Mary and Daphne #74 (Patreon)

“Go put some pants on, Daffy.”

“Why?” What’s wrong with me not wearing pants? I was quite comfortable without any pants. Pants are an invention of the patriarchy. First, they say women can’t wear pants, and then they just wanna sell you all the pants at ridiculous prices. It’s a conspiracy. It’s all part of the 5,000–year–old long game to get me. Which is not me being Daphne–centric. It’s just a theory of history that centers most – not all, big difference – of human history as being directed toward and culminating in me. And this is not me being weird for the sake of being weird. I’m going somewhere with this.

“I need you to put on pants,” Mary said. And I love Mary, but sometimes she’s an unwitting pawn of the patriarchy. Why was she so big on pants all of a sudden? Cui bono?

“Need me to do something,” I asked Mary.

“Yes,” she said with her I–done–told–you–to–do–something tone. “Go. Put. On. Some. Pants.”

“Wuh. Eye?” See, I did what she did but funnier. Dat’s muh job.

“So I can pull ‘em right back down and spank your bare butt.”

“What’d I do,” I asked incredulously. We’d spent the whole morning sledding on some random hill. If you haven’t done that lately as an adult, I do recommend it. If you need a reason, tell yourself it’s exercise, which it is. Not the going down part, obviously, but the going up. Hoo boy. I sweat through all the layers, which had me cold enough to shiver by the time we got back to the car. Then we got back to the cabin and went inside, and ya know how when you go from a really cold place to a warm place you feel way overheated and feverish? I peeled off most of the layers and stopped at the last one. Look – snowman undies (that you can’t see)!

“Nothing. I just like it when you make your indignant face … yep, that one.” She thinks she’s so damn funny. She was trying to cheer me up.

“That was kinda mean.”

“Aww, need me to make it all better?”

“No. I can make it all better myself. See – over it.” I don’t need Mary to be making stuff better all the time. I can do all sorts of things all by myself. I’m the one who took the initiative to not wear pants, as a for–instance. Are you wearing pant right now? See how much more accomplished I am than you? Think I’ve made my point.

“You wanna come with me to shower,” Mary asked me.

“Mmmm no.”

She made that noise Marge Simpson makes, which goes, “rrrrrrrrrm.” The closed captioning just says, “(Groan)” or “(Grumble).” But that’s how I spell it.

“Well,” she asked me, “then do you wanna shower first?”

“Yep.”

“Okay … Don’t use all the hot water.”

“’Kay.”

And if you’re thinking, Daf, you’re being somehow bitchy without actually being bitchy, well, you have a point, is what you have.

We had fun sledding. It was just, now we weren’t sledding. We were just … together. We’ve been together an awful lot lately, as you know. Pandemic and all that, what? As the British upper classes of the 1940s say. Makes them all sound hard of hearing, like they think someone just said something and they missed it. Not that I’m changing the subject.

And the subject is … nothing. No subject. Just me, hot water, steamy bathroom, inner monologue that never shuts the fuck up, tank top and snowman undies discarded on the floor and getting wet, I guess from steam unless the snowmen are melting. Of course, if that were the case they wouldn’t be very good undies. Not that I wear undies. Kids wear undies. I wear panties. I’m thirty–one years old (but don’t spread that around) and haven’t been a kid in most of those.

Sure, up through the age of two I was a kid. Ages three and four, I had my kid–like moments, but by five I was definitely not a kid. Oldest soul in kindergarten, that’s what, well, no one said about me. Point being, I’m not a kid. Even if the bathrobes in the cabin are both three times too big for me. That still leaves them two sizes too big for Mary, and she’s not a kid either. We’re adults.

“All yours,” I said as I walked across the narrow hallway to the bedroom. When I’m filthy rich from raking in that sweet teacher salary (I was listening to cable news, and apparently they’re the reason we can’t afford nicer nuclear missiles), we’ll only stay in mountain chalets and leave the cabins to the peasantry and manifesto writers.

This isn’t a manifesto, btw. For one thing, it’s not declarative enough. I’ve declared very little. I’ve declared I’m not a little girl a bunch, and if people don’t start to pay attention to that I will write a manifesto. It’d be short and just reiterate I’m not a little girl.

And just because I’m short doesn’t make me a little girl. I’m five–foot–two. It’s not like I’m a lilliputian. Go find a little girl and ask her what that means and where it comes from. They won’t know. I know stuff. I’m erudite. I’m educated. I’m well read. I’m all kinds of things. Daphne contains multitudes. Daphne writes in the third person sometimes for dramatic effect.

Speaking of persons, my person called Mary ws soon out of the shower in her own too–big robe. She dried her hair, put the towel down, and looked at me. She’s always looking at me.

“Uh, Daphne?”

“Mhmm?”

“You doing okay there?”

“Uh–huh.”

“Because you look a little anxious.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, you’re just sitting there hugging your knees.”

“Just thinking,” I sighed and stopped hugging my knees.

“Wanna get dressed and come make hot cocoa with me?”

“I guess.”

She grabbed ahold of my little toe and gave it a tug. She was trying to cheer me up. “We can make stilted conversation while we do it.”

“Why stilted?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you did and would tell me.”

“Guess I was just thinking … I don’t wanna go home.” Which was a lie. I mean, I didn’t want to go home, but I wasn’t being such a churl because of that. I was being a churl and defending myself in an argument no one was actually having because I was embarrassed because of my emotional freak out the day before, but I didn’t want to open that can of crap by telling her, so apparently I had decided to just be mean and distant. How … not mature of me. But I’m not a little girl.

And Mary took me at my word. “We have five more days, Daf. No need to get the Sunday Scaries yet.”

“I know … sorry.”

“Daf, if you say sorry to me one more time this week without having a reason to, I’m really gonna paddle your butt.”

I sighed.

“Daf?”

“Mhmm?”

“Do you need some of your medicine?”

“No. See,” I smiled. “All good.”

“Okay.” She sounded not so much with the convinced. “How about I pick out some outfits while you go clean up after us in the bathroom?”

“Sure.” Okay.