Among the (considerable) amount of damage that television’ s “reality” craze has done to the medium and to the country as a whole is to feed the myth that if you’ re not famous, then you don’ t really matter, that if you’ re not alloted your 15 minutes of fame, then you aren’ t really worth anything. It was the popular late-night-television host Jimmy Kimmel who observed: “More people have appeared on the ‘reality’ shows than there are in reality.” Basically, he was right. And it speaks volumes concerning our incessant panting after instant celebrity as an escape from ongoing boredom, our reaching out for easy fame as a relief from the tedium and the sameness of everyday existence. In point of fact, many of the most interesting (in the positive sense) folks with the most interesting (in the positive sense) stories exist among us, thoroughly untouched by the spotlight or, indeed, any kind of celebrity. In her bestselling personal/professional memoir Might As Well Laugh About It Now, Marie Osmond, looking back upon her days as a syndicated-radio-show host, writes: “[W]hat I looked forward to most was talking to the daily listeners and hearing their unforgettable stories…You name the topic and chances were the phone lines would light up with true-life stories that were more compelling than any Hollywood studio could produce.” Proof positive that colorful and memorable tales and folks easily go beyond “reality TV” fame-seekers.   

    The relevance of all this is that there reside in my (vast) book collection two compilations of erotic/sexual stories from the same authors, Steven and Iris Finz, The Best Sex I Ever Had and What Turns Us On. While both tomes, as mentioned, are chock-full of items where average, everyday folks discuss their erotic/sexual lives or an especially memorable erotic/sexual experience, each book has one entry that is particularly exciting, markedly thrilling, that rises above all the rest as far as quickening the pulse and arousing the libido are concerned.   

    We begin with the Finz’ s The Best Sex I Ever Had and its stand-out entry, namely “Exquisite Dessert.” It starts by describing Carl, who owns his own construction company (”[T]hirty-three…tall and brawny, carrying 210 pounds on his six-foot frame. When he moves, his muscles ripple impressively, muscles developed…from hard physical labor”). There is then a brief sketch of his wife Lucy (”His twenty-six-year-old wife…works as a sales representative for a women’ s clothing line”), then, after a while, Carl speaks for himself. He kicks things off by telling why “[s]ex is always good for Lucy and me” and why “I don’ t think it’ s ever going to get old with us.” (”We love to surprise each other with unusual sex. Lucy started it all about six years ago”) Carl afterward relates the story of how one of his workers, Johnnie, asked him to accompany him to the top floor, claiming that there was a problem. According to Carl, when the elevator began going up, “Johnnie jumped off, hollering that he’ d see me later.” At first, Carl was mystified, planning to ride back down and confront Johnnie. However, when the elevator stopped, “there was a surprise waiting for me. My wife was standing barefoot on the concrete apron by the elevator gate. She was wearing a smile and nothing else.” Carl is quite scintillating as he details his reaction (”[H]ere I was right in the middle of the city on the top floor of a completely open structure, with my wife stark naked and her giant tits flapping in the breeze. And let me tell you Lucy’ s got some big ones”). And he finishes on a high note, so to speak (”Everything was showing. I just stood there gawking, with my cock getting hard”). The tale takes on an even spicier note as he relates how Lucy said: “Hi, big boy. Glad you could come up and see me,” then opened the elevator door, dragged him out, unzipped him, then “dropped to her knees on the rough concrete and started sucking me off.” As he tells it, “for an instant I forgot where I was.” When she finished, says Carl, she sent him back down in the elevator, and “Johnnie was laughing” as “She had set up the whole thing with him in advance.” From then on, relates Carl: “We always try to outdo each other at our little sex game, but…I thought up the idea of surprising her with dessert.” He continues to be enticing as he tells how he and Lucy came home from having a meal at their favorite restaurant and: “As soon as we got into the house, I told Lucy to go into the bedroom, get completely undressed, and wait for me on the bed.” He goes on to reveal that he came into the bedroom with Lucy having followed his orders (”Her legs were spread slightly to give me a view of her pussy. She knows how hot that gets me”) and his brandishing a tray. When Carl speaks of Lucy’ s reaction to his plan to coat her with dessert (”I could tell by the way her nipples got hard that she was excited. She lay back down, closing her eyes submissively”), we are even more aroused. And when he details how he spread the food over Lucy–honey on and between her toes, fudge sauce upon and around her breasts, et al–and how excited her reactions were, we’ re genuinely turned on. The finish is absolutely mouth-watering, with Carl first telling of Lucy’ s utterance of pleasure (”Oh, Carl. You fuck me so good. Oh, Carl. I’ m going to come. Again”) then relating how they came at the same time (”The spasms of pleasure had me shuddering and gyrating, oblivious to the world around me. I heard nothing but Lucy’ s gutteral cries as she rose to sexual satisfaction…We came forever, riding to the heights before drifting slowly back down to earth. When it was over, we were totally exhausted and totally content.”).     

    Carl concludes his narrative thusly: “I hope I didn’ t shock you with my story or the language I used…I told it like it was.” No, Carl, you didn’ t, and, yes, Carl, you did. And for those things we shall be eternally grateful.   

    Now, on to What Turns Us On.   

    The top entry in this Finz book is called “Office Temp,” having to do with an office temp named Jenny. Her description begins: “Jenny is only nineteen, but claims to have had more sexual experience than most women twice her age. She is small and compact, standing just a little over five feet tall, with full breasts and a well-rounded bottom.” Her description ends: “Her easy smile is flirtatious and seductive.” And with that Jenny proceeds to speak in her own voice. To her great credit, she minces absolutely no words in revealing what she’ s all about,  coming right out with it (”I can’ t help it. I’ m a seducer of men. It just comes natural to me. Find ‘em, fuck ‘em, forget ‘em.” She goes on to call working as an office temp “the ultimate sexual challenge”). She is also laudably blunt in discussing her past (”I started in high school…I set out to fuck the entire team. All the teams–baseball, football, basketball. Hell, I even did the debate team. The girls called me a nympho, but…[t]hey weren’ t getting laid, and I was”). She, happily, keeps upon her entirely-truthful path in explaining what work means to her (”For me, work is a groovy erotic game. I come into a new job knowing that I’ m only going to be there for a day or two”). And–yaaay–she doesn’ t stop being genuinely direct when she discusses her sex-filled working past (”Once, I managed to fuck two different guys on a one-day job. The first one in the elevator before lunch, and the second in the mail room just before closing. I…finished [the second guy] off within three minutes. I don’ t even remember his name, if I ever knew it”). And Jenny honestly become her most provocative (in the good sense) when talking about her most arousing work experience. As she tells it, she was once sent to an insurance place that had to have another word processor, as that was the day they were auditing their files (”The place was crawling with good-looking young claims adjustors, so I knew I was going to like it”). At one point, she says, her intended “victim,” Mark by name, “checked me out thoroughly and obviously.” Being intrigued, Jenny claims, the next time she caught Mark looking toward her, “I dropped a pencil and bent down to pick it up, giving him a good view of my tits.” Afterward, when she arose, “I accidentally brushed my arm against my skirt, so that it rose up high enough to show him the crotch of my pantyhose.” It was then, remembers our girl, that “[t]he bait was cast.” She was positive, says she, that Mark would find a way to back out, “[b]ut I also know that there isn’ t a man alive who can resist the scent of easy pussy, no matter how risky it turns out to be.” So our girl eventually got it on with Mark in the file room. Afterward, while she was concentrating upon continuing her work duties, Mark lightly tapped her shoulder and instructed: “There’ s a door just to the right of the elevator. Go to it in ten minutes and walk inside. I’ ll be waiting.” In response to Mark’ s invitation, reports Jenny: “I was enjoying this weird role reversal and wondering what my male counterpart had in mind.” After ten mintues, relates Jenny, she followed Mark’ s orders. As a result, she found herself behind a film screen. After a while, she felt Mark touching her and, when she lay down with him, “I realized he was naked. He had waiting for me that way, certain that I would join him.” He soon got her naked also and “fucked me with wild abandon, without giving a shit about who might hear or discover us.” After they both came, there was a directive to “take down the screen.” Our heroine closes her richly stylish and richly arousing narrative with: “[T]he whole fun of [sex with Mark] was the spontaneity. Looking for him wouldn’ t be very spontaneous, so I’ ll just keep temping and watching for new opportunities.”   

    It was Heather Reider and Mary Goulet, in their popular guide for mothers It’ s All About You: Live The Life You Crave, who pointed out two of women’ s most-preferred roles: “the hot babe in bed” and “sex machine.” The narratives of Carl in The Best Sex I Ever Had and of Jenny in What Turns Us On are proof positive as to how right the aforementioned authors were.