Stupid Baby Story Club, Part 6 [Tier 2 and 3] (Patreon)

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Six: The Ballad of Burned Bagel

I wasn’t mad at Flo. All things considered, I thought I was handling my emotions pretty well.

“Sasha,” Lara said, a concerned expression on her face, “is that seriously what you’re eating for lunch?”

My tray at the dining hall was loaded with three separate containers of french fries, a pile of ketchup packets, and a can of lemon-lime soda. It’s not until she asked her question that I see how it might be seen as a sign of inner turmoil.

“Do you, uh, want some fries?”

“Is something wrong, Sash?”

I did like that Lara and I were at the nickname stage of our friendship. I wasn’t entirely in love with ‘Sash,’ but anything was better than when my high school friend Pip called me ‘Trasha.’ Offensive and crude–and it was coming from someone whose chosen nickname was ‘Pip.’ Wrong on so many levels.

I was torn on how much I wanted to say to Lara. Obviously, I wasn’t about to tell her that I’ve been hanging out with people who enjoy waddling around in diapers, but maybe there was a way to bemoan about my current woes without bringing them up.

“I’m in this real, uhm, dill of a pickle,” I said, immediately regretting it.

Lara snickered to herself, shaking her head. “You’re so weird sometimes.”

“Sorry…”

“No, no, I like it. But what’s this about your pickle now?”

“So my friend that you saw in the dorm room with me the other day. Flo?”

“Right.”

“She and I have been… I don’t know. I don’t want to say we were dating, because we absolutely weren’t. And I don’t even think that we really acknowledged what was going on there. I think we just had some sort of…vibe? Do you know what I mean?”

“Maybe?”

“Okay, so we have a vibe, right? But we both mutually know this other guy. Who–by the way–gave me his phone number once. And the other night, I saw Flo doing, uhm, stuff with this guy!”

Lara scratched her head for a moment. “Wow, this sounds like a really good TV show.”

“Don’t even get me started on that.”

“So, do you think that Flo is, like, cheating on you?”

“No…I don’t think so. I mean, how can she be cheating when we’ve never once had a conversation about being a thing?”

“A thing?”

“A…couple? Two friends with slightly more-than-friends privileges? I don’t know. We haven’t even acknowledged that we’re just friends.”

“Yeah, but friends don’t have to do that. Like, I consider you a friend, but we’ve never sat down, looked each other in the eyes, and said: ‘I am now your friend.’”

“Aww, I’m your friend?” I cooed, distracted for a moment.

She nodded. “And you’re mine, right?”

I nodded back. “Let’s say it though. Just to be safe.”

She laughed. “Alright, ready? We’ll stare into each other’s eyes and say it on the count of three. 1, 2, 3…”

Simultaneously: “I am now your friend.”

We giggled at ourselves, and I felt like I was 12 years old again–developing a silly love language with a friend that meant everything to us, but would be embarrassing had anyone else seen it.

“Alright, good,” Lara said. “I’m glad we got that out of our system. I feel like we can proceed now.”

“So, as my official friend, what are your thoughts?”

“I mean, you’re right–she’s not doing anything wrong if there’s never been any sort of expectation set that you wouldn’t be seeing other people.”

“But I like her,” I whined. Might as well have stuck my thumb in my mouth and pissed my pants too if I was going to sound that much like a toddler.

Oh, that actually sounds nice.

“So maybe you should tell her that?”

“Yeah, but her and Chuck…” I didn’t mean to say his name. It felt like too much information–even if she didn’t know who Chuck was.

“Wow, someone actually goes by ‘Chuck?’”

“You don’t like it?”

“It reminds me of…Rugrats,” she said. “Like now, I’m just imagining some red-head in a diaper.”

Jesus, Lara, what the hell are you doing to me?

This casual reference to diapers had also reminded me about the package that had been delivered a few days before. Much to my surprise–and delight–Lara hadn’t asked about it. Maybe because, by the time I got home from the Story Club meeting that night, she had been passed out. I stashed the box under my bed, where it had been ever since.

I wanted to open the box. Very badly. I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I had been busy. Well, mildly busy. Too, I feared that things would change once I opened the box. Like I would somehow lose control of who I was and just obsess over diapers–more than I already was.

Oh yeah, I owed Lara a response. “Y-yeah…well, no, Chuck isn’t a, uhm, baby…”

“So, wait, you said that Chuck gave you his number too? I have to assume you guys had some sort of interaction where that seemed like the appropriate thing to do, right?”

“We had, like, the briefest of moments,” I said. And that moment, as best as I could recall, was just me being nice to him one day. “I don’t know that we have much chemistry. And, besides, I never used his number.”

“But Flo did.”

I shrugged. “Apparently.”

“If you like Flo–in a particular way–then you should have a conversation with her. It might be awkward. But you’ll never know what could’ve been if you don’t. And you’ll live with that guilt forever.”

“Forever? Jeez.”

“I’m speaking from experience,” Lara said. “Back in Chicago, I felt like there was a long line of guys I had feelings for and never acted on. And everyone of them would go on to date the girls who were able to express themselves. I’m still a virgin, Sash.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything…”

“Maybe I’m just bitter about that too, I don’t know,” she laughed. “But seriously. Go talk to Flo. And I’d like a few of your fries.”

What Lara said was completely accurate–the only adult solution was to talk to Flo. While she hadn’t told me anything that I didn’t already know, I definitely needed to hear it from someone else. And, with her newfound friend status, her words carried a lot more weight than they ever had before.

In the days that had followed the last Story Club meeting, I had tried to avoid Flo. I couldn’t completely avoid her, just because I wasn’t capable of being that rude. But I waited a little longer to respond to her texts. I made up a few excuses for why I couldn’t meet up with her for a meal or two. I lived with the knowledge that, eventually, we’d be in the same place at the same time and that I’d have to make a decision. Either I acted like I didn’t know anything and just accepted whatever it was Flo and I were from that point forward, or I’d tell her how I feel–risking our friendship if she didn’t feel the same way.

There was another problem too–that of my story for the club. The story was about Flo and I. I’d have felt like an absolute idiot if I rattled off that whole thing, only to get to the end and watch Flo walk off, hand-in-hand, with Chuck.

Who, now that I thought about it, wasn’t all that different from the character from Rugrats.

I made a decision. I couldn’t say whether it was a good or bad one–only that it was the decision I made. I’d proceed with telling my story at Story Club, and I’d see what happened after that. Because my story would put all my feelings out there–and it’d be up to Flo to decide what she wanted to do with them.

From the day I made that decision–which had been somewhere smack in the middle of the last club meeting and the next one–up until the time I had to actually tell the story, I was an absolute mess. I was having trouble focusing on anything. I’d stare at my story, written out on my laptop, and fret over every single word. Not only was this a story about Flo and I–but this was my first story to tell to this group. It didn’t matter how ‘good’ it was or not–these were people who knew each other better than they knew me. They’ve heard plenty of stories about diapers already–and I was just terrified that mine wouldn’t compare. I’d get through the whole thing, only for Drake to say: “Sorry, but we don’t think you’re actually all that good of a fit for the group.”

This feeling of distress must’ve been pretty obvious. Lara was asking me daily if I was alright.

“I really don’t want to beat a dead horse,” she said over breakfast, the day of the next meeting of the Story Club. “But I’m a little worried about you. Is this still about that Flo girl?”

“Sort of,” I said. It was the truth–albeit just a part of it.

“You still haven’t talked to her,” she said. It was an observation–not a question.

I just shook my head.

“What can I do to help?” she asked. “And don’t just say ‘nothing.’ I’m not asking for you to talk about anything you don’t want to. But if there’s anything I can do to make you feel even an iota better, just tell me. Even if it’s just, like, a muffin. I’ll go and get you a muffin.”

“I do like muffins…”

“What kind? I’ll be right back.”

“No, no, you don’t have to get me a muffin. I’m sorry. I’ve just got myself all worked up and I know I just need to chill.”

“Well, what sorts of things do you like to do to chill?”

A few weeks ago, I’d have probably said something like ‘jazz music and a big slice of cake.’ Now…I was just thinking about diapers.

“Oh…I don’t even know any more…”

“Hey, uhm…” Lara’s cheeks got a little rosy as she scratched her head. “Look, we don’t have to, like, talk about this much. But I just want you to know that, like, if there’s stuff that you like, or want, or need, to do…you can do it in our dorm room. Like, just say you need the room to yourself for a bit and I’ll go take a hike.”

That sounded an awful lot like someone who knew something they shouldn’t. I narrowed my eyes a little. “What do you mean?”

“Like, I dunno, if you had some sort of…interest, right? And it was something you thought that I’d judge you for. And so you keep it a secret and so close to the chest that you don’t allow yourself time for it? I’d want you to have the ability to, uhm, enjoy that sort of thing.”

“What do you know?” I asked.

She sighed. “I don’t actually know anything. I saw that box you got last week. And I was just, uhm, curious. So I looked up the return address online…”

My body completely locked up–unable to decide if I was furious or mortified.

“And so I don’t know what you actually ordered. But I saw the company you ordered it from. And they seem to specialize in, like, just one sort of thing…”

“And what’s that one thing?” I asked, still hoping that maybe she had made some sort of mistake in her research.

“Like, uh, diapers? But for adults?”

Mortified. That’s where my body landed.

“Kill me now,” I muttered.

“No, no,” she said. “Please, don’t be embarrassed. I swear, I’m not going to ask questions or anything like that. I don’t care what you actually ordered or what you actually like to, uhm, do? I’m just saying… Clearly there’s this thing that you like, and…maybe that’s the kind of thing that’s hard to do here on campus. With a roommate. So…just say the word and I’ll give you all the time in the world–no questions asked. Promise.”

The temptation was to deny, deny, deny. But I was at just the right level of vulnerability to want to take her at her word.

“What are you doing this afternoon?” I asked.

“Well I have some classes between, like, 2 and 3 . Then I was supposed to meet with my advisor at 4, but I could probably just stay out from 2 until whenever I was done with my advisor…”

“That’s perfect,” I said. “I can count on having the room to myself between 2 and, say, 5?”

“Absolutely,” she said with a warm smile.

“Lara, I love you.”

It was time. I needed a diaper.

I had other obligations during that time, but a quick email to my professor explaining that I had come down with a stomach bug freed up the afternoon pretty easily. I strolled into my dormitory just as Lara was leaving. We waved and smiled at each other. She winked. And it felt kind of good–giving my friend just enough information that she could do something nice like this for me.

I went and did it. I cracked open the box and pulled out the package of adult diapers. This particular style was called Uni-Cuties–all pink with little cartoon princesses, unicorns, and rainbows printed across it. Humiliatingly juvenile–it made me cringe a little just to look at them. But this was by design. If I was going to be a big baby, I wanted to go all in. None of those white diapers that looked like someone might have grabbed them off a shelf at a hospital.

…if that’s a place one can even get diapers? Honestly, I know nothing about the diaper protocols at a hospital.

This was only my third time putting a diaper on myself, and I felt exponentially more capable this time around. I doubted it was perfect, and I doubted it’d win me awards at the next Lil Miss Diaper Bottom pageant–but it felt secure and tightly secured. All it had to do was hold some pee, and I felt pretty confident that it could do that.

It felt good to just have all the time in the world to enjoy wearing a diaper. I had no place to be. Nobody else to share space with. It was just me and my diaper. For a while, I just flopped around on the bed, laying and sitting in every configuration I could imagine–just trying to get a feel for how the thick padding felt between my legs and against my skin. I ran my hands back and forth over the diaper, hearing it crinkle and rustle loudly. It was a lovely and humiliating sound–a unique chorus that could only come from a diaper. If I ever heard that sound again in my life–I’d know it was a diaper.

Pretty quickly, I knew I had to pee. By design, more or less–I hadn’t used a restroom since just before lunch. And after Lara–bless her soul–had given me clearance for having the room to myself that afternoon, I might have guzzled an extra bottle of water. So, standing in front of the full-length mirror mounted on the dorm room’s built-in cabinetry, I squatted a little and watched my reflection carefully as I released my bladder.

And then…all hell broke loose.

___

The Ballad of Burned Bagel, Part 1

Gather ‘round, kiddies, and let me tell y’all a tale…

[“Are you going to do this old time-y prospector voice the whole time?” Neil asked.

“I guess that depends on whether or not you like it,” I replied.

“I like it now…but I worry I’m going to get sick of it real fast.”

“Fair enough. I’ll…tone that back a little.”]

Some might say that the story starts on that Tuesday afternoon, when fire alarms sound throughout Moyer Hall. Frowning faces flood the hallways as temporarily displaced students file out into the sunny outdoors. Most–trained by years of fire drills in their primary and secondary educations–assume it’s nothing more than an inconvenience. This is either another drill, or it’s some fluke that’ll be resolved quickly.

There are some who just flat-out refuse to leave. They don’t see the point. “Yeah, well my room isn’t on fire, says a young man with a video game controller in his hands.”

“I’m not really dressed to…leave,” says a young woman from behind a barely opened door when someone knocks on it to advise she needs to evacuate.

But it doesn’t matter. The school has strict rules about these sorts of things. Rules probably dictated by the fear of lawsuits more than actual safety, one might guess–but rules nonetheless. Everyone is escorted outside–whether they like it or not.

Liam Hadzik believes that the story actually starts a while before this particular day. He wonders if the story actually starts when he was in elementary school, when he wet his pants while standing in the outfield during a game of kickball. Time would prove that it had just been a fluke–he never had an accident before or after that. But it wouldn’t matter, because for the next ten years, he’d be known as ‘Pee-am.’

He had been looking forward to college for most of his time in high school–if only because it felt like it’d be a second chance. One removed from the tainted aura he was still carrying around all those years after his one fluke accident. He didn’t have many friends–and the ones he had were kids with their own social troubles.

And while college had been the blank slate he was hoping it would be, he lacked the social skills to take advantage of it. Years of hiding and keeping to himself had made him excruciatingly introverted. He hadn’t made any friends, and aside from going to classes, he barely spent time outside of his dorm room. Even trips to the dining hall made him uncomfortable–that whole song and dance of trying to find a table where he could sit by himself, without fear of being joined by other strangers in need of a mostly-vacant table.

Enter: the toaster.

Campus rules are pretty strict about appliances approved for dorm-use. Microwaves and mini-fridges seemed acceptable. Toasters and blenders were prohibited.

And that’s why he kept the toaster in a closet. When his roommate wasn’t around, and when he could open a window to let the smell of grilled bread escape the room, he’d break out the toaster and treat himself to a meal that didn’t involve being around other people.

Liam’s not sure what happened. He put a bagel in the toaster and pressed down the lever that submerged the bread between the hot wires–like he had countless times before. But this time, something was a little different. Maybe he had the little knob turned too far towards the ‘darker’ setting. Maybe he got distracted by an article on his phone while he waited for the bagel to toast. Maybe the window wasn’t open enough to let the smoke out when the bagel passed the ‘toasted’ stage and entered the ‘burned’ stage. But suddenly, smoke is rising from the toaster, filling his room faster than he can wave it out the window.

And then the fire alarms kicked on. The bagel is already out of the toaster and in the trash. The toaster is already unplugged. The ‘threat’ is resolved–but nobody else knows that. Everyone is muttering and cursing as they trudge down the hallways, angry that their afternoon has been upended.

He grabs his bookbag and joins the crowd in its exodus from the dormitory, hoping that he’s done enough to prevent the fire alarm from being linked to his error. Once outside, he flees into a grove of trees not far from the building–close enough that he can keep an eye on things, but far enough that he’s away from everyone else.

[“This happened today,” Chuck said. “I saw the firetrucks show up.”

“Let her tell the story!” Flo quickly barked.]

It’s from here that he watches the firetrucks pull up to the building just a few minutes later. They’ve got their heavy gear on and they quickly jog inside, ready to do a full sweep of the building. They’ve probably done this countless times before. This couldn’t be the first time a fire alarm has gone off in a dorm building, and it probably won’t be the last.

It’s at about this time that he learns he’s not alone in the grove.

“Don’t mind me,” she says, a young woman in a cute–but likely far too short–yellow summer dress. “Just waiting for this hubbub to die down before I go back.”

“You and me both,” he answers.

She snorts, seemingly amused. “What are you hiding over here for?”

“I think that’s my fault,” he says, pointing towards the fire trucks.

“Did you try to burn down the dorm?”

“Not on purpose…”

“You really couldn’t have picked a better time for this?” she spits.

“It was an accident,” he says.

She doesn’t seem especially happy about his answer, but she doesn’t seem to have any interest in continuing the conversation either. From adjacent bushes, they silently watch the building, and the frustrated crowd standing outside of it.

“My name is Liam,” he finally says. He’s not one for talking to strangers–or anyone. But…adversity makes strange bedfellows.

“Sasha,” she begrudgingly offers.

“And what are you hiding from?”

“Who said I’m hiding?”

“Because while everyone else is standing over there, you and I are in these trees, hiding behind bushes. I’m hiding. And so I’m guessing you are too.”

“I just don’t want anyone to see me right now,” she says.

“Why?” he asks. “That’s a, uhm, pretty dress.”

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. He wonders if he’s missing something. Was it against social protocol to compliment someone in a time of crisis?

She bypasses that observation and asks a question of her own: “So how’d you burn down the building?”

“I didn’t burn down anything I…” He sees that she was being sarcastic and decides to start over. “I had a bagel in a toaster. I let it get too dark and it started to smoke. That’s the whole story.”

“A toaster?” she asks. “I thought we weren’t supposed to have…”

“I know, I know,” he says. “Believe me, I’m already preparing myself for the trouble I’m going to be in when they find it in my room.”

She sighs, her face looks a little more sympathetic now. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be a dick. I’m just having a hell of a day.”

“You and me both,” he says.

A few minutes of silence passes before she finally breaks it: “You know, there’s toasters in the dining halls. You don’t really need one in your dorm room.”

He starts to tell his story–he doesn’t think it’s going to be a very long one, considering she knows most of the details already. But somewhere along the way, he gets distracted and his story takes a turn. He’s talking about wetting his pants during kickball and how kids called him ‘Pee-am.’ He’s talking about his struggles with being on campus. He’s just opening up and letting it all out.

She doesn’t say anything for a moment after he finishes rambling about himself. She still has that sympathetic look to her, but she seems unsure what to say.

“Sorry,” he says. “I…didn’t mean to go off there.”

“This isn’t my dress,” she says.

“Uhm, I’m sorry?”

“I wish I could wear dresses like this,” she says. “It’s a cute look. But this is my roommate, Lara’s. I think, too, it’s just a little too small for me.”

“Well…for what it’s worth, I think it looks nice.”

“It doesn’t even completely cover my, er, bottom.”

“I, uh, didn’t notice…”

“Oh please. I’m practically flapping in the breeze out here.”

“At least you’re wearing underwear,” he shrugs–as if that was the silver lining of this situation.

“I fucking wish I was wearing panties,” she says.

“But…” What he wants to say is that she’s clearly wearing something. He can see the smallest bit of something pink poking out from under the hem of the dress once in a while. Not that he’s purposefully looking…it’s just hard not to see it.

Sasha sighs. “Do you want to know what I’m wearing? Here, I’ll show you, Bagel-Boy.”

She lifts up her dress without giving him time to even answer her question. And he’s a little perplexed as to what he’s looking at. He’s never seen another woman–in real life–showing him her panties before. And these are colorful like panties, but…they’re not panties.

“It’s a diaper,” she says, throwing him a bone.

“Wh-why?”

“That’s a really complicated question,” she says.

They both look up towards the dormitory again. The firemen are still inside the building, still going room by room to look for stragglers or possible sources of smoke.

“We’ve got time,” Liam says. “If you want to talk about it.”

“Actually, you know what?” she says. “I have a story to tell. I was going to tell it, uh, later? And I still might. But now I’m thinking I need to tell this story–about standing in the trees with you.”

He scratches his head. “I…don’t follow.”

“I know. Here, let me hit you with this story, real quick…”

___

Night Energy

Do you know what my Mom said to me after helping me unload my belongings from the car when I was moving into my dorm? She said: “Sasha, this is going to be where you find yourself.”

I was kind of offended at the time. I spent a lot of time dissecting what I thought she might have meant by that. But then a weird thing happened…I had this moment when I thought: Yeah, you know what? I think I just found myself.

[“Wait,” Mama said. “So this is a story inside of your other story?”

“Dipe-ception,” Neil said.

“I’m telling two stories,” I said. “One just so happens to be in the middle of another one.”]

It was midnight–or thereabouts–when I found myself. I was sitting on a park bench in a little park somewhere off campus. If it has a name, I don’t know it. If you asked me how to get there, I wouldn’t have any idea. But I’ll remember my view from that bench, staring out at the sprawling field in the moonlight–a really good friend sitting beside me.

We were naked. No…not completely naked–we were each wearing a diaper. But our clothes were sitting in a heap a few feet away. Had anyone walked into the park, we wouldn’t have had enough time to grab our clothes before they saw what we were, and weren’t, wearing. Neither of us seemed especially bothered by this, though. We felt safe enough–or, we were both just being stupid together.

Rewinding a little, we were eating some food at a diner off-campus. I already had dinner much earlier in the evening, and I wasn’t one to need four meals in a single day, but I managed to scrape together a pretty big appetite when I saw that there were waffles on the menu.

“What do you think?” my friend asked.

“About the waffle, or…”

“Not the waffle. The…diaper?”

‘All consuming’ was on the tip of my tongue. The giant thing, stuffed inside a pair of pants that were already fitting a bit tight without extra padding, was about all I could think about. Besides food. The way my pants crinkled as I moved. The way that it wasn’t as easy to walk. The awkward heat accumulating between my legs.

But, I thought I should be honest: “It’s good.”

“Really?” she asked, a big smile on her face. “You’re not just saying that for me?”

“It feels wrong, you know? But, like, the right kind of wrong, if that makes sense.”

She nodded. “Exactly.”

“What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done in a diaper?” I asked.

My friend, she just laughed. “I’m not sure what you mean. It’s not like I ever jumped off a plane in a diaper while pooping myself.”

“I’d poop myself if I jumped off a plane,” I said. “Diaper or not.”

“You heard my story,” my friend said. “Some of those moments probably rank among the craziest I’ve ever had. But I’m always down for making new crazy memories.”

[“It’s safe to assume that ‘your friend’ is just Flo, right?” Chuck asked. “I think confirming that would just make the story a lot hotter.”

“It’s actually your Mom,” Flo said, shrugging. “Kinda weird that they know each other.”

“I mean…yes,” I said, responding to Chuck’s question. “But that’s not what I wrote. So, can we just…”

“Go with the Flo?” joked Neil.

Mama shook her head at Neil. “Neil, we’ve warned you about that pun before. Please go on, Sasha.”]

I had a little bout of ‘night energy.’ I don’t know if that’s a real thing or not, but it’s something I’ve experienced a few times in my life. You get out with some friends, or there’s just some random reason you’re out later than you’re used to. And suddenly you just have this drive to go and experience the world while everyone else is sleeping. Sometimes, things you wouldn’t normally do–or even think about doing during the day.

So, between the waffle, this thick diaper that my pants can barely contain, and my friend’s suggestion that we make some crazy new memories…I’ve got night energy.

“Yes,” I said with a big nod. “What do you want to do?”

“I’ve got an idea,” she said.

“Tell me!”

“I’ll show you. As soon as we’re done here.”

When we left the diner, I just started following her wherever she went. I knew that we were walking further from campus, but I wasn’t paying attention to the roads and intersections we encountered. I was mostly just thinking about the way the diaper felt in my pants as I walked.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“It’s just a place.”

“Have you been there before?”

“Sort of?” She paused a moment or two before deciding to elaborate. “I’ve been here during the day, and I had this idea about going back there at night. The place itself isn’t all that important. I’m more concerned about where it is.”

This didn’t make much sense to me until we reached the destination. A park, of sorts, on the edge of town. There were a few lights in the abandoned parking lot, but the park itself–a sprawling field with a smattering of benches and picnic tables arranged around it–was lit only by the moon.

“This place was mostly deserted during the day,” my friend said. “And I wondered if it was this quiet during the day, it’d be even quieter at night.”

“It’s unbelievably quiet,” I said, stepping into the grass as I spun around to take in all the dark nothing that surrounded us.

“It seems like the kind of place where you could get away with anything,” she said. Her fingers were working on the latch to her pants.

“Wh-what are you doing?”

“You don’t have to follow my lead if you don’t want to,” she said. “But I’ve been thinking about what I’d do if I ever came back here at night.”

“And you decided that you wanted to take off your pants?”

“I decided that I wanted to liberate myself, Sasha. It’s hard to find a place on campus where you can even take a piss without someone lurking in the background. So I’ll take any place that lets me just take my pants off.”

I stood my ground on the periphery of the field. She didn’t wait for me–she just shimmied out of her pants and tossed them aside along with her shoes before trotting out into the grass in just her shirt, diaper, and bare feet. And she just…ran around in the moonlight. It was amusing, though I still hadn’t been sold on doing the same myself.

Until, that is, I watched her attempt a cartwheel a few times. She’d throw her body forward, arms splayed out above her, and try to land on them so that she could just roll–but the timing never seemed right. If she was a wheel on a cart, the cart would be in the ravine now.

[Flo crossed her arms and scoffed. “Hey…”]

If she had tried a cartwheel and nailed it, I wonder if I’d have stayed on the sidelines. But watching her out there, goofing around like a toddler and trying a cartwheel over and over again, was pretty inspiring. I missed the freedom that came with just being childlike. That time when you could just spend an entire day trying to perfect your cartwheel.

I had only taken one step forward when my friend spun around to face me.

“If you’re coming out here to play, there’s only one rule.”

“And what is that?” I asked.

“No pants. This is a diaper-only zone.”

“Well I don’t want to disrespect the sacred rules of the field…”

It took a little bit of squeezing and breath-holding for me to unfasten the button on my very tight pants, but I finally managed–my diaper almost immediately expanding out in every direction.

“There’s no way that we’re getting these pants back on,” I said.

“We?” she teased. “Seems more like a you problem.”

She was right, but it was too late to care about that now. I kicked off my shoes and socks, slid my pants off, and jogged out into the cool grass. It seems like such a silly thing to say–but I had forgotten how good grass feels on bare feet. I’m sure I’ve done that plenty of times since I was a child. But there was something about this particular moment, in the moonlight with my new friend, that made me remember just how good it felt.

My inhibitions sloughed off of me with every awkward waddle forward. And by the time I reached her, my hands were over my head and I was throwing myself towards the ground for a half-assed cartwheel of my own. I doubted it was much better than hers.

[“To be clear,” Flo said, “my cartwheels were fully-assed.”]

“Watch this,” she said suddenly. And right there, she just spread her legs a little and squatted down in the middle of this field.

“Are you going to…”

But I could hear it happening before I even finished asking the question. The steadily buzzing hiss of her diaper being wet. It was so amazing to witness. I know that sounds strange–but I think I just needed to see someone else do it, you know? Like, if she could do this–and do it so breezily–then I could do it too.

So I tried. I replicated what I just watched her do. I spread my legs a little and squat down. In that thick-ass diaper? I’ve never felt so little since I was, like, an actual toddler. But when it came time to flood my pants like she had…I just couldn’t do it.

“I…can’t,” I said.

Meanwhile, she was standing in front of me in a clearly-soggy diaper. The bottom of it hung between her thighs like a pendulum. I wanted to be like her so badly.

“You can do it,” she said. “You just have to, like, reassure your body that it’s okay to betray all those toilet skills you’ve developed.”

“Gotcha. Forget the toilet skills. Make new diaper skills.”

She circled around me, positioning herself behind me. I felt her hands–both of them–gently pressing into the back of my diaper.

“Let it out,” she said. “Go ahead. I know you want to pee yourself like a big baby.”

[It’s at about this point in telling the story–and what a coincidence–that I feel an aching in my bladder. Maybe it’s been there longer than I’ve realized, but it suddenly feels urgent. And I could probably hold it if I wanted to…but I don’t think I want to.]

That combination of her hands on my diaper, and her saying those words to me, helped to just shut off my mind. Be like a baby, I told myself. It worked, and…

FSSSHHHH. In the silent field, the sound of my diaper getting flooded was very easy to hear. My cheeks might have blushed, but I was loving this moment.

“Can I ask you a question?” my friend asked from behind me.

“Please.”

“How weird would it be if I said I wanted to kiss you?”

“I mean, uhm…”

I was thrilled. I was flattered. I was…way out of my element. I’ve never kissed a girl. I barely had any experience kissing boys. And, while I might have had an occasional curiosity about kissing another girl, I felt mentally unprepared to actually go through with it.

“It was just an idea,” she said as I pondered her question a little longer than I meant to. Even in the dim light, I could see the pink in her cheeks, and I felt bad for leaving her hanging like this. “I’m not asking you to marry me or anything. I just–I dunno… We’re out here in the moonlight in our diapers and there’s this, like, energy, you know? And I just see your face and I want to kiss it.”

“I just don’t know, uhm…how?”

My friend laughed. “It’s pretty simple. I’ll show you.”

And she did. I turned to face her as she began shifting herself to be in front of me, and we met in the middle. Her soft lips pressed against mine almost immediately. For a moment, it didn’t feel like we were kissing–it was only her kissing me. It wasn’t until her lips struck a particular nerve–I don’t know which it is, but it’s one I’d like to be better acquainted with–and a warm and inviting sensation was passed to my brain that I finally broke from my stillness and felt myself actually kissing her back.

It’s a joke, at this point, that you do some ‘experimenting’ in college. And this, I think, was experimenting. Our arms wrapped around each other, the two of us hungrily eating the breath from each other.

We were suddenly rolling around in the grass together. Sometimes we were kissing, sometimes we were just giggling. Our hands would touch, or we’d grab ahold of each other–but sometimes we just rolled. We just…played.

Somewhere in there, our shirts came off, and our bras soon followed. We were running around this dark field together in only our sagging diapers. Twirling, dancing, singing. Every so often we’d stop and kiss again, our hands pawing at each other’s diaper.

I say this as someone who has had so much anxiety about my own body that I’ve collapsed in a corner and cried rather than going to a pool party with my best friends–I didn’t think about my appearance at all. Not a single fuck was given. We had transcended appearance and aesthetics. We were just babies.

And not that long after, sitting on a park bench with her, is when I found myself.

“I was afraid I wouldn’t have a story to tell,” I said.

“And you do now?”

“If you’ll allow me to tell it.”

“Just don’t include the part where I…”

Well, obviously I can’t talk about that part.

___

“What?” asked Chuck. “Are you kidding me? There was more? Flo, what happened?”

“Calm down,” Flo said. “We just had a, uhm, moment.”

I sighed as Flo flashed me a little grin. I had almost forgotten about catching the little scene between her and Chuck. A scene I couldn’t talk to her about without admitting that I had followed her. A scene I couldn’t talk about without telling her how I felt.

I wondered–hoped–that my story was the first step needed for me to have that conversation.

“Oh,” I said, “we still need to get back to that grove of trees...”

___

The Ballad of Burned Bagel, Part 2

As Sasha finishes her story, Liam’s eyes wander back to the dormitory. The firemen have emerged, and judging by their casual pace–whatever threat had been perceived was neutralized. Some pause to talk to school administrators, while the rest climb aboard the trucks, waiting to head back to the station.

He’s a little curious to know what they’re talking about. Are they talking about toasters and burned bagels?

He’s actually a lot more curious about Sasha, whose story seems to have…

“So, I, uhm, assumed you liked the story?” she asks, a hand masking the rather obvious grin on her face.

[And it’s at this exact point that I feel a spurt of pee escaping into my diaper. The floodgates open soon after, and as I try to remain focused and determined on telling my story, my diaper is getting completely soaked.]

He realizes his erection has tented the front of his pants, and he scrambles to fix himself.

“I…I’m so sorry you had to see that,” he says. “Please don’t, like, cancel me.”

She just laughs.

“B-but…isn’t that what your story was about?” he asks. “Embracing your inner-self and not caring about how other people see you?”

“Sure,” she says. “But you still shouldn’t be walking around with that thing sticking out like that.”

“Uh, right…”

“So what did you think?” she asks.

“Of the story?”

She nods.

“I, uhm…” He isn’t expecting to have to give a critique. He wasn’t even expecting to hear such a strange story while he hid out in these trees. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t paying attention–his little pants-problem is proof of that. “I feel like I was missing some context? But…you drew me in. It was kind of interesting, I guess.”

She shrugs, seeming to accept the gist of his feedback. “Was it hot?”

“It was, uhm, kind of arousing. Sure.”

“Okay. I guess I feel pretty good about sharing this, then.”

“Wh-who on Earth would you even share that with? That’s not for a class, is it?”

“No,” she says, though she doesn’t elaborate any further. “But I need to know that you’re not going to tell anyone about this.”

“Who would I tell?”

“I don’t know.” she says, folding her arms in front of her. “But you already know too much. You know my name. You heard my story, and I showed you my diaper. I did all that because you looked like the type that I could trust. I can trust you, right?”

“I…could show you something too,” he says.

“Please don’t show me your penis.”

But he doesn’t. Instead, he opens his backpack and fishes out a large cube-ish block.

“It’s the toaster,” he says. “I grabbed it just before I left.”

“Do you think that’s going to prevent you from getting in trouble?”

He shrugs. “I have no idea. But…if nobody else ever finds out–at least you’ll know.”

She laughs and nods. “I wouldn’t say we’re even–but we’re headed in the right direction.”

She glances towards the dormitory, where students are now being allowed back inside.

“I suppose I should head back too,” he says, putting the toaster back into his bag. I should see if I’m in any sort of trouble.”

“Sounds good,” she says. “So long, Burned Bagel.”

“Oh, is that my, uhm, new nickname?”

“It’s better than ‘Pee-am,’ right?”

He nods. “That’s true.”

He takes a few more steps before spinning back around and walking towards her again.

“Look…I know this is being really forward of me, but…”

She sighs. “Bagel, I’m kind of going through a lot right now. So I’m not sure I’m in the mood to, like, date or anything at the moment.”

“Uhm, n-no… Actually, I was kind of wondering if…” his tone drops as he leans in closer–as if even being secluded in these trees isn’t enough privacy for what he has to say. “...I could buy that diaper off of you?”

Her head tilts and she stares at him. “Do you want a diaper? You don’t have to, like, buy one if you want to try one. I’ll just drop one off to you.”

“No, I mean…I want to buy that one,” he says, pointing between her legs. “Preferably, like, after you use it?”

And such is the story of Burned Bagel.

___

Mama wiped tears from her eyes–tears from all the laughing she had been doing at the end of my story, I presume.

“The balls on that guy,” Chuck said, shaking his head.

“Yeah,” said Neil. “But…did you sell it to him?”

“Don’t be crazy,” I said. “I don’t want some guy running around with my dirty diaper. Even if he doesn’t have any sort of social network.”

“It kind of makes me feel bad for him,” Mama said. “Should we invite him to join the group?”

“No,” Drake said, rather firmly. “I’ve met plenty of Burned Bagels in my life, and I just don’t think they’d be a good fit.”

“Well that’s it, right?” asked Flo. “Another round of stories down?”

“That’s a wrap, guys,” said Drake. “That was a pretty good group of stories too. And, I’d like to think that we learned a lot about each other.”

“I learned that you got your diaper changed a few feet from where your friends were hanging out,” Neil said to Drake.

“And I learned that you fell in love with a German man you called Daddy,” he retorted.

“And let’s not forget that we learned that Mama used to be a spoiled princess,” Flo added.

“Or that Flo fell in love with her teacher,” Chuck said.

“Or that you sucked a man’s cock,” Flo fired back at him.

“So…what now?” I asked. “We move on to a new round of stories?”

“Pretty much,” Drake said.

“We used to put it to a vote for the best story,” Mama said. “And the writer whose story got the most votes would pick the next theme. But…”

“There’s really not enough of us for it to be all that fair,” Neil added. “Especially when two of the five members are dating.”

“Six now,” I said.

“True,” Drake said. “But seeing as how you’re the newest member of our little group–and just as new to the topic of diapers in general–I’m thinking that we should just let you decide what the next theme is.”

“Oh. Uh…”

“You don’t have to come up with it now,” he added. “Take your time. Mull it over.”

It felt like a lot of responsibility–but not so much that I felt like I couldn’t handle it. It was an honor to be given this task, and one that I wanted to think long and hard about.

And for a little while, we just sat around and chatted. No stories–just friends kicking back and laughing with each other. I was worried that I’d be awkward around Flo and Chuck, but the second that Flo started talking to me again, it was as if I had completely forgotten the things I had seen the night before. I liked Flo.

“You decided to show up this week, huh?” I asked Chuck. Too, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Ah, right.” He scratched his head and shot a glance towards Flo. “Sorry…I was busy with something else last week. But I heard I missed a good story about Mama, huh?”

“Well, yes. But also, we just missed seeing you here,” I said. This was true.

Flo leaned in a little closer to me and said something in a lower tone: “Hey, uhm, when we all leave here tonight? Hang back for a minute. I want to talk to you about something.”

My heart sank a little. Were I to guess, she was going to say: “Sorry, Sasha. I’m madly in love with Chuck, and I just don’t think either of us have the social skills required to manage a polyamorous relationship.” She’d be right, though it’d hurt to hear.

“Alright, we’ll probably take a break for a week or two,” Drake finally said. “I’ll text everyone with the details on when, and where, we’re reconvening. Though this room seems to be as good as any. Sasha? Hit me up whenever you know what you want the next theme to be.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Alright, stupid babies. I’ll see you when I see you.”

Outside of Garcia Hall, I stood near a lamppost for a few minutes, waiting for Flo–who was still back at the room when I left–to emerge. When she finally did, she was with Chuck. My heart beat fiercely in my chest. There was no way that she wasn’t going to break the news that she and Chuck were a couple now, right?

“Hey,” Flo said, approaching me with a cautious smile on her face.

“Hey,” I said back.

“So, look, I’m just going to come out and say it…”

And I, my mind already convinced that it had heard the bad news, immediately spat out: “Well, I’m really happy for you two.”

“Huh?”

“S-sorry…I think I assumed you said something and…you hadn’t.”

Flo laughed and shook her head. “Girl, you’re so weird. And I love that about you.”

“Wait…so what were you going to tell me?”

“So, Chuck’s roommate moved out, right?”

“Got expelled,” he said from behind her. “Not that it matters.”

“Right,” Flo continued. “But he doesn’t need a roommate…”

“My parents are happy covering the rent for the whole apartment,” Chuck, again, chimed in.

“Which leaves an open bedroom at his apartment. Which…we want to make into a baby-room.”

My mouth hung open. “A, uhm, baby-room?”

“A place where we can go and just…you know…be babies. A place inside. Where we can use our diapers and get changed and…be ridiculous. Without anyone watching us–or the fear of anyone watching.”

“I was helping my old roommate move out the last of his shit last week,” he said. “That’s why I couldn’t come to the meeting.”

“Oh…”

“We thought about telling the whole group,” Flo said. “But…”

“I just didn’t want to overhype it before it was ready,” he said. “It’s not ready yet. I mean…it’s just an empty room.”

“I helped you put up a shelf last week,” Flo said. “The official diaper shelf.”

I thought I’d have found a more subtle way–or perhaps time–to ask this, but I found myself blurting out: “Are you two in, like, a relationship?”

They both laughed.

“I think we like each other more than we let on in the club meetings,” Flo said. “But we’re just friends.”

“With benefits,” Chuck added.

I shouldn’t have been asking for more information, when it was already none of my business. But I couldn’t help myself: “Benefits?”

“If by ‘benefits’ he means changing my diaper for me after I helped him steam clean the carpet and put together a shelf last week? I suppose.”

It all made sense–kind of. The alibi was believable, as was the reason Flo went to his place. And the moves I had seen him put on her–kissing the top of her head and feeling to see if her diaper was used or not–didn’t actually feel as intimate as I initially thought they were.

“Eventually there’s going to be, like, a nursery in that room,” Flo said. “But at the very least, we’ll have his place to use if we just want to hang out. In diapers.”

“And a place that isn’t a park in town,” Chuck added, laughing to himself.

“Come with us,” Flo said to me. “I’ll show it to you. And if you play your cards right, Big Daddy Chuck might just change your diaper.”

I blushed a little at this, remembering that my diaper was feeling a little soggy. “W-well…we’ll see about that.”

“You didn’t actually sell Bagel your diaper, did you?” asked Flo a little later as the three of us walked to Chuck’s apartment.

“Uhm…”

“No way!”

“Look, all I’m saying is that I have, like, a hundred extra bucks in my purse right now? So maybe I could make a contribution to the diaper-fund for the cool new baby hangout?”

“That sort of generosity earns you more than just a diaper change,” Chuck said.

“You can, uh, hold any possible benefits for now,” I replied.

“So what’d you do?” Flo asked. “Bag up a wet diaper, shove it in a bag and hand it to him?”

“I’m not saying that’s what I did. But if I was to have sold him a dirty diaper? Yes…that’s exactly what I would’ve done.”

“And what do you think he’s doing with it right now? You know…if he had a dirty diaper of yours in his possession.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “So long as I don’t ever hear about it.”

And this was the point at which I feel like the first arc of my journey ended–headed off to help build a space where people didn’t have to be so secretive.

Six weeks ago, I was a lonely weirdo who didn’t know what to do with herself. The ‘weird’ part never changed–hell, I think I got even weirder–but at least I wasn’t lonely anymore. There was still a lot of growing and learning to do. People I wanted to get to know better. Diapers I wanted to fill up. But I at least knew that I was in the right place.

“You sound different,” my mother said to me on the phone, a few days later.

“How so?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said. “But you just sound…happier.”

“This is a pretty nice ending,” chimes in Karen from the writer’s room. “I think this is the part where we introduce the threat for the next season.”

Get the hell out of here, Karen. Just let a happy ending be a happy ending.

___

Epilogue

I was checking my email on a dreary Wednesday morning, half asleep and with a heavily saturated diaper under my pajama pants, when I spotted an email from an address I didn’t recognize. I’m surprised it hadn’t already been flagged as spam, and I was about to delete it myself when I saw the subject: “SBSC.”

Nervously, I opened it.

Dear Sasha,

I understand that you’ve recently joined the Stupid Baby Story Club. Have you enjoyed your experience so far?

I enjoyed my time in the club too. Until they humiliated and ostracized me. They kicked me out, and exposed my most private secrets to strangers. They ruined me, Sasha. And this isn’t the first time they’ve done it. They’ve done it again and again–and, next time, it could happen to you.

If you know what’s good for you, you’ll distance yourself from the group and its members. Otherwise…well, the odds are good that you’re going to get hurt very badly.

Look, I get it, who would trust a random email from an anonymous nobody telling you to abandon their social circle? But ask yourself this: If anyone in that group decided they suddenly didn’t like you, how badly could they fuck up your social standing on campus? How much do they already know about you that they could use to their advantage?

I don’t want to scare you. I want to educate you.

Be safe.

-B

At first, I was just angry at this so-called ‘B’ for reaching out to me like this. What gave them the right? How did they know who I was, how I was in the group, or even how to reach me? I wasn’t mad–I was furious. This was a breach of personal space–not whatever it is they were accusing the Story Club of doing.

But then, of course, the warnings kept floating around in my head as the day progressed. Should I be worried? Should I watch my back? Could I trust everyone as much as I wanted to trust them?

Dammit. Just when I was getting nice and cozy, too.

Later, I sent an email back to ‘B.’ I kept it brief.

B,

I think you’re going to have to give me more to go on if you expect me to start questioning my friends.

-Sasha

And then, it was just a matter of waiting to see what would come next.

“Wow, I can’t believe that actually happened. I think we’re good to go for this next season!”

Karen, you’re fired.