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From: Incest Man <familyincest@graffiti.net>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.incest,alt.sex.incest,alt.sex.stories,alt.stories.incest
Subject: Story "The Adventures of Me and Martha Jane" part 5A
Date: Mon, 04 Jul 2005 14:32:11 -0700
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===================
http://www.incesttabooo.com/taboo.html
The Adventures of Me and Martha Jane
Part 5A
1951.
Summer.
"Well," Lash LaRue said with his cocky grin, each hand perched on one
of two pearl-handled .45's at his side, "that takes care of the McGraw
Gang."
"Sure does," said Fuzzy St. John, nodding and spitting a wad of
tobacco juice.
Lash LaRue tipped his hat to the pretty gal in the calico dress, who
beamed at him admiringly from the wooden sidewalk. Lash LaRue cocked
his cocky, self-assured head toward Fuzzy St. John.
"Let's get goin', Fuzzy," Lash LaRue said, and he and Fuzzy mounted
their horses.
Their steeds reared up. Lash LaRue and Fuzzy spurred their horses and
galloped outta town.
It was my ninth summer, pushing for my tenth year.
Things had changed. I knew it as I watched this absurdly outdated
B-grade western for the third time, the first time being with Uncle
Johnny when I was five years old. At ten I bid a fond but not reluctant
farewell to Lash LaRue and Tex Ritter and Roy Rogers.
Martha Jane had graduated high school, on time and with high grades.
She started college immediately that summer at the largest of the local
campuses, Memphis State. She was determined to get her teacher training
in less than four years. My mother dated almost always on weekends, and
since I spent every weekend with relatives, no one was needed to watch
over me. These were gray, uneventful days. I got bored every fifteen
seconds.
Life had tragedy now. It had dire consequences, uncertainty,
loneliness, nuclear warheads. Left more often to my own devices by my
relatives on weekends, I searched the downtown movie houses for an
intensity of experience not found with the Bowery Boys or in Gene Kelly
musicals. I would hit the Main Street cinemas as soon as they opened at
eleven A.M., my pockets jingling with the movie money with which my
relatives bribed me into conformity. They assumed I was watching Abbott
and Costello or cowboys. Instead, I sat tearfully absorbed in more than
a dozen showings of the archly romantic "Cyrano de Bergerac". I was
fascinated with the impressionistic Technicolor of "Moulin Rouge";
again and again I watched this moody film, empathizing strongly with
Lautrec's pitiful infirmity.
My relatives, staunch stay-at-homes, had no idea these films existed
until I told them what I'd seen-- -and at that they seemed bewildered
as to why a boy would be so magnetically drawn to Bogart's sarcasm,
William Holden's cynicism, or Brando's hostility. They were amazed when
I told them I had spent an entire day in the same movie house watching
over and over as a somber Robert Mitchum portrayed a death-obsessed
army officer in "G.I. Joe."
I saw Martha Jane on our front porch once or twice in the early
summer. By August she had disappeared. Once I knocked on her front
door, expecting her mother to answer. But no one did. My Mom didn't
mention her. It seemed Martha Jane had been swallowed up into nowhere.
Knowing she was in summer classes, I assumed a break would occur soon,
probably in September. But by September I'd heard nothing.
Associating with others had eroded my confidence. My impression was
that other kids regarded me as a little weird; I had a fatalistic
attitude toward people and events. Repression and criticism from Mom
and relatives didn't help. By age ten, I was on a psychological downer.
I began to expect that life would either take people away from me, or
me from them. Stepper and Uncle Robert was a case in point; Mom and all
the dead of the war were others. When the Korean War started, Josephine
Louise's dad, my Uncle Lawrence, was called back to active service. He
paid us a farewell visit in the early Fall. He smiled and saluted me
when he left our house, bound for Fort Hood, Texas. By October he was
killed in action.
My future step-dad had little interest in my activities. His name was
Anthony. Mom called him Tony. He was a dark-haired, virile, handsome
man. I disliked him somewhat; he had a deep and relatively loud voice,
very different from the softer voices of all the aunts around me,
different from the breathy Italian quality of Uncle Johnny and
Josephine Louise. By the end of that summer Tony started hanging around
our apartment more often. He came over many mornings before opening the
supermarket in our neighborhood and had breakfast with Mom and me while
I prepared for school. Our interests never interlocked. He assumed I
was interested in sports, in being a fireman or doctor when I grew up,
in playing with other boys. When he found out I wanted to be an artist,
he was taken aback. His idea of art was limited to portraits of the
saints.
One morning at breakfast as I ate my milk and oatmeal, he sat at the
other side of our tiny kitchen table, reading a newspaper article to my
mother who was working at the sink. He was mildly agitated about a
report on small business regulation. He read until he came to a word in
the article that made him stop.
"What is that word?" he asked irritably, squinting at the page. "Why
do they have to use words this long in newspapers?"
"Ask Speedy," Mom said, so he handed me the paper and pointed at the
word. "What's that word say?" he asked me.
Chewing oatmeal, I glanced at the word quickly and announced,
"Antiestablishmentarianism."
He sat back in amazement. "Well, damn," he breathed. "How'd he know a
big word like that?"
"I don't know," Mom answered absently. "He just does. I think his
Uncle Johnny taught him to read from the comics."
"The comics?" he echoed, dumbfounded. He reached for his coffee cup.
"Damn," he breathed again.
In my isolation, movies became my life. I devoured them like popcorn
and soda. I saw three or four films each weekend. If new ones hadn't
opened I'd frequent the rerun joints and the art film outlets. My
relatives didn't mind, as it kept me out of their hair all weekend,
didn't cost much for a child's admission (twelve cents in those days),
and Uncle Johnny was getting a little too old and arthritic to escort
me all over town the way he did when I was younger.
Truly, I enjoyed the freedom of doing mostly as I pleased. They knew I
was smart enough to find my way around town; most of the movies were a
short walk from the restaurant. But the art film outlet was far out in
the eastern part of town. With my usual brazenness I allowed folks to
assume that I never traveled that far out of the way. But one Saturday
I took the No.10 bus all the way to the Ritz theater to see "Cyrano de
Bergerac." I was so affected by the film that I stayed inside and
watched it again, then again, then a fourth time. The movie was longer
than most, so that when I left the theater I discovered I was just in
time to catch the last inbound No.10, which stopped running by ten PM.
It was nearly eleven when I arrived at Aunt Frances' house and let
myself in. Entering by the long unlit front hallway, I assumed everyone
was asleep. But Aunt Frances was waiting up for me in her long white
nightgown on the living room sofa.
"Where the hell have *you* been?" she demanded as I walked into the
room.
I knew from long experience that the best tactic for handling Aunt
Frances under these circumstances was to appear unfazed and keep on
grinning.
"The movies," I answered.
"You trying to give your Aunt Frances a heart attack? Huh? You want
your poor old Aunt Frances to have a heart attack? What kind of movie
they let you into that lasts till this time of night?"
"Cyrano de Bergerac," I said.
"Syrup what?" She squinted hard.
"Cyrano de Bergerac," I repeated. I sat sideways on one of the ornate
dining chairs in the room and slipped my arm around the back of the
chair. I smiled and batted my eyelids.
"Don't give me that look. What kinda movie is this, uh, Cereal di
Hajiback?"
"It's French."
"It's what? It's fresh?"
"French, Aunt Frances. French."
We both looked up as Uncle Johnny appeared in the doorway leading to
the bedrooms. His hair mussed, his eyes squinting in the light, he
scratched his tummy over his pajamas.
Aunt Frances huffed, "Look, Johnny. He walks in like nothing happened.
You see him, Johnny? Look at him."
"You home?" Uncle Johnny mumbled drowsily.
"I'm here, " I said. "I'm okay."
"It's late, Speedy," Uncle Johnny said.
"I know."
"You okay? We were all worried about ya."
"I'm fine."
"Have any trouble?"
"Nope."
He yawned. "How'd you get here this time of night? Walk?"
"The Number 10 Bus."
"Oh." He yawned again. "Well, you be careful out there. You oughtta
call us next time." Another yawn. "Good night, Frances." He walked back
into the dark.
"That's all you have to say?" Aunt Frances called after him.
"Good night, Frances," Uncle Johnny said, disappearing.
"I'll be damn," she muttered, settling back into the sofa. "Two of a
kind, you two. Listen, you're too young to be watchin' French movies at
eleven o'clock at night."
"How old do I have to be?"
"Seven years old is too young!"
"I'm not seven years old, Aunt Frances, I'm ten."
"Ten? You ain't no ten years old. What kinda movie is this? Is Clark
Gable in this movie?"
"No. Jose Ferrer."
"Who?"
"Jose Ferrer."
"Never heard of him."
I leaned forward and peered at her. "Aunt Frances, are you sure you're
not asleep?"
"Of course I'm not asleep. I look asleep?"
"Well, the things you're asking and saying to me don't make much
sense."
"How'm I supposed to make sense with you talking French, or whatever
it is?"
I rose from the chair and bent down to her and kissed her on the
cheek-- -a surefire technique for calming her down. Poor Aunt Frances,
who had not been anywhere except to work and church and bed since the
1920's, had no idea how the world had changed.
"You think you're gonna kiss your Aunt Frances and that's all you
hafta do?"
"I just don't want you to be worried."
"You look just like your poor daddy when you do that. You love your
Aunt Frances?"
"Yes, ma'am, I sure do. You're my favorite." I kissed her again. "Now
you ought to go back to bed. I'm all right."
"You think you're smart, don't ya? That's what your daddy used to do.
You love your Aunt Frances like your daddy did?"
"I sure do," I cooed, knowing I had her in the palm of my hand.
"Okay, then" she said, blushing childishly. She looked up at me with
her big round confused eyes, as if trying to comprehend how the
universe had become what it was without her knowing. It had taken me
years to fathom this hysterical woman. I had learned, with coaching
from Josephine Louise, that Aunt Frances had not been all there since
my father's death. A couple of years before, I would not have been able
to understand it. Now, after many weekends, I realized that her
thoughts and feelings were stuck at a single moment in time and would
go neither backward nor ahead.
"You look just like your daddy," she said wistfully, looking at me and
seeing someone else. Then she scowled mildly and said, "You don't do
that to me and your Uncle Johnny any more. You hear me?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said, sweetly.
"Your Uncle Johnny loves you too. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"We don't want anything to happen to you, like what happened to your
daddy."
"I know," I said gently. "Now," I began, standing up and holding her
hand. "I'm gonna go to sleep, and you go back to sleep too."
"You love your Aunt Frances?"
I bent down and kissed her again. "I sure do."
With that, she was satisfied and sloughed off in her fluffy house
shoes to her bedroom. For a while I sat in the living room, breathing a
long sigh of relief. I asked myself, seriously, if I would ever again
find someone with whom I could communicate without the need for these
convoluted tactics. Trying to follow Aunt Frances' line of thought was
like working one's way through a trick maze or a hall of mirrors.
When I stayed with them I slept in the front bedroom with my Aunt
Frances' mother, my great-grandmother Nifa. She was, everyone estimated
at that time, in her nineties. She wore black. She wore a simple black
dress and black shoes and black hose all day long, and she wore a black
nightgown and long black stockings when she slept. She had worn nothing
but black since her husband's death in 1936. She spoke no English, only
a Northern Italian dialect that other Italians found difficult.
Speaking with Nifa was similar to speaking with Aunt Frances; their
minds were elsewhere, their words and memories and thoughts had not
changed over many years. Being among them was to be among memories of
loved ones never seen and long since gone, of time long since past and
silenced. It was a lonely experience, like talking to the blind and
deaf, who could neither hear nor see me.
Somehow I had learned to understand, pity and love these lost souls. I
may not have known what they thought (no one did), but I somehow knew
what they felt.
But as for me, by the summer of 1952 I didn't see a soul-mate in
sight. Not anywhere.
Late that Fall I did have one baby-sitter when my Mom had a rare
weeknight date. The sitter was none other than Evelyn, Martha Jane's
sister.
Evelyn spent almost the entire night on the phone. She was working
days at a clerical job and attending the University of Tennessee
Medical Extension at night, studying for work in medical research. She
was an attractive woman in her middle twenties now, tall, rather chic
and long-legged. Only in her eyes and general posture did she resemble
her sister. Objectively, most people would have thought Evelyn to be
more beautiful: she was brunette and had a svelte, sophisticated air,
with a lazy voice and large dark eyes and high cheekbones. But being
among young women other than Martha Jane, which didn't happen often,
taught me something about my own needs-- Evelyn, though sexy, did not
appeal to me at all. I found her nice to look at, friendly, and boring.
I was beginning to learn the vast difference between just any
"good-looking woman" and one who has a compelling, irresistible,
unsettling appeal. At that point I could be brought under the spell of
only two females on the planet: the physically devastating Josephine
Louise, and the warm, captivating, and equally devastating Martha Jane.
Evelyn told me that night that she was herself so busy with career and
friends (she admitted she had no steady man and was tied to her work),
she seldom spoke with her mother or Martha Jane. But she offered me the
last phone number she had for her, an apartment somewhere near Memphis
State that Martha Jane shared with two other students. I was certain
Martha Jane must have found a boyfriend by then and had little time for
anything except school. Evelyn also told me she last saw her sister for
lunch in downtown Memphis at Woolworth's, where Martha Jane worked
part-time. She was 19 now, "busy as a busy little bee." Evelyn promised
that when she contacted Martha Jane again she'd ask her to give me a
call.
I missed Martha Jane. I missed her sexually, of course, but at that
age sex was still secondary. Mainly, I missed just her, her warmth and
the ease of simply being with her. At age ten I saw her as a sexual
object much more clearly than I had a few years earlier, though I still
had a while to go before the full impact of sexual attraction hit home.
At that point I wanted the sisterly, motherly, girl-woman of her more
emotionally and intellectually than physically.
As soon as I could I dialed the number Evelyn had given me. No go. A
young girl answered and said that Martha Jane shared a place with them
but that she had moved again and they didn't know where. Besides that
call, I had no idea what happened to Evelyn's promise that she would
have Martha Jane call me.
That left me with the part-time job at Woolworth's. On impulse I went
to find her on a Saturday afternoon one weekend when I was staying at
the downtown restaurant. It was warm weather, right around my 11th
birthday.
Telling my folks I was going to a movie, I took a bus down to the end
of Main Street and went straight to the big three-story Woolworth's.
Once inside, I had no idea where to look. It was a huge store,
especially to an 11-year-old. I searched the whole place, checked at
every sales counter, roamed through every aisle.
After a while I gave up and stood outside on the busy sidewalk. I
thought that perhaps it was her lunch hour, or perhaps she came to work
later in the day. Since I had movie money, I went to a movie nearby and
feasted on a lunch of popcorn and Coke. By then it was after two, so I
went back to Woolworth's.
The second search proved futile as well. She was nowhere to be found.
Despite my aggressive, snoopy attitude in so many other areas, I seem
to have lost all my "fight" in this situation. I wandered aisle to
aisle, feeling dejected and lost. I walked around the waterfront area
for a while, then up and down Main Street several times. By then it was
4:00. I returned to the store. It was crowded nose-to-nose with
Saturday shoppers. After yet another hour of searching, I had not found
her and it was near closing time.
I asked some salespeople if they knew Martha Jane Graham. They didn't.
Puzzled, I thought about hanging around and asking every employee I
could find, but everyone was preparing to close for the day. I asked
one more worker if they had a personnel department. They did, but it
was closed Saturdays. She referred me to a sales counter where she
thought Martha Jane worked.
But when I arrived there, I found only a redheaded middle-aged lady
who didn't look anything like her and wasn't particularly interested in
helping me find my way. She eyed me suspiciously. "You have parents?"
she asked, frowning. "Where are your parents? You shouldn't be here all
by yourself, we're getting ready to close."
I felt odd and disoriented. The whole situation was becoming eerie,
dreamlike. The redhead now confronted me with the fact that I was still
only 11. Aggressive and independent though I might have been at that
age, and though I was an 11-year-old kid who in many ways didn't act or
think like an 11-year-old-- -yet I was, nevertheless, still a kid.
Perhaps it was a feeling of frustration: if I were not such a kid, I
thought, these people would take me seriously and give me the
information I was looking for. And if I did find Martha Jane wouldn't
she, like Evelyn and the redhead and everyone else, notice that I was
not an adult? Had something changed, such that now she would recognize
me for who I really was? And besides, she probably had a boyfriend now;
she was among college students her own age at a big coed state college.
The day had such a strange effect on me that I was in its grip for
months. I soon became fearful that Martha Jane would not want to see me
again, as least not as she had seen me before. She was in a different
world now. Effectively, she had left the project and in leaving the
project she had somehow changed everything. I began to feel she was
"too old" for me now.
When I went home after that weekend I mentioned Saturday's search to
my Mom, but she was unconcerned. Paranoid, I didn't trust her as
someone I wanted to talk to about Martha Jane, not in any way. She
might want to know why I was so desperate to find her, she might
suspect something was going on-- -especially since Martha Jane had not
been around for more than a year. I didn't mention it to her again, and
sulked around our apartment for most of that week.
One day several weeks later when I came home from school, Mom said
Martha Jane had called and asked how I was getting along.
The first thing I asked was, "Did you get a number to call back?"
Mom shrugged. "Well, no, I didn't think it was important anymore. You
haven't mentioned her in so long..."
I didn't hear the rest of what she said. I felt as if I had fallen
from a high place and landed on my face. I didn't want to betray my
feelings, so I said nothing more. I didn't even know what my feelings
were.
As I approached and then reached twelve years, I became involved in
that strange activity in grammar schools known as "dramatics," which
consumed my energy and my thoughts. Because I had gleaned from movies
so much about effective acting, I became very successful at it. The
more successful I was, the harder I worked. Though I had no close
relationships among my peers and teachers at the newly built St.
Michael's School, I did find a source of attention and recognition on
the stage. Being in a new school in a different part of town made me
feel that I, too, had started the process of moving out of the project.
By the time the thirty-minute bus ride to St. Michael's ended each
morning, I had readjusted to an entirely different place; I felt almost
as if I were spending those five hours a day in a different town.
Then came the day my Mom announced she would be getting married and
that we'd soon be moving out of the project. That day, Martha Jane
seemed to disappear for good. I made it so. I went into our bedroom the
night of Mom's announcement and saw the moonlight on the window sill.
And I forced Martha Jane out of my mind.
Continued...
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