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AL GOLDSTEIN'S GOT this thing for flesh, all right. The hotter the better. Which is why he's about two seconds from ecstasy on this muggy August afternoon in Manhattan.
There's this glistening piece of pastrami, see, and it's hanging six inches above Goldstein's anxious mouth. It's a pose familiar to anyone who's fed scraps to the family Fido at the dinner table. This time, however, it's Al Goldstein who's feeding Al Goldstein doggy-style.
"I've been dreaming about this for hours," the bearded, black-T-shirted, 280-pounder tells his secretary at his crowded office on 14th Street - four flights above an underwear bodega.
Finally Goldstein drops the treat. Then he chomps. Then he speaks.
"I'm at the dentist's this morning, he's got me stoned on laughing gas, he's ready to drill my molar . . . and all I can think about is pastrami! It's sick!"
No doubt there are thousands of New Yorkers who agree with this diagnosis. For 22 years, Alvin Goldstein, a self-described "nebbishy, insecure, argumentative, narcissistic exhibitionist from Brooklyn," has been the hardest-working pornographer in New York.
He first claimed the title in 1968 when, on a $150 investment (matched by a partner he later bought out for $500,000), he launched Screw, a XXX-rated weekly endeavoring to be the underground Consumer Reports of sex. It was a mandate Goldstein - a former press photographer, cab driver, industrial spy and welfare recipient - took personally as well as seriously. During one period, he visited and rated nearly every massage parlor in New York.
Now, Screw - packed with explicit photos and raunchy ads for every sexual service imaginable - is the reason why Goldstein lives in a $3-million townhouse on the same block as Bill Cosby. ("Sure, I know Bill," Goldstein says. "He mooches cigars from me.")
But if Screw made Goldstein's fortune, it did not create his fame. At least not in the sense of making him one of the most recognizable people in Manhattan. For that, credit is due Goldstein's success in another medium: Television.
More specifically, "leased public access" television (Ch. J / 23) on the Manhattan cable system. There, Goldstein's show, "Midnight Blue" (Fridays and Mondays at midnight), has been a cable fixture since 1975, shocking tourists and New...