Subject:      Celestial Reviews 120 - Sept 25
From:         celeste801@aol.com (Celeste801)
Date:         1996/09/25
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Reply-To:     celeste801@aol.com (Celeste801)
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Celestial Reviews 120 - Sept 25, 1996

Note:  For some reason it seemed like a good idea to have a theme issue;
and so I have a lot of stories with a birthday motif in this issue.

Second Note:  The Web Page that used to archive my Top 100 Stories of 1995
has apparently stopped offering this service.  I have not been directly
affiliated with that site and have had no control over it.  I'll give you
more details, if I ever obtain any.

- Celeste

      "Blind" by Mary Anne Mohanraj (bdsm, etc.) 10, 10, 10
      "Escalator" by Mark (brief encounter) 10, 10, 10
      "The Hot Tub" by Fin Haddie (sex in the jacuzzi) 9, 8, 9
      "Not Quite Hidden" by Fin Haddie (exhibitionism) 9, 8, 9
      "Aunt Jennie's Buddy" by PleaseCain (sex with a hot aunt)
            10, 10, 10
      "My Birthday Present" by DonW38 (wife watching) 9, 5, 6
      "A Birthday Gift" by Suki (bdsm) 8, 4, 3
      "The Birthday Gift" by Wollstonecraft (adolescent seduction
            of adult) 9.5, 9.5, 10
    * "Birthday" by Deirdre (mf bondage & anal sex) 10, 10, 10
    * "Tom's Birthday Surprise" by Tom in Sacramento (orgy)
           9, 10, 10
    * "Surprise!" by Mark Aster (birthday bondage) 10, 10, 10
    * "Freebie" by Deirdre (spontaneous oral sex) 10, 10, 10

* = Repost of a previous review (because the story has recently
      been reposted).

"Blind" by Mary Anne Mohanraj (moh2@midway.uchicago.edu).  The woman wakes
up in bed.  She has been drinking, apparently at her own birthday party.
Suddenly she realizes that she is comfortably bound and blindfolded and
that a stranger is doing wonderful things to her body.  No, not a stranger
- her husband.  No, it's her husband plus a stranger.  Or maybe several
strangers; but it feels wonderful.  And it's exciting reading too!

Ratings for "Blind"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

"Escalator" by Mark (MarkB@aboy.demon.co.uk)."You're fuckin' pathetic,
mate, arntcha?" she yelled. I can see how I appeared that way, but I'm not
though. I'm really not.

What would provoke such an outburst?  Actually, not much - just two people
passing on the up versus down escalators, one a man dressed for a day's
work in the business world who ogles and lusts for the woman approaching
him on the other escalator, and the other a young lady dressed in the punk
style who decides at the last second to flash the man as they pass.  The
rest is in the details.

Ratings for "Escalator"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 9
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9

"The Hot Tub" by Fin Haddie (sex in the jacuzzi). David has been spending
a week alone on a brief vacation in Florida.  A woman hits on him by
suggesting "having some fun" in the jacuzzi; but it turns out she was just
using him as a setup to turn her husband on.  Frustration station!  As
David mopes later that night, a young woman named Kathy, with whom he had
played volleyball earlier in the week joins him.  As the lights go out and
the darkness deepens, another woman joins them; and without paying any
attention to the other two starts griping about how everybody has been
trying to hit on her.  This is a major turn-on for David and Kathy, who
proceed to have very pleasant underwater sex in the jacuzzi.

This story was posted as Florida1.  I suppose it goes with the next story,
but they are relatively independent.  Even when they are combined, they
are not a complete or focused story; but the sex in each is pretty hot.

Ratings for "The Hot Tub"
Athena (technical quality): 9
Venus (plot & character): 8
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9

"Not Quite Hidden" by Fin Haddie (sgoodman@primenet.com).  David heads for
the beach and is turned on by the attractive women he passes.  He lies
down by himself in a secluded spot and notices a woman working over her
lover in the grass nearby, where they are unobserved by everyone except
David.  As he watches and gets turned on, the woman turns toward him; and
this causes David to explode into a very pleasant orgasm.

This story was posted as Florida2.  I suppose it goes with the preceding
story, but they are relatively independent.  Even when they are combined,
they are not a complete story; but the sex in each is still pretty hot.

Ratings for "Not Quite Hidden"
Athena (technical quality): 9
Venus (plot & character): 8
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9

"Aunt Jennie's Buddy" by PleaseCain (pleasecain@aol.com).  Jim (nicknamed
Buddy) slips away from school early by cutting the pep rally and arrives
home to surprise his Aunt Jennie, who is staying with the family for a
while.  He is astonished to find her standing in front of the huge mirror
in the bathroom, nude, eyes closed, singing into the hairbrush and shaking
a bathrobe in her clenched fist.  She spots him and slams the door shut.
He feels guilty. His conscience bothers him.  But this is not
alt.religion.morals.  So he fantasizes about her, which could also happen
on alt.religion.morals, if they told the truth.  Then Aunt Jennie knocks
on his door and tells him not to feel guilty and adds that nudity is
nothing to be ashamed of.  Again, alt.religion.morals would buy this,
except that the sentence ended with a preposition - and we get the feeling
that the scene is going to end with a proposition.

Anyway, the story reverts to alt.religion.loose.morals when Aunt Jennie
says he can touch her.  Then the story heats up; and it even includes a
bit of a surprise twist at the ending.

Ratings for "Aunt Jennie's Buddy"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

"My Birthday Present" by DonW38 (donw38@aol.com). On his birthday card
Don's wife writes that for his birthday she is not going to give him
anything. However, she will be giving something very special to his friend
Jay, whom she has invited to come over and to spend 48 hours with her. She
will play with Jay, have sex with him, and sleep with him all weekend. And
Don will get to fulfill his fantasy of watching her have sex with another
man.

This is not one of those stories where the guy gets to join in on the fun.
 Don has to wear a sign that says "cuckold," and the other two humiliate
him in various ways.  I guess this is kind of interesting, if you like
that sort of thing; but the story just stops in the middle.  Just like
this review.

Ratings for "My Birthday Present"
Athena (technical quality): 9
Venus (plot & character): 5
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 6

"A Birthday Gift" by Suki (suki@fish.com).  The woman is trying to make
her Master feel good on his birthday by encouraging him to dominate and
humiliate her in little ways. The Master keeps adding cuffs until she is
bound to the chair by her ankles, thighs, waist, arms, and collar.  Then
he has his way with her, I guess.

I saw a couple stories by this author and decided to take a look.  I think
the author had an image in her mind of something more entertaining than
she manages to convey in this story.  I just didn't find this to be all
that interesting.

This was a week story; but for some reason I feel compelled to do a theme
issue.  Here are some better birthday stories - most of which I have
reviewed in the past.

Ratings for "A Birthday Gift"
Athena (technical quality): 8
Venus (plot & character): 4
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 3

"The Birthday Gift" by Wollstonecraft (an285729@anon.penet.fi). Betty and
the Narrator were both "big girls" with fuller bosoms and hips than most
of the other girls; and they both hated the way guys would fall all over
themselves staring and drooling like pigs and how girls would snub them
because they were jealous.  They quickly became close friends; and so the
Narrator got the chance to hang around with Betty's stepfather, Tom, who
was like one of those really great super-dads on TV family shows.

Near the beginning of the story the Narrator moves out of her house and
into Betty's after her mother's boyfriend (referred to as the chicken man)
tried to molest her.  Things go well at the new house, and the Narrator
develops some healthy insights into sexuality.  But then, as the song
says, things get complicated when you get past 18.  I'll give you the
short version.  Tom's wife dies; Betty and the other kids move away; the
Narrator decides to seduce and become pregnant by Tom on her 18th
birthday; and in order to achieve the full effect, she goes to great
lengths to keep him from masturbating for a full week prior to the Great
Occasion, so that Tom will come to (or at <g>) the birthday party with a
fully loaded gun.  It's all very sexy.

Ratings for "The Birthday Gift"
Athena (technical quality): 9.5
Venus (plot & character): 9.5
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

* "Birthday" by Deirdre (an65862@anon.penet.fi).  I guessed the plot of
this one!  Or at least I think I did.  At the end of the story, neither I
nor the narrator can say for sure exactly what happened.  The female
narrator (who has led a pretty straight sex life) decides to let her
husband (who has spoken favorably about bondage) do anything she wants to
her on his birthday.  Since she is embarrassed to bring the topic up to
him, she conveys this message to him in a letter, which she types at the
office and gives to her secretary to mail; and subsequently she receives a
typed reply from him, giving her detailed instructions.  "Aha!" says I.
"The secretary may have never mailed the letter at all.  She may have read
it herself and written her own reply.  I should be a rocket scientist!
The secretary is going to have her way with the boss!"  Well, maybe.  The
woman follows the instructions, and mysterious but sexy things happen to
her at the designated time and place.  But the husband never brings it up
again, and their sex lives remain status quo.  So, was it really somebody
else - perhaps even a group of ribald fun lovers known only to the
secretary?  Or was it really the husband who fucked her brains out?  Is he
playing dumb to make it more fun?

What's really great about this story is that even though I read it from
the perspective that I thought I had figured out the secret, it's really
impossible to tell what actually happened.  This impossibility arises not
because the story is written in a confusing manner (as is the case with
many stories), but because Deirdre has written the details in such a way
as to support either theory.  This is a very clever and sexy story.

Incidentally, as you may recall, I have a theory that Deirdre is really
Sherwood Anderson reincarnated in the body of a late 20th century smut
writer (perhaps as either a reward or punishment for what he did to the
people of Clyde, Ohio).  One of my readers has suggested that he sees more
O. Henry than Sherwood Anderson in Deirdre's stories.  However, this
reader's suggestion that I am wrong is misguided.  I'll stand by my
Sherwood Anderson theory, but I'll admit that there is a distinct
possibility of O. Henry's influence - perhaps in Deirdre's maternal
ancestry.  This story exemplifies that influence.  (Rating: 10)

Ratings for "Birthday"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

* "Tom's Birthday Surprise" by Tom in Sacramento (an248036@anon.penet.fi).
 This is a really hot story about a man whose wife gives him a birthday
present consisting of an orgy with herself and two women that she knows he
really likes.  I'm not going to tell you the details - you can read them
for yourself.  Although this story has minor flaws, it is almost non-stop
hot sex.  However, since I know that many people read these reviews to
improve their own writing, let me take two paragraphs to point out how
this story could be improved.

There are two problems with this story.  First, the tenses are messed up.
The author obviously intended to write in the present tense, but he
frequently switches back and forth between the present and the past.
(Note that I also have changed tenses in this very paragraph, but I have
done so correctly.)  This inappropriate switching of tenses is an
annoyance to the reader.  Even more importantly, it throws away verb tense
as a useful tool in the story.  Because of the author's carelessness, the
reader is forced to assume that all tenses are really the same. Therefore,
if the author really does want to convey the notion that one action came
before another, he has no easy way to do this.

The second problem arises from the discussion of emotions and motivations
during the story.  In the middle of really hot sexual activity - I think
two of the female protagonists had already had two orgasms apiece and the
man was building to a earth-shattering climax of his own {Ooops! Maybe
that was me!} - they all pause and discuss how good it felt and wonder
whether it would be OK for Tom to stick his cock up Barbara's ass.
Everyone agrees that this would be emotionally fulfilling and wonderful,
and the action resumes.  I understand the author's motivation - he was
trying to show us that these are four sensitive people having
non-destructive group sex; but the pause in the action didn't quite ring
true.  At a time like this it would have been better to focus more on
action and less on words - as the song says: "A little less talk and a lot
more action."

Both of these problems could be overcome by better proofreading.  The
author was simply too close to the story to see what was wrong.  Recently,
I posted my own story ("Virtuous Reality"). I think mine was a good story;
and I am certain that it was a much better story after I received and
reacted to feedback from two skilled readers.  I have no way to enforce
such suggestions, but I would like to urge this writer (as well as the
writers of many other stories) to incorporate improvements into their
texts when they repost these stories.

Ratings for "Tom's Birthday Surprise"
Athena (technical quality): 9
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

* "Surprise!" by Mark Aster (MyFrThAl@aol.com).  It's Julie Allen's 21st
birthday, and so Our Hero and Cousin Jake blindfold and bind her, kidnap
her, cart her off in a packing crate, dump her in the van, and fuck her
both in the van and at their destination.  I approve of this kind of bdsm,
because the guys have good reason to believe that this is just what Julie
wanted for her birthday present.  The author does an unusually good job of
depicting the sexual activities vividly and erotically.

Ratings for "Surprise!"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

* "Freebie" by Deirdre.  This is probably my all-time favorite story with
a birthday theme.  A woman gives her husband for his birthday five coupons
that say: "Give this ticket to Jeannie Greene and she will immediately and
silently perform one oral sex act on her knees, any time, any place, no
questions asked."  Interesting premise!  Read the story to find out what
happens to the tickets.

Ratings for "Freebie"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10