An Unexpected Undercut

Finally, Lindsey thought with relief as she drove to the salon, my hair is finally going to be the same length again. She had spent the last year growing out her undercut – an impulsive idea she tried and loved but proved to be too much to maintain. It had been a year without ponytails or braids or buns or updos of any kind as the soft buzzed hair, once shaved off up to her eyeline, became fuzzy then fluffy then shaggy. But her patience paid off and those once-buzzed hairs now brushed her shoulders.

Lindsey’s dark brown hair seemed impossibly thick and fell in natural waves if she didn’t undertake the arduous task of straightening it into submission. She loved her hair but given the headaches which resulted anytime she tried to wear it up, the longest she was every able to wear it was shoulder length. That all changed over two years ago when her stylist suggested “a crazy idea.”

“Your hair is so thick…what if we shaved part of it off? Like an undercut? You almost always wear it down so no one would be able to tell. Plus, you may even be able to pull it up without headaches and show off buzz cut hair, too! What do you think?”

“If you think it will help,” Lindsey said with a familiar sigh of frustration, “go for it.” She was surprised at how much she loved the tingling of the clippers! And over her next few visits a little hair shaved off at the nape of her neck rose to her occipital bone and eventually up over her ears.

Each visit ended with a sea of thanks to her stylist. “I love this so much!’ Lindsey would beam. “I feel so fresh and so clean! I’m so much lighter! It’s amazing! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

She loved petting the velvety stubble left behind by the clippers, buzzed down with a #1 guard. She loved the feeling of her long hair swishing like a soft curtain against her buzzed hair. Without the extra weight Lindsey was able to wear ponytails and grow her remaining hair to her chest. The longest it had ever been! She loved that, too.

Now Lindsey was preparing to sacrifice all that beautiful length, cutting her hair to her shoulders again. It was another impulsive decision, much like her original undercut, but leaving work today she decided losing six beautiful inches of her long hair was worth it to have it all one length again. She couldn’t take this uneven grow out any longer – a year of this was enough.

Lindsey didn’t want to grow out her undercut per se but it seemed like the practical thing to do. The upkeep was a lot and, as she learned, the difference between her undercut feeling sexy and sleek or unkempt was about a week. Plus, her partner didn’t seem to enjoy her having half her head shaved.

John would never tell her how to wear her hair. She’d been with him long enough to know he wasn’t “that guy.” However, Lindsey noted how anytime her undercut hit the two or three week mark in between seeing the clippers, he’d mention it. “Oh,” John would say as they laid on the couch watching TV, his fingers in the hair at her nape, “your hair’s getting a little long again.” Sometimes he’d ask if she was growing it out.

Lindsey knew it was too regular an observation for him not to care about it. Plus, guys preferred long hair anyway. While Lindsey loved her undercut, she also loved John, too…and not having to deal with that sleek-to-unkempt dance every few weeks was an added bonus.

A new job meant Lindsey’s regular stylist, who first put clippers to her neck, now only worked at the salon a handful of days a month. Before her grow out began, she’d taken to stopping by chain salons or little barbershops to get her undercut reshaved. It was quick, cheap, and her head always felt so light again afterwards. She was taking the same approach now, pulling into the chain salon closest to her office.

“Hello!” a bubbly stylist greeted Lindsey as she walked in. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No,” Lindsey said. “I’m just stopping in after work. Can you fit me in?”

“Sure,” she said. Then the woman took Lindsey’s phone number, put her in the system, and asked her to wait for the next available stylist.

As she sat in the busy salon, Lindsey watched a few half inch trims play out. She saw a woman with midback blonde hair sacrifice over a foot of it for sideswept bangs. And she saw a teenage boy with gorgeous curls nearly reaching his shoulder blades, wince as each pass of the humming clippers sent his hair to the floor and left a tight buzz cut in its place. The glee on his girlfriend’s face was the inverse of his own misery, leaving Lindsey to presume the shearing was the result of a lost bet, lost argument, or maybe even a sacrifice for young love.

Watching a woman bleaching her greying locks platinum blonde, Lindsey was startled by the arrival of her stylist.

“Hi Lindsey,” she said, “I’m Meghan. You’re my next client, c’mon over.”

“So what are we doing today?” Meghan asked as she draped the white cape over Lindsey and pulled her hair out from under it, fastening it at her neck.

Looking at her stylist in the mirror Lindsey said, “I’ve been growing out my undercut for a year. It’s finally gotten to the point where it almost reaches my shoulders and I can’t take this unevenness anymore. Can you cut the top layers so they match? Then my hair can be one length again?”

“Of course!” Meghan said with a smile. “You have beautiful hair. I’ve never worked with hair this thick and this wavy before. I love it!”

“Yeah,” Lindsey laughed, having heard such statements all her life from people who didn’t have to live with her wild hair, “it can be a lot. That’s why I tried the undercut. But I like it better when it’s all long.”

Meghan wet Lindsey’s hair and settled into the usual stylist small talk as she began closing her scissors around the longest hair Lindsey ever had. While it certainly wasn’t the loss that boy just endured for his girlfriend, Lindsey felt she could sympathize with him. Each snip of the scissors followed by a wet six inch lock of her hair sliding into her lap made her a little sad.

With all her hair cut back to her shoulders, Lindsey sighed internally as Meghan stood behind her and pulled a lock of hair on each side of her head down to be sure the cut was even.

“Hm, it’s a little shorter on your left,” Meghan observed. “Let me even this up.”

What followed seemed unreal and Lindsey watched as if in an out of body experience. Her hair, already six inches shorter than when she came in, rose from her shoulders to swing between her shoulders and chin to just below her chin.

“I’ve never cut hair like yours before,” Meghan said again, “but I think we’ve got it. I just need to clean up the back a bit so it doesn’t look too boxy.”

Lindsey sat in stunned silence, in part because of her shock over what was happening and in part because, once her haircut began, how could she leave the salon with it chopped unevenly? But her heart leapt into her throat when she heard that familiar buzzing sound and felt the clippers sliding up her nape again.

No, she thought, I came here to undo the undercut. I spent a year growing this out…

With a few quick passes of the clippers Meghan had reduced all of the hair on Lindsey’s nape back to a #2 buzz. There was no joy in the tingling of the clippers for Lindsey this time, only regret at her now-wasted year.

Meghan’s scissors made some final snips and then – finally – she held up a hand mirror so Lindsey could see the back.

“What do you think?” Meghan asked.

Lindsey’s mouth dropped open in shock. Not only was her nape buzzed again but the bob was angled up over it. She came into the salon an hour ago with hair to her chest, planned to cut it to her shoulders to undo her undercut, and now had a chin-length bob with a sharp angle up over the buzzed back of her head.

“I…” was all Lindsey could manage.

“I know it’s a little shorter than you asked for but I wanted to make sure it’s even. I think you look really cute! It suits you.” Meghan said as she took the cape off Lindsey and the remnants of the hair she never planned to lose fell to the floor.

Once she got home, Lindsey could do little more than stare at herself in the mirror and run her hands through this bob, cringing a bit herself each time she found the undercut which wasn’t supposed to be there. She thought of that teenage boy again. At least I still have some hair on my head, she sighed to herself.

She heard the door open as John got home from work and she steeled herself for his reaction.

“Hey love, I… It’s SO SHORT! I love it! I didn’t know you were cutting it short.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be short!!” Lindsey said, lost halfway between anger and heartbreak. She explained the whole story ruefully lingering on how her hair was apparently too mysterious for her stylist to do something as simple as cut it to her shoulders.

“I’m so sorry,” John said as he hugged her. “But listen, hair grows. And I do think it looks really good. It’s not what I was expecting and it’s not your usual look. But I think it’s cute. You look cute.”

“That’s so sweet of you to say but I’m sorry,” Lindsey said. “I know you never liked my undercut and you’d never say anything but…well, I was growing it out long again for you.”

“Wait,” John said pulling back from Lindsey and looking in her eyes, “why do you think I didn’t like your undercut? I never said that.”

“No,” Lindsey agreed, “but you were always so aware of it. Whenever you’d touch it when it was longer you’d say something about it. I finally decided to just stop shaving it off. Plus, it’s easier without the upkeep, too. Or it was. It would’ve been.”

Lindsey was surprised to see John blush as he looked away from her. “I didn’t know you noticed me…noticing,” he said.

“Well, yeah,” Lindsey said. “Your hand was always back there. It was easy to see it mattered to you, that it was something you thought about. Even though you’d never ask, I wanted to do this for you. But instead…” her voice trailed off as she gestured to her chin-length locks.

“Are you okay?” Lindsey asked after the silence dragged on for a few moments and John continued to fidget on the couch. “I didn’t want it to be this short. But like you said, it’ll grow. In fact I’ve been growing it ever since I got out of that damn chair,” she said with an eyeroll and short laugh.

“No, it’s…uh, never mind,” John said waiving it away.

“No, what’s up?” Lindsey asked. “You’re being weird.”

John took a deep breath and said, “I’ve…I was noticing your hair. But not for the reason you think. I…uh, I’ve never told anyone this before. I’ve never even said it out loud.”

“It’s okay,” Lindsey said, sliding closer to John and putting her hand on his leg reassuringly. “We tell each other everything. What is it?”

“Short hair…turns me on,” he said with another deep breath. “The shorter the better. It’s not just short hair either. It’s haircutting and head shaving and I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember. The first time I ever came as a kid was looking at pictures of women with short hair. I glance in every salon or barbershop I go past. I watch haircut videos online. I…masturbate thinking about this. It’s so creepy. I…I’m sorry. I know it’s weird. I’ve…I just, I’m sorry.”

After keeping this secret his entire life, once he began sharing it John couldn’t hold anything back even if he wanted to. The words tumbled from him faster and faster until it was all out in the open.

“But…you have long hair,” Lindsey said gesturing to his collar-length locks.

“Yeah, but I like my hair long for the same reason I like women with short hair. It’s a little…subversive.”

“Really?” Lindsey asked.

“Yeah, I know. It’s so weird.”

“It’s…not,” Lindsey said. “As far as fetishes go, this is pretty tame, hun. And there’s nothing weird or wrong with it! I’m glad you finally said something! We’re partners. We should share everything – including our kinks and fetishes.”

As relief moved through John it was his turn to ask, “…really?”

“Yes,” Lindsey said warmly. “So, it didn’t bother you that I shaved half my head? You were asking because the thought of me buzzing it again…turned you on? Is that right?”

“Yeah,” John said quietly. “I always got excited when you’d buzz it. That’s why I kept playing with it, not because it was getting longer again but because I loved how short it was.”

“So this,” Lindsey asked as she took John’s hand and rubbed it up her freshly buzzed nape, “is a good thing?” Free from fear of judgment, John let out a moan of pleasure like she’d never heard before.” Alright, a good thing it is,” Lindsey smiled.

“So…” Lindsey said tentatively, thinking of her lifetime of headaches and trying to manage her wildly thick hair, “what if I cut it…shorter?” Again, a new moan of pleasure.

“I’d be okay with that,” John offered in a breathy whisper.

“What if I did it…tomorrow?” Lindsey asked, her excitement growing along with John’s. She felt a little giddy at this sense of this freedom now dangling in front of her. She didn’t have to deal with her hair and its weight and the trial of straightening it and it’s wild waves if she didn’t want to. She didn’t have to deal with any of it anymore. She could just…cut…it…off. And John would love that.

“I…” John said before stopping and looking away.

Noticing that wall popping up again Lindsey asked, “What is it? C’mon love, we’re in this now. What do you want to say?”

John rose from the couch and went into their bedroom. She heard him rummaging in his closet and when he returned he set a plastic box on the couch between them.

When he opened it, Lindsey was surprised to see a home haircutting kit – clippers, various guards, scissors, a cape, even a brush to whisk away cutoff hair.

“I’ve,” John said with another deep breath, “I’ve always fantasized about…about cutting someone’s hair myself. I’ve even thought of cutting mine. I bought this years ago and…well, sometimes I just take it out. I hold the clippers. I’ll even turn them on and just…imagine.”

“Okay,” Lindsey said with the same impulsivity and certainty that led to her first undercut and the unplanned sequel and accompanying bob she was now wearing. “Cut mine.”

“What?!” John asked, shocked.

“Listen, I didn’t want this haircut. Even if this ends with me bald, you’ll still love it. And my head felt so fresh and so clean and so light with the undercut, I’m all in for something shorter. Let’s give it a go.”

Soon a stool had been moved from the kitchen to the bathroom and Lindsey found herself sitting on it, wrapped in John’s barbering cape, with a smile on her face.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” he asked again.

“Of course!” she said, her smile getting bigger. “I’ve never seen you turned on like that before. Plus, I kinda hate this haircut. Let’s play. This’ll be fun.”

Lindsey watched with no small amount of surprise as John began sectioning her hair and pinning up the top section. While he took his time, the lines were as straight as anything she’d seen on a salon visit before. “Are you sure you’ve never done this before?” she asked.

He laughed. “No, I haven’t. But I watch a lot of haircutting videos on YouTube. I mean I watch a lot of haircutting videos. Like an embarrassing amount.”

“Nope,’ Lindsey cut in, “there’s nothing embarrassing about this, love.”

Okay,” John corrected, “I just watch a lot. I guess I’ve picked up a few things.”

With her hair finally secure and the lines to his liking, Lindsey heard the familiar POP, bzzzzzzzzz of hair clippers coming to life. Unlike after work, this time her excitement rose to meet the sound.

Lindsey watched as John tenderly lifted a section of hair at her left temple, placed his clippers at her cheek, and slide them up into her hair – buzzing higher, higher, higher, and pulling away just after they curved above the top of her head.

Lindsey’s eye followed her discarded locks to the floor and she said, “That is a lot of hair.”

John panicked. “I’m just matching what the stylist did! It’s just a #2! I promise! It’s…”

“John,” she cut him off, “I’m not mad or nervous. I’m just saying that is a lot of hair. Because it is. And hopefully my noting that makes this a little hotter for you.” She gave him a wink in the mirror and then her lips curled into a smile as she added, “Get back to buzzing, babe. I love the feel of those things. If you’re half as turned on as I’m having fun right now, than we’ve got quite the night ahead of us.”

Each time Lindsey felt the clippers slide up her head and she saw John pull the next chunk of her hair away to drop on the floor her smile got bigger.

After the last locks of hair were buzzed from her right temple John tentatively asked, “What do you think?”

Taking her hand out from under the cape, Lindsey slowly ran it all over the velvety stubble. It felt so good to have it back and to know her lover loved it, too. “We can do better, love. Let’s go shorter,” she said.

Guards were changed out and John slowly moved his clippers around her head several more times as he faded the #2 down to her skin. Lindsey wasn’t sure if it was his lack of professional training, his arousal, or both that had him moving the clippers so much slower than any of her stylists ever did but she was happy for it, whatever the reason.

“How about that?” John asked with more confidence this time.

Running her hand over the shortest hair she’s ever had Lindsey said, “I love it!”

“For the top do you…” John began.

“Dealer’s choice!” Lindsey cut him off. “Just do your thing.”

John unpinned her hair and Lindsey watched the remains of that horrendous bob swing back into place. She was surprised to see John set his clippers down and pick up his scissors. Though she was not disappointed when she saw the blades snap shut and the first 5 ½ inch piece of hair land in her lap.

Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip.

Again and again the blades closed, making their presence known as they crunched through her dry hair, and Lindsey watched with glee as her unwanted bob fell to her shoulders and tumbled to the floor.

“Wait, why are you actually so good at this?!” Lindsey said once John had put his scissors down and proclaimed the haircut over. She was in awe as she looked in the mirror. Free of its former weight, her waves bounced in cute loose curls. While her bangs were five inches long, the curled up to rest almost an inch above her eyebrow. The longer hair on top of her head dipped down a bit in the back where the two inch pieces formed a “v” with how John had combed it back.

It wasn’t a perfect cut but her curls more than made up for it, hiding anything that wasn’t precisely even.

“So,” John asked with that earlier vulnerability back in his voice, “you really like it?”

“I can’t stop touching it!” Lindsey said with her hands in her hair. “ I really love it!”

“I do, too,” John said as his breathing began to get a little faster. He leaned in to kiss her as his hand began to stroke her shaved nape.

With their hands on each other, Lindsey abruptly pulled away. “You know,” she said as she reached over and gave the hair hanging over John’s collar a gentle tug. “you did say you imagined using those on yourself. What do you think?”

John let out another of those pleasure moans Lindsey had just discovered. “Yes,” he whispered quietly.

“Now, I can’t do anything as skilled as this,” she said pointing to her own undercut pixie.

“I…I think a regular buzz cut will do,” John said as he brushed his long hair out of his eyes for what he new would be the last time.

Again there was the POP, bzzzzzzzzz and slowly John’s collar length hair joined Lindsey’s former bob, replaced by a #1 all-over buzz cut.

Later, in the shower, Lindsey giggled as the water dripped off her short hair to land on her shoulders. She’d never felt anything like this! Her long hair always guided the water back over her shoulders, as it rolled from her hair onto her back. But short hair was a shower free-for-all with water dripping into her eyes, on her shoulders, and down her neck. Lindsey loved it!

She loved how excited John was, too. The orgasms they shared that night were unlike anything they had before. And Lindsey had to admit…it was a bit of a turn on to shave John’s head and then stroke his super soft buzz cut hair as they had sex…just as it turned her on when he did it to her. Then there was the warm shower water hitting the bare nape of her neck! She came again while John slept in their bed.

This was quite the night, Lindsey thought as she crawled back into bed beside John. It was the first of many like it she realized with a rush of excitement. Short hair does requite more regular trims, she thought. While that proved frustrating with her first undercut, now it seemed like the best gift ever. She fell asleep holding her partner, a contented smile on her lips and dreams of their next haircuts filling her head.