Chapter 57: Adventures in Being Babysat
Thursday Night.
The television clicked off. The Muffets were on and Lita Coreno was about to do her famous rendition of ‘Fever’, arguably the bit that first made the show in Season 1. It was a classic, and something I felt I needed to watch right then.
I pounced up to my feet, letting the blanket slide off my bare legs. “Hey I was watching tha-!” I froze in embarrassment, realizing that I was in nothing but a diaper, again. The locking mittens over my hands didn’t count as clothes to me.
Jessica stifled a giggle. “You’ve only got another hour before bed,” she said. “Do you really want to spend the rest of your time watching T.V.?”
“YES!”
“Ask a silly question…”
That day had not been good to say the least. As opposed to the inspirational mischief I’d achieved on Tuesday, and the catharsis of Wednesday, Thursday had gone particularly poorly for yours truly. At first, I’d tried crying all day but couldn’t get it up to snuff quickly enough.
“Don’t start that again, Clark,” Beouf warned. “You’re just being silly.”
True enough. I’d come across enough fake criers in my time to know when I was trying to be one. Grieving is a process. Emotions come and go and one can’t force them. Best to just explore them while they’re happening, and they weren’t happening right then.
My second mistake was deciding that I’d ‘whoops’ all day. No, that had nothing to do with the state of my pants, though I was quickly finding out that the aftershocks of the training chocolate weren’t done with me. Holding it in for upwards of a minute was still next to impossible, I just got painful warnings before the explosions occurred.
‘Whoops’, in this instance, was my attempt at ‘painting the frog’ all day long: Grab a crayon and drop it. “Whoops!” Bottle ends up on the floor and rolling under the table. “Whoops”. Pacifier becomes unclipped. “Whoops”. Puzzles; “Whoops”; paper, “Whoops” me trying to ‘help’ by grabbing a whole stack of diapers from beneath Beouf’s changing table. “Whoops!”
On paper it should have been good. It was good…for a while. But one of many bad parts about legally being a baby is that eventually Grown-Ups can just decide to not put up with you anymore. That’s how my hands ended up in mittens, courtesy of Sosa the Occupational Therapist.
My present state of undress came during dinner when Jessica chose to disrobe me for ease of clean-up. She hadn’t bothered to give me back my pants, and offered me a blanket instead. At least I’d gotten to zone out and watch T.V.
“Come on!” Jessica tried to coax me. “Let’s play! Get some of that energy out!”
I’d just wanted to tune out my surroundings and drown in nostalgia until unconsciousness claimed me. This woman wanted to play. Which one of us was supposed to be the adult again?
“I don’t want to play,” I said as evenly as I could. “I just want to… I just want to…” I couldn’t say what I wanted to do. “Just please. Let me be. I’ve had a bad… everything.”
Jessica, skinny, flat chested, and unimpressive for an Amazon, but still several times my size strode up to me, sat down and crossed her legs. “Wanna tell Auntie Jessica about it?” She patted the nest she’d made with her thighs inviting me to sit in it.
“You’re not my aunt,” I said. “And Janet’s not my mother.” One full week of me being snatched up and my life turning upside down because of a shart; less than twenty-four hours after Janet made that heartfelt declaration of love for me; and she’d already decided she was stressed out and needed a night off from being a ‘parent’.
Jessica seemed to get defensive. “Janet, I mean your Mommy is doing her best to learn how to make you happy and you’re not making it any easier for her.”
“Easy?” I scoffed. “Easy? She thought taking a grown man and forcing him to be her baby was going to be easy?”
Now she scoffed. “It’s not her fault that you poopied right in front of everyone. She’s just trying to figure some stuff out. Most mothers have at least a couple of months to figure everything out.”
I opened my mouth to reply and came up short. Damn. She was right. Janet had benefited from my downfall, but I had no real reason to believe she’d caused it. Time to change the subject. “What does that make you, then?”
“Her best friend,” Jessica said plainly enough. “Her sister from another mister.” Then she dared, “Your Auntie.”
“You’re not my aunt.”
“Your babysitter then.”
I sighed. I knew where this was going. “Can I at least have my shorts back?”
“They’re only gonna come off when it’s time for bed, anyhow,” Jessica replied. She was still sitting down, hoping I’d come cuddle with her. Good luck with that…
“This diaper isn’t going to make it to bedtime either,” I retorted. “Does that mean I can walk around nude?”
“No, silly. Little babies need their diapers.” Like a cobra, two fingers had shot down past the leg cuff. “You’re a little wet, though. Do you want me to change you?”
Another no-win question. I’d gone underneath the blanket, anticipating a losing potty argument. I’d been right. Still…a question was an invitation to negotiation. Negotiation determined measures of control.
This Amazon was Janet’s best friend. Someone Janet had gossipped about me to and was determined to see me as Janet did and was even pushier about being called ‘Auntie’ than Janet was for ‘Mommy’. She’d probably be another one of Beouf’s disciples if she had a Little of her own.
She didn’t have a Little of her own, though. She had all of Janet’s cosseting, but no one to infantilize. No Clark to call her own. She had an Amazon crush on who she perceived me to be and absolutely zero experience with the real me.
Maybe I could use this…
“If I let you change me now, can I wear pajamas?” I asked.
A smirk. The recognition of a hint of a challenge. “When I change you,” she replied, “I’ll dress you up in your jammies, yes.”
Oh the power of language to assert control, demean, and subvert. A true Amazon. I could work with this, though. I really could.
“Can I get the mittens off, too?” I asked. “My hands are all hot and icky”
Her mouth cocked to the side. “I don’t know…Janet told me how you’d been acting up today.” Of course she had.
“Did my Mommy say I had to leave them on till tomorrow?” I asked.
Bingo. I knew I’d won as soon as I’d called Janet the M-word. “Well…she didn’t specifically say that…but I didn’t ask.”
“But she didn’t specifically say,” I grinned, hoping my smile came off as precocious or whatever people used to describe a child with charmingly adult-like qualities.
Jessica got up. “Okay. You got it, kiddo. Diaper change. Jammies. No more mittens.” Heh. Kiddo. Based on this exchange we were more similar than she’d ever want to admit. If shrinking rays were a thing she’d be more likely to pass as a classmate than as a babysitter. “Deal?”
Miracle of miracles, she reached down with one hand and left it there for me to shake.
I took it, grasping her palm like it was victory itself. “Deal.”
“Great.”
I lifted both arms up at an angle, and Jessica yanked me up by the armpits and onto her hip. Sad to say but I was already getting used to this sort of thing. “Let’s go get changed,” the sitter said.
Riding around Janet’s house was hardly a novel experience. Outside of my nursery, and the living room, everywhere else required me to travel on someone else’s hip. I’d never even seen the inside of Janet’s bedroom.
Jessica plopped me down on the changing table. I reached up and wiggled my wrists. “Mittens first, please.”
“Please is the magic word,” Jessica responded immediately. She reached over to my wrists and undid the latches with a grip much stronger than mine and fingers more dexterous than the mittens allowed me to be.
I wiggled my fingers as if it were the first time using them while Jessica’s hands went to undo the tapes on my Monkeez. I barely flinched. It’s strange how quickly I forgot to be embarrassed; actually forgot.
Jessica had never seen me dressed as an adult or otherwise known me as ‘Mr. Gibson’. We were alone with no one left in the entire house, with no one to witness my position. She was being good about not commenting or narrating anything as she wiped me down and such, possibly lost in her own head considering how much she’d wanted to change me at the shower. To top it all off, after the new diaper was on, something would come to cover it up. Best of a bad situation, really.
Speaking of that: “Whoah! Whoah! Whoah!” I called out just as Jessica was unfolding a super thick Nighttime Monkeyz. “Not that one!”
“Why not?” Jessica said. “You’re about to go into your jammies. Might as well have your night diaper on.”
“It’s really hard to move around in those things!” I said. “It’s almost like a pillow.”
“So?”
So? So? Crap, I needed a reason to…to…idea! “How are we supposed to play if I can barely move?”
“Play?”
Laying down, completely naked, I shrugged. “Why not?” I quickly added, “My pajamas all have snaps in them. You can change me into one before you put me down for the night.”
That was enough. A regular daytime diaper took its place beneath me and I was powdered and taped in. The jammies I was buttoned into were sky blue, but at least the feet had tiny grips in the soles so that I could walk without sliding around too much.
“So what do you want to play, cutie?” I was back on her hip and being taken back to the living room. Jessica’s grin was almost identical to Janet’s that first day that she took me. If she hadn’t told me that she and Janet weren’t related, I might’ve assumed based on that look alone.
I looked around the room. I’d written a check to keep my thighs closer together. Now my ass had to cash it. “Um…I dunno.” I said.
The babysitter was more than willing to help. “Peekaboo?”
“No.”
“Horsey ride?”
“No.”
“I mean you ride on my back, not my knee“ the technically more adult of us said.
“Still no.”
She looked over to the unfolding obstacle course. “We could…”
“Nope!”
“You’re just full of ‘no’ all of a sudden, aren’t you Little guy?”
I exhaled and looked around the room. I was alone with a baby crazy Amazon that I’d just had some success at negotiating with. How could I turn this to my advantage?
Inspiration! “Hide and seek?” I asked. “Whole house?”
Jessica puckered her lips in thought. “I don’t know…”
The more I thought about it, the more I knew it was a good idea. What better way to get into every nook and cranny of this place than to pretend to be looking for a hiding spot? “Come on,” I goaded her. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“You might try to run away.” Janet’s friend said quickly enough. She wasn’t cosseting on me so hard as to be completely oblivious to the fact that I was a Little and not regressed. It was only natural to assume that I’d book it.
I gestured to the kitchen where the nearest door was. “Come on!” I said. “All the doors are baby proofed with those special knob things.” I hated using words like baby in place of Little; I was just playing to my audience. “And look at me. Even if I do get away, where am I going to go dressed like this?”
“You could get hurt, and I won’t be there to save you.”
My arms fidgeted, and I had to use my willpower to keep them still instead of gesticulating wildly. “This is the suburbs! It’s not like a great beast is going to eat me or something!” Oh, the absurdity of it all!
“Yeah, but you might hurt yourself trying to hide from me or get out. You could get stuck, or crushed, or trapped.”
I exhaled. “Fair point. Okay. So…boundaries? Certain places where neither one of us is allowed to go.”
Come on Clark, I thought. You can do this. Control the conversation. Set the rules, even if you’re going to break them.
Jessica hemmed and hawed for a moment. “Alright. Let’s talk boundaries. No hiding in the oven.”
Yikes! Did she really think I was so…? I stopped myself. I could use this. “Okay. No oven. No refrigerator either. Cabinets are okay though.”
“That sounds safe enough,” Jessica. “No trying to get into the dryer or the washing machine, either.”
I made a show of thinking. “Can I hide in the garbage cans?” I had no desire to hide in the garbage cans. This was about getting concessions more than extra spots. Also extra options on her mind could only help me.
“Ewww!” Jessica’s nose wrinkled. “No way. You’ll get disgusting and I’m not giving you a bath so close to your bedtime.”
“Empty them first,” I said.
“Nope.”
I kicked at the carpet a bit. “Okay, okay. What about laundry baskets and hampers?”
“That’s okay.” Jessica replied. She looked around the room. “Hiding under chairs and tables is okay, too, but no messing with the sofa. You could get hurt.”
The game within a game was getting me excited. “What about the bathtub? Under my crib?”
“All good,” she said. “Anything else?”
“Yeah,” I said. “No messing with the lights when you hide. No fair turning the lights off to make you harder to find.”
“Harder to find?” Jessica ran a hand through her short brown hair. “I’m not hiding. I’m seeking.”
I had anticipated this. “What? Where’s the fun in that? We take turns.” I’d been hiding from Amazons in some form or another my entire life. Why not change it up a bit? More importantly, the seeker had greater freedom of movement.
.Clearly she imagined herself leisurely walking through the house calling my name. ‘Wheeeere’s Clark?’ “I’m too big to hide in this house,” the Amazon chuckled
“So you think you’re gonna lose,” I goaded her. “That’s an interesting way to play it.”
She got that exact same look of iron willed competitiveness that I’d seen in Ivy Zoge’s face on Monday. Who says Amazons and Littles are that different? “If I chose to hide, kiddo, you’d never find me.”
“Oh really?” I said. “Care to make a bet?”
“What kind of a bet?” she asked.
“A simple bet,” I suggested. “We take turns. Every time I find you… I get a cookie.”
A look of understanding and recognition came across Jessica’s face. “Ooooooh! So that’s why you want to play hide and seek. You want a game you can win so that you can get a cookie!” More like I wanted to appear to be interested in something besides snooping around. I looked away trying to seem bashful. “Okay. What do I get when I find you?” she asked.
I thought. What did I have to offer her? What to get for the girl who might not have everything, but it doesn’t matter because you have no credit card? “You can…tickle me?”
Score! Again the hand came out, rather like an equal. “Deal!”
We shook. She took out her phone and played with it for a moment. “One minute to hide. Five minutes to look. If the alarm goes off first, hider wins.”
I didn’t like the time limit on snooping, but I knew where to push. “Deal.”
“Oh, and no going into your Mommy’s room. I just don’t think she’d like it.”
“What?” I whined. “We didn’t negotiate that.”
“Sorry, kiddo. Them’s the breaks.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m older than you!”
She didn’t seem too bothered by that fact. “Take it or leave it.”
I huffed. “Fine.” I was totally going into that room. If I wasn’t before, I was after that exchange.
Jessica showed me the app on her phone. A one minute timer on vibrate followed by a five minute timer on speaker. “You hide first. Ready! Set! Go!”
She put the phone down and covered her eyes. I started looking around for a place to hide. A bad one, too. I was planning pool shark tactics. Lure in my pursuer’s interest by lowering her expectations. Play just enough to give a feeling that I was doing it for real instead of biding time.
Even with no life left to live, the fantasy of escape kept coming back to me. I wouldn’t escape tonight, but I could at least get the information that would eventually lead to my escape.
Internally, I started counting to sixty. Memorize the doors, observe the windows. Nothing to it. There was the nursery, the guest bathroom, the greeting area, the living room, the kitchen, and Janet’s room.
A couple air conditioning vents made me pause and consider. It did not last long though. The vent was small, even for me. I couldn’t rip the tapes off a diaper; forget taking a grate off. No go on the grates.
“Ready or not! Here I come!”
I shuffled quickly into my nursery and hid behind the curtain. It was a bad hiding spot. The curtain didn’t even come down to my ankles. Nobody would be fooled by this. That was the point.
“Claaaaark?” Jessica called out. “Where arrrrrre yoooooou?! Wheeeeeeere’s Clark?!” Ha! Called it! Her footsteps were practically thunder in the house. “Wheeeere’s Clark?!”
I decided to speed up the inevitable and forced a childish giggle. “Hee-hee! Hee-heee!” I covered my own eyes and shuffled my feet in place. Maybe Amazons were secretly tuned into the crinkle? I didn’t know.
“THERE HE IS!” I felt the woosh of the curtain being pulled back. I heard Jessica stifle laughter. “Awwww, Clark! It doesn’t work like that.”
“I know,” I sighed.
“You know what that meeeeans?” Already, Jessica’s fingers were moving like spider’s legs. “Iiiit’s tickle time!”
I pressed myself up against the wall and let the panic fill my eyes. “Wait!” I called out. “If I find you, will I get a cookie right away?”
“Hmm?” Jessica grunted. She clearly hadn’t considered that. “No. I think if you get any cookies, you’ll have to wait till we’re done playing.” She started making like a cat that had cornered a mouse.
“Then how is it fair,” I asked, “that you tickle me every time you find me?”
The tickle monster stopped. “Fair enough,” she said. “But I’m gonna give you a really big tickle before bed then! It’ll be worth two or three tickles put together!”
“Good thing I’m wearing a diaper, then,” I replied. Those are seven words I never thought I’d say in that order.
The thought of somehow tickling me until I peed myself caused Jessica to bubble up. “Okay,” she said. “Your turn.” She grabbed my hand and led me back to the living room. She took her phone out and reset it. “Ready?”
She had no idea.
“Close your eyes.”
I did.
“Go!”
I inhaled and slowed my breathing; waiting the full minute until the phone vibrated. No sense in cheating. Not yet. Not like this. I didn’t actually want that cookie. I started to prowl through the house, doing my best to hope that the diaper wouldn’t give away my position. Neither did I call out Jessica’s name. I didn’t want her to know where I was. Now was the time to really hide.