As some of you may know, my first job out of college was as the head writer for a pornographic comic book company. (Hey, whaddya want? There was a recession on and the Internet hadn't blown up yet; I had to pay the rent somehow.) Early in my tenure, the company's troll-like CEO asked me to write a series of lurid "Penthouse-style" letters (the ones that invariably begin "I never thought this would happen to me, but...") to be summarily brought to life by our crack corps of desperate, 18-year-old illustrators. At the time, I lacked the imagination (or was it the wide range of experience?) to complete the assignment. I sloughed the gig off to my lowlife roommate, who was more than happy to comply. Anyway, the point of this story is that now the wheel has come full circle. I have made it into Penthouse--the REAL Penthouse--at last. Yesterday, as I waited for my train at New York's glittering Pennsylvania Station, I purchased the May issue of the venerable beaver mag and was pleased to discover an extended excerpt from Secret Lives of Great Authors on page 104. With a byline for me and everything! Somewhere my late mother is smiling. And my late father--whose tastes, as I recall, ran more to Hustler—is, well, I don't want to speculate on what he's doing.