These Boots Were Made for Talking

Digial art illustration by Stella Kalaw

"You swear too much" topped her husband's list of complaints about my friend Adira. "So coarse, loud and vulgar; can you not hold back?"

"Did you tell him to fuck off?" I asked, but she had started crying. "What a dick," I added.

Obviously, I was of no help.

Later, his comments brought back a memory from the early 2000s when I was cheering on our Canadians at a hockey game in Geneva where I found myself getting far more enjoyment out of the woman behind me whose conversation was peppered with "fuck this," "fuck that," and "fuck him." At the intermission, I turned to her and asked, "Are you by any chance from Montreal?"

"How did you know?"

"Nobody uses 'fuck' like we do." We both laughed, joined by the solidarity of comforting language. I should add Adira's husband is not a Montrealer.

The year I turned sixty, we were out with friends, or maybe we had invited them over—these details become blurred when you turn sixty. My friend Jim looked at my boots and said, "You got your come-fuck-me boots out of the closet." I burst out laughing. His wife was horrified.

"Oh my god, those are HARDLY CFM boots, and nobody actually says it out loud!" I should add that Jim is a Montrealer, but his wife is not, even though she has learned to swear to a suitable standard. Let’s say she has lived there long enough to understand that the term “fuck” is, at times, kind of like punctuation.

I looked at my boots—black leather flats that came up to just under my knee with a slightly pointed toe. Hardly the stuff of scandal. We reminisced about fashion from the 80s—too big hair, too tight Adidas shorts, too much purple, too many terms we no longer use. Mind you, CFM boots comes in handy when you want to watch people squirm.

Back in the day, Adira owned the town. I mean, she still does, but in a more comfortable way, the way a Persian carpet becomes more beautiful with age.

"I fell in love with her in the passenger seat; she was driving standard, smoking a cigarette and backing into a too-small space uphill," another friend, Dan, says about Adira.

She may have been wearing CFM boots but it wouldn’t have mattered; when she walked into a room, there was no question that she was the skipper.

"She is fucking hot," he said to nobody in particular.

I mean, we all were, weren't we? CFM boots or not, we rocked the town. And yes, Dan is a Montrealer.

I know I'm a total hypocrite. I hate it when my kids swear—especially without good reason. I hate it when my mother swears, and I'm guessing my kids hate it when I swear, which is far too often. But, when my father, the one time in his 91-year-old life, swore I absolutely loved it. Maybe that's the lesson—saving for the occasion.

And yes, I have tried to find alternatives. I've tried to copy a friend who balls her little fists, turns red and yells, "Rats." Incredibly she is from Montreal but just doesn't feel the need to swear like I do. But "Rats" just doesn't work. "Fuck” has so many fantastic meanings. A quick Google search identifies the obvious meaning as a noun: an act or instance of having sex. As a verb: to ruin or damage, followed by phrases suggesting annoyance, contempt or impatience. There are thousands more definitions, discussions and essays on the word, but I'm confident in how I use it. And like I said, I'm a total hypocrite.

Arguably, I use the term far more now that I am over sixty, but possibly with more discretion. I hold back from telling the bearded young man sitting next to me on the bench at the pond to fuck off when he asks, "Your toes always been like that?" I live in Ottawa now, after all.

I chuckle and think for a minute that I should tell him instead that they are that way because of years of wearing CFM boots, but again, I keep my mouth shut. Do they even know that term outside of Montreal?

"Arthritis," I answer and slip my Birkenstocks back on—the only shoes that slip on these days, and say goodbye with a smile.

“Fucking arthritis!” says a woman sitting opposite us. I look over and smile.

"Mum," my daughter later says when I tell her about it, "ugly feet are a thing. Uma Thurman has really ugly feet."

She's always got my back, that daughter of mine. I laugh because I don't really care. These gnarled feet of mine have taken me to more cities, hiked to more summits and danced in more CFM boots than most people's pretty feet ever will. Even if they are fucking ugly.

The truth is that on the top shelf in the far-left corner of my closet stand a pair of black suede ankle boots with a four-inch heel. Jim would definitely call them CFM boots. But I can't wear them anymore nor did I ever wear them that much—mostly to cocktail parties where I stood the whole time.

These days I wear what my husband calls "combat boots"—the boots of the punk rockers I was a little scared of back in the 80s. I have a black pair, and it occurs to me that Adira sent me a photo of a bright pink pair she picked up at Winners. Just this past week I saw women here in Ottawa—yes, in the nation's capital—rocking bright blue ones, silver ones and gold ones! We're onto something.

Her husband is working on being less of a dick apparently, but I remind myself to call Adira and tell her two things. First, she should swear whenever she damn well pleases and second, while she can still rock those CFM boots, we've graduated to something better: our Don't Fuck With Me boots.