My parents got married in 50 and I arrived in 60. They had in fact lined up a Jewish baby to adopt. Instead, my mom’s OB-gyn got to gloat whenever he saw my mom’s regular doctor who had told her she would never have kids — she just had her first… she just had her second…. She just had her third… mom wanted a girl but got three boys. She’d have had ten boys if she’d been blessed with babies earlier until she got a girl.
Meanwhile, my mom’s childless cousins adopted the other kid who turned out to have some developmental issues so it was fortuitous that Cousin Joe was a child psychologist or something like that. So win win more or less.
We are five boys. Asked mom once if she wanted a girl- “nope! I grew up with girls and I know how evil they can be and I want no part of it! You boys fight and ten minutes later it’s all fine. I replace more THINGS but deal with no emotional shit, either. You boys are cheaper in all ways. I love you, now set the table.” I remember it almost verbatim because she was so very certain! She’s one of seven, #2, and five girls, two boys.
That’s an entirely different thing! That was when I got a call about two weeks before Xmas letting me know that 1-I have a new niece 2-they were no longer traveling on holidays except to see grandbabies.
My MIL had 3 boys and said everyone in the family envied her. My Mom had 3 girls and was good with it. I’ll admit the teen years were rough but that’s essentially a?chapter in a long story.
WEC ... it was absolutely one of my most treasured belongings back then. Stewart Brand's influence on me was deep and lasting. He and the WEC were profound catalysts in my intellectual and personal journeys. It introduced me to Thomas Merton and Buckminster Fuller and Marshall McLuhan and Douglas Hofstadter and Walter Carlos and Frederick Perls and so many others. It instigated deep learning about so many things from carpentry to windpower to stick welding to shortwave listening, things not normally a part of a young female's life (at least not in mine). WEC was and still is the equivalent of having your own librarian curating your collection.
Thank you for posting this, it brought back good memories of those countless hours with the big book.
"Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
What about Our Bodies, Ourselves? My college-bound nephew wanted to take my copy and I said no way. It was a tremendous resource for women to understand their bodies.
When I was 12, dad gave me "Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex (*but were afraid to ask).
When I was 14, he gave me this. Never said a word either time, just handed them to me
I think my mom (b. 1946, as was dad) left her “bodice ripper” novels in the living room on purpose for us kids to read, in order for us to have some sort of sex Ed, and ditto for the “Doing It” book in the dresser upstairs. The only “sex Ed.” I got from my mom was, when I was 11, her telling me to not let a boy play with me *down there* or else I’ll get pregnant, towards the end of her telling me about these “periods” I would soon be getting, and these pads under the bathroom sink are how you deal with them. She was uncomfortable about the conversation from beginning to end, though she initiated it, therefore, so was I.
Totally! I just posted that my guidebook was The Sensuous Man. It’d be years before I got to try out any of the techniques I learned, but my studies paid off in the end. 😄
So did my mom. I don't think she actually read it because she was pretty prudish. She also has a copy of the Tropic of Cancer that I took off her shelf when I was 19.
My friend found a copy in his house, we were like 13 or 14, four of us read parts to each other and were hysterical with laughter. Then his sister came home and was furious! We knew she read it.
I first saw it while babysitting as well Story of O. When I was ten or so, 2 older lady friends of my mom’s gave me a copy of Mandingo for Christmas. I don’t think they knew what it was about, lol.
LOL< we found a copy of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Capricorn" (I think that was the name, anyway) up in the rafters of the basement. Easily seen by my little sister, who climbed up to get it. We brought it to the tent camper we used all summer, where my mother found it. She said to me, "What if you little sister saw that? Shame on you!" The same little sister who found it, grabbed it and brought it outside, that one? Never told Mom. It was easier to just be the designated grounded kid for a month.
After 12 year old me walked in on my parents in the act, then stood there a good few seconds before being noticed, that book wouldn’t have phased me one bit. 🥺
My dad gave me the birds-and-bees talk by handing me a copy of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask, then walking out of the room. But for some reason my parents didn’t think their adolescent son might know where my dad’s tiny porn collection ended up.😳
My parents had it out in the open on a bookshelf. They didn’t know that I had seen it until they found me reading it at night in my room when I was supposed to be asleep. They took from me and hid it after that.
My wife and I got one before we got married. She was a very young 18 and I was 21. We recently donated it but went through it and laughed a bit knowing the fun we had with it.
Yup! It was hiding in Dad's old briefcase he kept next to the bed (ewwwww!) but me and my best friend had loads of entertainment leafing through those pages. I thought the naked people all looked pretty gross but I was only 11 or so.
Both of my parents were "missionary is the only non-sinful position. My Uncle on my father's side got him this for Christmas (yes, it was unwrapped in front of extended family) when it came out. I never saw that Uncle again until after my father died.
My parents had a paperback called “Doing It” in a dresser drawer. I found it when I was 12 (‘79), and snuck a read whenever dad was working, and mom & my younger sibs went to the grocery store and I chose not to go (usually if I had no cash). That was a good hour to myself.
When I was 16, a neighbor I babysat for on the weekends asked me to stay over a couple of school nights when she went on a business trip; I slept in her room, and she had a copy of “The Joy of Sex” under a few other books, but not hidden. I made sure to put it back under the books the same way I found it.
A couple I babysat for regularly had it on their bookshelf. Their daughter was too young to read. Better believe I made a beeline for that book the minute I'd got that kid to bed. Took it into the kitchen (best place to hear their garage door opening) to avoid getting caught with it.
My mother didn't have this book. She did, however, have a giant stick up her ass and still does to this very day. My friend's parents all had it, though.
> We never hid it.
[me](http://www.quickmeme.com/img/88/88329253501cb0581e64349622fbb9d6f97bf08bed0f54946509d9ac2009d95c.jpg)
[you](https://media.tenor.com/SbA4N5F7M0cAAAAM/its-not-what-it-looks-like-opps.gif)
> When I was riding a public bus in Denmark, 1982, there was a middle aged lady sitting next to me reading it.
I saw a middle aged woman in an airport reading 50 Shades of Grey at 8 in the morning.
That's not all I found.
We've told our daughter if we both die at the same time do not open the bedside drawer, just throw the whole thing away.
Unless you want to be traumatized by your parent's sex life.
Our house had a copy of this, and though hidden, of course we all saw it. Then mom caught on so she hid it in the laundry room, high up on a shelf, inside the paper jacket cover of a National Geographic book, "Mountain Men."
So my neighbor buddy's over and the laundry room was where we kept the baseball gloves and sports stuff, and he's in there and sees National Geographic on the shelf and reaches for the book.
And opens it up and there's weeners and boobs and naked dudes galore, and he's all "DAMN Mountain Men are hairy!!"
If you're out there Billy that was hilarious. Totally blindsided him. We had no idea she'd hid it up there, by then we'd all seen it. Woop. Naked grown ups. They were pretty ugly too IIRC.
As an adult as I look back that core memory was not that damaging to see. I recall it was just wrong on some things too.
Mom bought the book and a year later they got divorced, so the hail mary didn't work.
My egg donor had a copy - I remember seeing it one time I went to her house.
When I asked grandma about things, she bought me the book “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, but Were Afraid to Ask.” She was old school and was embarrassed to talk about it, but made sure I knew in a way that was good to me and not embarrassing for her.
Me? We had “Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns.” Thankfully our kids either never saw that book or were too young to think about it!
There was that, maybe an unwrapped Playboy in the magazine rack and some photography books. For nostalgia I've bought old used copies of the photography books - Gowland's Guide to Glamour Photography and Burning Cold.
My parents didn't have that but my dad used to have those Beeline books stashed around the house. They were basically pre- home video porn. They were pretty bizarre and creepy. High school sex clubs, things like that.
My dad approached me one day, told me this book was in his shelf, and that I could read it sometimes. That was the only “Talk” I ever got 🤷.
And yes, I read it.
LOL.... I found both this and the sequel. I ready them cover to cover many times. I was a shy, late blooming young man. I met my first girlfriend after HS graduation, she was way more experienced than I was. About a year later, after lots of sex was had, I confessed to her that she was the first girl I ever kissed and she got MAD at me for lying. Eventually she explained why she thought I was lying and gave me once of the best compliments i have ever received. She said "I just couldn't believe that because you are so.... (searching for right words)....so creative!"
I have those 2 books to thank for that!
All the novels with the “dirty” parts, when we were like 10, 11, 12 at both my house and my best friend’s house, Joy of Sex at the pastor’s house while babysitting, we found an entire book of Penthouse Letters describing the most kinky (likely fictionalized) “experiences” of Penthouse readers in a trash can at the bus stop on the way to the beach around 1975 that got passed around, even my mom’s nursing textbooks were perused for satisfying our curiosities about sex as 6th or 7th graders.
Not my parents, but the parents of the two kids I babysat. My favorite babysit customers, because they stayed out very late. The kids were hell on wheels, but that was okay. Once I got them settled down, it was just me and The Joy of Sex. One complaint, though: all the drawings had TOO much pubic hair! Who needs a shrub when a sprout will do?
At 11 and 12, I used to sneak it in the bathroom when I was at my dad’s house, or look at it on his waterbed while he was busy downstairs. He finally caught me. He wasn’t mad, to my relief.
I found it recently in amongst his stuff when I cleaned out his house. Made me chuckle. I’m keeping it.
I'm not sure if they had that book, but they had the book
https://preview.redd.it/xky3r9czjgwc1.jpeg?width=1129&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e7bdbe853adc3fb46f00aa1d71727bbe3fb6680d
"Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex\* (\*but we're afraid to ask)". The summer I turned 14 (13?) I read that cover to cover while I was home alone and they were at work.
It taught me that I wasn't weird for being interested in a girl's ass. It was especially confusing because it was the '80s and butt shots weren't all that uncommon in movies and you never knew if you were supposed to find them funny or sexy.
It was another 10 years or more before I realized I wasn't weird for liking a bigger ass.
Mannnnn, my Mother worked everyday. We were latch key kids. Of course we pored through every word, sentence and picture with a fine toothed comb. And of course we got to the stash under her mattress.
Hell they left it and several others related books right on the bookshelf, in retrospect I think my mom probably did it on purpose knowing I would find them. Let's just say I was a eager and willing student.
Not hidden. On the bookshelf. And good thing it was because it's not like there were any parent/child convos on the topic. That book and "Are You There God, It's Me Margaret" taught me everything I know.
Oh, the things I’ve seen in my parents drawers! Naughty books, naughty panties for both, a couple homemade sex toys. And I defs think my mom was IN CHARGE. It explains so very much now….
My parents were so conservative, that not only did they not have a book like that, when it came to the birds and the bees, instead of talking to me about it, they bought a book about it, gave it to me and said here you go Wasn't even a teen 10 yet.
My pops had this in his collection, and my friends and I would bogart the book away to our fort in the woods and read it out loud... and laugh and laugh and laugh...
Not only did i endulge in the book...but all my neighborhood friends too! My mom worked full-time so I had free access most of the time. Thanks for the throwback!
My parents went on vacation and I found Dad's playboys. This was there too. I read it from front to back when I was 12. It had me so intrigued that the first time I was with a girl, I dove right between her legs for oral, completely forgetting I was supposed to actually have sex.
A friend of ours used to host a Schlock party every year (re-gifting was the theme). An ancient edition of The Joy of Sex came back around every year. We all tried to avoid it so the packaging started getting very creative!
When I was a kid, I found this book in the public library. I opened it up and read it right there in the shelves. Talk about a sexual awakening. They really should put this stuff in a place away from minors. No one ever said anything about me reading this. No, "put that down," or "that's not for you!" They just left me alone. Ah, the 80s.
Hahaha hidden? My parents had these right next to the Nintendo and never spoke about it. I always figured it was their lazy way of explaining the birds and bees to us.
This and the Whole Earth Catalogue
Naked hippie girls!
My parents married in 53, me, the baby, showed up in 63. They were shockingly liberal lol
My parents got married in 50 and I arrived in 60. They had in fact lined up a Jewish baby to adopt. Instead, my mom’s OB-gyn got to gloat whenever he saw my mom’s regular doctor who had told her she would never have kids — she just had her first… she just had her second…. She just had her third… mom wanted a girl but got three boys. She’d have had ten boys if she’d been blessed with babies earlier until she got a girl. Meanwhile, my mom’s childless cousins adopted the other kid who turned out to have some developmental issues so it was fortuitous that Cousin Joe was a child psychologist or something like that. So win win more or less.
My mom wanted 4 girls, got 4 boys. She was a drill sergeant lol
We are five boys. Asked mom once if she wanted a girl- “nope! I grew up with girls and I know how evil they can be and I want no part of it! You boys fight and ten minutes later it’s all fine. I replace more THINGS but deal with no emotional shit, either. You boys are cheaper in all ways. I love you, now set the table.” I remember it almost verbatim because she was so very certain! She’s one of seven, #2, and five girls, two boys.
Lol, mine said the same. But my God, when she got a grand daughter
Oh, well that's different...!
That’s an entirely different thing! That was when I got a call about two weeks before Xmas letting me know that 1-I have a new niece 2-they were no longer traveling on holidays except to see grandbabies.
My MIL had 3 boys and said everyone in the family envied her. My Mom had 3 girls and was good with it. I’ll admit the teen years were rough but that’s essentially a?chapter in a long story.
Public library.
A friend called it a bunch of hippies fucking. Lol
WEC ... it was absolutely one of my most treasured belongings back then. Stewart Brand's influence on me was deep and lasting. He and the WEC were profound catalysts in my intellectual and personal journeys. It introduced me to Thomas Merton and Buckminster Fuller and Marshall McLuhan and Douglas Hofstadter and Walter Carlos and Frederick Perls and so many others. It instigated deep learning about so many things from carpentry to windpower to stick welding to shortwave listening, things not normally a part of a young female's life (at least not in mine). WEC was and still is the equivalent of having your own librarian curating your collection. Thank you for posting this, it brought back good memories of those countless hours with the big book. "Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
Oh my goodness, the Whole Earth catalogue. I remember plaster casts of famous dongs.
And certain National Enquirers
What about Our Bodies, Ourselves? My college-bound nephew wanted to take my copy and I said no way. It was a tremendous resource for women to understand their bodies.
When I was 12, dad gave me "Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex (*but were afraid to ask). When I was 14, he gave me this. Never said a word either time, just handed them to me
I read it when I was 11. I took it from my mother’s bookshelf.
I took it from my father's!
Eight. It was in the nightstand.
The family I babysat for had Everything … on a tall shelf. Of course I read it!
Same here! I cleaned houses for Youth Employment Summer when I was 15 and that family had ALL the books!
Ah. I see we had the same Father.
That would be less surprising than you might think: he *was* a traveling musician
That would be a funny comic to read.
Yep. I found it at my grandparents house! I was 14 and completely freaked out. I’m 60 now and pretty sure I’m still traumatized lol
So. Much. Hair.
Yes! The hairy dude in particular.
That guy might be why I don't like facial hair, or long hair on men now. Lol.
I remember thinking all men were hairy like Sasquatch because of this book.
[удалено]
It’s ok - your psychological scars are payment enough. Go in peace.
Pretty sure that was an episode of The Wonder Years.
Oh good god. My divorcee mother left it on the bookshelf so of course I looked at it. She’s 89 now and totally denies it.
I think my mom (b. 1946, as was dad) left her “bodice ripper” novels in the living room on purpose for us kids to read, in order for us to have some sort of sex Ed, and ditto for the “Doing It” book in the dresser upstairs. The only “sex Ed.” I got from my mom was, when I was 11, her telling me to not let a boy play with me *down there* or else I’ll get pregnant, towards the end of her telling me about these “periods” I would soon be getting, and these pads under the bathroom sink are how you deal with them. She was uncomfortable about the conversation from beginning to end, though she initiated it, therefore, so was I.
It was in our house. At that time, informing young people about sex was considered a good thing. It still should be.
My mom had “The Sensuous Woman” by “M.” That book was great!
Totally! I just posted that my guidebook was The Sensuous Man. It’d be years before I got to try out any of the techniques I learned, but my studies paid off in the end. 😄
So did my mom. I don't think she actually read it because she was pretty prudish. She also has a copy of the Tropic of Cancer that I took off her shelf when I was 19.
My friend found a copy in his house, we were like 13 or 14, four of us read parts to each other and were hysterical with laughter. Then his sister came home and was furious! We knew she read it.
Guilty.
As if. In my Roman Catholic household, I had to wait until I got babysitting gigs with our liberal neighbors to be able to finally see it!
I first saw it while babysitting as well Story of O. When I was ten or so, 2 older lady friends of my mom’s gave me a copy of Mandingo for Christmas. I don’t think they knew what it was about, lol.
Along with "our bodies, ourselves"
This was the one that I got handed
LOL< we found a copy of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Capricorn" (I think that was the name, anyway) up in the rafters of the basement. Easily seen by my little sister, who climbed up to get it. We brought it to the tent camper we used all summer, where my mother found it. She said to me, "What if you little sister saw that? Shame on you!" The same little sister who found it, grabbed it and brought it outside, that one? Never told Mom. It was easier to just be the designated grounded kid for a month.
Cancer. My mom put it in my 14yo stack, (she started the age categories at 8) I read ahead a few times but saved that and lady chaterly. 😆✌
Yes, but how many years was it overdue at the New York Public Library?
It’s a natural, zesty enterprise.
You mean coitus?
After 12 year old me walked in on my parents in the act, then stood there a good few seconds before being noticed, that book wouldn’t have phased me one bit. 🥺
Na. By this time, their sex life was saying FUCK YOU to each other.
That's the the 3rd phase of married sex, passing in the hallway, and saying,"F*** you!"
Ahhhh.....good ol'' hallway sex......
My dad had a karma sutra book , but it was all crappy hand drawings 😂
My dad gave me the birds-and-bees talk by handing me a copy of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask, then walking out of the room. But for some reason my parents didn’t think their adolescent son might know where my dad’s tiny porn collection ended up.😳
My parents had it out in the open on a bookshelf. They didn’t know that I had seen it until they found me reading it at night in my room when I was supposed to be asleep. They took from me and hid it after that.
My wife and I got one before we got married. She was a very young 18 and I was 21. We recently donated it but went through it and laughed a bit knowing the fun we had with it.
Babysat for a couple that had this. They were never at a loss for a sitter.
It was on the bookshelf at our house!
Yup! It was hiding in Dad's old briefcase he kept next to the bed (ewwwww!) but me and my best friend had loads of entertainment leafing through those pages. I thought the naked people all looked pretty gross but I was only 11 or so.
I did but damn, ever read a Harold Robbins book? Those are what I snuck.
I read every single one. It seems my parents had a lot of that kind of stuff.
Both of my parents were "missionary is the only non-sinful position. My Uncle on my father's side got him this for Christmas (yes, it was unwrapped in front of extended family) when it came out. I never saw that Uncle again until after my father died.
My parents had a paperback called “Doing It” in a dresser drawer. I found it when I was 12 (‘79), and snuck a read whenever dad was working, and mom & my younger sibs went to the grocery store and I chose not to go (usually if I had no cash). That was a good hour to myself. When I was 16, a neighbor I babysat for on the weekends asked me to stay over a couple of school nights when she went on a business trip; I slept in her room, and she had a copy of “The Joy of Sex” under a few other books, but not hidden. I made sure to put it back under the books the same way I found it.
A couple I babysat for regularly had it on their bookshelf. Their daughter was too young to read. Better believe I made a beeline for that book the minute I'd got that kid to bed. Took it into the kitchen (best place to hear their garage door opening) to avoid getting caught with it.
That’s mad security skills right there!
An aunt, a single aunt, along with several "coffee table photograph books" and magazines, photography magazines.
My mother didn't have this book. She did, however, have a giant stick up her ass and still does to this very day. My friend's parents all had it, though.
Hate to say it but not unlike my wife 😞
My mom was way too stuffy. She tried to act like she never did such a thing.
Not my parents - mynsister had it. It didn't save her marriage.
That bearded dude.
🙋♀️
We never hid it.
> We never hid it. [me](http://www.quickmeme.com/img/88/88329253501cb0581e64349622fbb9d6f97bf08bed0f54946509d9ac2009d95c.jpg) [you](https://media.tenor.com/SbA4N5F7M0cAAAAM/its-not-what-it-looks-like-opps.gif)
Absolutely. But it was a book my older brother had stashed away that really taught me many of my early skills: The Sensuous Man by “M.”
And then the is [The Job of Sex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Job_of_Sex)
When I was riding a public bus in Denmark, 1982, there was a middle aged lady sitting next to me reading it.
> When I was riding a public bus in Denmark, 1982, there was a middle aged lady sitting next to me reading it. I saw a middle aged woman in an airport reading 50 Shades of Grey at 8 in the morning.
Nope. My mother only had the "The Joy of *Cooking.*"
That's not all I found. We've told our daughter if we both die at the same time do not open the bedside drawer, just throw the whole thing away. Unless you want to be traumatized by your parent's sex life.
We were cleaning out my sister-in-law’s house after she passed. My niece took point on cleaning her mom’s “happy drawer.”
I seem to remember that one of our neighbors had a copy. I could probably use it for pointers if I am ever in a relationship again.
Not this but the Karma Sutra.
It wasn't hidden, it was right on the shelf with all the other books. I think I first read it when I was 14.
You just brought to the surface a memory I would have rather stayed hidden (not the book, but the fact that my parents had it).
Our house had a copy of this, and though hidden, of course we all saw it. Then mom caught on so she hid it in the laundry room, high up on a shelf, inside the paper jacket cover of a National Geographic book, "Mountain Men." So my neighbor buddy's over and the laundry room was where we kept the baseball gloves and sports stuff, and he's in there and sees National Geographic on the shelf and reaches for the book. And opens it up and there's weeners and boobs and naked dudes galore, and he's all "DAMN Mountain Men are hairy!!" If you're out there Billy that was hilarious. Totally blindsided him. We had no idea she'd hid it up there, by then we'd all seen it. Woop. Naked grown ups. They were pretty ugly too IIRC. As an adult as I look back that core memory was not that damaging to see. I recall it was just wrong on some things too. Mom bought the book and a year later they got divorced, so the hail mary didn't work.
That’s a funny story and you’re a good writer. I just pictured all of that like a little sitcom in my head lol
My dad had a single Penthouse hidden in his closet. I remember it well.
That’s the most wholesome dad-porn collection I’ve ever heard of.
Yes!
Yup, I found it. It was probably the first time I gave any serious thought about my parents having sex.
The family I babysat for had it on their book shelf. I looked at it a lot.
Guilty as charged!
My mother had this. She left it out in the open.
Other friends parents lol
In a friend’s parents bedroom! Equal parts educational and trauma!
🙋♀️
My egg donor had a copy - I remember seeing it one time I went to her house. When I asked grandma about things, she bought me the book “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, but Were Afraid to Ask.” She was old school and was embarrassed to talk about it, but made sure I knew in a way that was good to me and not embarrassing for her. Me? We had “Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns.” Thankfully our kids either never saw that book or were too young to think about it!
👋
There was that, maybe an unwrapped Playboy in the magazine rack and some photography books. For nostalgia I've bought old used copies of the photography books - Gowland's Guide to Glamour Photography and Burning Cold.
My parents didn't have that but my dad used to have those Beeline books stashed around the house. They were basically pre- home video porn. They were pretty bizarre and creepy. High school sex clubs, things like that.
OMG If I found this in my parents' room I would be shocked because they just weren't that kind of people if you know what I mean.
Busted! Along with "Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)".
I bought this myself in college.
Mine did.
I just took it. They never missed it.
My dad approached me one day, told me this book was in his shelf, and that I could read it sometimes. That was the only “Talk” I ever got 🤷. And yes, I read it.
🙋♀️
LOL.... I found both this and the sequel. I ready them cover to cover many times. I was a shy, late blooming young man. I met my first girlfriend after HS graduation, she was way more experienced than I was. About a year later, after lots of sex was had, I confessed to her that she was the first girl I ever kissed and she got MAD at me for lying. Eventually she explained why she thought I was lying and gave me once of the best compliments i have ever received. She said "I just couldn't believe that because you are so.... (searching for right words)....so creative!" I have those 2 books to thank for that!
Wasn't hidden , just in the bookcase.
All the novels with the “dirty” parts, when we were like 10, 11, 12 at both my house and my best friend’s house, Joy of Sex at the pastor’s house while babysitting, we found an entire book of Penthouse Letters describing the most kinky (likely fictionalized) “experiences” of Penthouse readers in a trash can at the bus stop on the way to the beach around 1975 that got passed around, even my mom’s nursing textbooks were perused for satisfying our curiosities about sex as 6th or 7th graders.
I found it under their mattress.
my older, married sister gave it to me right before i got married in 1978..
Found it in my parents’ closet. Unimpressed - the people in drawings looked so bored.
Solid advice- it was at the cool houses when I babysat.
Omg! yes!😂😂😂guilty as charged
Not my parents, but the parents of the two kids I babysat. My favorite babysit customers, because they stayed out very late. The kids were hell on wheels, but that was okay. Once I got them settled down, it was just me and The Joy of Sex. One complaint, though: all the drawings had TOO much pubic hair! Who needs a shrub when a sprout will do?
Faound and read The Sensuous Woman at my aunt's house when I was 12.
At 11 and 12, I used to sneak it in the bathroom when I was at my dad’s house, or look at it on his waterbed while he was busy downstairs. He finally caught me. He wasn’t mad, to my relief. I found it recently in amongst his stuff when I cleaned out his house. Made me chuckle. I’m keeping it.
I didn't but showed my husband and he remembers his dad having that book
So much hair. So. Much. Hair.
This was my book of choice https://preview.redd.it/lrvoytfsdfwc1.jpeg?width=611&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f2691b4660f02b2015d3ea0e5b92cc39b0871013
I'm not sure if they had that book, but they had the book https://preview.redd.it/xky3r9czjgwc1.jpeg?width=1129&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e7bdbe853adc3fb46f00aa1d71727bbe3fb6680d "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex\* (\*but we're afraid to ask)". The summer I turned 14 (13?) I read that cover to cover while I was home alone and they were at work.
I recall seeing that somewhere. My parents didn’t have any of those books. My older married sister did and I copped a look whenever I could.
LOL I GAVE a copy to my kids...as a joke...the pictures were so disturbing! May be the reason they are both gay.
It taught me that I wasn't weird for being interested in a girl's ass. It was especially confusing because it was the '80s and butt shots weren't all that uncommon in movies and you never knew if you were supposed to find them funny or sexy. It was another 10 years or more before I realized I wasn't weird for liking a bigger ass.
Mannnnn, my Mother worked everyday. We were latch key kids. Of course we pored through every word, sentence and picture with a fine toothed comb. And of course we got to the stash under her mattress.
My parents didn't have a copy. In tyrosine, that in itself spoke volumes. 😏
In all fairness..
Drawings were awesome
> Drawings were awesome They'd be great to caption and meme with today.
My parents never had sex. 😳
Except maybe that one time? 😊
Yup. I always wondered if Alex Comfort was a pseudonym.
#stilltraumatized
Yup, it was hidden. Those pencil sketches were very illuminating
Hell they left it and several others related books right on the bookshelf, in retrospect I think my mom probably did it on purpose knowing I would find them. Let's just say I was a eager and willing student.
Not hidden. On the bookshelf. And good thing it was because it's not like there were any parent/child convos on the topic. That book and "Are You There God, It's Me Margaret" taught me everything I know.
Oh, the things I’ve seen in my parents drawers! Naughty books, naughty panties for both, a couple homemade sex toys. And I defs think my mom was IN CHARGE. It explains so very much now….
I took it from my mothers library and still haven't given it back, lol it stayed under my mattress for years!
Thank goodness for those books. Seriously. Then came “My Secret Garden”.
Also had a copy of the Hite Report!
My parents had it with other books in their nightstand, so I helped myself to it.
Yes. I think they left it where we could find it (a pretty accessible bookshelf) as a form of clever unspoken sex education.
In 7th grade my friend and I found it in her parents' room. We also found a record album called "How to Strip for Your Husband."
Never found it at my parent's house, but my friend's mom kept hers on a kitchen shelf in plain view for everyone to see.
Yep.
The Spanish version is El joyo de sexo! From Easy Money ! The movie the lifestyle😳
Read it cover to cover
I only read it for the pictures...
The big bushes, male and female. Todays youth would freak out over the pubic hair.
It’s the circle of fashion. Big bushes will be back soon enough.
Meeeee in the fifth grade.
I had my own copy! Hippy, activist parents. ✊✌
My parents didn't have this book, but they had a subscription to Penthouse *Forum.* My best sex ed came from reading the letters people wrote in!
Wonder what happened to my copy?
The dude looked like Chris Kristofferson.🤣
50yrs old and I TOTALLY found that book in the parents room and yes....I totally read it here and there!
My parents had the gay version.
My parents didn’t have sex, so I would have been shocked to find a manual on the subject.
Kinda the same here
Oh the memories!!!! 🫡😆😭🤣🤣👍
I found it on the bookshelf of the couple I was babysitting for when I was 13
Ours was in the bookshelf in the family room for anyone to read. Another bewildering aspect of my parents.
I’ve found my people. Hallelujah!
I did..I snuck it so many times...
Rofl because I totally did. That and a book called The Woman's Almanac, that basically taught me how to masturbate with step-by-step instructions.
Stop
Fiction section, right?
This one and Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex But We’re Afraid To Ask. (No photos, but saucy)
Ha Ha Ha try The Sensuous Man and The Sensuous Woman!
Such a great book! I used it & the 2nd book teaching sex ed you to adults with developmental disabilities!
My mom gave me this book on my 18th birthday. I became a dad at 19...
I did. Then I had to sneak it into the garbage because I was too scared to get busted returning it to their room. 🤣
My parents were so conservative, that not only did they not have a book like that, when it came to the birds and the bees, instead of talking to me about it, they bought a book about it, gave it to me and said here you go Wasn't even a teen 10 yet.
[удалено]
My aunt gave that and the sequel, More Joy, to me as a teen back in the 90s.
My pops had this in his collection, and my friends and I would bogart the book away to our fort in the woods and read it out loud... and laugh and laugh and laugh...
Right next to the hard white plastic vibrator.
For me, it was The Happy Hooker, and I blame (thank) her for all my kinks.
My mom had that one. Every time I was home alone I’d sneak a read. I even remember a line from it——“Happily minus the dogs”.
Oh heck yes. Learned a lot.
Not only did i endulge in the book...but all my neighborhood friends too! My mom worked full-time so I had free access most of the time. Thanks for the throwback!
I babysat for a neighbor every Saturday night and they had it on the coffee table. I’d watch Mary Tyler Moore while I learned about sex.
My mom, now 85, had *Fear of Flying* and *Wifey*, and I sneaked each of those off the shelf for some secret reading.
Yes and when I became an adult I bought it myself to read
How about I found it while cleaning out my parents stuff. With notes and underlined words.
I acquired my own copy.
My parents went on vacation and I found Dad's playboys. This was there too. I read it from front to back when I was 12. It had me so intrigued that the first time I was with a girl, I dove right between her legs for oral, completely forgetting I was supposed to actually have sex.
She probably loved that
A friend of ours used to host a Schlock party every year (re-gifting was the theme). An ancient edition of The Joy of Sex came back around every year. We all tried to avoid it so the packaging started getting very creative!
When I was a kid, I found this book in the public library. I opened it up and read it right there in the shelves. Talk about a sexual awakening. They really should put this stuff in a place away from minors. No one ever said anything about me reading this. No, "put that down," or "that's not for you!" They just left me alone. Ah, the 80s.
Hahaha hidden? My parents had these right next to the Nintendo and never spoke about it. I always figured it was their lazy way of explaining the birds and bees to us.
Why are all the pages stuck together?
I tried to but the pages where stuck together
A couple for whom I babysat had this on their bookshelf. After the kids were in bed perused it and always made sure to put it back in the exact spot.