One of my first encounters with someone over diaper age wearing diapers came during a surprise party for one of my friends in middle school.
I still remember it like it was yesterday.
My friend, Jason, was turning 14. His mother, who happened to be the president of the school board, invited me, my brother, and a bunch of other neighborhood kids over for a surprise party. His little brothers, Reese - who was 12 - and Eric, 9, would all be there too.
I had been over to the house, which was less than a mile from my own, on several occasions. Once, my friend's mother had made all of his friends leave for no reason, and I had gotten a bad impression of her as being a first-class bitch.
She was also known around town as being crazy; in fact, some of the teachers called her 'Janet from Another Planet.'
For this reason, I was surprised that we had all scored an invite for the party.
My mom dropped us off around the same time as some of the other kids from our neighborhood. Janet was waiting in the entrance to the garage, and we all huddled outside holding our gifts. Finally, after all the expected guests had arrived, she announced it was time to go inside.
"But, you all need to be absolutely silent," she warned us.
"Because if you're not, it'll spoil the surprise," one of our friends offered helpfully.
Joan turned and looked at all of us very seriously.
"That," she said, "and the boys are down for their nap."
I will never forget hearing those words. I remember immediately thinking if she'd had more kids than we'd heard about. Maybe she had a set of twins in the last few years or something. The boys are down for their nap?
"Uh... you make your kids take naps?" One boy said what we were all thinking.
"Of course," she replied nonchalantly. "Don't your parents make you take naps too?"
I wanted to say, well, you scheduled a surprise party for the middle of the day and we are all here stupid. Instead I just said
"Uhhh... not since we were little kids."
"Well," she said somewhat condescendingly, "my boys will always be my little kids. So my boys take naps."
"Were they tired?" someone asked.
"Not particularly."
"Were they misbehaving?"
"No, why do you ask?"
This bitch was crazy...
Someone then asked where Jason was. I think we all assumed he was probably out, and coming back, at which time we would surprise him with a rousing call of happy birthday.
"He's down for his nap," Janet replied. She then proceeded to look at the kid who asked the question like he was the crazy one.
We went inside and she told us she be waking up the boys in about 15 minutes. I remember thinking, we're all here... can't they cut their naptime short just a little bit for a surprise party? Damn.
I guess not.
We silently set our gifts on the table and each of us took up different hiding spots. I stood behind some drapes, huge flowing drapes that easily provided cover for me. Or so I thought.
I remember being embarrassed for my friend, who had never mentioned to any of us that he was required to take a nap every day during the summer. I hadn't been able to warn everyone, but I hoped that nobody would try to embarrass him about it on his birthday. I remember feeling bad for him, that his mother would invite us over and then announce that they had been put down for their naps. What a shitty way to start a surprise party.
But as he always does, Little Cwis came out. And I remember thinking, I wonder if there is a way I can trick my parents into having this lady babysit me. Being forced to take a nap on a daily basis? That sounded like a dream come true. Throw in a diaper and a pacifier, and I'm there...
After we had been there for about five or 10 minutes, each of us looking at each other and rolling our eyes at the strange predicament we were in, Reese came tip-toeing down the stairs. From where I was standing, I could easily see him from behind the drapes.
And Reese, 12, was wearing nothing but a diaper.
I remember being awestruck. I was 14, and up until this time had never seen anyone around my age - besides myself - wearing a diaper. Not a picture, not a photo, not even a cartoon illustration. Just me in the mirror.
Reese looked over in my direction and stopped suddenly.
"Mom... who's here?"
Nobody said anything for a minute. I knew he could not have seen me through the side of the drapes. At least, I didn't think he could. I heard his mother tell him to go back upstairs. He bounded back upstairs, and she walked over to where I was standing.
"I'm afraid you may have spoiled it," she whispered to me. "I can see your feet under the curtains."
I looked down. There were literally 6 inches of space between the drapes and the floor, and my shoes were probably sticking out of them.
"I hope he doesn't tell his brother," she told me.
I had to ask.
"Was Reese... wearing... a diaper?"
Janet didn't even blink.
"He sure was," she told me. "He's a bedwetter."
That was all she said, but I remembered doubting her story. Reese was athletic, confident, and pretty cocky, definitely the most extroverted among the three brothers. He would always be cracking jokes and making fun of people. I didn't picture him to be a closet bedwetter, and I remember thinking right there on the spot I bet she just makes him wear a diaper for humiliation purposes.
A few minutes later she went upstairs, and I wondered if all the boys would be coming down in diapers. Instead, she came back down and told us to get ready to yell surprise, and when I did see Jason, he was dressed. We shouted "SURPRISE!" and a minute or two later Eric came bounding down the stairs, clearly wanting to see what was going on. He also was dressed. We all sat around for at least 20 minutes before Janet seem to notice that her middle son had not come downstairs. She called up to him and shouted for him to come down to the party. I couldn't hear his reply, but whatever he said made her go upstairs. A few minutes later she came back down, practically pushing Reese along in front of her.
His face was beet red, and he looked around at all the faces in the room before his gaze fell on mine and stopped. He just stared at me, and I tried not to look back at him, thoroughly humiliated for him, and also embarrassed by how jealous I had been when I saw him. He finally came over and sat down in the chair next to me, just kind of looking at the floor.
I leaned in.
"Bro, no big deal. I wet the bed sometimes too."
That was a lie – I really only wet the bed on purpose – and I knew I was taking a chance admitting that to someone who likes to make fun of people as a social sport. I figured after what I'd seen, fuck it. Plus I couldn't think of much else to say.
Reese looked at me, and his face flashed with anger.
"I do NOT wet the bed dude."
That was all he said, and I couldn't even think of anything to say. The only thing that was going through my head was: then, WHY? And, WHY NOT ME?
After a few seconds, the anger dissipated. He looked at me with a pleading look and said:
"Chris... I am BEGGING you not to tell anyone."
I honestly thought he might cry, and I immediately promised never to tell anyone. I remember thinking how lucky he was that it wasn't my brother who had seen him, or one or two of the other kids, who would be picking on him already.
And I remember thinking, why would his mother allow him to come downstairs dressed only in a diaper knowing that some of her son's friends would be present?
In fact, why would she invited us over while her children were taking naps at all?
Was she just trying to humiliate her kids?
Over the years, as we went through high school, I would see Reese a lot. When I would lifeguard at open swim, he would come swimming. He would always be super respectful to me, and if he made fun of any of the other lifeguards, he would leave me out of it. Every night he left he would come over and give me a dap. Like we were old friends.
When I was a junior in high school Reese got arrested for starting a fire in a school bathroom. He had gone in through a window overnight, damaged thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and started the wastebasket on fire. Since his mother was the school board president, it was the talk of the town. I remember my parents wondering why someone's child would want to humiliate them like that. I had never told them what we had seen that day, and I wanted to defend him, and say maybe he's just getting back at her for years of humiliation...
When I was a senior Reese would have been a sophomore. I remember one night after open swim, Eric - the littlest brother - and Reese got into an argument outside the locker room before they left. I can't remember what Reese said, but Eric responded with this insult:
"That's why Mom found you jumping the dryer!"
Reese blushed considerably, enough so that every person in the room new it immediately to be true. I remember thinking, what kind of mother would share that information with someone else? If my mother ever caught me masturbating and went and told my brother, I'd be furious!
Reese tried to deny it, but Eric kept going.
"Dryers vibrate so they can dry clothes, stupid. Not so you can come on top of them. That's gross!"
He insults grew worse and I finally broke in.
"I bet there's not a guy here who hasn't jerked off on the dryer." Eric suddenly grew quiet, and looked at me. The other lifeguards standing next to me nodded their heads as if they agreed. One told Eric he probably had never tried it only because he was so little, and Eric looked embarrassed. Truthfully, I had never tried it either – probably only because I had never thought of it lol. Still, I wasn't going to let a kid get humiliated for something that never should have been shared with anyone else in the first place.
I wanted to punch his mom in the face at that moment. What a fucking bitch!
Ryan really hadn't said anything to defend himself, but at that moment Eric decided to just start throwing general insults about other stuff.
The insults finally stopped when Reese punched Eric. Someone suggested I ban them from open swim, but I declined, and the parent in question accused me of giving them preferential treatment because of who their mom was.
She was right, but she didn't know the half of it.
In middle school and high school, as I Pamped up in my room, I'd look out my window and wonder if Reese was also diapered. It felt like I had a little diaper comrade, even though I had no evidence to suggest that he wore them by choice like I did.
In college, as I discovered diaper sites, I would often search for my hometown wondering if Reese would wind up there. I never saw him.
When I was graduating from college someone from my high school came to the ceremony and was refreshing me on local hometown news. He mentioned that Reese had been arrested for completely trashing a school and slashing the tires on some school buses.
"That kid's mom is the school board president," one of my friends said. "He must be trying to make her look bad."
Years had passed, but I immediately flashed back to the day she had tried to make him look as bad as possible.
"You wonder why is that kid is still breaking into schools that we went to years ago," another person said. "I mean, we've all moved past that, Reese. It's time to grow up..."
Whenever I come back to New York on my summer vacations I always look up people I knew years ago. I try to see people that I purposely lost touch with after high school. (As you get older, you start to remember how valuable those friendships in high school really were at the time, and it makes you want to reach out.)
I had included Reese in my extensive list of Google searches, but had never seen anything about him. It was like he had dropped off the face of the earth.
Today is my first day back in New York. I stopped by the local cemetery to visit the gravesite of a friend who killed himself when we were juniors in high school, as I do every time I return to New York. Between my car and his grave lay a bunch of new graves, dug since I was last year in August 2011.
One of them belongs to Reese.
Reese changed his last name at some point since we left high school, which is why I never seen him listed anywhere. But I knew as soon as I saw the first name, the new last name, and the date of birth it was my friends little brother. A Google search for the obituary confirmed it.
Reese was probably not an ABDL. In fact, there is a good chance that he probably grew up to hate and resent the time he had to spend in diapers, and probably would think all of us were fucking insane.
Still, he and I made a weird, accidental connection because of a diaper, and the impact of that day will never escape me.
The last time I ever saw Reese was in the weeks following my friend's suicide. I was the swim team captain, and at some point my coach impressed upon me the need for me to step up and be even more of a leader then I usually was. I visited my friend's mother with different friends every day for weeks, was a pallbearer at his funeral, and even helped create a fund raiser for a scholarship for him.
I was exceedingly strong, always in the middle of everything, but I hadn't really had time to grieve. One afternoon I was playing old answering machine messages and heard one I hadn't heard before from my friend. I began crying, my first time crying since he'd died. I didn't want my parents or brother to see me crying, so I left the house in my car, driving down the road to a secluded spot where I stopped the car and pulled over.
I just sat in the car for five or 10 minutes crying. I realized how upset I had really been, and how between notifying every swimmer I knew, and all of the things that had happened afterward, I'd never had any time for myself.
After about ten minutes Reese came riding by on his bike. I was surprised to see anyone, because the road was typically deserted. He looked into the car and saw it was me as he passed, but then rode on. He must have thought twice, and a few minutes later he came riding up behind me, tapping on my window.
I rolled the window down, and kind of looked at him, but I had been crying considerably and I was pretty embarrassed.
"Need to talk?" he asked.
"Nah," I replied.
"Don't believe you. We all need to talk to someone sometime," he told me.
"Really, Reese... thanks, but no."
He just stood there looking at me for a minute. Then he finally put his foot on his pedal to ride off.
"Yo Reese," I said, and he stopped. "Please don't tell anyone you saw me sitting here crying, okay?"
Reese leaned into the car and whispered the words "I promise." The similarity to my promise to him a few years before struck me, and I think it occurred to him too, because he then said "you've had my back since we were little kids."
We were both silent for a minute or two, him standing by my car and me sitting in the car trying to dry my tears.
"I can't even begin to tell you the number of times I've ridden down to this exact same spot to cry about stuff," he told me. I knew he was probably making it up, just like I had made up wetting the bed and masturbating on the dryer to try to make him feel better before.
Then he told me "you know where I live, so when you're readddddy to talk..." and rode off.
Hadn't seen Reese for years, but had thought about him sometimes. The obituary didn't say how he died. But I am literally standing over his grave speaking this blog entry into my phone, and I hope that it had nothing to do with anything that happened to him growing up.
Before I wrote this blog entry, I called the one friend I still talk to regularly from high school and asked if he knew how Reese had died.
He didn't, but he did find the time to crack a joke: maybe Reese died trying to break into the elementary school.
If he had been there to see what I had seen the day of the birthday party, he would never have said that.
RIP Reese.
