To reach out for the man you want is to be aggressive, and to reach out for the way you want him in bed isn’t just aggressive, it’s unfeminine. The fact that he might enjoy what follows her first move isn’t what’s at issue; the point is that it isn’t done, hasn’t been done, and won’t be done until men and women are convinced that changing the traditional sexual roles doesn’t constitute a threat.
Meanwhile, if he’s too shy to telephone, or perhaps less imaginative or worn out in bed than she (might be, given the chance), then two people who’d like to never do get started and the sheets barely get rumpled. He never knows what he’s missed; she does, but only in her fantasies. And if in those fantasies, as in so many in this book, she comes on like a tiger, in a startlingly aggressive role—she tying him down on the bed, etc.—don’t hastily put the little lady down as a secret dominating sexual sadist: Sometimes you have to shout just to be heard.
