Message-ID: <22701asstr$950069406@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
X-Original-Message-ID: <00b201bf7259$7197e8e0$2201a8c0@sromeo>
From: "SJR" <sanlyn@worldnet.att.net>
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200
Subject: {ASSM} ME AND MARTHA JANE '99 (m/F,teen) MJANE10.TXT
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 23:10:06 -0500
Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail
Approved: <assm@asstr-mirror.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d
X-Archived-At: <URL:http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/Year2000/22701>
X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation <story-ckought69@hotmail.com>
X-Story-Submission: <ckought69@hotmail.com>
X-Moderator-ID: dennyw, apuleius, IceAltar, kelly, Lambchop
SJR
<1st attachment, "MJANE10.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 10A:
Martha said over the phone, "I think it's about time you came to
New York, if you still want to."
"Why this sudden change of mind?" I asked.
"Sudden? I've been thinking about it for months. I figured you
could handle the shock of New York by now."
I chided her, "Listen, that typewriter you sent me -- I promise to
use it 'till I wear it out, but...it's a very expensive present. I
can't let you pay for it. I owe you."
She said she'd purchased it in New York at a low price that I
could never match in Memphis. She said that, if I really wanted, I
could make up for the cost of the typewriter. "I tried to save some
party money for your visit, but it's impossible. You have enough on
your own to make it a real vacation instead of a trek. And you can
pay me back for your present by treating me too, now and then."
"Deal."
"And promise me, Steven...while you're here...be my friend."
I had no idea what she was getting at. Lack of space in her pad?
Too much activity, too many things to see? "Okay," I said.
"Don't say okay, if you don't mean it."
"Okay." I took a long, deep breath. "How long can I stay?"
"How long? Well...It depends on how much you've saved up."
I said right away, "All summer."
I heard her laugh hilariously on her end of the line. "My lord,
Steven! You mean three *months*?"
"How much money do I need?" When she told me, I thought my legs
would give out. I said gloomily, "I don't have that much. I have the
time, but I don't --" I stopped, so disappointed that I thought I'd
crack up like a little baby, and she must have heard it in my voice.
She said forgivingly, "Oh, hon, I know--I just know you couldn't
possibly have that much saved up, and I can't get very much time off
for you, I work all summer. But..." I heard her sigh irritably. "Oh,
don't make this so difficult for me."
I asked, "Two months?"
"Well, I...Steven. Are you sure you have that much in the bank?
I mean, two people can't eat cheaper than one."
"I have that much." It was a white lie, maybe a slightly gray
lie, but I was desperate.
She said slowly, "Are you telling me just a tiny, tiny lie?"
I offered again, "Seven weeks."
She teased, "Now, Steven...?"
I waited. Why not all summer? I might even be able to get a job
up there part time and help her with the rent. Anything! Anything to
get out of Memphis.
She said, "Steven, if you really do have enough saved up for two
months, and if we can get your folks to go along..."
"They'll go along."
"Well...You know, I told my girlfriend Ronnie downstairs that she
might have to watch out for you for a couple of weeks on days when I'm
at work. I didn't tell her it would be for..."
I waited again. I heard her shuffling around at the other end of
the line. Finally, she said, "Okay. Two months." Then she said,
"But you have to promise me you have enough saved."
"Okay."
"Don't say okay if you don't--"
"Okay. Okay. Okay."
Getting to New York required planning, and some tricky politics
with Tony. At first he refused to allow me to spend my money on the
trip. He grumbled, "If that friend of yours wants to see you so much,
why don't she come home and visit her own folks, and you -- with her
own money? And what the hell are you gonna do up there for two
months?"
Despondent, I called Martha a few days later and explained the
problem.
She was disappointed. "I see you two still have problems getting
along," she said over the phone. "I wish I'd known about that. But
don't get into total warfare with him. From what you're saying, I
think you really need to be away from those problems for a while.
Don't worry, just be patient. We'll find a way."
I was so angered at Tony's refusal to let me at my own money that
I sat at my desk one evening and wrote a long list of the many things
I hated about him, citing a detailed history of his "criminal" acts
against me. It was a scathing document that I hid in my desk.
Unfortunately, I was dumb enough to not destroy it after venting
my spleen. My mother found my invective while cleaning my room.
One day when I came home from school she entered my room wearing a
darkly reproachful look and sat with me on my bed. We had our very
first -- and last -- long, intimate chat together.
She urged me to be more understanding of Tony. He didn't really
hate me. He grew up in a large and very poor Italian family in a
poverty zone in Memphis and literally had to fight his brothers and
sisters for food. He worked long and hard, he moved us out of the
housing project, and he sacrificed his own needs to pay my tuition at
Christian Brothers instead of sending me to a public school with
inferior academic and social standards.
Then she told me the truth about my own father, Steven senior.
When my dad was in training in 1943 in Tucson, Arizona, he lived
with another woman. He wrote home saying that he wanted a divorce and
that he didn't want to have anything to do with me. When I was 18
months old my Mom and Daddy Joe brought me to Tucson. They urged my
dad to live up to his responsibilities and to wait at least until the
War was over to see if he still wanted to dissolve the marriage. They
reminded him that as a Catholic he was morally bound to try to work
things out. My father relented. He came back to Memphis on his way
to the European front and made Mom pregnant with my sister. Months
later, he wrote a letter the night before his fatal bombing mission,
saying that he feared he was going to die because he had been volun-
teering for too many dangerous assignments in order to complete his
tour more quickly. My mother told me she felt he must have realized
that his behavior had been some sort of death wish, that he did not
want to return to raise his son and daughter.
As she told me this I sat rigid and silent. After she left me
alone in my room, I wept. The model on whom I had based my own
resistance against my stepdad had been destroyed forever. And so had
the trust I'd placed in relatives who had woven the legend of Steven
senior. But this did little to reconcile with me with Tony. I
disliked him as much as I ever did, especially after his refusal to
allow me to visit Martha.
A few days later at breakfast, after Tony left for work, Mom
perked up and said, "Guess what? Tony's gonna let you go to New York.
But you have to promise not to spend every dime you've saved."
I stared at her, surprised and happy and confused. "But why did
he change his mind?"
"Martha Jane called me and we had a talk about how seeing New York
would be good for you. She asked if she could talk to Tony about it,
and I said yes. And then your cousin Rena called here."
"Rena?"
She explained patiently, "Your cousin. Rena. You don't remember
her? She grew up across the street from Josephine Louise. Rena's an
airline stewardess in New York. So Martha Jane called, and then Rena
called. And both of 'em kept tellin' me it would be so much like a
real education for you up there. So...they both called Tony, and on
top of that they had him talk to your friend Brother Edmund at Christ-
ian Brothers, and he thought it would be a good thing for you, and..."
She sighed, winded by her own rambling. "It just seems like everybody
was talkin' to Tony, on and on and such, and so..." She concluded,
breaking into laughter for the first time in many weeks, "Your old
girlfriend and your cousin sweet talked him into it! They really
ganged up on him!"
I thanked her. And for once I was truly thankful for having so
many cousins. I was not crazy about the idea that I was unable to
negotiate with Tony on my own, but I thanked her. I actually gave her
a quick hug. And I did ask myself if her apparent relief was caused
by her desire for Tony and I to have a friendlier relationship. And
when Tony came home that night, I gave him a somewhat more subdued
thanks that included a perfunctory handshake.
But these gestures were the maximum that I was willing to concede
to either parent. The people I wanted to hug and thank even more were
Martha and Brother Edmund and my long forgotten cousin Rena.
I spent the next several weeks working at my three jobs to stash
away more travel money. When the Commercial Appeal held sales
promotions I badgered the people on my news route until some of them
took temporary delivery just to shut me up. And I put in extra time
on the delivery bike, working my tail off after school on weekdays as
well as the usual weekends. And when summer vacation started, I put in
a full 12-hour day at the market, six days a week. On July 4th I
earned an extra forty bucks at a watermelon sale held at one of my
uncle's grocery stores. And I cut some lawns for relatives when I had
the time to spare.
And finally, on Friday, July 5, one day after the rest of the
country celebrated America's independence, I celebrated my own freedom
as my folks drove me to Memphis Municipal Airport to meet my flight to
New York. Accustomed to hiding my feelings, I concealed my nearly
unbearable excitement and anticipation behind a mask of calm and
reticence as my luggage was tagged and loaded at the ticket counter.
Looking bored wasn't all that difficult; in my excitement I had not
slept more than an hour all night, despite sweating all day at the
watermelon sale and getting up at 3 A.M. to help my substitute on the
paper route.
I had not expected the departure committee that met us at the
airport. In those days, an airplane trip to New York was as exotic an
event for my family as a trans-Atlantic cruise. Aunt Frances, Uncle
Johnny, Mama Rose, Josephine Louise, several aunts and uncles, a dozen
cousins and other kin from both the Ricci and Lobianco families had
come to see me off, occupying an entire section of the waiting room.
Aunt Frances had no conception of airline travel. As everyone
chattered and waited, Aunt Frances sat dabbing at her eyes with a
hankie as tears ran down her face. When asked why was crying, she
pointed out the window at one of the airliners parked near the
terminal building.
She sobbed, "Your daddy was killed in one of those!"
Uncle Johnny swore quietly, "Hell, Frances," and spent most of his
time comforting her.
My stepdad said, "You don't look very excited about goin',
Speedy."
My mother laughed and told him, "I know he doesn't look all that
excited, but I bet he is. Look at him; whenever he looks like he's
not thinkin' about anything, it means his mind is goin' a mile a
minute. Just like his Uncle Frank."
I received some liberal kidding about that, along with Josephine
Louise reminding me, "Now, don't you let New York go to your head. I
hear Martha Jane lives in some kind of luxury building up there with a
doorman and everything."
Mother said, "Well, I hope they have a doorman. His cousin Rena
said Martha Jane has one. I hope so, I don't wanna worry about him
gettin' mugged for two months."
Soon it was time to embark. At the boarding gate I had so many
relatives to kiss and hug that Josephine Louise had to remind every-
one, "Stop all this kissing or he'll miss his plane!"
I kissed Aunt Frances, who was still crying. The last person I
hugged and kissed was Josephine Louise. She whispered into my ear,
"Be careful. And don't lose your virtue in the big bad city!" I
grinned at her and thought: if she only knew! Waving a last goodbye,
I slung my borrowed flight bag over my shoulder and headed for the
plane, with Aunt Frances wailing pitifully behind me and Uncle Johnny
grumbling, "Shit, Frances. Cut it out."
I found my window seat, removed and folded the suit jacket I wore,
and loosened my tie. As the prop-driven plane roared off the ground I
wondered how my father felt when his B-24 climbed into the air. But
most of my thoughts were about Martha. Should I let her see me
wearing my glasses? I thought not. I removed them and hid them in my
spectacle wallet. I worried about the few brownish adolescent pimples
that I'd tried for two weeks to eradicate. Maybe she wouldn't notice.
After a while the pilot announced that we were cruising at a few
hundred miles per hour. Hell, I thought, couldn't we go faster? Try
as I might to stay awake, the previous day's hard work and lack of
sleep had me nodding off.
Five long hours later, I was confronted with the unimaginable
bustle of LaGuardia Airport. I walked out of the airplane and across
the short length of tarmac, and past the arrival gates into a huge,
crowded, pandemonious lobby. I craned my neck in all directions
searching for Martha. How would I ever find her in a crowd like this?
I considered putting on my eyeglasses, but I didn't want Martha to see
them.
She was standing on the ledge of one of the panoramic viewing win-
dows, her head several inches above the crowd. When I spotted her
she'd just caught sight of me and was beaming at me and waving both
arms. When our eyes met, she yelled "Steven! Stay there!" She
hopped to the floor, disappearing into a roiling ocean of heads and
shoulders and elbows.
Then she was walking toward me with outstretched arms. Her auburn
hair was pinned back, her face stretched with a wide, elated smile.
She wore a white, starched, open collared blouse, a dark red pleated
skirt, and matching heels. She looked as fresh and clean as new snow.
And her hazel eyes, bright, electric, eager and happy, had me in a
state of instant nuclear meltdown. Almost knocking me down, she
hugged me fiercely and squealed, "I'm so happy to *see* you!"
My eyes moistened.
Breaking our furious clinch with a cheerful grunt, she held me at
arms length and looked me over. "None of that, young man! That's no
way to start a vacation -- save all that until you find yourself on
your way back to Memphis! Stop, now, you'll make me cry, too! Oh, I
knew you'd do this to me!" She hugged me again, really hard, and then
held me at arm's length again. "Now stop it, let me see you. Stand
still. *LOOK* at you! And look at those shoulders! Steven, you're
gorgeous!"
Regaining my composure, I placed my hands around her slim, belted
waist. I said, "A few hours a week at Liberty Cash Grocery Number 23
was all it took."
"Well!" she said, robustly pulling me against her, "You forget all
about that. You're on vacation, hon." She gave me a loud smooch on
one cheek. "No delivery bikes here. Just noise and buildings and --"
she chuckled -- "trash and muggers and psychopaths. Oh, my, look at
you! I can't get over this!"
She hustled me into the baggage area. "This is the New York art
of waiting for your luggage," she announced sarcastically. "No matter
what you do or where you go in New York, expect a waiting line." We
waited for my bags to appear, and she asked me what they looked like
and she asked me if I had my wallet pocket button closed tight, and
she warned me about pickpockets, and she asked me about folks back
home, and between each snatch of hurried conversation she would hug me
or squeeze my hands in hers. After claiming my two suitcases she
rushed me outside so we could take our place in a long, snaking line
of people at the taxi area. "And this is the art," she announced, "of
waiting for a taxi back to town."
"We're not in the city yet?" I asked, overpowered by the sight of
so many people and so many cars and so much noise and movement.
"You're in Queens, Steven. Queens is populated by cousins.
Everyone who lives in New York has a cousin in Queens." While we
waited, she pointed at everything and explained what was going on. I
stood gaping.
As we climbed inside a taxi she cautioned me, "Grab anything you
can, and hold on tight."
Before I knew it, doors slammed shut around us and I was com-
pressed against the back seat as our taxi screeched away with neck
wrenching speed and soared down the exit drive.
"This is a New York City taxi," she explained, lurching about in
the seat beside me. "Hold onto that strap over the door before you
fly through a window. The first thing a New York taxi driver learns
is to maintain a certain state of rage to help cut through traffic."
We zoomed through so many exits and around so many curves that I
lost all sense of direction. Soon, far ahead of us, I saw a long line
of massive skyscrapers that stretched for miles across the horizon.
The city. Manhattan. I stared at it. I listened to it. I gasped.
Martha was pointing. "That's the Chrysler Building, the slender
one with the art deco, scallop-like stuff on top. And that's the
Empire State Building, the one with the tall antenna. And all that
along the end, on the left, is the Village and the Bowery and Wall
Street...And you see that dark brown steeple straight ahead? The one
that's in the middle of that big cluster of buildings, directly ahead
of us? That's St. Patrick's."
My eyes and brain reeled. The city and the careening taxi was one
thing, but Martha was yet another. Her profile and her softly parted
lipsticked lips captivated me. After she pointed out the skyline she
relaxed into the seat and smiled warmly at me. With a supreme effort,
I talked myself out of leaping onto her.
She asked, "Wanna go grocery shopping with me? I had no idea what
to get for food, so I waited until you got here. All I have in my
frig is some cottage cheese that died."
I stared at her.
She said, "You changed. And yet you didn't."
"You changed," I said, mesmerized. "For the better."
She laughed. "Wait until you find out what a total neurotic New
York has made me. When we get home I'll take you to the supermarket.
You'll get your first lesson in coping with multiple nervous
breakdowns."
The taxi crossed the East River at the 59th Street Bridge, zig-
zagged for dozens of blocks up Third Avenue, then jerked and bumped
its way for a couple of blocks down another narrow street lined with
apartments. Then the driver came to a lurching halt in front of a
building that indeed looked like a one hundred year old tenement.
But it was clean and seemed recently painted in brown, four stories
high with a fa ade of eight windows at each level, and it was on a
neat but old and congested block of East 87th. Martha paid the driver
and told him to keep the change.
We stood on the sidewalk and she saw me looking confusedly at the
building.
She asked, "Looking for the doorman?"
I guessed aloud, "It doesn't have one."
She smirked, reaching down to grab a piece of luggage. "You have
no idea, the lies that were told to get you here."
As we rushed to gather our luggage on the sidewalk, she spouted a
constant stream of instructions and explanations.
"You MUST learn to tip while you're here," she said, grabbing a
suitcase. "Tipping is part art, part inexact science. It all depends
on whether you liked the service. If you do, you give a good tip. If
not, be stingy. Either way, you get a drop-dead look, no matter how
much you tip. If you don't tip at all you might get shot, but at the
very least you'll hear cursing in many exotic languages. Here are the
keys to this place...I made copies for you. There's the main key to
the front door, the mail box key, two keys for the two locks on my
apartment door, and a key to the laundry room. If you lose any one of
these keys, you're dead; no one will help you and it's impossible for
anyone except a professional burglar to break in through a window.
Here's the entrance, now, and of course there's never any room in
here, and here's the mailboxes. Here's the intercom -- a real luxury
in an old building like this. You never, NEVER buzz anyone in, unless
they identify themselves over the intercom; when we get upstairs I'll
show you how the buzzer works. This is the first floor, and I live up
there on three. There's no elevator, you have to be an Olympic
climber to get up these stairs. Be careful, now! Don't bang your
luggage against the walls! I know there's no room for your elbows,
but there's never any spare room anywhere in New York, and every noise
you make is recorded in detail by the tenants, and they remember it
for MONTHS! This is the second floor, this is where Ronnie has her
apartment in 2C, but she won't be home until later tonight and she
wants to meet you. Don't let her frighten you, she's just another,
typical, hard pressed, totally insane New Yorker. The guy next to her
looks really nice and is very quiet, but Ronnie insists he's the Mad
Bomber on weekends...I guess you heard about the Mad Bomber? They
finally arrested him. Now, here's the third floor, and we make a hard
right, all the way to the end of the hall -- god, this suitcase is
heavy, what'd you pack in here? -- and this is my gorgeous penthouse
apartment, right here, number 3C, right above Ronnie's place. And
here's the key for the bottom lock...there, and here's the key for the
top lock... and, if you don't mind the awful squeak in the door...
here's my humble cave."
We shoved my luggage inside and she closed the door behind us. We
were both out of breath.
I asked, "Why are we rushing all the time?"
"Everybody rushes in New York."
"But why?"
"Nobody knows." She stepped into the middle of the tiny living
room. "This is the living room. The toilet's over there, that's a
closet over there. The bedroom is the same size as the living room,
which means no room, period. This is the -- ahem -- dining alcove,
Steven. Isn't that marvelous? I have my own dining alcove, just
barely enough for one table and two people. And that's the kitchen,
and that atrocity over there with the plastic drape across the front
of it is the shower." She took a deep breath and paused with her
hands on her hips. "Whew! There! The full tour. The place is so
small, you don't even have to walk around to see it all."
"Well," I uttered, my brain swarming with instructions and infor-
mation. "It is small. But it's cute. I hope I don't get in your
way."
"You will," she said, heading straightaway for a small cupboard
door in the kitchen wall, "there's no avoiding it. But we're used to
each other, so it won't matter. Now...here's a couple of paper
shopping bags from Macy's. Protect these shopping bags with your
life! You cannot SURVIVE in Manhattan without good shopping bags, and
what Manhattan is mainly about is not the enjoyment of life, it's
about surviving. Most of the bags you get are so shoddy they fall to
pieces immediately. There's no more heartrending sight than a New
Yorker stuck on the street in the rain with a ripped shopping bag,
standing there sobbing while their whole life gets strewn on the
sidewalk. Oh -- Steven, aren't you going to give your Mom a call?"
I shrugged. "Whenever we get to it."
"What?" she said, scowling at me. "Hon, what do you mean? You
aren't going to call home?"
"They never worry about me."
"Of course they do. And remember we promised we'd call her twice
a week, every week. So call her. The phone's over there."
Halfheartedly, I got an operator and made the call to my Mom in
Memphis. While I talked, Martha gathered and folded a couple of
shopping bags, frowning at me now and then. When I finally hung up,
she said, "Steven, what a tacky way to treat your folks. You know,
they didn't have to let you visit me."
"Okay, I called them and said thanks again, and...there."
"Well, I see we're going to have a little talk about this...Oh,
forget it, you handle it the way you want to. We have to get going
anyway, so...here, take these --" she handed me two shopping bags and
gave me a quick kiss on the cheek -- "and here are my keys, and here's
my purse...and let's go before the Friday rush hits the market."
The supermarket was five blocks away on Third Avenue. I had
difficulty keeping up with her as she strode quickly down the street.
I asked again, "Why are we in such a hurry?"
She said, "Because. You get trampled if you don't stay ahead of
traffic." I said, "But there isn't any traffic," and she laughed and
said, "Don't worry -- the minute you slow down, they catch up with
you."
The supermarket was well stocked but unbearably cramped. The few
shoppers who were there spent most of their time trying to avoid
collisions with each other. Like an experienced bird dog, Martha
wheeled our cart quickly from aisle to narrow aisle and introduced me
to packaged foods I'd never seen in Memphis -- all of it stacked
around us from floor to ceiling with hardly a spare inch of open space
anywhere.
"Always check the eggs," she cautioned as she opened an egg
carton. "Check every single one of them. The stock boys handle them
as if they thought eggs were made of stainless steel." She found two
broken eggs in that carton and went through four others before she was
satisfied. Then she rushed into the short cashier's line, then we
rushed out of the store, and rushed back to her block, rushed up the
stairs, rushed into her apartment, and rushed to put away the
groceries.
"There!" she proclaimed at last. "Now we can relax!"
We stood in the tiny kitchen, with me surveying the tiny room
quickly to see where everything was placed.
"Well," she sighed with a tired little smile. "What do you think
of it?"
I gazed at her. She gazed at me. There she stood, five-foot-
five, looking elegant, sophisticated, grownup and lovely. The pretty
teenage gal who once felt ugly next to her older sister now made her
sister Evelyn look dumpy. I gathered the courage to ask, "Can I kiss
you hello?"
"Do," she said.
I touched her waist and bent to give her a shy, tentative kiss.
Suddenly we embraced. I kissed her -- actually kissed her, full
mouthed and deeply -- a shattering development, considering that
Martha and I had romantically kissed in that way on only two occasions
during our entire relationship.
At the end of it she seemed taken by surprise. She stepped back
from me, her eyes shifting rapidly as she searched my face, and she
began, "Steven, we--." She began again, "We don't--" She stopped.
Her eyes were eager, but I also saw apprehension, misgiving. But then
she took my hand and said, "Follow me." She led me from the kitchen.
In her bedroom she immediately drew the window drapes closed,
kicked off her loafers, and reached behind her back and started un-
buttoning her dress. She worked efficiently, neat with her clothes
and saying nothing, glancing at me now and then, expressionless
except for a hint of wariness in her eyes, and I moved clumsily in the
unfamiliar, dim room. Naked, looking smoother and more fit than ever,
she turned down the bedspread and walked toward me as I slid my
underwear down my thighs. Watching her undress had already made me
hard. Standing, we held each other warmly. Martha pressed her torso
to mine. I skimmed my lips over her smooth shoulders. She pulled
away and looked at me and ran her hands slowly over every part of me.
She breathed, "Look at you. Look at how you grew. So smooth...
and...You're beautiful, Steven."
"Sorry I didn't grow taller."
"I don't care about that. And look..." Her voice fell to a
whisper. Looking down, she carefully wrapped her fingers around my
erection. I placed my fingers around both of her soft, pale, abso-
lutely lovely nipples. She looked down at her fingers around my cock,
half of me enclosed and another four inches or so extending beyond her
hand. She whispered, "Steven. You did change."
I had often visualized our reunion as prolonged and tender, a
heavenly chorus lolling in the background as we tenderly relearned
each other. But now, overwhelmed, I immediately urged her toward the
bed. In one smooth motion she backed up against the foot of the bed,
sat, slid herself backward onto the bed and then reclined, opening her
legs. I lay on her and she raised her knees to accept me. I kissed
her neck, my lips hot on the sleek skin that was salty and humid with
summer sweat, and my blind cock found her portal and the nerves along
the back of my neck bristled when I found she was wet and I saw her
staring up at me, her expression anxious and passionate. I slowly
entered, parting her ready and welcoming outer lips, flexing in her,
feeling the warm tight depth of her. She sighed, her lips parting.
Her cunt hugged me. I pulled out a little and then we both sighed
together as I slowly reentered. She was snug and slick and had
already started clenching. She wrapped her legs around mine. I
entered more deeply. Immediately, my mind burst with amazement and
pleasure at the astounding results of the past two years of my physi-
cal development: my cock was incredibly firm, filling her totally, and
for the first time I felt my tip nudge against the nubby, squirming
mouth of her womb. Electrified, my balls readily began a familiar,
irresistible churning.
Below me, I saw in her eyes the same sense of surprise at the new
sensations.
She whispered, "God, Steven."
I panted, "I don't think I'll last long."
She gasped, "I won't either!" She watched my face while I fucked
her with long, deep probes, her eyes staring and her mouth forming the
words "So deep," but six or seven strokes into the marvelous new
pleasures inside her were all I could take. I slowed, feeling it well
up in me and trying to slow it. But her mouth fell open and her eyes
fogged and closed and she stiffened and started cumming. Her orgasm
had me cumming seconds later. I simmered and then gushed profusely
and warmly inside her as her contractions swathed the underside of my
throbbing shaft. I thought: yes! This is how it should feel. I
moaned, feeling her cervix suck my tip. We both climaxed for a long
time with her cunt happily convulsing and my cock riding slickly in
thick cum, my own flow surprising me, and I groaned roughly and heard
her whimper. When it ended I nestled my face into her neck. We lay
resting for a long while.
PART 10B:
I lay on my side with Martha spooned behind me. Gazing out the
small window that overlooked East 87th Street, I gradually returned to
earth. I was startled at how quickly and completely I had fucked and
climaxed. In trying to recall each detail of the past few moments, I
felt I'd lost all control and all awareness; the whole event seemed
blurred.
Martha slid a hand down my arm and up again, as if learning anew
the textures her fingers found there.
She said softly, "I missed cumming like that."
"I'm surprised I remembered what to do," I whispered. I wiped
sweat from my brow, beginning to notice how humid her apartment was.
I said apologetically, "I, uh...I got a little carried away."
She said, smiling to herself, "I did too." She sighed, tired
but content, and smoothed back her short, nearly blonde hair. "I hate
to say this, but...there's no rest for the weary..."
"Oh, no. What next?"
"We have to grab a little snack. Some of that weird tea we bought
at the store should perk us up. Then I'll show you where to put your
clothes and things, and we'll dress and meet Ronnie at the Stage Deli
when she gets off work. We'd better shower -- Ronnie has radar in her
nose and can smell sex a mile away."
Martha sat up beside me, and then suddenly uttered a surprised
"Oh." Quickly she yanked a tissue from the box on the little table
beside her. She held the kleenex between her legs and whispered,
"Hon, you're...getting very healthy." With one hand pressing the
tissue to her pussy she headed for the bathroom. I lay in bed and
heard water running and Martha working furiously behind the closed
door.
After she completed her toilet in the tiny bathroom, I joined her
in the cramped shower stall in the kitchen. Under the thin warm spray
we stood toe to toe, nipple to nipple, with no room to spare. As if
studying a lab specimen, she quickly scanned the face and body she had
not seen in two years. She ran her fingers through my hair. "You
have yellow highlights," she mused. "It looks very good on you. But
while you're here I'll have to teach you how to get the right kind of
haircut. Whoever cuts your hair in Memphis has no idea what they're
doing." She scowled at a mark on my lower cheek. "What's this scar?"
I told her it was a boil that had been lanced a few months ago.
"Wonderful," she muttered dryly. "Any doctor who lances a facial
boil that way would be better off in a butcher shop. Don't ever let
anyone do that to you again."
She held my face and kissed my nose. "You've been having a hard
time down there, haven't you? But you're still you..." She draped
her arms around my shoulders. "If only everyone in New York were so
easy to get along with." She kissed my nose again. She looked at
me. I looked at her. Again, she kissed my nose. Her hands cradled
my face. With water splashing and gurgling around us, she simply
looked at my face for a moment, her eyes searching mine.
Abruptly she closed her eyes, leaning against me with her forehead
pressed to my chin and her hands loosely atop my shoulders. She took
a deep breath. She swallowed hard and said, "Steven...I'm not used to
this."
"I'm not either," I said, and I stroked her temple and kissed her
ear.
She went on hesitantly, "I'm not used to...having people around
like this."
"I'm not either."
"I mean, you'll find out things...about me--" She stopped and
took another impatient breath and said, "Remember--you promised to be
my friend."
"Sure I did."
"All right," she said quietly. She leaned more closely into me,
her forehead moving down to my chest, and she looked down my torso.
I brushed away water that cascaded from my wet hair. The next thing I
knew, she placed her palms against my hips, her fingers pointing down,
and while water splashed onto her back she slid her palms down my
thighs and up again. "I mean...I didn't expect this. We have to be
careful."
I put my hands on her shoulders. "Careful?"
She raised her head and stepped back and grabbed the bar of soap
from the little holder on the shower wall. She said mysteriously,
watching her hands lather the soap, "Never mind. We have a lot to
talk about. There's no time right now."
More water ran down my face and I wiped it away, saying behind my
hands, "I hope this isn't going to be as complicated as it sounds."
"It is very complicated," she said, her eyes level with mine for
a few seconds. "Needless to say, I'm very impressed by--" She
stopped, and she put the soap onto its little dish. She began briskly
swabbing my chest. "We *must* control ourselves, now. We have a lot
to do and I want us bright-eyed and bushy-tailed so you can meet
Ronnie."
She looked at me again and seemed ready to say something. In-
stead, she planted a loud smack on my forehead and continued bathing.
We finished our shower, and while we dried and dressed Martha grew
quiet and subdued, as if preoccupied.
We speedily finished our chores, with Martha going over the
schedule for the weekend and the week ahead. She could not get the
entire week off; she had meetings Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. But
she would leave the office early, by four o'clock. I'd be on my own
those three days until she returned. She told me about her neighbors
in the four story building so that I'd know who they were and so they
wouldn't think I'd broken into the building if they saw me in the
stairway. Then there was a mind boggling series of details about her
part of town and how to get around the city. She gave me subway and
bus maps, a tourist guide, and a couple of magazines about New York.
She had tickets for "West Side Story" on Monday night, reservations
for Ronnie and us on another night, tickets for an off-Broadway play,
tickets for a lecture at Columbia, and there was a staff cocktail
party coming up...
"And I want to show you places where you can shop for clothes,"
she told me as she cleaned the teacups in the little sink. "And I
want to take you to the United Nations, and to Columbia to meet some
people I work with, and the Museum of Modern Art, and Fire
Island. The Museum's a favorite hangout. And Fire Island...well,
that'll be very special, that's a full day's trip. And then there's
a beatnik joint in the East Village..."
Just before five, we left for midtown Manhattan to meet Ronnie at
the Stage Deli.
The food at the restaurant was a revelation. I chomped into the
corn beef sandwich as if my life depended on that one dish.
"Good?" she asked, amused.
"Delicious!" I growled, my mouth stuffed.
She flicked her cigarette's tip on the corner of her ash tray.
"Bet you never had corned beef like that in Memphis."
"Memphis?" I asked. "They serve corned beef out of a can."
"Don't eat yourself into a coma. We still haven't ordered the
cheesecake, and Ronnie will be here any minute."
Overcome with gustatory delight, I pushed my plate away so I could
pause and catch my breath. Unconsciously, I reached into my shirt
pocket and withdrew a cigarette, which I lit without even thinking
about it.
"What are you doing?" Martha asked, taken aback. "Steven. I
don't believe it. When did you start that?"
"I dunno. Long time ago."
She frowned reprovingly, then she smirked. "Well, I'm not going
to sit here with a cigarette in my hand and preach, but I see you're
still full of surprises. I hope you don't chain smoke. Ronnie chain
smokes now and then, and I can't stand it."
"I have it under control," I lied.
"Do something for me."
"What?"
"See that sign, the big blue menu sign they have posted on that
big mirror over there? By the restroom door on the other side of the
room?"
"Yeah."
"Tell me what it says."
I squinted at the sign. I could tell from my side of the room
that the hand lettered writing was oversized, but I couldn't decipher
the first item in the list. "I think it says, uh...stew. Oyster
stew."
"Why aren't you wearing your glasses?" she asked, her face
hardening with mild impatience.
"How'd you know I wore glasses? Did my mother tell on me?"
"In your suitcase you had a case with your glasses in it. Why
aren't you wearing them?"
"Well...they're just reading glasses."
She took a fast puff off her cigarette and exhaled quickly,
leveling her eyes at me. "The lenses are too thick to be reading
glasses. And you squint at everything, even when we're just walking
down the street. Why don't you wear your glasses?"
"Oh..." I started casually. Her insistence was unsettling. I
wished she hadn't seen them in my luggage. Absently, I groped at a
pimple on the side of my face.
"Steven, don't do that. Leave your face alone." She flicked her
ashes again. Then she gave an exasperated little laugh and shook her
head. "Oh, listen to me nag. I'm sorry, Steven, don't let me nag at
you like that. But this is so unlike you."
"I know," I said, shifting uneasily in my seat.
"Are you lying to me about those glasses? Was that one of those
tiny, itsy-bitsy, teeny white lies?"
"Yes."
"Please don't do that." Her eyes looked past me and she straight-
ned in her seat and smiled. "Hold onto your hat. Here comes
Ronnie."
Ronnie, entering hurriedly in a gray business suit and carrying a
purse and a pharmacy shopping bag on one arm, appeared with a loud
clicking of high heels and headed for the chair between Martha and
me. "Oh, good!" she said breathlessly, "A chair! Oh, god. Feet,
just a few more steps, you can make it. Hello, people, hellohello.
Oh, please, please let me sit!" She hastily flung her suit jacket
over the back of the chair and sat slowly, with a prolonged wince.
"Aaaaah! Oh, god. Don't look under the table, Martha. It's just me,
slipping my shoes off." She was a young brunette, about Martha's size
and age, her medium-length, black hair combed back in loose, fluffy
waves. "And this -- this must be Steven."
"Ronnie," Martha said, "meet Steven."
"Steven. Yes." She smiled broadly and shyly. "Yesyesyes." She
bent toward me earnestly and placed her hand on my arm. Small mouthed
and with a slender, somewhat pointed nose, she had dark, sapphire blue
eyes. "Not to worry, Steven, I'm recovering from a week at work that
I would like to forget for the rest of my life. Ignore. Do what you
were doing."
Martha said, "Steven, if you haven't guessed, this is Ronnie."
"Hi, Steven. Ronnie." She grinned and extended her slender hand
across the table. I gave her a brief handshake that she returned
with a quick, warm clasp, and she turned to glance around. "Oh,
Where's that waiter I always get in here, what's his name? Marco? Is
he around? I am desperate for coffee. Desperate."
Ronnie waved a waiter to our table. She ordered coffee. "Black,"
she said. "And that white wine and vermouth thing you guys make here,
know what I mean, Marco? Just fill the glass with ice cold wine, and
then *lean* near the glass, you know? With your lips just a few
inches away? And whisper 'Vermouth'. Whisper, now."
The hefty, bull necked waiter rolled his eyes and nodded and said
wryly, "Yeah, yeah. I'm hangin' on every word. What else?"
"A hot pastrami with cole slaw. And coffee. Black."
The waiter scribbled on his order pad. "Right."
"If the coffee's left over from this morning, even better."
The waiter shrugged. He said sarcastically, "We might not be able
to locate the one cup we were savin' just for Madame."
Ronnie smiled at him familiarly. "Whatever's on hand."
"Anything else?"
"That'll do for a start."
The guy said dryly, "Whatever madam wishes." He left quickly to
take an order at another table as Ronnie said dryly, "Oh, Marco.
You're such a doll."
We chatted. Ronnie chain-smoked and did most of the talking.
Martha asked Ronnie about Ronnie's date with a guy named Harvey, whom
Ronnie met at a party recently. "Harvey? Right. I need Harvey like
I need breast cancer. What a jerk. He takes me to this AWFUL movie
with Pat Boone, something called 'Bernadine' or whatever. Steven, can
you imagine Pat Boone and a bunch of forty year old phonies playing
people your age? Oh, Steven, please, don't get upset, I'm not talking
years, I'm talking a case of arrested mental development. And this
silly plot about a sugar-sweet telephone operator? Come on. And
Harvey RAVES about it -- 'Better than Gone With the Wind!' he says.
Then he gets the idea I'm having such a great time, and he's such an
attractive moose, he wants to go someplace where we can be alo-o-one.
Hey, won't he even let me finish my popcorn? Come on, he says, we're
two adults. I said, no, Harrv, we're NOT two adults. We're one adult
named Ronnie, and one JERK!"
At dessert time, Ronnie warned me that it was illegal to remain in
New York without having a huge slice of the deli's homemade cheese-
cake. The three of us indulged in servings of the cloying stuff,
thick with sour cream and cream cheese on a bed of crunchy vanilla
wafer crust. Martha ate sparingly, finishing only half her slice,
while Ronnie and I groaned with each bite. I finished Martha's
helping after my own.
By that time, Ronnie's fourth wine had begun its work. "Get
Steven an egg cream, Martha!", Ronnie playfully demanded. "Steven,
you'll love this. Egg creams. I can't even LOOK at them, I get one
after another until I burp foam."
I ordered an egg cream and while I enjoyed it, Ronnie watched
merrily and started giggling at everything in sight.
Martha enjoined her delicately, "Ronnie...maybe you should have
egg creams instead of those wine things."
"Martha, don't get me started. They're addictive and fattening.
Steven -- Steven, look at this woman. My friend Martha. I'd kill for
the dates she turns down. And she turns down everybody, for godssake.
Can you believe this? She has all the gifts, and dates only twice a
year. Look. Isn't she gorgeous? A Georgia peach, right? Or a Tenn-
essee peach, or whatever. And so-o-o sweet and smart. I'm so glad I
met her, but every time I look at her I say this little prayer: 'God?
Why all to her, and so little to me?'"
After we had been there for over two hours, Ronnie went to the
rest room for the second time. While she was gone, Martha began
gathering Ronnie's things and called for the waiter to empty the ash
tray, which Ronnie had filled three times with crushed Pall Malls.
Martha said apologetically, "Ronnie isn't always like this. I
think this guy Harvey pushed some buttons. I wish she'd never met
him. I'm sorry I brought him up."
"Maybe she's had too many Harvey's, instead of too many wines."
"That's very insightful, Steven. You happen to be correct." She
threw a concerned glance toward the lady's room. "Please help me get
her out of here when she comes back. Don't force it; she hates to be
ordered around. But it's time she had a nice long nap."
After another half hour, Ronnie caught the gist of Martha's many
hints and asked us to walk her home. On the sidewalk she tottered on
her high heels before leaning on Martha for support. It was all
pretty clumsy, with Ronnie leaning on Martha and Martha and I needing
three hands to guide her and hold her purse and the little shopping
bag at the same time. After a couple of blocks, she leaned on me as
we walked.
"Steven," Ronnie said, patting my back, "you're a nice guy,
y'know? Nice. Quiet. Polite. All that easygoing, down home
politeness...and all that..." She yawned, and leaned her head on my
shoulder. "Oh, Steven. Martha. I'm afraid I'm tipsy. Helluva way
to meet somebody, huh?" She giggled. "I promise, you met me at what
is euphemistically called a 'bad moment'." Again she leaned her head
on my shoulder, with one arm around my waist and the other around
Martha as we walked down East 87th. "Mmmmm, Martha... no wonder you
two are such buddies. He has such a nice feel to him, doesn't he?
He just seems to...you know...fit. Something cozy...good leaning
material. Y'know?"
I blushed. Martha watched warily to ensure that Ronnie didn't
stumble and bring all of us to the ground. I gave Martha a wink, to
let her know I felt I could manage. Even as she lurched against my
shoulder, Ronnie had a lightness about her physically that matched her
delicate laugh and voice. Her compliments had me wondering how much
she knew about me and Martha.
A few people passed us on the street, staring but moving on.
Ronnie began mumbling crankily with her head on my shoulder. "That
was Harry. He was *all* shoulders. Shoulders. No brains, no heart,
no-- " She yawned again. "All shoulders and cold hard cash."
Martha said, "Ronnie? You're babbling."
She murmured, "Oh, yeah." She snuggled against Martha's shoulder
as she lurched between us. "Sorry."
Half a block later, Ronnie had moved her head back to my shoulder
and fell silent and seemed to drift off.
Martha prompted Ronnie sardonically as we stopped at the stairs
leading to the front door of her building, "Hey, you. Do we have to
carry you up the stairs?"
Ronnie blinked awake, blushing. "Omigod. I guess I went far, far
away. Far away." She looked up at the building, smiling groggily.
We helped her up the front steps of the building, and she com-
plained, "I'm okay, I'm okay. I can get up there. Lemme get my keys.
You just keep me up here, Martha, Steven...I'll get my key."
Martha sighed irritably while Ronnie leaned against her and
fumbled for her keys in her purse. Martha glanced at me, and I just
smiled back.
Ronnie mumbled, "Got it, got it." Opening the heavy front door
with her own key, Ronnie held the door open with her foot and replaced
her key, smiling with hair falling over her eyes. "See? Did it. I'm
not that bad, right? Did it." She plopped the keys into her purse
and then tried to stand up straight, seeming to make an effort at
composing herself. I kept my arm around her waist. She glanced at
me, her blue eyes looking afraid and sorry and she looked ahead, into
the building. She seemed suddenly aware of where she was and what she
was doing. Her voice dropped as she looked away from me. She said,
"I'm sorry. Martha? Steven, I'm sorry. I'm embarrassing you. I'm
really sorry."
Martha said gently, "It's okay, hon. Come on, go on in."
She smiled weakly at Martha. "You're mad at me again. Right?"
Martha touched Ronnie's arm and whispered, "It's all right. Come
on."
Ronnie mumbled, "You were right about Steven. He's such a honey.
So patient." She gave my arm a squeeze and braced herself up again.
She said, "Okay, I'll get up there. On my own, now. Okay?"
After a small battle with the tightly-sprung main door, she
started upstairs with her high heels in one hand. We watched as she
dragged herself up to the second floor and we heard her bumping
around. Finally we heard her apartment door close. Martha sighed a
big sigh of relief, saying, "I'm so sorry, hon."
I shrugged, "Ah, it's okay."
"She's been so unpredictable. I don't seem able to handle her
anymore."
I insisted, "But it's okay! I've been around relatives who were
her type before."
Martha said, "Oh, no. You've never been around her type. Not
like her." She looked at me, about to say something, then changed her
mind. "Well, I'll...tell you later. Come on, let's go somewhere."
She led me back onto the sidewalk and started walking toward First
Avenue.
"It's early," Martha said. "Wanna take a walk? I'll show you the
East River. C'mon, we can talk."
Martha told me that Harvey was one of a long line of disastrous
dates for Ronnie. I asked why Ronnie seemed to think of herself as
unattractive and told her I thought Ronnie was pretty. Martha said
"It's not that she feels physically unattractive so much as thinking
that there's something emotionally and sexually unattractive." A few
years earlier, Ronnie lived with a heavy drinker who battered her, and
the longer they stayed together the worse the man treated her and the
worse Ronnie felt about herself. That relationship was followed by a
similar, though less violent, one. Ronnie blamed herself, feeling
things would have been different if she had been more attractive and
sexually competent.
"I've tried again and again to tell her that her focus is only on
her imagined shortcomings, and that she deserves better," Martha
said, as we strolled downtown on First Avenue. "Ronnie's pretty. And
talented and sensitive, and --" She stopped, and she put her arm in
mine. "Oh, I'll tell you later. It's a very long story, and we don't
need all that now. Let's just...let's head down to the 70's and I'll
show you a nice place to take a walk in Manhattan."
We strolled the East 70's and then along a promenade beside the
East River. The night was clear and starry. A strong breeze ruffled
our hair as we walked along the loudly whispering river, the muffled
roar of the city blocked by buildings bounding the promenade. We
began a long stroll back uptown, toward her street in the 80's.
Martha asked about Memphis, sending us both into a long remini-
scence of how we had grown up. We recalled the housing project and
the people she'd known and how they had changed or dropped out of
sight. She mentioned her memories and her longings and how her work
had replaced what had been missing in her early years.
"I could never explain to myself how I grew up to be so disci-
plined and so proper," she said, "and yet there was such a wicked side
to me. You're the only one who knows about that. Do you realize
that? Not even my few boyfriends knew about that. You're the only
one who knows that about me. And Ronnie does, I suppose."
She had talked openly and frankly for over half an hour. Now she
stopped and looked at me, saying plaintively, "Steven, you haven't
told me much about yourself."
"Nothing to tell," I replied, looking out at the swift, gurgling
river.
She said flatly, "I won't accept that."
I shrugged, a gesture that made her frown. She placed a hand on
my arm and squeezed. "You spent almost three hours with me and Ronnie
and hardly said anything."
I dodged her question with an apologetic grin. "I was just trying
to get used to all this. Everything's so new, so different. And I'm
...shy."
"No. There's a difference between being a shy young man and just
hiding out. I saw it and felt it. You were tense and sometimes you
wouldn't even let yourself laugh with Ronnie and me. I meet shy
people your age all the time...the ones who hide and hold back the way
you do are the frightened ones. They're depressed. Angry." She
looked at my eyes, her own eyes gentle. "After all the work I did on
you in Memphis...You changed a lot. But some things didn't change."
I didn't respond. For one thing, I didn't even know where to
begin. All I could do was shrug, and wince, and shuffle my feet
uncomfortably.
Martha straightened up and said firmly, "I'm not gonna let you get
away with that. Come on."
"Where are we going?"
"Let's go get some goodies."
We walked to a liquor store a few blocks away on East 86th. In-
side the store, Martha tapped into my interest in detail by giving me
a quick education in wines and the basic wine types and varieties. I
already knew something about it through my family's involvement in the
liquor business, but this New York store carried wines I'd never heard
of in Memphis.
The change of subject lightened my mood and made me feel, for the
time being, that I'd successfully avoided her interrogation of me.
Martha was shocked to hear that few members of my huge Italian family
served wine at meals when youngsters were present. I told her I
didn't even know about Italian foods like cannoli or gnocchi; the
menus posted on the doors of New York restaurants we passed listed
Italian dishes I never heard of. She told me, "You're going to learn
so much in New York. I can't wait to see your reaction when we go to
Little Italy." She suggested that, if I could afford it, we could buy
three representative wines and sample each during the week ahead.
"Most of this stuff is never imported into Memphis. And on the
way home we can stop at this fabulous cheese place. An entire store
filled with cheese."
When I told her I liked the idea, she bent close to my ear and
said in a hushed whisper, "Give me the money for the wine, and wait
outside. I forgot, you're not old enough to be in here, but I don't
think anyone noticed yet. You look older in your coat and tie and
they probably won't even check, but we shouldn't push it."
While she made the purchase I waited outside, smoking a cigarette
and watching the human theater that passed on busy 86th Street. New
Yorkers impressed me as energetic, assertive, and streetwise --
totally different from the languorous, dawdling people I knew in
Memphis. Even the teens I saw seemed to possess a savvy and a worldl-
iness that I knew was far ahead of me. Watching them, I felt like the
consummate bumpkin, pimpled, awkward, and slow witted. And Martha,
whom I'd always seen as self assured and knowledgeable, seemed to have
caught up and merged with the best of them.
I wanted to shrink into a doorway and disappear. Surely my
ignorance and clumsiness and all my other failings must be evident to
everyone, including Martha.
On our way back to Martha's we stopped at the cheese shop.
"So how do you like this place?" Martha asked as we entered.
Before me was a wide room that looked like a solid yellow wall of
cheese. Cheese in wrappers, in boxes, on shelves and in roped chunks
hanging from the ceiling. My mouth fell open. "I never saw so much
cheese in my life!"
After leaving the store with a sack of cheeses I never dreamed
existed, I felt giddy and overwhelmed. I stayed close to Martha, fol-
lowing her steps and learning how to dodge oncoming traffic along the
sidewalk.
Beside me, Martha chuckled. "Don't look so intimidated! You'll
get the hang of walking in New York. Just forge ahead."
I gulped. "It's not see easy to see where I'm going when my
eyeballs are falling out of my head."
She pulled me close to her and clasped my arm firmly. She said
earnestly as we hurried toward her block, "You have to get yourself
out of the 'Memphis mode' if you expect to be hanging around with me
for the few weeks. You have a lot to learn, hon, but I'll help.
Starting right now..."
PART 10C:
By ten fifteen that night we returned to Martha's place and set
the tiny dining table with a bottle of wine, three cheeses, and two
boxes of imported crackers. We kicked off our shoes. Martha
struggled with the corkscrew. I fetched two glasses, helped her with
the cork, and our table was ready.
"Begin," she said.
Almost two hours later I was slurring my words and pacing the
living room with a cigarette in one hand and a wine glass in the
other. I wasn't drunk, but I was "loose" for the first time in my
brief life. I'd had my share of dinner wines on holidays back in
Memphis, but little did I suspect that a small amount of "real" wine
would extract from me such a detailed two-year autobiography. De-
fenseless, and listening to my own rambling sentences, I felt almost
removed from myself, as if I were someone sitting beside Martha, who
remained perfectly sober and attentive as she curled lazily on the
sofa with her glass and crackers. I told it all, starting with the
dumping of the Black Beauty; my three jobs, undertaken solely to get
me to New York while sacrificing everything else; my isolation from my
parents and my lack of friends, my efforts and adventures on the
delivery bike and the paper route; my withdrawal from activities at
school, my distrust of everyone; my refusal to accept my faults, my
dislike of my own appearance and even of my way of speaking; my
inability to live tolerably with my parents -- all of it tumbled out
of me in stolid, dry detail, as if talking about it under the influ-
ence of the wine-induced fog made Memphis seem galaxies away. I was
so mildly but pleasantly boozed, I felt as if I were describing
someone else.
Martha listened calmly and solemnly, asking an occasional question
to keep me on track. Just before one o'clock in the morning, I became
drowsy and ended my story, settling with a sardonic laugh into a chair
across the room from Martha, who smiled sleepily and sympathetically
and brushed a stray hair from her forehead.
I sighed, "It seems so far away." I looked out the window at the
roofs of the sleeping city. "I'm so far away from it now, I wonder if
it really happened."
"Maybe you had to physically get away from it," Martha said,
"before you could tell me about it."
"No," I said sarcastically, "first you had to get me fifteen
hundred miles from home and put a bottle of zinfandel in front of me."
She smiled forgivingly. "You're not that drunk. Not on zin-
fandel. But, yes, I did ply you with liquor, hon. I'm sorry. No --
I'm not sorry. I haven't seen this much of you in a very long time."
We both yawned. Martha suggested, "Let's get our jammies." We
did, Martha slipping into a pair of pale blue pajamas while I donned a
thin sweatshirt and jockey shorts, in which I usually slept. As we
changed clothing Martha warned me, "I told Ronnie you'd be sleeping on
the sofa in the living room. Let's just let her keep thinking that.
Understand?"
But as we were putting away the leftovers, Martha said she
wouldn't be able to sleep. "I'll make coffee," she said.
I said, "Coffee? At one A.M.?"
"Yes," she said frankly. "I wanna talk to you. Do me a favor
while I make the coffee: go put your glasses on."
"Oh, Martha, I hate those damn--"
"Hon, go put your glasses on."
I did, reluctantly. In the kitchen she looked me over and decided
that it wasn't the fault of the eyeglasses themselves. I protested,
refusing to wear them any longer. She made me promise that I'd go
with her to a shop where I could replace the cheap plastic frames with
something more attractive. She urged me, "Don't passively accept the
bad taste others force onto you, Steven. Your face is fine, you just
need decent frames." But she wouldn't force me to would wear them
publicly until I accepted myself with glasses.
While we sat at the dining table sipping French coffee, she took
control of the conversation. She said:
We grew up without parents. In her case, she had a mother who was
willing to be close to her in at least a minimal way, though they had
never shared the same values and never would. Martha had at least the
memory of a father, whom she described as tall, lean, intelligent,
affectionate and independent; he was never very successful, but he was
very much a man. He was close to his two daughters and encouraged
them to think for themselves. He was killed overseas when Martha was
eight. But in my case, she said, things took a different course.
Martha saw my mother as a good, conscientious, likeable woman. Martha
cautioned me that I should not think my Mom didn't love me; but I
should accept the fact that Mom might never be the mother I needed.
Nor did I have even the memory of a father, mine having died when I
was barely two. In my family circle there were few competent male
figures; those that remained were simply worn out, resigned to life as
dictated by others. My overbearing stepdad typified the opposite
extreme of heedless masculinity and intolerance. I'd apparently been
living in an emotional and intellectual vacuum; I lived surreptitious-
ly, letting others see only those parts of me that I could twist into
a mere copy of what they expected.
I said glumly, "I hate all of them. I distrust and dislike every
one of them."
"No!" Martha said forcefully. She pounded the table once with a
clenched fist. "No, Steven! Don't hate. Understand. They did what
they could. They did what they knew to do. It wasn't much, in my
humble opinion, but it was the best they could do. And you do owe
them respect. But nobody ever said you had to love them. Anyway, I
don't think you can -- I don't think I could love most of the people I
was involved with, either, not in the way most people usually do."
She said we both grew up as if on a deserted island. We developed
our own means of survival, our own ideas, our own view of the world,
our own morality. In many ways most children grow up to be like their
parents, she said, but in our case we grew up to be more like our-
selves, untended, untaught except through our own isolation. "If we
feel unloved," she said, "it's not because we weren't loved. It's
because we weren't loved for who we are."
The night wore on with neither of us able to stop talking. The
subject eventually moved to the unique relationship between us.
"It just happened," Martha said, lighting another cigarette and
hugging her knees to her chest, her feet propped on her chair seat.
"It's so strange, how it happened. Neither of us had the slightest
idea what we were doing. We couldn't trust what others told us,
because we'd already learned something different. What they told us
made sense only in their lives, not ours. It just happened that
way." She knocked the ashes off her cigarette and asked me, "Were you
ever afraid you'd die and go to hell?"
I inhaled and blew out with a bitter huff. "There is no hell," I
said. I told her I'd never felt that we were wrong; it was everyone
else who was wrong.
She said, looking down as if remembering, "I was always afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"I don't know," she said, absently and sadly. She paused. She
rubbed her shins and then fiddled with her toenails. "I was afraid of
a lot of things. But, then, I tried anyway. I was always afraid I'd
never be smart enough to be a teacher. But fearing it, somehow, made
me need to do it."
"Working on the delivery bike was like that. Physically, I'm not
cut out for it. The other guys have an easier time of it. I came to
that job and the first thing I learned was that I couldn't do it. All
it did was make me want it."
She made a wry little smile. "You don't belong there. You belong
in the theater. You belong in creating and in doing. I wish you
didn't want so much to be like everyone else. You're not like every-
one else, Steven. You can't be and you shouldn't be. You can't be
someone else and neither can I, despite how others might demand it and
regardless of how much we might want it." She crushed her cigarette.
"That's Ronnie's problem. She wants to be me, she wants the same
boyfriends others have, she wants to be anyone but herself. I can't
be what my mother wanted. And I won't be what Mr. Buchanan wanted.
I'm not submissive, and I'm not a saint. I'm stubborn and different.
I learned to be alone and to see what others do without being involved
in what they do. Maybe that's why I could stay friendly with your
mother, without feeling guilty about her ignorance of us. I'm
different and rebellious and wicked and I can't help it. I suppose
you and I could attempt to do and be what others want -- we might even
be good at it. But we'd suffocate."
We both yawned, stretching in our chairs and moaning about how
late it was. We saw through her living room window that the sky had
begun to brighten. Birds chirped outside.
I yawned again. "I hope I can get to sleep."
"After all this? What would keep you awake?"
I thought about it; I was tired, but tense and impatient.
"Thinking about all the things we talked about. Worrying, I guess.
Wanting it to change, or...wishing it were different."
"You can't change what's happened, hon."
I yawned again. "No. I guess not."
"You're at a disadvantage, not knowing what a father is. I don't
know myself what it means to have one, in the way most people do. But
I am a teacher, and I did learn things that helped me. I don't know
what I can be to you. I certainly can't replace the people you should
have had. But I can teach you...if you promise me something."
I rubbed my swollen eyes. "Another promise? Okay. What's the
deal?"
"Promise that you'll accept the fact that you're not stupid,
you're not ugly, you're not incompetent. It's just that -- and don't
take this the wrong way, hon -- it's just that you have things to
learn. Promise you won't beat yourself over the head for what you
can't be."
"Easy for you to say," I told her dryly, and reached up to scratch
a pimple under my chin.
Martha gently pulled my hand away from my face. "Don't, hon.
Don't do that to your face."
"But it itches," I complained, scratching again.
"No!" Again she took my hand, this time holding it firmly and
close to her. "Listen to me. If you don't like the way you look, do
something about it. I'm going to show you how. This morning I'm
sending you to someone at my health club. He might strike you as very
eccentric, but I want you to listen to learn from him. His name is
Fiore. He trains athletes and dancers. Promise you'll listen?"
I said petulantly, "Oh, okay,"
"Don't say okay unless you mean it."
"Okay," I said, halfheartedly.
"You think I have a nineteen inch waist because I mailed in enough
box tops? Fiore showed me how, and I want him to show you how to get
rid of those damn things on your face by the end of this week. Prom-
ise me you'll listen to him."
"Okay."
"And work hard."
"Okay, okay, promise."
"Don't pout, Steven."
"What's the sense of it? Seems like such a hopeless case."
She sighed irritably and shook her head. "Where in the world did
you latch onto such a low opinion of yourself?"
"I just...learned to face facts, that's all. I'm not pretty, I'm
not anybody. I'm not very smart, I'm clumsy, I sink into a hole in
the ground when I'm around people, and I -- "
"Oh, hon!" she said, her voice heavy with anger and disappoint-
ment. She gripped my hand tightly, frowned at me, and then dropped my
hand onto the table. "Steven, what's happened to you?". Groaning
with frustration, she rose from her chair and walked to the living
room window, sighing distressfully three or four times. She leaned
against the window frame, folding her arms and gazing outside.
I began, "I'm sorry..."
"Please...be quiet while I get this together."
"I didn't mean to make you--"
"Stop, Steven. I won't let you trick me into feeling sorry for
you. And I won't let you feel sorry for yourself, either. It won't
get you anywhere and you need more than that. Please be quiet a
minute."
I waited as she gazed out the window, her arms folded tightly as
she shifted her feet and frowned thoughtfully for a few moments.
Finally, after taking a deep breath, she began:
"Hon, I have to tell you something. I wanted to tell you this so
many times, but I never knew how. I still don't know how. That last
day we were together in Memphis, when we went to the Holiday Inn...
just before it was time to leave...I wanted so badly to tell you, it
hurt. It physically hurt. But I didn't know how you'd take it. I
didn't know how I could possibly make you understand. I once told you
that there was something important, very important, that I wanted to
share with you, and I wanted so much to tell you then. But I couldn't.
And I tried to tell you the day my mother was married, and I tried to
tell you the day I left Memphis. And there were so many other times I
tried. But I was so afraid you wouldn't understand."
She stopped and then breathed heavily, wincing with consternation.
I said softly, "If it's so hard to do...then forget about it."
"No! Dammit." She rubbed her forehead and gazed out the window.
"You need to know this. It's one thing to think no one loves you.
But it's another to think you're not lovable. I used to think that
way. I know how it feels. I work every day with young people who
know that feeling all too well."
"Martha, I've heard all this from the Brothers and the -- "
"No you haven't. And stop thinking you've guessed what I'm going
to say. Please, just stop thinking and just...listen. This is hard
enough for me to say as it is."
I opened my mouth to say okay again, but thought better of it.
She hugged herself tightly, her hands clinching and unclinching.
Thinking she might feel less pressured if I didn't have my eyes on
her, I turned away from her in my chair and sat still.
After another pause she said quietly and earnestly, speaking into
the warm dark outside the window, "I love you, Steven...I've always
loved you. From the first time I saw you, barely waist high to me, I
loved you. You were the sweetest, most unique, most open and loving
person I'd ever seen. Your eyes had such a beautiful light...so
eager, so trusting and so...so very brave. I fell in love with you,
and you were so free and giving that...I simply couldn't resist. I
never could. I still can't."
She blinked. She covered her face with her hands for a moment,
and then folded her arms again and gazed out the window. "I don't
know what kind of love it is...It's not a romantic, Hollywood kind of
love, it's not like married love, it's not motherly. Or maybe it's
all of those. Maybe it's what philosophers refer to simply as love,
the kind you can't define by any known standard, the kind you can't
put in a box. Whenever I tried to control my feelings for you or
rationalize them away or moralize about what we did over the years, I
couldn't. I once went to one of my advisors, to try to describe what
I felt, and later I went to a psychologist. But I couldn't even begin
to explain it to them, or even to myself. All I heard from them was
the same moralizing that I could get from anyone on the street. I
don't know what you're going to make of this, or how you explain any
of this to yourself, or even if you know what the hell I'm talking
about. I don't even know how to describe what happens to me when
we're together or why I sometimes feel so primitive, so free, so
wonderfully...alive with the pleasure that, for some reason, I know
only with you. I tried to justify my actions, but I can't. I tried
to condemn them -- I can't do that either. I tried to make plans
around it, tried to resist it, tried to analyze it. I can't. It's
just there. It's just...just me-with-you, and I can't conceive of it
or experience it in any other way."
Again, she sighed and searched for words. "It's just me...and
it's just you. It's what you do and it's who you are and it's how you
think. I don't think about you all day every day. I don't seem to
pine when you're away, not the way I'd miss a boyfriend or a parent.
But when I see you in front of me I become a completely different
woman...or maybe, I think, I become a secret 'Me' that I can't define
or describe. Please understand, hon -- I have no idea what's going to
happen to us. Every time I try to control it, it's a little like
trying to tell the universe how to change shape. Sometimes I think
you'll find someone, and I'd be so happy for you if that happened. I
have no desire to own you. I know you'll change with time, and I have
no idea what you'll think of me years from now. And I dread...Steven,
I dread the day when either of us changes or goes away or moves on
with our lives, and I know both of us will. There's nothing that you
or I can do to stop that." Her voice cracked a little, and she paused
to wipe a tear from one eye. "And, oh, hon -- if I ever did anything
to break your heart, I don't know what...I really don't know what I'd
do."
Still gazing out the window, she collected herself quickly and
went on. "Maybe you're getting some kind of ambivalent message from
me. Am I wrong to feel the way I do? Were we wrong to break the
rules? Am I expecting something from you I have no right to expect?
I've learned so much since I left Memphis. I've seen so much.
I've...changed so much. I agonized over whether or not to bring you
here and see what I'd become, what I'm becoming. But I do trust you.
I've always trusted you, because I believe in what we feel for each
other. I see honesty and caring in the way you treat me and in every
action you took with me. I could see it and I could feel it."
She shook her head, slowly and sadly. "We were both so innocent,
Steven. Innocent, until we come face to face with the other morality
that's out there. Their morality. My sister casually slept with men
whenever she felt like it. So many, she doesn't remember their names.
Not because they wanted her. Because they liked her. And she was so
likeable, she fit in so well, so easily. I didn't have that. I had
to work and keep trying to change myself. But men didn't like me --
they 'wanted' me. They thought wanting was morality enough. But not
you, Steven. Your touch and your eyes had love in them. You looked
into me, not at me. My father had that about him, too. I wanted him
very much, my father. I wanted him sexually, too. I don't know that
he ever knew what I was thinking. But when he looked at me, and
talked to me, and hugged me...oh, I loved him so! He loved me, too,
just...just me. He never made me be someone else or be like someone
else; he just wanted me to be the best me I could. And it made me
want him completely. I never wanted to own or possess him, and I
never wanted him to own me. But I did want to have the whole
experience of him. And then let him go his way, let him be him. I
feel that way about you. Can it go beyond that? Should we cut our
wrists and mix blood? What can we do, how can we show someone how
much we love, and how we love, how much we want to totally please,
without owning? How do we even marry, without owning? Steven, do you
know that when I talked to your mother a few years ago, she told me
she was shocked to learn that your Aunt Yvonne regularly slept nude
with her husband? Your mother was so incensed, so scandalized. She
said, 'God knows, I've never let either of my husbands see *me* with
nothing on at all'. She's a good, suffering woman, Steven, but how
can people live that way? What kind of morality is that? Mr.
Buchanan waits until he's worn out with so many women, women he called
whores, and then decides to marry my submissive mother so he can
settle down and be waited on hand and foot, with a few of his old
whores hanging around in the corners. What kind of morality is that?
So many wives faking orgasm, getting pregnant so they can say they're
respectable with a home in the suburbs and a new Chevrolet every two
years. But without love, without joy, what kind of respectability is
that? We pray to God to keep our stocks going up, to help us make
more cars and more toasters and bigger bombs. We pray for our team to
win the World Series. But no one prays that we'll learn how to love,
how to please, how to understand and accept. Hmp. Morality. It's so
strange, my talking to your mother and asking your folks to let you
visit, let you come here and see the city and the art and new life,
new people, new ideas -- life and ideas that they don't really want
you to see. Such a pretense I've had to make, so many omissions and
lies, to match up with their morality. My mother's morality, my
teacher's, my supervisor's. How could their morality conceive of
the...the joy and fulfillment I felt as a young woman the first time I
shared myself with you? Their morality forbids it. Their morality
forbids neglect, forbids abuse -- and yet we are neglected, we are
abused. And what kind of honesty is this, having to be honest behind
everyone's back? What kind of morality is it that forbids pleasure,
forbids intimacy, forbids ecstasy? Forbids individuation and
knowledge and self-realization? It's not *my* morality. It's not my
battered wives or my screwed up kids or my frigid women or my impotent
men. Not my Mississippi lynch mobs. Not my wars. My morality tells
me I shouldn't lie to them; their morality demands that I do, if I'm
to be honest about myself."
She bowed her head and sighed. Her voice lowered to a murmur.
"But I can't lie to you, Steven. I don't know if...Hon, I don't know
what you expect of me. I have an idea what it is. And I don't know
if I can fulfill your every dream. I don't know that you can fulfill
mine, either. I don't know that anyone, anywhere, can fulfill
everyone's dreams and needs all the time, in every way." She shook
her head. "I knew...I knew that one day I'd go to hell for this. And
there is a hell, Steven. It's all around us. Whatever we do or don't
do, whether we're right or wrong... we're damned if we do and we're
damn if we don't. I can tolerate it. I can tolerate knowing that I
do what I think and feel is best. I can tolerate it because even
though I don't know if I can do everything for you, I will always,
always be as good to you as I can. And I'll always trust that you'll
do your best. So if I can't live up to it all, or if you can't, I can
accept it. I can live with that much hell."
She stopped. She raised her head and breathed deeply from the
night breeze that faintly rustled the window curtain. "Oh, hon. I
hope I'm not letting you down." She sighed again.
She straightened, her voice changing from plaintive to resolute.
"But there's one thing I simply will not accept. I won't accept
thinking that I might have done something, said something, that makes
you feel unlovable. Something has made you feel that you can't depend
on yourself or your ideas or your efforts. If you feel that way, then
I've failed you. Right now, right this minute, I don't really know
what to do about it. But I have two months to change the way you feel
about yourself. And I intend to try. No, I don't intend to -- I
will."
For the first time since she had moved to the window, she turned
to look me straight in the eye. "You have no idea how difficult it
was to say this. I agonized over it for years. Please don't use it
against me, Steven. I think you're old enough to understand what I
mean."
PART 10D:
Her eyes and her words left me speechless. I cleared my throat
and concealed my state of shock, nodding firmly to signal my accept-
ance of what she had said. I shuffled nervously. She waited, staring
at me almost apprehensively. She seemed at once both resolute and
vulnerable.
She said softly, "I hope...I didn't blow your fuses."
I said with a brittle smile, "They're not fuses. They're circuit
breakers. They reset after a few minutes."
She smiled sweetly. "Have I...burst all your bubbles, hon? I
can't even tell. You hide your feelings so well. Too well."
"I'm not as good at expressing those feelings as you are," I said
guiltily. "But, no, I...I won't keep them hidden." I swallowed hard.
"I can't answer right now. But I will."
She walked across the living room toward me. She whispered,
"You don't have to say anything."
I said haltingly, "Yes, I do, but...But my circuit breakers need
time."
"Okay, hon. Okay. C'mon. Let's get to sleep."
With another fit of yawning, we shut the lights and groaned our
way into bed, lying uncovered and facing each other in the dim wash of
early daylight that filtered through the curtained window.
We lay on our sides, facing each other in the dark. I closed my
eyes. From the window behind me, the city stirred faintly. It was an
unfamiliar sound, one I'd never heard when falling asleep in Memphis
-- a vague, distant but lurking and steady noise, a hint of the
unexpected, an undefined coming and going, a hushed sound of events
moving in all directions.
I shifted, making my shoulder more comfortable. Opening my eyes,
I saw her watching me.
She asked, "Are you falling asleep?"
"I'm thinking."
"Don't think, hon. Sleep." She touched my shoulder, squeezed it
softly. "It'll be all right, Steven. It will."
I closed my eyes. I was far too exhausted to question a looming
future I couldn't see or define. I trusted her. I felt I had no
choice. I had not yet been in New York for a full day, and things
were already moving faster than I could comprehend them. All I could
do at the moment was to sleep like a rock.
Saturday afternoon shortly before one o'clock, I awoke to my
first weekend in New York, and my first hangover. And Martha's
musical, teasing voice, and her gentle hands rubbing my back and
shoulders.
"Up," she said, "the day's half gone."
There was little time for serious meditation over her words of a
few hours earlier. Martha roused me with scrambled eggs and two cups
of a strong, mint tea that made my mouth and nose tingle, and some
celery juice. We showered and dressed hastily, then scurried outside
into the blinding sunlight before I knew what happened.
"Hurry!" Martha implored as she dragged me by the arm toward
Second Avenue. "I called Fiore while you were sleeping like a slug
and he said he's leaving the health club by three!"
I yelped, "Are you sure he can work with somebody who can't talk
or walk?"
"Snap out of it," she told me as we turned a corner and headed
downtown. "If you're that tired and if you have a couple of bucks, we
can take a taxi."
"Good," I resolved aloud. I stepped into the street as I'd seen
others do and raised my hand for a taxi.
"Slacker," she said.
The meteoric taxi ride helped wake me during the short trip to
Lexington and 47th. Martha lent me her health club pass and told me
how to find Fiore on the sixth floor of the hotel. "This is only an
evaluation," she told me. "It's free. After that, and because
Fiore's a friend of mine and wants my body, he's agreed to see you for
twenty bucks a session. Take my word for it, hon, it's a bargain.
But don't bother if you're not going to work with him."
Martha shopped while I was in Fiore's hands. I was surprised at
his height; who'd guess that a paid trainer would be even shorter than
I! He had phenomenal strength and agility. During the first ten
minutes he learned my every strength and weakness with a few quick
glances over my torso and limbs.
"Off with your clothes!" he snapped curtly, and he handed me a
pair of blue shorts. "Dress!" Before I finished changing he was
chirping, "On the massage table!" Rushed and confused, I fell down
trying to remove my shoes.
Fiore laughed merrily. "Haha! Say, you're allowed to sit on a
chair while you take off your shoes."
"Everybody's in such a hurry," I muttered.
"Of course! Iss New York! If you don' hurry in New York, you
die!", a remark he laughed about until I had the shorts on and was
climbing onto the table. For the next several minutes he threw me
around like a bag of dried peas.
"You hev a nice frame, Steven. Nice! But weak back and hips.
What kind of work you do, hah?" I told him about my newspaper route
and the delivery bike. "No, No!" he warned. "No good, the way you
move! When we finish here, we go to the bicycle to show you how to
move. The way you move now, iss no good!" For an hour he demonstrat-
ed how to manage and build up my weaker body parts. By that time I
was so breathless that I merely grunted at his questions and stumbled
through his instructions. "Bad coordination! I have exercises for
that! Here, here, no! No pushups like that! Here, THIS iss a
pushup! Only halfway, you see? Never all the way! There! You see?
Kapeesh?"
"What kind of food your Italian mother makes for you?" he asked
later as I struggled into my clothes with no air in my lungs and no
strength in my limbs. "Bread? Huh? Pasta?" I told him, yes, a lot
of bread and breaded foods, pasta, salads with oil and vinegar, cakes
and pies, pancakes, cereals. "Aha!" he screamed, "And then you have
pimples, Ha? Listen to me: No white bread! No white flour! Never!
Get vinegar and oil in the health food store! If anyone makes a salad
with Crisco, shoot them! If they give you a pancake, break their
legs! No sugar! Iss garbage, my friend! Garbage in your body,
pimples on your face!"
He wrote a list of several items I should buy. "Today!" he
demanded. "There is a place two blocks down on Lexington. Start
today! Come back Monday, ten o'clock!"
He gave my back a slap that sent me reeling. He had a good laugh
while holding me up. "Haha, you'll be all right, my friend! In only
a few days with me, you'll have the strength of -- well, at least you
will be on your way! What's this?...smoke on your breath? Listen to
me -- nicotine iss UGLY! You cannot have good skin if you smoke! And
when you see Martha, tell her thank you for sending you to me, I give
you a special price! How lucky to have such a beautiful woman on your
side!"
As I glanced about on my way out of the health club, I saw that
Martha's was not the only lovely body in New York. There were several
dancers and models around, some of them bearing the most perfect
figures I could imagine. Their accomplishments fired me on -- though,
for the time being, I was too whipped to do anything more than limp
out of the club, into the elevator, and out to the busy sidewalk. By
the time Martha returned from shopping and found me outside the hotel,
I had managed to learn to stand again.
"So," she asked, "What's the verdict?"
"Are you sure Steve Reeves started out this way? I can do it if I
get plenty of rest between sessions."
"Not the way *we* fuck!" she laughed, drawing a startled look from
two or three passersby.
I showed Martha the list of things Fiore told me to buy.
"Can you afford this?" Martha asked. "This is some list."
"What'll it cost me?"
"About twenty dollars, I guess."
"What I was going to spend on junk food, I'll spend for this."
Martha led me through my first trip in a health food store. We
walked out with a bag of bottles and foods and pills I'd never heard
of. Back in her apartment, she surveyed the goods. "I thought so," she
said, "he gave you a lot of B6. I figured as much, everybody on your
mom's side of the family seems to have signs of a deficiency. And,
uh-oh, Brewer's yeast! Oh, my -- hon, you'll hate me for this, but I
have to find some way to get a tablespoon of brewer's yeast down your
throat three times a day."
Most of the teas and supplements were not seriously upsetting, but
ingesting Brewer's Yeast was torture. By late afternoon I was filled
with vitamins, minerals, teas, juices, the yeast, and herbs.
For a rest, she introduced me to Central Park, where we roamed
over hills and through pine forests and followed a group of bird
watchers until twilight.
On our way out of the park, we passed a hot dog stand. "Hey," she
said, her eyes rolling, "Steven! You have to try a New York hot dog."
"No," I said firmly, mimicking Fiore. "Hot dogs iss pimples!"
"But you can't see Central Park without having a hot dog."
"No. No. And no."
"Wow, I see you took Fiore to heart. I'm proud of you."
The hectic session with Fiore and the walk through the Park did me
in. For dinner Martha made "nekkid" hamburgers (ground sirloin baked
slowly under a blanket of cheese and mushrooms), a salad dressed with
the special vinegar and oils Fiore prescribed, plus another handful of
pills. Martha informed me, "Gourmets never eat beef as-is. It's
always ground, Steven." Dinner was prefaced with a spoonful of the
dreaded yeast, which I managed to swallow in small amounts with the
help of some dark, berry flavored tea.
After dinner I sat listlessly at the table, feeling I'd soon
faint. "What's next?"
"To the bathroom. I'll show you how to wash your face."
"Wash my face? You think I don't know how to wash my face?"
"I'm gonna to show you how professionals do it." She gathered a
can of scouring powder and a bottle of the new vegetable oil and led
me to the bathroom.
I yelped with alarm, "I'm gonna wash my face with that?"
"No, silly. First we have to clean the sink. Watch and learn."
Again, it was a New York revelation. In her tiny bathroom Martha
taught me how to prepare my face with a thin coat of vegetable oil
before using special soap and steaming hot water.
I frowned at the sink of smoking water, and then at my oiled face
in the mirror, with growing skepticism. "Now, who would go through
all this just to wash their face?"
"People who don't accept the usual way of doing things," she said,
adamant. "People who don't listen to fairy tales. Do it, Steven.
Open up and try something different."
I followed the procedure reluctantly but exactly, counting aloud
to make certain I splashed the nearly stinging hot water onto my face
as she directed, twenty-five times. Afterwards, she made me look at
myself in the mirror.
"Feel your skin," she prompted, her voice losing its stiffness.
"Look at your face. Smooth, right? And the skin's tight? Look at
your cheeks glow, hon. Your skin's acid balanced now, and the pores
are clear. And those damn pimples were opened up and they're already
disappearing."
I looked carefully, flabbergasted. She was right. I wouldn't
have believed it without seeing it.
"Trust me?" she taunted. "Was I right? Is not the wicked witch
really your friend in disguise?"
I surrendered. "Yes," I mumbled.
"Feel better about yourself?"
"Yes."
She hugged me. "I've got to get you out of the 'Memphis mode'.
Stop letting those foamin' Romans tell you how to think. I want you
to find out for yourself, try something new, trust yourself. All it
takes is some work and a little nerve. Okay?"
I hugged her back.
"Love you," she said. "You know that now, don't you?"
"Yes."
She hurried into the kitchen and started cleaning up.
"What next?" I called from the bathroom, still looking at myself
in amazement.
"Movie, if you want."
"Doesn't anybody in New York ever rest?"
"Occasionally, but they don't admit it in public. It's bad p-r.
But after last night, I guess we could both use a quick nap."
After cleaning the kitchen we lay flat on our backs in bed for a
brief nap. I fell asleep immediately. When I awoke, Martha was
sitting on the edge of the bed, smiling at me.
She said, "Looks like you're beat."
"Martha -- I'm sorry, I guess so."
"That's okay, hon. I can hardly believe you've only been here a
little more than 24 hours."
I sighed drowsily. "Is that all? Seems like a week already. But
you're right...this is only my second night in New York."
"I saw you so sleeping so well, I let you nap over an hour. What
do you say we skip the movie, go over to Second Avenue and eat out?
Ronnie called, and she'd like to treat you for being so patient with
her last night. Would that be better?"
"Deal," I said, relieved.
I started to rise, but Martha held me down with a hand on my arm.
"I have to tell you something."
"Oh, no. More revelations."
"Yes," she said, and she made her voice very small and paused for
a long time while she played bashfully with my shirt collar, hiding
her eyes from mine. "Steven...Ronnie is my very best, very close,
very only girlfriend..."
"Go ahead," I said warily. "Go ahead, hit me with it."
"Well...Steven...hon...she knows about us." She felt me tense up
and then go limp. "Not everything," she added quickly, "Not...hon,
not about intercourse. I couldn't quite bring myself to tell her
about that, but I did say that we, you know, fooled around a while
back. I didn't want her to be totally turned away from me."
"What did she say?"
"Nothing."
I blinked. "Nothing?"
"No, she didn't say anything at all. I was so surprised. She
asked me again about it, later, and I did tell her that a long time
ago you gave me my first orgasm. She thought it was so sweet that we
were good to each other. I even think she was a little envious. She
grew up in Michigan in much the same way we did. But she had no
friends at all, Steven. No one. She went through three fathers and a
screwed up mother and two really crappy brothers before she was sent
off to a college she truly hated. She walked out of class one day and
never returned, never went home again. She gave up everything and
moved here with a college boyfriend and lived with him...until he
kicked her out because he said she wasn't good enough for him. She
ended up on the street. I don't know if you know about that kind of
life, but...it was pretty rough for a while, a short time, but very
tough on her. She got picked up by a guy in a bar. He asked her to
stay with him, and she was so desperate for a place...He was the guy I
told you about, who ended up being so abusive. She endured it until
she finished school and got her first job. When she answered my ad
for a roommate, she'd been sleeping in the bus station for two days."
I winced and shook my head.
"Plenty of people had it tougher than we did, hon. Many who
aren't as sensitive as Ronnie would've turned cold and mean. But
Ronnie still tries. Like you and I, she knows she doesn't fit. But
she can't live in a shell, either. So don't think she gets loaded and
always acts the way she did last night. She's disorganized and she's
searching. But she's affectionate and understanding. I sometimes
think...people like Ronnie, who've been hit hard and who are so
different, are the only people I can get close to. She tries so hard
to please. And like you, she can be very hard on herself when it
doesn't work. And she has fits of despair. But she's really very
nice. Now, please -- don't mention any of this. I'm sure she'll know
that I would have told you something about her, but don't get into
this with her. She gets very depressed about it. Okay?"
"Okay."
"Are you sorry you came here and got mixed up in all this? I know
so much is hitting you at once -- "
"No. No, I like it."
"You *what* ?"
I said earnestly, "I mean...I mean it's life, it's real. I can
understand it. It's not a Tupperware party. It's not I Love Lucy or
shopping at the A&P. It's like the things I really think about and
feel, but never talk about. I mean--" I sighed in exasperation,
searching for better words.
She ruffled my hair. "I got the idea. I don't think you'll have
too much trouble getting the hang of things around here."
"Ronnie's no problem," I said, trying to stand. I ached every-
where and needed to stretch. And I was starving. "It's Fiore that's
gonna kill me!"
Again, with ruthless practicality and adherence to method, Martha
forced a spoonful of bitter yeast down my throat. A cup of berry tea
and a shower later, I was awake enough to force my sore muscles to
carry me down the stairs and onto the sidewalk.
"C'mon," she said ahead of me.
"All right, all right. Let me wake up. Always in a hurry."
We met Ronnie a few blocks away on Second Avenue. She blushed
when she saw me, but she gave me her catchy, sweet, girlish smile that
made her dark blue eyes light up playfully.
"Remember me?" she joked, extending her hand. Blushing as well, I
accepted her handshake. Like her face, her hand was narrow and deli-
cate. She had long, slender, very warm fingers. Without her spiked
heels she was Martha's height, and she looked slimmer in a simple
skirt than she did in her business suit.
Ronnie took us to a crowded neighborhood diner where she and
Martha stormily debated the use and purposes of psychology. Ronnie
didn't agree with any of it. "Science is the bane of life," she
groaned, slicing away at a pork chop. "Putting people's feelings on
charts and graphs!"
"It has its uses," Martha insisted.
"So does cyanide," Ronnie said.
"And like anything else," Martha went on hotly, "it can be used or
MIS-used, Ronnie. I don't agree with the way it's used. It's used to
plot norms, and the norms are considered not only normal and desir-
able, but required for everyone. And, you're right, that's the part
that's sheer nonsense."
"Careful, Martha, you're on the verge of agreeing with me."
Ronnie grinned insolently and popped a chunk of meat into her mouth.
Eventually they exhausted themselves and changed the subject,
moving on to the latest ladies' fashions. I sat beside Martha and
opposite Ronnie, saying nothing. I listened, my elbow on the table
and my chin propped in my hand, eyeing them with an amused smile as
their new conversation progressed from frolicsome chatting to
sarcastic debate.
"Ronnie," Martha argued, "that's what I don't understand about
your business. What right has some cafe society designer to decide
what I will or won't be able to buy in a store next year? He knows
nothing about me!"
"Oh, Martha it doesn't work that way!"
"Yes, it does! That's exactly how it works!"
"So boycott Bloomingdale's. All I do is design what I'm told,
don't point fingers at *me*."
"What you just said," Martha emphasized slowly, "is exactly what I
mean. The business is structured for the very few who tell everyone
else how to fall into line. Your own creativity and my freedom of
choice never enter the picture. Because marketers know that most
people are sheep. Madison Avenue denies people information that lets
them decide for themselves."
Ronnie winked at me, unwithered by Martha's polemic. "Steven,
isn't this fun? Have you learned anything from this conversation?"
I shrugged and ventured, "Eat dinner with the boys, and don't wear
ladies' clothes?"
"Great, toots. Martha, I *knew* Steven was a cool guy. Steven,
are we boring you with this?"
I answered, "Actually, yes."
"Ha!" Ronnie yelped. "Good answer! Come on, let's stop all this
philosophical garbage and talk about something totally mindless.
Steven, has this friend of mine taught you anything about New York
that you couldn't have learned in Memphis?"
I told Ronnie about learning to wash my face. Her eyes narrowed
with serious interest in what I was saying. She wanted more
information.
"Martha," she said, "why didn't you ever tell me about this trick
with washing the face? All this time, and you never told me."
Martha threw up her hands, "Oh, you're just avoiding my point!
Just for that, I'm going to the restroom. Please don't make Steven
cry while I'm gone."
"Okay, hon, okay," Ronnie said absently, returning to me.
"Steven, I meet Martha, next thing you know I'm calling her 'hon'.
Can you believe it? But tell me...what's this about washing?
Seriously. See, I have this blemish right here under my ear, and I
have these pores, see? Over here...?"
Minutes later, Martha returned from the restroom and found us en-
grossed in a serious exchange.
"I can't believe," Martha said sarcastically, "that you two are
talking about cosmetics!"
"You know, Martha, this guy's fascinating. I never saw anybody go
into things so thoroughly. You do everything that way, Steven?"
The talk went from skin care to the relation between mind and body
and how an individual's acceptance of their faults affects their will-
ingness to either change the situation or simply resign to it and
remain a victim.
Soon Martha was yawning again.
"You already worn out?" Ronnie grumbled. "Just when it was
gettin' good!"
"It's been a rough two days," Martha said. "We're calling it a
night soon."
"Steven," Ronnie said, cupping her hand around her mouth in a mock
whisper, "Martha always does this when she's losing an argument with
me."
We left the diner. Ronnie strolled with us along First Avenue.
On the way, we passed a pet store. The store was closed for the day,
but we stopped to look at the giant green and white parrots and the
toucans in the darkened window.
"Fascinating," I murmured, my mouth so close to the window that my
breath left a small circle of fog on the glass. "What huge birds. I
never saw anything like this back home."
"It's depressing, though," Martha said sadly. "The ones who
aren't in cages have their wings clipped. What a mean thing to do to
such gorgeous creatures. C'mon, Steven. Ronnie. Please. I can't
stand seeing this."
Back in our building, Ronnie stopped at her apartment to thank us.
"Steven, what a nice evening. Does this make up for my stupidity of
last night?"
I pretended ignorance. "What stupidity?"
"You're sweet," Ronnie said, loading the comment with overplayed
mushiness. She kissed me quickly on the cheek. "Mm. You Rhett
Butlers are all alike."
After Ronnie said goodnight and closed her door, I turned to see
Martha smiling at me. "One more chore. Let's cap off the night with
one more New York experience. Come on."
PART 10E:
We strolled down East 86th Street. It was getting late, yet I was
amazed that the traffic and the people on Lexington Avenue were as
frenzied as they were during the day. Martha led me to a newsstand so
besieged with customers that we had to push our way through to get a
copy of the Sunday Times.
"This is not the way you get it in Memphis," she said, offering me
the hefty newspaper with both hands as if it were a precious gift.
She saw my eyes bulge: the complete New York Times, including sections
the out-of-town editions didn't carry. "Hot off the presses," she
said, pleased at my reaction. "Be careful. The ink's still wet."
We headed home with the Times under my arm, my neck craning to
catch sight of all the activity that flourished in late night
Manhattan.
"Who would ever believe," I said delightedly, "that buying a news-
paper could be such a major event?"
"New York does have its simple pleasures," she said, enjoying my
excitement. "But don't stay up all night with it. You'll have plenty
of time later. Remember, Fiore told you to rest."
Later, upstairs, I crawled into bed as Martha sat propped against
her pillows reading a book.
"You really perked up tonight," she said.
"I did?"
"It makes a big difference when you're around people you actually
get along with. Ronnie was very impressed. See? There really are
people who like you."
"Well," I said grudgingly, "I did pretty good for a fifteen year
old."
Martha scowled. "You did well, period. Stop running yourself
down, or I'll spank you."
I lay on my side as Martha paged through her book to lull herself
to sleep, as she usually did when she was alone. I gazed out the
window and listened to the city. Martha was right: being with kindred
souls made a difference. I wondered how I would handle myself when I
returned home. The very idea of having to fly back to Memphis loomed
threateningly, making the spread of the next few weeks seem like a
paltry few minutes. How much did Martha think I could accomplish in so
short a time?
I shifted onto my other side, facing Martha. She put her book
down and looked at me.
"Ready for sleep, hon?"
I yawned. "Looks like it, hm?"
She turned around to shut off the light on the bedside table. She
rested on her side and faced me. Her hazel eyes glistened in the dark
as she smiled at me sleepily.
She said, "I'm glad you're here."
I pursed my lips and made a little kiss. "Me too."
"Goodnight," she whispered.
Settling onto my side facing her, I closed my eyes and tried to
stop thinking. The small kiss I gave Martha reminded me of Ronnie's
friendly kiss as she bid us goodnight earlier. I still felt Ronnie's
thin, lipsticked, warm, sticky lips on my cheek. A mild horniness
sprang from nowhere and spread with a vague tingle through my tired
body. This was a new feeling, purely physical and seemingly unalloyed
with any emotion. I wondered if the yeast and the bellyful of
vitamins were responsible. I wondered whether the tingle meant that
Fiore's efforts on my behalf were beginning to pay off. I wondered
what kind of answer I could give to Martha's confession of a few hours
ago.
I opened my eyes and saw Martha, on her side, still watching me.
She asked, "Are you thinking again?"
"Mm."
She looked at me for a long moment. Her sleepy gaze changed to a
mild frown. "That was terrible what you told me, about your mom when
she caught you masturbating. Did she really act like that?"
"I got over it."
"No. I don't think you did." She yawned. She fumbled with the
slit of my underwear and found the tip of my flaccid organ. "Maybe I
should check it again, though, and make sure it wasn't damaged."
Carefully she opened the slit and pulled out my cock. She said, "I
told you I was wicked. I can't help it. You're so touchable." She
looked down at my cock stirring languidly between her fingers. "Can I
pull you off? It can feel very nice when you're sleepy."
I smiled, lax and weary except for my cock, which itched pleasant-
ly in response to her soft hand. "Okay."
She said sheepishly, "You must think I'm terribly perverted, doing
this now. Maybe I am."
"Maybe I am, too. You see how courageously I resist."
Perhaps it was Ronnie's affectionate kiss. Or the lack of sleep.
Any misgivings I may have had about the strangeness of the moment or
the reasons for her need to masturbate me just then were obscured by
the warm tickle of her begging fingers.
She murmured, "I felt lonely, telling you all that about me this
morning. I felt you might think I was pushing you away."
"No," I said. My cock slowly unraveled.
"Steven..." she began falteringly. Her hand encircled and hugged
my tube. She swallowed thickly. "It's not so easy for me...to open
up that way."
"I know," I whispered, aware of the same problem within myself.
As I lay on my side watching her I sensed in her careful, delicately
urging fingers and her disquieted tone, our mutual need to coax
reassurance from weary flesh.
After a long moment of pulling and squeezing, Martha said, "you're
still not really hard yet. Are you too tired?"
"I'm tired, but...now you've got me wanting it."
"Well...wait, let's try this..."
She reached behind her and grabbed a bottle of hand lotion from
the bedside table. Wetting her fingers, she smeared the peach scented
stuff on me and resumed her tender milking. I sighed pleasurably as
her slick hand gently pulled upward, completing each motion with a
squishy clench around my tip.
She asked, "Better?"
"Yeah. I'm tired, but I need it."
"I know."
She soon had me stiff, and as she began methodically milking me I
reached under the waistband of her pajamas. On her side, she raised
one knee so I could find her clit. Lazily I made one-finger circles
on her slick nub, now and then dipping inside her to caress the little
lump of nerves that I knew lay deep within. For a long time we
masturbated one another, in no special hurry to finish. We played
languorously, sighing and moaning. She came first, closing her eyes
and easing into it with a long groan, her hand on me pausing in its
ministrations while she stiffened and enjoyed her cum with quiet
desperation. As it ended for her, her hips undulated softly a few
times and then jerked to a stop. She came out of it gasping wearily.
I kept my middle finger in her while she finished me off. Just before
I came she nestled closer, gathering a portion of her pajamas shirt
and baring her flesh just above her navel. As cum splattered on her
tummy she smirked contentedly, murmuring "Mm-hm, mm-hm," and watched
thin rivulets drool down her hip onto the sheet. When I finished she
wiped up with a kleenex, then tugged my shaft firmly to draw the last
of it onto the tissue. With our arms limply entwined, we fell asleep.
I awoke early Sunday and lay for a while watching Martha sleep.
She was curled into a ball, her pajamas stretched over her smoothly
rounded hips and firm thighs, one hand folded loosely into a fist near
her cheek. She lay on her side, her face toward me, her eyes softly
closed and her lips parted. She seemed touchingly angelic. It had
been years since I'd watched her sleeping. For a while I dared not
move; I had only a few days to see her this way. My brain ached with
the question: How could this woman, this grown woman, so lovely, so
intelligent, so accomplished, appear so childlike as she cuddled in
sleep beside me?
I lowered my head to barely touch my lips to hers for a moment.
As always, her flesh seemed to melt into mine.
Knowing I would not fall asleep again, I slid carefully from the
bed and crept into the kitchen, where I rummaged for coffee and set
the percolator brewing. Then I found a pen and some paper and sat at
the dining room table. I gazed at the window in the living room
where Martha had confessed her thoughts and feelings early Saturday
morning.
I began writing, one word or phrase at a time. At fifteen, what
could I say to allay the anxieties she expressed? Did she see me as a
man, as a boy, or as a man who happened to be less than sixteen? How
could I have expected her to respond to me in any way other than the
way she responded while standing next to that window? How could I
expect her to embrace an uncertain, undefined future with a partner
whose major claim to fame was a paper route and advanced skills at
delivering groceries in Memphis, Tennessee? Should I proclaim an
undying love for her? My fifteen-year-old heart idealized that love as
precious; but a more cynical old man in my head knew that my youthful
heart was susceptible to indulgence in impractical mush.
The words I wrote fell together and fell apart fitfully. I
crossed them out, rewrote them, crossed them out and began again.
Over an hour later, I had written:
You were always the one who offered first.
Am I the one who only receives?
That in me which I couldn't do, you do.
That which I couldn't have, you give.
I give you that you are more than loved,
but as my secret otherness,
the You-ness I can't be but am,
you are cherished, dearly.
Before I could finish, I heard a muffled knock at the front door.
Thieves? The landlord? Quickly I fetched my pants from a hanger in
the bathroom and stood listening at the front door as I dressed.
Again, two brief, soft knockings. I cleared my throat. Silence.
I cleared my throat more loudly.
"Steven?" a girlish voice whispered from the other side. "Is that
you?"
It was Ronnie. I started to open the door, remembered that I wore
my glasses, removed them, opened the door halfway, and peered out.
She stood in the hallway in her pajamas and floor length bathrobe.
Her face looked shiny, as if just washed.
"Hi," she said, grinning. She gave me a little wave of her hand.
"Martha up?"
"Not yet."
"Steven, I'm outta coffee." She folded her hands beseechingly and
grinned meekly. "Please?"
"Sure," I said, beckoning her inside. I opened the door and held
a finger to my pursed lips. She nodded and tiptoed into the kitchen.
Realizing I was in my t-shirt, I tiptoed to the bedroom and fetched my
shirt. Martha still slept. Closing the bedroom door, I buttoned my
shirt and waited in the living room until Ronnie tiptoed from the
kitchen.
"Shh, okay," she whispered. She held a cup half filled with
coffee grinds. She stood near the door waiting, smiling sleepily with
curly black hair falling into her face. I moved quickly to the door.
She whispered, "You guys sure clean up fast around here."
Not understanding, I looked at her.
With her head she gestured toward the living room sofa. "The
sofa's already made up and folded. Unless you sleep on the floor."
"Oh," I said. "Yeah. I woke up early."
She patted me on the shoulder. "Good boy. You Southern guys are
so self sufficient." Wincing and grimacing playfully, she whispered
"shh" again and opened the door and slithered past it. I stood near
the door and was ready to close it when she poked her head back
inside. "Oh, by the way--" she whispered, craning her neck and face
toward me. She gave me a quick, innocent peck on the cheek.
"Thanks." She withdrew, waved a tiny bye-bye at me with her fingers,
and tiptoed down the hall.
Just as I quietly closed the door I heard Martha mutter sleepily
behind me, "Steven, is somebody there?"
She stood in the living room doorway, drowsy, her formerly combed
hair a tousled, light auburn fuzz across her eyes and forehead. She
slumped, she had no makeup, and her pajama sleeves half covered her
hands as they flopped uselessly at her side. She looked deliciously
girlish.
"Ronnie," I said, gesturing toward the door. "She ran out of
coffee."
"Oh...She's always out of coffee."
With her overlong pajama bottoms rasping sluggishly along the
floor, she drifted into the living room and toward the kitchen. As
she passed the dining table I quickly retrieved my writing off the
table, folded the sheet, and slipped it into my shirt pocket. I
unfolded the Sunday paper and spread it on the table and sat, pre-
tending I'd been reading all along.
After a moment Martha turned toward me in the kitchen, still
slumping, squinting at me through half-closed eyes. "You made
coffee?"
I nodded.
She paused, scratching her forehead, and rubbed her eyes and
murmured, "Oh. That's sweet." She yawned and drifted toward the
living room, pausing on the way to give me a quick kiss on the cheek
and say "Thank you" before stumbling into the bathroom and closing the
door behind her. After a while I heard her clinking around. She
dropped something plastic that rattled on the floor. Soon she drifted
past me again, carrying cosmetics and towels, pausing again to give me
another peck before floating listlessly to the shower stall in the
kitchen. She removed her pajamas, giving me a quick flash of her
tightly toned back and her charmingly round, sloping derriere (I
mused: How in the world would one dare use common street or medical
terms to refer to something so perfectly, delicately, and beautifully
shaped?). Stepping inside and drawing the curtain, she turned on the
spray and gave a little squeak.
As she showered I returned to my prized Sunday Times. So far, my
first Sunday in New York was a great success: it was not yet nine
a.m., and I'd already been kissed by two women and totally turned on
by Martha's luscious nudity. Outside, sparrows chirped merrily on a
lamp post.
During my brief shower, Martha applied her makeup quickly and
combed her hair, pinning it back and bobbing it. I was amazed to find
that in mere minutes she transformed the sleepy, frowzily sexy,
pajama'd little girl into a chic, poised, glamorous woman in skirt,
blouse, and loafers. After I dressed, we walked down Second Avenue past
several bars and restaurants that advertised their brunch menus on
entrances and on sandwich boards along the sidewalk. Martha laughed
when I asked her what a brunch was. "Brunch," she said, "is where
we're going." She advised me which of the places along the street had
good service and which had good food. She said, "You have to compro-
mise between service and food. It's a New York institution: usually,
you can't have both at the same time."
I chose food over service, and we went to a place where I ordered
eggs benedict on English muffins (yet another rarity in Memphis) and I
was introduced to a spicy, non-alcoholic version of the bloody mary.
I spent most of the time watching the appearance and behavior of the
other customers. New Yorkers entered a restaurant, quickly sighted a
table, and headed straight for it. Memphians usually stood still,
frowned, and seemed to agonize over a decision before moving falter-
ingly ahead, changing their minds several times in the process. I
also noticed the glances and stares that men directed at Martha.
"You know" I said furtively as we ate, "two men in here are
staring at you."
"That's what New Yorkers do," Martha said, unfazed. "They stare.
They're trained from childhood in effective staring. Don't stare
back, though. They get violent. If you think this is staring, wait
until you get on the subway."
We returned to her apartment. The first order of business was to
stuff another load of nutrients into my mouth, including a tablespoon
of the yeast, which blessedly was getting easier to take. Then Martha
prepared food for a picnic in Central Park. She told me more about
Ronnie and how they met and became friends, and things they did
together.
Martha had laid out several slices of bread and covered each with
slices of ham and cheese. She said, "I always thought Ronnie was very
pretty." She was pleased when I agreed. She kept talking as she
worked. "Would you like to go out with her?"
"Don't be silly, I don't like her that way. Anyhow, I'm too
young."
"Steven--" She sighed impatiently, but continued working. "Ronnie
is now your friend, because she's my friend. And she likes you. I
doubt that she'd scream in horror if you asked her to go out and show
you around. Please get out of the Memphis mode, she's not one of your
tough old aunts. She's more like your cousin Josephine Louise, the
one you used to get all goggle eyed about. Anyway, you won't even
have to ask, because she's going with us to the beach at Fire Island
later on. And I'm asking her if she'll meet you for lunch after your
session with Fiore tomorrow, and show you how to get to a place on
34th Street where you can order some decent eyeglass frames for your-
self." She stopped smiling as she worked, speaking somewhat bitterly
and almost to herself. "I don't like the way you're growing up down
there. You've proven you can work hard, you've proven you can get
your grades in school, you've proven that you're desirable and in-
telligent and sweet. I don't see why they allow you to just submit
and suffer everything the way they do. So many people, so determined
to make you exactly like them..." She looked up at me, apologetic,
seeming almost surprised by her own words. "I'm sorry. They're good
people. But they don't understand you. And they've left me with an
awful lot of work to do and an awfully short time to do it." She
grinned at me, wrapping the sandwiches. "Am I pushing you too hard?
Hm? Why are you so speechless?"
"I just don't talk much."
"Well, hon...Well, I guess some things just don't change. Oh,
well, just be yourself, don't worry about it. Anyway, I have news for
you. I've set you up with a date."
"A what?"
"A date. With a student of mine. Marilyn. She's sixteen. She's
bright, sweet, and cute. Done some theater, too. I told her about
you and she wants to meet you."
I paused. "What if she doesn't like me?"
"She already likes you, Steven. And it was her request to begin
with."
"But what if she doesn't like me?"
"If she doesn't," she said firmly as she worked, "then you should
learn to handle it. With grace, confidence, and intelligence...Well,
I see you're not so happy about it. All right, I won't force it. We
can talk about it later, then, and you make up your mind. But it's
for Saturday next week, and I'll be there to chaperone, and...well,
you make up your mind."
I said reluctantly, "All right, I'll...probably say yes."
"Hon," she said frankly, stacking the wrapped sandwiches and
looking in the cupboard for a bag, "don't be a doormat. You can say
no to me if you want to."
I didn't reply. I was thinking: what is she trying to do, get me
off her hands by setting me up with someone else?
"There, now," Martha said finally, placing our sandwiches in a bag
and fetching her purse. "We're ready for Rockefeller Center, and the
park, and a movie I know you'll be crazy about." She stood in front
of me and looked me over. "You look so nice, Steven. Please think it
over about a date with Marilyn. Will you? There may be plenty of
people who would put you down for not being what they expect of every-
one else. But you're different in a very nice way and, frankly,
Marilyn's looking forward to meeting you. You think about it. C'mon,
let's get going."
Her words may have served in one respect to shore up my lagging
confidence. But I chilled at the thought that her long term hopes
didn't appear to be the same as mine. On the other hand, I wasn't
that certain about my own long term hopes. They had never been
defined in my head; when I tried to envision what Martha and I would
be like in ten or twenty years, I always drew a blank. It was as if I
had been living under an old assumption from the past, when Martha and
I were growing up: She had always been there and, somehow, she always
would.
That afternoon she led me through Rockefeller Center and Radio
City, and then to a lake in Central Park. We stayed in the park until
sunset, sitting on the grass and snacking. When it was almost time to
leave for the movie in the Village, she packed our leftovers and sat
looking up at me, her skirt spread on the grass around her.
"I know you're having a good time," she said, teasing. "But what
have you been thinking about all day, hon? Come on. You're hiding
again."
Vacillating, I pulled my handwritten note out of my shirt pocket
and gave it to her. "I don't talk that well on my feet yet," I told
her. "I couldn't say it. I had to write it."
She unfolded it and read, her head lowered and her face hidden as
I stood near her. The paper lay loosely in her hands on her lap.
Hearing nothing, I stuttered, "It's just words...it's not finished
or anything..."
"I understand that, Steven," she said quietly. "I know what the
words mean."
"Well...it's not what I was thinking. It's...what I was feeling."
For a long moment she silently looked down at the page. I
couldn't see her face.
"Hon," she said earnestly, "I hope I'm not letting you down."
I shuffled, stirring my feet on the grass. "Well, I did promise
I'd be your friend while I was here. A friend wouldn't put a lasso
around you. A friend wouldn't want to." She didn't move or speak.
"I mean...you wouldn't be the same, would you, with your wings
clipped?"
I looked down at her. Nearly horrified, I saw a tear drip from
her hidden face and onto the paper. She sniffed. I tensed: I had not
expected this!
Gently, she wiped the droplet from the paper and fingered a
corner. "Hon," she whispered, "these are the most beautiful words I
ever read."
"Well, they're a little...clumsy."
"I don't care," she said firmly. She looked up at me. She smiled
sweetly, gratefully, happily. She wiped a corner of her eye. "It's
lovely. It's simply lovely. And these words...and what you just told
me...it's the most beautiful thing you've ever done. Look at me, you
have me crying. No one has ever done anything like this for me."
She stood, reaching for me. "C'mere," she said, and she embraced
me with a close, tight hug, clinging to me from head to toe. She
sniffed again, and then laughed against me. "Oh, lord, you don't say
much. But when you do, you sure know how to do it!"
I gulped, astounded. She hugged me until I couldn't breathe.
Leaning back, she held me by the shoulders and beamed at me.
"Come on!" she said eagerly. She grabbed my arm and walking briskly,
keeping herself close to me. "We're headed for the rest of your
vacation."
I glanced at her as we moved blithely along the path toward the
south end of the park. She smiled, relieved, exhilarated, shaking her
hair in the breeze, squinting into the setting sun.
She said, "Steven, you can be so romantic sometimes. And you can
do it without making me feel like you're chaining me to a wall. I'm
so glad you're here."
I beamed back, smiling inwardly. It wasn't the ultimate victory,
and I didn't know what I'd do anyway if I'd won her over completely.
It was a step forward, nevertheless. I had a little less than two
months to accomplish miracles. But, for the time being, I thought:
victory is so sweet.
Continued. . .
<1st attachment end>
----- ASSM Moderation System Notice------
Notice: This post has been modified from its original
format. The post was sent as an email attachment and
has been converted by ASSTR ASSM moderation software.
----- ASSM Moderation System Notice------
--
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| alt.sex.stories.moderated ----- send stories to: <ckought69@hotmail.com> |
| FAQ: <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/faq.html> Moderator: <story-ckought69@hotmail.com> |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Archive: <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org> Hosted by Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository |
|<http://www.asstr-mirror.org>, an entity supported entirely by donations. |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+