On the first of Gemini, the day after Midsummer's, we celebrated the beginning of Yellow '45's twenty-fourth year. The following day, young Geminis were, no doubt, waking up anxious and early all across the city to learn how the dice had rolled for them, and in Yellow '45's case the news was good for her. "Yes!" she cried in exultation, jumping up and down on my bed until I had no choice but to wake up, an hour before my alarm too.
Not that I objected to the flood of kisses from my beautiful cohabitee. We had known each other for seven months, and our request for cohabitation had been processed and approved in the usual three-month time frame, but a shared apartment in our city zone had become available only the week before.
Sleeping in the same room (not the same bed, naturally) as someone you're head over heels with is a strange experience. For the first few nights, you're almost supernaturally aware of every breath they take. Every rustle of bed sheets becomes a possibility of something more. The very air in the room is infused with their seductive scent.
Sleeping itself becomes a real challenge when your body craves and is denied contact. Intimate contact. Sexual contact.
I had accompanied Yellow '45 to Executives' apartments on a number of occasions, my mouth offering a supportive role to her official work as an Apprentice. Work. Sex work. No matter that it was all official, even after eight months of oral service to so many cocks and cunts that I could do it unconsciously, my mind wandering the halls of memory and fantasy while my mouth and tongue and lips explored and excited.
Well, at work, anyway, where all the cocks and cunts were anonymous, where they were simply genitals thrust through the wall. Accompanying her on her appointments with Executives was different. There was no anonymity, and while that meant I got to be sexually intimate with Yellow '45 - nothing in life gave me as much satisfaction as hearing her cry out in ecstasy as my mouth made love to her cunt - it also meant participating in scenarios that left me feeling both immoral and degraded.
It was Yellow '45 who gave it meaning. I would go to work each day, my heart bouncing with excitement from the anticipation of seeing her again, of kissing her, of holding her. Of furtive caresses that bordered on transgressive.
But now all that was upside down. "What's wrong?" she asked. She was straddling me on my bed, the duvet keeping us safely separate.
I struggled into a sitting position without pushing her away. "I'm really happy for you," I said with sincerity. And I was sincere. Yellow '45 loved her job, strange as it was, and becoming a Professional was an important step that meant she might one day become a Manager.
"But what?" she demanded.
"But I won't get to see you at work every day."
She laughed, clearly relieved. "Silly '86," she said. "You'll see me every morning and every evening, and absolutely I will still bring you to appointments that I know you will enjoy.
And she kissed me warmly, passionately, her bare breasts so close that a deep breath from me would surely bring them into contact with mine - but, pyjamas or not, that would be to risk all for a momentary thrill. I kept my arms still, my hands flat on the mattress, denying my instinctive hunger to hold every part of her close to me for all eternity.
"Let's fuck," she said, too full of energy to be denied.
Actual fucking, as in cock and cunt, was not an option. Neither of us had an actual cock. We did, however, possess silicone replica cocks. Yellow '45, being an Apprentice (and now a Professional), possessed several, as well as a harness that allowed her to wear the cock as if she were a man. Thus I was very quickly presented with a very excited, very aroused Yellow '45 sporting an erect, purple cock.
So no, actual fucking was not permitted, nor even genital contact, but as long as the only thing contacting either of our genitals was that silicone cock, the rules bent in our favour.
I knelt on my bed, my knees at the edge, my pyjamas and underwear discarded, my bum bare and held still, passive. I didn't dare move. Any unexpected move from me might close the necessary distance between us. I sighed with a blend of pleasure and discomfort as her cock sought out my cunt and with gentle nudges pushed inside. It was a long cock, and much thicker than my own pink replica cock that I had grown very accustomed to. It did not penetrate easily, but stretched me deliciously once it did, and the friction excited my clitoris wonderfully.
It was nothing like the sex booth. Eight times I had been there. Eight different men with eight different cocks had had their inelegant way with my cunt, thrusting with vigorous enjoyment as is the way, finishing inside me and leaving me to the mercy of the vibrators for my own eventual finish. No, Yellow '45 took her time, allowing me to become aroused naturally, working in slowly and giving me time to adjust and enjoy this dangerous act of non-contact fucking.
One slip, one impatient move, and the rules we were bending could break. The Organiser would know. It would be over for us. We would be torn apart, our career prospects over, and we were risking it all for what? Love? Lust? I don't know. I know only that I needed to feel her in me right then as much as she needed to be in me.
I knelt there, utterly still apart from breathing ragged as if from physical exertion. I was doing nothing, but my whole awareness was on that cock penetrating me, stretching me, filling me, fucking me. Behind it, unseen by me except in my imagination, was my flame-haired lover, thrusting her huge, purple cock into my submissive cunt. This was what sex was supposed to be like, not some brutal exchange in a sex booth. The temptation to drive my hips back to meet her, to deepen the thrusts, to feel the impact of her actual flesh against mine was a cruel torment that made each moment an agony of need. Her long silicone cock was bumping uncomfortably against my cervix, and still it wasn't enough for me.
And then she stopped. She eased out, leaving me achingly empty of her. "Come on," she said. "Get ready. Let's have an early breakfast."
With a whimper of frustration, I twisted round and sat facing her, my hands twitching with the need to touch myself, to finish what she had started. "I love when you look at me that way," she said. "I love knowing that you'll be thinking about me all day, that your cunt will be wet with need for me, that tonight you'll beg me to finish what we've just started."
She was cruel in her control of me, and I loved her for it. "I love you, '45," I said.
"I love you too, '86," she said, and proved it with a kiss.
*
The day we are born determines the sign that rules our lives, but the exact day is not recorded. Had I been born four weeks later, I would still have been a Libra and would still have celebrated my birthday on the first of Libra. That I even know the exact day of my birth is a consequence of my refusal to leave my mother's womb.
Defying all expectation that I would be a Virgo, I lingered in that space of peace, warmth and love until midnight passed, and only then permitted my removal into cold reality. There is, of course, no official record of the time and day, but my birth mother would often tell the tale of how stubborn a child I was even before I took my first breath.
I often wonder. If had been born a day earlier, born a Virgo, I would have come to the city a month earlier, would likely have had different jobs assigned to me in the annual rotation, and very possibly would have remained blithely ignorant of the worlds of oral service and sex work.
I might never have met Yellow '45 and learned how addictive the fusion of romantic love and sexual intercourse can be. That I was able to endure that year of oral service was because of her. That I was often able to enjoy it, and occasionally even embrace it, was because of her too. No one who is allocated sex work is unchanged by the experience. Most escape back into the mundane world of innocence with relief, but many - a higher proportion than for any other work - ascend to Apprentice and then Professional.
That was Yellow '45's career path, and one well suited to her. Were it not for her, I doubt it would ever have been mine.
Early on the second of Libra, the day after I turned twenty-two, I spoke with the Organiser in private. Yellow '45 was awake, pacing anxiously in our bedroom, waiting to hear the outcome. I wasn't at all sure what I wanted. It would be disappointing to not be offered Apprenticeship, but in a way a relief also that it was out of my hands, the choice made for me.
"Good morning, Organiser," I said.
"Good morning, Red-23086-63-Libra," the familiar voice said, neutral in tone and identity. "Today begins the new annual work cycle for Libra. Do you wish to discuss your new status?"
"Yes, please," I whispered.
"Following an evaluation of your skill development and emotional response, you have been approved for ascendance to Apprentice in the general category of Sex Work. Do you wish to pursue this career?"
Said so very simply, as if becoming the modern, civilised equivalent of a prostitute, that oldest of professions, were devoid of moral ramifications. The secrecy that shrouded the very existence of such a career was proof sufficient that sex work was contrary to our strictly regulated culture of scheduled, anonymous sex. That the privilege of rank, from Manager to Executive and no doubt to Director too included sexual acts and freedoms denied to the general population seemed contrary too to the fundamental tenet of equality from birth, whatever the sophistry used to justify it.
No matter how I justified it to myself, it all felt corrupt to me. I myself felt corrupted by it, experiencing sexual pleasures daily that would horrify any of my friends from before. This was my one chance to escape that corrupt world, to return to a rational existence not defined by sexual perversity.
"What's the alternative?" I asked.
"An entry-level position in theatrical stage design."
Oh, how cruel that was! A more perfect job for me - the old me - I could not imagine. I would have loved to pursue a career in art and design, to have my creations bring joy to thousands. Indeed, I could still pursue it. A year doing the basics, a year as an Apprentice, finally a Professional, perhaps even a Manager in time...
But what of Yellow '45? Could I do any of that and still have what I had with her? What we had was founded on a shared purpose, a shared adventure. Working in the theatre, I would no longer be able to join her in appointments. I would no longer have opportunities to gorge on my lover's cunt. I might not even be allowed the use of silicone replica cocks, whether alone or shared in passion. All the while knowing that her cunt was well used by others.
No, I could not live with her if I were denied her thus. To choose the theatre was to choose to end what we had. Maybe not immediately, but with absolute inevitability. And how could I choose that?
With a sigh that was as much grief as acceptance, I decided. "I'll take the Apprenticeship."
