Rules of Engagement
By Phonic
The following story is completely based on an actual event, a college ritual. It's intimate, but contains no actual sex acts. Naturally the names of real people involved have been changed: none of them are recognizable as described here. Only someone familiar with the story should be able to identify the place - if you're one of them, please drop a line. This is how it happened, otherwise altered only by time's effect on memory:
Any guy who was at my small-town Nebraska college in the 70s should recognize the tradition I'm going to retell for you here, at least any guy who lived in B____ Hall.
It was probably midway through Freshman year that my classmates and I had our first chance to see the ritual for ourselves, although we had heard about it. Whenever a guy became engaged, it was the"duty" of his friends - and anyone else who cared to join in - to put the future husband through a forced crotch-shaving. Depending on the guy's strength, popularity (or lack of it) and time of day, this event could involve as few as four attackers, or as many as a dozen, plus spectators.
The first guy I knew to get engaged escaped the treatment, probably because he had already moved off-campus with his girlfriend. He claimed he had planned it that way, but I think he secretly felt a little unloved when no "band of brothers" ever jumped him to take his pubes. Soon, though, another guy on my floor, Ron Benson, bought the diamond ring for his long-time girlfriend. His best pals let a month go by without making a move, and Ron had just about stopped looking over his shoulder, when he got a big surprise one afternoon.
Old Ronnie used to love to get out of his clothes as soon as he came back from class: he'd put away his briefly worn "class-worthy" shirt and pants so he could do laundry less often, and lounge around the dorm in sweats. He paid no attention when his roommate, John ("Mac") MacDonald, greeted his arrival one afternoon with a quick, "Hi," followed by dialing the phone and saying a previously arranged code statement: "I'll see you at dinner, OK?" In a few minutes, as Ron was standing in the middle of the room in his socks and underwear, carefully folding the sweater he had been wearing, Mac answered a knock at the door.
In stepped Hinkley and Scovie, next-door roommates and close friends of Ron and Mac. Ron didn't immediately sense anything strange, or even look past them to see a couple of other guys waiting just outside the doorway.
Scovie's dumb-ass grin should have given it away, but when Hinkley reached out to shake Ron's hand, he took the bait. Hinkley not only didn't let go, he used his left hand to grab Ron's arm further up, while Scovie lurched at the free arm.
"Hey, hey, hey ..........!" Ron shouted and tried to get his footing, but was too late. They were already pushing him down on the bed. He immediately tried kicking and twisting, but Lundquist and Nelson, both big Swedish farmboy types, pushed into the room and grabbed his legs, their huge hands clamping down on thighs and shins, flattening his lower body to the mattress. By now the air was filled with shouts and laughter: "It's time!" "No more waiting, Ronnie Boy!" "Benson, prepare for the blade!" Ron Benson himself immediately went red-faced with rage, and he was cursing with passion: "I'll kill you, you fuckers ... MacDonald! Mac! Mac ... Don't even try it!"
Trying it was not even an issue though, for fate had been irresversibly set in motion.
Now, everything up to here was told to me, but I'm confident that's how it happened. At this point I arrived on the scene, investigating the noise I'd heard from my room, all the way at the other end of the hall. Everyone who happened to be on the floor at the time seemed to have come running, judging by the crowd I found. I was one of the last to get into the small room, in fact, and luckily I'm tall enough that I could see pretty much everything, even from the doorway.
By that time Scovie and Hinkley were kneeling by the victim's head, each using a knee to help hold his shoulders down as they restrained his weakening arms. The Swedes had positioned his butt on the edge of the mattress, holding his legs down and apart, toes touching the floor, but barely. Mac knelt between them. He would be the "glove man."
You see, this ritual was not to have sexual overtones, in spite of the resemblance to rape and the musky scent in the room. One of the most important jobs was almost always performed by the best friend (often already named the eventual Best Man): he would be responsible for holding the initiate's dick and balls out of the way during the shaving - a simple safety precaution. To immunize him from any possible subsequent suspicions concerning his own masculinity, he wore gloves during the procedure. Therefore, no skin on skin contact.
Mac held up his right hand for all to see, and pulled on a black leather glove, then put its mate on his left hand.
"As you know, roommie," he said smiling, "I lost my gloves last month on the last cold day of the year. So I'm borrowing yours!"
Cheers and much laughter for that remark, as Mac reached up to push his roommate's t-shirt up to his pits, exposing his smooth gut and a chest only lightly dusted with fine hair. He slapped the tender tummy a couple of timeswith his leather palm, till it started to turn pink, then paused, held up one hand, and brought the room to silence.
"Drumroll, please!"
Like an accident scene, no one could turn away - you just had to look. Ron himself strained, chin to chest, to see what happened next. Mac slipped the finger tips of both gloved hands into the waistband of the boyish tightie-whities and, with no further delay, pulled down and snapped the elastic under his best friend's balls. The bush was blond-to-light-brown, and suddenly seemed even less dense than all of us who had seen it in the shower room already knew it to be - barely ran a third of the way to his navel.
The method of exposure was effective.The elastic helped push the balls and dick out a bit for access, and leaving the underwear on concealed the victim's asshole, limiting embarrassment, consternation and any confusion about what we were really there to see. It made a good picture, actually.
"Don't, oh, please, you are sick ..." Ron gasped, half laughing, half still struggling for some bit of strength to fight his fate. Mac looked him in the eye as he wickedly called out,
"Let the blades begin!"
At that moment all eyes moved to Rick D., a small but mighty member of the wrestling team who stepped through the group, brandishing scissors in one hand, a disposable razor in the other. Mac moved to sit on the bed next to his captive friend, now blushing red from head to toe and glowing with a sheen of perspiration. Rick took the spot of honor facing the crotch.
"Glove man, if you please," he said in his Oklahoma tenor. Mac held his black leather-clad hands over the pink belly, then slowly moved them down until they were right over their target. With excruciatingly tiny increments he brought them closer and closer, to howls of laughter and encouragement. Then he placed his right hand on the shrunken dick and pushed it down over the balls, giving the blade man a clear target. Not sure what to do with his left hand, Mac placed it on Ron's sternum and pushed down lightly. This not only helped restrain him, but effectively blocked the victim's view of his own haircut.
Rick D. held the scissors up where Ron could see. "Don't squirm now, "he advised, "or it could get messy. I won't be responsible if you lose a nut." And, it spite of all the hoopla surrounding him, Ron stayed nearly perfectly still, though whimpering a bit, as Rick trimmed away his short curlies, all the while tossing them up on Ron's chest, where they soon stuck to the sweaty skin. Before long a can of shaving cream appeared. Again, Rick made something of showing a handful of foam to Ron before applying it generously, smearing plenty on the glove that held the dick that covered the balls. The heat in the room had only helped Ron's cock grow slightly from its frightened state, but now Rick told Mac to "hold that dick a little lower, glove man." Sliding the now soapy glove down a couple of inches, while grasping tighter to offset the slipperiness, Mac did inadvertently help the meat swell just a little. Not so that anyone would call it hard, of course, but enough that Ron might feel a little prouder of it once it was exposed again.
The blade man worked like an expert. He must have done it before. After each swipe of the razor he would rinse it in a bowl of water someone held for him, then take another stroke. "Don't move now," he would caution when it seemed the victim was getting restless or nervous ... It took less than ten minutes, and he called for a towel. The glove man did the wiping honors. All got to take a good look at the hairless crotch (no attempt was made to shave the jewels or dick.) Then, before they let him up, the Swede boys lifted Ron's legs and slipped off his briefs, just to be sure he could cover too fast.
It was over in a flash, and an hour later the victim's best friends were buying him beers at the closest tavern. (And a week later his fiancée was saying "You guys are mean" for making their friend itch so badly ...)
As for me, I couldn't get the scene out of my mind ... it was my first experience with B____ Hall's Rules of Engagement, but it wouldn't be my last.