It was the first truly "dirty magazine" I ever saw.
By my mid-teens I'd already flicked through the usual stockpile of adult mags that various friend's fathers kept ineptly locked away some place; and had already mused aloud to various trusted friends that I wished there was more to the art of porn than another nicely airbrushed lady spreading her legs for a tasteful cameraman. Even Hustler wasn't impressing me.
And then a friend of a friend returned from a break year in Europe and, smuggled back in their luggage inside a pile of more innocent continental reading... a copy of Private; probably the single most important truly adult magazine ever published because, in terms of content and explicit imagery, it was the first.
The various stories of Berth Milton Jr's decidedly anti-climactic battles with Swedish censorship are ancient history in the world of erotic legend today... and a search for Private magazine on the web will bring up a wealth of content and images.
But if you really want to get to the meat of the matter... and maybe discover why I still rate my discovery of Private among the key events in my own sexual journey, then a couple of box sets that Santa dropped in my stocking this year will be compulsory reading. Or viewing, because there's not much text and what there is is pretty lame.
But the pictures....
Check out (or purchase) your own copies here... the Seventies box and the Eighties box.
It was the first truly dirty magazine I ever saw.
And the first to keep me awake at nights as well.
1 comment:
For those of us flirting (and actually consummating) with soft porn in the '80's, "Private" had an almost legendary aura, being true hard-core - there were tales of it being smuggled into the UK (then going through one its prudish phases) with the occasional connivance of Customs officials. I was too young and too nervous to ever try to obtain it, which is probably just as well, as I'd undoubtedly have hated it.
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