Message-ID: <11250eli$9805131506@qz.little-neck.ny.us> X-Archived-At: From: john_dark@anon.nymserver.com Subject: {SJR}JDR"The Adventures of Me and Martha Jane 14B"( bf mF mF+ )[52/52] Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d Path: qz!not-for-mail Organization: The Committee To Thwart Spam Approved: X-Moderator-Contact: Eli the Bearded X-Story-Submission: X-Original-Message-ID: <6jbgfp$e21$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. 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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 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 ==================================== THE ADVENTURES OF ME AND MARTHA JANE by S.J.R. ============ -30- -- +----------------' Story submission `-+-' Moderator contact `--------------+ | | | | Archive site +----------------------+--------------------+ Newsgroup FAQ | ----