33.)

On our way to the medical supply store, I was pretty quiet. I played with my fingers in my lap. I knew it didn't matter. I knew no one would know who I was, or care. It was residual anxiety, stuff that made me nervous as a teen. Back then, anyone even catching a glance of me with a pack of diapers in my arms was worse than death. It would have made me downright suicidal. These days... I wasn't that ashamed of who I was or what I liked. I just didn't want to share it with anyone. Anyone other than Blossom, it seemed...

"Are you sure that you don't wanna come in with me? Maybe a little bit of exposure therapy will help your anxiety levels?"

And it didn't take a psych major to tell that Amanda was anxious about this part of the trip, most evidently because she was barely talkative and not in her usual 'I'm imagining things' way. Blossom wasn't too old to remember the way that felt.

"No, I'm just gonna wait in the car..." I sank down a little bit in the passenger seat and tried to think about something else. If I didn't go in, no one could implicate me. I couldn't be ambushed by some surprise appearance of my mom getting medicine for a coworker, or someone at school on a road trip. I'd read too many baby stories to think, with confidence, I wouldn't run into someone I knew. I couldn't be sure there wasn't going to be an incident.

Or, what if it was a joke. Blossom would get me in there, get the diapers in my hands, and her friends would jump out. A trap she set? I knew she wouldn't do that; I was trying to trust her. But my mind was running away with my insecurities. They were eloping at the edge of a sheer cliff with rocky waters below. If I tried to stop them, they would probably jump. I continued to rub my fingers.

"Alright babes, but you try and keep a clear head, alright? I won't be gone long, and I'm trusting you to be a big girl in my car on your own, okay? It's a big step for a girl your age."

This was largely an experimental avenue for Blossom, to see if Amanda responded well to well-meaning teasing.

I blushed and sunk a little lower in the seat, but I nodded my head all the same. A big step for a girl my age... all the cold inside me felt a little warmer.

Blossom pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall and I could see the little sign for the medical store, sandwiched between a Five Below and Spirit of Halloween. I took a deep breath and tried to think about something else. Blossom was trusting me in the car alone. That was a nice thought...

The medical store wasn't exactly what Blossom had imagined when she'd ordered boutique adult diapers online, because it was… just a medical supply store. She didn't know why she thought it would be anything else honestly. Her transaction was pretty quick and painless: a few minutes in line, a few minutes for them to get her order, and then a few minutes later she was coming back to the car. With the diapers. Because this was no more complicated than buying groceries, it seemed.

Blossom was gone for both five minutes and five hours. I had been pulling on my fingers and they were red at the tips. I kept vacillated between the thoughts of everything that could go wrong and the likelihood that nothing would. My chest hurt. I wished I wasn't in a car. I wished I had something to keep my hands busy, but I couldn't focus on my phone screen.

When the driver's side door opened, I looked up with confusion. Like someone was stealing the car or something. Kidnapping me. Story idea? I'm not sure, I couldn't think clearly. But it was Blossom, peeking in with a smile. I don't know why I thought it was someone else.

"All done," she said.

She pushed a button to pop the trunk and went around to the back of the car. For the first time since she left, I think I took a real breath.

"It looks like you were a pretty good girl for me, babes." Blossom considered the pet name for a moment and resolved to come up with something more childish and personable. "And so," she closed the trunk and returned to the driver's door, sitting down with a big grin,"if you want we can check out the Halloween store?"

She could have regaled her about her trip inside. How it was uneventful. How it was almost routine. How the one guy had tried to hit on her by reading her shirt and offering to teach her math. But none of that really mattered right now.

"I dunno..." I wanted to just go home. But her beach house was an hour away. An hour of driving? An hour of not doing anything. I was already feeling carsick and the car hadn't even been turned on yet.

Blossom thought for a moment and then decided to approach things from the perspective of talking to a child.

"How about this: we go in, we look at some costumes, and you can decide when we leave? I'll try any costume on if you wanna see what they look like, and I'll buy you some candy at the checkout on the way out?"

Getting out of the car felt like I would fall through the pavement into Hell. But I liked the idea of looking at something other than the inside of my mind. And she said I could decide when we left, right? I bit my lip and nodded.

It took a while, but I got out of the car. Standing upright felt wrong, like a rubber band pulled taut. I should have been crumpled up in a ball or something. It was cold out, and I was struggling to find warmth. I wrapped my arms around myself.

It was interesting and curious to see the way the two of them handled being out in the cold: Amanda wrapped her arms around herself and her teeth chittered a little bit, whereas Blossom just stayed in constant and perpetual movement. It was easy to tell which one of them was more used to the outdoors. Blossom locked up the car, took Amanda's hand, and led her toward the garishly colored storefront with its papered up windows adorned with bats and big plastic fake spiderwebs.

I don't know if it was the intimacy of hand-holding or the childishness of it, but the blush on my cheeks warmed my body a little. She led me by the hand all the way to the front of the store, and by the time we were inside I was feeling a little better. All that baby stuff was behind us. This was no different than being in the Pottery Barn, except this store was more in my price range. And, you know, Halloween themed.

A scarecrow greeted us with a loud shriek that made me jump. My heart was still racing, so it didn't feel all that different, but I squeezed Blossom's hand. I let out a sigh and tried to catch my breath.

"Sorry," I finally managed. "I didn't mean to get quiet on you like that..."

The squeeze felt a lot like when Blossom would squeeze boys' hands during scary movies to make them feel better, like she was afraid; but with Amanda it seemed pretty genuine. Blossom felt good about being here for her, and she smiled nonchalantly.

"It's easy to get overwhelmed, babes, don't worry about it. I hope I handled your feelings well enough."

"Yeah..." I didn't know what to say, really. Usually when stuff like that happened, I just found somewhere to be alone for a while. That was hard to do in Blossom's car. But she made me feel better. It was kind of weird, to be honest.

We started looking at costumes together. Blossom's jokes about slutty costumes sure weren't unfounded. Nurses, maids, clowns. There was even a sexy grim reaper. I rolled my eyes.

"Some of these are just silly," I said. "Like a Crayola crayon? Who thinks dressing up like a crayon for Halloween is a good idea?"

"Ohh, but why be a Crayola crayon when you can be a slutty Crayola crayon?" Blossom asked with a cheeky air of mischief, holding up a slutty crayon costume over herself.

"How silly of me." I rolled my eyes and pushed past her into the next aisle. Then I had to double back. "Okay come here!"

I reached out and grabbed Blossom, pulling her by the arm into the adjacent aisle. The rack had a lot of different things on it, like cat girls and cowboys. But one in particular caught my eye. I pointed.

Adult Baby Costume.

"Comes with... a bib. A bonnet. A t-shirt, which you know must be the highest quality. A giant rattle that..." I shook the package a little bit. "Doesn't rattle. And an 'adult diaper', which, by the looks of it, is just puffy cloth underwear with a big safety pin through the front? And look, it's only 36 dollars! What a steal!"

"That's outrageous!" Blossom shook her head dramatically, and clucked her tongue as she crossed her arms. "You can't make a Candy lose her potty control in that; it wouldn't even keep her warm in a subzero room! You'd think they'd at least try to go for some degree of practicality. But I guess that's like saying that the Tinker Bell outfit should come with working wings. Although… I guess if you were in Academy K - and yes I got that Hook reference! - you could probably imagine the wings working, right?"

"I think this is appropriation," I thought out loud, tapping my finger to my cheek in thought. "Like, this is such a caricature, you know? It's kind of insulting, boiling us down to something like this. And I know that saying this is super privileged, and kink-stereotyping isn't the same as cultural stereotyping, but I just feel like maybe we should be able to realize the similarities here. Like, people see this on the shelves. Kids see this. And then they grow up, and when someone says 'I'm an ageplayer,' this is the image they conjure. And if that upsets someone, then it should probably upset them when they see a 'Mexican' costume that has a long mustache and a poncho. And it should upset them to see an 'insane asylum' costume with a straitjacket and dark eye makeup."

I crossed my arms in annoyance. I wasn't getting worked up exactly, but it was shit like this that made me afraid to walk into a medical supply store and buy diapers.

"My friend Jenn says that Halloween costumes are like tweets," Blossom said. "They have to say a lot without a lot to work with, so they wind up super exaggerated. How would we know that's a baby? Well obviously, a diaper and rattle and bonnet and stuff. Okay, how about a cowboy? Well it's gonna have the hat, it's gonna have a gun, a horse could help, maybe spurs? Like costumes boil everything down to the most prominent features, and that sucks for cultural appropriation stuff, but I think for like…" Blossom randomly picked an outfit of the rack - slutty space robot. "Robot. Well, grasping claws, light up glasses, antennae, you know? I don't think it's right, but I think it's a problem with societal expectations as much as it is with the costumes themselves."

"Well, maybe societal expectations should be: don't reduce people's differences to comic relief," I said sourly. "Nobody gets hurt when you dress like a robot. Not yet anyway."

Then again...

"I know I can't speak for other interests, and this probably doesn't apply to cultural costumes, but I would be okay with an adult baby costume if it represented us better. Like, this isn't cute." I motioned to the thing on the wall. "That's half the fun of being little, you know? Or, like, why doesn't the rattle work? It takes two cents to fill that thing with beans or rice or something. Partner with Bambino; they aren't doing much these days. They've got cute prints and fit the public perception. Maybe include a little card about what it feels like to be ABDL, why it's important. Like, it doesn't have to be a joke; make a costume into an experience. Promote understanding and education, not ridicule."

Okay, now I was taking it personally. With a deep sigh, I stepped away from the baby costume and walked into the next aisle. The worst part is... when I was a kid, I saw that costume and I loved it. I wanted it. I rode my bike up to the costume shop a dozen times to buy it, and I never did. Why? Because someone might laugh.

"You're such an insightful girl, Amanda. You're more than just a pretty face or an amazing writing talent - you're really clever and insightful and kind of inspiring. I'm here for it."

And among her other friends, Blossom might have just been the kind of girl to laugh it off or to make fun of shitty outfits, but never to actually examine the issue, or propose solutions. Which got her thinking.

"You should start an Etsy shop or something. Sell like Halloween costumes, but they're for adults who are Littles, so like instead of 'slutty princess' it could be 'diapered princess,' and you'd actually use high quality stuff."

"If I had any talent other than writing, maybe." I rolled my eyes, but it was a good idea. Maybe if someone could sew for me. Or, you know, if I had any room in my house to stock stuff like that.

Diapered princess, with a short dress and a pacifier sewn in on a ribbon. Diapered fairy, with light-up wings and sparkling dust that made magic happen. Diapered nurse, with one of those old enema syringes and lollipops to give out. Oh, and a stash of high-quality medical diapers. Ah, if only I could write things into the real world.

Blossom and I looked around for a while longer. I had to admit, Halloween shops did have some perks. For example: knee high socks for six dollars! Unfortunately, nothing that would fit over my chubby thighs. I found a cute purse, but I didn't really use purses. They had kitty ears and mouse ears and collars and a lot of kink props that weren't there to further a joke. I didn't care much for that stuff, but I knew people that did. I swear, Halloween stores are where fetishes are born.