I can tell you that the day I discovered my wetting fetish was a Tuesday.
It began with too much water, and it ended with an awakening of something deep within me, a primal urge that left me wet and shaking in the raptures of post-orgasmic pleasure.
Let me rewind.
It was my last year at high school. I'd turned eighteen that March, and it suddenly felt like adulthood was approaching -- or maybe childhood was ending. I'd always been pretty quiet and flown under the radar, but this year, more than a few adults commented that I was really blossoming.
I made the school's top hockey team and was picked as vice-captain; I had already secured a place at university thanks to my English Literature results; and I had stopped worrying about fitting in and seemed to be able to move between different friend groups with ease.
While I still felt like a bit of an introverted outsider on a social level (being the only child of two workaholics will do that to you - especially when you live miles away from your friends), I had developed a quiet confidence. Whether it was being in the final year, or having turned eighteen without any kind of major mishaps or dramas, a switch had flipped.
The things I was self-conscious about - being over six feet tall, being quiet and reserved, never being part any loud and vibrant cliques - had suddenly become things in my favour. I went from being the weird tall tomboy to the athletic hockey star. From the quiet nerd to the trusted, reliable friend with a sympathetic ear. From the girl called "frigid" or "lesbian" or "virgin" behind her back to the smart young woman with no burnt bridges or pregnancy scares to her name.
In fact, aside from a couple of casual boyfriends and one or two tipsy kisses with my best friend Clara, I hadn't been at all adventurous with my sexuality, but that didn't seem to count against me anymore: I was just Maggie, a proper, normal girl with no embarrassing secrets to hide.
But if books taught me anything, it's that a surprise event can throw everything you thought you knew into doubt.
For me, that surprise event happened on a rather ordinary Tuesday afternoon.
I know it was a Tuesday because I had hockey practice at lunch. It must have been the summer, because I remember it being oppressively hot and humid, the sun so bright that the shadows looked crisp and sharp and the air shimmered as we ran through it, pushing ourselves to exhaustion. I finished a whole litre sports bottle of water, plus half of it again before the training was finished.
Our coach pushed us hard and all of us were often late to the first class after lunch. That Tuesday was no exception. Like always, we arrived in our classes sweaty, pink-cheeked or even red-faced, our white blouses blotted grey with wet patches from freshly-showered hair. I still hadn't cooled down, and kept sipping from my water bottle to bring the temperature back down.
If it had been my English class, or maybe Art and Design, maybe nothing would have happened. Maybe that Tuesday would have been ordinary. But that day I had mathematics after lunch, and it was a test. I put my hand up to ask if I could go to the bathroom, and Miss Smith looked at me with a smirk.
"You had your chance at lunch time, Maggie."
I tried to put the growing need to pee out of my mind. I could feel my bladder pushing insistently against the waistband of my skirt, but I am a top-grade hockey player, and we had been through classes and trainings about mental strength. I knew how to control my body better than most people. I told myself the need to pee was an electrical signal, something I could ignore.
It worked - and maybe it worked too well. Because it was not until late through the last period of the day - history with Mr Whatley - that I felt a wave of urgent pressure in my bladder again. I looked at the clock: only another fifteen minutes, and then I could make it to the toilet before heading to catch the school bus. No problem.
Until, that is, one of the boys began coughing. I turned around and could see vape fumes at the back of the room, and the class all at once erupted in pandemonium, the boys all laughing and mocking each other, and Mr Whatley struggling to regain control. He demanded the vape and nobody would give it up.
Please, I thought: please just hand it over. I had an awful feeling that Mr Whatley would hold the class back after school as punishment, and that I would lose my window of opportunity to make it to the bathroom.
The bell rang and I began packing up my stuff, but Mr Whatley had lost it.
"None of you are going ANYWHERE until the culprit comes forward!" he screamed, his sallow cheeks pulsing purple and red with anger.
I sank into the hard plastic seat, and the impact gave me a jolt of electricity through my pelvis. I began to squeeze my thighs together, fiddling with a pen under the table to keep my mind off my bladder. I tried thinking about something else, anything else to distract me from the rising panic that I might not have time before I had to catch the bus. I began to fret and stress myself out: I lived over an hour away, none of my older friends with cars lived anywhere near. Missing the bus was not an option - Tuesday is when both of my parents worked in the city, a long train journey away. They wouldn't be home until later in the evening. I had to be a big girl and look after myself.
The need to release my bladder suddenly hit me in a wave. I leaned forwards, the pressure was hot and electric inside me. Back to the mental game: I began to talk to myself, using everything I had learnt about sports psychology to bring my urges back under control. Plus, I told myself, you're eighteen, not a child. You're much too old to wet your pants at school.
After what felt like an age, Mr Whatley gave up. I think he realised he would be in trouble if he caused any of us problems getting home. He begrudgingly let us out of the door, and I began to walk quickly down the corridor, leaving so abruptly I forgot to say goodbye to Clara.
