Mary and Daphne #171

“Daffy,” someone said, very rudely interrupting my nap even if they were sorta softly singing my nickname. And not just my nap, but the puppy’s too. Doesn’t Mary know the puppy is just a baby and needs her rest? Which is nothing like me, an adult who needs her rest because, well, you need a lot of sleep in your thirties, for some reason. Really.

“Hi,” I said.

“Come with me.”

“But I have a warm puppy on me.” True story. She was sleeping on me. I think she likes me, so I got two awesome women who like me. Maybe even like like me. Heehee! It took exactly two weeks for me to get over being anxious about having a dog. We’re buddies now.

“And we’re going to have a little talk about responsible puppy care.” Well, a ‘little talk’ with Mary is one of those phrases that snaps me out of the deepest slumber. Like I’m a sleepy forest bunny hearing a twig break in the night and knowing it’s a she-wolf on the prowl.

Setting aside my well-founded reservations, I set the pupper down (and she fell right back asleep; so cute!) and followed my lovely wife to the kitchen. Here’s a secret for you – I love following her cuz, and I know this is a shocker, I’m a fan of butts, especially hers. And yet when we reached the kitchen and she turned around, gone was the wakey-wakey-sleepy-girl face from which came the dulcet tone of her singing my name.

I can always tell when she’s irked cuz she makes her I-am-irked face. That, and the tone she uses when she’s gotten the ridiculous idea that whatever is irking her is my fault. I mean, even when I am the thing irking her, it’s still not my fault because reasons. I even told her once that we can’t control other people’s behavior, only our emotional response, so if she was feeling irked, that was on her. That’s just facts. But they were not well received, and she did a helluva good job showing who can control what in our house. Besides, I’m a ray of sunshine. How could I ever be irksome? Can’t. Really.

“Daphne,” Mary said to me, “do you have something you want to tell me?” As a matter o’ fact, I didn’t, but when she asks me that, it’s very rarely a random question. Whatever she thinks I have to tell her, I’m better off just telling her something else entirely cuz ‘I don’t know’ is one of those phrases that, coming from me in certain moments, irks her. But sometimes I really don’t know because, and this may shock you like it shocks me, sometimes she thinks very spurious things about who did what and what the consequence for what the who did should be. Very spurious indeed.

So I naturally, exactly because I am a ray of sunshine and care about her and knew it would help her to redirect her attention, responded, “Um, the Gay Men’s Choir is having their craft fair at Redwood Park this weekend. I thought we’d go look at stuff, get a hotdog.” Something about the park makes hotdogs taste better there. And gay men and crafting? Fuhgeddaboudit. They make the best stuff. Plus it would be full of our fellow gays, which is always eight kinds of fun.

“Daphne, look down.” My eyes followed Mary’s the floor.

O come on! How much can such a small dog pee so much?!? That’s the second time she’s peed inside just today!

“Now tell me the truth,” Mary said with her faux earnest face on, “is that your puddle, or the dog’s?” She’s so friggin faux sometimes.

But I’d heard that joke before. Several times. And I didn’t like it those times either. “Mary, I swear to god, you make that joke one time and I’m gonna launch my entire body at you.”

“And do what? The last time your tried to pounce on me, you just bounced off.”

“So now I know what not to do.”

“Try to be big?”

“Akdienfowsj, Mary!” Akdienfowsj indeed.

“You still haven’t answered me.”

“It’s the dog’s! There, are you happy now?”

“I’m not happy at all. We need to get to the bottom of this right now.”

Ooo, so that phrase ‘get to the bottom’ is, uh, never good and often prelude to (bottom smacking) stuff. And Mary sure did seem, all of a sudden, as serious as a very serious person (why are serious people always so serious? Lighten up! Seriously.)

“Do you need me to show you how to clean it up?”

“Stupid rhetorical question,” I mumbled but not mumbly enough cuz Mary swatted my butt when I passed her on the way to the paper towels. At least she peed on the tile that time. I wiped it up, sprayed some Lysol, wiped that up, threw away the paper towels, and washed my hands, all under the watchful eye of Captain Mary Sour-Face. She was making way too big a deal out of this. Puppies have accidents.

“I’ll go take her out again,” I told Mary and got all of one step before Mary took me by my upper arm.

“Not so fast. We’re not done talking.”

She reached behind her to get something off the counter, which is when I said, “We don’t need the wooden spoon to talk!”

“We do for this kinda talk.”

“You can’t be serious!?! It was an accident!”

“The puppy had an accident. You were negligent.”

“In what possible f-(smack) ow!”

“Language, little girl. Do you wanna get your mouth washed out too?”

“No, but I didn’t do anything.”

“Exactly,” Her Royal Butt Tenderizer pronounced like that heccin meant anything. She sat down on a kitchen chair, and then – get this – she just yanked my shorts and panties right to the floor. Who even does that? Spanking someone on their bare bottom? A very new and off-putting experience for me … and stuff. Really.

But if Mary wasn’t going to have any manners or dignity, I had dignity to spare. “Marrry! I didn’t do anything and this isn’t fair and you can’t spank me for something the dog did and I can too stomp my feet if I want to!” Super dignified … and stuff. Especially with my underpants around my ankles. Super … really.

Not like I was feeling alarmed about the prospect of becoming the whipping girl for our puppy, but, ya know, let’s not ever let that come to pass.

“Are you done having a temper tantrum,” Mary asked me calmly. I wish just once she’d be the least bit perturbed by one of my righteous soliloquies, which she insists on referring to as tantrums. Hmmph!

“For now,” I didn’t pout with my arms crossed.

“Over my knee.”

“Make me!” Which she then did (with distressing ease). “That was rhetorical, Mary! I can be rhetorical too!” Like she’s queen of the heccin rhetoric or something. What the heccin heck?

“Daphne Ann, you will stop struggling, close your lips, and open your ears right now, or I’ll take you upstairs and spank your bottom with the hairbrush. Is that you want? … I asked you a question: do you want me to spank your bottom with the hairbrush? Cuz I’ll do it right now.”

O my god, one damn more rhetorical question. I gotta break her of that habit somehow. But I chose to just say (pouted, actually, but only because I’m ever so put upon, so it doesn’t count), “No.”

Btw, is it still a rhetorical question if she demands an actual answer? I say yes cuz the answer is so friggin obvious … or it would be if not for all the times I enthusiastically answered yes to that question … but those don’t count because reasons … and stuff. True story.

Mary resumed her ‘little talk.’ “When I’m working, you need to be watching the puppy more closely and taking her out to potty. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but she hasn’t had a single accident in the house when I’m not working.”

“But it was. An. Accident! You don’t spank people for stuff they don’t do on purpose.” It’s just not done in polite circles, but try telling that to Miss Mary Rude … Person whose lap I was splayed over. And actually, she is so damn classy, but in that moment, she was being quite the ill-mannered troglodyte. I’ve been meaning to have a talk with her about her etiquette, but I always remember at the worst possible moment to bring it up and then forget it entirely in the ensuing chaos (until next time, when the cycle begins anew).

“If you had an accident on the floor, I wouldn’t spank you for it, just like I never spank you for the tinkle accidents you have in your diapers.”

“They’re not mine, and they’re not accidents!” … Hey Daphne, shut up. I’m begging you, who is me, to just shut up.

“Whatever you want to tell yourself, little girl, but you didn’t have an accident. The dog had an accident. You were negligent in not taking the dog out.”

“That’s just mean. I take great care of our puppy.”

“Wonderful care of the puppy, but not so good care of our floors. You’re getting a sore bottom, and you’re going to get another sore bottom every time the puppy piddles in the house. Let’s see if a red fanny will remind you to take her out.” And then with the spanking without even, ya know, a warning. What is even with her sometimes?

“I remem-ow!-ber. She stares – ow! – at me and then – ouch – comes insides and – eep! – pees on the – stop that! – floor anyway! Stop it!”

“I decide when your spankings are over, little girl.”

“Well how ‘bout now?” Me, defiant? Never. Me, sassy? So rarely as to be all but a myth. Indignant? Heck yeah I was indignant! And I had zero intention of getting spanked without a (verbal) fight!

And therein lies my strategic error – I brought words and logic to this fight, whereas Mary brought her physical prowess, feminine wiles, the almost mystical sway she holds over me, and that damn wooden spoon. I hate that thing! Mary can just flick that thing against my butt twice a heccin second without her wrist even tiring. It weighs an ounce and a half. How can it pack so much wallop?!? Stingy little balsa bitch should stick to stirring stuff and leave my butt alone! But trying telling that to Miss Mary Viking Spoon Maiden. Which I did, and it went like this.

“Mary! Mary! Ouch. Stop! That’s not what spoons are for!”

“Is that your way of telling me you want to get a special spoon just for spanking?”

“That’s not what I meant! Owie!” O my god. Just o. My. God. Daphne, did you really just say owie? What’s wrong with you today? Maybe it’s been too long since you got spanked. It’s just the spoon.

To which I said, Shut up, Brain!

“Good,” Mary sassed me (can you believe she sassed me? Me!?!), “because the middle of a spanking is a terrible time to ask for a new toy.”

I’m telling ya’ll for real, Mary has highly selective hearing and/or a deviously motivated way of interpreting things. And the hypocrite (there – I finally said it!) has accused me of selective hearing more than a time or three. I mean, she was right some of those times. And the other times, I heard and chose to ignore it, but that’s not even the point.

“I think, little Miss Tiny Butt …”

“You ow take that ow back! Eep! I have a great butt!” It’s very shapely and womanly. One of the few curves on my otherwise slender body in which I still get mistaken for a twenty-something sometimes. And when I was a twenty-something, I got mistaken for a college student. And when I was a college student, sometimes on campus people asked me if I was lost.

“I think,” Mary continued (know who loves to continue? Mary), “that it will go a long way to helping you behave if other people know you still get spanked.”

“Eep! Stop that! Eeeep! That stings!!!” My thighs! My poor thighs. “Those aren’t for spanking!”

“They are for spanking, and the spoon leaves such pretty red welts on the back of them. Everybody who’s ever wielded a spanking spoon knows what those look like, and you are officially forbidden from wearing anything to cover them until they go away.”

“That’s just mean! Mean! And I can wear what I want!”

“I can pull them down for a spanking just as fast as you can put them on.”

“Urgh!”

“All this backtalk I’m getting is telling me this spanking isn’t even close to getting through.”

I will not be silenced! But sometimes I will choose – as an agent of my own fate – to shut up. Which I did. Chose to. Very brave act. Really. But not once did she slow up with that damn spoon.

“Is your new-found silence a sign of contrition?”

Like she’s gonna trick me into me in saying something. Doesn’t even work … anymore. She set the spoon down and rubbed my butt with some squeezing thrown in lagniappe. Like that makes up for (more than almost all) the injustice I’d just suffered.

“Are you ready to talk some more,” she asked me like it was ever my idea to not talk. “Sit up for me … What’s this,” she asked when I sat up and faced her. Looked her right in the eye, too, cuz I’m not afraid of her (actually kinda definitely hopelessly in love with her). She reached out and wiped a tear away with her thumb. O, the things she can do with her thumbs. “I spanked you to tears.”

“Tear,” I moped, “Singular. Just the one. Don’t make it sound worse than it is.”

“You sound like a pouty princess. Are you gonna be a pouty princess?”

I hadn’t decided yet, but I took a moment to make up my mind. “… Hmmph.” Bet you can’t guess what I decided.

“Save some of that, because we’re not done yet.”

“Marrry! I don’t want any more spanking.”

“You didn’t want the first one, and if you’re a good girl …”

“Mary!” What the hell?!?

“Sorry. You’re always a good girl.”

Did you hear that? She thinks I’m always a good girl. She loves me and stuff. Sigh …

“If,” she continued, and I swear if she keeps continuing to do that … “If you remember to make choices like the good girl I know you are, there won’t be any more spanking today. Will you try extra hard for me?”

“Stop babying me,” I said to her as I – like an adult! – leaned forward and rested my head on her shoulder. I was quite vexed what with the spanking and the rubbing (and squeezing!) and the button pushing.

“If that’s what you want, sweetie. Let’s go get your diaper on.”

“What? Seriously?”

“Of course seriously. You know you always wet yourself after a spanking,” she actually said (grr!) as she led me by the wrist up to our bedroom.

I know nothing of the kind, and she knows I know nothing of the kind, and I know she knows I know nothing of the kind! That’s called slander, so I mumbled, “Slander.”

“What was that?”

“Slander,” I said clearly.

“That’s what I thought. Lay down on the bed.”

I did, and who should come into my field of vision? The furry little pee-anywhere anarchist whose fault this was! “Mary, close the door, she’s looking at me.”

“Such a silly girl.”

“Seriously, she’s laughing at me.” I wasn’t projecting my emotions onto a dog, by the way. No way; not me. Really.

“Well, she does kinda look like she’s smiling. Aren’t you? Aren’t you smiling at your mommy and her little girl? Yes you are! A-yes you are!”

“Don’t encourage her. This is all her fault. Puppy, get her! Get Mary!” Can’t get her to pee outside, can’t get her to sic Mary. All very disconcerting for an all-powerful wonder woman like myself. “I don’t want her watching.”

“Daffy, you’re just going to have to get over that because we don’t keep secrets in this house. Do we? No we don’t. Not we don’t keep secrets. A-no we don’t.”

“Stop talking to me like a dog … Or at least wait longer after talking to her that way.”

“Did that make you uncomfortable or jealous?”

“… No.” Mary’s o-really face with her right eyebrow climbing her forehead like it’s Alex Honnold. As if!

“Where are my manners?”

“Been meaning to ask you that.”

“You’ve been laying there with your pink bottom on display probably needing to tinkle all this time, and here I am holding your diaper.”

“It’s been forty seconds.” And I did have to pee, but purely coincidental. I did just wake up from a nap after all.

“Which is a very long time for a little girl to be holding her weewee.”

It’s distressing how quickly Mary can tape me into a diaper now. That’s undoubtedly the result of practice, which is just so not cool. It wasn’t that long ago that when she put me in a diaper, she used the nursery cream and took her time with it. But however many assaults against my adulthood later, it’s gotten much more utilitarian. The cream is for special occasions and bedtime, apparently, not that I wear these things to bed very often … My life is weird.

“Sit up for me,” she said and helped me up, then sat down next to me and motioned for me to climb into her lap. Good thing I like it there or I would’ve … obeyed. Dammit …

“So here’s the thing, Daffodil. It’s been two weeks, and she isn’t any better at peeing outside than when we got her. So until she’s potty trained, you’re not potty trained either.”

“What!?! Kernoffler furnamuffin and that’s urterwingen and so gurstufirder and mean! Just mean!”

“Don’t look at it that way. Look at it as a chance for you to brush up on your own potty skills.”

O. My. God. Which, because I’m the agent of my own destiny and brave and powerful, came out as, “(Whimper). You can’t be serious.”

“You can still use the potty for the other thing, but Daffy, if she has just one poopy accident in the house …”

“No!”

“So.”

“You are such a butthead sometimes.”

“You mad at me?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that why you’re snuggling in closer?”

“That’s one reason.”

“What’s the oth … O; you’re peeing on me.”

“(Silence) … I had to go when you woke me up.”

“You mean you’re not waking up to pee on your own anymore? Are you a bedwetter?”

“Stopppp!” Keep pushing buttons and one of them is gonna get stuck like that!

“Are you feeling motivated to get the dog housebroken yet?”

“Shut up.”

“Gonna watch her like a hawk and take her out every twenty minutes?”

“Every ten.”

“Good girl.”

“Damn right I am, and you’re still a butthead.”

“Spanked little girls in wet diapies say the most emotional thing.”

“Eat farts, Mary.”

“Like that.”

And then she kissed me! True story. She’s a chaos demon … A very pretty one I’m pledged to for life, which I’m heccin incredibly over the moon happy about, and I’d write more about it, but I need to go google how to potty train a dog in less than an hour.