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Subject: {ASSM} ME AND MARTHA JANE '99 (m/F,teen) MJANE05.TXT
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<1st attachment, "MJANE05.TXT" begin>
**** WARNING **** WARNING **** WARNING ****
THIS DOCUMENT IS A SEXUALLY GRAPHIC STORY ABOUT AN INTENSE SEXUAL,
EMOTIONAL AND INTELLECTUAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A TEENAGE GIRL AND
A YOUNG BOY AND THE COURSE OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP OVER A PERIOD OF
10 YEARS. IT IS A DRAMATIZATION ABOUT REAL PEOPLE AND THEIR CON-
FLICT WITH SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS. IF THIS SUBJECTS OFFENDS YOU OR IF
SEXUAL LANGUAGE UPSETS YOU, OR IF YOU DON'T WANT THIS MATERIAL SEEN
BY UNDER-18 OR OTHERWISE UNQUALIFIED PERSONS, DELETE THIS DOCUMENT.
THIS DOCUMENT IS COPYRIGHTED 1994, 1999 BY SJR. SO--HEY, YOU CAN
COPY IT BUT YOU CAN'T CHANGE IT OR SELL IT UNLESS I SAY SO.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ADVENTURES OF ME AND MARTHA JANE
by S.J.R.
PART 5A:
1951.
Summer.
"Well, that takes care of the McGraw Gang," Lash LaRue said with
his cocky grin, each hand perched on one of two pearl-handled .45's
at his side.
"Sure does," said Fuzzy St. John with an affirmative nod. He spit
a wad of tobacco juice into the dusty street.
Lash LaRue tipped his hat to the pretty gal in the calico dress
She beamed at him admiringly from the wooden sidewalk. Lash LaRue
cocked his cocky, self assured head toward Fuzzy St. John.
"Let's get goin', Fuzzy," Lash LaRue said, and he and Fuzzy
mounted their horses.
Their steeds reared up. Lash LaRue and Fuzzy spurred their horses
and galloped outta town.
It was my ninth summer, pushing for my tenth year.
Things had changed. I knew it as I watched this absurdly out-
dated B-grade western for the third time, the first time being with
Uncle Johnny when I was five years old. At ten I bid a fond but not
reluctant farewell to Lash LaRue and Tex Ritter and Roy Rogers.
Martha Jane had graduated high school, on time and with high
grades. She started college immediately that summer at the largest
of the local campuses, Memphis State. She was determined to get her
teacher's certification in less than four years. Meanwhile, my mom
dated almost always on weekends, and since I gradually began spending
every weekend with relatives, no one was needed to overwatch me.
These were gray, uneventful days. I got bored every fifteen seconds.
Life had tragedy now. It had dire consequences, uncertainty,
loneliness, nuclear warheads. On a daily basis I tracked every news
story and photo of the Korean War, longing desperately to be old
enough to lug a Leica camera and produce the dramatic photos I saw in
"Life" magazine. What I saw in the reportage was a grim, idiotic war
that destroyed my earlier illusions about the brand of heroism I had
seen in the likes of "Wake Island" and "The Fighting Seabees." This
vicious drama had a strange allure for me, and now, many years later,
I suspect that my fascination with it was a sublimation of the
emotional and sexual intensity of my relationship with Martha Jane.
Our secret drama was enacted less and less frequently as the circum-
stances of our lives began to change.
Left more often to my own devices by my relatives on weekends, I
searched the downtown movie houses for a potency of experience not
found with the Bowery Boys or in Gene Kelly musicals. I would hit
the Main Street cinemas as soon as they opened at eleven A.M., my
pockets jingling with the movie money with which my relatives bribed
me into conformity. They assumed I was watching Abbott and Costello
or Johhny Mac Brown and Wild Bill Eliott. Instead, I sat tearfully
absorbed in more than a dozen showings of the archly romantic "Cyrano
de Bergerac". I was fascinated with the impressionistic Technicolor
of "Moulin Rouge"; again and again I watched this moody film, empa-
thizing strongly with Lautrec's pitiful infirmity and isolation.
My relatives, staunch stay-at-homes, had no idea these films
existed until I told them what I'd seen--and then they seemed bewil-
dered by a boy who would be so magnetically drawn to Bogart's sarcasm,
William Holden's cynicism, or Brando's hostility. They were amazed
when I told them I had spent an entire day in the same movie house
watching over and over as a somber Robert Mitchum portrayed a death-
obsessed army officer in "The Story of G.I. Joe", and a new actor by
the name of Lee Marvin clenched his jaws and grumbled in "Eight Iron
Men."
I saw Martha Jane on our front porch once or twice in the early
summer. On July 4th we attended a big open-lawn picnic in the project
and went to bed together while my mom and future step-dad went down to
the waterfront to see fireworks. By August she had disappeared. Once
I knocked on her front door, expecting her mother to answer. But no
one did. My Mom didn't mention her. It seemed Martha Jane had been
swallowed into nowhere. Knowing she was in summer classes, I assumed
a break would occur soon, probably in September. She called our place
now and then and we'd chat on the phone and she'd promise that things
would be settled son, when she received her first on-the-job student
teaching gig, and I went to a small celebration in her apartment the
day she graduated. But by September I'd heard nothing.
Associating with others had eroded my confidence. My impression
was that other kids regarded me as a little weird; I had a fatalistic
attitude toward people and events. I was pessimistic and bored -- I'm
certain I must have been a gloomy-gus to be avoided. Repression and
criticism from Mom and relatives didn't help. By age ten, I was on a
psychological downer.
I began to expect that life would either take people away from me,
or me from them. Stepper and Uncle Robert was a case in point; Mom
and all the dead of the war were others. When the Korean War started,
my older cousin Josephine Louise's dad, my Uncle Lawrence, was called
back to active service. He paid us a farewell visit in the early
Fall. He smiled and saluted me when he left our house, bound for Fort
Hood, Texas. By December he was killed in action.
My future step-dad had little interest in my activities. His name
was Anthony. Mom called him Tony. He was a dark haired, virile,
handsome man. I disliked him somewhat; he had a deep and relatively
loud voice, very different from the softer voices of all the aunts
around me, different from the breathy Italian quality of Uncle Johnny
and Josephine Louise. By the end of that summer Tony started hanging
around our apartment more often, as if we were already an official
part of his own, very large Italian clan. He came over many mornings
before opening the supermarket in our neighborhood and had breakfast
with Mom and me while I prepared for school. Our interests never
interlocked. He assumed I was interested in sports, in being a fire-
man or doctor when I grew up, and in playing with other boys. When he
found out I wanted to be an artist or a cinematographer or a war
correspondent, he was taken aback. His idea of art was limited to
portraits of the saints. And war correspondents had an incredibly
short life expectancy, Ernie Pyle being a case in point.
One morning at breakfast as I ate my oatmeal, he sat at the other
side of our tiny kitchen table, reading a newspaper article to my
mother who was working at the sink. He was mildly agitated about a
report on small business regulation. He read until he came to a word
in the article that made him stop.
"What is that word?" he asked irritably, squinting at the page.
"Why do they have to use words this long in newspapers?"
"Ask Speedy," Mom said. So he handed me the paper and pointed at
the word. "What's that word say?" he asked me.
Chewing oatmeal, I glanced at the word quickly and announced,
"Antidisestablishmentarianism."
He sat back in amazement. "Well, damn," he breathed. "How'd he
know a big word like that?"
"I don't know," Mom answered absently. "He just does. I think
his Uncle Johnny taught him to read from the comics."
"The comics?" he echoed, dumbfounded. He reached for his coffee
cup. "Damn," he breathed again.
In my isolation, movies became my life. I devoured them like
popcorn and soda. I saw three or four films each weekend. If new
ones hadn't opened I'd frequent the rerun joints and the town's single
art film outlet in town. My relatives didn't mind, as it kept me out
of their hair all weekend, didn't cost much for a child's admission
(twelve cents in those days), and Uncle Johnny was getting a little
too old and arthritic to escort me all over town the way he did when
I was younger.
Truly, I enjoyed the freedom of doing mostly as I pleased. Rela-
tives knew I was smart enough to find my way around town; the down-
town movie houses were a short walk from the restaurant. But the art
film outlet was far out in the eastern part of town. With my usual
brazenness I allowed folks to assume that I never traveled that far
out of the way. But one Saturday I took the Number 10 bus all the way
to the Ritz theater to see "Cyrano de Bergerac." I was so affected by
the film that I stayed inside and watched it again, then again, then a
fourth time. The movie was longer than most, so that when I left the
theater I discovered I was just in time to catch the last inbound
Number 10, which stopped running by ten PM.
It was nearly eleven when I arrived at Aunt Frances' house and let
myself in. Entering by the long, unlighted, high-ceiling front hall,
I assumed everyone was asleep. But Aunt Frances was waiting up for me
in her long white nightgown on the living room sofa.
"Where the hell have *you* been?" she demanded as I walked into
the room.
I knew from long experience that the best tactic for handling Aunt
Frances under these circumstances was to appear unfazed and keep on
grinning.
I answered, "The movies."
"You trying to give your Aunt Frances a heart attack? Huh? You
want your poor old Aunt Frances to have a heart attack? What kind of
movie they let you into that last till this time of night?"
"Cyrano de Bergerac," I said.
"Syrup what?" She squinted hard.
"Cyrano de Bergerac," I repeated. I sat sideways on one of the
ornate dining chairs in the room and slipped my arm around the back of
the chair. I smiled and batted my eyelids.
"Don't give me that look. What kinda movie is this, uh, Cereal di
Hajiback?"
"It's French."
"It's what? It's fresh?"
"French, Aunt Frances. French."
We both looked up as Uncle Johnny appeared in the doorway leading
to the bedrooms. His hair mussed, his eyes squinting in the light, he
scratched his tummy over his pajamas.
Aunt Frances huffed, "Look, Johnny. He walks in like nothing
happened. You see him, Johnny? Look at him."
Uncle Johnny mumbled drowsily, "You home?"
"I'm here, " I said. "I'm okay."
Uncle Johnny said, "It's late, Speedy."
"I know."
"You okay? You shouldn't stay out so late. You had us worried."
"I'm fine."
"Mm. Have any trouble?"
"No. I didn't."
He yawned. "How'd you get here this time of night? Walk?"
"The Number 10 Bus."
"Oh." He yawned again. "Well, you be careful out there. You
oughtta call us next time." Another yawn. "Take care of yourself
out there, now. We don't want nothin' to happen to you. Memphis
ain't as safe as it used to be."
"Yes, sir. I'll be careful from now on. I'm sorry."
"Mm. Well, all right." Yawn again. "Good night, Frances."
He walked back into the dark.
Aunt Frances called after him, "That's all you have to say?
Johhny?"
"Good night, Frances," Uncle Johnny said, disappearing.
"I'll be damn," she muttered incredulously, settling back into
the sofa. "Two of a kind, you two. Listen, you're too young to be
watchin' French movies at eleven o'clock at night."
"How old do I have to be?"
"Seven years old is too young!"
"I'm not seven years old, Aunt Frances, I'm ten."
"Ten? You ain't no ten years old. What kinda movie is this?
Is Clark Gable in this movie?"
"No. Jose Ferrer."
"Who?"
"Jose Ferrer."
"Never heard of 'im. What's somebody named Jose doin' in a French
picture show?"
I leaned forward and peered at her. "Aunt Frances, are you sure
you're not asleep?"
"Of course I'm not asleep. I look asleep?"
"Well, the things you're asking and saying to me don't make much
sense."
"How'm I supposed to make sense with you talkin' French, or
whatever it is?"
I rose from the chair and bent down to her and kissed her on the
cheek--a surefire technique for calming her down. Poor Aunt Frances,
who had not been anywhere except to work and church and bed since the
1920's, had no idea how the world had changed.
"You think you're gonna kiss your Aunt Frances and that's all you
hafta do?"
"I just don't want you to be worried."
"You look just like your poor daddy when you do that. You love
your Aunt Frances?"
"Yes, ma'am, I sure do. You're my favorite." I kissed her
again. "Now you ought to go back to bed. I'm all right."
"You think you're smart, don't ya? That's what your daddy used to
do. You love your Aunt Frances like your daddy did?"
"I sure do," I cooed, knowing I had her in the palm of my hand.
"Okay, then" she said, blushing childishly. She looked up at me
with her big round confused eyes, as if trying to comprehend how the
universe had become what it was without her knowing. It had taken me
years to fathom this hysterical woman. I had learned, with coaching
from Josephine Louise, that Aunt Frances had not been all there since
my father's death. A couple of years before, I would not have been
able to understand it. Now, after many weekends, I realized that her
thoughts and feelings were stuck at a single moment in time and would
go neither backward nor ahead.
"You look just like your daddy," she said wistfully, looking at me
and seeing someone else. Then she scowled mildly and said, "You don't
do that to me and your Uncle Johnny any more. You hear me?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said, sweetly.
"Your Uncle Johnny loves you too. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"We don't want anything to happen to you, like what happened to
your daddy."
"I know," I said gently. "Now," I began, standing up and holding
her hand. "I'm gonna go to sleep, and you go back to sleep too."
"You love your Aunt Frances?"
I bent down and kissed her again. "I sure do."
With that, she was satisfied and lumbered off in her fluffy house
shoes to her bedroom. For a while I sat in the living room, breathing
a long sigh of relief. I asked myself, seriously, if I would ever
again find someone with whom I could communicate without the need for
these convoluted tactics. Trying to follow Aunt Frances' line of
thought was like working one's way through a trick maze or a hall of
mirrors.
When I stayed with them I slept in the front bedroom with my Aunt
Frances' mother, my aging great-grandmother Nifa. She was, everyone
estimated at that time, in her nineties. She wore black. She wore a
simple black dress and black shoes and black hose all day long, and
she wore a black nightgown and long black stockings when she slept.
She had worn nothing but black since her husband's death in 1936. She
spoke no English, only a Northern Italian dialect that other Italians
found difficult. Speaking with Nifa was similar to speaking with Aunt
Frances; their minds were elsewhere, their words and memories and
thoughts had not changed over many years. Being among them was to be
among memories of loved ones never seen by me and long since gone, of
time long since past and silenced. It was a lonely experience, like
talking to the blind and deaf, who could neither hear nor see me.
Somehow I had learned to understand, to pity and love these lost
souls. I may not have known what they thought (no one did), but I
somehow knew what they felt.
But as for me, by the summer of 1952 I didn't see a soul mate
in sight. Not anywhere.
Late that Fall I did have one baby-sitter when my Mom had a rare
weeknight date. The sitter was none other than Evelyn, Martha Jane's
sister.
Evelyn spent almost the entire night on the phone. She was work-
ing days at a clerical job and attending the University of Tennessee
Medical Extension at night, studying for work in some sort of admini-
strative area. She was an attractive brunette woman in her middle
twenties then, taller than Martha Jane, rather chic and long legged.
Only in her eyes and general posture did she resemble her sister.
Objectively, most people would have thought Evelyn to be more beauti-
ful: she had a svelte, sophisticated air, with a lazy voice and large
dark eyes and high cheekbones. But being among young women other
than Martha Jane, which didn't happen often, taught me something
about my own needs -- Evelyn, though sexy, did not appeal to me at
all. I found her nice to look at, friendly, and boring. I was
beginning to learn the vast difference between just any "good looking
woman" and one who has a compelling, irresistible, unsettling appeal.
At that point I could be brought under the spell of only two females
on the planet: the physically devastating Josephine Louise, and the
warm, captivating, and equally devastating Martha Jane.
Evelyn told me that night that she was herself so busy with career
and friends (she admitted she had no steady man and was tied to her
work), she seldom spoke with her mother or Martha Jane. But she
offered me the last phone number she had for her, an apartment some-
where near Memphis State that Martha Jane shared with two other
students. I was certain Martha Jane must have found a boyfriend by
then and had little time for anything except school. Evelyn also told
me she last saw her sister for lunch in downtown Memphis at Wool-
worth's, where Martha Jane worked part time. She was 19 now, "busy as
a busy little bee." Evelyn promised that when she contacted Martha
Jane again she'd ask her to give me a call.
I missed Martha Jane. I missed her sexually, of course, but at
that age sex was still secondary. Mainly, I missed just her, her
warmth and the ease of simply being with her. At age ten I saw her
as a sexual object much more clearly than I had a few years earlier,
though I still had a while to go before the full impact of sexual
attraction hit home. At that point I wanted the sisterly, motherly,
girl-woman of her more emotionally and intellectually than physically.
As soon as I could, I dialed the number Evelyn had given me. No
go. A young girl answered and said that Martha Jane shared a place
with them but that she had moved again and they didn't know where.
And beyond that call, nothing ever resulted from Evelyn's promise
that she would have Martha Jane call me.
That left me with the part time job at Woolworth's. On impulse
I went to find her on a Saturday afternoon one weekend when I was
staying at the downtown restaurant. It was warm weather, right
around my 11th birthday.
Telling my folks I was going to a movie, I took a bus down to
the end of Main Street and went straight to the big three-story
Woolworth's. Once inside, I had no idea where to look. It was a
huge store, especially to an 11-year-old. I searched the whole
place, checked at every sales counter, roamed through every aisle.
After a while I gave up and stood outside on the busy sidewalk.
I thought that perhaps it was her lunch hour, or perhaps she came to
work later in the day. I had movie money, so, I went to a movie
nearby at the Malco Theater and feasted on a lunch of popcorn and
Coke. When the movie ended it was after two o'clock, so I went back
to Woolworth's.
The second search proved futile as well. She was nowhere to be
found. Despite my aggressive, snoopy attitude in so many other areas,
I seemed to have lost all my "fight" in this situation. I wandered
aisle to aisle, feeling dejected and lost. I left Woolworth's and
walked around the riverfront area for a while, then up and down Main
Street several times. By then it was 4:00. I returned to the store.
It was crowded nose-to-nose with Saturday shoppers. After yet another
hour of searching, I had not found her and it was nearing closing time.
I asked some salespeople if they knew Martha Jane Graham. They
didn't. Puzzled, I thought about hanging around and asking every
employee I could find, but everyone was preparing to close for the
day. I asked one more worker if they had a personnel department.
They did, but it was closed Saturdays. She referred me to a sales
counter where she thought Martha Jane worked.
But when I arrived there, I found only a redheaded middle aged
lady who didn't look anything like Martha Jane and who wasn't partic-
ularly interested in helping me find my way. She eyed me suspiciously.
"You have parents?" she asked, frowning. "Where are your parents?
You shouldn't be here all by yourself, we're getting ready to close."
I felt odd and disoriented. The whole situation was becoming
eerie, dreamlike. The redhead now confronted me with the fact that
I was still only 11. As aggressive and independent though I may have
been at that age, and though I was an 11-year-old kid who in many
ways didn't act or think like an 11-year-old -- I was, nevertheless,
still a kid. Perhaps it was a feeling of frustration: if I were not
such a kid, I thought, these people would take me seriously and give
me the information I was looking for. And if I did find Martha Jane
wouldn't she, like Evelyn and the redhead and everyone else, notice
that I was not an adult? Had something changed, such that now she
would recognize me for the kid I really was? And besides, she prob-
ably had a boyfriend now; she was among college students her own age
at a big coed state college.
The day had such a strange effect on me that I was in its grip
for months. I soon became fearful that Martha Jane would not want
to see me again, as least not as she had seen me before. She was
in a different world now. Effectively, she had left the project and
in leaving the project she had somehow changed everything. I began
to feel she was now "too old" for me.
When I went home after that weekend I mentioned Saturday's search
to my Mom, but she was unconcerned. She wondered why I was suddenly
so interested in finding her. Paranoically, I didn't trust her as
someone I wanted to talk to about Martha Jane, not in any way. Mom
might want to know why I was so desperate to find her; she might
suspect something was going on, especially since Martha Jane had not
been around for more than a year. I sulked around our apartment for
most of that week. Mom asked a couple of times if I were sick or
constipated. I didn't mention Martha Jane to Mom again.
One day several weeks later when I came home from school, Mom said
Martha Jane had called and asked how I was getting along.
The first thing I asked was, "Did you get a number to call back?"
Mom shrugged. "Well, no, I didn't think it was important anymore.
You haven't mentioned her in so long..."
I didn't hear the rest of what she said. I felt as if I had
fallen from a high place and landed on my face. I didn't want to
reveal my feelings, so I said nothing more. I didn't even know what
my feelings were.
As I approached and then reached twelve years, I became involved
in that unlikely, out of the way activity in grammar schools known as
"dramatics," which consumed my energy and my thoughts. Because I had
gleaned from movies so much about effective acting, I became very
successful at it. The more successful I was, the harder I worked.
Though I had no close relationships among my peers and teachers at the
newly built Saint Michael's School, I did find a source of attention
and recognition on the stage and in parades and holiday shows. Being
in a new school in a different part of town made me feel that I, too,
had started the process of moving out of the project. By the time the
thirty minute bus ride to St. Michael's ended each morning, I had
readjusted to an entirely different place; I felt as if I were spending
those five hours a day in a different town.
Then came the day my Mom announced she would be getting married
and that we'd soon be moving out of the project. That day, Martha
Jane seemed to disappear for good. It was I who made it so: I went
into our bedroom the night of Mom's announcement and saw the moonlight
on the window sill. And I forced Martha Jane out of my mind.
PART 5B:
In December 1953 my Mom married and my stepfather moved into the
apartment temporarily while they searched for a new house. The cere-
mony was little more than a small tea party in a room in the reception
house at St. Mary's Church. This being my mother's second marriage,
she didn't think a large wedding would be appropriate, and my conserv-
ative step-dad agreed. They took over the old bedroom, and I slept on
the pullout sofa in the living room.
Business problems at my stepdad's supermarket and the rush to find
a new home caused them to postpone their honeymoon. But near Easter,
1954, they announced that a house had been found and purchased, and
before moving in they were going to take their honeymoon week in St.
Louis. The concept of a honeymoon was rather a vague one for me. Mom
said it was just a "vacation" people take when they marry, so they can
get used to each other's habits (Even with my limited knowledge of the
marriage state, I knew better than that! My relationship with Mom
certainly had not improved).
Shortly after that announcement, I came home from school one day,
the last day before the start of my school's Easter holidays. There
in the kitchen with my mother sat Martha Jane, sipping coffee and
chatting merrily away!
She said as my eyes bulged out of my head, "Well, Hi!"
I could tell--immediately--that her Southern accent had thickened.
It was still the same musical voice, a bit rambunctious now, a little
louder and more confident. But the same eyes; a more slender neck and
arms, and definitely an older and more adult figure. She was 20. Her
hair was the same, a little longer, a little more blonde.
She gaped at me. "Well, hotshot, are you gonna speak?"
I did, but I didn't hear what my own voice said. I was dumbfound-
ed. It was Martha Jane, but it wasn't Martha Jane. She was the same
person, yet she wasn't. She was not a teenager anymore. And she
smoked cigarettes. One dangled lazily from her fingers as she sat
cross-legged at the kitchen table with Mom.
Mom said, "Say hello to Martha Jane." She laughed. "You al-
rady forget who she is?"
Dazed, I asked, "I did. I said hello, didn't I?" They both shook
their heads no and waited for me, amused. I said falteringly, "Well,
then, uh--" I shrugged helplessly -- "Hi."
Martha Jane rose from the chair. "Oh, what kind of welcome is
that?" She walked across the room -- on noisy high-heeled shoes! --
and came straight to me, moving the cigarette from one hand to the
other so she would be able to give me a big hug without burning me
with the thing. I was grateful for the hug. Deeply grateful. But
my feelings were so firmly entrenched, especially when I was around
my mother, that I denied myself the luxury of any response at all.
"Let me look at YOU!" Martha Jane exclaimed. "You're barely as
tall as I a now! Can't you grow any faster than that?"
I shrugged and blushed. "I'm only 12 years old," I said.
"Well, that won't last forever, hon, don't worry." She took my
hand and leaned closer to me. "How are you, Speedy? Did you forget
all about me, after all I had to put up with from you?"
"I didn't forget," I smiled. I was overcome by a blush attack
that I strongly resisted. She saw my problem, and immediately she
gave a sympathetic "Aawww, c'mere.." She put her arms around me and
gave a stronger, more affectionate hug. "How are you, hon? I haven't
seen you in so long."
I saw my mother watching us, pleased. But not trusting myself,
I pulled back and simply gave Martha Jane an appreciative nod.
My mother announced: "Martha Jane lost her job."
Martha Jane shrugged. "Laid off." She shrugged again. "What
the heck! At least I'm still getting the GI Bill money because of my
father. All I have to say is, 'Thank you, Uncle Sam!'"
My Mom went on, "Martha Jane showed up just in time. While your
daddy and I are in St. Louis on our honeymoon next week, your Aunt
Yvonne was supposed to drop by here and check up once in a while so
you wouldn't be here all by yourself. But Yvonne caught appendicitis
and had it took out, and she can't handle a part time babysitter job.
So...guess who showed up just in time to take her place?"
I didn't answer. I was afraid to.
With a big smile my mother nudged her head toward Martha Jane.
"Your old girlfriend over there."
I looked at Martha Jane.
She pointed her thumb at herself. "The old supervisor herself,
hon. Yvonne got fired, I got hired. Gonna be living next store
again anyway, so why should Yvonne have to traipse all the way over
here?" She moved closer to me again and pointed a finger into my
chest. "Gonna be checkin' on you, buster. Better clean up your
act."
My act, considering how little I revealed of myself at that
instant, couldn't have been more antiseptic. My feelings were in
chaos. She didn't seem the same. She moved and spoke with an
aggressiveness I found difficult to accept. Nor was it so easy for
me to switch emotional gears after two years of not seeing her,
having spent that time surrounded by people in whom I had so little
trust emotionally.
The next day, a Saturday, Mom and my new dad departed for their
honeymoon from Memphis' Union Station. At this grandiose Victorian
railroad terminal, a number of people were present to see them off. I
had not attended many of the recent parties, nor had I spent much time
among my step-dad's family. But most of the people who dropped by to
see my parents off were my step-dad's folks. They were a friendly,
earthy group, outgoing and likeable. But the sight of the sheer size
of his family was intimidating -- my step-dad's immediate family had
fifteen brothers and sisters. That afternoon at Union Station I
discovered that on the day Tony married my mother, I instantly ac-
quired over three hundred new cousins and an undetermined number of
uncles and aunts! I had yet to meet most of them, a task I estimated
would take years.
I spent the rest of the day Saturday with my paternal grandpar-
ents, the Ricci's. And later that afternoon Grandpa Joe Ricci, my
father's father, packed me into his dark crimson Oldsmobile to give me
a ride back to the project.
As he drove he griped, "Don't see why you can't spend the rest of
the week with me and your Grandma Rose."
"I have too many things to do at home, Grandpa Joe. I got a
dozen library books over there to go through while my Mama and Daddy
are gone."
"Your 'Daddy'!" Grandpa Joe swore mildly in his gravelly voice.
"He ain't your daddy. Your daddy was Steven Joseph, Senior. And
he's dead."
"My step-daddy, then."
"Ha! There ya go. That's better."
I didn't know if I really wanted to see Martha Jane or not. She
called my apartment from a friend's place and told me she was packing
the last of her things to move back to the project, then she had to
change and go to a funeral. She said she would be job hunting all day
Monday. But she'd come over tonight, Saturday, and the next night as
well, and fix dinner for me. I was on Easter vacation, a mixed ad-
vantage of being in a Catholic grammar school, because I had a week
off but no friends and nothing I particularly wanted to do. But it
was still better than being bored all week with my relatives. I spent
most of the remainder of Saturday fiddling around the apartment, which
seemed roomy with no one home but me. Over the years I had spent so
much time alone that I began to appreciate its positive side: I had
absolute freedom of movement, without being hassled by the foibles
and demands of others, especially of grownups.
But as Saturday evening neared, I was considering whether or not
to be home at the time Martha Jane was due to fix dinner. I did not
trust my feelings at all. I could always hop a bus and go back to my
godparents or grandparents for the whole week...
In my mind she had changed. She was not the simple girl-woman
I knew. She wore high heels. She smoked. She talked loud.
She showed up shortly before six. She greeted me with a hug, and
when she saw I appeared numb she insisted that I give her cheek a
hello kiss, after which she set her purse down on a table in the liv-
ing room and went into the kitchen to make dinner.
I stared at her purse. It was one of those slick black patent
leather purses that adult women carried around. It seemed she moved
faster, too, or maybe it was an illusion created by her seemingly
longer legs and the heels. From the kitchen she asked what I wanted
to eat. I told her I didn't care. As she prepared to warm up some
Campbell's soup and some vegetables in that tiny kitchen with the
obsolete refrigerator and the two-burner gas stove, she kept joking
and seemed in fine humor.
"Won't you be tickled pink to get out of this tiny place and into
that big new house out on Macon Road? Got a nice big kitchen in
there, I saw it. Your mom drove me out there last week."
"Last week?" I asked, confused. I didn't know she had been around
for almost a whole week before seeing me.
"Yes, hon, last weekend, you know? I *missed* you, I asked them
where you were, and you were at your grandmother's all weekend."
"My mom didn't call me," I muttered. Betrayed by mom again!
"Well, she couldn't. I couldn't stay long anyway. Rent Overdue,
Speedy, I had to move out of that apartment. Heck, I sure collected
a ton of junk in there." She was setting the table but she stopped
to grin at me. "You're gonna love that house. It's new, all *new*,
not a scratch on it! Even the grass is new. And three bedrooms,
hon. See this--?" She held up three fingers -- "Three bedrooms!
You'll have your own room, and to heck with that sofa bed in there."
I was not overly pleased. "I guess it'll be okay," I muttered,
moving to take my seat at the small table. "I could learn to like
it."
She came over to me. She bent down. I became very aware of her
breasts--not her pert teengirl titties, but her adult female breasts
under the white blouse and inside the white bra. She hugged me from
one side and her voice softened. She said earnestly, "You need your
own room, hon. You need your... own...room." She emphasized the last
three words. She pulled back and looked at me. "My lord! How old
are you now, about forty-five?"
"Umpteen," I answered blandly.
She laughed. "Does it really feel that way?"
"And you?" I asked as she sat in the chair before me.
"Umpteen," she answered, with a wry chuckle "Closer to twenty,
really. Speedy, you look wonderful. You're getting so cute. And
you're growin' up so fast. I thought you'd be a little taller,
though. Don't you eat your spinach?"
I didn't answer.
She said, "You look like your daddy's picture."
"I know," I said.
"Bet every aunt and uncle you know tells you that at least once
every fifteen minutes, don't they?"
"Yep," I said, aware of the dull tone in my voice.
"Mm, well...Not everybody that flew B-17's and B-24's won a Silver
Star, hon." She chewed her food and swallowed, and her face and voice
became more serious, more leveled. "Doesn't mean you have to win a
Silver Star too, Speedy."
I didn't know what to say to her. I didn't know exactly what she
meant, but I did feel that she knew so very much more about me than I
did.
She said, with a mouth half full of spinach, "You didn't say you
missed me."
"Well," I said, "I did. I'm not as talkative as I used to be."
"Tell me something I hadn't noticed," she said dryly. "You don't
smile as much, either. Of course, you also don't clown or blush or
shuffle around. Those are improvements, anyway." She swallowed her
food and wiped her lips with the napkin. For a brief moment she
looked at me, just looking, watching my face. She said evenly,
"You're getting to be too nice looking a young man to be that pain-
fully shy. You're growin' up. Guess we all have to grow up sooner
or later."
"I guess."
"So how do you like it?"
"Like what?" I asked.
"This growing up business."
I shrugged. "It's okay."
She winced. "Holy smokes, what an answer." She shook her head.
"You're right, it's not all it's cracked up to be." Then she changed
the subject. "I'm going out right after we eat dinner, I might buy a
used typewriter from somebody across the driveway. I really need
one."
I offered casually, "I have a typewriter."
"The old Underwood? No, Speedy, you need that. I need a small
one. Portable. I'll be lugging it back and forth, here and there,
whatever..." She chewed her food quickly and checked her wrist watch.
"But I'll be back later, about eight or eight-thirty."
I swallowed. "Okay."
She would eat, chew, look at me, eat, and chew. Then look at me.
She went rapidly from one subject to another. She sounded like one of
my curious aunts. But her constant effort at searching me out left me
feeling that she was almost as uncomfortable as I was.
She left after dinner. I played with the Philco, dialing from one
radio show to the next. Boring. Even the Jack Benny show and Amos 'N
Andy failed to catch my interest. I took a bath. I got all dressed
again in jeans and a plaid shirt and sat listening to records and
going through the record albums. Just before 8:30, Martha Jane showed
up carrying her purse, a small, leather overnight bag, and a little
paper sack stuffed with clothing. She looked tired; she moved slug-
gishly to the sofa, dropped her belongings on the floor, and then
plopped down on the sofa and gave a loud moan and a "Whew!" She
looked at me. "So, how are you, hon? Really."
Sitting on the floor and looking through a 78-rpm record album in
my lap, I ignored her question. Why did grownups always ask how you
were? Was it a real question? Did they really want to hear my
answer? I asked her tonelessly, "So how's your new typewriter?"
"I just left it at home, next door. It'll do." She slumped into
the cushions and caught her breath. She used each foot to push the
high heels off. "I hate these! Hate them."
"They make a lot of noise when you walk."
"Yes, don't they?"
She looked at me for a long time. "What's the matter? Do you
just go off into nowhere when you get to be twelve years old? It is
twelve now, isn't it?"
"It's twelve," I said, not looking up from the records. I sighed.
"Just tired, I guess."
"Your mom and your brand new daddy won't be back until next Sunday
afternoon. So you can make as big a mess as you want, you're getting
too old for a baby sitter. But I'll check in. Just be sure to clean
the place up before mommy and daddy day next weekend."
I said flatly, "He's not my daddy."
"Of course he's your daddy. What do you mean?"
"My daddy's dead," I said without emotion, recalling Grandpa Joe.
"Speedy...what a morbid thing to say."
"That's what Grandpa Joe told me to say."
"I know your Grandpa Joe and he's a very nice man who's done a lot
for you and your mom. But he's an unhappy man who lives in the past
and likes to make others think the same way he does. You have to mind
him and do as he says, but he doesn't have to tell you how to think."
"Okay," I said, paging the record album.
For a long minute she didn't say anything. I could feel her,
above and behind me, looking at me from the sofa. In a moment she
said, "So what are gonna do with yourself all week? You have the
whole Easter break to yourself, right?"
"Oh, I dunno...Spend some time with Aunt Frances, Uncle Johnny.
She's taking me to Oak Hall's later this week for some new clothes.
I'm outgrowing everything."
"Well, that's nice! That's really nice of her. You're her
favorite, y'know."
"Yeah."
She paused again. "So, what else?"
"Eh. Nothin' much."
"Would you like to go to a movie with me this week? I mean, what
else are you gonna do all week?"
I looked up at her, rather blankly. "Okay," I said. "I like
movies, I know every inch of every theater in Memphis."
"Oh, yes? That's right, you spend a lot of time at that."
"Every weekend."
She moved from the sofa and sat down on the floor next to me. She
began removing bobby pins from her hair. "You still spend a lot of
time alone, too, don't you? That hasn't changed, has it?" Her words
sounded more like a statement than a question.
"No," I said.
She leaned toward me. "Give me your face," she said.
I leaned toward her. She kissed my two eyes, lightly, and then
my nose. "I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut
off since six o'clock this morning. Do you promise not to run away
from home while I borrow your bathroom and take a bath?"
"Promise," I said.
She studied me, her face close to mine. She put an arm around
my shoulder. She smiled. "What's been happening to you?"
I looked down at the records album in my lap at her and asked,
coldly casual, "You have any boyfriends lately?"
Her grin disappeared. On the floor next to me, she settled back
onto her legs. She said directly, "Yes." After a pause, she asked,
"You have any girlfriends lately?"
I hook my head no.
She leaned back on her ankles and took out one more bobby pin.
"My boyfriend...if you want to call him that...and who is no longer
my friend because he's learned so much about being a snake instead
of being a *man*...and no longer takes up any part of my life...is
a schmuck." She paused again. "You know what a schmuck is?"
Again, I shook my head no.
She had one bobby pin in her mouth and was fishing out another
one. "It's a yiddish term. From one of my girlfriends. A gal from
New York who's in one of my classes always uses that word."
"What's a schmuck?" I asked.
"A schmuck," she said slowly and distinctly, "is...a...schmuck!
A creep. A jerk." She shook her head. "You'll figure it out."
Then she said firmly, "Being a schmuck is what your Grandpa Joe was
being when he said that horrible thing about your daddy."
She got up and kissed me on the forehead. "I'll be back. Stay
put."
Into the bathroom she went, taking the little blue bag and the
paper sack with her. She was in there for quite a long time, bathing
away and making plenty of noise. I was getting sleepy and started
putting the records away. It was not so bad, I thought; she does
slow down after a while, and obviously she was warming up to me like
an old friend. She wasn't *that* old, certainly. Not *that* diff-
erent. Obviously we were still buddies. But she'd had a boyfriend!
A little voice in me said: of course she has a boyfriend, stupid.
She's twenty years old. When you're twenty years old, you can have a
girlfriend. She deserved a boyfriend.
I put away the record album, sat on the floor, and watched the
closed bathroom door. Water running furiously in there. The voice
in my head kept talking to me: No change in the way she kept herself,
she always hated being clammy or sweaty. Certainly, she was being
nice enough. And how did I respond? Like a long lost friend?
During the rest of her stay behind the door I worked up the
courage to apologize. I stood up, waiting in the middle of the living
room with my hands in my pockets. I still had my pride, of course.
I didn't want to seem as dejected and desolate as I really was -- that
would be giving too much away.
I heard the bathroom door open, saw the light go out. She came
into the doorway of the living room. She was in floppy, loose, light
pink pajamas. She was drying her hair and was saying, "Say, it's
been a while since I pulled the old baby sitter routine over here...
not that you look like you still need one, you've grown up so much
since the last --" She saw me standing in the middle of the room
with my hands still in my pockets.
Rubbing the towel in her hair she asked, "What are doing? Just
standing around?"
I asked, "Is a schmuck just being rude, or a party pooper, and
stuff like that?"
"Yes, I'd say...that qualifies as fairly schmuck-like." She
fluffed her head with the towel.
"Is it, like...being snotty?"
"Yep."
I searched for words a second. "Acting like you're always right
and everybody else is wrong?"
"Yep."
"...like...the way I was acting today?"
"Yep. That's a schmuck, all right."
"So I was bein' a schmuck."
"That's one of a great many things that schmucks do." She put the
wadded-up towel on a chair near the doorway and walked to me and
grabbed me by the hand, leading me toward the bedroom. "C'mon.
Beddy-bye. It's after nine o'clock."
I resisted. "I thought this was supposed to be a vacation!"
"A vacation doesn't mean you stay up all night. Anyway, young
man--my young schmuck--you've been pretty cranky all day, and if you
want to have a good time with me this week and keep up with me, you
better rest while you can. As far as *my* life goes, this is going to
be one rough week."
I stood near the bed as she jerked back the bedclothes.
I said, "Okay, but I *am* twelve years old. I can get myself in
and out of the bed."
"Right," she said. "Well, you're not all that old. Besides, I
want to ask you about something before you turn in." She walked to
me and began removing my shirt. Without pausing she said, "Your
mother told me...schmuck...that you went to Woolworth's looking for
me one day and you couldn't find me."
"She told you that? Wait a minute, I can unbutton my shirt my-
self. Is a schmuck somebody who can't unbutton their own shirt, too?"
She stood eyeing me sternly with her hands on her hips.
I said, "Anyway that was months ago."
She nodded. "She told me. She said you were very disappointed.
She said you were down in the dumps. All week long."
"She told you that, huh?"
"Yep."
"Well, that was...a long time ago, I don't remember all that."
"Your mother said you were verrry disappointed. She said she
just couldn't figure it out."
"Sure, I was disappointed. What's wrong with being disap-
pointed?"
"No no no, schmuck. Not just disappointed. She said you were
down in the dumps for a week."
I raised my eyes to the ceiling. Didn't mothers know when to
shut up? Having removed my shirt, I started on my jeans, not saying
anything, avoiding her gaze.
"It so happens," she continued, "I probably had an exam that day
and wasn't at work. So did she get this little story right? What's
your version?"
I blushed. I made a what-the-hell shrug. I was having trouble
with the big front button on my jeans, and Martha Jane started to
help with my belt. "Look," I said quickly, "I can do it."
She stepped back. "Okay. Take charge. But get into bed.
It's late."
"I thought I could just stay up all week. It's Easter vacation."
She eyed me with a comic, bug-eyed sternness, firmed her lips,
and pointed dramatically at the bed.
I did an aw-shucks and got down to my underwear. I was taller and
more developed than I was when I had last seen her. I had a little
hair on my legs, not much, but visible. I also had under my jockeys a
healthily burgeoning patch of pubic hair that had replaced the light
blond fuzz and which, I suddenly realized, might be dimly visible
through the thin cloth. Hurrying into bed, I also realized with even
greater embarrassment that I had developed in another area as well,
which must surely have been noticeable, not as the thimble-shaped
white bulb near the slit of my jockeys that she had seen in the past,
but as a definitely larger and more recognizable bulge.
Quickly, I lay on my side and pulled the sheet to my waist.
Looking officially satisfied, she reached to turn out the bed-
side lamp. But instead, she changed her mind. Leaving the light on,
she got into bed on top of the sheet and shoved me farther to the
other side. She lay next to me, facing me, on her side with her head
propped on one arm.
"Wanna talk?" she asked.
PART 5C:
I shrugged.
She said, "I mean, seriously. Talk."
I shrugged again. "Not really."
"I do," she persisted.
So I sighed wearily and moved into the same pose as she, facing
her, my head propped on one elbow. "All right, but I don't need a
baby-sitter to put me to bed."
"I don't know what to do with you. About you. You're spoiled.
You're too independent. I know you don't like all your fussy old
aunts and uncles so much, but you have to admit they spoiled the heck
out of you. And, brother, did I help! You are so strange. In so
many ways you're older than me, in the ways you connect with certain
things inside people, but...such a strange boy."
"Boy," I echoed petulantly.
"Well, Speedy, you *are* a boy...No, no, no, you are what looks
like a boy, you do boy things, you have boy habits. But you're not
really a boy. Wars took your boy away from you. I did, too. I'm
going to die and go to hell for it."
I grumbled, "Oh, That's what the nuns say all the time..."
"Do you know what I mean when I say I'm going to hell for it?"
"...and you say that all the time, too."
"I know, but do you know what I mean?"
"I guess. No."
"I'm in hell for it now, Speedy. I'm in hell every day thinking
about this and about us."
"You mean...'this' and 'us' being...?"
She said, "You know what I'm talking about."
I felt a crashing, cutting disappointment. All I could say was,
"Oh."
She slowed down and said, "I'm not kicking blame in your face,
Speedy, I'm just telling you how I feel. I think what we did together
was very unusual. Very out of control. I don't think I will ever be
able to be like that with anyone else again, as long as I live."
"I didn't know you felt so bad about it."
"No no no no no, not 'bad'," she moaned, beating her fists lightly
on the bedsheet. "Not 'bad'!" She beat her fist again, once for each
word: "You...don't...understand."
"Explain it to me."
"I am explaining it to you!"
"Okay."
"You don't understand that...I...that I *did* like it. I liked it
more than anything. I'm trying to tell you that I...that I know,
looking at you right here and now, that I know I'll never be able to
do that with anyone else. Not in that way."
"Not--?"
She waited for me. "Not what?"
I continued hesitantly, "Not even...with your boyfr--"
She stopped me. "Not even with my boyfriend."
"Hm."
"And he's not my boyfriend any more."
"Hm."
"Believe me?"
I shrugged: a sort of, a maybe.
"I'm trying to tell you, Speedy, my dear sweet little man, my
somehow grownup, somehow not grownup little man -- Oh my, my, you are
so grownup in bed, but out of bed you are so strange. I'm trying to
tell you that...I liked it...But...I'm afraid of you. I'm afraid of
myself. You do something to me, we have something, we do something
to each other that--" She stopped. "Yes, I had this boyfriend but
it wasn't the same, it's not--" She stopped again and sighed impa-
tiently. "Oh, heck!"
I guessed, "You think it was wrong?"
She shook her head no, dismissing my question. Then she sighed.
"I have this problem."
"Problem?"
"Yes." She pulled on a damp strand of her hair and then picked a
little crumb of something off her tongue and couldn't find it again
and just gave up. "The problem is...I still remember it."
"Oh."
"Yes, 'Oh'. I remember, and I -- ah, this is so complicated."
I sat up. In some ways this was beyond me. In some other strange
way, I sensed what she was saying. I said, "Maybe we shouldn't have
done it."
She looked suddenly and deeply into my eyes. There was conster-
nation, frustration, impatience in her eyes and face.
I went on, "I mean, what we were doing makes you feel bad and you
think you're going to hell, so we shouldn't have done it."
"Oh...!?" She squinted at me. "Tell me something: did you think
we would do it again the next time you saw me?"
"Not especially."
"Oh, be honest."
"Mmm, no."
"But you sort of hoped we would," she prompted.
"Mmm, yeah."
"But if you think it hurts my feelings, you wouldn't ask me?"
"Right."
She stared at me darkly. "I should have known you'd say that. I
should have known." She played with her wet hair again, and lay back
on a pillow. "Let me ask you something. Did you really find yourself
thinking about it? I mean, thinking about it a lot?"
"I guess...I didn't think about it a *lot*, but it made me sad
when it looked like...well, it looked like you'd just gone off and
forgotten all about it."
"I see..." she mused. "But you thought about it."
"Sure I did. For a while."
"I see..." She lowered her voice, sounding more sympathetic and
plaintive, and began again. "When I saw you again in that kitchen, so
worried about what I'd feel or what you'd do with your Mama there
looking at us....do you know what I was thinking, after not seeing you
for so long?"
I shook my head no. How the hell would I know what she was
thinking?
She smirked. "I hope you don't grow up to be like one of those
good looking hotshots that I don't want you to grow up to be. Darn,
that's what's so strange about you, and me *with* you...If only we
weren't so good at it together, then neither of us would always be
expecting that it's supposed to happen that way all the time." She
shook her head ruefully. "Do you have any idea at all what you would
have to do to seduce me, to make me do it?"
"You mean...like really *make* you do it with me?"
"Yes."
"It wouldn't be the same."
"Why?"
"Because you wouldn't want to do it."
"I see," she said, pondering again. She squinted at me. "I wish
you were twenty. I wish you were thirty. I wish..." She stopped,
searching my eyes.
I was looking down, away from her, absently toying with a wrinkle
in the bedsheets. She leaned forward and forced herself into my view.
"Have you ever made yourself cum?"
I blushed strongly, hanging my head as low as I could to avoid her
gaze. I shrugged.
"You haven't. I'll bet you're telling the truth, too. I took
your boy but I didn't give you enough man to work with, did I? And
you made it so good for me."
This chat was annoying me. Talking with adults was something I
never, simply never enjoyed. They had such a baffling way of compli-
cating matters. As I did with other adults when they wanted a
"serious" discussion, I tried to appear unaffected. Now, as Martha
Jane talked with me that night, the room seemed crowded and too small
to hold the thoughts I was trying to keep from her. I felt alienated
from her, especially now that she had so obviously begun her move from
a teenager to a woman, a woman who worked for a paycheck, studied in a
college, went out with other people her own age who lived in a world
that I was totally unfamiliar with. It was an odd and unsettling
sensation for me to feel that way about Martha Jane.
She went on with difficulty. "I don't know what it is we...we do
to each other..." Absently she started to reach toward my thigh, but
stopped. "You want *me* to ask *you* to do it?"
Still propped on my elbow, I shrugged again. "Sort of...I mean,
the only time I used to know you wanted to was when you said you did."
"I...see..." she said ominously, looking at her own hands and
appearing troubled by my reply. She rolled onto her tummy and crossed
her ankles in the air behind her.
She asked, "Why did you feel so bad when you didn't find me at
Woolworth's? Hm? I really want to know, Speedy. Was your mama
right, were you down in the dumps?"
I gave shrug number one thousand or so. "I don't know," I pouted.
"That was a long time ago."
"Oh, baby, that's not an answer. C'mon, talk to me."
"I don't know. I just...didn't know what else to do."
She prompted in a singsong voice, "You could have come ba-a-ack...
on a different day-y-y."
I didn't say anything. She was right, I could have gone back and
looked for her again. I didn't know what she was getting at.
In the same singsong she continued: "You could have...mmm...
called my mother...called my sister."
I blushed again, but I was also a little hostile. All I could do
was lower my head and say, "Well...."
"Speedy, why didn't you ever call me after I left home and moved
into an apartment?"
That remark left me slightly bristling. "I *did* call. Evelyn
gave me a number. But they told me you had moved to another place."
"Why didn't you look for me again? I was very busy at first, I
was so busy I didn't sleep. Half the time I'd eat breakfast or lunch
walking between classes. And after a few months, I heard nothing. I
said to myself, okay, so what, the kid's only ten years old, how does
he know what to do? What should I expect? And I met boys, nice boys,
interesting people, friends--for the first time in my life. And after
a while I figured, well, he's growing, he has his own things, his own
life.....Maybe he doesn't want to see me, maybe he doesn't even re-
member who I am." She waited, looking down at the bed. "We really
didn't have to see each other, period. We could have just talked. We
could have just said hello. We were still friends, weren't we?" She
looked at me, a hint of pleading eyes. "We were so close, we'd been
through so much together. What happened? Why didn't I hear anything
from you? Even my mother said she never saw you, not once."
I remember the day I had gone to her front door, and no one
answered. Apologetically, I told her about it.
"But, Speedy, how many times did you knock on the door? How many
times did you walk next door to see where I was?"
I shrugged. I didn't answer.
"Come on, how many times?"
"Once."
"Once?"
I nodded. I held up one finger. I avoided her eyes. I was
getting the point.
She repeated, angry, incredulous, "You went to my house *once*?
That was it? Once?"
I nodded. I saw her anger mounting. I wanted to run away. I had
never seen her angry with me. I began to shuffle around in the bed,
looking for an excuse to get away and relieve the tension for a while.
"I think I have to go to the--"
"No you don't, buster." She held me down by one hand, which she
pressed tightly into the mattress. "Now just let me calm down a
minute," she said, and she sighed two long sighs and then she let go
of my hand. She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, and
squinted. "Oh my, I have so much work to do with you! You're like a
wild boy that's grown up in an uninhabited forest, without parents,
without friends, without--" She shook her head and sighed heavily
again.
Patiently, she lightly touched one of my hands. "Why didn't you
fight a little for me, hon? Why didn't you try to find me? I want to
know, I really do. I can get frustrated with your stubbornness and
your turning inward sometimes, but I can't dislike you. You mean too
much to me. But what on earth...what was going through your strange
head about me? I want to know. Can you tell me?"
I opened my mouth, unable to look at her. But my mouth didn't
have any words in it. I just lay there, looking down.
She asked persistently, "Do you *want* to tell me?"
My head was bursting. My heart, too. In time I had forgotten her
and had grown used to not seeing her. And now she was trying to make
me rely on her all over again. I made a face at her, a silly boy's
face, a creepy grin, and then a pout. And as soon as I did it, I knew
that I felt and acted exactly like the child that I was.
She gave me a look of mild exasperation, and then ignored my
stupid gesture with a wave of your hand and a murmured, "Oh, I guess
you really can't tell me, can you? You really, really can't tell me
yet." She sighed, paused, and then continued earnestly, "You would
just keep looking for me in places where I'm not, wouldn't you? You
would go into a room by yourself, and if I wasn't there you'd wait.
And you wouldn't find me."
"I guess," I said, embarrassed that she had me pegged.
"You 'guess'..."
She rested her chin on her hands, her elbows propped under her.
Her voice became gently prompting. "Maybe you didn't want to find me.
Maybe, instead...you just wanted me to find you? Is that it? You
didn't go looking for me because you wanted me to come looking for
you. Because that's the way it always was, wasn't it? I had always
come to you. You never had to go looking for me."
Something was welling up in me. I wasn't sure what to do about
it. I tried to think up a cute, innocuous answer. But I couldn't.
I was struck dumb by a sudden awareness of how well she knew me, how
little I knew about myself.
"Hon?" she asked. "Isn't that what happened? Is that what I did
to you?"
Silently, I cried. A big fat tear rolled out of my eye and down
my cheek. I turned away from her.
She moved over to me and put her arms around my back and her cheek
against my neck.
"Tell me, hon. Please tell me. What was wrong?"
"I'm sorry," I sniffed, my cheeks shiny with tears.
"No. I don't *want* you to be sorry. I just want you to tell me."
"But I am sorry. I got you mad at me, I did everything wrong!"
"No no no no no no, hon. Now sit up. Sit up and look at me and
let's dry off this cute face and stop this, okay? See, if you handn't
refused to talk to me, me your old tried and trusted girlfriend, we
wouldn't be going through all this, would we?"
"I guess not." I wiped my nose with my t-shirt.
"Don't use your t-shirt, hon. You're so intelligent, but you can
be such a mess sometimes." She pivoted on her hips to rummage through
the drawer in the table beside the bed and turned back to me with a
kleenex. "Here. C'mon." She blotted my eyes and face. "This is my
fault, I'm really not handling this right."
Not wanting to be pampered, I took the kleenex from her and helped
myself, saying, "I thought you didn't want to see me anymore."
"Sweetheart, I couldn't see you all the time, not the way I used
to when I lived next door. You'll be in college one day, and just you
watch -- you won't speak to your folks for months at a time. Even in
high school things will be different; in high school they don't have
nuns who walk you to class from eight o'clock mass every day. But all
that's beside the point, hon. The point is that you...have...to...
find...your own way."
"But you never came around," I continued.
She grabbed my face and ogled me with mock sternness. "You see
what happens when we don't have any faith, when we don't talk to each
other? It got all mixed up, didn't it? Stop it, now. Stop. I want
to tell you something."
"Okay."
"C'mon, pay attention and stop sniffing."
"Okay, okay." I said, wiping my face and eyes.
She squeezed my nose with a kleenex and kissed my ear and looked
at me again. "Hon, I don't want you to grow up all by yourself like
this. Are you listening to me? Do you know what I'm talking about?"
"I guess."
"You--?" She huffed and scratched her forehead. "Oh, how can I
get this through to you?"
"I'll try," I volunteered. "Go ahead. Try me."
She thought for a long time. "Do you know how much I like you,
Speedy? Hm? I like you so much, it doesn't even make sense. Not to
*anybody*. I don't even have anyone I can talk to about you. I don't
care about them, really, or what they think. It's you I care about."
She paused, raising her hands with a shrug. "If we're supposed to be
'friends', then I want you to come lookin' for *me* sometime, okay? I
don't want you to grow up always thinkin' that people are always
dependable or that they'll always be comin' to you. Sometimes you
have to go out and get them. You know what I mean?"
"I guess."
"If you say 'I guess' to me one more time..."
I gave her a silly, friendly smile. I had stopped crying.
"Well, I have news for you, I was really lookin' forward to seeing
you today, and last week too. Now, last week we can't do anything
about, that's past. But we do have today. And I'm glad to see you,
and I'm worried about you because I show up and you walk away from me,
into yourself. When you met me in that kitchen the other day, after
not seeing me for so long, all you did was hide away from me and act,
well, it was hostile. It really was. All you had to do was tell me
you were glad to see me. It would have been so much easier."
"Okay."
She was growing a little petulant herself, nervously playing with
her fingernails. "Now don't say okay, if you don't really mean okay."
"Okay." I grinned.
She resisted laughing, but finally gave in to it and held her head
in her hands in mock frustration, and then she beat the sheets with
her fist again. "Stop...makin'...me...laugh!"
"So you're saying..." I pondered aloud, squinting, "you're saying
I should have looked more."
"I am saying," she explained patiently, "that you have to have
some faith. Not in others -- in yourself. I'm saying that you're
getting older now and you have to learn to start looking for--" She
stopped herself. She shut her eyes briefly, then lowered her voice
and continued slowly, "Sometimes, I want you to come to *me*. I want
you to learn to come to *me*."
"Oh."
"I want you to ask *me*. For a change. I want you to start it, I
want you to talk to me. I don't want you to sulk away from me, or
from anybody, just because they don't follow you around all day trying
to figure you out. Oh, Hon, you're too sensitive. You're gonna lose
sometimes, you're gonna be disappointed...But you still have to try."
"Okay."
"Do you really mean that?"
"Yes."
"Look at me. Really?"
"Yes, ma'am."
She put her hand on my shoulder. She squinted one eye. "Listen,
cowboy. I want you to mean it. I'm concerned about you, you know
that? Everybody who knows you likes you, but they don't always give
you everything you want. Ask for it sometime."
"Okay."
She threw up her hands. "Oh lord, another okay!" She rose from
the bed. "Well, you're all ready to go to sleep. Maybe you can now,
and you'll feel better. *I'm* going' to the bathroom." She got off
the bed and disappeared into the bathroom.
I settled down into my pillow and pondered all that she had said.
It seemed sensible to me. A little too-much-grownup, I thought. But
then I also knew, from all the sad grownups around me, from all that
my scientifically inclined mind had observed among the many tragedies
in that housing project and in my family, I knew that I would not
always be twelve years old. I would be older one day. Those who
provided for me would no longer be around; certainly, I had seen this
happen often enough to others. I was not ready at the time, not ready
to forge that far ahead. But, I was aware, that day would come. And
I did know for certain, again, that Martha Jane was my friend, not
just a bed partner or a playmate. If she had done some growing up,
then so should I.
She shut the bathroom light and came into the bedroom doorway, but
stopped there. She yawned and scratched her head. "You ready to go
sleep?"
"Yeah," I called from the bed.
She came into the bedroom and turned out the table lamp. In the
dark I felt her lean toward me and kiss me on my cheek.
"G'nite, hon. I'll be in the other room if you need anything."
I didn't respond. This was not exactly what I expected.
She waited for a response from me. "Okay?"
I nodded.
"G'nite." The hem of her pajama legs rasped along the floor as
she left the room. I heard the squeaks and rattles of the sofabed
being made in the living room. Shortly after, all the lights went out.
I lay there for about fifteen minutes. I looked out the window.
I kept hearing her say she wanted me to ask her first. She wanted me
to come to her. I turned over and propped up on one elbow and
listened. Not a sound from the other room.
Lying back down, I tried to fall asleep.
But a torrent of thoughts overpowered me, struggling mightily
within my head and chest. The flood was so chaotic, I lay with my
eyes tightly shut and concentrated on sorting them out. Among them
was a new thought, a new impulse that rose over the others with an
almost deafening voice: I wanted her. And I wanted her to want me. I
wanted to make myself desirable in the ways she had talked about that
night. Her words had me asking what had happened to that rebellious,
independent, rascally 'me' of only a few years before. I realized I
had changed. Had Grandpa Joe and my fussy aunts and the tough kids
and the stern teachers changed me so much?
With each question came a plenitude of conflicting answers. I
realized that I had not interacted enough with others to know how to
handle myself on my own terms. I could not voice this realization so
articulately at age twelve, but I could feel it. I knew that I had
absorbed a great deal of information, had amassed countless observa-
tions; but I felt powerless when it came to doing something with what
I knew.
I sat up in bed.
I lay down.
Rolled over.
Sat up again.
Was she asleep? Or was she waiting?
Soon I grew impatient with wondering. I put the sheet around me
(still embarrassed about all that my underwear now contained), and
walked through the dark into the living room...
PART 5D:
I walked toward the living room and stood in the doorway, allowing
the sheet wrapped around me to make as much noise as it wanted, and
hoping she would respond if she were awake.
Dimly across the room I saw her rise and look toward me. "Speedy?"
"Yes," I answered. "It's me."
"I thought you were going to sleep?"
"Are you awake?"
"What do you think? I was worried about you."
I told myself: Do something, show her some fight.
In the faint light I saw a pencil on the lamp table near the door.
I reached for it and held it like a cigarette, twiddling it gingerly
in my fingers and puffing on it. The bedsheet wrapped around my waist
and below, I walked into the middle of the room. Martha Jane had
turned toward me on the sofabed and was lying on her side, staring at
me quizzically.
I took a deep breath and started my act in full force. I opened
with my Deep South Truck Driver's gruff, heavy drawl, the pencil
dangling sloppily from my lips like a cigarette.
"Hey, bay-beh! Wonna beer?"
She smirked. On her side, she leaned on an elbow and propped her
head in her hand. "Oh my, what is this strange child up to?"
Then I made the pencil a cigar, touting and flipping it one-
handed. I propped my other hand on one hip. Then I faked the
higher-pitched, tightly clipped voice and speech of the Leo Gorcey,
right out of a Bowery Boys' movie.
"Dey call me Doubtless Dan. 'Cuz When Dan's About, There Ain't No
Doubt!" I smugly pretended to straighten my tie. "Pahdon me, ladies,
whilst I make myself pre-sent-able."
Then I jammed my hands deep into my pajamas' pockets, stuck out my
tummy to simulate a beer belly, put the pencil in one corner of my
mouth, and rocked back and forth for my W.C. Fields act.
"I recallll when were stranded in the Andeeees. It was TERRibble,
couldn't find a bottle o' whiskey anywherrre. Had to live on nothing
but food and waterrr for tennnn daaayzz!"
Each character brought me a step or two closer to the sofabed
where she still lay propped on an elbow and keeping a straight face.
Then I put one hand behind my back, pursed my lips, and at the
same time raised my eyebrows and squinted my eyes at the same time--
not easy to do, but it was essential for an effective Clark Gable.
"Now listen, Scarlett. I know we haven't been gettin' along,
sweetheart, so...I'll make a deal with ya. You keep the child, and
the money, and the lumber company, and...I'll stay here at Tara with
Ashley Wilkes."
With understated sarcasm she broke in. "Does this have an end?"
"Why, Scarlett, whenever you say."
"End, please."
Myself again, I dropped to my knees and my face was level with
hers. "Yes, ma'am."
"Speedy...What in the world are you doing?"
"I'm trying."
"You're trying? Trying what?"
"Trying. You wanted me to try harder."
"Well...that's not *exactly* what I had in mind, angel."
"Well," I said, simply, "that's...right now, that's all I know."
"Oh," she said forgivingly. "Well then...what's next?"
"I want to kiss you."
"Kiss me?"
"Yeah. Kiss me, you fool."
She looked at me blankly. Perhaps she realized, as I did, that we
had never truly, romantically kissed.
I prompted, "Alright?"
"Well...sure. I guess so."
"You sure?"
"Why wouldn't I be sure?" She frowned. "What are you going to
do?"
"Kiss you."
"So kiss me."
I took a deep breath for courage. "Okay."
This was something I had not only never done, but had never imag-
ined doing. I had no idea how to go about it. I walked on my knees
the short distance to her, then stretched up over the edge of the
sofabed, and brought my face close to hers. She appeared a little
apprehensive and unsure, but she didn't flinch. One motion at a time,
I gently took the arm she was propped upon and laid it flat on the bed,
prompting her to recline on her side. I touched her hips and nudged
her to lie flat on her back, which she did, smiling indulgently and
watching me closely. I leaned forward a little more and put my right
hand on her cheek, then I slipped my left arm under her neck. Cradl-
ing her in the best romantic style of the movies, I held her thus and
brought her a little closer to me. She adjusted herself uncomfortably
and I waited until she was settled.
I looked into her eyes. At first I attempted to do this with a
certain panache, using a soppy, longing Charles Boyer gaze. But her
eyes and her face undid me. Immediately, I fell victim to her effect
on me, and my phony gaze faded. Her half lowered eyelids, her milk-
smooth, softly sculpted face, her slightly parted, expectant lips
with their moist, dewy glaze, and her lucid, penetrating, expectant
blue-gray-green eyes...
All pretense disappeared. I wanted, more than anything else in
the world, to give Martha Jane the kiss of her life. A real kiss. A
kiss that would be uniquely me. The kiss of the century. I returned
her waiting gaze with one which I'm certain must have reflected the
poignant tenderness that swept over me. Gently I lowered my lips
toward hers, miraculously managing on my first effort to get the
interlocking tilt of our faces just right. I waited ever so momen-
tously before touching my mouth to hers. Then I joined our faces.
Never before had my lips felt hers -- and never before had they felt
anything like it! Meeting no resistance, I mouthed her gently at
first, massaging my way into a complete awareness of the shape and
texture of her yielding petals. Amazed, I felt her return my kiss
with a slight, tentative, moist pressure against me. I settled my
lips into hers until her almost imperceptible return of movements
matching my own told my lips that her lips had found the most agree-
able, the most telling contact. Surprised, my lips began melting into
hers, into the wondrous, creamy velvet of her that met my seeking mouth
with a seeking of her own, which I learned to read and respond to like
a mirror image of her every oral gesture. Enthralled, I allowed my
lips to caress hers with slightly more pressure and a series of small,
slow, ovular movements, which seemed as natural to me as breathing.
She, too, returned the pressure and the movement. Enraptured, I felt
my insides sizzle as she slid one arm along and then around my shoul-
ders. A sudden hunger rose in me; but I controlled and tempered it,
expressing it with my hand on the side of her face as a small caress
and a tender hug, a subtle drawing of her head closer to me. Captiva-
ted, I lifted my lips only slightly and, still touching hers, I
allowed my lips to caress hers like a tantalizing, slippery, mothering
feather. Enchanted, I felt her return the favor. Intoxicated, I
moved my mouth closer again, this time with a sure but carefully
restrained ardor, and then I simply allowed my lips to disintegrate
into hers. Gently we writhed our mouths together for another long and
nourishing moment, increasing the pressure gradually, then releasing,
withdrawing with languid, reluctant slowness, until I opened my eyes
and saw hers still closed, blissful, tranquil. Never had I been so
close to her mouth or her face, which filled my view and shut out any
and all awareness of the universe. My lips were still wet with hers;
my lips still felt hers, felt *LIKE* hers; my lips seemed to have
disappeared, her own lips taking their place.
Gazing raptly, I stroked her cheek.
She opened her eyes sleepily. At first they were questioning,
uncertain. Then she seemed to come awake and she gently pushed me
away.
"Where," she asked skeptically, "did you learn to kiss like that?"
"That's the way I kiss."
"No, Speedy, nobody kisses like that. I bet you picked that up
from the movies. You kissed me the way somebody like William Holden
kisses."
"That," I insisted, "is the way I kiss."
"No. That's the way William Holden kisses."
"He got it from me."
"Oh...I see. Well, that's some kiss."
"Thank you." Daringly, without pause, I declared, "I wanna sleep
in here."
"There's not room enough for two."
"Then, uh..." My eyes rolled as I tried to overcome this latest
obstacle. "Okay, I'll have to sleep on top of you."
"That would be very uncomfortable, Mister Holden."
"Well, then...I guess we'll have to sleep in the bedroom."
Her only response was an insolent, waiting smirk.
I stopped right there. I rose upright on my knees beside the
sofabed. I looked at her, thinking that this just wasn't at all what
she wanted. And I knew it wasn't, because I knew that to a large
extent, except for what I felt during the kiss, it was a show on my
part. I felt dishonest.
She said, "What's the matter? What are you thinking up next?"
I said quietly, "Nothin'." I got to my feet and started walking
out of the room. Toward the bedroom.
She asked irritably, "Where are you going?"
"Forget that. I'm startin' over."
"What?"
I repeated, angrily, "Forget it. I'm startin' over."
She said, "Come back here."
I called back angrily, "Wait!"
"Oh, alright," she said.
I walked into the bedroom and stood there in the dark and took a
long, deep breath. I waited. Then I turned around and walked slowly
into the living room, across the floor, and settled on my legs in
front of her.
She was giving me a soft, curious smile. "Now what"
"Hello," I said, as simple and as direct as I could, as if I had
never walked into the room before.
She asked, "What?"
I said again, "Hello."
She replied softly, "Hello."
I said as naturally as I could, "It's been a long time since I saw
you. How have you been?"
Her smile softened even more. She laid her head on the bed and
looked at me with warm, understanding eyes. "I've been okay. Working
hard. But it wasn't too bad."
I said, "I missed you."
"You did?"
I nodded. "I missed hearing your voice."
She paused. Something had happened. Her eyes went straight to
mine. She said, "You did?"
"I missed just having you around. I'd go outside in the morning
and you weren't on the porch. And I missed you. I'd call your house,
but you wouldn't answer. And I'd go sit by the oak tree out back, but
you never came outside. And so I missed you."
For a long moment she paused. There was something moist that came
over her eyes. She swallowed again. She looked at me tenderly.
"That's more like what I wanted to hear you say."
"Thank you," I said.
She smirked again, but this time playfully. "Did you mean that
kiss?"
I declared with a nod of my head, "I sure did."
"That was some kiss."
I said, "It sure was."
She queried me with her big, smiling, waiting eyes. "Well?" she
said in a small voice.
I leaned toward her and took her free hand which rested near the
edge of the sofabed. "I want you to sleep in the other room with me,
because I haven't seen you in two years. And because I want the first
thing I see in the morning to be you. And because I might never get
the chance to do this again."
She whispered, "That's better." Then she rose from the sofabed
and headed straight for the bedroom in her floppy silk pajamas. I
remained on my knees, totally perplexed.
She looked back and saw me, and she said, "Well?" When I started
getting to my feet, she proceeded into the bedroom.
I followed her. "Well...why didn't you tell me that's what you
wanted in the first place?"
"Oh, how unromantic."
"But why didn't you just tell me?"
"Because all this time, I made it too easy for you. Because I
wanted you to learn something. Because I was playing hard to get."
She settled into the bed near the lamp table, lying back with her
hands behind her head in the dark. "That's the way girls behave in
real life, Steven. They want you to figure them out."
I stood near the bed. "But why do girls have to *do* that?"
"Because they're girls."
"But boys don't play hard to get."
"I know. They're boys."
"I see," I pondered. "So the girls play hard to get...and the
boys do the getting."
She winked.
In the two years that I had been away from her, I had forgotten
what it was like to look down on her alluring body in the dark. As I
stood watching her from the edge of the bed, it all came back. And it
came back with a vengeance. I did not pause, but followed my impulse
and climbed onto the bed from the foot of it, and in one motion I
stretched over her and lay on her, both of us still clothed.
She smiled, opened her arms, and I snuggled into her neck.
She asked, "The lesson wasn't too hard on you, was it?"
"Did you like my Clark Gable?"
"No."
"Oh."
"I liked your 'you', though. And what a kisser." She hugged me.
I hugged her back. I lifted my face and looked at her. I felt it
was my move. I shifted my weight to her side, letting my right arm
cradle her neck. I looked down at her breasts. Her nipples stood out
tautly under the cloth of the pajamas. They were different now, less
girlish, more womanly. Or perhaps I was two years older, had new
juices flowing from my glands, and saw her differently. I lifted my
hand to her right nipple and with two fingers cradled and squeezed it
gently over the slippery cloth. She shifted slightly, leaning into
me. She watched my fingers, then she watched me. I allowed my hands
to sweep across her chest, down her tummy, around to her hip. She
felt different; more firm, more sleek, more smoothly sculptured. At
the crotch of her pajamas the shape of her tuft and mound were
revealed in sharp relief. She had lost some baby fat; her mound was
more distinct, more feminine, its contours more erotically enticing.
With my hand I covered the gentle swell between her legs. Right
away I realized she wore nothing underneath. I felt her heat. Her
tuft felt thicker than before, crisper. I made a small circle on her
cunt with my palm and could feel where her thick outer lips softly
parted and folded inward. As I continued circling, I felt her hand go
to the slit in my underwear. With three fingers she formed a cone
with which she lightly enclosed the outline of my tip. Cupping it,
she squeezed almost imperceptibly, with a slow rhythm. I felt an in-
credible itch that ran the length of my cock.
As I caressed her over her pajamas her thighs parted. I looked at
her. I whispered, "Feels different with clothes on."
She nodded lazily, slipping her lower lip naughtily under her
teeth.
I whispered, smiling, "Feel good?"
Her eyes narrowed. She nodded slowly again.
I rubbed her another moment until I sensed moisture in the cloth
under my hand. Her slit had widened. And my erection was underway.
I searched her darkening eyes. "Do you think it would still feel
good to fingerfuck you like I used to?"
She shrugged. "I guess," she said, with an impudent grin.
I sighed a little laugh at her joke. I lay down flat, lifted my
hips, and pulled off my underwear, flipping it onto the floor at the
foot of the bed. I had expected she would take a while to unbutton
her pajama top, but she sat up and grabbed the hem of the shirt and
pulled it over her head and off, like a sweater. She lay down and
raised her hips and pulled off her bottoms.
This was not a girl in bed with me. This was a woman. And she
was lithe and smooth and naked, with firm, round, delicately sloping
breasts dotted with the upright, pale pink nubs of her suckable
nipples, hips and waist and thighs so smooth they had a soft sheen,
and her flat tummy lent extra prominence to her auburn tuft and the
swell of her mons. Her pubic hairlets had indeed thickened and ex-
extended to just below the top of her slit. As soon as I saw her I
knew I'd have to learn about her body all over again.
Settling on one elbow I could not resist letting my palm slide
along the inside of one warm thigh and onto her center. I carefully
fondled her outer lips, which were already slick and blossoming open
to invite my finger's search for her clit. When I found it she swal-
lowed and her staring eyes glistened. I began to stroke her clit in
slow, tiny circles. Immediately it began to lubricate and her long
thighs drifted apart.
She whispered, "Yes..."
With her fingers she formed a small cone around my tip again, then
she found I was hard. Her fingers searched, finding that I had smooth
curls now instead of fuzz, and she investigated my balls and my hard-
ening shaft, then enclosed me, gripped, squeezed up. Her fingers
found pre-cum at my tip.
"Speedy," she whispered.
I looked at her. "Hmm?"
"Your not a baby anymore, hon," she whispered, circling my corona
with a wet finger. She shook her head and smiled. "Mmmm. Not a baby
anymore..."
PART 5E:
I whispered, "Let's do this for a while. Just this. Okay?"
She swallowed again. "Yes."
For a while we silently enjoyed touching and stroking each other
with no particular goal in mind other than pleasing ourselves and
discovering all the things about us that had changed.
As we touched and played we talked. I told her about the plays
I'd done, how movies and photography and history had captured so much
of my life. She told of her classes, her work, what she had learned.
I didn't entirely take the lead; I didn't yet know how. But I was
not as passive as in the past. I was fascinated with how she had
become so trim and womanly and supple. She marveled at my broadening
shoulders, my well formed thighs, the hair beginning to sprout fuzzily
on my legs, chest, and groin -- and my burgeoning young cock, which
swelled and stretched and jutted upright to a size that surprised both
of us, extending six inches or so, the coronal ring thickening, the
stiff shaft throbbing pleasurably against the soft fingers wrapped
around it. She was pleased to find that my length now exceeded the
grip of her hand, my tip poking up fully beyond her grasp.
We became alternately playful and serious, lewd and virginal. I
can't remember all of it. Our old devils had entered the dark room
and within a few minutes they overpowered everything and everyone in
it. For a while we seemed to be trying to see who could bring out the
deepest sensuality in the other, who could come up with the naughtiest
turn-on, who could make the most endearing gesture. The excitement
mounted gradually but inevitably, shutting away the narrow world out-
side as the world inside the room expanded.
She cradled my face in one arm while I sucked her nipples and
fingered her. She asked, "Would you like to lick me? Like you used
to?" I was hardly in a position to refuse. She sat up against the
pillows and raised her knees and let her legs fall open. Then she
held the moist hairlets away from her pussy and watched me lick her.
After a short time she told me, "Hon, you're so good at this. It's
been a long time since I felt you do that. It's getting me so hot."
I kept licking, but soon she urged me, "Hon, stop a minute." I
asked her if I had been doing it correctly, but she said, "Yes,
exactly right. That's just it, it's got me feeling so wicked. I
haven't been used to this for a while."
She wanted me to lie down flat on the bed, with my head near the
headboard, because, she whispered naughtily, "I just have this
feeling. I want us to do something nasty." I lay on the bed and she
hovered over my face on her knees, holding onto the headboard while
she gave me detailed licking instructions until she almost came. She
stopped, telling me she didn't want it to end yet. We lay down and
hugged for a while. We remained gentle, held back by some subtle,
self imposed constraint that would not let us take anything too far
too quickly.
It soon became apparent that the pre-cum at my tip was thicker and
slicker than ever before, matched by the surprising size and heft of
my erection. Martha Jane grinned as she gave it a squeeze and saw
another bead of liquid appear, and she whispered, "Speedy, you get so
big now. Look at him!"
I asked her if she thought I had grown too big for her to suck me.
She said, "Too big? I know how much you like it, but...I just
thought it might be too soon."
I didn't know what she meant. I just said, "No, it's not too
soon. I wanted you to do it a while ago."
She smiled at me, an amused but indulgent smile, and said, "He's
not too big to suck. He's just right."
I rose to my knees and she lay on her tummy before me, holding my
hard young dick in her hand and looking it over. "Look at him. The
shape is perfect. Just perfect." She gave my tip a couple of licks,
and I gave a long sigh as she enclosed me in her mouth, held me, and
then very, very slowly gave me two or three of her familiar, shallow,
wet sucks. My eyes closed and my brain reeled; her mouth felt so
different now! Better. A luscious itch began to spread throughout my
groin. There was an unfamiliar tightening in my balls. My larger
cock could feel more of her knowing mouth and tongue. She played with
my balls and sucked again, pausing to ask if it felt good. I was so
amazed at all the new things that were happening to me, I could
hardly speak. The fact is, I had never had an orgasm. I had no idea
what my orgasm would be like, but I was feeling at that time that my
nerves and muscles were on the verge of losing control to -- to
whatever was happening between my legs and seemed to spread through my
veins. I felt odd, shaky and woozy.
Holding my cock, Martha Jane gazed up at me, questioning. She
asked, "Hon, are you all right?"
"Yes, I'm...it's good. It feels good."
She gave my hard dick a slow pull and looked at it. "Look at
you," she whispered. "You're dripping. Your balls must be so full."
She looked up again and asked quietly, "Speedy...did you really mean
what you told me, that you never gave yourself a climax?"
I sighed, getting impatient, wanting her to go on and yet fearful
of how I was reacting. I answered nervously, "No. No, I never did
it."
"You sure? You've never made yourself cum?"
I nodded quickly. "Well, it--it just didn't seem like it would be
any fun, cumming by myself."
She looked at me briefly, her face a blank, and then she looked at
my cock again. I heard her whisper, "He's so hard. So big and so
hard. And dripping." She moved her torso closer to me and touched my
tip to one nipple and then rolled a finger round the sticky fluid I
left there. She said, "You know that? You're dripping a lot."
"Dripping?"
"You're making cum, hon. Do your balls feel tight?"
"Yeah, they're...yeah, they do."
She grinned with delight and expectation. "Maybe you'll cum.
You're sure you never did?"
I nodded again, gulping.
"You're so much bigger and hotter than you ever were." She gently
touched and squeezed beneath my balls. "Does that hurt?"
"A little. Yeah. Feels kinda sore."
"Even when I touch just a little, like that?"
"Yes."
"Oh, hon," she said, laughing to herself. "I think we have an
opportunity here that we really, really can't pass up." She sat up
and rose to her knees and held me gently by my shoulders. "Be
honest. You never came before? Not even by yourself?"
I shook my head. "I never tried it. Other boys said they did,
but...I didn't want to." I looked down at her nipple and the glisten-
ing spot I'd left there. "Maybe...maybe I could."
"Think so?"
"What happens? I mean, how will I know?"
"You'll know."
"I...I dunno."
"Want to go inside me and see if you cum?"
"We haven't in a long time. Yes."
"Then I hope..." She stopped. "Never mind," she said. She moved
around me and lay down, propping a pillow behind her head. She was
long and slender and the color of dim moonlight. Her eyes gleamed in
the dark. She raised her knees a little so her trim thighs could fall
open and spread wide, revealing her flat tummy and auburn tuft and the
furrowed center below. She reached down with both hands and delicate-
ly parted her pubic curls, baring her cunt. She was open, already wet
from my licking. She whispered, "Fuck me, hon."
I moved to lie over her, feeling physically larger and more musc-
ular than I ever remembered, seeing my dick jut and sway in front of
me as I moved, seeing it hard and long the way it was sometimes when I
woke in the morning. I propped myself on my arms and my toes, looking
down as I aimed my new hardness at her shadowy core. My tip felt her
wet outer lips, a feeling that had never occurred with such sharp,
tangy clarity. I paused there, unable to prevent an intake of breath
at the surprising intensity of this sensation.
She whispered. "You okay?"
I smiled and breathed hard and nodded.
As I held my erection at the mouth of her cunt, the tip barely
inside her, she made a small circle with her hips, bathing my glans
with the tight ring around her opening. I was frighteningly aware of
the thin slippery skin of her inner lips moving on me. I felt a flow
of precum being gently forced from my balls -- was that a climax? I
had felt that before with her, but only after many minutes of fooling
around. Now it was happening quickly, at the very touch of her cunt
on me.
My arms trembled, and I shifted my weight on them, spreading my
palms wider on the sheet, and despite my efforts at remaining calm I
felt a rush of adrenalin that demanded more air in my lungs. I heard
my breath quicken and wobble nervously.
She began making small, steady circles on my glans. "Feel me on
your tip? Feel me moving?"
"Yes, it feels very...very nice. Didn't feel that way before."
She stopped moving and whispered, "Hon? Just relax. Maybe we're
taking this a little too fast."
"It's okay," I said, "Keep doin' it. It felt good." And she did.
But she kept the movements slight and slow, just enough to keep the
sensation going. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I
could feel myself getting even bigger and stiffer. Very slowly I
began to move forward as she maintained her movement.
Martha Jane said, "Go in slow, now. Slow, hon. Verrry slow. So
both of us can feel it."
Eyes closed and head lowered, I concentrated on this wave of new
and unfamiliar pleasures. I let my hips move forward a little at a
time, the hair on the back of my neck bristling at the feel of my new
length and how much more deeply it ventured into her.
She whispered, "Tha-a-t's right. Very slow. Let it last." I
minded her request, sliding about half my length inside her but stop-
ping there, amazed at the contours that my dick of yesteryear had not
detected, surprised to find my tip was deep enough to sense a snug
curling upward of her passage just beyond my tip. And the sensation
of her inner walls parting to let me inside and then closing around
me like a soft, gluey hand...
I paused, my eyes shut. I whispered, "Feels so good goin' in."
From below I heard her whisper, "Yes."
I pushed carefully, feeling her cunt starting to make that slow
circle again, and amazingly her movement and the swirling lubricant
seemed somehow to tuck my tip smoothly into that narrowing curve and
then magically sucked me into and past the resistance, deeper, deeper
than I'd ever been, and I heard Martha Jane let out a slow breath of
pleasure as she received my new length.
Then I was all the way in and I felt her muscles rolling around
my length, and I moaned a weak, low "Uuh," and then so much began to
happen at once: Martha Jane held still, her cunt gripping me briefly
in a warm, wet welcome that made my body stiffen as my dick arched
blissfully inside her, feeling warmly gloved in her syrupy, finely
textured inner woman. Despite my having traveled part of this road
before, everything was a startling surprise.
I opened my eyes. Below me, Martha Jane raised a hand to my
cheek, and her eyes searched mine and her voice was hesitant and
questioning. "Sweetheart...hon? Did you cum?"
"No," I said quickly, "No, I'm okay."
"Good, baby." I saw her long, warm, smooth, naked arms rise to
stroke my outstretched arms and then to caress the back of my neck
and my shoulders. She whispered, "Mmm. You're getting muscles."
I closed my eyes again. Perhaps that would help. But oddly, in
the dark behind my eyelids, I could not erase the sight of her long,
firm, naked body, thighs spread wide, her soft tuft, and that hot,
soft, wonderful pussy.
I relaxed, or tried to. The incredible ache in my balls was so
unfamiliar. Did cumming hurt your balls? I knew what was supposed to
happen: Sperm would spurt out of me into her. And then what the hell
would Martha Jane do? Wasn't that dangerous? How could I keep that
from happening? She had told me several times that she'd never let me
use a rubber with her.
She stroked my back and neck. She whispered, "Feel good in me?"
I nodded yes, nervous and unmoving. It was all so new, so good it
was scary. I kept feeling on the edge of losing all control.
Trying to slow the whirl a bit, I let my hips pull back slowly.
But her slim outer petals clinging wetly to my withdrawing shaft was
so pleasurable that I gasped. Again I moved forward, gradually, but
this time without pause, all the way in. She gave a soft hiss and
held still while I entered, and as I settled deeply into her she let
the breath out with a quiet "Ahhh". Again, she enclosed the entire
length of my very surprised, very hard, almost brand new cock.
She whispered, "Speedy, you're so big. I've never felt so much
of you inside."
I forced myself to wait, again adjusting my outspread arms to give
myself time to absorb what was happening. There was more of me down
there now, more flesh, more nerves, more to feel her with. Shakily I
began to ascertain her inner texture and her narrow shape. It seemed
totally new, as if I'd never been in her before.
She whispered, "Are you okay?"
"Yes."
"Hon, you seem so nervous--"
"No. No, it's good."
She settled back into her pillow. "Shh. Take your time, hon."
I nodded. I looked at her and took a deep breath.
She grinned up at me. "You feel so good."
"You too," I whispered back. I looked down. Her stiffening
nipples pointed straight up at me. And down below, her auburn patch
merged with my younger, darker one. And just below that, there was I,
inserted to the hilt between her widely spread, rounded thighs.
I closed my eyes. Despite my best mental efforts at wanting to
stop until I figured out what was going on, I began to slide in her,
staying deep, adjusting my angle so that I sensed the familiar nudge
of her clit against my shaft.
She whispered, "Ah, hon."
I slid back in, slow, and slowly out, and in, and I felt her
subtley adjust the angle of her clit against me as she had always done
in the past, and she sighed heavily, and said, "You still know how."
As I pumped cautiously I asked, "Is that okay?" I insisted on
moving in the careful way I'd always used with her in the past, know-
ing that the slow deep movements were the ones that brought her to her
climax. But now I had new reasons: I was afraid to move too quickly,
afraid of going out of control and causing her to miss her own orgasm.
And, secretly, I was more afraid of my own feelings than of anything
else.
She whispered warmly, her eyes and voice growing more agitated,
her words matching my motions in and out, "Mmmm, yes...Yes, baby
...not too far back, now...In, yes, ahhhh, in...keep it slow, now,
slow, hon, let it last...Mmmmm, yes...oh, you're good...you do it so
right...ahhhh, so right." Her eyes glinted with rapidly intensifying
lust. After two or three more of my languid, deliberate strokes, she
suddenly looked as if she might cry. She stared into my eyes, her
mouth slightly open, and she said in a low, audibly shaky whisper, "So
good...It's gettin' so good!" She tightened her grip on my shoulders.
She gasped and swallowed. Then as she stared unwaveringly, she held
her body still under me, her pelvis raised slightly as if to maintain
perfectly the friction her clit enjoyed against my dick. As she had
in the past, she simply let me fuck her for another slow stroke.
My slow movements were futile. An animalistic, purely physical
urge welled up, eroding my resistance move by move. I wondered, if I
really wanted to stop the inevitable, whether or not I *could*. For
the moment, I couldn't. I'd held on for eight or nine slow dips in
and out of her. Twelve seemed possible. But twenty?
All of a sudden Martha Jane whispered with breathless urgency, "Go
all the way in! All the way in me!" Her hands on my shoulders
tightened more, then still more, as I stayed still in her. She
whispered, "Stay still in me! Like that, yes! Be still a minute.
Be still..."
Staring at me, she was breathing harder and swallowing harder, and
I breathed back harder. Martha Jane's staring eyes seemed to darken,
as if she were sinking into a distant world of her own, even as she
looked right at me. She whispered excitedly, "It was too good. I was
getting so close."
I thought: that makes two of us. She ground her belly against
me. Her inner flesh sucked, softly wringing my entire length. It
made my head snap backward and then fall forward. I moaned. I
looked down at her.
She was smiling at me, her eyes lustily half-closed. "Like it?"
"Your pussy feels so good..."
"Does that make you want to cum?"
I shook my head. "I...it...I didn't know it would feel this good."
"I didn't either." She panted and swallowed. She gave me a
nervous, almost embarrassed grin. "But it does." She loosened her
grip on my shoulders and gave my cheek a stroke of her soft, warm
palm. She whispered, "Just rest a minute."
It wasn't merely the physical sensations I resisted. It was
something else--unfamiliar, otherworldly.
A short moment later I regained a modicum of composure, not to
mention a lungful of air. I looked at her. She was still watching
my face and still panting, albeit more quietly now, and her face had
a flush to it, her angel lips slightly parted and an anxious look in
her eyes.
I braced on my arms again and raised on my toes. We both looked
down and watched as I began another stroke. Then another. But it
seemed senseless; I kept feeling that my old trick of staying deep and
moving just enough to massage her clit might no longer suffice. But
Martha Jane knew my movements well, and she seemed to be holding her
cunt poised at the angle that we both knew would have her cumming
soon. Her face told me she was getting close after all the licking,
but I had doubts about my own patience. My existence centered more
and more uncontrollably on Martha Jane's wet, enclosing nether-mouth
and her spread thighs and her quickening gasps. The itch in my groin
spread to my hips; my next stroke into her was less controlled, more
self driven. The something-new and wonderful that I held back kept
licking at me from somewhere behind my brain. Suddenly her cunt was
milking me. I could not wrest my eyes from what I saw. She was
looking straight into me. I could tell by her taut neck and the force
of her inner spasms that she was starting to climax.
Hardly moving her mouth, she uttered faintly, "Don't move..."
Her eyes and face were tense with pleasure. She repeated, "No, Don't
move. Hold still. Stay in me." She gulped, she even seemed to try to
stop cumming and she did not let her eyes close as she usually did.
Cumming or not, she seemed determined to stay in touch with what was
happening to me. Then she began making tiny movements with her
pelvis, her clit churning against my cock, and the movement got more
demanding, and she just stared at me, her neck visibly taut.
Breathlessly she asked, "Is this making you cum?"
I shook my head no. The slide and suck along my shaft wasn't
there. There was a delicious, soft, circling suck near my tip that
felt delicious, but I didn't think it would make me cum.
She gave a strained, hushed whisper, "Good. Just be still."
She quickly began to stiffen under me. She smiled, wild-eyed and
holding her breath. The dimming light in her eyes signaled that she
was sinking deeper, deeper. Then she went entirely still and silent
for several long seconds as her channel tightened on me, then tight-
ened again. Her face and eyes were locked in a joyful stare, and I
wanted to make it good for her and so in the middle of her cumming I
bent down and held my lips close to hers and uttered "Fuck." Immedi-
ately she whimpered and then she winced hard and the tendons of her
neck bulged and pulsed and she held her groin tightly against mine,
pressing hard. Then her eyes widened but seemed unfocussed, and then
with a loud sigh she quickly relaxed. She jerked her face to one side
and whimpered, and let go of my shoulders and let her head fall back,
and then she gasped a loud "Oh!" And I stopped moving, feeling even
then that my cock had started to throb. But in an instant she got her
breath, quickly wiping an arm across her brow; and then grasping my
arms again and returning her eyes and her face and her attention to
me, she whispered hastily, "Keep fuckin' me, hon," and she breathed
hard, her jaw set firmly as she regained her focus. Her eyes glued
themselves to mine as if she wanted to miss nothing that might happen
while I was in the grip of my new and (to me) almost terrifying
pleasure, and she whispered, "Don't stop. Let it cum."
And then everything started happening and I knew it wouldn't be
stopped. I began again, and the strokes were slower, deeper,
stronger. And then a series of hurried whispers:
I gasped, "Somethin's happenin'."
And she, eagerly, "Yeah?"
"Oh god."
She groaned, "It's okay. Don't stop, it's okay."
"Oh..."
My hips seized control, My cock sought more, reaching deeper. My
brain receded, far behind. A deep, long stroke. Another. On extended
arms, I trembled. Below me, Martha's eyes flashed. She hissed in
pleased amazement, "It's so big!"
She reached down between us and lightly held two fingers against
the base of my moving cock. I snapped. I was finally, absolutely
lost. Between her fingers my shaft began the unavoidable throbs. The
thought shouted in my brain: This is what it is! It's happening!
And Martha Jane's grin spread wide, and she whispered throatily,
gloating, "You're gonna cum. Your gonna cum in me. In me."
I moaned. Loudly. "It's so good! Oh it's so good!"
Her eyebrows arched high. She hissed, "Yes!"
Then an eerie, totally foreign, blissful wave flooded my gut.
Then the awesome tightening in my scrotum, a primal serpent writhing,
forked tongue flicking. The serpent struck. I felt my first gush of
cum course through my dick and spew from the slit, and then the
sucking flesh around my tip, tickling, intense, insane. Then a gutsy
groan from me as more cum gushed, and my hips worked, slow and ardent,
my stiff stick of pleasure deep, deeper, fucking in the hot splash,
and Martha Jane breathed in the dark, happy, ecstatic, "Yes, baby!"
And then her hips circling lewdly, sinuous wet flesh curling round my
dick, and ahhh the sucking...!
It was an onslaught of pleasure. I groaned and spurted. The
universe shrank to a dot, and there was only a jerking cock, probing
greedily in slick folds of woman-flesh, and Martha Jane watching with
slitted eyes, her smile spreading. A roar filled my brain, and in it
was her pleased, heated whisper, "So warm..." Then another shattering
wave of itchy rapture, muscles under my balls pulsing faster, rapid
gushing, emptying, and in my dimming field of vision were her smoking
eyes, and her grin, and her licentious croon, "Cum, sweetheart. Cum."
Then I slumped, humping weakly while the rest of me slurped into
her, into her eyes, into her smile and her voice and her whispers,
into her taut nipples and her moving belly, her open thighs and her
auburn bush...Into the hot, sweet depths of Martha Jane, where the
last remnants of my virginity disappeared, completely and forever.
Finished, exhausted, I quivered above her. I was completely out
of breath, out of cum, out of my mind. But she wouldn't let me have
air; she grabbed me by the neck and pulled me down to her. She held
me so tightly I couldn't breathe. I didn't care. I couldn't hold her
tightly enough. If I had died, it was fine with me. In the aftermath
my young dick lurched inside her, and she answered with a low chuckle
and a tightening of her cunt. The fingers she had used to make the
small but catalytic ring around my base now pulled on my shaft as I
softened. With half my length still inside her she gently wrung the
last drops into her, imploring, "Get it all in me. All of it..."
All I could do was gasp against her breast, "Oh, so good! So
good!"
"I know, honey. I know."
I thought: I am out of control. I am completely out of control
and I am going to hell. It's so good and we both like it so much that
it has to be a sin. I'm Adam in the Garden of Eden and I've taken
deeply, enjoyably of the fruit. Everything is different now. Perma-
nently different.
I raised up to look at her face. She smiled at me, and then she
blushed. She said, "Baby. You came in me." And then one of her eyes
squeezed out a small, wet, shiny tear. She moaned, "Oh...Oh, my, I
didn't think I'd..." She wiped the tear away, quickly, and sniffed
and blushed again. I kissed her wet cheek, and she pulled me to her
with a strong hug.
She sniffled again, holding me to her. "I'm so happy for you.
You're so warm in me."
I whispered against her flesh, "It was good."
She tightened her hug, still panting. "Yes, hon. It was. It
really was." She hugged and held and hugged, and gradually settled
down. She gave a little laugh. "Will you still respect me in the
morning?"
I nodded against her.
She hugged me again. She held me. Soon we were calm. She
stroked my hair. She said softly, "You came for a long time. I
could feel it happening in me. Not exactly, but...I could feel you
pulsing. Especially when you were really deep in me. I was so
surprised, I didn't think I'd feel it that much." She kissed my
forehead. "It was very exciting."
I nodded against her. "Does it always happen like that?"
"I guess. We'll have to make you cum again and see what happens."
I shook my head no. "It wore me out."
She hugged me again and said, "Don't worry, hon. You'll be okay
later." She kissed my forehead, then my neck. Then she cradled me
snugly against her again. She asked, "How do you feel?"
"Am I..." I stopped to gulp. "Am I goin' to hell?"
"Hon, we're both goin' to hell." Slowly she shook her head back
and forth against mine, murmuring sleepily, "But I can't help it."
Continued. . .
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