Path: newsfeed.direct.ca!newsfeeder.toronto.ican.net!torn!howland.erols.net!worldnet.att.net!uunet!in2.uu.net!152.163.170.17!newstf01.news.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail From: celeste801@aol.com (Celeste801) Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories Subject: Celeste's Top Stories Reviews (1/4) Date: 5 Jan 1997 21:13:41 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Lines: 1056 Message-ID: <19970105211200.QAA03404@ladder01.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder01.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Xref: newsfeed.direct.ca alt.sex.stories:138200 Status: N Top Stories of 1996 - Part 1 of 4 (This is the first of four parts. The stories are listed alphabetically. For the complete list of Top Stories of 1996 in rank order, see the posting labeled "Celeste's Top 100 Stories of 1996." Please do not ask me to send you these stories. Most of them can be found on DejaNews at www.dejanews.com.) - Celeste "The Adventures of Me and Martha Jane" by Santo J. Romeo (73233.1411@compuserve.com). I first reviewed this story in CR 18, which was posted on September 9, 1995. At that time I gave it a 5. It was a good story, I said; but I was genuinely pissed off because it just ended in the middle of nowhere. I further refused to read any more parts of the story until the author would assure me that he was finished. I was tired of this neverending story crap. Well, the author has finished the story, and it has been worth the wait. I saw a message on a.s.s. that compared the author to Harold Robbins. That evaluation is not far from the mark. The narrator is presumably a man in his fifties, retelling a story of his youth. At the beginning of the story, the 6-year-old Steven (Speedy) harbored a wonderful, non-sexual admiration for Martha Jane, who was nine years older; and she showed a reciprocal respect for him. The two lived next door to each other in a federal housing project around 1950 and shared a common front porch. The focus of the story is the maturation and fulfillment of their relationship. Although the early lines of this story hint of sexual activity, the first several paragraphs are devoted to demonstrating that the protagonist of the story was a precocious child - not a sexually precocious child, but a run-of-the-mill precocious child. This full-life focus continues throughout the story, and it emphasizes that the hero and Martha Jane should be regarded as whole persons, not as simple sex objects. The development of non-sexual aspects helps set this story in a truly rich and interesting psychological and emotional environment. The story is one of the longest coherent stories I have seen on this newsgroup, but it is also one of the best. Certainly there is moral ambiguity in the story. For example, near the beginning the mother tells the young Steven that pregnant women get that way by eating too many popsicles and that babies come from storks. Shortly thereafter, Martha Jane corrects this stupid explanation by playing with his penis to give him a hard-on, while giving him an accurate biological account of the facts of life. If I had a son, I wouldn't try either of these approaches to sex education. It's interesting that normal society rejects Martha Jane's approach - to the extent that Redbook and the Sunday supplements would never even consider publishing an account like this without labeling Martha Jane a pervert; but sitcoms routinely laugh about the mother's explanation. I'm running the risk of preaching to the choir here: most readers of this review are likely to be predisposed to want to like a story like this. On the other hand, large numbers of equally civilized readers outside a.s.s. would react to this story as an example of perversion. Most of us will counter by describing these people as sexually repressed puritans. And so forth. I think we should be willing to simply admit but tolerate the moral ambiguity of the story. It's fiction and it's interesting. There's nothing perverse in setting aside our moral scruples and enjoying a good story. Millions of American high schoolers are required every year to read Edgar Alan Poe's tale about a pervert who tears the heart out of an old man and buries it under the floorboards in his house. We practically require these students to set aside moral scruples and to enjoy the beauty of this atrocity. I'm not recommending that we make "Martha Jane" part of the sophomore curriculum; I simply think adult readers can set aside moral reactions long enough to enjoy this story without taking a position that it would be "better" if all children grew up this way. When I myself was a young baby-sitter, I did not give head to any of the children I cared for; and I would hope that my own daughters likewise refrain from that practice. The psychologists and counselors who suggested to the narrator later in his life that this activity was abnormal are quite likely right (although, again, these sages would simply laugh about the goofy explanations of sexuality given by the mother and other adults.). It would be much better for little boys to receive accurate answers from their own parents and for young baby-sitters to have internalized a code of ethical conduct that enables them to understand their own and their clients' emerging sexuality and to rule out genital contact without resorting to primitive mythologies. But that still doesn't make this a bad story. One of my own favorite novels is Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." I would never raise my own children the way those children grew up in that story, but it's still a good novel (and an excellent movie). Again, I'm probably preaching to the choir. But someone is surely going to label this story "pedophilia." There are legitimate gripes against many pedophile stories; they essentially recommend the adoption of lifestyles that would be destructive to children. What we need to do is acknowledge that some stories that describe genital activities with children have the potential to be destructive - especially those that are simply unrealistic or that promote the exploitation of children. On the other hand, other stories that describe genital activity with or among children are either harmless or actually have the potential to lead to moral or emotional growth among readers. To take a sexually-related analogy, there are numerous examples of books and movies about adults having affairs. Some of these are badly written or stupidly conceived and seem to have as their only goal to degrade the value of marriage and other permanent relationships. On the other hand, many of these books and movies are well conceived and have the overall effect of enabling us to understand human emotions - and, indeed, marriage and other permanent relationships - more perfectly. Although the most important aspect of this story is the sexual relationship between the narrator and Martha Jane, it's not really a sex story. Rather, it's a story about the emotional development of two young people. Less than a third of the lines in the story are even remotely devoted to their sex lives. The non-sex scenes are extremely realistic and vivid, giving us information needed to understand the background and personalities of the two main characters. If a reader wants a source of information about how much fun it would be to have sex with a precocious little kid, this would be a good story for that purpose - although all the details about the child's emotions would probably be viewed as distracting. However, I really don't think this was the author's purpose. On the other hand, if a person (like myself) is reading this story to obtain sensitive insights into the personalities of two young people as they mature sexually and emotionally, this is a good source for serious reading. "American As..." by Deidre Ng. Sirens blare in the background! Fireworks explode! Confetti and brightly colored balloons waft gently to the ground. No; this is NOT again the 1000th story I have reviewed; this time the pyrotechnics, etc., are part of the story. Deidre Ng has become an American citizen! To celebrate, she and her sister and their boyfriends do something uniquely American - they go to Chinatown. This is a hilariously sexy story. It's possible, of course, that the author is not trying to be funny or sexy - that she may merely be relating the events that filled an important evening in the life of a Chinese-Canadian woman celebrating her enfranchisement and standing topless in the ladies' restroom yelling sexual innuendoes at her equally untopped but more outspoken sister. Serves em right - those sweaters were like fashion foreplay anyway. Or, as David put it "I mean you look really sexy in that outfit." "So sexy you have to fuck me even before I can take it off?" "Overpoweringly sexy." "Now that I'm a citizen, don't I get a vote on the subject?" "You'll have to hold an erection to vote on that." "Planning on stuffing the ballot box, are you?" I constantly tell my students to find a main idea and to stick to it. This delightful story proves that I don't know what I am talking about. "The Anatomy Lesson" by Michael Dagley (dagley@soho.ios.com). From time to time I reach the conclusion that since so many authors send me their stories before posting them I must by this time know about all the good authors on this newsgroup. Therefore, I tell myself, there is no need to go through all those other postings that are probably a waste of time anyway. Fortunately, I ignore my own advice; and that's how I find excellent stories like this one. This story is about a 17-year-old English boy who has grown into adolescence almost completely isolated from peers - and especially from girls. His strict parents have dispassionately and sternly instilled in him a "good education"; but he knows only theoretical information. For example, he has been forced to memorize the names and locations of all the parts of the human body (including the reproductive organs of both males and females), but he has no clear idea how they all function or why anyone would want them to function. Then his elderly nurse and tutor, Moni Brunner, who was also his best and only friend, dies. Her replacement is Moni's granddaughter, Rafael, who is much closer to Gordon's own age. Although she is herself inexperienced with men, she decides during their first lesson together to teach him (1) the practical use of his theoretical information about reproductive organs and (2) the meaning of desire. I assured my husband that he would like this story; but I insisted that he read it aloud with his hands behind his head, while I did the things that Rafael did in the story. I guess you'll have to read the story to understand this. This was an exceptionally well written story. I hope to see a lot more by this author. "Anything" by Delta (an248969@anon.penet.fi). Lance is driving his car on a dismal night, concerned and annoyed because his wife is inexplicably upset and has gone to visit her sister. In this state of emotional tension, he picks up a young, female hitchhiker. Susan thinks she recognizes Lance, but she doubts that this is really the case. Susan comments that she would do "anything" for a ride all the way to her distant destination by 9:00 the next morning. Lance quickly takes her up on her offer, and off they go on their mutual odyssey. Susan is upset when he pulls up at his house - obviously to cash in on "anything"; but it turns out that he has to feed the cat. The shifts in mood and in sexual tension continue throughout the story. The author constantly switches rapidly but smoothly between the viewpoints of the two protagonists, describing the thoughts and emotions of each. Neither knows what the other is thinking, and we constantly see how each is sometimes right and sometimes wrong in his or her perceptions of the other. What Delta does as well as or perhaps better than anyone is tell a COMPLETE STORY - a story with a plot that involves me as the reader and plays with my mind as I think I know what is going to happen next. This is a truly excellent and sexy story. "Appleseed" by Wollstonecraft (an285729@anon.penet.fi). Joey is a rich guy who is a generally nasty bastard and whose attitude toward girls is not only to "lay 'em and leave 'em" but also to get 'em pregnant in the process. This story describes how he routinely exploits teenage girls for this purpose. The author's style is vivid, and he uses verb tenses in such a way as to convince us that while he is vividly describing a specific situation he is really describing Joey's typical behavior. Actually, he's not really Joey; the guy makes up new names and new cover stories to suit his particular seductive needs. He finds it especially easy and enjoyable to pick up religious girls at church activities; they're invariably extremely gullible. The only constant is that he is an asshole who wants to get young girls pregnant. He's even scientific about his process - in one case seducing a pair of identical twins and conducting a seductive experiment with them in a way that a Nazi genetic engineer might admire. Nonconsensual seduction and rape are not funny in the real world. But this story is very well told and extremely enjoyable. I can't tell you more details, because a major part of the enjoyment is watching the story unfold. I strongly recommend this story. "Awakenings" by Annette. The young lady is a naive virgin who has just graduated from a Swiss finishing school. Her big turn on is the thought that when a man penetrates her for the first time it will be to shoot live ammunition at an unprotected target. She gets all churned up at the idea of totally unprotected sex with an even money chance of being put in the family way. When a rich guy she really likes comes on strong to her, she tells him her feelings and says she's just not quite ready yet. Naive? Well, sort of; but she certainly knows how to keep Alan at bay! She resolves to be a virgin when she marries Alan, but shortly before the wedding he gets called away for work for two months and she goes on a cruise. The cruise ship is a veritable stud farm; and she mates with the ships mate. Not to worry; he'll use a condom. Ooops! To hell with the condom; he'll withdraw. Ooops! To hell with withdrawal; he has a supply of the RU 462 morning after pill. Ah! Ecstasy (or Ecstacy, as the Brits say); ten straight days and nights of ecstasy. Ooops! If you've never seen an RU 462 pill, I guess it's easy to confuse them with Relaxatabs. The story has minor proofreading errors; but if I managed to ignore them, you can probably do so as well. Here is a lesson from the English teacher that lies hidden inside me. Comedians and newscasters frequently talk about oxymorons. They give as examples "military intelligence," "governmental efficiency," and "honest lawyer." It may be funny to refer to these as oxymorons, because the speaker is suggesting that the military is inherently unintelligent, the government inefficient, and lawyers dishonest. The problem with those examples is that they are better examples of humor than of oxymorons. This author uses a true oxymoron when the protagonist sees her first engorged penis and refers to as "how beautifully ugly!" That's a perfect oxymoron. I once heard the person behind me at a wedding refer to the bride's "utterly ugly beauty" - making the point that the extreme artificiality of her makeup was not beautiful at all. There's a famous Latin expression: "festina lente" - make haste slowly, or as Yogi Berra put it, "Take your time; but hurry up!" A genuine oxymoron makes a point. In the story, the idea is that the male sex organ fully engorged with blood is really pretty grotesque if you look at it objectively; but if you look at it from the potential pleasure it can give, it's beautiful. This is such a great example; I want so much to use it as an example with my students, but I guess I had better not. American middle class manners; now there's an oxymoron for you! Even aside from the oxymoron, the sexual scenes were delightfully graphic. I strongly recommend this story. "Bird Watchers" by Unknown Author. There's a person named William Gann who is reposting a large number of stories from his archive. I have had time to check out only a few of these; but my advice to you is to grab all of them you have time to download. (If your service doesn't list the names of the person posting the messages, look for this format: REPOST: BIRD1 "Bird Watchers" 1/8 M,F, mast.) Some of the other downloaders don't exercise any quality control at all; their stories run the gamut from sheer gibberish to occasionally excellent writing. However, Mr. Gann has been selective. From what I have seen, the stories he is reposting are all literate and sexy. As long as William Gann doesn't read this review and decide to post even more stories and start dumping bad ones on us, I think he is doing us a great service. I cannot possibly read and review them all so rapidly; but I'll try to review one or two a week even after he stops posting them. This particular story is about a man and a woman who accidentally view each other in moments of private sexual arousal (i.e., masturbation). Even though the man uses his binoculars to zoom in for detail, he doesn't consider this to be an invasion of her privacy. {He differentiates between being a Peeping Tom and voyeurism of opportunity.} In fact, as a friendly gesture he sends her a gift: a pair of binoculars with a note reading "from one bird lover to another." The voyeurism is itself very sexy, and the direct sexual contact is even hotter. I strongly recommend this story. A problem with this posting is that I have no idea who the author is. I would very much like to read more stories by this writer, but I have no way to accomplish this. I find that a lot of people who repost stories from their archives remove the names of the authors; and it's hard to tell who really wrote them. This one bears a closer resemblance to the Sue-Backrub-Ng school of authors than to the Deirdre-Anderson or Victorian schools. I'm pretty sure it was not written by either the Dirty Dawg, Shakespeare, or Francis Bacon. It's really hot sex with good character development and twists of plot. The author is especially adept at viewing the action from the perspectives of different characters and using flashbacks to add excitement to current situations. I know the year is just beginning, but this is a good candidate for story of the year. So if someone knows who the real author is, please let me know. "Bob and Carol and Jack and Jill " by Darryman (Darryman@aol.com). This story gets off to a fast and jolting start. An American boy and girl have been hiking across England. The girl is a bit forward - almost sluttish; and she is in the next room having sex with Jill's brother Jack. The boy is shy; and when he cums prematurely, Jill tells him that's OK, because "I'm going to fuck you to death." And she does. Literally. Then she goes to join her brother in disposing of the boy's sister. These are not the ordinary, friendly hedonists that we Americans believe inhabit the British countryside. In short, this story deals with that question that has been nagging at the back of your mind: is there anything as exciting as giving pleasure to someone you were about to destroy? Now on to the main plot. Bob and Carol are sexy American lovers whose car breaks down near the Gothic mansion of Jack and Jill. They need help - but they don't know how badly they really need help. Some - indeed, most - of the rape, torture, and snuff stories posted on this newsgroup are just plain drivel. They're the inane emissions of childish minds trying to prove their manhood by being nastier and grosser than anyone else. {If you need evidence to support my assertion, consider this title of a story posted yesterday, which I declined to review: "6 Drunks Gang-Bang, then Vomit on Barmaid"} This one is different. When an author can write about so many things that disgust me and do so in such a way as to make me thoroughly enjoy the story - THEN I know that I am reading a truly good story. At a very early point in the story I was struck by an insight. Jill is a crazed sex maniac who has joined her similarly inclined brother, Jack, in his hobby of sexual torture and murder. Jack had started out a long time ago on the whores of London - to be exact, his first victim had been Mary Kelly. But by now his sister had helped him develop more cultured tastes. I'll give you no more hints regarding Jack's identity. Lest you have nightmares, I remind you that this is fiction. People like this don't exist. Or if they do exist, they're crazy and too strong to resist. Now, isn't that reassuring? "Body and Soul" by Stephanie (an266891@anon.penet.fi). Many TG (transgender) stories pursue the theme of a man changing from his own body and personality into that of a woman. This one has several new twists: the man has died in an automobile accident but is given an opportunity to return to earth to take part in a special project that involves rehabilitating a man who has started to go bad. To participate, he must allow his soul to return in the body and personality of a woman. A final complication is that there are two agents actively opposing the rehab process: the devil himself and a man who has sold his soul to the devil in return for being permitted to live in the body of a voluptuous young woman. Both of these evil agents possess the power to hypnotize others and make them engage in activities they would normally resist; however, this power is not absolute, and one of the interesting aspects of the story is determining how the protagonists can deal with and overcome this influence. With so many competing forces at work it would seem likely that either the story would get crazily complex or that it would get lost on a non-sexy sidetrack. Neither predicament occurs: I found this to be a highly imaginative and very erotic story. Readers who are knowledgeable about the TG tradition will respond to this story differently than "outsiders" who pick this up and simply read it as a story that they expect to contain sex. The latter will perhaps find novelty in the idea of a man beginning to understand himself anew after being thrust into the body and personality of a woman. Actually, that's one of the most common themes in TG literature; and people who read TG stories regularly will automatically compare this story to others that examine this problem of sexual identity. Both types of readers will enjoy this story. There are numerous interesting situations that emerge as this complex plot evolves, and I am going to make no attempt to summarize all of them in this review. For example, Dan (the guy who became the wife) is required to rehabilitate Simon, who is a chronic drinker, gambler, and womanizer; but Dan initially does not want to engage in sexual activity with Simon, because Dan himself still has a male personality within his new body and has strong inhibitions against homosexual activity. As a way to resolve the dilemma of changing Simon's behavior without having sex with a man, Dan blackmails Simon into wearing panties, stockings, and a bra every day. This should keep Simon out of trouble, because he will be embarrassed to fool around with bimbos, and getting drunk could cause him to reveal his little secret. However, an unexpected result of this cross-dressing is that Dan becomes turned on to Simon. This story is full of numerous situations like this - intricate but interesting dilemmas that occur as a result of the structure of the story. I especially liked the way the author combined the protagonist's knowledge and ignorance about the feelings and emotions of the woman whose body he inhabited. The story ended somewhat abruptly - almost as if the author were saying, "Well, I've carried this plot about as far as it will go, and so I had better stop now." A slight problem with the story is that it really did need a final proofreading. It is full of minor but distracting errors - especially comma splices, Stephanie combines two sentences into one by simply putting a comma between them (like this one, which I did on purpose to offer an example). One of you who enjoys this story should write to Stephanie and tell her that you would be happy to proofread her future stories for her. Stephanie is a very creative person, and I understand (1) that it's difficult to find one's own grammar errors, especially when one is wrapt up in the more interesting process of composing a creative tale; and (2) that an author often has an irresistible urge to rush a story to press, so that millions of eager readers can share the story without unnecessary delay. Write to Stephanie and tell her Celeste sent you. Tell her that you love her stories and promise to read them overnight, and agree to return the stories with so little delay and with such careful attention to detail that she'll be glad to have waited the extra day or so. How could she resist such an offer? "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." "Bushido" by Sachi Mizuno (71022.251@compuserve.com). I truly enjoy historical novels and televised miniseries with historical themes. Likewise, I enjoy reading about sex in a historical context. The present story takes place in Medieval Japan - during the Tokugawa shogunate, which would place it in the early 1600's. I am familiar with this period of Japanese history from other sources, and the customs and events in this story seem to be extremely accurate. For example, the daimyo (lords) really were hereditary warriors who were governed by a code of ethics - bushido (which means "the way of the warrior") - that defined service and conduct appropriate to their status as elite members of Japanese society. In addition, during the Tokugawa shogunate sons of the daimyo were routinely sent to the capital at Edo to serve as hostages in order to assure the good behavior of their fathers. A glaring exception to the overall accuracy is that in the first chapter the daimyo considers Tokugawa to be a weak and almost effeminate ruler. This is grotesquely inaccurate, and surely the author knows this. I suspect that in a later chapter the daimyo will realize his mistake. The first chapter is full of political intrigue and sex. I do NOT know for certain how accurately this story portrays the sex life of Japanese lords in the 17th century, but the presentation was certainly believable. In addition, the chapter that I sampled was just plain well written. If I were not already overwhelmed with numerous good stories to review for this newsgroup, this is certainly a book I would read. The publisher has a Web Page at http://users.aol.com/specpress. "Carol & Tom" by Nom de Plume (NomdePl@aol.com). Carol and Tom grew up as twin brother and sister in a dirt-poor environment of western Virginia during the American Depression. When they were 15, they both began masturbating. Since their beds were back-to-back, they each vaguely knew what the other was doing; but although they wondered a lot, they said nothing to each other. Eventually they became much more intimate and then later drifted apart to lead their own lives. Of course, it would be just plain blind luck that kids experimenting like this would not find themselves burdened with a really undesirable pregnancy; and a better (but perhaps less interesting) solution would have been for the parents to offer some sort of sex education to the children. However, this story is a well-written, sensitive account of the early sexual emergence of two young people who had no access to useful information about human sexuality. "CBS Evening News" by Uncle Mike (fr582@cleveland.Freenet.Edu). Dan Rather had initially been miffed at having Connie Chung assigned as his co-anchor; but of late he has begun to enjoy the visual pleasantries of having a hot chick to look at during breaks in the evening news. Imagine his surprise when Connie confides in him that she and Maury are having trouble getting pregnant. Imagine his further surprise when she asks Dan to be the sperm donor - right there on her couch! This is a hot an sexy story. I'll have to switch from NBC to CBS for my evening news. The Bad News is that Max Wojtylak recently announced that he is almost out of these parodies. As you may know, Max himself did not write these stories; his Uncle Mike did, and Max simply found the stories when he was cleaning up the hard drive or something like that. My advice to Max is to get Norton Utilities and run the Unerase program; maybe there are another ten or so stories buried there. If that doesn't work, try a seance. I really like these stories; and oddly enough, Uncle Mike seems to write better the longer he's been dead. Imagine that! "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. "Chantal" by Mary Anne Mohanraj (moh2@midway.uchicago.edu). No offense to the rest of you authors out there - and I may say the same thing about someone else right after I have read his or her story - but Mary Anne Mohanraj may be the best writer to post stories on this group. I would be absolutely astonished if this author has not written other stories that have gained recognition in high-quality, mainstream, non-erotic publications. A lesbian woman is comforting a non-lesbian friend to whom she is non-reciprocally attracted and who has recently broken up with a jerk of a guy. She longs to hug and caress her friend and to make tender love to Chantal, but she knows that any attempt at closeness will drive Chantal away. A knock comes at the door; it is a phony pizza man, who threatens to kill the woman unless Chantal surrenders herself to his will. At the crucial moment the woman breaks free and demands that the man rape her instead of Chantal. The rapist at first seems ready to comply, but then he tells the two women to get it on together for him. Ironically, the woman's attempt to rescue Chantal will enable her to achieve her fondest desire - but under highly undesirable circumstances. I've told you all but the very end of the story; but I think you'll still find immense pleasure in reading this well-crafted and highly erotic story. "Cleave It To Beaver" by MrNatural (an351140@anon.penet.fi). "Ward, I think you were a little rough on the beaver last night." June Cleaver has made that statement many times in television reruns, but note that this time "the beaver" is not capitalized. As you may have guessed, this story is an irreverent treatment of "Leave It to Beaver." "Sorry, June. But when a man feels really special about a woman, even his wife, sometimes he has to express it in ways that are a little decisive." I'll bet he was carrying his pipe and wearing a sweater when he said that! "It's just the right thing to do and I know we all feel better when you do the right thing." This story alleges that The Beave was named after his father's beaver cleaver. This story makes lots of interesting allegations. And what does this mean? "I've told you boys about eating wieners when you don't know where they've been. Maybe I should go up and give Beaver that lesson." You can well imagine that Eddie Haskell will have something obsequious to say to June, and I won't go into that here - except to say that June finds it ironic to think of all the times Ward has called Eddie a little prick. This is an extremely good example of a sexual parody. DO NOT READ THIS AT THE OFFICE COMPUTER, if you are the sort of person who has trouble explaining to your coworkers why you are laughing uproariously. The author does a wonderful job of making the characters stay in character while they do things that are completely out of character. It's enough to make me grant complete forgiveness for the several typographical errors I encountered. This story ends with a notation: "More will follow if response is good." I assure you - response will be good. And a little more will be good; but I urge this author not to try too much of a good thing. After a few more episodes, I'd like to see him go to work on some of the other popular sitcums. "Coincidence" by Delta (an248969@anon.penet.fi). The narrator is seated on a nearly full jetliner, dressed in a scruffy manner, waiting for takeoff, when - who to his wondering eyes should appear to take the seat next to him but his ex-girlfriend. Ex-very-close-girlfriend. Hence the title. Lisa appears not to recognize the former lover seated next to her, but the conversation coincidentally brings back memories of things past. Hence the title. The story consists mostly of the narrator's recollections of their good times together before they broke up somewhat bitterly. While he ruminates, he debates within himself whether or not to disclose his identity to her. This story contains hot sex, but it also contains much more than mere graphic descriptions. The playful banter of the lovers adds to our reading enjoyment, as does our knowledge that these two broke up and our anticipation that they might be reunited. The narrator even has a philosophy of life - that coincidences don't just happen; they represent the Universe speaking to us. Is he going to tell her who he is? Or does she already know; and maybe those coincidences aren't so coincidental after all. As they say, everything happens for a purpose.... Here's an interesting aside: Just before I read this story, I was preparing my lesson plan for a presentation on Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." Coincidence? I hardly think so. "College Reunion" by Deidre Ng (Deidre Ng@aol.com). Every year each school throughout the entire world has a parents' night or something of the sort, when parents dutifully trot off to school and find out how the kiddies are doing. At the lower grade levels, nearly all the parents who can possibly do so show up; but as kids enter high school, the crowd of parents thins out substantially. Probably the single most common comment in teachers' lounges at this time of year is, "The parents I need to see never show up. The only parents I ever see around here are those whose children are already doing good work!" We have a similar phenomenon here on this newsgroup. (After I noticed this analogy, I had to point it out to someone; and I figured you people would handle the analogy a little better than those in the teachers' lounge.) The writers who least need to revise their stories are the most likely to revise them before reposting those stories. This is the THIRD revision by Deidre Ng of this story. When she first posted it, I rated it a 10. So she revised it and reposted it; and it was even better. So I rated it a 10. At least this time, I have a new rating system, and so I can give it three 10's. Briefly stated, this is a story about a passionate reunion between two woman who had previously been very fond of each other as college roommates. The author effectively moves back and forth among past and present scenarios. An interesting aspect of this story is that Deidre gets away with the use of the second person (you), which I normally find obnoxious. In most cases, "you" stories put the reader in a bad spot. For example, in the present case the "you" is a female lesbian (actually, a hearty bisexual); and so all males and many females would possibly have trouble identifying with that perspective. However, Deidre manages to use this point of view effectively. As an ultimate test, I asked my husband to read the story and to let me know if anything bothered him. He showed me what "bothered" him all right, and we had a delightful rest of the evening. Incidentally, to encourage such revisions, I WILL consider revisions of old stories to be eligible when I make up my monthly and annual Top 15 and Top 100 lists. "Composition in Cream and Chocolate" by Mary Anne Mohanraj (moh2@midway.uchicago.edu). I found it difficult to determine exactly what was happening in this story. After reading a paragraph or two I often found myself reaching a point where I gained a new piece of information and had to back up to fit it into the picture that was gradually emerging in my mind's eye. This ambiguity is not a flaw; it's intentional - end it's very well done. The theme is unusual: a male stripper gradually revealing himself and offering his attentions to a female patron. I have never attended such a show myself, and all my vicarious experiences have consisted of films and stories about female strippers. I HAVE gone with my husband to bars with striptease dancers (while we've been away at conventions - so that none of my students will see me entering the establishment and so that I won't accidentally discover one of my coworkers at her night job.) My impression has invariably been one of disappointment; the dancers were simply not very sexy. They seemed to be in worse shape than myself, bored with their jobs, and concerned primarily about squeezing tips out of patrons before putting on a tawdry display that wasn't really sexy at all. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to FANTASIZE about exotic dancers in terms of wonderment; and this story turns the tables by making a male dancer the center of attention. I guess what we have here is the male stripper equivalent of the ideal lap dance. This was a new and very erotic experience for me. The show starts in near darkness, as does our understanding of what is going on. Even at the end of the story, I wasn't sure exactly what had happened. The sex had been explicit, though conducted by candlelight in a dark room; but questions remained unanswered. All along I had assumed that the woman was a patron - but at the end we hear an audience applauding. And near the very end we have a reference to a pile of cream and chocolate skin; and I am struck with the realization that the woman is brown-skinned and the man is white. OK; the two must BOTH be dancers, and they've been putting on a show for an audience.... That's why it's called "Composition in Cream and Chocolate." Wait a minute! I'm going to have to reread major parts of this erotic narrative - maybe even the whole thing - to see if my new theory fits. Gee, that's too bad. I'm already turned on, and you can never tell what a second reading is going to do to me.... In recent reviews I have railed against what I have called a demeaning use of interracial sex in some of the stories. This story does NOT fall into that category. The skin color is part of the ambiance - music, skin color, facial features, nipples, actions, etc. - that create a sexually charged, poetic atmosphere. This is an excellent story. This author has a whole collection of her stories on the Web at http://mud.bsd.uchicago.edu. "Conversation" by Sandmann (bd654@scn.org). Goddammit! I really hate it when this happens. Here it is - August 30. I have a busy weekend ahead of me; and so I prepared my Top 15 List for August ahead of time earlier this evening. Then I decided to read one last story before going to bed. I guess I could just delay this review until the next issue; but then it might be more difficult for readers to find the story in the postings. But I simply refuse to bump any more good stories off my Top 15 list for August. We'll just have to live with sixteen stories in this month's Top 15! This story begins as a conversation between two women about the sex life of one of them, who mentions that she is sexually uninhibited. A stranger at a nearby table jumps into the conversation and asks her to explain what she means by "uninhibited." Her friend leaves, and the woman continues the discussion with the stranger. This is a fascinating combination of a theoretical discussion and sexual fantasies. It's a Platonic dialogue run amuck! As you know, I enjoy "discovering" that various a.s.s. authors are "really" someone else. For example, I have disucssed at length my theory that Deirdre is actually Sherwood Anderson reincarnated. More recently, I speculated that Harper Lee is the real author of "Tomboy," which was falsely attributed to Jordan Shelbourne. If I recall correctly, I once even exposed J.D. Salinger posting on a.s.s. In the present issue of CR, Plainman is obviously a pseudonym for John Updike. I also suspect that some authors on this newsgroup post under more than one name. The present story is a case in point. This story bears an uncanny stylistic resemblance to the work of another excellent author whose work I have reviewed here in the past. However, since the author may have some reason for wanting to conceal this dual identity, I am not going to disclose the other name under which I think this author writes. If you want to fess up or speculate, you can contact me by e-mail. This is a throughly enjoyable story! "Crossing The Line" by Ann Douglas (AnnD55@pipeline.com). Cathy Donohue has a habit that helps her get through boring meetings: she picks out someone in the crowd and has sexual fantasies about that person. Imagine that! You don't think students do that to their teachers, do you? Even worse - you don't think readers of these reviews would do that to this reviewer, do you? Anyway, Cathy is a member of the local PTA and she has a theory that the initials actually stand for Pussy Tits and Ass. I myself once went to a major PTA meeting wearing a tee-shirt that said, "PTA is in the middle of temPTAtion!" I was advised to remove the shirt by an officer who is very unlikely to be reading this review: "What if the newspapers take a picture of you?" I was tempted to literally remove the shirt right then and there, but saner heads prevailed. In her secret life, Cathy Donohue is Anne O'Donnell, writer of erotic short stories. Of course, the people of her community think of her as merely a happy homemaker and helpful member of the community, not as a porn writer. {This story is starting to strike too close to home.} Unfortunately, the college kid who comes to fix her computer makes the connection between Cathy and the Internet. Fortunately, he's a hunk. Being a gentleman, Glen promises not to reveal Cathy's secret identity. Being a lady, Cathy asks if there is anything she can do to repay him for fixing her computer. Being a horny virgin, Glen asks her to write a story for him. Being a horny non-virgin, she offers to go one better than that. Being a sexually active person, I'm getting pretty horny myself at this point. Being an English teacher, I'm pretty impressed with the parallel use of participial phrases in this paragraph. That's it! If I concentrate on the grammar I can make it through this story without having to do anything about my more mundane urges. OK. They're fucking now. Damn this is good stuff! I've got to do something to help me finish this story. The grammar. Concentrate on the grammar. Oh good, she said "eluding" when she meant "alludinig" - I mean alluding - I'm going to make it - or should that be "illuding"? Damn! I'm not going to make it after all. Maybe if I rub my pussy just a little while I finish this review... I'll even keep my pants on.... This won't be hard.... Won't be HARD! I've gotta watch what I say, but it's hard - I mean difficult - to type with just one hand... Oh good, she said "...excuse as to why she stood home." She's talking like Yogi Berra now. She meant "stayed home." Maybe she shoulda slud. I'm starting to lose it.... It really won't hurt to take my panties off.... Oh, Oh! Sabrina has found out that her son Glen fucked Cathy; but now they're discussing how she found out. Encryption! That's good; if they keep on discussing encryption I may even be able to put my panties back on. No; they're already too wet. Oh, great! Sabrina knows Cathy's secret identity, and she even made hard copies of her stories and took them on the cruise with her and therefore she humped her husband with renewed vigor each night and sometimes during the day. Oh shit! Now they're discussing their sexual relationships with other women.... If they make love to each other, I'm going to cum in my pants.... Except that I'm not wearing any pants.... Would you believe my husband's at a meeting at church? I'm a grown woman; I can take care of myself.... Good! She said "lay" instead of "lie" but that doesn't help - too much sexual innuendo in the "L" words. Now they're making love. I mean REALLY MKAING LOVE. OOOOH SHIIIIIT!!!! This was an exceptionally good story. I strongly recommend it. "Darcy and Elizabeth" by Mark Aster (MyFrThAl@aol.com). I take my Jane Austen seriously. I refuse to assign any Jane Austen works to my students. They may report on her work for extra credit or as an optional assignment; but I don't want to force her on them. I'm afraid that in their adolescent immaturity they'll hate the stories because nothing explodes in them or because some of the words are unfamiliar; and I want them to remain open to the pleasure of reading her work when they are old enough to relax and enjoy it. And so, I told myself, Mark Aster had better be careful how he treats Darcy and Elizabeth in this apocryphal Chapter 60 (Volume III, Chapter XVIII), continued. This chapter can more interestingly replace the chapter of the same number which is so amiably summarized in Cliff's Notes. The story commences shortly after the nuptials. "Mr. Darcy," Elizabeth says, and then laughs at herself, "I find, sir, that I do not know how to address you, in our new state of existence. Shall I call you Fitzwilliam?" Her husband is so pleased by the sound of his name in her mouth that he owns that she can call him by it twelve hours in the day if she wishes." And so it goes, as the erstwhile proud and prejudiced prepare for the deflowering and the concomitant festivities. The thought of Fitzwilliam's forthcoming friendly ferocity flows through the fervid bride in a warm wave of feeling, as she becomes especially sensible of those places that his hands have touched but a minute before. "I see that it is my task here to tease and cajole that ferocity, until it quite overwhelms your propriety, and emerges into the light, that we may both appreciate it." What can I say? Convention, sense, and sensibility all have their place - but in a different novel, where they may contribute to the placidity and good grace of human relation; but there are times when even the genteel share sausage and eggs between the legs with a fervor that borders on rapture. To find out what wanton events of amorous playfulness transpire amidst the ensuing rain of muslin and calico, you'll have to read the story thyself. "Dark Nights 1" by Unknown Author (reposted by William Gann). When I downloaded Dark Nights 1 and 2, I assumed I was getting two parts of one story; and so, when Part 1 ended with the protagonists looking forward to "Round 2," I loaded the second story, expecting to see the second part. It turns out that these are two independent stories. This first story views either a date rape or a spouse rape through the eyes of the woman. The story, I think, is a realistic portrayal of a man overpowering a woman sexually. Since I don't believe such actions are ever justified, I would like to say that I found the story to be entirely repulsive, but that would not be true true. Quite the contrary, as I read the story I had the feeling that I could understand the ambivalent feelings of the woman: hating the man who was forcing himself on her, feeling a physiological arousal that she simply could not control, and setting aside her aversion for the man in order to satisfy her temporary needs. I don't think this is a realistic portrayal of how ALL abused women feel while being attacked, but I think it realistically describes the feelings and perceptions of one victim. What I think is sad is that a large number of men will read this story and conclude that it's OK to force themselves on women, because "they'll eventually like it anyway." Many women and their allies who want to prevent rape would often prefer that stories like this never appear in print or anywhere else, because they put into the minds of men and women the idea expressed in the previous sentence. I bounced this story off a friend of mine who is a professional counselor. When she finished reading it, she said it was a disturbing story. I told her I didn't care; I wanted to know if it was realistic. She said yes, that many abused women feel this way. I asked her if reading this story could help me better understand a mutual friend who had recently moved into a shelter for abused women for the third time. She said yes - but she added that the story left a lot unstated (and the author of the story admits this). Clearly there were words and actions that preceded the rape scene; and even though these actions never legally or morally justify rape, they would help us understand the story or our friend more fully. My friend agreed that this was a good story. "A Day on the Bay" by Joe Parsons (jmp@cyber-mall.com). The woman gets knocked overboard and is then rescued by the skipper of the craft. They are the only two on board. Since she might experience hypothermia, he undresses her and puts her into a dry sleeping bag. To share his warmth with her, he gets naked himself and climbs in with her. Eventually she expresses her gratitude to the skipper for saving her life, and then the ship's captain expresses his gratitude to her for expressing her gratitude. This is a very good story - especially for nautical people and for Baywatch fans - who will, of course, insert themselves and their favorite characters into the story line. "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. "Diana" by Mary Anne Mohanraj (moh2@midway.uchicago.edu). The young man, just a few years out of college and a bit disillusioned with the way his life has gone, has gone off for a couple of days of hiking in the Berkshire forest. Thinking he is alone, he is surprised to hear the sound of a woman's voice; and when he follows that sound he comes to a clearing in which there are seven blonde women and one red-head - all beautiful and all naked. What has he stumbled onto? He realizes that he won't be welcome, and he starts to retreat; but suddenly he is summoned to join them. Does this sound interesting? Then read this well-written story. If you're familiar with Robert Frost's poetry, you'll probably get a little more out of it than you would otherwise. And it won't hurt to recall that Diana was the Roman goddess of the hunt and of the moon and the protectress or women. I love this author! I'm tempted to make my students read this story for English class, but then I'd have to explain where I got it. Actually, it will be easier simply to forbid them to read it; they'll enjoy it more that way. "Discovery" by Michael K. Smith (mksmith@metronet.com). The guy works in the library reference area, and an attractive girl whom he would like to meet accidentally drops her purse on the floor. Instead of picking it up for her, he waits for her to leave and then retrieves the purse. He checks its contents. What will he do? If this were a Parker story, he would try to use the information obtained from the purse to stalk its owner and make her into his sexual slave. However, Parker is a complex author; and so the guy might wind up becoming HER sexual slave. If the author were either SueNH or Ann Douglas, the guy would return the purse but would first look in the window of her house or apartment and discover her making love to her female roommate. He would probably knock on the door, and the purse's owner would recognize him as the author of several of her favorite stories on a prominent Internet newsgroup and would invite him to join the festivities. The sex would be explicitly described and wildly erotic, but nothing much kinkier than three-way sex. If the author were Backrub or one of the Ng sisters, the range of possibilities would expand rapidly, depending on the mood of the author. The guy might find Tammy's diary in the purse, read it, and insert himself into her love life. The purse would almost certainly contain at least one dildo and probably several other sextoys. {Indeed, if this were a story by May Anne Mohanraj, the story might be told from the perspective of the dildo.} The woman to whom the guy returns the purse might be a vampire. Almost certainly there would be passionate heterosexual activity, and it is not particularly likely that the guy would die during the ensuing action. If Wollstonecraft wrote the story, the guy would return the purse; but the woman would be either a nun or a member of a coven of witches. They would be hostile to him, until he offered to impregnate them all during a wild orgy, at which time they would become submissive but passionate. It is very possible that somebody might die during the ensuing orgies. If Mark Aster were the author, the girl would be Pat Allen, the lovely and vivacious older sister of the equally lovely and vivacious Julie Allen. When he returned the purse, the guy would find its owner making tender love to her sister and to an extremely sexy stud in a metaphorically rich environment. They would invite him to join the festivities, and the author would choreograph his orgasm to coincide emphatically with those of the Three Amigos. If Joe Parsons wrote this story, the guy would call the girl and have a really nice, erotic conversation with her. It would be a truly delightful conversation, but he would later receive a bill for $240. If this were Stephanie's story, the girl would really be a guy who just looked like a girl - actually, he would be both a guy and a girl. This would be the first of ? parts to be posted over a period of 14 months. If this were by Estragon, the plot would be similar to Stephanie's; but the number of parts would keep changing. If it were by Vickie Tern, the plot would again be similar, except that the girl would be a guy who had become a girl to please a wife who really wanted a girlfriend with whom she could pick up men. Also, the guy would be a hair stylist rather than a library assistant. In addition, the story would have been revised three times since Vickie first posted it yesterday. If this were written by Shelby Bush, the story would be a parody of "Murphy Brown." The guy would try to return the purse, but Murphy would be interviewing Ralph Nader, with whom she is secretly in love but cannot get off first base. I'm unclear on the specifics, but somehow during an early part of the story Hillary Clinton would become involved in a menage a trois with Murphy and Ralph, while the guy watched and masturbated with a defective dildo, which Nader would eventually work into a class-action lawsuit. Later, Dan Quayle would have trouble spelling the plural of dildo and would express the opinion that he was glad he studied Latin in high school, in case he wanted to have sex with a woman from Latin America. If this were an Uncle Mike story, it would still be a parody of Murphy Brown; but the guy would be a blind man whose dog would sodomize Murphy. Of course, if this were Deirdre's story, the man would return the purse, only to find its owner living in an old warehouse that she shared with seventeen other women who spent most of their time nakedly worshipping a female dom who fucked them anally with a large dildo shaped like a snake while their husbands hung by their feet from meat hooks and sucked each other's cocks. Although he would be the narrator of the story, the guy would never be seen again. If I wrote the story myself, the guy would return the purse to the woman, but she would be a bit of a jerk. She would leave on a date with someone else, but the guy would become attracted to her roommate - a socially mature, intelligent person who would discuss world politics with him over a banana split, which they would share. After dating for several months, he would propose to her. They would engage in heavy petting, but they would not have sexual intercourse until the night of their wedding, which would occur in a beautiful church in the presence of their fully clothed friends. None of their relatives (nor the priest) would have intercourse with either of them on their wedding night, but the couple would see metaphorical fireworks as they together explored the wonders of each other's bodies. If Dirty Dawg wrote the story, the plot would be similar to mine, except that the guy would first treat the girl badly, then realize ten years later what he had missed and make it up to her during a whirlwind courtship climaxing in tender, multiorgasmic sex. If Frank McCoy or The Bear were the author, the plot would again be similar to mine, except that the girl would be much younger - probably the guy's daughter. The Observer's plot would likewise be similar to mine; but it would be spread out over about six different stories and would have been edited by all the other authors mentioned in this review. If this were a porn movie instead of a short story, the woman would be Tori Wells, playing a character named either Eustacia Vye or Pussy Galore - both of which names have amazingly appeared in the non-censored media (one more amazingly than the other). The college kid would be played by a middle-aged fat guy, perhaps Ron Jeremy. Ron would follow Tori when she left the library, but we would never see her again - except on the jacket of the videotape. Ron would go through a door into a cheap motel room with a beautiful fireplace, where he would have oral sex with a listless woman named Randi Cunt, who very well might be the inspiration for all those dumb blonde jokes I see on rec.humor, while a Scandinavian guy with long blond hair and a black guy with a monster cock did a double penetration on her. The actual action would take about three minutes, but clever looping would consume fifteen minutes, while Randi said clever things like, "I love your big cock" and "Cum on my face." Indeed, all three men would cum externally, and Randi would rub the cum or a mixture of flour and water all over her body while she said things like "oooooo!" I apologize to all the authors whose works I did not satirize in the previous paragraphs - as well as to those whom I did mention. The story's actual plot was quite interesting and contained elements of several of my proposed story lines. One of Smith's main strengths is his ability to write highly literate and realistic stories from many different perspectives. I find him pleasantly difficult to predict. All I'll add about the plot is that I think it gives a nearly perfect treatment of romantic interracial sex. As I've said before, I am a white woman with a black brother-in-law whom I really enjoy knowing but who is not reputed to have unusual sexual proclivities. I get tired of reading stories that are labeled "interracial" in which black guys with "monster cocks" service white women or white guys screw black "sluts." This story takes a completely different (yet sexy and socially responsible) perspective on interracial sex. I think you'll enjoy reading this story. I certainly did. (Continued in Part 2) Path: newsfeed.direct.ca!news.wildstar.net!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!portc02.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail From: celeste801@aol.com (Celeste801) Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories Subject: Celeste's Top Stories Reviews (2/4) Date: 5 Jan 1997 21:17:50 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Lines: 1047 Message-ID: <19970105211600.QAA03505@ladder01.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder01.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Xref: newsfeed.direct.ca alt.sex.stories:138026 Status: N Top Stories of 1996 - Part 2 of 4 (Continued from Part 1. The stories are listed alphabetically. For the complete list of Top Stories of 1996 in rank order, see the posting labeled "Celeste's Top 100 Stories of 1996." Please do not ask me to send you these stories. Most of them can be found on DejaNews at www.dejanews.com.) - Celeste "Dispensation of Grace" by Horangi (an182766@anon.penet.fi). One of my favorite songs is "Amazing Grace." This is not because I have a proclivity for bagpipe music, but rather because several years ago I had a student named Grace who was very mature for her age. Because of her alluring, seductive behavior and because of the images she conjured up in his head, my husband used to call her "Amazing Grace." One night after a football game he and I noticed her making it with two guys under the grandstand. That night my husband hummed "Amazing Grace" while he ate me out. A week or so later we were in a movie theater when we saw Grace and her current boyfriend making out a few rows over. My husband whispered in my ear what he would like to do to me and Amazing Grace, and I think I actually timed my orgasm to come with hers. The next Sunday the congregation sang "Amazing Grace" in church. I did not have an orgasm on that occasion, but I did have a hard time afterwards explaining to the kids what I was laughing about. What I am saying, I guess, is that the title of this story didn't exactly put me off. In this story, "Mark" (that's not his real name; but that doesn't matter, because he's not even a real person) is a Ph.D. candidate and teaching assistant in anthropology at a large California university. He goes into a sex fantasy booth and is startled to see Grace (one of his most beautiful students) looking back at him through the one-way mirror. This encounter leads to some thoroughly stimulating activities for both of them. Mark incorporates Grace into his fantasy life with Helen, his fiancee who has been forced to live in a distant city. Actually, it's not all that likely that a college student would find personal and sexual fulfillment that would enrich her life by taking a job that required her to strip and masturbate while horny, anonymous guys pound the bald-headed moose on the other side of a one-way mirror. Nor is it all that likely that a lonely guy is going to find a meaningful relationship in a sleazy booth in a red-light district. But there's something about the idea of two people, separated only by a thin one-way mirror, with breasts pushed up against one side, and cum shooting against the other... anyway, it's one helluva fantasy. As the song says, "You gotta have a wet dream, 'Cuz if you don't have a wet dream, How you gonna have a wet dream come true?" Or something like that. Come to think of it, compared to the movie "Pretty Woman" this plot is stark realism. The story examines in an interesting manner some complex and erotic emotions. For example, since "Mark" is both the teacher and the invisible patron, he views Grace as both a demure virgin and a sexy slut; and he finds this combination to be most enticing. Grace herself eventually opens up and discusses with Mark aspects of her own life outside the booth. A part of the sexual tension is that they are both being very unsafe in this form of safe sex in which they are engaged. In her job, Grace is running the risk that sooner or later someone will come into the booth and recognize her. And Mark is taking a risk that Grace will discover that he is her instructor, and there is no way of knowing what that could lead to, for better or worse. I don't want to ruin the story by telling you too much of the plot. Suffice it to say that I especially enjoyed the confessional fantasy, when Grace reverted to her high school uniform and confessed her sins to Mark, who in his role as a patron in the booth actually did resemble a priest in the confessional. Oh! One more thing. In this story Grace is experiencing some problems outside her booth life. She suffers from depression and visits a therapist; but she hasn't yet told the therapist about her job. Here's some free advice. If you are paying a therapist huge amounts of money to help you solve your problems, for God's sake tell the therapist if you happen to supplement your income by having real or fake orgasms for pay in a sex fantasy booth. The information may be relevant to your problem. At the very least, the therapist may be willing to let you pay for your session with in-kind services. Overall, this was an excellent, well-rounded story. The author even spelled the word "discreet" correctly, which is the mark of a truly literate person. But the main reason I liked it was because it prompted me to go into the bedroom shortly after midnight humming, "Amazing Grace, how sweet she is, to suck a cock like mine." I go to school very tired some mornings after I review these stories! Since the author will use the anonymous mailing service to post the story, there's a chance you might have trouble finding the whole thing when he reposts it - the parts may become widely separated. My advice to you is to wait until you have all three parts of the story. Then brace yourself for an amazing evening with Grace. "Disrobing Mother" by Dafney Cecil Dewitt (dafneyd@ix.netcom.com). Tommy is angry over the impending divorce of his parents. The teenager focuses his anger on his mother, who has decided to get him out of her way by sending him to a military academy. He plans a clever sexual revenge that goes out-of-control. Except for the sexual nature of the revenge, we would have here a plot for a classic Judy Blume teenage novel or for an ABC After School Special. As it is, we have a very clever blackmail story for a.s.s. "Do You Want It?" by Mark Aster (MyFrThAl@aol.com). I've been lurking at my computer, ready to pounce on this author as soon as he makes a mistake. He patiently sends me each of his stories shortly before he posts it, and I eagerly devour each one - expecting that the string of good stories will have to end. After all, his plots are largely similar: hot sex between or among two or more friends or strangers of the same or different gender, usually with one or more persons watching and having sex while the featured couple or menage do their thing. That storyline eventually has to get boring, doesn't it? Well, not yet. Maybe it's because my computer was down for the last week or so, but I found this story to be one of Mark's most erotic ever. I live my real life in an interestingly boring world where I have not yet and probably will never will utter the sentence, "Do you want it?" under circumstances quite the same as those depicted in this story. Mark Aster writes about an imaginary world where there are no sexually transmitted diseases and where casual sex is not likely to ruin some of the best things in life - in short, a world where recreational sex is almost always the wonderful fun that it is on the best occasions in my real life. I would LIKE to live in Mark's world; and I do live there in my imagination. If I did live there and if I came upon a really cute guy watching a really sexy girl masturbate, I'd look him straight in the eye and shock his socks off by asking him, "Do you want it?" Then I'd casually remove whatever clothing would obscure and impede his access to my ass and pussy, and I'd lean on the bridge in front of him, so that I could watch the lady do her work and so that he would have to look past me to see her. I'd let him fondle, kiss, penetrate, and generally do wonderful things to my anatomy. I'd let my pussy muscles return the favor without distracting me even a moment from the interesting object of our mutual admiration; and when the young lady that originally attracted his interest would eventually look up, I'd lock eyes with her and let her know across the distance that I was every bit as happy as she was As a final touch that the author did not think of, I'd wink when I managed to time my climax with hers. I don't live in Mark's imaginary world, but my husband has his Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar near my computer. While I read Mark's story after school this afternoon, I found myself glancing at that calendar; and Miss April and I managed to merge Mark's world with my own in a way that made me very happy. As I'm writing this review, Miss April is still there, and I'm getting horny again; and as soon as I finish this sentence, I'm going to head for the bedroom, summarize this story to my husband, and see if he wants it. It's now morning; and he did want it - twice! That's a total of five raging orgasms in less than 24 hours from one story! I suggest you read it. It's now late afternoon. I made it through the day with all those sexy people in the teachers' lounge without giving way to my lust. As I glanced back over this story before writing the next review, I realized that there's one more idea that I wanted to mention. I have on several occasions commented on interracial sex. I think it's wonderful that people want to make love to people of other races; but I have expressed concern that so many of the newsgroup stories focus on people of one race humiliating those of another. Or Black men are often described as possessing animalistic qualities that make them distinctly different from their white counterparts. The present story handled interracial sex wonderfully. The woman who was masturbating while reading her book was a Black woman. There was no implication that there was anything abnormal about the woman - in the author's imaginary world all sensible people are sexy and sensuous and give pleasure to themselves and to others. But neither the woman's personality nor the color of her skin was irrelevant; rather these factors were treated as a natural part of a hot story. Skin color is not invisible. I like my own skin. I love to run my fingers over it, especially when I'm turned on; and I hate its blemishes - although my husband claims these make me more attractive. My skin happens to be white and my hair happens to be dark and my eyes brown. These are very sexy skin, hair, and eyes; and so were those of the woman in the story and of the model on the calendar. It's beautiful and natural to take all of these things into consideration when telling or reading a story about sexy people. What I am trying to say is that an unexpected extra of this story is that the author managed to introduce race in such a natural way that it simply became a realistic, natural part of what I would normally notice in a sexy setting. I really liked the way he handled that detail. "Dog Breath" by Dafney Dewitt. The author prefaces this story with the following disclaimer: "The intent of this story is to elicit disgust and poke fun at stories featuring humiliation and submission by using a soap opera type melodrama to help maintain the suspense. If you finish this story feeling just a little queasy, if you have a sudden desire to brush your teeth, then this story has accomplished its purpose." The author carries off this parody beautifully. The gist of the story is that the heroine of the story hears voices that tell her that in order to obtain sexual fulfillment she must, among other things, jerk the dog off and swallow his cum. A serious cliffhanger moment arises when she has to kiss her husband - the urine on her sleeve is innocuous, but she is afraid that her husband will slip her the tongue and discover that she has dog breath. This may sound goofy; but parodies are SUPPOSED to sound goofy - it's the parallelism between the goofy and more serious events that gives a parody its punch. This is a very good parody. Let me preface these next few paragraphs by saying that I do NOT think that everyone who reads or writes a bdsm story or who practices a variation of bdsm is necessarily a loony or a danger to society. My problem is that I sometimes read stories that appear to me to be just as grotesque as this one; but they are not parodies - I'm supposed to take them seriously. For example, I may read a story in which a man inflicts pain on a woman in such a way that my common sense tells me that she is experiencing degradation very similar to that described in this story. As I read it, I say to myself, "This is weird. The author must be kidding." I look for a disclaimer, and there's no indication that the author is kidding; the writer really seems to believe that people can express love by giving and receiving degradation. My reaction is that such a story is not very realistic. Occasionally one of the authors will write to me after I post a review. The message will essentially tell me that I "have a problem" with bdsm. I have missed the point; the people in the story really love each other. {Or women really enjoy getting raped or being pissed on or whatever it is that I didn't understand.} These people usually assure me that they are sane and productive members of society, and I believe that assertion. My question is why do they assume that I am the one who has a problem? Note that if I knew the lady in this story in real life, I would assume that she was seriously dysfunctional. If she asked my advice, I would suggest she see a counselor. She is not leading a productive alternative lifestyle. She needs to get her act together. My problem is that the characters in some of the stories are just as dysfunctional, but readers are supposed to assume (without any further evidence) that their behavior is a realistic depiction of what normal people do. I may be arrogant, but it is my belief that the AUTHOR has the responsibility to express ideas in such a way as to communicate a story to his/her audience. The stories to which I give relatively low ratings for lack of realism (usually stories that involve bdsm, water sports, rape, or pedophile behavior) are usually written in such a way that INSIDERS will enjoy them. In other words, a person will enjoy the story if he or she already believes that it is productive to express love by torturing a partner or who thinks that kids who are molested by adults normally experience no ill effects. However, I review the stories as what I'll call a "mainstream" reader of erotica. If the authors want to include people like myself (and that's a lot of readers on this newsgroup), then it seems to me that it is THEIR responsibility to help the rest of us understand why the story is realistic rather than silly. In other words, the author of the present story shouldn't have had to tell me that this was satire. As I read the story, I should have been able to say, this is so silly that he must be kidding! Please note that I DO frequently give high ratings to bdsm, water-sports, rape, pedophile, etc. stories. This happens not only when they are parodies (as in this case) but also when the authors present the story in such a way that a non-insider like myself can see the point. I appreciate those stories and I find that I not only enjoy them - I also grow by reading them. My suggestion here is that authors whose stories are based on counterintuitive premises should assume the burden of communicating their stories realistically to the rest of us. That's part of being a good author. "Elizabeth & Anastasia" by Tom Bombadil (stbush@iglou.com). This author combines timing and tension to create a very good story. At the very start we know simply that Betty (Elizabeth) is upset because her father has thrown Stacy (Anastasia) out of the house and has threatened to kill her if he ever sees her around his daughter again. Then we flash back to a scene in a vice-principal's office, where Betty is describing her problems with a teacher who seems to be making passes at her. There must be some relation, the reader thinks, between what's happening in this flashback and the relationship between Betty and Stacy; but what is it? Is the vice-principal actually Stacy? The vice-principal has recommended a tutor; will that be Stacy? And then there is a sinister note; the vice-principal is apparently interested in exploiting a sexual opening with the teacher who had been harassing Betty. What are the implications of that tidbit for Betty? I can't help it; I root for characters when I read some of these stories. I already sympathize with Betty; and as a hard-working teacher myself, I wouldn't mind seeing the VP stick it to the teacher/pervert, but I hope that Betty and Stacy are people with a wholesome relationship rather than participants in some sort of demeaning ring of sex-slavery. As I finish writing the preceding paragraph, I am only about 2000 words into a 47,000-word story. I mention this because I think it is a sign of a good story to arouse the reader's interest as strongly as this story grabbed my attention. I'm reluctant to tell you too much of the story. I enjoyed finding out what would happen next, and I think you will too. The author uses an interesting strategy of alternating between the past and the present; that is, there is one continuous story starting in the present; and another continuous story - that gives meaning to the current-time story - starts in the past. In general, this is an ingenious and enthralling approach; but at times it becomes confusing. For example, when the girls are arguing in the past and making up in the present, the two plots may become entwined in the reader's mind. It must have been difficult for the author to coordinate these two plots; but he carries it off effectively - with the exception of one point in Chapter 4 where he seems to use in the past storyline information about Joyce that could be known only from the present plot. This is not a wham-bang sex story; it's a romantic story about a relationship that happens to involve intimate sex between two females. The early part of the story (probably the first two thirds - and that's a lot in a story of this size) does not contain any specific sexual activity at all; but sex is implied, and sexual tension pervades even this part. That makes it sexy to me. When explicit sex does occur, it is very hot. To be honest, I have to admit that this story brought tears to my eyes more often than it brought moisture to my lower regions; but they were often tears of joy that I associate with really happy times in the sack. I suppose that makes this pretty much a "chick story," but you studs out there oughta read it too. Maybe it'll put some hair on your chest. This story has some flaws; but it's still excellent. Look at it this way: on several occasions the author actually spelled "english" (as in English Teacher!) with a lower-case "e"; but I still gave the story straight 10's. I can't offer a much stronger recommendation than that! "Et Tu" by Mark Aster (MyFrThAl@aol.com). This title is taken from the famous words of Julius Caesar to Brutus. I think it was on the Ides of March that Brutus asked Caesar if he had gotten any good pussy lately. Caesar replied, "I Et Two, Brutus." I guess maybe it gains something in the translation. Halfway through this story I determined that I had finally found a story by this author that would not receive a high rating. Moderately high maybe, but not extremely high. Certainly not straight 10's. It was a story about Our Hero and the delectable Julie watching another couple make love while they themselves got sexually involved with each other. It was good sex; but this author had done this so often that I was not about to give him a really high rating for doing what he had done so often before - even if the language was exquisitely descriptive. It was even no great shakes to me when Our Hero gasped with pleasure as the lips of the unseen other woman wrapped themselves around his cock and brought him to orgasm while he buried his own face in Julie's cunt. But surprise! It wasn't the other woman, it was the other MAN! This story offers fictional verification of my basic contention that any sensible man who enjoys getting head from a sexy woman would enjoy equally sensuous fellatio from a man. In this story the man enjoyed it while it was happening, although he had never engaged in male-male sex before, because while it was occurring he assumed it was a woman sucking his cock. I think enjoyment of this kind of activity would be the most perfectly normal reaction. The fact that opposition to same-sex activity is a learned response is proved by the fact that most men would not find this activity to be disgusting or even at all objectionable until afterwards - when they acquired supplementary knowledge by looking around an noticing that the lips, mouth, and tongue belonged to a guy rather than a woman. {A similar case could be made for women enjoying cunnilingus from another woman.} I am not arguing that all men "should" engage in homosexual behavior. I am simply re-asserting my contention that almost all men would enjoy homosexual activity if they would be able to free themselves from culturally acquired resistance. I am refraining from passing moral judgment, since morality has nothing to do with whether an activity is _enjoyable_. It is quite possible that culturally acquired objections to homosexual behavior may seem valid to a person who would enjoy such behavior and that many men should, therefore, refrain from such activities in order to live a happy life. But it also seems obvious to me (1) that we should refrain from labeling people as "gay," "straight," or "bi" simply on the basis of what they admit to enjoying, and (2) that we should be willing to expand our horizons by being willing to enjoy fictional accounts of activities that do not immediately appeal to us personally. I've gone well beyond the story. You'll have to read it to find out how Our Hero reacts. Don't worry. Enjoying this story will probably not change your sexual preferences - or those of your partner! "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! "First Love" by Unknown Author. This story presents an interesting paradox. I don't know who wrote it or how it got posted. I want to review it and give it some publicity, because it is good. On the other hand, I don't want to violate the author's copyright privileges. I don't mind associating with and befriending people who write about topics that are taboo to "decent society"; in fact I find most of the people who write for and lurk on this newsgroup to be interesting, intelligent people with whom I share common interests. But I draw the line at copyright infringement. The authors work hard on these stories, and they deserve to receive credit for their own work. Using simple logic, since I know two people who say they got this story through this newsgroup, I think I can assume that it was posted here at least once. In general people who post are willing to have their work reposted in the same forum; or even better, they'll repost it themselves if they become aware of the request to do so. Therefore, what I am going to do is post this REVIEW and let someone else (either a reposter like Red Dragon, who seems to have an extensive collection, or the author him/herself) repost the actual story. After I read the first few lines of this story, I simply could not put it down. This story is long - real long - nearly 95,000 words long. I knew I should have been correcting my students' papers and going over the next day's lesson; but I rationalized by telling myself that this story was about kids like those I teach, and this story would help me understand those kids better. Right! That's the ticket! Read this story for its pedagogical value. The story focuses primarily on a young girl going through her high school years and her first sexual experiences. Aside from its interesting plot, what I liked most about this story was its realistic use of interesting details and events. For example, without realizing that the answering machine is recording his entire conversation, Matt brags to his friend on the telephone about his conquest of Jen. His parents listen to the recording and have to confront him. Later, Matt gets beat up by Jen's former boyfriend. When he gets home afterwards, his mother hastily assumes that Jen had something to do with the beating and angrily drags Matt off to Jen's house to confront her. It is difficult to predict the reaction of the protagonists to these subtle but interesting events; and they greatly enrich the plot as it unfolds. Jen and the others in the story experience occasional communication problems - usually arising from moods and an inability to express emotions correctly. These problems are common among young people going through adolescence. The author understands these problems thoroughly and does a good job of setting them up and bringing them to resolution. What this story actually reads like is a juiced-up Judy Blume novel. I'm certain it's not, since I have read all of that author's acknowledged work. Wouldn't it be nice if kids could read and discuss a book like this in their English classes? They can't, of course, because it talks about kids having sex and uses words like clit, cum, and cunt. The characters also engage in ecstatic sex that is a lot of fun and in irresponsible activities that cause them really serious problems. Of course, since high school kids don't have sex and don't know the meaning of clit, cum, and cunt, they shouldn't read a story like this - even if the vicarious experience might help them deal with some of those problems in their own lives. They should read "The Scarlet Letter" and "Moby Dick" instead. The good news is that in schools all over the country we are forcing kids to read Hawthorne and Melville, and their predominant reaction is to think those authors really suck. Kids mean nothing personal against those authors when they say things like that - they have no idea what those stories are about anyway, unless they read Cliff's Notes. Since the present story is banned for them, they'll almost certainly read it, enjoy it, and learn from it. I certainly hope somebody reposts this story soon, so that the young people who don't lurk on this newsgroup can not read it. "Flying Nun: Decameron Minus 99" by Uncle Mike (fr582@cleveland.Freenet.Edu). Legend has it that in the days of yore - possibly back when television sitcoms were black and white - there existed a weekly series called "The Flying Nun." I know not who was in the show nor the content thereof; and so I cannot tell whether this story is a parody of that show, and so I shall respond to this as a tale of inspiration in its own right. This story tells of a poor farmer in a land called Italy who was possessed by a demon that revealed itself to the world through an appendage between the farmer's legs. One day a flying nun appeared from the sky, and on that and successive occasions the farmer persuaded the nun to help him draw the demon out of his body. The nun pursued her holy task with great vigor and through noble stratagems did indeed draw the bilious fluid of the demon out of the man; but alas on each occasion the demon had returned by the time of the nun's next visit, and the process of exorcism needed to be repeated many times. Fortunately, the nun enjoyed her holy chore and kept laboring at it with the patience of Jezebel. This is an excellent story. It reminds me that back when I was in Catholic elementary school we had to give our pastor a "Spiritual Bouquet" for his golden anniversary. He thanked our class, as he read it out loud: "....21 masses, 17 rosaries, 50 Our Fathers, 70 Hail Marys, 400 ejaculations...." And then he laughed. To us, an ejaculation was a short prayer, such as "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, pray for us." To our pastor the word had a more interesting meaning, which I suppose he heard about in the confessional. I don't think he thought the fifteen boys in our class were up to the task of 400 ejaculations prior to graduation. In retrospect, I don't think the nun who taught the class had any idea what the pastor was laughing about. "For Him" by Uther Pendragon (nobody@flame.alias.net). The man and woman don't have a lot of money, since he is a college student and she is holding down a job to help keep him that way. So they usually make each other presents. This year she asks what he would like for his birthday, and he suggests that she be his sex slave for a day. She agrees; and she enjoys the experience even more than he does. Some bdsm enthusiasts may find this story objectionable. That's because the participants say they are practicing sex slavery, but they don't do the things that bdsm lovers usually do. On the other hand, maybe some bdsm enthusiasts will like this story. I assume they can be broadminded enough to accept the notion that people can be dominant and submissive in completely "unorthodox" ways that border on really friendly sexual activity. As an incurable romantic with an insatiable sex drive, I loved this story. I like it when a sexy story makes me laugh, and this one accomplished that with lines like this, from the master to the slave: "Jeanette, if you were to escape into another state, is that state required to return you to me?" "Mr. Calhoun says 'yes.' Mr. Lincoln says 'no.'" That's not true, of course. Lincoln never attacked the fugitive slave laws. He specifically endorsed them in Congress and after being elected President. Well, anyway - it was funny in the context. The story displays a large amount of inside humor, when the lovers talk about their past experiences and about what they have been reading. For example, not all readers will catch the connection between Juneteenth and the plot of this story, and I'm certainly not going to tell you. But even if I didn't fully understand all the allusions, I thoroughly enjoyed the fondness and bantering between two people who were obviously in love. "For Now" by Uther Pendragon (anon584c@nyx.du.edu). It was almost exactly six months ago that I reviewed "Forever," the first story in the Bob and Jeanette Brennan saga. I astutely said it was a good story, expressed a wish that the author would post more stories, and rated it 9.5, 9, 10. I was also pleased as punch that I had recognized Uther Pendragon as the name of the king who established the Round Table on Merlin's advice and who subsequently found his true heir (King Arthur) through the ole sword-in-the-stone test. Since that time, this author has not only reposted a revised version of that story - cleaning up the imperfections and earning a 10, 10, 10 rating; he has also posted six more stories in this series, in addition to a half dozen unrelated stories. At the present time I am going to say that this is the best story in the series; but I think that may be comparable to my daughter's annual statement that "This is my best birthday ever!" which is invariably followed a few months later by "This is the best Christmas ever!" What I mean is that each successive story (a) is excellent itself and (b) makes the whole series better. As I read this story I saw Bob and Jeanette in a completely new setting, and I learned things about them that made sense, but which I had not thought about before. The present story is only indirectly about Bob and Jeanette. It's told through the eyes of Bob's sister, Vi, a bright 16-year-old who wants to be a psychoanalyst some day but who is at the present time overwhelmed with her own problems with her boyfriend. The sexual activity is equally indirect: we infer only what we can learn from Vi's descriptions of Bob and Jeanette, while she listens in the room next door while her hot brother and sister-in-law go at it in his old bedroom. This is an excellent Christmas story. I loved "The Gathering" episode of the Waltons, and this is the sexually explicit version of it - except, of course, that the Brennans are a smaller family and that Bob is Bob's first name rather than the ubiquitous Walton middle name. The interpersonal and family relationships ring true in this story; and even the non-sexual details contribute to the sexuality that Vi observes in Bob and Jeanette. If this author does not have a degree in psychology, I hereby bestow an honorary degree upon him. If you have not read the previous stories in this series, do a favor for yourself or a loved one this Christmas. Log onto DejaNews on the Web (www.dejanews.com) and punch in the search words "alt.sex.stories pendragon." Download all the stories you find there. The ones that begin with "For" are the Bob and Jeanette stories. They'll give you a warm feeling on a cold winter's night. "For These Gifts" by Uther Pendragon (dustman@athensnet.com). It's Thanksgiving break at Bob and Jeanette Brennan's house, and it's time for games. These "games" are choices of sexual behavior, new positions on the days when he chooses, mostly old ones when she makes the choice. In fact, she called her first game "Missionary." Tonight she has a genuine need for Bob to "be gentle"; and so they play Cherish, which is actually a variation of Missionary. Compared to some of the scenarios we see in this newsgroup, this sexual activity is no big thing - but a very nice no big thing. For Bob's turn they make love sitting down - and standing up. Between the two games, this story even includes a prayer - in fact, the title refers to the prayer that people often say on Thanksgiving, when they give thanks for the gifts they have received during the past year. What I like about this series of stories is that the lovers are intelligent but ordinary people. Bob is going to school (majoring in history) and Jeanette is working full time to make Bob's academic career possible. They are looking forward to a happy future, but they are also trying to enjoy a happy present. They sometimes have riotous sex, but it's in the perspective of a full life. Another way to say this is that a typical episode in this series is like three or four Dulcinea stories cohesively joined together. "For You" by D.A. Ignatius (jash@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu). Katerina has instructed Jonathan to dress in formal attire for their evening date. Then she comes and picks him up to take him to their destination - blindfolded. I'm not going to tell you the details of this story; suffice it to say that this story involves the kind of bondage that I myself find sexy as hell. It is the kind of domination that involves no humiliation of the the bound partner; rather the whole goal is to turn over the control of the bound person's pleasure to his loving partner. This story is a very close approximation of the events of my own tenth wedding anniversary, when I successfully surprised my husband by celebrating it on our nine-and-a-halfth anniversary. The main difference between this story and our real anniversary is that this story does not include a traffic cop. This is one sexy story that you can safely use as a recipe for real life. "French Kiss" by Mark Aster. "L'amour, c'est one cock, and one pussee, no?" These words express in Franglais the moral theory of the lovely Daphne, who is the amorous target of both the narrator of the story and his two traveling companions, Pat and Julie (the Allens, I presume). "Oui, ca marche bien." That should work! This is a very hot story, with the primary focus on bisexual activity in one hotel room while the girls go at it in the adjacent room, which happens to be connected by a peephole. The author shows an excellent gift for using language (especially dialogue) effectively. "French Tickler" by Mark Bastable (MarkB@aboy.demon.co.uk). The narrator has been cycling in the Loire valley and decides to wander into Pinochelle to enjoy the evening air and maybe to see what quaint, provincial nightlife this somnolent region has to offer. Well, he over-imbibes at the "club" and finds himself dreading the walk back to his lodgings, but then a busload of young French women pulls to a stop next to him. Does he want a lift? It is a long way to walk in the dark, n'est-ce pas? He accepts the ride and finds himself packed in tightly in the back of a crowded bus between two people to whom we shall refer euphemistically as Fille Gauche and Fille Droite. I guess this might sound boring - a guy snuggled up between two young French girls whom he can't even see because of the darkness, surrounded by raucous conversation, hands and mouths reciprocally engaging in very private but friendly activities, mind-blowing orgasms; but I certainly enjoyed it. Those Filles really know how to throw an impromptu bacchanal when they put their minds to it! Ooops! The bus has stopped to let him off. Why is everyone so quiet and looking at the back of the bus? And how long have they been watching? Oh well, c'est la vie! The other passengers (Filles Autres) all burst into a spontaneous and sincere round of applause, laughter, and high-fives. Besides having a great idea, this author uses the language very, very well. But where was the tickling? "The Gathering" by Patrick Donovan (drwho@world.std.com). The man's lover has come from a distant city to visit him in Indianapolis. After he and Kathryn have made passionate love several times, another couple arrives unexpectedly for a visit. Kevin is a professional masseur, and his girlfriend is one of his best students. After the spend the evening out, they return to the apartment, where Kevin and Nancy offer to give Kathryn a massage. The narrator joins in, and the massage becomes much more than simple physical therapy - it becomes VERY physical therapy indeed. I'm not going to try to describe in detail the ensuing orgy - except to say that it's some of the hottest sex I've ever read. A potential turn-off to some readers (but not to me) is the fact that there's male/male sex as well as variations more common to group sex stories. I suggest that you just be open-minded and enjoy it, even if that's not your style; otherwise you'll miss a great story. "Gilligan's Island" by Shelby Bush (stbush@iglou.com). The previous two sexual parodies of sitcoms were good, but this one is the quintessential sexual parody. It is both humorous and erotic. As I read the story, I could easily imagine the actual characters on Gilligan's Island doing these things. It was really an excellent story. This makes it stand apart from some of the weaker parodies, in which the author simply takes the names of the characters and the general plot from the original story and has them do things that involve sex. How does a person write an excellent parody? I get the impression that Shelby Bush first of all enjoyed the shows he parodies. He became thoroughly familiar with the characters and the types of plots that were typical of the shows, and then asked himself, "What would happen if people in these shows were allowed to have sex?" The true genius lies in finding a creative plot and blending into that plot details that make the parody seem like a natural extension of the original show. This author does this very effectively, both in the present story and in several others that I have read. For example, I found it perfectly plausible to imagine Gilligan hiding in the bushes while Ginger took a bath under a waterfall. I could easily imagine Ginger being aware that Gilligan was there and doing subtle things to tease him. What would happen next - probably right before the commercial? Why, Ginger would bend over and display to the hidden observer the pink pucker of her asshole and the darkness of her nether lips below, and Gilligan would shoot his wad while falling backwards into a somersault, hitting his head on a tree and blacking out in preparation for the next scene. "Girls' Night Out" by Vickie Tern (VickieTern@aol.com). The author describes this as mainly a consensual feminization story. What that means is that the narrator is a person named Henry who has decided to make a voluntary switch from a male to a female identity in order to please his wife. Whenever I read a feminization story, I predict that I'm going to have trouble identifying with the characters, because I have never wanted to be a man, nor do I have any interest in my husband becoming a woman. (Of course, in a previous life I did reign as king of a major part of Africa, and more recently I was the first Maytag repairman in Clyde, Ohio; but those are different stories.) However, true to form, almost as soon as I got into this story I forgot about my identity problems and just sat back and enjoyed a good story - over 17,000 words all at one sitting! The story starts in the middle of the action, with Henry dressed as a woman, ready to go out for a night on the town with his wife Bea and her friend Pearl. The next several paragraphs backtrack to explain how Henry got into this predicament. At this point the author goes into a brief lecture on how men and women differ during their mid-life crises. This is the least interesting part of the story, because it's more like an essay than a story; but it's a pretty good essay. Anyway, the basic premise of the story is that Bea is turning 40 and has wanted to celebrate with an intimate night out on the town with just her two dearest friends: Pearl (who already qualified) and Henry (who has undergone a thorough transformation since Bea's 39th.). The bulk of the story is what happens during the "night out." Mostly they tell their stories - focusing on events in the distant past that were turning points or of special significance in their lives. Like Henry, most readers will have viewed Pearl as a petty jerk; but by the time she gets finished telling her story, we come to love her. This story within a story technique is extremely effective. After the storytelling, the women (including Henry, who has become Honey) pair off with men they meet in the bar. At this point it occurred to me that I really didn't know how complete Honey's transition was. He/she had been taking medication (probably hormonal) and would have distinctly feminine characteristics as well as emotions; but I assumed she still had a cock. What was she going to do with the guy she began to neck with? You'll have to read the story to learn more. The author herself considers this to be her best work. I still like both "NICE" and "Sooo Sweet" better. But I can see her point. This was a more difficult story to write; and I can see why her pride in this accomplishment would make her feel especially good about this story. "A Guest of Celeste" by Ted (an477638@anon.penet.fi). Veteran readers of these Reviews may recall that in CR 52 I reviewed a story entitled "An Ode to Celeste; or, Meeting the Muse" by an author named Ted The premise of that story was that Celeste is an author of a highly respected series of reviews for a.s.s. who maintains a cabin in a secluded mountain area where she goes to check out possibly fraudulent story lines with sexy young men whom she solicits through the Internet. A young man named Ted shows up for his appointment with fate and is invited to join his predecessor in exchanging pleasures with the Grammar Goddess of Usenet. It was a really hot, well-written story. Well, Ted is back; and he's in fine fettle - whatever that means. If he's as good in the sack as he is with his word processor, I would bet that there's a lucky lady out there somewhere. The main premise of the present story is that Ted has been invited to meet with the REAL Celeste; and this time she is giving assistance to a novice author named Amy, who needs to make her sex stories more realistic. Actually, Amy is allegedly the author of "A Weekend on the Island" (a very hot withSue story to which your humble servant gave a rating of 10 in CR 44); and so one might be a bit skeptical about her actual need for enlightenment. In short, the story consists of an orgy in the context of a writing lesson. An interesting element is that Ted follows in this very story some of the advice that he has Celeste give to her student. To a certain extent, Ted's treatment of Celeste is realistic. For example, she assiduously makes notes on Amy's manuscript and helps her develop her writing skills even while Amy is in the process of giving head to Ted. Such scholarly devotion to task is a mark of a true teacher, critic, and sex goddess. On the negative side, the author spelled Deirdre's name wrong. He spelled it Deidre as in Ng, rather than Deirdre as in Sherwood Anderson. I'll skip past his Celestial use of "ain't," which was in poor taste. However, at one point the author has Celeste say, "...would you like to read it, so you know where we're at?" Now, I don't mind ending the sentence with a preposition, but I never use the expression "where at." I guess I could use these errors to accuse Ted of faulty research, but that would be tantamount to inviting a third story. Actually, that's not a bad idea. Your research sucks, Ted! It sucks dinosaur dildos! "Hands On" by Deidre Ng (Deidre Ng@aol.com). Deidre Ng employs the flashback technique as effectively as anyone I know on this newsgroup. She even does flashbacks within flashbacks without confusing the reader. In this case, she starts the story giving a hand job to her present lover and immediately flashes back to the first hand job she gave to her adolescent boyfriend. She then flashes back to her fourth grade fantasies of what sex must really be like. She moves back and forth through these nested scenes quite effectively. This is easy to read; but believe me, it is not easy to write this as well as Deidre does. The emerging adolescence that Deidre describes in this story is quite different from my own; but as I read her description it was totally believable and almost nostalgic. Deidre's other stories are often what I might call "crazy sexy" - all out total passion, often in the context of a comparison to the activities of her insatiable sister Tammy. This story has a note of that sort of spontaneous sex, but it also demonstrates that Deidre can write in an entirely different mood. Incidentally, this author is Deidre - without an early "d" as in Deirdre. Both Deidre and Deirdre are excellent writers, but their stories are quite different. "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! "Healing" by D.A. Ignatius (jash@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu). This is the sixth story I have reviewed in the DarkNites series. It begins as a very serious, almost somber story. Both of the woman's parents have died in some sort of recent tragedy. The man feels locked out of her life and wants to get back in. After a conflict of emotions they make tender love, and the lovemaking becomes part of the healing process. In a very real sense, this is not an enjoyable story. It is likely to remind you of some of the saddest times in your life. However, in another sense it is a most enjoyable story, because it leads to the insight that two people pulling together intimately can make a difference in each other's lives. "Home Again" by Ann Douglas (annd55@nyc.pipeline.com). A.C. has come home to visit his childhood haunts, and he meets Mary Austin, the 45-year-old mother with a still great body who is the mother of Josh, one of A.C. closest childhood friends. We eventually discover that she was also the target of some of A.C.'s adolescent masturbation fantasies. This author takes her time developing a plot. The first 2 parts (of 7) are not exactly devoid of sex; we do learn that A.C. used to date Jenny Wilson with whom he traded cherries on prom night and whose sister was nicknamed Kleenex Karen because of her proclivity to fill the partial vacuum in her bra with that product, and also that Josh's sister Dawn Marie had fucked the whole football team before moving out of the family domicile right after her 18th birthday. The author also lays a basis for future sexual possibilities by letting us know that Mr. Austin is deceased and that during his adolescence A.C. had once seen Mrs. Austin naked and by arranging for A.C. to stay overnight while he waits for Josh to come home in the morning. But in general A.C. and Mary just have dinner and engage in interesting conversation. So the author spends nearly 4 out of 7 parts with nothing more than innuendo and build-up; but when the sex comes it's both tender and hot. I love this kind of story. Read it yourself for the details. I secretly wish that Ann Douglas would get somebody to proofread her stories. She develops wonderful plots that give full personalities to people having hot sex, and then she makes annoying mistakes that keep me from giving her perfect ratings; and then I often have to decide whether to let a imperfect story onto my Top 15 list for the month. I mean, surely Ann knows the difference between a dinner and a diner and between celibate and celebrate. The problem is that Ann knows what the words are supposed to be, and so she probably skips right past them; and this is just the sort of mistake that a spellcheck doesn't pick up. The solution is to have one intelligent person go through the story before it gets posted. Let this be a lesson to you. Finally, a word of advice. It's nice to shower together before anal intercourse, but the shower removes the natural lubricants from both bodies; and so the penis is likely to be even drier than usual. The problem of dry skin is compounded by the fact that a person's anal canal does not produce natural lubrications for sexual intercourse, as the vagina would. Using Vaseline to solve this problem is not a great idea, because that product tends to seal off the body's natural lubricants, when they do begin to flow. My own experience is that saliva is a better idea than Vaseline at both the front and back door. By far the best solution is a lubricant specifically designed for this purpose, such as K-Y jelly. I guess this gives away part of the plot, doesn't it? "Hot on the Trail: Who in the World is Celeste802?" by Backrub and Tammy Ng (bckrub@aol.com). In this story, Tammy Ng and Backrub are erotic investigators - an Odd Couple hired by the tormented author of a series of highly literate and popular erotic reviews posted each Wednesday and Saturday on alt.sex.stories. Their job is to determine the identity of the writer who has parodied her reviews. The story is based in reality. You may recall that last November someone using the name Celeste802 posted a set of phony reviews that cleverly poked fun at both my own reviews and the stories of several popular a.s.s. authors. I immediately suspected Backrub, but he denied complicity; and he and I exchanged several rounds of e-mail, trying to use our limited deductive abilities to determine the identity of the mystery writer. I abandoned the project, but Backrub evidently kept after it and even enlisted the assistance of Tammy Ng, who was one of the initial suspects; and eventually they wrote this clever and sexy story. As often happens when reality becomes fiction, however, certain events and characteristics have been altered under the guise of poetic license. For example, Backrub is presented as a veritable stud, whereas I come across as some sort of prim English teacher who couldn't get laid if she wanted to and has to resort to writing cheap humor for hormonally imbalanced cyberpunks. In addition, the authors make some unwarranted snide remarks about the quality of writing on a.s.s The style of this story is not Backrub's as I have ever seen it before; and so I suspect that someone else - perhaps Tammy Ng, whose name appears in the title line - either contributed to the story or distracted Backrub while he was attempting to do his inimitable thing. The story is full of sex, humor, and creative detective work. SooNH even does a cameo cumshot. In the end, the authors expose the real Celeste802 (pardon the puns); and I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of their claim. I hope the glare of public exposure does not prevent the reclusive Celeste802 from making additional contributions to this forum. As I neared the end of this story, I was vividly picturing in my mind's eye Backrub - Renaissance man, former CAI operative, erotic investigator, and general man of my dreams. As my thoughts came into focus, I received a clear picture of something dangling - dangling grotesquely and bringing to a sudden halt the flood of moisture that ran from my pussy and down my legs, leaving my computer chair with a damp spot and a fragrance hinting that someone had been consumer testing vibrators on it. It was a dangling modifier right in the fucking middle of the story: "Hard, she put me back in my pants, rose and kissed me goodbye." I called this to his attention, but Backrub has persisted in refusing to remove what dangles. Another image crushed! This is a highly creative story. I would have enjoyed it even if it were not partly about me. "How I Met Pat and Julie" by Mark Aster (MyFrThAl@aol.com). "The younger of the Allen sisters soaped my stomach and thighs with a warm washcloth while the elder, lying naked on the bed, masturbated lazily with a blue dildo, and told erotic stories in between orgasms. My cock had been hard in a relaxed comfortable way for some time, and the gentle rubbing of the rough wet cloth on my thighs and balls was driving me slowly crazy." So starts the pilot episode of Mark Aster's "My Friends the Allens". The "Allen Sisters" stories are loosely connected. I understand there are now about 20 of them. There is every indication that there will be at least 20 more. I hope so. The combined stories do not add up to a novel; the best comparison I can make is a sitcom. But since the stories are predominantly erotic rather than funny, perhaps a better analogy would be a porno version of an American soap opera. What I mean by this is that readers can start at any point in the series and even skip episodes without losing the continuity of the story. While doing so, readers can still enjoy both each separate story and the combined series, while developing a sort of friendship with the characters. The unnamed Hero/Narrator of these stories is a typical soap stud. If he lived in Salem or Aramid, he would be John Black or Bo Brady; but instead of having two middle aged women fighting over his favors or wrestling over which bride he should keep, our Hero is resigned to the quiet existence of servicing his two lovely friends, while the three of them unselfishly extend their favors into the world around them. While John and Bo frown a lot, Our Hero groans even more. Like John, he has no obvious means of earning a living; he just accompanies the girls to expensive resorts or attends parties at exclusive mansions and pleasantly groans and reciprocates ad infinitum. He is pleasantly insatiable, the kind of boytoy that even Madonna and her Evil Twin working as a tag team could not exhaust. Logically, I should have read this story first in the series; but I didn't know it existed until now. Finding it was like coming across the pilot story for a sitcom I had grown to love. The Friendly Threesome were quite at home in my mind's eye as they fucked and sucked their way through this initial episode. It's a really hot one. Somehow I'm glad I read it out of order; it was almost as much fun as the time I found the John Black FAQ on the World Wide Web. "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. "Interpreter" by Mark Bastable (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! (Continued in Part 3) Path: newsfeed.direct.ca!news.wildstar.net!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!portc02.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail From: celeste801@aol.com (Celeste801) Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories Subject: Celeste's Top Stories Reviews (3/4) Date: 5 Jan 1997 21:29:27 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Lines: 986 Message-ID: <19970105212700.QAA03874@ladder01.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder01.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Xref: newsfeed.direct.ca alt.sex.stories:138029 Status: N Top Stories of 1996 - Part 3 of 4 (Continued from Part 2. The stories are listed alphabetically. For the complete list of Top Stories of 1996 in rank order, see the posting labeled "Celeste's Top 100 Stories of 1996." Please do not ask me to send you these stories. Most of them can be found on DejaNews at www.dejanews.com.) - Celeste "Intimate with the Vampire 2.0" by Rocket88 (rick84@ mindspring.com). A story like this has two strikes against it when I start reading it. Strike one: I don't like senseless pain as a part of sexual relations. Pain and violence are fine under the right circumstances; and I'll even grant that there are occasions when it can be pleasurable to be either the giver or receiver of pain. However, I think people who enjoy being tortured by another person have serious emotional problems. And so I expect the author of a story that involves pain or violence to show me that there is a point to this activity. Strike two: I don't believe in vampires. I find "Dracula" so boring that I have never watched the entire movie. I think the notion is generally silly. Under these circumstances you may be surprised to know that I really liked this story. Strike two evaporated first: lots of things that are generally silly can become interesting if I suspend my disbelief and if the author does a good job of presenting the story. That's what science fiction is all about. For that matter, that's what most of this newsgroup is about. My other objection evaporated just as easily: sure, there was pain and violence; but it occurred in a surrealistic context that seemed to have a point to it. If I granted that there may be preternatural beings that have this kind of power of seducing people and stealing their souls, then this kind of activity made perfect sense. If the author's goal was to give me nightmares or to make me live in fear or anticipation that things like this might happen to me, then he has failed (I hope!). However, if he wanted to entertain me with a damned good story, then he has succeeded. Now, here's my favorite part: this story was originally submitted about two months ago. Here's what I said about it in CR 45: "As I have said before, I am not an aficionado of vampires, werewolves, witches, or other preternatural forces. Nevertheless, I think this story has considerable potential - especially for people who understand the ground rules of vampires better than I do. The problem with this story is that it lacks even rudimentary proofreading. The author is obviously intelligent, and so he/she attempts to use fairly sophisticated ideas and sentence structures to convey his/her plot. But the mistakes are so glaring as to convince me that the author simply doesn't want to spend the time to make the story reader-friendly. I mean, does the author really think that it makes sense to "lye" in a motionless embrace? Lye is a chemical that cleans my plumbing. And then near the middle of the story I read these lines: "The fire grew more intense. MailFirst....Save As... She said. MailTheres pleasure.Save As... And with out another word she opened her mouth and gently covered mine." This garbled writing may be the result of a faulty mailer rather than poor writing skills; but it certainly is annoying. In addition, throughout the story the verbs are frequently screwed up. As I said earlier, the author is obviously intelligent; and so he/she sometimes starts using a past perfect tense or the subjunctive mood correctly, but then all of a sudden we're in the present tense and indicative mood. There are several instances of misplaced modifiers, like this one (which also contains a comma splice): "It was if she never used these feet to walk, scented and soft, I put her toes into my mouth using my tongue to wet them." Literally, this sentence means that the guy sucking the toes smelled nice and was soft; and I doubt that's what the author intended. A few lines later we hear about "the beating of her hart." A hart is a male deer. What does the author really mean here: "...my mind soured as I clung tightly as the sweat that gummed my body to hers was causing my arms to slide." I think the guy's mind *soared*, but the sentence clearly says that it turned sour! Here's one more that I kinda liked: "My flesh was ripped and I needed to explode, I wanted orgasm, I started to beg to her. Mailplease dont stopSave As..." Finally, I think a succubus is a ghostly visitor that goes under the person being visited; this critter sounds more like an incubus. {Note: I was wrong about this; the author was right. I checked.} "I don't derive sexual satisfaction from making fun of authors' mistakes, and I don't mean to give the impression that I want to humiliate this author. For me to say that a vampire story has potential means that it *really* has potential. I myself recently spelled "waist" incorrectly in Celestial Reviews (although I was actually copying the words of a different writer). Mistakes happen. But when mistakes accumulate, readers get annoyed and wonder why the author hasn't gone to the trouble of preparing the text properly. Creative ideas are the most important part of a story, and I think this story may have creative ideas. But there's no reason why creative ideas cannot be presented more coherently than this. "It's not just English teachers who get upset at this. English teachers may be the only ones who know why they're upset; but readers in general will find this presentation to be annoying. I urge this author and others like him/her to take advantage of my offer to find free volunteer proofreaders. This could possibly have been an excellent story if the author would have given it the care it deserves. (Rating: 4)" As you will notice from the title, this author accepted my invitation to receive proofreading assistance; and that's why this is labeled version 2.0. There are two major differences between the present and the previous versions of this story. First, the grammar and style no longer stands in the way; the reader can now react to the ideas of the author and can feel the emotions that the author wanted the reader to feel. Second, I don't know this for certain, but I imagine the proofreader challenged the author by asking him to clarify some of the ideas that originally seemed unclear. It is important to point out that these improvements are not just something that please English teachers. Ordinary readers - no, I'll go further - even borderline imbeciles who themselves communicate only by grunting and yanking on their penises would have been mainly confused by the original version but will enjoy this story in its present format. If this sounds like an advertisement for my proofreading service, so be it! "Jinsong" by Mary Anne Mohanraj (moh2@midway.uchicago.edu). There's incredible variety in this author's writings. This story started slowly. At first I was concerned that I might have accidentally downloaded somebody's garbled e-mail instead of the story I had expected. Then I realized that the story was written in the form of e-mail messages between a woman with the "handle" Jinsong (who has just broken up with her boyfriend) and a Pennsylvanian named Matthew Danzener (a shy guy who at first seems incapable of romance). Matthew is extremely awkward in his communications, except when he speaks in poetry. After a few mundane messages, Matthew hits Jinsong with a 627-word poem that describes his anticipated first date with Jinsong. What he wants to do is actually pretty tame; but it sure sounds great the way he puts it. You'll have to read the story yourself. It's impossible to convey its mood without the e-mail and the poetry. "July 4" by Mark Bastable (markb@aboy.demon.co.uk). The British are civilized people. If you ever visit a Civil War battlefield in the United States, you have to be careful how you use the words "enemy," "loser," and "bad guys." You see, the South lost the Civil War, but they're still pissed about it; and almost all the battlefields are in the South. The British, on the other hand, lost the Revolutionary War; and what do they do? They have fireworks on the 4th of July. When I was in the eighth grade, a hormonally imbalanced boy who was considered sexy, sat down next to me at lunch and asked me, "Do they have a 4th of July in England?" Sexy boys did not usually talk to me, and so I was taken aback. I tried to think quickly, but all I could manage was the notion that since the British had LOST the war that the 4th of July seemed to have started, then they'd have to be damned fools to celebrate it; and I told him so. "Well what do they do, then?" he answered. "Go straight from the 3rd to the 5th?" He laughed uproariously. Still thinking that this joke had to have something to do with sex, I was thoroughly confused. This review may seem disjointed, but that's because so is this story. All that matters is light and sound. The rest is just details. That's the conclusion the narrator drew when he acted as a beard for his lesbian friend at a 4th of July party at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square and an unknown assailant from behind pulled his dick out of his pants while he fondled her clit and the fireworks exploded overhead. The important thing to remember is when a Brit says he's pissed, it means he's drunk. When an American is pissed, he's mad. Thus, the saying, "'Tis better to be pissed off than pissed on" is more likely to be meaningful to an American than to our friends across the Pond. "Justice" by Michael K. Smith (mksmith@metronet.com). When Susan was twelve and just entering puberty, her father saw her naked one day and came to her in bed that night. He told her that here mother no longer took care of his needs and that he wanted Susan to help out. Then he fucked her; and it hurt. Her father had split neatly into two people in her life. There was her Daddy, whom she loved, who dropped her off at the school bus stop and helped her with her homework, and who did nice things with her. But there was also the man who came at night whenever the two of them were alone, and put part of his body inside her body. When he came, he never struck her, or put the pillow over her face, or anything so dramatic. They simply had sex. Both of these men said they loved her, but she now understood that word to have two different meanings. And neither man ever mentioned the other. It never occurred to Susan to say anything about their relationship to her mother or to anyone else. She simply got used to the visits and outwardly accepted them. This is a very realistic description of typical pedophile activity. It is not as enjoyable as the stories that describe "family fun" as a neat way for children to grow up. I want to remind you that I have given high ratings to well-written stories that present sex between adults and children in a much more pleasant light than this one. I mention that because I don't want to sound overly moralistic in this review. All I am saying is that I have known lots of children who were sexually abused, and this story comes closer than any other I have seen to describing the TYPICAL reaction of a child who is coerced into having sex with her father. This story is not a turn-on - even though it does have a "happy" ending; but I urge you to read it anyway. It's one of the best stories I have ever seen on this newsgroup. "Kin" by Delta. "I don't usually break promises. Not even ones I make to myself. Especially not ones I make to myself. Funny how hard, and how easy, it is to overcome that private taboo." These words from the beginning of Delta's story state the narrator's ambivalence as she returned to the scene where she had known a former loved. But to me they instantly evoked a different reaction. As I read these words, I recalled an e-mail message from Delta - I think it was in November of last year - in which she told me that she was withdrawing from the erotic story circuit. She had to get on with other tasks in her life. Anonymous relationships that we develop on this newsgroup are strange and wonderful. I was sad; but I sent her a cheerful note of some kind. I don't know why she's back; but I'm glad she is. I hope she continues writing stories like this. Delta made my Top 100 list for 1995 four times - including the number 2 story. The present story, I think, is the best she has ever written. This is partly because I like romantic, sentimental stories; but it's mostly because the story is so well written. There is no wasted verbiage; the action tells the story and conveys the emotions very effectively. I don't know why this story has to be hidden away on a.s.s. I don't know why it can't be on magazine racks in the supermarkets or in the anthologies that my students read. There is almost no explicit sex in this story, but I had a really good feeling inside me all the while I read it - maybe that's why it's not in those anthologies. The story is about a guy and a girl who take a First Aid course together and like each other but do not make love with each other. That may sound pretty lame; but take my word for it - Delta tells the story better than I do. "Lawyers in Love" by A. Van Peebles (an182636@anon.penet.fi). Q. How many lawyers does it take to screw in a light bulb? A. Just two. Most lawyers will screw anywhere. But it may be hard for them to get inside the light bulb. That joke has nothing to do with this story (except it's about lawyers), but humor and social commentary are important components of these reviews. This is one of the best stories involving lesbian love that I have ever read. If someone wanted to write a textbook chapter on how an older woman who identifies herself as a lesbian should begin a romantic relationship with a younger person confused about her sexual identity, this story would provide a good foundation. While realistically portraying the feelings of Kate and Becky, this story avoids such pitfalls as stereotyping people as gays or straights and exploiting a vulnerable young woman who is confused about life. The story doesn't use gimmicks to turn us on. I have never been involved in a relationship like the one described here, but as I read the story I could REMEMBER these things happening to me. What I mean by that is that the author presented the story line so plausibly and authentically that I found myself identifying with the characters and saying to myself, "Yeah, that's the way it was." An important comment that I want to add is that the story was so well written that when I was near the middle of the story and Becky in her drunken stupor first kissed Kate, at least two endings would have been perfectly plausible and acceptable. First, Becky could have realized the value of a lesbian lifestyle for herself and entered into a relationship with Kate. Alternatively, Becky could have found the relationship with Kate to be fulfilling, but could have continued to seek an even more fulfilling relationship with someone else - perhaps with Peter. (Other endings would also be possible and emotionally acceptable.) While reading this story, I was reminded of events and fantasies in my own life. As I point out in my FAQ, I lead a monogamous heterosexual lifestyle, yet I happily admit to enjoying and being turned on by the activities and emotions expressed in this story about a lesbian relationship. I mention this because I think it is important to stress that while sexual identity is obviously important, it is also sensible to avoid premature or inaccurate labeling. I think it is important that people (especially young people) avoid labeling themselves as "gay," "straight," or "bisexual" based on fantasies or isolated experiences. When I was young, I had trouble relating to guys and found myself thinking horny thoughts about other women. I even had a crush on a female teacher. As an adult, I have discovered that nearly all my female friends report similar feelings. In retrospect, I think my feelings occurred because I was shy (or perhaps socially inept) around boys - nearly all of whom were assholes at that time anyway, while the girls with whom I participated in sports seemed to me to be mature, sexy creatures whose tits bounced enticingly when I was with them in the showers and locker rooms. I had access to two highly competent persons at the time (known as parents) who noticed my reactions and convinced me that I was normal - even though they never gave me a specific lecture about it. I think it would have been foolish for me to have concluded at that time that I "was" lesbian. Even now, sexy women turn me on. The cosmetic companies count on them to do so; otherwise I would never buy that overpriced stuff they put into bottles and other containers. I recently had an orgasm while I was alone and watching a woman masturbate in a porn flick.. I also got turned on while reading the sexy lesbian scenes in this story. I don't think either of these admissions make it sensible to say that I "am" bisexual today. I have selected heterosexual monogamy as my lifestyle, and I feel good about it. Because of this choice, I'll never have an opportunity to make passionate love to a sexy woman; but I see no conflict in enjoying a good story about someone else doing so. The label "heterosexual" is also detrimental, but in a more subtle way (because it is more socially accepted in the culture that surrounds me). I enjoy playing with myself. I enjoy it when my husband fondles, kisses, licks, etc. my genitals (or practically anything else, for that matter). By what grotesque stretch of logic am I supposed to believe that it would be UNenjoyable to have a sensitive female partner play with me instead? I'm not going to do it; but that's because of a lifestyle choice (called marriage), not because it would be anything but intensely satisfying to have a luscious little beauty tongue my clit while I felt her juices drip across my face as I buried my face in her pussy. Do I think that reading and enjoying stories about hot lesbian love is likely to "make" me a lesbian? No, I don't. I DO think these stories make it more likely that if something would happen to my present relationship with my husband (for example, if he would die) I would be more likely to consider a lesbian relationship afterwards; but if I were a betting person, I'd still bet on my finding a good man for my next relationship. I guess what I'm saying is that good erotic fiction should and does have an effect on readers; but to the extent that it's realistic and readers have their heads on straight, this is not really a problem. If readers don't have their heads on straight or if the stories give a well written but distorted view of reality, I think such stories can and do cause problems. I'm sorry! I've just realized that I've written 550 words that tend to digress from my topic. I'll stop right now - except to say that I think the logic expressed in the preceding paragraphs applies to other areas as well. For example, enjoying a well written, stimulating pedophile or D&s story does not mean that you "are" a pedophile or submissive or whatever; it just means that you recognize certain sexy aspects of such stories. It is my opinion that regularly reading and enjoying such stories does, in fact, make it more likely that the person reading and enjoying them would engage in these activities if given a chance to do so and if there were no good reasons to refrain. If that presents a problem (as I think is the case with rape and pedophilia), the solution is not to blame or denounce the stories, but rather to look for and give importance to legitimate, sound reasons why such behaviors need to be avoided - perhaps by reading or writing stories that show more realistic consequences. (One of the stories on my Top 100 list did just that. In "Raped Teen Burglar" TEX took a story about how much fun it would be to rape a teenage girl and turned it into a vivid description of the likely consequences of that kind of activity.) These insights may obvious to many of you, and others may disagree with them; but I think I'll leave them in this review. After all, I gave you that great lawyer joke; so a little seriousness may be in order. Back to the story. The first two thirds of the story was about the development of the relationship and contained no sex, and while I read it I thought that maybe the extreme objectivity of the author's style might make the eventual sex scene less than interesting. Not to worry! This is a really good story, and I hope to see more writing by this author. "Let Your Fingers Do the Riding" by Solo Polyphony (solo.polyphony@teamhbbs.com). OK, so here's the story. A woman is riding alone in a subway car late at night. It is very cold. She pulls her arms and hands inside her jacket and hugs herself to keep warm. One thing leads to another, and pretty soon she's masturbating. After all, she's alone in the car. She is rapidly approaching orgasm, when she looks up and sees a man was standing in the aisle about ten feet away, his eyes riveted on her crotch, the bulge in his pants registering his interest. Their eyes meet. "Sorry to disturb you," he says, in the most incredibly gentle voice, "I saw what you were doing from the next car, and I just couldn't resist coming over to this one for a better look." What can you do when you're faced with a gentlemanly apology like that? She does the ladylike thing: "Why don't you have a seat?" Then she continues with the show. But first she says, "Perhaps you'd like to open your pants and do likewise?" What can a guy say after a show like that? "Hundred and Tenth!" the man exclaims after he ejaculates. "Oh, shit! My stop was 96th!" Ah, the vicissitudes of life in the Big Apple! "Library of Congress" by Mark Aster (MyFrThAl@aol.com). The title is a bit deceptive. The story doesn't take place in the Library of Congress, where activities like this are fairly common, but rather in a sub-basement of the medical law library where Julie goes to school. What do you suppose would happen if Our Hero and Julie were wrapping up a study session in a lonely library area, occupied only by the classical, bespectacled librarian and the gangly adolescent with the book cart? Just as you might expect, Julie seduces the librarian by giving her The Look. Then while Julie settles her overdue fines with the book kid on the study table, Our Hero does the silent serenade with the librarian among the stacks. It's very sexy stuff; this author is at his best when he's describing two couples copulating simultaneously. If synchronized sex ever becomes an Olympic sport, I want Mark Aster for my team's coach. "A Lovely Girl" by Michael K. Smith (mksmith@taproot.win.net). This is a vivid story about a homicidal maniac who rapes a thirteen-year-old girl. The horror continues to build throughout the story until it reaches its full impact at the very end. What I truly appreciated about this story is that the author did not pretend that the little girl enjoyed any part of the experience. Rating the story was difficult. Its use of language was excellent; no problem there - 10. The plot was exceptionally well developed; again, no problem - another 10. But did I like it? Actually, I was repulsed by it. I definitely did not get turned on; and I hated the protagonist. My fervent hope is that nothing like the events depicted in this story should ever happen to anyone I love. So I didn't like it; but I did ADMIRE it. It conveyed to me an accurate description of the mind of a pervert; and I think I'm a better person because of the experience. And so, for appeal to reviewer - another 10. "Lucy in the Sky" by SueNH. Sue goes for a short vacation in the Poconos (that's a "holiday" in the mountains, I think, to you British readers) with her old friend Lucy. She is suspicious that Lucy is playing matchmaker - trying to fix her up with a guy. "Naw!" I thought. "Lucy is inviting her to an orgy." (Having met with success in predicting Deirdre's plots, I had decided to expand to more complex cases. This one was simple: they will go to a mountain retreat with Lucy's boyfriend, and the three of them will fuck their mutual brains out in the great outdoors.) I was so close that I'm going to give myself a gold star for that prediction. However, even though I "knew" how the story would end, I found it to be a hot and sexy tale. Sue again shows her ability to write a "rich" story - one with lots of details that appear to sometimes appear to be irrelevant but actually add to the story by developing the personalities of the characters or by setting the physical or emotional environment for the sexual activities. This is not an easy task; it's very easy to drift into extraneous details that distract from the story. Readers don't want an inventory of all the items in the physical environment or an anthropological description of "a day in the life" of the characters; and so it's the author's job to decide what to include and what to exclude. I once received a critical comment from a reader who knocked me for picking on Friar Dave in "Singapore Girl." My correspondent pointed out that he happened to know that what Friar Dave said in that story was all true - the way it "really happened." My reply was that if Friar Dave were writing as an anthropologist or maybe even as an autobiographer, then he should include details that have nothing to do with the focus of the story. However, since Friar Dave was writing a story, he needed to stick more to his focus (as he does in most of his other excellent stories). At any rate, this ability to enrich a story without losing balance is one of Sue's main strengths. Authors who want to enrich their own stories in this way should study Sue's technique. (Sue herself thinks she writes good stories because she's one hot chick with a vivid imagination. Not true! It's because she has an ability to enrich a story without losing balance. Right!) I encountered some irritating formatting problems with this story: (1) I frequently encountered the words "Mail" and "Save as..." at strange places throughout the text. Sue must have some sort of macro with her mailer that interprets quotation marks as these commands. I simply used my global replace function to turn these back into quotation marks, and the story was much easier to read. (2) I noticed that Sue was omitting her apostrophes for possessives and for contractions. On an impulse, I did a search for apostrophes in the story and found nary a one of them. Since I am pretty sure Sue knows about the existence of the apostrophe, I think Sue should check her mailer, which appears to be deleting or altering some punctuation marks. I mention this publicly (rather than in a private note to Sue) because this happens more often than authors may realize. It's a good idea to download your stories yourself to see what they actually look like to your readers. Anyway, I resolved not to "take points off" for faulty apostrophes and quotation marks, but I encourage Sue to look into this when she reposts or archives this story. This is an excellent story. The following sentence contains a subtle grammar problem. Can you tell what it is? "The trail was very rugged, showing little signs of regular use. " Answer: there should not be an "s" on "signs". The phrase should be either "little sign" or "few signs." The present sentence says that there were tiny (little) signs that the trail was used regularly. (Boy! Are my students in for a rough day tomorrow if I don't have an orgasm soon!) "Marie" by Friar Dave. When she was a little under 11 years old and had a body that was a bit advanced for her age, Marie made an important discovery. She could become close to and even have sex with nice men, and she could turn them on and still have them treat her right, and it could be fun and sweet and pleasurable and not hateful or hurtful or scary. The problem was that soon she loved sex, and she was used to getting it pretty much when she wanted it. And she was often horny as hell. To use Marie's own expression, she was making Lolita look like a nun. Marie's initial sexual contacts were with boys near her own age. She quickly graduated to more mature boys and to adult men. Once she had experienced the more mature partners, she lost interest in younger boys. She progresses to numerous hot, sexy adventures. If we accept this as fiction - a nice story - then we're OK. If we look at it as a case study - which is the format the author uses - then our choices are to regard this story as either (1) a very unusual set of circumstances or (2) a far-fetched fantasy. The FACT is that there is an overwhelming tendency for girls who become sexually active this young to have adult lives that are at best far below their potential at and worst just plain miserable. I have worked with kids who have been sexually active. I am not talking about "kids" who get married and start a family when they are 17. I am talking about kids who start having constant sex when they are under 12 years old. In general, when they become adults, they have no idea what real love is about. They've lost their childhood. They almost invariably either drop out of school or just sit in a desk until the law permits them to leave. They enter into a series of shallow sexual relationships as adults, and they almost never have what a sensible person would call a stable family. My guess is that by their fiftieth birthday half of the kids I have known like this will be dead after an unhappy life. I also serve as an informal counselor to a large number of well-adjusted teenagers (by being the sponsor of various organizations), and my impression is that the sexual experiences of these kids begin much later in life. Articles and case studies published in scientific journals confirm my perception. It's possible that I'm getting a biased sample in my real life contacts. I work with kids who are dysfunctional, and so maybe I just don't see the well-adjusted kids who have been having frequent sex since they were 11 years old. It's POSSIBLE that the world is full of wonderful children like Marie who become sexually active before they turn 11, who are never sexually exploited, and whose lives are not permanently screwed up because of their early sexual experiences. These kids would not come to my attention, because they look like normal kids and don't advertise the fact that they're fucking one another's brains out when I'm not looking. It's also important to note that even with the dysfunctional kids it may be the problems in the rest of their lives that lead to early sexual behavior rather than vice versa. What I most emphatically want to say is that I do NOT believe that any of you readers who started your sexual careers at a really early age are necessarily scarred for life because of this. On the other hand, I hope you have the honesty to admit that maybe life would be better were it not for some early problems and mistakes. Marie discovered early in this story that sex could be fun and sweet and pleasurable and not hateful or hurtful or scary. I learned the same thing from my mother and from the happy environment in which I grew up. Mom didn't let me look at porn magazines when I was really young, because they would "give me a wrong impression of sex and love." My father and mother were very affectionate in front of us, and I knew that someday I might get lucky and have a similar relationship. She knew what kinds of movies I watched and casually offered me advice, including the encouragement to "save myself" for somebody I truly loved. I had a full childhood and a happy athletic career in high school; and I cannot imagine my sex life being much better than it is right now - except when I get interesting ideas from these stories. My advice to my own daughters has been similar; and had I ever suspected that one of them was engaging in precocious sexual behavior I would have done what I could have done to lead her to a more adaptive lifestyle. Having stated my personal philosophy in the previous paragraphs, now I'll say that this is still an excellent story. It's "realistic" in the sense that these events COULD happen to a person that would grow up to be a normal, functioning adult. And if you read the whole story, I think you'll discover that Marie's eventual opinion of her life story is not all that different from my own. The story is also just plain enjoyable - even to a person like myself who would discourage such behavior in real life. I have close friends and relatives who adamantly insist that anything that's immoral, unwise, or unrealistic cannot be enjoyable. That's just plain stupid. When I watch Star Wars, I don't worry about the impact on their families of killing the storm troopers of the Evil Empire. When I watch a movie about a clever bank robbery, I don't worry about the fact that such activity would ultimately influence how banks would operate and probably cause hardship for families with marginal incomes. Get real! It would be fun to rob a bank and get away with it (although I would never do it and it couldn't really be harmless in real life), and it would also be fun for a 12-year-old to pull a train with a bunch of friendly 16-year-olds. Not wise, perhaps, but certainly fun. Some people cite this as Friar Dave's best story. I liked "Inger" better, but this one is still an excellent story. "Meeting Shirley" by The Observer (observer@onramp.net). The man likes women who are a challenge: sexy, smart, classy, devious, and underhanded - with a whim of iron. As a favor to a friend, however, he agrees to take a frumpy young lady to dinner. After she changes clothes, she becomes beautiful - even enchanting, if non-French men would ever use that word. {Usually it works the other way, I'm told; beauty deteriorates geometrically during the first twelve hours - except near closing time. As one of my former professors used to say whenever he talked about nuances among synonyms: "She was a vision in the evening, and a sight in the morning."} Unfortunately, he has promised his friend not to seduce this young lady. The chemistry between them is obvious. I don't know when I have read so many hot lines before any sex has occurred. I think I once berated this author for dangling his modifiers. He has reformed almost completely - almost: "Alone at last with Shirley, my cock was making its presence known even more than it had numerous times during the day." Incidentally, if I were the author of this story, I would have gone with "Damn you Charlie" for its title. One problem I had with this story was that it ended a bit up in the air. The author starts a new subplot near the end and doesn't finish the first plot. However, he promises a continuation this week. A more serious problem may be that the author apparently intends to connect this story to his previous "The Photographer's Daughters." Unless he has some tricks I haven't thought of, I can't imagine how that would work. This is a much better story, and I don't see how the characters match up. "Memories of Underdevelopment" by Estragon (an573847@anon.penet.fi). Erica and Leila are two fifteen year old girls who are beginning to discover their own sexuality. Little by little, they start with what they know about boys just from instinct, and then imagine things together, out loud, that they would only have let themselves imagine in private before; and then they try some of those things out for real, on real males; and then they build on what they have learned. One day Erica says, "It's strange. Girls let all kinds of guys they're going to break up with in a week touch them and learn all about them, and their best friend who they'll love forever has no idea what their nipples or slot look like...." And so they head for Leila's house, get naked, and explore each other's bodies. Sounds normal to me. Like many of Estragon's stories, this one starts with perfectly normal, sensible activities and emotions like these and builds to the point where readers will suddenly realize that they are accepting as normal activities that they would previously have viewed as bizarre. In other words, Estragon has fiendishly combined the Socratic dialogue with the short story and feminist ideology. Careful research shows that males outnumber females on this newsgroup. I can't explain this, although I'm sure Erica and Leila could demonstrate that it is this way because women want it this way. My point is that large numbers of male readers will read this story and wonder whether young girls really do lie around playing with each other's bodies, giving pleasure to each other and devising plans for subjugating males to be pussy whipped. {The story gives a delightful discussion of this term.} On the surface, most men probably reject the idea as foolish; they know their girlfriends and lovers, and these people are nice to their male friends. But isn't it possible that that's just part of the facade? Maybe the girlfriends and lovers are smart enough to not let the dumb males know that they are being pussy whipped. Maybe there really is this huge conspiracy going on, but maybe we women are just smart enough to keep our slaves happy by letting them foolishly believe that they are the masters. Makes sense to me. I truly love Estragon's writings, and I don't want to betray the Sisterhood; but I'm going to tell you a secret. When I was an adolescent girl, I did NOT sit around with a girlfriend and devise ways to subjugate males. I never once stuck a boy in the balls with the backside of a spoon, nor did I pee on a male of the species who was begging me to do so. However, as I grew older, in dorms and locker rooms we girls did metaphorically do these things. Although I don't know anyone who actually did cut off a boy's or man's testicles, I do know lots of girls who took delight in emasculating their boyfriends in more socially acceptable ways; and I myself often enjoyed giving one of these assholes a metaphorical kick in the balls. What I am saying is that I doubt that many young girls literally do the things that Erica and Leila do; but a very large number of mature women (myself included) read this story and say, "That's not an entirely bad idea!" In short, this story is sort of a thinking person's "Thelma and Louise." Most of my correspondents think that Estragon is a man. I have no direct knowledge to the contrary, but I suspect that she is a woman. If Estragon is a man, he's a genius to have insights like this into the female psyche; and as Estragon herself would point out, men just aren't all that smart. Ergo, Estragon must be a woman - and a damned good writer besides. On the other hand, Aristophanes was a man, and he wrote Lysistrata. Don't be scared off by my references to Socratic dialogues, to feminine psyches, and all that technical jargon. And don't you guys be afraid that you'll become emasculated by reading this story. And who cares if this IS reality? If Estragon is right, you guys too dumb to realize it anyway. Just read this story and enjoy it! If you do so and then ask real politely, maybe a nice lady will let you get naked for her. "My Weekend with Nancy" by Steve Black (c621097@showme.missouri.edu). Through a combination of brains and beauty Nancy LeDoux has made her way to the top ranks as a manager within the Ultimate Wrestling Association. Andy is a big fan of wrestling and of Nancy. Don't worry; you don't have to buy into the idea that pro wrestling is "real" in order to enjoy this story. Andy views Nancy as a beautiful woman who is good at promoting entertainment. Alas, Nancy hurts her ankle, and Andy helps her. Double alas - because of the injury, Nancy cannot sleep; and Andy helps her again. Triple alas, Nancy needs a man; and Andy redoubles his efforts to help out. It turns out Nancy is polyamorous. Andy has to decide if this is OK with him; and he says he needs time to think. Quite possibly, the reason for his hesitation was because he had to check the fine FAQ on that topic, available on alt.sex.wizards. Then Andy rescues Nancy from her crazed wrestler ex-husband. Next Nancy's sexy assistant Tamara starts coming on to Andy. Andy likes Tamara but resists her, because he wants to remain true to Nancy. But Tamara is going to be persistent. What will Andy do? I knew the answer, because I already knew all about polyamory. That's the value of having a good vocabulary and/or lurking in alt.sex.wizards. Actually, I *thought* I knew the answer, and I was pretty close. But I didn't guess the part about the handcuffs. This story has a slow build-up; but that's probably necessary. The ending was excellent. "Natalie" by Daniel Shechori, (s1719104@techst02.technion.ac.il). Viewers of American commercial television are likely to be familiar with a man named Lucky - a well-built hunk who takes a break everyday, while all the ladies in the nearby buildings gather at the windows to watch him ingest a Diet Coke. Natalie is Lucky's a.s.s. counterpart. She and the narrator take turns on successive workdays eating sexual lunches. It starts with an innocent grape a la Cleopatra and quickly moves on to the guy licking a peach with a gentle ferocity that strangely resembles cunnilingus. This is a really sexy story, even though the main characters never get within ten feet of each other. In fact, the narrator professes to know absolutely nothing about Natalie, which isn't even her real name. But somehow, they keep coming back to each other each day at lunch. How sweet! Pass the bananas, please. "Newhart: The Made Maid" by Uncle Mike (fr582@cleveland.Freenet.Edu). At first I was disappointed with this story. I was expecting a parody of the Bob Newhart Show in which Bob plays a psychologist in Chicago. Instead I found a parody of the more recent Bob Newhart Show, in which Bob plays a writer who is also the owner of an Inn in New England. I wasn't as familiar with the latter series, and so I expected that I wouldn't enjoy the parody as much. I was very pleasantly surprised! The plot is perfect; it actually fits in with the personalities and mannerisms of the characters. Stephanie (the ditzy, lazy, rich girl who is a maid but never does any work) develops a rivalry with Joanna, and to prove her case she seduces Dick (the Bob Newhart character). In retaliation, Joanna seduces Michael (Stephanie's preppie boyfriend). In further retaliation, Joanna tricks Stephanie into having sex with Larry and his two brothers (Daryl and Daryl). Finally, to make amends Joanna makes love to Stephanie herself. As I said, the parody is very well done. For example, it is easy to imagine the Bob Newhart character reacting just the way the author shows him as he is seduced by the young vixen. I strongly recommend this story. "Novice" by Wollstonecraft (an285729@anon.penet.fi ). The events in this story probably didn't really happen. If they did, we surely would have seen the participants on Donahue or one of the other talk shows by now. Actually, there's a good chance that this was written under a pseudonym by Donahue himself, to get even with those nuns for swatting his cute little ass when he talked during mass as a child. Anyway, the novice (a young woman aspiring to become a nun) looks out the window of her convent one evening and sees a young, wretched, homeless lad shivering on the ground. What can she do? Her charity demands that she invite him inside (through the window, of course). But alas, sleeping on the cold floor would hardly be better than sleeping on the ground and there's only one bed. Charity would demand sharing the bed. But double alas, his tattered clothes would soil the bed sheets; and so - cleanliness being next to godliness (more literally than usual, in this case) - she invites the young man into her bed clad only in a humble gown that she bestows on him. Recognizing that this might be a source of temptation, she cautiously enjoins him to be chaste. The good lad replies thus: "I would not press an unholy advantage as a result of your compassion, Sister, nor would I be so foolish as to risk the wrath of the Lord by despoiling His servant's perfect offering." Ah, 'tis the life of a saint we have described here - albeit a saint whose grasp of both theology and sexual reproduction seriously sucks. Will the young novice remain firm in her commitment to all that is holy or will the pull of the flesh impinge upon her cloistered life? This sounds a lot like "The Sound of Music", doesn't it? I don't want to reveal too much of the plot to you; there may be a few events in it that you haven't guessed yet. I enjoyed this story very much. It's almost as if Geoffrey Chaucer has returned through cyberspace with a modern version of "The Nun's Tale." Of course, real nuns don't really do things like this; they're almost as straight as English teachers and librarians - but less likely to be offended by this story, since they seldom surf a.s.s.. The falsehoods in this story probably originate in this author's primordial urge to wreak vengeance upon his childhood teachers, who possibly caught him masturbating during music class and made him stop or used the more common ploy of telling him that jerking his gherkin would make his voice get high and he'd have to sing with the girls. This story is filled with raw passion, but it lacks some elements of authenticity that would make it fully believable. For one thing, I happen to know that first vespers do not occur in convents at the time of day when they do in this story. And besides, if people did do things like this, someone sure as hell would be struck dead by lightning. Or something. "A Night at Suzy's" by Mark Aster (MyFrThAl@aol.com). It's Orgy Night at Suzy's, and the gang has prevailed upon the local goddess of a.s.s. to bring some high quality stories from her extensive collection to read aloud as a mood setter. By coincidence the author of Celeste's Pick of the Week happens to be present; and as luck would have it, everyone likes everyone else and a good time is had by all. I have to admit that I am flattered to become part of such a hot evening of sex, but I want to assure you that flattery in no way influences my ratings. The author knows this, and I suppose that's why he toned down my sexuality a little. No offense taken. There's not much to say about this story: read it - you'll get your bang for your buck. This author follows a practice that few others follow. He writes his story, lets a couple of weeks pass, and then revises the story before he posts it. This takes discipline, but it is often worth it. I know Mark does this, because he sent me a copy of the draft three weeks ago, asking for permission to defame me in the way he has done in this story. "Old Friends" by D.A. Ignatius (jash@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu). This is the longest and most complex story I have yet read in the DarkNites series. I see similarities between this story and the typical Dirty Dawg story. Since I am going to review the Dawg's "Lisa" next, I'll compare the two. Both stories center around a friendship or love relationship that had been incomplete or had gone bad in the past; and now the former lovers are thrown back together with a chance to set things right. A major difference is that Dirty Dawg views life more simply; when people screw up a relationship, they should simply realize what they were missing and be nice to each other - very nice to each other. The present story, on the other hand focuses on the struggles for power that are so often present to screw up relationships - and to make them really interesting. The story is full of ebb and flow - ying and yang - that shifts in rhythm with the events of the story or when the author creatively changes perspective. Taken in isolation, the present story has hotter sex. By that I mean that if you want to get your lover going, you could probably find a couple of paragraphs that you could read out loud until he/she would interrupt you by jumping your bones. But taken in its context, the Dawg's sex is pretty hot too. That is, you may not be able to find a short passage that is equally amenable to bone jumping; but when I read the whole story I came away with a warm, wet, and wonderful feeling that helped make me and my husband about as happy as the quicker fix supplied by the present story. I don't want to overemphasize the importance of the power struggles in the present story. There's much more to this story than power struggles. There's the focus on the difference between young love and mature love. There's the man's sudden realization of his own beauty when his beautiful lover finds him to be desirable. And there's much more. This story could have benefited from a final proofreading. The omitted apostrophes and missing articles are a minor annoyance - even grammar goddesses make petty mistakes. In one case, however, I was seriously confused by the verb tense. The author shifted into a flashback without making it clear to me that she had done so. Only after I had read several paragraphs did I say to myself, "Wait a minute! This has been a description of something that happened ten years ago!" When I checked back, I discovered that the author was right: if I would have read more carefully, I would have caught the flashback. But this isn't a reading test to separate the Honors Students from the less inspired students; and so I think a simple shift in verb tense - in this case saying "She HAD BEEN wearing a maroon sundress...." instead of "She was wearing...." - would have made the timing crystal clear. There was no need for this confusion; this author is a brilliant writer. Had she simply made one more careful swing through this story, she would probably have noticed this herself. Even better, she should capture an intelligent potential sex partner and make him proofread the story before she agrees to do to him some of the interesting things that transpire in this story. "One Afternoon" by Mark Aster (MyFrThAl@aol.com). Let me tell you two things that really piss me off. One: I come up with a really great rating system that's practically guaranteed to end my problem of too many 10's; and then the first time I try to use it I give not one but TWO stories perfect ratings in all three of my new categories! Two: I hate mindless sex; this story is mindless sex; yet I loved this story! This story is very hard to describe. Just try to imagine, "What kind of story filled with mindless sex - almost literally, mindless sex - could possibly thrill Celeste? If you can answer this question correctly, you may already know the plot of this story. Otherwise, you'll have to read it and find out. "The Passing of Seasons" by Linda B (an274617@anon.penet.fi). I try to wait until all the parts of serialized stories have been posted before I post my review. I have seen seven parts of this story, and the seventh says it will be continued; but I am going to go ahead and post my review now. This is an exceptionally well written, sensitive story about the intimate relationship between two young girls. It's almost like a good Judy Blume story - except, of course, that teenagers read Judy Blume, whereas they would never think of reading stories on a.s.s., which are prohibited to them. In fact, I think it is possible that Linda B may actually be Judy Blume, prematurely reincarnated and living in that literary commune in a Waldenesque setting near Sulphur Springs. {Incidentally, if you think Judy Blume writes only for kids, you should read her "Smart Women," which is probably available in your local public library.} This author is intimately attuned to the emotions likely to be felt and expressed by teenagers trying to establish their sexual identities. I myself am a happy heterosexual, but I recall feeling many of these same emotions (if not the same activities) that Jenny and Sarah express in this story. (I have no intention of revisiting my discussion of whether practically all adolescent women experience these emotions.) This is a really good story. The author has an interesting disclaimer, which reads in part: "If you are a teenager, we as adults don't think that you should read this, even though you are sexually mature and probably have much more sexual desire than we do. We are merely jealous of your sexual virility. Please leave us alone to *fantasize* about being your age once again. I'm sorry but you'll have to wait until you're at least 18 before you can have your own fantasies. Preferably you should wait until you're at least 30 or older, that way you can really have something to fantasize about: your very own teenaged years!" "Pat Comes of Age" by by Mark Aster (an479991@anon.penet.fi). This is the fourth in the "My Friends the Allens" series. Familiarity with previous stories is helpful but not essential to understand this one. Pat is the older Allen sister, who discloses to her younger sister and her boyfriend the details of her first orgy. One of the attractions of this story is that while Pat tells two very arousing stories, her sister and boyfriend are making love on the couch, becoming aroused as they listen to the details. Another feature that I liked is that one of the hot relationships is apparently interracial, without the degrading aspects that are so often inserted into such descriptions and about which I complained in a previous issue of CR. This was another very hot and enjoyable story. "Paying the Price" by Javahead (an217242@anon.penet.fi). This story describes an interracial relationship; but its tone is quite different from the previous story. The man is happily married to an Oriental woman, who goes for a month-long trip to Hong Kong. When she returns she ad libs the role of a mail-order bride, and he plays along by assuming the role of the Western purchaser who is going to make the young woman comply with his every demand. The overwhelming tone of the story is that the man and woman regard one another as equals, and their enjoyment of the hot sex activities derives largely from their awareness that they are acting out phoney stereotypes rather than actually treating one or the other as inferiors. I liked this story a lot! "Peer Pressure" by Wollstonecraft (an285729@anon.penet.fi). In the past Terry has said no to guys who wanted her to go to far. Result: no dates for six months. Her peer counselor, Jenny, has convinced her to loosen up; and now, as Bobby's tongue duels with hers, she's following that advice. Being lonely is not fun. Sex is. Some choice! At Bobby's urging, she opens his zipper, takes his cock in hand, and thinks, "Please, don't try to put in me, please, please, don't!" Bobby moans and says, "Thanks, Terry! That'll be enough for tonight!" He zips his fly, takes her home, and gives her a sweet kiss on the cheek. The next day he sends her flowers with a poem he wrote himself. Yeah, right! This is Wollstonecraft, not Pollyanna. Actually, Bobby's next words are, "Mmmm, Terry, you're so tight! So warm, so tight!" You can well imagine the course of events that ensue, right after Bobby pauses and says, "Y-you've done this before, right?" She doesn't tell Bobby he is going to be a father. After he spreads the word about how good Terry is at sex, she becomes real popular. She goes out with a different guy every night and does what comes naturally. The baby might not even be his. In addition to the overall realism, what the author accomplishes extremely well in this story is his portrayal of the Terry's ambivalence. She constantly thinks one thing and does the opposite; and the contrast is, effective, exciting, and depressing. "Remembering" by Michael K. Smith (mksmith@metronet.com). Please believe me when I tell you that I wrote the "Comment on Authors' Rights" that appears at the end of this issue BEFORE I read this story. In that Comment I describe a story entitled "Raped Teen Burglar" by an author named TEX, in which that author offers a reality check: maybe raping a teenage burglar wouldn't be so much fun after all. In this story Michael K. Smith suggests (to me at least) a similar reality check: maybe incest isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Don't run away! Neither the story nor this review will be a moral lecture. In the story a woman describes to a psychiatrist her sexual experiences with her brother, who first raped her when she was thirteen and he was eighteen years old. The brother did most of the things to her that happen in other incest stories; but although she became a "willing" participant for the next four years, her reaction is different from that of the "victim" in most incest stories. I do NOT think that a person is necessarily a pervert if he or she enjoys reading (or even writing) incest stories in which everyone enjoys the "family fun." I am even willing to imagine that the world may be full of boys and girls (and subsequently, adults) who have been subtly coerced into having sex with a parent, sibling, or relative, and who have maintained their normal emotional stability and have gone on to become valedictorians, CEOs, PTA presidents, and other all-around well-adjusted people. I just don't know any of them. However, I HAVE worked with high-risk (dropout-prone) adolescent girls, and it's astonishing how many of them have been involved in what we call incestuous relationships. Again, I don't have a major problem with fantasies; but I think we should be a little careful even there. If I at my 40-plus age see my sexy brother, think back to my childhood, and fantasize about how neat it would have been to do sexually intimate things with him, I see no problem with this fantasy. On the other hand, if I find myself fantasizing about how cute my daughter looks and thinking that maybe it would be fun to "initiate her into the joys of womanhood," I should consider the possibility that I may have a problem. Even this fantasy would quite likely be harmless - as long as I am a person that can keep my fantasies separate from my real life; but not everyone can do that. Unfortunately, it's the person who can't keep them separate who is least likely to wonder whether he or she has a problem. I think we readers and writers on this newsgroup should be aware that sometimes our stories may indeed CAUSE PROBLEMS for some readers. It's naive to deny this. People who fantasize about chocolate cake are more likely to eat chocolate cake; kids who fantasize about playing basketball are more likely to play basketball; why should maladaptive sexual practices be any different? This doesn't mean that we should ban advertisements of chocolate cake, abolish basketball on television, or suppress the publication of provocative stories; it merely means that we should acknowledge that there could be a problem. One "solution" is to provide children and adults with accurate, sensible information - probably as a part of a wholesome relationship between parents and children. Another solution is to help children (and adults) learn to deal adaptively with their fantasies. Another solution is to post and read stories like this one that offer an occasional reality check. Ironically, of course, this story would be banned from the school in which I teach. If I tried to discuss it in class, I would be fired. My mother used to have a friend who was a religious fanatic. She used to lug with her a shopping bag in which she carried religious tracts on various topics. She would "accidentally" leave her pamphlets in buses, in restaurants, in bars, and in other places, so that naive finders would get religion. Maybe I'll try that with this story. (Continued in Part 4) Path: newsfeed.direct.ca!news.wildstar.net!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!portc02.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail From: celeste801@aol.com (Celeste801) Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories Subject: Celeste's Top Stories Reviews (4/4) Date: 5 Jan 1997 21:34:30 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Lines: 844 Message-ID: <19970105213200.QAA04081@ladder01.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder01.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Xref: newsfeed.direct.ca alt.sex.stories:138030 Status: N Top Stories of 1996 - Part 4 of 4 (Continued from Part 3. The stories are listed alphabetically. For the complete list of Top Stories of 1996 in rank order, see the posting labeled "Celeste's Top 100 Stories of 1996." Please do not ask me to send you these stories. Most of them can be found on DejaNews at www.dejanews.com.) - Celeste "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. "Room 6" by McAlister Baine. By walking through a tunnel that mysteriously appears in a department store's changing room, a man suddenly finds himself in another world - a world in which he himself occupies a beautiful woman's body. As the story progresses, we learn that as the man (Gene) moved into the woman's body and universe, and that the woman (Jean) simultaneously moved into his place in his world. Eventually, he leaves the dressing room in her body, and we presume that she has done the same. It's hard to predict what will happen next, but I am eager to find out. This is an exceptionally well written start to a story. I eagerly look forward to more. "A Rube's Story" by Bazarov. There are many reasons to dislike this story. It's difficult to read because it attempts to convey a heavy dialect that will be unfamiliar to many readers. It's about a mother fucker, and even the dictionary doesn't like mother fuckers. But there are also good reasons to like this story. If the reader takes the trouble to read carefully, the story conveys the accent and dialect of the protagonist very effectively. And that protagonist is "the boss-man a' motherfuckers." When I received this story from the author, I was upset because it contained a large number of little squares sprinkled throughout the text. This is how my computer registers "unrecognized characters." I sent a message to the author pointing out my problem, and he simply sent me another copy of the same thing. Frankly, I thought he was an illiterate fool who would go away if I asked for a good copy. When I eventually received my third copy, I decided to try replacing all the unrecognized characters with apostrophes; and it became clear to me what the author was trying to do. I was dealing not with typographical errors or with a computer foul-up, but with dialect. Writing dialect effectively is difficult - and so is reading it. It's necessary for the reader to slow down and pretty much look at each word - at least until the flow starts coming naturally. In addition to using a dialect that differed from mine, I found that the author was expressing the ideas of a man whose outlook on life and modes of thinking were a lot different than mine. And so I said to myself, "It's the Christmas holidays. Why not spend a couple of hours expanding my horizons by reading in an unfamiliar dialect about a guy fucking his mother!" To put it kindly, the story focuses on the exploits of a young gentleman who was initially uninterested in sexual intimacies with his mother but whose ardor was aroused when he came across some magazines containing letters "from fellers who'd been feedin' their mothers a steady diet a' sausage an' these women who'd been treatin' their lil' boys with pleanty a' candied fruit." To tell you more would run the risk of ruining your enjoyment of this story. I might mention, however, that near the end of the story the narrator wonders what life will be like "in 'bout ten years when her bush be sprouted out with the gray hairs an' her ass startin' t' sag t' the floor." My own assumption is that 'long 'bout that time he'll start plowin' th' field of L'll Sadie, who should sho'nuff have a right fine bush of her own by that time. This is an extremely literate tale about an illiterate and dysfunctional family. The author carries off the dialect exceptionally well. I recommend absolutely none of the activities in this story. In real life I would suggest that Mama pull the trigger on the 45. But I really enjoyed this story. "A Rude Awakening" by Michael Dagley (dagley@soho.ios.com). I really hate this story! I sat down about 45 minutes ago to read a story while I ate lunch. I had with me two ham sandwiches, a can of Diet Coke, and an 18-ounce bag of potato chips. I would read "A Rude Awakening" for ten minutes while I ate lunch and then prepare my classes for the first week of the new school year. I am now one chapter - 10,770 words and approximately 12 ounces of potato chips - into this story; and I can't stop. My husband is not home; the kid across the street is mowing the lawn, sweating, his muscles glistening in the sunlight; Kathy Ireland is looking down at me from my husband's calendar with a cum-hither look that would give me blue balls if I had balls; and I have my classes to prepare for a new semester. What's a girl to do? I guess maybe I'll just read another chapter and see if this feeling goes away. Well, I read TWO more chapters, at which time there was a lull in the action. Then I fixed dinner and read four more chapters. Then I had to wait for the author to post the rest of the story. Frustration Station! This story contains an amazing blend of voyeurism and direct sexual contact. For example, at one point Joey is getting head from Mrs. C, who is insisting that he describe to her what he did with her daughter earlier that evening, while Joey is making direct eye contact with the daughter, who is safely hidden and masturbating behind the mother's back. This is hot stuff. I noticed the title words, "Rude Awakening," several times in the story. The first context stated that at the time of the story, (June of 1965) graduation from high school would be a rude awakening: war, racial strife, assassinations, drugs, and other problems. Like many good titles, however, this one has more than one meaning. The second time the phrase occurred was after Joey and Terri had made love; it was a rude awakening for Terri to discover the power of her sexuality. The term pops up several other times in the story. The most significant meaning of "rude awakening" is not specifically stated - just strongly implied. The story begins with Joey an immature, sad, sexually-repressed young man. He takes no chances with girls and women, because he is afraid they will consider him to be rude. His friend and lover Alice tells him he needs to risk being rude once in a while. When the rudeness in him "awakens," he becomes a more mature, happy, sexually responsive person. In fact, he becomes the neighborhood Lothario - a term which you can either look up in your Funk and Wagnalls or infer from the context of the story. And then he discovers that he has lost something special - another rude awakening. What do women really want? Polite men or rude men? The answer is that different women want different blends; and even the same woman may want a different emphasis at different times. Also it depends on what you mean by "rude": in this story rude means that a guy does something that a girl will like, in spite of the fact that a social custom or the girl's inhibitions might oppose his action. I myself have been known to use the phrase "Shut up and kiss me" - or an equivalent, more emphatic phrase, which would indicate a demand for less "politeness." A very important moral to this story is that it is often necessary to take some risks in order to be happy. A very wrong conclusion would be that the rudest asshole gets the girl - or the guy. This author's greatest strength, I think, lies in his sense of timing. For example, he has the ability to make me think I'm witnessing two people getting hotter and hotter until they can't stand it any more; and I can almost feel it when they explode. He seems to have an intuitive grasp of what to tell me and when to tell it to me in order to maintain my interest. My husband has a similar ability, but he accomplishes this effect through direct access to my body parts. The main "weakness" to this story is that at times the author seems to want to cram too much sex into it. I have a theory about why the author has done this. I suspect that he has contacted a publisher (whom I know and respect, but will not name in this review) about publishing a version of this story as a novel; and that the publisher insisted on more instances of explicit sex. In fact, the publisher I am thinking of makes specific demands, such as (1) a wide variety of sex that is likely to be perceived as kinky, and (2) at least two separate instances of specific sex per chapter. I know of at least one good author who has simply stopped writing erotic stories because he felt that these demands compromised his literary integrity. I may be off the track in suggesting that the present author has "padded" his story with extra sex in order to appeal to a publisher. I do know that there are several instances where the storyline seems to take an unnecessary turn that is unrelated to the overall plot. However, not too many readers are going to complain about "too much hot sex," and so I'll let these "digressions" slide. What I do know is that I review another story ("Elizabeth & Anastasia" by Tom Bombadil) in this issue of CR that is every bit as good as this one: and that other story has about a snowball's chance in my pussy of ever getting published by that same publisher. It's "too long on story" and "too short on real sex." I think it's about time that that publisher (or some other publisher) made it clear that it IS OK to have hot sex in the context of a good story. The world is ready for good stories that contain hot sex - without quotas and restrictions on what kind and how much explicit sex needs to be included in each chapter. These stories don't need to appear on news stands in the supermarkets; but they should be available to mature adults who want more than a quick fix from their erotica. As I reread the preceding paragraph, I realize I have overstated my case; but I think I'll leave it. The present author HAS, in fact, done a commendable job of trying to deal with the full personality of the main character. This is an excellent story. In fact, if I would have found this story without knowing the author's name, I would have guessed that it was written by Delta, who made my Top 50 List of 1995 not once but four times. That's one of the strongest compliments I can give to a story. "Scarlett's Cove" by Ann Douglas (AnnD55@NYC.Pipeline.Com). As I understand it, Ann Douglas has become nervous about the possibilities of censorship and related repression on the Internet and has withdrawn from posting stories with this newsgroup. I heard she has started her own newslist, to which she circulates her stories, and so I thought she wasn't going to post on a.s.s. anymore. Therefore, I was surprised to find this story in the postings. I don't know how it got there, but I'm glad it did. The story centers around the visit of two friends to a Caribbean Club Med type resort that caters to lesbians and bisexuals. Although both are lesbians, they are not habitual lovers - just friends. After some preliminary fun, Jeanette finds that Arlene has entered her into a sort of charity bachelor auction - the other women will bid to have Jeanette for their date for the evening. I think I have told you enough about the story. It's a hot plot with hot sex. I might add that Jeanette is a high school teacher and many of us wish we could touch our favorite students the way she does - but somebody might take that comment the wrong way. Ann writes many different kinds of stories, and I enjoy them all; but this story is a good example of what Ann does best: an interesting and sexy plot woven into an exotic environment embellished with accurate information about varied cultures. In addition, the author enriches the narrative with sexy flashbacks and side plots that heighten the tension and allure of the main storyline. As I have said many times before, although I suspect that all sensible women would enjoy sexual activities like those described in this story, I myself have never engaged in full genital lesbian or bisexual activity. However, after reading this story, my defenses have begun to crumble. If by some chance I would ever be bereaved of this wonderful guy that humps me like Mark Aster's studly hero and then found myself on an exotic Caribbean island with a beautiful, rich former student who was professing her love for me after purchasing me for an exorbitant price in a charity auction - well, I might give it a thought. Hell, I think I'll give it a thought right now! I'm reminded of the words of my daughter, who every year proclaims that "this is my best birthday ever." This is the best story ever by Ann Douglas. "Scorpio Madness" by Green Onions (flagger@world.std.com). The man has been happily married to a full-figure woman, whose figure has become even fuller. He relishes her sensuous rotundity, but her obesity is a source of embarrassment to her; and the result is a withdrawal from sexual intimacies. What will they do? Well, this story isn't posted on alt.marital.counseling, so you won't be surprised to know that when the narrator meets another woman (Rikki) on the Internet, two marriages become sexually rejuvenated as a result of their clandestine association. The cyberlovers should have suspected that things were getting out of hand (!) when he sends her a scanned Polaroid picture of him shooting his cum into his own mouth. This is a little hard to imagine. Not the cumshsot - but how in the world would he manage to take a picture of it. If you know how to do this, send me just the answer, not the picture. Pretty soon they are exchanging clothing by mail (PO Box, of course). At this point I should mention that neither my spellcheck not my excellent unabridged dictionary recognized the word "cumwear," which refers to such items as the lady's panties into which the male recipient has masturbated after receiving them still wet via USPS in their double ziplock bags. After a short time, the lovers meet in person at a highway rest stop, where they frolic sexually in the nearby woods. The sex in this story is sometimes wonderfully creative. For example, I have never even thought of ingesting a brownie as part of a French kiss while driving down the highway. The story is full of surprises. After they get pulled over by a cop while they are engaged in foreplay at a high rate of speed, nobody has sex with Officer Hardass, but he does escape with Rikki's panties. You can now probably guess the part of the country in which this story takes place. The author deals with several topics that are at least non-traditional on a.s.s. - if not actually controversial. For example, most a.s.s. heroines are built like supermodels. This one is frankly fat, but that doesn't lessen her joi de vivre or her ability to give and receive sexual pleasure. In addition, I have omitted the descriptions of urination as part of the sexual activity. The author obviously thrives on "watersports." While I acknowledge that taking a leak in the great outdoors has occasionally given me a feeling of liberation that could almost be described as sexy, I simply do not see the enjoyment in deliberately drinking a partner's pee during sexual activities. I'm not a doctor, but we're talking about consuming waste products; that's gotta be at least as dangerous to one's health as smoking. This author writes extremely well. The narrative and action flow smoothly and naturally. The author has a wonderful ability to adjust his language to express the reality of a situation as well as the emotions of the participants. Even though some of the activities would not be of interest to me personally, they are nevertheless fascinating; and it's just plain fun to read about two people enjoying each other so much "Shower Buddies" by Stone Wolf (an582016@anon.penet.fi). I normally don't like to review multi-chapter stories until all the parts have been posted. Sometimes the authors don't even bother to finish the stories, and then my readers will feel cheated. In addition, a story that begins well may end badly, or vice versa. I decided to make an exception with this story. Even though only two chapters have been posted and even though the author says that no actual sexual contact will occur until "at least chapter 3," I think you'll want to know about this one. The basic premise of this story is that there has been a fire in the women's dorm and the displaced coeds have with little forewarning been relocated into one of the men's dorm. Our protagonist first notices this when he is in a naked, semi-comatose, early-morning stupor in the shower, asking to borrow shampoo from the person in the adjacent stall. His body language sort of embarrasses him as he tries to be polite and recover from his faux pas when he discovers that the guy he is talking to is an attractive girl. This story reminds me of an X-rated script for a high quality sitcom. For example, I can imagine this being a plot for "Friends" or "The Single Guy." The story is extremely well written; the characters are refreshingly wholesome; and the story is redolent of realistic details of college life - like showers that make funny noises and guys that don't use fabric softener for their towels. I am eagerly looking forward to more of this story. "SNIP!" by Vickie Tern (VickieTern@aol.com). Men are often such anti-intellectuals. Why would an educated man skip past this story and instead read one entitled "Drunk Guys Fuck GirlS with big Tits in the Ass"? I suppose it has something to do with the legendary male fear of castration. I assure you men that this review will be harmless. For now, assume that the STORY may give you nightmares; but my review will be friendly - even humorous and enlightening, perhaps. Nothing will happen to your goddam balls while you read this review. I promise. So relax. First let me share with you what my encyclopedia tells us about castration. Castration is the surgical removal of one or both testicles of a male person or animal in order to suppress the development or function of the sexual glands. Male farm animals are castrated, or gelded, in order to improve the breed or make the animals more docile; house pets may be castrated to keep them from wandering or producing unwanted offspring. The practice of castrating human males is an extremely old one. In imperial China and other Oriental empires castrated men known as eunuchs occupied important court positions, and in Europe in the 16th to the 18th century male singers were sometimes castrated before puberty so that they would retain a soprano or alto vocal range. {The term Unix is pronounced exactly the same as "eunuchs." The fact that programmers typically see nothing funny when they say, "My job is to take care of the Unix system" shows either an unfamiliarity with the English language or an abysmal absence of humorous insight among these poor drudges.} Today the operation may be performed on men with cancer of the prostate or certain diseases of the testicles. If the operation is done after puberty, it produces sterility but has little or no effect on secondary sex characteristics. There; that wasn't so bad was it? Well, actually Freudian psychoanalysts think it IS pretty bad. In fact, they have coined a term called the "castration complex" to refer to the notion that a child may feel that he or she will be or has already been genitally mutilated as a punishment for sexual and aggressive desires. {As I've said before, Mr. Rogers of the famous television neighborhood has a song about this childhood problem.} If these and other complexes remain unresolved and persist into adult life, they can produce disturbances in the person's love relationships and ability to work productively. No wonder you guys feel anxious when you look at this title. That exclamation point doesn't exactly alleviate your anxiety, does it? SNIP! Now on to the present story. Aurora and the narrator come together frequently to fuck like rutting rabbits and to play delightful little games, like languorous courtesan, Amazon princess, bitch in heat, and stallion (not one of Aurora's favorites). Aurora also enjoys snippety snip, which involves hacking away (with the fingers as imaginary scissors) at hair, clothing, and other needless appendages in the region of her lover's groin. When he objects to this as even an imaginary activity, Aurora asks him why he is concerned. After all, he doesn't really need his testicles. He doesn't intend to have more kids. She certainly doesn't want children. So why keep the testicles? They're in the way when he jogs or plays tennis or does anything healthy, bouncing, and jouncing. When he's Aurora's captive maiden in her dungeon, they ruin the view; and anyone can put him into agony by punching or kicking him in the balls. And, she might add, according to my encyclopedia, if the operation is done after puberty, it has little or no effect on secondary sex characteristics. Aurora has been to a detailed sex education class. They didn't teach me this stuff in the ninth grade. Actually, they didn't teach me some of this stuff until right now. At Aurora's urging, the narrator undergoes surgery in which he mistakenly thinks he will get a practically permanent hard-on; whereas in fact he is really undergoing castration. During a crucial point in the story he asks the doctor, "Will it always be hard?" The doctor answers, "No, it gets easier with time." I always urge my students not to use "hard" when they really mean difficult. Following my teaching would have been useful here. Ooops! The poor guy was too far gone from the anesthesia to deal with grammatical niceties. Hear that, guys? You've got to make English grammar automatic in your personal lives. Otherwise, you might get your balls cut off. A further grammatical lesson ensues. Near the end of the surgery, the guy wonders if she has cut his cock off. The doctor reassures him: "I'm taping your penis to one side, to keep it out of the way until the wound heals. There's a catheter in it now, so you won't need to pee. I'll remove it tomorrow before we discharge you." Grammar problem: What's the antecedent of "it"? The doctor looks up and smiles. "I mean remove the catheter, of course! My but your pulse jumped when I said that! No, this is only an orchiectomy." When the guy comes out of the anesthesia, Aurora is at his side. "Aurora, do you know what they did?" he asks. "SHE did, dear. It's a very simple operation, and doesn't really need a team." Aurora really knows her grammar! And you guys thought this story would scare you! There's nothing scary about good grammar. Back to the story. The guy soon realizes that what's done is done. All the resentment in the world wouldn't bring his testicles back. As the saying goes, "There's no use crying over snipped off testicles." The doctor has done what she thought he wanted, and had asked him twice, and he had signed for the operation . He just hadn't picked up on her cues while they were talking. Need I say more about the value of the skills learned in a high school English class? Now, let's see what you have learned. The next day the doctor visits her patient and says, "Your body's manufacturing traces of the hormones you need to maintain firm skin texture, and other sex characteristics, and above all to maintain sexual desire. But not enough. In a few days you'll lose all interest in that part of life, when what's there now is used up. So we need to replace the hormones your testicles once manufactured with the other kind right away. You understand this, don't you?" Now, what question should this guy ask the doctor before he gives an affirmative answer? That's right! He needs to ask if the continued therapy is going to give him MALE or FEMALE hormones. To put it another way, he needs to verify that he and the doctor are on the same page of the program; and with his track record so far, he should be skeptical. {If you answered that the patient's next question should be "Is this going to be covered by insurance?", you would be right, of course - but that answer would be more appropriate for an economics class.} If all this worries you guys, just find a girl who has a harmless hobby - like cow tipping - instead of castration. Even defenstration might be better than castration, unless she lives above the third floor. I don't want to ruin the ending for you. As you may know, this author always has logically complete and happy endings - at least they're happy if you buy into the right perspective - and, of course, if you can handle the grammar. I personally think this is the best Vickie Tern story I have yet read. And that's saying a lot! "Snowbound" by A. Van Peebles (an182636@anon.penet.fi). Planes are grounded because of snow; and so the doctor's wife is stuck in a distant city, leaving him alone in charge of the slumber party for a boisterous band of fifteen-year-olds. One of the girls (who happens to be his favorite) falls and sprains her ankle; and the old peter meter is on the rise as the doctor takes her to his bedroom and gives her first aid. Afterwards, to avoid doing something "irretrievably stupid," he is faced with the choices of a cold shower or masturbation. He prescribes the latter for himself, but Allison is vividly in his mind as he jerks off in the bathroom. The sex is hot here, even though it's all in his mind. While Doc shovels snow the next morning, the rest of the kids go sledding; but the injured Allison stays behind and offers him a massage to cure what ails his sore back. He accepts the rubdown, but will he decline to roll over and let her "do the front"? And what will happen when his wife eventually returns home? You may be surprised! "Spare Change" by Dafney Dewitt (dafneyd@ix.netcom.com). This is not a sexy story. If you want to get a hard on or get your juices flowing, I am almost certain that this story will not help you. As a matter of fact, the story nearly made me gag. Literally. On the other hand, this is a very GOOD story. It's an example of what we literature teachers call Naturalism. That is, it goes beyond realism and shows how really fucked up life can be. This is also an example of excellent feminist writing - although I cannot say for sure that the author is a female. It's a thought-provoking commentary on how some men treat women. The story focuses on an affluent man and a beggar woman. The man decides to get his sexual jollies by humiliating the woman, and she turns the tables on him in a very interesting way. This is also the first story that I know for sure has gone through my Volunteer Proofreading Service. I cannot comment on what the story would have been like without that assistance, but right now it's an excellent story. "Swansong" by Unknown Author. After spending considerable time compiling my Top 100 List for 1995, I was a little apprehensive about returning to "ordinary" stories. I figured I was in for a letdown. Not so. This first story of the new year may make the list of Top Stories of 1996. It's about a senior citizen who is getting tired of being looked upon as some kind of sexual relic and who suddenly has thrust upon himself some responsibility for helping raise the young teenage daughter of his stepson. A large number of people (including myself) are often offended or at least annoyed by "pedophile" and "incest" stories. I found this story about sexual activity between this man and his young charge to be not the least bit offensive. As a matter if fact, the person most likely to be upset by this story will be the reader who reads this story to see some hot sex between a prepubescent virgin and her grandpa. The sex is not at all vividly portrayed; but it's still a very realistic, sensitive, and sexy story. The author approaches the relationship between the old man and young girl with sensitivity and in a context of moral ambiguity. This story reminded me of "Mother and Son" by Ann Douglas. I think it is normally a good guideline that parents and grandparents should refrain from having sex with prepubescent children; but both stories described situations in which it would be hard to say that the older people were exploiting the children with whom they were sexually intimate. I don't know who the author is. In fact, if the author reads this review, I'd like to hear from him/her. There were a few stylistic problems that could be cleared up, but otherwise this was a well-written, thought-provoking story. "Terri's Dilemma" by The Observer (lsummers@onramp.onramp.net). The narrator has been keeping company with Terri as a sort of favor to the family. Her boyfriend is in the army, and somebody has to hang out with her. The story opens with Terri giving the narrator a ferocious slap for no good reason. He responds with a grim determination to take the bitch home and dump her for good. However, as every British schoolgirl knows, when a girl slaps a guy for no discernible reason, it's because she loves him. And if the recipient of the aggression would simply get a grip on himself, he would realize that the emotions are reciprocal. I'm not going to retell the story; the fun is in finding out what's going to happen. I'll only say that in many ways this story is a fusion of the previous two stories in this review. Like "Old Friends" this story is built around power struggles; and like "Lisa" it describes the fruition of a relationship that began badly. Oh - I almost forgot. The sex scenes are some of the hottest ever; and their heat is intensified by the chemistry of the context. One thing I had trouble with was the anal sex scene. I have come to the conclusion that anal sex is uniquely personal. This story and several others describe it as painful. I have had anal sex, and I have experienced no pain. The guy in this story seems to want to dominant his lover and she wants to be dominated. I like it because it's a violation of a taboo that needs to be broken; it's a way to be nasty without being nasty at all. I think the secret lies in having a gentle lover who has rimmed the asshole tenderly and has finger fucked it on previous occasions and who uses plenty of lubrication when he finally rams his dick home. Remember, the ass doesn't naturally lubricate, and it may be useful to withdraw and add some extra KY before finishing the job. I guess the other part of the secret is to relax and enjoy it; if you're tense, I guess it might hurt like hell. I have learned to relax and enjoy it so much that once when I had to have a barium enema I was afraid I would have a sexual climax in the doctor's office through association with anal sex. We engage in anal sex less often than in other forms, but I would describe the feeling as slutty (in the best sense of the word) and very filling. {In my fantasy life, I would like to have one cock in my cunt and one in my ass.} In addition, there's the side advantage of making me look forward to my next GI series. This is an extremely creative and generally well-written story. {It has a few grammar glitches that supplied the examples for this week's Grammar Tip of the Week.} The author uses a nice variety of stylistic techniques. I especially liked the way the narrator's perspective kept changing as Terri's behaviors changed in response to his own actions. I also liked the wide variety of writing styles that the author blended into an integrated story. "Test Ride" by Joe Parsons (jmp@cyber-mall.com). This is a story about motorcycles and sex. As the bumper sticker says, "Motorcyclists spread their legs when they do it." Or even better, "Motorcyclists like something hot between their legs." Cyclists differ from English Teachers, who do it with style, and Federal Express Couriers, who will absolutely and positively do it overnight - and bakers, who knead it daily. Ironically, motorcycles have no room for such sophisticated aphorisms on their bumpers, and so these proclamations invariably appear on the bumper of the owner's automobile. Reminded of his biker past by a cyclist bumper sticker, the man in this story stops at a German motorcycle dealership, where Inge, the statuesque salesperson, offers to let him take a test ride. Inge is the sort of person that gives the double entendres to the bumper stickers I mentioned in the preceding paragraph. In my distant past I had an early boyfriend who owned a motorcycle. I used to call it his hog. I broke off the relationship, largely because he was interested primarily in something hot between the legs, and I wasn't ready for that yet. As I read this story, I came to a better understanding of his viewpoint. For example, I used to naively wonder why he didn't have a larger seat if he wanted me to ride double with him; and I honestly believed there was no such thing as handbars for the second rider. I WAS naive, wasn't I? This story verifies one bumper sticker: "Cyclists do it off the road." In addition, "Cyclists can change speeds while doing it." This is a sexy story. Even if you aren't a cyclist yourself, you'll probably enjoy this story. If you're a motorcycle freak, you'll probably love it. This was an outstanding story by an author who does it in really novel ways! "Thanksgiving" by Tom in Sacramento (an248036@anon.penet.fi). Ann is a mild mannered former toxicologist who is now a dance therapist and active member of the local PTA. She has a great ass and a pussy whose fragrance automatically generates erotic thoughts, even when one's face is not nicely nuzzled where it fits best. She is married to Tom, the narrator of the story, a handsome chap who is a journalist. Jerry, a brilliant scholar and sexy lawyer, was the narrator's closest friend in college and has become like a brother-in-law to Ann. The kids have gone away for Thanksgiving, and Jerry is visiting the couple for Thanksgiving and has brought with him Sue, a professional masseuse who is at least as attractive as Ann. I can identify with these people. The story opens with Ann and Sue walking ahead of the guys on the beach, gently swaying their cute little asses. (I hope that misplaced modifier aroused you as much as it did me.) From this point you can probably guess at least the general outline of the rest of the story; but the tale is delightfully told, and the fact that you can guess what's going to happen will not diminish your enjoyment of this story. And besides, there are some surprises. Now I have a confession to make - two confessions actually. Although I write these reviews and have become a bit of an expert or at least a connoisseur of sexual acrobatics, I have never engaged in an orgy and probably never will. My husband and I both understand the intense stimulation and sense of freedom that would be present if we did it with another couple, but we also see the value of the one-to-one intimacy that we share and don't want to do anything to risk losing this. Nevertheless, I really enjoy picturing in my mind stories like this - even while I am making love to my husband Which brings me to my second confession. Between the first and second paragraphs of this review, I field tested this story. I can now verify (1) that it is possible to come to mutual orgasm with a spouse by relating the basic events of this story by the fireplace - although it may be necessary to alter the plot to include a bank teller; and (2) that a focus on one part of this story seems to greatly increase the probability that the male partner will have a roaring second orgasm. Go figure! As I was reading this story, I couldn't help thinking that it reminded me of several of the stories written by SueNH. This is ironic; but you'll have to read the whole story and be at least remotely familiar with the writings of Sue to see the reason for this irony. I really enjoyed this story - and so did my husband, even though he hasn't had time to read it yet. "Tidal Passion" by Patrick Donovan (drwho@world.std.com). I had to reread the first few paragraphs of this story to make sure I had it right. This couple was traveling together to Florida for a winter vacation; they were obviously in love; but they were sleeping separately! Oh, great; amateurs with a worldview that suggests you're supposed to be deeply in love or permanently committed to each other before you make love. I've had enough of that in my real life; I want raging sex in my fantasy life. Actually, I got both. This is by far the best story I have read by this author. The protagonists come across as being deeply in love, and the simple act of consummating their relationship becomes extremely engrossing as it takes place on a Florida beach. This is a beautiful, romantic story. "Tonya Harding: Slave-Girl" by Your Friendly Author (an587309@anon.penet.fi). What did that sweet little ice skater do to deserve all the vituperation she receives on this newsgroup? An even better question - what would possess an apparently sane man to write over 40,000 words about this fair damsel and her evil step-sister Nancy? Beats me! In this story Tonya receives Abuse Control Therapy from Dr. David Liebenschmerz, a kindly psychologist who comes upon Tonya in a Portland park while she is in the throes of depression over the unjustly negative vibes she gets from everyone around her. The doctor volunteers his services to help Tonya regain her self-concept and resume her normal, adaptive lifestyle. First the good doctor gives our miscreant mistress of the ice a severe beating - 50 whacks on the bare buttocks with a sturdy paddle. This hurts like hell and raises welts; but Tonya finds it to be sexually stimulating and resolves to continue the treatment, which will take place on the Liebenschmerz country estate. I honestly think I myself would feel something other than sexual arousal if someone did this to me; but Tonya is - to say the least - an unusual and mildly dysfunctional person, and so I accepted this reaction as plausible. After all, the bruises from the beating were nothing a little masturbation couldn't cure. The story is a veritable Odyssey filled with wonderful events. The enema and catheterization sounded a bit uncomfortable, but Doc Liebenschmerz helped out by pinching her clitoris until she relaxed. Being blindfolded, gagged, and (of course) bound in the back of a van traveling down a highway while possessed by an urgent need to defecate and go wee-wee helped Tonya develop self control. Everything for a purpose! I almost forgot to tell you. Dr. Liebenschmerz has an assistant: Nancy Kerrigan. As you may recall, she was Tonya's archrival at the Olympic debacle who subsequently made snotty remarks during a parade at Disney World. This might sound like a framework for a catfight story; but Ms. Kerrigan is here as part of the therapy. You'll have to read it yourself; its kinda hard to explain. Basically, Tonya has to confront her guilt and/or pay the piper. Dr. Liebenschmerz is actually a humanitarian. This therapy is good for Nancy as well as for Tonya - and he gets a few jollies himself. Mistress Nancy tortures Tonya, and naturally Tonya has to find a way to make amends to the Goddess of Ice. I wonder how she'll do that! OK. So I couldn't resist having a little fun with the plot; but I don't think the author will object. I really don't like torture stories; but there are certain people - including the goody-goody characters in televised fiction and a few celebrities like Saddam Husein, Joey Buttofucko, and Tonya Harding - who fall outside my rules of normal morality. Even Ghandi would enjoy reading about these people suffering discomfort and ignominy. The author is quite creative in his presentation of the story. He mixes pleasure and pain, reality and dreams, sense and nonsense - all these in such a way as to make even me wonder what the hell would happen next. We even get high-quality bestiality - mostly in authentic Freudian dream sequences. And there's much more. Eventually, I was forced to admit that there was a certain logic to the plan - this therapy was so crazy, it just might work! I doubt it, but it beats anything else I can think of to reform Tonya - assuming Mother Theresa is unavailable. "Trances" by Michael K. Smith (mksmith@metronet.com). When he was a freshman in college, the narrator learned from his friend Edward how to hypnotize people. As his first conquest, he hypnotized Edward's kid sister Sharon - making her believe that the licorice her gave her was chocolate candy. When he eventually turned to more prurient possibilities, he hypnotized a schoolmate named Kathy not to give him a blowjob, but rather to fall in love with him and to do everything possible to make him reciprocate. After many good times together, he realized he had laid the foundation poorly and he released Kathy to have a happy life of her own. And so it goes with other "experiments." The narrator is a sort of benign dictator with Power to control other people, but he generally uses this in only the most constructive ways. With girls and women this usually means freeing them from their inhibitions and enabling them to do (with him) those things that they would secretly like to do anyway. The story has two major components: (1) the flashbacks induced by hypnosis, during which his clients describe in very sexy terms their own previous sexual experiences, and (2) the narrator's current sexual activities with these partners. The author skillfully joins these complementary components into an interesting plot. I found this story to be an excellent blend of mind control and romance. Mind control stories in which the main characters simply make other people do dirty things for them have always seemed a bit uncreative to me. In this story, however, the mind control, though still an essential part of the story, is more subtle. The narrator's sexual partners act freely, even though they are under his control. Of course, as I have said before, I personally consider mind control stories to be essentially balderdash. {That's strange; I've never used that word before.} The notion that people can go into a college library and learn how to control the minds of other people is bunk. If mind control really worked, surely someone would figure out a way to do it through cyberspace. If this were possible, then an incredibly sexy man could have his way with, say, an equally sexy English teacher and then top it off by having her spend a major part of her life writing extensive reviews of stories for a Usenet newsgroup and get consistently high reviews for his own stories. Such an idea is clearly impossible. "Twin" by Deirdre. Many moons ago, I stated in this column that Deirdre deliberately writes with several different styles. I made that observation because the style of the narrator in the story I was reviewing was not one of my favorites. In her disclaimer to the present story Deirdre herself says: "It's possible that you have noticed that for some of my main character/narrators, the elevator doesn't quite reach the top floor. (If you are just now learning English, then there's an idiom you can study) The problem is that I prefer to write stories with the main character narrating, but I also like to keep secrets from the main character. Thus if I let the reader in on a secret, then the main character isn't thinking things through very well. If I'm lucky, they just seem distracted. Otherwise . . ." Deirdre put it better than I did (elevators usually are better metaphors than moons), but for once I was more succinct. This subtle aspect of Deirdre's style (adapting the language and logic to that of the narrator) is one of the strengths of her writing. On to the present story: "Twin." One night, the narrator's usually passive girlfriend starts fucking his brains out in an unusually aggressive, passionate manner. This is fine with him; but midway through the second performance, he hears a noise in the house. He goes looking for a prowler, but he finds a naked woman bound and gagged in another room. His girlfriend hastily explains that this is her twin sister, who has come to town and would do anything to keep her (the girlfriend) from being happy. "Best to leave her gagged and teach her a lesson by fucking her in the ass," says she. Now, go ahead and guess the rest of the plot. Under these circumstances, were I the boyfriend and granted that we have twins here, I would at least entertain the possibility that it is the girlfriend who is bound and gagged on the floor and the evil twin sister who has been fucking my brains out. Instead the guy says to himself, "Gee, my girlfriend sure is talking different!" and proceeds to sodomize the damsel in bondage. Well, I've given away the secret to the story; but that's because my elevator goes higher than this guy's has gone in many moons. But you would have figured out the secret yourself anyway, and there's still another half of the story to go. Here's another secret: according to her disclaimer Deirdre _expected_ you to figure this out; and for the rest of the story you get to participate in a sort of dramatic irony by knowing something the boyfriend doesn't know - or do you? It gets pretty interesting trying to figure out whose bones the guy is jumping, who he's marrying, and who it is that has him tied spread-eagle on the bed. "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!