Mary and Daphne #159

When you’re single, Valentine’s Day sucks. No two ways about it: it sucks. When you have a partner, you get to choose whether it sucks. Some people think it’s just a greeting card holiday, and some people see it as an opportunity to be all lovey dovey and stuff. I take the latter approach, as is my wont cuz I’m as sunny as sunshine. I am goddamn friggin delightful. “There goes Daphne,” people say, “She is such a delight.” Mhmm, that’s a thing people say about me. But delightfulness and a heck yeah attitude toward the holiday isn’t always enough to figure out what to get your Mary for Valentine’s.

“Daphne,” Mary said. It’s not how she said it that made me jump. It was when she said it, specifically when I was rifling through her drawers.

“O! Hi.”

“What are you up to?”

“Rifling through your drawers trying to think of something to get you for Valentine’s Day.”

“We’ve talked about you going in my drawers,” she said with the same smile she-wolves make when they approach bunnies.

“Yeah, about that: I couldn’t help but notice you don’t mind it when I’m putting your laundry away.”

“Tsk tsk tsk. Such a sass muffin.”

“Well, you won’t find those in a bakery … Wanna go to a bakery later?” That’s where they keep sugary delights, and you need to feed this girl delightful things if you want her to be delightful. The person who thought to put chocolate in the croissant is my hero. Blessings and light be upon them all their days.

Mary did a reach-around and closed her drawer (that’s what a reach around is, right? I don’t know these things; I’m very innocent and sexually inexperienced – really). And then she put her hands on my hips and pivoted me around before leaning forward and giving me a kiss that almost knocked me off my feet. I think she’s hopelessly in love with me or something? As for myself, I like to think of it as hopefully in love with her, glass half full and what not. See? Delightful.

“Ya know, Mary,” I said and maybe sorta kind definitely put my hand on her chest, “it’s almost as if you’re hiding my Valentine’s Day present in your drawers what with the drawer shutting and you maybe-this’ll-distract-her kiss.

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Yes. Yes, I would. That’s why I said it.”

“Tough. You have to wait.”

“Fine,” I said and tried to do the thing she just did with the grabbing the hips and pivoting her around but, um, I’m not as strong as she is, plus she has six inches on me so she has leverage … and stuff.

But I did make her lose her balance and almost trip over me. She didn’t, but only because she planted her hand on my shoulder and almost knocked me flat on my ass, then grabbed me by the arm to save me from a broken butt. It’s sort of amazing anyone ever dated me and came away unscathed. Rewinding a bit, Mary was taking a huge risk trying to teach me to ice skate. I could’ve maimed both of us plus everyone within an ice rink radius.

But in the then-present, I apologized for my faux pas. “Um, oops? You okay?” See how polite I can be after almost knocking my wife down? Very polite. Apologetic and polite and with, I’m told, a very cute oops-how-embarrassing grimace.

And Mary made this kinda sweet I-don’t-know-what’s-passing-through-your-head-sometimes face. “There goes Daphne,” people say, “the source of much consternation.” Yep, that’s also a thing that people say about me.

“What exactly were you trying to do there, little girl?”

“Spin you toward the bed so we could fall back on it and look at each other with big gay eyes.” What I lack in physical prowess and coordination I make up for in word choice and timing. True story. Also, I actually have all the physical prowess … so I got that going for me too. I’m quite the superlative, now that I think about it.

Mary grinned at me, and no sooner did I suspect her intentions than she grasped me by the hips again with a, “You mean like this?” And down we went onto our bed.

“Woah! Ha! Yeah, like that. Heehee.” Wow; so this is what it’s like to be laying on a bed with a beautiful woman. Pretty awesome. But seriously, how does she do that? It’s not like she’s Superwoman (at least not since this one Halloween at band camp).

“Your eyes are so gay,” she said to me.

“No you.” That’s a trick I learned. Whenever you get a compliment, just say ‘no you’ and the other person will get squirmy and think you’re nice and also so cute. Not that I ever use these kinds of tricks on my Mary, but …

“You’re so cute.”

“Ha! Hahuhaheeheehee!”

“What are you giggling about?”

“I’m happy.” And here’s a secret for you – right then, Mary kissed me. Girls kissing girls. Whoever heard of such a thing, and why aren’t there public service announcements letting the whole world know how awesome it is? And why doesn’t the news cover it with, like, a thirty-second video at the top of each segment? Turn the lights down, watch a little news – ya know, girl stuff.

But awesome or not, I still had to tell her, “But you still haven’t given me any ideas for Valentine’s. What do you want?”

“I want … Hmmm. I don’t want anything. I already have a little girl.”

“Can I meet her? I promise I’ll be nice and won’t bully her or anything.”

“You think you’re so clever.” Ooo, she tapped my nose! O my heccin goodness she tapped my nose! I LIKE that. I like like it and everything. Sigh … nose taps. Also I’m not a little girl. Really.

“Besides,” she said to me, “you couldn’t bully anyone if you tried. You’re too kindhearted.

“I can too bully people. I can be mean. You’ve heard my rants. I say all kinds of mean things.”

“Mhmm. Your temper tantrums can be quite the verbal fireworks show, and it’s cute the way you turn all red and clench your fists and stomp your little feet. In fact, I’d say you have the most adorably ineffectual temper tantrums I’ve ever seen in an adult.”

Ugh! That is so mean! Can you believe she says these things about me? My Mary has no social graces at’all. “You better say something nice about me next.”

“The reason you can’t bully people is because you are too good a girl.”

Heehee! “Um, would you even say that I’m a very good girl? Maybe even a very, very good girl?”

“That’s what I tell people.”

“Aww, you go around bragging about me? You’re so sweet.”

“Mhmm. I’m always telling people ‘sorry for her behavior; she really is a very, very good girl.’”

“If we’d done more stuff and gone more places in the last two years, I’d probably believe you actually said that to someone.” I may not be mean, but I can be mischievous, over-excited, and every so often short-tempered. Sometimes Mary makes me apologize; sometimes she even makes me mean it; and sometimes Mary takes me to the nearest private place for a … conversation about good choices. Yep, just a conversation. A regular Algonquin Roundtable … no one ever left one of our conversations with wet eyes, a red face, and even redder butt. Um, really.

“But we’re still talking about me,” I said. “What do you want for Valentine’s Day? Try harder.” If I gotta boss her into giving me an idea of what to give her, I will. Not that I didn’t have ideas, but they were birthday, anniversary, and Christmas ideas. I needed a Valentine’s Day-sized idea.

“Um … I want a … surprise.”

“You’re about as helpful as burnt toast sometimes.” One time she burnt the toast so bad, the smell gave me a headache and she took me to breakfast. And one time the following weekend, I turned the toaster way up when I thought she wasn’t looking, and she took me to a chair and put me over her knee. Just shows that even brilliant economists such as myself can get our reward-to-risk calculations wrong, but in my defense, it’s notoriously hard to contextualize the true value of restaurant waffles. Just look at what they cost – that much happiness for just three dollars? Ridiculously underpriced. True story.

“I want an experience,” Mary said.

“Do you want a surprising experience or an experiential surprise?” I’ll get her either one; I just wanna be sure cuz I don’t wanna get her something she won’t like.

“Incapable of being mean, but fully capable of being a sassy molassey.”

“By the way, I looked that up, and it’s not a word.”

Mary’s you-really-wanna-go-down-that-road-of-who-uses-more-nonsense-words face. Huh. Wonder what she meant by that, and lucky for me, she told me. “You, telling me, that something’s not a word. That’s … okay.” Mary’s I’m-gonna-let-that-go face. What could she mean by that?

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Really.”

“You keep using that word ‘really’. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

“Of course it does. So you know what I want for Valentine’s Day?” Changing the subject? Me? Never. I don’t avoid the tough conversations. I go straight at them. That’s me – damn the torpedoes and all that jazz.

“But I already got you your Valentine’s Day present.”

“I know. I was talking about something else. Something I think I’m gonna get myself.”

“Is it under the hundred-dollar limit?”

“Yes, and we need to talk about that number not having changed in almost seven years, but just to clear, I wasn’t asking permission.” You’d think from the face Mary made that I’d sent a red flag up the mizzen. But I didn’t. Really.

“So what is this thing you want to buy yourself?”

“You know how the stores have peanut butter hearts back in stock?”

“You can have one.” She even put up one finger to illustrate her point. I like that finger. It does some pretty cool stuff. But I don’t especially care for it when she uses it for illustrative purposes cuz I almost never like the point she’s trying to illustrate.

“I don’t understand your puritanical attitude about chocolate-and-peanut-butter confections.” I mean, why would my Mary align herself with the Puritans? They very much would not align themselves with us.

“They turn you into a crazy person.”

“Leading experts say sugar highs are largely a myth.”

“I know. That’s what makes it even weirder how you behave on them. It’s like you found a drug that only works on you. You can have two, and not on the same day. Or on back-to-back days. You on peanut butter cups runs me ragged.”

Many is the time Mary has put me over her knee because she says I listen better in that position, but I think Mary is the one with the listening disorder. I already told her I wasn’t asking permission, and there she was trying to dictate terms. But we were having such pleasant quality time that I didn’t want to make things awkward or hostile. I decided to just nip this conversation right in the bud. “I have to show you something.”

“It better not be a candy stash,” she warned me as I got off our marital bed.

“Remember when we ordered Chinese last week,” I asked as I stepped over to my jewelry box and got out My Precious.

“Yeah.”

“They sent three fortune cookies, and PS, I ate the extra one, and this was my fortune: ‘You should be able to undertake and complete anything you desire.’” My Precious.

And Mary, see, she’s very smart but has trouble keeping up with me sometimes, and I could tell that was one of those times cuz she was making her I-don’t-get-it face. “I don’t get it.” See how well I know her? “What’s that have to do with what we were just talking about.”

“It says I can have and do whatever I want.”

Mary’s deep-skepticism face. “Um, no, it doesn’t.”

“Sure it does. If I undertake the doing or having of things, I’ll be able to complete – a/k/a do and have – all the things I desire. It’s just a fancy way of saying I can do and have anything I want. That’s what it says, and I want peanut-butter-filled chocolate hearts, so I shall have them.”

I’m both a sympathetic and empathetic person. I can understand how difficult it must have been for Mary to understand her authority had been usurped by a cookie. I can understand her discomfort with the entire notion. I mean, if I were a dominant, I’d probably think it was downright dangerous for the cookie corporations to even make such a cookie and leave them where submissives could get their hands on them. I’d think it was dangerous and immoral, especially since everyone knows that if there’s a cookie somewhere, a submissive will find it.

“That’s what you think it says, huh,” she asked me.

“Mhmm. It’s quite clear. I can do and have anything I want. It’s pretty awesome actually.” Bit of a head rush to be honest. Like woah, power trip!

“Let me see that,” Mary sat right up and said with her hand outstretched. I mean, geez, grabby hands much? She seemed awfully alert all of a sudden, one might even say she was ready to spring into action, perhaps even get online and organize a dominant boycott of the fortune cookie company.

“Are your hands clean,” I asked. What? It’s a valid question.

“Daphne Ann.” Whoa. Doubled naming me. It’s not unheard of for the very recently deposed to try to exert the power they had mere moments ago. She needed time to adjust. I understood. She was under a lot of stress just then; being dethroned, as far as I can tell cuz I’ve been on the throne all my life, seems very traumatic.

But there is a certain protocol to these things, and she had a right to see it the document declaring her deposition. “Be careful with it,” I instructed her, “It’s an official document.” I duly handed over My Precious.

Mary read it, looked up at me, read it again, and said, “Stop smiling.”

“So I’m going to get all the peanut butter hearts they have at the store, and then I’m going to go to a few more stores, and then I’m going to go to Target and buy a mini fridge to keep them all in.”

“This is exactly the weird behavior I’m talking about, and you haven’t even tasted one yet.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.” Hmm. Why are her eyes narrowing like that? “Hey,” I (a little loudly) said as she put my fortune in her pocket. “I need that.”

“Stay.”

“I won’t stay, but I’ll wait patiently because I’m in charge of me but I’m still polite,” I said as she strode across the room like the sheriff in an old western. How sad that she hadn’t yet grasped that she was no longer the law around these parts. “It’s alright with me if you wanna hang on to that for a little while until you get used to the idea, by the way. Just give it back by bedtime.” See? See how considerate I am?

“I’ll give it back to you in just a minute,” she said like the sheriff in an old western striding back across the room carrying a … naughty stick and giant pampers? I’d never seen either of them before. Really hope neither was my Valentine’s Day present; how disappointing would that be.

But bigger picture, do you see? You see how she’s the aggressor? Like all tyrants, even the benevolent ones like my Mary, she’s always so ready so resort to coercion. I mean, who buys a stick just for chastising their wife (besides the very best kind of people)?

“On your back,” she ordered like authority was still a thing she had. I was going to let her stay on in a ceremonial capacity, or sort like the founder of a company who retires but still comes to work every day like they’re still in charge only now they wear a sweater instead of a suit. If she’d picked any battle besides peanut butter and chocolate, I’d have let her do that. I’d have even gotten her some nice house slippers to wear in her forced retirement. But she sealed her fate when she tried yet again to get between me and the peanut butter.

“I don’t wear diapers anymore, and you can’t spank me.” Hmm. Mary’s hell-hath-no-fury face. What an … unsettling reaction. “Um …”

“I’m going to count to three.” Almost like she didn’t accept the authority of the cookie to take away her authority over me and place that authority under my authority. And remember when Mary implied I don’t always make sense? What was up with that?

“I’m not a toddler,” I reminded her. “I’m not impressed by counting.”

“One.”

“I didn’t have a choice. You have to obey fortune cookies. It’s the law.”

“Two.”

“I’m not even intimidated by the way you’re slapping that stick into your palm.”

What happened next is one of those things historians will debate: did she say ‘three’ before my back hit the bed? I was there in the room, and I don’t even know. Not that I surrendered. I just … decided to let her have this one. Call it Stick-holder Management – sometimes you hafta let a stick-holder think they’ve won to seed the ground for success in confrontations down the road.

Mary let her guard down just enough to flash a situation-defused face. Or maybe it was more of a Daphne-should-learn-that-when-she-tries-these-things-she-just-makes-herself-vulnerable face. And if it was the latter, I have no idea what she was talking about. Really.

“I think I understand what you’re trying to tell me – hands above your head,” Mary said as she untied the bow in the drawstring holding up my sweatpants. Maybe I should use some of my free time to learn more difficult knots she’ll have a harder time undoing. “You’ve been such a good girl lately …”

O my gosh, she noticed?!? Squeee!

“… that I haven’t been as strict as I should’ve been. I mean, on reflection, that scene you made up with the cigarettes must’ve been your way of telling me I haven’t been spanking you often enough or hard enough or long enough. I apologize for missing your signal, but I promise I’ll correct that mistake.”

Something about being naked below the waist while a tall, strong woman wielding a big stick stands over you just has a way of making you feel vulnerable. Maybe science will one day be able to tell us why that is. I found it especially disconcerting as I’ve never felt exposed or vulnerable in all my life. Really.

“It really is just about the peanut butter,” I said very calmly for someone feeling so disconcerted. In any case, I thought I’d been admirably clear about my stance. Isn’t it just like a stick-holder to read way more into what you’ve been saying than is really there? Silly stick-holders.

“But then,” Mary Monologue soliloquized as she unfolded that diaper, “we’ve gone through so many cycles of strict and very strict, and the effects never last for very long, so maybe such a little girl trying to take on so much responsibility for herself is really trying to say she needs even more doting and attentive care.”

Hmmm. Mary’s I’ve-got-her-cornered face. “I, um, just want more peanut butter hearts than you let me have.” I’m very reasonable. I can scale back my demands. “There goes Daphne,” people say, “a pleasure to negotiate with. She knows when to scale back her demands.” Yep, that’s one more thing people say about me. I’m the friggin (delightful) talk of the town.

“It’s so cute that you think so, but little girls so often don’t know what they want or need or even mean.”

I was going to remind her I’m not a little girl, but something about the way she was smiling so adoringly and threateningly at the same time made me decide to remind her later. Good thing I mostly (but also all the times) like it when she adores and threatens me at the same time. True story.

“But I’ll humor my little girl,” she said as she glanced from the stick on her right side to the diaper on her left. “What do you think you need: some extra strictness, or some extra care?”

I think I’ve lost control of the narrative. Let’s just try this. “I don’t think you’re taking the fortune cookie seriously enough.”

“Mhmm,” she patronized me. The faux interest in the way she wrinkled her brow practically shouted, tell me more about that.

“Um, see, they may not be legally binding, but, uh … mystically speaking, they do tell the future. And that’s my destiny, apparently … getting to do whatever I want. You wouldn’t, um, wanna deprive a pretty girl of her destiny … would you?”

“Daphne.”

“So what if I only follow my destiny specifically for candy and only until after Easter?” That’s the start of the dry season when there are no more holiday-themed peanut butter treats until Halloween. We could even consider it a trial period and go back to peanut butter deprivation if it didn’t work. I mean, if peanut butter has such a strong effect on me, that’s plenty of time to remove any doubt as to whether my behavior on peanut butter is as self-destructive as she says. Heccin good logic, by the way.

“I’m going to pick for you,” she responded. Quite the firm negotiator, my re-throned queen.

“So we’re on the same page, doting means I’m wearing that diaper, and strict means you’re gonna spank me back to the stick age?”

“Wearing diapers, with an ‘s,’ but other than that you seem to understand it perfectly.”

“Any chance if I choose the stick I’m not going to end up in diapers?”

“No; sorry.” I know my Mary, and she wasn’t sorry at all. Fibber.

“And would I be correct to assume that choosing the diaper doesn’t mean the stick goes in the fire pit?”

“Quite correct.” She winked at me! Who winks at a time like this? Like she was raised in a barn sometimes. “But if you choose diapers, the stick goes back in the closet until your choices tell me you need it applied to your bare bottom.” I took a deep breath and pushed it out as a big sigh. “Don’t you go getting huffy with me,” she gently warned me. Like that even counts as huffy. Hmmph.

“I wasn’t gonna … How many diapers?”

“That depends on heavy a wetter you are.”

“So, how many hours?”

“168 hours. Probably easier for a little girl like you to think of it as seven days. That way you only have one digit to wrap your little girl mind around.”

Dammit! “Can I … hold the stick first?” It looked heavy.

“I’m gonna choose for you.”

Big sigh again. “The diapers.” I was gonna end up in them anyway, and I’ll tell you something else for free: we have so many spanking implements, Mary only buys a new one when she thinks it’ll hurt more than all the ones we already have. I’ve heard about naughty sticks. I did NOT want my first experience of one to be a (allegedly) bad girl spanking.

“You’re the boss,” she said like we’d settled everything in my favor. Hmmph!

“That’s just mean,” I said as I crossed my arms.

“Lift your butt.” She got the diaper situated under me. “And I haven’t forgotten about your fortune cookie. You can have it back.”

I watched, horrified, as she withdrew My Precious from her pocket and dropped it on the open diaper. Time slowed down, like watching a tragedy unfold and being powerless to stop it.

My Mary folded the diaper over me and taped it shut. The pats she gave the front of it echoed in my ears like the clang of some terrible bell tolling the death of a valiant band of freedom fighters for whom independence was too sweet dream to come true. Literally, because all they wanted was the freedom to eat as many chocolate-peanut-butter hearts as they could stomach.

“I can’t believe you did that,” and I said that having seen Mary get pretty creative with the mean things she does to me. She shrugged and made her I-know-I’m-pretty-impressed-with-myself-too smile. It’s a good thing I like seeing her smile, else I’d have gotten huffy with her after all.

“And don’t even think of opening this diaper or reaching in there to get it.”

“I was going to frame that.” I could spend the rest of my life eating nothing but Chinese takeout and never get that fortune again.

“Tell ya what – if it comes out of there in one piece and you can salvage it, we’ll frame it. Custom, in a giant, overpriced frame. How’s that?”

“I just wanted more peanut butter hearts,” I pouted.

“You can have three.”

“Five.”

“Four.”

“That’s not even enough to get the dosage right. I’ve built up a lot of tolerance.”

“Three.”

“Four’s good.”

“I’m so glad you feel that way,” she chuckled and laid herself back down next to me like there never was an interlude in our staring into each other’s big gay eyes.

“Would you really have spanked me hard with that stick?”

“You didn’t leave me much choice.”

“Taking a cookie awfully serious.” But not in the way I wanted her to, so actually she was quite flippant in a this-is-very-serious kinda way.

“I had a mutiny on my hands. I won’t have my submissive little girl trying to rebel, even in a cute way.”

“It was just supposed to be funny.” But if it had worked, and I’m not saying I believed it would, then it would have been way too important to be funny. A watershed moment in the history of the tripartite relationship between Daphne, Mary, and the peanut butter that so often comes between us. Really.

“You know how sometimes a kid does something very naughty, but it’s also hilarious, but the parents can’t laugh,” she asked me.

Hey! “I don’t think I care for that analogy … So you really think I’m hilarious?”

“Very.”

“Is my comedic timing good?”

“Very good.”

“Good.”

“Can I feel,” she asked. Like, seriously, now she’s asking if she can feel me up? She reached over and felt the diaper she put me in.

“What,” I asked cuz I wasn’t sure what she was doing.

“Is it soft?”

“Lots of things are soft. That doesn’t mean I wanna wrap them around my loins and urinate in them.” True story. Very. True. Story.

“So much sass,” she chuckled, “but is it? It’s supposed be.”

“Yeah … Where did you even find this? It looks like a giant pampers.”

“It’s new.”

“From … Pampers? Really?”

“No, silly goose, from a company that makes diapers for girls like you.”

Does she really think those comments just slide under my radar? “I’m not going to take that bait because I like you and stuff.”

“They’re hard to get now, but once there’s enough, you might never wear another kind of diaper again, unless you want to. I know how attached you are to the one with the little blue dog and the pink princess one.”

“Psychologists call what you just did projecting.”

“They even have some on Etsy made out of real baby diapers. Do you wanna try those?”

“Um, how about no?” Hey, wait a second! That gives me an idea. “But I will if you want me to … if I can have six peanut butter hearts.”

“And you really don’t think you do things you wouldn’t otherwise do without the peanut butter?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about it.” Seriously, what is she even talking about? I’m a certified instructor in Nonsense as a Second Language, and even I have no idea what point she’s trying to make half the time.

“If you say so.”

I casually reached over and picked up the naughty stick. “Really, Mary? Just unilaterally escalating?”

“Like you said, your tolerance has gone up.”

“An extended spank-free period would fix that.”

“And have you sad, mopey, and unspanked? I couldn’t do that to you.”

I’ll admit that on that subject she actually had a point. “Do you think maybe if I behave all day, we can give it a trial run before bed?”

“Why wait for bedtime? We can test it it when I change your diaper.”

I wanted so badly to avoid that thing a few minutes before, and now I was curious and wanted to feel it. “Goes straight to the heart of being me. I don’t want it when I’m in trouble, but when I’m not, I want it so bad that I need it.”

Mary kissed me on my forehead. “Goes to the heart of being us. I hate having to spank your bottom, but love doing it.” And she tapped my nose again! Heck yeah nose taps!

“Our Sundays are heccin fun.”

“So much fun. How about some lunch? You can color a picture while I dote on you just like I threatened.”

“Can it be a picture of me and you doing stuff to each other?”

“Knock yourself out. Giving a pencil to such a little girl, I’ll be happy if I can tell the difference between that and your drawings of a house.”

“Mean! I’m good at drawing.”

“Very good at drawing.” O heck heccin goodness she tapped my nose again! Squeeeee!