Celestial Reviews 120 - Sept 25, 1996
Note: For some reason it seemed like a good idea to have a theme
issue; and so I have a lot of stories with a birthday motif in this
issue.
Second Note: The Web Page that used to archive my Top 100 Stories of
1995 has apparently stopped offering this service. I have not been
directly affiliated with that site and have had no control over it.
I’ll give you more details, if I ever obtain any.
- Celeste
“Blind” by Mary Anne Mohanraj (bdsm, etc.) 10, 10, 10
“Escalator” by Mark (brief encounter) 10, 10, 10
“The Hot Tub” by Fin Haddie (sex in the jacuzzi) 9, 8, 9
“Not Quite Hidden” by Fin Haddie (exhibitionism) 9, 8, 9
“Aunt Jennie's Buddy” by PleaseCain (sex with a hot aunt)
10, 10, 10
“My Birthday Present” by DonW38 (wife watching) 9, 5, 6
“A Birthday Gift” by Suki (bdsm) 8, 4, 3
“The Birthday Gift” by Wollstonecraft (adolescent seduction
of adult) 9.5, 9.5, 10
* "Birthday" by Deirdre (mf bondage & anal sex) 10, 10, 10
* "Tom's Birthday Surprise" by Tom in Sacramento (orgy)
9, 10, 10
* “Surprise!” by Mark Aster (birthday bondage) 10, 10, 10
* "Freebie" by Deirdre (spontaneous oral sex) 10, 10, 10
* = Repost of a previous review (because the story has recently
been reposted).
“Blind” by Mary Anne Mohanraj (moh2@midway.uchicago.edu). The woman
wakes up in bed. She has been drinking, apparently at her own birthday
party. Suddenly she realizes that she is comfortably bound and
blindfolded and that a stranger is doing wonderful things to her body.
No, not a stranger - her husband. No, it’s her husband plus a
stranger. Or maybe several strangers; but it feels wonderful. And
it’s exciting reading too!
Ratings for “Blind”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
“Escalator” by Mark (MarkB@aboy.demon.co.uk)."You're fuckin' pathetic,
mate, arntcha?" she yelled. I can see how I appeared that way, but I'm
not though. I'm really not.
What would provoke such an outburst? Actually, not much - just two
people passing on the up versus down escalators, one a man dressed for
a day’s work in the business world who ogles and lusts for the woman
approaching him on the other escalator, and the other a young lady
dressed in the punk style who decides at the last second to flash the
man as they pass. The rest is in the details.
Ratings for “Escalator”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 9
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9
“The Hot Tub” by Fin Haddie (sex in the jacuzzi). David has been
spending a week alone on a brief vacation in Florida. A woman hits on
him by suggesting “having some fun” in the jacuzzi; but it turns out
she was just using him as a setup to turn her husband on. Frustration
station! As David mopes later that night, a young woman named Kathy,
with whom he had played volleyball earlier in the week joins him. As
the lights go out and the darkness deepens, another woman joins them;
and without paying any attention to the other two starts griping about
how everybody has been trying to hit on her. This is a major turn-on
for David and Kathy, who proceed to have very pleasant underwater sex
in the jacuzzi.
This story was posted as Florida1. I suppose it goes with the next
story, but they are relatively independent. Even when they are
combined, they are not a complete or focused story; but the sex in each
is pretty hot.
Ratings for “The Hot Tub”
Athena (technical quality): 9
Venus (plot & character): 8
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9
“Not Quite Hidden” by Fin Haddie (sgoodman@primenet.com). David heads
for the beach and is turned on by the attractive women he passes. He
lies down by himself in a secluded spot and notices a woman working
over her lover in the grass nearby, where they are unobserved by
everyone except David. As he watches and gets turned on, the woman
turns toward him; and this causes David to explode into a very pleasant
orgasm.
This story was posted as Florida2. I suppose it goes with the
preceding story, but they are relatively independent. Even when they
are combined, they are not a complete story; but the sex in each is
still pretty hot.
Ratings for “Not Quite Hidden”
Athena (technical quality): 9
Venus (plot & character): 8
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9
“Aunt Jennie's Buddy” by PleaseCain (pleasecain@aol.com). Jim
(nicknamed Buddy) slips away from school early by cutting the pep rally
and arrives home to surprise his Aunt Jennie, who is staying with the
family for a while. He is astonished to find her standing in front of
the huge mirror in the bathroom, nude, eyes closed, singing into the
hairbrush and shaking a bathrobe in her clenched fist. She spots him
and slams the door shut. He feels guilty. His conscience bothers him.
But this is not alt.religion.morals. So he fantasizes about her, which
could also happen on alt.religion.morals, if they told the truth. Then
Aunt Jennie knocks on his door and tells him not to feel guilty and
adds that nudity is nothing to be ashamed of. Again,
alt.religion.morals would buy this, except that the sentence ended with
a preposition - and we get the feeling that the scene is going to end
with a proposition.
Anyway, the story reverts to alt.religion.loose.morals when Aunt Jennie
says he can touch her. Then the story heats up; and it even includes a
bit of a surprise twist at the ending.
Ratings for “Aunt Jennie's Buddy”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
“My Birthday Present” by DonW38 (donw38@aol.com). On his birthday card
Don’s wife writes that for his birthday she is not going to give him
anything. However, she will be giving something very special to his
friend Jay, whom she has invited to come over and to spend 48 hours
with her. She will play with Jay, have sex with him, and sleep with him
all weekend. And Don will get to fulfill his fantasy of watching her
have sex with another man.
This is not one of those stories where the guy gets to join in on the
fun. Don has to wear a sign that says “cuckold,” and the other two
humiliate him in various ways. I guess this is kind of interesting, if
you like that sort of thing; but the story just stops in the middle.
Just like this review.
Ratings for “My Birthday Present”
Athena (technical quality): 9
Venus (plot & character): 5
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 6
“A Birthday Gift” by Suki (suki@fish.com). The woman is trying to make
her Master feel good on his birthday by encouraging him to dominate and
humiliate her in little ways. The Master keeps adding cuffs until she
is bound to the chair by her ankles, thighs, waist, arms, and collar.
Then he has his way with her, I guess.
I saw a couple stories by this author and decided to take a look. I
think the author had an image in her mind of something more
entertaining than she manages to convey in this story. I just didn’t
find this to be all that interesting.
This was a week story; but for some reason I feel compelled to do a
theme issue. Here are some better birthday stories - most of which I
have reviewed in the past.
Ratings for “A Birthday Gift”
Athena (technical quality): 8
Venus (plot & character): 4
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 3
“The Birthday Gift” by Wollstonecraft (an285729@anon.penet.fi). Betty
and the Narrator were both "big girls" with fuller bosoms and hips than
most of the other girls; and they both hated the way guys would fall
all over themselves staring and drooling like pigs and how girls would
snub them because they were jealous. They quickly became close
friends; and so the Narrator got the chance to hang around with Betty’s
stepfather, Tom, who was like one of those really great super-dads on
TV family shows.
Near the beginning of the story the Narrator moves out of her house and
into Betty’s after her mother’s boyfriend (referred to as the chicken
man) tried to molest her. Things go well at the new house, and the
Narrator develops some healthy insights into sexuality. But then, as
the song says, things get complicated when you get past 18. I’ll give
you the short version. Tom’s wife dies; Betty and the other kids move
away; the Narrator decides to seduce and become pregnant by Tom on her
18th birthday; and in order to achieve the full effect, she goes to
great lengths to keep him from masturbating for a full week prior to
the Great Occasion, so that Tom will come to (or at <g>) the birthday
party with a fully loaded gun. It’s all very sexy.
Ratings for “The Birthday Gift”
Athena (technical quality): 9.5
Venus (plot & character): 9.5
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
* "Birthday" by Deirdre (an65862@anon.penet.fi). I guessed the plot of
this one! Or at least I think I did. At the end of the story, neither
I nor the narrator can say for sure exactly what happened. The female
narrator (who has led a pretty straight sex life) decides to let her
husband (who has spoken favorably about bondage) do anything she wants
to her on his birthday. Since she is embarrassed to bring the topic up
to him, she conveys this message to him in a letter, which she types at
the office and gives to her secretary to mail; and subsequently she
receives a typed reply from him, giving her detailed instructions.
"Aha!" says I. "The secretary may have never mailed the letter at all.
She may have read it herself and written her own reply. I should be a
rocket scientist! The secretary is going to have her way with the
boss!" Well, maybe. The woman follows the instructions, and
mysterious but sexy things happen to her at the designated time and
place. But the husband never brings it up again, and their sex lives
remain status quo. So, was it really somebody else - perhaps even a
group of ribald fun lovers known only to the secretary? Or was it
really the husband who fucked her brains out? Is he playing dumb to
make it more fun?
What's really great about this story is that even though I read it from
the perspective that I thought I had figured out the secret, it's
really impossible to tell what actually happened. This impossibility
arises not because the story is written in a confusing manner (as is
the case with many stories), but because Deirdre has written the
details in such a way as to support either theory. This is a very
clever and sexy story.
Incidentally, as you may recall, I have a theory that Deirdre is really
Sherwood Anderson reincarnated in the body of a late 20th century smut
writer (perhaps as either a reward or punishment for what he did to the
people of Clyde, Ohio). One of my readers has suggested that he sees
more O. Henry than Sherwood Anderson in Deirdre's stories. However,
this reader's suggestion that I am wrong is misguided. I'll stand by
my Sherwood Anderson theory, but I'll admit that there is a distinct
possibility of O. Henry's influence - perhaps in Deirdre's maternal
ancestry. This story exemplifies that influence. (Rating: 10)
Ratings for “Birthday”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
* "Tom's Birthday Surprise" by Tom in Sacramento
(an248036@anon.penet.fi). This is a really hot story about a man whose
wife gives him a birthday present consisting of an orgy with herself
and two women that she knows he really likes. I'm not going to tell
you the details - you can read them for yourself. Although this story
has minor flaws, it is almost non-stop hot sex. However, since I know
that many people read these reviews to improve their own writing, let
me take two paragraphs to point out how this story could be improved.
There are two problems with this story. First, the tenses are messed
up. The author obviously intended to write in the present tense, but
he frequently switches back and forth between the present and the past.
(Note that I also have changed tenses in this very paragraph, but I
have done so correctly.) This inappropriate switching of tenses is an
annoyance to the reader. Even more importantly, it throws away verb
tense as a useful tool in the story. Because of the author's
carelessness, the reader is forced to assume that all tenses are really
the same. Therefore, if the author really does want to convey the
notion that one action came before another, he has no easy way to do
this.
The second problem arises from the discussion of emotions and
motivations during the story. In the middle of really hot sexual
activity - I think two of the female protagonists had already had two
orgasms apiece and the man was building to a earth-shattering climax of
his own {Ooops! Maybe that was me!} - they all pause and discuss how
good it felt and wonder whether it would be OK for Tom to stick his
cock up Barbara's ass. Everyone agrees that this would be emotionally
fulfilling and wonderful, and the action resumes. I understand the
author's motivation - he was trying to show us that these are four
sensitive people having non-destructive group sex; but the pause in the
action didn't quite ring true. At a time like this it would have been
better to focus more on action and less on words - as the song says: "A
little less talk and a lot more action."
Both of these problems could be overcome by better proofreading. The
author was simply too close to the story to see what was wrong.
Recently, I posted my own story ("Virtuous Reality"). I think mine was
a good story; and I am certain that it was a much better story after I
received and reacted to feedback from two skilled readers. I have no
way to enforce such suggestions, but I would like to urge this writer
(as well as the writers of many other stories) to incorporate
improvements into their texts when they repost these stories.
Ratings for "Tom's Birthday Surprise"
Athena (technical quality): 9
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
* “Surprise!” by Mark Aster (MyFrThAl@aol.com). It’s Julie Allen’s
21st birthday, and so Our Hero and Cousin Jake blindfold and bind her,
kidnap her, cart her off in a packing crate, dump her in the van, and
fuck her both in the van and at their destination. I approve of this
kind of bdsm, because the guys have good reason to believe that this is
just what Julie wanted for her birthday present. The author does an
unusually good job of depicting the sexual activities vividly and
erotically.
Ratings for “Surprise!”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
* "Freebie" by Deirdre. This is probably my all-time favorite story
with a birthday theme. 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.
Ratings for “Freebie”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10