I remember that dinner party like it was yesterday, even though it must have been… oh, a good twenty years ago at least, maybe more. Time just blurs, doesn’t it? Especially when you’ve got so much of it behind you, every single day, every day, it all just becomes this long, winding river. It was at the Millers, the fancy ones in Gramercy Park, you know, the kind of place where you always felt a little out of place no matter how many times you’d been invited. Always an immaculate apartment, the kind with the impossibly high ceilings and the art that looked like it cost more than my entire retirement fund. They had a thing, you see, a very particular thing about shoes. Everyone, *everyone*, had to take them off at the door. It was part of their ritual, their, what’s the word… their *ethos*. And me, well, I had walked. I always walked back then, because who could afford cabs every day when you’re just trying to keep your head above water in this city, even when you’re… well, not young anymore, but still working, still hustling. And I had walked a good ten blocks after a full day on my feet, and it had been one of those truly humid New York days, the kind that just sucks the life out of you, makes everything feel heavy and damp. And I remember getting to their door, and Mrs. Miller, bless her heart, she was already there, beaming, ready with the little basket for the shoes, a little ritual, like I said. And that’s when it hit me. A wave of, well, not exactly panic, but a deep, profound sense of dread. The kind of dread that settles in your stomach and makes your throat tight. Because I realized, with a sudden, horrifying clarity, that my socks… my socks were *not* in a good way. They were old, probably hadn’t been replaced in… well, a while. And after all that walking, all that humidity, the sheer *olfactory evidence* was going to be overwhelming. I could practically smell them through my shoes, even before I had taken them off. A truly pungent, unmistakable aroma. A malodorous reality, one might say, a sensory assault waiting to happen. I knelt down, trying to be discreet, trying to make it seem like I was just carefully untying my laces, but really I was trying to buy time, to concoct some elaborate excuse. Maybe I could just… keep them on? Claim some rare foot condition? But Mrs. Miller was standing there, expectant, her eyes twinkling with that polite, well-meaning insistence. And so, with a theatrical sigh that I hoped would be interpreted as charmingly weary rather than deeply ashamed, I pulled off my loafers. And then the socks. Oh, the socks. The immediate, unmistakable diffusion into the pristine air of their entryway. I swear I saw a flicker in Mrs. Miller's eyes, just a micro-expression of something, a momentary widening, a slight narrowing of her nostrils. Or maybe I imagined it. Maybe it was just my own paranoia, my own self-diagnosis of an acute social catastrophe. But I *felt* it. The temperature of the room, it didn't change, but it felt like it did. I quickly, almost violently, shoved them deep into my shoes, hoping the leather would somehow act as a hermetic seal. But the damage, it was done. The air had been… altered. Compromised, even. And the rest of the evening, it was torture. Every step I took, walking across their polished hardwood floors in my bare feet, felt like a walk of shame. I kept my feet tucked under me at the dinner table, tried not to move too much. I was convinced everyone knew. That they could all still smell it, even through the scent of their expensive catered food and their fancy candles. It was a constant, low-grade cognitive dissonance, trying to participate in intelligent conversation while simultaneously being overwhelmed by the memory of my own offending presence. It felt like I had stained their perfect, elegant evening with something utterly vulgar and irredeemable. And it’s funny, isn’t it? The things that stick with you. The big tragedies, yes, those are obvious. But the small, humiliating moments, the ones that make you feel utterly exposed, utterly human in the worst possible way… those can sometimes leave the deepest scars. I still think about it sometimes, every single day, every day, when I'm getting ready to go out, if there's any chance I'll have to take my shoes off. It's a kind of anticipatory anxiety, I suppose, a lingering effect of that particular evening. A phantom odor that follows you through the years. The things we carry, the utterly ridiculous, mundane things, they weigh just as much sometimes as the truly profound ones. And I wonder if they ever thought about it, if it was just a funny story they told later, "Remember poor [my name]? His *socks*?" The thought makes me laugh, a little, even now. You have to laugh, don't you? Otherwise, what's the point?