The Annex Reviews, March 2003
3/30/03 ~Sex and Sheer Silliness~ New Year's Eve Barbie (TooMuchTime); Princess Zowie and the Royal Wedding, Parts 1 - 3 (Simplex); Harem Slave (Don); Next Door and Plotting Wives (Lance); The Fruits of Indifference, Part 1 (Peter); Book Notes: Kiss and Makeup, by Gene Simmons
3/23/03
My, what's to do when you're a gorgeous 19-year-old who's been kidnapped and sold into sex slavery? Not much, except to squat with your hoo-hoo impaled on a lubricated metal rod as would-be purchasers diddle your clit. If you like the idea of naked women pumping themselves up and down like oversexed carousel ponies you'll like this story, which is actually an excerpt from a published BDSM novel. Though it didn't say anything new to me beyond that one memorable slave-pump scene, the excerpt did compare favorably with the amateur erotica I've read, though the voice was less distinct... not surprising because it is, after all, a commercial piece, and thereby trying to appeal to the broadest taste. Still worth a look, though.
The Virgin Sacrifice [A-]
Here's another girl-in-peril story, this one by an author who seems to be trying to create an entirely new genre: pulp erotica, a homage to action-adventure magazines of the 1930s and 40s spiced up with a modern sexual explicitness. I suspect the covers of the magazines (which, nine times out of ten, featured some screaming young woman bound and imperiled) have contributed more to such a revival than the contents, which are almost unreadable by today's standards.
The author announces the setting in the beginning as "The Amazon jungle, 1937." Luscious young virgin Mary Elizabeth Austin has been captured by a neo-Aztec Indian tribe known as the Mazketl (though what they're doing in the Amazon Basin, thousands of miles away from their Central American origins, is unknown) and is about to be sacrificed to the gods. The whole story is, in fact, an extended description of this setup: the helplessness of the girl, the impassivity and cruelty of the natives, combine with the sexual aspects of the ritual itself to create a word-picture that struck me as an attempt to make one of those lurid covers come to life:
She's rescued in the nick of time; this is no darkfic tale. I thought the story entertaining but not very engaging. I wouldn't read it again, for example, even though I'm inclined to like trashy pulp tales. I think the problem was it was too polite. It wasn't outrageous enough, or porny enough, or cruel enough, or ironic enough; it reminded less of an original story and more of fanfic, where the writer is embellishing on and going deeper into a particular scene from a favorite movie or TV show for a fellow fan, the consumer of such media. As such it's odd beast neither fowl nor fish. This is one story where a touch of self-conscious parody is needed, as in AFresh Sto's "XXPulp: Earth vs. Tyranno-X" (8/10/02 reviews). Nevertheless, the fantasy did do a fair evocation of a 1930s pulp story, if perhaps less purple (and less fun) than the original.
Chattel Acres [A+]
This story may the ultimate girl-in-peril one, and a candidate for the ultimate girl-as-livestock one as well. It's from way back when, 1999 to be precise, posted to ASS newsgroup only as an attached text file bearing the cryptic title "This group needs some stories." There's no author credit attached, which is a shame, as I'd really like to know who wrote it. Whoever it is, male or female, they have a detailed, fevered imagination for dystopian slave fiction rivaling that of Neuralmancer and Joshua Ryan: "Everyone's heard about Chattel Acres by now, but nobody knows the whole story. Well, almost nobody. You see, we did a real good job on the cleanup. If it hadn't been for that one damn news helicopter's footage, the story probably would never had made the news. But it did, and the Acres decided to make one last profit by taking advantage of the publicity to sell this story."
And what a story it is... hapless female captives ruthlessly exploited for sex, snuff entertainment, human milk (through lactation drugs) and forced pregnancies for black market baby adoptions. New arrivals get the full slave treatment (collaring, branding -- both cheeks -- and nipple and labia piercings) and are milked with sadistic humor described as thus:
Later, when the slaves' usefulness is over, they give up their skin ("tanned and used to produce a leather which was the finest and most supple anywhere"), their edible flesh ("very special bratwurst made right there at the farm"), and even the hair from their heads, which is sold for wigs. At this point the story takes a serious turn into snuff and cannibalism as a human cow's last moments are vividly described and a decadent couple purchase another two cows to be heavily tortured, then barbecued together over a firepit. Not for everyone (and I hope not) but if you like your reading material to go to extremes, you can't get any more extreme than this.
Ugly: A Monster's Story [A+]
Here's a story told from the viewpoint of the monster, a human one, who sexually menaces a young human female. The narrator is a 'coyote' who smuggles illegal aliens into the United States for a hefty fee. An accident has left his face horribly scarred and cut off his right arm below the elbow. As such, he has no recourse but to visit prostitutes to have healthy sex life (if one can consider such a practice an element of a healthy sex life.) One day an educated couple and their children come to him wanting his services, and he is struck by the deep bonds of love between them. Finally acknowledging what he so deeply wants, he cuts a deal with them to have the wife serve as his "mistress" for four days:
Oh, sex is no problem. Sex can be performed, but love is more subtle, it does not bend to the will of man.
Elizabeth cooked for me, she washed my clothes, she cleaned my house. She performed the duties of wife. Yes, all the duties of wife... I had resolved that by the end of the four days, at least she should not hate me. Love was out of the question, I'm not a fool. But if I could keep house with this good woman for four days, and at the end she should not hate me, that would be something. Something small perhaps, something insignificant to you readers, whole of body and mind. But for me, something to cherish.
However, the brief affair has consequences he didn't foresee, and the story took off in another direction altogether, surprising me. Nothing is resolved in a 100% happy way, yet it's very true to life, where there are gradations of relative happiness rather than absolute. This was an excellent story, a bit rough in the first quarter (where there were more than a few grammar and spelling errors) yet it kept me reading. I was drawn into it by the author's total sympathy with his character, who is dignified, not self-pitying, yet very aware of what he lacks. I also liked the story's structure, which for a change was not linear (as the previous three stories were, and most of porn is) but jumped back and forth in time, comparing and contrasting; a little confusing to read at first, but very effective for the tale that was being told.
3/30/03
Thirteen year old Roger receives a mysterious Christmas
gift from his mysterious uncle, a globe-trotting
photographer with a penchant for busty blondes. The gift
consists of two vials of powder from Australian
tribesmen which causes objects to grow and shrink. More
specifically, the first powder makes a toy or model
representation of an object become real and three-
dimensional, with the second reversing the effect. So,
bored and left home alone on New Year's Eve, Roger
experiments, and comes up with the perfect subject, his
sister's Barbie doll:
Barbie has an amusingly chirpy personality that seems
inspired from the scene in "Toy Story 2" where a whole
tribe of Barbies live it up in their plastic dream home
and toy camper. It's not long before Roger decides to
experiment sexually, with humorous consequences.
"Did you ... um ... want to touch it?" Roger asked.
"Yes, I think I would like that very much. May I?"
"Um. Sure. Feel free."
"Excellent!" Barbie said, resuming use of her favorite
word, then stepped forward and fell to her knees. At
first, she just eyed his cock up, moving her head to one
side, then the other, as if to get a better look at it.
Then, bringing her face very close to it, she reached
her hand out tentatively, and touched it with one
finger. Then she touched it again, this time pushing
the head down and bit and releasing, making it twang.
Which brought her no end of delight, apparently, because
she started to giggle. "Your penis is so cool!"
Roger blushed. "Well ... thanks. I like to think so."
Barbie twanged it a few more times. "Are all penises as
fun as yours is?"
At the end of the evening when the parents return Barbie is transformed back into being a doll, leaving Roger the wiser. This was an enjoyable story, more for its subject matter than its style. Its simplicity, in fact, reminded me of a generically written children's book in places. Yet the characterization of the doll was memorable in her enthusiastic naivete (seeing she has real tits instead of plastic ones, she gleefully jumps up and down to watch them jiggle) and the boy was nicely done too, being experimental without being brutal. In fact, the whole thing read like an example story from a textbook on writing, which is a compliment to the author, but I do wish there had been more of the sheer zaniness of the situation.
Princess Zowie and the Royal Wedding, Parts 1 - 3 [C+]
Here's a tale that could have been either humorous or very whacked. It had a tone similar to "The Prince" (the 1/18/03 reviews) and I wonder if it wasn't translated from Japanese, or written by a native Japanese speaker in imitation of a favorite anime. A hentai, or sexually explicit, anime that is. Such animes feature a disconcerting mixture of hardcore fetish action with cutie-pie characters and plot, a combination difficult for Western audiences to understand, as we tend to separate hardcore and whimsy.
Princess Zowie (there were a bunch of crazy Engrish
names in here, see engrish.com for more) is the leader
of the kingdom of Ullandra and her ministers have
advised her to marry. She is a lusty free-loving sort
and not enthusiastic about it, but nevertheless she
complies and begins to seek a mate. Her sometime lover
Bonalot has sex with his lover on the side, and a group
of other oddly named characters also have sex; nothing
much else happens. A unique feature of this kingdom is
that all females are able to lactate when sexually
aroused, so you get passages like:
"Oh Sheila!" cried out Zowie cumming hard, trembling
suddenly. So sensitive were her massive boobs that she had
easy orgasms quickly when they were suckled and played with.
Over and over again. I don't recommend this as it was plotless and confusing, but if you can figure it out, are a breast milk enthusiast, and like anime girls, you may like it. However, I had to bow out after the third chapter.
Harem Slave [B-]
Here's another very silly tale in which it's hard to gauge exactly how silly the author meant it to be. Sheera is a young slave in a Middle East fantasy world who has been raised to serve in a harem. At the age of 16, at the height of her beauty ("Her golden brown skin was the color of fine beach sand and her long hair was the color of honey. She had large brown eyes framed by high cheeks. Her sensuous mouth was framed by lips the color of cherry. Her large breasts looked as if they had melted off her body, like candle wax." Lady Cyrrh's note: What the hell??) she is given to the Prince of Kalimari and serves in his harem as events of the kingdom unfold around her -- a defeat at the Battle of Parmesan by the Army of Tiramisu, after which he has the Duke of Fettucine reorganize the royal forces. I *think* the author meant these Italian menu names as a joke, but there was nothing particularly spoofy about the rest of the story, so I'm not sure what they're doing there. How hard would it have been it make up some pseudo-Arabic names, or pick them off a map? Anyway, Sheera is handed over to Alexander Placko -- another weird name -- the general in charge of the new campaign, and since she secretly longs for a man to dominate her the two get along very well, with time-honored utterances like "You wonderful little cock sucker. You're going to make me cum again" on the part of the general. It was hard to know what to make of this story, whether it was a parody, a sexual fairy tale for grownups, a domination story, or what. It read like the author didn't put a lot of thought into it, and didn't do any editing. This was surprising since he also wrote the excellent "Plaything" science fiction series of genetically altered sex workers (6/20/02 reviews) a series which struck me as being better crafted and more humorous. In sum, pleasant in places, but lightweight and, well, silly; the strongest impression it gave was those outlandish names. Which isn't a good thing.
Next Door and Plotting Wives [B]
Two neighboring couples share a pleasant relationship
until their spouses go away on business trips. Under
pretense of dropping of a wrongly delivered package Eddy
has morning coffee with Liz, who comes out with a
zinger: "Katherine,
told me once that you were pretty well endowed. Is that
true?" which leads her to an offer of spouse-swapping
with the dumfounded Eddy, with videotapes exchanged.
Nonstop then sex ensues:
"Do it you huge man. Put your cream way up there inside
me where no man has ever been before."
Hmm, she's 50 years old and married, so "where no man has ever been before" doesn't make sense, as she's not a virgin anymore, right? I felt pretty indifferent to this story. The plot wasn't very interesting, and the sex, as illustrated by the excerpt, was stereotypical. There weren't even any plotting wives, as the two of them reached their concord easily enough. However, aside from the caveman sex, there wasn't anything too objectionable about the story either; so, a B, for a quick read that wasn't very memorable.
The Fruits of Indifference, Part 1 [B-]
This was part one of what is a longer story that seems to be a revenge one from the first two paragraphs. Kevin Ralston is a young man with a lot of problems. Fatherless and ignored by his alcoholic mom, he has drifted into drug dealing, leading to his being arrested and sent to juvenile hall for four months; embarrassment ensues when he returns to high school. He suspects one of his teachers was responsible for the bust, and I was prepared for a male teen revenge tale on an older, attractive female, but the story then took a turn into Jerry Springer territory: Kevin drops out, drifts through a series of low-paying jobs, and spends all his time screwing his overweight, slutty girlfriend Tina, spending her hard-earned waitress cash on beer and drugs. Tina lives with her poor but upright mom who works two jobs to pay for their pre-fab townhouse (just a step above a trailer park) and when mom sees the two going at it she's livid. But a confrontation with the shiftless Kevin only leads to 40-ish mom being raped and humiliated, after which he bows out ("I don't know... don't worry about it," Kevin replied coyly. "I was simply told that it was time to leave... See ya." With that simple, sarcastically polite gesture, Kevin was out the door, leaving the two generations of the Shantz females to tear each other apart.") This was another story that was an "eh" experience for me. The writer tried to work up sympathy for Kevin's rough life in the beginning only to lose it at the trailer-trash part, and I felt, as the story was titled, indifferent, even though, as with "Next Door and Plotting Wives" there wasn't anything too objectionable about it. Well, okay, on a second pass the trailer trash characters weren't very pleasant to read about, and certainly not very sexy. Maybe there are people out there who get turn-ons from watching Jerry Springer and the like, but as a fetish it didn't really speak to me. Perhaps if some humor was there it would have been more enjoyable, but the author took the whole thing very seriously. And perhaps if the protagonist had been a dangerous, smoldering rebel along the lines of, say, an Eminem or Johnny Depp out to create sexual havoc -- by working through his own existential pain -- I might have liked it more. But the character was flat, and I didn't get any sense of why he did the things he did, or how he felt about them. Could have been better.
Book Notes:
Kiss and Makeup by Gene Simmons
The Tongue speaks! Anyone who's lived through the 70s has got to remember KISS. Even if you didn't like them, or thought, as I did, they were sexually suspect, it was pretty hard not to have some visceral reaction to the Demon, the Cat, the Starchild, and the Space Ace. They were everywhere. Lunchboxes, tshirts, belt buckles, you name it. In the decades since the merchandising has only gotten wider. Now there are video games, motorcycles, and even Kiss Kaskets for your eternal rest. I'd always thought such merchandising was a fluke, a byproduct of the band's popularity. But according to Gene Simmons in his biography, it was a carefully crafted part of the KISS business plan from day one, cooked up him and Paul Stanley, the group's two coleaders. Not bad for a Jewish boy from Queens. Or an only son born to Hungarian refugee parents in Israel, a scifi and comic book nut who planned the band's image from the very beginning as "The Beatles on steroids" who would become a brand name and cultural icon akin to Mickey Mouse. I thought all this was very interesting, as I'd never thought much about Gene Simmons before, save he had a very large tongue. I was more partial to the Space Ace; sorry, Gene, but the Demon character did seem a bit lacking in the intelligence department. Happily, that is not so, and Gene has written a fascinating, genial biography about his life both before and after the mighty KISS. For ASSM readers, Gene discusses his sex life a bit, not revealing details (he is a nice Jewish boy after all) but admitting, as a sex addict in all but name, he slept with literally thousands of girls, taking intimate Polaroid snapshots of most of them, a hobby he claims is less damaging than liquor or drugs. He's also fairly indiscriminate, his partners including a deaf girl, big-name celebrities Diana Ross and Cher, and a sexagenarian limo driver. You go Gene! The book also has a nice selection of pictures, some of the band in their early years, and lots of candid photos from recent decades. The picture of Gene with his mom is a winner. Want to join the KISS army, but missed the boat? Read this book.
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