Chapter 19

Tracey knew that back home she was regarded as something of a slut. This had never been something which had really troubled her. After all what were the opinions of a few dried-up cunts compared to the pleasures of all that cock which was just out there for anyone willing to grab it. She'd even sometimes been called a tart, but that was an epithet too far. For all the indiscriminate fucking she'd enjoyed with Sharon, she had never been a prostitute. Not that she'd slighted any gifts her lovers might have left her, but that was only fair. A fair day's pay for a fair day's work. But it was a totally different thing to be out there, actively selling her snatch.

Prostitution in Gomorrah wasn't quite the same as back home. For a start, there was a lot more of it here. And also, there was none of the approbation associated with it as back home. It was just another way of making a living. Not that there were that many options. You could work in the fields or in the community, but that had very low returns, dependent almost entirely on either the season or how well everyone else was doing. You could work in the factories, but that invariably meant sex anyway. Especially for Buttercup. She couldn't help being so very pretty, and it was almost a curse to her here. And it wasn't as if the work in the factories was that easy either. And Tracey hadn't forgotten the time she and Buttercup woke too late to get to the front of the queue of the other women waiting to get into work, and ended up having to walk back home without having got anything for their pains of actually getting there. As a prostitute you were guaranteed of getting something, and the returns were substantially better than sealing pies in cellophane, slicing legs of ham or packing munitions. In fact, after her first day, Tracey was wondering why she'd not opted for it earlier. She took home much more than she did from a day in the factory: two packets of cigarettes, a chocolate gateau, several kilos of apple and a small alarm clock.

She quickly learnt how to match the value of the sexual favours she gave for the rewards that came with it. A hand job was the least profitable. That might get no more than a medium-sized melon, or a frozen pasty, or a second-hand comb. A blow job might be worth a packet of twenty cigarettes, a large bottle of Coca-Cola, a whole frozen chicken or a litre of milk. A fuck might rake in as much as a bottle of wine or a leg of lamb. And anal intercourse would bring in a small transistor radio or a bottle of spirits. Compared to how she'd been before, Tracey felt rich. And the cigarettes were welcome as well, although they were very rarely any kind she'd ever heard of before. But when you spent hours waiting for sex by the roadside, a cigarette or two was a very welcome companion.

Buttercup was less keen on prostitution than Tracey, although she was actually substantially more successful at it. In fact, this may have been part of what she didn't like. She never seemed to have enough time to recover between one encounter and the next. But she did at least twice as well as Tracey, and not just because she had more customers. Often her clients were so grateful to meet someone as genuinely beautiful as her as to give many times more than was absolutely necessary for the services she provided.

And the mechanics of prostitution was so very different here in Gomorrah to what happened back home. Although of course for Buttercup there had been no equivalent to prostitution in her life in Buggery, and she had nothing to compare it to. In the absence of clothes and make-up or even tottering high-heels, the only thing that marked out a prostitute was the fact of where they were and how long they hung around. Most Gomorran women kept their distance from the world of men, fearing that they'd be raped or arrested or beaten up. Only prostitutes had any license to encroach at all on male preserves, and then only on the very margins of it. Along main roads in the wilderness, at the very edges of towns and cities, by desolate industrial wastelands. And there they would stand, or sit, Tracey and Buttercup amongst them actively seeking out the men's attention.

There were no laws against prostitution in Gomorrah, although Tracey got to learn from her clients that there were still stigmas associated with it. A man wouldn't boast that he'd seen a prostitute, although he might boast about the sex he'd had as if it were a different transaction altogether. Furthermore, as women were not allowed by law to have any possessions, they could only ever be given things. Never money or anything like that. Not that either Tracey or Buttercup had any use for money. Women weren't permitted into shops and money wasn't used as currency in the community where they lived. Any potential client offering just money had to be turned down. Those notes with the president's head on them and the pictures of Gomorran industry and Gomorran war victories, they were totally worthless in the world of women.

It was relatively easy to identify men who were looking for sex. They would be carrying plastic bags of groceries, a couple of unopened bottles of wine, or unwrapped cigarette packets. And they would pass Tracey and Buttercup with eyes which were evaluating them and comparing them with other women they'd passed, to decide whether they wanted to fuck them. Or they might be cruising slowly past in their cars, most of which were of a far poorer quality than Tracey knew from back home, the windows wound down, as the occupants decided whether they should or not.

But it was for Tracey and Buttercup to make the advances most of the time: a situation that at first Buttercup resented but then actually came to appreciate as she realised that it was actually her opportunity to turn down men she didn't want,. Although Tracey wasn't at all sure she liked the sex as much as she did. Tracey had always liked cock. OK! She wasn't too keen on cock when it was thrust in her when she didn't want it. But cock as a whole was fucking magic. She didn't mind too much what pathetic individual was on the other end of the cock. She liked the taste of it. She liked it inside her. She liked it when the cock exploded in all that come, which might drip out of her twat, or seep through the gaps in her clasped fist round a cock, or get spat out of her mouth. It was cock. It was cock up her arse, in her cunt, in her mouth and, for less than five minutes, in her hand.

However, she had sex wherever circumstances dictated, and what they mostly dictated was no modesty at all. Like all the other girls along the road side, under the tall lamp-posts, or in the shadows of the factories and garages, it was on the ground, in the grass, against the wall, just whatever happened to be there. Nobody was concerned about their modesty. And, anyway, what modesty was there? She and all the girls were already showing all they had to offer, although the more desperate girls would prise open their cunt lips to the men as they passed by, the better to advertise what they had to offer. It was the men who were showing more flesh than usual, but normally it was only the flesh between the tails of their shirts and the undone belts of the trousers below their knees. Their pricks were generally hidden by fist, mouth, cunt or arse. And their hairy, flabby buttocks were no advertisement to any but the most desperate of men of a certain proclivity.

The most comfortable and the most lucrative of fucks were those in the back of cars, although even to someone as naÔve of the nature of economics as Tracey it was fairly clear that car ownership was nowhere near as universal in Gomorrah as it was back home. These were driven by men who were rather better dressed than the average client, even though the cars scarcely spoke to Tracey of great luxury. Often the cars carried more than one man, and very often were picking up more than one woman. Buttercup attracted an unusually high proportion of clients in cars, which earned her both the envy and the respect of the other girls, although she wasn't really aware of it. In fact, several cars became almost regular visitors: Buttercup knowing who she was about to fuck just by the sight and sound of some beaten-up vehicle with the license plate almost hanging off and the dent on the bumper.

Tracey's favourite fucks were those with Buttercup when the two of them were picked up together and provided sexual services to the men for material rewards and to each other for pleasure. These were the only time that the lovers were ever able to enjoy the flesh and passion of each others' bodies, aware also that their mutual lovemaking in some peculiar way actually gave pleasure to the men who'd picked them up. This slightly puzzled Tracey. She'd never seen anything very erotic or exciting about watching two men fucking each other, and those few times in Gomorrah where she'd witnessed it filled her with about as much sexual passion as watching two dogs doing it. But somehow men were different that way. And what was even more strange was that for doing what she and Buttercup liked doing anyway, but usually by themselves, they actually got more at the end of the session than if they'd just let the men fuck them. This particularly confused Buttercup who had no sense of distinction between sex with a man or sex with a woman, and thought watching anyone else having sex, in whatever combination, was at best boring and at worst frustrating.