A fetish is a story masquerading as an object.

Robert Stoller

I have known that I had a fetish centered around footwear and mud since before I even knew I was gay.  It wasn’t until I had gone through my entire adolescence that it finally occurred to me that my fantasies only ever featured men. But growing up in a conservative Christian household meant not only that these feelings were to be quashed, but also never to be understood. To this day, I have shared my fetish openly with no one.

Several years ago, I read about people like me in the Experience Project. Since then, I have struggled to find open and honest material that explores this fetish in a thoughtful way.  YouTube can certainly provide the stuff of fantasies, but I needed something more—the stories of people who struggle with the same thoughts and feelings I do…and who are perhaps a little more brave than I am.  

So I started to write my own. 

What started as a little experiment in expression burgeoned into a novel, so I have begun to separate out my writing material.  Posts under the “Branthony Series” are meant to be consumed in chronological order.  Stand-alone posts and stories with limited parts are referred to as “Horny Shorts.” And my latest epiphany comes in the form of “Horny Scenes” which strip away character development and extraneous plot elements and focus on the climactic (pun intended) in roughly 500 words.

From here, you can also visit Tread Files, my YouTube channel. While this represents my latest experimentation in the world of this fetish, I think it’s worth noting that my true passion is in storytelling and that my videos are an attempt to bring this another medium.

Finally, you can see ShoeSnap, which is my drama-free answer to Instagram and features both my favorite stills from my filming escapades as well as staged shots.

All of this has been exhilarating and cathartic, and for the first time in my life, I feel as though I’m embracing this part of me, rather than ignoring or resecting it. I knew the day this blog went live that it was entirely possible no one else would ever find it. That would have been fine—I’m gratified just knowing that it’s out there. But instead I have received dozens of messages from people just like me, letting me know that they found their way here. And perhaps Shoe Horny has been waiting to find you.

-Ryan Bacall, a pen name