If The New Yorker had an issue devoted entirely to blowjobs, bigamy, and buggery bombs, it might resemble SCREW #164, dated April 24, 1972—but only if the staff at The New Yorker dropped acid, quit their jobs, and started banging each other in a supply closet while talking dirty about Nixon. This particular issue is a smut-stained monument to the holy trinity of SCREW: sex, satire, and scorched-earth rage at middle America’s hypocrisy.

At the helm, as always, was Al Goldstein—our Patron Saint of the Profane—who opens with “Screw You,” his usual editorial punch in the nuts. You can practically hear the cigarette ash hitting the typewriter ribbon as he tears into censors, cops, and whichever poor bastard tried to moralize that week. He was fighting a war—one cumshot at a time.

Cover Art by Martin

Let’s talk cover—Martin, our resident pervert-turned-painter, delivers an image that would make the Vatican spontaneously combust. You don’t even need acid to hallucinate when you’re staring at one of Martin’s creations. It’s all cartoon smut and garish glee, like Tex Avery had a stroke in Times Square and started drawing wet dreams instead of wolves.

“Marriage in the 70s: I Fucked Three Wives” by Michael Rice

Inside, Michael Rice makes his literary debut with “Marriage in the 70’s,” a brutally honest confessional on the sanctity of modern wedlock—if modern wedlock involves banging your way through matrimony like it’s a revolving door. Rice doesn’t preach. He doesn’t apologize. He just fucks. Three wives, one man, and enough guilt to crash a Catholic school reunion. It’s personal, dirty, and weirdly romantic—if your idea of romance involves a waterbed and an open marriage.

“Hail Fellatio” by Bette Leone

Then there’s Bette Leone, who pens a love letter to the blowjob in “Hail Fellatio.” Forget the Kama Sutra—Leone’s essay reads like scripture for the orally obsessed. This wasn’t just sex talk. It was female pleasure, sexual autonomy, and a middle finger to the Puritanical pearl-clutchers who still thought women should lie back and think of Nixon. Bette writes like she’s got one hand on the typewriter and the other between your legs. She gets it. She gives it.

“My Scene: Scrub-Job” by Martha Ektil

Martha Ektil’s “My Scene” dispatches from the frontlines of city grime, where a “scrub-job” might be a car wash—or something dirtier. Ektil always wrote like she was holding a cigarette and telling you a secret in the bathroom of a peep show. Her prose stinks of rain-soaked leather and sweat-stained sheets, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Homosexual Citizen: Buggery Bombs Out of Town” by Lige and Jack

Our resident gay gadflies Lige and Jack chime in with their “Homosexual Citizen” column, this time riffing on a failed gay-themed play or protest (or both)—“Buggery Bombs Out of Town.” Lige and Jack’s style was biting, brainy, and bitchy in the best sense. They were gay lib’s answer to Siskel and Ebert, if both of them had mustaches and shared a rent boy.

“Sex Scene” & “Naked City”

David Reitman’s Sex Scene and Anthony Gambino’s Naked City served as SCREW’s version of wire news—except instead of war updates and stock reports, you got handjob horror stories and reviews of Times Square smut theaters. These guys had their ears to the dirty ground and their noses buried in crotches. Their beat was Manhattan’s underbelly, and they reported from the inside out.

“Fuckbooks: Jungle of Amazons” by Michael Perkins

Michael Perkins dives into the pulp trash pile with “Jungle of Amazons,” a review of whatever bondage jungle romp had landed on SCREW’s desk that week. Perkins always managed to write about dildos and dominatrices with the vocabulary of a tenured professor. He was our Harold Bloom of the butt plug set.

“Watson’s Weirdness” & Goldstein’s Dirty Diversions

Christopher Watson returns with another installment of “Watson’s Weirdness”—think Ripley’s Believe It or Not, if Ripley was a horny weirdo living in a basement full of stained VHS tapes. Meanwhile, Goldstein’s “Dirty Diversions” offers a smorgasbord of smutty reviews and scandal, capped off by his ever-satisfying Shit List—a literary kick in the balls to the prudes, pigs, and politicians of the day.

The Verdict?

SCREW #164 wasn’t just a magazine—it was a middle finger mailed first class to the nation’s repressed subconscious. This issue captures SCREW at its filthy, fearless peak: loud, lewd, and lacerating. It wasn’t just about sex—it was about freedom. It was about truth. It was about fucking. And in that order.

As always: If you weren’t offended, you weren’t paying attention.

—P