Bottoms Up, Part 1 (Patreon)

Welcome to the next weekly serialized story: Bottom’s Up! I’m trying a few new things in this story, including perspectives from multiple characters. As always, your feedback (good or bad) is greatly appreciated and welcome.

Enjoy!

One: Donuts

Bleary-eyed, hair tousled, excessively dry lips. Only slightly hungover. He had a personal rule about wearing sweatpants out of the house, but there he was - in the shop while rocking a pair of heather grey sweats.

Effie noticed this immediately, opting to keep any comments to herself - for now. Though, let it be said, this had been a particularly challenging morning to keep it to herself.

“Go on,” he said, clearly aware of her tongue-biting. “I know you’re dying to say something.”

She shook her head while mimicking the motions of locking her mouth shut and tossing the key over her shoulder.

“It was a rough night,” he continued, responding to questions that weren’t asked. “A rough morning too, for that matter.” He pulled the carafe from the coffee maker, pouring a disappointingly transparent brown liquid into a cup. “It’s gonna be one of those days.”

“For the record,” Effie finally said, “I didn’t make the coffee.”

“Well I didn’t either. Do I have another employee I’ve forgotten about?”

She released a burst of air from her nostrils - somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. “Harper was here this morning.”

“Really?”

“I thought you knew that.”

“It certainly sounds like something I should have known, right?”

She made the motion of locking her mouth shut again. A smart girl.

“Doors are unlocked?” he asked. “Lights on? All that shit?”

She looked at her smartwatch. “For the past hour, yeah.”

“Am I that late?”

“Yes.”

He took a sip of the coffee, cringing as he swallowed. He shook his head, holding the cup far out ahead of him - like it was a canister of caustic acid that he didn’t want to have too close to his body. He left the salesfloor, walking through the double doors into the stock room.

She waited patiently for his return, perfectly timing her question for when he emerged through the double doors again, no cup in hand. “Why don’t I just get some coffee?”

“What if a customer shows up? I’m not going to talk to them looking like this.”

Effie craned her neck over her shoulder, scanning the salesfloor. Not a single person. Nobody outside. Not even any cars in the parking lot, save for hers. This was the norm for the morning. The walk-ins would be hitting up the store later, somewhere between lunch and closing.

“I think you’ll be fine,” she said.

“Is Harper coming back?”

“No, I don’t think so. I think she just left her laptop charger here.”

“She made that coffee?” he asked, pointing an accusatory finger at the coffee maker. “For herself? And presumably drank it?”

“I think she thought she’d be staying longer than she did.”

“Oh.”

Effie knew she wouldn’t have to elaborate - and she knew that she should probably lock her mouth shut again - but she said it anyways: “She didn’t think you’d be here this morning. But then she heard your car pull up around back...”

“Oh.”

A change of subject was needed: “So. Coffee, right?”

“And donuts,” he said, his pointed finger spinning from the coffee maker to Effie. He reached into his pocket, pulling out his wallet. He grabbed a cluster of cash and handed it to her.

“I doubt the coffee and donuts will run us…” she quickly counted the bills, “...$47.”

“Just...give me the change when you come back,” he sighed, far too tired to care about this right now. “Buy yourself a Billie Eilish CD or whatever you kids do.”

She rolled her eyes, but laughed. “Gee, thanks mister. Gosh, welcome to the wonderful world of diaper money.”

“Just go do the thing,” he said. “And do it without any further snark.”

--

He liked Effie less as a person and more as a symbol. She was the sign that he was doing something right. Four years ago he was doing most things by himself. Selling, ordering, packing, shipping, customer service and, occasionally, answering a ridiculous question on the Internet. He had long assumed that this would be the way that it always was.

Harper helped, when she could. If nothing else, she was a body. She could sit at the counter while he did actual work. But she had a job herself. And a life.

This place? This was his life. 60-70 hours a week, waist deep in the world of adult diaper sales. Still just as awkward to say to himself as it was to say to other people.

And then, when he finally started to make a profit? He treated himself to an Effie. Perfect timing too, as Harper had not only grown sick of looking at giant diapers, she had grown sick of Layne in general.

They were separated now - a vast grey area that could encompass everything from sleeping in different beds to living with different people. They lived in the same house, supposedly. They passed each other once in a great while. But the house hadn’t been ‘home’ in sometime. Home was the store.

Bottoms Up: The Adult Baby Superstore.

One. He didn’t know what made a superstore so super. But the name sounded good. Definitive.

Two. He had wanted to call it the ‘ABDL Superstore,’ but that had been vetoed by Harper. He had forgotten how most of that conversation went, but he still spent a lot of time debating with himself on whether or not he should’ve pushed harder for ‘ABDL.’

Three. He had to lie about what he did for a living. He couldn’t just be a generic ‘business-owner,’ nor did he ever want to have to explain to Aunt Cathy that he sold large diapers to horny men. So he was a ‘specialized medical supply reseller.’ And that usually did the trick. Though Aunt Cathy had once called to ask if by ‘specialized medical supplies,’ it meant that he sold donut pillows for people suffering from hemorrhoids. “No,” followed by a mental ‘not unless that kink community really blows up sometime soon.’

Did he like what he did? That was a tricky question. He imagined it’d be the same answer whether he was playing professional baseball, directing movies, or selling diapers for a living. It was fun until it wasn’t. Any passion he had for the subject had just been transmuted into ‘knowing a lot about that stuff he sold.’

He hadn’t worn a diaper himself in two years. And while the store had its own semi-active social media accounts, his personal accounts had been deleted long ago.

Theoretically, he still liked it. Somewhere very deep beneath the everyday stress of fulfilling orders, paying bills, and making sure that decent coffee was within reach.

--

The front door opened, jingling the bells attached to the back of it. He didn’t look up from the laptop perched on the front counter - one tab opened on a message board discussion reviewing the new diapers from Puffybabes, the other featuring an article about the ongoing computer chip shortages that made buying a video game console so hard.

For the record, he was fine with there being a chip shortage - as it meant that he couldn’t buy a video game machine that he had no time to play anyways.

“I’m going to stack three donuts on top of each other and eat them all at once,” he said. “Just watch.”

“I’m sorry?” spoke the young woman. A different young woman’s voice than Effie’s. Less sarcastic.

“Oh, uh, hey there. I was expecting someone else. Someone else with donuts.” He silently cursed his sweatpants, opting to stay behind the counter.

“Should I...get some donuts?”

“Are you a customer?”

She looked around the shop cautiously, taking in the shelves and stacks of adult diapers tightly packed into plastic cubes and the dresses and onesies hanging from racks. “Yes, I think so. I hope so.”

“Customers aren’t required to bring donuts,” he said.

“You should have a sign on the door,” she said. “Just to make that clear before you walk in.”

Her playfulness was a welcome vacation from Effie’s sarcasm. And Harper’s frustration.

“Looking for anything in particular today?”

“Diapers,” she said. “Obviously, I guess. But that’s as far as I got.”

“I know a thing or two, if you have any questions.”

Layne was the salesman he wished every other salesman he had ever met was: unobtrusive. He was there if he was needed, otherwise he tried to stay out of people’s way. He said something along the lines of ‘Diapers sold themselves,’ often enough that it was either now a mantra, or a catchphrase he’d use until proven wrong.

“They’re not for me,” she said. She sort of just tossed it out into the void in case anyone cared.

He had heard this before. He had heard this often, actually. He had gotten pretty good at figuring out whether or not this was a lie. Sometimes it wasn’t too hard to tell. Maybe it was the way they giggled or blushed. Maybe their diaper was sticking out of the back of their pants. Maybe they were just wearing a onesie that said, in large bold letters, ‘MOMMY’S DIAPER BABY.’

He was pretty sure he had sold that very onesie to that baby.

She didn’t look like she was lying. He could certainly imagine her wearing a diaper. With her thick plastic framed glasses and auburn hair in a bun, she’d probably look cute in a diaper - the star of a video about a librarian who gets turned into a baby after reading a cursed book and…

Focus, Layne.

“Who might they be for, then?”

“My boyfriend,” she said

“Does he know he’s getting diapers?”

“Not yet.”

He laughed to himself. “Is this going to be a, uh, surprise?”

“A birthday present,” she said. “But he likes diapers. I’m not, like, forcing something new on him.”

“That’s a shame.”

She laughed.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?”

She shrugged. “I’m sure you could give me some very detailed information about each diaper’s absorbency. But I think I’m more interested in finding something...cute?”

“We have plenty of cute,” he said. He almost took a step out from behind the counter, but changed his mind. He pointed to a small stack of diapers in the center of the salesfloor. “Take a look at those.”

“Oh?”

“They’re the Carnivals. Discontinued for a while, but they’re back - mostly thanks to the demand. People absolutely adore these things.”

“They are pretty cute,” she said, lifting a package up for further inspection.

“It’s a simple design,” he said. “But I think that’s what everyone likes about them. Quite babyish.”

“Is that what people like?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Yeah...I’d say so.”

“Do you think my boyfriend knows about Carnivals? Like, would he see them and be excited that they’re being made again?”

“Maybe? Actually, let’s say yes. Yes, he would absolutely be delighted to see them.”

“Or I could get him a gift card,” she said. “And he could pick out his own diapers.”

He grimaced a little. “What is your involvement in his...diaper wearing? Are you an active participant? A passive acceptor? Probably not a concerned opposer…”

“Passive acceptor? If I had to choose.”

“So when he unwraps his gift and sees that it’s diapers, how do you think that’d make him feel?”

She smiled, shrugging a little. “Happy? Acknowledged?”

“And now imagine him opening a gift card to the diaper store.”

Another little shrug. “Yeah, alright. Let’s get these, then. Do I need to get anything else? Any other accessories?”

“Oh, maybe. Does he have a B-type or C-type changing station? Does he need an adapter?”

She wrinkled her nose at this, trying to make sense of his gibberish, before laughing.

“How often do you get to use that joke?” she asked.

“I think that’s actually the first time. Right off the top of the dome, too.”

She handed him her credit card. He took a close look at the name before sliding it through the register’s card reader.

“You’re more charming than a guy who sells diapers should be,” she said. It straddled the line between observation and joke far too closely to know for sure how it was supposed to be taken.

“Nobody has ever said that to me before,” he said. “At least not to my face, April Kellogg.”

She winced a little at hearing her own name come from his mouth. Was it too flirtatious?

“Don’t let your head get too big. You’re still selling diapers.”

He handed her card back to her, drawing a large black plastic bag from under the counter to hide her gift-diapers in. “I actually just had one more question for you.”

She smirked a little, ready for one last cute little quip from this stranger. “Okay?”

“What do I have to do to get you into a diaper today?”

--

Effie wasn’t an adult baby, nor was she a diaper lover. She didn’t hate them; she found the whole movement kind of interesting from a sociological standpoint. There had been times when she had come close to wanting to buy a package of diapers for herself - or to pluck a stray single from an opened pack in the stock room - but she hadn’t pulled the trigger. She liked admiring it from afar. She liked to pretend she was an anthropologist, immersing herself in the foreign culture to have the best vantage point of what it looked like.

She hadn’t applied for her job at Bottoms Up. It had just been offered to her. She had spent some time at Layne and Harper’s home a summer or two ago - mostly visiting her best friend Nina, Harper’s younger sister who had been staying with the couple while in between apartments. That was a much longer and complicated story than anyone had time for.

Of all the unexpected things to have happened that summer, the highest on the list would’ve been Layne offering her a full time job working at her store.

“Now, I gotta be honest with you,” he said, shortly after having shoved a can of hard cider into her then-19 year old hand. “This store is pretty fucking weird. Or, you’re going to think so.”

She told people that college ‘wasn’t for her,’ but the truth was that she just lacked focus. She was 19 and had just suffered through a decade-plus of mandated school. She didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, but she knew that at least four more years of school wasn’t going to help that. And, just like that, a job had fallen out of the sky and landed in her lap. A thickly padded and blushing job.

It was an easy job. Layne had never really been the ‘boss’ type. He had minimal expectations, and he barely met them himself most days. He paid her as well as he could afford, and nobody else seemed willing to pay her more for doing as little as she did.

She didn’t do nothing. Most days were spent packing boxes - online sales made up for the bulk of the business. Occasionally she’d field questions on social media for Layne. He used to want to be the one to handle all those things, but his online personality seemed to be three times more prickly than it was in real life.

And, occasionally, she’d get to laugh at some silly man-baby waddling through the store. You didn’t get a perk like that while working at Sears.

The door jingled, and she had returned; a cardboard carrier of tall coffee cups in one hand and a box of donuts in the other.

He was still behind the counter, but he seemed distracted. He rubbed his cheek.

“Did I miss anything?”

He scoffed.

“Everything alright with your face?”

“Ah, you know how it is…”

“I don’t.”

“This lady who was just in here. She, uh, slapped me.”

“What? And I missed that? C’mon. I was only gone for 20 minutes. I’ve been here for 40 hours a week for the last year and I’ve never once got to see someone take a swing at you.”

“If you want to take a swing yourself, there's a vacancy on my other cheek.”

“Can I hold onto that offer for later?” she asked. “Like a coupon?”

“The decision is pending, per review of the donuts you’ve brought back. Did you get anything good for yourself?”

She pushed the remaining wad of cash across the counter towards him. “They were all out of slingshots and Pokemon cards.”

“Better luck next time.”

“Why did you get slapped, anyways? I mean, I assume you ran your mouth. But you must’ve said something real juicy.”

He shrugged. “I hit on her.”

“Didn’t work out too well?”

“Joke’s on her,” he said with a shrug. “I’m a masochist.”

“You once told me that I shouldn’t flirt with the customers.”

“That’s because I was looking out for you. You don’t want to have to share a man’s pacifier.”

“But for you it’s okay?”

“She was buying diapers for someone else,” he said. “So…”

“Who was she buying them for?”

“Boyfriend.”

She tilted her head and shook it while smirking. That classic ‘Are you kidding me right now, Layne?’ look she had perfected over the last year.

“I know, I know. Just give me the coffee and donuts.”

--

Just another Monday. Crates of diapers and plastic pants were delivered. Diapers were shipped off. The door jingled a few times. Effie was listening to something especially youthful and dreadful in the stockroom. The coffee was gone and the remaining donuts would probably sit around until tomorrow morning when they were picked over one last time before being tossed into the trash.

Another car had pulled into the parking lot, though it had just been sitting there, idling, for 20 minutes. At one point he had carefully crept towards the window to see what was going on in the car. Not too close - he didn’t want to look like he was doing exactly what he was doing. Nor did he want anyone to see his sweatpants.

Just one woman. She was flipping through documents in a folder.

Documents? He didn’t care for that too much.

Maybe it was nothing. Out here, on the outskirts of an industrial park, there were only two types of visitors: People who knew exactly what they were looking for, and people who just wanted to stop in a mostly-vacant parking lot for a few minutes.

But then she got out of the car. And she was walking towards the store. With purpose. He liked that even less.

He really wished he had a pair of slacks - even jeans - in the back.

The door jingled and there she was. A pantsuit. Her honey-blonde hair - as opposed to Effie’s whitish-blonde hair - styled in such a way that he could only imagine seeing the salon’s bill and feeling sick to his stomach.

For the second time today - third time, if he was being completely honest with himself - he was attracted to the woman walking through the door.

“Good afternoon,” she said. She looked around the salesfloor, but only dismissively. As if she only needed to remind herself of what it was she was pouting about. She definitely had a pout on her face.

“Hi,” Layne said. Friendly, but hesitant.

“Pardon my intrusion, but I’ve been meaning to stop in and have a little chat with you,” she said, brushing her hair over her shoulder. That navy blue pantsuit was really working for him. Yes, Mommy.

“Well, you’re here now,” he said. “And I am too. Shall we get to chatting?”

“Mr…”

“Stanlan.”

“Mr. Stanlan, my name is Grace Vanderhoeffen. I represent the Concerned Adults for the Local Marketplace.”

He immediately disliked the name of that group, whatever it was. “That’s, what now...CALM?”

“Yes, that’s exactly right. Good job,” she said, her tone dropping to a condescending coo. “I represent CALM. And I thought it was time for me to introduce myself - seeing as how we may be seeing a bit of each other soon.”

He squinted a little, trying to see if he could answer any of the questions he had by himself. He could not. “I’m sorry, I don’t really know what you’re talking about.”

“Mr. Stanlan, in two weeks, CALM is scheduled to appear before the city council to present our case as to why we think your store is an abhorrent scar on our good town.”

“Ouch,” he said, running a hand through his unkempt hair. “Tell me how you really feel.”

“This is not a joke, Mr. Stanlan. We have had meetings about this. Many discussions. And, you should know, we are not short of members. We have many local professionals and distinguished citizens among our ranks - all of us firmly standing in solidarity with the belief that your storefront encourages and enables dangerous and immoral behavior. I come to you today so that you know who I am. So that you know who we are. And so that, in two weeks time, you too can join the city council meeting for yourself and hear what we have to say.”

“I suspect I might have heard enough already,” he said. “But, if I may, ask a question?”

“Sure.”

“What would you have me do? Leave?”

“Yes,” she said quickly.

“And go somewhere else?”

“Well, seeing as how your store would be an abomination no matter where it was…”

“So you’d rather I just close up my shop, liquidate my inventory, break my lease, fire my employee and find an entirely new career?”

She shrugged. “Most of the details aren’t my problem.”

“Actually,” he said, rubbing his still-tingling cheek, “I do have just one more question.”

“Yes?”

“What do I have to do to get you into a diaper today?”