"Find a Penny..." by J Boswell (Ole Joe repost). Guest review by BronwenSM.
We start with the narrator today, reminiscing on the beach in the Nineties, and then go into flashback.... It's the Sixties, and our hero is a not-so-hip freshman in a big Eastern city just before long hair and hash took over the campuses.
His group's moral code also predates the Summer of Love. Although loving and responsive, his steady girlfriend wants to hold onto her virginity - and his frustration is what drives the events that follow. It's a story about growing up. Boy meets girl, boy cheats on girl, boy owns up, girl dumps him, second girl was only playing games...
"Life was simple and fun, and I had it by the balls and knew it," says the narrator. By the end of this section he's beginning to see that life isn't always quite that simple. (There's more of this story to come - for which I am grateful!)
This story is well-constructed with interesting characters you can care about. As an Englishwoman, I found the writer's powers of observation made an essentially foreign scene vivid to me. Take out the most explicit sexual passages and you could publish this story a lot of places. Personally, though, I think taking the sex out would be a real waste - as it is horny and authentic. This is a good story, but it as a story I will remember it rather than a turn-on - though this doesn't mean it wasn't a turn-on, rather that this wasn't its main appeal.