Men's grooming in the next century by GermanCut

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I woke up by birds chirping and the babbling of a creek.
I took a first glance to the window, through which the morning sun shone and painted an abstract pattern on the carpet.
I stretched myself, clapped my hands, whereupon the creek and the birds immediately stopped, and sat for a while naked on the edge of the bed.

"Hestia?" I spoke into the room.
"Good morning, Ben!" I heard the usual soft voice.
"A cup of tea, please! Earl Grey. Sweet," I said.
"You are welcome!" the voice replied.
"Any appointments?" I asked.
The answer came promptly
"Your appointments for today, Friday, 19th Fructidor 341
900. Rendez-vous Mario at the hammam.
1400. Community work at the municipal park. Expected duration until 1630.
2000. Josianne's birthday party at the neighborhood's meeting-point."
Damn! I almost forgot the birthday party! I would get a gift for Josianne and bring her some flowers from the park.
"Thank you, Hestia."

I went to the bathroom for a moment. Then I got the tea from the automaton and drank it standing in front of the window. I looked at the wildflower meadow outside and thought about what to wear.
I opted for white shorts with silver side stripes, a silver track jacket and soft moccasins.
When I wanted to leave the apartment, I got a little shock at the sight of myself in the mirrored wall. My reflection seemed strange to me.

Yesterday evening I had returned from a two-month adventure trip in Sweden together with Mario. "Awaken the man in you!" this trip was advertised. To "awaken" the man in us, it was apparently necessary to walk for hours through forests full of insects, swim in the ice-cold sea, do excessive strength training and almost completely renounce personal hygiene. The man in me whom I had awakened was suntanned and had visibly gained muscles. He had much longer hair than usual and wore a full beard for the first time in his life. The man in the mirror looked like a lumberjack of the century before last. I looked at my hairy legs and thought it wasn't such a good idea to wear shorts. But now it was too late to change.
I put on a red retro baseball cap to at least hide the chaos on my head and left the apartment.

I walked to the hammam. The people on the path seemed as if they were looking at a point below my head. Then they quickly looked away in embarrassment. Finally, I realized what irritated people most about me. I wore my tracksuit jacket wide open and revealed lush chest hair. Embarrassed, I pulled the zipper up to my neck.

The path, which was arched with glass, widened and led into a large palm-lined solarium. I crossed a dainty bridge spanning an artificial pond and found myself in the hammam.
An employee came up to me and greeted me, "Ben? Good morning! I'm Aaron and I'm here for you if you have any requests. Your neighbor Mario is already waiting for you."

The interior of the hammam looked more like a large Finnish sauna. A lot of light wood was built into the walls and ceiling, while the floor was covered with white tiles, and it smelled of pine and eucalyptus.
It was an older hammam, built 25 years ago together with the residential complex where Mario and I lived. It was already put into operation as a fully automated hammam without human personnel. 25 years ago, you were greeted by a service robot at best. As in almost all shops, restaurants, tailors and authorities.
That had changed. Politics had changed. People felt unsafe in these fully automated spaces without human interlocutors. Quite a few developed anxiety, and scientists proved the connection with the increasing psychoses. Since then, it has been mandatory, with a very few exceptions, to employ a certain amount of humans.
The robots did the main work, while the human employees had little more to do than smile and look good and make customers feel welcome.

Aaron did his job. He smiled and looked very good. Like all male employees at the hammam, he wore nothing but sandals and a skimpy white loincloth. I trotted after him, scanning him with my eyes.
"Surely not older than 20," I guessed as I measured his calves and thighs, his butt in the loincloth, his narrow waist and his shoulders. He wore his hair in a way which was popular among young men. The sides were immaculately clean-shaven, while a strip of short hair ran from his forehead to the nape of his neck, velvety shiny like a panther's fur.
Aaron suddenly turned around.
"You have booked the complete package. Will it stay that way, or do you want to cancel something?"
I feared that he had noticed how I had been watching him with interest, casted my eyes down and stammered "Uh, no. It stays that way!"
"I would have recommended that to you too," Aaron replied, a little too bitchy.
I blushed. Almost twice his age and hairy as a monkey, I had devoured him with my eyes the whole time like a horndog. I was disgusted with myself.

"There you are!" Mario's voice tore me out of my tormenting thoughts, "I was afraid you had overslept."
Mario, already in his bathrobe, hugged me and tousled my hair.
"Hello, Neanderthal!" he said.
"Same to you!" I replied. Mario also had a full beard, a messy hairstyle and was possibly even hairier than me.
"Then let's leave the adventure trip behind us and get civilized again!" he said and slapped me on the shoulder.

I entered a cubicle and undressed.
A frosted glass door slid silently aside, and I found myself in my bathroom compartment.
The left wall also sank silently, revealing the neighboring bathroom compartment and a naked Mario.

We took a seat in our tubs.
"Let's go!" I shouted and pressed the button next to me.

The light was dimmed and began to change between different warm shades.
Water splashed out of countless nozzles and cleaned our bodies.
"Ah...!" sighed Mario, "How did you like the first real shower last night after six weeks in the wilderness? That was wonderful, wasn't it?"
"You can say that again!" I replied, "No comparison to the things in our huts by the sea! A hose with the tip of a watering can! That's supposed to clean you? And then the shaving! I didn't dare to use the razor blades that had been distributed to us. I didn't even know that they were still being produced! Some really used them. Have you seen Wojciech and Ersin? And their cuts after their first attempt? I'd rather be hairy all over my body like a hobgoblin than bloody!"
"Thank goodness, everything comes to an end! I can't wait to get rid of the fur!" said Mario, and as if that had been the cue, the tub filled completely with water, which contained a very effective depilatory agent, adapted to our skin types.

After ten minutes the water drained off and with it our body hair. We were hosed down again, blown dry, and finally enveloped in a haze perfumed with autumn flowers, which made our skin shimmer.

We got out of the tub.
Slowly and with relish, I let my hands glide first over my chest and arms, then over my butt and thighs. I didn't feel a single hair. My skin was flawlessly smooth.
With a suggestive grin in the direction of Mario, I grabbed my balls.
Mario also grabbed his crotch and moaned theatrically.
"Dude, that's a cool feeling! You can't take your hands off it!" he said and rolled his eyes.

Wrapped in our bathrobes, we sat in comfortable armchairs while the robots took care of our hands and feet. The robots must have been particularly amazed at our cracked feet if robots had the ability to do so.
Mario chose nail polish in green metallic, I optioned for transparent one.

"I first had the idea of going to a human barber," said Mario as we went into the adjoining room, freshly manicured and pedicured, "But then I found that it just costs too many points. I'd rather save the points from the community work for the Mumbai Film Festival. I've already booked."
I agreed with Mario. As interesting as it would be to try a human barber, one could not be sure whether the result would really be close to that of a robot. And above all, with a robot, the same service costs nothing.

We took seats on the barber's chairs. While our arms rested on the rests, plastic helmets lowered over our heads down to our collarbones.
Relaxing music played as our heads were scanned for shape and bumps. A few seconds later, their images appeared on the small screens inside the helmets.
I selected "Completely clean-shaven" in the menu for my face. This also included the eyebrows. I would have two thin lines drawn, as it has been fashionable for several years.

This choice had been easy for me. But I hesitated about the hairstyle.
My hair had never been that long before. I would have the opportunity to get a particularly extravagant pompous hairstyle. Anything was possible! But the longer my hair grew in the last few weeks, the stronger a certain desire came up. Sometimes in the Swedish forests I wished for nothing more than a short haircut. Not just short, but as short as I've never had it before.
"Shorter than ever," I said quietly to myself as I browsed the menu and arrived at the historic military haircuts.
I chose, more for fun, "Classic Flattop", and immediately I saw myself on the screen with this hairstyle.
"It doesn't look that bad!" I thought, pressed the start button and the shaving and haircut began.

A buzz and crackle filled the helmet as it felt like a small ball rolled gently up and down my neck, cheeks, chin, and upper lip. I knew the beard was a thing of the past in no time, and I did a sigh of relief at that thought.

There was a short pause, then I heard a soft click and felt the hair on my head getting cut. It was as if the hair was being pulled vertically upwards along with their roots. At the same time, I felt the movement of the ball again. This time it rolled over the nape of my neck and over my temples, which would be clean-shaven like my face.
"As short as never before!" it came back to my mind.
I've had haircuts in my life that were at least as short as a classic flattop. So why not to try something shorter and more radical?
I pressed "Correction" and hesitated for a long time between "High and Tigh" and "Horseshoe-Flattop". Finally, I chose this extreme version of the Flattop with an extra wide landing strip.
Another soft click, then a buzz. The hair on the top of my head would now become much shorter. The ball rolled up the nape of my neck and finally went directly over the skull for the landing strip.
It shaved nimbly, its high-pitched buzzing ringing in my ears. Never before had I felt the movement of the ball on top of my skull! It was pleasant, it was arousing. It could roll over my head for hours! I couldn't get enough of this feeling and pressed the correction button more than once to widen the landing strip. One last time! There were many "last times"...
In the end I had a horseshoe of 1.5 cm length at the top and 2 cm wide. Everything else the ball had completely shaved off.

I was shielded from the outside world by the helmet while the ball did its work on my head. Maybe it was this intimacy, this anonymity, that pushed me to the extreme. Why not let the ball work until there was nothing left for it to do? Why not savour this feeling to the fullest?
With a deep sigh, I pressed the correction button one last time.
Then I chose "Bald Head" and "Ultra-Glossy"

The ball rolled humming over my head. It may have been only minutes. But I had lost awareness of space and time.

A slight dampness filled the helmet and settled on my skull and face.

Then the helmet lifted.

"Dude! I thought you'd never finish!" Mario shouted, but then stopped abruptly at the sight of me.
But even I couldn't get a word out of amazement.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
Mario stood in front of me. The ceiling light reflected on his smooth scalp.
"Ultra-glossy?" I asked.
"Ultra-glossy!" he answered.
Then we burst out laughing, fell into each other's arms and stroked our bald heads.

"I was afraid that something was wrong with the haircutting robot because it took you so long," Mario said and laughed relieved.
"Quite the opposite!" I replied, "Everything was all right with the robot. I would almost say that it was the beginning of a good friendship."
"For heaven's sake!" cried Mario, "Do I have to worry about you?"

We heard somebody clearing his throat. Aaron had made himself known and let us sit down at a table on which there were a large number of tubes, cans and pens.
"First the eyebrows!" he determined, took a blue pencil and drew two slightly curved arcs over my eyes, while Mario got more curved arcs with a black pen.
"Look at the latest trend!" Aaron shouted euphorically and took a can in his hand, "That's baldie polish, and I recommend green metallic for you to match the nail polish." He sprayed a shimmering green strip over the left half of Mario's head. Then he reached for another can.
"Blue with silver pigments would look very good on you," he said to me and sprayed almost my entire skull with it.

Fully dressed, we extensively looked at ourselves in the mirrored wall. Mario with a fishnet shirt, gray tight pants and sandals, which showed off the green-painted toenails well.
I pulled the zipper of my track jacket down to my belly button and looked at my hairless chest and my smooth muscular legs in the shorts.
I ran my hand over my head. The baldie polish still stuck on the skull.
"I could get used to baldness," I said. "Why didn't I do it much earlier? It's not as if baldness is completely unusual. And yet "the man in me" was afraid of being bald. This man we awakened on an adventure vacation. This guy with a full beard, unkempt hair and heavy body hair."
"100 years ago, he still fit into this world," said Mario. "But where would his place be today, when robots take over all the strenuous work? He would be just a stranger as we are in his world."
"Let's both keep 'the man in us' where he is! We can be men in other ways!" I summed up.
"You're right," Marco replied as he hooked up with me and we left the hammam. "And now please tell me all about your new friend, the haircutting robot!"

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