The twelfth issue of SCREW hit the stands on May 9, 1969, and like a half-drunk uncle at a Baptist funeral, it didn’t bother with decorum. This was the issue where SCREW stopped being a naughty pamphlet for beatniks and started growing balls big enough to offend literally everybody.
Al Goldstein opened the show with “Low Level Lust (Succubus),” a horny hallucination of cinematic smut critique. Picture a film review with a hard-on. Then Jack Nichols—co-founder of the gay liberation front before it was cool—followed up with a savage take on Dr. Albert Ellis. Title? “Does Dr. Albert Ellis Suck?” Answer? He kinda did. He pioneered the American sexual revolution of the 1960s.
Leah Fritz—brilliant, pissed off, and absolutely not here for your male-gazey bullshit—served up “Too Fat to Fuck,” a piece that predated body positivity by about forty years and still hit harder than a backhand from Betty Friedan. It was a war cry against the thin-obsessed, fuck-measurement culture of the time, written with the fury of a woman who knew damn well she was desirable and sick of convincing anyone else.
Meanwhile, Richard Field got real raw with “Sex Addict,” a no-pants confession that read like Charles Bukowski doing confession in Times Square. Billy Graham (no, not that one) delivered the dirty-minded doodle “Peter D.,” a comic that could’ve gotten a man arrested in at least six states. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a cartoon penis with more personality than your ex. (Billy Graham would later go on to work for Marvel and was known for his work on Black Panther — the comic not the film.)
Michael Perkins, our resident smut sommelier, curated a filthy little listicle called “Fuckbooks: Dirty Dozen,” proving Playboy wasn’t the only rag with opinions on literature—ours just came with cum stains. Of the Top 12 sex books of the time, Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth, Memoirs of a Beatnik by Diane Di Prima, and Mama Black Widow by Iceberg Slim topped the list.
Jody Hannaken showed up with “Jack-Off Jamboree,” a masturbatory manifesto that did for self-love what Gloria Steinem did for Ms. magazine—only stickier.
And if you thought we’d forget the gays—think again. Lige and Jack closed out the issue with “Homosexual Citizen: Old Boys – The Just Blow Away,” a smart, stinging piece on aging in the gay community back when even Time magazine thought homosexuality was a disease.
Twelve issues in, and SCREW was already lightyears beyond smut. It was a dirt-covered mirror held up to a puritanical society, reflecting every nipple, hard-on, insecurity, and orgasm it didn’t want to see. No. 12 wasn’t just a magazine—it was a Molotov cocktail disguised as reading material.
Light it up.
—P.
