Foreword

Although there are still many levels of society in which deep concern is felt about the intensity and depth of the so-called Sexual Revolution, there is no one who will not admit that it is simply an extension, a projection, rather than a new growth. Whatever other differences there may be between Man and the other animals, once the female is mature, she is ready for the male, and, needless to say, the male is ready for her. And this has always been true.

Then, the calm observer may ask, what's all the noise about? In Victorian England, in Ben Franklin's Colonial America, in Francois Villon's Paris, there was always the rakehell's adage: "If they're big enough, they're old enough."

True. Always a slick-talking, persuasive man, or a persistent youth, or a fat-cat playboy with carriage (or Ferrari) and yacht to get the young lady's goodies, to "rob her of her most cherished treasure," in the peculiar language of the long-ago.

As a matter-of-fact, according to Carolyn Hunt, author of this novel, the male was more often the takee than the taker. Ms Hunt's view is not clouded by the Woman's Movement. "I'm for anything that gives women an advantage," she declares. "And the particularly interesting fact-to me, at least-about the Sexual Revolution chatter is based on the fact everyone must recognize and few care to discuss. That is, that it's really the Woman's Sexual Revolution. Women always wanted what the men could give them. Also, women always knew they had what it took to get it. With one great big horrible injustice. Women were belittled, shackled by convention, abused by unfair legislation, and even screwed up by social rules they, themselves, were conned into making and enforcing.

"Result: Ten generations of repression and unfairness are now breaking into the open. Every day, some formerly timid housewife realizes that sex is neither naughty, dirty, or dangerous. And if some stereotype of a Dirty Old Man wants to seduce the probably long since seduced high school senior, women all along Main Street as well as Broadway are asking: 'How about me? I could use a little of that stuff in the boys locker rooms.' And why not? Both the Dirty Old Man and the repressed and hot-blooded mature woman are only behaving as nature intended them to behave."

It is unquestionably a part of a world-wide move toward sanity that we can accept an infinite variety in the patterns of sexual life without the trauma even the most minor improvizations once brought. Sisters and brothers raised in isolation, sons who, for one reason or another, cannot find love away from mom's understanding heart and outstretched arms, all such possibilities now plead for understanding not only from professional men, but from human beings in all walks of sexual ambience.

To the novelist who tries to write with clarity and realism about male and female, it would be sheer cowardice to fail to produce, in fiction, what everyday life produces in fact.

A young doctor in Vienna, stubbornly seeking a common motivator among all people-this was c. 1880-said: "There is now, and always has been, sex in everything. In the cell which preceded man by twenty million years, there was sex. Before the cell, in the slime which warmed under the primeval sun, can we say there was not sex? If any man cares to prove there was not, then he must first answer the question of how he got here."

His name is Sigmund Freud. We have an idea he would have liked this little book.

New from Surrey House, Inc., you will find four fresh, new Bedside Books, along with their all-time bestselling companions, Rated-X and Surrey Collectors Series. Serious collectors will want each and every one, side-by-side on their special, private bookshelves, handy for several pleasure-filled readings.

Bedside Books, like all Surrey House, Inc. books, are designed with YOU in mind, and every attempt to reflect your desires and reading tastes is made. Readers' comments are invited at all times, and we urge you to write us, at all times, with exact details of what you like to read, or with any other sexual matters you wish to impart, IN ABSOLUTE, STRICTEST CONFIDENCE' You need not identify yourself if you wish not to, but only through communication with YOU can we give YOU what YOU want.

All especially significant letters will be answered immediately, and all story suggestions are passed on to our capable staff of writers all over the world.

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