Another Greaser Challenge - Ch. 03

I

The three remaining contestants, Sawyer, Max and Thorne, had watched all of Eros's MPB makeover first with a sort of morbid curiosity and then with increasing alarm. It was one thing to see the Stylist on the television, from the safety of one's own home. It was quite another to see him in the flesh, so to speak, as he worked his particular brand of destructive magic upon Eros's shoulder-length mane.

After all, barbers usually strive to make a man look better. Very few purposely set out to make him look significantly worse.

The spectacle had made all three men acutely aware of the prized hair that was still attached to their heads. The prospect of being led like a dog, like someone's personal goddamn pet, towards the Stylist's chair and then having to sit there, obedient and submissive, as their signature haircuts were obliterated in such a relentlessly humiliating way...

The wealthy socialite Thorne Ravenscroft had watched with a sort of studied, ironic detachment but his thoughts constantly returned to the immaculately-styled golden strands of his own oil-soaked hair.

What would it really feel like, he wondered, to have the Stylist buckle that leather collar around his own well-bred neck, to lead him like an animal to the altar upon which his own supreme good looks would be sacrificed in front of a baying, bellowing, unsympathetic crowd.

Knowing the sacrilege would be performed beneath the studio lights, before TV cameras that would broadcast every lurid moment of his degradation into the homes of millions of Americans... the idea filled him with an indescribable combination of terror and the most profound, kinky arousal.

Every two weeks Marcel arrived at the Ravenscroft mansion on East Mapleton Drive in Bel Air and carefully trimmed and pimped Thorne's hair to perfection. With its flawless execution and attention to detail, the haircut was a testament both to the skill of its creator and the discerning taste of its wearer.

And it reeked of expense. Every single one of Thorne's blond hairs had been cut to precisely the correct length and then slicked into position with the most luxurious combination of exotic oils and greases imported from Zanzibar. In all of his 29 years, no clippers had ever been within buzzing distance of Thorne Ravenscroft's glorious golden locks. It was, by any measure, an exceptionally handsome haircut for an extremely handsome man.

The Stylist sat in one of the two empty barber chairs at the Forfeit Station and waited for the next round to begin. It promised to be a fun one, another change to the format made especially for the show's second episode: the Pomade Packing Challenge.

Sawyer, Max and Thorne were ushered out of the diner set and into another part of the studio that had been dressed to look like a small pomade factory. The cloying scent of vanilla, sandalwood and petroleum jelly hung in the air. Three conveyor belts emerged from the back wall of the set, a black curtain concealing each opening. The three men were allocated their own conveyor belt and went to stand next to a stack of small cardboard boxes stamped with the show's own logo: a straight razor imposed on a handlebar mustache.

As the announcer explained the rules for the benefit of the viewers, the Stylist looked across at Eros who was staring out towards the audience, his fat mustache bristling, stewing in the realization that most of his beloved hair was now lying at his feet.

"... to neatly pack as many jars of pomade into..."

It was, the Stylist thought, one of the most satisfying transformations he'd ever done. To take a handsome man with a full head of the most attractive shoulder-length hair, which obviously meant so much to him, and to skin him down into full-blown male-pattern baldness... What an incredible rush it had been!

"... but the pace will only get quicker and quicker! Who will..."

The vast expanse of Eros's bald, newly-exposed dome perspired under the hot studio lights surrounded by that ridiculous ring of greased fringe. He really did look a completely different person. It was an intensely masculine look, true, but it was the look of masculinity gone to seed, of middle-age spread, of grunting when getting out of a chair. The thick patriarchal mustache was just the icing on the cake.

"... who packs the fewest jars will inevitably face the Stylist's shears! His razor! His clippers! in a makeover that will leave them utterly..."

The Stylist wondered for how long Eros would keep his new MPB hairdo. Would he go full-bald as soon as possible and take it all off, total chrome dome, that absurd fringe joining the rest of his hair in the trash? Or would he keep the new style and let it grow out naturally?

Or more intriguingly, and you may well think this suggestion too outlandish even to contemplate but believe me, stranger things have happened, would he actually maintain the look and live his life going forward as an MPB man by choice?

"... can rise to the challenge and who will fall victim to the Stylist's merciless hands..."

The Stylist didn't think Eros's new extreme haircut would go down too well in Pasadena. He could only imagine the intensity with which the poor man's cheeks would burn as he arrives off the bus, shame-faced, back at the commune with his glorious mane decimated, his female followers gathering around, crying, wailing, cooing with dismay as they finger his nude scalp and stroke that oiled fringe, as if to convince themselves of the grim reality of it.

"The Pomade Packing Challenge is about to..."

The entire harem would all miss Eros's magnificent manly locks, the Stylist was sure of it. But perhaps they too would learn to love the look, not because it was male-pattern baldness but because it was *his* male-pattern baldness.

Perhaps the ruination of Eros's shoulder-length locks would be like a martyr's sacrifice and the pity they'd feel, bereft as they'd be with the passing of his sumptuous long hair, would turn into a sort of divine worship as their hands grew accustomed to that smooth hairless crown and the short tragic fringe.

They had already venerated one classic male archetype in the form of their charismatic, youthful, long-haired and bearded leader. Who was to say they wouldn't learn to venerate another?

Perhaps it would be the commune's sisterhood who would insist that he religiously maintain his transformed appearance via daily rituals, reshaving his dome smooth and reanointing his fringe of hair with Wildroot Cream-Oil, now a sacred unction. And they would insist on it not out of spite but out of devotion, his haircut humiliation on 'The Greaser Challenge' reconsecrated as holiness.

And so, in a gorgeously ironic twist, it would be Eros's own band of ardent female followers who would permanently consign his lush locks to the eternal dustbin of history as Eros ascends to become the chronically, permanently bald, mustachioed Daddy of the Commune, whether he likes it or not.

The Stylist's perverse reverie was interrupted by the audience bursting into loud applause. The Pomade Packing Challenge was about to begin.

II

The three conveyor belts suddenly sprang into life and through the curtains emerged dozens of orange tins of Murray's Superior Pomade that made their way along the belt towards the contestants' waiting hands. Working as quickly as possible, the three men snatched up the tins of hair grease and swiftly began packing them into the cardboard boxes as the audience shouted encouragement.

The Stylist wondered which of the men he would be getting to grips with next. If you've ever experienced a true pompadour in real life, out in the wild, you would know that it has its own magnetic allure and Sawyer's handsome haircut was no different.

Unfortunately he seemed to know what he was doing, the Stylist thought, as the greaser's hands gathered up tins and dumped them into the boxes but, oops, only neatly-packed tins would count.

The sound of metal tins clinking against each other filled the air as the three men boxed as many of them as possible, the contestants' hands a blur as more and more tins came hurtling down the conveyor belts.

"Oh fuck, fuck, fuck," Max muttered to himself under his breath, his eyes scanning the conveyor belts as a new wave of tins descended. At the front of his mind was fear: the fear of losing the challenge and with it his chance of winning the cash prize he so desperately needed. The dude's relationship with his thick black hair hair was the most important one in his life but if he lost then it would be his turn to sit in the barber's chair and be relentlessly fucked with.

And now, as the belts started to accelerate, there was music too - the 'Galop Infernal' from Offenbach's 'Orpheus in the Underworld', the tins emerging faster and faster and in greater numbers. They started flying off the end of the belts, literally rolling around on the studio floor as the audience clapped and roared in a sort of demented delight.

The crowd had seen what had happened to Eros, and they wanted more. They were by now completely hyped on seeing another of the remaining men receive the full barber-from-hell experience!

With the 'can-can' blaring over the loudspeakers, Thorne's beautiful blond eyebrows knotted in concentration as he worked to maintain his composure amid the chaos that was engulfing the studio. A sudden wave of orange tins surged down the conveyor belt, most of which ended up rolling around his feet as the spectators whooped in almost ecstatic jubilation.

He glanced across at the Forfeit Station about twenty feet away to his right. Eros was sat there in the furthest chair. The beatnik's T-shirt and cargo shorts combo looked utterly incongruous paired with his new 'middle-aged, conservative dad' hairdo and mustache, his shorn hippy hair in piles on the floor.

Then Thorne made the mistake of looking across at the Stylist who was sat in one of the other chairs, and the man was staring at him with a sort of amused expression on his face. The image of a shark smiling before it gobbled up its prey flashed into Thorne's mind. Oh god, he thought. What had he done...

Of course the Stylist knew who Thorne was. Everyone did. Scarcely a month passed by without him appearing in an LA gossip column or featuring in a photoshoot for a women's magazine. Just last week there had been a double-page spread in 'Gingham & Old Lace' featuring Thorne sprawled across the hood of his gullwing Mercedes like a Parthenon river god. The latest tittle-tattle swirled around an alleged engagement to the guano heiress, Mimsy Duncan, and everyone was now expecting a high-society wedding to take place the following summer.

And so Thorne's unexpected appearance on 'The Greaser Challenge' had taken the whole of California by complete surprise, the Stylist included. As he watched Thorne now, futilely manipulating the tins of pomade, the Stylist was absolutely certain that should the man find himself in one of the two remaining barber chairs he was going to receive the full treatment, and neither his wealth, his reputation or his remarkable good looks were going to save him.

Making eye contact with the Stylist made Thorne realize, for perhaps the first time, that his glorious golden hair might really be in clear and present danger and that this was no longer like one of his games of polo that he could just abandon whenever he started to lose.

But right *there*, beneath the rising dread, almost beyond conscious acknowledgement, lay the seed of another emotion entirely: a secret, fervent, hot and sweaty desire to experience the very thing he feared the most.

The prospect of the Stylist annihilating his meticulously styled hair made his stomach knot. But there was a part of him, buried deep beneath years of societal conditioning and cultural expectations that felt a perverse sense of excitement, yes, even of arousal, at the thought of submitting to another man's will, of relinquishing total control, of undergoing a profoundly humiliating transformation in the most public way possible.

After all, although he didn't even dare to admit it to himself, isn't that what he had secretly hoped might happen when he applied to appear on the show? To lose and then to lose? He felt his face flush as his shorts tightened at the thought of it, his cock spontaneously flexing to life within the confines of his very expensive trousers.

With each jar of pomade he packed, Thorne couldn't shake the feeling that he was teetering on the edge of something irreversible, something that threatened to up-end his carefully constructed façade and expose something dark and perverse, something long-hidden, something that had lurked in the shadows but which was now threatened with full exposure under the harsh studio lights.

Exposure. Maybe, with all his luxurious, handsome hair scraped off, the real Thorne would finally be revealed for everyone to see.

As the last of the tins poured down the conveyor belts only to cascade onto the floor in three great orange cataracts, the music reached a final frenzied, deafening crescendo accompanied to the shrieks and screams of the audience, who were by now utterly beside themselves with a sort of deranged excitement.

Finally a loud klaxon sounded. The challenge was over and the last tin had been packed. The tension in the studio was palpable as three members of the production team walked on set with clipboards and began tallying up the number of tins in each of the contestants' boxes.

Coming together, they conferred for a few moments with one pointing in the direction of Sawyer's stack of boxes and shaking his head. After what felt like an eternity, the crew members concluded their deliberations and left the set.

Silence descended as the audience held its breath, waiting for the announcer to deliver the verdict. For the three men awaiting the result, the anticipation was almost unbearable.

Sawyer took a deep breath and instinctively reached up and ran a hand lightly over the greased DA at the back of his head. He had a horrible feeling that he'd screwed up very badly. He reveled in the ritual of greasing his hair every morning. He loved the feel of the slippery, sticky oily pomade as it softened in his hands. He loved the weight of the grease-laden locks pressing down on his scalp. He loved the scent of it, like whisky and cigars and lemon. He loved the sight of it in the mirror.

But what if he walked away from the show with a ridiculous makeover that became the talk of the town, his degradation captured for posterity by the TV cameras? How would he feel as his carefully-crafted pomp was irreversibly transformed into something bizarre in front of a laughing audience of total strangers?? How would he face his friends, his colleagues, his girlfriend, Nancy!

And he'd seen for himself what the Stylist had done to Luca the week before, how the strapping greaser had been turned into an object of ridicule and absurdity. Jesus, even his eyebrows had been taken off. And now Eros, sat in that chair with his shoulder-length mane exchanged for the most extreme male-pattern baldness...

Well it was too late now. The results of the challenge were about to be revealed.

The announcer cleared his throat.

"The contestant with the fewest number of correctly packed tins and therefore the loser of the challenge is..."

There was a pause for dramatic effect.

Sawyer was convinced it was going to be him.

An eternity...

...

... that seemed to last forever.

...

"The loser is... Mr Thorne Ravenscroft!"

A very audible collective gasp filled the studio as Thorne's name was announced.

Surely it wasn't possible. In fact it was beyond belief!

The wealthy socialite, Thorne Ravenscroft, one of the most eligible and beautiful bachelors in the country, was going to have his handsome good looks completely and mercilessly dismantled at the Forfeit Station by the show's notoriously sadistic Stylist.

And everyone was going to watch it happen.

III

Thorne felt the floor twist under his feet as he heard his name read out. An almost overwhelming urge to run for the exit washed over him. He just needed to get away, to get away from the studio, to get away from the cheering audience, to get away from the Forfeit Station, and to get away from the man who was now walking towards him with a leather dog's collar and leash in his hand, symbols of ownership and articles of submission.

The Stylist was grinning and then actually laughing as he approached Thorne.

"Consider this your grand unveiling," whispered the Stylist as he fixed the leather collar around Thorne's tanned, clean-shaven neck. The Stylist was so close he could smell the other man's cologne; a musky combination of patchouli, cinnamon and lavender.

"This is your moment of reckoning," he said. "Are you ready to embrace the unknown, Mr Ravenscroft? Because once we're done here, you won't even know yourself. Or maybe you'll know yourself better... Let's find out."

Then, having clipped the leash to the collar and as the audience clapped, the Stylist literally dragged Thorne across the studio floor and towards the Forfeit Station like his personal pet.

Thorne's entire beautiful blond head was enveloped in a pomade-cloud of sandalwood, baobab and cloves which left an exquisite scent trail that lingered in the air as he was marched across the studio floor.

For perhaps the first time in his pampered life, he experienced a total loss of physical autonomy. It was like being forcibly strapped into a rollercoaster. He could feel a lifetime of male dignity and privilege melting away like snow on a summer's day. The dream of submission that had excited him and aroused him in his most intimate, private moments, which had regularly awoken him at night as a hot and sticky nocturnal emission, now took on a more daunting dimension as he confronted the reality of an irreversible and drastic alteration to his celebrated appearance.

As he was led towards the second of the three barber's chairs, to take his place next to Eros, Thorne felt as though his legs belonged to someone else, that he had no choice but to obey. With each passing moment he could feel the fantasy of relinquishing control fading beneath the harsh light of the studio's spotlights. Yet despite the knot of fear tightening in his stomach, or because of it, part of him still yearned for what now seemed inevitable anyway. Part of him craved it and needed it, and as the barber's chair got ever closer, he felt another sudden hot surge of anticipation start to stir his loins.

And then Thorne and the Stylist arrived at the Forfeit Station.

"Sit!" demanded the Stylist, directing Thorne towards the middle of the three chairs, and like an automaton, Thorne obeyed and slowly eased his athletic form down onto the seat. The Stylist removed the leash but left the thick leather collar in place around Thorne's neck for everyone to see.

Thorne glanced across at Eros who was sat about four feet away in the first barber's chair. The man looked ridiculous, thought Thorne with contempt. Utterly ridiculous. There was something almost obscene about that gleaming, newly-shaved, pale bald dome with the short fringe of hair plastered to the sides. And as for that huge mustache which even the most burly dockworker would've been embarrassed to wear... Eros's own mother wouldn't recognize him.

Part of Thorne's mind wondered exactly why Eros, a grown, adult man, had sat there and allowed that be done to him. Why he had handed that sort of power to another man. But he was about to find out for himself.

Unlike with Eros, who had endured the first part of his makeover while facing the audience, the Stylist turned Thorne's chair around to face the mirror, leaving the good-looking man a few feet away from his own reflection, his back to the crowd of curious spectators.

At that distance Thorne could see every part of his body from his knees to the top of his head: his bespoke chinos; his Italian leather belt with the hand-cast bronze buckle in the form of a prancing horse; the Patek Philippe 18ct-gold watch on his left wrist; the dense blond hair on his forearms; the pure white T-shirt that adhered so perfectly to the sculpted, gym-toned torso, his hard nipples visible as two dimples beneath the fabric; the exclusive, black browline glasses.

And at the very apogee of his appearance, both literally and figuratively, was his stunning blond haircut. It shone like gold in the studio lights as if surrounded with a halo of untouchability, a symbol of his status and self-assurance. But dominating everything else, even that enviable haircut, was the Stylist's leather dog collar.

The Stylist himself stood behind the chair, his hands pressing down on the younger man's broad, muscular shoulders. He looked at Thorne for what seemed like a full minute before leaning forward and whispering in Thorne's ear: "You will watch every single moment". And then Thorne audibly groaned with an almost overwhelming combination of horror and a sort of sick desire that traveled from the root of his cock to the top of his perfectly-greased head.

The Stylist took a deep sniff of the pomade-drenched hair, breathing in the exotic fragrance. "Ah," he murmured. "You know, that really is exquisite." He then removed Thorne's black glasses and placed them on the counter.

"No cape this time," he said. "Not for you."

A hush descended in the studio as the Stylist selected a comb from a jar of blue Barbicide on the counter. Without speaking, the Stylist placed the comb at Thorne's thick blond hairline and then slowly drew it back over the top of his head, through the greased and oiled locks. Again and again the comb passed through every strand of Thorne's hair, front to back, front to back. Like a hot knife through butter, it traversed over every inch of the man's blond head until Marcel's classic side-part had been obliterated and replaced with a regular slick-back, every single hair combed back parallel to its neighbor.

The Stylist then restyled Thorne's hair by parting it exactly in the center, combing each side straight down to form two long blond curtains that covered his ears. He stood back, a look of exaggerated uncertainty on his face.

"I'm not sure..." he pondered. "What do you think?" he asked, turning to face the audience.

The flat-topped jock called out. "Give him the 'Old Man' cut, same as the hippy!"

There were some mutterings of dissent, some laughter and a few alternative suggestions.

"No! Give him a mohawk!" squawked an elderly woman who should've known better.

"A tight little perm!" squealed an attractive girl in her 20s. "And use the tiniest rods!"

It seemed the center-parting was not a popular choice either way.

"No," said the Stylist, "not this time... but perhaps Mr Ravenscroft's beautiful hair does need to be a little..."

... and then the Stylist uttered the very word that Thorne had been both longing to hear and dreading in equal measure.

"Shorter... His hair needs to be a little shorter," confirmed the Stylist as the audience nodded in assent. That seemed to satisfy them for now. Thorne groaned as only a man can groan when he realizes that his very expensive and perfect haircut was on the verge of total obliteration.

The Stylist used the comb to drag all of Thorne's exquisitely barbered hair forward, right over his forehead so it hung down in front of his eyes like an oily golden waterfall. The locks at the front were long enough almost to reach his lips. And then it was Thorne's turn to breath in the heady aroma of sandalwood, baobab and cloves in the pomade that had been carefully applied to his hair earlier in the afternoon before he left his Bel Air mansion for the studio.

Slipping the comb under the long hair at the front, the Stylist lifted it up and held the golden strands taut between his fingers. Thorne could feel the roots tugging at his scalp. Bringing the scissors over to the now-erect forelock, the Stylist placed the blades about an inch down from the hair's oiled tips.

He looked at Thorne in the mirror. The two men's eyes met for a moment and then the Stylist snapped the scissors shut. Thorne gasped in surprise as an inch-long section of his golden hair bounced off his forehead and came to rest on his thigh.

"Oops!" grinned the Stylist.

He recombed the hair, pulled it upwards and snipped off another inch in another location. Working rhythmically, the Stylist quickly reduced all of the hair on top of Thorne's head by just one inch, leaving most of the length intact.

Soon Thorne's T-shirt and chinos were covered in little inch-long snippets of his own greased hair. Apart from the fact he wasn't wearing a cape, and he was in a TV studio, the experience so far hadn't been that different to what usually happened when Marcel called at the mansion for his monthly trim.

The Stylist combed all of Thorne's hair straight back, flat against his head again,

and smoothed it down with the palm of his hand. He then resumed the process, combing the hair, pulling it away from Thorne's scalp and taking off another inch all over.

The original six-inch locks at Thorne's hairline had now been taken down to around four inches. He did a rough calculation: the lost two inches represented around three months of hair growth given the speed at which Thorne's hair usually grew. It was now shorter on top than he usually wore it, true, but it was still more than comb-able and the classic side-part was still easily achievable even with the reduction in length.

The Stylist combed through Thorne's hair for a third time, making eye contact once more with the man in the chair. Then, starting at the front, the Stylist combed Thorne's greased hair upwards and cut off another inch.

Thorne groaned again, but louder.

Inch-long fragments of his oiled hair continued to rain down as the Stylist worked the comb and scissors through Thorne's increasingly-short locks.

Comb and cut.

Comb and cut.

And still the hair kept falling.

With another inch removed, the Stylist combed all the remaining hair forward again.

Now, instead of reaching Thorne's lips, the hair growing at the hairline barely reached passed his blond eyebrows! The Stylist combed the hair back again and pressed it flat to Thorne's skull. The weight of the grease in his much-reduced hair still kept it slicked tightly to his head. Even so, Thorne could feel the hair on top wanting to break free of the pomade and stand to attention, erect, like the bristles of a brush. Any shorter and he'd be left with just a very long crewcut, the classic side-part nothing but a distant memory.

Thorne figured that he'd lost around half the hair on top of his head. At around three inches long it was almost the same length as the finely-barbered sides and back which still remained completely untouched. If the Stylist stopped now, and didn't trim another hair, it would still be four or five months before the former length grew back.

But part of Thorne found the prospect of being forced to relinquish his exquisite haircut for something as vulgar as a crewcut to be as exciting as it was degrading, or maybe exciting precisely because it was degrading.

The Stylist looked at Thorne in the mirror.

"So, Mr Ravenscroft," he said, casually re-combing the three-inch-long hair on top of Thorne's head, almost like he was playing with it.

"Should we stop here? Or do you want something... shorter?"

A prolonged, pregnant silence fell across the studio.

Thorne swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.

Shorter?

He could feel the Stylist fondling what was left of his hair and his cock ached in response.

Shorter?

His mind reeled. He had naively hoped the makeover had almost finished but it seemed as if he was being given permission to end it himself anyway. He just had to say 'no, I don't want it shorter'. His hair was already significantly shorter than it had been at any point in his adult life.

Shorter?

He had imagined it, of course, many times as he lay masturbating in his satin sheets. But that was fantasy and this was reality. Thorne looked at his greased blond locks in the mirror, at the slightly butchered remains of Marcel's masterpiece. The side parting itself had been combed out of existence, true, but it could be reinstated and the hair on top could probably be coaxed back into something resembling its former style, especially if Marcel used a heavier, stickier, greasier pomade.

"It's your choice," confirmed the Stylist with a slight shrug. "Do you want something shorter?"

The audience waited for his answer in total silence. Thorne felt the sweat beading on his forehead as his heart beat relentlessly in his chest.

Shorter?

The word throbbed in his brain.

Why would he want to go shorter? His golden greased hair was a thing of utter beauty in its own right upon which he'd lavished so much time and so much expense and which was imbued with so much of his self-respect and self-confidence. It was a fundamental part of his identity both as an individual and as a man, a glorious, greasy symbol of his control, over both himself and his world.

He was 29 years-old. He was wealthy and virile, and he was incredibly handsome, all of which were reflected in his truly magnificent head of hair. It was like a holy relic of his masculinity.

To have it stripped off...

Shorter?

It would be intolerable.

Wouldn't it?

But the thought of relinquishing something that was so beautiful, which he loved so much and that was such a significant part of his vision of himself excited him in ways he could barely comprehend. The prospect of sitting in a barber's chair while this repellent man continued to assault his follicular pride and joy, as total strangers looked on... The sheer humiliation of it.

"Do you want something shorter?" repeated the Stylist.

The destruction of his treasured, immaculately-styled haircut filled him with understandable anxiety and a sense of shame but buried beneath the layers of self-imposed norms, dwelled the realization that he also craved something other than normalcy - he craved the opportunity to succumb, to submit, to bow down totally and without reservation and to be subservient to another man's will.

"Do you want me to cut your hair shorter?" he heard the Stylist bark imperiously as if from a great distance.

Now, with the need to make a decision fast approaching, Thorne couldn't help but feel a surge of the most intense arousal at the prospect of submitting in full to a totally dominant male, of being transformed at the hands of this malicious, sadistic stranger.

His cock demanded it. The reptilian part of his mind needed it. His very soul was crying out for it!

"Do you want it shorter!" demanded the Stylist for the fourth and final time.

And Thorne moaned like he'd never moaned before as he squirmed and writhed in the chair in an agony of indecision.

He looked once more at his reflection in the mirror, at his expensive clothes, his luxury wristwatch, the studio lights shining off what remained of his golden locks, and then finally his eyes came to rest on the leather collar around his neck.

"Yes," he said, quietly. "Shorter".

The audience gaped in stunned disbelief.

A pin dropping on the floor would've sounded deafening, such was the silence that engulfed the studio.

"Louder!" ordered the Stylist.

"I want it cut shorter!" shouted Thorne in response.

The Stylist leaned over and tickled Thorne's left ear with his waxed mustache.

"And I want you to call me 'Sir'" he whispered.

The Stylist half-turned to the audience, gesturing.

"I don't think those at the back quite heard you, Mr Ravenscroft," he said to Thorne.

Thorne could feel his ears reddening with pure shame as he shouted it out: "Please cut my hair shorter, Sir!".

The Stylist almost purred with satisfaction.

"As you wish, Mr Ravenscroft," he said as he patted the other man's muscular shoulder. "As you wish".

Thorne couldn't believe what he'd done, that he'd actually given this foul person permission to remove even more of his precious hair.

He tried to imagine what he'd look like with a crewcut or some horrid brushcut! Or, god forbid, a flat-top, the shaved landing strip on top glistening slick and pale in the overhead lights, the short hair at the front waxed stiff and erect.

It would be terrible, of course, but just the thought of having the rest of Marcel's magnificent creation shorn down into something so extreme, so crude, so out of keeping with his social status... just the thought of it... and he was overcome again with a perverse wave of excitement and arousal as his cock flexed in response.

Yes, he wanted to jump up from the chair and run from the studio. At least that would preserve the remnant of hair that he had left, which was not inconsiderable after all. But he knew deep-down that he wouldn't get up and that he wouldn't run; that he would sit there and endure it and on some twisted, perverted, fundamental level he would enjoy it even as he hated it.

The Stylist combed Thorne's beloved hair for what would prove to be the last time, front to back, and returned the scissors and comb to the counter. And then the crowd gasped as he picked up the balding clippers that had already decimated Eros's executive contour. A tremor of excitement vibrated through the entire audience.

The Stylist reached around, clippers in hand, and held them an inch away from Thorne's handsome mouth.

The socialite closed his eyes. He knew what was expected of him. All he had to do was submit. He paused only for a moment and then he did it. He actually puckered up his rosebud lips and softly kissed the cold metal blades that were going to rain hellfire down upon the remnants of his follicular beauty.

"Good boy," murmured the Stylist.

Placing his hand firmly on top of Thorne's still slicked-back hair, he forcefully pushed the man's blond head forward so that his chin was almost touching his chest.

Thorne grunted in surprise, his pulse starting to race as the Stylist flicked on the clippers, filling the studio with the sound of its powerful motor. There was no guard on the clippers - just the chattering metal teeth that would strip off Thorne's hair right down to the skin.

The Stylist placed the bare clippers at the nape of Thorne's immaculately barbered neck. He paused for a few seconds and then very slowly pushed the clippers up the back of the socialite's head, cutting a bald swathe straight through Marcel's masterly taper.

The clippers continued up as far as Thorne's crown before the Stylist lifted them away, clumps of greased blond hair falling down to settle on the back of Thorne's white T-shirt. The Stylist proceeded to mow the back of Thorne's head down like a field of wheat before repeating the process on the sides.

Thorne emitted a long, guttural moan as he felt the clippers removing the slick hair from the back of his head and around his ears. He tried to look in the mirror to see the extent of the devastation but the Stylist's firm hold on his head made it impossible. He could only gauge the amount of damage being done by the amount of oil-soaked blond hair that was now tumbling down to cover his arms, his chest, his bulging lap.

Once the Stylist had deforested the back and sides he released his hold on Thorne's head.

Thorne looked in the mirror. The sides had been shorn down to nothing! Gone was even a trace of the styled three-inch-long hair that formed the lower portion of his former haircut. He raised one hand and ran his index finger slowly up and down his left temple. The almost invisible stubble left by the clippers had the texture of fine sandpaper.

Thorne tried to think of the crewcuts he'd seen. He thought of Carlos, the beautiful Hispanic guy who maintained his swimming pool back in Bel Air. Thorne had often watched him from the safety of the mansion, the man stripped to the waist, his muscles flexing as he removed the dead leaves from the pool in the Fall.

Thorne was sure Carlos had a crewcut, dark brown, almost black, but the sides weren't bald. It was just a helmet of short, dense, furry hair. He remembered thinking how much he would've liked to touch it, to stroke it, how it would've felt under his fingers, like the soft warm pelt of a forest animal.

The crewcuts he'd seen had been short but he couldn't recall a single one in which the sides had been skinned down to what was essentially clipper-shaved baldness.

The Stylist flicked the back of one of Thorne's ears, hard.

"Hands off," he snapped.

Thorne lowered his hand quickly.

"Sorry... Sir," he mumbled instinctively, to his own utter astonishment.

He thought of his manservant, Bruno - and how Bruno always addressed him as 'Sir'. His entire world had been turned upside-down.

The Stylist exchanged the clippers for the scissors. With a firm grip, he seized a fistful of the hair remaining at Thorne's hairline. Pressing the scissor blades flat against Thorne's scalp, the Stylist snapped them shut, effortlessly shearing through the three-inch-long blond forelock at its roots.

The spellbound audience audibly inhaled with shock at the sheer brutality of it! This wasn't just a haircut. It was a desecration!

A sigh of deep satisfaction escaped the Stylist's lips as he watched the fat clump of hair detach from Thorne's head. Then he sprinkled the liberated locks directly over Thorne's increasingly exposed scalp.

And then he did it again, and again, and again, and again.

As each fistful of his once-glorious hair was severed from his head, Thorne squirmed in the barber's chair. He now knew that he wasn't going to receive anything as conservative as a nasty little crewcut. The Stylist had something infinitely more extreme, more submissive in mind.

Repeatedly, mercilessly, he hacked off handful after handful of Marcel's classic haircut, sending a flurry of detached hair drifting down as Thorne writhed and groaned and grunted in a sweet agony of aroused torment.

"You did say you wanted it shorter," mocked the Stylist as more of the severed hair fell passed Thorne's handsome face and tumbled in greasy clumps down his chest.

His T-shirt and chinos were soon completely covered with the remnants of his own valuable haircut, the residual grease on the shorn hair sticking it to the fabric of his bespoke clothes.

The Stylist repeatedly attacked the remnants of Thorne's golden hair, roughly manipulating his head backward, forward and from side to side to allow the scissors to make the closest contact with his scalp. The parts of his head that had once been covered in the thickest blond hair now blazed white, exposed and naked under the studio lights.

And the more of Thorne's scalp that was laid bare, and the more his hair was so humiliatingly decimated, the more Thorne burned with shame and desire. He had never experienced anything as arousing in his entire life. It was as though his hair was directly connected to his cock and every touch on his scalp made his erection yearn in his pants for release.

By the time the Stylist had finished with the scissors, Thorne's magnificent haircut was gone. The vast majority of that immaculate hairdo had been reduced to what was little more than uneven stubble in a matter of minutes.

Thorne was almost panting as the Stylist retrieved a bowl of hot shaving foam and started to lather it into the man's thoroughly botched haircut.

Shorter.

The feeling of the foam being worked methodically into his scalp, knowing that it was a precursor to total hairlessness, almost pushed Thorne's passion to the point of no return. As the foam made first contact with his dome, he had never been closer to experiencing that Holy Grail of male sexuality - the hands-free, spontaneous ejaculation. He was aroused, so desperate to experience the hot and sticky fountain of his own orgasm, that it was almost like an out-of-body experience.

Here he was, Thorne Ravenscroft, his hair already destroyed, about to be transformed into a bald man, in front of a studio audience, in front of the television cameras, for everyone to see. And he'd actually asked for it to happen.

No-one was fully bald in 1958, least of all one of the most attractive, sought-after men in America. Even the most degenerate criminals were usually allowed to keep some stubble on their scalp.

But hadn't he begged for it? 'I want it shorter, Sir'. Yes. And everyone had heard it, everyone had heard how he had brought his own humiliation down upon his own handsome head.

Bald. He was actually going to be bald. 'Please cut my hair shorter, Sir'. The fateful words were already haunting him, and Thorne knew they would haunt him for months, even years to come. How on earth could he go back to his old life after this?

He wanted the ground to open up and swallow him whole. He'd never felt more vulnerable and more exposed. But he'd been utterly complicit in his own humiliation. He'd literally consented to his own degradation! He'd asked for it. He'd demanded it. He'd begged for it. What would his friends say, his family. Oh fuck... and Mimsy Duncan!

Thorne already bitterly regreted the loss of his stunning hair but at that moment his overwhelming need to submit, to be dominated by another man, to be transformed on the whim of another man, was stronger than any other emotion he'd ever felt before. It was as transcendent as it was excruciating.

Shorter.

The Stylist finished lathering up Thorne's head. He picked up the pearl-handled straight razor and waited.

Thorne knew what the Stylist wanted him to say.

He knew it but he just couldn't bring himself to say it. He just couldn't no matter how much he wanted it.

Seconds passed, then what seemed like a minute.

Two minutes.

Still the Stylist waited, watching him in the mirror, the audience transfixed by the game being played out between the two men.

Thorne, surrounded by the ruins of his own haircut, closed his eyes again. Conflicting emotions fought inside him like rabid ferrets in a sack. The studio seemed to spin as if the world had been knocked off its axis. He'd never felt so horny and so ashamed.

He thought he was going to be sick. Thorne knew that this moment would mark the symbolic death of his assuredly virile old self. It would signal the end of the masculine identity that he'd been crafting for the last 29 years and nothing would ever be the same going forward.

He knew it but still he couldn't stop himself saying it.

"Shave me bald..." he whispered, almost to himself.

"Louder!" demanded the Stylist.

Thorne's cheeks were crimson with embarrassment even as his cock oozed in his shorts.

"Shave me bald, please, Sir!" Thorne shouted at the very top of his lungs as he blushed with the sheer humiliation of it.

The audience exploded in a frenzy of outraged cries and hoots of derision!

The Stylist placed the straight razor on Thorne's head and shaved him bald.

IV

Fifteen minutes later and Thorne was a hairless man - a chrome dome - a total cueball.

Slick bald.

The Stylist had wasted little time in removing the stubble from Thorne's head before relathering and shaving him again, against the grain. "Just to make sure," the Stylist had said.

Thorne looked at himself in the mirror. Small rivulets of shaving foam mixed with specks of blond fuzz dribbled down the sides of his head, caught in his eyebrows and dripped off his square jawline onto his white T-shirt.

He was indisputably bald, his tanned face contrasting shockingly with the white dome that now glistened in the studio lights like a giant egg. Absolutely every trace of the hairstyle Thorne had worn and loved for the last nine years had been removed. It was like it had never even existed. Not even the shadow of his hair was visible.

At the start of the show Thorne's greased and oiled haircut had been an object of wonderment and admiration. Now it had been obliterated and he was literally covered in its wreckage.

The Stylist roughly wiped Thorne's head with a towel. "You've been shaved bald," he announced, "just like you wanted".

He brought a hand down and casually slapped Thorne's newly-defoliated scalp, making him flinch. "Now take off your T-shirt," the Stylist added.

The audience murmured in anticipation, the crowd sensing that Thorne's makeover wasn't quite over.

Thorne hesitated.

"Take. It. Off," ordered the Stylist.

Thorne reluctantly obeyed, pulling the T-shirt over his naked head and sending a scattering of cut hair onto the floor and into his lap. His toned, athletic torso was as impressive as everyone had imagined from the way his T-shirt had clung to it, his chest covered in a carpet of fine, blond fur that inched down over his abs before thickening and disappeared down into his pants.

The Stylist snatched the hair-covered T-shirt out of Thorne's hands, rolled it up into ball and tossed it dismissively into the crowd.

"Hands behind your head," he commanded.

Thorne paused for a second or two, wondering what was coming next, and then slowly raised his arms and grasped the back of his head with his hands. He noticed how weird his bare scalp felt, almost like the skin belonged to someone else. And, in some identity-shifting way, perhaps it really did.

The Stylist turned the chair so Thorne was facing out toward the audience and then he ran his fingers through the dense blond patch of hair that sprouted in one of Thorne's armpits.

He picked up the straight razor that had just been used to baldify Thorne's head and, to Thorne's ever-lasting mortification, he started to strip the left armpit of its thatch of slightly curling, thick blond man-fur.

Within just a few seconds the pit had been scraped clean and its hair, one of the most sacred badges of Thorne's masculinity and a constant companion since he hit puberty, was now lying in a small pile on the floor.

The Stylist repeated the process with the right armpit as Thorne sat there, his eyes tightly closed, his hands clamped to the back of his head. Any remaining dignity he might've still had shrank away inside him as the Stylist stripped the pit totally bald.

Within two minutes both of Thorne's armpits were as smooth as his scalp.

With Thorne still facing the audience, still with his hands on the back of his bald head, the Stylist asked him: "Do you submit?"

Thorne didn't know how to respond.

He'd already submitted, hadn't he? Surely the scattered scraps of his treasured hair littering the studio floor were testament to that, as were his now shockingly hairless armpits.

"Do you submit?" asked the Stylist again, the audience starting to grow restless as they sensed something singular and strange was brewing.

Thorne felt his bald scalp rubbery and pliant beneath his fingers. The fact that the shaving of his head and armpits had been so humiliating just added to the intensity of the transformation.

"Do you submit!" demanded the Stylist for the third time.

Thorne felt his entire life had been building up to this very moment. He'd lost count of the hours he'd spent indulging his kinkiest fantasies of submission and domination, the pints of jism he'd expelled as he'd lain in bed, groaning and moaning, one hand wrapped around his hot and hairy shaft as he grunted his seed out onto his own stomach.

And now it was finally happening and he was being truly exposed in the most public space imaginable. He just had to say the word and the revelation would be complete. Everyone would see the true Thorne that lurked beneath the expensive clothes, the immaculate haircut and the veneer of wealth and breeding.

Thorne felt as though he had nothing left to lose.

"Yes, Sir," said Thorne. "I submit".

The audience watch in stunned silence as the Stylist leaned over the barber's chair with his straight razor and proceeded to shave off both of Thorne's thick blond eyebrows.

As Thorne felt the razor make contact with his brow, and as he felt it edging its way slowly and deliberately across his face, severing at the skin every single one of those hundreds of individual blond hairs, scraping away the last remnant of his former identity, Thorne's erection spasmed once and a creamy, hot load surged up his shaft and dribbled out into the confines of his designer shorts.

"Behold the Freak!" declared the Stylist, before whirling the chair back around so Thorne could see for himself the end result of this most remarkable of pervy makeovers.

And a freak is what Thorne saw looking back at him in the mirror.

Without his signature blond hair he had been rendered almost unrecognizable, even to himself, but with no eyebrows he scarcely looked human. It was though his masculinity had been stripped away along with his eyebrows and replaced with this strange, androgynous, alien face that seemed vulnerable and passive in a way that his old self would never have believed possible.

The transformation was as profoundly humiliating as it was arousing. He looked weak. Meek. He looked submissive. But perhaps, for the first time in his life, he also looked like himself.

The Stylist bent over and whispered again in Thorne's ear: "After the show I will give you my address. I will expect you to arrive at the specified time and on the specified date when I will take the very greatest pleasure in stripping you of every single strand of your golden hair, from the top of your head to the very tip of your toes, and everything in-between, including those pretty long eyelashes. You are now mine. Do you understand? You belong to me, and 'hairless as a cucumber' will then be your new look for the foreseeable future."

The Stylist returned the chair so that Thorne was facing the crowd once more before he bowed to the watching spectators with exaggerated deference. An awkward ripple of applause passed through the audience.

Thorne's transformation was complete, for now, but how long would it last and would he really attend a follow-up appointment as the Stylist demanded?

Of the original four contestants, only Sawyer and Max remained and one of them was destined to receive the final makeover of the night.