The Story of a Private Pleasure
by Carol's Guy
I have just discovered the Slickville site, and it looks like the ideal place for me to write an account of something that's been delighting me and embarrassing me in about equal measure for a very long time! I think an 'essay' is the best way to present it, and in writing it I hope I can take the serious tone that your correspondent Rodney took in his interesting 'What Happened in London' essay. I hope I can avoid, like the proverbial plague, any temptation to drop into that predictable pornographic rhetoric of the "you can imagine my surprise and delight" type, because I think it would make a mockery of what is supposed to be an honest study of a serious business. Hopefully this essay will strike a few chords somewhere; there must be plenty of guys out there who have had the same kind of experience.
To start with, can we please get this completely clear. I'm a straight guy. I'm single, but I've had some close lady friends, and apart from this Brylcreem business I have never had any reason to doubt my sexuality. I think the reason I remain single is that I'm a bit of a loner and not very good at sharing my personal space. I hope that this account of my experiences will put things in perspective, and I hope it will be clear that everything is seen from a 'straight' point of view. Whoops, I'm starting to sound homophobic, aren't I? As a single middle-aged guy, then, am I afraid of being thought gay? Maybe, I just don't know. There are people around who are very good at jumping to conclusions, so frankly if they want to think I'm gay then that's their business. If push comes to shove there are a number of very sweet lady friends from my past who can testify which side of the line I'm on, so let's leave it at that.
I have an obsession and fetish about Brylcreem, that's the top and bottom of it. Other makes of hair cream have worked for me, some haven't, and modern gels I don't get on with at all. Maybe the charm of Brylcreem is that it's somehow 'the original', it also has an evocative name, and I think it's interesting that it has become a generic word like Hoover or Biro. The story of my obsession with the white stuff is long and rambling and goes something like this.....
In my youth I lived in a town in the south-west of England. Until I was fourteen I had my hair cut by a ladies' hairdresser, at the shop my mother went to. I didn't question this until the age of about eleven, when I started to wonder if it was a bit uncool, but I didn't have the nerve to say "I want to go to a proper men's barber shop like the other kids". Seen in perspective, I think that going to a women's shop was probably normal enough, today it certainly is. Anyway, there's young me having my plain old monthly haircuts at this relatively posh shop, with no experience at all of the traditional mens' barber shop.
From the very beginning of my schooldays in the 1950s I couldn't help noticing that some boys, like some men, used cream on their hair all the time. I was mildly curious about it, but that was all. I also noticed that some of my friends would occasionally appear at school with cream on their hair when they had just had it cut. So, the occasional (as opposed to habitual) use of cream was associated with haircuts, I gathered this much, but in my posh ladies' salon I was in an isolated little world of non-male haircutting. At the age of about seven it seemed to me that cream was a peculiar and messy way of keeping your hair in order, and that those guys who made an exhibition of combing their hair in any available mirror (this was the teddy-boy era, remember) must get that grease all over their hands, all over their clothes, all over everything. Not nice. I remained mildly curious, but the curiosity was very slowly beginning to grow.
One Saturday morning when I was about eleven, a school friend dropped in on his way back from town, and he had just had his hair cut. He didn't comment on the fact because it was obvious enough, and neither did I, but I found I just couldn't take my eyes off his hair. I had never seen him with Brylcreem on before, but today his hair was gleaming with it, presumably thanks to the barber. What impressed me most was that my friend's front hair, which normally flopped down over his forehead in a kind of fringe, was creamed up and back from his forehead. It made him look grown up, 'cool', somehow glamorous. After he had gone my mother made a comment about how she "hated to see little boys with their hair plastered down with Brylcreem." I think I understood her dislike at the time, and I certainly understand it now, but at the time her disapproval somehow seemed to make the thing more desirable. From that point on, I found myself thinking about Brylcreem quite a lot, and I began to identify several separate aspects to this mysterious subject. First, there was my mother's implied declaration of taboo. Second, the cream itself had a certain glamour, and gloss, and smell. Third, there was the strangely exciting adult beauty of having your front hair not only creamed, but combed back from the forehead.
A similar small but significant incident took place around the same time. I was in the town centre one very cold winter day, and some way ahead of me I saw a boy I didn't know coming out of a barber's shop. He was wearing a hooded coat, with the hood down. As he came out of the shop a woman's voice behind me shouted "Paul, put your hood up, it's cold". The woman was obviously the boy's mother coming to meet him, but I didn't see her because I couldn't help staring at the boy. His light brown hair was gleaming. It was beautifully creamed, shining with Brylcreem even better than my friend's hair had been, and with the front combed up and back perfectly. As the boy walked past me, I could see the 'just combed' look of his hair, and the wind carried the unmistakeable smell of his cream towards me. Then he answered his mother, "But I don't want to spoil my hair!"
Those words hit the nail on the head. If I had been that boy I was sure that I wouldn't have wanted to spoil my perfectly Brylcreemed hair by putting up the hood of my coat.
Another memory concerns a boy I once saw in the street whose hair was creamed in a different way, straight back without a parting, and this was unusual. Some years later I was to find that this style didn't work for me, but for this boy it worked perfectly. He was younger than me, probably about nine, and as usual in these encounters his hair had obviously just been cut. Tapered off short at the back and sides but still quite thick on top, his brown hair had been Brylcreemed then taken straight back with a fine comb. It looked magnificent, and even from a distance I could tell that he had more than the usual amount of cream on his hair. As he drew closer I couldn't help staring because his hair wasn't just gleaming, it was glistening with a deep liquid gloss; he must have had an enormous amount of cream on for his hair to look like that. I had never seen a boy with so much Brylcreem on his hair. He seemed desperately aware of his new found beauty, and kept self-consciously touching and smoothing his shiny hair as he walked along the street. As he went past I saw that he was beaming all over his face, a shy beam of delight. Was he feeling the same way I would have felt myself, with my hair Brylcreemed like that ?
In the light of later experience, there is a point about this last episode that has me puzzled. The boy concerned had just had his hair cut, that was clear enough. And I think it's fair to assume that the barber had put the Brylcreem on for him. The thing is that I don't believe a barber, Ron or any other, would normally apply cream in the kind of glistening excess that this boy was enjoying. That, together with the straight-back style, makes me wonder if he had asked for his hair to be creamed like that.
There were other incidents and curiosities as well. Looking back, I suppose my fascination with Brylcreemed boys must have been sexual, but I don't believe it was caused by any sense of attraction. My interpretation is that it was much more an envy thing. If I saw a boy with beautifully Brylcreemed hair I wanted to be him, and it began to occur to me that the occasional use of Brylcreem, just occasional use, might be quite a desirable thing. Why not then, you might ask, just tell my parents that in spite of the implied taboo I wanted to use Brylcreem on my hair? The reason is this: it was also starting to become apparent to me that the use of Brylcreem, should I ever be in a position to do it, was going to be a private pleasure.
When I was fourteen, in the summer of 1966, my ladies' hairdresser died suddenly and unexpectedly, and it became necessary for me to seek out a traditional barber's shop. And quickly, too, because the end of the long school holiday was approaching and a haircut had been decreed by parental authority. So it all happened in a hurry, and a few days before the start of school I found myself going nervously into a barber's shop near where I lived. When I say nervously it wasn't because I was apprehensive about the impending Brylcreem adventures, in fact such a possibility hadn't occurred to me. It was purely because the traditional barber's was a strange land to me. The shop was run by a man in his forties called Ron, there were two chairs but he ran the shop alone. It was mid-morning and, it being the end of the long summer holiday, the one operational chair was occupied by a boy of about ten who had obviously received similar parental orders to mine. He seemed to know Ron and they were chatting quite amiably about football. I sat looking at a magazine and just wished for the whole episode to be over. Even at the ladies' shop, a haircut was a chore like going to the dentist.
Ron finished cutting the other boy's hair, and then he said four words which electrified me.
"Spot of cream, son?"
My heart was suddenly beating furiously and I had to try very hard not to stare at the boy in the chair. I buried my nose in the copy of WEEKEND magazine which ironically contained an article about the Beatles, those champions of non-greasy hair. I heard Ron squeeze what sounded like a whole handful of Brylcreem from the dispenser on the counter, and rub it between his hands with a never-to-be-forgotten smack smack smack sound. Then I suppose he rubbed it onto the boy's hair, but I didn't dare look. Did I hear the swish of the comb? I don't know, I might well have imagined it. It didn't take long for Ron to do the deed, then he said "Thank you, son" and I heard the boy stand up out of the chair. I knew it was time for me to make a move, time to stop hiding behind the magazine, time to step to the chair and have my hair cut the same as anyone else would, the same as any normal boy who hadn't been going to a ladies' hairdresser for the last fourteen years and didn't have a funny hangup about Brylcreem.
The other boy's hair looked completely wonderful. It was shining, gorgeous, gleaming with Brylcreem, back off his forehead and beautiful. It was the same style as I had seen so many times; a side parting, straight across on the top, with the front creamed up and back. Oh, good lord, this must be the same shop that the other kids had been going to all this time.... I was going to have my hair cut and creamed into that same perfect and long-admired style, the private pleasure was about to be awarded to me out of the blue.
Ron cut my hair. We talked about football, the usual things. I told him that I used to go to the ladies' hairdresser in a nearby street and, to my surprise, he knew the lady concerned. I don't know why I was surprised, it's obvious enough that people in the same trade should know each other. I tried to be at ease, but I wasn't and I'm sure Ron could tell. He was a nice enough guy and possibly he thought it was nerves at my first encounter with a 'mens' barber shop, partly this was true but there was a lot more on my mind.
"Spot of cream, son?"
I replied in the affirmative, trying hard to keep a steady voice. The handle on the dispenser went squee squee and the cream between Ron's hands went smack smack smack. And then, for the first time in my life, I felt the wetness of a handful of Brylcreem on my hair. Ron made a single long comb stroke forward from my crown, made the parting along one of the comb grooves, and combed my top hair straight across. The sides and back he combed straight down, and then the front he combed up and back in a shiny shape that was more perfect than I could ever have imagined. I could hardly believe it was happening.
I left the shop with my hair gleaming. I could feel the Brylcreem holding my hair and I was in a strange heaven. At last I was that boy with the hood who didn't want to spoil his hair, I was my friend that Saturday morning, I was the same as all those gorgeously Brylcreemed young boys who looked so cool and grown-up. I was also embarrassingly aware that here I was, Brylcreemed to perfection in the street and trapped into the public enjoyment of a pleasure I felt to be private. I felt peculiarly exposed and naked, and it was a feeling remarkably similar to those dreams where you are at school with no trousers on. I had to remind myself that I was no different from lots of other boys and men on their way home from a haircut. I was also, I realised, something of which my mother would disapprove, and at the age of fourteen it suddenly struck me that it was perfectly right for me to be breaking the taboo. And over and above all that, my Brylcreem envy was being satisfied at last.
It was very fortunate indeed that when I got home, I briefly had the house to myself. I didn't want anyone to see me engaging in this newly-discovered private pleasure, least of all my parents. I let myself in with my key and... oh, delight, delight, I was able to have some time to myself, combing my hair in front of the bathroom mirror. If everyone has their own heaven, I thought, then mine must be a Brylcreem heaven. I was the boy in the duffle coat and my hair was perfect. I stood there blissfully combing my hair until something happened that I don't need to dwell on. Suffice it to say that I experienced my sexual awakening. It was a wonderful thing, it took me completely by surprise and was longer, more powerful, more frightening and at the same time more blissful than anything that I have experienced since. That's the truth, and I wish I could experience it again.
I was able to clean myself up before my mother came home. I also made a point of messing up my hair a bit and pushing down the creamed-back front, as that was the part I felt the most self-conscious about. When my mother came in from town I was innocently doing my homework, sitting at the kitchen table and wearing a fresh pair of underpants. My mother made a comment about 'the shorn lamb' and asked why I had let the barber put so much Brylcreem on. I said he had put it on without asking first, which wasn't true at all, but she seemed satisfied. Still, even with the front pushed down my hair was an embarassment in the company of family, and later that day I washed the cream off. The return to normality was welcome, but at the same time I somehow couldn't wait for my next haircut. I could see quite clearly that the furtive enjoyment of Brylcreem was going to provide a whole new world for me to explore.
Over the next two years or so, Ron put cream on my hair every time he cut it, and I would enjoy a brief spell of the private pleasure before circumstances compelled it to end. You will have gathered that furtiveness and secrecy appeared, for me at least, to be inherent features of the Brylcreem game. Some occasions were better than others, and the most memorable happened during a school holiday about six months after the first incident, which would make it Easter 1967. I would be fifteen, and prior to that holiday it was decreed from above that a haircut was due. Now, while barber Ron was fairly generous with the Brylcreem, I had a growing desire to slap it on myself, and to excess if possible. I had gone well past the point where the proverbial 'little dab' was enough! I therefore devised a plan to buy a small jar of Brylcreem a few days before the haircut, using my pocket money, and conceal it somewhere in my bedroom. Given the requisite privacy I could then enjoy a massive Brylcreem session after my hair was cut, pretending if questioned that the barber was responsible for the excessive cream. The scheme had its flaws but I was determined to do it.
The expedition to buy the jar of Brylcreem (it was still in glass jars in those days) turned into a bigger operation than I had expected. It took nerve! Walking through the town centre on a Saturday morning, the streets appeared to be alive with people I knew. Where had they all come from? Usually I could go to town without being recognised. Although I wasn't aware of the fact, exactly the same furtive feeling was dogging certain school colleagues of mine who were going through the phase of trying to buy soft porn magazines.... and a few years later, of course, it would be contraceptives. Summoning all my courage, I went into a major chemist's shop and approached the mens' cosmetics counter. I tried to imagine I was shopping for toothpaste, but it didn't make me any less nervous. I approached the counter a bit closer. Yes, the Brylcreem was in several sizes of jar, and here were the smallest ones. Quite enough in there for a session! I was reaching out for a jar when a voice at my shoulder said, "Hi, kiddo, haven't seen you for a while," and I jumped out of my skin. I must have looked the absolute picture of guilt, and here talking to me was a former next-door neighbour who had moved away about a year before. He was an amiable but talkative middle-aged guy called Jackson, and I had always got on well enough with him when I was little, but I didn't want to see him or anyone right now.
"Buyin' Brylcreem, eh? My, you've grown up, son. I can remember when you were just a little boy.... "
That said, Jackson launched into one of those reminiscence sessions that the older folk will inflict on you when you're 'growing up'. What a nice little boy I used to be, and all that stuff, yeah. I couldn't get rid of him! At last it occurred to me that the sensible thing was to go ahead with the purchase, while keeping up the talk. He had seen what I was buying, so bluff it out. So I did it. The counter assistant approached, and while I maintained polite conversation with Mr Jackson the transaction was completed. Cash changed hands, and I became the proud owner of a small jar of Brylcreem. So the deed was done, but not quite in the way I had hoped. I pocketed my precious purchase and walked out into the street with Mr Jackson.
I got away from him eventually, at the point where our routes home diverged. Oh, how he could talk. My sense of guilt was well and truly stirred up, and as I slunk homewards the jar of Brylcreem in my pocket felt as if it weighed about twelve tons. Fancy meeting bloody Jackson! Oh well, at least it wasn't a school friend I had bumped into, now that would have been embarrassing. But why, oh why, couldn't things just be straightforward? Was my thing about Brylcreem so wicked that obstacles had to be thrown in my way? I had visions of Jackson seeing my mother and casually remarking "Your boy's growing up, saw him buyin' a jar of Brylcreem the other day" and my mother's horrified "Whaaat?" It must have been my guilty conscience that was somehow creating the obstacles for me. Because a guilty thing it was, certainly, not just a private pleasure now but a guilty one as well.
The jar of cream was smuggled into the house and hidden in my bedroom without any great difficulty, although I was conscious of having a certain hunted feeling about me until the deed was done. Even then, after it was hidden at the back of a drawer, I kept wondering what would happen if a prying parent discovered it. With my teenage paranoia increasing daily it was easy to imagine that the home authorities were spying on me. When I was quietly reading a book, or doing my homework, the bedroom door would open slightly and my mother or father would smile at me round the door then disappear again. Just checking! So, if I didn't have the privacy to do homework in peace, what hope was there for a decent Brylcreem session? Looking back on this, I don't for one moment believe my parents would ever have knowingly pried into my boyish business, not unless they thought I had started smoking dope or something.... but at the age of fifteen los parentes seemed to be ever-present and in retrospect I'm sure it was just a symptom of my growing up and needing more space.
Sometimes at night I would get the jar out from its hiding place and smell it.
About two weeks after I acquired the jar, my luck actually took a turn for the better. A haircut was due, and as I mentioned above, it was now towards the end of the Easter holiday. It was a weekday, my father was at work, and my mother announced her intention of visiting her sister who lived on the other side of the town. She asked if I wanted to come, and when I said 'no' she suggested that in that case I might occupy the afternoon by doing something useful like having a haircut. Trying not to sound too enthusiastic, I agreed, so at last the stage was set for the long-desired Great Brylcreem Experiment.
Ron cut my hair, and as I walked home with my hair shining I was in a fever of anticipation. This really was piling pleasure upon pleasure, the excitement of having my hair Brylcreemed at all still remained, but waiting at home were further pleasures yet to be discovered. And once in the house, I found the jar of cream and got to business.
I took two fingers-worth of Brylcreem from the jar, and rubbed it between my hands. Smack smack it went, that wonderful sound, and then I put the cream on my hair. And then I put some more on. By now I had lost my parting, so neatly made by Ron, so I used his technique with the broad-tooth comb and found it was more difficult than I thought! After making an accurate parting at last I combed my hair into the usual style and then, quivering with excitement, I combed the front up and back. It looked and felt wonderful. My hair was absolutely saturated with the Brylcreem, I had put so much on that my hair made little squelching noises as I combed it. And as I combed my hair I found myself making a few observations.
First, I discovered that when you have a lot of cream on your hair, there is a tendency for the comb to rake it off. This can result in a big blob of cream flying off your comb onto the floor, what a waste! The effect can be overcome by using the broad-tooth end of the comb, or better, by using the fine-tooth end and then smoothing more cream over the top of the combed hair. I found this gave a lovely gloss on the front and along the side opposite the parting. It was also possible, once this extra cream was smoothed over, to put comb marks into it by running the comb gently over the surface.
Second, the practice of combing all the hair straight back without a parting might work for some, but I found it didn't work for me. I envied that beautiful boy I had seen in the street a few years ago, beaming with delight, his hair Brylcreemed straight back and glistening. I bet his hair had squelched when it was combed! I think the success of that style must depend on the shape of your head, and on the depth of your hair line at the front. Having tried it and decided it wasn't for me, I put my hair back into the barbershop style I had enjoyed from the beginning. Yes, that was the way I liked it, and with all this extra cream on it looked gorgeous.
Having got my hair as perfect as I possibly could, massively Brylcreemed and with not a single hair out of place, I made an expedition round the house to look in every possible mirror. I felt more like a criminal than ever and took care not to leave greasy finger marks anywhere. It was like being a stranger in my own home, but thank goodness for this prolonged privacy that had been granted to me. There were quite a few mirrors in the house and I found that each one somehow gave a different image, I suppose it depended on the direction of the light. The best one was the big mirror in the entrance hall, and I think the reason was the slightly diffuse light coming through the frosted glass of the front door. Standing in front of that mirror, I gazed on my gleaming adult beauty. This was complete perfection. I touched the back of my hair, it felt slippery with cream as I smoothed it with my hand. Could I ever dare to go out and walk down the street like this, I wondered. Would I have the nerve to comb my hair in the street? What would people think, especially people who knew me? What would Mr Jackson think if he saw me now? What would the pretty young girl at No.12 think? Would she be impressed or disgusted?
Regardless of what other people might think, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I liked it. I was in love with it! The extra Brylcreem elevated the pleasure to a new level, and I'm sure it was the element of deliberate excess that did it. I wondered what would happen if I asked barber Ron to "put a lot on," would he really put this much Brylcreem on my hair? Ron's expression "spot of cream" suggested that there was indeed the option of a larger quantity. Did anyone ever ask for a lot? Had the beaming boy asked for a lot? It occurred to me that the enjoyment of my over-Brylcreemed hair was increased even further by pretending that it was actually the barber, and not myself, who had put this enormous amount of cream on. Standing there and smoothing my hair, I said aloud to myself...
"The barber asked if I wanted cream on, so I told him to put a lot on.... I've never had this much Brylcreem on my hair before!"
At that point the excitement and pleasure seemed to combine in a kind of explosion, and to my indescribable delight I achieved a spontaneous sexual experience similar to, if not quite the equal of, my very first. Oh, I was addicted to Brylcreem alright.
In the strange feeling of depression which (as I was rapidly learning) tends to follow a sexual high, I addressed the problem of washing the cream off. This was all part of the same learning experience, if a bit less exciting than the act of putting the cream on. I found that with an excess of Brylcreem on my hair like this, the best way to get it off was to comb it out onto a piece of toilet paper using the fine end of the comb, then flush the paper down the toilet. I did this several times to get rid of all the excess cream, and then I felt my hair was ready to wash. The flushing operation left a greasy mark round the toilet bowl, so I had to wipe it round by hand and put some bleach down. Then I washed my hair. The fun was over, for the time being, but leaving me with a strong desire for more of the same.
These occasional 'Brylcreem sessions' continued, with varying degrees of success and pleasure, for about two years. I have tried to analyse my feelings about it. I suppose the thing must involve narcissism, or being in love with your own image. I don't like this explanation but I suspect it is the correct one. I don't consider myself to be a particularly good-looking guy (not that it's for me to judge) but in this case the relationship is not with the face or the individual in the mirror, it's with the hair. The pleasure seems to lie in the feel, the shape, the texture and the excess of the Brylcreemed hair. This is coupled, of course, with the element of taboo and its associated furtiveness and secretiveness, which in my case just served to make the thing even more desirable. So, call it a mixture of narcissism, exhibitionism, and the lure of forbidden fruit.
Sadly I never had the nerve to ask barber Ron to "put a lot on", but I thought about it a lot. This curious state of affairs couldn't go on for ever, and I was disappointed but not entirely surprised when Ron stopped using Brylcreem altogether. I'm fairly sure this was during 1968, I was sixteen, and to be quite honest Brylcreem had gone out of fashion. I will end this section with an odd little experience from the shop, and I think it may indeed have been the very last time that Ron put cream on for me. He cut and creamed my hair in the usual way, and as he was finishing a younger boy came into the shop and sat down to wait. I got up out of the chair and produced a pound note, which was the only money I had. Ron didn't have enough change, so he had to go out of the shop and through to the house to get some. Now, the novelty of having my hair in that lovely 'just creamed' state had worn off a little bit by now, but I still couldn't resist looking in one of the mirrors and smoothing the back of my hair with my hand. As I did this, the other boy said, "You've got cream on, haven't you !"
I managed a reply something along the lines of "You're not kidding," at which point Ron came back into the shop with my change. To this day, I have never been able to decide whether that boy's remark was intended to be approving (I like your Brylcreemed hair, mate) or mocking (what, still using that greasy kid stuff ?) I wonder?
When I was seventeen I met and fell absolutely in love with a sweet girl called Carol. It was a perfect teenage relationship, it lasted for three years and like most similar relationships it provided a voyage of discovery for both of us. And we discovered lots of things together! All this while, the Brylcreem business was in the back of my mind, but I never mentioned it to Carol even during our most cosy moments. Frankly there seemed to be no need, because I felt that I had moved on to the real thing. The Beatles had demolished the old greasy hair culture, my own hair was getting longer, my collection of rock records was growing, and adulthood was approaching. Carol and myself were bloody lucky that parenthood didn't approach as well, but that's another matter. Suffice it to say that for the time, the Brylcreem game appeared to be over.
Years later in the late 70's, with the long hair era well and truly past, I rediscovered my interest in the jar of white stuff. This was about the same time as I became acquainted with.....
In my twenties I became friendly with a guy called James, who when I first knew him had a beautiful Cornish girlfriend called Jenny. Very much an item, James and Jenny were a popular couple and although James was a thoroughly good guy, I think it was Jenny who was the main attraction, to James' male friends anyway. She was only eighteen when I first met her, she had round blue eyes and a truly stunning figure. The word 'hourglass' barely does her justice. She knew how to look her best, as well, and I remember in particular a fluffy grey woollen sweater she used to wear. What has this got to do with Brylcreem, I hear you say? Bear with me. Everyone seemed to agree that Jenny was a lovely girl, but it was sometimes suggested that she would be lovelier still if she would only let her hair grow. This was because Jenny always kept her light brown hair in a boyish style; short at the sides and tapered off at the back, longer on top and with a heavy fringe. Are you starting to see the connection?
I'm sure I wasn't alone among James' friends in fantasising about Jenny, but in my own imagination there was a lot more to Jenny than the obvious pleasure of undressing her. I longed to put Brylcreem on her hair, which was fine and straight and would have taken cream beautifully. I wanted to comb the big fringe back from her pretty forehead and take all her hair straight back without a parting, wetted through with cream and with the comb marks smoothed out. And in my mind's eye I have a clear image of how she would look. Jenny is sitting in front of a dressing table mirror, she is gorgeous in the fluffy sweater and looks like a Gil Elvgren painting. On the table is an almost empty jar of Brylcreem, and Jenny's hair is glistening. Her fringe is creamed right back so that it merges with her top hair, and she has so much Brylcreem on that the top and sides of her hair form a gleaming, glossy dome that tapers off down behind her ears. With one hand she is smoothing her hair, and with the other hand she is holding the bottom edge of her sweater.
"Ooh, but if I take my sweater off for you, I'm going to spoil my hair" she is saying in her musical Truro accent.
You get the picture? That image, my friends, is the finest of all my fantasies.
Okay guys, back to earth, and let's get analytical again. What is the appeal of the Jenny fantasy? I think it's that the involvement of Jenny serves to legitimise my Brylcreem obsession by putting it into a heterosexual context. For me, the idea of sharing Brylcreem fun with a male friend has always been unthinkable, but the idea of sharing it with an attractive female friend is a different matter altogether. And with Jenny's hair being the style it was, my old fascinations with (a) the cream itself, and (b) the combing back of the fringe, were perfectly combined. We could have played a role reversal game where I was the barber, and she was the customer. "Spot of cream, my beauty?".... oh, here we go again.
There is also an interesting contradiction in this fantasy in that it combines wish fulfilment (Jenny has her hair Brylcreemed) with wish denial (she doesn't want to take her sweater off). We get the impression that Jenny is a lot more worried about spoiling her hair than she is about the equally imminent risk of getting Brylcreem all over her good sweater. Maybe she's just teasing me, because if her sweater is coming off at all I know it's coming off for me, but there's no doubt that she likes having her hair creamed up the way it is.
We can but dream... oh, beautiful Jenny of the bodacious bod and the oh-so-creamable hair.... where are you now? And what would you think if you knew I was writing this ?!?
An aspect of the Brylcreem game that I discovered in my twenties is the desire to do it in a strange town, or better still, abroad. I suppose this is a way of achieving anonymity, if not actual privacy, in much the same way as the Internet gives anonymity to people who write stuff like this! I first tried it when I took a short break and spent a few days by myself in Rome. I took a jar of Brylcreem with me, and on the first night in the hotel I creamed my hair and went for a walk. I did my hair quite moderately, I put it in the usual barbershop style but I didn't go to great excess with the cream because I didn't want to attract attention. Why do it then, I hear you say, and you have a point.
I found it took nerve to walk through the hotel reception area. Once outside I walked around the streets near the hotel, glancing at my reflection occasionally in shop windows, and I experienced very mixed feelings. Yes, I was enjoying the feeling of being out and about with Brylcreem on my hair. But the old naked sensation, the dream of being at school without trousers, was back as well and very strong. And the two sensations offset each other about equally. What was actually happening here, I asked myself. Is this exhibitionism? If so, it raises some serious questions, such as... who do I see as my audience? With the possible exception of a few female friends like Jenny, I certainly don't see 'my audience' as anyone I know, which is why I'm doing it in a strange town. I couldn't imagine any of the well-dressed Italian women I saw finding my hair attractive, and I certainly didn't want any of the men to take notice. I couldn't imagine any of the younger girls or boys taking notice either, which besides, would invite a situation which raises a whole different set of moral questions. What if a well-dressed and good-looking young Italian man, his hair creamed similarly to my own, approached me and began a friendly conversation in English? What if a group of small children pointed and laughed? It was all very plausible.
To this day I do not understand my desire for walkabouts in foreign towns with Brylcreem on my hair. Maybe the audience is unimportant and the act of exhibition is the only thing that matters. But it's a trade-off, and the down side can't be ignored. It is a hollow pleasure, and sometimes I wonder if it's like being on a hard drug. Given the situation, and given the availability of the fix, I can't resist going through the ritual.... but any pleasure that results is severely compromised, and in the end it hardly seems worth the effort. But I have done it again, on city holidays by myself in Prague, in Paris, in Vienna.... and something tells me I will continue to do it.
Let's talk about types of cream. Here in the UK, Brylcreem is the big name, and the one that has endured. These days a traditionalist like me finds that the Brylcreem range is complicated by a bewildering variety of gels and mousses, so I think that even if Brylcreem's basic and original hair cream went completely out of fashion and was discontinued, the brand name would still carry on. Occasionally, particularly in the 'bargain' shops, I have seen an Indian version of Brylcreem. It's strange stuff and I can't say I like it. It smells different from the normal stuff, and has a way of drying out on your hair like gel. It also has a drying effect on the hair itself, and the first and only time I tried it my hair took a long time to recover after I had washed the cream off.
In the 1960's and 70's there was also something called Vaseline Hair Cream. This was very similar to Brylcreem but it actually had several advantages. It tended to give a better hold than Brylcreem, it gave a better gloss, it washed out more easily than Brylcreem and it was cheaper. So, on the whole, it could be the preferred product! Sadly, in the late 70's it changed. Something happened, probably a change in the raw materials, and it was never the same again. Shortly after that it disappeared for good.
Then there was Silvikrin Hair Cream, which was very much an 'imitation Brylcreem'. It seemed thin and really didn't perform so well, but as Rodney has remarked it was cheap.
And then there was a strange one made by Boots and called 'Brilliantine Cream'. It was awful, and appeared to me made of tallow, which is a form of refined beef fat. It worked after a fashion, but the texture and smell were not nice at all. Very much a grease rather than a cream.
What do women think of men with Brylcreemed hair? I suspect that my dear Carol would not have liked it. And I doubt whether Jenny would have agreed to play the game, had I ever been in a position to propose it. So how did the wives and girlfriends manage in the 1950s, when the Brylcreem culture was at its peak? Did they like it or just tolerate it? I would love to know.
When I first took notice of Brylcreem, all the fashionable and rockin' young men had duck-tail hairdos. I have to say that this is a style I do not like. Possibly that's because it's a style that was around before I actually woke up to the pleasures of Brylcreem. It's also associated with the very early days of Rock-n-Roll music, and that's a period of music that I don't really identify with.
I have tried Brylcreeming my hair when it's a bit long at the back, and I find the ends go into greasy little curls and tails against my neck, which (to my mind) look dreadful. This might go very well with the duck-tail style, but I don't like it. I prefer the back to be neatly trimmed off, and for the ends to lie flat against the back of my neck when I put cream on. This is at its best when my hair has just been cut, and I love to Brylcreem my hair immediately after a haircut because of this. Having a Brylcreem session when my hair is freshly cut also creates a strong illusion that it is the barber, and not myself, who has put the cream on. And this, for me at least, seems to be an extremely important part of the game.
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