They say corns are more common among “the elderly”—as though youths are immune to friction. Foot friction, that is. They say that’s what getting a corn all, er, boils down to (if one will pardon the potential dual meaning of “boil” in this case). Well, that and how one bears their weight while walking. Seeing as how most people don’t have the means and/or good sense to determine the best possible (and custom-made) footwear for themselves, it seems almost inevitable that everyone is condemned to suffer the effects of a corn sooner or later. Women especially.

After all, it’s women’s shoes that promote the idea of “needing” to shove your foot into something narrow in order to be even faintly “à la mode.” For Veronica, the corns that formed as a result came sooner rather than later. Who could really say why? Perhaps the skin on her feet was more sensitive than “normal” women’s feet.

The first time Veronica got a debilitating corn, she had no idea what it was, had never experienced such a unique form of torturous pain. She was sixteen years old when it happened, and she could remember it like it was yesterday. You never forget your first corn. Particularly when it arrives the day (or morning) after you lose your virginity, like some sort of bad omen. The night before, she had worn the most glamorous pink sequined pumps—Jimmy Choo, no less—that she had found like a buried treasure at the thrift store downtown. They were one size too small, but, like Céline Dion, Veronica refused to let such a “trivial detail” influence whether or not that would matter in terms of making it fit. And that’s exactly what she did for the sake of her prom. A night during which her “aesthetic” would be immortalized forever. A bit of “foot discomfort” would be well worth the tradeoff, Veronica figured.

Alas, waking up the next morning with a toe that was sorer than her vagina seemed to announce the contrary. Though, in a way, it was a welcome distraction from the harsh realization that the boy she had allowed not only to “deflower” her, but also to cum inside her in the early hours of the morning had seemingly vanished without a trace. Foolishly, she believed Joel might actually still be there when she opened her eyes again. That, despite being a novice, her “skills” in bed were good enough to merit him staying the entire night instead of skulking out before the sun rose. As though Veronica was some dirty little secret reserved solely for the shadows of the night. It made her feel almost as awful as the goddamn corn on her left foot. For, even though she had one under the bottom of each of her fourth toes (a.k.a. her “ring” toes—though Veronica never met anyone freakish enough to wear a ring on said toe), it was her left toe in particular that was giving her the most shit.

As she lay there fondling the corn like an old man with a younger woman’s tit, she started to look up possible at-home treatments for her mounting problem. Amid her research, she found the origins of the disgusting name (corn? Really?). Apparently, it came from the Latin word “clavus,” meaning nail. And yes, this level of pain surely mimicked what it must have felt like for Jesus as he was being nailed to the cross. It was enough to make Veronica reconsider her former lack of respect for the man—a true sign of her present state of delirium. Hobbling across the room after forcing herself to leave the bed, Veronica made her way to the bathroom to fill up the tub with hot water and soak her feet in it for the recommended thirty minutes before sloughing off some of the excess skin. Fuck it, maybe she would immerse her entire body in the bath as a means to cleanse her aching “central hole” as well.

The only problem was, sitting in there would give her far too much time alone with her own thoughts. Over the years, this fear didn’t stop her from continuing to take long baths as a means to “elegantly” soak her corn-plagued feet. Just as she was in the bathtub now, at thirty-one, “coming to,” as it were, out of her state of reverie—having just spent who knows how many minutes zoning out and remembering all the trauma surrounding her first corn. A trauma she would effectively relive every time she took a bath. Unfortunately, the bath was the cure and the disease. She still thought about Joel practically every time, too. It was impossible to avoid. He was so rooted in the trauma of that first corn (apologies to those who noticed how gross it is to use “root” and “corn” in the same sentence). Like corns themselves, Joel seemed to be one of her pathologies.

Even though she had a few theoretically “great” relationships after that indelible abandonment (Joel didn’t even try to brag about “plowing” her to the other guys at school, which only made Veronica feel worse about how bad she must have been in bed), she kiboshed them all before they could grow to their full potential. Would that she could do the same to her corns, which she only ever allowed to grow and flourish in the too-tight designer shoes she was constantly walking around in. To be fair, though, her job as a high-profile, sought-after publicist did mean she had to look her best at all photographable hours of the day. And she figured if her foot got really fucked up later on in life from how badly she treated them, she would just use the money she made during her “PR heyday” for the necessary corrective surgery. Or whatever. Because she damn well wasn’t going to be caught wearing orthopedic shoes. Especially if Joel ever happened to come across an image of her online. She had to ensure that she was always looking her best. And, without fail, that usually meant suffering in some way to look as such. If in no other fashion (pun intended) than the shoes she willingly chose to wear.

Removing herself from the tub after she had been soaking in there for god-knows-how-long, Veronica wrapped a towel around herself and started padding along to the bedroom when, all of the sudden, she slipped in one of the small pools of water she had created and slammed the side of her left foot just at the part of the big toe where the joint capsule is located. Screaming out in response to the agony of the moment, Veronica held on to the door frame as though her life depended on it, and, in that instant, it kind of did. She might have actually passed out if she wasn’t gripping to something else that reminded her she was still real, still existed in this dimension. Though, more and more, she was starting to severely doubt that. Questioning if she had “disappeared” long ago, like Joel from her room after fucking her with abandon. She never told him (not right away at least)—or anyone, for that matter—that she got pregnant as a result. That’s what you get for giving men unrestrained pleasure: nothing but pain in return. Maybe that’s why all the corns she got afterward felt so much less horrible. As though she had crossed a threshold that had made her immune to certain levels and types of other anguish.

On graduation day, she gave Joel a hug and slipped a letter into his pocket that confessed both how she still felt about him and that she had aborted their baby two years prior. She knew it was a huge risk. That he might show it to other people and mock her. But she had to say her piece, somehow, some way. The written word was usually best with messages like these—it didn’t give people the chance to reply with something that would end up disappointing you and breaking your heart.

It didn’t take long for Veronica’s foot to swell up after her bathroom “snafu.” And while sitting on her bed icing it, she looked toward her closet and considered which dreadfully narrow designer shoe she might don the following morning for her meeting with a potential new client. She could feel herself getting positively titillated over the prospect of how much it would hurt. That’s when it fully dawned on her: foot pain had been her self-medicating drug ever since the pain of Joel. The enduring torment of his rejection, his unrequited love. He never did reach out to her again after high school, so she had no way of knowing what he thought of that letter, or if he ever thought of her at all. No matter though…she would think of him twice as much to fill the chasm where his own lack of thought was.