Chapter 6D

Saturday 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."

We had been sitting near the screen. As we turned to exit, we were confronted with a thick crowd moving at a snail's pace.

She said, "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 along."

Outside, the drizzle had progressed to a light rain. I walked 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 stupid."

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 umbrella. "Come on, Scarlett! Where's your sense of adventure?"

"It's right here under this umbrella."

A man in a rain coat and plastic covered hat 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. 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, getting upset, "I'm wearing a wool sweater and it'll get wet and ruined and I can't afford another one! 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. But 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." She sighed heavily. "But I won't quit school to take a full time job." She paused as we walked, and then began again. "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. Speedy, I... 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. 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 my arm. "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 try 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 what you just told me..."

"I was talking about a pot bellied beast 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. Don't 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. 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 dark 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. She wanted to get me used to letting go and trusting my orgasms. She had me sit against the headboard with some pillows behind me and said, "Cum in my mouth first. That way, you can stay hard longer when we fuck." I gave instructions while she sucked, and now and then she stopped to ask how this or that felt. She was very obliging, and I was pleased at how much she deduced on her own; she seemed to have a knack for the right technique at the right time. She sucked slow and steady and I came hard and plentifully, and this time she kept her mouth closed on me and I felt the new pleasure of being enclosed by soft, tiny sucks while I spurted.

Not to be outdone by her oral skills, I told her there was still more I wanted to know about women. Specifically, about her. More specifically, about her most pleasurable spots and how she liked to be licked. Her full grown breasts felt soft and creamy, and she told me it was okay to suck her nipples because she wasn't sore and sensitive the way she had been earlier. Another half hour passed as she spread her legs and educated me in more detail about her 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 caught her breath and said, "God, I never thought I'd enjoy this so much. It's so intense, I thought I was going crazy." I reminded her that I had felt pretty much the same way before I allowed myself to cum in her mouth. She took in a deep, nervous breath and sighed, "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 little sense and she stiffened and quivered with a very long, gasping climax.

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 sighed, "That feels so good after I cum! Ah, it's good!" 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. I ejaculated inside her when she was in the middle of her orgasm; I was so intensely pleasured by the way her orgasmic contractions milked me that I didn't want to move or withdraw from her 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 was finished we took a quick, rinsing bath together (her low-rent bathtub, like mine, had no shower). As we rested in bed she said she was okay and we snuggled warmly. Soon we were touching again, and stroking, and she scooted down in the bed and sucked me some more. It took a while to harden me, but eventually she put me half hard inside her and moved under me while I propped myself high on my arms. Less urgent and hysterical now, we were both almost clinical as we talked about our sensations and tried new techniques. 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 began to sound much less scientific as she gasped a constant stream of lascivious talk and said she wanted to cum, so I fucked her the way she wanted and didn't stop until she climaxed. I let her rest a minute and started again, keeping her on the edge, and finally she came so hard I thought afterwards that she had fainted. I was thoroughly tired by then and didn't cum, though I was close a few times and highly sensitized. But at that point I needed rest more than I needed another orgasm.