Path: newsfeed.direct.ca!portc01.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail From: celeste801@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories Subject: Celeste's Top 15 Stories - Nov 1996 Date: 4 Dec 1996 18:59:26 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Lines: 367 Message-ID: <19961204190100.OAA06001@ladder01.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder01.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Xref: newsfeed.direct.ca alt.sex.stories:126009 Status: N Celeste's Top 15 Stories -November 1996 (1/3) Note: This was an exceptionally good month for stories. I start each month by keeping a running list of the stories that I think might make my Top 15 list for that month. Usually I reach the end of the month and have to go back over all that month's issues of CR to complete my set of 15 stories. This month I had 13 stories on the list by November 13; and I had a backlog of stories that I knew were good. What this means is that (1) we have some excellent stories on this list and (2) some other good stories got bumped from this month's list. It also means that I gave up. I punted. I don't get paid enough to cull this list down to just fifteen stories. You'll just have to settle for twenty-four stories in this month's Top 15. And this doesn't include the wonderful reposts of stories that had been posted and reviewed earlier by Deirdre, Ann Douglas, SueNH, Mark Aster, Uther Pendragon, and several other authors whom I may accidentally offend by not mentioning them specifically here. The people that say there are no good stories posted with this newsgroup should get their heads examined. Second note: Since many readers would like to read the top stories for each month, I would appreciate it if authors would repost as many of these stories as possible. If you wish, you can label them as Celeste's #x for November: Name of Story. Third Note: I have had great success finding these stories on the World Wide Web by using the Deja News Server (www.dejanews.com) and the service at www.reference.com. You can even find past issues of my reviews through these services. - Celeste Here's this month's list: 1. "Inger" by Friar Dave 2. "The Reward" by Bill Green 3. "Deja Vu" by Ann Douglas 4. "Watching" by Alan Mathews 5. "Bracelet of Love" by Stephanie 6. "Fame" by Uncle Mike 7. "Cinnamon" by Patrick Donovan 8. "Virgin (On the Ridiculous)" by Jordan Shelbourne 9. "Happening" by Vickie Tern 10. "Interpreter" by Mark 11. "Pickles" by Dulcinea 12. "Perfect Love" by Uther Pendragon 13. "Cobbler's Bench" by Dafney Dewitt 14. "The Inspiration" by David Cramer 15. "I Learn to Think" by Estragon 16. "Duty" by Uther Pendragon 17. "The Ongoing Adventures of Gorgeous Gracie" by Mary Anne Mohanraj 18. "Into the Woods" by With Sue 19. "Nextdoor" by Friar Dave 20. "Make ****** Fast" by Delta 21. "The Prize" by Ann Douglas 22. "Sandy" by Ann Douglas 23. "While You Were Out" by Deidre Ng 24. "The Black Knight: An Erotic Adventure" by Alan Barclay 25. "A Love Deeply Missed" by James Boswell. Here are the original reviews in alphabetical order: "The Black Knight: An Erotic Adventure" by Alan Barclay (editor@spellbinder.bc.ca). Sir Englebert the Ungainly is in the midst of a rather hectic adventure when he comes upon a naked woman - I mean fair maiden - tied to a stake. The young lady is the nearby village's offering to one of the great beasts of the forest to persuade that monster to spare their homes from destruction. If the dragon devours her, he cannot then in good conscience attack the village. It was a sensible thing for the villagers to do, and the good knight very nearly rides on by. But there's something about the fragile beauty of a damsel in distress with her naked body dangling like a misplaced modifier from a stake so that her breasts.... This is the sort of story that really upsets me! It includes a focus on sex slavery and a large amount of spanking - but that's not what upsets me. After all, this is a story about chivalry, and chivalry has specific Rules. For example, a chivalrous person must always open doors for lady of rank equal to or higher than his own, allow an opponent to be armed before he lops off his head or blows his brains out, and accept sex slaves when they are assigned to him and treat them as their status deserves. No, that's not what bothers me. What upsets me is that at the time I am reading this story, I already have TWENTY-ONE stories on my Top 15 List for this month; and here I am reading number TWENTY-TWO! In today's mail I received the "J" story from Mark who does the Alphabet series. I'm going to wait until December 4 to review it. I can't stand any more really excellent stories this month! The only significant problem with the story was this sentence: "I told her that I labored under a curse; that I could not enjoy a woman who was well and recently spanked." Actually, the opposite was true: he could not enjoy a woman UNLESS she was well and recently spanked. It's a big difference, but I figured the curse correctly from the context. Since the story was otherwise so good, I decided to forgive this one sin. Anyway, this is a really excellent story. I don't want to ruin it for you, but I'll advise you that it's meant to be funny. Thomas Mallory and Alfred Tennyson may have taken knighthood seriously, but more recent authors have discovered that knights were really funny people. This story was presented by Lust So Stories. Since it was a good one, I might was well cite their web page: http://spellbinder.bc.ca/lss/ "Bracelet of Love" by Stephanie (stephanie@nym.alias.net). The woman buys an old bracelet that turns out to be magic. She had been beautiful before; but when she puts the bracelet on, she becomes the embodiment of feminine sensuality. This all happens within the first 449 words of the story; there are 11,597 words left in the story. What will happen next? Well, for one thing, the bracelet has the immediate but indirect effect of making the husband's penis become engorged with blood. Imagine that. This is an amazing story! I'm not going to tell you more details except to say that the main effect of the bracelet is to turn the wearer not necessarily into an idealized woman, but into an idealized lover for the person who happens to be closest to the wearer. Oh, and the wearer cannot take it off; someone else has to remove it. As my Canadian sisters say, interesting possibilities, eh? Or, as the wife says in the story, perhaps it isn't a good idea to experiment with the bracelet in a hotel." "Cinnamon" by Patrick Donovan (drwho@world.std.com). This is a vivid description of the narrator making love to Alicia in a beautiful cove by the ocean on a moonlit night. It is an extremely well-written story; and I recommend it strongly. I had never thought of using warm cinnamon oil in the manner described in this story. What I would like to know is whether that liquid when heated and rubbed gently into the appropriate aperture really does serve as an effective lubricant for anal intercourse. "The Cobbler's Bench" by Dafney Dewitt. The four female friends have gathered and Jackie's house to play Truth or Dare. It will be a night for telling stories. The rules of the game are simple. Each of the women will try to tell the scariest, sexiest story that she can. The others have to guess if the story is True or just a Daring Lie. Whoever tells the scariest, sexiest story that is believed to be true will win. The only other rule is that there are no other rules. Everything is fair game. The winner can do anything to win. The other important element of the story is that Jackie tells her friends that her daughter's pet ferret has escaped. Of course, ferrets like to burrow into very small dark holes. If you pull on their tails, they may bite. Many pet owners have had their fingers bitten to the bone and nearly amputated. The Japanese are reputed to have used ferrets to torture prisoners. I wonder what role the ferret will play in this story! This was a thoroughly enjoyable story! "Deja Vu" by Ann Douglas (annd@pop.tiac.net). Ann Douglas placed four stories among my Top 100 of 1995. I have been keeping a running list for 1996; and if I had to post that list right now, she'd make it four more times. She'd make it even more often, except that irritating proofreading errors get in the way. In short, she writes very good stories. Let me tell you her secrets to success. First, she writes stories that contain vivid, realistic portrayals of hot sex. Nearly all the stories on this newsgroup contain sex, and a lot of them contain hot sex. What Ann Douglas does is to write vivid, realistic portrayals of hot sex. Second, her characters are normal people. Some of them are also typical; but all of them are normal. Although some bible thumpers would disagree, most of the protagonists are basically moral people. Nearly everything that happens in her stories (except maybe in the sci fi and comic book stories) is something that my husband or I have done or could do or at least know somebody else who has done it. These people are not depraved predators, sex-starved sluts, contortionists with 12-inch penises, or generally dysfunctional sex maniacs. I have a soft spot in my heart (as well as somewhere else) for all the people covered in the previous sentence; but readers like myself do like to read about normal people. I get the impression that some people would disagree with me on this point; Ann's characters - they would say - are not normal, because they are lesbians or at least bisexual. I am not a lesbian. I think I could enjoy lesbian or bisexual activity; but I won't, because I have made a life-choice not to. In spite of this, however, Ann's characters make perfect sense to me. A very large number of readers feel this way. We enjoy Ann's stories because her characters act the way we think we would act (or would like to act) in similar situations. Third, Ann embeds her hot, realistic sex and normal characters in plots that are intelligent and well developed. A lot of authors try to do this, and several succeed. What Ann and many of the other successful authors do is integrate the sex with the plot in an effective manner. Some authors who try to develop a plot fail because they spend too much time on details that have no connection with the sex. One of Ann's greatest strengths is that while she is developing details, she is also developing sexual anticipation by describing events and information that give us the feeling that something exciting is going to happen and then later make the sexual activities more interesting when they finally occur. Ann also uses other techniques effectively. For example, she's a pro at the story-within-a-story technique; and her plots are often set in exotic places or focus on important social issues. But I'm convinced that the three techniques described in the preceding paragraphs are what make this author's stories so consistently good. There! Now that you know all this, you yourself can compose stories that are every bit as good as those written by this author. The present story is about Connie D'Angelo and her relationship with her granddaughter and her memories of her own sexual awakening during adolescence in the 1950's. Just read the story! It does an excellent job of implementing the techniques I described earlier in this review. "Duty" by Uther Pendragon (nobody@REPLAY.COM). This author has learned to write like a behavioristic teacher. We teachers say things like, "Do you want to read Hamlet or Macbeth next?" Actually, if they had to read at all, our students would prefer to read Stephen King or maybe Sports Illustrated or probably TV guide. But it's best to give them the illusion of control. And so the lieutenant says to the peasant woman, "Do you want me to rape you here in the main square while the men use cattle prods on you, or would you prefer to go inside the house and be my sweetheart? Macbeth looks shorter, and there probably are no cattle prods in the house, and there's no chance of getting out of the assignment anyway, and so she becomes the lieutenant's sweetheart pro temp. The lieutenant is a graduate of the School of the Americas - not the one in South Bend where they play football, but rather the one that the CIA operates to train freedom fighters for Latin America. I'm sure some readers will enjoy this story of a terrorist officer exploiting a peasant woman as "really great sex." I found it to be a genuinely realistic portrayal of a real asshole. "Fame" by Uncle Mike (fr582@cleveland.Freenet.Edu). This story is based on the movie and television series of the same title; but knowledge of those shows is unnecessary. This story about a teacher and student rehearsing for a dance performance stands on its own. It is replete with arpeggios, counterpoints, dramatic leaps, abrupt pirouettes, and other subtleties that rarely occur in light-hearted sex stories. Once the sweat kicks in and the music charges the emotions, Miss Grant begins to look literally lewd and lascivious in her lovely, lithe, and luscious little leotard that covers her palpably pulsating pussy while her pupil plays the piano. Lost in a delightful daydream about driving his desperate dick into the dark cunt of his teacher and fatefully fantasizing about her eyes flashing during the forthcoming fellatio, Bruno strikes a heavy chord when he would have preferred to remove her g-string, and his faux pas draws the teacher's attention to his engorged love wand and reminds her that perhaps he has a different form of rhapsody on his mind. As Miss Grant changes into her costume behind the portable blackboard, Bruno realizes that her taut brown body is naked before him but for that one obstruction, and he tries to regain his composure by concentrating on the middle arpeggio while stroking his middle appendage. To make a long story brief, shortly after Miss Grant praises him and encourages him to just keep it up, Bruno comes wildly in his pants while the devilish dancer accidentally brushes against his beleaguered body. As he finishes the piece, she moves away and comments, "Perfect tempo, Mr. Martelli, but you finished too quickly." More practice seems to be in order - but only after she checks and tunes his instrument. Damn! He'll have to tell his mother the teacher kept him after school. A faux pas occurs! This is a school for the gifted. Shouldn't "I never thought a teacher could suck cock so good" be more fittingly rendered, "I had not realized that a teacher could fellate so felicitously"? This is an exceptionally well-written story. The description and integration with the musical theme was so well done that I practically came just reading about the dance scenario - before there was any actual sexual contact. Then the actual sex was even more vivid. I strongly recommend this story! "Happening" by Vickie Tern (VickieTern@aol.com). The author sent me a note with this one that said that this story was to have been very short - like one of Deirdre's stories. But the characters outwitted her, even as they outwitted each other and the plot outwitted them; and it took time and space for her to head them off, haul them back, and make them behave. I used my word count; that's 80,278 characters - as in 18,361 words! If you ever become trapped as a character in a Vickie Tern story, here's my advice to you: if you want to maintain your personal autonomy and gender identity, do not be unfaithful to your spouse under the impression that he/she will not know. Not only will he/she know, he/she is probably engineering it; and very soon he/she will be the proper pronoun to refer to you. Oh! and also be especially skeptical if you are male and the female participant values your sexual activities but does not appear to consider your penis to be an integral part of your amorous interactions with her. And if there is more than one female in the story, be very careful - you may be wrong about who is really in charge of your life. Your best bet is to find a kindly priest, minister, or rabbi and follow the conservative moral advice given to you by that counselor. On the other hand, if personal autonomy and gender identity are not high on your list of priorities, go with the flow; it might be fun. Ignoring my initial advice, the hero (for lack of a better word) of this story plunges into a romantic liaison with his sexy neighbor, who lets him lick her pussy and insert his earnest ejaculations into her asshole, provided he licks out the untidy remnants. What begins as a simple fling soon becomes something much more complex. You see, the neighbor has a husband with one of those monster cocks, and this husband has been boinking the hero's wife into heavenly bliss for the past several months. As part of a revenge/love theme, our hero becomes a woman, so that he/she can suitably serve all three of the others - to the happiness of all four, of course. The plan assumes that some characters will misconceive some other people's reasons, get them wrong, act accordingly, and then do the right thing, while thinking they were doing something else. This probably makes no sense whatsoever, unless you read the story. I know a lot of readers think TG stories are just plain weird. Some may be, but I have found the ones that have been sent to me for review to be exceptionally creative. This one is no exception. To be honest, I did not find this story to be sexy in the sense of a turn-on, but I did find it to be extremely erotic in the sense of blending sex into a creative plot that actually did make a lot of sense and really did speak intelligently about human nature. This is one of this author's better stories! "I Learn to Think" by Estragon (rgt@well.com). I nearly died laughing while I read this story. I have never been an adolescent boy, but this HAS to be how they think when they encounter the first intelligent and attractive female who has authority over them. The story is written in the format of a journal for a philosophy class - a class that discusses how people think. Sounds boring; but it's not. The author comes up with some bizarre insights that are so crazy that they simply MUST be true. The last line of the story says "end of part one"; but I almost hope there is no more - why ruin something that's almost perfect by adding to it? {That last sentence sounds like something I once wrote in my own philosophy journal.} Instead of making this story three times as long, I would really like to see this author tighten up the ending and leave it at approximately the same length. Then publish it in a philosophy magazine - like Playboy or Redbook or maybe Cosmopolitan. One interesting thought that is NOT explored in the story is the fact that since the journal is written FOR Ms Altman, then she'll obviously have to read what the writer has written; and it's fun to speculate about what her reaction will be. Incidentally, my favorite philosophical cartoon may be apropos here. It shows a philosophy professor writing on the chalk board, "I think, therefore I am." The student in the back row leans over and whispers to the scholar next to him, "Oh, no! We don't even exist!" Think about that one, Ms Altman! "Inger" by Friar Dave (friar.dave@teamhbbs.com). Roger is a single Father who is raising a 12-year-old son. He hires Inger, an intelligent, dependable, but apparently unattractive college girl to do the housework, to help with homework, and to generally keep an eye on his son while he is at work. Bill discovers long before Roger does that Inger can really be a fox when she wants to be one. Meanwhile, Roger begins dating Bill's English teacher. Well, while Roger goes out with Bernice the English teacher, Inger notices that Bill has been running off to the bathroom to masturbate; and she asks him if it's because he's thinking about the English teacher who is with his father. Bill replies with something like, "No. I'm thinking about you, Inger. Look, I have another boner right now!" Since they have to study algebra, she helps him relax his erection before study time; and eventually she integrates their mutual physical attraction into part of an incentive system to get him to study hard. {Ooops! "Study hard" can have more than one meaning in this instance, I guess.} And so the plot thickens. I might add that giving a kid a hand job when he displays a hard-on that you have caused is not a good way to eliminate or minimize future erections. A more successful strategy would be to hit him in the groin with a baseball bat. There, that should settle you down for a while. As I said, Inger's method would not have been successful had it been her goal to minimize arousal in order to facilitate the study of algebra, which would have been a worthy goal. However, it turns out that she has needs too. And so she and Bill form a sort of Reciprocal Needs Alliance. She will scratch his back if he scratches hers - only it's not their backs that they will be scratching. This is a very good story. We get to see Roger develop his relationship with Bernice and Bill develop his with Inger, who has developed a tutoring system that manages to get the 12-year-old through calculus in just about three months! The sex is very hot. (Continued in 2/3) Path: newsfeed.direct.ca!portc01.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail From: celeste801@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories Subject: Celeste's Top 15 Stories - Nov 1996 (2/3) Date: 4 Dec 1996 19:01:12 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Lines: 322 Message-ID: <19961204190200.OAA06026@ladder01.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder01.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Xref: newsfeed.direct.ca alt.sex.stories:126023 Status: N Celeste's Top 15 Stories -November 1996 (2/3) (Continued from 1/3) "The Inspiration" by David Cramer (david@law.uoregon.edu). This and the previous story ("Tedi") are similar in the respect that both of them are written from a perspective that differs from my own. I am neither an extreme hedonist nor a talented sculptor. The previous story I rated somewhat negatively, because I felt that it did not allow me as an outsider to see the thrill of what was happening in that story; it just came across as a ritualistic listing of titillating events chained together because the formula called for events like those to fill that kind of story. The present story, on the other hand, DOES enable me as an outsider to feel the thrill of artistic creation. I think the contrast between these two stories offers a good example of the difference between a mediocre and an excellent erotic story. I won't try to describe the present story in detail, except to say that Thomas is a sculptor who becomes almost intoxicated with the need to sculpt a beautiful woman. He eventually makes love to her, and this enables him to bring his artistic effort to fruition. I enjoy art; but as I have said, I am not a visual artist. I cannot even draw those bonus.jpg pictures that occasionally show up on this newsgroup. However, I have a friend who is an excellent artist. She has drawn a great picture of two lesbians making love. She is not a lesbian herself, nor am I; but her painting makes me believe that the emotions it displays are real. I once asked her how she did this. Did she have to make love to another woman to express the emotions shown in her picture? She said no, and she added that as far as she knew the models were not lesbians either; but she said she did have to walk around inside the heads of the people she was painting. I mention the information in the preceding paragraph to make the point that I don't even buy this author's apparent premise that it would be important for an artist to make love to a woman in order to sculpt her perfectly; but he conveys his story to me in such a way that I can say to myself, "Yes! That makes sense!" This author has an insight that is different from my own and from my friend's; but unlike the author of the previous story, he conveys his insight to me in such a way that I am at least temporarily able to set aside my own perspective and accept his. That is the mark of an excellent writer. I don't want to over-analyze this story, but one of the ways the author accomplishes his goal is by being so accurate and vivid in the aspects where his character's thoughts and actions do overlap with my own experiences. For example, although I am not an artist, I myself have had the experience of being suddenly and constantly aware of a person whose existence I had not previously noticed. This author describes a similar experience in the first lines of the story. He seizes that and other details and integrates them into a plot that enables me to blend my own experience with that of a person who is not at all like me. I really enjoyed this story. This is a talented author, and I hope we can see more of his writing. "Into the Woods" by With Sue (suenh@kear.tdsnet.com). Try this pickup line the next time you encounter a really attractive blonde: "Are you the Sue who writes erotic stories on the Internet?" If she says yes, have pleasantly ecstatic sex with her. If she says no, then say, "Do you come here often?" or "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" or "Either smile or slap me if you'd like to have sex with me." In the present story a guy named Dave meets the real Sue in the woods and he tells her that her stories are by far the best on alt.sex.stories - better than all the drivel that's usually posted there. Such exaggeration is understandable, since by this time Dave was interested in getting into Sue's pants or helping her resolve a plot; but Sue's stories are not really quite that good. They're better than 95% of what's posted here and competitive with the very best; but this story is based on Dave's pickup line, and so we'll let his hyperbole stand. So anyway, Dave tells Sue that "Louvre Love" is his favorite among all her stories. This is blatantly silly! Aside from "Life's a Beach," "Louvre Love" is probably Sue's WORST story! Dave's statement is really an insidiously complicated pickup line. He expects Sue to respond with something like, "Louvre Love my Lovely Ass! Let me re-enact a scene from Craftsmanship with you!" By starting with Louvre Love, Dave can eventually get Sue to work through all of her plots that are better than that one, including "Slippery When Wet," "Lab Partners", and "Red Hot". Good Grief! That's right - there's also "Good Grief", "To Serve and Protect" and even "Adventureland", to say nothing of "Coffee Table", "Fun with Dick and Jane", "Film at Eleven", "Lucy in the Sky" or the great withSue stories like "Across the Catty Corner" and "Weekend on the Island." I was right - or at least close! In the middle of the story, Dave and Sue decide to work out the plot for a new story called "Into the Woods," which - surprisingly enough - is this very story that I am reviewing! Well, actually they act out the basic details, and then I suppose Dave or Sue wrote the actual story back at the computer. "Interpreter" by Mark (MarkB@aboy.demon.co.uk). The man is sitting at a boring meeting of the European Commission, listening to a boring interpreter translate a boring speech to him. Then there's a pause in the action, and the voice of the boring interpreter is replaced by the sexy voice of a mysterious woman who starts working sexual innuendoes into the translation. The man realizes that he's the only person getting the English feed, and so some hot one-on-one action seems to be in order. This is really creative stuff! "A Love Deeply Missed" by James Boswell. Since about the age of 10, the college-age boy narrating this story had been in love with Stacy, the beautiful woman who cut his hair. His father and he had grown close after his mother died; but to his dismay his father started dating Stacy shortly after he himself went off to college. When Dad married Stacy, he couldn't stand it. He began to hate his father; and a conservative statement would be that he began to obsess over Stacy. First he went through her drawers to examine all her clothes; then in order to make himself feel closer to Stacy, he began to jerk off into anything that would go onto her skin - face cream, skin lotion, suntan oil, etc. Sound weird? Actually, it sounded fairly normal the way the author introduced the activities. I was frankly surprised by this story. I'm used to Boswell's slutty wife stories, and this is not like that at all. The sexual activity is largely suggestive, but very hot. It's an interesting situation: boy falls in love with girl who becomes his step-mother. What would you do? I think the author handles it realistically, but you'll have to read the story to see what happens. To top it off, the author beautifully "illustrates" the story with lyrics from Bruce Springsteen. "Make ****** Fast" by Delta (delta@bc.sympatico.ca). In these reviews I have occasionally expressed my bemused bewilderment over the chain letters that I sometimes receive via e-mail. One of my speculations has been about the meaning of the statement "this letter has been around the world five times." Is five times good or bad for e-mail? And how do they know which direction the mail went in the first place, and what constitutes a circumnavigation of the globe? Delta has taken a more detailed, satirical approach in her reaction to chain spam. The ****** in the title stands for what it usually stands for on the net, only it's usually spelled ****. Delta's story is based on the premise that one can send one's lover to the top name in the left column or whatever those letters require. Sounds like fun, you may think; but as the story will show, there could be some negative repercussions. By the way, I have never given an Orion rating of 10 to anyone. "Nextdoor" by Friar Dave (friar.dave@teamhbbs.com). The single father comes home from work early and discovers his only child Jan, who is 12-years-old, in the shower with Marty, the much older physical fitness instructor who lives next door. Eavesdropping briefly, the father concludes that the activities in the shower include anal intercourse. Since he doesn't want to traumatize his child, the father decides to wait until they're finished and confront them. As I read this story, I grew suspicious. Friar Dave is a good, creative author, and this story bordered on the banal. I began to consider the possibility that maybe there was a punch line - maybe things weren't what they seemed to be. Maybe the father had jumped to the wrong conclusion and taken me with him- maybe the child and friend were just giving the dog a bath or something. So I tried to read the story with possible innocent meanings in mind. I was right. Things weren't what I thought they were. But I still missed the surprise ending. Maybe you'll have better luck. It was an enjoyable story. "The Ongoing Adventures of Gorgeous Gracie" by Mary Anne Mohanraj (mohanraj@mills.edu). I feel a strong affinity with the protagonist of this story. Grace is a beautiful, dedicated English teacher. She is so beautiful that she has to go to great lengths to prevent her physical charms from interfering with her life's goal of imparting skills in the use of the English language to her college students. One of her concerns is that she is ill fain {I think I recall that phrase from Shakespeare} to become romantically involved with a person less intelligent than herself. Pete is a football jock - a veritable Herculean Adonis, but doubtlessly a dumb jock. He has missed his class assignment, using the excuse that he had been hit by a car and cracked several ribs while helping a little old lady across the street on his way to class and had to delay his rendition and explanation of Macbeth for 24 hours. Grace suspects that this contrived explanation is merely a lame excuse for Pete to meet with her in private and to look at her boobs or to get into her pants. When his presentation is impeccable, Grace is possessed by a wild desire to get into HIS pants. And then there's the surprise ending! "Perfect Love" by Uther Pendragon (nobody@REPLAY.COM). And now for something completely different. This is a story about love and sex in America at the end of the 22nd century. If a similar account were written by an anthropologist in, say, the 25th century (or if the present story were written by a current anthropologist about similar events and customs during the 11th century), the author would probably start with definitions of key concepts that would enable the reader to relate the time being studied to events and customs in the reader's own life. For example, in the present case, it might be useful to say that the dangers of sexual diseases and pregnancy had been brought under control by the end of the 22nd century, that sexual activity was accepted by society as a natural part of growing up and that young people were actively assisted in their sexual development by more mature partners who played an important but temporary role in the life of the adolescent, and that what we now call marriage had been subdivided into a period of time referred to as pairing followed by a more permanent relationship referred to as partnering. There's more to sexual life in this futuristic society than what I described in the preceding paragraph. I have mentioned this much simply to state that the author does not take the systematic approach of an anthropologist, but rather uses more of a chain-of-thought approach to introduce us to Jared, Dawn, Tai and the others in this story. This more casual, sometimes poetic approach is designed to make the story less technical and more enjoyable than the anthropological approach. Unfortunately, it also makes the story somewhat confusing. My advice would be to express the ideas more directly through action instead of intellectual discourse and to focus on a single point more cohesively. I would also suggest doing something about the names. The atmosphere of the story was already strange, and on top of that I had to deal with weird, hyphenated names. It was like dealing with a Russian novel or the British aristocracy! I reacted by ignoring most of the names that I considered to be unimportant, and this probably added to the confusion that I experienced. I hasten to add that in spite of my comments in the previous paragraph I think this is already a very good story. However, this is an author who revises and improves his work even after he has posted it; and my guess is that someday this author will revise this story to make it really excellent. In addition to describing a futuristic society, the author describes the love life of a young man who departs from the traditional style of that society. He appears to be a romantic in a scientific, pragmatic, structured civilization. What the author is asking us to do is to imagine a world that is quite different from our own and then to imagine a person whose lifestyle is interesting because it departs from the strictures of that society. This is hard to do - we're being asked to imagine hypothetical variations about a hypothetical society to which we have barely been introduced. Although I found the effort to be at times frustrating, overall I found it to be interesting and worthwhile. There's not much I can really say about the story itself. You have to read it to believe it. The plot begins with the sex education of an emerging adolescent boy at the end of the 22nd century. The society refers to this process as maturing the libido, and it is essentially a sort of apprenticeship during which the young man matches up with an older woman who teaches him the necessary skills and attitudes. The young man decides to enter a state of suspended animation in order to let a younger woman become closer to his own age, so that their union will be more acceptable to their culture. But as the 20th-century song by the Stattler Brothers says, "Life gets complicated when you enter suspended animation." As I said, read the story and enjoy it for yourself. I'd like to make two final comments about this story. First, the other story with which I most closely associate this one is "Tales of the Seeding" by Wollstonecraft. The level of civilization in the two stories make them almost opposites; but in both cases the reader's enjoyment arises from trying to figure out what in the world the protagonists are doing as they work out their sexual feelings and from comparing the activities and emotions of the protagonists to their own. I encourage you to read both stories. Elf Sternberg has also written several similar stories about sexual relationships in a futuristic society. Second, I find it interesting that this story can be written by the same author who wrote the recent series of stories about Bob and Jeanette Brennan. Those stories (all beginning with "For...") focused on the developing, romantic relationship of a couple who seemed so realistic that I felt I knew them personally. The present story, on the other hand, focuses on people who by definition cannot exist at all. I am impressed that one person can write so effectively on both these levels. "Pickles" by Dulcinea (Dulcinea97@aol.com). It's very difficult to accomplish what Dulcinea does in this story. We all know that bananas, carrots, and cucumbers have phallic significance; but Dulcinea manages to convey the excitement of turning a lover on _over the telephone_ by eating a pickle. I got wet just reading the story, and I was just munching on a chocolate chip cookie. How could that be? Normally, Dulcinea's stories are excellent but too short to make my Top 15 lists. This is not a shortcoming; the stories simply do not compete with the more complete plots and character developments that these other stories exemplify. This story is an exception. It tells a really stimulating story completely yet concisely. "The Prize" by Ann Douglas (annd@pop.tiac.net). While vacationing in a tropical paradise, Alyssia has won a race against her fiance, Stephen; and for her prize she expects some tender lovemaking. Since she's a bit of an exhibitionist, she would like to make love outdoors; and so she is disappointed when Stephen invites her inside for a shower, with a promise that the prize will come later. While they are in the shower, there is a knock at the door. Stephen leaves the shower, and a moment later announces that the prize has arrived. The prize, it seems, will be a massage from the masseuse who has just arrived. Alyssia is disappointed. Certainly she likes it when Stephen gives her a massage, but doesn't Stephen realize that what she loves most about his massages is that they inevitably end with a hot lovemaking session? Well, yes, he does; and that's the rest of the story. "The Reward" by Bill Green (wgreen@netcom.com). I usually prefer to wait until multi-chapter stories are finished before posting my review. This author asked for a review now rather than later. Since this is an excellent story, the author deserves a Reward; and so here is the review. Until now, my favorite mind control story was Backrub's "Wet Dreams," which I ranked as the Number 43 story of 1995. This story is even better. To be honest, I HAVE enjoyed other mind control stories, but in the back of my mind I always get the feeling that they are simplistic. That is, they suggest that a college sophomore can read a book on hypnosis and thereafter have his way with any woman he wants. This one is different; it is genuine science fiction. The Power goes beyond mind control; the explanation for the power sounds like it's based on an esoteric application of quantum physics. The beginning of the story delineates the rules that the recipient of the power must follow. The results are delightful! The hero accidentally releases from captivity a mysterious being and is rewarded by the Power to control thoughts and actions within a restricted range. He initially tries the Reward out on his spoiled-brat step-sister with remarkable success. Then he tries it out with a traveling companion during a two-hour plane flight. As he uses his power, he learns about his Reward and modifies his guidelines for using it. I can't wait to see the next chapters! I suspect that the author is a person with some background in computer programs. His instructions to the Power appear to be mini-scripts containing commands that typically might become computer programs in a language like C++. However, this is not C++. It's easily an A. My only problem with this story (and it's not a significant one) is that the narrator's fantasies often do not correspond with my own. All that means, however, is that if you get off on the idea of fantasizing about a woman with basketball-size breasts dressed only in corset and a set of leather boots with six-inch stiletto heals, you'll probably enjoy the story even more than I did. (Continued in 3/3) Path: newsfeed.direct.ca!op.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!howland.erols.net!portc02.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail From: celeste801@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories Subject: Celeste's Top 15 Stories - Nov 1996 (3/3) Date: 4 Dec 1996 19:05:26 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Lines: 164 Message-ID: <19961204190700.OAA06128@ladder01.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder01.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Xref: newsfeed.direct.ca alt.sex.stories:126040 Status: N Celeste's Top 15 Stories -November 1996 (3/3) (Continued from 2/3) "Sandy" by Ann Douglas (annd@pop.tiac.net). Last week I said that readers "enjoy Ann's stories because her characters act the way we think we would act (or would like to act) in similar situations." Actually, I have to refine that statement to make it applicable to the present story. I have never followed a hooker home or made love to one in a train station, nor would I like to. On the other hand, I CAN understand how a woman could act that way; and so I'll still give Ann credit for writing realistic stories about normal people. The plot begins with Sandy becoming attached to the hooker (Jasmine), as described in the preceding paragraph. Things escalate when Sandy's clod of a boyfriend rudely breaks up with her and she needs companionship. You can probably guess where this is going - or at least you think you can. Read the story and find out. One of the reasons I like Ann's stories is because they are generally free of racial and ethnic stereotyping. For example, in the present story Jasmine is Hispanic, and there is no suggestion that she is in any way inferior to Sandy - in spite of the fact that Jasmine is the prostitute and Sandy (who I presume is white anglo-American) is the executive. So it was with some surprise that I read that Jamal (Jasmine's black boyfriend - not the stereotypical pimp) had "the largest cock Sandy had ever seen." I guess I should keep in mind that statements like this are meant to be complimentary to the owner of the cock; but the notion of Black men having "monster cocks" is simply a myth. People who promote this stereotype may be advancing a notion that treats a large group of people as being in some way more "animalistic" than "normal" people. I have never directly examined the penis sizes of a sample of Black men; but my brother-in-law has. That's because he is a black man. After one of my previous reviews in which I ranted on this topic, I managed to get him into a conversation. He's super-religious and would never understand how I could read these stories or write these reviews, and so I told him about the stereotype that I had "heard on Geraldo." He got genuinely upset and started quoting valid medical research to me that stated that there is no significant difference in organ size between average members of the white and black races. I am pretty sure he's right. When he calmed down, he said he has verified the published facts by direct but discreet observation in locker rooms and in showers. It's his opinion that "insecure" white people try to set up the stereotype of the Black male as a stud in order to scare white women or to dehumanize Blacks in general. I see his point. In Ann's defense, if she wanted to have somebody have a monster cock, I guess that could be a Black man as well as a White man. So I won't put her on my Bad List. Nor will I tell my brother-in-law about her. Having been a tad negative, let me become more positive. I think Ann does an excellent job of presenting bdsm activities in a way that makes them seem enjoyable to outsiders. I don't have the same fantasy that Sandy has - maybe my husband or I WILL get that fantasy someday - but the domination activities seemed both hot and interesting to me. I came away with the impression that this was a normal person enjoying something that was a little different from what I myself enjoy. I do NOT get that impression from all bdsm stories. Finally, this story contains an example of a minor mistake about which I think author's should be more careful. The entire story is told from Sandy's point of view. Then suddenly we find these sentences: "Jasmine felt her orgasm about to burst. She could tell that is wasn't going to be a record breaker, but then again she hadn't expected it to be." There's no way Sandy could have known what Jasmine's feelings were, and it would have been better to stick with Sandy's point of view. The author gets back to the proper perspective almost immediately: "Sandy soon could feel Jasmine's body shudder as her legs pressed tighter against her face. While she wasn't a gusher as Sandy sometimes was, there was enough of an eruption for Sandy to feel proud of her achievement." It IS OK to take the viewpoint of the omniscient author - to write as if the author knows the feelings and actions of absolutely everybody in the story. However, in this case Ann clearly intended to write from Sandy's point of view, and it would have been easily possible to do so; all she had to do was describe what Sandy saw or felt Jasmine doing, instead of shifting to the inside of Jasmine's head. The same problem occurs a few other times in this story. "Virgin (On the Ridiculous)" by Jordan Shelbourne (jordan@u36.com). Larry and Tara are roommates. They have a chaste relationship; no sex - they just live together. Tara has a boyfriend named Cliff who doesn't want to deflower a virgin. He says it's too important a decision to make in the heat of passion, and he doesn't want to hurt Tara. So Tara concludes that if Larry would make love to her just once, then she wouldn't be a virgin anymore; and then Cliff will be willing to boink her. As the title says, this is verging on the ridiculous; but it's quite enjoyable. I won't tell you more about this delightful story. You should read it yourself. It's like a really good episode of "Three's Company" (if such an oxymoron is possible) - except that this time "Two's Company." Although literary critics would possibly classify this as farce, it contains gems of wisdom, like this one: "I hate waiting to dry my hands under those blowers, and you know, it's ten times worse if you're holding up a drunk who's drying his hands." The story is a wonderful combination of sweet, sexy, and hilarious. "Watching" by Alan Mathews (alanmath@hotmail.com). I got lucky tonight. No, not the way you think, although that happened too. I got lucky because my lessons for the rest of the week have been so well prepared over the years that I could afford to blow off about three hours reading this story. Sometimes a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. The boy and the girl first meet when the school bus breaks down and it gets cold and they have to share his coat. She's 13 and he's 18, but she's beautiful and he has a crush on her. They don't have sex. She falls asleep in his arms, and he doesn't even masturbate. She kisses him gently when she eventually gets off the bus. That's the kind of story this is going to be. But the action picks up quickly. Circumstances require Jenny to leave home; and since Alex happens to live alone most of the time he takes her in. Soon we discover that sleeping together and showering together leads to a certain level of intimacy. The sexual activities come across as both innocent and sexy. The story includes a genuine, interesting plot. This is a really sexy, romantic story. A minor problem is that the story contains numerous irritating errors. For example, the author consistently uses "to" instead of "too." Dr. Mathewson becomes Dr. Sampson a few paragraphs later. My advice to you is to ignore the errors and just enjoy the story. It's excellent! "While You Were Out" by Deidre Ng (Deidre Ng@aol.com). As you may have hear by now, the bureaucrats at AOL erased all of the stories from the Ng Sisters' web site. This is known in Catholic theology as a felix culpa. Culpa (fault or sin), because it was a lousy thing to do. Felix (happy), because the upshot is that Deidre is now reposting all of those stories, which means that those of you who have not yet seen the entire Ng opus will get your chance now. In her e-mail message notifying me of our Redemption, Deidre said that she actually started reading a.s.s, and told Tammy how pitiful it was, and how "even they" could do better than most of the lame stories, and got their first stories posted, just before I started reviewing. That means that I'll have to write a few new reviews, but I'll also repost my old reviews whenever I notice one of the stories reposted. I might add that this newsgroup has come a long way since the first stories of the Ng Sisters. Their stories still stand out as excellent, but they have a lot more company nowadays. This first repost takes the form of a message from Deidre on Tammy's answering machine. Deidre speculates about what her sister is probably doing instead of answering the machine and describes her own recent experience at the St. Regis hotel, where after a long day Deidre's boyfriend dropped by and lit up her life. The author describes the foreplay and penetrations in intimate detail. As an English teacher, I was most interested in the punctuation of this sentence. I started to beg for him to fuck me, just little panting "fuck me, fuck me please"s. How DOES one make plural a phrase that's in quotes when the item within quotes is itself singular. As far as I know, the author got it right. I'm going to defer further thought on this problem for one of those occasions when my husband is trying to embarrass me by getting me turned on in public and I need something really boring and insipid on which to concentrate. All I can say is that Tammy's answering machine takes a lot longer message than mine does!