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"Dolls" by Vickie Tern (femdom): Twassel: (no rating)
"Dolls" by Vickie Tern. Reviewed by Mat Twassel. A slight, shy man, in a strange town between jobs, gets picked up in a bar by a young woman. He falls for her. Later she sucks his cock and shares the semen in an after-blow-job kiss. He finds he likes it. He comes to crave it. He'll do anything for her. She starts making him into a woman, no--less a woman than a pet, a doll; and, as if etherized, he goes along. There's some suspense in this long (60 pages) story by Vickie Tern. For one thing we want to know why the young woman is going to all this trouble. And maybe we're a little curious whether the guy will ever resist. (In a brilliantly funny and profoundly sad scene, perhaps the best in the story, the man Bob, does decide to resist.) The effective point of view in the story's first half is the man--but for the most part all we learn is that he's malleable. Part two of "Dolls" shows us the history of Diana, the woman. It's a picaresque sexual journey which quickly turns dark. We understand some of what makes Diana tick. The adventure is mostly entertaining, fluently written, sometimes sexy, and often strange. Diana has some quixotic (but not after all unconventional) ideas about marriage and fidelity, for example. In the end, surprisingly, the characters let us down--plot and idea have the upper hand, and characterization, while apt, isn't engaging. There's almost too much material, and the story, although relentless and of seemingly good pace, chokes. Nevertheless there is much to admire, many many nice images and promises: She was standing at his bureau making up her face in his mirror, and he looked over her shoulder and pressed his cheek to hers, to see their two faces reflected together. They were about the same height, both thin, with the same high cheek bones. His blonde hair was shorter than hers, but getting longer -- she liked long hair she'd told him, and she'd asked him not to cut it. What little beard he had was thin and blonde, and anyhow still smooth-shaven, hardly visible even the morning after. His cheek snuggled against hers, she placed her palm on his other cheek, and they smiled at each other's images. They looked so much alike, like brother and sister. It was a marvelous moment. For the sake of the plot and the plan, it's nice if not vitally important that the two do look alike, but neither this congruency nor anything else really grips the characters' hearts or souls--there's an interstitial emptiness, undoubtedly intentional, but also too bad. The story earns points but provides no catharsis. Black comedy, I think it's called. In a stunning scene near the end this is epitomized: two men, neither of them gay, suck each others' cocks perpetually while a pair of women chat: Diana walked through the hallway into the living room. The two men were naked, lying side by side together on the couch, their legs sprawled apart and their hips turned up, each one's head tucked down into the other's crotch, eyes closed peacefully, each one's mouth working gently on the other's penis. "They nurse on each other for four hours each day," Nicole commented, looking down with some admiration and affection. "It's really very dear. I kept them tied together doing it once for as long as thirty-six hours, when they needed the discipline. Round the clock was common. They got resigned to it, and then used to it, and then they found ways to like it. Now I don't let them go past four hours -- too much of a good thing can lose its flavor." Pick any paragraph in this story and you'll likely find a jewel. Here are a couple more I can't resist sharing. "Until you can decide for yourself what kind of a girl you are and then be you, with your own style and ways of feeling feminine, for the time being just pretend you're me. OK?" And: "Clean, as beautifully clean in your body's openings as I am in mine. This is very special, what we're doing tonight. I want your body to feel different on the inside as well as the outside. A woman should always feel fresh everywhere when she starts out on a date. Remember that. Whatever scents and fluids then fill her body should be those aroused by her lover." The pleasure of these paragraphs goes beyond--they are part of story, well- placed and with later reverberation. And yet the whole doesn't really satisfy. Maybe somebody wiser can explain why--or convince me I'm wrong. |