After spending the first day aboard the Barbaros with Dyana, to make sure she was as comfortable as could be expected, I dove down to our dome. I entered the airlock, and zipped it shut behind me. I signaled the ship and they set a valve to purge the water by forcing air into the lock. Then I entered the dome and removed my tanks, fins, and gloves. I could have stripped down to my bikini, but I decided to work in my wetsuit until I got too hot. If that happened, I’d strip down.
The dome was comfortable and essentially dry, though humid. I was glad for my short hair. My long locks would have been far worse than a mess in this place. I was actually happy that Dyana had cut most all of my hair. I made a mental note to tell her how appreciative I was of my new look, the freedom it afforded, and the comfort it provided. I intended to do everything I could to make sure she knew how much she was appreciated, especially by me.
Because of its shape, I could stand up throughout the dome, until I got within a few feet of the curved walls. The sand below my feet was semi-dry, but I knew I’d encounter water before I dug a foot down. We had partitions with pumps that would keep small areas dry to a depth of several feet, however.
I started poking around the floor of the dome, trying to decide where to begin. I settled on an area just off center and started the painstaking task of excavating. For me, the expedition and survey had now become a dig.
I tried hard to be interested in the work that had seemed so fascinating, so important, when I’d accepted the position. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, the reality of my lover’s anguish kept invading my thoughts and mood. What had been an incredible, interesting, compelling and addictive archeological exploration had turned into an endless string of necessary tasks that I had to complete, in order to ultimately escape from this unplanned ennui.
The days passed slowly, at about the rate Dyana regained her strength. I think her weakness came as much from the blow to her head, as any surgery that was done to her. After she’d been back on ship for about a week, I asked her to trim my hair. I thought it would make her happy and let her know that I wanted to please her as much as ever, that I still considered us a couple.
She smiled, agreed and half an hour later, I was back to neat and trim. I also think I was successful in making her happier. As she was running the clippers up the back from my hairline to taper it, she mentioned with some surprise, “Doing this is actually making me wet.”
“That’s a good sign,” I said.
“I think it might be.”
A couple weeks later, we found out whether it was.
I had gone ashore with Dyana to see the doctor who had operated on her, and in whose care she’d been at the hospital. She got a clean bill of health, and had no restrictions anymore. She was healed – fully reconfigured into the Egyptian idealization of womanhood. A nirvana state promoted and sanctioned by the fundamentalist Egyptian government and the laws they imposed.
God save us from social and/or religious zealots.
Until Dyana was cleared by her doctor – and I use the term Doctor with all the disrespect it deserves here - we’d avoided getting into any sexual activities, and had only kissed sporadically, because I was sure that if we did more, I wouldn’t be able to stop, and might injure her. At this point, I ached for her. I honestly thought she felt the same yearning.
We couldn’t keep our hands off each other during our trip back to the ship, on a launch now piloted by my rapidly-rising, bright, undergrad star, the hard-working young woman, Toni. She still reminded me a lot of me a few years ago. She was slightly plumper than I had been – maybe just a little more baby fat than average. She did have the same long, streaked, blonde hair I used to have, maybe not quite as long, but almost. Her hair was wavier or curlier though. Maybe it actually was longer. I couldn’t tell anymore, obviously, since mine was gone – getting closer to long gone. I thought all that hair made her look like a kid, probably even more so because she has a sweet face and a pretty smile. I suppose I had also looked like a kid to Dyana, before I was brutally shorn.
Well, maybe not so brutally. I was laid claim to by the most desirable woman I’ve ever met – up to then or up to now. That’s not brutal; it’s awesomely erotic. But I did lose a lot of hair in the process.
Yep – and I am so glad to be short-haired. It turns me on every minute of every day. Call me crazy. Don’t knock it until you try it.
If you’re straight, do it if your hubby likes it. If you’re lesbian or bi, do it if your lady likes it. Don’t be a whiner.
“Hey Toni,” I said, taking a break from making out with Dyana and winking at her, “why don’t you let me cut all that hair off for you. If you’re going to be an archeologist, you need to grow up and lose those junior-high locks. They make you look so immature that some people are beginning to wonder if you have a parent in the staff.”
Dyana started to laugh but tried to suppress it. Toni had the expression of a young adult who was at first totally nonplussed, then scared to death, then frozen in fear like a deer caught in the headlights.
“Uh … uh … uh … uh, I’m not sure. I don’t think I want my hair cut. I … I mean, I don’t think I’m ready to have it cut. Do I actually need to cut it; do you think?”
I needed a release from the tension and, being a not very nice person sometimes, I intended to have some fun with this poor, overly-dedicated girl. I could tell Dyana was up for it too. After all, Dyana was the short hair aficionado.
“I’ll be totally frank, Toni. Yeah,” I said, “you really do need to fix this disruptive problem. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. Dyana and I were both surprised to see you arrive with your hair that long and unsuitable.”
Toni was a lot of naïve things, but she also was as observant as you’d expect a budding scientist to be. “But … but … you came here with hair as long as mine!”
“Is my hair long now, Toni?”
“Well … no. Obviously not.”
“There you go. Dyana knew I would have her cut my hair when I got here. So I waited for her to do it. She’s very good, you know. Maybe you should have her cut your hair instead of me. She was a pro, at one time.”
“A pro?”
“At cutting hair. She made money at it for years in college.”
“Uh … uh … I didn’t know.”
“So now you do. Do you have a few minutes to cut Toni’s hair as soon as we get back?” I asked Dyana, trying to hold in the belly-laugh I needed to let go of.
“Sure,” Dyana said, playing along. “Let’s all go to my cabin, where my bag of equipment is, as soon as we get back. I’ll take care of all those tangles and that unwieldly mess of hair that Toni has made even worse by zooming through the water with it blowing around.”
Toni reached up to touch her hair. It was definitely blowing back, and it was an almost-frizzy mess.
“I don’t see how you can dive with that,” I said to Toni.
“That’s much too dangerous,” Dyana added. “The project cannot be put into a position of liability because of it. It’s gotta go. We shouldn’t have let you keep it like this for this long. Time to correct our oversight.”
“But what do I need to do to be professional? How are you going to cut my hair?” Toni asked Dyana. She was in a panic, and didn’t know how to say no to two of the project leaders. Maybe she could have said “no” to me, but not both of us.
No one spoke for a long moment. We both pretended to carefully study Toni.
“The most effective, and simplest-to-maintain thing would be to just buzz her all over,” I said to Dyana, as if I’d expended all my mental power against this problem.
“Yes, I agree,” Dyana said, stone-faced.
“What does that mean?” Toni asked, her pretty eyes becoming huge. I really don’t think she knew.
“Dyana will use a clipper all over your head, and your hair will be an even … say … three-fourths inch, I think. All over.”
“That sounds about right,” Dyana quipped. We were simply trying to
get Toni to beg for her hair. As it happened, the poor girl was too afraid of offending us, or maybe too in awe of us. I started to feel sorry for her.
“But … but … my hair will be shorter than yours then,” she said to me.
“Not at the sides or in the back,” I responded calmly.
“Oh … yeah. Uh … do I have to do this?”
“How much longer are you here?” I asked her, but I knew already.
“Through this quarter and next. Until Christmas, in other words.”
“Until Christmas? Then I’d say yes, you definitely do,” I told her, feeling deliciously evil. Maybe we were gonna get to do this! For some diabolical reason, I thought that was gonna be great! I was probably looking forward to the relief from tension, since Dyana’s injury and butchering at the hands of the Egyptians. Poor Toni was going to be the surrogate for the doc whom I couldn’t put my hands on.
“What do you think?” I asked Dyana, with another wink.
“Oh yes, without a doubt,” Dyana said.
“As soon as we get back?” Toni asked, still alarmed.
“Head down to my cabin right after you stow your things,” Dyana told her.
Little else was said on the rest of the return trip. Once aboard the Barbaros, Dyana and I went to her cabin.
“I want you and I need you,” I said to her.
“I feel the same way. Let’s wait fifteen minutes to see if poor Toni comes here. Meanwhile, I’ll get my things out, just in case. If nothing else, shearing her will restore some of our erotic inclinations.”
I was delighted to hear her say “our.”
Trying to focus our angst onto something or someone else was evil and unkind, but we started laughing, and kept mostly quiet, making jokes at the gullible, 20-year-old’s expense, until there was a light knock on the cabin door.
Dyana looked as surprised as I did and got up to answer it. Yep, it was Toni, our soon-to-be haircut victim.
“Hi Tony. I’m all ready for you,” Dyana told the poor, panicked girl. “Sit right here.”
“I don’t think I want to do this,” she said, but she sat where Dyana indicated.
“Requirement for the job,” I said. I really wanted this girl’s long hair gone. It reminded me too much of me. If I couldn’t have long hair, she couldn’t either. That’s how I was – sort of – feeling. For that matter, I didn’t want any other woman to have long hair, if I couldn’t have it.
Besides, Dyana was damaged and I wanted to take out my frustrations on someone. Any suitable victim would do nicely. Toni, naïve as she was, epitomized the perfect victim.
For a moment there, I didn’t want any other woman to have a pussy, including me, if my lover couldn’t have one. You can accept what is real and in your face, or not. I knew it was a reality for my Dyana, and I wanted someone to pay something, no matter who that was, no matter what we made her pay. It wasn’t right; it wasn’t fair. I knew the world had been neither to Dyana.
“Didn’t you ever hear of having to get a tattoo the first time you crossed the equator on a ship? Dyana asked her.”
“I have to get a tattoo too?” The girl was clearly in a panic and her thoughts were in total disarray. She was WAY too enmeshed in her hair thing. It was time to separate her from that. I couldn’t wait. I resisted the urge to grab her ridiculously long locks and just whack them off. This should be a moment of surrender and awakening to be relished, inhaled and appreciated, not rushed.
“Hmm …” Dyana said, giving the impression that she needed to find an excuse, or the tattoo would happen too. She seemed deep in contemplation, and poor Toni was almost paralyzed with fear. “If you can manage getting your ridiculous mess of hair in order, I suppose we can let you off that one,” Dyana said (in reality, we were well north of the equator – ha, ha), “but this is a tradition for expeditions in the Mediterranean. That’s one of the reasons why I had to cut Destiny's hair. That and the safety aspects, of course.” Dyana motioned at me. I just smiled innocently.
Poor Toni had to cry out, “But Beverly has hair almost as long as mine!” I couldn’t tell if she were ratting Beverly out, or trying to argue why hers shouldn’t be cut. The fact was that, in this time period, 90 percent of girls in their teens and early twenties had long hair.
“Oh, I’ll get to her eventually,” Dyana said, “but the young women with leadership skills have to go first – it’s the only way to insure that the others will accept tradition.”
I was having a ridiculously hard time holding it in while this exchange continued. I just wanted to burst out laughing. However, I wanted Toni to be buzzed more than I wanted to go into hysterics. I held it. Dyana saw the gleam in my eyes and, once again, she almost burst out laughing herself.
“So what do you think?” Dyana asked me, “about an inch?”
Whoa! That was short. I guess Dyana was determined. I had to one-up her at that point – it was like a dare, after all, and you know how I respond to a dare.
“No longer than 5/8ths,” I said. “She is an undergrad, you know.”
Dyana looked at me, raising her eyebrows as if to say, “Are you kidding?” What she actually said was, “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” She paused in contemplation.
“Okay, 5/8ths of an inch it is.” I saw her reach down and snap a guard on the clippers. This wasn’t going to be a sleek, funky, fashionable haircut, it was going to be a buzzed massacre.
“Wait, wait, wait …” Toni called out, moving her hands back-and-forth in a no gesture, like a referee in football indicating an incomplete pass.
“I don’t think I want my hair cut?” She said, making it a question. At that point, I knew we had her.
“You’ll love it,” I told her. “I do, honestly.” I realized as I said that, that it was true. God help me, I had no hair longer than two inches, some of it was practically shaved, and I loved it! After all, my lover had done it to me several times now! I felt great after each cut!
Dyana was combing Toni’s hair back off her face, which was basically how she wore it anyway. No style, I realized, just long, no-bangs hair. No-fringe hair for those of you of the British persuasion.
Here’s my contribution to international understanding: American bangs = British fringe. That’s my public service announcement for the day.
Toni didn’t move. Dyana tied her hair in a ponytail near her crown, and, before the terrified girl could say anything, she handed me the giant shears, held the ponytail straight out, and I wacked it off between her head and the elastic band holding it.
“OH!” Toni cried out, reaching back for her lost hair and trying to stand up. That seemed familiar, and I thought it must be a universal, automatic reaction.
Before our victim could do anything else, Dyana flipped the clippers on and, with no hesitation, ran them straight back from Toni’s forehead, just to the left of the middle of her head.
“Ah! Ah! AH!” Toni screamed, but it was far too late.
The girl held her hands right on either side of her head, as though she wanted to reach up and make it stop, but was afraid to. She started to cry.
“No tears, or you’ll spoil the ceremony!” Dyana cautioned her, smiling at me. “Then you may need that tattoo to prove yourself.”
“My … my hair!”
“Really, Toni,” I said, “you‘re going to find in a few days – or sooner – that you love this. I promise you!” I realized I meant that,
“My hair …”
“Don’t be impatient, I’ll be done in a few minutes,” Dyana told the hapless girl.
“My hair …” I think her mind had locked up; she kept repeating the same thing. Her hands were still at the side of her head, acting like she was about to touch her hair, but afraid that Dyana might cut her fingers off, I guess. It was crazy-funny.
Dyana was buzzing her like her life depended on it. What was left of those really long locks – I was pretty sure at this point that they had been as long as mine used to be – was flying everywhere as Dyana plowed
the clippers across her head. In another minute, all she had was a carpet of 5/8 inch, teddy-bear-like bristles on her head. Dyana was using the bare clippers to trim her around the edges, though she wasn’t styling it like mine. Toni’s hair would be a simple, short buzz.
When Toni was done, we got her up and turned her toward the mirror. I should have felt sorry for her at this point, but I didn’t. Truthfully, she looked cute. No one would recognize her, of that I was sure, but she was cute and sexy in a boyish way.
She was about to faint as she looked at herself in the mirror. Dyana was brushing her off. Poor Toni turned to us and said, “What did you do to me?” In the strangest voice – centered between disbelief, confusion, and horror.
“We made you a professional like us!” I said cheerfully. I bent to kiss her and she greedily kissed me back.
I couldn’t believe it!
Dyana sent her on her numb way, telling her to shower off and just rub out her hair with her fingers. She even gave poor Toni a small jar of gel for short hair to use on it. Dyana told her to plan on coming back every two weeks to have it buzzed.
I told Toni that her eyebrows were way too thick for that hairstyle, and that she should either pluck most of them out, or come back and I’d do it. Frightened even more, she said she’d take care of them. I promised to look them over later that evening, tweezers in hand, and thin them if they weren’t done enough, or fix anything she missed. “I’ll do them!” She promised, trying to run away.
“Make sure they’re at least 80 percent gone!” I yelled after her.
I was hot and unquestionably turned on by the whole affair. I realized that I didn’t feel guilty at all. That realization in itself should have made me feel ashamed, but it didn’t. Dyana and I turned to each other and lost it for ten minutes of complete hysteria at Toni’s expense!
I had barely gotten myself under control, finally, when Dyana, who had been looking down just then, stood up and stared directly at me, her face now very sober.
Destiny Taken (Destiny Lost Book 1) Page 12