My stepfather had Hustler and Penthouse in the trunk of his car, where he also kept his booze stash. It was a rolling party, I guess.
When I was a kid entering puberty, I found that book and the sequel in the parents’ room dresser and each time I was alone in the house made a beeline to pore over those pencil drawings and volumes of sex information regarding everything from menstruation to oral sex to masturbation to key parties. No copies of actual men’s magazines though, either with nudity or without. Saw some Playboys sneaked out of closets or off of refrigerators at friends’ houses but none of them in my own home.
My dad was a physician, so was able to find some clinical pictures in various medical books that he had. Oh, not to worry he also had some Penthouses (when Penthouse wasn’t super-gross) in his closet that a snooping early teen with too much time on his hand is certain to find eventually.
I found my parents 8mm projector with porn films in their closet. I figured out how to work it without youtube.
Unless those were home movies of them or of friends, that was some seriously expensive stuff back in the day. Probably the equivalent of $100 today for a couple minutes of steamy (and grainy and jerky) film action.
I don’t think it was homemade but it wasn’t low budget either. The nurse had a stethoscope.
Nothing like that in my house. I borrowed some from a friend one time, and hid them under my mattress. When I came back from summer camp I found they had been discarded. My parents never said a word about it.
I lived at home until I was 20. In all those years I found one, and only one, copy of Playboy, one time, in my father’s nightstand.
Maybe he DID just get it for an article.
Same for me. They were the most excitement I got till I found, like others, a couple nudie mags hidden along the railroad tracks I walked to and from school. As much as I looked at those two magazines, I can’t tell you what they were. Penthouse or Hustler is my best guess. It was 40+ years ago…
WARNING: Have ample supply of brain bleach ready to pour before you read my answer.
Privately, as in just-between-the-two-of-them, my parents were evidently extremely open-minded about sexual activities for their era (they married in 1955). But my dad, quite understandably and appropriately, never communicated any of that to me. The only inkling I had that he might have been unashamed to walk on the frisky side with my mother was that I remember two books - Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, and Joy of Sex - being purchased and not particularly hidden from me in the 1970s while I was in my teenage years. That strikes me as fine, although the first book was a piece of misinformed, bigoted crap by today’s standards. I think Joy of Sex holds up reasonably well.
My mother … yikes, she was a different story, to the point where it felt a bit inappropriate. I do appreciate that she tried to raise me to be sexually open-minded, but she, uh, kind of overshared at times. Two examples:
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When I was just about to go off to college, my mother pointed to their hope chest, which had a lock on it. “Here’s the key,” she said. “Listen, if your dad and I happen to die together, take this key and dispose of all the items in the chest. It’s got all of our sex toys in there, I don’t want anyone else to see them.”
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When I was around 15, she drew me into the master bedroom and said, “here, I want to show you something.” It was a photo spread in some hardcore porn magazine that showed (obviously photoshopped, with whatever early photo-faking technology was in use at that time) busty blonde women with penises. “Isn’t that amazing?” marveled my mother. “Those women are so beautiful.” (Note: my mother was a tall, slender blonde herself, so predisposed to thinking the archetype of the blonde 36-34-36 type was the most gorgeous possible woman.)
Okay, the first example isn’t TOO terrible, I guess, but the second one? 
I consider myself reasonably well-adjusted and open-minded with regard to sex, so I guess my parents’ attitudes were successfully communicated to me, but I must admit, I am pretty grossed out by my mother not only sharing that porn with me, but inviting me to comment? What was she thinking?
The few times I found a discarded magazine, it was always some super sketchy rag you’d get from behind the counter at the liquor store versus anything as classy and refined as Hustler.
Going back to the OP, this is eerily similar to my youth. My mother read mostly mysteries from the library and my father bought men’s magazines. That was pretty much all he read except for books about WWII. We never had a Playboy in the house.
I read everything, so I read both my mother’s mysteries and father’s magazines, although I never told him I sneaked them out of his pile and put them back where I found them. The mysteries, frankly, interested me more, because the “real” “actual” stories about Nazi dens were too stupid to pay attention to.
However, my mother had a copy of Fanny Hill hidden a drawer, and I reread passages of that frequently. That was the only book ever hidden from me. Growing up in a household in which reading as an activity was good, even if it was comic books, shaped the rest of my life.
I seen exactly one Hustler over the shoulder of a bunch of squealy girls I was in school with.
I would not describe it as classy or refined.
Is this a whoosh?
Men’s magazines, some photocopiesof X-rated drawings, and booklets of extreme BDSM art by somebody called Gord. Which I ran onto on the Internet decades later, something that made me laugh about how people like to act like weird porn was invented by the Internet.
He didn’t, but I did stumble on one of those “Making Love” (not the real title) kind of books that were popular in the 70s. Plenty of full nudity in it, and sex positions that were very… instructive to my young teen mind, but nothing explicit.
I also found a Penthouse-clone magazine that I’m pretty sure my mom had bought, because it featured an article on a type of dogs that she loved. So, she literally read it for the article. I didn’t, the two dozen-page pictorials were much more appealing to me.
Not so much a whoosh as sarcasm by exaggeration. Hustler was smut. But compared to real smut, Hustler was much less smutty.
if Playboy is a fancy steakhouse, and real smut is roller taquitos at 7-11 in the 'hood, Hustler was somewhere about maybe a franchise BBQ joint or sandwich shop in a convenience market by the freeway. IOW: Bad but still distinguishable from awful.
Right. Playboy was “respectable”, Penthouse & Hustler were smutty but still something of a household name (i.e. people would recognize them) and carried in bookstores. Then there was the level of adult magazine sold in seedier places, with names you never heard of, usually lasting a few issues before disappearing and featuring women paid $25 worth of weed for their time.
They were unpleasant in tone, models and photography standards and, once they fulfilled their intended purpose, there was little incentive to hold onto them so they’d wind up in a strip mall parking lot for a kid like me to find.
My dad never had any of these magazines, but a neighbor that I used to babysit for did, and since their kid was very young, they didn’t bother hiding the mags, so as a very young, naive teen, I looked at a few. I’m pretty sure if my mom knew about them, I wouldn’t have been allowed back in their house ever again!
I remember those! I think in junior high I became obsessed with seeing female genitalia. The curiosity was driving me crazy. Then one day we were hanging out down by the railroad tracks as usual and my friend Jack found an old weather-beaten skin mag among the rocks, and there was a faded full frontal photo in it. We looked at it for a few seconds, then looked at each other and shrugged. So much for mystery.
I’m trying to figure out what else one would call ‘nudity’? If you’re referring to genitals, then you’re right: even Playboy didn’t show everything back then, but most men’s mags didn’t even show uncovered breasts.
My father didn’t, as far as I know. I’m mulling how likely it would have been that I did find out. One data point - he had a handgun or two, and I never learned where they were kept, never found any locked storage.
By the way, we would have to include Sports Illustrated as pornography. Here’s why: they say the annual Swimsuit Issue outsold all other issues combined. That means most of their sales come from pictures of attractive and scantily clad women. If that’s not porn, what is? However, I never saw any issues of Sports Illustrated, either.
I should note, this is not to suggest my father was some paragon of goodness. He DID have a girlfriend other than my mother, and in fact his relationship with her started before his relationship with my mother, and continued right up to his death.