On a clear, sparkling Sunday early in the month of June, a small group of bright and sophisticated young women were seated in a circle on the high roof garden of a doorman building in Manhattan. It was Jennifer Slater’s building, and it was Jennifer’s engagement party for Meg and Dan. As Jennifer’s capacity for preparing food was limited to boiling water, the party was catered. The festivities began at two in the afternoon. By four, most, if not quite all of the invited guests had arrived. About fifty guests sat or stood in small clusters scattered along the length and breath of an extensive roof. The area was fitted with groups of wooden chairs, which surrounded large coffee tables. Each cluster of people, chairs, and tables were separated from one another by a space of approximately thirty feet, far enough in the open air to provide a modicum of privacy to each group. It was the perfect setting for a party, with spectacular views of Central Park and the line of stately buildings that graced Upper Fifth Avenue on the East Side.

The circle of friends consisted of Jennifer and Meg, Hillary and Daryl, and Annie Giraud. With the exception of Annie, introduced to the others by Meg a year earlier and still on the periphery of the circle, the friends had known one another since college, or even earlier. They were familiar with each other’s tics and idiosyncrasies; in short, it was a quite comfortable group of intimates. It was perfectly natural and even expectable that at some point during the party they would congregate and lose themselves in a discussion that, as often as not, would involve men. For the last few minutes the topic of conversation that engrossed the five young women was: why are men afraid of commitment? Annie, the youngest member, happily in her midtwenties, sought information from the one member of the group who wore the mantle of “expert.”

“How did you do it, Meg? How did you convince Dan to commit?”

“It’s a long story,” Meg said in a voice suggestive more of levity than seriousness. “Dan did put up the usual guy resistance. You all know the dreary story—all the crap about needing ‘space.’ Then the answer came to me in a flash—you know, one of those eureka moments. Why not out-phobe the commitment phobe? So I began to ask for more space than he wanted. You see, girls, guys love a challenge. They go for the kind of girl who’s hard to get. The harder she is to get, the more they prize her. After a while I had the poor man in a complete daze. So that’s how I bedazzled him.” Meg deliberately mispronounced the word bedazzled to rhyme with daze.

“But that’s so unromantic. That’s gamesmanship,” Hillary protested. Hillary was the idealist of the group.

“Romance is an illusion,” Jennifer retorted. “It all comes down to power.” Jennifer was the group cynic.

“You’re a cynic,” Hillary said.

“I’m a realist. It’s all about who has the upper hand.”

Annie requested an explanation.

“It’s simple; someone is going to be needier. That’s the person who doesn’t have the power.”

“So why don’t we just withhold sex? That way the guy’s got to be the needier one,” Daryl suggested.

“You withhold sex?” Jennifer said. It was a strictly rhetorical question.

“You know, we never have gotten around to answering the original question,” said Annie. “Which is why men fear commitment.”