The Best of Intentions, Chapter 2 (Patreon)

A new, unspoken, game had arisen in the apartment. I would go about my day as usual - but while doing my best to pretend that I was hiding my nonexistent bathroom problem. She was going about her day as usual - but while seeming to keep an extra eye on me at all times. She was looking for signs. I don’t think she wanted to catch me lying to her. On the contrary, she was being nicer and more supportive about everything than she had ever been before. I think she was trying to figure out how she missed something so big before.

We never talked about it directly. She’d ask me vague questions like “How are you doing?” or “Is everything okay?” and we both knew what she meant. I’d give equally vague answers like “Oh you know how it is…” or “Just another day, you know?” and that would usually suffice.

I had started wearing sweatpants around the house, hoping they’d disguise the bulk - or lack of a bulk in most cases - of a diaper. I worried she’d wonder why I was suddenly wearing sweatpants more often at the apartment...but either she didn’t notice or she didn’t think it was worth asking about.

As the weeks wore on, I began to feel this pressure mounting. I was almost positive that I was the only one putting this pressure on myself, but it was there regardless. I was beginning to worry that I was setting myself up for disaster. Someday my pants would slip down slightly and she’d see the distinct lack of a diaper. Or, more likely, she’d hear me flushing the toilet.

I had devised an embarrassingly silly routine of avoiding using the toilet while she was home. In the case of an emergency, I’d either piss in a bottle in my bedroom or I’d run down the street to the Burger King’s bathroom if it was a severe emergency. That is - when I wasn’t wearing the diapers.

I had begun to wear them more often at home. For one, I could. But also, I felt like it was the easiest way to conceal the truth.

But, to be clear, I knew I was pathetic.

Worse, all this sneaking around and creating elaborate diversions had started to diminish my actual enjoyment of them. There was a time when I’d love nothing more than the feeling of rolling around in my bed in a plump dirty diaper. But now, where I felt cruelly bound to them as punishment for being an idiot, I was barely getting any satisfaction at all.

I had begun conjuring a new plan.

There would be a clinic in the city - it wouldn’t be a real clinic of course - offering me the chance to help treat my incontinence. Then, over time, I’d simply work on rolling back the illusion of incontinence as I was “cured.” One day, it’d be a blip in my shady past. I’d be past it. She’d be past it. It would be good.

This would be my best acting yet.

I had the intent of telling her that Friday night. I’d come home with some fake pamphlets that I had made myself in Photoshop, and I’d sit in front of her on the couch, pretending to be really interested in them. She’d either have her curiosity piqued by my attention, or by the cover art: a middle-aged man looking up at the sky, with the words “Overcoming Incontinence” boldly centered. I was pretty proud of my work.

Instead, as I opened the door, faux pamphlets in hand, I found Gabby already halfway through a bottle of wine. A second empty glass waiting on the coffee table.

“You’re gonna have to catch up to me, Stephen.”

Fuck, I thought. I don’t know what this was, but I suddenly wanted it. It was what I had always wanted: Gabby the Friend. Gabby the Lover. Gabby the Anything-other-than-a-roommate.

I tossed my things down and joined her on the couch, taking a glass as she poured wine into it.

“It’s Friday, bitches!” she said. She seemed slightly more tipsy than half a bottle’s worth, but this was also the first time I ever sat down to drink with her.

“To Fridays!” I answered, and our wine glasses clinked together.

There was a nagging thought in the back of my mind. I didn’t want to acknowledge it - but I knew I needed to. I needed to put a diaper on. Whatever this was now, if she was going to catch me in my stupid lie, it would be now.

“You’ll have to excuse me for a moment,” I said, setting my wine glass down. 

“Oh...is everything okay?”

“I just need to...well...it’s been a long day, you know, and I need to get changed and…”

“Right, right,” she said. “I’m sorry...that was silly of me. I shouldn’t have pried.”

“You’re good, I promise! I just...give me a few minutes!”

I scrambled to my bedroom and hastily tossed aside my pants and boxers, drawing out one of the diapers from my closet. I was going to need more soon - I had already gone through more in the last few weeks than I had in the last few years combined. This lie was getting expensive - as if I needed another reason to doubt my life’s current trajectory.

I put the diaper on before slipping a pair of sweatpants on over it. I couldn’t tell if I was trying to hide the diaper or make it obvious that I was wearing one. Maybe it didn’t matter. Hopefully it didn’t matter.

I returned to the couch and joined Gabby, who had topped off my wine glass a little while I had been in my room.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Yeah...of course,” I said, smiling my fake smile. 

We talked for a while, while we drank the wine. We broke into a second bottle when the conversation didn’t let up. We were bonding. Maybe more than we ever had before since I moved in. For the first time, it didn’t seem like we were roommates - instead we were friends. She told me about growing up as the oldest child in a house where her mother was rarely around. She told me about the year she spent in Australia - a time that seemed equal parts astonishing and heartbreaking. She was opening up to me in a way that I never thought she would.

In exchange, I told her about myself.  Well, a version of myself. I did have two older brothers. I did get lost in Mexico City once. My father did have more love for his motorcycle than anyone in his family. But peppered into those stories were little lies. I regretted every single one of them, but never enough to just avoid them. I mentioned being gripped by fear in my teenage years of my brothers finding out about my diapers. There was a part of the Mexico City story where I had to communicate to a shop owner that I needed to find adult diapers when I didn’t speak Spanish. I would hint at, again and again, the shame I felt over my supposed disability.

A few glasses of wine deep, I pissed my diaper. It was embarrassingly effortless. I knew I had to go, and there was barely even a debate with myself about holding it. As quickly as I knew I needed to do something about it, I decided to just let it out in my diaper. I kept watching her eyes as I soaked my diaper - wondering if she could in any way tell what I was doing.

There was no sign of recognition, though.

Later, as we wrapped up a brief debate on the best Tom Hanks film, she took a deep breath and asked: “Has anyone ever...helped you before?”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” I replied. A lie. I kind of knew what she meant. I knew what I hoped she meant.

“With your...incontinence? Like, your...briefs? Is that what you call them? I’m sorry. I hope I’m not being insensitive. I always call them ‘diapers’ in my head...that just feels so demeaning though.”

“I...call them diapers,” I said with a shrug. “That’s okay. They are what they are, right?” I paused, trying to think of how I should answer the other part of her question before finally saying: “My mother...when I was younger. Not since.”

“Have you ever wanted that?”

“I mean, that’s not something I really think about much.” A lie. But everything was a lie now. I wasn’t sure what to do here. I felt like I was close to...something. I didn’t know what. Some sort of fantasy. Some sort of completely disastrous unethical fantasy. Every alarm was going off in my brain. 

Red lights were flashing. Sirens blared. Do not do this! Do not engage! Abort! Abort!

“I just feel like I could never ask someone to deal with that,” I said finally. “I can take care of myself.” That seemed like a slightly more ethical answer. I was feeling a little tiny bit proud of myself.

“Okay, I respect that,” she said. “But what if someone wanted to.”

“Wanted to?”

“Like, say you have a partner. A girlfriend...or boyfriend, I dunno. Or a wife. Or some sort of partner, right? Someone you could trust with anything. And they wanted to help you. Do you think you could let them?”

“Well…” My heart raced as I tried to figure out what I should say. “...yes, I think so.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I...maybe it's the wine, I don’t know. I hope I’m not being disrespectful. I’m just curious, I guess. It’s just a whole life that I feel like I can’t imagine for myself. And we live together, you know? So...I guess I just feel like if I know more, I can better support you. Does that make sense?”

I nodded without saying anything.

“Your...d-diaper,” she said, tripping over saying the word aloud, “I...think it's wet, yes?”

I blushed, wondering what it was that gave it away. Rather quickly, it came to me that it was probably the smell. I quickly became desensitized to the scent of my diapers - though I often surprised myself by returning to my bedroom after changing out of a diaper, only to find the scent of the discarded diaper stronger than I remembered. I had been sitting in this diaper for quite a while.

I nodded.

“Please don’t be embarrassed. I think I’m just kind of sensitive to it,” she said, cupping my hand with hers. “I had to look after my younger brother, you know? So I think sometimes I see you, or I smell something, and I just...like these instincts just kick in. I wanted him to be okay, you know? I didn’t want him to be ashamed. And you...I don’t want you to be ashamed. I don’t want you to feel alone in this.”

My heart hammered in my chest. I began to feel sweaty. My lip quivered. I was completely paralyzed. What was I supposed to say? What was I supposed to do? 

I suddenly wished that I had told her the truth when she initially saw my diapers. I wished that I had taken any of the millions of seconds that had passed between then and now to tell her that I hadn’t been honest.

“Th-thank you,” I said.

“Would you let me?”

“L-let you?” I asked. I could barely think straight. What exactly was she asking me?

“Let me change you? Please?”

Red lights were flashing. Sirens blared. Do not do this! Do not engage! Abort! Abort!

“Okay,” I said instead.