My Neighbor’s Punishment Began with a Slipper

I suppose all fetishes are born from a specific instant, a second that gets seared into some corner of the brain and is never erased. Mine has a name, a texture, and a smell: a house slipper. A woman’s. A very specific kind.

I must have been thirteen when I saw it for the first time. My friend Óscar had misbehaved about something at school, I don’t remember what, and his mother gave him a memorable hiding in front of me. I was less than two meters away, frozen, eyes wide, while that woman brought her hand armed with a slipper down on her son’s backside. The sharp sound, Óscar’s reddened face, Lucía’s firm gesture. Something switched on inside me that day and never switched off again.

Lucía was the neighbor on the second floor. Forty-something, brown hair always gathered into a loose bun, wide hips, and a way of walking that made her slippers drag slightly over the terrazzo floor. Those slippers. They were dark blue terry cloth, with a heart-shaped opening over the instep, red inner lining, and a yellow rubber sole that she always kept immaculate.

After that afternoon, my head could think of nothing else. But with one particular twist: in my fantasies, the one getting hit with the slippers wasn’t Óscar. It was me.

I started looking for excuses to go into her flat when no one was there. I knew her schedule, I knew when she went down to shop and when she took the kid to football. I slipped in through the back door that opened onto the patio, went into the little room where she kept the shoes, and stayed there with my heart battering my ribs. I put on her slippers, smelled them, pressed them to my face. The inside still held her warmth, her shape. I even ended up licking the yellow sole. At first it seemed disgusting to me, but the disgust lasted less than the arousal.

That went on for months. Each raid gave me more confidence and less caution, which is the worst possible combination when you’re doing something you shouldn’t.

One Thursday in March she caught me.

I was in the little room by the patio, with one slipper on as if it were a sandal and the other pressed to my nose, licking the sole, when I looked up and saw her in the doorway. Her expression was the perfect mix of surprise and horror, and in that instant I wished the earth would swallow me.

—What exactly do you think you’re doing, Adrián?

She had the habit of pronouncing my name by separating the syllables, as if she were splitting it into three. I don’t know why I remember that so clearly, but that’s how it was.

—Nothing. Nonsense. I’m very sorry.

—You’re sorry? And what am I supposed to do now, tell your mother?

—No, please. Please don’t.

—Leave the slippers where they were.

I put them back with trembling hands, slipped on my trainers, and stood there not knowing where to look. Then I felt an open-handed smack on my backside that made me jump. She had hit me out of anger, hard enough to sting through my trousers.

—Do you like slippers or being hit with them?

—Both things —I said, swallowing hard, so ashamed my voice came out broken.

At that moment the doorbell rang. Someone was at the front door asking for her, and the conversation was cut off at once.

—This isn’t over. You and I will talk later. Now go home and pray I don’t tell your mother.

I took off like a shot. On the one hand, that “you and I will talk later” sounded like a promise. On the other, the threat of telling my mother made my stomach churn. I spent weeks in a constant state of anxiety, watching every time Lucía and my mother crossed paths in the lobby, looking for signs that she’d betrayed me. But nothing happened.

***

Until Easter break.

A few friends from the city came down to the village for those days, and one of those afternoons was organized when there wasn’t much to do except get together. Someone suggested watching a movie and Lucía offered her living room. Not only did she offer it, she stayed to watch it with us. There were eight of us: five boys and three girls, all about the same age. Lucía’s son was the youngest; I was the oldest.

We didn’t all fit on the sofas, so some of us sat on the floor. I positioned myself to Lucía’s left, where she occupied her favorite armchair. She was a bit far from the screen, but very close to her feet. Her slippers. The same as always: blue terry cloth, heart on the instep, yellow sole.

Halfway through the film, the sun came in through the window and was bothersome. Lucía stood up, lowered the blind, and the room fell into dimness. When she sat back down, she let her left foot drop so that the slipper brushed my right thigh. Barely a contact, almost imperceptible. But after what had happened between us, that brush carried enormous weight.

I didn’t look at her. There was no need. I pressed my thigh lightly against the slipper and waited. She answered by moving her toes up and down, a slow, sinuous gesture that could have passed for a simple nervous tic but that we both knew was not.

I got so aroused that the erection became unmanageable. The tracksuit hid nothing. I shifted my thigh until her slipper was underneath it, and then I felt clearly the movement of her toes pressing against me. The soft terry cloth, the warmth of her foot, the measured rhythm. Each second was an electric shock rising from my groin to the nape of my neck.

Then one of the boys complained that the sofa was too cramped and got down onto the floor. The movement pushed me even closer to Lucía. She made room by drawing her left foot back, and suddenly I found myself sitting between her legs, with her calves on either side of my torso.

We were farther back than the others. No one could see us.

Her left foot slid under my thigh until it touched my backside. With her right, she massaged my other thigh, moving up and down with calculated slowness. If heaven exists, it was there, in that dimness that smelled of popcorn and cheap perfume, with a movie no one would remember playing in the background.

I lifted my body slightly so her left foot could settle better. She accepted the invitation and placed it right in the cleft between my buttocks, pressing through the thin tracksuit. I felt the slipper’s terry cloth against that sensitive area and a moan escaped me, which I managed to mask thanks to a noisy scene in the film.

I was purring like a cat. I rubbed my back against her legs trying to contain what was happening to me, but when I thought I couldn’t take any more, Lucía carefully raised her right foot and set it directly on my erection. My backside resting on one slipper, my bulge beneath the other. She began moving her foot in a very slow back-and-forth, up and down, rubbing the full length through the fabric.

It was too much. I started crying. It happened just as the movie ended and I was able to hide it more or less, but my friends laughed at me for a long while over my supposed sensitivity. Lucía withdrew her feet with astonishing naturalness and restored order.

—Come on, enough laughing. Everybody outside, and watch out for cars. Whoever wants water, come to the kitchen.

As always, everyone wanted water. I took the opportunity to go to the bathroom. I had such an erection that I couldn’t pee standing up, so I sat down and waited for it to go down a little. I washed my face with cold water. I took several deep breaths. When I came out, the last stragglers were in the kitchen and I heard her voice very clearly.

—Don’t you want any water, Adrián?

—Yeah, pour me some.

Then, in a tone high enough for the two boys who were still there to hear, she added:

—When you’re done, I need you to help me move something in my bedroom closet.

The excuse was weak, but enough. The others left without suspicion and I stayed behind.

***

When we entered her room, she closed the door firmly. There wasn’t a lock, so she pushed until it fit properly in the frame. She turned to me and, without saying a word, grabbed me over my tracksuit. She squeezed decisively, without gentleness, and looked straight into my eyes.

—Did you like that, you little rascal?

—More than anything in the world.

—I can see that —she said, without letting go—. Look at how hard you’ve gotten.

She kept kneading me as she spoke. Her voice had gone husky, deep, and it turned me on almost as much as her hands did.

—Well, I liked it too. Look at what you’ve done to me. Touch me.

She took my hand and brought it beneath her skirt. When my fingers touched the fabric of her panties, I found them soaked. A wet, thick heat that made me swallow hard. With my other hand I brushed a breast over her blouse and she answered with a low moan that raised goosebumps on my skin.

I tried to kiss her. I had barely brushed her lips when she stopped me cold.

—Don’t rush. You and I still have unfinished business. Take off your trainers and lie on the bed. On your back.

I hadn’t expected that, but I obeyed instantly. I lay down on the burgundy bedspread, which was cold and made me shiver. Then I saw her take off her slippers. She lifted her right leg back with a quick, almost feline movement and slipped one off. She held it up, looking at me.

—Lift your legs.

I raised them together, straight, forming a perfect angle with the mattress. She pulled my tracksuit bottoms and briefs up with her free hand, gripped my legs with her left arm at the height of the knees, and my backside was left completely exposed.

The first slipper stroke tore a shout from me. The second made me clench my teeth. By the third I was moaning with every blow, a mixture of pain and pleasure I hadn’t known could exist. The rubber sole hit my skin with a sharp, heavy sound, and each blow left a mark of heat spreading like a wave.

—Is this what you like?

—Yes. Yes, I like it. But only if it’s you hitting me.

I don’t know why I said that to her. Maybe to flatter her, maybe because it was the absolute truth. Having her punish me with her slipper was the most secret and dirtiest fantasy I had ever had, and it was coming true far beyond anything I had ever imagined.

—I really like it. Truly. I like being hit with the slipper, but I like you too. A lot.

Lucía let go of my legs. She looked at me fixedly, with an expression I had never seen before. Something between tenderness and hunger.

—What happens here is our business. No one can know. Understood?

—I’ll never tell anyone anything.

—Good. Now I want you to enjoy yourself. After that, I’ll enjoy myself.

She leaned over me and took me into her mouth. She started right in with firm sucks that made my back arch. At my moans, she softened the pace: wet, slow kisses, her tongue tracing my full length as if savoring something exquisite, and then wrapping me completely again. She combined her mouth with her hand in a rhythm that utterly undid me. I didn’t last long.

I loved that she swallowed everything eagerly, with a fierce expression that intimidated me a little. She was a lot of woman for a boy with no experience, but that same thing gave me courage.

—I want to do the same to you too.

She kissed me, sharing my own taste. It was the most intense kiss of my life, long, deep, exchanging fluids while her hands roamed over my chest. When I suggested going down between her legs, she shook her head.

—Another day. We don’t have that much time. Right now I want you to do something else. Think you can manage?

—I think so —I said, my voice trembling.

—Of course you can, darling. Leave it to me.

She slipped a hand beneath her skirt, took off her panties, and straddled me. She guided me herself to enter her.

That feeling.

The contact with her pubic hair, the warm embrace of her inside receiving me, the dense wetness, the heat. I felt all of that before she had even settled fully. When she did, I thought there could not be anything better in the world. And I was right. That first encounter, preceded by the beating with her slipper and everything that had happened in the living room, was something unrepeatable.

When I came out ten minutes later, the April sun blinded me. The air smelled of orange blossom and wet earth. I walked toward my house feeling that something had ended forever, but also that there had been no better way to leave childhood behind than that one.