The Carpenter Found My Diapers

I get up before the birds five days a week, which is the kind of thing you only say out loud to watch people wince. The bakery on Mill Street opens its doors at six, and by then the first loaves have to be cooling on the racks, the cinnamon rolls have to be iced, and somebody has to have swept the flour off the front step, because the wind pushes it out under the door all night like the place is trying to escape. That somebody is usually me. I'm thirty-one, I have flour in places I've stopped trying to explain, and I like my job a lot more than I let on.

What I like best is the first hour after we open, when the regulars come in. You learn people by what they order. The woman in the green coat buys one plain roll and eats it standing at the window, like she's somewhere she isn't supposed to be. Two retired mailmen split a loaf and argue about who paid last time. And Cal, who builds furniture in an old garage two blocks down, comes in at ten past six every morning and buys two cinnamon rolls, one for now and one, he says, for later, though I have never once believed there is a later.

He's a big man with broad shoulders and a short gray beard, and his hands are always a little nicked up, with sawdust caught in the hair on his forearms. He wears the same kind of flannel shirt every day in a different color, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and he has the slowest, easiest voice I've ever heard come out of someone that size. He told me once, when I asked, that he was forty-eight and too old to learn how to hurry. He says thank you like he means it. He drops something in the tip jar every single day, even when it's only coins.

His business card is pinned to the corkboard by the register, between a lost cat and a guitar teacher. CAL BUILDS THINGS, it says, with a phone number and nothing else. I'd looked at that card a hundred times without needing it.

Then my bed broke.

It wasn't a dramatic break. I sat down on the edge one night to pull my socks off, and the whole left side of the frame let go with a crack like a branch, and I slid gently onto the floor with one sock still on. The frame had come with the apartment, and I think it had come with the apartment before that one, too. I slept on the mattress on the floor for a week and woke up every morning feeling like somebody had folded me in half and forgotten me in a drawer.

So I took the card off the corkboard.

"A bed," Cal said the next morning across the counter, and he looked pleased about it, the way some men look pleased when you ask them to carry something heavy. "What kind?"

"One that doesn't throw me on the floor."

He laughed, low in his chest. "That's my favorite kind. I'll need to come measure the room. Is Saturday all right?"

Saturday was all right. Saturday was also a problem, because there was a box that normally lived under my bed, and the bed was gone, so the box was now in the closet, and the closet in that apartment doesn't have a door. It has a curtain on a rod that I hung myself and hung crooked.

I should explain the box. I'm going to explain it the way I'd tell a friend after two glasses of wine, which is to say badly and all at once.

When I was twenty-seven I moved into my first place without roommates, and the quiet went to my head a little. Since my early twenties I'd had this private, stupid, warm thought about what it would feel like to wear a diaper. Not for any reason. Just to know. I'd never done anything about it, because when you share a bathroom with two other women you don't have things like that delivered to the house. Living alone, I ran out of excuses. I ordered one pack, plain white, the kind they sell for grown-ups, and when it came I hid it behind my winter coats like a bottle of something I'd sworn off.

The first night I put one on, I turned off every light in the apartment and lay on my back and didn't move for a long time. It was thick and soft and it crinkled every time I breathed, and I felt ridiculous, and I felt hot all over, and somewhere in there those two feelings stopped being different from each other. I didn't even touch myself that night. I didn't need to. I just lay there, wet in the other way, listening to my own heart.

That was four years ago. By the time my bed broke, the box was a big box, and the diapers in it weren't plain white anymore. Some were pale pink with a pattern of tiny hearts. Some were sky blue. All of them were thick enough to make me waddle, and I'd stopped pretending to myself that this was a phase.

Cal came on Saturday with a tape measure, a carpenter's pencil behind his ear, and two cinnamon rolls in a paper bag, which he handed to me at the door like a host gift. He measured my bedroom wall to wall twice and wrote the numbers on the back of his hand. He asked how I slept, and I said on my back, mostly, with too many pillows, and he nodded like that was useful information. He asked whether I wanted anything under the bed, drawers or storage, and I said no, nothing, too fast. He looked at me for one second longer than he needed to and said, "All right."

I didn't breathe properly until his truck pulled away.

The bed came two weeks later. It was solid oak, with a headboard he'd sanded so smooth it felt like skin, and I almost cried when I saw it in the back of his truck. He carried the frame up the stairs in pieces, and on the third trip, coming through my bedroom door with the headboard, he caught the end of my crooked curtain rod. The rod came down. The curtain came down with it. And the box, which I had stacked on top of two shoe boxes so it would be out of the way, tipped over the edge of the shelf and emptied itself across my bedroom floor.

Pink hearts. Sky blue. A soft little avalanche of them, right at his boots.

I don't know what I expected him to do. Laugh, maybe. Pretend he hadn't seen. Leave the bed in pieces and drive away and buy his rolls somewhere else for the rest of his life. What he did was set the headboard carefully against the wall, crouch down, and start picking them up. He didn't hurry. He stacked them on his knee, squared the edges, and put them back in the box neatly, the way he'd stack lumber, and when he was done he put the box back on the shelf and hung the curtain rod back up, level this time.

"These go anywhere in particular?" he asked, without turning around.

I couldn't answer. My whole face was on fire.

He turned and looked at me then, and his face wasn't laughing at all. It was kind. "Can I say one thing," he said, "and then you can throw me out if you want?"

I nodded.

"If I'd known, I would have built you a drawer for those. A wide flat one, right under where you sleep. Nobody would ever see it but you." He scratched his beard. "Nobody's business but yours what goes in a person's bed."

He finished putting the bed together while I stood in the kitchen with my hands flat on the counter. When he left, he said, "Sleep well, Nora," the way he always said thank you, like he meant it. That night I lay on my new bed in a pink diaper with the lights off and thought about his big careful hands squaring the stack, and I came so hard I bit the pillow.

The next Tuesday he bought his two rolls, put a folded paper napkin in the tip jar, and left. On the napkin, in carpenter's pencil, it said: The drawer is done. Want me to fit it?

I wrote Thursday, 7pm on the back of a receipt and slid it across the counter the next morning with his change. He read it, folded it into his shirt pocket, and said, "Thank you, sweetheart," and he had never called me that before.

On Thursday I told myself I'd wear jeans. I told myself that while I took a pink diaper out of the box and taped it on, and while I pulled a loose cotton sundress over it, and while I stood in front of the mirror turning sideways to see if you could tell. You could tell, a little, if you knew. Under the thin cotton, when I walked, it whispered.

He brought the drawer up the stairs on his shoulder. It was beautiful, oak to match the bed, wide and shallow, with a little round handle, and it slid into the space under the frame like it had been waiting there. He knelt by the bed to fit the runners. I stood beside him holding the screws in my palm, and when I shifted my weight, the diaper crinkled.

His hands stopped.

He didn't look up right away. He finished turning the screw he was on, slowly, and then he set the screwdriver down on the floor and sat back on his heels and looked up at me.

"Nora," he said. His voice was even softer than usual. "Are you wearing one right now?"

I nodded.

"Are you wet?"

I shook my head. Then, because he was still looking at me, I said, "A little."

He breathed out through his nose, a long breath, and something in his face went very still and very warm at the same time. "Here's how this goes," he said. "I'm going to ask you something, and whatever you answer is fine. If the answer's no, I'll finish this drawer and buy my rolls tomorrow like always, and we will never talk about it again. All right?"

"All right."

"Do you want somebody to take care of you? Not just in the dark by yourself. Somebody who changes you and tells you you're good and doesn't think one thing less of you for it."

My throat closed up. I'd never heard anybody say it out loud, not even me. "Yes," I whispered.

"Say it so I know you mean it."

"Yes. I want that. Please."

He stood up, which took a while, because he is a big man and he'd been kneeling on a wooden floor, and he took the screws out of my hand and put them on the nightstand. Then he cupped my face in both of his rough hands and kissed my forehead.

"You can call me Cal," he said. "Or if there's something else you'd rather call me, I'll answer to that too."

I knew exactly what I wanted to call him. I'd known since the napkin. It still took me three tries to get it out. "Daddy."

His thumbs moved on my cheeks. "There's my good girl," he said, and my knees went soft.

He sat on the edge of the new bed, and it didn't make a sound under him, and he patted his thigh. I lay down across the bed with my hips over his lap, and he lifted the hem of my sundress and folded it up onto my back, and there I was in pink hearts in front of a man for the first time in my life. He laid his big warm palm flat on the seat of the diaper and just left it there.

"Look at you," he said. "Prettiest thing I've seen all week, and I spent Tuesday on a cherry dining table." He pressed a little. "You said you were a little wet. Go on and finish. Daddy's got you."

I didn't think I could. I'd only ever done it alone, in the dark, in my own time. But his hand was right there, warm and heavy, and he started rubbing slow circles over the padding, and he said, "Go on, sweetheart, let go for me," so gently, and I did. It came in a hot rush that I didn't completely decide on and didn't completely fight, spreading under me, the diaper going heavy and warm against my pussy. I made a sound into the blanket I'd be embarrassed about later. The shame and the pleasure hit me at the same time, and they didn't cancel each other out. They piled on top of each other.

"Good girl," he murmured, and he kept rubbing, pressing the wet padding right up against my clit, and I started grinding back against his hand without meaning to. "That's it. Look at you. You needed that, didn't you?"

"Yes, Daddy."

"Let's get you changed."

He rolled me onto my back on the bed, and that's when he opened the new drawer for the first time. It was empty, of course, so he got up and brought the whole box from the closet and set it on the floor, and then he found my wipes on the shelf without asking. He tugged the tapes open one at a time. The sound of it, those little rips, made my hips jump. He peeled the wet front down and looked at me, and I wanted to close my legs and I didn't.

"Sweetheart," he said, and his voice went rough for the first time. "You're not just wet from the diaper, are you?"

I shook my head. My pussy was slick and swollen and he could see every bit of it.

He wiped me clean slowly, the cool cloth between my thighs and over my lips and up across my clit, and he took his time about that last part, and I lifted my hips off the bed after his hand like it was on a string. He slid the wet diaper out from under me and slid a fresh one in its place, open and flat beneath my ass, and then he didn't tape it closed.

"Anything in that nightstand I should know about?" he asked.

I covered my face with both hands and said, "Top drawer."

He laughed softly and opened it. Inside was my wand, the big white one that plugs into the wall, and a small black butt plug with a flared base that I'd bought on a brave night and used twice. He held up the wand, found the outlet behind the bed, and plugged it in, and the low hum filled the room.

"Hands down, Nora. Daddy wants to see your face."

He held the round head of it just above my clit and didn't touch me. I could feel it humming through the air. Then he touched it down, very lightly, and I cried out. He kept it there, slow circles, while his other hand pushed my thigh wide open on the crinkling diaper, and the pleasure came up fast and mean, faster than it ever came when I did it myself. I was right at the edge in a minute, gasping, and he lifted it away.

"Daddy, please."

"Not yet." He kissed the inside of my knee. "You've been doing this alone for years. Let me make it last."

He brought me up to the edge three times and took it away three times, until I was crying a little and begging with every word I had, and the open diaper under me was damp again with how wet I'd gotten. The fourth time, he pressed the wand flat against my clit and leaned over me and said into my ear, "Come for Daddy, good girl," and I came so hard my heels drummed on the new bed. He held it there through every wave until I pushed his hand away because I couldn't take any more.

Then he set the wand on the nightstand, still humming, switched it off, knelt on the floor between my legs, pulled my hips to the edge of the bed, and put his mouth on me.

His beard scratched my thighs. His tongue was slow and flat and patient, the way he did everything, and he licked me from my hole up to my clit like he had all night, and then he slid two thick fingers inside me and curled them. I grabbed his hair. He hummed against my clit. I came again on his tongue, shaking, and he didn't stop until I was pulling at him and saying his name and then saying Daddy, over and over, because that was the only word left in my head.

When he stood up, his beard was wet and his eyes were dark. He unbuckled his belt. He pushed his jeans and boxers down, and his cock was thick and heavy and already hard, flushed dark at the head, and he wrapped his big hand around it and looked at me.

"Tell me what you want, sweetheart."

"I want you to fuck me, Daddy." I'd never said it like that to anyone. "And I want the plug in too. Please."

He picked up the little black plug and the bottle of lube from my drawer. He took his time again. He rubbed lube over my ass in slow circles until I relaxed, and then he pressed the tip of the plug against me and kissed my stomach while he eased it in, a little at a time, until it slipped past the widest part and settled with a jolt that went all the way up my spine. I felt so full already I could barely breathe.

He climbed onto the bed over me and the bed took his weight without a creak. He lined his cock up against my pussy and pushed in slowly, so slowly, stretching me around him, with the plug making everything tighter, and when he was all the way in he stopped and stayed there, his forehead against mine.

"Listen to that," he said.

"To what?"

"Nothing. Not one squeak." He smiled down at me. "Told you I'd build you one that wouldn't throw you on the floor."

I laughed, and the laugh clenched me around his cock, and he groaned, and then he started to move. Long, deep, steady strokes, his weight braced on his forearms so I was under him like a roof, the open diaper crinkling under my ass with every thrust. Every time he pushed in, the plug shifted, and it was too much and exactly enough. He reached down and rubbed my clit with his thumb, slow circles, the same rhythm as his hips.

"You're mine to look after now," he said, low. "Every Thursday. And any other night you need it."

"Yes, Daddy."

"You're going to come on Daddy's cock."

"Yes, Daddy."

And I did, with my legs wrapped around his back and my nails in his flannel shirt, which he had never taken off. He fucked me through it and then his rhythm broke and he pushed deep and held there, and I felt him come inside me, hot, his whole big body shuddering over mine, my name coming out of him on a long breath.

Afterward he was so gentle. He eased the plug out and wiped me clean, front and back, with slow cool strokes. He folded the used diaper away. He took a fresh one out of the box, a sky blue one, and he lifted my hips and slid it under me and brought the front up and taped it snug, checking the leg cuffs with one finger the way I'd only ever seen in pictures. Then he patted the front of it, twice, like he was approving a joint that had come out square.

He lay down beside me on the new bed, still in his flannel, and pulled me against his chest, and the diaper crinkled between us, and he didn't seem to mind at all.

"Thursday," he said into my hair. "I'll bring the rolls."

"There's never really a later, is there," I mumbled. "With the second roll."

He was quiet for a moment, and then I felt him laugh. "There will be now," he said. He reached down and slid the new drawer open with one hand, and it rolled out silent and smooth, empty and waiting. "Plenty of room in there," he said. "Let's see how fast we can fill it."