Generations (Patreon)

Our family seemed so normal. So...standardized. My mom was the typical mom. She cooked, she cleaned, she didn’t complain about the amount of work she had to do around the house - she just did it. And my dad - I don’t want to say he was, like, a tyrant or anything. But, you know, he worked all day, came home and needed to decompress. So he’d sit on the couch and drink and you just knew better than to get in his way. That’s just the way it was for so long, and I expected it to be the way it would always be.

Then, one night, I remember my dad being out. I don’t know if he was just hanging out with some friends or if there was a party or what - he was just out. When he came home, it was really late, and he must’ve been pretty plastered because he seemed completely oblivious to how loud he was. He woke just about everyone up - me, my sister, my mom, our baby brother. And we can all hear him downstairs - he’s like Godzilla, just crashing into things and stumbling over who-knows-what. He’s cursing and babbling.

This sort of thing had happened before, of course. My mother, bless her soul, she’d come check on my sister and I, and assure us that everything was okay and that we should go back to sleep. Then she’d usually escort him upstairs and get him into bed before he could cause any more trouble. Then, we’d just...never talk about it again.

But this particular night was different. I watched my mother storm right past my opened bedroom door without so much as a pause. She looked furious and on a mission. I heard her ask my sister to take the baby into her room with her for a little bit. Then, my mother went downstairs. I couldn’t hear exactly what she was saying, but she was clearly giving him hell. Whatever he was saying sounded apologetic, but she just wasn’t having it.

We rarely saw my mother like that, you know? I think she was always expected to be the one to have to keep it together at all times. So I snuck out of my bed and got closer to the door.

“...and if you’re going to act like a baby, maybe I ought to treat you like one.”

It was the sort of thing she’d say to my sister and I were acting out. It was always an empty threat, but the implication was that she’d grab the wooden spoon and smack some sense into your bottom. But to hear her say it to our father was something else altogether. She never, as far as I could remember, spoke to him like that.

He said something, I don’t know what. But whatever it was, she wasn’t happy with the answer. I heard them coming up the stairs. I quickly jumped into my bed just before they passed by my door - she was practically dragging him down the hallway by a tight grip on his arm.

More commotion. A door slammed shut. And then...the unmistakable sound of a hand slapping skin. Over and over and over again. It was so surreal that I almost didn’t believe it was what I thought it was. Or, maybe, he had somehow regained control and was the one smacking her? That’s how unlikely I thought it was that my mother would be doing it to him.

But he was calling out in pain. Whining and crying. He begged for her to stop. She finally did and then, from at least my vantage point, there was just silence.

My sister, whose room was closer to my parents room, and across the hall from the baby’s room, would fill in some additional gaps later when we compared notes. According to her, she stopped by the baby’s room on the way to the bedroom, grabbing an armful of things before dragging our father to the bedroom. She didn’t know what things, but she was absolutely certain that she could smell baby powder, a lot of it,  coming from their room.

It was never brought up. Even my sister and I were hesitant to talk about it the first morning after. With every week that passed, it seemed like a stranger and stranger memory. To the point where I began to wonder if it had even happened at all.

Even if nobody wanted to address it, though, things had changed after that point. My father stopped drinking, or at least going out to drink. He seemed...nicer? Softer? It was easy to attribute it to his drinking less, but I was never convinced that that was it. This contributed to a general diminishing of respect in the house for him. My mother certainly seemed to have very little for him, and their relationship seemed almost nonexistent. Even my sister and I felt less intimidated in his presence.

My parents later divorced. We had seen divorce before - aunts and uncles, parents of my friends - but this didn’t feel as dramatic or as sad as those seemed to be for my cousins and friends. When my mother told us, we practically shrugged. It seemed like an inevitability. Or, at the very least, it didn’t seem to change much of anything since he had become a toothless spectre in his own home.

He moved out. He didn’t just move out, he moved far away - out of state. We’d see him here and there in the years that followed, but he was just never a big presence in our life again.

A new normal had formed with just my mother and siblings, and it was fine.

Most of the consequences of that one night seemed to have played out and were over. Except for one. One lingering effect that stuck around.

I wanted to experience what my father had experienced that night. I wanted to be helplessly dragged around, and I wanted to be punished and reprimanded. I wanted to be humiliated and shamed.

--

Cherry didn’t like me, I don’t think. Which was fine with me because she didn’t have to. She wasn’t necessarily my favorite person in the world either, but while I was paying her, she was my queen.

“Was that good?” she asked, sitting on the edge of the bed. I always appreciated that she asked. She didn’t have to; she was under no obligation to care.

“That hit the spot,” I replied, buttoning up my shirt.

“You, uh, might want to take a shower before you get dressed,” she said. “I did my best to clean you up, but I worry I’m just not thorough enough.”

“I’ll worry about it later,” I said, pulling my pants up over my diaper. “But I’m sure it's fine.”

“Just don’t get, like, a rash or something,” she said.

I smiled and thanked her. I could sense our sessions were exhausting for her. I was demanding and specific, but she never once flinched at anything I asked of her. Maybe that was the money working its magic, or maybe she had somehow seen worse elsewhere.

We said our goodbyes and she left my place. I’d probably see her in another month or two, once I had set aside a little extra “fun money” again.

Immediately after she left, I stood in front of my door-length mirror and pulled my pants down again. I didn’t get the chance to admire it before, but her diapering skills had come a long way since we first started meeting. I decided to just ditch the pants altogether - I wasn’t sure why I had even bothered putting them back on in the first place.

Cleaning up after Cherry left had once been my least favorite part of her visits. I would be feeling exhausted myself and I’d be all over the place emotionally. The last thing I wanted to do was to sift through the remnants of my night. I didn’t mind it so much anymore.

I picked up the pacifier from the ground and popped it back in my mouth. I tried to remember when it had even fallen out of my mouth. Maybe when I was hoisted over her lap? A plug - I’d have to wash that. I wound the rope up into a bundle and added it to the chest.

I put the extra diapers, the wipes, and the baby powder back in the wooden chest at the foot of my bed. The discarded diaper from earlier - the one I had been changed out of earlier - was rolled up and sitting on the ground. It had been quite the night for that diaper. Filled to capacity. Smacked into oblivion by a firm hand. Rubbed into my face. I could still see a little of her handwriting on it with a marker: “Baby Pig.” It was almost a shame that I had to throw this thing away, but what else would I do with it?

Then, as was customary after a night like this, I sat down and had a hard drink.

--

“Where was I?”

“Oh, you were talking about the cabin out by Lake Chapman?”

“Right. So I don’t get out there as much as I’d like to anymore. The whole culture there has changed, honestly. Like, it used to just be this nice community where all the families who had houses there knew each other. But now, it’s all rentals and B&Bs, you know? Every weekend it's a gamble as to what kind of crowds are going to be there. Sometimes you luck out, but sometimes…”

Her name is Lydia. She’s fine. Polite. Nice. Kind of chatty - or at least she hasn’t had anyone to talk to in a while. I suppose I could relate to that. Honestly, I really wanted to like her. I’d really like to…like anyone. This was my third date that month with the third different woman. None of them seemed offensive in any way. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I had been downright unfair by not giving them a second a chance - for both them and myself.

The best part about these dates being in a public place, like this restaurant, was that if I needed to, I could just walk out the door and never have to see her again. It was tempting.

I already know that I’m not going to give Lydia a second chance. I was either bored or I’ve already convinced myself that this isn’t what I want.

While she’s talking about lake cabins, I’m asking myself: So what is it that you do want then?

Cherry, probably. Or, like, someone nice like Lydia - but mashed together with the things that I do like about Cherry. Or what Cherry does for me.

This little thought creeps into my mind. Seeing as how my future with Lydia is apparently already doomed, I wonder if I roll the dice and just tell her about the things I really want.

“...I guess that’s all you can do, right?” she says, completing whatever thought that was. I smiled and nodded politely. “I’m sorry,” she says with a sigh, “I talk a lot on dates. What about you? Tell me more about you?”

“Can I be honest with you?” I ask.

“O-of course,” she replies. The question seems to catch her off guard.

“I don’t think I’m invested here.”

“Oh.”

“It’s nothing personal.”

She shrugs. She’s probably been in this position before, though probably because she just felt like that was the case - not because someone just said it out loud.

“I’m not sure what I’m doing here, honestly. Not with you, specifically. But just dating in general.”

“What...are you hoping to find?” she asks. It’s nice of her to ask, she certainly doesn’t have to.

I’m also not sure that she wants the answer. I hem and haw over what I’m going to say - but I can’t find any reason not to just be completely open, even if she despises what she hears.

“Someone to fuck me up,” I say with an earnest laugh. “Like, I don’t even think I want romance anymore. I wouldn’t know what to do with a girlfriend if I had one. But I have this fantasy, I guess, of meeting some strong confident woman who just wants to drag me back to her place so she can humiliate me for her pleasure.

Lydia’s color seemed to disappear from her face. Whatever she was expecting me to say, it wasn’t that.

“Humiliate you? Like...how?”

I felt myself blush a little. “Do you...really want to know? I’ll tell you if you want. But...it’s not pretty.”

She mulled it over for a moment or two, picking at the food left on her plate with her fork. “Yeah, alright. Humor me.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean...it sounds like you’re pretty uninvested here anyways,” she said. “I could go home and drink more wine and dwell on all the things I said wrong or how I’m not cute enough. Or, you could tell me about what a freak you are, and I could go home and instead feel better about myself.”

I appreciated her in that moment. She saw the opportunity to be as blunt and honest as I had been and she went for it. I didn’t think she had it in her.

“Fine,” I said, likely sounding as surprised as I was that she had called my bluff. “I want to be made to wear diapers. I like being made to crawl around on the ground in them. I want to be told to wet myself. I want my diaper changed by a strong woman. I want to be thrown over her lap while she beats the hell out of my ass.” Under normal circumstances, I’d probably never be able to say these things. But she allowed the floodgates to open, and I felt like I couldn’t even help myself. “I want dirty things. Absolutely filthy things. I want people to piss into a diaper while I wear it. I want to be someone’s toilet.”

She winced a little, but to her credit, she didn’t just get up and walk away. Of all the things she could say, she said: “What does that even mean? To be someone’s toilet?”

I shrugged. It occurred to me that I wasn’t completely sure myself.

“I don’t know,” I said with a laugh. “But I’m sure I’d figure it out if someone told me they wanted to do it.”

It was hard to read her expression. It wasn’t disgust, but it certainly wasn’t joy either.

“And what do you think is going to happen?” she asked. “You’re just going to go out with someone and they’re going to slip it into the casual first-date conversation that they really wish they’d find someone who is willing to piss in a diaper for them? Or...is that just a specific vibe you somehow catch?”

I shrugged again. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I haven’t found anyone yet.”

“Or maybe you’re asking for too much,” she said.

“Also possible.”

“So that’s what you want? Just...no strings attached fucked-up sex stuff?”

“Pretty much.”

“I wish you all the luck in the world with that.”

My heart sank. For a moment - the briefest of moments - I thought I had somehow gotten her on the hook.

--

I had gotten used to date nights feeling like a dead end or another step in a long long line of disappointments. But the date with Lydia had hit harder. Maybe it was because I finally opened up about what I had actually wanted. And she had listened.

It wasn’t a complete loss. For one, it planted a thought in my mind that maybe the secret to getting what I want was, believe it or not, being vocal about what I wanted. And not just with the woman I hired.

For another, the conversation left me hot and bothered. I couldn’t have run to my bedroom any faster following my arrival home. I tore off my clothes and flung open my chest, grabbing a diaper. Within minutes, I was back to crawling around the house while a piss-soaked garment squished between my thighs.

I could hear my phone in the other room. A text message. I waddled my way over to it.

A text. From what appeared to Lydia’s number: “I’m not going to pretend I get what you want. But I’m not going to lie - I’m at least a little curious. I’m sick of meeting guys on dates and going home with nothing. Why don’t you come over to my place? If you scratch my back, I’ll try and scratch yours.”

My heart raced.

I began to ask if she was sure, but I stopped myself and deleted it. She wouldn’t have sent me the message if she didn’t mean it. Her invitation for the same night as our date sent a signal that it was a one time offer. If I hesitated, she’d likely think better of it later and just rescind it.

“Give me a little bit to clean up, and I can be over soon,” I texted back. “Just give me your address.”

She had been waiting at her phone, because the moment I responded, she was already constructing a new message. “Don’t clean up. Just come as you are. Bring what you need. 432 Piedmont.”

I almost felt the need to elaborate on what I meant by “cleaning up.” I didn’t mean that I needed to take a shower. I was wearing a pissy diaper.

But she didn’t know that. She didn’t have to know that either. I could just take it off and run some wipes over my skin before slipping some boxers on.

I didn’t. I threw some pants on over my sopping wet diaper. I threw a new diaper - two new diapers, just in case - some wipes, baby powder and a pacifier in a bag and left the house in a blur.

--

“Am I going to regret this?” she asked.

“I’m not making you do anything you don’t want to do,” I said.

We were sitting at her kitchen table, drinking rum and cokes. It was a small, modestly decorated, colonial home in a modest neighborhood. Unassuming, like I had her pegged as earlier.

“So where do we go from here?” she asked.

“Wherever you want.”

She sighed. “You know what you want better than I do.”

“The truth is that I want whatever you want.”

“Is that stuff...your diapers?” she asked, pointing to my bag.

I nodded.

“I’m wearing a diaper now,” I said. I had been on the fence about whether or not I wanted to say anything about it.

“How long have you been wearing it?”

“Since I got home from seeing you.”

“Did you...use it?”

“I wet myself.”

She nodded, taking a long sip of her rum and coke.

“I said a lot of things at the restaurant earlier,” I said. “And while you didn’t really seem interested, you never really questioned any of it either.”

“How do you mean?” she asked. “Should I have?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just imagine that when I tell a woman I barely know that I want to wear diapers, she wants to ask questions about it and dig into the hows and whys.”

She shrugged. “I mean...I’ve heard of people wearing diapers before. It’s pretty weird, yeah, but I don’t need a thesis on it.”

I felt paralyzed sitting at her table. I wanted, needed, her to tell me what to do next, but this was all new to her.

“Show me it,” she finally said.

“The diaper?”

She nodded.

I stood up in her kitchen, pulling down my pants to reveal my big white diaper. The bottom was discolored and drooping off of me. She shifted her chair a little closer and reached to it, patting the soggy middle with her hand, feeling the weight of it. She seemed to be a combination of amused and curious. She was like a scientist exploring some alien object for the first time.

“What does it mean to want to be someone’s toilet?” she asked again.

If I had been drinking, I would’ve done a spit take clear across the room.

“I guess...like…”

“I want to do it,” she said.

“Oh? Just like that? You just want to...do it? I didn’t even get to explain it yet and…”

“I know what I want to do,” she said. “I’d suggest taking anything off that you don’t want to get wet.”

There was no hesitation on my part. I hastily stripped down to just my diaper once again. My shoes, my socks, pants and shirt were all tossed aside into a pile.

She looked around the kitchen, contemplating how she wanted to do this. Finally, she pointed to the center of the most open area of the kitchen floor.

“There,” she said. “You can go there.”

“Should I...sit? Lay down?”

She thought about it again, before answering: “Sit down. On your ass.”

I did as she asked. She walked behind me, and I could hear her shimmy her pants down her legs. I wished I could’ve seen it.

“I...I’m going to try this,” she said. “I don’t know if it will work.”

I couldn’t see what she was doing, but when I felt her skin on my back, I think I had it figured it out. Her back was to me, and she was squatting on me, her ass resting on my back.

“You might need to lean forward,” she said. I leaned forward as best I could.

There was no further discussion. Seconds after I leaned forward, I could feel her warm piss cascading down my back. I’m not sure what she expected to happen, but once it hit my back, it careened off in all directions. Some of it trickled over my sides and puddled onto the tile floor below me. The rest of it trickled down my spine and right into my diaper, adding a new warm and moist feeling to the back of it.

It seemed to take forever. I wondered if she had been saving up for a week prior just in the hopes that she’d meet someone like me. Finally finished, she stood up again. Instead of pulling her pants up, she orbited me, ending up right in front of me, her ass in my face. She leaned forward herself, exposing everything between her legs to me. Her ass cheeks were wide open, and the very small tuft of trimmed pubic hair she kept around her vagina was still damp with urine.

“Can you clean that up for me?” she asked.

I obliged without another word, plunging my face into her exposed bottom. My tongue lashed out, lapping up everything in its path without scrutiny. Overwhelmed by the options of where my tongue could go, I was a little unwieldy at first. My tongue darted between her two holes. She adjusted her body a little, further forcing her muff into my mouth.  The message was received and I did my due diligence in giving it a thorough cleaning.

I started to pull my head back from her, but she grunted in disapproval. “You’ll stay there until I say.”

It had been a long time since I had pleasured a woman - this wasn’t on the menu when Cherry was over - and it had been even longer since I used my tongue. Given the way that Lydia was moaning, either I was doing a decent job, or it simply wouldn’t have taken much to please her in this position.

She moaned louder, bucking her back end against my face as ate her out. I could feel her grinding against me, harder and harder.

“Come on,” she said, “you can do it.” Then, perhaps seeing the benefit of dangling the carrot a little closer, she added: “I know you can get me off, you disgusting little freak.”

It worked, as I found myself ravenously licking and sucking at her. It became my entire world. It was all I knew, and the only thing that mattered.

With little warning, she climaxed - squirting into my face. I’d hoped to have drank it, but very little of it ended up in my mouth, most of it trickling down my face and dripping off my chin.

She finally removed her parked bottom from my face, stepping away while out of breath. Then she pulled her pants and panties back up, turning to look at me - still sitting on the ground in my diaper, wet from her piss. She laughed and shook her head.

“So you like that?” she finally said.

I nodded enthusiastically.

She scoffed. Maybe she just didn’t believe what she saw, or maybe she didn’t want to.

“I can take more,” I said.

“Maybe you can clean my floor for me?”

I looked down for the first time, realizing that I was literally just sitting in a puddle of her piss. I glanced around the kitchen to see what my options were. I hoped to spy a roll of paper towels or a mop, but…

“Don’t waste your time looking for a rag or something,” she spat. “I meant that you might as well get on your hands and knees and lick up every drop of it.”

My mouth dropped open. Who was this woman?

But of course I wanted to do that. I was delighted she had asked. I was almost immediately on my hands and knees lapping up her piss. Every drop that I could find. I wondered when the last time that she washed the floor was. It hardly mattered. I would’ve licked it even if she had trampled over it in muddy boots.

“Disgusting,” she said. “I hate that I’m enjoying this.”

I was reminded of what Cherry had scrawled on my diaper recently, and I said it aloud: “I’m a pig baby.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s accurate.”

“Where did all this come from?” she asked. “What made you like this?”

“I inherited it, I think.” It came off as a joke, but I think I meant it.

I continued to lick at the floor. It was incredibly hard to lap up such a puddle, and having started with my ass already planted in it, it felt like every move I made only spread it further. She watched me struggle, a lovely struggle, for a few minutes.

“Alright, that’s enough,” she finally said.

“But...the floor still has…”

“Just take this,” she said, throwing a towel at me.

I wiped the floor clean, tossing the towel back to her. She let it land on the ground and she kicked it into the pile of my clothes.

“I’m not going to change your diaper,” she said.

“I understand,” I said. I was disappointed, but not surprised.

“But you can change it. In front of me.”

“R-really?” That almost sounded even better, somehow. I felt like I should be taking notes for Cherry. Or, maybe, I didn’t need Cherry.

“Sure. Show me how you change your own diaper. Right there on my floor.”

“Could you get my bag for me?”

She did grab the bag, but while I sat back down in the ground, she sat at the table, taking out the contents of the bag and began laying them out on the table. She started with the two diapers.

“Two? What did you think was going to happen here tonight?”

“I was just being cautious,” I said.

“Do you wear diapers all the time?”

“No.”

“Did you wear one on our date?”

“No.”

“Do you...shit yourself?”

“I...yes. Yes, I do.”

“Can you do it now?”

“Do you want me to do it now?”

“I’m just asking if you could.”

“No...probably not.” Then, in the interest of being honest, I added: “I wish I could.”

She nodded without further comment. She moved on, taking out the baby powder. Then the baby wipes. She began putting the bag down, believing it to be empty, only to feel another object in it just before she would’ve tossed the bag aside. She reached in again, drawing out the pacifier.

“Think you’d need this?”

“I’m not sure why I grabbed that,” I admitted. “Habit?”

She tossed it to me. “You might as well use it. Babies should be seen and not heard anyways.”

I obediently plugged it into my mouth. Admittedly, it made me wish I brought the plug for my other end too - I would’ve liked to see how she would’ve reacted to it.

“Open your diaper up,” she said.

I did as she asked, untaping the sides of the diaper so that I could let the front flop down onto the floor with a soggy slap. My semi-stiff cock was sitting atop a golden mound of moist padding. But it was getting harder.

“Does this excite you? Changing your dirty diaper in front of someone else?”

I nodded, sucking the pacifier pretty hard.

“Maybe you should show me how much you like it.”

I gripped my manhood, looking back up at her. Was this what she wanted?

“That’s it,” she said, her hand shaking up and down. “Go on. Give it some tugs for me.”

I exhaled loudly through my nose. I suppose it could’ve come off as being unhappy with her request - but it was more that I couldn’t believe I was actually about to do this. I was excited to do this.

I was stroking myself in my open wet diaper now. Every few seconds I’d look back up to her, only to find her staring back. Again, it was hard to determine how she felt about it all. She looked like she was watching an interesting TV show - with a sort of bemused curiosity.

But the more I rubbed myself, the more into it I got. It was more than the motion - it was the situation. It was the company. It was everything that lead up to this moment.

“What if I squatted over your diaper, went to the bathroom on it, and made you wear it?” she asked.

I moaned through the pacifier and nodded.

“Basically, you’ll do anything I ask?”

Another nod.

“I don’t know how I feel about you,” she said with a laugh. “You’re kind of a fun toy. I want to have fun with you - but you disgust me too.”

I kept stroking myself.

“I don’t want to date you. I definitely don’t want you to fuck me. But, like, I don’t know...maybe I’ll get the hankering to shit in someone else’s pants someday and you’ll be the first person I think to call.”

I was stroking myself even harder now.

“You’d like that, right?”

I moaned loudly and I nodded so hard I felt like I was headbanging as I furiously rubbed myself off.

“But, I don’t know what’s worse, honestly. If you were actually getting off while wearing a diaper that I filled up for you, or you sitting here now, getting off on just the idea of it. Look at you. You’re about to come all over...and I barely did anything. I’m just talking about it things I could do.”

She was right, but it didn’t matter. I exploded in my hand, my white cream flowing through my fingers and down my shaft.

When I finally looked back to her, she had a smug smile on her face, but she almost looked bored.

She threw the package of wipes to me. “Go ahead and get yourself cleaned up. Put a new diaper on or whatever you have to do.” She stood up and started walking out of the kitchen.

I spat out the pacifier. “W-wait...where are you going?”

“I think I’ve seen enough for now. When you’re done, you’re welcome to hang out for a little bit if you want. Or you can go. Whichever.” She left the room. I remained frozen where I was for another minute or two. I heard a TV turn on in another room.

--

Two weeks passed and I didn’t hear from Lydia again. I called her exactly once, one week later, asking if she was interested in getting drinks again. No response.

I set up an appointment with Cherry. She seemed displeased to be hearing from me - more so than usual. Her rates had gone up again. I told her it was fine.

I went on another date, this time with a woman named Samantha. I tried the same tactic that I had stumbled into during my date with Lydia: The honest admission that the date wasn’t working for me, and what I really wanted was something much darker and more disgusting. I told her about the diapers and about my desire to be treated like absolute garbage.

She did not share Lydia’s curiosity. She left before the check arrived.

--

I often thought about that one night, all those years ago, where my father’s foolish behavior was checked by mother. Inadvertently, it had set me on a seemingly self-destructive course through life. I wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t witnessed those events - whether he just hadn’t acted like that, or if I had just stayed asleep - if I would’ve eventually found the same desires elsewhere, or if I would’ve lived a life without them.

“I asked her about it once,” my sister said over the phone with me one Sunday morning, referring to a conversation she had with my mother. “It was just one of those weird things that stuck in my head.”

“Mine too,” I said, happy to hear that I wasn’t the only one.

“You know her; she was never one to turn down an opportunity to bad-mouth Dad.”

‘What did she say?”

“Did you know that he had pissed himself when he came home that night? I guess that, along with everything else, is what put her over the edge.”

“I...didn’t know that.” I wished I didn’t know that.

“She told me that if she could’ve fit him into a diaper, she would’ve. There’s a disturbing mental image for you, right?”

“Y-yeah…” I said nervously.

“Do you ever visit him?” she asked.

“No. I mean, I call him once in a while, but I haven’t been out to see him in years. Do you?”

“I went out there a year or two ago. He seemed fine, I guess. Still lives alone. Still seems kind of...sad. But can I tell you something? You have to promise not to tell anyone I told you this. Because I wish I didn’t know it myself.”

“Uh, sure. I mean, who am I going to talk to?”

“Alright. Well...I was trying my hardest not to snoop around, but I used the bathroom at his place and I walked past his bedroom and I saw, like...diapers on his bed? Like...adult diapers.”

My heart was beating faster. “Well...you know...he’s getting older in his years.”

“I guess. I mean...I wouldn’t mention it at all if they weren’t...colorful.”

“Colorful?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t know what I saw, or I don’t understand it. But they were colorful diapers Like, I don’t know. Babyish? But big. I don’t know. I don’t know what to think about it. I think about that, and then about that night with Mom and… Man, she really messed him up after that, huh?”

“Yeah…”

“Did you know about that sort of stuff?”

“N-no.”

“I’m sorry to bring it up,” she said. “I just thought it was weird.”

“You’re not wrong.”

--

In the same way that watching my mother manhandle my father had changed my life, so too did that conversation with my sister.

I didn’t know what, of my desires, I could sacrifice - but I felt like something had to change. I didn’t want people to one day have similar conversations about me. “Oh remember him?” they’d say. “He lives by himself and uses diapers all day.”

It was my second date with Tara. I’d like to think that we had just hit it off - and we had - but it was more than that. I felt like I had opened myself a little. I didn’t go into it just hoping for a specific thing. To my surprise, people were pleasant to talk to when you gave them a chance.

“I’m usually not this forward,” she said over our post-dinner cups of coffee. “But you’re welcome to come back to my place tonight for a night cap.”

“I’m not opposed,” I said.

“I suppose it's only fair to warn you,” she said with a shrug. “I can be a little...aggressive in the bedroom.”

“If I’m being honest,” I said with a chuckle, “I prefer that.”

“I had a feeling you would. You like being tossed around a little?”

“You have no idea.”

“Yeah?” she said. “I think we’ll get along pretty well then.”