Gerald Bivens

PETER

(Embarrassed)

I’d rather not talk about these things.

JERRY

So? Don’t. Besides, I wasn’t trying to plumb your post-adolescent sexual life and hard times; what I wanted to get at is the value difference between pornographic playing cards when you’re a kid, and pornographic playing cards when you’re older. It’s that when you’re a kid you use the cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when you’re older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy.

PETER

It’s so . . . unthinkable. I find it hard to believe that people such as that really are.

JERRY

(Lightly mocking) It’s for reading about, isn’t it?

PETER

(Seriously)

Yes.

JERRY

And fact is better left to fiction.¹