It was a late summer afternoon. My girlfriend Mary and her two friends were sitting on the deck in her back yard. All were reading a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey.

I read the first chapter online and didn’t buy the relationship, but obviously it didn’t bother the gazillion women reading it. So what do I know?

The other night I asked Mary to tell me about the kinky sex purported to be in the book. She claimed she hadn’t gotten to those parts yet, but she did read a more pedestrian passage. It could easily have been lifted from the pages of Penthouse with one exception: the writer kept referring to breasts being gently caressed etc. In real porn girls have tits and boobs; guys, dicks and rods.

“Maybe you’d learn something from reading it,” Mary told me.

“I doubt it. I’d rather read the new Richard Ford.”

“It’s a huge seller,” she said. “I thought the whole point was to make money.”

“Yes, I want to make a living,” I said, “but I didn’t get into this to be that sort.”

“What sort?” she asked. “The type that makes money.”

“You know damn well what I’m talking … Read the rest