By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 13: What Everyone’s Wearing on Palmerston Road

When you first get your collar, it feels so heavy, it’s almost like you’re an animal wearing one of those wooden yokes you see in pictures of, like, primitive places or whatever.  Of course you get used to it pretty fast.  But when they first put it on you, it’s a big thrill.  I mean, it’s not like, hmmm, this is a new piece of clothing, I wonder how I’m gonna like it, maybe I’ll take it off.  Your collar is fuckin ATTACHED to you!  And you’re gonna be wearin it for the rest of your life!  So like I said, big thrill!

“What’s this?” Malcolm said, looking down at my cock.  Which was sticking straight up.

“Dunno,” I said.  “Guess it likes my number.”

“He really is a smartass,” Jojo said.

“Whatever,” Malcolm said.  “Now sit on that chair.”

Too bad, I thought.  Nobody likes my dick.  Anyway, there were some old wooden chairs in the room, and I sat down on one of them.  Behind me, something switched on.  Something electric.  Something that made a loud whirring noise.  “Hold still,” Malcolm said.  “I’m gonna buzz you off.”

And that’s what he did.  He started in the middle of my forehead and buzzed a path all the way to my crown.  Then he plowed off all the rest of my hair.  I’d had a lot of it, but it wasn’t on my head anymore; it was all on my shoulders and crotch!  I ran my hand across my skull.  I was totally bald!

“Fuck!” I said.

“Aw, ver’ sorry mon.  Weren’t expectin that, eh mon?”

“I . . . no.  I wasn’t.”

“Yeh, too bad,” Jojo said.  “But maybe you get some owner, he let you grow it like us.  Or maybe not.  Anyway, you bald now.”  He ran his hands through his hair, which was thick and yellow, yellow like the pictures of Dutch boys in my third-grade geography book.  So he was, like, a total bitch–and I was bald!

Which I did NOT see coming, and it was a real big deal for me.  To me, bald guys were like . . . OK, they were the guys that weren’t goin to college.  The guys that were gonna end up working in some oil-change place.  That’s where I saw them.  Also a lot of dumb guys that went around actin tough.  I remembered one of the gay kids in high school—not that we were friends or anything, I guess I was way too “cis” for him, but I remembered him looking at some kid with a bald head and saying “cringeworthy!”  And I agreed.  And now I was cringeworthy!

But you see how stupid I was!  It took me measurable time to realize that A, I’m not goin to college, and B, I’m not gonna be workin for an oil-change place and gettin paid for it, I’m gonna be workin as a fuckin servant, dude, and C, if I have to be dumb to be tough, then I want to be dumb.  So when Jojo said “you bald now,” I missed a few beats, but I came back and said “hey, that’s great!  I’ve been meanin to do that.”

Then since I was bein a bitch he needed to be even more of a bitch and he said, “Since you likin you baldy so much, I’m bettin you want you picture taken.  Against thee wall, boy.”

Hey, now that he brought it up, I did wanta have my picture taken!  I knew it must be for some kind of records or something, but so what, fine with me!  And it was just like you see in movies, where some dude is arrested and then they’re takin his mugshots, you know, front, left side, right side, so on, but this time the DUDE was naked and lookin more than criminal if you know what I mean!  A very bad boy!  I was definitely feeling that way.  And the collar was a good accent for a bad boy attitude.  So I had a smirk on me, all the way through.

“OK,” Jojo said.  “You done.”

“I’m just gettin started,” I said.  Yeah, I knew that would bug him.  I did see him lookin down at my dick, and I wanted to be like one of those dudes in the movies, like “You want some a this? You want some a this?”, only the guys in the movies were talkin about real guns, instead of . . . you know.

“Yeh?” he said.  “Then we help you some mo’.  Time to put you in you slappie clothes.  Git in there.”  Pointing to the back room.  So yeah!  If that’s where they’re handin out the browns . . . !

So I was about to be uniformed, but I was already carryin around this HUGE sign of manhood.  I could’ve tried to cover it, but I didn’t care anymore.  Even when Jojo and Malcolm were glancing back and forth, like what the fuck!  But I did notice Malcolm scratching his shorts a lot.  And maybe Jojo, once or twice.  But anyway, there was a line of feet painted on the floor, outlines of feet, like they were goin someplace, but they weren’t.  You can’t just walk away from Slappietown!  So OK, it was just to find out what size you were—I mean, what size your feet were—when you stood on them.  So that was sort of fun, goin back and forth from one set of feet to another, like I was tryin to find my True Identity, lol!  Then Jojo said “size 12! You got big feet like a walrus, dude,” and Malcolm dropped this huge pair of boots on the table they had in there, and those were MY boots!  And right after that, another load of brown hit the table, and that was my uniform!

I guess they could tell my clothes size, sort of, just by lookin at me and knowin how big my collar was, like I told you.  But I also guess they weren’t worried too much about that.

“Doan wanta disappoint ya, dude,” Jojo said, “but these browns ain’t so good as thee ones we wearin.  Ain’t no number, ain’t no name, ain’t no nothin.  An why?  Cuz you ain’t nothin yet.  You gotta earn you number on you browns.”

I looked at the top of the pile, which was the shirt.  It was true—all it said on the chest was SLP.   But the color was right.  Definitely brown, only sorta washed out.  Like they’d been passin those things on from one slap to another.  Which was true.  Anyway, so what?

“Oh yeah,” I said.  “I’ll earn it.”  Givin him a big grin, just to show who was on top.  Sort of!  Not!  But he didn’t like it.

“Put em on,” he said.

“That’s all I wanta do!” I said.

So fuck him—I started putting on my clothes.  Of course, I’d worn Patrick’s browns before, and I pretended that was real, cuz it was real enough at the time, but nah, THIS was the real thing.  No matter what Jojo said.  And it was so easy—there’s only five parts to a slappie suit.  Which was too bad, because I was havin a fuckin party about every one of them!

Hard to tell which was the hottest.  Those little y-fronts with the  SLP stamped on them, thigh and butt—if you still need to be convinced that your balls don’t belong to you anymore, that will do it.  Your butt too!  You gotta love that heavy harsh feel around your nuts, under your nuts, in back of your nuts . . . .   I’d heard a lot about “supportive relationships,” but that was the one I liked.

The shorts couldn’t really compete after that, but you gotta remember, this is what the public sees, and there’s nothin like that big black  SLP on your butt to tell everybody that you’re owned and who owns you.  Did I want to be owned?  Sure, if I could wear those shorts!  And seriously, if you’re owned, why not advertise it?

Then the shirt, which has always gotta be my favorite, because that’s what you feel the most.  OK, you’re feelin your undies, but they’re not goin anyplace.  Your shirt is always shiftin around and doin things to your pecs and your back and your shoulders and your nips.  And also, like I said before, the shorts are what people see, but even more, they’re lookin at your shirt.  They’re seein this smokin hot tough slappie boy in his big brown slappie shirt with, can’t say it enough, a great big  SLP on his pec and another great big  SLP smack in the middle of his back, and they know, this bad dude is a servant in the State Labour Program.   I mean, FUCK!  That’s all I can say!  Except I was fuckin ready to shoot all the time I was puttin that shirt on.  In fact, while I was puttin everything on.  Even the sox, cuz they were brown like everything else, so you wouldn’t have anything on you that wasn’t completely SLP, and cuz they were fat and scratchy and would remind me all the time that things had changed; I wasn’t a college kid anymore.  Even my feet weren’t mine; they now belonged to the SLP.

Then I sat down on the floor and pulled on my boots—MY boots, dude, not just Patrick’s, like before.  And they had fuckin  SLP on the sides too.  They had it in white letters, so you couldn’t miss it, if you were interested in feet.  Pretty scuffed up, but you’d always see it if you looked.  So in case you see some boots sittin next to your bed, and you wonder whose boots those are, now you know.  They’re the property of the State Labour Program, and so are you.

I told you that I never wore boots before I met Patrick and put his boots on, so this was new and old at the same time, and I think I surprised Jojo because I didn’t spend all day gettin into em.  But it was still kind of a big event to get my feet inside and laced up and secured, because this time I HAD to do it and I couldn’t avoid it.  I wasn’t a tourist just sneakin things on anymore; I was a real slappie now.

Which leaves only one part of the uniform, which was the cap, and it was lying on the table waiting for me, with the black  SLP sorta grinning at me from the back side of it.  So great—I put it on, and now my ugly bald head was covered!

Jojo and Malcolm were off in a corner chatting about something, so I stood up straight and said, “Done!” and they had to turn around and look at me again.  “Take a look in thee mirror, slap,” Jojo said.  He was pointing at an old cracked piece of glass they had hanging in a corner of the room.  “See what you think.”

To be continued …