I scroll through post after post about collars and “stuffies,” littles and doms. I’m assailed by hashtags. #daddydom #daddykink #ddlg #daddydomlittlegirl #ddlglifestyle #ddlgrelationship #littlespace.
This idea of “little space” intrigues me. I search it on Instagram and find dozens of photographs of girls my age clutching giant teddy bears, sitting in pink rooms, doing coloring in, dressing up as princesses or in white stockings and panties. They use phrases like “going into little space” and talk about needing rules and someone to take their worries away from them. They call themselves littles.
I think about how exhausting it is functioning in the real world sometimes, and the things I like to do to soothe myself when I’m stressed. I thought they had to be kept secret because no one would understand, but here are literally hundreds of girls my age bravely proclaiming who they are, some showing their face, some posting more anonymously.
Later, lying in bed in the dark, staring at the ceiling, I realize something. I am a little.
Tears come into my eyes. It’s such a relief to know that there are other people like me. I’m not strange, or weird, or stupid. I just never grew out of the things that everyone once needed to make them happy.
I stare around my blank room. No wonder this doesn’t feel like me. It isn’t me.
* * *
“Oh, Abby.”
I can hear the dismay in my mother’s voice as she looks around my
room. My toys are back on the shelves and my bed is a mountain of stuffed animals and frilly cushions. There aren’t as many of either as there used to be because my mother culled them periodically over the years, but there are still enough to make me happy.
“I thought we put all these things away.”
“No,” I say, yanking a ruffled pillowcase over a pillow, “you put them away.”
She flinches, and I’m instantly ashamed. “I’m sorry.” I take a deep breath and say, “I just mean I’ve decided I want them around me again. I have to do things my way, especially now I’m going to be leaving home.”
Sighing, she says, “All right.”
No arguments? Really? I’ve managed to convince her of something I need and I haven’t broken out in a cold sweat doing it. “Okay... Great.”
“How’s the new part coming along?” she asks, watching me arrange my “stuffies” as the other littles call them, in order of size. “Your father and I can’t wait to see your first night.”
I debut in two days’ time and I am so excited. I had a costume fitting yesterday and tried on my new dress and silver dancing shoes. The makeup is something else, all glittery and silver, with a pale pink wig to top it off. I can’t believe I’m paid to dress up like this every day.
“It’s great,” I say, grinning. “I feel so lucky they chose me.”
“Did that man have anything to do with it?” my mother asks, and something about the casualness of her question makes me stop and look at her. “You know, the one who drove you home?”
“Mr. Kingsolver? Well...” I don’t want to tell her anything about him but she’s going to guess that something’s up from my face. “Yes, he watched my audition. He’s the owner of the theater so he gets a say, if he wants it. But it was the director’s final decision.”
She nods and says, “I see,” in a way that tells me that she sees, perhaps not everything, but more than what my words are saying.
I turn and look at her, and she’s got a funny expression on her face. “What?” I ask.
Shrugging, she rubs an imaginary speck of dirt from the light switch. “Nothing. I just wondered if you might be dating him.”
I feel a stab of panic. What has she seen? What does she know? Has she been going through the search history on my phone? What if she’s seen all the weird things I’ve been Googling? I stare around at all the stuffies on my bed and suddenly wish I’d left them where they were. Each one seems like a beacon that’s blaring aloud my weirdness. If anyone finds out what Mr. Kingsolver and I have been doing I will die. I’m not like those girls on social media. I need this to be a secret because I still don’t understand it myself. If my parents find out that I called him daddy... I shudder. It doesn’t bear thinking about. I’ll never say it again, just please, please, don’t anyone find out. I don’t know who or what I’m begging to. Anything and everything in that moment.
My mother hasn’t noticed I’m having an internal meltdown, and continues. “He’s very attractive and he seemed attentive when he brought you home. He went out of his way to tell us how proud we should be of you.”
I let out the breath I’ve been holding, slowly and calmly. She doesn’t know. It’s all right. If she did know she wouldn’t be speaking about him in such a kindly way. She’d be calling him a pervert.
“He’s a nice man, that’s all.” He was attentive, wasn’t he? I feel a warm glow as I think of it.
“Do you like him?”
I turn to her with a smirk. “You’re awfully nosy all of a sudden.”
She smiles. “I know. It’s just that you’ve never shown much interest in boys before. Not real-life boys who walk and talk and, you know, exist. Unlike Jareth the Goblin King.”