Self-Spotlight: The Blouse

Spotlight (Warning: Possible Spoilers)

Updated Thu May 6 10:54:31 EDT 2004

This is yet another Helen story. This time I changed her name to Tracy this time, and I'm not exactly sure why, but I think that Tracy actually is a better name for the main character, since Helen usually seems to be a victim in her stories (even though she almost always turns the tables, much like Tracy does in this one).

This is a short story, and was originally an attempt to rewrite "Lucky Tickets" using an alternative plot device, which, like the tickets story is reflected in the title of the story.

I'm in the midst of writing the sequel to the Tickets saga, and once again, I've hit a minor stumbling block (I need to know where the story is going to work toward an ending). I ended up writing scene after scene, which was starting to look like episodes in a TV series, rather than a real, cohesive story.

So, I put Tickets Two down, and looked for something else to write. I stumbled upon a story called "The Blouse" that I wrote in 1999. It was actually a good story, and I wonder why it took me so long to actually get around to maybe publishing it.

I sent the story to a friend for comment, since it was already proofread and edited, and I felt that I was ready to upload it to StoriesOnline. I received an immediate response that it was somewhat similar to a story that my friend had seen go by on USENET recently called "Dress Day." I felt a sinking feeling, but when I read that other story, I found it was more a psychological story (character does it by choice) rather than the "magical" story (character has no choice) that I wrote.

The big similarity between the two stories was that when a girl/woman wears the garment (the Blouse in mine, any dress in the other story), she has to obey any orders given to her.

That is where the similarity ended, but it seemed very spooky to me. Somebody had managed to write something that was hauntingly close to something that I had thought was a bit original, and which I hadn't yet published. (If there are other stories about magical garments like this, feel free to let me know.)

Instead of uploading the story, I put it aside, and instead wrote a short story about a writer with trouble with the ending of a story, a self-reference to a bunch of my stories, and a subject near and one dear to my heart. It still needs proofreading, and since it's self-referential, it's written mostly with tongue in cheek, unlike the erotic stuff that I prefer to write.

Recently, I had the good fortune to see a soft-core film called "Forbidden" with Reneé Rea. I recommend this movie to anybody that wants to see a good erotic movie with real plot and real characters that are multi-dimensional—it was on Cinemax on Demand in April, 2004. Anyway, in that movie, the character Nikki asks, "Do you know the difference between good sex and great sex? The connection that you feel with great sex."

I thought about it. That soft core not-even-porno movie said more about sex and what makes it good than any X or XXX rated movie.

Picking up the Blouse, I decided that it's power should be "great sex" rather than the "person under the influence" sort of story that I tend to write. I just wanted to see what happened. What came out seems more believable, if you ignore the "magical" aspect of it (maybe it's mental after all). After all, if a garment can force you to do things you don't want to do, why would anybody ever wear it a second time?

I morphed the story and added some additional characterization and some of what I feel is "great sex" in the story. The result is, to my eyes, more enjoyable than the original story.

Anyway, I had to have the main character "discover" the power of the Blouse, and then have somebody else experience it. The original Blouse had been written with an omniscient author unlike most of my Helen stories because I wanted to get into the heads of two different female characters with this story. This fact made it easy to shift from one character to another as the action starts getting on. Also, the relationship change between the two friends is a fascinating area that I might want to explore further in a future story, possibly Tickets Two.

Because this is still a "Helen Story" at heart, the male characters aren't developed much, if at all, other than they exist. Being adult males interacting with underage females, I felt that excessive characterization wasn't something necessary for them (I don't feel comfortable glorifying that sort of behavior).

As a bonus, I got to throw in references to both Helen and Nikki (Reneé's character in the movie), as well as certain well-known intern who probably doesn't deserve the bad rep she has nowadays and who is off-handedly dismissed in a silly joke at her expense within the disclaimer that precedes the story.

In this current incarnation, I think I've done the story justice. In recent days, this has become one of my favorite "Helen Stories" to date. I hope other readers like it as well.

Finally, this is the unofficial first installment in a series of stories that I may write called the "Lucky Garment" series. I already have notes on eight separate stories...!