Zagats Guide to BOSTON

Horatio writes: Welcome to our new occasional feature. Now there is a Zagats for almost everything, we are proud to add to the range with our definitive guide to the best places to acquire porno mags in the 1970's and '80's. We start with The Puritan City, The City on a Hill, Beantown, Boston. Thanks to Adam of San Francisco for this review. Please send yours our way.

BOB'S CANDY STORE used to be in Waban Square in Newton. It was run, fittingly, by Bob, the meanest guy who ever lived and who was totally bald aside from a fringe of white hair that he let shoot out of the front. Bob carried himself like a man whose biggest regret in life was opening a store populated only by twelve year olds, a target audience he clearly despised. One was left to wonder exactly what he was thinking when he went into the candy store business.

The store had a huge wooden counter, more befitting of a bar, running round two sides of the shop. Bob longed for adult custom so much, that he kept a mid-sized stock of porno mags - Playboys and Penthouses -- under the bar. His biggest mistake was positioning it right next to the small entry way which was cut into the bar so he could enter and exit. And so, here's how you got your porn at Bobs: Most important, you had to be tight with my friend, Eliahu who was a tubby kid who had been blessed with deceptive speed which made him great at two things: On the basketball court he had an explosive burst to the basket, which made him impossible to stop in the paint. In Bobs, he had all the skills necessary to become an experienced klepto. Eliahu would wait patiently for Bob to become distracted by a gaggle of kids purchasing jawbreakers down one end of the bar. This was his cue to launch himself under the bar, grab a handful of magazines and thrust them down the front of his pants in one practiced silky-smooth move. Watching him operate was almost as thrilling as using the magazines later back in my bedroom. Just knowing what was going to go down and then watching it happen was like being privy to watching Babe Ruth hit a "called shot" home run week in week out.

Small barrier to be able to frequent the store. Bob is now dead and his shop has now closed. But don't let that stop you.

A Little Something For the Weekend, Sir? Taffy from Captain Cavemen

Horatio writes: Hanna Barbera was our generation's Pinter. Everything they served up from "Scooby Doo," to the "Wacky Races" was a rollercoaster ride of truth and emotion. And then came Captain Caveman, a magnificent mash-up of "Josie & the Pussycats" and "Charlie's Angels." Caveman was a troglodyte who was really just one big giant ball of pubic hair, grasping a phallic club that had magic powers dedicated to solving crimes. This whole package was masculine enough to persuade three nubile young women -- The Teen Angels a brunette, an African American and a blond to follow him, groupie style, around the country. Captain Caveman was the kind of role model America's youth cried out for. My family were all lawyers and accountants. Nothing to want to emulate there. This was a man who knew what was important and lived the kind of life I aspired to when I was nine. And the more I watched, the more I realized that this was down to one thing and one thing only. Taffy. The blond. Dee Dee, the African-American was intelligent. Brenda, the brunette, to be honest was just kind of there...But Taffy was the perfect ten. A button of a nose, the slightest of mini-skirts, a divine pair of legs, and a voice that was teasing, playful, throaty and oh, so sexy. Her character had Captian Caveman wrapped around her finger, and before long, I too was besotted. When the show came on I would start off on the couch in the den. But with in minutes, like a sleepwalker, I would find myself involuntarily inching nearer to the television, ending up right in front of the screen, as close as was humanly possible, to see if I could get a glimpse up her skirt. I googled the voice actress who played her. Laurel Page. She has a web page with her agent's number, as well as her own email for her side businesses of making cakes out of photographs and art consultancy. Emailing her would be the equivalent of reaching out to Christie Brinkley or Kathy Ireland. I just flat out don't have the confidence. But if anyone needs a photo cake I am sure she would be pleased to hear from you. Until then, here is an episode of Taffy in action for your viewing pleasure in every sense of the word over the weekend.

And what do you want to be when you grow up?

Horatio writes: This web site has fixated almost exclusively on how the random pieces of pornographic material we managed to get our hands on controlled our hearts and minds and defined the way we thought about ladies and the world of love. What it has failed to do is to examine the myriad of ways these magazines influenced our thinking in less obvious ways. Let's pretend for the sake of argument that reading porn magazines fail-safe guaranteed you would develop sufficient love-making skills to pleasure women both one-and-one, and in small groups. But what were the less obvious collateral benefits? In this instance, if you dedicated a vast proportion of your waking hours to reading porn as a teen, what career track were you setting yourself on? The answer to this question, and countless others, lay in the small ad section at the back of the magazines. Have a close look and ponder just how much majestic whoopee a professional meat cutter gets nowadays anyway? Enjoy this selection from a 1971 edition of Stud Magazine. (click on images to enlarge)

Hooked On A Feeling and a Futon

Jimmy O, now of suburban Chicago, sends in this tale of a collegiate bond stronger than Crazy Glue:

My freshman roommate was a handsome fellow. Well over 6 feet tall with a dong to match. He had a girlfriend. He fornicated. For all the aforementioned reasons and more, what I witnessed that cold, dreary Midwestern afternoon remains a mystery. But it did occur all the same.

And as far as roommates go, he was a pleasure. Amicable, amiable, and many other descriptive words that begin with a, he was as easygoing as they come. From pizza toppings to music, we had much in common. When it came to decorating our dorm room our tastes couldn't have been more simpatico and we quickly agreed upon a wool carpet remnant and a cherry red futon. For almost a year, we spent countless nights on that futon playing Tecmo Bowl, watching Sports Center, and pulling late night bingers from his home-made bong. Why he would chose to desecrate such hallowed ground is still beyond me. But he did. And it went a little something like this:

Poly Sci 101 class was cancelled. I grabbed a slice of pizza and headed back to the dorm. Room was double bolted. This was odd. I opened the door and-- even as I write this it doesn't sound real -- walked in on said roommate with his Girbuad jeans at his ankles, making love to the crease in our futon.

Alarmed, ashamed, and agitated I high-tailed it out of there. Too repulsed to return, I spent the night in a friend's room. The next morning I returned and, perhaps by way of an apology?, found the futon covered in a brand new tie-died tapestry.

Looking back, it's still difficult to ascertain what drove him to this act of man on couch love. Where had he learned it? Who had taught him the joys of the crease? I don't think I want to know.

Tree Hugger

Horatio writes: Thanks to J. Owen for this beauty. He was born and bred Upper West Side as the story attests:

My best friend growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan was a kid called Marcus Berg. We were the kind of friends who were joined at the hip up to about the age of 14 when playing Atari stopped being our number one priority and was replaced by pursuing girls in his case, and personal computing in mine. Looking back, I can pinpoint one exact moment when our friendship began to dissolve. We were throwing a football in Riverside Park one late winter afternoon as we often did on the way home from school. I gave the ball a little bit too much of the Dan Fouts treatment and it went over his head and into the bushes. Bergie ran in to retrieve it, and emerged with the ball in his right hand, and a copy of Penthouse Letters in his left. Our relationship was never the same again.

The questions such as whose was this magazine and what the hell was it doing in the bushes of Riverside Park were not asked. Even the ball was quickly forgotten as we flicked through this slightly-soiled discovery and the treasures that lay within. Darkness descended quickly as it does in winter in Manhattan. Riverside Park in the early eighties was not a place you wanted to be at night unless you intended to score some drugs or indulge in some man on man pleasuring and this created a problem for Marcus. His parents were English and extremely strict in a "spare the rod, spoil the child" way. So there was not a chance that magazine was returning with him to his 98th and West End boudoir. But for Marcus, the magazine was like a diamond, and to throw it away so soon after finding it would have been a sin akin to leaving left overs if you ever had dinner with Bob Geldof.

Under pressure, Bergie was quick of mind and quick of foot -- the closest analogy would be George Peppard in the A-Team. He shinned up a nearby tree, a spruce I think, and concealed the magazine in a crevice between two branches. And that is where the fun started for Berg. For the very next night, he put on his black champion sweatshirt and camo pants and penetrated the park at night -- an act which hithertofore had held a kind of Candyman stigma in our imaginations -- returned to his tree, climbed it, retrieved the magazine, knocked one out to its pages with a flashlight, restored it to its hiding place, and then ran like the wind back to the safety of West End Avenue. When he told me about this act of foolhardy bravery the next day in class I was aghast and agog. As I listened to the story and the risk of life and limb he was exposing himself to, it was like my friend had become a different person. "Yes, I was terrified" he admitted, ""But, tossing one off is like how i imagine drugs feel. You know what I mean, right?"

I was too embarrassed to admit that I did not. For the sake of our friendship, but just as much, for the sake of maintaining perceptions as much as I could about my not so well developed masculinity... I played along and tried to pretend that I was down with his daredevil Delta Force style park raids which occurred ritually in the same way every night for the next three months, a period in which the magazine stayed in the tree, the only difference being that it was now stored in a plastic bag (my idea) to protect it from the elements.

On the 93rd day of this ritual, the magazine mysteriously disappeared. I was relieved. But Bergie entered a state of depression and mourning after which he picked himself up, started running with a slightly faster crowd at school and our relationship, though still warm, was never really the same again. I think about this story being less about friendship, and more about the intoxicating power of the act of masturbation to an adolescent boy. That between life and death and knocking on out, they would choose death.

Odd Todd and his Hot Rod

Pound for pound, Todd Rosenberg is one of the funniest gents on the interweb. And now we, at True Beat, have another reason to love him, his lost days of porn innocence.

A Little Something For the Weekend, Susanna Hoffs

Fewer bands were more underrated musically and erotically than the Bangles. Ok. Musically, they were mediocre, but it was their music that propelled them into the nation's consciousness, and into the stuff of my adolescent fantasy. The Bangles were living proof that the collective can be greater than the sum of the parts, because truth be told, there were some pretty ugly looking ladies in there -- but they were carried by their lead singer who was a feather of a girl, one Miss. Susanna Hoffs. Hoffs was tiny -- the Mugsy Bogues in a band full of Manute Bols. And she knew how to grab your attention and then keep you transfixed, taking the stage in a slip of dress, thigh-length boots and a strapping guitar lashing out from her crotch. When she sang, the angels in heaven stopped to listen. And when she gave the microphone up to one of her bandmates, she knew how to keep you staring with a wriggle of her tiny knees, a sashay of her hips, or a head toss of her shaggy mane. Hoffs drove me crazy. Pocket sized, she represented everything a thirteen year old boy could want in a woman. You can keep your Walk Like an Egyptian, which always seemed crassly commercial to me with its gimmicky dance and nonsensical meaning. When Hoffs sang, there was meaning a plenty -- Eternal Flame is a case in point. Many was the night I would dust off that record and give it a spin whist staring at the four individual headshots of Hoffs on the front cover of the LP Different Light. As the song climaxed, so would I, driven on by Susanna's urging me and me alone: "Close your eyes, Give me your hand, Can you feel my heart beating? Do you understand?" I understood. Oh yes. I understood.

Horatio writes: Thanks to Joss David of New Jersey for this poignant piece of masturbatory nostalgia.