Mary and Daphne #107 (Patreon)

“Ow,” I squeaked as I eased my butt down onto one of our nice new patio chairs. Been quite a week. Did I ever mention Mary is mean? Cuz she is. She is just mean. In wonderful ways that are part of why I adore her and everything, but maintenance spankings aren’t supposed to be the same as punishment spankings. She asked me how I knew that since until this week I’ve never gotten maintenance spankings, and when I told her I looked it up, she accused me of reading inappropriate materials. Well, guilty, I guess.

So consider me well chastised and hot AF. Our air conditioning is out just in time for the first heat of the summer. At least outside there’s a breeze, so I planted myself in a chair under a tree, squeaked my little squeak, and inadvertently alerted Nana. You think someone her age wouldn’t have such sharp hearing.

“Daffy, is that you?”

“Yep. How are you?”

“Doing good. Can I come visit?”

“Mhmm.” We were really unsure about having a gate in the fence when we bought the place, but it’s worked out well.

“What about you,” she asked as the gate crashed behind her. My grandpa had a thing about gates and screen doors slamming; I can still hear him telling us to close it gently as we ran across the field toward the lake. I loved Pop-Pop, but the lesson never stuck. “You look positively wilted,” she said when she saw me.

“Our A/C is out. I tried a cool shower, but never dried out.” I know weather can be muggy, but can a person be muggy? It’s not supposed to be so humid. If I wanted it to be so humid, I’d still live in the Midwest where I could be muggy all summer long and where people wouldn’t question my preference for ranch dressing on so many things that aren’t salad.

“You wanna come cool off at my house?” She sat down on the other chair.

“Maybe after Mary comes out. She’s trying to bribe the dispatcher at the repair place to let us jump the line.” She thinks she’s so smooth. The only unethical things she’s ever done are things she did to me (and they were so wonderful).

“So what’s it like to be vaccinated,” she asked me.

“Awesome … And anti-climactic. You feel like you can go all these places and do all these things, and then you remember you actually have to go places and do things. We’re not homebodies, but we didn’t have anything planned or anything. Guess we’ll have to come up with some stuff.”

“I know how you feel. I think we were remembering pre-pandemic life with advantages. Or that’s just an old lady talking.” She made her pandemic bubble with her kids and grandkids. We got into her bubble for a while, but then with everything getting worse again last fall, it made more sense for her to bubble with her family and us to bubble with no one, as it turned out. We had many a conversation over the phone and fence, but not the same.

“You’re not an old lady,” I reminded her.

“Just like you’re not a little girl.”

“Right … Hey! Mary rubs off on people in all the wrong ways.” Except me. She rubs off on me in all the right ways, what with all the rubbing on me she does on my places.

“Sorry, couldn’t pass it up.”

“So what are you doing these days?”

“Going out to lunch with my old lady friends. Shopping. Taking my grandkids places.”

“I wish I had unemployed friends. Or retired friends. Or stay-at-home something friends.”

“Which one of those are you?”

“I don’t even know anymore.”

“You still planning on going back to school?”

Ugh, loaded question. “I dunno. Maybe. I don’t have to work. With Mary’s promotion last year and not going anywhere or doing anything, we didn’t miss my salary as much as we thought we would. We might now that things are opening back up and we can travel again. That doesn’t fit in our new budget like it used to. I don’t miss the work part of work … But I do miss seeing people and being part of something. And putting my mind to something. Being a stay-at-home whatever-I-am gets boring. I don’t have any friends to hang out with during the day now.”

I think I’m in early cognitive decline (she wrote only somewhat facetiously). My brain needs more workouts. I’ve read all the books and done all the sudoku puzzles, and I need some actual problems to solve or something. To say nothing of my atrophied social skills. I feel like I went from an awkward turtle to an awkward tortoise. How do you make a new friend again? Or talk to an old friend about something other than the pandemic, societal dumpster fires, and the weather? And my career as an essayist and memoirist was shut down early when the publishers all sent me something from their lawyers saying to never send them anything from my kinky diary again (and not really, but you see can how that would happen), so that’s not the outlet I need either. I suppose I could be a homemaker, but our home is pretty much made at this point, at least to our satisfaction.

“What if you got a job to pay for the little extras like travel, but don’t make it a career,” Nana asked.

“I thought about freelancing. I don’t really miss what I did, though.”

“I mean like something hourly. You could get a part-time job.”

I worked retail and restaurants before. I just can’t even with the managers and the bullshit. I think my plan is to tell Mary to make us some more money. Mary, I’ll say, get in there and make us some more money. I mean, I’m already getting spanked once a day. What’s the worst she could do to me? And nope, that question has never led to unintended consequences ever. Really.

Nana more helpfully suggested, “What about a job at a museum, like a docent? They’re all hiring now that they’re open full-time again.”

“That’s an interesting idea. I’m good at pointing to stuff.” One of the best. Really. And I do like museums.

“What are you two conspiring about,” Mary asked as she strode across the lawn looking like a perfectly normal person and not someone who had a mere hour ago spanked me until I sniffled. I got up to get one of the other chairs for her because I’m polite like that, and it’s the least I can do for her, what with the whole she’s keeping us fed, clothed, and housed thing. It had nothing to do, of course, with the spanking she gave me, as I’m resolute in refusing to learn a single lesson. I’m very willful. Really.

I was about to answer her when Nana exclaimed, “Mary, did you do that to her butt?”

Just keep walking. And keep walking until you get to the ocean. And then keep walking some more.

“What’s that, Mae? O, you mean this,” Mary asked as we met in the middle of the yard and she put one of her surprisingly delicate mitts on me. “Her bottom?”

“Marrry.”

“Little Daffy here has gotten her tail whacked every day this week.”

She has no dignity, that woman. Unlike me, who doesn’t even, “Eep! No pinching!” when her wife pinches her. Grumble. And then she kissed me, which is just so annoyingly sweet because I like it and stuff.

“You wanna tell Nana what you did to earn a trip over my knee every day this week?”

“Nothing. Be nice to me. I’m short.” I mean, that’s gotta work in my favor at least sometimes, right? I didn’t shrug her arm off me because I was being churlish (though didn’t I have reason to be?) but because it was too hot to be hanging on each other.

“Where you going?”

“To get you a chair.”

“You don’t wanna share with me?”

“It’s too hot,” I said as I picked up the other chair and brought it over. We used to have people over in the summer to dine on our patio with us and sometimes play kinky games like Pass the Submissive which is one of the rare games that I can both win and lose at the same time.

Mary was looking at me as I eased myself back onto my chair. She’s usually a little more subtle around vanillas. Maybe she needs socialization lessons even more than me.

“What on earth could she have done to earn a spanking every day,” Nana asked my captor. That’s what must’ve happened – I’ve had Stockholm Syndrome all these years and didn’t even know it. It would’ve been more polite for Nana to ask me what I allegedly did, but she’s not alone in that particular rudeness. Pretty much everybody asking that type of question directs it to Mary unless they’re being a whole other kind of rude and trying to embarrass me. Like, just because Mary is the one dishing out the spankings means she’s the expert on why she’s doing it? I’m there, too, ya know, and Mary is very good about telling me why I’m getting spanked and asking me to repeat it back to her before she starts in on my behind.

“She went feral on me, Mae.”

“As if,” I mumbled.

But Mary continued because she loves to continue, “Running barefoot with a pack of stray dogs all hours of the night. Have to shape her up before I can let her out with people again.”

Yes, we’ve gotten very close to Nana, but Nana is not part of the scene. If she sees my spanked cheeks peeking out from the edges of my swimsuit, so be it. I can’t exactly not have a butt, and I wasn’t planning on her seeing. But Mary was being a bit much with the forwardness about her Behavior Improvement Plan, which I learned is what I have to call it or else.

“Take it easy on her,” my Nana defended me. “I’ve never seen her be anything but an angel.” Nice of her, but if I ever tried that line, I’d get in trouble for lying.

“She’s holding up alright. Her little red bottom will be back to its normal pink by morning.” She was being weird, in my opinion which is an expert one since I married her and live with her and know when she’s being weird. She had her I-like-having-you-around face on. She does, ya know, like having me around.

“Mary, let’s leave a little to Nana’s imagination,” I suggested as much for Nana’s sake as mine. “Not that you want to imagine … Please don’t imagine.” I gotta watch my phraseology better.

“What did the repair people say,” Nana asked by way of changing the subject.

“That they can’t get out here for three days.”

“Bribe didn’t work, huh?”

“Nope. I even tried a sympathy ploy, and that only got us one day.”

“What did you say,” I asked because we were having a normal adult conversation and that’s probably the thing that’s been most missing since the pandemic began. Not that we don’t have normal adult conversations, but they have this way of segueing into adult adult conversations.

“I told her I have an adult with special needs in diapers and that without A/C the whole house was smells like a diaper pail.”

Blink. Blink. Hmm. My body is doing that squirming thing again without my permission. Ooo, what’s that under my chair? Grass? I think I’ll stare at it.

“Mary Taylor,” Nana spoke up, “you better not have.”

“Of course I didn’t. I just like watching Daffy turn that shade of red.”

“Be nice to my Daffy,” Nana said. Finally, someone who isn’t me says it! “She’s just a little girl.” And she ruined it.

I figured I should speak up for myself (not that it ever helps) but I couldn’t think of anything just then. Maybe something like, Buh, wuh, muh, stuh … mean to me! Yep, either cognitive decline or sometimes she leaves me speechless with the how do I even defend myself when the woman obviously has no scruples (which is one of her better qualities).

“I’m being very nice to her. Her behavior improvement plan has been such a success, I’ve decided to take her on a trip.”

Trip? We’re going somewhere?“Where?”

“I got us three nights at resort in Bear Claw while we wait for our A/C to get fixed.”

“Aww, thank you.”

“That’s a nice treat,” Nana said back on the subject of our impromptu trip. We’re going on a tip! Heeheehee!

“Are you taking off work,” I asked.

“Not even taking my laptop.”

“Ooo. A real trip then. Guess we need to go pack some stuff.”

“Yep, and don’t worry: I called the hotel and asked them to put a rubber sheet on the bed and give us an extra wastebasket for your diapees.”

“Marrrry!”

You don’t think she actually did that? Did she?