Message-ID: <10995eli$9805071133@qz.little-neck.ny.us> From: john_dark@anon.nymserver.com Subject: {SJR}JDR"The Adventures of Me and Martha Jane 13A"( bf mF mF+ )[46/52] Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d X-Note: This message was posted by a secure email service. Please report MISUSE OR ABUSE of this automated secure email service to . Path: qz!not-for-mail Organization: The Committee To Thwart Spam Approved: X-Moderator-Contact: Eli the Bearded X-Story-Submission: X-Original-Message-ID: <6irhhd$p2g$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 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 train banged and screeched and jerked to a stop. ==================================== THE ADVENTURES OF ME AND MARTHA JANE by S.J.R. 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