"Longing" by kollontai (amadora@hotmail.com). {Guest Review} Kollontai (who posts as "La Amadora", and has email addresses as both "kollontai" and "amadora") is a newcomer to a.s.s.*, but her first three stories show a great deal of promise. The first two, short-shorts called "Taken" and "The Orgy", are intense surreal pieces (see Celestial Reviews 191). Her latest posting, "Longing", is much more realistic, and quite effective.

I've never had a really long-term long-distance relationship, but I do remember some pretty hot cross-town phone calls as a teenager. This was phone-petting rather than phone-sex, but it was memorable, and kollontai's story effectively brings back those memories. The narrator (in New Jersey) is talking to her lover (in Massachusetts) on the telephone, and missing each other and longing for each other they quite convincingly make love through that little wire. If MIT proves too much for him, this boy has a real future in phone sex! (He may actually be a bit TOO good at it; I did once or twice suspect that we were going to have a surprise ending where it turned out he was a professional phone-fantasy operator. A real amateur lover might not be quite as perfectly-spoken in this situation; but the author makes it easy to suspend disbelief here.)

Despite some problems with "lie" and "lay", and using "cum" as a verb (a pet hate of mine), kollontai has given us a hot sexy romantic story. People in long-distance relationships should study it carefully!