St Paul boasted one all-female college: Myra Shrewsbury Teachers' College, its 1890s and Art Deco buildings clad in ivy and set in verdurous grounds. All its staff were women. Busts and portraits of its presidents- bespectacled and ferocious- glowered like female deities of vengeance, arranged in its vestibule, as if to frighten off any creature who dared to boast genitals dangling between his legs. In fact the only males ever allowed through its iron grated gates were aged janitors and gardeners. Delivery boys- their jeans and T shirts considered improper- were kept outside.
Most of the city's female teachers had been educated there, certainly all those at Grover Cleveland High. It was famous for a feminist credo, inculcating a certain attitude to males. It was an attitude its graduates sought to enforce when they joined other "Shrewsbury girls" as teachers in the city's schools.
Miss Cuff was one of them. As a devotee of her old college she kept her former teachers informed of her school initiatives including the musical, Cowgirls and Indian Braves. And of her little experiments like the loin cloths and the shaving of the boys' body hair. At lunches and coffee klatches with her old teachers there were a lot of lascivious smirks when she described the embarrassment of, say, Rodney Ricketson when his organs became engorged and poked the flap aside, in front of watching female staff or when Johnny Marcello had become instantly erect when forced to undress for a shave by one of the designated girls, with other females looking on in the school corridor. Or poor Stevie Lynton whose tiny erect penis had been exposed on the very day when 15 girls had been invited to watch a rehearsal and the waist band holding up his flap had snapped and the loin cloth had fluttered to his heels.
This summer the college got started with a theatre work of its own: an all-female production called The Female Crown: Shakespeare's Women. And they went to Miss Cuff, drama teacher of Grover Cleveland High, with a little request. It was a simple request. They asked if she could supply six 18 year old males to be an idling, ambling presence on stage, during productions of The Female Crown. They wanted boys from her school just standing in the background, providing atmosphere.
It was going to be a production in traditional dress.
For the males forming this chorus, this meant wearing what was known in Shakespeare's time, as hose. Or tights.
"We will have Mrs Carruthers run them up- the lovely old dress-maker who did your loin cloths? She's found this new, stretchy, silky nylon material," explained the head of the college drama department, Dr Martha Bagnet.
"Nylon?"
On her boys? Miss Cuff's imagination galloped. Her eyes swum, behind their red- framed, cats-eyes glasses.
And Dr Bagnet's eyes enlarged behind her flashing pince nez as she expatiated on her secret, even erotic, vision.
"Yes. Just like ladies' stockings. Skin tight. Absolutely skin tight. Colors? Oh, the palest...creams, limes and a light salmon, almost pink. Will look sensational on your young men, my dear."
Miss Cuff looked suffused. She fingered the long dangling chain of beads that hung around her neck and stared into the distance, imagining. She was, after all, an artist.
She said, "Yes, I know the effect. You want them to look sheathed..."
The two women savoured the word.
"Yes...sheathed."
"...sheathed, in their tights."
"Precisely, sheathed. Leaving nothing to the imagination. Absolutely no padding, though, not like ballet dancers with little mounds in their groins. We want a skintight effect. Think you can pick six...shall I say? Six of the most...interesting of the boys?"
As she delivered this, Dr Bagnet flashed a cunning, crocodile smile.
Miss Cuff assured her that, yes, she could. She felt the old stirring in her loins at the thought of her young men...stripped...completely naked...humiliated in front of females.
The boys had rehearsed in front of her wearing tiny loin cloths. Encouraged she had designed new ones even tinier and, daringly, without flaps on the rear. Made them display their cleft bottoms, to their acute embarrassment. She had seen them blush when erections had sprouted, their stiffening rods shoving the flaps aside. She had seen them naked standing on the stool at Mrs Carruther's as they'd been measured and fitted; she had smiled as their cocks had, with wills of their own, lengthened and risen. And she had encouraged girls to peep in from the corridor. Yes, while they stood, blushing on the stool.
She had watched as girls, whipping up shaving cream and wielding razors, had scrapped off the boys' pubic hair. She had recently been a witness at Dr Speight's medical examinations, thrillingly conducted in conditions of top-to-toe nudity.
If one of her boys had been laid on an examination table with towels over every inch of his body except his privates she was certain she could identify him- by the shape of his glans, the overhang of a foreskin, the heft of his shaft.
Yes, she told Martha Bagnet, she could pick six of the most interesting ones.
Which was why they had been summoned, six fellas- to stand on the stage of the school's empty auditorium, the stage with the faded backdrop showing a pyramid and palm tree. They were framed by the sagging, moth-eaten, satin-coloured curtains with gold rimming.
Wearing nothing but their jockstraps.
Virtually in their birthday suits, they thought darkly.
The ladies, eyes dancing, were Miss Cuff, Mrs Carruthers and her Negro maid Yuela, a few teachers from school and half a dozen from the teachers' college.
Miss Cuff explained to the boys why they were here- they were forming a chorus to decorate the stage, over at the ladies' college, to be part of the mise-en-scene, while young women recited and acted. Yes, they just had to stand there and, no, it had nothing to do with their Indian costumes. In this performance they'd be fully attired.
The relief of the males was palpable, even as hands stayed fixed over the bulging cups of their jockstraps. Hell, they had feared they might be forced to prance and pose at this ladies' college in the loin cloths!
No, Miss Cuff went on, they would be fully attired in Shakespearean dress.
Another sigh of relief.
In fact that's why they were here today: to let Mrs Carruthers, who had done such a good job with their Indian costumes...
Here the boys blushed. How they hated to be reminded of those tiny garments which left their asses exposed.
...to let Mrs Carruthers carry out some preliminary fittings for the college production.
"Beginning with the blouses..."
Mrs Carruthers held up a short, embroidered green top.
Rodney thought it looked...sexy. He remembered the males who sang and danced in the musical Kiss Me Kate- his mother had taken them to see at the drive-in. He'd wanted to be one of the male performers, singing and dancing, admired on the Broadway stage. His penis began to stretch.
"...and these caps."
She held one- streamlined, with a feather, Robin Hood style. The boys chuckled. Funny, nice to show off at home.
"And..."
Miss Cuff paused for effect.
"...these tights!"
Miss Carruthers held one aloft.
It dangled- a wisp of a costume, fit for a fairy.
It looked it might be worn in a girls' ballet class, with a tu-tu. It was the lightest salmon pink.
What was it made from? It looked frail as parchment.
The boys stared, shocked.
Miss Cuff looked at it dangling from the broad, raised arm of the seamstress.
She appeared quizzical, fingers on chin.
"I don't know...it looks too...too.."