Chivalry Is on Life Support

The next time we met, I took Brooke for a 10-course tasting menu at one of the best restaurants in the region. We ordered the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu, not an insignificant expense on an assistant professor's salary. I did not recite medieval poetry to her that night. Rather, I jumped all the way to the 19th century, and recited a handful of lines from Anactoria, perhaps the most famous poem of the English poet Swinburne:

I feel thy blood against my blood: my pain
Pains thee, and lips bruise lips, and vein stings vein.
Let fruit be crushed on fruit, let flower on flower,
Breast kindle breast, and either burn one hour.
Why wilt thou follow lesser loves? are thine
Too weak to bear these hands and lips of mine?
I charge thee for my life's sake, O too sweet
To crush love with thy cruel faultless feet,
I charge thee keep thy lips from hers or his,
Sweetest, till theirs be sweeter than my kiss.

"Interesting choice. Do you think my feet are faultless, Walter?"

"Honestly, Brooke, I haven't seen them closely enough to judge for certain, but I basically think everything about you is faultless."

"Are my feet cruel, as well?"

"Cruel only to the extent that I don't get to touch them."

"Would you like to touch them, Walter?"

"Of course I would," I said, staring down at my plate.

"Would you like to do anything else to them? Smell them, perhaps?"

"Yes, Brooke"

"Anything else? Taste them, maybe?"

"Yes, Brooke. I'd like nothing more."

"Nothing more? You'd rather kiss my feet than kiss my lips?"

"No, I didn't mean it that way. I'd like to kiss every inch of you."

"Are you worthy of kissing me, Walter?"

"No, Brooke. I'm self-aware enough to know that you're in a completely different league than me."

"I like your mind, Walter. Tell me more about Swinburne,"

"Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English Victorian poet who was perhaps best known for being a sadomasochist. I think he was really simply a masochist. He believed in male subordination to female authority. He had a strong interest in medieval French culture and history, including courtly love. Apparently, he was hopelessly in love with his own cousin, Mary Gordon, and was completely devoted to her. He worked on and off for twenty years on a 42,000-word poem called The Flogging-Block: An Heroic Poem. It wasn't published until 2011, more than a hundred years after his death. Interestingly, this poem is about teachers whipping boys at Eaton, the famous British boarding school. It's very graphic. I remember these lines:

He'll cut to the bone. He'll draw blood at each cut.

He'll punish your big brother Algernon first.

I don't know which he'll flog -- you or Algernon -- worst.

You'll have to look on -- won't you tingle, by God! --

While Algernon's bottom grows red from the rod.

You'll see the red mark of each twig and each bud

Till Algernon's body is covered in blood.

"How do you remember all that?"

"It's my job."

"I thought your specialty was medieval history and poetry. How come you've memorized a 19th century poem about men whipping boys?"

"Well, I've only memorized a very small portion of it, but, like I explained, Swinburne is interesting to me because of his fascination with medieval courtly love."

"Hmmm. I wonder if there isn't more to it than that?"

It took several more dates before Brooke accepted my invitation for me to cook her dinner at my house. At the end of our dates, she'd present me with her hand to kiss. The night she came over for dinner, she dressed less casually than I had expected. She wore a little black dress, black stockings and heels. After our candlelit dinner, we watched a movie. Brooke removed her heels, and curled her feet under her legs. I sat three feet away from her on the couch, but felt her watching me glance surreptitiously at her feet.

Suddenly, she said, "Walter, my cruel, faultless feet could use a massage. Do you think that you can accommodate them." Looking at me with her teasing, radiant smile, she extended her stocking-clad feet towards me on the couch.

Speechless, my hand trembled as I touched her right foot.

"Wait. Shouldn't a humble knight be on his knees at his lady's feet?"

"Yes, Brooke," I said as I dropped to the floor.

"Yes, who?"

"Yes, my lady." I began strenuously pressing my fingers into the ball of her right foot. Focusing on the movie, she largely ignored me for the next 30 minutes as I worked on both of her feet, occasionally smiling down at me.

When she was finally satisfied, she placed both of her feet over my nose and mouth, and said, "Go on, Walter, inhale deeply." The commingled odor of her sweat, the residual scent of leather from her shoe and whatever fragrance she was wearing was intoxicating.

Watching my expression, she said, "You now may kiss your lady's feet. Gently. A chaste peck on the top of each foot."

That night she slept in my freshly made bed and I slept on the couch.

Two months later, we were married.