We have a Whatsapp group, all the friends from the "square"
The other day we were reminiscing on those VHS porn tapes
They were ultra-hard to get back in the 80's and early 90's. The rental store would never rent them to minors and people who had an account wouldn't want to rent those if they had other members of the family in the account. Usually it was younger dudes, single, who would rent them. I would envy those shady bastards leaving the tiny room in the store, a couple tapes in the black bag, the clerk looking at them under the counter. God forbid some kid got a good look on one of those covers LOL
But one summer, a friend of ours, Ayrton, went on a mission. To duplicate porn tapes. He had a VCR and when his parents went on a trip with his younger sisters, he called another dude who also had a VCR, older guy who ALSO had access to the tapes.
They rented the best ones from the day. Hyapathia Lee, Jenna Jameson, dang...
Legend says that 10 tapes were made until the video store owner started frowning on mystery renter (we never knew for real who was other guy, Ayrton always kept that info privy)
Ayrton got to keep 4 with the promise that they could be swapped on occasion.
For a few years, only the "inner circle" would have the privilege of taking one of the 4 tapes home
But then, copies of the copies were made and pretty soon, terrible SLPs with 180 minutes of grainy Jeremy Irons were being found forgotten into VCRs of 12 yo parents, for their pure despair.
I had fun with them a few adventurous times, the first weekends alone at home while the parents were at the family farm, I was 13 or so, but the horror stories of shitty BASFs getting stuck inside the cheap Philcos and Panasonics we had made me more attracted to the good old Playboys. The newsstands dudes were cooler and they'd sell them to us. Not the hardcore ones, though. Only Playboys and Ele&Elas. Only softcore nudity. No spreading. Hustlers were also available if the end of the month was close, but Playboys, as expensive as they were, were awesome. The hottest TV girls from the time. Some were memorable for their "30-second fap" impulse, like Luciana Vendramini or Isis de Oliveira. Others, for the horror, like "Marta Do Voley" (she looked like Grace Jones). There was the stigma of lending and borrowing them, we knew that both cock and magazine would he handled together.
It wasn't uncommon to stumble upon discarded boxes of porn on the sidewalk. My borough used to have lots of homes that were like frat houses, but for young men that worked in the steel mill, it employed almost 20k people once. But the older kids always warned them against falling for that temptation, for most would have their pages stuck together and they were forever tainted if you're a straight boy. Only fags would touch them.