him what was left of the new pair and asked for money to buy new shoes. After I did that, this conversation (or something really close to it, at least) followed.

“Nga-a?! Ano natabo sa sapatos nga ginhatag sa imo ni Mommy mo?(Why!? What happened to the shoes your mommy gave you?)” he asked in an accusing tone.

I showed the sad-looking pair to him again because he wasn’t really paying attention until I asked for money. “Nawas-ag na gid ya. Waay-waay gid ang pang-ubra. Hindi na ni guro mapakay-o. (It’s really ruined. The quality wasn’t good at all. They probably can’t be repaired.)”

He blew up on me “Linte! Nami-an ka gid magpagasto sa amon, no? Pwede na mapakay-o ah! (*Expletive* You really like making us spend for you, don’t you? They COULD be repaired)

He then angrily pointed out that my shoes got that way because I didn’t walk properly and because I had bad posture and because I didn’t tie the laces correctly and because I was a lousy no-good kid blah, blah, blah etc.

He then took the shoes and gave them to our cook to bring to one of those sidewalk cobblers to have them fixed when she made her rounds in the wet market the next day.

When I got those shoes back, they looked… functional to say the least. When I put them on they felt tighter than ever. When I used them the next PE session, they held up just fine. But on the way home, one of them literally ripped open from the top. When I got home I showed my shoes to my dad. He was mad again, but less mad than the last time. He gave me 1000 pesos to buy new shoes.

I walked around Robinsons (a bad place to look for cheap shoes, in hindsight) and found a canvas pair of Adidas’s on sale for 500 pesos exactly. It was a size 11. My school shoes and tattered basketball shoes size 8 &1/2 and 9. I tried them on. They felt like two pieces of paradise on my feet! I’d never, ever felt this level of comfort on enclosed footwear! I was never a size 9! Not even a size 10! I’ve been wearing shoes two sizes too small! I looked at the date of manufacture on one of the shoes. The year was 1989. I was wearing a 10 year old pair of brand new shoes. It was unusual, considering Robinsons opened in 1997. The pair must have been bouncing along from stockroom to stockroom with no buyers. I bought them immediately and stupidly returned the change to my dad.

Those shoes were the one thing that made me happy aside from my tapes and music CD’s. I honestly believe that there was a different me before and after I bought those shoes. After years of low-level torture I was free. The shoes are still around still around.

The euphoria of knowing that there were comparatively cheap shoes to be found was upon me. Scarcely 3 months later when I was walking around in the old Gaisano, I spotted a pair of black low-cut Converse Chuck Taylors. Carlo Yrure, a batchmate of mine had pair of black high-cut Chucks. He was the only one in the entire batch at the time who owned them. He bought them because Dimebag from Pantera wore them. I liked the shoes because they were comparatively cheap and they were my size. They cost 450 pesos. I had money with me for some reason and bought them, the clincher being the fact that Dimebag wore them too (he wore high-cuts, though).

People asked me about my shoes when I used them in my next PE class. Asking me why I bought a weird pair of shoes. Some of them probably thought I was insane because chucks were NOT in or cool at all in my school at the time. Some liked them because the Eraserheads wore them (which I did not know at the time).

I shrugged off most of the comments. I just wanted cheap, comfy shoes. But upon spotting the Eraserheads’ UEMP! album cover, I began to want variety as well.

With Converse Chuck Taylor’s being cheap at the time, I started collecting them using allowance money I saved. I got black high-cuts, blue high-cuts, maroon hi-cuts and blue low cuts, black All Star low-cuts, blue All Star low-cuts etc… But my size is hard to come by, especially when all the stocks are old. This was because at the time nobody bought Chucks. So, the stores didn’t order them. And for quite some time I didn’t buy any.

But I noticed more and more chucks on other people every month. It was slowly becoming uso (trendy) for some reason. Then the unthinkable happened. Nike bought out converse. Their marketing machine worked overtime. My eccentricity became a worldwide trend. Chucks were no longer made in the Philippines and in the U.S. as my ‘pre-trend’ pairs were.

And the prices went up. From 450-500 for a Made in the Philippines pair and 750-900 for a Made in the USA pair, Converse (owned by Nike but keeping the original brand intact) jacked up prices to 1,300+PhP and then 1,500+PhP, and then 1,700+PhP for Made in Vietnam, Made in China and Made in Indonesia pairs. And these are just the prices for basic models. Now there are special pairs priced at 4,000-6,000Php.

I was annoyed that many people were wearing the shoes I liked. Probably they were the same people or the same kind of people that ridiculed me for my tastes back in high school. But I was also glad that I wouldn’t have to go far to tickle my podiatric fetish, since the trend made chucks readily available.

My increased allowance in college allowed me to purchase some of the newly made pairs. They aren’t made the same. The fabric is thinner and is part synthetic unlike the old natural “duck-cotton”. The stitches are VERY different. The toecaps are wider. There is no more “Made in the USA” or “Designed in the USA” inscription on the heel patch. The insoles feel less comfortable. The shoelaces are shorter and a hell of a lot flimsier. And as my experience has told me, they are nowhere near durable as the old pairs and last a little over half as long as the old ones. I do like the new chucks enough to keep collecting them if I have the money. (I am not rich by any means. But lacking a social life has its advantages because you don’t have to spend that much money.)

This led me to try out the basic suede Pumas, which I really like. It’s a crime that the new Chucks are now more expensive than the basic Puma sneakers, which are far more comfortable. Chucks still rule more in my psyche though.

But they don’t rule the most! Dr Martens 1460’s take that place in my mind. When I was a kid, I read my dad’s Playboy’s and Penthouses surreptitiously and there were ads for Doctor Martens. I never saw the ads in other magazines. The ad showed ‘punks’, longshoremen, factory workers, Rastas and businessmen wearing just one kind of shoe. Black Doctor Marten 1460’s. They became, to my mind, the epitome of badass, classy, all-around shoes. I’m pretty sure the fact that I only saw the ads on Playboy and Penthouse had a big role in imbeding that thought in my brain.

Immediately after I bought the canvas Adidas sneakers that started it all, I realized I wanted my school shoes to be replaced, because my old school shoes plain sucked. So I started using my NPMT-required combat boots, which fit better and were comfier. Even though we were not supposed to do this, you couldn’t tell if someone was wearing combat boots with the male school uniform because the uniform pants hid the ‘off-kilter part’ of the boots. I even wore them to my graduation march with my barong tagalog because they were ‘shinable’ unlike my dogshit school shoes.

After graduation, I felt greedy and materialistic enough to ask my mother who was at that point already working in the US, for black Dr. Martens so I’d have a durable, decent pair of black school shoes in college. It was the only specific thing I ever asked of her when she was working there. I gave her my size, which as I said earlier, was 11, and the color I wanted, which was black. When they shoes arrived, they were fucking beautiful and…brown… and they were size 9. They absolutely wouldn’t fit me. I was pissed off like the brat I am but since they couldn’t fit, I had to give them to my dad. I told my mom over the phone what happened and she said she insisted I said brown size 9s. I sighed and said nothing. She said she’ll send the correct pair the next time. In the meantime, I used the combat boots for school and formal events.

Packages kept coming; some of them contained shoes. Shoes I didn’t actually ask for. I didn’t list packages without shoes in them.

The next package with shoes from my mother contained unbranded brown hiking boots for which of course did not fit and I had to give to my dad.

The package after that had black dress shoes in it for me. Miracle of miracles, they actually fit. They seemed classy enough that I didn’t want to use them because I actually walk a lot and can go through shoes fairly quickly. This pair is now hermetically sealed and used only when really important.

The next package had 3 pairs of Chucks in them for me. They were size 10s and fit OK when I use thin socks. I felt sad my mom wasted box space since two of the three pairs of Chucks were available in Bacolod.

This isn’t about any package but what happened between the last package and the next one. My dad splurged on Teva sandals because they were 75% off. He gave me one pair, which I use on camping trips. They were okay but I hated having to strap and unstrap them everytime I had to go in a tent or something. After one camping trip, I bought Islander slippers. But on the 2004 Sembreak incident, Carlo Lim and I forgot to bring sandals or slippers. So we bought Spartans from a sidewalk in Escalante(I think) and surprisingly, they had size 11s. I leave this pair in the bathroom most of the time for reasons I don’t know.

The next one had brown Dr. Martens of another model for my dad (!) and New Balance Cross-trainers for me. The Cross-trainers were size 9 again, so I had to give them to my dad. Again.

The one after that held a surprise. It had precious Doctor Martens! For ME! And they fit! But they were brown and hence they cannot be part of the prescribed uniform. I loved them and wore them anyway and alternated them with my combat boots and a pair of all black Chucks (still not part of the prescribed uniform). I was caught a few times and made to do community service, mine being arranging thousands Student Information Forms alphabetically and cutting 200 rolls of cartolina into 800 equal pieces.

Finally a good 3 years since I asked for them, my mom sent a small package just for me. It was the pair I’ve been wanting for so long. Black, 8-eyelet, size 11, Doctor Marten 1460s. They were heavy, like treasures should be. And they were comfy. VERY COMFY. They were hands down the most comfortable pair of shoes I’ve ever put on. They had a heft to them but I got over it in a day. When I put them on with my uniform for the first time, I finally stopped feeling like a dork (temporarily). I was no longer be conscious of the shoes on my feet because of the feeling that I‘d get caught and be made to do dumbshit community service for Uniform Policy violations. I will KILL anyone who’d steal my Doc Martens. Don’t doubt it.

As you may have gathered, I’ve what most Filipinos would consider ‘a lot’ of shoes. I know I won’t need any more for quite some time. But still, whenever I put on a new pair of shoes that fit me, that I actually LIKE, I feel like a new person temporarily. Getting the right pair of shoes feels better than most Christmases I’ve experienced. The exhilaration is near orgasmic. I become less jaded and my urge to slaughter children in their millions is reduced. I lose my existential angst. Content, I am.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 16th, 2005 at 7:34 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.