Going to Sri Lanka did me a world of good: I loved the never-ending stream of fresh green. I adored the food. I was fascinated with the locals. Some people have the bizarre notion of doing things, including travelling, to ‘change their lives’. I never wanted to change mine, being happy enough with it as it is, thank you very much, but damn, this trip did change my relationships with my gay best friends.

Let’s explain this one, shall we? Gay men adore outlandish fashion statements. They love Celine even though when you wear it everybody in Malta will think that you bought the high-waisted trousers from the M&S oldies’ department (read: all the floors). They think Vogue covers are important discussion points.  They think a t-bag in a silk pouch is good because of the silk, not because of the delicately flavoured contents. All of this was par for the course prior to the 2010 long haul trip to this verdant country. I listened. I participated.

We would meet up on Saturdays, call it ‘coffees’ and drink a tankard of overpriced cocktails while discussing the merits of the size on pearl necklaces this year. Or ruffles. Or fringes. Or, of course, shoes.

Now you have to keep the reason why women adore shoes in mind: anybody can wear beautiful shoes no matter how fat or ugly they are, which explains why when a woman needs an emotional prep (and prop) she opts for a beautiful Burberry she can sling on her shoulders rather than a too-tight Cavalli skirt which just makes her feel worse. Accessories are body-image generic; they enhance, rather than bring out the worst.  You can have a big fat pimply arse you need to disguise in floor-skimming skirts but hell, that Hermes will still look gorge on your arm, if anything, to deflect from the butt situation.

And men, gay men of course, cannot wear beautiful female clothing. Fashion has come a long way, and these days the gents can don ruffles as much as they could in the 17^th century, wear leggings (if they’re called Russell) and even sarongs. Nonetheless, Roberto Cavalli 5-inch heels and a Chanel puffy bag are still considered OTT, especially if you work in the civil service.

So my bestests gayest friends pile the pressure on to me to wear it for them. They need to be able to wear Zanotti by proxy. The reason why I keep mentioning Zanotti is that unlike Louboutins, Jimmy Choos and Prada, which are infinitely comfortable even when presented in tower format, Zanotti was created for pain. McQueens come close, Manolos sometimes do too, but if you want your old knee injury to come back in flaming torture, you need to be wearing the dreaded Zs.

Obviously for the shoes to look good, you need to look like you are very comfortable wearing them, have a bit of the insouciance (and madness) of Sarah Jessica Parker pregnant in Manolos at 8 months and running. You need to project an image of taking all this, this pain, in your stride. The pain can cover anything from but is not restricted to: the pressure on the ball of your feet, the ludicrous elevation of your sole which was surely not created to hover, the dull thud throbbing through your shins, the sheer lack of control over your knees and ankles and of course, the way that your spine curves forward, throwing your butt back, as it tries to re-align the rest of your body. It is a fight, a battle, sheer war between your spinal cord and knees (and hips – well, all the bits there’s a waiting list at Mater Dei for replacement of) and the shoe leather.

I have to agree that the shoes, studded black gladiators in this case, are nothing if not beautiful: honestly, tear-jerkingly, I’m-so-glad-I-bought-them gorgeous. The heel is a 5-star hotel glossy black pencil, the straps difficult to wield but worth the stab the studs give my fingers every time, the zip at the back difficult to do up but of such solid construction you want to stare at it even if you do get a crick in your neck.

And that is, sadly, the whole point. You cannot walk around staring at them, especially as (please refer to the body part paragraph above) if you do not hold your head up straight and throw your shoulders back you will topple over. I have tried to sit at dinner tables with one leg draped over the other so that the shoes are in my line of vision but end up getting strange looks from The Writer who thinks I’m being whimsical. The only way I can stare at them is if I either use them as a handbag and go barefoot, leave them at home where they can be looked at without inflicting damage (unless, of course, I bump against them) or if I walk around with a mirror on the side of TW’s shoes.

They are serious fuck-me shoes but the last thing you want to do after a session wearing them is have a four-hour screaming romp: it would be much preferable if somebody did a Pulp Fiction and massaged my feet, re-watered my knees and re-aligned my spine. Sexy? To look at maybe. The aftermath is a study in irony.

So the only reason why anybody would wear shoes like these is for the pleasure (and in some cases, infinite envy by those who think the copy from Primark is enough – believe me, I bought that too: it ain’t) of others. You will be pleasing your fashion sisters, gay or straight. You will be pleasing a few foot-fetish men (yes, I think they’re still around) who are, the last I heard, happy with looking at your toes and giving you serious foot stroking and that’s enough for them. You will obviously be pleasing Mr. Zanotti and his bank manager as the shoes fly off the shelves at anything from £400 to over £2,000. But you will most certainly not be pleasing yourself.

And this, I’m afraid is where the whole Sri Lanka issue crops up, and where my bestest gayest friends and I part views. For Sri Lankan women, fashion harks back to, well, Mormon times. They wear shirts with little sleeves. They love their long skirts in Frida Kahlo colours. Their hair remains long and plaited and I wonder if the village hairdressers ever get any business. Their shoes are flat. They are comfortable. They do not stoop to the hideousness of Clarks (sorry to all the fans but no matter how ‘fashion-y’ they make the damn things, they still look like Clarks) and sadly plastic Chinese tat has crept in here too. Yet they don’t wear heels. Ever. Not even on their freakin wedding day.

So I didn’t either. It would have been ludicrous if I had. And I loved it. It was as if somebody had lifted years of heels and pressure off my back.

If all those days surrounded by comfortable women whose smile was not the result of rictus were not enough, we had to (well, had to…) fly to the Maldives afterwards where, at Six Senses, the motto is ‘No News; No Shoes’: the first thing they do to you here is take them away. Which is how I spent so many days walking, cycling and running around a picture-postcard island with no shoes on, getting myself serious scrubs provided by nature (aka: powdered sand) and developed an aversion to anything but a pair of, at a stretch, Havaianas.

And Havaianas, I’m afraid, do not cut it with the gays as they can wear them themselves. They are despairing of me. ‘You’ve changed’ GBF said when I replied to his e-mail about the cover of this month’s French Vogue with a ‘this leaves me unmoved’. He followed that with ‘please feel free to unsubscribe’. He was referring to our life. I cannot imagine what they are gossiping about me but have a feeling that their constant visits to my shoe closet (out of one, straight into another) where I used to let them try them all on may form a part of it. You haven’t lived until you’ve been lashed at by the tongue of your own gay best friend.

I did not set out to change my life by travelling for almost 20 hours to get to some far-flung country which fashion forgot, but if they gays have their way, they’ll change my life for me.