Chapter 5: A Strange Party
George and Mary arrived at the jazz club at the appointed time. The band was in full swing in the middle of a set. They spotted a familiar young woman's face at the back of the smoke filled club near a door. They approached, handed over their dollar, and passed through the door.
In the room, the three couples already in attendance greeted them. "Well if it isn't George Rush! What brings you back here, old man? With Mary? Jones?" Chuck Annenberg was speechless. Mary had been considered a total square.
"Cut the old man crap, Chuck," said George. "I'm only two years older than you."
"Oh, but all the rules have changed, my good man! You don't know what you're in for. But I'll let Liz Edwards, our master of ceremonies, explain."
Liz stepped up to Mary with a pair of scissors. "This will never do," she said. Mary was dressed in conventional attire for a young lady: a modest blouse with long sleeves and a high collar and what appeared to be an ankle length skirt. "We have a dress code. Are you sure you want to proceed? If you leave, you'll still forfeit your dollar."
"This old thing?" replied Mary, "Do what you will."
Liz chuckled and scissored Mary's high neckline into a ragged low cut one, exposing much of her brassiere underneath. She also scissored off Mary's long sleeves, leaving a very revealing and low cut mess of a blouse that was easy to reach through, resulting in hoots and hollers from the other now five couples in the room and a pained look from George that tried to say, "Let me take you away from this viper pit."
Liz moved down to Mary's modest skirt. "What have we here?" she chuckled with delight, for Mary's skirt was not a skirt at all but long flowing baggy pants that looked like a skirt. These were Aikido pants custom made for Mary in Japan. Liz started by scissoring off the legs of the pants above the knee, which was a higher cut than the knee length flapper dresses of the other girls. When she was done with that, Liz gently cut up Mary's inseam, leaving a kind of skirt with sizeable but not entirely revealing splits up the front and back. The assembled crowd of couples could easily see that Mary was not wearing a slip underneath, only a pair of white silk panties.
The hazing of her attire had been brutal, but Mary accepted it willingly, feeling like it was helping her to move from her normal life into this new life of rooms full of lusty young men and scantily clad young women. She had borne it without complaint, and she could see that her reaction had garnered her some grudging respect among the surly and cynical youth present.
As more couples arrived and chatted with one another, Mary pulled Liz's date Chuck aside. He was a ringleader of many pranks, including perhaps the one involving the Old Cock. His face and lip had a disfiguring scar. Some girls might disagree, but she thought he was all the handsomer for it. "I'm curious, Chuck," she began coyly, "Where is the Old Cock?"
"Right now it's in my pants," Chuck joked with her gleefully, "But if you insist later, I'll get it out and let it crow for you."
