Another Greaser Challenge - Ch. 02

I

Eros 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 and hard 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 long 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. 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 Sapphire, 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 locks with undisguised enthusiasm. The last hippy he'd relieved of his hair had been at 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 beautiful 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 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!"

II

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 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 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 hair 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 going to come 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 mane 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 preserve 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 impressive locks. In the dry dust around Pasadena, Eros probably enjoyed nothing more than a new follower running her admiring fingers through that tactile 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 hair was 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 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 he knew what haircut he would be getting. And then 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 image of everything he thought he'd escaped from his past. 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.

III

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 what you were thinking of when you allowed the barber to inflict such a travesty on your own hair.

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 slick haircut 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 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 his 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 top of the executive contour was buzzed down to the shortest, sandpapery 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 hot and hairy 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 12-inch-long locks 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 30 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 owing 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 in episode one 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 smooth 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.