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 and barbering 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

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. 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, excitable 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 uncompromising 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 would 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.

But 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 a crude 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 manipulate his appearance any way he wanted - there really was nothing like it.

The Stylist had 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.

He 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 to 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 transformed 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."

II

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: greased, oiled and piled up 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 and it was therefore already primed for fetishization

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 fucking 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 straight back with Vaseline from his forehead to the nape of his neck. No parting, just a solid helmet of greased hair.

The black eyebrows over dark brown eyes, the wide sideburns that embellished the sides of his face, 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 as a male 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 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 long 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 attractive 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 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 striking 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.

III

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. 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 really 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 overgrown 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 '49, as a younger man, 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, testosterone and taboo desire, 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 a prominent boner as they'd stripped away their opponent's haircut and the sheer glee with which they did it. And he'd realized then that haircutting wasn't just the tedium of daily grooming. It could also be about domination, humiliation, exposure and control, the erotic thrill of one man reducing the sexual value of another. His experience in San Diego had flicked a switch in his mind which had never been switched off.

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 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.

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, unexpected 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 perverse 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.