Author
:
Santo J. Romeo (
sanlyn@worldnet.att.net
)
Homepage of Author: None
Date: started 1994, completed April 1996, revised and expanded
April 1999
Size:
Code : m/F teen rom
Author Information:
The author maintains a very quiet internet presence, limited to some reposts of Martha Jane and some isolated messages on other groups. As far as I am aware, the present work is his only contribution to a.s.s. (and a very considerable contribution at that). After a hiatus of about two years, the author re-emerged on alt.sex.stories in April 1999 with a major new version, expanding the original 180,000+ word work even further. I would be most interested to see any new work by SJR, but I have the feeling that we're not going to see any. I suspect this is one of those times where an author has written something which says everything he/she wants to say, and there is no more inclination towards writing. He is one of Celeste's recommended authors on the strength of this novel alone.
In a correspondence with Commander Jameson, the author claimed the story was partly true; I believe him. There is so much detail about the physical environment that seems to derive from first-hand experience. Clearly the author had deeply personal reasons for creating this unprecedented work.
Celestial Reviews:
Two exist. The earlier one is basically the review presented here, plus a tirade against the (then) incomplete state of the story. It is available here . This later one is the definitive version.
From Celestial Reviews 78 - April 24, 1996
"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
Other Celestial Awards:
#2 on Celeste's Top 15 Stories of April
1996
#9 on Celeste's Top 100 Stories of 1996
Piper Review:
(from Piper's Favorite Stories Reviews Part 1 )
The Adventures of Me and Martha Jane
- Santo J Romeo (1130k) [sic]
Often, when people hear that a story
involves children and sex, they
either start slavering at the mouth, or foaming at the mouth.
There
doesn't appear to be much in the way of a middle ground. Well,
maybe
this story is it.
A young Steven is befrended by his next
door neighbor, Martha Jane.
When the story starts, they are 6 and 15, respectively. No, Martha
doesn't have a "thing" for young kids. Rather, she has
a respect for
a young, bright, inquisitive child. For years, their friendship
grows. As Steven gets older, their relationship changes. He wants
to know about everything, like where babies come from, how they
are
made, how the radio works, what's it like to talk on the telephone
-
everything. Martha, rather than plying him with the old platitudes
and standbys, like his mother and relatives do, tells him the
truth.
Once he has that, then his interest changes to other things.
That's how it starts, Steven's infatuation
with the older woman. It
carries on for years. Physicality is crept up upon, slowly, as
a
natural consequence of their prior actions. Nothing terribly sordid
or horrible happens. That is, until Martha moves away to the big
city.
Santo's writing style is quite good.
There are many details and
aspects of Steven's life that are explored that aren't directly
linked
to Martha, even though she permeates his entire life. This allows
for
more than one aspect of his personality to come out.
In summary, the story is soft and sweet,
bitter and harsh, all in
appropriate measure. Enjoyable, yet with enough meat to make you
think.
Recommended.
Reader Comments:
"I think it's the best story I've
seen on the Net so far"
- an603510@anon.penet.fi
Every once in a while there is a special
offering, Me and Martha Jane is
one. A well written, sometimes intense, sometimes non sexual,
sometimes
titillating but always sensitive and introspective story. Waiting
for
each installment/chapter is a combination [of] impatience and
fear [that] the next
one is the last one. Thanks again.
- M. Carr (thiscanbeanyone@hotmail.com)
I was deeply affected emotionally by
my first reading of "The Adventures
of Me and Martha Jane", and Mr. Dark's recent reposts have
brought those
emotions back up. No story - erotica or not - has ever touched
me the
way this one did, and I'm not really sure why.
- Jay Bird (j_bird3@hotmail.com)
(I have been unable to locate the message referred to in Celeste's review).
My Comments:
It's only rarely that something from
a.s.s. leaves me wondering about it for days on end, but this
work certainly fulfills the description. Martha Jane is the most
complex, inventive and thought-provoking a.s.s. work ever written
about young people. It is quite simply amazing that an author
allowed such a substantial, quality piece of writing to appear
for free. With Martha Jane,
we are as far away from the stereotypical a.s.s. story as we are
going to get.
In the review of Passages of Life , Green Onions commented that "it almost qualifies for the label 'short novel'". A reviewer of First Love referred to that story as a "novella". Martha Jane, at almost twice the length of First Love, and four times the length of Passages of Life could justifiably be called a novel in every sense of the word. It is the longest story I know of which has an overall, integrated plot, and it is also one of the longest stories of all.
The events of Martha Jane take place between 1948-58, mostly in Memphis. Many stories attempt to place their action in an historical period to give an air of "authenticity", but then proceed with a story which could take place anytime (Jimbo's Teen Sex in the 50s comes to mind). With this novel, however, we become immersed in the world of Steven Ricci (nicknamed "Speedy"), a precocious youth born into a staunchly Catholic Italian immigrant family, growing up on a Federal Government housing project. As the story unfolds through Steven's narration, we get to perceive his world in immense detail: his extended family, his school and church, the movies he goes to see, brand names, radio programs, everything is described so as to give truly realistic picture of what it was like to be growing up then.
Next door to Steven lived Martha Jane and her family. At the outset of the novel, Martha was a bright 15 year old, determined to complete high school (uncommon for girls at the time) and make a better life for herself. Steven had a very serious (but non-sexual) "crush" on her, and his affection was reciprocated. She always took time to answer his questions honestly, and treated him as "a person rather than an imbecile", unlike many of his relatives. Steven's intense interest in the world around him sat uneasily with his generally working-class family, who, while displaying no lack of affection towards him, were incompatible with his intelligent and inquiring nature. Martha Jane was someone who shared his interests, read to him, talked with him: it is understandable that they developed an intense affection for one another.
Things like this must happen all the time, but as people grow older, they normally find new friends, develop different interests and go their separate ways. Not so with Martha and Steven. It is here that we enter into the most problematic aspect of this novel. Celeste described the book as possessing "moral ambiguity", but then went on to give an elaborate defense of the author's right to discuss the protagonists' activities without being labelled as an "abuser". It must be made very clear that this book is not an endorsement of the sort of activities Martha Jane and Steven engage in (nor does my inclusion of this story here any imply endorsement on my part). Rather, the author has modified "real" human behaviour (in a purely fictional context), as part of the narrative elements of the story, much like all those a.s.s. stories where characters have wild, unprotected sex and yet fail to get STDs or fall pregnant.
In real life, of course Steven would
be greatly harmed by what Martha does, and no-one her age would
want to do that to him anyway, rejecting it as perverted, disgusting
and unforgivable, and rightly so. Martha Jane is a "fantasy"
world, in which the reader is required to suspend disbelief for
the purposes of the story: the concepts and behaviour described
therein are totally
fictional, and should stay that way. These arguments would carry
little weight if used as a defense for writing and viewing all
material of this nature, for most of it is poorly written, and
contains justifications which are both repugnant and highly irresponsible.
Martha Jane, on the other hand, never attempts to promote
the protagonists' actions, and in the later chapters
in particular, we see Martha and Steven grappling with the morality
and implications of what they are doing.
This novel may seem quite an unusual
choice for an archive purporting to include only "realistic"
teen rom stories, and indeed at no point in the book are the protagonists
both teenagers at the same time! However, for the later stages
of the book, when Steven is 13-15 years old, the age difference
between the two (nine years) presents less serious problems for
many readers, I would suspect, than the earlier parts where the
characters are many years younger. If Parts 10-14 had been created
as a separate story, I would have included this in the archive
without hesitation, as an unusual but beautifully written story,
which, as the tragic "real life" teacher-student example
showed, was not entirely outside the realms of possibility (and
there the age difference was nineteen years). Yet the novel
also includes a 15 year old Martha Jane and her young charge,
sexually stimulating each other, and it was this scene among others
that led me to have major reservations about including the book
here,
especially in the context of all the a.s.s.d discussions about
what constitutes "responsible" writing.
The fact remains that the novel gains immeasurably in meaning and psychological insight by charting the course of Martha Jane and Steven's relationship over a long period, to such an extent that I refused to consider omitting any part of the novel, and therefore it represents the sole exception to my "realism" consideration. I make it clear once again that I in no way endorse the activities described in this book; in real life this kind of activity causes irreparable damage, and anyone who performs such acts on the young should be locked up, and the key thrown away. My approval of Martha Jane as a written work is based solely on the understanding that it is a fantasy, which will never and should never happen in reality.
Modern society likes to look back at the 1950s as some kind of "golden era" of innocence and wholesome middle-class life, but of course the reality was nothing like that, as anyone who saw the recent documentary series America in the 50s would know. Through Steven's eyes, we perceive the less savoury aspects of his environment: the racism of his family towards his friend Stepper, the pressure on Martha Jane to just "settle down and raise a good Christian family", and the inequalities of the state school system for which she eventually works.
The character of Martha Jane, with her ambiguities and weaknesses, is one of the most fascinating ever to appear in a.s.s. She is not shamelessly exploiting Steven for her own gratification; his childhood "crush" soon develops into something much more, and together they are capable of much warmth and intimacy. Certainly both of them, as intelligent and "sensitive" people, sought a "soulmate" within the barren and rigid life of 1950s Memphis, and the fact that they found one with a nine year age difference does not seem so unusual in this context. What is unusual is Martha Jane's efforts to make the relationship sexual at such an early stage. Both are well aware of the exceptional nature of their love; in the longest and finest section of the book, Part 10, Martha's series of admissions probably has dozens of Freudian implications, but it makes quite clear that their relationship was not something she entered into lightly, nor was it due to some perverted interest in young people.
Those reading this review may have the impression that it is Martha Jane who "controls" the relationship. That is manifestly not so; it is just that Martha is the most enigmatic character and the one who seems to demand the most extensive discussion. Steven, the narrator, is very much in control of his own actions, and there is no question of Martha Jane "manipulating" him; he does, however, love her with an intensity and maturity which is matched only by her love for him. Martha Jane does have a formative influence on his adolescence, but she is not the only one, and there are whole sections where she is not even mentioned. Nor is this a predominately "sex-based" book, but the exceptional nature of this aspect seemed to require some discussion and explanation. It is the story of a boy's adolescence, with admirable emotional and psychological depth, set on a scale unprecedented in a.s.s.
I would like to comment here on the one
strange aspect of the novel: its title. When Celeste wrote her
original review, and the book only extended to Part 6, the title
was The Amazing and Ponderous Adventures of Me and Martha Jane.
Presumably by "ponderous" the author meant to imply
this was a serious, important work, but, as Celeste pointed out,
the word is used to describe anything laborious and dull - hardly
the impression an author would want! Such a lapse is strange considering
the author's otherwise flawless grammar, usage and spelling. (Incidentally,
the correct word for this context is ponderable). The title
itself also causes problems; the over-forced style seems inappropriate
for such a serious work, almost as if the author was writing a
parody (cf. Tom Bombadil's The Absolutely Amazing Adventures
of Angelica Ahsmacker). Even though "amazing and ponderous"
has been removed, it seems strange that SJR saw fit to leave his
completed work with such a perfunctory
title.
Celeste has commented upon the vividness of the scenes in Martha Jane, and indeed it is the only a.s.s. work where I have formed an appreciable picture of what the main characters looked like. If a movie was made of Martha Jane (yeah right!), I think Lucas Black and Sarah Paulson would be perfect as Steven and Martha Jane (they played Caleb and his "angelic" sister Merlyn in American Gothic). No offense to these actors, of course. On a more literary note, the author's descriptive techniques really are superb; we perceive clearly the oppressive heat of a Southern summer, the social environment of an Italian family, the moral hypocrisy of a supposedly "Christian" community. Martha Jane is the most ambitious work ever written in the teen rom genre, and deserves to take its place among the "classics" of internet erotica.
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