This issue, July 1980, is barely one hundred pages long, with quite a few being pictures. Advertisements do dominate many pages; nearly all are for other adult products, probably due to the smaller size & scope of the magazine. Many of the ads even bring a blush to my face, despite having been hardened by the so-called rampant sexuality they say we're exposed to today. The acts described -- golden showers, hot 'lessies', group come, sucking cheerleaders -- rival the nastiest keywords in today's adult websites. One indicator of age reveals itself in the adult films: there's not a video tape among them. All movies are described as 8mm -- either standard or Super8 -- and many of the sellers offer free 'viewers' with purchase. There are very few color ads, and most are plain black-and-white ads that might be seen in the backs of most magazines...although the items sold here are significantly different than anything you'd find in Popular Mechanics.

The magazine starts with four or five pages of 'sexy news,' a few pictures of body paint, some product recommendations, in a column called "Foreplay". The "Letters" section is about what you'd expect: thanks for good photos, "real" stories of sexual exploits, and funny stories. Near the end is a feature called "Beaver Patrol," publishing nude photos of readers along with a description of their favorite sex acts. The common theme between the three is the sexist attitude towards women. A news article about sex in the military labels the women as 'nymphos,' one of the letters describes a woman being forced into being a sex-slave for her infidelity, and the reader photo descriptions are distinctively lewd...but who's complaining? That's what these magazines are for, right? If Stuff magazine would show more tits, it'd be a comparable magazine in terms of sexualizing women with a faint haze of misogyny around the edges.

The articles are actually much better written than the 'shorts'. The first is an interview with a male escort, describing how he does his work, and how he deals with the perils of male prostitution. The article doesn't reveal anything new about the high-priced escort industry, but the male point of view is refreshing. A nice change from the misogynistic tone of the arousing news is an article on women in the military, writted by April Blackwood. The three-page opinion piece is surprisingly positive towards women soldiers, both as a large component of the military and in combat duties. The final piece is an expose on the "killer drug" of the period: Angel Dust, or PCP. While the article does do a good job of explaining the dangers and affects of PCP, it delves into explicit erotic ramblings about sexual scenes caused by PCP use, which are neither effective nor arousing...which may be the point.

Surprisingly thorough is a review of the pornographic film "Education of the Baroness," showing such depth as to desribe a very loose and specious connection to Harold Pinter's work The Servant. Owing it's description to the appreciation of porno chic in the seventies, the writer, Rex Underwood, gives the film a complete working over, from complimenting the acting abilities of the performers and describing food inerted into a woman's cunt, all in the same sentence.

The magazine has a number of erotica pieces of varying length. The first, a regular column called "Kinky Street," is a short, barely two pages, voyeurism erotica piece. The end indicates it was reader-submitted, and asks for people with 'bizarre freaky sexual' experiences should write their stories and send them in. This is followed by an article of compiled sexual fantasies, each being only a few paragraphs long, from both men and women. Wet Satin, by Sylvia Francis, is a story about a young man with a panty fetish, ranging from being turned on by his mother's panties as a child, through the undergarments of his sexual conquests, to wearing panties himself. An interesting read, it dwells significantly on kinky sex (during period, oral sex in public, bdsm, and his facination with his mother), but it moves quickly and isn't difficult to read.

There are six different photo spreads; four of individual women posing, one of a man and a woman, and a pseudo-lesbian set. The first, titled "11" (Bo Derek, meet your competition, according to the table of contents, alluding to the movie 10), is five poolside photos of a short-haired blonde, who also appears on the back cover. "Cherry Bomb" is nine photos of a brown-haired woman posing with Fourth Of July themed cake and balloons, and in lingerie on a bed. "Poster Pet Jane" is Eros' version of the centerfold, appearing at the middle of the magazine so a two-page photo could be removed and posted on a wall. Her eight photos are credited to "RDR Productions". The last solo spread is of a long-haired woman in the desert, called "Bake Off". Her photos are credited to Leverett Bradley. Around half of the photos are accompanied by witty comments, ranging from "Now that's what I call America the Beautiful" for a Cherry Bomb photo to a complete limerick:

A sex-starved young waitress from Frisco,
Whose cookie was not a Nabisco,
Would warm up her oven
With fingertip lovin',
And then she'd start cookin' with Crisco.

The man-on-woman sexual scenes are par for the non-XXX magazines, showing nothing but a limp penis and a number of suggestive poses. Nothing remarkable. The lesbians, however, are far less lesbian than just missing the penis altogether.

If all lesbians were made so by a lack of available penises, the world might be a much different place. No, the magazine and the photos are clearly for the benefit of horny men, as the unintentionally humorous captions demonstrate. It starts with the cut-and-dried statement, "I wish you were a man," continuing with "I wish I had low slung balls for you to suck on," and ending with "I wish I could screw you till you begged me to stop." Finding out that your friend wishes she had a huge black cock to fuck your little blonde cunt with might be disturbing to most women, but, again, giving men the opportunity to project their own image onto either woman is what sold the photos, not the burgeoning lesbian market.

Unfortunately, none of the models -- except the centerfold "Jane" -- are credited, possibly because they were purchased from photographers rather than photographed by staff. In fact, the magazine's masthead lists no photographers, save an 'art director'. None of the authors show up in the masthead as regular employees, and given their alias-sounding names it's likely that they were independent writers whose works were purchased for the magazine.

This copy does show wear from use, mostly around the corners and edges. The cover and staples are still tightly bound, and there are no significant tears, rips, or stains inside.

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