Why couldn’t he get the image out of his head of the kid laughing in just a diaper, mother’s arms stretching out to catch him form behind. The toys he had fiddled with in the basement were on his mind too, if he was being honest with himself.

After thirty minutes to an hour, he began to hear laughter from the living room. James peered around a corner to see Mayra laughing at old re-runs of Blue’s Clues that were playing on Nickelodeon. James slowly found myself fixated on her again, giving him fuzzy feelings in his tummy that combined with the curiosity of seeing the show he used to love so much when he was little. Finally, he gave in and started to walk towards the couch, for whatever reason getting larger than life as he approached.

Mayra noticed James from the start, but allowed him to come to her. True, she was amused by the preschool programming, but she knew it would be a fun show they could watch together. As he walked slowly towards her, she turned her head to him, smiling warmly. “There you are, pequeño,” she greeted him sweetly as he stood by the couch, intermittently looking to her and looking back to the show. “The episode just started. Steve is going to start to look for clues. Would you like to watch with me?”

She placed her hand on the couch with a welcoming pat, letting James see he could sit down on the soft couch cushion right next her, maybe even lean on her if he got tired. James began to turn just a tiny bit pink as he wandered around the coffee table and climbed up onto the couch, scooting over until he was next to Mayra. He seemed to be genuinely confused by his actions, but not in a way that it seemed was causing him to be afraid of her or himself. As the show played on, Mayra began to respond to Steve’s questions, even singing along to The Mail Song, which she told James was her favorite part. She encouraged James to answer Steve as well and play along

By the end of the episode, he was responding to most of the questions, albeit in a very soft and unsure voice. Mayra made sure to praise him every time he was right, which was very often given the complexity of Steve’s questions, or rather the lack thereof. Mayra was ready to turn off the TV, but there was another episode coming up and James asked if they could watch that one as well. “One more, pequeno,” she agreed, noticing he was starting to doze off a little during the commercials. He didn’t seem to have any interest until one commercial started with a toddler in a sleeper running across the screen into his mommy’s arms, being kissed and cuddled. It was a commercial for Luvs diapers, and Mayra watched as James turned a little redder, knowing she was watching him and but being unable to look away. “Look at the cute baby with his mommy, pequeño,” she whispered softly to him. “He’s almost as cute as you.”

Feeling weird feelings from seeing the Luvs commercial, James knew it wasn’t humiliation, but a realization; it finally came to him, after everything that had happened, it hit him square in the face – He wanted this, all of this. He wanted to be in diapers. It was something unexplainable for so long, a feeling he had hidden in his mind for so long, but it’s what he truly wanted.