Long Time Listener... (Intro, pt.1)

[ZedWalker]

 

           “He who cannot howl/
             Will not find his pack…”
                   -Charles Simic, Ax

Woof.

     After surreptitiously poking my nose in here (do I scent the unmistakable if faint miasma of nursery lingering in the air or is it just me—literally?) from time to time over the precedent dozen or so years, I've finally garnered the stones to emerge from the safe shadows of anonymity, declare my presence without further ado and hereby add my name to this cast of quirky characters.  There are some who call me Tim, but feel free to call me Schroeder, and it is my sincere pleasure to make your acquaintance one and all at long last.

     The human saga teems with tales by turns fascinating and fatuous, humbling and humorous, and plenty that are just plumb pathetic; mine is no exception, but before I get too far ahead of myself typing out a romanà clef, one detail stands out among the rest and merits mention right off the bat: I am incontinent.  Ex ungue leonum, would that putting to bed this entire sordid affair be a simple matter of singling out the ostensibly obvious culprit—POOF!—away melts any fog of befuddlement and with it so endeth this narrative as quickly as it began, nothing more to exchange between us except perhaps a jaded yawn from you after wasting time reading something so trivially trite, and me, an unctuous apology in retort for writing it, then it's, “Thank you for indulging me, folks.  Goodnight and drive home safe.”  Being keen to my audience, however—I daresay this forum finds me nested amongst birds of a feather—I  bet you already suspect enuresis per se is not the big bombshell here.  Forsooth, but if you think living with this demeaning disease day in and day out is discomfiting, mayhap it also crosses your mind merely copping to it in the first place, especially sans duress, might be equally so?  Because it is, on both accounts, absolutely and always, which is why I don’t make a habit of it (the “copping to”, that is; the “living with”, d'altra parte, is technically out of my control.  <crickets chirping>  Get it?  Incontinence = No control.  Oh, c'mon, I can hear your eyes rolling on my side of the screen!  This is my “A” material, people) since there’s no upside to putting myself out on Front Street, flaunting willy-nilly my diapered derrière to the world writ large that beforehand hadn't the slightest inkling but thereafter have no compunction about enlightening me, usually in terms less than polite and gentle, why it pays to keep such a private personal matter close to the vest.  That said, shit happens and I'm no stranger to diaper-related disasters; discretion instantly gives way to damage control and, whether with sheepish chagrin or a dash of high dudgeon, my one and only goal becomes squeaking out of another sticky situation before getting steamrolled by it.

     Like it or not—for the record, I don’t, although I too harbor the sentiment—woven deep into the jaundiced Weltanschauung is a stigma about diapers, sophistic as it is unchallenged, that maligns unsparingly as dim-witted and feeble anyone older than a toddler who still or again wears them, no matter the reason.  With roots stretching clear back to potty-training, drilled incessantly into every rugrat’s head by moms and dads (but can you blame them?  Spend a few thankless years changing Junior—a real shit job sometimes if there ever was one—upwards of a half-dozen times a day ad nauseam and who wouldn't be anxiously impatient to be done with diapers sooner than later?  Well, possibly the selfsame toddler still wearing them, who might elsewise be content doing so from cradle to grave, but that’s why it’s parents' prerogative deciding when to nudge Junior toward taking those first tentative steps down the long, Augean road to self-sufficiency), diapers are disparaged as intrinsically foul and loathsome things, the pluperfect embodiment of the utter helplessness and complete dependency of infancy, and there's no un-drinking the Kool-Aid®.

“But why do they laugh?” Asked the Savage in pained bewilderment. ¶ “Why?”  The Provost turned towards him a still broadly grinning face.  “Why?  But because it's so  extraordinarily funny.” 

For proof, look no further than the classic SNL sketch “Oops!  I Crapped My Pants!”  But ask yourself, would anybody laugh if the skit instead spoofed, say, Huggies® and by association babies?  Doubtful, even though all diapers, regardless brand or size, share the identical raison d’être, n'est-ce pas?  Handicaps of any flavor should never be a punchline, and is it honestly that different losing control of the faculties an infant has yet to acquire?  In my patently partisan opinion, I think not.  Nonetheless an explicit joke about Depends® is always a tacit jab at incontinence; an unambiguously cruel reminder that adult diapers in and of themselves are more emasculating than the malady they're meant to manage and therefore something to be ashamed of.

     But I digress.  My aim today is not to rail against potty-training or shamelessly solicit sympathy by carping about my condition—which, I hasten to add, is neither a recent development nor, having determined early on might be a skosh less dispiriting if I ditched my dignity tootsweet, one with which I still struggle coming to grips.  We all have our switches, buttons and  knobs, so I’ll cut the bleeding heart crap lest you summarily dismiss me as a hopelessly woebegone whiner.  Rather, you’ll discover peeling back the myriad layers of my story is fittingly akin to dealing with a dirty diaper: Something about it stinks, a single whiff from even clear across the room convincingly suggestive whatever’s lurking within, barely out of sight but definitely no longer out of mind, ain’t gonna be pretty but, until and unless you get in there for a closer peek, who knows what you have on your hands or just how ugly it truly is.

     Would it pique your curiosity if I confess incontinence is only one reason why I need to wear diapers, and a fairly picayune one at that?  It's true—long before the infirmity made them indispensable I was already dallying in diapers of my own volition, out of no bona fide necessity other than amusement.  Without question, wearing diapers just for shits 'n grins would be outlandish enough even were that the extent of my aberrant behavior.  But wait, there’s more—that’s not all I was doing with…um, in 'em; to wit, if nature came a-callin' while I happened (wink-wink, nudge-nudge) to be so attired, “shits 'n grins” also concisely conveys the what 'n why it was my rule and not the exception to answer said call right in said diaper.  Because why not?  That is, after all, precisely what they’re for.  De l'audace, encore de l'audace, et tojours de l'audace!  For nigh twenty years I was (s)electively diapered, and contentedly so, my chief beef with this off-again/on-again relationship just that—too much off against not enough on—but I never imagined where this would ultimately lead.  It's a slippery slope from seemingly innocuous though incontrovertibly seamy distraction from the angst and ennui of an awkward, alienated adolescence to intractable master I now and for the foreseeable future must serve abidingly and, like a beguiling husky, I allowed familiar fealty to lull me into naïve confidence I could let loose the leash and trust it always returning obediently to heel whenever I bade.  Which it did…until it didn't (yes, Squirrel, I'm talking about you, too.  And you're still grounded!), so although incontinence now holds me hostage in them, diapers alone beckoned me ex mero motu to the brink of the Abyss of Monomania—the SLA to my Patty Hearst, if you will—and from there I was all but foredoomed to tumble in.  It begs the question: At what point does innocent if misguided devotion to an idée fixe become deliberate ignorance of the consequences?

     On that note, enough for tonight.  To be continued. . .

[littleTomás]

Welcome, and wow that was quite the prose. I have to admit though, I didn't understand a lot of the references and non-english phrases. Regardless, well done. As someone who is also pretty new to this site, I can say it's relaxing to be out in the open instead of just lurking in the shadows.

[Baby Girl Sarah]

Welcome to DD   dear ?