In the beginning: My story          





In volume II number II, of Fascination there was an article entitled  "Part One: The Beginning", by a person who used the initials "A.J.".  I have searched for and been unable to find "A.J.". He wrote about his interest in amputee woman. He became sexually aroused when he saw a woman missing a leg.  He liked to bind his feet and toes to make them look crippled and amputated. Some of the many similarities in the discovery and acknowledgment of our interests are: we both discovered our interests at about the same age in childhood, our common interest in amputees, and significantly in binding and playing with our own feet. He found a magazine article about a woman amputee who let men take photographs of her stump for sexual reasons and knew he was not crazy or alone. I found the penthouse monopede-mania articles and knew there were others with my interest in amputee woman. I read an ad in the old Ability magazine for Grant Riddles book Amputees and Devotees. I ordered the book and Grant put me in touch with Bette Hagglund of Fascination. I became a member and told Bette of my special interest in amputated toes. When she found another member interested in toe stumps she brought us together. Now I have found several people who have similar special interests in amputated toes.



When I was a young child I found myself interested in amputated limbs. I was interested in above knee and above elbow amputations, finger and especially and toe stumps. I thought about my feet all the time and played with them whenever I could. I liked to bind my toes. I enjoyed the feeling and did not feel the pain when I tied them back to make the toes look amputated. When I masturbated this felt pleasurable until I ejaculated. It then became very painful and unbearable immediately afterward, and I had to release the binding quickly to relieve the pain. I found that this procedure made my climax much more intense; in fact it made it possible. This is another similarity between "A.J." and myself. 



Through the years of adolescence I vowed to keep my horrible secret to myself. I was also interested in other limb amputations, especially above knee and above elbow. I was ashamed, embarrassed and felt guilty. A non sexual part of the body sexually stimulated me. I felt I should not be turned on by a deformed or missing part of another person. I kept this vow throughout my formative years until I was 17. Then I met my first wife, and I felt that I could not keep such a dark secret from a person with whom I was so deeply involved. I intended to share the rest of my life with her. Although my ex-wife had all her toes, she did have a strangely shaped foot, and that was enough to get my interest. 



After three years, my ex-wife and I were on the verge of separating. She went home to her mothers for some months. She found a lump on her leg and thought it might be cancer and that she would have to lose her leg. Her brother had found the Penthouse Letters and gave them to her to let her know she would be attractive to someone even if she did lose her leg. Knowing that I was attracted to amputees, she told me about the letters.



The lump went away and she did not lose her leg after all, but due to the Penthouse letters, I finally had proof I was not alone. I then knew that there were others sexually interested in amputees.



I purchased all the issues of Penthouse that had the Monopede Mania letters and devoured them. After I read them, idiotically, I felt I did not need the copies of Penthouse and gave them to a friend. I vaguely remember finding an address in the Monopede letters for some amputee group in Arkansas, which I could not find when I tried to contact them.  I wish I had those articles now. When I was in New York I tried to contact the editor who handled the Penthouse letters and was rebuffed. I thought about it and concluded the letters were fictional, but I knew they been based on fact. I wondered if some writer heard about amputee devotees and used that as a basis for the letters since the subject could raise readership, because of its weird subject matter.



After my first wife and I divorced, I promised myself I would not marry an amputee. I could never be sure I was marrying this person for the amputation or for the herself, so I modified my plans.   I then thought if I married a non amputee I would always be looking for the one I missed.  I figured I would just not get married again.  Then I met Judy, my present wife. I really did not want to get married, but the physical attraction was great.



Judy had really short toes that looked amputated. At the time I met her, she had ingrown toe nails which she subsequently had removed. After the nails were removed, her toes looked really amputated.  Before we married, I tried to break off the relationship  because I was not sure if I could make a marriage commitment and cut myself off from possible future relationships with amputees. I found, however, that I could think of no other women, amputee or not. I was captivated by love and obsessed with Judy. She accepted my interests and made it OK for me to be myself, because she had unique interests of her own. I then had what I wanted and did not feel like I was taking advantage of anyone. We have been married 17 years.



I have made wax casts of my feet and Judy's feet.  From these I made latex models that look like her real foot.  I have amputated some toes on the models.  The stumps look life like.  Even with all this at my disposal,  I still want to go out and look for feet which are missing toes. I want to go to the beach and down to the French Quarter to look for feet.  I look for women wearing lots of rings on their fingers or thumbs and ask if they would like a toe ring also. If they are interested, I give them a ring or two and ask for a photograph of the ring on their toe.



Frequently I see women wearing toe rings.  Many days I find no interesting feet or toe rings, and after looking for hours, I feel depressed that I wasted so much time and energy looking. Even if I found a good foot, what would I do with it?  I can't take it home with me.  I want to touch it and kiss it and feel it,   but most women do not want that kind of attention.  Besides,  I am married and do not really want to fool around. Still, I am driven. If I do not go out looking, I feel I have lost an opportunity,  one that I may never get back. 



I am concerned how this behavior is affecting my marriage.  My wife acknowledges my "unique-interests" and says its OK with her. But when I spend time on my "UI" she says I am ignoring her.  She gets angry and jealous.  When we got married Judy gave  me the impression that it was OK with her for me to pursue my "UI".  That was one of the reasons I agreed to marrying her.  After we were married I found that she could not accept the amount of time and energy I was spending on my "UI". Sometimes when running errands I make a sighting and lose track of time. When I am going to meet Judy some where and I have a sighting, I am in a quandary: do I look and take the chance of being late, or do I walk away and lose a sighting?



I was going to meet Judy for lunch in New Orleans. I was a little early and took a walk in the French Market. I looked down just in time to see a foot with nine toe nails and one toe stump. I did not happen to look down, I always look down at peoples feet. I saw a foot with its right great toe amputated so just the first knuckle remained.  My heart exploded.  My pulse raced. I did not have my camera with me, it was in the car.  I was in my work uniform. It is bright blue and has a purple logo on it, hard to be inconspicuous.  The second toe on the left foot was longer than the left big toe (Mortons Toe). The stump toe on the right foot was in effect much shorter than the second toe, since it was shorter before it was cut off.  It looked as though it tried to stop the lawn mower blade and lost.  The stump was perfectly smooth.  The scar was on the top and straight across. It was amputated before the cuticle started, and the part where the nail had been was completely missing. This was the first sighting of a amputated toe stump I had seen in two years.  It was a beautiful stump.  The foot itself was fair and not really to my personal taste, but in good condition over all.  I went into arrest and almost died. I had to follow. It was almost a perfect stump. I wanted to look at it closely and touch it.  I felt great excitement all over my body.  I was trembling.  Although I am heterosexual, if I find a male toe amputee I want to look just for curiosity.  This toe belonged to a man.  I do not let go of any opportunity to see a stump and how it works,  so I followed and watched as the man walked and shopped.  I saw him turn his foot and saw how the stump flexed and turned in the sandal.  I saw the stump try to grasp the sole of the sandal when he stopped and started to walk.  I would have been proud to have had his stump. I followed him and his wife and a friend for a few minutes as they shopped.  I went to get my camera from the car so I could perhaps get a photograph of his stump.  As I got back to the market they were leaving.  I followed them to their car and found they had parked just behind my car. Now what? I could watch and observe this man and his amputated toe. So what? I certainly did not want to touch this man's foot. They drove off. I sat there and wondered what was this all about?  Such Luck! So close and yet so far. When I made the sighting I got that "High", that feeling of excitement. The feelings I got when I saw his amputated stump toe in the black sandal reconfirmed my devotion to toe stumps.   



I know I have no control over those feelings.  They come on by themselves and I just go for the ride.  I can suppress them, but that is very frustrating.  I can pursue them and then I feel guilty.  I feel like I am cheating on my wife when I go looking, it's like a married man who likes big boobs to go to a topless bar and watch the naked body bounce about.  What's the point of all the pursuit?  Yet I get those feelings when I see an amputee and when I go without seeing one for a long time I get nervous and feel I should be out there looking whenever the weather is such that young women will be sunning their toes.



It's that "High" feeling I am after.  I compare myself to a drug addict, or an alcoholic. I am addicted to toes and amputations and the sexual high that seeing an amputation brings on in me. When I don't have the feeling I feel empty and when I get the "fix" I feel OK for a while, but guilty.  Then it wears off, and I need to get another "fix" of stump. It's an endless cycle, that feeling of need drives me. That great "high" feeling I get when I have a sighting reaffirms why I do all this.  



But what do I do if I find someone with an amputated toe?  I can try to make a video of the foot, or use my still camera and try to get some photographs.  When I am at the beach I sometimes find an amputated toe and I would like to set up my umbrella near the person and watch.  Too often I have found a stump and the person is with a crowd of others and I cannot get close enough without being obvious.  If the person is in a food line I get in line behind them.  I can only watch for so long.  If I follow them back to where they are sitting I can be too obvious.  It has happened that I have gotten strange glances from people I have watched.  One lady looked at her feet and asked me what I was looking at,  was there something wrong with her feet.  On my adventures I have either gotten some photos or video and felt successful, or I have not and felt depressed that I wasted my day.  If I have gotten some photos what do I do with them now?  I look at them and get an empty feeling.  I wonder why I spent my money on film and gas to get these pictures and they do little or nothing for me.  



I am compulsive in pursuing my interests.  I feel guilty for spending  time when it probably will result in futile efforts.  I feel guilty for looking at womens feet when I am happily married. Sometimes I feel guilty that I do not have more normal interests such as womens chest proportions.  If I liked breasts as much as toes, would I feel guilty for looking at womens tops?  Would I make such efforts to do so?  Of course I would not need to go to so much effort, because it is not considered to be unnatural for men to be interested in "tits and ass".  Do men go out of their way to go to the beach to look at the bikinis even when they don't like to swim or be in the sun?  



Most devotees, amputee, foot and toe lovers look for stumps, feet, or toes wherever and whenever they go.  They look always. I look all the time also, but I go to extremes and make special trips looking for opportunities to find a glimpse of what I seek.  I will drive 100 miles one way to the water park in Baton Rouge to spend the day looking. I go to Pensacola Fl, 175 miles one way to seek my objective.  I spend too much time pursuing.  Others will look just as intensely as I do,  but do they go to such expense in time and gas?  I feel depressed when I make the decision not to go on an outing when the weather is good and the opportunity is high. I feel I have let a chance go that I may never have again. If I go I feel guilty about letting things in my life go undone.  When I walk the beaches and do not find a good subject, I feel I have wasted precious time I could have used more productively.  



I am driven, insanely, like a dog that chases cars and barks at the hubcaps, what am I going to do with a perfect stump should I be lucky enough to find one? Like a sand castle that I might try to touch, it is hard to feel the surface without destroying it. I think the pursuit of perfect stumps might be the unrecognized goal. The anticipation and the chase are greater than attaining the goal. I never had the real thing, a stump to play with and touch and feel. I want to find a toe stump and touch it.  Kiss it and feel it. I want to massage the foot and manipulate the toes between my fingers.  I want the person whose foot it is to feed me M&M's with her toe stumps.  I want to make a cast of the foot and have it to look at  whenever I want to see it.  But then again I look at my casts, and I get an empty feeling like, "Why did I bother making this?" In the end it is always the same, I feel frustrated and depressed. 



I have found that if I see any particular stump too often it becomes uninteresting. I get bored very quickly and need to see another new and fresh stump. I must rotate my foot models. I can get turned on to the old ones after they have been put away for a while.  My mind forgets what they look like when they are out of sight and suddenly come back into the picture. I can get the same arousal from one that I unexpectedly  unpack from a box where I had stored and forgotten it. If I play with it for more than a few times it can lose its attraction.





Part Two:from wannabe to amputee



I wanted to have a toe amputated since the beginning. I spent hours and days in medical libraries. I have studied the various ways to remove a toe nail.  The terminal symes amputation, which is not used very much anymore, is a simple amputation of the end of the digit.  In 1984 I found a Podiatrist who was willing to perform a terminal syme amputation of the distal end of the distal phalanx of my big toes.  



I got to watch and see the entire procedure.  I saw the doctor cut my toe open and remove the nail and clip off the end of the bone.  I asked questions and he explained and pointed out the parts that were inside my toe.  I was fascinated and loved watching the operation. 



The doctor did not know the real reason I wanted my toes amputated.  I convinced him that I had a problem with pus pocket continually forming on the edge of my nail and I could not stand the pain.  This was true, but I did not tell him I caused the problem to get worse by how I cut my nails, or that I only got

the pain occasionally.  



As it always goes, something good and something bad.  Such luck!   I am very lucky and get so many of the things I want and yet I often miss the mark.



The bad part:  I was horrified to find that he was trying to save the length of my toe with his talents.  He tried to retain the normal toe shape and was very conservative in his removal of bone and flesh.  He made the incision outlining the nail he removed, so the scar is in the shape of the cuticle.  Now it only looks a little shorter and at certain angles  the scar looks like I have a very pale looking nail.  It is hard to tell my toenail is gone.  I wanted my toe shortened to look like it was amputated and he worked very hard to make it look like it was not.  I told him after the surgery that I thought the toe would be much shorter and was surprised that my toe was still nearly its original length.  He told me with pride that he tried to make it look as normal as possible.  I made the mistake of getting both left and right toes done.  I should only have done the right  so I would have the effect of the difference of a long toe with a nail and a stump.  I had seen many photographs in the medical journals and most of the amputations were less conservative than mine,  and those looked very stumpy.  The skin from the bottom of the toe wrapped over the end of the bone and over the top of the toe.  The scars went straight across the toe, starting on one side going over the top near the knuckle and down the other side, no where near the old cuticle.



My second and third toes bilaterally were of normal length.  They were hammered and were in effect shorter than my great toe. There are two ways to correct this deformity.  One shortens the bone so the tendon is looser and doesn't pull the toe up, the other lengthens the tendon and lets the toe relax and lie flat.  I wanted the tendon lengthened so my second toes would lie flat and look longer then my great toe, making it look more stumpy. The doctor and I had talked about this and I was under the impression this was what he was going to do.  Wrong. As I watch in horror he shortened my middle phalange by 1/4 inch on four toes and reattached the tendon at its original length so my toes now lay flat.  In effect they touch the ground at the same point as they did before but now they don't have a hump at the second knuckle.  They look shorter and they are shorter than my great toe stumps. My foot has the same outline as it did before I had any work done on it at all. 





From the time I had the surgery on my big toes to shorten them Iwanted to have the surgery to lengthen my second and third toes.  But the final result left my second and third toes shorter than they were before and so my foot has about the same outline as before, but shorter overall.  The stump of my big toe is longer and sticks out past my straightened, flatter, but now shorter second and third toes.  I have read that artificial joints can be put in to replace joints which were removed to provide more flexibility and lengthen short toes.  I would like to get this done.  Also I would like to get my big toes shortened to the length that I would like. If a woman has small breasts and wants to have them made bigger, or any of a number of purely cosmetic procedures done, it is OK.  I would like to know why I cannot get what I want done without lying to the doctor about the real reasons for the surgery. Could you imagine what a doctor would say if I told him I wanted my big toe cut off because it turns me on?  But if I wanted my nose shortened because it turned me on it would be OK. Now I have my own semi-stump. Although it can give me great pleasure to play with it, sometimes it does not turn me on, and I am just as frustrated as if I did not have it. Its a weird world we live in, isn't it?



In this essay I have addressed how I recognized and acknowledged my unique interests. I am now in contact with other devotees and can discuss mutual feelings, so I don't feel so all alone and abnormal. The remaining problem is dealing with my interests. I have many unresolved feelings which I want to try to work out. I do not know if I am broken so I don't know if I need to be fixed. I do know that my unique interests consume a large portion of my time, and interfere with every other aspect of my life. It remains for me to resolve these difficulties.