Capitalism + Cocaine = Naked Women on Film Part 1: 80s Nostalgia Week

On January 1, 1980, I was merely six years old. Come the bitterly cold evening of December 31, 1989, I was a sixteen-year-old virgin. Needless to say, at some point between those dates, I discovered the opposite sex. And their breasts.

Now, for the young folks playing at home, the eighties was a decade that existed before Al Gore invented the Internet. The steady flow of pornographic images of every sexual interest was not as readily available as it is today. No one knew about foot fetishes, scat was some type of "urban" music and Whitney Houston wasn't smoking the rock. Overall, it was a simpler time. Hell, there wasn't even a distinction between transvestites and transsexuals back then. Can you imagine that? No chicks with dicks?

But then the cocaine came, sullied everything and America still can't scrub itself clean.

Let's look back at this wonderful time, shall we?

Relax, 7-11 is Still in Business and Larry Flynt Still has his Gold-Plated Wheelchair

As I mentioned above, there wasn't an Internet back in the 80s. For a minor with no hope for getting some, there were only two avenues leading to the land of milk and honey: printed smut and cable.

Thanks to smut pioneers like Larry Flynt, there was an abundance of nudie publications during this period. However, for a minor, procuring such magazines as Cheri and High Society posed a challenge. Bookstores with a magazine section were still relegated to your local mall, stuck between the Orange Julius stand and the Lodge clothing store. Large chains such as Borders and Barnes & Noble had yet made it on the scene. These small stores, with their ever-vigilant sales staff, made sneaking peeks at the scantily clad centerfolds near impossible.

Most respectable convenience stores had secured the Adult Periodicals behind the counter. SO, the best method to get your hands on such precious publications was either an older relative with limited morality and/or cash flow or outright thievery from the shadiest of convenience stores. Since my friends and I were all "only children", we stole. (Although my grandfather (Polish side) did make sure that I 'stumbled' upon my father's Playboys. No "Friends of Dorothy" to be had in the Wojciak family.)

In the illegal obtainment of shady convenience store smut, I personally recommend slipping the desired magazine into a newspaper and then paying for said newspaper at the counter with exact change. Making your exit as quickly and calmly as possible. Just be sure to leave the vicinity of the store before examining one's procurements. (Of course, wojr.com would never endorse criminal behavior. These pointers are solely for entertainment purposes.)

If this all seems rather difficult to you, then you are correct in your opinion. This method involved a great amount of risk and left you the one thing you did not want your parents to find: evidence that you were a goddamn pervert.

Thankfully, there was the cable box.

BN, N, SC: All the Letters You Need to Know

Cable came into its own in the 80s. Again for the youngsters playing at home, there was a time when TV came into your living room via an antenna. If you were lived at the right elevations, you managed to get all 13 local channels. None of them showed the boobies.

Personally, I was lucky enough to have a spendthrift for a mother. We were one of the first people I know to get cable. Cable showed boobies. Cable even sent you a book telling you when boobies were coming over to your house. When the cable guide came in, we would attack it like Ike getting the maps for D-Day. HBO and Cinemax were our pre-adolescent saviors. No matter how many times these channels played 'Black Beauty' and 'Any Which Way But Lose' - they would eventually go back to breasts. The book even let you know about the extent of flesh you would be getting to see by their ratings key.

The important ratings were broken down into three categories:

BN (Brief Nudity) - If you weren't doing anything, worth checking out. Not worth losing sleep over, because movie may only show ass. Actually, it may only show male ass.

N (Nudity) - Guaranteed breasts. Definitely should see, but don't risk detection by parents. Movie will be played on multiple occasions through out month. You will get your chance.

SC (Sexual Content, sometimes listed as Strong Sexual Content) - The freaking mother lode. You miss sleep for this bad boy. You make sure to see multiple viewings. Tivo has not been invented yet, so there is no freeze-frame or rewind. You need to remain ever vigilant if you do want to miss a thing. (While this might sound difficult, one must remember that this was before MTV had destroyed America's attention span. Watching a two-hour movie for seconds of naked flesh was not the arduous task it is today.)

Now, one might blame HBO and Cinemax for corrupting the young minds of America, but don't. They tried everything they did to keep these films away from minors. Warnings were showed before the film to discourage parents from letting their children watch such filth. Plus, the truly heinous films were only played after 8PM.

Check in tomorrow for Part II.

wojr  ¶ 1:44 PM