Friday Night all to Herself
Camilla Niloufar Prescott-Behzadi paused her audiobook, closed her eyes, rolled her head, left shoulder to right shoulder, and then quickly back to the left, flicking a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. She eased back into her seat, exhaled long and slow, and back in. Feeling new resolve, she eased her eyes back open, gazing down at first, gradually looking up and up, degree-by-degree, until she was looking straight on towards the mirror.
She contemplated the startlingly truncated figure before her, and wondered why she was contemplating her body today, of all days. She was seeing the same body she saw every day, the one she’d begrudgingly grown accustomed to over the past five years.
Of course, Camilla knew why she was doing this. “Why?” was purely a rhetorical question. It was because of her trip to the art museum yesterday, she thought, then chided herself for the evasive imprecision. It was Marnie d’Entremont, the brown-haired docent she met at the Kandinsky exhibit. In Camilla’s mind, the hour-and-a-half spent talking was a kaleidoscopic panorama of disparate impressions, as if her memory were a gemstone, refracting sundry angles in arbitrary configurations: Chestnut brown hair, perky breasts, the smell of a wool sweater, swirl of ankle-length tartan, crystalline ringing laugh, gray eyes with a gentle, probing curiosity, her surname belying a Newfoundland brogue. Camilla had been swept downstream in the breadth and depth of the conversation, forgotten herself, what others saw; for ninety blessed minutes, she just was.
But, others, Camilla sourly thought, wouldn’t forget what the mirror now showed with its blunt, un-opinionated, instrumental cruelty. A quadruple amputee in her late twenties, strapped into an electric wheelchair by a four-point harness over her shoulders and under her breasts. Her limbs were truncated stumps, her legs barely four inches long (the harness owing to the relative lack of stability afforded by the residual limbs), while her ten-inch arm stumps afforded her some blessed semblance of independence. She could manipulate a simple joystick and nudge the occasional loose object, but not with any particular dexterity or precision.
Those disabilities alone, she firmly believed, were enough to irrevocably color other people’s perceptions, her body and the obvious utility of the harness a strobing red neon sign flashing ‘cripple!’ into the night. Her therapist had visibly cringed at that word, but Camilla saw it in the pitying and quickly-averted eyes of others every time she went out into public.
Camilla was wearing her usual Friday evening loungewear: conceptually a simple outfit, a blue T-shirt and underpants, the staple of untold millions of women settling in to relax with an audiobook or podcast. How many women, though, she thought, unwind in a clean adult diaper? The bacterial meningitis that had so cruelly taken her limbs had also left her with residual neurological damage, primarily muscle coordination issues in her lower body (Camilla contemplated the bitter irony of this largely being masked by her utter and complete lack of useful legs with which to make grossly uncoordinated movements). This had also left her with complete urinary incontinence (and to her unceasing gratitude, only urinary incontinence).
She looked closer, mentally forcing herself to assimilate the image anew, a twenty-seven-year-old woman wearing nothing but a shirt and a bulky plastic diaper. As she shifted in her seat, the shiny white plastic crinkled, and she gazed, coolly noting how it visually announced its fundamental diaper-ness in that steamroller-subtle, brutally utilitarian way that only mass-produced clinical products can. All together, the wetness indicator stripe, the wings snugly fastened to the front with what were obviously heavy-duty built-in tapes, and the shiny, slightly crumpled-looking plastic exterior were completely impossible to miss. Nobody would ever confuse them with white panties, particularly given how the whole garment clearly ended somewhere around belly-button-level, underneath her t-shirt.
Camilla sighed, wondering what Marnie, grace and eloquence embodied, would think if she knew that Camilla was so helpless that she relied on others for a twice-daily diaper change. (Were Marnie to know, she would not care, contrary to Camilla’s fervent belief to the contrary). Even if Marnie could handle it, could she truly regard a woman like Camilla with physical attraction, given what Camilla believed to be the cruelest blow dealt by her catastrophic case of meningitis?
The cruelest blow by far, Camilla thought, contemplating her face. The sepsis that had ravaged her system and the aggressive kars escort course of vasoconstrictors given to contain the fulminant gangrene had cost her most of her lips, the tip of her nose, and the front two thirds of her tongue. The cascading soft-tissue failures had left her requiring a permanent tracheostomy – her breath now a turbulent hiss in and out of the plastic tube in her neck.
Prior to her illness, her voice had been velvety and husky – bedroom talk alone had nearly been enough to drive her then-boyfriend to the point of orgasm. Post-illness, two years with a speech-language-pathologist had given Camilla what she and Thanh affectionately referred to as ‘Camillish.’ Camillish was a breathy whispered English consisting largely of broad, hissing vowels and glottal consonants.
Case-in-point, twenty minutes ago, Camilla had turned to Thanh and said “hek haifuh” – wet diaper. Thanh knew Camilla as well as her own sisters, and understood immediately, even without the pointed glance down. In public, Thanh generally had to act as interpreter, though Marnie had caught on with an unusual quickness (Yesterday, Marnie, intrigued and drawn by the fierce intelligence in Camilla’s large brown eyes, made a concerted effort to build an inventory of Camilla’s speech sounds, afraid of missing any of the sharp wit she was quickly growing acquainted with).
Camilla, though not vain, was confident, and had considered herself a reasonably attractive woman beforehand. Admittedly, the nose prosthetic did an astounding job of capturing that characteristically Persian arc of the nose handed down from her father. However, Camilla had never been impressed with the prospects for cosmetic surgery as explained by her specialist. Though some careful and clever grafting had given her something of a mouth back, her resting expression was what she considered a rough approximation of overbite-y grin, owed to the absence of enough residual skin to cover all the way down her front teeth. Camilla was quite happy with those teeth, again registering gratitude for Thanh’s deft touch with the toothbrush. Camilla imagined Marnie’s slender, agile hands – was she a pianist? – and wondered how Marne would fare at that evening ritual.
Contemplating this, Camilla wondered, as she occasionally did, at precisely how much continuity she actually felt between her body now, and the twenty-two-year-old vessel that had deftly scrambled up rock-strewn escarpments in northern Ontario and loped with surprisingly delicate grace from blackboard to blackboard in University of British Columbia lecture halls (though she would never have regarded herself as graceful). She felt as though she were the subject of a peculiar thought experiment – a purely subtractive Ship of Theseus. She had, and still did have, broad hips and moderately-sized breasts and a slim waist. A the time she had been strikingly curvy for 5’2″ and 105 pounds. But, what relationship did this (as she described herself last week, much to the consternation of her therapist. Marnie would similarly disagree, given the chance) grievously maimed, stump-limbed, almost entirely helpless, fifty-pound, diaper-clad, twenty-seven-year-old freak have with the nimble, dynamic physics graduate student of five years ago?
Her friends, particularly the girlfriend before her final pre-illness boyfriend, had always been quick to admire her eyes. They were large and brown, seemingly regarding the world with a slightly surprised naivety coupled with sparks of keen-eyed intelligence. Her girlfriend had frequently laid with her in bed gazing into her eyes, until one of the two couldn’t stay awake any longer. Though slightly more lined at the corners, Camilla noted, those same qualities were present, as far as she could tell.
There was also her hair; Though neither vain nor fussy, she had – particularly before her illness – nonetheless doted upon her hair with an attention to detail that surprised those who’d never known her well.
Camilla regarded herself as largely inert, restrained by her amputations and the necessary harness (Having watched Camilla gush effusively about the Kandinsky exhibit, her arm stumps waving and sweeping as she wiggled in her harness, Marnie thought Camilla was profoundly energetic and mobile). However, Camilla regarded her hair as an animate character in her life, a counterpoint to her static, restrained remainder. She had inherited the thick, black, wavy-going-to-curly hair of her father, which she kept at waist-length, even now. She had always tied the hair about six inches above her waist, and as a graduate physics instructor, she had been a minor celebrity for never using the same silk band karşıyaka escort to tie her hair for the entire semester.
Camilla traced the path of her hair down her body; Thanh had tied it off with a simple green band today, and had draped the tied hair across Camilla’s left shoulder, the hair a dark cascade down her chest, ending just before her lap. As she shifted in the wheelchair, the ends past the tie made a soft whispering sound as they brushed against the plastic exterior of her diaper. The volume of hair, and the bundling effect of the tie, gave the hair the general sense of being either a large, gracefully sweeping mane, or a large, broad, black hood gradually disappearing into a sleek cloak. The dense waves and curls easily added three inches of diameter to her silhouette.
After changing Camilla’s diaper, Thanh had left to go to the apartment three rooms down, where she lived with her husband Wilson, who, like Thanh, was a second-generation Vietnamese-Canadian. Camilla thoroughly enjoyed Wilson’s company – he was gregarious, witty, and clever, and could bring Camilla out of a slump with one of his endlessly awful puns. However, at the moment, Camilla was happy to be left completely alone.
She wobbled left and right, the plastic bulk between her legs crinkling vigorously (again, she laughed, not without mirth this time, at yet another way in which her undergarments screamed their single-purpose status as what she jokingly referred to as Serious Diapers for Serious Adults) as she bunched it into a shape more suitable for her intended purpose. She closed her eyes, and leaned forward, letting the harness bear more of her weight, as her clitoris pressed into the improvised sex toy. She imagined Marnie gently unbuckling her from the wheelchair, laying her down into bed, and gently threading her hands through Camilla’s hair. Marnie drew Camilla’s head towards her, and kissed her on the mouth, gently biting Camilla’s bottom lip in all its carefully reconstructed, sensitive glory.
In this reverie, Camilla rocked side-to-side in her wheelchair, her breath rushing in and out of her tracheostomy in increasingly ragged hisses and puffs. Camilla’s cheeks suddenly grew warm, and before she could lose the warm lubricity in her crotch, she conveniently skipped past the part where Marnie would have to suddenly learn how to remove an adult woman’s diaper – imagine those hands, though, surely she’d be quick and gentle, Camilla huffed to herself. Now Marnie grabbed her, and tumbled with Camilla in her arms until they were on the far side of her bed, almost against the wall. This sidelong tumble ended with Camilla on top, both hands in her hair, Camilla’s arm stumps tracing gentle, circular strokes on Marnie’s (now, conveniently) nude breasts, which were as tight and perky as that delicious sweater had suggested.
Camilla’s rocking was increasing in amplitude and vigor, and her breath was now a noticeably loud, shaky, “psssh, pshaaa” in and out of the plastic tube in her neck, her chest rising and falling in irregular, shuddering gasps. I want her tongue on my clitoris, she thought, then stopped herself. No, I want her tongue deep in my tight, wet cunt. Despite being nearly thirty, and having had her share of pre-illness partners, the sudden, forceful burst of vulgarity gave her a surprisingly powerful illicit thrill that percolated up her back and into her face, a hot electric frisson.
In her wheelchair, she stretched her right arm downwards as far as it could go, and began vigorously stroking the tip of the stump against her erect nipple, plainly visible through her shirt. She gasped with the sudden intensity of the stimulus and began thrashing against her harness as she rocked. Now, Marnie had her flipped, in a classic sixty-nine, as she trilled a long series rolled R’s against Camilla’s clitoris, then sweeping around in vigorous flicks, then plunging deep into her – “hehshhh hahk hiiiik” yes that’s it – tight-wet-cunt. Camilla leaned forward into Marnie’s soft, brown pubic hair and gently extended her…
She paused, glancing up at the mirror. Shit, she thought, extended your what, idiot? Glimpsing the mirror at the edge of her vision, She noticed that what she’d thought were tight circling strokes of her right arm stump were actually more of a wide thrash, like she was pawing at a particularly vexatious coffee stain, and that the side-to-side-back-and-forth rocking was taxing the full range of wheelchair’s harness, a far cry from the erotic, sinuous, pumping she’d imagined. She hissed, suddenly embarrassed at what she believed to be a graceless freak show display (had Marnie been party to any of this, she’d kartal escort have regarded Camilla’s self-assessment as needlessly cruel, finding nothing freakish about a woman so plainly, unguardedly, in the throes of ecstasy).
Camilla closed her eyes, rolled them back, and shoved her tongue stump as firmly as she could into her back molars, re-entering the reverie before it could dissipate. She imagined Marnie crouched in front of her wheelchair, Camilla seated, and strapped, the clean white expanse of a fresh diaper laying open across the front of the seat, out past her short stumps. Camilla’s wetness laid open to Marnie’s face, and she darted in with the sudden precision of a hummingbird. Marnie began exercising her trilled r’s again, before plunging deep, with an astounding length of tongue, as she grabbed both leg stumps with her hands, and began kneading. Were someone observing her masturbation session, they’d see that Camilla was again thrashing, leaned forward against the harness, her pelvis grinding into the pinched bulk of the adult diaper. She began to moan and scream, in her own way, airy whispers of “huhhhh heahhhhhhhhkk” (No Camillish, just raw ecstasy) interspersed with loud, turbulent puffing. The rocking began to make the wheelchair and straps emit a repetitive series of clacks and thumps, as even the four wheels began to rock. As she reached the peak of the most thunderous orgasm she’d experienced in years, her eyes rolled back, and she shook, stumps twitching aimlessly, lost. Her arms suddenly wide, then thumping repeatedly against the backrest, her back arched, then arms forward, then up. She slumped forward, completely spent, her breath tickling her lower neck and upper sternum as it was deflected downwards by her chin.
Looking up, her scalp and cheeks prickled, and she turned red. Thanh, having forgotten the paperback Camilla had picked for her on the walk back from the museum, had walked in on Camilla, mid-orgasm. She’d briefly panicked, thinking she was witnessing Camilla experiencing some sort of seizure episode, before realizing what she was seeing. Caught flat-footed, she’d turned to leave, but was too late.
Camilla, blushing even more intensely, looked away, tears welling in her eyes, embarrassed at the flagrant display. “haaaheee haaaah” – sorry Thanh. Thanh looked at her, head gently tilted. “No, I’m sorry. I understand if you don’t want it, but, I can wipe your eyes.”
Camilla, inhaled, then “huuuh” – sure. Thanh gently dabbed Camilla’s eyes, and wiped a stray speck of spittle from her cheek.
“Cam. I’m sorry, It’s so easy to forget that there are some things that I just don’t know how to help you with”, said Thanh, gently, as she adjusted Camilla’s hair, pulling strays out of her face. Camilla gave a limp shrug and a self-explanatory “ehhh” – it can’t be helped.
Thanh unflappable as ever, placed the tied bundle of Camilla’s hair back in her lap, and said, “I’m guessing you’re about ready for bed? I can get you settled in; I figure a bath, then we get you into something dry?” Camilla nodded. Thanh smiled gently, “I’ll get everything ready – do you want the audiobook back on while you wait?” Camilla paused, then “heeh” – yeah.
While Thanh drew the bath, Camilla sat, only half-listening. This isn’t so bad, her seeing you like this. If you’d known her in college, you’d’ve talked guys, and she touches you everywhere, every day anyway, and that never made it weird. She’s a woman, she fucks William, she knows you need this. She’s not stupid, she already knew you probably try to flog your clit somehow. Her mood lightening slightly, her thoughts went back to Marnie. What was she doing right now?
(Marnie was on a date with a woman she met online. She knew this was a doomed venture; she was trying to exit gracefully, without stringing the poor girl along. No matter what they discussed, Marnie just wasn’t there, her mind going back to the doe-eyed woman she’d exchanged email addresses with yesterday.)
Ninety minutes later, Thanh had placed Camilla in bed, and they’d chatted about everything and nothing, prior awkwardness forgotten, and Thanh switched off the lights, and stepped out, closing the door behind her. Camilla rolled over, stumps pressed tight against her body, when she felt something brush her leg stump. An extra pillow from the closet, placed, conveniently, at waist level. Camilla smiled and shuffled and pushed until she found the right position.
The next morning, Camilla woke up, her hip and abdomen muscles blissfully sore. What would my PT think? A soft puffing chuckle, gentle bursts of air tickling her chin. She rolled over, and looked at the iPad propped up on her night stand, as a large, multi-function alarm clock, placed within stump’s reach. A single new email notification had appeared, the subject line reading, “Coffee? – Marnie d’Entremont.” She rolled onto her back, savoring the sudden radiant glow engulfing her from within.