At any given moment, all across the city, hundreds of women are wearing boots and I want to see them all. They are strolling down the street, they are entering office buildings, they are shopping, eating, reading in the Square, they are dressing up for a night out at a rock club. I want to see them donning their boots. I want to gaze at their legs as they stride across the room, the floor thumping under their weight.

In their mind, they are just putting on a pair of boots. Its just clothes. Nothing special. They have no idea that men are following them down the street whenever they wear their boots, or that on the bus guys are eyeing their legs with a blend of desire and sadness. They have no idea that the glint of light off the leather sends me into a frenzy of passion, that the sound of their heels on the pavement drives me crazy, that I want to be near those boots, to fondle or worship them.

These confessions of submission to the glory of womens footwear must be surprising coming from a guy who used to be a cop. The man with a uniform, the dominant alpha male, a masochist?! Shocking, but true. For one thing, I wasn’t that kind of cop. For another, dominance and submission are on a continuum. They aren’t opposites, just variations. The same drive that makes a guy bossy is the same psychological flirtation that makes him pay to take a whumping from a bitch in boots.

These women in boots are all over the place. I went down to the atrium in my office building the other day and there were several. There was a young long-haired, blonde girl, fresh faced and pink, sitting with a dictionary and a play text, wearing a long white dress and a pair of delicious motorcycle boots, the thick soles splattered with mud. I was thinking of trying to talk to her, but after a while a male friend came up. Dark, thin, slumped, sullen; her perfect match.

Then over near the counter was another blonde; harder, rawer, with a brown suede jacket and a short skirt, stockings and cool plastic boots. She had dishwater blonde hair and a dirty looking nose ring in her right nostril. Her skin had a slightly ravaged look, and a long cigarette poking out of her mouth. Her boots were black, with tall chunk heels. She had a little difficulty walking in them. They were skin tight, molded to the flesh of her perfect calves. The shininess and the tightness thrilled me, and the stockings coming out the top highlighted her muscular thighs.

I wanted to go up to her and ask where she had found them. The Future? London Underground? Or did she have to go all the way to San Francisco or Los Angeles to find something so kinky?

But I didn’t.

Maybe next time.

(Jimmy Doyle is a former New York cop now living in Portland.)