Celestial Reviews 100 - July 17, 1996

Note:  Wow!  A hundred issues of Celestial Reviews!  Whoda thunk it?  
In honor of this occasion I am publishing as separate posts brief 
summary lists of the 848 stories I have reviewed in the first 99 
issues.  I hope these lists help you find lots of good stories.

Second Note:  The people who write these stories do not get paid for 
doing so.  Their main motivations for writing these stories are (1) the 
inherent pleasure that comes from writing a good story and (2) the 
feedback they get from readers.  Plus I guess the activity can improve 
their sex lives.  I strongly urge you to take the time to communicate 
with the authors.  You don’t have to have cybersex with them; just tell 
them what you think of their stories.  If you like a story, send a note 
to the author and tell him/her what you thought of the story.  If you 
do this once a month or so, you’ll make the lonely recluses who write 
these stories feel good, and you’ll increase the probability that we’ll 
continue to see good stories on a.s.s.

- Celeste

      “Dating Ritual" by Michael K. Smith (rough adolescent
            sex) 10, 10, 10
      “Family Ties” by Uncle Mike (sitcom parody) 
            10, 9. 8
      “WKRP in Cincinnati” by Uncle Mike (sitcom parody) 
            10, 9. 8
      “Diana” by Mary Anne Mohanraj (mysterious outdoor sex) 
            10, 10, 10
      “Trust Me!” by Vickie Tern (transgender femdom) 
           10, 10, 10
      “Celeste” by Marjorie Cartwright (prostitution) 10, 9.5, 9.5
     *"Spare Change" by Dafney Dewitt (control) 10, 10, 10
      “A First Time” by Abel Wisman (ff sex) 4, 4, 4
      “Roman Orgy” by Marcus Van Heller (orgy) 9, 5, 5
      “Penelope Pitstop’s Picnic of Peril” by S. Sneakly (cartoon
            parody) 6, 10, 10
      “Sundown” by Wolfgang Amadeus (blind date romance)
            9, 10, 10
     *“Jacuzzi” by Wolfgang Amadeus (threeway sex in the 
            jacuzzi) 7, 9, 9
      “Susan” by Caesar (office sex) 9.5, 8, 8
      “Gilligan Mashukah” by Richard Dunstan (sitcom parody)
            10, 10, 10

* = Repost of a previous review (because the story was recently
      reposted).

“Dating Ritual" by Michael K. Smith (mksmith@metronet.com).  This is a 
vivid description of a date during which the fifteen-year-old girl is 
forced by peer pressure to engage in sex that isn’t very pleasant for 
her.  I’m sure many people will read this as a description of a really 
great date or of the “good ole days.”  I found it to be a brutally 
realistic but sad story.  I never went out on a date with a boy who 
forced me into anal sex or made me lick his cock clean after he stuck 
it into my ass.  {I might add that although I myself enjoy consensual 
anal sex; anal rape is likely to be painful and unhealthy.  The anal 
orifice doesn’t self-lubricate during arousal, as does the pussy; and 
so when some jerk forces himself in, the activity is likely to tear 
tissue.  This may sound like fun; but it can lead to medical problems.  
In addition, anal rape in real life is a very good way to get and give 
AIDS.}  I never dated anyone just to prove that I could take his cock 
just as well as any other slut could.  I know girls who acted like 
that, and I don’t know any of them who look as happy at this time of 
life as I feel.  I guess I’m lucky I bought into my parents’ system of 
morality and self respect.

I try not to do moral lectures, and I know there are no teenagers 
reading this review or this story.  Here is my lecture.  Don’t do what 
they do in this story.  Have sex only with someone you love and trust.  
But it’s OK to read this story as soon as you’re old enough so that 
nobody is breaking any laws.

This is still a good story.  I just suggest that you think twice if you 
think this sounds like a lot of fun.  I don’t think the author saw it 
that way, nor did I.

Ratings for “Dating Ritual”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

 “Family Ties” by Uncle Mike (fr582@cleveland.Freenet.Edu).  All the 
members of the Keaton family are going on a family camping trip, except 
Alyse, who has a cold and must stay home alone.  Nick the Boyfriend has 
prepared some spiked orange juice with which to console himself in the 
wilds.  Unfortunately, Nick leaves his brew at the Keaton house, and 
Alyse wolfs it down in an attempt to ingest some vitamin C.  Skippy 
comes by to visit, and the drunken Mrs. Keaton comes on to him.  He 
fucks her a couple of times and leaves just as the others are returning 
from their miserable trip.

This story would have had more potential if more of the family members 
had been in it.  Having Skippy fuck Alyse is probably not the most 
creative way to parody this series.

Ratings for “Family Ties”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 9
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 8

“WKRP in Cincinnati” by Uncle Mike (fr582@cleveland.Freenet.Edu).  
Jennifer is feeling horny.  She has agreed to baby-sit for a large 
Russian wolfhound while its owner went to dinner with Herb.  When 
Jennifer crawls under the desk to get a piece of paper, she gets stuck 
there; and she finds it not entirely unpleasant when she finds the dog 
licking and then fucking her panty-less cunt.  In gratitude, she even 
gives the hound a blow job.  Aside from this healthy dose of 
bestiality, the story also contains humor that runs generally parallel 
to that in the TV series.

Ratings for “WKRP in Cincinnati”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 9
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 8

“Diana” by Mary Anne Mohanraj (moh2@midway.uchicago.edu).  The young 
man, just a few years out of college and a bit disillusioned with the 
way his life has gone, has gone off for a couple of days of hiking in 
the Berkshire forest.  Thinking he is alone, he is surprised to hear 
the sound of a woman’s voice; and when he follows that sound he comes 
to a clearing in which there are seven blonde women and one red-head - 
all beautiful and all naked.  What has he stumbled onto?  He realizes 
that he won’t be welcome, and he starts to retreat; but suddenly he is 
summoned to join them.  Does this sound interesting?  Then read this 
well-written story.  If you’re familiar with Robert Frost’s poetry, 
you’ll probably get a little more out of it than you would otherwise.  
And it won’t hurt to recall that Diana was the Roman goddess of the 
hunt and of the moon and the protectress or women.  

I love this author!  I’m tempted to make my students read this story 
for English class, but then I’d have to explain where I got it.  
Actually, it will be easier simply to forbid them to read it; they’ll 
enjoy it more that way.

Ratings for “Diana”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

“Trust Me!” by Vickie Tern (VickieTern@aol.com).  The man has become 
fascinated with cross-dressing.  Since he works alone out of his home, 
he is able to spend most of his daytime hours dressed in woman’s garb.  
His wife, whom he loves dearly, has always been skeptical; but suddenly 
she has become supportive and has actively encouraged him to go even 
further - to live the life of a woman.  The man can become the best 
friend that the wife always wanted.  As the title suggests, his wife 
asks him to put his complete trust in her, and she will see to it that 
he gains the happiness he has been seeking.

Things escalate.  They go to spend a weekend at an expensive resort.  
The wife asks the man to trust her a little further. She confesses that 
she has been having sex regularly with Ben, her boss. Ben is the 
greatest lay a girl could ever hope for, and she’s going to spend the 
entire night with him in the adjacent room. In fact if a day or two 
passes when they don’t make love, she starts to daydream about him and 
can't tend to business.  But so that the man won't feel left out, the 
wife is going to ask Ben to make love to him first.  She wants her 
husband (or girlfriend - or whatever he/she is now) to make  love to 
Ben with real desire in every move. And she wants the husband to watch 
them fuck at least once, before they close him out and do their private 
things together for the rest of the night.  Infidelity has been 
redefined as sharing!

This author specializes in stories about women who know what they want 
and what other people really want, and who know how to sell it to them. 
This is another good, clever story of that genre. This author also 
specializes in introducing unusual (almost grotesque) complexities that 
actually make sense.  As this story evolves, there are a huge number of 
additional plot details and explanations that I haven’t mentioned.  I 
didn’t find them to be exactly erotic; but I did find them to be 
extremely creative.  When I got to the end, everything actually did 
make sense.

I am not interested in changing my gender, nor am I attracted to living 
my life with a man who becomes a woman.  Since this is a long story, I 
was unable to finish it last night; and so I went to bed and woke up my 
husband and asked him if he thought I would still love him if he became 
a woman.  Usually when I wake him up after reading a story he humps me 
like a madman; but this story did not have that impact.  I figured 
maybe it was a complex thought for the middle of the night; and so I 
asked him again at breakfast.  He said, “Certainly!”  Then he kissed me 
and suggested that I read a different story.

Ratings for “Trust Me!”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

“Celeste” by Marjorie Cartwright (71022.251@compuserve.com).  This is 
an excerpt from a Spectrum novel (http://users.aol.com/specpress).  An 
American sociologist has been doing scholarly research on prostitution.  
As a final step she has gone underground as a prostitute in Paris. In 
this first chapter we see her reactions as she is first passed over by 
a prospective client, then is hired and awkwardly performs sexual 
favors for money.  This first chapter concludes with a surprise ending 
that is supposed to make readers want to read the rest of the book.

I’m necessarily a bit skeptical about over-praising a novel based on 
just a first chapter, but I found what I have seen so far to be quite 
absorbing.  I had the feeling that I was reading a really fascinating 
sociological study with a human-interest and erotic twist - kind of 
like Oprah gone to the bordello.

Ratings for “Celeste”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 9.5
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9.5

*"Spare Change" by Dafney Dewitt (dafneyd@ix.netcom.com).  The 
preceding story (“Celeste” by Marjorie Cartwright) reminded me of this 
story; and since this story happened to be reposted just recently, I 
decided to repost this review.

This is not a sexy story.  If you want to get a hard on or get your 
juices flowing, I am almost certain that this story will not help you.  
As a matter of fact, the story nearly made me gag.  Literally.  On the 
other hand, this is a very GOOD story.  It's an example of what we 
literature teachers call Naturalism.  That is, it goes beyond realism 
and shows how really fucked up life can be.  This is also an example of 
excellent feminist writing - although I cannot say for sure that the 
author is a female.  It's a thought-provoking commentary on how some 
men treat women.

The story focuses on an affluent man and a beggar woman.  The man 
decides to get his sexual jollies by humiliating the woman, and she 
turns the tables on him in a very interesting way.  

This is also the first story that I know for sure has gone through my 
Volunteer Proofreading Service.  I cannot comment on what the story 
would have been like without that assistance, but right now it's an 
excellent story.  (Rating: 10)

Ratings for “Spare Change”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

“A First Time” by Abel Wisman (able@pi.net).  The girl unexpectedly 
meets an old female friend.  The friend invites her home for a cup of 
coffee, but instead they make passionate love.  It turns out that the 
friend’s husband has been watching; and the affair is a major turn-on 
for everyone.

This story was written in Dutch and translated into English.  It shows 
obvious signs that it is a translation.  The first thing the author 
should do is get an English spellcheck.  In addition to the language 
problems, the story suffers from a lack of plot development.  Two 
people meet and fuck; that’s really all there is to the story.  I think 
this author plans to write more, and I hope to see some rapid 
improvement.

Ratings for “A First Time”
Athena (technical quality): 4
Venus (plot & character): 4
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 4

“Roman Orgy” by Marcus Van Heller (71022.251@compuserve.com). This is 
an excerpt from a Spectrum novel (http://users.aol.com/specpress).  I’m 
not exactly a Latin scholar, but I did enjoy studying the Latin 
language in both high school and college.  I was first introduced to 
the term “Roman orgy” by a nun, and I had no idea what she was talking 
about except that it involved sin. The Romans, as the nun told us, 
sought pleasure as an end in itself; and that was bad - in fact, that 
sort of thing eventually caused the Roman Empire to decline and fall.  
She was an incredibly fat nun, and I assumed that she knew what she was 
talking about and that it involved eating.  I went home and asked my 
mother about orgies, and she told me (1) that the word was pronounced 
with a soft gee, and (2) that orgies involved wild sexual excess and 
that I should probably refrain from orgies until I was at least 21 and 
had moved out of her house.  Much later in life I watched a movie about 
a Roman orgy, in which bad actors and actresses engaged in sex without 
any real purpose or plot.  As far as I know, that nun may have directed 
the movie.

So you can easily imagine the eager anticipation with which I returned 
to my days of yesteryear and to this opportunity to renew my scholarly 
study of Roman orgies.  I was disappointed.  Rather than an orgy, this 
was a story of a banquet at which a rape occurred.  True, the other 
people were also going to rape the Egyptian slave girl, and maybe the 
Spanish dancers would return to get raped as well, and we weren’t sure 
how the senator’s wife would react; but there was nothing uniquely 
erotic or Roman about this story.  The problem may lie in the fact that 
all I saw was the first chapter, but this excerpt did not leave me with 
a longing for the good ole days of ancient Rome.

In conclusion, let me adapt a joke I heard recently: Two students of 
Latin met at a Roman orgy.  He asked her to conjugate. She declined.  
{Maybe you have to be a cunning linguist to enjoy that one!}

Ratings for “Roman Orgy”
Athena (technical quality): 9
Venus (plot & character): 5
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 5

“Penelope Pitstop’s Picnic of Peril” by S. Sneakly 
(an571192@anon.penet.fi).  I have concluded that it is impossible 
during a single lifetime to have great sex at least five times a week 
during one’s entire adult life, to read and understand all the Great 
Books, and to watch all the great cartoons on American television.  I 
myself have failed to various degrees in meeting these lofty standards 
that I once set for myself during a metaphorical private orgy of New 
Year’s resolutions.  I could never really get excited about either 
Thoreau or Kant, and I cannot remember watching even a single episode 
of Penelope Pitstop.  However, after reading this story, it occurs to 
me that maybe I have missed something in my life.

As I understand it, the author of this treatise spent a great part of 
his younger years watching ‘The Adventures of Penelope Pitstop” on 
television.  Apparently the villain in this series (Sylvester Sneekley 
who turns into the Hooded Claw) routinely tormented the lovely Ms. 
Pitstop in various interesting ways, and as the author graduated to 
adolescence and then (possibly) to adulthood, it became obvious to him 
that the scenes that had initially appealed to him as exciting but 
childish adventures were actually fraught with sexual potential and 
symbolism.  And so, in an attempt to get his sex life back in order, 
the author has written an episode of that cartoon that tells it like it 
really should have been told.

I need not relate the specifics.  Suffice it to say that the villain 
masturbates while incubating his plan, then captures Penelope, then has 
sex with her, then describes to her in detail how she will be killed by 
an ingenious Rube Goldberg device that Wylie Coyote would admire, then 
goes to a convenient spot to masturbate and tries to time his orgasm to 
occur at the moment of Penelope’s excruciatingly painful but artistic 
demise when the ore hopper will drop her onto the conveyer to the giant 
rock crusher where the monster machine will munch her little muff to 
end this meaty melodrama.

Actually, my ignorance of this story is perhaps excusable.  The 
original cartoon appears to be of British, not American origin.  The 
villain rides a “lift” and has a “boot” in his car in which he carries 
his tools and would like to carry off the oddly named Penelope, who is 
referred to as “perky,” an adjective normally applied only to the 
breasts of American women but to the whole persona of their British 
counterparts.

This story is extremely creative.  It follows my rules for a good 
sexual parody: it retains the key ideas of the original cartoon series 
and inserts sex in a natural way in order to make the story really fun.  
The main problem is that the grammar is very bad; but most readers will 
be willing to excuse this shortcoming.  In addition, the language 
connoisseur will find some simple but interesting usage mistakes that 
make the story even more fun:  the grand finally (finale) occurs while 
Penelope is in the throws (throes) of orgasm, all be it (albeit) nearly 
naked.  Furthermore, from a cunning linguistic point of view, the 
absorbing and attractive alliterations nearly make up for the bad 
grammar, as (for example) when the villain directs his deadly dick 
toward the delicious denouement of the dastardly deed of penetrating 
the pink partitions of poor Penelope Pitstop's pulchritudinous pussy.

Ratings for “Penelope Pitstop’s Picnic of Peril”
Athena (technical quality):6
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

“Sundown” by Wolfgang Amadeus (an648468@anon.penet.fi).  The lady is 
out on a blind date at the Sundowner Lounge and is looking for a way to 
end it, when she spots a guy that she would _really_ like to date.  It 
turns out her blind date knows the new guy; and when the blind date’s 
pager summons him elsewhere, the new guy offers to take her home.  They 
dance awhile and then have a very hot and romantic first time together.  
The author does a good job of describing the magical way those first 
times are supposed to be.  It’s an excellent fantasy.

Ratings for “Sundown”
Athena (technical quality):9
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

*“Jacuzzi” by Wolfgang Amadeus (Wolfang@world.net).  This is a repost 
of a story by the author of the previous story.  A woman is alone in a 
large Canadian city for what portends to be a boring evening.  {I’m 
guessing Canada, because of subtle clues.}  The city rolls up its 
sidewalks at 6:00 on weekday evenings.  She plans to go to the hotel’s 
fitness center after dinner.  During dinner she makes eye contact with 
both members of an attractive couple at a nearby table.  To her 
pleasant surprise she later finds them in the jacuzzi and they are 
interested in getting to know her much more intimately.

Sexual foreplay in a jacuzzi is a naturally hot fantasy for me; and so 
I liked this story, even though it had proofreading problems.  In 
addition, I honestly cannot see why the author used the second-person 
narrative.  My guess is that both problems arose because the author 
wrote this as part of a cyber-romance; the recipient was turned on by 
it and encouraged him to post it.  She was right to encourage him to 
post it:  this has the potential to be a hot story.  However, she was 
wrong to think that without at least minor revisions it would be as 
good for the general public as it was for her.  On the other hand, 
these ratings are pretty good for a semi-final draft!

Ratings for “Jacuzzi”
Athena (technical quality): 7
Venus (plot & character): 9
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9


“Susan” by Caesar (jsharpe@portal.ca).  The guy has won the lottery or 
something equivalent to that.  He has come into the office to tell his 
boss that he no longer needs the job.  The boss is a big lady who 
seizes the initiative and asks him if he has come in to tell her to 
“fuck off.”  He doesn’t even like her, but soon he finds his throbbing 
cock in her hands, with the boss asking him if there was anything else 
he needed.  It seems that she wants to redefine the relationship; and 
she always did like him best of all the employees.  By strange 
coincidence, she used to think of him when she masturbated.  Imagine 
that!  He fucks her, but he still doesn’t like her.  He tells her he’ll 
give her a call, and gets the hell out of there.

Ratings for “Susan”
Athena (technical quality):9.5
Venus (plot & character): 8
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 8

 “Gilligan Mashukah” by Richard Dunstan richard.dunstan@indiefilm.com).  
Last week I reviewed Shelby Bush’s parody of “Gilligan’s Island.”  I 
considered that to be one of the best sitcom parodies ever posted on 
alt.sex.stories.  This one is not yet finished; but from what I have 
seen, it promises to be very good.  I’ll do a full review of this story 
as soon as the author finishes it.  As the author points out in his 
introduction, “Gilligan” displayed a surreal, nonsensical quality in 
that the three single men on the show never lost complete control of 
themselves while faced with the delectable feminine pulchritude of 
Ginger and Mary Ann.  For the show’s audience, however, the predicament 
of Mary Ann and Ginger fueled many an adolescent sexual fantasy; and 
stories like this one will strike a resonant chord in the mind of many 
a reader.

Ratings for “Gilligan Mashukah”
Athena (technical quality):10
Venus (plot & character): 9
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10


