Celestial Reviews 58 - Feb 3, 1996

Note:  The proofreading service is in full operation, and people are 
reporting successful use of it.  I am directly aware of just a few 
cases in which proofread stories have been submitted for review, and 
they have been excellent stories.  I assume at least part of this is 
because the proofreading has paid off.  Of course, other authors have 
probably been submitting their stories without calling them to my 
attention.

I would like to know how well this is working.  If you have proofread 
or have received the service and have not communicated with me about 
your experience, please try to take a moment to do so.  If you offered 
to proofread, I should have sent you something by now; if this has not 
happened, you may want to contact me again.  In addition, if you 
offered to proofread and have decided not to do it after all, please 
contact me.

This proofreading service is necessarily loosely organized.  (like, 
we're dealing with psudonyms, anonymous mailers, and people who are 
paranoid that their bosses will find out what they're doing.)  Mistakes 
occur for strange reasons.  I have tried to contact proofreaders and 
have been informed that the "mail cannot be delivered."  Sometimes 
anonymous addresses get changed suddenly.  Sometimes I think I just 
plain screw up and make the connection incorrectly.  Please be patient.  
Neither I nor the proofreaders get paid for this good job. We do this 
because we like to read erotic stories or because we love the human 
race or because football season is over and we hate professional 
basketball.  

If you were assigned to a proofreader that seems to have forgotten that 
you exist - or if you received an assignment to proofread for someone 
who never corresponds with you - either be patient or contact me for a 
new arrangement.

Second note:  I have adopted the practice of posting the new issue of 
CR on alt.sex.stories every Wednesday and Saturday, if possible.  When 
I do this, I am also posting the previous issue (as well as the current 
issue) on a.s.s.d.  This should be helpful to people who miss the first 
posting.  This week I am reposting CR 57 and 58 on a.s.s.d., but only 
CR 58 on a.s.s.  

Third note: Steve Black has set up a Web Site for Celestial Reviews at 
http://www.missouri.edu/~c621097/reviews/celeste.html. This is an 
outstanding service that I truly appreciate. Two other persons are 
trying to work on Web Sites that will make some of the stories 
available.  One will deal with the Top 100 List and another with 
current stories.  I want to stress that I have no relationship with any 
of these persons (except, perhaps, in our mutual fantasies).  I assume 
they are doing this as a public service, and I myself certainly make no 
money from any of these enterprises.  All I ever do in return is 
continue to write my reviews and occasionally offer a free 
advertisement like this one.

- Celeste

      "Tryout" by Deirdre (bdsm) 9
      "Tutor" by Deirdre (sexual training) 9
      "Twin" by Deirdre (identity problems) 10
      "Girls' Night Out" by Vickie Tern (consensual feminization)
            10
      "Wherefore Art Thou, O'Mighty Thighmaster?" by 
            Anonymous (mindless mayhem) 1

"Tryout" by Deirdre.  The woman knows her husband is interested in 
bdsm, but she herself does not want to participate in such practices.  
She decides that it would be OK with her if he did it with another 
woman, but she doesn't want him to go out trolling on her own; so she 
decides to select one for him.  She finds a good candidate, gives her a 
brief tryout, and finds her to be acceptable.  When she mentions this 
to another friend at lunch, that friend says that SHE would like to be 
her husband's partner!  The plot thickens; it seems that the friend 
already has some sort of relationship with the other candidate.  You'll 
have to read the story to see what happens.  (Rating: 9)

"Tutor" by Deirdre.  Jim is not living up to the narrator's 
expectations as a lover, and Charlene offers to go to bed with him to 
teach him to be a good lover.  That may sound like a harmless idea.  
However, the moral of the story is that things can "get complicated 
when we get past 18...." This story validates my personal belief that 
surrogates may not always be a good idea.  On the other hand, by the 
end of the story the narrator was having more orgasms than she had ever 
had before.  (Rating: 9)

"Twin" by Deirdre.  Many moons ago, I stated in this column that 
Deirdre deliberately writes with several different styles.  I made that 
observation because the style of the narrator in the story I was 
reviewing was not one of my favorites.  In her disclaimer to the 
present story Deirdre herself says: "It's possible that you have 
noticed that for some of my main character/narrators, the elevator 
doesn't quite reach the top floor. (If you are just now learning 
English, then there's an idiom you can study)  The problem is that I 
prefer to write stories with the main character narrating, but I also 
like to keep secrets from the main character.  Thus if I let the reader 
in on a secret, then the main character isn't thinking things through 
very well. If I'm lucky, they just seem distracted.  Otherwise . . ."  
Deirdre put it better than I did (elevators usually are better 
metaphors than moons), but for once I was more succinct.  This subtle 
aspect of Deirdre's style (adapting the language and logic to that of 
the narrator) is one of the strengths of her writing.

On to the present story: "Twins."  One night, the narrator's usually 
passive girlfriend starts fucking his brains out in an unusually 
aggressive, passionate manner.  This is fine with him; but midway 
through the second performance, he hears a noise in the house.  He goes 
looking for a prowler, but he finds a naked woman bound and gagged in 
another room.  His girlfriend hastily explains that this is her twin 
sister, who has come to town and would do anything to keep her (the 
girlfriend) from being happy.  "Best to leave her gagged and teach her 
a lesson by fucking her in the ass," says she.

Now, go ahead and guess the rest of the plot.  Under these 
circumstances, were I the boyfriend and granted that we have twins 
here, I would at least entertain the possibility that it is the 
girlfriend who is bound and gagged on the floor and the evil twin 
sister who has been fucking my brains out.  Instead the guy says to 
himself, "Gee, my girlfriend sure is talking different!" and proceeds 
to sodomize the damsel in bondage.

Well, I've given away the secret to the story; but that's because my 
elevator goes higher than this guy's has gone in many moons.  But you 
would have figured out the secret yourself anyway, and there's still 
another half of the story to go.  Here's another secret: according to 
her disclaimer Deirdre _expected_ you to figure this out; and for the 
rest of the story you get to participate in a sort of dramatic irony by 
knowing something the boyfriend doesn't know - or do you? It gets 
pretty interesting trying to figure out whose bones the guy is jumping, 
who he's marrying, and who it is that has him tied spread-eagle on the 
bed.  (Rating: 10)

"Girls' Night Out" by Vickie Tern (VickieTern@aol.com). The author 
describes this as mainly a consensual feminization story.  What that 
means is that the narrator is a person named Henry who has decided to 
make a voluntary switch from a male to a female identity in order to 
please his wife.  Whenever I read a feminization story, I predict that 
I'm going to have trouble identifying with the characters, because I 
have never wanted to be a man, nor do I have any interest in my husband 
becoming a woman.  (Of course, in a previous life I did reign as king 
of a major part of Africa, and more recently I was the first Maytag 
repairman in Clyde, Ohio; but those are different stories.)  However, 
true to form, almost as soon as I got into this story I forgot about my 
identity problems and just sat back and enjoyed a good story - over 
17,000 words all at one sitting!

The story starts in the middle of the action, with Henry dressed as a 
woman, ready to go out for a night on the town with his wife Bea and 
her friend Pearl.  The next several paragraphs backtrack to explain how 
Henry got into this predicament.  At this point the author goes into a 
brief lecture on how men and women differ during their mid-life crises.  
This is the least interesting part of the story, because it's more like 
an essay than a story; but it's a pretty good essay.  Anyway, the basic 
premise of the story is that Bea is turning 40 and has wanted to 
celebrate with an intimate night out on the town with just her two 
dearest friends: Pearl (who already qualified) and Henry (who has 
undergone a thorough transformation since Bea's 39th.). 

The bulk of the story is what happens during the "night out."  Mostly 
they tell their stories - focusing on events in the distant past that 
were turning points or of special significance in their lives.  Like 
Henry, most readers will have viewed Pearl as a petty jerk; but by the 
time she gets finished telling her story, we come to love her.  This 
story within a story technique is extremely effective.

After the storytelling, the women (including Henry, who has become 
Honey) pair off with men they meet in the bar.  At this point it 
occurred to me that I really didn't know how complete Honey's 
transition was.  He/she had been taking medication (probably hormonal) 
and would have distinctly feminine characteristics as well as emotions; 
but I assumed she still had a cock.  What was she going to do with the 
guy she began to neck with?

You'll have to read the story to learn more.  The author herself 
considers this to be her best work.  I still like both "NICE" and "Sooo 
Sweet" better.  But I can see her point.  This was a more difficult 
story to write; and I can see why her pride in this accomplishment 
would make her feel especially good about this story. (Rating: 10)

"Wherefore Art Thou, O'Mighty Thighmaster?" by Anonymous (and 
understandably so) (an433945@anon.penet.fi).  This is an excellent 
example of a really bad story.  Aspiring authors should read this story 
just to identify mistakes to avoid.  Really.  Here's how you yourself 
can write a hot sex story like this one:

(1) Have a general plot and then start writing. As soon as you get an 
idea write it down.  Then keep piling your ideas one on top of another 
until eventually something neat happens.  Pretty soon nobody will be 
able to figure out what the plot is.

(2) When you finish the story, set it aside for at least five minutes, 
while you relieve one of nature's needs or something; then read through 
the story. You'll think of new ideas.  Just insert them wherever you 
think of them; that's what a word processor is for.  But never delete a 
thought once you've written it down and never rearrange what you have 
written in order to make it make better sense.

(3) Don't worry about grammar.  You're writing for sex maniacs, not 
nerds.  For example, if you want to use "she" ambiguously in a 
sentence, sometimes referring to a wagon and sometimes to a female 
person, readers should be able to figure this out.

(4) When (if) you reread parts of your story and can't even yourself 
remember what you meant by a passage, put the passage in ALL CAPS for 
emphasis.

(5) Don't let the dictionary stand in your way.  For example, if you 
think "wherefore" means "where," then go with the W word for the first 
word of your title.  After all, every kid who has never read Romeo and 
Juliet knows that when What's Her Name said, "Wherefore art thou 
Romeo?" she was asking for his geographical coordinates.

(6) Even when using informal language or slang, fuck tradition!  For 
example, never mind that most people use the term "buck naked" - go 
ahead and say BUTT NAKED and put it in caps.  Nobody knows where the 
term "buck naked" came from anyway.

(7) Don't let school subjects bother you.  For example, either math or 
biology might inform you that it's extremely unlikely that one of the 
Monet twins would be 19 and the other 15 years old; but you don't want 
to be a nerd; so stick with the twin theory - even if it is irrelevant 
to the plot of the story.

(8) Don't worry about whether something is actually possible.  If you 
can write it down and it's about sex (or at least about defecation or 
neat forms of torture), it belongs in the story.

On a more serious note: the following sentence brought back childhood 
memories:

    "With all her might, Carrie struck her as her head jolted 
      forward knocking off Becki's glasses."

    The first joke I can ever remember a teacher telling was: 
    "Do you see this nail?  When I nod my head, hit it as hard 
     as you can with that sledge hammer!"

The joke had something to do with pronoun antecedents, a topic about 
which this author does not claim expertise.  There must be a sexual 
version of that joke out there somewhere, and I'd like to hear it.

Incredibly enough, this story actually does have potential.  I really 
mean that.  It could become a weird tale about a kid's odyssey while 
towing naked peers in her little red wagon. The author merely needs to 
break at least seven of the eight rules I cited above the next time he 
revises this story.  Even in its present form it's almost half as good 
as a rejected episode of Beevis and Butthead.  (Rating: 1)

GRAMMAR TIP OF THE WEEK: I have received some critical comments about 
my discussion of the fewer/less distinction. I have taken the 
discussion to the gurus of alt.usage.english.  What I have found out is 
that some pretty important people use "less" when traditional grammar 
would demand "fewer."  So if you screw up, you're in good company.  On 
the other hand, there is a distinction; and I think it's a distinction 
worth keeping myself, although I don't intend to put the mistake in the 
same category with lie/lay errors.

The following is a variation of the discussion I posted in 
alt.usage.english.  This version is more fun to read, because on 
alt.usage.english I left out all the sexual examples.

The best discussion I have seen of fewer/less is in Theodore M. 
Bernstein's "The Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage" (New 
York: Atheneum, 1965).  There is a more complete but less focused 
discussion on pages 592-594 of Webster's Dictionary of English Usage 
(Merriam-Webster, 1989).

Bernstein expresses the succinct rule as "use less for quantity and 
fewer for number."  He adds that the problem is to distinguish whether 
it is quantity or number that is being spoken of.  I think the best way 
to summarize it is to say, "If the thought focuses on a reduction in 
individually countable items, use fewer."

He cites the following as INcorrect: "Not many of these buildings are 
fewer than thirty years old."  He says that "less" would be more 
appropriate, because the thought here is not on individual years but on 
a period of time.  He gives the following as another example of 
INcorrect usage: "Some professors earn fewer than $7500 a year."  He 
says to make it "less," because the thought is not of separate dollars 
but of a sum of money. (Actually, it would be nice to make it "more" - 
but then $7500 wasn't all that bad in 1965!)

"She earned less money by turning fewer tricks." is a perfect example.  
"Fewer money" would be incorrect, because the focus (the thought, in 
Bernstein's terms) is on the accumulation of wealth, not the collection 
of individual things called moneys.  On the other hand, if the sentence 
focused on blow jobs, it would say, "She earned fewer blow jobs by 
turning fewer tricks."  That's because it makes sense to count 
individual blow jobs.  However, if we use "sex" instead of "jobs," the 
correct statement would be, "She earned less sex by turning fewer 
tricks."

Sometimes (but not always) the decision is simplified by the fact that 
"fewer" never occurs with a singular noun indicating quantity.  "Fewer 
money" and "fewer weight" never occur; it's always less "less money" 
and "less weight."

The confusion occurs because any attempt at concrete measurement 
necessarily involves some sort of counting; and this might make it seem 
that "fewer" might always be appropriate - even in the obviously absurd 
case of "fewer money."  Bernstein's focus on the _thought_ helps me see 
beyond this narrow focus.  If the focus of the thought is on a 
reduction in items that would be counted individually, then I use 
"fewer."  If the focus is on a reduction in a continuous quantity, I 
use "less."  This seems to work well for me.

      His dick was less than eight inches long. (Thought focuses 
           on length, not individual inches.)
      We fucked fewer than six times last week. (Individual
            occurrences)
      She has had sex with fewer than five people in her entire
            life.  (Specific count of people)
      Actually, she came continuously for less than two minutes. 
           (Accumulation of time, not focus on isolated minutes)

I hope this helps.  I think the solution is to focus on doing MORE of 
all of the above.  "More" is the opposite of both "fewer" and "less."  
Hence, there is a grammatical basis for our inherent need for self-
gratification.


