Message-ID: <3586eli$9709011202@qz.little-neck.ny.us> X-Archived-At: From: LadyCyrrh@aol.com Subject: The Annex Reviews 8/30/97 Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.d,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: <970830134146_212706209@emout14.mail.aol.com> X-Is-Review: yes A week ago I pointed out the increasing traffic in Spam on the usenet sex newsgroups. Here are some things you can if you're getting unwanted spam at your personal address: 1. Use more than one address, if you can. Use one for posting, and include the other in the body of the message for people to send comments to you. 2. Use filters if your service supplies you with these. Some providers don't, however. Celeste has already given a good explanation of how to use filters. 3. Use an email address associated with a forwarding service such as http://pobox.com. These offer antispam filters as part of their annual fee. I've always why there were so many pobox addresses on ASS. I believe hotmail is another. 4. Remove your name and email address from membership directories, such as those found on AOL and Compuserve. 5. Write to your congressional representatives to pass a law banning junk email. 6. Never buy anything from a junk emailer. Don't even open up those on the newsgroups, either. 7. If you want to get really nasty, figure out who sent you the junk email and register a complaint with the Attorney General's Office of your state. I'll be saying more on this later. On to the stories. True Story My 1st Time Parts 1 and 2 [B+] When posted: 8/22/97 Where posted: ASSG, ASSM Author: Corinne Address: lifebgood@aol.com I sometimes wonder about the validity of sexual experiences told in first person ("I") voice. Did these things really happen to the writer, or is it just an authorial device? This being ASS, I take such things with a grain of salt, as everyone--male, female, gay, straight--is prone to locker room exaggerations in the name of entertainment. But whether fictional or true, this story was a pretty hot lesbian spa fantasy. A businesswoman goes to Arizona to attend a conference, and while there she and her friend decide to treat themselves to a massage. In a luxuriant private home complete with scenic views and jacuzzis she is slathered with warm cactus flower oil, rubbed, tweaked, patted and stroked, and soon begins to feel relaxed yet horny...and then the enemas begin, followed by the attentions of the two other women. If you ever fantasize about sex in this kind of setting (who hasn't?) then check this out. Blizzard [A] When posted: 8/22/97 Where posted: ASSG Author: Mathis B. Rogers Address: pixel@mboxes.com This was a long one (pun intended)--more of a novelette than a short story--but it was very good, a sort of first-person gay gothic romance- mystery about a writer with amnesia. The story begins as the narrator is pulled from his crashed car by a handsome man. He doesn't remember a thing and doesn't know who he is, so the other guy takes him to his nearby cabin in the woods for shelter, as a blizzard is blowing up, and they soon become isolated from the world. The rest of the story is taken up with the writer's efforts to rediscover his identity and understand the attraction he feels towards his rescuer and his repulsion towards another man who claims to be his lover. There wasn't much sex save for one scene is the middle (in which the police barge in on the gay couple as they ejaculate), but this was more of a mainstream story than porn anyway. The writer was quite skilled in setting up the situation--Is the rescuer all he seems to be? Can anyone he knows be trusted?--and I was eager to resolve the mystery. The denouement was a little bit of a letdown--by the time the final revelations came, I was expecting something really scandalous--but overall the story was entertaining, and excellently written as well. Computer Games on a Sunday [A] When posted: 8/23/97 Where posted: ASS, ASSM Author: Kim Address: Kim@nym.alias.net Computers are wonderful things. You can program them to simulate anything. In this story, the female narrator inputs some quick code to randomly generate sex acts for herself and her boyfriend to try, a programming feat I'm sure many computer geeks have tried already. The acts are kinky ones of the dom-sub variety and first concern the narrator play-acting as a job applicant who has to let the manager face- fuck her; then she dresses up her boyfriend in panties, ties him to a chair, and torments him deliciously. Kim says this is her first story, and it's an auspicious debut. The tone is controlled, dry, and very British, and the descriptions of the sex acts are handled well, too. There's a sense of humor running throughout that lets us know these are games and are treated as such by the couple in question...and a bit of reverse technical sexism in that the woman is the technologically advanced one while the man is computer-illiterate. If I could give any advice, it would be to give each line of dialogue its own paragraph. But that's it, really. Now, if only someone would create a sexual slant on "Magic the Gathering" Cards... Night of the Camel [A] When posted: 8/22/97 Where posted: ASS, ASSM Author: DG Address: dionysian1@hotmail.com Back in the 70s, there was an old Maria Muldaur song that began, "Midnight at the oasis, put your camel to bed..." The story begins in Rudyard Kipling style as a stuffy Victorian colonel travels to a remote fort in the Indian desert to assume its command. He discovers that his sex-deprived men have been satisfying themselves by using the fort's only camel. Naturally, he assumes the worst of them. But over time, when the isolation and sexual deprivation take their toll on him, he resolves to take the camel (female) out for a night and use her the same way. Read the story for more, as there's a twist at the end. The author says, "Yeah, I know, it's an old joke. But besides being very funny, I always thought the joke had a certain pathos to it, even when told in just a few sentences." Well, if it is an old joke I haven't heard it; the story seemed fresh and new to me. This one succeeded as good writing and as good humor...a novelization of a joke, if you will--which is no small feat for any writer. House [A] When posted: 8/18/97 Where posted: ASS Author: Dierdre Reposted by: Story Master Address: velvet@znet.com According to Ole Joe's "Alt Sex Stories - A Subculture" Dierdre was a very active writer who produced a lot of material two years ago but has since vanished, leaving her body of work to the collectors, reposters and archivers. "House" is one such story. Told in first person by a middle- aged woman, it begins as she goes to visit her friend, who runs a rooming house for college students. They are all very nice young men...too nice...and willingly do whatever she says, including taking off their clothes and having sex with each other, giving the story a definite "Twilight Zone" flavor. Unfortunately, the piece was cut off before I reached the conclusion, which added to the mystery for me. Dierdre is not a fancy technical writer. She doesn't create literary fireworks; her characters are somewhere between white bread and vanilla pudding, and the sex doesn't immediately grab you by the organs. But she has a solid sense of story structure and is (or was) a competent story craftsman who knows how to stretch a plot and create tension. Her writing is technically good as well. Other writers should note her effective use of repetition in this story, which adds to the otherworldly effect. I'll be looking for more Dierdre in the future, though I have the feeling this story won't be topped. The Absolutely Astounding Adventures of Angelica Ahsmacker by Tom Bombadil [A+] When posted: 8/26/97 Where posted: ASS, ASSM Author: Tom Bombadil Address: stbush@iglou.com Website: http://members.iglou.com/stbush/stories.html Remember those old-fashioned movie serials from the 1920s like The Perils of Pauline or the Adventures of Pearl White? Remember an even more recent cartoon reincarnation called The Perils of Penelope Pitstop? Well, Tom Bombadil has brought those titillating series to life again for us, complete with breathless narration, alliterative language that dances the Cha-Cha, and some truly awful--but fun--puns. Angelica Ahsmacker is the purer-than-pure, color-coordinated heroine whose skimpy sundress always covers her completely no matter how thoroughly it is shredded. Tiny Silvertongue is her handsome 6'4 handsome male sidekick. Venoma Tart is the villainess who's captured them both and taken them to the abandoned sawmill that serves as her hideout. Yes, those names mean exactly what you think they do. At the sawmill Angela is tied to a log that's slowly heading towards the spinning blade, while Tiny is bound also and made to watch while Venoma Tart spreads her legs and gleefully masturbates herself at the sight. I haven't read one of TB's stories yet, and this one was a delight, particularly in the language department. Here the sawmill's conveyer- and-blade apparatus is revealed to have other appendages that disrobe Angelica as she travels down the conveyer: >>Those ominous arms were finally removing the last scraps of her scant covering, and were poking and prodding everywhere. Her magnificent mammaries were being dented and deformed. Her perfect, inch-long nipples were being tweaked and twiddled. And worst of all, just below her prim and proper heart-shaped blonde bush, they were trying to penetrate the privacy of her pure pink portal. It was a race between the awful arms of that molestation machine and the terrible teeth of that spinning saw to see which would be the first to delve deep into the defenseless damsel's dampening divinity.<< The only way Tiny can save her is by going down on the villainess: >>Despite the pain his mouth and lips were enduring from the caustic cream pouring from that polluted pudenda, Tiny continued with his oral onslaught, wiggling the wild woman's corrupt clitoris with the tip of his titillating tongue before delving deep into the disgusting depths of her drooling duct once again.<< Angelica is rescued in the nick of time, of course, the hideout explodes, the villains escape, and a new peril looms at the end, with further installments to come (excuse the pun.) Definitely silly, definitely clever, definitely intelligent...which is why I like it. I'll be checking out Mr. Bombadil's website soon. Lori's London Vacation [A-] When posted: 8/21/97 Where posted: ASSM Posted by: Anahka Address: anakha@clara.net Website: http://home.clara.net/anakha/index.html The title the author gave this story was "Lori's London Vacation." There was no credit line for the writer. However, I remember when it was posted before, and the information given that time indicates it's been making the rounds of BBSs for years. Young Lori is a bondage and rubber fetishist. She goes to London to get some new gear in a sex shop and is hoodwinked into serving as their model. But not in the way you think. The fantasy (can't really call it a story) consists of her being corseted, clamped, strapped and buckled in various kink gear configurations, then being enclosed inside one of the shop's mannequins (an iron maiden device of sorts) and put on display in the shop's window, where no one can see her plight, and of course she can't let anyone know how she's been imprisoned, either. The story ends rather abruptly as she's being bound and nailed into a large crate for a trip to an American store, where she'll also be on display. Permanently this time. This is the best bondage GEAR fantasy I've ever read, though there was no sex and no characterization to speak of. Just pure double enemas, dildoes, electric vacuum-pumped nipple clamps, and catheters. I told you it was extreme. The only thing that could have made it better was a plot. historical [C] When posted: 8/21/97 Where posted: ASG Author: Bill Address: bill@anon.com The title the author gave this was "Comfort Boys - December, 1941." He says of this, "My idea for it came from reading newspaper accounts of the practice of the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II of forcing young women, including young teens, into military brothels. Although nearly all of these women (called "comfort women") were Asian, there are a few documented cases of European women (e.g. Dutch after the capture of Indonesia) being forced into this kind of prostitution. I have drawn from these accounts, as well as a bit of the movie "Empire of the Sun" from about 10 years ago, to come up with a scenario of American and European boys in a Japanese internment camp, serving in unit that satisfies the sexual needs of Japanese officers who appreciate the erotic appeal of boys in the 11 to 14 age range." OK, we know what we have here. My tolerance for different sexualities is pretty high, anyway, and I happily wade through electronic stacks of what other people would call kink, perversity or depravity in the name of good copy. (The exception is incest--I'm not interested in this theme, not do I understand its appeal.) However, this is the first time I've come upon something I object to on moral grounds. The plot was this: a young American boy is left separated from his parents during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai (an incident that seems to have based on the Steven Spielberg movie "Prisoners of the Sun" that was in turn based on the JG Ballard novel of the same name) and sent to a relocation camp for foreigners. The young boys are culled out and trained to be sex slaves to the adult Japanese men. As a fantasy, there's nothing wrong with this. I suspect it's quite common. The problem is, this fantasy has been based on real life, and World War II prisoner of war camps were not an erotic playground...they were full of starvation, slow death by cholera or tuberculosis, forced labor, and quick executions. So for me, it's very hard to imagine pleasurable erotic undertones in something so evil and depraved. When writing sexual fantasies, it's always a good idea to locate them somewhere outside of real life, where both the writer and audience know the activities are make- believe. This isn't to say real-life incidents can't be used as the basis for fantasies, but when they are explosive ones like war camps or Serbian rape squads, the writer has to be very, very skilled to pull them off convincingly, which probably excludes 95% of the writers on ASS. No slurs intended, but paid professional writers are paid professional ones for a reason. They write well. So, the misguided use of prison camps was partly what gave the low grade to this one, though the main fault was the writing style. Things were grammatical enough, but the author just didn't know how to tell a good story. There wasn't much dialogue, the characters were wooden, and the danger and tension was underplayed, which was surprising considering the dramatic nature of the situation. A good rule of storytelling is "show, don't tell." which means the readers should be shown characters in action who are doing, thinking and feeling things, not just being told that they do, like "That evening, Jonathan naively mentioned the massage to his father at the dinner table. After only a few question, answered honestly, the man stormed from the room looking for the houseboy." It was also annoying to hear about the boys' cock measurements every time their names were mentioned--it's the gay equivalent of hearing about womens' bra sizes. But I admit this was a good idea; too bad it wasn't handled better. Note to Vickie Tern: I haven't forgotten about you, I'm still working on your latest. Comments to: ladycyrrh@aol.com Website---> http://users.aol.com/ladycyrrh -- +--------------' Story submission `-+-' Moderator contact `------------+ | story-submit@qz.little-neck.ny.us | story-admin@qz.little-neck.ny.us | | Archive site +--------------------+------------------+ Newsgroup FAQ | \ .../assm/faq.html> /