 |
danielleandariel.com The Double Life of Ariel Crawford Selling Out |
|
|
Ariel Summary Download Selling Out Misc. |
Things had mostly returned to normal by mid-August. Vince hadn’t mentioned my diapers or anything else about Andrew’s party in weeks and for the moment we were both content to pretend it hadn’t ever happened. I hadn’t talked to Andrew since the party, either.
One afternoon I was working at Farm Fresh, dragging whole-wheat pasta and diet soda across the scanner for a thirty-something woman with a couple of little girls whining for candy. She had a package of pull-ups too, I guess for the smaller for the two girls. I always enjoyed seeing what people bought, especially from the diaper aisles. Usually, parents had their kids with them, and it was easy to tell from the sizes who the diapers were for. There were also a fair number of old people who bought adult diapers, too, but I didn’t find anything too interesting about them. I did want to ask them if they minded having to wear the diapers, but that seemed a little out of line so I just smiled and told them to have a nice day.
Occasionally, though, there were a few surprises. Sometimes I saw younger people buying adult diapers, and I also saw mothers buying the largest size of Pampers and the only kid with them looked about four. There were also more than a few parents buying goodnites for kids as tall as I was. I wanted to step in and recommend some adult diapers, but I figured they didn’t particularly want my input.
“$123.94,” I told the lady.
“Why is this place so expensive?” she groaned as she swiped her debit card, glaring at me. I thought about suggesting that she could spend less if she didn’t buy all that low-carb stuff, since it didn’t seem to be helping her anyway, but I also wanted to keep my job. Just then I saw Sarah get in my line. I waved at her and started scanning for my next customer, a burly unshaved guy in a button-down plaid flannel shirt who was only buying four cases of Miller Lite. I was glad when Sarah finally got close enough to talk to me.
“Guess how I got here?” she asked smugly. “Mom’s letting me have the car for the whole day.”
“Lucky,” I said enviously. “I’ve hardly even driven since I got my license. My aunt’s never going to let me use her car for anything except taking my cousins to soccer practice and stuff like that.”
“How much money have you saved for a car?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t even think I could buy a tire yet. Besides, I also need to try to save for college.”
“Oh, just go to community college and get your car,” Sarah said, dismissing the matter with a shrug. “So what’s this I hear about you becoming an alcoholic?”
I sighed. “Who did you hear that from?”
“I called Bri to see if we have any classes together this year and she was telling me how trashed you were at that party last month. She didn’t think you’d recognize her even if she said hi.”
“Oh, that’s great. Probably half the school knows by now.”
“Hey.” Sarah leaned closer to me and whispered, “Everybody we would ever want to talk to anyway knows she’s a total skank and they don’t take her seriously, so I wouldn’t be that worried about it.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“Yeah, she said you were all over this dude from Kellam and Vince was pissed. You didn’t tell me about that.”
“That’s all she said?”
“Yeah, why? Did something else happen?”
“I threw up in Andrew’s yard. I was just wondering if she mentioned that.”
“No, she just said you were drunk. She didn’t go into any details.” I gave Sarah her receipt for the candy bar she’d bought and said bye. The rest of the day was nothing exciting until Andrew came in about an hour before I got off. Things were pretty slow by then, and I didn’t have any customers.
“Hey there,” he said, leaning on the credit card machine stand.
“Wow, I’m Miss Popular today,” I said. “What brings you here?”
“Well, my mom needs milk,” he said. “So I came up here cause I figured maybe you’d be here.”
“I’m flattered,” I said, bending my head down to focus on changing my receipt tape so he couldn’t see me smiling.
“You should be. Cause I wanted to get dinner with you, if you happen to be getting off soon. But then I realized the milk would spoil while we were getting dinner. So I’ll have to wait to buy it anyway.”
“So you came all the way up here on the chance I might be working and just might be getting off soon? Why didn’t you just call my house?”
“I tried. I said, ‘Is Danielle there?’ and whoever answered the phone said ‘I don’t know’ and hung up.”
“That must’ve been Caitlin. Don’t mind her. She was born with a stick up her ass.”
“I can feel the love. So, when are you getting off?”
“Seven.”
“That sounds like dinnertime to me. Do you like Chinese? There’s a really good place right down the road. I can get some and meet you back here at 7, and we’ll go to the park or something.”
“Sure. Sounds really good.”
“See ya then.”
The store got busy again shortly after Andrew left with people coming in to pick up last-minute dinner items, so I didn’t have much time to think about our plans, but once in awhile I would notice that I felt a little nervous. I wasn’t sure why. It seemed silly to get nervous over something as simple as having dinner with a friend.
I called Jenny after I got off to tell her she didn’t need to worry about coming to pick me up. “You guys are getting dinner together?” she said. “That sounds like a date to me.”
“It’s not a date! It’s just dinner.”
“At the park, how romantic,” she teased.
“I have a boyfriend! Why is it a date if I eat with Andrew in the park, but if Sarah and I did that it would just be two friends hanging out?”
“When was the last time you ate dinner with Sarah at the park?”
“Never. But we’re just going there because it’s summer and you’re always saying I should get some fresh air.”
“Well, you’d better make sure to go dutch, so it’ll seem less like a date when you tell Vince.” Who said I was going to tell Vince? “By the way, he called.”
“Okay. Thanks. I’ll call him when I get home.” I went outside and saw Andrew getting out of his car. He waved.
“It looks like it might rain,” I said doubtfully, looking up at the heavy clouds gathering in the sky.
“Oh, it’s not going to rain for at least an hour,” he replied confidently. “I’m a lifeguard. I deal with the weather for a living.”
“If you say so,” I said as I got into the car. “Wow, it smells good in here.” I moved the heavy take-out bag out of his passenger seat and sat down. The seat was warm from the food, and it reminded me of the just-wet-my-diaper feeling. “How much did you get?”
“Well, I like variety. So I got us shrimp lo mein, beef with broccoli, kung pao chicken, egg rolls, crab rangoon and mixed vegetables.”
“Good lord! You didn’t tell me we were going to be feeding a whole football team!”
“Well, this way we’ll have leftovers.”
I self-consciously dug around in my wallet. “I, uh, only have $15 on me, but I can give you some more later.”
“No, no, no, don’t worry about it,” Andrew said, using one hand to back his car out of the parking spot and pushing my hand away with the other. “It’s my treat.”
“Are you sure?” I said doubtfully. “That’s a lot of food.”
“Yeah, but you’re good company. It’s no big deal. And actually, my parents kinda paid for it, because they went out of town, and they always feel guilty when they go out of town so they left me $300.”
“They went out of town again?”
“They’re in Sydney now on vacation. When I threw the party, my dad had gone to a conference in North Carolina and my mom went with him. They left me $200 that time. That was partly how I funded the party.”
“Wow. I wish my family would go out of town and leave me with money and the house to myself.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool. They take a week off every summer to go on a trip by themselves, and then they take me and my little brother somewhere over winter break.”
“Wow,” I said enviously. Our annual summer family vacation usually was something along the lines of heading west on 64 in Jenny’s Caravan to visit Busch Gardens and Colonial Williamsburg, maybe Water Country if we were lucky. “So…what do your parents do?”
“My dad’s an aerospace engineer for the military. He designs planes. My mom is a cosmetic surgeon.”
“Oh. I don’t want to meet her.” I put my hands over my face protectively.
He laughed. “She’s not one of those ones who goes around telling everyone what’s wrong with them. She’s really sweet. The only problem with having successful parents is I have a lot to live up to. My dad wants to make arrangements for me to meet with some recruiter for the Corps of Cadets at Virginia Tech. My mom doesn’t care if I want to be a doctor or not, but she keeps telling me if I become a writer I’ll never make any money.”
“You want to be a writer?”
“Maybe. I really have no clue what I want to do, but I figure writers have an excuse to keep weird hours and drink all the time. And I kinda like writing. I’ve written a few short stories. But it doesn’t pay anything. So my dad thinks I need to consider something more lucrative, and he thinks engineering and the military would be good for me. Though I’ve noticed ever since we invaded Iraq he hasn’t talked so much about that.”
“Yeah, really. My family would flip if I signed up.”
A fat drop of rain landed on Andrew’s windshield. “Uh-oh,” he said. A few more drops splattered before it started pouring.
“Oh, but this can’t be!” I cried. “Mr. Weatherman here said it’s not going to rain for an hour!”
“Hey, I think I have at least as much accuracy as the weather channel.” Andrew sighed. “Okay. I’m sitting here in the left turn lane of the most dangerous intersection in Virginia, according to Triple A. I can either risk our necks and get over and go straight and go to your house, or I can stay here nice and comfy in this left turn lane and we can go to the park anyway and hope the rain lets up.” The light turned green. “Your place?” he asked, as he started to get over.
“No!” I yelled. He swerved back into the turn lane midway into the intersection. Brakes screeched and horns honked behind us. He hit the gas and turned left at about 50 miles an hour.
“You know, they say most fatal car accidents occur like three miles away from home,” I said once my heartbeat had slowed down.
“But we’re close to your house. Not mine. So that balances it out,” he said, shrugging. “Besides, you didn’t want to go home. I don’t know why that is. Maybe your dad is really overprotective and is waiting there with a gun.”
“My dad’s drying out in a rehab clinic like 600 miles south of here,” I said. “But my cousin Caitlin is PMSing. That’s worse.”
“Yikes,” he said. “But our Chinese is going to get soggy and cold now.”
“We’ll eat in the car.”
He looked over at me and smiled a little. “Okay.” We were silent for a few minutes until he pulled into a parking spot at Redwing Park. It was still pouring. “So, how do you want to eat all this? There’s not much room up here.”
I was starving by then. “We could do it in the backseat,” I said quickly.
“Dirty!”
I felt my face getting hot. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know,” he smirked. “Relax, it’s okay. The backseat’s a good idea. We’ll put the stuff in between us.”
“That sounds kind of dirty too,” I said.
“Everything starts sounding dirty if you think about it,” he said. “Wait until we read our fortune cookies.” He turned the car off but kept the stereo on. “You can pick out a CD if you don’t like what’s in there.”
I hadn’t been paying attention to the music until then. “Hey…this is Taking Back Sunday! You didn’t tell me you liked emo!”
“I do not!” he said. “This is Lisa’s CD.”
“And you were listening to it!”
“Let’s just divvy up the food,” he said. We sat in the backseat and piled mountains of food onto our paper plates that filled the car with an overwhelming aroma. I started stuffing lo mein into my mouth immediately.
“So do you just keep paper plates and plastic utensils in your car for a rainy day or something?” I asked.
“Rainy day,” Andrew said, pointing out the window. “It’s raining. Ha.”
“Very clever.”
“I wind up buying fast food a lot on my way to work, and I can’t stand eating out of the bag so I spread it out on my lap,” he explained.
“Vince will not touch vegetables,” I said with my mouth half-full. “The only Chinese he’ll eat is General Tso’s chicken. It’s nice to eat with a guy who doesn’t have the tastes of a five-year-old.”
“I love my veggies,” he replied, taking a big bite of egg roll. “I think it’s cause my mom’s a doctor. She always made me eat them when I was little.”
“I still think it’s funny you like Taking Back Sunday,” I said.
“Sometimes when I’m in the car by myself I sing ‘You’re So Last Summer’ at the top of my lungs,” he admitted.
I laughed. “That song rocks! I do the same thing in my room!”
“After my party last month, I heard that song, and actually it kind of reminded me of your boyfriend.”
“Vince?” I said, surprised, taking a bite of egg roll.
“Yeah. I dunno. He just seemed so pissed. That whole part ‘You’re a lush, and I hate it,” and then all that stuff about ‘You could slit my throat and with my one last gasping breath I’d apologize for bleeding on your shirt.’”
“I guess you’re right,” I said, surprised that he was analyzing my relationship. “I’d never really thought about that before.”
“Well, after the party, I was kinda thinking…”
“What?”
“All that stuff you said about wearing diapers…”
I had a huge mouthful of food and couldn’t say a word, but I knew my eyes were wide open staring at him as I chewed for what felt like forever.
“I’m sorry,” he said, staring down at his food. “Should I have not gone there?”
I swallowed. “Doesn’t matter. You did already.”
“Well, you didn’t really mean any of that, did you? I mean, I guess it was just the alcohol talking, making you bullshit?”
“What if it wasn’t?” I challenged, eager for him to get to the point.
“Well, if you like to wear diapers, I kinda think that’s cool.”
“You do?”
“Remember how I told you I saw you working at Farm Fresh back at the beginning of the summer but didn’t say hi?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the real reason I didn’t say hi was because I was buying a bag of diapers.”
“For yourself?”
“No, no way. For Lisa. Cause I liked it when she wore them. I don’t know, something about it just turned me on. But she didn’t like it that much, and she wouldn’t ever buy them on her own so I had to do it. Then pretty soon after I bought that last bag, she said she was sick of it and I was a pervert and she wasn’t going to do that anymore. Things were kinda fucked up then anyway because she was dating this guy Justin but he was a dick and they weren’t really serious. But anyway, I still have the bag, if you want to get it the next time you come over.”
“Oh. Okay.” I wondered if all that had just been so he could offer me some diapers. “Thanks.”
“Yeah.” We ate our food quietly for a couple of minutes and then I said, “What got you into them?” at the same time as he said “Do you want some more food?”
“Sorry, go ahead,” he said.
“I’d love some more food,” I said, piling my plate high again. We still had hardly made a dent in any of the cartons.
“What were you saying?” he asked.
“I was just wondering, what got you into diapers? Well, not literally into them, since you don’t wear them, but why do you like girls in them?”
“Well, when I was like about six…” he stopped and sighed. “You know how when you go to those AB/DL message boards and there’s all these people there who blame all on this stuff that happened to them when they were kids? I don’t want to sound like one of those people. But I really think this is how I started. There was this girl living next door to me. She was my age, so we played together all the time, but for some reason she wore diapers still, and I thought that was just the coolest thing. Not only that, but she had absolutely no problems about walking around in just a diaper and a t-shirt when I was over. I never even thought to ask her why she wore them, but I had the biggest freakin crush on her. Can I get graphic?”
“Sure.” I thought about all the perverted diaper stories I’d had the misfortune of stumbling upon and wondered if he was about to tell me one.
“Okay. If we had been like five years older I know I would’ve been jerking off in my bed every night thinking about her. I did anyway when I got to be that age. But one day she let me borrow one of hers and I tried it on and came home with a diaper on, and my mom found out and gave me this whole spiel about how she needed them but I was a big boy, blah blah blah. Didn’t matter. I didn’t like wearing it that much anyway. So her family moved away a few months later but I just couldn’t stop thinking about her in those diapers. I’ve never stopped thinking about her. I have no idea where she is. I don’t even remember her last name. But I’ve always imagined her as a teenager still in them, and every girlfriend I’ve had I’ve wanted her to be diapered for me.”
“How have they taken it?”
“Well, Lisa’s the only one I ever actually told. Actually, I didn’t tell her. She found pictures on my computer and confronted me.”
“That’s what happens to everyone. What’d she say?”
“She was pretty weirded out. I told her about how obsessed I’d been with that diapered girl next door, because Lisa’d known her too. But she barely even remembered her. You know, Lisa and I have been friends since we were in diapers.”
“I didn’t know it’d been that long.” I thought it was pretty weird to start sleeping with someone you’d known your whole life.
“Yeah, well, I think that’s kind of why Lisa was willing to try the diapers. It wasn’t like she could just never talk to me again. We were really into each other back then. This was about a year ago.” Andrew helped himself to a third egg roll. “How’d Vince take it?”
“I think he’s in denial at this point.”
“You should just start wearing them whenever he comes over.”
“Well, even if he didn’t look at me like I had three heads when I wore in front of him, it’s not that easy. My family doesn’t go out of town all the time like yours does. My aunt works at home. Cody’s always bugging me about something. Caitlin periodically flips out over things like me finishing all the potato chips when she wanted some. I have no privacy whatsoever. If Vince and I decided we did want to sleep together, I don’t know when we’d get away with having my door closed for that long.”
“It wouldn’t take that long the first few times.” I snickered. “Anyway, what’s wrong with his house?”
“His family’s all fucked up, and pretty much whenever he’s home he has to baby-sit his little sister.”
“Jeez, that sucks. I guess I’m lucky. My parents work a lot, and my brother’s busy with school stuff and his friends, so even when he is around he doesn’t bug me.” Andrew pulled a couple of fortune cookies out of the bag the food had been in. “Want one?”
“No thanks. I don’t really like them.”
“Oh, nobody likes the cookie. But the fun part is reading the fortune and adding ‘in bed’ to the end of it. Anything in a fortune cookie is ten times funnier when you do that.” He unwrapped his and cracked it open. “You have many talents. In bed.”
I laughed. “Well, that can’t be accurate.”
He winked at me. “I think Lisa would disagree on that one.”
“Oh, you might be surprised,” I said, opening my cookie. “You are about to get a big surprise in bed.”
“Hey, cool. Maybe you and Vince will finally get that alone time.”
“I doubt it. Notice it didn’t say a good surprise.”
“Maybe the surprise will be that your diaper leaks while you’re sleeping.”
I forced an awkward laugh. We were silent for a minute. Andrew finally said, “Sorry.”
“Oh, it’s okay. I’m just not really used to talking to people about this stuff.”
“Don’t you talk to anyone? Like people online, maybe?”
“Not really. Maybe occasionally. Most of them are kind of weird. It’s like, 90% of people like me are guys, and when a girl announces her presence on a message board or something, the guys start drooling like a bunch of starving dogs who’ve come across a steak. I don’t let anyone IM me who’s not already on my buddy list cause there were too many guys IMing me with screen names like ‘diaperboy85’ or something and asking ‘hey, do you like diapers?’ I can’t afford to have people to IM me with that shit, not when the computer I share with my cousins is in the living room where anyone might be around.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I have to admit, if you were a guy I wouldn’t have any interest in your diapers.”
I laughed. “That’s kind of a relief.”
Andrew closed up the cardboard food containers, put them back in the bags, and gathered up all our trash. “Want to take a walk?”
“It’s still raining,” I said.
“Oh no! I’m melting! I’m melting!”
“Okay, okay. It is kind of warm in here.” I glanced around. “I really hate to think what would happen if Vince saw us getting out of your car with the windows all fogged up.”
“I would be in for an ass-whoopin’, I guess.”
“Maybe a verbal one. I don’t think Vince is in top physical shape for a fight.” We got out of the car. It was still pouring, but the cool rain felt refreshing.
“So, I gotta ask,” I said. “If you want to be a writer, and you’re interested in AB/DL stuff, have you ever tried writing any diaper fiction?”
“That crap? Are you kidding?”
“It’s not all bad. You could write a good story.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you a story now. Here’s our main character. We’ll call him Pete. Pete is 12 years old and he’s always liked diapers. So he steals some Pampers size 6 from his three-year-old brother who’s a late potty trainer. Now, most 12-year-old boys can’t fit into Pampers but Pete is very small for his age and he’s actually the size of a 5-year-old girl. Pete’s parents catch him and to punish him, they decide that they’re going to punish him for wearing diapers by making him wear diapers. Kinda like how they punish kids for skipping school by suspending them. He’s going to have to wear them all the time and he can’t change himself, so when they’re not home, his 16-year-old sister is going to have to change him. She hates it at first but soon she starts enjoying it and she makes fun of the three-inch hard-on Pete gets when she cleans him off. Nobody seems to have a problem with a teenage girl feeling up her little brother. Pete thinks that feels really good so at some point he decides to try touching himself and oh my god, he gets off in his diapers! Now, Pete’s best friend thinks it’s kind of weird that he wears diapers, but after he sees Pete’s sister wipe shit off his butt, he decides that looks like lots of fun and he tries them too and loves them. He and Pete lie in bed and masturbate together, and they both wear diapers for the rest of their lives. The end.”
“Well, Deeker’s going to sue you for plagiarism, but it’s not bad.”
He laughed. “You also have to remember that I’m not a DL. So writing and reading that stuff doesn’t excite me unless it’s a girl.”
“Well, you could write about a girl. You could write about me!”
“Oh yeah? What kind of story would that be? You wear like once a week cause your boyfriend doesn’t like it and your family’s not supposed to know? That’s kinda boring.”
“My life is not boring!”
“Yeah, but the only thing the people who read that stuff want to read about is diapers. Not how you fight with your cousin or how your boyfriend is insecure or you sing Moulin Rouge songs at school or any of that.”
I grinned. “Everyone would want to read about my life, because I’m an exciting and fantastic person!”
“And you’re modest, too.” Andrew looked me over critically. “I could put a twist on the story. I could write all about how you sell yourself out to make others approve of you and don’t wear because you’re worried about what other people think.”
“And you don’t tell anyone you like girls who wear, because you’re worried about what other people think too.”
“Yep.” Andrew sat down on a wet swing. “We should just run away and start a diaper colony. You can wear all the time. I’ll be in charge of admissions.”
I sat down on the swing beside him and started pumping my legs. “What would be the criteria to get in?”
“Well, you’d have to be an AB/DL, of course.” Andrew began swinging too. “And you’d have to be female, and attractive, and between the ages of 15-25.”
“That narrows it down to about three people.”
“I also might make applicants take an IQ test.”
“Well, then you’ll get it down to two.” I started pumping harder. “I bet I can swing higher than you.”
“No way. I’m the bestest.”
“No, I am!” I leaned back and lifted my face up to the sky. Raindrops streamed down it and back into my scalp and hair. I kept pumping until the swing was souring high up into the air, then dragged my sneakers in the mud to slow down.
“You ready to leave?” Andrew asked.
“I guess so.” I didn’t really want to go home, back to the world where everyone breathed down my neck, but it was getting dark and the park would close soon.
Andrew turned the air conditioning off when he started the car and turned up the music. We didn’t say much during the 5-minute drive to my house. “You want to take the food?” he asked as he pulled up at the curb.
“No thanks.”
“You sure? Go on, take it.”
“Nah, I don’t want you starving to death before your mom gets back.”
He grinned. “Okay. This was fun. We should do it again.”
“Okay.” I got out of the car and looked back at him. “Just don’t wait a month before you call me this time!”
He grinned again and brushed his sloppy brown hair out of his eyes. “Sure thing. Go call your boyfriend.”
“Bye.” I slammed the door shut and went inside. Jenny was cleaning up from dinner and looked at me strangely. “How’d you get so wet?”
“I told you. We went to the park.” I rubbed my arms, trying to get warm.
“In the rain?
“Why not?”
“Whatever.” Jenny turned her attention back to wiping off the counters.
I went upstairs, put my Taking Back Sunday CD in, and read for awhile and got ready for bed. I was almost asleep when I realized I’d never called Vince back. |