"Lessons in Lust" by Kid Dynamite. In the past, when I have reviewed D&s stories, I have been unable to understand the point of the stories. Why would anyone want to undergo degradation and humiliation in order to achieve a sexually submissive status? An analogy that I have used is this: if it's a bad idea for slave owners to beat people in order to make them pick cotton more efficiently, why is it a good idea to torture women (or men) in order to make them better sexual playthings?

This story gave me a different insight into D&s. It's about a college-age girl who is staying with her wealthy aunt and cousin and is being trained by them in the arts of lust. The "punishments" in this story consist not of whippings and electrical shocks (as in some other stories of this genre), but rather sexual "punishments," such as being brought to an orgasm under embarrassing circumstances or being required to reveal shameful thoughts to the mistress. In a certain sense these events are not really "punishments" - they feel bad only because they are associated with a sense of shame, and (according to the philosophy upon which the story is based) this sense of shame is false and should be abolished.

This is the first D&s story that has ever explained to me the meaning of the word "slut." Here is that the mistress in this story says about the slut: "The slut is a perfect creature. She is strong, free, self-possessed, and satisfied. The struggle inside you is the struggle between 'bad' and 'hot', is it not? These things all seem so 'bad'. You've probably said to yourself 'I'm a bad girl,' or 'I can't believe how bad I am.' Well, it's true. You are a bad girl, Lisa. These things are all 'bad'. So why do you do them? Because they're 'hot.' Bad equals hot, for you, doesn't it? You secretly long to be oh, so bad, because you feel it hit you right here.... "The slut is the woman who knows it's bad, but wants it anyway. Needs it. Longs for it. The heat inside her drives her beyond 'bad girl' and 'good girl', to simply 'slut'. The slut is the woman who listens to her instinct. Who ignores the pathetic notion of 'morality'. There is no 'morality', no 'right' or 'wrong'. No 'good' or 'bad'. Only one thing - pleasure. Only pleasure can free you from the hopelessly contradictory, confusing, impossible constraints that hold us back."

From the perspective expressed in the preceding paragraph, the girl receiving the "training in lust" is not a complete fool who wants to be degraded, but rather a person who is undergoing training that will make her superior to others. I personally don't buy this extreme hedonistic philosophy, but at least I can understand it. What I can especially understand is how sane people who lead wholesome lives could derive enjoyment from reading and thinking about such experiences.

Having said all these nice things (at least I meant them to be nice), I also have to add that parts of the story still seemed silly to me. At one point, for example, we have Lisa wandering about naked with a banana shoved up her cunt and a carrot up her ass, with just the carrot greens sticking out. Overall, however, it was a good story. One of the marks of a good author is that he/she can present a story in such a way as to make people who differ from those in the story suspend reality and temporarily see life from the perspective of the characters in the story. This author (whose very name destroys the serious mood of my review) successfully brought me to the point where I could say, "If I were Lisa, I think I would feel just the way she feels."