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Message-ID: <30162asstr$989136605@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: mmtwassel@aol.com (mat twassel)
Subject: {ASSM} {REVIEW} My Favorite Dulcinea Stories -- Mat Twassel
Date: Sun,  6 May 2001 04:10:05 -0400
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My Favorite Dulcinea Stories


In preparation for the upcoming Dulcinea Memorial Festival, I've 
been rereading the Dulcinea stories.  My favorite is one called 
"Helping Hand."  In this story the guy gets up on a chair to 
straighten a curio cabinet which is slightly askew, and somehow 
the support cracks.  He's left holding the cabinet against the 
wall, unable to get down off the chair.  He asks his wife for a 
helping hand.  Naturally she obliges.  Only about 380 words, 
"Helping Hand" would be too short for the Memorial Contest, but it 
is so completely delicious that I showed it to my wife.  I thought 
maybe she'd be inspired to write something for the contest. 

"What do you think?" I asked her.  

"I don't understand it," she said.  "How come he had to stand on 
the chair?"  

"The curio cabinet," I answered.  

"But isn't that awfully high for a curio cabinet?  I don't get 
it."  

"Maybe it's over a fireplace," I suggested. "Maybe you need some 
suspension of disbelief?" 

"Mm, maybe," Laura said, "But I don't remember anything about a 
fireplace."  

"Dulcinea doesn't put stuff like fireplaces in her stories," I 
told Laura.  "She pretty much sticks to the bare minimum."  

"Okay," Laura said, "But when she was helping him, would there be 
room for all that... that sex stuff?" 

"I think so."  

"Get up on a chair," Laura said.  "Pretend you're holding up a 
curio cabinet.  Let's see."  

We pretended.  Yes, there is room for all that.


Another of my favorite Dulcinea stories is Ice Cream.  Maybe 
that's because I really like ice cream. Maybe it's because I 
really like sex.  Mmm, sex and ice cream.  This story, too, is not 
perfectly typical of Dulcinea stories. It's set in an ice cream 
parlor whereas most Dulcinea stories are set in the home, but an 
ice cream parlor isn't exactly exotic.  Dulcinea's settings are 
almost always ordinary places.  What's a little different about 
Ice Cream is that it makes important use of secondary characters, 
in this case a group of college kids who, along with her husband, 
are in the ice cream parlor watching the Dulcinea character lick 
her cone.  Ah, the way she licks that cone!  And what she says to 
the college boys as she and her guy are leaving.  Later today I'm 
going to show this story to Laura, and then I'm going to suggest 
we go out and get some ice cream.  Vanilla ice cream, in honor of 
Dulcinea, whose stories are the epitome of vanilla, all light, 
sexy fun, not a hint of darkness or truly distressing conflict. 

Another of my favorite Dulcinea stories, "At the Movies," also has 
an important secondary character, the usher, who represents 
perhaps the closest thing to a threat in any of the "typical" 
Dulcinea stories.  The man and woman are fooling around during the 
show, and suddenly, at just the wrong moment, or just the right 
moment, the usher is about to discover them.  One of the things I 
like about this story is the ending, which is a little richer and 
more complicated than that most Dulcinea stories, though the 
writing is not complicated at all.

The endings to most Dulcinea stories are a little soft.  Maybe 
they're like the gentle, relaxed fuzziness which one might feel 
after especially nice sex.  A sort of sleepy playfulness.  One of 
my favorite of such Dulcinea endings is the one in "Down by the 
Tracks."  

    She smiled, letting her hands roam his body, 
    letting herself totally relax in his arms. 
    "Honey!" she said suddenly, licking his chest. 
    "Did I ever tell you how much I like boats?"

This story also has a great beginning:  She had a "thing" for 
trains.

In between we're treated to a most delightful picnic in the woods 
not far from a train tracks. Here, too, the mild possibility that 
the couple might be observed adds some spice to the story, but 
discovery is not he main thing: the main thing is a nice couple in 
love, pleasing each other sexually.  Lust plays  a part, but it is 
lust in the service of love.  You might want to compare Dulcinea's 
sex scene in "Down by the Tracks" with a scene from the Henry 
Miller novel, Tropic of Capricorn.  Miller, who is not a favorite 
of mine, vividly describes a sexual encounter between his 15 year 
old hero and the boy's piano teacher, Lola, a girl in her mid 
twenties who has been flirting with him:

     Anyway, one night I was lying in the grass near 
     the railroad tracks; it was a sweltering summer's 
     night and people were lying about anywhere and 
     everywhere, like panting dogs.  I wasn't thinking 
     of Lola at all--I was just mooning there, too hot 
     to think about anything.  Suddenly I see a woman 
     coming along the narrow cinderpath. I'm lying 
     sprawled out on the embankment and nobody around 
     that I can notice.  The woman is coming along 
     slowly, head down, as though she were dreaming.  
     As she gets close I recognize her.  "Lola!" I 
     call. "Lola!"  She seems really astonished to see 
     me there. "Why, what are you doing here?" she 
     says, and with that she sits down beside me on 
     the embankment.  I didn't bother to answer her.  
     I didn't say a word--I just crawled over her and 
     flattened her.  "Not here, please," she begged, 
     but I paid no attention. I got my hand between 
     her legs, all tangled up in that thick sporran of 
     hers, and she was sopping wet, like a horse 
     slavering.  It was my first fuck, by Jesus, and 
     it had to be that a train would come along and 
     shower hot sparks over us.  Lola was terrified. 
     It was her first fuck too, I guess, and she 
     probably needed it more than I, but when she felt 
     the sparks she wanted to tear loose.  It was like 
     trying to hold down a wild mare.  I couldn't keep 
     her down, no matter how I wrestled with her.

So those are my four Dulcinea favorites.

1. Helping Hand
2. Down By the Tracks
3. Ice Cream
4. At the Movies

Some others I especially like are:

5. D Is for Driving
6. To the Point
7. E Is for Eyeliner
8. Pickles
9. One of Those Days
10. Hiccups
11. Welcome Home


In general a Dulcinea story which works shows the joy of a 
companionable couple's sexuality.  You can see that in all the 
stories.  It's by no means true that all the stories are the same: 
I like different things in these stories.  Sometimes it is a 
particular image or a particular idea.  In "To the Point," for 
example, she's making a poster for work, and he gets excited 
watching her blow the dust from the tips of his freshly sharpened 
pencils. He gets even more excited not long later when she does 
approximately the same thing to the tip of his cock.  I like those 
images and those ideas.  Not only are the images simple and 
special here, there's a simple but special transition which is one 
of the best in all of Dulcinea.  In the end, though, what it is is 
the same in at least one respect: nice people having nice sex.

--Mat Twassel

Dulcinea stories may be found at:

 http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/BitBard/www/forray/dulcinea/

~~~
Here is a copy of the official Dulcinea Contest Announcement

The Announcement:

  We invite participation in The Dulcinea Memorial Writing Festival
  which celebrates one of ASSD's best known and admired writers. The
  late Dulcinea's stories are available at
  http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/BitBard/www/forray/dulcinea/

  The Festival shall be a collection of stories to be written in the
  manner of "the typical Dulcinea story". For the purposes of the
  Festival, "the typical Dulcinea story" is defined as:

  - involving the young, married couple who appeared nameless in
  most of Dulcinea's stories,

  - being at least 600 words long but no longer than 1,100 words
  (excluding titles, disclaimers and the like),

  - correctly coded as (MF rom cons). Light bondage and pregnancy
    are also permissible and, where they appear, the commensurate
    additional story code should also appear.  Note that oral sex is
    common in Dulcinea stories and is implicitly included in Dulcinea's
    MF code.

  The story must reflect the codes used. Use of other codes, not
  being typical of Dulcinea, is not permitted.

  The judging process shall be controlled by the Festival Director,
  Mr. Rui Jorge or, failing him, Mr. Mat Twassel or Father Ignatius.

  Anyone may enter by e-mailing his/her story in plain text to the
  Festival Director, Rui Jorge (rjnp@my-deja.com) before the
  deadline for submissions, which is:

  ***** 24h00 GMT, Sunday 20th May 2001.

  Late entries shall not be accepted. Entries that are shorter than
  600 words or longer than 1,100 words (excluding titles,
  disclaimers and the like) shall not be accepted.  If it comes to
  the notice of the Festival Directorate that a story has been
  plagiarised, it shall be disqualified.

  What is not forbidden is permitted.  While the Festival
  Directorate expresses a preference for stories composed especially
  for this festival, the rules of the competition do not forbid the
  submission of stories previously posted, hopper stories,
  collaborations, multiple entries and so forth. Anyone not on the
  judging panel may enter.


  JUDGING PANEL

  The judges are:

   Allison George    
   Desdmona22  
   Janey 
   Lisala  
   Mary Anne Mohanraj  
   Neneh99  
   Vickie Morgan  
   Virago Blue  


  JUDGING.

  The Festival Director shall remove authors' names from their
  stories.  Each story shall be submitted in this "anonymised" form
  to each judge.

  Each judge shall consider, in her own subjective opinion, the
  quality of each story and whether or not that story is "a typical
  Dulcinea story" as defined above.  Each judge shall award each
  story a rating of "gold", "silver", "bronze" or "dross",
  reflecting its literary merits as she, personally, perceives them.
  Judges are not constrained to distribute awards in any particular
  pattern. For example, a judge may award as many golds as she
  wishes, or none.

  _Provided that,_ should a judge be of the opinion that the story
  is not "a typical Dulcinea story", as defined above, that judge
  shall be obliged to award that story a "dross" rating regardless
  of its other literary merits.

  The ratings are confidential and each judge shall report her
  ratings to the Festival Director and to no-one else.  The Festival
  Director is deemed to be competent, trustworthy and able to add.
  He shall reveal the individual ratings to no-one and shall
  therefore be the only person who ever sees all the judges' ratings
  of any story.

  The Festival Director shall prepare an aggregate score for each
  entrant, awarding a score of 3 for each "gold" rating, 2 for each
  "silver", 1 for each "bronze" and 0 for each "dross".  The
  aggregate scores shall not be announced and will only ever be
  known to the Festival Director, who shall use them to determine a
  winner, a first runner-up and a second runner-up.  The Festival
  Directors invite the donation of gold, silver and bronze medals
  for award to the winners.

  The Festival Director shall announce the results by a post to ASSD
  that advises which story is the winner, which is the first
  runner-up and which is the second runner-up.  He shall then post
  all the stories (with full author details, in the normal fashion)
  to ASSM, make a Festival web page that includes links to all the
  stories submitted and announce its URL on ASSD.  It is projected
  that this shall occur on or about Monday 28th May 2001.

  The judges' decision, as enunciated by the Festival Director, is
  final and no correspondence shall be entered into.  Any queries
  about the running of the contest shall be resolved by consultation
  amongst the Festival Directorate whose decision shall be final.



  Festival Directorate
    Rui Jorge (rjnp@my-deja.com)
    Mat Twassell (mmtwassel@aol.com)
    Father Ignatius (fatherignatius@hotmail.com)

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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