Celestial Reviews 89 - June 1, 1996
Note: See the section labeled “Clitorides” at the end of this issue for some
valuable information.
Second Note: I’m going to have to skip an issue. The school year is
ending, and that means I have to do things quickly at work. The next
issue (CR 90) will be posted on or about June 8. It’s OK to keep
sending stories and correspondence. I just won’t be able to respond
quite as quickly as usual.
- Celeste
“Pansanjan Falls” by Steve S621 (wife watching in
exotic places) 9, 10, 10
“Night in Vosgraad” by Marawuti (magic, sorcery, and
very hot sex) 10, 10, 10
“A Dark and Stormy Night” by Ann Douglas (lesbian
romance & emerging adolescence) 10, 10, 10
“Sally’s Surrender” by Kid Dynamite (bdsm & humiliation)
10, 10, 10
“Peach Pit After Hours” by Roger P. Tipe (gang rape)
9.5, 9, 8
“Pansanjan Falls” by Steve S621 (sschaf19@mail.idt.net). This is a
continuation of “Fun on the Beach,” to which I gave a brief review in
CR 88. In this episode, the husband has gone back to work in Taipei
and Laurie has stayed behind in Manila. The first day she gets an
interesting massage; one masseur fingers her asshole and pussy while
the other has oral sex with her through the face-hole in the massage
table. Interesting idea!
Then she heads on a tourist bus for Pansanjan Falls. The final leg of
the trip is by canoe, and the riders are packed in very tightly.
Laurie is seated in front of a nice, handsome, black sailor who is
planning to take pictures of the Falls. You may think you can guess
what happens next - as Laurie’s cute little ass is pushed back into
Eddie’s rapidly hardening cock; but it gets even better than that!
You might think this would upset the husband; but au contraire, mon
frere! He enjoys hearing about it, largely because his head is buried
in her cunt when he hears most of the details. Alas, the husband is
pussy-whipped - a term which (surprisingly) does not appear in my
Random House Unabridged Dictionary; but he’s happy in his uxorious
state. Whatever pulls your trigger!
The story has a number of slightly annoying grammar errors. In
addition, the author uses no quotation marks around quotes; and this
practice sometimes becomes seriously confusing. Finally, we have an
interesting usage error: When Alan saw Jackie in the bar, he “waived.”
This means that he gave up a right or to forgo an opportunity - as when
a person waives his right to an attorney. Alan would have had better
chances with Laurie if he had waved. {Whatever happened to Jackie and
her Bloopers on a.s.s.d.? I loved reading the mistakes she found in
our stories.}
In spite of these irritations, this was a really good story. I myself
am not into spouse watching, dominating my husband, and male/male
contact; so I pressed my mental delete key for those parts when I
mentally rehearsed this while making love to my husband last night.
Even with those deletions, it was a stimulating experience. Whatever
pops your popcorn!
Ratings for “Pansanjan Falls”
Athena (technical quality): 9
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
“Night in Vosgraad” by Marawuti (marawuti@teleport.com). This is a
story of magic and sorcery, of elves and demons, of intrigue and
revenge. Wulf is essentially a nice person, a sort of kind-hearted
soldier of fortune. A pair of shape-changing assassin beasts have been
assigned to kill him; but he has a beautiful woman who is a skilled
warrior as his ally. I hope you can see the potential in a story in
which the evil beasts can change into the persona of two of Wulf’s
favorite females in order to throw him off guard. The sex is wild and
graphic and includes many scenarios in addition to the one to which I
have alluded.
I am not a connoisseur of this sorcery stories. However, I did enjoy
this one. What this author does that some others neglect is to offer
explanations for some of the behaviors that would be meaningless to
naive outsiders. He does this in such a way as to avoid interfering
with the flow of the story; and I suspect that veteran readers of this
type of stories are not bored by this repetition of what they already
know. This is a very effective technique. I’ll watch for more Wulf
stories, which are archived at http://www.teleport.com/~marawuti.
Ratings for “Night in Vosgraad”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
“A Dark and Stormy Night” by Ann Douglas. This author has written
several stories about women’s first sexual experiences with another
woman. I am over 40 years old and have still never made physical love
to another woman, and I have no plans of ever doing so. Nevertheless,
I found this story, which describes an evening when two teenagers who
have been long-time girlfriends first make physical love to each other,
to be both romantic and arousing.
Right now there numerous “abstinence” commercials on American
television, stating that it is a good idea to remain celibate until
marriage. I think it’s possible and even sensible to agree with the
abstinence philosophy and to like this story.
When I was a 17-year-old, I was still a virgin and I think all of my
best friends were too. I played a lot of sports - largely, I think,
because my parents wanted me to keep my mind off sex. My close friends
and I became really good athletes and developed interesting
personalities without having to worry about making love to one another.
This worked well, and if I could by wishing grant a lifestyle to other
teenagers, that’s what I would wish for them. I suppose there are lots
of other happy people in the world who took a different course of
action, but I’m glad my friends and I acted the way we did. On the
other hand, it really is fun to think back about things that could have
happened; and this story is a good start.
I have contended in several previous reviews that I think almost all
women could be happy having sex with another woman. {If getting my
pussy eaten by a guy is sexy, why wouldn’t it be equally sexy to have a
woman’s lips locking onto my clitoris?} I was thoroughly refuted by
several a.s.s, readers. Still, I think I personally would have enjoyed
the activities described in this story. I think there’s a huge
tendency to over-label people as “gay” or “straight.” This unnecessary
labeling causes 17-year-old girls to decide that they “are” lesbians
just because they feel more strongly attracted to a sensitive female
friend than to the immature males of the same age who seem to be
interested in nothing but making crude remarks and getting into girls’
pants. It also causes people to be afraid to show their honest
emotions for fear of labeling themselves. This same thought pattern
causes people not to enjoy a good story like this because the girls’
behavior is thought to be “wrong” in a way different from a boy and
girl of the same age engaging in similar behavior. There’s no reason
to restrict life choices so narrowly. My advice is to loosen up, enjoy
life, and keep your options open. And by all means read this story.
The author makes numerous grammatical and usage errors that are
probably the result of poor proofreading. The last time I gave a high
rating to an Ann Douglas story, a reader chided me for missing errors
like these. I checked, and he was right; there were numerous mistakes
that I had ignored. The reason I didn’t dock her for these mistakes
was because they didn’t bother me at all. I would appreciate it if Ann
would clean up her grammar; but an occasional “it’s” instead of “its”
is no big deal. Since I was locked into the meaning of the story, I
didn’t even notice these mistakes in the previous story. I suspect
that the present story has fewer errors, but I am not going to bother
to check. The story was well written.
This treatment of the emerging sexuality of two teenage girls was both
sensitive and sexy. I strongly recommend it.
Ratings for “A Dark and Stormy Night”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
“Sally’s Surrender” by Kid Dynamite (an109288@anon.penet.fi). One
might expect something silly and immature from an author using the name
“Kid Dynamite.” Not so. This is a cleverly constructed, complex story
that comes across very clearly. As the author points out in the
prologue, not many real human beings don't and shouldn't act this way.
It would be a horrible world if they did.
The author uses a highly effective technique of switching viewpoints
among several protagonists as he tells his tale: Sally, her mother, her
stepfather, the woman from the Society, her husband, the dirty old man
who teaches art at the Academy, and others. With each change of
perspective we see the story unfolding as that person alone would have
seen it.
At times the action becomes very slow-paced. I read page after page of
the art teacher trying to get a look at the top of Sally’s panties and
practically shooting his load when he got there. But art teachers are
often like that, I suppose.
The basic story line is that Sally is an extremely attractive and naive
18-year-old who has been home-schooled and taught to give automatic
respect to authority by draconian and puritanical parents. Well, not
too puritanical; they’re heavily into bdsm and into swinging. In fact,
they have applied to join the Society of Silk, a bizarre but selective
group of swingers and sado-masochists whose tentacles reach deep into
the Academy, where Sally is blossoming into a grownup woman.
Surprisingly enough, the Dean of the Academy is also the Mistress of
the Society! This is a coincidence. Really.
So as we near the midpoint of the story, we have young, innocent Sally,
sitting in the office of the Dean of the Academy, accused by a teacher
of wearing no underpants to school that day - an act in which she has
engaged to please her art teacher, who is a benign but disgusting
pervert who would probably die to sniff her used tampons - about to be
judged by the Mistress of a secret Society of depraved sex offenders to
which her own parents belong. It is at this point that the author
points out that she’s lucky she doesn’t have serious problems, like
drugs or booze. Right!
Sally’s problems get much worse; but I’ll let you read the story to
find out about that.
The one thing I would do (besides writing a completely different story)
would be to vary the style within the segments that take the
perspective of each separate protagonist. As it is, the author uses a
very simple style that suits Sally but is not really appropriate for
all the others. The ideas are appropriate, but the way they are
expressed is not.
In his prologue the author states that he thinks this story is a vast
improvement over his previous venture, “Lessons in Lust.” He’s right
about that! This is an excellent example of the misguided asshole
genre of literature, which Edgar Alan Poe exemplified so well in his
“Telltale Heart.” People really enjoy trying to figure out what goes on
inside the mind of bizarre people. Again, as the author points out in
the prologue, not many real human beings don't and shouldn't act this
way. It would be a horrible world if they did.
In a way this was an uplifting story. It made me happy to live in a
world of murderers, rapists, politicians, and lawyers.
Ratings for “Sally’s Surrender”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
“Peach Pit After Hours” by Roger P. Tipe (rogrtipe@ix.netcom.com).
Rocco and his gang of thugs burst into the Peach Pit After Dark. Rocco
puts a gun to Brenda’s head and tells Val to hand over all the money,
or he’ll blow Brenda’s brains out. Since Val doesn’t like Brenda
anyway, she replies , “Fuck you!” Not really wanting a murder rap,
Rocco changes tactics and announces that instead of killing Brenda he
and the guys are going to rape everyone unless Val turns over the
money. This is supposed to scare Val, but instead it turns her on; and
besides, she likes the feeling of power and control that Rocco has
given her over her sexy little friends.
So what we have here is a prolonged gang rape, with 30 or so scuzzy
gang members banging the Beverly whores. Val herself escapes
relatively unscathed, but rumor has it that she’ll get hers in the
sequel. I guess as gang-rape stories go this was a pretty good one. I
think if I were a 90210 fan I might have caught some more of the
allusions and enjoyed some inside comments that I might have missed.
Ratings for “Peach Pit After Hours”
Athena (technical quality): 9.5
Venus (plot & character): 9
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 8
CLITORIDES: Last issue I discussed the derivation of the word
“masturbation.” In a previous issue I published my comments on the
plural of “clitoris.” A reader recently posted a challenge to my
clitoric (or clitoreal) commentary. He stated that the plural was
“clitorides.” He also reminded me that the plural of “penis” is
“penes.” Not so!
I rechecked my current (2nd) edition of the Random House Unabridged
Dictionary. It lists no unusual plural for “clitoris.” When the dictionary
gives no unusual plural, the plural is assumed to be formed by adding -es.
{That’s the rule stated in the fine print.} Frankly, this surprised me when I
first discovered it.
Here’s my guess about why “clitorides” is not the accepted English plural.
Most “scientific” or “medical” words that end in -is form their plural by
changing -is to -es, as in “dialysis.” Note that this happens even in many
orignally Greek words (like “dialysis”), because they come through the Late
Latin. Even though a group of early (or I assume, modern) Greek girls might
get together and play with their clitorides, modern English-speakers play with
their clitorises. I assume it’s possible that some English-speakers actually
do use “clitorides” - but probably not in the height of sexual passion. I
find the Random House Unabridged Dictionary is pretty authoritative -
especially with regard to popular sexual terms.
The Random House Unabridged Dictionary lists “penises” as the first plural
form of “penis” and “penes” as the second form. Almost all females reporting
on the previous week’s (or night’s) sexual activities would refer to the
“penises” they had encountered. If “penes” occurs at all anymore, I suspect
that it’s in medical journals.
The fact that a word is declined a particular way in its original language
does not necessarily mean that it will invariably be declined that way after
it has been assimilated into a new language. For some reason “testes” caught
on as a plural in English, but “penes” did not. {Incidentally, there’s a
really interesting story about the semantic relationship between “testes” and
“testify”; but I’ll let someone else tell it. Suffice it to say that ancient
Romans did not have bibles on which to place their right hands when giving
sworn testimony in the forum. Get the picture?}
The litmus test here is that it would be a real social faux pas for a female
in mixed company to stand up and say, “We’ll suck your penes if you’ll first
stimulate our clitorides!”
I may be wrong, of course, because I usually deal with very singular
clits and cocks.