Done Adulting Vol. 1 Ch. 113

“You can still change your mind,” Amanda said. Jamie was sitting across from her, purposefully trying to seem less of a little. He even asked Becky to buy him a button-down shirt, something he hated wearing back home, but he wanted to be taken seriously. This was his chance to speak up for unregressed littles.

“No, I want to,” he said. Not that he wasn’t nervous.

“Your pants clean?”

“Keep your voice down,” he hissed, “Yes.”

“Just thought you’d feel more confident clean and dry. Class is about ready to start. You ready to go meet Professor Stern?” He taught her Human Studies course.

He took a deep breath and said, “Sure” on the exhale.

Amanda moved to picked him up, but he avoided her hands and slid off the chair and on to the floor. “I’d like to walk in.” Amanda shrugged and led him down the hall toward the classroom, staying near enough to help him dodge the bigs walking toward and around him if need be. It wasn’t an especially busy hallway, but every hallway seems busy when its occupants tower over you. Amanda held the heavy classroom door open for him. Fifteen students were in the room.

“Dr. Stern,” Amanda said as she put her hand on Jamie’s shoulder, “this is Jamie. Excuse me, James.” Jamie put his hand out, and the professor knelt down and took it.

“James. I’m glad you could come,” he said.

“Me, too. Thank you for having me.”

“I’ll introduce you in a minute, and then you can just take questions. How does that sound?”

“Fine. Thank you.” Three chairs were in the front of the room, and Jamie assumed one was for him. Trying to look like Douglas Fairbanks, he did his best to artfully yet manfully vault himself into the middle one. Amanda took the seat next to him. She couldn’t help but smile; she was proud of him and glad to show him off. She’d respected his privacy all semester, but when she spoke up in class, she often used him as an anonymous example. When the last student came in and was seated, Dr. Stern began his introduction.

“So with just two more classes to go before finals, I wanted to use this one for a very rare opportunity. We have here James, an unregressed human. James came here at the beginning of last summer and is Amanda’s little brother. He’s here to take questions from us. Let me be the first to thank James for coming today.” The students politely applauded. “So, who has the first question for James?”

Everyone in the room hesitated for a moment. Jamie felt more nervous. He’d spoken in public before but not as a representative for the species, of course. Now he felt on the spot, quite literally a specimen being examined. “Michelle,” the professor said to the first student to raise their hand.

“Hi, Jamie,” she squeaked, leaning in and smiling at him as though speaking to a toddler. “I’m so glad you could come to our classroom today. Do you like it here in our dimension?” Amanda tried to hide a smirk. She’d anticipated someone might forget, within seconds, that Jamie was unregressed, or otherwise not care.

Jamie was gracious in his response nonetheless, at least in tone, saying with a smile, “Thank you, Michelle. If you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you would address me as James. Only my friends and family call me Jamie.” He paused to see how the group responded. About half the students looked bored. Most of the rest sat up straighter having figured out this was not an ordinary conversation with a little. “And,” Jamie added, “I’d like to begin your question with a question of my own: why are you talking to me like that?”

“Like what,” Michelle asked, patiently confused.

“Like I’m an infant.”

“O, well …”

“You’re still doing it. I’m not trying to embarrass you.”

“This is how almost everyone talks to littles.”

“Regressed littles. I have an adult mind. Like yours.”

“I, um … Sorry. I guess it’s just something I don’t think about,” she said, sounding genuinely apologetic and speaking in a normal tone.

“I understand that,” Jamie said. “Do you want to try asking your question again?”

“Um, sure. What do you think of Itali?”

“Overall, I like it. It’s taken a lot of getting used to, but I like it here very much.”

“What’s taken the most getting used to,” another student interjected

“It’s frustrating a lot of times, interacting with bigs who don’t see humans as fully-fledged people, or who try to treat me like I’m a toddler whose feelings and opinions can be ignored. If I weren’t a patient and forgiving person, I’d probably have had even more trouble remaining calm about it.”

“Can you give us an example?”

“A big picked me up one time without asking and ignored me when I told her to put me down … No, not ignored me. More like didn’t hear me.”

“What happened?”

“Amanda told her to put me down, and then she did.”

“Then what happened?”

“We ignored her back,” Amanda said with a shrug.

A young man in the back raised his hand. “Justin,” Dr. Stern said.

“Do you feel like that’s teaching him to be disrespectful of us as Amazons?” Amanda and Jamie looked at each other for a moment. Jamie managed to not roll his eyes or grimace.

“For what reasons are bigs due respect from littles,” Jamie asked calmly, “and why should that respect extend to letting others touch us without permission?”

The boy shrugged. “Littles are immature. They’re not as smart. They could hurt themselves. Bigs provide for littles.”

“I’m not immature,” Jamie said. “I’m a decade older than you. I’ve had a career, a hard one. I helped others deal with things you’ve only seen on the news. I’ve never hurt myself for want of a big to control me. And as for bigs providing for littles, that’s what bigs sign up for when they adopt a little. Perhaps that means a big is due some appreciation, but let me ask you this: why should it mean automatic deference to every single big, or even for their guardian all the time?”

“Um …”

“It’s not because you’re always right,” Jamie answered, “And I’d like to think it’s not because bigs are big and littles are small.”

“But it’s like adults and kids,” the boy said.

“For regressed littles, maybe. I’m not regressed. So why should I respect a person who puts their hands on me or demeans me? You wouldn’t think that if I were an independent little, would you?”

“No.”

“So, then why?”

“Because you’re not independent.”

“Still the same mind. And my status as a dependent is between myself, Amanda, and our mother. It has nothing to do with any other big.”

“Well, it’s just the way things are … That’s how they work here.” Jamie’s eyes betrayed his sanguine expression.

“In Aidu they mutilate littles,” he said, spitting the words through his teeth, “if they don’t want them to walk or if they want one with different genitals or want to add aesthetic features to them. That’s how things work there. So fuck how things work.”

“That’s Aidu.”

“That’s your species,” Jamie said with a shrug. “Pretty much takes away any general claim of amazons’ superiority to humans, doesn’t it.” He didn’t want to continue the line of conversation. “Anyone else have any questions?” Jamie called on a woman in the back.

“So if you didn’t want to be regressed, why did you come here?” A question Jamie had been grappling with for over a year.

“A new start … A chance at a better life … A chance to be happier than I could be there.”

“Did it work? Are you happier?”

“I’m working on it.”

“What would you change, if you could,” another student asked.

“There are no public accommodations for littles. I wasn’t allowed to see the art at the museum because they don’t allow littles to walk around. A restaurant insisted we sit in a separate section.”

“Littles can get pretty rambunctious,” Justin said.

“I don’t. I guess if I could change one thing, it would be for people to stop seeing us as a homogenous group and start seeing us as individuals. I just want to be treated like James.”

“Does he misbehave a lot,” a student asked.

“No. I do not misbehave. Do you?”

“Bigs can’t misbehave.”

“Really? You never do something stupid that you shouldn’t have done? As a college student,” Jamie chuckled.

“What’s your favorite part about being here,” another student asked.

Jamie’s eyes turned toward Amanda, and he smiled. “Probably the same as yours. My family.”

A man in the back raised his hand. “When you think about yourself before you came here, do you think of yourself as being a little back then too?”

“No. Not at all.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I was a human there, and I’m a human here. I led a life pretty much like the life of an adult here. I went to work, I ran errands, I paid bills, I tried to forge connections and relationships, and it was hard like it is for everyone. Adulting is hard.”

“So what’s the difference then between an adult and an adult who’s a little, according to you?”

“I guess … here I don’t have to hold anything in. I get to be honest here. I get to experience all my feelings here. I don’t have to hide anything. I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not. I don’t have to compartmentalize myself into who I really am and who I am at work and who I am with friends; I just get to be me all the time.

“And I don’t have to do it all alone. I mean, really not alone. Not just having someone to listen to your complaints, but having people who’ll carry you when you need it, take the burden from you, really share it all with you.

“And the good things, too. I get to love with everything I have to give, and I get loved with everything my people have to give me.

“So, if you ask me, a little isn’t a species. It’s a way of being. And it’s better.”

“Is it worth it? The things you gave up?”

“I got a lot more than I gave up,” Jamie answered. He looked at Amanda. “A lot more. Worth it every day.”

______________________________________________

“Did you enjoy that,” Amanda asked when they were seated in their booth at their favorite TexMex restaurant.

“Yeah. It was fun … Justin’s a dick.”

“Yeah. But even if you didn’t get through to him you probably did to a few other people.”

“Dr. Stern’s a nice guy.”

“Yeah. He has more experience with more kinds of littles than even most people in his field.”

“You think any more about changing your major?”

“Some. I’m leaning towards it.”

“You gotta admit, we’re a lot more interesting that kids.”

“You definitely are. What do you want to do when we get home?”

“Do you have to study for finals?”

“I can do that after you go to bed.”

“After we take a nap, will you help me build something with my blocks?”

“I’d be happy to.”