Celestial Reviews 37 - Nov 15, 1995 Note: I am posting my Celestial Summary for the second time today. This is a list of all the stories I have reviewed, along with an extremely brief summary and my rating of each story. I posted it first on November 8, and I am posting it again today. Between these two dates authors may have reposted stories that appear in this Summary. That will enable readers to find stories that they may wish to read. I also reposted on Saturday November 11 all of the Celestial Reviews that I have written up till now. I have reposted these on alt.sex.stories.d (not on alt.sex.stories). Those of you who have requested copies can download them at this time. This is the last time I'll do this; it's simply getting too difficult to repost so many reviews. If someone has a better idea, I'll be happy to cooperate. Second Note: I sincerely appreciate the e-mail I receive from readers. Please understand that I would like to respond individually and in detail to everyone who writes to me, but my time limitations often prohibit this. I hope you will accept my column as my response to your communications. It seems to me that people are enjoying my writing, and that makes me feel good. - Celeste "Basement" by Deirdre (whipping) 8 "Found" by Deirdre (whipping) 9 "House" by Deirdre (female domination) 10 "Key" by Deirdre (voyeurism & submission) 7 "Merge" by Deirdre (sex slaves) 9 "Trip" by Deirdre (threesomes & wife swapping) 10 "Firsts" by Mike Bohner (outdoor sex) 5 "Something I Didn't Expect" by David W. Morgan (romantic passion) 5 "All Dressed Up and No One to Blow" by Mistral (cross- dressing) 9 "Grand Ground Round Roundly" by Benjamin Griffin (mindless drivel) 1 "Teacher's Pet" by Brian Tidlund (hot sex with Mlle French Teacher) 10 "Basement" by Deirdre (an65862@anon.penet.fi). Deirdre has posted several new stories, and I have decided to review all of these at once. Then I'll continue with the reposts next week. In this one the man and his wife have secretly admitted to each other that although they would not like to be whipped themselves, they would both like to beat a woman for a sexual thrill. Then one day the guy comes home to find a woman bound in his basement and his wife with a grin on her face. What's going on here? (Rating: 8) "Found" by Deirdre (an65862@anon.penet.fi). A woman's boyfriend undergoes hypnosis in her presence, and she finds out (1) that her boyfriend loves her and (2) that he would really like to whip her. Her friend debates with her the rights and wrongs of accepting the whipping. Like most of Deirdre's stories, this one has a surprise ending; but unlike most of her stories, this one is perfectly plausible in real life. (Rating: 9) "House" by Deirdre (an65862@anon.penet.fi). OK. I'm going to try again. I'll write the review *while* I review a Deirdre story and try to guess what's going to happen. At the very beginning we find out that Gwen lives alone in an extremely large house and has invited Ms. Billings inside to show it to her. I'll bet she has a sexual torture chamber in the basement! OK, I've read further, and I have found out Gwen takes in college kids borders. That means that I may have been right about the machines in the basement, but the main plot will be that Gwen has a bunch of sex slaves that serve and pamper her. The surprise ending will be that Ms. Billings will move in with Gwen as a sex slave. Ooops! The nine borders are all boys and are reputed to have girl friends. Maybe we have a simple bordello here. OK. Now one of the boys is undressing and letting Gwen and Ms. Billings fondle his genitals. My main theory is holding up all right. Ooops! One of the boys is showing off for Gwen and Jenny by sticking his cock into another boy's ass. I wasn't expecting this, but my overall theory still sounds good: sex slaves and Ms. Billings will move in. I'll skip a few details that simply confirm my hypothesis. Two girls have arrived. I think the one named Jenny is probably a recruiter and assistant mistress. The other girl, Carla, seems to be an outsider. Ms. Billing and Carla have secretly plotted to get away after dinner. But now dinner is finsihed and Carla has been missing for a long time. I think she's being recruited and will decide to stay. OK. I've read further. Still no sign of Carla, but Jenny and Randy have fucked Ms. Billings and have hidden her clothes; but she has found a key to get out of the room and is dressed in a bath robe, intending to escape. The action is getting hot and heavy. Aha! While looking for an escape route, Ms. Billings has wandered into the basement; and people are chained to the walls, and one of the girls is holding a whip! There are a few final details; but I did pretty well this time. (Rating: 10) "Key" by Deirdre (an65862@anon.penet.fi). A woman is upset because she and her husband are not getting along, and she knows he still has in his possession sexy pictures of her. She recovers them and turns them over to her friend for safekeeping; but the control has simply passed from her husband to her friend. (Rating: 7) "Merge" by Deirdre (an65862@anon.penet.fi). I'm going to try another *in vivo* review. This approach is fun, and it's also a good way to read a story. If you have reading problems, you should try this yourself: always make predictions and confirm or reject them while you are reading the story. Even if they don't realize they are doing so, good readers use this approach automatically. One of the reasons good grammar and effective writing styles (like Deirdre's) are important is because these factors enable readers to make and test their predictions without being distracted by extraneous garbage like run-on sentences. I learned this information in a graduate course on teaching reading to adolescents; and I have found it to be true. So if you need an excuse to read these stories, tell people you're developing your reading skills by making and testing hypotheses while reading fictional textual material. The same approach works with textbooks and business reports. After reading the first few lines I have concluded that the title refers to a business merger: companies will merge, and employees are worried about being laid off. I have no idea how sex will fit into this story yet; but since the initial focus is that no one will be laid off, I'm going to assume that they'll all be kept as sex slaves. (French artists have blue periods. Deirdre wrote all these stories within the last two months, and I think she's in a comparable period - a sex-slave motif seems to be dominant right now. It's as good a guess as any.) Several paragraphs later, our protagonist is attending a meeting with seven other women. I still don't know whether Henderson (the new owner of the company) is a man or a woman. I'll read on. Wait a minute! People are walking around nude at the meeting! Did I miss something? I just checked; and up till now I've had no evidence that people were naked. This was an interesting surprise. Now Tamera (our protagonist) is going naked into the next room, where a bunch a people dressed in suits are checking out her external sexual machinery. This is a drastic change from what I thought I was reading, but my theory of sex slaves isn't looking bad at all. Some sort of selection process is taking place, and Tamera is rejected because it takes too long for her vagina to become properly lubricated. But her mouth seems to function effectively when it is joined to the test apparatus. Sex slaves is sounding good. To make a long story short - sex slaves it was! You'll have to read the story to get all the details. I enjoyed this weird story even though I was on the track all the way because of my wild guess; a person encountering more surprises might enjoy it even more. (Rating: 9) "Trip" by Deirdre (an65862@anon.penet.fi). Something has gone awry in the Universe. As you may know, I have a theory that Deirdre is really Sherwood Anderson reincarnated. Now I discover that she's my husband!! Or perhaps Sherwood Anderson has bilocated while being reincarnated. All I know is that when I nudged my husband in the middle of the night a month or so ago and said, "Do you ever think of doing it with another woman?" he replied, "A nice thought, but you are all I want." Those very words appear in this story! I guess other possible explanations are that Deirdre has been sleeping with my husband, that Deirdre has a recording device in our bedroom, or that maybe millions of husbands and wives regularly recite this same dialogue; but the bilocative reincarnation is more in line with a Deirdre story. A major difference is that the fictitious Deirdre is more persistent than the real-life Celeste in bringing the threesome fantasy to fruition. Actually, Deirdre has another one of her surprise endings here; and I doubt that you'll guess it, even if you're looking for it. (Rating: 10) "Firsts" by Mike Bohner (MEBOHN0@UKCC.uky.edu). This week I noticed that rec.arts.erotica has come back to life, and the moderator is cross-posting those stories to alt.sex.stories. Feeling that this might be a source of good stories, I decided to check a few of them out. As you will see, the quality is extremely uneven. After I read a few, I discovered that the average rating I gave to these stories appeared to be lower than what I typically give to an a.s.s. story. However, that's an unfair comparison, because I tend to look only at *good* a.s.s. stories - many of them sent to me by authors who are known to be excellent writers. The first rec.arts.erotica story I read was about a man and a woman who go rock climbing and fuck on the rocks. The guy gets it orally and gives it to her vaginally and anally. That's about all there is to it. The story is rushed, unimaginative, and poorly proofread. I had expected better from a newsgroup that claimed to be "moderated." (Rating: 5) "Something I Didn't Expect" by David W. Morgan (d_morgan@ix.netcom.com). As I am reading my second story from rec.arts.erotica, I have come to realize that all "moderated" means is that these stories are screened to make sure they are actually stories, as opposed to "me too" or "wannafuck" postings. There is no sense in which the first two stories are superior to the stories that I have previously proofread on a.s.s. This one started out with confused verb tenses; then I came to this gem of a sentence: "She turned, and although I couldn't see her hands, I heard her zipper slide down, and watched as she slid her skirt over her shapely hips, until they lay on the floor around her ankles." As I understand this sentence, it means that the skirt was so tight that it forced her hips to slide down onto the floor beneath her ankles; of course the author may be wrong about this, because he is watching what he can't see. Oookaaaay.... Actually, the story is not bad - it's just marred by faulty proofreading. Although it's more of a snippet than a whole story, the sexual action is passionate. I would like to see more stories by this author; but he should finish them and proofread them before posting them. (Rating: 5) All Dressed Up and No One to Blow by Mistral (ribald@iglou.com). It wasn't until I was 590 words (61 lines) into this story that I suddenly realized that the narrator who was getting dressed up in sexy female clothing was a man cross-dressing as a woman! (I should have become suspicious when the "other" girl was named Rocky.) I like that kind of writing - when the author really lays a surprise on me. Of course, now you won't be surprised; but this is a well-written story, and I would be astonished if you wouldn't be surprised by something else. Frankly, in real life, I would find the type of sex described in this story to be repulsive; I don't think it would be possible to get me interested in this type of activity. On the other hand, I found the description to be extremely erotic. I consider that to be a sign of good writing. (Rating: 9) Grand Ground Round Roundly by Benjamin Griffin (bgriffin@ic.sunysb.edu). This story is absolute proof that a "moderated group" doesn't necessarily have quality control. If we assume that it's written by a used tampon or by a toilet seat, it's pretty impressive; otherwise, this "story" is mindless drivel. Maybe it's a put-on and I missed the joke. The best aspect of the story was its brevity. (Rating: 1) "Teacher's Pet" by Brian Tidlund (tidlund@ibm.net). The senior high school French student has the hots for the teacher, and the feeling is reciprocal. So neither is exactly upset when he has to see her after school for tutoring. Cherchez la femme! Oui! The story is well written - even though the author manages to break nearly every rule in Celestial Grammar 1.2 Perhaps he needs tutoring - n'est-ce pas? Actually, this is a good example of when not to make a fuss over grammar. Even though I naturally favor correct grammar, these errors are the kind that many college-bound seniors make; and so the story gains authenticity by appearing to be written by a high school student (even though we know that's impossible, because high school students are not allowed to read this newsgroup). In addition, the errors were spread out enough that I was not annoyed - I just skipped right past them. A note to you concerned parents. In most high schools, the teachers are not lecherous sex fiends. Nearly all of us can actually carry on a conversation with well hung students without getting even mildly moist in our cunts or getting a raging hard-on. On the other hand, I suspect some of my students have similar fantasies about me; and I certainly have *fantasies* about students. For my part, I fantasize about fictional students or maybe the basketball players on the opposing team, because I have a vague feeling that practicing mental sex with my own students could backfire. This story should take care of me for a while. This is a good, hot story. I noticed that the author has a whole series of these Teacher's Pet stories. I hope the others are equally good. This one ended with the two lovers deciding that she would... Ooops! You almost got me there! (Rating: 10) 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. (The other 5% will eventually be covered in Advanced Celestial Grammar.) 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. Because I've spent so much time on reposting reviews this week, I have not had time to write a new Tip. I'll try to be back on track next week.