Penthouse

26 Nights: A Sexual Adventure
by Penthouse Magazine Editors
Audio narrated by Bill Morgan
3*

Steven Walling is a businessman whose wealth and occupation was handed to him by his father and who relies mainly on his competent assistant, Miss Greenglass, to maintain his success. He spends most of his time womanizing and avoiding actual work. Although he constantly has a stream of women to entertain him, he is a bit obsessed with Miss Greenglass, who seems to be the only woman who has ever refused his advances and, in fact, seems oblivious to him.

After some back-and-forth bantering about his excessive love life, Miss Greenglass tells him he needs to learn to limit himself and proposes a challenge. He is to date women using their first names in alphabetical order, with no women in between. He is allowed six months to complete this challenge. If he fails to do so, then Miss Greenglass will be given a raise (he offers 3x her salary). If he completes the challenge successfully (26 women from A-Z), then Miss Greenglass reluctantly agrees to be his 27th woman.

When I first started reading this, I was rolling my eyes with derision. It was so ridiculous and such a sexist male fantasy. Complete trash, I thought, and was already preparing for the 2* rating. Then I started noticing that this man's tale was being told in the first person from Mr. Walling's viewpoint. After his trysts with these women, he would go back and describe them to Miss Greenglass to prove that he completed A, B, C, etc. and was moving on to the next "letter". I first thought the intention was to be titillating, but it failed because it was pretty clinical. Then I started to see the humor in it all. I realized that the man's "voice" was always fairly deadpan, which was even more effective when things got weird or the situations ridiculous. I was seeing the intentional humor, not just poor writing like I had initially assumed.

Each episode became more and more bizarre and unbelievable, often rather absurd, and that is where the genius lies in this story. There was a funny dalliance that took place in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House, with the help of an unnamed but easily presumed former president. There's also a ridiculous yet funny interchange involving a set of identical twins with names one letter apart, so Steven has to try to tell them apart and be with them in the right order so he doesn't lose the bet. Of course, they insist that they do everything together.

Yes, it's still a man's fantasy (it is by Penthouse Magazine) and yes, it still can be considered pretty trashy, but really this is just a silly romp into the land of erotica with an actual romance thrown in. You have to be patient with this one, but if you make it through to the end, you'll find a sweet ending and some chuckles throughout to take away from it.… (mere)