of revelations: the shoes and the potential rapist

Nobody thought I could be lying about being obsessed about shoes, or about a blogger who wanted to date rape me? You were right. I don’t make jokes about rape. Or shoes.

So here’s the truth, and nothing but the truth.

The shoes

In 1999, just before I started college, my cousins decided to take me out shoe shopping. I had saved exactly 1500 bucks (that’s roughly $24) and I specifically told them this was my shoe and clothes budget. They were a bunch of brand conscious kids so they didn’t care about my budget and took took me to a Nike factory outlet anyway.

The moment I entered, I saw a wall full of white and blue, white and yellow sneakers. My head reeled. All I owned at home was a pair of dirty blue-grey hawaii chappals, a pair of white canvas shoes (the school uniform ones) and a pair of black ballerinas (again, school uniform shoes), and a pair of red sandals for parties, etc.

So I inched closer and closer, when one of the bros stopped me and said – this is the men’s section, and dragged me to a scantier wall, where I saw pink and blue shoes. One pair clearly stood out – black canvas with red laces – and I fell in love. I paid 750 for it, and on my way home I was wondering if I should’ve bought another pair, just in case. I never stopped buying them.

This was 1999, people. I think I may have started the canvas shoe fetish.

Do you wear canvas shoes too? Ever realize you have a similar obsession about something?

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The date rape

This is a story from two or three months ago. I was new to IndiBlogger, and was done lurking in the shadows, so I gingerly entered the group chat. I made “friends” with a blogger, who then proceeded to chat me up via IndiMail, the personal messaging system on IndiBlogger. To be honest, I knew that if I were a man, he wouldn’t have done that, but you know how I am about wanting to fit in, so I responded to him once in a while.

Soon he started following this blog, and left random comments that reeked of I know you so well. I do not like people who try to act over-familiar, so my responses to him became delayed and scanty and mostly contained smileys and thank yous.

On IndiBlogger, it was difficult to ignore him. He kept talking about the fact that he used to write soft porn, to which I never responded. Then he asked me if I wanted to be interviewed on his blog – I didn’t really want to, but politely said sure. He sent me some grammatically incorrect questions, very badly framed, and I asked if he wanted me to correct the English for him, and he didn’t say anything about it, so I was pretty relieved.

Two months ago, he realized that I had said nothing about the interview. So he sent me this:

Of course I already knew he was saying this in jest, but I just couldn’t let it slide. So I confronted him, saying I didn’t appreciate jokes about rape, and he said he only meant it as a joke.

I blocked him. Then I thought some more, and reported him to the IndiBlogger team. Not because I felt threatened by him. I’m sure he didn’t even mean it, but it angered me. What kind of insensitive person jokes about rape?

What would you have done? If you could address this guy directly, what would you say?