#centerfold
It started, as these things so often do, with a promise. Dave had promised Morley, for the fourth spring in a row, that he would finally clean out the basement of the Vinyl Cafe.
“You can’t even see the furnace anymore,” Morley had said, standing at the top of the stairs with a look of concern reserved for cave divers and parents of toddlers holding permanent markers.
“It’s not that bad,” Dave replied.
Which, of course, meant it was worse.
Enter Sam. Sixteen, suspiciously strong for someone who routinely claimed lifting a dish towel was “too much,” and in need of volunteer hours for school.
“Consider this character-building,” Dave said, handing him a flashlight and a dust mask like he was sending him into the catacombs of Paris.
The Vinyl Cafe basement was a time capsule. Or a storage locker. Or possibly an archaeological dig.
There were crates of unsold records, half-broken stools, a blender from 1973, and boxes simply labelled “Dave’s Stuff.”
Sam, being Sam, naturally gravitated toward those.
Now, it should be noted that Dave had once, long ago, agreed to part with a certain collection of artifacts when Morley discovered them stashed behind the furnace in their house. He’d nodded solemnly, promised full disposal, and then, apparently, quietly relocated them to the cafe.
Sam opened the first box expecting old concert posters or invoices. Instead, he found—well—let’s just say the first page he saw involved a woman named “Trixie” who apparently did her best thinking on the hood of a red convertible.
He flipped a few pages. All the women seemed to be leaning on cars, tractors, or pool tables. Some had hard hats. None were wearing them.
Sam, in the way of teenage boys since time immemorial, stared at the contents for a moment, blinked, and slowly backed away like he’d opened the Ark of the Covenant.
“Uh…Dad?” he called up the stairs.
Dave came bounding down, carrying two Tim Hortons coffees and whistling Cheeseburger in Paradise. He stopped short at the box in front of Sam.
“Oh. Ohhhhh. Right,” said Dave, voice rising like he’d just remembered he’d left a pie in the oven…fourteen years ago.
“I thought you got rid of these,” Sam said.
Dave glanced at the pin-ups, then at Sam. “I did! I mean, I was going to. But they’re historical. It’s more of a cultural archive.”
“Sure, Dad. A museum of naked ladies.”
“I prefer the term ‘tasteful ****** Dave paused. “And they’re not naked. Some of them are wearing… tool belts.”
Sam smirked. “So, what do we do with them?”
Dave looked around. “Well… we don’t tell your mother. That’s what we do first.”
Naturally, Morley found out within the hour. Because the next box Sam opened had ******* issues from the early 80s, including one with a mysterious sticky note marked “Dave’s first car. Page 47.”
When Morley arrived, summoned by Sam with a dramatic, “You might want to see this,” Dave was holding a calendar featuring a woman named Candy who was, ironically, pouring syrup over a stack of flapjacks in stilettos.
There was a moment of silence.
“Dave,” Morley said, very calmly, “I thought you said you got rid of these.”
“I did,” he said. “Well, I relocated them.”
“To your place of business?”
“Technically it’s historical research,” Dave mumbled.
Sam was enjoying this immensely.
Morley walked over, picked up one of the magazines, flipped it open to a centerfold, and raised an eyebrow.
“This one’s wearing earmuffs.”
“Practical!” Dave offered brightly.
Morley sighed. “I don’t care what you do with them, but they are not going back in the house.”
Dave nodded solemnly. “Agreed.”
That’s how, two hours later, Dave and Kenny Wong found themselves in Kenny’s garage flipping through the stash, laughing like high schoolers, and arguing over whether a 1981 issue of Oui had collectible value.
“This one’s art,” Kenny said, holding up a black-and-white photo.
“It’s a woman vacuuming in heels,” Dave replied.
“Exactly. No one vacuums like that anymore.”
Eventually, they boxed it all up and decided to store it—temporarily—in the back of Kenny’s shed, behind the snow tires and the broken lawn darts.
Morley, for her part, decided not to push the matter. She just raised her eyebrows every time Dave mentioned “cleaning projects.”
Sam got his volunteer hours. And a few stories to share with his friends—although he did omit the “sticky note with the car” bit when retelling it to Stephanie.
As for the café basement? It was marginally cleaner. At least you could see the furnace.
And tucked between the cleaning rags and mop buckets was a single pin-up, laminated and framed, featuring a woman in coveralls and work boots, holding a record player.
Dave claimed it was motivational. Morley let it slide.
Because in the end, in the Vinyl Cafe, things weren’t always clean. But they were always honest.
Well… mostly.
Jul 30, 2025
Jul 30, 2025 at 9:30 AM UTC
Burt Reynolds **** 10 facts about the Cosmo
centrefold; It's 40 years since a **** Cosmopolitan
centerfold of actor Burt Reynolds broke a taboo
& launched a new era of women's magazine publishing;
"At last a male **** centrefold - the naked truth
about guess who!!" screamed a banner
on the front page. Cosmopolitan editor
Helen Gurley Brown saw it as a victory
for women whose "visual appetites" had been
ignored by male magazine editors & proprietors;
It also boosted Cosmopolitan's circulation
& turned Burt Reynolds into a 1970s *** icon.
So what was the story behind the photograph?
1. It began on a TV show. Burt Reynolds
was standing in for Johnny Carson as presenter
of the Tonight show on NBC, &
Helen Gurley Brown was his guest.
"He was handsome, humorous, wonderful body,
frisky," she told James Landers, author of a book
on the first 100 years of Cosmopolitan .
"During our conversation I asked him
if he would pose for us." He agreed.
2. It could have been Paul Newman.
Gurley Brown had approached him,
before putting the question to Reynolds,
but he had refused;
3. It made Burt Reynolds into a celeb.
The day after the magazine hit news-stands,
he was mobbed by women asking him to sign their copy.
Reynolds also noticed a change in the behavior
of theater audiences from "polite to boisterous".
"Standing ovations turned into burlesque show
hoots & catcalls. They cared more about my *****
than they did about the play," he wrote in his 1994
autobiography, My Life. Gurley Brown said:
"He had been a movie star, now he was a celebrity."
4. It made Cosmopolitan notorious.
"At the time, you know, men liked to look
at women naked. Well, nobody talked about it,
but women liked to look at men naked. I did,"
Gurley Brown told Landers, who noted
that the photograph pushed Cosmopolitan
across a threshold, in the public mind,
from a mainstream magazine "to a *** magazine".
5. It spawned Playgirl magazine.
Douglas Lambert, owner of the Playgirl Club,
decided to launch the magazine after seeing
what a "winner" the Burt Reynolds centrefold was.
"It came to me, that's what women want.
If a woman says she wants to see a man's smile,
his eyes, I say 'Don't lie to me,'" he was quoted as saying.
6. Reynolds chose the picture.
A number of shots were taken. The choice of which
would be published was left to the model.
7. The bearskin was a humorous touch.
"I think that's probably a joke," says New York-based
fashion portrait photographer Max Vadukul.
"This is a very macho statement, a real bloke,
full on, and totally confident,"
he says. He reckons Reynolds would have been
happy going further, & removing the artfully
placed arm from his lap;
8. You won't see this in 2018.
It would be a tough photograph to take in 2018,
Vadukul says, because of the "commodity factor"
- the actor's publicists would be concerned
about damage to his brand, among some members
of the public. "It's a very modern picture,
it would still be a very talkative picture.
Who would be the equivalent of this guy -
George Clooney? It's very far ahead of its time,
from that period when anything goes,
people swinging partners non-stop..."
9. The photographer was the celebrated
Francesco Scavullo. Scavullo shot most
Cosmopolitan covers over a 30-year period,
& was involved in controversy again
when he took photographs of a young
Brooke Shields that some considered
too ****** He died in 2004, on the day
he was due to photograph CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.
10. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the next centrefold;
Cosmopolitan did not do these very often.
It took two years for the next to appear, &
Schwarzenegger made his appearance in 1977.
Another man to grace the center pages
was Scott Brown, now a Massachusetts senator,
but in June 1982 a law student who had entered
& won the magazine's America's Sexiest Man
contest. He posed for the cameras days before
his final exams.
Sep 6, 2018
Sep 6, 2018 at 3:51 PM UTC