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* "The Adventures of Me and Martha Jane" by Santo J.
Romeo (emerging adolescence and romance)
10, 10, 10
* "The Adventures of Me and Martha Jane" by Santo J. Romeo (73233.1411@compuserve.com). I first reviewed this story in CR 18, which was posted on September 9, 1995. At that time I gave it a 5. It was a good story, I said; but I was genuinely pissed off because it just ended in the middle of nowhere. I further refused to read any more parts of the story until the author would assure me that he was finished. I was tired of this neverending story crap. Well, the author has finished the story, and it has been worth the wait. I saw a message on a.s.s. that compared the author to Harold Robbins. That evaluation is not far from the mark. The narrator is presumably a man in his fifties, retelling a story of his youth. At the beginning of the story, the 6-year-old Steven (Speedy) harbored a wonderful, non-sexual admiration for Martha Jane, who was nine years older; and she showed a reciprocal respect for him. The two lived next door to each other in a federal housing project around 1950 and shared a common front porch. The focus of the story is the maturation and fulfillment of their relationship. Although the early lines of this story hint of sexual activity, the first several paragraphs are devoted to demonstrating that the protagonist of the story was a precocious child - not a sexually precocious child, but a run-of- the-mill precocious child. This full-life focus continues throughout the story, and it emphasizes that the hero and Martha Jane should be regarded as whole persons, not as simple sex objects. The development of non-sexual aspects helps set this story in a truly rich and interesting psychological and emotional environment. The story is one of the longest coherent stories I have seen on this newsgroup, but it is also one of the best. Certainly there is moral ambiguity in the story. For example, near the beginning the mother tells the young Steven that pregnant women get that way by eating too many popsicles and that babies come from storks. Shortly thereafter, Martha Jane corrects this stupid explanation by playing with his penis to give him a hard-on, while giving him an accurate biological account of the facts of life. If I had a son, I wouldn't try either of these approaches to sex education. It's interesting that normal society rejects Martha Jane's approach - to the extent that Redbook and the Sunday supplements would never even consider publishing an account like this without labeling Martha Jane a pervert; but sitcoms routinely laugh about the mother's explanation. I'm running the risk of preaching to the choir here: most readers of this review are likely to be predisposed to want to like a story like this. On the other hand, large numbers of equally civilized readers outside a.s.s. would react to this story as an example of perversion. Most of us will counter by describing these people as sexually repressed puritans. And so forth. I think we should be willing to simply admit but tolerate the moral ambiguity of the story. It's fiction and it's interesting. There's nothing perverse in setting aside our moral scruples and enjoying a good story. Millions of American high schoolers are required every year to read Edgar Alan Poe's tale about a pervert who tears the heart out of an old man and buries it under the floorboards in his house. We practically require these students to set aside moral scruples and to enjoy the beauty of this atrocity. I'm not recommending that we make "Martha Jane" part of the sophomore curriculum; I simply think adult readers can set aside moral reactions long enough to enjoy this story without taking a position that it would be "better" if all children grew up this way. When I myself was a young baby-sitter, I did not give head to any of the children I cared for; and I would hope that my own daughters likewise refrain from that practice. The psychologists and counselors who suggested to the narrator later in his life that this activity was abnormal are quite likely right (although, again, these sages would simply laugh about the goofy explanations of sexuality given by the mother and other adults.). It would be much better for little boys to receive accurate answers from their own parents and for young baby-sitters to have internalized a code of ethical conduct that enables them to understand their own and their clients' emerging sexuality and to rule out genital contact without resorting to primitive mythologies. But that still doesn't make this a bad story. One of my own favorite novels is Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." I would never raise my own children the way those children grew up in that story, but it's still a good novel (and an excellent movie). Again, I'm probably preaching to the choir. But someone is surely going to label this story "pedophilia." There are legitimate gripes against many pedophile stories; they essentially recommend the adoption of lifestyles that would be destructive to children. What we need to do is acknowledge that some stories that describe genital activities with children have the potential to be destructive - especially those that are simply unrealistic or that promote the exploitation of children. On the other hand, other stories that describe genital activity with or among children are either harmless or actually have the potential to lead to moral or emotional growth among readers. To take a sexually-related analogy, there are numerous examples of books and movies about adults having affairs. Some of these are badly written or stupidly conceived and seem to have as their only goal to degrade the value of marriage and other permanent relationships. On the other hand, many of these books and movies are well conceived and have the overall effect of enabling us to understand human emotions - and, indeed, marriage and other permanent relationships - more perfectly. Although the most important aspect of this story is the sexual relationship between the narrator and Martha Jane, it's not really a sex story. Rather, it's a story about the emotional development of two young people. Less than a third of the lines in the story are even remotely devoted to their sex lives. The non-sex scenes are extremely realistic and vivid, giving us information needed to understand the background and personalities of the two main characters. If a reader wants a source of information about how much fun it would be to have sex with a precocious little kid, this would be a good story for that purpose - although all the details about the child's emotions would probably be viewed as distracting. However, I really don't think this was the author's purpose. On the other hand, if a person (like myself) is reading this story to obtain sensitive insights into the personalities of two young people as they mature sexually and emotionally, this is a good source for serious reading. Ratings for "Martha Jane" Athena (technical quality): 10 Venus (plot & character): 10 Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10 |