When did you first notice the top shelf ?

[Athlon]

I found my parents mags when i was about 11 maybe 12, from that one i would go up to the local newsagent and look up to the top shelf...

Then one day, some friends dared me to 'steel' a mag, just any mag i could get :P and of all mags, i picked playboys playmates collection or something...
In any case i was really proud of having it...

When i was sweet sixteen, i bought my first mayfair (it was then legal for me to buy porn )

[jonno38]

mustve been about 11 I think. It was in a local newsagents and I think it was a Parklane or a Mayfair. I remember the cover was a woman on her back with her legs up in the air. It was a pose from the side. She had black stockings on. Never forget it! And with Benny Hill's Hill's Angels and their stockings, I've loved stockings since...(er...not on myself by the way...on women...not that theres anything wrong with blokes wanting to wear stockings...but not for me...etc etc)

[Falican]

One day when walking home from 4th or 5th grade, my brother and I stopped into a convenience store to get sodas. We stopped by the magazine racks and started looking at the gun magazines when I started drifting over to the adult features. I remember seeing a picture of a man with two women holding his erect penis and trying to make sense of it. I then turned the page and found what I know now as the center fold - a woman with beautiful tits in a gold corset and a soft brown muff. I was staring at that image for a while when I felt a very large hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see a grandfatherly old man who said, "Son, should you be looking at that?" I dropped it and left.

I got home and played with myself and distinctly remember feeling an orgasm for the first time that day but nothing came out. That happened a few weeks later

[Rustler78]

I could go into a lot of detail about my first experiences with pornography and getting addicted to 'the top shelf'.

I recall being in a news agent shop while on holiday one summer, probably age about 15. And while glancing through the magazines at eyes level, typical boys interest on cars and trains. But then I found my eye glancing up further, higher and higher until I finally reached the allure of the top shelf!

I was mesmerised and intrigued to find magazines that ALL had pictures of girls in suspenders and fishnets. Some girls had their tits fully exposed, I just couldn't not believe it. I just had to get access to those 'dirty books' and see what the pictures were like inside.

When I look back now, it must have been that point of transition from boys hobbies to er... what girls have got between their legs.

A while later, I visited 2 shops - a second hand book shop and a small newsagent near a park I used to visit. I was so nervous!! But , nervous as I was, the desire to see those filthy pictures of what I desperately hoped were of girls with their knickers right down and spreading their legs.. WIDE OPEN, was much, much stronger.

I recall buying my very first dirty magazine, from the second hand book shop I later came to know VERY, VERY well - the formidable 'Dows Book Shop'. I was just desperate to see tits and fanny. The magazine was called Rapier and had a very dirty blonde girl on the cover. When I got out of the shop, magazine hidden under my jacket, I felt a combination of real embarrassment but also massive excitement - I didn't know what to expect!!

Well, I learned one thing very quickly - Rapier was blatant that it was 'all about cunt'. On opening the front cover, onto the inner first page I was confronted with this same blonde on the cover, but this time, her knickers pull right down by her ankles, legs spread and the lips of her fanny held WIDE OPEN. And this was only a few hundred feet up the street - as soon as there was no one around, I just couldn't not wait to see inside my first porno magazine!! I could have easily been seen by someone, but.. the desire to see girls flashing their fanny was just too much.

I look back now and wish so much I could do it all again and learn all about porn magazines from the very first time. And here I am now, about 35 years later, STILL obsessed by those filthy books on the top shelf. But its the magazines I grew up with -Rustler, Raider, Rapier, Journal of Sex, Playbirds, Lovebirds, ParkLane, Whitehouse from the 70ss, 80s and 90s that were BY FAR the best.

[anglocat]

I think I might have been a slightly late developer in this regard. I was probably about 13 before I really became conscious of the delights to be found on the top shelf, and even then I didn't make a habit of peering in that direction every time I ventured into a newsagent's shop. My first experiences with porno mags were with ones which I found dumped, discarded or abandoned, or with ones shared by friends.

[amuro7PA9]

Would've been early 70's for me. Except my local newsstand didn't put them up on the top shelf. There was actually a whole section that I had to walk by to get to the the comic books! And in those days, many mags in the US put topless shots right on the cover. Ah, those were different times.

[bga35]

1994. I was about 15. Couldn't buy them but was able to buy a bikini magazine with Debbe Dunning on the cover.

[KissArmy]

When I was about 4 or 5, back in the mid-60s. They had them right out on the magazine rack in the grocery store.

[Girlfan]

Another late developer here (though I have made up for it since!).
I first became aware of "Girlie Magazines" (note, not porn - I was brought up in the UK where such stuff was illegal and never seen in those days), when I started senior school, and some of the more daring boys started passing round stuff like Mayfair, Club & Fiesta that they'd nicked off their Dad or elder Brother. I'd have been about 11 or 12, but was quite shy back then, and not in with that crowd, so I never really got to see those magazines. That would have been 1973 - and pretty soon my eyes were wandering upwards whenever I was in the newsagents. I remember desperately, desperately wanting to possess the issue of Mayfair I spotted on the top shelf of WH Smith in 1975 (I was 13) which featured Upstairs, Downstair's Lesley-Anne Down, who at that time I regarded as being the most beautiful woman on the planet. I didn't get to see what was in that magazine for well over 20 years!
My first magazines were all "hedgerow porn" - stuff I found in the park, around the back fence of the school, on the local riverbank.
I eventually bought my first magazine (again, a late starter here) from the station bookstall at Liverpool Lime Street railway station in October 1980 (Fiesta).

[Cheekymonkey]

Before I noticed the sky