60s Sexual Revolutionists! Shed a few tears for the demise of the sex rags of old. I found a little trove of back-issues of SCREW! Oh yeah. One of the most influential sex rags of the 60s/70s counter-culture, helping swingers, pervs, bisexuals, and all other sexual outliers connect for hook ups, find clubs for bondage, fucking and all the other orgiastic fun that seemed so safe before AIDS. SCREW was a kind of a one-stop shop for armchair travelers and sex tourists alike: rating porn flicks and sex acts, listing adult venues in New York, publishing sex gossip about and interviews with open-minded celebs, and fighting for sexual freedom. It was good clean wholesome fun but for some reason, everyone considered it sleazy. Maybe it was the grey greasy cheap paper and cheaper inks with smudgeable B&W images of Al Goldstein eating hair-pie with a bottle of ketchup at his elbow.
(My mother found that very issue hidden at the bottom of my drawer when I was about 15 and, let me just say, 40 years later, my eardrums are still a little numb from her reaction. It was a shock for us both. I couldn't believe that, at her age, my mother still didn't know about oral sex.)
I'll start now with three typical late 60s/early 70s covers. Coming up, part II with some fun interior articles.
(pssst, Alex Bennett, this is for you)
