PART 2 - The Further Adventures of a Kid Called Casper
by The Duo
It was the 1980’s and at the Mount of Olives Father-Son Revival a guy paid me twenty bucks to smell my Adidas sneakers.
The way I met Mr. Thomas Falkner wasn’t wholesome or heartwarming — it was the kind of social mix-up that only happens when the universe decides to clown on you personally.
It was at the Mount of Olives Father-Son Revival, a big community event meant to shore up Black fatherhood, strengthen families, and remind everyone that dads matter. Noble mission. Beautiful cause. And then there was me — the lone white kid dropped into the middle of it like a marshmallow in a pot of collard greens. My Black foster dad had brought me along, proud as ever, and Mr. Falkner had shown up with his adopted Black son, Richard.
From a distance, though? Folks saw two white guys with sandy-blond hair standing near two Black guys and their brains did the math wrong.
They decided Mr. Falkner was my father.
And look — I get it. We did share a certain “generic white guy” aesthetic. Fairly handsome, if I’m allowed to brag. But Mr. Falkner’s face was basically a tribute to his nose — like God started sculpting him, got really into the nose part, and then forgot to finish the rest. Still, we looked enough alike that people started giving him those proud-dad nods.
Meanwhile, my actual foster dad stood off to the side watching this circus unfold, probably wondering if he should correct people or just let the comedy play out.
The mix-ups got awkward fast. Men clapped Mr. Falkner on the back, telling him he was “raising a fine young man,” while I stood there like a misplaced prop. Richard looked confused. My foster dad looked annoyed. And Mr. Falkner looked like he was trying to figure out how he’d accidentally acquired a second son.
And all of this was happening in a space where fatherhood wasn’t just symbolic — it was political, cultural, urgent. The Revival was meant to be a show of strength for Black families, a response to real concerns about marriages falling apart and dads disappearing. It was serious business.
And then there we were:
Mr. Falkner and me.
Two cornflakes floating in a bowl of Cocoa Puffs.
Not hated. Not unwelcome. Just… glaringly obvious. Every prayer circle, every workshop, every group photo made the contrast louder. And every time someone assumed Mr. Falkner was my dad, it felt like the universe was poking me in the ribs, whispering, “You don’t fit here, kid — but damn if you aren’t trying.”
Anyway, the most awkward interaction of all occurred between the two of us. Me and Mr. Falkner that is. He got me alone and actually asked to smell my sneakers. I’m not kidding. He offered me twenty dollars
He told me point blank that he liked the smell of feet. The worse someone’s socks and insoles smell, the better he liked it.
“I get hard smelling them. After I shoot my load into them, they smell even better … or worse depending on your point of view.”
I let him smell my Adidas and socks, but I drew the line at letting him jack off in them.
He told me afterward — voice tight, nerves buzzing under his skin — that he’d never done anything like this with Richard. Not once. The words came out like a confession he wasn’t ready to make, like he was bracing for judgment that wasn’t even coming yet. And the shame on his face wasn’t subtle. It sat on him heavy, like he was wearing a coat two sizes too big, dragging him down with every breath.
He kept looking at me like he expected me to explode, or preach, or call him out. Like he knew he’d crossed some line and was waiting for the universe to punish him for it. His whole posture said “I messed up” — shoulders slumped, eyes low, hands fidgeting like he was trying to rub the guilt off his palms.
And here’s the part that still twists in my gut:
If I’d been a regular person — clean-cut, straight-arrow, no strange quirks or shadows of my own — I probably could’ve shut him down. Maybe even told him he was some kind of sicko and walked away with the moral high ground. A normal guy might’ve had the clarity to call it what it was.
But I wasn’t that kid.
I wasn’t straight-and-narrow. I wasn’t even crooked-and-consistent. I had my own weird edges, my own offbeat impulses, my own history that made everything feel less black-and-white. And because of that, I didn’t feel righteous enough to judge him. Didn’t feel clean enough to throw stones.
Truth is, I felt a little sorry for him — this grown man tangled up in his own confusion, ashamed of himself, ashamed of what he’d done with me, ashamed that he hadn’t done anything like it with his own son. It didn’t make the moment less strange. It didn’t make him less guilty. But it did make the whole thing feel like two flawed people stumbling through a situation neither one was built to hand.
Who was more pitiable than Mr. Falkner? This crackhead I encountered not long before I left home for college…
I learned early that crackheads operate on a very specific kind of street etiquette:
They don’t approach you until you make eye contact.
It’s like vampire rules, but for chaos.
No eye contact means you’re invisible.
Eye contact means you just signed up for a conversation you absolutely did not want
And once they know you saw them see you see them?
Well, that’s a binding contract.
You can’t claim you didn’t notice them — because they watched you notice them.
Door’s open,
Interaction unlocked.
Side quest accepted.
Now, I also noticed something else — a pattern.
Most of the Mexican crackheads I’ve run into apparently had too much pride to ask Blacks for anything.
They’d walk right past them like they were bill collectors.
But if they spotted a white guy?
All that pride evaporated instantly.
They’d sprint toward us like we were the last ice-cold Gatorades in the desert. And there I was; sandy-blond, blue/green-eyed and my skin … well, my skin was so fair the sun didn’t tan me, it filed a friggin’ complaint! Too long in the sun and I didn’t get bronzed — I would start sizzling like someone left a marshmallow too close to the campfire.
Anyway, so this Mexican crackhead comes straight at me when I was leaving what is now Las Chabelas alone.
No hesitation.
No warm-up jog.
Just full-speed determination like he’d been waiting all morning for someone dumb enough to look around with their eyes open.
I was still young then — and still KIND OF innocent, clueless, still pretending the world made sense.
This vato started offering me things.
All kinds of things.
Rapid-fire, like he was running a yard sale out of his pockets.
I refused everything.
Not because I was tough — because I was terrified.
Half the stuff he listed sounded like it came with side effects.
I didn’t know what any of it was, but I knew enough to fear it.
I kept backing up, shaking my head, hands raised like I was surrendering to gravity.
He kept pitching like he was trying to win a sales contest.
Eventually he gave up, muttered something in Spanish, and wandered off to find another white boy who’d made the mistake of being friendly with his eyeballs.
I called him back because I suddenly had an idea. A wicked, pathetic idea.
I told Diego (not his name – I don’t think I ever knew this guy’s name) I’d pay to have him lick my feet and suck my toes— but only if he found a spot that wasn’t smack in the middle of the park, where every jogger, dog-walker, and kid with a melted ice cream could witness the transaction.
I needed privacy.
Or at least the illusion of it.
And somehow, he actually found a place.
He marched off like a scout looking for high ground, then waved me over to a hiding spot behind the giant sign for the Civic Center. I’m not joking.
We ducked behind it like two fugitives hiding from the sheriff, while the rest of Lynwood kept right on living.
Kids screaming, basketballs thumping, somebody grilling carne asada like they were hosting a block party — and there we were, crouched behind a sign like it was the world’s worst VIP booth.
I remember thinking:
This is crazy. This is absolutely crazy. And I was crazy because I was doing it again … just following the whims of my weird cravings. I was young, clueless and running on pure instinct — the kind that gets you into situations you don’t fully understand until years later, when you’re writing the story for a foot fetish website and realizing how insane it actually was.
Understand, this wasn’t the first time something like this has taken place with me. It was just the first time it was happening on the fly and with a complete stranger—no pre-planning.
And this is how I learned another street rule:
If someone is determined enough, they can turn any public space into a private one…
Even if the “privacy” is just a large sign and a prayer.
Diego paused for a moment once we were safely concealed. Then his listless eyes suddenly twinkled with both lust and mischievousness. I guess what he was about to do was for more than just drug money.
I began taking off my Adidas and socks—apparently too slowly for Diego because he rather impatiently ripped the sneaks and socks off my feet.
I felt the Vato’s tongue and lips tickle-kissing the bottom of my left foot. This hungry, warm mouth tickle tortured my sole and toes in a way no feather or toothbrush or hairbrush ever had before.
I didn’t want to cry out and accidentally get us discovered, but I couldn’t help cackling as this crackhead hungrily licked under my toes. And when he swapped feet—so that his nimble mouth tickled my right foot I got dizzy with bliss.
Then he got rather tender and attacked almost sensuously.
I gasped as the Vato kissed his way over the top of my left foot, then licked it from ankle to toes, leaving a warm trail of sticky wetness on my skin. He massaged the muscle along the top, and my toes curled.
He lifted my foot and licked the bottom again but more vigorously—making me squirm and yelp, my toes curling again. My feet were a little sweaty at the time, but not rank—a kind of exotic fragrance clung to them. Diego took the time to tell me that the smell was arousing and not disgusting. He said some other things in Spanish that I didn’t understand. He nibbled at my heel, proving I was also ticklish there before moving up to my toes. When he began to flick his tongue rapidly between the spaces of my toes, I went absolutely crazy with ecstatic pleasure!
Then he started to SLOWLY nip at my toes, pushing the tip of his tongue in between them to SLOWLY tease the sensitive skin there. I nearly fainted.
He licked and sucked at my toes slowly too, teasing them, nipping at my toenails, listening to me whimper and yelp. My feet were that sensitive! The more Diego played with them and kissed and sucked at them, the wilder my body involuntarily gyrated and bucked. The vato ran his fingers lightly over my arches, tickling and then licking and sucking some more, kneading my toes with insistent crackhead fingers. I Shot my load so hard, Diego gasped at its intensity and backed away.
After this, I really did come close to losing consciousness. When I get super-overly stimulated that sometimes happens. I’ve been told by people I’ve “played” with that I’d shoot my load and go so limp that I’d almost look like I freaking died. My cheeks would be flushed and my blue-green eyes would be rolled back in my head. Little squeals and squeaks of pleasure coming from me would be the only indicators that I was still alive.
So, seeing that I was still breathing, Diego returned to my bare feet and began kissing the soles of my size 10 feet and especially sucking on my toes again. He then began moaning himself as he hungrily licked my sweaty bare feet. He even stroked them so my toes wiggled in his mouth. He again verbally expressed how my feet had the most awesome smell, and he slid his nose along both of my soles and continued licking and sucking.
He sucked my toes for all they were worth until I could even tell that he was going to ejaculate soon himself. He leaned back and then shot his load all over my feet. Then he began licking his own cum off my soles and toes! This act almost got my penis hard enough to go for a second round!
All this happened before I left for college. I was in a far more secure place mentally than I had been during my first years with the Dickersons.
Looking back, I can’t believe I survived with my sanity intact. I mean, I had black foster parents (one of whom I had a crush on), I was gay AND I liked to have my feet worshipped. That’s a lot to deal with. Especially back in the 80’s when I was thirteen/fourteen. I really Lucked out with having the Dickersons as foster parents. As the song says, “God Only Knows” what I would have become without them.
Then there were my black foster brothers.
Vincent, Donell and Ricky — yeah, I hit the jackpot with those three in my life too. Even Donell, who—to this very day—still has me low-key terrified to ask for the remote whenever he’s camped out on MY sofa, watching MY television, in MY house like he pays the mortgage and I’m just the dude who drops by uninvited.
I’ll walk in and see him sprawled out like a crime boss fresh off a victory, remote clenched in his hand like it’s the last surviving artifact of a fallen civilization. And there I am, standing in the doorway, debating whether I value my dignity or the ability to change the channel.
Because asking Donell for the remote isn’t a simple request — it’s a negotiation. A hostage situation. A test of courage. You clear your throat, he doesn’t look up. You shift your weight, he raises the volume. You try again, and he gives you that slow side-eye that says, “You sure you want to die over The Hallmark Channel?”
And somehow… I still love the guy. That’s brotherhood. The kind that’s equal parts loyalty, chaos, and mild psychological warfare.
But back in the 80’s …
Like I said, I grew up with three foster brothers, though “brothers” always felt like a word I had to earn. I met all of them when I was thirteen — that age where everything feels too loud, too sharp, too close to the skin.
Donell was fifteen back then—already carrying the weight of a man twice his age. He moved through the world like someone who expected it to swing first. He once convinced his friends to hide his gun. I was still trying to hide the fact that I didn’t know who I was, or why my chest tightened every time a boy looked at me too long.
Ricky was eight — small, gentle, the only one the Dickersons managed to adopt. The system made them fight for him like he was a prize they hadn’t earned. They deserved better. They deserved ease. They never got it.
If Donell and I had been younger, maybe we would’ve been adopted too. But timing is a ruthless thing in foster care. We aged out of the window before anyone had the chance to see us clearly.
The third brother was Vincent — the Dickersons’ biological son. Older, steady, already living on his own. He treated the rest of us like we belonged before we ever believed it ourselves.
Because Lynwood was what it was, our foster dad Isaac gave Donell and Ricky long talks about being Black boys in America. About danger. About perception. About survival. I stood there beside them — blond, pale, blue-green eyes — feeling like a misplaced object in someone else’s lesson. I wanted to tell him I was gay, that I was a different kind of minority, but the words never came. I didn’t set off anyone’s radar. I had to manually update people, one by one, like a glitchy app.
I feared that when my foster brothers eventually found out ... Well, I figured 'd hear something like:
“So. you were checking us out back then, huh?”
And the truth?
I did look. At one of them. And most-often at Mr. Dickerson. I was thirteen, confused, and drowning in feelings I didn’t have the language for. Shame came later.
One of my brothers definitely knew back then. He never says anything. He never brags about girls around me. He never asks about mine. I think he knew that I knew he knew. But, at that particular point in my life, I was too afraid to confirm it. That’s how my adolescent mind worked — spirals inside spirals.
One evening, Mr. Dickerson came home from work and dropped onto the sofa, rubbing the tension out of his neck. He usually sat in his armchair, but Ricky had fallen asleep in it, curled up like something fragile.
I stood in the doorway pretending to watch TV, but really I was watching him — the way his shoulders rose and fell, the exhaustion in his eyes. I didn’t have a word for the feeling then. I do now.
He opened a letter from the RaiseAChild agency, and something in him snapped.
Mrs. Dickerson walked in, asked what was wrong, and he erupted:
“Tell me why they make it so difficult for Blacks to adopt?? They make it damned near impossible!”
His anger filled the room. And suddenly I remembered: I’d been placed with the Dickersons because Loving Hands (a children’s home) was overcrowded. They hadn’t chosen me. I was a body in a bed, a name on a file. I wondered if he regretted taking me in. If he wished I were someone else, you know? I know for a fact that one of his missions in life was to provide a stable home for disadvantaged black boys who didn’t have one. And here I was, a blond dink with paternal baggage … amongst other flaws. I thought about this and shuddered.
I must’ve gone pale, because Mr. Dickerson dropped his magazine — the one with John Fuqua on the cover — and stared at me.
“Good god, boy! What’s the matter?”
He saw it then. The fear. The misunderstanding. His expression softened. He pulled me down beside him.
“Just because I try to foster as many Black kids as I can … it doesn’t mean I got any regrets about you bein’ here, D-man.”
Then he kissed the side of my head.
The gesture was nothing to him.
It was everything to me.
I gasped. Then my body shut down. I blacked out went limp against him like some fragile thing that had been holding itself together too tightly for too long.
My soul left my body, did a cartwheel, and fainted before I did.
When I woke up, I was stretched out on the sofa with Mr. Dickerson stroking my forehead and Mrs. Dickerson massaging my socked toes like she was trying to summon a genie. She wasn’t even aware she was doing it — her eyes were on my face, not my feet.
Mr. Dickerson said, “He did this before — nearly passed out on the overpass. I’m thinking about takin’ him to a doctor.”
Absolutely not. No doctor needed to discover I was just thirteen, hormonal, and crushing on my foster dad like an idiot. A doctor wouldn’t understand that Isaac Dickerson was a special guy. A guy who treated me like a son even when I didn’t feel like one.
Around that time, Mr. Dickerson appeared on the game show Tic Tac Dough. And when the host asked about his family, he said:
“I have a lovely wife and four sons.”
Four.
Not “one son and three foster sons.”
Just four.
That sentence lodged itself in me like a heartbeat.
One Saturday, Mrs. Dickerson left Pop-Tarts and croissants on the table. Vincent (who hadn’t moved out yet) and Donell fought over the last Pop-Tart like it was the last piece of proof that they mattered. They rolled across the linoleum until Mrs. Dickerson walked in, and suddenly they were “just playing.”
She told us to bring our laundry hampers. I peeled off my socks — filthy, embarrassing — and tossed them in. She held them like they were hazardous material.
She kicked me out of the kitchen because the floor was freezing and I was barefoot. I didn’t mind. The carpet was warm, soft, forgiving in a way people rarely were.
We visited Mr. Dickerson’s sister and her husband, a judge, in Ladera Heights — a neighborhood where success hung in the air like perfume. Donell brought his buddy Tishawn, who treated me like I was invisible unless he needed someone to aim his annoyance at. He was good at that. And believe it or not, it wasn’t racial. Tishawn regarded Ricky the exact same way he regarded me—just Donell’s tag-a-long little brothers (potential snitches) who often prevented him and my foster bro from getting into even more mischief than they already did.
At the judge’s house, I asked his daughter Cookie if I could take off my shoes to feel the carpet. Before she could answer, Donell smacked the back of my head.
“Nobody wants to be up in here smellin’ your stank feet.”
He wasn’t wrong. But it still stung. I could have told my foster bro that, arguably, his feet smelled worse than mine on any given day. But I never did because I valued my life.
Later, the judge gave me advice—told me I should write down my experiences. That my life mattered enough to record. So I did. And that’s how all of this began.
Sometime later, Mr. Dickerson let Donell and me spend the night at Vincent’s new apartment. Vincent was in Vegas with his girlfriend, so it was supposed to be quiet.
Donell lied to Mr. Dickerson and used me as his alibi so he could go to a party. When I protested the idea that he was leaving me alone in the apartment, he slammed me against the wall hard enough to knock pictures down. He told me to stay put and not snitch or he’d kill me. He got right in my face…
“And I ain’t playin’ Davey… YOU LEAVE HERE AND I WILL TURN YOUR PUNK ASS INTO A GODDAMN CAUTIONARY TALE! YOU TELL ON ME AND I WILL DRAG YOU SO HARD THE SIDEWALK WILL FILE A FUCKIN’ COMPLAINT! YOU EVEN DREAM ABOUT TELLING VINCE AND I WILL—”
“I get it, D! I won’t go nowhere … I won’t say nothing to nobody!”
And I stayed put and silent.
He left. I panicked. I drank Schnapps. I watched Miami Vice. I fell asleep.
I woke up alone. Again. And again. Sirens outside. No phone. Couldn’t remember my foster family’s number. My mind spiraled into every dark corner it knew. I waited and waited for Donell and he never came back.
Finally, I went out into the rain to look for him. I was soaked, shaking, convinced something terrible had happened.
Violence in those years didn’t wait its turn. It didn’t build. It didn’t warn. It just erupted — fast, mean, and without mercy. The crack epidemic had the inner-cities strung tight like piano wire, every block vibrating with tension you could feel in your teeth
A man could step out of his house thinking he was just going to a party — clean shirt, pockets light, nothing on his mind but music and maybe a drink — and that was it. That was the last time anyone saw him. One wrong street, one wrong moment, and he was gone.
That was the reality of some places. Sudden. Brutal. Arbitrary. The kind of danger that didn’t care who you were or what you intended. It just swallowed people whole. The Dickerson’s home was in Lynwood—it wasn’t some inner-city hell hole at all. But the place where my foster brother had journeyed for a party that night? It was exactly that in my imagination.
And Donell wasn’t some innocent lamb wandering through the chaos. If trouble sparked in the streets, he wasn’t just nearby — he was just as likely to be the one who lit the fuse. The crack era had everyone on edge, but Donell moved through it like he owned the tension, like the violence answered to him as much as it threatened him.
Knowing this, I really was on the verge of crying.
Then a voice cut through the storm:
“Casper? What the fuck you doin’ out here?”
Tishawn.
TO BE CONTINUED…