The School in the Desert by longhairboy

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“You’ll be here, Josh,” the aide said, coming to a stop before an ebony door framed by twin marble pillars of green flecked with white.

“Do I really have to stay here?” I asked, exasperated. I had absolutely no desire to take up the quarters that had been assigned to me. “I’m twenty-three years old.”

“I know, I know,” the aide replied, smoothing his white dress shirt and gray blazer, straightening his red tie. “Your father tried to get out of it, too, but we can’t. This isn’t our country. Just suck it up for two nights, and we’ll be on our way back home.”

I grumbled, not caring for the silent manservant who stood holding my bags only several feet away.

“If I’d known this was going to happen, I would have stayed home,” I said frankly. “It wasn’t worth interrupting the semester for. I’m missing a full week of school to be here, because I thought I’d be learning about the culture and spending time with my father. Instead, I’m stuck in some—”

“It is what it is,” the aide responded, spreading his hands tactfully. “We just have to deal with it. Now, look, I have to go help with coordinating the summit. Remember, two days, we’ll be done in two days.”

“Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Great.”

The aide walked off down the hall and the manservant opened the floor-to-ceiling door leading into the chamber.

My father was attached to the U.S. State Department and had been assigned to make this trip by no less than the President himself. He was ecstatic with the request, as the sensitivity of the meetings being conducted indicated a strong level of trust from the White House and a career leap for him. When he told me, a Middle East Studies major in my Senior Year of college, I jumped at the opportunity to accompany him. I thought I’d be viewing the formation of policy behind the scenes, witnessing high-level talks, and getting out on the streets of a country I’d read so much about, but instead I’d been landed here, in the South Corner.

The South Corner was actually quite more than a corner, comprising instead an entire wing of this monstrous palace, this fountain-studded, diamond-tinged, gem-encrusted, gold-slathered pillar of marble wealth that gleamed like an ocean of plenty in the middle of a desiccated desert. Within this wing were housed a number of young men, ranging in age from about sixteen to twenty-two, who were sent by elite families from across the world to study in the Sultan’s School, a high-caliber boarding academy of such prestige that attendance there virtually guaranteed a cushy job upon graduation. The School provided arguably the highest quality education in the world—but rumors of what else went on there were sensational, at least among the younger set.

For example, while the Sultan provided some of the best tutors in the world—men who’d been tenured at places like Oxford, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale—to serve as instructors, and while the students admitted by and large met extremely rigorous academic criteria, people started to notice after a little while that every boy who ever made it into the School seemed to be exceptionally good looking in one way or another. The Sultan, an aging, childless monarch, was widely thought to be homosexual, and while nothing had ever been reported as happening between him and a student, stories of princesses—and princes—who came knocking on the palace door late at night to engage in outrageous sexual escapades with the pupils were the stuff of college legend even back in the U.S.

As for the Sultan—he just liked to have pretty things around him, or so the stories went. This, of course, was only information common among the students themselves. No parent with a modicum of concern for their son’s wellbeing would send him to such a place, but the academic reputation of the institution (and the undeniable perks for its alums, who held high government positions around the globe) tended to trump the more salacious gossip to come out of the place. And this, I learned upon landing in the capital city’s international airport, was where I would be housed for two full days. I was a college student, even if only months from graduation, and, as such, I would spend my nights in the South Corner. I wondered to myself if I’d be the only visitor, but I didn’t dare speak it out loud, and frankly I didn’t care that much.

I’d worked hard in high school, taken part-time jobs to save up for my first car, and, after graduating, had been accepted to a mainstream American university full of children of the middle class, which, despite my father’s prestigious job, we still belonged to. I didn’t want to be stuck for two or three days with a bunch of oversexed, overindulged, spoiled little brats who were accustomed to all the amenities of a royal court. What could be more of a bummer?

I walked in the door and entered a splendid lobby area with pink-white marble floors, potted palm trees, a soaring ceiling, and sculptures of mythical Greek gods traversing the wall in florid ivory. The manservant told me that this was the “common room” and showed me around. To one side of the common room was the gourmet dining hall, while behind it was a vast chamber of bathrooms abutting to a long hallway of sumptuously outfitted dormitories, complete with four-poster beds, mahogany dressers, walk-in closets, and magnificent bay windows.

“The students usually stay in pairs,” the manservant told me as he showed me into a spare room. “But there are no other guests in the School at this time, so you’ll have these quarters to yourself.”

I looked around, eyeing the writing table with antique vanity and the small chandelier that hung from the ceiling. Maybe staying here wouldn’t be so bad after all.

“Thanks,” I said, and I began to unpack my things. I could hear laughter and playful teasing in the rooms nearby, and I wondered for a moment if any of the chortling coming through the walls was directed at me. Some of the boys had seen me being escorted through the common room and down the hall, and if my modest clothing (jeans and a sweat shirt) and duffel bag didn’t scream to them that I was an outsider, then my stares of undisguised awe at the new surroundings certainly did. The schedule I’d been handed when I arrived at the palace said that dinner would be served in the dining hall in less than an hour, so I grabbed my flip-flops and a towel and headed for the showers.

Walking into the bathroom was kind of like entering a wood-paneled labyrinth. Rather than the square, concrete facilities I knew at university, with their tiny shower stalls and cracked tile floors, these featured lovely mosaics, soft lights in golden fixtures, and vanities arranged in geometric patterns across the room, one sink bounding another and another and another. As I first stepped over the threshold, a skinny young blonde boy was staring into a mirror, running his hands over sleek hair that was slathered tightly to his head. His shirt was open and his pants nearly sheer, a wardrobe adjusted to the climate. The glass he looked at was at such an angle that while I couldn’t see it, he was facing nearly directly to me. He was the first person I’d been close enough to actually make conversation with, so I tried my hand at a greeting.

“You sure are paying a lot of attention to that hair,” I said with a smile, walking towards a nearby shower. His looked up at me with an expression of contempt.

“A boy’s ponytail is his pride,” he sneered. “Everybody knows that.”

Ponytail? I thought, but as I got closer I could see his profile in a diagonal mirror, and everything became clear. His hair wasn’t gelled down; it was tied back, held in a massively-thick long blonde tail that was bound with five black bands roughly a fist’s length apart from each other. The long ponytail was a gorgeous golden color, like the sun in early morning or the pure yellow of a candle’s flame, and I could tell that were it not tied so elaborately it would also be very wavy. It instantly altered his appearance, turning him from just another skinny kid into a young man with one extremely-striking feature. Generally speaking I felt pretty attractive—I was thin, but certainly not as tiny as that twig, and at six feet tall I stood a few inches over him as well. Yet he had that ponytail, and next to it, next to that fat rope of long blonde hair, my own few inches of black puff felt…irrelevant.

“I can tell you believe that,” I said, staring at the impressive tail. “Good gosh, look at that thing!” It didn’t seem like it belonged on his head; the rest of him was so small, so delicate, so thin and bare. Not a single inch of him could be described as muscular, except of course the many inches of blonde hair that unfurled down his back, practically snapping the slew of hair ties employed to control them. The thing was like a gorged yellow snake. He smiled in an expression of pure hubris.

“Yeah,” he said, tossing the gigantic thing into the air. “It’s kind of obvious for me.” His tone oozed superiority, but I said nothing, just turned to one of the showers as he sauntered out. Two other boys had been watching our interaction from near the door, and as he approached them they looked away.

“What are you looking at?” he yelled.

“Nothing,” one of them, a thin young man with shaggy brown locks said, hastily turning.

“Still trying to grow your hair out, Bryan?” the blonde boy taunted, ruffling the teen’s longish brown hairdo with his hand. Then he put his hand on Bryan’s forehead, pushed him off, and headed for the exit.

“Seniority!” he crowed as the door slammed behind him and his ponytail wagged out of sight.

I got in the shower, thinking. If everyone here was going to be like that little braggart, I’d probably just take dinner alone. I would not sit around being made fun of and talked about all night. I emerged from the shower, headed back to my room, threw on a Sultan School outfit that a maid had mercifully laid out for me, and entered the dining hall, a fantastic chamber of round tables, upholstered chairs, and ample buffets. I looked around nervously, unsure where to sit.

“Hey!” someone called. “Hey!” I looked to my left, and saw that it was Bryan. He waved me over, and I gratefully sat down. He introduced me to himself, then to a red-headed boy named Jamie, and then to a boy with short brown hair named Ian.

“Are you a new student here?” Jamie inquired.

“No,” I answered. “My father’s State Department.”

“Okay,” he nodded. “That happens every once in a while.”

“What about you guys?” I added.

Bryan and Ian were recent high school graduates, both eighteen, while Jamie had finished secondary studies a grade before and was one year older.

“How do you like it here so far?” Jamie asked.

“It’s pretty cool,” I said. “I mean, the physical school is great, but one of the kids was a huge dick to me in the bathroom.”

“Who?” Jamie wanted to know.

“He didn’t give a name,” I said dryly. “He was a skinny blonde kid with a really long ponytail. He looked a little younger than you guys.”

The three of them glanced at each other and howled with laughter.

“That’s John,” Bryan said. “He’s twenty-one, but he’s a stick. He is such an asshole.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“All the time,” Ian seconded. “He’s constantly holding over our head that he has seniority, since we’re all Freshmen and Jamie’s only a Sophomore. That, and now the School decided they want us to have long hair, which he constantly makes fun of us for because we’re all trying to grow ours out and his is the longest in the school.”

I looked over and saw a flash of yellow fly through the air. Several hundred feet away, he was sitting at a table guffawing with some other guys and stroking his absurdly-long blonde ponytail, which was draped over his shoulder in a display of sparkling light. He saw us and snickered, flicking his hair behind his back.

“It’s constant bullying,” Bryan said. “And constant pranking. Anything you can think of has probably happened to us: water balloons, pie in the face, dye in our laundry, stealing our books. Then there’s just the daily harassment of name-calling.”

“They get all the girls who come here, too,” Jamie said.

“And John gets a ton.”

“I don’t understand why,” I said. “That kid looks like he weighs 115 pounds. He’s a decent height, but other than that nothing.”

I remembered John’s narrow shoulders, his small waist, his flat stomach, his moist pink lips, the freshness of a fair face that was deceptively innocent.

“What kind of girl wants that?” I asked. “Other than that ponytail…”

“But that’s it!” Jamie said. “That is literally exactly why. He’s been growing it since before any of us got here, and now it’s one more reason for him to mess with us. I had to clean their room in my underwear last week.”

“The other day, they put gum in Bryan’s hair,” Ian said.

My eyes widened in shock.

“They didn’t?” I asked.

Bryan nodded, his face reddening with shame.

“There’s a chunk missing back here,” he said, indicating the back of his head. “It’s not really big. But look, don’t get mad about it; there’s nothing we can do. People who report or try to fight back just get hazed worse, and in a year the whole Senior class will be graduated and we won’t have to worry about it.”

I looked over at John, who was bending his head down to eat some pudding. The tip of his ponytail accidentally dipped into the chocolate, and he jerked back with a curse of irritation. The table chuckled, and one of the other guys sitting with him grabbed the tail and held it out by its tip, mimicking cutting the soiled half-inch off. John laughed but yanked the long thing back nervously, cleaning the end with a napkin. He handled it meticulously.

“Oh, I know one thing we can do,” I said, seething with anger. “I have the perfect plan. I think John needs a little haircut.”

The others looked fearful, but I reassured them.

“My father’s State Department, remember?” I asked. “If they do anything back to you, I’ll make sure that some very detailed reports are sent back to their parents in the U.S.”

We hatched a plot then and there. John preened in the mirror after each meal, so when boys started to drift out of the dining hall my new companions headed for the bathrooms while I trekked back to my dorm to retrieve the instrument of torture we would need. I found it in a pocket of my backpack.

“Yes,” I smiled wickedly.

When I arrived in the bathroom, the three boys were doing their best job of distracting John, whose back was to me as I entered.

“Man, John, your ponytail is so long,” Ian was gushing.

“Yeah, how long have you been growing it for?” Bryan asked.

“Since I got here,” John laughed.

“It’s SO long,” Jamie said. “When’s the last time you cut it?”

“Cut it?” John asked. Even saying it put fear in his voice.

“A long time, okay?” he said, the swagger returning. “Longer than any of you have been going to this school.”

“You get so much attention for it,” Ian intoned. “It probably took forever to grow. I mean, that thing looks like it’s been growing for LONG time.”

John guffawed.

“It has,” he said. “THREE YEARS. I’ve been growing this thing since I was a Freshman. I mean, yeah, it took a really long time, but dude, look at my f***ing PONYTAIL.”

He tossed it over his shoulder, where it landed with a thump on his chest, out of my reach.

“Whoa, dude,” Ian said, picking it up off of the fabric of John’s tee-shirt and pulling it out towards himself. “This thing is awesome.”

In the diagonal mirror, I could see an erection beginning to form in the boy’s pants. With a gesture of his head the ponytail flew into the air and came to a rest behind his back, all sixteen inches hanging in exquisite vulnerability just next to where my hand neared, wielding a pair of scissors. I’d come in here intending to grab him, chop the thing off right at the base, and then walk out. It would take me about two seconds to overpower him and transform a boy who’d worked carefully for years to become known for his fantastic, beautiful, and extraordinarily long ponytail into a chicken-legged adolescent with no distinguishing trademarks and a nice, short haircut. His pants rose higher as I approached, out of his sight.

“Awesome?” he asked, every syllable vibrating with bravado. “I have the longest ponytail in school. It’s like a foot and a half of hair.”

My scissors were open, but I decided against it. I hadn’t been aware how long his ponytail had been growing, how deeply he prided himself in it, how much his sexuality and persona were tied to his tremendous braid. No, I wouldn’t do this quickly. He needed to get the point. I grabbed his ponytail in one hand. He turned around, angry, and I said, “You need a haircut” before pulling it as hard as I could. He yelped as I dragged him across the room and nearly slammed him into a sink.

“What are you doing!?!” he asked, outrage emanating in his voice. He tried to back away, but with the palm of my hand I had his ponytail pinned firmly to the mirror. I displayed the scissors in my left hand, and his nostrils inflated with terror. He tugged desperately back, but I had him.

“Dude, let me go!” he said, still commanding. I’d make him beg yet.

“Now what we’re going to do here,” I said calmly, easily holding onto his skinny frame. “Is some maintenance cutting.”

His face went deathly white and he lost his footing, so that he would have fallen to the floor but for the hand that clasped his hair in a death grip. He screeched in pain and stumbled to his feet, looking absolutely petrified as I moved my closed scissors back and forth along the massive braid of hair that I’d just heard him say he’d been growing for over three years.

“Why would you even want this raggedy long thing anyway?” I asked, gesturing at the impossibly beautiful and improbably lengthy tail of shimmering blonde hair that extended from his head to my tight fist. “When’s the last time you had a trim?”

“A t—t—t—t—trim!?! I don’t want a trim!” he stammered. You could almost feel sorry for him; he’d spent his entire time at school growing the entrancing blonde ponytail that was by far the most memorable thing about him, that overshadowed in its golden spectacle even his very slight frame, that had caused him around campus to be known as the Boy With the Ponytail. All that work could be undone with one flick of my scissors.

As his ponytail had grown, so had his persona; everyone knew that it was not only extremely long, but also that it had taken years and years to achieve. If it were suddenly severed, the countless days and months he’d put into it would mean nothing—an outside observer would know nothing of the incredible ponytail that had once crowned his head, and he’d just be a scrawny college boy indistinguishable from any other scrawny college boy. Without his ponytail, in fact, he wouldn’t even be average; he was thin enough that given a haircut he’d probably rate as less attractive than his peers.

“I don’t want a trim,” he repeated, his eyes manic.

“Good, because you’re getting a haircut, and there’s a big difference, as you’re about to find out.”

I tossed him against a back wall that faced a mirror so he could see the beautiful tail fall across his chest. Bryan, Ian, and Jamie locked the door.

“I mean, seriously,” I said, advancing on him slowly as he eyed me with growing horror. “Look at that thing.”

He did, his eyes reflecting every second it had taken him to grow it, and when his gaze returned to me it was one of infinite pleading.

“Is all of that really necessary?” I asked, opening my scissors as I walked towards him.

“Is it really necessary!?!” he cried, as if the question were a suggestion of the most abominable terror on the face of the Earth. “Wait, please!”

But he was too late, and my hands were on his shoulders.

“Bryan, hold his ponytail out,” I instructed. Bryan complied eagerly, taking the thing by its tip and extending it to its full length. I stared at it, realizing for the first time how long it really was.

“Wow, John,” I said, in spite of myself. “I have to admit, I’m impressed.”

He looked at me with a glimmer of wild hope in his eye.

“Too bad, though,” I smiled back, and tears began to fall down his face.

“You guys, please!” he exclaimed.

“John, are you crying?” Bryan asked. “What a pussy! I didn’t cry when you put gum in my hair. I’d say this is even payback, wouldn’t you? Huh? Huh?”

He tugged hard at the ponytail as he said it, and John shook.

“My ponytail is so long, though,” he gasped, struggling against us.

“I’ll fix that,” I laughed, and brought my scissors to his ponytail’s base, where in five seconds they could turn it into a blonde stump.

“WAIT!” he shrieked, his voice almost breaking. “WAIT! PLEASE!”

I stopped, the twin blades poised so close to his hair that closing them by a fraction of an inch would have begun the cutting process. I bet that even in his deepest nightmares he never thought he’d be in this position.

“Okay,” I said. “How about this: do you promise you’ll stop making fun of these boys?”

He nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes, yes.”

“And do you promise that you’ll stop rubbing it in their faces how long your ponytail is?”

He repeated his affirmation.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Because, I can solve the whole problem and just cut this thing off right now—”

“No, please!” he interrupted. “I’ll do what you say, I swear!” “

Okay,” I continued, trying to think of other conditions. A wonderful idea popped into my head. “And do you promise to let the others pull your ponytail?”

“What?” he asked, shocked.

“Oh, you don’t want to? It’s cool. Hold it out again—”

“NO!” he exclaimed. “They can pull it, they can pull it!”

“Alright,” I said lightly. “You can keep it.”

I let go of him, and he ran his hands feverishly over the long hair that had so nearly been sawed off. When he stood up, the boner he’d got being horny and maintained being scared out of his minds popped through his pants. He looked down at it, aghast, as the other boys rolled with laughter. The slender pink thing was throbbing, literally pulsing with fear.

“Is that what all the fuss has been about?” Jamie taunted. “It really is a good thing you have that ponytail!”

They cawed even more, and I told John to step forward to have his ponytail pulled.

“Right now?” he asked, staring down at his burning, swollen red cock.

“Bryan, scissors,” I said.

“NO!” he yelled again. “They can pull it!”

I situated him right in front of the mirror, where he stood still as a statue while his penis grew hard as rock. I’d read before about erections sometimes coming upon someone in a time of fear, but I hadn’t imagined it was true or that it would be this extreme. The veins in his cock were pumping like engines, delivering blood to a boner so taut and bloated that the penis head was actually shining. He looked at me, timid and afraid.

“What if, you know, they pull it really hard…?”

“Scissors,” I called matter-of-factly.

“Wait, no,” he said quickly.

“No, no, it’s okay,” I said, deciding this was as good an excuse as any to lop the thing off. “You obviously have a problem with this. I’ll just cut it off and let them throw it around the room.”

He eyes widened in abject panic, and he stuttered dozens of frantic entreaties as my hand made its way to liberate his ponytail from the lanky body to which it was attached.

“Please,” he begged. “Please, let them pull it! Please let them pull it! PLEASE LET THEM PULL IT!”

“Okay,” I relented, pulling my hand back inches from slashing away his locks. “I’ve never seen anybody who wanted someone else to pull their ponytail so bad.”

I looked down and saw that John had come on himself, and that cum mixed with urine was now leaking out of his blood-laden penis.

“Nice,” I noted, flicking at his member nonchalantly. He screamed in surprise at the pain and then completely lost all control, spraying pee and semen across countertop, his bare chest, and the bottom half of his ponytail.

“Oh, gross,” Ian laughed. “Are you sure you don’t want that haircut?”

The other boys chuckled, but John was as rigid with fright as ever.

“I won’t cut it this time,” I whispered, menace suddenly creeping into my voice. “But let me tell you something: if you complain one more time, I don’t care how much you beg—it’s haircut time.”

He nodded, his mouth kept carefully shut but his nose widening so hugely that there could be no doubt about the fear he must have felt. The expression “haircut time” seemed to summon an invisible demon that tormented him from the mirror. One by one, the three boys approached and gave his ponytail a good yank, with Bryan pulling so hard that the older boy fell to the ground and peed himself a second time.

“Bryan, take him back to his room,” I ordered cavalierly. “He’s got the perfect leash.”

John’s mouth dropped open, his face showing shock and indignity that his ponytail, his defining feature, his astounding braid of fantastic golden hair, the crowning achievement of years of painstaking growth, had in fact been reduced to nothing more than a rope with which he could be tugged around. Bryan took him to his dorm, and, when he made ready to take his hair ties out, stopped him.

“Sleep with your ponytail in, tonight,” Bryan said with a vindictive smile. “Stretch it out over your pillow, like this.”

He pulled it gingerly across the tender white surface and placed John’s left hand on its far end, so that it was held out at its full length. At feeling Bryan’s hand on his ponytail once more, John wet his sheets.

“This way, if Josh changes his mind, he can come in here and cut your ponytail off in the middle of the night.” Before John could even register a cry of objection, Bryan had bounded out of the room with a cheerful “Goodnight!”

John spent the whole night was a painful erection, and was woken after only a few hours of sleep by Ian tugging on his ponytail.

“Wake up, Sunshine,” the boy said provocatively.

John bounded out of bed, his boxers a wet crusty mess, and felt his ponytail to make sure it was still there. He sighed in relief.

Unfortunately for me, the issues of the summit were resolved unexpectedly early, and my father was allowed to leave one day ahead of schedule, which meant that I was departing after only a single night. Who would’ve thought, when I arrived, that I’d be so reluctant to return to the U.S.? This trip had proven a lot more fun than I anticipated. At a ceremony in front of the palace, the Sultan officially bid the American delegation farewell, and the boys of the Sultan’s School stood to watch me depart.

John, as a Senior, was selected to actually send me off.

He approached and extended his hand to me, which I shook. His handshake was surprisingly firm, and to my astonishment all of the contriteness of the night before had vanished from his face, replaced by a pride even greater and more boastful than before.

“Hey, Josh,” he said, the lift in his pants visible only to me. “My ponytail is so LONG.”

I looked at him, amazed but sanguine.

“Oh, John,” I sighed. “You’re so stupid.”

I stroked his ponytail and he flinched. I laughed.

“I should have given you a haircut when I had the chance,” I said.

That seemed to get him for a moment, but then he recovered.

“Well, you didn’t,” he said. “And now my ponytail—it’s LONG.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Just one thing before I go.” I leaned forward, so that I was actually whispering in his ear. “I gave each of them a pair of scissors—and instructions on how to give you a quick haircut,” I murmured.

The smile fell from his face, and his tune changed in a millisecond.

“Listen, man,” he said, repentant and sincere. “I was just kidding, you know?”

“No you weren’t,” I replied. “I know exactly the kind of person you are. You never learn. Just remember: no matter how long that thing gets, one wrong move…and snip, snip.”

The ponytail blew in the wind, long and thick, and I wondered what his classmates might have waiting for him later that day.

“SNIP, SNIP!?!” he asked, his hushed response full of alarm.

I didn’t answer.

“Bye, John,” I waved, stepping into a limousine with my father. He turned around to see the Freshmen staring at him, opening and closing their fingers as if they were holding scissors.

I laughed as we drove away, and my last image of the Sultan’s School was one of the Freshman boys going up to John and giving his ponytail a tug.

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