Amelia Watches While Other Do, Part 1 – Reflection

Prologue

I stared at my reflection in the mirror, my long raven thigh-length hair slicked back as tight as possible against my scalp, pulled up into its usual high ponytail. I felt the neatly trimmed ends swishing against my bottom in their familiar way as I sashayed from side to side. The harsh tension on my forehead that smoothed my skin and lifted my eyebrows was an addictive sensation that I had always relished.

From time to time, with my hair sleek against my head, I would bizarrely imagine what it would be like to be bald. To feel the smoothness of my scalp in the breeze, without any hair to weigh me down. I would be placing my striking eyes, my bold lips, and my delicate ears on permanent display. However, the notion was clearly absurd, ridiculous even, and yet, the fantasy sent a shiver of excitement through me every time I imagined it.

Having checked my reflection in the mirror, I pushed the thought away, telling myself I was just in a strange mood … but I knew it was more than that. Although I had failed to understand the origin of my fantasy, the sensation, the vulnerability, and the raw exposure of being bald, had always stirred something deep within me.

Reality

As an accountant working from home, I enjoyed the freedom of my flexible schedule. However, to maintain personal discipline, I always wore a smart skirt suit and blouse. It was a uniform of sorts, one that made me feel professional and in control. While I often did not see anyone in the flesh from one day to the next, I found the notion of appearing in a business video call wearing my pyjamas completely unacceptable.

It was a demanding occupation that held my attention. But sometimes, during a particularly taxing project, I would catch myself playing with my hair. Twirling the ends of my ponytail around my fingers, smoothing the drawn back hair to lie as flat as possible, or tugging the base to ensure I had secured it as tight as possible. I realised it was an obsession, but one I found difficult to break.

One day, an unexpected distraction from a tricky work problem took precedence over my hair. There was an urgent knock at the door. It was my neighbour, Emily, looking distressed.

‘Amelia,’ she cried, ‘my car won’t start, and Jason is due to attend the induction for his air force training today. We need to leave now, and he must not be late, so please could you take us,’ she begged.

‘No problem, Emily,’ I confirmed, knowing that her life revolved around her son, Jason. Not the first time, I wondered how she would cope once he joined the military and lived away from home.

I would miss him too as he was a cute kid. He acted bashful around me, and I suspected he had a crush on me. It was very flattering as I was approaching twice his age!

I did not have time to change, despite my work attire feeling a bit formal for a day out with the neighbours. However, I felt good with my long black hair in its signature sleek and high ponytail. Dressed in my short grey skirt and matching blazer, worn over a crisp white blouse with a bow at the collar, I felt no desire to change my appearance.

Expedition

‘Thank you, Mrs Patterson,’ a blushing Jason blurted out when his mum gave him an obvious nudge. ‘For taking me … er, that is, driving me … to the base.’

‘My pleasure, Jason,’ I smiled, doing my best not to act demure, and thus save his blushes. I casually flicked my ponytail back over my shoulder and adjusted the hem of my short skirt.

‘You look, er, nice … Mrs Patterson,’ he stuttered, making me realise he may never have seen me in my office attire. I reserved it for uninterrupted working from home or the occasional foray into the office.

‘Thank you, Jason, I simpered. ‘That’s so sweet of you.’

I had repeatedly asked him to call me by my first name as he got older, more so since he came of age, but he always reverted to formality. I found it pleasantly endearing.

Jason looked excited about his future, but a worried frown kept clouding his features as we sped through the city streets to the military base on the edge of town. He repeatedly ran nervous fingers through his shoulder-length floppy hair that he had sported for all the years that I had known the family. There was no doubt it suited his features and his personality, and it gave him a raffish and unconventional charm.

I could not resist teasing him. ‘Will they let you keep you all that hair, Jason?’ I asked mischievously, a spark of excitement igniting within me at the thought of a grumpy old barber shearing off his hair.

He stuttered in response, ‘Er, I… er, don’t know, Mrs. Patterson. Maybe …’

‘Ah, it would be such a shame,’ I commiserated, grinning at him in the rearview mirror, flicking my ponytail behind my seat and watching it brush his face. ‘Perhaps you can wear it in a bun, or a braid, or something. Like the women?’ I suggested, maintaining an innocent expression.

‘Perhaps …’ he murmured unconvincingly, but clearly not wishing to dwell on the subject.

‘Or are women in the military not allowed to have long hair?’ I pressed, remembering an old film starring Demi Moore in the forces, when she shaved off her own hair. I had no idea whether it was compulsory for women in the military to have short hair, but I do remember every stroke of the hairclippers through Demi’s hair in that film. Primarily because I watched the shaving scene repeatedly, and I was worried I might have worn out the DVD when I returned it to the shop … and following each time I borrowed it thereafter! ‘Do you know, Jason?’

He just shrugged, Having given Jason something else to worry about, he looked more anxious than ever. I may have been a little cruel, but I still chuckled inwardly, enjoying the effect my words had on him.

‘Amelia,’ Jason’s mother stepped in abruptly, firing a warning glare in my direction. ‘I expect they’ll just want to give his hair a trim.’

Emily was undoubtedly admonishing me for my insensitivity. But I just winked at Jason reassuringly, but then made a flamboyant gesture of smoothing back the hair from my forehead and caressing my long ponytail.

Deliverance

We arrived at the military base, and Emily and Jason headed inside to finalise the lad’s enrolment process. I waited patiently at a table outside a nearby café, sipping a cup of coffee, alternately browsing my phone and indulging in people watching.

Sometime later, a commotion across the street interrupted my musings. A line of young recruits, headed by Jason, were marching briskly down the street. They all wore a uniform T-shirt and shorts, with hair of varying colour and length being their primary distinguishing feature. Jason stood out with his blonde shoulder length locks, although there was a woman who had auburn hair that she had secured in a modest bun at her nape, and her hair might have been longer.

The recruits filed into a nearby shop, across the precinct and just a short distance from where I sat. A sign above its large window unimaginatively proclaimed the premises to be Shauna’s Barbershop. My vision of a grumpy old guy shearing Jason’s locks, morphed into a plump old woman doing the same.

After a brief delay, I observed Jason as he settled into a large traditional barber’s chair by the window, his long hair cascading over the backrest.

A woman, who I assumed was Shauna, appeared behind him, draping him with a large haircutting cape. She bore no relationship to the revised vision that had formed in my mind. She was neither old nor plump. I judged she was around 30 years old – a similar age to me – and had a figure to die for, accentuated by the extremely short white dress that hugged her curves. A zip rose up from the hem and it tried to secure the front of the garment. However, it struggled to pass her breasts, leaving an enticing amount of her cleavage on display.

Wavy auburn hair tumbled past Shauna’s shoulders and beautifully framed her attractive features. I imagined that whatever she required from the recruits, they would be putty in her hands … and, deep down, a part of me wondered if I would be too.

Without any preamble, I watched as a grinning Shauna raised a large set of red hairclippers. She placed the silver blade on Jason’s forehead, against his hairline. The lad’s eyes widened in shock and resignation, as she began forcing the blade through his locks.

Severance

The hairclippers moved briskly through Jason’s familiar waves, leaving a path of glowing white skin in their wake, holding my full attention. As soon as Shauna finished one pass, she quickly began another, the grin never leaving her lips.

Jason’s blonde severed locks tumbled onto the cape, then into his lap, before sliding down to the floor. A constant torrent of hair. Once Shauna had stripped away the bulk of his hair, she used her free hand to manipulate his head from side to side. Then down to his chest and back up straight, meticulously removing every last bristle from his head. Within minutes, she had reduced Jason’s perfectly shaped head to a gleaming white cue-ball. She patted him on the head and sent him on his way, and Shauna’s next victim quickly replaced him in the chair.

Darker haired, the successor looked different to Jason when he sat down. However, within minutes, Shauna had stripped him of all his hair, and he matched Jason’s shining cue-ball appearance. Shauna pressed on relentlessly, and I lapped it up. No words passed between the barber and her prey. The barber knew what needed doing and the recruits accepted what needed to be done. But then the final person sat in the chair, namely the woman with the auburn hair worn in a bun.

Shauna scowled at the woman’s reflection in the mirror and impatiently gestured for her to release her hair. The woman turned in the chair and remonstrated with the barber and, although I could not hear, the body language suggested the female recruit believed her hairstyle was acceptable to the military. Shauna repeatedly shaking her head following the woman entreaties indicated she was wrong.

After a protracted consultation, the woman shrugged dramatically, raising her arms in the air, clearly defeated. A smug grin formed on Shauna’s lips as she carelessly tugged the woman’s bun, revealing her expensively cut and highlighted long hair.

As Shauna retrieved her hairclippers, the woman suddenly held up her thumb and forefinger with a gap of an inch or so between them. She looked up beseechingly at the barber looming over her. It was obvious that she was appealing for a longer alternative to the cue-ball style of her male colleagues. Shauna chuckled, leaning over and emphatically squeezed the woman’s thumb and forefinger together until there was no light showing between them.

It was an unambiguous message although the woman took a short while to catch on to Shauna’s meaning. But it soon became clear to her when the hairclippers carved a path through her expensively highlighted auburn locks. Shauna made no concession for the recruit being a woman. If anything, she was faster and rougher than she had been with the men. And the result was identical. The woman clambered out of the chair rubbing disbelievingly at her gleaming white scalp. Although she was stripped of her individuality but not of her sexuality as, in my opinion, her attractiveness still shone through.

Witnessing the brutal, repeated action of the hair falling to the floor, the transformation of these young people into their new, bald selves, had given me an unaccountable thrill. I had never seen anything like it. It was all so fascinating, and so incredibly arousing to watch.

While Shauna appeared focused on her task, a number of times she caught my eye through the window and smiled. Each time, I quickly averted my eyes to suggest I had no interest in the proceedings, but I doubted that I had fooled her.

After the shop emptied, I felt strangely drained by what had taken place, and tinged with disappointment that the show had ended. A mournful cry interrupted my musings. ‘He’s bald!’

Parting

Emily had reappeared by my table, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘They shaved off all my boy’s hair,’ she whimpered, distraught. ‘Jason’s as bald as egg.’

I did not want to admit that I had witnessed his entire transformation, or to confess how greatly I had enjoyed watching it happen. ‘Oh dear,’ I said soothingly, while trying to stifle a chuckle that disguised my pleasure.

Evaluation

By the time we had reached home, Emily was more herself. But I suspected she would be needing my support over the following days, now her freshly shaved son had left home.

I attempted to settle back down to work to complete the assignment that Emily had interrupted earlier. However, I found myself distracted. With my head full of visions of Shauna’s Barbershop, I began searching the internet to see if there were any videos of men having their heads shaved. It did not take me long to find a surprising amount of such material.

Having watched barbers shaving men bald, recommendations popped up for videos featuring women receiving the same treatment. I was a stunning revelation. Sometimes the shaving took place in barbershops, sometimes at charity events, and sometimes at home. While there was an abundance of videos that were free to watch, there was a surprising number of pay sites too, so I bookmarked those for future exploration.

These videos, although entertaining, even exciting, seeing real people shaved in an actual barbershop by an attractive woman barber had been infinitely better.

I assumed the induction process was a regular event at the air force base. So, I made the bizarre resolution to return to the café in the future so I could enjoy it all again.

To be continued

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