The T’s were back to being all black! No more pink!
“How did you do that?”
Debra held up a can of black spray paint.
He looked closer, and saw the nubs of Brigid’s nipples, now jet black. “Wow!”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Brigid said in misery.
“No... it doesn’t look bad at all... They just look like... part of the T.”
“Exactly!” Debra said. As the three friends looked at the black-painted nubs, Virginia said, “It looks like rubber cement. Black rubber cement. To keep the T’s on.”
Indeed it did look just like some kind of glue to keep the T’s on, colored black to match. If one didn’t know...
Brigid forced her arms down straight at her sides, her fingers rubbing her hips. Looking up as if praying, she said, “You guys GOTTA look at me like that??”
“OK, OK,” Rod said quickly, his eyes shooting down to the floor, where he contemplated their boots and Brigid’s squirming toes.
Through the door they could hear Sarge’s muffled voice out in the hall. “The floats are fixed, people! Line up in five minutes! For sure!”
“Let’s get out there!” Debra said.
“I just -- can’t!” He had never seen Brigid like this, so shy and queasy, though he could well understand.
“You know you have to,” Virginia said.
Brigid gulped and shook her head in misery. “Yeah... What choice do I have?”
“Of course you have a choice,” Rod said. “Tell them you’re sick. Here, take my jacket.” He began the laborious task of undoing the fifteen buttons down his front.
“No, no...” Brigid walked forward and gingerly opened the door. With a deep breath, a heave of her breasts and a rise of the T’s they supported, she walked out into the alcove.
They got out there and Brigid once again reflexively covered her black-painted nipples with her fingers.
“You have to put your hands down,” Debra said. “Don’t give the slightest sign…”
Brigid nodded and straightened her arms down her sides. She got her baton from where she had laid it down before. And the four of them walked out the alcove into the hall.
The band was roughly in line but more or less hanging around. After all, they had five more minutes in this endless wait. The four friends stood around and tried to act relaxed. Rod allowed himself just fleeting glances at Brigid’s T’s. He felt Debra and Virginia under a similar stricture. The four of them tried to look everywhere but... Everyone else was going to see the T’s, of course, the rest of the band and the hundreds of people lining the route, but only the three of them knew what they would be looking at...
“Hi Debra, Rod, Virginia, Brigid,” Ms. Chen said. She and Mr. Tucker and Mrs. Toriello came up to them. The three teacher chaperones, expecting to be outside in a moment, were in their coats and winter hats, carrying gloves. “I could make you nervous and say ‘ready for your big moment’, but you’re all old pros at this.”
The four Tunemasters smiled politely, unable to think of anything to say.
“Your new uniforms are positively resplendent,” Mrs. Toriello said.
“Thank you,” Virginia said. They all felt the need to look down, if only quickly, at their new duds. Even Brigid. With the heavy coats on the teachers and the new uniforms, the rest of them looked twice her size.
“Looks good,” Mr. Tucker said in his gravelly voice. “The majorette uniform keeps getting... more interesting.” He looked down at the tiny T that covered and also separated Brigid’s lower lips.
Brigid blushed, as if being gushed over, which was not surprising to the three chaperones.
Ms. Chen, a very short Chinese woman, looked at Brigid’s T’s which were almost at her eye level. Her eyebrow furrowed. “I thought these were all plastic. This looks like -- “ The four friends almost died with fright as the three teachers gathered closer.
“It’s -- rubber cement,” Brigid said.
“Seems like it’s coming out,” Mr. Tucker said. “Excuse me dear.” He gently held one of the T’s and -- poked his rough old shop teacher’s finger into Brigid’s nipple!
Rod could hear the sudden intake of breath, could see the quaking tummy below --
“I’m afraid it might fall out,” he said. “We don’t want that happening, don’t we?”
“Rubber cement?” Mrs. Toriello said.
“Looks like xanthum gum, a good choice I’ say, but it doesn’t look too good,” Mr. Tucker said.
Ms. Chen said. “Excuse me, dear...” She held the other T and gently poked the other blackened nub...
Some of the other band members approached in curiosity. Soon there were about ten of them gathered around, watching the teachers fix Brigid’s T’s, maybe to prevent a “wardrobe malfunction” during the parade?
“What’s wrong?” Jared said.
“Xanthum gum fastener, I think she put too much on,” Mr. Tucker said, continuing to try to poke the black nub in, but it kept springing back out. Ms. Chen was having a similar lack of success with the other one.
“Oh... I didn’t notice that before,” Jared said. As indeed none of them had, when they were viewing all the new uniforms in the big cafeteria room. They had not been examining the T’s too closely, their attention naturally being directed to what the T’s were covering (or not covering).
This can’t be happening, the three friends told themselves as they looked at each other. They watched in horror as Mr. Tucker and Ms. Chen kept gently poking as Brigid looked down with widened eyes and gulped. Seeing the faces around her, she suppressed her natural body reactions and said, “It’s -- really - - O.K. We’ll be mahching in a minute -- “ Her fingers fidgeted against the baton, her toes wiggled and squirmed...
Ms. Chen and Mr. Tucker gave up on poking and stood there, contemplating Brigid’s T’s. “Maybe we can fix it.”
Mr. Tucker saw the word “Custodian” on the closet and said, “We’ve just got to get this xanthum flush with the rest of the T’s. Otherwise it looks like -- well...” He didn’t want to say it but they knew what he meant. “She’ll be on TV, you know. We’ve got to act fast.”
“Where are you going?” Ms. Chen said.
“There should be some sandpaper in here,” the shop teacher said, walking into the custodian’s office. “Some steady buffing with 150 or so grit will probably do it.”
“Get some for me too,” Ms. Chen said.
Before Brigid and her friends could decide what to do, Mr. Tucker had come out of the custodian office with two little sheets of sandpaper.
Actually there was nothing they COULD do. Everyone was watching them, standing around waiting for the old shop teacher to emerge. Brigid couldn’t run. She couldn’t tell them the truth, that it was actually her bare nipples sticking out in everyone’s faces. That would be indecent exposure, detention for sure, telling her parents... as well as shame that would last for years. The incident would stick to her name for years. And they were about to go out to march. She and her friends were frozen to the spot, terrified.
Now Mr. Tucker gave one sheet to Ms. Chen. “Only 220 grit, but let’s see what we can do,” he said. He wadded his sheet up into a little section, then grasped Brigid’s left T around the edges. The T was only three inches high and was dwarfed by his rough, burly hand. “This should only take a moment, Miss O’Dierna...”
The first rub of 220 grit onto the majorette’s most sensitive spot caused a little strangled gasp and a quick intake of her bare tummy. He slowly drew the wad all the way across, then back, then forth, back and forth --
In a full band uniform one can always hide the manifestations of one’e emotions. Tummies shake with nervousness, butt cheeks clench with cold, arms and legs and chests sweat with exertion or heat, toes squirm in their boots, and of course also hidden are male erections, which for a teenage boy are frequent events. But a Tunemasters majorette cannot hide her body. As they watched in sympathy and horror Rod, Debra and Virginia looked their suffering friend up and down and noted the twitching shoulders, the flushed collarbones, the quaking of the flat tummy, the flexing of thigh muscles, and the spreading of her meticulously painted toes as poor Brigid tried to withstand the unbearably intense stimulation.
Ms. Chen started working on the right T, holding it in her little hand as she began sanding what she took to be the black gum adhesive. It was almost at her eye level and she peered in very closely. Seeing no progress, the two teachers became more vigorous, brushing back and forth faster, faster, harder, rasping away at the nipples. Behind the T’s, Brigid’s breast flesh jiggled in response to their motions.
Rod shut his eyes. He couldn’t look. But of course he opened them again. Brigid’s eyes popped open and she seemed about to cry. She looked at her friends with pleading. But they could do nothing. They were horrified at what it must feel like. Debra and Virginia folded their arms tightly across their chests, as if to protect their own nipples, which lay hidden from the world and protected by bras, thermals, blouses and jackets. Four layers of covering that Brigid was denied. For Rod’s part, he pictured the sandpaper going over the end of his dick, his most sensitive part, so sensitive that he himself never touched it, not even when jerking off.
Around them, the other band members drew closer, curious about whether the teachers could get that extra gum off. The buffing grew more furious. Mr. Tucker, a bit winded, stopped to tighten his grip on the T. So did Ms. Chen. Then they bore in and rubbed harder, faster, with lightning speed back and forth, back and forth --
Brigid’s breathing grew ragged. Her eyes blinked and opened wide again. It must be agony! Rod felt about to cry. Poor Brigid must be about to jump out of her skin! Her fingers clutched the baton with a white-knuckled grip. Her toes wiggled in her flip flops and spread and squirmed, individually and together, as if speaking urgently and eloquently of her distress in some kind of sign language.
Brigid looked up as if praying for deliverance from this torture. She must be Catholic and Rod pictured this as a stained glass scene. The Agony of St. Brigid.
The teachers rested again, then buffed again. Brigid sniffled. Her eyes squeezed shut. Then she remembered she must not betray the truth and she kept as still as she could. As her nipples were rasped and scraped, she kept her eyes forward, not looking anyone in the eye, in a resolute gaze, as if waiting for the signal to march. She stood up straight, baton at her side. Only an occasional twitch of the tummy or toes evidenced her suffering.
Rod was afraid that the black color might rub off. But it was a penetrating, oil-based paint and could only come off with turpentine.
Finally Mr. Tucker and Ms. Chen stood back and conceded defeat. Brigid closed her eyes and caught her breath.
“We’re not getting anywhere,” Mr. Tucker said.
“If anything, it’s sticking out more than before,” Ms. Chen observed.
Looking around at the gathered Tunemasters, Mr. Tucker said, “Any ideas, folks?” This comment only emphasized how everyone’s gaze was fixed on the black nubs at the center of Brigid’s T’s. She looked about to die from shame, though to everyone else it just seemed like the distress and concern she shared with the teachers, who had seen at the last minute a problem with her uniform that she hadn’t noticed from her vantage point. Rod and Debra and Virginia glanced at each other helplessly.
Mrs. Toriello, a grandmotherly type, came up and stood right in front of the majorette. She gripped the T’s in each hand and examined them appraisingly. In the process she turned them a bit inward to more directly meet her gaze, making the breasts look a little cross-eyed.
“I think we’re under a misimpression here. This not what we think it is.”
Oh no! Brigid, looking down at her T’s, bit her lip.
“I think the gum has separated.”
The four friends exhaled in relief. But then they held their breath again as she said, “It’s in pieces. See all these little bumps? Maybe we can pluck some of the pieces out.”
Mr. Tucker grabbed part of Brigid’s left nub and pulled. She suppressed a gasp. He squeezed again, harder. But his fingers were too big and rough to get a good grip. “This is a job for women,” he conceded. “Someone with long nails.”
“I can do it,” Brigid volunteered quickly.
“No, you can’t see from your angle,” Mrs. Toriello said. “Also I don’t want you to ruin your manicure.” A valid concern. With the disappearance of boots and gloves, fingernail paint and toenail paint had become part of the majorette’s uniform. Brigid’s nails were meticulously done in the school colors, black and white, now with a little line of gold near the cuticle.
Everyone looked on as Mrs. Toriello and Ms. Chen bit into Brigid’s nubs with their fingernails, like pincers, squeezing them and pulling them, delicately and carefully, so as not to dislodge the T’s, but none the less painfully from Brigid’s standpoint.
Brigid’s nipples were squeezed and pinched and yanked on for a minute or more, the sharp fingernails cutting and slicing into the little bumps.
“This material is very tough,” Ms. Chen admitted. She brought out tweezers from her handbag. The nubs were now subjected to the merciless and crushing of the little metal jaws. The Agony of St. Brigid continued. Now as Ms. Chen twisted the tweezers, almost half way around, trying to tear out one little bump after another, Rod brought his hands over his crotch and almost doubled over as he pictured this being done to the end of his dick. The pain must be horrible. Debra and Virginia cringed and squeezed their arms across their chests even tighter.
The majorette reverted to waiting-to-march mode, eyes forward. Though her eyes were now rimmed with red. And now the pink circles behind the T’s, her areolas, which one could see clearly because the stems of the T’s were only a half-inch across... The pinkish hue was becoming more red, and the areolas were getting a little puffy. It made the T’s stand out more from her breasts. Not only were the areolas getting puffy, little goose bumps were forming around the perimeters.
As for the black-painted nubs, they were getting bumpier and more prominent, as each individual little bump was yanked and crushed and squeezed and twisted. Rod had to admit that they did look like bits of some kind of dried glue.
The women were not succeeding in tearing the bits off. “The only thing to do,” Mr. Tucker announced, “is cut. There’s a wire cutter in there,” he said, walking toward the custodian’s office. “I’ll be right back!”
“No!” Rod said. “No!”
Mr. Tucker, not one to brook any disrespect from students, said, “What, young man?”
Rod’s heart was in his mouth and his whole body was shaking as he took his stand. Fortunately the words that came to him were convincing. “This is a... Tunemasters -- matter. We help each other in this band. Let us fix it ourselves.”
“Yes, yes,” Debra and Virginia said quickly.
“Th - that’s right,” Brigid said, still recovering from the assault on her sensitive nipples.
“Let me do it,” Rod said. He stood in front of Brigid. Their eyes met. He wanted to kiss her, hug her, take her away from the probing eyes and the tormenting teachers. If only they knew how cruel they had been. But his task now was to pretend to deal with the outcropping black gum.
He looked down at her nipples. She didn’t want him to look but she knew he had to. Under the black paint they looked swollen, abused, maybe angry. Like that time she took those old circlets off at the burger place, during the Patriots game parade, after her nipples had been squeezed by those bulldog clips all morning.
“It’s best to push it in,” he said. Gingerly he brought his gloved hands up. He brought an index finger to each nipple and once again contemplated how just one of his fingers enjoyed more covering than the majorette had for her entire, gorgeous body. He swallowed and looked at her. Her eyes were full of gratefulness. She pictured them going back into the custodian’s office, alone, as he comforted her, crying on his shoulder. “Oh Rod... I thought I was going crazy . . .”
She gasped as the tips of his gloved fingers rubbed her nubs tenderly, soothingly. He wanted to lick them. They would be soothed by a soft, wet tongue. Actually what she probably needed was ice. Well, in a few minutes her nipples would be hit by to the frigid air outside. That should help, though it would be rough on the rest of her near-nakedness.
The three teachers watched closely, along with Debra and Virginia. “You’re not getting anywhere,” Mr. Tucker complained.
He rubbed gently and then began pushing the nubs in, as tenderly as possible. Brigid sniffled and then smiled at him. He smiled back. They were in love, for sure.
He wanted to kiss her, so, so bad!
“March time!” Sarge yelled from somewhere.
That broke the tension. The scene broke up as the kids turned quickly. “We’ll be okay,” Brigid said to Mr. Tucker as the Tunemasters went back into line. In a moment Rod was walking behind her as she led the band into the vestibule.
As they approached the glass doors the bright lights of the outdoor winter carnival began to play on their uniforms, on Brigid’s skin. And now the frigid mountain air hit them as they walked outside, one by one.