I can remember opening up Mosaic at the campus computer lab. I don't think any proper fetish sites existed back then, but I had compiled for myself a long list of mainstream sources for messy pictures. News stories about Woodstock '94, random pie in the face fundraisers, and things of the sort.
Around that time, I read a short piece in Harper's magazine (!) that referred to SPLOSH magazine and one of the tapes that advertised there. (Slimewave, I believe!) That was the first indication that there must be people like me out there, that I wasn't the only hopeless weirdo in the world who would love to watch well dressed women get covered in mud. I don't think there was a web presence for SPLOSH just yet, but an ex girlfriend (who also knew I had a thing for messy women) saw a copy in a bookstore and bought it for me. I read that magazine so much, I practically memorized some of the articles.
In a few years, the internet exploded. Bill's Pie Page, Gregg's Famous Pied Faces list, Schokolada's Mess, Hurley's Pie Mafia, Messy Fun... these were all places I regularly visited. As that list became long, I found myself drawn to something called the Ultimate Messy Directory. That was a wonderful curated list of links to things that I would never have found on my own.
Of course, UMD has changed a LOT over the decades since then, but it is kind of cool to think that UMD is one of the first sites I ever made a habit of visiting... I still regularly visit here today.
I saw that journal, or something similar to it, at the Barnes & Noble on Michigan Ave in the late '90s. I was working for a medical ad agency in the ADA building on Chicago Ave.
Yes, it was stocked near the Paris Review and the NY Review of Books--still among my favorite journals. But what I remember is the ad that Rob Blaine regularly placed in that book. That ad featured a wonderful topless blonde covered in pie. I felt so ashamed that I was the only person who regularly flipped through that journal.
Good stuff, Boxster, I didn't imagine it then! Well, Mrs. Bee, who has much better memory recall than I do, remembered the journal name. It was called "Libido". I did a quick search just now and, lo and behold, you can buy used issues on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Libido-Magazine-Fall-1991-Issue/dp/B000I3MNBI
1991, fuck me...side note, I entered the tech industry in 2000 and when I got there, found Rob Blaine in our co's CRM because he had bought odds and ends as an end user, hard drives, and so forth, so I decided to email him to tell him I was a fan. He emailed back a day or two later, a long nice email (I don't know if he had worked at Dell but I had assumed so since he was from Austin) talking about mess and tech. That was as close I got to the man.
I recall occasionally reading Penthouse Variations, which was a compact magazine you could pick up at airport book stores in the late 1970's, and try to read discretely while on the plane . I think it included regular Q&A entries by Xaviera Hollander. Anyway, in one of those entries Xaviera mentioned something about messy fun as a way to spice up your sex life. That was quite a revelation to me, and I kept reading her column every time I went on a business trip hoping to find other mentions of messy fun. There might have been a few others, but it wasn't really her thing.
I remember stumbling across alt.sex.fetish.wet-and-messy back in 1994 or so and having the requisite "Holy shit, I'm NOT the only person into this stuff" revelation. I also remember spending a breathless four minutes or so waiting for a Messy Fun jpeg to download... and then printing it, somewhat pointlessly, on our black and white laser printer. We've come a long way since then, haven't we?
The ironic thing, of course, is that back in 1994 you could fill your car's trunk with 99-cent Pet-Ritz cream pies for around $50... so although it's gotten much easier to *view* WAM content over the last 25 years, the cost of actually WAMming has gone up a hell of a lot.
I was constantly hopeing every Monday night to see if WWE would do a Trish vs the flavor of the month "mud match" with very little luck. That all changed back in 2008/09 when I searched sexy muddy girls and the first site that popped up was Wambabes.com . I found one constant theme here, an amazingly beautiful girl with a cute smile getting very muddy. Needless to say I was hooked.
Tied and Messy made a good point about "Penthouse Variations" and its compact size.
It was the exact size of the original "TV Guide" when the Annenbergs owned it (the seed money came from "The Daily Racing Form" that the family owned, and I ain't going there).
"Penthouse Variations" was the same size as "TV Guide". "TV Guide" chose that size because it would fit into the pockets of a robe or PJs.
Probably 1989 or 90. (holy crap, 30 years ago!) There was a letter in the Playboy Advisor asking for information on how to sensually play with paint. In the answer, the Advisor had consulted with Rob Blaine, and directed the reader to messyfun.com. 5 minutes later I'm logging onto my Apple IIG with the modem connection, and downloading pictures of wet and messy girls...well off to make a sandwich, clean the bathroom, wash the car, while pictures slowly loaded from my dial up connection.
I guess about '95-'96 we got the WWW. I was very young. I searched "mud wrestling" and the first thing I found was SPLOSH! That expanded my horizon from mud to full blown mess, and boy was I blown away by the MESS!
Now at the time my parents had the internet access password protected. Somehow, someway the WAM gods smiled down at me and I GUESSED the password!
I can't remember all of the other early sites, but I remember Toni, Messygirl, WAMgirls, crazygirls, and I recall a page with about 60ish links to pics from a mud wrestling tournament, Seabrook maybe? That was the page I was on the first time I got caught wanking! HAHAHA Oh the memories. Still clearly remember the photo I had on the screen too...
Bozo1 said: What site or video did you come across the FIRST time you discovered WAM was a THING on the Internet?
For me, back in 1998, I entered "pie in the face" into a search engine not named Google and I discovered Phoebe's website. At that time, she only had 4 videos filmed and posted. The first one I clicked on was her most recent one, which was her and Tracy seeing who wore pies better - brunettes or blondes.
By the way, I did this at the county library. lol I immediately bought myself a PC and some Internet service.
Your story and mine pretty much line up, but I had access to the library printer It's weird thinking back to September 1998 and sneaking a screenshot was the only way to bring the fetish home. Also weird that I still have a couple lying around.
I just remembered the magic combination on the Yahoo homepage. "Society and Culture" to "Sexuality" to "Fetishes" and a whole world opened up.