Shorngirl
Memory Jog
By Shorngirl
I always said that nothing brings back a memory like the scent of something familiar. It could be the simple smell of bread baking in the kitchen, or a particular perfume that takes a person back to another time and place.
I had a few scents which placed me at a different place and time, like the smell of bayberries from when I was running through the dunes as a young girl on Cape Cod, or the times I was fishing with my father, the smell of seawater and marine gas which mingled to form an unforgettable memory jog.
The strongest of those, for me at least, was the smell of a barbershop. It was so powerful that I couldn’t walk past one without stopping to catch the whiff of the familiar scent of Bay Rum and menthol mingled together.
It all started when I was maybe ten years old. I’d never been to a barbershop before then, but as fate would have it, my father was forced to take me along while getting my twin brothers’ haircut for the summer. My mother was out of town visiting my aunt, who hadn’t been well, and he didn’t think it was okay to leave me at home.
I had insisted that I’d be fine, saying that Mom left me on my own all the time. Despite this, he packed me in the car with my brothers and off we went. The place he took us to was a little shop, Manny’s, stuck halfway down a strip mall at the edge of town. My brothers hopped out of the car as soon as we pulled up. I needed some more persuasion in the form of an ice cream cone afterward we were done.
I stood and stared at the barber pole, which spun around on itself a few times before I was scooted through the door by my father. As I figured, I was the only girl in there, and it felt weird. What was also strange was the smell. Unlike my mother’s salon, which stunk of bleach and permanent solution, this place smelled sweet, almost spicy.
My father pulled a couple of pages from a pad near the door, both having numbers on them, handing one each to the boys. Tim and Marty weren’t all that bad for brothers. I figured they spent more time annoying each other than hassling me and that was just fine with me.
I watched as the barbers worked, mostly wielding what I later found out were clippers. The sound was almost mesmerizing, especially when more than one was going. Almost all the men got the same cut, short on the back and sides and a comb-over on the top. The boys all got skinned, pretty much. I wondered if that was what Tim and Marty were in for. Before then, I never paid much attention to their hair or how they wore it.
Marty got called up first, and being only seven, needed to climb up into the chair which swiveled as he did so. “Give ‘em the summer special.” My father instructed, as the barber turned the chair back around and threw a cape over my brother.
Just like the other kid, Marty got skinned. We were all towheads back then, so he looked pretty much bald by the time the barber let him go. Watching him rub his head made me want to do the same, so I reached over and felt the stubbled pelt of blonde bristles when he sat next to me.
“Hey, cut it out!” Marty complained, slapping at my hand. I guess he wasn’t too happy about losing his blonde curls after all.
Tim got the same treatment, only he taunted me when he was done, bending over and offering the top of his head to me. “Maybe you should get one if you like it so much.” Tim teased.
My father broke it up, saying that they didn’t cut girls’ hair in a barbershop. A nearby barber chimed in, however, insisting that they’d cut two girls already that day. “Really?” My father responded, giving me and my shoulder-length hair a look. “Your mother would kill me.” He sighed, paying the barber and herding us all toward the door.
I looked back at the barber as the door opened and the heat from outside rushed in. “Come back any time, kid.” His eyes met mine and I knew he was talking to me. Butterflies made me giddy as we climbed in the back of my father’s Buick. The heat was unbearable, and the plastic seats made us all lift our fannies off the searing surface, protecting the backs of our legs.
All the way home, while my brothers horsed around next to me, my mind was lost, imagining what it might be like to get skinned like them. I looked at their heads, the hair so short their scalps shone through like nothing was there at all. A couple of baldies taunting me, unknowingly.
I disappeared into the fields behind the house when we got home, finding my usual haunt by a small brook that burbled through the stones and long grass. The sound eased what I was feeling, but at the time, I had no idea what it was. I was just too young.
After that day, the sweet smell of a barbershop was ingrained into my psyche as a pleasant one. I had associated it with that unnerving sensation I had felt, which I later knew was arousal.
Sadly, I never took the barber up on his offer, probably because it just wasn’t something that would be acceptable in my family. My mother would have killed me, my father probably would have blamed himself for taking me to the barbershop in the first place. That isn’t to say that I never considered it. I did, many times.
Ten years later, I had come back into town from university for my brother’s graduation ceremony. I was a junior at Caltech and was majoring in electrical engineering. Yeah, I was a nerd that way.
My brothers were taller, smarter, and more handsome than they were back then, but they were still my twin brothers and acted that way. “Hey, Sam, we’re heading down to Manny’s after graduation. Wanna come?” They teased, never forgetting the time I’d gone with them all those years before.
“Uh, that’s okay.” I mused, running my hand through my sandy blonde curls, which now reached my waist.
“Old Manny’s still around, you know. I bet he’d love getting his clippers into that mop.” Marty growled, tugging at my hair as he walked by.
“Just ignore them, Samantha. You know how they are.” My mother eased, slipping an ice-cold Coke into my hand. “So, tell me about school.”
I went through the motions of telling my mother about Caltech and at her insistence, about things she couldn’t possibly understand to do with my major. In actuality, all I could think about was Manny’s. Would this be the time I’d give in to the temptation? So many times, I’d walked by that shop and allowed the scent of the place to fill my nostrils.
Now, I knew precisely what those tingling sensations were that coursed through my belly, before settling in my center. I just never worked up the courage to do it. I’d pretty much ignored my hair, allowing it to grow as long as it had. My mother had even offered to take me down to her salon, which I’d immediately declined.
Just as they promised, Tim and Marty appeared the day after graduation with summer buzz cuts, saying that it was the last summer before college and “why the hell not.” I laughed along with them, obliging them with a rub when they offered.
“Should’ve been there Sam. I told Manny you’re in town. He even remembers you.” Tim chuckled as he grabbed a beer from the fridge. I just shook my head, looking over at my mother’s confused expression.
“It’s a long story, Mom.” I sighed, at which my father spilled the beans and explained the whole thing.
A week later it was time for my flight back to California, and some summer courses I’d signed up for in the lab. It was going to be a long and lonely summer and I dreaded being on campus when all my friends would be at home. I really needed the credits, however, and I’d already signed up.
I threw my suitcase in the trunk of the rental and said my goodbyes, promising to stay in touch. My mind went blank as always, making my way through town, and heading for the airport. Not paying attention, my route took me right by the small strip plaza where Manny’s barbershop was. Shaken from my autopilot mode, I found myself turning into the two-row parking lot.
Looking down at my watch, I hissed out the time. “Ten O’clock.” My flight wasn’t until one. I had always been one to leave all sorts of time when flying, and three hours wasn’t out of the question for me.
Parking the car, my heart raced in my throat as I nervously made my way to the entrance. I was doing this thing, and now was the time. So, there weren’t words to describe the disappointment I felt when I realized the shop was closed. I looked at the sign on the door, saying ‘Closed Wednesdays’.
“Well, shit!” I muttered under my breath. I guessed it wasn’t to be.
Utterly let down, and the buzz between my legs all but gone, I climbed back in the car and continued to the airport. “I guess that’s just my luck.” I pulled into the Budget rental place a good two and a half hours early for my flight and turned in the keys.
By the time I’d checked in, and settled in at my gate, I had a comfortable one and half hour margin before my flight boarded. Huffing out a breath, I was still disappointed over Manny’s. “Why are they closed on Wednesdays?” I asked aloud.
Hungry, I looked down the mall-like concourse that led back toward the main terminal, I pulled at my carry-on and wandered back along the rows of shops and restaurants. I spied a Subway and started towards it when a very familiar scent wafted past my nostrils. “I know that smell.”
Following it as best I could, I made my way through a cut-through that joined one concourse with the next, and there it was. A barbershop. Well, sort of. It was nothing like Manny’s, with three swivel chairs and a long row to wait in, no, this had a single chair and an older man sat in it. He was reading a newspaper, ignoring the crowds as they filtered by unawares.
The closer I got the stronger the smell grew, and it rekindled the arousal that had been so nagging earlier that day, before my disappointment. There was no spinning pole, only a graphic representation of one plastered on the inside of the glass. The shelves were packed with products, some of which combined to draw me in, I was sure.
“You lost, sugar?” The old man spoke, startling me out of my trance.
“Just waiting for a flight,” I explained, chickening out. I stepped back, thinking I could escape if I wanted to. But, that was when my legs, obeying my sex rather than my mind, stepped forward and into the man’s little world.
“Look, Blondie, I cut men’s hair, and not too much of that lately to be honest. Now, why don’t you find a place to have a drink and let me read my paper?”
For some reason, the man’s gravelly voice and terse tone only set the flame in my crotch to high. “Uh… I really need a haircut.” I managed, weakly.
“Tell you what, beautiful…” the man stood, setting his newspaper down on the counter behind the chair. “… you sit in this chair, and I’m gonna give you a haircut you’ll never forget.” He scolded, thinking I’d run away with my tail between my legs.
So, before I could respond intelligently, I had climbed into his chair. Exasperated, he grabbed a red striped cape from a coat rack near the sliding glass door and snapped it loudly. “Fine.” He sighed, loudly. “Look, Hon, you’re a pretty lady, and I…”
“Just cut it off. All of it.” I said, in a stronger voice than I thought I could at that moment.
“All of it, as in, all off?” He frowned. “A buzzcut?” He questioned.
By now my juices were flowing and my panties were wet. I knew what I wanted, but… “Just think of a young kid in for that summer skinning.” I proposed. “That’s me.”
“Jesus Christ, are you sure?” He asked, as he wrapped the cape around me and fastened it securely around my neck. By now a few curious onlookers had gathered discretely on the opposite wall, wondering what was about to occur.
He picked up some clippers and ran a bead of oil along the blade, reaching for a few combs that were scattered on the counter. “How about a number four?” He asked picking up the large guard.
“No guard.” I breathed, the words barely audible to anyone but he and I.
A smile suddenly spread across his face, and I wondered if he was aware of my circumstances. Could he smell me? A ceiling fan was moving the air around in the small space. Could he? He leaned down, lifting my hair away from my ear. “So, Sugar, you wanna be a bald little girl, don’t you?”
It was as though every thought I had ever had on the subject was revealed to him. I could feel my face flush with embarrassment as I nodded my answer. “Please.”
He gathered my hair in his hands, pulling it taught and then allowing it to fall over the cape once again. “How long have you been thinkin’ about it?” He asked, more loudly.
“Since I was ten,” I revealed, echoing his volume, sure that at least a few of the people gathered outside could hear.
“And it makes you all hot and sticky, doesn’t it?” Certainly, too loud to be ignored by the audience that grew larger by the second.
“God, yes.” I moaned aloud, hearing the clippers whir to life behind me.
“Then let the skinning begin.” He grinned, our eyes meeting in the mirror as he placed the bare blades of the clippers at the top of my forehead.
I gasped as the vibration changed, pressing back firmly into my scalp; the clippers feeding on my blonde tresses. Pulling the machine away, rubbing the bald strip that separated one side of my head from the other. “How does that feel, Sugar?”
“Oh, God, oh…” I looked out into the hallway, a group of men leering at me and knowing exactly what was happening. This was a spectacle, and they knew it.
“You’re gonna make a mess of my floor.” He ran the clippers over my head again, and again, widening the bald strip, my jet-white scalp on display for all to see. “Maybe I’ll make you clean it up. I bet you’d do it, too.”
I was audibly panting now as the entire top of my head had been stripped bare and he began on the sides. Would he make me clean it up? My own hair, would he humiliate me like that?
As he cleared the side of my head, and my ear came into view, I could see that I had my brother’s ears. I always prodded my brothers for the way their ears stuck out. Adding insult to injury, I would be no different.
“Ooh, look at those ears.” The barber jostled, flicking one with his finger as the other side came fully into view. The humiliation was beyond anything I’d ever imagined. Were we not in an airport I was certain the men gawking from the concourse would have their cocks in their hands, masturbating to this degrading show.
Forcefully, he pushed my chin down to my chest, ramming the hot bare blades along my nape, stripping the last of the hair from my head in long sweeping strokes. I swore I’d come, but as he rubbed his hand over my bald head, I realized I hadn’t yet. The liquid he used smelled nice but stung against my freshly denuded scalp.
“Why don’t you stand for your audience and take a bow, Sugar.” He pulled the cape away from my body and pushed me forward out of his chair. To my horror, applause erupted from the hallway, and I unconsciously bowed. “That’s a good little girl. All skinned for the summer, aren’t you?”
I nodded, reaching up to feel if I was as bald as I looked. Even though there was the slightest scrape of stubble, it was far shorter than my brother’s had ever been shorn. “Oh, God, my ears.” I mewled, pressing them against my bare scalp only to see them spring back into their place, my little radio antennae, as I had once teased my brothers. Now it was my turn.
The barber looked down at the floor, and my eyes followed his. All around his chair was a sea of blonde curls and I knew what he wanted. He raised an eyebrow and motioned to the broom in the corner.
Most of the crowd had vanished by then, the show being over, all but one. He watched intently as I swept up my hair, bending to deposit it into the waste basket as instructed. When the floor was cleaned to his satisfaction, I pulled out my wallet to pay him what I owed.
“How often are you through here?” He asked, taking the twenty and slipping it into his pocket.
“Um… at least four times a year.” I sighed, my breath still coming in pants.
“You’re gonna stop in to see me each time.” He mused.
“I am?” Still too flustered to catch on.
“You are, without fail. Isn’t that right, Sugar?” He ran his fingers over my head smiling, before toying with my ears one at a time.
“I’ll be back in August,” I said, almost obediently.
“I’ll see you then…?”
“Samantha.” I blurted, realizing I hadn’t shared that intimate detail.
“Phillip, but you can call me Sir.” He smiled.
“See you then… Sir.” So, I wandered out into the airport, garnering curious stares from the people I passed, exhausted but still incredibly aroused. I took in the humiliation of it, knowing that there would be much more to come and for a long, long, time.
