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danielleandariel.com The Double Life of Ariel Crawford Selling Out |
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Ariel Summary Download Selling Out Misc. |
I craned my neck to see past the cash registers and
shopping carts to the windows overlooking the Farm Fresh parking lot.
Light snow was beginning to fall, and I was a mile and a half from home,
with my ten-speed bike chained to a tree outside of the store. Sighing, I
grabbed a candy bar to add to my purchases and looked for the most
oblivious cashier possible. “Hey, Zack,” I said as I set my stuff down on the conveyer belt. “What’s up?” “Danielle,” he grinned as he started scanning my stuff. “You driving now?” “No, I won’t be fifteen until next month, and I can’t get my permit till six months after that under the new law.” “Hey, that’s not so bad. In a little over a year, you’ll be driving to school.” He scanned the bag of Attends without even glancing at them. “Like I’ll ever get a car. My aunt would lie under the tires before she’d let me drive hers, and I can’t afford my own.” “That’s why you gotta get a job,” he said, hitting a button on the cash register. “Twenty-four eighty-seven.” I handed him the cash and stuffed my change in my pocket. “Maybe next summer. Anyway, have fun.” “Yeah, right.” He rolled his eyes. “I don’t get off till ten. Be careful out there.” I stuffed my purchases into my backpack and pulled on my gloves before going outside. I contemplated calling Aunt Jenny for a ride, but I’d told her I was only riding my bike up to the school to get my math book, and she’d want to know why I’d gone all the way to the store. Plus, she’d want to know what I’d bought. It was a long, cold ride home. I put my bike in the garage and went inside the warm house. Jenny came downstairs to greet me. “Gosh, your cheeks are red. Make yourself some hot chocolate. You were gone for a long time; I was starting to worry.” “Sorry, I ran into some friends and hung out with them for awhile. I didn’t realize it was getting so cold.” “Well, next time remember to bring home all your books, and you won’t have to go back to school.” “Where are Caitlin and Cody?” “Cody’s at Patrick’s and Caitlin’s at Ariel’s. We’re going over there later for dinner.” “Okay. I’m gonna go start my homework.” She smiled. “You’re such a good student. Caitlin has to be beaten upside the head to do her homework anyway, and now that it’s flurrying she thinks there’s not going to be school tomorrow.” I felt a little guilty for lying about where I went. I don’t like to lie or anything, but sometimes I just have to. Because what am I supposed to say, I went to the store to get some diapers? I would never tell anyone that. Hey world, I’m almost fifteen years old, a freshman in high school, and in my spare time I wear and use diapers. Only two people know. Two Christmases ago, my older cousin walked in on me when I was in the bathroom changing my diaper. At that point I’d been wearing them for several months without anyone catching me, so I guess I thought I was invincible enough to wear them to a family gathering. Needless to say, I don’t do that anymore. But I don’t even know if Jessica remembers that, because her son was born prematurely later on that night and she probably forgot about my little secret in all the fuss with his birth. And because I had to babysit for my cousins while all the adults went to the hospital with her (sometimes I think my aunt just keeps me around for convenient, free babysitting), I ended up still diapered, sharing a bed with Jessica’s daughter, who heard the crinkling. But she was only eight then and maybe she’s forgotten by now, I mean, who really remembers every detail of what happened to them when they were eight? Right? I guess I’m in denial, because if Jessica and Ariel don’t remember my diapers that night, they probably still do remember the night I slept over at their house and stole one of Ariel’s diapers, because she wore them right up until last summer. She really liked them too, but for different reasons than me, I think. Because I know it sounds weird that I enjoy wearing diapers, but I’ve spent lots of time surfing the web and reading about this, and there are other people who wear them for fun. Adult babies, teen babies, and diaper lovers. Adult and teen babies wear them to escape the stress of everyday adult life and regress to babyhood, secure in their mother’s arms. They suck pacifiers and drink from bottles and sleep in cribs, too, which sounds a little screwy, but they’re the nicest bunch of people you’ll ever talk to, and everyone has different ways of coping. It’s a lot less self-destructive than alcoholism or drug addiction, as long as it doesn’t become an obsession. If Ariel had stayed in her diapers, she would’ve become a teen baby, and she’s a normal kid. But that’s not what I am. I’m a diaper lover, and we tend to get a little kinkier. Which is why I can’t live with my mother, because even though she doesn’t know about my diapers, she’s about the most devoted Catholic you’ll ever meet and we all know what the Catholic church says about masturbation. My mother and grandmother were willing to look the other way about the rumors that the supposedly virgin priest at the Catholic church we went to had an affair with the married choir director, but they can pull a dozen quotes from the Bible about the evils of masturbation and premarital sex. Jessica had Ariel when she was sixteen and if they could disown her from the family, they would. They practically did that with her mother, but I digress. Anyway, I’ve never slept with anyone, never gone past first base even though I do have a boyfriend, and I still go to church so why is this whole thing with the diapers so bad? I know my mom would hit the roof if she found out, because she was always bad-mouthing Jessica for letting Ariel wear them. She said it was a bad influence on the rest of the family. And I guess she was right about that influence thing, because I’m sure if Ariel and Caitlin hadn’t worn them I never would’ve given diapers a second thought. Caitlin wears them, too. There’s five of us cousins around here, me, Caitlin, Ariel, Cody and Joey and four out of five wear or have recently worn diapers, although Joey is only a year old so he doesn't really count. Caitlin can’t help it though. She wore them for bedwetting when she was younger, and then right after she outgrew them she injured her bladder in a car accident. She took off her seatbelt so that she could turn up the radio when a Britney Spears song came on, which is so Caitlin, and a nanosecond later a truck cut her mom off and she couldn’t stop, and her body was slammed against something, probably the seat. At first I think she enjoyed wearing the diapers like Ariel did, but now she’s almost eleven and starting middle school in September, where she’ll have to change for gym every day. I enjoy my diapers, but if I had to wear them to school every day and the whole student body knew, I might hate them too. Some of the people I talk to on the internet at all those AB/DL sites claim they’ve been into diapers as soon as they were out of them, making them out of towels and trash bags and all other kinds of weird stuff until they got old enough to buy them. Others were diapered for wetting the bed or weren’t potty trained until they were older, but I only wet the bed a couple of times when I was sick and my mom swears I was potty trained at eighteen months because she was such a great parent (not!!!). So I don’t think I would’ve ever given diapers a second thought if it hadn’t been for the abundance in my cousins’ lives. Between Ariel and Caitlin, I started to wonder just what diapers felt like, and that’s what inspired me to try them. At first I wore Pampers like Ariel, but puberty got the best of me and now they don’t fit anymore. Then I tried Depends before settling on Attends, because the local grocery store doesn’t really carry very many brands. There’s also a store brand I have yet to try, because I’ve heard that generic brands are very thin and notorious for leaks, and I really don’t need my diaper leaking all over my bed and clothes. Some people swear by cloth diapers, but not me. I think the feeling is similar to peeing my pants, and one thing I’ve noticed (and there are a lot of stereotypes you can draw about ABs and DLs, some aren’t really true but some are) is that it’s generally the older ones who like the cloth, the ones who likely wore cloth when they were babies. It makes sense especially for the ABs; if you want to remember what it was like to be a baby then you wear what you wore when you were a baby. My thoughts were interrupted by pounding at my door, making me grateful that I hadn’t put on a diaper yet. I don’t get much privacy around here. I opened the door to find Caitlin and Ariel standing there, dusted in snow. “You should come outside. There’s already two inches!” Caitlin exclaimed, jumping up and down. They don’t make enough Ritalin to keep that kid calm. “I’m studying.” “Why? School’s gonna be closed tomorrow, and it’ll probably start raining by noon. Even Mom said we should enjoy it while we can.” I sighed. She was right, and the snow was more tempting than my history book that I was about to open. I could wear later. I put on some boots and my heavy coat and followed them outside. “Let’s build a snowman,” Ariel suggested. “No, a snow couple,” Caitlin suggested. “The guy can be holding the girl’s hand and in his other hand he could have the jewelry box that contains the engagement ring that he’s going to propose to her later on.” “Isn’t that expecting a lot out of snow?” I asked. “I don’t even think there’s enough for one snowman. Maybe a snow child.” “A snow baby. Wearing diapers,” Ariel said. “No, no diapers,” Caitlin said. “Our snow baby is three years old and potty trained.” “But it would be cute! We could give him one of Joey’s bottles and a blanket and build a snow crib and put one of your diapers…” “No!” “Nobody would know it’s yours!” “No!” I could sense an argument brewing. I was on Caitlin’s side here, I didn’t want anything with diapers in our front yard, but as the oldest I have to play peacemaker. “I don’t think the diaper would stay on very well in the snow, and think how gross it would be when it starts melting. Let’s just make snow angels.” Ariel shrugged. “Okay.” She’s usually a pretty agreeable kid. Caitlin gave me a grateful look, spread out her arms and fell backwards with a teeth-chattering thud. “Oof! It’s cold! It’s getting up my pants!" Ariel giggled and fell back too. “It’s not that cold. Don’t you love just lying back and looking up at the sky?” “Yep,” I agreed, lying down myself. “It’s peaceful.” “Until we hear Mom screaming out the window ‘you all get out of that snow before you catch your death of cold!’” Caitlin mocked. “Who ever died from being cold, anyway?” “Hypothermia? But I think that takes awhile. I’ve heard that freezing to death is very peaceful.” “What’s so peaceful about it? You know you’re going to die. I wouldn’t be very peaceful,” Ariel commented. “I don’t know. I guess whoever said that was on a deep spiritual level.” “I don’t want to be deep. Your mom’s deep and spiritual, Caitlin, and she feels guilty if she misses church. I want to be able to sleep in, miss church, and not feel bad about it.” I thought Ariel had a good point. Life can be a lot more fun when you look at it from a third-grader’s perspective. Like when she liked to wear diapers, she never worried much about what the other kids thought. Occasionally it bothered her, but never to the point that she just stopped wearing them. If for some reason the only way I could continue to wear is if I wore to school too, I think I’d stop in a heartbeat. A familiar car drove by. “Daddy!” Ariel exclaimed, jumping out of the snow and running down the street towards her house. Caitlin and I trailed behind. “Do you remember ever getting that excited about your dad coming home from work?” she asked me. “When I was little…but by the time I was nine, I knew there wasn’t anything to get excited about because he was just going to get drunk and not pay any attention to me, and then Mom would get on his case and they’d fight.” “I don’t even remember seeing my dad coming home from work,” Caitlin said. “I don’t really remember him living at home at all.” Her parents got divorced when she was five, and for the last six months or so that they were married, Caitlin practically lived at our house because they didn’t want her to hear them screaming at each other all the time. That was around the same time that my dad started drinking more, so either way Caitlin had to listen to screaming. I feel sorry for the kid sometimes, but she seems pretty much unscathed. Being ashamed of her diapers is more likely to fuck with her head than listening to her parents ever did. “Hey, princess,” Ryan said as he got out of his car and gave Ariel a hug and kiss. He looked tired. “Hey, what’s up?” he said to me and Caitlin. “Nothing much,” I replied. “Long day?” He sighed. “Tell me about it. Complete with driving home in snow. Just think what you have to look forward to.” “It’ll be worth it to be able to drive.” I was thinking that driving in snow couldn’t be any worse than riding a bike in snow. We went inside Ariel’s warm house, and Joey came toddling up to us. “Da da! Up!” he said, lifting his arms up in the air to get Ryan to pick him up. “Joey! My man!” he exclaimed, lifting Joey high into the air and running towards the kitchen with him. “It’s liftoff…and Joey takes off at a thousand light-years per second…right into the kitchen to say hi to Mommy!” “Ryan! Be careful with him! I’ve got the stove on,” Jessica exclaimed. She kissed Joey’s forehead first and then kissed Ryan. “Hey girls. How was your day?” “Good,” Caitlin and I replied. Caitlin peered into the pot of soup Jessica was making. “I hope you didn’t put any onions in it. I hate them.” “Caitlin! That’s not polite to go over to someone’s house for dinner and say that you don’t like something!” I scolded. God, I’m turning into my mother. Jessica laughed. “It’s okay, Danielle. Ariel says stuff like that all the time, and Caitlin eats over so often she’s like another daughter. No, it’s cream of broccoli. No onions. It’ll be ready in about twenty minutes, so call your mom and tell her to come over soon.” “Do you need any help?” I offered. “No thanks. Ariel, honey, go set the table.” Jenny has to argue back and forth with Caitlin for forever to get her to do anything around the house, but Ariel got some plates and took them into the dining room without complaint. Jenny and Cody came over a few minutes later, and we all gathered around the table. I love family dinners. At Jenny’s house we all do our own thing most of the time. Jenny reads the paper while she eats, Caitlin watches TV, and that leaves me and Cody to try to hold a conversation, if he doesn’t get too wrapped up in what Caitlin’s watching. But when we eat with Jessica’s family, everyone talks. Even Joey tries to contribute to the conversation. He’s only fourteen months old, but the pediatrician told his parents that he knows more words than a lot of eighteen-month-olds. “Want to do a lesson after dinner?” Ryan asked me. “Sure.” Ryan’s been teaching me on his acoustic guitar for about six months now. He usually gives me one or two lessons a week, but we don’t schedule them. It’s just whenever we feel like it. Eventually I want to be able to play while I sing, but right now it’s hard enough to get the chords right when that’s all I’m concentrating on. He’s glad that he has somebody who shares his passion for music, because Ariel can plunk out a few things on the piano but never showed much interest in learning guitar, and Jess likes to sing but says she doesn’t have time to learn an instrument. “What’d you do at work, Daddy?” Ariel asked. “Oh, I spent the whole day hearing about how N Sync wants the stage set up just so for their show. I’m so sick of arranging concerts for these bubblegum pop sellouts. If it’s not them, it’s some rap artist where the only thing you can understand in their music is the profanity. That’s all anybody seems to want to listen to these days.” “What’s a sellout?” Caitlin asked. “Someone who goes against their own beliefs, or in this case, the kind of music they really enjoy doing, just to gain money or popularity.” “Oh.” We all helped clear the table and then Ryan and I headed for the garage to practice. But after my fifth mistake within about thirty seconds, I put the guitar down with a sigh. “I’m never going to learn this.” “Well, it takes awhile. And a lot of practicing.” “I know, I don’t practice enough. But sometimes I just don’t feel like it!” “I wasn’t saying you didn’t practice enough. You should practice as much as you want to. Even if you practice three hours a day, and I don’t encourage that by any means, it still takes a long time to get the basics down. Never force yourself to play, Danielle, because then you’re just going to resent it. Remember, it’s just for fun. And I can tell your heart’s not into it tonight.” “Yeah, I guess not.” “What’s on your mind?” “I don’t know…just me and Vince.” “Did you guys have a fight?” “No. Not yet, anyway. It’s just…does Jessica know everything about you?” “Everything? Well, no, I think we know each other pretty well, but I’m sure there’s a few embarrassing childhood stories my mom hasn’t told her yet.” I smiled. “So you don’t keep secrets from each other?” “No. At least, I don’t keep them from her, and I hope she doesn’t keep them from me. Honesty usually works best in a relationship, at least a marriage. But at your age I don’t think you need to tell your boyfriend everything, especially if it has nothing to do with him.” “I want to tell him though, just to get it off my chest…but I’m just worried about what he’ll say. I mean, I don’t think he’ll break up with me, but what if he tries to change me?” “Well, anyone who doesn’t accept you for who you are isn’t worth keeping around. Don’t change yourself for a guy. There are other fish in the sea.” “But what if it’s something that should be changed? I mean, say you found out that Jess was a kleptomaniac.” He laughed. “Wouldn’t you try to get her to change? Take her to therapy or something?” “Well, yes, that’s a good point. But I hope you’re just talking about a harmless personality trait here and not some mental problem.” “To be honest, I’m not sure.” He looked at me closely. “You sure you don’t want to talk about this?” “Yeah. I’m sure. It’s personal.” If I can’t get up the nerve to tell my own boyfriend about my diapers, I certainly could never tell someone in my family who I have to see every day. If Vince doesn’t like it, I can say “Screw you” and never talk to him again, but I have to see Ryan every day. “Okay. Well, if you change your mind, you know where I live.” |