Offer her Chicken Delight and she’ll probably bring a trampoline. : Keeping Busy on a Wednesday

Ihave received several copies of the August issue of New Woman magazine, a periodical that purports to represent the interests of liberated females in a male-dominated society.

They were sent to me by Valley feminists in order to call my attention to a column that offers “a thump on the head” to those making sexist remarks, among whom, I am pleased to report, my name is listed.

The reason I am pleased is that I am quoted alongside one of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who also won a thump on the head by writing, “Educating a woman is like pouring honey over a fine Swiss watch. It stops working.”

No need to repeat my remark since I have already caught hell for it many times over and am satisfied to know that someone was paid $10 by the magazine for having sent it in. That is atonement enough.

I had not intended to read anything else in New Woman for the same reason I do not read anything in Reader’s Digest or Fish & Game. They do not encompass my interests.

My attention, however, was captured by a large-type teaser on the cover of the magazine that asked: “Too Busy for Sex?”

My policy is to know a little something about all segments of our society in order to enrich and inform those who manage to squeeze my column in between their advanced studies on social semantics and facial isometrics.

Perhaps it was time to discover something about those who are too busy for sex.

The article is written by Dagmar O’Connor, which is probably a pseudonym for a free-lancing male, and begins by chiding new women for not allowing enough time for “fooling around.” It seems to me that’s all they do, but I’m here to learn, not argue.

Dagmar goes on to suggest that her busy readers, assuming there is more than one, ought to set up appointments with their loved ones for sex much as they might set up an appointment to have their teeth capped.

She writes: “One evening a week--Wednesday is a nice, neutral day--pick up a bottle of wine and two sandwiches-to-go on the way home from work, and take each other--and the sandwiches--directly to bed.”

Sandwiches?

Well, you’ve got to keep in mind that today’s new woman was raised on Big Macs and pepperoni pizza so it doesn’t require a gourmet menu to arouse her sexual instincts. If tuna will do it, what the hell. Offer her Chicken Delight and she’ll probably bring a trampoline.

Do not, however, complain to me that Wednesday is a bad day. That’s your problem. I’m not going to sit here and work out your calendar, for God’s sake. Skip bowling.

Dagmar doesn’t care whether you eat first or not, that’s strictly up to you. But she does suggest that you might want to read to each other or, possibly, sing campfire songs.

It seems to me the whole thing is getting a little complicated, but to each his own. Bring bongo drums if it fits your style.

The article goes on to offer helpful hints on how to take advantage of that “little fleck of mustard on his chin”--assuming he slobbers when he eats--and whether it is all right to interrupt everything to exchange humorous anecdotes.

Many would argue that it’s simply the wrong time to pop up and tell a joke, but I guess there’s nothing like a good belly laugh to stimulate the old libido of the new woman. A world of wonder awaits if you can just work it into your schedule.

I realize, first of all, that Dagmar’s comments were never intended for me. I am not a woman and I am sure as hell not new, at sex or anything else.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that Dagmar, or whatever his real name is, is going out of the way to institutionalize something that ought to be instinctive.

My wife is very busy and I am very busy, but if I ever suggested setting up a date to hop into the sack with even something as exotic as roast duckling with a peppercorn glaze she would probably have me committed.

If these are among the advances that the woman’s movement has gained in its somewhat faltering march to the ERA, then I am right in assuming that a noble cause has bogged down in absurdities.

For most normal people, having sex is simply not the same as, say, having your dog groomed unless, of course, you’ve got something going with the dog groomer.

There ought to be a little magic to the moment, a quality of breathlessness which, by its very nature, would preclude appointment books and tuna sandwiches.

There’s got to be something better than rolling in crumbs on a fixed time schedule.

But what the new woman does in the privacy of either her own bedroom or her own kitchen is not up to me. If that little fleck of mustard on his chin turns her on, vive le moutarde!

One hopes, however, that at some point in the dismal mutuality of assertive independence and calendar sex, she might wonder fleetingly whatever became of candlelight and wine.