Message-ID: <17423eli$9811200426@qz.little-neck.ny.us> X-Archived-At: From: shutters@cix.co.uk (Ian Shuttleworth) Subject: The Annex Reviews, 9/16/98 Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d Reply-To: shutters@cix.co.uk X-Envelope-From: news@plutonium.compulink.co.uk 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: X-Is-Review: yes Article: 226833 of alt.sex.stories Path: news.cix.co.uk!peernews.cix.co.uk!ayres.ftech.net!news.ftech.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!woodstock.news.demon.net!demon!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news.alt.net!qz!not-for-mail From: LadyCyrrh@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Subject: The Annex Reviews, 9/16/98 Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d Date: 17 Sep 1998 09:47:03 GMT Organization: The Committee To Thwart Spam Approved: Message-ID: <15376eli$9809170547@qz.little-neck.ny.us> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archived-At: X-Moderator-Contact: Eli the Bearded X-Story-Submission: X-Original-Message-ID: <8e59155f.36007ac1@aol.com> Lines: 189 Xref: news.cix.co.uk alt.sex.stories.moderated:12325 alt.sex.stories:226833 Here's something different this week--a whole set of reviews based on normal male/female heterosex. That's right, heterosex. I didn't plan it that way, but there happened to be so many excellent stories out, things just sorta fell into place. Because these are heterosex stories my reviewing apparatus is tuned a bit differently. I'm a bit more critical than usual. The stories: Korean Dry-Cleaning Lady, by Richard Rivers (M/F cons) The Lens as Mirror, by Adhara Rawcalyn (M/F cons) Unicorn Prayers, by Thomas M. Carvett (M/F, teen, fantasy) Summer 1976, by Jim Keigel (M/F, hippie sex) The Root of Evil, by Tooshoes (M/F, adult club dancing) Korean Dry-Cleaning Lady [A+] Where posted: ASS, ASSM When posted: 9/11/98 Author: Richard Rivers Address: r_rivers@cryogen.com Not all consensual M/F stories are vanilla. Some are flavored with kim chee. The narrator of this story develops a crush on the Korean owner of a dry cleaning store, passing by daily to note her activities and moods. (He also drops off his dry cleaning.) His passion grows. One day when he drops in as she is closing to have a personal conversation with her. His dreams come true when they have a tumble on a pile of dirty laundry. This story was an excellent depiction of the ordinary sexual encounter most people might have in daily life; though "small" it held my attention, mainly through the author's heartfelt prose. I felt I was peaking into someone's personal diary, and, oddly, I feel privileged for it. The Unicorn Prayers [A] Where posted: ASS, ASSM When posted: 8/29/98 Author: Thomas M. Carvett Address: tcarvett@earthlink.net Website: http://home.earthlink.net/~tcarvett A young girl loses her mother and develops a vaguely incestuous relationship with her father. He rejects her, knowing it isn't right, so she turns to fantasies of unicorns to satisfy her budding desires. She eventually discovers that, by putting out, she attracts lots of boys, but the boys don't matter; only the fantasies do, which she puts down on paper using her artistic talents. One day she disappears after painting a unicorn mural on the wall of the boys' lavatory (!!?) I really liked this story; it was sweet and true to life and psychologically insightful; the tone was assured and elegant, kind of like a fable. I was all set to give it an A+ until the end, which destroyed the whole thing for me. Why the hell does she decorate a row of urinals? It's not exactly a sexy thing to do, although the symbolism of the story says it should be. (Male bathroom = male sex.) Teenage girls aren't, on the whole, enthusiastic cockmistresses; they regard male equipment as little more than leaky sewer pipes. If the girl wanted to give a last "gift" so to speak, to her male conquests, it makes more sense for her to paint the house of one of them, or the place where they hang out, such as a school. The Lens as Mirror [A-] Where posted: ASS, ASSM When posted: 9/11/98 Author: Adhara Rawcalyn Address: eros_dreams@hotmail.com A woman married to a photographer consents one day to pose for him. He usually photographs younger models and both are surprised at how sensual the pictures of her turn out to be. He displays them in a gallery and the enthusiastic reception they get inspires him to renew the passionate bond he once had with his wife. This was a nicely written, modest story but it really bothered me on one point--that images are more important than people. The husband never notices how appealing his wife is until he prints her on emulsion, while the wife assumes her sex life is over because she thinks "bony" 19-year-old models have more appeal than a 43-year-old. I am so sick of this. Not everyone who has a satisfying sex life looks like a Calvin Klein ad. I know unattractive men married to beautiful women. I know Queen- sized women going out with skinny little guys. I even know of two cerebral palsy sufferers who got married even though they couldn't take more than two steps in the same direction. So what does that say about image and attraction? Summer 1976 [B+] Author: Jim Keigel Address: jimkeigel@hotmail.com The author prefaced this story with "If you don't like this one then I give up." Come on. I'm not evil enough to wreck someone's writing career, am I? This story was part of the continuing chronicles of a guy named LC--who may be a stand-in for the author--and purports to be based on real life sexual activity. LC is a rock and roller and has a second job as a sort of security guard at a remote power plant. One morning on the job he encounters a naked chick, in the parlance of the time, who is wandering around as if on a drug trip. Like most naked chicks in such accounts, she's young, sexually desirable, sexually skilled, and sexually available. If she wasn't, she wouldn't be a naked chick. She'd be a fat cow or hard-ass bitch or whatever. In the parlance of the time. Lots of sex follows as the stoned naked chick displays her sensual prowess, causing some humorous situations between LC and his boss. She eventually flips out and tries to kill herself by sitting on top of an electrical transformer after giving the hero a case of clap. The story was funny in places and an evocative memoir of its time--that period in the 70s when the sexual excesses of the hippies had finally filtered into the mainstream--but was hampered by the narrative voice. The author couldn't decide whether to write the story in omniscient POV ("John did that") or first ("I did that") and settled for a strange median ("Our man LC decided to do that") which gave the strange effect he was talking about himself in the third person. On a personal level, the story did not appeal to me because it was too much like the articles that used to appear in the old National Lampoon and High Times magazines on which I cut my porn- reading teeth as a young pre-pubescent in the 70s. Frankly, they gave me the wrong idea as to what male-female sex was all about. Being a stoned hippie chick sex machine in order to please men is not a very appealing future for a tender 11-year-old. So, in order to answer the author's question, No, I didn't like this story--it carried some bad memories--but looking at it from an unbiased viewpoint, it had its moments. The Root of Evil [A+] Where posted: ASS, ASSM When posted: 7/31/98 Author: Tooshoes Address: tooshoes@cris.com Website: http://www.cris.com/files/Authors/tooshoes/www A lonely guy becomes infatuated with an exotic dancer in this story, or rather an adult club dancer, as ballet and jitterbugging could be considered very exotic to a native of Borneo or Tierre del Fuego. Gradually he spends more and time at the club, tipping his crush generously, and a friendship develops based on the exchange of sensual energy for hard cold cash. He begins to fall in love. The dancer likes him and cuts him a special deal, but she's still a dancer who has to work for a living, and this is where the story's conflicts come into a play. Eventually the narrator gets more and more possessive and confesses his love, which freaks her out (the #1 rule of adult club dancers being Don't Get Involved) and leads her to oh-so-gently withdraw. The narrator considers suicide, but has a startling change of heart. The first nine-tenths of this story was an excellent depiction of the feelings of an adult man caught up in the particular male trap of exchanging cash for female attention, which has been going on for as long as there's been prostitution in the world. It deserves an A+ for the sensitivity involved. However, I was not so crazy about the conclusion. I could see the narrator deciding that his infatuation was ridiculous and resolving to live his life as free and sensually as the dancer lives hers, but such a resolve does not occur in one night, nor do the feelings of pain and rejection go away easily. I expected him to give up clubbing for good and instead find a real woman, but the last paragraph has him returning to the club and starting out the relationship with his dancer on a fresh foot. Wish fulfillment maybe, but not real life. Still, the rest of the story was excellent, and that's why I gave it the grade I did. Comments to: ladycyrrh@aol.com Website---> http://members.aol.com/ladycyrrh -- +----------------' Story submission `-+-' Moderator contact `--------------+ | | | | Archive site +----------------------+--------------------+ Newsgroup FAQ | ---- -- +----------------' Story submission `-+-' Moderator contact `--------------+ | | | | Archive site +----------------------+--------------------+ Newsgroup FAQ | ----