Stilettos, Porn, and your iPhone 5: how does what we consume define us?

Let me get this on the screen right up front.

I can't wear your shoes, ladies. I can't adorn my tootsies with 95 percent of the strappy, open-toed, glittering numbers stores put in their front windows.

Ever since I was a kid, I've been ordering my shoes from the "Tall Girl" (should be called "Tall Girl with Big Feet") catalogue.

Until Zappos and other online retailers came along, I had to sneak to the back of the store and scan their remnant rack to see if someone had decided there were enough of my kind to produce a shoe I could wear.

Do  I have shoe envy? Of course.

And I'm aware that lots of women with their demure size sixes, find it comforting to pick up an inexpensive (or perhaps a more expensive) pair on the way home from work, or a tough talk with the spouse, or just because they go with that outfit you just bought.

My retail therapy expresses itself differently, as I "find' myself at Macys on a Friday night, or my fingers wander every few months over to Bidz, the online jewelry site where you can find something funky and bid just enough to make it yours.

I'm not an addict. But I am inclined to use material goods as a substitute for loneliness, or discontent, or a spur to the fantasy that it's THIS sweater or those lacy leggings that will catch his eye.

Do you have an alchemical cure? Or perhaps a couple of (temporary) moodraisers?

I sometimes wonder if they free us -- or cage us in. Retail therapy wouldn't be so popular if it didn't give a rush, if only until the next mood swing or "gotta have it" moment.

Does your thirst for books or jewelry or charming chemises form a boundary beyond which you dare not dream?

Then there are all the online sex shoppes.

There's a reason so many magazines keep talkin'  porn. Its availability to everyone, pretty much, is a sign of  our times.

  When we took apart my father's house my sister and her boyfriend found a Confederate bayonet. but no skanky magazines. Of course, dad was in his late eighties -- but I never had the sense that publicly consumed erotica was a part of our domestic life.

Not so anymore.  Older male mentors have warned my son that pornography is everywhere, and coping with it a lifetime temptation.

After a  date with a prospective beau, I idly wonder, more  curious than anything else, as to whether he is a fan of online porn.  When it is available at the tap of a few fingers, it is hard to assume that most guys aren't partaking -- whether guiltily or not is another topic.

 My most extended encounter with on screen erotica was an "art" movie screened at my college.So yeah, not exactly an expert.  I believe I saw it with this incredible nerd, but that's another story...

Oh, and then there was the artist who kept showing me Gustav Klimt pictures and wanting to take my picture. I hid in my rented room at the back of the house when he would show up, totally clueless.

But when it comes to dating,  I am a little concerned about my competition, with her sultry eyes and facile hands. My most unexceptional form is no match, at any given time with what he sees flickering across his monitor or cell phone.

For a man (or men) who have lived in the desert for long time, even a pixelated siren seems like a long, cool drink of water.

And I don't think I am alone.  Many women are concerned that they are being defined, both anatomically and amorously, by the soulless antics of paid and often exploited actors and actresses.

It's not easy to talk about these topics -- certainly not with your spouse or your kids. But as long as we can't talk about what virtual sex does for and to us (and women also consume it), it will continue to call out to us, offering substitute for the messy realities of male and female intimacy.

Ask yourself -- do your secrets define you?

I recently read an article about how the ubiquity of cell phones was one factor in decreasing parent-infant communication.

Of course, we don't need articles to tell us this. We see it all over, as the mother chats on the cell phone in the Acme while the children run up the aisles, or dad keeps his phone glued to his ear while maneuvering his huge SUV through the parking lot at the Little League fields. Or casting furtive glances at it while his son runs the bases.

Access to email. Access to Facebook. All of these incredible apps...that newest iPhone or tablet is just too fabulous to walk by. Unputdownabble, in fact.

Meanwhile, life flows and ebbs around you, and me.

If we don't lift up our eyes from the screen, we might not even know what we are missing.

I'm not against fantasy -- whether it be in a good book or a Star Wars app.   But if I had to choose, I'd take messy life, with all of its inconsistencies and challenges, over the gauzy goods marketed to fulfill our dreams.

After all, they are just substitutes.

I want the real thing.  And I bet you do, too.