Message-ID: <38047asstr$1030594203@assm.asstr-mirror.org> Return-Path: <mmtwassel@aol.com> From: mmtwassel@aol.com (mat twassel) X-Original-Message-ID: <20020828211724.19304.00004093@mb-mg.aol.com> X-ASSTR-Original-Date: 29 Aug 2002 01:17:24 GMT Subject: {ASSM} Mat Twassel: Larry's Party of Not Quite Two (etc.) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 00:10:03 -0400 Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail Approved: <assm@asstr-mirror.org> Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d X-Archived-At: <URL:http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/Year2002/38047> X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation <story-ckought69@hotmail.com> X-Story-Submission: <ckought69@hotmail.com> X-Moderator-ID: kelly, Lambchop Daily erotica at: http://Calendar.atEROS.com ============================== Larry's Party of Not Quite Two by Mat Twassel ============================== Is it wrong to repost other people's newsgroup stories? I'm clueless about the legalities. It's easy enough to get conflicting opinions. What I wonder is: why would anyone want to repost other people's stories? It seems like strange behavior. At the same time, why would an author become upset at someone who reposted his newsgroup story? Isn't the whole idea to obtain readers? Maybe that's not the whole idea. Sure, an author might become miffed if his story were altered or otherwise damaged, or if he didn't get appropriate credit, be it praise or fame or hits or royalties, though one has to wonder about an author expecting royalties out of something he's exposing to anyone and everyone for free. In any event, seems to me a reposter should get permission before reposting. That would be the nice thing to do. The fine novel I'm now reading, Larry's Party, by Carol Shields, contains on its copyright page the following statement: Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. Jeez Louise! Oh, don't worry--I've obtained written permission from both the copyright owner and the above publisher. I'm not going to get into trouble for reproducing and transmitting that bit of warning. But unless you get similar dispensation, I'd advise against reading the passage aloud. Or committing it to memory. Committing any part of it to memory. Even the spaces, the pauses, the punctuation. Just to be on the safe side, you know. Now Jeez Louise is another matter. Somebody's probably copyrighted that expression, reserved all rights, and his bevies of lawyers are buzzarding my webpage even as we speak. You never know. Remember Pat Riley and 3-Peat? My own opinion (and it's worth less than zero in a court of law) is that a story or poem is not property any more than a kiss is property. The good man makes art for those who'd love it. One should own neither art nor utterance, fuck nor flatulence. It's easy for me to feel this way because no one has ever offered to buy any of my stories, no one has ever begged to have them reposted. If I made my living through my words, I'd probably be whimpering a different tune. This reminds me of something that riled me a few years back. We were visiting the Southwest, and we found ourselves up on a beautiful mountain owned by local Indians. The Indians demanded tourists pay a fee to take pictures of the mountain. Jeez Louise. If they'd made the mountain (molehill by molehill) maybe I'd have some sympathy. If they'd simply outlawed cameras, maybe I'd have been more understanding. Religious grounds, or some such. Should I be more tolerant? Is photography an appropriate cash crop, not different from tobacco or Brussels sprouts, begonias, casinos, or pornography? It's a tough world out there, but somebody's got to live in it. I don't mind being "on the road" but I wish I could have stayed at a posher hotel instead of the dreary middle- class chain out near the airport. Seems like I'm miles from anywhere. The parking lots of trucking and pallet companies stretch endlessly in all directions. Early evenings I try jogging. One day I lope several miles along the semi-rural highway, sticking well to the shoulder. Semi-trailer trucks rocketing by at sixty or seventy miles per hour do create quite the whoosh, blowing me sometimes almost into the weeds. I turn down a side-road, but after a hundred yards or so it peters out. There's a scruffy lot filled with many hundreds of damaged orange highway pylons--a barricade graveyard--and then there's a dead end sign. I go back. Another day I head out in a different direction, and after a mile or so I find a little park with bike paths leading into mounds and hubbles of wildflowers. What's this doing out in the middle of nowhere, I wonder. I'm a little timid about venturing into the park. There's a sign: No Dogs, which doesn't completely reassure me. The park is wonderful--miles of empty bike trail, acres of auburn-tipped reeds, and silvery spikes, and russety spindles of rustling woolly ground-growth, a splendid haze of muted end-of-summer shades; soon the setting sun pings the meadows, washes all gloriously golden. Eventually I turn around. On my way out a pretty girl on a bicycle pedals ardently towards me. This teenager's wearing a khaki backpack and a wary smile, and I wonder where she's going and where she's been. She whooshes by. What a difference from the trucks' stale and gassy perfumes! Wonder what it'd be like if she ran me down. I turn to watch her swing around the dip and curve I've just come up, but the sun is in my eyes and I can't see anything. Dinners are dreadful. Single men, truckers, most likely, spatter the hotel dining room, devouring their strip steaks with calm, mindless devotion. One evening some party of three couples sat near my corner; they chatted stupidly about the upcoming cruise. "It's so good to get away from the fornicating job," one old fellow said. "I can't wait to do some dancing and get furry and fat." "Oh, Cy," his middle-age partner sighed. The waitress asked if they'd want one check or what. "What," Cy answered, and his wife guffawed quietly but without grace. The chicken is dreadful. Guilelessly dry strips of tasteless white meat which effortlessly refuse to blend with the oily and ineffective sauce, the frayed, flavorless vegetables. And the angel-hair pasta promised by the menu is simple flat noodles instead. Be the restaurant bad or good, I always order the wrong thing. And where is that bottle of Sam Adams I asked for? Tara, the waitress, looks at first glance to be barely into her mid-teens. Medium height but slight of build, she resembles an eleven year old boy who's grown suddenly. Ordinary face. Bobbed hair. Not much ass at all. For some reason I think of ball bearings, smallish lead colored steel spheres coolly doing their jobs. She is neither friendly nor gruff nor gushy. Efficiently nondescript. When I look at her more closely I see she has to be older. Maybe even thirty. A woman getting through the day. Naturally I mean nothing to her. I don't try to make her smile. I order my Dreadful Chicken and bottle of Sam Adams with minimal fuss. I don't think about what it might be like to fuck her in the ass until much later in the evening. I tend not to have sexual thoughts in public situations. Maybe that's why the girl doesn't smile. My neighbor at dinner is a gray-white man not quite elderly, not quite flabby. He's reading a Mickey Spillane novel, a paperback, brand-new, just opened. Tara takes his order. She stands at attention and yet neat and easy, a firm little tree in a friendly park. Then the man, this mild-mannered ball-bearings salesman, says something to her, and she titters, and her right foot moves behind her left. If only she were facing me I'm sure I'd see her smile. Midnight is too late to call Laura again. We've already talked about which trees to have taken out, which to have pruned. I try to remember the feel of her body next to mine, her breath in my ear, and for a moment I have the silly thought that my imagination is keeping her awake. I am too tired to read anymore, too agitated to sleep. Maybe one of those sex movies on hotel TV? God I hate those things. They're much worse than ordinary TV. The average beer commercial is fifty time sexier. Nothing worse in the world than a hard core sex movie without sex, that is without juice or genitals. These hotel Nite-time flicks ought to be taken out and shot, burned at the stake, beheaded, boiled in oil, and fed Dreadful Chicken until it's all gone. These films have no plot, no characterization, no clever dialogue, just miserably bland fucking and sucking, but you don't get to see anything--all the "good" parts, anything of any value in a porn movie, are relentlessly concealed: no ardently erect phalluses come to life under a lovely girl's luscious tongue, no sweet juicy vaginas tremble in anticipation of cock, no triple X close-ups caress cocks and clits and assholes all bathed and basted and bursting with lubriciousness. What a waste of sex! Am I getting to be one of those who need to see gash and gush to get off? I guess so, he says, sporting a sad grin. What's a guy on the road to do? Fantasize about his waitress? I wonder what that machine oil salesman said to her. I'm hopeless at figuring this stuff. "Got anything good for me tonight?" Must be the way you say it. A certain secret inflection? Something in the eyes? In the vowels? "Would you care for any dessert?" Tara says. "Not right now," he says. "Maybe later?" she says, "In your room?" "Maybe," he says. "We have some specialties," she says. "Some specialty pies." "Mm," he says, "Home made, I'll bet. Are they good?" "Yes," she says. "They're good. They're very VERY good." "Ah," he says. "That does sound like something I might be interested in. How much are these specialty pies?" "Well, we have two types," she says. "The vanilla goes for a hundred. The devil's double fudge chocolate is two." "They both sound nice," he says. "You can have them both for two fifty. Should I deliver them, say around eleven-thirty?" "Ok," he says. "Just write your room number down on the check." Do you expect me to describe what happens in the salesman's room? (Just wondering.) I'm not sure I can imagine it. And anyway, don't you want to know a little more about these two people... before they get down to dessert? Are they married? Do they have kids? Are they happy with their lives these days? As eleven o'clock approaches, does the guy think: I wonder if that girl is really going to come up. And if she does, is she really going to have pies? Or is he sure of himself, of the situation? Does he log on to his laptop, check out his investments, delete the junk e- mail, read a short note from his daughter at college and dash off a reply. "Hugs, honey," he closes, "And all my love." And then, to get himself in the mood, not that he needs it, or just in case Tara doesn't show, he peruses some websites. "Mm, Taria," he mutters, "Wasn't that the name of that waitress? Couldn't actually be her, of course." And that page takes him to another which takes him to another which takes him ... A little after midnight Tara taps on his door. "Hi," she says, a slight whisper. "Sorry I'm late. You still want those pies?" "Come in," he says. She steps into the room. The laptop blazes on the table. "Computing?" she says, strolling over to it. "I had a couple of courses in it." "Oh," he says, "Then you know more than I do." "Prob'ly not," she says, reading the screen. "Dirty stuff, huh?" "Well," he says. She reads quietly but aloud. "Miles of empty bike trail, acres of auburn-tipped reeds, and silvery spikes, and russety spindles of rustling woolly ground-growth, a splendid haze of muted end-of-summer shades; soon the setting sun pings the meadows, washes all gloriously golden." "Kind of poetic," she says, "Maybe a little over-done for my taste. Not exactly Mickey Spillane, is it?" "I just..." She backs up a page. "Sperm in the sink. Ah ... now that's ..." But she doesn't finish this sentence, she just clicks off the laptop. "Why don't we go in your bathroom," she says, taking his hand. "Check out your sink and stuff." "Not much room," she says there, "But the mirror's big. And it's nice and bright. You'll be able to see everything. Oh, and you've got your bottle of lotion." She starts on his buttons. "Good. We might need a little of that." Etc. ============================== Larry's Party of Not Quite Two by Mat Twassel Mat's Erotic Calendar at http://calendar.atEros.com -- Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | alt.sex.stories.moderated ----- send stories to: <ckought69@hotmail.com> | | FAQ: <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/faq.html> Moderator: <story-ckought69@hotmail.com> | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Discuss this story and others in alt.sex.stories.d, look for subject {ASSD}| |Archive at <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org> Hosted by <http://www.asstr-mirror.org> | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+