14 May 2001: Nicola by Duff

[Laurel]

Hi everybody! This forum is rockin'! Weird Harold and Christo deserve much kudos for the wonderful discussions taking place here. We all should send naughty greeting e-cards to their emails as soon as possible.

This week, I'm reaching waaay back into the archives for a story that really caught my eye when it was first submitted back in 1999. We wanted to use it in the upcoming Literotica anthology, but we were unable to contact the author. (If anyone knows how we might get in touch with Duff, please drop me an email - if this anthology goes well, we'd like to include it in the next one.)

Discussion on this will begin on Monday, May 14. If anyone has any questions, feel free to email myself, Weird Harold, or Christo - or all three if you're really lonely.

Here's the links...one story, two versions:

Nicola, by Duff
http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=3690

and

Nicola (Revised), by Duff
http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=3691

The plot revolves around a secret, reciprocated lust between father and daughter. What sets it apart from the run-of-the-mill father/daughter incest story IMHO is that it's well paced and the descriptions really put you in the scene. But the reason I picked this selection is that the author went back and resubmitted the story with, among other edits, a very different ending. The ending, for me, really changes of the whole story.

Please read both versions. Which ending do you think works best? Why?

Was Nicola exploited? If so, by whom?

Was George Jensen exploited? If so, by whom?

Go get 'em!

 

[christo]

Less is more?

When I read the first version, I really liked the ending, I liked how it just STOPPED, how the reader was left to imagine what the aftermath would be. But I knew there was a second version with a different ending, so I may have been spoiled by that.

I read the second version, with the extended ending, and I preferred the first. After Mr. Jensen makes his sudden, terrible realization, it would take something remarkable to follow it. And the scene in the second story, while quite good and not lacking in intensity, provides a flat note to what was otherwise an extraordinary story.

Were Nicola and her father exploited? Certainly Mrs. Townsend knew what she was doing, knew that she was tricking a daughter into intercourse with her father. In the society that these people move in, with the craving for distractions of greater and greater outrageousness, perhaps the only wonder is that Mrs. Townsend didn't have them perform in front of a large group of revelers. Or maybe she wanted to save this pleasure for herself.

I was reading this story and imagining the scene in "Eyes Wide Shut", the much-maligned Kubrick movie with the former Mr. and Mrs. Tom Cruise. The use of masks, of adopting another identity, is a fascinating one. A few square inches of plastic and a length of flimsy rubber band can turn a shy wallflower into a predatory beast, just because of the power of anonymity. Of course many of us who participate on Literotica wear a mask of sorts, hiding behind a pseudonym, posting stories we would never share to anyone we know, admitting desires and lusts that otherwise would remain unspoken.

And now a moment of shameless self-promotion-- I wrote a story called "Santa's Naughty Aunt", about a young man shanghaied into playing Santa Claus by his mother who ends up having sex with a favorite aunt. She expected Santa to be played by a man she was about to start an affiar with and didn't know another face was behind the whiskers. I was attracted to the idea of a mask, of anyonymity. I certainly wasn't alone.

 

[nitengale]

niten's thoughts...

I liked the first story much better! I was left using my own imagination as to what George would do next, and was disappointed after reading the revised version. It actually spoiled the story for me as I no longer had to ‘wonder’ how things would progress.

The two of them were definitely exploited by Mrs. Townsend, as she orchestrated the sexual meeting the two encountered, and participated in the actual event. I am puzzled though as to HOW Mrs. Townsend knew who she was, yet her own father did not, or did he? Was that line “Is my little girl okay?” done on purpose? Did I miss something?

 

[Sonia_de_Beaumanoir]

I liked the first version better as well

Ambiguity is often the best type of ending, in that the reader is given something to think about afterwards.

As for exploitation, the fact that both George and Nicola were at such a party pretty much eliminates much room for it.

Nicola could still have stopped had she, in her core, not really wanted to continue sex with George. There is no way her being horny would have made her go on against her will. And the fact that in the morning she regards it as something "miraculously true" says that she had no regrets.

In version 1, we don't really know what George will think once the initial shock has passed, and that is what is most interesting about the ending, and why I prefer it to version 2.

In any case, it's one of the best stories I've seen on Lit. Thanks for pointing it out, Laurel.

 

[NCmVoyeur]

I liked it, despite . . .

Usually I'm not one to enjoy the more 'over the top' scenarios. But I found myself, as Laurel said, very much moving about that party (something of a voyeur's paradise, I suppose). I think what Christo said is dead-on true: [M]any of us who participate on Literotica wear a mask of sorts, hiding behind a pseudonym, posting stories we would never share to anyone we know, admitting desires and lusts that otherwise would remain unspoken. I suppose the idea of a similar real-world situation where the otherwise reserved people in our lives felt free to 'bare it' behind a cloak of anonymity makes sense.

The questions Laurel posed are largely semantic: yes, both characters were manipulated (exploited) in one sense; on the other hand, as Sonia notes, given that they were both there as willing participants in the first place, it can't be called 'exploitation' in any moral sense.

I'm going to buck the trend and pick the second ending. I liked that it tackles the hard question ('What next?'), rather than ducking it. My view of incest stories is that they too often present shallow characters who never seemingly confront the question 'Why?' The incest taboo is universal and strong; a story which avoids the psychological dimension I'll generally find wanting. Here, the author cleverly sets up the premise to explain how it happens. But I like the version that deals a bit more with the consequences.

(A question for those of you who prefer that it be left to the 'reader's imagination:' How do you imagine the characters' relationship later? Do they concede a mutual attraction and get it on? Acknowledge the reality, but mask it under a continuing illusion of duality, as Ending #2 suggests? Say "that was nice, but I could never again do it openly and knowingly?" Or recoil under the horror of the act?

In the 'ugh, there it is again' category: Nicola whimpered as she felt her body betray her. I recently posted on the "Rape: Women's Opinions" feedback thread that I find the frequently-used convention in 'non-consent' stories that a woman orgasms against her own wishes to be too implasusible. I find the same device used here to be little better. Here, the character realizes she's having sex with her dad. I'd have prefered a plot that didn't have her moving scarcely missing a beat in coital motion, hurling inexorably toward orgasm, notwithstanding that realization.

 

[Lynn]

Parts of each

I truly liked the clean up that was done in the revision.
I stumbled a few times on the abrupt change of scenes and people in them, so the clean up REALLY made the story more readable for me.

I thought the detail, flow and characters were believable and well thought out. The storys were paced well and were quite believable and well written.

I did however not like the second ending as much as the first. For the most obvious of reasons. I don't care for incest stories, and not to talk for everyone at all, but I find it hard to read them. But being in this Discussion Circle I said, OK, put it aside and read it. So I did.

I loved the first story so much because even though you know it had incest in it, and because of the plot of the story you knew how and why it would happen, it was more palatable to my sesibilities. When George Jetson (err Jensen - sorry) had the shock in the morning, it made for a great ending.

When he took it the next step it because to hard for my liking.

I am not knocking the story genre at all, just not my thing.

That is why I liked the first one so much more than the second one.

Now, since the world revolves around me, what do we now know about me? I like explicit sex stories, when it makes sense to be explicit AND I like incest stories when the characters initially don't know it is incest.

This is so much fun. Can we do two stories a WEEK? Or is that too much?

 

[Laurel]

Re: I liked it, despite . . .

Acknowledge the reality, but mask it under a continuing illusion of duality, as Ending #2 suggests? Say "that was nice, but I could never again do it openly and knowingly?" Or recoil under the horror of the act?

I do agree that the first ending ducked big questions, but I felt that the second ending did as well. It was too pat. The first ending gave me a hint of the horror that George Jensen felt as he saw the beauty mark and realized what he had done. In the second, both he and she seem a little too comfortable with the idea that it might happen again.

How would you all have liked to see it end?

 

[nitengale]

Re: Re: I liked it, despite . . .

How would you all have liked to see it end?

I guess therapy for the two would ruin the flavor of an erotic story?

I'm not into incest stories, so this is a hard call for me.

 

[Lynn]

Re: bad humor

How would you all have liked to see it end?

I guess a bullet in the old BAT's head would also ruin the erotic moment, huh?

 

[Sonia_de_Beaumanoir]

Re: I liked it, despite . . .

I do agree that the first ending ducked big questions, but I felt that the second ending did as well. It was too pat. The first ending gave me a hint of the horror that George Jensen felt as he saw the beauty mark and realized what he had done. In the second, both he and she seem a little too comfortable with the idea that it might happen again.

How would you all have liked to see it end?

I don't necessarily agree that the big questions were "ducked." If an author wants to leave the aftermath to the reader's imagination, why is that ducking the issue?

I also think the big question was whether to engage in incest the first time. Once that question has been answered, we are only talking about repetition. If we were living 100 years ago, the next big question would be whether she should join a convent to expiate her sins.

The better question is how you would construct the ending IF you wanted to continue the story beyond the next morning. Given the personalities of the two people, especially Nicola, I could easily imagine them having an ongoing family affair, with her friend joining in as well. But I'm not sure that would improve the story itself. The second ending seems too contrived for me.

 

[NCmVoyeur]

Re: Re: I liked it, despite . . .

I don't necessarily agree that the big questions were "ducked." If an author wants to leave the aftermath to the reader's imagination, why is that ducking the issue?

It is 'ducking' because 'leaving it to the reader's imagination' is merely a concession that there is no way to end the story without spoiling the erotic illusion. In my first post, I posited four different possible endings and asked 'how do you imagine it ending?' So far, no one's come up with an ending that they think is credible that doesn't also spoil the sense of eroticism.

It strikes me that Ending #1 is the erotica equivalent of "and they lived happily ever after." Which raises the question: Is erotica just 'fairy-tales' for adults? Are we just merely transporting that sense of 'make-believe'--that suspension of reality--into a different genre? (Or, is this so obvious that I'm only reinventing the wheel with these questions? )

 

[christo]

I didn't think the ending of the first story was a "they lived happily ever after". He's horrified that he had sex with his daughter, and it doesn't seem like the aftermath is going to be too pleasant. While the ending in the second story shows both father and daughter accepting what happened and even looking forward to another encounter.

I think an objection that many people have to incest stories is that they usually have a "happy" ending. I'm guilty of writing stories like this myself, though I finessed the situation in both stories (at least in my own mind) by making the characters related by marriage, not blood. But incest so often involves molestation and exploitation, and a story that makes everything all fuzzy and warm at the end can be difficult to swallow.

Then again, these stories are meant to be erotic, not cautionary tales. That's why I liked the first ending so much. You have a very erotically charged situation, a situation fraught with emotion and lust and horror, but the ending hits you like a slap, and lets you imagine how difficult their relationship is going to be in the future, without spelling out exactly what takes place. Mr. Jensen doesn't get off the hook at the end. How deep the hook digs in is left for the reader to decide.

 

[Sonia_de_Beaumanoir]

Ambiguous endings

The writer Roald Dahl wrote many short stories with endings where the reader could only imagine what transpired afterwards. I think this type of story is very satisfying. Too much concrete detail or "lived happily ever after" ending are less so.

Having said that, I confess that my own incest stories do have happy endings because "that's the kind of person I am."