The Fetish by Tony-B

Sometimes, it’s as if a key gets turned in your brain, and the memories rush out in a rash – memories that you’d long since forgotten. It was that way with me last week when I was watching an old movie on cable television, called “The Red Shoes”. It’s the story of a ballerina who has a magical pair of red ballet slippers, which drive her to obsession and into madness.

I remembered my own encounter with ballet slippers, and many other things.

But let me start at the beginning…..

I was named after my maternal grandfather who immigrated to the United States from Bulgaria after the Russian revolution of 1917. His name was Anthony William (Americanized) – the last name isn’t important.

But when I was born, just before World War II, I was given the Americanized version, Tony Bill. Years later, I learned that at the time before the war, there was a very popular Radio Show called “Just Plain Bill” who was so well thought of, I was actually named after the Radio Character. Sort of a “Father Knows Best” character. For the purposes of writing this story, and others, I use the pseudonym Tony-B.

After the war was over, I began to go through puberty, and notice girls. As normal for those times, I didn’t know what it was, and in those times it was never discussed among nice people. So as my fascination developed of girls, I became mired in an obsession about them.

I grew up, mostly, in Pasadena California. It was considered “old money” at that time, and a lot of the residents were attached, one way or another to the entertainment business. The movie industry was nearby, and I grew up with actors and other “important people on my own block. Back then, everyone wanted to get into show business, or the fledgling television industry.

I grew up with, and later worked with, such notables as Tom Snyder, George Murphy, Bill Stout, and Carolyn Jones at KTLA Television, one of the first LA television stations.

Like all parents, especially those emigrants who wanted a better life for their children, I was enrolled in one of the several “acting schools” in Pasadena. At that time, Pasadena was also a center for the arts, having several public amphitheaters in parts, and several performing theaters, including a “theater in the Round”, or “Center Theater” as it came to be known. Then, of course, there was the famous Pasadena Playhouse. (See Wikipedia: Pasadena Playhouse.)

I was enrolled in the Pasadena Academy of Drama, a well-known school for potential child actors, such as Dwayne Hickman and Jackie Cooper. (Names, which probably mean very little to today’s generation.) Anyway, the Academy was eventually absorbed into the Pasadena Playhouse, and became part of it.

But during the time I was there, they worked in a third-floor rehearsal hall, above some downtown stores, including a shoe repair shop and newsstand.

It was a large rehearsal hall, and was shared with a ballet company that taught young girls to dance and become ballerinas for three dollars a week. As I recall the year was divided into four quarters, and each quarter, there would be a “recital”, accompanied by a play, produced by the Academy, to show off the accomplishments of the students.

There was a small stage at one end of the hall, with curtains and lights on a dimmer to bring them up and down to increase the excitement, and the curtain had to be pulled open by hand, with a stagehand pulling it behind himself as he worked it across the stage.

But this was show business, and the show must go on.

For the recitals and the plays, folding chairs would be set up, and the children’s parents would get “free” tickets to the performance, and priority seating up front.

During the rehearsals, and the classes, the folding chairs would be stacked against the wall, available, but unused. At the back of the auditorium, there were two long box benches for the girls to sit on while they were putting on their slippers. When I say “box” benches, I mean literally that. The seat consisted of a long box, approximately two feet square, with arm rests at each end, and a wooden railing back. It looked more like a storage box than anything else, and in fact, it was. The seat was hinged, and could be lifted up to reveal a storage space underneath that ran the entire length of the seat – maybe eight or ten feet.

In those days, there wasn’t much knowledge about child predators or peeping toms, and I wanted to see what a girl looked like, under her dress. I figured that if I crawled into the storage part of the box, I could peek out and see what I could see, probably without being discovered if I was careful. I figured it wasn’t much difference than the guys who “accidentally” went into the girls restroom, hoping to see a girl in there, with the excuse that they “made a mistake”. I could always say I was playing “hide and seek”, or that I was hiding and fell asleep…..

Now I have to tell you that wasn’t a very realistic plan, since girls in the dance class wore tights on their legs, and a body covering leotard, covering everything but their feet, which were hidden by the slippers, and wrapped with ribbons up to their ankles. No real possibility of seeing anything. But in a young man’s mind, anything was possible. After all, I was there to see what I could see, even if it was nothing at all.

So I snuck into the rehearsal hall a half-hour before the girl’s class was scheduled to start one day, and secreted myself in one of the two storage benches. I found a crack between the boards on the side of the box, and waited for the girls to arrive. The seat above me was a solid plank of wood, but I imagined that it was a sheet of glass, and that when girls sat on it, I could get a full view of the differences between girls and boys. (Ignoring the fact of the leotards and tights!)

But acting wasn’t my forte’, and neither was spying on the girls. There was so little to be seen from inside the box, it was a virtual bust. But in order to avoid discovery, I stuck it out, and waited for the class to be over, and for everyone to leave. But I did manage to rub myself to orgasm, while imagining what I might have missed under better circumstances.

Interestingly, there were two dressing rooms behind the stage, along with a restroom. And after everyone left the rehearsal hall, I got out of the storage bench, and quietly went backstage to see what I could find. Some of the girls had used the bathroom while I was in the bench, and I hoped that I might find something of interest. Maybe a pair of panties or something…..

Well, I did find a few things – a few disgusting things. There was a pad of some sort that was all bloody, left in a trash basket, and a leotard, and a broken ballet slipper – the ribbons had been torn off. It was actually what is called a “pointe shoe”, the kind which allows a woman to dance on her toes, “en point”.

I stole the leotard and point shoe.

I managed to get out of the rehearsal hall without being discovered, and headed for home with my stolen treasures, not knowing what I was going to do with them, or why I took them. With my heart pounding in my chest, I hid my treasures in the garage out back, and went into the house as if nothing unusual had happened. I left the leotard and shoe hidden in the garage for three days before I touched them again. And when I did retrieve them, I got a strong erection, so I knew there was something about them that made me horny.

I took them into the house, and hid them in my bedroom.

That night, when I was getting ready for bed, I put on the leotard under my pajamas. It was a little tight, but I managed okay. I felt an almost immediate stirring in my groin as my penis grew in size. I hopped into bed, and jerked off by rubbing my penis until I had an orgasm. We boys called it “Making Jizz” at the time. Thank goodness that phrase has been lost over the years. Boys don’t “make Jizz” any more, they simply cum!

At the time, there were a lot of pulp magazines with pictures of tied up women on the covers. Women screaming in terror, threatened with death, but always tied up. The stories inside were all text – no pictures at all, and very few illustrations. But those covers started my interest in bondage. As I lay in bed, in the leotard under my pajamas, and clutching the one, lone shoe, I dreamed of being a girl, who was tied up, and terrified at what was about to happen to me. It always worked – my orgasms became stronger and stronger – and more pleasurable, to boot. I grew to like thinking about being a girl and being tied up. A lot! It became an obsession.

Eventually, I outgrew the leotard, but I never outgrew the feeling – or the desire – of being a woman who was tied up and at the mercy of some dark man who would use me for his own pleasure.

I discovered gags, and self-bondage. It was hard to find a new leotard, but I switched to panties, and started stealing panties of girls I knew off the clotheslines in their back yards. (No washer-dryers back then – clothes were hung out overnight to dry.) And, of course, there was my precious ballet shoe.

I bought a girl’s swimsuit for my “sister” at a local five-and-dime store. And couldn’t wait until I got it home to put it on. It was a two-piece, much like the one Betty Grable wore in her famous World War II pinup photo. (I don’t HAVE a ”sister”!)

But when I put it on, it was a bit tight through the crotch. Not as much material as in a pair of panties, and it was a bit tighter over the penis. So I learned to “tuck” the penis back between my legs when I put on the bottom part of the swimsuit. Looking down, that gave me the look of a perfect girl’s belly. No bulge, and nothing to indicate that I was really a boy down there.

I put on the bra, and it gave me an immediate feeling of satisfaction, even though I was as flat chested as any boy, and could never pass as a girl of my age who was already growing tits. But you could get foam rubber, cone-shaped bust pads at the five-and-dime, and a pair of those fitted inside the bra, gave me the illusion of having breasts – at least small ones.

I took to wearing my swimsuit as often as I dared. It gave me the shape, and figure that I so wanted.

And I couldn’t stop there – I had to have more. I had to experience more or what it felt like to be a girl – to be a woman. I wanted so badly to be a girl/woman. I didn’t care which; I knew that one grew into the other, and couldn’t understand why, with all my praying about it, God wouldn’t wave his magic wand and make me a girl – the girl I wanted to be.

I kept all this hidden from my father, but my mother knew. She let me occasionally wear one of her old skirts when dad was otherwise occupied, and wouldn’t see me. I would dance around the house, spinning around and twirling my skirt so my mother could see what a good girl I would have made.

When I was 16 – maybe late 15 – I bought a red dress by mail order, and wore it to a Halloween party. I’ll write about that some day, but about the red dress, see my story “The Red Dress” also here in the Plaza.

Somewhere along the way, I lost the ballet slipper that so shaped my girlhood – my fetish – my love of self-bondage. One of these days I’ll write about all of it, and maybe put it all in a book.

09.06.10