Adventures in Cosplay: The Boots of Death

It was the weekend of Sci-Fi Expo and I wanted to go big. I wanted to look damn good. I wanted to be noticed for something other than how fun it is to boing my curls.

Even though my group put our costumes together in less than a week, I was pretty pleased with what we were able to accomplish on a shoestring budget. But I wanted the second glances that I never get in my everyday life.

Why no one ogles me when I’m wearing a ratty t-shirt and no makeup, I’ll never understand.

In an effort to wow the crowds, I wore my Halloween boots. The ones that I so lovingly refer to as my hooker boots. These black, knee-high, lace-up patent leather beauties with 5 inch heels are by far the sexiest footwear I own, and thus they were chosen to compliment my TARDIS dress (complete with a light-up lantern headband!).

This was quite possibly the worst decision of my life.

Between walking the length of the convention center and waiting in line after line, my feet grew achy and sore until they screamed out with the kind of pain you associate with knives and guns and grenades and weapons of mass destruction. I began to shift my weight around uncomfortably. I took tentative steps, 20 paces behind my flat-shoed friends. I even sat when I had the chance. But nothing could stop the feeling that my toes were being permanently mashed and fused together.

I began to doubt the universal sexiness of high heels. Sure, they look good while they’re on and while their wearer can functionally walk without resembling a drunken drifter suffering from vertigo. But there is nothing sexy about feet that have been recently freed from high heel hell. The red, inflamed stumps that once rested flat on the floor, now contorted into mangled claws, pocked with oozing blisters and rage.

But there was no turning back now. I wore the damn boots and I was going to finish the day out looking sexy in them, even if I had to resort to crawling on the floor. I would crawl sexily.

At the end of the day, I trudged back to the car in visible agony. The only thought that kept me shuffling forward was that soon I could take the boots off…and possibly set them on fire.

The second my butt hit the car seat, I frantically began tearing at the laces. The subdued whines of my feet suddenly made themselves known and burst forth from my throat, resonating with the laughter of my friends as they watched me claw my way to feet freedom. I was nearly done removing the laces of the first boot when Sporadatak connected her iPod and blasted Frozen’s “Let It Go.”

I tugged the boot with all the strength I could muster as I sang “conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know” and successfully ripped it off as my friends joined me for “let it go, let it go, can’t hold it back anymore.” Tears welled up in my eyes, a culmination of both the pain and the joy of my newfound freedom. Yet I laughed because the whole scene was so ridiculous.

My friends couldn’t tell if I was laughing or crying, but I assured them that both emotions were necessary under such dire circumstances. I tugged once more and Idina Menzel’s vocals soared to celebrate the removal of the second boot.

The whole ordeal exhausted my entire body and I threw the sexy torture traps to the floor of the car, inviting everyone to the boot bonfire to be held the following night.

Thirty minutes later, my friends cheered me on as I hobbled barefoot into IHOP to drown my pain in maple syrup. The waitress said my costume was cool. And I wasn’t even wearing a bowtie. Win!