So twice a week the boys who were to play the Red Indians in Miss Cuff's school drama had to drag themselves down the echoing corridors of Grover Cleveland High and report to Miss Assam, the principal's secretary. They stood in front of her beetroot red and shuffling. She would mark their names, flash them a grim smile and send them to the second door on the left, a storeroom now converted to a little clinic. It was where the boys went to have their body hair shaved off, by the girl allocated to look after them: a different girl for each fella.
"Go in...and strip off," Miss Assam would say, her green eyes dancing in the direction of the boy's fly- chilling, because as the boys had learnt, they could hardly have a shaving session anymore than a medical inspection without Miss Assam finding reason to burst through the door with an inquiry or a form to fill, while her eager, roaming eyes searched out the nude male's groin.
Still blushing like a fire hydrant Rodney shuffled down the corridor, passing the hanging, fading photos of football and basketball teams from the 1920s and the display cases with sporting trophies and school mementoes; he passed the gold-framed photo of Hiram Q Mossbacher, school principal from 1923 to 1951, beaming above a polka dot bow tie. Rodney came to the second door on the left.
He knew who would be inside, with her shaving gear at the ready: Milly Slink who, in seven shaving sessions, had grown more confident, more assured, more deft. That is, at whisking off the stubble in his arm pits, from his groin and his scrotum.
While Rodney had grown more...
It was hard to find the words. But if naked exposure had shaken him with surges of terror and suffused him with feelings of joy it might be said that the suffused joy was becoming, well...to dominate. Yes, at the hands of Milly.
There she stood as he opened the door. Her eyes swam behind her Coke bottle lenses, her plaited hair stretched stiff in pink ribbons. These days she dressed up to shave Rodney- today, in pink blouse with pussy cat bow, wide tartan skirt, white ankle socks, loafers. She had even taken to wearing a pointy bra and high-waisted salmon pink panties she had smuggled home without her Baptist Mom getting a glimpse.
"Well, hullo Rodney. All ready...to be smoothed skinned?"
Her voice had a sing song quality.
It was the voice of a nurse, a matron, a teacher. A female...in charge. She had picked it up from Dr Speight, school doctor and Kinsey sex researcher.
Especially when she used the next locution.
Sometimes it was, businesslike, "Yes, slip out of your clothes." Sometime, cheerfully, she would chime, "Time to strip off then." And smile resignedly, as if to say here we go again, isn't this a chore. Or she might be as maternal as any mother with a first born boy, "Come on fella, outta those clothes. You know I can't shave you with everything on."
Or brutally she might just say, "Rodney, now take off every item of clothing and put your hands behind your head so I can see what we need to do today."
And Rodney had no alternative but, blushing, to begin to struggle with shirt buttons while his stomach felt as if it had a thousand butterflies fluttering, and struggle out of his shirt knowing that Milly would notice his long projecting nipples sticking out and she would probably be reminded how Rodney appeared to enjoy having them tweaked with tongs. And he would reach the moment when his trousers would have to be unbelted, unbuttoned, slithered down his legs.
As they proceeded towards the denouement of total, one hundred percent stripping off, developments never failed to send a rocket-charged surge of excitement through both of them, there never being an occasion when Rodney peeled off his trousers when his boxers weren't shamefully tented or shucked out of his boxers, when his penis was not revealed rock hard and drooling. As for the girl her excitement was hidden from view but an irrepressible odour- feminine and sour- quickly circulated about her while her eyes swam with a lubricious greed lapping up every station of the boy's quickening humiliation.
He always felt a jolt in his tummy when his erection bounced into view after he pulled his boxers down his legs and he looked up and saw her eyes swim behind those glasses, wide as saucers, as if she were straining to take in the huge, swollen, purplish glans stuck on the end of his long, thick, white stalk. Or to take in the network of prominent blue veins, or the heavy, hanging testicles in their purse of loose flesh. All amplified by the absence of so much as a single hair. Without his scrolled, ginger pubic locks he looked as bare as an egg.
He stood naked and erect, "bare as a board" as Miss Assam had exclaimed the last time she had burst in, his hands locked behind his neck. A trail of fluid dangled from his penis tip, swinging in the air like a loose thread in a spider web. Milly advanced and, standing so close he could feel her breath, lightly ran her finger tips in his armpits.
And when he trembled and twisted she said, "Oh that's right, my silly little boy is ticklish isn't he?" And she gave him a good five finger tickle right in the armpit and made him twist.
"A bit of stubble. Yes, we'll shave those armpits smooth again. And down here..."
Her fingers fluttered in his groin, which had once blazed with sculptured red curls and was now exposed, white and childlike. Her fingers touched his penis stalk as she felt for stubble on his pubis.
"Oh dear, you have grown stubbly here, Rodney," as her hands moved between his stretched, stiff dorsal shaft and his bald pubic area and he clenched his eyes with embarrassment and pleasure. "Yes, we will need to shave right around your groin..."
She was feeling the base of his erection. She tightened her grip.
"...yes, all around your groin and..."
She had moved to cupping and caressing his balls. As if assessing their weight. Lightly bouncing as she cupped them. Rodney was going weak at his knees.
"...these are getting stubbly too...so we gotta...shave your...test...testicles."
She struggled with the pronunciation. These were things she had only learnt about. And her palm tightened on them.
"Soooo..."
She released her grip, held the scrotum in her palm. Then she slapped his ballsac hard.
Slap.
"Ouchhhhh!"
He doubled over.
"...we better start. Up on the table, Rodney!"
"Yes...but...please...don't...do...that...to my balls..."
He gasped...gathered his strength...looked imploringly into her eyes.
"Rodney, no more dirty nicknames for your private parts. Say, 'please don't do that to my testicles.' Now, Rodney, up on the table."
Penis shaft leading him- it had happily reinflated- he shuffled and lifted his left leg, then eased himself down and spread himself, with hands under his head and armpits open. He lay naked under her gaze.
She noisily whipped up a thick lather in a shaving jug with the old fashioned shaving brush. She produced a rich foam. He watched. His penis throbbed expectantly.
She then squished the shaving cream into each armpit, lathered it around, while he flexed with ticklishness. He loved the feel of the bristles. His penis drooled into his belly button. She picked up the lady's safety razor and slowly set to work, scraping off the foam, from the cavern of each armpit.
No one- not in all the history of hair removal, from the time of Aztec warriors and Pharaonic Egypt- has ever been shaven with more luxurious slowness- than Rodney Ricketson was by Milly Slink.
She took her time, slowly rinsing the shaver, then paring off another rectangle of lather, till his armpits were bare. And smooth.
She now mushed the shaving cream into his groin. Sloshed it around. She laid it on, under his stiff shaft. She lathered it around his penis base. And, with huge enjoyment, lathered his lounging scrotum. He flinched with pleasure, bristles working his tender spaces.
"What fun this part is," she thought. "What did Johnny Marcello say they called it? Their beanbag. Ballsac. Such loose skin, with those marbles inside- little oblongs really- and the funny ballsac, the beanbag, hanging down between their thighs. Hilarious really, flopping around, especially when they jump or run."
And as she deftly, lightly pared off strips of lather, tongue between her lips, she would ask him in her sing song nurse's voice about the latest stories on his home life. She loved hearing about his punishments and humiliations at the hands of his mother, in full view of his sisters and cousin. And Rodney, lying bare as a board, having his groin shaved, loved telling this plain bespectacled girl all about it.
Now, as she leant in close- tongue between her lips- singling out a stray hair under his shaft or on his scrotum- he talked about the horror of being forced to model his Indian costume for his mother's bridge club- so the ladies could see how it looked with his body removed of all its hair. And how ladies had made him stand close so they could see his smooth testicles and had gone "Ohhh" and "Ahhh" and how old Mrs Shotover had pointed her finger and come close to touching his left testicle. And he had felt Miss Flintwich's breath- hell, she must have been 75- when she leant in close peering through her lorgnette- shit! Her breath on his penis head!- when his mother had edged him closer to the seated ladies, pushing him forward with her hand on the small of his back.
"And did your long, thick thingie stick out and up? I bet it did!"
"Yes," he had to concede. "I got a hardon...sorry, I mean erection. It...it...poked out under the flap."
"And all the old ladies saw it?"
"Yes...it was right in front of them."
"What, stiff and long like it is now?"
"Yes."
"How did they react to that?"
And she whisked off some stubble from his penis base and pubic bone with a deft lift of the razor.
"They stared. Stared hard at it. Their eyes popping. Staring hard. Looking...kinda greedy. And giggled."
"And your mother?"
"She just smiled."
"Oh dear, I bet you hated that! Staring and giggling at this!"
And she touched the underside of his shaft, stretched as it was above his belly all the way to his navel. And lightly ran her fingers along the dorsal length.
And he had to admit to MIlly he had felt very embarrassed. He had shrivelled with embarrassment. That is, until his mother had made him turn around and show them his bottom.
And as he told her stories of his humiliation at home his insides melted with shame as the girl dipped the shaver in the water bowl and shook it clean and returned to the folds of his lounging scrotum. And slowly, with surgical dexterity, scrapped foam off.
