Celestial Reviews 25 - Oct 4, 1995 Note: I have received two entries so far in the First Annual Celestial Writing Contest. As you may recall, I reviewed a story in which a locksmith responded to his beeper and a woman answered the phone: "Are you the locksmith? Oh! Thank God! My friend has been handcuffed, and we don't have the key. Can you help us?" After this nice set-up with great potential, nothing sexual happened in that story. So I initiated a contest. Just write a story based on the above premise. (You don't have to use the exact words or context.) Any author who wishes to do so may enter. Send it to me at celeste801@aol.com. (I'd suggest that you just post the stories, but this would lead to plagiarism and other forms of confusion.) The winner will be announced on October 7. If you submit early enough, I'll even give you free feedback. - Celeste "Assignment" by Deirdre (ff sex, bondage, & anal sex) 10 "Beach" by Deirdre (nudity and romance in the dark) 8 "Backfire" by Deirdre (anal sex) 7 "Serving Young Girls" by Estragon (Female adolescent dominance) 10 "Too Tight for Comfort" by Javahead (Vibrator sex) 9 "Ten Minutes" by PleaseCain (Rape) 7 "They Had the Cheryl Crow Nude Pic" by PleaseCain (applied sex ed with mom) 7 *"Catty Corner" by Sue (Voyeurism & mutual masturbation) 10 * = repost of a previous review (because the story has been recently reposted. "Assignment" by Deirdre (an65862@anon.penet.fi). I guessed the plot of this one! I say that not to criticize Deirdre's creativity, but rather to brag about my own insight. If you're going to try to guess the plot, don't look at my description in the title list that precedes the reviews; that would give you an unfair advantage. The story begins when a woman spots a young woman who lives in the same apartment complex weeping in the hall. She takes her in, comforts her, and becomes attracted to her; and then the plot thickens. (Rating: 10) "Beach" by Deirdre (an65862@anon.penet.fi). A man and wife visit another couple who live on the beach. They quickly become persuaded to engage in nudity, which they find to be more exciting than they had expected. Then the home couple takes the guest couple to the beach and leaves them there in the dark, some distance apart, with instructions that they are to find each other but not speak. They do so and make romantic love. The question we are left with is to whom did they really make love in the darkness? (Rating: 8) "Backfire" by Deirdre (an65862@anon.penet.fi). A college girl has been flaunting her cute little ass to impress a woman's husband. With the intention of embarrassing the girl, the woman persuades her to proposition her husband; but the girl turns the tables on the woman - giving double meaning to the story's title. (Rating: 6) "Serving Young Girls" by Estragon (an356608@anon.penet.fi). The story centers around the activities of an uncle who has been asked to look after his two nieces and one of their friends for a weekend. The man is 27 years old and the young girls range from 13 to 15. They ask him to let them examine his body and to conduct some experiments on him. Since he is firmly convinced that a main purpose in his life is to please these young ladies, the uncle acquiesces. I won't try to describe the various experiments the children conduct. Many of them would sound just plain stupid out of context; but the description in the story makes them sound quite interesting. The author is fascinated with the oxymoronic gentle cruelty of these young ladies. They protect him even while they torment him. The children treat the uncle with much the same combination of affection and accidental cruelty that they would bestow upon a pet animal. In fact, the author writes from the perspective that men are basically pets whose purpose in life is to amuse and serve women. The uncle- narrator in this story feels it is his duty to help girls grow into this role of good, solid, dominating, adult women. I'm not sure everything they do in this story is even possible? Can you really take a guy with a serious hard-on and bloat him with beer and make him take a leak while cute young girls pass his dick back and forth to see what it feels like with the urine coming out? I guess so. Can you almost instantly make a raging hard-on vanish so completely that the balls recede inside the body by simply immersing the guy in a tub of ice water? I guess so. When the actresses in the old movies slap a guy really hard in the face, does the slap cause his dick to become aroused? I don't know the answer to that question. I asked my husband these questions, but he politely and respectfully (but adamantly) refused to participate in any experiments. He quoted Haim Ginott (who wrote "Between Parent and Child"): "Ice cubes are not for freezing a guy's cock off." I derived and interesting incidental benefit from this story. Many years ago I had to give a speech to a group of important people, most of whom were men. My mentor convinced me that the best way to overcome my nervousness was to imagine everyone in the audience to be naked. If that didn't work, I was to imagine them all sitting naked on toilets. The purpose of this stratagem was to minimize the gap in dignity between myself and the audience. The next time I speak to a group of men, I think I'll just imagine some of the scenes in this story. Like "I Meet Toni's Mom," which I reviewed last week, the story is really a fictionalized version of a feminist philosophical tract, fed into the mouth of a male narrator. Here are a couple of gems: "We men are so odd. The very erection that shows a girl that she's in charge of us also makes us feel 'manly.' The unequivocal sign of our helplessness makes us think we're showing our stuff." "Ejaculation is always premature. It brings us 'relief,' but it's not relief we're really after, is it? It 'relieves' us (though only a little, and only for a little while) of the loveliest sensation we can know: that of pure pliancy to a female's will." Incidentally, I reread and re-reviewed "Toni's Mom" and decided that my criticism of the grammar and spelling in that story was petty and erroneous. It was an excellent story and deserves a rating of 10. Get out your back issues and make the change. Personally, I would never want to become intimate with a man like the uncle in this story. Guys with grandiose opinions of themselves can be a real pain in the ass; but an insipid guy who enjoys being humiliated isn't much of an improvement. I guess in my immature adolescence it might have been fun to have a guy like this around to poke sticks at; but I assume my mother would have yelled at me and told me to stop. I mean, I guess we could learn something about dogs by kicking a puppy; but it doesn't sound like something we should really do. What made me like this story was that it came across as an extreme exaggeration of an element of truth. I like to think that the ideal person blends in her or his personality a good mixture of the stereotypical male and stereotypical female. And my ideal romantic relationship attempts a similar blend. Even though I'll admit that my husband and I spar in some ways (even in our sexual relationship), I don't personally see a need to dominate him or to be terrified that he'll dominate me. I think mutual respect and sharing comprise a legitimate goal, and it's actually possible to work toward that goal - even though I know that some of the insights underlying this story are valid. In spite of my reservations, however, I feel this story is still well written and enjoyable - even for people who don't buy into it completely. (Rating: 10) "Too Tight for Comfort" by Javahead (an217242@anon.penet.fi). The woman jokingly complains to her husband that his cock isn't big enough, and he responds by bringing home a large vibrator that he is sure will be too big for her. She calls his bluff and pretty well devours the dildo into her cunt and then has happy sex with him. The story is clearly written, but I would have liked to have seen a little more passion in it. At times the description is almost clinical rather than sexy. (Rating: 9) "Ten Minutes" by PleaseCain (PleaseCain@aol.com). This is one of those stories that, when you finish it, you have to go back to reread parts of it to find out what really happened. This does not mean that it's a bad story. Even if this story were perfectly written, it would still be necessary to go back and check for consistency. That's part of the fun - to see if the author messed up when he tried to fool you. (In this respect, it's very much like a good murder mystery.) The story begins with a man brooding over a woman who is at the center of attention and seems to be flaunting her supercilious beauty in front of the throng of admiring men. The man follows her to the parking lot, and in a drug-induced rush violently rapes her in her car. This is where it gets difficult to summarize; it's a good story, and if I'm very specific from here on, I'll ruin it for you. I'm not going to tell you the ending, but I'm going to raise some problems, and I hope I can do this without giving away the plot. The author tells the story from subjective viewpoints: mostly the man's, but occasionally the woman's. At one point I had the distinct impression that the woman was dying; but then she was alive again. I think the problem is that the author needs to convey subjective confusion without thoroughly confusing the reader. I don't think he quite accomplished this. I just forgave him and went on with the story. Then at the every end, in the conversation with the man's boss, it's not clear what's going on. What is the relationship between the wife and the woman he raped? Were they the same person? Was the rape a sexual game or a real explosion of anger - or both? How is the relationship between the man and his wife affected by what happened in the parking lot? The author is being deliberately vague; but it is my feeling that he is too vague. I think he needs to throw us a few more clues, so that (at least when we reread the main parts of the story) we can figure out what really happened. In spite of my confusion and my normal distaste for violent sexual activity, I liked this story. I consider this to be another example of the need for revision. Instead of simply reposting this story ten times over the next few years, I think the author should check to see if there are any problems and then correct the problems he finds. The next version of this story should be labeled "Ten Minutes 1.1 or 2.0" or something like that. (Rating: 7). "They Had the Cheryl Crow Nude Pic" by PleaseCain (PleaseCain@aol.com). Mom catches her son and his friend looking at a hot picture (the legendary Cheryl Crow Nude Pic) from the Internet. First she tells them they had better stop and then she decides to give them a lesson in applied sex education with her own body. The 17-year-old boys are well endowed - Dick with a 9 1/2 inch peter and Peter with a 12 inch dick. After the kids bring her off by sucking her tits, Peter beats her with a belt (much to her enjoyment), while she swallows Dick's 12-incher in its entirety. Peter had wished that his first time with his mom would be different than this. After the first climax, Peter and Dick both gasped, "Cool!" They realized this didn't make them sound very mature, but this situation "just rocked." Then Mom invited Petey to fuck her ass, which he did with great enthusiasm, while she banged in glorious orgasms - 21 of them, to wit, before Dick lost count. Soon Peter came again, shouting "I'm coming." "Me too!" shouted Mom, redundantly. Then Mom asked Dick to finish her off (Right!); but Dick refused, unless he could watch Mom make it with a woman first. So they all got dressed (Right!) and went next door; and Mom and Joy (a 23-year-old sex goddess) went wild on the floor while the boys jacked off; but then Deanna Troi from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" rang the doorbell and brought ten Paula Zahns, including Handicapped-Amputee Paula Zahn, into the room, all eager for an orgy. I shouldn't tell you this next part, because it will ruin the surprise; but then Peter ran next door to get his Sega Genesis game; and the women watched him and Dick play. They were all very impressed at how long they played, and how high they scored, and many of them got really turned on at their manly prowess. And then somebody brought a whole cart filled with sex toys, and then the fun really began. This all made perfect sense to me, except that Mom was going to teach them about the female body, and I'm not sure she really achieved her objective. Oh; and the unrealistic part is that I don't think there really is a live Cheryl Crow Pic on the "Net. Finally, if you're interested in finding this and the preceding story, it may be useful to know that this author posts his stories with a title line beginning TO JOY, which (coincidentally) is the name of the sex goddess who lives next door, (Rating: 7) "Catty Corner" by Sue (SueNH@aol.com). I loved this story. So many writers on a.s.s. can describe hot sex; but Sue has the knack of putting it into the context of a really creative story. This one comes with a double whammy - a voyeur watching a voyeur and then the voyeurs watching each other. I just resolved earlier today to be a little rougher in my ratings. I also resolved to give my husband a break from passion tonight. Oh, well; there go my resolutions. (Rating: 10) LIST OF RECOMMENDED AUTHORS: I am constantly besieged by complaints that by the time people read my reviews the stories have disappeared from the postings. I'm going to try one more way to deal with this problem - by posting a list of recommended authors. The risk here is obvious: I am likely to offend someone whom I have left off my list. I apologize for omissions; and I want to stress that there are lots of extraordinarily good stories written by persons whose names do not appear on this list. If you want to download stories that I'm likely to review, you can almost bet that I'll review stories by these authors: Ann Douglas Backrub Deirdre Delta Dirty Dawg Estragon Lysander Sisters Ng Stephanie Sue WithSue Wollstonecraft Remember: The authors in this list comprise only about 30% of the stories that I review, but either they send me advance copies or I make an effort to watch for their stories. In addition, most of these authors usually identify themselves in their title lines, so that you can look for their new stories and reposts. Even if I'm too busy to review a particular story by one of these authors, you're likely to enjoy the story anyway. TIP OF THE WEEK: In each issue of Celestial Reviews I present one of the guidelines from Celestial Grammar, which I have posted on alt sex.stories.d. and which I'll continue to develop and revise from time to time. My theory is that if all of these tips were followed, about 95% of the really distracting errors in a.s.s. stories would be eliminated. I was going to name this part of the column TIP OF THE {something sexual}, but I thought the innuendo might detract from the sober serious business at hand. Here is this issue's Tip: VERB TENSE. Stick with one tense, unless you have a reason to change. Bad: "I was walking down the street one day. I see a girl who was wearing no bra or panties." Better: "I was walking down the street one day. I saw a girl who was wearing no bra or panties." There are instances when it does make sense to change verb tenses. Just do so on purpose. ANOTHER NOTE: I've been getting requests for more detailed grammar rules! {As Yogi Berra said, "Whoda thunk it?"} Give me a break! I may write Advanced Celestial Grammar some day; but right now I want to focus on these simple rules that can help writers get rid of really distracting errors. If you want good, complete grammar rules, read the Little Brown Handbook - a concise tome with a brown cover published by Little Brown. Who says grammarians don't have a sense of humor!?