Summer 2011

As regular readers have no doubt noticed, I haven't been very active in the online diaper community this summer. I thought that once my thesis finished up I would be less busy ... wrong!

In May I landed an internship in a very busy producer's office, which gave me the opportunity to work on the set of three independent features. In many ways, it was awesome-- I feel like I have learned more in the last few months than I did in my entire 4 years of college. In others, it was horrible-- I was sleeping an average of 4 hours a night and working 12 hour days for less than minimum wage. It made the work I did on my thesis seem like nothing, and the work was pretty menial for films I didn't care about.

Then again, the most important thing I learned was probably that I was capable of working that hard. I also put those got grown-up clothes I blogged about while back to good use, and got very comfortable dressing like an adult professional when I was in the office.

I didn't learn to tie that tie, though. No one else wore one, so I would have been overdressed. I like looking sharp, but really I don't want to be the kind of guy who wears a tie every day.

One really nice thing that has happened this summer is that I've reconnected with a long time reader of this blog named Sara. She emailed me back in August 2010 and we were talking about meeting up, but my thesis film got in the way and we lost track of each other. My girlfriend and I met up with her in the middle of the night at the Sugar Cafe, a little 24 hour diner on East Houston Street.

Sara's also an art school grad, so we have a bit more in common than any of the other DLs I've met in person. Despite the fact that her first email to me said that she had been too shy/embarrassed to contact me for nearly a year since she discovered my blog, she's an adventuresome and impressively inquisitive girl with a habit of jumping into strange jobs and activities on craigslist.

She said she thinks she's always had a diaper fetish, but never acknowledged it to herself until she was a senior in college. For her, diapers are a totally sexual thing and she looses interest in them pretty soon after she has an orgasm. I can definitely identify with that feeling. It sucks to be having a great orgasm and come down from it to realize how stupid you must look as an otherwise normal and attractive twenty-something in a wet diaper. All you can do is change yourself out of it and take a good, thorough shower.

In my case, I think I started very close to those lines, but over time the sharpness of that mental U-turn has abated a bit. When I first started wearing diapers again, I would often wait until I felt the need to go to the bathroom and just put one on instead. I would let the feeling build up until I lost control and had a genuine accident. The feeling was so new to me at the time that for a while I would just ignore that sudden loss of interest and change into a fresh diaper right away, knowing that the urge to use one would come back as soon as I needed to go again.

Part of this habit came from the fact that it was difficult at first to let go unless it was an emergency. Sure, I've always been a pantswetter, but I was so used to keeping control as tight as I could until I was sitting on the toilet. As I got better at wetting my pants as soon as I felt the need to go, I learned that I really liked the feeling of just being able to forget about holding it at all. I learned to delay my orgasm so I could enjoy being diapered longer. I think that has something to do with why my interest in diapers fluctuates less than Sara's.

Speaking of fluctuations, there was an odd period in June when I felt pretty much zero desire to wear diapers. Around this time, our apartment was stricken with bedbugs. As those of you in NYC probably know, those baneful little beasts get EVERYWHERE. You have no idea where they are, and you have to treat everything. Disposable diapers would be a prime hiding place for them, and as a result, we would have had to ask the exterminator to treat them. The incredible awkwardness would have been unbearable. We opted to throw them away. I wondered at that time ... was this it for me and diapers? First this extended lack of desire, and now I was throwing the ones I have left away.

Well, I was without them for more than two months after that, experiencing the occasional twinge, but nothing even close to the urge I used to feel. Then two days ago, my friend jokingly brought up Lisa Nowak, the astronaut who drove from Houston, Texas to Orlando, Florida in diapers. It's dumb that this of all things would bring my desires back, but it did. He humorously suggested that he often thought of her when he was doing something and had to stop for a moment to get up to go to the bathroom. We were hanging out in my kitchen all day, talking philosophy over coffee, and after a bit all of us were getting up to pee pretty frequently. This is exactly the kind of situation where I always want to be in diapers, and realizing that I didn't have any made me want them even more.

Later, as we were hanging out and watching the old X-Men animated series from the '90s, (now on Netflix instant!) I suddenly realized that episode 8, “The Unstoppable Juggernaut,” contained one of the most memorable diaper references of my childhood.

Those readers who are DLs (which must be pretty close to everyone) will know what I'm talking about when I say "memorable references." As a kid, I would always take special interest any time someone in a movie or TV series would mention diapers. Even just commercials for diapers would capture my rapt attention. In this particular episode, Juggernaut teases Jubilee about wearing diapers.

Here's a link to the clip.

I can't even say how many Jubilee fantasies that line spurred for little 10 year old me. At that age, I was having daytime wetting accidents more often than any other time in my life, and I had a drawer full of stained X-Men underwear. I was so sure I was going to be put back in diapers any day. The thought that this cool, spunky superhero girl might have the same issue as me was incredibly exciting. If internet access had been available to me at the time, you can bet that I would have been responsible for some truly ridiculous fanfiction. As I write this, I am actually shocked that google image search does not turn up any images of Jubilee in diapers. Come on, Internet. You are seriously slacking ... what the hell happened to “Rule 34?” (On that note, I invite those artists among you to submit your sexiest diapered-Jubilee fan art. I'll put it up and judge the winner. Go!)

Remembering all this was too much for me. The next day, I went out and got a pack of Depends Maximum Protection. I was wearing them when my girlfriend came home with a friend from work in tow.

I am generally pretty calm about wearing in public, but Depends are loud, I wasn't wearing a belt, and I had the pack sitting in plain sight in the bedroom. I dashed to the bedroom and tossed the pack under the bed just as my girlfriend started giving her friend the grand tour. My behavior probably seemed pretty strange, but I got them hidden in time.

Then I had to get the one I was wearing off. I sat talking with them for a bit, then excused myself to the bathroom. The door is right next to the kitchen table where we were all sitting, and I had to turn the water on so the sound would drown out the crinkling as I changed out of the diaper. Luckily, it was still dry, so clean up was not an issue.

I hid it at the bottom of the trash can, under the liner, then flushed and came out like nothing had happened.

A close call, but the crisis was averted.

Wow, so thankful to have diapers today!

So last night in class I started having these monstrous stomach cramps. I thought I could wait to use the bathroom until the end of the movie the teacher was screening, but I had to run to the bathroom a couple of times before it was over to keep from messing myself. Luckily I avoided any public potty-disasters, but it was so urgent that I was checking my underwear each time I got to the toilet to make sure I hadn't had an accident on the way.

I thought I was okay once I got home, but I must have just been emptied out ... because after breakfast this morning it got so bad I had to put on a diaper. I've been messing myself a little every time I pass gas, which is like every few minutes. Definitely not my ideal diaper experience, but it beats being stuck in the bathroom for hours on end and not know when it'll be safe to get off the toilet. There are some times I a extremely glad to have a closet full of diapers, and this is definitely one of them.

Diapers in the News

So it seems like every time I open the "Diapers in the News" forum at DailyDiapers, there is another story about how some crazy fetishist has exposed their diapers to children in public, or fooled some unsuspecting person into changing their diapers by pretending to be disabled, or some other equally horrendous crime. As one of the overwhelming majority of people in the diaper community who are completely sane, here is my response.


An excerpt from her interview: "I knew when I looked out my window and saw a litter of kittens trapped at the top of a burning building, I had to do something. I had just put on a fresh diaper, as I often do while responding to 'thank you' notes from the children at the orphanages I operate.

"Now, I know wearing diapers for fun might seem strange to some people, but I love the feeling of just being able to let go whenever I feel the need. Plus, there are just so many letters, and I would hate to give even one of those dear little waifs any less than the attention they deserve, just because I needed to use the bathroom.

"I am usually very discreet when it comes to diapers. I may be an internationally famous supermodel philanthropist and cancer researcher, but I like to keep a low profile. Not that I feel like it is wrong in any way-- I love myself and know that everyone has little quirks. I've told my significant other and a few close friends, but it would just be embarrassing for everyone to know.

"All thoughts of my own reputation went out the window when I saw those kittens, though. I knew there was no time to waste getting dressed: I just grabbed my grappling hook and did what needed to be done."

A few pics

So today was a snow day. I took the opportunity to clean the house and take a few pics. Since Bambino discontinued their small size, I've been using Depends Maximum Protection for the first time in a long time. They're pretty decent for wearing around the house as long as I'm careful about leaks, but I still don't trust them enough to wear when I'm out and about. They'll hold about one good wetting, and a little more if you don't flood them all at once, but I can't imagine relying on them for 24/7 wear. You'd have to change every hour or so!

One thing I do kind of like about them though is how obvious it is when you're wet or messy. Besides the indicator disappearing, the plastic backing is pretty much transparent and lets everybody know what you've done in your diaper. Anyhow, here they are. Enjoy!

Bambino discontinues small size diapers

You are looking at a picture of what is possibly the last small size Bambino diaper in existence. I went to their website yesterday and found that they were out of stock, and when I sent them an email asking when the small size would be back in, this is the email I got:

Thank you for your e-mail. Due to the lack of demand we are no longer manufacturing our size small diaper, we are however working hard to find an alternative for our customers. We have found a product the Molicare Super Plus that we feel best meets our standard for a superior diaper. This product runs a little smaller than our other diapers so please try a sample first. Please see details regarding sizing on our website.
Thank you,
*Bambino Customer Service*

The next smallest size is their medium, which will fit a 32-44 inch waist. It's depressing to think their are enough overweight people out there to justify making an extra large size, but not enough of us skinny DLs to make us a viable market. If you're reading this somewhere out there any you're as dismayed as I am about this, I suggest you send an email to bambinodiapers@gmail.com requesting that they bring back their small size. Then buy a damn case of them-- because without the support of the diaper community, who knows ... they might go under entirely.

Update:

So I did a little research, and it seems that the small size diapers were being phased out as early as June 2010. The following posts are from Bambino forum at DailyDiapers:

28 June 2010 - 10:13 AM
I just noticed Small Classicos are no longer available on the website! Sad Panda! Not all ABDLs are fatasses!

04 October 2010 - 10:02 PM

Hm. Well I E-mailed Bambino and they basically told me that they have no intention whatsoever of making small classicos or teddys again. Lame.
I'm honestly quite a bit put-out by this. It's basically Bambino saying that those of us who are smaller are, frankly, not worth the attention. This is a big mark against them in my eyes and I shall have to consider wearing another product in the future.

08 October 2010 - 01:02 AM
I wouldn't mind paying more if it meant having the variety in small.
There is also an update to this little Saga, however. Bambino sent me a further E-mail, despite saying that they have no intention of having Teddies or Classicos in small, saying they intend to have OTHER new products in small. While I am not holding my breath (of course, history tends to repeat), I am interested.
I still like the company, again, and they still make GREAT products. It just happens that I don't like being ignored.

15 November 2010 - 12:15 AM
Since they just stopped offering Small Biancos too, it seems that those of us who are smaller will just have to go somewhere else. I'm glad the medium/large/xl folks have something great for them still but now there's literally no Bambino product for us Small folks.

So there you have it. I got mine at the end of August, so they were probably among the last of them. Maybe if business picks up for them they will start offering the small size again ... but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Last winter break ever

Hey loyal followers,

It's winter break for the last time in my school career, and I have never been busier in my life. I haven't really been keeping up with the online diaper community since September. I feel somewhat guilty because there were a couple people emailing me about meeting up at the end of the summer who I left hanging. I just wanted to post to let everyone know that I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, and that I have every intention of keeping this blog active and meeting up with people as soon as I have a bit of time and sanity to spare.

Diapers have definitely taken a back seat in my life in the last few months, but as you can see from the picture above, I have gotten a few good diapered days in over the break. I'm just about through that box of Bambinos I ordered at the end of August. As soon as I have some spare cash I will probably order more. They are basically everything that I'd hoped, but I was so used to GoodNites before I got them that I had forgotten how much trickier it is to get the tapes on a real diaper just right, especially when they aren't refastenable and tear or lose their stickiness if you don't get the right fit on the first try.

Come to think of it, the only other times I've worn a diaper with non-refastenable tapes were when I was first experimenting with Depends back in 2006 ... and by that I mean the only other times ever. My mom recently reminded me of this when she called me up during a trip to the laundromat.

"Oh, your building doesn't have a washer and dryer?" she said. "I remember those days. I used to have to go to the laundromat every day to wash your diapers. I only used organic cotton on you."

Her reminiscence of diapering me caught me quite off guard. It was the first time in my memory that she had ever spoken about me wearing diapers other than to remind me how quickly I was out of them.

"Well ..." I said, her. "You really went all out."

We both laughed, but me mostly from the irony of her complete ignorance of fact that I was still wearing diapers. The conversation soon turned to other matters, but her mention of how I had worn only cloth diapers set me to wondering, as I occasionally have in the past: why am I so much more interested in disposables?

I guess I was too much too young when I was potty-trained to have any conscious memories of my organic cotton days, and that the easiest explanation for my interest in disposable diapers would be that it arose from seeing my younger siblings diapered. I'll admit that when my second little sister was born and there were disposables in the house for the first time I was very interested in trying one, but as I mentioned in my first post on this blog, my first memories regarding my diapered desires began before that, when I was three or so and my first sister was a baby. She was in cloth diapers too ... and I can remember wanting to try them on. My current theory is that my desire for diapers originated from premature potty-training and intensified over the years as I struggled with imperfect control. These feelings were transferred to a specific desire for disposables when I saw my younger siblings and cousins wearing them them and became jealous, since they were something I could never have but by this time had realized I needed.

All this ruminating on the origins of my diaper fetish has led my train of thought to another somewhat mysterious artifact of memory from that early preschool period in my life, one that I am surprised to realize I have never written about before. It is an odd idea that I had at the time, which, looking back, says a lot about the early development of my fetish. I had this secret list in my head of things that, if you did them, would cause your potty training to be undone and land you back in diapers. Here it is.

---

1: Wet your pants
A logical first step. I was having wetting accidents so often back then, I felt sure I well on my way to being put back to diapers already. It hadn't happened yet though, so I guess I figured there was something else I needed to do before I could give up my "big boy" underwear. In retrospect, if I had just stuck to doing this one as often as possible, I would definitely have ended up in diapers sooner or later. Pooping my pants would probably would have sped up the process. Instead, I was misdirected to the second ritual task.

2: Use the baby potty
The baby potty on which I was trained continued to sit next to the real potty even after I had graduated from it, presumably waiting for the next child in line to be potty trained. I think that my notion of it possessing the power to undo my potty-training must have been tied to its standing as a constant reminder of the fact that I had once used it as a transition from diapers to my present, non-diapered state. In the murky logic of my preschool fancies, it is easy to see how I might have decided that if there was a way back into diapers, it would be the same way I had come-- through the baby potty.

3: Use a diaper

The final task here might seem redundant, but it was tied to another strange idea I had-- the idea that diapers weren't just something you wore when you didn't have control, but something that removed your control when you wore them. I figured that since my parents had granted me the ability to control my bladder and bowels through potty training, they could take it away just as easily by putting me back in diapers. As I imagined it, I would go back to zero control the minute I had a diaper on. My control would return fully as soon as the diaper was removed, but only if I hadn't used it-- once I "activated" the diaper by wetting or messing, it would be too late. If this happened, I would have no ability to control my bladder or bowels, even if I put my "big boy" underwear back on. I would be unable to regain any level of continence until my parents decided I was ready to move back up to the control-giving baby potty and give potty-training a second try.

---

So there you have it: another piece in the puzzle of what makes a Diaper Lover. My next post might not come until as late as May, (that's when I graduate) but it'll be worth the wait: I've been chipping away at first ever piece of diaper fiction for a while now, and by then it will probably be ready to see the light of day.

Until then,

CDB

New stuff

I've been trying to dress more like a grown up lately. I mean, I'm in school to be a movie producer. How am I going to fly all over the globe to meet with investors if I don't look like someone who can be trusted with a couple million dollars?

I've gotten rid of my sneakers. I now have two pairs of very sharp looking leather shoes, one black one brown. I also have five amazing looking collared shirts and a waistcoat. Nearly everything came from Uniqlo.

Here is the big one though: I bought a tie. I don't know how to tie it yet, but that can come later. With everything on, I look like I stepped off the cover of Vogue. I want to get used to dressing this way during my last year of school so that I can actually feel like it's no big deal when I graduate and dress this way all the time.

Another big change that's taken place since the last time I posted is that my girlfriend and I moved into a huge fucking apartment, which we've been filling with things from Ikea. All of this is due to the fact that I have been working overtime and making more money than I have ever had.

However: my new-found financial freedom has also allowed me to indulge my more immature side more than ever. The absolute highlight of my summer was seeing Walking with Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular at Madison Square Garden. My girlfriend and I were screaming along with a stadium full of five-year-olds as each new dinosaur appeared. They were incredible. I was completely freaking out the entire time.

I'm slowly filling the holes in my comic collection too. There is this publisher I can't get enough of called Eclipse. In the mid-eighties, they put out some of the greatest comic series of all time, including Zot!, Airboy, and Mr. Monster. Not only do these books feature better writing and art than nearly any mainstream comics before or since, but they are also printed on better quality paper with a laser scanned color process which reproduces the painterly work of the colorist. The mechanically separated processes which came before and the tacky digital techniques which have been invented since are wholly inferior.

Now, you'd probably imagine that Eclipse comics are really expensive, right? Wrong! They are cheap and they are everywhere. Look in any back issue bin of 80s small press stuff and you will find them for next to nothing. I've got tons of singles, but what I'd really been wanting for forever are the lavish and long out-of-print hardcover editions which Eclipse collected some of these series into. Now I've finally got them! :D

Last of all, I finally ordered myself a 24 pack of Bambino Biancos. For those of you who may not know, Bambino is the Cadillac of diapers ... and they only come in adult sizes. That's because they are the first designer diaper, made for and by diaper lovers. For the adult baby crowd, they offer a couple of options in childish prints, but I will stick to the all-white "bianco" style until they come up with some designs featuring space stuff, superheroes, or dinosaurs.

For a long time, I had been wearing Pull-Ups GoodNites, which are a lot of fun and more absorbent than people generally give them credit for. Unfortunately, the largest GoodNites are designed with pre-teen bedwetters in mind, and as such they are meant to be wet gradually over the course of the night. They are fine for recreational daytime wear, as long as you wet them a little at a time whenever you start to feel the need to go, but they can't really take a full bladder release all at once. You also have to be careful how full you let them get, as they have a tendency to overflow when you sit down.

For all their downsides though, GoodNites are nice because they are cute, trim, and readily available. There are 5-7 million kids in America who wet the bed, and as such, you would be hard pressed to find a drug or grocery store that doesn't stock them. When it comes to adult sizes though, a good diaper is much harder to find. This is pretty weird, considering that about 25 million people nationwide deal with some form of incontinence ... and that doesn't even count the recreational diaper-wearers out there who supplement that market.

In any case, the diapers you can get from your local drugstore which are actually intended for adults aren't much better in the absorbency department than GoodNites. Also, they look stupid as hell. Depends, easily the most recognizable name brand in the field, are notoriously bad, unless you get the "fitted Maximum Protection" version. These still have crappy tapes, but they at least provide sufficient absorbency to do their intended job.

The "fitted Maximum Protection" Depends aren't easy to find though. Most major chain stores seem to prefer to stock the more middle of the road ones, which in my experience are some of the flimsiest diapers ever.

So the question you are probably asking yourself now is, "if so many people in America wear diapers, why the hell aren't there better ones at my local drug store?" Well, as Justin Peters put it in his article for Slate magazine, "Like chocolate, beer, and jewel thieves, the best adult diapers come from Europe. This is not coincidental. European manufacturers don't have to cater to institutional purchasers' demands, so they're more likely to sell on quality rather than cost."

That's right. Because 50% of all people in nursing homes are incontinent, large institutional buyers make up a major part of the sales for products like Depends. The booming medical industry here in the United States knows that people who can't take care of themselves aren't in a position to complain about the inadequacies of cut-rate diapers. Keep in mind that Kimberly-Clark, the company which makes flimsy adult incontinence products like Depends and Poise, is the same one which makes better products like Huggies, Pull-Ups, and GoodNites for kids. This is because parents generally have a stronger interest in their children's well-being than professional caretakers, and are therefore more likely to purchase diapers based on quality rather than cost.

So what if Bambino products suddenly appeared on store shelves across the nation? My guess is that anyone who wears diapers on a regular basis and had a choice in the matter would switch over without a second thought. Think of the comics I mentioned above. If everyone had known about Eclipse when those comics were just coming out, they would still be around and probably be bigger than Marvel is right now.

Another bonus to having a company like Bambino at the head of the diaper industry would be the fact that they are so in touch with the recreational diaper-wearing community. Kimberly-Clark does so much to promote the statistics about how common bladder control problems are. Imagine if Bambino was out there, as visible as them, saying "Yes! It is totally okay to want to wear diapers, whether your bladder control is good or not. You are not alone." I know it would have done a lot to ease my mind as a kid.

As soon as people realize that there are alternatives to the vastly inferior, mass produced garbage that big companies force upon us, the world will be a better place. That's one of the reasons I want to produce movies. We need people out there with good sense and taste, and it's worth applying these attributes to selecting a necktie if it means I will have an opportunity to use them in bringing new films to life with previously unknown creative talent. After all, I can always go home to an apartment filled with toys, games, and other un-grown-up things.

* * *

"Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms.

"Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

-- C.S. Lewis