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            ****  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, 1996 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 1A:


    The story herein is told as best as I can recall it.  It occurred
during 1948-49-50. There are continued incidents that occurred 1952-58.
Over the years I have relived these events countless times, carefully
reconstructing in my mind many forgotten details and conversations -- at
one point undergoing hypnosis to recall details or events that lay buried
under a lifetime of other thoughts and concerns.

What follows is presented as clearly as I can remember...



    During this first period, 1948 to 1950, I ranged in age from 6 to
almost 9. This doesn't make me an "old man" -- fortunately, a youthful
look runs in my family (though we tend to lose our teeth early, for some
damn reason). I look 35.  I am 5'8" and appear slightly taller because I
am muscular but slim.  When I was age 8 to 13 I actually looked older and
was often mistaken for 12 to 18. Luckily, that trend later reversed
itself.

    Over the years I've discussed these incidents with professionals
(i.e., headshrinkers and other counselors), most of whom were scandalized
by my tale.  In discussing it, and in going back over childhood memories
with parents and relatives, I managed to gather a number of facts about
me as a boy:

    I was mentally and sexually precocious.  Not that I was a young
Einstein or a certifiable "prodigy", but I was quite bright and mentally
overactive.  From the time I was able to crawl along the floor I was
poking my nose into everything.  In this regard I was difficult to
manage; my mother couldn't keep pace with my endless questions and habits
like peeking under everything in sight. When entering a new room or
building the first thing I did was wonder what was in the closets.  I
used to look under the sofa and the chair cushions just to see what was
there (I found lots of pennies doing this, and a wedding ring lost by a
visiting aunt). I also loved listening to the 78rpm records on Mom's
then-new Philco tabletop radio-phonograph.  The Philco was on several
occasions a source of wonderment to my Mom and relatives -- whenever they
brought me a child's record, I would set it aside untouched and start
playing a symphony (Dvorak's Eighth was my favorite) or the Peggy Lee
album, and I listened to Tex Ritter platters until I wore them gray and
had to ask for replacements.  I knew more about the Philco than Mom did,
once producing for her a crayon drawing of how the old vacuum tube
"tuning eye" worked.  My hearing was sharply developed: I could tell when
the steel-tipped phono needle was beginning to wear before anyone else
could hear the difference and I knew how to change the needle
myself -- something my mother was never able to figure out.

  Before I started grammar school I would read the morning paper to Mom
while she fixed breakfast.  This was something I picked up from my
godfather, who every Sunday read the comics to me, pointing at each word
as he read.  An Italian immigrant who never finished grammar school, he
was a slow reader who always read that way, his index finger leading him
along word by word across a page.  The first time he read to me I was
curious about how the printed letters corresponded to what he said aloud,
so each time he went through the comics with me I made him break down the
words he pointed to, and soon I had him breaking down the syllables in
the words until I learned to put words together on my own.  The first
words I learned to recognize by myself was the phrase, "You betchum, Red
Ryder!," a phrase I used until everyone around me grew sick of it.  My
great-aunt Frances once caught me in her back yard trying to lift a heavy
old castiron Underwood typewriter that someone had abandoned.  I was
barely six then, and the ancient 1920's-vintage machine was almost as
heavy as I was.  She wanted me to throw it away, but I insisted on
keeping it and cradled it heavily on my lap the day I found it as she
drove me back to my Mom's and stared at me, amazed that anyone would want
such a piece of junk.  But the old machine's feel and construction
fascinated me, and did so for years.  Quickly and easily bored, I drew my
own comic books (mostly stick-men and outer space battles), once filled
the apartment with acrid smoke and ruined a pot trying to manufacture my
own crayons -- the odor made Mom sick for days, and it took weeks for the
stench of paraffin to fade.  These and other feats of my daring and
heedless youth caused most of my stodgy family to consider me a holy
terror.  They labeled my behavior as weird and inscrutable.

    Most of these activities were the result of prolonged self isolation
and boredom.  I was as impatient with adults as they were with me.  They
addressed me as if either they or I were idiots, mumbling among them-
selves as if they didn't think I understood what they were talking about
(some of them knew that I knew, so they would mumble in Italian -- which
of course I didn't understand and which infuriated me!).  They usually
answered my questions with religious myth, fantasy, or old wives' tales
-- none of which I accepted, especially quaint tripe about storks deli-
vering babies and women getting big bellies from eating too many
popsicles.  I soon learned that adults -- especially my overly religious
mother -- could not be trusted.  I became emotionally and intellectually
estranged from them at a very early age, probably around age four.
Rather than ask questions, I did my own investigating.  This often got me
into trouble: I once jammed my arm into the ancient Westinghouse laundry
machine Mom had in the kitchen corner, the kind with a mechanized
feed-by-hand rinser-wringer attached to the top of the washtub.  The
thick rubber rollers on this machine happened to be engaged at the time,
and the rollers pulled one of my arms through the wringer, threatening to
squeeze the rest of me along with it.  My mother heard me yelling, ran
into the kitchen, smacked the roller release lever, and rescued me.

    Unfortunately I learned absolutely nothing from this incident.  I
kept right on distrusting the advice of any and all elders and continued
to snoop, probe, and experiment.  My active spirits were so unpredictable
that my mother arranged for rest on weekends by sending me out of the
house to spend time with my grandparents and godparents.  I gave this
Puritanical crowd the same case of the heebie-jeebies, so they placated
me with plenty of money for movies, comic books, magazines, and whatever
else would keep me occupied in a corner or otherwise out of their hair.

    I was not mean-spirited or destructive.  In fact, I considered other
children to be insensitive, dense, selfish, often brutal. My feelings
were easily hurt by name-calling and arm-punching.  I had a nauseating
fear of violence, whether directed at me or at anyone else.  Yet
physically I was fairly muscular and aggressive, tending to spend my time
in risky games such as purposely dashing back and forth across Lauderdale
Street, the 6-lane, heavily trafficked main boulevard that ran through
our project, and early on conducted my own far-flung explorations of the
nearby downtown area without the slightest idea how I would find my way
back home.  I once wandered around the downtown Memphis waterfront until
I truly got lost; I didn't find my way back until 9 o'clock that night
and on returning home I found my Mom had called every relative in sight;
several of them were pacing around our living room talking with some
cops.  I casually entered the front door and walked across the room with
a carefree "Hi, folks!" and everyone immediately descended upon me with
yells, threats, moans and tears of consternation.  And though I knew this
would be the result if I ever wandered off again, I wandered anyway --
but not without first studying a map of the city and learning all the
routes of the city bus lines -- not so I would not get lost again (I did
on several more occasions), but so I could find my way back in time to
avoid their hysteria.

    My neighborhood was a Federal housing project.  But It was nothing
like modern projects, so it's difficult to describe.  The place was in
downtown Memphis, Tennessee, and was built in the 1930's to house retired
veterans, their widows and children, and government employees needing
housing.  World War II made this housing available to war widows and
disabled vets and their families.  The rent was $30 a month, which in the
1940's was still a fairly hefty sum for a widow or disabled vet.  The
housing staff maintained the area almost antiseptically inside and out.
It consisted mostly of small, single-level housing units with 4 to 6
1-bedroom apartments in each unit.  The project extended 6-by-8 city
blocks.  Each apartment had its own small backyard, which some tenants
equipped with picket fences and even flower or vegetable gardens.
Housing staff inspected the interiors of each apartment every 30 days to
make certain the tenants kept them maintained. The grounds were webbed
with sidewalks, dotted with trees, shrubs, and benches here and there.
Those who are familiar with the life of Elvis Presley will recognize this
project near downtown Memphis as the same one Elvis lived in during the
early 1950's, at roughly the same time I was there.

    In the late 1950's, a few years after my mother and my new stepfather
moved out of the neighborhood to suburbia, the Feds handed the project
over to the state.  Housing for military and government people had been
moved into the 'burbs, so the project became tenanted by state welfare
recipients.  In the 1960's the project was turned over to the county and
city, at which point it was populated only by the homeless, the chronic-
ally unemployed, and those living strictly on the dole.  By that time it
had decayed into a crusty slum and looked not at all like the well kept,
flowered neighborhood I remembered.

    My mother was a World War II widow.  In many ways this contributed to
my early feelings of isolation from her.  I distinctly recall receiving
from her the impression that, since my father's death in combat earning a
Silver Star in the B-17 battles over Europe, I had been a great burden to
her (There was more to this story than his death in the war, but that's
another tale.) Certainly, my Mom being suddenly left alone to raise me
and my younger sister could have had this effect on her.  She never
openly voiced any of this, but I clearly remember having received this
"message" from her in many subtle ways.  I had a sister almost two years
younger.  The two of us in that small apartment were too much for Mom; so
it happened that by the time I was 5 or 6 my sister wasn't around often,
having been taken under the wing of her very large godmother, who allowed
my sister to spend months at a time with her and her husband.  My sister
wasn't enamored of life in the project, preferring to be thoroughly
spoiled and pampered by her doting godmother (who did her best to play
the role, usually to excess).  Sis, whom we called Miss Priss, would stay
at our apartment for a while, then ask to stay at her godmother's for
prolonged periods, until at the age of 12 or so she practically moved in
with her semi-permanently.  This same godmother was also our great-aunt.
I seemed to barely get along with this shrill woman, and our relationship
probably survived due only to the fact that she had a great affection for
her favorite nephew, my departed father.  I found the woman too smother-
ing and exacting for comfort.

    So I was left most often with Mom, whom I didn't trust.  I had the
feeling I was in her way.  She was attractive and quiet, but a sad and
moody woman, usually too tired or worried to spend much time with me.  I
can't fault her; she married too young, got caught up in the tragedy of
the War, and was simply doing her best to cope.  With my sister usually
away and with most of the kids in the project being too roughneck for my
taste, I was left pretty much to myself from a very early age.  Very
likely this same attitude caused me to leave home later, at 18, and
strike out on my own.

    The single bright spot was the family next door.  Another war widow
lived there with her two daughters.  This woman and my mother became
close friends, a relationship that continues to this day even though the
lady moved to St. Louis years ago.  Her oldest daughter was a tall,
attractive, brunette young woman nearing her twenties at the time and
whom I seldom saw.  She possessed a highly valued high school diploma,
enabling her to find work and help the family financially.  In the South
in the 1940's women could expect only minimal pay at clerical or similar
jobs.  But she earned enough to keep her younger sister in high school.
This younger sister was Martha Jane.  My earliest memory of Martha Jane
was when I was 6 years old and she was 15.  I had a very serious crush on
her.

    I don't mean that as a 6-year old sexpot I had the kind of crush that
centers on sexual fantasy.  I don't recall ever sitting around fantasiz-
ing sexually at that age about Martha Jane.  I simply had a strong and
memorable affection for her.  And she had similar feelings for me -- in
later years my mother would say to me, "Yes, I remember Martha Jane --
she just LOVED you!  She thought you were the sweetest, cutest thing on
earth!  She was the only one who could make you behave."

    It was true.  With little instruction or any warning that I can
remember, Martha Jane's presence seemed to soothe my savage beasts.  I
would knowingly do nothing -- nothing -- to upset her in any way.
Actions that I knew were upsetting to others were automatically filtered
out of my behavior when I was around her.  By the same token, Martha Jane
always approached me as though I were a person rather than an imbecile.
She gave honest, practical, concerned answers to my endless questions and
she had a fondness for stories and science and movies and music similar
to mine.  Obviously my insistent questioning and troublesome behavior
were attempts on my part to get attention and establish some sort of
meaning- ful communication with a mental soul mate.  Most of my large
family of relatives were half-literate, working- or middle-class folks --
nothing immoral about that, and such is the human stuff that gets work
done and is often referred to as the "salt of the earth."  There was no
lack of a certain modicum of family attachment and devotion.  But they
and I lacked, shall we say, compatibility and understanding. Martha Jane
apparently fulfilled many of those needs and shared my mental interests,
sometimes sitting for hours telling me stories or reading to me or simply
listening.  After spending some time with her I usually felt serene for a
few days.  My frequent bouts of instant boredom and hyperactivity were,
for a while, minimal.  Martha Jane reciprocated by treating me with
intelligence, playfulness, and a seemingly endless supply of affection.
And she and I simply seemed to establish an instant rapport together.
Adults were boring and stultifying: she never was.  She never raised her
voice or hand to me, and she never had reason to.

    At 15, she was a sunny faced, fairly short, trim teenager with a very
poised manner and auburn hair that was so light it often appeared
blonde.  She often wore black horn-rimmed glasses.  Her hair was medium
length and usually frizzy (I called it fuzzy-cute) rather than long and
curled like most women and girls I knew.  She had strong eyes that
appeared alternately hazel or bright green, depending on the light and on
her mood.  She wore very sparse makeup, and had a soft musical voice
that I found hypnotic.  Pugnosed, a little delicate and with a bright
face that hinted of a few tiny freckles, she was the typically pretty,
early 50's teen.  She also had a very evident West Tennessee Southern
twang, which her older sister didn't seem to have.

(* P.S.:  In later years I became an accomplished astrologer, and
eventually astrology combined with my computer skills.  Astrologically
I calculated her birthdate:  Martha Jane was a Virgo, born September 9,
1933.  I later found out that this birthdate was correct. But I hope I
never again have to do the amount of work required to figure this out!)

    Martha Jane didn't spend a great deal of time with me or in my
mother's place.  She was an avid student.  At that time, poor kids who
wanted to get anywhere in life -- especially to move out of Federal
housing projects -- had to get through high school, or else!  It was that
simple.  We would usually see each other on our shared front porch if we
happened to be entering or leaving our apartments together.  She would
greet me out front and spend a while talking to me there, and we'd go on
our way.  It was always a pleasant exchange, though today I remember
little of what was said.  I do remember that she would often hug me, kiss
my nose, let me give her a kiss, or in some other way express herself
affectionately and attentively to me.  On a few occasions she visited my
mother for an afternoon.  They would sit in the small kitchen and chat
over tea or coffee while I played elsewhere in the apartment.

    Martha Jane and I did not spend time alone together until late in my
6th year, when my widowed Mom began dating the man who eventually became
my stepfather.  This started in late 1948.  Mom and my future stepdad
didn't date often, since they saw each other regularly during the week
when she did her grocery shopping at the supermarket on the corner; my
stepdad-to-be was manager/owner of the place, with others in his family.
They dated only every few weeks or so; and as staunch conservative
Catholics, they had a long and leisurely courtship that continued for
years.  When she did have a dress-up date, Mom engaged a sitter for me.

    Originally my sitter was my maternal grandmother or one of my
mother's younger sisters.  But grandma moved to the distant 'burbs and my
two aunts found husbands.  My mother could only occasionally afford to
pay a babysitter, and she refused to accept as little as a dollar or two
from my stepdad-to-be (now I know where I got most of that independent
streak of mine!  It was her own independence that kept her in the project
for so long.  After my father's death she was too embarrassed to accept
help and was determined to make life work on her own.  Unfortunately the
right to that streak wasn't looked upon so favorably in my case).

    So it turned out that my sitter became Martha Jane, who offered her
services freely.  My Mom tried slipping her a bill or two now and then,
but Martha Jane would have none if it.  "You don't have to pay me to stay
with him," she'd say.  "I love Speedy!"

     This brings me to my nickname.  Why I found this name so embarras-
sing, even then, is a mystery to me.  But I came to be known as "Speedy."
My other nicknames were Mikey (from my godmother) and Butch (from my
great-aunt).  Where the name Speedy came from has many myths behind it,
but most people say it had a lot to do with the legendary speed with
which I ran away when caught at something.  Martha Jane addressed me by
Speedy and sometimes by my proper name, Steven.  Being called Speedy by
most people deeply annoyed me, but I didn't seem to mind when Martha Jane
did it.  I have no explanation for making an exception of her when it
came to my otherwise despised nickname.  She said she liked both names,
and that was OK by me.

    During these infrequent babysit sessions she would usually study.
Sometimes she would do a little cleaning or straightening, purely out of
a desire to help my Mom, and I would always help.  I felt "right" with
whatever we did together.  I do recall the one time that I upset her
during a babysit session:  I was in our small bedroom.  There was a black
phone set in the room and I wanted desperately to find out what happened
when I dialed 411.  The telephone directory listed it as a free public
information number.  So I picked up the phone and dialed 411.  An
operator answered.

    "Number, please?" said the voice on the other end.

    "Oh," I said nonchalantly, "I don't want a number.  I just wanna talk
to you."

    Martha Jane must have heard this ridiculous conversation, because
right away I heard her cry out, "Speedy? What are you doing in there?"
She rushed into the room and stood in the doorway, stunned and shocked.
"What are you DOING?"

   I was so alarmed that I immediately said into the phone, "I'm sorry, I
didn't mean to bother you, Miss," and hung up.  Martha Jane quickly came
to me and took the phone away.  I told her I had only called 411 and was
talking to the operator.  She looked at me blankly, and then couldn't
help but giggling.  "You did WHAT?"  All I could do was look up at her
(she was not that tall, but she was then taller than I).  I took the hem
of her skirt and scrunched up against her; I was really afraid I had
offended her. I kept saying I was sorry.  She knelt down to my level and
patiently explained to me about telephone operators and how the poor
overworked gals got so many crank calls.  "I'll call up one of my
girlfriends sometime, okay?  And you and I can talk to her together and
you'll see what it's like."  I said it would be fine, and I hugged her
and apologized again and again, and she accepted and hugged me back and
got me ready for bed.


                             PART 1B:


    The fact is, Martha Jane was an upright, well behaved, socially
poised, and even a classy young lady.  She seldom displayed anger,
apparently never gossiped or had anything critical to say about anyone.
As far as I can tell, she was just a very conscientious, proper, very
pretty teenaged girl.  She did have an active and playful nature but for
the most part she behaved with the kind of politeness so common among
girls whose Southern moms brought them up as "proper" and "sociable".

    But obviously Martha Jane had her other side.  On rare occasions
during that period when she first was sitting for me, I would now and
then look up and find her staring at me.  Not "at" me, I should say, but
"toward" me as though thinking of something very deep and ponderous.  Or
now and then she would, indeed, look right into me with a serious and
careful gaze, but she'd say nothing.  I would turn away and go back to
what I was doing.  I had no idea what she was thinking.

    One of these incidents occurred in late 1948, just before or after
Thanksgiving.  I was six, Martha Jane was fifteen.  She arrived at our
place from next door at about 7 o'clock as my Mom was getting powdered
and done up.  I was on the floor of the living room and had spread old
newspapers around to work on the treasured but broken Underwood type-
writer that I had retrieved from the trash only a few weeks earlier.
Martha Jane said hello and hugged me and chatted with my mother.  Mom
said, "Just let him play down there and he shouldn't be any trouble."
Martha Jane laughed and said, "Betty, Speedy never gives me any trouble,"
at which Mom grumbled, "Give him time."

    Martha Jane stood over me and asked what I was doing.  My Mom broke
in and said, "He's making a mess with that old typewriter. I don't see
why he doesn't throw it away, it's nothin' but a...hunk of junk."

    Martha Jane bent way down to smile at me on the floor and survey the
spread of springs and spare parts strewn over the newspaper. "Hey," she
asked, "are you taking this apart or putting it together?"

    "Both," I said, not looking up from my work.  "I'm gonna make it work
again."

    "But what'll you to do with it, Speedy, after you get it to work?"

    "I'll figure somethin' out," I said arrogantly.

    "You certainly have enough parts there for inspiration."

    My mother came into the room, screwing on an earring.  "Don't you
make a mess and drive Martha Jane crazy.  She has to study tonight."

    "Oh, Betty," Martha Jane said, "he'll be all right."

    My mother continued, "I don't know what he wants that thing for, it
must be twenty years old.  His godmother buys him toy trains and toy this
and toy that, and he has to fool around with that and make a mess!"

    She left to finish dressing in the bedroom.  I sat on my knees,
hunched over, laboriously studying the puzzle before me.  I was so deeply
absorbed that I was startled to hear someone breathing behind me.  I
looked up at saw Martha Jane staring at me.  I turned so quickly that she
barely had time to change the studied expression with which she had
apparently been watching me.

    Quickly, she smiled and gave me a big wink.  She mouthed the words,
"It's okay."

    My Mom left a few minutes later.  Martha Jane settled down to a pile
of books on the sofa and studied silently while I knelt on the floor
struggling with my project.  Using pliers and a screwdriver, I managed to
straighten most its typeset arms, but some of them were still getting
stuck on certain letters.  I worked on it until I became frustrated and
threw the pliers on the floor and pouted.

    "What's wrong?" Martha Jane asked, and she came to sit on the floor
beside me.

    I showed her how the keys for certain letters were still bent out of
shape and that if I bent one properly, the keys next to it became misa-
ligned.  Martha Jane said, "Speedy, why don't you take it to a repair
shop?"

    "It's too old," I said. "Nobody wants to fool with it."

    "Tell you what, maybe your Aunt Frances would buy you a new one."

    "She won't," I said.

    "But she gets you everything you want."

    "No!" I said, angrily.  "She told me I'm too young to have a
typewriter."

    "Too young?" she said, surprised.  "You probably know more about
typewriters than she ever will, hon."

    "Besides," I added, holding the black albatross by the ends of its
heavy roller platen, "it's mine!  I found it."

    "And nobody wants it but you," she pondered.  She hunched down beside
me and surveyed the damage. "Maybe I can help."

    I sighed, "It's no use.  It's just too old and banged up."

    "Well, Speedy, let's be patient and see what we can do.  I'm sure you
can figure it out.  Show me what's wrong with it."

    I was reluctant and pessimistic at first, but Martha Jane put on her
hornrimmed glasses and made me show her what the problem was.  She
studied everything closely and showed me how to set up the keys so that
the problem was always repeated exactly the same way every time.  She
told me how to work on one part at a time and not try to fix everything
at once.  Finally we had the machine in one piece again and I showed her
how straightening one key would throw several others out of whack.

    Martha Jane sat back and scratched her head.  I stood up beside her.
"Martha Jane," I said, "you don't have to do this. You have to study."

    She said, "No...now you've got me as puzzled about this as you are."

    Suddenly she snapped her fingers and ran into the kitchen. She came
back with some popsicle sticks.  We kept popsicle sticks around for
making our own cheap popsicles out of soda poured into ice trays.  She
showed me how to hold the line of keys in place with parts made from
popsicle sticks, and that would let me work on one key at a time and keep
the others in place.

    "Hey," I exclaimed, "Neat!  That's pretty smart for a girl."

    "Hm...boys!" she huffed with a laugh, and she went back to the sofa
and her books.

    An hour passed while I worked feverishly.  And finally the damn thing
worked!  I ran to the chest in the corner for paper and put a sheet into
the roller, and used a piece of popsicle stick to replace a missing part
that kept the wrinkled old ink ribbon aligned.  Then I typed and typed
and watched amazed as the page filled with perfectly straight rows of
letters for the first time. I was so pleased, I filled the page from top
to bottom with letters that soon were words instead of random
characters.  I watched as my thoughts magically unfolded in printed
sentences before my eyes.  I typed until there was no more room on the
page, then I ripped it from the roller and ran to Martha Jane, who was
startled by my sudden leap onto the sofa next to her.

    "Look!" I said, shoving the paper under her face.

    "Well," she said, impressed.  "That's very nice.  See?  I knew you
could do it."

    Embarrassed, I said, "Look at the last line."

    Along the last line I had typed "Thank You Martha Jane Thank You
Martha Jane" across the page.

    "Oh, that's sweet!" she exclaimed.  She gave me a hug.  "Can I keep
this?"

    "Sure."

    "Is it all right?  It's yours, you made it all by yourself.  You sure
you don't want to keep it so you can show your Mama what you did?"

    "She don't care."

    "Now why would say something like that about your Mama?"

    I shook my head.  "She don't care.  I didn't make it for me, I made
it for you.  You helped me make it work."

    "But, hon, your Mama cares about what you do."

    I shook my head no.

    "She does!" Martha Jane insisted.

    I shook my head again.  "She tells me kid stuff like...she says
babies come from storks, and the storks deliver the babies in diapers
hangin' from their beaks.  She's always tellin' me stuff like that."

    "And I take it you didn't believe it."

    I shook my head no.  "That can't be where babies come from."

    "Well," she said, "maybe you ought to talk to your Mama about that."

    I shook my head no again.

    "So, have you figured out where babies come from all by your self?"

    "Not yet.  But it ain't from storks."

    "You're probably right," she murmured.  She gazed at me inscrutably
for a long moment, during which I squirmed and stood on the floor but
bent down to prop my chin on an elbow that I leaned on the sofa cushion
beside her.  Then she looked down at the page I had given her and
smiled.  "This is so nice of you.  I'll take it, but...you can have it
back whenever you want it."

    "Okay."

    She held her hand on the back of my neck and drew me toward her so
she could kiss me on the nose.  "Thank you!"

    "Thank you too!"  I smiled and blushed and looked at her slender
fingers and her auburn hair and the gentle lines of her face.  She could
not have ignored the way my eyes stayed glued on her.  She smiled at me.

    "Kiss me back," she said, pointing to her noise.

    I did and said, "I like your nose."

    "Yeah?" she said.  She winked at me.  "I like yours too."

    I feigned an overdramatized blush and a baby-like "Aw, shucks."

    "Don't be silly," she laughed, and pointed at my project on the
floor.  "I hate to say it, hon, but it's nine o'clock.  You have to clean
that up, and I have to get you a bath."

    I said okay and quickly straightened things up while she went into
the bathroom and drew the bath.  It was time for our bathtub ritual.  The
apartments had no showers, but they had big new tubs in the small tiled
bathrooms.  Martha Jane would fill the tub to just the right warm temp-
erature for the pink bubble-bath.  The magic moment came when I was
fidgeting nude by the tub while the water level slowly rose.  Martha Jane
would hold the packet of bubblebath powder high over the tub.

    "Almost ready-y-y..." she'd chant, as I waited.

    "Looks okay NOW!" I'd say.

    "Nope," she'd say.  "Almost...almost...."  And finally, "There she
blows!"  And she'd upturn the packet until just enough of the pink powder
fell out to make the right amount of bubbly stuff that I liked.

    I would hop into the tub and splash and stir up the bubbles until
they overflowed the tub.  The bubble-baths were better with Martha Jane
than with anyone else, because others insisted on fewer bubbles and less
time in the tub.  But Martha Jane was herself a bubble-bath lover and
seemed to know just how much would be the most fun -- which in my case
was enough bubbles to not only fill the tub to its rim but to cover most
of my head as well, by the time I fluffed it up.

    Martha Jane did not dry and dress me.  That was up to me. I was a
fidgety kid anyway who liked to dress under my own power. Usually she
stayed in the living room and listened to the radio or studied, and I
would bathe, dry and dress and empty the tub myself. On those occasions
when she did stay in the bathroom as "supervisor", she was there to make
sure I cleaned up my bubbly mess. When this happened, Martha Jane removed
her skirt and blouse and wore her bra and panties, or sometimes a
delicate silk slip, if I were still in the bath; this was to keep her
clothes from being splashed when we got playful and threw globs of
bubble-bath at each other during our occasional bubble-fights (Martha
Jane, neatnick that she was, insisted on cleaning up every single remnant
of any mess we made).

    On that night she stayed in the bathroom with me, fully clothed until
I climbed into the tub.  She stood in the opened doorway and watched
contemplatively.  After a minute she came into the bathroom and began
removing her skirt and blouse.  She was almost down to her slip when I
announced, from under the mountain of bubbles that reached to my nose,
that I had to pee.

    "Go ahead," she said.

    I insisted, "But YOU'RE in here!"

    "For goodness' sake, it won't bother me."

    But I refused to pee with her in the room and would not get out of
the tub.  I remained hidden behind my hill of bubbles.

    Seeing my reluctance she said, "all right, I won't embarrass you.  Is
Number One all you have to do?"

    "Just Number One," I said.  "But I hafta do it a hunnert and sixty
three times."

    "Yeah, right...keep it under one-fifty, bubble-man, and don't take
all night.  Do what you have to do, hon, and call me when you're
finished."

    That was fine with me. She left the room and closed the door. After I
peed I got back into the tub and shouted that the coast was clear.

    When she opened the door she wore only her bra and panties.

    For a while she watched me from the opened doorway while I splashed
and scrubbed, but when it was time for me to finish up she came into the
room and knelt near the tub, watching me as before.  I don't remember
what I said to her, but she was laughing about it when I pulled the
stopper from the tub and stood up to dry off while the water drained.
After my upper body was dry I got out of the tub as usual to dry my legs
and feet on the little pink rug in the middle of the tiled floor.  Martha
Jane knelt and stared at me with that same probing look.  I was drying
off when she reached up and put two of her slim fingers around the head
of my penis.

    "Dry this too?" she asked, smiling.

    "Yep," I answered innocently.

    She continued fondling my tip with her two fingers, gently and
slowly, squeezing lightly or running a finger around the tip.

    I stopped my drying and looked down at what she was doing. I studied
her fingers closely, feeling a new and beguiling pleasure at her touch.

    "Feel good?" she asked, her eyes studying my reactions.  Her voice
had fallen to a whisper.  She half-smiled with what appeared to be great
interest, curiosity, and uncertainty.

    "Yeah," I whispered back.

    Our voices were so low that the drip drip drip of the bathtub faucet
was easily twice the volume.  I remember hearing the faint drip, thinking
that the hot water handle had to be tightened to make it stop, but her
touch had me spellbound.  My tip itched strangely and the skin of my
glans seemed to cling to her soft, tentative fingers.

    "You like that?" she whispered.

    "Yeah.  Feels nice."

    "Like it when I squeeze this way?"

    "Yeah.  Keep doin' it."

    Constantly observing my reactions, she continued fondling me and
asking questions.  She had a very secretive, whispered manner as if no
one was supposed to hear us, and I fell into this pattern by whispering
back my own answers in the same secretive way.  As she played with me I
grew larger -- something else quite new to me -- and after a moment she
set me on the edge of the tub and knelt in front of me, tickling and
stroking my cock, explaining how it would get bigger as she did it.  Soon
I was erect enough to allow her entire hand to enfold me, at which point
she began delicately pumping me toward a larger erection.

    Still whispering furtively, she was delighted at the size of my young
hard-on and made several remarks about how my penis, which normally was
hardly bigger than her thumbnail, could grow to about 4 inches and get
much fatter.  I was far too young to have an orgasm at that point, a fact
she apparently discovered after several minutes of this activity.  But
for quite a while she continued fondling me, and I grew more and more
pleased at the sensations.  Vaguely I recall that she attempted an
explanation of the birds and bees (I found this much more sensible than
that crap about storks!), but I absorbed precious little of what then was
a great deal of heady biological detail.  At that moment I was more
interested in the pleasant physical sensations of her touch and the
strangely enticing intimacy in her voice and manner.

    She studied my facial reactions as much as she did those of my penis,
and with every new touch or change in technique she asked me how it
felt.  I would tell her it felt good and told her the kind of hand
movements and touches I liked best.

    She said, "Now don't tell anybody we do this."

    While this may have seemed an odd request to any other young boy, it
didn't seem so to me.  From the very beginning Martha Jane's secretive
manner conveyed to me an air of deliciously naughty discovery, of shared
and precious secrets.  Obviously I wouldn't do anything Martha Jane
didn't want.  My distrust of grownups in general had made me adept at
developing many covert activities on my own that offered refuge from
meddling adults.  I was intrigued to find that Martha Jane also had
secrets that she kept from grownups but that she was willing to share
with me.

    From slightly above her I saw a soft swell of flesh extend invitingly
down into her bra, and I ran my finger over it.  "Why do girls always
wear these?" I asked.

    Martha Jane told me a bra held a woman's titties securely (Now, the
word "titties," as compared with "breasts", was a valid "Southern" term.
"Breast" sounded too clinical and seemed to apply mostly to packaged
chicken parts.  The people I grew up around came from rural farming
families before they lived in the city.  The word titties was perfectly
acceptable.  I heard it used often in connection with everything from
cats and dogs to cows, auto tire aircaps, and baby-bottle nipples.  But
from the outset, body words had special connotations for me and Martha
Jane.  They were spoken with a unique vocal, emotional, and sensual
coloration that I find indescribable.  These same words would sound
entirely different when I heard them used by others.  This use of certain
words in certain ways became a part of our strange relationship at a very
early stage.  The singular meanings we gave them appeared to grow
entirely under their own power -- the same way the relationship itself
seemed to have powers of its own).

    She opened her bra and let me touch her flesh and her nipples. The
feel of her gave me goosebumps.  She explained how babies were nursed.
"Babies suck on the nipples," she said, and I asked what it tasted like.
She said she had never had a baby so she had no milk in her but she said
that a baby sucking its mom's tit was a very important part of the way
babies grew up.  She asked if I had ever sucked my mom's nipples.  I said
I probably didn't (which in retrospect, considering my mother's staunch
puritanism, was more than likely true).  I asked her how it felt and
asked to suck her titties.  She held one breast up for me and told me I
could lick her nipple and see for myself.  I did.  The sensation of her
marshmallow-soft flesh on my tongue has never been duplicated.  I was
aware of her smiling down and encouraging me as I took my sample lick.
She was delicious.  So I took another, longer lick.  Hearing her breath
become oddly deep and pleasurable, I licked yet again.

    It was a memorable moment.  She left me with the impression that she
enjoyed my tongue on her in a way that was an equally unique experience
for her.  She told me that licking her titties was very, very personal
and that she would never let anyone do it but me.

    After a while she had me as erect as I would ever get at that age.  I
was in a state not only of physical warmth, but of gratitude for her
having revealed to me actions and pleasures that no one but Martha Jane
and I would ever know about.  And Martha Jane was greatly pleased and
surprised at the size of my erection and at my ready complicity in our
naughty game.

    "We'll do it again later, okay?" she said, holding my very hard penis
still in her warm hand.  "But don't tell anyone else, hon,
because...well..."

    She paused.  She searched for words.

    "Well, they would say this is nasty.  They wouldn't like it and we'd
be in trouble."

    I asked, "Why do they think it's nasty?"

    "They just do.  Lots of people don't like doing this."

    "I do."

    "You do?  Really?"

    "Yes.  I like it with you."

    She grinned.  "Let's get you dressed and we can do it again sometime."

    I don't remember anything else about that night.  But I am certain
this was the night that a significant language with its own coloration
and associations, its own set of gestures and responses, and a heavily
secretive atmosphere introduced themselves into our relationship.

      Good little boy that I was, I got dressed.  She did, too, and then
she put me to bed, kissed me goodnight, and went into the living room to
study while I fell asleep.  I was perfectly content. It was not so much
the physical sensations that left me pleased as it was a new serenity, a
feeling of closeness with the only person in the world I could trust.

    That was the beginning.  I did not invest much time thinking about
the details, nor was I old enough to live in constant anticipation of the
next event.  I knew only that I was extremely fond of Martha Jane.  I was
also aware, at the time, of her apprehension and tension.  But she
needn't have worried; indeed, I never told anyone about us and was never
tempted to.  This was Martha Jane's secret and mine, a haven from the
coldness and fickleness of the outer world.  And there was no way I would
ever hurt Martha Jane by getting her into trouble that might keep us
apart.  Unwittingly, we had formed a compact and a revolt.


                             PART 2A:


    I believe that Martha Jane, like me, was mostly curious at
first.  And it seems that my surprise and delight at our intimacy
was matched only by her own surprise and delight at my enthusiasm
and cooperation.  But we never mentioned our secret to each other
when she visited my Mom or when we greeted on the front porch on
our way to school in the mornings that followed.

    Several weeks later, a few days after Christmas, the city was
inundated by a heavy winter snow--something Southern cities seldom
experienced.  The whole town knew the weather was coming and Mom
had a date to go to what had been set up as a White Christmas
dinner at one of the fancy hotel ballrooms that were popular in
the late 1940's.  It was a Friday night.  Martha Jane darkened our
bedroom and sat on the bed with me, watching the snow.  The bed was
in its usual place in that little room, pushed lengthwise against
the wall next to the big double-window.  We leaned on the window
sill and talked and watched the falling snow.  I don't remember
what we talked about, but she had told me a story about something-
or-other and I was astonished and said, "Really?", and she said
"Yes, it really happened like that!", and I squealed "REALLY?",
and she made a wide-eyed face back at me and said, "Yes, REALLY!",
and we were both giggling.  I have no idea what the subject was,
but I remember the essence of the moment as playful, trusting and
warm.

    She settled her chin on one hand on the window sill, and I did
the same.  She said in a hushed tone, "Listen.  Be very, very quiet,
and listen."

    "Okay," I said loudly, smirking.

    "Shh!" she said, and we giggled again, and then we sat very
still.  Soon I whispered.  "There's so much snow, but it's so
quiet."

    "No," she whispered. "You can hear it falling.  Listen."

    We stayed perfectly still.  In the night outside the window the
entire project was covered in a thick, globby blanket of white. The
snow fell with a dreamlike lazy slowness, but so densely it made the
buildings seem dark gray instead of dark brick-red, and completely
obscured the contours of the access driveway that ran behind our
building.  I strained nearer the window and listened.  After a
short time I could indeed hear the muffled, barely audible whisk of
falling snow.

    "Hear it?" she asked.

    "Yeah."

    "You wouldn't deceive me would you, mister?  You really hear
it?"

    "Yeah," I breathed, fascinated.  "Really."

    We leaned on our chins and listened more.  I turned to her in
quiet excitement at this revelation of the noise of snowflakes
falling, but as my eyes met hers I melted into speechless jelly.
She was watching me with a look of warm, affectionate, captivating
tenderness.  All I could do was look back into her eyes helplessly
until, embarrassed at my own startling feelings, I made a funny,
scrunched-up face.

    She wrinkled her nose at me.  "And 'that' to you too," she
said, "silly-face."  Then she jumped off the bed.

    "Bubble time!" she announced, and off we went to the bathroom.
She undressed down to her panties, bra, and slip and held up the
bubble-bath pack and let it go, and I hopped in to splash around
and build my usual nose-high mountain of bubbles.  I didn't notice
until slightly later that she stood there for quite some time after
reaching back to the hook on the bathroom door to fetch her skirt
and blouse; after thinking about it she returned her clothes to
the door hook.  She removed her slip as well, and knelt by the tub
again in her undies.  I got out of the tub and dried off.  Once
again, after a long hesitation, she put her fingers around my cock.

    Remembering this from before, I stood still and watched her
play with me.  I hardened, and tickles spread through my tummy.
I looked at her and grinned, and her eyes met mine with a widening
look of recognition and pleasure.

    "That's good," I murmured.

    "Yeah?  You still like this, huh?."

    I told her I did, and something made me shove my pelvis slightly
forward (a totally unconscious movement toward her fingers, the
source of my pleasure), which caused her to look up again in sur-
prise and a strange kind of glee.  The two of us seemed urged on by
some outlandish, mutually shared impulse to make the gestures and
say the words we did.

    As she played we watched my cock harden and twitch.  She said we
would be more comfortable if I sat on the edge of the tub as be-
fore.  I did so, and we both watched as she softly pumped me erect.
I reached inside her bra and found a nipple, and we exchanged
mutually knowing smiles as I gently squeezed her.  She was still
amazed at how my "teentsy" young organ became so enlarged. Soon I
was thoroughly hard and she was grinning lewdly at me, a grin I
quickly learned to return.

    These returned glances and simultaneous eye contacts occurred
so often it seems they never ceased.  They were another integral
part of our communication with each other.  It was part of the con-
tinuous pattern of feedback and feed-in and feed-on that united us.
Often it replaced thousands of words that might have been used to
describe a feeling or a moment.  This, too, began happening quite
early in the relationship.

    Of course, I didn't climax.  The incident soon ended and we
returned to the bedroom.  We continued watching the snowfall for
a long time.  I leaned sleepily on the window sill, and listened to
her magical voice.  She was talking about something she was doing
at school.  I was soon overcome by the languorous peace of being
with her, something entirely absent from my relationship with my
mother.

    When I opened my eyes again it was Saturday morning.  My Mom
was back home fussing around the house, and Martha Jane was gone.

    Several months went their course, and I passed my 7th birth-
day.  It was around that period, near May 1949, that several more
interludes occurred.  By this time I would get out of the tub and
Martha Jane would be kneeling and waiting, and I would stand up and
say, "Do me."  She would set me on the edge of the tub and pump me
erect, which she learned to maintain for longer and longer periods.
I don't have a clear memory of what I physically felt at that time,
but I recall that she and I kept finding ways to make it feel
better.

    Martha Jane beamed delightedly at my responsiveness. "I love
feeling it jump," she'd say, and she soon discovered that my cock
jerked even more during her early attempts at using her tongue and
mouth on it.  Constantly we talked about how it felt and what we
liked.  Her favorite ploy was to hold me entirely inside her
mouth, my tip barely extended into the narrow channel of her
throat, and gently close her mouth around me and hold me that way
so she could feel my cock throb against her tongue.  I was still
too young to have a true orgasm, but I had no feelings of frus-
tration.  Nor was I particularly anxious about when she would be
sitting for me again.  The aspects of our relationship that I
sorely missed when we were apart for any significant time were our
fondness for each other and the simple "rightness" of being with
her and hearing her alluring voice and quiet girlish laughter.

    It was sometime during the summer that the bathing routine
changed.  It was probably the fourth or fifth episode.  I got out
of the tub and stood with my tummy sticking out lewdly so she
could play with me, which she did.  We both grinned and whispered
in our naughty secret way as she stroked me, and she unhooked her
bra so I could make little circles around her nipples.

    I watched her fingers on me and muttered, "It tickles."

    "Want me to do it slower or faster?"

    "Slower."

    "That way, hon?"

    "Yeah.  That feels nasty."

    "You like it that way?"

    "Yeah."

    "You mean it feels better, is that what 'nasty' means?"

    "Yeah.  Feels really good."

    She said, "That's what grownups say, hon, they'd say if it
feels good it's nasty."  She added ruefully, "They think anything
that feels good is horrible.  I really don't understand.  You'd
think people already have enough sadness and pain in their lives
without making things worse."

    It was a concept that she and I would mention many times.  It
seemed to be something of which she was often terrified; now and
then she would stop everything, look at me painfully, and then hold
me close to her.  This was one of the first of those occasions.
Others would follow.  But on that night it happened for the first
time.

    She was saying to me, "Squeeze my nipple just a little, hon,
really soft, the way I squeeze your dick...that's nice.  I like
it when you just stroke me, too, around my nipples for a while."
I feathered my fingertips across and around her nipples, and she
closed her eyes dreamily.  "Hm-hm, yes...better, hon...you do
that so well..."

    I was surprised at the reaction of her nipples.  "They got
stiff," I said.  "Does it hurt when they get stiff?"

    "No, hon, it means it feels good.  Just like getting you hard
feels good for you."

    We played and whispered for a while.  Then Martha Jane just
stopped.  Abruptly and completely, she dropped her hands and
stopped everything.

    She settled back on her folded legs on the floor, and put her
hands over her face.  She did that only for a few seconds and looked
up at me only because I had bent down closer to her.  I saw she was
suddenly saddened, and as I bent down she turned toward me with a
look of pain and loss on her face.  She spoke softly and plaintively
and, as best as I can recall, she said:

    "Do you know who you are, Speedy?  You are the smartest, cutest,
most loving boy in the world.  D'you know that, hon?  But you're
gonna grow up--".  She stopped, and held me down closer to her face,
so that our foreheads touched.  "You are gonna grow up in a very
strange world, with no daddy, like me.  And a mommy who can't live
for anything except dying and...goin' to be with God.  Oh Speedy,
don't you ever grow up to be like that.  You hear?  Don't grow up
and be afraid and suspicious and narrow and mean.  I know you'll
grow up and be so good, and so sweet, and so smart and sensitive,
but you'll feel like you're in hell because you're trusting and sexy
and...other people don't tolerate that very well, it's all bad for
them and they'll always say you're too different and--"

    I must have had a confused look on my face that made her stop.
I'm sure I did.  I don't remember all her words exactly, but I do
know that at that time her words only partially made sense.

    She kissed my nose.  The episode quickly ended when she stood
up and said, "C'mon, hon.  Beddie-bye."



                             PART 2B:


    She led me to the bedroom and I jumped into the mattress, as
I usually did, and waited for her to turn out the light and fluff
up the pillows, as she usually did.

    But this time she stood very quietly in the dark near the edge
of the bed.  She took off her bra and panties.  I had seen her in
undies often enough, but now she was totally nude.  I remember how
she looked, her smoky green eyes and frizzy auburn hair reflecting
the moonlight.  She was slim but not skinny, slightly full in the
upper thighs but trim enough to appear rather long-legged.  She had
normal, presentable breasts with mildly pink nipples that were
almost the same color as the surrounding flesh.  Martha Jane was 16
then.  Her mound was slight, but prominent because of the soft flare
of her hips and the flat of her tummy and the space between her slim
thighs.  She had a small light tuft of auburn hair leading to her
thick-lipped vaginal slit.

    Needless to say, I didn't know what many of these spare parts
were for.  I remember that seeing her nakedness for the first time
was more pleasing and soothing than it was titillating.  Her body
impressed me as having the form that a female body should ideally
have.  For me, the excitement of the moment lay in the fact that she
allowed me to see the secret Martha Jane that no one else could see.

    "C'mere," she coaxed sweetly. "to the edge of the bed." I rose
and stood on my knees on the edge of the bed.  She smiled and pulled
her shoulders back, lifting one breast with her left hand while her
other hand touched the back of my neck, urging me toward her and
holding me near.  In the dark she whispered, "Suck my titty, hon."

    That night she carefully and gently introduced me to the rest
of her body as she stood by the bed.  I still remember how she
taught me to suck her breasts in just the right way, which I
enjoyed immensely.

    She crooned, "Put my nipple on your tongue and press it with
your lips...Mmm-hm, you do it just right...you're so sensitive to
what I like, hon...there, right there...Suck...suck, just like
that..."

    Now and then as I sucked and nipped I'd hear her swallow hard,
one of several clues from her that she had reached a small peak and
was on her way to the next level of new or forbidden pleasure.  She
lovingly watched me suckle and lick from one breast to the other
and asked if I liked it, and with my usual alacrity I replied that
I liked it a lot and I asked if I were doing it right and if it felt
good for her.  She said yes I always did everything right and I was
sucking her just the way she wanted.  This went on for a long time
in the sensuous dark.  What I remember most about it was the giving
to her of so much pure physical pleasure.  She was almost clinical
at first, appearing to examine her own feelings and reactions more
than anything else.  While she stood enjoying my sucking, she led
one of my hands to her mound and told me that in a little while she
would be very wet and sensitive there but that she wasn't wet just
yet and that later she would be and she wanted me to touch her there
when she got wetter.

    She lay in the bed and I lay beside her, cradled into her left
side, licking her nipples.  She found my balls and began tracing
around them with a fingernail.  She did this for a while, giving me
an erotic tickle that made me spread my legs so she could reach me
better.  After her light fondling had my cock jerking, her hand went
warmly around my shaft, her thumb making lazy circles around the
tip.  Her voice was motherly, cotton-soft magic in the dark, along
with her milky flesh and her nipples and her slow deep breathing:
"Would you like me to milk your dick, hon?"

    I nodded, giving her breasts the nipping little kisses that
she liked and that made goosebumps on her arms.  I had heard her
use the term 'dick' before, but I didn't know she could 'milk' a
dick.  These became two of my favorite words when I'm aroused.  And
I was a little older then, nearing 8, and perhaps some new hormones
had begun their work:  a strong sexual giddiness had found its way
into my response pattern.  And new words had found their way into
our universe.  She was adding them continually, as if their forbid-
den nature took on an even more alluring power than usual.  What
was happening now was less intellectual, more emotional, and
clearly more sexual.

    The pleasure that accompanied my erection soon mounted, for
Martha Jane was showing me that a dick could indeed be warmly,
voluptuously, lovingly hand-milked to a rod-like firmness.  She
kept whispering to me as she sought new ways of touching and
pumping me and varying the speed and angle of her motion.  She had
learned that I preferred a gradually rising intensity, that I
enjoyed lingering at one sensual plateau for long intervals before
going on.  It was a technique I would soon learn to surprise her
with, on my own.

    And then a new twist introduced itself, seemingly on its own
and without any prior thought or suggestion from her, the same way
new pleasures always did when we were together.  Without being
prompted I felt it was time I returned the delight she had given
me.  I had felt like doing so for some time; but never having seen
her naked, I didn't have much of a roadmap from which I could draw
inspiration.  How or why I managed to accomplish all that I did
that night is beyond me, and was probably beyond Martha Jane.  No
one had ever explained female anatomy to me.  Breasts and long hair
were the only female parts I knew until that night, except for
Martha Jane's brief bathroom explanation of where babies came from
and her earlier revelation about how the place between her legs
would get wet when I touched her there.

   Somehow I figured that Martha Jane's ultimate pleasure-center
would be between her legs, as was mine.  I shifted upward a little,
hoping to use of my arms and hands more freely, and this allowed me
to snuggle my face in her neck, kissing her throat and relishing
the taste and feel and scent of her skin there.

    "Oh, sweet," she sighed.  I was thrilled that she enjoyed it.
Then I began stroking downward along her tummy toward her navel,
and then across the tops and insides of her thighs.  I felt the
need to go slowly, as she had done with me.  Then again, I was not
quite sure what I would find or where I should go.  Gradually my
hand slid in circles and to and fro until I found her pubic curls.
She didn't move, but her breathing stopped.  The action of her
hand slowed on my cock.

    I marveled at the shape and texture of her mound, firm and
rounded just enough to fit in the palm of my hand; and her silken
tuft whose twirls clung to my fingers.  My fingers drifted downward
and found her moist folds;  her unmoving hand gave my dick a little
squeeze.  Her eyes were closed.  She seemed to concentrate entirely
on what I was doing.  She didn't say anything.  Blindly and with
the utmost care, I explored her dampness.  Her flesh there seemed
extraordinarily delicate.  I heard her catch her breath as my
finger made a path along both sides of the smooth ridge of her wet
and swollen outer lips.  Her hand on my cock remained still, her
other arm cradling me at her left side.  Soon I found the places
and movements that heightened her enjoyment, although from my
vantage point near her upright breasts I saw little of her wet
darkness beyond the faint rise of her pubic hair.  Her thighs
spread, slowly, moment by moment and an inch or two at a time,
until she raised her knees slightly so her legs could fall outward
and she could completely open her naked secrets to my hand.  Care-
fully my fingers learned to open and spread her, and soon they
found her clitoris.  At that moment she gave a loud swallow and a
sleepily murmured "Yes..." that was barely audible.  Millimeter by
millimeter, I began teaching myself about her mysterious clit.

    Her eyes remained closed, her head tilted back slightly on the
pillow.  She seemed not asleep, but in another world.  I heard her
breath only faintly, and for long periods it seemed she was holding
her breath.

    It's very possible that Martha Jane knew little more about this
part of her than I did (although, today, I suspect she had mastur-
bated, which was something I had yet to discover).  She offered no
instruction, guiding me only with childlike whispers of "yes, hon,"
and "ahh, that's good."  But I soon knew how to touch her clit and
her thick lips and thin inner petals exactly as she liked.  The
moment when I discovered her most sensitive spot of all, she gave a
startled, whispered "There, hon!"  I repeated the motion, and she
said again, "Right there...Right there, yes..oh yes do that," fol-
lowed by my learning to use a very slight pressing motion near the
base of her button, which she greeted with a long "Aahhh" and
another noisy throaty swallow.  Her thighs fell farther apart and
she made small snuggling adjustments into the mattress with her hips
as if attempting to open herself wider for my fingers.

    What she liked was a slow drawing of my finger, held flatly
but gently along her crease, from the bottom of her clit toward the
top.  At the top she enjoyed my occasional cradling of the length
of her clit within two of my fingers, and a gentle sliding up and
down each side of the length of it, in much the same way that she
often used only two fingers to stroke my cock.  She preferred it
done slowly, with little pressure; and I learned that she enjoyed
riding a peak this way until I left the area and started drawing
small, deliberate middle-finger circles around the nub without
actually touching it.  During all this time her face remained
slightly turned away from me, eyes closed, her head back to reveal
her graceful throat so that I could see as well as hear her swallow
with nervous pleasure.  I repeated this stroking until she began
tightening her arms and seemed to stiffen everywhere.  I would slow
down and maintain her excitement at that level for a while, then go
back to the little circles that gave her some rest.  But each time,
I made the preferred stroking motion last for a longer interval,
and shortened the interval of the slightly less pleasurable circles.
I have no idea where these ideas came from.  Now and then she would
return to more normal breathing, but each foray into the more
intense level would find her neck tightening a little more, her
occasional breathing more urgent and irregular.

    And there was yet another amazing discovery: now and then as
Martha Jane milked me, squeezing gently from base to tip and mildly
jiggling me for a moment with two or three fingers before going
back to the long, hugging strokes, I noticed a drop of slippery
liquid at my tip.   There was a very small amount of it, barely a
slight smear.  I didn't make much of it at the time, thinking it
might mean I needed to go to the bathroom.

    What concerned me more were the mystery and beauty of her
growing involvement within her pleasure, and my own responses to
it.  Of course I had no idea where this intensity of feeling would
lead; I knew only that I was making her feel very, very good and
that it got better for her every minute.  And the minutes did,
indeed, pass.  Later I looked at a clock and found then that it
was after eleven, two hours from the time I'd first stepped from
the tub that night.

    As Martha Jane became quieter and more tensed, I discovered
a variation she liked immensely.  With that favorite motion of my
flattened finger along her crease and clit, I learned to lengthen
the path slightly and insert about an inch of my stroking finger
inside her before beginning the upward slide along her clit.  I
didn't do this quickly, but I did increase the speed and pressure
very slightly once I found that she enjoyed this even more.  I was
awed at the inner texture of her incredibly warm opening and the
way it gripped my finger as I entered and withdrew.  Each dip into
her brought a fresh supply of wetness to her clit and outer lips.

    Then she began a rapidly accelerating slide toward her climax.
She had been cradling me with her left arm, but this had drifted
behind her head.  Her other hand, which had been milking me, was
drawn to her lips in a fist that tensed until her knuckles grew
white.  Her head craned farther back, her neck stiffened.  And as
she always did when her excitement heightened unbearably, she held
her breath, letting it out and in with a single, delicate gasp and
holding it again.  Then I felt her clitoris swell; the heat of her
sucking slit rose quickly and dramatically.  Her knees fell open
even more, stretching her thighs and arching her mound into my hand;
I watched this in utter fascination.  The memory of the sight of her
outspread thighs and slightly lifted hips as she allowed herself a
total immersion into pleasure continues, after all these years, to
redefine and reclarify the true meaning of the word "naked."

    And suddenly, electrically, came a rapid series of quick and
shuddering gasps that stopped short as she took in one last gulp
of air and tightly held her breath just before uttering a last,
frantic, desperate whisper:

    "oh hon....ohdontstop!"

    I was certainly not going to stop, irresistibly engrossed in
giving her such intense enjoyment.  She began trembling in small,
tight, jittery waves along her waist and arms.  She whimpered, and
her head dug back tightly into the pillow.  Then she went entirely
stiff from head to toe, breath held.  Her clit swelled enormously.
A tendon flittered in her inner thighs.  Thinking that slowing my
movement would prolong her ecstasy, I did so.  Her hips lurched once
and made a single grinding circle against my hand, and she again
stiffened, hard, and remained completely still for an alarmingly
long time, her flowering heated center weeping slickly around my
finger--until she finally and just as suddenly began to relax, her
hips first giving three or four gentle undulations.  Her neck
softened and receded, and she took in a long deep breath at last,
her head falling limply to her other shoulder.  Soon she began
breathing normally but deeply and tremulously, so I stopped moving
my finger and kept it pressed securely against her still-turgid
clit.  Her wetness soaked my hand.

    Her eyes opened.  She blinked and panted, breathing an
astonished, "Where did you learn to do that?"

    I shrugged. "I just thought it was what you wanted."

    "You mean you never did that before?"

    I just looked at her blankly.  "Did I do it wrong?"

    "Oh you sweet baby," she moaned, almost crying.  And in fact she
did half-rise and hug me and she did indeed cry.  "Oh my honey," she
moaned.  She cried for several minutes, but quietly, in delicate
expulsions of breath (Martha Jane was always a very quiet, very fem-
inine, even a very elegant crier.  I have never been able to forget
it).  For a while she held me, rocking to and fro, not letting go of
me for a long time until she fell back listlessly, sniffling, and
put a kleenex to her eyes and nose.  She said, almost to herself,
"We are gonna go straight to hell."

    "Martha Jane?  Did I do it right?" I asked again, concerned.

    When she settled down she cradled me once more and said, yes, I
had done it right.

    "Exactly right!" she said, and began milking me again.

    "Was it Good?"

    "Speedy...that was so deliciously nasty."

    It was one of our favorite phrases (and perhaps the most signif-
icant), along with all the others we adopted as turnons. Although
studious and conscientious and polite, Martha Jane used a limited
and earthy vocabulary when naked.  She gave the words a seething,
lecherous coloration.  And she seemed to know exactly how and when
to use them.  I soon learned to do the same.  It would be some time
yet before I knew what it all meant.  But I recall that night as
being the one during which we opened and passed through a door that
soon closed shut behind us, yielding no escape.

    She sweetly milked and cradled me and looked deeply into my
eyes--an intense, probing gaze that told me she didn't have sex with
only part of her body.  She did it with her face, her eyes, her
words, her every part.  She explained that she had just "cum," a
word she pronounced with such dripping salaciousness that I got hard
again, even though cumming was a little abstract for me and she soon
gave up trying to describe it.  In any case, I was glad I had given
her such intense gratification.  I described what I had seen, heard
and felt as I was making her cum, and her eyes glowed sensuously and
mischievously as she listened.  We were tired, but through words and
glances we prolonged a titillating sexual afterglow that lasted
several more minutes.

    She tried to demonstrate what cumming was by pumping me
briefly.  Both of us soon realized that it wouldn't (couldn't)
happen for me yet.  But my feelings of closeness to her were
extremely satisfying in their own right.

    As I started falling into sleep, she rose from the bed and
began dressing.  My mother would soon be home from her date.
Martha Jane put on her shirt, but stopped to give me a very big
kiss on my nose and a very long, very close hug.

    While she finished dresssing I was slumbering off.  I rolled
over, away from her, snuggled into my pillow, and watched the
moonlight falling on the window sill a few feet away.  I felt
exceptionally peaceful and cared for.  I felt that the best part
was being able to give her such spectacular enjoyment.  I felt
that devils in us had been given space, had played, laughed, sung,
shared, had been released into the night somehow, and had worn
themselves out.  I felt now like an angel.  I wondered how it could
be true, as I had heard in school, that angels traveled from world
to world along alabaster shafts of moonlight.  I looked closely and
tried to imagine how even the tiniest of angels could glide in the
glowing pools that dripped over the window sill.  I imagined what
it would be like to travel upward on those soft beams, beams the
color of Martha Jane's warm and trembling nakedness when I watched
her having her long cum with the moonlight on her neck and hardened
nipples.

    Martha Jane's clothing whispered as she dressed.  Her softly
rounded shoulders and smooth thighs whispered under her clothes.
Her arms and hands whispered as they reached to button her shirt.
And her breathing whispered, still a little shaky from cumming.
I remember those sounds when I see moonlight.  I hear them in my
dreams.

   I fell asleep.


                            Continued...


            ****  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, 1996 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 3A:


    Just before my 9th birthday my godmother and great-aunt Frances
bought me a new dark brown suit and new shoes for my Confirmation
ceremony at St. Mary's Catholic School.  It was a dim, cloudy
Sunday afternoon outside; but inside the ornate, high-ceiling
Gothic church hundreds of banks of candles cast a warm glorious
light over everyone in the church.  Mom and Aunt Frances and my
deceased father's mother, Grandma Rose, drove me to the front en-
trance and let me out on the sidewalk while Aunt Frances parked the
Buick behind the church.  I stood there for a moment looking down
at myself, all got up in the immaculate suit and the shiny new
shoes, my hair slicked with a hefty, odorous portion of Wildroot
Hair Oil.  I asked myself if it were really me in this costume.
If I bent my arms the sleeves of the suit crinkled and wrinkled
stiffly, but when I straightened my arm the cloth fell back into a
smooth, neatly creased tube.  I wore a tight starchy white shirt
with a flowery bowtie my aunt had chosen.  The tie and the thick
collar dug uncomfortably into the front of my throat.

    I felt out of place, as emotionaly removed from the impending
ceremony as I would have been at a funeral for a perfect stranger's
dead dog.  I climbed the front marble steps and entered the front
vestibule, an imposing, darkly paneled hall where I lined up with
a chatty, squealing assemblage of other suited boys.  The girls,
fluttering and chirping like sparrows, lined up at the other end of
the hall in fluffy communion-style dresses and white shoes.  Soon
the long-robed nuns in their stiff white bobbing habbits shushed us
into silence.  They strode quickly through our ranks to check us
out and nod their stern approval.

    Even the shuffling of feet on the waxed tile floor came to a
dead stop as my own home-room teacher, Sister Mary Joseph, sternest
and most dreaded nun of all, strode into the room.  No more than a
tiny slip of a woman, her imperious expression and long stride gave
her a commanding manner.  She stood exactly in the center of the
long and narrow hall, her arms folded firmly before her so that
her hands were hidden inside the floppy arms of her robe.  As she
slowly passed her glowering eyes from one end of our ranks to the
other, her thin lips characteristically pursed and reset them-
selves.  The hall suddenly echoed as one of the kids gave a loud
sneeze, which was quickly followed by the echo of four nuns giving
a sharp and loud "Sh!"  In the ensuing silence, Sister Mary Joseph
began her announcement in her usual manner, with a rise of her head
and a long deep breath.

    "Children," she said, "you are about to become soldiers for our
lord Jesus Christ."  Pause.  "As you attend the holy ceremony of
Confirmation today, you will receive a scapular with an image of
your patron saint."  Pause.  "Wear your scapular at all times.  It
is your protection from the dangers and temptations you encounter
in your struggle with Satan.  Protect it as you would your immortal
souls.  Many holy martyrs of the Church have suffered pain of death
rather than lose possession of the holy image we will give you here
today."  Pause.  "You are fortunate and honored that your holy
scapulars will be blessed by none other than Monseignor Kearny from
Blessed Sacrament School.  He has honored us by agreeing to deliver
the blessing and the sermon today."  Pause.  "Now we will all file
into our pews."  Pause.  "Be silent.  And conduct yourselves as
children of Christ and as you were taught in the rehearsals.  Don't
forget to kneel and to stand at the proper intervals for a High Holy
Mass.  And remember at all times that the Monseignor is watching.
I know you will make him proud of each of you, one and all."

    She nodded to a nun at the door, who shoved opened the vast
carved walnut panels that led into the interior.  The place filled
with the shuffling of new shoes and rustling of clothes as we
entered double-file, first the boys and then the girls, and took
our assigned places in a line of wooden pews along the right side
of the church.  As I shuffled slowly in line along the narrow aisle
I passed my family, Aunt Frances and Mom smiling proudly my way,
and my pert grandmother giving me a wink.  Their obvious pleasure
failed to improve my humor; the only pleasantness I found in the
situation was the heavy waft of candle smoke and parafin in the
air, and the dulcet singing of the choir in the loft above and
behind us.  As this would be a High Mass, I knew I would at least
have the pleasure of hearing Sister Albert's accomplished choir
singing the Gregorian Chant required by the formality of the
ceremony.

    As usual, the Mass progressed in what I always thought was a
tortuously slow pace.  And again as usual, I occupied my wandering
mind by studying the dozens of statuettes that line the walls of
St. Mary's.  St. Christopher: a rugged, bearded, muscular man
leaning heavily on his staff and struggling head-first through some
undefined tempest, the child Jesus hoisted on his massive shoulders.
St. Stephen the Martyr: in the swaddling garb of what I later came
to know as the clothing worn by Roman peasants, lashed at his wrists
and ankles to a wooden post, posed with his eyes lifted to heaven,
all done with exacting, lurid anatomical detail.

    My gaze never failed to linger on the carved image of St.
Joseph, whose name matched my middle name and who had been chosen
as the patron saint of my Confirmation.  Not as herculean as St.
Christopher, he was a long legged figure with a long beard, seated
at his carpenter's bench with a tacking hammer in one strong hand,
his other arm draped around the shoulders of the peasant boy
Jesus, who clung absurdly dependant at his side.  I studied
Joseph's face interminably, striving to imagine what it might be
like to have had such a father with strong, chiseled features and
commanding eyes under a heavily furrowed brow.  I wondered what
his beard would feel like.

    And the Virgin Mary, a short, full-hipped woman in a simple
white flowing robe with a blue shawl draped about her head and
shoulders.  Her slim right hand was raised as if conferring on the
viewer the two-fingered blessing that I had seen Pope Pius XII
giving from his balcony in movie newsreels.  In her right arm she
held the half-nude child who turned its head to gaze at the viewer
with a frown of divine approbation that seemed blatantly inappro-
priate on the infant's face.  Always my eyes fixed themselves on
Mary's girl-like oval face.  The sculptor had fashioned for her
a pair of enchantingly dark, gentle eyes.  Her expression was
tender, knowing, forgiving.  I could not match my mother's face
with hers, nor my great aunt nor my grandmother nor anyone else.
I wondered what it might be like to have such a mother.  In many
ways her expression reminded me of one I sometimes saw on Martha
Jane.  My eyes moved down to Mary's small bosom, and warmly I
remembered the moist swell of Martha Jane's breasts and the feel
of her nipples on my tongue.

    I asked myself if the woman who lived within that statue would
be scandalized at my illicit familiarity with the feel and taste of
real, warm, responsive titties.  Would she, too, offer a nipple to
me for sucking?

    I was fully aware of the blasphemous nature of these thoughts.
As Mass moved agonizingly along, we children prepared for communion
by attending the rear confessional one by one.  Dutifully, I ducked
into the dark curtained booth and spoke into the cloth-shrouded
grating that separated me from the priest, whom I could dimly see
and whom I knew immediately to be the kindly and unflappable
Franciscan, Father Edward.

    Dutifully, I contrived a suitably penitent voice.  Dutifully, I
recited the same repertoire of sins I usually confessed and for
which I was truly sorry: for saying bad things about my fat Aunt
Mary, whom I really didn't like, even after I confessed not liking
her; for talking back to my mother or disobeying and upsetting her;
for not making the bed on Saturday; for taking God's name in vain
when I got angry at a kid on the playground and wished that Jesus
would tear the little bastard's tongue out and send him to hell to
be devoured by slimy gnomes; and for falling asleep during morning
Mass.

    Brazenly, I made no mention of wondering what the Holy Mother's
breasts were like.  Brazenly, I made no mention of Martha Jane's
breasts or her thighs or that I had made her cum.  Brazenly and
stubbornly I refused to connect Martha Jane with evil, and even if
I could I brazenly and stubbornly refused to betray our trust.

    On the other side of the grating Father Edward leaned back in
what I could see was a brown leather-backed chair.  He gave his
usual sighs and his usual response: "Very well, my child, and is
that all you have to confess?"

    "Yes, Father."

    "You know you must honor your mother and you must not have
unkind feelings for your aunt, for they all love you and care for
you in ways you do not understand.  And for your penance I want you
to say ten hail marys and ten our fathers."

    "Yes, Father."

    "And remember to avoid the temptations and the sins of greed,
envy, and lust."

    "Yes, father."

    And then the usual, ritualized dismissal: "Your sins are forgiv-
en.  Go in peace, and sin no more.  "

    "Thank you, Father."

    I left the man with no inkling of Martha Jane.  I wondered if
his benediction forgave me for that as well as for the sins I had
confessed.  I thought the penance was a little out of line for not
liking my fat Aunt Mary.  Apparently at least half that penance
must have been slated for disobeying my Mom.

    Returning to my pew, I found the walls of St. Mary's reverber-
ating with the husky, amplified voice of Monseignor Kearny.  From
the ornate pulpit at the front of the church he inveighed weightily
with his baritone's voice of doom:  "...and be wary, my children,
of the evil nature of the sins of the flesh, sins that render our
precious souls disgusting in the sight of the Lord.  For to Jesus
and His Holy Mother Mary, the sins of the flesh are truly the most
offensive sins of all.  Because of them we risk the punishment of
being cast down to a terrible, burning place in purgatory for ten
thousand years, and after that, into the flames of hell for all
eternity..."

    Just ahead of me sat Sister Mary Joseph, nodding slowly in
righteous agreement as the monseignor thundered on.  I sighed
impatiently, my eyes wandering until they fell on the statue of
Jesus, gruesomely hanging from a crucifix high over the center of
the altar.  I cringed at the sight of the bloody nails...

    I have no idea how much of this tripe I did or didn't absorb,
but at the time I consciously rejected it as irrelevant to what
Martha Jane and I experienced.  At that time I found other aspects
of life to be much more frighteningly evil:  evil was the beating
of a boy I knew by some unknown kids who came to our part of the
project one day from the big apartment buildings on the hill at the
top of Exchange Street.  Evil was the Russians wanting to drop atom
bombs on everyone, and evil was the Nazis and the Japs who had
blown off the arms and legs of soldiers and shot out the eyes of
the man who lived a few doors down from me.  But I could not equate
evil with the image of Martha Jane spreading her thighs to allow my
hands to please her.  To use a more modern phrase: the equation
didn't compute.

     However, I was not so brazen nor rebellious as not to
appreciate the majesty of the edifice and interior of St. Mary's
and the solemnity of the ceremony.  Gregorian Chant had its
hypnotic qualities, as did the ritual of the purple-robed mon-
seignor moving down a line of piously kneeling children as he
draped a scapular ribbon round their necks.

    When he came to me I kneeled properly and straightly.  Behind
me, my mother stood with her hand on my left shoulder as the
ceremony required.

    The Monseignor intoned, "What is the child's name?"

    "Steven," my mother answered.

    "And who," the monseignor intoned, "is his patron saint?"

    "Saint Joseph," my mother answered.

    The monseignor reached toward an altar boy who fished out a
scapular--a thin ribbon with a small, two-inch cloth-framed image
of the indicated patron--and then the monseignor draped it loosely
round my neck.

    "Steven, I confirm you as a soldier in the army of Christ under
the guidance of your patron, Saint Joseph."

    There followed a quickly delivered chant of garbled Latin as he
moved to the next child in line.  Even I, brazen and rebellious
sinner that I was, had to admit that the theatrical power of this
pageantry was highly effective.  Of course my relatives were in-
ordinately pleased and heaped praise onto me incessantly on the
drive back home, which mercifully was only a few blocks away.

    Mom had arranged for a small dinner with my Aunt Frances and
Grandma Rose, who brought ravioli and salad and knotbread for the
occasion.  The kitchen being too small, we ate in the living room
on aluminum trays and paper plates.  I'd had to fast in order to
attend the required communion during the ceremony, and it was well
past noon; I sat in one corner and ate like a famished cave man.

    "Don't spill gravy on your shirt!" my aunt screamed in her
usual panic, and Mom removed my coat and stuffed a napkin under my
tight collar.  The napkin hurt, but I was too hungry to complain.

    "Don't eat so fast," my mother prompted.  I replied by stuff-
ing ravioli into my mouth until it squeezed out the sides of my
lips.

    "There," my aunt grunted, throwing up her hands. "See what
he does?  Why won't you listen to your Mama?"

    My mother warned, "You better not stain that suit.  Martha
Jane will be here later on.  See wants to see you in it."

    At that, I didn't eat more slowly but I ate more carefully,
making certain the napkin covered as much of my starchy shirt as
possible.

    But by the end of the day Martha Jane had not arrived.  As it
grew dark I went outside our apartment and looked into their
apartment window next door, but no lights were on.  Going back to
our apartment I asked my mother what happened to Martha Jane.

    Mom answered, "I guess she didn't have time.  She probably
went to the hospital with her mother and her Uncle Joe.  He gets
sick all the time with that shot up stomache of his, ever since he
came back from overseas."

    Once again before getting ready for bed, I checked Martha Jane's
apartment but no one was there.  Reluctantly I went back to our
bedroom and removed my suit, getting into my undies for bed. Mom was
in her nightgown, turning out all the lights.  I lay on the bed in
the lighted bedroom near the window and studied the picture of Saint
Joseph on my scapular.  The portrait had been done in oils, appar-
ently in the late Victorian period.  The man was heavily bearded,
piously looking toward heaven with a conventionally saintly gaze.
The scapular itself was a simple device, a black flat rayon ribbon
with the cloth-bound portrait dangling by a similar piece of cloth.
The painting was done in the same rich oils as a picture once shown
to my class by Sister Mary Joseph, who had found in a book what she
considered to be a true representation of the fires of hell.  She
brandished the book before the ogling eyes of the kids and told us
what would happen to us if we were sent to hell. It showed a dimly
lighted cavern populated by crawling serpents and evil clouds of
smoke.  Snarling, leering, crocodile-toothed hairless dogs ate their
way through the intestines of screaming victims and cruelly tore off
their arms and legs.

    Holding my scapular before me, I wondered if its reputed magic
powers could indeed protect me from such a fate.  Certainly, it
had done a shabby job of protecting me from temptation.  I couldn't
imagine how anything could keep me from engaging in future naughty
intimacies with Martha Jane.  The image that made me feel a creepy
apprehension was that of having to protect the scapular with my
life.  Suppose, as Sister Angelica from the fourth grade had pro-
posed weeks earlier, the Chinese Communists invaded the country
and arrested all the Catholics and strangled their children?  I
would be found wearing a scapular, certainly a dead giveaway, and
would be sadistically and slowly strangled if I didn't give it up.

    This morbid thought haunted me as Mom climbed in the bed and
shut the light.  When I grew a little older Mom would sleep in the
living room on the sofabed, but in those days she slept with me.
My place was at the window side, because I often enjoyed sitting
by the window sill and looking out into the dark before falling
asleep.  Mom said good night and rolled away from me.  For a long
time I lay face up, pondering the magnitude of my reponsibilities
as a soldier in the army of Christ with an official scapular that
I had to wear at all times to confirm my identity.

    Late in the night I awoke and found myself totally alone in
the bed.  Feeling something moving under me, I rose up on my knees
and looked down.  Horrified, I saw dozens and then hundreds of
black thumb-sized roaches dashing across the white sheets in all
directions.  Frantically I pounded the mattress and made wide
sweeping movements with my outspread hands to wipe them away.
They kept coming, multiplying, crawling everywhere, I couldn't
stop them...

    Suddenly I was awake.  I was on my knees in the bed.  My
Mom slept on her side, next to me.  My hands were spread on the
sheets in front of me.  But there were no roaches.  Only the
clean white sheets.  My heart pounded.  I waited for it to stop.
The only object on the sheet before me was the tangled, black-
stringed scapular.

    I picked it up and placed it on the window sill.  As I did
so, my arm was flooded by a narrow beam of moonlight.

    Stealthily I moved to the edge of the foot of the bed, then
onto the floor.  My heart still pounding slightly with the memory
of my terror, I slowly opened the corner chest and took out a new
sheet, which I brought with me into the kitchen, carefully looking
back to see my mother still asleep.  Wrapping the sheet around me,
I opened the back door, wincing as it creaked halfway open.  Look-
ing behind me again, I saw no one following me. I walked into the
dark back yard, barely visible in the light from a streetlamp
several doors away near the corner of the building.  A cricket
chirped lazily.  I moved out near the curb of the access driveway
behind our building and looked across Martha Jane's back yard.  I
saw no lights.  It was too dark for me to see into their bedroom
window.  I wondered where she was.  When would she be back?

    My mother appeared in her nightgown at the back door, frown-
ing sleepily into the dark with swollen eyes.  "Speedy?  Speedy?"

    Reluctantly, I walked toward her with the tails of my white
shroud trailing at my feet.

    "What are you doin' out here in the middle of the night?"  She
bent down and examined me.  "Are you walking in your sleep?  Huh?
Are you asleep?"

    Seeing that she had furnished me with an excuse as good as any
I might conjure on my own, I nodded yes.

    "Are you asleep?" she asked again.

    I nodded.  "I'm asleep," I said plainly, and looked up to see
if there were any possibility that she believed me.

    "Well, come in the house.  Come on, get in here and get back to
bed."  She pulled me gently into the kitchen and stroked my hair.
"Are you awake now?  Answer me, are you awake now?"

    I nodded yes, and kept walking in my oversized sheet to the
bedroom, where I left the sheet on the floor and climbed back into
bed.  As Mom settled beside me I nestled back into my pillow, face
up, and looked away from her into the shafts of moonlight that
banded the window sill.

    Mom asked irritably, "What *were* you dreaming about?"

    "Roaches," I muttered.

    "What?"

    "Roaches.  The roaches from the scapular."

    "Roaches?" she repeated, incredulously.  "Well, go back to
sleep.  Are you alright now?"

    I nodded yes, several times.

    "Go back to sleep, then."

    She turned away from me and drew the top sheet to her
shoulders.  Soon she was still, breathing deeply.  I lay watching
the moonbeams, listening for echoes of Martha Jane in the room.
The resting woman beside me felt like a foreign object that didn't
sound or feel like the Martha Jane I wanted to talk to and explain
my dream to.

    I searched the moonbeams and thought about her until I fell
asleep again.



                             PART 3B:


   For several weeks I saw Martha Jane only now and then as she
walked across the grounds on her way in or out of the project.  She
caught sight of me once from a couple of blocks away and smiled and
waved and yelled Hi.

    Meanwhile, it seems my Mom and future step-dad had gone through
a brief spat.  They started dating again a few weeks later.  But my
sitter was not Martha Jane.  In fact, I had two different sitters
at first.  The first must not have been very interesting, as I have
absolutely no recollection of who they were or how they looked. The
identity of the second sitter is also a blank, but I recall that I
spent the evening not at home but in the sitter's apartment, across
the driveway and at a slight angle from my own building.  Through
their back kitchen window that night I could see the back door that
led to my own apartment.  And just to the left was the apartment
where Martha Jane and her family lived.  At one point that night I
saw her in her kitchen; there was no mistaking that pretty face and
frizzy auburn hair.  I waved to her.  Of course, she didn't see me.
I went back later and waited for a while but she didn't show again.
And by the time the sitter walked me back across the driveway back
home, all the lights were out in Martha Jane's place.

    When I had not seen her for several more days I bumped into her
accidentally just as I was going out the front door on my way to
school.  She came outside at the same time with her schoolbooks
under her arm.

    "Hey, hon," she sang as she locked her door.  She beamed at
me and gave me her best Southern twang.  "Where've you been,
sugar?"

    "where've-you-been-too," I mimicked playfully.

    "Well," she went on, making a silly face, "Where YOU been?"

    "Well," I said in the same way, "Where YOU been?"

    She laughed and gave a mild go-away wave with her free hand.
"Oh, silly!"  She shook her head.  She was wearing a long plaid,
pleated skirt and a white blouse.  I very clearly remember that
morning and how she looked; bright, clean, basic, unpretentious,
very very pretty in a simple, uncomplicated way.

    We walked a few blocks together.  I noticed she seemed to be
getting thinner.  She also looked tired, but cheerful.  It turned
out she had been working very hard in school and was overly anxious
to do well.  "You wouldn't know about that yet," she said, "you're
barely in the third grade."

    "What grade are you in?" I asked.

    "The umpteenth, feels like."

    Umpteenth was our private code that meant something akin to
forever or infinity.

    "I'm coming over Saturday," she said.  She had stopped and
seemed serious and looked steadily at me without moving.

    I said, "Oh. Okay!" and beamed at her.  She kept looking at
me in the same mysterious way.  I didn't know why she wasn't
saying anything.  She seemed concerned, apprehensive.

    "Well," she said after a minute and a short breath, "I am
*supposed* to stay with you Saturday night, anyway."

    I did not know what she was getting at or what was going on,
or why she emphasized the word "supposed".  I do remember the
moment clearly.  I became very tense; I felt suddenly distant from
her and didn't know what was wrong.

    She asked me pointedly, "Are we still friends, hon?"

    "Sure we are," I said.

    "I mean...are we still really, really friends?"

    I blushed.  "Your my own special, very only, very umpeenth-
degree friend."

    "And you're my special little man, hon," she said, but she
wasn't smiling, except weakly, sympathetically.

    We talked a little more, I don't remember what we said.  She
seemed absent-minded.  It was not until Saturday night that I
discovered what she was thinking.

    It was all quite complicated.  At least, it was for Martha
Jane.  As an adult I now understand, but as a 9-year-old I could
not fathom it.  I viewed things more simplistically.

    Next Saturday, Martha Jane and I sat and talked after she made
dinner and after we cleaned the dishes.  Then she studied on the
sofa a while.  She asked me a series of seemingly unrelated
questions, none of which I remember.  She was not as openly
affectionate as usual and seemed remote, though not at all cold.

    Our exchanges were brief and rather formal.  She asked me about
some uncles of mine who had not returned from the war, and she
asked if I ever saw my Uncle Frank--my father's brother and one of
the few male relatives in my family who had survived and returned
home.  I told her that Uncle Frank had not seen me since he fin-
ished his last hitch in the Air Corps and decided to come back to
the States and go to college on the GI Bill.  I told her about his
getting wounded in a B-26 in the Pacific a few years ago and how he
pulled up his pants leg and showed me the pink scars of the three
healed bullet holes in his lower thigh.

    She winced, making an "Ugh" face.  She said firmly, "I don't
want to hear about it.  I've heard enough about the war."

    So I didn't say any more.  I sat on the floor watching her,
trying to figure out how to get through to her.

    Martha Jane announced, "My Uncle Joe died, you know."

    "Yeah," I said, "Mama told me."

    "He was sick for so long, from his war wounds.  He lived longer
than we thought he would, but...It was hard on Mother. That's two
men the war took from her, her husband and her brother."  She
stared ahead pensively, then blinked awake. "Well.  Enough of that."

    I said earnestly from across the room, "I'm real sorry, Martha
Jane."

    She smiled weakly. "Thank you, hon.  I know you are.  It'll be
alright."  She looked back at her book and began scribbling in her
notepad.

    For a long time--perhaps for most of the evening, it seems--
she pored over her studies and remained unresponsive.

    Later that night I felt she was still mourning, despite saying
she would get over it.  I had seen a whole neighborhood full of
hurt, tragic people: widows, the disabled and the paralyzed, the
shot-up and the abandoned of the War.  I had seen my mom's sister,
my young and plain-looking Aunt Martha, when she came to our
apartment once in the middle of the night, pounding on our front
door and screaming for help until she woke us.  My mom scrambled
out of bed and I stood in the hallway watching from the bedroom as
Mom opened the front door for Aunt Martha, who rushed sobbing into
the living room and collapsed in a wailing heap on the sofa.  Her
husband had beaten her again.  Mom and Aunt Martha tried to hide
the bloodied bruises from me, but I had already seen them on Aunt
Martha's face and arms and I knew what the marks meant without
being told.  Seeing her, I wanted to cry and throw my arms around
her--even though she was, unfortunately, one of those adults I
didn't trust.  She was even more grimly puritanical and prim than
my Mom, and a fundamentalist who considered everything an occa-
sion for sin of some kind.  But I understood her pain, both
physical and emotional, without having it explained to me.

   That night occurred some years earlier, when I had just turned
6.  The commotion woke up Martha Jane's family next door.  She and
her sister Evelyn came over in their robes and pajamas and Martha
Jane went straight over to me because my mother panicked and was
rasping, "Get Speedy out of here, get him out of here!"   Martha
Jane led me to bedroom, where I looked up at her and whispered so
the others wouldn't hear, "I already saw it."

   She looked down at me.  "You did what, hon?"

   I repeated, looking back to make sure the others couldn't hear
us, "I already saw it, Martha Jane.  I saw what happened."

    Martha Jane knelt down to me in her rumpled bathrobe and
looked into my eyes with her deep, striking green ones.  "Then,"
she said eyeing me seriously, "you understand what happened."

    I nodded.  Then I added, so the others wouldn't hear, "Uncle
Bobby hurt her again."

    We were alone in the room.  I could still see in my mind the
earlier glimpse of Aunt Martha's bloody lip and the dark bulging
eye, and the blue-black on one of her arms.  I started crying.  I
could not stop the tears from falling down my face, despite my
attempts at remaining calm.

    "Oh, honey," Martha Jane implored, "don't get scared and
start crying, now."

    "I'm not scared," I sniffled.  "I know how Aunt Martha hurts.
It makes me cry."

    "You--"  Her eyes looking into mine softened and seemed to
turn to mush.  "Oh, you sweet baby."

    "Why does he do that to her?"

    "I don't know, hon.  But you are so sweet.  So very sweet."

    She closed the bedroom door, shutting us off from the sobbing
and wailing in the living room, and put me back into bed.  She told
me it would all be okay in the morning and she understood my
feelings.  She sat on the bed and said I shouldn't feel bad about
not being with the others and she really didn't want me to feel as
though I were being "locked away" in the room.  She said, "I'll
stay in here with you for a while if you want, okay?  So you won't
be all by yourself?"

    I told her,  "It's okay if I stay in here, 'cause I know Aunt
Martha.  I know how she is.  She doesn't want us staring at her,
she feels all ugly and everything.  I'll stay here so she won't
feel ashamed.  But...they don't have to yell at me.  They're always
hiding everything and acting like I won't understand."

    "No, hon.  They're just scared, that's all.  They're upset."
She stroked my head.  She told me she would come back later and
that she would tell my Aunt Martha about my concern for her.  But I
said, "No, don't tell her that."

    "But why not, hon.?  I know she'd appreciate it."

    "I don't want you to."

    "But, Speedy...honey, why not?  What's wrong?"

    "I don't...want...you...to."

    "But, hon...?"

    "'Cause every time she sees me, she'll be embarrassed.  She'll
remember tonight.  That's the way she is."

    I don't know how long Martha Jane sat looking at me, stroking
my hair, with that amazed look on her face.  Finally she said, "I
have to go in there and help.  You sure you'll be alright?"

    "Yes."

    She sighed and rose and went to the door, but before going out
she leaned inside and blew me a kiss.  "You're my little man from
now on, hon," she said, and closed the door.

    That night had taken place some years before and was one of
the very early incidents that had so endeared me to Martha Jane,
and her to me.  Now it was a few years later.  And Martha Jane had
become more than just a neighbor.  More than a friend.  And now I
saw that she was the one who seemed hurt.  Or, at best, worried
about something.

    I didn't know what to do about it.  I was good at clowning,
though, and I wondered how I could make her laugh.  At 9 o'clock
she hustled me into the bathroom (no bubble-bath this time.  I was
getting a little "too old" for that) and she stayed in the living
room while I bathed.  I dried off and straightened the room, and
peeked around the door into the living room.  She was on the sofa,
studying intensely.  But I did see a crumpled kleenex in her hand,
and her eyes had reddened.

    An wave of empathy had me almost crying with her. There was a
curtain-covered closet in the hallway between the bath and the
bedroom.  It could not be seen from where Martha Jane sat on the
sofa.  I got out of the tub, dried off, and went rummaging in the
closet, looking for a funny idea.  Martha Jane heard me kicking
around.

    "Speedy, I thought you were going to bed," she called.

    "Just lookin' for somethin'," I called back.  I found my
six-shooter outfit in there, and a cowboy hat.  I put on my mom's
dress with my six-guns and holsters on backward.  I had seen enough
John Wayne movies to be able to do a fairly acceptable imitation of
the guy.  I donned this outfit and tied toy spurs loosely on my
ankles.  Pulling the brim of the hat down low over my eyes, I walked
into the living room.  I looked ridiculous.  I stood there while she
had her face in her book.  It was a minute before she realized I
was there, and when she finally looked up I yelled out in my best
John Wayne voice:

    "Howdy, pil-grum!"

    She blinked.  Her mouth fell wide open and she covered it with
the kleenex.  I strutted across the room with big stomping John
Wayne steps.  "pardon me, ma-uhm, but...this town ain't big for
thah two of us.  One of us has...got tah go."

    She laughed in her oh-my-god, head-shaking way, not a big laugh
but several breathy intakes.  She blurted out, "Do you intend to
sleep in that outfit?"

    "Why, yes'm" I said, still John Wayne.  With my thumb over my
shoulder I indicated an imaginary object behind me. "Just me and...
muh horse, over there."

    "Oh, no," she said.  "You are so cute."  She wiped one eye with
a corner of the kleenex, trying to hide her red eyes.  I think she
knew I couldn't possibly have missed the gesture, but she kept up
the effort.  She said, "I have something in my eye, hon.  You go on
and get ready for bed.  Go on, now, it's late."

    "Well...okay," I said, disapppointed that I hadn't accomplished
very much.  I walked back to the closet with one of my aluminum toy
spurs dragging uselessly off one foot, and removed my silly gear
and stored it back in the closet.  As I was doing so, I saw Martha
Jane turning back the bedclothes in the bedroom.  I undressed down
to the underwear that I usually slept in and crawled into bed.
Martha Jane fluffed the pillows and turned off the lamp.  She stood
by the bed.

    "You ready to go to sleep now, cowboy?"

    "Right, ma-yum."

    She was silent.  She looked at the floor.  I saw her eyes
water.  She was dark against the dim light shedding in from the
living room.

    "You never met your daddy, did you, hon?  You never saw him.
He got killed over there before you ever knew who he was."

    I didn't know what to say to that.  Every relative I encount-
ered--and there were many of them in my huge family--mentioned my
dead father at every visit, every Mass, every picnic, every Bingo
game, every damn holiday dinner.  Now Martha Jane was doing it.
I was not angered by it, but I did find myself unable to understand
this constant lingering over the memory of dead men I never knew.

    Martha Jane went on quietly.  "My daddy was killed in the war,
too.  He was one of 'em, too, that...died, got killed."  She took a
deep, wobbly breath, and sighed.  "I guess you're lucky, Speedy, you
never knew your daddy, but I knew mine.  I used to..."  She stopped
again, breathed deeply, and when she started again her voice had
cracked and broken up.  "I used to see him all the time.  Every day.
So you don't know what that is, when some Army sergeant you never
saw before--" and she began talking and crying at the same time--
"shows up at the door with a letter--"

    She suddenly crumpled and fell to her knees, her hands on
her head, which was cradled on the edge of the bed.  She cried her
heart out, not wailing, but heaving in long, wrenching, childlike
sighs.   "I miss him!  Oh, I miss him!  Why isn't he here to help
us?"

    Instantly I went to her, squatting on the bed and holding her
head, the only part of her I could reach.  She cried and cried and
cried.  I didn't know what to say, but I did know to hold her and
stroke her hair.  Eventually she calmed down, and returned my hug
with a long tight embrace of her arm around one of mine.  With a
long sigh, she reached up to the night table for another kleenex
and sat on the floor, drying her eyes and looking up at me.

    "You knew I was thinkin' something, didn't you cowboy?"

    I nodded.

    "You...are one little smart-ass," she said, blowing her nose.
She sniffed loudy.  "You know what a smart-ass is?"

    "I think so."

    "Well you are one sweet smart-ass.  Now, c'mon..."  She stood up
and started tucking things in again.  "I'm done now, I got it outta
my system and it's a-a-all over with.  You get yourself to sleep.
C'mon, John Wayne."

    "Martha Jane?" I began.  I had not told her what I desperately
wanted to tell her.

    "Yes, hon?"

    "I..uh...Hmmm."  I scratched my head.

    She came closer to the bed.  "What is it, big boy?"

    "I still never..."

    "Mm-hm, okay, you still never.  You still never what?"

    "I never told anybody what we did together."

    She stood deadly still and silent, looking toward the floor,
hands on her hips.  She pursed her lips and made another sniffle.
She didn't say anything.  I thought I had offended her.

    "I mean...," I went on carefully, "in case you were worried
about that.  I mean, at first I thought that's what...you were
worried about."

    She said, "Oh."  She neither moved nor looked at me.  "Oh,"
she said again.  "That."

    "I just wanted you to know," I said, shrinking from her and
back into the bed.

    She shook her head, seemed to ponder deeply.  Abruptly she
left the room.  I lay there numb, figuring I had somehow pissed
her off in the worst way.  Then the living room light went out.
The only light in the room was moonlight falling on the bed.
I heard Martha Jane walking toward the bedroom.  I turned and
could barely see her at first, but soon she appeared in the dim
light of the moon beside the bed.

   She said sternly, "C'mere, Speedy."

    I crawled to the edge of the bed.  She was wearing dark
clothes, a blue blouse and a ruffled blue skirt.  All I could
see were her eyes.

    "You are one smart little boy," she said.  "Yes, I was worried
about that.  I wanted my daddy to get me out of trouble, I thought
I was in trouble about that."  She paused and said something,
almost to herself, something I would be able to understand only
years later.  "I am goin' to hell.  We're both goin' to hell."

    She then reached out and pulled me to her by one hand, she
standing by the bed with me on my knees near the edge.  She looked
deeply into my eyes briefly, and then hugged me tightly.  There was
something serious and desperate, rather than playful, in the way
she clasped me to her.  So I made no moves on my own.  I simply let
myself be held, my arms draped loosely around her neck.  When she
made no response after a moment I gave her a hug and waited.  But
she stood unmoving beside the bed, silent, enfolding me closely
with one arm around my back and the other cradling my head into her
neck and shoulder.

    With my face in her neck I was unable to see hers in the dark,
but I could tell that she was looking down at the floor silently
for a very, very long time, perhaps for almost two minutes.  During
that time I very lightly stroked her back and then put my own hand
on the back of her neck to let her know that I would wait, wait for
her to stop thinking or whatever it was she was doing in that long
wordless minute in the dark.

    She moved her lips; faintly I heard them part, and she took in
a small breath as if to speak, but she stopped.  I waited for her
in the darkness around us.  Her eyelashes flicked once, and I knew
she was looking past my shoulder, across the bed, out into the moon-
lit window behind me.  Her lashes flicked again against my cheek,
and she looked down once more, breathing.  She parted her lips again
and they made a mildly dry, sticking sound.  And she breathed and
waited and waited, as if something from deep inside her were slowly,
slowly struggling to the find a place in her breathing and in her
voice.  She looked down.  She swallowed.  Hard.

    "Hon?" she began, tentatively, barely audible.  Her lips were
so close to my ear I could feel the moisture of her breath on my
earlobes.  "Do you want to be nasty with me?"

    My head buried in her neck, I nodded slowly.

    She paused again, and again I heard her lips part drily near
my ear.  She continued, softly.  "Do you mind if I say it's nasty
but I want us to do it anyway?"

    "I don't mind."

    "I mean...I mean I know and you know that everybody says it's
wrong and we're not supposed to do it, but...I want to anyway.
I want you to understand: I know it's nasty...but that's why I
like it.  And I don't understand it."

    "But I like it too," I whispered back.

    Again she hesitated before she relaxed her arms and held me
more loosely.  "Good," she whispered in my ear.  "Good."  She
stroked my back for a moment and gave my head in her neck a brief
affectionate hug.  Then her fingers were at the front of my
underwear.  She tried to find her way into the slit but couldn't,
so she pushed her hand gently under the top band.

    She whispered, "Your dick, hon...", and soon her fingers found
me and wrapped around me warmly.  "...there he is..."  She hugged my
cock gently.  Then she murmured so softly I could barely hear, even
though her lips were still against my ear: "I like it too, hon.  I
can't help it.  We're so much alike."



                             PART 3C:


    At the time, most of this went right past my very young level
of awareness--but I clearly understood that she was troubled.  I
knew that I somehow had to stay with her and believe in her and
help her in some way.  I wanted to bring indescribable pleasure and
comfort to her.   She was making me feel loved and tickly now, and
I wanted desperately to do the same for her.  I found the folds of
her skirt and tried to gather them up, but had a hard time; my
hands were too small.  She stepped back, not letting go of my cock,
and used her free hand to lift her skirt.  She spread her feet
apart and looked down while I massaged her mound over her panties.

    "Ah, hon," she breathed.  "You remembered just exactly how I
like you to do that."

    As she had done, I slipped my hand under her waistband and
found her pubic hair and her soft folds.  She was not wet yet.
But she moved one foot to open her legs more so I could find her
crease.

    I whispered, "I want to make you feel good."  Now I hoped I was
learning to talk to her as she talked to me.  I was beginning to
comprehend the nature of my own very young sensuality, realizing how
so much of it was mirrored by Martha Jane, and learning to try and
contact those elements within her.  I was not yet very certain about
any of it.  But now I had glimmerings of the giddy adrenal rush gen-
erated by the allure of the forbidden that held us and our secret
world together.  And I was beginning to understand as well the para-
doxical, inexplicable comfort we both experienced by giving in to,
rather than resisting, our hunger.  In short, I was getting older
and more sexual, and I realized more than ever how complex were the
emotional and physical needs that bound us.  It was scary. It was a
lot like rushing blind across the avenue the way I used to, traffic
headed at me in all six lanes, not sure if or how I could make it
safely to the other side--but knowing, from where I stood at that
moment, I would not and could not run back.

    Martha Jane moved her head slightly, toward me.  Her lips
touched my ear.  Her mouth opened and I heard the thin saliva break
as she licked my earlobe.  And then my neck.  Under one hand I felt
the skin on the back of her neck move and flex as she reached
farther with her tongue and licked behind my ear, then down, then
into my neck again.  Under my other hand, she was getting wet.

    She pulled her head back, smiling and looking down to watch my
hand working between her legs in the dark.  She spread her knees
apart a little more.  She softly hissed, "Put your finger in me..."
I found her hot opening, now growing wetter, and slowly inserted
what came to me naturally--my longest finger.  She urged quietly,
"All the way in, hon, deep..."  Her eyes closed as she sighed a
trembling, breathy "Aaahh..."

    "Like that?"

    "Yes, baby."

    I flexed my finger in her.  I never ceased to be amazed at
the way the inner Martha Jane could suck on my fingers in her.
"Did that feel good?"

    "Bend your finger again, inside...Yes...keep doing that..."

    We continued for a while, but it soon became uncomfortable
standing up.  She broke away and got undressed.  Before climbing in-
to bed she removed my tshirt and underwear and had me sit up against
a pillow that she placed against the headboard.  Then, naked in the
moonlight, she lay before me on her tummy with her head in my lap
and started sucking me.  She sucked gently, wetly, slowly, immersing
me in her very hot mouth and holding me there.  Then slowly she
withdrew, sucking upward, and came off me with a loud swallow of the
wetness she had re-sucked off me, and sighed lasciviously.  "You
feel so good in my mouth.  You fit all the way inside."

    She licked her lips and sucked me again in the same way, gently
but fully, flattening her tongue along the underside and pressing
slightly, then started bobbing her head slowly and rhythmically.
I was amazed and hypnotized.  I began to be aware of her physical
beauty and the depths of the desperate lust that lurked in both of
us, there in the dim shaft of light that fell across her naked back
as she licked and sucked.

    She stopped and asked, "Do you know what I'm doing?"

    I just stared at her.  Of course I knew what she was doing,
though she had never done it so gluttonously.  But I didn't know
what it was called.

    "I'm suckin' you off.  Do you like it when I say that?"
Once again, her eyes had a strange glint and her voice sounded
inordinately wicked.

    "Yes," I whispered back, suddenly realizing how breathless I
was.  And I was doing some hard, nervous swallowing of my own.
"You know I do.  Especially the way you do it."  I was truly
flabbergasted that there were so many ways to bring pleasure to
each other.

    She returned to her sucking, which she continued for quite
some time, breaking to gently fist my wetted cock.  The cloying
sensuality of her motions and words caused me to make what I know
to be a seriously wicked grin as I watched her pump me.  "That's
good," I whispered.

    She looked up. "Yeah?"  She grinned back.

    I grinned again too, into her eyes. "Yeah.  Keep doin' it."

    "Yeah, honey."

    "Ah..."

    "Feel it, baby...enjoy it..."

    And once again, her eyes and her words and her voice held me
mesmerized.  She herself seemed hypnotized by my own spellbound
reaction.  We fell into unalloyed devilishness, as if demons within
us had generated a chain reaction neither of us could not stop.  She
wouldn't let up.  The lust in her eyes and her voice met mine, mine
met hers, and they fused.  We were glued to it, tangled it in.  I
kept hearing the nuns and the aunts and relatives warning me, but
all their screaming voices together could not drown the tantalizing
whispers of Martha Jane.  And the more my eyes lit up with pleasure,
the more Martha Jane saw it and gloated on it.

    She gave a low, dirty chuckle and breathed, "You like it.  You
like being like this with me."  She kept looking into my eyes,
directly into them, into my cornea and through the optic nerves
and into my brain.  As she wetly stroked my twitching cock I heard
only the wet slush of her hand in the hot spit she had left on me,
and her endless, libidinous whispers.  "You like it just as much as
I do, don't you, I can tell.  I like it too.  I like watching your
face while I make you feel good.  I love your dick.  I love
touching it.  I love milking it, and sucking..."  She pumped and
then sucked and then pumped me again.  I was feeling extremely
strange and giddy and I knew she did too.  A dark wicked wave seemed
to wash into the room and lick me squarely in the scrotum under my
balls, then lick upward along my spine and settle in the back of my
head.  I could see the reflection of these new and growing impulses
in her own eyes, I could hear her voice echoing my own rising
lechery.  We fed it, and fed on it, helpless in the dark and the
moonlight.  She fisted me loosely now, looking up at me.  Distinctly
I felt and saw her own eyes catch the glint of lust in mine, and she
leered and fisted and kept whispering.  "I feel you liking it, I
feel you jumpin' in my hand.  Such a beautiful, hard, sweet little
cock.  It gets so big.  How does it get so big from being so little?"

    "I like you making it big," I managed to whisper back, but
only after fighting for the breath to say it.  I took a deep
breath and gasped brazenly, "I like watching you watch me."

    Her eyes rose, surprised and please that I was joining her
in this hypnotic whirl.  "I'm so glad you like this.  Want me
to suck you some more?"

    "Yes, it feels so good."

    "I want to suck you and I want you to fingerfuck me, like
last time."

    Uh-oh!  A new term in the ever-expanding lexicon.  I was taken
by surprise.  Another Martha Jane word.  At that point I somehow
knew there would be an explanation forthcoming.  Contented, and
learning for the first time what the word "turn-on" would later come
to mean, I let her suck me and we continued our lurid whispers and
glances.  Of course, I did not cum.  This was fortunate, in a way,
since literally I didn't know what I was missing.  But at one point
a pang of sensual tickling shot through the length of my shaft, and
I felt an oozing from me that mixed with her spit and slickened it.
I wondered if that meant I was cumming.

    But the feeling passed too quickly for me to stop and ask
questions about it.  For Martha Jane had risen to a half-sitting
position beside me, her head against the headboard.  Her left leg
lay on the mattress between us, bent at the knee toward me so her
inner thigh was spread to expose her slit; and she bent her right
knee upward, keeping her foot on the bed, using her heel to spread
her right leg wide and exposing even more of her nakedness.  She
shoved her hips forward so that I, lying beside her, could fully see
her auburn tuft and the widening, smooth-lipped slit below.  With
one hand she spread the silken hair that partly covered her, and
wantonly instructed me on how to touch her clit and how to insert my
finger and how to search far up inside her and find a magic bundle
of muscle and nerve that made her arch her hips and sigh lustily and
made her nipples swell in my mouth, and she looked down, leering
and watching me please her and holding herself open for me, telling
me this was her cunt, and she said that when she felt really nasty
as she did now that she wanted me to call it her cunt, and as I
pulled her clit and stroked the tender place far inside her wetness,
her words and her voice and her sighs slid into a barely audible
stream of hissed obscenities.

    And I remembered doing this to her before and making her cum,
but now I knew she wanted me to call it fingerfucking and that she
liked the word and so did I, and she liked me watching her on her
side with one leg bent between us and the other with one knee raised
and resting spread away from her so that she could use the leverage
of that leg to raise her cunt toward me and we could watch me
fingerfuck her, and she liked watching while I did it, and her
raised knee soon fell and she dropped back into the pillows and
spread herself flat and gave herself over to the long cum that
seemed to be on its way, and for a long while she simply lay and
enjoy it and sucked on my finger in her.  And finally I gave her the
smashing, paralyzing orgasm she wanted, her head pressed far into
the pillow and her neck straining, her arms and legs stiffened
against the white sheets and her nipples jutting upward as she
threw her head back and suffered silently the sweet agony I was
giving her, taut and stiff for what seemed to me a perilously long
time.  Her hips gave a slight jerk, and I expected her to slide into
her swooning relaxed state, but instead her head snapped farther
back into the pillow and her teeth showed in the dark and she
whimpered "Oh!" in sudden surprise, and then "Ah!" and she came
again, again, again as I moved my fingers in the way I knew was just
right for her, never for a moment wanting to lose my way in giving
her pleasure, caring for her, protecting her in her utter nakedness,
striving to make it perfect and right for her.  And finally, with a
great sigh and a whimper that I know could be heard out in the dark
street beyond our window, she relaxed with a final lurch of her
hips, and began breathing in waves, then breathing regularly and
deeply, and she made the same sounds she made when she cried, but
now they were sounds of exhaustion and release.

    I licked her nipple, my soaked hands now lightly massaging her
outer lips and inner thighs, and she put a hand on my arm and cried,
"so good!", and on reaching down to touch my cock she found wetness
there, a smear from inside me, and she opened her eyes and looked at
me and then looked at my cock and reached down and kissed the tip,
moaning "oh your cum, your sweet cum!"  She licked it off me and it
tickled terribly and I felt deep in my balls the oozing of another
smear, which she milked out of me with a long slow pull upward on my
dick, and she licked that off too with tender relish, as if even the
smallest beginnings of my cumming were as precious as water to a
parched throat.  And then, out of breath and with a final gasp, she
literally fell into me and hugged me and held on and went straight
to sleep.

    We slept like that for a while, with her splayed over me as
if knocked unconscious.  She awoke with a start and looked at the
clock.  "Darn!" she whispered frantically, "they'll be coming home!"

    Quickly she dressed.  As she did, she caught me smiling at her
from my pillow and she told me,  "Speedy, you are remarkable.  My
god, I wish I could tell someone about this.  They'd never believe
me..."  She looked at me as if she were in shock.  "How do you do
this to me?  Where did you learn to do this?"

    "Do what?" I asked, truly puzzled.

    "You know what I'm talkin' about," she scolded midly, hopping
a little to get her shoes on.  She sat on the floor and tied her
laces.  "You made cum in my mouth, too, didn't you?"

    "I...think so."

    "Listen," she said earnestly, finishing her shoes and getting
up to bend over me.  "I want you to grow up and cum.  I can't keep
doing this all by myself.  Do you have any idea what you just did
to me?"   She gathered up the wads of kleenex and started straight-
ening the place quickly, mumbling, "I didn't even know anything
like this was possible.  Where in the world did you learn how to do
it like that?"

    "You taught me," I said.

    She caught herself, pausing as if startled, and went back to
her hurried straightening.  "I'm just talking, hon.  You go to
sleep. Your Mama will be home soon."

    She returned to the living room and her books.  The light in
there snapped on.  I rolled over and looked out the window.  I did
not understand the significance of this nor the problems it would
cause later.  But I had experienced an unusually intense level of
eroticism which I feared and yet didn't fear, something apparently
as new and exotic to her as it was to me.



                             PART 3D:


    That was a sensuous summer.  Mom's relationship apparently ran
smoothly for a while and my stepdad-to-be took her out not fre-
quently but regularly.  Each time, Martha Jane would show up on time
and we'd fix dinner for each other, clean up, do a little homework,
and then undress each other in the tiny bedroom.  Soon the room
echoed with our sighs, whispers, and moans of pleasure and lust.
The only sex we had outside that bedroom was the one time Martha
Jane showed up at our place one rare Saturday afternoon when I had
not been shipped off to relatives for the weekend.  Martha Jane had
iced tea with Mom and chatted a short time, and told my mom she
wanted me to come next door and help set up a record player her
sister Evelyn had given to Martha Jane and her mom.

    She brought me to her apartment and as soon as we were inside
she took me into her bedroom.  I told her I thought she wanted me to
help her with the new phonograph and she giddily and impatiently
replied that the machine was set up already and she really just
wanted us to be alone.  "I don't know what's got into me today," she
exclaimed, almost visibly trembling.  "I feel so nasty.  God, I hope
we don't get caught!"  She lay on the edge of her bed with her legs
hanging over the side.  Lifting her skirt, she panted, "Fingerfuck
me, hon.  Hurry.  Somebody might show up."  I put my hand inside her
waistband and fingerfucked her inside her panties.  She came almost
immediately.  Afterwards, nervous and fumbling, she lay me down the
same way and jacked me with my zipper open until I felt that little
buzz in my cock and she pulled a little drop out of me and licked it
off.  Then we straightened our clothes and went into her living
room, where she settled down.  And just in time: about ten minutes
later her sister Evelyn arrived unexpectedly.  I talked with her
briefly and while she was in their kitchen making lemonade Martha
Jane saw me to her door and whispered as I left, "That was close.
But it sure felt good!"  Afterward she told me we shouldn't try that
sort of thing again, as the schedule in her place was truly unpre-
dictable and so many of her mother's friends always popped in.  And
she said she never, never wanted to risk having my Mom find out.

    Had sex been the only aspect of our relationship I have little
doubt that both of us would have soon tired of this sitting routine
and sought more varied pleasures elsewhere or with someone else. But
we had a life outside the bedroom that was also special for us and
that only added to our feelings of intimacy, devotion, and pleasure
in the bedroom.

    My back yard was a small patch of lawn about the size of a
modern suburban carport.  It lay along the curb of the access drive-
way that fed into the project from the street and led to a parking
lot around the corner of our building.  Near the curb was a large
black oak.  We spent several evenings there on weekdays at dusk,
just after dinner, as the long summer days ended and the stulti-
fyingly humid Southern air turned breezy and cool, the sky glowing
purple and orange.  It was there under the heavy, leafy old oak tree
that I told her about my strange dream with the roaches.  She said
she had no idea why I would dream such a thing, but she suspected
the nuns had scared the hell out of me.

    Martha Jane and I discussed our dreams frequently during those
waning summer days under the tree.  She often dreamed of her father
coming to her in the night, but he was reduced to the size of a boy,
a very small boy almost as small as an infant.  His head was
bloodied and disfigured (he had died in combat on Okinawa from head
wounds).  He would plead for help, but when she rose to go to him
she saw the rest of the house was filled with more like him, thou-
sands of them, moaning and reaching for her.  In the dream her
mother made tea, oblivious to it all and apparently deaf and unable
to hear, but as she sipped her tea she said she didn't want to hear
and appeared to have gone quietly insane.  Overcome with helplesness
and rage, she would wake up sweating.

    She said she once had a dream about me.  I was standing in a
dark room smiling at her.  She said my eyes were very large and
very dark, almost gigantic, and they glowed in the dark room.  As
she stepped toward me she became very small and felt faint, and
suddenly I was very large and very much older and went to her with
a glass of wine, gently cradling her head in one arm while holding
the wine for her to sip.  The wine was warm and was in a small
silver chalice.  She said the most striking part of the dream was
my remarkably dark eyes that seemed to fill the room.  They were
kind and endearing, but there was something frightening and ruth-
less about them as well.

    Across the access driveways were the small back yards of the
building directly behind ours.  I never knew our backdoor neighbors
personally.  Occasionally I'd look out our kitchen door and see one
of the neighbor ladies standing in her kitchen and talking with
Martha Jane across the driveway.

    One of those neighbors, a Mrs. Johnson, would open her back door
each evening just before dark and carefully slip her bathrobed,
paraplegic husband in his wheelchair down the three or four concrete
steps into their back yard.  She would make him comfortable there on
their little patch of grass, read the newspapers to him, or tune a
station on their small brown GE portable that rested on the ground
between his wheelchair and her aluminum lawn chair.  Many after-
noons, Martha Jane and I sat on the curb and watched this ritual.
We would say hello to Mrs. Johnson and to Mr. Johnson, and Mrs.
Johnson would smile and wave hello and bend down to Mr. Johnson and
tell him we were out there with them.  Mr. Johnson was unable to
respond.  Nor could he move his legs or arms or his neck or his
eyes.  He slumped limply in his wheelchair, wearing striped pajamas
and a brown bathrobe, his eyes ogling blindly ahead, a thin drool
forever flowing down one side of his slack and expressionless face.
Mr. Johnson had been almost blown to pieces on Taiwan.  Even at my
age I realized without being told that the man would never move or
talk or lift a spoon of soup to his face.

    Martha Jane would watch quietly as they performed this almost-
nightly ritual for a brief stay in the open air.  I would look up at her
and see her swallow, for a different reason now, and she would murmur,
"God grant the poor woman patience."  I told her about Taiwan, and
Guadalcanal.  And she told me how my father had died. He was flight
engineer in a B-17 on his 21st mission when the plane was badly shot up.
They barely made it back to England, where they discovered that the front
wheels would not remain extended for a landing.  As engineer in this
emergency, my father ordered everyone but the pilot into the rear of the
aircraft, where most of them lay wounded and unable to parachute out.
With the pilot bringing the plane in, my father stationed himself near
the landing gear handcrank, literally jamming the left wheel straight and
steady with a hand-held crowbar.  The wheel held up just long enough for
the plane to land and start to slow.  Then the  gear collapsed, crushing
him.  All the other crewmen were saved.

    "You're a lot like him," Martha Jane told me at the end of that
story.  "You'll try anything, just to see what happens.  You're such
a little outlaw."

    We would sit there until the sky grew dark, seeing before us where
so many others had gone, talking vaguely about how far there was to go.

    "Sometimes I think we're the only ones who are still in one piece,"
she sighed, her chin propped on her knees.  "Sometimes I think we were
put here so we could know how much there is to lose.  So we can save
whatever's left."  She shook her head.  "And sometimes I think: there's
so little left to be saved."

    On July 4th she took me to a movie at the neighborhood theatre,
the Suzore's--a seedy, well-used, crowded, and sticky-floored movie
house if ever there was one.  The place was a fallen relic of the
1920's, but it had a kind of homey who-cares air about it and the
best popcorn in town.  We held hands and shared the popcorn bag,
laughing at the Bowery Boys and hiding our eyes when Charlie Chan
crept through the hidden corridors of a haunted house.  The walk
back home was about seven blocks, down the steep, landscaped, four-
block-long hill that led from the top of the project to our building
at the other end.  It was one of those hot Southerm nights, humid
but cooling down, the air so still that the voices of people walking
nearby hung in space long after the people had gone.  In those
days, before pollution clouded the view, we could see a multitude of
stars overhead.  As we walked I pointed out Orion to her, and Alpha
Centauri.  I showed her where the Weeping Sisters usually appeared
and told her that the faint red dot near the steeple of St. Mary's
Church was Mars.  We were standing in the dark of the open lawn near
the project's administration building.  She listened as I pointed
out the constellations, and after a minute I stopped and watched as
she looked up.  I was very nearly her own height, then.  A half-moon
floated just in front of her, outlining her face.  Unable to resist,
I softly cupped my hand over one breast.

    She looked down at my hand on her bosom.  She didn't pull away,
but she whispered mischievously, "Somebody's gonna see us."

    "I don't care," I said.

    She laughed and said, "Yes, but I do."

    "Okay," I said, and withdrew my hand.

    She held my hand at her side as we strolled the rest of the way
home.  "It's not that I don't want you to," she said.  "It's just
that...I don't ever want anyone catching us and trying to stop us
from doing it."

    That summer gave us several nights together, nights of holding
each other warmly and softly, naked, with Martha Jane under me or
hovering over me and whispering her secret needs and pleasures,
showing me something new.  I learned to keep her on a dreamy
sensuous edge for a longer and longer time, and then to make her cum
several times, rapidly and intensely.  She would almost always fall
sleep or faint afterward, and I had to struggle to stay awake so I
could rouse her in time to straighten up before my Mom returned.

    Martha Jane had her 17th birthday in September, 1950.  There was
precious little money to spend, but she invited a few close friends
and had a small celebration in her mother's apartment.  I was there,
indulging heavily in ice cream and homemade cake.

    Martha Jane found it necessary to introduce me personally to
everyone in the place.  I was surprised to learn that so many of her
friends were not classmates but older adults.  This left me edgy,
especially when she kept introducing me as "my boyfriend, Speedy."
And every older lady in the joint had to say something like, "Oh,
he's such a cute boy!"  My discomfort was obvious.  At one point I
retreated to a corner and sat unsmiling by myself for a long period.
Martha Jane came over to me and asked what was wrong.

    I sat petulantly bumping my heels on the legs of the chair and
averting her eyes.

    She leaned down to me.  "Speedy, you're too smart and too well-
liked by everyone here to act like this.  What's wrong with you,
don't you like these people?"

    "They all think I'm cute," I pouted.  "And I hate the name
Speedy."

    She chuckled and said, "Speedy, let 'em think what they want
to think.  It doesn't hurt to cooperate a little bit.  And what
difference does it make?"

    I adamantly folded my arms.

    She stood up and said, "Hmp," with her hands on her hips.
"Face it, hon--you ARE cute!"

    I said back, "Hmp!"

    "How am I gonna get you to have more experience being around
people other than that fussy family of yours?  Hm?"

    I said nothing, but kicked away with my heels.

    "Okay, sourpuss," she said.  Shaking her head impatiently, she
returned to the group.  I spent the rest of the day mostly ignoring
everyone until I felt it was time to go home.  As I left her apart-
ment I saw her notice me from the corner of her eyes while she spoke
with the others.  For the rest of the day I stayed in my living room
and pretty much had the place to myself, my Mom being at Martha
Jane's all afternoon.  I listened to the Philco for a while, and
typed on the Underwood.  And by dusk I was totally bored.

    I went to our back yard, out by the curb near the big oak.  For
a while I sat on the curb under the tree, listening to its heavy,
leafy limbs rustle in the breeze.  It was dusk, and the early fall
sky had turned red.

    Before long I heard the slap of the screen door behind me at
Martha Jane's place.  I looked behind me.  Sure enough, it was she.
She saw me and walked toward me, her head lowered and her arms
behind her back.  I sat with my legs extended from the curb, my
heels on the surface of the driveway.  She sat beside me.

    "What's the matter, hon?"

    "Nothin'," I said.

    "Look at me."

    "No."

    She lowered her voice and said, hurtfully, "Speedy, why are
you doing this to me?"

    I sighed deeply and leaned forward, propping my chin on my
raised knees.  I muttered, "I dunno."  And I didn't.

    "I'm sorry you didn't have a good time.  I thought you would."

    I shrugged, as if to say it didn't matter.

    "Can't you tell me what's wrong?"

    "I dunno."

    "Try, Speedy."

    I shrugged.

    "Try, hon.  Talk to me.  You haven't been nice to me all day.
I have a perfect right not to speak to you at all.  Do you realize
that?  Can't you tell me what's wrong?"

    I struggled a bit, and finally managed to say, "I don't...
like it when people expect me to be cute all the time."

    "Speedy, they don't 'expect' you to be cute.  You 'are' cute.
You really are.  You're an unusual person--you don't look like other
boys your age.  You have a strong, intelligent, different look and
personality altogether.  And that's what people notice about you."

    "But...I don't know what to say to people."

    "You just say hello, hon.  And 'how are you'.  You don't have
to say anything special."

    "Well..."  I stopped.  I shrugged helplessly.  "People always
expect me to do certain things.  And act a certain way."

    Martha Jane sighed.  "You mean," she said knowingly, "you
mean 'certain' people, don't you?  Like Aunt Frances and the rest
of them?  And your mother?"

    I nodded.

    For a while Martha Jane looked at the ground silently.  she ex-
tended her bluejeaned legs into the driveway and leaned back on her
arms.  "Speedy, do you know what I'm going to do when I go to
college?"

    I shook my head.

    "I'm going to study to be a teacher.  A special kind of teacher.
I'm going to teach children who are...who are different from other
children.  Someone like you could be one of those children some day.
But you'll be grown up by the time I get started.  You'll be in high
school yourself by then, or nearly there.  But you know--?  Look at
me, Hon.  Look at me."

    I did as she asked.

    She continued, "There's an awful lot I could learn from you.
You're a really tough case."

    "Tough case?" I said.  "What's a tough case?"

    She raised her eyes, looking up at the sky.  "Ah, you're soooo
hard-headed.  That's what a tough case is."

    I shrugged.  "Oh."

    "You wanna take me to the movies for my birthday?"

    "Movies?"  I frowned.  "I don't have any money."

    "I'll pay."

    "But that's not fair."

    "Yes, it is.  I asked you first."

    "Well, if you're askin' me, then I'm not takin' you, you're
takin' me."

    "Oh, darn it, why do you have to be so exacting?  Listen.  Let's
start over again.  Now, I'm going to ask you if *you* want to take
*me* to the movies.  And you're supposed to say yes."

    "Okay."

    "Now--you wanna take me to the movies for my birthday?"

    I paused.  I still didn't agree with the "politics" of this
game.  "But if you're the one who has the money--"

    She prompted, impatiently, "Answer yes, darn it."

    "Start over," I said.  "This time I'll do it right."

    "Oh, alright...You wanna take me to the movies for my birthday?"

    "Yes."  I reached up very quickly and kissed her cheek.  "Yes,"
I said again, kissing her again.  And a third time, "Yes," and
kissed her.

    She laughed.  "What *are* you doing?"

    "I'm kissing you and saying yes."

    "Three times?"

    "To make up for the times I didn't do it right."  One more time,
I gave her cheek a loud, lingering kiss.  "...And that's for me
being so snotty on your birthday.  I won't do that any more."

    "You little heartbreaker."

    Martha Jane was looking less like a teenager and more like a
young woman.  Her neck, arms, and legs had developed slimmer and
more graceful lines, and she was losing the baby fat in her face
and neck, getting more slender overall.  I was nearing my 9th
year and was somewhat muscular and slightly tall for my size, but
certainly not as hefty as many fast-growing boys my age.  I was
now only an inch or so shorter than Martha Jane.  Like my father
and his brother, there was still something delicate about me from
my paternal grandmother's side of the family.

    I mentioned this because at that time I was becoming more and
more aware of my own physical dimension and of the physical side
of this passionate relationship.  I noticed this change in both our
appearances a few days after Martha Jane's birthday.  She stayed
with me while my Mom's future fiance took her to a Halloween party.
Outside my apartment the kids strolled the Halloween trail for candy
and trick-r-treats, their noisemakers and their giggles echoing in
the night.  At that time, however, Martha Jane and I were naked
together in that tiny bedroom.  We were giggly and giddy because we
were totaly nude but lying on the bed just below the window sill so
that anyone looking in would see only our faces and elbows.  For a
while we talked and watched the goings-on outside.

    Then we went into the bathroom so we could make up in Halloween
faces of our own and laugh and point at each other.  This was one of
the few times I had seen her naked outside of a bed.  Watching her
stand before the bathroom mirror or tiptoe across the living room, I
saw how slim and tight her waist, back, neck and legs had become.  I
told her this and she stood in front of me sizing me up.  She said
my chest was starting to expand now, my shoulders broadened and
would probably look like my Uncle Frank's one day, and my legs were
longer and leaner and already had fuzz on them.

    I told her, "You're getting prettier and prettier all the time,
Martha Jane."

    "Oh, stop it."

    "But you are," I insisted.  "Your eyes are.  They're bigger than
they used to be.  Yes, they are, I know they are.  They have more
blue in 'em  than they used to."

    "Phooey, hon.  Let me see you."  She held me at arm's length
and looked me up and down.  "Look.  You're perfectly proportioned.
Not too big, not too small."  She put her hands on her waist and
continued her assessment of my nudity, muttering absently, "I've seen
a lot of pictures of a lot of statues in the art books at the library,
so I know what I'm talkin' about.  Look at you.  Just perfect.  Like
a little Greek statue.  The only thing missing is a fig leaf."

    "And you look perfect too," I breathed, slowly taking in her
naked form, the graceful slope of her breasts, her slightly parted
thighs and her slender ankles.

    "Guess what?" I asked.

    "What?"

    "Looking at you like this is makin' me excited."

    She winked.  "C'mon."



                             PART 3E:


    We got into bed and she lay with her head in my lap, sucking me
languidly until the increasingly familiar twinge in my cock sent a drip
of pre-cum to my tip.  I sat breathlessly enjoying her now expert lips
and hands on me.

    "I can taste it," she said, tentatively slurping as she raised
her mouth off me.  "I taste more of you, hon.  Are you starting to
cum?

    "Well, I guess...I'm not sure."

    "Poor baby.  You still don't know what I'm talking about, do
you?"

    I told her I wasn't quite sure, and she tried to explain about
male orgasms and ejaculation.  I got the general idea, but was
amazed to find out even more about babies and how much of the truth
had been concealed by the adults around me.

    Martha Jane told me how women kept from getting pregnant by
making the guy use a rubber (she never used the word condom or
contraceptive.  She told me she didn't like those words because
they were turn-offs.  "Rubber" sounded dirtier, and that's the
word she liked to use).  I remarked that if I ever had a real cum,
we'd have to use a rubber on me.

    She frowned and said, resolutely, "No.  I'd never make you use
a rubber."

    "But wouldn't you get in trouble if I didn't wear a rubber?"

    She didn't answer me.  She was stroking my cock, now limp after
so much prolonged stimulation.  She looked at me, and then she
looked out the dark window.  I asked, "what's the matter?"

    She said simply, "Wait a minute, hon," and she looked out the
window and seemed to be thinking deeply about it.  After a while she
sat up and smoothed back some stray hair from her face and scowled.
"No.  No rubbers."

    I looked puzzled.

    "Because..." she continued, pulling a bobby pin from her hair
and holding it in her teeth while she bundled back some of her
hair.  "Because, uh..." she went on, securing the bundle behind her
with the bobby pin.  Then she abruptly concluded, "Because."

    The look on my face told her that I knew she hadn't answered me,
but I also knew by her voice that she didn't want to talk about it.
She lay beside me and I put my head on her breast and we held each
other, and for a while she simply stroked my hair and neck and
reached down to lick my ear.  We grew quiet and listened to the
squeals and giggles of the kids outside.  After a while she licked
her hand and wet my cock with it and fondled me while I sucked her
nipples.

    With her face resting on my head as I suckled her, I could
feel her smiling.  She asked sweetly, "You really like sucking my
titties, don't you, hon?"

    "Yes.  You feel so good in my mouth."

    "I'm glad you like it.  It feels good to me too.  It's so
loving.  I like holding you like this and letting you suck.  I
like it because I like the way you enjoy it."

    "It's fun," I joked, moving to another nipple.

    She laughed.  "You funny boy.  Yes, it's fun, it really is fun,
isn't it?  I don't know...I guess I wouldn't do this if you were my
same age."  For a long time she said nothing, but stroked my cock
playfully and watched me enjoy her breasts.  She murmured, "It's
so hard to imagine people wanting to hurt us for this.  This doesn't
happen for most people.  I don't think you understand that."  She
held my chin and pulled my head up so she could give me a playful
smack on the lips.  She searched my eyes and my face for a moment.
"I hope no one ever hurts you.  But it's going to be very, very
hard to find a woman who understands someone like you."

    I asked her what she meant by that, but she didn't answer.
Instead she brushed it off and played with my pubic fuzz.  "You
have such a nice shape," she mused.  "I hope you don't grow too
much hair on yourself."  She uncoupled from me and scooted down
to suck me again.  Holding my shaft and licking my tip she sighed
contentedly, "You're so suckable."

    After wetting me she started pumping again, holding me very
loosely so her hands could slide along my shaft and brush my tip
in a way she knew felt good and would make me hard quickly.  She
grinned and said, "It's good, huh?  Yeah?  It's good, I can tell
you like it.  I want to make it so good for you..."

    It didn't take long for her to propel me to a breathless state
again.  I have to admit, orgasm or no, I have never been so
physically pleased by a woman's hands as I was by the way Martha
Jane had learned to please.  It wasn't long before my rockhard young
cock seemed to develop a life of its own.  My legs grew stiff and I
can verify that toes really do curl, for I could look down past
Martha Jane and see them doing so before my very eyes.  Another one
of those strange waves of pure pleasure shot into my cock and I
seemed to melt under it.  After several seconds of this tension, I
felt fluid leak to my tip.  Martha Jane stopped and looked up at me
in awe.

    "Honey, did you cum?"

    I struggled to say, "I don't...know.  It sure...felt good all
of a sudden."

    She studied me.  Sure enough, I had leaked again.  I would not
have called it an orgasm, at least not a proper adult orgasm, but
she had propelled me toward an awesome pleasure, both physical and
emotional.  I felt drained and tired.

    She rose to stroke my face.  "Did I hurt you, hon?  I didn't
hurt it, did I?"

    I shook my head no.  I found it to difficult to speak, my mouth
was so dry.  "No, but it...it just felt so good."

    She hugged me.  "Oh you almost, you *almost*!  Oh, that's
so nice!"

    I felt very good and deliciously wicked anyway, which was
enough for me at the time.  I don't remember at what point that
night I was inspired to take my next action, but Martha Jane was
lying on her back quietly enjoying having her nipples sucked while
I fingerfucked her, when I was inspired to please her orally as she
had pleased me.  As I trailed kisses down to her thighs, I relished
the feel and the taste and texture of her smooth thighs and licked
the tight juncture at her crotch below her cunt, and nipped at the
smooth tendons that stood out when she spread her thighs widely to
let me get close to her cunt.  She liked tiny nipping kisses on the
insides of her thighs.  Once she figured out what I was up to, she
looked amazed and her eyes lit up.

    "Are you doin' what I THINK you're doin'?  My god," she ex-
claimed, and let her head fall back on the pillow.  She smiled
at the ceiling while I searched with my tongue for the motions and
actions that would please her.  As far as I can recall, she had no
scent except for a faint musk that was something like freshly
warmed milk.  She did have a subtle and indescribable taste,
similar to unsweetened whipped cream.  She had never mentioned
going down on her--and this was, after all, the early 1950's, an
era that had yet to indulge in the oral freedoms of later decades.
Immediately, I could tell she was pleasantly surprised; I could
hear it in her sudden and joyful whimpers and could feel it in the
tightening of her tummy and her gasp as my tongue probed her
wetness and found her clit.

     It wasn't long before I found what she liked.  Apparently she
had never considered this act before, so she probably couldn't
think of specific instructions.  Afterward, she would always refer
to this as "licking."  I don't recall all the details after all
these years, but she was mightily pleased and delighted by my
complete willingness to lick her and my obvious enjoyment in doing
it.  The intensity of her reactions surprised even me, who should
have been used to it by then.  Knowing that her sucking of my own
tip was very pleasing to me, I learned quickly to suck her clit
gently just as it seemed she might be cumming.  I found I could keep
her close but not quite there for a very long time.  After almost a
half hour of this, I was ready to suck and lick her steadily until
she came.

    Instead she, too, introduced the unexpected.  She reached
down and pulled me up to her.  "C'mere, hon," she whispered under
her breath.  There was a new urgency, a queezy tension in her
voice that I hadn't heard before.  "Come up here,"  she said again,
pulling me forward until I lay on top of her, and she widened her
thighs with her knees extended at each side of me to let me lie
completely nestled between them.  I propped myself on my elbows to
see what she wanted.  Her face was taut and intent.  She fixed her
determined gaze on mine and moaned, "Lift up a little," and still
keeping her eyes on me and biting her lower lip she felt down,
between us, and found my dick.  I felt a very strange, wet tickle
and realized she was rubbing my cock in her slit, wetting me.  She
saw the surprise in my face and her own face became more intent
and deliberate.

    "Feel that?" she asked breathlessly.

    "Yeah.  Wet.  Ah.  Tickly."

    She fumbled urgently for a few more seconds.  "Move up a
little," she whispered.  Now her voice was shaky, trembling in a
way it never had.  And then I felt my dick enter her.

    "Yes, hon," she breathed.  Her intense face softened, and she
smiled deliriously, but there was still a great urgency in her
voice.  "Move on me.  Move up here, toward me."

    I did so.  Her eyes were locked on mine.  I saw and heard and
felt her swallow hard as my cock slid deeply in.  The feeling was
marvelous.  I was enthralled.

    Knowing that she enjoyed my finger moving in and out of her,
I naturally assumed that my cock moving in her would feel even
better, if not just as good.  I pulled back slightly and then moved
as far as I could into her.  She contracted around me snugly, and
I moved out and in, then did it again.  I was not moving up and
down, but back and forth, careful to move only an inch or so, not
wanting to lose that wonderful new feeling of being totally sheathed
inside her.  I kept my tummy and the upper shaft of my cock riding
in her groove, knowing intuitively that she wouldn't want me to lose
contact with her clit.

    I was amazed and afraid, and her eyes saw it in mine and mine
saw it in hers.  Her eyes narrowd and glistened, and she gulped.
"It's okay, hon.  Don't stop.  It's okay, you can do it to me.  I
want you to."

    She swallowed again.  One hand gripped my shoulder and trembled,
and my legs shook.  Her eyes kept searching mine.  And I searched
for guidance in hers, as I vaguely but fearfully realized what we
were doing.  Most of all I was overcome by the unthinkable, by the
fact that I was totally inside her, in her darkest and most secret
place.  She could see the disorientation and suddenness of it in my
face, she could feel it in my unsure movements.

    I managed to utter, "I'm...I'm in you.  I'm inside you."

    She released a pent up half-laugh, half-cry. "Yes!  Yes, You're
in me, hon.  Stay in me.  I want you in me."

    "It's so good!"

    "Keep moving your dick in me...deep and slow, just like that...
...baby, it's so good and you do it so...exactly...right!...oh how
do you know to do it...I knew it would happen sooner or later but I
never knew it would be like this, I didn't know it would be so
*good*...it's...oh your dick's in me and we're fucking...We're
FUCKin', hon, and I want you to FEEL it I want you to like it with
me I don't want any rubbers because I want you to feel your DICK in
me, I want to watch your eyes while you feel your first fuck and I
don't want you to stop...oh god I don't want you to stop..."

    "I won't stop," I panted, working steadily on her.  "I can't."

    Her eyes jerked swiftly, searching mine and in every corner of
my face, as if to record with her eyes every detail of the moment,
every move I made and every twitch of my face.  One hand gripped
the back of my neck, the other below held my wet sliding shaft
between two fingers as she felt me fuck her steadily and wetly and
she kept talking in a low whisper that became lower and lower and
more breathless.

    "...it's so good and so...nasty and...I can't believe how good
you feel!  I can't believe what a beautiful loving good fuck you
are, you do it just right..."

    "Martha Jane...it feels so good in you."

    "Yes, baby, in me, *in* me!...I never thought I'd be this good
...oh...I want it to last, I'm...Im trying to wait but you feel
so...you're making me cum...you want to stop, hon?  Huh?  You want
to stop and rest so you can feel it longer?"

    "No.  I don't want to stop."

    "Oh baby..."

    "I want you to cum."

    "So sweet you want me to cum...I didn't think it would be
like this I didn't think you'd make me cum so soon..."  Her eyes
widened, startled, and her chant grew more urgent, then frenzied.
"Oh hon I'm...oh it's gonna be so good!...it's gonna be so good!
it's GonnaBeSoGood...!"

    As I continued her eyes lost focus.  She appeared to see nothing
at all, though she stared directly at me.  Her eyes fluttered and
closed, her head swooned back and to one side, one hand came up to
her lips.  She could no longer speak--and neither could I.  I had
not moved on her very long before her trembling began, and then the
stiffening.  This time she seemed totally lost, afraid but unable to
do anything about it except to keep doing it.  Her motions and
reactions seemed different, as if she had suddenly and somehow lost
all control and had turned her body and cunt and destiny entirely
over to me.  I saw her lie below me and totally abandon herself to
what I would or wouldn't do.  She lay utterly helpless.  She moved
little, but her movements were centered in a very small area from
her upper thighs to her navel, and she seemed to have somehow found
a way to hold her cunt poised at the exact height and angle for my
cock to slide snugly in her exactly the way she wanted, with her
swollen clit barely brushing my shaft-- either she planned it
precisely so, or I had precisely found the very spot and the very
motions she precisely wanted, or else it just happened that way
because everything we did when we were naked somehow and unavoidably
happened that way.  Her cunt sucked exactly at the center of my tip
and her hips subtley rotated her clit precisely along the ridge of
my cock that rode and fit exactly in her crease as we firmly and
silently locked and greasily ground our bellies together.

    Then she stiffened terribly, trembled, stiffened and lifted
her her hips a bare inch off the bed, trembled and whimpered, and
then stiffened for one last, prolonged period.  I knew then that she
was in a different world.  If I didn't yet know what an orgasm was,
I had the perfect example lying under me, sucking pleasure from my
cock with a quiet madness from an unseen place inside her.  The to-
tality of her surrender and the sight of her elegant neck stretched
back as if in sweet death filled me with the knowledge of that
ecstasy which only a complete surrender to lust could achieve.
Without thinking I settled deeply into her and, feeling her clit
nudging the edge of my shaft, I ground my hips into her in slow,
rhythmic circles, which her cunt returned in exactly the opposite
direction at exactly the same time, and I clenched my young teeth
at the insane tickle of her inner muscles rolling around my glans
and the oily sucking ring of her outer lips caressing me near the
root of my cock, and I knew by the tension in her cunt and in her
thighs on either side of me that she was more deeply immersed in
pleasure than she had ever been.  She remained like that for what
seemed to be a large portion of eternity as I grunted above her in
my first conscious wallowing in the pure animalistic pleasure of
what I was doing to her.  The whole time she came, I looked down at
her.  I have never forgotten the sight of her below me in the moon-
light as I hovered on my elbows and for the first time used my
penis, my cock, my dick to make her cum.

    It all happened so quickly.  I didn't yet know all the implica-
tions of the word that described what we were doing (she would get
to that later, in her own inimitable way).  My entry and our screw-
ing and her cumming seemed to have happened by accident, an acci-
dent that overtook us completely and swiftly and absolutely.  She
had cum so quickly and deeply that we both lay stone quiet for a
while as if stunned.

    Afterwards she said, "You and I certainly are full of surprises,
aren't we, hon?"  She leaned over me.  "You gave me so much
pleasure, I...How do you know just what do?  Oh my, I can't even
think straight."

    Once again she tried masturbating me.  I enjoyed it, and she
did get another buzz of some kind out of me a second time.  I told
her not to worry, that whatever I felt it was really a very good
and wickedly satisfying sensation.  Then we had to dress.

    She left that night as if in a daze.

    And I slept like a sack of bones in the moonlight falling on
the part of the bed where I had experienced the unbelievable
thrill of entering her secret core and probing the very source of
her with my cock.  In the morning my flesh remembered her and it
seemed her wetness still clung to me,  I could feel her on my cock
for days.  And if memory serves me correctly I still cannot say,
after all these years, whether I wandered all day in a dream, or
in shock, or both.


                                Continued...

            ****  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, 1996 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 4A:


    I had a bad cold.  It was just before Thanksgiving.  Wearing
a heavy brown flannel robe, I sat up against the headboard as
Martha Jane settled near me on the bed and sat Indian-stlye.  In
her hand she had a bottle of green cough syrup, a bottle of cod
liver oil, and a bottle of ear drops.

    "Okay, hon, time for dessert."

    "That's not dessert," I complained.

    "This is dessert for sick folks."  She shimmied her hips into
the mattress to get comfy.   "Now, let's see, what does this
say...?"  She examined the label on the cough medicine.  "One
tablespoon.  Okay!"  With a giddy smile she fished for the spoon
in the paraphernalia she had gathered in a large dish towel spread
on the bed.  She held up the spoon.  "One tablespoon!" she an-
nounced.  Seeming to enjoy every minute of it, she unscrewed the
cough medicine, held the spoon up as she poured the dark green
gunk, and carefully brought the spoon toward my face.  "Oookay...
a-a-all for you, hon.  C'mon.  Yumyum.  Yumyum."

    "Yumyum Yuch!" I pouted.

    "Come on now, you don't want to stay up coughing all night
like you did last night, do you?"

    I frowned at the spoon.

    "C'mon.  It tastes good."

    "I already had some of it and I know it doesn't taste good.
It's terrible, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth for hours."

    "Well, Speedy, it doesn't taste good because it's medicine.
Medicine isn't supposed to taste good."

    "Why don't they make it in the first place so it *does* taste
good?"

    "'Cause if it tasted good in the first place, you'd drink it all
the time.  You'd live on it, and then it would make you sick."

    "If it's medicine, why would it make me sick?"

    "Listen, stop bein' so logical.  Here.  Yumyum.  C'mon."

    I opened my mouth and she tilted the spoon into it.  I swallowed
and grimmaced.

    "There, I knew you'd like it."

    "Yech."

    "Now where's the cod liver oil..."

    "Yecch!" I growled, as disgustingly as I possibly could,
stretching my mouth into a horrific grimace that went from ear to
ear.  I held the pose as if frozen into it.

    "Oh, stop.  It can't taste that bad.  Here..."  She care-
fully squeezed an eyedropper of amber oil into a spoon, and then
squeezed the juice from half an orange into it.  As she did this
I sat rigidly against the headboard as if long petrified, my face
still frozen in the same gruesome pose.

    "Speedy, stop making that ugly face.  Now, here...here's
your cod liver oil.  Come on, stop makin' that face and swallow
this."

    I looked her straight in the eye, with the same face.

    "Speedy, that is the ugliest thing I ever saw.  Stop, so we can
get this over with."

    I let my face relax, sighed heavily, and opened my mouth. The
orange juice didn't do much to hide the bitter, fishy taste that
clung to the inside of my mouth.  "Yah!"

    "That's a good boy, that's two outta three.  Now let's get this
off the bed so you can lie down and I can fix those ears." She
placed the dish towel of goods on the side table and sat up on her
knees on the bed, holding the bottle of ear drops.  "Lie down on
your side.  C'mon, you've had earaches before, you know what to do.
At least your ears can't taste this."

    "They can too," I insisted.

    "Lie down the other way first, hon, facing away from me. That's
right.  Now, here..."  She bent over me and placed the tip of the
filled eyedropper into the opening of my ear.  The sudden contact of
the cold glass tip made me jerk and quiver involuntarily.

    "Oh!"  She jumped and pulled her hand away.  "Oh, Speedy, did I
hurt your ear?"

    I shook my head no.  "It itches!"

    "Oh my god, don't do that!  You almost gave me a heart attack.
I thought I hurt you!"

    I coiled up into a ball and feigned a low, pitiful groan, then
another.

    "Oh, behave.  You're not funny.  Be still."

    I relaxed on my side and then cringed as the cold thin fluid
filled my ear with a small roaring noise.  "It itches.  Eeew, it's
so itchy."

    "It'll settle in and be okay," she said, stuffing a piece of
wadded cotton in my ear.  "Now turn over so I can do the other one
...Turn over."

    I lay still.

    "Speedy, turn over so I can do the other one."

    I sat up and pretended I was in a breathless daze.  "What?
Did you say somethin'?  I can't hear.  Where am I?"

    Holding the ear medicine in one hand and the eyedropper in the
other, she started to laugh, resisted it, and closed her eyes
patiently.  "Speedy, please...you'll make me laugh and spill this
stuff all over the bed.  Now...please...stop."

    I groaned, "Okay," and laboriously rose to turn over on my
other side.  Already weak, I feigned an even greater weakness,
moving slowly and spasmodically, writhing at every turn as if in
pain.  "Oh...Uh...Mr. Holmes...uh..call Dr. Watson right away...
it's the deadly, poisoned ear drops...cgh, cgh."

    "Speedy, if you make me spill this..."  She started to laugh
again, and held it back with clenched teeth.  "Stop, or I'm gonna
spank your butt 'till it falls off on the floor."

    On my side facing her, I lay still.

    On her knees, she shuffled closer to me.  "Honestly, I never
in my life saw anybody go through such agony...Now here, this is
the last one."

    Once more, the cool fluid rushed into me and greasily leaked
over my eardrum.  I shivered again with the same itch in my ear as
before, and Martha Jane sealed my ear with cotton. Then she sat back
and sighed, drooping.

    "I am exhausted from this!  You're worse than a room full of
sick puppies."

    I smiled seraphically.

    "Don't you smile at me like that, you little devil."  She
leaned closer to me and half-whispered, scowling.  "Hon, you have
to get well.  We can't fuck while you're sick like this, you're
too weak.  So there."

    She rose from the bed and brought the bottles and table-cloth
into the kitchen.  While I heard her running water and cleaning I
made myself comfortable in the bed, lay on my side, and pulled the
covers up to my neck.  I shivered as the 'flu coarsed through me,
but soon the blanket warmed me and I relaxed.

    Martha Jane turned off the lights, except for one small lamp in
the living room.  Then she came into the bedroom and turned out the
ceiling lamp using the switch on the wall by the door, and reached
under the bedside lamp to turn off the last light in the room.  We
were dimly lit by the glow from the small living room lamp.

    Martha Jane hiked up the legs of her jeans to make herself more
comfortable in bed, and quietly lay down beside me.  She put her
palm on my head briefly.  "You still have a little fever," she
whispered.  She fiddled with the blankets and straightened my
pillow.  She felt me tremble.  "You still have chills, hon?"

    Lying on my side, I nodded slowly.

    "Well, don't you worry, they'll go away soon."  She stretched
and pulled blankets about, soothing out the twists and tangles
that were made while we struggled earlier with the medications.
"You just stay nice and warm and...take your medicine the way
you're supposed to, and...before you know it...you'll be well and
gettin' right back into trouble, good as new."  She rested on her
elbow beside me. "You ready to go to sleep?"

    I nodded.  At that moment another chill went through me.  I
clasped my arms closer to fight it off.

    "Want me to keep you warm?" she asked.

    I nodded.

    She moved closer to me and put one arm around my head to
slightly lift and cradle me onto her bosom.  "There we are," she
said, and as soon as I was settled against her she unbuttoned her
shirt and pulled it open loosely.  Then she pulled her bra up,
baring her breasts, and wiggled down so that her left nipple
grazed my cheek.  I reached up and kissed the brownish pink bud.
"There...," she whispered.  "Sleep, hon."

    The shivers made a brief pass through me as I fell asleep
against her softness.

    ...A week or so later I was standing in Martha Jane's kitchen
as her mother, a thin lady who looked much older than my own and
who resembled her darker brunette daughter more than her fair,
auburn-haired Martha Jane, carefully handed me a large tablespoon
filled with dark green syrup.  Her mother always spoke slowly and
with a slight rasp, having never completely overcome the lung
problems that she developed from the long and severe illness fol-
lowing her husband's death in the war.

    "There," she told me, "now go in the bedroom and give that to
Martha Jane.  And be certain she takes every drop of it."

    "Yes, ma'am," I said.  Holding the filled tablespoon face-high
before me, I walked carefully through their living room and into
Martha Jane's bedroom.  She sat up in bed, a pink wool blanket up
to her waist, the place littered with used kleenex and her school-
books.  Her eyes and nose were swollen and red.  In one hand she
held a thoroughly used tissue.

    I grinned maniacally at the door and chanted, "Yumyum."

    She winced.  "Don't yumyum me, you--Is it already time for
that awful stuff again?"

    "Yumyum."

    She called into the kitchen, "Mother, I thought I already took
this stuff!"

    "It's three times a day, Martha Jane," her mother called back.

    "Oh my," she moaned.  I had climbed onto the bed and, on my
knees, moved cloer to her with one hand holding the spoon and the
other cupped guardedly beneath it.

    "You were right," she said, sniffing.  "That stuff really does
taste awful.  And you can taste it for a week!"

    "Yumyum," I said, moving the spoon closer.

    "Oh," she whimpered, wincing again.  "Do I have to?"

    I nodded.  "It hurts me more than it hurts you."

    "Right," she muttered, eyeing the spoon with mild terror.
"Oh...all right."  She opened her mouth and I dipped the spoon
inside.  Mugging and wincing, she took it all, swallowed, and
slithered her tongue around thickly.  "Oh, that is so disgusting!
This is supposed to be the atomic age.  Can't modern science do
better than this?"

    Her mother came into the room and retrieved the spoon.  She
stood beside the bed shaking her head.

    "Look at this," her mother said, indicating Martha Jane's
books and papers all over the bed.  "Look, she won't even stop
when she's sick as a dog.  I don't know what to do with her,
Speedy.  She was awake half the night studying, and if she wasn't
studying she was coughing *and* studying."

    "I have to graduate," she muttered petulantly.  "On time!"

    "But, Martha Jane, you can't learn very well if you don't
sleep.  You need rest, dear."

    "Yes, mother, I know.  I know, and you're right."  She sighed
and played nervously with the kleenex, which she brought back to
her nose, and blew into it.  "I hate people staring at me when I'm
sick.  I'm so ugly."

    "Alright, I'll go back in the kitchen.  Speedy, you visit a
while and try to talk some sense into her."

    Her mother left and I started to settle on the edge of the bed,
but Martha Jane said, "Don't get too close," holding up a hand.  She
sneezed suddenly, and held out her palm, indicating the box of klee-
ex near my knees.  I gave it to her and she plucked a new tissue.
"I hate this."

    "I'm sorry," I said, and sat on the bed anyway.  I leaned
forward to kiss her.

    "No," she whispered.  "You'll get this same cold again."  She
held the kleenex to her nose and sniffled.  "Well, alright, a little
one.  Right here--" she indicated her forehead.  As she held the
kleenex over her nose I leaned forward and gave her a noisy kiss.
"Thank you, Speedy.  I'm sorry, hon, you're really sweet.  Don't pay
any attention to me.  I'm sick!"

    "Is this gonna keep you from school?" I asked.

    "No, no, it'll just slow me down.  I'll have to work like the
devil to keep up.  I already worked myself to death, getting in
school a year ahead of my age to begin with.  I hope it doesn't hurt
my grades."  She settled against the pillow behind her and gazed out
the window.  "I have to make those grades.  I have to get out of
here.  I have to get out of the "Lauderdale Courts U.S. Government
Housing Project"."

    Though I wanted her to get well, the thought that she might soon
leave the project was disturbing.  Fortunately for her, the Christ-
mas break would soon be underway and she would not miss many of her
classes.  And I knew she still had the winter and spring to go be-
fore graduating.  But by this time it was something she mentioned
with more frequency than I found comfortable.

    Falteringly I tried to think of the questions that would give me
more information about what might happen in the near future.  "Would
you move out as soon as you graduate high school?" I asked.

    "Oh no, hon, I still have college to go.  You can't get a decent
job with just high school, at least a girl can't.  Not in good ole
Memphis, Tennessee.  My poor sister got her diploma and she hardly
earns peanuts.  She was hoping she'd make more, and she wanted to
rent a place for all of us.  But she can barely support herself, and
she gives mother money to keep us goin'." She sighed again longingly
and shook her head.  "Why can't she marry some filthy rich man who
shows up here in that driveway with sacks of money...?  Oh, well,
Evelyn wouldn't do that.  She wouldn't marry just for money."

    "Would you?" I asked, half smiling, half not.

    "No," she said directly and firmly.  She blew her nose.
"But I wouldn't complain if some was included."

    I had no idea what to do about her completing high school, going
to college, and leaving.  But I knew she was unhappy where she was.
Heedless of the fact that the forces of time and economic necessity
and all the rest of it were far beyond my control, I was determined
during the following weeks to please her so well that she might have
second thoughts about never seeing me again.  Within a few days she
recovered from her cold and used the Christmas break to work
feverishly on catching up with her studies.  Trying to make myself
indispensable, I checked with her daily during the holidays to see
if she needed anything.  If she needed note paper I volunteered and
ran to the drug store to get it.  I trailed along with her to the
library and looked up several of her books.

    The weekend after Christmas, Mom had a date and Martha Jane sat
with me, but I spent the entire night waiting on her, fixing dinner
and washing the dishes, bathing and cleaning up while she studied.
I even prepared the bed myself so that by nine o'clock she came into
the bedroom to check on me and found everything in place.

    "Well!" she said, sliding into bed and hovering over me with
a warm smile.  "You didn't even need me here tonight, did you?
You did everything all by yourself."

    "You were busy," I said.

    "Yes, I was.  And so were you.   And I'm glad you let me study,
hon, I needed it.  And don't think I didn't notice.  Now, is there
anything I can do for you?"

    I didn't answer.  But I could see a sultry look in her eyes.
More than likely, in the pause that followed while we searched
each other's eyes, she saw something similar in my own.

    She whispered softly, "I'm all sweaty.  I have to clean up
a little.  You wait right here and don't go anywhere."

    She rose, went into the bathroom, and closed the door.  I
heard the bath water running for about five minutes, and later
she opened the door, turned out the bathroom light, and came into
the room wearing her wrinkly old bathrobe that she had worn for
years.  The apartment was, like all the others, not very warm in
winter.  Her robe didn't fit that well any more, seeming a little
short, more like a short sarong than an ankle-length garment.  And
it was too tight around the shoulders, so that even when she held
it closed in front the lapels ventured outward, revealing the soft
glimmering swell of her breasts.

    She had just started to slide into bed when I got up and
scooted down, off the foot of the bed and onto the floor.  "Wait
a moment, madam," I said, rather elegantly and formally.  "The,
uh, services of this establishment go beyond cooking dinner and
making beds."

    "Oh, really?" she asked innocently, batting her eyelashes.

    "It includes turning out the lights," I said, walking around
the bed and shutting off the bedside lamp.  In the dark I con-
tinued, "And many other services to insure that you rest peace-
fully during your stay with us."  I removed my underwear.

    She asked primly, "And do the services include the manager
of the establishment making himself nekkid?"

    I answered, "Yes, madam.  They also include the management
making the guest nekkid, too."

    "Oh my," she whispered.  "I'm shocked.  And pleased."

    I reached for her hand with mine, and pulled slightly so
that she rose from the bed and stood before me.  I noted that we
were just about the same height now.  She was only slightly
taller.  In a single motion, but gently, I pulled off her robe
and dropped it to the floor.  It was, I think, the first time I
had undressed her myself.  I whispered, "All madam has to do now
is lie down."

    "And then what happens?" she whispered back.

    "Management...manages."

    "I can't wait."

    She moved into the bed, going near the other side to give me
room, and I followed.  I stayed on my knees, watching for a
moment as she lay flat on her back, stretching to get comfortable.
Her hands were behind her head, her slim body stretched out in
the moonlight.  She spread her thighs slightly, just enough to
show me in the dark that she had begun to moisten and open.  I
hovered over her, surprised at how, more and more, I should be so
deeply affected by the sight of her.  Then I settled on my elbows
close to her.

    She started to put one arm around me, but I whispered, "No.
Don't move."

    She lay silently and waited.  I began to softly, slowly, and
wetly kiss her, starting with her nose, her face, her neck.  "You
don't have to do anything," I whispered.  It took me about fif-
teen minutes to move my lips from her neck to her toes, and up
her thighs again.  By then she was trembling and sighing.  When-
ever she tried to help, I would tell her to lie still.  One time
she asked me, "Don't you want me to do anything for you?"  I ans-
wered simply, "You are."  From that point on she gave herself to
my mouth and hands.

    Finally I lay betwen her thighs, my mouth nipping at the
sensitive skin along the tendons and muscles there.  She gave a
series of small gasps as she felt my lips licking toward her cunt.
Watching her from below, I shortened each lick as I moved upward,
closer.  I have no idea how these techniques ever got into my young
head.  I simply learned from her responses.  I could see the tension
in her tightened fists as I neared her center.  I knew that when she
held her breath she would be completely ready for the touch of my
mouth directly on her.  Soon this happened.  She lay tense and
unbreathing, her thighs and tummy stiffened expectantly.  I removed
my lips from her completely for only a second or two, then lowered
my tongue to nestle directly and lightly on her clit.  She exhaled
and whimpered, and her hips swiveled once.  I removed my lips again
for another brief pause, then curled my mouth into her slit, took
her clit in my lips, and gently sucked.  Surprising even me, she
whimpered helplessly, and started cumming immediately.  This was
sooner than I had planned, but I was not one to interrupt.  Still
sucking, I arched my tongue rhythmically and slowly along her nub.
She stiffened, and her hips rose slightly off the bed.  Her head
rolled languidly to one side.  She uttered a strange sound that I
can describe only as the sound of a beautiful young woman cumming
deep and hard, and I could feel her tummy and taut thighs quiver
around me through most of it.  Soon her hips fell back to the bed
and she let out a long, breathy "Oh!  God!".  I continued my gentle
suck, waiting for the subtle sensations that told me her hot clit
had stopped swelling, and soon her thighs jerked once and I knew
she was returning to earth.

    I unmouthed her as she regained her breath and I licked her cunt
petals lightly, smelling the cum and the remains of the bathroom
soap on her, nipping at her thighs again, and rose to lie fully on
top of her.  For a moment I kissed her neck and her nipples.  Then,
rising on my elbows, I aimed my cock by sight and slowly and fully
entered her.

    "Oh hon," she gushed, though she still could hardly breathe.
"God, that feels so good!"  I didn't move.  I could feel her clasp
me inside, once for several seconds, then two or three contractions
around my shaft that waned in strength.

    I rose on my elbows.  Slowly, the new young animal in me rising
gradually and fully until I found myself unexpectedly breathing
through clenched teeth, I looked down at where we were so delicious-
ly joined, and wordlessly and with a deliberate and unchanging
rhythm, I fucked her until she came again.  I said nothing until she
gave a final quake and went entirely rigid, and as she lay suspended
and frozen in pleasure I moved my lips near her face and breathed
"Cum...cum..." again and again, waivering only when I felt that odd
tickle in my cock sliding inside her, and the soft writhing of
fledgling tubes in my lower gut that I could not resist told me with
a startling jolt of pleasure that a drop of me was oozing into her.

    By the time she relaxed we were both overcome.  Neither of us
could move.  Eyes closed, she lay stroking the back of my neck.
Finally she whispered.  "You are such a wonderful fuck."  To which I
could only mutter into her bosom, "I had help."

    With her cheek resting on my head I felt her face form a wide
smile.  Without seeing her, I could envision her teeth gleeming in
the dark.

    "Flatterer," she purred, sounding sinfully pleased.



                             PART 4B:


    Two technicalities that didn't particularly plague me at that
time were: whatever happened to Martha Jane's virginity?  And what
did she use for birth control?

    I assumed that my early sexual equipment had not yet developed to
the size required for breaking hymens.  This seemed reasonable, though
I was not that small in those days and from what I had seen and heard
from other boys my age, I was above average in that department.  At
the swimming pool in the project and at Malone Pool, a municipal public
swimming pool nearby, plenty of kids showed up who didn't hesitate to
drop drawers in public and hop into their swim trunks.  From all I
saw, I was a definite contender.  From Martha Jane's testimony, of
course, I was the best in the business.

    Birth control was a different matter.  I did my own research, at
considerable consternation to the librarian who fetched dozens of
medical references out of the library stacks.  The best information
I could gather and decipher led me to conclude that it was medically
possible for me to do some damage--though I doubted I'd find a
urologist who would dare confirm it.

    In addition to official references I garnered more information
from every young boy's ultimate source: the first-hand tales of that
worldliest of peers, the local 12-year-old womanizer.  I don't
remember this kid's name, but he frequented the big grassy lawn that
stretched before my building.  It was a ritual about once a month for
this nice-looking, hefty redheaded kid to pontificate on the handling
and seduction of young girls before a group of enthralled listeners
age 4 to 14 or so.  At about that time I decided to hang around for
some of these sessions, during which I heard the usual rumors about
virginity often passing without pain or bloodletting, or via other
means (sports, et al).  He had his own lurid stories to relate, and
often did so with amazing clinical detail which, through my experi-
ence with Martha Jane, convinced me that at least some of his reports
seemed authentic.

    I decided Martha Jane's hymen had probably been taken by me--
exactly when, I couldn't say--and that its inconvenience had been
masked by ardour and passion.

    My scouring about the world was not limited to what I could find
in a boring book.  I did consort with peers now and then, especially
on the school playground at lunch and recess.  I developed no close
or frequent friends that I recall.  The one buddy I did take up with
was Stepper.

    I spent about a year kicking around with him.  He was a black
boy my own age.  We didn't see each other regularly because he lived
on the other side of the downtown area, near my Aunt Frances' home.

    I met Stepper on one of my expeditions into the downtown business
district.  Having been packed off to my godmother's place for a week-
end, I had spent the morning sitting around their restaurant near
busy Union Station.  The usual procedure when I spent weekends with
my godparents or my father's parents was to spent evenings in their
home; but since they had no sitter for me and everyone in the family
manned the business during the day, they would drag me downtown with
them when they opened the Tremont Cafe in the morning.  I spent half
my time gobbling down ice cream and Cokes and whatever was on the
menu, and the other half exploring the nearby railroad yards, playing
Army games near the grounds of the mammoth post office building next
door, or poring over comic books and sipping milk shakes.  I had
exhausted my supply of comics that day and sat around looking bored,
so my godmother (who was also my great-Aunt Frances) handed me two
bucks for more comics.

     Searching the newsstands nearby in Union Station and Central
Station uncovered nothing new.  So in my usual (i.e., unpredictable)
way I wandered into the thick of downtown Memphis until I discovered
a new and gigantic supply of comics in a hotel near Beale Street.  In
1949 two dollars would buy a sackful of comics, and a sackful is what
I held under my arm as I started back toward Aunt Frances' place.

    Just beyond the corner of Beale and Main I heard a jazz band.
Following the sound, I found a small crowd listening to the three-
piece band on a block on Beale Street.  This was an event in Memphis,
there being ordinances against such things.  All three players in the
band were blacks, with a drummer and a bass player, and a trumpeter in
a straw hat with a bright yellow feather.  The fourth member was
Stepper, a gangly black kid in loose clothing who was shuffling and
tap dancing.  The kid's style caught my eye.  He seemed very smooth
and adept; I had seen enough Fred Astaire flicks at the Suzore's to
recognize fancy footwork.

    After he performed a couple of numbers he took a big bow from
the crowd and leaned against the wall of the building for a break
while the band started a number without him.  That's when I walked
over to him and, too shy to know how to start a conversation with a
person who seemed so accomplished, I shuffled around without a word
until he happened to notice the corner of a comic book cover that had
crept up over the edge of the paper bag I held.

    "Say," he said, pointing to the bag, "you got Plastic Man in
there!"

    "Yeah.  You know about Plastic Man?"

    "Do I?  My favorite.  Got them funny glasses, and goes stretchin'
his neck all the way around buildin's an' everything.  Yeah, it's
funny, it's really weird artwork, the way they draw that guy."

    We established an immediate rapport.  I found it odd that a kid
who performed with such alacrity and precision could have such a
sleepy, lazy manner of speaking.  There was much about Stepper that
I found intriguing: he had a flair for dance and a sense for music
that has never been matched by any kid I knew before or since.  He
had practical and apparently hard-earned "street smarts" that I
envied.  At the same time there was something about him that was
even more childlike than his 8 or 9 years.  I kept seeing him as a
youngish Pied Piper.

    Before I left that day I offered him my copy of Plastic Man.  He
thanked me but said he wouldn't have time to read it on the spot.

    But I held the book out to him and said, "No, keep it.  It's
yours.  I'll get another one."

    The kid beamed a big, surprised smile at me and said thanks.
He asked if I hung around there much, and I said I'd try to get
back on a weekend.  As I was leaving he said, "Hey, you ever
get back here, look for me.  Ask for Stepper.  That's me."

    A few weeks later I again saw Stepper dancing with the street
band.  When I talked with him during his break I was surprised when
he reached into a wrinkled paper sack, pulled out the Plastic Man
comic and handed it to me.  He said he hoped it wasn't too damaged,
he had given it to his smaller brother Junior.  And even his 5-year-
old sister Truluv had read it.

    I asked, "Really? You have a sister named 'True Love'?"

    "Yeah, Truluv," he said, and he spelled it for me.  "That was my 
Aunt Harriet's idea.  She got a lot o' goofy ideas."

    When Stepper was finished for the day he gave me a brief tour of 
Beale Street, which had not changed very much since its heydey at 
the turn of the century.  This street was "downtown" for blacks who 
lived in that area, although many of the businesses had since been 
bought out by whites.

    Stepper told me his real name was Franklin, which he didn't 
like. He insisted on being called by his nickname, Stepper.  He was 
amused when I told him I had the opposite problem and that I hated 
my nickname.  Stepper lived in a small house near Beale Street with 
his mother, an uncle, his sister Truluv and his baby brother Junior, 
and their dog Agnes.  It turned out that his home was in the same 
neigh- borhood as my Aunt Frances and her next-door neighbor, my 
Aunt Josephine Sansone.  Stepper said he was familiar with those 
names. He told me he had an older uncle, Robert, who was a handyman 
and junk collector in the neighborhood.  He cruised the area with 
his mule and wagon and made part of his living making deliveries or 
picking up used tires, refrigerators, sinks, or whatever refuse 
could be sold or rebuilt.  The local shopping area had a small 
supermarket, a liquor store, a cleaners, and a restaurant and beer 
hall on the corner of Linden Street.  My relatives owned that 
property and ran the businesses.  The area was a decaying part of 
Memphis built in the 1890's.  The old two-story houses that were 
still standing were populated by whites, many of them either closely 
or distantly related to me.  The other side of the area was literal- 
ly a shantytown populated by poor negro families who lived in houses 
little better than shacks.

    Stepper became my indispensable guide to many of the dangers I 
had somehow avoided downtown.  Standing on a street corner one day 
he pointed out a very large lady shopper who was crossing the 
street, walking in our direction.

    "Lookit that lady," he murmured, pointing to her.  "See, she got 
two shoppin' bags she's holdin' in one arm, and that other bag she 
got down at her left side.  Lookit dem two bags she's holdin' in her 
right arm.  See dat?  It wouldn't take nothin' to bump up aside her 
a little bit, and dem bags come tumblin' down all over the side- 
walk.  You could grab three or four, maybe five things outta that 
bag and run like the devil, she'd wouldn't know it 'till too late to 
catch you."

    He showed me how several shoppers left themselves vulnerable
and how he could make a getaway unscathed.

    I asked him how he knew these tricks.

    "My brother, he's 19 years old and he has this friend, name
is Joel.  Joel brung me down here one time and showed me all them
tricks.  Said he wanted me to do it with him.  But I wouldn't do
it."

    "Have you ever done anything like that?"

    "Nope.  Not me.  And I'm glad I didn't.  'Cause Joel, he's in 
jail for it right now.  And I'm not.  But I hope I never get to the 
point where I have to steal like that."

    "Why would you have to steal?"

    "'Cause you get hungry.  You don't have no home.  Then you
got to.  Ain't no other way."

    Stepper guided me to many of the secret places in unlikely parts 
of the city.  Like me, he was inveterately curious.  We saw each 
other every few weeks or so and explored areas that had not been 
touched or seen by anyone in years.  We crept through the dank, 
silent warehouses of the old cotton shipping district, unused at 
that time for dozens of years, and found remnants of an entire 
railroad network that connected the shipping docks.  We followed the 
railroad itself through an old part of town, onto the bluffs along 
the waterfront, across the Mississippi RIver on the old Harriman 
bridge and into Arkansas on other shore.  Traversing the old rail- 
road bridge was scary: there was no walkway and only a thin metal 
cable for a handrail, and therefore there was no escape from oncom- 
ing trains, short of diving into the river.  The heavily rusted 
tracks told us that the bridge had been unused for years. Still, we 
played it safe and walked back to town over the DeSoto Bridge, which 
had a pedestrian walkway.

    It took over an hour to return to Memphis.  Along the way, 
Stepper entertained me by forming his fingers tightly around his 
lips and showing me how to "trumpet" a blues number with his hands.

    When it came to adventuring with people, however, we didn't
fare so well.

    One hot, sticky June day I brought Stepper into my back yard and 
told him to wait while I went inside to get us some lemonade.  Mom 
was making a pitcher of it when she noticed Stepper waiting out 
there near the edge of the access driveway.

    "That little boy out there..is he with you, Speedy?"

    "Yeah, that's Stepper.  Can he have some, too?"

    "Well," she began, looking at him irritably.  She turned and
pulled two tall glasses down from the pantry on the wall, and
started clunking ice cubes into them.  "All right, but listen to
me..."  She bent down close to my face and in a stern whisper, so
Stepper wouldn't hear, she warned me, "...I'll give him some this
time, because I don't think I ever mentioned this to you before.
But don't you bring any black boys around again.  Hear?"

    Confused, I looked out through the rear screen door at
Stepper, who stood unknowing with his back to us and looked about
at the goings on around him.  I turned back to Mom and asked,
"Why not?"

    "Because we don't socialize with them."

    "But why not?"

    "Because he's--" she lowered her whisper to a barely audible
level--"black."

    "But why don't we--?"

    "Because we just don't.  Now you mind yourself, Speedy, and
don't ask me why not, just don't do it anymore."

    She gave me two glasses of lemonade and went about cleaning
up, doing little to hide her displeasure.

    Perplexed at the harshness of such rules and her unflinching
insistence, I walked outside and handed Stepper the lemonade.  He
took a quick drink and yelled toward my mother in the kitchen,
"Thank you, ma'am.  This is real good.  You make it really good!"

    My mother brought her face to the screen door and smiled with
stiff politeness.  "I'm glad you like it."  Then she went back to
work.

    Stepper drank the lemonade in one long, noisy series of gulps
and wiped his lips.  Without changing his casual manner he said
quietly to me, "Hurry up and finish yours, and let's go."

    "Where we goin'?" I asked.

    "You in trouble about this, I can tell.  Ain't you?"

    I shrugged and sipped my lemonade.

    "You in trouble, huh?" he asked again.

    I drank deeply and paused.  "What makes you think so?"

    "I can tell," he said.

    Conspiratorially, we both behaved offhandedly as I finished my
lemonade and returned the glasses to the kitchen.  "Thanks, ma," I
said nonchalantly as I walked out.

    "You be back here at six," she warned.

    "Yes, ma'am."

    Stepper and I decided that from then on we would meet in a part
of the project where my mother wouldn't see us--which would be any-
where except in my tiny back yard.

    Shortly thereafter I was similarly approached by my Aunt Frances.
One Sunday morning as she was cleaning up the breakfast dishes be-
fore leaving to work at the restaurant, she called me inside.  I had
been playing in the her back yard with Stepper and his little sister
Truluv, throwing a ball for their dog Agnes to fetch.

    Aunt Frances stood in her kitchen with her hands on her very
wide hips, her big face frowning.  "You don't let any of them kids
come in this house when we leave you alone here, do you?"

    "No, ma'am," I said--lying, of course, since Stepper and I had
already explored the unlived-in, unfurnished second floor of their
big old Victorian house.

    "Hm-hm," she muttered to herself, displaying her usual distrust.
"You watch out who you play with around here.  Those kids belong in
niggertown, over there on Linden Street.  They don't have no
business around here."

    "Yes, ma'am, " I said dutifully.

    Naturally, I disobeyed.  On weekends when I stayed with Aunt
Frances and they were home, I met Stepper behind their house.  Their
back yard had a wooden one-car garage, and a vine-covered wire fence
that ran along the gravel alleyway separating shantytown from the
homes on Aunt Frances' block.  Right behind the garage was our
favorite spot.

    I was waiting there one day eating a cookie out of a big batch
Aunt Frances was making for the restaurant.  Stepper came around the
corner of the alley before I finished.

    "That looks good, " he said.  "What kinda cookie?"

    "Oatmeal," I said.  "Wait.  I'll get you one."

    "That's okay, I don't want one that bad.  Don't get in no
trouble."

    "I won't," I said.  "Just wait."  I went through the yard and
paused at the rear door, quickly swallowing the last cookie bite,
and walked into the kitchen.  Aunt Frances stood in a white chef's
apron at the big center table, rolling out cookie dough.  I asked for
another cookie.

    "I just gave you one.  You ate that already?"

    "Yes, ma'am."

    "Well...all right, but this is the last one.  Don't you spoil
your lunch."

    "Thank you," I said obediently, and once outside I dashed behind
the garage.  Stepper's little sister TruLuv stood shyly beside him.
I gave the cookie to Stepper and said, "Now she doesn't have one."

    "She can have some o' mine," Stepper said.

    "No," I said.  "Wait here."  I dashed again to the back door,
paused to settle down, and strolled casually into the kitchen.

    "Can I have another one?"

    My Aunt Frances looked down at me in disbelief.  "What?  I just
gave you another one!"

    "I ate it."

    "You ate that big cookie already?  Don't you chew?"

    My Uncle Johnny sat in the living room reading the paper.  He
called out in his soft, wheezy voice.  "What's the matter, Francis?"

    Aunt Frances called back in her shrill voice,  "Your nephew eats
cookies faster than I can make 'em."

    "Well, give 'im another one."

    "He's had two already."

    "He's a kid, they eat all day.  Won't hurt anything."

    Aunt Frances gave me another cookie, with a strong warning: "Now
this is the last one.  Don't eat so many cookies, they're not good
for you when you eat so many."

    "Yes, ma'am.  Thank you."

    I ran outside.  Behind the garage, Stepper and Truluv had been
joined by their baby brother Junior and Agnes the dog.

    I handed Truluv the cookie.  "Wait," I said.

    Back to the kitchen door.  I paused a longer time, hoping it
was enough to cover the consumption of another cookie.  Then I
went into the kitchen.

    Aunt Frances balked and scowled.  "Don't tell me you want
another one!"

    "Yeah."

    "How do you eat so fast?"

    My Uncle Johnny called, "What's the matter now, Frances?"

    "Your nephew already ate that other cookie!"

    Uncle Johnny gave his usual laugh, an ironic, tired little
wheeze.  "Hell, I'm not surprised.  What's he want now?"

    "What do you think he wants?  He wants another one."

    "Give him one, Frances, what the hell..."

    "Here!" Aunt Frances said, posing another big cookie in my face.
"Now, that's the last one!"

    "Yes, ma'am.  Thank you."

    I ran back to the garage and behind it, and gave Junior his
cookie.

    "What about you?" Stepper said, munching.  "Now you ain't got
one."

    "Aw," I said, "I get cookies outta her all the time."

    Stepper grinned, his teeth covered with crumbs.  "You some-
thin' else, boy."

    This resulted in my being introduced to Stepper's Uncle Robert,
the junk man, a tall, portly, silver-haired elder who reminded me
of cheerful Uncle Remus, whose Walt Disney movie I'd recently seen.
Along with Stepper and Truluv, we went riding on Uncle Robert's
junk wagon up and down Linden and Lauderdale Streets all that week-
end.  I spent one Sunday at Robert's own shanty, where he made a
batch of the warmest, crunchiest, greasiest, tastiest Southern
fried chicken I ever ate.  He called me "Mister Speedy, suh" and
showed me how he collected the junk and cleaned it up.

    It was a few weeks following the February cookie incident that
I was on Robert's mule-powered junkwagon with Stepper and Truluv
and Agnes.  We sang and joked our way merrily down Lauderdale in
front of my Aunt Frances' home when we passed my beautiful cousin
Josephine Louise, who was walking toward her mother's home next door
to my Aunt Frances.

    We kids waved and screamed hello.  Josephine Louise at first
didn't hear, but when she did she turned to us and her face lit up.
Josephine Louise was a creature of magical beauty.  Her wide red
sensuous mouth and huge doe-like eyes were almost as hypnotic to me
as Martha Jane's basic, tender charm.  She smiled and waved.

    "Hi, Speedy.  Y'all havin' a good time?"

    "Yep," I yelled back, proud of myself as a veteran rider of
wagons and expert on the back end of mules.

    "Stay outta trouble now," she called, and winked her sexy wink.

    As the wagon clattered by with its tin cans rattling and its
mule clopping along, I watched Josephine Louise's sultry slinkiness
turn and walk up the front path to her home.  If ever I had been
crudely horny as a very young boy, Josephine Louise was the cause
of it.

    It was on that day that the proverbial excrement first hit the
proverbial fan concerning Stepper...

   The following day, a Sunday, I snuck around the garage behind
Aunt Frances' house and met Stepper in the alley.  We began walking
through the shantytown toward his house when we were met by his
Uncle Robert.  We both expected his usual, toothy grin and good
cheer.  Instead, he had a long and serious face.

   "Stepper, you come hyah," he called somberly from a few yards
away.  He stopped to wait for Stepper to go to him.  Both of us
could tell by his cheerless tone that something unpleasant was
brewing.

   Stepper looked back at me as he went to his uncle.  "Wait here,
Speedy, Uncle Robert's got somethin' to tell me.  I'll be back."

   But as soon as Stepper joined his uncle, Robert took the boy's 
hand and held him still.  He straightened up and looked down at 
Stepper sternly.  "Stepper, child, I got somethin' ta tell ya.  This 
is serious, now.  You got to pay attention and you got to mind what 
I say."

   "What is it, Uncle Robert?"



                             PART 4C:


    Robert paused, and began again with a strained voice and face.
"You chillun cain't be playin' around here together no mo'.  I done
got the word on it from yo' brother Steve, and from Miz Sansone
across the street.  She call me on my phone at home, and when Miz
Josephine Sansone calls me at home, I know it's ser'ous.  She seen
us all on the wagon yestiddy, and she say...she don' wonna see no
more of it with you and Mister Speedy."

   "But why?"

   "Now, I told you, child, please mind me."  He looked up and took
a step toward me.  "Mister Speedy, I sho don't like this.  But I
got to do what Miz Sansone say."

   I looked into his sad eyes and said, "Uncle Robert, you don't
have to call me mister.  I'm supposed to call *you* mister."

   "I appreciate that and I know what you mean, but...Miss Josephine,
and yo' Aunt Lucille and Aunt Frances is all in a big uproar, and...
I ain't got no choice in this."

    I asked, "But who told you we were out on the wagon?  Was it
Josephine Louise?"

    "No suh, now, yo' cousin Miss Josephine Louise, she didn't have
nothin' to do with this.  So don't you go blamin' her.  She's the
sweetest lady I know, and she wouldn't do nothin' like that.  Now...
it don't make no difference who said what and who done what.  The
end of it is, yo' Aunt Josephine and Aunt Lucille and Aunt Frances
don't want you and Stepper together 'round hyah.  And they ask me to
tell you they don't think it's safe, you runnin' round in shantytown."

    Stepper broke in excitedly, "Speedy, I'll meet you up by Saint 
Patrick's church from now on, won't nobody--"

    "Now, Stepper!" Uncle Robert said firmly.  "Please, child.  You
heard what I said."  Uncle Robert turned to me.  "I'm really sorry,
Mister Speedy."

    I said, feeling very staunch and grownup, "I know how they are, 
Uncle Robert.  I understand."

    "Well, I know you is a smart boy, and a good boy, and I know
you see what's going on.  I wish it could be dif'ernt, and I ain't
sayin' it's right, but--"

    "I *know* it ain't right!"  I said defiantly.  "It's not fair!"

    "Mister Speedy, please.  We all know what's going on hyah, so
let's don't dwell on that 'cause they ain't nothin' we can do about
it.  Miz Sansone and them is yo' people, yo' family, and you got to
do what they say.  So don't be makin' trouble for yuhself.  I
confess I did see yo' cousin Miss Josephine Louise at the grocery
sto' this morning when she come to work, and she say she knew what
was happenin', too, and she was sorry.  So I know how you and her
feel about dis, but..."  Uncle Robert grabbed Stepper's hand again
and straightened up.  "But I makes my livin' from Miz Sansone and
other folks round hyah, and...well...we got to do what we got to do.
Come on, Stepper.  Let's go see 'bout some lunch."

    Silently I watched them go, torn between pity and affection for 
Stepper and Uncle Robert, and my growing dislike for what seemed to be 
a mounting tide of opposing forces from adults, mean kids, the possi- 
bility of Martha Jane leaving after high school, aunts who hated 
giving cookies, and moms who gave no reason for banishing my friends.  
As Stepper and Robert walked away, Stepper turned and gave me a lost 
look that tugged at my heart.  But out of view of Robert he winked, 
pointing at himself and then at me, and the message I got was that he 
would find a way to come to me.  I nodded.  When they disappeared into 
Stepper's slanted wooden house down the driveway, I turned and trudged 
back toward my aunt's house with dragging feet.  I was in no mood to 
give up an afternoon of Stepper and Uncle Robert for one with grownups 
I increasingly resented and could not fathom.

    This wasn't the end of it with Stepper.  A few weeks later at the 
end of March, he met me in the Lauderdale Courts project.  He'd 
brought with him his pride and joy--a leatherette bag of genuine 
cat's-eyes marbles given him for his birthday by his Aunt Harriett.  I 
knew this to be a prize, as an entire bag of 24 cat's-eyes cost more 
than many poor black families earned in a week.

    We gathered with several other kids in a patch of orange dust
a few yards west of my building, near a thick grove of hedges.
This was safe from my mother's view and within sight of most of the
other kids who lived nearby.  We called this grassless patch of worn
ground the Marble Court.  It was the perfect surface for hand-
shooting marbles.  The common belief was that only sissies played
marbles on smooth surfaces; shooting and rolling in fine dust re-
quired great skill.

    About five boys my age, and Stepper and I, and a number of young
boys and some girls were gathered at the Marble Court as Stepper
amazed everyone with his expertise at marbles.  I was almost tempted
to take bets on the little tyke, as I had seen Leo Gorcey do with
Huntz Hall in a Bowery Boys movie.

    The sun was lowering toward the rooftops near dinner time,
and kids were wrapping up their final marble shots, when four older
boys strolled hurriedly across the lawn toward us.  Looking over my
shoulder, I recognized two of them as a couple of tough kids that
had been in fistfights in the area.

    One of the boys standing near me saw them as well, and he leaned
close to me.  "Hey, Ricci," he said, calling me by my last name,
"here come some of them guys from the big buildings on the hill."

    I murmured back, "Maybe we oughtta stop the game and spread
out.  They're always lookin' for trouble."

    "Naw, they look like they're goin' somewhere in a hurry.  They 
might not stop here.  Make like we don't see 'em."

    The other kids, not noticing the quartet, were on the ground,
anxiously hunched around a boy who was making a critical shot.  As
I tried to appear unaffected, I heard with a chill the footfalls of
the boys walking swiftly through the grass near my back.  With a
sigh of relief I heard them approach and then pass, appearing to be
on their way into the project without noticing us.

    But then one of the four yelled, "Hey, Herschell, look at this!"
He suddenly appeared in front of me, headed deliberately toward the
kids hovering around the game.

    One of the other four yelled, "Hey, JB, what the hell 're you
doin'?"

    "Just a minute," the hefty boy named JB yelled back, "Lemme
see somethin'."

    "Oh, what the hell!" swore one of the toughs.  "You're wastin'
my time, JB.  You're always wastin' my time!"

    JB stepped roughly into the group playing marbles.  The kids
stood and scattered immediately.  Only another boy and Stepper were
left on the ground.

    "Hey, nigger, what you got down there?"

    Stepper remained still, staring up at him warily with wide,
white yes.

    "You got cat's-eyes, nigger?  Hey, Herschell, this nigger's got
some cat's-eyes.  Got a nice set, too."

    "Are you kiddin' me?" Herschell yelled back.  "C'mon, man,
we ain't got time for that.  We're gonna miss tickets for the game
tonight.  Cut the crap and get movin'.  C'mon!"

    JB stood with his hands on his hips, looking down at Stepper
with a mean smile.  "Them your cat's-eyes, boy?  Huh?  They belong
to you?"

    "Yeah," Stepper said politely, starting to get up.  "They's
mine."

    "Well, they ain't yours no more," JB said, and he reached down
and scooped up a handful of cat's-eyes.  Stepper had no choice; JB
was twice his size, and almost twice mine.  All the other kids
began spreading out, away from the Marble Court.

    The other three toughs were still walking on their way.  "C'mon, 
JB," one of them yelled.  "We ain't waitin', man!"

    JB eyed Stepper with a menacing false friendliness, as Stepper
carefully moved away from him.  "Thanks, nigger," JB said, grinning,
spilling the marbles loudly from one hand to the other.

    I was a few yards away from JB.  I calculated that if I broke
into a quick run, I could pretend to have just arived on the scene
and could brush against his hands, knocking the marbles away.  If
the goods were spilled everywhere and his friends were urging him
to leave, he might just forget the whole thing and move off.  I was
desperate that Stepper should not lose those marbles and that the
rest of us would not be intimidated.  Before I knew it I was rushing
across the front of JB's view, headfirst.

    I struck his hands with my right shoulder and arm.  Marbles
flew everywhere.  Quickly I jerked to a stop and said, "Oh,
'scuse me, mister!  I didn't see ya."  I bent down, retrieving
marbles, most of which had fallen in the nearby grass.

    "Hey, Herschell," I heard JB yell over my head as I bent.
"You see what that little shit did to me?"  He gave a rough laugh.
I didn't know what he would do next.  I could not see him from
my bent-over position.  But I knew I was terrified.  I could see
my hands quiver as I fished for one marble at a time.  I had no
idea what would happen next.

    I didn't have to wait long to find out.

    I heard and felt a violent, dull thud on the left side of my
face.  My head snapped to the right, straining my neck, and the rest
of me followed into the dirt.  I don't remember falling, so I must
have gone down instantly.  I hit the ground tummy-first with a
single bounce, my mouth and nostrils filled with sticky, choking
brown powder.  One of the little girls behind me screamed.  To my
left I heard feet pounding from the direction of the other three
toughs.  I was numbed by a growing hum of sickening fear.  Were all
four of them going at me?  What a stupid thing I'd done!

    One of the toughs had run to us and hissed angrily, "JB,
goddammit, get yer butt movin.  You wanna see this game, stop
fuckin' around and let's go!"

    "Okay, man, okay," JB said, swaggering over to me.  "You see what 
this nigger-lover did to me?  Like I wouldn't know what he was up to.  
Hey, boy!  You think I'm stupid or somethin'?"

    I didn't answer.  I didn't think I could speak anyway.  I lay flat 
in the dirt.  Maybe he'd think I was knocked out.

    The second tough walked away.  "SCrew it, man, I'm tired of your 
foolishness.  Hey, Herschell, keep movin', this stupid motherfucker's 
gonna stay here and play.  So long, JB!"

    "I'm comin', man, I'm comin'," I heard JB say absently.  From the 
corner of my left eye I could see his shoes approach me slowly.  Then 
the shoes moved so quickly they were a blur, and I shifted two or 
three feet to the right as a fierce blow crashed into my left side and 
ribs.  This time I got a good face-full of ground and felt my forearms 
scraping roughly into it.  I then realized the left side of my face 
was swelling from the earlier blow, and the rapidly spreading mixture 
of numbness and stinging pain in my left side meant that I had been 
kicked hard.  I lay frozen and nauseous, waiting for more.

    But more didn't come.  JB scoffed, "Nigger lover," and out of
my right eye I saw him walking off.  "Okay, fellas, I'm comin"," JB
yelled.

    My worst fears gone, the ability to move returned to my limbs. I 
saw drops of blood in front of me on the ground, and my nose itched 
maddeningly.  Rapidly, fear was displaced by rage--so much so, I felt 
I might go out of control.  I trembled more from anger than from 
pain.  I rose to my elbows and knees, a throbbing ache spreading 
through my head and face.  I wondered if the bastard had broken my 
nose, or a cheekbone, or a rib.  More blood dripped off the tip of my 
nose into small red blots in the dust.

    Stepper and two other kids were onto me right away.

    "Hey, Ricci! Ricci!" one of them pleaded.  "You okay?"

    I heard someone sniffling and crying just over my head.  I
opened my eyes and saw Stepper's shoes.

    "Speedy," Stepper sobbed.  "Say somethin'.  You alright?"

    "I'm okay," I mumbled, surprised that my mouth could move, but not 
surprised that it hurt my nose and jaw.

    "He's okay!" one of the kids screeched.  "C'mon, let's get 'im
up."

    I let out a powerful, growling scream.  "Don't touch me!  Nobody 
touch me!  Leave me alone!"

    I sensed the others were startled and that they began moving away 
cautiously.  All but Stepper.  He was still crouched near me, his hand 
on my back.

    "Speedy, please tell me you okay," he sobbed.

    I was up on my knees now, and settled back on my haunches.  I 
nodded.  "It's okay, Stepper.  I'm bleedin, I guess, but I'm all here."

    "This my fault, man."

    "To hell with that," I breathed.  "I don't wanna hear that."

    He sobbed, "He got you in the face, man, and kicked you good.
He didn't have to do that."

    "Well," I said angrily,  "he didn't have to, but he sure did, 
didn't he?"  I tried to laugh.  My left side burned.  I leaned forward 
on my hands and let the blood drip from my face.  I hissed, "I'll kill 
the son of a bitch.  I'll kill 'im."

    "No, Speedy, you take it easy.  We gotta find somebody to help 
you.  We gotta find somebody."

    "No.  Stop it," I gruffed in a dull monotone.  I felt something 
wildly irrational sweeping through me, starting in my gut and spread- 
ing into my arms.  It was a rage from my dreams about being beaten, 
trapped, powerless.

    Wobbling, I struggled to stand.  Stepper helped me.  At first
he tried grabbing me round the waist, but I winced and yelled.

    "I'm sorry, Speedy, I forgot."

    "It's okay," I mumbled, sounding drunk and unable to find an
equilibrium.  I finally stood but swayed, my movements muddled.
Stepper was still trying to help me.  I gently pushed him away.

    "No," I groaned roughly.  "Stepper, no.  Move away.  Please.
Gimme room."

    "You okay?"

    "I'm gonna be alright,"  I slurred, not really sure about it.  I 
tried to turn and walk to my right, but stumbled.  In case anyone 
might be thinking of rushing in to steady me I yelled, "Stay away!"

    To my left I saw a very young girl in a light blue dress, so
small she seemed puppet-like, rushing as fast as her little feet
could carry her toward the corner of my building a few hundred
yards away.  The front screen door of the apartment on that end of
the building opened--it was Martha Jane's door--and the girl and
two other kids were animatedly talking to her and pointing toward
me.  Other kids were rushing in from across the lawn, toward the
Marble Court where I stood caked with tan dust, lightly dripping
blood down my green plaid flannel shirt.

    My rage swelled, ignited, exploded.  Not only had someone beat
the hell out of me, but now every kid and mother and everyone else
in sight was going to see me stumbling and bleeding.  My eyes
clouded with dust, I saw Martha Jane go to the little girl, take
her hand, and start running toward me.  Her mother's face appeared
at the screen door and peered out at us anxiously.  I was enraged
at being doubly mortified, at being beaten and being seen beaten.

    It was too late for anyone to squelch the primal force that
overtook me so quickly.  I stumbled toward the grove of hedges and
began tearing away at one of the shrubs, ripping it apart, looking
for a club, a stick, anything with which to strike at anything
else.  I heard myself scream incoherently, a long, throat-scalding
yell.  I grasped at the shrubs, throwing ripped-off leaves and
twigs everywhere.  I encircled one shrub in a superhuman effort to
pull it from the ground.  Of course it was impossible, but I tried
anyway. The hard edges of the branches dug into my arms and torso.
I grunted and again screamed, trying to uproot the plant that was
taller and wider than I was.

    I heard Martha Jane plead behind me,  "Speedy, what are you
doing?  Stop it!  Please stop!"

    And poor Stepper, pleading and begging, "No, miss!  Leave 'im
alone.  Pleeease!  He'll be okay.  I seen 'im do this before!
Please, miss, don't!  He won't even know who you are!"

    "God, what's he doing?"

    "He'll be okay!  Please!"

    After that I was aware of precious little except my own blind 
fury.  I jerked at the shrub until I my arms could no longer grasp it, 
then trampled randomly into the grove of hedges and found an old four 
foot limb on the ground, a dead limb fallen months or years ago from 
the giant black oak nearby.  I picked it up and charged toward the 
tree.  I was dimly aware of faces watching in shock as I raised over 
my shoulder a dead black limb whose height and size nearly equalled 
mine.  Crying, screaming, bleeding, I smacked the old wood against the 
trunk of the oak.  The faces of four toughs loomed before me, and the 
faces of those who lied, cheated, stole, killed, maimed.  I let into 
the tree with savage vehemence and loud whacking sounds.  Each effort 
tore along my injured side. I didn't care.  Again and again I struck.  
With each blow, splinters and chunks of black dead bark flew every- 
where.  Soon one end of the limb was frayed, yellow shards spewing in 
all directions.  When too weak to hold the log I let it drop; then 
after a huge gasp of new air I picked it up again, raised it overhead, 
and hurled it lengthwise at the tree with a furious scream.  The 
broken log bounced back toward me.  Stumbling, I grasped it with sore 
hands and tried to raise the log over my head again.  

    I faltered, drained and feeling barely conscious.  My legs gave
out first, the weight of the log pulling me to my knees.  The
screaming gave way to sobs and heaves.  I was out of breath with
the effort.  I settled backward onto my ankles.

    A soft voice, tremulous, wary, a young woman's voice, was just
behind my shoulder.

    "Speedy?  Can I touch you, hon?  I won't try to hold you down.
I just want to take care of you, hon.  Can you hear me?"

    "Why won't they let me fight?" I sobbed, choking.

    "Can you hear me, hon?"

    The limb lay across my thighs.  I let it go and it rolled away.
I slumped.  I was too tired to move.  I felt like falling asleep.
Martha Jane's hand was on my left shoulder.  When I didn't resist,
her other hand touched my other shoulder.

    A tall long-legged woman in a print house-dress stood near my
left.  I could barely see her.  She stared at me with a horrified
grimace.

    "Is he alright?  Lord, what's wrong with that poor child?"

    "I don't know," Martha Jane said.  "But he's alright now.
Speedy?  Can I touch you, hon?"

    "Oh, lord," the woman above me groaned, her voice thick with
disgust at the sight of my face.

    "Please, Miss Ferguson." Martha Jane said firmly.  "I'll take
care of him.  Don't just stand there staring at him."

    "Well!" the woman said, and turned and walked away.

    Martha Jane sat behind me on the ground and tried gently to steady 
me by my shoulders.  I felt her put her face to my cheek from behind, 
one hand holding my forehead.  "Lie back, hon. Come on, lie back 
against me.  I'm holding you.  Lie back."

    I drooped, emptied, and fell back against her.  She cradled me 
into her bosom, which became dotted with blood.  Holding me with one 
arm around my shoulders as I slumped against her, she stroked my 
forehead with her other hand.  "Let your head fall back, baby.  Let it 
fall back on my shoulder.  That's right.  That's right.  Shh.  Rest 
now."

    Stepper had stopped crying.  He was on the ground in front of me.  
"He done this before," he told Martha Jane.  "Some kids at High Street 
Park, they stole this girl's bicycle and pushed her around some, and 
we showed up a minute later, like, the guy's was just takin' off.  
They got away.  Speedy got so mad, he tore up a garbage can.  He said 
he mad, he wanted to fight back.  So he took it out on this big drum 
can.  He threw it on the ground over and over till the bottom came off 
and it jus' fell apart.  Then he was okay."

    "I see," Martha Jane said.  "Shh.  You doin' better now, hon?"

    I was too bombed out to respond.  Stepper said, "He's alright
now, lady.  He just had to let it all out."

    I fought to stay alert.  I knew the right side of my face had
swollen and was closing my right eye.  Looking down, I saw my
blood on Martha Jane's pale green bodice.  I tried in vain to pick
at it, not knowing what to do.

    "Don't worry about that.  You just rest."

    I looked into her eyes.  They were bright, piercing green,
wide with concern and fear.

    "I want to fight," I whimpered.

    "I know, hon.  Listen to me.  I know.  But you're hurt and you
have to rest."  She called the little girl who had run to summon
her.  "Margaret!  Margaret, go tell my mother, at that front door
over there, tell her to get Speedy's mom.  Go tell her, sweetheart.
That's a good girl."

    I moaned, "I have to sit up."

    "You sure?"

    "Yes."

    She helped me sit up on my knees.

    Stepper knelt in front of me. "Yo' Mama's gonna be comin',
Speedy.  You don't need no more trouble from me.  This is the third
time I got you in trouble."  He put the bag of marbles in my shirt
pocket.  He clasped one of my hands in his two, tightly.  Then
quickly he got up and started running across the lawn.

    "Stepper," I tried to shout, but I could only croak. "Stepper!"

    Martha Jane said, "Let him go, hon."

    "But he'll never come back!  I know he won't!"

    "Speedy...let him go.  You have to let him go."

    My mother and little Margaret came rushing toward us.  Mom was
hysterical, screaming, flailing her arms.  "Oh my boy!  What
happened to my son?  What did they do to my boy?"

    All I could say to myself was, "Oh, no.  Shit."  Now relatives
would be converging from everywhere.  As if getting beat up hadn't
been enough!




                             PART 4D:


    Martha Jane and my mother helped walk me into our apartment,
where they settled me on the sofa and placed a wet rag over my
face.  Mom called our closest relatives, my Grandma Rose Ricci,
to hurry over in their car and get me to nearby St. Joseph's
Hospital.  But Grandma Rose was too distraught to drive and she
called my Aunt Frances, who in turn was so distraught she called
my Aunt Josephine, who in turn was also so distraught she called
her neice, my cousin Josephine Louise, whom they all knew drove
like the wind at all times.

    Within 30 minutes Josephine Louise arrived in Aunt Frances'
black 1947 Dodge, the car packed to the hilt with relatives like
clowns in a circus act.  They rushed into our little apartment
and shook the walls with their hysteria.  Martha Jane, stroking
my forehead and cheek with the cool wet cloth, watched calmly
with me as yet another car drove up and Grandma Rose and the
Ricci's and Gagliano's got out.  Soon the place was so full, no
one could walk.

    "My God," Martha Jane whispered incredulously.  "How many
more of them are there?"

    "No one knows," I said dryly.

    Amid the moaning and wailing and my Aunt Frances swooning
into a chair, her husband, my Uncle Johnny, cooly and sanely
brought the crowd to attention.  "You all remember why we're
here," he said, gesturing toward me with his hat.  "We gonna
take him to the hospital, or we gonna stand around and faint?"

    They all gaped at each other momentarily, then everyone
started issuing different instructions at once.  My mother and
Josephine Louise edged their way through the panic and calmly
lifted me into Josephine Louise's arms.

    "Come on, Speedy," she said, carrying me with one arm around
the back of my neck and the other under my knees.  "While they
work this out, we'll go to St. Joseph's.  Follow me, Betty," she
said to my still distraught mother, and she wiggled her way
through the crowd, through the kitchen, and out to her car.  My
mom and Martha Jane followed, with Uncle Johnny almost casually
in the rear, hat in hand.  The last I heard from the others, they
were still screaming at each other in my living room.

    At St. Joseph's I was cleaned, poked, wrapped, injected,
xray'd, gowned and wheeled up to a bed with a window overlooking
the project a few blocks away.  A doctor who looked and sounded
like Joel McCrea with a Southern accent told everyone I was a
sturdy kid and no great damage was done--although I would have
to keep my arm in a sling for a day or two to keep from stretching
torn muscles around my left rib cage, and I'd have a fat cheek
for a while, and I'd have to wear a thick pad on my side for a
few weeks to restrain movement there, and I was warned to not
strain myself by attacking any more trees.

    I was in St. Joseph's for two days, strapped tightly in a
corset to keep my torso immobile, and continually monitored by
a nonstop parade of Italian aunts, uncles, godparents, great-
aunts and uncles, great-grandmother Nifa and her two morbid
sisters, cousins, near cousins, and a number of people I never
saw before who claimed they were related.  Nurses groaned and
complained, shuffling people in and out of the waiting room
and forced to keep count of how many people were in my room at
one time.  I was kissed on the cheek by innumerable elderly aunts,
most of whom appeared grieved as if I were dead and laid out
in my coffin instead of propped up in bed.

    I was obliged to "be nice" and appreciative and, as Josephine
Louise whispered to me with her luscious, red, magnificently
sexy mouth close to my ear at one point, "Look as if you're in
mortal pain, Speedy.  These old Victorians just thrive on
melodrama."

    Martha Jane visited me each day, but we were hardly able to
have a few words between ourselves.  On the second day she had
enough time alone with me.  While the others were out getting
coffee, we had a brief chat.

    "I'll bet you just love all this attention," she said.

    "Martha Jane, you know I feel so creepy around them.  I get
the same questions: Hi, Speedy, how are you?  How old are you
now, Speedy?  How are you doing in school?  What do you want to
be when you grow up?  Did it hurt bad?  Was your--?"

    She interrupted, touching my hand.  "Now, hon.  You should be 
grateful all these people care so much for you. Your Grandma Rose  
has been so nice, they could have just sent you straight home two  
days ago, but your Grandma Rose is footing the whole bill so you
could be more comfortable here."

    "But--"

    "But nothing, Speedy.  You have to admit, that was very
generous."

    Guiltily, I conceded, "Well, I do like my Grandma Rose,
she's the only one I like."

    "And your poor Aunt Frances and Uncle Johnny--"

    I groaned and slapped my forehead.  "No, not Aunt Frances."

    "Stop that, hon, I know she's hysterical and a lifetime of
criticism every five minutes, but she means well."

    "No, no, not Aunt Frances..." I groaned in mock dismay.

    "Stop, it squirt," she reprimanded gently.  "They all love
you, and you know it.  You devil, you're just eating all this
up.  It's more attention than you or anybody else gets in a
lifetime."

    "Okay," I pouted.

    "Don't say okay unless you mean it."

    "Okay."

    "I gotta go study, hon."  She rose and gathered her sweater
over her shoulders.  Leaning down to me, she looked back at the
door to see if anyone might be listening.  She whispered, "You
get well.  Hear me?"

    "Okay."

    "Because..."  She licked my ear. "...I miss us."

    I smiled, blushing.  "Me too."

    With a peck on the cheek she was gone.  And just in time for
the return of Aunt Frances, Uncle Johnny, Grandma Rose, Aunt
Josephine, Aunt Lucille, Aunt Mary, Uncle Louie, Mom, my sister,
Aunt Catherine, my *other* Aunt Catherine, Aunt Yiya, Aunt
Theresa, Grandpa Joe, another Aunt Josephine, Uncle Vito, Uncle
Lawrence, Aunt Cecilia...

    By the end of the second day I felt well enough to start
getting unbearably bored again.  Whenever I shifted restlessly
my injured side ached and cramped.  Except for visits to the
restroom and the coffee shop, Aunt Frances and Uncle Johnny were
a permanent fixture in the room, Uncle Johnny sighing restlessly 
and winking at me now and then, recognizing our mutual discomfort.
The worst part of the day was when Aunt Frances began cajoling my 
mother into moving out of the project.

    "But I want my children and I to have our privacy," my mother
objected, trying to be as nice as she could about it.  "And where
would we stay?  I wouldn't want to take rent money from all my
relatives.  I just can't live that way."

    "But, Betty," my Aunt Frances pleaded.  "You and Speedy
could live with *us*."

    On hearing that, I raised my eyes to Heaven.  Please, Jesus. 
Not that.

    My mother said no, it just wouldn't work.  She thanked Aunt 
Frances.  She told her she had a good relationship with my stepdad- 
to-be, it looked as if they were steady now, and perhaps they would 
marry in a year or two.  I was grateful for her persistence.  Not 
only would I not be able to bear seven days a week of Aunt Frances, 
but leaving the project meant leaving Martha Jane.  Aunt Frances 
didn't let up all day, but Mom didn't give in and didn't even appear 
to be tempted--for which I was deeply grateful.  Maybe there really 
was a God.

    In a spare moment, when no one was looking, I found myself 
unable to resist the urge to stick out my tongue at Aunt Frances.  I 
did so, mildly, about half an inch of it. And just as I did, Aunt 
Frances looked at me.

    I withdrew my tongue immediately, but already her big round eyes 
had widened and her eyebrows rode halfway up her forehead.

    She turned to Uncle Johnny, beside her.  "Johnny, did you see 
what he did?"

    "What'd he do, Frances?" asked Uncle Johnny, trying to keep 
awake.

    "He stuck his tongue out at me."

    Uncle Johnny's repressed laugh started out as a smirk, then he 
deftly transformed it into a wheeze, and then a mild cough.  "Forget 
it, Frances.  The boy don't feel well."

    Three or four weeks later, when Martha Jane was with me again, 
my cheek had cleared but I was still wearing the heavy restraining 
pad at my left side, held in place by thick layers of gauze around 
my middle.  Martha Jane turned the lights out early. I had already 
got into bed and was lying on my back when she turned out the last 
light and walked over to the bed.  In her jeans and white shirt she 
lay down beside me and began taking off my clothes in the dark.  
When my shirt came off she traced the bandage with her finger.

    "That's horrible what that little rat did to you."

    "I can take it," I said stoically.

    "Sur-r-re, you can, cowboy." she said.  "You sure threw a fit.  
I knew you had a temper, but...I had no idea it was that much of a 
temper."

    I sat up while she removed my shirt.  She unbuckled my belt and 
unzipped me, shoving my pants to my knees.  She stood up, pulling my 
pants off past my feet by its legs.

    "I hope you never get so mad at me that you direct that awful 
rage at me, Speedy."

    "I can't hurt people,"  I said.

    "What do you mean, you can't hurt people?"

    "I can't hurt people.  Only things.  I can't hurt them, even if 
I hate them."

    "Why not, hon?  You had every right to take that tough kid and 
beat the--"  She stopped herself, and continued removing my socks.  
"I'm sorry.  I don't mean that.  You had every right to, but you 
wouldn't have done it.  Because you're sweet, hon.  Even though you 
don't like your Aunt Frances and all those other people, you 
wouldn't hurt them. You're a very brave boy.  It takes courage to be 
sweet."

    "He had me so angry," I said.  "Why do people have to take from 
others like that?  Poor Stepper, he's so poor and he doesn't have 
anything.  And he can't help it if he's black.  Why does the world 
do that?"

    "I don't know, hon.  I wish I had the answer."  She had removed 
my socks, and now she grabbed the sides of my underwear.  "Lift," 
she said.  I did, she pulled, and I was naked.

    She stood looking down at me in the dark.  Silently she unbut- 
toned her shirt, looking at me with a gently intent gaze.  All the 
buttons undone, she shifted her shoulders back and the shirt seemed 
to simply breathe off her.  Then her bra.  The moon glowed along one 
side of the swell of each gently sloped breast.  She unbuckled the 
belt at her jeans, twisted the top button open, pulled the zipper 
down.

    "That horrible, violent day is all over now," she whispered.  
She pulled down her jeans, dropped them on the floor, and slipped 
her thin panties down her long, perfect legs.  Her auburn tuft 
glowed like a softly lighted powder puff in the moonlight.  I was 
getting hard watching her.  My cock weakly stirred and straight- 
ened.  A slab of moonlight fell directly on it.  It rose, slightly.  
Martha Jane looked at it and bent down and slowly, one finger at a 
time, she put her hand around it and held it so that only the tip 
stood out above her gentle fist.

    "I don't know why people have such meanness," she went on, 
almost absently, watching my cock.  "I don't know why they have to 
hurt each other.  When they could give themselves pleasure and 
affection."

    "I would never hurt you, Martha Jane," I whispered.

    "I know you wouldn't, hon.  And I hope I never hurt you."
She leaned down and licked the part of my cock that protruded
above her fingers, then lightly sucked it.   "He's so sweet."

    I gulped, and my cock stirred.  She felt it and grinned.  "He 
can almost talk," she said.

    She lay down beside me near the window and our arms went around 
each other.  Propped on one elbow, she caressed my chest.  I lightly 
squeezed a nipple.

    "No more meanness," she whispered.  "No more hurt.  No more 
hate.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if that could happen?"

    "It happens here," I offered,  "when I'm with you."

    "What a beautiful thing for you to say, Speedy," she breathed, 
surprised, her eyes glowing.  "What a lovely thing to say."  She 
held my face in her hands and pressed her cheek to mine.  Her lips 
at my ear, she whispered, "How can I make you feel good?  We have to 
be careful with that thing on you.  You can't move very much."

    "I don't know," I pondered.  "I wanna make you feel good, too."

    "I know what," she said, and got onto her knees beside me and 
bent over my chest and held her face over mine.  "I know what we can 
do."

    "What?"

    She kissed my nose.  She kissed my right eyelid.  She kissed my 
lips.  "You just wait..."

    "What?" I asked again.

    Her voice was a langorous, barely audible whisper, mildly
taunting, motherly, lecherous, all at once.

    She bagan softly,  "The management of this establishment is
establishing new management."

    She kissed my ear.

    She raised her face above mine again and touched a finger to my 
lips.

    "Don't talk," she whispered.

   She was so quiet, I heard the "k" in the last word linger in the 
air for several seconds.

    She nipped at my throat, around the side of my neck to my other 
ear.  One of her nipples grazed one of mine.  She put her lips onto 
my ear.

    "Don't move."

    She kissed my neck, licked my neck, trailed kisses slowly across 
my chest with tiny, almost unheard little puffs and lickings.  She 
kissed not with her lips, but with the inside of her lips.  She put 
her lips on my left nipple and softly opened them, made a tiny pool 
of the inner lining of her lips around my nipple, and gently sucked. 
My cock got very hard. She used the tip of her tongue, only the tip, 
to move down my chest until she got to the bandage.  Then she looked 
down.

    "You're hard," she observed aloud, under her breath. "How nice."

    It was so quiet and still in the room I could feel the moonlight 
on my stiffened, upright cock.  My eyes were closed. Now I knew why 
she swallowed so much when I did this sort of thing to her.  It was 
something to replace speech, for there were no words for the 
pleasure she was giving me.

    Watching my cock intently, she moved as if in slow motion, and 
still on her knees she stretched her neck elegantly forward in the 
dim light and poised her head straight over my erection.  She opened 
her mouth.  She lowered her head, straight down, slowly and cau- 
tiously, hardly touching my cock with her mouth.  When her head was 
all the way down, and her lips grazed my pubic fuzz, she closed her 
mouth around me fully, sucked, and drew up.  She did this four 
times, wetly.  Soon I throbbed and felt a drop of my nascent cum 
being siphoned up my shaft into her mouth.  Apparently she tasted 
it.  She came off me, licked the inside her mouth.

    Then she turned to face me, hovered over me.  She lifted one leg 
over me, her knee settling into the bed on my other side.

    "Careful," she whispered.  "Don't let me hurt you."

    "It's okay," I whispered back.  It always seemed so sacrilegious 
to talk aloud at such moments with her.  Like shouting in church.

    Her face over mine, her knees on each side of me, her back 
raised so we didn't touch below the waist, she looked down and 
positioned each of her nipples over each of mine, then pressed 
into me.

    "Does it hurt your side if I press my titties on you like that?"

    "No."  I mouthed the word, rather than speak it.  I was
speechless, enchanted, amazed.

    "I'm not really sure how to do this," she whispered with a 
nervous little laugh.  "I never did it before.  Let's see..." 
Closing her eyes and rising on her arms, she bit her lower lip in 
deep concentration, and down below she slowly and tentatively hunted 
in small movements with her wet cunt, searching for my standing 
cock.  Her outer lips found my tip, circled two or three times, 
wetting me, then lowered.  With a long sigh she took me all the way 
into her.  She looked down.

    "That okay?" she asked.

    "That feels so good!"

    "Yes, it does...verrry good."

    For a while she experimented, sometimes moving up and down on 
me; sometimes circling just my tip with her warm slithery outer 
petals; sometimes taking me all the way and grinding her clit 
against my shaft, which she seemed to enjoy the most; sometimes 
taking me in only halfway and pumping rhythmically for a while. 
Several times she asked me if my side was okay, and I told her it 
was.  She searched and discovered patiently and ardently, often 
breathing her pleasure in my ear with the most obscenely graphic 
phrases she could think of.  In time she became less careful, 
gradually more swept up in her heightening pleasure.  Soon her wet 
channel became more snug around me and then began contracting irreg- 
ularly, at which point she would stop and pant over me for a 
moment.  Then she would start again, growing tighter around me, her 
grinding more urgent and more intuitive.  As her breathing grew more 
ragged, she began sighing and whimpering.  Gradually she assumed 
more often the position of settling tightly all the way down, 
squeezing me, rotating subtly on my shaft.  And eventually she 
stiffened, her straightened arms quivering.  Her grinding became so 
intense she rocked the bed, and I knew she would be unable to stop 
this time around.

    She began to chant, "oh hon...oh hon...", and then she began
to sing, "oh hon...!" and finally she groaned loudly, "Oh, yes!"
and her head snapped forward and she writhed her clit furiously
against my shaft, holding her breath, and I circled my hips in the
opposite direction against her, and she answered with a low groan,
"Yes...", and her cunt clamped on me madly for a long moment.  Then
she passed her peak, her head fell back and then forward, and she
slackened, holding still, gasping deeply and loudly and quickly,
her hips and back softened and I saw her breasts had swollen against
me and were hot, a vein on one side of her neck throbbed and I
reached up and sucked it and her hips jerked once, making the bed
squeak, and her neck was hot and salty with sweat and I stroked her
hair as if strewing balm on her agonizing pleasure, and she rested,
still sucking me inside now and then, and I felt her hot cuntlips
drain wet around the root of my shaft.  Twice my cock had felt the
long moment of sweet tickling inside her as she moved on me, twice
I had felt some of me seep into her, and I was content with both
her pleasure and mine.


				Continued...


             ****  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, 1996 BY SJR.  SO--HEY, YOU CAN
  COPY IT BUT YOU CAN'T CHANGE IT OR SELL IT UNLESS I SAY SO.

 --------------------------------------------------------------------

                THE ADVENTURES OF ME AND MARTHA JANE

                              by S.J.R.


                              PART 5A:


    1951.

    Summer.

    "Well," 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 out-
dated B-grade western for the third time, the first time being with
Uncle Johnny when I was five years old.  At ten I bid a fond but not
reluctant farewell to Lash LaRue and Tex Ritter and Roy Rogers.

    Martha Jane had graduated high school, on time and with high
grades.  She started college immediately that summer at the largest
of the local campuses, Memphis State.  She was determined to get her
teacher 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 overwatch me.  These were gray, uneventful days.
I got bored every fifteen seconds.

    Life had tragedy now.  It had dire consequences, uncertainty,
loneliness, nuclear warheads.  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, empa-
thizing 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
houseshoes 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 esti-
mated 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 intel-
lectually 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 wan-
dered 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.  Paranoically, 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.


                             PART 5B:


    In December 1953 my Mom married and my stepfather moved into
the apartment temporarily while they searched for a new house.  The
ceremony was little more than a small tea party in a room in the
reception house at St. Mary's Church.  This being my mother's second
marriage, she didn't think a large wedding would be appropriate, and
my conservative step-dad agreed.  They took over the old bedroom,
and I slept on the pullout sofa in the living room (which, I did not
realize until that time, had a bed inside it!).

    Problems with finding a new home caused them to postpone their
honeymoon.  But near Easter, 1954, they announced that a house had
been found and purchased, and before moving in they were going to
take their honeymoon week in St. Louis.  The concept of a honeymoon
was rather a vague one for me.  Mom said it was just a "vacation"

people take when they marry (even with my limited knowledge of the
marriage state, I knew better than that!  My relationship with Mom
certainly had not improved).

    I came home from school one day shortly afterward, on the last
day before the start of the Easter school holidays.  There in the
kitchen with my mother sat Martha Jane, sipping coffee and chatting
merrily away.

    "Well, Hi!" she said as my eyes bulged out of my head.

    I could tell--immediately--that her Southern accent had only
thickened.  It was still the same musical voice, a bit rambunctious
now, a little louder and more confident.  But the same eyes; a more
slender neck and arms, and definitely an older and more adult figure.
She was 20.  Her hair was the same, maybe a little more blonde.

    "Well, hotshot, are you going to speak?"

    I did, but don't remember what I said.  I was numbstruck.  It
was Martha Jane but it wasn't Martha Jane.  It was the same person
but it wasn't.  She was not a teenager anymore.  And she smoked
cigarettes.  One dangled lazily from her finger as she sat cross-
legged at the kitchen table with Mom.

    "Say hello to Martha Jane," Mom said, and laughed.  "You
forget about her already?"

    "I did say hello, didn't I?" I asked, dazed.  They both shook
their heads and waited for me, amused.  I said falteringly, "Well,
then, uh--"  I shrugged helplessly-- "Hi."

    Martha Jane rose from the chair.  "Oh, what kind of welcome
is that?"  She walked across the room--on noisy high-heeled
shoes! --and came straight to me, moving the cigarette from one
hand to another so she would be able to give a great big hug
without burning me with the thing.  I was grateful for the hug.
Deeply grateful.  But my feelings were so firmly entrenched, espe-
cially when I was around my mother, that I denied myself the luxury
of any response at all.

    "Let me look at YOU!" Martha Jane exclaimed.  "You're only an
inch taller than me now!  Can't you grow any faster than that?"

    I shrugged and blushed.  "I'm only 12 years old," I said.

    "Well, that won't last forever, hon, don't worry."  She took
my hand and leaned closer to me.  "How are you, Speedy?  Did you
forget all about me, after all I had to put up with from you?"

    "I didn't forget," I smiled.  I was overcome by a blush attack
that I strongly resisted.  She saw my problem, and immediately she
gave a sympathetic "Aawwww, c'mere,"  and putting her arms around
me she gave a stronger, more affectionate hug.

    "How are you, hon?  I haven't seen you in so long."

    I saw my mother watching us, pleased.  But not trusting myself,
I pulled back and simply gave Martha Jane an appreciative nod.

    My mother announced: "Martha Jane lost her job."

    Martha Jane shrugged.  "Laid off, hon."  She shrugged.  "What
the heck!  At least I'm still getting the GI Bill money because
of my father.  All I have to say is, 'Thank you, Uncle Sam!'"

    My Mom went on, greatly amused.  "Martha Jane showed up just in
time.  While your daddy and I are in St. Louis on our honeymoon next
week, your Aunt Yvonne was supposed to drop by here and check up
once a while so you wouldn't be here all by yourself.  Well, guess
who showed up just in time to take her place?"

    I didn't answer.  I was afraid to.

    My mother nudged her head toward Martha Jane.  "Your old
neighbor over there."

    I looked at Martha Jane.

    She pointed her thumb at herself.  "The old supervisor herself,
honey.  Yvonne got fired, I got hired.  Gonna be next store again
anyway, so why should she have to traipse all the way over here?"
She moved closer to me again and pointed a finger into my chest.
"Gonna be checkin' on you, buster.  Better clean up your act."

    My act, considering how little I revealed of myself at that
instant, couldn't have been more antiseptic.  My feelings were
jumbled.  She didn't seem the same.  She moved and spoke with an
aggressiveness I found difficult to accept.  Nor was it so easy for
me to switch emotional gears after two years of not seeing her,
having spent that time surrounded by people in whom I had so little
trust emotionally.

    The next day, a Saturday, Mom and my new dad left Union Station
for their honeymoon.  At the grandiose Victorian building a number
of people were present to see them off.  Most of them were my step-
dad's folks.  They were friendly, earthy people,  But the thought of
the sheer size of his family was intimidating: he alone had fourteen
brothers and sisters.  The day he married my mother, I gained over
three hundred new cousins and an undetermined number of uncles and
aunts.  I had yet to meet most of them, a task I estimated would
take years.

    I spent Saturday with my grandparents, the Ricci's.  Grandpa
Joe Ricci, my father's father, packed me into his Oldsmobile on
Sunday morning to give me a ride back to the project.

    As he drove he griped, "Don't see why you can't spend the rest
of the week with me and your Grandma Rose."

    "I have too many things to do at home, Grandpa Joe.  I got a
dozen library books over there to go through while my Mama and
Daddy are gone."

    "Your 'Daddy'!"  Grandpa Joe swore mildly in his slightly
gravelly voice.  "He ain't your daddy.  Your daddy was Steven
Joseph, Senior.  And he's dead."

    "My step-daddy, then."

    "That's better."

    I didn't know if I really wanted to see Martha Jane or not.  She
called from a friend's place and told me she was packing the last of
her things to move back to the project, then she had to change and
go to a funeral.  She said she would be job hunting all day Monday.
But she'd come over tonight, Sunday, and the next night as well, and
fix dinner for me.  I was on Easter vacation, a dubious advantage of
being in a Catholic grammar school.  I had no friends and nothing I
particularly wanted to do.  I spent most of Sunday rummaging around
the apartment, which seemed relatively large with no one home but
me. Over the years I had spent so much time alone that I began to
realize and appreciate that it did have certain advantages:  I had
absolute freedom of movement, and freedom from being hassled by the
foibles and demands of others.

    But as Sunday evening neared, I was considering whether or not
to be home at the time Martha Jane was due to fix dinner.  I did
not trust my feelings at all.  I could always hop a bus and go back
to my godparents or grandparents for the whole week...

    In my mind she had changed.  She was not the primal, simple child
I knew.  She wore high heels.  She smoked.  She talked loud.

    She showed up shortly before six.  She greeted me with a hug, and
when she saw I appeared numb she insisted that I give her cheek a
hello kiss, after which she set her purse down on a table in the liv-
ing room and went into the kitchen to make dinner.

    I stared at her purse.  It was one of the slick black patent
leather purses that adult women carried around.  It seemed she moved
faster, too, or maybe it was an illusion created by her seemingly
longer legs and the heels.  From the kitchen she asked what I wanted
to eat.  I told her I didn't care.  As she prepared to cook in that
tiny kitchen with the obsolete refrigerator and the two-burner gas
stove, she kept joking and seemed in fine humor.

    "Won't you be tickled pink to get out of this tiny place and
into that big house out on Macon Road?  Got a nice big kitchen in
there, I saw it.  Your mom drove me out there last week."

    "Last week?" I asked, confused.  I didn't know she had been
around for almost a whole week before seeing me.

    "Yes, hon, last weekend, you know?  I *missed* you, I asked
them where you were, and you were at your grandmother's all
weekend."

    "My mom didn't call me,"  I muttered.  Betrayed by mom again!

    "Well, she couldn't, I couldn't stay long anyway.  Rent Overdue,
Speedy, I had to move out of that apartment.  Heck, I sure collected
a ton of junk in there."  She was setting the table but she stopped
to grin at me.  "You're gonna love that house.  It's new, all *new*,
not a scratch on it!  Even the grass is new.  And three bedrooms,
hon.  See this?"  She held up three fingers.  "Three bedrooms!
You'll have your own room, and to heck with that sofabed in there."

    I was not overly pleased.  "I guess it'll be okay," I muttered,
moving to take my seat at the small table.  "I could learn to like
it."

    She came over to me.  She bent down.  I became very aware of her
breasts--not her pert teengirl titties, but her adult female breasts
under the white blouse and under the white bra.  She hugged me from
one side and her voice softened.  She said earnestly, "You need your
own room, hon.  You need your...own..room."  She emphasized the last
three words.  She pulled back and looked at me.  "My lord!  How old
are you now, about forty-five?"

    "Umpteen," I answered blandly.

    She laughed.  "Does it really feel that way?"

    "And you?" I asked as she sat in the chair before me.

    "Umpteen," she answered, giving a muffled laugh. "Closer to
twenty, really.  Speedy, you look wonderful.  You're getting so cute.
I thought you'd be a little taller, though.  Don't you eat your
spinach?"

    I didn't answer.

    "You look like your daddy's picture."

    "I know,"  I said.

    "Bet every aunt and uncle you know tells you that at least once
every fifteen minutes, don't they?"

    "Yep," I said, aware of the dull tone in my voice.

    "Not everybody that flew a B-17 won a Silver Star, hon."  She
chewed her food and swallowed, and her face and voice became more
serious, more leveled.  "Doesn't mean you have to win a Silver
Star too, Speedy."

    I didn't know what to say to her.  I didn't know exactly what
she meant, but I did feel that she knew so very much more about
me than I did.

    She said, with a mouth half full of spinach, "You didn't say
you missed me."

    "Well," I said, "I did.  I'm not as talkative as I used to be."

    "Tell me something I hadn't noticed," she chuckled.  "You don't
smile as much, either.  Of course, you also don't clown or blush or
shuffle around.  Those are improvements, anyway.  You're getting to
be too nice-looking a young man to be that painfully shy.  You're
growin' up.  Guess we all have to grow up sooner or later."

    "I guess."

    "So how do you like it?"

    "Like what?" I asked.

    "This growing-up business."

    "It's okay."

    "Holy smokes, what an answer."  She shook her head.  "You're
right, it's not all it's cracked up to be."  Then she changed the
subject.  "I'm going out right after we eat dinner, I might buy a
used typewriter from somebody across the driveway.  I really need
one."

    "I have a typewriter," I offered.

    "The old Underwood?  No, Speedy, you need that.  I need a small
one.  Portable."  She chewed her food quickly and checked her wrist
watch.  "But I'll be back later, about eight or eight-thirty."

    I swallowed.  "Okay."

    She would eat, chew, look at me, eat, and chew.  Then look at me.
She went rapidly from one subject to another.  She sounded like one of
my curious aunts.  But her constant effort at searching me out left me
feeling that she was almost as uncomfortable as I was.

    She left after dinner.  I sat and played with the Philco, going
from one radio show to the next.  Bored, I took a bath.  I got all
dressed again in jeans and a plaid shirt and sat listening to the
records and going through the record albums.  Just before 8:30,
Martha Jane showed up.  She looked tired now, and didn't move around
as quickly.  She plopped down on the sofa and gave a loud moan.
"Whew!  How are you, hon?"

    I ignored her question.  "How's your typewriter?"

    "I just left it at home, next door.  It'll do."   She slumped
into the cushions and caught her breath.  She used each foot to
push the high heels off.  "I hate these!  Hate, hate, hate."

    "They make a lot of noise when you walk."

    "Yeah, don't they?"

    She looked at me for a long time.  "What's the matter, hon?
Do you just go off into nowhere when you get to be 12 years old?
It is 12 now, isn't it?"

    "It's 12," I said, not looking up from the records.  I sighed.
"Just tired, I guess."

    "Your mom and your brand-new daddy won't be back until next
Friday night.  So you can make as big a mess as you want, you're
getting too old for a baby-sitter.  But I'll check in.  Just be
sure to clean the place up before mommy and daddy day on Friday."

    "He's not my daddy," I said flatly, not looking up from the
album.

    "Of course he's your daddy.  What do you mean?"

    "My daddy's dead," I said without emotion, recalling Grandpa
Joe.

    "Speedy...what a morbid thing to say."

    "That's what Grandpa Joe told me to say."

    "I met your Grandpa Joe and he's a very nice man who's done a
lot for you and your mom.  But he's an unhappy man who lives in
the past and likes to make others think the same way he does.  You
have to mind him and do as he says, but he doesn't have to tell
you how to think."

    "Okay," I said, paging the record album.

    For a long minute she didn't say anything.  I could feel her,
above and behind me, looking at me from the sofa.  In a moment she
said, "Would you like to go to a movie with me this week?  I mean,
what are you gonna do all week?"

    I looked up at her, rather blankly.  "Okay," I said.  "I
like movies, I know every inch of every theater in Memphis."

    "Oh, yes?  You must spend a lot of time there."

    "Every weekend."

    She moved from the sofa and sat down on the floor next to me.
She began removing bobby pins from her hair.  "You still spend a
lot of time alone, don't you?  That hasn't changed, has it?"

    "No," I said.

    She leaned toward me.  "Give me your face," she said.

    I leaned toward her.  She kissed my two eyes, lightly, and
then my nose.  "I've been running around like a chicken with my
head cut off since six o'clock this morning.  Do you promise not
to run away from home while I take a bath?"

    "I promise," I said.

    She studied me, her face close to mine.  She put an arm around
my shoulder.  She smiled.  "What's been happening to you?"

    I looked at her and asked, coldly casual, "You have a boyfriend
yet?"

    Her grin disappeared.  "Yes," she said.  After a pause, she
added.  "He's a schmuck.  You know what a schmuck is?"

    I shook my head.

    She leaned back on her ankles and took out one more bobby pin.
"It's some kind of Jewish word, I think.  From my New York.  A gal
from New York who's in one of my classes keeps using that word."

    "What's a schmuck?"  I asked.

    "A schmuck," she said slowly and distinctly, "is...a...schmuck!
A creep.  A jerk."  She shook her head.  "You'll figure it out."
Then she said firmly, "Being a schmuck is what your Grandpa Joe was
being when he said that horrible thing about your daddy."

    She got up and kissed me on the forehead.  "I'll be back.
Stay here."

    Into the bathroom she went.  She was in there for quite a
long time, bathing away.  I was getting sleepy and started putting
the records away.  It was not so bad, I thought.  She does slow
down after a while, and obviously she was warming up to me like
a long-lost friend.  She wasn't *that* old, certainly.  Not *that*
different.  Obviously we were still buddies.  But she had a
boyfriend!

    A little voice in me said: of course she has a boyfriend,
stupid.  She's twenty years old.  When you're twenty years old,

you can have a girlfriend.  She deserves to have a boyfriend.

    I put away the record album, sat on the floor, and watched
the closed bathroom door.  Water running furiously in there.
No change in the way she kept herself, she always hated being
clammy or sweaty.

    During the rest of her stay behind the door I worked up the
courage to apologize.  I stood waiting in the middle of the living
room with my hands in my pockets.  I still had my pride, of course.
I didn't want to seem as dejected and desolate as I really was,
that would be giving too much away.

    I heard the bathroom door open, saw the light go out.  She came
into the doorway of the living room.  She was in light pink, floppy
silk pajamas.  She was drying her hair with a towel and saw me
standing with my hands still in my pockets.

    She asked, "What are doing, just standing there?"

    I asked, "Is a schmuck just being rude, or a party pooper, and
stuff like that?"

    "Yes, I'd say...that qualifies as fairly schmuck-like."  She
fluffed her head with the towel.

    "Is it, like...being snotty?"

    "Yep."

    I searched for words a second.  "Acting like you're always
right and everybody else is wrong?"

    "Yep."

    "...like...the way I was acting today?"

    "Yep.  That's a schmuck, all right."

    "So I was bein' a schmuck."

    "That's one of a great many things that schmucks do."  She put
away the towel and came to me and grabbed me by the hand, leading
me toward the bedroom.  "C'mon.  Beddy-bye.  It's ten o'clock."

    I resisted.  "I thought this was supposed to be a vacation!"

    "A vacation doesn't mean you stay up all night.  Anyway, young
man--my young schmuck--you've been pretty cranky all day, and if you
want to have a good time with me this week and keep up with me, you
better rest while you can."

    I stood near the bed as she rapidly pulled back the bedclothes.

    "Okay, okay, but I *am* twelve years old.  I can get myself in and
out of the bed."

    "Right," she said.  "Well, you're not all that old.  Besides,
I want to ask you about something before you turn in."  She came
to me and began removing my shirt.  "Your mother told me, schmuck,
that you went to Woolworth's looking for me one day and you
couldn't find me."

    "She told you that?  Here, I can unbutton my shirt myself.
Is a schmuck somebody who can't unbutton their own shirt, too?"

    She stood eyeing me sternly with her hands on her hips.

    "Anyway," I said, "that was months ago."

    She nodded.  "She told me.  She said you were very disappointed.
She said you were down in the dumps.  All...day...long."

    "Sure, I was disappointed.  What's wrong with being disap-
pointed?"

    "No no no, schmuck.  Not just disappointed.  She said you were
down in the dumps for a week."

    I raised my eyes to the ceiling.  Didn't mothers know when to
shut up?  I removed my shirt and started on my jeans, not saying
anything, avoiding her gaze.

    "It so happens," she continued, "I wasn't there that day.  So
was she correct about that?  What's your version of the story?"

    I blushed.  I made a what-the-hell shrug.  She started to help
me with the belt.  "Look," I said, "I can do this."

    She stepped back.  "Okay.  Take charge.  But get into bed.
It's late."

    "I thought I could just stay up all week.  It's Easter vaca-
tion."

    She eyed me with a comic, bugeyed sternness, firmed her lips,
and pointed dramatically at the bed.

    I did an aw-shucks and got down to my underwear.  I was taller
and more developed than I was when I had last seen her.  I had a
little hair on my legs, not much, but visible.  I also had under
my jockeys a healthily burgeoning patch of pubic hair that had
replaced the light blond fuzz and which, I suddenly realized, might
be dimly visible through the thin cloth.  Hurrying into bed, I also
realized with even greater embarrassment that I had developed in
another area as well, which must surely have been noticeable, not
as the thimble-shaped white bulb near the slit of my jockeys that
she had seen in the past, but as a definitely larger and more
shapeless bulge.

    Quickly, I lay on my side and pulled the sheet to my waist.

    Looking officially satisfied, she reached to turn out the bed-
side lamp.  But instead, she changed her mind.  Leaving the light
on, she got into bed with me and shoved me farther to the other side.
She lay next to me, facing me, on her side with her head propped on
one arm.

    "Wanna talk?" she asked.



                                PART 5C:


    I shrugged.

    "I mean, seriously.  Talk."

    I shrugged again.  "Not really."

    "I do," she persisted.

    So I got into the same pose as she, propped on one elbow and facing
her.  "All right, but I don't need a baby-sitter to put me to bed."

    "I don't know what to do with you.  About you.  You are spoiled
and too independent.  I know you don't like all your fussy old aunts
and uncles so much, but you have to admit they spoiled the heck out of
you.  And, brother, did I help!  You are so strange. In so many ways
you're older than me, in the ways you connect with certain things
inside people, but...such a strange boy."

    "Boy," I echoed dryly.

    "Well, Speedy, you *are* a boy...No, no, no, you are what looks like
a boy, you do boy things, you have boy habits.  But you're not really a
boy.  Wars took your boy away from you.  I did, too.  I'm going to die
and go to hell for it."

    I gruffed, "Oh, That's what the nuns say all the time..."

    "Do you know what I mean when I say I'm going to hell for it?"

    "...and you say that all the time, too."

    "I know, but do you know what I mean?"

    "I guess.  No."

    "I'm in hell for it now, Speedy.  I'm in hell every day thinking
about this and about us."

    "You mean...'this' and 'us' being...?"

    She mouthed the word s-e-x, and nodded.

    I felt a crashing, cutting disappointment.  All I could say
was: "Oh."

    "I think what we did together was very unusual.  Very out of
control.  I don't think I will ever be able to be like that with anyone
else again, as long as I live."

    "I didn't know you felt so bad about it."

    "No no no no no, not 'bad'," she moaned, beating her fists lightly
on the bedsheet.  "Not 'bad'!"  She beat her fist again, once for each
word: "You...don't...understand."

    "Explain it to me."

    "I am explaining it to you!"

    "Okay."

    "You don't understand that...I...that I *did* like it.  I liked it
more than anything.  I'm trying to tell you that I...that I know, looking
at you right here and now, that I know I'll never be able to do that with
anyone else."

    "Not--?"

    She stopped me.  "Not even with my boyfriend."

    "Hm."

    "Believe me?"

    I shrugged: a sort of, a maybe.

    "I'm trying to tell you, Speedy, my dear sweet little man, my somehow
grownup somehow not grownup little man--Oh, my my you are so grownup in
bed.  You are so strange.  I'm trying to tell you that...I liked it...
But...I'm afraid of you.  I'm afraid of myself.  You do something to me,
we have something, we do something to each other that--"  She stopped.
"Yes, I have this boyfriend but it's not the same, it's not--"  She
stopped again and sighed almost tearfully.  "Oh, heck!"

    "You think it was wrong?" I guessed.

    She shook her head no, impatiently dismissing my question. Then she
sighed.  "I have this problem."

    "Problem?"

    "Yes."  She pulled a wet strand from her hair and then picked a
little crumb of something off her tongue and couldn't find it again and
just gave up.  "The problem is...I still remember it."

    "Oh."

    "Yes, 'Oh'.  I remember, and I--ah, this is so complicated."

    I sat up.  In some ways this was beyond me.  In some other strange
way, I sensed what she was saying.  "Maybe we should not have done it."

    She looked suddenly and deeply into my eyes.  There was conster-
nation, frustration, impatience in eyes and face.

    "I mean, what we were doing makes you feel bad and you think you're
going to hell, so we shouldn't do it."

    "Oh...!?"  She squinted at me. "Tell me something: did you think we
would do it again the next time you saw me?"

    "Not especially."

    "Be honest."

    "Mmm, no."

    "But you sort of hoped we would," she prompted.

    "Mmm, yeah."

    "But if you think it hurts my feelings, you wouldn't ask me?"

    "Right."

    She stared at me for a very long time.  "I should have known you'd
say that.  I should have known."  She played with her wet hair again,
and lay back on a pillow.  "Let me ask you something.  Did you really
find yourself thinking about it?  I mean, thinking about it a lot?"

    "I guess...I didn't think about it a lot, but it made me sad when
it looked like it wouldn't happen again."

    "I see..." she mused.  "But you thought about it."

    "Sure I did.  For a while."

    She smirked.  "I hope you don't grow up to be like one of those
good-looking hotshots that I don't want you to grow up to be.  Darn,
that's what's so strange about you, and me *with* you...If only we
weren't so good at it together, then neither of us would always be
expecting that it's supposed to happen that way all the time."  She
shook her head ruefully.  "Do you have any idea at all what you would
have to do to seduce me, to make me do it?"

    "You mean...like really *make* you do it with me?"

    "Yes."

    "It wouldn't be the same."

    "Why?"

    "Because you wouldn't want to do it."

    "I see," she said, pondering again.  She squinted at me.  "I wish you
were twenty.  I wish you were thirty.  I wish..."  She stopped, searching
my eyes.

    I was looking down, away from her, absently toying with a wrinkle in
the bedsheets.  She leaned forward and forced herself into my view. "Have
you made yourself cum yet?"

    I blushed and shrugged.

    "You haven't, have you?  I took your boy but I didn't give you enough
man to work with did I?  And you made it so good for me."

    This chat was annoying me.  Talking with adults was something I
never, simply never enjoyed.  They had such a baffling way of complicat-
ing matters.  As I did with other adults when they wanted a "serious"
discussion, I tried to appear unaffected.  Now, as Martha Jane talked
with me that night, the room seemed crowded and too small to hold the
thoughts I was trying to keep from her.  I felt alienated from her,
especially now that she had so obviously begun her move from a teenager
to a woman, a woman who worked for a paycheck, studied in a college, went
out with other people her own age who lived in a world that I was totally
unfamiliar with.  It was an odd and unsettling sensation for me to feel
that way about Martha Jane.

    She went on with difficulty.  "I don't know what it is we...we do to
each other..."  Absently she started to reach toward my thigh, but
stopped.  "You want *me* to ask *you* to do it?"

    Still propped on my elbow, I shrugged again.  "Sort of...I mean, the
only time I used to know you wanted to was when you said you did."

    "I...see..." she said ominously, looking at her own hands and appear-
ing troubled by my reply.  She rolled onto her tummy and crossed
her ankles in the air behind her.

    She asked, "Why did you feel so bad when you didn't find me at
Woolworth's?  Hm?  I really want to know, Speedy.  Was your mama right,
were you down in the dumps all day?"

    I gave shrug number one thousand or so.  "I don't know," I pouted.
"That was a long time ago."

    "Oh, baby, that's not an answer.  C'mon, talk to me."

    "I don't know.  I just...didn't know what else to do."

    She prompted in a singsong voice, "You could have come ba-aa-ck...on
a different day-y-y."

    I didn't say anything.  She was right, I could have gone back and
looked for her again.  I didn't know what she was getting at.

    In the same singsong she continued: "You could have...mmm... called
my mother...called my sister."

    I blushed again, but I was also a little hostile.  All I could do was
lower my head and say, "Well...."

    "Speedy, why didn't you ever call me after I left home and moved into
an apartment?"

    That remark left me slightly bristling.  "I did call.  Evelyn gave me
a number.  But they told me you had moved to another place."

    "Why didn't you look for me again?  I was very busy at first, I was
so busy I didn't sleep.  Half the time I'd eat breakfast or lunch walking
between classes.  And after a few months, I heard nothing.  I said to
myself, okay, so what, the kid's only ten years old, how does he know
what to do?  What should I expect?  And I met boys, nice boys, interest-
ing people, friends--for the first time in my life.  And after a while I
figured, well, he's growing, he has his own things, his own life.  Maybe
he doesn't want to see me, maybe he doesn't even remember who I am.  We
really didn't have to see each other, period.  We could have just
talked.  We could have just said hello.  We were still friends, weren't
we?"  She looked at me with pleading eyes.  "We were so close, we had
been through so much together.  What happened?  Why didn't I hear any-
thing from you?  Even my mother said she never saw you, not once."

    I remember the day I had gone to her front door, and no one
answered.  Apologetically, I told her about it.

    "But, Speedy, how many times did you knock on the door?  How many
times did you walk next door to see where I was?"

    I shrugged.  I didn't answer.

    "Come on, how many times?"

    "Once."

    "Once?"

    I nodded.  I held up one finger.  I avoided her eyes.  I was getting
the point.

    She repeated, angry, incredulous,  "You went to my house *once*?
That was it?  Once?"

    I nodded.  I saw her anger mounting.  I wanted to run away.  I had
never seen her angry with me.  I began to shuffle around in the bed,
looking for an excuse to get away and relieve the tension for a while.
"I think I have to go to the--"

    "No you don't, buster."  She held me down by one hand, which she
pressed tightly into the mattress.  "Now just let me calm down a minute,"
she said, and she sighed two long sighs and then she let go of my hand.
She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, and squinted.  "Oh my, I
have so much work to do with you!  You're like a wild boy that's grown up
without parents, without friends, without--"  She shook her head.

    Patiently, she lightly touched one of my hands.  "Why didn't you
fight a little for me, hon?  Why didn't you try to find me?  I want to
know, I really do.  I can get frustrated with your stubbornness and
your turning away sometimes, but I can't dislike you.  I like you too
much.  You mean too much to me.  But what on earth...what was going
through your strange head about me?  I want to know.  Can you tell me?
Do you want to tell me?"

    My head was bursting.  My heart, too.  In time I had forgotten her
and had grown used to not seeing her.  And now she was trying to make me
depend on her all over again.  I made a face at her, a silly boy's face,
a creepy grin, and then a pout.  I felt and acted exactly like the child
that I was.

    She ignored it and continued earnestly, "You would just keep looking
for me in places where I'm not, wouldn't you?  You would go into a room
by yourself, and if I wasn't there you'd wait.  And you wouldn't find me."

    "I guess," I said, embarrassed that she had me pegged.

    "You 'guess'...You wouldn't find me because I wouldn't be there."

    She rested her chin on her hands, her elbows propped under her. Her
voice became sweetly, gently prompting.  "Maybe you didn't want to find
me?  Maybe...you wanted me to find you?  Is that it?  You didn't go
looking for me because you wanted me to come looking for you.  Because
that's the way it always was, wasn't it?  I had always come to you.  You
never had to go looking for me."

    Something was welling up in me.  I wasn't sure what to do about it.
I tried to think up a cute, innocuous answer.  But I couldn't.  I was
struck dumb by a sudden awareness of how well she knew me, how little I
knew about myself.

    "Hon?" she asked.  "Isn't that what happened?  Is that what I did to
you?"

    Silently, I cried.  A big fat tear rolled out of my eye and down my
cheek.  I turned away from her.

    She moved over to me and put her arms around my back and her cheek
against my neck.

    "Tell me, hon.  Please tell me.  What was wrong?"

    "I'm sorry," I sniffed, my cheeks shiny with tears.

    "No.  I don't want you to be sorry.  I just want you to tell me."

    "But I am sorry.  I got you mad at me, I did everything wrong!"

    "No no no no no no, hon.  Now sit up.  Sit up and look at me and
let's dry off this cute face and stop this, okay?  See, if you hand'nt
refused to talk to me, me your old tried and trusted girlfriend, we
wouldn't be going through all this, would we?"

    "I guess not."  I wiped my nose with my t-shirt.

    "Don't use your t-shirt, hon.  You're so intelligent, but you can be
such a mess sometimes."  She wiped my eyes and face with a kleenex.

    "I thought you didn't want to see me anymore."

    "Sweetheart, I couldn't see you all the time, not the way I used to
when I lived next door.  You'll be in college one day, and just watch--
you won't speak to your folks for months at a time.  Even in high school
things will be different; in high school they don't have nuns who walk
you to class from eight o'clock mass every day."

    "But you never came around," I continued.

    She grabbed my face and ogled me with mock sternness. "You see what
happens when we don't have any faith, when we don't talk to each other?
It got all mixed up, didn't it?  Stop it, now.  Stop.  I want to tell you
something."

    "Okay."

    "Pay attention and stop sniffing."

    "Okay, okay." I said, wiping my face and eyes.

    She squeezed my nose with a kleenex and kissed my ear and looked at
me again.  "Hon, I don't want you to grow up all by yourself like this.
Are you listening to me?  Do you know what I'm talking about?"

    "I guess."

    "You--?"  She huffed and scratched her forehead.  "Oh, you don't, do
you?  Oh, how can I get this through to you?"

    "I'll try," I volunteered.  "Go ahead.  Try me."

    She thought for a long time.  "Do you know how much I like you,
Speedy?  Hm?  I like you so much, it doesn't even make sense.  Not to
*anybody*!  I don't even have anyone I can talk to about you. I don't
care about them, really, or what they think.  It's you I care about."
She paused,  raising her hands with a shrug.  "If we're supposed to be
'friends', then I want you to come lookin' for *me* sometime, okay?  I
don't want you to grow up always thinkin' that people are always depen-
dable or that they'll always be comin' to you.  Sometimes you have to go
out and get them.  You know what I mean?"

    "I guess."

    "If you say I guess to me one more time..."

    I gave her a silly, friendly smile.  I had stopped crying.

    "Well, I have news for you, I was really lookin' forward to seeing
you today, and last week too.  Now, last week we can't do anything about,
that's past.  But we do have today.  And I'm glad to see you, and I'm
worried about you because I show up and you walk away from me, into
yourself.  You can't keep doin' that."

    "Okay."

    She was growing a little petulant herself, nervously playing with her
fingernails.  "Now don't say okay, hon, if you don't really mean okay."

    "Okay."  I grinned.

    She resisted laughing, but finally gave in to it and held her head in
her hands in mock frustration, and beat the sheets with her fist again.
"Stop...makin'...me...laugh!"

    "So you're saying..." I pondered aloud, squinting, "you're saying I
should have looked more."

    "I am saying," she explained patiently, "that you have to have some
faith.  Not in others, in yourself.  I'm saying that you're getting older
now and you have to learn to start looking for--"  She stopped herself,
shut her eyes briefly, then lowered her voice and continued slowly,
"Sometimes, I want you to come to me.  I want you to learn to come to me."

    "Oh."

    "I want you to ask *me*.  For a change.  I want you to start it, I
want you to talk to me.  I don't want you to sulk away from me, or from
anybody, just because they don't follow you around all day trying to
figure you out.  Hon, you're too sensitive.  You're gonna lose sometimes,
you're gonna be disappointed.  But you still have to try."

    "Okay."

    "Do you really mean that?"

    "Yes."

    "Look at me.  Really?"

    "Yes, ma'am."

    She put her hand on my shoulder.  She squinted one eye. "Listen,
cowboy.  I want you to mean it.  I'm concerned about you, you know that?
Everybody who knows you likes you, but they don't always give you
everything you want.  Ask for it sometime."

    "Okay."

    She threw up her hands.  "Oh lord, another okay!"  She rose from the
bed.  "Well, you're all ready to go to sleep.  Maybe you can now, and
you'll feel better.  *I'm* going' to the bathroom."  She rose and left
the bedroom and disappeared again into the bathroom.

    I settled down into my pillow and pondered all that she had said. It
seemed sensible to me.  A little too-much-grownup, I thought. But then I
also knew, from all the sad grownups around me, from all that my scien-
tifically-inclined mind had observed among the many tragedies in that
housing project and in my family, I knew that I would not always be 12
years old.  I would be older one day.  Those who provided for me would no
longer be around; certainly, I had seen this happen often enough to
others.  I was not ready at the time, not ready to forge that far ahead.
But, I was aware, that day would come.  And I did know for certain,
again, that Martha Jane was my friend, not a bed partner or a playmate.
If she had done some growing up, then so should I.

    She shut the bathroom light and came into the hallway, but stopped
there.  She yawned and scratched her head.

    "You ready to go sleep?"

    "Yeah," I called from the bed.

    She came into the bedroom and turned out the table lamp.  In the dark
I felt her lean toward me and kiss me on my cheek.

    "G'nite, hon.  I'll be in the other room if you need anything."

    I didn't respond.  This was not exactly what I expected.

    "Okay?" she asked again.

    I nodded.

    "G'nite."  The hem of her pajama legs rasped along the floor as she
left the room.  I heard the squeaks and rattles of the sofabed being made
in the living room.  Shortly after, all the lights went out.

    I lay there for about fifteen minutes.  I looked out the window. I
kept hearing her say she wanted me to ask her first.  She wanted me to
come to her.  I turned over and propped up on one elbow and listened.
Not a sound from the other room.

    Lying back down, I tried to fall asleep.

    But a torrent of thoughts overpowered me, struggling mightily within
my head and chest.  The flood was so chaotic, I lay with my eyes tightly
shut and concentrated on sorting them out.  Among them was a new thought,
a new impulse that rose over the others with an almost deafening voice:
I wanted her.  And I wanted her to want me.  I wanted to make myself
desirable in the ways she had talked about that night.  Her words had me
asking what had happened to that rebellious, independent, indefatigable
'me' of only a few years before?  I realized I had changed.  Had Grandpa
Joe and my fussy aunts and the tough kids and the stern teachers changed
me so much?

    With each question came a plenitude of conflicting answers.  I real-
ized that I had not interacted enough with others to know how to handle
myself on my own terms.  I could not voice this realization so articu-
lately at age twelve, but I could feel it.  I knew that I had absorbed a
great deal of information, had amassed countless observations.  But I
felt powerless when it came to doing something with what I knew.

    I sat up in bed.

    I lay down.

    Rolled over.

    Sat up again.

    Was she asleep?  Or was she waiting?

    Soon I grew impatient with wondering.  I put the sheet around me
(still somewhat embarrassed about all that my underwear now contained),
and walked through the dark into the living room...



                             PART 5D:


    I walked toward the living room and stood in the doorway, allowing
the sheet wrapped around me to make as much noise as it wanted, and
hoping she would respond if she were awake.

    Dimly across the room I saw her rise and look toward me. "Speedy?"

    "Yes," I answered.  "It's me."

    "I thought you were going to sleep?"

    "Are you awake?"

    "What do you think?  Of course I'm awake.  I was worried about you."

    I told myself:  Do something, show her some fight.

    In the faint light I saw a pencil on the lamp table near the door.
I reached for it and held it like a cigarette, twiddling it gingerly in
my fingers and puffing on it.  The bedsheet wrapped around my waist and
below, I walked into the middle of the room. Martha Jane had turned
toward me on the sofabed and was lying on her side, staring at me
quizzically.

    I took a deep breath and started my act in full force.  I opened with
my Deep South truck driver's gruff and heavy drawl.

	"Hey, bay-beh!  Wonna beer?"

	She smirked.  On her side, she leaned on an elbow and propped her
head in her hand.  "Oh my, what is this strange child up to?"

	Then I made the pencil a cigar, touted and flipped it one hand. and
with my other hand on my hip I faked the higher-pitched, tightly clipped
voice and speech of the Bowery Boys' Leo Gorcey.

    "Dey call me Doubtless Dan. 'Cuz "When Dan's About, There Ain't No
Doubt!'"  I smugly pretended to straighten my tie.  "Pahdon me, ladies,
while I make myself presentable."

    Then I jammed my hands deep into my pajamas' pockets, stuck out my
tummy to simulate a beer-belly, put the pencil in one corner of my
mouth, and rocked back and forth as I did my W.C. Fields.

    "I recall when were stranded in the Andeeees.  It was TERRibble,
couldn't find a bottle o' booze anywherrre.  Had to live on nothing but
food and waterrr for tennnn daaayzz!"

	Each character brought me a step or two closer to the sofabed where
she still lay propped on an elbow and keeping a straight face.

	Then I put one hand behind my back, pursed my lips, and at the same
time raised my eyebrows and squinted my eyes--not easy to do, but it was
essential for an effective Clark Gable.

    "Now listen, Scarlett.  I know we haven't been gettin' along, sweet-
heart, so...I'll make a deal with ya.  You keep the child, and the money,
and the lumber company, and...I'll stay here at Tara with Ashley Wilkes."

	With understated sarcasm she broke in.  "Does this have an end?"

    "Why, Scarlett, whenever you say."

	"End, please."

	Myself again, I dropped to my knees and my face was level with hers.
"Yes, ma'am."

	"Speedy...What in the world are you doing?"

    "I'm trying."

    "You're trying?  Trying what?"

    "Trying.  You wanted me to try harder."

    "Well...that's not *exactly* what I had in mind, angel."

    "Well," I said, simply, "that's...right now, that's all I know."

    "Oh," she said forgivingly.  "Well then...what's next?"

	"I want to kiss you."

	"Kiss me?"

	"Yeah.  Kiss me, you fool."

	She looked at me blankly.  Perhaps she realized, as I did, that we
had never truly, romantically kissed.

	I prompted, "Alright?"

	"Well...sure.  I guess so."

	"You sure?"

	"Why wouldn't I be sure?"  She frowned.  "What are you going to do?"

	"Kiss you."

	"So kiss me."

	I took a deep breath for courage.  "Okay."

	This was something I had not only never done, but had never imagined
doing and had no idea how to go about it.  I walked the short distance to
her on my knees, stretched up over the edge of the sofabed, and brought
my face close to hers.  She appeared a little apprehensive and unsure,
but she didn't flinch.  A step at a time, I gently took the arm she was
propped upon and laid it flat on the bed, which forced her to recline on
her side.  I touched her hips and nudged her to lie flat on her back,
which she did, smiling indulgently and watching me closely.  I leaned
forward a little more and put my right hand on her cheek, then I slipped
my left arm under her neck.  Cradling her in the best romantic style of
the movies, I held her thus and brought her a little closer to me.  She
adjusted herself uncomfortably and I waited until she was settled.

    I looked into her eyes.  At first I attempted to do this with a
certain panache, or a soppy, longing Charles Boyer gaze.  But her eyes
and her face undid me.  Immediately, I fell victim to her effect on me,
and the phoney gaze disappeared.  Her half-lowered eyelids, her milk-
smooth, softly sculpted face, her slightly parted, expectant lips with
their moist, dewy glaze, and her lucid, penetrating, expectant blue-green
eyes...

    All pretense disappeared.  I wanted, more than anything else in the
world, to give Martha Jane the kiss of her life.  A real kiss.  A kiss
that would be uniquely me.  The kiss of the century.  I returned her
waiting gaze with one which I'm certain must have reflected the piquant
tenderness that swept over me.  Gently I lowered my lips toward hers,
miraculously managing on my first effort to get the interlocking tilt of
our faces just right.  I waited ever so momentarily before touching my
mouth to hers.  Then I joined our faces.  Never before had my lips felt
hers -- and never before had they felt anything like it!  Meeting no
resistance, I mouthed her gently at first, massaging my way into a com-
plete awareness of the shape and texture of her yielding petals. Amazed,
I felt her return my kiss with a slight, tentative, moist pressure
against me.  I settled my lips into hers until her almost imperceptible
return of movements matching my own told my lips that her lips had found
the most agreeable, the most telling contact.  Suprised, my lips began
melting into hers, into the wondrous, creamy silk of her that met my
seeking mouth with a seeking of her own, which I learned to read and
respond to like a mirror image of her every oral gesture. Enthralled, I
allowed my lips to caress hers with slightly more pressure and a series
of small, slow, ovular movements, which seemed as natural to me as
breathing.  She, too, returned the pressure and the movement. Enraptured,
my insides sizzled as she slid one arm along and then around my should-
ers.  A wild hunger rose in me; but I controlled and tempered it, ex-
pressing it with my hand on the side of her face as a small caress and a
tender hug, a subtle drawing of her head closer to me. Captivated, I
lifted my lips only slightly and, still touching hers, I allowed mine to
caress hers like a tantalizing, slippery, mothering feather.  Enchant-
ed, I felt her return the favor.  Intoxicated, I moved my mouth closer
again, this time with a sure but carefully restrained ardor, and simply
allowed my lips to disintegrate into hers.  Gently we writhed our mouths
against each other for another long and nourishing moment, increasing the
pressure gradually, then releasing, withdrawing with languid, reluctant
slowness, until I opened my eyes and saw hers still closed, blissful,
tranquil.  Never had I been so close to her mouth or her face, which
filled my view and shut out any and all interference from the rest of the
universe.  My lips were still wet with hers; my own felt hers, felt like
hers;  mine seemed to have disappeared, her own lips taking their place.

    Gazing raptly, I stroked her cheek.

    She opened her eyes sleepily.  At first they were questioning,
uncertain.  Then she seemed to come awake and she gently pushed me away.

	"Where," she asked skeptically, "did you learn to kiss like that?"

	"That's the way I kiss."

	"No, Speedy, nobody kisses like that.  I bet you picked that up from
the movies.  You kissed me the way somebody like William Holden kisses."

	"That," I insisted, "is the way I kiss."

	"No.  That's the way William Holden kisses."

	"He got it from me."

	"Oh...I see.   Well, that's some kiss."

	"Thank you."  Daringly, without pause, I declared, "I wanna sleep in
here."

	"There's not room enough for two."

	"Then, uh..."  My eyes rolled as I tried to overcome this latest
obstacle.  "Okay, I'll have to sleep on top of you."

	"That would be very uncomfortable, Mister Holden."

	"Well, then...I guess we'll have to sleep in the bedroom."

	She smirked.  "Well, then...I guess so."

	"Well, then..." I echoed, waiting.

	But she didn't move.  After a pause she queried me with her big,
smiling, waiting eyes.  "Well?" she said in a small voice.

	I leaned toward her and took her free hand which rested near the edge
of the sofabed.  "I want you to sleep in the other room with me, because
I haven't seen you in two years.  And because I want the first thing I
see in the morning to be you.  And because I might never get the chance
to do this again."

	Her eyes softened.  "That's better," she whispered.  She tilted her
head and looked at me warmly, tenderly.  "That's more like what I wanted
to hear you say."

    Then she rose from the bed and headed straight for the bedroom in her
floppy silk pajamas.

    Perplexed, I rose and followed her.  "Well...why didn't you
tell me that's what you wanted in the first place?"

    "Oh, how unromantic."

    "But why didn't you just tell me?"

    "Because all this time, I made it too easy for you.  Because I wanted
you to learn something.  Because I was playing hard to get."  She settled
into the bed near the lamp table, lying back with her hands behind her
head in the dark.  "That's the way girls behave in real life, hon.  They
want you to figure them out."

    I stood near the bed.  "But why do girls have to play hard to get?"

    "Because they're girls."

    "But boys don't play hard to get."

    "I know.  They're boys."

    "I see," I pondered.  "So the girls play hard to get...and the boys
do the getting."

    She winked.

    In the two years that I had been away from her, I had forgotten what
it was like to look down on her alluring body in the dark.  As I stood
watching her from the edge of the bed, it all came back.  And it came
back with a vengeance.  I did not pause, but followed my impulse and
climbed onto the bed from the foot of it, and in one smooth motion I
stretched over her and lay on her, both of us fully clothed.

    She smiled, opened her arms, and I snuggled into her neck.

    She asked, "The lesson wasn't too hard on you, was it?"

    "Did you like my Clark Gable?"

    "No."

    "Oh."

    "I liked your 'you', though.  And what a kisser."  She hugged me.

    I hugged her back.  I lifted my face and looked at her.  I felt it
was my move.  I shifted my weight to her side, letting my right arm
cradle her neck.  I looked down at her breasts.  Her nipples stood out
tautly under the cloth of the pajamas.  They were different now, less
girlish, more womanly.  Or perhaps I was two years older, had new juices
flowing from my glands, and saw her differently.  I lifted my hand to her
right nipple and with two fingers cradled and squeezed it gently over the
cloth.  She shifted slightly, leaning into me.  She watched my fingers,
then she watched me.  I allowed my hands to sweep across her chest, down
her tummy, around to her hip.  She felt different; more firm, more sleek,
more smoothly sculptured.  At the crotch of her pajamas the shape of her
tuft and mound were revealed in sharp relief.  She had lost some baby
fat; her mound was more distinct, more feminine, its contours more
erotically enticing.

    With my hand I covered the gentle swell between her legs.  Right away
I realized she wore nothing underneath.  I felt her heat.  Her tuft was
thicker now, crisper.  I made a small circle on her cunt with my palm,
which could feel where her thick outer lips gently folded in and parted.
As I continued circling, I felt her hand go to the slit in my underwear.
With three fingers she formed a cone with which she lightly enclosed the
outline of my tip.  Cupping it, she squeezed almost imperceptively, with
a slow rhythm.  I felt an incredible itch that ran the length of my cock.

    As I caressed her over her pajamas her thighs parted.  I looked at
her.  "Feels different with clothes on," I whispered.

    She nodded lazily, slipping her lower lip naughtily under her teeth.

    "Feel good?" I whispered, smiling.

    Her eyes narrowed.  She nodded slowly again.

    I rubbed her another moment until I sensed moisture in the cloth
under my hand.  Her slit had widened.  And my erection was underway.
I searched her darkening eyes.  "Do you think it would still feel good
fingerfuck you like I used to?"

    She shrugged.  "I guess," she said, grinning impudently.

    I sighed a little laugh at her joke.  I lay down flat, lifted my
hips, and pulled off my underwear, flipping it onto the floor at the foot
of the bed.  I had expected she would take a while to unbutton her pajama
top, but she sat up and grabbed the hem of the shirt and pulled it over
her head and off, like a sweater.  She lay down and arched and pulled off
her bottoms.

    She was nubile and naked.  She was beautiful.  Her pubic patch had
indeed thickened and darkened and extended below the top of her slit.
Her nipples were larger and a darker pink.  As soon as I saw her I
realized I would have to learn about her all over again.

    Settling on one elbow I carefully fondled her outer fold, which was
already slick and blossoming open to invite my finger's search for her
clit.  When I found it she swallowed and her staring eyes softened.  I
began to stroke her nub in slow tiny circles.  Immediately it began to
lubricate and stiffen, and her long thighs drifted apart...

    She whispered, "Yes..."

    With her fingers she formed a small cone around my tip again, then
she found I was hard.  Her fingers searched, finding that I had smooth
curls now instead of fuzz, and she investigated my balls and my hardening
shaft, then enclosed me, gripped, squeezed up.   Her fingers found
pre-cum at my tip.

    "Speedy," she whispered.

    I looked at her.  "Hmm?"

    "Your not a baby anymore, hon,"  she whispered, circling my corona
with a wet finger.  She shook her head and smiled, repeating to herself,
"Not a baby anymore..."



                             PART 5E:


    "Let's do this for a while," I whispered.  "Just this.  Okay?"

    "Yes."  She swallowed again.  For a while we silently enjoyed touch-
ing and stroking each other with no particular goal in mind other than
pleasing ourselves and discovering all the things about us that had
changed.

    As we touched and played we talked.  I told her about the plays I'd
done, how movies and photography had captured so much of my life.  She
told of her classes, her work, what she had learned.

    I didn't entirely take the lead; I didn't yet know how.  But I was
not as passive as in the past.  I marveled at how she had grown so lithe
and graceful.  She marveled at my new shoulders, my well-formed thighs,
my growing cock, and the hair appearing on my legs, chest, and groin.  As
the night wore on we became alternately playful and serious, lewd and
virginal.  I can't remember all of it.  Very often I try to, but it all
gets jumbled.  Our old devils had entered the dark room and overpowered
everything and everyone in it.  For a while during that night, each of us
appeared to be trying to see who could bring out the deepest sensuality
in the other, who could come up with the naughtiest turn-on, who could
make the most endearing gesture.  We shut out the narrow world and the
narrow people around us, and the world inside the room expanded. At one
point she sat up and watched and held her pussy open while I licked her.
Then again, I stood up and watched her suck me as she lay across the bed,
having to make her stop sucking early because my larger cock could now
feel more of her knowing mouth and tongue.  She would stop now and then
to play with my balls and ask if it felt good.  Then I lay on the bed and
she held onto the headboard while she hovered over my face and gave me
detailed licking instructions until she almost came.  She stopped, not
wanting to end it yet.  We lay down and hugged for a while and then began
masturbating each other again.  Our devils seethed out of us in a slow
but steadily mounting stream.  We remained gentle, held back by some
subtle self-imposed constraint that would not let us take anything too
far too quickly.  We would hold ourselves at an intense edge, as if what
we needed and what we felt could be dealt with and satisfied only by its
own intensity and its own fire, one step at a time.

    Because it had been so long since I had been touched or excited, the
nature of my arousal was new to me.  For the first time I felt a tight-
ness and a pain in my balls that was not there before.  I became more
aware of our physicality together, and understood more fully the
mysteries and the implications of what we were doing.

    I knelt on my knees over her, while she lay flat and sucked me.

    "You're dripping," she said.  She touched my tip to one nipple and
rolled a finger round the sticky fluid I left there.  "You know that?
You're dripping a lot."

    "Dripping?"

    "You're making more cum, hon.  Do your balls feel tight?"

    "Yeah, they're...very tight."

    She grinned with delight and expectation.  "Maybe you'll cum. You've
never cum, have you?"

    "I don't...I don't really know."

    "You're so much bigger and hotter than you ever were."  She gently
touched and squeezed beneath my balls.  "Does that hurt?"

    "A little.  Yeah, It's...feels kinda sore."

    "Even when I touch just a little, like that?"

    "Yes."

    "Oh, Speedy," she said, laughing to herself.  "I think we have an
opportunity here that we shouldn't pass up.  Be honest.  You never came
before?  Not even by yourself?"

    I shook my head.  "I never tried it.  Other boys told me they did,
but...I didn't see how doing it by yourself could be much fun."  I looked
down at her hand and the amount of fluid she had drawn from me.
"Maybe...I could cum."

    "Think so?"

    "What happens?  I mean, how will I know?"

    "You'll know, hon."

    "I...I dunno."

    "Do you want to fuck and see if you'll cum?"

    I nodded. "We haven't fucked in a long time...Yes."

    "Then I hope..." She stopped.  "Never mind," she said, shifting her
torso higher in the bed and then leaning back into the pillows. She was
long and the color of the dim moonlight.  She raised her knees a little
so her trim thighs could fall apart and spread wide, and then reached
down and held her cunt open for me.  "Fuck me, hon."

    I lay on her, feeling physically larger than I remembered.  This made
her seem smaller to me, more delicate.  Certainly, my erection was larger
than it had ever been.  I propped myself on my arms and my toes, looking
down as I aimed my new hardness at her dark core. My tip could feel her
wet outer lips, a feeling that had not occurred with such clarity in the
past, and I paused there, unable to prevent a sharp intake of breath at
the surprising intensity of this sensation.

    "Yeah?" she whispered.  "Feel me?"

    I smiled and breathed hard and nodded.  "Wet me."

    She knew what I meant.  It meant that I held my erection at the mouth
of her cunt, the tip barely inside her, while she made small circles with
her hips, bathing my glans with the tight ring around her opening.  From
the first moment, I felt a twinge that told me this was different from
the way it had been before.  I was pain- fully and frighteningly aware of
the thin slippery skin of her inner lips moving on me.

    My arms trembled a little, and despite my effort to remain calm I
felt a rush of adrenalin that demanded more air in my lungs.  I heard my
breathing quicken and wobble nervously.

    "Feel me on your tip?  Feel me moving?"

    "Yes, it feels...different...very strange...very nice."

    "good...good"

    "Keep doin' it," I said, and she did.  Her movements were slight,
just enough to keep the sensation going.  I could feel myself getting
bigger and stiffer.  Very slowly I began to move forward as she main-
tained her movement.  I gradually moved deeper into her, hearing her
whispers:  "Let it go in me, let it go in... slow, slow.  I want us both
to feel all of you..."

    I bent down to watch.  "It feels so good going in..."

    "Feels good for me too, hon.  Ah."

    Very gradually I slid all the way in and could feel her muscles
rolling around my length.  "Oh," I gasped, and my head fell back
involuntarily.  My dick arched blissfully at the sensation of being
warmly gloved in the new world of her syrupy, finely textured inner
self.  Feeling this was quite a surprise, and quite alarming; I felt
something beyond me was threatening to take control.

    Trying to slow the whirl a bit, I pulled out just as slowly. She kept
up the gentle grind.  Again I moved forward, still gradually, but this
time without pause, going all the way into her.  With a soft hiss she
took in a long slow breath that she let out as a hotly whispered "Ahhhh"
just as I my entire length settled in her.

    "Speedy," she whispered, "you're bigger now.  I've never felt so much
of you inside me."

    I forced myself to pause, to adjust my outspread arms and give myself
time to absorb what was happening.  There was more of me down there now,
more flesh, more nerves, more to feel her with.  Shakily I began to
ascertain the texture and narrow shape of her inner cunt.  I was fully,
warmly, snugly encased.  It was almost entirely new, as if I'd never
ventured there before.  Despite my best mental efforts at wanting to stop
until I figured out what was going on, I began to slide in her, still
remaining deep, adjusting my angle so that I sensed the familiar nudge of
her clit against my shaft.

    "Ah, hon...you still know how."

    I looked at her, her eyes gleaming with what seemed an almost painful
pleasure.  She looked as if she might cry at any moment. She fucked with
her cunt and her eyes and her breath.

    "Is that okay?", I asked, grinning and pumping.

    She hissed, "Yes!  It's just right.  Just right."

    I began stroking her more deeply and purposefully.  An animal istic
urge welled up.  The purely physical began to assert itself, eroding my
resistance move by move.  I wondered, if I really wanted to stop, whether
or not I could.  For the moment, I couldn't.

    After a few strokes she whispered breathlessly, "Go all the way in
me, all the way...Yes, hold it there...like that, yes.  Be still a
minute.  Let me milk you inside me."  She ground her belly against me,
her inner flesh softly wringing my entire length.

    My head snapped back again, then fell forward.  I moaned, I moaned
again.  I looked down at her.

    She was smiling at me, her eyes half-closed with lust.  "Like
it?"

    "It's wonderful...your cunt feels so good..."

    "Getting closer, hon?  Does it make you want to cum?"

    "I don't...I don't want to yet.  It feels too good."

    "I like making you feel good...I missed this, I missed you...I want
to make it so good for you, the way you always did for me."

    Alarmed by a sudden and overpowering surge of pleasure, I pulled
out slightly.  "Wait," I panted.  "Wait a second."

    She slowed and stopped.  She, too, was a little out of breath.
"Are you okay?"

    "Just rest a minute."  It wasn't merely the physical sensations I was
resisting.  It was something else--new, unfamiliar, otherworldly.  I
felt I might be in better control of myself if I did the moving while she
lay back and enjoy it.

    I finally regained some of my air and composure. "Let me move in you,
now, for a while."

    "Okay."

    We both looked down and watched as I stroked steadily and deeply. I
felt that if I went too fast it would end too soon.  My existence
centered more and more tightly on Martha Jane's wet and sweetly enclosing
nether-mouth and her spread thighs and her whispers and irregular gasps.
The itch in my loins spread to my thighs; my strokes into her became less
controlled, more self-driven.  I could feel my glans warming inside her.
The something new and wonderful that I held back kept licking at me from
somewhere behind my brain.

    After many, many strokes I looked down.  I could not wrest my eyes
from what I saw.  She was looking straight into me as I looked deeply
into her.  I could tell by her taut neck and the force of her inner
spasms that she was starting to cum.

    "Don't stop...," she uttered, hardly able to move her mouth. Her eyes
and face were alive with pleasure.  She swallowed, she even seemed to try
to stop her cumming and she did not want to look away as she usually did;
cumming or not, she seemed determined to stay in touch with what was
happening to me.  Her neck was very taut.  She gradually stiffened under
me.  She smiled, wild-eyed and holding her breath.  She was no longer
undulating under me.  I kept fucking with the same rhythm while the dim-
ming light in her eyes signaled that she was sinking deeper and deeper,
and then she was entirely still for several seconds, during which her
channel tightened on me several times.  I was growing incredibly excited.
Her face and eyes were locked in a joyful stare, and I fucked her eyes
with mine.  I wanted to intensify her pleasure and her lust with words,
the same way she always intensified mine, and so in the middle of her
cumming I bent down and uttered "fuck" against her lips.  Immediately she
whimpered and then uttered that wordless cumming sound that she made in
her mouth somewhere and her cunt clutched, the tendons in her neck bulged
and pulsed.  I whispered, "I feel you cumming," and her eyes widened for
a second and seemed completely unfocused; and then with a long sigh she
gradually relaxed, and then jerked and made a little whimper deep in her
neck, then shut her eyes tight and let go of my arms which she had
gripped so tightly with her nails, and she let her head fall back and
gasped, "Oh!" and quickly caught her breath, wiping an arm across her
brow; and then holding onto my arms again and returning her eyes and her
face and her attention to me, she began again her smooth undulations
beneath me.  Her half-closed eyes glued themselves to mine as if she
wanted to miss nothing that might happen while I was in the grip of my
new and (to me) almost terrifying pleasure.

    "Keep fuckin', hon."

    "It's gettin' better," I whispered, growing breathless again.

    Her eyes widened eagerly.  "Yeah?"

    "It's getting..."  I could not describe it.

    Seeing me without words, she began a mothering croon. "It's okay,
hon...Just feel it.  Enjoy it..."

    "Oh...Martha Jane...I'm..."

    "It's okay.  Don't stop, it's okay."  As I moved on her she reached
up a gentle hand and stroked the back of my neck.  "Let it happen."

    My strokes became more deliberate, deeper, stronger.  It was a
strength I'd never felt before.  I didn't direct it, it directed me. I
didn't move faster, but I moved with more urgency.  My swelling cock
sought more of her.  It raced out ahead of my mind, which seemed to keep
falling farther and farther back, outraced by everything else.

    "Ready...?" she asked.  She could hardly talk.  And I couldn't speak
at all.  Uncertain of losing myself so completely, I clung desperately to
her eyes for safety.  An incredible fullness welled up in my balls along
with a wave of electrifying, undiluted lust.

    She whispered, waiting, "You're so hard in me..."

    She reached down between us and lightly wrapped two small fingers
around the base of my cock.  Her touch was all I could stand. Something
told me, then, that I was lost and there wasn't a damn thing I could do
about.

    Apparently she knew, as her fingers at my root must have sent the
signals of my first penile throbs.  I didn't think her lewd grin could
get wider, but somehow it did, and her eyebrows raised in wonder,
delight, victory, as she watched my face.

    "Yeah.  Yeah, you're gonna cum.  Cum in me."

    All I could say was, "Oh, I'm..."

    She raised her eyebrows again.  "Ah, it's starting--"

    "Oh!"

    Her cunt sucked at my tip.  It tickled intensely, insanely.  Her
circling hips slid her inner walls against the swollen underside of my
exulting cock, which took over completely.  My body lurched and, utterly
surprised, I felt the eerie, uncontrollable twist of unknown tubes in my
lower gut that writhed and spewed the first of my life's cum inside her.
My dick pumped into the splash.

    A low, gutsy moan oozed out of me.

    She wept happily,  "Yes, baby...Yes!"

    An onslaught of pleasure gripped me.  The universe shrank into a dot
inside of which there was only my wildly twitching cock and her begging
cunt.  All I could do was groan and spurt again, spurt twice, three
times, rapidly, wetly, violently.  Her face flooded with joy as she
watched me through slitted eyes.  I heard only her loving chant, "Cum,
honey...ahhh, so warm...cum..."

    I was no longer fucking--I rutted, blind.  More streams of me leapt
from the slit in my tip that wetly scraped her hugging walls. Soon I
began to slump under a final wave of bliss and the rest of me slurped
into her, into her eyes and her voice, her nipples and her squirming
belly, her spread thighs and her auburn tuft, as the last remnants of my
virginity disappeared forever into the hot, wet, sweet depths of Martha
Jane.

    Once finished, I quivered above her, exhausted.  I was com- pletely
out of breath, out of strength, out of cum, out of my mind. But she
wouldn't let me have air; she grabbed me by the neck and pulled me down
to her.  She held me so tightly I couldn't breathe. I didn't care.  I
couldn't hold her tightly enough.  If I had died, it was fine with me.
My young dick still throbbed, and she answered the throbs with a low
chuckle and a tightening of her inner muscles.  The fingers she had used
to make the small but catalytic ring around my base were now pulling on
my dick as I softened.  With half my length still inside her she
whispered hotly, "Get it all in me!", and firmly wrung me dry.  "All of
it..."

    I could only murmur into her breasts. "Oh...so good!  Whew!"

    "I know, honey.  I know."

    I could only think to myself:  I am out of control.  I'm completely
out of control.  I am going to hell.  It's so good and we both like it so
much that it has to be a sin.  I'm Adam in the Garden of Eden and I've
taken deeply, enjoyably of the apple.  Everything is different now,
forever.

    I raised up to look at her face.  She smiled at me, and then pouted,
and then blushed, and then one of her eyes squeezed out a large tear.
"Oh, baby, you came inside me.  Oh...oh, I didn't think I'd..."  She
wiped the tear away, quickly, and sniffed.  I kissed her wet cheek, and
she pulled me to her with a strong hug.

    She sniffed again, holding me to her.  "I'm so happy for you.  You
feel so warm in me."

    I whispered against her flesh, "It was soo good."

    She tightened her hug, still panting.  "I know, hon.  Oh, I know."
She gave a little laugh.  "Will you still respect me in the morning?"

    I nodded against her.

    She hugged me, held me.  Soon we were calm.  She stroked my hair.
She asked, "How do you feel, hon?"

    "I am..." I gulped.  "Am I going to go to hell?"

    "We are both going to hell, hon."  Slowly she shook her head back
and forth against mine, murmuring sleepily, "But I can't help it."


                                Continued...



            ****  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, 1996 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 6A:


    Neither my parents nor Martha Jane's mother were home that
week.  She slept with me for the first time.  When I woke, earlier
than usual, the morning sun was just above the rooftops of the
buildings beyond mine.  Dazzling shafts of sunlight rushed into the
room.  Water was running in the bathroom.

    I knocked on the bathroom door and Martha Jane invited me in to
take a bath with her.

    I told her I'd love to.  I walked into the bathroom and stood in
front of the sink, looking at myself in the mirror.

    She noticed me and said, "Do you spend every morning looking at
yourself in the bathroom mirror?"

    "I don't look any different," I said, observing the same old me
in the mirror.

    "Oh," she smirked, soaping her legs.  "But how do you FEEL?"

    I took in a deep breath, my shoulders back and my chest out,
extended my arms far out at each side, and intoned as loudly as I
could in my best, loudest, deepest, Texaco Opera Theater baritone,
"Steeee-vennnnnn!".  I beat my chest several times and grunted like
a gorilla.  Then going back to my operatic bellow, I sang from the
famous aria from Barber of Seville:  "Lala Lalala Lalala Lalala
Lala...Figaro! Figaro! FigaroFigaro Feeee-gaa-ro!"

    She said, "My, my!  Were you, uh, referring to last night?"

    I grinned.

    "Veerry flattering."  She stood and moved to one end of the
tub to make room.  "C'mon, let's wash the sleep off you."

    I climbed in and she handed me the soap, but before I got
started she held me close to her bubbly-slick nakedness and
hugged me.

    "You were asleep when I woke up," she said.  "You're a wonder-
ful lover."   She kissed my forehead.  After I soaped down she
took the bar of soap from me and lathered her hands, then reached
down to wash my cock.

    She winked.  "Remember this?"

    "Mm-hm."

    "I never thought of using soap on you when we started all this.
Of course, you're a lot bigger now."

    She rinsed me and stepped out of the tub to dry off.  She had
chores to do that day, she said, but we had time for breakfast
and a little talk.  I saw a small blue bag in the corner of the
room and asked, "That's all you bought over here with you?"  She
told me the blue bag was filled with enough spermacide and powders
to lower the Indian birth rate.  She blushed and said, "You put an
awful lot of cum in me."  After I fell asleep the night before,
she had douched twice, and twice again before I came into the
bath.

    "Douched?" I asked.

    "It's a long story, hon.  Later."   She blushed again.

    Then I remembered reading about it.  "Oh.  You mean, 'cause
we didn't use a rubber?"

    She sighed impatiently.  "Yes."

    "I don't mind using one."

    "No!" she said firmly, spreading jars of makeup on the edge of
the sink.  "And you just forget that those ugly things exist."

    I asked, "Doesn't all that stuff make you sore or dry inside?"

    "We can always apply some...lotion," she said, blushing again.
I was amused at her modesty.  After a night of raw passion, she
blushed and avoided my eyes continually.  She got into her bra,
panties, and slip right away--a far cry from the way we started
out a few years before.  As I dried off I watched, fascinated and
charmed at the sight of her putting on makeup.

    "What are you staring at?"

    I answered, "Watching you doing woman things."

    She laughed mildly, dabbing at her face with powder.  "I'm
glad you find it so enjoyable.  We women think it's just a pain
in the neck."

    "I like watching."

    "How can you get such a thrill out of watching a female cover
up what she really looks like so she can throw the wool over
everyone's eyes?"

    "I like watching women do woman things."

    "I see."

    I paused.  "I like watching you do woman things.  It's not
just watching.  It's watching you."

    "Speedy.  You're a dear.  Really."

    "I'll fix breakfast," I said, hanging up my towel.

    "You've added cooking to your many talents?"

    "Sure," I said.  "I've been hanging out in a restaurant for
years."

    "Well...I'll try anything once.  Hope we live."

    I was pretty noisy about it, but I managed to get the eggs
sunny-side up and the toast looking just right in two plates on the
small kitchen table.  Out in the back yard I found a wild daisy and
placed it in a small glass of water on the table.  She entered the
kitchen in her slip.  "Wow," she said, "Look at this, picture
perfect!  You're being so nice to me.  It looks beautiful.  Is it
edible?"

    We ate and talked.

    She told me about her schedule for the week.  Just listening to
what she had planned was exhausting.  "I'm a work fiend," she
confessed.  "I feel guilty if I don't work myself to death every
day."  She told me about her classes, the kinds of projects she was
doing, the problems she encountered with teaching in special
education.  I told her, "But you like it," and she nodded.  "Yes,"
she said, chewing off a corner from a piece of toast, "not because
I'm so dedicated, but because I'm so neurotic.  I'm terrified of
ever being poor like this again."  I asked her more about what she
did, about the people she met at school, about what college was like.

    "The first thing you should know," she warned with a strong edge
of sarcasm, "is that every professor at Memphis State is a Commu-
nist.  And anyone who shows up expecting to actually learn anything
is a pathetic egghead.  All the girls are virgins, regardless of how
many football players they've slept with."  She went on with this
litany of definitions, exaggerating each item and apparently having
a good time doing so; but after a while I realized that she was
actually defining herself as a hardworking, dedicated outsider.

    She stopped at one point and looked at me hesitantly. "Speedy,
would you...would you like to spend an afternoon with me and go to
Memphis State?  It's the holidays, but they're open--at least the
library is.  That probably doesn't sound very exciting, but--"

    I breathed in amazement.  "Really?"

    "Do you want to?"

    "That would be the best adventure I've had since Uncle Johnny
let me spend two hours in the Bump 'em Cars at the fairgrounds."

    "Yes, well, it does get a little like the Bump 'Em at exam
time, but...don't get all worked up, now, it's not the biggest
thrill I could think of for somebody as adventurous as you are."

    "But," I said earnestly, "it's what you do."

    She stared at me, taken aback.

    I went on enthusiastically, "It's your...it's your world, like
mine is in the movies and the plays.  And yours is college and
learning to be a teacher.  Of course I want to see it."

    She blinked and cleared her throat, propping her elbows on the
table and folding her hands.  "Speedy, do you know how many boys
your age and older--much older--just want to spend an afternoon
with me so they can get inside my pants?"

    "Get inside your pants?  Hm, that's a funny expression, I
never heard that one before.  You mean...to fuck?"

    "I mean that's all they want to do."

    "Don't they ever do anything else?"

    "A lot of them, Speedy, no.  Do you know what a tragedy it is
in my life just to have an argument with some boy because I have
work to do and I don't have time, just no time right away, right
then, right now, to go out with them?  They think I'll hop into bed
with them to express my undying my gratitude for their taking me to
a football game and watching them scream and guzzle beer and make
fools of themselves."

    "So," I said, tenuously, "...so do you do it?"

    "Of course not.  And then I don't hear from them for two weeks,
or a month.  Until they get horny again, and all of a sudden they
develop this deep interest in what I'm doing with my life and my
time."

    I grimaced.  "What shitheads."

    "That's a very...apt description, hon."

    "Apt?" I echoed.

    "Yes, it means--"

    "Don't tell me.  I wanna look it up."

    "I'll tell you what," she said, reaching across the table and
taking my hand, "You go with me, say, Thursday afternoon, and I'll
show you lots of things you can look up.  Would you like that?"

    "Sure."

    We cleaned up a little, as I had left some record albums lying
about, and Martha Jane made phone calls while she polished her
shoes.  Still in her slip, she went into the bedroom and started
making the bed.  When I went in there to help her we were almost
finished when she asked me to sit on the bed and started undoing my
jeans.  I told her I thought she had to get dressed for her inter-
views, but she said we still had a little time and she could stay in
her slip for now.  "I've always been curious about something," she
said, taking out my cock.  "We still have some time before I go.  I
want to show you something about your body."  Of course, I didn't
object.  With my legs hanging over the bed and Martha Jane kneeling
before me, she licked and sucked me until I was hard and then she
started fisting me quickly, her hands gliding smoothly up and down
my shaft.  Again I was startled to feel all the things that happened
in my groin as I approached orgasm.  She could tell I was close
when I began throbbing erratically.  As I neared cumming she took
one of my hands and put it into my crotch under my balls.  "Feel
here, underneath," she said.  "Keep your hand there.  In a minute
you'll feel your muscles jump."  Sure enough, I could feel swelling
and movement down there.  Then she pulled down the straps of her
slip and shoved the front of her bra below her breasts, and brought
her bosom closer to my cock.  As she fisted me she whispered, "I've
always wondered what this feels like...c'mon, hon...c'mon..."

    Soon I felt those secret muscles moving under my fingers, and I
gasped frantically, "I'll get it on you!" but she grinned and said
"It's okay, I can change...c'mon..."

    As my eyelids drooped I lost focus, and though my resources were
limited because of the night before, I started cumming.  Encouraging
me, she whispered, "C'mon...c'mon," and then "Oh!" as I gave her a
tight little squirt on her left breast.  She slowed and tightened
her pumping and I squirted again in the same place and she was
delighted.  The rest streamed out thinly over her hand and made
squishing noises while she finished me off.

    I lay back on the bed, breathless.  She stood and leaned over
me, giggling.  A drop of me ran down the swell of her breast and
sneaked under the nipple.  "Was that good?" she asked.  "You getting
used to cumming now?".  I told her it was good, but it was still a
little scary.  She said, "Speedy, I can't imagine you being afraid
of anything like that."

    "No," I said, "not that kind of scary.  It's just...it's
different.  It takes over, and it all happens at once."

    "That's the way it's supposed to feel, hon."  She walked to the
bedside table, got a kleenex, and wiped off her breast.  "But don't
worry.  You'll get accustomed to letting yourself go.  I love
watching you cum.  I never thought I'd enjoy it so much, but you get
so hard and it's so intense for you.  I like that about you."  She
wadded up the kleenex and bent down to kiss me on the nose.  "That's
one of a lot of things I like about you."

    She did not see me again until Thursday, three days later. Where
she was for three days I didn't know.  She called at least once a
day, and on Wednesday morning she came clomping with her high heels
and purse and Sunday best to see that I had not transformed the
apartment into a Frankensteinean horror.  Each night just as I
climbed into bed she would phone from next door and ask how I was.

    The phone rang Tuesday night around 9:30.  I picked up.

    "Hello," I began.  "This is the Louvre.  Wanna buy some French
post cards?"

    "Speedy, what if this had been someone else on the line?"

    "I would say 'wrong number' and hang up."

    "Did your mom and dad call today?"

    "Yes."

    "So how are they doing?"

    "Sounded like she was having a good time."

    "Just 'she'?  What about your new daddy, didn't he have any-
thing to say for himself?"

    "He never talks to me."

    "Now, that's mean.  Maybe you just never talk to him."

    "I don't think he knows how to use a telephone yet."

    "Speedy, you must learn to like him.  He's your daddy now."

    "It feels funny talking to you on the phone and you're right
next door.  Are you gonna sleep over here?"

    "...I can't, hon."

    "Why, what's wrong?"

    "I just...can't.  I know it's silly, but I can't.  I'll have to
tell you all about it."

    "Okay."

    "You all tucked in bed?"

    "Yep."

    "Well, you go to sleep.  And don't be afraid to call me if
anything goes wrong, okay?"

    "All right."

    "G'night, cowboy."

    "G'night, Miss Scarlett."

    In later years, spending most of a vacation alone would not have
been my first choice.  But that week my mind seemed particularly alive
and sensitive.  Waking, walking about town, entering a movie and
walking back out, and then strolling home, I followed the path of the
rising, passing, and setting sun as I had never done before.  In the
late afternoon I made a sandwich, packing it and a wedge of cheese
into my G.I. Joe mess kit, and defied the world by hiking all the way
to the edge of Exchange Street, at the very zenith of the hill at the
avenue's end, and sat on a bluff overlooking the river.  Battle-
hardened youth that I was after this gruelling six-block walk uphill,
I ate from the kit and swigged heartily from my canteen filled with
Nehi Grape Soda, and watched the sun go down on the flat, distant
shore of Arkansas.  The sky changed colors minute by minute, so
gradually that it was always a surprise when I surveyed the horizon
again to see how the silent panorama had repainted itself.  Before
dark it turned magenta, then intense purple, and finally black.  As
the sky dimmed, distant lights not seen in the sunlight became visible
one by one.  I wondered what might be out there.  I wondered what it
might be like not having to return home but to keep on going,
straight, past those lights and onto new lights, new rivers, new
bridges and towns.

    What got me back home was not a strong desire to be there but to
be in bed when Martha Jane called.  The phone rang at exactly 9:30
and I picked up.

    "Why, Martha Jane, you sound so clear on this wonderful invention,
Mr. Bell's telephone, just as if you were right next door!"

    "Silly.  Were you a good boy today?"

    "No."

    "That's the spirit.  Did your mother call?"

    "Yes, they're fine.  She called around supper time."

    "They'll be back Friday, then.  And next week you'll move out
of the Lauderdale Courts forever.  Won't that be great?"

    "I guess."

    "You don't sound so happy about it."

    "Well..."

    "Oh, you will be when you get there.  And you'll have that
wonderful room all to yourself instead of keeping your things in
cardboard boxes in that closet."

    "Well...maybe."

    "Oh, c'mon, you'll love it."

    "I'll have different neighbors, though."

    "...I'll have to talk to you about that...We'll have a nice talk
all about that tomorrow.  You still want to go with me to Memphis
State?"

     "I'm ready now."

     "I'm over here with textbooks up to my nose, so I'll be up a
while.  But I'll still be up bright and early, so you better get
your beauty sleep.  You all tucked in bed?"

    "I sure am, Miss Scarlett."

    "You didn't leave a stinky sink full of dirty dishes, did
you?"

    "No'm, Miss Scarlett."

    "...Are you mad at me for not being over there?"

    "No'm, Miss Scarlett."

    "Well...Okay.  I'll be there at ten in the morning."

    "Yes'm, Miss Scarlett."

    "You be all ready to go."

    "Yes,'m, Miss Scarlett."

    "Stop it.  G'night."

    Late in the night I was standing in the middle of the universe
and I had the sensation of getting larger and smaller at the same
time, while the universe shrank and expanded at the same time, and
the part of me that shrank was not getting small fast enough for the
universe that was shrinking, and the part of me that was expanding
was not expanding fast enough, and the part of the universe that was
shrinking kept pulling my expanding self back into the part that was
shrinking, and yet nothing was changing at all in any direction.  As
I tried to comprehend this a low-pitched hum grew louder, louder,
and soon it was a deafening buzz that threatened to crush even my
thought.

    I woke up, literally poised to jump through the ceiling.  I was
gasping and sweating.  I was not in bed, but standing in the pitch
black hallway between the bedroom and living room.  Apparently I had
leapt from the bed in a single broad jump, as I vaguely remember
being in the air just before I jerked to a halt.

    In the kitchen I made a glass of ice water and brought it to the
living room, where I sat in front of the Philco and turned it on.
The pearlescent eye of the green tuning tube glowed and stared at
me.  I picked up static.  Trying to relax, I listened.  After a
minute I heard a voice in there.  I could not hear the words.
Concentrating on it took my mind off the nightmare and the eerie
panic that crept into me when I remembered it.

    This was a dream I'd had before, perhaps a year earlier.  I
never told anyone about it;  I didn't know how to describe it.  Back
in bed, I removed my underwear and moved to the bed to be naked
under the moonlight.  Lying on by back, I spread my legs and looked
at my growing, lean, surprisingly strong-looking young body.  I
tried to remember what cumming felt like.  It was unimaginable
while it was happening, and so it was when I tried to recall it.  A
small machine whirred inside my chest, urging me to do something;
like the voice in the static, my brain could not understand what the
machine was saying.  I gazed past the moonlight and out into the
city.  Out there, awake, all the things I wanted to do were waiting.

     A cricket chirped.  I heard the sugary spring Southern night
air glide past the window and felt me and the yard and the tree and
Martha Jane next door and our little patch of earth turning slowly
together in the universe.  As fell asleep again I imagined I could
feel the morning approaching us.



                             PART 6B:


    Thursday was overcast and chilly.  Martha Jane and I made a long
trip over two local bus lines to the campus of Memphis State, which
was farther out than I had ever gone in my explorations.  When we
arrived I was both excited and apprehensive.  There was so much to
it!  Surrounded by a well-to-do suburb and even a few estates, the
campus of several Georgian buildings and dormitories spread over a
rustic landscape that alternated between broad green pasture and
heavily forested alcoves of pine, maple, oak and magnolia.

    I'm certain I must have seemed like a spellbound infant.
Tongue-tied, I stayed at her side like a puppy as Martha Jane, one
arm carrying a shopping bag loaded with books and notebooks, led me
down the long rambling drive toward the main library.  I spent so
much time looking up and stretching my neck to take in everything
that I tripped over every curb and twig along the way.  Martha Jane
finally had to lead me by the hand.  At the library's columned
entrance I ran to the door and tried to yank it open for her.  Sur-
prised by its weight, I was jerked back against the door and had
to lean far backward to open it again.

    She laughed, "Don't be in such a hurry."

    Inside, I was overcome by the solemnity and silence in the large
and spacious building, which was far more imposing than the small
branch library I knew in my neighborhood.  Martha Jane walked ahead
of me to the front reception desk.  I followed, my neck craning and
my eyes agape at the high walls solid with shelves and books.  My
tennis shoes squeaked softly on the tile floor and echoed into the
ceiling.  I was so flabbergasted that I walked right into her as she
stopped to have the receptionist check her bag.  I shifted to avoid
standing on her feet, apologizing so loudly that my voice shot back
at me several times over, startling me, and I had to lower my
volume.  Turning around and trying to take it all in, I took a step
or two in each direction to try to see down the paths of shelves and
oak tables to my left and right, only to stumble backward with a
loud clunk into the face of the reception desk.

    Martha Jane said quickly to the receptionist, "He's going to be
with me.  He's not a student or anything, he doesn't have an i.d.--"

    The bespeckled, matronly woman smiled at Martha Jane and handed
her back the shopping bag of notebooks.  The lady looked exactly the
way I had always imagined librarians would look.

    "That's perfectly all right," the woman said warmly, and she
peered down at me cheerfully through her bifocals.  "Well, young
man, this must be your first visit."

    Martha Jane laughed and blushed.  "Yes, it is.  I'm afraid he
doesn't have his bearings yet.  Bumping into everything..."

    "Oh, don't you worry, he'll find his way around.  You enjoy
yourself, young man.  If you're interested, there is a child's
section right over there in that far corner just past the card
catalog cabinet."

    I asked, "Where do you have the newspaper stacks?  I guess I'll
start with The New York Times Index?  Do you have it back to the
1920's?"

    She looked at me and then at Martha Jane, a little surprised.

    Martha Jane grinned at her.  "He likes newspapers."

    "Oh, how interesting.  He's your son, is he?  Oh, I'm sorry, you
certainly don't look that old.  Your brother?"

    "No, he's my..."

    "Student," I interjected, somewhat formally.  Behind me, out of
the lady's sight, I felt Martha Jane poke a finger in my back.

    "Oh, I see.  How nice, bringing your students to the library in
person, that's a wonderful idea.  Well, now, you get settled and
then come back here and I'll show you to the periodical stacks."

    "Thank you," I said, and Martha Jane also whispered a thank you
and led me by the hand into a small alcove with a large writing desk
upon which she parked her shopping bag.  She smiled wryly at me as
she removed her sweater.  "You're my what?  My student?"

    "It had a certain status."

    She blushed. "I'm glad you spoke up.  I had to stop myself
because I almost said you were my boyfriend.  I'm certain she would
have got a rise out of that."

    I smiled broadly.

    "Now, you've been in libraries before, so you know what the
general setup is.  I'll be working right here if you need anything,
or anybody at the big front desk can help you."

    She left me on my own.  A young woman at the front desk gave me
a brochure with a map of the building and directed me to the card
catalog filing cabinet.  On first seeing it I was taken aback.  So
many drawers!  And in each drawer were hundreds of index cards, some
packed so tightly they had to be shoved back firmly to be read.  I
didn't know where to begin.  There were so many choices.  The
problem was, I wanted to see everything at once.  Going through them
became stultifying after a while; I wanted something more substan-
tial, something I could hold in my hands.

   Leaving the card catalog as a hopeless case of too much to absorb
at once, I moved to the stacks themselves.  Looking over the titles,
I couldn't imagine how any book or index or subject might be missing
from this building.  Following the map, I took the elevator to the
next floor and found myself confronted with hundreds of shelves,
thousands of books.  The musk of paper filled the room.  And on the
next floor I encountered the same odor, and the same endless maze of
stacks and shelves and labels and volumes.  On the elevator again,
to yet another floor of the same thing.  And from there, a curled
iron stairway leading to still more, and then to another wing of
more floors, more tiers of books.  I grappled with one thick book
that almost pulled me to the floor as it slid from its shelf.  It
was a weighty volume of nineteenth century photographs.  Opening its
large pages separated by translucent tissues which themselves had
chipped and yellowed, I found myself in the grip of an eerie
fascination with the faces of the people in the pictures.  Starkly
and stiffly posed, their eyes seemed alive and knowing--a strange
and hair-raising sensation, because these people had posed for the
photographs in the 1870's.  There were long shots of tailcoated,
booted men in front of banks and post offices and on street corners.
And there were pictures of the streets.  New York City in 1876.  An
interior of a fancy restaurant, the shot taken so that the tall
windows lined up along the right and rays of sunlight drenched the
floor and the tables, leaving the corners of the room deep in
shadow.  I could smell the wood frames of the windows, hear the
photographer prompting carefully as he held the shutter open for the
long exposures required in those days.  The streets and the build-
ings and the rooms struck me as being oddly familiar; I was not
surprised at seeing them, and felt that I was seeing nothing new.
Everything seemed to be exactly in its proper place.  The surprise
was my knowing that it was so, that I had seen these buildings and
their arched windows and tall shadowed doorways before.

    A rustle of clothing startled me.  I looked up.  Martha Jane was
strolling toward me.  I had been studying the book so closely that
my eyes watered and the back of my neck was cramped.

    "You've been gone for hours," she said.  "I looked everywhere
for you.  Do you have any idea what time it is?"

    "I'm sorry," I stuttered, finding my mouth dry.

    "Find anything interesting?"

    "This," I said, holding the book open with both hands.  I
touched my fingers to a full-page photograph of 4th Avenue, in
downtown Manhattan, taken in 1881.

    She looked at it.  "What about it?"

    "I've..."  I was startled as the words came out of my mouth,
almost on their own accord.  "I've been here."

    "Here?  You've been on this street before?"

    I nodded.

    "Speedy, this is...Hon, this street is in New York City.  The
picture was made sixty or seventy years ago.  Maybe it reminds you
of Adams Street in Memphis.  It looks a lot like it."

    I shook my head slowly, not believing it myself.  "No," I
muttered.  "I mean it feels like...I was here, on this street.
This street."

    "You mean, like deja vu.  You know about deja vu?"

    "Yes.  I remember looking it up.  This is what deja vu is?"

    Standing beside me, she gazed into the picture.  I saw her
eyelashes flutter as she scanned the page from corner to corner.
I felt embarrassed.  It was true: the photograph was from another
century, from a place I'd never seen.

    She looked into my eyes with her piercing blue-green orbs
floating in white.  "You feel you were there?  Really?"

    I nodded.

    "I've had feelings like that too, hon."

    Her words both astounded and intrigued me.  For a moment both of
us stared at the photograph.

    Then she said, "Come with me.  I want to show you something."

    She led me down the iron staircase and then down another, to a
floor of magazine stacks and dozens of metal shelves piled with
loose papers and brochures.  She took me to a corner where her hand
went straight to an enamel-backed issue of a National Geographic.

    "Look at this," she said mysteriously, and flipping the pages
along her thumb she seemed to know exactly the page she wanted and
found it right away.  She held the magazine open and motioned for me
to take it.  "Look," she said quietly.

    It was a grayed, gold-bordered monochrome photograph.  The woman
was in a shawl and held a child wrapped so heavily that only part of
its forehead could be seen.  In the background was what appeared to
be a desert.  The picture was taken from the knees up.  The woman
wore what looked like a light gray (pale blue?  pale yellow?) heavy
shift tightly girdled at the waist with a white cord.  The folds and
shadows of the loose garment revealed that she was slim and deli-
cate.  Looking suspiciously toward the camera, her bright eyes
projected a strange mixture of fear and concern.  Her left arm
cradled the child closely; but her right was extended across the front
of the child's wrapped body, facing the camera, and the sleeve of
her garment fell back to reveal her long, slender white arm with her
fingers spread around the child's covered head.

    She breathed, "It's me."

    And as I continued studying the woman, who did not look like
Martha Jane except for her remarkable eyes, Martha Jane stretched
her right hand across the page and spread her fingers in the same
pose that was in the picture.  I was silent, numbed.  Their arms
and hands looked alike.

    She mused aloud, "There's probably nothing to any of it.  It's
just a feeling I have when I see this picture.  I've looked at it
hundreds of times.  But always, I get the same feeling.  I've seen
that desert.  And those mountains back there on the landscape."  She
sighed, taking the magazine from me.  "Or maybe I'm just going crazy
or..."  She jammed the magazine back in its place and added soberly,
"...maybe I just take myself too seriously."

    I felt giddy at the prospect that I wasn't the only creature in
the world who had otherworldly sensations.  Martha Jane reinforced
that when she said, "Speedy, I hope you don't think I'm just weird,
but I feel those things all the time."

    I said earnestly.  "I feel the same way sometimes."

    As she led me out of the room she confided, "Speedy, you're the
only person in the world I could have shared that with."

    "What do you think it means that we both feel those strange
things?"

    She put a finger to her lips and whispered mischievously, "Shh.
It means we're both crazy."

    I whispered back, "I won't let the lady at the front desk know."

    "Come on, let's go to the cafeteria before they close and get
a late lunch.  I'll introduce you to the wonderful world of institu-
tional food."

    The cafeteria was closing when we arrived, so we picked out
cold sandwiches and cokes in plastic cups and went outside to sit
on the massive steps of the administration building.  From there
most of the campus spread before us, as far as we could see, into a
dense wood beyond a grove of magnolias.  A chill, early spring wind
picked up and rustled the stiff leaves of the magnolias.  Some
sparrows and mockingbirds hopped around us and we pitched them the
crumbs that were left from our lunch.  Martha Jane was finishing the
last of her coffee, which she referred to as "college soup."

    "Horrible stuff," she said, sipping.  "It's addictive.  Ruins
your tummy.  Gives you insomnia."

    "Why do you drink it?" I asked.

    "Because it's oh so necessary, hon.  When you get into college
you'll find out how very very needed it is.  I was falling asleep
taking those notes in the library.  Sometimes you think you'll go
into a coma, but you just keep on working."

    She finished the coffee and sat one step lower than me, her
knees raised and her head propped on them.  She looked up at me
sideways.

    "You're finally leaving the project.  I'd give anything to be
leaving, though I know I will someday, not long from now.  My
mother's dating now.  She met a very nice man in the office supply
business.  He has a beautiful home right out there, near where you'll
be living with your mom and your dad.  He's in a richer neighborhood,
so I know it's not quite the same, but...it'll be yours, and you'll
have your own place.  You're way too old to be living in a closet,
you have too many interests.  I should think you'd be very happy
about all that.  But you're not."

    I shook my head.  I pinched a small piece off the remains of my
sandwich and pitched it to a lone mockingbird a few steps below.

    "Why not?" she asked gently.

    I didn't respond, holding back the real answer.  Finally I just
shrugged.

    "Is it because I won't be your neighbor anymore?"

    I nodded.

    "Speedy, that's very nice.  But you can't give up everything
just to live next door to me.  I'm hardly there anymore, anyway.
And when I can, I'll be moving away again.  Then what would you do?"

    "Well...I'll stay in the project until you move again."

    "And then what?"

    I shrugged.

    "And then what?" she repeated.

    "I don't know."

    "Speedy, listen to me--"

    I tried to remain casual.  Stubbornly I said, "You're my friend."

    "I know, hon, but both of us have to get out of that place sooner
or later.  Both of us need homes, not just a hole in a wall."

    "You're my friend," I said again, offering another crumb to the
white-trimmed mockingbird, who chased greedily after it.

    "I know, but you'll have other friends.  A whole neighborhood
full of them, not like those rough kids downtown."

    "You're my friend," I said again, stubbornly, and pitched another
crumb.

    "And you'll be in high school before long, at Christian Brothers,
and there's so many smart kids there just like you--"

    "Don't make me cry!" I demanded, crying and then choking it back
in the same instant--but not soon enough to stifle the single tear
that dripped down my face.  My nose ran and I sniffed loudly.

    "Honey!" she whispered in amazement.  "Here..."  She produced a
kleenex from her sweater pocket and reached up toward my face.

    But I took it from her.  "No!" I said stubbornly, and wiped my
nose.  "No, I won't cry.  I will...not...cry.  I'm too old to cry.
I don't have any business crying."

    She started to rise but I put my hand on her shoulder, so she
moved up only one step and was sitting next to me.

    "Baby," she crooned, "you've been holding this back from me for
a long time, haven't you?"

    "There's nothing to hold back.  You're my friend.  That's all.
I've lost friends before.  And I've liked people who didn't like me.
And you told me things you didn't like about people and how much
work you're doing and how you can't spend all your time with them.
I know you have to leave the place.  I know you want a home.  This
week I went down to the river front and watched the sun, and I saw
the whole world in front of me and I wondered how big it was, how
much of it is out there and how much I had to do.  How much I had to
learn.  It's your world, too.  I know you'll leave, or I'll leave.
And I'd never try to stop you.  I'd never try to take that away from
you and I'd never blame you, like I did last time.  'Cause I know
it's not because of me, it's because of what you have to do, it's
what you want.  And because--"

    I blew my nose hard, once and for all.  "Because I know you
don't like schmucks, and I don't wanna be a schmuck!"

    "Speedy..."

    I would not look at her.  I could feel her looking across at me,
leaning toward me.  "I don't have to actually *like* leaving my
friend on the other side of town, do I?" I complained.  "I don't
have to be a schmuck, but I don't have to like it either."

    For a long minute she didn't say anything, and I refused to let
her see my face until I felt I was totally in control again.

    I felt her arm go around my shoulder.  She put her cheek to mine
for a second then pulled away from me.  "Look at me," she said.
When I hesitated she said, "Look at me, hon."

    I turned to her and she had her teeth and jaw set in a playful,
mock-tough, happy little smile.  She said, "C'mere" and put both
arms loosely around my neck and pulled me to her slightly so that
our foreheads were touched.

    "Hey, bud, answer one question."

    "Yeah?"

    "Did you mean everything you just said?"

    "Yes."

    "You didn't just get it from some movie somewhere?"

    "Hey, lady...This ain't Hollywood."

    "Speedy...Steven...don't ever let me call you a little boy
again.  Don't even let me think it.  If you catch me doing it,
remind me of today.  Promise?"

    "Promise."

    "I've got a proposition for you, Mister Ricci."

    "Proposition?"

    "Yeeeahh...We still going to the movies tonight?"

    "If you want."

    "Yeah, I want, but after that...I want you to spend the night
with me."

    She stuck her tongue out, far out, and licked my nose.

    I wiped it off with the kleenex.  "What if my folks come home
early or something?  Tomorrow's Friday."

    "Then we'll stay up and keep watch."

    "You don't have to.  Stay with me, I mean."

    "Yes I do, hon.  Yes I do."




                             PART 6C:


    That night we walked through light drizzle all the way to the
Warner's on Main Street and saw "The High and the Mighty."  The
minute the film was over, I knew I'd go back to see it again and
again.

    "Oh, my," Martha Jane said as we rose from our seats to leave.
"That was pretty schmaltzy, wasn't it?"

    "Yeah, it was.  Schmaltzy.  That's what makes a great movie."

    "You just say that because John Wayne was in it and he saved the
airplane."

    "But that's what schmaltz is," I insisted.

    We had been sitting near the screen.  As we turned to go out,
we were confronted with a thick crowd moving at a snail's pace.

    "It'll take forever to get out of here, Speedy."

    "Don't worry.  Follow me."  I led her on a detour down one of
the side aisles where I pushed down the handle on a black-painted
door that was difficult to see.  It opened into an empty alley that
led to the main street.

    She said, "Hey, I'm glad I decided to bring you with me."

    Outside, the drizzle had grown into light rain.  I walked
out into it.  "It's like Gene Kelly in "Singin' in the Rain", I
said, holding out my arms.

    "You won't start tap dancing, will you?  Speedy, get under
the umbrella with me.  You'll get soaked."

    I walked ahead of her.  "But I want to.  It's drama, it's
Hollywood.  It's schmaltz."

    "It's insanity."

    I stayed ahead of her, getting wetter by the minute.  Now and
then I'd look back at her, a few yards behind me under her um-
brella.  "Come on, Scarlett!  Where's your sense of adventure?"

    "It's right here under my umbrella."

    A man in a rain coat and rainhat passed me on the sidewalk going
the other way.  He looked at me, and I gave him a silly smile.  Then
he looked at Martha Jane behind me, who strained to give him a
perfectly normal smile.

    She called out to me, "People are staring at youuuu."

    "Martha Jane, honey," I said cockily.  "This is my night.  I just
got that feelin', baby.  It's like...like money from home.  Like,
nothin' can stop me now."

    "Pneumonia will stop you.  Hon, you've seen too many movies."

    "Look!" I exclaimed, and stopped short.  I pointed across the
street at the Memphis Light, Gas and Water office building.  Built
in the 1920's, it was famous for its thousands of 60-watt electric
bulbs that lined the frontage and the entrance marquis.  Onto the
sidewalk they cast a strong yellow light that shimmered in the rain
and glowed as brightly as the bulbs themselves.  "Look at that!  It
looks just like the ending of the movie tonight.  Remember John
Wayne whistling at the end, and walking down the sidewalk with all
the yellow lights?"

    She looked at me sternly and said, "No."

    "C'mon, let's walk in the yellow light."

    "Get under the umbrella," she said, harder now.

    "But what's wrong with me doin' it myself?"

    "Because," she said, louder and upset now, "I'm wearing a wool
sweater and it'll get wet and ruined and I can't afford another one!
Now get under here with me and stop making me so angry with you!"

    Surprised, I walked to her.  She scowled angrily and started
walking toward home.  For a tense moment we didn't say anything.  I
took the umbrella, offering to hold it for her, and she smiled
tightly and said, "Thank you, you're a gentleman," and we walked
under the umbrella together.  I looked at her.  She looked straight
ahead and wouldn't look at me.  After a minute she took my arm and
put hers through it.

    "It wasn't you," she said.  "It was me.  Some things just remind
me that I'm poor.  I've worked so hard.  And I wear the same sweater
for six years, and the same shoes, and borrow clothes from more
fortunate girls with more money so I can look for work.  And all I
do is work and I'm still not out of it.  And I don't have a job and
I looked for one all week.  But I won't quit school to take a
full-time job.  I applied for a job yesterday and the guy, the boss,
he had me in his office talking to me and he started telling me
about how demanding the job was, how there was all this clerical
work and he said I could have it but I'd probably have to cut some
of my classes if I wanted the work because it took so-and-so many
hours a week.   Well...I told him there was no chance I'd quit any
of my classes, and he said, well, he could make a little deal.  A
little deal, he said.  There would be a little something extra,
after hours, and he could pay me for it.  He could pay me a lot for
it, he said.  And the way he was looking at me...He knew I was
desperate.  He could tell I needed the job.  So he was going to
make me a little deal.  A little after hours deal.  Oh, Speedy,
sometimes I hate being pretty.  I hate being trapped.  Evelyn's
getting successful now, people are finding out how good she is at
her job, and when a man looks at her like that and wants to make a
little deal she can just tell him to shove it.  I can't do that
yet.  I can't say that without losing out.  So I passed it up.
I told him thanks but no thanks.  And I walked out.  But I didn't
want to say thanks -- I wanted to say 'shove it, mister'.  I
didn't even get that much satisfaction out of it.  All I could do
was walk away from it and just forget about it."

    I didn't know what to say, so I walked with her silently and
put my hand on the arm she had locked in mine.

    "I'm getting too desperate.  I want it too much.  I have to stop
wanting it so much.  You were having such a good time and I don't
often see you feeling that good.  I didn't mean to stop you.  I
might have even been...a little jealous, seeing you let go and
watching you say 'screw you' to the world."

    She simmered down and walked silently for a moment.

    "Hey," I said.  "I've got a Hank Williams album at home my Aunt
Frances bought me."

    She smirked at me.  "Well, you certainly know how to change the
subject, don't you?  You don't fool around."

    I shrugged. "I guess you said what you wanted to say."

    She hugged me.  "You know something?  You're a pretty cool guy.
I kinda like you."

    I winked at her.

    She winked back.  "So, you want to play Hank Williams and turn
out the lights and watch the rain?"

    "Sounds nice."

    "You, uh, wanna do it nekkid?"

    I looked at her, then cleared my throat.  I blushed.

    "What's wrong?" she asked.  "Oh, don't tell me I embarrassed
you!  Oh my lord, you have to be kidding!  "

    "I kinda thought, after the story you just told me..."

    "I was talking about a greaser who was taking advantage of me
and girls like me.  He had an office full of them, all practically
the same age.  I wasn't talking about you.  You're different.
We're different.  You know that."

    I shook my head.  "Maybe I'm too young.  Sometimes girls are,
uh, verrry mysterious."

    "You don't seem to have a problem understanding me...most of
the time."

    "Most of the time," I said.

    "Okay.  We'll go home.  Turn out the lights.  Play Hank
Williams.  Get nekkid.  And I'll tell you all you want to know
about 'us girls'."

    "Deal," I said.

    Sometime later, Martha Jane and I lay nude together in her
apartment, listening to the rain patter against her bedroom window.
The Hank Williams album had long since been played and replayed, and
she had explained to me a great deal about women, and different
kinds of women, and girls, and the way she thought about sex and
boys when she was my own age.  Then she wanted to know about boys;
specifically, she wanted to know about me; and more specifically she
wanted to know exactly what it was I liked best when she sucked me,
and after I told her she did it exactly that way. She did it so well
that I began feeling the now-familiar tightening and the pleasure
pangs and the lusty itch and told her I was starting to cum and that
she had to be careful because I was going to cum in her mouth if she
didn't stop.  Rather than stop, she kept sucking with a sweet
vengeance until she felt the first spurt.  Then she slowed, tanta-
lizing me, and in my dim state of consciousness as I emptied my bag
of cum into her mouth I heard her gulp and swallow until I fell back
and lay still.  With her hands and lips she drained all of me into
her and then lay beside me while I recovered.

    "So," she said, "now you know another way to cum."

    "I didn't think you wanted to swallow it."

    "Some girls don't.  I never sucked that boyfriend I told
you about.  But I wanted to now because it was you.  Your cum."

    "Oh, yeah," I murmured, "your boyfriend."

    "Don't be jealous, hon, I don't see him anymore."

    "Did you and him...?"

    "Yes.  Not very often.  And I made him use a rubber, and I
hated it."  She laid a gentle hand on my arm.  "Don't worry about
him.  It wasn't at all the way it is with you and me.  And I love
your dick without a rubber, it feels good inside me and it tastes
good sucking you."

    "Yeah?"

    "Yeah, dummy."

    "I thought I was finished cummin', but when I heard you swallow
I sort of starting all over again."

    "Is that what it was?  I thought it ended, too, and then you
squirted more."

    Not to be outdone, I told her there was still more I wanted to
know about women.  Specifically, about her.  Specifically, about her
most pleasurable spots and how she liked being licked.  Another half
hour went by as she spread her legs and educated me in the details
of her nipples and tummy and thighs and cunt.  She was much better
at explaining the technical details than I was at explaining my own,
though at one point she had to make me stop.  I asked her why and
she said, "It's so intense, I thought I was going crazy.  Hon, you're
getting so terribly good at this!"  After she rested she asked me to
keep going and explained more to me, although at times she was so
breathless I had trouble understanding her.  Eventually her sentences
made very little sense and she stiffened and quivered with a long cum.

    She explained the differences between how it felt when I made
her cum manually or orally, and how her outer lips were especially
sensitive right after she came, so since I was hard I entered her
and we started fucking slowly and she told me how wonderful it felt
to fuck after she had just cum.  She asked if it felt different for
me, now that I'd already cum once, and I said it felt more sensitive
but that I also felt more in control.  So we practiced learning how
we could tell when either of us would start cumming and how to stop
it but keep the pleasure going until we were ready to start again.
Both of us started a long climb that took us to an edge where we
didn't want to stop and couldn't, and I started squirting in her
when she was in the middle of her cum and her contractions milked me
so thoroughly that I didn't want to move when it was over.  For a
long time we held each other until she said she had to get her
little blue bag and go in the bathroom.  This time I didn't mention
rubbers, knowing how much she disliked them.

    When she came out she said she was okay and asked if I wanted to
fuck again.  It took a while to harden me, which she did with her
mouth and then by putting me half-hard inside her and moving under
me.  Less urgent and hysterical now, we were both almost clinical as
we talked and excited each other.  When I was hard enough I screwed
her the way she told me she liked, bringing her to an edge and then
changing my movements to slow her down, until finally she said she
wanted to cum, so I moved in her the way she wanted and didn't stop
until she came.  I let her rest a minute and started again, keeping
her on the edge, and finally she came again and almost fainted.  I
was thoroughly drained by then and didn't cum, though I was close a
few times and highly sensitized.  At that point I needed rest more
than I needed another orgasm.

    For a while we talked sleepily, listening to the rain that still
slopped outside the window.  She put her head on my chest and I
found out how to massage her temples with my thumbs.  I caressed her
that way until I knew she was asleep.  Watching her doze on me was a
marvel.  Filled with tenderness, I continued stroking and touching
her, finding the exact shape of her gentle shoulders and her back,
playing in her hair, learning the wonder of the hollows and curves
of her trim waist and flared hips.  Her deep and steady breathing
became my music for the night, along with the waning rain.  I didn't
want to fall asleep right away.  I wanted to keep holding her and
listening.  I wanted the night to go on.  I considered staying awake
all night and would not allow myself to fall asleep; this would make
the night last longer, I reasoned, and by morning it wouldn't matter.

    But I was asleep before I knew it.  I found myself in the middle
of the universe again.  I was floating.  Somewhere in the distance I
heard the hum, almost imperceptibly, and I thought this time I would
wake up and pay attention and I would know what it was.  But then
the dark that had no shape began changing and not changing shape and
I thought: no no here it comes again --

    I was standing in her kitchen.  Panting.  I gulped, trying to
figure out how I got there.  Behind me I heard her bare feet running
toward the room.  She whispered frantically, "Where are you?
Speedy, where did you go?"

    Turning, I saw her arrive in the doorway, and then she came
toward me quickly.  I stumbled to her and as soon as I felt her
nakedness against me I clasped her tightly and wanted to disappear
into her breasts.

    "Sweetheart, what's wrong?  You almost knocked me off the bed,
you jumped out and ran so fast!  I never saw anyone run so fast!"

    "I dreamed this before," I gasped.

    "Of course you were dreaming, hon, of course. Are you okay now?"

    "I dreamed this before," I repeated,  I held more tightly.  One
hand at her back, my other held her by her smoothly globed buttocks
and pressed her into me voraciously.  She reciprocated and writhed
into me.  Her pliant body fit into me as if her flesh and bones were
part of mine.  My cock was incredibly hard against her pubic hair.

    "Hon, your heart's beating so fast!  What's wrong?"

    "I had this dream before," was all I could say.  I let go of her
and pulled her by the hand and led her back into the bedroom. "I'm
okay, I'm...waking up.  I'm okay."  Still holding her hand I gest-
ured for her to climb in, and when she was in the bed on her back I
pulled her knees wide and opened her legs and fell on her, clasping
her as tightly as before, my face in her neck, mashing her tight
breasts against me.  Frantically, realizing I had little control
over what I was doing and that it may have been part of the dream, I
searched for her with my cock, which was painfully erect.

    "You want me hon?" she asked.  "Want me?  Wait...let me get
wet."  She licked her palm and I felt her rub herself with it but
I knew that wouldn't make her wet enough so I scooted down and
licked her--slowly, thinking that she'd get naturally wetter if I
did it the way she liked, and after only a few seconds she said,
"Good, hon.  Hurry inside me."

    I moved up again, quickly, lunging with my cock and missing.
Her hand helped, and I went straight in.  Doing something I had
never done before and had never thought of doing, I put my hands
under her butt and hid my face in her neck and fucked her
rapidly, deeply, hungrily.  She said "Yes, hon, it's good, it's
good," and right away I came.  It was not a long or a very wet cum,
but it was blindingly intense and as always she milked me with her
cunt when she felt me throb in her.

    Then I simply lay gasping on her, afraid to let go, amazed at
how I had just fucked her so thoroughly and completely and quickly.
She caressed my neck and back.

    "What was wrong?" she whispered.

    "I don't know what it is," I moaned into her neck.

    "But what did you dream, hon?"

    "I don't know what it is," I said again.

    "Are you okay now?"

    "Yes.  I came in you.  You'd better go in the bathroom."  I
started to move for her, but she stopped me.

    "No.  Not until you're asleep again."

    "I'm okay, go ahead."

    "Shhh.  I won't leave you in here alone."  She put a hand on
my back and one on my rear and pressed me into the pliant, warm,
clinging length of her and squeezed her cunt on me.  Then she
rested and held me.

    I more than slept: I fell unconscious.  I woke much later as
the birds were just beginning to sing in the dark.  Their song
meant the sun would rise soon.  The rain had stopped.  Martha Jane
lay next to me on her side, one arm around my waist.  Her face was
toward mine, eyes closed, lips softly parted, hair splayed on the
pillow.  I kissed her cheek very lightly, not wanting to disturb her.
Faintly I could smell her body on me and felt her dried moisture
between my legs.  I put my hand on her waist and slept again.

    In the morning we woke and bathed together and I made breakfast
again.  As we ate I was unable to explain my dream to her, though I
tried.  She got dressed and went to the supermarket and I went to my
apartment and got my bed ready for her.  Late in the morning she
returned and we got back into bed, this time at my place.  She
grinned as we embraced and said, "We owe the old place one more try
before you're gone."  I was still a little tired and she wanted to
talk about my dream, but I stopped her by fingerfucking her until
she had a prolonged orgasm during which her hot and frantic whispers
never stopped.  Then she was very tired, and we rested and made
lunch, then got back into bed and napped for half an hour.  We got
up and bathed again.  Though still tired, I asked if we could fuck
again and she smiled and led me back to bed.  Languidly she lay back
with her thighs spread flat and watched me as I steadily fucked her.
I wanted to learn more about how I could tell I'd be cumming.  I
stroked lazily in her until I tired again, but I still didn't cum.
She moved me to the edge of the bed and lay on top of me, moving
gently on me, first in circles for a while and then up and down until
she was tired as well.  Having her on top left me more rested and
very erect and horny, so I moved her to her back on the edge of the
bed and with her legs dangling to the floor I stood between her
thighs and found the bed just high enough to let me stand and enter
her deeply.

    She lay restfully and looked down to watch, one hand behind her
head and the other stroking the exposed part of my shaft.  I stood
between her outstretched legs, marveling at how the skin of her inner
thighs now had a tight, athletic tone and flesh that whispered faintly
as I stood and pistoned gently in her snug wetness and watched her
subtly arch her mound up and down.  Finally, almost out of breath, I
could feel my shaft start twitching.

    She asked, "Are you close?"

    "...Yes..."

    "Wait," she said, smiling devilishly.  She held my hips to make
me stop thrusting and then she sat up a little, saying "I've always
wanted to do this."  Biting her lip girlishly, she looked into my
eyes and held my half-immersed shaft with one hand and with her
other fingers she pressed the muscles under my balls.

    "Cum in me this way, hon," she said.  "Let me jack you off
into me."  With that, she began gently but quickly masturbating
me with half my cock in her.

    All I could do was throw my head back and moan.

   Her breasts jiggled as she swiftly but neatly jacked me off
with three slender fingers while rapturously studying my face.

   "Oh, I"m...Oh, it's so close!"

   "hon...I can't believe how wonderfully wicked this feels."

    She jacked me some more, not strongly, just enough to carry me
along an almost painfully slow, irresistible glide into a long and
libidinous cum, which finally arrived with a smashing wave of sensa-
tion at the tip of my cock where the wet ring of her outer lips held
me and warmly, subtly clung; my knees weakened and bent, and uncon-
trollably I leaned back with my cock and hips extended toward her,
my tummy tightening.  I watched helplessly as my knees moved out and
spread my thighs lewdly; and with a jerk of my hips a blob of cum
shot out of me like a bullet.

    She felt it pulse along my shaft.

    "There, baby, theeerrrr...mmm, you're cummin' so good, hon...
...Mmm!"  She beamed up at me, surprise and lust flooding her face.
She gently squeezed my balls.   "I feel it," she murmured glutton-
ously, highly satisfied with herself.  She watched my cock and
continued draining me.  "This is so good."

    Soon she could tell from my glazed eyes and the weakening of my
throbs that I had peaked, so she slowed her smooth squeezing and
stroked my chest as I finished.

    Then I collapsed on her.  I was emptied, and completely out of
breath.

    She gave a low chuckle as I rested, still standing but bent over
her with my face in her neck as she lay on the bed with her legs
hanging over the side.

    She said, "Hey, you animal, you really liked that, didn't you?"

    I nodded, struggling to get my breath.

    She chuckled again, contentedly.  "Oh my, so did I.  I was so
surprised at myself!"

    I panted into her neck, "You always...make it feel so good."

    She whispered, "Yes, and I want to, because you make it good for
me.  You always do--it's like a fuck fantasy come true.  It's very
special, the way we please each other, the way you always seem to
just...know."

    I craned my neck and gave her a long kiss on the cheek.

    By that afternoon, when we started straightening up for the
return of our relatives, both of us were saying we probably wouldn't
want to have another orgasm for months.

    Of course, we were both wrong about that.


                                Continued...

             ****  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, 1996 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 7A:


    My mother scowled as she stood in the doorway of my new bedroom in
our new house in the new suburb on Macon Road.  She warned me, "This room
better be straightened up before your daddy gets home."

    As she turned to leave I said, "Can you close the door, please?"

    Her frown deepened. "Why do you always stay in here with the door
closed?"

    "I just do," I replied, sitting on the floor and pouting, surrounded
by the artifacts and tools that I had collected during the past few
months in my large room.

    She closed the door, sighing impatiently.  I remained on the floor
and pondered how I might organize the mess around me.  I had books,
comics, magazines, drawing supplies, record albums, newspapers, theater
magazines, brochures, copies of theatrical scripts, research papers and
mementos of plays and movies.  Now and then I bought a copy of the New
York Sunday Times at the Union Station newsstand when I visited my
godparents, as I still did almost every weekend.  Several issues of the
Times, with all sections intact, stood piled in one corner of the room.
And there were reams of lined looseleaf paper filled with schoolwork and
drama club notes and the thousands of words of novels and stories that I
had begun writing since the move to the new house.  Unfortunately I had
only a single chest of drawers and one small two-shelf bookcase, my bed,
a small table with a record player, a desk large enough only for a book
and small pad, and an eight-inch knickknack shelf screwed into the wall
near one of the two windows.

    Knowing my stepdad would be home within the hour, I began stuffing
the loose papers into a couple of cardboard boxes.  I found room for the
boxes in my closet, along with many other things.  Even more of my keep-
sakes and projects were slid under the single bed, and several books were
lined up along the floorboards on either side of my small desk. Just as I
was looking for a place to stow the Black Lady -- my prized Underwood
typewriter, with which I had typed my make-believe newspapers and my new
crop of stories and novels -- I heard the kitchen door squeak and slam
shut.  My stepdad Tony had arrived with the familiar heavy stride that
rattled the prefab windows in my room as he approached.

    "You finish cleanin' this up yet?" he asked, his voice as always
noisily and deeply resonant.  He looked tired, overworked and impatient,
his strong and darkly-haired arms bulging from the white shortsleeved
shirt, his large hands parked on his hips.

    Sweaty from working quickly, I was kneeling on the floor, pushing
the old typewriter along the floor.  I stopped and looked up at him.
"Almost," I said.

    "Still looks like a lot of junk left in here."  He strode heavily
into the room and went directly to the closet.  Pulling the door open
with a quick swish of air, he grunted unpleasantly at what he saw.  "In
the Navy they would have kicked you overboard for a mess like this.  And
in the Navy, we don't stuff goods under the bunks..."  Stooping, he saw
what I had placed under my bed.

    Without pause, he glowered at me and pointed a finger at each thing
he named as he spoke. "Okay, mister...all of this goes.  This goes out in
the trash...and this..this...and all that crap piled on the floor in that
closet."

    Amazed and shocked, I gulped hard.  "Throw it away?"

    "This ain't the Lauderdale Courts housing project," he bellowed, "and
it ain't gonna look like it, either.  Throw those boxes away, throw those
newspapers away, and get this place straightened up. *Before* you eat!"
Without another word, he stomped out of the room.

    Having lived with this intractable man for half a year, I knew
resistance was futile.  He had mentioned earlier that my projects were
junk and that sooner or later they'd have to go.

    I sat on the floor for five minutes or so, looking at each article
that would soon be gone.  I knew I had no choice.  While I was thinking
about it, spending a last few minutes with my belongings, Tony growled
from the doorway, "Let's MOVE it, mister!  Get rid of that crap or you
don't eat."

    An armful at a time, I carried one load of newspapers out of my room,
through the living room where my stepdad sat watching Bishop Fulton J.
Sheen talk about Communists on tv, past the dining room table, through
the kitchen, out the squeaking aluminum back door, down the steps and
across the narrow driveway, where I dumped the load into the dark green
fifty-gallon garbage drum by the carport.  Then back into the house, past
my stepdad who sat engrossed in Bishop Sheen's warnings about the threat
of godless enemies, and into my room.  Then another armload, back through
the house and out the back door, without a word between the two of us,
until I had emptied four armloads of my belongings into the big green can.

    He stepped into the doorway to check on me as I gathered another
load.  Behind him, my mother peered past his broad shoulder. "All those
damn record albums, too," he said. "They must be twenty years old and the
seams are falling apart."

    "Better keep those, Tony," my mother reminded him. "Most of them
belong to his Aunt Frances."

    "Then next time you go to see your Aunt Frances, take them outta
here and give 'em back to her."

    "Yessir," I said tonelessly, loading up an armful of brochures and
magazines.

    "And all that paper you got in that box over there, if ain't
schoolwork, throw it away!"

    I looked up at him.  "That's stuff that I drew myself."

    "That 'stuff' is foolishness nobody needs, and we don't have room for
it."

    The raw sternness of his voice and face told me there would be no
compromises in my bedroom that night.

    "Yessir," I said quietly.

    "I don't see why you cain't be like any other boy and play ball with
the rest of 'em.  It ain't no good for somebody your age to just come
home after school and close yourself up in this room every day.  Put away
that art crap away and grow up like everybody else."

    "Yessir."

    "You have schoolwork to do, and that's what you're supposed to do.
Not all this art crap and newspapers from I-don't-know-where."

    I mumbled, "I already have an A average."

    "What?"

    "...nothin'...sir."

    "You don't have no time for backtalk, buster.  Just get rid of this
mess and clean this place up."

    "Yessir."

    They both left for the living room.  I passed them with several more
armloads, wordlessly, as they both watched Bishop Sheen and exchanged
concerned whispers to each other about the Communist threat.  More
armsful of my history and my time and my effort tumbled into the dark
green can, which began to look like a great black hole as the sun fell
and the evening turned to night.

    Soon I passed them with what I thought was the last armful, which I
soon dumped into the top of the growing heap in the can.  I stood there
sweating, looking at the pile, and took a long breath.  Well.  I had
lived through that, anyway.  Perhaps they were right: there was not much
future in the way I'd spent my time.  I passed them once more as I went
back to my room and closed my door.

    After a moment my stepdad opened the door again and looked around.
He pointed directly at the Black Beauty.  "And get rid of that."

    "That's my typewriter," I argued feebly.

    "It's junk.  Get rid of it!"

    I said nothing.  I looked directly at him, aware that I was ready to
jump at him and rip his throat open.  But I stubbornly concealed every-
thing I thought and felt.

    "You heard me," he said threateningly.

    "Yessir," I said.  I rose to my feet, pretending that I was tired
rather than reveal that even my own body resisted me.  I stooped down.
The Black Beauty came into my arms heavily, reluctantly, and I lifted it
like an overweight child to my chest, and cradled it.  I walked past them
into the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, silently telling
myself that I had to be prepared soon for the instant when its weight and
its keys and its words and memories and its secrets that I had typed out
on paper would soon disappear into a barrel of trash.  I banged open the
kitchen door with one foot, stumbling and scuffling under the Black
Beauty's heft, and moved into the cool night under the power of the
obedient little boy whom I knew was not really me at all.  And the real
Me watched and the sadly drifting lightning bugs watched and the angrily
flittering moth at the back porch light watched as another Me let the
Black Beauty slip out of my arms and settle with a dull crunch, half-
hidden in the paper and drawings and books and pieces of crayon. Instead
of going inside to dinner I walked to our front yard and leaned on the
head-high cyclone wire fence that girded our front and side yards.  I
listened to the sound of cars swishing past in the street and watched the
automobiles full of people who did not know what had just happened and
who couldn't have done anything anyway.  After a moment I could not see
the cars very well through the liquid gathering in my eyes.

    As soon as I felt one eye overflow I brushed the wet from my cheek
and whispered aloud to myself, "You have to be tougher than this."




    "....Speedy, every time I call, you aren't home," Martha Jane said
over the phone.  "What have you been doing all this time?"

    "I called a few times myself," I answered, checking in all directions
to make sure no one was listening -- not because I expected an embarras-
singly intimate conversation with Martha Jane, but because I had been
increasing my isolation from everyone I lived with.  "Your mother keeps
giving me different telephone numbers."

    "I know," said Martha Jane, and her breathing and sounds of movement
on her side of the line told me she was talking and doing other things at
once.  "I am so, sooo damn busy, it's pathetic.  Moving around like a
chicken with my head cut off.  I moved twice in one month, I had a room-
mate that I didn't know hadn't paid the rent for months and we got kicked
out before I was finished moving in, and now...now I'm moving AGAIN!.  I
don't believe it.  I'm packing books in a box right now, but... Anyway,
how *are* you?"

    "I'm...okay," I lied.  "When can I see you?"

    "Oh my, I don't know, the next couple of weeks are--Oh god I wish I
could just get a day off or something, I -- "

    "Need some help moving?  I'd be glad to help."

    "Oh, Speedy, these books are so heavy, you'd break your back."

    "I want to help you."

    "If you'd like to spend a day together or something, that would be
fine later on, but -- how are you gonna get all the way into this part of
town from way out there on Macon Road?"

    "I'll get there."

    "How?"

    "Bus,"  I insisted.

    She laughed.  "*BUS*?  Speedy, that'll take hours.  And I can't come
get you, I'm borrowing princess Evelyn's car for just a few hours."

    I repeated, my voice audibly shaky with a need I couldn't subdue, "I
wanna come see you and help."

    She paused on the other end, then her voice sweetened with concern.
"What's wrong, hon?"

    "I just...I just wanna help you, you never let me help you."

    "No, something's wrong."

    "You're just so...far away, and I want to know I'm helping you."

    "Well...I've been so busy for so long, and I really don't have anyone
to help.  I can't ask the guys I know, they think if they help me move I
oughtta let them into my pants."

    "Well," I said, making up something quickly, "I'm bored!  It's so
boring out here in this neighborhood.  I want to do something.  And you
shouldn't have to move by yourself."

    "Oh, you're sweet...well...you're sure this bus ride won't wear you
out?"

    "I can handle it."

    She gave me directions.  I would have to transfer to two other city
buses.  I would meet her after my own classes, on a Friday afternoon in
the student center at the college.

    "Are you sure you're all right?" she asked.

    "Yes," I lied.  "I'm fine."

    "OK.  Next Friday, then.  You know where to meet me."

    That Friday seemed a month away and in no great hurry to arrive on
time.  Days in our new prefab home started as they always did.  Mom in
her bathrobe and slippers would make hotcakes in the kitchen, then serve
them dripping with Aunt Jemima syrup.  I once remarked that such a
breakfast was all empty starch and sugar, at which Mom irritably shot
back, "What do you want?  Steak?  We have to eat what we can afford."  I
didn't mention my misgivings again, realizing that for some reason she
seemed to be growing more irritable by the day with some sort of ail-
ment.  I would spoon away the syrup and eat what remained, watching my
stepdad sit silently across from me and hurriedly sip his coffee while
he tied his shoes and got ready for work.  On one morning Mom had to
leave the table, and soon I heard her retching in the bathroom.

   "Is Mama sick?" I asked my stepdad.

   He dismissed my question testily.  "Aw, that female problem stuff is
all in her head."   He got up without another word and left for work. Mom
returned shortly after he left, sitting with her coffee and staring
tiredly out the window.  No words passed between us until I said goodbye
as I left for school.

   One night during that week I awoke from my shrinking universe night-
mare and found myself panting in the dark, standing confused and shaky in
the middle of my room near the bed.  The pillow had just slipped from the
bed to the floor, telling me that I must have just then bolted from bed;
my body was poised for a dash into nowhere, but I had waked almost immedi-
ately.  I stood deathly still, listening for signs of anyone else who
might be up.  Nothing and no one moved.  I crept into the living room and
stood near the front window, looking out at the still and empty street
while I settled down.  I did not understand my recurring dream of a
crushing, wildly buzzing universe.

    We had kept the old Philco radio, which sat on a small table near
the tv.  I turned it on, keeping the volume all the way off, and stared
into the bright green tuning eye.  What voices might that green eye be
hearing now?  What was life like out there, how far away was the source
of the voice?  What were the colors and the thoughts and the lives out
there?  After a while sleep overtook me again, and I went back to bed.

    On Friday at precisely 2:30 PM I left my last grammar school class
and broke into a full run.  With my school bag flung around my shoulder
and slapping against my side, I barely made it to a bus three blocks away
that waited for me to dash across the main thoroughfare,

    The suburbs to which my family moved lay fourteen miles directly east
of the old housing project.  Fourteen miles of long, straight, unbending,
undifferentiated city boulevards.  The trip began with four miles of gas
stations, soft-serve ice cream drive-ins, barbecue restaurants, and auto
dealerships.  Then four miles of look-alike firebrick school complexes,
look-alike shopping centers, look-alike office towers.  And then five
miles of look-alike, quickly built, instantly GI-mortgaged homes.  I
remember thinking of it as monotony raised to the level of science, made
all the more bland and pointless by the terrain of this part of Tennes-
see, which was almost ruler-flat.  Even my own neighborhood, broken at
least partly by the vast open but treeless fields of an unadorned recrea-
tion area called Geisman Park, seemed a universe of its own with long
curveless streets, no visible beginnings, no visible ends.  Across from
my new home the supermarket and the drug store, both of which were con-
tained within a single, one-story, squared-off, plate-glassed building
made from the same brick of the same colors as all the bricks in all the
look-alike houses around it, looked like the same supermarket and the
same drug store and the same building on mile after mile of other look-
alike streets.

    But as I boarded the third and last bus in the long trip, and as the
gasoline engine roared under the load of passengers, a different city
entered my view.  It was the older Memphis, the Memphis of its heyday in
the 1920's, the streets lined with elegant estates and thick, dark green
trees.  The Memphis in which my dead father had grown up, with old
bungalows and quaint corner shops and undulating roadways.  The edges of
the college campus soon appeared, its magnolia trees, open pastures and
Georgian buildings filling my eyes and crowding out the memory of the
numbing suburbs.  I knew Martha Jane lived somewhere within a block or
two of the campus.  As the bus rattled past the streets I wondered how
she looked while strolling down the sidewalk past the cherry trees and
the neat old homes on her way to class.  I wondered what it might be like
to be surrounded by ideas, by art, by talkers and teachers and learners.
It seemed as exotic as a vision of a perfect Pacific isle.

    The bus squealed to a halt at Patterson Avenue.  I jumped out and
walked in long stretching steps down the three blocks toward the campus
center.  The walkway soon became crowded with students going in all
directions: yelling, chatting, or alone in a hurry with an armload of
books.  Again, I began to feel very, very young and childlike among these
people.  I caught myself staring in wonder at a man who crossed my path a
few yards ahead of me, a man with a pipe and two books under one arm, a
man wearing a tweed sport jacket with leathered elbows, a man frowning in
thought.  Why his image remained permanently in my mind, I don't know;
but within a few years from that day it would come to pass that I would
be in that very college and I would have several classes taught by the
man that I saw that day.  Perhaps, I think now, I had known that he would
be one of my principal teachers in later years.  Perhaps, I think now, he
would have been someone whom I wanted as the father I didn't have instead
of the unyielding and exacting replacement with whom I was confronted.
Or perhaps he embodied an image of the person I might one day like to be.

    Even though I knew my way, I felt lost.  I was besieged by sights and
sounds from a world that was, on that day, completely unlike anything in
my daily life.  The odor of pine and magnolia in the breeze almost made
me feel drugged.  Being surrounded by so many people was disorienting,
and all of them were completely foreign to my experience of others.
These were adults who could read and converse about concepts and events I
knew nothing about and couldn't possibly imagine.  I felt completely out
of my element, and yet I felt I was in a world that I was compelled to
enter and explore.  I slowed my pace to a normal walk, feeling I would be
less conspicuous if I adopted the ways of those who inhabited this
strange new planet.  But I averted my eyes from theirs, looking down at
the sidewalk as I moved along.

    Then I heard her voice, calling to me from the massive steps of the
Administration Building.  I looked up and saw Martha Jane, in a plain
gray ankle-length overcoat with her pert face smiling broadly and one arm
waving at me.  I waved back.  I smiled.  I attempted to seem undaunted
and casual.  It struck me at that moment, as I observed my own behavior,
how I was beginning to simulate a kind of calm and unaffected front--
when, in fact, I almost jumped out of my shoes at the sight of her.

    She met me halfway across the driveway to the building and gave me a
hug and a kiss.

    "So there you are!" she said.  "Right on time, too, I was afraid
you might have trouble on the bus.  Come on with me to the student
center, we'll get coffee or something before we start."

    I agreed and stayed closely at her side as we walked to the center.
She noticed me staring at the many students passing everywhere.

    She laughed.  "You look like a tourist."

    I blushed.  "Martha Jane...I shouldn't be here.  I mean--"

    "I know what you mean, Speedy, but don't let them intimidate you --
one day you'll be here for classes every day yourself and you'll find out
how dumb most of them really are."

    It was late in the afternoon and the crowd in the student center was
a thin one.  Martha Jane led me to a long table near the middle of the
vast, resonant room and sat across from me and opened her overcoat.

    "What do you want, Speedy?  Coffee?  A coke?  I don't know what you
like anymore."

    I deepened my voice into a macho growl.  "Coffee!"

    "You sure?  The coffee here is more like dark brown kerosene.  Has
quite a kick.  I *need* that kick, but you might not be used to it."

    "Coffee," I repeated, and she went into the serving line to bring
back two steaming cups of very dark stuff that didn't look like any
coffee I had ever seen before.

    She caught me looking into the cup before I took a drink.

    She smirked.  "Just take a deep breath, and swallow."  She took a
little gulp of it, sighed wearily, and settled back into her chair.
"Speedy, I hope you hurry and grow up faster so you can get into school
here.  You'd certainly add a lot of class to the male population.  Don't
look now, but there's a guy behind you, walking toward us, and he's going
to come over here and try to put the make on me.  Watch closely, and
learn how the lower classes do it."



                              PART 7B:


    The guy she was talking about soon appeared to my left.  He was tall
and brawny, well over six feet, with shoulders to match.  He had a
bellowing, gruffy voice and wore a blue and white wool athletic jacket
whose padded shoulders made him look gigantic.  He approached our table
and called out heftily, "Hi, Janie, you gorgeous heifer, you!"  He lifted
one large thigh and planted a foot on the opposite side of the table,
then lifted the other big leg to stand beside Martha Jane.

    "Hello, Frank," Martha Jane said politely.

    With sweeping, commanding, swaggering movements, Frank grabbed a
chair and sat backwards on it, huge legs spread and massive arms draped
across the chair's metal backplate.

    "Hiya doin, cutie?" he bantered.  He nodded toward me.  "Hey, Janie,
who's yer friend?"

    "That's Steven," Martha Jane said.  I immediately realized that she
had not introduced me as "Speedy." and I gave her a half-hidden Groucho
Marx raised eyebrow in return.  She winked.

    "Steven, huh?  Hiya, big guy.  You look like you're new here this
year."

    Before I could answer, Martha Jane told him that I was her "prize
student"who was checking out the campus.  Frank continued to make small
talk with her, his speech as swaggering and masculine as the rest of
him.  Finally he asked her, "So, you goin' to the big Homecomin'?  Ain't
goin' by yourself are ya?"

    Martha Jane told him she was swamped with work.

    Frank shook his head.  "Damn, Janie, you are the workin'-est heifer I
ever saw.  C'mon, now, you ain't accepted my invitation for three
months."  He looked directly at me and winked, "Is she always this hard
to get, fella?"

    "She's a busy girl," I answered, trying to deepen my young voice as
best I could.

    He made another attempt or two at getting a date with Martha Jane,
persisting in calling her Janie, and Martha Jane remained politely
adamant and told him that her Homecoming weekend would be spent trying to
finish her final papers before the semester piled up on her.  Eventually
he stood up to leave.

    He joked, "You sure you wanna pass up a big Homecomin' date?"

    "It's tempting, Frank," she flirted, "and I'm sure I'll regret it for
the rest of my days.  But, really, I have a lot of work to do."

    "Still doin' that student teaching, huh?"

    "Yes, it's a back-breaker."

    "Well, that's OK, it'll get you a nice job after graduation.  But a
gal like you, you won't have to put up with that teachin' racket for
long, some guy'll snatch you right up before you know what happened."

    "Yeah right, Frank, happens every day."

    "Well, see ya, then.  You, too, fella."

    After he was out of hearing range Martha Jane heaved a long, relieved
sigh. "See what I mean?  Pride of the campus, that big ox.  We could sure
use all that muscle to help us move...but it's not worth it."

    "He seemed nice enough," I remarked.

    "Speedy, he's not nice.  He tried to fuck me on the first date,
strictly on the dubious merit of his membership on the football team,
without so much as a word about how I might feel about it.  He was so
surprised when I said no!  As if it's the first time in his life a girl
didn't undress the minute he walked in!"  She shook her head.  "I hate
the name Janie.  And I don't like being called a 'cutie' or a 'heifer' as
a sign of affection, by some good ol' boy from Arkansas who can't talk
about anything but beer, football, and his daddy's money.  I should have
known better than to go out with him in the first place, but somebody
fixed me up and I was in desperate need of a night out."  Again, she
winked at me.  "So don't think you're going to be some kind of dummy the
first day you start taking classes here, because most of your mental
competition is in the form of that big palooka."

    We finished our coffee and headed across the campus toward Martha
Jane's apartment a few blocks away.  Martha Jane said there was no big
hurry; she'd spent two weeks packing and she didn't have that much gear
to move.  The sun was sinking near the rooftops by then, the late after-
noon sky beginning to deepen in color.  We strolled, and she lit a ciga-
rette and talked.  She was in her last undergraduate year now, and had
spent most of it struggling to make it through in three years and quali-
fying for an award that might get her a Master's, and the rest of the
time warding off the good ol' boys whom she described as "so eager to get
me in bed you can smell the lust a mile off."

    I told her, "It's because you really are very pretty, Martha Jane."

    She flicked her cigarette and sent a smooth stream of smoke into the
chilly air.  "You have a nice way of saying that, but...in Memphis, being
pretty just means you're like prey, you're some kind of prize that guys
just want to show off and get their cookies with.  Have their babies and
cook.  I don't like being so pretty sometimes.  I wish I were more
average...or more cosmopolitan, you know--chic, I guess, like my sister
Evelyn.  She looks so sophisticated, a guy looks at her and knows he has
to take his time.  But for some reason they see me as a sex kitten who's
just waiting to get pounced upon, and I'm supposed to show my thanks by
giving up everything I've worked for and sit at home continually getting
pregnant out of love for their 'Prince Charming' complex...No.  No, I
sometimes wish I were not as pretty as they think.  I'm being interviewed
for teaching jobs, and the men who interview me--well, what they're
thinking is written all over their faces, they're so patronizing.  They
see how I look, that's all.  Other than that, I'm just another new
special education major, nothing special, nothing unique.  And not a word
about the work I've done and the research I did, not a minute spent
talking about new methods or the problems with abused or precocious kids
or any of that.  It's just 'Hi, what a pretty girl.'  And it never goes
beyond that."

    The place she was moving from was in a small two-bedroom, typical
modern apartment building with thin carpets and thinner walls.  Her
former roommates had been evicted, leaving only a mattress in one of the
bedrooms and a painted wooden chair in the living room.  All the rest of
it -- some bundled clothes, an old trunk, and a few dozen boxes of books
-- belonged to Martha Jane.

    Puffing and heaving, we began loading Evelyn's borrowed Pontiac.
Martha Jane was right: those boxed books were *really* heavy.  But I was
up to the task, exhilarated at finally being able to move and fling some
weight around after so much torpor in the suburbs.  It wasn't long before
we had the car filled with a little more than half of the full load and
were on our way in the car to Martha Jane's new place, several blocks
away on the other side of the campus in an older part of the neighborhood.

    Martha Jane drove to an old, well-kept dark red two-story house with
white shutters.  It stood in the middle of a deep lawn amid many large
oak and birch trees.  Her apartment was in back, atop the two-car garage
behind the house.  As I carried the first boxes up the creaky wooden
stairway at the side of the garage and entered the front door, I was
immediately struck by the serenity and homeliness of the interior. It had
a tiny kitchen, a small but ample bedroom in the rear, and a spacious
living room.  The many curtained windows looked out over the main house,
the trees, and the rest of the neighborhood.

    "Beautiful!" I whispered as I set the box on the floor and looked
around.  "This is cute!"

    It was furnished with keepsakes, most of it simple early-American
gear having a basic, useful look.  One wall had a painted wood bookshelf,
another a long ancient sofa with fairly new, flowered upholstery in good
shape, a big fluffy easy chair covered with the same fabric as the sofa,
and an ancient writing desk with a roll-up top.  The carpet had seen
better days and was seamed together from several smaller pieces; but it
did have a certain bohemian character that fit the circumstances.

    Her brow dotted with sweat even though the air was cold, Martha Jane
followed me inside and dropped the box she carried onto the floor with a
thud, and the weight of it pushed her across the room and into my arms.
I caught her, and she stopped to give me a hug.

    "Whew!  Damn, where did I get all these BOOKS!?!"  She stood still
and relaxed against me, catching her breath.  "Speedy, you're hardly out
of breath!  How do you do it?  Whew!"

    I held her lightly, wanting to simply crush her against me.  She was
wearing a turtleneck sweater and jeans and loafers.  The sweater clung to
her light frame and slim shoulders; outwardly she appeared dainty, but my
hands felt the lithe and solid body under her flesh, and the warmth and
feel of her seemed to seep into every pore of my body.  Her sweaty cheek
was against mine, my lips near her long and elegant neck.  Embarrassed by
a sudden wave of affection and passion, I pulled back from her and said,
"You rest, I'll go get the other stuff."

    "Oh, I will not!" she protested, leaning into me and still looking for
her second wind.  "I can carry my own weight in this job, mister.  Whew!
As soon as I get my breath!"  She kissed my cheek and hugged me.  "I'm so
glad you're helping.  You've grown an inch taller, haven't you?"

    "I have a long way to go before I can compete with guys like that
Frank fella."

    "Don't you *dare* become...whew!...another one of those bull-necked,
overgrown jocks."  She moved away from me and collapsed onto the sofa.
"Thank goodness *everybody* isn't like him!  Whew!  How did I get so old
so fast?"

    I headed for the front door.  "You stay there and I'll bring up some
more stuff."

    "Don't you dare, without me," she said weakly, staring at the ceiling.

    But I was already on my way out the door and down the stairs, hearing
her yell behind me, "Don't you dare!"   Grabbing the wooden bannister, I
dropped down two steps at a time and was soon into the car and grabbing
another box.  I was on my way up the stairs with it when Martha Jane met
me on her way down.  "Don't you carry this stuff by yourself!"

    I insisted, "Listen, you rest a minute.  I'm all right."

    "Oh, you men, you always think you can do it all."

    In no time at all we had emptied the car and then collapsed on the
long sofa side by side, staring at the ceiling, our feet dangling toward
the floor.

    "Are we finished?" she asked, winded again.

    "Just one more carload oughtta do it."

    "Oh, God...whew!...We have to hurry, Evelyn will drop by for her car
soon, and we have to get you home."

    "No.  Don't wanna go home."

    "Don't be silly...whew!...You have to go home, Steven."

    I stopped thinking for at least half a minute.  She had called me
Steven!  She had not called me "Speedy."  It was the first time she had
used my proper name, and the first time in my memory that anyone had
called me by Steven.  I was so surprised I was speechless.

    After a minute she sat up, her arms hanging limply at her sides, and
looked over the half-filled room.  "What a mess.  Will this endless
moving ever come to an end?  I'm so sick of it."

    I lay back into the sofa looking at her.  I wondered if she realized
she had called me Steven.

    She rose to her feet with a groan, stretched her back and raised her
arms toward the ceiling, then moved slowly and grudgingly toward the
door.  "Okay, cowboy.  Let's get the last of it."

    On the drive back to her old place she told me she was concerned
about how I would get home.  "Listen, I have some money.  I'll get you a
taxi.  It shouldn't be more than ten dollars or so from here.  I hate to
ask Miss Evelyn to give you a ride, she's such a put-upon princess!"

    "I can take the bus," I said, unworried.

    "Bus!  Your mother will have a fit by the time you get home.  Oh,
it's my fault, we shouldn't have stopped for coffee, we should have come
straight here."

    "Coffee was only ten minutes, that wouldn't have saved much time."

    "But it's already *DARK* now!"

    "Hey, take it easy, we'll be finished soon and it'll be all right.
Anyway, I'm having fun."

    "Yeah, fun!" she pouted.  "This is all my fault, trying to do it in
one quick flash like this.  God knows I've done it often enough to know
better by now!"

    "Martha Jane, it's okay."

    "It's not okay!" she came back angrily, keeping her eyes on the
road.  "I'll end up getting you in trouble, and it's my fault!"

    I didn't reply, as I could see that continuing the conversation would
only get her more riled.  We had arrived at her old place again.  She
scurried ahead of me out of the car and into the lobby elevator.  As I
joined her she smacked the button for floor #3 and waited impatiently
while the machine lurched upward.

    "We have to hurry," she muttered nervously.

    "It won't take long," I offered.  But she just said again, "We have
to hurry."

    We did indeed hurry, even though I assured her that it was only a
little after five and that we would likely be finished in less than half
an hour.  I talked her into lifting two boxes into my arms at once,
though she protested frantically until she saw that the boxes I picked
out were lighter than the others.  We piled everything into the hallway
near the elevator, then shoved everything into the elevator and then into
the building lobby, and carried it all out to the car.

    On the way to the new place for the last time, she lit a cigarette
and puffed on it deeply and ran a stop sign.  "Sorry," she muttered as we
careened down the street.  Then she let out a nervous laugh and slapped
the steering wheel.  "God, hon, I hope I'm not having a nervous break-
down!"  She looked at me and at the road and then broke into a giggle.
"Huh?  You think I am?"

    I muttered, "Wait until we get there, so you can park the car first
and let me out."

    "Okay," she laughed.  "I'll wait.  Then I'll let go."  She looked at
me and blushed, and then giggled again.  "I've already gone spastic."

    It didn't take long to unload the remaining goods.  I again managed
to carry two boxes at a time, while she made several trips with her
clothes.  We were on our way up the stairs with the next-to-last load
when someone drove up with Martha Jane's sister Evelyn in the car. Evelyn
thanked the driver, a girlfriend of hers who traded quick hello's with
Martha Jane and me and who drove off when she saw that all was under way.

    Evelyn followed us up the steps and into the new living room.  She
was dressed in a neat and expensive-looking brown business suit that
seemed to somehow avoid getting a single wrinkle after a full day at the
office.  Evelyn herself looked perfectly groomed and unaffected by any
aspect of life that I could determine.

    "Well," she sniffed, looking around the place.  "It's certainly
homely.  Where in the world did they get this rug?"

    Martha Jane huffed as she dropped some clothes on the big chair.
"Evelyn, the place only runs $45 a month.  What's wrong with the carpet,
anyway?"

    "It's a little...thin, honey," Evelyn answered absently.  She went
into the kitchen to look it over.  "I guess it's enough for one person,
but two would be impossible in here."

    Martha Jane rolled her eyes at that and waved at me.  "C'mon," she
said, "one more armful and it's over."

    "Wait," Evelyn said, strolling to the door.  "If you have my keys, I
have to meet some important people for dinner and I'll be late if I hang
around here.  I see you're just about finished anyway."

    "Yes," Martha Jane agreed, her hands on her hips and her temper
flaring a little, "Yes, we are just about finished.  I wouldn't want you
to be late.  Your keys are in the Pontiac."

    Evelyn stopped at the door.  "Speedy, is that you?  I didn't recog-
nize you, you're getting so grown-up.  Have you been helping Jane move?"

    I nodded.  "Yeah, but she did most of the work."

    "I'll bet," Evelyn laughed in her dry, mildly scornful, successful-
lady way. "Jane, I'll come get you Sunday.  We're having lunch with our
Mom's boyfriend and future husband."

    Martha Jane's mouth fell open.  "Husband?  Future husband?"

    Evelyn smiled broadly.  "Yes.  It's going to be announced.  But don't
say anything yet.  All right?  Please?  He thinks it'll be a surprise--as
if we hadn't already guessed for more than a year."

    Martha Jane stared into space, flabbergasted.  "So she's going to
marry him.  She's...going...to...marry...him."

    "Why not?" Evelyn said merrily, tilting her head with her purposely
sexy little smile.  "But don't say anything.  Till after.  Nice meeting
you again, Speedy."

    Evelyn walked out the door, careful not to snag her high heels on the
old plank woodwork, and Martha Jane went to the door and yelled out,
"Well, thanks for the car today, sister.  I hope we didn't damage any-
thing."

    "It's all right, Jane," Evelyn called back, careful not to muss her
immaculate shoes as she walked to her car.  She looked inside briefly
and, satisfied that the last of the load had been placed on the ground
outside the car, she smiled and waved before backing up and driving away.

    I followed Martha Jane down the steps for the last two boxes and the
last plastic bag of clothing, which sat in a mild cloud of dust left
behind by Evelyn's Pontiac.

    "Well!" Martha Jane said.  "So mama's gonna marry that guy."

    I said, "They've been dating forever, haven't they?  Didn't you tell
me about him a long time ago?"

    "Well, he's nice, and fairly wealthy, but....Oh, forget it.  Let's
get this stuff upstairs.  I'm so tired.  I'm really just running out of
gas at this point."

    I stood and waited while she lifted two boxes into my arms and then I
turned to go up the steps.  But then I heard Martha Jane yelp behind me,
followed by a loud thump.  She had picked up a heavy bag that pushed her
backward and onto the ground under its weight.

    "You all right?" I asked, and she answered with a dull, "Yeah.  Sure."

    "Don't pick that up, I'll come back and get it."

    "No, I'll get it."

    "Martha Jane..." I began impatiently.  I stooped to lower the boxes
to the ground, then rushed to her and grabbed the plastic-wrapped
clothing.  "You're getting tired, now, don't carry this.  I can get it."

    Her face seemed blank and her eyes glazed, her brow sweaty and
smeared with a lock of auburn hair.  I asked, "Did you hurt yourself?"

    She mumbled, her voice slurry.  "Take me up the stairs."

    "What?"

    "Walk me up the stairs, please."

    I held her by one shoulder and we started toward the stairway.  "Are
you all right?"

    "Oh, I'm just...tired and feel a little silly after falling down like
that.  I should have been more careful."  Holding my arm with one hand
and the handrail with the other, she started up the stairs with me.

    "Easy, lady."

    "I'm all right!  Just bumped the hell out of my butt, that's all."

    "That's okay."

    "It's not okay, I should have taken more time for this...and Evelyn
didn't even offer you a ride."

    "She had that important dinner to get to."

    "Her and her damn important dinners," Martha Jane muttered.




                              PART 7C:



    We reached the top of the stairs.  She stood in the middle of the
living room, looked about, and turned to me.  "I'm so tired of this," she
sighed.  Suddenly she squinted and then frowned hard; her eyes closed and
squeezed small pearly tears that tumbled quickly down her cheeks.  "I'm
so tired of this," she wept, and covered her face quickly with her hands.

    I went to her and held her lightly but closely.  For a minute she
shook and cried as I silently stroked her hair.  Soon she calmed down.

    "I'm so silly," she moaned, sniffling loudly.

    "You're dead tired," I said.  Firmly, I held her away from me and
looked into her reddened, wet, tired, absolutely beautiful face.  "You
get right over to that sofa and relax.  I'll get the other stuff."

    "Oh, independent me, look at how well I'm holding up.  I'm sorry, I
guess all this just...hit me all at once."

    "Go to that sofa, or I'll carry you over there and nail you to it."

    "Oh, all right..."  She whimpered like a defeated little girl and
brushed the wet hair from her face and went to the sofa.  I moved to the
door, and by the time I turned around to look at her she had fallen onto
her back on the sofa, her head against an armrest and one foot dangling
onto the floor.  She sniffled again.

    I stood by the door and shook a warning finger at her.  "Now, don't
you move until I'm finished."

    Three quick trips up and down the stairs, and I finished the job.  I
set the last box onto the floor and saw that she seemed asleep with her
head nestled on a cushion against the armrest.  Grabbing some paper
towels from one of the boxes, I went to her and knelt on the floor beside
her, and reached up to wipe her forehead.

    Her eyes opened and she smiled wearily.  "Oh, look at ME!  I feel as
if I need a nurse.  No, don't--" she took the towel from my hands, folded
it, and gently wiped the sweat from my face.  She whispered sweetly,
"Thank you, hon.  You've done enough for me already.  I'm sorry I
organized this so badly."

    "You did fine," I said.  "We moved two carloads in a little over an
hour."

    "Stop being so nice to me.  You've always been too nice to me.  I
wonder why you didn't just blow your stack and start yelling when I was
having a stroke in the car coming over here."

    "You were tired."

    "You're too nice, hon.  I wasn't just tired, I was overworked and
disorganized.  And just plain mad.  This must be the fifth time I've
moved my stuff in a year.  I can't depend on anybody, everything I do
goes wrong, I rush into things before I know what I'm doing, I worked
myself to death for god knows what, I took on too many classes this
semester...I'm a mess."

    "Just another lady genius working her way through college."

    "Stop.  Be a Clark Gable and slap me around a little and bring me to
my senses."

    "I could never do that."

    She blew her nose.  "No, I guess you couldn't.  I'd probably slap you
back, anyway."

    "You probably would.  And you're bigger than me."

    "Not anymore."

    "Well...you're older."

    She wiped her nose.  "Yeah, but you're catching up."  She crumpled
the towel and pitched it on the floor and took the fresh towel that I had
in my hand.  "What a big grown-up girl *I* am, right?  I can't believe I
broke into tears just because I fell on my rear end."

    "Stop apologizing for being worn out."

    "Listen...how the heck are we gonna get you home?"

    "I don't wanna go home."

    "I'll call a cab."

    "That costs too much."

    "I can afford it.  Anyway, I owe you something for all this."

    "No!  I'll take the bus."

    "But you won't get home until after ten."

    I shrugged.  "I wanna stay here for a while."

    "And do what?  You've already done enough."

    "It's nice here.  I like it, it's a great apartment.  Right now, I
just want -- "  I stopped.

    "You want?"

    I didn't answer.  I suddenly became aware of how, over the past few
months or perhaps over the past few years, I'd become so indirect and
timorous.  I was thinking about that and about how to reply to her, when
she laughed bashfully and blew her nose again.

    "Hon, we can't...uh...I'm so embarrassed to admit this, I have never
admitted this to you, but...well, we can't."

    "Can't what?"

    "You know.  It's...I'm having my period.  It started today."  She
suddenly hid her face with the napkin.  "Oh, god, after all we've done
together, why am I so embarrassed?  Oh, I'm so messed up."

    I said to her flatly, "That's not what I was thinking about."

    "What?  What do you mean, then?"

    "I wasn't thinking about that, that's not what I wanted."

    "Oh.  I'm sorry."  She laughed and rolled her eyes.  "Oh, WELL!  We
know where Martha Jane's mind is, don't we?  Oh, brother!  I'm sorry,
hon.  What did you want, then?"

    I hesitated, only briefly, wondering why I waited and why I could
not be direct with this young woman.  I started to say, "Well..." and
rose on my knees so that I looked down at her, and stuttered, "Well, I
just wanted--".  I stopped, looked deeply into her questioning face,
and then put my arms around her and placed my head on her chest, just
below her breasts, and hugged her.

    She asked, surprised, "This is what you wanted?"

    I nodded against her.

    I felt her fingers at my temple, stroking my hair.  "That's all you
wanted?"

    I nodded.  "Just for a while."

    "You sweet."  She stroked my hair for another moment and then said,
"Wait a minute, hon, lemme get my shoes off."  I lifted and she reached
down to pull off her loafers and said, "You too, hon."  I removed my
tennis shoes as she stretched lengthwise on the sofa and reclined along
and against the backrest.  She held her arms up to me.  "Come here and
let's cuddle," she said.

    I lay half on top of her, and she curled up closer to me and held me
with my face in her neck as stroked my back and my hair.

    She said after a while, "I think I'll like this place.  It's so nice
looking out the windows at the trees.  It's the first comfortable dump
I've seen since I started school."

    "I like the breeze in the leaves," I said.

    "Yes."

    We talked, not moving, then rested silent for a while.  Then we
talked.

    I did not tell her much about myself.  I was uncertain about what was
happening to me or who I had become.  She talked about her mother and how
her mom's health had gradually improved after being courted and spoiled
for years by her boyfriend, Mr. Buchanan.  He owned an office supply
house and did well financially and had a beautiful home in East Memphis.
Martha Jane said she didn't like the man very much.  He was nice, very
generous with his time and money and his displays of affection.  And
patient; he had now spent some years waiting for Martha Jane's mom to get
over her fears of disappointment and her feelings of inadequacy about her
ill health.  But Mr. Buchanan was old-fashioned, very "Memphis" and
close-minded about women.  He adored her mom, but the only virtues he
could see in any female were subservience and physical beauty.  He gently
but constantly urged her successful sister Evelyn to quit her job and
find a husband.  He had respect for, but meager agreement with, Martha
Jane's independence or her liberal politics.  He felt that a woman's
place was in the home rearing babies and baking turkeys.  He had helped
Martha Jane in small ways financially with her schooling, but he wanted
to marry her mom and he wanted Martha Jane and Evelyn to live in his home
and not in their own apartments; he wanted them to stay in his home until
they were cured of their career ambitions and could get themselves
married and "raise a family in the proper way."

    "There is no way for me to talk to him," Martha Jane said, still
stroking my hair.  "He agrees in word, and then disagrees in action by
not supporting anything I do or believe.  And if he tells me one more
time how pretty I am, I think I might get very angry and do or say some-
thing stupid that I'll regret and that he probably doesn't deserve.  He's
been very good to my mother--and my mother, unfortunately, agrees with
him.  I wouldn't want to mess it up for her."

    We fell silent for several minutes.  We listened to the wind filter
listlessly through the trees.

    She said, "You haven't talked much."

    I shook my head no.

    "Is there anything you want to tell me?"

    Again, I shook my head no.

    "Hon, that light over there on the table is in my eyes.  Can you turn
it off?"

    I rose and turned off the only lamp in the room.  I stood there until
our eyes became accustomed to the dim moonlight and the faint glow from
the light in the kitchen.

    From the sofa, she looked up at me with two small points of light in
her dark eyes.  "I'm sorry I'm having my period."

    I shrugged.  "I wasn't even thinking about it.  I just wanted to
spend an afternoon doing whatever it is you usually do."

    She grinned.  "Really?"

    "Really."

    "Come here and lie down."

    I went to the sofa expecting to lay with her as before, but she stood
up and motioned for me to lie where she had been.  "Go ahead, hon."

    I lay down lengthwise and face up, my head against the end armrest.
She knelt on the floor beside me with her head onto my chest.  "It was
getting a little cramped the other way."

    "I'm sorry, you should have said something."

    "No, no.  It was nice."  She lifted her head and looked at me. Her
voice took on that strange, mesmerizing, throaty quality that meant she
had something particularly intimate to say.  "I never told you when I was
having my period.  That's the first time I've admitted that to you.  Or
to anyone.  I don't know why it's so embarrassing.  Every other female I
know just gabs and bitches about it every time it comes around."

    "That's okay."

    "Are you embarrassed when I mention it?"

    "Of course not."

    "It's getting late."

    "Yeah.  Phooey."

    She lifted her head off my lap and reached up to gently part the
folds covering the zipper of my jeans.  She neatly held the cloth folds
open with one hand, and with two fingers of the other hand she lifted the
zipper latch.  "You'll have to be starting for home soon."

    "Yeah," I whispered, my voice getting wobbly and thick.  I swallowed.
"Yeah, I guess so."

    Fiddling with the zipper tag, she continued: "That time a few months
ago, when we had a whole week together and your folks were on their
honeymoon...I had my period for three days.  They don't usually last very
long.  But that's why I disappeared."  She slowly pulled the zipper
down.  With two fingers she found and parted the slit in my underwear.
"I was afraid to let you see me in that condition..."

    She used the same two fingers to feel the contours of my rapidly
expanding organ and to give it a squeeze.  She deftly took hold of my
tip, sending a thought-destroying tickle through my cock and into my
spine, and pulled my flesh free of the clothing.  My cock stood straight
up, twitched, and hardened more.  I could feel every blood cell in my
body turn on a dime and begin a journey to and through my loins.

    "Such a nice shape, " she whispered to herself, and softly curled her
fingers around me.  "The skin is so soft, but underneath it's so hard...
so warm in my hand."  She tightened her grip at my base slightly and slid
her long fingers slowly up and then enclosed my tip.  A bead of pre-cum
greeted her fingers.  She smiled and breathed, "Mmm.  Yes."

    I swallowed again, hearing my loud gulp echo through the room.  I
said, "I hadn't expected this."

    "That's what makes it so exciting," she said, almost to herself.  She
looked at me.  "I know you weren't in the mood, but...do you mind?"

    I smiled and had to take a deep breath to get enough air into me to
be able to answer her.  "You don't expect me to make a big fuss about
protecting my virtue, do you?"

    She looked back at my cock and studied it, as if contemplating where
to start and how to go about it.  "You have such a nice dick," she said
sweetly, and the next thing I knew she opened her mouth wide and leaned
down to me and, her hand near my root holding me straight up, she lowered
and slowly, wetly, fully took all of me into her mouth, shoved her tongue
against the underside, and lightly sucked me all the way to the tip, back
down, and up again.  I think I heard someone gasp and I'm pretty sure it
was me, since Martha Jane's mouth was occupied at the time.  My own voice
sounded far away.  She lifted her mouth from me and wet her lips and
scrunched down to make herself more comfortable, and repeated the move in
the same way, once, twice, three times, sweetly and softly sucking.  By
the fourth suck I knew every ridge and curve and hollow in her tongue. My
eyes closed and I floated somewhere else in the room and her mouth
floated with me; I heard only the soft sound of Martha Jane breathing
through her nose and the sound of my own irregular gasps and sighs and
the wind in the leaves outside.  Slowly, she repeated the long lascivious
suck, her lips and mouth and tongue relaxing their grip as she moved
downward, then renewing their molten hug as she sucked upward.  And
again.  And again.  My balls tightened.

    I gasped, "I don't...think I'll last very long."

    And as soon as I spoke the hot, itchy pleasure of a strong and
remarkably easy cum obliterated all except her mouth; her rough little
tongue began making tortuous circles around my immersed tip as her mouth
pulled a long hot squirt from me.  Undaunted, she continued without pause
and another hot eruption bathed her tongue and bounced off it toward her
throat.  She swallowed loudly, but she didn't pause or waver.  Her
sucking strokes were shallow now, her lips tightening on me and her
tongue circling lazily, and then I felt three warm cumshots leave me in
quick succession and she swallowed them as if they were one.  Continuing
to siphon and swallow me, she worked her maddening tongue until my
pleasure-choked body jerked slightly, once, and rose again into her, and
her tongue drew one more wildly eager spurt that bounced against the roof
of her mouth and which she gulped with affectionate greed and a happily
surprised little "Hmmm!".  The rest flowed from me in swiftly weakening
trickles until her lips and tongue could find no more.  With a final gulp
and a contented sigh she removed her mouth and closed her fist on my
cock, giving it that last long tug that she liked to give when I was fin-
ished, draining the last thick drop of me onto her extended tongue and
drinking it down.  Then she gently and briefly fisted me while I shrank.
She grinned and giggled childishly.  "I couldn't help myself.  Was it
good?"

    Still breathless, I told her it was.

    She watched my wet cock wither as she calmed it with her strokes.
She licked her lips, blushing and smiling when she saw me watching her.

    She chuckled, still stroking.  "Look at me, licking my lips like a
German shepherd!  You do taste good, y'know, creamy and hot and...just
slightly salty...but the part I like best," she went on, her voice
dropping to a sensuous murmur as she watched her hand stroking me, "is
how wicked I feel when you squirt on my tongue."

    It was only then that I realized how iron-rigid my body had been, and
only then that I noticed I had not been breathing during the entire
orgasm.  I was still breathless.  My body relaxed with a sudden sag.  I
took a long deep breath.

    Then her incredibly soft, smooth cheek touched mine and she kissed me
on the neck.

    She whispered, "I love the way you cum."  Uncontrollably I held
her to me as tightly as I could and buried by face in her hair, and she
hugged back with a playful groan.

    I wanted to cry: it was not so much the mind-boggling pleasure she
had given me as it was the lovingly erotic nature and ways of her.  But I
found I somehow could not tell her so.  I didn't know why.

    I refused to waste her money on a taxi.  I took the bus home, luckily
meeting every transfer just in time.  The lack of passengers at stops
along the way speeded the trip.  It was still later than usual when I
arrived home a little after nine-thirty, but there was no argument about
the late hour.  When I arrived I found the tv was not on, as it usually
was.  At first it appeared no one was in the house; I knew that my step-
dad would be working late at the grocery store and that my sister was
staying at her godmother's, but it seemed my mom was gone as well.

    It was not until I walked into the hallway leading to the bedrooms
that I found my mother curled up on her bed and vomiting small amounts of
blood ...



                             PART 7D:


    Mom convulsed into a tight ball on her side and retched quietly,
weakly, making a small sticky red stain in the kleenex she held to her
mouth.  Then she relaxed with a pitiful moan.

    "What's wrong?" I asked, going swiftly to her side of the bed.

    She licked her lips clean and tried to catch her breath.  Not getting
an answer, I raised my voice fearfully.  "What's wrong?  What happened?"

    "I'm sick, Speedy.  It came on...all of a sudden."

    "What's wrong?  When did it start?"

    "Called your daddy...but he said he had to work late."

    I was incensed at her words.  "Had to work late?  Work late?  What
does he expect you to do, just stay sick?"

    "Well, I don't know...maybe it'll just clear up."

    "How long have you been sick?"

    She shrugged, taking in a deep breath and wiping her lips again.  "A
couple of hours, I guess."

    "You've been sick for hours and he just says he has to work late?"  I
threw up my hands in anger and walked in a small, confused circle in the
room and looked back down at her with my eyes flaring.  "What can I do?"

    She shook her head.  She hid her face from me and did not seem to
want to tell me what was happening.  "I don't know...Call your daddy, and
see what he says."

    I went straight to the kitchen wall phone and telephoned the grocery
store.  My stepdad answered the phone with a tired, bored voice.

    "Mama's real sick," I said.  "She's throwing up blood."

    "Hell, it's one of those female things, she's been sick to her
stomach and throwing up for weeks."

    "But she's throwing up blood!" I insisted.  "You don't throw up blood
when you're just sick to your stomach."

    "I told you, it's one of those female things.  That kind of stuff is
all in their minds, anyway."

    "Well...what should I do?"

    "Don't do anything," he answered, unconcerned. "I'll be home in about
an hour or two.  Tell her to drink some water."

    "But...she's acting like it hurts really bad."

    "You know how she is, she overdoes everything.  Tell her to drink
some water or some soda, and I'll be home later."

    His indifference told me I was wasting my time.  I said I would look
after Mom, said goodbye and ran back into the bedroom where I stood
beside the bed, helpless and frustrated.

    "He said drink some water and he'll be home later."

    "I can't drink water," Mom said, her breath short and labored.  "I
tried that, it came right up."  Then she made a retching sound again,
down deep in her throat, and tried to hold back.  But another convulsion
soon overtook her and she coiled up again, her neck stretching in a
fierce heave outward, and more blood spilled onto the tissue and onto the
bedspread.  This time she did not simply moan and come out of it, but
bent herself into a small trembling circle and grasped her stomach and
began to cry and cough.

    I touched her shoulder, but did not know what to do.  She heaved
again, and groaned, and finally relaxed.

    "Mom...What can I do?"

    She hid her face but reached out with one hand and grabbed my arm
tightly.  Her fingers trembled and her entire form shivered.  She spoke
with a breathless rasp, "Go down the street...to Aunt Catherine's.  I
tried to call her, but her line's busy...bring her here."

    My Aunt Catherine was one of my stepdad's sisters.  She lived in a
house a few doors down from ours.  Quickly, my fear for my Mom's pain
giving me a bloodcurdling case of the shakes, I ran to the front door.

    "Put your jacket on!" my mother yelled.  "It's cold outside!"

    I thought: to hell with the damn jacket!  I rushed into the night and
ran up the street as fast as I could.  By the time I pounded on Aunt
Catherine's front door I was out of breath.  I tried not to panic.  I
told Aunt Catherine to get to my house as fast as she could, that my Mom
was deathly sick and it was getting worse.

    She stood in the doorway gaping at me.  "Why, Speedy, what's wrong?"

    "I don't know.  She needs somebody.  Hurry!"

    "But what's the--?"

    "Now!  She needs somebody now!"

    Quickly she grabbed her overcoat and threw it loosely over her
shoulders.  "You stay here," she said, trying to calm both herself and
me.  "Watch my baby, Speedy, I can't leave her here alone.  I'm goin'
down there right now, don't you worry."  And she ran down the sidewalk
with her loose coat flapping in the wind.

    I watched Aunt Catherine's sleeping infant for over half an hour.
Several times I peeked out the front door to see what might be happening
down the street at my house.  Then an ambulance with flashing lights
pulled into our driveway.  I longed to get a closer look but was afraid
to leave the baby alone.  Going back to check on the child I found her
still sleeping, and by the time I returned to the front door, two white-
uniformed attendants were shoving a loaded stretcher into ambulance. I
could not see much detail.  The lights began flashing again and the
ambulance backed out swiftly, then screeched as it turned up the street
and took off with sirens wailing.




    My mother had suffered a miscarriage.  I was deeply affected and
spent days shuddering at the thought of how emotionally and physically
painful it must have been for her.  But at the same time I was angered at
discovering that not one of my puritanical family or relatives would
mention the details or even the word "miscarriage" in my presence -- I
gathered what had happened from bits and pieces of conversation that
leaked out now and then.  During the few days my mom spent in the hospit-
al I was shipped off to my maternal grandmother's house a few miles down
the road and endured her endless chatter and bad jokes when she drove me
to school each morning in her creaky 1950 Ford.  She evaded my questions
about what had happened to my mother, but I figured it out when I over-
heard her telling a neighbor that "the baby died."

    It was with deep concern that I came from school one day and Grandma
told me she was taking me home because my mother would be out of the
hospital that afternoon.  As we drove and my grandma lapsed into another
awful and unmemorable country joke, I felt some hope that perhaps the
unfortunate incident would somehow narrow some of the distance between my
family and myself.  Waiting for Mom and my stepdad to show up, I paced
the living room floor restlessly until I saw our tan Ford arrive shortly
before sunset.  Mom was in a bathrobe and overcoat and my stepdad, now
treating her with more deference and attention than I had seen before,
opened the car and slowly and carefully led her to our door.

    Mom entered, looking tired but happy to be home again, and looked
down at me and gave me a weak hug.  "Well," she said, "I'm back."

    "What was wrong with you?' I asked.  "Are you all right now?"

    She averted my eyes and turned to go to the bedroom.  "Well, I was
just real real...sick, Speedy."

    My stepdad held her arm as she slowly and haltingly made her way into
the hallway and the bedroom.  He completely ignored me, which was exactly
what I would have expected.  I watched my mother struggle into their
bedroom, bracing herself against a door or a wall as Tony guided her past
the framed portraits of the Virgin and the Sacred Heart and Saint Jude in
the hallway.  I watched her getting farther and farther away from me.
Farther than ever.  I felt her pain.  I felt her loss.  And I felt a
distance that I had little hope of breaching again.

    Later in my room and I heard the two of them talking in hushed
tones.  Mom was crying softly.

    My stepdad spoke in a consoling manner I'd never heard him use.
"His soul will be protected, I know it will," he said.

    "But, Tony, I was unconscious," my mother softly cried.  "No one knew
to baptize the child.  It'll be in limbo forever."

    "There, now," he kept saying.

    The incident had changed the way my stepdad generally treated Mom.
But it did nothing to quiet my anger nor smooth the raw feeling I had of
not being part of the household I lived in.  I was disgusted with the way
he'd ignored her pain for weeks until the result was disaster and heart-
break.  I was glad he'd had a comeuppance and that he'd earned it the
hard way.  And I knew that my mother's rigid religious fervor meant that
I would never be able to share with her my blasphemous ideas or my
certainty that answers to the mysteries of the universe did not lie in
fairy tales.  I could have said that the hereafter didn't exist anyway. I
could have fudged and said that surely their all-merciful God would not
forever consign an innocent fetus to limbo.  But there was no way, in
that house whose furniture and walls were dotted with pictures of saintly
figures and suffering martyrs and plastic figurines of Jesus, that I
could communicate through their wall of myth and superstition.

    I understood their pain.  But I could not forgive them for leaving me
alone in a world so different and so distant from theirs.




    Near my thirteenth birthday, Martha Jane called and said that Mr.
Buchanan's Easter present to her and her sister Evelyn would be to marry
their mom soon after Easter and move all of them into his big East
Memphis home.  Martha Jane had mixed feelings about it.

    "I'm glad for mother," she told me over the phone. "But I don't know
if I can live in that house.  He's nice.  But he's still a redneck and I
just can't seem to work past that fact."

    "At least you won't have to spend the rest of your college career
moving from place to place."

    "True, but...one more move, actually."

    "Oh no, not again!"

    "Yes, but it's just a move *out* of where I am, and into that big
house.  Oh, well, at least this time I'm his future daughter, so he's
hiring some movers."

    "Being his daughter does have its advantages," I offered.

    "Come over and help me pack."

    "When?"

    "I have two weekends when I can do it, the first and second Saturdays
in April.  Which one would you like?"

    "Both," I said.

    "Which one?"

    "Both," I repeated.

    Her voice on the other end of the line almost sounded as if she were
winking at me.  "Okay," she said.  "This time we'll have longer to play.
I'll have a car to use.  Not Evelyn's, this time.  My daddy-to-be is
buying me one."




    On a Saturday a few weeks later, Martha Jane showed up in a bright
blue Chevrolet.  But she didn't look happy behind the wheel.

    I said after I got into the seat beside her and we were on our way to
her place, "Wow, what a car!"

    "It's not me!" she moaned.  "This huge gas-burner is NOT ME!  Speedy,
I'm scared.  Really.  I should love this, but I hate it.  I feel as if
I'm selling out.  And it takes me an hour to park it."

    "Well...you can always give it back."

    "But this is terrible!  I feel so dishonest.  I dread to think of how
I'm going to be punished for this...this terrible sin!  I've invested so
much in claiming I was on my own and had my own ideas, and now I'm sell-
ing out."

    I spent the afternoon with her and helped her pack books and clothes.
She was cranky the whole time.  I tried to joke around and make light of
Mr. Buchanan and to convince her that at least her life would be settled
for a while.

    "I don't know what's going to happen to me," she said at one point.
"I had finally got the feeling that I was in control of my life and I
could honestly be myself.  Now I have to spend every day in that house
pretending that I agree with everybody, when I really and truly don't."

    "I know," I said ruefully.  "How well I know."

    "Hon, can I say something?"  She was sitting on the floor with her
legs under her and a pile of books in her lap.

    "You can say anything you want, Miss Scarlett."

    "Something's...wrong inside you, isn't it?"

    "Wrong?  What you mean, Red Ryder?"

    "Because you're trying too hard to erase yourself and you never talk
about what you think or feel anymore.  You're being nice to me about
anything and everything, to the total exclusion of yourself."

    I laughed.  "You don't like me paying attention to you?  I'm having a
good time, just helping you today.  Really.  Honest."

    "How are things with your mom and your stepdad?  You never mention
them.  I don't have the slightest idea what's up with you and them."

    I didn't know what to say.  My own feelings about the way I'd been
living and how powerless I felt were thoroughly confused.  And I didn't
want to spoil my time with Martha Jane by getting into it.

    I mumbled something, a careless "Nothing much going on about that,"
and she was quiet behind me for a while.  For sometime afterwards we
didn't talk much except to say that another box was packed or to ask
which box to pack next.  At around six o'clock she decided we should stop
for the day so she could make salads for dinner.

    "You sure got quiet," she said after I had been eating wordlessly in
front of her at the table for five minutes.

    I shrugged.  "Burned out from all this packing, I guess."

    "I guess," she said.  She sighed.  "Me too."

    "So...you'll be living the life of a cool little East Memphis
socialite from now on."

    "Please.  Don't talk about it while I eat."

    I sat and chewed and tried to think of something else to say.  But
the only thing I could think about was that Martha Jane would not be in
that college forever, that she would be teaching one day, perhaps far
away.  I knew better than to bring up that subject.  In fact, everything
that I could think of as material for discussion somehow led to the fact
that the one person in whom I could place any trust was surely going to
be out of the picture sooner or later.  And on that particular day I
wanted very much to undress her and touch her, but I had grown fearful of
even saying anything or making a move in that direction.

    I blinked and looked up.  She stared questioningly at me.

    "Were you in a trance?" she asked.

    "No,"  I said.  She eyed me skeptically.  I shrugged and confessed,
"Yes."

    "I asked you if you have any girlfriends at school."

    The question sent a chill up my spine.  "No," I said.

    "Someone as active as you, and you don't have some girl after you?"

    I shook my head no.

    "Why not, hon?"

    I shrugged--a big, on-purpose, don't-give-a-damn shrug.  "I'm not
interested in anybody."

    "I see..."  She got up and poured some soda into her half-empty glass.
Wordlessly she returned to the table and sat.

    After a moment she looked into her glass and said slowly, "I wonder
...Speedy...oh, never mind."

    I did not know what she was hinting at.  I looked up to find her
staring at me again.  I had just taken a big bite of salad.  Desperately
reaching for something to talk about that had nothing to do with my
thoughts or with anything else, I pointed at my face and said with a full
mouth, "Nice salad.  Good."

    She gave me a sad little smirk.  "Speedy, you're not talking to me.
You're just throwing words across the table."

    "I'm eating," I said, and tried to grin with lettuce sticking out one
side of my lips.

    "You're a miserable failure as a liar, you know that?"

    "What am I lying about, Miss District Attorney?"

    "The same thing I'm lying about."

    "You?  What are you lying about?"

    She hesitated.  She opened her lips to speak, but didn't.

    I repeated, "What are you lying about and why?"

    She took a deep breath and looked me right in the eye.  "I'm not
lying, really.  It's just that there's something I'm not talking about."

    I joked, "Well, gee, thanks for telling me that there's something
you're not telling me about."

    "You're doing it, too.  But you won't even tell me that you're not
telling me about it."

    I shook my head and moved uneasily in the chair. "Miss Graham, this
sounds so complicated."

    "Speedy, what do I have to do to keep you from going inside yourself
like that?  You're so clever about it, but you're so distant when you do
that, and it's something you do again and again and --"

    "No," I said quickly.  I gave her a tired, strained smile.  "No,
Martha Jane, it's...things I don't know how to talk about yet."

    "Oh, goodie, I think I hit the target!  What?  What things?"

    "No."

    "What things?"

    "No!" I insisted, verging on defensive anger.  I'm sure I turned a
little red, but I let it go no further than that.  I was getting better
at holding it all in, because I was sure that a tear would show, or I'd
let slip some desperate motion or remark.  But all I let out was a quiet
and definite no.

    "Well," she said reluctantly, "all right, then.  I won't nag."

    "Let's pack some more stuff," I said, brightening up.

    "No."

    "Martha Jane...I'm -- I guess I'm just bored and tired."

    "You sure?"

    "Mm-hmm."

    The look on her face told me she didn't believe me.  But all she said
was, "Will you promise not to run away while I take a shower?  I'm all
dusty from this work."

    "Can I shower first?  You really had me sweating today.  What a
slave-driver."

    "Okay.  You, then me."

    I showered first, very quickly--not that I was so grungy, but I
wanted to prepare a surprise for her while she washed.  After I dried
off, she followed.  While she showered I remained undressed, cleaned up
the kitchen, turned down all the lights, readied the bed, and lay naked
in the bedroom face-up with my hands behind my head and my cock standing
straight up in the air.

    She came out of the bath toweling her hair.  She stopped short in
the doorway when she saw me.  Her eyes widened and she laughed.  "Well,
well!  Am I to gather from this that you are making the moves this time?"

    "Isn't it my turn?"

    She smirked.  "Let me clean up the kitchen."

    "I already did it."

    "Oh," she said, impressed.  "Really!  My--All this, and he does
dishes, too."  She threw the towel aside and climbed on the bed and
crawled stealthily toward me.  "C'mere, you..."

    Almost an hour later she lay naked under me with her knees raised
while I fucked her rapidly in the soft bed in her dark bedroom.  She had
cum twice, once under my mouth and once with me inside her.

    "Slower," she taunted, her eyes fixed on mine.  "Let it build up."

    "...it's so good, it's close now..."

    "Let it feel good longer, honey.  Look at me."  She held my face
gently but firmly.  "Let me see your eyes."

    I trained my eyes on hers.

    Her hazel orbs searched mine knowingly.  She stroked my face as I
moved in her.  I was physically close to climax, but emotionally distant
-- and Martha Jane had uncanny ways of sensing it.

    She said, "You've been hiding something from me for a long time."

    Trying to evade her, I stared back intently.  "No."

    "You don't have to tell me what it is.  But I don't want it holding
you back from me when we fuck.  Let go of it.  Let it go so you can
really enjoy fucking me."

    Her offer melted my resistance, and I could not prevent my face and
eyes from softening with gratitude -- a reaction she acknowledged with a
little grin of recognition.

    I stopped moving.  I tried telling her, "I keep thinking...I
don't know how to say it..."

    "Shh.  No thinking.  It's so seldom that we can be together like
this.  I'm being very selfish: I want to give you a wonderful cum.  I
want you to stop thinking and cum."

    I began moving in her again, but she cradled my face once more and
said, "Slow, hon.  Make it last until you can stop thinking so much."

    I slowed my pace and lengthened my strokes so that I withdrew almost
all the way out before going even deeper in her.

    "Good," she said.  "Yes.  Take your time.  Go deep."

    I dreaded she would make it so good that I would forget myself com-
pletely, that my fears and anger would have me crying or screaming when I
came.  But her eyes and voice enticed me out of myself despite all my
recent conditioning to the contrary.  I felt my emotions welling up to
match the intense pleasure I felt inside her.

    She urged me on with lusty whispers and an ingenious knack for
holding me on the edge and delaying my release until the defenses that
imprisoned my pleasure behind a wall of rage and isolation had been
obliterated.  For a long time she would not let me cum until I was so
overpowered with lust that, with a helpless sob, I relinquished all
control to my back and hips and allowed them to pump my cock into a
mindless state of raw pleasure.  Below me, she received my surrender
with a sweet smile.

    Everything disappeared.  I yelled.  I slowed and spurted.

    She hissed, "Yessss...yes, hon...MMM! So MUCH!...yes, baby!...oh
yes enjoy it, such a good cum..."  When she felt my orgasm waning she
rolled her hips in a slow arc and drew my last remnants into her
clutching warmth.

    As usual, she thoroughly destroyed and drained me.  I fell asleep in
her arms until she woke me up to drive me home.  On the way she asked if
I felt better.  I answered, yes, I felt better.  But what I did not say
was that nothing had changed.


                           Continued...


            ****  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, 1996 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 8A:


    The week preceding Martha Jane's last weekend of packing before she
left her charming apartment near Memphis State was a long, numbing one.
As far as I knew, it would be my last chance to spend time with her
before she moved to East Memphis under her new stepdad's watchful eye.
Although we spoke by telephone briefly during the week and set the
schedule for my Saturday visit, there was no mention of what might or
might not happen after that weekend.  I was too fearful of bringing it up.

    When Martha Jane arrived in her Chevy (which she still didn't like),
I felt distracted and dull.  My feeble attempts at appearing cheerful
fell flat.  When I couldn't think of anything to say I sat humming an
aimless tune and looking out the car window, pretending to be engrossed
in the passing scenery.

    At her apartment I dove into the work of packing, working so quickly
and efficiently that Martha Jane was left with little more than to stand
around and watch.  By three o'clock that afternoon I'd packed everything
and there was nothing else to do.

    "Well," she said, forcing a cheerful smile through the tension that
had been written on her face since we arrived.  She looked around at the
boxes stacked along one wall of the living room.  "That's that.  Good
work, cowboy, we finished two hours early."

    "Yep," I said, knowing that I sounded terse and sullen.  But I didn't
know what else to do.  I walked into the kitchen to wash my hands.

    "So what's next?" she called from the living room.

    I sighed.  "Can't play records or anything.  It's all packed."  I
stood in the kitchen doorway drying my hands with a paper towel.  "Hate
to see you give up this place."

    Martha Jane cleared her throat and said with an air of mystery,
"Well, there is one more thing.  I don't know what you'll think about
this...I mean, it's kinda...silly."

    I gave her a weak but indulgent smile.  "Try me."

    She blushed and hesitated before starting for the bedroom.  "Follow
me," she said.

    She led me into the bedroom and then into the rear bathroom.  Her
toiletries were still on the floor in two small shoulder bags.  She bent
over the tub and turned on the water.  "First, we need a warm tub..."
She adjusted the water flow and then turned to me with a naughty smile.
"Can you guess yet?"

    "Looks an awful lot like a bathtub filling up with water, lady."

    She winked and wagged a finger.  "Not...quite."  She reached into one
of the shoulder bags and pulled out a package of blue bubble bath powder
and held it up to me.

    "Remember this?"

    Blood rushed to my head, and to a couple of other places.  I smiled,
still a little unsure, and reached out for the package of bubble bath.

    She jumped back playfully.  "No, no, that's *my* part.  I get to
open the package.  Your part is to get nekkid first."

    I squinted.  "Is this supposed to remind me of what I think it's
supposed to remind me of?"

    She winked.  "Yes.  See, I told you it was silly."

    A sudden and chilling thought passed across my mind but, not wanting
to kill the mood for her, I kept the question to myself: did this ritual
mean that I was not going to see her again?

    I unbuttoned my shirt.  She came to me with a playful gleam in her
eyes and helped me undress, pausing now and then to touch my neck and
sides and to help me unzip my jeans.

    She turned to dump the powder into the water.  She watched the blue
bubbles expand and rise.  When she turned around again, I stood naked in
the middle of the room.  Seeing me, her eyes lit up and she walked over
to me.  Her face hovered near mine.  As she watched my eyes she trailed
her fingers down my tummy and onto the tip of my cock.

    "Remember this, too?" she whispered.

    "Hmmm.  Yes."

    "Feel good?"

    "Yes.  Like the first time."

    "Hmmm.  Nasty boy."  Her hand continued to graze my now twitching
penis.  "You have no idea how often I've remembered the first time we did
this."  She kissed me on one eye and then the other, and whispered near
my ear: "And since then, little Speedy has grown into a warm, lovable,
sensitive young man.  And a wonderful lover."

    I managed to keep myself from breaking into tears.  I resolved that
this moment, if it was to be our last intimacy, would be as she wanted
it.  But my unvoiced questions persisted, and so far my mind was still
uneasy on that score.

    I put a wet, open-lipped kiss on her neck and saw and felt goose-
bumps rise on her back and arms.  I said, "Hey.  The water's ready."

    "Oh, yeah," she said.  She saw that the tub was now half-filled with
blue bubbles.  "But we're both bigger now and we need a little more than
we used to.  You go in first."

    I pointed at myself as if to question "Me?", and she grinned and
nodded.  I settled into the tub, the bubbles engulfing me with an audible
hiss.

    She began to undress.  "Turn it off when the bubbles are high
enough."

    "How high?"

    "Nose high."

    "Okay."

    In a moment she was naked.  My cock lurched under the bubbles when I
saw her.  She was slim and firm; her legs seemed rather long for a woman
of her relatively petite stature, an illusion caused by her nineteen-inch
waist, the moderately lush flair of her hips and the firm roundness of
her tush.  Her breasts sloped smoothly and swiftly into rounded globes
with pointed, dark pink nipples.  Her mound was topped with a fine,
curly, almost transparent auburn fuzz that crowned her outthrust smooth-
lipped vulva and extended halfway down the length of her prominent slit,
which now was only slightly parted.  But it was all these bound by a
perfection of creamy flesh -- skin so tight and toned that it glistened
along her shoulders and hips and upper thighs -- that, and her long-
necked grace, gave her body an alluring mixture of woman and girl, harlot
and angel.

    She grinned as she approached the tub and stepped inside.  "You hard
under those bubbles?"

    I nodded.

    "Well," she said, settling into the nose-high foam and facing me,
"hold that thought j-u-u-st a little longer."  She grabbed the bar of
soap and lathered her hands and then reached under the bubbles to stroke
my cock with her slippery fingers.

    "Ah," I gasped.

    "Good?"

    "Mmm."

    "Don't cum, hon."

    "Aw, no fair."

    "Shh.  I'll just hold it," and she did.  "I have something to tell
you.  New house rules."

    "Phooey.  Rules."

    "You'll like this one."  She lowered her voice to a more serious
octave.  "From here on out, you're not Speedy anymore."

    "No?"

    "No.  You're Steven.  You don't look like a 'Speedy' anymore.  You
don't think like him and you don't fuck like him.  You don't have a
little boy's four-inch dick anymore.  You have a fine, perfectly shaped
cock with soft dark brown pubic hair in just the right amount and just
the right places.  And a warm heart, and a good mind, and very handsome
eyes.  You're Steven now.  Is it okay if I never call you Speedy again?"

    At the end of her little speech I was a blue-bubbled blob of silly
mush with a melting heart and a very hard cock.  If she asked me to shoot
the Pope and steal his name, I would have said yes. I reached for her,
and she moved closer to me and let my arms drape over her soft wet
shoulders before she said, "Wait, there's more."

    "Oh.  OK.  More."

    "From now on, I'm no longer Martha Jane.  I'm Martha.  I'm not a
teenage doll and not a kitten and not a Southern belle, and I'm twenty-
one years old.  Not long from now I'll be a professional and I'll dress
like a professional, not like a schoolgirl.  I want everyone to call me
Martha from now on.  I'll use that name on my resume's and checks and on
everything I sign.  And I'll insist on Martha from others.  But from you,
Steven--I don't want to demand, I want to ask... will you call me Martha
from now on?"

    Too choked up to speak, I nodded slowly and firmly, and then I pulled
her into a hug under the bubbles, and she hugged me back.  After a moment
in this humid, bubbly clinch she tapped me on the back with one finger.

    "Steven?"

    "Yes?"

    "You didn't call me Martha yet."

    "I will.  In a minute."

    "Call me Martha now.  I want to hear you say it."

    "Well...you have your new rules.  I have one, too."

    "What's that?"

    "I will call you by that name very soon, in just a little while, when
the time is exactly right."

    "When?"

    "You'll see.  Soon."

    We soaped and rubbed each other, adding some playful touches and
tickles.  She said it was the first time she'd had her nipples and cunt
soaped by another's hands.  Covered with bubbles, we climbed out of the
tub.  She stayed in the bathroom to powder and finish up, while I turned
off all the lights in the apartment so that a soft, late afternoon glow
filtered through the curtains.

    When she entered the bedroom I was sitting on the edge of the bed,
my legs under me.  She stood a few inches away, fluffing her hair with a
towel.

    She asked, "why are you sitting on the edge of the bed like that?"

    I said quietly, "C'mere.  Stand by the bed," and when she dropped the
towel and came to me I pulled her head close and whispered in her ear,
"Remember this?"

    "Remember what?"

    "The first time I saw you nekkid.  The first time you showed how to
get you wet."

    "Oh," she whispered.  "Oh.  Yes."  She backed away one step and
spread her feet so that her love-pod was more available.  I whispered,
"Let me fingerfuck you."  As her hands found and squeezed my cock and
balls, she opened her legs a little more.  Between her smoothly muscled
thighs was a small open alcove shaped and sized perfectly for the palm
of my hand.  I cupped her warm mound, which greeted me with a sliver of
slippery moisture along the middle of my palm.  She shifted her legs
again, allowing me a little more room to slide a tantalizing finger along
the slick edges of her firmly-rimmed slit.  Leaning into me and lifting a
nipple to my lips, she whispered, "Suck my tittie, hon."

    I kissed, licked, and then she sighed pleasurably as a nipple entered
my gently sucking mouth.  At my fingers, her slit swelled and opened.
Once more she made a fine adjustment with her feet, bending her knees a
little to lift her portal upward and toward me.

    She hissed, "Put it in me.  Slow.  Slow.  Ah."

    I whispered, "Squeeze my cock.  Just a little.  Give it a little tug."

    "Like that?...Mmm.  Yes.  Wet."

    Several years earlier when this scene was first enacted, I could hold
out for hours.  Now, I'd be lucky if I lasted half a minute -- and when
she spread precum over my shaft and circled her fingers around me, that
interval was seriously shortened.

    With my free hand I held both of hers motionless at my crotch.
"Wait," I whispered. "Not yet."

    "Not yet?"

    "Let me fuck you with my finger a minute."

    She grinned and smoothed a lock of hair from her forehead so she
could look down and watch my hand on her.  "Okay."

    For a few minutes that dripped with a seething eroticism I had not
seen in her for some time, I gently stroked and primed her clit, pausing
now and then to fingerfuck her slowly and deeply and properly, searching
her slithery inner walls until I found that rough spot just above the
curve lay that lay beyond her portal and which that made her moan and hug
my finger.  In a while her head drifted back and her eyes closed.  She
sighed to the ceiling, "Hon, that's so good."  I was so turgid  I felt
I'd need a firearm permit if I got any harder.  Soon she leaned against
me, murmuring, "My legs are getting weak, it's so good."

    I whispered, "Lie down."  She slid naked into the bed and lay with
her arms draped above her head and her thighs spread wide. She smiled
languidly.  She was wet and open enough to start fucking, and she
appeared to think that we were going to do just that.  Instead, I lay
between her legs and kissed her cunt and inner thighs.  Her head fell
back and she closed her eyes and whispered happily, "Yes."

    With one more preparatory smooch on the surface of her cunt, I
whispered, "Tell me when you're close."

    "Okay."

    "When you're very close."

    She crooked one knee and let her leg fall to one side.  I could
see her grinning toward the ceiling with her eyes closed as goosebumps
rose on her legs.  "Okay."

    I tongued her delicately.  When I found her clit she sighed, arching
ever so slightly.  Wetly I continued, sometimes full-mouthing her entire
mound and then sucking her clit between my tongue and inner lips the way
she liked.  Her arms reached behind her head and grasped the edge of the
headboard.  A few minutes later she tightened her grip, her knuckles whitening
with the effort, followed by tremors in the stretched tendons of her inner
thighs.  She was fully open to me then, her clit almost the size and
hardness of a thin thimble, her thighs drifting apart until her knees
were drawn up with her feet pulled together under my chest.  She began
whispering heatedly, "Suck it.  Right there, yes...Soft, hon. Suck...
Yes.  Mm, yes."  I felt the beginnings of the stiffening and trembling
that signaled the onset of her orgasm; I wondered if she'd remember to
tell me when she was near.  I did not want to remove my tongue to remind
her, for I knew she was getting dangerously close.  I trusted her to be
selfish, to cum whenever and however she pleased.  And just as it seemed
she might be ready to go over the edge, she lifted her head and looked
down at me, gasping, "I'm so close!"

   Immediately I rose, and the surprise on her face was matched only by
the pleased widening of her eyes as I entered her quickly, deeply and
smoothly, my eyes on hers.  She stared at me with wild-eyed, joyful lust
as I began fucking with the slow, steady rhythm I knew she preferred.
She slowly whispered, "Fuucck."  Then her writhing inner walls began to
pulse and contract, and she stiffened, and her eyes narrowed, and her
fingers dug into my arms, and she wept softly, "Hon I'm cummin'!", only
for her to find, just as her entire body went into its taut muscle-lock
of pleasure, that I had just jerked and squirted inside her, and her eyes
saw it happening for me and for her at the same time, and she saw and
heard me whisper to her, "Martha," and her eyes glazed wetly with
pleasure and she sank into the undertow of her long deep cum while I
squirted again in her tightening center.  I slowed and lengthened my
strokes to prolong the pleasure and to savor the full feel of her,
another hot and very hard spurt jetting out of me with a force that made
me moan, and I crooned to her between my own quickening gasps, "Cum,
Martha.  Cum."

   As my ejaculations ebbed, she came out of her climax and settled into
the bed with a childlike whimper of surrender and fatigue.  Her eyes
closed, and she pulled me against her and started breathing again.  I
kissed her ear and throat and hid my face in her neck while I made three
or four last, hungry probes into her, winding down.  Feeling her hand
push its way between our tummies, I rose slightly to allow her to wring
the last of me from my tubes, as she so much liked to do.  When she
finished I settled onto her, our joined lengths so hot and wet that it
felt like immersion in a bubble bath again.  We hugged, and breathed, and
rested.

    She purred, "Yes.  Oh, yes."




    We were dressed and it was dark outside.  I sat on the bed watch-
ing her brush her hair.  She looked at my reflection in the dressing
table mirror.

    "Are you staring at me?" she joked.

    "I'm asking you," I tempted.

    "Asking me what?"

    "Martha..."  I stopped.

    "Hmm, that sounded nice.  And you sure do know a perfect moment when
you see one."

    "Martha."

    "ye-e-e-s?"

    "Will we do this again?"

    Her brush slowed, and stopped, and a heavy darkness seemed to fall on
her.  After a moment she said, "Oh, Steven."

    "I was just asking."

    She sighed heavily and began brushing again.  "Yes.  We'll all be at
my mommy's wedding next week."

    Her answer and her dull manner told me the question had upset her, so
I dropped the subject.  I lay back into the pillow, resting.  With my
eyes closed, I heard her place the brush on her table, then heard the
rustle of her jeans as she walked across the room, then felt the bed
slant as she sat beside me and laid her head on my chest.

    "Steven, the answer to that question is that I want to.  But I don't
know when.  Or how"

    "You don't have to answer."

    She held her face over mine and removed the arm I'd draped over my
face.  Her eyes dug into mine.  "Steven, there's something I've wanted to
tell you for a very, very long time.  And I can't right now, not right
now.  But I will someday.  When the time is right."

    "Promise?"

    "Promise."

    "When?"

    "Oh, you devil..."  She put my arm back over my face and pouted.   "I
told you, I promise.  I keep promises."

    "Okay."

    "Don't say okay if you don't mean it."

    I smirked.  "Okay."

    She sat up on the bed and said, "But I will tell you part of it at
the wedding.  I just should need time to find the words.  Deal?"

    "Okay."

    "Really okay?"

    "Yes."

    She removed my arm, kissed my forehead, replaced my arm, and rose to
get ready to drive me home.  I watched as she moved about the place doing
her Martha chores and touching her Martha things.  I could tell she was
hiding some distress from me.  I sorely regretted having allowed myself
to blurt out my question about us.  I resolved I'd never again mention
it, would never again bring that shadow into her face.  Never again.



    Her mother's wedding was a festive, crowded, expensive affair, as
ornate as Mr. Buchanan's could afford.  I attended the ceremony, watching
from a front pew in the cathedral while Martha, as a member of the bridal
party, stood stiff and uneasy in a pale blue, formal gown.  After the
ceremony she came to me during the drawn-out handshake ritual on the
front steps of the church and confided, "How wasteful and barbaric."  She
sighed impatiently.  "Hundreds of people, tens of thousands of dollars,
all these clothes, all this display -- just so a man and woman can sleep
together."

    The huge crowd gathered that evening at the formal dinner and recep-
tion at Colonial Country Club.  Mr. Buchanan, finally married, showed off
his bride and his two stepdaughters.  "The three prettiest gals in the
whole city of Memphis," he boasted during one of many pre-dinner toasts.
During the evening Martha seated me beside her at a long table apart from
the one where her sister and mom and stepdad were gathered.  I waltzed
with her once, both of us blushing as I attempted valiantly to subdue an
insistent erection under my rented tuxedo.  Time and again as we attempt-
ed to chat at our table, we were interrupted by one request after another
for Martha's hand on the dance floor. Finally, as the evening's end drew
near, she and I moved outside for a quiet stroll among the cherry trees
and pines in the gardens behind the reception hall.  A faint breeze
filtered through the cherry blossoms.

    I stood near her as she leaned on the low bough of a cherry tree.  I
said little, distracted by the fear that as long as she was living in Mr.
Buchanan's house we would not be free to see each other intimately.

    "Something's on your mind, isn't it?" she asked, her eyes searching
mine.  Her voice -- needy, cajoling, seductive -- floated through the
sweet spring air and washed over and into me.  Her beauty and the perfume
from the cherry blossoms and the moonlight worked on me relentlessly.
She said, "It's so hard for me to tell you what I wanted to say last
week, if you hide from me.  It makes me feel I'm here all alone, hon."

    Falteringly, my own effort at concealment almost choking off my
voice, I told her that what I was feeling at that very moment, in that
place, would sound strange.  "Even a little weird," I said.

    "Tell me.  Let me decide if it's weird or not."

    After beating around the bush for a while, I haltingly confessed that
I wish she'd been my mother.  Or my sister.  But I guessed I'd have to
settle for her being "my friend."

    Hearing this, her eyes softened and she, too, blushed profusely.
"How strange, Steven," she mused.  "How so, so strange."

    Girlishly, diffidently, almost guiltily, she confessed to me:  "Hon,
I'm shocked to admit this to you, much less to myself.  But I wanted to
tell you the same thing.  I wish you'd been mine, too.  My brother.  Or
even...my son.  Isn't that an outrageous, wicked thing to say?  Would we
have slept together?  I don't know.  But if I ever had a son, I would
want him to be like you."

    Deathly afraid of revealing more, I fell silent.  Deep inside me, my
emotions swelled and wanted to shout themselves to the world.  I was
partially soothed by the sound, somewhere beyond us, of the dinner crowd
singing in chorus.  Muffled by distance, the sound of their voices sing-
ing a plaintive waltz drifted through the trees.

    The distant voices sang:

                    Last Saturday night I got married.
                    Me and my wife settled down...

    "It's the last dance," she said.  "The bride's choice.  My mother
chose that song.  It's her favorite.  Such a sad song.  But so pretty."

    I turned to her, to nod in recognition of the bittersweet lyric.  At
that moment our eyes met.  She smiled sweetly, her eyes looking deeply
into mine, poignant and yearning.  I asked myself: yearning for what? Had
I seen, somewhere within the warm affection in those soft, hazel eyes, an
even more meaningful message?  Deep inside the glistening pools of the
clear whites of her eyes lay something more, something tense, enigmatic,
hypnotic.

                    Irene goodnight, Irene goodnight.
                    Goodnight, Irene,
                    Goodnight, Irene,
                    I'll see you in my dreams.

    "Hon," she whispered reluctantly, "I have to go.  The dance is over
and they'll be looking for me."

    Quickly she kissed me on the cheek and hugged me, and then left for
the reception hall.  I stood paralyzed, watching her disappear among the
cherry blossoms.  Slowly I strolled to the building, not caring whether
my parents spotted me or not.  Oblivious to the milling crowd that gath-
ered their belongings and prepared to leave, I crossed the vast hall and
strolled into the parking lot, hoping for a sight of her as she passed
by in the car with her family.  Perhaps I'd catch her before she left; so
much was left unsaid.  Perhaps I'd get up the nerve to say it.

    But the moment had fled, and Martha was nowhere to be seen.



                             PART  8B:


    In early June of that year she graduated with honors and a Bachelor's
degree in special education.  The ceremony was held on a Sunday after-
noon.  I was staying at my godparent's restaurant in downtown Memphis at
the time and was able to get a ride to Memphis State with Aunt Frances,
who grumbled about having to make a special trip all the way out there.

    When we arrived on the main boulevard that bounded the campus, Aunt
Frances frowned in bewilderment.  "Where are all the people who go to
school here?"

    Looking around, I saw students swarming all around us.  I answered,
"This whole crowd is students, Aunt Frances."

    "This is what they wear to school?  They don't have to wear uniforms
on Sunday?"

    "Aunt Frances, you don't wear uniforms in college."

    "The nuns let them go to class with no uniforms?"

    "Nuns don't teach the classes out here, Aunt Frances."

    "Oh," she said, her eyes widening even more in shock and confusion.
"Which one of these buildings do the nuns live in?"

    "There aren't any nuns, Aunt Frances.  No Nuns!"

    "Look at the way these boys come to school.  Hmp.  No ties, no nice
shoes.  Look, that one boy over there, he's the only one with a tie!"

    For over forty years she had driven down the same streets to work and
Mass and home again, oblivious to growth and changes in other parts of
the city; nor could she imagine an educational institution other than the
Catholic elementary girls' school she had last attended in 1918.  When
she dropped me off near the administration building I explained to her
how to get back to Central Avenue a few blocks away, a street she knew
only because Immaculate Conception Cathedral was located on it, even
though this was the first time she had been on that street's ten-mile
eastward extension that had been built in the 1940's.  I gave up trying
to explain college to her.

    Later, seated in the balcony of the auditorium, I spotted Martha in
the procession of students in cap and gown, as well as her mother and
Evelyn and another female relative who sat in the audience.  I hadn't
seen Martha in several weeks; she looked pleased, if not visibly ex-
hausted after the crunch of her final exams.  When she walked to the
podium to accept a special certificate of honor, I wondered how soon she
would leave Memphis State, or if she would leave the city altogether.  At
the end of the ceremony I found her in the audience and traded niceties
with her relatives.  She offered to give me a ride back to my Aunt Fran-
ces' place downtown, which I gladly accepted -- although, as she drove me
in her Chevy, I found I was holding back so much of what I really wanted
to say that I said little.  Whether or not she noticed this, I didn't
know.  She seemed limp, glad that it was finally over.  So far, she'd
heard nothing from her applications for graduate aid.

    Arriving at the restaurant on Calhoun Street, she smiled tiredly and
thanked me for showing up at her graduation.  I tried to be as cheerful
as I could.  As I got out of the car she said, "Wait a minute!  Don't
you dare leave me without a hug!"

    She got out of the car and met me on the driver's side, where she
threw her arms around me and gave me a close, long, moaning hug.

    "We'll get together soon," she said.  "At last, I'll have some free
time."

    From the street we saw my relatives inside the restaurant -- Aunt
Frances and Mama Rose and a couple of visiting aunts.  They waved at us
through the restaurant's front window.  We waved too, and as Martha got
back into her car she blew me a kiss and a sympathetic smile:  "Don't let
'em drive you crazy, hon!"  Then she drove away, leaving me feeling
rather lonely but knowing that she was leaving temporarily, and that she
was headed for a well-deserved rest.

    A few weeks later I was again spending Saturday afternoon at the
Tremont Cafe.  I was completely unprepared for her excited phone call.

    "I don't believe it!" she squealed excitedly over the line.  "Steven,
I don't believe it!  It came in the mail, just this afternoon!  Columbia!
Columbia University in New York!  I don't believe it!  New York City!"

    I don't remember the rest of the telephone call.  She had been award-
ed a scholarship and a graduate teaching assistantship at Columbia.  She
had not expected it, and I even recalled her saying when she mailed her
application months earlier that she doubted anything would come of it.

    It was another week before she picked me up at the Tremont to spend
Sunday afternoon with her.  She drove into the county and into Shelby
State Park, where we parked her Chevrolet in the tourist's lot and went
for a stroll deep into the woods of the park.  I was familiar with the
area through my brief tour with the Boy Scouts at St. Michael's School.
We were both rather subdued, but glad to see each other.  For some time I
did not ask the big question, but I finally summoned up the nerve to do
so as we rested on the grass atop a heavily forested hill and snacked on
some cold fried chicken I had brought along from the Tremont.

    "So when will you be leaving for New York?"

    She smiled at me warmly, touching my cheek and then squeezing my
arm.  "I don't really know, Steven, but it will have to be soon.  Very
soon.  You have no idea, the confrontations I had with Mr. Buchanan.  It
happened just yesterday, when I told him I was going to leave home to
take the assistantship.  It was almost a shouting match.  He got down to
saying: how *could* you move to New York when you have a home right here
in Memphis and an obligation to marry and keep the family going?"

    I turned away, toward the distant valley.  I had no idea she would
meet with such resistance from her stepdad.  It made the distance from my
own family seem secondary, at least for the time being.

    She went on.  "He's dead set against my leaving.  Especially to big,
bad New York.  You know how people are in Memphis, they think Memphis is
the whole world, the only possible choice.  Why would anyone dare run off
to another city, when everything one could ever need is right here in
good ol' Memphis?"

    "But you can't give it up.  It's what you worked for.  You earned it.
You broke your back for it."

    "He treated me as if I were some kind of ungrateful beauty queen.  I
even offered to give back the Chevrolet.  I never wanted it that much in
the first place -- I always knew that damn car would be symbolic of
trouble sooner or later."

    "So, will you give it back?"

    "He won't let me.  Can you believe it?  He wants me to keep it.  He
thinks he can buy me with it.  He thinks that car would be as important
to me as it is to him."  She lowered her face and set her jaw firmly.
"But it won't work.  I found a friend who can sell it for whatever cash
we can get.  And I'll need it in a place like New York.  I haven't saved
a dime and Mr. Buchanan certainly isn't going to help me out.  Mother
offered to wheedle something out of him, but I won't let her.  I know it
sounds crazy, but I still want to do this on my own."

    She stopped and looked at me.  Her hazel eyes were sisterly and
knowing.  "You don't want me to go, do you?"

    "I never said that."

    "Steven, I know you never said it, but..."  She looked down and
fingered a fallen leaf.  "It's just as sudden for me as it must be for
you."  She looked up at me.  "It's not forever."

    "Not forever?"

    "Only for a Master's.  Only two years.  I'll be teaching and working,
so there won't be any crash course this time.  It'll take me the full two
years to get through it.  So...it really won't be that long.  Besides --
you'll find a girlfriend, you know.  You'll forget all about me."

    I gave a low, wry laugh.  "Right."

    "You will, Steven.  You're becoming a very accomplished young man.
You'll be in high school then, your social life will have changed.  And
you'll be older and taller.  You'll be different.  So very different by
then."

    "And you'll find somebody, too," I said, avoiding her gaze.

    She sighed and shook her head and looked out over the bucolic scene
before us.  "I don't know, hon.  I don't think so.  I'm not planning on
it.  All I'm planning on is all the hard work I'll have ahead of me.
Graduate school at a first-rate place like Columbia is no pushover.  It's
no picnic at all, from what I hear."

    She looked back at me, apparently to check my reaction to her words.
I shrugged and laughed it off.  I played with a long blade of grass that
I pulled from the ground.

    "So," she insisted, "how do you really feel, Steven?"

    "It's yours," I answered stoically.  "You worked for it.  You should
have it."

    She searched my eyes and then smiled wanly, looking away. "All right,
if that's really what you wanted to say.  You're unnecessarily brave
about this."

    "How?" I asked.

    "Oh, I don't know.  I expected something else from you.  Maybe some-
thing poetic.  Or even angry.  But you don't reveal much about yourself
the way you used to.  Do you really feel so noble and sure of yourself
...or are you just accepting it for my benefit?"

    I considered my answer quickly, but carefully.  I wondered if she
could tell that my reply didn't exactly match my feelings.  I lied: "I am
this noble.  I am this sure of myself."  Then I partly told the truth:
"And I am doing it for your benefit."

    She smiled.  Broadly.  Lovingly.  She put her hand on my arm and
squeezed.

    "Thank you, Steven.  Thank you for that."

    As we left the park and headed back to the city and the Tremont Cafe,
I felt her and everything about her slipping away.  My anxiety welled so
violently, and I concealed it with such difficulty, that my chest and
head felt physically crushed.  I gazed blindly out the open window on my
side of the car, afraid that if I exposed my face to her she would know
everything I felt and thought.  The world that passed my view at fifty
miles per hour on the highway seemed to be little more than a rush of
strange, alien objects that threatened to swallow me up and smother me at
any moment.  I was torn between needing her and letting her go to claim
what was rightfully hers.  And I was afraid that any open expression of
my fear and helplessness would be an affront to her, would reveal that I
really and truly was only thirteen years old and that I would not know
what to do without her.

    She didn't say much.  She drove with her eyes leveled straight ahead
on the highway.  I wanted desperately to hold her.  Then it hit me that
not only was Martha on her way out of my life, but all of the places
where we could have been alone and unseen had already vanished.  The
Lauderdale Courts was gone, her apartment was gone.  I knew of no place
where we could be together.  I harried myself with worry over what she
would think if I asked her if we could go somewhere and be together
again.  Would she feel that I were attempting to hold her back?  In the
past, we had not always had sex when we met; in the past I felt assured
that it would happen again, later, when the opportunity arose.  Now,
suddenly, I realized that "later" was not going to happen.

    I shuffled in my seat, folding my arms tightly before me in an effort
to appear only mildly affected -- which, of course, I soon realized only
revealed the storm inside me.  It was a strange effect, to be able to
stand so far away from myself and observe with embarrassment how I moved
and spoke and appeared.  It was something that happened to me more often
and was becoming a modus operandi that left me feeling extremely uncom-
fortable about myself.

    Eventually I asked with great effort, "Will I be able to see you
again...before you leave?"

    To my surprise, she smiled wickedly.  "You mean...you wanna try to
get together somewhere?"

    "Yeah."

    She smirked.  "I was wondering how long I'd have to wait for you to
ask first.  Well...I'll see if I can arrange something."



    A few days later she called and told me that she would be leaving in
two weeks.  She would leave by train and move to New York.  She had a
college girlfriend who lived there and who would help her get settled.
Going by airplane would be faster but much more expensive; the cheaper
train fare and the cash from the sale of her Chevy would have to suffice
until money from her award at Columbia materialized in the fall.

    She relayed all this information as though it were secondary -- or
perhaps too unpleasant to contemplate at the moment.  Quickly she changed
the subject and told me that all her college friends had left Memphis for
the summer, so she knew of no one's apartment where we could hide out for
a day.  And it wouldn't be possible for us to spend an entire night to-
gether: neither of us could think of a good excuse for my being out all
night that would be acceptable to my parents or hers.  So she would rent
a room in a new Holiday Inn motel in southeast Memphis on Airways
Boulevard in a part of town our acquaintances never frequented, and where
not even her car in a motel parking lot would be recognized.

    She picked me up on a Saturday afternoon at the Tremont Cafe.  I
didn't tell my parents about it; my isolation from them had intensified
to the point where a few mumbled words at the breakfast table during the
week were all that transpired between us.  But I did tell my Aunt Frances
and Mama Rose and the others at the restaurant that Martha and I were
going on a picnic in Riverside Park and then to the movies, and that we
wouldn't return until later that evening.

    I slipped into her car and we both smiled and waved at onlookers in
the restaurant's front window, then pulled away and headed for Airways
Boulevard.  For a few blocks I didn't speak.

    "What's wrong?" she asked.  "You're so quiet."  She winked.  "Afraid
we'll get caught?"

    "Oh, nothing," I murmured dully.  For the first time in my relation-
ship with her, I actually felt we were being deceptive and sneaky.  In
the past, our getting together had somehow seemed like a naturally occur-
ring event, like occasional rain or a change of season.

    I told her, "More and more, I'm leading a secret life that no one
knows anything about."

    "Steven," she said seriously, watching the road as she made the wide
turn into busy Airways Boulevard, "I've been doing that with my folks for
a very long time."  She sighed heavily as she pressed the accelerator and
merged with traffic on the road that widened into the highway to Birming-
ham.  "I haven't had time to worry if it was the right thing to do, or
not.  But if I were to stay sane...it was necessary.  It's not me, and
it's not you.  It's the world."

    Soon the homes and businesses along the busy highway thinned out.  We
passed the airport area and then the wide expanse of land occupied by the
outdoor drive-in theater district.  Beyond that point, I was in a totally
unfamiliar part of town.  When we pulled into the parking lot of the huge
Holiday Inn, I felt lost and shaky.  She and I had always been alone in
familiar, secluded, cozy places; the building I saw in front of me was
impersonal, massive, and coldly public in the hard midday June sun.

    She pulled into a parking space in the lot behind the building, shut
down the engine and turned to me.  She laughed.  "You look scared to
death."

    "I'm not," I lied.

    "Is this place okay?  I realize it's not like home--"

    "Yes," I said, opening my door and moving out bravely.  "Let's go."

    Our room on the second floor was neat and spacious.  It smelled of
cleaning fluid.  It was so meticulously color-coordinated in dark browns
and burnt orange that it seemed almost monochrome.  Martha closed and
double-locked the door behind us and motioned toward the wide bed.  "Have
a seat," she said.  "Try it out."  As I sat on the firm bed she yanked on
the cord of the halfway-open drapes and pulled them shut, closing us off
in a square white-walled room that was now dimly lit only by remnants of
sunlight seeping around the edges of the floor-length drapes.

    I had a paper bag of snacks and Cokes on my lap.  I reached over to
the nearby chair and placed the bag there while Martha removed the small
overnight bag from around her shoulder and placed it on the desk near the
wall.  Sitting next to me on the bed, she caught her breath and pushed a
few stray locks of hair from her face.

    "Well," she breathed.  "It's a little antiseptic."

    "I could get used to it."

    She shivered and rubbed her bare arm.  "Let's turn down that air
conditioner before we both become frozen peas in here."

    I got up and then knelt at the air conditioner, found the controls in
the dim light and turned the temperature and the fan halfway down.
Standing, I turned to see her sitting on the bed and looking about the
place warily.  Her discomfort appeared to be similar to mine.  As I
watched her she looked in my direction, caught me eyeing her, and smiled
apologetically.

    I smiled back.  "Anyway...it's quiet.  Just feels a little strange."

    "A little sleazy?" she asked jokingly.  "What do you say we take a
shower and rinse off all this summer sweat?  It was so muggy in that car,
I'm all clammy."

    In the big reverberant bathroom we ran steaming water in the shower
and got undressed, eyeing each other with a growing sense of intimacy and
anticipation.  The discomforts of the place and the room were soon dis-
placed by our grinning and tittering and our bumping against each other
under the water.  We unwrapped the little bar of hotel soap and swathed
each other provocatively, Martha closing her eyes and moaning as I
caressed her hardening nipples with my sudsy fingertips.

    She toweled off quickly, and while I dried myself she went into the
main room.  When I shut the light and left the bathroom I saw that she
had lit a cigarette and was sitting on the bed against the headboard, her
knees drawn up to her chest and her arms around her slender, shiny
shins.  Naked, she seemed daintily trim and diminutive, her firm breasts
jiggling as I got into the bed.  She exhaled a thin stream of gray smoke
and gave me a sly smile.  I smiled back.  Before me, between her thighs
and half-hidden behind her calves, was the smoothly domed swell of her
furrowed conch, sparsely fuzzed with tiny auburn cilia, the rims of her
narrow slit just beginning to glisten with her dew.  Its primal, she-
animal character presented itself in impudent contrast to the statuesque
elegance of the rest of her.




                              PART 8C:



    She indulged in her cigarette, her voice throaty, secretive, con-
spiratorial.

    "This is beginning to feel very naughty," she said.

    "All those people driving by," I said, joining in her mood, "not
knowing we're nekkid."

    "Yeah," she breathed, pleased.  She took another puff. "After today,
you'll have to go to confession."

    "I don't go to confession.  I just pretend I do."

    "Don't you feel strange about that?"

    "A little.  But it's what I have to do."

    "It's a sin," she said, testing me.

    "Only for everyone else."

    "This...is a sin," she announced, a little amused.  She reached over
to the ashtray and slowly, carefully, mashed the cigarette several times
against the glass until it was completely extinguished.  "It's the major,
most unacceptable, most outrageous...most delicious sin."

    "Can I have one of those?" I asked mischievously.

    "One of what?" she asked, settling against the headboard.

    "One of those," I said, motioning my head at the ash tray.

    "Don't you dare.  It's an awful habit.  One of my few vices.  I'm not
lazy, I'm not narrow-minded, I'm not hateful.  I don't rob anyone, I
don't kill anyone, I don't hate anyone.  I'm not a racist, not a bigot.
But I do smoke.  And I'm a hypocrite.  And deep inside, I'm ruthless."

    I asked, surprised, thinking she was joking,  "You are?"

    "Yes. I am.   I have such a sweet, innocent, kitten-like look.  Mr.
Buchanan thinks that Evelyn and I are both virgins.  Saints.  But Evelyn
fucks.  And I fuck."  She looked at me, expressionless, studying me.

    I gave an embarrassed laugh.  "That's not so sinful."

    "Oh, it is.  It's a sin because I like it so much.  You can't like
something that much without it being a sin.  It's so difficult to let
someone else know how much I like it.  It's so good with you, but even
with you sometimes...I get a little scared of myself, it's so good and
so...unexpected.  Sometimes, hon, it's so much of a strain on me.
Really.  It's not always so easy to let you know that about me.  I am a
terrible sinner when I'm nekkid with you."

    "Really?  After all we've done?"

    "Yes."  She suddenly and playfully hid her eyes with one hand.  "Oh,
I can't believe this.  Why am I so embarrassed?  It's like telling you
about my period.  It's so silly."

    I paused.  "Is that the secret that you wanted to tell me about?
That you think this is a sin?"

    "No, hon, no.  My big secret is something else, and I can't tell you
that now."  She uncovered her eyes and with a coy smile she leaned her
head on her knees, smiling at me indulgently.  "But I will tell you one
day, don't worry."

    "Okay," I said, disappointed.

    "Do you think this is a sin?"

    "Yes.  Sort of."

    "Sort of?"

    "Well...only because everyone else says it is."

    "Yes...I know what you mean."

    She dropped into deep thought for a moment.  She rubbed her leg and
then her voice shrank into that of a hesitant little girl.

    "Hon...do you like sinning with me?"

    "Yes.  That makes me as big a sinner as you are."

    "Then there's no hope for us," she said, grinning slyly and lowering
her legs, stretching out and lying naked and open.  "Sin with me," she
crooned.  "Lick me."

    As I moved over her and bent to kiss her firm inner thighs she looked
down.  Fastidiously, she brushed her pubic curls aside and gently parted
her cuntlips for me.  "Lick me, hon."

    Gradually she became almost uncontrollably licentious, whispering and
rasping lewdly and with an abandon I hadn't seen since our nights in the
Lauderdale Courts.  I have no idea what incited this effusion of raw
lust; I could only guess that, like me, she was grasping at something
that would soon end.  She seemed to have somehow reached back to her six-
teenth or seventeenth years, when it was all new and unimpaired by change
or necessity.  I realized that I was not the only one in that room who
felt afraid and threatened.

   As I mouthed her cunt she moved my body around so that my knees
straddled her head and my cock fit easily into her mouth.  She sucked me
slowly and lecherously, her hips jerking now and then when I sucked her
clit.  Soon I rose and stretched over her, entered deeply, and fucked in
long deep strokes.  Her head raised and resting against the headboard,
she grinned and watched me fuck her.  Soon she stiffened and climaxed,
wrenching her head back and to one side.  She finished with a lurch of
her hips, gasping and sighing, "Fuck...oh, fuck."  Raising her knees, she
reached between us to touch my shaft and feel the spurts hurtling into
her.  She watched with salacious glee while I finished cumming.

   We napped, waking in mid-afternoon.  Whispering sultrily she leaned
over me and quickly jerked me off, entreating me as I came, "C'mon, hon.
C'mon.  Ah.  Those hot little squirts.  Yes."   We rested again and then
drove to the Howard Johnson's down the street and ate like cave people,
giggling and spilling things.  Martha would grin and say something stupid
like "Pass me the salt, hon -- " and then lean close to me over the table
and whisper laughingly, "-- and squirt on my tits!"  We squealed and
sniggered and I would reply with something like "Cum on my ear," which
threw her into a squirming fit.  She said, "Mr. Buchanan would have a
stroke.  Haha, Evelyn would have a stroke.  The walls of the First
Baptist Church of Memphis would come tumblin' down, and the doors of the
temple would be rent asunder."

    We returned to the room.  Dusk found us sinning and lusting like
animals, me licking her slowly, her spread thighs taut and trembling as I
made her cum, and then we fucked and I made her cum again, then again.
Each orgasm for her was deeper, harder, more paralyzing than the one
before.  Each time she would clench my shoulders and with her lips near
my ear she would moan, "Again.  Again, Steven.  Fuck."  Until finally her
fourth cum was a long pleasure-drenched struggle, and when it finally
arrived I felt my own orgasm creep slowly from my strained back and then
into the tip of my cock, on whose length her clinging cunt fed greedily
and invoked yet another hot jet from my balls.  I yelled and then
groaned, straining on outstretched arms and quaking knees, as I watched
her long body writhe in ecstatic lust with our last prolonged, exhaust-
ing, excruciating release.

    For almost an hour afterward, we held each other silently.  I lay on
her for a while, then rolled over and lay with her head on my shoulder.
Soon we changed positions again, me lying on her breast before we curled
up spoon-style.  At one point she sat up, leaned back against her pillow,
and lit a cigarette.  I watched her inhale and then slowly exhale.

    After a moment she whispered, "Steven."

    I looked at her and waited.

    She paused and took another puff.  She shook her head no, once.  She
whispered, "Nothing."

    Finally, it was time to dress and leave.

    She drove me back to my Mama Rose's house.  We arrived at eleven, an
hour after the Tremont had closed.

    "You be good to your Mama Rose," Martha told me from her car window.
"she's so sweet."

    "I'll come to Union Station next Saturday and see you off."

    "You don't have to," she said quietly.  "You sure?"

    "I'll be there," I said, winking -- not knowing if I were really up to
it, but letting her think I believed I was.

    She winked back.  Unsmiling, she stepped on the gas.  She and the car
raced down the street and grew smaller.  I stood on the curb and watched,
wondering what the hell I was going to do.




    Of all the weeks Martha and I had spent apart, that week of waiting
for her departure was the longest that I remember.  The only memory I
have of that week was of standing in our front yard one sultry afternoon
with the cloying humidity hanging in the air as I stared into the vast
suburban sameness around me.  As in an underexposed, bleached-out still
photograph, nothing seemed distinct.  Nothing moved.  But I felt the
earth move; and I felt time move, slowly and relentlessly.

    During breakfast on Friday morning my mother told me, "This coming
weekend will be the last week for you to have nothing to do while
school's out.  Your daddy wants you to work at the grocery during the
week, starting Monday."

    "You have to learn the value of a dollar," my stepdad grunted as he
came to the table for his coffee.  He took a quick sip and then bent over
to tie his shoes.  "Learn about runnin' a business," he went on. "Sackin'
groceries.  Trim the produce.  Then we'll get you on the big bikes with
the delivery crew, and you can make some money.  Ten cents for every
order you deliver in the Lauderdale Courts.  The work ain't that hard,
but it'll help put some muscle on you, get you out in the sunshine and
the open air."

    I mentioned that a new play was going to start soon at St. Michael's
and that I had been assigned a role.  I would have to leave the store by
five to get a bus in time for rehearsals.

    Unfazed, he continued.  "That school dramatics crap will just have to
wait.  The store stays open 'til seven during the week and 'til nine on
Saturday.  So your games at school can wait until September."

    "...Yessir."

    "You just tell them at school that you're sorry, but your time
belongs to the Liberty Cash Grocery Number 23 until school starts again."

    "Yessir."

    "That dramatics shit is a lot of foolin' around anyway."

    "Yessir."

    "The money you earn will be yours.  I'll keep it in a checkin'
account for you, at Union Planters, just like a regular checkin' account.
I'll keep tabs on it.  You can spend it, but get somethin' you need and
can use at school.  Don't spend it on crap."

    "Yessir."

    The conversation ended.  It was perhaps one of the longest exchanges
I'd had with my parents in several months.  For the rest of the day I
moped in my room.  Near dusk I drove my squeaky kid-sized bicycle to
Gaisman Park.  The bike was an undersized blue machine that Aunt Frances
had given me for Christmas when I was nine years old.  The thought that
I'd be able to earn my own money for a sparkling new bike was a comfort,
at least.  At thirteen, going on fourteen, I needed more mobility; for
the time being I was limited to city buses and my own two feet.  The idea
of buying a full-sized bike gave me something to look forward to.  And,
hopefully, a few months of hard work at the supermarket in my old neigh-
borhood would get me back into the heart of the city and give me some-
thing to think about other than Martha's absence.

    By sunset I returned home and told Mom I didn't want dinner.  I
boarded a bus and made the long trip into old Memphis and the home of my
Mama Rose and Daddy Joe Ricci, my deceased father's parents.  Usually I
alternated my weekends between them or Aunt Francis and Uncle Johnny.

    Being with my grandparents was more subdued and folksy than weekends
spent with my disoriented Aunt Frances and my tired and ailing but affec-
tionate Uncle Johnny.  The Ricci's lived in a newer home, a tidy 1920's
brick duplex occupied on one side by my grandparents and on the other by
their daughter, my Aunt Baby Sister, so called to distinguish her from
several other Aunt Catherines in the clan.  The Ricci's kept a living ar-
rangement that even in my youth I considered unusual.  My Uncle Johnny
and Aunt Frances, with all the extra space they had in their big old
Victorian home, slept together in the same room and the same bed; but
Daddy Joe and Mama Rose, in their smaller duplex, kept separate rooms.
Mama Rose's room was in the middle of the long hallway that led through
their side of the duplex.  Behind her room was the bedroom that once
belonged to my Uncle Frank and my father.  Frank was never around, having
used his GI bill to get through Vanderbilt University in Nashville, after
which he landed a job with a local bank and found an apartment elsewhere
in Memphis with his recent bride, my glamorous and vivacious Aunt Leigh.
Behind Frank's room, at the far end of the hall, was the small add-on
that was Daddy Joe's solitary room.

   Gentle, submissive and soft-spoken, Mama Rose would greet me from the
front door of their corner house when I got off the bus across the
street.  Watching the street carefully in both directions, she would wear
a frown of concern until I safely crossed the six lanes of busy Peabody
Street, and then she would smile her warm motherly smile as I strode up
the front steps and onto their little brick-walled, plant-lined front
porch.  Like her older sisters, My Aunt Frances and my sister's godmother
Aunt Mary, Mama Rose had a squeaky voice: but hers was a small, serene
one that matched her manner and her diminutive size.  Like my deceased
father, she had black hair; but her caring, madonna-like eyes were a
bright blue that could be seen across a room.  There was a quiet joy in
her whenever she greeted me and led me into the kitchen for a bowl of
cereal or some milk and cookies.  When I entreated her to not go through
trouble on my behalf, she would insist on waiting upon me, circling about
the kitchen with her weak little walk and her bad back, looking far older
than her fifty-odd years as if some great weight had attached itself to
her petite frame at some point in the past.  Always, there was a sweet
remark about how I looked just like my daddy, Steven Senior.  Always.
And always she would at some point confuse me with her son Frank, whom I
also resembled.  And almost always she would at some point call me Steven
instead of her favorite nickname Butch (and where she came up with Butch,
I'll never know.  She was the only person who called me by that name
instead of by Speedy).  And always, at some point, she would call me
Frank, then give a shy little laugh and apologize, saying, "Oh, I mean
Butch.  I'm so sorry, sweetheart.  Did you hear me say Frank?  Wasn't
that silly?"

    After I snacked I would ask about Daddy Joe, and a shadow would fall
over her face--a quick and barely visible flash of something sad and
lonely in her--and she would recover and say, "Oh, he's back there in his
'man's room', where he always is.  You go see him, and then we have to
get to sleep and go to the Tremont in the morning.  Go on, go see him.
You know he loves you, Butch.  He always wants to see you.  You go on
and I'll clean up in here."

    At the end of the long unlit hallway, Daddy Joe was in his room.  He
was a short, kindly but fidgety man who spoke and moved suddenly, jerkily
and unpredictably.  I had a strange liking for him; not the same warm and
comfy affection I had for the saintly Mama Rose--but an affection mixed
with a wariness of his nervous style and his occasionally bitter cynicism
that seemed to underlay his reactions to everything and everyone around
him.

    As usual, he sat in the small, chilly room with the windows wide
open, he in his worn, heavy brown leather chair with his short legs
propped on a matching footstool.  He held a pipe in one hand, a National
Geographic magazine and a newspaper in his lap.  Around him were his
man's trophies that graced the walls of his man's room: an oversized 1948
calendar with color photos of legendary racehorses like Citation and Sea
Biscuit; a yellowed, framed, original copy of the announcement of the
Wall Street crash in the New York Herald; over three decades' worth of
the National Geographic; old copies of the Wall Street Journal; an
ancient telegraph set from the Frisco Railroad, where he worked for many
years as a youth; a battered dumbbell with two heavy, rusting weights; a
photograph of Charles Atlas tugging a subway car in the 1930's; and
portraits of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt.

    He would greet me with a big grin and a coarse but chummy "Aaaaa!", a
kind of gruffly playful reproach accompanied by a firm ruffling of my
hair and a pinch on my ear.  Then a quick hug, his red cheeks always
scratchy and tickly against mine.  And then questions: how was I?  Would
I grow any taller?  What was I doing in school?  And always, regardless
of my answers, a waggish "Aaaaa!" as he unexpectedly rose from his chair
and ruffled my hair again.  I never quite knew when he was going to jump
up and pull that frolic on me.  Our conversations were more like an
effort on my part to find out who he really was, while he remained
roguishly elusive.

    I mentioned that I had received a birthday card from my Uncle Frank
and he asked, "Yeah?  You ever see your Uncle Frank?".  I answered no,
and he dismissed it with a wave of his hand and a gruff, "Ha!  Your Uncle
Frank.  To hell with him, Speedy-boy.  Right?  Never comes to see *ME*!
Huh, SPeedy-boy?  Sonofabitch."  As usual, he immediately changed the
subject and asked about my Mom.  I said my mother and daddy were doing
well, and he muttered, "Your 'daddy'.  Hmp.  Your daddy's dead," a
frequent remark to which I never had a reply, and he would growl "Aaaa!"
and ruffle my hair again and then confound me by cheerfully asking if
Mama Rose had fed me well when I came in.  "Your Mama Rose is sweet on
you, Speedy-boy.  You're her boy, you know that?  She's sweet, your Mama
Rose."

    This meandering and inconclusive conversation seldom varied.  Neither
did it last very long, as Daddy Joe would want to spend some time going
over the stock quotations in the newspaper.  He would preface this by
again mentioning his plans for the day when he hoped to retire from the
liquor business, cash in his stocks and move to Hot Springs, Arkansas,
where he would play the horses all day and "live like a white man."

    He sent me back into the caring hands and motherly smiles of Mama
Rose, who laid out my pajamas and turned back the bedspread in Uncle
Frank's room, and tucked me in with a peck on the cheek and a little
sing-song about, "Oh, I love my little Butch, just like your daddy
Steven."  And after the lights went out I would be in that room alone
with my father's ghost and the relics of my mysterious, long-absent Uncle
Frank.  I often wondered, if either of them had been around, how I would
talk to them and what they would advise me about my situation.  How would
they, grown and apparently sane men, handle it?  Why were they always
gone?  What were they really like?  Was I like them?  Would I be able to
tell them about Martha?

    Certainly, despite their affection, neither Mama Rose nor Daddy Joe
nor anyone else could be someone I trusted with the story of me and
Martha Jane, whom I now called Martha but whom I still pictured as the
original Martha Jane, and who would be leaving the next day.




                              PART 8D:



    Perhaps, when I awoke groggily at my Mama Rose's house that Saturday
morning, July 2, 1955, I had been dreaming of my father while asleep in
that room.  I had little else to hold before me as a model of what I
might do and how I might behave when I went to Union Station later that
day to say goodbye to Martha.  I wondered how Steven Senior might handle
it: he was a hero, a winner of the Air Medal, two Purple Hearts and the
Silver Star.  He had faced the terror of war with the Nazis twenty-two
times.  He had readily attempted to hold together a B-17 landing gear
with little more than his bare hands.  If he could do that, then as his
son I could certainly hold my own at Union Station.

    I rode to the Tremont Cafe with Mama Rose and ate a big breakfast
there.  I left just before eleven o'clock and walked two blocks to Union
Station.  It was a gaudy Romanesque building of massive proportions, a
relic of the Gilded Age, with a vast main lobby graced with chandeliers
clustered, gigantic warm-white globes.  The atmosphere was so much
quieter than I would have thought;  I expected a noisily milling crowd
and a rush of people in all directions.  Instead, all was quiet and
sedate, with few people waiting on the long rows of curved mahogany
benches.

    Martha sat in a pleated black skirt and white blouse near the
newsstand in the center of the lobby.  She was reading a magazine.  At
the sound of my footsteps she looked up and smiled, put her magazine
aside, and rose to meet me halfway.  She gave me a long warm hug.

    She whispered a happy "Hi, hon."  And I almost cried.  But I showed
little of it.  Heros didn't cry.  The sons of Silver Star winners didn't
cry.  In the movies, neither William Holden nor Bogart did that sort of
thing.

    Evelyn was there, and another girlfriend whom I didn't know but whom
they introduced as Tasha.  So I was unable to say much of what I wanted
to say--and at any rate, I doubt I would have said anything anyway.

    Martha told me she had sold her car.  When she told Mr. Buchanan
about it before leaving, he had been bitter and unrelenting.  There had
been some angry shouting.  He would support her in Memphis, but not in
New York.  New York was golgatha, sin city, filled with queers and
commies and perverts.  If she wanted to teach, she could teach just as
well in Memphis and then find herself a husband and raise a good
Christian family.  Everybody in New York was a drug addict, the mafia
owned everything, and anyone who wasn't a mobster was a Puerto Rican, a
wetback or a Jew.  Even staid Evelyn, who now sat waiting unhappily with
Martha and her friend in the station, thought her stepdad's ravings were
little more than strident hysteria, and certainly she thought New York
could not be nearly so awful.

    My concern for my own problems vanished when I noticed that Martha
herself, keeping up a good front of cheer and optimism about claiming her
future, sat holding my hand hidden from the others in the folds of her
pleated skirt.  She held on tightly, almost frantically.  Again and again
she gave my hand a tight squeeze, and now and then she would rub her
thumb nervously and firmly across my knuckles.  At first I thought she
was doing it for my comfort; after a while I could sense the tension
throughout her body.  But others were present, and there was little I
dared to say, even in a whisper, lest they notice.

    At one point Evelyn mentioned that the announcement for the train's
departure would be heard soon, and she and their friend jaunted off to
the ladies' room.  I sat with Martha and looked around at the vast
railroad station that I knew so well and where I had spent so many
weekends roaming and playing.  Those weekends were followed by a trip
back home to the Lauderdale Courts, where Martha lived next door.

    "Steven, I'm scared," I heard her say beside me.

    I turned to find her looking down at my hand, which she grasped and
rubbed nervously.  "I'm really scared.  I didn't think I would be this
scared.  I can't have my father here -- He's long gone.  It's been so
long since he died.  I know Mr. Buchanan was spouting nonsense and
superstition.  I mever thought he'd explode that way.  I sometimes think
I understand why he dislikes what I'm doing...but I had no idea he would
hate me so much.  It scares me, somehow.  I can't even let Evelyn see,
she's so strong and so successful and she fits in so well.  But even
Evelyn had to lie to him about coming here with me.  He thinks she's at
her office.  It scares me.  I don't know why."

    I whispered, levelheaded and all grown up.  "I'm not scared."

    She looked up at me with thankful, loving eyes.

    I said, "I'm proud of you.  You earned this.  You deserve it.  And
after you leave here today, you'll be in a place where you can be your-
self.  Mr. Buchanan won't be around to make you feel like a criminal for
being yourself."

    Her eyes shuttled quickly to one side and she whispered, "Evelyn and
Tasha are coming back."  She gave my arm an extra squeeze and, looking
down, she sent me a secret smile.  "Thank you, hon."

    Within five minutes the cathedral-like walls rang out with the echoes
of the departure announcement.  Groaning and sighing, Martha and Evelyn
and Tasha grabbed the baggage and we all walked to the departure gate at
one end of the lobby.  Before us the trains waited noisily, hissing and
steaming and whistling.  It was near the end of the era of the long pas-
senger railroads, and the line of Pullmans was not as long as I remem-
bered from a few years earlier.  But the black porters were still there,
smiling and polite and spry, asking "Can I see your tickets, please
ma'am?  Here ya go, Miss, the porter'll take those bags for you, ma'am.
George, these are for car 4111."  It was still the age of tipping caps
and friendly smiles.

    We walked together to the start of the waiting platform, where the sun
blazed down on us in the open air.  Beyond that point, only ticketed
passengers could venture down the platform walkway.

    "'Bye, sister," Evelyn whispered tearfully as she gave Martha a
close and affectionate hug.

    Then her girlfriend took her hand and looked in her eyes and tried
bravely to smile, saying "Martha...", only to break up angrily and sob,
"I'm gonna miss the hell outta you!"  They clutched each other and Martha
whispered something in Tasha's ear I couldn't hear above the hissing
steam of the waiting trains.  In response, Tasha nodded and stepped back.

    Then Martha came over to me with a courageous smile and reached out
for me to come to her for a hug.  I went to her and she grabbed me like a
big watermelon and almost lifted me off my feet.  I felt certain there
was no danger at all that Martha would cry, but I still wondered if I
could hold myself together so well.  I was barely taller than she; her
lips, as usual when we embraced, were just below my ear.

    She laughed and whispered, "I won't cry if you won't."

    "I won't," I said.

    And then, her face on my shoulder, she started crying.  Almost in
terror, I wondered if the others noticed.  They had, but not in the
manner I feared; Evelyn gave a sad little smile and said something to the
other girl and pointed to me, as if explaining about me and Martha.
Reading her lips, I saw Evelyn mouth the words "grew up together", and
the other girl nodded as if she understood.  That, at least, is how their
conversation appeared to me.

    But my concern was about Martha's crying.  With a deep breath and a
sudden straightening, she stepped back and wiped one eye hastily with a
bare hand.  "Damn, I didn't think I would do this."

    I gave her a kiss on the cheek, and a gentle smile that said it was
okay.

    "You behave, cowboy.  And write to me."  She kissed my cheek quickly
and turned away.  Unstopping, undaunted, she smiled and waved to the
others and made her way down the length of the train.  Two or three times
she turned as she walked, one time shouting to us, "You people write to
me, or I'll come back!"

    The other girl shouted back, "Watch out for those New York taxi
drivers!"

    For a brief time I watched as she grew smaller on the path down the
line of Pullmans.  I did not want to see the rest of it.  She was walking
ahead strongly now, far past the point where any of us could be heard
over the steam and the commotion of the boarding platform, so she no
longer turned to yell at us.  The others stood waiting, and as I turned
to leave I caught their glances and motioned a polite goodbye.  I felt I
had to go elsewhere; I was exhausted from holding back all expression
of my feelings.

    I walked into the cool shade under the giant awning that covered the
departure area, and into the quiet station.  The noise of the trains
retreated behind me, leaving me feeling less haunted by the sounds of
their leaving and taking Martha away.  I retreated to the area around the
newsstand, stood alone and shoved my hands into the pockets of the dressy
slacks I wore for the occasion.  A deep breath.  Another, deeper breath.
I loitered, pretending to gaze at the magazines while I pulled myself
together enough to pass through the station and appear perfectly normal
in front of the bystanders who entered and left through the main arches.
I was not really aware of anything around me.  My mind went completely
blank.  I didn't know where I was going or what I would do.  My urge was
to hop on the train, ticket or no ticket, baggage or no baggage.  I could
not believe I was thinking such impossible thoughts.

    Abruptly I felt I'd had my fill of this scene.  I turned and, in one
long series of movements during which I consciously fought to keep moving
ahead rather turning and running for the departing train, I kept going
until I was out of the station and onto the sidewalk.  I made my way
quickly back to the Tremont Cafe.  I have no idea what kinds of sounds
the train made as it left Memphis, no idea how it looked or whether
Martha might be gazing out the window and back at Union Station, or what
she might look like riding in the Pullman on her way out of town.

    I entered the front door of the Tremont Cafe, now crowded at the
height of the lunch hour with crusty old railroad men and a bunch of my
aunts and grandfolks and the two middle-aged waitresses who worked there.
Bill Hailey and the Comets were drumming out "Rock Around the Clock" on
the light-swirling Wurlitzer.  It was a record that had been on the juke
box so long it had taken on a cloudy, garbled, hissy sound.

    Without a word I stepped behind the lunch counter, grabbed a dish,
and filled it with several round scoops of Forest Hill vanilla ice cream.
Though there were no tears, I knew I was crying: I had a thick salty
taste in my throat.  Shuffling past the help and the dishes, I made my
way through the rear kitchen where my ancient great-grandmother, Mama
Nifa, smiled her toothless smile and happily stirred a huge caldron of
steaming beef stew.  I smiled and nodded to everyone who smiled and
nodded at me, and found a seat in the fairly quiet and unpopulated rear
lunch room.  I sat wordlessly and poked at the ice cream, which was
soothing and cool, although in my numbed state I couldn't taste it.

    Wanda, a wiry little redheaded waitress who always talked out of the
side of her thin mouth, came into the room on a break with a glass of
iced tea and asked me, "Hi, sport, you gonna type the menus for us again
today?"

    Mustering my most casual smile, I answered, "Sure."

    "Here," she said, grabbing a seat at the table in front of me and
pulling several handwritten pages out of her apron pocket.  "Here's the
dishes and the prices, so you can type this up for us.  I'd rather you
did it anyway, I can't spell worth a damn and you do such a nice job on
the typewriter."  She spread the pages on the table before us.  She lit a
cigarette and sipped her iced tea.

    I looked at her.  She was in her late thirties and I knew she was
divorced.  She was thin, long-necked, rather attractive despite her long
and slightly crooked nose.  I had always felt there was something seduct-
ive about what I could see of her small tits and slender arms.  High-
waisted and leggy, she was always friendly and unceremonious with me from
the first time I saw her.  Now I sat directly across from another woman
whom I knew to be sexually attractive to me in a kinky way that partook
of something of the forbidden manner in which Martha had been sexually
attractive.  But Martha was gone.  Those two facts -- Wanda's physical
presence and loose manner, and Martha's complete absence -- gave me a new
and undefinably odd feeling.  It suddenly occurred to me that for the
first time since I became a sexual person, there was no way for me to
express my sexuality.  I found it strangely disorienting.

    Wanda puffed on her cigarette.  "What's up, sport?  You don't look so
happy."

    Brazenly I said, without a blink:  "I just lost my girlfriend."

    "What the hell," she said, with a disdainful smirk and a wave of her
hand.  "So get another one."

    "I don't know any other ones."

    "So what?  You're young.  Not like me!  My last one wore me out!
Made me old before my time."  She stretched in a tired yawn, a motion
that shoved her tiny nipples against her thin apron, and it occurred to
me that she didn't appear to be wearing a bra under her uniform.

    "Anyway, I gotta get back to work.  Give the menus to the boss-lady,
you know, your Aunt Frances, when you finish.  And thanks, honey--my
English ain't nearly good enough for that kind of work.  I envy you,
bein' smart enough at your age to do that kinda stuff."

    She turned and sauntered off, with horny little thirteen-year-old me
following her slim hips and long legs all the way out of the room.

    I retrieved the heavy Smith Corona typewriter out of the broom closet
and loaded it with paper and carbons for the day's food listing, of which
I would type several carbon copies that would be slipped inside the
plastic covers of the restaurant menus.  As I worked I wondered what it
might be like to fuck Wanda.  But, then, Wanda wasn't what I wanted.  I
knew I was merely lonely and that what I really missed was knowing that
sooner or later Martha would be around, moaning and talking and fucking.
Of course, that wouldn't happen.  With a new and sudden pain in my balls
and in my gut, it began to hit me -- suddenly and with the force of the
wind from an atomic blast -- that my needs had nowhere to go.

    Restless and growing anxious and angry, I threw myself into typing
the menus.  The restaurant had no duplicating machine; I had to type the
menus manually, one original and five carbons at a time.  Aunt Frances
would give me five bucks for the job.  Not much, but five bucks was five
bucks, in addition to a couple of bucks for a weekly allowance that she
would slip to me, and another two or three bills from Mama Rose or Daddy
Joe as the balance of my allowance.

    My brain started adding this up.   That was about nine to eleven
bucks a week.  If I continued to lie about my age at the movies and kept
getting in on the child's ticket price, and if I kept my spending down to
a reasonable level at school during the week, I could save perhaps
twenty-five or thirty bucks a month.  Maybe more.  And I would be deliv-
ering at my step-dad's grocery, which would amount to more money every
week.

    As I typed, I wondered:

    How long would it take to save up enough money to get to New York?



                           Continued...


            ****  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, 1996 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 9A:



    Working at Liberty Cash Grocery Number 23 was more challenging than
I'd expected.  The store occupied the corner of Exchange and Lauderdale,
across the street from the same project and the same corner where Martha
and I grew up.  Two stock-boys worked in the store, and three delivery
boys worked outside on the clunky old utility bikes.

    On my first day at work in early July I was assigned to young, dark-
haired Anthony, a distant cousin who lived with his widowed mother in the
project.  He could shuck a bushel of corn and trim lettuce so quickly
that his hand movements seemed a mere blur.  During the first couple of
days I almost managed to compete with him, as well as learning how to
stock canned and boxed goods in the aisles and shelves as neatly as did
George, the oldest stock boy.

    But after I learned the basic layout and operation of the store by
the end of that week, I was assigned to a delivery bike.  That job con-
fronted me with my physical limitations.  Though I was not small for my
going-on-fourteen years, I was neither hefty nor strong.  A customer's
grocery order contained from one to several stuffed bags in addition to
an occasional case of canned goods or beer.  The bikes themselves were
ancient chain-driven units with gigantic wire baskets over the front and
rear wheels.  They had fat metal seats, no center bar, a chest-high bare
metal handlebar, undersized wheels designed for heavy loads and rough
streets, and a low-ratio single gear for hauling rather than speed.  They
were slow, rusty, noisy machines.  But when loaded with several heavy
grocery bags that would be pedaled over a pitted street or along a gravel
driveway, they were stronger and more manageable than a recreational bike.

    One of the older boys, a chesty, tough-looking but friendly blond,
crew-cut kid named Charlie, took charge for the first few days and
showed me the ropes.  He saw to it that I started out with one-bag or
two-bag loads for customers who lived no more than three blocks away.  I
was slow at first; although I had once lived in the area, the building
numbering system in the project and on some of the more obscure side
streets were unfamiliar. This brief training reduced the number of daily
deliveries I was able to make.  The job paid ten cents per order.  At
that stage I averaged seven to ten orders daily.

    By the end of the second week I was getting the hang of things.  That
Saturday was particularly busy.  Under the additional pressure of a
blistering noon sun, Charlie and another kid and I were on the sidewalk
in front of the store loading bags onto our bikes, along with a fourth
boy who had been drafted for the day from the part-time pool.  Charlie
helped load the first two bikes and sent them on their way.  He had
already loaded three orders onto his own bike.

    He pointed to the last group of several bags.  "They been here over
an hour.  We better get caught up."  He surveyed the bags.  "We got one
for 236 Exchange, I can add that to my load.  But all the other nine bags
is Miz Gaston's order.  You'll have to make two trips outta this, maybe
three.  You up to it, Speedy?"

    "Sure," I said.  "Load me."

    Charlie helped me load the first four large paper bags onto my bike.
"That looks steady enough," he told me, checking the bike for sway and
balance.  Then he climbed on his fully-loaded machine and steadied him-
self with one foot on the ground.  Pointing at the one-bag order still
sitting in the corner, he told me, "Gimme me that order."

    I gaped at him.  "You gonna carry that with five bags already on your
bike?"

    "Hell, give it to me.  C'mon."

    I handed him the bag, which was no lightweight, and he held it
pressed to his side with one hand grasping the bottom.  Wobbling slightly
on the bike, he settled onto his seat, grabbed the handlebar with his
free hand, shoved off with one long push of his feet, and started
pedaling rough-and-ready down the street in the hot sun, gritting his
teeth and looking in all directions for the traffic.

    I watched with admiration as he drifted slowly up Exchange Street,
steering one-handed and hefting a full sack under his free arm.

    Climbing onto my own bike, I was surprised as the stubborn weight
caught me off-guard and almost felled me.  Grunting, I forced the bike
upright and made sure of my balance.  I proceeded slowly, knowing I'd
have to be careful with this monstrous load.

    But before I could get moving, my stepdad rushed out of the front
door and pointed at the remaining bags on the ground.  "Wait up!  Wait!
Ain't all this part of the Gaston order?"

    I told him it was all one order and that I'd make it in two trips.

    He yelled impatiently about the order having been delayed too long
and demanded that I load it all at once and get moving.  I was not that
good at loading up yet, so Tony grumbled and shoved me aside.  Hastily,
he began stuffing the bags into the large carry baskets, shifting and
shoving until the bike was so heavily loaded it seemed to sag.  The tires
were slightly but visibly pressed flat where they touched the sidewalk.

    I eyed the load fearfully and mumbled something about not being sure
I could handle that much weight.

    "Hell you can't!" Tony retorted, "Get on that damn bike and move this
order outta here!  Go on, get movin!"  He chomped on his unlit cigar and
strode back into the store, glaring back at me hotly.

    At first it was all I could do to disengage the kickstand and simply
hold up the bike.  The cargo's weight was considerably more than my own
and the slightest tilt of the machine required serious effort to keep the
bike balanced.  I carefully walked the bike to the curb and slowly let
the front wheel off the sidewalk and into the street, then the rear
wheel.  At that point the shifting weight almost pulled the bike ground-
ward.  Desperately, using both arms and heaving my back and legs into it,
I kept the bike upright while I haltingly moved onto the seat, checked my
balance, hopped up onto the big metal pedals, and shoved my legs forward.

    The bike seemed to move in slow motion.  Before I made it across
narrow Exchange Street my ankles were sore with the effort.  Checking the
traffic in both directions, I let the bike roll lethargically toward the
six-lane breadth of Lauderdale Street.  Then I tried pedaling to gain the
speed I needed to cross the boulevard.  But the weight I was pedaling
seemed to mock my efforts.  I could not gain speed.  Seeing traffic ap-
proach, I knew I had to head back toward the curb to avoid being overrun.

    Helplessly, as if in a bad dream, I felt the bike tilt sideways as I
turned;  then I felt the overwhelming weight shift the undersized wheels
with a sharp scraping sound; the front wheel began slipping underneath
the bike, and the bike started tumbling.  I jumped off the seat and with
my arms, back, legs, and any other leverage I could muster, I vainly
tried to keep the load from forcing the bike on its side in the middle of
the roadway.  But the weight shoved the wheels over the surface of the
pavement and pulled both me and the bike toward the curb.  With a loud
crash the bike fell on its side, half on top of me, and several bags
tumbled into the street.  Groceries went everywhere.  The traffic caught
up with me and one of the speeding automobiles, swerving away from me,
smashed a cabbage into shards.  Other cars crushed oranges and a cannis-
ter of bug spray.  A can of creamed corn exploded sticky yellow grit into
the air, and several other items were smashed and smeared in the roadway.

    Across the street, Tony ran out the door and screamed "God DAMN!"
Pitching his cigar aside he dashed across the roadway toward me, with
Anthony following.  Anthony himself rushed to me in concern and alarm and
helped pull me from under the bike.  But my stepdad Tony flew into a
rage.  Kicking a couple of smashed cans out of the street and into the
gutter, he flared angrily at me and screamed, "How fuckin' stupid!"

    Anthony uprighted the bike.  Just as he wheeled it onto the sidewalk,
Tony stomped over to me and yelled, "Cain't you hold up a damn bike?"  He
slapped me across my face so hard that my head jerked and I found my
startled eyeballs suddenly staring down the street in the opposite direc-
tion.  I turned back to him, my neck aching from the blow, and saw his
reddened face glowering into mine.

    "Get this shit outta the street and get that bike loaded again!  Now
we're gonna have to rebuild this whole damn order!  And whatever's
missin' comes outta your pay, goddamit!"  He spit on the street and
pointed to the trash around us.  "Anthony!  Help this idiot clean up and
get 'im back on the road!"  Tony turned and stomped off, toward the store.

    "Right, Tony," Anthony murmured after him, looking almost as startled
as I must have looked.  Shaking his head and eyeing me sympathetically,
he said, "That Tony's a tough customer, Speedy."

    Enraged and humiliated, I avoided his eyes and began fetching the
litter out of the street while Anthony walked the bike with its bent
baskets to the storefront.  Five minutes later I trekked wordlessly into
and through the store, into the rear stock room.  Storming into the
restroom, I slammed the door shut behind me and threw the bolt lock into
place, then untied and removed my garbage-stained, shin-length cotton
work apron and, wadding it up tightly, slammed it into the wall and
screamed "Son of a bitch!" into the little room.

    Covered with sweat, I bent to the sink and splashed my head and neck
with cold water to cool me down both physically and emotionally.  I held
my dripping head over the sink and massaged my sore neck, muttering "Son
of a bitch" again, and then paused and took several deep breaths.

    "All right," I muttered aloud, hearing my voice sound grim and wobbly
with hate.  "All right, dammit."

    I fetched a new white apron and got back to work.  I'd kept track of
Mrs. Gaston's sales receipt.  I repacked the entire order, noted what was
missing, and retrieved new items from the shelves.  When the order was
complete I got Mrs. Gaston's telephone number from the delivery listing
and gave her a call, explaining that her order had been damaged but that
it was fixed and ready to go.  She was very gracious and said she knew
that Saturday was always a busy day and she wasn't annoyed.

    This time I packed the bags myself, making certain that the load in
each bag was evenly distributed and that each bag weighed nearly the
same.  I managed to reduce the original nine bags to seven.  As I began
carrying them outside and loading them on the bike, Anthony paused in his
work to speak to me briefly.

    "Don't take it too hard," he said.  "You're his son and he expects
you to do better work than the rest of us."

    "I have my own expectations about how good my work'll be," I replied
angrily.

    Outside, I loaded and unloaded the grocery order onto the bike sev-
eral times, until I was certain the cargo was perfectly balanced.

    "What the hell 're you doin'?" said a burly young voice behind me.  I
turned to see Charlie, his hands on his hips and a wry grin on his face.

    "I'm takin' this order," I said flatly, grabbing up the last bag.

    "I heard about what happened, " Charlie said, his tough-kid's voice
slightly taunting.  "I know he shouldn'a done that to you, and I know it
was too big a load for that bike, but you ain't gonna tell me with a
straight face that you intend to deliver all this in one trip."

    "That's exactly what I intend to do!" I said, jamming the last bag
into the rear basket.

    "Hell, man, I weigh twenty pounds over you and my legs are longer,
but I wouldn't carry that in one load.  You trynna get yourself fucked up
again?"

    "Not this time," I vowed.  I held the bike straight and level, dis-
engaged the kickstand, and then let go of the bike altogether.  For a
brief moment it stood still and upright until I grabbed the handlebar
again.

    "Not bad, tiger," Charlie said, nudging his lips in approval.  He
grinned and threw me a salute.  "But this time, if you fall, try t' land
on yer butt instead of yer head."

    I turned the bike toward Mrs. Gaston's and walked it off the curb.
The bike landed on the street surface and remained level, with no bounce.
Mounting, I tested the sway range of the weight piled around me.  I found
that managing the weight from the front was the key tactic, rather than
trying to manipulate everything at once.  I engaged the pedals and began
pumping my legs with all my might.  Soon I was rolling fast enough to
make a rapid shift to the right.  I glided almost gracefully across
Lauderdale Street.

    My initial optimism was short-lived.  As I slowly progressed down the
street the load seemed to get heavier by the yard.  Mrs. Gaston's address
was three blocks into the project.  The last leg of the trip was a seg-
ment of rising driveway that led to her building; unable to pedal uphill,
I dismounted and walked the bike to her building.  It was touch and go
all the way, with several close calls as the weight persistently forced
the bike toward or away from me.  Finally, covered with salty sweat and
grime, I arrived at the front of her building.  For some reason the cargo
was now too heavy for the kickstand, so I leaned the bike against her
building.  There was no elevator, so one by one I began hefting the bags
up the steep, narrow stairwell to Mrs. Gaston's third-floor apartment.

    She was a tiny, elderly woman in a dark flowery dress who expressed
alarm at the sight of my sweat-soaked face and clothes.  She gave me a
glass of ice water, smiled and thanked me, and gave me a ten-cent tip.

    Later, leaning in the shade at the side of her building, I cooled off
and caught my breath.  I looked down at the shiny dime in my hand.

    I told myself: you made it, dammit.  And with a dime to spare.  An
extra dime for New York.  One step closer to the big city.

    Mounting my bike I grabbed the handlebar, shoved off with both feet,
and went into a long glide down the driveway toward the street, the cool
wind now flapping my apron around my shins.  I pumped the pedals swiftly
and pushed the bike through the breeze that mounted with my speed.  I
spotted Charlie under the front awning of the store two blocks ahead.  He
glanced in my direction and grinned and gave me the "OK" sign with his
raised hand.

    For the rest of the afternoon the orders proliferated.  Charlie and I
and the two other boys kept loading and shoving off with one delivery
after another.  Charlie kept his eyes on me, sending me on the lighter,
nearer orders.  Finally I told him I expected to be treated the same way
the others were and that I should carry the same loads as they.

    "Take yer time," Charlie told me as we loaded up yet another group of
bags.  "You're smaller than the others, and your legs are shorter."  He
paused to reach into his shirt pocket for his cigarette lighter.  He
retrieved a cigarette from the pack he kept in the folds of his rolled-up
shirt sleeve.  He took a quick puff and extended the pack toward me.
"Smoke?"

    "Thanks," I said, even though I didn't know how to smoke.

    He gave the pack a quick, short jerk and the tips of several ciga-
rettes protruded from the pack.  I grabbed one and put it in my mouth,
instantly feeling the mild burn of tobacco on my inner lips.  I resolved
that whatever could be done by Charlie, who was robust and taller and
three years my senior, I could do as well.

    He flipped open his Zippo lighter and lit my cigarette.  I puffed.  I
coughed several times.

    "Shit," he said, grinning with his cigarette dangling from his mouth.
"C'mon, man, take it one thing at a time.  That ain't no way to smoke,
you got tobacco all over your damn lip.  Maybe you oughtta start out with
filters instead of straights."

    "I'll start with straights," I said, embarrassed but grinning back
stubbornly.  "There's a four-bagger over there.  Come on and load me up."

    He took another puff and sighed.  "Man, what a glutton for punish-
ment."

    For the rest of the afternoon I watched Charlie closely, chiding him
when I saw him pass up a large order and assign me to a much smaller
one.  He smirked and warned me, "Don't pass up all the small orders," he
cautioned.  "They're short and quick.  And they pay the same ten cents as
the big ones that take longer."

    As dusk neared and the flow of business waned for the day, I loaded
one more four-bagger onto my bike and was just getting ready to shove off
when my stepdad came out of the front door and stood near my bike.  I
averted my eyes from his and pretended to be engrossed in straightening a
bag in my front basket.

    He spoke evenly and calmly.  "All right, I have to apologize for
losin' my temper today.  You cleaned it all up, and you got the order to
the customer all by yourself.  The customer called up and said nothin'
was missin', and nothin' was damaged.  So you did a good job.  And forget
about anything comin' out of your pay this week.  I'm sorry I got so
angry about it."  Without another word, he walked away.

    His apology changed nothing.  At that moment I deeply resented him --
not for his anger, but for the humiliation I felt at being struck.  Even
before he disappeared into the store, I had turned my bike around and was
on my way with the next order.

    Soon I was cruising in the cool late afternoon breeze with a four-
bag order, my sore thighs arduously pumping at the pedals that pushed my
squeaky, straining bike down Lauderdale Street.  Earlier, when no one in
the store was watching, I made Anthony sell me a pack of Chesterfield
unfiltered cigarettes.  As I turned into the project driveway and slipped
out of sight of those in the store, I reached into my shirt pocket under
my stained work apron, pulled out the pack of cigarettes, jerked the pack
in the manner I had learned from Charlie, and pulled out a cigarette by
holding the tip with only the dry, outer portion of my lips.  Using
another technique I learned from watching Charlie, I struck a match on my
bluejean leg and lit up.  The smoke was bitter and hot.  I vowed I'd
learn to inhale the way older kids did, and the thought that my stepdad
would be incensed at my smoking merely firmed my resolve to smoke as much
as I wanted, to carry my own load, to ignore him and be free of him.  I
told myself that it was what my real father, Steven Senior, would have
done.

    In my pants pocket I had the tips I'd earned and that I didn't let
Tony know about: two quarters, two dimes, and some pennies.  That day I
had already broken my previous record by carrying thirteen deliveries,
and the store would not be closing for almost three hours.

    I knew I had considerable growing and building-up to do.  Charlie and
the others outclassed me in every way.   But I had a goal ahead of me, a
goal far beyond the grocery store, beyond Memphis.

    By mid-September I was running thirty orders a day, and over fifty on
Saturdays.  The savings account that Tony managed for me slowly grew.
Slowly.  But as soon as it looked as if I might be getting somewhere
financially, I had to register for my last year of grammar school.  This
meant that I could earn money only on Saturday deliveries and on Sundays
when I typed menus at the Tremont.

    I began looking for more work and more money.



                              PART 9B:



    One morning in early October, soon after starting my 8th-grade school
year, I approached Tony at breakfast and told him I needed to draw from
my savings.  At first he didn't want to hear about it; the account had
only recently begun to show real progress.

    I told him I needed to buy a new bike and a front basket for it.
When he discovered that I needed the bike because I had signed up to be a
morning news carrier for the Commercial Appeal, his eyes lit up.  It was
the first time I'd seen him express enthusiasm for anything I'd said or
done.

    "What about your Saturday job at the store?" he asked.

    "I'm keepin' that one, too," I said firmly.

    He smiled broadly at my Mom.  "Damn, this kid's gettin' to be a real
worker!"

    Under those circumstances, he agreed that I could get an inexpensive
three-speed bike that wouldn't consume my savings but would be good
enough to haul a load of morning newspapers.

    Of course I didn't tell him that the money from the paper route would
be used to get me to New York.  He was so pleased about my willingness to
work myself to death, I didn't want to spoil the only basis for the slim
rapport that had been established between us.

    At my first morning on the carrier job, it soon became apparent that
I'd again taken on a bigger chunk that I'd bargained for.  My Mom woke me
at four o'clock in the morning and had hot oatmeal waiting for me when I
was dressed.  As I wolfed breakfast she stumbled back into bed, grumbling
that she'd be glad when I would be able to wake myself up and get an
early breakfast without disturbing her.

    That first October morning was chilly and dark.  I rode my new red
three-speed Schwinn to the loading station several blocks away.  The
route manager, a short and muscular middle-aged man with a harried look
and baggy eyes, delivered my initial instructions and showed me how to
check and sign for my newspapers.  I learned that my route consisted of
136 customers on seven short suburban streets.  I then discovered that
there was no way my three-speed Schwinn could transport 136 newspapers in
a single trip without another backbreaking effort on my part.

    The solution was to pile as many papers as I could into the bike's 
front basket.  This amounted to a little less than one-third of the 
papers required.  I was given three large canvas shoulder bags with the 
official Commercial Appeal logo imprinted on them in dull red.  I stuffed 
the remaining papers into the three canvas bags.  Then I strapped the 
bags around my shoulders by their long canvas straps.  Thus weighted,  I 
slowly waddled like a two-ton duck out of the dimly lighted loading sta- 
tion and toward my bicycle.  Outside, the crowd of other newscarriers 
hustled to load their motorcycles and automobiles.  I knew none of them 
and spoke to no one -- I was too busy trying to figure out how to keep 
the weight of the packed bags from pulling me down and flattening me like 
a pancake.

    Lurching fitfully, I struggled to mount my Schwinn.  The next step
was to see if I could possibly move my legs up and down to work the
pedals.  I couldn't.  The huge canvas bags hanging from my shoulders were
in the way.

    The route manager in his leather bomber jacket passed me on his way
to his station wagon.  "Hey," he shouted, "you gonna make it anywhere
like that?"

    "Sure," I said, forcing a smile.  I was far from sure of it myself.

    After twisting and shuffling the load on my shoulders so that one bag
hung over my back and the other two were suspended slightly behind my
hips, I was able to move my legs.  I started pumping arduously at the
pedals of my Schwinn, which I locked in its lowest gear.

    By the time I devised this clumsy method, almost all the other kids
had left the loading station.  I lumbered into the roadway and headed
toward Given Avenue, one long block away.  Looking ahead, I was horrified
to find that, despite all the level streets and flat expanses of land in
my neighborhood, I had been given a route that had to be accessed from
the loading station by climbing the only hill in sight.  And it was a
steep climb, rising quickly to a least a two-story height in the course
of that one long block of roadway.

    As I grunted and puffed my way up the hill at a slug's pace, the
last two newsboys passed me, one on his motorcycle with its sidecar
loaded with newspapers, and the other in a baby blue 1952 Mercury whose
broken muffler roared and spewed a thin gray cloud of oily smoke as he
passed me and disappeared over the hill.

    The sun was just rising.  The jet black sky had lightened vaguely
with the first gray intimations of daybreak.  There was no traffic on the
streets, no sound in the predawn stillness -- just myself, groaning and
huffing under the onus of the fully loaded front basket and the three
bulging canvas bags whose combined size was almost three times my own.

    Halfway up the hill, the burning in my thighs told me I had no choice
but to dismount and walk the load to the crest of the upgrade.  Cursing
under my hot breath, I stopped my bike.  Now I had to find a way to
dismount without hurting myself.  I could not get both my feet to touch
the ground in order to balance the Schwinn.  Before I knew it, I felt the
bag around my back begin to shift to my side as I leaned to get off the
bike and onto one foot.  Suddenly the strap of the bag was choking me.  I
reached back to stop the bag's movement, but its weight and that of the
one next to it dragged themselves and me toward the ground.  I was yanked
to my left; then the bag at my right hip followed suit with the others,
swinging behind and then beyond me, and all three bags hauled me down.

    I fell, face up, my Schwinn toppling away from me.  Two of the bags
landed beneath me, their wide straps yanking roughly and garotting me
from behind as they pulled me down.  Flat on my back, choking and gag-
ging, I panicked and struggled to raise my head.  This only dug the rough
straps into my neck.  Finally, I had the good sense to roll onto my side
and off the bags.  The straps fell away from my neck.  I could breathe
again.

    Coughing and gasping, I pulled the other straps away and stood to
survey the damage.  The handlebar of my Schwinn had somehow been twisted
starboard, out of line with the center bar.  I raised the bike and held it
between my knees while I strained to center the handlebar.

    Rasping loudly and still choking a little, I looked around.  Not a
car or a person in sight.  At least I'd been spared the embarrassment of
having my stupidity and clumsiness witnessed by others.  Checking my
wrist watch, I saw that it was nearly six A.M.

    Breathlessly I muttered aloud to myself, "You'll have to do better
than this, stupid."  My body was still reacting to the sensation of being
strangled by the straps of my own newsbags.  Rubbing my neck, I found
that the flesh around my Adam's apple had been burned and scraped; it
stung painfully when I touched it.

    Enraged, I hurriedly began strapping up again.  Arranging the bags
more methodically, I reloaded the papers that had fallen out of my
Schwinn's basket and began laboriously walking the bike uphill.

    Finally at the top, I took a right turn and surveyed the street that
lay before me and that led to the beginning of my route five blocks away.
Whereas the steep grade that led from the paper station to the top of the
hill was sudden and sharp, the street before me was a long sweeping down-
grade as far as I could see.

    "Good!" I said aloud, knowing that I could simply coast downhill all
the way to my route.  Carefully I mounted my Schwinn.  After ensuring
that all was balanced and under control, I shoved off with my feet and
sat with the hard nose of the bicycle seat nudging painfully into my
coccyx under the weight of the carrier bags.  But soon I was rolling
swiftly, the bicycle tires hissing loudly along the asphalt street.  In
the quiet air I heard the wind whistle faintly past my ears as I picked
up speed.  Thus loaded, strapped, upright, and rolling almost merrily
along, I imagined myself as looking absurdly like a giant papier-mache
cauliflower on wheels.  About halfway down the hill it suddenly occurred
to me that I had no way whatever of braking quickly under the momentum of
the weight that both surrounded and propelled me.  Stoically, I concluded
that in a collision the formless paper hulk would at least cushion the
blow.

    Fortunately, sudden stops weren't needed.  But as I approached the
far end of Given Avenue, where the first house on my route nestled upon
its own little mound of grassy lot, I noticed for the first time that
this part of Given sloped toward another upgrade.  Thankfully it was not
the virtual mountain that lay behind me; but my rolling began to slow,
and soon I was straining and pedaling again in low gear.

    Out of breath and grunting fiercely under the three canvas bags, I
finally rolled to a stop at the curb in front of the first house.  Too
tired to resist, I allowed myself and my bike to lean, and then to slide
into a slow fall, toward my right.  All of me and my load settled with a
soft lurch into the grass that lined the curb.

    I lay there for several minutes on my back, gazing at the
brightening, dull overcast above.  Gradually I gained my breath, though
for a minute or so I seemed to have fallen into a shallow doze.  Opening
my eyes, I extracted myself from the long shoulder straps and sat up,
feeling the chilly October air on my face and hands.  I craned my aching
neck to my left and looked at the sweep of roadway which I had just
traveled.  There stood the hill at the top of Given Avenue, where I'd
fallen and nearly choked. I knew there was no way to get from the paper
station to my route without fighting that hill.  I'd have to battle that
hill every morning, seven days a week, for as long as I kept the paper
route.  And this was only a Monday -- the Sunday edition would be three
times the size and weight of the dailies.  Well, I thought, I'd worry
about that when Sunday arrived.

    Standing creakily, I stretched and found that my shoulders ached and
had also been burned by the iron grip of one of the straps.  My neck
ached, my back ached, my thighs and shins burned and throbbed.

    I looked again toward the hill, which stood silent and mocking five
or six blocks away.  "I'll beat you," I said aloud.  "I'll beat you yet,
dammit."  I straightened my jacket and my twisted shirt, and then dragged
my load of papers onto the customer's lawn.  Sitting in the dew-damp
grass, I spent several minutes resting while folding and tucking each
newspaper into a hard, flat, four-cornered package that would be easy to
pitch onto the 136 front porches that lay ahead.

    A few minutes later the route manager, Mr. Williams, cruised by in
his brown station wagon and rolled to a stop near me.  "Hey," he scolded
from the car window, "you better get movin'.  It's almost six-thirty."

    "I'm folding all the papers first," I called back, without getting
up.  "It'll go faster that way."

    "It's your route, you handle it the way you like.  But if you don't
finish by seven o'clock when people wake up, I start getting calls from
folks who climb the walls because they don't have their mornin' paper."

    "Don't worry," I said wearily.  "Just running a little slow on my
first day."

    Mr. Williams frowned and lit a cigarette.  "Don't let this get to be
a habit," he cautioned sternly.  He stepped on the gas and drove off in
a hurry.

    "Up yours," I muttered as he roared away.

    It was impractical to walk my entire route carrying all three bags
loaded with folded newspapers.  I decided that I could leave two bags
in the shrubs of the first house, and use the third bag to service the
first part of my route, which circled back to where I started.  The
second bag could handle the next two streets, and I could circle back
again to pick up the last bag and finish the route.




    By the end of the week I was showing up at a quarter to five in the
morning, walking my papers up that first hill, and completing the route
just after six.   Then I'd cruise home on my Schwinn and catch an hour's
nap before showering and boarding the bus to St. Michael's School.  When
school let out that afternoon, I was so tired that I fell asleep on the
school bus; the driver knew my stop and woke me up every day.  But I knew
I couldn't depend on his wakeup forever.  I had to shape up.

    Managing my first Sunday edition was a nightmare.  The Sunday sub-
scriber list was larger than the daily, totaling 165 papers instead of
136.  The bulk was not my estimated three times that of the dailies, but
four or five times the weekday load.  Although I'd learned a lot about
handling the carrier bags and my Schwinn, I was discouraged to find that
I had to make three trips back and forth before I could transport the
entire load to my route.  By the time I finally slipped thick rubber
bands around each paper, a heavy and sloppy rainfall began.  Many papers
got soaked before I could move them into shelter on a nearby front porch.

    That morning, I didn't complete the route until after seven-thirty.
When I finally stumbled into my parents' home I found that five customers
had already called in their complaints.

    My step-dad was awake and sipping his coffee as he dressed for Mass.
"Why are you so late?" he grumbled.  "Didn't you go to your route this
morning?  Your manager called and said he had five complaints."

    I collapsed onto our sofa and wearily explained that the Sunday
papers were so heavy that it took over an hour to get them to my route,
and then the rain made me even later.

    "Hmp.  Cain't be THAT many papers on Sunday," he grumbled.

    "It's not the number," I said, "it's the size."

    "The other boys get their papers up there, don't they?  Why can't
you?"

    Holding back a fit of anger, I answered patiently, "The other boys
have cars or motorcycles."

    "You have to be sixteen to drive a car," he retorted.

    I retorted back, "They have cars.  That's all I know."

    He thought about it for a minute.  "Well, we have to wake up early to
get to Sunday Mass anyway, so...I'll get up with you on Sundays, and we
can load your papers in the car."

    I was relieved by the idea.  Relieved, surprised, and disappointed
all at once.  Surprised that he would offer help, much less that he'd
even considered that my situation might require it.  Relieved, that the
worst of the Sunday nightmare would be alleviated, although that big hill
on Given Avenue would still be there the other six days of the week.  And
disappointed:  not only did I feel old enough and intelligent enough to
drive our Ford each morning, but I also could complete my work long be-
fore it was time for my stepdad to drive to work.  I was envious of many
of the other boys, most of whom were not yet sixteen but who nevertheless
appeared to have dads who let them use a car for work.

    But I was not willing to tempt fate by complaining about the offer.
I thanked him, though I did so in such a subdued manner that I wondered
if he believed I was truly grateful.  I did not trust Tony enough to
communicate with him frankly.  I seldom shared words with him, much less
my thoughts and feelings.  Anyway, this little package of help did not
satisfy my need for someone whom I felt could be the father I wanted or
needed.

   The other barb was that I wanted to be able to do everything on my
own.  I did not trust people or like them enough to be able to ask for
help, which I accepted only when I saw no other choice.

   So I accepted his ride.  Each Sunday, the two of us traded brief,
dull, impersonal shreds of conversation during the predawn half-hour or
so as we rode to the paper station, loaded the papers, and then unloaded
them onto a front porch where I could keep out of the weather.  Tony
would drive off, leaving me to rubber-band the big Sunday editions or
slide them into plastic covers when it rained or snowed.

    It's possible that this Sunday routine might have aided in bringing 
me closer to Mr. Tony Lobianco, and through him perhaps to my Mom.  After 
the first few weeks I had faint hopes that this might happen.

    Those hopes were dashed a few days before Thanksgiving when my mother
came into my bedroom one night and caught me masturbating.  Apparently
she had been on her way to the bathroom in our dark house and must have
seen my hand movements under the bed covers.  She rushed into the room
and pulled back the blankets to reveal my erection, as I tried in vain to
pull my pajamas back up.

    "Speedy!" she shrieked.  "How disgusting!"  She threw the covers back
over me and I saw her flinch and grimace with revulsion.  "You should be
ashamed of yourself!"  She left the room, muttering, "I hope you tell the
priest about this in confession!  That's just...awful!"

     For a while I lay silent and shaky with the suddenness of it all,
humiliated at being caught, mortified by her reaction.  After many
minutes of darkness and quiet, I was simply angry.  I waited almost an
hour before renewing my vision of a girl my age, a girl very much like
Martha Jane, arching her hips to receive me, and finished as stealthily
as I could.

    The next morning at breakfast, Tony waited until my Mom left the
breakfast table for a moment before saying in a subdued but reproving
voice, "You'll be goin' to confession when you're in school today...
Right?"

    "Yessir," I replied, appearing suitably ashamed and penitent.

    Of course, I didn't confess.  The incident succeeded in making me
feel ashamed, but it also resulted in my being angrily rebellious rather
than penitent.  I adopted a strict policy of never revealing my sexual
self to anyone, not even to other boys.

    That night and that morning had been the most personal and intimate
moment I had ever experienced with either of them.  Any hopes I had about
bridging gaps between myself and my parents bit the dust.  I never again
trusted them with any aspect of my inner life.



                              PART 9C:


    Easter Sunday, 1956.

    I knew the paper that day would be no larger than a regular daily.
I told my stepdad I could handle the load with my Schwinn.

    In fact, the Easter edition was so slim that the entire load fit into
my front basket, and I pedaled up the big hill on Given Avenue at a brisk
pace with nominal effort.

    As I rounded the hill and turned to roll into the long downgrade that
led to my route, a thin snow flurry began.  Spare, tiny flakes floated
lazily down to white-frosted lawns and rooftops.  I felt rather heroic.
I had become attached to the hill I'd conquered over the past six months
and to the bloated carrier bags that I now slung around my back and
shoulders with routine nonchalance.  I had not grown taller, but from the
way I was climbing that hill every day and the way I handled multiple
deliveries on the big hill at the top of Exchange Street on Saturdays, I
had grown in strength and endurance.  I felt I had learned the message
behind Pogo's little joke, which I had seen not long ago in the Sunday
comics: "We have met the enemy, and he is us!"  My physical limitations
were my major enemy.  I felt that if I could not overcome them, then I
must develop effective workarounds.

    Adults were, if not inimical, untrustworthy at best.  My peers and
those who were slightly older had gone Brando, all in upturned collars or
black motorcycle jackets and t-shirts.  Boys my own age, nearly fourteen,
began outracing me physically; I watched them grow taller, while I stayed
where I was.  I had been tall at twelve or thirteen; but I could see that
at fourteen I would be below average in size.  Even in the winter cold I
would sweat bullets when delivering the heavy orders on Saturdays in the
project, while bullnecked Charlie performed the same feat without even
breathing hard.

    As the Easter flurry advanced slowly into light snowfall, I sat on a
customer's front porch away from the chilly wind and rubber-banded my
goods.  After a long winter, mornings were breaking earlier.  In the
early hush, the sky slowly brightened into a warm greyish glow.  The
Easter edition would be an easy throw; people would be waking later than
usual.  I could afford, for once, to relax.  Unrushed, I lapsed into one
of my most dangerous habits: thinking.  I recalled the day a few weeks
earlier when Tony mentioned that I'd saved up enough to buy a small
motorcycle, for which I could legally obtain a license on my fourteenth
birthday.  But I preferred for some reason to stay with my Schwinn.
Besides, the money saved by not buying a motorbike would be more useful
when I could finally visit New York.

    Keeping busy, making my own breakfast seven days a week, spending
Sundays at the Tremont and several evenings each month making door-to-
door subscription collections on my route -- all of it left me more
isolated from my parents and sister, and from acquaintances.  I was only
dimly aware of Mom's next pregnancy, which produced a baby half-brother
they called Tony Number 2 a few weeks before Easter.  Naturally, every-
one's attention shifted to him.

    Keeping two jobs had cost my participation in plays at school.  It
was physically impossible for me to do it all, considering how much hard-
er my relatively small frame had to work to accomplish the same thing
that others seemed to manage with less effort.  But if I kept working and
building myself up, I thought, then a later day might find me doing plays
again as well as everything else.

    The fact that I was now wearing eyeglasses had been a major setback,
leading me to believe I was somehow defective.  An eye test at St.
Michael's in February revealed that my vision was far from perfect.  A
few weeks later, Mom took me to an optometrist.

    The following week, we returned from his office with my new eye-
glasses.

    "How long will I have to wear these things?" I asked Mom petulantly
as we were riding home with the plastic-framed monstrosity on my face.

    "If you're like most men on your side of the family," my Mom replied,
unaffected, "you'll probably have to wear them the rest of your life.  At
least when you read, anyway."

    This depressing thought sent a chill up my spine.  For days I would
stop at every reflecting surface I passed and adjust and readjust the
frames, to no avail.  They hurt my nose.  They burned behind my ears.
They never seemed to sit neatly on my face.  My mother's lack of concern
didn't help.  Nor did the kids at school, who started calling me "four-
eyes" and "spec".  Kids who wore glasses on tv and in movies were always
portrayed as anemic, brainy misfits.  The glasses made me feel ugly and
deformed.  I hated them.

    That Easter morning I carried, safely hidden in a zippered pocket
inside my quilted carcoat, the latest of three letters from Martha.  I
kept her mail in a folder with my schoolbooks, not because they contained
intimate material, but because I never wanted them to be considered part
of the garbage my parents would force me to discard.  Sitting on a cus-
tomer's front porch after preparing my papers, I leaned back against the
stuffed bag and gently opened the white envelope from New York.  She used
plain unlined paper.  I marveled at the way she wrote in almost perfectly
straight lines.

    Martha.  She had an address in Manhattan on East 87th Street.  "It's
the East Side," she wrote, "but definitely not a ritzy block.  The
building is a hundred years old.  It's a walkup, which to you tourists
means no elevator.  It's an old building with very small apartments.
Over the years the newer buildings just grew up around this block.  It's
so old, the shower is a stall in the kitchen, because the building was
here before indoor plumbing was common.  Has hot water, though--at least
it's not a coldwater flat, like the building next door to mine.  The
apartment even has nicks in the walls that hold the old-fashioned oil
burning lamps that were in here before electricity was installed.  It has
a small living room, and a really tiny fireplace that actually works.

    "I have been teaching kids your age who are just about the most
brilliant boys and girls I ever met.  Of course, you're just as smart as
most of them.  What many of them lack, though, is your sensitivity, and
your creativity.  Some of them are not bright at all, but just problem
children whom it seems I can't help much.  I hope I can learn to work
with them, they've led such hard, often cruel lives.  Some conditions in
the neighborhoods where these children live can be described only as
real-life nightmares.

    "Which reminds me: I hope you are not having that same old dream.  I
wish I knew what it meant.  If it happens again, please try to describe
exactly what it is that happens in your dream, how you feel and what
you're thinking.  But I hope the dream hasn't come back.  I hope you are
well, and happy, and growing, and learning.  Please don't wear yourself
out with all that work; your school is the most important thing, and your
well-being."

    Although I had read the letter a thousand times, I could read no
further that morning.  I wiped my eyes dry, replaced and aligned my
specs, and hid the letter inside my coat.  Standing, I slung the heavy
bag over my shoulder and started on my way.

    I had written her several times.  I had not told her much about
myself, except for the jobs.  I hadn't told her that the reason I was
working so hard was because I wanted to come to New York and see her, and
I wanted to do so more than once.  I didn't tell her about my dream, my
parents, my loneliness, or anything else about my inner life.  I didn't
want her to worry.  Above all, I didn't want her to see my failings.
Therefore, I didn't tell her about the glasses.  I didn't tell her that I
had not grown taller.

    Someday, soon, I knew I'd have to ask her if I could see her in New
York.  I wondered if she would refuse.  She was in a truly different
world now.  Had she fallen in love with someone?  Surely, with her looks
and her charm, she must have met someone in a big place like New York
City.  Each time I read her letters, I wondered how much she didn't
reveal.  I wondered, as I walked through the waxing snowfall that Easter,
if, when I asked her about going to see her, she would then be forced to
tell me that she had someone and that it wouldn't be a good idea for me
to show up.  Or if she had met someone and I did visit, what would I do
when she introduced her boyfriend?  And if she indeed had a boyfriend,
why was I breaking my back for the money to visit her?  What would be the
point?

    Martha, I thought as I walked along with my carrier bag slapping my
hip.  Snowflakes smashed silently into my new lenses.  Martha Jane.




    Just after Easter I woke up one morning with a burning pain in my
side and tummy, and a heavy twinge of nausea.  Luckily the paper load was
light that day and the weather mild, but as I finished and was on my way
home I still sensed a creepy nausea.  Except for a bout with the 'flu, I
had never been so sick.

    When Mom saw that I was still in bed at breakfast time she asked what
was wrong.  I told her I didn't feel I could handle the ride on the
school bus without throwing up.  She shoved a thermometer in my mouth and
read my temperature.

    Tony stopped in my doorway and asked, "What's goin' on?"

    Mom sighed.  "Well, he doesn't have much of a temperature.  It's just
under one hundred."

    Tony grunted, "C'mon, Speedy, you're not that sick.  Get up and get
ready for school.  You'll feel better when you start movin' around."

    Mom, in her bathrobe and slippers, followed him into the living room
as he donned his carcoat and got ready for work.  "Well," she said, "he
does have a little fever, not much.  Do you think it might get worse?"

    "Damn.  People go to work and school all the time when they're a
little sick.  I go to work when I feel like shit, myself.  Hell, he ain't
sick.  Get him dressed and get him to school."

    My brief nap did leave me feeling improved, and I supposed Tony was
right.  Besides, I didn't want to admit that anything could floor me that
easily, and I did have to keep up with my work.  So I dressed and boarded
the bus as usual.  But during the long ride to school the pain and nausea
increased.  I began perspiring.  Repressing the desire to throw up was
becoming an effort.

    As usual, I arrived at school and got into the line of 8th graders.
Sister Immaculata led us into the church for our daily eight o'clock
Mass.  Halfway through the service, I feared I could no longer hold back
my urges.  At one point some bitter stomach fluid jumped into the back of
my throat; trembling, I knew an eruption was looming.

    Climbing over the other students in my pew, I crept softly to Sister
Immaculata, who sat in the aisle seat in the back pew looking prim and
fresh in her starched white Dominican collar and pristine black robes.

    "What's wrong, child?" she asked, a little irritably.

    "Sister...I feel sick.  I think I should go to the restroom."

    "Now, just be patient.  Mass will be over soon, and you can go."

    "But, Sister, I don't need to...'go'.  I feel sick.  And my stomach
hurts."

    "Oh.  Well...patience, child.  The service will end soon and we can
take a look at you."

    Sister Immaculata did not have more time to protest or to talk me
into thinking I felt better.  A split second later, to my own surprise as
well as hers, I noisily and violently threw up a huge serving of redolent
vomit directly into the lap of her long brown robes.  She rose instantly
as the pale yellow stuff spilled down her clothing and onto the floor.
Grabbing my arm, she rushed me through the nearby rear door and into the
vestibule.  Despite my best efforts, I deposited another raging load that
drenched her entire right side and clung to every shiny bead of the heavy
rosary and the large silver crucifix that hung from her hips.

    When we were safely in the boy's restroom at the rear of the church I
began to cry.  "I'm sorry, Sister," I sobbed, almost hysterical with
embarrassment.  "I'm so sorry, I tried to hold it back!"

    "It's all right, dear.  You couldn't help it.  I didn't realize you
were so ill.  Poor child, I should have listened to you.  It's all right."

    I was kept in seclusion in a small office in the rear of the church,
with Sister Immaculata sitting beside me and holding my hand until
another nun and the assistant pastor showed up to relieve her.  Thank-
fully, the other students couldn't see me there.  I feared I could never
face them again; so many of them had both heard and seen me throw up on
Sister Immaculata.

    For my entire stay in the office, which lasted almost an hour until
yet another priest showed up to drive me to St. Joseph's hospital in the
official black pastoral Chevrolet, I apologized again and again for
drenching Sister Immaculata.  Secretly, in my impish self that I never
let anyone know about, I was telling myself that this was what stupid
adults had coming to them for not listening to me.  There was, indeed, an
almost satanic satisfaction in being able to say secretly, "There!  Now
they'll believe me."

    At St. Joseph's I was examined quickly by a tall doctor who smiled
indulgently when he was finished and had me lie down on a hard-cushioned
cot until my stepdad arrived.  Both of them stood in the doorway of the
antiseptic room and joked and chatted.  I had appendicitis.  They would
have to operate.  I would be in surgery that afternoon.

    "Operate?" I repeated fearfully from the cot.

    They both laughed.  "Mr. Lobianco," the doctor chuckled, "I think the
word 'operate' made your son turn white as a ghost."

    They were amused at my stunned reaction, but I wasn't.  How could I
have allowed myself to get so sick?  It was a sign of weakness and power-
lessness that I found totally unacceptable.

    But there wasn't much I could do about it: within the hour I was
dressed in a thin cotton hospital gown and wheeled into surgery.  Lying
face-up on the surgical wagon in the middle of a small operating room, I
looked up to find myself surrounded by white-masked faces.  Firm hands
placed a cool damp white cloth over my eyes, and then I felt the ether
mask covering my mouth and noise.

    "Just relax," a nurse crooned.   "Relax, now, and breathe slowly
through your nose.  Don't open your mouth, dear.  Breathe only through
your nose.  Understand?  Breathe deeply, now.  Thaaaat's right."

    I could not relax and trust them.  I felt overcome by all those faces
and then I saw only the unfocussed white of the cloth over my eyes. Sud-
denly the acrid odor of ether burned the lining of my nose.  Then my
throat burned.  I felt as if I were being suffocated.  I became aware of
the low buzz of the bright neon operating lamp that I knew was suspended
just over my face.  I made a brief moaning sound to let the others know
that the gas was burning my nose and that I couldn't breathe.  Sensing no
reaction from them, I groaned more loudly.  But they ignored me.  Then I
panicked: I could not breathe, I was choking.  The lining of my nose
burned so painfully that I felt my sinuses would burst.  Someone held me
down with a ruthless pressure on my chest.  I was afraid to open my mouth
and scream, fearing that to do so would cause the ether to burn my mouth
and throat.  I began thrashing about and moaning, then moaned louder and
louder.  Unable to scream through my mouth, I screamed through my moan
and felt my throat scalded by the force of the sounds I was making.  I
heard someone shout, "Grab his arms!"  I struggled violently, grasping
and scratching into space.  But I couldn't move!  The buzz of the operat-
ing lamp grew into the deafening, terrifying buzz that I'd heard in my
dreams.  The white cloth over my eyes began to swim and circle in my
sight, even though I knew my eyes were closed.  I could feel myself
drifting, then sinking back into nothing.  I was shrinking, dying, and
the white universe expanded swiftly.  My moans and the wild buzz merged
into a single strange sound that rose to a blaring hum and then slowly,
slowly, slowly decreased in frequency and then in volume, until it became
a low helpless drone in the drowning murk.  I surrendered to the white
death, and to the blackening veil and the silence that fell quickly and
softly over everything...




    I was unconscious into the evening.  When I awoke I lay partly on my
right side in a huge, soft hospital bed.  I blinked.  I was actually
alive.  I had a pounding headache.

    "There you are," said the sugar-sweet voice of a very pretty
nurse.  Her gorgeous face was the first thing I saw when I opened my
eyes.  "Feel all right now?"

    "It stings," I moaned, referring to my stitched and tightly bandaged
tummy.

    "Well, don't you worry, that'll go away.  Say, mister, what happened
to you in there?  It took four people to hold you down.  You're really
strong, you know that?  You're just about the strongest young man we've
ever seen around here.  You feel better now?"

    I never had the chance to answer the lovely nurse's question.  She
was so beautiful, all I really wanted to say was that she had made me
instantly horny and that I wanted to screw her brains out.  But the pain
of the stitches in my side became my overriding concern.  That, and the
pesky injections three times a day that left my right arm cramped for
several hours; and the unfilling diet of jello and Cream of Wheat; and,
during the next three days, the parade of relatives that passed through
my room.

    As with my first hospital stay, years ago following the fight in the
project, everyone in the Ricci clan showed up or called or sent a card.
But now the Lobianco family and a vast array of their kin cruised in and
out of view.  My stepdad had fifteen brothers and sisters, and it seems
most of them showed up.  Almost all of them lived in the Little Flower
parish, in the same part of town as the hospital.  I met for the first
time the enchanting, smoky-eyed Aunt Theresa Lobianco who would be a
major figure in my sexual fantasies for many years.  And Josephine
Louise, who worked nearby, stopped in on her lunch hour each day to grin
and joke around and then exit, leaving me with a horrendous erection.

    And then there was the phone call from Martha.

    She spoke first with my Mom, who filled her in on all the medical
details and then handed the phone to me.

    "What are you doing in the hospital again, cowboy?  Can't you stay
out of trouble?"

    With my heart pounding, my mind swirling, and everyone in the room
listening, I had to carefully consider every word I spoke and every
expression on my face.  After beating around the bush for a few sentences
I asked, "So, are you married yet?"

    "Married!?"  Martha laughed hysterically.  "God, I don't have *time*
to get married!"

    Mightily relieved, I didn't even hear the rest of our conversation.
Martha couldn't say when or if she would be back for a visit.  She wanted
me to hurry and get well.

    I wanted to hurry and get well, too.  I was already growing bored and
giddy with impatience, knowing that I was under strict orders not to work
at delivery or on the paper route for at least three weeks.  That would
be three weeks without money for New York.  I still didn't tell Martha
about my plans.  The conversation got sidetracked onto my upcoming four-
teenth birthday and, due a few weeks later, my graduation from grammar
school.

    When the phone call ended I spent the rest of that day in a nearly
morbid silence.  I pretended to be irresistibly sleepy.  Most of the
visitors left the room as the nurse tucked me in for my final evening at
St. Joseph's.  I closed my eyes and allowed the others to think I was
sound asleep.  Meanwhile, I kept listening to the sound of Martha's
telephone voice, which clung to my brain like syrup.  She was not
married.  I wondered how long she would remain so, and how I could make
up for three lost weeks.

    I would go home the next day and spend my birthday on the living room
sofa, doing makeup homework to keep up with my classes.  And all day long
for three weeks I would simply think:  Martha.  Martha.



                              PART 9D:


    Near the end of the summer of 1956, just before I started classes at
Christian Brothers High School, I wrote Martha Jane and told her that the
main reason I worked all summer was to earn money for a one-week visit to
New York.  I had saved enough for train fare, and if she didn't have room
for me in her apartment I had money for a hotel.

    Three weeks passed.  I'd hoped for a quick reply.  I wanted to get to
New York before the summer ended.  But as the days passed I started
losing hope.  August ended.  I made new plans:  perhaps I'd hear from her
soon and could at least spend the Labor Day holiday with her.

    Then Labor Day passed.  And I thought: all right, then, Thanksgiving.
And if not Thanksgiving, Christmas....

    A letter arrived the week after Labor Day.  Mom handed it to me when
I came home from Christian Brothers.  I pretended it was unimportant and
told Mom I would read it when I got to it.  I disappeared in my room for
a while, then hid the letter under my shirt and rode my bike to Gaisman
Park.  I sat under one of the skinny, almost leafless saplings and
hastily opened the envelope.

    "Dear Steven:  Please, please please don't spend so much money so
soon on a trip up here.  I don't want you to go broke and spend every-
thing on me.  Wait a little longer."

    Disheartened, I read on.  She had taken in a roommate, a struggling
fabric designer named Veronica, whom she called Ronnie, to make ends
meet.  Martha's deal with Columbia didn't include summers, so she tutored
privately and had other jobs on the side.  And the apartment was far too
small for two people, much less for three; and she and Ronnie had to lay
low anyway because her lease included only one tenant; if Ronnie were
found out the rent would go up.

    She wrote, "You really haven't saved enough money for a week in a
decent hotel in New York.  There is no way I'd have you stay in a dump.
You'd get mugged or even killed in that kind of neighborhood.  New York
isn't like Memphis.  It's very dangerous here."

    I read on.  She wanted me to bury myself in work at Christian Bro-
thers.  She wanted me to give up the paper route and return to drama and
to writing.  I had sent her some short poems I'd written; she was so
impressed that she wanted me to contact someone at school who would look
at more of my work.  She thought my stepdad's decision to send me to
Christian Brothers was wise and that the Brothers were singular teach-
ers.  And if I were going to spend my money, I should wait until I had
more on hand so that I wouldn't be totally broke, because I would need
decent clothes of my own.  And I should buy a new typewriter for school
and for developing my writing instead of struggling with the Black Beauty
(I had not yet told her the story of the Black Beauty's sorry fate).  And
I didn't belong on a paper route anyway; I belonged in the theater and on
the student newspaper.

    So that was it.  I could not refute her.  In every way, she was
correct.  But I was not content with it.

    Two days later, on a Saturday when I knew long-distance rates were
low, I asked Mom if I could make a call to New York and pay for it with
my own money.  Mom said yes.  I dialed Martha's number.  No answer.  Two
hours later I dialed again, late in the afternoon.

    It was Ronnie who answered, with a youngish voice and a noticeable
New York City accent.  "Who's this?" she asked.  When I told her she
replied excitedly, "Oh, Steeeeven!  Oh, I've heard so much about you from
Martha!  So you're really a person?  The way she talks about you, I
didn't think you were real!  Hold on, I'll get her."

    Martha was surprised and happy at my call.

    I asked, "What happened to your Memphis accent?"

    "Oh, hon, that's gone months ago.  I call Mother and she can't
understand a word I say."

    We had a long talk.  It took a while for me to get accustomed to the
changes in her voice.  She talked faster, and she sounded older, worldlier
and more businesslike.  She apologized for not letting me visit her right
away.  She said I really and truly needed more money, and she refused to
let me stay in a hotel.  "I want you to come up here on an airplane, not
a crummy train.  I want you to be patient so you can be comfortable and
treat yourself like a mensch.  You know what a mensch is?"

    "No."

    "A mensch is a PERSON, hon!  I don't want you coming up here with
your stuff in a paper bag and looking like a street urchin.  And I want
to make plans for it, and have time to spend together.  Don't you think
that's better than being so rushed and desperate?  Life in New York is
desperate enough without all that."

    I didn't want to agree; but she was right, all the way down the line.
She pleaded with me to buy a good typewriter, a nice one that I'd be
happy with and that I would use to write and study instead of wasting my
time and energy with notebook paper.

    I refused.  I did so nicely, but I refused to spend money on a type-
writer, which in those days was a fairly expensive and exotic item for a
high school kid in Memphis.  And I insisted that I'd rather save the
money for New York.  Martha yielded on that point but insisted that I
travel to New York when the timing was better.

    She said, "I'm glad you called, Steven.  Really.  But talking about
saving money, do you know we've been on the phone for over an hour?"

    Apparently she heard reluctance and disappointment in my voice.
"Steven.  Sweetheart.  I miss you, and I know you'd love New York. Will
you understand?  For me?  And treat yourself better, and be patient?"

    "Well...okay."

    "Don't say okay if you don't mean okay."

    I laughed.   "Okay."

    "And buy yourself a typewriter?"

    "No."

    "Oh...stubborn!  Hon, please write me.  And please take it easy."




    Halloween passed.  Thanksgiving.  Three more letters and then
Christmas cards passed between us.   Then Christmas.  1957 began.  Then
Ronnie found a better job and moved into a vacancy in the same building.
Then Martha found another teaching job on the side to supplement her
scholarship.  Easter passed.  She sent an oversized Easter card that she
said was designed by Ronnie.  But no other word.  April passed, and still
no letter.

    One hot Friday afternoon in late spring, Charlie and I spent a
harried day working one huge delivery after another.  I was sullen and
was taking my anger out on the orders, asking for the biggest ones and
for the most distant customers.  Finally, by late afternoon, the two of
us cleared the backlog and the flow of customers thinned for a while.
Soaked with sweat, I took a break in the restroom and soaked my head with
cold water.

   As I returned to the front of the store, Charlie called to me from the
front door.  "Hey, Speedy!"  He motioned toward the outside with his
head.  "C'mon out here, let's take a break.  C'mon."

   "I just had one," I said crankily.

   "What the hell, c'mon."

   I met him out front and he mounted his bike.  "Get on your bike," he
said.  "Let's take a ride."  He lit a cigarette and handed me one.  I
took it and lit up.

   "Where to?" I asked.

   "Let's take a little ride up on High Street while it cools down.  Get
the hell away from this store for a spell."

   Wordlessly, I followed him on my squeaky bike and we rode up a short
rise for several blocks.  We took a right onto High Street, a narrow
avenue of dilapidated tenements that had changed little since the turn of
the century.  A few of the buildings were abandoned; one of them had a
condemnation notice on the front door.  Abruptly, Charlie turned into a
narrow driveway overgrown with weeds beside a four-story building of old,
oily, dull red brick.

   "What's up?" I asked, crushing out my cigarette.

   "C'mon and meet a coupla girls I know," he said laconically.  He
shoved down the kickstand and flipped his cigarette toward the street.

    "Girls," I said apprehensively.  Quickly, I removed my glasses.

    Charlie smirked.  "Hell, Chrissie and Karen don't care 'bout that."

    "I do," I said.

    The wooden front stairs and porch creaked loudly under our feet.
Charlie pounded on the screen door and hummed and waited.  Presently two
teenaged girls opened the heavy front door.  Charlie introduced them with
a few lines of friendly banter.  Chrissie, the busty one with curly
blonde hair and a mischievous smile, said hi.  Karen was the slim, quiet
one with long black hair and an expressionless face.

    "What's up?" Charlie asked.

    "C'mon," Chrissie said to him playfully, "I'll show ya.  Karen, you
and Steven...talk."  She giggled.

    Charlie and Chrissie disappeared into the massive dark hallway beyond
the door.  Karen leaned in the doorway and looked me over shyly, still
with no expression on her face, her hands folded behind her.  She was
attractive in a lazy, slutty way, with a pale narrow face and a thin,
wide mouth, black hair that draped around her small shoulders, and dark,
ambiguous eyes.

    "Charlie says you're a real hard worker," she said, her voice soft
and hesitant and dripping with a heavy drawl that I recognized as belong-
ing to northern Mississippi sharecroppers.

    "I do my share," I said.  Unaccustomed to talking with girls my age,
I said lamely, "So you're Karen."

    "Yeah.  I'm Karen.  Uh, Chrissie and me been friends for a long time."

    It had been so long since I'd stood face to face with a girl, I had
no idea what to do next.  I looked around to see if Charlie and Chrissie
were doing anything that might give me a clue as to what was going on,
but they had disappeared inside the building.

    Karen eyed me with an inscrutable stare.  A clumsy silence passed.
Then she motioned with her eyes to her right, toward the hallway.  I
wondered if she meant what I thought she meant.

    She hesitated, and moved lazily into the hallway, where she stopped
with one foot on the stairway and a hand on the dusty wooden bannister.
She turned toward me momentarily, her face still dull and unchanged, her
dark eyes questioning.  I stepped inside the screen door and let it close
softly behind me.  She headed slowly up the stairs, quickly glancing at
me about halfway up.  I waited at the door.  Then at the top step her
gaze again met mine, directly but very briefly, as she turned and started
up the second level.

    I told myself: hey, idiot, she wants you to follow her.  I moved to
the stairway.  It was all too unexpected and unfamiliar.  There had been
girls who told me they thought I was cute, but none who made or accepted
my advances.  What the hell -- it had been almost two years for me.
Martha was in no hurry to see me.  Probably New York would never happen.
But was Karen serious?

    Halfway up the first flight I paused and listened.  The floor above
creaked softly.  I continued.  When I reached the second floor all I saw
were dusty shafts of sunlight, warped and faded walls, and several half-
open doorways.  Then, behind the second door on my right, I heard what
sounded like the squeak of an old metal bed.  I moved forward and stood
in the doorway; the odor of grease and rotted plaster bled from the room.

    Karen sat on a half-made metal bed, holding a single deflated pil-
low to her chest, her long legs folded under her dark blue dress.  Her
eyes looked at me from her dull face.  "What took y' so long?" she
joked.  A slight smile creased her thin lips; the smile disappeared
instantly as I moved into the room and looked around.  The space consist-
ed of four walls, a cracked ceiling, a closed closet, an undraped open
window, the bed, and her.

    I stood in the middle of the room, hands on my aproned hips.  "What's
up?"  I wondered if, at any moment, an axe murderer might dash from the
closet, empty my pockets of the tips I'd earned that day, and kill me.

    She seemed confused.  Then hesitantly she raised a slender, long-
fingered hand to her dress and touched the top button.  "Wont me t' take
this off?"

    I don't know how many seconds she waited for me as her words slowly
sank into my brain.  Soon she began undoing her buttons.

    "It's okay to do it in here.  Ain't nobody else home today, they all
went downtown."  As she spoke she allowed her dress to fall open and
reveal one breast and its flat, cocoa-brown nipple.  "Won't nobody come
in."  She motioned toward the window.  "Cain't see nothin' through the
winder, either, they tore down the buildin's back there."

    I started undressing.  As I got down to my underwear and prepared to
strip them off, I heard a noise from the hallway.

    "Never mind them," she urged.  "They're too busy doin' it to worry
'bout us."  In one motion she slid under the sheet, pulled her dress over
her head and off, and held a corner of the bedsheet aside for me, care-
fully keeping herself covered below the waist.

    "C'mon," she said.  "Git in."

    Nude, I slipped under the sheet.  She covered us and turned to me.  I
turned to her, but hastily she pulled herself to me as if she didn't want
me to see all of her, and curled her legs around mine.  Against my right
knee I felt her crotch and was amazed that she had become sopping wet so
quickly.  Like a sudden wind from under the sheet her girl's scent rose,
stringent and sharp.  It was disconcerting; heady because of its sheer
lusty power, uninviting because it seemed so alien to her otherwise
alluring, slim, white body.

    Her face was uncommunicative, but her eyes were intent, waiting,
deeply focussed into mine.  Her arms went around me and she tried pulling
herself closer to me, and me to her.  I reached under the sheet and down,
touching her dripping mound.  Instantly, her hand shot down to hold mine
away from her.

    "No, don't.  I don't usually like bein' touched there.  It's
embarrassin' sometimes."

    Surprised and disappointed, I looked at her confusedly.  Her eyes
softened and gently she placed my hand on one of her pliant little
breasts.

    "I don't need much touchin' anyway," she said apologetically.  "I'm
ready.  Can you tell?  How 'bout you?  You ready?"  Her eyes on mine, her
hand found my cock as if by radar, without searching.  She gave me a
quick, fleeting, sensuous grin -- another of her rare facial expressions
that vanished almost as quickly as they appeared.  "Yeah...it's gettin'
there."  Without removing her eyes from mine she reached under the edge
of the mattress on her side and retrieved a rubber, quickly stripped open
the wrapper, and reached under the sheet.  Chewing her lip, she held my
cock with one hand and with the other unrolled the cold rubber over my
length.  "There," she whispered, lying back.  "C'mon.  'S been a long
time.  I need it in me."

    Well, I thought, if that's the way she likes it...I covered her and
then settled on her, and with one whispering slide of her trim torso she
raised her knees and spread her thighs.  Before I knew it she grabbed me
again, her light touch and long fingers warm and tickly, stimulating me
briefly until I realized she was maneuvering me into her while I was only
mildly excited and barely at half-mast.  Nevertheless, she was so wet and
slippery that I slid inside; she had only to nudge her hips slightly
upward, and I was fully sheathed.

    Through the confining rubber I felt she was warm, almost steamy--but
so soft and lubricous that I felt I were copulating into a small glass of
warm water.  I tried to raise on my arms and look down at her, but
immediately she pulled me close and pulled herself up so that we were
tightly joined with my face in her neck.

    She wasted little time.  Gasping, "Yeah.  Feels good," she began
squirming her sex against me with a nimble precision that belied her
sluggish manner.  I humped slowly but steadily, stretching a bit so that
my nearly flaccid shaft could gain some feeling of her inner shape and
texture.  But to my disappointment I felt little, save for the pleasant
tickle of her pubic hair bristling near the unrubbered part of my root.
The sensation was paltry, and a great deal more of what I had been
accustomed to was altogether absent, but it did generate a mild erotic
twinge that helped stiffen me a little.

    "Yeah," she panted.  "Gettin' harder.  Hmm.  You move good."

    Soon I knew I could not maintain this semi-erection.  It wasn't just
the lack of sensation or the sense of being rushed: we were clumsy and
unsynchronized.  There was nothing about us physically or emotionally or
mentally that spoke in the same terms, much less in the same language.
Not being able to touch her, not being stroked or primed myself, I became
merely a cooperative observer.  Staring ahead at a sight no more scintil-
lating than a patch of pillow, her earlobes, and part of her tensing
neck, I grew more and more distant.

    The only thing keeping me involved was the surprisingly rapid ap-
proach of her orgasm.  "Don't cum yet!" she panted. "Keep dickin' me!" I
pumped her steadily, keeping my shaft near what I thought was her clit
and flexing my cock to make it seem stiffer.  I wanted at least the
pleasure of getting her there.  The old bed jiggled.  Soon she was gasp-
ing and groaned "Yeah..." and her head fell back.  Her ankles slid around
mine.  Seconds later, she trembled and hissed "Yeah," and her head
snapped stiffly forward.  She whimpered a few times and her nails dug
into my back while she rapidly ground her pubis against me for several
seconds.  Somewhere beyond the rubber I dimly felt her inner spasms. Then
with a shudder and a sigh she sank back like a limp string.

    I stopped.  Propping on my elbows, I watched her: she lay open-
mouthed, eyes shut, breathing deeply and exhaling in long tired sighs.
Her arms relaxed and fell from me, one flopping to her side and the other
draping itself around her head.

    "Hey," she panted, "yer good...Y' know just how to do it."

    "Glad you liked it."

    "Yeah.  Liked it a lot...I'm glad you waited.  I ain't cum good 'n
hard like that in a long time."  She opened her yes.  "You cum okay?"

    "Sure," I lied.

    "I couldn't tell.  You must a cum when I did."

    "Mm-hm."  For a moment I held her and stroked her cheek, neck and
dark nipples, planting little kisses on her throat and her slim, oddly
touchable shoulders.  Her flesh was soft and seemed to melt against my
lips.  It wasn't that I liked her so much; it was sympathy for a soft
girl whose life was so barren that she could think of what we had just
done as being great sex.  And more: I needed someone to please, hold, and
kiss.

    Soon she squirmed nervously, her eyes filled with surprise and mild
reproach.  "Hey, you could make somebody fall in luv, doin' stuff like
that.  Holdin' an' kissin'...'n stuff."

    I moved off her.  Swinging my legs out of the bed, I sat up with my
feet on the floor and my back to her.  "Just felt like doin' it," I mut-
tered, defeated, looking down and seeing the empty rubber on me.  Out of
her sight, I pulled it off and pitched it out the open window.  I started
dressing.   I didn't want to be there anymore.

    She rolled onto her stomach, still clasping the sheet about her.
"Hey.  You live 'round here?"

    "No."

    "Oh.  Thought maybe I'd...see you around sometime."

    "It's...possible."

    She started to speak again, but stopped.  Her face had changed; it
had a look of quiet contentment and a girlish almost-smile.  I was
stooping to tie my shoes when she spoke again.

    "Maybe I wouldn't be so shy, next time.  'Specially with you.  I
always been kinda shy."

    "Why?  There's nothing wrong with you.  You're pretty."

    "Yeah, well...but shy anyway...You look better'n I thought you would."

    I walked to the door and looked out.  There was no one in the hallway.

    "How old 're you?' she taunted, rocking shyly on her hips.  "Sev'n-
teen?  Eighteen?  I'm sev'nteen, come July."

    I looked back at her.  Should I tell her I was barely fifteen?  I
lied: "Eighteen."  I noticed I was lying more often lately.

    "You don't talk much," she said.

    I smiled weakly.  "I'm shy too."

    "Yeah.  You fuck real good, though."  She blushed.  "You ever hear
that song, 'Sweet 'n' Gentle'?"  She smiled devilishly.  Her teeth were
yellow, a couple of them chipped.

    From downstairs I heard a door slam and then Charlie's heavy foot-
steps heading for the door.  "Hey, Speedy!  You up there?  C'mon, we
gotta go!"

    "I have to get back to work," I told Karen, and I started downstairs.

    Behind me I heard her call out, "You know where t' find me.  Right?"

    Charlie and I mounted our bikes.  He lit a cigarette and started
forward.  "Damn," he said, "that was a LOAD off my MIND!"

    We rolled down the street.

    Charlie said, "You ain't said nothin'.  How was Karen?"

    I shrugged.  "It was okay."

    "Okay?  Damn.  Just a little quickie, wha'd you expect?"

    "It was okay.  Nice."

    "Never done her myself.  Chrissie always tells me Karen's real hot."

    "Yeah," I said, trying to forget the whole thing, "she is."

    Charlie wagged his head.  "Damn, Speedy.  I cain't figure you out."

    That night I arrived home around ten o'clock, as usual for a Friday.
Mom was asleep.  I showered.  Then I remembered Karen and showered
again.  It might have been possible for me to like her.  She struck me as
pretty, an oddly delicate but kinky combination.  I wondered if she had
any diseases.

    Two days before my fifteenth birthday, I arrived home from school and
found a large, brown-paper Parcel Post package on my bed.  The return ad-
dress was East 87th Street in New York.  Quickly, I unwrapped and opened
the heavy box.

    It was a brand new Underwood typewriter.

    Taped to the instruction manual was a birthday card.  Martha had
signed it.  Under her name were three or four x's and a message:

    "Call me 'Collect' on your birthday."



                                Continued...


             ****  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, 1996 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."

    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?"
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,
Steven, 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
he 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 res-
ponsibilities 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 volunteering for too many dangerous
assignments in order to complete his tour more quickly.  He realized that
his behavior had been a death wish; 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 spoken so highly 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 spend a week in 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.  So..." she concluded, breaking into laughter for the first
time in many months, "your old girlfriend sweet-talked him into it!"

    I thanked her.  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 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 of my
parents.




    I spent the rest of that summer planning the trip and working at my
three jobs to stash away more travel money.  Finally, on Friday, August
16, my folks drove me to Memphis Municipal Airport to meet my flight to
New York.  Accustomed to hiding my feelings, I concealed my nearly un-
bearable excitement and anticipation behind a mask of calm and reticence
as my luggage was tagged and loaded at the ticket counter.

    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 chat-
tered 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."

    Soon it was time to embark.  At the boarding gate I had so many rela-
tives to kiss and hug that Josephine Louise had to remind everyone, "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-17 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?

    Three long hours later, I was confronted with the unimaginable
bustle of LaGuardia Airport.  I walked out of the airplane and into a
huge, crowded, pandemonious arrival area.  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 glasses, 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 rushing toward me with outstretched arms.  Her auburn
hair was pinned back, her face clear and stretched into a wide, happy
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 dreary ol' Memphis!  Stop, now, 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.  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."  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 stand. "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 compressed 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 that helps 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 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, zigzagged
for several more blocks, then screeched to a stop in front of her apart-
ment building, which indeed looked like a one hundred year old tenement.
It was on a clean but old and congested block of East 87th.  Martha paid
the driver and told him to keep the change.  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 suit-
case.  "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 number 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 a mass
murderer on weekends.  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 informa-
tion.  "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.  Call her.  The phone's over there."

    Halfheartedly, I dialed 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, for-
get 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 diffi-
culty keeping up with her as she strode quickly down the street.  I asked
again, "Why are we in such a hurry?"   She answered, "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 colli-
sions 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 stockboys 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,
sophisticated, grownup and lovely.  The average teenager who once felt
ugly next to her older sister now made 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 pulled away from me.  "We've never acted this
way before."

    "I know."

    Her eyes were eager, but somewhere behind her gaze I thought I saw
apprehension, misgiving.  Then she took my hand and led me from the
kitchen.  "Follow me."

    Within a few minutes we were naked in the small, dimly lit bedroom,
standing and holding each other tightly.  I skimmed my lips along her
smooth shoulders and she pulled away and looked at me and ran her hands
slowly over every part of me.

    "Look at you," she breathed.  "Look at how you grew.  So smooth and
firm.  You're beautiful, Steven."

    "Sorry I didn't grow taller."

    "I don't care about that.  Look.  Look at this beautiful cock.  It's
so right.  Just the right size and shape.  And so hard."

    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.
Quickly she reclined and opened her legs.  I lay on her and she raised
her knees to accept me.  I kissed her again, hotly, as my blind cock
found her portal and slowly entered, parting her ready and welcoming
outer lips, flexing in her, feeling the warm tight depth of her.  She
sighed and looked up at me.  Her cunt hugged me.  I pulled out a little
and then we both sighed again as I slowly reentered.  She was tight and
slick and had already started contracting.  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
physical development: my cock was incredibly firm, filling her totally,
and for the first time I felt my tip nudge against the softly 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."

   "I won't either," she gasped.  Watching each other, we both slowed and
started cumming.  Her lips parted and her eyes fogged and she stiffened.
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.  We both came for a long time
with her cunt happily convulsing and my cock riding slickly in the hot
cum that filled her, 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 and mindlessly 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; I remembered little of it.

    Martha slid a hand down my arm and up again, as if learning anew the
textures her fingers found there.

    She breathed,  "I missed cumming like that."

    "I'm surprised I remembered what to do," I whispered.

    "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."

    Quickly we went about 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 I want to show you places where you can shop for clothes," she
told me as she readied towels and cosmetics for her shower.  "And I want
to take you to the United Nations, and to Columbia to meet some of the
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,
very special.  And then there's a beatnik joint in the East Village..."

    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 study-
ing 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 every guy in New York were so easy to get
along with."  She kissed my nose again.  She looked at me.  I looked at
her.  Again, slowly, she kissed my nose.  Her hands cradled my face. Her
eyes narrowed as her face tilted and inched closer to mine again.  With
water splashing and gurgling around us, we kissed, our lips writhing with
a lovingly gentle hunger.

    Abruptly she pulled away.  She closed her eyes, leaning against me
with her forehead pressed to my wet chest and her hands loosely atop my
shoulders.   She took a deep breath.

    "Steven," she said, "I'm not used to this."

    "I'm not either," I said, and I stroked her temple and kissed her ear.

    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.  Instead,
she planted a loud smack on my forehead and continued bathing.  We
finished our shower, Martha growing quiet and subdued, as if preoccu-
pied.  We dried and dressed.  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 does 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.

    I looked at her.  "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 axasperated 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.

    "Steven...are you lying to me about those glasses?  Was that a tiny,
itsy-bitsy, teeny white lie?"

    "Yes."

    "Please don't do that."  Her eyes looked past me and she straightened
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 click-
ing 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, hellohellohello.  Oh, please,
please let me sit!  Let me SIT!"  She hastily flung her suit jacket over
the back of the chair and sat slowly, with a prolonged wince. "Aaaaaaah!
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 soft, large, 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.  It's genetic, nothing helps.  Oh, Where's that
waiter I always get in here, what's his name?  Marco?  Is he around?  I
need coffee desperately."

    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.  And a hot pastrami with
cole slaw.  Remember: coffee.  Black.  If it's left over from this morn-
ing, even better.  And remember, just whisper the vermouth.  Please don't
make lemonade out of it.  I need the total, mind-altering effect of the
juice of one glass of pure white wine with a mere suggestion of ver-
mouth.  In fact, toots, don't even whisper vermouth, just look at the
wine and *hint*.  Y'know?  Thanks, Marco.  You're 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 about years, I'm talking
about 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, Harv, 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 cheesecake.
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 squealed.  "Steven, you'll LOVE this.  Egg
creams!  I can't even LOOK at them, I get one after another until I burp
foam!"  As I enjoyed an egg cream, Ronnie watched merrily and started
giggling at everything in sight.

    "Ronnie,"  Martha enjoined her delicately, "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 nearly three 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 twice filled with crushed Pall Malls.

    "Steven," Martha said quietly, "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 gins."

    "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.  After a couple of
blocks, she leaned on me.

    "Steven," Ronnie said, patting my back, "you're a nice guy, y'know?
Nice.  Quiet.  Refined.  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?  Like, you wouldn't know it to look
at him, but he just seems to...fit.  Something warm and comfy cozy and...
so easy to lean on, 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 complements had me wondering how much she knew
about me and Martha.  Half a block later, Ronnie fell silent and seemed
to drift off with her head on my shoulder.

    "Hey, you," Martha prompted Ronnie dryly as we stopped at the stairs
leading to the front door of her building.  "Do we have to carry you up
the stairs?"

    Ronnie blinked awake, blushing.  "Omigod.  I was having such a nice
nap."

    Opening the door with her own key, Ronnie apologized and said she
hoped she hadn't embarrassed me.  "Martha, you were right about Steven.
He's such a honey.  So patient."  She said she could make it upstairs on
her own.  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, then we went back outside.

    "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 un-
attractive and told her I thought Ronnie was pretty.  Martha said Ronnie
had always felt 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.  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
appealing.

    "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 to 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 whispering river, the muffled roar of the
city blocked by buildings bounding the promenade.

    Martha asked about Memphis, sending us both into a long reminiscence
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 disciplined
and so proper," she said, "and yet there was such a wicked side to me.
So wicked.  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."

    She had talked openly and frankly for over an hour.  Now she stopped
and looked at me, saying plaintively,  "Steven, you haven't told me any-
thing 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 gave a long sigh and
placed a hand on my arm and squeezed.  "Steven, you spent almost three
hours with me and Ronnie and didn't say a thing.  What's wrong?"

    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 simply
hiding out.  I saw it and felt it.  You were tense and 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.  The depressed and the angry."

    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.  Inside
the store, Martha tapped into my interest in detail by giving me a quick
education in wines and the basic wine types and varieties.  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 canoles 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 four 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 being energetic, assertive, streetwise -- totally differ-
ent from the languorous, dawdling people I knew in Memphis.  Even the
teens I saw seemed to possess a savvy and a wordliness 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.  "Steven, 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
next nine days.  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 while I fetched two glasses.

    "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.
Little did I suspect that a small amount of wine would extract from me
such a detailed two-year autobiography.  Defenseless, and listening to my
own long, rambling sentences, I felt almost removed from myself, as if I
were some one sitting beside Martha, who remained perfectly sober and
attentive as she curled lazily on the sofa with her glass and crackers.
I told her everything, 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 with-
drawal 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
influence of the wine-induced fog made everything seem galaxies away from
Memphis and from me.  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.

    "It seems so far away," I sighed, looking out the window at the roofs
of the sleeping city.  "I'm so far away from it now, I wonder if it real-
ly 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 two thousand
miles from home and put a bottle of zinfandel in front of me."

    She smiled indulgently.  "You're not that drunk.  Not on zinfandel.
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.  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 some-
thing 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 over-
bearing stepdad typified the opposite extreme of heedless masculinity and
intolerance.  I'd apparently been living in an emotional and intellectual
vacuum; I lived surreptitiously, letting others see only those parts of
me that I could twist into a mere copy of what they expected.

    "I hate all of them," I said glumly, agreeing with her.  "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 ourselves,
untended, untaught except through our own isolation.  "If we feel un-
loved," 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 were wrong; it was everyone else
who was wrong.

    "I was always afraid," she said, looking down as if remembering.

    "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 everyone 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 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 had in your
life.  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 just beat yourself over the head for what you can't be."

    "Easy for you to say," I told her drily, 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 some-
thing 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 what he has to say.  Learn from him.  His name is
Fiore.  He's trains athletes and dancers.  Promise you'll listen?"

    "Oh, okay," I said petulantly.

    "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 by the end of this week.  Promise 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."

    "Jeez, 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 disappointment.
She gripped my hand tightly, frowned at me, and then dropped my hand onto
the table.  "Steven, what's happened to you?".  Groaning with frustra-
tion, 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'm sorry..." I began.

    "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 a deep sigh, 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 be-
fore 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
some momentous secret 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.

    "If it's so hard to do," I said softly, "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, Steven, 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, and 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,
Stephen.  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 orgasms,
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 white lies, to match up with their morality.  My
mother's morality, my teacher's, my supervisor's.  How could their moral-
ity conceive of the...the joy and fulfilment 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 screw-up kids or my frigid women or my impotent men.  Not my
Mississippi lynch mobs or 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.  "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, Stephen.  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 bold.  "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 nine days 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 acceptance of
what she had said.  I shuffled nervously.  She waited, staring at me
almost apprehensively.  She seemed at once both resolute and vulnerable.

    "I hope," she said softly, "I didn't blow your fuses."

    "They're not fuses," I said with a brittle smile, "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, Steven"

    "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 to me and gave me a quick little hug. "You don't have to
say anything."

    "Yes, I do," I said haltingly.  "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 direc-
tions.

    I shifted, making my shoulder more comfortable.  Opening my eyes, I
saw her watching me.

    "Are you falling asleep?" she asked.

    "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.




    That 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, minty 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 down-
town.  "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 loaned 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-five
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 demonstrated 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, pan-
cakes, 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 thirty or forty 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 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', hon.
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.

    "Looks like you're beat," she said.

    "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 hard, 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.  "Stephen...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 the
fucking part.  I could never 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 totaled."

    "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, and 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 shook my head and winced.

    "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."  She smiled with admiration
and surprise.  "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 everywhere
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 small and delicate.
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 desirable,
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 conver-
sation 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, unwhithered 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
philosphical 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, mak-
ing the spread of the next eight days seem like a paltry eight 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.

    "I'm glad you're here," she said.

    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 small, lip-
sticked, 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 yes 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 him off?  It
can feel very nice when you're sleepy."

    I smiled, lax and weary except for my cock, which itched pleasantly 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 encircling and hugging my
shaft.  She swallowed, thickly.  "It's not so easy for me...to open up
that way."

    "I know," I whispered back, 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 reassur-
ance from weary flesh.

    Sensing that I might be a little numb with drowsiness, 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 re-
sumed 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 stif-
fened 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 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 innocent.  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 grocer-
ies 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
grin 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 hair
falling into her face.  I moved quickly to the door.

    "You guys sure clean up fast around here," she whispered.

    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 pajama bottoms rasping sluggishly along the floor, she
drifted into the kitchen.  Quickly, I retrieved my writing from the
table, folded it and slipped it into my shirt pocket.  I unfolded the
Sunday paper and spread it on the table and sat, pretending I'd been
reading all along.

    In a moment Martha appeared at the kitchen door, 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 bath-
room, pausing on the way to give me a quick kiss on the cheek and say
"Thank you" before stumbling into the tiny room 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.




    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 res-
taurants 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 compromise 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 falteringly ahead, changing their
minds several times in the process.  I also noticed the glances and
stares men directed at Martha.

    "You know" I said secretively 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 pre-
pared 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, hon, 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 Wednesday.
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 yourself."  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 intelligent 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,
hon.  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."

    "You used to talk my head off, years ago.  Well, hon, that's all
right.  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, 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
Friday, and I'll be there to chaperone, and...well, you make up your
mind."

    "All right, I'll...probably say yes." I said reluctantly.

    "Hon," she said frankly, stacking the wrapped sandwiches and looking
in the cupboard for a bag.  "don't be a pushover.  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 everyone else.  But
you're different in a very nice way and, frankly, Marilyn's looking
forward to meeting you.  I can't imagine a caring, intelligent person who
wouldn't like you.  You think about it.  C'mon, let's get going."

    Her words may have served in one respect to shore up my lagging con-
fidence.  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 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 like a baby.  No one has ever, ever done anything like
this for me!  It's so unselfish, so much like the Steven I know!"

    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 contentedly, "Steven, you're not just a friend.  You're not
just sweet.  You're one helluva romantic guy.  I'm so glad you're here."

    I beamed back, smiling inwardly.  I thought: victory is so sweet.


                          Continued...


             ****  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, 1996 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 11A:

    I sat dumbfounded while viewing my first foreign-language film -- so
amazed, that at first I didn't feel Martha nudge me with her elbow in the
dark theater until she did so insistently.  I turned to her.  She smiled
and wiggled her fingers near my face.  Understanding, I held her hand in
mine.  She smiled again, playfully, and hugged our clasped hands against
her thigh over her skirt.  She rubbed my arm cozily, and turned back to
the movie.

    I had never seen such a film.  The movie was "Bicycle Thief," which
had been released years earlier.  The lilting rhythm of the original,
unedited Italian dialogue rolling off the actors' lips, the newness of
their attitudes and the earthy acting style -- all of it had me, as had
happened so many times since I arrived in New York, sitting with my eyes
bulging and my mouth open.

    When we left the cinema I was dazed.  Everything I knew about acting
and theater production and movie-making had been expanded beyond my
expectations.  I sat wordlessly at our late dinner in a Village beatnik
coffee shop.

    Martha asked, "Is anything wrong?  You look lost."

    I explained with difficulty, "My brain is working overtime."

    And it was.  So many impressions were striking me at once that I was
soon exhausted trying to sort them out and keep track of everything.  We
took a long walk all the way uptown to her apartment, during which I had
to inspect every store window and peer around corners to see what was
there.  It seemed every inch of Third Avenue presented something new and
exotic.  Martha was pleased that I was so enchanted.

    "It's a little intimidating," I mused aloud as we strolled with
Martha hugging my arm.

    "It doesn't really frighten you, does it?"

    "It's a lot like being in the middle of something that has no begin-
ning and no end.  And that movie -- now I have to learn about the theater
all over again.  From scratch.  All of this..it just keeps going, doesn't
it?  It never stops."

    "Oh, it stops.  At around 4 A.M., for an hour or so."

    In her apartment as we prepared for bed, Martha told me about the
schedule for tomorrow.  I had Fiore at ten, and Ronnie would meet me at
noon where she worked at 33rd and Madison.  She would take me to the
eyeglass dealer and help me choose a set of frames.  Then I was free,
until Martha returned at around five.  Martha would wake at six and be
ready to go to a meeting at Columbia by seven.

    "I dread these things," she said, slipping out of her skirt.  "So
political, so artificial.  Everything is numbers, bureaucrats, commit-
tees.  For such educated people, there seems to be no one person who can
do or decide anything alone."

    I watched her.  She removed her bra, her panties.  She stood naked,
her flesh glowing in the lamplight.  She reached into a drawer for her
pajamas -- blue ones this time -- and started unfolding them.

    My balls ached.  I was accustomed to her making the first move or
giving the first signals.  Holding back, I felt myself tremble.  I looked
down at my shaking hands.  How long, I asked, would I continue to be so
unsure of a woman who so obviously desired me?  Or was it just the
vitamins and Fiore's workout?  Or was this really me, my new sexuality
more demanding that it was back in Memphis?  Almost always, sex with
Martha was prefaced by moments of relaxed conversation and sweet touch-
ing.  That, I told myself, was the emotional warmup.  What I felt now was
spurred not by emotion; it was almost entirely physical.

    Standing in my underwear, I looked at her nakedness as she talked 
about the meeting and unbuttoned her neatly packed pajama top.  She was 
luscious.  Her breasts jiggled lightly as her hands worked at the 
buttons.  She stood with one leg on the floor and one knee on the bed, 
as she rambled on.  She had the pajama shirt unbuttoned and would soon 
have it on, covering her pink-tipped breasts.

    I stopped thinking.  I walked to the bedside lamp and turned it off.
She stopped talking and looked up at me.  I stared daringly into her
wondering face as I approached her.  I dipped my head, licked a breast,
found her nipple with my tongue, and sucked.

    I heard her murmur "Hmm.  Hon."  Her fingers held the breast to my
mouth and I suckled gently.  I raised my head and placed my lips into the
warm hollow of her throat.  She sighed pleasurably as I kissed and licked
my way up her long neck.  I looked at her.  She was smiling at me, her
eyes narrowed and warm and sultry.

    "Your mouth feels good on me," she said.

    I held her by her shoulders and gently laid her on the bed.  She lay
with her legs spread, smiling at me languidly from the dark as I removed
my underwear.  She saw that I was already stiff.  I walked to the end of
the bed, my dick wobbling, and knelt on the mattress.  She grinned and
pulled her knees up and opened her thighs and waited.  I moved forward,
and placed my head directly into her crotch, gently spreading her cunt
with my hands, and gave her a long, slow, wet lick along her slit, from
bottom to top.

    "Yes," she breathed softly, "Oh, hon, yes."

    Perhaps it was the lecherous hunger in my mouth and movements that
heated her so quickly.  Holding her furrow open with the spread fingers
of both my hands, I saw her nub was swollen and ready.  I held her open,
her clit totally unbared and defenseless.  She looked down at me as I
dipped my tongue.  I licked, circling slowly.  She uttered "Ah!", and
gritted her teeth and watched my eyes watching hers.  Then her eyes
closed, her neck tensed, her raised knees fell aside and opened her
smoothly tendoned thighs under my shoulders.  I circled my tongue again,
not directly on her clit, but around the firm rim of her cuntlips.  After
a moment I gently sucked her clit.

    She caught her breath.  "Ah.  Nice."

    I settled my mouth into her mound.  Yearningly I started sucking her
clit the way she might suck my longer cock, using my lips as a warm cone
sliding up and down her stiffening length.  Her thighs stiffened, the
tendons throbbed.  She gave a soft, surprised "Oh!"  Her head fell back
and she gasped irregularly, her hips arching.  Unrelenting, I sucked
and stroked with my wet inner lips in a steady rhythm, feeling the smooth
swell of her furrowed mound against my face, feeling her thighs flutter
and her hips flex.  Soon I heard her moan achingly toward the ceiling,
"It's so good.  Oh, it's so GOOD!".  It did not take long for her to
signal that she was near cumming.  Her entire body quivered for a few
seconds, then her thighs widened even more and she began a slow, sensuous
writhing of her hips.

    I stopped, with her close and gasping and writhing.  I rose over her,
my erection swaying, my tip glistening in the dark.  I knelt over her
with my knees astride her head.  I grasped the headboard as I raised my
hips and dangled my cock over her mouth.

    She looked up, surprised.  Her eyes narrowed wickedly. "Yeah," she
whispered.  She reached behind her head and bunched the pillow so that
her head leaned forward comfortably.  She smiled into my eyes as she
gathered spit in her mouth and then extended her tongue to slowly and
completely wet me with long, lingering licks.

    I grinned down at her.  I heard myself whisper lecherously, "Yeah.
Mmm.  Suck it.  Suck."

    With a single movement of her head forward, her mouth enclosed me,
wetly, hotly, immersing me entirely with warm spit and clinging flesh. I
grunted and sighed at the poignant, itching pleasure as she drew her
mouth back and along my entire length with a long slurp.  Then she
mouthed my tip gently with the soft inside of her lips.  My cock jerked
against her mouth.

    "Hmm," she breathed.  She smiled mischievously at me, whispering,
"I love this."

    "Suck," I whispered.

    Her eyes widened lustfully at my words, and she enclosed me again,
nodding with slow, regular, spitty, lingering sucks.  Her mouth moved
only an inch or two, her lips riding loosely and slickly up and down my
cock, the pressure of her tongue on the underside creating most of the
tantalizing sucking effect.

    I sighed hotly, grinning down at her, thinking that what Martha did
when she sucked was not really sucking; it was mouth-fucking, pure and
simple.  Martha, I thought, knew how to make her mouth feel almost
exactly like a warm, affectionate, perpetually moving cunt.  Her skill
had not diminished with time; soon my cock began its mad twitching
against the roof of her mouth and I felt the beginnings of my climax ooze
into the tubes under my cock.  I gently pulled away, her mouth loosing me
with a little slurp.

    My eyes on hers, I watched as I slithered down, straightening my legs
and settling onto her.  The surprise on her face softened when she saw me
rise on my arms and angle my cock toward her opening.  She continued to
gasp, her breath broken and her eyes staring helplessly, pleading to be
filled, telling me she was still near orgasm.  My cock touched her firm,
drippy outer lips.  Her thighs fell open again, and her pelvis lifted to
me, her cuntlips welcoming, kissing, grasping, encircling my tip.  I
moved forward.  And her eyes glistened and I exhaled with the pleasure of
my slide into her, the familiar slickness of her welcoming channel, the
clinging, loving comfort of the gripping flesh of her that my cock had
known so well before.   My shaft lurched upward, saying hello to her
secret place, and she clinched me in return.  And I began to slide in
her, luxuriate in her, with long and deep and slow and powerful and
steady strokes, my butt tightening in the warm hair and my belly grazing
hers.

    "Fuck," she whispered happily, her eyes glistening.  "Fuck."

    I watched her panting.  I felt her spasm wetly around me.  I tight-
ened my tummy and moved upward on her slightly, brushing her seeking and
swollen clit on every glide in and out of her, and her eyes flared with
pleasure.

    I whispered as I moved, "Are you close?"

    She nodded, quickly, her eyes shifting and her breath shuddering.

    I said, "Look at me.  Cum in my eyes.  I want to see your eyes while
you cum."

    Her eyes widened again, excitedly.  Unsmiling and seemingly en-
tranced, she parted her lips and tried to speak, but couldn't.  She
gulped thickly, and started panting.  Her eyes melted into a longing,
helpless stare.  Her nails clamped into my shoulders, her taut arms quiv-
ered.  Balancing on my right hand and still moving inside her, I swooped
my left arm under her, around her trim waist, and held the small of her
back in my spread palm.  I felt the muscles in her hips lurching under my
skin.  I whispered "cum" to her, encouraging, helping, and whispered
"cum" again, watching her eyes, watching her mouth part and her eyes
glaze and watching her lips mouth the word yes and watching her gasp and
mouth yes again and then feeling her stiffen, suddenly, taut as a wire,
her pelvis grinding her firm clit against my shaft, and then her sudden,
moaning, low-pitched, frenzied "Yes!" and she was cumming, her cunt
fiercely clamping, her neck straining, her face nodding and pitching
forward in small spasms as she stared at me and came, and I held her
cheek with my hand and smiled into her face and crooned as her father
might, "Yes.  Yes," and her face and feverish eyes froze with pleasure
and after a moment while she was cumming her throat uttered that strange,
animalistic sound she sometimes made, something between a groan and the
whimper of a helpless infant, and I held her face tenderly and slowed my
fucking to make it last for her, and she shuddered, stiffened, shud-
dered, and finally her face fell forward and her arms enclosed me and she
hugged me to her and opened her mouth against my shoulder and seemed to
scream quietly against my flesh there, and she relaxed, and whimpered,
and gasped for breath, and then fell back with a sigh, her eyes tearing
and her mouth moving with the word Steven, and her face soft and loving
as her fingers held my cheeks, and she whispered plaintively, "Cum in
me.  Cum inside me," and I raised on my arms and looked down at her body
stretched and spread under me and began lancing into her strongly again,
steadily, deeply, and trembling with long-held lust I felt again the new
pleasure of the nub of her womb nip at my tip deep inside her, and she
tightened her cunt on me imploringly and soon I felt the blessed release
and gasped and shook with it, seeing below me what I had always suspected,
that as my glistening shaft pumped into her auburn tuft her tummy did
indeed move, but subtly, her hips rotating in a slow tiny circle so that
her slithering cunt could wring cum from me, asking ruthlessly for it
all, and I slowed and groaned and kept twitching upward against the roof
of her cunt and gushing hotly, hearing the faint slosh of me in her, and
hearing her sweet "mmm" and her softly hissed "Yes" as she raised her
head to watch me fuck into her, and with my last, slowing strokes she
sighed a long, quiet, contented "aahh," and I stopped, and collapsed on
her, feeling her neck hot against my face, and she hugged me warmly and
cuddled into me, and reached down between us for me to raise my belly so
she could give my cock a tug as she liked to do, and then she hugged me
again, my breath hot and damp against her neck, and her hips writhing
happily as my twitches waned inside her.  She raised her legs around me,
her body now enclosing me completely in her heat and damp flesh and the
scent of warm milk that came from her.

    She was still catching her breath.  Against my ear, she gave a low,
pleased chuckle.  "Lord, do you know how to fuck."

    I panted, my aching balls empty.

    After a few moments I whispered, "Don't you have to go to the bath-
room?"

    She sighed wearily.  "Not really.  It's not the right time of the
month."

    "Maybe you should be sure."

    "I'd love to sleep with your cum in me."

    "Mother nature would love it too."

    "Mm...Okay.  But hold me a little longer.  Wait 'til you're asleep."

    At the window, the warm summer night sent a breeze that made the
curtains whisper sleepily.  For a few minutes, I thought, New York was
stilled.  My mind whispered silently: Stay.  Stay here.  Keep holding
her.  Hold this moment.



    Unaccustomed to sleeping for more than five or six hours, I awoke on
Monday a little before six.  Beside me, I saw that Martha had changed
into her blue pajamas while I slept.  I touched my lips to her cheek, and
got out of bed and dressed and made coffee.  I had been sitting in the
dining room only a couple of minutes before I heard the same soft knock
at the door that I'd heard the day before.  Going to the door, I cleared
my throat loudly, as before.

    "Steven?" Ronnie called softly from the other side.

    I opened the door, removing my glasses first.  Ronnie waited in the
same pajamas and bathrobe as yesterday.

    "Steven," she said.  As before, she made the same begging gesture and
sheepish grin.  "Sugar?"

    "Sure," I said, extending my arm into the room.  She tiptoed into the
kitchen.  I sat waiting at the dining table until she tiptoed out again,
holding a coffee cup half-filled with sugar.  I opened the front door for
her.

    She glanced at the sofa, which of course was made up and intact as
before.  "What a fireball," she whispered, slithering into the hall.

    I closed the door and turned to hear Martha rustling in the bedroom.
In a few seconds she appeared in the living room doorway as she had
yesterday when Ronnie borrowed coffee.  Martha slumped in her pajamas and
scratched her side.  Her face was half-covered with the same fuzzy tousle.

    "Ronnie again?" she slurred.

    I nodded.  "Right.  She ran out of sugar."

    "God...she's so disorganized."

    She stumbled into the bathroom.  I read the Sunday New York Times
that I had not finished the day before.  After a minute I heard Martha
dropping things in the bathroom again.  In a few seconds she emerged,
carrying an armful of cosmetics and drifting toward the kitchen.  She
stopped in the kitchen door and sniffed, testing the air.  She turned to
me, her eyes still half-closed behind the hair in her face.

    "You made coffee again?" she asked.

    "Yes," I said, looking up from my newspapers.

    She paused, seeming to fall asleep for a second or two, then drifted
toward me and dropped the cosmetics on the table and shoved the table
away from me with her hips, and then settled with a plop onto my lap and
buried her face in my shoulder.  She kissed my neck.  She nestled into my
shoulder for a minute, her breathing still noisy and sleepy.

    She pulled her head away and looked at me, eyes hooded.

    "Kiss me," she murmured, a little drunk with sleep.

    We kissed, warmly.

    She pulled away.  Still sleepy, she gazed without expression at my
mouth.  She shifted on my lap, closer to me, her arms around my neck.

    "Kiss me again," she murmured.

    I did, for a long sweet minute.

    She pulled away.  She paused.  She made a sound that was something
like a little whimper of frustration.

    "Kiss me again," she murmured.

    I did, more longingly this time, giving her lips a little lick while
we were still connected.

    Pulling away, she experimentally ran her tongue around her lips.
"Mm.  New sensation."  She looked at me, her half-closed eyes hidden
behind her hair.  Mostly, I saw nose, lips, and chin.  "You never did it
that way before."

    "I didn't?"

    She shook her head no.  She leaned down.  "Kiss me again," she
murmured.

    I did.  This time she gently invaded my mouth with her tongue, which
wrestled wetly with mine for a few seconds.  When she pulled away she
rested her forehead against mine.

    "Do you know what you did to me last night?" she whispered.

    "I have a vague recollection," I said.

    "Try to remember.  I want you to do it again when I get home this
afternoon."

    "I'll consult my notes."

    "Okay."  She rubbed her nose listlessly.  "Remember," she said, "Fiore
at ten.  Ronnie at twelve.  Then rest.  Then me."

    "Okay."

    "You were very good last night."

    "Mm.  Thank you, Miss Scarlett."

    "We're seeing West Side Story tonight, don't forget."

    "Will we have time for that, and for you when you get home?"

    She said, "Mm-hm," and then tilted her face again, her mouth parting.
"Kiss me again," she murmured.

    I did.

    Finally she pulled away, patted my shoulders, and rose.  Gathering
her cosmetics, she sighed, "What a delicious mouth," and she drifted
toward the kitchen.  Again, she stripped quickly, affording me another
view of her perfect, lithe body from the rear, and stepped into the
shower.

    I thought, my groin aching from the past three days:  Fiore, help me
with this.



                             PART 11B:


    At ten o'clock Fiore, looking me over with his hands on his hips,
grinned at me from his big red face.  "So!  Still with smoke on your
breath, heh?  You're lucky you have only light work today!  Every other
day, we do the heavy work!  Today you stretch like a rubber band!  I will
show you!  Now -- onto the table!"

    Once again, Fiore flipped and kneaded me on the massage table,
showing me how to detect which muscles and tendons were too tight and
required work.  Then he showed me the stretching movements that the
dancers in his gym performed.  I strained and grunted through all of
them.  Then: "On the bicycle!  Do it 'til you fall off!"

    "This is light work?" I remarked, climbing onto the exercise bike. I
started pedaling.

    "No!" Fiore exclaimed.  "You destroy your knees moving that way!
Remember what I told you!  Start again!"

    By eleven o'clock, huffing and puffing, I was tired but definitely
awake.  I took Fiore's advice and stopped in a shop on Madison Avenue to
buy a pair of first class workout shoes, then walked downtown to 32nd
Street to meet Ronnie in the building where she worked.

    She appeared at exactly noon, hurrying across the expansive lobby of
the building, wearing a gray business suit.  She carried a wide cardboard
artist's portfolio.  Ronnie had a youngish face whose slightly squared
jaws and narrow nose might have been considered a liability were it not
for her overall soft, pretty, youngish quality and her large, dark eyes.
Not one to smile constantly, her normal expression was a serious, re-
flective, older one, with a hint in her eyes of some unspoken sadness.
When she did smile it was a crinkly, playful, contagious one that bright-
ened her whole face.  I smiled at her as she approached, aware that her
winning grin and friendly blue eyes were beginning to affect me warmly.
She greeted me with a lilting "hello-ooo" and a flitter of her raised
fingers.

    She asked, "Did Fiore leave anything for the rest of us?"

    "I'll be okay, as long as I can sit at lunch."

    "No problem," she said, chuckling.  "No extra charge for chairs at
this place."

    We walked quickly along the crowded street toward a restaurant on
35th Street.  She asked about my workouts with Fiore.  I described
the special movements Fiore taught me and the diet he assigned.

    "Uk," she said, making a face, "brewer's yeast.  Yeah, he made me
take that stuff once.  Three tablespoons a day, right?"

    "Me too."

    She eyed me playfully.  "You don't cheat, do you?"

    "Nope."

    "Jeez, what dedication.  I had to lay off that stuff.  It made me so
healthy I stayed horny all the time.  Couldn't stand it."

    We sat at a small table near the window of the second floor of the
restaurant she took me to.  There was no lack of material to talk about.
We shared many interests.  I found Ronnie to be quite cheerful, despite
her occasionally self-disparaging remarks.

    "I can't believe," she said, salting her food, "that you worked for
two years day and night to come up here.  You must be very determined,
Steven."  She was interested in every detail of what it took to keep a
paper route, a subject I considered tedious, but she wanted to know about
it anyway.  Then she asked about growing up in the Lauderdale Courts.
"You know," she said, "Elvis Presley grew up there, too."  I told her I'd
seen Elvis in the neighborhood and that he still visited my stepdad's
supermarket now and then, accompanied by a string of pink Cadillacs.

    She winced.  "Oh, the Cadillacs!  Almost as bad as his movies, and
some of his stuff is just too teeny.  But I love it when he gets into the
old rhythm and blues stuff."  Pouring cream in her second cup of coffee,
she sang lightly, "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog...,"  and concluded
with a droll, "Am I awful, or what?  Wanna see me wiggle?"

    Out on the sidewalk, she asked me to hold still and put my glasses
on.  I balked, but she insisted, "Oh, come on, let's see what we have to
work with.  We'll still be friends."

    I donned my glasses and let her have a look at me.  She gazed at me,
studying.  I began thinking she was actually quite cute, with a casual,
girlish charm and an easy acceptance of me as I was -- a far cry from my
carping relatives.

    "Yeah," she conceded, "Martha's right.  New frames will make a b-i-g
difference.  Come on, we're going to a place that not many people know
about."

    On the way, she asked me about my theater work.  She was awed that I
had gone onto the stage before I was a teen.  Teasing, she wanted me to
perform a bit from one of my former roles.  By the time we arrived at the
frame vendor's place on the fourth floor of a building near Macy's, I
felt easy and comfortable with Ronnie.  I didn't wonder that she was a
close friend of Martha's.  And she was the first young woman I knew other
than Martha who expressed a serious interest in and knowledge of the arts
I'd left behind for my paper route.

    In the frame shop I tried several designs, with Ronnie giving her
impressions of each.  "Really," she said, "I like every one you picked
out.  But you tell me which one you like best."  I put on my favorite
and she looked me over carefully, and then nudged her lips approvingly.
"Right.  They're drop-dead gorgeous, Steven.  You look seriously like a
New Yorker."

    The frames cost sixty bucks -- a pretty sum in those days, consider-
ing that my originals cost a mere twenty.  The salesman behind the count-
er told me I could have my lenses mounted on the premises for five bucks
if I would wait an hour.  I agreed.  Ronnie and I sat in a corner and
chatted until she was due to return to work.

    "You get involved in so many fascinating things," she said, sitting
beside me and looking pensively down at the floor.  She had a slim figure
and a slinky, easy manner of sitting and moving.  "I'd give anything to
have your brains and endurance.  I just slug along.  Don't even know
where I'm going yet.  Feel like I'm twenty-two going on sixty."

    "You've got a start in the design business, though.  Back in Memphis,
women don't even know such jobs exist."

    "Yeah, Martha told me about Memphis.  Minimum wage capital of the
world, right?  God, Mom, and apple pie?"

    I nodded.  "Red necks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.  Memphis
would be waste of your talent -- and your personality."

    "Awww.  Shucks.  But those Southern accents are so cute.  They never
get it right in the movies.  Yours is faint, but just right.  Martha's is
almost gone."

    I leaned toward her, and she leaned closer to hear me.  "Tell me," I
asked furtively, "all the salesmen in this place...why are they wearing
those little black caps?"

    "Those what?" she asked, leaning closer.

    "Those little black caps."

    She widened her eyes and covered her mouth with her hands, grinning
broadly behind them.  "Those little black...?" she began, then she bent
over with laughter as I sat and watched, confused.  She straightened up,
and took another minute to calm down.  "Oh, that's precious!  I have to
tell Martha about this!"

    The little black hat, she whispered, was a yarmulke; the salesmen
there were hassidic Jews.  I blushed, feeling like a complete country
idiot again.  She chuckled over it until she left for work. "You're such
fun, Steven.  I can't wait for us to get together Wednesday."  She gave
me another of her innocent pecks as she left.

    Soon my frames were ready.  I put them on, bought a new hard case for
them, and headed for the street.  The new frames felt better.  The city
looked better.  I had made a friend of Ronnie.  I wasn't wearing those
loathsome hornrimmed gadgets.  Instead of taking a bus to Martha's, I
stuffed my old tennies in my shopping bag and laced on my new workout
shoes.  I broke into a jog up busy Third Avenue.  As I huffed along in
the breeze, I was surprised that no one on the street took notice.  I
could like New York, I thought; I didn't seem so uneasy about myself in
New York.

    I streaked up the stairs to Martha's apartment and looked at myself
and my new frames in the mirror.  Not bad.  The frames were very thin,
almost invisible.  In the kitchen I swallowed my midday ration of yo-
gurt, pills, and yeast.  I took an extra dab of yeast.  Settling onto the
sofa with my New York Times, I awaited Martha.

    She returned late, around five-forty-five, looking cheerless and
enervated in the brown two-piece suit in which she had been so fresh and
pretty a few hours before.  I opened the door for her and grinned, wear-
ing my new frames.  Unsmiling, she entered sluggishly and plopped her
purse onto the dining table.

    I stood behind her, waiting, my new frames sitting squarely on my
face in broad daylight.  "Whaddya think?" I asked the back of her bobbed
head.

    She turned around and looked directly into my eyes, and leaned close
to me, and then put her hands on my shoulder and, gazing intently at my
mouth, pushed me backward against the wall and pressed full length
against me.  She held my face in her hands.  "What do I think of what?"
she asked distractedly, her lips coming closer to mine, her eyelids
hooded sensually.

    "The frames," I said.

    Ignoring the frames, she raised one hand and gently touched my lips.
She murmured throatily, softly, "Outstanding."

    "You didn't look," I said.

    "Yes I did, they're gorgeous.  Steven, I hate the New York City edu-
cation establishment.  I hate the politics, the shortsightedness.  But I
love your mouth.  I've been thinking about your mouth all day."  Still
pressing against me and watching my mouth, she unbuttoned her suit jacket.

    I had not expected her to be so direct, willing, and ready after a
day of work.  I cleared my throat.  "I learned what a yarmulke was."

    "You did?  You gonna start wearing one?"  She slipped the jacket off
her shoulders and let it slither to the floor without looking.

    "And had a nice talk with Ronnie."

    Gently she wedged one leg between my thighs.  "Fiore didn't wear you
out, did he?"

    "No, it was okay."

    Her voice was soft, sultry, whispery.  "Steven, I demand that we fuck
immediately."

    "Right here?  Now?  Standing up?"

    "Hmm...I didn't think of that.  Can we do it standing up?"

    "I guess.  Horses do, don't they?"

    "Not face to face."

    "Well, they're horses, what do they know?  I bet we could.  We've
both been very resourceful so far."

    "Resourceful, yes.  Not necessarily lucky."

    I looked at her face and she looked at my mouth and I gathered the
hem of her skirt and ran my hand up her leg.  "Careful, hon, don't tear
my hose.  They're so expensive."  She gave a low, small sigh as I cupped
my hand between her legs over the hose and panties.  She was warm and
humid.

    "Here," she whispered, "I'll pull them off.  You get your pants off."

    "Lucky?  Why did you say 'Not necessarily lucky'?"

    I heard things snapping under her skirt, and her shoulders jerked as
her hands moved under her suit.  She stayed against me, looking into my
eyes and at my mouth, her lips nearly on mine.

    "I think, " she whispered as she worked, "that the parts have to fit
in a particular way, you know, for fucking to be conducted between stand-
ing humans."

    "But we're the higher species, we differ from lower animals in our
ability to stand upright."

    "I think we stood up to hunt, Steven, not to fuck -- No, don't do
that."

    "...Just reaching for the table lamp, so we can --"

    "No.  No seeing.  Just hearing.  Feeling.  There's just enough light
from the window.  I like to fuck in the dark."

    "How wicked.  You realize, you're seducing me."

    "I thought standing was your idea."

    "I was naive and innocent.  I didn't know it would lead to this."

    She gulped when I raised her skirt and my cock grazed her bared cunt.

    "Look, you're already wet.  I got you wet, didn't I?  Hm, this is
getting you hot.  Isn't it?  And you thought it was a silly idea.  You
fraud, you're as wicked as I am."

    "You're one to talk, look how hard you got.  Come on, get in me...
in me, hon...a little more...a little -- oh, darn, I don't believe this."

    "Don't spread your legs so wide, you get lower to the floor and I
can't reach you."

    "Let me lean against the wall.  Then I can open my legs a little...
try again, hon...easy...lower...Mmm.  There."

    "Your cunt's so hot"

    "Slow, hon...This is too outrageous not to let it last...Oh, yes
...nnn, deeper...Feel okay?"

    "It's very strange, our clothes on and the only place we can...mmf
...feel each other is where we're fucking."

    "Yes, but...mm!...you can't go very deep."

    "I know.  No wonder horses do it the other way."

    "Yeah?  The mare gets down on all fours?  Right?"

    "Be interesting to see what they get out of it."

    "I understand...ah, mm...I understand it feels very good that way."

    "Yeah?  How do you know?"

    "Ahhh...Ronnie."

    "Ronnie likes it that way?"

    "No, hon, Ronnie and I discussed it."

    "I see, the two wicked witches of East 87th Street."

    "Okay, let's...let's try it horsie style.  Come out, hon...oh, mmm,
it's always so sad when he leaves me."

    "He'll be back."

    "You stay right there, little horsie.  Oh, my, I got him all wet,
didn't I?  Here, I'm supposed to get on my hands and knees, right?  This
way...?  Come on, you kneel behind me.  Push my skirt up, hon.  Okay,
okay wait... Steven, where'd you go?  Feel my hand back there?  Huh?
Where are you?  Here, horsie.  Here, horsie!"

    "Wait, wait...Here, let me get up against you."

    "Yeah, there he is...move closer....closer, hon."

    "I think you have to raise your tail a little, miss filly."

    "That okay?  Hm?  Oh!  Oh, mmmm."

    "Hmmmm."

    "Oh that's feels so good!  So depraved.  Oh, hon, are you sure this
is legal?"

    "Ah...I won't tell if you won't.  Mm, you're so tight and wet this
way..."

    "Baby...Mmp!...Why didn't we do this before?"

    "We were too busy...doing other things.  Oh, it's good.  I'm out of
breath already."

    "All I can see under me is your balls bouncing.  Oh, how sweet.  How
perfectly, beautifully obscene, your balls bouncing.  Go all the way in
and hold it, all the way in...ahhhh, hold it, Steven.  Oh, it's so...your
balls against me, so nice.  I can just barely touch them, if I can reach
back far enough..."

    "Martha...no, don't do that..."

    "You don't want me to squeeze 'em?  Does that feel good, if I
squeeze, just a little?   They feel so heavenly in my hands.  I can't
feel them like this when we fuck the other way."

    "Martha, don't squeeze..."

    "Just a little?  They're so fragile and warm and hairy."

    "Oh, fuck."

    "What are you -- are you cumming?  Oh...oh that's so funny, you're
cumming, I can feet your squirt muscles."

    "...mmmmm..."

    "Let it cum, hon.  Is it better if I move on you a little?"

    "MMM!"

    "Hmm, feels good when I move, huh?...Does it?...uh!..uh!, oh, you
animal...uh!...mmmm...Steven, I like this..."

    "Whew!  Okay.  Okay.  Okay, stop.  Stop."

    "Oh my, what a short-lived experiment.  Look at you, you look like
you're ready to fall on your face.  Haha, oh, that's so funny, I never
saw you cum so fast.  Instant hot Steven!  You poor thing, we'll have to
take this a little slower next time.  Did you like it?"

    "Oh, yes, *ma'am*, yes...Very.  Whew!"

    "Wanna do it again?"

    "Huh?  Let me sit down.  What?"

    "Wanna do it again?"

    "Whew!  Okay.  Right.  Five minutes.  No, ten."

    "No, silly, after the show tonight.  Oh, I have to wash up!  I'm
dripping.  What a lot of cum!  Here, you just have a quick nap right here
on the floor and I'll hurry into the bathroom, and after you rest a
minute you can fix us a quick sandwich or something, 'cause we won't have
time to eat out.  You can make me cum when we get back, okay?"

    "Whew!  What?  I can't hear you when you're running water in the
bathroom!"

    "I thought cummin' too much made you blind, not deaf.  I said, you
can make me cum when we get back.  Maybe we can even horsie fuck."

    "It's doggie style, isn't it?...Whew!...Not horsie fuck."

    "It's eff-yew-see-kay, hon -- horsie, doggie, froggie, whatever.
Let's do it so I can watch in the mirror.  Wouldn't that be delicious?"

    "Right...Whew!...Cumma ti yi yippee yippee yay..."



    After watching "West Side Story" we returned directly to Martha's.
As soon as we entered the room she had me lick her to orgasm on the sofa
with her clothes on.  She came right away.  But that was hardly enough to
satisfy her.  We undressed and went into the bedroom, where she closed
the bedroom door so the mirror on the door faced the bed while we
copulated doggie style.

   She thought watching the mirror to be exciting for a while, but she
soon found it artificial and distracting and preferred looking in my eyes
and talking in the dark with me on top.  My back was feeling the effects
of the last few days with Martha and Fiore and the rest of New York.  I
turned over and she got on top, a position we seldom used.  I directed
her hips, reading her carefully to make certain she held back long enough
to build what I hoped would be a thoroughly exhausting climax.  When she
started humping and grinding on her own, I withdrew my hips and avoided
contacting her clit until I could get her going all over again.  Finally,
when she was so agitated that she seemed incoherent, I humped steadily
under her until she came in a long, gasping, whimpering finish.

    She gulped and floundered on me, swallowing and sweating and catching
her breath with tiny yelps.  She lay her cheek on my chest just under my
neck and breathed heavily for a while.  Soon, still slightly breathless,
she raised up on her arms.

    "Whew! You think you're pretty smart, don't you?...Whew...Holding me
back like that and...driving me crazy."

    "You didn't like it?"

    "Whew!...Of course I liked it!"  She rose on me and looked down into
my face.  "You didn't cum yet, did you?"

    I shook my head no.

    "Want to?"

    "Yes."

    "Now?  Hmm?  You wanna cum now?""

    I lay still, strongly suspecting something was up.

    "Well..." I stumbled.

    She grinned devilishly.  "So, you wanna cum now, huh??"

    "Perhaps I made a slip in judgement..."

    "Yeah?"

    "...and drew things out a little."

    "Yeah?  A little?"   She began moving on me, ever so slightly, most
of it internal and secret.  She smiled greedily.  "Think you might have
miscalculated?"

    "I may have, uh, yes, miscalculated.  'S possible."

    "Uh-huh."  Knowing I was already hard as a rock, she made a tiny
motion inside her somewhere that deftly squeezed the entire length of my
sensitized and swollen knob.

    I jerked.  "Oh!"

    "Hit the spot, huh?"

    "God, I think so."

    "Oh, I'm so glad I found it."  She did it again and grinned trium-
phantly when I jerked once more.  "Think you're gonna cum?  Hm?"

    "Well..."

    "Think so?"  She raised on her elbows again, looking down to watch my
wet, distended shaft.  She lifted until the snug ring of her opening
barely encircled the ridge of my tip, and held there.  "Not yet..."

    I whimpered and gasped.  Suspended over me, she started squeezing
my tip rhythmically.  I moaned and tensed.

    "Not ye-e-et," she sang, her face near mine.  She pulsed slowly and
methodically as she settled onto me, an inch at a time, pausing for
several squeezes before lowering another inch.  After a long minute of
this routine she breathed a deep, wobbly sigh and imbedded me in her to
my root, her pubic fuzz tickling my tummy as she settled and then circled
her hips.  She contracted, watched my face, and contracted again.  my
cock leapt yearningly inside her.

    "Don't cum," she whispered.  Then she began moving, watching my face
and smiling as she rose and fell slowly, taking about two seconds to rise
and two seconds to fall.  "Don't cum," she said again, "It feels too good
right now."

    She worked on me in exactly that way for about ten minutes, never
changing her pace or the depth of her stroke.  Or maybe it was five
minutes.  Or maybe it was half an hour.  Or maybe I have no idea how long
it went on.  "Not yet," she chanted cloyingly as she continuously ca-
ressed my face with one tender finger.  Now and then she urged her cunt a
little lower as she engulfed me, knowing that I now could feel her cervix
at my tip, her smile widening each time I tensed and gasped at the
sensation.

    Finally, when she saw that my entire body had gone rigid as a lamp-
post, she began kissing me softly on my eyes, face, and neck.

    "Ready?" she taunted.

    "...Yes," I groaned, sounding as if I were someone speaking on the
other side of the room.  Was this my voice?  My legs stretched so tautly
that I imagined they approached the far wall beyond my feet.

    "Your balls nice and tight?"

    "...Yes..."

    She continued, her hands cradling my face, her lips bare centimeters
from mine.

    "It'll feel so good, Steven...it'll feel so good."

    I trembled.  Her words and movements had me in a strange, new,
unimaginably erotic galaxy.  I knew I had some cum left down there,
somewhere.  Where was it?  I searched frantically for the elusive source
of the orgasm I desperately needed lest I lose all control and start
making absurd cries and noises.  I feared everyone in the building would
hear me if I didn't cum soon.  But her crooning and her writhing, slid-
ing cunt obliterated everything except wildly panting, arching, trembling
sensation.  I stiffened and arched and thought damn she's so good at this
and I quivered and I...

    Squirted.  Once.  Twice.  Hot.  Strong.

    "Yes," she whispered.

    Martha, I thought.  And I squirted.  And squirted.

    "Yes," she whispered again.  "Yes..."

    I whimpered, floating out of the dark place of pure pleasure like
flotsam rising to the top and bobbing on the surface.

    I felt her face grinning with her cheek against mine and heard her
chuckle near my ear.  "There," she crooned, "There, baby."  Her hips
slowed and stopped.  She held me securely inside her and stroked my face.
I blinked and opened my eyes.  She wore an amused, self-satisfied little
smile.

    She whispered, "Gotcha."

    "Whew!"  I had a mustache of salty sweat above my lip.  I removed it
with a finger.

    "Didja like that?"

    I pushed my hair out of my face and shrugged, nudging my lip forward
nonchalantly while gasping for air.  "It was, you know...okay."

    "It was the best, wasn't it?"

    I looked into her eyes, seriously.  "Yes, it was.  You fucked
my brains out."

    "Have any cum left?"  She kept eyeing me, but her mind was on her
inner muscles, which closed on me once or twice.

    "Not only do I not have any more cum, I don't have toenails anymore."

    "C'mon, after a cum like that I want to hear you say something deli-
ously dirty to me in gratitude."

    "Hmm."

    "C'mon."  She squeezed.

    I looked at her.  Her eyes studied mine mischievously.  I stroked
her hair.  "Go ahead," I whispered.  "Milk me with your cunt.  Get all of
it."

    "Yeah..."

    "Every drop."

    "Yes..."

    "There," I grunted, blinking.  "You got some."

    "I Did"

    "Yes."

    "Any more?"

    "I don't think so."

    "Sure?"

    I nodded.

    Her lips glistened.  Her eyes smouldered.  "God, I love this with you."

    I looked up at her.  I placed a palm warmly against her cheek.

    She lowered her head and gently chewed my ear and slithered her wet
labia and her firm clit against my tummy and whispered wickedly, "Maybe
there's just a tiny, teeny, little bit more?  Hm?..."



                             PART 11C:


    Tuesday morning I didn't open my eyes until I heard Martha getting
dressed on the other side of the room. I turned onto my side and saw her
slipping a belt through the loops of her skirt.

    She beamed at me, "Hi.  Did I wear you out?"

    "Yes," I groaned.

    "We can rest tonight."  She fetched shoes from the closet and sat on
the bed, embracing me and snuggling into my neck.  "You certainly have me
in a great mood for doing combat with the bureaucrats this morning.  At
least I can escape for a while later today and do some serious tutoring
before I come home.  I'd much rather struggle with the kids than with the
grownups."

    "Martha," I said into her shoulder.

    "Mm-hm?"

    "Do you have any idea how good you are in bed?"

    She nodded against my cheek.

    I said, "Then I don't have to tell you."

    "Tell me anyway."

    "I just did."

    "Tell me anyway."

    I kissed her neck.  "Martha," I whispered, "you're so good in bed."

    She sighed.  "It's so nice to hear you speak up for a change."

    She finished dressing and gathered her things into her purse and her
briefcase.  In my whole life in Memphis, Tennessee, I had never seen a
woman carry a briefcase.

    Martha reminded me that I had Fiore at ten, I had to take my vitamins
and the yeast, and I could meet Ronnie for lunch again if I wanted.
Later that night we were due at an Artur Rubenstein concert.  "Then we'll
rest," she said.  "It's an early day Wednesday.  We have to be up at
five-thirty.  We can't be late, the Long Island Railroad leaves on time
and it takes Ronnie forever to get ready."

    I yawned.  "I thought Ronnie worked."

    "She does, but not everybody in New York works nine to five.  This
isn't Memphis, Steven, people here get time off when they need it."

    She blew a kiss as she rushed out the front door, leaving me
standing in my underwear in the living room.  I listened to the traffic
bustling outside.  I could like New York, I thought.  I started laying
out my vitamins on the kitchen table.  I could like this hustle and
bustle, this constant stimulation, this variety, this surfeit of possi-
bility.

    There was a knock at the door.  "Steven?" Ronnie called.

    I stood near the door.  "Sugar?" I called back.  "Coffee?"

    She laughed.  "No, no.  Wanna meet for lunch?"

    "Okay."

    "Remember where?"

    "Same as yesterday."

    "Right.  'Byyye, y'aaall....Did I do that right?"

    "...We'll work on it."

    She laughed again.  "All right.  See ya!"  I heard her clatter down the
stairs in her heels.

    I could like this place, I thought.  I poured water for a cup of
berry tea.  I could even like brewer's yeast.



    Fiore worked me to a frazzle.  He set up a coordination and aerobics
exercise in which I had to race around a small room and catch handballs
that he kept pitching to me.  He began pitching more balls, faster and
farther from wherever I stood -- until, finally, I had enough.  Snatching
one ball that he pitched into a corner far from where I stood panting and
recovering from the previous pitch, I squeezed the ball and grimaced and
threw him a hot, angry stare, and then slammed the ball into the wall as
hard I could.

    Fiore grinned, his hands on his hips, while the ball bounced away and
I stood gasping and glowering.  "Good!" he said, nodding.  "Good, my
friend!  I was wondering how long it would take you to speak up for
yourself!  Iss feel good, hah?  Good!  Know your limits!  Admit them!"
He strode toward me, his grin softening.  "If you don' learn your own
limits, THEY control YOU.  As you build your body, build your awareness.
As you develop awareness, develop the body.  Mind and body, my friend!
They work together!  Hah?  Good!"  He slapped me on the back, and I
managed to stay on my feet.  "You rest a minute!  Then...More of this!
Hah?  Good!"

    Later, as I was walking downtown on Lexington Avenue, I thought:  I'm
surrounded by geniuses.  Surrounded by artists, writers, thinkers, doers,
teachers, seers, makers, strivers.  Every store front, every skyscraper,
every crowded street corner offered new possibilities, new freedom -- and
new crises, with little room for the laxity or purposelessness I knew in
Memphis.  New York was swift, extreme.  People seemed to have a certain
cunning, a toughness, that came from being forced to look deeper and try
harder.  I felt intimidated, but that in itself incited me to look more
deeply into myself, to listen to my impressions.  As I strolled, I began
observing everything more meticulously.  New York struck me at first as
simply a chaotic puzzle, a violent offhandedness.  But taken separately,
some pieces seemed studied, calculated, learned and honed to the point
where they leapt out with an ease that seemed spontaneous, innate.
Merged, everything appeared merely disordered.  People seemed to know
where they were going and how to get there; those who didn't wandered
vaguely.  The few who stopped to read a street sign were shoved by unpaus-
ing others, honked at by speeding and careening traffic, glowered at by
those who suddenly found a lost soul impeding their own progress.

    I somehow managed to express this to Ronnie during her lunch hour as
we sat looking out the window in a Chinese restaurant on Seventh Avenue.

    "Jeez, Steven," she said, staring at me, "you do need to live here.
Did you really come from Memphis, Tennessee?  I wish I had such a brain.
I have such a hard time getting down to the guts of life.  I guess I'm
too busy trying to remember where I put my laundry ticket.  But it's
true: in Manhattan, if you don't learn life well, you either get stepped
on or you miss out on everything.  In my case, both."

    She told me about the small Michigan town where she grew up.  "It
seemed so nice when I was very young.  Very serene.  But then I made a
terrible mistake: I became twelve years old.  And the land wasn't serene
anymore, it was just flat.  And the trees didn't seem to grow.  People
just walked in and out of my life as if I weren't there, while I wasn't
going anywhere or doing anything.  I kept saying, hey, there has to be a
next moment somewhere.  Y'know?  There has to be a rest of me.  So what
do I do?  I move to Manhattan and get stepped on and honked at like
everybody else."

    "But it doesn't stop you," I said, smiling at her.

    She blushed.  "Steven, there really aren't that many thinkers around
here.  Most people think you're supposed to be clever and slick...like,
there's this formula they get down pat -- and they're good at it, too.
But it's another thing to want to be knower.  A seeker."  She flicked her
cigarette against the ashtray and leaned forward on her elbows.  "You're
a seeker, aren't you?  You don't want to know the formula, you want to
know where the formula came from.  You don't want to find the ocean, you
want to find out how it got there, and why, and what's under it."

    "I guess that's me, yes."

    "What the hell are you living in Memphis for?  You need to move up
here and start looking for life -- like the rest of us, who haven't found
it yet."  She gazed out the window, her chin in her hand.  "It's out
there somewhere.  I know it is.  It steps on my feet every day, so I know
it's there.  I keep thinking, if I'm in the right place at the right
time, I can just -- "  She motioned quickly, as if to snatch a mosquito
in midair "-- catch it.  Like that."

    I asked, "That's a little chancy, isn't it?  Like trying all the
formulas until you get the right one?"

    "But isn't that what everybody does?"

    I thought for a second.  "I don't trust formulas.  I don't trust them
because...so far, the formula isn't the answer, it's a replacement for
answers.  It's like self-help books.  You read somebody else's answers
and they work for a while, but you never look deeper for your own."

    She gave me her crinkly grin.  "No wonder Martha likes you so much.
I always told her she was too picky sometimes.  Maybe she just has good
taste."

    Soon, after leaving another peck on my cheek, she left for work.  I
watched her until she waved at me and turned a corner and went out of
sight.  I turned to walk back to Martha's, thinking again that I'd have
little trouble mustering the effort to survive in a town where people
talked with me instead of at me.

    That evening Martha took me to a delicatessen on Sixth Avenue where I
stuffed myself with more new, mouth-watering goodies: matzo ball soup,
and cheese blintzes with sour cream and strawberry jam.  I attacked it so
voraciously I was almost embarrassed in front of Martha, who sat smoking
a cigarette and watching me enviously.  She said, "You act as if you
haven't eaten for a year.  If I ate like that, my nineteen inch waist
would be fifty inches before I walked out of here.  If I *could* walk."

    Later we went to a concert hall somewhere on the West Side, where
Artur Rubenstein perfomed Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Pagan-
ini."  In the dark we held hands, an act that seemed as natural as eating
or talking.  It was unlike the giddy, conniving hand-groping of teenagers
that I observed in the movies and at dances back home.  It was simple,
comfortable, expected, accepted.  When the lights lowered, our hands
coupled automatically, immediately finding the correct angle and pressure.

   It was not a long concert -- chosen deliberately by Martha so that we
could return home early and prepare for our trip to Fire Island.  I had a
list of things to prepare and was packing them into a shopping bag while
Martha sat in her pajamas on the sofa, sewing a small tear in the seam of
her yellow swimsuit.  She worked wearing her reading glasses.  She ex-
plained that Fire Island was a long, narrow lick of land off the south
shore of Long Island that stretched from Brooklyn eastward to Montauk
Point.  The island was only a few blocks wide.  It was dotted with small
villages.  The well-off built homes there, but it was fast becoming a
mecca for tourists during the summer.  No vehicles were allowed; people
moved on foot or bicycle.  The villages were not connected by roads or
sidewalks, although there were wood plank walkways within most of the
towns.

    "You sure it's okay if I just wear shorts?" I asked,  "They're
cutoffs I made myself from old Levi's.  I forgot to bring trunks and we
don't have time to buy any."

    "It's fine," she said, drawing her sewing needle into the air.  "No
one worries, Steven.  It's very casual out there.  We're going on a
weekday, when it isn't such a hassle.  There aren't any bath houses for
changing, but some of the villages have showers to get the sand off you.
People wear their swimsuit under their clothes and change on the beach.
Anyway, you probably won't even need your shorts."

    "People swim in their clothes?"

    Martha smiled slyly as she searched the seam she worked on.  "Some of
them swim with no clothes."

    I gulped.

    "What's the matter?"

    "Fire Island's a nudist colony?"

    She gave a low, amused little laugh.  "Hon.  I'm surprised at you.
We're going to a part of Fire Island that's Federal land, about four or
five blocks along the beach.  It's secluded, and sometimes it's even
guarded.  And most of the people you'll find there are fat old lawyers
and their tubby wives who wouldn't be worth looking at anyway."  She
winked.  "Think you can handle it?"

    I shrugged.  My face felt hot.  "I won't mind if you and Ronnie don't
mind."

    "Ronnie and I go there all the time.  But when we went in June, the
Christians had closed the place down.  They do that every once in a
while, but it doesn't last long because the local township has no juris-
diction out there.  Just in case they're up in arms again, though, bring
your shorts."

    "I will," I said nervously, hoping the Christians were active.

    "You've never seen the ocean.  You'll love it.  It's nothing like
Rainbow Lake swimming pool in Memphis.  Nothing like it at all."  She
looked at me as I sat on the floor folding beach towels and shoving them
into the bag.  "Is all this paganistic New York stuff giving you the
heebie-jeebies?"

    I shrugged.  "I'm holding up."

    "How about the date I told you about for Friday?  You never told me
what you want to do, and I really ought to tell Marilyn now if you want
to call it off."

    "No.  I'll go."

    "Hm.  You don't look like you're ready to explode with enthusiasm."

    "I still say Marilyn might not think I'm all that great."

    "Well, the opposite might be true.  She might like you but you won't
like her.  Although I doubt that either will be the case."  She cut the
thread and held up her swimsuit to check the work.  "Marilyn's a very
sweet, very bright young lady.  I'll introduce you to her at lunch, and
hang around a while, and then you two can go to the Metropolitan Museum
together for the afternoon, and then Marilyn will go home.  It's that
simple.  No crisis, no big thing."

    "Well...okay."

   "It's just somebody who wants to meet you," she said easily.  "Every
time you meet someone, it doesn't have to be a major event."  She glanced
at me from the corner of her eye as she removed her glasses.  "Maybe
you'd like something a little more familiar."  She grinned. "Want me to
fix you up with Ronnie?"

    "Of course not."

    "Come on.  You two get along pretty well."  She walked to the re-
finished corner desk and put her glasses in a drawer, wearing the same
teasing smile on her face.

    "No.  She's too old."

    "Oh, re-e-eally?  At twenty-two?  Now I've heard everything."

    I rose, blushing, and settled onto a chair on the other side of the
living room.  "I just wouldn't want to."  I watched, sulking a little, as
she returned to her swimsuit on the sofa.  "What is this, a test to see
if I can fly on my own?"

    Martha smirked.  "Well, I'm teasing.  Oh, look at you.  Don't be so
defensive.  You've wanted other girls, haven't you?"

    "No," I lied.

    "Oh, come on!", she exclaimed skeptically.  She folded her swimsuit.
"You can't tell me you don't think about other girls."

    "Sometimes."

    "Well...At least I've opened you up enough to admit it."

    I sighed wearily.  "Okay, Ronnie is cute.  She's a lot like you, too."

    "It's very convenient.  We wear a lot of each other's clothes."

    "But I still wouldn't."  I grinned and added, "Even if she wore your
clothes."

    "Well...but you have tried, haven't you?  You've been with other
girls?"

    My eyes kept shifting to avoid hers.  "Yeah, well..."

    "Well what?"

    "Have you?"

    "...Eh.  Yeah."

    "And?"

    "It didn't work so well."

    "What does that mean?"

    "I mean it didn't work."

    "Steven, what do you mean, it didn't work?"

    "I mean it didn't work."

    "...Well, that happens, Steven.  But I'm glad you were honest with
me.  And I'm glad you tried.  I tried, too, hon, and you know I did.
Everybody tries.  I didn't try often, but I did and it didn't work so
well for me, either.  But that's the way it goes, Stephen.  Stop thinking
it's always your fault."

    "Okay," I pouted, sighing.

    She came over to me and leaned against the chair, her arm around my
shoulder as she stood beside me.  "You wanna tell me about it?"

    I shook my head no.

    She knelt down beside me.  "Don't think you were doing something
behind my back," she said, gentle but frank.  "You were lonely and you
needed somebody, and you're young and healthy, and neither of us knew
what was going to happen next.  We still don't.  And I don't think you
needed it just because you wanted to get laid.  I know you, Steven,
you're too sensitive.  You need more than that.  Don't be ashamed of your
needs, Steven.  Please.  You're allowed to be yourself and you're allowed
to be selfish once in a while if no one's giving back to you."

    I sighed, avoiding her gaze.  "Okay."

    "Look at me."

    "No."

    "Steven look at me."

    I looked at her.

    "You're quiet, hon, but you're so intense.  I know you are.  I can
feel it in you.  Take my word for it, buster, nobody ever made love to me
the way you do.  Nobody makes me cum the way you do, because you always
think of my pleasure, you get your pleasure from mine.  Don't you think I
know that?  There aren't many men who have sex that way, and I don't ever
want you to be ashamed of it.  Remember, not everyone's like your mom.  A
lot of women are, but not me.  And there are others who aren't like her,
either."  She rose and walked to the dining table, where she started
packing cosmetics and sun lotion into the shopping bag.  "And whether you
ever knew me or not, whether you ever had real parents or not, hon,
you'd still have to know how to fly on your own.  Not under their power,
under your own."

    I looked away, and then back her.  I wiped my sleepy face.  "Well...
before I leave New York, would you write me an official letter of
recommendation?"

    She grinned.  "Sure.  Want it notarized?"

    "Hmp.  You need more than that in Memphis."

    "You won't be in Memphis forever.  And you're not in Memphis now,
except maybe in your cute little your head."  She stood up and went about
the room, turning off the lights.  "All I'm saying about Ronnie is that
she'd spend time with you.  Stop thinking everyone's going to put you
down.  Plenty of people will, but Ronnie isn't one of them.  She really
likes you.  Maybe not sexually, but she likes you.  She might not go
romping in the hay, but that's something else.  Too bad...I can imagine
the orgasm you'd give her.  All those sorry characters she ends up with,
so many dates, and always the same results.  Anyway, don't avoid the few
people you can connect with, hon.  There aren't many around like that,
not for any of us.  And for most of us, having something like we do is
Very rare.  Very rare indeed."

    Later, I lay in bed while Martha placed a small fan in the bedroom
window to help cool the room.  It was a hot August night.  She donned her
pajamas, giving me another peak at her luscious body before sliding into
bed and giving me a hug.

    "Five-thirty gets here pretty early tomorrow," she sighed.

    "Do New Yorkers always go through this just to get out of town?"

    "Always, Steven.  It's all they think about.  And once they get away
they spend the whole time complaining about all the New York things they
miss.  It's simple to explain and simple to understand:  New Yorkers are
nuts."

    She curled up.  I blew her a friendly goodnight smooch.  She blew one
back.  I settled onto my side, gazing out the window, listening to the
the whirr of the little fan.  All I could think was: What the hell was I
going to do on that beach with two naked women if I had a hard-on, and
how could I hide it if I'd be as naked as they were?  I didn't see any
problem handling myself around Ronnie, but Martha's body was irresist-
ible.  On the other hand, the ladies could go nude and I could stay in my
cutoffs.  That would be pointless, of course: why go in the first place?
But why avoid it?  And what made me so fearful?



                             PART 11D:


    Each day in New York introduced me to a different and fascinating
experienced that I had not imagined in Memphis.  Wednesday was no
exception.  The Long Island Railroad was a world of its own.  We rose at
five-thirty and Martha and Ronnie and I had a quick, greasy breakfast in
Pennsylvania Station before boarding a commuter train bound for eastern
Long Island.  We shuttled through Jamaica Station just as the westbound
rush hour mounted; for miles and miles as we headed east toward Bay
Shore, we were passed by one after another packed, speeding rush hour
trains headed for Manhattan.  I was flabbergasted at finding it true, as
I had heard rumored, that people on the rush hour trains really were so
packed together that their shoulders and backs, and in some cases their
faces, were pressed against the glass doors of the commuter cars.

    Martha and Ronnie, in bluejeans and printed shirts, sat smoking and
reading as westbound trains roared and clanged past our window.

    "God," Ronnie said, shaking her head as yet another crowded train
blasted by, "I could never *DO* that!  I'd die first!  If I knew I had
to go through that when I got up in the morning, the first thing I'd do
is put my head in the oven."

    By eight-thirty we arrived at the oceanside town of Bay Shore and
took a taxi to the ferries that waited to shuttle small crowds of people
to various landings on Fire Island.  Martha and Ronnie carried shopping
bags.  I toted the aluminum deck chairs we rented at a clam shop near the
ferry.  Soon we boarded a boat and found seats on the upper level, the
deck's stark white benches gleaming under the brilliant sun.

    Martha put on her sunglasses.  Ronnie sat next to her, combing back
her fluffy black hair that fluttered in the brisk ocean breeze.

    "Don't look now," Ronnie said to Martha as she primped herself, "but
you're getting the eye again, Martha."

    "Right," Martha said, unaffected, her chin in her hand as she sat
bored and waiting for the trip to get underway.  "One of them's giving
you the eye, too."

    "Which one?  The fat sweaty guy in the big sombrero with the ammuni-
tion belts strapped around his chest?"

    I smirked at Ronnie, wagging my head.  I lounged against the bench,
inhaling sea air for the first time in my life.  "Ronnie, it's true.  Two
guys right behind you are mesmerized by your beauty."

    "It's not mesmerized, kiddo, it's heatstroke," she said, stuffing her
comb into the shopping bag at her feet.

    "No.  Really.  The whole deck's giving you the eye."

    She leaned toward me and wrinkled her face and squeezed my jaw,
pushing my cheeks together.  "Aw, you're sweet.  Keep talkin' to me,
baby.  mmm-MM!"

    With several growls and a cloud of steam, the ferry got underway. The
boat cruised slowly down a half-mile, narrow inlet.  Soon I saw the
channel open into a wide, endless expanse of sea.  Sea gulls were every-
where, following in the roiling wake as the boat opened its engines and
sped into the wind.  It was exhilarating.  I couldn't resist standing up
and leaning on the railing to survey it all, my hair billowing in a blast
of sea air.  The sky was a clear wash of cerulean blue.  It seemed the
whole world opened up around us.  I beamed at Martha.

    "Isn't it beautiful?"  she asked, squinting up at me, her eyes hidden
behind the dark sunglasses.  "I told you you'd love it."

    "I do," I said.  "This is marvelous.  This is really great."

    The ride to the island lasted twenty minutes.  I spent the whole time
marveling at the screeching gulls that accompanied us.  More birds greet-
ed us at the village pier.  Sea gulls and swallows swooped and glided
everywhere.  The port lay at the foot of a small village only three or
four city blocks wide, dotted with wooden homes painted in bright
pastels.  The crowd of beachgoers alighted onto the wooden pier with
their bags and umbrellas and chairs and headed down a wooden path that
led slightly upward toward the horizon a few hundred yards away.

    "The beach is straight ahead," Ronnie said.  "Keep going.  You can't
miss it.  When you start sinking, you're there."

    We strolled down the wooden walkway, Martha and Ronnie chatting ani-
matedly.  I was oblivious to what they said.  As I did when first walking
along the streets of Manhattan, I gaped at everything in sight.  Wood
frame houses lined the path, set back in small yards of short, thin
cherry and holly and dogwood trees.  Each house had its garden of wild-
flowers or cultivated plants, each front porch the home of rubber balls
and rubber rafts and beach blankets hung out to dry.  It was serene,
painterly, mirage-like.

    We reached the top of a hill, which I found was a dune of soft tan
sand.  Before us lay the blue ocean, waves creeping lazily to the shore.

    "Let's get our jeans off and look like beach people," Martha said.

    I thought: Uh-oh, this is where we get nekkid.  But Martha and Ronnie
stripped down only to their swimsuits, Martha's a bright yellow one-piece
and Ronnie's a one-piece, dark indigo with a pink slash across one hip.
I stripped to my shorts.  We gathered our bags and walked in the sand to
the water, then followed the waterline down the beach.

    "Our place is just a mile or so down," Martha said.  "Steven, walk
out here by the water.  Walking in soft sand will wear you out."

    Dark sandpipers hopped and flitted around us.  Small waves swooshed
in loudly and then hissed away, gurgling as they coiled back from shore.
We walked toward a blazing sun.  The beach was sparsely populated, as
Martha said it would be, with several long, empty stretches.  Martha and
Ronnie talked as they walked, their feet sinking slightly into the wet,
packed sand.  Walking behind them, I couldn't hear their conversation
over the sound of the waves and the simmering ocean.  I had never seen
Martha in a swimsuit.  I had seen her either dressed or nude.  She walked
gracefully, poised and smooth, almost as if she had trained herself to do
so.  Ronnie was more flippant, kicking up little spoons of sand behind
her.  Whereas Martha had a toned, firm, ballerina's body, Ronnie was
sinuous, her limbs longer and softer.  She had a slim, compact torso and
delicate shoulders.  She was the same five and a half feet as Martha, but
Ronnie looked taller with long, slender limbs and hands, a sparse but
tight tush, her long legs less muscular but smooth and gently tapering
into lean calves and ankles.  As they walked and talked, Martha hugged
her shopping bag to her chest; Ronnie carried hers in one hand at her
side, her other arm poised carelessly in the air while she flipped her
hand loosely as she talked.  I was too spellbound to do anything more
than watch and listen to the Atlantic.

    After a while Ronnie turned to me, pointing ahead. "There it is!" she
yelled.

    "Come on!" Martha yelled after her.  "It's open!  Come on!"

    I caught up with them.  Ahead, a few older couples and a younger one
sat on beach towels, separated by wide stretches of beige sand.  Some on
their sides, some on their backs, some on their tummies.  All nude.

    Martha and Ronnie found a spot, spread the towels, and slipped off
their shoulder straps.

    "Oh, it's so NICE out here today!" Ronnie squealed as she peeled her
swimsuit downward.  "Oh, Martha, it's heaven!  We picked a perfect day!"

    I'm certain my eyes tripled in size as Ronnie's soft, jiggling,
dark-nippled breasts came quickly into view.  A couple of her ribs stuck
out.  Her tummy was flat; Martha's was so tight it seemed sucked it. Both
women were the same size, but slim Ronnie looked alluringly long-
legged.  Martha's mound stood out prominently under her auburn bush;
Ronnie's tummy sloped gently to a smallish black whorl, simple and feath-
ery, and her pelvis curled inward immediately beneath it, showing only a
hint of a slit.  Now I had seen three nudes in my life: Martha, and a
brief and incomplete glimpse of Karen, and now Ronnie.  I found Ronnie
surprisingly pleasing to look at; she seemed almost teen-like and looked
younger naked than she did dressed.

    Nude, they sat on their beach towels, knees bent, and fished for
their bottles of Coppertone.

    I stood fiddling with my shirt, shuffling around nervously and
kicking off my shoes.

    "Come on!" Ronnie called to me.  I picked up my shoes and walked to
them, and dropped the chairs on the ground.  I started to unfold them,
but Martha said, "Put the lotion on first, Steven!  Hurry!  You can get
sunburned out here before you know it!"

    Ronnie smirked and kidded, "Get undressed.  Come on, it's so perfect
out.  Here, use up my lotion first."  She handed me her bottle of Copper-
tone.  I looked at it, and looked down at my clothed body.  The moment of
truth had arrived.  Courageously, I removed my shirt and then unzipped
and removed my shorts, looking around casually and trying to pretend That
Ronnie and Martha weren't there.  There I was: naked.  Not nude -- naked.
I knelt into the sand, facing toward the water with the others, the
better not to let either of them notice I was half erect.  I squirted
lotion on my arms and chest, gasping as the cool stuff hit my skin.  I
rubbed it in, adding more to my legs and face.

    Martha reclined, saying, "Come on, Steven, finish up and get comfy.
You're never gonna get a tan like this in Memphis."

    Ronnie asked, "They don't have water in Memphis?"

    "Of course not, Ronnie, it's five hundred miles inland from the Gulf."

    "Jeez, I couldn't live in a place that didn't have an ocean.  I'd
dry up and die.  Steven, sweetheart, can you do our backs?  I promise to
do yours."

    "Sure," I said, kneeling down and holding the bottle firmly so they
wouldn't see my hands shaking.  I thanked my stars that both of them
turned their backs to me: perhaps my organ would have time to settle
down.  I rubbed lotion onto Martha, whose sleek back I knew only too
well.  And then onto Ronnie, whose unfamiliar, softer skin had a comfort-
ably warm and melty feel to it.  "Mmmm," she moaned as I rubbed, which
didn't do much to calm me down.  "Steven, what a nice touch.  Martha,
does he give you back rubs?"

    "No," Martha said.  "Women who ask for free back rubs are a pain."

    "God, I haven't had a back rub since my last time at Fiore's.
Martha, you don't know what you're missing here."

    "Ronnie, he just did my back."

    "Wasn't it wonderful?"

    "Steven always had a nice touch."

    "Oh, Martha, why didn't you *tell* me earlier?"

    "Oh, Ron, shut up.  Steven, finish her back.  She's just teasing
you."

    "Steven, I'm not.  You're a miracle man.  Really.  Oh, I was so
tense.  I'm always so tense in the city.  It's so nice to come out here
and relax, isn't it?"

    "It's nice," I said, rubbing quickly to get it over with.

    "Okay," Ronnie said.  "Now you.  Come on, sit."

    I lay down on the blanket beside her, quickly aligning myself face
down.  "Go ahead,"  I told her.  "I like it better this way."  I also
appreciated the fact that my half-hard was completely hidden in that
position.

    "Whatever," she said.  "Here, I'll spread it on my hands first, so
you don't get a heart attack from a cold splash.  There.  Therrrre we go,
nice and gooey, huh?  Wonder what they put in this junk to make it so
icky?  Mmm, Martha, look at this guy's figure.  Can you believe this?"

    "Believe what?" Martha said, shuffling and making herself more
comfortable as she gazed skyward.

    "Look at this body!  Steven, where did you get a body like this?
Martha, look at him.   Did you know Steven looked like this?"

    "I know, Ronnie, Steven's very lucky.  He has perfect proportions.
Broad shoulders, slim hips.  Hey, I'll unfold the chairs.  Our towels are
already full of sand.  Ronnie, stop gushing over him!  Poor Steven is so
shy.  He's from Memphis, y'know, he's not used to this."

    "Oh...Steven, am I bothering you?  Gee, Martha, it's only suntan
lotion...God, I'd die for a tush like this."

    It may have been only tanning lotion, but it was on Ronnie's long,
slithery, not very strong, slender fingers, her hands much wider and her
fingers much longer than Martha's.  I even found myself wishing that
Ronnie were more vigorous; her hands had a sensuous, lingering quality
that was not quite like Martha's more direct touch.  Blessedly, she was
soon finished and rose to help Martha with the chairs.

    "Ah," Martha said, settling into the plastic straps of the lounge
chair.  "MUCH better!"

    "Steven," Ronnie said above me as she sat in another chair, "you
don't want a chair?"

    "No," I murmured from the ground as I rested face down, hiding my
hard-on.  "I like it just like this for a while."

    "Whatever," Ronnie said.

    Martha and Ronnie rested for a while.  I lay with my eyes closed,
feeling free and clean with my back and buttocks and heels in the baking
sun, the breeze rippling over my flesh.  The new sensations were pleas-
antly calming.  My erection soon dwindled as the sound of rustling ocean
waves began lulling me into drowsiness.  After a while Ronnie and Martha
began chatting about a restaurant they had tried and about a sale coming
up at one of the big department stores and about the clothes at Sach's
being grossly overpriced, and I closed my eyes and relaxed.  Before I
knew it, I dozed.

    "Hey," Martha said, stroking my back.

    I blinked awake.  Martha was kneeling over me.  My eyes moved.  The
pair of feet standing near my head belonged to Ronnie.

    "Turn over," Martha said, "You'll get baked on one side."

    "Oh," I said.  I directed my mind to my penis to make certain all was
safe.  It was.

    Martha chuckled, "Ronnie, Steven isn't used to a real beach.  It's a
good thing we're with him or he'd get fried."

    I turned over and looked up.  Ronnie grinned at me from above, her
hands on her hips, her slit plainly visible below her tummy, which rose
upward to her sloping breasts.  They were a little smaller than Martha's,
not as rounded, with small brownish aureoles and darker nipples.

    Ronnie said they were getting up their courage to try a dip in the
surf.  I rose and watched them walk toward the waves, Martha's round
globes glistening in the sun and Ronnie's softer, flatter tush bouncing
lightly.  Martha dipped a foot into the water and jumped back, squeaking
and laughing.

    "Hey, it can't be that cold," Ronnie said, then screeched and jumped
when she tried it.

    The water looked inviting.  I was anxious to feel what swimming in an
ocean was like.  I rose and walked to the water, where the two girls
giggled and squeaked and hesitated about venturing more than ankle-deep
into the water.

    "Steven, it's cold!" Martha warned me.

    The water chilled my toes, but it was bearable.  I walked slowly,
water licking at my ankles and then at my calves.  I told Martha and
Ronnie to step out gradually and pause to let their skin adjust to the
water before proceeding.  All three of us tried it, and soon we were
waist deep in the water.  I splashed my chest and face, discovering that
sea water really did taste salty.  I squinted up, into the sun.  It was
pleasant, new, comforting, exactly what a genteel character I once saw in
E.M.Forester would have called "an excellent adventure."  The sloshing
waves pulled feebly at my hips, nudging me to and fro slightly.  I rev-
elled in the simple, calm excitement of everything around me.  But
always, there was that little tug from within, tempering every pleasure:
Memphis was still ahead, somewhere.  Damn, I thought, why wouldn't it go
away?

    I felt a hand touch my back, and stiff nipples against me.  Under
the water, blood warmed my cock.

    I turned.  Martha smiled at me.  "It's nice, huh?"

    I looked back at the sea.  "It's wonderful.  I don't want to leave.
Can I build a shack back there on the island?"

    "Sure," she said, laughing.  "For about fifty thousand dollars."

    Far ahead of us, a motor boat crossed our path on its way toward the
city.  It roared past merrily, stirring up a wake behind it.

    "Jeez," I heard Ronnie say, "I've never been out this far."  She
appeared to my right and walked out just ahead of us.  Martha strode to
her, nodding lightly in the water.

    "It's not so bad once you get into it," Martha said.

    I watched the two of them bob as water crept toward their shoulders.
Martha slid into the water, floating, and turned onto her back, her feet
kicking and pushing her toward shore.  I took another step forward,
feeling the water rise to my chest.  I was enjoying the unique sensation
of unseen currents snaking around my waist and chest when I looked up and
saw the choppy results of the boat's wake arcing toward us.

    I yelled at the others to move back.  Martha squinted at me, ques-
tioning, and I pointed to the approaching waves.  She cautioned Ronnie to
pull back to shore, but Ronnie grinned and stood where she was.  "Come 'n
get me!" she yelled playfully ahead of her, but a few seconds later the
height of the spreading wave, which would have been slightly above our
shoulders, became apparent.  She moved backward, laughing, chanting,
"Here it comes, here it comes!", and even though I tried to move aside,
she changed direction unexpectedly and backed directly into me, the
furrow of her buttocks directly against my cock, her soft, warm, wet
flesh seeming to cling to my shaft and generating a sudden and electric
jolt in my groin.  She jerked violently, rising out of the water and
turning around to face me, her mouth an 'O' of shock.  "Steven!  God, I
thought someone was sneaking up on me, I didn't know who you WERE!"

    As the first wave hit us, her eyes shot open and the force shoved her
into me, her forehead bumping my chin.  I grabbed her shoulders to hold
her up.  She squealed, the cold water rushing over our shoulders, and my
cock grew at the feel of her slim, delicate shoulders and her nipples
brushing my chest.  She shrieked again, "God, that's cold!", and moved
away, and then shrieked again as the next wave pushed her into me again,
this time pushing both of us backward, and her slim thighs embraced my
left leg, leaving clearly in my brain an impression of the exact size,
shape, and texture of her cunt on my upper thigh.  She shrieked again,
wiggling free, and wiped her face and waved her arms in the water.

    "Oh, I'm sorry!  Damn, I didn't expect that!  Did I bump you in the
face?"

    "It's okay," I said, holding up my hands.  "It's okay, don't worry."
I laughed, my cock suddenly the size of a corncob.

    "Are you okay?  I didn't hurt you?"

    "No, no," I insisted.  "No problem."

    "Gee, that wave was COLD!  Lemme outta here, I gotta warm up!"

    She struggled back to shore as quickly as she could, but I lagged
behind.  I stopped when the water fell to my navel.  Dimly through the
dark swirling sea water, I could see my organ at top mast.  I would have
to wait in that spot until things calmed down.

    "Come on!" Martha called from the shore, "it's too chilly to stay in
there!  Come on, Steven, let's get some lunch and walk around."

    I held up a finger to suggest one minute.  The waves stirred up by
the boat were receding, the water level threatening to bare me below my
navel, so I moved backward.

    "Aw, c'mon," Ronnie said, "I'm getting hungry anyway."

    I grinned sheepishly, bobbing in the water and flexing my arms at my
sides to keep from being pulled shoreward.

    "Steven," Martha called, "Come on out, what's the matter?"

    I raised my finger again.  Two nude nymphs jumping and cavorting be-
fore me did little to stem the tide, as it were.  I remained as hard as
ever.  Martha alone would have been enough, but the feel of Ronnie's
soft, fleshy cunt on my thigh was still too fresh in my mind.  I waited,
the water suddenly receding so swiftly that I dropped to my knees, grin-
ning and wobbling in the choppy water.

    "What's the matter?" Martha yelled, impatient.

    I grinned back.  I held my finger high again.

    Ronnie stood with her hands on her hips, smirking sarcastically.
"Martha..."  She indicated me with her thumb over her shoulder.  "I think
Steven's stuck out there with a big kielbasa."

    Martha squinted.  "A what?"  Then she covered her mouth and her eyes
shot open.  She twirled on her toes once, laughing.  "Oh, Steven!  Oh,
you poor thing!  Oh..hahahaha!"

    Ronnie called out dryly, "Sorry, Steven."

    I grinned back foolishly.

    Ronnie wagged her head, shrugged, and gave me an apologetic palms-up.

    Martha yelled, "Do you want your shorts?  I can throw them out there."

    I shook my head no.  Their humor and Ronnie's frank acceptance of my
condition created an intimacy between me and the two girls that enlarged
and enhanced my erection.  I turned from them and strode further into the
sea, my wobbling cock out of sight of the beach and just above the water,
and I leapt into the air, feeling pleased, sexy, daring, vigorous.  I
stood on my toes, stretched my arms, arched my cock, and howled at the
sea and the sky.  No Mom to flinch in disgust, no aunt to screech in
alarm, no nun to pummel me with guilt.  I had no idea what the others
thought I was doing, but I was enjoying my hard-on and the day and the
sun and I closed my eyes and saw the image of Martha, naked and laughing
on the sand, and remembered how incredibly good Ronnie felt against me,
without wanting to do anything about it except enjoy it.


                          Continued...


             ****  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, 1996 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 12A:


    Some events are like dreams.  Their cause, their meaning, their place
in one's history remain forever unexplained.  They occur once in time; in
memory, they are recurring, timeless, with vague borders and an always
jumbled, inexact sequence.  All one can say is that they occurred, and
defiant memory recalls only the pieces, but never their source or their
reason.

    In the yellow-white sun Martha and Ronnie slipped into their swim-
suits and I pulled on my shorts.  We strolled through a small forest to a
nearby village  We drank iced tea with lime and munched sandwiches.
Ronnie and Martha chatted and debated while I gawked and watched the
parade of Fire Islanders drifting from the city and lounging about the
pier.  The teenagers passed by, the freaks in their outlandish costumes
and body markings passed by, the New Jersey families and the Manhattan
executives and the yacht owners and the working girls and average guys
passed by.  In my mind, while the rest of the world churned around us, I
had the sense that the three of us -- hair-bleached me, sunny-faced
Martha, dark-eyed Ronnie -- were somehow insular, absolute.  Looking back
on the whole day, we seemed to be moving in a different direction from
everyone else, at a different pace.

    After a long lunch we strolled across a wide, open plain of sand dune
and low brush, and then through yet another secluded wood, and then to
yet another village, speaking among ourselves while no one spoke to us,
no one deflected our conversation or our thoughts.  Martha and Ronnie
gabbed away, I gaped away, and the rest of the world left us to our
business.  We watched the beginning of the sunset in the early evening,
boarding the ferry just as the sun painted the world red and sank into a
black sea, and during the ferry ride we watched the day end.  The stars
came out.  Distant lights glowed lazily.  The boat docked and we piled
into a taxi that barely made it in time to the train station, and then we
were on a train going in the opposite direction from everyone else,
headed for Manhattan.  Two hours later we decided to walk home from Penn
Station, the three of us joined as Martha grabbed my hand and pulled me
between her and Ronnie and then Ronnie took my hand as well and all three
of us strolled, and looked in the same windows together, and commented on
the same sights together, and were all tired together from the trip, and
all three of us climbed to Martha's place.  We made berry tea and sat on
the floor in front of the sofa and talked and drank tea and ate cheese
and crackers.  It was Ronnie who suggested the lights were too bright, so
she turned off all but the small table lamp, and all three of us contin-
ued as before.  Then it was Martha who lit the first cigarette and Ronnie
followed, and then I, and Martha told me to open the window a little
wider and I placed the small Hunter fan on the sill.  Ronnie was too un-
comfortable with her swimsuit under her clothes so she removed her jeans
and shirt and Martha followed suit, and I got down to my cutoffs, and
Martha said, exhaling a stream of smoke into the room, that we were all
getting to be smoke fiends.  Ronnie talked about Michigan and bad parents
and Martha rose and lit two candles, one on each side of the room, and
turned off the table lamp.  "Nice, Martha!" Ronnie cooed, as the candle-
glow draped an almost palpable cocoon of dim, lazily flickering light
around us.  Martha sat in the middle of the circle we made around the
small towel on the floor where we placed the tea and the cheese, and the
girls rested on their sides in their swimsuits.

    Ronnie told Martha, "You haven't burned candles in a long time."

    Martha said, "No, not since our all-nighter.  When was it?  Three
months ago?"

    "Yeah, right after gorgeous George," Ronnie lamented.  "How did I
ever end up with him?  Steven, you'd love this guy.  Testosterone city.
Talk about nuclear overkill."

    Martha gave a muffled laugh as she spread cheese on a cracker.  "You
keep dating the same guy over and over, Ronnie.  Only the names change."

    "They're all alike anyway, aren't they?  I mean, the whole idea is
to get sex, right?"

    "No," Martha said.

    "Sure it is.  Steven, you're a guy, right?   You know other guys,
right?  It's biology, isn't it?  Getting sex is the whole idea."

    I shook my head.  "The whole idea is to give pleasure."

    Martha smiled at me and nodded.

    Ronnie said, "Okay, honey, so you're different."

    Martha said, "Steven's very different."

    Ronnie leaned toward Martha and said, "And, Martha, my god, his back
rub was something else.  Steven, you oughtta start a business.  I never
felt such warm hands.  Are your hands always that warm?"

    Martha grinned, lying face-down, her eyes secretly teasing me.  "He
has very warm hands.  Very intuitive."

    "Lemme see," Ronnie said, reaching for my left hand.  "Gimme your
hand.  Martha, I can't believe this, feel how warm this guy is!  You have
fever, sweetheart?  C'mere.  God, his arms are warm, too.  Must be that
hot Italian blood."

    Martha said, "Steven isn't hot-blooded, Ronnie, he's warmhearted."

    I blushed and pulled my hand away, grabbing another cracker.

    "Aww," Ronnie said, "look at him blush.  Aww, look."

    Martha said, "Ronnie, leave him alone.  You already embarrassed him
once today."

    "Really?  Steven, were you that embarrassed?  Aww, I'm sorry.  I
thought it was pretty funny, myself."

    Martha said, "Ronnie, there's a difference between hot-blooded and
warmhearted.  They don't necessarily go together."

    "Ain't that the truth!" Ronnie said.  "I've had some very hot-
blooded, co-o-old-hearted dates."

    "You deserve better, Ron," Martha said.

    "Steven," Ronnie said, taking a puff and tilting a finger toward me,
"I like your attitude.  Martha, why can't I find somebody with an atti-
tude like his?"

    "Because," Martha said, sighing, "you grew up with a lot of aggres-
sive people who didn't like you and you're still trying to -- "

    "I know, I know," Ronnie said, ruffled.  "Martha, I told you not to
tell me that again or I'd wash your mouth with soap."

    Martha pestered her with a small, sly smile.

    Ronnie said petulantly, crushing out her cigarette in the ashtray on
the floor at her side,  "Why can't I find somebody nice?  Everybody I
know has the same problem.  I always end up with heavyweights who just
...get some kinda kick out of tormenting people."

    Martha said, mildly reproving, "Maybe you don't pay that much atten-
tion to people who are good to you.  It's easy to take them for granted."

    "I pay attention to you, don't I?  And you're nice to me."

    "Maybe you have a problem accepting niceness in men, not in women."

    "Steven's nice, isn't he?  I like Steven.  And you have trouble
finding nice people, too, Martha.  You're so picky."

    "I was spoiled early," Martha said.  "My first lover was...very, very
good to me."

    I bristled at Martha's words, turning my eyes to the ceiling.  She
smiled at me furtively.

    "Steven," Ronnie began, reaching for a cracker,  "I bet you don't
have any problem finding somebody who's nice to you."

    "Doesn't happen often," I said.

    "Really?  But you're so interesting and sensitive."  She beamed at me
playfully.  "Great with a bottle of Coppertone."  She narrowed her eyes
skeptically.  "I can't believe you have a problem finding someone."

    "Only happened once, so far," I said.

    Ronnie didn't say anything right away.  She frowned, pondering, and
absently spread cheese on a cracker.  "What's it like," she asked softly,
"to be with someone who's really good to you?"

    "Wonderful," I said.

    "No, Steven, I mean -- seriously -- what's it like?  How does it
happen?  How do you make it happen?"

    Martha interjected, "You don't 'make' it happen, Ronnie.  It just
happens.  And not that often."

    I said, "You can't make somebody be good to you if they don't want
to.  I've been raised by people who weren't very nice to me.  Not nice in
the way one needs, I mean.  Relatives bought me things.  My parents gave
me a place to live.  But I wouldn't say they were nice to me.  And it's
not something you 'do' to somebody else; it's mutual, it's not something
you do, it's something that's done."

    "Mutual," Ronnie mused slowly, as if tasting the word.  "Mutual.  No,
I never had that."  She looked down at the cracker in her hand and
murmured, a bitter edge to her voice, "That's something I sure as hell
didn't have much experience with in Michigan.  Or New York, either."

    There was brief silence in the little room.  Martha rose on her arms
and then stood up quickly.  "Are we finished with this cheese and stuff?"

    "Yeah, I'm stuffed," Ronnie said, popping one more cracker into her
mouth.  "Come on, get it away from me.  I'll never leave it alone while
it's right in front of me."

    Martha gathered the leftovers.  "Come on, Steven, help me get this
into the kitchen."

    In the kitchen as she re-wrapped the cheese and I helped her put
things away, she whispered, "Steven, I have to get her off this subject.
Don't even let her get started."  She glanced at me.  "Do you like her?"

    "Sure," I said.

    "I mean...as a real friend.  Do you like her?"

    I whispered reassuringly, "I feel comfortable with her, if that's
what you mean.  Not like people I know in Memphis."

    When we finished, Martha stopped me with a hand on my arm and whisp-
ered, "Wait."  In the center of the kitchen she paused and reached up to
pull the string that turned off the kitchen light.  In the near-dark,
lighted only by a spill of candlight from the living room, she waited,
unsmiling, with a contemplative frown.

   "What's wrong?" I asked.

    Her eyes examined mine briefly, and she glanced toward the living
room, and she said, "Nothing.  C'mon."

    We returned to the living room and formed the same circle as before.
Ronnie lit another cigarette, looking somber as she sat with her back
against the foot of the sofa.

    Martha pulled bobby pins from her hair.  "Wasn't it nice on the beach
today?" she said.  "Steven's never seen the ocean before.  And never a
nude beach.  There's nothing like that where we came from, except in no-
where places in Arkansas."

    Ronnie said she couldn't live without the freedom to lie naked in the
sun now and then.  The winters, she said, were too long in New York and
the summers too short.  Martha said that the first time she and Ronnie
discovered the nude area they were both squeamish about undressing,
making silly jokes and giggling the first time they did it.  Ronnie asked
if I had been embarrassed and I blushed and said no, and Martha quipped
that I had "a lot" to be embarrassed about and Ronnie laughed, mildly
shocked, and asked "Martha, how do you know that about Steven?" and
Martha smiled enigmatically and said, "I know," and Ronnie looked at her
and then at me, and sniggered and said Martha was assuming a lot from the
way things must have been with me years before, and we sat quietly for a
while, gazing at the candles.  Martha said, "Candlelight is so nice,
isn't it?" and I gave a brief soliloquy on candlelight as natural, and
that for centuries mankind saw something spiritual in candlelight and
even after electricity was invented, fire was still used in ceremony and
pageantry.  Ronnie thought about it and said she saw something very
spiritual in candlelight, too, and it struck her as having a quietly
erotic quality.  Martha got up and went into the bedroom and Ronnie asked
her why she was frittering around and Martha returned in a bathrobe and
fished a bottle of Coppertone from one of the bags and said she was going
to put on a thin coat of lotion to keep her from peeling. "We got so much
sun today," she said, slipping the robe from her shoulders and sitting
bare-breasted as she rubbed lotion onto her face and neck, and Ronnie
thought it was a good idea.  Ronnie told me, "You better put some extra
on, too, Steven, so you won't peel.  You're not used to the kind of sun
you get on Fire Island."  She slipped the straps of her swimsuit off her
shoulders and rubbed oil on her arms and shoulders, and Martha said it
was silly to sit around in their swimsuits after laying nude together on
the beach all day, and Ronnie said it was rather strange that we looked
at each other all day with no clothes on and here we were, the three of
us, sitting almost like Puritans in our swimsuits, showing most of our
bodies anyway, after spending half the day nude in broad daylight. Martha
joked about how civilization had made us so uncivilized when it came to
our bodies, and Ronnie agreed.  "How did the cave men react to that?" she
asked, lighting another cigarette and lighting a second one and giving it
to me, "I mean, we weren't always covered with hair."  And Martha told
her it came from the Bible.  "Original sin," she said, "Remember how
ashamed Adam and Eve were when they figured out they were nekkid?"  And
Ronnie laughed and wondered how long it must have taken Adam and Eve to
figure it out, and Martha said, "It is silly, isn't it?."  Martha giggled
and noticed she was already half nude anyway, with her robe around her
waist, and I wondered aloud if a candlelight bath wouldn't be as soothing
as a sun bath, and Ronnie said, "Hey, wanna take a candlelight bath? What
the hell, it's so stupid to feel ashamed, isn't it?  Steven already saw
me with nothing on," and Martha said, "It's our attitudes, Ronnie, it's
our training," and then Martha lay on her tummy and slipped the robe off
and asked me to put lotion on her back, and Ronnie watched me rub oil on
Martha and asked Martha, "Don't his hands feel great?  I told you this
afternoon you were missing something," and while I rubbed lotion on
Martha, Ronnie went into the bathroom and came out without her swimsuit
on and a towel held to her front.  She put the towel on the floor and lay
beside me and Martha, face-down on the towel, and asked me to do her when
I was finished with Martha.  When I shifted over to work on Ronnie's
back, Martha looked at me and asked if I were embarrassed, and I said no,
and she asked, "Why do you still have your shorts on?" and I balked for a
minute, wondering if I could conceal a recurrence of the hard-on's I had
earlier, and Ronnie said, "See? See how we've been conditioned?  I wonder
if men are more embarrassed about it than women?"  And Martha said she
thought that might be true, because the popular conception was that
women's bodies were pretty and displayable and men's weren't, and Ronnie
said she remembered reading women were ten times more exhibitionistic
than men. "I mean," Ronnie said, "look at the magazine rack, the pinups
and most of the ads are pictures of women, not pictures of men," and I
watched as Ronnie and Martha, lying on their tummies and facing each
other, with me between them, grinned and winked at each other, so I stood
up and said, "All right, you two, you made your point," and they giggled
and I removed my jeans and underwear, and Martha smirked when she saw
that I was a little firm, and Ronnie saw too and turned her head the
other way, resting it on the floor and saying, "All right, I won't look.
Just don't leave my back alone."  I knelt down and wet my hands with
lotion and spread it lightly on Ronnie's back, and she moaned and said,
"Oh, I thought it was the sun that was so warm, but it was Steven's
hands!"  And Martha said, "I know Stephen's hands," and she looked up at
me warmly and asked, "We're not being too demanding, are we, hon?  Ronnie
and I are so used to each other and we've been on the nude beach dozens
of times, when it wasn't closed," and I smiled and said it was okay, and
Martha rose onto her elbows and watched me rubbing Ronnie, and Ronnie
said, "Well, you two shouldn't be exactly strangers to each other," and
when Martha didn't say anything, Ronnie tensed and asked, "Martha, did I
say the wrong thing again?", and Martha said quietly, "No, hon, it was
okay."  And Ronnie murmured out of the side of her mouth with her lips
against the floor, "Leave it to Ronnie to open her big mouth," and Martha
said again, "It's okay," looking up at me to see if I had reacted to
Ronnie.  I smiled at her and shook my head to tell Martha I didn't mind.

    Time passed and the candles lowered.  Ronnie moaned a couple of times
as I rubbed, and I moved down to cover her legs and then moved up to put
lotion on her tush, and she smiled and said "hmmm," and I finished rub-
bing that part of her quickly, feeling blood rush to my groin, and Martha
smiled at me and wiggled her feet and said, "Me, too, Stephen, you didn't
do all of me," and I said, "Well, I wouldn't want your tush to peel," and
Ronnie giggled at that, and I rubbed lotion on the back of Martha's legs
and then massaged lotion lingeringly onto her tush, and she smiled,
pleased, and Ronnie turned her head to watch Martha and Martha glanced at
Ronnie and grinned sheepishly at Ronnie and Ronnie chuckled and said,
"See?  I told you he had great hands," and Martha said slowly, "Yes,
Ronnie, I know about Steven's hands," and Ronnie blushed and crooked an
elbow and leaned her head on her raised hand, her small soft breasts
leaning toward the floor as she moved slightly onto her side.  She
watched Martha as I rubbed her, and then looked up at me, and then back
at Martha, who closed her eyes and smiled as I finished, and then Martha
rose on her elbows and said, "Okay, Steven, your turn.  Lie down."

    I lay face-down between them, grateful for the chance to hide my
rising penis.  I closed my eyes and folded my arms on the floor and
rested my face on my forearms, hearing Martha slither lotion on her hand.
She spread her palms on my back and rubbed languorously, then more
softly.  She said to Ronnie, "Steven likes the soft touch, at first," and
she massaged me gently for a moment and then I heard her say to Ronnie,
"Here, you do him," and then I heard Ronnie wet her hands and then felt
her long-fingered, hot hands making feathery trails up and down my back
and across the back of my neck and my cock got harder, and then her hands
left and reappeared as trailing fingers down my thighs, and the young
dark-brown hair on my legs and arms bristled and I heard Ronnie give a
little squeal and a chuckle and she said, "Mm, he likes that," and Martha
said, "yes, he does," and after lightly rubbing my legs for a minute she
gripped me on my lower calves and ran her hands firmly up my legs to the
tops of my thighs, saying "It brings the blood from the legs to the
heart.  Fiore taught me that."  I moaned approvingly into my forearms and
then Ronnie's hand left and I heard her lathering her hands again and her
fingers spread them over my buttocks lightly and she gently rubbed lotion
on me there, giving my globes a little squeeze before trailing her
fingers across the skin, whispering, "I'd die for a tush like this," and
Martha said "He's so cute back there," and Ronnie murmured, "Very cute.
I'm so envious," and then her fingers made long, slow, feathery trails
over my buttocks and then across the back of my thighs and back up to my
buttocks, skimming gently along the crack and then ever so sneakily
grazing the hair on my balls, and I jerked and gave a little yelp, and
Ronnie whispered laughingly, "Sorry, sweetheart.  That was an accident.
Really," and as Ronnie re-capped the lotion bottle she told Martha, "I'm
not used to testicles, y'know.  They're so mysterious and amazing, and I
never saw them from this angle," and they both tittered about that.  With
my face against my arms I nodded okay, and then Martha leaned on me from
behind, one nipple against my back, and she stroked the back of my neck
and whispered to both of us, "Touch is so reassuring, isn't it?  It can
be so comforting," and Ronnie whispered, "Yes.  They say that of all the
senses, the sense of touch brings the most pleasure," and Martha said, "I
love touching.  It doesn't matter where.  Steven's a toucher, too.  Does
that feel nice, Steven?" and I nodded yes, my cock pressing pleasantly
into the floor.  Martha said, "Ronnie, Steven and I still hold hands in
the movies, like old friends," and Ronnie said, "Really?  That's so
sweet, you two are so sweet with each other," and Martha whispered, "It's
nice to just sit and hold hands."  I cleared my throat and lifted my head
slightly to murmur, "Holding Martha's hand is a different kind of touch-
ing.  She's a great hand holder."  Martha gave a low, pleased little
laugh and said, "You like holding hands with me that much?" and I nodded
yes and then I felt Martha lower her head and her hair grazed my shoulder
and her lips touched my back.  She skimmed her lips across my back,
barely touching, and she said to Ronnie, "Lips are nice, too.  They're
more exciting than just touching, but they're also soothing when you do
it right.  Steven likes it this way," and she gave my back a little kiss
with the inside of her lips and said, "Such nice skin.  Everyone in his
family has touchable skin.  Try it, Ronnie," and Ronnie said, "Me?" and
Martha said, "Yes, go ahead," and Ronnie leaned close to my head and
said, "Is it okay, Steven?" and I nodded yes, and braced myself during a
long pause and heard Martha whisper, "Go ahead, he won't jump on you,"
and a few seconds later Ronnie's lips were on my back, gliding wetly, and
my cock lurched under me and Ronnie said, "Hmm, yeah.  Nice.  He smells
good, too.  God, I'm so used to men who smell like sweat and beer," and
Martha said, "Steven hates beer," and I cleared my throat and said, "I
can't stand beer," and Ronnie said, "Good for you, sweetheart," and
Ronnie bent down and held her arm near my face and asked "Do I smell like
anything?" and I sniffed her arm and said "Like Coppertone," and she said
"Is that all?" and I sniffed again and said, "Hm, it's like...Well, I
don't know what it's like, but it's nice, it's kinda sweet," and Ronnie
laughed and said "We look like a bunch of eskimos in their igloo,
sniffing each other."  We laughed at that and then Martha joked "We
oughtta be using whale oil instead of Coppertone," and then Martha leaned
close to my ear and said, "Roll over, Steven."



                             PART 12B:


    I didn't move.  I lay rigid.

    Martha said, "Come on, roll over, you don't want your chest to peel,
do you?" and I didn't move, and I heard Martha make a little laugh and
she gave my shoulder a nudge and said, "Come on, roll over. What's the
matter?" and Ronnie said, "Uh, Martha, I think we got Steven a little,
uh, al dente, with all that lip stuff."   Martha laughed again and asked
with obvious amusement, "Steven, are you hard?" and I didn't move and she
asked, "Are you?" and I nodded yes, and both women laughed.  Martha said,
"Come on, it won't be anything we haven't seen before," and I shook my
head no, and Ronnie said, "Oh, Martha, don't push him.  I don't care
myself, but you saw how embarrassed he was on the beach today.  Come
on," and Martha implored sweetly, "Oh, come on, Steven, don't be ashamed
of feeling good.  Doesn't it feel good?" and I nodded and she said, "So
come on and roll over," and I shook my head, firmly this time, and Martha
asked, "How about if Ronnie closes her eyes?" and I shook my head no
again, and then Ronnie's lips were near my ear and she whispered play-
fully, "You want us to wait a minute?  I forget that guys are more
bashful about this sort of thing than women are.  It's easier for us
girls to hide the, uh, visual effects, y'know?  Want us to wait?  We'll
wait if you want.  C'mon, say yes," and I nodded yes, and her hand
touched the back of my neck and she said to Martha, "Martha, he really is
touchable," and Martha said, "Ronnie, I don't think that's helping," and
Ronnie removed her hand and said, "Yeah, right.  Sorry," and I heard and
felt them both sit up and Martha sighed and said, "Okay, Steven, we'll
wait if you want.  I don't want to embarrass you, you know that," and
Ronnie said, "Come on, Steven, I understand," and she chuckled and then I
heard them both give muffled, whispered laughs and Martha said, "I hope
we didn't overdo it.' and Ronnie said, "Oh, he can't be that excited
already," and Martha said, "Ronnie, see how different it is when you're
gentle, and loving, and your body is nice to someone else's?" and Ronnie
said, "Jeez, I'm so used to just being grabbed and pitched around," and
Martha said, "Well, some poeple like that," and Ronnie said, "I'm tired
of the volleyball treatment, myself," and Martha said, "Steven has such a
nice body," and Ronnie asked, "Ready yet, Steven?" and I muttered "Al-
most" against my arm, and Ronnie said, "Martha, he can't be that big,"
and Martha said "Steven's big, hon," and Ronnie said impatiently,
"Martha, so how do you know so much about his recent development?  Huh?
So...you're just gonna sit there with that secret grin of yours, and not
let me in on this?  Steven, looks like Martha doesn't snitch.  You can be
proud of her," and Martha said slyly "Keeps you guessing, Ron," and
Ronnie said sarcastically "I'm guessing, Martha, definitely guessing,"
and Martha called, "Steee-vennn.  Come on.  Did you calm down yet?" and I
shook my head no and she complained "Hon, aren't you down just a little?"
and I said "Almost" and Ronnie asked Martha again "How big, Martha?  Come
on," and Martha said "Size doesn't matter, Ronnie, it's shape that
counts," and Ronnie asked, "Shape?" and Martha said "You'll see.  Come
on, Steven," and I reluctantly raised my head and groaned "Okay" and
shifted onto my side, and saw Martha peering around my body at my slowly
settling but prominent cock and she smiled and said, "Okay, that's
better," and Ronnie gave me a chummy wink and mouthed the words "It's
okay."   Martha wetted her hand and spread the lotion onto my chest and
gently shoved me onto my back.  I shifted to get comfortable on the
floor and put my hands behind my head and Martha and Ronnie settled onto
their haunches on either side of me and I closed my eyes.

    Martha rubbed my chest and waist and my left leg.  Ronnie said
"Here, gimme some, Martha," and she lotioned my right leg firmly and for
the moment, at least, my cock lay flopped over to one side and behaved,
but my scrotum ached, and then Martha began to feather her palms across
my tummy and waist and then along my upper thighs and she asked "Feel
nice?" and I nodded and Martha whispered "Steven is so flat here and so
nicely rounded along his legs.  See?  Even his knees are cute," and
Ronnie whispered "I can see, Martha, don't rub it in.  I'd die for a
figure like this, and I'm not even a guy."   Martha whispered "Steven,
are my hands threatening?  Do they feel nice?"  I nodded, and Martha
told Ronnie "He doesn't like to be grabbed, he likes to be caressed, like
this," and she ran three joined fingertips lightly in wide circles across
my upper thighs and lower tummy and I felt my cock lurch upward in the
air and Martha said "See?" and I heard Ronnie utter in wonderment,
"Look," and Martha said, "Yes," and I opened my eyes and looked down and
Ronnie was staring at the bead of precum on my tip that glistened in the
candlelight and then she used two fingers to gently wipe the smear away
and I jerked and they both giggled, and Ronnie held up her fingers and
rubbed them against each other and whispered "He's wet," and then her
eyes found Martha's and Ronnie grinned and blushed and said "Oh, I
think...is this starting to feel a little illicit?" and Martha's eyes
twinkled and she nodded and Ronnie gazed at the glossy smear she rubbed
between her upheld fingers and mused throatily "Me too.  I'm at least
this wet myself, right now," and Martha whispered furtively 'Me too" and
they grinned at each other again and Ronnie looked at my cock, which had
just nodded and urged its way upward into the air and Ronnie whispered,
"It's a perfect shape, Martha.  Steven, the doctors did a great job on
you," and Martha said, "They must have.  Isn't he nice?" and Ronnie
whispered, pleased and captivated, staring at my cock,  "Oh, very nice.
You were a lucky little girl, Martha," and Ronnie reached toward my cock
but stopped and asked, "Martha, should I?" and Martha grinned and said
"Carefully, very carefully," and Ronnie glanced at me and asked "Okay?"
and I cleared my throat and paused and Martha said "Well, maybe Steven
should say so," and Ronnie pouted and said "Awww," and I said "Okay," and
I closed my eyes, waiting, and after a second or two I felt Ronnie's
long, soft fingers coil around me amiably and my shaft gave her a little
throb hello and the heat and texture of her fingers and palm soaked
through my flesh and into my thighs.  Ronnie whispered "Martha, I see
what you mean.  It's the shape.  Yeah, the shape.  Mmm," and Martha
warned "I think this might be a little too much right now, Ronnie," and
Ronnie let go of me and I realized my back was arched upward and I re-
laxed onto the floor with a gasp and Ronnie asked "You okay, sweetheart?"
and I said, my voice showing signs of strain, "Yes.  Fine."   Martha
laughed and said sympathetically, "Oh, hon, you look so worried!" and she
bent down and kissed my cheek and whispered, "Don't fret, hon, it'll be
okay," and she rose and reached for the bottle of lotion and I said
uneasily "If you say so" and she said "It will.  Okay, Steven, time for
you to make me and Ronnie look ridiculous.  Come on. Wanna do my front?"

    Martha moved away from me and I raised up.  She lay on her back on
the floor and put one hand under head and rested, relaxed and supine. Her
eyes met mine and her relaxed face was soft and her eyes waiting.  She
listlessly held the bottle of lotion up to me and said, "I don't want my
front to peel, either."  I squeezed lotion into one hand and rested on my
elbow, reclining on my side along Martha's length, and smeared and rubbed
the lotion into her chest and ribs and Martha turned her head away and
closed her eyes and I rubbed between her breasts and then massaged her
breasts gently and then circled my open palms more lightly around her
nipples and she looked up and smiled and watched my hands on her.  I got
more lotion and massaged along the tops of her thighs and calves, and
then lightly along the inside of her thighs and Ronnie moved and knelt
closer behind me and watched and Martha looked up and past me as Ronnie
reclined on her side behind me and I felt her soft length rest against me
and a breast flattened against my back and Ronnie ran her fingers softly
along the side of my uppermost thigh and my cock started hardening again
and Martha grinned at me, and then I finished with the tickling strokes
along her thighs and she parted her legs slightly as I ran a finger along
the very edge of her mound, and then she watched as I grabbed the bottle
and squirted a drop on my finger and smeared it between two fingers, and
then I dabbed a little on one of Martha's nipples and then on the other
and smiled at her as she looked down to watch my fingers gently pluck at
her nipples.  She sighed and her eyes narrowed and she looked at me and
whispered "Yes" as I trailed a finger down her tummy and then softly,
slowly, cupped her mound, my fingers pointing downward, and we looked at
each other and I felt Ronnie's hand stop on me and felt her watching too
as I looked into Martha's eyes, and Martha gave me a small, subtle nod
and looked down as I pressed my palm into her mound and made a slow
circle, then another, and she closed her eyes, and then I bent my middle
finger and probed past her thick, wet cuntlips and her breath wobbled and
she closed around my finger as my finger gradually entered and then my
finger searched for and found the secret spot inside her and pressed and
massaged it and her thighs whispered apart and she breathed more slowly.
I withdrew my finger and made a circle on her clit and she sighed, and I
inserted my finger again and fingerfucked her very, very slowly with my
palm resting on her, and I heard Ronnie breathe behind me and for a brief
while the only sound in the room was the two women breathing, and then
Martha reached down to still my hand and she looked at me and bit her
lower hip and whispered "Not yet."   She glanced at Ronnie and whispered
"Be nice to Ronnie, too."  I withdrew my finger and turned to Ronnie, who
scooted back to give me room to turn around, and she then lay back with
one arm draped over her head and the other across her slightly rounded
tummy and smiled at me lethargically and I smiled back bashfully as I
shifted to my other side and wet my hand and began slowly spreading
lotion on her sides and waist and then on her shoulders, and my shaft
firmed a little more and lay against Ronnie's thigh as my brain swirled,
and my hands felt the new sensations of a new female body, a body softer
and even warmer than Martha's, Ronnie's warm flesh less silky and less
firm than Martha's but tempting nevertheless, baby-soft skin overlaying a
firmness underneath, skin that seemed to melt under my hand and cling to
my palm as I massaged between her breasts.  Her head fell to one side
and she closed her eyes as I cupped her breasts, soft globes that sloped
lower than Martha's and were less solidly round, but more yielding and
puffy and moist, and then I put a drop of lotion on her nipples and
gently squeezed and then Martha leaned against me and ran her hand down
my arm and whispered softly "She likes you to pinch them a little," and I
turned a little and asked Martha "How do you know?" and Martha said "She
told me."  So I squeezed Ronnie's nipples a little more purposefully and
when nothing happened I squeezed a little more, carefully, not wanting to
hurt her, and Ronnie's closed eyes fluttered and she smiled and nodded
and I gave her nipples several slow, tight tugs with the wet lotion and
she sighed with her eyes still closed and whispered "Yes" and I felt
Martha smile against my back and Martha whispered "See?" and I nodded and
worked Ronnie's dark nipples until they budded and hardened, and then I
got more lotion and applied it to the outside and tops of her thighs and
then began working more slowly and more lightly and more tantalizingly
along her inner thighs below and then above her knees, and then with long
feathery strokes I made the first approach upward along the inside of her
thighs toward her cunt, and I heard her draw in her breath and looked at
her as she lay with her head still turned to one side, and I moved higher
along her thigh and felt Martha watching me from over my shoulder, and
adding to my excitement was an oddly pleasurable fascination when I
discovered that her thigh was so slim and delicate that my hand could
wrap itself halfway around it and then Martha's hand stopped moving on my
arm as I neared Ronnie's crotch and stroked the tender flesh on the
uppermost part of the inside of Ronnie's thighs, and the edge of my hand
grazed her soft and glistening black curls and her hips twitched and she
uttered "Oh," and then I let my hand graze her wet outer lips once or
twice as I stroked and I felt a fluttering under the flesh of her thighs,
and then I placed my palm on her tummy and scooted up a little on my side
and Martha followed me and watched with her face on my shoulder as I
placed my palm on Ronnie's tummy and held it there gently for a few
seconds and then turned my palm so the fingers pointed toward her cunt,
and then I slid my hand down until I touched her dark whorl and I made a
little circle with my palm that moved farther down and Ronnie's neck
tensed and her thighs parted as I moved my palm lower and then I moved my
palm down and covered her mound, her curls leaving small beads of wet on
my skin, and Ronnie's hips arched and she gulped and I pressed against
her mound and started making firm, slow circles on her and she gulped
again, and then I pressed my middle finger slightly and kept making small
circles on her and then Ronnie turned her head toward me and smiled and
opened her eyes and her smile widened sultrily and she whispered "Go
ahead.  Do it," and I pushed my finger into her and her eyes glistened
and she raised her hips against my hand and she mouthed a quiet, smoul-
deringly sensual "Yeah," and my middle finger slowly pumped in and out
and she looked down to watch my finger fucking her and my finger found
that she was much narrower than Martha, smaller, less lubricous but more
clinging, and I pulled my finger out of her gently and she sighed a soft
"Mmmm" and my finger searched for her clit and found it was short and
smallish but hardening and hot, and I made a circle directly on it and
Ronnie's body seemed to sink into the floor and her thighs parted and she
said happily "Oh yeah," and I made a firmer circle on her clit and
Ronnie's eyes half-closed and she looked up at me and narrowed her eyes
and whispered seethingly "That's so good," and Martha moved from me and
lay on her tummy with her head near Ronnie's and asked "Is he doing it
right?" and Ronnie looked down at my circling finger and her hips bobbed
slowly and Ronnie whispered "Yeah," and she gulped hard and gasped and
said "Ah," and then she gulped again and said, "Martha, no one ever did
this to me," and Martha smiled at her and whispered "Nice, isn't it?" and
Ronnie nodded and looked down at my finger and breathed "Oh, yes, it's
so...easy and so...so lewd," and I circled her clit a few more times and
then held my finger in her a minute, staying still to let her know I was
finished for the moment, and her hips quieted and she caught her breath
and then I pulled my finger out of her and she smiled at me and said
"Mmm" contentedly.

    I looked at Martha, whose eyes met mine, and I stretched my neck and
lifted on my arms and gave her a soft kiss on the lips.  After I kissed
her, Martha looked into my eyes for a long moment and put her hand on my
cheek and touched, barely touched, her lips to mine again, and then
Martha lay on her back and stretched out and beckoned me with her finger
and I shifted to my other side and leaned over her, my eyes asking her
what she wanted, and she cupped her left breast for me and I craned my
neck down and licked and she whispered "Lips, hon," and I made sleepy
glides across her breast with my inner lips and Martha sighed "Yes," and
I felt Ronnie leaning behind me and near me and Martha said "He does this
so well," and Ronnie said, "He looks so peaceful," and I chuckled with
Martha's nipple in my mouth and Martha said "He really likes this," and
Ronnie said "You like it too?" and Martha said "Oh, yes.  I really love
for him to do this.  Steven did this years ago and I still love it.  It's
so loving and his mouth is so good to me," and she cupped the other
breast and I mouthed and licked and sucked it and Martha sighed and bent
down to kiss my forehead and Martha said "He never has to tell me how he
likes this.  His mouth tells me," and Ronnie whispered "God, you two are
so sweet with each other," and then I began moving my head down Martha's
ribs with short licks and nips and then I licked her tummy and she
grinned and whispered "Okay," and then my mouth found her tuft and I
licked her fuzz and I felt Martha moving her knees apart, and I lifted,
and as I lifted and settled my body between her thighs she grinned at me
naughtily and hissed "Yes" and opened her thighs until her feet were
joined under my chest and Ronnie sat up on her haunches and watched
silently with a look of intense interest as I dipped my tongue into
Martha's slit and licked slowly upward and Martha's head dropped back and
she smiled toward the ceiling and sighed "Mmmm," and Ronnie uttered
raptly "God, Martha, nobody ever did *that* to me, either," and Martha
sighed as I did it again and she said "Oh, he's so good at this," and
Ronnie watched me as I repeated the long introductory lick again and then
settled my tongue in the firm ledge around her clit and began making
small circles with the tip of my tongue and Martha raised her head and
looked down at me with a contented little smirk and Ronnie settled onto
her tummy with her head near Martha's head and she and Martha traded
glances and Ronnie grinned at her and asked "Is it good?" and Martha
gasped and said "Oh, yes, Ronnie, it's...mmm...very good," and Ronnie
asked "What does it feel like?" and Martha chuckled and swallowed with
mounting pleasure and said "Ronnie, I have no idea how to describe this,"
and Ronnie glanced at me and said "Steven, no fair," and Martha said
"Take it easy, Ronnie, you'll get yours." and Ronnie said "I wouldn't
know what to do, I've never done this," and Martha gasped as I worked and
she said "Just tell him what you like, hon," and Ronnie said "I wouldn't
know what to tell him," and Martha said "Don't worry, Steven's good at
figuring it out," and she stroked the back of my neck as my tongue licked
and pressed and Ronnie asked "Doesn't his mouth get tired?" and Martha
shook her head no and said "Ah," and I made a motion to rise and start on
Ronnie but Martha held my head and said "Wait, hon, wait a minute...a
little more...a little more," and Ronnie grinned surprisingly at Martha
and asked "It really feels that good?" and Martha said "God, yes," and
then Martha patted me on the shoulder and said "Okay, hon," and I stopped
and she caught her breath and I moved up and hugged her and she kissed my
neck and pulled back and her eyes full of lust glittered into mine and
she whispered "Be good to Ronnie, hon."



                             PART 12C:


    Ronnie's eyes stayed on mine and glowed with anticipation as she lay
back and draped her arms around her head.  I rolled to my other side and
tenderly kissed the hollow in her throat, a new place and a new pleasure
for me as my lips explored Ronnie's soft and pliable flesh.  Then I
kissed her small, slender left shoulder and her arms came around my neck
and she offered her right shoulder to my mouth and I licked it and then
nipped at her long throat, and she bent her head back and stretched her
neck and breathed "ahhh" as I kissed her there, and then I licked and
nipped my way to her left breast and found that she was smaller than
Martha and I could take most of Ronnie's tit in my mouth and I did so,
and tongued the sloping underside and then licked and sucked her nipple.
It stiffened as I pinched it lightly between my lips and bothered it with
my tongue, and Ronnie twitched enjoyably and crooned "Yeah, that's the
way," and while I pleasured Ronnie's breasts Martha moved to kneel beside
her, and Ronnie said "Martha, this is really good," and Martha whispered
"Yeah?" and Ronnie looked down at my mouth on her nipple and whispered
"Yeah," and although I relished the newness and the unique feel of
Ronnie's hard dark nipple and her long, warm, slender arms that coiled
around my head and shoulders as she cradled me to her, I began to slowly
lick and kiss my way down her torso.  She tensed a little and caught her
breath and then trembled as I kissed around and then below her navel.
Her hands moved to my shoulders, and she started breathing nervously, and
she whispered "Steven," and I continued licking downward and she said
again tremulously "Steven..." and Martha asked "What's wrong, honey?" and
Ronnie gulped and said "Nobody ever did this for me.  God, George never
even warmed me up," and Martha said "Steven's being good to you, Ronnie.
Pleasing you pleases him."   Ronnie gritted her teeth and gasped and
watched as I licked the silken curls above her mound, and I found that
her mild scent was like sage, and Ronnie gasped again and then relaxed a
little as I moved to kiss her inner thigh, and I ached inside with the
realization of how different and moist and clingy her skin was there, and
I inched my lips closer to her cunt and she tensed again and gripped my
shoulders and I raised my eyes to see her looking at me and her eyes were
wary and she gritted her teeth and breathed quickly, and I tentatively
licked along the edge of her slit and she stiffened and gasped with
surprise and smiled timidly, waiting, and I licked again and she gasped
again and her pelvis lifted, and I extended the tip of my tongue and
delved gently into her slit and gave her a long lick upward that ended
with a caress along the short length of her clit and she gasped, and her
eyes softened and she whispered hotly "Ah, that's nice!" and I began
making circles around her clit with my tongue and she smiled ecstatically
and sighed "oh, yes...oh, honey, yes," and she softly bit her lower lip
and arched languidly and irregularly under my mouth while I licked.  I
stopped to cradle her clit on my tongue and clamped my lips together and
sucked and she gasped "Oh!" and then her thighs fell farther apart and
she tilted her pelvis up a little and offered her cunt more urgently to
my mouth, and she gritted her teeth and gasped and moaned shakily "Oh,
Martha it's so *good*," and Martha laid a hand softly on Ronnie's trem-
ling shoulder and I paused to suckle her clit again and Ronnie sighed a
quick, steamy "Ah," and her breathing and her voice grew tense and shaky
and her eyes found mine and she whispered "Steven..." and she gulped and
licked her lips nervously and said "The only person who ever made me cum
was me," and as I sucked, my eyes gazed past her tummy and past her heav-
ing breasts and into her pleading eyes, and she trembled and whispered
needfully, fearfully, "Don't leave me hangin', honey," and I winked at
her reassuringly and Martha told her softly "He won't," and Ronnie moved
one hand from my shoulder and her hand shook a little as she wiped sweat
from her upper lip and then she gripped my shoulders again with both
hands and whispered "Be good to me."  I covered her cunt with my mouth
and flattened my tongue against her slit and my flattened tongue nudged
forward until her clit and portal were completely bared so that I could
lick her entire cunt from bottom to top, and my tongue found that she was
hot and salty and syrupy and the edges of my tongue felt the difference
between Martha's smooth, firm slit and Ronnie's tasty, fleshy, fuzzy one
and Ronnie moaned and hissed and said again through her teeth "Be good to
me," and my tongue stroked longingly and she gulped and her eyes closed
and her head drifted back and I could see only her arched throat and her
chin, and she softly cried "Be good to me..." and Martha stroked her
forehead, and Ronnie's thighs opened and the tendons pulsed as her hungry
cunt sought more of my tongue and her hands gripped my shoulders tighter
and I nudged my mouth closer to her, my upper lip finding the tip of her
small, slippery clit, and I nestled my lower lip against her clit's root,
and my tongue cradled the length of her clit and I tightened my lips and
sucked and Ronnie gasped and her throat made a helpless "uh!" sound, and
then I softly flicked my tongue up and down along her captured clit and
she groaned weakly and then she whimpered and her body went taut and she
moaned urgently "Faster...faster...no, slower, honey, a little slower..."
and then gasped "that's it!  Oh that's it!" and she gulped hard and her
voice trailed off with a rapturous "Oh, god, that's it," and she quivered
as I sucked her clit and flicked my tongue with the speed she liked, and
her wetness dripped over my chin, and then for a long moment she held her
breath, and then she said loudly into the air, as if with sudden, ominous
comprehension, "Oh my god," and she tightened again and moaned hoarsely
with the same dread and powerlessness "It's gonna happen.  Oh my god it's
gonna happen," and Martha smiled at her and said simply "Mm-hm," and
Ronnie's hips rose and her clit throbbed and I knew she was there, so I
sucked and flicked and her whole body jerked and she made a languished,
surprised "Oh" sound as her chin strained upward and her mouth fell open,
and she humped and jerked spasmodically several times and her nails dug
painfully into my shoulder and she softly cried a rhapsodically joyful
"Yes" and then "Yes" again and then a louder "Yes" and then her hands
gripped me so tightly that her arms trembled, and then after a long
moment a prolonged, violent tremor coursed through her, and finally she
jerked and slumped and her head raised and fell forward and she heaved a
loud "Oh!" and then she struggled to breathe, her grip on my shoulders
relaxing and her hips bobbing, and her cunt withdrew from me as her
climax waned.  I knew her clit needed rest, so I held my tongue still
against her for a few seconds, feeling her clit flutter slightly, and
then I raised my head and saw she was a gasping, panting little girl with
her eyes shut tightly as she winced with exhaustion.  I pulled myself up
and wiped my wet chin with my forearm and moved to cradle her against my
chest, and her head fell back against my shoulder and her body felt
willowy and limp and feverish against me, and I kissed her forehead and
eyelids and she raised her slim, soft arms that felt so good and friendly
on me and draped them over my neck and shoulders and rested her face
against my chest, and Martha moved to her other side and stroked her
shoulders, and Ronnie panted and smiled bashfully and wiped her shiny
brow and said "Whoo!" and said breathlessly "Now I know what I sound like
when I cum," and Martha smiled at me and whispered, "You were good to
her, Steven," and I held Ronnie, feeling strong and protective as she
nestled her delicate, heaving, tired body against mine.  She closed her
eyes and swallowed hard and said "Steven, that was so good," and she
breathed deeply and asked "Did I sound like I was out of it?"  I answered
"No, you sounded into it."

    The small, candlelit room seemed untouched by time.  The earth
stopped turning.  As if in a dense, humid fog of sensuality, I slithered
across the floor and enfolded Martha in my arms, my sweet and needed
Martha, and we kissed longingly and she lay back on the floor and opened
her legs under me and grinned, her eyes simmering lazily, and she
whispered, "Lick me, hon.  Don't wait.  Lick me."   I glided my mouth
down her body and felt my cock leave a smear of precum on her leg as I
slid lower and Martha whispered "I'm so close," and when my face was over
her mound I saw her fingers holding herself open and her voice dripped
with lust and she whispered "Lick me" again and my tongue found her
sweltering, slick, and ready, and she ground her clit against my tongue
and sighed a low, salacious, breathy "Ahhhh", and I laved her clit with
my tongue and glanced up to find her still grinning and she whispered
"Yes," and Ronnie, still a little breathless, crawled to us and lay on
her tummy and rested her hand on Martha's arm.   When I sucked Martha's
clit her head fell back and her eyes closed and her lips mouthed the
words "So good," and by the hardness of her nub -- her hot and sensitive
jewel that was bigger than Ronnie's and was so easy to find and to grip
with my lips and that throbbed so strongly when Martha was close to
cumming -- I knew that Martha would be there soon and so I sucked more
lightly and moved my tongue in a wide circle that surrounded but bypassed
her clit, and Martha arched and moaned and I watched her long, elegant
neck tense, and Ronnie gazed into Martha's face lovingly and stroked
Martha's arm, and Martha's hand on Ronnie's shoulder began to tighten and
Ronnie took Martha's hand and held it and gave Martha's hand a little
kiss and stroked it, and Martha's hand grasped Ronnie's and Ronnie told
her, "Now I know what it feels like," and Martha said "I'm close...
Ronnie, I'm so close.  He has me right on the edge.  Oh, so close!" and
Ronnie glanced down at me, perplexed, and asked "God, Steven, how do you
do that?" and Martha whispered "He just knows," and Ronnie grinned at me
and said "Do me that way next time, Steven."  My cock lurched at the
thought and I wondered how long I could keep my mouth and teeth and
tongue going, and Martha began saying more urgently "Almost there...
almost there," and Ronnie whispered to her "It must feel so good," and
Martha closed her eyes and stretched her neck and showed her teeth with a
happy grin and sighed "Oh, it does," and then she tensed and hissed "It's
so close" and then gushed loudly and excitedly "Now!" and she panted and
then stiffened and held her breath and my cock and my heart swelled with
gladness for Martha because I knew she could no longer resist, and I
nudged my tongue along the length of her yearning clit, stroking slowly,
and Martha jerked and Ronnie watched her intently and then Martha whim-
pered and her head rolled to the side toward Ronnie and then she made a
happy "Ah" sound as she arched and then stiffened more.  Her clit seemed
inflamed under my tongue and her hand trembled on Ronnie's and Ronnie
whispered "yes" and watched Martha cum, and then Ronnie's eyes widened,
startled, as Martha's mouth fell open and Martha's whole body trembled
once, twice, and again, and Ronnie whispered "oh, honey, yes" and stroked
Martha's hand, and soon Martha gave a long, loud, sweet sigh and then a
low "mmmmm" as she relaxed and her climax ended, and her clit receded and
softened and her hips twitched once and she started breathing again, and
she looked down and stroked my hair while I cleaned her with my tongue
and Martha said "Nice.  Ah, nice," and I removed my mouth and wiped my
jaw, and I rose, resting on my heels, and Martha rose and bent to me and
held my face and kissed me softly and Ronnie watched in awe as we kissed
and hugged.  Martha kissed my neck and shoulders and held my face
tenderly and kissed me again.

    Then Martha looked down and saw my half-wilted cock.  She said, "My
goodness, what happened to him?"  I was a little breathless after all my
work.  I said "He's been holding back so long, I think he gave up," and
Ronnie said "Hey, we can't leave him hanging, can we?  Pardon the pun,"
and Martha moved her legs out of the way and kneeled beside me and Ronnie
kneeled in front of me and gave my face and chest damp little kisses,
saying "I'd like to put in my two cents worth, sweetie.  You sure had me
feeling good, too," and her lips moved down my chest and onto my tummy
and she lay down with her legs extending away from me and smooched my
navel and murmured "Look, he has just enough hair, in all the right
places," and Martha smiled at me and asked "Want Ronnie to finish you
off?" and I looked at her and hesitated and Martha nodded yes and I
nodded yes back and said "Okay."  Martha looked down at Ronnie and said
"Your move, Ron," and Ronnie encircled my half-hard cock with her long
hot fingers and I sighed with the pleasure of it, and she licked the bead
of precum off my tip and mused aloud "Lessee, how's Ronnie gonna be nice
to Steven?  Too bad we don't have any condoms," and I smiled down at her
and said "This will do," and she grinned up at me and asked playfully
"Okay if I suck it?  Hm?" and I grinned back and she cackled softly,
"Want me to?" and I said "Yeah," and Ronnie said reassuringly, still
looking up at me, "It's okay to cum in my mouth," and I said "Okay," and
Martha added, "He has a nice clean taste, hon."   Ronnie peered at her,
surprised, and asked, "How do you know that?  Huh?" and Martha smiled
secretively and Ronnie said, "Uh-huh.  Holding out on me," and her
fingers jiggled me a little and I tensed and settled more comfortably
onto my legs beneath me and spread my thighs a little to give her elbows
more room.  She put my cock in her mouth and sucked once, popping me out
of her, and I moaned and she grinned up at me and then she put her lips
around me and started sucking too tightly, moving her head rapidly and
jerkily.  I groaned and held her head still and said, "Hm, no, no, wait a
minute," and she lifted off me and looked up questioningly and Martha
said "Ronnie, what are you doing?" and Ronnie said "What's it look like
I'm doing?" and Martha laughed and said "Ronnie, when they say 'suck it
off', they don't mean it literally!" and I laughed and Ronnie laughed.
Ronnie said, "I thought that's the way you're supposed to do it," and
Martha said "Maybe some men like it raw that way, but Steven likes it
slow and dirty," and Ronnie said, "Oh.  Show me," and Martha said, "Come
on, be nice to him, when you suck so hard and fast you squeeze all the
blood out of his cock, and it dulls the nerve endings," and Ronnie said
defensively "That's the way guys told me to do it, the few guys I did it
with.  They said hey baby suck the chrome off that thing."  Martha said,
"Yeah, big guys with stainless steel dicks.  Steven's sensitive.  Look,
start easy, and real wet -- the secret is, your mouth should feel wet and
soft," and Ronnie lifted her head and said, "So show me, already," and
Martha said impatiently, "Oh, here, gimme your finger.  I feel so silly
doing this..." and she sucked Ronnie's finger for a few seconds and
Ronnie said "Oh, yeah, I see...you don't really suck, you just grip with
your tongue.  Hmm, if only my finger could cum," and Martha stopped and
said "And Steven likes it when your mouth just slides over him, y'know, I
mean don't try to strangle him with your lips," and Ronnie looked up at
me and asked "Ready for a second try?"  I nodded and she started sucking
again and Martha watched carefully and after a couple of sucks she asked
me "Okay, Steven?" and I stopped gritting my teeth and said "Yeah, it's
...okay, but...," and Martha told Ronnie "C'mon, Ronnie, wait a minute,"
and Ronnie rose and asked Martha to show her again and Martha said im-
patiently "Oh, Ronnie, he's gonna cum before we get anywhere," and Ronnie
said "Well, show me!" and Martha said "It's not a science, it's an art.
Watch, now, first I get my mouth really wet and then I cover him all at
once so he's, you know, drippy.  Watch," and she sucked on her tongue
inside her mouth, gathering moisture, and then she bent and put her mouth
around me, enclosing fully and gently, and started slowly moving up and
down and I gasped and said "Okay, careful," and Ronnie said "Okay, okay,
I get it," and Martha sat up and watched as Ronnie lay down in front of
me again and held my cock and muttered "We'll get this right yet," and
then she touched her inner lips to my tip for a second and then nipped at
it and my cock arched with a pleasant itch and was getting big and rigid,
and Martha said, "Good, Ronnie," and Ronnie murmured "You smell good",
too," and I whispered "Thanks," and she looked at my cock and said "I
never tried it this way" and gathered moisture inside her mouth for a few
seconds and then she lowered her head and I sighed quietly and jerked
inside her as she enclosed me completely and started moving up and down
slowly, and Martha looked at me with an odd little half-smile and asked
"Good?", and I blushed and nodded yes and she whispered "Enjoy it, hon,"
and she looked down at Ronnie and said "Slow down when he starts cummin',
Ron, he really likes that," and Ronnie said "Mm-hm" with her mouth full
of me, and she started nodding her head, her lips sliding greasily, her
cradling tongue inducing a tauntingly mild suction as it rode along the
underside of my shaft and tip, and I gave a prolonged, gratified sigh as
Ronnie settled into a languid rhythm, moving her head in strokes of about
three inches, always leaving at least two inches of my cock warmly
immersed, and Martha, smiling mischievously, watched me enjoy Ronnie's
spitty-wet mouth, and I hissed softly when I realized that Ronnie had
found exactly the right speed, depth, wetness, and gentle suction, and I
smiled at Martha, whose eyes met mine with a sensual, conspiratorial nod
of approval, and I knew my feelings were not the sweet, poignantly shat-
tering emotions I had when Martha sucked me, but the look in Martha's
eyes told me that this was deliberate, primal, wanton carnality, and then
Martha looked down to watch Ronnie's lips gliding along my wet cock.

    It took Ronnie less than a minute to thoroughly and satisfyingly suck
me off.  At first I feared I might be too shy to cum with Martha watch-
ing, but Ronnie worked with an easygoing, lubricous, unerring efficiency
that brought me steadily and swiftly to the brink of orgasm, and when she
sensed my impending cum she slowed her pace by half, delaying for several
sucks as Martha had suggested.  While I hung on the edge, my hips poised
and taut, Martha looked up inquiringly and I grinned and nodded and she
smiled back, our eyes joining us in lecherous complicity, and my cock
pulsed between Ronnie's lips and the slit in my tip gushed gently against
her tongue, and her head slowed, and then my hips twitched and I panted
and sighed and grunted and started squirting inside Ronnie's mouth, and
she swallowed noisily, and Martha heard the swallowing and grinned
knowingly at me and winked, and then I squirted more, a powerful effusion
of hot new cream, and Ronnie sighed pleasurably through her nose and
gulped, and after several squirts I slumped, gasping and huffing,
gritting my teeth while Ronnie finished me off.  Finally, with a last,
tight suck and a long swallow, Ronnie raised her head and released me.
She wiped a corner of her mouth and licked her lips and caught her
breath, exchanging catty grins with Martha, who gave her a nod of
approval, and Ronnie, pleased, reached down to soothingly tug my aching
cock as she smiled at me sweetly.

    I floated backward and lay gasping, face-up, my legs still folded
under me, and Ronnie asked, "Was it good?  Huh?", and I panted several
times before replying dully, "No," and they both laughed.

    We rested, stroking each other and talking.  Ronnie confessed that
she had no idea how all this got started, and she asked Martha "Did you
have any idea something like this would happen tonight?" and Martha
smiled impishly and said, "I gave it a thought, earlier on the beach, but
I didn't know it would happen."  Ronnie said happily, "But it was nice,
wasn't it?" and I agreed.  Martha asked me, "Were you embarrassed?" and I
said, "Yeah, a little, but..."  I glanced at Ronnie and said, "You were
too good to resist," and Ronnie chuckled and said wryly, "The whole thing
was too good to resist."

    We lay naked together in the candlight and one of the candles died
out with a little puff and a hiss, and Martha asked Ronnie, "Did you feel
that old Catholic guilt when you realized what was happening?"   Ronnie
confided that what she felt was embarrassment more than guilt, but my
mouth felt so good on her that she was taken completely by surprise when
she climaxed.  "It happened so fast," Ronnie said, "I don't even remember
how it happened," and she gave me a little kiss and said, "Thanks,
Steven," and I said, "My pleasure."  Ronnie heckled Martha, saying,
"Well, Martha, you sure didn't have any trouble cumming," and Martha
blushed and said, "It was a very erotic situation," and Ronnie said "God,
wasn't it?  I know I couldn't have done a thing if it I'd been with
anyone else. I just felt so trusting, with the three of us."  We talked
about the physical and emotional sensations we experienced, and Ronnie
said she discussed sex frequently with Martha but she'd never been so
frank and experimental.  Ronnie was curious to know how it felt for
Martha and for me to hang on the edge as long as we did, and Martha and I
told Ronnie that we both liked it that way, that there was a peculiarly
intense pleasure in holding back for a while.  Ronnie asked, "But how do
you know when you're partner's ready?", and Martha and I explained
various signals.  "Of course," Martha said, "You can always just tell
your partner you're ready."  Ronnie gazed at the candle, entranced, and
said, "It happened so quickly for me.  I guess it was because it was the
first time anyone ever made me cum.  What's it like...I mean, is it like
making it last longer?"  Martha said, yes, it was a lot like prolonging
orgasm.  Ronnie said, "God, that must feel great."  We asked her to des-
cribe how she knew when she was near orgasm, but Ronnie said it was all
so new and mysterious that she couldn't explain it.  We decided I should
eat her again, taking my time, and she wanted to learn to describe what
she felt and how to tell me what she wanted.  Patiently, I serviced her
with my mouth while she and Martha instructed me.  It took longer this
time, and soon, instead of licking with a steady rate as I usually did
with Martha, I learned to read Ronnie's responses and to speed up as her
pleasure mounted.  I discovered that she didn't want me to suck her clit
steadily until she was ready to finish.  With her and Martha prompting, I
held Ronnie on the brink for several minutes while Ronnie pulled her
knees back and used both hands to hold her legs up and spread so she
could feel all of my mouth on her, and when she gave me the word, I
sucked and flicked quickly and she came easily, noisily and enjoyably,
with a prolonged second peak.


                          Continued...


             ****  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, 1996 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 13A:


    On Thursday morning I awoke to find Martha bleary-eyed and rushing to
get ready for work.  I dressed quickly and hurried into the kitchen to
make a breakfast of toast and juice.  When she finished dressing she
woofed down the toast and quickly packed her briefcase and reminded me
that I had Fiore at ten and then I would meet her uptown near Columbia
for lunch.  She hastily scribbled the address and handed it to me.

    "The subway goes there, right?" I asked.

    She drank her juice in one gulp and grabbed her briefcase.  "Do NOT
take the subway by yourself, not to this neighborhood.  Take a taxi, hon.
Please.  Make the driver leave you right in front of the building."

    Clattering in her high heels, she headed for the front door.  "I
gotta go."

    I rushed to close the door behind her and she gave me a quick peck on
her way out.  I closed the door.  There had been no mention of Ronnie or
of the night before.  I didn't have much time to think about it.  I
showered and dressed.  I cleaned up from the night before and straight-
ened the pillows on the little sofa.  On my way downstairs I paused at
Ronnie's door but heard nothing from inside.

    On the way to Fiore's I stopped at a bank to cash more traveler's
cheques.  I had money to spare, but the bank calendar reminded me that
time was short.  I had the rest of the day, and then two and a half days
remaining in New York.  I broke into a run toward the health club.

    Fiore gave me hell again for an hour.  But I was set on attaining the
level of others who worked out in his club.  "No, no, concentrate!" he
grumbled at me as I lifted dumbbells over my head.  "Watch your form!
Take more time if you need it!  Concentrate!  Mind and body together, my
friend!  Together!"

    I worked arduously.  I kept thinking that I had less than four more
days in New York, less than four days to be more than I was when I left
Memphis.  I knew I had lost some baby fat and that the pimples I brought
to New York had all but faded and I could run in place almost twice as
long as I could a few days before.  But I felt compelled to do more.  I
worked at the exercise bike until I couldn't breathe.  While I rested,
slumping on the handlbars and huffing and sweating, Fiore strode to me,
his hands on his hips.  He wore his perpetual, taunting grin.

    "At first you couldn't do enough," he said.  "Now you try to do too
much!  You can't make up for missing yesterday by overworking today!  You
can't go back, my friend.  Only ahead.  Never try to go back.  Now, rest.
And begin again!"

    I rested.  But then I worked myself to exhaustion again, feeling time
rush at me.  Finally, near the end of the session, Fiore walked to me and
laid a hand on my arm.  "Stop," he said quietly, unusually subdued.
"Stop, my friend.  You are working too hard.  I want you to stop for
today."  He held up a warning finger.  "And tomorrow, light work.  Light.
Understand?"

    I nodded, breathing heavily.

    "Understand?" he repeated.  His eyes scolded me. "Light tomorrow."

    "Okay," I said.  I got off the bike and went to the showers.  On my
way out I glanced again at the dancers and others in the room.  I envied
their physical perfection and their grace and ease.  I felt like a
laggard.  Outside on Lexington Avenue, I responded to my urge to work
harder by jogging, determined to make my way on foot all the way uptown
to meet Martha.  But at 59th Street I was running out of steam.  Angry
with myself, I caught a taxi to Martha's and changed into nicer clothes
for lunch.  Fiore was right, I thought as I knotted my necktie in the
mirror: I still had a lot to learn and a long way to go.  But I saw my
skin was clear.  At least I was getting somewhere, if not far enough.  In
the kitchen I gulped down the vitamins and the yeast, taking an extra
full serving of yeast.  I told myself that at lunch I'd be meeting
adults, experts.  I had to look sharp.

    The taxi let me out in front of a block long, delapidated office
building in the West 130's.  As soon as I was on the sidewalk again I
knew I was in a slum.  It was unlike the shanty towns and working-class
neighborhoods I'd seen in Memphis.  The street stank strongly of garbage
and grease.  Trash was everywhere.  I found myself surrounded by tough
looking, disheveled Hispanics and blacks on the busy sidewalk, inter-
spersed with a few Orientals, Eurasians, and some students carrying
books.  A bearded man sat on a pile of paper wrappings in a doorway,
mosquitoes swarming around him.  I looked up and down the busy street;
Broadway stretched for miles in both directions, downtown toward Man-
hattan where the scenery looked a little cleaner and brighter, and then
uptown toward Riverside, the George Washington Bridge looming in the
distance.  I knew that the entire neighborhood wasn't as squalid as the
block where I stood, for I'd seen cleaner areas in the taxi on my way
there.  Quickly I made my way through the creaking entrance of the build-
ing and found myself in a clean but aging, yellow-walled lobby where I
followed a swept but dank hallway around several corners to a small
office with "109" on the front door.  I knocked.

    "Come in," I heard Martha say from inside.  Before I could open the
door, Martha opened it and stood in her suit in a room with several
massive, metal desks and filing cabinets.

    She smiled.  "Welcome to the Northern District Special Education
Worksite," she said, her greeting colored with a little irony.  "I'll be
right with you.  Like it?  I share this place with six other people.
They're in a meeting now, but it's almost over.  Two of them are waiting
across the street.  Come on, I'll introduce you."

    She was businesslike and matter-of-fact.  It was a serious, profes-
sional Martha I saw now.  She gathered her briefcase and a printed list
and led me down the hallway toward the lobby, explaining tersely the
various offices and cubicles we passed, and then led me across the street
toward a small diner.

    "This is a New York you haven't seen yet," she said somberly.  "It's
the working part.  The tough part."  She paused and added, "The heart-
breaking part."

    I asked as we crossed the hot, teeming street, "The people at
Columbia sent you here?"

    "No.  Worse than that.  I volunteered.  Come on, they're waiting in
this little diner.  Watch out for the coffee, it'll keep you awake for a
week."

    In the diner Martha smiled tiredly and greeted two men who sat at a
four-seat table near the foggy front window.  One of them was a tall,
virile looking man in his thirties.  The other was a slight, younger man
in black-rimmed glasses and a wrinkled gray suit.  The taller man spoke
readily and directly and reminded me of the laconic, rangy cowboys I'd
seen in many westerns.  The younger one was more reticent and seemed
bored and annoyed as he examined a spiral bound, one-inch thick report.
The taller one greeted me with, "Hello, nice to meet you, Steven," and a
hefty handshake.  The other one smiled weakly and reached into his coat
pocket for a cigarette.  Martha, too, lit a cigarette and we ordered
coffee and sandwiches.

   "Welcome to New York," said the tall one, whose name was Mark.  Martha
told them I was an old friend from Memphis and that she brought me along
to prove she wasn't kidding when she told people back home that she
really had a paying job.

    I found, again, that I was no expert at initiating conversation.  I
felt tense and self-conscious, even when Mark said jokingly, "People from
down South always seem so laid back and casual.  But I know better.
Martha, here, came to us with her sweet Southern smile and her sweet
Southern manner.  Then she turns out to be a taskmaster."  The younger
guy smiled sardonically and added, "That's post-graduate slang for ball-
buster," and punctuated the remark with an amiable, "Speaking figurative-
ly, of course."  They asked what I'd been doing in New York and when they
discovered I attended a school taught by the Christian Brothers they
wanted to know all about the teachers of whom they'd heard a great deal
and what kinds of teaching methods they used.  "The Brothers have schools
up here, too," Mark said, "but not in neighborhoods like this.  It's
enough to make me consider joining their order, but I'd like to stay
married." When I told them that the Christian Brothers was one of the few
religious orders that allowed marriage, Mark said, "Hey, doesn't sound
bad."  He grinned and asked, "Have their address on you?"

    Martha asked the younger man about the list he paged through.  "Are
those the assignments?" she asked, and the young man said dryly, "Yes,
wanna see?"  Martha held out her hand and said, "Let's see what they're
doing to us," and the young man handed the papers to her with a dry, "You
won't like it, Martha."  Martha looked over the first page for a second
and muttered "You're right, I don't," and the young man shrugged and said
resignedly, "What can I say?  We don't make the decisions, we just tote
the barge."

    Within a few minutes the diner was more crowded for the lunch hour.
Another man and a woman entered wearing business clothes and headed for
our table.  Martha noticed them and asked me, "Hon, would you mind
terribly if you sat at another table for a minute while we talk something
over with those people?  They're from the meeting and we just have to
review something.  It'll only take a minute.  Really.  Do you mind?
There's not enough room here for all of us."

    I said, "Of course not!", feeling I was being very adult about it,
and found a seat a few yards away at the lunch counter where I finished
my sandwich while the others talked.  The two newcomers pulled an extra
chair to the table.  Everyone fell into an earnest discussion over the
assignment list Martha was reading.  I watched Martha and the group
through the mirror in front of me.  I envied them.  They seemed to fit
together intimately, readily voicing their opinions about the teaching
assignments that had apparently been decided upon at the meeting.  Martha
openly objected to many decisions and gave what sounded like very compe-
tent, well-considered reasons for her opinions.  This was not the
indulgent, forgiving friend I'd seen so far; she was insistent, often
adamant, and sometimes passionately vocal.  At one point she glared hotly
at Mark, saying "Oh, you're kidding!  Honestly!  What do they think
they're doing?"  Mark began grudgingly, "Now, Martha, you know how the
system works--" and Martha grumbled, "The system hardly works, Mark, come
on!"  And Mark said, "Well, it's allocated by ability," and Martha
flicked her cigarette and said angrily, "It's allocated by race, and we
know it!"  And the newer guy shrugged and said, "Well, that's the way it
is."  Martha sighed and then simmered quietly for a moment, flicking her
cigarette on the ash tray, and then she sighed again and said "Oh, all
right, there's nothing I can do about it."   The young woman smirked and
said, "Martha, I know it's unfair but at least we'll be able to--" and
Martha interrupted, "I don't care if it's unfair to us.  It's unfair to
the kids, that's the point," and the other woman waved her hand and said,
"Okay, okay, we know that," and Martha asked vehemently "Well, if we know
it, why do we let them do this again and again?"

    The debate went on for several minutes.  Soon Martha reluctantly
agreed to whatever had been arranged at the meeting and the others seemed
relieved.  Martha asked the guy with the list to make a copy for her.
She rose and walked to me.

    "Come on, hon, let's go," she said cheerlessly.  I waved goodbye to
the others and they smiled and waved back, and Martha led me across the
street to the building where we met.

    "Come with me to the third floor.  I want to show you something."

    We stepped into an elevator that lurched violently when it started up.

    "My god!" I breathed, looking around in alarm.

    "It's just another New York elevator," Martha griped, looking at the
list she'd written.  "They'll fix it immediately, as soon as a pile of
people get killed in it.  Management by disaster, it's called."

    The third floor lobby was crowded with people sitting in several rows
of gray, aluminum folding chairs.  Kids squawled and whined.  Martha led
me into a small office a few doors down a nearby corridor, telling me
that she had to meet with one of her students for about an hour.  "I
don't know what you'll think of this, but I wanted you to see what goes
on here."  She pulled a file folder from her briefcase and placed it on
the single desk in the little room.  "This is a social services depart-
ment.  Most of the people out there are waiting for a welfare counselor,
or a case worker, or a therapist.  I was lucky enough to get this tiny
room for some of my students.  In fact, Marilyn often meets me here.  I'm
meeting one of the others now.  One of the less fortunate ones."

    She walked around the desk and stood in front of me.  "Do you want to
wait for me?  You can wait outside in the lobby.  Or if you want, you can
wait in that diner across the street.  But I want you to see another part
of the world."  She paused and said, "Hon, not everything is the way it's
been all week.  Not everything is like last night.  I hope that...you'll
feel differently about yourself if you see the mess others get themselves
into.  Are you up to it?"

    I eyed her directly and nodded.

    "Okay.  Forget all that romantic 'West Side Story' fluff you saw the
other night.  The real West Side is in that waiting room.  Come on."

    She led me back to the waiting area and straight to a chair near the
rear of the room where a Hispanic woman sat with a young boy who appeared
to be eleven or twelve years old.  He was a handsome youth, but I thought
he might have been more handsome had it not been for the vacant, unfo-
cussed look in his big, dark eyes.  His mother sat listlessly beside him,
looking bored and uninterested.

    Martha smiled and greeted them in Spanish, and introduced me.  The
mother acknowledged me with a drowsy glance and a slight movement of the
hand at her cheek.  The child simply stared at me.  I saw the remnants of
a bruise on his nose.  Martha said something in broken Spanish to the
woman, and the woman indifferently and tiredly replied "Si" a few times.
Martha extended her hand to the boy and smiled sweetly and said "Carlos?
Come with me?".  The child stared at her for a few seconds and, unsmil-
ing, stood and took her hand.  Martha whispered "Good," and gently led
the child by the hand.  On her way past me, Martha glanced at me and
whispered, "Welcome to New York, hon."  She led the boy to the corridor,
speaking to him maternally, and the child nodded but never smiled.  They
disappeared into the small office.

    The door closed.  Around me, children screamed and yelped.  I looked
down at the boy's mother and smiled politely.  She responded only with a
slow blink and looked down at the magazine in her lap, absently rubbing
an earlobe.

    For most of the hour I sat watching the people in the room.  Some of
them stared at me emptily for several minutes.  The room was redolent
with the odor of their ill-fitting, often filthy clothing.  One older man
had shoes whose soles were peeling off.  Infants whined and bawled.  Some
mothers whined back helplessly, others scolded and warned, and still
others sat unresponsively.  One boy kept up a continuous, rambling
conversation with his mother, who completely ignored him.  Some men and
women sat staring at the floor, some dozed; one man read a newspaper,
pointing slowly at each word and pronouncing them quietly and carefully
to himself.  Now and then a man or woman in a suit would greet one of the
people and lead them into an office.

    After a while I wandered through the corridor and noticed how ill-
kept the building was, although it looked recently swept and mopped.  The
faded walls were peeling in many places, some windows were cracked and a
few were boarded up, and every surface of every wall and doorway seemed
chipped, scarred, or damaged in some way.

    At the end of the hour I returned to the waiting room.  Martha
emerged from the office, smiling to the boy and talking to him as she led
him to his mother.  She spoke with them briefly, the mother appearing
interested only in gathering her things and leaving.  They said goodbye
and Martha watched them walk to the elevator.

    When they had gone, Martha said limply, "I'll get my things.  Let's
go somewhere."

    On the street as we walked to the subway I had nothing to say.  Or,
rather, I could think of nothing to say, which had me feeling crushingly
incompetent and stupid.  The image that stuck in my mind was the one of
the mother in the waiting room who sat chewing gum and filing her nails,
completely and, it seemed, purposely oblivious to her talking, question-
ing son.  I glanced at Martha as we walked.  Unsmiling, she winced in the
hot sun and pushed a lock of hair from her forehead.  I asked myself if I
would ever be able to sit at a table with a group of peers and handle
myself with Martha's apparent effectiveness.  I asked myself why I had
not spoken to her as completely and as intimately as I wanted.  I asked
myself if sex were the only intimate contact I would allow.  I asked
myself if hiding out from my family had rendered me hopelessly unable
to communicate with others, except on the most superficial level.

    "That boy," Martha said after a while, her voice edgy, "is very
talented.  His mother wants him to learn English and math as quickly
as he can so he can be a bookkeeper and support her and the babies she
keeps having.  I find it hard to believe that I keep praying for the day
when a counselor will take him away from his mother.  Every time he slows
down or makes a mistake, she beats the hell out of him."

    That was all she said.  She looked straight ahead, her eyes dark and
brooding.

    She led me to my first subway ride.  The rush hour had not started
yet, but the train was crowded and there were no seats.  We stood togeth-
er in the aisle and held onto a center post while the train sped and
swerved underground along Broadway.  Martha remained moody and silent.  I
looked at her.  Her auburn hair was combed and pinned back, smooth and
almost glossy at her temples, with blonde highlights and a bob in back.
Her elegant, pretty, pugnosed face had a sad frown, nearly a girlish
pout, that made me want to kiss and cuddle her.  I wondered why I didn't.

    She saw me watching her.  "Well," she said, "did you learn anything?"

    I nodded.

    "Yeah?"

    I kept my eyes on her.  "You're back in the Lauderdale Courts,"  I
said drearily.

    She smirked, and leaned on the post.  "Yes.  Right back where I came
from.  Worse than ever."  She looked at me again.  "Anything else?"

    I sighed and said, "Will I ever get to be really good at anything?"

    "You will if you work at it.  You will if your family will let you
be."

    "Not much I can do about that right now."

    "I know, Steven.  But someday..."  She kept looking at me and I kept
looking at her and we swayed as the train swung into a fast turn, but her
eyes didn't move from mine.  I wondered what she saw when she looked at
me so inexplicably with no clue whatever on her face to tell me what she
was thinking.  I wanted to tell her I loved her.  Did she know what I was
thinking as she studied my eyes?  Would she feel intimidated or feel I
were being possessive if I told her?  Was I really in love, or was it a
childish infatuation, a crush, a movie-like fantasy inspired by just
being in freewheeling New York?  It was not the affectionate but somewhat
raw lust that Ronnie generated in me.  Was it her pretty face, her incan-
descent hazel eyes, her musical voice?  Was it her talent, her brains,
her outspokeness...?

    "What else?" she asked, still watching me.

    I blinked awake.  "I learned how good you are at what you do."

    "Oh, I'm not good," she said scornfully, breaking her gaze and
looking away.  "I'm totally unqualified for this.  I'm not a psycholo-
gist.  I'm not a therapist.  I'm not even a case worker.  I'm a teacher.
And a beginner, at that.  A mere, everyday, generic beginner.  I want to
do some great work, some great endeavor.  I want to stop the wars and
stop the abuse and stop the beating.  But it doesn't stop.  It never
stops.  I'm helpless.  There's nothing I can do."  She frowned, and
winced, and sighed tearfully as she leaned into the post, her voice
straining.  "There's not a damn thing I can do."

    One eye teared and she wiped it with a finger.  She sighed heavily
and sniffled and then quickly straightened up and tightened her jaws.
"Crap," she said angrily.

    I offered, "Well, you did a great job on me."

    She looked at me.  I gave her my handkerchief and she honked her nose
into it quickly and looked at me again.  "If only I could convince you to
be yourself and believe in it.  You feel inferior because you're trying
to be like someone else, not you, and...Well, your pimples are gone,
anyway...and you're wearing your glasses for a change.  The frames are
very nice, just right for you.  And you look gorgeous."

    "Well, that's something.  Isn't it?  A dozen tubes of Clearasil is no
match for a couple of days with you, lady."

    She continued watching me and lurched as the train entered a
station.  She frowned, mildly, impatiently, "Why are you so nice to me
all the time?  You're always so nice to me, you've never said anything
critical to me as long as you've known me.  Never.  Why?"

    "Because you're beautiful and smart and perfect," I said as the train
slowed.

    "How hopelessly romantic," she huffed, returning my handkerchief.
"How silly and juvenile.  How ingratiating, Steven."  She touched my face
gently.  "And how sweet," she said.

    The trained banged and screeched and jerked to a stop.



                             PART 13B:


    We dropped by Martha's place, changed clothes and then spent the rest
of the afternoon on the Staten Island Ferry.  Martha showed me what she
called the "expected tourist attractions" -- the Statue of Liberty, Wall
Street, City Hall.  As dusk approached we walked uptown toward Greenwich
Village, where she took me to a hairdresser for a very expensive hair-
cut.  Gradually, Martha cheered up.  Gradually, I became more sullen. We
strolled through New York University and stopped in a couple of book
emporiums on Broadway.

    "Wanna get anything?" Martha asked as I fingered a volume in a pile
of books on a table at the Strand Bookstore.

    I gave a rueful little laugh and pointed at one of the books.  "An
out of print copy of 'Gregory the Great'," I said.  "Brother Martin back
home would give his eye teeth for this."

    "Why don't you buy it and take it back home for him?"

    "I'd want it for myself.  Brother Martin loaned me that book from the
school library as a special project.  He said he didn't want to waste my
time in basic English, so he gave me extra credit for writing a report on
this book.  It's great.  Whoever thought a biography of the first great
Pope of the Church could be so good?  Wouldn't it be great if I could--?"
I stopped and sighed.

    "If you could what, hon?"

    "If...if I could absorb all this.  Just stay here and go through
every one of these things.  There are books and ideas here that go back
hundreds of years."  I shook my head.  "I'd never be able to do it all."

    "Nobody can do it all, Steven."

    "But I want to."

    "Nobody can, hon."

    "The problem is, I wouldn't even be able to get started.  Why start
with one, when there are thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of
thousands, of books in here?  I wouldn't finish Chapter One before I'd
have to get on a plane back to Memphis."

    She smirked.  "So that's what you've been thinking about.  I thought
so."

    I sighed again, and shoved my hands into my pockets.  "Yeah."

    "Come on," she said, "Let's go find dinner."

    We had dinner at a small place in Greenwich Village and then took the
bus home.  I lounged on the sofa.  Martha plopped into the fluffy old
easy chair beside her small fireplace.

    "What'll we do tonight?  It's not even eight o'clock and I didn't
make plans for tonight because I wanted you to have one night to call the
shots. You know your way around the city a little now, so I thought you'd
like to set it up yourself for a change."

    "You plan real good, Miss Martha."

    "That's not an answer.  Just tell me what you want to do."

    I yawned.  "Oh, I dunno."

    "Steven...I've been leading you around town for a week now.  In fact,
I've been leading you around all your life.  I didn't bring you to New
York to lead you on a leash.  I brought you here to open you up.  I
brought you here to show you that the whole world isn't Memphis and you
don't always get punished for saying and doing what you want."

    I smiled gratefully, and shrugged.

    "Oh, c'mon.  Talk to me."

    "What do you want me to say?"

    She sighed impatiently.  "It's not what I want you to say, it's what
YOU want to say.  It's what you want to do."

    "I don't know what I want to do."

    "You wanna just sit here and mope about going back to Memphis?
You're not in Memphis yet, Steven.  You're still in Manhattan.  With me.
You're here.  Now.  Stop going over the past and stop worrying about the
future.  You see what that sort of thing did to me this afternoon at
work.  I said what I had to say about it, and then I moved on."

    "Okay, well...First of all, I'm a little tired."

    "Right, I'll buy that.  Sounds reasonable.  I am too, actually."

    I paused.  She waited.

    "Steven" she said quietly.  "Talk to me.  Wanna just talk?  A nice,
restful Thursday evening, talking my head off would be very nice.  I've
got you to do a lot of things, but I still can't get you to talk.  I
haven't forgotten who you are, Steven.  I know you're still young and
unsure.  I know that New York is intimidating, and it was for me when I
came here.  But you still have feelings and ideas.  I wish I could figure
them all out on my own, but I can't."

    I thought for a moment.

    "Well?" she said.

    I sat up straight.  "Come one, let's take a shower."

    She laughed.  "That's what you want to do, take a shower?"

    I walked to her and took her hand and gave a little tug. "Come on," I
said.

    We showered together.  "How exciting," Martha said sarcastically as
she soaped her hands.

    "This is a prelude to what's next," I said mysteriously, swabbing my
shoulders and arms.

    "Hon, everything's a prelude to what's next, and this gives me a
pretty good idea what it will probably be.  But do you have to shower to
talk?"

    "You'll see," I said.

    At the end of our shower I asked her to re-soap her hands and make
the suds thick and slippery.  "Now," I said, holding my cock, "Get me
hard.  Come on.  Get me really hard."

    She smiled at me quizzically as she worked on my cock.  "Steven...
what are you up to?  This is a heck of way to start a conversation."

    "You'll see.  Come on, do it."

    When I was fully erect I asked Martha, "Are you wet?"

    She said, "Of course I am, what do you think?"

    "Okay," I said, and I rinsed the soap away quickly and then in one
smooth motion I picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.

    "Steven," she complained, "We're still wet from the shower."

    "I don't care," I said, and tumbled her onto the bed.

    She looked at me wonderingly as I turned out the bedroom light and
then stretched her out on her back and opened her legs and lay on her
and looked down to aim my cock and then slowly and deeply and yearning-
ly entered her, sighing as I enjoyed the sweet long slide inward.  Her
eyes widened and she whispered, "Oh, my.  Steven.  I have to thank Fiore
for more than just my nineteen inch waist.  Mmm."

    I slid in and out a few times.  I muttered a little breathlessly,
watching her hips adjust to my length, "I love your nineteen inch waist.
I love getting big and hard and going into you."  When I felt thoroughly
lubricated and comfortable I slid all the way in and held myself there
and embraced her closely, one arm around her waist and the other around
her neck, and hugged her and nestled my face against her neck.  I lay
motionless, my cock deep and snug and hard and wet inside her.

    "Now," I said, "we can talk."

    She laughed quietly, snaking her arms around me.  "And I thought you
said you weren't a good conversationalist."  She kissed my cheek.  "This
is a very sexy way to have a talk."

    I kissed her neck.  "Listen.  I don't know how to tell you what I'm
thinking because I'm not thinking right now.  I'm feeling.  I'm feeling
how good it is to have you holding me and to just be inside you.  I'm
feeling how good it is to walk in Central Park with you and go to a deli
and eat matso ball soup.  I'm feeling how good it is to feel good with
you.  I don't like to spend a lot of time talking about how I feel.  I
have to do something about it.  I have to put my feelings to work.  I
don't want to spend a lot of time analyzing them and talking about them,
I want to do something about them.  I don't want to just look at books
and look at movies and read plays.  I want to do them.  I want to make
them real, I want to make them into something I can touch and see and
hear and taste.  I don't want to just look at you or think about you, I
want to hold you and lick you and fuck you.  You are my feelings.  When I
put my fingers around your waist I'm feeling I'm your waist, and when I
touch your skin it's because your skin is my feelings.  And when I fuck,
what you feel when I'm inside you is what I'm feeling.  I was a little
scared with Ronnie last night, and with you, because what you and Ronnie
were feeling was what I was feeling.  When Ronnie was sad, I was sad.
When Ronnie was afraid that I wouldn't let her have her full pleasure, I
felt it too.  I didn't want to just be friends with her, I wanted to give
her pleasure, I wanted to feel with her when she felt that release, that
comfort, that closeness.  And when I saw you wanting the same pleasure I
wanted the same pleasure for you and I wanted to feel it with you.  I
wanted it to be so good I'd never forget it, and I wanted to make it so
good for you, you'd never forget it, either.  I wanted it because I felt
you wanting it.  I want it because that's the way you make me feel.  When
you were upset this afternoon I didn't just see it, I felt it.  When
you're happy I don't just see it, I feel it.  When you're almost cumming
and not there yet, I feel it, too."

    I hugged her.  "I don't want to just think about going back home, I
want to go back home and do something.  I don't want to look at New York
and think about New York, I want to do New York.  I don't want to think
about being here, I want to be here.  I don't want it later, I want it
now.  It won't do me any good later.  I need it now.  I needed everything
yesterday and I want to do everything now.  I don't want to think.  I
don't like thinking.  I want to feel it and do it."  I licked her ear.
"I love your ear.  I love your neck."  I kissed her neck.  "I love your
nipples and your navel and your legs and your feet and your cunt.  When I
go inside you I don't put a dick in you, I put all of me in you.  I put
my body and my thoughts and my feelings, my past and my present and my
future in you.  When I cum the only thing I think and the only thing I
feel and the only thing in the whole world for me is cumming, and there
isn't anything else.  And I don't want there to be anything else."

    I stopped to pull my arm from under her neck and stroke her hair.

    "Baby," she whispered.  Inside her, she hugged me.

    We talked for an hour.  I did most of the talking, hugging her and
stroking her hair and kissing her neck, and she did most of the listen-
ing.  Now and then when I softened inside her she would lift my face and
watch me talking to her and squeeze me inside until I was hard again.
After a while I stopped talking and we fucked for a few minutes, slowly
and lovingly, and it was one of the few times that I fucked Martha while
not watching her; I fucked gently and deeply, nestling into her neck and
listening to her breathe.  When the pleasure mounted beyond anything more
than an affectionate, friendly probing, I would stop.  She would ask a
question or make a comment and I would start talking again.  Mostly, she
listened and watched me and let me know with small contractions inside
her what she was feeling.  I talked about the things I yearned to do, the
person I yearned to be.  She asked me to describe that person, and I
expended so much time and so many words trying to explain it that she
asked me to give her a name, someone I knew who mirrored what I thought I
wanted to be.  I mentioned Gregory Peck.  She laughed out loud and said,
"But, hon, don't you see? You're describing someone else, not yourself."

    She wanted me to tell her what my plans were, precisely, when I
returned home.  I told her I'd keep working.  She asked why I was so
willing to sacrifice the things I really wanted by wearing myself out
with a paper route.  I told her I wanted a car, I wanted freedom to move
around, I wanted the clothes, friends, and independence others had.  She
said having what others have wasn't as important as being myself; I
should be in the theatre, and I had better opportunities for a future in
college if I spent more time in activities at Christian Brothers.  I told
her I didn't want to be in high school, I wanted to be in any other
place.  She was amused and somewhat awed by my willingness to risk every-
thing I had for everything I didn't have.  She said I should work with
what was available.  She told me I was trying too hard to be every- one
but myself.

    "I'd like to be," I said earnestly, "like you."  And she laughed and
said, "Like me?" and then she frowned and stroked my hair and said,
"Steven, I don't want you to be like me.  I want you to be you.  And I
don't want you to work yourself to death the way I did.  Oh, sure, you
have to work hard, but I gave up everything to get through Memphis State
in three years instead of four, and kept weekend jobs on top of it.  And
you know what it got me?  It got me worn out.  Not quite twenty-four
years old yet, and I'm all worn out and frustrated with work.  It got me
used to not taking my time and made me want everything and want it to be
perfect.  Take my word for it, you have to stop and look around and
realize that the whole world isn't going to pay attention to you just
because you're working yourself to death."

    "But you got out of Mmephis," I said.

    "Yes, and you'll get out, too.  But it was part luck and part hard
work and part nerve.  I could just as well have been picked by another
school, but it happened the way it did.  The same way we just happened.
And some things, Steven, don't happen.  You can't make things happen, you
can only make yourself available.  Don't count on things happening that
you can't control. Don't you remember what you said to Ronnie, you can't
make someone be good to you if they don't want to?  Oh, you seem so
passive and easygoing on the outside -- but you're very aggressive,
aren't you?"

    We got out of bed for a few minutes and had a snack.  Then we
embraced in bed again and Martha sucked me to an erection and I went into
her and we hugged and lay still for a while.  She asked me about Karen. I
told her as much as I could remember about the incident, though I hesi-
tated to go into it with any great detail.  Martha said that disappoint-
ment was the norm when it came to intimacy.  "Not everyone's a perfect
partner," she said, "and some are lousy.  It all depends on who you're
with.  Remember what I said about being able to fly on your own, Steven.
You don't always have someone around to show you the way or to validate
yourself.  That's why you have to be you and have what you have, not be
someone else and have what someone else has.  God, I wish you'd believe
in yourself.  I wish your folks would give you just a little break, a
little recognition.  But they won't, Steven, not any more than Mr.
Buchanan or Evelyn would give it to me."

    The pleasure of being inside her soon asserted itself.  I began
talking less and moving more frequently in her for a few minutes before
we started talking again.  Soon I lifted on my arms and fucked steadily.

    She whispered, "Don't keep stopping, Steven, it's feeling good."

    "Did I talk your head off?"

    "You sure did.  Now I want you to fuck my brains out."

    I watched her as I moved and she put her arms around my neck and
looked down at me pumping in her.

    "Hon, it's nice."  She looked up at me and saw the pleasure in my
face.  SHe smiled softly and churned her hips under me, and I felt her
inner muscles writhing and sucking.  When I moaned she smiled happily and
whispered, "Know what I want you to be?  I want you to be you.  I want
you to be fifteen and strong and full of cum.  I loved watching you with
Ronnie, watching both of you discover each other and please each other.
I don't want you to get old and mean and moody, Steven, I want you to
always be new and pure.  And you're so very sensual, and so intense, and
you really know how to give pleasure.  I want you to be yourself and
enjoy me, and not worry about what was, or what might be.  Stay young for
me.  I feel so young when you fuck me like this.  It was so good, the
very first time."

    "Martha, you're...gonna make me cum."

    "But I want you to.  I want you to cum when you feel like it.  Come
on, just cum.  Don't cum because I do, cum just because you want to."

    She began tightening on me, smiling into my eyes, and I stopped and
fought for breath and she asked, "What's the matter?", and I moaned, "It
feels so good!"

    She grinned.  "It's supposed to, Steven!"  She began moving her hips
gently under me, up and down, sliding her cunt on my shaft.  The suction
she created was overpowering.

    "Come on," she taunted.  "Come on, I want you to be selfish for a
change.  There's nothing wrong with it."

    My head snapped back and I groaned again.

    She kept up the rhythm and began seriously milking me as she moved.
"Come on," she whispered. "Come on."

    "Oh!"

    "I'm not your mother, hon.  You won't lose me if you don't always
please me first, don't you know that?  Right now, I want you to please
yourself first.  Let me just give to you, and I won't ask for anything,
and you don't have to give anything back.  You're allowed to do that, you
know.  I'll let you because I know you'd do the same for me."

    I gasped and closed my eyes and raised high on my arms and began
pumping into her.  She ceased her undulations and held her pelvis against
me and closed tightly on my cock.

    "Yes," she whispered, "Oh, yes, hon.  Take it.  Take what you want."

    I began to stroke deeply and strongly in her, my pelvis seeking her
deeply on the instroke, relishing the tickle of her cervix as it nipped
and grabbed my tip.

    "I'm other girls," she whispered hotly.  "I'm everyone you ever
wanted.  I'm all those others and now I'm saying yes.  I'm Josephine
Louise.  I'm Karen.  I'm Ronnie.  I'm not saying no.  And I like it,
Steven.  I like it and I want it."

    I burrowed more deeply into her than I had ever gone before.  And I
was bigger and harder and more seeking than ever.  I fucked deliberately
and deeply, and soon the grip of her inner warmth changed and became less
rhythmic and less purposeful and became more erratic.  She became slicker
and hotter, and I saw her eyes close, and her smile vanished and she
squinted and frowned in surprise and concentration.

    "God," she breathed suddenly, "you're so big."

    And I whispered "Fuck" and shifted on my arms and raised on my toes
and my toes dug into the bed and then I had the balance and the leverage
that I wanted and I started stroking, smoothly and strongly, as deep as I
could go and as far back as I could go.  I became a fucking machine and
all I wanted to do was fuck.  I was near cumming, but I wouldn't let it
happen yet.  I clung to the hot, primal itch that I felt on the edge of
letting go and I wanted to stay there.  I forgot about how close Martha
might or might not be to cumming; I just wanted to fuck and keep on
fucking as long as I could.  Her sighs and whispers were indeed those of
Josephine Louise and Ronnie and everyone else I'd lusted after; her
seductive crooning had implanted them clearly in my mind.  I forgot about
Martha's body as my universe focused exclusively onto her cunt, on her
pelvic muscles straining and quivering against mine, her clinging inner
woman, and she wasn't Martha, she was the primeval cunt my leering,
slurping beast wanted to fuck, and my beast demanded the delicious,
licking pleasure, and vaguely I heard her amazed gasp, "God, you're
hard!  You're so hard!" and then I heard her hoarse moan, and I felt her
cumming and her hot, slithery, woman-cunt spasmed with it and my cock
felt it and rejoiced and grew and plunged and I wanted to keep fucking,
keep fucking like this forever.  I felt her relax a little and I fucked
and pushed and my bursting shaft sought more, more pleasure, more
lusciousness, and soon she stiffened again and I heard her gasp "Steven!"
and I wanted more and got bigger and harder and she jerked and relaxed
and then came again, and then I grunted and felt my face smiling as my
cock leapt upward against the roof of Martha's curling, writhing nether-
mouth, and my tip pulsed and the slit grinned against her womb and the
cum poured out and then gushed out and then exploded out and somewhere in
my gut my happy beast grinned and said Yeah, yeah, and my tip twitched
and the hot cum gushed and then I heard Martha scream a high, muffled
scream, and my victorious cock slowed so that I could ruthlessly prolong
and enjoy and own and remember the long moment and she screamed again and
the satisfaction and the sweet release washed around my dick and through
me, and then the blinding, tickling peak hit me and I ceased to exist for
a long, liquid instant, and my cock throbbed, pleased, bloated with
pleasure, purged, slick with her juiciness and my cum, and Martha lurched
under me and ended her cum with a whimper and my whole body sighed and
slowed and relaxed, my balls aching with a pleasant emptiness, and I
opened my eyes and saw her face flushed, her eyes squinting, shut, and
her mouth gasping for air, and then I realized that her nails had dug
into my neck and it felt good, it felt exhilarating to see her completely
worn out, trembling, limp, clutching me as if afraid, and I gave a long
sigh of pleasure and embraced her again, and cuddled her and gave her
mouth a long, firm kiss, and when it was over she gasped loudly and her
head fell against me, and I pulled my cock out of her and watched it
glisten and drip with us and I pushed in again and enjoyed entering her
once more, and did it again and marvelled at how good it was.  And then
she curled into a tight ball and she was whimpering, mewing, crying like
a little girl, her knees pulled up against me, and she nestled into me
and broke into a long fit of quiet but wrenching cries.  I stroked her
back softly and held her, one hand cradling the back of her neck and
pressing her tear-wet face into me, and she cried for a little while and
then she began to relax, sniffling noisily at first.  And then she seemed
to rest but was still curled up and holding onto me and the odor of semen
and warm milk was strong in the room.  The curtain rustled against the
window frame.

   She whimpered, "That was so good!"

   I nodded against her head.

   And she breathed nervously, "Steven, that was so good it scared me."
And in her voice I did indeed hear the childish relief one feels when a
terror has passed, and she softend against me and seemed tiny.  Soon she
fell asleep.  I lay awake for a long time, listening to the breeze from
the window.  I remembered dimly hearing Martha scream.  I drifted toward
sleep, feeling somehow changed.  I didn't know why I felt that way.



                             PART 13C:


    By five A.M. I was awake.  My first thought was that Sunday was two
days away.  I gave sleeping Martha a kiss, got out of bed, and took my
vitamins.  I needed to move.  To run.  I dressed in my gym clothes and
went downstairs and jogged toward Central Park.  The early sun was
already hot and beaming.  Halfway to Central Park I stopped, waiting at
Park Avenue for the traffic light.  Cars swished by and I found myself
watching everything, taking it in, wondering what it would be like to do
this every morning in Manhattan.  I wanted to memorize it; there was
nothing in Memphis to remind me of this street, this town, this feeling,
these sights.  I wanted New York burned into my mind, wanted to hold onto
it and take back as much as I could.

    The light changed.  I broke into a run to the park.  I was burned out
by the time I got there.  I limped into a sloping field and rested on a
park bench.  As far as I could see, only one or two distant people were
there.  I rubbed my aching ankles and burning shins.  I was short of
breath.  Fiore was right, I thought: work within your limits.

    All right, I conceded, within my limits.  I accepted it, but ached
knowing it was not good enough.  My limit at that point was my body.  My
limit was two days.  My limit was time.  My limit was Martha.  I could do
nothing about any of it.  My body told me what would happen if I pushed
too far, too hard.  Something in my heart and head told me what might
happen if I pushed too hard with Martha.  I walked around and stretched
my legs, trying to coax more work from them.  But they, too, had reached
their limit.  Around me lay the serene park, disturbed only by skitter-
ing squirrels and robins, chirping sparrows, and cooing pigeons.  Not
even a breeze came through to wake the trees.  Inside, I simmered.

    Tired, I walked back to Martha's.  I looked at everything twice,
memorizing.

    She was showering.  I undressed and joined her.

    "Well," she asked, "were you out conquering the world?"

    "Sure," I said.

    "Who won?"

    "The world."

    "I said it once, honey, and I'll say it again.  Welcome to New York."

    She went over the schedule.  Fiore at ten.  Marilyn at one.  Then
Marilyn and the American Museum of Modern Art or whatever Marilyn wanted.
Then meet Martha at a deli we'd seen before, and then to Little Italy.
She invited Ronnie to dinner with us, but Ronnie said she had an
afterwork date.

    At my workout, Fiore watched me for a while and seemed satisfied that
I wasn't going to try to accomplish in one hour what had taken his
students months or years to do.  Inside, I was fighting the limits; I
just didn't know how to do it, so I went through the movements and
stretches Fiore prescribed.  I still felt it wasn't enough.

    I changed into a sport coat and tie at Martha's and she and I walked
to a spacious, busy restaurant on Madison Avenue near the American
Museum.  We ordered tea to occupy us while we awaited Marilyn.

    I tugged at my tie and tried to keep it from eating into my neck.  "I
feel like I'm a fifteen year old being taken by his parents to the prom."

    Martha said, "Steven, you are fifteen."

    "I know, I just...don't enjoy feeling like it."

    "Enjoy it while you can, it only happens once."

    "Thank god.  Why am I doing this?"

    "Because Marilyn wants to meet you.  Let's not go through all that
again.  It's too late to back out.  Anyway, here she comes."

    Marilyn was slightly taller than I.  She wore black, thick-framed
glasses and had long brown hair past her shoulders and she was, as Martha
said, cute.  She looked younger than sixteen.  She was high-waisted, a
little thick in the legs, and was freckled and had a sweet, wide smile at
all times.  Her voice was rather husky, but soft, and she talked easily
and slowly.  Above all, she was almost irritatingly polite.  At first it
seemed like a pose, but as the lunch wore on I saw that she was so stead-
ily proper and soft-spoken that it had to be genuine.

    We had no problem making conversation.  Marilyn wanted to know all
about the South.  When she heard that Christian Brothers High School had
just built a new, multi-million-dollar theater and concert hall, the talk
swerved into theater and the arts and stayed there for most of the day.
Pleased that we weren't at each other's throats, Martha left after an
hour and walked with us to the museum, where she left me with Marilyn
for the rest of the afternoon.

    "Meet me at the restaurant at seven," Martha told me.  She gave
Marilyn a little kiss and told her, "Don't let Steven get lost, now."

    It was an eerie exercise in relating to someone who was pretty,
friendly, bright, incurably sweet, and someone for whom I had no strong
feelings at all.  The interval between two-thirty and six-fifteen was the
longest I'd spent in the company of a young woman whose presence left me
vaguely lonely and horny for something else.  But I learned;  I learned
to keep talking, and I learned how uneasy I felt with someone who
endlessly asked about me.  I found it difficult to get her to talk more
about Marilyn.  I wondered if it were my fault or hers.

    Marilyn had no qualms about touching me, placing her hand on my arm
to point something out to me, or grabbing my hand and leading me down a
corridor to another exhibit, and at one point simply holding my hand
casually and unselfconsciously for a few minutes as we sat together
during a brief rest.  And then, when we decided to take a walk in sur-
rounding Central Park and sat on a bench talking, she touched my knee,
apparently without noticing.  If she was turned on by any of this, she
revealed nothing.  I tried touching her myself, on the hand or on the
arm, with no reaction from her.  I kept wanting something else, someone
else.  Being with her did little to make me stop thinking that Sunday was
near.

    She said she would take the subway home, and when I made remarks
about it she said, "No, no, that's the way it's done here, unless you're
going steady or something.  But, oh, I do like that Southern politeness.
It's refreshing, really.  Listen, would you like to keep in touch?  I
think you're very interesting, and we have drama conventions up here, so
if you ever attend one I could help show you around."

    We exchanged addresses as I walked her to the subway at 86th and
Lexington.  She gave my hand a squeeze, blew me a little goodbye kiss
and left with a sweet, polite little smile.

    I decided to walk downtown to meet Martha at 57th Street.  I thought:
Not bad, really.  Not bad at all.  I knew of no one my age in Memphis who
would have been as pleasant.  And then I thought: I knew of no one in
Memphis, period.

    It was a few minutes after seven when I entered the restaurant on
57th Street.  As my gaze swept the room I caught sight of two pairs of
arms waving at me over the heads of the customers.  Now, I wondered, who
owned the other pair of hands?  As I neared the corner, Martha and Ronnie
stood at their table and grinned and yelled "Yaaay!" and applauded and
waved.

    "Good show," Martha said.

    Ronnie yelled "Bravo!  Bravo, Senior Stephano!  Bravissimo!"

    Amazingly, few people turned to look.  I strode to the table calmly,
holding up a cautioning hand and nodding casual thank-you's, and when they
continued cheering I gave them the palms-down, finger-up footbal signal
for time-out, saying, "Okay, okay, have a seat.  I survived."

    "Didja get laid?" Ronnie joked.

    "Yeah, twice."

    "Bravio, Senior Stephano."

    "So," Martha asked, "How was it?"

    I told her it was pleasant, very pleasant, and that we exchanged
addresses and that Marilyn had me very confused with her touching.

    "Yes," Martha said, "she does that.  She's always touching your hand
or arm.  And she's sweet.  Isn't she just nice to know, hon?"

    "You're right.  As usual."

    Ronnie said, "Isn't it sickening?  She's always right.  Even when
she's wrong."

    Martha announced, "Ronnie was stood up."

    I said, "What?  Ronnie!  I don't believe it!  Who would stand you up?"

    "Eh!" Ronnie said.  "Ain't the first time."

    "I don't believe it!  Why would anyone stand *you* up?  I mean, they
just left you standing in the street or something?"

    "No, I was waiting in my building."  She fiddled with the straw in
her iced tea and shrugged.  "I pick 'em, don't I?  Just as well, I wasn't
so hot about it to begin with.  I probably tried to fake enthusiasm and
I tried too hard and they caught on, and...what the heck."

    Martha said, "Ronnie, I told you, it's just a New York thing.  It
happens all the time, it just seems to happen more in this town."

    I asked, appalled, "But why would they do something like that?"

    Ronnie said flippantly, "They change their minds."

    "They don't call you or anything?"

    Ronnie shrugged.  "Hey, if they change their minds and don't show
up, they figure you know."

    For a long moment I sat looking at Ronnie while she and Martha talked
and made jokes about the situation.   Finally I cleared my throat and
asked as casually as I could, "Come out with me and Martha."

    Ronnie waved me away.  "Ah, c'mon, you two have plans."

    "No," I said.  "Come on.  I'm buying anyway.  Let me take you to
dinner."

    Martha's eyes widened in surprise, and she looked at Ronnie and then
at me.  "Steven!" she breathed in mock dismay.  "Are you asking Ronnie
for a date?  Oh, Ronnie, this is a first!"

    Ronnie batted her eyelashes at me.  "Li'l ol' me, y'aaaall?  Did I do
that right?"

    I said, "No, but you can come along anyway."

    Martha watched, smirking while I talked Ronnie into it.  As we rose
to leave for Little Italy, Martha whispered to me, "Good going, cowboy.
The afternoon with Marilyn must have taught you something.  I'm glad."

    "At last she's pleased," I mumbled, raising my eyes to heaven, and
Martha elbowed my ribs.



     We visited three restaurants in Little Italy.  Again, it was another
amazing New York adventure for me.  In my excitement I ordered everything
in sight, until Martha and Ronnie warned me that the prices were moder-
ate, but not cheap, and the servings were large.  Laughing and joking, we
sampled each other's plates and sang an Italian song when a violinist
came to our table in the Grotto Azura.

    "Honey," Ronnie said on the street later, "I love you for this.  My
date would never have been this nice to me.  C'mon, Martha, I'll take him
to Ferrara's and really fatten him up."

    Martha said, "Careful, Ron, Steven's a sucker for the goodies in
Ferrara's."

    "Lead the way," I told Ronnie.

    In Ferrara's Bakery, Ronnie bought me a canole and a baba-a-rum that
had my mouth watering and my tummy bloated.  The only thing preventing me
from ordering second rounds was the utter impossibility of shoving more
food into my stomach.

    "Take you a week to work this off," Ronnie said, grinning at me with
her cigarette held in the air.

    "Oh, Ronnie," I breathed, wiping my mouth and downing the last of the
canole, "this is just...I never tasted anything like this.  Thank you
for corrupting me and bringing me to this place."

    "I don't get it," Ronnie said, "don't Italians in Memphis eat this
stuff?"

    Martha said, "Most of them never heard of it.  Strictly barbeque and
canned beans down there, Ronnie."

    Ronnie winked at me.  "It's good stuff, huh?"

    "Decadent," I groaned, sighing with an overfull stomach.

    Ronnie smiled as she crushed out her cigarette.  "Yeah.  It's a good
feeling, isn't it?  It's the only thing keeping me in New York.  It's my
dark side.  My yin, or yang, or whatever.  Now I'm gonna order one for
myself."

    Martha warned, "The waistline, Ronnie.  Remember?"

    "To hell with it," Ronnie said, waving for a waiter.  "I want."

    Afterwards, we walked uptown through Greenwich Village, up Fifth
Avenue to Union Square, then up Broadway to Times Square, then up Sixth
Avenue into Rockefeller Center, then up 6th Avenue further into Central
Park.  By that time we were worn out.  We sat on a bench near the lake at
59th Street, resting and calculating how many blocks there were between
the park and their building.

    "Should we take a taxi?" Martha asked.

    "Nah," I growled, "let's walk."

    Martha said, "You walk, hon.  It's about twenty more blocks."  She
looked at Ronnie, who sat gazing into the moonlit pond before us and
seemed sad and lost in thought.  "What's on your twisted little mind,
Ron?"

    She sighed and looked into the lake.  "Oh, I just...I don't know,
Martha."

    "Are you still worried about what happened tonight?" Martha asked.
"C'mon, Ronnie, it's happned to all of us.  Steven, too.  And he took it
pretty hard."

    "No," Ronnie said, still gazing.  "No, it's not that.  It's just...I
had a nice time, really.  But you always keep thinking, y'know, why
people do that.  And how they manage to find me."

    "Ronnie," Martha commanded gently, "Forget about it.  Come on."

    "Well, I was just wondering," Ronnie said.  She leaned back and then
looked down for a moment and said to the ground, "Steven, did you just do
all this because you felt sorry for me?"

    Martha said, "Ronnie, we had a nice time, didn't we?"

    "That's not what I asked," Ronnie said.  "It was very nice, Steven.
Really.  Even if you were just being nice and felt sorry for me.  You
did, didn't you?"

    I said, "I did a little, sure.  Because it was you.  The main thing
was, I just wanted you with us.  You're nice.  I wish I knew people in
Memphis who are as nice as you."  I did not find this easy to say, and I
spoke nervously.

    Ronnie looked at Martha skeptically.  "Hey, Martha, is Steven the
sweetest guy in the world, or is he the best bullshit artist in Memphis?"

    Martha smiled.  "Choice A, Ron.  But don't tell him to his face, or
he'll blush and disappear."

    Ronnie laughed quietly, and smiled, and blushed.  She picked a twig
up off the ground near her shoes and picked at it and looked into the
lake with a thoughtful smile.  "Hey, uh...look, folks...You two wanna
come over to my place?"  She raised her eyebrows at me suggestively.
"I'll show you my etchings."

    We took a taxi to Ronnie's.  On the way, my young mind was inundated
with images of another night of unabashed eroticism.  In Ronnie's apart-
ment, Martha made tea while Ronnie showed me her design worktable and an
airbrush setup in the corner of her living room.  Ronnie told us to sit
in a circle on the living room floor.  For over an hour she laid before
us one after another of her artwork and drawings.  Though her place was
neat, frames and tablets of pictures seemed to come from nowhere; she
pulled them from under the sofa, from the closets, from behind book-
shelves.  Soon the floor was covered with her work.

    "This isn't what I do at the office," she explained diffidently.
"This is on my own.  I've been doing these for years.  Martha's the only
person who's seen most of it.  George destroyed a lot of them, but I did
lot of them over again."  Her art was either very darkly or very brightly
colored, all of it meticulously detailed.  "The darker ones are my dark
side," she told me, showing several oil paintings of a fetus surrounded
by black and crimson smoke which she had populated with the faces of
strange and frightening animals.  She had a large canvas that pictured
what seemed to be thousands of palm-sized, bright, multi-colored flowers,
each petal carefully rendered and detailed.  The title of the picture was
"Lust."  She said, "This one's the most difficult for me to explain.  I
was just thinking that word, and spent weeks drawing the flowers."

    She had a large tablet of pencil drawings that showed nude couples
in various sexual positions.  "I spent very little time on their bodies,
but their faces are complete.  You see, the man never quite enters the
woman.  They never quite kiss, either.  It's always the moment before,
because I didn't really know how the next moment felt.  And only their
faces have detail, because I wanted to picture them as people, not as
bodies.  The faces say that this is a woman, a person, and another person
is about to enter her.  Not a penis, a person."

    Then she showed a series of small paintings of a young, dark-eyed,
long-haired young girl in pastel dresses.  The girl sat on a swing in a
garden, cuddled a cat, stared sweetly at the viewer, or sewed a dolls'
dress.  In all the paintings the girl seemed serene, often happy, some-
times pensive, sometimes playful.  "That's not me," she said.  "That was
a girl I used to know in Michigan.  I always wanted to be her.  I don't
know if she was really as happy as I show her...but she seemed to be,
when I knew her."

    For a long time after showing the girl to us, Ronnie stared at the
pictures silently.  During this long moment, Martha looked at me cau-
tiously and then said to Ronnie, "C'mon, Ronnie put those away.  Let's
see something else."

    "No" Ronnie said absently.  "Let me look at her.  I haven't seen
these in a while.  I usually hide them from myself."  She bent down to
one of the pictures and ran her finger along the girl's face.  "Isn't she
pretty?  I always wonder what it was like for her.  I wonder what it
would be like to feel like her, to have someone make me feel like her,
make me smile peacefully the way she always did...Maybe someone would
give me a phone call sometime.  Or bring me a flower.  Or just kiss me,
without trying to invade me.  Y'know, just a little kiss that says, 'Hi,
Veronica.  How are you, Veronica, I'm glad to just be here with you.'"

     "Ronnie,' Martha began more strongly.

     Martha said quietly, "All right.  I'll put them away."  She closed
the drawing tablet, and Martha talked about something else for a moment
while Ronnie put the tablet away, and then Ronnie sat with us on the
floor and gazed at her hands in her lap.  "It wasn't supposed to be much.
I imagined a quiet night, you know?  A little restaurant that's good but
cheap, where you don't have to worry about what you look like or what
everyone else is doing.  And the guy would talk to me and he wouldn't use
words he didn't mean, and I'd believe him..."  Her voice fell to a
whisper. "Oh, look at me.  Look at big ol' Ronnie.  Oh, I'm sorry,
Steven, I--"  She hung her head and cried silently.  She put one hand
over her eyes and sobbed, "It's just a date.  Right?  It's just a date. I
don't even know the son of a bitch that well."

    She rose quickly and ran into her bedroom.

    "Damn," Martha said, rising to her feet, "I'm sorry, Steven, she's so
unpredictable."

    As Martha started for the bedroom I rose and held her by the arm.
"Look, you go in there, you know her better than I do.  I'll go out for a
minute so you two can be alone."

    Martha apologized again, but I said it was okay.  I left, leaving the
door unlocked so I could get back in.  I walked to an all-night deli that
I remembered seeing a few blocks away on East 86th.  In small wooden bas-
kets along the front of the store were some flowers.  I stood looking at
them for a moment, thinking:  Too presumptuous?  Too sappy?  I decided to
buy a single yellow rose, which the cashier wrapped in thin floral paper,
and I walked back to Ronnie's place.

    When I entered, Martha came out of the bedroom and said, "She's all
right.  Come on, let's go home.  She's going to sleep."  She saw the
flower I held.  "Steven, how nice."

    "A little too much?" I asked.

    "No," she said, tiptoeing to the kitchen.  "I'll put it in a glass on
her desk.  Don't worry, she'll see it."

    Back in Martha's apartment, she told me, "I didn't tell you every-
thing.  I didn't want you to accidentally make any refernce to it.  She's
very nearly an alcoholic, hon.  She's miserable.  She tries so hard, but
sometimes she's just miserable.  That was a very nice thing you did.  It
means you heard what she said, and you paid attention to her."

    I lay in bed as Martha unfolded her pajamas.  She asked me, "Did you
think something kinky would happen again downstairs?  Be honest.  I want
to know."

    I blushed.  "Yeah...I was thinking it."

    "Were you disappointed?"

    I thought about it.  "No," I said.  "I thought giving her the flower
was much more...meaningful."

    "It was, Steven," she said.  "You turned a schoolboy disappointment
into a very kind, unselfish gesture.  I'm very glad you did.  I'm glad
you realize that Ronnie doesn't need sex, she needs love.  Unfortunately,
despite what she thinks of herself, she's a very sexy looking young woman
and she looks soft and...too many strong men see her as prey.  And Ronnie
makes it too easy for them."

    She slid into bed beside me and leaned over me.  She asked softly,
"want me to make up for what you missed?"

    "I didn't miss anything," I said.  "What I ended up doing was better
than what I wished I'd done."

    She gave me a soft kiss on the mouth.  "Sometimes, Steven, it's nece-
ssary to erase yourself.  I'm glad you did it just because you wanted to
do it, and not because you expected something back."

    I sighed, "Anyway, you wore me out this week.  There wasn't much left
for Ronnie."

    "You never run out affection," Martha said, lying on her side toward
me."

    I yawned.  "I like going to sleep with you."

    She smiled, her eyes warm and soft.  "I'm going to miss you, Steven."

    Moved by a stinging pang of affection, I gave her a long kiss.  I
nestled into her and relaxed.  As I drifted off to sleep with her arms
around me I thought:  This part of being us is nice, too.  Just as nice
as anything else.


                             PART 13D:


    Saturday.

    I slept like a corpse until Martha woke me up at nine and told me it
was time for Fiore's last session.

    "Gimme a break," I moaned, hiding my head under the pillow.

    "Now you sound like a New Yorker," Martha said.  "Come on, get up."

    Again, I worked desperately in the club.  Again, Fiore grinned at
me.  "You do well for only a week!  Good!  But don't undo it on the last
day.  Slow down!"  At the end of the session he gave me a firm handshake
that had my jowels bouncing.  "You worked hard.  Good, I like that!  If
you come back, I give you a special price!  Hah?  Not becaue I like you
so much, but I am in love with Martha!  You're in love with her, too,
hah?  Only someone in love works that hard!"

    "Fiore," I said, not answering but looking him straight in the eye,
"Thank you."

    He laughed a hearty, knowing laugh.  Then he held up his famous,
warning finger.  "Watch your limits, my friend!  And good luck!"

    I took my time getting back to Martha's.  Going out of my way, I
entered Central Park and broke into a jog.  But I soon slowed to a tired
walk.  One day.  One more day.  "Never try to go back," Fiore had said,
"Only ahead."  He had said, "Watch your limits, my friend!" I heard his
words and recalled his instructions.  I was tired and, for the time
being, at a stalemate.  Torturing myself to surpass my limits at the
last minute wouldn't get me very far.  I told myself I would have to be
careful.  I couldn't push it.  I couldn't push myself too hard.  But
would I be able to avoid pushing Martha during the next twenty-four
hours?  As I strolled I continued to observe and memorize.  How long
would it take me to get back to New York?  I was a day away from the
airport, and I was already thinking about how to get back to New York.

    On my way upstairs I heard Ronnie's door open as I passed.

    "Hey, you," she called behind me.  I stopped and turned.  She
beckoned me to her with a finger.  She stood pursing her lips, her eyes
mildly accusing.

   "Full of surprises, aren't you?" she said, one hand on her hip.

   I grinned.  "You don't have to say anything."

   "Listen," she said, winking, "I owe you one."

   I winked back.  "You already gave me one."

   "I give dividends," she said wryly.  "Go on up there, Martha's waiting
for you."  She winked one more time and went into her apartment, her lips
forming a noisy smooch as she closed the door.

    Martha had constructed a huge salad for lunch.  Having got out of bed
too late for breakfast, I ate at her dining room table until I felt I
wouldn't be able to walk.  Martha was reticent.  At one point the room
was so quiet that I only heard her chewing and swallowing.  It was as
somber a meal as I'd ever had.

    "So what do you want to do this afternoon?" she asked, not looking at
me.  She prodded her salad listlessly with her fork.

    "Right now?  I want a nap."  I stretched and groaned.  "Fiore expect-
ed a full day's work, even on the last day."  I yawned.  "Wanna take a
nap with me?" I asked.

    "You go ahead.  I have so much to do to get ready for work again next
week.  I won't have time all day tomorrow, half the day will be at La-
guardia to see you off," she said, pushing a cherry tomato across her
plate.  "I wish you'd go straight back to doing what you want to do when
you get home."

    "I was thinking about that."

    "Don't think about it, Steven," she said solemnly.  "Do it.  You know
you want to.  Don't..."  She stopped and sighed and shoved the tomato in
her mouth.

    "Don't?" I said.

    She shook her head no.  I was reminded of how she'd behaved during
our last few minutes together at the Holiday Inn, years ago, in Memphis.

    "I won't preach," she said.  "I do enough of that during the week
and with Ronnie.  It doesn't do any good."

    "Im not ignoring you.  I listen to every word you say."

    "I hope so," she said.

    I rose and gave her a kiss and stretched again.  "Okay, we can think
of something to do later.  Anyway, I want to make that midnight trip to
the newsstand and get a Sunday Times, if we don't do anything else.  But
I'm really pooped right now.  You wore me out this week.  You and Fiore.
And New York.  And Ronnie."  She didn't say anything, so I kissed her
cheek again.  "It's been a wonderful week.  Really.  I'm not the same
person.  You did a hell of a job with me, and I'm not forgetting anything
I saw or learned."

    She gripped my hand.  "Good, Steven.  And I'm glad to hear you tell
me so, for a change.  Hey, go take your nap so we can get around a little
tonight."

    I got down to my undies and lay in bed.  A strong breeze blew into
the bedroom and smelled faintly of the East River.  I pulled the sheet
over me.  In about half a minute I was asleep.  I dreamed I was home.
I saw all the faces of my family, my parents, uncles, aunts, the Ricci's,
the Lobianco's.  They smiled amiably, some of them lovingly.  In the
dream I asked, "Who are you smiling at?"  No one answered.

   Then in the dream I heard Martha talking on the telephone.  I opened
my eyes.  The long shadows on the buildings outside the window told me it
was late in the afternoon.  I rolled on my back and stretched.  Martha
was still talking on the phone in the living room.

   "Ronnie, I don't know, I already told you...But there's not enough
time, and you know how something like that...Yeah, right...I don't know,
it's...No, I don't...No, honey, don't.  All right?  Please?...That's
better...Okay, I'll call you later, maybe...Maybe...Later, Ron..."

   Martha hung up.  I heard her moving around in the living room.  After
a minute she looked into the bedroom and saw I was awake.  She sat on the
bed, unsmiling.

    "Well?" she said.

    "I guess I'll just lie here and look at you for a while."

    She frowned and said, "Oh, you."

    "Well, what's wrong with that?  Why should I wear myself out on the
last day?  I've run myself ragged all week.  That's not what a vacation
is supposed to be.  I have enough money for a camera.  Why don't I buy a
cheap camera and take some pictures of Central Park?"

    "You really like it there?"

    "Sure.  Might even have a hot dog.  Fiore won't be watching."

    She looked down at her hands and fiddled with a finger and then
sighed and shifted uncomfortably on the bed and then dropped her hands
and complained, "Oh, hon, why is this so hard to say?"

    "I never knew you to have that much trouble saying what you wanted
to.  I envy you.  You're so much more outspoken than most people."

    "No, hon, it's--"  She gazed out the window with a look of painful
frustration.  "Oh, I..."  She sighed and looked down and confessed, "I
guess I don't want you to go."

    I didn't say anything.

    "Oh, baby, there was so much more I wanted to do.  It seems we're
always parting, we're always doing something else, and yet I...even if I
did everything I wanted to do, you'd still have to go.  And, anyway, I
can't do everything I wanted to.  I don't want you going back to those
people.  That's really what I don't want, I don't want you with them
anymore.  I want you learning, and growing, and -- But I can't have it, I
can't keep you like a damn gerbil and I really ought to just leave you
be.  I have no right to fill your head with wild ideas that you can't use
down there.  I really want you on your own, being you, and..."  She
stopped and winced.  She squeezed her temples with her palms.  "Oh, dman,
why can't I just say this?  Damn!"

    "I know what you're trying to say," I said frankly, getting up.
"Come on, I'll get dressed and we can see the Park."

    "We've seen the park," she pouted.

    "Come on.  Can I get a camera somewhere, real cheap?"

    "I guess so."

    "Come on," I said, putting on my shirt.  "I won't have you, or me,
sitting around here acting as if we were going to my funeral.  I wanna
have fun with you.  Come on.  And you were the one who told *me* that *I*
couldn't do everything in the whole world!"

    On East 86th Street I bought a cheap camera and some flashbulbs and
film.  It was near sunset.  I took a picture of her at the statue of Hans
Christian Anderson and she took one of me on Pilgrim Hill.  She cheered
up, but not by much.  Soon the sun was setting and we walked home.  For
dinner we ate more of the salad.  I took my day's third round of vita-
mins.  Then the yeast.  Then more yeast.  Then a third spoonful.

    "What in the world are you doing with all that yeast?"

    "Fortifying myself," I said.  I dipped into the jar for the fourth
time.

    "Good heavens," Martha breathed.

    I felt good.  I was rested.  I was drunk with desire for Martha.  I
was, secretly, desperate for her.  If this was to be our last night for
an undetermined length of time, I wanted to make it the most memorable of
the week.

    "It's dark outside," I said.  "Let's make it dark in here."  She sat
at the table watching as I went through the apartment closing all the
curtains and turning off all the lights.  She soon got the idea and sat
with a coy smile until I finished.  The apartment was inky dark.  I felt
my way through the black, toward her.  I heard her clothes rustling.  By
the time I reached her she had removed all but her panties and bra.  I
embraced her and kissed her hair and then her temples and reached behind
her to undo the bra.  It fell from her shoulders with a whisper.  I
breathed, "Here, in the dark.  Let's take our time.  We have all night.
You feel so good.  Did I ever tell you how good you feel?"

    "Yes," she whispered.  "Tell me again."

    I told her as she helped me undress.  I told her, standing and
caressing her lightly, running my fingers over her nipples and around
her waist and along her hips and across her delightful, warm, flexing
tush.  After a moment she knelt down and began softly tonguing and
mouthing my cock in the dark.

    I whispered, "Don't make me cum yet."

    "Okay," I heard her say.

    "I don't want to cum for a long time."

    "Okay," she whispered.  All I could hear or see or feel was her mouth
on me.  When I was hard and twitching, which didn't take long, she rose
and led me by the hand into the bedroom.  We both bumped into things and
sniggered and then slid into bed together.  Martha leaned over me and
gave my nipples inner-lip kisses.  It went on for a long time.  We ca-
ressed each other and whispered, our words growing more sensual and
arousing.  We slid on and off each other lazily.

    "Does that feel good?" she asked, running a fingernail along my balls.

    "Yeah.  Does that?" I asked, running my fingernail along the crease
of her still warm, moist derriere until I reached under her and felt wet
flesh.

    "Ah, yes."

    She moved up on me and kissed my neck, and I said "Mmm," and enjoyed
her doing it, and she licked my earlobes.  She whispered into my ear, "I
want more."

    "You'll get more, don't worry."

    "Steven...you've made me very hot."

    "Good."

    "No, it's different, it's...I need more."

    "Mm.  Let's see what naughty things can I think of?"

    "You wanna be naughty?"

    "Yes."

    "Really naughty, Steven?"

    "Yes."

    "Steven..." She licked my other earlobe.

    "Yes?"

    She paused and licked again.  "I told Ronnie today not to come over.
I wanted you all to myself."

    "You'll have plenty on your hands, don't worry."

    "Steven."

    "Yes?"

    "Was it good with her?"

    I didn't answer for a second and said, "You saw me, didn't you?"

    "But it felt good, didn't it?  I mean, different?  Good different?"

    "Yes."

    "Steven...hon...I was very excited that night."

    "I was too."

    "Were you?"

    "Yes."

    "Mmm.  Ah, your dick is wet.  It got wet talking about it, didn't it?"

    "Yes."

    "Wait," she whispered.  "Don't move.  I'll be back."

    I lay with my cock twitching in the dark while she fumbled her way
into the living room. I heard her dial a number and then she was talking
on the phone briefly.  I heard her hang up.  She felt her way along the
walls into the room again.  She lay down and leaned over me.  She whis-
pered, shakily, fearfully, "Hon.  Ronnie's coming up.  She'll be here in
a minute.  If it's not all right, tell me now.  I'm sorry, I feel...Oh,
Steven, it's scary, I feel so wicked.  Stop me while it's still time to
call her back."

    I could barely see her face in the dark.  "So call her back if you
want to."

    "I don't want to.  Do you want me to?"

    I waited.  "No," I whispered.

    I heard her breathing nervously.  She wiped her mouth and when she
whispered again her mouth sounded dry.  "Why am I so scared?  It's not as
if we never did anything before.  Steven, I haven't been like this in so
long...and only with you."

    "All right.  If you want me to, I'll call her.  What's her number?"

    "No."

    "You don't want me to?"

    "Hold me, hon.   Please hold me."

    I put my arms around her and she lay on me fully and held my face in
her hands and suddenly gave me a long, deep, loving, searching kiss.  The
kiss went on and on and she wouldn't interrupt, breathing through her
nose, her lips constantly mashing mine.  A little later, the front door
opened and clicked shut.  I heard Ronnie whisper, "Martha?  Steven?  God,
it's so dark in here."  Martha ended the kiss and whispered loudly,
"Ronnie.  In the bedroom."  Ronnie said okay, and Martha slid down my
body and started licking my legs and balls.

    Ronnie knocked something over in the living room.  It fell to the
floor, sounding like a big book.  "Sorry," Ronnie said.  "Leave it to me,
right?"  Soon she appeared in the doorway, feeling her way along the wall
and then past the door, saying, "It's a good thing this apartment is
exactly like mine.  It's so dark in here."

    "Wait," Martha said.  She got out of bed and gave me a beautifully
vague view of her rear as she hurriedly slid past Ronnie into the living
room.  Ronnie peered into the bedroom from the doorway.  She appeared to
be wearing a blanket or a bathrobe.  "Steven?" she asked, moving into the
room.  "What the hell is Martha doing?", and I answered, "I don't know."
Ronnie felt along the wall until she was in front of the bed and then I
felt her hand patting the foot of the bed, and she touched my foot.
"Oh!" she exclaimed softly, and laughed gently.  "That's you, right?"

   "My foot," I answered.

   "This is crazy," she said, but she sounded as if she were smiling.
"Yeah, I'm starting to get used to the dark."  Her hand slithered up my
leg.  "God, I can't get used to how warm you are.  What the hell are you
two doing in the dark like this?"

    "Planning a new deterrent against the Soviet Union."

    "Ooooh," she said. "I do a little of that in my spare time, myself.
How far along did you get?"  Her hand found my cock and closed around
it.  "Hmm.  I see I didn't get here too late.  Or just in time?"  Her
hand squeezed and rode up and down.

    "Careful," I said, loudly.

    "Okay.  Sorry."  She removed her hand and stood up.  She called,
"Martha?"

    In the living room, I heard the sound of a match flaring, and then
the dim glow from a candle trickled into the room.  Ronnie stood at the
foot of the bed in a fluffy terrycloth bathrobe, smiling at me.  She
looked down and saw my cock standing straight up and her smile widened.
"Oh," she said.  "There you are."  She slipped the bathrobe from her
shoulders and let it slide to the floor.  In the near-dark her small,
slim torso and her long legs and arms and small tits were outlined
faintly in yellow.  The candlight danced and flickered on her soft
flesh.  The whole scene was dreamlike, unearthly.  I lay in a fog of
uncertainty, swallowing as a wave of weird, undefinable sensations swept
over me.

    "Martha told me earlier she wanted you all to herself."  She put one
knee on the bed and leaned toward me.  She gave me a small, amiable
smile, her dark eyes glinting with two tiny, fiery dots of light.  "But I
insisted.  I still owe you one."

    Martha came into the room and slid into bed beside me.  She sat up on
her legs.  Her face was calm, unsmiling, composed.  But her eyes had a
darkly eerie intensity.  I turned to her and she leaned down and kissed me
softly.  "Do you still want to?" she whispered.

    I kissed her back.  "For you."

    She whispered, "For you, hon.  Us.  Three of us."

    I heard Ronnie whisper, "You two are so romantic with each other."

    I asked Martha, "Still scared?"

    She swallowed.  "A little."

    Ronnie said, her hand sliding up my leg.  "Your darkness, Martha.
Remember?  It's your darkness.  You're always so scared of it."

    "I know," Martha said uneasily.  Her lips touched mine briefly and
left a tiny string of moisture between us. "But Steven's not afraid of
his.  At least, I don't think so.  He's the one who turned out the
lights."

    "Steven," Ronnie said, settling on the bed with one thigh over my
legs.  Her wet cunt was on my knee.  "You're so full of surprises.  Hmm,
is there no end to it?"  Her lips touched my thigh and then slid wetly
across the head of my cock.  I kissed Martha again.  She held my face and
kissed me back, and then looked at me with the same unsmiling face and
then her eyes seemed to simmer with a soft heat.  "Don't let him cum,
Ronnie."  Then she looked back at me.

    She whispered almost inaudibly, her voice urging me with an other-
worldly intensity that I had never heard in her, "Fuck Ronnie, Steven."

    Ronnie had condoms in the bathrobe pocket.  She looked up at me as I
lay between her raised knees and she smiled mischievously as she unrolled
the condom onto my waiting cock and then aimed me into her.  Her smile
melted into a steady gaze as I slowly fucked her.  She said it was nice
to look into the eyes of someone fucking her so gently.  "Intense," she
breathed, "So intense."  As my finger did on Wednesday, my cock found
Ronnie narrower than Martha, but deeper, and the dulling condom had me
wondering how it really felt inside her.  The condom slowed me down;
there was just enough sensation to keep me hard in Ronnie.  She said I
was just the right size and shape and that I felt very comfortable in
her.  I had difficulty contacting her clit because she had her legs
around me and she kept moving too much under me.  Soon I felt I might
cum, so I left her and rested for a minute and then Martha was ready.
Martha refused to use a condom, so I removed it and entered her without
one.  Ronnie said she didn't know how Martha could chance it without
protection, and Martha said it was a safe time of the month and she had
additional means for later, and Ronnie scoffed and said, "God, Martha I
can't trust the papal method."  To Ronnie's amazement, Martha came almost
immediately, and loudly, and I had to move very slowly to hold myself
back, but I knew I couldn't resist much longer.  Ronnie said she never
saw a man ejaculate, so Martha asked me to pull out so that Ronnie could
finish me with her hand.  I sat up on my legs and Ronnie sat in front of
me jacking me off gingerly.  I squirted high onto her forearm and Ronnie
looked at it and breathed an amazed "Oh," and then she squealed
delightedly as I squirted on her shoulder and then on her left nipple,
and then she slowed her pumping and chuckled, pleased, as cum splatteed
onto her forearm and then twice onto her wrist, and then she crooned a
motherly, "yeah, honey" and watched my eyes as the rest of it sobbed out
warmly over her hand.

    While we rested Ronnie asked Martha how it felt to cum during
intercourse, and Martha tried to describe it but couldn't.  They both
stroked and sucked me until I was ready again, which took longer than I
expected, considering how heated I was, and Ronnie put another condom on
me, saying, "Warning, folks.  I don't know how you're gonna make me cum,
Steven, I don't have the slightest idea what to do."  Martha and I
prompted her, telling her not to raise her legs over me but to learn how
to angle her pelvis so that my cock could find her clit with the rubber
on, and after a while I found ways to sense her needs and she smiled up
at me in surprise and muttered, "Oh, yeah.  Yeah, I see now.  Oh, I
*feel* it!  Oh, keep doing that!  God, it's so good, it's right on it!"
Martha asked if Ronnie were comfortable and Ronnie was quickly growing
agitated and she gasped, "Who cares if I'm comfortable, it works!  God,
it's good!"  She watched me going in and out and looked up at me and I
whispered, "Feel it now?" and she leered and whispered "Yes," and I asked
her "Just like that?" and she whispered "Yes" and she watched my eyes and
in the same secretive whisper she asked me, "Feel the darkness?  Feel the
darkness, sweetheart?" and I moaned "Yes," and her blue eyes glowed with
a deep, dark, moist blue and she smelled humidly like sage and she
whispered, "Me, too.  So good.  So sweet good," and Martha gazed at me
from beside Ronnie's face and she held my cheek and smiled lovingly and
said "Devils are dancing in your eyes, Steven," and soon Ronnie's eyes
closed and she whispered dreamily, happily, "I'm a little girl...I'm a
small...soft...wet...fucking little girl, and my darkness and Steven's
darkness are fucking.  It's so good, Martha.  Oh it's so good," and
she ground her cunt on my cock and I fucked her deeply and methodically
for several minutes, and then I slowed as she gasped and trembled and
winced, and she came loudly, her slim hips yearning off the bed and her
pelvis quivering against me.  When it was over she breathed, "Jesus!" and
I held her for a while and then Martha kissed me.  And I wanted Martha. I
had fucked soft, slender Ronnie with a pure and strangely gentle lust.
But I needed Martha's love and passion and raw intensity.  I entered
Martha without the rubber.  Uncontrollably we whispered obscenities while
we screwed and Ronnie gaped at us and then caught on and lay with her
face close to Martha's, whispering the same words and phrases in Martha's
ear as Martha started cumming, and Martha came wildly, gritting her teeth
and laughing "Yes!".  My cock was so hard I wondered if it would fall off
if it got any bigger, and Ronnie asked, "Wanna cum in me?" and she got
another condom onto me and I fucked her hungrily with her knees raised
and her legs spread the way she liked it.  But I couldn't finish with the
rubber, so Martha lay back and rolled me onto her and removed the rubber
and put me inside her.  She told Ronnie as my pumping became arduously
slow and deliberate, "He's close, Ronnie, he's close," and Ronnie asked
her how she knew and Martha grit her teeth as she watched me straining
into her and told Ronnie "I know, that's all," and she told Ronnie to put
her fingers on the muscles under my balls.  Martha said, "Do it, Ronnie,
hurry!  He's so close!"  I felt Ronnie's fingers searching under my
scrotum and then she pressed and found the knot of muscle and I started
squirting and heard Ronnie gasp, "God, Martha, yeah," and Martha grinned
at me and her eyes were flaming and strange and crazed and her cunt
squeezed and she asked with a greedy smile, "Good?" and I gasped
breathlessly, "Fuck," and I came with Ronnie's fingers under my balls and
her lips kissing my left buttock and I growled "Fuck" into Martha's wild
gaze, and I came for such a long time that Martha's eyes on mine turned
into a blind stare and she whispered "I'm cummin' again--oh I'm...oh,
hon!" and then her eyes closed and her cunt contracted.  I finished, but
kept moving until she finished as well.

    We rested again and got into a long, poetic, whispering session with
Ronnie about her drawings of darkness.  As Martha dozed off, Ronnie and I
continued talking about her drawings while I fingered her until she came
again.  "Another first," she sighed, her hips nodding as she finished.
Soon we were all asleep.  I awoke in the dim light and saw Ronnie getting
dressed.  She smiled at me and gave me a little kiss.  Then she looked at
me and put a palm against my cheek and said, "That was good.  That was
good and dark and wonderful.  I want to leave Martha alone with you.  She
loves you, Steven.  You know that, don't you?  So do I, now." She gave me
a long, deep kiss, her tongue lathering mine, and then she crept out of
the apartment.  Martha slept.  I lay on my back with my arm cradling her
head and fell asleep again.



                             PART 13E:

    I blinked.  The room was black.  The candle was out.  Vaguely, I
heard distant sparrows.  Vaguely, I felt a warm, small, still hand rest-
ing on my cheek, barely touching my skin.  I saw lips near my face, and a
face so close to mine that my sleepy eyes couldn't focus on it.  Before I
saw any features or sensed any other signals, I knew the face and hand
were Martha's.  I was on my back but leaning slightly to my right, my
right arm slung across the bed toward the night table at the right of the
bed.  The only thing I could see clearly in the black room was the lumin-
ous dial on the clock.  It was five minutes after five.

    Without a word, Martha lay on her side, close to me, one soft, re-
laxed nipple on my right shoulder.  I closed my eyes again, drifting in
and out of sleep as my drowsy brain tried to put the room back together.
Her left arm cradled my head into her shoulder.  Her length lay snuggled
along my right side, her tuft warm and crinkly against my right hip, her
right leg draped around my right thigh.  I settled fully onto my back and
her face turned and looked into mine.  She said nothing.  Her only move-
ment was the slow grazing of a finger across my forehead.  She repeated
the motion over and over.  I felt her eyes gazing at my face, then felt
her head move as she looked toward the window when a small gust ruffled
the curtains, and then she looked into my face again.  I opened my eyes
briefly and found her gazing at me: a warm, calm, caring, sisterly
gaze.  I closed my eyes again and wondered if this part of the long night
were a dream.  The lust that earlier drenched the room had evaporated.
The room was a still, silent peacefulness.  I floated, feeling only
Martha's heat against me and her leg over mine and her finger on my
forehead.  Time passed.  Her right hand that had stroked my forehead now
cradled my cheek, her thumb softly rubbing my left eyebrow.  My eyes
closed.  I felt the warmth of her face close to mine and felt her gaze.
Her thumb made love to my eyebrow, carefully, soothingly.  Then her thumb
stilled and her hand pressed my cheek almost imperceptively, and her very
warm, moist, soft lips fit themselves perfectly to mine -- a strangely
unsexual, unwanting kiss, a simple touching.  She did this several times,
lifting her head and then matching her lips to mine.  And then her lips
stayed, pressing slightly.  A genuine, easy, affectionate kiss.  She
lifted her face again and touched her lips to my cheek, nose, eyelids,
and then down my other cheek and across my jawline and then around my
neck. No demands.  No urgency.  Only a touch of her lips.  And this, too,
she repeated, and then again.  There was a pause and I felt her gazing
and heard her breathing calmly and she seemed to be not gazing, but
watching, waiting.  And then her lips on mine again, but this time more
wetly, more warmly, and it was more a kiss than a touch, her own lips
slightly parted and wetter now, and she pressed her lips to mine but, at
the same time, she didn't press; she skimmed her inner lips across my
lips. And for a long time that way she made gentle love to my mouth with
hers.  And then her mouth met mine and the nipping and light puffing
kisses began, trailing down my neck and onto my right shoulder, then
across my throat and onto my left shoulder, her lips opening and her
tongue touching my flesh but not moving, remaining there, tasting,
giving, and I let my head fall to the right and blinked.  The clock said
five twenty-nine.

    She withdrew her tongue, lifting her head, and stroked the spot on my
shoulder that her tongue had warmed, and then her tongue returned, and
the small, soft kisses returned, across my nippples, pinching me ever so
slightly.  Then her shoulders moved and her right hand stroked my left
waist and her lips moved downward, her head dipping gently and sweetly,
and she kissed so lightly and so quietly that I heard nothing but her
breathing.  She made wide circles on me, circles that became slowly
smaller, a mouth that became slowly wetter, and the circle started above
my navel and swung around my left hip and across the top of my right
thigh and then across the left thigh and then around my left hip and back
to the spot above my navel.  And the kisses never changed but the circle
became smaller and smaller.  After a long time the circle was only a few
inches around my softened cock.  I blinked again and the clock said
five-fifty-one.  Inexplicably, her mouth seemed lustless, angelic,
motherly, innocent.  She merely touched, and loved.  And then the circle
was smaller and the slow, infrequent kisses moved into my pubic curls and
then to my cock, and a few seconds passed between each kiss as she
touched them to my sleeping shaft, from the bottom and slowly to the top,
then down.  And then she stopped, and nestled closer, bringing her head
over my loins, and I looked down and saw her gazing at my cock, her left
hand circling and then holding it with only an inch of the awakening tip
above her thumb, and she seemed to study this sight with a gentle,
girlish pout.  And then she lowered her head and licked my tip. She gazed
again, the same way as before, and still holding me she made a little 'o'
with her lips and circled my tip with her inner lips and gently tongued
the slit, and she did this for several seconds.

    Then she removed her hand and her lips and started all over again,
above my navel, in a wide circle.  And she closed the circle slowly, and
kissed up and down my listlessly but gradually responding shaft, which
ached from its earlier striving.  And then the lick, and then her wet
lips gently mothering my tip.  All the while, there was no demand, no
hunger.  Only a learning, a knowing, a loving.  I looked at the clock.
Six seventeen.  I thought: only Martha could do this.  Only Martha would
think of this.  Only Martha could love in a way that was flaming lust
and, later, angelic nurturing.

    Now her lips at my tip opened.  Slowly, not inch by inch but milli-
meter by millimer, her lips sunk down and her mouth enclosed me. The only
sound in the room was her breathing through her nose.  After, it seems,
three minutes, she engulfed my half-hardness completely.  And then it was
another three minutes, it seemed, while her mouth and tongue rose back to
the top, and then her inner lips and her tongue swabbed me gently, and
her mouth let me go.  And she continued to hold me and she gazed at me
while she swallowed and she settled closer.  And then she did the same
thing all over again.  And after she had gone through the same, unhurried
enclosing for the fourth time, I was rigid and hard and good as new,
saying hello to the roof of her mouth with a feeble pulse now and then,
especially on the downstroke.  The rest of me was torpid and slow, but my
cock reached skyward.  Now I was slick with her, and after she removed
her mouth her cupping hand enclosed me and stroked me easily, loosely,
slowly, and she watched, calm, unhurried, serenely pleased as I grew in
her hand.

    And then the soft, subtle sucking began.  One suck, two, three, and
then her lips would gently enclose and wetly swathe the sensitized tip,
circling slowly.  And never a hurry, never seeking more, never a thought
of the next moment, but always a slow, moist lingering in the present.
Then I surmised what she was doing.  As I had done in the streets, she
was memorizing.  She seem to nurse, protect, savor, and record each
moment, each sensation, each response.  Her eyes never left my cock.  And
as she saw my hardened shaft pulse, the glimmerings of a satisfied smile
crossed her face, and she lifted up and put her hands astride my head and
her knees astride my chest, and she raised onto her arms and looked down
between us and centered her middle over mine and, carefully, she lowered
herself and pressed my cock against my stomach and setted on me with the
top half of my cock nestled in her tuft and the lower half cradled in her
humid slit.  Then she settled onto her elbows and arranged her nipples on
mine, and she hugged her body against me, and hugged her elbows into me,
and hugged her knees into me, and held my face.  Her lips hovered over
mine briefly.  Her eyes flutterd and closed and she whispered with a
soft, almost religious hush, "Baby.  My baby."  And then she kissed my
mouth.  Fully, her lips pressing and gliding, her tongue slithering.
Without hunger, without yearning.  But with patient need and relish.

    Her lips left mine.  Rising again, she looked down the length of us
and I looked down and watched and she watched as she carefully raised her
belly and allowed my cock to stand.  She lifted a little higher, and her
slick outer lips found my tip, and circled it, and she let her sticky
outer ring caress and then enfold my tip, as the lips of her mouth had
done, and she raised and lowered, minutely, barely visibly, and her outer
lips kissed and bathed my tip.  My cock yawed and greeted her, and
nestled to her.  I heard her steady, concentrated breathing, and my own
broken sighs.  I rested my hands on her circling hips and let my head
fall back, and enjoyed not the lust but the love, the pleasure of being
learned, intimately mothered, friended and pleased.  Each movement, each
pleasure, each moment was its own.  There seemed to be no impatience for
whatever was next.  Her cunt caressed my tip for a while, and she lifted,
her breath mildly irregular as her slit relinquished me, and I felt a
thick, warm drop from inside her, whose source could only have been my
cumming inside her earlier, that trickled onto my tip and teared downward
and then onto my tummy.

   And then with a quiver in her breath she contacted my tip again, this
time sliding her wet opening along my shaft until I felt the tip of her
firming clit slide along my flesh.  She nudged my tip and, still looking
down, massaged my slit with her clit, around, up and down, and her breath
quickened.  She wetted and pleasured her clit on me for a moment, and
then she raised again, and her slit clung to my tip and my my cock was
lifted straight up.  And with a long sigh through her nose and a serious,
intent pout, she lowered and then engulfed me fully, and ground her belly
benignly on me.  Relaxing onto her elbows, she brought her face close to
mine again, and tenderly held my face between her palms, and kissed me.
Then, her breathing broken only by small, occasional gasps of pleasure,
she started fucking me languidly.

    Or, I should say, made love to me and paused just long enough to
memorize every move, every response, every sensation.  Her eyes closed,
her mouth calmly set, she rose and fell on me with apparent relish and
care and concentration.  When my breath quickened and my cock lurched in
her, she stopped, paused, and raised her tummy and looked down again. And
started over, from the first loving swab with her outer lips, and then to
the nudging and sliding of her clit, and then to enfoldment, and then
fucking.

    And again she did that, and again.  And on the fifth effort, I felt
her back tense and curl, and she didn't pause in sliding her clit along
my shaft.  She gasped, and her face near mine breathed with a short,
broken, quickening rhythm, and she closed her eyes and her lips tight-
ened and she frowned as if deep in concentration, and her clit on me was
as firm and taut as a sparrow's beak, and her juice flowed on me and she
came, quietly, with a long trembling sigh, and her hands tightened on my
face, and her arms shook, and then she pressed her clit against my
cock and paused, and quivered, and jerked with a small, low-pitched,
clipped "Hm!" from deep in her throat, and then another pause and a long
quiver and a jerk and a then "Hm!", and then again, and still another,
and then she slumped with a long, wobbly exhalation, and then she raised
on her hands again and swallowed hard and whimpered, and she rested for
a brief while while her breathing slowed.

    Then she looked down between us, aimed, enfolded me, relaxed on her
elbows at my sides, and held my face tenderly.  And began again.

     It was nearly seven before I found the strength to climax.  Finally,
the blissful agony began.  I felt the first twitch in my tired balls.
Martha looked down, and slowed, but kept going.  Her inner cunt milked me
on each upstroke.  And I thought:  How does she know?  How does she
know?  I spouted.  Thin, watery squirts were all I could manage.  But it
was warm, eager, leaping high into her like salmon.  I kept cumming after
my weak, empty tubes had given their last, and I heaved and panted and my
shaft continued to pulse.  I think I made a loud noise but I couldn't
hear myself.  The long orgasm was poignant and tight and deep.  She
milked me snugly and let me wander in my cumming for as long as I could.

    Then she melted into me everywhere.  She closed her elbows and her
knees and her arms on me and her torso pressed into me and she became a
mothering cocoon around me, and she kissed me passionately.  She stroked
my hair and kissed my face.  She whispered, "Baby.  Baby."



    After lunch and packing, we took a brief stroll along the river near
Gracie Mansion.  I leaned on a railing and looked toward the city and
down the line of the promenande into Manhattan.

    "Will I see this again?" I asked.

    "Oh, of course you will," she said.  She stood behind me, her short
hair rustling in the breeze, and put her arms around me and folded them
around my chest.  She spoke, then, more than she had spoken all morning.
She spoke clearly, slowly, her voice raised barely above the sounds of
the breeze, the rustling trees, and the flowing river.

    "Hon, you may be only five-foot-seven and wear glasses, and you look
sweet and innocent...but you have a great power inside you.  You have an
intensity that is...consuming, and almost frightening.  I know you do,
because I've seen it, I've felt it.  And I know you do, Steven, because I
have it in me, too.  This week, I knew what I probably always knew...That
intensity has bound us for a long time.  I discovered that if I couldn't
express it with you, I felt smothered.  And when we smother ourselves,
that intensity controls us and it makes us do things we should never,
never do.  Being mean to each other in so many subtle, hidden ways.  And
being too nice for too long until one of us explodes.  Taking, without
knowing we're taking.  Or...making promises we have no way of keeping.
Steven, don't let them smother you back home.  When you're smothered,
your strength becomes rage, it becomes hatred.  It can be so very cruel.
But you're too outwardly kind, and you don't turn that cruelty and rage
onto others.  You turn it against yourself.  Don't smother yourself,
hon.  Understand yourself.  Use it, the way you told me you want to.
Don't go back to the way you were, or you're going to hate yourself, and
your needs will turn against you.  Or even against me.  If nothing else,
when I see you again I want you the way you are right here, today."

    She hugged me from behind.  "That's my last speech, cowboy.  Last
lecture for the semester.  You ready to go?"

    "No," I said.

    "I know, hon.  Come on."



    Martha and Ronnie and I in a taxi.  Ronnie smiling and only half
awake, even at three in the afternoon.  Martha subdued.  I pretended I
didn't give a damn.  We all smoked.

    Mertha and I and Ronnie in LaGuardia.  Martha and Ronnie talked.  I
paced and looked out the viewing windows, and smoked.  Time moved more
quickly.  The past week seemed like only a few seconds, a few, paltry
seconds.  Time rushed.  It rushed into my face.  I couldn't stop it.  I
couldn't slow it down.  The more I thought about, the faster the clock
changed.

    "Announcing American Airlines flight 54 to Washington, D.C., Atlanta,
Georgia..."

    "That's it," I said into the window.  I strode to the seats where
Martha nd Ronnie stood to hand me my carry-on bag and my copy of the
Sunday Times.

    "Watch those stewardesses," Ronnie said.  "I hear they're pretty
loose women."

    I shook my head, pleasantly.  "Ronnie, you wore me out."

    She took a drag off her cigarette and grinned and exhaled.  "Eh.  You
can make more, right?  Takes you Southern guys a little longer, thank
god."

    I slung my bag around my shoulder and walked to Ronnie and reached
for a handshake.  She took my hand, and then pulled me to her and held me
tight.  Into my neck she said, "Thank you, Steven.  Thank you so much."
She leaned back and beamed at me.  "You comin' back soon?  Right?"

    I said, "Nah, you'll be married."

    "Yeah, right.  Gimme a kiss.  C'mon."  I did, and she smiled and
pinched my cheek and wiggled it.  "Hmm, MMM!"

    I turned around and looked at Martha.  My tongue froze in my head.
She smiled calmly.  Her hazel eyes watered.  Martha threw Ronnie a
glance, and Ronnie walked away, waving a small bye-bye and smooching at
me.

    "Steven," Martha said.  She pursed her lips and swallowed.  "Damn,
what happened to those ten days we had a few days ago?"

    "Yeah, I know."  I glanced behind me and saw the passengers filing
slowly through the exit door.  I said to Martha, "I have another minute,
anyway."

    "Hon," she began.  She sighed and bit her lip and held her hands
behind her skirt.  "Oh, there's never enough time."

    "I don't know," I said.  "We seem to be pretty good at catch-up,
don't we?"

    "Steven, I...Steven, I don't know what to say, except...I know you
expected more..."

    "I'm not expecting more," I said, gently.

    She looked down at the floor.  "Steven, I'm letting you down.  You're
not saying it, but I know I am.  But I can't say okay if I don't mean
okay, and -- "

    "Hey, I thought the lectures were over for the semester."

    She blushed.  "Damn, you sure know how to be nice about it, don't
you?  Thank you.  I'm so afraid sometimes, that you're just saying it."
She kept smiling, she had to wipe a corner of one eye.  "Will you forgive
me, Stephen?"

    I frowned, in my best Cary Grant manner.  "For what?"

    She said softly, "For not giving you everything."

    I sighed and glanced to see how short the line was.  I said, "Well,
let's see...You didn't lie, you didn't cheat.  You helped me get rid of
my pimples and you got me a great haircut.  You fixed me up with a great
date and you shared Ronnie with me.  You took my ignorance and you gave
me knowledge.  You, uh... You were my friend, my teacher, my sister, even
my dad and my brother.  You were my mother, my confessor, my girlfriend,
my lover, and my sweetheart.  Let's see, you, uh...You gave me affection,
passion, lust, and...you gave me love."  I sighed and looked up at the
ceiling, and hung my head in mock sadness.  "But I guess I just can't
forgive you, Martha, for spending so much money on that typewriter."

    "Stop it, Steven," she moaned, and she held herself close to me and
then she gripped me tightly and cried a little.  She said, "Don't you
dare make me cry in here, I'll slap your face."  She put her arms around
me as tightly as she could and we hugged and swayed for a minute.  She
whispered, "Goodbye, Speedy.  Goodbye, now.  Go on."  She held herself
from me.  Her eyes were red, but she grinned.  "Go on, get on your plane,
before my landlord finds out about you and raises my rent."

    I stared at her.  "You called me Speedy?"

    She blushed again, and pushed herself a little farther back.  "Do you
know, when you were with me early this morning, you called me Martha
Jane?" She saw the surprise on my face, and she released her tension with
a quick little laugh.  "You did.  Go on, Steven.  Go on, you'll miss your
plane!"

    I looked at her.  She backed away.  Several yards beyond her, Ronnie
waved and smiled.  My eyes were on Martha.  My eyes wouldn't leave her.

    "Steven," she insisted, crying.  "Steven, go on!"  She stopped
backing away when I threw her a kiss.  She waved at me, her other hand
rubbing her forehead and wiping an eye, and I turned and started for the
exit.  The other passengers had gone ahead.  At the door I stopped and
looked at her again.  She smiled, sadly, and she lifted a palm and waved
weakly.  "Go on!"

    Inside the door I showed a stewardess my tickets and receipts.  She
smiled and said thank you.  I went down a short stairway and out another
door.  Into the sun.  Onto the walkway.  I slung my bag over my shoulder
and walked.  Ahead, more blazing sun and blinding concerete and another
stewardess and the metal boarding ramp and the DC-4.  Ahead, Memphis.

    Halfway to the plane I slowed.  Why had she called me Speedy?  Why
would I have to forgive her?  An unseen, ominous weight dragged me to a
stop halfway down the walkway.  I waited.  Three of me waited: one me
behind, one me ahead, one me watching the other two.  Why did I have to
go?  Why couldn't I stay where I was?  I turned around to scan the huge
terminal and the dark, looming windows.  I saw only the reflection of the
airplanes and the airfield.  Where was she?  Why did I have to leave?

    The stewardess ahead called, "We're boarding, sir."

    I looked ahead, lost in the middle of the walkway.  With a friendly
smile we're taking you back.  Back where you came from.  Back where you
started.  Back to the home that isn't a home.  Back to the stifling heat and
the bleeding saints, the plastic christs, and the old women and old men
lashing me down for a ride to a heaven that didn't exist.

    "Boarding, please," she insisted nicely.

    Not being myself, I took a step forward.  One step farther away.  A
second step, a second step farther away.  Then more steps, and farther
away.  One universe expanding, one universe contracting.  Myself, growing
and shrinking.  One person moving forward, one moving back.  Onto the
ramp, my face a pale mask of the striving within.  Up the ramp.  Into the
door.  Down the aisle.  Into my seat.  I sat.  I slumped, numb.  I gazed
out the window, my eyes unfocused.  Soon the ground crept by, and then
the ground soared by, and then New York disappeared below the window.

    One of me stayed on the ground, without provisions or hope or sight
or legs, and refused to leave.


                          Continued...


             ****  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, 1996 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 14A:


    In Memphis I was, on purpose, the last one off the plane.  I lugged my
carry-on at my side and then flung it over my shoulder as I entered the
damp, hot daylight.  The wrenching familiarity of everything I saw had me
thinking: fifteen years to get somewhere, and in three and a half hours I
was fifteen years behind.

    My mother, Aunt Frances, my sister Ann, and my great-aunt Mary met me
at the arrival gate.  I hugged each of them perfunctorily.  My Aunt
Frances, as usual, seemed confused and was not quite certain where I'd
been for ten days.  I was not smiling and I knew it and I didn't want to.

    My sister asked, "Did you see the Empire State Buildin'?"

    "No," I answred.  "Never got there.  I saw it from the street."

    Great Aunt Mary shrieked, "Did you buy anything at Saks Fifth
Avenue?  They always have a sale".

    "No," I said, "I never made it to Saks."

    As we drove down Airways Boulevard we passed a newly constructed
Holiday Inn.  Great, I thought: every building and every street in this
town is going to remind me of Martha.  I gazed out the window.  The
sameness.  The boredom.  The torpor.  The bleaching sun.  The enervating,
choking humidity.  The empty sidewalks.  The empty stores.  The churches,
churches, churches, and the revival camps.  Signs directing traffic to
Elvis Presley's house.

    "Did you see the Statue of Liberty?" my sister wanted to know.

    "Yes," I said.

    "Well, what was it like?"

    "It's a big, tall statue sitting in the middle of New York Harbor on
a tiny island."

    My mother said, "Well, didn't you have a good time?"

    "Yeah," I said, weakly feigning enthusiasm.

    Mom said, driving at twenty-five miles per hour in a forty-five-mile
zone with both hands clutching the steering wheel so tightly that her
knuckles were white, "Well, it don't sound like it.  I guess you did,
look at him.  You can tell he did, 'cause he won't say so.  I guess that
means you had a good time.  Well, let's see, what happened while you were
gone?  I had a corn removed, the thing was killin' me so bad, I went to
Doctor Stabnik's and told him 'cut it off before it drives me crazy.' And
it was hot down here, I mean really really hot!  And your daddy's been
working at the store, of course, so nothin' new there.  And your aunt
Margaret's gonna have another baby.  And, let's see, what else happened?"

    Aunt Frances shrieked from the back seat, "You were in New York,
Speedy?  Is that where you went?"

    I sighed, "Yes, Aunt Frances."

    My Great Aunt Mary shrieked from the other side of the back seat,
"Speedy, I hear they have a lotta niggers in New York.  Is that true?
Did you see a lotta niggers up there?"

    I thought:  god damn, I've got to get out of here.  At least I would
finish the day with a call to Martha to let her know I arrived home
safely.  For two days no one noticed that I wore new glasses.




    September, 1957.

    I started my sophomore year at Christian Brothers High School.  And I
kept the paper route and the Saturday delivery job.  Those would be, I
vowed, my future tickets back to New York.  I started a diary.  After two
weeks I had nothing to remember, so I threw it away.  Instead, I typed
fifteen- and twenty-page letters to Martha and mailed both within a
week.  I spent a week searching for a birthday card for her, and on the
inside of the card I wrote "I Love You."  But then I thought better of
it, and tried to erase the "I" to tame it.  I couldn't erase the
ballpoint letter without damaging the card, so I made a special trip to
buy another card like it and wrote instead, "Love you.  Steven."

    She answered both letters with one.  As usual, she handwrote only two
or three pages.  I had grown to expect as much, especially in light of
her workload.  Her letter ended with, "P.S.: Ronnie sends her love. She
wants you to come back.  And Marilyn thought you were cute.  And, honest,
we all miss you.  Especially Ronnie.  Hon, did you make an impression on
her! (wink)."

    Her letters had never been markedly intimate.  I suppose she thought
(and I agreed) that my parents might read them.  I saved all of Martha's
letters in a shoe box, along with a few incidental papers and other
scraps to throw my parents off.  And I thought little of the relative
brevity of her writing; had she typed them, I supposed, they might have
been longer.

    Between September and Christmas I wrote several long, plaintive
letters asking Martha to suggest some way to get me to New York, or at
least out of Memphis and into the northeast.  She answered the letters
with one, again, asking me to be patient and make my grades at Christian
Brothers so that I could get a scholarship to an Eastern school as she
had done.  But graduation from high school seemed eons away.  I knew  her
suggestion was sensible and was, in the long run, probably my best
option.  Each day I grew more temperamental, pouring out my frustrations
into longer and longer letters.  I sent a shorter letter to Ronnie, whose
last name I couldn't recall, and enclosed it with a letter to Martha for
delivery.  I received Christmas cards from both of them.

    On New Year's Day, Martha called me long distance.

    "Steven," she said, "you sound so miserable.  Please try to cheer
up.  You're in a great high school, and you can win scholarships through
them.  It's really a feather in your cap, and it's a very prestigious
name."

    I breathed into the telephone, "Martha.  Martha, I hate this.  I hate
all of it."

    "Remember what I told you about feeling sorry for yourself.  Remember
what I told you about being yourself.  You'd be so much happier if you
were in the theater and doing other things at school."

    "But if I don't work, I can get back to New York."

    "Steven, you're crazy.  It would take you at least six more months to
save that much money again."

    "Okay, then six months from now is June.  So I could come up this
summer."

    "Well, if you want to, but...Hon, that won't get you up here perma-
nently, though, will it?  That only gets you here for a few days.  If you
won a scholarship up here, and with your theater work adding to your aca-
demic record, why...if you did it that way, you'd be here forever.  Not
just a few days.  Doesn't that make sense?"

    I didn't answer.

    "Doesn't that make sense?"

    "Yes," I said, "it does.  You always make sense.  I never seem to
make any sense."

    "Oh, Steven.  There you go again.  Good lord, a few months home and
you're right back where you started.  Well, hon...I guess you better save
and come up here before they make you a total wreck down there, and...
maybe we can figure out something else in the meantime."

    "Next summer then?"

    "Just keep working, and we'll set up something later.  Summer's a
long way off, kiddo."

    I told her I had received a Christmas card from Ronnie.

    "Really?  She told me she would send you one.  She has a boyfriend,
you know.  A steady.  She met him Thanksgiving.  I guess she must have
finally taken our advice, because he's a far cry from the idiots she used
to hang around with.  And how about you, Steven?"

    I stuttered and paused and told her, "Oh, I get around.  A little."

    "Steee-ven?" she said skeptically.  "A little?"

    "Well, I'm -- y'know, I'm busy doing a, uh, a play at school in a few
weeks."

    "I thought you were still working on your paper route?"

    "Well, just for a few weeks, I'm doing both, but...I'll be off the
paper route soon.   It's just until they find someone else to take the
job."

    "Oh, hon, that's good.  I'm glad you're back into it.  I'm so glad
for you.  Hasn't it made you feel a lot happier?"

    "Yeah.  Of course it has."

    I finished the conversation with such bothersome pangs of guilt that
I wondered if I could ever speak comfortably with her again.  I began
keeping copies of the letters I sent to her so that I could track any
white lies I wrote.  I didn't say that I was working madly, exactly the
way I'd worked before.  I didn't say that I was on the lookout for
better-paying jobs that would get me to New York earlier.

    I tamed the complaining tone of my letters and mailed them less
frequently.  The next letter arrived in mid-February.  Another arrived in
April.  Then, a birthday card.

    I had a few disastrous flirtations.  The Brothers held a sophomore
class prom.  Those who couldn't find a date could get one through Brother
Lawrence's contacts with the Catholic girls' schools in town.  At first,
my sister was going to fix me up with a blind date.  After meeting
several of her girlfriends I decided I'd be better off with pot luck
through Brother Lawrence.  How bad could it be, I told myself;  after
all, my date with Marilyn in New York had not been such a trying
experience.

    But trying it was.  Being driven to and from the dance by my mother
helped little.  The girl had been in plays at Saint Agnes Academmy for
Girls -- apparently, this was her sole qualification for being picked by
Brother Lawrence.  Other than her drama interests, we had nothing in
common.  She was, I discovered later, a local glamour girl from a rela-
tively wealthy family whose major social interests were football players
and other class heroes.  I spent the evening introducing her to my class-
mates, and she spent the evening traipsing about the dance hall floor
with them.

    It actually made little difference to me.  Beyond a basic sexual
titillation, I had no interest in her or any other girls.  My sole
interest was to save money and, hopefully, leave home.  And, definitely,
make it to New York.   At the Liberty Cash Grocery Number 23, Charlie
himself couldn't fire my interest in his numerous female contacts.

    On my sixteenth birthday I received a driver's permit.  My stepdad
refused to allow me to drive the family car, but to me the permit meant
I was one step closer to independence.  I began planning the next step,
which would be to buy my own used car.  Of course, that wouldn't be
legally possible until I was eighteen.  But for severaI nights for weeks
I stayed up late, calculating the possibilities: the time required to
save a little more for trips to New York; saving for a future car of my
own; perhaps getting someone else to let me use their car for a larger,
more lucrative paper route; or using someone else's car to get me to a
better job after school.

    For the time being, the driver's permit allowed me to drive my Aunt
Frances' or my Daddy Joe's car.  Durng my weekend stays with them I began
taking them to work and picking them up at night now and then, or making
short drives to cafe supply houses.  When Aunt Frances gave me three or
four dollars for gas, I'd secretly pocket some of the money.  The first
few times I did this I remember saying to myself, "There ya go, Steven.
on your way to a life of crime."

    That, and lying to Martha about my jobs and my long-range plans,
often kept me up at night.

    By the end of July, I had received no letter for nearly four months.
I was so busy working that summer -- the paper route in the mornings and
the delivery bikes all day during the week -- that I had little time or
energy for the long letters I'd written earlier.

    On the last Sunday in July, 1958, I was spending the day at the
Tremont Cafe when I received a telephone call just after dinner.  I
stood behind the service counter talking to one of Uncle johnny's old
railroad buddies when Mama Rose answered the telephone.

    "Butch, honey?" she called from the front corner of the store, near
the cash register.  "You got a phone call, Butch."

    "Who is it?" I asked.

    "I dunno, Butch, but it's for you."

    This could only be Martha, I thought, and I rushed to the phone.

    "Hello?"

    "Steven?  It's Martha."

    "Oh, Martha!  Hello.  I thought you were dead!"

    "Well, not yet, hon."

    "Your Southern accent has totally disappeared."

    "Has it?  Do I sound like one of those enraged New Yorkers?"

    "No, no, you sound just fine."

    "What's all that noise in the background?"

    "That's the juke box in this place.  Is it awful, or what?  Here,
hold on, I'm moving the telephone into the corner behind the cigar
counter, maybe that'll help.  There.  Is that better?"

    "Yes, a little.  It's a little better.  Steven, I had to call all
over town to find you. Doesn't anybody know where you hang out?  I called
your mother, and she had me call your Aunt Frances, and nobody answered,
and then...well, anyway, I finally got through to you."

    "Yeah, well, they don't pay very much attention to me, whether I tell
them where I am or not."

    "Yes, I found that out.  Well...how's school?  How'd your play turn
out?  Have you started anything for the summer?"

    "Oh, it was, uh, really great.  You know, no big deal, these things
come and go.  I'll be in something else soon."

    "You never wrote me about it."

    "No, I...I've been really busy with all that, y'know."

    "Please write me, Steven, and let me know how you're doing.  You have
me so worried sometime.  I'm sorry I never come home, I'd be able to keep
track if I did, but...you know, I don't feel any better about Memphis than
you do."

    "I understand that.  It's no problem, Martha, really, uh...Listen,
I'll write and let you know everything.  I'll write this week."

    "Oh, good, I know you'll have lots of juicy news about your plays and
things you're working on, and let me know if you need any information on
colleges up here.  I can get all you need."

    "Yeah.  Yeah, I'll do that."

    "Steven...Listen, I...I had to reach you tonight, this has been on my
mind for a while now, and...Steven...hon, are you there?  Are you still
there?"

    "Yes, I'm here.  Still here."

    "Oh, I heard weird noises."

    "I was moving the telephone set, Martha, it's so noisy in here."

    "Oh, that's what it was.  Well...Steven, I...Well, you remember I
told you, none of us knew what might be happening, and my own jobs were
so irregular and everything, and...Well, I might be moving to Connecti-
cut.  To Riverside, Connecticut.  It's about an hour north of New York on
the commuter train."

    "Oh, I see.  But you can still get to New York?"

    "Oh, yes, that's no problem.  And I still work in Manhattan for the
time being, but...Steven, I..."

    "Yeah?  I'm still here."

    "I know you are...Steven...I..."  Over the line, I heard her swallow
hard. "Promise me, now, you won't get upset or anything.  I'm not really
sure how you feel about this, I'm not...I..."  Again, she swallowed hard.
"Steven, I've met someone."

    The juke box blared.  The restaurant was crowded at the tail end of
the dinner hour.  The music and the customers and the clanking pots
receded into nowhere.  All I could hear was the telephone in my ear.

    "I met him a long time ago, actually, but nothing ever really
happened, you know, and then...several months ago...Steven, promise me
that you won't...Oh, darn"

    "I promise.  Why do you want me to promise something?  You've met
people before."

    "Steven...I want to move in with him.  For a few months.  And try...
I want...Oh, Steven, I...I think I'm...I'm pretty sure we're going to get
married.  Before the end of the summer."

    "...Oh...I see, well, that's..."

    "That's why I had to reach you.  I didn't want you to get this in the
mail or anything like that, and I'm packing now.  Can you believe this,
all the packing I've done, and I'm packing again!  But I'm...moving in a
few days to stay with him in Connecticut, and I thought if you called I
wouldn't have the phone here anymore in Manhattan, and I...Well, I just
decided this weekend to say yes.  And I couldn't do it without telling
you, Steven...Steven?  Hon?"

    "Yeah, I'm here, it's okay."

    "Steven...Do you understand what I mean?  I'm trying to say...Hon, it
was...Well, I didn't expect it.  I just didn't expect it."

    "Well, sure, you...uh...you really like this guy.  Right?"

    "Yes, I do, Steven.  I do.  Not like with you, in many ways, but...
well, it's just very different.  I don't know how to explain it, and I
won't even try, but...Steven...sweetheart, I hope this doesn't...You know
how much I care about you.  I've been -- Oh, hon, I've been so worried! I
sat up late with Ronnie, and then sat up all night by myself.  I didn't
know what to do.  I tried to write, but...That wouldn't do, and I knew I
had to call you.  And now I...I still don't know what to do."

    "Oh, but I'm...glad you found somebody.  Really."

    "...You're not just saying that?  Steven, I'll make him buy me a
ticket down there and I'll beat your little behind if you're just saying
that.  You know how I feel about you."

    "No, really.  Really, I'm happy, and I...Well, I hope it works.  I
hope it's better than the treatment Ronnie ended up with."

    "Oh, Ronnie, well...Ronnie's okay, I guess, I haven't heard anything
tragic lately, but...Hon, this isn't about Ronnie.  This is about you.  I
sat by this phone for three hours before I could call you, and I spent
another hour trying to figure out where you were.  I had to find you and
tell you, and...I will write.  I'm moving this week, but as soon as I'm
settled in Riverside, I'll write you a nice long letter, and give you my
new address and everything."

    "Well, when I come to New York I'll be within train distance of you,
won't I?"

    "When you come to New York?"

    "Well, I...I'll be visiting up there, sooner or later.  Hopefully
sooner, and...well...When would you and I be able to...you know, to get
together again?"

    There was a long pause on the line.  I knew she was still there.  The
low, unchanging hum from her end of the line told me I was still connect-
ed.  A couple of seconds passed.  Only a couple of seconds.  At the time,
it seemed like several minutes.

    She said, gently, "Never, Steven."

    I spoke quickly.  "...Oh, well, *sure*, I mean...You know what I
mean, I mean...if I ever came up there, or...You know, I could visit, and
take the train up and, you know..."

    "Steven...I'm going to marry him."

    "Of course, of coure you are, I didn't...I didn't mean the question
to sound the way it did, I meant...you know, if I'm ever in New York, we
could meet for lunch or something, or...You know what I mean."

    "If we marry, it'll be by the end of the summer.  And we'll probably
come to Memphis.  He can sure afford it, so I'd drop by and see your
folks.  And I'd see you, of course.  I'd love to see you again, sweet-
heart.  Maybe you'll be doing a play, and I can see you.  I'd love to see
you doing something you like, I wouldn't miss that for the world."

    "Well, I'll let you know if I'm gonna be...doing anything."

    "Hon, are you all right?"

    "Yeah, I'm fine.  I'm fine."

    "Oh, honey, I...Steven, if you want to say anything...Go ahead."

    "...Don't be ridiculous."

    "Steven."

    "You deserve somebody.  You need a home.  You can't...you can't
shower in the kitchen forever.  Anyway...why should things just stay the
way they are?  You know?  I know how you feel about me."

    "Do you?  Do you, sweetheart?  Do you really?"

    "Sure I do.  You know that.  And I have a...I have a girlfriend I've
seen a little of, you know.  I mean..."

    "Steven...you know I love you, hon.  You know that, don't you?
Please, don't...Please, don't lie to me Steven."

    "Well, we...we grew up together, and...y'know...but things change.
Things happen."

    "Hon, my feelings about you have never changed.  I told you how I
felt. I do love you, Steven.  And I'm glad you're doing better down
there.  And when we come to Memphis, you'll be around, right?  In late
August or early September?  That's when we plan to come down.  I'd love
to see you, hon.  Is that okay?  Could I see you then?  You won't end up
in the movies and go to Hollywood by then, will you?"

    "I seriously doubt it."

    "Haha, oh, hon.  Oh, I do love you.  I was so afraid that...Listen,
I'll write to you next week, and you'll get a letter soon.  Okay?  A long
one, this time."

    "Yeah...okay."

    "I have to go and call my mom, for what it's worth, and tell her I'm
moving, and...Hon, you're still my favorite.  You're my one and only,
Steven, in so many ways.  You know that, don't you?"

    "Of course I do.  And you're...You're my one and -- "

    "Hon?  What's wrong?  Steven?"

    "...It's okay, I, uh......almost dropped the phone."

    "Listen, this is your Aunt Frances' business phone, and I know how
she is, and we don't want her to throw a fit.  But I'll write.  And I'll
give you my new phone number."

    "...Yeah...Right.  That's good."

    "Steven, please don't...Well...Goodbye, hon."

    "...Yeah."

    "Write to me!"

    "Of course I will.  Goodbye, Martha."

    "Okay, I...Goodbye, hon.  You'll hear from me, don't worry...and I
...There's never enough time, is there?...well...Goodbye, Steven."

    A click.  Two clicks.  A dial tone.

    "Goodbye, Martha."

    I listened to the dial tone for about half a minute.  What was left
of her was out there in that dial tone, somewhere.  I hung up the phone
and placed it near the cash register where it belonged.  The juke box
hammered, "You Ain't Nothin' But A Hounddog".  People ate and talked and
read their newspapers.  I put my hands in my pockets and walked behind
the counter and into the kitchen.  Mama Rose asked me, "Who was that on
the phone, Butch?"

    "Nobody," I said.

    I walked through the back room where a waitress was taking her coffee
break.  I headed for the back door.

    "Where you off to, sport?" she asked.

    "Takin' a walk."

    "Don't get lost, hon."

    I went outside into the rear parking lot.  It was dark.  Hot.  Humid.
Still.  I opened the door to the ten-by-ten foot, firebrick, food storage
bin that was built onto the rear of the Tremont Cafe.  I shuffled among
the bushels of carrots and the potato sacks and tomatos.  In the dark, I
sat on a crate of cabbage.  I cried for a long time.



                             PART 14B:


    One day in late September when I came home very late from school, Mom
said, "Speedy, You missed Martha Jane's call.  I told her I didn't know
where you were.  By the way, that reminds me, she called a couple of
weeks ago, and you weren't here then, either.  I guess I forgot all about
it.  Where've you been all day?  It's after supper."

   I opened an upper door of the kitchen cabinets and fetched a clean
glass.  I said dully, "I had to stay late in the library at school."

   "Oh, well...Martha Jane's gonna be here next Sunday with her new
husband, you know, that guy from Connecticut that she married.  We're
gonna have a little barbecue out back on the patio.  Your daddy's out
there repairin' the barbecue stand.  Anyway, you gonna be here next
Sunday afternoon?"

   "Yeah," I said, pouring a glass of ice water.  "I guess so."

   "I tell ya, that girl's stepdaddy, that Mr. Buchanan, he's a hoot,
Ain't he?  He won't even let her and her husband come to his house.  I
tell ya, some of these rich folks are nuts.  I cain't figure him out, I
thought he wanted his daughter married.  Anyway, Martha Jane will be
here, and her mother and her sister Evelyn will be here, they're gonna
sneak away from Mr. Buchanan and be here Sunday.  And Evelyn Graham's
husband, too.  She's married, too, you know.  Some guy at the First
National Bank."

    "That's nice," I said as I emptied the unused water into the sink.
"I'll be here, I guess."

    "Well, it'll start at four-thirty or so, we figure it'll be nice out-
side and cooled off by then..."

    As she rambled, I went into my room without a word and closed the
door.  Many of my belongings had been packed in boxes standing against
one wall.  My family was preparing to move in a few weeks to an older but
better neighborhood in Memphis, near Southwestern College.  Many of the
Lobianco family members lived in that area, with several related clans
living next door to each other.  Our own neighborhood had deteriorated
rather early and was quickly being overrun by lower-class residents who
displaced the original homeowners.

    Because we were moving to a different part of town, I quit my paper
route.  I would have quit the paper route, anyway.  It had worn me out
and grown too large for servicing on my Schwinn.  And I had proven myself
as a hard worker to Tony Lobianco, who preferred that I spend more time
at Christian Brothers and keep up my grades for college prospects.

    I was about to quit my Saturdays at the grocery store.  I had told my
mother about it, but hadn't mentioned it to Tony.  When my mother asked
why I planned to quit the store, I replied morosely, "I'm tired.  And I
don't wanna give any more."  She balked at my answer and asked what I
meant, but I said, "It means I'm tired.  I'm worn out. That's all."

    In my room that night in September, I sat at my desk and looked
around for anything that might be left of Martha.  I had destroyed her
letters -- burned them in the garbage can out back, along with the
pictures I'd taken in New York, and then stirred the ashes and dumped
more paper on them and burned it all again.  The burning included poems,
notes, and anything in my bedroom that would remind me of Martha.  I left
the typewriter at my Aunt Frances' house, and bought a smaller one.  Of
course, there was still the rest of Memphis to contend with; every car
trip into the Memphis State area brought back another set of memories.
All that was left, in the small top drawer of the desk hutch, was her
last letter.  It arrived about two weeks after the phone call.  It had a
return address in Riverside, Connecticut.  It was a thick envelope.  I
could tell that Martha must have had to fold the flap firmly in order to
seal it.  I had never opened it. The seal remained intact.  Now and then
I would look at the envelope and wonder what was inside and wonder if I
should get mixed up in it by opening the thing and reading the letter.

    Often in my bed at night, as I tried to sleep, I would see in my mind
the flaming, smoking letters in the big metal drum in our back yard.  I
remembered the night I gathered them and all the other remnants, going
through my room meticulously to make certain I'd forgotten nothing.  I
did it without pause, without thinking.  Even as I was doing it, I didn't
know why.  I vaguely recall Fiore saying "You can't go back, only
ahead."  I knew of no other way to go ahead.  If I felt an emotion
welling up, I thought about something else as I gathered and burned the
memories.  I allowed only unrelated thoughts to enter my head.  I told
myself that if I could ignore pain when I worked out, I could ignore pain
any time.

    The unopened envelope had survived by accident.  When it arrived I
placed it in a spot apart from the others, intending to open it later.
Each time I brought out the envelope, it remained unopened.




    On the last Sunday in September, 1958, I drove my Mama Rose to work
at the Tremont Cafe.  I drove Daddy Joe's car and then drove Daddy Joe to
his liquor store on Poplar Street.  He would be there all day that day
taking inventory.  I was supposed to pick them up at eleven o'clock
Sunday night and bring them home.

    Instead of staying at the Tremont all day as I usually did on week-
ends, I drove the car back to Mama Rose's and spent the day there.  I
roamed about the house, rummaging through the attic, looking for my old
toys.  I found many of my dad's childhood relics: books, some high school
texts from Catholic High; I found some of his letters in an old trunk.  I
spent the day rummaging through a past I'd never known, wondering how
the people in that house sounded and acted in the 1920's and 1930's when
my father was growing up.  Later in the day I knew I would soon have to
make up my mind whether or not I would be at my parents' home on Macon
Road when Martha arrived.

    I walked through my Mama Rose's neighborhood.  I walked on the
streets where my father grew up.  I had never seen these streets.  I
looked at the houses and the people and the stores.  I wondered what he
might have been thinking on that last night, when he wrote my mother and
decided that taking a chance on a risky mission was better than a sure
shot at living half-alive.

    I decided I wouldn't go to my parents' house that day.

    At four-thirty on Sunday I was in Mama Rose's house, napping in the
bed where my father once slept and where I slept every other weekend as a
toddler.  When I awoke at five-fifteen I looked about the room and
listened, searching for remnants of my dad's presence in the room.  I
felt I had begun to understand his decision.

    At around seven o'clock the telephone rang.  I wondered if it might
be Mama Rose calling, or Daddy Joe.  Or my mother.  Or Martha.  I didn't
answer the phone.  It stopped after seven rings.

    At eight o'clock I was in Daddy Joe's back room, sitting in his
leather easy chair with my feet on the footstool.  I paged through his
collection of National Geographics.  His collection went as far back as
the early 1920's.  I knew looking at them might be risky; when Martha was
Martha Jane, she had shown me a picture of a woman in a National Geo-
graphic from the 1920's, a picture that reminded her of herself.  But
that night, I never came across that picture.

    At eight-forty the phone rang again.  I wondered what Martha looked
like at that moment.  I wondered if she was the caller.  I sat in the
chair and read the magazine.  The phone rang ten times before it stopped.

    I thought it might have been someone from the Tremont calling, so I
called the cafe.  Mama Rose answered the phone.

    "Hi, Butch!  Is that you?"

    "Yeah, Mama Rose.  Listen, did you just call here?"

    "No, I didn't call.  And it wasn't Daddy Joe.  He got tired of work-
ing at the liquor store, so he left early and took a taxi over here to
the Tremont.  He was just getting ready to call you and tell you he'll be
here tonight when you pick us up."

    "Well," I lied quickly, "I don't feel good."

    "What's the matter, sweetheart?"

    "I, uh, drank some milk.  I think it was going sour.  I think it made
me sick, so I took a nap."

    "Oh, Butch, be careful.  If the milk's bad, just throw it away.  It
ain't worth it to drink bad milk."

    "I know.  Can you and Daddy Joe get home tonight?  I think I'm too
sick to drive.  I don't wanna risk it, if all I have is a permit instead
of a license."

    "Sure, Butch.  Don't you worry, your Aunt Francis can bring us home."

    "Do me a favor and see if anyone called for me over there at the
cafe."

    "Okay, hold on."  I listened to the juke box over the telephone and
the clatter of the restaurant.  In a moment Mama Rose came back to the
phone.  "Aunt Frances says your mama called here a little while ago,
looking for you."

    "I see.  Well...if she calls back, tell her...I'm sick and I'm asleep
over here.  I probably won't hear the phone."

    "Okay, honey-boy.  I'm sorry you're so sick.  Don't worry about it,
Aunt Frances will get us home around eleven-thirty."

    I hung up.  I grabbed another magazine and sat in Daddy Joe's chair.

    At nine-fifteen the phone rang again, ten times.  It rang ten times
again at nine-thirty-five.  It didn't ring again that night.

    At a little after ten I went to bed in my father's and Uncle Frank's
old room.  I lay in the big bed and paged through one more magazine.  I
wondered what Martha was thinking.  I wondered if she knew what I was
doing.  I wondered if she knew why I was doing it.  I wondered, even, if
I knew.  I had read a case in a psychology book where an orphan had cut
all ties with new friends at one point because the new friends were the
only symbols the orphan had for the mother and father that he was bound
to break away from one day.  Or was my inner power now making me do
things I should never, never do?  Or had Martha somehow known this would
happen all along?  Had she indeed found that a future with me would be
impractical later, and then happened to meet her ideal while trying to
resolve the problem?  Had she shared me with Ronnie to whet my young
appetite for more adventure, or as a gift, a consolation for what she
knew would happen anyway?  Or had I, powerful sexpot Steven, managed to
somehow keep us together longer than she thought I would?  Had I missed
my chance by being too cautious with Martha and not speaking my feelings
completely?

    At ten-thirty I put out the light on the table beside the bed.  As I
settled into my pillow I said aloud, "Regardless of the answers, pal,
you're flying on your own."

    I lay on my side.  My eyes drifted to the big, curtained window
beside the bed.  The warm, late-September Memphis air drifted almost
inaudibly through the leaves of the fig tree outside the window.  I saw
moonlight spilling onto the window sill and onto the bed and onto me.  My
eyes clung to the moonlight.  My ears clung to the faint rustling of
little leaves on the fig tree.  My mind clung to a memory of the same
sound and the same soft air a few years earlier, and a warm night and
hazel eyes and a song:

                        Last Saturday night I got married.
                        Me and my wife settled down.
                        Now me and my wife are parted.
                        I'm gonna take another stroll downtown.

                        Irene goodnight, Irene goodnight.
                        Goodnight, Irene,
                        Goodnight, Irene,
                        I'll see you in my dreams.






    By December my family had moved to a bigger house in midtown
Memphis.  The neighborhood was packed with other members of the Lobianco
family, making my stepdad feel right at home.  I had no paper route.  I
had no delivery job.  I spent weekends doing homework and rehearsing for
plays and planning on how my GI Bill money from the War Orphans Act of
World War II would be used to get me through college a few years hence. I
was thinking about joining the Army after I got out of high school.  I
wanted to see more New York's, more sights, more sounds, more people.  I
wanted to see some of the places I'd read about in the National Geograph-
ic.  I wanted to see anything but Memphis.

    Now and then I would falter and start looking for remnants of Martha.
For weeks I searched for the unopened envelope in our new home.  I never
found it.  I wrote a letter to Ronnie, not knowing what I would do if she
replied.  The letter was returned, marked "addressee unknown."

    By then the memories were starting to fade and scatter.  The memories
became a yearning for the missing pieces.  Soon there was mostly the
yearning.  At night I stopped the yearning by pulling down the shades in
my bedroom to darken the moonlight on the window sills.

    Just after Christmas I drove my Daddy Joe's car one Saturday after-
noon to the Liberty Cash Grocery Number 23 to deliver some papers to my
stepdad.  I parked in front of the store.  It was a chilly, but not
unpleasant, late December day.  1959 would arrive soon.  And then the
60's and graduation and college.  Getting out of the car, I looked across
the street at the building where I had grown up.  Where Speedy and Martha
Jane had grown up.  The project was beginning to wear down.  The lawns
needed cutting.  Much of the shrubbery had died or was uprooted.  The
clump of thick shrubbery and saplings that once stood beside the building
was replaced by an extension of the parking area.  I thought about the
day I had tried, in a rage, to uproot a shrub with my bare hands.  Some
of the trees were gone.

    I delivered my stepdad's papers and said hello to some of the guys I
worked with in the past.

    "Hey, Speedy!" one of the guys yelled.  "You comin' back to
work?  We needja here!"

    I grinned, "Nope.  I'm working on a project.  Big new project."

    On my way out of the store I saw an attractive girl pass in front of
me on the sidewalk.  I thought she might have eyed me, too, but I was
moving too quickly to be certain.  I pulled out my key ring and was
standing at the driver's side of my car, fishing for the door key, when I
saw that the girl had stopped on the corner and was looking at me.

    She had long dark hair and a strangely pretty, thin face, a long
neck, and soft nipples pushing from small breasts under her pink silk
blouse.  Long-legged and slim, she wore loose jeans and brown sandals and
an open corduroy jacket.  A second look at her face and her darkly
lashed, brown eyes evoked a memory of someone I had met before.

    "Hey," she said hesitantly, her voice soft and thick with a Southern
accent, "Ain't your name Stevie?  Or Speedy?  Or somethin' like that?"

    "It's Steven," I said.  I walked toward her with a smirk.  "Hi,
Karen."

    Her eyes lit up.  "You 'membered my name!" she said.  She walked
toward me.  "I thought you might 'a had trouble findin' me in the neigh-
borhood, 'cause I don't hang around with Chrissie no more.  And I ain't
seen you around in a while.  I don't remember you wearin' glasses."

    I ignored her remark about the glasses.  Had she changed?  More
grown-up.  Brighter, healthier.  At least, now, she smiled more easily.
There was something in the sweetness of her smile that reminded me of
Martha and of Martha Jane, and something dark and sad in her yes that was
Ronnie.

    I thought: What the hell, you have to start somewhere.  You have to
work with your limits.  I asked, "You still as shy as you used to be?"

    "Maybe."  She winked, and flashed a grin.  She added, looking deeply
into me, "It depends."

    I said, "Maybe we should do something sometime, and see what makes
you more comfortable."

    She shrugged.  "Okay."

    I pretended a bantering, casual laugh.  I pretended real hard.
"Don't say okay," I said, "if you don't mean okay."

    Thus a long and impossible journey ended.

    And a new, unfinished one began.



                                    T H E   E N D


