BaaliMoloch

I think there's a lot of truth in what you say. In an episode of one of his many television series (probably "No Reservations"), Anthony Bourdain met a guy (in San Francisco, if memory serves) who claimed to have been a staff writer at Penthouse a couple decades before, where his job was to write "letters" about sexual encounters. Not only did I find his claim believable, but after that, I started seeing similar claims on other television shows by other writers. When I was a teenager, I didn't always catch things that would make me instantly question such letters now. One is no mention of lube in relation to anal sex. Now, I get that that might be a detail that wouldn't always get mentioned, but when there's a story about spontaneous anal sex somewhere where lube probably wouldn't have been available? Yeah, I doubt that.

You did indeed start the old thread I mentioned. You also mentioned the letter about two guys wrestling the gay virgin on the old thread. I wondered if you didn't give much detail because you didn't remember, or for the sake of brevity. I now know it was for the sake of brevity because you didn't mention the girl in your old post. I'm 99% sure that Penthouse gave that letter the title "A Sunny Day Without Orange Juice," and I'm 51% sure it was published sometime in 1978. The other letter you mention sounds vaguely familiar as well, but I don't remember the details of that one so well. I've seen other people on the internet claim to recount letters they'd read in Penthouse, but nothing they recounted sounded a bit familiar to me. You get a gold star for honesty! Another person on the old thread mentioned seeing compendia of Penthouse letters. I remember those too. They were in the form of a mass market paperback. They were very odd because they were supposed to be a collection of the best of the letters, but when I skimmed through them, I never saw a single letter I recognized. I think those may have been compendia of letters they didn't publish in the magazine because they were too boring--but they still didn't want them to go to waste, so they ended up publishing them in that format. I'm still hoping a moderator will respond to my initial comment. I'd like to know if I'd get in trouble reproducing those letters here. If I'm not allowed to do that, I think I can probably get away with retelling it in my own words. I do remember some details from the letter you mention which you don't describe.

There was a thread titled "Letters to Penthouse" in the Lounge area of the General Discussion Forum on this site. Unfortunately, it saw activity only on one day, namely March 17, 2013. It had nine posts and has long since been archived. Since I wanted to respond to the things written there, I'm starting a new thread here. The reason this is of interest to people here is that Penthouse Magazine was the only erotic magazine aimed at straight men that dared broach the subject of man-on-man sex. At one point, one of Penthouse's slogans was "For the Practicing Heterosexual." I heard they were considering changing that to "For the Practicing Bisexual," but they never actually did. Penthouse began publishing such letters in 1978 (if memory serves me correctly), and they petered out around 1989 or 1990. However, there was an entire family of Penthouse publications. Besides Penthouse Magazine proper, there was Penthouse Forum, Penthouse Letters, and Penthouse Variations. Discussions of gay male sex may have continued on in those other magazines well past 1990. There were actually a lot of kinks in the letters to Penthouse that I found arousing besides gay male stuff. Having read the forum rules, I know some of that stuff is out of bounds here, so I'll avoid it. Other things I'm not sure about, but I'll avoid that too, unless the moderators give me a green light. Explicitness is forbidden--but does that apply solely to photographs, or to verbal expressions as well? Pedophilia is forbidden, but does that cover teenagers having sex with each other (which is legal in most states--but not all) or adults having sex with teenagers (which is properly termed ephebophilia, but most people mistakenly refer to it as pedophilia)? I hope some moderator will see this and clarify this for me because I definitely want to stay within the boundaries drawn by the rules. Another question is, can I copy out some of those letters, or would that be considered copyright infringement? And if it is a copyright issue, can I retell the story in my own words?