In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country, Chapter 5

Neither Lily or I knew what to say as we were in the guest room together. Lily unpacked some clothes from her suitcase into a dresser, while I set up my laptop so I could check my email. Occasionally we’d trade a glance and there was an unspoken sense of astonishment and amusement.

Finally, Lily cracked. “Can you fucking believe this?” she asked.

“I don’t even know what to say,” I said with a shrug.

“Kat’s, like...her baby?”

“I know. I saw the video.”

“The video? You saw one of the videos?”

“Kat showed me, yeah,” I said.

“Oh wow. What was that like? Was it weird? Was it gross?”

“I mean...she was just, like, doing some stuff on the farm. And she pissed herself. And Madison checked the diaper.”

“Wow. This is so crazy, right?”

I nodded, throwing a shrug in for good measure. Lily was completely right, though I felt like I was still processing it.

“I don’t know how I feel about it,” Lily said. “I can’t wrap my head around it.”

“It’s kind of cute,” I said. “Or...endearing? I don’t know. I don’t hate it.”

Lily offered some sort of affirmative grunt that didn’t really tell me much about what she was thinking.

“Are you okay with this?” I asked. “Do you have regrets about coming here?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m glad we came. All things about their life aside, it really is delightful to see Madison again. And Kat seems nice. I guess I don’t know how I feel about the other stuff. But...that’s none of my business. They’re not shaking their diapers in our faces.” She paused, as if a new thought came to her mind. “Oh my God, Henry - did she shake her diapered ass in your face?”

“N-no...she didn’t do that.” I tried to stifle my laughter, but I didn’t succeed.

“But she made you watch her video?”

“Only because she was too bashful to just come out and say what they were doing around here. Trust me, it was pretty mild. Or, at least as mild as videos like that can be, I guess.”

With an incredibly maternal sounding sing-song voice, Madison had announced that dinner was on the table. Lily and I filed down out of the guest room and down the stairs to meet Kat as we took our seats around the large dining room table.

“We don’t use the dining room very much,” Madison said.

“I think we’ve used it once,” Kat added.

“Sounds about right. With just the two of us, and rarely any guests, we just eat in the kitchen. But this feels like a special occasion.”

Madison placed a cast iron pot onto a wooden potholder on the antique table, its contents still bubbling and steaming.

“It smells fantastic,” I said. “What’s on the menu?”

“Chicken cacciatore,” Madison said. “It’s actually a recipe that Lily and I used back when we were in high school. Remember our attempt at making food for our parents that one night?”

Lily laughed. “And you had somehow dropped your ring into the sauce but were too afraid to fish it out? Or tell anyone that you dropped the ring into it?”

“I thought that was your ring,” Madison retorted. They both laughed harder, though that didn’t really clarify whose ring it was. Kat and I shared a small shrug while the girls shared their moment.

“Nobody ate the ring I hope,” Kat interjected.

“I found it while dishing out a plate for my mother,” Lily said. “So I pretended to sneeze on it so that I could take the plate into the kitchen. Then I gave my mom a new plate, and nobody was the wiser.”

“I think it was my ring,” Madison mused. “It was always kind of stained orange after that.”

The two laughed again.

The little story had set the tone for dinner. Bread and wine were passed around the table, and we gorged ourselves on salad and chicken. Everytime my plate was empty, more food suddenly found its way onto it. Everytime my wine glass was empty, someone would pour more into it. Madison and Lily kept the conversation light and engaging with stories of their high school days. Lily’s bright pink shoes. Madison’s driving instructor with the lazy eye. Their year long plan to avoid talking to Adam Wilmont after he was caught trying to steal Lily’s shorts from her gym locker. Every story brought about a new bout of laughing, and the stories only seemed to get funnier as we progressed through the bottles of wine.

Finally, full of food and a little drunk, we left behind the dining room to go sit out on the porch again - though Madison was sure to bring another bottle of wine out with us.

For a little while, it was nice to just feel the cool evening wind blow through the porch while listening to the crickets and birds as the sun set. Regardless of how long it had been since Madison and Lily had been apart, and regardless of the fact that I barely knew Madison or Kat - or them knowing me - there was a real comfortable feeling between all of us.

“You know,” Madison said, “Kat...I haven’t checked in on you in a while. Do I want to know how bad things are in there?” Lily and I both laughed a little - Madison was trying to be slightly discrete, but there was no doubt as to what she was referring to.

“It’s...uhm…” Kat looked to both Lily and I before blushing. “It’s okay.”

“I can look for myself in a little bit,” Madison said with a shrug, clearly not believing her.

“Can I ask something?” Lily said.

“Please,” Madison responded.

“Kat, you wear diapers...all the time?”

“I do, yes.”

“And how long have you worn them like this?”

“Like...all the time?”

“Right. Like, when Maddy was telling me about your life here on the farm, earlier, she mentioned that you wear them all the time now?”

“Yeah,” Kat said. She was being a little modest, but nothing she couldn’t power through following the multiple glasses of wine she had. “Uh...I guess its been a year or two. I mean, I’ve worn them pretty frequently for years. Since before Maddy and I had met, you know? We kind of knew that our eventual goal was to achieve this ‘“24/7” lifestyle, but we had to work our way up to it.”

“So...is that hard?” Lily asked. “Do you ever just miss sitting on a toilet? Are you, like...I don’t know...un-potty trained now?”

Madison laughed while I could see Kat blush a little. Even I laughed a little. I wasn’t sure what they thought was so funny, but there was something kind of intoxicating about their good humor towards something so strange.

“I never really thought of it as something being ‘hard’ or not,” Kat said with a shrug. “It was always something I just wanted to do. I suppose there are times where it's less convenient, or potentially more awkward than if I wasn’t wearing diapers…”

“Like when you have friends over and you have to explain your life to them,” Madison interrupted with a tipsy wink.

“...but the other 98% of my life is exactly how I want it to be.”

“Oh, wait,” Madison said, leaning towards Kat and giving her a playful push on the arm. “You didn’t answer the other part of her question. Are you un-potty trained now? Hmm?”

Madison’s playful repeating of Lily’s question had caused Kat to sit back in her seat, her face turning a deeper shade of rose.

“Well...I mean, I wouldn’t say that I’m not ‘potty trained’ anymore,” she said, in a slightly defensive tone. “If I went back to panties tomorrow and never wore a diaper again, I’d probably be able to make it to a toilet just fine when I needed to.” She stopped, glanced to Madison who was grinning, and then added: “Most of the time.”

“Most of the time?” Madison asked playfully. “Elaborate.”

“I...well…”

“No, it’s okay,” Lily said, jumping to Kat’s defense. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot or humiliate you like that.”

“You’re not,” Kat said bashfully. “I really don’t mind talking about anything. I just don’t have much experience actually doing it.”

“Go on,”Madison urged. “What were you going to say before?”

“I don’t know if I’d call it being ‘un-potty trained’ as much as I would say that I’ve developed some different habits from wearing diapers all the time. If I’m not using the bathroom, there’s really no reason to hold it. So, most of the time, I just don’t. If I feel that I have to go, I just let go. And that happens so much that sometimes it’s just second-nature. Like, I won’t even be thinking about it.”

“It’s the cutest thing,” Madison gushed.

Lily and I exchanged a look. I didn’t think that either one of us disliked what we were hearing, but we needed confirmation from the other that we were hearing the same thing.

Madison composed herself, as if suddenly being reminded that perhaps this was all brand new information to Lily and I.

“I’m sorry...is this weird? Are we being weird?”

“No…” Lily said, shaking her head slowly. I wasn’t sure that I completely bought that. “Honestly, no. I mean...yes. It is weird, I guess. But it’s kind of beautiful too. You have this land - this sanctuary - where you can live out whatever life you want to, and you are. I think it’s good.”

I smiled and nodded to back up what she had just said. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

“Thank you,” Madison said, taking Lily’s hands in her own. They both stood up, hugging each other. Kat joined in, wrapping her arms around both of them. I contemplated joining, but was worried that maybe I didn’t fit in.

“Get in here,” Kat said.

I stood up and joined the group hug. Clearly, we were all somewhere on the spectrum between tipsy and drunk. Yet, for what it was, it was a genuinely tender moment.

“Alright,” Madison finally said. “Now let’s get some dessert.”