Chapter 6A

Neither my parents nor Martha Jane's mother were home that week. For the first time, Martha Jane slept overnight with me. When I woke, earlier than usual, the morning sun was just peeking over the rooftops of the project buildings beyond mine. Two radiant shafts of sunlight poured through the bedroom's double window and across the middle of the bed. Martha Jane was not with me, but I knew where she was by the muffled sound of running water behind the closed bathroom door.

I could not have asked for a more perfect morning. In the big old oak beyond the bedroom window a batch of sparrows chirped away. I lay listening to them, feeling the sun's warmth soak into the blanket. The pillows and the bed and my own body seemed permeated with the faint bouquet of Martha Jane's hair and skin. Between my legs was a new wake-up sensation: it felt as if my lower tummy and my genitals were coated with a fine, powdery film of something uniquely female, not sticky or pasty, but soft as down, a feathery lingering of Martha Jane's feminine essence, on and just under my own flesh.

I slipped into my jockey shorts and got out of bed. When I knocked on the bathroom door Martha Jane called out, "Hi! I just got in the tub. Wanna join me?"

I told her I'd love to. I entered the bathroom and stood in front of the sink, scrutinizing my image in the mirror.

She noticed me and said, "Do you spend every morning looking at yourself?"

I replied, observing the same old me in the reflection, "I don't look any different."

She smirked, soaping her legs. "But how do you FEEL?"

I took in a deep breath, my shoulders back, chest out, arms extended far at each side, and intoned as loudly as I could in my best, deepest, Texaco Opera Theater baritone, "Steee-vennn!". I beat my chest several times and grunted like a gorilla. Then going back to my operatic bellow, I sang from the Barber of Seville: "Lala Lalala Lalala Lalala Lala... Figaro! Figaro! FigaroFigaro Feeeeeeee-gah-ro!"

She said, "My, my! Were you, uh, referring to last night?"

I grinned.

"Verrry flattering." She stood up in the tub and moved to one end to make room for me. "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 wonderful lover." She kissed my forehead, and for a minute we held each other. I said quietly against her ear, "Hello."

She pressed her cheek against mine and with a warm, girlishly happy little whisper, she said simply, "Hi." That tiny, two letter word, and the magic of the sound and the uncomplicated feeling that she put into it, soaked into my ear and through my brain and went straight to my heart. Years later I would lose track of many details about that morning and that week. But I have always remembered, precisely and minutely, the way she whispered, "Hi" when we were standing in that little tub.

I started soaping up, watching her do the same. Our elbows bumped a few times, and when she bent down to soap her feet our heads nearly collided. We both laughed, giggling and joking that both of us had outgrown the old bathtub we used to play in.

After I was soapy she took the bar of soap from me and lathered her hands, and reached down to wash my cock.

She winked. "Remember this?"

I moaned, "Mmm." It felt startlingly good.

"I never thought of using soap on you when we started all this. Of course, you're a lot bigger now."

She rinsed and stepped out of the tub to dry off. She said she had chores to do that day, but we had time for breakfast and a little talk. I saw a small, blue, leather bag in the corner of the room and asked, "That's all you brought over here with you?" She told me the blue bag was filled with enough spermicide and powders to lower the Indian birth rate. She blushed and said, "You put an awful lot of you in me." She told me that after I fell asleep she had douched twice, and again before I came into the bath.

"Douched?" I asked.

"It's a long story. Later." She blushed again.

Then I understood. "Oh. You mean, 'cause we didn't use a rubber?"

She sighed impatiently. "Yes."

"I don't mind using one."

"No!" she said firmly, laying out jars of makeup along the edge of the sink. "And you just forget that those ugly things exist."

I asked, indicating the blue bag, "Doesn't all that stuff make you sore or dry inside?"

"We can always apply some... lotion," she said, blushing anew. 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 her, fascinated and charmed at the sight of her putting on makeup.

She eyed me through our reflections in the mirror. "What are you staring at?"

I answered, "Watching you doing woman things."

She laughed mildly, dabbing at her face with a small, fluffy brush. "I'm glad you find it so amusing. 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."

"Mmm. That's sweet."

"I'll fix breakfast," I said, hanging up my towel.

"Mmm. All this, and he can cook."

"Sure," I said. "I've been hanging out in a restaurant for years."

"Well... I'll try anything once. As long as the two of us don't end up needing a stomach pump."

I was pretty noisy about it, but I managed to get the eggs sunnyside 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! It's Beautiful. Can we really *eat* this?"

We ate and talked.

She told me about her schedule for the week. Just listening to all that 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 Communist. 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, exaggerating each item and apparently having a good time doing so. But after a while I realized that she was actually defining herself as hardworking and dedicated, but strictly an 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 anybody, especially you."

"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 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 a very unpleasant 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 gratitude for their taking me to a football game and watching them scream and guzzle beer and make idiots of themselves."

"So," I said, tenuously, "... so do you, y'know... do it?"

"Of course not. And then I don't hear from them for two weeks, or two months. Until they get horny again and their usual status hungry tarts aren't around, and all of a sudden they develop this deep and sudden 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?"

I thought a moment. "Memphis State on Thursday, and 'The High and the Mighty' on Saturday."

"The High and the Mighty?"

"At the Warner's. It's a great movie, you'll love it."

"Why, Speedy, are you asking me out on a date?"

"Didn't you ask me on a date?"

"Well, Memphis State isn't really..."

"You'll love the movie."

"You've already seen it?"

"Sure."

"And you want to see it again?"

"I always see the good ones again."

She looked at me. "Well, okay, we'll make a deal. I have midterms exams all week, and I must--I simply must make the grades, hon, so..." She stopped again, and I wondered what the big problem was. "Okay. Thursday and Saturday. But I have to have the rest of the week to study and look for a job. Okay?"

I grinned. "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 interviews and then get her things ready to move out of her old apartment, 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, pulling my jeans and shorts down and taking hold of 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 began to harden. Then she started jacking me off with lazy, loose-fisted, pumping, her hands gliding smoothly up and down my moistened shaft. Again I was startled to feel all the stirrings in my groin as the pleasure mounted.

Her eyes tracked mine playfully. She asked, "Still have a little cum left for me?"

"Sure," I said, silently asking myself if, indeed, there would be as much as a single drop.

She said, "How about if I do it this way?", and she bent down to wet me with her mouth again and then rose to watch my face as she began methodically hand-milking me, gripping only the front half of my erection and wringing upward from shaft to tip. It was a very pleasing sensation.