I guess you never really know what attracts one person to another but I suppose I always thought my ultra-long hair had something to do with the fact that Tod had fallen in love with me and, in due course, had married me.

I had grown up in a family that valued “natural” and unspoiled things. I can never remember my mother going to a beauty salon and I grew up never really thinking about it. My mother spent a lot of time washing and grooming my long, straight hair and, when I grew older, I did the same for her. Most of the time we wore it loosely coiled at the back of our heads and two or three times a year when it became a little raggedy we would help each other to snip off the uneven ends to keep it in healthy condition.

On my wedding day, I wore my hair loose and long, with flowers braided into it. It was an unremarkable mid-brown colour but, never having had any chemicals or processes applied to it, it was in as good condition as simple care and my genetic heritage could make it.

My hair routine became part of our married life. When your hair hangs well below your hips, there is no possibility of a “quick shower, blast with a drier and out the door”. Three or four evenings a week, my bedtime routine would begin mid evening with a shower and shampoo and then a few hours in front of the imitation log fire in our apartment, combing it while it dried naturally. Then a single thick braid so that it hung in rippling waves the next morning.

This was me … and Tod and my hair … just getting on with life as I had always known it.

Until the day that Tod was away on a business trip and his office phoned our home in a panic, looking for some documents which he had been working on at home. I knew that he often used our home computer in the den for some of his work, so I fired it up and opened up some of the folders and files under his name. I found what the office was after and e-mailed it to them but in the course of doing this, I found a great deal more – dozens of images of women downloaded from the Internet. At first I jumped to the conclusion that this was some sort of pornographic or sexual thing, but then I looked more closely at the images. They weren’t of women in provocative poses, or various stages of undress. Instead, they were mostly head and shoulders shots and I noticed that they all had a very wide variety of hair styles. Some of them were quite conventional – formal up-dos or long, loose styles. Others were more striking like sharply-defined bobs, often with the back angled high up so that the hair at the sides swung forward on to the model’s cheeks. Other styles were more extreme, such as spiky mohawk cuts, often in bizarre colours and some pictures were of women with short-cropped hair, from shaggy spiky looks to heads that were virtually shaven bare.

Once I had realised that this was not the usual pin-up collection I had read that many men kept privately, I relaxed and looked more closely at the images. Although often extreme, the photographs were all very flattering of their subjects and I could see why Tod found them good to look at.

After a while I began to feel that I was intruding too much on Tod’s privacy. I felt sure that he would be horribly embarrassed if he knew I was going through his computer data like this, so I shut down all the files and closed down the machine.

Knowing that it was really none of my business, I tried to put Tod’s pictures out of my mind. I couldn’t really stop thinking about them, though.

When Tod came home from his trip, I decided to say nothing about the phone call from the office. I just didn’t feel comfortable getting into explanations about looking at his computer files. Best to let sleeping dogs lie, I thought.

Over dinner, though, I simply couldn’t help myself turning the conversation to hair styles. Actually, it was Tod himself who gave me the opportunity. Our next door neighbour had treated herself to a make-over while Tod was away and he had met her when he arrived home.

“I see Jinny’s gone blonde,” he said, matter-of-factly.

I nodded and then paused. “Do you like that look?” I asked, not looking up from my food.

“Er … yes, I suppose so,” said Tod. “It suits her.”

I paused, sensing that we were approaching some sort of invisible boundary line.

“Do you think … something like that would suit me?”

He paused in his eating and looked at me.

“But you never do anything with your hair,” he said.

“Does that bother you?”

He paused again. Then he said, “No, of course not.”

We went on eating dinner.

Some minutes later, I broke the silence that had descended.

“Would you like me to be different?”

He looked up at me. “No,” he said, and I knew that he meant it.

“But would you like me to look different occasionally?” I persisted.

This time he looked at me a lot longer. “Would you?” he said.

“Might be interesting to change things around from time to time,” I said. “The trouble is, I have no experience of anything like that. I have no idea what other look might suit me.” I looked up at him. “I’d be open to suggestions.”

Tod smiled, reached out and held my hand in that strong, warm grip of his. “OK,” he said. “Let’s think about it. But there’s no hurry.”

Some weeks passed and Tod and I became caught up in preparations for Christmas. This year, we were entertaining both sets of parents because Tod is an only child and my sister had provided Christmas for my Mum and Dad last year. After the flurry of present-buying, cooking and house-decoration, the day went well and, towards midnight on Christmas Day, I retired to bed as Tod and my father poured themselves a night-cap and continued their heated discussion on the parlous state of the national economy.

As I pulled back the bed-cover I found a slim, gift-wrapped parcel on my pillow. The small card attached said ‘One last present. Love, Tod’. I stripped off the wrapping to reveal a calendar which Tod had obviously made himself on his computer, because the front cover had an image of me, obviously scanned from one of our wedding photos, and the title “Cassie’s Year of Change”.

I flipped back the cover to reveal the first month – January. I recognised that the photograph above the grid of numbered days was one of the images I had seen on Tod’s computer. It showed a model with brownish hair like mine, but much shorter, cut to shoulder-length and curled under at the ends. I tried to turn the page to reveal February, but found that Tod had sealed up the remaining sheets with a small sticker bearing the words, “One month at a time!”

When he came to bed, Tod made no mention of the present and so I didn’t refer to it either. From his goodnight kiss and the lovemaking which followed, though, I knew there was some unspoken secret between us … a delicious tension which had never been there before.

Once New Year was past and life got back to normal after the holidays, I talked to one of my girlfriends at work and got a recommendation to a really good beauty salon. I rang the number and booked an appointment for a few days hence. Then I approached my boss and arranged to take the day off.

When the day of my appointment arrived, I began to panic as I realised I had no idea how to deal with a hairdresser. I had literally never been to one in the whole of my life. Realising that I would be hopeless in
trying to describe in words what I wanted them to do, I tore out the January picture from Tod’s calendar and folded into my purse.

I almost turned back at the salon door. I had imagined some sort of quiet, professional place, whereas I was met with a blast of loud popular music and a blast of air mixed with the smells of chemicals and perfumes. The receptionist gave me no time to think, however, relieving me of my coat, swathing me in a black over-gown and sitting me in a chair in front of a mirror. A minute or two later a woman in her early thirties – much like me – pulled up a chair beside me, introduced herself as Cindy and asked, “So what are we going to be doing today?”

I gulped like a goldfish for a second and than I relaxed.

“Cindy,” I said, “I’m just going to be honest with you. You may find this hard to believe but I have never been to a professional salon in my life and, quite frankly, I have no idea what I’m doing here. All I know is …” and I pulled out the picture from Tod’s calendar “… I love my husband very much and I know he would like me to look something like this. Can you do whatever it takes to make me look like this picture?” Cindy looked at me. Then she said, “You mean I’m the first hairdresser who’s ever touched your hair?”

I nodded.

“My God,” she said. “What a responsibility.”

She stood up behind me, released the clasp from my hair and began to comb it down. It fell well beyond the back of the chair behind me.

“You have beautiful hair,” said Cindy. “We charge clients hundreds of dollars to get hair extensions just to look like this. Are you sure you want it cut?”

“Yes,” I said. For myself, I wasn’t sure at all but I loved Tod.

Cindy lifted up handfulls of my hair.

“Let’s be clear here,” she said. “If I cut it to shoulder length it’s going to be a couple of feet long, tops. I’ll be cutting off more hair than I’ll be leaving behind. More importantly, if you don’t like it, it’s going to be at least five years before your hair grows back to anything like this length. Are you sure?”

I nodded. “Go for it.”

I will never forget Cindy’s first cut with the scissors. I don’t know what I expected but my mother’s delicate snipping of split ends led me to believe that hair-cutting was always a slow, careful process. Cindy just lifted up a strand of my hair at the side of my face, inserted the scissors and with a metallic snick, more than two feet of hair slid to the floor. She must have heard my sharp intake of breath.

“OK,” she said, “ we could stop now. I could just feather it a little round the sides and you coukld keep the length.”

“No,” I said, “Let’s finish the job”

An hour later, I was transformed. My hair just brushed my shoulders in the turned-under style precisely shown in Tod’s picture. Although still very unsure of the change from my life-long mane, I constantly moved my head back and forwards to feel it swishing against the shoulders of my coat. When I got home, I couldn’t resist brushing it through and through in front of the mirror, amazed that I could take each brush stroke right from roots to tips in one movement. Before I had had to brush my hair in several stages.

Tod was delighted and couldn’t keep his hands off me. He took me to bed almost as soon as he stepped through the door and as we lay together afterwards, he stroked my hair over and over.

“I never thought you would do it,” he said.

“Neither did I – until I did,” I said.

Although I really loved having shoulder-length hair – which saved me hours in washing and grooming, by the way – as January wore on, I found myself thinking more and more about what the February picture would be. I promised myself that I would wait until the new month to open that page of the calendar, but on the 30th of January I couldn’t wait any longer. Miss February’s style was much the same as I had had cut for January – one-length to the shoulders – but she was platinum blonde.

I booked another appointment with Cindy for the first week of February, but I wasn’t at all sure I would go ahead with it. Getting my hair cut was one thing, but this was really going to mess with it. I imagined all sorts of horror stories about bleach jobs causing women’s hair to fall out.

Cindy was much more matter-of-fact.

“Oh, yeah, in the old days,” she said, “but they have such sophisticated products now. Sure, you have to take a little more care, but it’s worth it.” She leaned forward and whispered in my ear conspiratorially. “Blondes have more fun.”

They do, too, if Tod’s reaction was anything to go by. This time he was really gobsmacked. Cindy had offered me highlights or all sorts of subtle near-blonde shadings but, for once, I had been the one insisting. I was white, Jean Harlow, Hollywood blonde.

For the next few days I kept catching my reflection in the mirror and hardly believing what I saw there. The first few times I shampooed, I was a little dismayed at the very different and fragile texture of my hair, but with the techniques and products given me by Cindy, I soon learned to keep it under control and in good condition.

At work, people had reacted with mild interest to my shoulder-length cut but it was a whole different ball-game when the “blonde bombshell” walked in. People seemed genuinely intrigued why I had gone for such a drastic change and I found that a lot more men than usual found occasion to talk casually to me. Maybe Cindy was right about blondes.

Then two things happened which made a real impression on me. The first was that the head of my department called me in for a chat. He told me that he had been thinking about me and had decided that I was wasted in accounts. How would I like a big promotion to the international marketing team? My job would be to choose and train staff for our stands at exhibitions and conventions round the world.

“You’ll need to find the right people,” he said. “Girls, mostly, of course. You know, girls like you who know how to make the most of themselves.”

I wasn’t exactly sure of the political correctness of what I was hearing but, hey, marketing is marketing and the job paid twice what I was earning previously.

The second thing that happened was that another woman in my department, who had seemed to be in head-to-head competition with me over the years, came up to me at the water-cooler and hissed, “ I can’t imagine why you chose to cheapen yourself like that.” Strangely enough I felt quite elated at that.

February shot past in the flurry of getting to grips with my new job and it was actually the 3rd of March before I remembered the calendar. I opened the new month to reveal another Hollywood look. It was still long, but this time it was a stunning auburn colour and styled in deep waves and curls to fall loosely over the shoulders. This time Cindy was suspicious.

“What’s going on?” she asked. Every few weeks you bounce in here with another photograph and demand another radical makeover. For somebody who claimed never to have been to a hairdresser in their life before, have you become addicted, or something?”

I decided to let her in on
the secret and told her about Tod’s secret obsession and our calendar arrangement.

“So what you’re saying,” she said, “ is that once a month we have to be ready for anything?”

“Literally anything,” I said. “Fun, isn’t it?”

“You bet!”

Cindy got to work. This time, I didn’t get any hair cut any shorter. In fact, it had grown an inch or two below my shoulders. However, after Cindy had given me the loose permanent wave she considered necessary to hold the waved style, my copper locks actually swung a good inch higher than my shoulders.

I loved this style. It made me feel glamorous and sexy and it had a tremendous effect on Tod. “I never expected to make love to Rita Hayworth,” he joked between kisses and other attentions.

The year went on. April was back to Hollywood blonde highlights and a Farrah-Fawcett flip. May was a bone-straight Cher-like style with a blunt fringe and in a startling scarlet colour. June saw black sections dyed into the scarlet and the sharp fringe extended to a full page-boy contour framing my whole face.

July posed a problem. The hair was still long and coloured an all-over black but the hair was plaited into tiny braids which made intricate swirling patterns over the scalp. Cindy shook her head at this one. “I can’t do corn-rows,” she said, “but I know someone who does”. A few days later she took me to a salon in another part of town which catered for afro-caribbean hair. It took the best part of a whole day, but we left with my hair in a good resemblance of the calendar picture and Cindy’s hair also had one side of her head braided.

After the braids, I thought I was ready for anything but August’s picture made me pause for thought. It was a montage of several photographs. The first was a model with black hair free-flowing informally to her shoulders. No problem there, I thought, and thank goodness no more braids. But the other pictures showed the model lifting up the hair on either side of her head to show the hair above each ear clippered to a few millimeters for at least a couple of inches above the ear-line. Moreover, the hair had some intricate Celtic designs clippered or shaved into the stubble.

Cindy shook her head. “I wouldn’t do it. You’ve followed all his pictures up to now, but this is a bit extreme.”

We looked at each other in the salon mirror.

“Pity to stop now,” I said.

She smiled.

“You really are addicted, aren’t you?”

“I guess.”

“OK,” said Cindy. “But this means you are going to make the acquaintance of Mister Wahl.”

“Why?” I frowned, “can’t you do this style?”

“Oh yes,” said Cindy, but I’m going to need a bit of help from my friend.” She opened a drawer and took out a pair of black electric clippers with glittering blades.

“My God, am I going to be bald?” I gasped.

“Of course not,” said Cindy, plugging in the clippers. She said the rest under her breath, but I heard her nevertheless. “Not this month, anyway.”

I had always thought of myself as reasonably responsive when it came to sexual impulses. Well, Tod never had any complaints, anyway. However, I defy any woman with a pulse to feel the first touch of clippers on her scalp without the most powerful frisson of sheer sensual electricity.

Cindy had made a sharp parting on either side of my head and clipped up the long hair into a pile on top. The remainder of my hair hung down over my ears from a line about two inches above the ear. She had snapped a black plastic guard over the gleaning blades of the clippers and switched them on. After a loud pop, they hummed menacingly as she brought them close to my skin.

Her injunction to “Hold still, now” did nothing to release the tension of delicious expectation I was feeling. This was not hair cutting. This was not a reduction from waist-length to shoulder-length, but a shearing. A cropping. A reduction to a pelt of hair which wouldn’t flow or wave, couldn’t be combed, couldn’t be tamed in any way, but left to stand as it would.

Cindy started in front of my ear and pushed up towards the part she had made. The tone of the clippers changed as the blades chewed into my hair. There was no effort, though. No tugging. A foot or so of hair simply dropped away.

I saw the first hank of hair drop on to the black salon cape and then shut my eyes to concentrate on the sensation I was feeling. The clippers buzzed and hummed against my scalp. As Cindy made another pass, this time directly above my ears, I felt her blow gently to get rid of some stray hairs. What felt like an electric impulse went through my entire body. I felt my spine tingle. Goose-bumps sprang up on the skin of my fore-arms and I felt my nipples harden.

All this was not lost on Cindy. “Great, huh?” she breathed.

“Have you been clippered before?” My voice seemed to be hoarse and breathy.

“Oh yeah,” Said Cindy. “Nothing like it.”

She was right. As Cindy moved behind my ear and made pass after pass over my scalp, I gave myself over to the sensations I was feeling. Over the exposed patch of stubble I believed I could feel even small air-currents in the salon. I tried to imagine how short I was being clipped, trying to remember the small boys and the Summer haircuts I had seen in my youth.

Cindy shifted to the other side and the clippers hummed and snarled, reducing to a few millimetres hair which had hung below my hips only a few months before.

This was the change I hoped would really turn Tod on. Thinking about his probable reaction when he got home, I felt a familiar warmth in my crotch. Cindy seemed to be moving faster now, passing the clippers over and over again in a crescent behind my ears. The warmth spread and I felt that liquid feeling, the weakness in my joints. I felt my breath shortening, was aware of my hard nipples scraping inside the fabric of my bra and then, finally, was unable to prevent tipping over into … orgasm.

To my intense embarrassment, Cindy had stopped. She was smiling at me.

“I told you,” she said.

“Did you do that the first time, “ panted.

“Not just the first time,” she said. “Every time.”

Things seemed to get back to a semblance of normality when Cindy finished the basic clippering of an area of stubble on each side of my head. She put away the clippers she was using and took more out another pair with much smaller, narrower blades.

“What are those>” I asked.

She seemed embarrassed. “They’re called ‘hygienic clippers’”, she said. “I use them when men come in. They often need the hair trimmed up in their noses or ears. I reckon they’ll be great for doing the design in your hair.”

I tried to dispel the images of noses and ears which had crept into my brain, trusting that Cindy’s hygiene practices were impeccable.

I drifted off into my own thoughts as Cindy got to work with the mini-clippers etching into my stubbly scalp her version of the designs in Tod’s picture. When she finally finished and showed me the result in the mirror, I was really quite impressed. She had a real flair for drawing and the designs had ended up pretty much as in the picture.

Tod was particularly delighted with this transformations and our love-making took on an extra urgen
cy and passion as he stroked my bristly scalp while pumping into me. The feel of the individual hairs bending and snapping back under his palms gave me an extra sensation and I came to orgasm far more quickly – and often – than I ever had before.

Tod and I went away on holiday during August and the combination of my new funky look and the relaxation of being away from everything led to a fantastic orgy of sensuality between us. It had never been so good. Tod insisted that I wear my hair clipped up every day so that the clippered patch and the edged designs stayed on public show. One night in a roadhouse restaurant, a girl came up to me and asked me diffidently where I had received such an unusual haircut. She was disappointed when I said it was in the city.

By the time we returned from holiday, it was almost the end of the month and time to turn over the September picture.

It was another montage and at first I didn’t see much difference from what I had had in August. The hair was still long in a wide strip down the centre of the model’s head, ending in a longish pony-tail which extended down her back. On closer inspection, though, I noticed that the sides of her head were not just clippered short but shaved actually bare. Also, the shaved area extended even farther up towards the top of her head. The strip of hair left on top must have been only two inches wide.

Cindy and I looked at the picture.

“Well,” she said, “this style is no problem. I can do that in a heartbeat.

I suppose women who experience the exquisite joys of clippering their scalps eventually graduate to the even more sensuous experience of shaving. Cindy parted my hair on either side even higher than previously, leaving only a narrow strip down the centre from my brow to the nape. I had asked for a strip about two or three inches wide, but I reckon she had made it a good deal less than two inches. Hair seemed to be hanging down pretty thickly on both sides.

Cindy produced her trusty Wahl clippers but didn’t bother with a guard this time. She started at the back and I felt the naked blades nibbling away the hair right up from my nape to the top of my head. Cindy quickly cleared away all the hair around my ear and then did the same on the other side. I looked in the mirror. Whereas before the hair on the side of my head had been a stubble about a quarter of an inch long, now it was the merest shadow. There was no hair at all. There was a ridge of black hair little more than an inch wide down the centre of my head and that was it. A month ago I looked like a had a full head of hair with a clippered patch on each side. The overall impression now was that I was completely bald, except for a narrow strip of hair down the centre of my head.

While I had been contemplating my reflection in the mirror, Cindy had been away collecting a can of shaving foam and a safety razor. She aerosol’ed a mound of foam into her hand and spread it around the sides of my head and either side of my centre-plume at the back. With careful strokes of the razor, she removed the last vestiges of shadow to reveal smooth, pink, shiny scalp.

I had thought I had felt air currents before in the salon, but nothing compares with the sensitivity of totally denuded scalp. I could feel the draught from every movement of Cindy’s overall, every pass of her hand with the razor.

Eventually, after many passes, Cindy was satisfied.

I felt the side of my head and my throat tightened in excitement. It was perfectly smooth and oh, so sensitive to my touch. I couldn’t stop myself fingering it all the way home and Tod couldn’t keep his hands off it either.

The next morning, when I woke up, I wondered if my extreme tie-back mohawk had been a dream, but when I moved my head I felt and heard the slight scratching of my scalp on the pillow. I felt my scalp and, although it was still totally devoid of hair, I felt the beginnings of a bristly shadow.

“Welcome to my world,” said Tod, as he kissed me and my shaved scalp. “Now you know why men have to shave every morning.”

“Help me,” I asked.

It was fun joining Tod in the bathroom. He lathered up his own face from a can of shaving foam and coated my own scalp as well. He used his razor on me and then turned his attention to his own face. I towelled off the last of his shaving foam and was pleased to feel my scalp back to its pristine smoothness.

“I guess we’ll have to do this every day, then,” I said.

“Gladly,” said Tod, with a broad grin.

The shaved scalp was finally too much for my employers who called me in and told me they were making me redundant. It didn’t matter too much because I got a new job within a week as the manager of an avant-garde interior design business.

For the rest of September Tod and I shared the bathroom every morning, with Tod touching up my shaved scalp as he did his usual morning shave. At weekends, when he gave his skin a break from shaving, I sometimes let my scalp go a day or two, but the rasping on the pillow, or the simple knowledge that hair was beginning to re-emerge from the surface of my skin always drove me back to the razor.

I found that the tie-back mohawk was a really versatile style. Some days I braided it so that it was a single, heavy black plait from my brow all the way back to the nape of my neck, against a background of bare-shaved scalp. Sometimes I just caught it in a band at the nape and had a pony-tail. One time, for a party, I had it crimped in small, regular corrugations, which covered half of my scalp, leaving the other side gleaming naked. I got a lot of attention that night and I discovered I had a real appetite for being considered daring and outrageous. I wondered if I would ever go back to the conventional me when the last page of the calendar had been turned and my “Year of Change” was over.

The October picture was almost predictable. The model had the sides of her head shaved smooth as I did, but the centre strip of hair, instead of being long and tied back, was only an inch or two long and spiked up in a full-scale mohawk, dyed electric blue.

It was another straightforward job for Cindy. After refreshing my shave, narrowing the centre strip of hair to an inch at most, she clippered the centre plume down to about an inch and a half and then stripped it completely of all colour, before applying a fluorescent electric blue dye. An application of extreme-hold gel was all it took to stand-up my mohawk into rock-hard attention and I was done.

Tod really loved the mohawk but an interesting thing happened after a few days when I joined him in the bathroom to have my shaved bits touched up. He shaved the sides of my head but left the top part either side of the mohawk strip untouched. I protested that this would spoil the style, but he kissed me and told me to “wait and see”.

By the end of the month, I felt pretty terrible. The blue mohawk was still evident and the lower sides of my head were still smoothly shaved but the top of my head was a mess, with about a half inch of scrubby growth showing through.

I couldn’t wait until November when I could turn over the next page of the calendar. This time the picture was not of a female model, but a man, in uniform. He was a soldier and his hairstyle was a much shorter version of what my own had grown into. The sides above his ears were still shaved clean, but the hair higher up had been allowed to grow a little longer. The very top of his head had been sheared flat so that the whole effect was of a squared-off boxy shape. Also, in the background of the photograph was the front of a man’s barbershop, which I recognised to be in a part of our town.

A couple of days later I drove to the part of town with the barber shop, parked the car and ope
ned the door. The place seemed to be deserted. I was on the point of walking out when a burly man emerged from the back of the shop, wiping his hands on a towel.

“He’p you ma’am?”

“I … er … need a haircut,” I stammered.

“Don’t normally do women’s cuts, “ he said. His eyes drifted up to my growing-out mohawk. “But then, it don’t look like you go for normal women’s haircuts anyway.”

A minute later I was sitting in one of his capacious chairs with a cape tucked tight around my neck. Releasing my hand from under the garment I produced the November picture.

“Can you do this?”

“High and tight flat-top. No problem at all. Do ‘em every day!” He said. While he was retrieving his comb and his clippers he smiled. “My name’s Bob. Like somethin’ a little different, do ya?”

“Well, you know, Bob.”

“I get more women in here than you’d think,” he replied. “Lotsa women wanna get away from the Barbie-doll look. OK, hold very still and here we go.”

One thing that struck me about Bob was how much faster than Cindy he worked. I wondered at first whether this meant he was just being less precise and careles, but from the assured feel of his movements around my head, I relaxed.

Bob used his clippers without a guard to remove all the hair from the sides of my head, moving up in a vertical line to where my skull curved towards the centre. He did the same at the back, removing the back part of my blue mohawk strip. I asked him whether he needed to get rid of the blue colour on the remaining part of the strip.

Bob grinned. “Ain’t gonna matter,” he said.

After removing all the hair from the back and sides of my head, Bob, moved round in front of me with a large comb and his clippers.

“This is where I need you to be real still,” he said.

He was standing between me and the mirror, so I could only feel what he was doing. He inserted the comb into the hair at my forehead and I felt it standing erect under the pressure of the comb, although the comb itself was pressed against my scalp. Bob passed the clippers from one side to the other and I felt what seemed like a lot of hair drop down my face. Bob moved the comb a little further towards the back of my head and the clippers cut across again. This happened again and again until eventually Bob’s comb broke through to the clippered area at the back of my head.

I fidgeted after sitting motionless for so long.

“Hold still, we’re not finished,” murmured Bob, deep in concentration.

Bob repeated the same movements with the comb, passing the clipper repeatedly from side to side, but this time, it felt like I could feel individual hairs moving against my scalp.

Bob made several more passes and then finally stepped away from the mirror.

I was intrigued by the reflection in front of me. I had a whole new face-shape. With the geometrically vertical sides, my face seemed longer and my eyes seemed much more prominent than I had ever noticed before, even when the sides of my head were shaved for the mohawk. I moved my head slightly and saw my scalp gleaming pinkly through the hair standing up on the top of my head. A fringe of hair around the hairline was a little more than three-quarters of an inch long and it tapered back in a perfectly flat surface to about a quarter of an inch on the crown of my head.

“You want the whitewalls?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The picture has whitewalls. Shaved at the back and the sides. You want the same?”

“Er … yes.”

Bob filled his hand with a mound of shaving foam from an aerosol can and spread it generously around the sides and back of my head. I was used to the sensation of the foam on the sides of my head but hadn’t felt it all around the back of my head before and certainly hadn’t felt it spread up to the crown.

Bob expertly whisked off the remaining vestiges of hair and I was done.

I had some shopping to do back in my own neighbourhood and was embarrassed to run straight into Cindy at the Mall.

“Wow, funky new look,” she exclaimed. Eyeing my newly-shorn head.

“Listen, Cindy, I’m sorry I didn’t come to you for this one, but Tod wanted me to go to a barber …”

“No problem, “ said Cindy, with a smile. “I couldn’t do that cut anyway, and all the business you’ve given me this year, I can’t complain.” She looked at me. “Tell you what I could do, though. You got a half-hour or so?”

Cindy walked me back to her salon and took me through to the back-shop where she does beauty therapy and some of her specialised treatments.

“With a look like that, your eyebrows need re-shaping,” she said. I thought I was in for a session with tweezers but Cindy fired up a pot of goo which she later spread on my eyebrows, pressed little linen cloths into the goo and ripped them off, taking more than half my eyebrows with them.

“You mean you never had anything waxed before?” Cindy asked, amused.

An hour and a half later I walked out of Cindy’s salon a wiser – but far less hirsute – women. I had always thought “no pain no gain” referred to exercise but I now understand that it applies to depilation just as much. The last hour or so at Cindy’s hands had, at times, felt like a session with ther Spanish Inquisition.

“Don’t worry,” Cindy has chirruped cheerfully as she ripped yet another patch of hairs from my trembling body, “It’s always worst the first time. As you do it again and again, the hairs become finer and eventually some of them stop growing at all.”

Right now I found it difficult to contemplate going through the ordeal of full-body waxing “again and again” but I must admit, the immediate results were intoxicating. As a result of Bob’s attentions at I had very little hair left on the top of my head and, as a result of Cindy’s work, I had absolutely no hair left anywhere else.

The eyebrows had been just the start. Cindy had reduced them to a line barely one hair thick. Then she had basically worked her way up from my ankles. My legs were denuded and then Cindy attacked what she called my “bikini line”. At first she had talked about a “Brazilian” which turned out to be the pubic equivalent of the mohawk which Bob had just disposed of. I made a remark to this effect and Cindy responded by whipping off the last vestiges of my Brazilian, too. Then the stray wisps of hair on my stomach and finally my arms.

As I drove home, I felt as if I no longer properly fitted my clothes. The fabric against my skin seemed to slide like it was loose. The sensation was strongly erotic and I was seriously turned on when I arrived home. Tod was already there and, whilst it was usually he who took the initiative after one of my monthly make-overs, this time I grabbed him and frog-marched him upstairs.

I went back to Bob a couple of times during November for maintenance touch-ups to my flat-top. Just before Christmas I went back to Cindy for a repeat of her ministrations. She was quite right, after the first time it is far less uncomfortable.

I was daydreaming while she was finishing off my “bikini line”, so I didn’t hear her properly when she said, “Mind if I try somethin
g new?”

“Um … sure, go ahead,” I murmured.

A couple of seconds later I shot bolt upright as a sharp stinging pain shot through my genital area.

“What the … ?” I yelled.

Cindy was grinning.

“I bet this wasn’t in any of Tod’s photographs,” she said, and tweaked a little gold ring which she had just pierced through the hood of my clitoris.

“Cindy,” I protested, “I never asked you to do that!”

“I know you didn’t,” she said, quite calmly. “But you wanted me to, didn’t you? You just never thought of it.”

The pain had subsided and so had my reaction. I smiled at her. “Yes. I guess I did.”

Cindy grinned again. “Do you think there might be other things that you would want me to do that you just haven’t thought of?”

I left Cindy’s after my first waxing with several parts of my body raw and tingling and it was the same again after this new session. In addition to me clit hood, Cindy had pierced by navel, both my nipples, the side of my nose, the lobes of both ears – twice, and the cartilage at the top of my left ear.

Tod was dumbstruck. That and completely frustrated when I told him that if he came anywhere near me until some of Cindy’s work healed up, I would scream.

And so December came. I was still pretty sore from the piercings, although they were healing well and I knew I would be keeping them. I had no idea what the calendar picture for December might be. I had virtually no hair left and the “conventional” girl I was a year ago seemed so far away from me now.

December was blank. There was no picture. Just a note from Tod. It read, “If you’ve got this far, then all I can say is thank you for a fantastic year of surprises and delights. You are an extraordinary girl and I love you – in any hairstyle.” The note went on. “December is for you to choose. Maybe you can think of something even more extreme than I could imagine, or maybe you’ll feel this is time to start the process of going back to your old self. Whatever you choose is fine by me.”

I thought about that note and, almost without knowing why, I went back to Bob’s barber shop. I showed him the note.

“What do you think you’ll do?” he said.

I sat in his chair and brushed my hand over the growing-out flat-top. “I don’t know,” I said. “Is there anything more extreme than this?”

“We could shave it completely,” said Bob.

“I suppose so, “ I said, but that seems such a cop-out. Not really a style at all.”

“We could try a horseshoe,” said Bob.

“What’s that?”

“Well, it’s much the same as you’ve got now except that on top it’s a whole lot shorter. In the limit, there’s just a little horseshoe-shaped fringe of hair around the front and the rest is shaved smooth.”

“Really smooth?” I asked.

“A cue-ball with a beard,” said Bob.

He swept the cape around me, got his clippers and held down my ear to start the process of cleaning off the hair from the side of my head. He chose to start with the ear with a ring through the cartilage and I winced.

“Sorry,” said Bob. “I’ll be careful. These are new, huh?”

“Part of a whole new set,” I said.

“Where will it all end?” he grinned at me in the mirror.

By now I was used to having all the hair at the back and sides of my head clipped away to the scalp, although I still found it an intensely enjoyable experience. On this occasion I sensed that Bob was clipping a fraction higher than before and that the sides were not going to be the geometrically vertical walls he had previously cut. Also, when he moved round to the back I felt his clippers travelling up to the crown as usual, but then carrying on over the top of my head, almost as far as the hairline at my forehead.

Once he had cleaned up the sides and the back, Bob spent a lot more time on the top. I felt him moving the clippers over his comb again and again like last time, but then he put the comb down and clippered free-hand. I felt the blades of the clippers contact my scalp directly many times in the middle of my scalp and I wondered what the difference was between Bob’s cut and a complete head-shave.

When he moved away from the mirror in front of me, I decided there was none. I was bald to the skin. Then I tilted my head slightly forward and saw that there was the faintest hint of a shadow around the front hairline, extending back in two narrow wings towards the middle of my head. The fringe of hair was less than a quarter of an inch long at the front and faded away to nothing by the middle of my head. I ran my hand over my scalp from the hairline backwards. I felt the slightest brush of the “horseshoe” fringe, but the rest was just a brief stubble.

“We ain’t finished yet,” said Bob.

As before he brought out his can of shaving foam and squirted it into his hand. Then he spread the cool foam all around my head, this time imncluding the top as well. With his razor he removed all the hair from the back and sides as before, extending right up to the horseshoe, and then he turned his attention to the top. Quite quickly he removed all the hair from my crown up to the middle of my head, then he got real intent. Carefully, I felt his blade scrape away all the hair up to the very edge of the fringe, he did this over and over again, to ensure a sharp definition of the outline of the horseshoe.

When he wiped away the foam, I saw that the horseshoe fringe was far more prominent than it was when the rest of the scalp had a shadow stubble.

I was satisfied.. This was the ultimate haircut. This was December.

All over Christmas, my haircut was the talk of the family and neighbourhood parties. People had got used to my monthly make-overs but this seemed to surprise everyone. I loved the attention and as New Year approached, I asked Tod whether he was planning a new calendar.

“No, honey. I think I’ve run you ragged enough. Now it’s up to you to decide what you’re happy with. I meant what I said in December.”

By January the horseshoe was beginning to grow out a bit. I went back to Cindy to get my waxing re-done and she asked me if I was going to keep the style or “go for something more normal”? I was surprised at my instinctive reaction. Little more than a year ago, I prided myself on being “normal” but now I realised that “normality” for me had become something completely different.

Cindy was just finishing up waxing my arm and said, “All done.”

“No,” I said, pointing to my scalp. “Sort this out.”

“I told you, I can’t do those precision haircuts,” Cindy said.

“I don’t mean that. Wax my head, too. Leave the horseshoe. Take everything else off.”

“Are you sure?” asked Cindy. “ I told you, it might not grow back right.”

“I don’t ever want it to grow back,” I said. “This is me, now.”

After she had applied the goo to my scalp, carefully outlining the horseshoe fringe, and ripped out all the redundant hair, my scalp felt smoother and cleaner than ever befor
e.

I knew that it wouldn’t grow back properly. I hoped it wouldn’t. I knew I would go back to Cindy every calendar month and have the re-growth waxed away until it never grew again. Just the horseshoe, so that I could always say it was a regular style. The December style.