No, these boots only speak truth when they are worn with fine wool, with silk, with a tooled leather belt and an understated silver and black buckle, or fine gabardine slacks, or pressed and creased trousers pleated in the front. They only tell the full story, the real deal, when they are united with an instrument of my aspiration. But usually, most days, my biker boots accompany me wherever I go, little ground-level warning signs that here is a man with something to prove, here is a man with a chip on his shoulder. Here is someone who must be considered further, because steel toes are inherently violent, an escalation, built both to withstand and project forth violence, at need or at will. Steel-toed boots are not merely footwear, not a statement constrained by the dictates or language of fashion.
Steel toes are omniglots.
These boots are a caution, a reminder, to myself and to friends who might forget. They are a signpost at the wood, a guide to the path I have taken and the feelings I carry in my heart through each day. None of my anger, or fear, or the rebellion that they spawn has left me, or been left behind, or forgotten. I walk in these boots from waking to sleep, and remember with each step where it is I am, and where I come from, and to what niche in the class consciousness of America I have attached myself. I wear my boots because they say something about me to anyone observant enough and empathic enough to understand.