Let It Go

Chapter 2
Two

“You can walk around naked for a while,” Trip says, “because it’s okay for little kids like you to do that. Very little dignity to get in the way.”

Trip leans down and stares Joel in the eyes. “Little. Kid,” he repeats, deliberately, in a tone more befitting a Las Vegas hypnotist or a Catholic grade school nun.

“Or, you can have pants,” he shrugs.

Joel gazes up at Trip, more than a little awed by the whole process and how huge everything has become. The living room stretches before him like it’s this great space just begging to be explored. He looks down over his bare, young, and tiny body-- skinny, yet rounded with baby fat at the elbows and knees. Joel can hardly remember looking this little. And he concludes...

“I’m... I’m okay if I don’t hafta wear anything for just a little while,” he says, testing the words and his positively childish voice. Joel looks up at Trip again, as though wanting a second confirmation that it’s alright.

Seemingly deep in thought, Trip bites his bottom lip, then looks up at the ceiling. “I dunno,” he teases. “This is a terribly nice carpet. I suppose I could let you run around like this for a little while. But not for much longer, little dude.” Trip tousles Joel’s hair. “You were cute before, and now you’re adorable. I just want to play Legos with you all night long. Or feed you. Or bathe you. Or all of the above.” Trip kisses Joel’s forehead.

The boy breathes out, feeling staggered that he’s expected to do all that childish stuff, that he’s being treated like any other small child. Just a few minutes ago he’d been 20 years old and now...

“So you’re...” pipes Joel, “...you’re gonna look after me?” The thought of needing adult supervision and help for the simplest things is at once alien and enticing. “I promise I won’t mess up the carpet or ‘nything.”

Trip drops down onto a knee and takes Joel’s hand gently in his, meeting his friend’s eyes.

“I am going to look after you,” Trip says, with a perfect, almost spiritual, sincerity. “And that means that nothing bad will happen to you. Ever.”

He then adopts a more playful demeanor, glancing his fingertips playfully across Joel’s cheek. “You won’t have to take care of anything. Including the bath you smell like you need.”

“I do?” Joel asks, and laughs, catching himself off-guard with the childishness of it. The size of the fingers Trip uses to hold Joel’s hand is surprising. But the care that the older boy is expressing has earned Joel’s trust, and the little one feels safe and not so self-conscious.

Trip stands back, adjusting the position of his hand so he can guide his friend where need be. “You smell like a grown-up. That’s very unbecoming on a little guy.” He gently walks Joel to the bathroom, giggling at the child’s advanced toddling. “You want to smell good, right?”

Joel follows hand-in-hand, having to trot to keep up with his caretaker’s gait. “What does an adult even smell like?” he inquires as they make their way to the bathroom.

“All the pollution and cigarettes and other nasty stuff you have to hang around when you’re expected to go outside and ‘accomplish’ things,” Trip giggles. “All you have to accomplish right now is being a cool little dude.” Trip stands Joel up on the bathmat and pours some bubble bath into the warm water he’s got started. “No more of that big-boy ‘responsibility’ garbage,” he says, winking at his little charge.

“Yeah!” Joel cheers. “I hate all that stupid grown-up stuff anyway!” The boy furrows his brow at the candor he seems to be spewing, unmoderated. Now that he feels so little next to Trip, and so light and liberated, all those adult concerns seem quite far away, in spite of how recently they’d contaminated his mind.

That’s strange, the boy thinks... and, after all, why should Trip be looking after Joel when the latter already knows how to behave like a grown-up? But the overriding impression is the unadulterated sense that Trip should be taking care of him. After all, Joel is but five years old... and just barely.

Trip smiles and turns the water off when the bathtub is full, a sea of bubbles foaming over the top. “That’s right. You’re a little five-year-old, and you hate that stupid grown-up stuff. You’re such a smart little boy for figuring that out so quickly.” He lifts Joel by the latter’s hairless armpits, then submerges everything but his head beneath the bubbles, grabbing a washrag. The boy gasps at the ease of the rising and falling motion.

Joel peers around at the foamy lake that comprises the first bubble bath he’s had in a long time. Swaying little hands along the surface of the water, he plays around with the bubbles experimentally. Joel feels Trip’s hand anchor him safely between his shoulder blades as the older boy proceeds to clean him. The washcloth slides effortlessly along Joel’s chest and arms. Trip lets go of the washcloth long enough to drag a favorite blue tugboat over to his little charge; a tiny plastic bear is sticking out of its top, playing the pilot.

“Just play with this, sweetie. These boring chores are almost over.”

Joel pushes the plastic tugboat through the foam as though it’s passing through a deep mist, starting to get the hang of playing with it, and only half-aware of Trip scrubbing down his body. Things are feeling incredibly normal for him. He feels the sensation of the washrag being threaded between his legs, his privates being cleaned, his legs coated in soap and suds right down to the tips of his toes.

“I bet you’d’ve paid a million dollars to feel that sensation of being cleaned again,” Trip says, nuzzling Joel’s forehead. The younger boy feels his butt being scrubbed before he’s lifted out of the tub. Trip pulls the drain plug. He’s made sure to prevent any unnecessary fear in his friend by allowing Joel some distance between himself and the swirling vortex of water and bubbles as it’s all sucked down the drain.

A giggle escapes Joel’s lips. He’s adjusting to the sensation of being lifted, of being transported from place to place without his say-so, and is finding it kind of fun. In an instant, a soft, downy, white towel is wrapped around the boy, a few stray bubbles still dripping off of him and onto the bathmat.

“But I couldn’a paid you a million dollars ‘cause I’m only five now,” he says, giggling again at the strange reality of it.

Trip dries his friend off dutifully, getting all the droplets of water and bubbles off of every part of his friend’s skin. “That’s right! Little five-year-old boys like you don’t have that kind of money. I guess you lucked out.”

The proud grown-up can’t prevent a giggle from escaping his lips, either.