“ You don’t put salt in your beer anymore, Huh?”

“No, I read this article about salt intake.”

Kenny Thibodeau, our town’s soft-core pornographer and writer of tall tales for men’s magazines, looked across the table and smiled. “I don’t have to tell you about ‘articles,’ do I?”

“This one’s legit, Kenny. By a doctor.”

“I’m a doctor.”

“Yeah, of ‘sexology.’”

When not writing books with titles such as Satan’s Sisters and Pagan Lesbians, or “true” articles such as “Hitler’s Love Maidens” and “The Wild Rampage of the Sex-Crazed Pirate Women!” Kenny writes a sex advice column under the name Dr. William Ambrose, “PhD and renowned Sexologist.” He cribs all his material from the Playboy Sex Advice column. His real name appears on none of this material. He’s saving that for the serious novels I know he has in him, though I’m not sure he himself knows that anymore. There’s one more reason for the pen names. J. Edgar Hoover and politically ambitious DAs across the country have been trying to send soft-core editors and writers to prison. Two publishers were already serving time. Their number-one target is comedian Lenny Bruce, of course. He was recently sentenced to jail again.

“So what happened at the demonstration tonight? I’d have been there except Sue had a doctor’s appointment in Iowa City and her car’s in the garage. I had to give her a ride.”

In high school Kenny’s idols were Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. He was messianic about the entire Beat movement. I was his only convert. I even subscribed to the Evergreen Review, which was the bible of the movement. One summer Kenny drove to the Beat Mecca, San Francisco, where he spent three days running in City Lights Bookstore. This was where he also met the soft-core publisher who convinced him he could make a reasonable living writing the stuff. Until two years ago Kenny still wore the uniform: the goatee, the dark clothes, the hipster talk. Then he met Sue and she changed him, which explained the short hair, blue button-down shirt, and chinos he was wearing tonight.