Celestial Reviews 62 - Feb 17, 1996
Note: Please do not ask me to send you copies of the stories I review.
I cannot do it, and I do not have time to respond to everyone who makes
this request.
Second Note: The proofreading service is in full operation, and people
are reporting successful use of it. At least one of the stories posted
today has benefited from that process. If you want someone to read and
comment on your story before you post it, contact me. Do NOT send me
the entire story; I'll assign one or two proofreaders to your story,
and you can communicate directly with them.
- Celeste
"Move" by Deirdre (weird sex) 7
"Patient" by Deirdre (dominance) 7
"Practice" by Deirdre (dominance) 7
"Rain" by Damya (romance & passion) 10
"Intimate with the Vampire 2.0" by Rocket88 (vampire
sex) 10
"Country-Western Style" by Unknown Author (music
& sex) 8
"A Guest of Celeste" by Ted (sexy tutorial) 10
"Lips" by Mark Aster (lip fixation) 9
"Falwelling Tracey" by Mark Aster (satire) 10
"Pairings" by DJ810 (romance & relationships) 10
"Move" by Deirdre. This is a _Stepford Wives_ story in the tradition
of Sherwood Anderson, pursuing the age-old question: "What do men
_really_ do when there are no women around?" The first inkling of
impending doom occurred shortly after the husband accepted the new job:
he was getting cold feet after he first met his future employers, but
his wife insisted that he take the job. The second clue came when the
wife went for a job interview of her own at the company: the secretary
simply said that the boss was busy and persistently tried to kiss the
wife. The third clue came when the gang from the Welcome Wagon showed
up, and one of them said, "Isn't she pretty? This is going to be
great!" If we need one more clue, we can find it when Veronica shows
up on the doorstep, starts unbuttoning the wife's blouse, and says,
""You'll do just fine!" With all this going on, it wouldn't surprise
me if the men were all gathered together in the Board Room having the
husband give them blow jobs! (Rating: 7)
"Patient" by Deirdre. How do some people exercise mind control so
easily? Here we have a veteran nurse examining a very sexy woman who
happens to be wearing nothing but a smile. After the examination the
woman says to the novice nurse, "Be at my house tomorrow evening at
7:30." Of course, the nurse follows instructions, and the story ends
with her wearing a skimpy little dress getting ready to take a
whipping. How do some people exercise mind control so easily?
(Rating: 7)
"Practice" by Deirdre. This is a story about people with "problems."
Specifically, it starts with a man who has a problem of feeling
uncomfortable when asked to undress in front of a nurse who happens to
be his next-door neighbor. The neighbor is willing to work overtime to
give him the practice he needs to overcome this problem. Soon they
progress to other problems that require KY lubricant and even duct tape
to overcome. (Rating: 7)
"Rain" by Damya (an128788@anon.penet.fi). Damya's postings are almost
invariably well written, but the passages are often so short (for
example, "Phantom Lover" and "In the Middle of the Night") that they
scarcely constitute a complete story. This one is more complete,
describing the quiet passion that a couple shares at a stage of life
when others might have fallen into a routine of taking each other for
granted. It is a romantic and highly erotic story. (Rating: 10)
"Intimate with the Vampire 2.0" by Rocket88 (rick84@ mindspring.com).
A story like this has two strikes against it when I start reading it.
Strike one: I don't like senseless pain as a part of sexual relations.
Pain and violence are reasonable under the right circumstances; and
I'll even grant that there are occasions when it can be pleasurable to
be either the giver or receiver of pain. However, I think people who
enjoy being tortured by another person often have serious emotional
problems. And so I expect the author of a story that involves pain or
violence to show me that there is a point to this activity. Strike
two: I don't believe in vampires. I find "Dracula" so boring that I
have never watched the entire movie. I think the notion of vampires is
generally silly.
Under these circumstances you may be surprised to know that I really
liked this story. Strike two evaporated first: lots of things that are
generally silly can become interesting if I suspend my disbelief and if
the author does a good job of presenting the story. That's what
science fiction is all about. For that matter, that's what most of
this newsgroup is about. My other objection evaporated just as easily:
sure, there was pain and violence in this story; but it occurred in a
surrealistic context that seemed to have a point to it. If I granted
that there may be preternatural beings that have the power to seduce
people and steali their souls, then this kind of activity made perfect
sense.
If the author's goal was to give me nightmares or to make me live in
fear or anticipation that things like this might happen to me, then he
has failed (I hope!). However, if he wanted to entertain me with a
damned good story, then he has succeeded. Now, here's my favorite
part: this story was originally submitted about two months ago. Here's
what I said about it in CR 45:
"As I have said before, I am not an aficionado of vampires, werewolves,
witches, or other preternatural forces. Nevertheless, I think this story has
considerable potential - especially for people who understand the ground rules
of vampires better than I do. The problem with this story is that it lacks
even rudimentary proofreading. The author is obviously intelligent, and so
he/she attempts to use fairly sophisticated ideas and sentence structures to
convey his/her plot. But the mistakes are so glaring as to convince me that
the author simply doesn't want to spend the time to make the story reader-
friendly. I mean, does the author really think that it makes sense to "lye"
in a motionless embrace? Lye is a chemical that cleans my plumbing. And then
near the middle of the story I read these lines: "The fire grew more intense.
MailFirst....Save As... She said. MailTheres pleasure.Save As... And with out
another word she opened her mouth and gently covered mine." This garbled
writing may be the result of a faulty mailer rather than poor writing skills;
but it certainly is annoying. In addition, throughout the story the verbs are
frequently screwed up. As I said earlier, the author is obviously
intelligent; and so he/she sometimes starts using a past perfect tense or the
subjunctive mood correctly, but then all of a sudden we're in the present
tense and indicative mood. There are several instances of misplaced
modifiers, like this one (which also contains a comma splice): "It was if she
never used these feet to walk, scented and soft, I put her toes into my mouth
using my tongue to wet them." Literally, this sentence means that the guy
sucking the toes smelled nice and was soft; and I doubt that's what the author
intended. A few lines later we hear about "the beating of her hart." A hart
is a male deer. What does the author really mean here: "...my mind soured
as I clung tightly as the sweat that gummed my body to hers was causing my
arms to slide." I think the guy's mind *soared*, but the sentence clearly
says that it turned sour! Here's one more that I kinda liked: "My flesh was
ripped and I needed to explode, I wanted orgasm, I started to beg to her.
Mailplease dont stopSave As..." Finally, I think a succubus is a ghostly
visitor that goes under the person being visited; this critter sounds more
like an incubus. {Note: I was wrong about this; the author was right. I
checked.}
"I don't derive sexual satisfaction from making fun of authors'
mistakes, and I don't mean to give the impression that I want to
humiliate this author. For me to say that a vampire story has
potential means that it *really* has potential. I myself recently
spelled "waist" incorrectly in Celestial Reviews (although I was
actually copying the words of a different writer). Mistakes happen.
But when mistakes accumulate, readers get annoyed and wonder why the
author hasn't gone to the trouble of preparing the text properly.
Creative ideas are the most important part of a story, and I think this
story may have creative ideas. But there's no reason why creative
ideas cannot be presented more coherently than this.
"It's not just English teachers who get upset at this. English
teachers may be the only ones who know why they're upset; but readers
in general will find this presentation to be annoying. I urge this
author and others like him/her to take advantage of my offer to find
free volunteer proofreaders. This could possibly have been an
excellent story if the author would have given it the care it deserves.
(Rating: 4)"
As you will notice from the title, this author accepted my invitation
to receive proofreading assistance; and that's why this is labeled
version 2.0. There are two major differences between the present and
the previous version of this story. First, the grammar and style no
longer stand in the way; the reader can now react to the ideas of the
author and can feel the emotions that the author wanted the reader to
feel. Second, I don't know this for certain, but I imagine the
proofreader challenged the author by asking him to clarify some of the
ideas that originally seemed unclear.
It is important to point out that these improvements are not just
something that please English teachers. Ordinary readers - no, I'll
go further - even borderline imbeciles who themselves communicate only
by grunting and yanking on their penises would have been mainly
confused by the original version but will enjoy this story in its
present format. If this sounds like an advertisement for my
proofreading service, so be it! (Rating: 10)
"Country-Western Style" by Unknown Author. Isabelle Stiles is a
rapidly rising country western singer. Ian Kaehler is a local
guitarist who hires on for a recording session. The two hit it off
sexually after the session. Although the story needs some more polish,
the author does a good job of blending the atmosphere of a recording
studio with an impulsive sexual encounter.
This story was reposted by The Red Dragon, who posts a large number of
stories. You can spot them because the titles are usually all capitals
and the author is often listed as (***). Many of his stories are posted
without any indication of who really wrote them. I don't think it is
the Red Dragon who strips these stories of their authorship; I think he
just finds them this way and reposts them. However, I think it is
unfortunate that the authors so often cannot get credit for what they
have written. (Rating: 8)
"A Guest of Celeste" by Ted (an477638@anon.penet.fi). Veteran readers
of these Reviews may recall that in CR 52 I reviewed a story entitled
"An Ode to Celeste; or, Meeting the Muse" by an author named Ted The
premise of that story was that Celeste is an author of a highly
respected series of reviews for a.s.s. who maintains a cabin in a
secluded mountain area where she goes to check out possibly fraudulent
story lines with sexy young men whom she solicits through the Internet.
A young man named Ted shows up for his appointment with fate and is
invited to join his predecessor in exchanging pleasures with the
Grammar Goddess of Usenet. It was a really hot, well-written story.
Well, Ted is back; and he's in fine fettle - whatever that means. If
he's as good in the sack as he is with his word processor, I would bet
that there's a lucky lady out there somewhere. The main premise of the
present story is that Ted has been invited to meet with the REAL
Celeste; and this time she is giving assistance to a greenhorn author
named Amy, who needs to make her sex stories more realistic. Actually,
Amy is allegedly the author of "A Weekend on the Island" (a very hot
withSue story to which your humble servant gave a rating of 10 in CR
44); and so one might be a bit skeptical about her actual need for
enlightenment. In short, the story consists of an orgy in the context
of a writing lesson. An interesting element is that Ted follows in
this very story some of the advice that he has Celeste give to her
student.
To a certain extent, Ted's treatment of Celeste is realistic. For
example, she assiduously makes notes on Amy's manuscript and helps her
develop her writing skills even while Amy is in the process of giving
head to Ted. Such scholarly devotion to task is a mark of a true
teacher, critic, and sex goddess.
On the negative side, the author spelled Deirdre's name wrong. He
spelled it Deidre as in Ng, rather than Deirdre as in Sherwood
Anderson. I'll skip past his Celestial use of "ain't," which was in
poor taste. However, at one point the author has Celeste say,
"...would you like to read it, so you know where we're at?" Now, I
don't mind ending the sentence with a preposition, but I never use the
expression "where at." I guess I could use these errors to accuse Ted
of faulty research, but that would be tantamount to inviting a third
story. Actually, that's not a bad idea. Your research sucks, Ted! It
sucks dinosaur dildos! (Rating: 10)
"Lips" by Mark Aster (MyFrThAl@aol.com). This is a story about a time
when the male narrator was completely obsessed by women's mouths and
lips. I once had a similar experience myself. My husband and I had
been watching a romantic movie, and we started talking about how lips
could turn us on. We kinda lost track of the plot, as we demonstrated
to each other how lips could turn us on. The next day I was in a
graduate English class, and you wouldn't believe what the instructor's
lips did to me! I still have pleasant associations with Lord Byron.
A major problem with a lip fixation is how do you talk about it? I
mean, if I were fixated on your lips and you asked me why I was acting
strange, I'd have to look in the general direction of your lips in
order to listen to you; and in order to communicate I would have to use
my own lips, which I happen to know are capable of making men (and
probably women) cum just by power of suggestion.
In the present story, while he's in the throes of lip fixation, the
narrator meets Rachel at an office party, and her wet and moist lips
immediately arouse him. Rachel asks him if there's something going on
that she should know about. To add to the sexual electricity, her
tentative smile does not exactly conceal the shape or potential of her
lips; and I happen to know that when the observer is possessed by this
problem, the smiler really is wearing nothing but the smile. The two
resolve the discomfiture by going to a secluded room and fucking their
brains out. In the post-coital afterglow, Rachel comments that while
she understands his lip obsession, she has been having an identity
crisis - she hasn't had a male lover for a long time. The narrator
tells her not to worry, and he invites her to dinner with the Allen
sisters, both of whom have great lips and are willing to share them
with other lips of either gender. A great time is had by all.
(Rating: 9)
"Falwelling Tracey" by Mark Aster (MyFrThAl@aol.com). I've been too
busy grading papers and writing reviews to download a copy of the
Communications Decency Act, but I'm pretty sure it's full of popycarp
anyway. The author of this story has set out to write a cute little
tale without using any of the Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say On The
Net. Hence, in the title he has replaced the F-word with an even more
odious but still permissible F-word. Actually, what the author did was
write a story that would have been deemed indecent because it contained
"filthy words," and then he used his word processor to replace each bad
word with the lowercase name of a prominent politician who can be
associated with the CDA.
On a serious note, what I don't understand about these legislative
attempts at censoring the Internet is what do they expect all the
sexual perverts to do after the law is passed - just stop being
perverts? Right now, all the people with these nasty notions can post
to their hearts content right here on a.s.s and on related newsgroups.
Like most of you, I have learned to recognize headings that indicate
really moronic writing, and simply ignore them. Internet readers have
to go out of their way to find these perverse postings; and parents can
use "parental control" type programs to keep their kids away from nasty
things. If I were a sex pervert, and somebody tried to close down my
forum, I think I would react by posting my depraved postings on, say,
alt.religion. As Confucius says: Squirrel who runs up woman's leg not
find nuts.
Anyway, this is by no means a great short story, but it is extremely
clever humor. (Rating: 10)
"Pairings" by DJ810 (an446077@anon.penet.fi). After I read a story, I
often try to express in one sentence the main idea I got from it. In
this case, it would be a long sentence. Two people can share their
thoughts and feelings intimately over a long period of time but still
not actually know the other person, because they filter what the other
is saying through their own personal experiences and expectations.
Oddly enough, I remember watching a televised movie with my daughter
that I summarized to her in almost exactly the same words. The only
difference is that the present story uses sexual activities and
feelings to exemplify this theme, whereas the movie focused on racial
differences among teenagers.
This story differs from many of the typical a.s.s. stories in that its
main impact is not to titillate, to propagandize, or to amuse the
reader, but rather to arouse some serious thoughts about the meanings
of relationships. The erotic content (which is actually pretty vivid
and sexy) is actually the background in this story. I have no inherent
objection to titillation, propaganda, or amusement; but I found it
enjoyable to read a story that made me wonder why apparently decent
people would act like that. (Rating: 10)
GRAMMAR TIP OF THE WEEK: An understandably anonymous reader has submitted the
following sentence.
Suitors with cocks less than eight inches in length
(shall, must, will, would) wait until the others
(are, will be, would, were) finished.
He originally wrote this sentence to discuss less/fewer; but he had become
convinced by the overwhelming power of my reasoning in a previous CR that
"fewer" would be inappropriate in this sentence. His remaining question is
which pair of the words in parentheses should be used to complete the
sentence?
The answer depends on the purpose of the sentence. Is it
- laying down a rule?
- describing a rule?
- describing the normal state of affairs?
- describing a hypothetical state of affairs?
If it is supposed to have the force of an ordinance, I would write
Suitors with cocks less than eight inches in length
shall wait until the others are finished.
If it is intended to report "what the law says", then I would choose
Suitors with cocks less than eight inches in length
must wait until the others are finished.
If it is intended to what usually happens when the wimps compete with the real
men, then I would choose
Suitors with cocks less than eight inches in length
wait until the others are finished.
If it is intended to suggest that all males are well endowed and to describe
what would happen in the unlikely event that a wimp showed up, then I would
choose
Suitors with cocks less than eight inches in length
would wait until the others were finished.