Brooke moved in with me the week before the wedding, and a few months later we closed on the purchase of an 1800 square-foot, three bedroom, two bathroom home about 10 blocks from campus. It was an older home that had been partially renovated, but which would still require a fair amount of additional work. Given how incapable I was of doing renovation or repair work myself, there was a side of me that wanted to buy a new house. At the same time, Brooke and I thought that most of the newer homes lacked character. Over time, I figured that we would be able to afford to hire contractors to complete the renovations that still needed to be done. Brooke was definitely much more handy than I, but was not up to renovating a bathroom and bedroom and finishing a basement on her own.
She continued waitressing at the restaurant for the first year or so after we got married, despite my many entreaties that she quit the job and look for something more intellectually satisfying. Or that she simply not work at all, but rather spend her time reading, exercising and gardening (all things she enjoyed doing). After all, that's what her humble knight was for; if I couldn't defeat opponents on the field of battle in her honor, the least I could do was provide for her and make her life easier. Chivalry may have been neutered by the modern world, but was not completely dead, I told her.
She resisted at first. But she didn't resist me doing most of the cooking, all the cleaning in the house, and waiting on her hand and foot. And for that, I was truly grateful. A highlight of the day for me was when she would get home from the restaurant, often at 9:30 or 10pm, and I would serve her a glass of wine or a cocktail, remove her shoes and massage her stocking-clad feet from my position on my knees as she sat on a recliner and we discussed each other's day. I especially enjoyed the warmer days -- or during the winter when she had been walking around in winter boots -- when her stockings were moist with sweat. She would permit me to place my nose up against the bottom of her feet and inhale deeply. Sometimes, when she didn't feel like talking, Brooke would order me to lie prostrate on the hardwood floor at her feet, and she would use my face as her footrest as she watched television or read a novel. Often, I would remain in this position for hours at a time, except when one of us would have to get up to go to the bathroom or when she wanted me to bring her a drink or a snack. Despite the opportunity cost -- time I could otherwise have spent working on my next academic book or doing my own reading -- these quiet moments of intimate submission were intensely blissful and fulfilling for me.
Over time, my interaction with Brooke's feet evolved. One Sunday afternoon about four months after we moved into our new house, in the late Spring, Brooke addressed me as I was massaging her bare feet (from my knees as usual).
"Walter, take a close look at my feet and tell me what you see? Do you think Swinburne would describe them as faultless?"
"I see perfection, my lady." I didn't always address her as "my lady," but certainly that was how I addressed her when on my knees before her or during other moments of overt submission.
"Really? What is that you're rubbing now on the bottom of my right foot?"
"A callus?"
"That's right. Is that perfection?"
"I guess not. But it doesn't matter at all to me."
"Whether or not it matters to you is of no importance. It matters to me."
