Celestial Reviews 39 - Nov 22, 1995

As a reviewer for alt.sex.stories, I am privy to some information even 
before the newspapers and tabloid television shows get it.  During the 
recent shutdown of government services an idle NASA worker shared this 
with me. We are all familiar with Neil Armstrong's famous quote from 
the moon about One Small Step and Mankind; but what we forget is that 
Armstrong actually made several statements from the moon, mostly 
technical jargon among himself, the other astronauts, and Mission 
Control. Before he re-entered the lander, he made the enigmatic remark 
"Good luck, Mr. Gorsky."  This really happened.  You can look it up!

Many people at NASA thought this was a friendly remark concerning a 
rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However a closer check revealed that there was 
no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs (nor even in 
the French program).

Over the years, many people have asked him who Gorsky was.. This year, 
on July 5, in Tampa Bay, to be exact, Armstrong finally answered the 
26-year-old question. Gorsky had died, and so Armstrong felt secrecy 
was no longer an issue.  It seems that when he was a kid, Neil was 
playing baseball with his friends in the backyard. His brother hit a 
ball that came to rest near the neighbors' bedroom window. As he leaned 
down to pick up the ball, Neil heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. 
Gorsky: "Oral sex?  Oral sex you want? You'll get oral sex from me when 
the kid next door walks on the moon!"

   - Celeste

      "Flight" by Deirdre (mile high fantasy) 8
      "Foreign" by Deirdre (mind control & sex slavery) 7
      "Honeymoon" by Deirdre (Honeymoon) 5
    *"Freebie" by Deirdre (spontaneous oral sex) 10
      "Leggy Neighbor II" by Jaemee (voyeurism & threesome)
            8.5
    *"Strip Chess" by Delta (Hot, hot time at the chessboard) 10
    *"Dreamwalk" (erotic dreamlike gentle sex) 10

* = Repost of a previous review (because the story has been
     recently reposted).

"Flight" by Deirdre.  The husband and wife go on a plane ride, and the 
husband casually inserts his hand inside his wife's clothes.  The 
stewardess notices.  Now what will Deirdre do with this setup?  
Actually, it was pretty tame.  Not a bad story, just tame and peaceful 
sex.

Are we going to tolerate this?  No!  This calls for the Second Annual 
Celestial Story Contest.  Simply write a short story based on the 
following premise:

Once in flight, we flipped up the arm rest between us and I lay against Jay 
who lay against the wall.  It was nice like that and I spread Jay's coat over 
us like a blanket. We had hours of night-time flying in front of us.  Jay held 
me in his arms.  I felt him slip his fingers into the waist of my pants.  He 
slowly fingered me.  I opened my eyes.  I felt that feeling growing inside me.

The stewardess walked by.  It was so strange to have Jay fingering me 
right there in front of someone.  Jay withdrew his fingers and I could 
tell he was sleepy.  Soon I could feel that he was sleeping.  I slipped 
my own fingers where his had been.  I fingered so slowly.  I wanted 
that feeling, more and more.  The stewardess came back and stopped.  I 
stopped my fingers, laying there frozen.  She looked right at me and 
then smiled.  

Rules: Enter as often as you like.  If you enter early, I'll try to 
give you feedback to help you revise.  You CAN alter the exact wording; 
as a matter of fact, I think it would be NECESSARY to modify the text 
to suit a particular story.  The key components are man and wife on 
plane, woman fingers herself, stewardess notices.  Send entries to 
Celest801@aol.com.  Winner will be announced on December 9.  The last 
time we did this we got a couple of excellent Locksmith stories.

Don't get me wrong.  The story is already a good one; and there's 
nothing wrong with quiet, peaceful sex.  But this just sounds like a 
setup that someone would like to finish in a different wat. (Rating: 8)

"Foreign" by Deirdre.  A woman finds herself attracted to the Asian 
teenager who lives next door and who has been a guest in her swimming 
pool.  She fights the urge to act upon this attraction, but then the 
girl's older sister intervenes.  Those Asian babes are impossible to 
resist!  (Rating: 7)

"Honeymoon" by Deirdre.  When she posted this story, Deirdre included 
an introduction that mentioned her extreme concern for her privacy.  
She is so obsessed with privacy that any e-mail directed to her is 
destroyed before it reaches her, and she doesn't send e-mail to 
individual correspondents.  I can live with that; and as long as she 
remains my personal sex slave, I won't reveal any of the information 
that I have acquired that suggests her actual place of residence is 
Sulphur Springs Texas rather than Clyde Ohio.  On a more practical 
level, I think I'll stop posting her address along with these stories.

In the same introductory message, Deirdre stated that she enjoyed my 
reviews but that she was somewhat perplexed by my ratings.  It seems 
that her favorites sometimes receive lower ratings from me.  (Now, you 
have to remember that the "low" rating she cited was a 7 for "Key.")  
She also wondered what my favorite was among her stories.  Off the top 
of my head, I would say the answer is "Freebie," which is reviewed next 
and which is being reposted this week.  I like its combination of 
romance (which is like me) plus extreme danger (which is not like me) 
and twists in the plot.  

The present story is about a man and woman who are on their honeymoon.  
The man waits for his wife in the bar of the hotel to which he and his 
wife have gone, and he is accosted by another woman who comes on to 
him.  It's a truly excellent setup, but then we are left wondering 
what's going to happen.  We have no clue.  The other woman could be 
anything from an innocent Avon lady who is selling dildos on the side 
to a vampire who has gained control of the wife's mind and is making 
preparations to turn the couple into sex slaves.  Open-ended endings 
are sometimes good; but this one goes too far.  Perhaps Deirdre was 
perturbed that I had been guessing her endings too easily and decided 
to fix my wagon by omitting the ending from this one completely.  It is 
interesting to note that Deirdre wrote this story over a year ago, when 
she still lived in Clyde, Ohio, and was more directly under the 
influence of Sherwood Anderson. (Rating for "Honeymoon": 5)

"Freebie" by Deirdre.  A woman gives her husband for his birthday five 
coupons that say: "Give this ticket to Jeannie Greene and she will 
immediately and silently perform one oral sex act on her knees, any 
time, any place, no questions asked."  Interesting premise!  Read the 
story to find out what happens to the tickets.  (Rating: 10)

"Leggy Neighbor II" by Jaemee (an407944@anon.penet.fi).  This story 
picks up where "My Leggy Neighbor" left off.  The narrator sees his 
wife being seduced by his hot neighbor, who had previously seduced him.  
He enjoys watching.  The neighbor finds out that the wife's sex life 
has left something to be desired, and she offers help by forming an ad 
hoc instructional threesome.

One suggestion I would make to this author is to make a better 
distinction between relevant and irrelevant details.  Many beginning 
writers have this same problem.  Many readers (myself included) like 
stories that supply interesting background, but not in minute detail.  
Here's an example:

"Hello, Henry," Linda said, without the slightest sign in either her 
voice or her eyes of what had occurred between the two of us just one 
week ago.

"Please come in," I offered, somewhat assured by her obviously detached 
demeanor. "The coffee's fresh if you'd like a cup?"

"Yes, I'd love a cup of fresh coffee, Henry. How've you been, Jinny?" 
she asked.

"Oh, all right, I guess," Jinny answered. "It's been a pretty boring 
winter and I'm anxious for some warm weather and the chance to get 
outdoors more."

I think this kind of dialogue adds little to the story and could be 
greatly abridged or omitted.  This is not a major problem.  However, 
the author requested feedback; and I think other beginning writers 
could benefit from this same advice.  The Usenet author whom I consider 
to be best at not wasting words is Deirdre.  In fact, Deirdre might 
overdo it.  If she mentions that the guy tied in shoelaces, I find 
myself thinking something like this:  "The shoelaces.  Why is he tying 
his shoelaces?  Why isn't he wearing sandals?  I know!  The lesbian 
hypnotist is going to trick him into a sex change operation before she 
has his former girlfriend flog him with a wet shoestring."

A second problem with this story lies in the point of view from which 
it is told.  Nearly all of the story is told from the perspective of 
the husband; but the author occasionally slips up and relates events 
that the husband could not possibly have seen.  In technical terms, the 
author inappropriately alternates between the first person and the 
omniscient author.  This is a bad idea.  The husband cannot possibly 
report what the two women said when he was no longer eavesdropping, nor 
can he relate what his wife is thinking.

Overall, this was another good story.  The descriptions of sexual 
activity were genuinely hot.  (Rating: 8.5)

*Note: Delta has informed me of plans to repost all her stories over 
the next two weeks or so.  Her stories are long but good.  I just 
checked my database, and I have never given her less than a 10. 
(However, since her stories are long, I have not reviewed them all.)  I 
am reposting my reviews of her stories.  I'll try to time my reviews so 
that they come out shortly before she posts them.  Here are the first 
two reviews.  (As I say in the review, "Strip Chess" is one of my all-
time favorites.  I dabble in chess; and since I read this story I have 
been unable to sit down at a chess board without having erotic 
thoughts.  Actually, that's not all bad; if you think about it, I'm 
lucky.  According to Pavlov, the association could have gone either 
way.  I mean, it could have happened that every time I have good sex I 
would get a wild urge to play chess.)

*"Strip Chess" by Delta (an248969@anon.penet.fi).  This is one of my 
favorite ever stories.  Some people resist downloading stories that are 
nine parts long, but this one is worth it.  A group of college kids get 
together for an evening of fun, and someone suggests playing strip 
poker.  Knowing she has no chance at the card game, one of the girls 
suggests strip chess instead, with the winner getting the body of the 
loser.  (The observers make side bets and do things to distract the 
players).  The only bad part about this story is that I had serious 
problems with my concentration the next time I tried to play chess.  
Really!  You don't have to know chess to love this story, but the chess 
will make sense to good chess players.  And the sex fantasies make 
sense to good sex players.  (Rating: 10)

*Dreamwalk" by Delta (an248969@anon.penet.fi).  Have you ever had one 
of those dreams that seemed so vivid that you weren't sure whether you 
were awake or not?  And then you decide to wake up and you think you 
have awakened; but you're not sure, because maybe you only dreamed you 
woke up.  The man in this story is approached in the middle of the 
night by a mysterious, beautiful neighbor who informs him that he is in 
her dream - and a nice, hot dream it is.  Delta maintains the necessary 
mixture of reality and unreality beautifully.  Where does she get ideas 
like this? Another excellent story.  (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. 

This week we're right up against Thanksgiving, a time at which I have 
certain non-sexual responsibilities that make it difficult to dwell on 
grammar.  So instead of a grammar lesson, you get a lesson on ODD WORDS 
THAT SOUND ALIKE.

DISCRETE/DISCREET

DISCRETE means separate or distinct.  DISCREET means being judicious or 
circumspect in one's conduct or speech.  Although lexicographers 
acknowledge this distinction, few other really sexy people seem to know 
about it.  Almost every time an author on a.s.s. means DISCREET, he/she 
says DISCRETE.

     I had sex with her in a discreet corner of the restaurant, where 
only the waitresses, the cooks, and customers leaving through the back 
door could see us.  {This is a correct usage of the word - assuming 
that it is judicious to act in this manner.}

     I made love to him three discrete times that weekend.  {This means 
they fucked, they stopped, they fucked, they stopped, and then they 
fucked again.}

A DISCREET orgy would be one that is conducted in such a way as to 
avoid upsetting the neighbors.  A DISCRETE orgy would be one that 
occurred separately from other orgies.  A person who had several 
DISCREET orgasms while listening to the preacher would be much less 
likely to disturb the service than one who had several DISCRETE 
orgasms.

YAHOO, YAHOO.  

If you're having robust sexual intercourse with someone and that person 
shouts YAHOO!, should you be triumphant or upset?  It depends on how 
the person pronounces it. 

Pronounced yay-hoo (accent on first syllable), this is a moderately derogatory 
term to call someone.  It implies that the person is stupid, like the 
"cavemen" in Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" (where this usage of the 
word originated).  

     "You yahoo, that's not my cunt, that's my asshole!"

On the other hand, when it is pronounced ya-hooooo (accent on second 
syllable), it means whoopee or "This sure is fun!"

     Yahooo!  Let's do it again!

By knowing this distinction, you have an advantage over sex partners 
that have not read this issue of Celestial Reviews.  You can insult sex 
partners without hurting their and without minimizing the chances that 
they'll have sex with you again if you cannot find a better partner.  
Or you can convince a reviled asshole who holds the affection of your 
True Love to shout the wrong pronunciation during the throes of 
passion, causing that person to be rejected by the recipient of the 
comment, who will understand the meaning and return to his/her true 
love (i.e., you).  This is its most common usage in American soap 
operas.

FOREGO, FORGO

FOREGO means to go before or to precede.  Almost nobody uses this word 
nowadays.  If you read the right version of the bible, however, you 
might discover that John the Baptist forewent Jesus.  We have a 
leftover of this word in "foregone," as "a foregone conclusion."

FORGO is a word that people often use today.  It means to abstain from.  
For example, I can forgo sex until the end of the meal (at least 
usually I can).  Anyway, here's the value of knowing this esoteric 
distinction.  Assume you're a woman whose husband knows only the more 
familiar of these meanings.  Your husband says to you, "Those two studs 
who moved in next door have been flirting with the women at the pool.  
I hope you don't plan to hang around with them."  There are two 
possible responses:

     "I think I'll forego."
     "I think I'll forgo."

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!