I remember exactly the first time that I realised that I really loved to wear rubber boots. I was fourteen years old. It had rained all night, and on this Monday, my mother said to me : put your boots on to go to school. So I did. My jeans were too tight to enable me to put my boots under my trousers. So I put my brown Aigle on top of my jeans. My legs slipped into the rubber, slipping under the cotton lining and the softness of the rubber. I was almost breathless with excitement. When I went out, to go and look for my school friend, the rain was still falling, but there was a heaviness, a mugginess in the air. When I got to his door, the first thing that he looked at were my rubber boots. We went to school and for the whole length of the road, he did not stop looking at the steps my rubber boots made. Was he fascinated ?

       I knew that I would sweat but at this point, no. After twenty minutes of walking, the heat of the rubber had already started to invade my legs ; I had a feeling of embarrassment and pleasure. The paradox of rubber boots. On one hand there were the looks directed at you, these same questions returned and I, like a conqueror, walked in boots towards the school where I was going to understand that one could be fascinated and insulted at the same time.

      You may have noticed how people stare at you when you are in boots. I was fourteen years old, in my class and my rubber boots seemed to be the number one subject of conversation. I was the only one wearing them, the others would have come much later, so, after the rain.

—But why are you in boots, they asked me.

—It was raining this morning when I put on my boots, I replied as a matter of course.

—And you are not too hot ?

       Certainly I was hot. In fact I was burning. I felt my soaking jeans and some persistent drops of sweat slipping down my legs, burning my socks most probably in nylon. And the more I thought about that, the more I enjoyed it. And the more they asked me the same question, the more I sweated. A vicious circle.

       On this day it happened that my mathematics teacher called me to the blackboard to solve a problem to which I had no answer. In front of the class and on the platform, I had heard and was still hearing the spongy noise of my feet in my boots. Drops of sweat appeared on my face ; my armpits took possession of my shirt. I was there on the platform, searching for the solution of the problem and perspiring more and more, cooking endlessly in the rubber. Then I returned to the back of my class, liquefied, scorned by my teacher, who had the gift of humiliating you as if you were an idiot, when I heard from one of the students : “Fucking hell, how you are sweating !” I felt humiliated by the insult and blushed and for several seconds, my face shone, the smell of warm rubber spread in the classroom and I could sense, by the way some of them stared at me, that for some of them, this smell was either a delight or loathsome… At least for me, when wearing my boots I felt invincible, if you can understand that.

       At lunchtime in the school courtyard I searched for others, who, like me, wore this ‘mark’ –the wellies- and what surprised me was to know that I was not the only one. At the end of the 70s up to the start of the 90s, boots were often worn. Aigle boots, riding boots or PVC. Sometimes I tried to follow my “compatriots” with my eyes, listening to their wet feet in their boots, like a sucking noise. Others like me, with their wet armpits and traces of humidity on the backs of their shirts, and who tried in vain to make the least amount of noise in their boots in order to avoid the floods of questions without replies. And at the same time, with the living hell of timidity, I did not go to see my “brothers” as I did not know if, like me, they were born poor or if they just loved to wear their rubber boots.

       My school friend had left me. The cowardice of school friendship… You wanted to be like everyone else… But not getting a friend who is so different from the others ; people cannot cope with that. It’s like these girls who would like to go out with you... but absolutely not with a guy who is in boots. And as a matter of fact they did not attract me. As I was born poor, I only have a pair of tennis shoes which I used in summer; in the autumn I wore my rubber boots as one wears the burden of one’s poverty. And yet I felt the force of it perhaps like the beggars.

       It was the following year that I found my booted friend. Both of us were pupils in the same boarding school. And if it rained on Monday, I knew I would wear my rubber boots all week… and if I was given detentions it would be up to Saturday. It seemed immediately to me that it was the same thing for my friend. One day we were sitting side by side in class in our rubber boots, our sign of recognition. We certainly played together with our boots under our table. I remember that we felt invincible in the warmth of our classrooms. Changing place at each class break, this noise which was so distinctive of the sweat which rustled in our boots ; we were not alone any more but together. One morning I told him how, in the evening, in my bedroom where three of us adolescents were sleeping, when I took my boots off after having worn them for thirteen hours, the terrific aroma which came out of them, and the look from my roommates towards me, hallucinated by the smell of rubber, which masked the equally incredible odour from their tennis shoes… But it was always only to me that they made their comments on the smell of my feet and armpits. He replied to me : “What the hell’s the matter with that”. I don’t experiment exactly the same as you but almost”. He was right, it was not sufficient to love to wear them, it is necessary to come to terms with them.

      We went together to breakfast. He proudly paraded his boots. His legs and his calves were fine. I saw the rubber of his boots stick to his trousers, then unstick over his feet. I had never seen anyone like him or who had such an elegant step when he was in boots. In the evenings when we did our homework together in the study, this smell was recognisable, as by the end of the day it became more persistent. A feeling, a place… I loved how he wore his rubber boots, it is impossible to write about it : they are images entrenched in the limbs of my memory. We knew that we would, as soon as it rained on Monday morning, come in boots to school. It did not matter if the sun made its appearance during the recreation, because everyone knew, as the saying goes, that after the rain comes good weather… and the sun would be shining on our boots like a gentle reflection, the warmth of the rays of the sun striking on the rubber. Our conversations, our mixed odours, this awakening to something else, this craving for something else, this impossible thing to talk about. The regrets came later for not having dared, and what about this blond shiny face which disappears now, as I get older... But there was still this remorse which in later years is still intact

       From thirteen years old until I was 30, I often put on my rubber boots in order to go to class and later also to work. I remember having to think about it two years ago when I was stopped by the forces of order in connection with an incident on the highway... I had to go to the Police station. I was in rubber boots, wet with sweat because of the “arrest”, splashing about in my boots after a day at work. On this day, I felt a certain feeling of shame when, in front of some gendarmes, I had to take them off : the smell was unbearable… But the look of the policemen directed to me, made me think of the phrase “What the hell’s the matter with that.” Does that mean that you have come to terms with your choice ?

       According to some people, to put on rubber boots is an external sign of poverty, a sign of shame. For me, as for others, it is a sign of pleasure, of an obsession, of a touch of elegance, of a smell. When I wear them still today, I have the impression that I am KING OF THE WORLD. I simply miss this little step, I am talking of, not being ashamed. I am still far from this.