The Heart of a Bootblack

By marc peurye
Great Lakes Bootblack 2002
Current Bootblack at the Chicago Eagle

October 2, 2003

3:00 A.M. The key twists in the lock and the door swings open. The bicycle and helmet get deposited just inside the door. The backpack comes off and gets thrown in the foyer leading to the interior of my tiny apartment. Black polish is under my fingernails and leather dye stains the palms of my hands. My body aches and I smell like a walking ashtray. I’d like to think about why I do this to myself but instead peel off my smelly, sweaty clothes and crash into bed alone. The sandman followed me in the room and has already pounced.

I’ve been a bootblack for 12 years. Boots and boot blacking are my passion, my fetish and a symbol of my service to the community, to the people in my chair, and fulfill part of the need in my soul to serve.

This part of my leather journey began with a man named Harry Shattuck. Harry is a thin muscular, hairy, curly haired, very horny man who wore no shirt to show off his muscular and furry chest. He wore short jean shorts that when he bent over didn’t hide much. Watching him bootblack, you felt you were interrupting something erotic. Harry had been the bootblack of AA Meat Market and was at the time the bootblack of the Chicago Eagle, a position he would later relinquish to the second International Bootblack, William Shields, Jr., and later myself. Harry went on to create the first bootblack contest, the International Bootblack Competition. I have just finished my title year as Great Lakes Bootblack 2002 and currently bootblack at the Cellblock Bar in Chicago. Harry used to say our beginnings were with the women in the truck stops but the tradition of boot blacking also dates to the early beginnings of the modern day leather community.

The first thing Harry told me was not to do this for the money and that this will never make you rich. The money has come in handy but one could never actually live on it. He said "do it for the love of doing it." Boots aren’t inanimate objects. They came from a creature that walked, swam, crawled, hopped, or flew over this earth. The leather continues to live on as boots on the feet of the person in the chair. Leather wears - a vest, chaps, pants, and boots, whatever, is a second skin over the epidermis below. Boot leather needs all the care you would give your own skin or it will flake, dry out and crack. You last longer when you take care of yourself. The same can be said of your boots. I get often confused with a shoe shine boy. I will clean and condition your boots. Shine what needs to be shined and oil what needs to be oiled, but when I hold a pair of boots in my hands, I hold a part of the man or woman in the chair. I make love to a person without ever going above their knees. The heart of a bootblack beats with a job well done but also knowing that you gave the person enjoyment and in some select cases made them break a sweat while only sitting there. My people have also told me that they find the smell of the fresh polish is also sexy.

All bootblacks have their own techniques. I like to take a brush and toothbrush around the base of the shoe and clean the edge of the boots. The person feels the brush gently around the base of their foot. Harry taught me to make love to a boot. My bar bootlick is sensuous but fast. I prefer to start at the toe of a boot and going up and around making little circles with my tongue and working my way up and around the boot. Near the base, I lick in long streaks. Keep in mind that every lick, every stoke of a brush, every time you rub in the polish or the wax, every touch is also a touch of the person wearing the boots. While you care for the boot, you care for the man or woman. This is what makes boot blacking different from the shoe shine boy. It is a shared experience of an exchange of power and respect.

Traditionally, boot blacking is also a negotiated BDSM scene. The person who is in the chair is in charge of the scene for all the "bottom" or bootblack will allow. Some people play in the chair and some don’t. I meet some of my most interesting tops by playing, within the law of the state and the bar, in the chair. I have had fire play on my back, been whipped, flogged, had my balls beaten, forced licking scenes, and being crop whipped from above. Add the BDSM power exchange and the endorphins it creates and it makes an erotic situation even more so.

Bootblacks also serve as other things. We are the concierge for the local leather community as we o the boots of people who come in from out of town or just plain information services for what is happening at the event or in the bar. Like bartenders, priests, and hairdressers, we become confessors. Then the submissive and silence serve best in the milieu of silence, understanding, and held confidences.

In the heart of the bootblack are many things but most of all mutual trust, service, and respect.