Done Adulting Vol. 1 Ch. 16 (Patreon)

The day ended with a tour of the house and back yard. Jamie feigned enthusiasm at the swing set that they got just for him in the backyard, or at least he thought it was feigned. He was more interested in the sandbox, which had been Amanda’s and to Jamie was almost an artificial beach.

That night, Jamie woke up in his crib once more in pain. He had resisted wetting his diaper all day, and he never had a chance to take to it off to pee in it. He once again had no idea what time it was, not that it mattered anyway. Whether someone was coming for him soon or not, they weren’t going to let him out of his diaper. He had the same choices as the morning before: pee in the diaper, or pee on the diaper.

“I can’t hold it every single day until I’m in bed,” Jamie said to himself. Aside from being uncomfortable for much of the day, he knew it would lead to an infection or worse. The more he mulled it over, the angrier he became. At whom, he wasn’t sure. He was on the list; after all, he’d gotten himself into this position. Rebecca was on the list; the diaper was entirely her decision. Rubbing his temples, he made up his mind, but only after arguing with the darkness. “Ya know what? Fine! Whatever. Just …. Fucking fine.”

He tried to let go, and as badly as he needed to, nothing flowed. He bore down, which made the need more urgent but did not open his sphincter. Getting more irate, he decided to try the opposite, and completely relaxed his abdomen and urinary muscles. At first, he felt just a drop, and his body seized up, knowing or at least thinking it was supposed to. Jamie was feeling impatient but tried to relax again. He was rewarded with first a trickle, then a slow stream, and then the feeling of a comfortable bladder.

Staying very still, he paid attention to what he was feeling. The warmth and tickling feeling weren’t bad. Once again, it wasn’t the sensation he hated but what caused the sensation. He reached down and through his sleeper felt his diaper. It was warm on his hand, but he realized he didn’t feel wet in his pants, even a little. He had assumed that wet diapers felt wet. That was just logical. But he didn’t feel wet.

After a few more minutes, Jamie went back to sleep.

______________________________________________

As he was being dried off after another bath the next morning, Jamie wasn’t paying much attention. He was thinking more about what would happen next. He didn’t feel a need to have any more big conversations today; in fact, he was well fed up having them. So what now, he wondered.

Jamie was like any other adult. He knew how to work, and he knew how to relax. And that’s the way it worked: you go to work, and then you go home and relax, and on the weekends, you run errands and try to relax more. Except Jamie wasn’t working, and he was already, physically anyway, relaxed. He’d done little more than sleep and hang out for two days, plus the 40 days of unconsciousness before that. He had a lot on his mind, but nothing he wanted to deal with that day.

Jamie also knew how to recreate. That’s what adults do for fun. When they aren’t working or relaxing or running errands, they recreate. They go to the gym, bike, hike, climb, sail, play pick-up games, have hobbies. These are fun, but they are also effort. They require time and money and effort and planning. They are often organized in some way, they are rarely spontaneous, and they almost always involve going somewhere.

Jamie wasn’t working, he was as relaxed as he could considering the upheaval of his life, he didn’t run errands anymore, and he couldn’t just up and go somewhere to recreate. What Jamie didn’t know how to do, what he had forgotten how to do and needed to learn again, was how to play. Except Jamie didn’t know that, not yet. He just thought he needed something to do.

“So today I thought we’d go out and get those things for your room,” Rebecca said as she got him dressed.

Jamie heard nothing after “go out.”

“Um, what if you went to go do that, and I stayed here with Amanda?”

“Don’t you want to pick out your own things?”

“Uh … no. I’m sure I’ll like whatever you decide.”

“You’ve been cooped up awhile now. I think you need some fresh air. We could go to the park after.”

That was worse. He said nothing, hoping she’d drop it.

“Well, I think you need to get out, so we’re gonna go together.” She ended the sentence with a period, and Jamie didn’t expect that to change.

He’d just gotten here. He was hardly used to Rebecca and now to have to meet other people? And what if he ran into other littles? It was one thing being dressed and cared for like this behind closed doors, but in front of human adults? What if they made fun of him? What if the bigs made fun of him? What if … he didn’t want to be on display, open to the judgment of others.

“Amanda is going to come with us, too. Does that make you feel better?”

“Yeah. A little.”

She looked at him and didn’t like what she saw. “Amanda,” she shouted, “Could you come meet us in the family room?”

The family room was turning more into a conference room. Rebecca carried Jamie in, and he was surprised when she didn’t put him in the chair but instead sat down on the sofa with him in her lap.

“What’s up, Mom,” Amanda asked when she came in.

“I just wanted the three of us to have a little talk.” Amanda sat down.

“Jamie is feeling a little nervous. Do you want to talk about it, Jamie, or should I?” So not talking about is not an option, he concluded. He just shook his head.

“Jamie seems a little afraid to leave the house, which is very understandable since it’s his first time. So, what we’re going to do is all three of us will go, and, Jamie, we’ll be with you the entire time. If you get scared, I want you to say ‘pause,’ and we’ll find somewhere quiet to calm our nerves. So do you want to go now, or in the afternoon?”

He looked at Rebecca and knew it was the best deal he was gonna get. And it wasn’t a bad one. He used to coach parents on this; ‘authoritative parenting,’ they called it. Rather than dictating a choice or giving the child any choice he wanted to make, the choices were narrowed down: pick A or pick B. Those are the choices, and you have to pick one.

“Now, I guess.”

“Okay, I think we’re ready to go then,” Rebecca announced.

“Wait,” Jamie said, “I need shoes.”

“Oh, you’ll be fine like that.” Jamie didn’t see how that would work. Who left the house without shoes? Was this some kind of weird planet where there was nothing to step on that might hurt? But then why were the two of them wearing shoes?

“Oh! I almost forgot we need a diaper bag,” Rebecca said. “Here, take him while I go make sure we have everything we need.”

Amanda happily took Jamie on to her lap. She could see he didn’t seem happy. It wasn’t just the look on his face. It was his body. He felt … softer, slumping his shoulders and casting his eyes down. She gave him a gentle shake. “Hey, you know we won’t let anything happen to you, right?”

“I know,” he said. He kinda sorta meant it, but he knew there’s a limit to what a person can protect another person from.

“Oh, c’mon. Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”

Jamie looked at her. He did have one thought, but it made him blush. “Well … can I take my bear with me?”

“I think we can manage that just fine.”

Ten minutes later, Jamie was being buckled into a car seat. He looked around, amazed even though he felt he ought to be getting used it. The car was huge. Even if he were an independent little, there was no way he’d be able to safely ride without a car seat. It otherwise looked like a car at home, albeit an expensive one. He knew not to expect flying cars, but if they could do all the things they had done to him at the hospital, not to mention master interdimensional travel, he’d just figured the cars would do something different.

“I’ll ride in back, Mom.”

“Thanks, baby. That’s nice of you.”

Jamie was secured, and Amanda buckled in next to him. His feet dangled, and his car seat had five-point restraints. He tried to casually see if he could open the restraints himself, and found even with both hands, his thumbs were not strong enough to depress the springs in the buckle.

“Not quite strong enough for that, huh,” Amanda grinned. Caught! “That’s the idea. Besides, do you really want to go without?”

“No, I was just curious.”

“How’s your bear doing?”

He chuckled. He didn’t entirely get Amanda yet. Sometimes she talked to him like an adult, and other times like a toddler, and other times like an adult being treated like a toddler, like she was in on a joke with him. Rebecca pretty much always talked to him like a toddler. The way Amanda asked about the bear, he wasn’t sure what she was thinking.

“He never says a word of complaint.”

“Ha! Does he have a name yet?”

“No.” Sometimes over the past couple days, Jamie had caught himself not being quite sure what he was: an adult living a strange lifestyle, an adult pretending to be a toddler, or an adult becoming a toddler. He knew why he liked the bear so much: Cheryl gave it to him, and it had her voice in it. But why did he want to bring it with him? He knew it wouldn’t protect him. He wanted to bring it anyway, a comfort object, and he gave himself permission to have a comfort object, a little empathy for himself to counter the stress he was under.

“Are you going to give him one?”

“Maybe. Maybe he already has one and I just don’t know it yet.” Are we both playing the same game he wondered, or only one of us, or neither of us.

“You two look like you belong together,” Amanda said, smiling at him. The notion made Jamie feel good, but also not. If the bear was a symbol of Cheryl, what did it mean if he and the bear looked like they belonged together?

As he was wondering that, he once more felt the need to empty his bladder. Trying the same technique, he relaxed and tried to let it out. It took a couple tries to get past his body’s reflex to shut it down; he had to concentrate. He noted again how it felt warm and tickled a little bit as it flowed down him before being absorbed, but then he felt completely dry. He had no intention of saying anything. The last thing he wanted was a public diaper change.

Amanda snapped him out of it. She had watched him, and she leaned over and pushed her hand just a little ways between the car seat and Jamie. She startled him. He looked at her ready to say, hands off the goods, but he before he could, her hands shot down to his feet, and she was tickling him ferociously through his socks.

Jamie couldn’t help his reaction. He squealed, squirmed, kicked and thrashed, but he was pinned in his seat and couldn’t get away. Amanda was merciful, though, and stopped well before it went from fun to teasing.

“Hey,” Jamie said trying to catch his breath, “Whadya do that for?”

“What’s going on back there,” Rebecca asked while trying to see them in the mirror. She didn’t sound cross, just happy to hear Jamie laugh.

“I don’t know, Mom. He just started tickling himself. I think we got a weird one or something.”

“Liar!” She stuck her tongue out in response. Jamie had too much self-respect to just take that kind of insult and so responded in kind, adding moose ears to be sure he’d win the round.

“Almost there,” Rebecca announced from the front seat.

That brought Jamie back to the moment. He’d need to step out of their space and into the world in mere minutes. He’d missed most of the passing scenery, but when he took notice, he saw they were on a commercial road like any other at home, lined with shopping centers. They pulled into one of them and parked, unremarkable but for the size and scale of everything Jamie saw. Looking out, he felt himself shrink a little.

Amanda got out on her side of the car, and Rebecca opened Jamie’s door. When her hands came toward him, to his confusion they didn’t go to the harness but to some mechanism behind the seat. He heard a click and then felt the seat shift.

“You’re gonna carry me?” He didn’t want to be seen that way, laying back in car seat held by its handle. It was downright infantile.

“I think you’re a little too heavy to carry that long even for me, honey. We’ll put you in the stroller.”

“Oh…”

She paused before saying, “Do you want to walk?”

He didn’t want to be seen in a stroller, but then he didn’t want to be seen in overalls, especially ones with a snap crotch and elastic waistband. He wanted to be seen like a grown man, just a short one. Looking past Rebecca, though, to the giant cars surrounding them and to the giant people that passed his field of vision, he realized the stroller would be better. Not just safer, but he could hide in there, maybe go unnoticed.

“Maybe later.” She nodded and lifted the seat by its handle. Amanda had already gotten the stroller out of the trunk, and the seat easily snapped in. Rebecca adjusted it so he was sitting mostly upright and pulled back the canopy on the seat. On the undercarriage, Amanda placed what Jamie figured was his diaper bag. He inwardly groaned: my diaper bag. It reminded him his diaper was wet, Amanda knew it, and though he was comfortable, the decision for a change wouldn’t be his. He kept his bear in his arms as he was pushed toward the door, mostly to give him something to rest his chin against.

“What kind of store is this?”

“It’s called A Little This, A Little That. It’s got stuff for littles, obviously. Are you comfortable?”

“Does this thing go up straighter?”

“Sure.” Rebecca paused and Amanda adjusted the seat. “Better?”

“Much. Thank you.” Now he wasn’t leaning back so far; it was more comfortable, and he could see everything around him better.

The doors parted for them, and just like at home they were hit with too much air conditioning. Jamie was glad he had overalls on. Amanda took out the list they had made.

“Let’s go find a chair for your room.”

The store was huge, even for a store staffed by giants, and the human-sized everything in the store made it, and them, seem even larger. Jamie expected a few chairs to pick from, but the furniture section could have been its own furniture store back home, and even then, it would be larger than most.

“Do you want to get out and try some?”

“Yeah!” Jamie had never gotten to pick out furniture that was new or didn’t come from a store with the word “Bargainz” in its name. He wasn’t sure what to expect. All the chairs were in childish colors or patterns or had cartoons on them, but otherwise they looked like actual, adult chairs.

He walked down the first row with Rebecca and Amanda following behind. He turned into the next row. When he saw something he might like, he first looked at the price tag and then remembered he had no idea about the currency, even its name.

“Is this expensive?”

Amanda bent down. “No; little stuff usually isn’t very expensive.” Jamie figured that must mean it wasn’t made very well, but he sat down and was surprised it was as comfortable as the chairs he couldn’t afford at home.

He stood up and moved down the aisle. They followed him patiently. When he reached the recliners, he tried one and knew it was what he wanted. Now just to pick the right one. He tried some modern looking ones, but they were too hard. He tried the overstuffed ones, which might have worked if he were taller, but he sunk so deep into them he had to propel himself back out. He finally found one that was just right; it nearly laid flat. He picked one in a pale pastel green; it was the least babyish color he liked. Amanda took the tag and the fabric swatch.

“Where to next,” Rebecca asked.

“I think he needs a table he can color at.”

So they went to that section and found an activity table. It was low to the ground so he could sit on the floor to use it.

“May I have a step stool?” Jamie surprised himself with the ‘may I.’ He’d learned to use that phrase with a foster parent who ‘helped’ him understand not to use ‘can I,’ and for all these years since he’d subconsciously refused to say it.

“What for,” Rebecca asked.

“Um, so I can reach some of the shelves and stuff.”

“I don’t think I want you climbing on a step stool yet.” Jamie wasn’t exactly surprised. No problem, he thought, I’ll just climb the furniture.

“How about we go look at some toys?”

They headed to the other end of the store. It wasn’t very busy inside, but there were a few other customers. Jamie was curious. He noticed that no one paid him much mind. Then he noticed there were very few littles walking on their own. When he could peer inside strollers or carriers, he saw much more babyish clothes than his own and many littles who had been clearly regressed, some of them very regressed.

“You getting tired,” Amanda asked. He had fallen a bit behind. And actually he was tired, having to walk faster to keep up with their long strides. And his hip hurt. Being back in the stroller wasn’t very appealing, but he blushed anyway and nodded just enough to say yes. Amanda lifted him back into the stroller, buckled him in, and handed him his bear.

They had every kind of toy except video games. Toys he’d seen babies back home play with, rattles, stacking rings, near-weightless foam balls. At the other end were toys that looked hard even for an unregressed mind.

Jamie didn’t know what to make of it all. Rebecca picked out a couple things she thought were cute, and Amanda picked out a couple. Rebecca’s were definitely on the simpler side; Amanda’s were more challenging.

“Don’t you want to pick something,” Rebecca asked. She knelt down next to the stroller. “How about any of these?” They were in front of a display shelf of blocks. What am I going to do with blocks, he thought. Most of them had letters and numbers on them.

“What’s that,” he said, pointing to a large plastic tub half the size of a footlocker.

“I don’t know; let’s see.” Rebecca pulled one from the shelf. To him it looked heavy, but she set it down lightly with no trouble. She popped the hinges on either side. Shrink-wrapped inside were blocks, larger ones, in different shapes, some basic and some intricate.

“I like those.”

“You do?” They don’t even have letters or numbers on them, she thought. “Okay then, let’s get ‘em.”

She loaded them under the cart. They had the big box of blocks, some puzzles Amanda picked out, including what looked like a giant Rubik’s Cube, a set of cars Rebecca picked out, and some doodad with a lot of lights and buttons.

“Where do they keep the art stuff,” Amanda asked. Once there, Amanda selected a few items on her own: real drawing paper, real drawing pencils, and coloring books. She opened one up to show him. Jamie knew adult coloring books were popular at home, but they were nothing as elaborate as these. Jamie was a bit of an art history fan, and it excited him to see art nothing at all like he’d seen before.

They headed toward the book section, and on the way, Jamie saw his first little tantrum, a woman who appears near his age. Exactly like a kid’s but with the lungs and power of an adult. A supremely pissed off adult. Jamie knew what a tantrum is, not the fit of anger adults think kids pitch to get what they want, but the expression of a mind overwhelmed with emotions it cannot control or understand. Geez, he thought, what if I end up that way? He was uncomfortable, embarrassed for himself and her. How mortifying, he thought, for her to behave that way and not even know how inappropriate it was for someone her age, even a quarter of her age. Yet all the bigs except hers seemed not to notice. He assumed they didn’t notice out of politeness, because she was very hard not to notice, just as adults do back home when someone else’s child is having a tantrum in public.

Jamie got out of the stroller to look at some books. The most mature of them were at best young adult fiction, but that struck him as a good diversion. He didn’t need to read adult drama just then.

“Hey, Jamie, do you play an instrument?” He turned to see Amanda holding a music book and recorder. He shook his head, and she put it in the cart.

He got back into the stroller, and the two of them found Rebecca looking at parenting books, or whatever you call books about caring for littles. Some looked very earnest, and others looked more lighthearted.

Caring For Your Little

Growing Up Or Growing Down

Helping Your Child Adjust To A Little

Helping Your Little Be A Little

When Your Little Is Pissed Off

Discipline And Your Little: The New Way

Discipline And Your Little: The Old Way

When Your Littles Don’t Get Along

When Your Little Is Really, Really Pissed Off

What To Do If You Catch Your Little Urinating In Your Houseplants And Other Potty Problems

Littles And The Extended Family

Introducing Your Little To The World And The World To Your Little

“Do we really need those,” Rebecca asked while Amanda inspected some of the covers. Amanda gave her mom the side eye and plucked Caring for Your Little and Helping Your Little Be a Little from the shelf.

“I think we just need some supplies and that’s it.” Rebecca pushed the stroller, and they headed to the middle of the store, which appeared to be where the little essentials were. Wipes, powder, disposal sacks, formula, food. Jamie opted not to pay attention.

As he was daydreaming, out of nowhere there was some strange big directly in front his face. “Oh my god, he is so darling,” this strange woman said in what was definitely an outside voice.

“Thank you! He just arrived a few days ago,” he heard Rebecca reply with pride.

“Oh my goodness! Then you’re just brand new, aren’t you?” She kept babbling, and Jamie didn’t know how to respond. She was in his face, rude on its own but coupled with how insulting her tone and words were. She wasn’t even really talking to him, more like talking at and about him. He was about to ask her to step back when she reached out and squeezed his cheek.

“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing,” he shouted. He’d not shouted over two of the most frustrating and overwhelming days of his life.

“Aww, I’m just seeing how soft your sweet, little cheeks are.” And then she did it again.

“What the hell! You could at least ask for fucking permission before you touch someone!”

The woman gasped but quickly smiled and chuckled politely at Rebecca. Rebecca turned three shades of red. Standing up, the woman reassured Rebecca, “It’s okay. We’ve all been there. I bet he’s just shy.”

“Shy and cranky. He needs his nap,” Rebecca replied.

The conversation was taking place above Jamie, literally, and it wasn’t addressed to him at all. “What I need is an apology!”

“Bye-bye, little guy. Hope you feel better after your nap.” The woman sauntered off, leaving Jamie feeling angry and ineffectual. He couldn’t even hurt her feelings, let alone get her to take him seriously.

“And I hope you dry up and shrivel!” I don’t even know what that means, Jamie mused.

“James!” Then Rebecca was in front of him. “This is a warning; I don’t want to hear any more naughty words from you. We don’t talk that way, understand?”

Jamie stared back at her, mouth parted in surprise that she would chastise him and apologize to the stranger. He wanted to stick up for himself. He was the victim. He could win this argument on straight logic easily. But Rebecca had displayed a certain imperviousness to logic.

She must’ve thought he was upset by her rebuke because she leaned in and kissed him. “It’s okay. I’m not mad at you.”

What about my feelings? I am mad! Can we talk about that?!? Jamie wanted to answer back.

Instead, all he said was, “Where’d Amanda go?”

“I’m right here,” she answered as she sauntered up with a couple more things for the cart. “What’s up?”

“No big deal. Someone just had a little tantrum is all.”

Someone is getting tired of being referred to in the third person when someone is right damn there listening and fully capable of answering for himself, Jamie wanted to shout.

“Oh. Well, what else?”

Rebecca reached to the shelf and tossed a package of pacifiers into the cart, which may have set Jamie off again except he wasn’t paying any attention to her. “Well, I don’t know if he deserves them after that little misbehavior, but I did promise.” She sounded so excited.

They were rolling again, and when they stopped, it was at the end of an aisle of diapers that ran almost the width of the store. There must have been a hundred varieties.

“Okay, you get to pick any ones you want,” Rebecca said as she lifted him from the stroller and set him on his feet. She said it with the same tone of eager largesse of the mother of the bride telling her daughter she can have any dress she wants and a diamond tiara to boot.

Jamie stood there. Not only did he not care what diapers he wore, he didn’t want to pick them out. Picking them out would imply some kind of consent. If she picked them out, he at least had the satisfaction of knowing that from being in diapers at all down to the very diaper he was wearing, it was all her decision.

“Um, we already have so much stuff. I don’t want to you to spend more than you can on me.” There, an out that made him seem gracious.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Teachers here are very highly paid.”

“Really?” That to him was a much more interesting topic to discuss, but he didn’t get to.

Turning him around to face the aisle, she gave him a gentle swat on the butt, and said, “Scoot.”

He turned red at the swat and how loud it was. They walked down the aisle slowly.

Alright, Jamie said to himself, if you have to make this decision, you might as well own it; not like you’re getting to make many.

She wasn’t kidding yesterday when she said they had so many choices. They had every color, or at least every color fit for someone in diapers. They had patterns; they even had ones that looked like Y-front underwear, but that just made them seem patronizing, like he was simple minded enough to be fooled. They had cartoon characters he didn’t recognize and sports motifs and car motifs and flower motifs. Despite himself, he wondered, what’s my motif? What motif fit his personality and interests? He wasn’t sure he even had a motif.

He walked back toward the end they started at. Maybe just a solid color? Or some simple pattern? Or maybe some motif after all?

He paced the aisle once more, and Rebecca didn’t get impatient. This seemed an oddly meaningful moment to her.

After another pass, he at last picked a white one, plain except for the blue stripe that ran along the top of the waistband and around the leg gathers. If there’s such as a thing as a mature diaper, this was it.

“Are you sure,” Rebecca asked. He nodded, and she picked up the package like it was it was some wondrous thing.

As much as Jamie was irritated with Rebecca, he couldn’t stay angry very long. He saw she had her heart in the right place, and it was clear she was doing everything she was doing as an expression of love. He was ready to forgive, but not to forget. He wanted to solve these issues, and as she put him back in the stroller with such a glowing look of contentment, he wanted to understand what made her tick.

“Alright, I think we’re ready to go home. You must be starving, and tired.”

And he was. On the ride home, he thought about the experience. He wasn’t the center of attention; he was just one more little to the rest of the world. And though he wished that woman never found a pair of pants that fit ever again, he also knew there were plenty of socially inept jerks back home who had no respect for people’s personal space.

He wasn’t sure the trip had taught him anything he liked. He was intimidated by bigs who might not be kind to him or might accidentally hurt him just because they were so big and he was so small. He was embarrassed by his outfit and didn’t want the condition of his diaper to be known. Though it wasn’t comforting, he knew if it was, no big would ridicule him for it. He was more worried about the judgment of his peers.