To the editor:

Frottage, indeed! Don't give me this nouvelle-cuisine euphemism as a substitute for the blunt American honesty of dry-humping. You may think me a decidedly old-fashioned kind of guy, but "The New Eroticism: Sex Without Sex" you're now promoting so ardently (July 1988 issue) sounds suspiciously like what we old geezers still refer to -- without a trace of nostalgia, believe me -- as cock-teasing.

Lots of flirtatious glances, provocative touches and hints of body contact, passionate stolen kisses under the stairs, furtive "full-body hugs" in the coat closet, all of it building up to occasional petting to orgasm, with the carrot of (gasp!) genital or oragenital intercourse always dangling ahead . . . ah, I remember it well. Along with its memorable aftereffects: the painful congestion of the testes we called "blue balls," the constricting tangle of one's erection in one's underwear, the agonizing ride or walk home, the race to some private spot where one could provide oneself with solitary manual release, the resulting sleeplessness and frustration. And, worst of all, the consequent neurosis-generating conviction that sex was something that women had and doled out to men, either whimsically or calculatedly, on some basis we could never understand.

Your author's guidebook to this "new eroticism," apparently aimed at grown women, sounds more like a description of adolescent sex play circa 1960. It certainly reads like the "Cock-Teaser's Handbook" men of my generation sometimes claimed was handed out to all girls by their mothers when they hit puberty, passing down to them the guidelines on how to manipulate men around their sexuality. The fact that you include a section titled "Getting him to go for it" suggests, semantically, what the true underlying motives here are: female control of male sexuality.

Understandably, the fear of sexually-transmitted disease has made many of us more cautious and selective in our courtship, seduction and sexual practices. Perhaps that's got its beneficial aspects -- but the extent to which it constrains or even eliminates elementary aspects of adult sexuality such as oral and genital intercourse can hardly be counted as benefits. The activities you describe generally come under the heading of foreplay, which is to sex as appetizer is to entrée.

I enjoy relationships with women in which eroticism is not restricted to the bedroom -- in which flirtation and arousal are part of a continuum, present to varying degrees throughout the time spent together and even provoked in various ways (hidden billets-doux, torrid phone calls, surprise gifts) during the time apart. But I find that enjoyable only when a full expression of mutual sexual attraction is also possible, at least potentially. Otherwise, I prefer to handle things myself.

I doubt seriously that you would publish an article by a man advocating women's acceptance of such behavior on the part of men. I'm convinced that an article extolling male provocation of women in analogous fashion would be received with howls of outrage by your readers, especially if written by a man. So your sponsorship of this notion reveals you -- and, of course, the article's author, Stella Resnick, Ph.D.* -- to be deeply sexist.

It'll be interesting to see if you manage to convince a generation of young women to play these games anew, and if they can persuade a generation of young men to "go for it." Personally, I hope not. The best people of both genders I know from my generation share -- among various distinctions -- their out-of-hand rejection of this Victorian nonsense. I'd like to think that's one aspect of the legacy of the Sixties that the retro generation won't feel obliged to discard.

Yours truly, etc.

The good doctor has also opined that "Most people simply do not know how to be happy," which reminds me of something I told a now ex-girlfriend who suggested that I didn't know how to verbalize my needs and desires: "I don't have trouble asking for what I want; I have trouble getting it." (Stalin once wrote, "Happiness is the maximum agreement of reality with desire." As Martin Cruz Smith commented, "Soviet philosophy is full of surprises.")

Resnick claims to have been influenced by Wilhelm Reich, but I'm not sure what Reich would have thought of frottage as a substitute for intercourse and orgasm (at least male orgasm).