Behind her cat's eyes glasses her green eyes were blazing. A note of half suppressed hysteria flavoured her voice as she issued orders. She sounded ardent, metallic, possessed. She was in fact a mad genius, driven by her own quasi-religious vision. Miss Cuff was in charge- very, very much in charge- and her project, this school production in which boys wore only tiny flaps over their loins, none over their rears (they were effectively naked) and girls were dressed as cowgirls, was being rehearsed. Yet it still had no date for its long-awaited premiere.
Long awaited that is, by Brewer's women and girls. They had all heard about it. Some had seen costumes, even had sons or brothers model them. A few had crept into rehearsals, stared with astonishment and left aglow. Some salivated, as rumors spread about how diminished the latest version of the loin cloth had become: the front flap was tiny, tokenistic, showed off everything and there was now no flap at all in the rear. The boys' bottoms were to be displayed without any covering.
It was not just that, suddenly, 18 year old boys were being put on display. It was that they were being displayed in conditions of the utmost humiliation. And that shaming- of the proud young males- sent extra shivers up female spines.
Now for the first time Miss Cuff was having girls rehearse with the boys. This was, for the females, a juicy development and a dozen female teachers, some young (barely older than the boys they were seeing nude) and mature (old enough to be mothers or grandmothers to the unclad adolescents) had joined her, seated in the front rows, facing the stage with its scarlet and gold trimmed curtains and the faded backdrop, painted in the 1930s, with incongruous painted pyramid, sphinx and palm tree under a crescent moon.
It was the climactic scene of Cowgirls and Indian Braves.
On the stage 15 boys were standing awkwardly. They were ridiculous in their headbands with their single feathers. Ludicrous- these athletic 18 year olds, swimmers and basketball players and champions of football and track and field- stripped like this, clutching their bows and arrows, the toys of junior school. Shuffling, nervous and ashamed, as their female teachers saw their bodies, near naked and on display.
But Miss Cuff had instructed them to come wearing jock straps under their Indian loin cloths. Jockstraps? The reason was simple. She knew the girl performers would be so distracted by the sight of testicles and pricks they would never get their words out. Never concentrate. Especially as one boy after the other got erect, as they always did (it must be said, to Miss Cuff's delight, to her colleagues' delight.) Especially as their erections fought their way out from behind the dainty little cloth coverings. Girls would stare- Miss Cuff knew for sure- eyes bulging, as a fat glans struggled into view, as a dangling scrotum flopped free, as a classic 45 degree erection sallied forth, shunting a flap sideways. The girls would stare and daydream, and stumble over their lines. She knew this would happen.
So the boys were sporting jockstraps under their flimsy flaps. God, she thought, it looks funny. Actually another humiliation for the poor males.
Jimmy Fraser, for example, wore his divorced Dad's slightly antique jockstrap, kept folded for years in a chest of drawers, yellowed and smelling of mothballs. It was Keystone brand, a 1946 model, manufactured in Pennsylvania for US paratroopers. The waistband was very wide and covered his hairy navel; it looked medical and prosthetic. Hanging from it was the cupped, V-shaped woven pouch; it was fraying; through its loose edges one could glimpse Jimmy's wrinkled, bundled penis and scrotum- and from her seat in the front row his music teacher, 28 year old Miss Moira Metcalfe, certainly did, and hoped for more- say, a view of his mauve penis head or lop-sided scrotum.
Rodney Ricketson wore a J and J Swimmer jockstrap with blue tracer line round the three inch waistband. He had pulled it out of the drawer as he dashed from the house and never inspected it. Of his two jockstraps it was the oldest, worn out. It should have been thrown out a year ago. The cup was threadbare with gaps in the meshing. One straining piece of stitching attached to another, literally, by a single thread. His mushroomy penis head, powered by the thick nine inch shaft, could poke through the tattered mesh at any time. His cock was swelling, expanding, inflating, thrusting at the old threads. It's my old problem, he thought, strip me off in front of females and I get stiff in no time flat.
But...will...these...threads...hold?
So they stood, arms hanging, hands playing with the elastic bands from which the flaps dangled around their waists. Avoiding eye contact with the goggling female teachers.
The script mandated stretching and yawning- they were very awkward and embarrassed doing this, knowing they were revealing their barely-covered midriffs- till the chief, played by Jimmy Fraser exclaims, "A long day of tracking and hunting, fellow braves of the Black Hawks. Here is our sacred site. We lie here...and rest till the morning."
The boys carefully lowered themselves (so as to minimise glimpses of their bared buttocks sliced by jockstrap bands.) But teachers caught views nonetheless- of Jimmy Fraser's soccer-ball ass cheeks, of Stevie Lynton's skinny little bottom dusted with his trade-mark black hair, of Muhammed Sulimen's black muscled glutes set-off by the white bands of his jocks, even of the inside of Kerry Fulbright's intergluteal cleft as his buttocks flared and he lowered himself to the stage.
And so it went, with the 15 braves settling to the stage floorboards around the makeshift scenery- three painted cardboard boulders and cactus shrubs- self conscious, yawning and stretching some more, pretending to sink into slumber. Awkward, because of the stares of the female audience. And Holy Cow! Jeepers- the girls had appeared in the wings, gasping and giggling as they elbowed one another to see the boys.
Miss Cuff noted with pleasure the bulge stretching in the ribbed knit pouch of Kerry Fulbright's jockstrap, with his Indian flap drooping to the left over his upper thigh. She remembered his elegant, slanting, seven inch erection, streamlined and athletic. Seen in profile, Mark Campbell was suffering embarrassment as the giant bulge in his jockstrap cup lifted his flap. "Those thighs!" thought Miss Hushabye, day-dreaming of having this boy wrap those legs around her. "The thighs of Wisconsin lumberjack!"
Rodney showed off his large bulge- an exploding bulge- in his knitted cup because his flap fell away over his right thigh as he settled on the floor and he didn't want to risk a rebuke by shyly flicking it back into place. As a result Miss Cuff and her colleagues, fixated on the huge, expanding rounded space, were reminded of his outsize penis head, what the biology teacher had called his "mushroom-like glans," setting them all atwitter with such suggestive words. Mushroom indeed!
Reminded, too, of Rodney's thick shaft and loose hanging scrotum with what looked like small avocados inside its two compartments. All bundled up in that knitted cup. Presumably he was secreting fluid, "Cowper's fluid"'or "pre-ejaculate" as it was apparently termed, secreting it because of his exhibitionist tendencies. Either way that swelling cup on his jockstrap had their attention.
Miss Cuff noticed the nervous breathing of the lying and reclining boys, their drum-tight abdomens twitching with apprehension. Goodness, there was Kerry Fulbright lying on his back and his flap moving up and down, his penis now vigorously at work in the cupped jockstrap underneath. Miss Auburon, family friend of the Fulbright's who remembered Kerry as a baby on her knee, directed a gimlet stare right at it. When Kerry darted a look at the audience he caught her eye. He winced.
Other boys lying on the stage showed off their bulges. As their genitals fleshed out and moved around like restless snakes in the cups of their jockstraps the flaps on top of the jockstraps moved too, as if each of the slumbering Indian warriors was enjoying romantic dreams of young squaws. Or even of Western women. Oh, they must be embarrassed, knowing we're watching, thought several of the women. Oh look- the flap lying over Colin Gray's groin was lifting, as the cup of his jockstrap filled out! Now what's that naughty fella thinking? Mark Campbell too, only with him the flap was jerking around as his big penis stretched in its jockstrap cup.
Wait till those girls join you.
Those girls who now, on cue, padded, tiptoed, onto the stage from left and right. Fifteen cowgirls. They wore tight fitting plaid blouses and skirts pinched at the waists. They wore knee-high leather boots, decorated with Western motifs. Their hats were curvaceous- charming and cheeky. They were heavily made up, cheeks like apples and lips that shone.
Miss Cuff had rehearsed the girls carefully.
They were to take the sleeping Indian braves by surprise and twirl their lassoes and close in on their victims- 15 near-naked, unsuspecting Indian braves-and tie their hands and...
She had thought carefully about the next step.
And...
...force them to strip? At gunpoint?
Make them wriggle out of their loin cloths? And, today at this rehearsal, peel down their jockstraps?
To present themselves completely bare on stage?
Today, in front of the girls and female teachers? And, on the night of the performance itself, in front of their Moms, sisters, cousins and girls next door and from the next street, and their aunts and Grandmas?
Miss Cuff shivered with expectation. Nothing quickened her more than this prospect of nude humiliation of young men. All the blushing. So, delicious. All those involuntary erections. How arresting.
But...
"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
She had been raised on the Bible, her grandfather on the Winkleworth side a tent preacher, famous in Nebraska, a disciple of William Jennings Bryan.
"Sufficient unto the day." The riveting prospect of stripping them buck naked could wait until their next rehearsal. Right now the girls needed to concentrate, not be distracted by boys shed of their clothing, thrilling though that prospect was.