Message-ID: <10548eli$9804221437@qz.little-neck.ny.us> From: john_dark@anon.nymserver.com Subject: {SJR}"The Adventures of Me and Martha Jane 09B"( bf mF mF+ )[31/52] Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d X-Note: This message was posted by a secure email service. Please report MISUSE OR ABUSE of this automated secure email service to . Path: qz!not-for-mail Organization: The Committee To Thwart Spam Approved: X-Moderator-Contact: Eli the Bearded X-Story-Submission: X-Original-Message-ID: <6hk23h$9t7$1@sparky.wolfe.net> The following story is posted for the entertainment of adults. If you are below the age of eighteen or are otherwise forbidden to read electronic erotic fiction in your locality, please delete this message now. The story codes in the subject line are intended to inform readers of possible areas that some might find distasteful, but neither the poster nor the author make any guarantee. You should be aware that the story might raise other matters that you find distasteful. Caveat lector; you read at your own risk. These stories have not been written by the person posting them. Many of those e-mail addresses below the author's byline still work. If you liked the story, either drop the author a line at that e-mail address or post a comment to alt.sex.stories.d. Please don't post it to alt.sex.stories itself. Posting the comment with a Cc: to the author would be the best way to encourage them to continue entertaining you. The copyright of this story belong to the author, and the fact of this posting should not be construed as limiting or releasing these rights in any way. In most cases, the author will have further notices of copyright below. If you keep the story, *PLEASE* keep the copyright disclaimer as well. This particular series is by Santo J. Romeo. That might even be his real name. The version that I have copied used his initials, and I have followed suit. It is more a tragic story of coming of age than simply a sex story, and individual segments might not contain any sex. The entire story, however, is a hot one. ======== **** 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. sjr <73233.1411@CompuServe.COM> ============ 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. ==================================== THE ADVENTURES OF ME AND MARTHA JANE by S.J.R. ============ PART 9B -30- -- +--------------' Story submission `-+-' Moderator contact `------------+ | story-submit@qz.little-neck.ny.us | story-admin@qz.little-neck.ny.us |