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By Root 864 0

was a long way from that but moving ever more quickly in that direction. The days when its readers could be satisfied by articles on accessorizing, fashions for office wear, and what to say on that first, crucial date were long since gone, and the word orgasm was off the list of taboos—indeed, half the articles seemed to be about sex, and one had the feeling that the magazine was running as hard as it could to catch up with its readers. Still, with any magazine, it’s hard for an outsider to gauge the prevailing, generally unspoken moral code. It was clear that Mrs. Casey ran the magazine with an iron fist, but since we had never met, I wasn’t sure just where and in what areas her limits lay. Sometimes I got away with things that I thought she would never print; on other occasions, things that seemed to me perfectly harmless produced a flurry of anguished calls from Amy and Karlys Daly, the beauty editor. One thing was clear: There was no appeal. Like most women’s magazine editors, Mrs. Casey was an unapologetic tyrant. In my mind’s eye, I thought of her as the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, ready at any moment to shout, “Off with his head!”

The schoolteacher’s experience, it turned out as the evening went on, had been mirrored by the others in the group. One of the older women confessed that it beat anything she had ever experienced with her husband, and another remarked, with a shy smile, that she sometimes made two or three jumps a day and came every time, “as regular as clockwork.”

The parachute ladies had another thing in common: They could drink me under the table. I returned to New York with the beginnings of a fierce hangover but happy to have a lead for my story—so happy that I actually decided to present it to the formidable Mrs. Casey in person.

An audience was arranged, and I arrived ahead of time, feeling rather like a Roman summoned to the Temple of the Vestal Virgins. Far from providing a threatening atmosphere, however, Mrs. Casey’s sanctum sanctorum was a riot of yellow and black: Every square inch that could be covered in fake leopard skin was. The walls, the carpets, the upholstery, the pillows were all done in leopard skin, and a profusion of leopard statues of various sizes, as well as drawings of leopards, made it clear what animal Mrs. Casey admired most. Even her signature pens were made of plastic formed to resemble a leopard’s skin, as was her wastepaper basket. I half expected her to have whiskers, fangs, and a snarling countenance, but in fact she was an attractive woman of a certain age with gray hair and a no-nonsense manner.

Tentatively, I outlined my article, then approached the lead. I described my afternoon and evening with the women sky divers and explained their startling confession. The word orgasm did not frighten Mrs. Casey. She stared at me, her expression ambiguous, nodding slightly to indicate that the subject was neither taboo nor unfamiliar to her. It would, I suggested, be a terrific way to begin the piece—a real attention grabber. (An “attention grabber” was a constant demand from the advertising department.)

Mrs. Casey looked thoughtful. She fiddled with one of her leopard-skin pens for a while. There were three or four other women in attendance, including Amy and Karlys, but none of them said anything. It was rather like being in the headmaster’s office at a boys’ school, after some awful infraction of discipline, or perhaps the Mother Superior’s at a convent. I half expected Mrs. Casey to lunge at me with a ruler, demanding that I hold out my hand. Finally, she spoke. Why, she asked, did I think these women experienced an orgasm while parachuting?

I had come prepared for this question, with a full Freudian answer. It was, I said, fairly obvious. First you had the physical excitement of the flight, then you stood up and a handsome young jump master put his hands on you—physical contact—and helped you leap into space. The Freudian elements were, surely, all there? Height, speed, adventure, the male touch that sends you spinning into space, the connection between