Celestial Reviews 210 - August 23, 1997
Note: A man and his dog are shipwrecked on an unpopulated island. After
a few days he decides to take the dog and reconnoiter the island. He
discovers that the only other inhabitants are sheep. He recalls how his
farm buddies used to brag how they would screw sheep for kicks, but he
says to himself, "I'll never be that desperate."
So, a few weeks later he can't get those sheep out of his mind, and soon
he's sneaking up on the flock. Just as he is about to pounce on a really
cute one, the dog grabs his leg and won't let go. He snaps out of it,
and thanks the dog for keeping him from making a fool of himself.
This same scene happens every night for a month, and the guy starts to
get really pissed at the dog.
Then one day, the man spies a life-raft bobbing in the surf. In the raft
is a beautiful young girl, barely alive. He takes her back to his hut,
revives her, and nurses her to health. After a few days the girl is
feeling fine, and that evening a rush of gratitude sweeps over her....
She confronts the man: "I owe you my life. I'm yours forever. I'll do
anything you want"
"Anything?"
"Anything!!"
"OK, hold that dog for ten minutes!!!"
Final note: Remember: even though someone else may be posting my
reviews for me, my e-mail address is still Celeste801@aol.com.
- Celeste
"Fortissimo" by Uther Pendragon (post-partum lovemaking)
10, 10, 10
"Wet Camera" by James Lawson (animalistic sex) 10, 8, 8
"Muse" by Seurat (writer's block) 10, 10, 10
"Mistress Molly" by Mary Anne Mohanraj (threesome &
ff femdom) 10, 10, 10
"Emptiness" by DevoSpudC (disillusionment) 9, 10, 10
Guest Reviews:
"Passages in Life" by Jubal Harshaw (emerging adolescence)
10, 10, 10
"Cary" by daVinci (romance) 10, 10, 10
Reposted Reviews:
* "Siblings" by Michael K. Smith (consensual sibling incest)
10, 10, 10
* "Summer Dreams" by Lysander (romance) 10, 10, 10
"Fortissimo" by Uther Pendragon (anon584c@nyx10.nyx.net). When I
found a "story" posted in a.s.s. last week labeled "Forceps," I
was at first happy (because I looked forward to another
installment in the Brennan story) and then sad (because it wasn't
really a story at all, "just" a birth announcement.) Now that the
story has actually arrived, I guess I should send a virtual
present or at least plan to attend the virtual baby shower.
As you may have surmised, the newest Brennan has arrived and Bob
and Jeanette are engaged in celebratory copulation. Jeanette is
concerned that Bob considers her breasts, which have been
exploited by Catherine as a source of nutrition, to be
unattractive. Bob disabuses her of this notion. Then, just a
foreplay is getting really good, they are interrupted by the
"fortissimo" cry of the baby. And so it goes; lovemaking is
delayed, but climaxes come later.
Most men and many women who haven't had or nursed a baby have no
idea how sensuous the combination of nourishing a baby and making
love to the baby's father can be. The author seems to have
figured this out and has made the connection pretty clear in this
story.
Ratings for "Fortissimo"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
"Wet Camera" by James Lawson (jdlawson@cybrtyme.com). This is not
a complete story. Just two minutes worth of a hot set-up and
brief follow-through. To find out what that means, check out this
story.
Ratings for "Wet Camera"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 8
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 8
"Muse" by Seurat (dantedibby@aol.com). The narrator is a man who
is writing a femdom story for this newsgroup - perhaps this is
genuinely autobiographical! His wife catches him in the act,
looks at the story, tells him it is silly, and recommends
something more romantic - if you know what I mean <wink>.
Ratings for "Muse
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
"Mistress Molly" by Mary Anne Mohanraj (mohanraj@goonsquad). Michael is
happy with Kate, and partly to please her he invites Molly in for a
threesome. They have one wild night together, but almost immediately
Kate finds herself drifting away from Michael and falling under the
control of Mistress Molly. OK. I'll admit it sounds a little lame, but
the author makes it all sound both enticing and plausible.
Ratings for "Mistress Molly"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
"Emptiness" by DevoSpudC (cwilson9@ix.netcom.com). Erika has
always known herself to be beautiful: she won her first beauty
pageant at age eleven. Tonight her boyfriend has been murdered in
a drive-by shooting and she has run off into the street, tried to
kill herself, been rescued by a passing motorist, and has
essentially been raped by that man.
This is a weird and confusing story - but deliberately so. It's
not really all that sexy, but it certainly did hold my attention.
Ratings for "Emptiness"
Athena (technical quality): 9
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
"Passages in Life" by Jubal Harshaw (jubal@flash.net). Guest
review by Green Onions.
Ah . . . the joys of church summer camp. Fresh air, tall trees,
silly skits, roasted marshmallows, clear spring water, and--um--
the other stuff.
No, I don't mean sneaking out at midnight and managing to put all
the camp superintendent's furniture out on rowboats tied to the
pier or any of the other clever stunts that bored kids do in order
to while away the first time in their conscious lifetimes in which
they must somehow survive bereft of the blandishments of computer
games, the vidiot box, and the local cruising strip. (Well to be
frank: this is a.s.s.--not a 'Leave it to Beaver' rerun on cable
TV--so you can bet that the "other stuff" I was talking about is
the forbidden fruit normally denied to kids young enough to be
denizens of these would-be gardens of Eden.)
But <ah-hem> this is not a child porno story <amen!>; in fact the
protagonist is an almost unbelievably mature seventeen year old
boy whose brilliantly planned and skillfully executed pranks of
several years ago have since become legendary at the camp. His
lover is another counselor who happens to be scarcely nineteen
herself and the job they both have ahead of them is to make their
relationship fully functional.
Well, what is there to a boy's 'first time' anyway? Is it a
gradual process, one that begins with a lot of groping, giggling,
cuddling and caressing and that eventually ends all-too-quickly in
a juicy sticky splattered mess? Actually our hero's baptism is a
long drawn-out affair, one that the author studies reverently in a
remarkable number of sensual and psychological dimensions through
the mind of an unusually reflective protagonist. This is _anything
but_ a story of a 'quick fuck.'
Indeed this piece isn't principally about sex at all, even though
there's no shortage of hot scenes. It has much more to do with
romance and the recovery process from a short lifetime of failed
youthful expectations--AKA: 'growing up.' As the plot develops, we
discover that he and his lover have met before; both have an
intricately developed past that turns out to account in large
measure for mysterious ways in which they move.
What does it mean to cross the sacred threshold between childhood
and adulthood in the context of romantic relationships? What does
it mean to have a love affair based on more than superficial
attraction or hot passing passion? How does a sensible person (or
to be more precise, _two_ sensible people) deal with the molting
of their adolescent fantasies and the emergence of integrated
romantic, sensual, and spiritual desire? And how will our hero
step out of the shoes of a boy in order to don the vestments of
His Lover's Man?
This is not a story for the impatient or intellectually feckless
reader: at something in the neighborhood of 35,000+ words, it
almost qualifies for the label 'short novel.' Most of the time I
found myself enjoying the author's slow, painstaking and loving
style of careful psychological development--but at other moments I
occasionally wondered which of the myriad details presented in the
first few chapters would turn out to be important.
Granted: a certain amount of seemingly 'irrelevant' information is
desirable in any story to paint the scenes in the reader's mind,
to frame the events, and to develop the characters. And one so
often hears from the _literati_ that a typical weakness of erotica
inheres in the inability or unwillingness of so many writers to
weave their protagonists' actions into the subtle complex tapestry
of human needs, desires and motivations--a criticism that
certainly hits the bulls' eye for all too many a.s.s. submissions.
Yet although the author's gift for careful description tended to
make the story a bit slow at the beginning (for example, we learn
the names of nearly a dozen different subdivisions of the camp in
one of the early chapters: none of which is used later), it turned
out to be a solid foundation on which to base the unfolding of the
plot--the basic outlines of which are probably familiar to nearly
everyone who has legitimate access to this newsgroup.
Overall this is an extremely thoughtful, well written and
remarkably sophisticated piece that might have been even better if
the writer had kept in mind that in art, less can sometimes be
more. It's also one of the sweetest emerging sexuality/emerging
romance stories I've had the pleasure of reading and one that I
think most patient straight or bisexual readers will find both
charming and delightful.
P.S.: My humble apologies to both Celeste and the author for the
inexcusable tardiness of this review. Perhaps a one-part repost of
this excellent novella might be in order.
Ratings for "Passages in Life"
Venus (plot & character): 10
Athena (technical quality): 10
Flagger (appeal to reviewer): 10
"Cary" by daVinci (rmbte1@ix.netcom.com). Guest review by DG.
Maybe the biggest challenge to writing an erotic story - a
good erotic story, that is - is finding a way to keep it fresh.
There are only so many ways that boy can meet girl, only so many
things that boy and girl can do to each other, only so many places
they can do it. One common solution is to expand the
possibilities: boy meets three girls, girl meets German shepherd,
boy ties up girl and paddles her bottom- you get the idea. These
stories can be quite intriguing to read, but the gains in
originality are generally offset by the loss of the romantic
underpinnings of the fundamental boy meets girl formula.
Another solution, which the author of this excellent story
uses, is to stick to the old formula and make the characters vivid
and unique. The nameless narrator of "Cary," by daVinci, is a
burned-out classical pianist who decides to take early retirement
and live a quiet secluded life in the suburbs. In the third
floor loft of his house he reads Kafka, listens to Mahler, and
works on writing a symphony - not your run-of-the-mill erotic
hero. We never even find out how long his cock is.
His next door neighbor is a beautiful woman with a troubled
marriage. She has the opposite problem from the narrator: he
lived the kind of life that people fantasize about and finally
found it unfulfilling, while she lives a drab existence in the
suburbs, feeling that there should be more to life. If you think
you know where this is headed, you're right. But that doesn't
matter - the enjoyment in this story isn't watching the plot
unfold, it's in the vivid characters and the realistic
descriptions of their problems and thoughts. And when they do
finally get down to business, the sex is very hot, thank you very
much.
It's not a perfect story. Some (but certainly not all) of
the character's musings about the meaning of life are overly
melodramatic, and the dialogue and phrasings are occasionally
awkward, particularly in the first half of the story. But these
are relatively minor quibbles. This is a story that attempts to
be both meaningful and sexy, and succeeds.
Ratings for "Cary"
Venus (plot & character): 10
Athena (technical quality): 10
DG (appeal to reviewer): 10
"Siblings" by Michael K. Smith (mksmith@metronet.com). The author
labels this a "novel in progress. The story is long - really
long; but it's good. It includes several completed chapters and
an outline of what is missing. The main characters in the story
take the simple perspective that if an action feels good and hurts
nobody, then it is good; and on this basis the brother and sister
build a sexual relationship that extends from their childhood into
their adult lives and enables each of them to embrace other lovers
as well.
In chapter five the author digresses from the story and defends
the practice of consensual incest. His arguments are plausible.
The most serious objections, as I understand them, are genetic
difficulties arising from recessive genes (double recessives are
much more likely to occur among related individuals) and the high
probability that incestuous relationships are likely to be
coercive and therefore abusive. The author is aware of the
dangers of abuse; his story "Remembering" vividly depicts the bad
effects of such a relationship. His argument here is simply that
those problems do not occur in this story and that the
relationship between Michael and Alex is healthy and beautiful.
The story certainly demonstrates his point.
The other objection to this story goes something like this: "The
bible says incest is wrong, goddamit!" I'm pretty sure that's not
true; but certainly lots of people who read the bible and claim to
be religious people say it's wrong. This story doesn't address
theology directly, but what it does do is draw a portrait of two
main characters and several others who are genuinely good and
socially responsible people. Bible thumpers make me nervous and
annoy the hell out of me. I'd rather have a couple of incestuous
hedonists like these for next-door neighbors.
The author states that "the story contains no sex scenes as such";
but that's not true. It would be more accurate to state that the
story does not glory in sex for its own sake; but it is very heavy
on romantic sexual contact in the context of the developing
relationship between this brother and sister. This story is
extremely well written. Because it is long and complex, I won't
even attempt to summarize it any further here. I strongly
recommend this story.
Ratings for "Siblings"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
* "Summer Dreams" by Lysander (lysander@bitsmart.com). I get more
than a little annoyed by people who say there are no good stories
on a.s.s. The people that call us all sick weirdoes I can at
least understand and ignore. But no good stories? I'm
desperately trying to keep up with all the good stories on this
newsgroup. Certainly there are some weak stories here (and some
genuine garbage); but I find a.s.s. to be a good source of high
quality recreational reading for adults. This set of reviews
should provide evidence of that quality. And this story is what
pushed me to make my comment.
Lysander has written several good stories; but I think this is his best.
I have previously enjoyed Lysander for his action stories; but this one
is almost poetry. He integrates the narrator's fantasies with his real
life in a unique and moving manner. Because the enjoyment arises from
the unraveling of the story, I can't tell you much about it. Just take
my word for it: if you're interested in romance with healthy doses of
sex and genuine human sentiment, this is a really good story for you.
And don't be afraid to stop and think after you read this story - and
read it again.
Ratings for "Summer Dreams"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10