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.
