Another Greaser Challenge - Ch. 01

[Author's note - this is a direct follow-up to 'The Greaser Challenge' and contains big spoilers for the original story. Both stories primarily revolve around male haircutting kink so don't say you haven't been warned if it's not your thing! - HF]

First Broadcast from the GoldenState TV studios, Friday 10 October 1958

Chapter One - The Stylist is Back

[in which four new men are introduced, the first challenge is played and one contestant gets a whole new look]

I

The first episode of 'The Greaser Challenge' had been aired to loud shrieks of shock and outrage just a week earlier, and of course GoldenState TV had been inundated with letters of complaint from very angry viewers.

Many just wanted the entire production to be shuttered.

'It was obscene!' they cried. "Immoral! Disgusting! Degrading!"

Well yes, that was all undeniably true, but there were a few letters of support as well, especially from the younger generation excited by the high-stakes competition. After all, who doesn't love seeing hot guys putting their hot haircuts on the line in return for a potential cash prize only to fall foul of the challenges and end up bald, or worse, in front of a baying studio audience, their prized hair piled up in their lap!

But the overwhelming complaint concerned Tommy Paul's blatant cheating in the final round and the subsequent cruel and unusual punishment inflicted upon the handsome Luca Barbieri as a result.

Luca's good looks had been vandalized in the most humiliating way and Tommy Paul had walked away $10,000 richer. The audience, both in the studio and at home, had not been happy. No Sir, they had not been happy at all.

Still, what's done is done and cannot be undone, as someone once said. So GoldenState was pressing ahead with the second episode anyway, determined to capitalize on the wave of negative publicity.

The controversy had certainly done nothing to dampen ticket sales. Every seat was taken and the studio was filled with a hushed but excited chatter as the audience waited for the show to begin.

There had been several changes to the set since the first episode had aired, including a couple of major alterations but the studio floor was still dominated by the Stylist's Forfeit Station, a low platform on which stood three traditional barber's chairs, all upholstered in red leather with chrome fittings.

The three chairs faced out towards the audience, a folded white cape draped over the back of each one. Sprawled in the first chair, legs apart, his hands hanging off the ends of the armrests, was the Stylist himself, waiting for the show to begin.

The Stylist was maybe in his mid-thirties, around 6ft-tall and well-built in a sort of lightweight boxer sort of way. He wore a white barber's tunic and white trousers. The brilliant shine on his black patent leather shoes was matched by the shine of his black hair which was greased, parted on the left and combed diagonally back across his head in a tonsorial homage to Rudolph Valentino.

Covering the whole of his upper lip was a thick, immaculately-styled handlebar mustache, trained and waxed, the ends twisted into two slightly raised spikes that extended about an inch past the corners of his mouth.

He was handsome, true, but he also exuded an aura of almost granitic masculinity that both attracted women and repelled most other men. In everyday conversation the Stylist was quietly spoken but this was not someone with whom you would want to fuck [except in very particular circumstances, as at least one of our contestants will eventually find out].

His background was a total mystery as was his personal life. He lived alone in a large, expensive condo on Washington Avenue in Santa Monica and that was pretty much all anyone knew for sure.

The studio's cook had told fat Maude Celibidache, who did the make-up backstage, that the man had been in the military before being discharged for improper conduct. But then she'd also heard that he'd made a ton of cash in the burgeoning oilfields around LA and that his work on the show was more in the line of a perverse hobby than anything else.

Either way, at some point the Stylist had received comprehensive training in male barbering techniques which he exploited to the full on the show: cutting, shaving, waxing, bleaching, dyeing, perming - he could do it all and he loved doing it.

He was an expert in men's hair and an expert in its removal, and he was as comfortable moulding a grease-soaked pompadour as he was creating the highest of high and tights and the flattest of flat tops.

If men's hair was his passion then wrecking it was the one true love of his life. Whether it was screwing a greaser's beloved pompadour down into a horseshoe flat-top or turning a fussy little businessman's side-part into a white-walled buzzcut, the Stylist lived for the wildest transformations.

He loved dishing out the shortest of short styles that would make even the most hair-adventurous man blanch, and the more bizarre and extreme the finished haircut, the happier he was and the harder he got.

To say he merely had a hard-on for haircut humiliation would be an under-statement. For him, the fetish wasn't just sexual. It was existential. It fed something deep in his very soul that he could nourish nowhere else and it fulfilled him in ways he couldn't even begin to articulate.

As he sat in that barber's chair, waiting for filming to begin, the Stylist thought back on last week's show and the three outrageous styles he had inflicted on the three unlucky losers - 'The Unicorn', 'The Reverse Mohawk' and 'The Friar Tuck'. This week, he was sure, would see three more equally spectacular transformations.

Barber's choice it would be and the Stylist had a lot of options to choose from. 'Barber's choice'... He sighed. Even the mere words sent a frisson of kinky pleasure down his spine. To get to choose another man's haircut... to have absolute free rein to mound his appearance any way he wanted - there really was nothing like it.

He'd already done a little research on the new contestants. Each of the four men had filled out a detailed questionnaire explaining their motivation for appearing on the show and the Stylist had been handed a copy by the show's director earlier in the day. He knew the men's names, their backgrounds, and some of their hair history, and he had a good idea why they had chosen to volunteer.

The Stylist sat up a little straighter in the chair as the lights around the studio walls flicked from green to red and the announcer's voice boomed over the speakers. He wasn't really listening. He'd heard most of it before during rehearsals earlier in the week, a dry run but without the contestants.

"Ladies and gentlemen... another episode of 'The Greaser Challenge'!... a riveting showdown... four contestants once again... a coveted grand cash prize of $10,000!"

The Stylist had designed the Forfeit Station himself. Behind each chair was a porcelain basin and a mirror, with a long countertop that was covered in an arsenal of barbering tools and styling products: straight razors, scissors, hair clippers, combs in jars of blue Barbicide, bottles of hair oil, tins of pomade, bleaches, dyes, perming solution. There were towels, tweezers and tubes of depilatory cream.

A hot wax machine stood at one end surrounded by a box of wooden spatulas and paper strips. At the opposite end was a machine that pumped out hot shaving foam.

It was, let us be honest with ourselves, a temple of barbering kink and a haircut fetishist's wet dream come true.

The Stylist's attention turned back to the announcer who was just getting started.

"Our four hot and hairy contestants will face the prospect of receiving an extreme makeover at the hands of our very own Stylist! Only one can emerge untouched while the others will see their handsome good looks rearranged before their very eyes!"

The audience clapped and the Stylist waved to the crowd. Clearly these people wanted to be thrilled and appalled by a humiliating makeover and it was his job to deliver it. He looked out into the sea of spectators. They seemed different this week. More young men, either in groups or with their girls, and less middle-aged couples. An interesting development but perhaps not surprising.

The Stylist twisted in the chair and looked towards the back wall of the studio where four figures were waiting behind a glittering curtain. He'd have a decent view as each contestant entered.

"And now", he thought, as the announcer prepared to introduce the first contestant, "the fun begins."

If he remembered correctly from his notes, the first man should be Sawyer Kincaid, a 28-year-old greaser from South El Monte, a small suburb east of downtown LA.

The Stylist watched as the audience cheered and Sawyer walked through the curtain and onto the stage. The greaser's clothes, a black leather jacket over a bright red T-shirt with worn denim jeans and leather boots, were exactly what the Stylist had expected.

The leather jacket complimented the man's physique perfectly and the Stylist wondered if it had been made to measure. The greaser was very good-looking, his eyebrows forming two thick straight lines over his dark eyes. His hair was a glorious shade of American walnut that made the Stylist's heart sing: greased, oiled and piled up onto his head into a classic pompadour, the sides combed back to form a classic ducktail.

Of course, 1950s Los Angeles was full of handsome men with the same haircut but even so, the Stylist had rarely seen one that complimented its owner to such perfection. It truly was a thing of beauty.

In 1958 a man's hair was about more than simply looking good. Buzzcuts, flat-tops, ivy leagues, brushcuts, crewcuts, pompadours, retro side-parts and slick-backs - this was arguably the defining era for men's hair - never equalled either before or since.

A man's haircut was an emblem of his masculinity and male pride, a symbol of his identity and, for greasers especially, a fundamental part of their self image. But then, thought the Stylist as he surveyed Sawyer's greased glory, that's what made screwing with it so deeply satisfying. You weren't just messing with a man's hair. You were messing with his whole damn mind.

The Stylist turned his attention back to the curtain where the second contestant was waiting to make his entry: Maxwell Sterling, a 30-year old from Cherry Valley.

Maxwell, or Max as he apparently liked to be called, walked onto the set dressed in black jeans, a white shirt with the top button casually undone and a narrow, green fabric tie around his neck.

He exuded an air of dismissive, arrogant nonchalance, almost as if he already knew he was the winner - and the Stylist disliked him instantly, although, he had to admit, the man had some of the thickest, blackest hair he had ever seen. It had been completely slicked back with Vaseline from his forehead to the nape of his neck. No parting, just a solid helmet of greased hair.

The thick black eyebrows over dark brown eyes, the wide sideburns, the heavy, five o'clock shadow on Max's chin and upper lip, sometimes the Stylist got a certain vibe from a guy, as he did now, that a man's intimate relationship with his own hair went beyond the merely platonic.

He was sure that Max sprouted a ton of hair in a bunch of other interesting places too and that he loved every strand of it, his body's outpouring of dark fur a confirmation of both his virility and his attractiveness as a man.

The Stylist watched, amused, as Max looked across at Sawyer, at the leather jacket, the blue jeans, the leather boots, his eyes coming to rest on Sawyer's oiled pompadour, and the Stylist knew exactly what Max was thinking: "yeah, if *that* was the only competition there was then the $10,000 was as good as mine."

Two contestants down, still two to go.

The announcer prattled on in the background as the Stylist's next potential victim appeared from behind the curtain.

"... a spirit as free as his flowing hair... steal more than just a few hearts... his magnificent mane... rival the hair gods themselves... the charismatic..."

It had been at least six months since the Stylist had last had the absolute pleasure of shearing down a beatnik, but maybe he'd get the opportunity again with the third contestant of the night: 30-year-old Eros Everhart from a commune near Pasadena.

Eros Everhart's hair glowed a warm honey-brown as he walked on stage, the luscious locks falling just past his shoulders. It was casually parted on the right to form two curtains of hair, at least ten inches long, one of which was tucked back behind his right ear. The other had been dragged over the top of his head where it fell down the side of his face in a very slight wave.

The Stylist didn't know which to be offended by most: the shoulder-length hair which, for 1958, was highly unconventional on a male; or the full beard and mustache that framed Eros's handsome face; or his clothing - a faded yellow T-shirt with khaki shorts, a pair of worn sandals on his otherwise bare feet.

Eros went to stand next to Sawyer and Max as the fourth and final contestant was announced.

"Hailing from a world of privilege, opulence and wealth, please welcome Mr Thorne Ravenscroft!"

As far as the Stylist was concerned, this very, very fine fellow was the one contestant he most wanted to get in the barber's chair for a no-holds barred transformation.

29-year-old Thorne walked onto the set wearing an ensemble that epitomized 1950s sophistication. He wore impeccably tailored, sand-colored chinos paired with a fitted white T-shirt that highlighted his broad shoulders and narrow waist. On his sockless feet were pale blue, Italian deck pumps. Designer, black browline glasses sat high on his straight nose.

The Stylist looked admiringly upon Thorne's classically beautiful, clean-shaven face with its chiseled features and cut-glass profile. God, he was handsome, as if a Greek statue had sprung to life before choosing to live out its mortal days in a mansion in Bel Air.

Instead of laurel leaves, Thorne's head was crowned with the most sumptuous golden hair, immaculately styled into a classic side-part by his own personal stylist, Marcel.

After Thorne's hair had been thoroughly greased and oiled, a precise parting had been picked out on the right-side of his head, the scalp visible as a white line where the hair divided. The shorter hair beneath the parting was combed back towards Thorne's right ear before being pressed against the side of his skull. The longer locks above the parting were slicked diagonally across the socialite's dome and artfully smoothed flat with the palm of the hand. The back of the haircut was expertly tapered with scissors and comb so that it very gradually merged with the skin at the nape of Thorne's neck.

The audience let out a collective gasp of admiration as this vision of transcendent male beauty made his entrance. But it was his haircut that made them truly marvel: Marcel's oiled masterpiece, a seemingly imperishable homage to elite barbering artistry.

As the murmurs of appreciation rippled through the audience, a sense of confusion hung in the air. Almost everyone knew who Thorne Ravenscroft was as he was scarcely out of the society pages of every newspaper and magazine in the state. The audience was baffled, unable to comprehend why the wealthy socialite would put both his remarkable haircut, the epitome of tonsorial perfection, and his reputation in the firing line, leaving himself vulnerable to the whims of the Stylist?

Why would a man of such vast wealth, with everything to lose in terms of his physical beauty and social standing, willingly put himself in danger of having his handsome good looks upended in the most humiliating and public way?

Was it a quest for adventure, a desire to challenge himself beyond the confines of his privileged existence?

Or perhaps, thought the Stylist, hidden beneath that composed, oiled and very expensive exterior, lay a deeper, kinkier longing: an unspoken, taboo desire - a desire that Thorne could barely even acknowledge to himself.

The Stylist was sure of it and should he ever get his hands on Thorne's stunning haircut, he was determined to drag those transgressive forces to the surface for the whole world to see.

II

As the voiceover announced the start of the first challenge, the Stylist thought back to last week's opening round - a dull little quiz that poor Tyler had eventually lost. At the Stylist's prompting, the producers had scrapped it in favor of an alternative challenge.

The Stylist looked over towards the side of the studio where a lavish new set had been created - a fairly convincing imitation of a 1950s diner with black and white floor tiles, four cozy booths upholstered in red vinyl and a chrome jukebox standing in one corner. The walls were hung with adverts for Coca-Cola and hair pomade.

In each of the four booths stood an easel, each holding a large slide puzzle measuring about three-feet square. The picture on each puzzle depicted a colorful image of an orange tin of Murray's Superior Hairdressing Pomade, but fragmented into smaller squares and now hopelessly muddled.

The four contestants, Sawyer, Max, Eros and Thorne, went to stand next to one of the easels and awaited further instruction. Each of the four handsome men understood all too well what was at stake: whatever happened, when this round was over, one of them would be heading to the Forfeit Station to have their precious hair screwed with.

The contestants had five minutes to complete their puzzle, the announcer declared. The first, second, and third contestant to finish would be safe from elimination. The contestant who finished last would be getting a personalized grooming experience courtesy of the Stylist.

The Stylist wasn't convinced this new challenge was much of an improvement on the old one but he watched with interest as the buzzer sounded and the four men frantically started shuffling pieces of the puzzle around in their frame.

He decided he didn't much mind which of them he got his hands on first but three of them would be rendered completely unrecognizable by the time the cameras stopped rolling. Demolishing Sawyer's perfect pompadour would be fun, for sure, and he had a vague plan for Max's Vaseline'd slick-back. Eros's luscious mane was just begging to be botched but he knew he would be infinitely disappointed if the evening came and went without Thorne sitting in one of the three chairs at the Forfeit Station.

The man was ridiculously handsome, obscenely privileged and had a golden haircut that had been kissed by the gods. The Stylist felt his cock rapidly stiffen within the close confines of his athletic support. God damn, the things he wanted to do to...

... at that moment the announcer told the contestants that half the time had gone already. The men's hands were a blur as squares were shuffled in a frenzy as the audience cheered and clapped in support.

From what the Stylist could see, Sawyer had almost completed his puzzle. So that was 'freshly greased pompadour' off the menu, for now. Thorne too seemed to have pulled away from the other two, much to the Stylist's irritation, so that just left Eros and Max battling it out.

There was something intensely erotic, the Stylist pondered, about two men competing directly with each other, head-to-head, not only to save their own handsome haircut but to inflict inevitable ruination upon the hair of their defeated foe.

Back in '53, the Stylist had visited a less than salubrious underground club down in San Diego. Every night under naked electric lights, in an atmosphere heady with sweat and testosterone, handsome burly men, stripped, oiled and wearing nothing but the skimpiest posing pouches had wrestled to the great appreciation of a small but enthusiastic crowd.

Hair vs hair. The loser left the ring not only defeated and humiliated but slick bald, head to toe. Bald, browless and yes, even pube-less. Some of the transformations had been as brutal as they were erotic. It was, thought the Stylist at the time, a sort of emasculation of one man by another, and he'd found the entire spectacle incredibly arousing. He'd been surprised, although perhaps he shouldn't have been, how often the winner had sported an erection as they'd stripped away their opponent's haircut and the sheer glee with which they did it.

The roars of the spectators in the studio got louder and louder as the puzzle challenge reached its climax.

Max's mind went blank. He couldn't even remember what a tin of Murray's Superior looked like despite using it in his own hair numerous times before switching to the pure petroleum jelly! His heart pounded in his chest, his palms slick with sweat as he stared at the jumbled pieces before him. He cursed under his breath, fingers trembling as he struggled to slide each puzzle piece into its correct place.

With his thick black hair and untamed black eyebrows, Max knew he would be handing the Stylist a golden ticket to create utter makeover mayhem should he find himself seated at the Forfeit Station.

He glanced across at Sawyer and Thorne and saw that both men had finished their puzzles and were safe. And then, oh fuck, he looked over at Eros and discovered that the long-haired fool had nearly completed the picture!

There were just seconds remaining.

And then, as he turned to renew his efforts, he heard a grunt of annoyance and frustration from Eros. The handsome hippy was trying to manoeuvre his last piece into position but it had become wedged against another part of the puzzle and refused to move - and as the countdown reached zero, Max slide the final piece of his puzzle into place.

He'd done it. He'd completed the challenge. And Eros had lost.

As the announcer confirmed the three winners, and the solitary loser, the Stylist cracked his knuckles and strode across the studio floor carrying a leather collar and leash.

III

Maybe it was a response to being thrust into the spotlight, or the product of some sort of latent bondage fetish that he didn't even know he had, but as the leather collar was slipped around his neck, and as the Stylist buckled it up and attached the leash, Eros's manhood started to stiffen.

Oh god, he couldn't believe his own body was betraying him in such a humiliating, inexplicable manner! I guess a dude's cock sure does work in mysterious ways. Eros tried thinking about anything: his grandmother, the commune latrines, the fat girl from Burbank who tried to break into his caravan last month!

He thought of his thick silky brown hair getting irreversibly wrecked in the barber's chair as the studio audience looked on and clapped but, for some perverted reason, that just made his hard-on even more rampant.

"This way, my long-haired friend," smiled the Stylist, and with a sudden yank of the leash he led Eros to the Forfeit Station as the spectators applauded enthusiastically.

Eros stumbled, caught off guard by the sudden movement, his ten-inch long bangs flopping forward over his face. He had no choice but to follow, his ears burning with embarrassment as he was marched across the studio floor.

He didn't dare look down for fear of drawing attention to his unwanted boner but he was certain that it was now visibly tenting out the front of his shorts. He could feel it straining, hot, hard and urgent against the thin cotton fabric of his underwear.

He was acutely aware of the TV cameras following his every step, beaming the very obvious sign of his arousal into households all across America! Oh sweet baby Jesus! - and if the audience's eyes weren't fixed on his erection then they almost certainly were fixed on his shoulder-length hair and thick brown mustache and beard.

As a younger man Eros had shaved his face clean and slathered his hair with Wildroot Cream-Oil before coaxing it into a severe executive contour, each strand slicked down tight to his head. It was a shiny, greasy and very conservative haircut but as he'd gotten older he'd rebelled against his rigid Utah upbringing until, at the age of 24, he founded a proto-hippy commune ten miles outside Pasadena.

The commune consisted of about thirty like-minded, free-loving individuals, mostly young women, who lived in seven rusting caravans on a few acres of scrubland. It was part spiritual retreat and part hippy-harem with Eros as the sole stud, and it was here that Eros had allowed his hair to grow, to thrive!

Freed from their oily imprisonment, his luscious locks had flourished in the Pasadena sunshine, and now, six years later, they had attained a sort of Zen-like perfection that balanced length with texture with the most gorgeous sun-kissed color, and now they had the sort of natural vitality that only came with a good diet, fresh air and plenty of herbal shampoo.

His hair was as much a symbol of his personal growth as it was a physical adornment to his pretty head, and it reflected not only the time and care he'd spent nurturing it but his entire life philosophy.

Eros and the Stylist arrived at the Forfeit Station and the Stylist patted the seat of the first of the three waiting barber chairs.

"Oh sweet fuck," muttered Eros under his breath, the red leather squeaking as he lowered himself down, reclining back into the chair and putting his sandaled feet on the metal footrest.

"Cape him up! Cape him up! Cape him up!" cried the audience enthusiastically.

The Stylist removed the collar and leash and then pulled the white cape from the back of the chair, shaking it out theatrically and floating it around the beatnik's shoulders, leaving just the man's hairy legs and handsome, hirsute head exposed.

If Eros had hoped that the cape would at least cover his tumescent manhood then he was sorely mistaken. Alas! as the sheer fabric gently settled over Eros's chest and lap, it only made his arousal even more obvious.

He groaned as Stylist lifted up his hair and secured the cape tightly around his neck. It was six years since he'd even been to a barber shop. Six years since he'd poured the last of the vile Wildroot Cream-Oil down the toilet and flushed! Six years since another man's fingers had even touched his hair, let alone cut it [a task he entrusted to the dainty hands of Ginevra, who trimmed his hair every month at the commune to keep it lightly shorn about his shoulders].

Eros felt exposed, ridiculous, like an exhibit at the zoo, and he felt an odd sense of restriction, almost as if he was being pinned into the chair by this lightest of capes. Even worse, he saw that the front row of seats immediately opposite him were occupied by a group of six men all in their mid-20s.

He unintentionally made eye contact with one of them, a handsome black-haired jock with a very short, waxed flat-top with shaved landing strip that had been cut with an almost militaristic precision. And suddenly Eros was acutely aware of the sheer incongruity of both his own flowing mane and his bizarrely-erect cock. He felt his masculinity shrivel inside him as he saw the look of mocking amusement on the jock's face. But then Eros wasn't the first man to pop a haircut-boner as he sat in the chair waiting to be shorn like a sheep, and god knows he wouldn't be the last.

Once he was securely caped up, Eros shook the bangs out of his face. The gorgeous honey-brown, ten-inch-long hair that he'd spent the last six years pimping to perfection glowed in the studio lights.

The Stylist looked upon those lush long locks with undisguised enthusiasm. The last hippy he'd relieved of his hair had been in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco some six months earlier. The two had met in the Golden Gate Park before returning to the man's lodgings where the Stylist had relentlessly milked him dry with one hand while removing every last trace of his handsome hair with the other. He'd even taken off the dude's two black eyebrows before the night was over.

Outside of the army, divesting a beatnik of his long hair in 1958 was a very rare occurrence but that just made these opportunities even sweeter. Most men didn't have hair down to their shoulders and even fewer were prepared to offer it up as a sacrifice to be ritualistically ruined on a TV gameshow.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" proclaimed the Stylist loudly as he faced the audience, his hands resting on Eros's shoulders. "Welcome to the circus!"

The Stylist picked up a bottle from the counter and started to spray the beatnik's head with water. Once Eros's head was thoroughly doused, the Stylist dragged a comb through the thick heavy locks so that they hung down around the hippy's head - six inches long at the back and over ten inches at the front - touching his shoulders, hiding his ears, ticking his chin and obscuring his face - a dark, wet, helmet of hair.

Eros opened his eyes but all he could see was the thick dripping dark-brown curtain. His cock jumped again as he heard the metallic scrape of the scissors being lifted from the counter. It was almost as though he wanted it, as though his erection was actually eager for it, his hairy balls pulled up tight against his body.

Oh fuck, then he could feel his hot seed churning as the Stylist's fingers pressed down on the top of his dome and pushed his head forward, so that he was almost facing his own lap, the long, lush forelocks hanging wet in front of his face.

To his own surprise, he didn't even try to resist - he just complied.

He felt the Stylist lifting the long locks up from the back of his head with the comb, low down at the nape of his neck. He could feel the individual strands pulling gently at the roots as the cool steel scissors slipped against his scalp and then *crunch*. He heard and felt the blades close and a six-inch long hank of wet hair fell on to his shoulder and slithered down the cape, down his chest where it came to rest, brown against white, against the unmistakeable outline of his erect cock.

And fuck fuck fuck, it was like being in a barrel and going over Niagara Falls, the current quickening as the precipice approached, his stomach in his mouth as gravity took hold and hurled him over the edge; and he was absolutely powerless to resist as the water carried him down, down, down. Oh god, he thought. It's all coming off.

And with that feeling of exhilaration and inevitable surrender came a perverse sense of liberation because he knew he just had to sit there and take whatever the Stylist dished out.

The Stylist continued making his way around Eros's head, lifting great hanks of the man's hair up with the comb before using the scissors to roughly chop it off, sending long clumps tumbling down onto Eros's shoulders, onto the floor, cascading down the cape to pile around the erection-tent in his lap.

Eros felt the air around the back of his head for the first time in nearly six years as more and more of his thick mane was removed. And then the Stylist's scissors were hacking through the dense curtains that covered his ears.

The Stylist had known exactly what sort of haircut he was going to give Eros as soon as he'd read his application form.

Despite the name of the show, the beatnik from Pasadena obviously wasn't a greaser and not a single drop of oily pomade had been anywhere near his hair, not since his Wildroot days of sporting that stuffy executive contour.

But the producers had chosen to bend the rules a little, deciding that Eros's shoulder-length locks would provide a much-needed contrast to the show's regular procession of greased-up men with their greased '50s haircuts. In fact, when the Stylist had seen Eros's application and read the description the man had given of himself and of his hair history, he'd insisted that the application be accepted without reservation.

There was, thought the Stylist, as he removed the bulk of the hair around the back and sides of Eros's head, something uniquely thrilling about cutting off a man's long hair, knowing the time and effort he'd invested in growing it, how he'd lived with it, for months, even years, as part of his life; the often dramatic effect that removing it had on his appearance and the long, arduous road to growing it back again.

It wasn't anything as vulgar as merely having a fetish for the destruction of something beautiful, although there was that too, of course. No, it was also the emotional aftershock, the psychological change that it wrought, not only in the way that the man saw himself but in the way he was seen by others. And having that sort of control over someone's identity was almost transcendentally exciting. It was a form of temporary power exchange which lasted for many slow months until the man's hair eventually returned to its former glory.

According to Marge's cousin, who worked for the Pasadena police department, Eros was a real ladies' man. Not satisfied with his female followers in the commune, he had recently found himself ensnared in a scandalous affair with the married daughter of the local sheriff.

With the sheriff demanding financial compensation, Eros faced a dilemma. Despite his popularity and charm, he was not a man of substantial means. So he had reluctantly turned to 'The Greaser Challenge' and its $10,000 cash prize as a way to pay off the sheriff and salvage his peace of mind.

As the Stylist casually obliterated Eros's magnificent mane with the scissors and comb, he was sure that Eros attributed his great success with the opposite sex to his hot and hairy appearance. There was no denying that the man was handsome but it was the sort of masculine beauty that was significantly amplified by the presence of those striking long locks.

In the dry dust around Pasadena, he probably enjoyed nothing more than a new follower running her admiring fingers through that tactile long mop or fondling his manly beard as his white, muscular butt frantically pumped up and down between her legs.

The Stylist stopped to assess his work: the bangs that fell to Eros's chin and the long hair on his crown had been left untouched, for now, but the rest had been reduced to around two inches in length.

"Now do those pretty long bangs!" a male voice shouted from the audience.

His head still bowed down, Eros couldn't see who it was but he damn well knew it was the jock he'd made eye contact with earlier. He actually heard some of the man's friends snicker.

"Patience, friend, patience," replied the Stylist.

The next ten minutes were spent tidying up the ragged two-inch-long remnants on the back and sides and tapering the hair around the nape of Eros's neck as the audience looked on with rapt concentration.

There's something hypnotic, almost therapeutic about watching a man's hair being cut, especially when it involves a significant transformation and the Stylist clearly knew how to wield a comb and scissors. Soon the beatnik's former long locks were just a memory, replaced with a severe short back and sides.

The Stylist then scooped up the chin-length bangs hanging over Eros's face and reduced the length by half so that they just covered his eyes. The rest of the long hair on his crown followed suit.

Eros glanced up and reluctantly made eye contact with the arrogant jock who now had a huge grin plastered over his handsome face.

The Stylist took a glass bottle from off the counter and unscrewed the black cap. Cupping one hand he filled it with Wildroot Cream-Oil, a potent mixture of refined lanolin and liquid petrolatum, and one of the slickest substances that's ever gotten near a man's hair.

He upturned the oil-filled hand directly onto the top of Eros's head and vigorously massaged the greasy emulsion into the other man's scalp until each strand was thoroughly coated from root to tip.

As much as the Stylist enjoyed the drama and brute force of the most excruciating transformations, the Friar Tucks and the Unicorns with most of the guy's hair left on the floor as he sat in the chair with a monstrous new creation on his bonce, there was something tactile and sensuously masculine about these almost ritualistic greasings that was just as appealing in its own way.

The way the oil made the hair several shades darker, the slippery alteration in its texture; the sensation of soft, yielding grease smeared onto the scalp; the sheer commitment to wearing an oil-based pomade and the undeniable difficulty in removing it; the glassy shine as the hair reflected back the light and those lingering, exotic, erotic scents - sandalwood and citrus and oils from far-off places and distant lands.

It all created a transgressive sensory delight of which the Stylist had never tired. For him, greasing up another man's hair was almost as intimate as a lover's touch.

Eros groaned as the hated, familiar scent of Wildroot filled his nostrils - something not unpleasant but medicinal that reminded him of old wood and mildew and the church he was forced to attend until he had made his escape to Pasadena. It was the smell of bitter obligation and humiliation and now it was being slathered into his hair again!

He closed his eyes and groaned as another full handful of the oil was applied to his head, the Stylist's fingers working it deep into the very fibers of his remaining hair.

He looked out at the smirking faces of the six men sat opposite him as he felt the comb make contact with his oil-doused locks, and then the Stylist was combing the hair back, slicking it back from his hairline to the nape of his neck, pressing it down so it hugged his skull like a thick oily brown cap.

His scalp prickled from the hot studio lights as he felt the Stylist's comb pick out a parting on the right-side of his head, and then he knew what haircut he would be getting.

And now Eros's unexpected hard-on was nothing but a raw response to his on-going humiliation as the Stylist worked quickly to fashion the perfect executive contour from the oiled and dishevelled remains of his former mane.

The hair that had been left on the top of Eros's head was pulled firmly over his dome from right to left and pressed down with the flat of the Stylist's hand, leaving it stuck there, each strand glued to his scalp, a small greased bumper rising about an inch from his hairline. The shorter hair on the back of his head and over his ears was combed tight again his skull.

The Stylist wiped his oily hands on a towel and then, with no warning, spun the chair around so Eros was confronted with his new image.

The sheer indignity of it was almost overwhelming. He'd been sculpted into a living effigy of everything he thought he'd escaped. It was his father's haircut. His pastor's haircut. It was his gym teacher yelling at him for dropping the ball, and it looked ridiculous coupled with his fully intact beard and mustache.

Despite the ignominy, Eros's tumescent cock was still hard in his shorts, but if he really thought the Stylist was going to leave him with something as conservative, or as socially acceptable as a mere executive contour then he was much mistaken.

The Stylist placed both hands on Eros's shoulders. "So what do you think, my greasy little friend?" he asked enthusiastically.

Hippy no more, thought Eros, disconsolately. The bulk of his lush hair was now on the floor, trodden under the Stylist's black patent leather shoes.

If any guy has ever gotten a terrible haircut they'll know what Eros was feeling - the leaden ball in the stomach, the confidence-deflating realization that once the hair is off it can't be put back on again, and the sort of social terror that comes with the knowledge that you're going to have to parade yourself through the streets with a totally botched barnet, and even strangers will look and stare and wonder exactly you were thinking of when you allowed the barber to inflict such a travesty on your luscious locks.

Not that the executive contour was a terrible haircut, and certainly not in 1958 where it was all the rage in offices, chapels and used car lots across the country but the transformation of Eros's shoulder-length hair into the oiled and slicked side-part had been merciless.

"I hate it," muttered Eros as he surveyed his oiled hair in the mirror. Even worse, he knew the female members of his little harem back in Pasadena would hate it even more. They wouldn't be queuing up to drag their fingers through his thoroughly greased hair in a heated moment of passion. No, they would be running for the hills.

"Hate is a very strong word," admonished the Stylist, with a feigned sense of indignation.

"Give him something else!" roared a solitary voice from the audience.

The Stylist turned to the grinning crowd.

"You think I should give him another hairdo?" he asked.

The audience cheered its assent.

"What do you think, Eros?" said the Stylist, looking at the other man's reflection in the mirror. "Do you want something different?"

A flicker of hope passed across the man's bearded face. He looked askance at the oiled haircut perched on top of his head, the pungent reek of the Wildroot still filling his nose. His hair was now disgustingly short at the sides, true, but the top was perhaps not completely beyond salvage. Even scrubbing out the oleaginous cream-oil would be an improvement...

"Yes," replied Eros with all the conviction he could muster. Anything, he thought, would be better than this carbuncle. "Please, just give me another hairstyle."

"As you wish," replied the Stylist graciously as he turned the chair away from the mirror so Eros was once again facing the audience. "After all, a happy customer makes for a happy barber."

And then the crowd roared its approval as they saw him select the balding clippers from off the counter, flicking them on with his thumb. They hadn't come to 'The Greaser Challenge' for some goddamn fussy executive contour. They wanted something far more outrageous.

The clippers buzzed into life like a swarm of angry bees. With no guard attached, the bare blades would cut Eros's hair very, very short...

The Stylist held them aloft in one hand while placing his other hand gently on the back of Eros's oiled head, the pomade-slick hair warm against his palm.

"From five please, ladies and gentleman!"

And the audience obeyed, counting down as one voice:

"Five! Four! Three!"

and Eros could do nothing but stare ahead, transfixed like a deer caught in the headlamps of an oncoming train...

"Two!"

Who knows why his cock had reacted the way it did. His bizarre arousal was like nothing Eros had ever experienced, but then that was true of the entire situation. Perhaps it was a psychological reaction to being the center of attention. He got a thrill from being watched, from being seen, even if it was just giving talks on cosmic ecology and spiritual transcendence at the Working Men's Union in Pasadena. And what was this barbering spectacle if not another, more extreme sort of performance with himself in the leading role?

"ONE!"

The Stylist touched the clippers against Eros's forehead, before letting them ride there for a moment, an inch away from his greased hairline. It was just a moment but it felt like a lifetime.

Eros could feel the vibrations through his skull as the Stylist, accompanied by the raucous cheers and applause of the watching audience, slowly edged the clippers into the front of the immaculately-styled executive contour.

And then, oh Merciful Mary! as the clippers started to gnaw their way into his hairline he felt compelled to look into the brown eyes of the flat-topped jock who was sat opposite him, the sides of his head shaved white, who was even now laughing and clapping along with the rest of the buddies. He glanced down at the man's crotch and was astonished, as aroused as he was repelled, to see that the man appeared to have a rampant hard-on which mirrored his own.

Eros half-closed his eyes and sighed, a single deep, almost orgasmic exhalation of air. He could feel each individual hair parting and separating from his scalp as the Stylist drove the clippers over the top of his head.

The severed hair didn't immediately roll onto his shoulders and down to the floor but clung, oil to oil, to his denuded scalp in thick clumps before it slowly migrated down the sides of his head and over his face before sticking to the cape. Eros was acutely aware of the unearthly sensation of having his greased hair peeled from off his head.

Using the clippers, the Stylist created a convincing impression of advanced male-pattern baldness - yes, a full-blown Norwood 8 - the most spectacular, extreme form of natural baldness that could ever be inflicted upon a man's unwitting head.

The executive contour was buzzed down to the shortest, sandpaper-y stubble, the fringe of two-inch long hair left relatively high at the sides but dipped very low at the back.

The Stylist then reclined the chair and used the clippers to make short work of Eros's beard, taking it off completely and leaving just the dense mustache spreading across the beatnik's thick upper lip. Eros could only stare up into the studio lights as handfuls of his hairy male pride joined the hair already in his lap.

The Stylist retrieved a bowl of foam from the hot cream machine and lathered it slowly into the other man's face with a badger bristle brush before shaving him smooth, the impressive mustache now the only visible sign that the beard had ever existed.

Returning the chair to its upright position, the Stylist then daubed the foam onto the top of Eros's head and used a straight razor to shave his exposed crown completely smooth, first with the grain and then against.

The Stylist wiped the foam from Eros's scalp and face with a towel and then restyled the remaining hair, still saturated with the Wildroot Cream-Oil, carefully combing back the sad short fringe that encircled Eros's head. He then removed the cape, dumping all the hair onto the floor at Eros's sandaled feet.

"Behold!" announced the Stylist to the audience in a melodramatic whisper as he slowly turned the chair to face the mirror, "the Old Man!"

- and then Eros was confronted with the full reality of his new image.

This wasn't just a haircut. God, no. This was an undoing. An entire dismantling. A strip-mining of his entire identity!

His yellow T-shirt and shorts were the same but now, where his luscious mane had so recently sprouted, a pale bald dome rose from his forehead like a high bare hill surrounded by the fringe of his remaining brown hair. The Stylist's straight razor had stripped the skin completely smooth and not a single trace of his lock longs could be seen on top of his head, not even the shortest, subcutaneous stubble. His face was tanned but his shaven, newly-exposed scalp had an almost luminescent whiteness.

So unnervingly convincing was the Stylist's handiwork that it looked as though Eros had been a naturally bald man for years and years. Eros angled his head down and saw the expanse of baldness disappearing over his crown and out of sight. He was speechless, almost awestruck at the sheer plucked-chicken severity of it.

What hair remained at the back and sides had been ruthlessly combed into place with the Wildroot Cream-Oil. Of his beard there was no sign at all but his cocktickler mustache now sat isolated on his wide lip like a huge, hairy down-turned banana.

He was 29 but now he looked like a man in his late-50s, perfectly representative of a sort of complacent, conservative, corporate masculinity. Maybe a lawyer with a bunch of adult kids, two ex-wives and a ton of alimony. To say he didn't recognize himself would be an understatement. Apart from the fact that his pallid dome now glowed like a lightbulb, it was a total, utterly convincing transformation.

And perhaps the fact that he really could've passed as an old, bald man is what made the transformation even more remarkable. Tyler's pink horn of shame had been a very obvious humiliation. Bizarre and deliberately ridiculous. Almost comical. But this haircut, this was arguably even worse precisely because it was so realistic. It was like the ego-death of his vanity, as if he'd been given a glimpse into his future, and that future was bald and old and mustachioed.

Eros reached up with one slightly trembling hand and softly stroked the top of his hairless dome, his fingertips running lightly over the hairless scalp. It felt so intensely weird, so ridiculously sensitive, almost like it belonged to someone else. And then he felt the contrast between the greased hair on the sides and the denuded top. Oh god. What on earth was this.

And Jesus, it looked awful but, and now Eros had no choice but to acknowledge this to himself even as his cheeks burned with embarrassment, it was also so fucking hot.

To see himself transformed like this, to have his beloved locks stripped away and dumped on the floor like trash; to have his old nemesis, the Wildroot Cream-Oil, massaged deep into his hair, the fringe greased flat to his scalp; to see his thick mustache unapologetically dominating his face, his beautiful beard a distant memory; and to see the studio lights gleaming off his exposed shining chrome dome - in some deeply strange way that he couldn't possibly understand it made Eros feel more like a real man than he had at any other time in his life - and with that feeling came one of the most profound erections he had ever experienced.

As the audience's applause and cheers started to fade, the Stylist turned the chair away from the mirror so that Eros was once again facing the wall of spectators. He would have no choice but to sit there and stew in the sheer spectacle of his spectacularly bald head.

Eros glanced across at the two empty barber chairs next to him.

Who, he wondered, would be joining him next at the Forfeit Station?

Sawyer, Max and Thorne - three men were left - and only one could win.