CarolJo
Claudia knew from the time she was a little girl that she would be expected to go into the family business: hairdressing. She wasn’t opposed to this, and spent hours braiding and styling doll hair as a child, even though her father made it clear that she was going to be working with him in his barbershop. It was when she was a little older and had discovered boys that she realised that she actually preferred the idea of a predominantly male clientele.
Even so, Claudia wasn’t a natural at first. She needed to practise on live models. Luckily, she acquired a boyfriend around the time that she was entering cosmetology school. Sam was a big fan of classic American comic book heroes, and liked to dress up as his favourites for Comic Cons and Halloween. One year, he decided that he was going to be the Joker.
Sam grew his hair out to his chin first, with Claudia giving him little trims along the way. This was instructive for her, because she learned how to structure a cut with the growout in mind. Sam had curly hair that behaved differently from the straight hair on the practise dummies.
When Halloween came and it was time to really prepare, Claudia first decided to apply the relaxer, thinking that straighter hair would be easier to bleach and then dye green. The whole process was going to take a very long time. This was good news for Claudia, who saw the waiting period as a chance to cuddle.
She fought the impulse to simply dunk Sam’s hair in the relaxer, and applied it with a paintbrush instead at first. This didn’t “take” the way she thought it would, so she repeated the process until his hair seemed ready to take the straightening iron, then the setting solution.
In hindsight, she should have waited at least a few days before she had Sam come back for his bleach job. Claudia couldn’t wait to have Sam in her chair again, however, so she called him in the very next day. She applied the bleach to all of his hair, left it for an hour, then rinsed it out. Sam’s chestnut brown hair colour had lifted to a bright carrot top red. Oh no, red undertones are hard to get out. Claudia had never seen Sam anything other than clean-shaven, so she didn’t realise that his beard would grow in ginger.
Another round of bleach yielded a strawberry-blond result. Better, but still redder than what she wanted. She decided to have another go with the bleach before applying the green dye.
This time, she decided to leave the bleach on longer, maybe two hours instead of one. This gave her plenty of time to canoodle with Sam. She was so lost in the joy of kissing him and letting their hands roam free over each other’s bodies that she didn’t hear the alarm go off to mark the two-hour point.
In fact, she didn’t stop until Sam did. “Ouch. I feel like my scalp is burning.”
“Uh oh.” Claudia unwrapped Sam’s hair and rinsed out the bleach. When she did, big clumps of hair came off in her hands. Claudia gave a little cry of horror.
“What happened? What’s wrong?”
“You’re going to hate me for this.”
“Uh oh. I can guess. Let me see the damage.”
Claudia tried to towel dry what was left of his hair, but even more hair came off onto the towel. Claudia handed Sam the towel without a word, then led him back to the chair so that he could see himself in the mirror.
“Wow, I look like Darth Vader without his helmet.” Sam’s once-plentiful hair was now patchy and brittle-looking. The unnaturally light colour of what was left made him look even balder than he really was.
“I guess I’m not going to be the Joker this year.”
“I can still dye the remainder green.” Claudia tried to run her fingers through Sam’s remaining hair, but even more of it came off in her hands.
“No, I don’t think so. I have an idea. I can be Lex Luthor instead. Let’s just shave off what’s left.”
“Really? You’re OK with that?” Claudia was fighting back tears. All she had wanted was to help her boyfriend achieve the look he had wanted for his Halloween Comic Con. She had been there through his grow-out process all year, and now she had ruined his hair so completely that shaving it all off was the best option.
“I never thought through what I was going to do with my super-straight, long green hair afterwards, anyway. I was going to have to dye it back to brown or strip out the green or something before I could be seen in public. That would have been even more damage. No, this way I get a fresh start.”
“In that case.” Claudia picked up a pair of clippers and plugged them in. She wouldn’t need to attach a guard. Sam lowered his chin onto his chest of his own accord and Claudia began to push the clippers upward through the wispy remains of his hair. There was so little left that it was quick and easy.
Once she had gone over the sides and top, she sprayed shaving cream onto Sam’s head. “It looks a bit like whipped cream”, she giggled. Maybe when she was finished she could put cream on Sam’s head and lick it off. That might be fun. Claudia picked up a safety razor and began shaving. Sam had his eyes closed but was smiling, clearly enjoying the sensation. Claudia went over his entire head twice, then rubbed in aftershave. It smelled divine and she found that rubbing it into his bare scalp was a much more erotic experience than she expected.
When she was all finished, Sam opened his eyes and smiled at his reflection in the mirror. “Not bad. I didn’t know I had such a good head-shape. That was actually kind of fun. Now I’m looking forward to being Lex Luthor.”
“And you can be as villainous as you like during our private after-party at my flat.” Claudia planted a kiss on Sam’s smooth head, leaving a bright red kiss mark. This was going to be a better Halloween than originally planned.
