Weird World: Baby man
How many of us are truly original? And how many of us are so original, we're prepared to fling our uniqueness into the face of the universe -- into the most daunting face of all, the face of our actual neighborhood? Meet a new superhero. Baby Man. At 54, William Windsor sleeps in a crib, eats in a high chair and does it in his diaper -- by choice. Believe it.
"It's late on a warm Thursday night in April, and William Windsor heads to the checkout stand at the Fry's supermarket at 20th Street and Highland Avenue, in central Phoenix. Customers and cashiers stare at the 5-foot-11, 180-pound man, who is dressed in a pink bonnet, pink shorty dress, and white patent leather shoes. Gold heart-shaped earrings twinkle beneath his carefully curled hair. Under his dress, you can see his diaper. He takes his place in line with a carry-all basket full of juice and Gerber baby food.
"Oh shit! It's Baby Man," says one cashier, a Hispanic kid who's heard the legend but has never been a witness to the spectacle. "It's like Sasquatch!" he says. "You don't believe it exists until you see it." And even then, you're likely to think Baby Man is the star of a hidden-camera TV show, a singing telegram, or maybe on his way to a costume party. But Windsor is for real. This is no spoof. The customers waiting in line behind Windsor -- a 54-year-old semi-retired singer and actor, and "full-time adult baby/diaper lover" (AB/DL) -- are giggling, then grimacing. But Windsor seems oblivious.
When offered a business card and asked for an interview, Windsor doesn't bother to remove the pacifier he's sucking on before responding. "Oh, cool," he says from the side of his mouth. He promises he'll call the next day to answer the biggest question of all: Why? And then he gets into his Buick sedan -- personalized license plate: "DIAPER1" -- and drives home to his east Phoenix apartment where he'll play with stuffed animals, eat in his high chair, and maybe play on the Internet, searching for friends. Then he'll wash his messy nappies before putting himself down for the night in a custom-made crib big enough for a baby his size.
William Windsor, who answers to at least a half-dozen nicknames -- Will, Willie, Bill, Billie, and to the name of his alter ego, HeidiLynn -- does not call the next day, or the day after that. On the third day, he uses the Internet, which he's only discovered in the past year. "For lack of a more suitable sobriquet," he writes in an e-mail, "'Baby' is the name most people in my neighborhood know me by. I have other nicks I go by on the Internet, of course, but 'Baby' is the one that seems to have the legs around here." He goes on to write that addressing "every avenue of 'the why?'" would be laborious, and asks for a more specific angle. He includes his phone number.
You walk around in baby-girl clothes and a diaper, sucking on a pacifier. That's the angle. "Okay, fair enough," he says from his cell. Is there someplace we could meet to talk? Do you drink? "Yeah, I drink beer." Well, is there a bar you frequent, a place you feel comfortable? "I don't really go to bars, but there's a place right down the street from my apartment called Bogie's," he says. "Let's meet there at about 6 tomorrow night. I'll show up a little early, to make sure it's okay for me to be there." See you then.
In the meantime, a Google search for the terms "infantilism," "adult baby" and "diaper lover" returns dozens of sites and personal Web pages, including first-person tales, academic papers and links to small businesses that sell everything a big baby needs, confirming that "AB/DLs" like Windsor -- well, not quite like Windsor -- are no joke. Men, the majority of the "AB/DL" community by at least 9-to-1 according to sites like dpf.com (the Diaper Pail Friends network) and infantilism.org, are known to organize "diaper lover" parties in New York and L.A., where they dance around in diapers and make small talk about their day jobs. In late July, the second annual "Adult Baby Camp" gets under way at a campground in Alberta, Canada, where a few dozen outdoorsy babies are expected to show, and fish the remote Wildhay River in nothing more than a cloth nappy. Infantilism has become so mainstream, so to speak, that even the hit CBS series CSI: Miami featured it in an episode in February. But still, it's not every day you see an adult baby wandering the aisles of your local Fry's.
Straight adult babies, like Windsor -- who was, in fact, once married and has a 24-year-old son -- often have "mommies" who change their diapers, feed them warm bottles of milk, and even let them breast-feed, lactating or not. Some have wives who make them frilly frocks and dress them up in baby-girl clothes. The gay adult babies, ironically, wear pastel blues and onesies made for adult baby boys, and are often on the lookout for daddies. But unlike William Windsor, the vast majority of adult babies keep the fetish under wraps -- going only so far as to wear a diaper under their jeans or three-piece suits -- so they can function in the straight world.
Windsor, though, doesn't worry anymore about keeping "the baby thing," as he calls it, a secret. And he thinks he's the only adult baby in the U.S. (and he's been searching for nearly two years) who sleeps, eats, pays bills, runs daily errands, shops at the grocery store, and occasionally drinks beer at a local tavern -- i.e., who lives this way -- 24/7, 365 days a year. Turns out, according to some reports from online forums and psychological surveys, there have been, and might be, several "extreme" adult babies like Windsor. But it doesn't take long -- two years at most -- before most succumb to mounting debts and the hazing they get in public. Willie, however, is determined not to fail.
It's hot and muggy outside Bogie's, a biker joint on 26th Street and Indian School Road, and the early-evening sunlight shines through the cracked back door, illuminating a layer of cigarette smoke hovering above the bar. Baby has yet to arrive. In fact, he's 45 minutes late, despite the promise that he'd be here early to case the joint. Finally, William Windsor appears in the foyer. His face is flushed and he's visibly winded from the walk over, from his apartment a few blocks away. He enters to an ovation of silence and disbelief. A tiny Navajo woman pushes herself up from her stool to get a glimpse, and two men in tight corduroy shorts have forgotten to light their cigarettes. The lull continues for about five seconds before a lanky 50-something asks aloud: "What. In. The. Hell?"
"Hey, man," Windsor says, placing his "binky" on the counter before extending a hand. He wears a pink bonnet over his golden locks, a pink polka-dotted dress that barely conceals his diaper, white bobby socks with lace trim, and those patent leather shoes. He sets a rag doll down gently next to his pacifier on the bar.
"Sorry I'm late," he tells me. "Gas prices these days, you know?" Turns out, William Windsor can afford a tank of gas every week for the next 20 years without having to work another day for the rest of his life. But overzealous frugality is certainly not the oddest thing about a man who once locked down the seat of his toilet for months to become incontinent. Windsor says he doesn't want to be asked about "family or finances." But over the course of the next three hours, and several weeks, Windsor reveals much about both.
He begins by explaining what happened a year and a half ago: Three weeks after his father's death in December 2003, Windsor threw away every piece of grown-up clothing he had, bought an oversize crib, a specially made high chair, a diaper-changing table, and a closet full of specially made baby dresses, rumba panties and onesies. Now, he's sitting at Bogie's, eyeing a pack of Marlboro Lights ("I really shouldn't be smokin'," he says, straight-faced. "It's important for me to maintain an image.") and ordering a Budweiser (bottle, of course), attempting to explain HeidiLynn, who just might be pooping her pants as she speaks.
For nearly 50 years, Windsor tried to conceal a secret desire to live his life as a 2-year-old. "The baby thing" had him spending his childhood allowance on diapers and baby bottles while his friends bought comic books and bubblegum. Growing up, Windsor was a social outcast, until he discovered his love for theater at Arcadia High School -- and his booming singing voice. Both took him all the way to Broadway, where he starred in Hair, in the lead role of Claude, at the height of the anti-war movement of the early 1970s. Then to Nashville, where he chased his dream of becoming a country singer and songwriter, but failing to meet his potential.
He eventually divorced his wife of 11 years, was homeless, addicted to crack, and an alcoholic, struggling to find balance between his "adult baby" lifestyle and the normalcy he felt obligated to pursue. But a year and a half ago, William Windsor was given another chance when his father, the grandson of H.H. Windsor, who founded Popular Mechanics magazine at the turn of the 20th century, died and left Willie and his three siblings a small fortune -- close to $1.25 million each. Windsor has yet to collect his share of the inheritance. That comes later this summer. In the meantime, he's making plans, setting up investments, and being a grown-up as seldom as possible. "Sometimes, though, I have to be an adult," he says. "I have to take care of my responsibilities."
The stares and laughter are a part of the appeal of the "24/7 extreme AB/DL" life. Which is why Windsor chose to meet at Bogie's, a bar he admits is pretty rough. "I do enjoy pissing ignorant people off. I like to point out how stupid people can sometimes be," he says, with the faint Southern accent he acquired while splitting time among Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi for most of the past 25 years. Then, he lights up a cigarette, with mild hesitation. "But to be honest, I don't really piss off that many people. "I've found that most people are at the very least tolerant, if not downright supportive of my appearance."
Just then, Dan, one of the new arrivals in the tight corduroy shorts, approaches. Already drunk, Dan struggles to put together a sentence, opening his mouth to speak, but unsure of the question he wants to ask. "Wha--," Dan begins. "W-w-why?" Then, he finally spits it out. "Is that baby powder I smell?" "Yeah," Windsor replies. "Do you like it?" Dan begins to sway, nearly falling over until he props himself up with an outstretched arm on the bar. "Not really," he says, inches from Windsor's nose. "It kinda stinks." Dan's delivery makes them fightin' words. But Windsor has a way of defusing these kinds of situations, he says, which happen so infrequently, even he seems surprised. "I've got a third-degree black belt in tae kwon do," he says, later. "The last thing somebody wants is to get their ass kicked by a baby girl."
As the commotion settles, Windsor shares his David Copperfield-style story: He is born. He grows up. He becomes "Baby Man."
Only it's certainly not that simple. Born in Evanston, Illinois, in 1951, William Windsor is the oldest of four kids, another boy and two girls. His parents, Henry and Mary, lived comfortably, Windsor recalls, but never flaunted their wealth. Henry worked as the editor for Popular Mechanics Spanish editions -- Mecanica Popular -- before the family sold the title to Hearst Magazines in 1958, and later taught Spanish and Portuguese at Arizona State University before finishing his teaching career at San Diego State University and retiring in 1980. "My dad rarely spent money," Windsor says. "He drove a modest car, we lived in a modest house, and there were very few indicators that we had money. It just wasn't like my father to show off. He was kind of a miser.
"My grandparents, though, they lived really well." Windsor remembers weekend breakfasts with his grandfather at his grandparents' Chicago high-rise apartment, which was decorated with pricey antiques and collectibles, like a Russian tea set Windsor says once belonged to the last Russian czar, Nicholas II. The memories he has of his grandparents are some of Windsor's fondest. "I just always felt safe there," he says. "When I look at pictures of me and my mom, I notice that I'm never smiling. And she always looks like she's trying to pass me off to someone else, kinda holdin' me out for someone to take."
Windsor has several personal theories as to the "why" of his adult baby life. He wonders aloud if perhaps his mother wasn't affectionate enough -- he refuses to declare so one way or the other -- and thinks that he might simply need the mothering he never got as a child. He considers his parents' divorce when he was 11 years old. His father cheated on his mother with one of his students at ASU, and eventually married her, according to Willie. "I thought, 'I'm gonna show him. Now I'm really gonna get into this baby thing,'" he says.
None of Windsor's siblings was similarly affected -- at least, not as far as William knows. For the most part, he's not in touch with his family. His sister, Susan Halloran, hangs up immediately when called about her brother. Windsor's brother, John, a marketing consultant in Boulder, Colorado, speaks briefly, acknowledging he hasn't seen William in more than a decade. William says he's been abandoned; John says it's a two-way street.
William says that his mother, Mary, lives in Scottsdale, but he refuses to give her current name (he says she remarried after the divorce) or her phone number. He says she's seen him in his baby gear, and that they're in touch a couple of times a month -- and that at the moment, she's vacationing in Europe. When asked what he thinks about his brother's lifestyle, John says, "I try not to think about it," followed by an awkward chuckle. "I saw the roots of it as a child and didn't quite know how to deal with it. But if Bill is a fully functioning individual, and if it's just a curiosity more than anything -- which I believe it is -- I really don't have a problem with it."
Sybil Holiday, a San Francisco-based "certified sex educator," author and "professional dominatrix," agrees -- mostly. "If someone has the money to do a 24/7 anything and they're not hurting anyone else, then party down," says Holiday, who co-authored Consensual Sadomasochism: How to Talk About It and How to Do It Safely with fellow infantilism expert Dr. William Henkin. "Do I think it's healthy? No, I don't think it's healthy for an adult to live as an infant. But if he's not hurting anybody else, and he's enjoying himself and having a good time, then I don't see anything wrong with it."
Today, the "why" no longer matters to Windsor, so he's stopped trying to figure it out. The "how" is much simpler. When Windsor was 4, a childhood playmate came by one day while his parents were out. Bored, the pair decided to play "house." "But only if I get to be 'baby,'" Windsor says he told his friend. Once she agreed, he ran up to his baby sister's bedroom, where he'd been ogling the rubber pants used to protect cloth diapers from leaking. He also grabbed a bonnet, and his friend tied it around his head. Soon, though, his mother returned, and he rushed to put his sister's apparel where it belonged. "But after that, it became a regular thing for me," he says. "Before I knew it, I was spending every dime my parents gave me for allowance on bottles and diapers at the drugstore. When I became old enough to get a job, all of the money went to diapers and rubber pants. That's when it got out of control."
William Windsor's childhood secret didn't keep him from pursuing a very public career. Once he discovered his stage talents and tenor voice, it didn't take long to shed the outcast image he had in his first two years of high school. He still wore diapers under his jeans on occasion, and he hid diapers and baby bottles in his bedroom at home. "Everybody in school thought I was a fag," he says. "I was kinda weakly, I guess. I didn't hang around with the jocks, and I played the flute. I quit playing flute, though, because I was getting razzed too much. "But theater was my escape," he says. "I found out I was pretty damn good at it." His parents, he says, weren't so enthusiastic. Windsor's mother rarely came to his performances, if ever, he says. His father had already moved to San Diego by the time Windsor became active in high school drama productions.
It wasn't until he moved to New York City at the age of 20 that anyone in his family even acknowledged his desire to perform. Once he got the lead role of Claude in the musical Hair, in 1971 -- the original cast opened the musical in 1968 -- it was his grandmother, Louise Hunter, who sang for the New York Metropolitan Opera until 1928, and not his mother or father, who came to see him perform on Broadway.
But Windsor was getting plenty of attention -- for the first time in his life -- from other women, fellow actors in Hair. Like Debbi Dye, his girlfriend for several months. Dye, who was the understudy for Sheila in the musical, could not be located for this story. But Windsor says they had an intense relationship that revolved around sex, theater and drugs -- pot, mostly, although Windsor says he did "smack" for about six months.
"Man, Debbi was wild," he says. She was also one of two women at the time -- he thinks -- who knew about Windsor's adult-baby, diaper-wearing tendencies. "We had separate bedrooms when we lived together, mainly because I wore diapers at night and didn't want her to find out," he says. "But one night she comes into the bedroom, pulls down the sheets, and says, 'I knew it!' But she promised she wouldn't tell anyone." Beverly Bremers, Windsor's co-star in Hair (she played Sheila), says she remembers him as a "very sensitive guy, which all the girls loved about him. I remember he had a very childlike quality about him," says Bremers, who now teaches acting and voice lessons in Southern California. Once she learns of Windsor's present-day lifestyle, she says: "I didn't think he was that childlike. I guess that explains why we haven't seen him at any of the cast reunions."
Once Hair closed on Broadway in 1972, Windsor toured for about three months with Jesus Christ Superstar, in the title role. (Programs from the time confirm it.) But while he believed he "had the world on a silver platter," Broadway productions never satisfied his first love: country music. "When I was growing up, I wasn't really into the whole hippie thing, which I guess was kinda strange, considering," he says. "I loved Hank Williams, Merle Haggard and George Jones. The country standards."
So in 1976, he made his way to Nashville, where a friend had hooked him up with talent scouts and a network of songwriters and producers. One was Rory Bourke, who had just written the country classic "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" for singer Charlie Rich. It wasn't long before Bourke, now a member of Nashville's Songwriters Foundation Hall of Fame, tried to get Windsor a singing and songwriting deal. "Willie was such a talent," Bourke says from his home in Nashville. "And that voice! Wow, did he have a voice. "I still can't quite figure out why Willie didn't make it." Windsor, of course, has his own theory. "I was always so afraid that if I made it, if I became more popular," he says, "someone would find out about the baby thing. I think I kind of sabotaged myself. I wouldn't go to auditions. I just didn't work very hard. I'd rather have the baby thing than the success."
Soon after he got to Nashville, Windsor met Barbara, a woman, he says, who "thought I was gonna be a famous country star!" He provides little information about Barbara, whom he went on to marry, he says, in 1979. He says they had a child, John, a year later. Windsor refuses to provide Barbara's contact information -- nor her current last name (she's remarried) -- because, he says, his son, who's now 24, lives with Barbara and his stepfather, somewhere in Montgomery, Alabama. He says he's not sure if his son knows about Dad, the Infantilist, but he'd rather John -- whom Willie says he hasn't spoken with in "about eight months" -- not find out from a newspaper story. (Windsor's brother, John, did confirm the marriage and the existence of Willie's son.)
After failing to garner a recording contract, or a lucrative songwriting deal, Windsor says he found himself playing Nashville bars, both solo and in his own band. But the bar gigs failed to make ends meet. So he was fortunate to meet Nashville Tennessean editor John Siegenthaler, he says, at a local talent contest. "I think [Siegenthaler] was pretty impressed with me. I know he liked me," Windsor says. (Siegenthaler did not return repeated messages requesting comment.) A few months of low-paying gigs prompted Windsor to visit Siegenthaler at the Tennessean offices, and ask for a job. "The only job I could get was as a copyboy," he says. The Tennessean personnel department confirmed that Windsor worked there as a copyboy for almost two years in the late '70s. But after leaving that job, Windsor felt staying in Nashville was no longer a fruitful endeavor. So he, his wife and their son moved to Alabama, where Willie continued to work in local bars, and toured with traveling country bands. Meanwhile, he says, Barbara sort of got into being "mommy" to Windsor's "baby." She would change his diapers; she had sex with him in his diapers. "Heck," he says, "I even proposed to her in a diaper."
But things weren't always so sweet. "Any time we'd get into an argument," he says, "she'd bring up the baby thing in front of my son. So he probably has an idea that I do this." The "baby thing" got to be too much for Barbara, Windsor says, and they eventually divorced.
Most of this period in Windsor's life -- from the time of his divorce through 1996, when he first returned to Phoenix, briefly -- is a blur to him, he says, and he avoids sharing much about it. He says he continued to play in bands, he moved around quite a bit, and he tried staying away from liquor. He even gave up being an adult baby for three years during one stretch in the mid-1990s. "But it's that whole 'binge/purge' cycle," Windsor says. "All it took was for me to see an ad in the paper for some diapers, and I went out and started buying bottles and nipples and stuff all over again."
Today, the baby thing is William Windsor's full-time pursuit. And it's an expensive one. Since last March, when he got the first installment from his father's estate, he figures hes spent more than $10,000 on clothes, toys and furniture. Some things, money can't buy. Windsor's "ultimate mommies" -- his fantasies, that is -- are Carmen Electra and porn star Jenna Jameson, both of whom grace the walls of his apartment on posters. He doesn't expect to be able to persuade either of letting him "suck on their tits" or changing his diapers, for any amount of cash.
Windsor lives alone in the living room of his small, one-bedroom apartment, which he rents for $605 a month (including utilities), his computer desk takes up the most space. There, he spends most of his days searching for fellow AB/DLs on the Web, and he's found hundreds across the country, and as far away as Australia, Britain and Japan. Some have become friends, whose pictures he proudly displays on his homemade Web site, dreambaby.org, also known as "Heidi's Dreamhouse."
But why does Willie Windsor live in relative squalor? "I could go to a better place," he admits. "I don't really want to live here much longer. But the management here has been good to me. You don't know how hard it is to get into a place when you look like this. Besides, that's one thing I get from my dad. I'm pretty thrifty. I don't like to spend money when I don't have to."
He has a small TV, a DVD/VHS player, and a wooden rocker and ottoman also in the cramped living room. But what immediately catches your eye is his specially made high chair, for which Windsor paid $500 and had shipped to his apartment from a Phoenix-based adult-baby furniture maker, Santiago LLC (babyapparels.com). The owner of the company, Mike Sally, says he ships high chairs, cribs, playpens, clothes and toys to adult babies all over the world. "It's a multimillion-dollar industry on the Web. It's a big business," Sally says. "I met a woman in Canada, a seamstress. She told me she has five seamstresses working for her just making adult baby clothes." Sally's company also made a $1,200 high chair, crib and playpen for CSI: Miami, which dedicated an entire episode to infantilism recently, titled "King Baby." The plot revolves around the murder of a man who had a secret chamber filled with adult baby paraphernalia.
Windsor has no secret chamber, just a closet full of baby-doll dresses and onesies, some of which cost as much as $350 apiece. At the base of his crib, which is decorated with "Baby Looney Tunes" stickers, is a diaper-changing table. In the corner of his bedroom is a hamper full of dirty cloth diapers. "That's probably what I spend the most amount of time doing every week. Laundry's a real bitch for me," he says. "But disposables are too expensive, and the Depends aren't really baby diapers anyway." Sometimes, HeidiLynn has a mommy to change her diapers -- women interested in the nurturing aspect of the adult baby fetish -- but mostly, she changes her own, usually two to three times daily.
It took Windsor more than seven months to retrain himself "to go" in his diapers, he says. He bought hypnosis tapes available online at dpf.com and other sites. "But the tapes aren't enough. You have to want it," he says. So he even went so far as to chain-lock his toilet. "Visitors weren't so happy about that," he says. "I am incontinent now. I never know when it's going to strike. It's to the point now where if I didn't wear diapers, I wouldn't have the time to get to a bathroom. I wouldn't trust myself anymore without the diapers. I've tried to close every avenue of escape."
Windsor offers a sort of "how to" on self-diaper-changing: "Well, first, of course, I have to take off the wet or dirty one," he says. "I have to unfasten the safety pins, the big ones -- which are getting harder and harder to find, by the way. Only a couple of stores have them. Then I lay a diaper pad on the table, lay down and clean myself up with some wipes, and let it dry. If I have diaper rash, I'll put on some Desitin. And then just a sprinkling of Johnson & Johnson baby powder," he says, adding that name-brand baby supplies are the one thing he splurges on. "But you don't wanna put on too much baby powder," he adds. "Too much dulls the absorbency."
In his kitchen, Windsor's decorated his refrigerator with block-letter magnets. Today it reads: BE GOOD BABY. In the cabinets above his sink, there are dozens of jars of Gerber baby food -- yellow squash, vanilla custard, and meat 'n' veggies. He doesn't eat the baby food every day ("I probably eat 50 percent baby food, 50 percent adult food," he says), but it does have its nutritional benefits, he insists. "I've dieted with baby food before. It's not the best tasting, although some of those desserts are really good. But there's almost zero fat," he says. "S'ghettis are my favorite. I really don't like the broccoli and cheese. That's gross!"
William Windsor isn't too naive to know that some women -- who will insist that they want to be his mommy, no strings attached -- will attempt to dupe him into giving them chunks of his inheritance. Some already have. Like a woman he calls "Helen," whom he met about a year ago at his apartment complex. "There aren't too many women who just come up to you and say they wanna be your mommy," Windsor says. "I shoulda known from the beginning." But Windsor ended up giving Helen little chunks of cash here and there, taking her to the grocery store several times a day, buying cartons of cigarettes and giving her rides at Helen's beck and call. In return, Helen simply called him Baby, played games once in a while, and went along to be photographed at Glamour Shots. Eventually, Windsor stopped answering Helen's calls because he felt like he was being conned, and hasn't seen her in months. When he returned to Phoenix from Tennessee after his last attempt at a career in country music about seven years ago, he met "Anna," whom he considers his "best mommy ever."
Windsor says he was briefly homeless, lived in a shelter, and finally worked his way -- via a telemarketing job -- back into a small apartment in north Phoenix. He met Anna through mutual acquaintances, and shortly thereafter, he told her about his adult baby urges. "I always tell women from the beginning," he says. Anna had a boyfriend, though, and she was hooked on crack, Windsor says. Still, he helped her out with groceries once in a while before eventually allowing her to stay with him. They did crack together, and it wasn't long before Windsor found himself hooked as well. "She was a great mommy," he says about Anna. But, like many women, Windsor says, she wouldn't change his diapers. Nor did they have sex. In fact, Windsor says he's been celibate for nine years now. He doesn't even masturbate, he says.
"When I was married, I'd often have sex with my wife while I was wearing the diaper," he explains. "But every time we finished, I felt so dirty, like it was something I wasn't supposed to be doing." Windsor would then "throw away" all of his diapers, bottles, bibs and dresses, vowing never to do "the baby thing" again. That never lasted more than three months at a time. "I figured the best way for me to avoid that was to just stop having sex," he says. Eventually, his relationship with Anna ended because of her drug problems, he says. Now, he's got a new mommy, although she won't change his diapers or let him breast-feed.
Anita -- who requests her last name not be printed because she fears Child Protective Services might put her on its radar -- is a 44-year-old woman whom Windsor met through mutual friends in the north Phoenix neighborhood he lived two years ago. Anita knew about "the baby thing" before she'd ever met Windsor. "I don't think there's really anything weird about him," Anita says, as her 5-year-old son plays on swings at Los Olivos Park, behind Windsor's apartment complex. William sits at a park bench next to her. "I think it's something everybody wishes they could do. Who doesn't just want to be taken care of and mothered all day?" Anita says she gets to fulfill her urge to nurture, as her son runs through a sandbox in the park. She has an older son who moved out of the house years ago. "These are my boys," she says. But she won't change Windsor's diapers. "That's just not something I'm comfortable with." She's fine, however, with her son playing "roll the ball" with "Baby." "Oh, my son loves 'Baby,'" she insists. "A lot of times, because he thinks [Windsor] is just one big baby, he starts to beat up on him! It's really funny to see it."
The air in William Windsor's apartment has become stagnant, and he's got a fan blowing full blast in his living room to combat the early stages of summer. Unfortunately, he's also got a dirty diaper. The smell of adult feces festering in his shorts is nauseating. "You'll have to excuse me," he says. "I had an accident about 10 minutes ago, and I didn't have time to change myself."
The liquidation of his father's estate began last year. In December, in fact, a pair of rare watches his father owned were sold by the San Francisco auction house Bonham & Butterfield's for more than $600,000. One of the watches -- an 18 karat pink gold Patek Philippe -- sold for a record $374,750 on its own. Windsor insists that, once he signs the final paperwork later this summer to receive his inheritance, the money won't change his lifestyle. He refuses even to contemplate the idea. "I'm not gonna fight it anymore," he says. "Sure, I could definitely be 'normal' -- whatever that means -- not having to worry about money anymore. But this is who I am." He's working with a JP Morgan investment banker, whom he says has set up "an investor's allowance" for him. "I don't need anything extravagant," he says. But he will move out of his apartment, possibly before the lease is up. He'd like to find a house, but he's worried about homeowners associations, and neighbors who might make it difficult for him to live in peace. "Of course, my investment banker tells me not to worry about that, but I know better," he says.
More likely, he'll buy a trailer or a condo somewhere in the East Valley, and turn it into a larger dollhouse than the one he currently lives in. "If I became 'normal,'" he says, "I'd throw out everything, waste a ton of money, and then I'd just go back out and buy it all again in three or four months. But I think I'm in a position where I don't have to worry about that anymore. I'm able to live my dream."
But he's still looking for someone to change his diapers."
PICTURES of baby man here. Article by Joe Watson for Phoenix New Times.
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