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!?