I bought Z-Coils in the midst of an existential crisis. A month after increasing my testosterone dose, I felt acutely uncomfortable in my skin. My clothes felt wrong, like bad disguises—femme clothes that felt too femme, masc clothes that were featureless and ill-fitting. And then it was my shoes.
I like being taller, so I’d worn heels; when I started transitioning, I switched to sneakers. Now, I felt stuck between two bad options: I resented the flat-shoes-only thing, which I was forcing myself to do out of a sense of obligation to dress masc, but the idea of bringing out my sexy Camper heels sounded worse. While researching an amorphous category I started to call “masc heels”—clogs, cowboy boots, Nike Shox, Rick Owens knockoffs—I made an offer on eBay of $62 for a pair of black orthopedic sandals with a spring-loaded heel, which the seller accepted.
Day 1
The Z-Coils arrive. To call Z-Coils ugly is already to make an ontological error; the shoes exist somewhere outside our prosaic spectrum of aesthetic pleasure. The upper has two sections—a rigid orthotic for the heel and a foam-soled front—with thick leather straps that Velcro your foot in place. The coil is a chubby black spring that terminates in a flat, squarish pad with the proportions of an elephant’s foot. The cushy footbed cradles my foot into a gently angled posture, more like a running shoe than a heel.
On its website, I find Z-Coils was invented by New Mexico department-store owner Alvaro Z. Gallegos in 1991. As he tells it, he’d begun running four or five times a day to manage his stress after his wife, Marcella, died, and the idea came to him on one of those runs through divine inspiration: “I will never forget that moment,” he writes. “The problem was that they (Marcella and God) did not send me an instruction manual describing how to put the shoe together.” His son Andres joined the company in 1995, and over time, its focus shifted from running to pain relief.
Z-Coils claims to help with back pain, hip pain, plantar fasciitis, and more. Research studies on the website illustrate in colorful 3-D heat-map charts a reduction in pressure on the heels and midfoot from a day wearing Z-Coils. There are hundreds of reviews on the site, most overwhelmingly positive; when I was evaluating whether they would skew masc, I was comforted by a customer image of a guy in Z-Coil boots and a Carhartt tee, smoking a cigar at what appears to be a worksite.
Day 2
I wear the Z-Coils to a radio DJ set and bookstore pop-up at the Dunkunsthalle, an art gallery in the skeleton of a former Dunkin’ Donuts. Walking to the subway there, I’m surprised by how comfortable and conspicuously bouncy the shoes are. At the Dunkunsthalle, I talk to my friend Kayla about industrial design-hubris shoes—shoes with ambitions so lavish the final product feels like a Frankenstein mash-up of components with different, sometimes contradictory functions. I buy a pack of weed gummies, then take the train to Nowadays for Body Hack, a monthlyish party organized by and for trans and nonbinary people. There, I have two realizations: (1) Z-Coils are a perfect party shoe—I am baffled, then euphoric, at the absence of the foot pain I expect after a night of dancing—and (2) the flat-shoes-only thing was a delusion. I could and should be doing way more. I felt obligated to make an effort to dress like a man, but no one is asking for that or even knows what that means.
Day 5
I take the Z-Coils out for a day of Manhattan errands with my friend Melvin. We’d planned to go to the Vaquera sample sale—I heard there’s chain mail—but according to a flyer in the stairwell, everything sold out so the sale ended a day early. We walk crosstown to another sale, but I’ve gotten the time wrong; no one’s there, either. I end up walking 12,278 steps.
Day 7
I take a shorter trip in the Z-Coils—from home in Astoria to the SculptureCenter, where the fashion brand CFGNY is having a pop-up, then to the Court Square diner. I don’t suffer from any of the foot complaints Z-Coils claim to relieve, but I do notice they make my posture better—the angled footbed engages the muscles in my back, stopping me from tilting over into a Grinch slouch. My body feels better after a day in Z-Coils than it does after one in my running shoes.
When I get home, I start searching for chain mail on Etsy, still salty about striking out at Vaquera. I’m bored by everything until I find BrooksBot75, maker of incredibly detailed metal bras, pauldrons, and Queen of the Damned headdresses for hot girls and cosplayers. He has a tiny top for $38, a Renaissance Faire version of the Chanel micro bra. It’s modeled on a woman, but I think it would look just as good on a flat chest. A week ago, the cop in my head would have told me not to buy it. I buy it.
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