The Year in Sex

the lowdown on who did what to whom in 1990

The gesture of the year: crotch grabbing, demonstrated here by a ballistically brassiered Madonna during her international Blond Ambition tour.

The Trump Shuffle

Let's face it: Gossip columnists would have had pretty slim pickings in 1990 without the Trump triangle: Donald, Ivana and model Marla Maples. The Donald claimed that the publicity had been good for the careers of both ladies, but the commercial that Marla made for No Excuses jeans, in which she consigned the offending tabloids to the trash can, was nixed by some television networks as "unduly disparaging" and "airing of private disputes."

Adolescent Dickhead

The pubescent male is Vice-President Dan Quayle; the well-hung doll, just like one he bought in Chile, is courtesy of The Quayle Quarterly; the condom cap's from the Funny Side Up catalog.

The Axing of X

After a summer of discontent in which movie after movie received the dreaded X rating from the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board, the M.P.A.A. bowed to protests and gave Universal's picture Henry & June its first ever NC-17 classification.

Crimes of the Arts

As the art-vs.-bluenoses battle continued, anticensorship activists demonstrated in Boston, a Cincinnati gallery director beat obscenity charges after exhibiting the same controversial photos by the late Robert Mapplethorpe, Senator Jesse Helms and other conservatives threatened to cut funding of the National Endowment for the Arts and, in Fort Lauderdale, business improved when the Apropos gallery began specializing exclusively in erotic art. In its windows (right), nudes pose for artist/photographer Tom Kulagowski.

Make Love, not war

Ilona "Cicciolina" Staller, Italy's porn star/parliament deputy, wants to make a swap with Iraq's Saddam Hussein. The deal: "I am willing to let him have his way with me if, in exchange, he frees the hostages."

That's what we call a Stacked Deck

Special-interest voyages being a hot item in seagoing travel, the liner Ocean Spirit set sail from St. Petersburg on a nude cruise. Here, Captain C. Lucas Master demonstrates the use of navigational devices.

Padres fans took offense when Roseanne Barr squawked the national anthem, then clutched her crotch in alleged imitation of practitioners of the national pastime.

Birds of a feather, almost

The plumaged performers at right are in the cast of Skin Tight, which its publicist bills, breathlessly, as "a lavish revue baring both the soul and the breasts of Manhattan's glittering night life," at The Blue Angel, New York's answer to Paris' Crazy Horse Saloon. By the way, the woman in the middle isn't.

Ding Dong Disney?

Is that, perchance, a phallic symbol hidden in the castle on Disney's The Little Mermaid video? You judge.

Political Dickhead

Despite a conviction for having sex with a minor, Representative Donald E. Lukens announced he'd run again. After new morals charges surfaced, he resigned.

Win a few, lose a few: One Florida jury found a 2 Live Crew album obscene; another jury found Crew members, including ball-bearing Luther Campbell, left, blameless for performing the same songs on stage.

Sex Drive

Multiple-exposure photography of a golf ball created this possibly unintended effect in an advertisement for the telecast of a Ladies' Professional Golf Association tournament, which appeared in USA Today in July.

Wanted: One Very Large Towel

To celebrate its ninth birthday, Florida's Paradise Lakes Nudist Resort packed 307 folks into a hot tub in a bid for a Guinness Book of World Records mention.

Devastating Backhand

Model Nicole Meissner (in a shot from a German Playboy pictorial, below) has a baby whose father may or may not be--she named him twice, recanted once--Peter Graf, tennis star Steffi's father. The scandal, during which Nicole was briefly jailed on charges of having extorted $424,000 from Graf père, put Steffi (with dad, inset) off her usual championship game.

Dirty Ditty

This is a song-and-dance act? That's how it was billed in Smut Fest: The Terror, presented at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco.

Here's a little something for Jesse Helms's Christmas stocking: the Annie Sprinkle Flashing Finger Puppet, souvenir of another Smut Fest. Wiggle your digits and Annie flashes.

Love Is A Tender Trap

Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry was sentenced to serve six months in jail on misdemeanor charges but beat a felony rap despite a tape showing him smoking coke with Rasheeda Moore, a former flame who had been recruited by the FBI.

Off-Collar Story

The nation's first black archbishop, Atlanta's Eugene A. Marino, resigned after revelations of an affair with Vicki Long--who also claimed involvement with two other Catholic priests and a nun.

Road Hogs: Handle With Care

Truckers may boost their spirits--and their buns into the semi--with the Cab Companion handle from Joe Palmquist Enterprises of South Gate, California.

Sexist Dickhead

Louisiana legislator Carl N. Gunter, Jr., rationalizes why he opposes abortions for incest victims.

When Roseanne Barr grabbed herself in San Diego, she said she was just doing what ball-players do. Kansas City Royals' left fielder Bo Jackson proves her point.

Read My Tits

Don't look for this mural, commissioned by rocker Roth, on your next trip to Vancouver. Despite pleas to save it, city fathers ordered the work whitewashed from a recording-studio wall.

A Racy Day At Epsom Downs

A mischievous breeze on Derby Day made Victoria Tucker's entrance at the race track grander, perhaps, than she had intended.

S'azz Sings The St. Louis Blues

Executives at S'azz, a new magazine aimed at the upscale black woman, claim that St. Louis supermarkets refused to display their launch issue because of this photo--but kept Cosmo's nudes on the racks.

Kissing Doesn't Kill: Greed and Indifference Do

Fuss On The Bus

Anti-AIDS campaigns took public transportation in Chicago (above) and Massachusetts (left) and hit some potholes. Illinois politicos tried to outlaw the kissing posters, many of which were vandalized; Massachusetts' Catholic bishops said abstinence, not condoms, should be endorsed as the best method of disease prevention.

Teddy Bare Puts Out At Sea

After examining a photo of nautical naughtiness off St.-Tropez that accompanied a startlingly unflattering GQ magazine profile of Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy, fellow solon Howell Heflin of Alabama observed, "Well, Teddy, I see you've changed your position on offshore drilling."

Next to the ball park, the rock concert is the best venue for crotch-clutcher sightings. Here, the Devil makes work for Billy's Idol hands.

Down On The Levy

Contemporary Ladies Godiva, like their legendary predecessor, strip to save the citizenry from taxes. The equestrienne rode in Winston-Salem; the banner bearer chained herself to a railing at the House of Lords car park, London.

Nothing Up His Sleeve!

Paul Matthews claims he's Britain's first naked magician; sounds OK to us. Here he introduces his sleight-of-hand routine to some sun bathers on the nudist beach at Brighton.

Pepsi Degeneration

Pop-company execs insist it was an accident that their summer Cool Cans could be stacked to spell SEX.

Entrepreneurial Dickhead

New England Patriots owner Victor Kiam is the target of feminist ire for his take on proper locker-room behavior toward Boston Herald writer Lisa Olson.

Let'S Hear It For Beach Bums

When thong bathing suits were banned from some beaches in Florida, a veteran Loxahatchee activist, Toni Anne Wyner (above), was arrested for wrapping herself in the Constitution; cheeky West Palm Beach hot-dog vendor Gloria Gonzalez, whose barely bikinied buns help sell her wieners, marketed her likeness on a T-shirt supporting the ban's repeal; and cartoonists had a field day.

Get a grip on yourself !

"I could take this home, Marilyn. This is something teenage boys might find of interest."

Get a grip on yourself!

Why we ? New York

Mooned by a topless blonde in an East River speedboat, Gov. Mario Cuomo noted, "In Queens, that never would've happened. For 50 years, we've been coming to Manhattan for excitement."

"It's been an unexciting and dull campaign. With me in it, it's no longer dull."

Get a grip on yourself !

Get a grip on yourself!

Why we don't ? New York

Respondents in a poll conducted by the weekly newspaper The New York Observer preferred dinner (57 percent of the men, 85 percent of the women) and the theater (men, 51 percent; women, 84 percent) to having sex. But sex did beat out baseball.

"Inbreeding is how we get championship horses."

Get a grip on yourself !

Grand Ol' Soap Opry

The tale of the romance between Nashville's mayor and a country-music singer who bragged to the local press about his sexual stamina (he's good for seven consecutive hours of passion, she said) would have been funny enough, even if their names hadn't been Bill Boner and Traci Peel. Now that hizzoner has belatedly shed his third wife and wed the all-too-talkative thrush, we suppose she'd be correctly addressed as Traci Peel Boner.

Get a grip on yourself !

"They can wiggle their waggles in front of her face as far as I'm concerned."