Message-ID: <30162asstr$989136605@assm.asstr-mirror.org> Return-Path: From: mmtwassel@aol.com (mat twassel) X-Original-Message-ID: <20010505213317.07476.00002133@ng-fx1.aol.com> Subject: {ASSM} {REVIEW} My Favorite Dulcinea Stories -- Mat Twassel Date: Sun, 6 May 2001 04:10:05 -0400 Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail X-Is-Review: yes Approved: Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories,alt.sex.stories.d Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d X-Archived-At: X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation X-Story-Submission: X-Moderator-ID: dennyw, gill-bates My Favorite Dulcinea Stories In preparation for the upcoming Dulcinea Memorial Festival, I've been rereading the Dulcinea stories. My favorite is one called "Helping Hand." In this story the guy gets up on a chair to straighten a curio cabinet which is slightly askew, and somehow the support cracks. He's left holding the cabinet against the wall, unable to get down off the chair. He asks his wife for a helping hand. Naturally she obliges. Only about 380 words, "Helping Hand" would be too short for the Memorial Contest, but it is so completely delicious that I showed it to my wife. I thought maybe she'd be inspired to write something for the contest. "What do you think?" I asked her. "I don't understand it," she said. "How come he had to stand on the chair?" "The curio cabinet," I answered. "But isn't that awfully high for a curio cabinet? I don't get it." "Maybe it's over a fireplace," I suggested. "Maybe you need some suspension of disbelief?" "Mm, maybe," Laura said, "But I don't remember anything about a fireplace." "Dulcinea doesn't put stuff like fireplaces in her stories," I told Laura. "She pretty much sticks to the bare minimum." "Okay," Laura said, "But when she was helping him, would there be room for all that... that sex stuff?" "I think so." "Get up on a chair," Laura said. "Pretend you're holding up a curio cabinet. Let's see." We pretended. Yes, there is room for all that. Another of my favorite Dulcinea stories is Ice Cream. Maybe that's because I really like ice cream. Maybe it's because I really like sex. Mmm, sex and ice cream. This story, too, is not perfectly typical of Dulcinea stories. It's set in an ice cream parlor whereas most Dulcinea stories are set in the home, but an ice cream parlor isn't exactly exotic. Dulcinea's settings are almost always ordinary places. What's a little different about Ice Cream is that it makes important use of secondary characters, in this case a group of college kids who, along with her husband, are in the ice cream parlor watching the Dulcinea character lick her cone. Ah, the way she licks that cone! And what she says to the college boys as she and her guy are leaving. Later today I'm going to show this story to Laura, and then I'm going to suggest we go out and get some ice cream. Vanilla ice cream, in honor of Dulcinea, whose stories are the epitome of vanilla, all light, sexy fun, not a hint of darkness or truly distressing conflict. Another of my favorite Dulcinea stories, "At the Movies," also has an important secondary character, the usher, who represents perhaps the closest thing to a threat in any of the "typical" Dulcinea stories. The man and woman are fooling around during the show, and suddenly, at just the wrong moment, or just the right moment, the usher is about to discover them. One of the things I like about this story is the ending, which is a little richer and more complicated than that most Dulcinea stories, though the writing is not complicated at all. The endings to most Dulcinea stories are a little soft. Maybe they're like the gentle, relaxed fuzziness which one might feel after especially nice sex. A sort of sleepy playfulness. One of my favorite of such Dulcinea endings is the one in "Down by the Tracks." She smiled, letting her hands roam his body, letting herself totally relax in his arms. "Honey!" she said suddenly, licking his chest. "Did I ever tell you how much I like boats?" This story also has a great beginning: She had a "thing" for trains. In between we're treated to a most delightful picnic in the woods not far from a train tracks. Here, too, the mild possibility that the couple might be observed adds some spice to the story, but discovery is not he main thing: the main thing is a nice couple in love, pleasing each other sexually. Lust plays a part, but it is lust in the service of love. You might want to compare Dulcinea's sex scene in "Down by the Tracks" with a scene from the Henry Miller novel, Tropic of Capricorn. Miller, who is not a favorite of mine, vividly describes a sexual encounter between his 15 year old hero and the boy's piano teacher, Lola, a girl in her mid twenties who has been flirting with him: Anyway, one night I was lying in the grass near the railroad tracks; it was a sweltering summer's night and people were lying about anywhere and everywhere, like panting dogs. I wasn't thinking of Lola at all--I was just mooning there, too hot to think about anything. Suddenly I see a woman coming along the narrow cinderpath. I'm lying sprawled out on the embankment and nobody around that I can notice. The woman is coming along slowly, head down, as though she were dreaming. As she gets close I recognize her. "Lola!" I call. "Lola!" She seems really astonished to see me there. "Why, what are you doing here?" she says, and with that she sits down beside me on the embankment. I didn't bother to answer her. I didn't say a word--I just crawled over her and flattened her. "Not here, please," she begged, but I paid no attention. I got my hand between her legs, all tangled up in that thick sporran of hers, and she was sopping wet, like a horse slavering. It was my first fuck, by Jesus, and it had to be that a train would come along and shower hot sparks over us. Lola was terrified. It was her first fuck too, I guess, and she probably needed it more than I, but when she felt the sparks she wanted to tear loose. It was like trying to hold down a wild mare. I couldn't keep her down, no matter how I wrestled with her. So those are my four Dulcinea favorites. 1. Helping Hand 2. Down By the Tracks 3. Ice Cream 4. At the Movies Some others I especially like are: 5. D Is for Driving 6. To the Point 7. E Is for Eyeliner 8. Pickles 9. One of Those Days 10. Hiccups 11. Welcome Home In general a Dulcinea story which works shows the joy of a companionable couple's sexuality. You can see that in all the stories. It's by no means true that all the stories are the same: I like different things in these stories. Sometimes it is a particular image or a particular idea. In "To the Point," for example, she's making a poster for work, and he gets excited watching her blow the dust from the tips of his freshly sharpened pencils. He gets even more excited not long later when she does approximately the same thing to the tip of his cock. I like those images and those ideas. Not only are the images simple and special here, there's a simple but special transition which is one of the best in all of Dulcinea. In the end, though, what it is is the same in at least one respect: nice people having nice sex. --Mat Twassel Dulcinea stories may be found at: http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/BitBard/www/forray/dulcinea/ ~~~ Here is a copy of the official Dulcinea Contest Announcement The Announcement: We invite participation in The Dulcinea Memorial Writing Festival which celebrates one of ASSD's best known and admired writers. The late Dulcinea's stories are available at http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/BitBard/www/forray/dulcinea/ The Festival shall be a collection of stories to be written in the manner of "the typical Dulcinea story". For the purposes of the Festival, "the typical Dulcinea story" is defined as: - involving the young, married couple who appeared nameless in most of Dulcinea's stories, - being at least 600 words long but no longer than 1,100 words (excluding titles, disclaimers and the like), - correctly coded as (MF rom cons). Light bondage and pregnancy are also permissible and, where they appear, the commensurate additional story code should also appear. Note that oral sex is common in Dulcinea stories and is implicitly included in Dulcinea's MF code. The story must reflect the codes used. Use of other codes, not being typical of Dulcinea, is not permitted. The judging process shall be controlled by the Festival Director, Mr. Rui Jorge or, failing him, Mr. Mat Twassel or Father Ignatius. Anyone may enter by e-mailing his/her story in plain text to the Festival Director, Rui Jorge (rjnp@my-deja.com) before the deadline for submissions, which is: ***** 24h00 GMT, Sunday 20th May 2001. Late entries shall not be accepted. Entries that are shorter than 600 words or longer than 1,100 words (excluding titles, disclaimers and the like) shall not be accepted. If it comes to the notice of the Festival Directorate that a story has been plagiarised, it shall be disqualified. What is not forbidden is permitted. While the Festival Directorate expresses a preference for stories composed especially for this festival, the rules of the competition do not forbid the submission of stories previously posted, hopper stories, collaborations, multiple entries and so forth. Anyone not on the judging panel may enter. JUDGING PANEL The judges are: Allison George Desdmona22 Janey Lisala Mary Anne Mohanraj Neneh99 Vickie Morgan Virago Blue JUDGING. The Festival Director shall remove authors' names from their stories. Each story shall be submitted in this "anonymised" form to each judge. Each judge shall consider, in her own subjective opinion, the quality of each story and whether or not that story is "a typical Dulcinea story" as defined above. Each judge shall award each story a rating of "gold", "silver", "bronze" or "dross", reflecting its literary merits as she, personally, perceives them. Judges are not constrained to distribute awards in any particular pattern. For example, a judge may award as many golds as she wishes, or none. _Provided that,_ should a judge be of the opinion that the story is not "a typical Dulcinea story", as defined above, that judge shall be obliged to award that story a "dross" rating regardless of its other literary merits. The ratings are confidential and each judge shall report her ratings to the Festival Director and to no-one else. The Festival Director is deemed to be competent, trustworthy and able to add. He shall reveal the individual ratings to no-one and shall therefore be the only person who ever sees all the judges' ratings of any story. The Festival Director shall prepare an aggregate score for each entrant, awarding a score of 3 for each "gold" rating, 2 for each "silver", 1 for each "bronze" and 0 for each "dross". The aggregate scores shall not be announced and will only ever be known to the Festival Director, who shall use them to determine a winner, a first runner-up and a second runner-up. The Festival Directors invite the donation of gold, silver and bronze medals for award to the winners. The Festival Director shall announce the results by a post to ASSD that advises which story is the winner, which is the first runner-up and which is the second runner-up. He shall then post all the stories (with full author details, in the normal fashion) to ASSM, make a Festival web page that includes links to all the stories submitted and announce its URL on ASSD. It is projected that this shall occur on or about Monday 28th May 2001. The judges' decision, as enunciated by the Festival Director, is final and no correspondence shall be entered into. Any queries about the running of the contest shall be resolved by consultation amongst the Festival Directorate whose decision shall be final. Festival Directorate Rui Jorge (rjnp@my-deja.com) Mat Twassell (mmtwassel@aol.com) Father Ignatius (fatherignatius@hotmail.com) -- Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | alt.sex.stories.moderated ----- send stories to: | | FAQ: Moderator: | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Archive: Hosted by Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository | |, an entity supported entirely by donations. | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+