SHOWING PINK

SHOWING PINK

As Penthouse magazine was on its way to bankruptcy, publisher Bob Guccione said, “The future has definitely migrated to electronic media.” And Hustler publisher Larry Flynt—who eagerly joined that migration—has complained, “If you ever cruise the Net and see everything that’s available, it’s glutted with sleaze. It’s a nightmare out there. This has to be affecting the revenues of people like myself.”

But both have played pivotal roles in the evolution of popular pornography. Men’s magazines had started out showing breasts but not nipples, buttocks but not anuses—and never, never a vagina. Nor did pubic hair used to be all over the place, only to eventually get bikini-waxed out of existence except for certain niche sites. Even nudist magazines had once air-brushed men and women into department-store mannequins without genitalia playing volleyball.

The great pubic breakthrough occurred in Penthouse in 1971. A triangular patch of dark curly hair eventually opened Pandora’s Box wider and wider until Hustler began “showing pink” in 1974. Even Flynt’s own wife Althea showed pink. One issue featured a Scratch-’n’-Sniff centerspread. When you scratched the spread-eagled model in her designated area, a scent of lilac bath oil emanated from her vulva.

In November 1977, Larry Flynt was flying with Ruth Carter Stapleton, the evangelist sister of President Jimmy Carter, in Flynt’s pink-painted private jet, which, when it belonged to Elvis Presley, had been painted red, white and blue. Up in the air, Flynt had a vision of Jesus Christ. Flynt’s entire body was tingling, and he fell to his knees, clasping his hands in prayer. Thus was he converted to born-again Christianity.

The next month, at Hustler’s Christmas party, Flynt announced that I was going to be the new publisher. This was the first that I heard the news. Before, I had been wondering how the magazine would change, and now it turned out that I was the answer to my own question. For Flynt to bring me in as redeeming social value was an offer too absurd to refuse.

Now that Flynt has evolved from a con artist into an authentic First Amendment hero—in July 2000, he spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco—I recall what a pariah he was in 1977. In Los Angeles, at the building in Century City, which housed his office, Hustler was not allowed to be listed in the lobby.

At the time, I was writing a syndicated column for alternative weeklies. Specifically, I was working on my “Predictions for 1978,” leading off with this: “Since Larry Flynt has been converted to born-again Christianity, the new Hustler will feature a special Scratch-’n’-Sniff Virgin Mary.”

“Hey, that’s a great idea,” said Flynt on New Year’s Day at Nassau Beach in the Bahamas. “We’ll have a portrait of the Virgin Mary, and when you scratch her crotch, it’ll smell like tomato juice.”

He was rubbing suntan lotion on my back.

“I’ll bet Hugh Hefner never did this for you,” he said.

Flynt wanted to know who would be an appropriate person to write an article for Hustler that would expose the Pope as gay. I suggested Gore Vidal, who had already stated in an interview that Cardinal Spellman was gay. So much for our first editorial conference.

There was an unwritten agreement among men’s magazines that human female nipples would not be clearly visible on a cover. I was also learning to accept certain arbitrary rules then governing the inside pages. An erect penis must not be shown. Semen must not be shown. Penetration must not be shown. Oral-genital contact must not be shown.

A few months later in Georgia, Flynt was shot during a lunch break in his obscenity trial. I flew to Atlanta and went directly to the hospital. Althea brought me to Larry’s room. It was extremely unsettling to see such a powerful personality so helpless, kept alive by medical technology, with one tube feeding him and another breathing for him. He appeared bug-eyed with painkiller. Althea lifted the sheet and showed me his gaping wounds, a truly awesome sight.

“Oh, God, Althea,” I said, “he’s showing pink.”

“I’m arranging for a photographer to come in here,” she said.

“We’re gonna publish Larry’s wounds in Hustler. I want people to see what they did to him.”

I sat down in a chair by Larry’s bed. I didn’t know what to say, We simply clasped hands for a while. Finally I broke the silence. “Larry, tomorrow is Good Friday,” I said. “So, uh, you don’t have to go to work.”

I glanced toward Althea to reassure myself that I hadn’t indulged in irreverence that was too inappropriate, but she said, “Oh, Paul, look,” gesturing toward Larry—“he wants to show you something.” Above the oxygen mask, Larry was blinking his eyes over and over again in rapid succession.

“He’s laughing,” Althea explained.

It was a moment of unspeakable intimacy.

Althea had transformed the Coca-Cola Suite of Emory University Hospital into her office, where she was studying the slides of a “Jesus and the Adulteress” photo spread, including a semi-life-sized poster in the form of a centerfold pull-out. There was a generic barbershop-calendar Jesus, looking reverently toward the sky as he stands above the prone Mary Magdalene— almost naked, her head bleeding from the stones that have been cast upon her—and, just as the Bible says, he is covering her, but not quite, and she is, inadvertently, still showing pink. Sweet, shocking, vulnerable pink. This was a startling visual image, unintentionally satirizing the change from the old Hustler to the new Hustler. The marketing people were aghast at the possibility that wholesalers, especially in the Bible Belt, would refuse to distribute the magazine with such a blatantly blasphemous feature.

Faced with a crucial decision, Althea made her choice on the basis of pure whimsicality. She noticed a pair of pigeons on the window ledge. One was waddling toward the other. “All right,” she said, “if that dove walks over and pecks the other dove, then we will publish this.” The pigeon continued strutting along the window ledge, but stopped short and didn’t peck the other pigeon, so publication of “Jesus and the Adulteress” was postponed indefinitely. And the poster would instead remain on my wall as a memento of my six-month stint at Hustler. Maybe I should try to auction it off on eBay.

As for Larry Flynt’s born-again conversion, he now attributes it to “a chemical imbalance” in his brain.