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The Probe's cornerstones of sex and punk rock might seem to go hand in hand, but these dual obsessions have polarized the zine's audience. Those who flip through to be titillated find the long-winded show reviews superfluous; conversely, the nudity has inspired charges of sexism from punk's PC contingent. "This garbage has no place in the punk scene," fumes an unnamed writer in the We Ain't Got No Car zine, in reference to The Probe's placement on the AK Press table at a show by the group Propagandhi. Epicenter Zone, the underground press center in the Mission, refused to carry the zine for a short time after some of the staff took issue with the publication's content (it didn't help that one of Epicenter's workers was the roommate of another of Muentz's girlfriends whose door he'd kicked in), but it's currently back on the shelves.
"A common line [from stores] is 'Personally, I don't have any problem with it, but ...'." says Muentz. "Someone is always afraid they're going to get feminists crawling down their back for accepting it." The Probe gets around primarily through punk-rock distribution systems, and most of the ads placed in the zine are for record labels. "It's been the punk community that's kept The Probe going," he says. "Sex zines often say that I should drop the bands and stick with the girls, but that would be a dumb move, considering who supports me." Muentz's interest in nude photos notwithstanding, music makes up a large part of the zine's coverage, and when he does review the porn-related material sent his way, it's with far less relish than he reviews records.
As for the accusations of sexism, these seem to stem more from assumptions that women shouldn't be naked than from any actual sexist content. Jeanette Good, who has known Muentz for years and has posed for The Probe, scoffs at the idea that the zine is degrading: "What's degrading about a woman showing her body voluntarily? As for the girl reviews, if you were going to say that anyone in those scenarios had power, it's almost always -- in my opinion, with Aaron's writing -- the women. Whether or not someone finds it entertaining or insightful, there's nothing wrong with what Aaron's doing. It's not like he goes out and picks up women and uses them and throws them away."
Kris Rockass, the writer responsible for some of issue No. 6's best pieces -- notably a manic tale of a weekend show in Santa Cruz and an "unsolicited advice" column -- concurs. "Most of the nudity is actually initiated by the women. It's so much more honest and real than nudity in porno mags. For people who want to pose naked in a magazine, The Probe is more accessible than something like Playboy; these women don't fit that blond, big-boob thing." Rockass met Muentz slightly more than a year ago and soon afterward took over mail-order duties for the zine and for Probe Records. "Men and women may appreciate the nudity for different reasons," she says, "but they appreciate it."
"Ironically," Muentz says, "my most common detractors are sensitive males who give the zine the cold shoulder because they think it will score them some PC points with the women." Charges of sexism don't bother Muentz too much, though, and he points out that bad feedback is rare. (His first piece of hate mail, in fact, didn't arrive until issue No. 6.) More annoying to him is the reputation that's sprung up around him. The situation is this: "The Probe Guy" seems to be someone detached from the real Muentz. The question of where one ends and the other begins is a tricky one. "We were at this show, and I was wearing my Probe T-shirt," recalls Good, laughing, "and he said something about how I must have felt so cool to be seen with him because he's 'The Probe Guy.' And I was like, 'Oh, get over yourself!' " Muentz himself worries, during one of his disastersex episodes, about whether his performance will disappoint his partner. ("I'm the Probe Guy -- I have to be good!")
"I realize now more than ever that The Probe is kind of my whole personality," Muentz admits. "And I find that people assume that I'm some kind of authority; I get all these sex zines in the mail because people think, 'Oh, you'll appreciate this.' Or I get stuff like, 'Hey, this guy's coming to visit from England, you should take him to some strip clubs.' And that's something I would never actually do, but my whole personality is supposedly wrapped around sex." The frankness of the girl reviews recently caught the eye of a Hustler staffer, who approached Muentz to write a feature article -- about people who have sex with stuffed animals. ("It just never happened.") Muentz says, "If anything, being 'The Probe Guy' has probably hurt me. Women figure I'm going to write about them -- but if they say not to, I don't." Indeed, several of his reviews have graphic content taken out at the request of the women involved, and Muentz makes reference to others who refuse to be critiqued at all. (On the other hand, in the new issue he cheerfully prints a pair of photos passed along to him of a woman he admits he doesn't even know.)
But the days of girl reviews are apparently over. At the conclusion of Probe No. 6's installment, he adamantly insists that that will be that. But in the interest of fairness, he plans to print girl-generated "boy reviews" in the next issue, and assuming that the Bay Area's underground punk scene continues to thrive -- and that booze and sex remain readily available commodities -- Muentz's future work looks cut out for him. So despite his present cycle of debt ($40,000 and counting) and his bouts of frustration with the self-publishing life, Muentz doesn't see the end of The Probe coming anytime soon.
