Mary and Daphne #203

“Daffy,” someone sang to me. “Daaaaaaffffy. I think you’ve slept in long enough.”

O friggin fine. I rolled over and greeted her with, “Urrrrrrrrrrrrf!”

“How are you still sleepy? You’ve been asleep for ten hours.”

“No circadian rhythm shaming.” I’m not a morning person, and I’m not an evening person. I thrive between eleven in the morning and one in the afternoon. I’m a mid-day person, one of The Lunch People. Rare is the day Mary lets me sleep past eight, something about not sleeping our lives away and liking it when we’re both awake and corporate productivity and stuff and things. She let me sleep in cuz we have a party to go to, and while I think I’m the life of the party, she claims (she just makes stuff up, really) lives of the party don’t fall asleep on the host’s bed no matter what time it is or how well they know the host. I mean, it was one time! She never lets me live stuff down.

She does, however, have a point about how me sleeping in doesn’t actually make me more energized. Hence my waking groan.

“Are you feeling okay?” Mary bent down to put her lips on my forehead. I don’t know how effective that is as a way to check for a fever, but it ends in a kiss and I like it and stuff.

“Yeah. Do I really have to get up?”

“Yeah.”

“Does Suzie really hafta get it? Surely you wouldn’t make the dog get up.” And if the dog was to stay peacefully asleep, surely I needed to stay right by her side snuggled up together. Dogs are warm. I mean, Mary is a better and more considerate sleeping companion, but Suzie is in her adolescent stage and has turned into the floofiest floofball.

“Suzie can do what she likes,” Mary said and with a whoosh pulled the covers down. Suzie gave Mary a look that, had I given it, I would’ve gotten my tail paddled for (which is a thing that’s happened before and how can a look be quote ‘massively disrespectful, majorly bratty, and unacceptable’ unquote; I ask and I answer, it can’t because reasons; really). She got up, shook herself all over, and went to find another place to sleep.

“If you stay in bed,” Mary said, “how are you gonna get that soggy diaper changed? Unless you like soggy diapers. Is that it?”

I am so giving her the look but hiding it behind my poker face right now. “About that, Mary? How many times do I hafta say I don’t like diapers, I don’t need diapers, and I only wear them for you?”

“Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the scent of overnight weewee.”

“Frumpeter nursherder!”

“But seriously, you stink.”

“What the heck kind of good morning is this? Is it Be Mean To Daffy Day again, cuz I hate those days.”

“It’s Give Daffy a Morning Bath Day because you smell like dog and pee.”

“The only thing that (sniff-sniff) … Okay.”

“Ha!” What do you think she meant by that?

“Bet you can’t carry me,” I said cheekily.

“Like a little girl?”

“I was thinking more like a queen, but I’ll settle for bride carried over the threshold.”

“Of the bathroom.”

“The threshold of the bathroom, yes.” Duh, cuz that’s where we were going. She’s so silly sometimes.

“Don’t think I can carry you, but how about being spank-marched?”

“Ooo, good idea. Yes please.”

I propelled myself to my feet with a helping hand from Mary. She’s so romantic and stuff: she twisted my arm behind my back and swatted my butt all twelve steps to the bathroom. Liking my butt is probably the first thing we knew we had in common, what with her yanking me over her knee at a play party before we even knew each other’s names.

“I’m going to run the bath, just in case there’s anything you’d like to do in that diaper before you get in the tub.”

“I don’t even know what you’re hinting at. And I don’t ‘want’ to do anything in this diaper.” I’d just rather do it in the diaper than in the tub, but that’s not even a free choice cuz Mary is big and strong and in charge of me. I mean, I guess I could pee in the tub, but ew.

“Uh-huh,” was all Mary said. She put her hand under the running water cuz she’s love me too much to scald me and she – “Hey!” – groped me. And you know what she said? Well, I’ll tell you what she said. She said, “If what’s coming out of you is 98.6, I’d guess the bath water is 105, 110.”

“(Embarrassed kitten noises).” She should really be careful with that kind of humiliation in the bathroom. If I faint and hit my head it’ll be her fault. What happened, the paramedics will ask. I made fun of her diaper, Mary will say. And even if I’m dead I’ll die of embarrassment all over again. It’ll be really upsetting for everyone.

“Are you done making tinkles?”

“(Whimpering wombat noises).” Is she trying to kill me!?!

“Ya know how neither of us is into degradation,” Mary asked rhetorically as she untaped her diaper (unequivocally hers; I just happened to be holding it for her using only my hips). “What do you think it means that I think it’s hot that you smell like pee like a subby little bedwetter?”

I’m a very smart, insightful woman. In a past life, I was the only Oracle of Delphi who didn’t need drugs to come up with answers in riddle form. I taught Steven Hawking everything he knew. Reinhard Nielbuhr never could follow my reasoning yet could only agree in stunned silence with my conclusions. I know stuff. And things. Things like how much we’d both (me and Mary, that is; RIP ol’ Reiny) regret knowing the answer to her question. That’s how insightful I am – I didn’t even need to know the answer to know we’d both regret it.

It’s like going to restaurant with a cuisine you’ve never had before: if it looks funny and smells funny and has a name you can’t pronounce and you’re enjoying it, never, ever ask what’s in it? Because once you know the answer, it doesn’t taste good anymore. I’m just saying, Mary and I had been – ahem – dining on each other for years. Let’s not yuck our yums, ya know?

So hoping to change the subject, I said, “If I let you finger me in the bathtub, can we not answer that question?”

SMACK!

“Ow! For fuck’s …”

“SMACK!!!

“OW!”

“Language, young lady. You’d better not plan on talking that way in front of the other guests tonight. In the tub with you.”

“What have we said about spanking the front,” I harrumphed as I got in the tub with a tingling tingle I didn’t hate.

“That I decide when, why, how, and where you get spanked, whether that’s your American fanny or your English fanny.”

So she does remember I gave her blanker permission to do that. Drat. “Well, I’m not English.”

“Yeah, but when I call it your pu…”

“Lalala sensitive …

“Little ears. Exactly, you do that. And you’re lucky you’re not English. Do you know what they do to gingers over there?”

“Even daywalkers like me?”

“Even daywalkers.”

I took my right heel and plopped it on the edge of the tub. “Wash, slave girl.”

Ooo, Mary’s if-it-wouldn’t-get-water-everywhere-I’d-yank-you-out-of-the-tub-and-paddle-your-bottom-purple face.

“I swear, if it wouldn’t make a mess yanking you right out of that tub, the bath brush would be off the wall and your butt would be purple already.”

We know each other so well! Soul mates!

“Uh-huh,” I said and (get this) handed her the soap. And you know what she did? Well, I’ll tell you. She took the soap and made it sudsy and started running it in long strokes up and down my leg. Sigh.

“You,” she said in an attempt to salvage her defeat (cuz who won that exchange? Well, I’ll tell you who won that echange: me. I won that exchange. Go me!), “are like living with a teenager sometimes.”

“Cuz I’m so full of life?”

“Cuz it’s a pain getting you out of bed, and when I finally do, you’re the biggest smartass.”

“The biggest? So I get a prize, right?”

“O, you’ll get a prize alright, but I’m gonna save it for Brenna’s tonight.”

“Is it a dinner party or a play party?”

“Have you ever been to a dinner party at Brenna’s that didn’t turn into a play party? Gimme your other leg.”

“It’s so sexy when you demand parts of my body.”

“I own you body and soul, Daffodil. I have a contract to that effect.”

“It was just a valentine.”

“Binding contract the moment you signed it.”

I was going to contest her understanding of our state’s contract laws, but the soap (and Mary’s arm up to her elbow) disappeared under the water and made me go, “Eep!”

“Been a while since we went to a party,” Mary said. “Have you thought about what you’ll do differently this time?”

Huh? “Was I … supposed to? And different from what?”

“So you don’t remember standing in timeout in Brenna’s living room and me saying your red-hot butt was to make sure you’ll make better choices next time?”

I’m a very busy woman. It’s unfair to expect me to remember things like that. I mean, my days are just packed! I … make lunch, and do dishes. Take care of the dog. Go to the grocery store. I mean, um, there are only 168 hours in a week, and every last one of them is mine to do with as I please, but I still have lots of pressing … I was probably crying when I acknowledged Mary’s admonishment, and I’m always getting in trouble at those parties and doesn’t that just prove that Mary’s style of discipline is ineffective?

In fact, I’ve long had my suspicions that it’s really an elaborate sex thing anyway, but Mary is so earnest when she says it’s not, and it’s not like people ever lie about sex, right? Mary never would cuz she’s all upstanding and prim and proper and stuff. Really. Even if she does use the p-word to describe a certain part of my anatomy. Really.

“Do you even remember what you did to earn that spanking,” Mary asked me.

O puh-leaze. Just cuz I woke up in a diaper doesn’t mean I was born yesterday. “Do you even remember what I did?” Bluff: called.

“… You’re mouthy today.”

Ha! Totally called it. “And you’re a subject changer.”

“Just tell me what you’re going to try to do tonight.”

“I’m gonna try to get along with Jane and Tommy.” Jane, for those of you new to perv-reading my diary, is my bestie and a bratty little who always manages to get me in trouble, and Tommy is a little and pain in the ass who has a special talent for getting on my last nerve and killing it with fire. I don’t know what I did to get in trouble at Brenna’s last party, but I can be positive one or both of them started it.

“And not roll your eyes like you just did, and come tell me if the other littles aren’t being nice to you.”

“…thinks she so subtle,” I mumbled.

“And give Ann and Jo a chance. I know you don’t like adding people to our group, but they’re super nice and Brenna wants to meet them.”

“Explain to me again what’s wrong with me resenting them and wanting things to stay the way they are,” I said without pouting even a little bit. If you ever hear otherwise, punch them in the sternum and tell them Tommy told you to.