It's not always good to be a nice boy.
Size: 231 KB (43,700 words)
Incomplete and Inactive
Genre: Erotica
Sex Contents: Much Sex
Tags: mt/ft, mt/Fa, Teenagers, Consensual, First, Oral Sex, Exhibitionism, Voyeurism
Review by Celeste [other reviews by Celeste]
Reviewed:
I really hate this story! I sat down about 45 minutes ago to read a story while I ate lunch. I had with me two ham sandwiches, a can of Diet Coke, and an 18-ounce bag of potato chips. I would read "A Rude Awakening" for ten minutes while I ate lunch and then prepare my classes for the first week of the new school year.
I am now one chapter - 10,770 words and approximately 12 ounces of potato chips - into this story; and I can't stop. My husband is not home; the kid across the street is mowing the lawn, sweating, his muscles glistening in the sunlight; Kathy Ireland is looking down at me from my husband's calendar with a cum-hither look that would give me blue balls if I had balls; and I have my classes to prepare for a new semester. What's a girl to do? I guess maybe I'll just read another chapter and see if this feeling goes away.
Well, I read TWO more chapters, at which time there was a lull in the action. Then I fixed dinner and read four more chapters. Then I had to wait for the author to post the rest of the story. Frustration Station!
This story contains an amazing blend of voyeurism and direct sexual contact. For example, at one point Joey is getting head from Mrs. C, who is insisting that he describe to her what he did with her daughter earlier that evening, while Joey is making direct eye contact with the daughter, who is safely hidden and masturbating behind the mother's back. This is hot stuff.
I noticed the title words, "Rude Awakening," several times in the story. The first context stated that at the time of the story, (June of 1965) graduation from high school would be a rude awakening: war, racial strife, assassinations, drugs, and other problems. Like many good titles, however, this one has more than one meaning. The second time the phrase occurred was after Joey and Terri had made love; it was a rude awakening for Terri to discover the power of her sexuality. The term pops up several other times in the story. The most significant meaning of "rude awakening" is not specifically stated - just strongly implied. The story begins with Joey an immature, sad, sexually- repressed young man. He takes no chances with girls and women, because he is afraid they will consider him to be rude. His friend and lover Alice tells him he needs to risk being rude once in a while. When the rudeness in him "awakens," he becomes a more mature, happy, sexually responsive person. In fact, he becomes the neighborhood Lothario - a term which you can either look up in your Funk and Wagnalls or infer from the context of the story. And then he discovers that he has lost something special - another rude awakening.
What do women really want? Polite men or rude men? The answer is that different women want different blends; and even the same woman may want a different emphasis at different times. Also it depends on what you mean by "rude": in this story rude means that a guy does something that a girl will like, in spite of the fact that a social custom or the girl's inhibitions might oppose his action. I myself have been known to use the phrase "Shut up and kiss me" - or an equivalent, more emphatic phrase, which would indicate a demand for less "politeness." A very important moral to this story is that it is often necessary to take some risks in order to be happy. A very wrong conclusion would be that the rudest asshole gets the girl - or the guy.
This author's greatest strength, I think, lies in his sense of timing. For example, he has the ability to make me think I'm witnessing two people getting hotter and hotter until they can't stand it any more; and I can almost feel it when they explode. He seems to have an intuitive grasp of what to tell me and when to tell it to me in order to maintain my interest. My husband has a similar ability, but he accomplishes this effect through direct access to my body parts.
The main "weakness" to this story is that at times the author seems to want to cram too much sex into it. I have a theory about why the author has done this. I suspect that he has contacted a publisher (whom I know and respect, but will not name in this review) about publishing a version of this story as a novel; and that the publisher insisted on more instances of explicit sex. In fact, the publisher I am thinking of makes specific demands, such as (1) a wide variety of sex that is likely to be perceived as kinky, and (2) at least two separate instances of specific sex per chapter. I know of at least one good author who has simply stopped writing erotic stories because he felt that these demands compromised his literary integrity.
I may be off the track in suggesting that the present author has "padded" his story with extra sex in order to appeal to a publisher. I do know that there are several instances where the storyline seems to take an unnecessary turn that is unrelated to the overall plot. However, not too many readers are going to complain about "too much hot sex," and so I'll let these "digressions" slide. What I do know is that I review another story ("Elizabeth & Anastasia" by Tom Bombadil) in this issue of CR that is every bit as good as this one: and that other story has about a snowball's chance in my pussy of ever getting published by that same publisher. It's "too long on story" and "too short on real sex." I think it's about time that that publisher (or some other publisher) made it clear that it IS OK to have hot sex in the context of a good story. The world is ready for good stories that contain hot sex - without quotas and restrictions on what kind and how much explicit sex needs to be included in each chapter. These stories don't need to appear on news stands in the supermarkets; but they should be available to mature adults who want more than a quick fix from their erotica.
As I reread the preceding paragraph, I realize I have overstated my case; but I think I'll leave it. The present author HAS, in fact, done a commendable job of trying to deal with the full personality of the main character. This is an excellent story. In fact, if I would have found this story without knowing the author's name, I would have guessed that it was written by Delta, who made my Top 50 List of 1995 not once but four times. That's one of the strongest compliments I can give to a story.
