Rita's Bet Ch. 03

My parents were angry, of course, but just as much at me as at Rhiannon and her family. Nothing came of their wrath (except that I got grounded until after winter break! I counted myself lucky: it would have been until graduation if either of them had seen me come through the door bare-assed naked and covered in egg slime).

When I finally returned to school on Thursday I held my head as high as I could. There was no need for me to explain why my head was shaved bare, why the faint marks of humiliating comments were still barely visible on my entirely smooth, hairless head. Why my eyebrows were absent. The story had already been told and re-told hundreds of time before I walked through the entry doors. Because I had not been present for three days some rumors had gotten out of hand regarding just what had been done to me and how bad I looked. But the essence of the story was largely sound: that I looked as I did because I had bet on our football team in the Thanksgiving Day game; that I had bet my hair on our team emerging from the game victorious. That I had bet my hair and lost.

My squad mates were outraged. Not so much at the fact that I was bald: they each understood about making bets and that there are consequences to losing. (I had witnessed one of them once topless, on her knees, and sucking the dick of a boy she'd lost a bet to at a party.) But they were incensed by what they had heard about the way the payment of my bet had been carried out, irate at the unnecessary humiliation and degradation that I had suffered in front of the audience Rhiannon had gathered. Most of what they had heard was mostly true, and I told them in detail just what had happened. It was mortifying both to recall and to relate. But I thought they deserved the entire and true story.

I had thought the tale of my risking and losing and paying so much because of school spirit might cut some ice. And some of the students in my school supported me, both by telling me my bald appearance looked good (even hot!) and by telling me how they admired me for having honored my bet.

But truthfully on some days and in some of our hallways I was the object of just as much mocking and derision as I would have been walking with my bald head down a hallway at West. I even had to withstand the humiliation of snickers that, in spite of all efforts, had slipped out of a few of my teachers.

I would just put my chin down and proceed on my way.

By the time I returned from spring break in the middle of March my hair had grown back in enough to be styled to some degree. By graduation I had a handsome, albeit shorter, coiffure. People began to forget.

But I never have. Seventeen Thanksgivings ago, and I still remember every detail. They stand out in my mind, each recollection honed into intense detail on the sharp edge of abject humiliation.