Brittney, the Tapgirl Princess

The weekend couldn't come soon enough for Susan Wilms. She had done everything she said she'd do. She'd had her Frye boots and her cowboy boots both tapped up identically—with huge (and noisy) steel horseshoe plates put on the heels, bumper taps under the toes, and two pairs of #4 Eagle plates nailed along the sides of the soles—one on the instep and one on the outside of the sole. Then, she'd made an appointment to have a total hair coloring job done, which she did on Friday afternoon after school. When she got back to her apartment, she looked at herself in the mirror and loved what she saw—bleached platinum blonde waves all over, parted on the left side, with just enough roots showing at the base of her scalp so it was very plain that her natural hair color was much darker, closer to the brown of her eyes. Her mind was running wild. She thought, "This trashy look is so cool on me! John has got to like this!" Instinctively, she unzipped her pants, shoved her hand down to feel her wet clit, and wildly stroked it back and forth, until she finally collected her thoughts and calmed down.

Meanwhile, John, knowing none of this, was doing his own Friday afternoon trolling. After that sudden encounter earlier in the week with Susan Wilms' wild side, he decided he needed to center himself back into his teen world. So after school he hitched a ride to the mall with an older friend and hung out there to wait for Brittney to take a break from her after-school cashiering job at the mall's drug store. While she worked the cash register, Brittney noticed John hanging out nearby, and she motioned to him, making like she was dragging on a cigarette, implying that she'd be taking a smoking break soon.

Five or ten minutes later, Brittney called out to her supervisor that she was going on her break, and seconds later John heard her click-clicking loudly on the mall's terrazzo tiles. As they walked together out of the mall's interior into the parking lot, Brittney was already lighting up. At one level John didn't care for Brittney smoking, and several times he'd told her she should quit, but he did secretly enjoy watching her inhale and exhale, her chest expanding each time and the bright red flame coming forward towards the tip before she raised her head skyward and released a huge plume of smoke into the air.

John smiled. "So I see you haven't quit smoking yet."

"John, now why would I do that?" Brittney replied rhetorically. "You know how I love to smoke. And, besides, you know you like looking at me smoking. So shut up and just enjoy it!" And she drew in a deep breath, and inhaled, then breathed in again and inhaled that breath, and out came the biggest plume of smoke John had ever seen.

John decided he couldn't win, so best to change the subject. "So Brittney," what do you think of Ms Wilms, our English teacher?"

"Well, it is really cool that she wears taps on her shoes. I think she's worn shoes with taps every day for the past two weeks, hasn't she? And not little mousy taps, either. Number 5s and 6s plus those #7s on the oxfords she wore first. I wonder if other teachers will start doing that. D'ya think?"

"I doubt it, actually." But that wasn't what John wanted to ask Brittney about. "I mean, what do you think of her as a woman, you know. Is she hot?"

Brittney was confused. "What do you mean, 'Is she hot?' She's an A-dult for crissake. Like, she's o.k. as a teacher, but like are you thinking of asking her out or something? She's twice your age, John! If you want to fuck someone, fuck me! I thought I blew you pretty well that time in my bedroom!" Brittney laughed and then gazed confidently into the distance, taking another drag on her cigarette.

"Oh, Brittney, you were awesome! I don't mean she's as good as you. I just wondered, that's all." And John decided he'd better drop the subject. But it was hard for him to get Susan Wilms out of his mind, and he wondered if she really did get horseshoe taps put on her boots and bleach her hair blonde. For the next few minutes, John and Brittney were quiet, the only sound coming from Brittney idly tapping her loafers onto the cement, toe and heel taps clicking in sync, scrape-click, scrape-click, scrape-click, while she continued to take deep inhales of her cigarette.

"Well, John, I better get back inside. My boss thinks I spend too much time on breaks as it is. Are you gonna hang around till I'm done? My dad's coming by at 8 to take me home." And she dropped the remainder of her cigarette onto the cement, and stomped on it with the heel of her loafer, the normal clanging sound her metal taps usually make muffled by the paper and tobacco it encountered as it hit the ground.

"No, I think I'll walk home and get some dinner…. See ya later, Brit." And the two bid each other goodbye as Brittney clicked her way back inside the mall, her shoes making a particularly loud scraping sound against the sidewalk. It was as if she was taking out some annoyance by causing deeper-than-usual scratches and cuts to be engraved onto her metal taps. John sensed Brittney was a little peeved by his question about Ms Wilms being hot, and that maybe she was a little jealous. John smiled.

When John reached home, his mom said he'd gotten a call from a girl named Susan. "She had kind of an older voice, though." So John took the phone up to his room. His heart was racing, and he wasn't sure what he should say. He punched in the number she'd given him.

"Hello," called out a sweet, sexy voice at the other end of the phone.

"Hi, er ah Susan," said John, still unused to referring to his teacher by her first name. "This is John Baker."

"Hi John Baker. I know your voice, silly," said Susan. "I just wanted to tell you that I'm ready to go on that nice long walk in the country we talked about. How is tomorrow morning, like about 10? [pause] Good! Why don't we meet in the Acme Market parking lot at the end of your block?"

"Oh, and John, I've done everything I said I would. I hope you like the new me!"

Saturday was a gorgeous, sunny day, and John told his parents he was going to be out with some friends all day and might not be back until late that night. He had on a t-shirt, jeans, his engineer boots (of course), and carried a leather jacket over his shoulder. Eagerly anticipating his meeting with Susan, he left his house not much after 9:45 to walk the 3 minutes to the corner store. Meanwhile, Susan was up at 7, as eager as John, but by the time she showered, applied makeup, fixed her newly tinted hair, and put on her clothes—a dark purple silky blouse, skipping the brassiere this morning as she sometimes did, and light blue shorts that strikingly contrasted with her newly horseshoed heavy Frye hiking boots—it was nearly 10 a.m. She hardly had time to take the top off her convertible! But she managed to do that and then sped off towards her rendezvous with John.

As Susan's red Miata raced into the lot, top off and windows down, John recognized the car but not the adorable young woman who was driving it! A platinum blonde whose brightly colored hair shown brilliant in the sunlight, a young woman with a confident and winning smile on her face. She looked no more than 22 or 23, John thought. As Susan bounded from the car to meet him walking towards her, she took carefully measured steps with her boots, rather like performing on the stage of a fashion show, twirling around, showing off her hair, then bending over and projecting her left leg, boots raised off the ground with three steel sole plates attracting John's attention. Then, as she pirouetted around 180 degrees and led John back to the car, she lifted each leg behind her, one after the other, much as the winning horse performs its victory trot. As she raised each foot and then tilted it backwards, a gleaming steel horseshoe tap shined in the sunlight, easily seen by her co-conspirator, now close behind.

John caught up to Susan just as she reached the car, held the door open for her, and made sure she was safely inside. Then he walked around to the passenger side, but rather than open the door, he took a running leap and jumped over it, landing first on the passenger seat with his steel-heeled boots--which unfortunately made a slight tear in the leather seat--and then he jumped to the floor. He hoped Susan didn't mind about the tear in her seat leather, and actually she didn't mind at all. She thought, "If my upholstery is going to be scratched up, let it be by John's horseshoe taps. Who knows where today will lead, but right now it makes me think that even after we say goodnight the marks made by his boot heels will stay with me."

The day started out wonderfully. They first drove along the highway to the end of town and as far as Bannister Creek Road, the once-paved road that went past the old mill that had closed 30 years ago. They turned right on the old road, bumpity-bumping for about a quarter-mile, and then Susan pulled the car up onto the side of the road, and the two of them got out and started to walk ahead. Although the old cement had lots of cracks and holes, the pavement was still present in most places, so they had plenty of opportunity to click and clack and scrape their taps along the road. But now they were away from the noise of the highway, and no one was around at all. The solitude was sweet.

This was the first time for Susan in horseshoe taps, let alone having side taps on the soles of her boots, so she had to experiment a little bit with how to walk in them. Luckily the cement was rough and provided some traction for her initial steps. Also, the Fryes were heavy and broad at the heel and had rubber soles and so were pretty stable and really caused her no trouble at all.

"So how do you like the horseshoes and side taps, Susan," John asked after they'd walked for about a half-mile.

"They are really nice," replied Susan. "They're not as loud or as hard to walk in as I thought they'd be."

"Yeah," said John. "I knew you'd have no problems with them. You sound absolutely fabulous walking around in those huge taps, you know." He thought back to Thursday afternoon in her apartment and how much Susan had seemed to change. Or maybe it was he who was changing in her thoughts about her. Suddenly, the age difference didn't seem so big to him at all. He looked at her skipping over the potholes and landing hard on her steel heel plates. All of a sudden, he felt the need to touch her. He ran up to her, and pulled her by the hand towards him. She stopped and turned around, and John pulled her close to him and gave her a big, deep kiss. She kissed back even more strongly, and they embraced for a good minute before they relaxed and continued walking, hand in hand. Until that instant, John hadn't realized how much he liked her-- platinum blonde hair, horseshoe taps, and everything else.

They strolled along the road together, for more than an hour, holding hands like children and talking about all the things in their lives they'd never known about each other—which was almost everything! Finally, they came to where the road meets up with Bannister Creek. At that point a grassy meadow appeared and they decided to temporarily forgo the clicky-tappy sounds of the pavement and walk onto the grass. The grass was occasionally broken by solitary tall oak trees, and when they came upon one that they really liked, its leaves blowing softly in the wind, they decided to rest for awhile. They lay down in the shade of the tree, Susan's head in John's lap. She looked up at the swaying branches above, while John's eyes focused on her freshly blonded hair.

"Susan," he said. "Have I told you how much I love your blonde hair?" They both smiled. "You can see your brown roots really clearly where your hair is parted, and also you have a brown layer under the blonde in back."

"I know," said Susan. "I asked my hairdresser to do it that way. I like that kind of slutty look, don't you?"

"Susan," said John. "I like everything about you." Then he changed the subject. "Susan, can I see your horseshoe taps up close?"

She turned around and lay down so that her legs were right in John's face. He lifted up one leg and looked closely at the bottoms of the boot.

"Wow! I hadn't noticed before--your horseshoe taps are even bigger than the heel—they come over the edge by at least an eighth of an inch, all around."

"Yes, I know. Sam asked me if I wanted it that way. He said that the taps make more noise when they come over the edge of the heel, and also they can be seen more easily. Then I remembered that when I was in college and had taps on my shoes, one time the taps were too large for the heel and came over the edge like that. Those were my favorite pair. So I told him, 'yes, that's the way I'd like them to be.'

She added, "Did you see, Sam put toe-bumpers on the toes instead of regular toe taps, just like on your boots and Brittney's. I'd never had toe-bumpers before, but I love that you can see the steel taps from the front like that, even when the boots are flat on the ground."

"And what do you think of your side taps?"

"I like them a lot. I thought they might hurt my feet when I stepped down on the sole, but I only feel them slightly—just enough to remind me that I have steel plates on the sole. I think I'll take my loafers and flats in to Sam's and have him put side taps on them too. I'll bet even Brittney doesn't have side taps on her flats!"

"No, I don't think she does. You'll definitely be one-upping her on that one."

After awhile, the pauses between their sentences grew longer, and pretty soon they stopped talking altogether, Susan now lying directly on top of John, her legs bent back towards John so he could see her taps, still new-looking but now definitely worn. Her face was buried in the grass next to John's cheek. Soon they started to kiss and their hands traveled over each other's clothes and into private parts. John unbuttoned Susan's blouse enough to touch and squeeze her breasts and Susan unzipped John's pants and slid her hand down inside his shorts. Their kisses became longer and more passionate, and they were about to pull down each other's pants when they started hearing voices in the distance. At first the sounds were faint, but they got louder and louder rather quickly. There were two voices, both young, one male and one female.

"I think someone's coming along the road," Susan said. "We better stop for now. I think we're pretty visible."

They both sat up and looked down the road. Very soon they saw two people on bicycles, a boy and a girl, both with blonde hair and both talking loudly so they could hear one another while they traversed the bumpy road on their bikes.

As the two came into view, suddenly both John and Susan realized that they knew who they were!

"Oh my God, it's Brittney Davis and Barry Browne!" shouted Susan. "Quick, zip yourself up! Get up and let's get behind the tree so they don't see us!"

But it was too late. Brittney saw that the boy getting up from the grass was her friend, John Baker, and that he was with a girl—actually the girl looked to be an adult woman!

"Barry! Look! It's John Baker!" "Hey, JOHN!" she shouted out down the road. "What are you doing all the way out here?"

Meanwhile, Barry had spotted John also. He looked closely at the woman John was with. "Brittney," he whispered. "I think that's Ms Wilms with him!"

"No, silly. Can't be. Ms Wilms has mousy hair. That's a blonde he's …." "Wait! I think you're right!" "Ms Wilms? Is that you?" she shouted excitedly as the two approached on their bikes. "Shit! You look so different! You look great!" She figured she'd better add that too, at least until she figured out if she did like that look on her teacher.

By this point, John and Susan had gotten up, dusted themselves off, and reluctantly began walking towards the old road, just as Brittney and Barry, coming up to them, had slowed their bikes to a stop. "Goddamn, Brittney" exclaimed John, with some heavy annoyance. "Are you everywhere in this town?" He shook his head from side to side. "Can't a guy go off somewhere in peace?" But by this point, he had calmed down, and actually thought this whole scene was funny. He started to laugh, and it was totally infectious. All four of them started laughing and John and Brittney started jabbing each other in jest.

Both couples, of course, were curious about how the other came to be there. Brittney explained that after Barry had finally gotten the courage to put metal taps on his oxfords, she wanted to make up with him and so had suggested that they go bike riding today. John and Susan had a harder time figuring out how to explain their presence in this out-of-the-way place. Susan had an idea just in time. "How we got here," she said, "is that John had bothered me with lots of questions about his assignment for the Great Gatsby and so I suggested that we go for a drive and I could help him understand the underlying meanings that you couldn't get out of just reading it once."

"Going for a drive? But I don't see your car," said Barry.

"Did you see that red convertible back up by the highway?" Susan asked him. Barry nodded that he had. "That's mine. We left it back there when the road became too bumpy to hear one another. So we just got out and started walking. Finally, we got tired of walking and just sat down."

"Wow!" said Barry to John, quite seriously. "I didn't know you were so interested in English?"

Brittney, not so convinced about this story, said somewhat sarcastically, "Yeah, John, by now you must be a total expert on that book." She look at Susan and smiled—almost laughing. "Ms Wilms, this is so unfair! John's getting way more help than anyone else on this assignment! You better grade him on a harder curve!"

Then, she took another look at Susan. "Ms Wilms, you sure changed your look since yesterday. The kids at school are gonna be amazed! If you came into school in those shorts and that top and with your hair so blonde, you'd never get your classes to pay any attention to your English lessons again!" She and the boys laughed.

Susan felt embarrassed. She stepped back, looked down, and shuffled her feet against the cement. But that just drew Brittney's and Barry's attention to her boots. Brittney thought she heard a metallic sound coming from Ms Wilms' boots. "Hey, Ms Wilms, those are cool retro boots you have on. Do those have taps on them too like the shoes you've been wearing to school?"

Susan looked up and smiled, still a bit embarrassed but less so. "Yes, they do Brittney. Actually, see, they have horseshoe taps on them like you and John have on your boots." Susan stood on one leg, leaned on John for support, and lifted her other leg so Brittney could see.

"Cool!" shouted Brittney. "Hey—you've got big side taps and are those toe bumpers too? Wow! You're just like one of us!"

Then everyone looked down to see what each other had on their feet. All four of them were in heavy boots. John with his engineers and double-horseshoes. Brittney, wearing her cowboy boots—the pair with horseshoe taps that she'd gotten at the thrift store. Then John and Susan looked at Barry to see what boots he had on. Barry had on some military combat boots with heavy rubber-cleated soles. When he saw his boots being looked at, Barry turned around, lifted one of his legs behind him, and showed the bottoms of his boots to John and Susan.

Brittney explained. "See. Barry has double-horseshoes on his boots too! Just like John! When we started out this morning, I asked him how he liked the taps on his oxfords, and I told him that the boots he had on should have taps on them too. So we rode over to Sam's and I convinced Barry to have Sam put double-horseshoes and side and toe taps on these boots. See?" Barry held his foot up behind him with his other hand and showed off the three large metal plates on the rubber sole of his boot. "Big ones," he added proudly. "Number 7's on the sides and toes!"

Brittney added, "But I couldn't let Barry do that without getting side taps put on these cowboy boots, so Sam put some on for me—three #3 taps on each side of the sole! Sam had to do it that way cuz the big taps like on Barry's wouldn't work cuz the sole is so curved on these boots."

John then realized they were all alike. "Hey," he shouted. "All four of us have horseshoe taps on our boots and side and toe taps too. We are like a gang!"

Barry added, "And our girl gang members both have bleached blonde hair too, just like gang girls do!" Everyone laughed.

Brittney suggested that they all go back into town together and get some lunch. Everyone agreed that was a good idea. Brittney said she and Barry would walk their bikes so the four of them could keep talking. It was about a two mile walk back to Susan's car, and during that time they all had fun trying to outdo one another with the noise of their horseshoe taps. It became pretty clear fairly soon that it wasn't just four people, but two couples. As they walked, at one point John turned to Susan and whispered, "Is it o.k. for them to call you Susan, too?" She smiled and nodded affirmatively. He then spoke up to the others, "Ms Wilms said that we could call her Susan."

"Susan?" said Brittney. "Gee I didn't know that was your name. Well, nice to meet you, Susan!" and she did a little dance and bowed before her teacher, scraping her taps extra loudly as she did this. So from this point on, it was Brittney and Barry, and John and Susan.

The four of them made a whole day of it. They had lunch at the nearest fast-food place they could find. (All four were starved by then.) Susan invited them all to her apartment for the afternoon, and since Brittney and Barry had had enough bike riding for the day, John and Susan followed each of them to their home, and they all squeezed into her little Miata and drove up the hill to her tower apartment. The four friends played frizbee out on the grass behind the building, and then they went inside to play board games and a few rounds of poker (with appropriate breaks for Brittney to smoke a cigarette out on Susan's deck). Then John and Susan drove to the store and bought some chicken and fixings and brought them back for a bar-b-que dinner that they cooked on the grill on her deck.

As the evening lights flickered on all over town below them, they went back inside, and the boys found Susan's videotape collection and picked out one they thought everyone would like—Fast Times at Ridgment High. The three teenagers identified a lot with the characters in that movie, although as Brittney said, "Kinda lame. We're way beyond that! Like fucking was such a big deal to them!" By the end of the movie, both couples were feeling pretty steamy. A lot of snuggling and touching and kissing was already going on, but since Brittney still regarded Barry as just a friend, she wasn't quite so comfortable doing much more than that, so she decided she'd better call it a night. Susan offered to drive her and Barry home, but they declined and found their way down the hill and back into their neighborhood on their own. Besides, they got to click and scrape their heels along the sidewalk all that way and while that was routine for Brittney, for Barry it was still a thrill to hear those horseshoe taps sounding out his heavy cadence as they headed home. Meanwhile, both John and Susan were completely worn out from the day. Not long after the others left, John fell asleep lying on Susan's lap, and she dozed as well. Around midnight, John woke up and suggested he'd better get home or his parents would start to wonder, so Susan drove him home and came back to an empty house, exhausted and happy, yet still achingly unfulfilled.