Celestial Reviews 143 - Dec 14, 1996

Note:  I am compiling my Top 100 List for 1996.  It should not surprise 
you to know that “First Love” will probably be on that list.  It is still 
not clear to me who the author is of that story.  I would appreciate it 
if someone would tell me who wrote that story, so that I do not have to 
list it as Unknown Author.

Second Note:  For the past year I have been hoping to find time to write 
a sexy story that could teach vocabulary to horny young people who 
normally resist traditional vocabulary instruction.  Really bad teachers 
tell students that they can do better on the SAT by memorizing the 
definitions of a bunch of words.  This approach rarely works.  My plan 
has been to take a subset of those words and put them into a really good 
story.  Then the students would be instructed to read the story at least 
three times before the test.  I’m willing to bet that learners reading my 
story would score better on a test administered, say, a month after the 
original test than would students who were simply told to learn the list 
of words to prepare for a test.

Since I spend so much time reading and reviewing these stories, however, 
it is obvious to me that I’ll never write my story.  So I am proposing 
the Third Annual Celestial Writing Contest.  The story can be of any 
length, but students should reasonably be able to (and eager to) read it 
three times in one week.  It should use all of the words on the following 
list.  Preferably, it should use them in creative ways that enable 
learners to see their meaning in context, and it should use the words 
more than once - in fact, as often as possible without becoming silly.  
The story should not be obviously didactic - that is, it should be a 
story about sex, not about learning these words.

If this idea catches on, I’ll be happy to supply to the authors or to 
others a vocabulary test based on these words.  When I announce the 
winners and the authors post the stories, I’ll post the vocabulary test.  
Readers can use the test before and after they read the story to see if 
they actually learn the words.

Since the Christmas holidays are coming up, I’ll give you a generous 
deadline - January 15.  However, as I tell my students, don’t put this 
assignment off until the last minute.  Your best bet is to start now and 
then come back to it many times in the coming weeks.  It IS fair to 
communicate with others and even to take advantage of my proofreading 
service.  If you send me your story early enough, I’ll even give you 
feedback myself.

Here are the words (all taken from one of those SAT study lists): 
acerbic, adept, ameliorate, apocryphal, assuage, blithe, constrict, 
credulous, dilatory, egregious, fatuous, guile, hedonism, impervious, 
incipient, irascible, lethargy, mundane, prolific, redundant.  It’s OK to 
use alternate forms of these words - for example, blithely instead of 
blithe or incredulous for credulous.

All 20 of these are words that intelligent people use when the context 
calls for them (Quite possibly I may have used them here in Celestial 
Reviews.), but most high school students have no idea what they mean.  
They are useful words; and if you write a story with them, at the very 
least YOU will probably learn some functional vocabulary words.

Have fun!  And thanks to Mark Aster for accidentally giving me the 
stimulus to suggest this contest.

- Celeste

      “Bike Rides” by Dulcinea (sexy bike ride) 10, 9, 9
      “A Fireside Love” by Ron Glick (masturbation &
            dreamlike sex) 5, 8, 9
      “Panties” by Tom Bombadil (bdsm) 9.5, 10, 10
      “Eating Out” by Unknown Author (threesome) 9, 8, 8
      “Dreaming” by Unknown Author (sexy tryst) 7, 6, 6
      “Young Stuff” by Jefferson James (teenager rape) 7, 8, 7
      “Restless Memories” by Poppet (female masturbating)
            10, 10, 10
      “Positive Therapy” by Sam Phencer (hospital sex) 6, 7, 7
      "Chauffeur's Dirty Job" by Caesar (employee humps boss’s
            drunken wife) 10, 10, 10
      “Cousin Tanda” by Unknown Author (youthful frolic with 
            a cousin) 9.5, 9, 9

“Bike Rides” by Dulcinea (Dulcinea97@aol.com).  The man and woman are 
racing their bikes.  I suppose he could overtake her, but he enjoys the 
view from behind - muscles, buttocks, and all that.  In fact, he sort of 
envies the bicycle seat - right there between her legs, up tight against 
her pussy - well, you get the idea.  It’s enough to give a guy a hard-on, 
and a boner makes it difficult to race a bicycle. Is that a bicycle pump 
in his pocket, or is he just happy to see her?  This is a very short, 
pleasant, and sexy story.

Ratings for “Bike Rides”
Athena (technical quality):10
Venus (plot & character): 9
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9
 
“A Fireside Love” by Ron Glick (phoenixprime@marsweb.com).  This story 
describes a woman masturbating in front of a cozy fireplace.  Then a 
mysterious lover joins her, and together they rise to new heights of 
ecstasy.

In a preface the author states that he changed from the first person in 
an original version to a second person narrative in this version.  He 
says that this didn’t catch on with magazines, which have apparently 
rejected the story.  My advice is that it’s not the “person” that stands 
in the way of publishing a story like this. {Actually, “he” is the THIRD 
person.}  The problem is with numerous other grammatical errors - such as 
verb tense and verb agreement and slightly awkward sentence structures.  
I say this not to be unfriendly, but to offer encouragement.  This story 
is highly erotic - almost poetic in many places.  The author should take 
advantage of my free proofreading service or at least have an {initially} 
unaroused friend proofread his stories before posting them.  The result 
would almost certainly be an exciting improvement in the quality of his 
stories.

Now remember: I’m being friendly; but this sentence is simply too good to 
pass up: “Abandoned is his sense of gentile behavior.”  Since the 
sentence means that the lover expresses his lust more forcefully, I think 
the author meant to say “gentle.”  As written, the sentence seems to 
suggest on-the-spot circumcision.

Ratings for “A Fireside Love”
Athena (technical quality): 5
Venus (plot & character): 8
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9
 
“Panties” by Tom Bombadil (stbush@iglou.com).  The title refers to the 
fact that various people (the ones who are not constantly naked) often 
have to change their panties, because they have become severely moistened 
through sexual stimulation, usually resulting from observation of ambient 
nudity and concomitant fantasies but sometimes from more direct 
involvement in the action.

The protagonist takes a job as a sort of governess for a rich family.  
Her main responsibilities are to look after the children and occasionally 
to administer discipline. In America, such people are known as teachers.

The author says he tried to write a deirdresque story.  In a way, he has 
come up short, because Deirdre would never write a story this long.  That 
is, there tends to be an inverse relationship between deirdreness and 
story length.  Other than that, the story does a good job of expressing 
the logical irrationality of a Deirdre-style story.

Ratings for “Panties”
Athena (technical quality): 9.5
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
 
“Eating Out” by Unknown Author.  This story’s title may deceive you.  You 
probably thought it was about a guy and a girl having oral sex, but 
actually it’s about two young ladies who run a catering service.  But 
then, you see, what turns them on the most is sharing a guy, putting on a 
little lezzie show for him and getting him really horny before they fuck 
him.  This story describes one of their escapades when they do just that.  
A good time is had by all; and you may have been right about that title 
after all.

Ratings for “Eating Out”
Athena (technical quality): 9
Venus (plot & character): 8
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 8
 
“Dreaming” by Unknown Author.  This melodramatic little THC repost tells 
of a man and a woman who pull together their “tattered lives” by 
consummating the love that they began in cyberspace.  Isn’t the Internet 
wonderful? “So blindly they tumble on, down the path to fulfillment, 
finally seeing the light ahead, in the absence of the whistling train.”  
That metaphor escaped me too.  The story has potential, but it’s 
carelessly written, overly dramatic, and incompletely developed.

Ratings for “Dreaming”
Athena (technical quality): 7
Venus (plot & character): 6
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 6
 
“Young Stuff” by Jefferson James (Tymm@cris.com). She couldn't be more 
than 11 or 12 years old, with long, straight, sandy brown hair and big 
green eyes, wearing a pair of slutty-looking hot pants and a halter top.  
He’s 6’3” and 300 pounds of biker-style hormones, working as a bouncer at 
a club that she’s trying to get into.  She wants to go backstage; and his 
fatherly spirit leads him to try to scare her off by telling her that 
she’ll have to suck his cock first. She doesn’t scare that easily.  She 
doesn’t give him a real blowjob; she doesn’t  play with his balls, stroke 
his dick, or even move her head. She just sucks on his cock like it’s a 
straw. But, being a swell guy, he doesn’t want to discourage her. So, 
rather than tell her what she’s doing wrong, he decides to face-fuck her.  
Then he lets her visit a dressing room, and after that he rapes her.  He 
gets caught raping her, but the other guy just joins in.  The story ends 
with these words: “Sure, Chrissie was tight. But, in my opinion, she was 
a pretty lame fuck.”

I found the story to be depressing.  I have known girls to act this way, 
and the guy didn’t even really enjoy what he did to her.  Aside from a 
lot of messed up grammar, this is a reasonably good description of no-win 
sex that benefits no one.

Ratings for “Young Stuff”
Athena (technical quality): 7
Venus (plot & character): 8
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 7
 
“Restless Memories” by Poppet (woodruff@bobcat.ent.ohiou.edu).  The woman 
wakes up in the middle of the night, thinking of her lover, who is not 
there.  So she masturbates while she thinks of him.  That’s all there is 
to it, but it’s a very good story.  I know the feeling, and I know the 
response.

I suspect that this was written to excite the lust of an unknown 
recipient in cyberspace.  Second-person narratives rooted in chat groups 
usually are weak stories, but this one is in a class with Dulcinea’s best 
erotic snippets.  Read it, if you need a quickie.

Ratings for “Restless Memories”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
 
“Positive Therapy” by Sam Phencer (phencers@spowell.demon.co.uk).  
Caitlin is a sexy nurse.  The patient in Intensive Care was the victim of 
an accident three months ago, seemingly uninjured except for a blow to 
his head which had rendered him completely unconscious, oblivious to any 
form of stimulation, such as needle pricks, scratches, or other 
intrusions inflicted by numerous doctors trying to coax him back from his 
nearly comatose state.  The title is “Positive Therapy.”  What do you 
think will happen?  The doctors have simply been using the wrong form of 
stimulation.

One night, while Caitlin is holding his penis in her hands (That’s how 
Swedish nurses take the pulse of male patients), she feels it twitch.  
Quickly, she administers mouth to cock resuscitation. It works! Not right 
away - but when Caitlin returns the next day, Sleeping Beauty has been 
moved out of intensive care.

This is a nice little story, but it has even more interesting potential.  
In the canonization of Catholic saints, the saint-makers have to 
attribute miracles to the candidate for sainthood.  Now what if this 
young man’s mother had been praying to, say, Blessed Anthony Beelzebub 
for a cure from his hopeless state?  Caitlin never did report her 
therapy, but the guy was cured.  It would be possible that Blessed 
Anthony could gain sainthood under false pretenses.  This may sound 
farfetched, but one day when I was younger my Dad threw away the little 
plastic Saint Christopher statue that he used to keep in the car.  He 
explained that the Church had just decided that there was no St. 
Christopher after all.  You don’t suppose....

This story suffers from faulty grammar and sentence structure.  I suspect 
that English is not the author’s native language. If that’s the case, he 
does better than most of us English speakers would do in a second 
language. The language barrier not only causes grammar errors, it also 
makes the entire story seem a bit stilted. The story would have benefited 
from someone proofreading it before the author posted it.

Ratings for “Positive Therapy”
Athena (technical quality): 6
Venus (plot & character): 7
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 7

"Chauffeur's Dirty Job" by Caesar (caesar@bigrock.com).  When the 
chauffeur is asked to drive the intoxicated wife home, she comes on to 
him by masturbating wildly in the back seat of the limousine.  By  the 
time he pulls the car over to have sex with her, she is asleep in her 
drunken stupor.  He screws her anyway, and she wakes up mumbling the 
name of a third party - neither the chauffeur nor the husband.  

This is an edited version of a story that originally included a large 
number of typographical errors (usually correctly spelled but wrong 
words) that were often extremely distracting.  This story proves the 
value of proofreading.  Those errors are now gone, and this has become 
a very good story.

Ratings for “Chauffeur's Dirty Job”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

“Cousin Tanda” by Unknown Author (editor@spellbinder.bc.ca).  The guy has 
been staying on the farm with his cousin Tanda.  One morning she awakens 
him early and asks him to join her in some voyeurism.  By that I mean 
they watch some pigs copulate.  There may be something to the old theory 
of “Monkey see, monkey do,” because immediately afterward Tanda asks him 
if he’d like to have a shot at it - with her, of course, not with a pig.  
They do pretty well!

This is a short, but very good story.  It was presented as a sort of an 
advertisement for Lust So Stories, who have a web site at 
http://spellbinder.bc.ca/lss/.

Ratings for “Cousin Tanda”
Athena (technical quality): 9.5
Venus (plot & character): 9
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9


