In Which Innocence is found in work and in work is found revived passion.

nnocence had achieved her independence: she had at last found a bedsit and a job that paid well enough for her to afford the rent. Honore had loaned her the money necessary to pay the deposit on her new home, but she hoped that with overtime she’d eventually be able to repay her. It was a very small bedsit - much smaller than what she’d been accustomed to in Labia or Wonderground - but at least when she shut the front door she was in her own territory, not shared with her sister or anyone else. The bedsit was a single room dominated by a single bed, with only enough room to squeeze past the wash basin, shower, cooker and integral wardrobe. The view from the window over the streets of Congress didn’t excite Innocence’s imagination much at all, being mostly of the main road fourteen stories below and the tower blocks opposite.

The job she got was at the Fierzehn, a city centre night club. It wasn’t one of the poshest or most fashionable night clubs in the city, but it was nonetheless very impressive, featuring dance floors on several levels, several fuck rooms, a cafeteria and several bars. She was taken on as a barmaid, but worried that the night club’s topless policy for its female staff might mean she would be expected to do more than serve alcohol. Fortunately, the policy existed more for reasons of fashion than for any sexual purposes, and Innocence was able to hide her groin under shorts or skirts. She also wore a pair of flat shoes to take the weight off her feet while standing for several hours behind the bar. Not all the other bar staff were inclined to limit their freedom of dress to just being topless: one or two were totally naked while most wore very revealing thongs that basically were only large enough to hide a sanitary towel. All staff, however, wore sensible shoes. The work was undeniably tiring. Her shift began just after eleven in the evening and continued to between six and seven in the morning.

The hours were not kind to Innocence. She went to bed at the same time as most people were waking up, fortunately sufficiently exhausted not to be disturbed by the sun penetrating through the thin curtains to her bedsit or by the roar of the city traffic. She woke up late in the afternoon, prepared breakfast and whiled away the hours shopping for necessities, sitting in launderettes and watching programmes on the television she precariously placed on a chair at the base of her bed.

Different nights of the night club had different themes and attracted correspondingly different audiences. Most nights were for the benefit of the young - mostly in their teens or twenties - who came for the purposes of dancing and socialising. Innocence felt most comfortable on these days, as the customers were usually more intent on stalking the dance floor than hanging around the bar. Occasionally, a woman or a man might sit on a bar stool all evening and try to attract Innocence’s attention and persuade her to come to the fuck room with him or her. Innocence was scarcely excited by the propositions, but even if she were, her fear of revealing the penis she hid from sight would have put her off accepting the offer. In any case, she was usually far too busy serving at the bar to be spared for very long.

The fuck rooms were dark and plush and boasted a huge mattress that covered every inch of the floor, and where the lights were so dim that Innocence often bumped into lovemaking couples whenever she ventured in, as she had to do to collect the glasses which against the express orders of the management often found their way into these rooms. It was very dangerous to have glass in a place full of naked flailing bodies, who may or may not take advantage of the free condoms that were available in several exotic flavours and designs.

The nights when the fuck rooms were most full were the Singles and Divorced Nights, as they were called, where older men and women - often in their forties and fifties - gathered in embarrassingly young clothes that revealed far too much flesh for the express purpose of finding partners. On these evenings there were quite a few unaccompanied men or women (but mostly men) who would sit on the bar stool and make embarrassing conversation usually about how beautiful Innocence’s breasts were, why didn’t she take off her shorts and did she fancy a quick fuck. Or maybe a long one. On those nights the fuck rooms were at their most overflowing and the dance floors at their most correspondingly empty. Couples were often unconcerned about where they should fuck and who might be watching. There were copulating couples on the sofas, or on the carpet, or supporting themselves against the bar as their partners thrust away at their vagina or anus with penis or dildo.

The management did nothing to dissuade such activity. Indeed, edited highlights from fuck films were broadcast from the banks of television screens or projected onto the dance floor. There was usually a floor show of some kind during the evening, featuring striptease, bizarre sex and audience participation. This usually happened fairly late in the morning, by which time the audience had thinned out, with the express purpose of enticing the remainder to stay on, drink more and forget about going to work the following day. Innocence found the floor shows some respite from work as most people who weren’t already in the fuck rooms were no longer interested in buying drinks and those who might be pestering her were engrossed elsewhere. Innocence marvelled at the skills of the performers, who were able to do things with their genitals she’d never believed possible.

The other nights were generally preferable, even though Innocence was conscious of not being amongst the most fashionable of people. She had no intention of shaving off her head or her eyebrows, although she’d adopted the fashion of wearing a beret or other small cap on her head. She also didn’t shave her groin as so many others did and revealed all but the actual lips of the cunt. Not all young fashionable people were quite as extreme as Twelve in their dress. Some still had quite long hair like Innocence - enough for her not to feel like an utter fashion pariah. Many didn’t even reveal their nipples, perhaps thinking that this was a degree of nudity beyond that they’d be comfortable with. Or perhaps because they weren’t especially happy with the shape of their breasts. The breasts and penises Innocence saw promenaded all night were of all kinds and not all could be described in kindly terms.

After work, Innocence would join the early morning commuters at the underground station. They were mostly more engrossed in their newspapers than in looking at her, as she sat with her legs crossed wearing an overcoat over her otherwise nearly naked body. She studied the travellers opposite her with interest, aware that even those looking directly at her were too tired to actually see her. With only the rare exception, these people were not on their way to well-paid jobs, and they were correspondingly poorly dressed and very rarely particularly fashionable. Although Innocence wasn’t paid at all well, she knew that she earned substantially more than most of these others mostly in recognition of her unsociable working hours, and it must be admitted, for her physical beauty. It would not do for a night club like the Fierzehn to employ unattractive bar staff: the custom would probably shift elsewhere if they did.

There was one evening of the week when the night club didn’t require Innocence to work behind the bar. This was because it was generally felt she looked and behaved rather out of place, and this was the Hard Core Night. It wasn’t known as that because the sex was any harder than on any other night. In fact, as far as sex went it was the Singles and Divorced evening that had the most hard core sex. The name described the music which was basically faster, louder and more insistent than that on any other night. Innocence’s fairly tame appearance was somewhat out of place amongst the rather bizarre and sometimes aggressive clothes worn by the clientèle. Her reluctance to bare her crotch was also a little out of place.

However, one of the usual staff - a girl whose face was normally covered by a veil and her feet by large boots, but wore nothing else - was feeling somewhat poorly that night. The manager suggested when he phoned Innocence that it might have something to do with all the drugs she took, and Innocence didn’t find this at all unlikely. She’d often felt uncomfortable working next to someone whose body resembled a ravaged pin-cushion. So, she was persuaded to come in, but not to wear anything less than a very skimpy short dress that revealed her buttocks, but not her precious crotch. In fact, Innocence rather troubled herself that it might reveal more of a bulge than she was particularly happy with.

She really didn’t enjoy the music that was playing, if music could be a word she’d normally ascribe to the thundering percussion, screeching samples and high-pitched wails. The audience however were totally immersed in it and the sweat poured off their naked or nearly naked bodies. Indeed, there was rather more flesh on display than usual, if much of it was very pale and quite unwholesome. Far more heads were shaved than usual, although there was a general contempt for shaved crotches, underarms or eyebrows. Many of the men had surgery to give them breasts that looked incongruous on otherwise normally masculine bodies. Many of the women still sported dildos, but it was unlikely that these monstrous ugly things - often made of metal with horrid knobs and hooks - were ever intended for sexual purposes. One feature that both men and women had in common was a fondness for laced boots that often reached high up above their ankles and sometimes had steel toecaps. There was actually rather less sex than usual: the fuck rooms were mostly used for drug-taking and the toilets were almost always heaving with people hanging around or injecting themselves.

Innocence felt rather uncomfortable as she served the real ale, bottled beer and mineral water that were the favoured drinks of the mostly young clientèle. She didn’t feel that way as a result of any sexual advances. She just didn’t know how to respond to the aggression many of the women expressed to her and didn’t like the names she was given, like Hot Pants, Tight Cunt and, most scathingly of all, Magazine Model. She tried to maintain a bland friendly smile which attracted even more adverse attention, until she copied the blank expression shown by the other bar steward, a slightly plump girl with shaved head, military beret and plaited pubic hair.

It was on this evening that Innocence once again met her old lover, Dodie, who was with a company of other girls dressed just like her with green berets decorated by a single red star, boots and nothing else. Like them, her head was shaved but the eyebrows weren’t, and the only piece of jewellery she wore was a single plastic bangle on her left arm. When Innocence first saw her she was kissing another girl with a patch over one eye and breasts that seemed curiously large on an otherwise emaciated body. Innocence suspected that the breasts were surgically enhanced judging from their unnatural firmness. Dodie wandered over to the bar, looking somewhat disorientated, with heavy lids over bloodshot eyes and a faint trail of snot from her nose.

When she saw Innocence, she paused as if hit by something and stood transfixed as if trying to be sure she could believe what she saw. Sparkle returned to her eyes and she grinned broadly and a little foolishly.

“Innocence! My love! My loveliest!” she exclaimed in a totally incongruous way for this unromantic environment. She leaned heavily on the bar, her long nipples brushing against an ice bucket and her elbows soaked in beery place mats. “Is it you? Is it truly you?”

Innocence smiled, while returning change from an order for several bottles of mineral water and alka-seltzer. “It is! This is where I work now.”

“I didn’t know you were into Hard Core. You certainly don’t look the part.”

“I’m not. It’s just my job!”

Dodie abandoned her friends, who occasionally returned to offer her a toke from a large joint or a sniff from smoke-filled glasses, and spent the whole evening sitting at the bar chatting to Innocence, while her old lover continued to serve customers. She chatted and chatted, without respite, about all that she’d done and seen since she’d left Wonderground. She’d only just arrived in Congress, and was currently dossing on the sofa in a very grubby squat in the Shit district of the city, an area Innocence had never visited for fear of being attacked by muggers or for being approached as a prostitute. She returned again and again in her rambling conversation to her abiding love for Innocence which persisted so strongly through all the fucks she’d had: the indifferent, the casual and the passionate. “You’re the only one who has ever brought meaning to my life!” she exclaimed with unselfconscious passion, clearly embarrassing the tall large-breasted man standing beside her with a large tattoo embellished on his shaved forehead.

Innocence found it impossible to resist inviting Dodie back to her bedsit, who barely noticed her environment at all, unlacing the long laces of her boots and collapsing onto her bed. She smiled blissfully. “It’s so wonderful to see you again!” she exclaimed as she fell into immediate unconsciousness. Innocence slightly resented Dodie’s invasion of her already limited space, but tidied the sheets around her, pulled off her dress and sneaked into the bed next to her.

The following morning, Innocence was awoken, very bleary eyed and with a raw mouth, to the distinct sensation of wet hungry lips taking her penis deep into a mouth and pulling it up into a more sensitive erection than she normally had so early in the day. She opened her eyes and focused on a dark raw hairy mass directly above her, only gradually becoming aware that she was staring straight into Dodie’s cunt. The long skinny body with tiny breasts and with Innocence marked on her buttock caressed the front of her body and replaced the warmth of the duvet. Reluctantly at first, but with increasing pleasure, Innocence surrendered herself to Dodie’s affection, and soon reciprocated by firmly pushing her tongue into Dodie’s anus, while stroking and probing the vagina with her fingers.

Dodie moved more or less permanently into Innocence’s bedsit - never able to get enough of her body. The only times they were parted was when Innocence went to work and Dodie went to join the company of her other friends, happy to indulge in drugs and sex with them, unaware that this in any way compromised the passion she felt for her well-endowed lover. There was very little space in Innocence’s bed for the two of them, so they slept very much enveloped in each other’s bodies: Innocence’s penis often left to sleep inside Dodie’s cunt and her face side by side with Dodie’s always blissfully grinning face.

Innocence didn’t doubt the passion of Dodie’s affection for her, and in the lonely forbidding anonymity of the city this was a centre of stability and comfort for which she became progressively more grateful. At the same time, however, it was a struggle to encourage Dodie to be more tidy, to return the cap to the toothpaste and to take her boots off before clambering onto the bed. These were minor trials however compared to the greater benefits of Dodie’s constant love and affection.