Cultures of Fetishism by Louise J. Kaplan Page A

humiliate sexually. My husband was a liberal in all ways and even believed that one day Chinese girls might be given an education equal to that of their brothers. It wasn’t until later that he realized that equality would mean the end of footbinding. And when he did come to that realization, everything between us changed. However, for the first fifteen years of our marriage, he was a Lotus lover and loved only me and loved to teach me the many ways of the Lotus.
    He began with the average, ordinary way of caressing my lotus. After he carried me to bed, he would simply hold my left Lotus in his right hand. With the point of the Lotus face-up, he would tightly grasp the side of the Lotus in his palms and press his thumb and forefinger on the toes, covering the instep with his other fingers. After a few minutes he would reverse to the right Lotus and perform the same gestures with his left hand. 20
    A few months later, my husband introduced me to more complicated pleasures. At the time I didn’t always know what he was doing. But he seemed practiced in his methods and sure of himself. His confidence was very exciting to me. As I think back now and recall his methods of grasping and caressing my Lotus, they seem rather studied and artificial, almost ridiculous. But in those days whatever my husband did with my body seemed just right to me. Even when the pressure of his hands and fingers verged on pain, ulti- mately his carefully calculated touches on my Lotuses could make my entire body sing sweetly like a lute.
    He would press with his palm and four fingers on the tip of the lotus and instep and then, placing his thumb and forefinger across and under the middle of the arched sole, he would grip tightly and twist his wrist around. Tightly covering my instep with his palm he would lock it under the sole with his thumb, index, and middle finger. His ring finger and little finger would support my heel. He would place the big toe in the center of his palm and press his lit- tle finger down on it. With his thumb and middle finger forming a circle around my shoe he would press the center of the sole against the thumb and forefinger. At a certain moment in this ritual of Lotus caressing, he would ask me to caress his pigtail between my thumb and forefinger. Usually, that would be the moment before the moment of his ejaculation. Sometimes though he would require these pigtail caresses many times during our scenario of love. 21
    After our first year of marriage, my husband supplemented the Lotus caresses with little scenes that he might have learned with the prostitutes, but that soon became our personal joys.
    He would instruct me to sit at the edge of the bed and lean backwards, supporting my upper body by placing my hands behind me. From this half- reclining position it would be easy for me to spread my legs upwards and apart. As he stood facing me, he put my right foot on his left shoulder and grasped my left foot in his right palm. He could gaze at the right foot and feel the left one soft as cotton in his hands. I would gaze up into his eyes and he would lean forward to bite my tongue. He timed the frequency and vigor of his movements with the upward and downward motion of the right lotus on
    his shoulder and convey his mounting excitement to me by grasping the left lotus tightly between his thumb and forefinger. By then I knew to caress his pigtail at just the right moment of his excitement. 22
    Sometimes he would sprawl across the edge of our bed, facing inwards with one foot stretched out and the other hanging beside the bed. He instructed me to sit and rest my thighs on his stomach. My left thigh crossed his knee so that my red shoe could face upwards. My right thigh crossed over my left thigh in such a way that I could draw up my knee to a position that placed my bare lotus in his left palm. He had the red shoe for his visual pleasure and my slender, pointed, soft, glossy bare lotus for sensuous pleasures and for all kinds of