Gramps - Chapte 1

 

Gramps

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 1

 

A slight noise outside caught my attention.  I hurried to the front door and opened it.  I saw a delivery man just climbing back into his truck.  But there, in front of me, right in front of my door, was a box.  My breath caught and my spirit soared.  It had arrived!  I knew it was coming today and I was watching and waiting for it desperately.  And now it was finally here.

I carried the box inside and all the way to my bedroom where I set it down on my bed.  A few swipes of a knife cut the packing tape and I opened the box.  There, inside, I pulled away the paper packing material to expose two small packages of hard bubble wrapped plastic.  I grabbed them and looked at them carefully.  I wished they were a bit more girly, but that was okay.  They were the best the store had to offer in the way of adult sized pacifiers.  I was already looking forward to unpacking them and sticking one in my mouth.

But now my attention was more riveted on what was underneath the two extra-large pacifiers.  Adult diapers.  Adult baby diapers to be exact.  I had never ordered any before, and just starting out I had taken the time to contact the store to get their advice.  They had offered to put together a sample package for me of diapers I could try.  There was a section of the box that held larger, fatter diapers, the ones I had asked for to use at night, but the rest of the box held regular diapers that I could already see were each covered in nursery prints.  I noticed a lot of pink on the diapers, but then, when they asked me about it, I had been brave enough to specify that I would prefer diapers for a sissy baby.  That would be me.  A sissy!  Despite the fact that I was pretty much just starting out…oh, and that I was sixty-nine years old.

Okay, okay!  I wasn’t just starting out, even though I was.  Is that confusing?  It really isn’t.  Let me explain.

As I said, I was sixty-nine years old when all this started.  Old enough to know better than to be doing anything like this.  But the truth was, I was also old enough to no longer care.  It was my life and I wanted to do what I wanted with the time I had left.  The sad part was that my wife of almost forty years had died several months prior, and her passing hurt me more than I can explain.  But at the same time, it also freed my mind.

With my wife gone, I no longer had to worry about her ills and problems, and it left me free to exercise and indulge in an ancient fantasy of mine.  Uh…two fantasies that I discovered many people on the internet had managed to combine into one.  The first fantasy?  I loved…okay, I was interested in dressing in women’s clothes.  All kinds of women’s clothes.  Not only that, but clothes for any age women from young girls up to…uh…I guess my age.  That’s fantasy number one, but fantasy number two was more embarrassing.  Fantasy number two was that I wanted to try wearing diapers all the time like a baby.  Maybe even try going incontinent for a few weeks…or maybe even a few months.

And then on the internet I discovered what was now something called a sissy baby.  Combining both my fantasies into one – being babyish, and being girlish at the same time.  Kind of being a baby girl, or, a sissy baby as the term had been coined.  So I guessed that must be me.  A sissy baby.  If the shoe fits, wear it.  And, uh, I wanted those shoes to fit!  Especially if they were girl’s shoes…heels or flats, I didn’t care.  I was just interested in and dying to try it all.

Yeah, yeah, it’s dumb, I know.  But hey, it was my life, and after sixty-nine years, I felt like I had the right to do anything I wanted…as long as it didn’t hurt anyone else.  But trust me, I was planning on this being my own little private interest, so I saw even less wrong with it than I’m sure anyone else would.  Okay?  Hey, that’s where this story starts.  Or maybe not.

I guess I should tell you that my name is Bill.  William actually, but everyone always calls me Bill, and I prefer Bill.  It’s friendlier.

About ten years ago, my wife Ruthie and I took a trip from our home up in Maryland, down here to the hills of Tennessee.  Long story short, we fell in love with the place.  Enough that we came back time after time.  Eventually, we bought a nice house on a large piece of land outside of Johnson City in the northeastern part of the state.  Heaven!  Our planned retirement home for as soon as we could both retire.

Eventually, retirement reached us each at close to the same time and we were off!  Away from the rat race of fast-paced Maryland life and down here to the quiet hills and trees in Tennessee.  We left our friends and family behind and simply soaked up the quiet slower pace of things in our new home.  As I said, heaven!  Until my wife got sick.

The cancer came quickly and seemed to take her even quicker.  The devastation that hit me over it was almost more than I could take.  But while she was now gone, I was still alive.  As the kids all told me, don’t lay down and die Gramps!  Uh…that’s what everyone called, me.  Gramps.  We had seven grandkids, and since they all called me Gramps, and my wife Grams, even our kids started calling us that.  As I got older, the name Gramps seemed to define me more than I ever thought it would.  I wore the name proudly!  Still do, despite what my life has now become.

Anyway, after Ruthie died, the old…and by old I mean ancient…fantasies began filtering their way into my head once again.  Fantasies that had only existed when I was much younger.  Yes, yes, they existed all my life, but every time those fantasies surfaced, I was able to push them away.  I’m proud of that.  But with Ruthie gone, I was suddenly alone, and I no longer needed to push them away.  So I…uh…indulged a bit.

The first thing I did was to buy some of those cheap incontinence briefs that the drug stores carry.  Modified adult diapers I guess.  At least that’s what I hoped they were.  I bought my first package of them about a month after Ruthie passed.  Hey, there’s an awful lot of people my age and younger who wear the darn things all the time.  There was no shame at all in buying them, even though, yes, I did feel not just a thrill when I bought them, but more than a bit of embarrassment as well.  Unfounded embarrassment.

I began wearing those cheap lousy things occasionally instead of my regular underwear.  I even experimented a few times with wetting them and once or twice (or more) messed in them as well.  Yuck!  But hey, it was my fantasies.  Fantasies that I was enjoying so much that I even got up the nerve to buy a baby pacifier while I was in one of the stores.

And then several months later, I got up the nerve to email one of those adult baby specialty stores and I asked their advice about what would be the best kind of real adult baby diapers I could buy.  I have to say, whoever wrote me back was very kind and understanding.  Something I was very happy about.  And so I eventually had a box of real adult baby diapers sitting on my bed.  Some of them for nighttime use, the rest for daily wear.  Oh, and two adult baby pacifiers to stick in my mouth as well, just to fill out the fantasy a bit more.  I had a feeling that they would be much better for me to suck on than those baby ones I had actually been trying to use.

I think that about brings us up to date now with where I started.  At least I hope it does.  Just to recap.  Wife died.  Family all went home to Maryland where they belonged.  My life got quieter than I ever imagined.  And I was alone here in Tennessee.  Alone with a new box of adult baby diapers.  Yeah, we’re back to where I began this thing.

I was happy…even without Ruthie.  Happy because I had a new hobby to indulge myself in.  Nobody knew about it but me, and that’s the way I wanted it.  I tried each of the diapers in that box, carefully making notes about each kind so I could find the ones I liked the best.  When the box reached about the halfway point, I ordered more adult baby diapers, one full package of the best brand of night diapers, two packages of the daytime diapers I liked the best, and one package of different ones that the store recommended I should try.  So, four full packages this time.  I also ordered three pairs of plastic pants that they recommended in case my diapers leaked.  I had already been through that problem and had to clean it up from one of my chairs.  Oh, and the store also had some little girl Mary Jane style shoes that I ordered in a nice shiny black, just to indulge the other fantasy of mine.

While I waited for my next order to arrive, I was brave enough to wear a diaper under my clothes while I was out grocery shopping.  Just for kicks, I stayed in the supermarket long enough until I was able to wet the thing slightly.  Then I finally checked out and got the hell out of there.  While I was in there though, I bought myself a baby bottle and a gallon of milk along with my other groceries.  On the way home I stopped quickly into the pharmacy and grabbed a package of white tights to go with those new shoes I had ordered.  Now I just needed them to arrive.

Two days later, they were on my doorstep.  Ten minutes after that, the tights were on my legs, and the shoes were on my feet.  I was so happy with them that they stayed on my feet for the rest of the day…and the next day…and…okay, I wore them whenever I could, which was pretty much permanently unless I left the house.

Um…I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I quickly discovered that drinking warm milk from a baby bottle in the evening before bed was a very relaxing thing.  I mean, it was just nice.  Since it was so nice the first time, I made sure to do it every night.  During the day, drinking anything from the baby bottle was just frustrating.  You couldn’t get any liquid out fast enough.  But lying there on my bed, ready to go to sleep, I was just able to relax and enjoy the experience.  I think having to be patient to get everything out of the bottle forced me to relax.  Overall, so far, believe it or not, my nightly warm bottles were one of the highlights of my little experience.

No.  I didn’t wear the diapers all the time.  I wanted to.  I tried to.  But after a few hours each time, or at the very most, a few days, I would give up.  I often put one on in the morning, then by afternoon I’d had enough of it and off it would come.  The little girl shoes though, those I enjoyed.

I ordered a dress, and a skirt.  I even ordered a pair of high heels.  All of my things, well, most of them, I bought online.  No use having people wondering about what I was doing.

And I was happy.  Happy with all of it.  Happy with my entire life.

Until the phone rang.

“Hi Gramps!”

“Kimmie!  How are you?” I replied, recognizing the voice of one of my granddaughters, Kimberly.

“Great.  Gramps, I’m here in Johnson City.  Mind if I stop by?”

“You’re here?  In Tennessee?  In Johnson City?  I didn’t even know you were coming.”

“I had a job interview here,” she said.  “I’ll be there in ten minutes to tell you about it.”

“Uh…great!” I replied nervously.  “See you then.”

I ended the call and made a mad dash for my room to remove every last vestige of anything weird from my body, which included a diaper, plastic pants, white tights, and those shoes I adored.  Then I hid everything in the closet where nobody could ever see it.  The doorbell rang before I was finished hiding it all, but it was close enough.

I welcomed Kimmie in and we headed for the kitchen where we both put pods in the coffee machine before sitting down at the kitchen table.  “A job interview,” I said.  “Here?  You didn’t even tell me you were coming?”

“I didn’t get here until just before my interview,” she told me.  “It was kind of last minute.  Sorry,” she said.

“It’s fine!” I told her.  “I’m happy that you called.”  Sort of.  “So how did your interview go?  Where was it?”

“Johnson City High,” she told me.  “And Gramps,” she said excitedly.  “I got the job!  And I’ll be the head coach for the girl’s softball team…along with teaching some other classes.”

“Fantastic!” I congratulated her.  “So you’re going to be around here all the time,” I realized.

“Uh…Gramps,” she said.  “Mom and a few others in the family kind of thought it might be a good idea if, instead of getting my own place, if I moved in here with you.  You’re all alone and at your age, they all think it would be better if someone was here with you.”

“Um…”  But she was my granddaughter, and I couldn’t let anyone know about the things I was recently into.  “Sure.  I guess,” I replied.  “Even though, trust me, I’m fine!  I’m doing fine all by myself.  But if you want to save some money then, you know I’ve got some unused bedrooms upstairs.  Heck!  You can have the entire upstairs to yourself…as long as you keep it clean, so I don’t have to go up there.”

She came out of her seat and hugged me tightly.  “Gramps!  You’re the best!”

Yeah, sure.  So much for my personal fun.  At least I was able to enjoy it for a little while.  It had been fun though.  Not to mention, interesting.  More so than I ever thought it would be.

“When do you start?” I asked.

“When school starts in August.  I’ll probably move down here pretty soon though so I can get settled in and find my way around the area.”

Soon!  Like I said, so much for my personal fun.  It was time to take all that fun stuff I had bought and throw it out…somewhere where she would never see it.

Funny thing.  When it came to throwing all that stuff out, I couldn’t.  I just couldn’t!  Besides, she wouldn’t be there all the time.  I could still play with it while she was teaching.  Not only that, but if I just “happened” to wear a diaper under my pants, she’d probably never even know it.  And if she did notice, I could always tell her that I was having…uh…problems.  Didn’t a lot of people my age have problems like that?  I was sure of it.  So…no problem, and no need to get rid of any of it.  I just made sure it was all well hidden in the back of my closet.  Besides, how many times had I started out with the intention of “playing” for a long time…months maybe…only to rip it all off that first afternoon.  Many, many times.  It was all fantasy after all.

So I kept it.  Every bit of it.  Not that there was really that much.

I can tell you that in the few weeks between then and the time she actually moved down, I played a lot!  And I mean a lot!  As if I was trying to get my fill of it all at one time, because I knew that very soon all my fun would be over.

And eventually, it was over.  Another car graced my garage along with my pickup truck, my upstairs was no longer completely unused, and I was no longer alone.

It wasn’t long though before I yearned to be alone again, much more than I imagined I would, just so I could play again.  How could I miss something like that so much?  I had to be sick!  Well, I suspected that.  Just look at the stuff I was into.

In the days before school started for Kimmie, I never once touched my things, although I certainly thought about it more than I imagined I would.  Still, I never once dared to pull any of it out of hiding, even though there were things I could probably get away with.  But once she was gone every day, off teaching school, things were different.  It was less than a week before I began pulling things out and wearing them and…playing.  Enjoying myself.  But I made sure to have everything put away long before she got home every day.

Things went on like that for a couple of weeks.  Kimmie would be gone all day, then come home and we’d make dinner together.  Eventually though, she started making friends and would go out in the evenings with them.  I was alone more often, but that kind of alone wasn’t the privacy alone that I needed to play in.  It was all so frustrating!  Still, I enjoyed those times when I could play while I knew she would be gone teaching school all day.  I told myself often that that much alone was more than enough for me.

And of course, the more I played, the more my stash of diapers began to go down.  Eventually, I needed to make the decision as to if I should order more or simply pack everything in.  Was it a mistake?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  The jury is still out.  But I did go ahead and place an order for more diapers, both nighttime and daytime, along with more plastic pants to make sure there would be no telltale stains either on the furniture or on my pants in case of a leak…and in case I decided to tempt fate and wear a diaper under my pants while Kimmie was around, which I’m sorry to say I was tempted to do many times, but never actually did.

I’ve known for many years that fate is a fickle thing.  You never know what it’s going to do.  Remember that order I just talked about?  It got delayed somewhere.  I waited, and waited for it.  But for some reason it never arrived.  I tracked it, and I could see it was in a warehouse somewhere not that far away.  They could have it to me in a day!  But it never seemed to arrive.  Kimmie was off teaching school, and I was home playing by myself.  And my package of replacement diapers and plastic pants was stuck somewhere in limbo.

Kimmie didn’t teach school on Saturdays, but she did often have softball practice or games.  I was home one Saturday, doing nothing more than watching TV when I heard, “Gramps!  I’m home!”

I turned and watched her walking in from the garage…with a large box in her arms.  A box I had no doubt in the world what was in it.  My package had arrived, and somehow, she had gotten it.

“I found this blocking the garage,” Kimmie explained as she put the box on the kitchen table.

“I’ll get it,” I told her quickly as I jumped up to grab the thing and hide it away.

But Kimmie wasn’t listening.  She started talking, telling me all about how the practice game went that day while she sliced the tape on the box open with nothing more than a long fingernail.

“Kimmie!  Don’t!”  I said as I hurried over to get the box.

She was still talking.  Still engrossed in whatever happened during that game as she pulled the packing material aside, and she suddenly stopped talking.  “Huh?”

“I’ll take that,” I said as I reached for the box.

But she was standing in front of it, blocking me from getting to it.  I saw her reach in and pull out the packages of pastel colored plastic pants.  She threw them on the table and then started pawing through the packages of diapers.  She turned toward me.  “Gramps?”

“Just leave it be Kimmie,” I told her.  “It’s mine.”

With that, I pushed my way through to the box, put the plastic pants back into it, picked it up, and carried it to my bedroom closet.  Damn!  Of all the luck!

I stayed in my room, sitting on my bed, wondering how I was going to handle that problem.  My plan?  Say nothing and just hope she didn’t say anything about it either.  But that plan didn’t pan out.  It was over the moment she walked into my bedroom.  From the start I had no doubt she would show up there.

“So what’s up Gramps?” she asked.

“Don’t ask Kimmie,” I said.  “Just…don’t ask.  Okay?”

Evidently though, it wasn’t okay.  She came in and sat on the bed next to me.  “Gramps,” she said softly.  “Whatever it is, it’s okay…okay?  Let’s talk.”

Why did women always want to talk about things?  I didn’t.  I said nothing.  I didn’t even look at her.

When I didn’t say anything, she said, “I’m guessing you like that stuff?”

I still said nothing.  Still didn’t look at her.

She waited, giving me a chance to answer before she finally said, “Gramps, it’s okay.  Now, do you like the adult baby stuff?  Are you into that?  Or is it something else?  The stuff in that box wasn’t the usual things you can buy in any drug store for incontinence problems.  From what I saw, it all had pretty cartoon characters on it, and it was made for people who are into the adult baby thing.”

I turned my head skeptically and looked at her.  “Adult baby thing?  How would you know about anything like that?”

“Gramps!  I majored in Physical Education.  Plus, I minored in psychology.  I’ve come across more stuff than you would ever believe.  And believe it or not, the adult baby stuff is a lot more common than most people would think.  So is that all it is?  Because like I said, it’s okay.  You’re allowed.”

“Allowed?” I replied.

“Gramps!  You’re…how old are you now?  Sixty something?  Around seventy?”

“Sixty-nine.  I haven’t reached seventy yet.  Except today I skipped over my seventies and went straight to eighty!  Or ninety!”

She giggled and gave me a brief hug.  “My point is, you’re an adult and…”

“Yeah.  An adult playing at being a baby!”

“So?  Maybe…maybe…”

“Maybe what?” I asked sarcastically.

“Maybe, at your age, it helps you feel…younger.  Does it?”

I considered that.  “Maybe,” I conceded.  I considered it some more.  “Maybe more than I thought.  I never considered it before.”

“At your age, I would think it’s nice to feel a bit younger.”

“Huh!  You have no idea!”

“I know the older people get, the more aches and pains they have to put up with.  The older they get, the lonelier they often feel…and unneeded.”

“Did I just mention that you have no idea?”

She hugged me again, then kissed my cheek.  “Gramps.  I love you.  If you want to play with stuff like that, it’s your business.  Go ahead.  Play all you want.  Feel younger.  Feel better.  Enjoy yourself.  You’re sixty-nine years old for heaven’s sake.  Enjoy yourself.  Heck, since Grams died, I’ve never seen you do anything else to get some enjoyment out of life.”

“You haven’t lived here that long.”

She seemed surprised.  “What else do you do for enjoyment?  Since I’ve been here all you do is sit and exist, day after day.”

“What else do I do?  Plenty!”

“Good.  Like what?”

I considered that, then admitted, “A lot of nothing.  Since Ruthie…Grams passed, I’ve had nobody around and nothing seems worth doing.  And don’t ask me why, but this just…I don’t know.”

“Caught your fancy?”

“Something like that.”

She giggled again.  “Like I said, it’s okay.  Don’t bother hiding it away.  Enjoy it all you want.”

She gave me another hug and another kiss on the cheek then got up and headed for the door.  Before going out she stopped and turned with a mischievous smile on her face.  “By the way,” she said, “I’d die to see one of those diapers on you!”  With a  laugh, she turned and was gone.

She’d die?  How about me?