Sabotage Times, We can't Concentrate so Why Should You?Sabotage Times, We can't Concentrate so Why Should You?


When Porn Was Fun

by Sabotage
4 July 2014 41 Comments

Before the internet men had to run the gauntlet of sneaking a jazz mag upstairs and then hiding it from Mum's prying eyes.Those were the days...

Any time today’s generation of young men fancy a quick one off the wrist, they can tap into billions of explicit images and videos via the internet, most of it easily accessible and free of charge. As for being detected, they know far better how to conceal their online behaviour than those monitoring it.

If I was to go back in time to meet my thirteen-year-old self, there’s a great deal I would want to say that might equip him for the difficult years ahead – I am sure most of us would impart similar advice to our younger selves – but I would not divulge the technical advances to come in pornography for fear of cheapening the pre-internet experience. The adolescent me would not appreciate how lucky he was, once he learned that graphic material could be displayed almost instantly on a hand-held portable device in the not-too-distant future.

Here’s the rub, if you pardon the pun. No amount of cyber-porn can ever beat the excitement of trying to get into the house, past your parents and up to your bedroom whilst concealing a jazz mag. The thrill of thumbing through the glossy pages for the first time, trying to savour the pictures without using up their powers all at once; reading the far-fetched stories and “letters”; marvelling at the appalling bedspreads and headboards of the readers’ wives, with their dodgy white stockings, eighties perms and faces concealed in case someone were to recognise Julie from the local Spar.

The first porno mag I ever saw was being passed around at Scouts. It was clearly from the seventies and featured women with hirsute pubic regions, wearing strings of beads and sitting on horses. There wasn’t a boob job, bleached arsehole or oven-ready chicken in sight. One of the boys had raided his elder brother’s collection, and he quickly became the supplier to me and my friends, at least until a mate of mine came across a den in the field behind his house that was home to a decent stash of about twenty mags, which then did the rounds.

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Any bloke that has ever obtained an adult publication that has been through more hands than a rugby ball, will recognise the familiar traits – missing pages, pages stuck together, corners folded over – but one mate of mine passed me a magazine with the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’ written next to each model. I asked him about this, and he told me that it saved time. The same friend later lent me a mag with some pages Blu-Tacked together (it actually was Blu-Tack, I checked), in order to quickly turn to the pages he wanted to see. This is how I discovered that he had a thing for women wearing oversized nightshirts and woolly socks.

Another buzz today’s generation has been deprived of is trying to buy a magazine from a newsagent whilst clearly underage. I always found the best places to go were Muslim run – if they didn’t object to stocking them in the first place, they didn’t seem to mind who they sold them to. I would buy them on behalf of friends, who lacked my bold streak, meaning that they would pay and I would get first look.

One thing that probably hasn’t changed is the potential to get caught in flagrante. On one occasion, I heard my mum walking upstairs and just knew she was going to barge into my room. I had a choice – put my tool away or attempt to conceal the magazine. I chose the former, and I still think I made the right decision.

Ironically, it’s the magazine format that dominates the softer side of titillation for today’s youngsters – publications such as Nuts, Zoo and Loaded are certainly better than the lingerie section of the Kay’s catalogue, although even these titles have suffered a huge decline in sales in recent years.

It has been plausibly argued that excessive exposure to internet porn can give people a distorted impression of what sex is, and what normal human bodies actually look like. I would argue that it has also adversely affected what porn itself means, making it too easy to attain, and cheapening what was an important aspect of growing up for generations of young men.

 

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image descriptionCOMMENTS

Robert 10:46 am, 17-Oct-2011

Yeah I completely agree. I'll never forget the thrill of my first porn mag; a copy of Razzle discovered on the floor of a changing room at a Minehead swimming pool, smuggled out in the leg of my jeans. Kids of today don't know they're born.

Phil 11:12 am, 17-Oct-2011

Razzle stack. Walking miles to another part of the town (preferably county), just to avoid the shame(!) of being a horny teenager buying a wankmag, and being seen by your neighbours. Hiding magazines amongst a pile of Warlord and Battle comics, to avoid detection. Aye, them were the days, lad.

Owen Blackhurst 12:45 pm, 17-Oct-2011

Great piece this. All of it is bang on but the bit that particularly resonates with me is the bit about finding loads in the field. We always used to find bags full of them in the woods near my Mum's and I was designated story reader. I used to sit on a tree stump, spark a gitane nicked from my dad's cupboard and regale everyone with the stories. Ace.

Terry Daley 1:56 pm, 17-Oct-2011

At a mag I used to work at we worked alongside the producers of a prodigious amount of porn. Any letters you bashed one out over were probably written by a pervy middle aged man. Think about that for a second, you beasts.

David L 2:39 pm, 17-Oct-2011

Yeah, I suppose so. Out of curiosity, what sort of underwear would the pervy middle aged man have been wearing?

Jimmy G 3:27 pm, 17-Oct-2011

How was it that everyone found / or made a den in some field / woods near their house? Brings back memories.

Adam 5:02 pm, 17-Oct-2011

Living near a motorway service station meant that there was HUGE AMOUNTS floating around the fields/woods near my house. We used to casually walk around and find it. We once found a huge stash dumped in some random metal container in a wood. And yes we had dens where we would stash our gains. Memories.

Nick 5:38 pm, 17-Oct-2011

The last thing any hormone-fuelled young man wants when purchasing his grot, is the newsagent attempting to engage him in conversation. This happened to me once; a copy of Rustler lying prone on the counter. Suffice to say, I never returned there.

simon 8:09 pm, 17-Oct-2011

I remember the planning that went into buying it; Choosing the right shop in the part of town no one would know you in; perhaps a reconnaissance mission to check how well the shelves were stacked and what magazine was where; how to get it out of the shop - up the jumper, a bag or concealed in a newspaper all seemed to work well.

David L 8:37 pm, 17-Oct-2011

Teenage Son: "Dad, dad, there's something wrong with that woman's arse in the first photo!" Dad: "Aye, lad." (Fondly patting son's head) "It's not been photoshopped. Proper 80s arse, that is."

Jayne 10:05 pm, 17-Oct-2011

very entertaining piece Mr P, you clearly know your subject

Jim 9:44 am, 18-Oct-2011

Reader's Wives. I must have lost gallons if bodily fluids over those hags. Happy days.

Peter 5:52 pm, 18-Oct-2011

Couldnt agree more with this. I remember going to my grans on a Sunday and waiting for my Dad to finish reading the Sunday People before rifling through it to find the latest topless photos of Jordan in the centre spread. My taste is Much more discerning now it must be said. I remember a friend having similar tactics, however he kept his cuttings in a briefcase under his bed. The day his mam announced that she knew the combination for it is one I will never forget.

Mark 7:01 pm, 18-Oct-2011

If it weren't for those old den porn mags I wouldn't have had any sexual education at all. My dad left quite a bundle open to me and my brother too to save him the embarrassment. I have to say, I've no complaints on that front - the day I stumbled across two VHS tapes behind the telly I never looked back. Dirty buggers, dads!

Foxy Dread 9:00 pm, 19-Oct-2011

I'd select a newsagent that opened at 5.30ish, just to reduce the chance of the purchase being interuppted by anyone bar a bin man on his way to work.

jimmy jinx 4:13 pm, 12-Jan-2012

great stuff, razzle tucked inside the sunday papers, it´s the ingenuity that´s missing...

Jason 6:58 pm, 29-Sep-2012

Great piece

Markxist 8:40 pm, 29-Sep-2012

Tsk kids don't know their born these days. There was a real skill and an illicit haphazardness to our porn intake back in the days before the net. You had to either stumble across a collection in the woods or in a field, have a mate who knew someone older/had an older brother or be lucky enough to look old enough and be man enough to breeze into the newsagents, rise up on your tiptoes and pick up a mag from the top shelf bold as brass. As it is, I well remember one caravan holiday when just the glimpse of Linsey Dawn Mackenzie (big boobed dog) in the back pages of The Star was enough to have me counting the hours til Mum and Dad went to the arcades. God, what a life

Doug 1:39 pm, 1-Oct-2012

I was the editor of those Fiestas.

Jamie 11:21 pm, 1-Oct-2012

Aaahh, I remember buying my first copy of Fiesta at fourteen and hiding it in a Kerrang! magazine. Looking back, it's difficult to tell which is the more shameful purchase. I found a bunch of 'em on a beach once. And a friend recently left a collection of about 400 pornos on my doorstep when his girlfriend moved in. I remember being confused by 'Dean from Slough' allowing all the blokes on the street to shag his wife. Them stories were wicked, like.

Doug 6:16 pm, 2-Oct-2012

I think most of the letters were figments of vivid imaginations.

Anti-Porn 9:27 am, 3-Oct-2012

Porn was never fun, it was and is a channel for men with unfulfilled sex lives to live out their fantasies. What's funny is that the beautiful women in the mazagines and videos wouldn't touch you in real life, well not unless you paid them. It's all quite grubby really.

Colonel Willowby-Gore St. Johns 11:37 am, 3-Oct-2012

Beautiful women, Anti-Porn? You've never "read" Reader's Wives then?

Howard 5:14 pm, 20-Jan-2013

Some women like porn. Just saying.

lerouge 11:36 am, 22-Jan-2013

Come on Anti-Porn, just stay out of the conversation if you don't agree. I think that the existence of these porn dens across the country says quite a bit about the UK's attitudes to sex in general. A discussion on that might be more suited to your point of view. Anyway- my two penn'orth- the old days of razzle etc were better as ther was still something (albeit very little) left to the imagination. Nowadays you can probably google 'dwarf cowboy porn' and get a few millions hits. At least imaginations were stoked somewhat back then.(Owen/ Dave L- let me know what you get from google). Jamie- be proud of your misspent youth reading Kerrang. It had it's place. And also Pandora Peroxide if you couldn't get Fiesta.

wayne mowat 3:20 pm, 28-Feb-2013

memories memories eh lads! What i remember is the thrill of flicking through them trying to be discrete in wh smiths. would shake with the excitment of it. Even knicked some of the smaller ones (which seemed a bit stronger but i forget what they were called..."experience" maybe??) from newsagents near me, stuffing it under jumper and walking out of shop. No doubt whistling as i did!

lord basil 5:26 pm, 28-Feb-2013

I'm proud to say that I actually remember the magazine that is the 3rd photo

Mike 5:38 pm, 28-Feb-2013

I remember once trying to wank over the lingerie pages in one of my mam's catalogues, (sometimes you got a glimpse of pubes through some of the lace knickers) i had it on my knee and just as i hit my vinegar strokes it feel to the floor and opened over the dishwasher section. section,

Macdoobie 11:46 pm, 28-Feb-2013

Great piece. I was just wondering the other day if anyone had found my stash of early 70s jazz mags.

Wilks 12:26 am, 1-Mar-2013

As a teenager in the late 80's/early 90's I must agree that finding a piece of 'grot' magazine, or even a whole magazine, was like several Christmases rolled into one. The joy of finding some item that further stirred a concoction of erotic, virginal emotions cannot be fully explained. I remember once finding some beer-mat like stickers with images on that kept me going for weeks. Fair play to anyone with the bollocks to go into a newsagents, not me though (I'm afraid I had to fantasise about whatever cuttings I could get hold of and make do with the imagination). Though one friend found his dads VHS copy of Debbie does Dallas and we spent an afternoon at his in a state of awe and silence. When the film finished I made the 150 mtr dash home in 6.2 seconds. Usain who? If you needed a wank ore Internet sub 9 second 100 metres were ten a penny!

Mave 1:35 am, 1-Mar-2013

Great piece - dens, jazz mags and teenage smoking - its what made Britain great

jeff 3:25 am, 2-Mar-2013

I remember roaming around old railway sidings in the midlands back in the 80s and you used to find old copies of Escort,Razzle,Derrier,Juggs in the parked up trains as the doors werent locked I spent many an evening with a torch wanking over these mags,i used to strip naked for the extra thrill and run up and down the coach ejaculating across the seats I couldnt wait to finish college and ride down to the sidings on my bike and start thrashing away Truly the best days of my life,its too easy now

sminkypinkyboomboom 11:30 pm, 2-Mar-2013

Ah yes, such innocent times: a slutty blonde with an 80's hairdo lying on a pvc settee, gazing vacantly at the camera - but guaranteed to make a schoolboy's fly burst. Today's kids don't know what they're missing. Nowadays it's all A2M, Hot Carl, Felching and Fisting, Cum-swapping,Rim-jobs, Pissing Dwarfs and Snowballing. It turns my stomach, it really does.

Simmo 2:49 pm, 21-May-2013

To bring these porn reminisces crashing into the late 90s, I had a "friend" who had thousands, literally thousands, of blank VHS tapes stored on shelving in his room. The front cover would state that the tape within housed a family friendly opus, 'The Goonies for example. But the truth was far more distasteful. He would tape EVERY film on telly after 9pm, and timeline any nudity/sex scene contaiend within, e.g. Kim Cattrall's bush - Porkies - 43 mins 34 secs. Sociopathic brilliance.

MaverickCat 6:18 pm, 27-Sep-2013

Those were the days nothing better than finding a slightly damp bongo mag under a bush. A bit sad that the Razzle pile on, also known as a block of flaps was banned under health and safety guidelines.

Hapless Dad 8:47 pm, 27-Sep-2013

Totally agree with the article (had to write a quick reply, my mum;s in the other roo0m!)

jasesteve 10:45 pm, 30-Sep-2013

The magic porn bush and its mysterious repeat bounty. Like white dogshit, now consigned to history.

Jack 4:43 am, 17-Dec-2013

The 1st comment dates October 2011...Its December 2013 now!...WTF!...lol

Sambosa75 8:15 am, 4-Jul-2014

I used to do a Sunday after lunch porno run from my local corner shop. I used to go for the higher end titles such as Club and Mayfair, slip them inside a News of the World newspaper in place of the free magazine supplements and stroll up to the counter and pay for the paper. I'd then have my Sunday night bath, retire to "bed" and w*nk myself blind. I'd then flog them on to school mates at a tidy profit. I got away with it for a good few weeks before getting rumbled when the lad behind the counter casually opened the paper to find my stash inside. Never did return to the shop for fear that he still works there!

Jon 9:01 pm, 4-Jul-2014

I miss traipsing through the woods and finding carrier bags of someone's favourite pages ripped out of bongo mags, often damp and musty- through rain, not spunk- and then rushing home with the bag for a quick tug before mum got home. I often think of the disappointment that the person hiding the carrier must have felt when he went back to retrieve his booty. The only things you find in woods now in the undergrowth are old mattresses and empty cans of Polish lager. Sign of the times i suppose

James Davidson 3:57 pm, 5-Jul-2014

One of my mates fathers had a superb collection of German art pamphlets as well as your run of the mill Razzels and Fiestas.My pal would often lend them out and as with most 12 year old's i thought hiding them under my mattress would be full proof.Until the day i came home and found my Dad sitting in his favorite chair leafing though one of the Kraut grot mags.The embarrassment is still with me 30 years on.

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