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Big Brother Was A Madhouse - An Interview With Chris Nieratko

Chris Nieratko has provided us with insightful and objective porn reviews for about as long as we can remember. His monthly column, Skinema, has set the bar in the smut-writing world and left his peers scrambling to keep up with his flawless critiques of the vagina-pounding trade.

Before his tenure here at VICE, Chris was the editor of Big Brother. Owned by porn magnate Larry Flynt, Big Brother was the best skateboarding magazine of its time. Unsurprisingly, women were not immune to the magazine's genius. Myriad photographs of naked women and offers of free love poured into Big Brother's headquarters every month. Over the years Chris collected hundreds of these photos, and this month he sent us six of his favourites to publish in our Photo Issue.

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VICE: Did the ladies ever send any steamy letters to accompany their photos?
Chris:There were always letters, but it wasn’t like they were writing to . They would just say something like, “Hey, if you’re ever in Oregon, I live in Oregon. I would love to fuck you.” I don’t remember any specific letters because I was on a lot of drugs, so I don’t remember a lot of things from back then. That’s my disclaimer if this interview lacks specifics. It’s because I was out of my head on goofballs.

People don’t really send that sort of mail anymore. Who sends Polaroids and letters now? Now it’s dirty texts and emails. So it was kind of sweet to actually open up envelopes and find photos of vaginas and offers from ladies who wanted to lend us their bodies.

What were some of the more graphic photos you received?
I remember one had a girl with the top part of a telephone, like the earpiece, inserted into her vagina. There were some good photos, but they weren’t Polaroids. I know how VICE likes to have their cute little layouts with their cute little themes, so I didn’t include any of those.

People would also send us the newest hip-hop CDs. I remember the receptionist from the top floor would come down and offer to suck dick for the newest album, regardless of how shitty it was. She just really wanted to get the early release, and in return she would take our early release.

This was the receptionist at Hustler?
Yeah. She really liked hip-hop.

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You guys took her up on the offer, right?
I think her mouth was used. I’m pretty certain that it was. I know one time a pro skater was visiting from New Jersey, and one night we bumped into her and invited her to a friend’s house. When we got there she let us put every phallic-shaped object in the house inside of her various parts. The big ender was when my friend wrapped his head in Saran Wrap and tried to torpedo it into her vagina, like a Polish pregnancy. We didn’t have any lube, so someone got some shampoo out of the bathroom and covered his head with it, and yeah, he tried putting his head in her vagina. I’m not going to lie to you and say that he got his head all the way in her vagina, but I’ll tell you that he got it in there a little bit.

Did she seem like the kind of lady who'd had a head in her vagina before? Or do you think it was a first time for her?
She told us that she had inserted an entire foot in there before, like right up to the ankle. I don’t really understand how you would angle your foot to get the heel in unless you dislocated your ankle, but she seemed like she would be up for anything.

Which one of your photos from our new issue is your favourite?
The one with the girls on the telephone seems nice. That might even be the same envelope… I think that was the phone that was in the vagina. But it wasn’t a Polaroid. My favourite is either that one or the elderly udder lady, because she doesn’t really seem to want to do it.

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Did a lot of porn screeners and promos trickle down to Big Brother from the Hustler office?
Oh my God it was insane. We would get the mailroom to bring us cases and cases of every dirty magazine, and then we made friends with everybody at Hustler, so anytime we needed VHS tapes – this was pre-DVD – we would go upstairs and load up. We would send our interns up there like three times a week and just clean them out.

Is that when you discovered your love of porn?
No, I think I discovered my love of porn when I was 12. I was riding BMX around a dirt track and found the typical waterlogged dirty magazine in the woods. There was a picture of a Japanese girl with a sword in her vagina. I’m not big on Asians, but that picture has stuck in my mind for twenty-some years. I was like "Man, that’s cool, naked chicks are cool."

Especially ones with swords in their vaginas.
Yeah, I’ve been trying to recreate that photo my whole life.

I’ve always wondered if Larry Flynt ever wheeled into the Big Brother offices and freaked out like Woody Harrelson did in The People vs. Larry Flynt.
No, we were summoned to him when there were problems. He never came to us. And thank God, because it was like a madhouse down there. People cannot even begin to understand just how nutty it was. We were quarantined on a separate floor that he had rented out to other businesses – we weren’t allowed to be with the other publications. The only other publication in our suite was a boating gear magazine called Hot Boat, and God, we fucking tormented that guy. He was like 350 pounds and rode to work on a motorised scooter. We would print his website in the magazine all the time and have our kids go to his site and torture him. It was constant torture. Also, we had interns that we would fuck with on a regular basis. We’d get like three refrigerator boxes from the mailroom and tape them together and tell them to stay in there for the entire day. Then we’d give them an empty bottle of water so that they could piss in it.

Intern laws are really strict now. They have to be getting school credit and you can’t keep them locked in boxes anymore.
Yeah, well we always went for the ones getting school credit anyway. For the most part I’d try to get females, and once I had sex with them I’d just sign off on their credits and say, “Hey, you don’t have to come back. Here’s three free credits for your time.”

JONATHAN SMITH