A Boy With Girly Hair - The Contest - Series 3 - Part 1

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PARTS - PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6

The peace of a summer Sunday afternoon was broken by the shrill voice of my sister, Jean, as she walked through the living room. "I need ahead to work on, and I need it now," she said to Mom.

"Dear, I just don't have the time or patience to spare."

Sis was persistent. "I need practice rolling hair, or I'll never pass tomorrow's test."

"Practice on the wig," Mom suggested as she prepared lunch for the family.

Squiggling up her face, Sis persisted, "Ma, you know that cheap wig keeps coming off the stand every time I try to comb it. Anyway, the test is on a real person."

"Sweetheart, I was your subject one time and nearly caught my death of cold while you worked for two hours to set my wet hair. Remember, dear?"

"But Mom, you know how much you paid for this semester of beauty college, so if I fail; it'll be all your fault," my sister cried. But Mom was unmoveable. This was one time it seemed that my sister wouldn't get her way.

Unfortunately for me, my father was in the family room, which was next to the kitchen, and overheard the conversation. "Nick, come hear." Damn, I thought.

"Nick" was the name my parents used when giving me orders. "Nick, come here," Dad called again but with a sense of urgency. Don't make me chase all over for you."

Reluctantly I walked over to where he was seated in his favorite Easy Back Chair reading the paper. "Nick, your sister needs practice for a test she's taking. Will you please be her model for this one time?" Dad said in a pleading tone of voice.

"Of course I will, then, I just couldn't help it, but I burst out laughing. Like sure; ya really," I chuckled and walked away.

Now, Dad is a calm type of guy, but he can be stern if he wants to, and he was this time. "Nick, give your sister a break and help her us out," he said.

"It's not as if you have anything better to do, and we paid, your mom and I have been after you for years get your hair cut, so you might as well put your hair to good use."

"Ok, Ok!" I reluctantly agreed. For some reason, my father has to lecture every time he tells me to do something. With a gleeful smile on her face, my sister said to follow her as she walked to the bathroom, glancing over her shoulder to be sure I was following. I'm sure she would have loved to see me get another lecture from father.

"First, I have to brush your hair." Sis ordered, "Here, you sit on the stool." I sat down on the metal-legged stool, and Sis sat on another one behind me. In front of us were a double basin counter and a mirror the length of the counter.

"I can do that," I protested as she pulled off the band around my ponytail and began to brush my hair.

"You be quiet," she said. With long strokes, Sis brushed my hair for several minutes. Mom had done this once or twice, but this was sort of, well, unsettling, having a girl, my sister, brush it. What made it even more weird was watching the whole business in a mirror. Sis had a smile on her face as she pulled the brushed through my hair, gathered it in each hand and brushed the sides, and then lifted it up and brushed the bottom side. "I have to wash your hair, so kneel down by the side of the tub. Better take off the T-shirt cause it'll get wet." So I did, but to my amazement, Sis did the same, that is, she took off her white blouse, saying that she didn't want to get it wet. This was no big deal because she was always walking in and out of the bathroom and kitchen in her bra; anyway, it covered more than her bathing suit, but still, I'd never seen her in her bra this close. We moved the 4 feet or so across the room to the tub, a Jacuzzi where I rested on my arms on the rim. When I was settled, Sis wet my hair using a hand shower massager and slathered it with shampoo. To my surprise, I enjoyed the aromatic smell of the shampoo, the sudhing sound of the lather, and the soothing feel of the warm water.

Her nails moved over my scalp, and her fingers pulled through my long wet, lathered hair, starting at the crown and down to the nape and finally to the ends of the hair.

Where she scrunched the hair really well. Then she rinsed, lathered, and rinsed again, applied conditioner and rinsed a final time. My hair was long enough to almost reach the bottom of the tub, so she had enough to practice with.

"Most girls would die to have hair like yours," she said as she finished me off with a towel-wrapped turban-like around my head. I probably should have protested more than I did, but it kinda fun. I couldn't help but almost drift off into sleep; it felt so relaxing. Now my 22-year-old Sis is a naturally good-looking babe with mid-back light brown hair, a great face, and a fantastic body. Most 16-year-old guys would die to have a doll-like her hovering over them, and I'd swear her boobs poked me a couple of times. Being placed so close to her body gave me some wicked thoughts, I have to admit.

"Now for the cut," she said.

"You mean there's more? You know, girl, you didn't say anything about a haircut." I protested.

"Of course, silly, I sure didn't need you to practice washing hair; anyone can do that and I sure can't roll uneven hair; I'd be wasting my time," Sis answered back.

Sis covered me with a sheet back on our stools and handed me a magazine of girls' hairdos. "This is going to be you in just a little while," she said, pointing to a picture of a girl in shoulder-length waves and curls. As I stared at the picture, I felt a wide-toothed comb sliding through my wet hair.

"Ouch!" I cried.

"Oh, shut up, you little sissy," Sis snapped at me. "I'm not killing you; it's only a snag. Now I'm going to cut your hair for the style."

"Your hair is long and thick but easy to work with," Sis said sweetly. "Be sure to gently comb your hair because wet hair stretches and is easily broken," she sounded like she was reading a book. I felt the small toothed comb run through my hair as she sectioned it off, and then she pinned it up. I felt the tug of each section of hair and the clicking of the scissors as she cut the back underneath first. She sectioned, cut, and pinned over and over again.

"If you use one of Mom's big scissors, you will get done a lot sooner," I said.

"If I used Mom's scissors, you'd be missing an ear by this time," she answered me. I didn't laugh cause I believed it.

Of course, Mom and Dad had to come in and out all the time and interrupt her with their stares.

"See," Sis said. "I'm only cutting a little off, to even out the length. I was relieved to see only small pieces of wet hair drop on the sheet. I'd fought Mom forever, it seems, to let my hair grow and enjoyed this little bit of rebellion. Anyway, I think

my parents and I talked about me getting a haircut more than any other subject, so I didn't want my sister to ruin it for me.

"Finished! Sis exclaimed”. "Now comes the hard part, but we have to go to the living room for this. My back can't take this stool. I was also uncomfortable, so I agreed with her. Sis sat on the living room couch, and I sat on a hassock in front of her. She brought with her all kinds of stuff, including a plastic cover which she spread over me and tied in the back of my neck. "Here, hold these," she said as she dropped lots of pink hair rollers into my lap. "We start at the front, then the sides, and finally the back," Sis said, talking like a textbook. "I'm combing smoothly a section of hair about an inch deep and half an inch shorter than the roller.

Now I'm combing it straight out up from your scalp, spraying setting lotion on it, wrapping an endpaper over the hair, sliding it to the ends, and holding it. Hand me a roller." I did, gingerly picking up one with two fingers and handing it to her over my shoulder. "Now I'm placing the roller next to the endpaper and smoothly and tautly winding a section of hair around the roller." she continued.

"Jean, it's too tight," I whined as she secured the roller with a bobby pin.

But I was ignored. My sister was in one of her trances.

"Now I'm pinning the roller on the bottom, attaching the first roller with a pin at the base of the roller, not the top, or you'll leave a mark on the finished hairdo." Section by section, she combed, sprayed, and rolled, attaching the second roller to the first one and so on and so on. Finally, she was behind me, rolling the hair in the back, and I was surprised to find that I was starting to enjoy it, all these sensations. I mean, the combing, the winding, and tightness were sexually exciting. I don't know why but it was. In fact, I had to place my hands over my growing erection to keep from having to run to my room to satisfy myself. Maybe it was because I like pretty hair.

Sometimes I think my favorite style is lots of tight curls or those long Shirley.

Temple curl, but other times, I'd like the sleek look, the one where the hair is slicked back and worn in a bun or twist. One time in like 8th grade, on the way home, I asked a girl classmate, Judy; I think her name was if I could touch her hair, but she just gave a dirty look, so I laughed, saying I was only kidding. She had come to class with a head full of curls for the class picture, and I thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Anyway, having my hair set wasn't as horrible as I would have thought it would be, and I spent the time thinking about the beautiful girl with beautiful hair in the magazine. And then a new thought came to mind: I tried but couldn't think of anything quite so daring that I'd ever done, and this made it all that much more exciting.

"How's your model?" Dad asked when he came in to see us. "Is he behaving?"

"Yes," Sis replied. "He's very cooperative.

"I'm being tortured," I protested to Dad, but he just smiled and said to endure it for the sake of the family. But this was too daring, having to be seen this way by anyone, especially my father, with a head full of pink rollers.

"Tortured, you're the one who tortures us with you moping around the house or staying in your room all day reading. You hardly ever go out. "Dad said, inspecting Sis' work and patting the rollers in my hair. I was relieved that Dad didn't laugh at me. If he had, I'm pretty sure; I'd walked away right then and there.

"See how good I'm getting, Dad," Sis said proudly.

"All the curlers are tight and inline like little soldiers."

Dad smiled at her and said, "They're supposed to be taunt, not necessarily tight."

"That's it. All done," Sis exclaimed and then sprayed the setting lotion all over my hair, especially at the roots. I shivered as the cold wetness ran off my scalp and trickled down my neck. "Now you can sit under Mom's hairdryer for a few hours, or you can let it dry naturally?" I hardly had a minute to think about her question when she ran to answer the doorbell.

Geez, I thought, what if it's someone I know, so I ran to the bathroom. There in the mirror, I saw rows of curlers taunt and smooth, straight down the middle, and row after row on the sides and back. I had seen Mom and Sis this way many times and remembered their curlers being transformed into soft waves, and curls like caterpillars changed into butterflies. Mom and Sis were always fixing each other's hair, and Dad was forever saying how pretty they looked. Now I figured I would get some attention. For a minute, I imagined how I'd look when they were combed out.

"Nick, your mother, wants to see your sister's handiwork," Dad called.

"Ahhh, doesn't he look darling," Mom shrieked when she saw me? "How do you feel, son, about having your hair in rollers?" She said in a mocking way.

"Now, dear," Dad said to Mom, "for once, he's helping his sister and us. Let's not spoil it." With that, mom was silent.

"Did Sis leave?" I asked.

"Yes, she's out with Bill," Mom answered.

"When she coming home to take these out?".

"Who knows? But those rollers come out when your sister says they come out,"

Dad said sternly. "You don't want to ruin her creation, do you?"

"They hurt," I complained.

"Don't be silly! Mom said. Now you can appreciate the time and trouble women take to look attractive."

As we sat down for dinner, I could hardly believe what was happening: I was eating dinner with a head full of pink curlers, and Mom and Dad were ignoring me, like their son in hair rollers was an everyday thing. "Doesn't Nick look like Jean when she was his age, dear," Mother said to Dad. "You know, dear, I was thinking the same thing," he replied. On and on, they talked about when Jean wore her first beauty contest, for Miss 10 Year Old, or something like that, and her first perm, when it came out real frizzy. On and on they went. Like when Jean was homecoming queen in high school and was a contestant in the State Pageant. You would think Jean was Miss America considering how often they talked about her.

I couldn't help but chime in, "But she didn't win cause she's got no talent, like a reading from Shakespeare is talent." I'm sure that was the last thing my parents wanted to hear, but at least it stopped them from talking about my sister, at least for a while.

"Aren't you hungry, son?" Mom asked.

"Na, it's hard to eat thinking about how I look.

"It doesn't bother us, does it, dear?" Mom asked Dad.

"No, not at all, dear," Dad said, smiling at me.

After a long sign, Dad declared, "Nick, you look like a little girl in hair rollers!"

"What do you think, dear?" He asked Mom.

Mom hesitated the answered, "I agree. He looks just like a young teenaged girl with his big brown eyes and fine delicate features and his perky little nose." Being only 5'7" and small-boned, I wish I could be called a hunk of a football player, but at least they were giving me a compliment, even if it was more for a girl than a guy.

"Help me with the dishes," Mom said to me after we finished eating. "If you're going to look like your sister, you might as well help me out the way she did when she was your age." "Do as your mother says," Dad added and got up and left. I helped Mom with the dishes and putting away the leftovers. She talked about how much work it was to be a woman, how much time it took to fix her hair and do her makeup and that being a woman was more than looking pretty, that there was a lot of responsibility involved. Oh, brother, I thought, I hope Mom doesn't talk like those feminists about how oppressed women are. Like women oppress men more than the other way around, I thought to myself. Anyway, I thought, Mom didn't do much with her hair and didn't wear much makeup and wasn't a fancy dresser, so she never took very long to get ready to go out.

"Mom, I know; I know you work hard. You don't need to convince me that being a woman isn't easy." "Geez," I thought, "what's gotten into Mom?" I was feeling kind of down when Dad came in to ask how his girls were doing. Without thinking I said, "fine."

After helping in the kitchen, I went to my room to watch TV but had a hard time concentrating on the movie. About all I could think about was the tightness of the rollers on my head and the feeling of the plastic rollers against my scalp. They were constant reminders of my daring new look. A dozen times, I sneaked into one of the bathrooms to look in a mirror. I never looked so often in a mirror in my whole life.

I don't think. I'd look at the front and, with a hand mirror, looked at the sides and back. I was glad Jean wasn't home because I could look and pat the rollers on my head the rest of the evening. I stayed up until past ten until Mom and Dad came by to say that I might as well go to bed because Jean surely wouldn't do the comb out so late.

"But the rollers, I can't sleep.

"Don't whine like a sissy," my father said with a laugh. That's one word I used to hate being called. "Sissy" was about the worst name you could call a guy in my neighborhood. But for me, a sissy was something I was beginning to think wasn't so horrible. That night I tossed and turned, not only because I was trying to find a comfortable position but also because I was thinking about how I'd look with a head full of curls, and I thought about Judy, the mean little girl with the beautiful hair. Finally, I settled on the side of my face on a pillow and fell asleep.