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PLAYBOY and RABBIT HEAD DESIGN are marks of Playboy Enterprise International, Inc. 


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e all dream of getting out. Deliver- 
ing a few choice words to the boss, 
draining the bank account and val- 
iantly absconding to Panama. We'll tell you 
how to do it in Exit Strategy on page 82. But 
in a counterpoint, reminds 
us we are authors of much of our own mis- 
ery and that no matter how far you go, you 
always bring your worst traits along for the 
ride. Speaking of worst traits, how about the 
one that causes you to drink like a Russian 
bus driver? No matter what kind of misery 
you're in the day after, we have the rem- 
edy. iler (Norman's son) 
presents us with The Playboy Cure, a guide 
to regaining your equilibrium and absolv- 
ing the sins of the past. It's a theme Ai 
knows well. The Death and the 
Maiden author delivers Asylum, a brilliant 
Short story that's a meditation on love, lan- 
guage and lies and whose main character is 
hounded by ominous electronic voices out ШТА 
of history, hungry to take all he has left. We 
also feature [ this month, 
albeit in a more pleasant form. Though you 
may recognize her from her Guess ads here 
in the U.S., the wild beauty originally hails 
from South Africa, giving us the perfect 
excuse to head out to the continent with 
lensman Rapt and shoot 
on the savanna. For this month's fashion 
spread, we slam from the wilderness back 
to the urban jungle, where renowned pho- 


tographer shot up-and-coming 

Soul sensation showing off the j 

latest in raincoat fashions. It's iba 4 es 
spring, damn it! Of course with Candice Boucher and Raphael Mazzucéo 


spring comes spring fever, 
when our appetites reawaken. 
Since ours tend toward food, 
women and drink, we sent 
to explore 

all three in the hedonistic 
paradise of Montreal, home 
to Au Pied de Cochon, a res- 
taurant that goes through 
more than 70 kilos of foie 
gras each week. John Gotti Sr. 
was something of an extremist 
himself, though about honor. * 
Godfather and Son is c 
n's insider account (he 0 

and the elder Gotti met in the 
joint) of the complicated, tragic and touch- 
ing relationship between John Gotti Jr. and 
his late father. Finally, the Playboy Inter- 
view features Sai f one of 
our favorite women on the planet (which 
is saying something). She's the ultimate 
triple threat: She's gorgeous, arguably the 
funniest comedian working today, and she 
has the biggest balls in the business. In 
this frank interview she opens up about her 
early traumas and failures, the truth about 
her relationship with Jimmy Kimmel and, of 
course, fucking Matt Damon. 


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rks of Playboy and used under license by DIRECTV. ©2010 DIRECTV, Inc. DIRECTV and the Cyclone Design logo, CHOICE and CHOICE XTRA are trademarks of DIRECTV, Inc. All other trademarks 


VOL. 57, NO. 3-APRIL 2010 


PLAYBO 


CONTENTS 


Anonymous and ominous e-mails force a father to come to grips with his past before 
his son comes of age. Would you save a family in peril or preserve yourself for the sake 
of your unborn lineage? Hurry up—the boy's birthday is in a week. By ARIEL DORFMAN 


CANDICE BOUCHER 


FEATURES 
40 GODFATHER AND SON 


His lot was decided when they wrote “John 
Gotti” on his birth certificate, but Junior con- 
fronted his father and chose his own family 
over the Family. RICHARD STRATTON's story 
isn't a mobster movie; it’s Junior's real life. 
50 THE NEW PSYCHEDELIC 
RENAISSANCE 

The FDA is finally approving studies on LSD 
and MDMA for treatment. STEVEN KOLTER 
follows a dying woman as she turns to 
these controversial miracle drugs. 

54 WORLD'S HARDEST SEX QUIZ 
So, are you a sexual intellectual? By the 
Playboy Advisor, CHIP ROWE 

72 THE APOSTLE OF 
INDULGENCE 

Meet Martin Picard, the world's hottest chef 
and a master of enjoyment. He and JULIAN 
SANCTON consider the seven deadly sins. 
78 THE PLAYBOY CURE 

If the social ramble's got you down, get 
back in the game the gentleman's way. 
By JOHN BUFFALO MAILER 


82 EXIT STRATEGY 

Want to get away and never come back? 
SEAMUS MCGRAW has a plan. Plus: PAUL 
THEROUX's 7he Other Side of the Dream. 


INTERVIEW 


33 SARAH SILVERMAN 


ERIC SPITZNAGEL sits with the sharp- 
tongued, dirty-minded and sexy comic. 


20Q 


76 WILL FORTE 

Will MacGruber—SNL's first spin-off flick 
in a decade—blow up or bomb? Funny- 
man Forte chats with ERIC SPITZNAGEL. 


COVER STORY 


We haven't slipped on a pair of Guess jeans since 
the Reagan presidency, but we never stopped 
monitoring their ads for Madison Avenue’s 
best creation: the Guess girl. We sent Raphael 
Mazzucco to Africa to photograph the newest traf- 
fic stopper, Candice Boucher. And if you guessed 
her necklace forms our Rabbit, you’re correct. 


VOL. 57, NO. 3-APRIL 2010 


PLAYBOY 


FINE GERMAN 
ENGINEERING 
Germanic DNA includes the ability to 
manufacture for speed and comfort, 
making it a pleasure to handle curves. 
They also make nice automobiles. 


PLAYMATE: AMY LEIGH 
ANDREWS 


Stop by this coed's room—it's laundry | 


day, and everything is in the wash. 
NAKED PREY 

Candice Boucher, the new Guess girl, 

strips off her grommeted dungarees 

and frolics nude on her native Afri- 

ca's savanna. Her wild animal side 

even turned a lion's head. 


FASHION 1 ASPHAL 
JUNGEE 


Under cover of darkness and sharp 

raincoats, the talented Mr. Hudson takes 

to the noir streets of New York. By 
and 


60 PLAYMATE 


AMY LEIGH ANDREWS 


THE WORLD OF PLAYBOY 
Hef does a signing for Hugh Hefner's Playboy; Vin- 
cent Bugliosi and Sara Karloff share Thanksgiving 
dinner with the Hefners; USC hosts Hef for a dis- 
cussion about censorship in film. 
BLACK TIE AND LINGERIE 
The Mansion ushered in 2010 with quite the fete. 
Hef welcomed Diablo Cody, Too Short, Lydia Tavera 
and more of the social elite to begin the new decade 
in the happiest place on the planet. 
PLAYMATE NEWS 
Susie Scott Krabacher was helping children in 
Haiti long before the earthquake, and she could 
really use your help now; Pamela Anderson makes 
her pantomime debut. 


PLAYBILL 

DEAR PLAYBOY 
AFTER HOURS 
REVIEWS 
MANTRACK 
PLAYBOY ADVISOR 
PARTY JOKES 
GRAPEVINE 


HOW THE CITY LOST 
ITS SOUL 
Urban areas are safer now—but they're 
deader, too. By 

WHERE ARE THE JOBS? 
In 's final interview we ask 
him to solve the unemployment crisis. 


PLAYBOY.COM 


Ever 
wonder what hot Playboy models 
would look like in your drawers? They'll 
be a pair that you fancy. 

Chelsea Lately's Whit- 
ney Cummings and others reveal their 
sexual secrets. 

Interviews and, of 
course, pictures of the hottest women 
on the web. 


TV Guide is for your par- 

ents; we'll tip you off to must-see TV. 

Suzy McCoppin, our 

stringer in the women's room, reports 

about nightlife and dating from the per- 
spective of the fairer sex. 


GENERAL OFFICES: PLAYBOY, 680 NORTH LAKE SHORE 
DRIVE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60611. PLAYBOY ASSUMES 
NO RESPONSIBILITY TO RETURN UNSOLICITED EDITO. 
RIAL OR GRAPHIC OR OTHER MATERIAL. ALL RIGHTS IN 
LETTERS AND UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL AND GRAPHIC 
MATERIAL WILL BE TREATED AS UNCONDITIONALLY 
ASSIGNED FOR PUBLICATION AND COPYRIGHT PUR 
POSES, AND MATERIAL WILL BE SUBJECT TO PLAYBOY'S 
UNRESTRICTED RIGHT TO EDIT AND TO COMMENT EDI 
TORIALLY. CONTENTS COPYRIGHT © 2010 BY PLAYBOY. 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PLAYBOY, PLAYMATE AND 
RABBIT HEAD SYMBOL ARE MARKS OF PLAYBOY, REG. 
ISTERED U.S. TRADEMARK OFFICE. NO PART OF THIS 
BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL 
SYSTEM OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM BY ANY ELEC 
TRONIC, MECHANICAL, PHOTOCOPYING OR RECORDING 
MEANS OR OTHERWISE WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN PER 
MISSION OF THE PUBLISHER. ANY SIMILARITY BETWEEN 
THE PEOPLE AND PLACES IN THE FICTION AND SEMI 
FICTION IN THIS MAGAZINE AND ANY REAL PEOPLE AND 
PLACES IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL. FOR CREDITS SEE 
PAGE 110. DANBURY MINT ONSERT IN DOMESTIC SUB. 
SCRIPTION POLYWRAPPED COPIES. CERTIFICADO DE 
LICITUD DE TITULO NO. 7570 DE FECHA 29 DE JULIO 
DE 1993, Y CERTIFICADO DE LICITUD DE CONTENIDO 
NO. 5108 DE FECHA 29 DE JULIO DE 1993 EXPEDIDOS 
POR LA COMISION CALIFICADORA DE PUBLICACIONES 
Y REVISTAS ILUSTRADAS DEPENDIENTE DE LA SEC. 
RETARIA DE GOBERNACION, MEXICO, RESERVA DE 
DERECHOS 04-2000-07 17 10332800- 102. 


PRINTED IN U.S.A. 


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PLAYBOY 


THE 

FIRST * 
SEASON 
OF 
KENDRA 
IS NOW 


ON DVD 


7 


at 
52 


Т 


Follow along as the silly and sexy 
bombshell makes her own life in the 
Valley with fiancé Hank Baskett. From 
learning to feed herself without being 
able to call a butler to planning her 
fairy tale wedding, Kendra's DVD set 
is full of love, laughs (especially Ken- 
dra’s endearing cackles) and bonus 
footage-including an extra episode 
and bloopers. 

TAKE KENDRA HOME WITH YOU TODAY. 
$22.98 AT PLAYBOYSTORE.COM 


PLAYBOY 


HUGH M. HEFNER 
editor-in-chief 


JIMMY JELLINEK 
editorial director 
STEPHEN RANDALL deputy editor 
ROB WILSON art director 
GARY COLE, MATT DOYLE photography directors 
A.J. BAIME, LEOPOLD FROEHLICH executive editors 
AMY GRACE LOYD executive literary editor 
STEVE GARBARINO uriter at large 


EDITORIAL 
TIM MC CORMICK editorial manager FEATURES: CHIP ROWE senior editor FASHION: JENNIFER RYAN JONES 
editor MODERN LIVING: SCOTT ALEXANDER senior editor STAFF: ROCKY RAKOVIC associate editor; 
ARANYA TOMSETH assistant editor; CHERIE BRADLEY senior assistant; GILBERT MACIAS editorial 
assistant CARTOONS: AMANDA WARREN editorial coordinator COPY: WINIFRED ORMOND copy chi 
BRADLEY LINCOLN, SANHITA SINHAROY copy editors RESEARCH: BRIAN COOK, LING MA, 
N.L OSTROWSKI research editors CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: MARK BOAL, KEVIN BUCKLEY, 
SIMON COOPER, ROBERT B. DE SALVO, GRETCHEN EDGREN, KEN GROSS, DAVID HOCHMAN, WARREN KALBACKER, 
ARTHUR KRETCHMER (automotive), JONATHAN LITTMAN, SPENCER MORGAN, JOE MORGENSTERN, 


CHRISTIAN PARENTI, JAMES R. PETERSEN, STEPHEN REBELLO, DAVID RENSIN, JAMES ROSEN, DAVID SHEFF, 
DAVID STEVENS, ROB TANNENBAUM, ALICE K. TURNER, CHRIS WILSON 


CHRISTOPHER NAPOLITANO editor at large 


ART 
SCOTT ANDERSON, BRUCE HANSEN senior art directors; CODY TILSON associate art director; 
CRISTELA P. TSCHUMY digital designer; BILL VAN WERDEN photo researcher; 
PAUL CHAN senior art assistant; STEFANI COLE senior art administrator 


PHOTOGRAPHY 
STEPHANIE MORRIS west coast editor; JIM LARSON managing editor; PATTY BEAUDET-FRANCES senior editor, 
entertainment; KEVIN KUSTER senior editor, playboy.com; KRYSTLE JOHNSON, RENAY LARSON, 
BARBARA LEIGH assistant editors; ARNY FREYTAG, STEPHEN WAYDA senior contributing photographers; 
GEORGE GEORGIOU staff photographer; JAMES IMBROGNO, RICHARD IZUI, MIZUNO, BYRON NEWMAN, 
GEN NISHINO, JARMO POHJANIEMI, DAVID RAMS contributing photographers; BONNIE JEAN KENNY manager, 
photo archives; KEVIN CRAIG manager, imaging lab; MARIA HAGEN stylist 


PUBLIC RELATIONS 
‘THERESA M. HENNESSEY vice president; ROB HILBURGER vice president, media relations 


PRODUCTION 
JODY J. JURGETO production director; DEBBIE TILLOU associate manager; 
CHAR KROWCZYK, BARB TEKIELA assistant managers; BILL BENWAY, 
RICH CRUBAUGH, CHERYL TJARDES, SIMMIE WILLIAMS prepress 


CIRCULATION 
SHANTHI SREENIVASAN single-copy director 


ADMINISTRATIVE 
MARCIA TERRONES rights & permissions director 


INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING 
DAVID WALKER editorial director; MARKUS GRINDEL marketing manager 


PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES INTERNATIONAL, INC. 
SCOTT FLANDERS chief executive officer 


ADVERTISING AND MARKETING: AMERICAN MEDIA INC. 
DAVID PECKER chairman and chief executive officer; KEVIN HYSON chief marketing officer; 

MARC RICHARDS group publisher; JOHN LUMPKIN vice president, publisher; HELEN BIANCULLI executive 
director direct-response advertising; MARIE FIRNENO advertising operations director NEW YORK: BRIAN 
HOAR spirits, gaming and entertainment manager; DAVID LEVENSON consumer products manager; PAUL 

SOUTH integrated sales director; ANTOINETTE FORTE national sports nutrition director; KENJI TROYER 
advertising coordinator CHICAGO: scoTT Liss midwest director DETROIT: JEFF VOGEL national 
automotive director LOS ANGELES: LEXI BUDGE west coast account manager SAN FRANCISCO: 
JILL STANKOSKI northwest account manager. JULIA LIGHT vice president, marketing; NEAL LYNCH senior 
marketing manager; ANNA BALLARD, CARYN HAMMER marketing managers; ANDREW GARBARINO merchan- 
dising manager; JOHN KITSES art director; CHARLES ROMANO promotions coordinator 


PLAYBOY 


HEF SIGHTINGS, MANSION FROLICS AND NIGHTLIFE NOTES 


HEF DISCUSSES CENSORSHIP AT USC 
Crystal Harris and Hef visited his eponymous hall at USC before his annual 
discussion with film students. Richard Jewell, who teaches the class Hef 
underwrites, says, “He's more than just a film buff. He knows the importance 
of preserving the legacy, and he puts his money where his mouth is.” 


HUGH M. Herr 
EXHIBITIO 


PAMELA ANDERSON AT HEF'S BOOK SIGNING 
Fans lined up around the block at the Taschen store in Beverly Hills 
for the chance to have Hef sign their copies of Hugh Hefner's Playboy. 
His admirers included Playmate Pamela Anderson, who shared in the 
celebration of the marvelous six-volume illustrated anthology. 


THERE'S NO 
PLACE LIKE 

PMW FOR THE 
HOLIDAYS 

To get into the Christ- 
mas mood, Crystal 
and the Shannon Twins 
decorated gingerbread 
j houses. Then on Christ- 
mas Eve Hef and his 
girls emptied their stock- 
ings and exchanged 
presents. Hef gave 
them Rabbit Head pen- 
dants with his name on 
them—because they 
were all both naughty 
and nice. 


GUESS WHO CAME TO THANKSGIVING DINNER 

Hef invited friends and family over for Thanksgiving. Among those 
he was thankful to host were Sara Karloff (with a Mansion statue 
of her father, Boris, as the Frankenstein monster), attorney Vincent 
Bugliosi and wife Gail, Ray Anthony and Marston Hefner. 


BLACK 
AND 1 LINGERIE 


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If you don't swing, then don't ring in the New 
Year at the Mansion. Celebrities and Centerfolds 
came to Holmby Hills to usher in the new 
decade. (1) Hef kicked off 2010 with three bona 


fide 10s: Crystal Harris and Karissa and 
Kristina Shannon. The girls are wearing 
their Christmas presents. (2) Big Brother 
11’s Russell Kairouz and Lydia Tavera. 
(3) Mr. Playboy with PMOY 1976 Lillian 
Müller. (4) Oscar winner Diablo Cody 
raps with Hef. (5) Bridget Marquardt 
and Nick Carpenter. (6) Miss December 
1968 Cynthia Myers and Miss Septem- 
ber 1963 Victoria Valentino. (7) Painted 
Ladies serve up Jell-O shots. (8) Astro- 
naut Buzz Aldrin with wife Lois. (9) 
Rapper Too Short poses with the Shannon 
Twins. (10) Hip-hop act Clipse gets down 
before the ball drops. (11) Actresses Terry 
Moore and France Nuyen are all smiles. 


(12) Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Playmate Candy 
Loving with Hef, whose New Year’s resolution 
again this year is “More of the same!” 


WARM THOUGHTS 
I know PLAYBOY has a long and rich his- 

tory of hard-hitting journalism, but you 
knocked it out of the park two issues in 
a row. First there was Thomas Frank's 
exposé of Glenn Beck (The Triumph of the 
Conservative Underground, December) and 
now Aram Roston reveals the bogus intel- 
ligence behind those federal terror alerts 
(The Man Who Conned the Pentagon, January/ 
February). It's comforting to know investi- 
gative journalism still has a home. 

Brett Lambert 

Edmonton, Alberta 


As a loyal reader for the past five years, 
I want to say how much I enjoyed the 
January/February issue. Tara Reid looks 
smoking hot (The Notorious Tara Reid), the 
Playboy Interview with Sean Combs is one 
of the best I’ve read, Playmates Jaime 
Faith Edmondson (We'll Always Have Paris) 
and Heather Rae Young (Mountain Girl) 
are gorgeous, and the Playmate Review is 
the perfect finishing touch. 
Greg Boehmer 
Sterling Heights, Michigan 


THINKING INSIDE THE BOX 
My first thought while reading The 
Singularity was, Very amusing, Mr. Kurz- 
weil. Ray Kurzweil's “end of days” vision 
of the human mind captured as binary 
data—a sort of rapture for techies—tack- 
les the fascinating question of whether 
consciousness can one day be uploaded. 
What is controversial about this idea 
is whether a silicon simulacrum of the 
brain can experience anything, can be 
sentient. Many scholars of consciousness 
answer with a surprising yes—provided 
the relevant parts of the brain can be 
mimicked, in particular the 25 billion 
nerve cells, 250 trillion synaptic connec- 
tions and 100,000 miles of cabling of the 
cerebral cortex and its associated satel- 
lite structures. That doesn't mean this 
computer would have to look or feel like 
a brain, a three-pound organ with the 
consistency of tofu. What is necessary is 
that the causal relationships among this 
fantastically complex lace of neurons be 
replicated. According to this school of 
thought, any system with similar connec- 
tivity—whether biological or synthetic, 
evolved or designed, made out of nerves, 
muscle and bones or electronics and tita- 
nium—will show the same properties, 
including the mysterious thing called 
consciousness. So yes, one day our minds 
may be able to migrate to our machines. 
But for now, even the lowly roundworm 
C. elegans, a creature no more than a mil- 
limeter long, with a brain made out of 
302 nerve cells, is beyond the ability of 
theoreticians to understand. For many 
decades to come, our minds will remain 
confined to our skulls. 
Christof Koch 
Pasadena, California 
Koch, a professor of biology and engineer- 
ing at the California Institute of Technology, 


DEAR PLAYBOY 


Although The Singularity (January/ 
February) is interesting, I am dis- 
appointed that Carl Zimmer fails to 
address the ultimate roadblock to 
downloading the contents of our minds 
to computers. The reason I “think” 
and my computer “computes” is that I 
have biological desires and evolution- 
ary needs. I feel love, lust and greed. 
Until you can get a computer to covet 
the vision that appears on page 93 of 
the same issue, you'll never emulate the 
human brain. 

Marvin Scott 
Fallon, Nevada 


is author of The Quest for Consciousness: A 
Neurobiological Approach. 


TARA! TARA! TARA! 

After all she has been through, Tara 
Reid shows a lot of courage posing for 
PLAYBOY. All the best to her in 2010. 

Jean Dumoulin 
Montreal, Quebec 


Thank you for the best holiday pres- 
ent I have received in my 30 years on 
this earth. Not only did my issue arrive 
on Christmas Eve, but when I saw Tara 
Reid on the cover I started believing in 


Tara Reid: "I'm in a good place in my life." 


Santa Claus again. I have been asking 
him for this gift ever since the release 
of American Pie, and it took my favorite 
magazine to make my wish come true. 
Chris Propst 
South Padre Island, Texas 


With her classic beauty and eyes you get 
lost in, Tara could launch 1,001 ships. 
David Reagles 
Sheboygan, Wisconsin 


90 MILES SOUTH 


In Cuba Libre (January/February), you 
suggest Americans visit Havana before the 
embargo lifts and tourists "ruin the place." 
I'm waiting instead to celebrate the day 
when the Cuban people are libre. 

Tomas Mulet 
Miami, Florida 


KEEPING IT REAL 

The Kate Moss Effect (January/Febru- 
ary) is name-dropping waffle. She isn't 
from Croydon (which equates to New- 
ark) but wealthy Sanderstead. And far 
from being “very much the architect of 
her own image,” she was created by pho- 
tographer Corinne Day, whose brilliant 
look of lesbian, rather than heroin, chic 
was hijacked, honeyed up and hetero- 
sexed by Mario Sorrenti. Juergen Teller, 
who has been snapping Moss since she 
was 15, has said, “She is an extraordinary 
woman, so much fun and so energetic. 
But to get to be such an icon, to have 
exploded like a rocket—I don't really 
get it. She is beautiful, but so are many 
others." What's really sexy about Moss 
is her getting off a cocaine rap. While 
your writer skims over Moss's "little tab- 
loid trip" following the infamous video of 
her using and sharing cocaine, Scotland 
Yard refuses to say why its investigation 
was so bizarrely inept. Doing so, I'm told, 
would be "contrary to the public inter- 
est." Now that is beautiful. 

Fred Vermorel 
London, U.K. 

Vermorel is author of Addicted to Love: The 

Kate Moss Story, now in its second edition. 


THAT JOKE SUCKED 

I'm a 28-year-old woman who has 
defended my interest in PLAYBOY to many 
of my female friends. So you can imagine 
my dismay to see the headline "Grown 
Men Envy Hungry African Child" (The 
Year in Sex, January/February) under a 


11 


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photo of Salma Hayek nursing a starv- 
ing infant. You manage to inform readers 
that Sierra Leone has “the world’s high- 
est infant mortality rate” yet don't think 
twice about exploiting a humanitarian 
crisis for a cheap laugh. 

Meghan Mayer 

Portland, Oregon 


IN THE BEGINNING... 

As a devout Christian, I take umbrage 
at the outrageous sacrilege depicted by R. 
Crumb in The Book of Genesis (December). 
Knock it off, goddamn it! 

Bob Fulford 
Clayton, California 


The slickest way to lie is to tell only part 
of the truth. Genesis began as an oral his- 
tory of the Jews. No people or nation is 
without this type of unethical past. Ameri- 
can history includes slavery, genocide of 
Native Americans and other crimes. At 
least the Jews have the moral integrity 
not to whitewash their story. It also seems 
rude and in bad taste to attack the Bible 
in a “Gala Christmas Issue.” 

N.D. Scheub 
Grand Rapids, Ohio 

Who's attacking the Bible? Crumb just 

decided to illustrate it. 


SLIGHTLY LESS HOT TUB 

As a hot-tub owner for the past 15 years 
I feel compelled to add a note of caution 
to No Reservations (December). You say 
parties at the featured Playboy Pad often 
end in a hot tub “heated perfectly to 110 
degrees.” Although 110 is not scalding, it 
causes painful redness similar to a sunburn. 
More important, any temperature higher 
than 106 degrees can cause heatstroke or 
drowsiness (especially in people who have 
been drinking alcohol), which has led to 
drowning. The Consumer Product Safety 
Commission recommends hot-tub temper- 
atures never exceed 104 degrees. 

Jason Smith 
Greenwood, Indiana 

Many people consider 104 to be lukewarm. 
However, as you note, it is prudent to limit your 
exposure, especially when imbibing. 


WE'LL TAKE REASON 
I enjoyed Thomas Frank's thought- 
ful and studiously researched piece on 
Glenn Beck. The views of America's lead- 
ing Red hunter can be summarized by 
asking, “Should we choose our direction 
based on feelings or reason?” The Daily 
Show would surely miss him. 
Alan Johnson 
Enosburg, Vermont 


ROAD TRIP! 

In “Cold Play” (Mantrack, January/ 
February) you suggest that anyone vis- 
iting Vancouver for the winter Olympics 
“quaff a local brew” such as Alexander 
Keith's. Alexander Keith's is brewed in 
Nova Scotia, which is on the other side of 
the country from British Columbia. That's 


like telling someone in New York to try 
Jack Daniel's because it's a local whiskey. 
Ira Geres-Codd 
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan 
As of last year, Alexander Keith's is also 
brewed in Creston, B.C. 


DIDDY ON THE RECORD 
Rather than being epic, your Playboy 
Interview (January/February) reveals vir- 
tually nothing more than the identity 
of Sean Combs's biggest fan—himself. 
Unlike the achievements of Barack 
Obama or Muhammad Ali, Combs’s big- 
gest accomplishments seem to be making 
money and getting laid on a yacht in 
France. Thirty years from now the names 
Puff Daddy and P. Diddy will be blips on 
the cultural radar, closer to M.C. Ham- 
mer than to Frank Sinatra. 
T.C. Brown 
Virginia Beach, Virginia 


Combs says the hip-hop generation is 
“probably” responsible for getting Presi- 
dent Obama elected. True, the decline in 
society through this generation is partly 
responsible, but the media's character 
assassination of conservatives had much 
more to do with Obama's success. And 
since African Americans make up less 


Last year Sean Combs made $30 million. 


than 20 percent of the population, a lot of 
white folks contributed their votes. Later, 
when recalling being cornered during his 
drug-dealing days, Combs says he “turned 
into a scared white Harvard student”— 
another example of the reverse racism 
that now dominates the culture. Certainly 
a white entertainer making a similar ref- 
erence to a black person would take a hit 
to his career. It's hard to believe Jennifer 
Lopez hooked up with this bobblehead. 
Troy Spatafora 
Metairie, Louisiana 


Combs is proud of co-writing almost all 
of his new album? Wouldn't that make his 
contribution less than half? 

Jason Downing 
Loveland, Colorado 


E-mail via the web at LETTERS.PLAYBOY.COM Or write: 680 NORTH LAKE SHORE DRIVE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60611 


The longer you wait 


A MAA 


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AGED m 


- Evan 


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PLAYBOY AFTERHOURS 


Karina 


Brazilian models? The | 
names Bündchen, Lima | 


yourselves, 7 | | | N N N and Ambrosio are on the 


H А tip of your tongue, but 
И consider this: All three of 
u rricane Y } / : them are MES Ж 
Ka rina IS y; T | | in diapers and baby || 
М y Å | formula at the ml 
а a" Y Those supermo 
CO m | n g p | 1 dominated the 2 s, 


| n fro m d M ү! | but it's a new decade. 


Meet 21-year-old Karina 


th e ү UI i x ү” Flores from the south- 


i ern Brazilian town of Blu- 
S 0 U t h Å p "f А тепан. She's ubiquitous 
EJ in her country, where 
she has captured the 
imagination of menfolk 
with a couple of Brazilian 
PLAYBOY pictorials. All of 
which begs the question: 
Why hasn't she come to 
the U.S. yet? She has. 
She's shooting pictures 
in Miami right about... 
now. Buzz is building. 
Keep your eyes peeled. 


Hunsecker (foreground): 

suit, $995, by Versace; white 
button-down, $475, by Brioni; 
tie, $195, by Charvet; pocket 
square, $55, by Robert Talbott. 


Classic Look of the Month 


TCM kicks off its first film festival in Hollywood on April 22 (tem 
.com). You'll see Sunset Boulevard, The Graduate and the oily classic 
The Sweet Smell of Success (1957), starring Burt Lancaster as the 
Walter Winchell-inspired J.J. Hunsecker and Tony Curtis as press 
agent Sidney Falco. The desperation and the wardrobe certainly 
resonate today. Wanna re-create the Hunsecker look? See above. 


In the House «B8 : 
California Dreaming : 


Los Angeles's modernist architecture is defined by the city's cli- 
mate, opulence and clash of cultures (Asian, Latino, Hollywood 
Hebrew). Thomas Hines's new Architecture of the Sun: Los Angeles 
Modernism, 1900-1970 (Rizzoli) is a thorough study of the work of 
Schindler, Neutra, Wright and the inimitable John Lautner. It's also 
a study in fine living. Chilled cocktail, anyone? Pictured: Lautner's 
Chemosphere House (below left, 1960) and the Sheats-Goldstein 
House (interior, below right; pool, bottom, 1963). 


Eve ning Wear Whats black, white and red-hot all over? 
Brazil's Sasckya Porto, Miss December 


Connect >, modeling this spring's coolest tin- 
the Dots gerie trend: pieces cut to fit today's bodies 


with patterns that pay homage to classic 
pinups. Pictured: Jezebel Pin Up Girl cami 
bra, $36, and Ruffle Boyleg with garters, 
$24, available at designerintimates.com. 


Strings Attached 
Forever Young 


Back in 1979 we first heard Neil 
Young's anthem on aging: "It's bet- 
ter to burn out than to fade away.” 
Turns out the 64-year-old rocker 
refuses to do either. The Jonathan 


Demme-directed concert film 
Neil Young Trunk Show has been 
making the film festival rounds, 
and Young's first book, The Neil 
Young Journal: 1945-1972, will 
hit stores this spring. Old man, 
take a look at your life... 


USA! USA! 


God Speed 


Not since the 1960s—with Dan Gurney's Eagle For- 
mula 1 cars and Ford's quest to win Le Mans—has 
an American racing team captured a mainstream 
homegrown audience while waging war at the pin- 
nacle of international motor sport. US F1, based in 
North Carolina, will rally the stars and stripes as it 
kicks off its first Formula 1 season at the Bahrain 
Grand Prix on March 14. The competition will in- 
clude the great Michael Schumacher, who comes 
out of retirement to race for Mercedes (car pictured). 
Catch most of the season on the Speed Channel. 


oS 8 


Employee of the Month 
Jenny Thompson 


PLAYBOY: Well, hello there. What do 
you do? 

JENNY: I'm a hospice aide. I take 
care of patients' end-of-life journey. 
PLAYBOY: So, sponge baths? 
JENNY: Yep. 

PLAYBOY: What do you find most 
rewarding about your job? 

JENNY: Maybe not the sponge 
baths.... I enjoy not only the patients 
but also comforting the families. The 
biggest reward is knowing I've 
helped people during the toughest 
time in their life. 

PLAYBOY: You have one of the most emo- 
tionally crushing jobs of all the women 
we've photographed for this feature. 
JENNY: Well, I'd like to think I have 
a big heart that enables me to cope 
with that part of the job. 

PLAYBOY: You are quite mature for a 
22-year-old. 

JENNY: Being a hospice worker has 
made me truly appreciate living life. 
PLAYBOY: What do you do in your 
nonwork life? 

JENNY: I Love getting dolled up and 
going clubbing or getting dirty while 
riding sports bikes. How many chicks 
have you heard say that? 

PLAYBOY: Now that's living. What do 
you try to accentuate when you dress 
for the clubs? 

JENNY: I like to wear heels to show 
off my legs and my butt. 

PLAYBOY: Do you have to wear 
scrubs and hide all that at work? 
JENNY: Yes, thankfully—I wouldn't 
want to give anyone a heart attack. 


SEE MORE OF JENNY THOMPSON AT CLUB.PLAYBOY.COM. 


AFTER (0:53 REVIEWS 


Movie of the Month 
Clash of the Titans 


By Stephen Rebello 


Greek mythology gets a 300-style 
adrenaline supercharge in director Louis 
Leterrier's Clash of the Titans. Donning 
sandals in the CGI epic are Liam Neeson 
and Gemma Arterton, with Ralph Fiennes 
as Hades and Sam Worthington as the 
hero who battles creatures from the 
underworld. "I told everyone, 'This is 
going to be a tough movie to make'— 
remote locations, action sequences and 
huge special effects," says Leterrier. 
“After making Terminator Salvation and 
Avatar, Sam knows visual effects in and 
out. I could say to him, 'I don't have this 
actor or this monster for you to do your 
biggest action scenes. Do you mind act- 
ing with only a tennis ball?’ Sam was 
battling the giant scorpions or Medusa, 
and he was fine acting with a ball. He 
made it so easy that at night 
everyone went home with a 

smile on their face.” 


Bringing a whiff of fresh air 
to the romantic dramedy is 
U , a witty, thought- 
provoking and sometimes 
devastating look at a solitary 
lothario who cares little about 
interpersonal relationships or 
the baggage they bring. As a 
“career transition counselor,” 
Ryan Bingham (George Clooney, 
in a career-best performance) 
flies cross-country firing em- 
ployees for corporate bosses 
afraid to do it themselves (call it 
"inhuman resources") and 
enjoys the rarefied stratosphere 
of members-only status thanks 


to his millions of airline miles. 
Things change when he meets 
his female alter ego Alex (Vera 
Farmiga: "Just think of me as 
yourself, only with a vagina") 
and an idealistic trainee (Anna 
Kendrick). Can and should a 
playboy finally settle down? 
Ask Clooney. Best extras: Both 
the DVD and Blu-ray have de- 
leted scenes with optional 
commentary by writer-director 
Jason Reitman, but the BD has 
more of them, including "Ameri- 
can Airlines Prank,” storyboards, 
a Sad Brad music video and 
more. YYY/2 —Stacie Hougland 


The Kick-Ass comic book series is a foul-mouthed deadpan romp about a high school dweeb who 
dons a superhero costume and becomes a lead-pipe-swinging vigilante with the help of a pair of 
father-daughter psycho killers. It's so raw that some fans thought they'd never see it on the screen. 
Wrong they were, and star Aaron Johnson says the soon-to-be-released Kick-Ass movie is true to 
the source, keeping it grown-up with a never-ending stream of profanity and graphic violence. 


Tease Frame 


Dutch actress Carice van Houten is fluent in Dutch, Eng- 
lish, French and German but has lovely attributes that cross 
all language barriers. Her provocative role in the 2006 film 
Black Book (pictured) launched her international career 
and led to a part in Valkyrie. Next Van Houten stars as Jude 
Law's wife in the science-fiction thriller Repo Men, about 
organ purchases and repossessions in the near future. 


A 


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АҒТЕВ REVIEWS 


Game of the Month 


God of War Ill 


The first God of War (2005) was a blood- 
soaked sleeper hit that redefined action video 
games. Its follow-up, God of War IT (2007), 
was the best game to come out on the PS2, 
period. And now the same writers, voice actors 
and coders who brought you the first two 
games offer the final chapter in Kratos's tragic, 
savage journey. If you are alive and you own a 
PS3, there's little to think about. You should 
buy this game. Today. Not only is it one of the 
PS3's most impressive offerings, but the brutal 
combat at the heart of the game is incredible— 
intuitive, addictive and satisfying. And its set 
pieces put most summer blockbusters to 
shame. The game opens where the last one 
finished, with Kratos scaling Mount Olympus 
astride an army of Titans, bent on overthrow- 
ing Zeus once and for all. We reiterate: That's 
where it starts. YY YY —Scott Alexander 


Also in gaming... 


BATTLEFIELD: BAD COMPANY 2 (360, 
PC, PS3) There's more than a few military 
shooters out there, but this game's gripping 
storytelling, four-player co-op and likable, 
over-the-top personalities found a place in 
our hearts. Plus, you can destroy almost 
any object you see, the squad-based multi- 
player is nuts, and the graphics are incredi- 
bly crisp and visceral. YY YY. —Damon Brown 


Music 
Erykah Badu 


Opens Up VER Берна БАХ таке good ma ence is massive: four albums, one of 
nd they sure don't give good interviews.) which was live, and a few singles. Be- 

A E As his new album proves, Jimi Hendrixis cause he died without a will (Readers: 
Badu explores “the mind of a the exception. The amount of music he Don't die without a will! Especially if 
woman learning love.” released before dying in 1970, at the age you are a guitar god), a variety of heirs 
Q: What do you know about love? of 27,is as have controlled his unreleased music, 
A: Men and women have differ- scant as which one biographer estimated was a 
ent needs, different hormones. " — his influ- 600-һоиг trove. There have been more 
That's why sex PT 7 if so ote than 40 additional Hendrix al- 

and monoga- N " - > _ bums since 1970, making him 

my are not the ^ rock's most prolific dead super- 

most impor- star, and by now you'd think the 

tant things in - : barrel had been scraped right 

a relationship. through the wood. On Valleys of 

Q: Do you N © Neptune, a collection of unre- 

have any hid- iN 5, leased recordings, several tracks 

den talents? М е fade abruptly—these are unfinished 

A: I can shoot * songs. Well, so what? If you like electric 

dice well. If . . guitar, this mishmash will leave you 

I'm in a tight spot and need 4 e making an OMG face. The prizes include 
some cash, I pull out the dice. А а version of “Fire” taken at stock-car 
Q: Are people surprised when Че tempo, the frolicking stereo tricks of 
they find out you're funny? - » "Lullaby for the Summer" and two of 
A: Yes. When my first album Hendrix's wildest, freest blues excur- 
was released I was described У 1 sions, each longer than seven minutes 
as a head-wrap-wearing, can- and worth it. Only drawback: The 
dle-lighting, incense-burning sound is so sharp, you'll want to buy a 
queen. The head wrap was new stereo. —Rob Tannenbaum 


bigger than I was. 


Chosen by destiny, six must cl 


saving mankind, а 


THE BATTLE WITHIN BEGINS 


FINALFANTASYXIILCOM 


Mild Language 


— ) (OS SQUARE ENIX. 


АДЕ DESIGN: TETSUYA NOMURA. FINAL FANTASY, SQUARE ENIX, and the SQUARE ENIX logo are registered 
fies and "PS3" and the PlayStation Network logo are trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Xbox, XÐ 
"sre used under license from Microsoft. The ESRB rating icons are registered trademarks of the Entertainment 


AFTER ELSEWHERE AT PLAYBOY 


| Date Night: 
Dinner and a 
| Few Shows 


Traditionally Friday ni 
the boys and Saturday is date 
night. With that in mind Playboy 
TV is rolling out a Saturday-night 
lineup programmed for couples. 
F | Picture this: After dinner you ask 
. f her up to your place while the 
| 4 night is still young (nine p.m. ET/ 
— . - PT). You shake up a few cocktails 
69 Sexy Things 2 Do Before You Die ^ while she flips on 69 Sexy Things 
2 Do Before You Die. You get to 
know each other by conversing 
about life aspirations and travel. 
Now she's moved closer and 
sensuously caresses your leg 
during the erotic Jazmin's Touch 
(9:30 p.m.). The brush leads to 
some light petting when the 
reality competition show Playboy 
Shootout begins (10 p.m.). After 
that, it's real daters vying for love 
and lust on Foursome (10:30 p.m.) 
to raise your heat level. By the 


Playboy Shootout à Foursome 


Down 
the 
Rabbit 
Hatch 


It's been 50 years since 
we opened the first 
Playboy Club. To toast 
the anniversary we are 
releasing three "cooler 
glasses" adorned with 
vintage Bunnies. You 
may recognize the tall 
drink to the left as art by 
Don Lewis, who began 
illustrating for us in the 
1960s. "He often based 
his playful and flirty pin- 
ups on some of his favor- 
ite Bunnies from the 
original Chicago Club," 
says Playboy Art Cura- 
tor Aaron Baker. The 
vessels are perfect for 
mixed drinks that call 
for a collins glass with a 
splash of flair. They re- 
tail for $8 and are exclu- 
sive to Urban Outfitters. 
Bottoms up. 


Some were skeptical years ago when Playboy got into radio ("Ya 
can't see the girls!" they said). But we proved them wrong by 
having one of the most listened-to stations on Sirius. Now we're 
bringing the best of radio—and by far the best faces in radio, 
such as Mansion Mayhem's Pilar Lastra (below)—to Playboy 
TV. The Playboy Radio Show airs Sundays at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT. 


AN х2 
A [INTERO < 


INSTA 


a ТТ 
ЛАШ 


MEN WHO HAVE =a) (ODD STAT OF THE 


INTERCOURSE AT ti MONTH 


WARRENBEATIV | | EAST TWICE A WEEK < 
LIVE LONGER THAN 
MEN WHO HAVE SEX 
LESS THAN ONCE 


A MONTH. LÅ 


y SEVENTY: EAGLES 


—— 


The winning bid at 


DN auction for the gray 
ДА fedora Jack Ruby was 
йе Pe " wearing when he gunned 
ge Ь down alleged JFK assas- 


sin Lee Harvey Oswald. 
AS MANY AS OF e 


CHANGED THEIR RELIGION Д Å [€^ " 


AMERICANS HAVE 
AT LEAST ONCE. 
WHAT According to 


Glamour.com, 


M 


OF GOVERNMENT 
EMPLOYEES SAY THEY HAVE 
KNOWN A CO-WORKER 

THEY SERIOUSLY BE 


THE TRUTH ABOUT. 
CHEATING 


ELIN NORDEGREN 


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= MANTRACK 


< HOME TECH 


STYLE | 


A bold U.K. company brings a whole new meaning to “working in the garden” 


Working from home has many advantages, but sometimes you just need to get out. Into the backyard, that is. The premise 
behind the radical work space called OfficePOD ($24,000, officepod.co.uk) is that while more and more people work from 
home these days, no one can be expected to do his best work in the place where he does his prime playing (our founder 
excepted, of course). We're not saying it’s impossible, mind, just that staring down your home bar all day can be hazardous 
to both your employment and your liver. The solution? A high-design, productivity-centric “pod” that sits in the backyard. 
Custom installation is available (and recommended unless you're a contractor in your spare time), and wherever possible 
the freestanding cubicle is made from recycled materials, letting you further burnish your green cred on top of all 


the gas you're saving. It has a power hookup for lights and computers, as well as phone and Internet jacks if you 
need them (though we think wireless is a better idea), and there’s built-in HVAC and storage in the 56-square- 
foot work space. Office PODs are on sale now in the U.K. with a U.S. release planned for a later date. 


Digital 
Dreaming 


These days the Internet 
is everywhere—even on 
your nightstand. Though 
Sony doesn't call its new 
touch screen Dash ($200, 
sonystyle.com) an alarm 
clock, it'll be the best one 
you ever own, delivering 
Net radio, weather, sports 
Scores and just about any- 
thing else digital, right to 
your bedside. 


Tale of the Tape 


Invisible information is all around 
us. Add some of your own with 
a Sonic tie from Texas artist 
Alyce Santoro ($120, 
sonicfabric.com). 
It's woven from 
discarded cassette 
tapes; if you pass 
a tape head over 
your chest you can 
still hear ghostly 

echoes of sounds 

from the past. 


25 


EMANTRACK 


A Little Luxury 


Driving a sports car in the city is like keeping a tiger on a leash: a wasteful 
extravagance bristling with power you can't truly enjoy. The idea behind 
Aston Martin's Cygnet concept car is to keep the luxury but lose the muscle. 
It's based on the Toyota iQ, a 1.3-liter four-cylinder car that gets upward of 
50 miles to the gallon. Aston's engineers gave it a face-lift and slathered 
the cockpit with Leather. Responsibility never felt so decadent. 


Hack Your Life: Destroy Your Phone Bill 


The Internet, fresh from beating up 
the music and film industries, is now 
thwacking the telephone companies. 
Ooma's Telo ($250, ooma.com) is a 
device that plugs into your broadband 
connection and then uses your existing 
house phones to let you make unlim- 
ited domestic calls with zero monthly 


Head of the Class 


fees. Combine it with the free Google 
Voice service (google.com/voice) to 
take complete control of your tele- 
phonic life, routing calls where you 
want them (home, work, cell), send- 
ing yourself voice-mail transcripts via 
e-mail or text and giving you access to 
your voice mail over the Internet. 


We don't envy the hundred-odd judges in the World Beer Cup, 
which kicks off in Chicago on April 6. About 3400 beers have 
been entered in 90 categories. While it's not open to the pub- 
lic, you can throw your own victory party at home (winners 
will be listed at worldbeercup.org). Among the defending 
champions are some of our personal favorites: Unibroue's La 
Fin du Monde, Blue Moon's Honey Moon, Trumer 
m Pils and Odell's IPA. Oh, and Old Milwaukee Light 
ir (in the American-style light lager category). 


A good set of speakers does wonders for your 
musical appreciation, but as far as visuals go, 
most are about as interesting as staring at a 
blank wall. ELAC changes that with its De Stijl 
FS 247 speakers ($2,100, elac.com), which are 
a functional homage to the abstract art move- 
ment that gave us Piet Mondrian. 


H E E > m 
SKYY Infusions®All Natural Pineapple. Vodka infused with Natural Pineapple Flavors 88% ale/VoL(70 proof). ©2010 Skyy Spirits, LLO, San Francisco, CA. 
Please enjoy responsibly. Learn more at skyyinfusions.com 


SWINGING 


For the first time, you can own every single 
issue of Playboy in one searchable digital ar- 
chive! Don't miss your chance to own these 
collector's-edition box sets, one for each de- 
cade, with every issue of Playboy ever pub- 
lished—all the stories, all the interviews and, of 
course, every beautiful photo, in one complete 
collection. Each collector's box set also comes 
with a 200-plus-page coffee-table book ed- 
ited by Playboy's founder. Sign up now to get 
the Cover to Cover box sets for every decade. 
Includes the Mac- and PC-compatible Bondi 
Reader, which allows you to search and view 
every page quickly and easily. 


Y60s 


UNDER THE COVERS 


than $50 off the list price of $100 on your first 
volume. Receive every issue published in the 
1950s and 1960s. Full-color coffee-table 
book. Also includes a reissue of the first edi- 
tion featuring Marilyn Monroe (a $25 value). 


Review the introductory collector's box set for 
30 days. If you're not satisfied, return the set 
with no further obligation. If you keep it, you'll 
receive a new P/ayboy Cover to Cover box set ap- 
proximately every six months for $69.95 for each 
volume plus $8.95 shipping and handling per 
shipment. There's no minimum to buy. You may 
cancel future shipments at any time by calling 
customer service. 


OWN IT HOW! CALL 800-577-7600 OR GO TO WWW.PLAYBOYARCHIVE.COM. FOR MINIMUM SERVICE REQUIREMENTS, GO TO WWW.PLAYBOYARCHIVE.COM 


M, husband is in the National 
Guard and deploying to Iraq 
(again). I want to buy pocket 
pussies for his unit as parting 
gifts. Can you suggest a brand 
that isn't too expensive, because 
I will need 37.—D.N., Cleve- 
land, Tennessee 

That's a generous gift—but are 
you sure the other women saying 
good-bye are cool with your distrib- 
uting masturbation sleeves? These 
days you can find pocket pussies for 
less than $10 at such unlikely places 
as Amazon.com, although how long 
they hold up to desert poundings 
is uncertain. A man in a bind can 
even make his own artificial vagina 
with five balloons filled with warm 
water, a pillow and a trash bag (see 
homemade-sex-toys.com/balloon-sex- 
bundle.html). But pocket pussies, 
like vibrators, have gone upscale, 
with such product lines as the 
Fleshlight (fleshlight.com; 888-804- 
4453), which can be customized 
with various orifices and textures, 
and the disposable Tenga (satistec 
.com; 877-836-4287). Since our 
troops deserve only the best, at our 
request Fleshlight has agreed to ship 
37 of its made-in-America products 
to your husband's unit. They look 
like flashlights, so let's hope they get 
through. And don't tell the other 
wives where they came from. 


lam having trouble choosing 
a best man. Should 1 go with 
my brother or my best friend, 
who last year had me stand as 
his best man? I don't want to 
hurt anyone's feelings. 1 hadn't 
thought to ask the Advisor until 
my fiancée suggested it.—R.K., 
Attleboro, Massachusetts 

Smart woman. Go with your 
brother. Your friend will understand. 
Your family may not. 


M, wife is a Muslim immi- 
grant. It was difficult to get her 
family to give her “permission” 
to marry me. I have a gay male 
couple in my circle of friends. 
My wife disapproves of homo- 
sexuality and feels uncomfort- 
able when this couple kisses or 
holds hands, but she doesn't 
get upset. I'd like to have a 
party, but I don't think I can 
invite my friends and exclude the 
couple. I also can't not invite my wife's 
family. Should I tell my gay friends 
they're welcome but to avoid PDA 
or revealing to my in-laws they are a 
couple? I don't think my in-laws would 
figure it out otherwise.—M.C., Boston, 
Massachusetts 

Alert your gay friends to the situation so 
they don't get blindsided. Good friends would 
cool it to avoid causing you any undue grief, 


ADVISOR 


| came across a photo on an amateur porn site of a cou- 
ple having sex in which the woman looked a lot like my 
wife. Her face was obscured, but she had the same build 
and, more telling, an identical tattoo on her leg. Should I 
confront my wife? If it is her, I'd like to know if the photo 
was taken before or after we were married. I've consid- 
ered first e-mailing the person who submitted the photo 
to ask a few questions.—J.H., Kansas City, Missouri 
What questions? “Have you ever or are you currently fucking 
my wife?” Unless the tattoo is of your face, this sounds like a 
coincidence; you don't have to search far online to find a woman 
of a certain build and with a nondistinct tattoo having sex. If it 
were your wife and the photos were recent, you'd probably recog- 
nize the guy. Is she a wild child who would not only cheat on you 
but allow someone to photograph it? Without more credible evi- 
dence, we see no reason to alert your wife to her doppelbänger. 
The best you could hope is that she'd burst out laughing—and 
then ask why you're cruising for amateur porn. 


but we would never suggest they deny they are 
together. For the record, sexual orientation is 
not a choice. Your in-laws and wife can “dis- 
approve,” but nature pays no heed. 


In the January/February issue you write 
that a couple becoming locked together 
during intercourse (penis captivus) is “so 
rare it's a myth.” 1 have news for you, 
Advisor—it can happen. In fact, my hus- 


band has gotten stuck inside my vagina 


twice, the first time for 15 min- 
utes and the second for nine 
minutes. Both times I wasn't 
very wet. After 15 minutes of 
thrusting I had gotten off twice 
but was swollen. 1 made him 
stop for a minute at this point, 
and when we started again he 
couldn't pull out. Even after he 
began to lose his erection it took 
a few minutes and a bit of force 
for him to escape. We both found 
it amusing. My obstetrician said 
the dryness and swelling were 
due to a fertility drug I was 
taking.—S.S., St. Louis, Missouri 

Your husband is messing with you. 


You are flat wrong to say a 
woman can't lock a man’s penis 
inside her vagina. A girlfriend 
once went to bed with me while 
in great anger. Her vaginal mus- 
cles closed around my erection 
like a fist, and her legs locked 
around my butt. 1 came, but 
to my surprise I didn't lose my 
erection. Her muscles gripped 
me so firmly I couldn't deflate. 
Only when she climaxed and 
relaxed was I able to withdraw. 
She also bit the hell out of my 
shoulder. It was not an experi- 
ence I care to repeat.—N.L., 
Naples, Florida 

This isn’t captivus but a more 
common occurrence known as rap- 
turus. Like many women, your ex 
had toned her taint muscle with 
: squeezing exercises known as Kegels. 

(It's also notable that she held you 
in place with her legs.) There's 
nothing quite like intercourse with 
a woman who can suck your cock 
with her vagina. 


lama 37-year-old woman who 
has almost constant orgasms 
without being touched. I lead a 
regular life, but when I'm alone, 
wow! Is this normal?—C.R., Chel- 
sea, Oklahoma 

It's unusual but not abnormal. 
Does it bother you? For many 
women it's a nightmare, which 
has led the scientific community to 
identify this condition as persistent 
genital arousal disorder, or PGAD. 
The standard definition is "feelings 
of persistent, spontaneous, intru- 
sive, unrelenting and unwanted 
physical arousal in the absence of conscious 
thoughts of sexual desire or sexual interest." 
Many women apparently experience this but 
don't find it distressing. For others it can 
create severe mental distress, especially since 
reaching climax provides no relief. "Women 
are not having orgasms all day and night as 
has been exaggerated by the media," writes 
Jeannie Allen, who runs psas-support.com. 
"Most wait for privacy and hold out as long 
as they can until they feel they are losing their 


29 


PLAYBOY 


30 


minds.” The good news is that a number of 
investigators are on the case, hoping first to 
discover whether PGAD originates in the 
brain, the genitals (“clitoral priapism”) or 
both. Scientists reported last year on a woman 
whose lifelong PGAD disappeared when 
she began taking varenicline, a smoking- 
cessation drug that regulates the release of 
dopamine in the brain. The neurosexologist 
Dr. Marcel Waldinger suggests PGAD be 
renamed restless genital syndrome because 
it appears to be related to overactive blad- 
der and restless legs syndrome. Most of the 
women with PGAD he has interviewed say it 
gets worse when they sit down or wear tight 
clothing and that it rarely bothers them at 
night. This, he says, suggests hypersensitivity 
of the nerves that supply the clitoris and/or 
other areas of the genitals. Indeed, examina- 
tions of 23 afflicted volunteers revealed that 
simply touching their clits with a cotton swab 
could induce the sensations of PGAD, and 
three of the women came. 


The December fashion feature, "Suit Up!,” 
shows Josh Radnor wearing a jacket with 
a single red button on the sleeve. What's 
up with that?—E.C., Anchorage, Alaska 

The suit is by Paul Smith, who often adds 
unexpected color to his designs, whether in a 
button, lining or contrast stitch. It's the same 
idea behind a colorful pocket square or tie—it 
adds a touch of personality that is distinctive 
but not distracting. 


How do you develop a “killer” instinct? 
Some guys seem to have it, and some 
don't.—R.L., New Orleans, Louisiana 

As basketball great Bill Russell once said, 
“If you sometimes wonder if you have killer 
instinct, you aint got it.” And he may be right; 
competitive fire appears to be determined by 
testosterone levels. The question is, does high 
testosterone lead to a killer instinct, or does a 
killer instinct cause higher testosterone? The 
answer is both, writes social psychologist James 
McBride Dabbs in Heroes, Rogues and Lov- 
ers: Testosterone and Behavior. You inherit a 
certain level of testosterone, but the hormone 
also rises and falls with each victory or loss, 
in sports and business. Idan Ravin, known as 
“the hoops whisperer” for his work with NBA 
stars, believes hypercompetitiveness can be cul- 
tivated if you grow up in a culture of success or 
pull yourself out of a tough situation, as many 
elite professionals have done. He has even 
broken killer instinct into six components: (1) 
love of the game, (2) ambition, (3) obsessive- 
compulsive behavior (4) arrogance/confidence, 
(5) selfishness and (6) nonculpability /guiltless- 
ness. By the latter he means “if a guy with killer 
instinct fucks up, he doesn’t feel responsible. 
For example, if Kobe Bryant misses a shot to 
win the game, he doesn’t say, ‘Sorry, guys.’ It 
isn't a failure, because no one else could have 
done it. That outlook makes it hard to be friends 
with people you work with.” 


My boss went to a nice restaurant for 
dinner. When his steak arrived the wait- 
er asked him to cut into it to make sure 
it was cooked to his liking. My boss says 


the server should wait until the customer 
cuts into the steak on his own, then ask 
if it’s okay. I argued it's good business to 
ask immediately so the situation can be 
corrected quickly. What does the Advisor 
think?—D.T., San Francisco, California 

We have no preference when a server asks if 
we're satisfied; what we don't want is an argu- 
ment over our definition of medium rare. One 
steakhouse review we read said a waiter who 
wanted to examine more closely the ratio of red 
to pink pulled out a flashlight, which we would 
have used to deck him. 


A couple who engages in BDSM should 
agree on a safe word the bottom can 
use to end the encounter. But what if 
the top ignores the safe word? Could he 
or she be charged with assault?—K. J., 
Indianapolis, Indiana 

This murky legal area will be in the news 
this year when the U.S. Supreme Court rules 
on a procedural appeal in the conviction of 
an S&M Svengali charged with, among other 
things, the “forced labor” of a female slave. A 
year into the relationship, while handcuffed 
to a wall, the woman had a moment of clarity 
and judged the situation to be abusive. In a 
1998 case a man convicted of sexually tortur- 
ing a woman for 20 hours was released on 
appeal when e-mails showed she had helped 
plan the encounter and immediately afterward 
proclaimed herself satisfied. More recently a 
former state politician in Missouri was accused 
of choking and beating a lover during rough 
sex. As he left he allegedly told her “You should 
have said ‘green balloons’”—their safe word. 
This is the sort of scenario that gives people 
who push the boundaries of pain tolerance the 
willies. Some even argue consent is a fickle 
concept. “Consent during and after but not 
before the act is seduction,” one dominant told a 
blogger who wrote about this issue. “Before and 
after but not during—that's my sweet spot. But 
before and during but not after, that's buyer's 
remorse. There’s no crime in it, and for good 
reason.” As they say, it’s a fine line. 


n my golf drives off the tee went 
straight they'd fly 300 yards. But I have 
a nasty slice to the right. I can hit my 
irons without issues. Is it possible that 
my swing is so powerful, the flex in my 
driver's graphite shaft causes the head 
to lag and hit the ball open-faced?—S.E., 
Newcastle, California 

This is a common problem: A golfer improves 
his short clubs but still has trouble off the tee 
because he's hitting for power and twisting his 
body to get it, which causes his arms to extend 
too far. You need a more traditional swing, says 
Andy Plummer, which he and fellow instruc- 
tor Michael Bennett describe in The Stack 
and Tilt Swing (stackandtiltgolfswing.com). 
“Golf instruction has lost sight of what made 
the best swings in history work: Ben Hogan's 
reverse tilt at the top, Jack Nicklaus's steady 
head, Sam Snead's straight right leg on the 
backswing,” he says. So, briefly: Straighten 
your right leg and keep your head stationary 
during the backswing so your body remains 
centered over the ball, and swing your hands 


well to the inside on the downswing. It's such 
a simple game. 


A reader complains in December about 
his cigar lighters failing within a month or 
two, and you recommend an S.T. Dupont. 
A Dupontis a work of art but an unneces- 
sary expense. Before refueling your light- 
ers, bleed them by depressing the valve 
with a small screwdriver until the hissing 
stops. My best lighter is a freebie I got with 
a box of cigars.—S.A., Wichita, Kansas 


Butane lighters should be cleaned us- 
ing compressed air. A scuba tank at 50 
pounds of pressure can keep $5 lighters 
going for 10 years and expensive ones 
forever.—M.L., Norman, Oklahoma 

If unnecessary expense were a concern, we 
wouldn't smoke cigars. Aaron Sigmond, author 
of the forthcoming Playboy: The Book of Cigars, 
notes that after bleeding a lighter you can use a 
toothbrush to remove flint dust and other parti- 
cles. Compressed air is an option—and required 
for torch lighters—but the cans available at any 
office supply store will suffice. 


M, new girlfriend is on the pill and 
doesn’t want me to wear a condom. 
What is the common practice when it 
comes to finishing? Is it okay to come in- 
side her, or do most girls still want you 
to pull out? If I pull out, is it okay to 
come on her, or does that happen only 
in porn?—D.T., Miami, Florida 

Unless she says otherwise, it's okay to come 
inside her. But you may want to continue to 
wear a condom or at least to withdraw. No 
method of birth control except abstinence is 
100 percent effective. If she misses a pill, the 
odds of an unplanned pregnancy go up. You 
also risk STDs without a condom, especially 
since this is someone you don't know well. 
She'll be justifiably skeptical if you claim to 
prefer latex over her sugar walls, so just tell 
her, “I don’t want to be a dad yet.” 


I take exception to your dismissal in Jan- 
uary/February of the pinkie ring's fash- 
ion value. Many engineers wear stainless- 
steel or wrought-iron pinkie rings as part 
ofa code called the Order ofthe Engineer 
(order-of-the-engineer.org).—B.F., 
Corpus Christi, Texas 

So you retired the pocket protectors? We're 
kidding, engineers. We love your bridges. 


All reasonable questions—from fashion, food 
and drink, stereos and sports cars to dating 
dilemmas, taste and etiquette—will be per- 
sonally answered if the writer includes a 
self-addressed, stamped envelope. The most 
interesting, pertinent questions will be pre- 
sented in these pages. Write the Playboy Advi- 
sor, 680 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, 
Illinois 60611, or send e-mail by visiting 
playboyadvisor.com. Our greatest-hits collec- 
tion, Dear Playboy Advisor, is available in 
bookstores and online; listen to the Advisor 
each week on Sirius/XM 99. 


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„ww SARAH SILVERMAN 


А candid conversation with the sexy shock comic about good Sarah versus bad 
Sarah, the breakup with Jimmy Kimmel and why directors think she’s a bitch 


Sarah Silverman, the eponymous star of The 
Sarah Silverman Program—now in its third 
season on Comedy Central—sometimes begins 
the show with a brief introduction to her life. Or 
rather, the life of her fictional doppelgånger, also 
named Sarah Silverman. “I'm just like you,” she 
once insisted. “I live in Valley Village, I don’t 
have a job, and my sister pays the rent!” 

The joke, of course, is that she’s nothing like us. 
And not just for the reasons she offers. Silverman, 
or at least her on-screen counterpart, is xeno- 
phobic, arrogant, selfish and downright cruel. She 
has dabbled in bestiality, tried to sue the country of 
Mongolia for rape, given birth to a demon baby, 
had sex with God and walked into an African 
American church wearing blackface. In this past 
season alone she’s been a veritable blitzkrieg of 
poor taste, poking fun at everything from mental 
retardation to pedophilia to Auschwitz. 

It’s comforting to think Silverman the come- 
dian and Silverman the character have nothing 
in common but a name. But sometimes the line 
between the two can get a little blurry. Whether 
making a controversial joke about Asians on Late 
Night With Conan O’Brien in 2001 (the punch 
line was “I love Chinks”) or claiming in the 2005 
documentary The Aristocrats that she was raped 
by talk-show host Joe Franklin—who responded to 
the mock charges by threatening Silverman with a 
lawsuit—she rarely winks at the audience to let us 


“When I was three years old my father taught 
me to how say ‘bitch,’ ‘bastard,’ ‘damn’ and 
‘shit.’ Looking back on it now it’s pretty obvi- 
ous why I do the sort of comedy I do. Is it such 
a surprise I'm a shock comedian today?” 


know what's real and what's meant to be ironic. 

Silverman—the real Silverman—grew up 
in Bedford, New Hampshire, the youngest of 
four sisters. Her parents, Donald and Beth 
Ann—a clothes retailer and a theater director, 
respectively—divorced when Sarah was six years 
old. She was, by all accounts, an unhappy child, 
having frequent panic attacks and sinking into 
full-on depression at 13. By 14 she was taking 
more than a dozen Xanax a day and struggling 
with a bed-wetting problem, which she documents 
in her new memoir, The Bedwetter: Stories of 
Courage, Redemption and Pee, to be published 
by HarperCollins in late April. 

She started young as a stand-up, performing 
at nightclubs and restaurants in the Boston area 
when she was just in her teens. She dropped out of 
New York University after only a year and lasted 
Just as long as a writer for Saturday Night Live. 
For the next decade she landed small roles in such 
TV shows as The Larry Sanders Show, Seinfeld 
and Crank Yankers, and movies such as There’s 
Something About Mary and School of Rock. It 
wasn't until Jesus Is Magic, the 2005 concert film 
that combined Silverman’s stand-up act with short 
skits and songs—including controversial material 
about the Holocaust, AIDS and racism—that the 
world finally began to take notice of her. 

But Silverman didn’t get her first taste of 
mainstream success until "I'm Fucking Matt 


“I love going to weddings. I’m not against 
marriage, but it’s just not for me. I’m a vege- 
tarian, but I don’t have a problem if you want 
a hamburger. Marriage, to me, is like eating 
meat. I think it’s gross and fucking crazy.” 


Damon,” a pseudo-confessional music video that 
premiered on the talk show of her then-boyfriend 
Jimmy Kimmel in 2008. It featured Silverman 
singing about her infidelity with Damon “on 
the bed, on the floor, on a towel by the door, in 
the tub, in the car, up against the minibar.” The 
video went viral, getting millions of hits on You- 
Tube and becoming an Internet sensation. 

We sent writer Eric Spitznagel, who has also 
interviewed Seth Rogen and Tina Fey for PLAYBOY, 
to meet with Silverman. He filed this report: 
“Silverman and I spent an afternoon in her West 
Hollywood apartment, lounging on the couch and 
snuggling with Duck, her 15-year-old Chihuahua- 
pug mix (he has a recurring role on The Sarah 
Silverman Program as Doug). She is exactly what 
you'd expect her to be and exactly the opposite. 
One minute she'll describe how she and her comic 
friends enjoy saying the word raaaaaaaape while 
belching. The next she'll suddenly grow sentimen- 
tal, talking about how much she believes in love. 
Spend enough time with her and you'll realize 
the real Sarah Silverman exists somewhere in the 
middle—but you're never really sure.” 


PLAYBOY: Your new memoir, The Bedwetter, 
is an intimate portrait of your childhood 
battle with bed-wetting. Why write about 
something so personal? 

SILVERMAN: I was so tortured about it 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIZUNO 


“You’re not going to believe this, but [my 
shrink] eventually had me taking four Xanax 
four times a day—16 Xanax a day, for a 
14-year-old girl. She upped my dose every 
time. She should be in prison.” 


33 


PLAYBOY 


34 


growing up. It was something I thought 
would always be the biggest secret of my 
life. When you're a kid that's how hopeless 
everything seems. But then I remember 
watching Johnny Carson one night, and 
the actress Jane Badler was a guest. She 
was one of the aliens in the original V mini- 
series in the early 1980s. She came out, 
and they talked about how she was a bed 
wetter as a kid. I couldn't believe it. For my 
little brain it was mind-blowing. 

PLAYBOY: It never occurred to you that 
other people may wet their beds too? 
SILVERMAN: Not somebody like her. She was 
a beauty queen and an actress. It meant 
the world to me that she could talk about 
it and not be embarrassed. 

PLAYBOY: When did you realize you had a 
problem with bed-wetting? 

SILVERMAN: When I realized my friends 
weren't wetting their beds. I remember going 
on a camping trip when I was 13 and hiding 
diapers in the bottom of my sleeping bag. 
Diapers! I slipped into them in my sleeping 
bag when everybody else was asleep. 
PLAYBOY: How old were you when you 
finally stopped? 

SILVERMAN: I was around 16. I think I 
just had to grow out of it. I didn't get my 
period until I was 17 and a half. So I think 
wetting the bed was just part of my adoles- 
cence. I went to hypnotherapy for a while, 
but it never worked. 

PLAYBOY: Why not? 

SILVERMAN: I wrote about it a lot in my diary. 
I just never felt I was hypnotized. I closed 
my eyes and tried to imagine all the things 
he was telling me. “You're in a meadow. 
You're in the forest.” But it just felt stupid. 
PLAYBOY: You wrote about this in your 
diary? 

SILVERMAN: Yeah. My mom found it and 
sent it to me. She thought it might help 
me with the book. 

PLAYBOY: Did anything in your diary sur- 
prise you? 

SILVERMAN: I didn't realize how neurotic 
I was as a teenager. Every entry was like 
“Today I was depressed between 4:30 and 
7:20, but I felt okay after that.” 

PLAYBOY: Has your mom read your diary? 
SILVERMAN: She read it all. I think she 
loved it. It's all about her. It's weird. It's 
like I was obsessed with my mother. We 
were always fighting, and then I would 
miss her when she wasn't home. 
PLAYBOY: Do you have a close relationship 
with your parents? 

SILVERMAN: Oh yeah, definitely. 

PLAYBOY: Are they fans of your comedy? 
SILVERMAN: Absolutely. My father espe- 
cially. All he cares about is having a hat 
or a T-shirt from some TV show that my 
sister Laura or I or Jimmy [Kimmel] was 
on. You know what he does? My step- 
mother keeps him from wearing all the 
swag we send him, because it's obnoxious, 
but sometimes he'll sneak it into the car 
and change when she isn't paying atten- 
tion. Laura had a boyfriend who had the 
best joke. He said if Dad was ever a fugi- 
tive, he'd be easy to track down. The cops 


would be like, “We're looking for a male, 
70s, wearing a Man Show hat, Crank Yank- 
ers T-shirt, Sarah Silverman Program satchel, 
Jesus Is Magic water bottle.” 

PLAYBOY: Didn't your dad introduce you 
to dirty jokes? 

SILVERMAN: He did, yeah. Whenever we went 
to restaurants, he'd take a napkin and...hold 
on. [finds napkin and begins folding it] Wait a 
minute. I can't believe I'm not remembering 
this. It's got to be like muscle memory. 
PLAYBOY: Are you trying to make 
SILVERMAN: Tits? Were you going to say tits? 
PLAYBOY: No. It looks like one of those ori- 
gami fortune-teller things. 

SILVERMAN: No, no, no. It's supposed to 
be tits. My dad would fold a napkin so it 
looked like tits. [laughs] He always did it at 
dinner. It's funny when you're a kid. I can't 
even remember it now. It's bothering me. 
Oh wait, hold on. [tries again, finally creating 
something that vaguely resembles breasts] 
PLAYBOY: Is there a punch line that goes 
with it? 

SILVERMAN: No, it's all visual. It's cerebral. 
It's like, “Hey, look, tits.” When I was 12 
my dad gave me these books, Truly Taste- 
less Jokes and Truly Tasteless Jokes Two. 1 


I do love poop. I can't help 
it. The heart wants what it 
wants. I enjoy being clever 
and pithy and political, but 
nothing’s going to get me 
like dumb stuff: 


remember reading them and thinking, I'm 
too young for this. They were so dirty. 
PLAYBOY: Do you remember any of them? 
SILVERMAN: I remember the very first joke. 
It was about Little Red Riding Hood. She's 
in the forest, and the wolf says to her, "I'm 
going to eat you," and Red Riding Hood 
says, "Eat, eat, eat. Doesn't anybody fuck 
anymore?" I don't know why I remember 
it. At the time I had no idea why it was 
funny, but I knew it was dirty because it 
had the word fuck in it. 

PLAYBOY: Were you a funny kid? 
SILVERMAN: I killed from a very early age. I 
was the youngest, so I was positioned to be 
the entertainer. I used to do impressions of 
all the characters on General Hospital, because 
that's what everybody in my family watched. 
And they would die. I remember—and it 
still happens—when I get a really big laugh, 
my arms itch. [scratches arms] 1 know that 
makes me sound like a crazy person. 
PLAYBOY: You've claimed you started 
swearing as a child to please your father. 
Is that true? 

SILVERMAN: It is. When I was three years 
old he taught me how to say “bitch,” “bas- 
tard,” “damn” and “shit.” Looking back 


on it now it's pretty obvious why I do the 
sort of comedy I do. As a kid I said swear 
words to adults, and they laughed wildly. 
Is it such a surprise I'm a shock comedian 
today? It makes total sense. 

PLAYBOY: Do you consider what you do 
shock comedy? 

SILVERMAN: Well, no, it's not that black- 
and-white. I don't write something and 
think, How can I be shocking? 

PLAYBOY: Even though that’s what people 
expect from you? 

SILVERMAN: Yeah, but doing shock comedy, 
real shock comedy, is giving an audience 
what they don't expect. So I have to totally 
disregard their expectations. 

PLAYBOY: Do you ever worry about how 
your jokes, especially the more controver- 
sial ones, could be misinterpreted? 
SILVERMAN: I have no control over that. 
Once it's out there it's theirs to have. 
These jokes will be whatever they see in 
the context of their own lives. 

PLAYBOY: So you don't care if people show 
up for your stand-up and think, I hope she 
does the one about the Chinks? 
SILVERMAN: [Groans] Oh God, that's the 
worst. I had a boyfriend who called it 
mouth-full-of-blood laughs. It's when 
people are laughing at the wrong thing. 
One time the lead singer of a very popular 
band from the 1980s—I can't give you his 
name—came up to me after a show, and I 
swear to God, he goes, "You're my favorite 
comedian. You have the best nigger jokes." 
I was like, "I...I...didn't mean...." And he 
turns to his friends and says, "She's got the 
best nigger jokes!" 

PLAYBOY: Would you give us a hint who 
it was? 

SILVERMAN: I'll say just this: After that, I 
stopped believin'. 

PLAYBOY: Are you still doing stand-up? 
SILVERMAN: Not as much as I should be. I’m 
at a crossroads in terms of my act. Anything 
from /esus Is Magic is done. I can't do any- 
thing from that movie anymore. I'm forcing 
myself to go out and do spots at comedy 
clubs when I'd rather be at the movies. 
PLAYBOY: It's not as easy as it used to be? 
SILVERMAN: It's a process. When you have an 
act that's polished and you're in the zone, 
you can't wait to get out there. But I'm ina 
place where I’m backstage going, "I have 
fucking nothing!" I just feel like a loser. But 
I've also realized I can't go out and keep 
doing the same fake racist metajokes any- 
more. Otherwise 30 years will go by and I'll 
be the guy onstage going [imitates Andrew 
Dice Clay], "Hickory dickory dock!" 
PLAYBOY: You're thinking about a com- 
plete image overhaul? 

SILVERMAN: It's scary to try something new. 
I just have to get out there and be will- 
ing to bomb and let people blog about 
how much I suck and not care. I have to 
remember not to apologize for myself. 
PLAYBOY: You sound almost emotionally 
mature. 

SILVERMAN: [Laughs] It's really kind of 
disgusting. Have I become New Age-y? 
Should I be out here with crystals? 


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PLAYBOY: You went through pretty severe 
depression as a teenager. 

SILVERMAN: I did. I remember when it first 
happened. I came back from this camp- 
ing trip, the one where I hid diapers in my 
sleeping bag, and it just washed over me like 
a cloud. It was like a cloud covering the sun. 
I remember the horror story I told myself 
over and over again: I'm totally alone in 
my body. Nobody will ever see through my 
eyes. I'm just completely alone. 

PLAYBOY: Is that when you started going 
to therapy? 

SILVERMAN: Yeah. My therapist wrote me a 
prescription for Xanax and told me when- 
ever I felt sad I should take one. I returned 
the following week and was in the waiting 
room. It was this Victorian house in New 
Hampshire, the same place I had gone to 
see a hypnotist for bed-wetting. It was four 
P.M. in the middle ofa snowstorm, and it was 
just pitch-black outside. My mom dropped 
me off, and I was waiting and waiting and 
waiting. I remember I read an entire Peo- 
fle magazine, and I thought, What's going 
on? Then Dr. Graham, the hypnotist, came 
down, and his eyes were all red and teary. 
And he was like—T ll use a different name— 
"Dr. Riley hung himself" 

PLAYBOY: How old were you? 

SILVERMAN: Thirteen. My fucking shrink 
hung himself at my second appointment! 
PLAYBOY: That's horrible. How did you 
make sense of what happened? 
SILVERMAN: I have no idea. I remember 
he had braces. And I was thinking, Wow, 
he didn't even wait to get his braces off. 
Braces are a sign of hope. You know what 


I was raped by a doctor...which is so bitter- 
sweet for a Jewish girl. 


I honestly can't remember the politically cor- 
rect word for Asian. Is it little people? 


My sister found out that the village in Rus- 
sia my great-great-great-grandmother came 
from was raped and pillaged—1 don't even 
know what pillaged means, but it was defi- 
nitely raped by Mongolians. I, therefore, am 
part Mongolian rapist. 


Jesus had a beard. Her name was Mary. 


They put my name in all the papers, calling 
me a racist. And it hurt, ya know? As a Jew, 
you know, as a member of the Jewish com- 
munity, | was really concerned that we were 
losing control of the media. 


I dated a guy who was half black, but he 
totally dumped me because I’m such a loser. 
Wow! | just heard myself say that. | am such 
a pessimist.... He's actually half white. 


I changed a baby's diaper today, and she had 
a totally shaved vagina. What a country! 


Gay or bisexual, it doesn't matter, because 
at the end of the day, they're both gross. 


I mean? Braces mean that someday you're 
gonna have new teeth. Braces are a sym- 
bol that tomorrow will be better. 
PLAYBOY: Did you continue going to ther- 
apy after that? 

SILVERMAN: My parents found this reg- 
istered nurse in Andover, which is just 
outside of Boston, who they'd take me to 
before school. It was an hour away, so I'd 
have to get up at six in the morning. She 
would talk to me, and then her husband, 
who was a doctor, would write prescrip- 
tions for me. She just upped my dose every 
time. You're not going to believe this, but 
she eventually had me taking four Xanax 
four times a day—16 Xanax a day, for a 
14-year-old girl. She should be in prison. 
PLAYBOY: Did you at least feel better? 
SILVERMAN: I just felt like a zombie. Finally, 
somehow, I went to this Mexican psychia- 
trist in Manchester. I think he was the only 
Mexican in New Hampshire. His name 
was Dr. Santiago. I don't know where he 
came from, but he literally saved my life. 
He found out I was on this medication, 
and he couldn't believe it. He brought my 
mother in and said, “This is a life-and- 
death situation. You can't just go off of this. 
You have to go half a pill less a week until 
you're at zero." So it took like six months. 
I remember that last half a pill so clearly. 
It was my sophomore year in high school, 
and I was at the bubbler in the hallway of 
my high school. I was myself again. It was 
just like that. The cloud lifted, and I was 
my old silly self again. 

PLAYBOY: Do you ever worry the cloud will 
come back? 


That å What she said 


Sarah Silverman is pretty, witty, rich and entertainingly crass 


I keep confusing 9/11 and 7-Eleven. Gotta 
stop going to ground zero for Nerds Rope. 


Balls are like men’s personal little Dorian 
Grays. What I’m trying to say, folks, is 
they're wrinkly. 


Guess what, Martin Luther King, | had 
a fucking dream too. | had a dream that 
I was in my living room, and | walked 
through to the backyard pool, and as I’m 
diving in, there's a shark coming up from 
the water...with braces! So maybe you're 
not so fucking special. 


People who say they're divas: You're not a 
diva. I'm pretty sure you're a cunt. 


I love how Palestinians and Jews hate each 
other. It's so cute. Honestly, what's the dif- 
ference? They're brown. They have an odor. 
It's like sweet potatoes hating yams. 


It sounds like a crude joke to say | exploded 
from my father's balls and out his penis hole, 
but it's true. Amazing to think | was so thin. 


People compare me to Lenny Bruce, and 
it's flattering. But really the only thing 
that's similar is the heroin and strippers. 


SILVERMAN: It came back six years later, when 
I was 22. I started taking Klonopin intermit- 
tently, which blocked the panic attacks, and I 
was able to work. A few years later I started 
taking Zoloft. I've been on it ever since. I've 
taken half a Zoloft every day since 1994. 
PLAYBOY: At 22 you were writing for Satur- 
day Night Live. Do you think the stress of 
writing for that show had anything to do 
with your depression returning? 
SILVERMAN: I'm sure it was psychological, 
but it felt mostly chemical. It just came on 
all in one moment. You know how you 
get the flu in a second, where you just 
go, "Fuck, I have the flu!" It's that fast. I 
recognized the feeling right away, and it 
sent me into a huge panic attack. 
PLAYBOY: Were you surprised when Saturday 
Night Live fired you after just one year? 
SILVERMAN: I was. I didn't get anything 
on the show in my first year, but it never 
occurred to me I wouldn't be asked back. 
All the way up to August I was writing 
sketches, making plans. My manager and 
agent called me together from Los Ange- 
les, and when they told me I'd been fired, 
I didn't believe it. I was like, “Awww, come 
on, guys! That's not funny!" I thought 
they were kidding. I was devastated, and 
I thought I'd never work again. 
PLAYBOY: But you continued to do 
stand-up? 

SILVERMAN: I did, but I wasn't sure I could 
still call myself a comedian. I had a full 
year of just "What the fuck am I doing 
with my life?" 

PLAYBOY: Do you feel as though being a 
comedian is in your DNA? 


35 


PLAYBOY 


36 


SILVERMAN: I do. I'm lucky. I've always 
known. My mom found something I had 
filled out in third grade. It was a work- 
book or something, and on one of the 
pages it said, "When I grow up, I want 
to be..." and I had written, "an actress, a 
comedian or a masseuse." 

PLAYBOY: You seriously wanted to be 
a masseuse? 

SILVERMAN: That was because of my fam- 
ily. They would get me to rub their backs 
by saying, "You're so good at this! Your 
hands are so strong!" So I'd massage 
everybody, just to practice. It's kind of 
genius how they manipulated me. 
PLAYBOY: Who was your first big comedy 
inspiration? 

SILVERMAN: I loved Steve Martin. I didn't 
just love him, I was in love with him. On 
the ceiling in my bedroom where I grew 
up, where my mom still lives, I wrote “I love 
Steve Martin" in pencil. It's still there. 
PLAYBOY: Did you want to be with him, or 
did you want to be him? 

SILVERMAN: Probably a little of both. I can 
remember reading a magazine article 
about him; I can still picture everything 
about it. He's from Waco, Texas, and he 
does magic, and he loves some artist named 
David Hockney, so I convinced my mom to 
get me a calendar of David Hockney pho- 
tographs from a museum. All of a sudden 
Iloved David Hockney, who is an artist 
I had no reason to relate to at all. I had 
never been to California or the West Coast, 
but my walls were covered with all these 
images of gay men in swimming pools. I 
loved it because I knew he loved it. 
PLAYBOY: What was it about his comedy 
that appealed to you? 

SILVERMAN: I don't know. Maybe it was the 
mixture of silliness without mindlessness. 
But I assure you I couldn't have articulated 
that when I was a teenager. I just loved 
him because he was funny and beautiful. 
PLAYBOY: Silly is definitely a word that could 
be used to describe your sense of humor. 
SILVERMAN: Oh yeah, absolutely. 
PLAYBOY: Another word is scatological. 
SILVERMAN: [Smiles hugely] I do love poop. 
I can't help it. The heart wants what it 
wants. I enjoy being clever and pithy and 
political, but nothing's going to get me 
like dumb stuff. It's not exclusively poop 
jokes, and I won't laugh at all poop jokes. 
It has to be something special. 

PLAYBOY: Can you give us an example of 
a really special shit joke? 

SILVERMAN: When we were working on the 
show, we noticed [Sarah Silverman Program 
co-creator] Rob Schrab would always get 
cranky toward the end of the day. We found 
out it was because he had to take a shit and 
needed to do it in the privacy of his home. 
Then we moved into office space, and one 
office had a private bathroom, so we gave it 
to Rob. Comedy writers can be so lazy, but 
when they're motivated by something, they 
can do amazing things. The writers Chris 
Romano and Eric Falconer came in extra 
early the first morning and took a huge 
shit in Rob's toilet, and then Chris put a 


toothpick with a homemade flag in the shit 
and wrote on the flag, "I know what you did 
last summer.” [laughs to the point of tears] It's 
just so absurd and stupid. Why would you 
put “I know what you did last summer" on 
the flag? What does that horror movie from 
eight years ago have to do with their shit? 
PLAYBOY: The work environment for your 
writing staff sounds like a fraternity party. 
SILVERMAN: It can be, yeah. But [head 
writer and executive producer] Dan Ster- 
ling keeps us pretty focused. He made a 
rule that nobody can take out his dick 
until five o'clock. 

PLAYBOY: Your writers have to be told not 
to expose themselves? 

SILVERMAN: They do, because otherwise it 
would happen all the time. And the guys 
interpreted Dan's rule as "Take your dick 
out at five." It would be like [glances at 
watch], “Forty-five more minutes." 
PLAYBOY: What's the context in which 
somebody might take out his penis? 
SILVERMAN: Oh, there are so many! Chris 
started it. He takes his dick out all the 
time. And then Harris Wittels, the young 
one who is normally a very shy and ner- 
vous guy, started taking his dick out. It 


I grew up with no Jews 
except for my family. I think 
there's something about Jew- 

ish culture that says sex is 
okay, sex is good. There isn't 

a stigma attached to it. 


usually happens when we're stuck on an 
outline or something. One of them will 
just stand up and pull down his pants 
and underwear and sit back down. It gets 
us out of the moment. It's a safe room, 
where you can just do anything. One time 
Chris came out of the bathroom and his 
dick was sticking through a napkin, out of 
his fly. I told him, “Chris, it isn't five yet!" 
And he said, "I can't help it. My dick just 
ate lobster." [laughs] I know these are not 
clever jokes, but I love them. 

PLAYBOY: Did you grow up in a sexually 
open family? 

SILVERMAN: Yeah, we were very open. I 
grew up with no Jews except for my fam- 
ily, but I think there's something about 
Jewish culture that says sex is okay, sex 
is good. There isn't a stigma attached to 
it. They really didn't shield me from any- 
thing. I became sexualized at an early age, 
although I didn't have sex until I was 19. 
PLAYBOY: You were a late bloomer? 
SILVERMAN: Not by choice. I went through 
puberty when I moved to New York. I 
remember my first stand-up act when I was 
17. I did a really lame song about being 
flat-chested. I was doing it in New York, 


and Kevin Brennan, the guy I lost my vir- 
ginity to, was like, "That song doesn't make 
sense. You have tits." 

PLAYBOY: Wasn't the song called 
“Mammaries”? 

SILVERMAN: [Long pause] How could you 
possibly know that? 

PLAYBOY: We have our sources. 
SILVERMAN: Have you been reading my 
diary? I'm so embarrassed. 

PLAYBOY: Do you remember any of the 
lyrics? 

SILVERMAN: All I remember is [sings] 
“Mammaries are the goyims that I need.” 
It was so fucking stupid. 

PLAYBOY: It's not always clear if you expect 
an audience to laugh with you or at you. 
Is that by design? 

SILVERMAN: I think it is. I like the ambi- 
guity. I used to love experimenting with 
that idea. I was doing a set at the Largo [a 
nightclub in Los Angeles] one time. I wore 
these pale tan khaki pants and painted 
period blood down the crotch. I wore it 
onstage and never mentioned it. But I 
knew the audience could see it, and they 
just assumed I had leaked period blood. I 
did six minutes of jokes without mention- 
ing it and acted as though I had command 
of the room. It was interesting to watch the 
audience, because so many of them were 
dying for me. They wanted to laugh at me, 
but they weren't able to hear anything I 
was saying. The blood stain was so distract- 
ing to them. Then at the end I pretended 
to notice it for the first time, and I was like, 
"Oh my God, you guys must think this is 
period blood. Of course you do. No, no, I 
just had anal sex for the first time." 
PLAYBOY: Who's the fall guy in that joke? Is 
it you? Is it the audience for being embar- 
rassed for you? 

SILVERMAN: I don't know. Who cares? If it's 
funny, it's funny. We don't need to dissect 
it and ruin it, do we? 

PLAYBOY: Do people sometimes assume 
they know you because of what they see 
on your show and in the movies? 
SILVERMAN: All the time. One ofthe few guys 
I've dated since Jimmy, it was weird how 
much he thought he knew me. He was like, 
"Well, I know you don't believe in God, but I 
blah blah blah....” And I was just like [shocked 
expression], "What kind of person do you 
think I am? And if it's true, why would you 
be with me?” It's just.... [laughs] Oh, who 
cares? Nobody needs to know me. It doesn't 
matter to know me. 

PLAYBOY: There is a great line in Jesus Is 
Magic: "I don't care if you think I'm racist. 
I just want you to think I'm thin." Was that 
the character talking, or was that you? 
SILVERMAN: It did come from a very real 
place. Sadly. 

PLAYBOY: You were responding to the con- 
troversy surrounding your "I love Chinks" 
joke on Late Night With Conan O'Brien. Were 
you surprised it caused so much outrage? 
SILVERMAN: I was, yeah. I knew they 
weren't crazy about the joke at Late Night, 
but I didn't think it would turn into a 
media shit storm. 


PLAYBOY: So the producers at Late Night 
knew about the joke in advance? 
SILVERMAN: Oh yeah, you have to go over 
all your material beforehand. Originally 
the joke had the word nigger init. The seg- 
ment producer said that wouldn't work 
and suggested using dirty Jew instead. But 
it wasn't as hard because I'm Jewish, and 
that makes it okay. So then I suggested 
Chink, because it's got that hard k, and it's 
really racist. It had to be something hard. 
And the producer said, “No, but you can 
say ‘spic.’” And I was like, "I can't say 
‘Chink,’ but I can say 'spic'?" I decided to 
go with Chink, because it sounds funnier 
to me. It's a joke about saying the worst, 
most racist word you can think of. 
PLAYBOY: When did you find out a back- 
lash was coming? 

SILVERMAN: I woke up the next day and 
had a message from my mother. "They're 
talking about you on The View and how 
you were on Conan and said ‘Chink.’ They 
showed a picture of you, and you looked 
gorgeous. You should wear earrings. Ear- 
rings always frame the face." And I was like, 
"Wait, what happened?" 

PLAYBOY: When Guy Aoki, the president 
of a media watchdog group, accused you 
of racism, did you hope the controversy 
would just go away eventually, or did you 
try to put out the fire? 

SILVERMAN: I immediately wrote this long, 
thoughtful letter to Aoki, thinking we could 
actually have an open conversation. But he 
was too jazzed about having a fight with 
me. I made the mistake of going on Politi- 
cally Incorrect with him. He had 60 people in 
the audience who hated me, just haaaaated 
me. And they made me repeat the joke. 
I was like, "Please just replay the clip. If 
you have me repeat the joke it won't be 
funny, and I'm doing it to 60 people who 
hate me." They made me repeat it, and of 
course it got boos. Jokes need context. 
PLAYBOY: Have you ever apologized for 
a joke? 

SILVERMAN: I’ve apologized to people in 
person but never as a public thing. I don't 
really make jokes about specific people. 
Kathy Griffin does that brilliantly, but it's 
not something I do. I'm usually the idiot 
in my jokes. Unless it's a roast, and then 
it's brutal but done with love. 

PLAYBOY: So why do you think you have 
a reputation for doing comedy that's 
antagonistic? 

SILVERMAN: I don't know, but I hear that 
all the time. I've always wondered, Where 
is the evidence? I mean, other than all 
those movies in which I play the cunty 
girlfriend or the cunty roommate or the 
cunty best friend. 

PLAYBOY: Do you feel as though you've 
been unfairly typecast? 

SILVERMAN: I've certainly done enough of 
those types of roles. I'm the girlfriend in a 
comedy who is mortified by her boyfriend's 
hilarious behavior. "You need to get a job 
and straighten up your life!" I'm done with 
that. I don't want to be the glue for bad 
writing anymore. My spirit can't take it. 


PLAYBOY: Have you tried to go after movie 
roles you really wanted? 

SILVERMAN: I met with Ivan Reitman [direc- 
tor of Stripes and Ghostbusters] about a movie 
that ended up not getting made, but it 
was really good. It had a beautiful female 
part, this hippie free-spirited woman, that 
I really wanted to do. But he wanted me 
for the cunty girlfriend the main charac- 
ter dates before he realizes what love can 
really be. And I told him, "I can't play 
those parts anymore; they're killing my 
soul. But I love the hippie lady." And he 
goes, "Sarah, people will never see you that 
way. They will always see you in the bitchy 
role." I was stunned. I think I cried a little. 
But I look back on it now, and I just don't 
agree with it. I was the cunty girlfriend in 
School of Rock, and now that's all anyone 
will accept me as? Surely people have big- 
ger imaginations than that. 

PLAYBOY: You turn 40 this year. Are 
you ready? 
SILVERMAN: [Rolls eyes] Oh yeah, I can't 
wait! Thirty-nine was the first birthday I 
didn't even want to get out of bed. It isn't 
fun anymore. I know I need to change my 
perspective, but it's hard. I feel so confi- 
dent and awesome and sexy when I'm 
with people who are older than me, and 
I've always been surrounded by people 
who are older than me. But to be vital 
in comedy you have to exist in a world 
dominated by young people. 

PLAYBOY: Don't you like being an elder 
stateswoman of comedy? 

SILVERMAN: Not at all. It's weird. I've never 
been single and had people—strangers, 
really —know who I am. It'd probably be 
awesome if I was a dude. 

PLAYBOY: Do you ever date noncomedians? 
SILVERMAN: Rarely. I'm cursed with being 
attracted to funny people, and that limits 
it to fucking freaks like me. 

PLAYBOY: Isn't that a good thing? 
SILVERMAN: It's a great thing. But it's hard 
to date other comics, because I know 
everybody. Lately I've found myself drawn 
to really, really white Midwestern guys. It's 
so exotic to me. I've dated Jewish men, 
but something about them makes me feel 
as though I'm sleeping with my brother. 
I want somebody different from me. The 
last couple of people I've been drawn to 
at all are farmer-boy types. Actually, no, 
not boys, men. I like to be the young one, 
and I like to be the small one. 

PLAYBOY: I5 that how you'd describe your cur- 
rent boyfriend, Family Guy writer Alec Sulkin? 
Is he a white Midwestern farmer type? 
SILVERMAN: Hilariously, not at all. Isn't that 
always the way? He's a tall skinny Jew. 
PLAYBOY: How did you two start dating? 
SILVERMAN: I had known him, barely, over 
the years. He was a writer at The Late Late 
Show With Craig Kilborn, and I remembered 
him from when I would do that show. Then I 
started following him on Twitter—get ready, 
this is a very modern story—and he was so 
funny. I saw that he followed me, too, which 
allows you to send messages directly. So I 
wrote him a note that said, "You're funny." 


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PLAYBOY 


38 


PLAYBOY: Which in the comedy world is 
akin to flirting, right? 

SILVERMAN: Maybe. We sent messages back 
and forth pretty much constantly, then 
exchanged e-mail addresses and wrote 
each other steadily for several days. When 
we finally met, he came over to my place, 
walked in the door, put out his hand and 
said, “Hi, I'm Alec." We've spent every 
day together since. 

PLAYBOY: He doesn't feel he's in Jimmy 
Kimmel's shadow? 

SILVERMAN: He does not care at all. He was 
the one who told me to watch Jimmy's “10 
at 10" on Leno the day after he did that. 
He isn't ruled by ego; he's just himself. 
PLAYBOY: Were you reluctant to go public 
about this relationship, if only because of 
what happened with you and Jimmy? 
SILVERMAN: What happened with me 
and Jimmy? 

PLAYBOY: Your breakup became national 
news. 

SILVERMAN: Eh, I don't let myself get too 
caught up in the outside world or what 
strangers make of me. It doesn't make 
sense to. I mean, it's all superweird, but 
I figure I might as well answer your ques- 
tions about it rather than act as though it's 
some big secret or mystery. He's a great 
guy. Swell, even. Really swell. Plus his 
mother will eat this shit up. 

PLAYBOY: We should probably talk 
about Jimmy. 

SILVERMAN: Do we have to? Nobody wants 
to hear about that. 

PLAYBOY: Quite the opposite. People seem 
to have a lot wrapped up in your former 
relationship with him. 

SILVERMAN: And my desire to please makes 
me wish I could say we're still together. 
When we first broke up and then got back 
together, we were walking down a street 
in New York and somebody ran over and 
said, "You're back together? Hooray!" It 
was so sweet. But you can't stay together 
because people who don't know you want 
you to be together. 

PLAYBOY: So you're telling us it's totally 
over? 

SILVERMAN: [Long pause] We were together 
for so long and tried our best to make it 
work. I can think of him now and I don't 
have that edgy feeling anymore. I just 
love him to pieces. 

PLAYBOY: Didn't you meet Jimmy at the 
Friars Club roast for Hugh Hefner? 
SILVERMAN: That's right. I totally forgot 
about that. [laughs] PLAYBOY is the reason 
I spent the past six-plus years of my life 
with Jimmy Kimmel. 

PLAYBOY: Was it love at first sight? 
SILVERMAN: He was married, so I met him 
and his wife that night. But I was totally 
impressed. I thought he was so great. He 
had a show called Crank Yankers, and he 
hired me for it. I remember in the begin- 
ning we kept going for the same joke. His 
brother Jonathan was producing Crank 
Yankers, and for some reason we were 
looking on the Internet for public-domain 
songs about a certain topic. Jonathan 


said, "There are 3,000 results," and both 
Jimmy and I said at the same time, "Just 
give me the first thousand." 

PLAYBOY: Before you started officially dat- 
ing, didn't you and Jimmy watch a lot of 
movies together? 

SILVERMAN: Yeah. This was after he sepa- 
rated from his wife. We were just friends, 
and he'd come over and we'd watch DVDs 
together. I can still remember our first kiss. 
We were watching Broadway Danny Rose. 
We were like nose-to-nose for what felt like 
40 minutes. Neither of us wanted to make 
the first move, we were so scared. And then 
we just started kissing and making out and 
fooling around. It got all hot and heavy, 
and I was like, “Do you want to go to the 
bedroom?” And he's like [softly], “Okay.” I 
walked down the hallway and into my bed- 
room, and I turn around and he's standing 
in the doorway, totally naked. 

PLAYBOY: He stripped down in a matter 
of seconds? 

SILVERMAN: I don't know how he got his 
clothes off in that amount of time. I'd 
never seen him naked before, so it was a 
little bit shocking. I was like [gasps], "Oh!" 
And he goes, "Well, we're definitely going 


Sometimes loving each other 
isn't enough. You have to 
be responsible for your own 
happiness. You can't stay in 
a relationship because you're 
afraid of the unknown. 


to do it, right?” [laughs] And I remem- 
ber we had bonded over loving the same 
movie nobody else has ever seen, called 
The One and Only, and he quoted a line 
from it as he left. He was driving away, 
and he yelled to my window, "Don't worry 
about me. I keep my mouth shut!" 
PLAYBOY: Why do you think the relation- 
ship didn't last? 

SILVERMAN: [Long pause] Sometimes loving 
each other isn't enough. You have to be 
responsible for your own happiness. You 
can't stay in a relationship because you're 
afraid of the unknown. But I will always 
love him. Sometimes I think maybe we'll 
die together in our old age or something. 
PLAYBOY: Are you one of those couples that 
made a pact to get married if the two of 
you are still single when you're 50? 
SILVERMAN: [Scrunches nose] No, I'm not 
going to do that. 

PLAYBOY: You have no interest in marriage? 
SILVERMAN: I love going to weddings, and 
Ilove it when my friends get married. I'm 
not against marriage, but it's just not for me. 
I'm a vegetarian, but I don't have a prob- 
lem if you want a hamburger. Marriage, 
to me, is like eating meat. I think it's gross 


and fucking crazy. It's this superbarbaric, 
old-timey tradition that no one remembers 
we don't have to do anymore. First of all, 
why get the government involved in your 
love? And why would I become involved 
with something that doesn't include every- 
one? If you're getting married today, it's 
the equivalent of joining a country club that 
doesn't allow blacks or Jews. 
PLAYBOY: What happens if gay marriage 
becomes legal? Would you reconsider 
marriage? 
SILVERMAN: No, probably not. [laughs] 
PLAYBOY: You just don't think love should 
be legally binding? 
SILVERMAN: I don't. But I believe in love! 
I'd like to find that person. I think Jimmy 
and I had every intention of spending the 
rest of our lives with each other. I love 
love. It's my top priority. Jimmy will tell 
you. I'm a good girl. 
PLAYBOY: You have a sentimental side? 
SILVERMAN: I'm all sentimental side. I've 
probably been ruined by romantic movies, 
but I really do believe in love. I've experi- 
enced it, I've had it, so I know it's real. 
PLAYBOY: You're talking about your fling 
with Matt Damon, right? 
SILVERMAN: No. That was just about the 
sex. 
PLAYBOY: The "I'm Fucking Matt Damon” 
video was such a monster hit for you. How 
did it originate? 
SILVERMAN: It was supposed to be a surprise 
for Jimmy's birthday. Jimmy ends all his 
shows by saying “Sorry, Matt Damon, we 
ran out of time.” Because when he started 
doing his show, his first guest would literally 
be the man with the longest leg hair, so he 
thought it'd be funny to name-drop the big- 
gest movie star he could think of. And Matt 
Damon loved it. The first time he came on 
the show he told Jimmy, “ГЇЇ come on, but 
I don't want you to stop doing that bit." So 
Jimmy's cousin Sal, a writer named Tony 
Barbieri and I came up with the “Pm Fuck- 
ing Matt Damon” idea for Jimmy's birthday. 
We went to Miami, where Matt Damon lives, 
and spent three hours shooting at the Del- 
ano Hotel. We just shot and shot and shot. 
It all happened that quickly. 
PLAYBOY: Did Jimmy have any idea what 
you were doing? 
SILVERMAN: He knew I was in Florida, but 
he thought it was for a stand-up tour. 
Even though I knew it was for his sake, 
I felt riddled with guilt. I hated lying to 
him. And then his birthday show never 
happened because of the writers’ strike, 
and the video was on the shelf for months. 
Jimmy ended up doing his show's fifth 
anniversary just as the strike was coming 
to an end, and I was like, “Fuck this. I've 
been walking on eggshells for too long. 
I'm gonna show it to him tonight.” 
PLAYBOY: And you managed to keep it a secret 
until the video had its world premiere? 
SILVERMAN: I don't know how, but I did. 
Before the show we were in his dressing 
room, both brushing our teeth, and he 
was like, "I'm so excited. Everybody says 
(concluded on page 104) 


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—JOHN GOTTI JR. 


IT WASN'T EASY GROWING UP THE SON OF THE MOST HIGH- 
PROFILE MAFIA DON OF ALL TIME. WHAT COMES FIRST, 
FAMILY OR THE FAMILY? THE EXCLUSIVE STORY OF 
JOHN GOTTI, JUNIOR GOTTI AND 
THE DEATH OF THE MOB 


T a gangster-adoring public 
he was known as the Dapper Don 
for his elegant wardrobe. To the 
media piranhas who feasted on 
his celebrity persona, he was the 
Teflon Don for his apparent invin- 
cibility to government prosecution. 
To associates in the Gambino crime 
family he was the boss. But to John 
Jr., his firstborn son and namesake, 
John Gotti Sr. was simply Dad. 
“You look good to me, Dad,” 
Gotti Jr. says to his father, who sits 
across a table in a meeting room at 
the U.S. Medical Center for Federal 
Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. 
It is February 5, 1999. John Gotti Sr. 
has recently been transferred from the 
super-maximum-security penitentiary 


BY RICHARD STRATTON 


in Marion, Illinois—where he had 
been held in 23-hour-a-day lock- 
down for the previous six and a 
half years—to Springfield, where 
he underwent surgery to remove 
malignant tumors from his throat, 
mouth and face. 

“You look much better than I 
expected you to look, ГЇЇ be hon- 
est with you," John Jr. says, wiping 
tears from his eyes. *What are you, 
about 175 pounds?” 

*Me, no.? Gotti leans back in his 
chair, pats his taut belly with both 
hands. “One sixty-five.” 

“You look bigger than that to 
me, Dad.” 

Gotti rips open his pale green 
prison jumpsuit and shows his 


son the huge scar where doctors 
removed a chunk of flesh from his 
chest and grafted it onto his face— 
that famous face now a ghostly, 
hollow-eyed distortion of the defi- 
ant gangster mug that once graced 
the cover of Time magazine in an 
original Andy Warhol rendering. 

John Jr. is shaken by the sight. 
“What? I don't understand it. Why?” 

“That's what cancer does to you, 
John,” his father answers. 

John Gotti Jr., 34 years old at the 
time, was granted special permis- 
sion from a federal judge to travel 
to the medical facility to see his 
father and ask his permission to 
plead guilty to federal racketeering 
charges. The indictment alleged that 


42 


Gotti Jr. had been named acting boss of the Gambino crime fam- 
ily by his imprisoned father. 

One does not need to hear the dialogue to understand the 
dynamic between these two men: a dying father and his belea- 
guered son. It is apparent in the body language. Junior leans 
across the table like a supplicant. Or he sits back with his hand 
to his cheek like an inquiring acolyte. And he is burdened by the 
request he must ask of his father. To John Gotti Sr., what his son 
has come to ask of him is unthinkable. 

Never plead guilty. Never admit anything. That is La Cosa Nostra 
code of omertå-silence-that John Gotti Sr. lived by. 

John Jr. is there to ask his father's permission to rewrite the rules 
And, in essence, to quit the Mafia. 

“Joseph [Joseph Corozzo Jr., a family attorney] told me, ‘John 
wants closure,” Gotti Sr. says, sneering. "Closure? | said, ‘Joseph, 
that word ain't in my son's vocabulary. That's a word for over- 
educated underintelligent motherfuckers." 

Junior has his answer. But just in case his son hasn't under- 
stood, the don goes on. "If they 
accuse me of robbing a church, 
and the steeple is sticking out 
of my ass, I'm gonna deny it, 
John," Senior admonishes. "Not 
because I'm a fuckin’ tougher 
guy than you or anybody else. 
But because without rats and 
without guys taking pleas, these 
jails would be empty." 

The godfather advises his son 
that if he fights the case and 


beats the charges, that will be the end of it. The government 
can never again come after him for the same crimes. But if he 
pleads guilty and admits to racketeering, admits to being a mem- 
ber of La Cosa Nostra-an unforgivable breach of the code-they 
will hound him for the rest of his life. 

“I'm telling you that as your father, not as your boss. My dig- 
nity, my pride means everything to me. Maybe I'm wrong, but 
that's the way | am." 

There are other, more ominous concerns. Junior must also con- 
sider possible repercussions from the underworld. For Junior to 
plead guilty and go to prison will result in chaos. 

This is advice from an expert. Gotti Sr. had defeated prosecu- 
tors at three separate trials between 1986 and 1990 before being 
convicted in 1992 and sentenced to life in prison with no possi- 
bility of parole. Only later was it revealed that Gotti's Teflon had 
come at a price: $60,000 to bribe a juror in one case and a few 
threats to intimidate witnesses in another. 

Gotti Sr. held himself as the embattled leader of a noble clan, 
a general at war with the formi- 
dable forces of the United States 
government as well as rival gang- 
sters. In the visit with his son he 
refers to their 400 cousins and 
uncles and other "relatives" who 
would be affected by Junior's cop- 
ping a plea-a cryptic reference to 
the Gambino crime family. 

“If they want to know my feelings, 
John, you tell them, ‘This is what my 
father (continued on page 94) 


“Well, I can either write them off as an expense or claim an investment tax credit.” 


44 


n August 1972 we launched our 

first foreign edition with the 

premiere of German PLAYBOY. 

Why Germany? These are 
the people, after all, who make 
BMWs and Porsches and whose 
greatest celebration is devoted 
to the consumption of Bavarian 
beer. The eight stunners you see 
here represent our favorite Ger- 
man Playmates from the past two 
years. Whittling the list down to 
eight was a daunting task; we 
were tempted to declare a 24-way 
tie. The girls of the German 
edition are simply that wunderbar. 
In fact, three German Playmates 
have recently crossed the pond 
to become American Playmates, 
making Deutschland one of the 
few Playmate-exporting nations. 
Pour yourself a cold Optimator, 
sauté some Jägerschnitzel and 
enjoy these fantastische fráuleins. 
And those summer vacation 
plans you’ve been pondering? 
Ponder no further—you've just 
landed in Germany. 


ALENA GERBER German PLAYBOY'S 
Miss October 2008 was born in 
1989 near Stuttgart just before 
the Berlin Wall fell. If she had a 


time machine, she says, she'd 
turn back the clock so she could 
meet fellow blonde and über-sex 
symbol Marilyn Monroe. 


PEGGY WEISS (left and above) Miss June 2008 was 
working for an insurance company when she became 
MIA a Playmate. She says she likes a good massage. 
MIRIAM SCHWARZ (below) Miss December 2008 munched 
grapes for her Playmate shoot and laid her lithe frame 
BEE over some wine casks. Makes us want to pop a cork. 


LUCIA SITAVANCO VI MisaNo iss,N vei 
ber 2008 is a Dösseldorf do: 
ith dreams of returning to her 


a Slov. 


ermany at club.playboy.com. 


a 


+ 
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 40 YEARS, THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY IS USING PSYCHEDELIC 


DRUGS SUCH AS LSD AS THERAPEUTIC TOOLS, DOSING COMBAT-ADDLED IRAQ, VETS AND 
DISEASED PATIENTS COMING TO GRIPS WITH THEIR IMPENDING DEATH. THIS IS THE STORY 
OF MEDICAL ADVENTURERS AND THEIR HIGH-FLYING PATIENTS 


BY STEVEN KOTLER 


THE NEW 


"PSYCHEDELIC - 
RENAISSANCE 


he room where they wait is a long rectan- 
gle. The floor is covered in thick green 
carpeting, so everyone calls it the *green 
room." One wall of the green room is cov- 
ered in books, the other three in paintings. 
In the center of the high ceiling is an old 
floral medallion—once the anchor point 
for a massive Victorian chandelier. When Mara Howell lies 
in bed she looks straight up at it. The flowers are braided 
into a wreath, and maybe it's all that Victorian ornamen- 
tation distorting the image, or maybe the design was 
intentional, but either way, the results look less botanical 


phone number. Then there were the meetings. At the first 
meeting Marilyn had several hundred questions, but Allan 
had several hundred answers. His knowledge was impres- 
sive, as was his willingness to take great risks for perfect 
strangers. Marilyn liked him immediately, which was a good 
thing because there were no other options. 

Mara was 32 when doctors diagnosed her with colon 
cancer. That was a little more than a year ago, and it was 
an unusual diagnosis. The disease typically strikes the 
elderly—from 2002 to 2006 the median age was 71. On 
top of that, Mara is, to all who know her, “vibrant.” She 
rarely drinks, doesn't do drugs, eats right, sleeps well, is 


“WE ARE GOING TO HAVE AN ADVENTURE,” ALLAN SAYS. AND HE IS NOT LYING. AT 11:15 A.M. MARA 
SWALLOWS 110 MILLIGRAMS OF PHARMACOLOGICALLY PURE ECSTASY, LIES DOWN IN BED AND 
LOOKS AT THE ANGELS ON THE CEILING. "PLEASE," HER MOTHER SAYS, *BE ANGELS OF MERCY." 


than celestial. The flowers look like angels. Mara hopes 
they are angels of mercy. 

Marilyn Howell, Mara's mother, and Lindsay Corliss, 
Mara's close friend, are also waiting in the green room. 
Lindsay is nervously tidying up; Marilyn is just nervous. 
She walks to the window, glances into the street again and 
wonders, Where the hell is Allan? She doesn't know much 
about Allan—though she knows he's late and she knows 
that's not his real name. Allan is an underground therapist 
of sorts, and the work he does, what he calls “his crimes 
of compassion," remains very much illegal. 

It took Marilyn some serious effort to even drum up his 


ridiculously optimistic, always battles her weight but gets 
plenty of exercise. A month before her first major surgery 
she had been in Honduras gathering data on fish popula- 
tions and earning a master scuba diver certification. 

In the past year Mara has tried all the traditional drugs 
and all the alternative therapies. Wow, has she tried all the 
alternative therapies—massage, macrobiotics, Chinese herbs, 
Tibetan herbs, acupuncture, acupressure, the Feldenkrais 
Method, chiropractic realignment, the power of prayer. At 
a Catholic mass in Boston the priest read from the pul- 
pit, “Blessed Virgin Mary, please intercede to heal Mara 
Howell." Jews at the Aquarian Minyan in Berkeley chanted 


ILLUSTRATION BY CRISTELA TSCHUMY 


51 


52 


“Mi sheberakh avoteinu,” while Buddhists in Hollywood tried 
“Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.” Twice Mara went to Brazil to meet the 
famed faith healer John of God. John of God has purportedly 
healed millions of people. But he couldn't heal Mara. 

About five weeks earlier Mara was forced to leave her apart- 
ment in Oakland for the home in which she grew up. So the 
green room, which was really the front room of her mother 
Marilyn's Boston home, was converted into a sick ward. 

Marilyn had heard rumors of Allan and the particular work 
he does, but broaching the subject with her daughter was not 
easy. The treatment is not only radical and illegal but also 
geared toward helping patients confront what's politely called 
“end-of-life anxiety” and known to most as “mortal terror.” 
Mara's reaction was hostile. “I'm not interested in discussing 
end-of-life issues,” she snapped. “Who told you about this? How 
could they be so insensitive?” Then she thought it through. 
She knew she needed a miracle, and this treatment, unlike 
all the others, had a history of spiritual transformation—that 
is, she also knew, if it didn't kill her first. 

Allan is an underground psychedelic therapist. Psyche- 
delic therapy is built on the 1960s idea that psychedelic 
drugs—such as LSD and psilocybin (the “magic” in magic 
mushrooms), which are known to radically alter cognition 
and perception—also have the ability to produce profound 
insight at low doses and cathartic, life-changing experiences 
at high doses. Psychedelic therapists not only provide these 
drugs but also act as guides throughout the journey. 

The drug Allan is considering for the first session is MDMA, 
known on the street as ecstasy and a latecomer to the psyche- 
delic tool kit. First synthesized by German pharmaceutical 


doctors. It's dicey, they said, but doable. Marilyn and Allan 
decide on a low starter dose. Mara agrees to roll the dice. 
That was two days ago. 

Today, the doorbell rings. Allan and that starter dose have 
arrived. Mara is excited. Lindsay is hopeful. Marilyn thinks 
she may throw up. Her mind won't stop racing. This starter 
dose is just a best guess, right? Can she even trust Allan? But 
Allan is buoyant, gloriously optimistic, not patronizing like 
other therapists Mara has met. His demeanor calms every- 
one. As he walks into the room Allan takes the pills from his 
pocket and holds them up. 

“We are going to have an adventure,” he says. 

And he is not lying. 

At 11:15 a.m. Mara swallows 110 milligrams of pharmaco- 
logically pure ecstasy, lies down in bed and looks at the angels 
on the ceiling. Marilyn follows her daughter's upward gaze. 
She too spots the medallion and utters one final prayer. 

"Please be angels of mercy,” she says. “Please, please, please." 


Though the work Allan does remains underground, that 
is now starting to change. We are teetering on the thresh- 
old of a major psychedelic renaissance. For the first time 
in 40 years, without resistance from the law, in countries 
all over the world and cities all over America, some of 
the most infamous substances in history are again being 
put to the test. 

Scientists in Israel, Jordan and Canada are looking at the 
therapeutic potential of MDMA. In Brazil, Germany and 
Spain, researchers have begun untangling ayahuasca, a plant 


AFTER TAKING ECSTASY, IRAQ VETERAN JOHN THOMPSON SAYS, “I WAS SHOCKED BY THE 
ACCESS I HAD TO MY MEMORY. THE NEXT DAY THE NIGHTMARES WERE GONE. I WAS 
GLOWING AND EXTROVERTED—FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE GETTING BLOWN UP” 


company Merck in 1912, MDMA didn't hit the therapeutic 
world until the mid-1970s, when pharmacologist Alexan- 
der Shulgin heard from his students that it helped one of 
them get over a stutter. Shulgin dosed himself, reporting 
"altered states of consciousness with emotional and sex- 
ual overtones." He also noticed the drug "opened people 
up, both to other people and to inner thoughts." Ecstasy 
was criminalized in 1985 but not before it had been intro- 
duced to thousands of therapists. 


mise Mara's palliative care, the MDMA will have to be 
administered in addition to all her other medications, 
and this is where the danger lies. Chemically, MDMA is 
an amphetamine. Because amphetamines increase heart 
rate and blood pressure and because Mara is already suf- 
fering palpitations, there's a chance of inducing a heart 
attack. Neurotoxicity is another concern. A third problem 
is diminishing her emotional and physical reserves, trig- 
gering a slide from which there would be no return. But 
the greatest threat is ignorance. Allan consulted outside 


N have completed an end-of-life-anxiety psilocybin study, 
Because Allan and Marilyn don’t want to compro- and teams at NYU and Johns Hopkins are beginning 


that contains DMT—arguably the most potent halluci- 
nogen on earth. In Switzerland, LSD is being used as a 
treatment for end-of-life anxiety. In Mexico and Canada 
it's ibogaine (another powerful plant-derived psyche- 
delic) for opiate addiction. Here at home, scientists at 
Johns Hopkins have concluded a long-term psilocybin 
study that examined the purported “mystical experience” 
people have while hallucinating. At UCLA researchers 


studies of their own. At the University of Arizona it's 
psilocybin as a treatment for obsessive-compulsive 
disorder. Researchers at Harvard have finished neuro- 
toxicity studies on MDMA and peyote, plus LSD for 
cluster headaches and MDMA for end-of-life anxiety. In 
South Carolina researchers working with combat veter- 
ans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, among other 
trauma victims, have completed one study of MDMA as 
a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and are 


about to begin another. (continued on page 114) 


“Are you shaken or stirred...?” 


WORLD 
HARDEST 


HOW MANY OF THESE ABSURDLY DIFFICULT QUESTIONS—EACH CULLED FROM THE PLAYBOY 
ADVISOR'S VAST LIBRARY OF CARNAL KNOWLEDGE—CAN YOU ANSWER? NO CHEATING, TIGER 


یر 
HEAD OF THE PENIS AS THE LABIA couples armed with stop-‏ 
MAJORA IS TO THE‏ 


watches, how long does vaginal 
intercourse last, on average? 


1 THE HEAD OF THE CLITORIS IS TO THE Y According to a study of "| 23207) 


IDENTIFY 


THIS OBJECT" 


A, 


Su THE OBJECT THAT HAS 
NOT BEEN REMOVED BY ER 
DOCTORS FROM A PATIENT'S 
RECTUM, ACCORDING TO 
MEDICAL LITERATURE: 


PLACE THESE CONTRACEPTIVE 
OPTIONS IN ORDER OF HIGHEST 
TO LOWEST EFFICIENCY UNDER 
IDEAL CIRCUMSTANCES: 
CONDOM, PILL, VASECTOMY, 
SPERMICIDES, MIRENA IUD, 
DIAPHRAGM, PRAYER, 
MASTURBATION 


HOW DID SUPREME COURT JUSTICE 
POTTER STEWART FAMOUSLY 
DEFINE OBSCENITY? 


BELOW ARE THE 
OPENING LINES OF 
SIX FAMOUS EROTIC 
WRITINGS. NAME 
THE SOURCE. 


(a) “Ours is essentially a 
tragic age, so we refuse 
to take it tragically.” 


(в) “I am living at the Villa 
Borghese. There is not a 
crumb of dirt anywhere, 
nor a chair misplaced. 
We are all alone here 
and we are dead." 


(c) "Let him kiss me with 
the kisses of his mouth, 
for your love is more 
delightful than wine." 


(o) “| left England, маќеа 
by a favorable wind 
blowing to the 
south, and found 
refuge in a little vil- 
lage in Provence, 
aptly named Langue- 
cuisse—which, for 
those astute readers 
who are not fluent in 
the French language, 
is translated to mean 
‘Tongue Thigh.’” 


(E) “There were 117 psycho- 
analysts on the Pan Am 
flight to Vienna and 
Га been treated by at 
least six of them.” 


(®) "His was first. In my ass.” 


ved 


de Ve Ue Oa. 


f 


WHAT PERCENTAGE 
Havea ERECTION Loncer 


"7,5 INCHES? | 


M If you pulled the sperm 
\`„ ^ tubes out of your testicles 
and unraveled them, how 
far would they reach? 


I 7 What percentage of married 


couples have sex at least twice 
a week? 


have breast 
reduction surgery 
each year? 


HOW LONG IS 
arning labels on albums THE CLITORIS? 


with explicit lyrics? f ( } 


4 


= | = - 
"- =) Anthropologists have found 
a common flirtation pattern among 
females of all cultures. Place the 
moves in order from the moment she 
spots you: 


Lowers her lids 
Giggles 
Arches her brows | № 
Smiles > » 
Averts her gaze 


Puts her hand on her lips 
Tucks her chin slightly 


2 QE galaxy or 
between your less? 


WHAT MAKES J 
A SWINGER “SOFT”? 


Ambartsumian's Knot 
Corona KDE 
Dartos NN 
Fornax X 
Pampiniform Plexus 
Prepuce 

Sextans 

Triangulum 

Tunica Albuginea 
Zwicky’s Triplet 


LL. 


FO: 
ANSWERS, 
SEEPAGE 
113. 


04,0 4% 
M | 
e a 


WHO'S TO STOP THIS 
MADMAN? WHO'S 

TO STOP THEM FROM 
SENDING THE MESSAGE 


OVER AND OVER AGAIN? 


“You think it's a prank?" 

“Spam or a prank. What else could 
it be?" 

And then Barrera had reached down 
violently over his son's right shoulder 
and then past Ricky's hand hovering 
on top of the keyboard; Barrera jabbed 
down and pressed the delete button, 
watched the message disappear from 
the screen, erased, gone, gone forever. 

“Hey, I wanted to answer that!” 

“No, you wanted me to answer, you 
wanted me to—what?—what were you 
going to suggest that I translate? Dear 
Comando Anesthesia, exactly who the fuck 
are you? And exactly what the fuck do you 
need me to do? And then they respond, Te 
dijimos que le preguntaras a tu papá, and if 
you studied Spanish like I've been ask- 
ing you to for—but that's not the point, 
the point is they'll insist again that I 
have some sort of answer, and then 
you'll respond that—though no, in fact, 
it'll be me doing the work, responding 
for you, I'm supposed to be the go- 
between here, right?, mi papá no tiene la 
menor idea, my dad hasn't the foggiest idea, 
and so on and so forth, back and forth, 
mensajes estápidos come and go, some 
fools laughing their heads off at us, 
at me, wasting my time, wasting your 
time, even wasting their time, whoever 
the hell they are, the bastards." 

"Okay, okay. I don't see why you're so 
upset. If it's only a joke, like you said....” 

Ricky was right, ofcourse: Barrera had 
overreacted. Later on, in his room, un- 
able to close his eyes even for those few 
winks he always bragged about, Barrera 
had berated himself. Hadn't he been 
feeling for months that he was being 
locked out of his son's existence? Hadn't 
he been lamenting to the mirror just this 


morning that the boy no longer seemed 
to need him, rarely came seeking ad- 
vice, seemed to be growing more distant 
as his 17th birthday approached? 

If you want this to end, you know what 
you need to do. 

Maybe he should follow the advice 
offered in that silly message. If he 
wanted this to end, this discomfort be- 
tween father and son, then he did know 
what he needed to do: Apologize to Ricky, 
offer his help, open wide the door he 
had just so rudely and imprudently 
slammed shut. He'd take care of it in 
the morning, at breakfast, after having 
made the kid his favorite, the buck- 
wheat pancakes tan norteamericanos that 
Cynthia had taught him how to griddle 
to perfection, a subtle gift from the boy's 
dead mother, one more remnant of her 
aroma in their townhouse; yes, Barrera 
would execute that plan, he'd—no, bet- 
ter still, he'd retrieve the message on his 
own, rescue it from the deleted items 
and reply to it himself, explain that he 
would love to know what this was all 
about, even ifit was a hoax or some such 
tontería, perhaps even confide in this 
Comando Anesthesia that he wanted to 
surprise his son with a detailed account, 
maybe the anonymous sender would 
commiserate with this father trying to 
impress a wayward son. 

It was four in the morning, Ricky 
was asleep, now was the time. 

Barrera logged on to his son's e-mail, 
slipped in the purloined password, 
waited for the in-box to fill up. 

Another message from Comando 
Anesthesia was waiting. 

IF YOUR DAD PRETENDS HE DOESN'T KNOW 
WHAT TO DO, THEN SHOW HIM THIS. 

Barrera hesitated. 


Erase this message. 

That was the first thing that flared 
up in his mind—to be replaced quickly 
by—no, I can't, I can't do that, one thing is 
to read his mail to keep tabs on the boy, keep 
him out of trouble, but this, l'ue never done 
anything like...not like this, and imme- 
diately: Even if I did, if I could, who's to 
stop this madman? Who's to stop them from 
sending the message over and over again, 
sending it when I'm not there to delete, when 
I can't eliminate the damn thing? 

He was saved from a further flood of 
panicked thoughts by the shadow of Ricky 
behind him. And then Ricky's voice. 

"Open it, Dad." 

Not even reproaching him for sneak- 
ing into that oh so private e-mail ac- 
count, not even angered by his father's 
refusal to cooperate before, by this be- 
trayal of trust now. Merely matter-of- 
fact, merely open it, Dad, only that. 

Barrera double clicked obediently, 
almost sheepishly, and there it was, 
there it was. 

Te vamos a matar como a un perro. No, 
como a un perro no, porque los perros mere- 
cen mejor suerte. Te vamos a matar como 
se matan a los seres humanos: lentamente, 
para que sepas lo que te está pasando. 

"Tell me what it says." 

"No." 

"Perro means dog. Is it about the dog 
you keep saying you'll buy me——" 

"No." 


"...the dog you promised to buy me 
i?” 

“If you studied Spanish. Which 
would have been helpful, right? You 
could be reading this nonsense on your 
own, right?” 

“You want to know what I think, 
Dad?” (continued on page 107) 


AIR 


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27 


‘лати. 7 
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“This meteor may have a really bad effect on the marke: 


59 


60 


PLATINUM BLONDE 
AND DELICIOUSLY = 
BEAUTIFUL, MISS 


ne morning not long ago, Amy Leigh Andrews 

awoke and checked her e-mail. “I screamed at the 

top of my lungs!” she now says. She found a note she 
had dreamed of receiving all her life. “Hef has approved you 
for Centerfold," the missive read. "You can't understand," 
explains the tiny but voluptuous blonde who embodies both 
brains and liberated sexuality. "Some girls dream of becom- 
ing The Little Mermaid's Ariel, but not me. Since I was very 
young, since the first time I saw a Playmate, I wanted to 
appear in this magazine." Originally from Conyers, Georgia, 
Amy is currently earning her master's in communications 
on her way to fulfilling another dream: becoming an enter- 
tainment news anchor. "I love school," says the 25-year-old. 
"Knowledge makes you independent and confident." She 
has also always loved classic rock, hanging on the beach and 
traveling. Her introduction to PLAYBOY came at an Atlanta 
casting call. She appeared in a couple of Playboy Special 
Editions, and she wrote a personal letter to Holly Madison, 
pleading her case. “Га just decided I was going to make this 
happen," Amy says. Her work paid off, and you now hold 
the results in your hands. "It's surreal, crazy, amazing and 
fantastic," bubbles Miss April. "A Playmate at last!" 


APRIL PLAYS 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY ARNY FREYTAG 


See more of Miss April. _ 
at club.playboy.com. 


2 


4 
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es m gn inde å m 36 EN 
BUST: BUD uos HIPS: Ao — UN 74 IN 

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BIRTH DATE: Ep BIRTHPLACE: 


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ате оя ADO а T NOS 


Sunny, polie, romantic and асрор. 
runvorrs: ОСО СМС, Отсос, sad tooth, choators, 


S Arci 


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+o match ard tho passion io wach hor aps, 
THE GIRL IN MY LIFE: \ Å Ex 


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Third Grade, age nine. High sdhedl geduallon. Spring reale 2001. 
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PLAYBOY’S PARTY JOKES 


ha survey conducted earlier this week, 1,000 
American blondes were asked if they would 
sleep with Tiger Woods. 

Eighty-nine percent responded, “Never 
again.” 


Say when,” the man said to his date as he 
poured her a cocktail. 

She breathlessly replied, “Right after this 
drink.” 


A young man approached the counter at a 
convenience store and asked the female clerk, 
“May I have six contraceptives, miss?” 

“Don't ‘miss’ me,” she replied. 

“Okay,” the man said. “Then make it seven.” 


In simpler times people who committed adul- 
tery were stoned; today it’s often the other 
way around. 


His family isn’t too pleased about our engage- 
ment,” a coed told her roommate. “In fact, his 
wife is furious.” 


Sometimes a woman can attract a man with 
her mind, but it's easier to attract him with 
what she doesn't mind. 


Two male centenarians were bragging about 
their sex lives while playing pool at the senior 
center, and one man asked the other, “Can 
you still have sex with your wife?” 

“I have sex with my wife once a week,” his 
friend replied. “How many nights do you have 
sex with your wife?” 

The first man said, “Oh, we do it almost 
every night of the week.” 

Incredulous, the other man repeated, 
“Almost every night?” 

“Yup!” he responded. “Almost on Monday, 
almost on Tuesday....” 


The man who likes to lie in bed can usually 
find a girl willing to listen to him. 


Before lecturing her class on heaven and hell, 
a Sunday school teacher asked the students, 
“Do you know where little girls and boys go 
when they do bad things?” 

“Sure,” a little boy answered. “The back of 
Kristin’s garage.” 


A man and his wife were sitting around the 
breakfast table one lazy Saturday morning 
when he turned to her and said, “If I were to 
die suddenly, I want you to immediately sell all 
my possessions.” 

“Now why would you want me to do some- 
thing like that?” she asked. 

“I figure you would eventually remarry,” 
he said, “and I don’t want some asshole using 
my stuff.” 

The wife replied, "What makes you think I'd 
marry another asshole?” 


Economists are baffled at how, despite the 
recession, a girl with the least principle man- 
ages to draw the most interest. 


My litina 


What do a hurricane, a tornado and a red- 
neck divorce have in common? 
Each one costs somebody a trailer. 


Am I the first man who has ever asked you 
to make love?” inquired the bachelor as he 
stroked her hair post coitus. 

“Yes,” answered the beautiful blonde. “All 
the others did it without asking.” 


Pm always amused by foreigners who don't 
speak the language very well,” a man said to 
his friend. “The other day a Chinese hooker 
who wanted to applaud me for my sexual per- 
formance told me, ‘I give you clap.” 


Send your jokes to Party Jokes Editor, PLAYBOY, 680 
North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60611, 
or by e-mail through our website at jokes.playboy.com. 
PLAYBOY will pay $100 to the contributors whose sub- 
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de 


“Here's your prescription. Should you experience an erection lasting more than 
four hours, this is my home phone number.” 


71 


restaurant goes 
through 70 kilos of 


An evening at Au Pied de Coch 
(literally “at the pig's foot”) 


“Fat is the vector for 
| faste,” says chef Picard. 
“If you have fat in yoj 
mouth, the taste wi 

develop.” 


pee Rabelais once 
wrote, “Appetite comes 
with eating, and thirst departs 
with drinking.” If that is the 
case, then why am I sitting, eyes 
glazed over, in front of a half- 
finished plate of stuffed pigs” feet 
with foie gras over mashed potatoes 
and yet still quaffing beyond the 
point of inebriation? The reason I 
keep imbibing is because Martin 
Picard, the rotund chef and owner of 
Montreal's Au Pied de Cochon, keeps 
toasting: “A la vie!” (“To life!”) 
Already I have been served eight 
courses. As for the pigs’ feet, they are 
expertly prepared: browned in lard, then 
cooked sous-vide, stuffed with a mustardy 
bread mixture, draped with a seared brick 
of foie gras and slathered with an exquisite 
sauce of mushrooms, onion, garlic and rose- 
mary. But as a whole, the thing is gout on a plate. 
I exhale heavily. Picard pats me on the back as if to 
say, “Save room for dessert.” 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY ÉLIANE EXCOFFIER 


2 BY JULIAN SANCTON 


GOOSE LIVER SEX? VODKA? YES, PEEASE: 
MEET THE: UNQUENGHABLE; GENIUS BEHIND 
NORTH AMERIGA’S MOST: DEGADENSEEATERY: 


There is no place on earth like Au Pied de Cochon. 
Picard is the patron saint of gourmands, and his res- 
taurant has become a shrine to indulgence since it 
opened two months after 9/11. Picard boasts that Au 
Pied de Cochon sells 
the most foie gras of 
any restaurant on the 
planet—70 kilos every 
week, he estimates, 
which amounts to 
more than four tons a 
year. It is served in 
every form imagin- 
able: raw, fried, 
seared, in a páté, in 
a terrine, with 
stuffed pigs’ feet, 
over meatloaf, in a 
pie. It’s no wonder 
patrons emerge 
from Picard's 
doors feeling like 
freshly gavé ducks 
themselves. 


If 

Picard—with the outsize 
paunch he likes to expose, 
the scraggly au jus-encrusted 
beard and unkempt receding 
curls—could play Falstaff. If he were a 
writer, he’d be Rabelais. Even among 
chefs, perhaps especially among chefs, 
he is a legend. Chef Donald Link, 
whose New Orleans restaurant Cochon 
shares with Picard’s the totem of the 
pig (Picard’s logo is a chef raising a 
meat cleaver while riding a pig), calls 
Picard crazy. Fergus Henderson of 
London’s revered St. John calls him, 
with British understatement, “spir- 
ited.” Daniel Boulud lovingly calls him 
the ultimate glutton. 

I had to meet him. When I visit his 
restaurant with my friend the writer 
Alex Shoumatoff, Picard tells me a 
story, pretty much unprompted, to 
illustrate how unbound he is by any 
sense of proportion or deference to a 
higher power. “Every night, Jesus 
gives me a blow job," he says in his 
Quebecois twang. *And he keeps 
coming back because I always forget 
to say thank you!" Picard believes in 
earthly things. He is among those 
Saint Paul warned the Philippians 
about, saying their *God is their 
belly." Taking the Lord's name in vain 
is the least of his sins. Over the course 
of my evening with Picard I keep a 
tally in my notebook: 


e were an actor, 


Picard sins by proxy dozens of times a 
night by expecting his customers to 
eat and drink with the same hunger 
and thirst as he. From the exterior, on 
a quiet side street, Au Pied de Cochon 
has an unassuming elegance. It's bus- 
tling and brightly lit. But inside it 
smells like a musketeer's tavern—the 
aroma of pork fat, duck fat, butter 
and onions wafting from the stoves at 
the center of the room, behind the bar 
at which we sit. From that vantage, 
we overlook the kitchen and the team 
of young cooks. Picard, 43, is sweat- 
ing over a stove, searing foie gras, 
rinking, laughing, playfully shoving 
a comely 20-year-old cook. 

During the four- 
evening that will follow, I will drink 
enough—on Picard's insistence—that 
I would surely have died of alcohol 
poisoning had the beer and wine and 
champagne and vo 
shots not been soaked up by 14 unfin- 
ishable courses. The dinner begins 
simply, with an unaccompanied pick- 
led bison tongue (the tongue is not 
always bison; it depends on the 
deliveries), followed by a cochon- 
nailles platter (including a perfectly 
seasoned páté de campagne, more 
tongue and a dark black meat gelatin 
reduced in stout), then by foie gras 
cromesquis, which are cubes of foie 


our dinner and 


ka and assorted 


gras breaded an 
deep fried. In the heat, 
the foie liquefies. We are 
instructed to put them in our 
mouth whole and be sure to 
close our lips lest the liquid squirt 
out when we bite down. 

Vodka. 

Even this early in the game we find 
ourselves begging for the refreshment 
of vegetables. The beet salad is piled 
four inches high, with beet discs 
alternating with slabs of goat cheese, 
and the endive salad is slathered in 
enough blue cheese to suffocate 
Mr. Creosote. Next comes a platter 
of flavorful duck carpaccio, likely 
from an animal whose liver we will 
soon be eating, topped with a raw, 
pepper-flaked egg yolk. Then arrives 
a dish of deep-fried headcheese 
croquettes, redolent of tarragon, 
over a bed of sautéed sea snails in 
gribiche sauce. To round out the 
appetizers—for these are still tech- 
nically appetizers—Picard sends out 
an off-the-menu Japanese-style hand 
roll with spicy raw bison wrapped in 
rice and seaweed sheets. 

More vodka. 

At exactly 10 p.m. a bell rings. The 
cooks whoop and holler and put 
down their spoons: It is beer time. 
(They will all share a second one after 
the last seating, along with a staff 
dinner (continued on page 112) 


Chef Martin Picard, 43, in the kitchen at Au Pied de Cochon, along with some of his sig- 
nature dishes. Several of Picard's most revered cooking colleagues have called him crazy, spirited, the ultimate glutton. 


> 


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lime! of 


“Brother Aloysius, are you off your saltpeter again?” 


ER 


1 på 


BY ERIC SPITZNAGEL 
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATTHIAS CLAMER 


= 


ing fear, a ШШЕ 


HE'S NOTHING 


ALLY KILLED 


ED ARMISEN 
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people on the movie 


PLAYBOY: Your new plia ‚ his 
“of the 


_/MacGruber, is a parody ¿this your first experience with the | 
An) 1980s TV show MacGyver. Mac long-in-the-back, short-in-the- 


wished | was a.little 
Between takes they'd 


Gyver and MacGruber could defuse- front hairstyle? 


a bomb with just a paper clip and. 
some dental floss. Are you'as cun- 
ning and resourceful? 

FORTE: The only thing I have in com- 


mon with those two is a fierce de- - 


termination. | will not quit when l'm 
working on a project. lt comes out - 
mainly with jigsaw puzzles. | could 


FORTE: | did have a mullet for a 
few years as a teenager, but it was 
by accident. | used to cut my own 
hair, and I'd cut the front part and 
think, Oh, that looks good; I'm all 
done! My friends never mentioned 
to me, "Wait, you're missing the 
back part. You should cut that too." 


probably put together something They didn't say ыша 
like MacGyver does, but it would = 
take me three years and | would lose 3 


girlfriends and eventually get kicked 
out of my apartment. The rest of my 


PLAYBOY: MacGruber has an 
R rating. Can we expect lots of 


life would go to crap. gratuitous nudity? , 
FORTE: You will be no stranger to 
2 my butt after seeing this movie. 


PLAYBOY: You created the 
MacGruber character for Saturday 
Night Live, and you've given him 


You will feel as if you're old 
friends with it. | was surprisingly 
comfortable with being naked. 


МА you like to wear a 
Say, "No, I'm fine." 
I we were shooting in 
inued on page 105) 


Rai | 


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78 


‘Il get a wide variety of oddly authoritative о 
n taking Suboxone (а drug that helps heroin ac 
king copious amounts of alkaline water to guzzling 
c and ginger to lengthy yoga sessions. After polling exp 
ition and internal medicine, we designed the perfect one- 


Suppose you get back from three nights in Vegas, celebrating at your best friend's 


bachelor party. It's highly likely you mixed libations (liquor, caffei 
Red Bull), assorted powders, the odd little blue pill and the fragra 
various dried plant matter. Whatever your poison, you have to face facts: 


a case of 
apors of 


have too much toxic sludge in your system and you now need to get 


You convinced your boss to give you Thursday and 
Friday off, assuring him you would take the time 

to prepare for Monday's presentation to those 
Chinese investors you've been courting for 


months. It's Sunday morning when you get 
back to your apartment. Will the feeling of 
nausea ever go away? How do you get the 
edges of all the objects in your room to 
stop rippling? You're in bad shape, no 
doubt about it. Here's what you do. 


Drink one eight-ounce glass of the 

most alkaline water you can get 
your hands on, at least once every hour. Fiji 
water has a pH of 7.5 and can be purchased 
in 24-packs at most major supermarkets. 


Prepare your stomach by taking 

one Prilosec, an over-the-counter 
antacid, to prevent heartburn and nausea. 
Do not take aspirin, caffeine or any type 
of ibuprofen. Instead take 100 milligrams 
of Pycnogenol, a natural plant extract from. 
the bark of the maritime pine tree. This 
acts as an anti-inflammatory, antiplatelet 
and antioxidant and, when combined with 
L-arginine, has the added benefit of increas- 
ing libido. You'll never want aspirin again. 


а / Drink a cleansing smoothie. In a 
blender, combine: 

* 4 oz. organic orange juice 

* 4 oz. aloe juice 

* 1 tsp. maca powder (an adaptogen that 

boosts energy and strength and acts as a 

libido lifter for men and women) 

* % tsp. camu-camu powder (highest 

vitamin C content of any fruit on earth, 

anti-inflammatory, antidepressant) 

* 7215р. mangosteen powder (antioxidant, 

anti-inflammatory) 

* 1 tsp. freshly grated ginger 

* 7 lemon peel 


Force Nutri- 
tionals Vitamineral 
Green powder 

* 4 ice cubes 


Blend until smooth, and 
down the entire beverage. 

{ All powder supplements for 
this green drink can be å 
purchased from Essential 


Go back to bed and do not attempt 

to reenter the world until at least 
11:30 a.m. Set your alarm every hour so you 
can pound more water. (Keep a glass and a 
bottle of water at your bedside to minimize 
sleep interruption.) 


Get up and urinate. Do not proceed 
to the next step until you do. 


Go directly to the nearest Russian 

or Turkish spa and take a lengthy 
platza oak-leaf treatment (a form of therapy, 
dating back to ancient Greece, that involves 
the highest level of a three-tiered sauna, cold 
water poured over you periodically and a large 
man beating you with oak branches dipped in 
warm olive oil). The leaves contain a natural 
astringent that opens pores and releases tox- 
ins from your body. For more information go 
to russianandturkishbaths.com/Platza.html. If 
Russian masseurs are in short supply, go to a 
local spa, preferably one that follows the Holly- 
wood notion that every story should have a 
happy ending. Take a 30- to 60-minute session 
in a low-temperature sauna (105° to 130°) and 
follow with a 90-minute deep-tissue massage. 


Go home and shower with glycerin 

soap. Glycerin promotes the absorption 
of moisture, and your skin can absorb astound- 
ingly more H,O than your digestive system. 


8 


For your first solid food of the day, eat three boiled eggs and two bananas. Eggs 
contain large quantities of cysteine, an amino acid that will break down the 


metabolism of bad substances you've ingested, while bananas will replenish all the potas- 
sium you've lost from peeing so much. For dessert, eat two slices of watermelon, which 


In the right hands, a deep- 
tissue massage helps get the hurt out. 


1 О Sit down in front of the 

television with your bull shot 
in hand and watch Lawrence of Arabia as 
a pick-me-up. The film's slow pace and its 
sweeping shots of gorgeous desert scenery 
will fit in nicely with your relaxed atti- 
tude and quenched body cells, which had 
been begging for some hair of the dog 
that bit you. Also, the unbelievable suf- 
fering of those poor people will put in 
serious perspective whatever depressing 
thoughts you have about how your life 
has turned out. 


EXPERTS CONSULTED 


Dr. Steven Lamm, a 


will bring your alkaline levels up, and go back to sleep until evening. 


1 1 Have one small bowl of spicy 

chili with cheese and whole- 
grain crackers. This will fill your stomach 
and help you sweat out the remaining tox- 


ins as you sleep. 

1 2 Take an antioxidant consisting 
of large amounts of vitamins B,, 

B, and C. (We recommend OPC-3.) 


1 4. Drink one more tall glass of 
water when you get up to uri- 


nate in the middle of the night. 


Drink one more eight-ounce glass 


of alkaline water and go to bed. 


1 Wake up at a reasonable time 
and repeat step three to make 

another green antioxidant drink, followed by 

an eight-ounce glass of water. Pop another 

OPC-3 with a bit 

of green-tea extract 

and ginseng to 

stimulate your | 

brain, then go ^ 

to work and nail r 


those Chinese! 


ng internist, co-author of The Hardness Factor 


and author of the upcoming Stronger: In Defense of Your Health 


(thehardnessfactor.com) 


Dr. Richard Ash, internal medicine specialist and host of WOR 
News Talk Radio's Sick and Tired of Being Sick andTired 


(ashcenter.com) 


Kipp Strod 
Holdings Inc. 
(essentiallivingfoods.com) 


sential Living Foods 


vice president of business development, BeOn 


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JENNIFER RYAN JONES 
NIGEL PARRY 


` TE a 
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~~ “A year ago I wore a pair of 
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Kanye Enid] "Why are БУРИ 
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ПИШИТЕ 


| 


STRATEGY 


IT’S EVERY MAN'S DREAM: 


EE EEE EEE EEE EK 


TO DROP OUT OF THE RAT RACE AND LIVE ON A 


SUN-SPLASHED ISLAND WHERE THE WOMEN ARE 
HOT, THE WATER IS COOL AND THE BEER COSTS A 


QUARTER. OUR GUIDE TO MAKING THE DREAM REAL 


BY SEAMUS MCGRAW 


ver since the economy did a swan 
dive off the roof of the AIG build- 
ing in 2008, I've been hearing 
people talk about "the dream." 
Not the American dream—something 
quite the opposite, actually. And why not? 
Everywhere I looked there was bad news. 
It was as if we were bobbing on a raft 
made out of pieces of broken hopes. The 
dream is to find a slice of paradise some- 
place, figure out a way to make it work 
financially and walk off into the sunset. 

I recently stumbled across the photo 
album of my honeymoon in Belize, and 
I began to think in earnest about the 
dream. I could still taste the salt air and 
hear the scratching of hermit crabs scut- 
tling up the mangrove roots that twisted 
beneath the cottage we had rented. The 
dream beckoned. It would be just like 
another honeymoon, only a little more 
open-ended. 

So I called my accountant, Ray. It 
was lunchtime, and I could hear him 
chomping on a sandwich. I was somehow 
reassured that he could still afford one. 

"Is somebody after you?" he asked. 

“No. Not really.” 


Ray understood the impulse to rebel 
against the crushing burden of day-to- 
day responsibilities. “You need liquid 
assets,” he advised me. 

There are two ways to fulfill the dream, 
money-wise. You can figure out how to 
earn while sitting on the beach (more 
on that in a bit). Or, if you have assets, 
you can leverage them. Ray and I came 
up with an equation that would result 
in a “magic number," a dollar amount 
you need to live the dream. It works 
like this: Make a list of your assets— 
how much money you'd have if you 
sold everything you own. Now, figure a 
four percent annual return if you invest 
wisely. There's your magic number, what 
you could live on without working and 
still break even (give or take a few bucks 
due to taxes and write-offs). While my 
magic number didn't have a Wall Street 
pedigree, it was a start. 

What I needed now was a guru with 
a Gauguin complex who could help me 
fill out this picture. I found that guru 
in Domenick Buonamici. At the age 
of 26, the Cleveland-born Buonamici 
has become a merry evangelist for the 


*YOU CAN RUN 
A BUSINESS 
RIGHT FROM YOUR 
LAPTOP FROM 
ANYWHERE 
IN THE WORLD." 


83 


HOT a 
PROPERTY | 


BOETICA, DOMINICA 

MORE THAN FOUR ACRES OF 
JUNGLE OVERLOOKING THE 
CARIBBEAN (PROPERTIES 
SHOWN COURTESY OF 
CARIBBEANLANDAND 


PROPERTY.com) $95,000 


CRABBE HILL, ANTIGUA WORKING BAR-RESTAURANT WITH 60 SEATS AND 120 


FEET OF BEACHFRONT A SHORT DISTANCE FROM JOLLY HARBOUR $475,000 


CAHUITA, COSTA RICA GoRGEOUS BEACHFRONT HOTEL (GREAT SNORKELING) WITH 
RESTAURANT BORDERING A NATIONAL PARK...LOTS OF MONKEYS $575,000 


IF YOU'RE READY TO 
MAKE THE LEAP, 
HERE ARE THE TOP 
SIX PLACES TO 
START OVER NOW 


PANAMA 


AVERAGE COST. OF A BEER: $0.49 
CIVILIZATION INDEX: 4.7 OUTOF 10 
In a lot of ways, Panama lets you stay 
home while you leave home. English 
is widely spoken, and the dollarized 
economy is faring well, bolstered by 
a $5.3 billion canal-expansion proj- 
ect. And since Uncle Sam plucked out 
Manuel Noriega in 1989, the place 
has been politically stable. What you 
get are pristine tropical beaches, cos- 
mopolitan cities, mountain jungles and 
relatively affordable newly constructed 
homes. Check panamarealtor.com and 
commence drooling. 


BULGARIA 


AVERAGE COST OF A BEER: $1.61 
CIVILIZATION INDEX: 5.1 

Once perceived as the armpit of com- 
munist Eastern Europe, Bulgaria is 
still barely a blip on the tourism radar 
screen. But with a Black Sea coast, a 
Mediterranean climate in parts and 
phenomenally gorgeous women, it can 
be a great toehold in Europe. Bulgaria's 
economy has taken off over the past 
decade, but it still has some amazing 
land deals. Get a place near the pleas- 
ant resort of Varna and you can watch 
Russian oligarchs stride by with their 
surgically improved trophy mistresses. 


expatriate movement. He writes for sev- 
eral Internet sites, among them Escape 
From America. He's also an expert at 
picking up women in exotic locales (he 
co-wrote The World Bachelor's Guide). Y 
threw my magic number at him. 

"If you're single and willing to live 
frugally you could stretch that out for 
three years," he told me. Even with a 
wife and children, he assured me, I 
could do it. ^I live on $500 a month," he 
said (never in one place for long). But 
he also told me it was essential I keep a 
credit card with at least $1,000 of avail- 
able credit for every month I wanted to 
stay in paradise without working. 

I had already done enough research 
to know I could buy a 700-square-foot 
flat in many prized areas of the South 
Pacific or South America for about 
$100,000 with a comparatively small 
down payment. But if I’m going to 
dream the dream, I'm thinking about 
living higher. What if your dream is 
bigger than your magic number? You'll 
need to make some money. 

The truth is, it has never been easier 
to earn money without going to an 
office than it is today. "There's a new 
thing on the block that wasn't widely 
available 15 years ago," Buonamici said. 
"The Internet. My advice to anyone is 
learn how to promote a business online. 
The business can be a traditional offline 
one with a simple website, or a 100 per- 
cent online business,” he said. “Once 
you understand how to drive traffic to 
a site and sell online, you can apply 


VIETNAM 


AVERAGE COST OF A BEER: $0.52 
CIVILIZATION INDEX: 5.1 

Sure, it's a communist state, but they 
actually kind of like Americans now. 
Vietnam's export-oriented economy 
sputtered in 2009, making it more 
financially attractive to immigrants. 
And with an exotic coastline from the 
Gulf of Tonkin to the South China Sea, it 
has plenty of beachfront property. Bear 
in mind that foreigners can only lease, 
not own, but that may soon change. 
If you're concerned about rising sea 
levels, you're advised to find a place 
up north, where the land lies higher. 


that knowledge to any field. You can 
run a business right from your laptop 
from anywhere in the world.” 

There is a reality, of course. People who 
long to escape the rat race tend to bring 
the rat race with them. There are success 
stories, however. Take Sharon Matola. 
In college, the Baltimore-born student 
developed an interest in mushrooms—all 
mushrooms, not just the happy sort. To 
make ends meet while studying mycol- 
ogy in Florida, she took a job at a local 
roadside attraction that boasted some 
sorry-looking wild animals. Through 
a series of unexpected events, she par- 
layed that job into a spot with a traveling 
circus in Mexico. "They were looking 
for a lion tamer," Matola told me, and 
she was looking for a free ticket south 
of the border to collect mushroom sam- 
ples. She ended up in Belize, where she 
looked after a British man's collection of 
20 animals, including a puma and a pair 
of endangered jaguars. 

When the Brit was sent off to Borneo 
for his job, Matola was ordered to get 
rid ofthe animals. “I couldn't just turn 
them loose," she said. The only way to 
save them, she decided, was to start a 
zoo. Belize had never had one. Now, 27 
years later, the Belize Zoo is one of the 
world's foremost research centers for 
the study of jaguars. And Matola would 
never return to live in the States. 

As for me? I have yet to put up the 
FOR SALE sign in front of my house. The 
dream is still a dream. But every day 
I'ma step closer. 


SIERRA DE VALLE FÈRME” 
ARGENTINA 


$0.80 
6.7 

Yes, this is where the largest national- 
debt default in history took place, 
but in the wake of that dark chap- 
ter Argentina has come into its own. 
Buenos Aires is a cosmopolitan city, 
the South Atlantic beaches are divine, 
and the Patagonian mountains offer 
great skiing. Since the 2001 default 
the country's economy has largely 
rebounded. Plus, the steaks are awe- 
some, and the president, Cristina 
Fernández de Kirchner, is pretty foxy 
for a chief executive. 


THE OTHER SIDE 
OF THE DREAM 
Be careful what you wish 
for, says the author of 

The Mosquito Coast 


By Paul Theroux 


Us fairly normal, I think, this dream of 

fleeing to a paradise and living happily 

ever after under the palms with a sultry 
beauty. The poster child is Arthur Rim- 
baud, who gave up poetry at the age of 19 
and ended up in the walled city of Harar in 
Abyssinia with a dusky mistress, became a 
coffee merchant and a gunrunner and never 
wrote a word again. Or Paul Gauguin, the 
stockbroker who abandoned his wife and 
five children and headed to Tahiti to paint 
masterpieces. He was for a while in heaven, 
indulging hi brilliant color and 
teaching 13-year-old girls the arts of love. 

I have not met any geniuses in the Happy 
Isles or the scented tropics, though I have 
bumped into any number of escapees, 
Americans and Europeans, in the Pacific 


genius will 


$1.91 
3.6 

One of the nicest places we've ever 
invaded, Grenada is also one of the 
smallest countries in the western hemi- 
sphere and one of only a few low-profile 
Caribbean islands. Tourism isthe main 
industry, so you'll always have drunken 
Americans and Europeans to share 
your time with. Hurricanes are an issue 
(Ivan 2004, Emily 2005). That said, the 
median female age is 22.3 years, and 
the scuba diving is excellent. Not a bad 
place to open your own fish shack. Now 
hiring beautiful young island girls.... 


Islands, in Southeast Asia and even in parts 
of Africa. All of them made money else- 
where, and many of them had settled down 
with a local woman—invariably one with 
parents to look after, brothers to educate, 
sisters needing support, and children. 

The first thing the exile learns is that he 
is not home. The most bewitching parts of 
Costa Rica are crawling with snakes, includ- 
ing the world’s deadliest, the fer-de-lance. 
The exile is also living under a new set of 
rules. The filial piety in paradise involves a 
lot of responsibility. Most villagers are happy 
to have a wealthy exile as a brother-in-law or 
a neighbor in his shuttered cháteau as long 
as he continues handing out money. 

This exploitation bothered Rimbaud in 
Harar, who got sick of the exotic fantasy 
and his neighbors. *Forced to speak their 
gibberish, to eat their filthy food and suffer 
a thousand aggravations caused by their 


idleness, treachery and stupidity!" 

At the age of 54, in one of the most beauti- 
ful islands in the Marquesas, in a delightful 
village, with a quarrel with French authori- 
ties hanging over his head, the disillusioned 
and syphilitic Gauguin died miserably. 

The place might be different, but we 
are the same person. That's the paradox of 
travel, “a fool's paradise, 
“At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, 
I can be intoxicated with 
my sadness. 1 pack my trunk, embrace 
my friends, embark on the sea and at last 
wake up in Naples, and there beside me 
is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, 
identical, that I fled from.” 


Emerson wrote. 


;eauty and lose 


$0.94 
5.4 

The Croatian riviera—right across the 
Adriatic from Italy—is one of tourism's 
best-kept secrets. In the good old days 
of the Cold War, Croatia was among 
Yugoslavia's wealthiest republics. The 
Balkan wars took a brutal toll, but 
Croatia emerged independent (if poor 
and ethnically cleansed). And its coast- 
line is once again safe and stunning. 
There may be no better place to buy 
your own island. Check out the inven- 
tory at croatia-estate.com. 


Al andite (pudo 


ger Ал е 
2 ee Nhe 


Mta, uut 


no tle еб A ald 


ike the word Playmate, the words Guess girl bring 
to mind an immediate connotation. You think of an 
impossible beauty shot in some cool locale: a gas 
station, poolside, stepping out of a 1957 Chevy. 
She's always cutting-edge, and yet there's a 
retro chicness about her, a nod to the great sex 
symbols of the 1960s. She is a timeless fantasy. 
The genius of Guess advertisements is the choice of 
woman and the sense of narrative, that the image is 
a window into some story line with an ending as yet 
unwritten. Therein lies the fantasy: Those clothes 
are meant to be 
torn off.by you.. 

right now. 


Sure, we'll 


NAKED PREY — 


buy a pair of jeans. Make that two pairs. 

Since the Marciano brothers founded the company 
in 1981 in California, they've had an eye for 
the youthfully provocative, finding women from 
around the world with fulsome curves and cheek- 
bones sharper than knives. The ads, many shot by · 
German lenswoman Ellen von Unwerth,-are unmis- 
takable, And what a worldly mix of goddesses: 
Brazil's Ana Beatriz Barros, Germany's Claudia 
Schiffer, France's Laetitia Casta, Britain's 
Naomi Campbell (of Chinese-Jamaican descent), the 
Czech Republic's Eva Herzigova, America's own 
Anna Nicole Smith. E 

And so we introduce you to tne Marcianos! 
est beauty, Candice Boucher, a rav n 


electric-eyed siren from South 
Africa. Not only is Candice a new 
face of Guess, she is also yet another 
Guess girl to appear nude in this 
magazine, following in the footsteps 
of Naomi, Eva, Anna Nicole, Victo- 
ria Silvstedt, Lauren Nichelle Hill 
and Diora Baird (though, of course, 
some appeared in ргаүвоү before they 
became Guess girls). 

Candice grew up in Durban, on 
South Africa's east coast. And 
though she has been enjoying Gotham 
City's nightlife recently, she now 
lives in her country's epicenter of 
beachside cool, Cape Town. "There 
are a lot of beautiful people 
here," she playfully allows, her 
deep accent shading every syllable. 
"We South Africans are proud of our 
country and have a lust for life. 
And being so close to the beach 
brings out the natural sexiness." 

Hardly a girl next door, Candice 
has a body sculpted of long, lean 
angles and gentle curves. She's 
often sent to shoots in such exotic 
locales as Tokyo and India. What 
you see here is Candice against the 
backdrop of a private and remote 
lodge in southern Kenya. Photo- 
graphed by Raphael Mazzucco (who 
has also shot three Sports Illus- 
trated swimsuit covers), she showed 
great poise, working the camera as 
lions and-elephants strolled behind 
her. Oddly, Candice explains, show- 


ing off her assets has not always 
come naturally. 
"It's taken me a wnile to be com- 


fortable in a bikini," she says. 
"It's a work in progress. I was 
one of the shiest girls you'd ever 
meet; I wouldn't even eat in front 
of people. My family kind of pushed 
me into the modeling thing so I 
would get more self-confidence. I 
never spoke in school. I was one 
of the shy girls in the corner." So 
shooting in the nudi "Well, let's 
just say I never in my life thought 
I would appear in praysor. But I'm 
happy and excited by it." 

The modeling industry has its 
pitfalls, she will tell you. 
According to Candice, the problem 
with being identified as a model is 
"men think you're easy, and women 
think you're dumb." 

Despite all the cover shoots and 
ad campaigns, Candice admits she 
still sees herself as the shy girl 
in the corner. "I don't walk around 
thinking, Oh God, I'm so hot. I like 
to think I'm pretty much the same 
person I always was." 

If you like what you see here, 
you're in luck. Candice will be 
making appearances on billboards 
in cities across the globe and in 
print ads, too. She is the new face 
and the new fantasy. We suspect 
she will sell the Marcianos many 
pairs of jeans. 


| NE A ou Ho «ым hate a Ай Tør fite Зуй 
e andite (pedo. : (pav So lose Lo 


Due gol 


Me beath hins "A Me nalural дете. 


at = 


PLAYBOY 


94 


FATHER & SON 


(continued from page 42) 
told me. When it comes to the govern- 
ment, I raise the black flag.’ You know 
what that means, John? That means give 
no quarter. I kill you or you kill me. That's 
the end of the fuckin’ story.” 

Gotti leans toward his son as if he wants 
to smack some sense into him. He's dying 
yet gesticulating like a prizefighter warm- 
ing up to go another round. “You gotta 
have this, John.” He pounds himself on 
his chest. “I’m telling you as your father, 
John. I'm not coming to you as your boss 
or nothing like that. There are standards 
I set for myself.” 

“I know, Dad, I know.” 

“What are these bums offering you, if 
you can tell me that?" 

“Five and a half to seven years,” 
Junior answers. 

Gotti says of government prosecutors, "I 
don't blame them, John. I hate them." 

No one can defeat this man. Six and a 
half years of solitary—unheard of. A life 
sentence. Condemned to a slow inglorious 
death, yet he remains unbowed. Whatever 
else one can say about John Gotti Sr., he 
was a man and a gangster through and 
through. And he was no rat. He would go 
to his grave keeping his vow, standing up 
until they laid him in his casket. 

“John, there's nothing in the world, 
nobody in the world 1 love more than 
you,” the godfather says. Then he asks 
him, “Why? Why give up?” 

Junior's answer: “Sometimes you gotta 
give them a pound of flesh.” It's his love 
for his biological family, his wife and chil- 
dren, he explains. He believes if he takes 
the plea he can serve his time and be 
released before his own boys are grown 
up and lost to him. “The hardest thing 
in the world for me to do would be to say 
good-bye to my kids.” 

The son has just confessed the ultimate 
blasphemy in his father's eyes: His wife and 
kids mean more to him than the Mafia. 

“If you became a rat or a fag or a 
junkie, I'd dog you till the day we both 
died," Senior says. "I'm talking like a 
father that's terrified for you. I'm gonna 
go to my grave with a smile on my face, 
John—as long as I know you're safe.... 
As your father, I want you to be happy. I 
want you to be safe. I don't mean physi- 
cally safe. Mentally safe." 

Gotti is talking about safety not only 
from prosecution but also from Mob retali- 
ation. He goes on: "Where's your dignity? 
Where's your manhood?" 

"I know your feelings, Dad," Junior says. 
“Га follow you off a cliff." 

Gotti gives his son his blessing. “If 
you're going to take the plea, make it 
what you desire, John." He reaches across 
the table, reaches out for his boy. “If you 
take this plea, John, I'm never going to 
see you again." 

Prophetic words. This was the last time 
father and son would see each other. In 
2002 John Gotti Sr. died—not of a lethal 


injection or a Mob assassin's bullet but of 
the one battle he could not win: a revolt 
of his own cells. 

The men stand, embrace, clap each 
other on the back. 

“Stay strong” are the last words of advice 
Gotti will ever say to his son. 


The meeting is set at Grimaldi's Pizzeria 
in Garden City, Long Island on December 
7, 2009. John Gotti Jr. was just released 
from prison six days earlier, after his 
fourth federal trial —Gotti IV—ended in 
yet another mistrial. According to Junior's 
lawyer, Charles Carnesi, since his release, 
John has been hitting every pizzeria on 
Long Island. 

“Welcome back to the world,” I say 
when John stands and shakes my hand. 
“You look 10 years younger than you did 
a week ago.” 

It's true. I was in the courtroom when 
the jury announced it was deadlocked, 
split down the middle. I watched Junior, 
a young man of 45, as he sat in front of 
the world, waiting to hear if he was going 
to walk out of the courtroom and go home 
to his wife and six kids or if he would go 
to prison for the rest of his life. 

When he exited the courthouse that eve- 
ning, three TV news helicopters hovered 
above. U.S. marshals and court security 
officers manned barricades to keep the 
mob of reporters and cameramen at bay. 
The posttrial press conference had the 
wattage of a Hollywood premiere. After 
16 months of lockup, Gotti was free on a 
$2 million bond. 

Now he's eating pizza. Gotti tells me to 
sit, order whatever I want. He is sipping a 
martini with a twist and a Diet Coke. He's 
dressed in a red warm-up suit and sneak- 
ers. He says he is the happiest man alive. 
He woke up this morning not in a prison 
cell but in his own bed, in his own home 
and surrounded by his children. 

"Im a simple man,” Gotti says and 
holds up his cell phone. “I just bought 
this, the cheapest cell phone available. Pm 
a dinosaur when it comes to computers, 
cell phones. This is me. What you see is 
what you get.” 

Carnesi, who represented Gotti in three 
of his past four trials, sits across from John 
and explains they are not talking to the 
media on the record as long as the threat 
of another trial is hanging over their 
heads. (Not long after this meeting the 
government confirmed it would not try to 
prosecute again.) John says he has agreed 
to talk to me because “you knew my father. 
And your reputation precedes you.” 

For 10 weeks of trial during Gotti IV, I 
was in the courtroom every day. I inter- 
viewed and ate with the family and the 
principal cast in the courthouse cafeteria. 
I knew John Gotti Sr., met him briefly dur- 
ing my own sojourn through the criminal 
justice system. I could not fathom what it 
must have been like to grow up as the son 
of this man, to be named after him and to 
follow in his footsteps. Follow him into “the 


life,” as those in the Mafia milieu refer to a 
life of crime. Follow him into a courtroom. 
And finally follow him all the way into the 
inner sanctum of the prison system: soli- 
tary confinement, where father and son 
each had to confront his own demons. 

The Gottis are the Kennedys of orga- 
nized crime. Fiercely loyal, children 
shaped by the ambitions and obsessions 
of a domineering patriarch, living large 
in the intense glare of the spotlight. The 
name Gotti has taken on emblematic por- 
tent in the American lexicon; it has become 
synonymous with the word Mafia. Like the 
Kennedys, the Gottis are a family shad- 
owed by infamy and tragedy. As JFK Jr.'s 
death brought down the curtain on Cam- 
elot, so too has Gotti Jr.’s renunciation of 
the Mafia come to symbolize the demise of 
traditional organized crime. 

What Gotti really wants to do, he says, 
is pack up, take his family and move away 
from New York. Go to North Carolina. 
Buy a farm. Raise dogs and horses. Raise 
his family. 

Gotti has already given the govern- 
ment more than nine years in prison. 
Against his father’s wishes, John pleaded 
guilty to racketeering in 1999 and went 
to serve his time. John’s father died while 
both men were locked up. Junior was 
denied permission to attend his father’s 
funeral. Then, while serving his six-and- 
a-half-year sentence, the government 
indicted him again—“double banged,” 
as his father would have said. The feds 
waited until the sentence was about to 
run out, then hit him with a reconsti- 
tuted set of racketeering charges. 

Between 2005 and 2006 the government 
tried and failed to convict Junior three 
times. The latest indictment, handed down 
in 2008, included allegations that John Jr. 
directly ordered or participated in three 
murders. In the four trials a huge majority 
of the evidence the government was able 
to produce to connect Junior to any of the 
charges came from testimony given by Mob 
rats who had made deals with the govern- 
ment. No physical evidence was presented. 
There were no damning audiotapes like 
the bugged conversations that convicted 
Gotti’s father. And Junior, through his 
attorneys, presented a novel defense. 

John A. Gotti, a “made” member of the 
Gambino crime family—indeed, the act- 
ing boss—maintained he had quit La Cosa 
Nostra. He claimed he saw the horror of 
his father’s and his own life and withdrew 
from the family when he pleaded guilty 
and went off to prison in 1999. By the 
time the government indicted him again, 
in 2005, the five-year statute of limitations 
had run out. 

It worked. Four juries deadlocked. 
To bolster his defense Gotti's lawyers 
entered tapes made during visits at Ray 
Brook federal prison. Gotti is heard tell- 
ing family members and friends he wants 
out; he’s disgusted by the treachery, the 
greed and lack of honor, particularly on 
the part of his uncles. The defense also 
played excerpts from the videotaped 


"I can simulate an orgasm so well, I sometimes imagine I'm really having one.” 


PLAYBOY 


96 


conversation with his dying father at 
Springfield as proof that John had asked 
for the don's permission to give the govern- 
ment their “pound of flesh,” plead guilty 
and leave the gangster life. 

“You saw the video,” Junior says to me. 
“When I bring up closure, that's what Pm 
talking about. You see my father's reac- 
tion. 'Closure?' He doesn't want to hear 
it. "That's a word for overeducated under- 
intelligent motherfuckers,' he says. There's 
no closure for him. Except when they close 
the coffin.” 

In the end, John says, his father relented. 
“He wanted me to do what I thought was 
right. But that was not him. I realized I 
could never be him.” 

“Did you ever want to be anything else as 
a kid growing up? Did you aspire to be any- 
thing other than what you became?” 

“Me? No. All I ever wanted to be was my 
father. More than anything in the world, I 
wanted to be that man.” 


John Gotti Sr. ascended to the top of the 
underworld by breaking the rules. While 
climbing the ranks of the Mob, Gotti alleg- 
edly ordered the killing of a made man, 
Ralph Galione, without getting permission, 
which enraged then caporegime Paul “Big 
Paul” Castellano. Then, just before Christ- 
mas 1985, Gotti and his right-hand man, 
Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, pulled 
off the gangland slaying of the century. In 
a daring hit planned and executed like a 
military operation by Gotti, the upstart capo 
from the Bronx ordered the execution of 
Castellano, Carlo Gambino's brother-in-law, 
who had assumed leadership of the crime 
family when Gambino died. 

Gotti had run afoul of Gambino lead- 
ership when the government began to 
assemble a case alleging that the Gotti crew, 
through Senior's trusted lieutenant Angelo 
Ruggiero and Gotti's brother Gene, were 
making a fortune in the heroin business. The 
Gambinos were not supposed to be dealing 
heroin. But the FBI had tapes of Ruggiero 
discussing junk deals over the phone from 
his Long Island home. After a high-profile 


indictment of Gotti lieutenants on narcotics 
charges, Paul Castellano demanded to see 
transcripts of the tapes, which could have 
meant a death sentence for Ruggiero and 
possibly Gotti as well. Instead, Gotti killed 
Castellano and orchestrated a coup d'état. 

The brazen late-afternoon murder 
took place outside Sparks Steak House in 
midtown Manhattan. Shooters—dressed 
identically in overcoats and Russian hats 
to confuse bystanders—gunned down 
the Gambino boss and his driver as they 
arrived for an early dinner meeting. Gotti 
and his future underboss, Sammy the Bull, 
coordinated the hit from a car parked 
down the street. Gotti got permission 
from three of the four bosses of the other 
New York Mafia families before killing the 
leader of his own borgata. The lone hold- 
out was Genovese family boss Vincent “the 
Chin” Gigante. And there were others who 
resented Gotti's relentless rise to power. 
From that day forth Gotti was a marked 
man. Agents of the law and rival gangsters 
both plotted his demise. 

Not long after the Castellano hit, a car bomb 
in a Buick parked outside the Veterans and 
Friends Social Club in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn 
blew to pieces Gotti's first underboss, Frank 
DeCicco. It is believed that the bomb was 
intended to kill Gotti and Gravano. 

"My father," Junior says, remember- 
ing the days following the attempt on the 
don's life, *you know what he did? He got 
in his own car—he had a Mercedes—and 
he drove. No driver; he drove alone. No 
bodyguards, just him. He went to every one 
of the clubs and spoke to his men. He was a 
general rallying the troops. He told them, 
“Now is when we got to show who we are. 
We're not hiding. We're standing strong.’ 
My father was a soldier." 

Though he angered his peers and put 
a target on his back, Gotti became a folk 
hero. Born in the Bronx to a father who 
abused him mercilessly, he rose to become 
the boss of bosses. Movie stars and sports 
celebrities sought his company. Anthony 
Quinn and Mickey Rourke made appear- 
ances at his trials. 

For much of Junior's early childhood—he 


"And as you can see, for a small car it has the kind of 
legroom most guys want." 


grew up in a modest apartment in the 
Canarsie section of Brooklyn—his dad was 
"away" (the Mob euphemism for doing a 
prison bid), serving a federal sentence for 
hijacking and, later, a state bid for his partic- 
ipation in the murder of James McBratney, 
an Irish hood who made the mistake of kid- 
napping the nephew of Carlo Gambino. 

"The other kids used to tease me," John 
says over pizza at Grimaldi's. "I kept telling 
them, ‘My father's coming home. He'll be 
home next week.' Then he wouldn't show 
up, and my friends, they'd say I was a liar, 
that I didn't really have a father. I was 
making it all up." 

By the time Senior was finally paroled, 
his wife, Victoria, and the kids had moved. 
Senior had been away so long he didn't know 
where his family lived. Junior remembers 
how he was out in the street playing with his 
buddies one day when a big dark Lincoln 
with tinted windows pulled up. “You know, 
nobody had tinted windows in those days." 

The electric window slid down and there 
he was, John's father, asking where the 
house was. 

“I told him, ‘That one over there, the one 
with the green awning, ” Junior says. "The 
Lincoln pulls into the driveway. My father 
gets out. He's wearing a light chocolate- 
colored topcoat. He was the most beautiful 
man you ever saw. Jet-black hair, in great 
shape, rock hard from being locked up. 
All the kids in the neighborhood just stood 
there staring at him. I was so proud. I really 
had a father. That was my father." 

Once inside, John took his dad to his room 
to show him the New York Mets pennants 
he had plastered all over the walls. Gotti 
shrugged and said, "You know I've been a 
Yankees fan my whole life.” When his father 
left the room, the crestfallen boy tore down 
all his Mets mementos. Young John would 
be a Yankees fan from that day forth. 

"When did you first understand who your 
father was?" I ask him. 

"We always knew; the whole family knew 
we were different. I remember my mother 
once took me to see my father while he was 
locked up in Lewisburg. I was about five, six 
at the time. It was around Halloween, and 
my father asked me what I was going to dress 
up as. I said I had a friend who was gonna let 
me use his policeman's hat and badge, and 
I was going to dress up as a cop." 

Senior turned to his wife and bit his fist. 
"What's the matter with you?" he said. 
"What have you done to my kid? He wants 
to become a cop?" 

“Johnny,” she responded, “he's just a kid.” 

“No kid of mine is gonna dress up as 
acop.” 

“That was my father,” Junior says. 

When he was 14, Junior was sent off to 
boarding school at the New York Military 
Academy. One day he was watching TV 
with some fellow students. “The guy on 
the news says something about this rising 
alleged Mafia captain from Queens named 
John Gotti,” Junior explains. “One of the 
kids goes, “Hey, he's got the same name as 
you!’ Then they show his picture on TV and 
all the kids are looking at me because they 
know that’s my father; he comes to visit me. 
By that time I pretty much had it figured 
out who my father was.” 


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PLAYBOY 


98 


By his early 20s Junior had assembled his 
own crew. In every way except his choice of 
wardrobe, the younger Gotti mirrored the 
don. John preferred expensive warm-up 
suits and sneakers to his dad's custom-fitted 
De Lisi and Armani suits and Bruno Magli 
shoes. Operating out of the Our Friends 
Social Club around the corner from his 
father's Bergin Hunt and Fish Club on 101st 
Avenue in Ozone Park, Queens, John's crew 
included the sons of other Mafia dads from 
the neighborhood in Howard Beach. 

“Where I grew up, my friends, all their 
fathers were in the life. Those were my 
friends. The life was all around us. It 
was....” Junior searches for the word. “It 
seemed normal.” 

On Christmas Eve 1988, at the tender age 
of 24, John Gotti Jr. became a made member 
of the Gambino crime family. In This Family 
of Mine, sister Victoria Gotti describes the 
night her brother was inducted in a secret 
ceremony John likened to joining King 
Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. 
“This was one of the most important days 
of his life," Vicki writes. The ceremony was 
held in an apartment belonging to Joseph 
“Joe Butch” Corrao on Mulberry Street in 
Little Italy, just doors away from the Raven- 
ite Social Club, where Senior took command 
after usurping control of the Gambino 
crime family. John Jr. was given a picture 
of a saint stained with a drop of his blood. 
As the saint's picture burned, John recited 
the ancient oath. 

“If you should betray La Cosa Nostra, 
your soul will burn like this saint," he was 
warned. Everyone in the room began to 
chant. “Now you are born over. You are 
a new man." 

After the ceremony John joined his father 
at the Ravenite. Junior “was the happi- 
est man alive," Vicki writes. Senior did not 
attend the ceremony in order to avoid the 
appearance of nepotism, already a persistent 
complaint in Mob circles. It is also part of 


Mafia lore that a father's presence at his son's 
induction brings bad luck to the family. 

Present, however, was Gotti Sr.’s under- 
boss, Gravano, who would go on to provide 
the testimony that helped convict the don 
and condemn him to die behind bars. 
Another budding wiseguy who got straight- 
ened out that night was Michael “Mikey 
Scars” DiLeonardo, who would rise to 
become a captain with close ties to the Got- 
tis. Mikey Scars also became a government 
witness who testified against Junior in all 
four of his trials. 

The curse was upon the Gotti family. 
Both the father’s and the son’s most trusted 
brothers in blood were poised to stab them 
in the back. 


There was another Gotti son, Frank, the 
family favorite, who was run over by a car 
and killed in 1980 while riding a minibike. 
He was 12 years old. The Gottis were dev- 
astated by Frankie Boy’s death. Privately, 
John Sr. was inconsolable. 

“My room was right beside my father’s 
study,” Junior tells me. “I could hear him in 
there alone, late at night. He was crying.” 

At the wake Gotti showed no emotion. 
It was a crowded affair: mobsters, friends, 
family. In Junior’s words, Gotti “showed 
nothing. He was like a statue.” 

“Your mother and your sisters told me 
it was hard for your father to show love,” 
I say. 

“Impossible,” John answers. “Because he 
never knew it as a kid. He never felt it.” 

“But did you feel it from him? Did you 
know he loved you?” 

“Yes, absolutely,” John says. “In his way, our 
father loved us. We knew that. The way he 
protected his family, the way he provided.” 

Victoria Gotti told me she was a “zom- 
bie” for 10 years after her son Frankie Boy 
was killed; she blames herself for being 
unable to keep a closer eye on her eldest 


KeGRD, I CAME FIRST. 


son, John, who around that time started 
getting into trouble. 

John Favara, the unlucky neighbor who 
ran over Frankie, was whacked with a two- 
by-four and thrown into the rear of a van by 
a group of unidentified men, a victim of what 
Sicilians call lupara bianca, the “white shot- 
gun.” Favara’s body was never found. The 
Gottis maintain John Sr. did not order the 
death of Favara. Gotti and Victoria were away 
in Florida when Favara went missing. Some 
law enforcement sources claim otherwise. 

Years after Frankie was killed, FBI agents 
puta tail on Gotti Sr. one Saturday to deter- 
mine where he went each weekend morning 
before he made his appearance at the Ber- 
gin Hunt and Fish Club. They followed 
Gotti’s car to a graveyard. They watched 
as the vicious mafioso placed a bouquet of 
red roses on Frankie Boy’s headstone. Gotti 
then sat staring at his boy’s grave for half 
an hour, quietly talking to himself and to 
his dead son. 

Every year on the anniversary of Frankie’s 
death, an announcement appears in the New 
York Daily News: “Frank: The pain of losing 
you never leaves our heart. Loving you, 
missing you, always and always hurting.” 


As the elder Gotti children grew up, mar- 
ried and moved away, the don and his wife 
stayed in their modest Howard Beach home. 
Gotti was at the height of his power and 
notoriety. He was untouchable. No court 
could convict him. No murder plot could 
capture him in the crosshairs. He was the 
most visible, best-dressed, handsomest, wit- 
tiest Mafia don ever. 

In time Gotti became enamored of his 
own myth. Hubris reared its Gorgon head. 
The boss got sloppy, allowing himself to be 
captured on an FBI bug in the Ravenite 
Social Club and on a second chip hidden 
in an apartment above the Ravenite, where 
Gotti and his closest comrades discussed a 
mounting body count. On FBI tapes Gotti 
was revealed as a foulmouthed dictator 
with an explosive temper and a scatologi- 
cal sense of humor. He ordered the killing 
of Gambino soldier Louis DiBono for the 
crime of not coming in to report. 

“You know why he’s dying?” Gotti asked 
his underboss at the time, Frank Locascio. 
“He’s going to die because he refused to 
come in when I called. He didn’t do noth- 
ing else wrong.” 

Caught on tape complaining about FBI 
wiretaps after the feds bugged Angelo Rug- 
giero’s house, Gotti lamented, “You know 
how they invade your privacy. Ya hear a baby 
crying, your wife crying. You say, ‘It could 
be my house, my baby, my wife.’ Where the 
fuck are we going? Maybe you wanna throw 
a fart in the bathroom; you hear it in open 
court. They hear you farting. Like that poor 
fuckin’ Frank the Wop. His phone was in 
the bathroom. He’s taking a shit, and he’s 
talking. That’s a fuckin’ shame.... Then he 
goes, Phphphhh! Bing! He said, ‘I feel better 
now. I couldn't move.” 

Gravano cracked up. Gotti was laughing 
too, clapping his hands. 

“In open fuckin’ courtroom. Madonna!” 
Gotti went on. “You gotta get a heart attack.” 

The boss might have had a heart attack 


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PLAYBOY 


100 


had he known the feds were listening in. 

In 1990, just two years after John Jr. got 
made, he was elevated to the level of cap- 
tain. That same year John married Kim 
Albanese in the most lavish Mafia wed- 
ding of all time. At the reception, held in 
the Helmsley Palace in Manhattan, each 
of the five New York families and the New 
Jersey family had their own table. The 
newlyweds received more than $500,000 
in cash in envelopes from wedding guests. 
They moved into a six-bedroom colonial 
mansion on three acres in Mill Neck, an 
exclusive community on the North Shore 
of Long Island, and began to grow their 
young family. 

The Gotti regime reigned supreme. The 
life had been good to the Gottis. Or so it 
seemed. 

Then it all came crashing down in a 
massive bust. 

Just before Christmas 1990, Gotti, Sammy 
Gravano and Frank Locascio—the entire 
administration of the Gambino family—were 
enjoying an espresso at the Ravenite when 
FBI agents stormed the place. As he was 
taken into custody, Gotti, calm and collected, 
asked the arresting agents, “I got time to fin- 
ish my coffee, right?” 

He would never see the streets again. 

With Gotti Sr. and Gravano locked up in 
the maximum-security unit on the ninth 
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rift divided the leadership of the Gambino 
family. The two most feared gangsters in 
the world were awaiting trial on 13 federal 
charges that detailed six murders, including 
the famous hit on Paul Castellano. 

Then the unthinkable happened. Sammy 
the Bull Gravano flipped. When Gravano 
rolled, the news sent shock waves through- 
out the underworld. Gravano agreed to 
become a cooperating witness against 
Gotti after FBI agents played the Raven- 
ite tapes aloud during a pretrial hearing. 
Gotti was outed on the wire calling Gra- 
vano a “mad dog killer,” criticizing him for 
being too greedy and creating “a fuckin’ 
army inside an army.” Gravano knew that 
even if he was to beat the charges, Gotti 
may still have had him whacked. So he 
turned. Gravano pleaded guilty to reduced 
counts of murder and racketeering, admit- 
ted responsibility for 19 killings and took 
the stand to betray his oath of omertà and 
summon the Gotti curse. 

With his father locked up for good, Junior 
took over as acting boss. It had been a 
meteoric rise to the top of the underworld. 
Mafiosi both inside and outside the Gambino 
family questioned the wisdom of naming 
John, only 28 at the time, boss of the most 
powerful Mafia family in the country. An old 
Mafia saying has it that "the family is only 
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Soon after taking over, Junior changed 
his image. He started wearing expensive 
business suits in place of the warm-up 
suits. He donned a pair of wire-rinmed 
glasses. He came to appear more as a dis- 
tinguished, sedate and businesslike version 
of his father. To those who were close to 
John, he began to reveal another, private 
side that was in stark contrast to Gotti Sr. 
He was emotionally devoted to his wife 
and children. 

Defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman, who 
defended Junior in his 2005 trial, told me 
when he first met his client in the law offices 
of Michael Kennedy, the young wiseguy 
struck him as "intimidating, sullen." But 
when they met again six years later, after 
Lichtman had gone to work for defense 
lawyer Gerald Shargel, who represented 
Gotti Sr., Lichtman found that Junior had 
changed. John, according to Lichtman, had 
a sensitivity he found likable. 

“We hit it off,” Lichtman says. “Gotti 
would plop down in a chair and we would 
talk for hours. I found him intelligent, car- 
ing. He would ask a lot of questions. He was 
introspective, human, sensitive, even warm, 
especially when he talked about his family. 
We bonded over a love for our kids." 

While locked up at Ray Brook federal 
prison, Junior confided in Lichtman that 
he wanted out of the life: "I'm out of the 
Mafia. I'm done, finished. I can't stand it 


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PLAYBOY 


102 


anymore. I can't stand these people. I've 
been done with it for a long time." 

"He was complaining how it had destroyed 
his life," Lichtman says. “He meant it. Most 
of our conversation was dominated by his 
saying he was out of the Mafia." Lichtman 
says of Junior, “He changed his kids” dia- 
pers. All he cared about was his kids. After 
he went away to serve his sentence, he would 
call in to parent-teacher conferences from 
prison. I loved the guy." 


Three trials and three hung juries later, it 
appeared some of Senior's Teflon had rubbed 
off on his son. At the conclusion of Gotti III 
in 2006, prosecutors told the presiding judge 
they did not intend to bring another case. 
But the federal government does not give 
up easily, particularly when your name is 
John Gotti. The FBI had unearthed a new 
witness, a college dropout and Queens coke 
dealer of Albanian descent named John Alite. 
Junior and Alite had been childhood bud- 
dies; Gotti had been Alite's best man at his 
wedding. Now, years later, FBI agents found 
Alite hiding out in Brazil. He faced a death 
sentence if extradited to the United States 
on drug-related murder charges. 

Early on the morning of August 5, 2008, 
a dozen FBI agents, some in helicopters, 
swooped in on John Jr.'s Oyster Bay, Long 
Island home and took him into custody on 
charges originating out of Tampa, Flor- 
ida, where Alite, as part of a deal to avoid 
the death penalty, had rolled and impli- 
cated Gotti. Gotti was held in New York 
in isolation, awaiting trial for more than 
a year. There would be no plea this time. 
In the solitary quiet of Junior's prison cell, 
the words of his dead father would come 
back to haunt him: “Raise the black flag.... 


Give no quarter.... Where's your dignity? 
Where's your manhood?" 

Gotti IV was a study in comparison. A son 
was held up to be measured against the long, 
ominous shadow cast by his father. John 
entered the courtroom each day carrying an 
attorney's file folio stuffed with legal docu- 
ments. A burly bodybuilder when he was on 
the street, he appeared smaller, diminished 
by the year-plus he had spent in solitary. 
Gotti had gone gray; not just his hair but his 
flesh too had taken on the dull patina of jail 
cell walls. He nodded, greeted his mother 
and sisters, the loyal Gotti women and family 
friends seated in the front of the courtroom. 
Then he took his seat at the defense table 
beside lead attorney Charles Carnesi. 

“The defendant has killed with his own 
hands," Assistant United States Attorney 
Elie Honig declared in his opening state- 
ment to the jury. Government witnesses 
testified John stabbed to death a kid named 
Daniel Silva in a barroom brawl at a Queens 
pub called the Silver Fox. The killing took 
place in 1983, when Gotti was 19. On cross- 
examination, none of the witnesses could 
actually place the knife in Gotti's hands. 

The man who aspired to become Junior's 
Judas, his Sammy Gravano, John Alite 
took the stand as the government's star 
witness. Alite admitted to committing mur- 
ders, countless beatings, robberies, home 
invasions, kidnappings. He told of mov- 
ing millions of dollars' worth of cocaine 
through half a dozen Queens bars; he 
admitted he lied as a matter of course in his 
career as a criminal. But now, Alite claimed, 
since becoming a government witness, he 
was telling the truth. He swore he partici- 
pated in all these crimes in the service of. 
the defendant, John Gotti Jr. 

Alite testified John ordered him to 


“My tax returns were based on the assumption that 
the IRS was understaffed.” 


murder a drug dealer named George 
Grosso for using the Gotti name as sanction 
for his cocaine-dealing enterprise. Alite and 
another witness, a retired corrupt New York 
City cop named Philip Baroni, described 
how Grosso was taken for a one-way ride. 
Alite sat in the rear of the car behind Grosso. 
He shot him in the head, spit on him and 
called him a motherfucker. 

According to Alite's testimony, Gotti Sr. 
gave responsibility for a hit on Gambino sol- 
dier Louis DiBono to his son John Jr. DiBono 
was found lying in the front seat of his Cadil- 
lac, parked in the garage under the World 
Trade Center, with bullets in his head. 

Alite's word was the only evidence the pros- 
ecution was able to produce connecting John 
to either the Grosso or the DiBono hit. 

“Three trials, there's no mention of any 
murders," Gotti says over pizza at Grimaldi's. 
“Now all of a sudden they find this Alite and 
I'm charged with three murders. Alite was 
a mad dog who got off the leash. He was an 
animal. Even the Mob didn't want him." 

A DEA agent once said to me, when 
describing how a jury trial works, “We get 
up there and tell our lies; then you get up 
and tell your lies. It's just a question of 
whose lies the jury believes." That may be 
an exaggeration, but it would be naive to 
believe that every word uttered on the wit- 
ness stand is the truth, the whole truth and 
nothing but the truth. 

After 10 weeks of trial the jury retired 
to deliberate. Once again prosecutors had 
presented no physical evidence to connect 
Junior with any ofthe alleged crimes. Their 
case rested entirely on testimony from coop- 
erating witnesses, snitches who admitted to 
committing crimes and lying as a way of life. 
The strongest thing the government had 
going for it was the defendant's name. 

He's John Gotti; he must be guilty. 


"One thing you can say, Dad: I ain't a tenth 
of you, but I am you.”—John Gotti Jr. to his 
father at their last meeting. 


Fathers and sons. The relationship is 
as deep and at times as stormy as the Sar- 
gasso Sea. A son may love his father and 
seek his approval by following his example, 
as did John with his proud mafioso father. 
A son may resent his father and strive to 
be different, as I did with my father. Or he 
may hate his father and live a life fueled by 
anger, as did John Gotti Sr. for his father. 
Sons are shaped by the example set by their 
fathers. The influence is as inevitable as it 
is profound. 

"I can tell you one thing,” Angela Gotti, 
John's older sister and the firstborn of the 
five Gotti children, told me over lunch in the 
courthouse cafeteria. “My brother is nothing 
like our father. I loved my father. I wor- 
shipped the ground he walked on. He put 
that family before his family. For John, his 
wife and kids are everything.” 

“Johnnie [Sr.] was not a good father,” Vic- 
toria Gotti, the Dapper Don's wife, added. 
“He was not a good husband. But he was a 
good man.” Then: “He was one of 13 chil- 
dren. They were very poor. Johnnie grew up 
with nothing. My husband had 30, 40 pairs 
of shoes because, when he was a kid, he had 


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PLAYBOY 


104 


to go to school with two different shoes. The 
other kids laughed at him.” 

“There were 18 kids,” Vicki Gotti, the fam- 
ily biographer, corrected. “Eleven survived.” 

After lunch Victoria and 1 rode up in the 
elevator together. I confided in her that I 
had met her husband while I was locked up 
in the Metropolitan Correctional Center. It 
was the mid-1980s. I was at MCC awaiting 
trial on charges of having been the kingpin 
of an international marijuana-smuggling 
enterprise. Gotti was jailed pending bail in 
the first racketeering case he ultimately beat 
by bribing a juror. I had become friendly 
with Gotti's goombah, Angelo Ruggiero, who 
is John Jr.’s godfather and his middle name- 
sake. Angelo introduced me to the don. Gotti 
Sr. exuded gangster charm. He was quick- 
witted, cocksure. He carried himself with the 
strut and style of a matador—a born boss. 

Victoria looked at me and appeared 
to relax. 

“So you know the life,” she said. 

“I thank God I didn't have children 
then," I said. "I used to see fathers in the 
prison visiting room with their kids. It broke 
my heart." 

"When I found out what Johnnie had 
done, that he led my son into that life, I was 
so angry with him I wouldn't speak to him 
for two and a half years. I wouldn't visit him; 
I wouldn't have anything to do with him. I 
couldn't forgive him for that. If I found out 
he had five mistresses, I wouldn't have been 
as mad at him as I was when I knew what he 
had done to my son. When I realized how 
sick he was, I went to see him, and I forgave 
him. You know, I still loved the man." 

"What did your husband say when you 
confronted him?" I asked. 

“Johnnie told me, ‘I did it to protect him. 
They would have killed him.” " 

If his enemies couldn't get to him, Gotti 
reasoned, his son made a likely target. By 
bringing John into the Gambino family, 
John Sr. believed he could shield his son 
from the treachery he knew only too well. 
But that could simply have been Gotti's ego, 
the imprisoned godfather seeking to main- 
tain control over his empire by foisting his 
son into leadership. 


There is a tragic inevitability to John 
Gotti Jr.'s life passage; he was preordained 
to become who he was. How do you grow up 
in the orbit of the boss of all bosses, named 
for him and not become a wiseguy? You 
either renounce your father and his life— 
a virtual impossibility if your father is John 
Gotti—or you embrace it. In the end, John 
Gotti Jr. did both. 


“The one thing I found totally unbeliev- 
able,” I say to Junior as we finish the last 
slices of pizza, “was the government's claim 
that once you become a made member of 
the Mob, there's no getting out." 

"Exactly. Says who? The government? 
There could be retaliation,” Gotti admits, 
"but I have to live with that." 

Joseph Bonanno, boss of the Bonanno 
family, quit and retired to Arizona to write 
his memoirs. His son Salvatore "Bill" 
Bonanno also walked away, as did Michael 
Franzese, son of legendary Colombo family 
capo John “Sonny” Franzese. 

“You don't think your father would con- 
sider what you have done to be brave? To 
make the decision you made?" I ask. 

"My father?" says John. "No, not my 
father. Not that man. He lived and died by 
what he believed." 

The Gotti regime changed the face of the 
modern American Mafia. John J. Gotti and 
John A. Gotti broke all the rules. Between 
them they ripped the mask off the hidden 
visage of the Men of Honor. Now it's mostly 
history. Of the five New York families, four 
are in chaos. Only the secretive Genovese 
family remains strong. 

As I left my meeting with the self-exiled 
former Mafia chieftain, I thought I could 
feel the old pirate roll over in his grave. The 
black flag fluttered and fell; the white flag 
was hoisted in its place. “Okay,” Gotti mur- 
mured to the ghosts of the underworld, "let 
the kid be his own man." Junior was safe— 
physically and mentally. Maybe now the boss 
would rest in peace. 


"Actually, I work from home." 


SARAH SILVERMAN 


(continued from page 38) 
this video is amazing." And I felt bad. I just 
felt his expectations were way too high. I 
said, “Jimmy, I don't want to disappoint you. 
It's a funny video, but that's all it is." 
PLAYBOY: Little did you realize. 

SILVERMAN: He tried to act angry when the 
cameras were back on him, but I watched 
him as he watched it, and he had this huge 
grin on his face. 

PLAYBOY: It went on to become hugely pop- 
ular on the Internet. Is that something you 
could ever duplicate? 

SILVERMAN: I’m very proud of it, but it was def- 
initely a fluke. When I did “The Great Schlep” 
[a campaign to get young Jewish people to 
encourage their Florida grandparents to vote 
for Obama], I knew the Jewish Council for 
Education and Research enlisted me because 
ofthe Damon thing. And I remember telling 
them, "I'm psyched to do this, but please lower 
your expectations. ‘I’m Fucking Matt Damon’ 
had a movie star in it. And it had a song with a 
catchy melody and the word fuck in it. That's 
a formula I can't repeat every time." 
PLAYBOY: It's been said that all musicians 
want to be comics 
SILVERMAN: And all comics want to be musi- 
cians. Yeah, I think that's true. There's a part 
of me that wants to be a serious musician. I 
love songs about heartache and heartbreak. 
Do you ever listen to Patty Griffin? I just 
adore her. I wrote this song—nothing as 
good as Patty Griffin would write—but it's 
more heartfelt than what I usually do. 
PLAYBOY: Do you have any plans to record it? 
SILVERMAN: Oh God, no. I would never do 
it. There's nothing lamer than a comedian 
taking himself seriously. 

PLAYBOY: Would you let somebody else 
record it? 

SILVERMAN: I want to get one of those teen 
pop girls to sing it, like Taylor Swift or Miley 
Cyrus, because it's about teen angst. It's about 
a teen girl wanting to be an adult. If I did it, 
it'd just be lame. But I think it'd really be cool 
if people were like, “You know that new Miley 
Cyrus song? The comedian Sarah Silverman 
wrote it." That would be awesome. 
PLAYBOY: Does the song have a title yet? 
SILVERMAN: Not really. I might call it "I 
Could Do That Too," maybe. [pauses, then 
breaks into embarrassed smile] Naw, that's not 
the name. 

PLAYBOY: It sounds like the song exposes 
a raw nerve. Do you feel uncomfortable 
sharing too much of yourself without the 
comedy detachment? 

SILVERMAN: Yeah, but I also think that as 
much as there are no rules, there are certain 
rules. The second you take yourself seriously 
or show you're taking yourself seriously, it's 
not funny. It's a comedy killer. 

PLAYBOY: But if you're not trying to be funny, 
why does it matter? 

SILVERMAN: I don't know. [long pause] Some 
things are just for private, you know? It's 
like people thinking I'm cold or this or that. 
It's unfortunate, but I don't need strang- 
ers to know I'm warm. [laughs] I don't need 
strangers to know the real me. 


WILL FORTE 


(continued from page 76) 
Albuquerque and it was hot. Nudity is 
nature's air-conditioning. 


Q4 

PLAYBOY: From Saturday Night Live to movies 
like The Brothers Solomon, you've proved to 
be a master of the vacant, emotionless grin. 
What goes through your head when you're 
playing dumb? 

FORTE: I think that's what I look like when 
I'm sleeping. If I was sleeping and opened 
my eyes for just a minute and you took a pic- 
ture, that's exactly what I'd look like. 


Q5 

PLAYBOY: Is it true your audition for SNL 
involved excessive profanity? 

FORTE: I used to do a sketch at the Ground- 
lings Theater in Los Angeles. I was a street 
performer who dressed entirely in gold and 
did robotic movements for money. I sing 
about what it's like to make a living on the 
streets, and I reveal that I suck cock for my 
gold face paint. The second half of the song 
is just the words cock and face paint. When I 
came out to New York for the Saturday Night 
Live audition, I did that song. When you 
audition for SNL you're alone on a stage, 
and [executive producer] Lorne Michaels 
and a bunch of other people are in the audi- 
ence, and they don't really laugh at all. I 
was up there singing about cocks and face 
paint to complete silence. After it was over 
I walked toward the exit, and as I passed 
Lorne I said, "Sorry about all the cocks." 
[laughs] Two weeks later they hired me. 


Q6 

PLAYBOY: Andy Samberg gets all the credit for 
being SNL’s male heartthrob. Have you taken 
any steps to increase your sex appeal? 

FORTE: I have, yes. I've been doing a lot of sit- 
ups and push-ups and.... [sighs] No, that's not 
true at all. I’ve accepted my place on the show. 
Andy is the sex symbol, and I get to do all the 
sex offender roles and the older pervy dudes. 


Q7 
PLAYBOY: Now that you mention it, you do play 
an awful lot of perverted characters. Are you 
more comfortable creeping out an audience? 
FORTE: At some point last year we were work- 
ing on a sketch about an overly polite sex 
offender, and it dawned on me that I'd played 
an awful lot of sex-offender-type characters. I 
thought, People are going to think I really am 
this creepy dude. I hope nobody thinks that. 


Q8 
PLAYBOY: Many of your characters have mus- 
taches. Do you feel funnier with facial hair? 
FORTE: Absolutely I do. I know sometimes 
it's not appropriate for a character to have a 
mustache, but I can't help myself. I got into 
a really tense mustache standoff with Lorne. 
My third year on the show I did a scene 
about a guy in a restaurant who forces his 
waiter to keep grinding pepper on his salad. 
"Grind it! Grind it! Grind, grind, grind!" I 
thought the character should have a mus- 
tache, but Lorne didn't agree. It became this 
major back-and-forth where I was pleading 


with him, "Please, let me wear a mustache!" 
Obviously Lorne won that argument. 


99 

PLAYBOY: You took over the George W. Bush 
impersonations after Will Ferrell left SNL but 
were quickly replaced by Jason Sudeikis. How 
did you lose out on playing the president? 
FORTE: It was definitely something I wanted. 
In general, Pm not good at impersonations, 
and Will Ferrell was doing Bush long before I 
got on the show. He made it such a wonderful, 
awesome character. When Lorne called me 
into his office to tell me I wouldn't be doing 
Bush anymore, 99 percent of me thought, Oh, 
yes, this is great news! And one percent was 
like, Oh no, what did I do wrong? But I think 
Jason is great at it. He does a wonderful Bush. 
[long pause] I still hate him for it. 


Q10 

PLAYBOY: During an SNL scene with quarter- 
back Peyton Manning, he strummed your 
leg like a guitar. Was it frightening to be 
manhandled by a football legend? 

FORTE: Peyton is much taller than I am, so 
when he pulled my leg up to play, it got very 
close to a groin injury. I'm not very flex- 
ible, but for him to play my leg effectively 
he had to pull it up to a dangerous level for 
me and my crotch. Thankfully I was fine, 
but it would have been an honor to have my 
groin injured by Peyton Manning. 


an 

PLAYBOY: We've heard a lot of wild sto- 
ries about the postshow parties at SNL. Is 
it nothing but wall-to-wall celebrities and 
punch bowls filled with cocaine? 

FORTE: 1 don't know what the parties were 
like in the 1970s and 1980s. I've heard crazy 
drug stories, but it's not like that anymore. 
It's kind of a family atmosphere...if your 
family is a bunch of shameless drunks. 


Q12 
PLAYBOY: Your real name is Orville. Why did you 
drop it? Isn't Orville a funnier name than Will? 
FORTE: I'm the fourth Orville in my family. 
My full name is Orville Willis Forte IV. I 
don’t know how the name got started or why 
it’s still passed along, because none of the 
Orvilles in my family have gone by Orville. 
My dad goes by Reb, my grandpa goes by 
Junie, and my great-grandpa was Buster. 
Even though the whole thing seems crazy, if 
1 ever have a son he's definitely going to be 
Orville Willis Forte V. Once it gets to num- 
ber four you kind of have to keep it going. 


Q13 

PLAYBOY: You were a history major at UCLA. 
When did you first realize you may have 
made a mistake? 

FORTE: Almost instantly. I somehow got good 
grades, but I wasn't a great student. I basi- 
cally persuaded the other students in class 
to do all the work, and then I just memo- 
rized their outlines. To this day I've retained 
none of that information. I can barely hold 
my own in Trivial Pursuit; the history ques- 
tions are way too complicated for me. 


Q14 
PLAYBOY: The memory loss may be 
explained by your other college experience, 


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PLAYBOY 


106 


as a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha 
fraternity. Did you have a few blackout 
drinking binges? 

FORTE: More than a few. I was a mess in 
college. In my freshman year I gained 40 
pounds, all from beer and vodka. My entire 
college drinking experience can be summed 
up with one story. I went with a friend to 
a sorority party with a Western theme, so I 
was dressed like a cowboy. We showed up, 
and after that it gets hazy. The next thing I 
remember is waking up at six in the morn- 
ing in the back of a postal jeep. [laughs] I had 
no idea where the fuck I was—all I could 
see were postal jeeps. I walked around for 
almost four hours looking for a pay phone 
to call my date and find out what the hell I 
did last night. I was convinced the fraternity 
was going to find out and kick me out. My 
friend said, “Are you kidding? You might get 
elected president of the fraternity.” 


АД ME 


Q15 

PLAYBOY: You played Barney Stinson's inept 
wingman on the sitcom How I Met Your Mother. 
Are you a little better with the ladies? 
FORTE: I’m not the kind of person who can 
just walk up to a woman in a bar and strike 
up a conversation. But I think I'd be an okay 
wingman. If I'm approaching a woman for 
a friend, there's no pressure. Approaching 
somebody for myself, I'm a mess. 


Q16 

PLAYBOY: We've heard rumors that you 
owed Amy Poehler $15,000. Care to 
defend yourself? 

FORTE: Okay, here's the thing. When Amy was 
promoting Blades of Glory and going on talk 
shows, I told her, as a joke, "Let's get the Will 
Forte name out there. I'll give you $100 if you 
mention my name on TV.” And I think she 
misunderstood it as “ГЇЇ give you $100 every 
time you mention my name.” It was my fault 


“Your daughter is the most beautiful girl I've ever met, 
Mrs. Beezley. I guess she gets her amazing tits from your side of 
the family. Am I right?” 


for not establishing the terms or making it 
clear that it was a one-time deal. She did a lot 
of TV spots to promote the movie, and my tab 
really started to run up. I think we reached a 
compromise that was charity-related. 


Q17 

PLAYBOY: A woman claiming to be your grand- 
mother appeared in some hilarious Internet 
ads for your first big movie, The Brothers Solo- 
mon. Was that a stunt grandmother? 

FORTE: No, that was my real grandma, 
Grandma Helen. She was a magical woman. 
I didn’t know it at the time, but she was 
declining in health when we shot those spots. 
She had one of those oxygen tubes in her 
nose, and we had to take it away from her 
whenever she did her lines. [laughs] I felt 
bad. I kept asking her, “How are you feel- 
ing, Grandma? Do you want oxygen again?” 
But she was a trouper. There was one point 
when she admitted, “I think I need my oxy- 
gen now,” but we were right in the middle of 
a take and my mom was like, “No, no, no. Get 
this one line first.” [laughs] She was so great, 
so funny, and then two weeks later she died. 
A small part of me feels I might've been semi- 
responsible. I still have this memory of taking 
the oxygen away from her face so we could 
film her. “No oxygen for you, Grandma!” 


Q18 

PLAYBOY: You French-kissed fellow SNL 
cast member Fred Armisen on the air. How 
would you rate Armisen's kissing skills? 
FORTE: It's funny you ask about that, because 
just last week we were working on a sketch 
in which I had to kiss Fred Armisen again. 
And it was a real deep, heavy kiss. I can say 
for the record that Fred Armisen is a great 
kisser. I'm happy for Lizzy [Elisabeth Moss, 
Armisen's wife and a co-star of Mad Men], 
because she's going to be satisfied in that 
department. I can vouch for him. 


Q19 

PLAYBOY: You videotaped your sister giving 
birth. How was that not weird and awkward? 
FORTE: She asked me if I would videotape 
it because her husband, who was also at the 
birth, is a little squeamish. The idea was I 
would be shooting from the “good” angle—P'd 
be standing behind her, up by her head, fac- 
ing down. But then my sister asked, "If you're 
comfortable with it, I'd love if you would vid- 
eotape it from...” the red zone, I guess ГЇЇ call 
it. [laughs] She wanted me to shoot the birth 
head-on. It was amazing seeing a new little 
person come into the world, but the imagery 
was pretty vivid, ГЇЇ admit to that. 


Q20 

PLAYBOY: On SNL's Weekend Update you 
introduced your "semi-celebrity" sex-tape 
sampler, in which you perform a naked 
ThighMaster routine and pour honey over 
your chest. What can we expect from an 
actual Will Forte sex tape? 

FORTE: A lot of dissatisfaction on the wom- 
an's part. It will be really quiet, occasionally 
broken by mumbled apologies. And the 
woman will say things like, “That's all right, 
that's okay, don't worry about it." There'll 
be a lot of “Don't worry about it.” 


ASYLUM 


(continued from page 58) 

“Pd love to know what you think.” 

“I think this Comando fellow—whoever 
is behind these messages, I think they want 
you to read it to me, that's why they sent it 
in Spanish, even if the subject is in English. 
I think it's meant for both of us, that's what. 
So—don’t force me to show it to somebody 
else, Dad. It said to ask you.” 

“We are going to kill you like a dog.” 

Barrera heard his voice translating, Isn't 
that how I make my living?, what he had spent 
his puta existencia doing, the one thing he 
did well since he was a child, well enough 
so that he wouldn't have to do it forever 
in some godforsaken consulate near the 
stinking coconut-oil-infested docks of Buena- 
ventura or close to the dangerous streets 
of Medellín, or even in air-conditioned 
quarters in Bogotá. Adroit and exact and 
rapid enough so he could graduate to an 
office in Washington and then to another 
more spacious one and ultimately a large 
room like the one he now occupied. Head 
of translators from and into Spanish at the 
Department, head honcho, his job now and 
then, pressing and crushing and corner- 
ing each word in Spanish until it exposed 
the nakedness of its meaning, squeezing all 
peril and murk and ambivalence out of the 
language of his mother as he transferred 
every sentence into the quiet, clean cer- 
tainties of his father's gringo tongue. That 
was Barrera's job as a kid, building a daily 
channel between the dark woman from that 
port city who had given him birth and the 
tall blond foreigner who left them when 
Barrera was eight, making that man who 
was his father, had been his gringo papá 
for eight years, making him understand 
what the alien mass of sounds and syllables 
really meant, just like now he was going to 
make sure his gringo son understood, and 
just as he had helped her understand, the 
hembra espléndida who was to be his gringa 
wife, who had once been his wife. Barrera 
had been doing this all his life, and now 
here he was again, one more time, automat- 
ically translating those words that he should 
not be uttering, that he had not heard for 
almost 18 years, that he did not want his 
son to take to someone else, that Barrera 
wanted to keep under wraps, domesticate, 
make those words safe, anodyne and under 
control, yes, anesthetize them. 

“We are going to kill you like a dog," Bar- 
rera's voice was neutral, almost remote. “No, 
not like a dog, because dogs deserve some- 
thing better. We are going to kill you like a 
human being should be killed: slowly, so you 
know what is happening to you." 

Ricky didn't react. Just like his mother, 
just like Cynthia to not give away her hand, 
tip anyone off to what she was thinking. 

All they could hear in the silence of the 
night was the sullen whir of the computer, 
stirring codes or clicks or memories inside 
its spotless metal frame, deep inside its metal 
frame or maybe not that deep, maybe on the 
surface, all shiny and gleaming spotless. 

Barrera knew that he was supposed to 
explode at the suggestion of this threat 
to the family, swear that he would call the 


police, call security at the Department, hunt 
down the perpetrator of this madness, of 
this—that's what Ricky expected of him, 
that's what any father would do, that's what 
he couldn't bring himself to—not a sound, 
he who was so good at words and with words 
and at ease in two languages, abruptly trans- 
formed from head honcho into resident 
deaf-mute, that's what he was. 

“What's going on, Dad? Who would want 
to hurt us?" 

And before Barrera could answer, another 
message flashed into the in-box, another letter 
from Comando Anesthesia, another sub- 
ject heading: 

THIS IS NOT A THREAT. YOUR DAD KNOWS THIS 
IS NOT A THREAT. 

Now it was Ricky's arm that reached over 
his father's shoulder, stretched a hand out 
and down to click twice on that message, 
revealing new words in Spanish: 

Que tu papá te diga lo que sucedió en Colom- 
bia justo antes de que nacieras. 

Ask your father to tell you what happened in 
Colombia just before you were born. 

Barrera didn't translate it right away. This 
was crazy. Lots of things happened in Colom- 
bia, everything had happened in Colombia: 
his own birth, his bifurcated childhood, his 
fatherless adolescence, his tentative employ- 
ment at the consulate in Buenaventura, his 
work ethic, his genius for interpreting, his 
hours at the U.S.-Colombian Friendship 
Institute reading every book on every shelf, 
his That’s how he’d answer the inevi- 
table question Ricky was about to unleash, 
his whole life before his son had been born, 
that's what—though not what Barrera was 
thinking, not what he'd been thinking ever 
since the word perro had come up, no, not like 
a dog, because dogs deserve something better. 

“What happened in Colombia, Dad? 
Before I was born?” 

As if Ricky no longer needed a translator, 
as if that word, Colombia, that country where 
Barrera's parents had miraculously met and 
fallen in love and conceived him, as if that 
one word were enough for the boy to sud- 
denly read and comprehend Spanish, as if 
he had not refused to learn it, to speak it, 
to acknowledge its existence. 

“Nothing,” Barrera said quickly, too 
quickly. A mistake. It was a mistake to deny 
anything that soon, when you're in a hurry 
all sorts of blunders have a chance to surface. 
What Cynthia had told him as she sorted out 
those who sought asylum legitimately from 
those who were faking it: Always be suspicious 
of the ones who answer right away, who don't 
take their time. But Cynthia was not around 
to counsel him about what to do now, not 
around at all, in fact, and Barrera couldn't 
help himself. He needed to slip out that 
one word, nothing, before la mujer who was 
sending these e-mails interfered yet again, 
continued her harassment апа. But it 
couldn't be that woman, esa mujer, she didn't 
know English, she wasn't even: Maybe 
the computer, something inside the com- 
puter itself? Had the computer itself found 
a way to—? Wait, wait, that's even crazier, this 
makes no sense, stop it, Pue got to end this. 

End this. If you want this to end. Si quieres 
que esto se termine. 

They waited, both of them, father and 
son, like twins caught in a mother's twisted 


womb. They waited for guidance or a rev- 
elation or something else, anything else, a 
truce, maybe a truce. 

It was dawning outside. 

It was dawning outside and there were 
five days left before Ricky turned 17. 

"I have to get to work and you—— 

“Yeah, school.” 

“Pl drop you off.” 

“No need to.” 

“Pl drop you off.” 

The first thing Barrera did at work, before 
he had even stripped off his coat glistening 
with snow, before he tasted the coffee his 
secretary had poured for him, piping-hot 
Colombian Juan Valdez java always there 
when he arrived at precisely 8:45 each 
morning, before he even said hello to her, 
to anybody, the first thing was to log on and 
scuttle into Ricky's e-mail and — 

There it was. 

On his screen, floating like an eye in the 
sky of his screen, on his screen like an eye 
opening and closing. 

Antes de que cumpla los diecisiete, lo tienes 
que hacer antes. 

Before his 17th birthday, you have to do il 
before then. 

He logged on to Ricky's e-mail account. 
Was it also there, had she found a way to? 

It was there, also there in the subject: 
SOON HE'LL BE OF AGE. And the same words 
in the message itself in Spanish, which the 
automatic translator inside Barrera kept 
repeating: Before his 17th birthday, you have 
to do it before then. 

He clicked savagely on the reply button. 
¿Quién eres? he wrote. And then deleted 
the words in a rush. He knew who it was, 
who it had to be on the other end of the 
e-mail, the one person it couldn't be, that 
woman was: 

Barrera drank down the coffee in one 
gulp, burning his throat, happy to feel 
his mouth and tongue and throat scalded, 
throbbing, proof that he was alive, that Ricky 
was alive somewhere in the same city and 
the same galaxy even if he was probably 
looking at the same words right now, Antes 
de que cumpla los diecisiete, lo tienes que hacer 
antes. And Ricky wouldn't show it to any of his 
classmates who spoke Spanish or any of his 
teachers, and he wouldn't mention it to Bar- 
rera when they met that night for dinner, not 
then, not ever, Ricky would make believe, just 
like his father, that nobody was sending these 
messages, nobody was erasing them. 

Because Barrera did erase the next mes- 
sage, over and over. 

The number 2,516. 

When it appeared, at three in the morning, 
with Ricky slumbering in the next room and 
Barrera watching his son's in-box as ifit were 
a wild animal about to leap out of the machine. 
One second after that number flickered inside 
the new message from Comando Anesthesia, 
his finger was there, stabbing it: obliterated, 
gone, gone forever. Though no, it came back, 
it returned from who knows where, the e-mail 
reappeared on the screen each time he erased 
it, and now, now, now the number was re- 
emerging directly on the screen, it did not 
come in a message, it did not tumble into the 
in-box, did not have a subject, not from any- 
one, not with a reply even feasible, just flashing 
on and off the screen, invading his screen and 


107 


PLAYBOY 


108 


Ricky's screen, not a wink, he responded to his 
son's unasked question the next morning, I 
never sleep, you know that. 

Except this time it was true. 

And this time Ricky was the one who 
pretended that everything was normal, 
everything was fine, this time it was the boy's 
turn not to say anything. 

Not a word. 

Not even to remind his father that his birth- 
day was coming up, three days from now. 

Barrera called in sick. 

He heard Ricky puttering around the 
house, sitting at his computer and then get- 
ting up noisily and then sitting down quietly 
again. And Barrera didn't tell his son he 
should be going to school, didn't tell him 
anything, both of them secluded in the house 
as if a blizzard had descended in the garden, 
right there outside the door, a plague seeth- 
ing just beyond the threshold if either one 
of them dared to open the door. 

Barrera looked at the empty screen, waited, 
tried not to close his eyes, closed them and 
instantaneously opened them again, because 
that woman was inside the in-box of his eyes, 
in there and out there and in here some- 
where, esa mujer. He wasn't going to fall 
asleep, he couldn't afford to fall asleep. 

His eyes strayed to the picture of Cynthia. 
Her last photo before she became too ill to 
go out, not a sign of what was gnawing away 
at her bones, a smile like heaven on her lips, 
and underneath, the words she wanted him 
to remember when things got rough, the 
words she had written in her flawless, tight 
script, Don't ever look back. 

“Easy for you to say that,” he said to her. And 
then shook his head. No, no, he wasn't going to 


“Mmm, I love the way you handle that, Miss.... 


start speaking to Cynthia's photo as ifit were a 
person of flesh and blood and limbs and ears. 
What came next? Talking to the screen as if 
it were—asking what would happen if these 
messages started to appear on every screen, 
everywhere, for everyone, if — 

A todos, no, came the answer on the screen. 
Sólo a tu hijo. 

Not everyone. Just your son. 

Barrera tried to rub that one out as soon as 
it materialized, get rid of the son of a bitch. It 
didn't go away, it wouldn't go away until it was 
good and ready, those words came and went 
of their own accord now, regardless of what he 
did, regardless of the fact that now only two 
days remained until Ricky's birthday, neither 
of them mentioning this, calling in sick, father 
and then son—yes, a bug is going around—eating 
up the supplies in the fridge and the pantry, 
not venturing out even to retrieve The Wash- 
ington Post, watching the papers accumulate 
outside like a dead dog in the snow, hardly 
acknowledging each other's existence, except 
at breakfast, except to say thanks for the pan- 
cakes, Dad, except to answer just like your mother 
used to make them, hijo, not mentioning that one 
day from now, tomorrow, it was going to be 
Ricky's birthday. The only difference between 
them: that the son slept at night and that Bar- 
rera had not slept for five days, for five nights. 
Not a wink, not for a minute, not for an hour. 
Now truly nothing, nada. 

Staring at the night, staring at the night as 
ifit were a screen, staring at his wife’s photo 
as ifit were a window into day. 

Antes de que cumpla los diecisiete. 

Four hours to go before his son turned 17. 

Si quieres que esto se termine, ya sabes lo que 
tienes que hacer. 


» 


But he didn't, he didn't know what he 
needed to do. 

¿Dime qué tengo que hacer? 

What if he did ask the photo what to do, 
what was needed? 

Don't ever look back, his wife's only answer, 
then and now. 

¿Dime qué tengo que hacer, qué quieres de mí? 

He didn't know anymore if he was think- 
ing those words or saying them out loud, 
What do you want from me? The glimmer of 
a whisper that nobody present or far away 
could ever have registered, not even Bar- 
rera could have heard those words so faint 
so quiet, not with a tape recorder, not with a 
secret camera, Ricky couldn't eavesdrop on 
those words—that's how hidden Barrera's 
thoughts had become. 

What do you want from me? 

The screen said nothing. 

Do you want to lake my boy, is that what 
you want? 

No answer, not a shimmer on the screen, 
before his mind foundered for lack of sleep, 
faltered into a sea of confusion, unable to 
distinguish anything anymore, having to 
comfort himself with those words written so 
many days ago they seemed a mirage, This is 
not a threat, your dad knows this is not a threat. 

What do you want from me? 

"What happened in Colombia, Dad? 
Before I was born?" 

It couldn't be Ricky who was asking that 
again. He went to his son's room, and Ricky 
was blessedly asleep, smiling; the kid was 
smiling into the softness of the pillow, smiling 
as if hell did not exist, as if he would not have 
to awaken to his 17th birthday a few hours 
from now and find out that hell did exist. 

"Nothing," he whispered to Ricky. “Noth- 
ing happened." 

He left the room and went straight to 
his own computer and opened an e-mail 
addressed to his son. He typed in what he 
had just murmured to Ricky, spilled the 
black and quiet milk of denial onto the 
screen, a last desperate attempt to keep at 
bay the other words, the other words that 
had been simmering inside him since the 
message about the dog, the perro on the 
screen—we are going to kill you like a human 
being should be killed: slowly, so you know what 
is happening to you—since then. 

“Nothing,” Barrera wrote. “Nothing hap- 
pened.” And heard his voice say, “That's 
God's truth,” and he began to write those 
words as well and then found his fingers 
erasing them, all of it, he discovered the 
blank screen once again there, the cursor 
blinking on and off and once again asking 
him to—asking him to...what, what did that 
woman want from him? 

“Ricardo,” he said those syllables out loud 
and then wrote his son's name on the screen. 
“Querido Ricardo, Ricky mio,” my Ricky, my 
Ricardo. And then was about to write: “We all 
do things in our lives that ——" but no, it wasn't 
that. And then: "There was a woman many 
years ago who——” and it wasn't that either. 

It was, it was.... 

It happened before Ricky was born. 

"This happened before you were born, 
Ricardo. I like to tell myself that it happened 
so you could be born, so I could marry your 
mother. So I could come to this country and 
live a decent life without violence, escape 


from the fate of the father who abandoned 
me, the mother who made her living by sell- 
ing what women sell. I knew that I would 
never leave you alone. I knew that I would 
stay by the side of the gringa I loved. 

“I met her at the consulate in Bogotá, 
your mother. You know that much.” 

Barrera read over what he had written. 

Yes, what he needed to do. 

Si quieres que esto se termine. 

His hands were commanding themselves, 
were flying solo, were flowing word after 
word onto the keyboard and through the 
screen and into this letter to his son. 

“She liked me. I realized that she liked 
me because—well, there are things that men 
know, that women know, that don't need to 
be expressed with words. But she made her 
case, so to speak, by always asking that this 
new mulatto interpreter from Buenaventura 
by way of Medellín, that this man Barrera be 
the one to translate for her whenever there 
was a particularly complicated situation, a 
complicated person, someone whose visa we 
would have to deny, some pain that was being 
inflicted and that she couldn't avoid and 
wanted to share, and I was the employee she 
chose for that sharing. I was the one.... An 
ally, someone who would understand, even 
approve, perhaps forgive her hard choices. 

“That morning, we....” 

Barrera stopped. He erased the last 
three words. 

“That morning when that woman came 
in, she....” 

And again he stopped and again he 
removed the phrase. 

“It started —what happened, I mean—it 
really started the night before. Your mother 
and I, we'd been out for drinks and intended 
to go dancing after dinner. She was trying a 
sancocho de pescado—but not me, no fish stew 
for me. Buenaventura had cured me of the 
sea—I was a steak man—and I can remem- 
ber the precise moment when everything 
changed, when what was to happen the next 
day was set in motion. 

“We were at a table on the sidewalk and 
two gamines—you know, street kids—they 
were watching us from behind a parked 
car. They’d been shooed away by the waiter 
and then the maitre d' and then some burly 
security guards, but the boys—waifs, really — 
kept on popping up, peering at us. One of 
them, well, he even winked at me and sort 
of smirked, a leer perhaps Pd call it, but 
his teeth were perfectly white, straight and 
perfect, as if he had been well nourished at 
home, as if nobody had ever beat him or 
punched him or raped him or forced him 
to roam the avenues of Bogotá. I knew that 
kid. I could have been that kid when my 
father left us in Buenaventura. I think that 
if I hadn't been blessed with English, with 
the certainty that I belonged elsewhere, Pd 
have taken to the streets myself, and Pm 
sure that my mother wouldn't have come 
after me to bring her son home. My mother 
was too busy sniffing for a substitute for her 
vanished gringo, my vanished gringo dad. 
So when the gamin winked at me, I knew 
what his lewd gesture meant. It was a wink 
of encouragement, that said, yes, I should 
ask the gorgeous redhead home with me, I 
should show her a good time, promised me 
that she would say yes—and how strange that 


I should need his approval, from that lost 
child not older than eight, because I turned 
to her and said: You know, I never sleep, but I 
think tonight will be different. Tonight I won't sleep 
due to another reason. And she answered, as the 
street urchin had anticipated she would, she 
answered: We'll see if you're right. 

“My response to that acknowledgment had 
been unexpected—not what she or I had been 
planning, I think, but maybe not unexpected 
for the two gamines. Because 1 stood up with 
my plate—half the steak was still on it and all 
the potatoes and remnants of a lovely béar- 
naise sauce—and I carried it with me to the 
kids and just gave it to them, plate and all, a 
reward for their witnessing of my triumph, 
what I had not dared to do or ask or dream of 
up till that moment, and somehow also a way 
of telling them, You can also make it this far, like 
I have. I educated myself, I read every book in every 
library, I found a way. I'm going to make love to this 
wondrous gringa and then we're going to leave this 
stink hole of a country, and 1 did it all on my own. 
You don't have to stay behind. You can come along 
too. You can also change your life. 

“And I waited a bit, while they tasted the 
steak, munched at it in a much too leisurely 
way for two famished scamps, so I asked 
them how the meat was, ifit was good, and 
the kid who had winked at me, he repeated 
his perfect smile with his perfect teeth, so 
out of place in that grimy, bedrugged face, 
he said, in Spanish of course, he said: “The 
steak up the street, at El Barranco, it's bet- 
ter, free ranging cattle, more tender, juicier, 
you know.’ And he deciphered the surprise 
in my eyes and added: ‘Sobras.’ Leftovers. He 
and his pal had been scrounging in the gar- 
bage. They knew where the best meat could 
be found, and now he was acting as my culi- 
nary guide to Bogotá, my gourmet gamin. 

“When I returned to the woman who was 
going to be your mother, she listened to my 
story and nodded in that bird-like wonder- 
way of hers, just like you. From the moment I 
met her I was so taken with her ability to stop 
what she was doing, like a chachalaca, a bird 
you'll only see if you were to finally come back 
one day to Colombia with me. Think ofa bird 
that can dance the cha-cha and then cease 
suddenly, Ricardo, well, that's how she looked 
at me, entirely still, as if she were wary of 
some assault from nearby. The very first time 
Ilaid eyes on her I realized how vulnerable 
she was underneath that show of toughness. 
And it wasn't just that we had to be cautious— 
in fact, as employees ofthe U.S. government 
in a country torn apart by civil war and nar- 
cos and the FARC and bombs, we'd make a 
nice morsel for anyone intent on kidnapping, 
her especially. I wasn't worth anything, not 
then, later yes, when I became a citizen, took 
on the country of my dad. Now yes, if some- 
one were to kill me now.... But I was telling 
you about that look of hers, which came, I 
said, from somewhere other than fear of the 
immediate violence that could be done to us. 
No, it came from some older tremor, some- 
thing else we shared. She looked at me when 
I came back from giving away my steak and 
said: "You're too good to be true.’ And then: 
‘Mañana.’ One of the few words in Spanish 
she ever learned, knew before she was sent 
to Colombia, the word everyone associates 
with Latin America and siestas, everyone 
assumes I represent when I tell them I was 


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born way down south. Your mother repeated 
itin English: "Tomorrow. ГЇЇ come home with 
you tomorrow night. Because, first, in the 
morning, there's something I need you to 
do, first you have to do something." 

"A test. That's what she had in store for me. 

"It was a woman. Maybe you won't believe 
me, but I can't remember her name. Some- 
day we can look it up, there must be files 
on her somewhere. Her husband was called 
Esteban, Esteban something. And he had 
been killed, headed a trade union, a coffee 
worker I think, maybe textiles, food workers? 
And his wife was seeking asylum, or a visa if 
asylum couldn't be granted. One for her, one 
for her son. Her 17-year-old son. Yes, 17." 

Barrera stopped. He reread the last para- 
graph. He erased Yes, 17. Then he erased 
Her 17-year-old son. Ricky didn't need to 
know the age of that boy. 

"That boy, that young man—name of 
Luis?, maybe Lalo, yes, Lalo I think it was, 
from Eduardo— Lalo had received a death 
threat. I had read it in her file. They were 
going to kill him like a dog. No, not like a 
dog. Yes, that's how they were threatening 
to kill him. Slowly. 

"Before the woman came in for the inter- 
view, your mother left the room. Left me 
alone with her. On purpose. T want to see how 
you handle this, by yourself” Cynthia said, 
stepping out the back door, adding, there 
on the threshold, almost as an afterthought, 
that I'd been selected for a training program 
back in the States. She'd recommended me, 
the sky was the limit. I remember those 
words, the sky being the limit, everything 
open for me, her and the country and the 
future and someone like you, the sky. She'd 
recommended me, your mother reiterated, 
but she wanted first to observe me, in action, 
she said, one last crack. 1 also remember those 
words, just as I can still remember, have been 
repeating to myself all these years the word 
for word of the death threat. 

“That's what I was examining attentively 
when that woman entered the room and sat 
down without my invitation, just sat down and 
pierced me with the black coil of her eyes as I 
read the message written on that crude piece 
of paper scrawled by someone who did not 
mind if an expert analyzed the handwriting, 
if the criminal's fingerprints were smudged 
all over that scrap of paper, a person who was 
an expert himself, an expert at creating fear 
in others, not concerned about his own fear, 
that's what I understood as I read. 

“ ‘Have you denounced this to the police?” 
I asked in Spanish. 

*"Two thousand five hundred sixteen." 

"å Perdone? ¿Qué dijo?’ 

“Two thousand five hundred sixteen,’ 
she said. “The number of trade union mem- 
bers who have been murdered in the last 10 
years, 2,515 plus one, my husband.’ And she 
pronounced his family name, the one I can't 
remember now, she said Esteban, Esteban 
and that surname. And before 1 could com- 
ment, offer my condolences, say something, 
anything, she added: “Do you know how 
many arrests there have been, how many cul- 
prits have been arrested?” And she answered 
her own question: ‘One,’ she said. ‘One man 
has been arrested, a policeman, a policeman 
who should have been protecting people like 
my husband and instead was killing them. 


One person, that's all, and he'll be out on bail 
soon and then he'll be up in the mountains 
with the paras and never be seen again." 

"Inside your mother's big broad desk, I 
knew a tape recorder was turning, registering 
every word of hers and mine, I knew that in 
your mother's office a security camera always 
recorded everything, every whisper. 

"I answered: “You can't expect us to take 
in every person who's threatened, who says 
she's threatened, who offers no more proof 
than a piece of paper whose origin we can't 
substantiate. Surely you can see that, ma'am. 
No podemos aceptar a todos." 

“А todos, no,’ she said. “Sólo a mi hijo.’ 

"Not everyone. Just my son. 

"And then she winked at me. 

"It wasn't really a wink, more like the 
flutter of an eyelid, a shuttering, the rapid 
deployment of a butterfly in her eyes, closing 
them just enough so I wouldn't catch even 
a glimpse of the promise of tears, because 
she was not going to give me or anybody 
else the satisfaction of seeing her cry. She's 
cried so much there's nothing left, and then the 
opposite thought, She hasn't cried for years, 
is scared to start because she may never stop, like 
my mother never dared to let herself go, not ever. 
And then that woman stood up, refused to 
sit down again, though I insisted. 

"She didn't explain why, just stood there, 
brusquely said one word. ‘God,’ that's the 
word she said and added: ‘God often comes 
to us from behind, remember that. He comes 
when we least expect him, from behind.' And 
again her eyes that opened and shut rapidly. 

"And I don't know why—yes, I know why, 
of course I know why—I confused that flut- 
tering again with a wink. It joined me and her 
to the gamines of last night, that night before 
the night you were conceived, and it wasn't 
me answering her, I forgot where I was, who 
I was, what I wanted to become, forgot who 
was listening to me from the other side ofthe 
back door. I forgot how often in the past I 
had taken the files and folders and papers that 
your mother would pass to me, how often I 
had closed them with a snap. And now it was 
open, that file, the death threat was lying in 
there, calling to me, asking me to read it again. 
And when I picked it up because I could not 
say no to it, deny it one last appraisal, what 
revealed itself, what had been hidden below 
that death threat, was the faded photo of her 
dead husband and also the prettified visa 
photo of her living son, one next to the other, 
her two men, and then, if only for a minute, it 
was just me and my sad beating heart, if only 
for a minute, and I said: 

"'Naturalmente, of course, we'll give you 
asylum, a visa, ma'am. No le quepa duda. 
Don't doubt it.’ 

""That's a promise?" 

"And I said yes. 

“And she said: ‘Swear it on your son.’ 

“Т don't have a son." 

"'Swear it on the life of your unborn child." 

"And that's what I did, Ricardo. I swore I was 
telling her the truth, swore it on your life. 

“I never saw her again. 

“Because your mother came into the room 
as soon as that woman had gone. 

“She looked at me. “You really are too 
good to be true.’ 

“She did not say anything else. Just 
waited. Like you do, so often, let the silence 


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grow until somebody like me, somebody 
who feels uncomfortable with stillness and 
has survived by filling the universe with 
words—since I can recall I would jump 
into the space yawning between my father 
and my mother. I would leap in, vault in, 
rush in to see if I could bring them closer, 
because I could tell they were going to sepa- 
rate, that I was the one who had kept them 
together. My existence had done that, my 
birth had made my father stay, and I spent 
the first eight years of my childhood going 
back and forth between them, saying in Eng- 
lish to my dad what my mother meant in 
her Buenaventura Spanish, extricating from 
my dad's Ohio accent what he wanted from 
my mother, back and forth, ida y vuelta, giv- 
ing them refuge in the common territory of 
my tongue, holding them to each other as 
I felt them drift apart. Their home, I had 
to become their home if they were to stay 
by each other's side, and your own mother 
knew this, merely by instinct and cunning 
and command, that she didn't need to do 
anything other than let me dangle in the 
silence of her puzzlement, her challenge that 
I explain myself. 

"And I did. 

“It took me less than a minute, not even a 
minute to close that file, snap it tightly shut. 

““Asylum denied,’ I said. ‘No visa for 
either of them. Not clear if they have ter- 
rorist connections.” 

“She didn't say anything, again she just let 
me swing awhile in the dark sun of her gaze. 

“I just didn't have the heart to tell the 
woman,’ I said. "Io her face, I mean, I just 
didn’t have the heart.’ 

“And now Cynthia answered. ‘Yes,’ she said. 
Just that one word. She said yes to me. 

“So that night...I like to think that was the 
night you were conceived, Ricardo, I like to 
think that something good came of this, not 
Just our marriage and my training and my 
promotion and my future citizenship and 
my new country— you, I like to tell myself 
that you were born because I did what I 
did, because of what happened in Colombia, 
what the messages demanded of me, that I 
tell you. That’s what I have to say, what I 
need to tell you before you are 17.” 

Barrera stopped. 

Behind him he sensed his son, told himself 


ANOTHER DRINK 
AND PICK UP 
SOME WOMEN. 


that the boy had been there for who knows 
how long, reading over his shoulder for who 
knew how long. And somehow this time Bar- 
rera found the strength not to turn around 
and address Ricky. He found the patience to 
swallow any word of welcome or of dismissal, 
was given the strength by someone, perhaps 
his wife, perhaps his mother, both of them 
dead, he discovered the strength to wait and 
let his son say something first. 

“So who is it?” Ricky asked, finally. “Who is 
sending us, you and me, these messages?” 

Almost as if he were a child asking a 
magician to explain how the rabbit could 
disappear, be cut to shreds and then reap- 
pear, one last moment of innocence before 
he outgrew it, one last chance. 

“It can’t be the husband,” Barrera said, 
taking his time, “because he’s dead, that 
man called Esteban.” 

“And the woman? The woman whose 
name you can’t recall?” 

“Not her,” said Barrera. “And not her son, 
Luis or Lalo.” And then added: “They were 
executed. The night before your mother 
and I left Bogotá.” 

“How did they die?” 

“Not that,” he said. And then, still with- 
out turning around to look at his son: 
“There are things you really don’t need to 
know. Not yet.” 

“I don’t need to know what was done to 
their bodies?” Ricky asked. “How slow it 
must have been?” 

“You don’t need to know.” 

Ricky didn’t speak for a while. Barrera 
could barely imagine him there at all, think- 
ing all this over. Then: 

“All right. So who else knew what hap- 
pened in that room, what you promised? A 
colleague, someone, anyone?” 

“Only me,” said Barrera, "I'm the only 
one who knows. From time to time, I ask 
your mother, ask her picture—not with 
words but with my eyes, you know, I suggest 
that maybe there could have been another 
way, that maybe we could have found a dif- 
ferent.... Even if I know that she was also 
acting under orders, only following protocol. 
This Esteban had been fingered as sympa- 
thetic to the guerrillas, was a subversive. The 
son had been videotaped chanting slogans 
against the U.S., was a rabble-rouser at the 


YOUVE GOTTA BE DRUNK 
OR YOUD REMEMBER IM 
MARRIED AND WE GOT 
MORE AT HOME THAN 
I CAN TAKE CARE OF! 


local high school. And above your mother 
in the pyramid of power there was someone 
else, and then the head of that department 
and the man above them, and somebody 
upstairs would have eventually seen the asy- 
lum granted and would have reprimanded 
her, maybe demoted her, maybe denied me 
my transfer or my residency or my citizen- 
ship one day. It was me or that woman, our 
son or her son, that’s how things are. d 
and by now Barrera was speaking to the 
computer, straight to the screen or what was 
inside the screen or beyond it. “All of us, just 
doing our job, just securing the border, just 
keeping our children safe, better to be safe 
than sorry. That's what I say silently to your 
mother, have said to her since she died." 

"And what does she answer?" 

"Nothing. Not a word. What could she 
tell us? What could she answer?" 

“Unless...” 

“Unless....” Barrera said. 

But neither ofthem dared to add another 
word, tell each other what they were think- 
ing, what they were both.... 

This was as far as he could go, this was 
the end. 

Barrera sensed a sudden absence, was cer- 
tain that his son was no longer behind him, 
that Ricky had decided to return to his room 
before dawn arrived, that's where he wanted 
to greet this day when he would be 17, when 
he would be of age. 

Barrera waited. He gave the boy time 
to cross the corridor, open the door to his 
room, sit down in front of his own com- 
puter. He waited until he was sure Ricky 
was ready, and then, without looking one 
last time at the letter he had written, with- 
out correcting one word of it, he pressed 
the send button. 

It was on its way, his response, what he 
needed to do. 

He prayed it would be enough. 

And he wondered, Barrera also man- 
aged to wonder, as the sun began to rise 
into that foreign sky, if he would sleep well 
that night, if he would sleep at all in the 
nights to come. 


www.adorfman.duke.edu 


EM 
WELL, LETS HAVE 
ANOTHER DRINK 
AND GO TO YOUR 
HOUSE! 


111 


PLAYBOY 


112 


APOSTLE 


(continued from page 74) 
that, I'm told, is mercifully lighter than 
anything on the menu.) 

On to the main courses. First, an off- 
the-menu croquet-ball-size pork-and-veal 
meatloaf on a bed of gnocchi; the dainty 
herbal subtleties of the meat are offset by 
the brick of seared foie gras draped over 
it. Then come those pigs' feet. 

Double vodka shots. 

Picard joins us for dessert. He orders 
us a bottle of champagne and toasts 
again: “A la vie!” Though the desserts 
are rich and outsize, they're compara- 
tively the most delicate courses of the 
evening. All of them are sweetened 
with maple syrup collected in the for- 
est around Picard's new establishment, 
Sugar Shack, open only in the spring. 
(On the restaurant's wall is a painting 
by Marc Séguin of a woman with syrup 
taps in lieu of breasts.) We share a rasp- 
berry pie, a pecan pie, a panna cotta 
and a maple pudding chómeur, which 


translates to "unemployed pudding," a 
throwback to a dessert popular during 
the Depression. 

By the end of the meal, our back teeth 
are bathing, as the French expression 
goes. Thoroughly mellowed by fat, sugar 
and booze, we discuss Picard's upbringing 
in Repentigny, Quebec; his two kids; how, 
as a lost youth, he decided to study hotel 
management, then switched to cooking; 
his apprenticeship in France, Italy and 
Montreal. And we discuss his philosophy 
of food. "Fat comforts," he says. "Fat is 
the vector for taste. If you have fat in 
your mouth, the taste will develop." 

Champagne. Vodka. Mix. 


PRIDE 


To Picard, the real sin in both cooking 
and economics is waste—he is a firm dis- 
ciple of Fergus Henderson's "nose-to-tail" 
approach, which calls for using the entire 
animal, offal, bone and all. Another sin 
is incompetence. “You need to know how 
to cook the pig," he says. "You might be 
trendy, but at the end of the day you need 


"Excuse me, guys, but I’m starting to feel a little like a third wheel.” 


to take responsibility. I've worked hard, 
I'm competent, and I’m qualified, and 
that allowed me to personalize my style 
and convince people I could become a 
reference for others." 


WRATH 


Picard gets angry at anything that isn't 
concrete, tactile, sensuous, of the earth. 
That includes food blogs, which he calls 
marde. ("Do you mean merde?" I ask, refer- 
ring to the French word for “shit.” “No, 
marde. It’s the Quebec version. It's like 
merde but more fatty.”) His wrath is also 
aimed at Wall Street. He sees the collapse 
of the financial sector as a good thing: 
“There are two economies. There’s the 
economy where I work, where I employ 
people, and it brings in money directly. 
And then there’s the economy Wall Street 
created, where they make money with 
money. Today the second economy has 
deflated, and people have become more 
grounded. They may have less money, 
but at least they feel things. Before they 
didn’t feel.” 


LUST 


After dinner I join Picard, his chef de 
cuisine, his maitre d’ and his beautiful 
hostess (all the women who work at Au 
Pied de Cochon are thin, stylish, attrac- 
tive and likely not eating a la carte at 
the restaurant) for a night on the town. 
Our first stop is a high-end strip joint 
called Kamasutra. Montreal is riddled 
with churches, and almost every street 
is named after one saint or another, but 
since casting off conservative Catholic rule 
during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, 
it has become one of the most permis- 
sive cities in the world. In this Olympus 
of hedonism, Picard is Dionysus, recog- 
nized and back-slapped wherever we go. 
“Ehh! Martin!” 

A stripper once told me that food 
and sex are the only two human activi- 
ties that stimulate all five senses. Picard, 
who by this point has unbuttoned his 
shirt entirely, agrees. "It's a similar plea- 
sure," he tells me. "Fucking is always with 
someone. It's concrete. And food is always 
concrete too." 

Bottle service arrives. 

The same stripper also said that, in 
terms of the excitement that both food 
and sex can provide, "less is more." From 
my foggy recollection of my night with 
Picard, it's hard to imagine him agreeing 
with that part. My most distinct memory 
of the evening—confirmed in my greasy, 
progressively illegible notes—is sitting on 
a VIP-room banquette next to Picard as 
his maitre d' pours a bottle of champagne 
down my throat and two gorgeous, fully 
naked young Quebecoises go bilingual 
on each other, in every permutation, on 
the chef's lap. . 

He raises a glass: “A la vie!” 

That leaves three capital sins of which 
Picard is most certainly not guilty. When 
he's not sweltering over a stove at one 
of his restaurants or writing a cook- 
book or tending to his pigs or visiting 
his purveyors, Picard hosts a show on 


Canadian Food TV, The Wild Chef, which 
follows his gastronomical journeys across 
the country. (He recently cooked up an 
impromptu dish of mussels and seal fat 
when dining al molto fresco among the 
Inuit.) So much for sloth. As for greed 
and envy, no one can accuse a man who 
serves such copious portions, who rel- 
ishes the company of others, who gets 
hurt if you don't drink with him and 
who gives such enveloping drunken bear 
hugs...of hoarding and withholding. 


Gluttony had been tested to its limit 
that night, as had my stomach lining. I 
didn't feel quite like the guy who was fed 
to death in Seven, but I wasn't far. A night 
with Picard is a test of endurance, even for 
Picard: "You can't just eat fatty in life,” he 
says. "You can't just eat only for pleasure— 
you need nourishment as well." 

Indeed, no evening is more riotously, 
competitively gluttonous than when 
famous chefs get together. Daniel Bou- 
lud, who makes a point of visiting Picard 
every time he's in Montreal, recalls many 
such indulgent affairs, when Picard 
would open the best wines in his cel- 
lar. "These Quebeckers," says Boulud, 
"always taking their shirts off." He recalls 
the most outrageously excessive night of 
eating as being his own 50th birthday, 
when he hosted a $2,200-a-plate charity 
dinner for 24 friends, including many of 
his former sous-chefs who had gone on 
to run their own restaurants and who 
each supplied a course. Robert Parker, 
the world's foremost authority on wine, 
provided the booze. 

Over the meal's seven hours, according 
to Boulud, they ate 16 courses and drank 
a million dollars’ worth of wine, about 
85 bottles spanning the 20th century. 
On another occasion, this one also from 
the peak of the flush times, circa 2004, 
Boulud hosted a white-truffle tasting 
menu for Japanese friends, movie produc- 
ers and journalists. Halfway through the 
dinner, chef Masayoshi Takayama—who 
now owns Masa, the most expensive res- 
taurant in New York—showed up. After 
everyone had shaved about five grams 
of a glorious $1,500 one-pound truffle 
onto their dishes, Takayama whiffed the 
mushroom and ate the whole thing like 
an apple, to the stupefaction of the table. 
Perhaps he had been drinking? 

Two days later Takayama returned 
to Boulud, tail between legs, to apolo- 
gize, with a new white truffle in a plastic 
can as a token of expiation. "I think he 
wanted his friends to be stunned," says 
Boulud. That level of conspicuous con- 
sumption, both financial and esophageal, 
was testing the limits, even in this culi- 
nary subculture. 

Yet perhaps Picard himself defines glut- 
tony best by throwing Catholic dogma on 
its head. Instead of defining gluttony as 
deriving excessive pleasure from food 
and drink, Picard says true excess begins 
“when pleasure is no longer there." 


SEX QUIZ 


(continued from page 55) 
(1) Scrotum. In each case the parts are devel- 
opmentally homologous, meaning they arise 
from the same fetal tissue. 
(2) It's an iron chastity belt lined with silk, 
probably from the 16th century. 
(3) Masturbation, vasectomy, Mirena IUD, 
pill, condom, diaphragm, spermicides, 
prayer 
(4) “I know it when I see it." 
(5) 7.3 minutes 
(6) The gerbil—an urban legend that has 
never been documented 
(7) (A) Lady Chatterleys Lover (D.H. Law- 
rence); (B) Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller); 
(C) Song of Solomon (Old Testament); (D) 
The Autobiography of a Flea (Anonymous); (E) 
Fear of Flying (Erica Jong); (F) The Surrender 
(Toni Bentley) 
(8) Sex treatise. Kama can also mean plea- 
sure, desire or love. 
(9) 2.8 


10) The underside of the shaft 

11) 18,000 

12) “Darling Nikki" by Prince 

13) Age-Sex-Location, Ass to Mouth, Bare- 
back Blow Job (no condom), Dining at the Y 
(cunnilingus), Male-Female-Female (three- 
some), Naked in Front of Computer, No 
Strings Attached, Talk Dirty to Me 

(14) A soft swinging couple does not have 
intercourse with other people, only foreplay. 
(15) 85 

(16) A quarter mile 

(17) 40 

(18) The erectile tissue of the clitoris extends 
up to 3.5 inches into the body. 

(19) Smiles, arches her brows, lowers her 
lids, tucks her chin slightly, averts her gaze, 
puts her hand on her lips, giggles 

(20) Ambartsumian's Knot, Fornax, Sex- 
tans, Triangulum and Zwicky's Triplet are 
galaxies. 


For citations see playboy.com/sexquiz. 


"Don't worry, it's mostly filler." 


113 


PLAYBOY 


114 


PSYCHEDELIC 


(continued from page 52) 

Moreover, the majority of scientists 
involved say the government no longer 
frowns on their work, and entering the 
field is no longer the easiest way to be 
denied tenure. “For three decades, just 
proposing human research with a psyche- 
delic was an academic career ender—the 
electric third rail for any serious scientist,” 
says Roland Griffiths, a Johns Hopkins 
professor of behavioral biology and neuro- 
science, and a psychedelic researcher 
himself. “But that's just no longer true.” 

“The difference,” says Rick Doblin, “is 
we're getting it right this time.” And Dob- 
lin would know. With a Harvard Ph.D. and 
as founder of the Multidisciplinary Associ- 
ation for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS—a 
nonprofit drug company whose goal is the 
eventual manufacture of psychedelics— 
Doblin sits at the forefront of this new 
movement. For the past 27 years he has 
worked to get governments to reconsider 
their stance on psychedelics, to get these 
drugs back into the laboratory and to help 
design experiments rigorous enough to 
force even the most adamant opponents to 
reevaluate their position. Doblin is 56 years 
old, with a strong, stocky frame, curly brown 
hair, a wide forehead and a face creased with 
laugh lines. His demeanor is mostly high 
school guidance counselor, but his stories 
are often Burning Man. 

What Doblin means by “getting it right” 
is not just a reference to experimental exe- 
cution but also to overall attitude. “We lost 
this battle the first time around because of 
arrogance,” he says. “Tim Leary wanted 
LSD to bring down the establishment. 
Terence McKenna said psychedelics are 
inherently opposed to culture. That was the 
arrogance. Theirs was an entirely romantic 
notion but also isolationist and uncomfort- 
ably superior. P'm trying to reverse that 
trend. I want to mainstream psychedelic 
medicine. My motto is “Tune in, turn on 
and go to the bake sale.” 

On the day I meet Doblin, just after get- 
ting breakfast at the local bagel shop, we 
walk back to his house. He lives in Bel- 
mont, Massachusetts, a town so idyllically 
quaint that neighboring Cambridge— 
home of Harvard and MIT—seems I.M. 
Pei-modern by comparison. Belmont is 
tree-lined and plaid-friendly, one of the 
last places one could describe as revo- 
lutionary. But looks can be deceiving. A 
woman stops Doblin. She's in her late 40s, 
well dressed, a poster child for overpro- 
tective suburban mothers. 

“Rick,” she shouts from down the block, 
“did you see that great special on LSD on 
the History Channel the other night?” 

What follows is a 10-minute discus- 
sion about the current state of psychedelic 
affairs. The woman knows much about this 
work. After she leaves, Doblin tells me he 
belongs to one of the most popular tem- 
ples in town. 

“And that,” he says with a smile, “was the 
rabbi's wife.” 

“The who?” 

“I don't ever hide what 1 do. It's a small 


community. Everybody knows everybody's 
business. Most people are really supportive.” 

Doblin believes the support he gets is the 
best kind. “It's based on knowledge, com- 
passion and social justice,” he says. “OCD 
and end-of-life anxiety—these are very dif- 
ficult conditions to cure—but the research 
clearly shows that psychedelics can help 
with both. We've got vets coming back 
from Iraq with intractable post-traumatic 
stress syndrome. The government doesn't 
know what to do for these people. But 
MDMA-assisted psychotherapy works for 
them as well. Cluster headaches are also 
called “suicide headaches' for the level of 
pain they produce and their frequency of 
occurrence. They're another incurable. 
But treating them with LSD looks really 
promising right now.” 

Doblin raises a hand and sweeps it around 
the neighborhood. 

“People around here know all this. Bel- 
mont is a small part of the future I'm 
working toward. This may be the only town 
in America where it's not unusual to find 
people discussing the benefits of psychedelic 
therapy at a PTA meeting.” 


Mara grits her teeth and stares at the angels. 
It's been more than an hour since she took 
ecstasy, and all that's happened since has not 
been pleasant. Her pain level has risen. Her 
noon dose of methadone didn't help. It's 
now one р.м. Everyone in the green room 
begins to discuss options. At 110 milligrams, 
Mara's starter pill is 15 milligrams shy of the 
standard therapeutic dose. In most studies 
patients are given an initial hit of 125 mil- 
ligrams and 75 more an hour later. Allan 
believes that doubling that starter would be 
safe. Mara swallows another 110 milligrams 
of MDMA and asks, "Is spiritual transforma- 
tion ever easy?" 

The reason Mara believes psychedelics 
can produce spiritual transformation has lit- 
tle to do with her own story and everything 
to do with her mother's. Marilyn had been 
born with a congenital deformity known as 
pectus excavatum, a dent in the center of 
her chest roughly the size of a golf ball. Her 
organs were pushed to one side and her rib 
cage jutted out. In her early 30s Marilyn 
met psychotherapist and pioneer of mind- 
body medicine Ron Kurtz. He opined that 
the dent was the result of trapped childhood 
emotion. Release the emotion, he said, and 
the dent goes away. 

Marilyn tried everything to release the 
emotion, and then she tried LSD therapy. 
Her session also took place in the green 
room, also beneath the angels. She had a 
blindfold across her face and a "sitter"— 
the technical term for someone who stays 
sober and guides the trip (a scaled-down 
version of the job Allan now does)—by 
her side. Half an hour after taking the 
drug and much to her surprise, Marilyn 
began to wail. Primal screams came pour- 
ing out. Eventually the screams softened 
to chants, and for the next four hours 
Marilyn made spontaneous repetitions 
of the sound aaaaah—though, in those 
moments, calling her Marilyn may have 
been something of a misnomer. "I no lon- 
ger perceived any boundaries separating 


me from my surroundings. I was sound 
and love and peace. Every emotion I had 
ever felt seemed insignificant by compar- 
ison. At that moment I knew what was 
meant by mystical experience, by tran- 
scendence. For me it had nothing to do 
with faith or religion or belief in God. I 
had experienced God." 

And when she was done, the dent in 
her chest was almost gone. Her rib cage 
flattened, her organs shifted toward their 
proper spots. What Marilyn experienced 
is known as spontaneous healing, and it 
is classified, at least in the Judeo-Western 
traditions, as a miracle. This was why Mara 
dropped that second pill; this was the kind 
of miracle she was after. 

On a small side table in the green room, 
Lindsay has arranged a display of gifts from 
Mara's former students, a seabed of crystals, 
carved stones, colorful beads, all encircling 
a bronze statue of Ganesh, the elephant- 
headed god regarded as the “remover of 
obstacles" in the Hindu canon. Ganesh car- 
ries an umbrella. An hour after Mara takes 
her second pill the afternoon begins to slant 
through the windows. Sunlight spotlights 
the umbrella. Ganesh glows gold. Maybe 
it's a sign, maybe it's the drugs, but for the 
first time in a year, Mara's pain is gone. 

George Winston is on the stereo. Mara 
closes her eyes and floats off with the 
music. Lindsay sees peace on her friend's 
face for the first time in...well, she doesn't 
remember how long. Marilyn glances at 
the angels on the ceiling. 

“Thank you,” she says. "Thank you, thank 
you, thank you." 

Just over an hour later the MDMA' effects 
are fading. Mara doesn't think she needs 
Allan's help any longer. 

“That was great,” she says. "I think Pm 
ready to go deeper next time." 

Everybody hugs, and Allan walks out 
the front door. Mara watches him go, the 
sight of sunlight giving her an idea. It's 
been more than a month since she's been 
outside, and she now wants to go for a 
walk. She and Lindsay cross the street 
and sit on an iron bench in a small park, 
under the shade of a towering oak. They 
talk about boys, their first sexual experi- 
ences and Lindsay's upcoming wedding. 
Mara doesn't feel sick. She just feels like 
herself—a feeling she was not sure she 
would ever have again. Lindsay has some- 
thing of a contact high. 

Two hours pass, and they head back inside 
the house. Mara has an appetite for the first 
time in weeks. She eats a large meal, takes 
her pain meds and, a little later, feels a slight 
jolt—either a wave of anxiety or her heart 
skipping a beat. She begins to sweat. Nausea 
comes next. And then pain. Marilyn helps 
her upstairs to the bath. Warm water doesn't 
help. More methadone doesn't help. Mara's 
palpitations return. Tics and twitches arrive. 
Now her body feels like a marionette, some 
madman pulling the strings. 

A bad night passes. In the early morn- 
ing, Lindsay heads to the airport. She lives 
in Oakland and has to fly home to get mar- 
ried. Mara can barely say good-bye. Ten 
minutes later Marilyn checks Mara's heart 
rate again—which is when she decides to 
take her daughter to the emergency room. 


When they leave the house both of them 
wonder, Will Mara come home again? 


We now suspect humans learned about psy- 
chedelics the same way we learned about 
most early medicines—by copying animal 
behavior. Everywhere scientists have looked 
they’ve found animals who love to party. 
Bees stoned on orchid nectar, goats gobbling 
magic mushrooms, birds chomping mari- 
juana seeds, rats on opium, mice, lizards, 
flies, spiders and cockroaches on opium, 
moths preferring the incredibly hallucino- 
genic datura flower, mandrills taking the 
even stronger iboga root. So prevalent is this 
behavior that many researchers now believe 
"the pursuit of intoxication with drugs is 
a primary motivational force in the behav- 
ior of organisms," as 
UCLA psychophar- 
macologist Ronald 
Siegel writes in his 
book Intoxication: 
The Universal Drive 
for Mind-Altering 
Substances. 

For millennia, psy- 
chedelics sat at the 
center of most spiri- 
tual traditions. The 
Eleusinian rituals 
of the Greeks, for 
example, required 
drinking kykeon—a 
grainy beverage con- 
taining the rye ergot 
from which LSD was 
later derived. The 
Aztecs prayed to Teo- 
nanácatl, literally the 
“god mushroom,” 
while the sacred 
Hindu text the Rig 
Veda contains 120 
verses devoted to the 
rootless, leafless plant 
(a.k.a. “mushroom”) 
soma, including, “We 
have drunk soma; we 
have become immor- 
tal; we have gone to 
the light; we have 
found the gods.” 

All of which is to 
say that one of the 
least understood 
facts about psychedelics is how well under- 
stood these drugs actually are. Ralph 
Metzner, psychologist and pioneering LSD 
explorer, points out, “Anthropologists now 
know that by the time our modern inquiry 
into psychedelics began, humanity had 
already accumulated an encyclopedia's 
worth of knowledge on the subject.” 

In 1887 Parke, Davis & Company began 
distributing peyote to doctors who were curi- 
ous. Many were curious. By the turn of the 
century mescaline—the psychoactive inside 
of peyote—had been isolated, jump-starting 
three decades of phenomenological investiga- 
tions into what Hunter S. Thompson called 
“zang.” As in, “Good mescaline comes on 
slow. The first hour is all waiting, then about 
halfway through the second hour you start 
cursing the creep who burned you because 


been the stuff of legend. 


nothing is happening...and then ZANG!” 

In 1938 Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chem- 
ist working for Sandoz Laboratories, went 
looking for a new way to boost circulation 
and ended up synthesizing LSD. Sandoz 
began distributing LSD free of charge to sci- 
entists around the world, listing two possible 
uses in the accompanying literature. First, 
LSD had potential as a psychotomimetic—a 
drug that mimics psychosis, thus giving 
researchers a better way to understand the 
schizoid state. And second, perhaps it could 
be used as a therapeutic tool. 

By the mid-1950s, not long after Aldous 
Huxley told the world about mescaline in 
The Doors of Perception, psychiatrist Oscar 
Janiger—appropriately nicknamed Oz— 
was giving acid to such celebrities as Cary 
Grant and Jack Nicholson in hopes of learn- 


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ing more about creativity. At the same time 
Humphrey Osmond, a British psychiatrist 
who coined the word psychedelic, first sug- 
gested LSD might be used to treat alcoholism. 
Says NYU's Dr. Stephen Ross, "Addiction 
was the number one reason psychedel- 
ics were administered during this period. 
Thousands of people were involved. All the 
research showed the same thing: Afterward, 
addicts tended toward abstinence. Sometimes 
sobriety lasted weeks, sometimes months." 
Addiction remains the primary public health 
concern in America, and yet most of this 
research has been buried for 40 years. 
Most date that burial to 1960, when Har- 
vard psychologist Timothy Leary traveled 
to Mexico to try magic mushrooms for the 
first time. He would later say he learned 
more about the brain “in the five hours 


after taking these mushrooms [than] in the 
preceding 15 years of doing research in psy- 
chology." Over the next few years, Leary 
dosed hundreds, maybe thousands of peo- 
ple, including author Ken Kesey and the 
rest of the Merry Pranksters. By the time 
that party was over—LSD and psilocybin 
were federally banned in 1968, though most 
point to the 1970 Controlled Substance Act 
(and the resulting export of U.S. drug policy 
to the rest of the world) as the real end— 
dozens of books had been written and more 
than 1,000 papers published about research 
conducted on more than 40,000 patients. 
"Nixon shut it all down," says Doblin. 
“He called Leary the most dangerous man 
in America. That's what we remember. But 
all this work was the beginning of modern 
brain science: the serotonin revolution, 
our first real picture 
of the subconscious, 
potential cures for 
some of the most 
serious conditions in 
the world. It's kind of 
incredible most peo- 
ple don't know this." 


Marilyn takes Mara to 
Brigham and Women's 
Hospital in Boston. By 
the time she checks in 
most of her symptoms 
have subsided. The 
initial ER examination 
report reads, "Awake, 
alert and in no obvi- 
ous distress." But tests 
come back with prob- 
lems, and she ends 
up staying two weeks. 
When she's finally 
discharged, she's 14 
pounds lighter and 
on 15 different meds. 
The first thing she 
wants to do is take 
more ecstasy. 

Her mother isn't 
so sure, though she 
understands the logic. 
"Some ofthis is Mara's 
search for a miracle, 
but mostly it's about 
the pain. On MDMA, 
she didn't hurt. She 
could move; she got to be herself." 

Again Marilyn consults with Allan. 
Together they try to backtrack the crisis. 
MDMA could have triggered Mara's symp- 
toms, but they both feel methadone is the 
more likely culprit. Mara is now taking 
significantly less methadone, which seems 
to be a good sign, but she's on twice as 
many meds as before. Allan consults out- 
side doctors. The main issue is Lovenox, 
an anticoagulant. MDMA increases blood 
pressure, and combining it with Lovenox 
increases the chance of a hemorrhage. 
They think stopping Lovenox the night 
before the session should cure the prob- 
lem, but there's another concern: Mara 
still wants to go deeper, which means a 
stronger dose of MDMA. Could it kill her? 
No one knows for sure. 


115 


PLAYBOY 


116 


In her master's thesis on outdoor adventure 
education, Mara wrote, “Risk is an essential 
element in adventure programming.... To 
shelter youth from reality, with all its dangers 
and uncertainties, is to deny them real life.” 
And she practices what she preaches. 

A week after checking out of the hospital, 
as June sweeps into July, at 10:45 a.m., Mara 
drops 130 milligrams of MDMA, adding a 
booster pill of another 55 milligrams a cou- 
ple of hours later. 

“Buy the ticket,” said Hunter Thompson, 
“take the ride.” 


Rick Doblin was born Jewish, in Oak Park, 
Illinois and raised, he says, “under the 
shadow of the Holocaust.” This produced 
a teenager who eschewed sports and girls 
for books about civil disobedience. By the 
age of 14 he had already devoted his life 
to social justice. By the age of 17, he had 
decided to become a draft resister, mean- 
ing he would always have a criminal record 
and “couldn't be a lawyer or a doctor or do 
most of the things a good Jewish boy was 
supposed to do.” 

Instead, Doblin enrolled in New Col- 
lege of Florida. “I had yet to speak to a 
girl,” he says. “I thought the Beatles wrote 
silly love songs.” To this day he has never 


drunk alcohol or coffee, smoked a cigarette 
or tasted a fizzy drink. Back in 1971 Doblin 
believed the hype. “Acid scared me,” he says. 
“I was sure one hit made you crazy.” Then 
he got to school and discovered a nudist 
colony at the campus pool and psychedelic 
dance parties going on all night. It didn't 
take him long to get over his fear. 

“LSD was an eye-opener,” he says, laugh- 
ing. “When I was younger, like everything 
else, I took my bar mitzvah very seriously. I 
had all these questions about religion that 
I wanted answered. I expected a spiritually 
transformative experience. When it didn't 
happen I got really pissed off at God. A. 
decade later I did psychedelics for the first 
time, and all I could think was that LSD is 
what my bar mitzvah should have been like. 
This was what I wanted." 

Doblin was instantly obsessed. There were 
more trips and more research. He stum- 
bled across Dr. John Lilly's Programming and 
Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer— 
Lilly's attempt to map the mind while on 
acid and inside an isolation tank—and Dr. 
Stanislav Grof's Realms of the Human Uncon- 
scious: Observations From LSD Research (Grof 
was one of the main LSD researchers dur- 
ing the 1950s and 1960s). “Psychedelics 
were exactly what I was looking for," Doblin 
says. "Here was a scientific way of bringing 


"A whole new life opened up for me the moment I put your 
grandma’s clothes on!” 


together spirituality, therapy and values. 
You could journey deep into the psyche 
and come back with important moral les- 
sons free from prejudice. Talk about a tool 
for social justice. I thought then, and think 
now, psychedelics, used properly, are a pow- 
erful antidote to Hitler.” 

Antidote or not, Doblin was too late for 
that trip. “The drug war had shut every- 
thing down. Researchers were moving on 
to dreaming, meditation, fasting, chanting, 
holotrophic breath work—ways to alter 
your consciousness without drugs. And 
it wasn't the establishment's fault; it was 
our fault, the counterculture's fault. We 
had it in our grasp and lost it.” So Doblin 
dropped out of college, took more drugs, 
raised a wolf as a pet, underwent intensive 
primal scream therapy, learned to build 
houses for grounding purposes—whatever 
he could do to distract himself from the 
fact that psychedelic research was the only 
thing he wanted to pursue. 

In 1982 he caught a break. MDMA had 
just arrived on the scene, and Doblin was 
enthralled. “It was a great tool to liberate 
inner love, to promote self-acceptance and 
deep honesty. I knew immediately it had 
amazing therapeutic potential, but it was 
already being sold in bars. Too many peo- 
ple were doing it. Obviously, a government 
crackdown was coming. But I knew that if 
we could get out ahead of that, this was our 
chance to make up for all that arrogance; this 
was our chance to do something different.” 

The DEA's MDMA crackdown began in 
early 1984, but Doblin was ready. He had 
met Laura Huxley, the widow of Aldous, 
and through her he learned about a psyche- 
delic community he never knew existed. “It 
was then I realized psychedelic researchers 
hadn't disappeared, they had merely gone 
underground.” He used these newfound 
connections to initiate a number of serious 
research studies and, in hopes of winning 
the PR battle, began sending MDMA to the 
world's spiritual leaders. About a dozen of 
them tried it. A 1985 Newsweek story titled 
“Getting High on Ecstasy” quotes famed 
Roman Catholic theologian brother David 
Steindl-Rast about his experience: “A monk 
spends his whole life cultivating this same 
awakened attitude MDMA gives you.” 

One of the studies Doblin was then trying 
to get the government to approve involved 
his own grandmother. She was dying and 
suffering from unipolar depression along 
the way. He wanted to try treating her with 
MDMA, but his parents refused to let him 
break the law. “Here was this very sick old 
woman who desperately needed help,” 
recalls Doblin. “We had a drug that could 
help her—a drug that thousands of other 
people had already taken safely—and a law 
that prohibited it.” 

In 1986 Doblin started MAPS and, in an 
attempt to keep ecstasy legally available to 
doctors, helped sue the government. He lost 
that battle. In 1988 the DEA added MDMA 
to Schedule I of the Controlled Substances 
Act, alongside heroin, PCP and other drugs 
"with high potential for abuse" and "no cur- 
rently accepted medical use in treatment in 
the United States." This meant that if Dob- 
lin wanted to reverse that decision, he had 


to convince the FDA that MDMA was both 
safe and medically useful. 

Doblin finished college and decided to 
go to graduate school. But this was 1988, 
and no graduate schools were interested in 
letting him study psychedelic research. “I 
realized the politics were in the way of the 
science,” he says, “so I decided to study the 
politics.” He enrolled in Harvard's Kennedy 
School of Public Policy, eventually getting 
his Ph.D. But before that, in 1989, the FDA 
had made an internal decision that forever 
changed the fate of psychedelic research. 
“The agency underwent a sea change,” says 
Doblin. “It decided to depoliticize its work 
and review psychedelic drugs based strictly 
on scientific merit.” 

“Rick figured out the secret,” says Mark 
Kleiman, director of the Drug Policy Analysis 
Program at UCLA and, before he switched 
universities, one of Doblin's professors at 
Harvard. “He discovered that the FDA was 
going to play it straight.” And for the first 
time in decades, psychedelic research was 
no longer a pipe dream—suddenly it was 
in the pipeline. 


Mara's second MDMA experience goes 
deeper than her first. She talks about her 
issues with intimacy, her fear of losing con- 
trol, her dread of betrayal. She begins to 
speak about her recent refusal of medi- 
cal updates. “I could find out, but I don't 
want to be defined in those terms—as a lost 
cause. Whatever happens, cancer gave me 
an opportunity to seek God.” 

But the MDMA does not help her find 
God. By early evening the drug is wearing 
off. Allan will be out of town for a few weeks, 
so more work is on hold—but Mara's dis- 
ease is not. She is two months away from the 
date doctors do not expect her to live past. 
Allan and his psychedelics seem like her only 
hope, but MDMA isn't getting the job done. 
Mara wants to switch to stronger stuff. 

Allan has LSD, but he feels the kind of 
breakthrough Mara desires requires a break- 
down of her emotional defenses—and that 
could trigger a greater fear of death. Mara 
has rarely spoken of that fear, though she 
once told Lindsay her concern wasn't dying. 
"I'm an only child,” she had said. “I’m ter- 
rified of leaving my parents. I’m terrified 
about what will happen to them if I die.” 
Even so, for their next session, Allan feels 
mushrooms are the better idea. 

Though there remains quite a bit scien- 
tists don't know about the medical uses for 
psilocybin, one surer thing is its efficacy in 
treating end-of-life anxiety. Freud believed 
existential anxiety is a primary motivational 
force in humans. In 1974 Ernest Becker won 
the Pulitzer Prize for arguing that the flip 
side, which he called the “denial of death,” 
is the reason for all our behavior—the rea- 
son we created society in the first place. 
A long line of scientists have also pointed 
out that there's only one cure to end-of-life 
anxiety: Attach the finite self to an infinite 
other. This, they believe, is one of the bio- 
logical purposes of religion—a way to ease 
our fear of death. It may also explain why 
psychedelics can ease the human condition. 
Psychedelics are known to produce a mys- 
tical experience known as “unity.” Exactly 


as it sounds, unity is the undeniable feeling 
of being one with everything. If you're one 
with everything, death becomes irrelevant. 

Mara drops mushrooms for the first time 
on a muggy day in early August. An hour 
passes. Two hours pass. Not much is happen- 
ing. Mara wants more mushrooms, but Allan 
has a suggestion. He's also brought along 
marijuana, which can enhance the effects of 
psilocybin. Mara decides to try it but can't 
tolerate hot smoke in her feeble lungs. So 
Marilyn becomes her daughter's “water 
pipe.” She takes sips of cold water, breathes 
marijuana smoke into her mouth, then puts 
her lips onto Mara's and blows. Suddenly, 
for the first time since their last MDMA ses- 
sion, Mara's pain is nearly gone. 

“There is some pain,” she says, “but I 
don't feel so uptight about it. It's there, but 
it's not me." 

Then Allan asks about her disease. 

“There's a snake in my house,” is her 
chilling response. 

The rest of the session passes without 
incident. Mara is disappointed. She wants 
more, wants to try LSD, but Allan has to 
leave town again. Mara will have to wait 
until he returns for that session. The wait- 
ing is difficult. There is, after all, a snake 
in her house. 


It took 10 years for Doblin and his associ- 
ates to convince the government that ecstasy 
may have therapeutic potential. That vic- 
tory came in 1992 when the FDA approved 
the first basic safety and efficacy study in 
humans. At roughly the same time, Dob- 
lin had more ambitious plans. He'd teamed 
with Dr. Michael Mithoefer, a psychiatrist 
with a specialty in trauma and an interest 
in psychedelic therapy, to explore a radi- 
cal idea. “Therapists had already figured 
out that MDMA helps people confront trau- 
matic memories—memories with a deep 
component of fear and anxiety—and get 
past them,” says Doblin. “Michael already 
had experience with post-traumatic stress 
disorder, and PTSD is exactly that kind of 
problem. It seemed like a perfect fit.” 

Doblin wrote the first paper to appear in 
the scientific literature about MDMA and 
PTSD. It ran in the Journal of Psychoactive 
Drugs in April 2002. That was also the year 
Mithoefer received permission to begin his 
formal study—which is how he met John 
Thompson (not his real name). 

Thompson, 40, now lives in Missouri, but 
in his younger days he was an Army Ranger. 
During the second Gulf war he was chas- 
ing insurgents in Iraq when an IED blew 
up beneath him. He broke his back and 
both his feet and suffered traumatic head 
injury. "I've been in fights," he says. "I've 
been shot before, but the trauma of getting 
blown up—it's a soul shaker." 

Almost immediately, Thompson devel- 
oped PTSD. He had nightmares every night. 
Every piece of trash on the road was enough 
to set off an episode. After about a year, with 
no respite, he was searching the Internet for 
cures and found a link on the MAPS website 
to upcoming studies, including Mithoefer's 
PTSD trial. “Га never done MDMA before,” 
says Thompson. “I smoked a little pot when 
I was younger and when I was in my early 


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PLAYBOY 


118 


20s tried acid once. At the time I was already 
a Ranger, already a well-trained, hardened 
killer, but on LSD I thought I was a disciple 
of Christ. That was pretty unusual.” 

Mithoefer's study was intensive. Patients 
were given lengthy pretrial counseling. This 
was followed by three eight-hour MDMA 
sessions, each with two therapists present 
(most psychedelic therapy sessions involve 
two therapists, one male, one female). For a 
week after each session, for integration pur- 
poses, there was daily phone contact and a 
weekly in-person meeting. 

“Almost immediately,” Thompson says, 
“I was shocked by the access 1 had to my 
memory. I started recalling parts of the 
experience I didn't remember. I really 
went deep. It was completely cathartic. 
The next day [after just one session] the 
nightmares were gone. I was glowing and 
extroverted—for the first time since getting 
blown up. MDMA gave me back my life. I 
hesitate to use the word miracle, but I’d defi- 
nitely call it a sacred molecule.” 

And Thompson wasn't the only subject 
to find relief. Mithoefer’s patient popula- 
tion included war veterans, crime victims 
and child abuse victims. Although he has yet 
to publish his data, Mithoefer has already 
presented it at conferences, saying, “With 
MDMA (instead of placebo) we had a very 


clear reduction of PTSD—well into statisti- 
cal significance. And it's been a year or more 
after the last MDMA session—in some cases 
up to five years—so the effects appear to last, 
at least for many of the people. I think the 
treatment holds a lot of promise.” 

Doblin will go further. “Eighty-three point 
three percent of our patients saw their PTSD 
cured. It took 22 years to get this study done. 
If that's all MAPS ever does, it's enough." 

Thompson goes the furthest. “I think 
MDMA is a gift to mankind. I think every 
vet, when they leave the service, should go 
through MDMA therapy. I think it should be 
part of the formal discharge process." 


It is late August. The phone rings. Allan 
is back in town, and he has quite a cock- 
tail in mind. The next day Mara, Marilyn 
and Allan are again assembled in the green 
room. Allan has brought LSD, MDMA and 
marijuana. LSD is one of the most powerful 
mind-altering substances ever discovered. 
The fear is still that a bad trip could increase 
Mara's anxiety, but Allan explains, “When 
MDMA combines with LSD, it can soften 
the experience, smooth out the overwhelm- 
ing visuals and help maintain a train of 
thought.” He also says marijuana deepens 
the trip, allowing them to use a lower dose of 


“My customers are always out of there before I can even 
write a receipt.” 


the psychedelic. Mara is game. At 4:20 p.m. 
she swallows 300 micrograms of LSD. 

By six p.m. Mara says that not much is 
happening. At 6:30 she wants to try more 
LSD, but 300 milligrams is already a sub- 
stantial dose. Allan decides to go with the 
MDMA instead. An hour later Mara's pain 
has diminished slightly but is still not com- 
pletely gone. At eight p.m. Mara smokes pot 
through a vaporizer. Within minutes she 
begins to shake. Tremors are now ripping 
through her body. 

“The pain,” she says, "it's burning, it's 
burning. But it's amazing how good the rest 
of my body feels.” 

Not much happens after that. At nine P.M. 
Mara wants to go to sleep. The session is over. 
Marilyn can't hide her disappointment. 

“No glorious cure,” she says. No dramatic 
end to the pain, no spark of enlightenment 
and no talk of what to do next. 

A week later Mara tells her nurse she's 
losing her resolve. “Pm worried about my 
parents,” she says. “I suck at good-byes.” 
A week after that her will has broken. “I 
can't do this anymore. I want to go fast.” But 
there is one thing she wants to do before she 
goes—more MDMA. 

That session takes place in early Septem- 
ber. At 2:35 p.m. Mara lies in bed, stares at 
the angels and swallows 135 milligrams of 
MDMA. An hour later she doubles down 
and takes another pill. Soon afterward, her 
breathing calms, the spasms subside and her 
pain is gone. By 4:30 Mara is alert. 

“Call Dad,” she says. 

Marilyn and David Howell divorced 
years ago, but David lives in the area and 
has always been close to his daughter. Most 
nights he comes by and reads to her. Most 
nights Mara worries about him, worries 
about him more than she worries about her 
mom. Tonight, the moment he arrives, she 
starts to well up. 

"It's so special,” she stammers. “I get to 
have my mother and father with me....” 

But Mara can't finish the sentence. 

Instead, she decides, if there was ever a 
time for indulgence.... She sends her father 
to the store for chocolate. Marilyn goes to 
the kitchen for a moment. With her par- 
ents out of the room, Mara looks at Allan 
and starts to cry. 

"I'm their only child....” But she can't fin- 
ish that sentence. 

David returns with Dove bars. Such a glo- 
rious indulgence. The music is lively. The 
Temptations are singing “My Girl,” and 
Mara wants to dance. Her mother lifts one 
arm; her father takes the other. They move 
her body to the beat, swaying in time, one 
family together, one last dance. Finally Mara 
can finish that sentence. 

“How beautiful it is to die,” she says, “with 
my mother and father with me.” 


It's a cold October night in 2009. Rick Dob- 
lin is in his kitchen, eating dinner with his 
wife and their three children. He's telling a 
story about the time Lilah, his 13-year-old 
daughter, won a writing contest at school 
that was sponsored by DARE (as in, “DARE 
to Keep Your Kids Off Drugs”). His young- 
est, Eliora, 11, was concerned about him. 
“She thought everything was going wrong 


in my life,” he remembers. “My teenage son 
wasn't doing drugs. My eldest daughter had 
just won a DARE contest. She took my hand 
and looked me in the eye and said, “Daddy, 
I don't want to do it now, but in the future, 
I promise, I'll smoke lots of pot.” 

Then the conversation turns to Mara 
Howell and her treatment. Because the 
psychedelic community is small, Doblin 
has heard about Mara's story. “I wish it was 
legal," he says, "but I like the fact they're 
doing it in the home, that it's integrated 
into her hospice care, that they have co- 
therapists and are not limited by treatment 
protocols to one substance at one specific 
dose. They're using the entire psychedelic 
tool kit at the levels the situation demands. 
That's the future." 

How long until we get to the future is 
another open ques- 
tion. The majority of 
current research is 
in phase II trials, but 
phase III trials are 
required to actually 
legalize these drugs. 
These are multi- 
centered trials with 
large patient popu- 
lations. The main 
reason trials take 
so much time has 
nothing to do with 
the government. 
"The greatest prob- 
lem," says Grof, "has 
always been recruit- 
ing patients." Doblin 
points out that while 
a few scientists may 
be aware that a psy- 
chedelic sea change 
has occurred, that 
information has yet to 
trickle down to main- 
stream doctors. But it 
will, and soon. 

Doblin finishes his 
dinner in a hurry. 
He needs to pack. 
Tomorrow he leaves 
for Israel, where 
he's consulting on a 
PTSD/MDMA study, 
and then to Jordan, 
where— Talk about 
peace in the Middle 
East,” he jokes—they' re doing more of the 
same. On his way out of the kitchen he tells 
a story about an aerobics class he used to 
attend, where the teacher always showed up 
stoned and encouraged her students to do 
the same. His 11-year-old interrupts him. 

“But, Daddy,” she shouts, “I don't want 
to do stoned aerobics.” 

Doblin shakes his head and smiles. 

“Story of my life,” he says. 


Secaucus, NJ 07094 


An hour after Marilyn and David dance with 
their daughter, the ecstasy begins to wear off 
and Mara's symptoms return. Everyone in 
the green room tries to figure out what to 
do next. MDMA's effects can be prolonged, 
so some psychedelic therapists will provide 
ongoing low doses during life's final stages 


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both for pain relief and lucidity. Marilyn and 
Allan go a different route. They decide to 
alternate sedation days with drug days, for 
what they believe is the maximum physical, 
emotional and spiritual benefit. On his way 
out the door, Allan leaves enough MDMA 
for another session. 

Mara spends the next day asleep. She 
can no longer eat or drink. The follow- 
ing morning Marilyn can't wake her, but 
her daughter's pain is obvious. At noon 
Mara awakens slightly. Marilyn asks if she 
wants more MDMA. It takes Mara a long 
time to answer. 

“Yes,” is all she says. 

Marilyn puts a tablet under her tongue. 
Mara falls back asleep. After two hours 
her breathing steadies and her muscle 
spasms cease, but Mara still isn't awake. 


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Marilyn calls Allan for advice, and he sug- 
gests giving her a second tablet. Marilyn 
takes his advice, but two more hours pass 
and Mara remains comatose. Marilyn calls 
David and tells him to come over. When 
he arrives, she says, “I don't think she's 
going to wake up again.” 

They spend the next few hours holding 
their daughter's hands, telling her sto- 
ries. Then Marilyn is seized by a peculiar 
notion. On his deathbed Aldous Huxley 
had himself injected with LSD, believing 
the drug would facilitate “a good death.” 
His wife, Laura, administered the dose. 
A few weeks back Allan had dropped off 
a copy of Laura Huxley's This Timeless 
Moment, her memoir of Aldous's life and 
his passing. Marilyn picks up the book and 
begins to read aloud. 


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“All too often, unconscious or dying peo- 
ple are treated as ‘things,’ as though they 
were not there. But often they are very 
much there. Although a dying person has 
fewer and fewer means of expressing what 
he feels, he is still open to receiving commu- 
nication. In this sense the very sick or the 
dying person is much like a child: He can- 
not tell us how he feels, but he is absorbing 
our feeling, our voice and, most of all, our 
touch.... To the ‘nobly born’ as to the ‘nobly 
dying,’ skin and voice communication may 
make an immeasurable difference.” 

Nobly born is a phrase from the Tibetan 
Book of the Dead, which argues for the 
great importance of one's state of con- 
sciousness and transcendence at the time 
of death. Back then Marilyn didn't know 
what to think. She was in the green room, 
beneath “those fuck- 
ing angels,” beside 
her dying daugh- 
ter. “And for reasons 
I still can't fathom," 
she says, "I'm read- 
ing to her from Laura 
Huxley." 

And then her 
daughter starts to 
move. 

Mara slides her 
right hand out from 
beneath the covers 
and places it inside 
her father's palm. 
Then she lifts her 
chin, opens her eyes 
and turns straight 
toward him. In the 
past year she has lost 
so much weight that 
her skeletal aspects 
have been showing 
through, but in that 
moment they vanish. 
David watches the 
transformation and 
can't believe what 
he's seeing. 

"She became 
angelic," he says later. 
"She looked radiant." 
He also says, "I knew 
exactly what was 
going on. She held 
my hand for about 
15 seconds, and then 
this look of absolute relief came over her 
face. Absolute peace. And then she died." 

David had experimented with drugs in his 
younger days and was never too keen about 
Mara's decision to try psychedelic therapy. 
“TIl be honest, I had a lot of misgivings 
about the whole thing," he says. 

But not anymore. 

"It was a gift," he says, "to get to spend 
that little bit of time with her." 

And her death? 

"I don't know what to say about that. I 
think her death was a miracle." 


Special thank-you to Marilyn Howell, who is 
completing her own memoir of these events, 
Honor Thy Daughter. 


119 


i PLAYMATE NEWS 


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German fitness guru Gurda (Miss J 

001 Irina Voronina) promises 

you will have sex partner desire” 

u follow the MúllerCize system. 

a made the over-the-top videos 

with Reno 911% Thomas Lennon and 

Robert Ben Garant. Here Irina models 

MüllerHosen. Take that, lederhosen. 


Miss July 2004 Stephanie Glasson 
was a red-carpet guest at P. Diddy's 
Good Life Tampa Bay party. 


It's better to give than to receive—and if you 
are the receiver, isn't it more desirable to have 
Playmates T 
making я 

the deliv- 

ery? For 

Playboy's 

Toys for 

Tots drive, 

Center- 

folds 


and played 
Santa's helpers, presenting marines with hundreds 
of toys collected through the generosity of Playboy 
models and employees. (Chris- 
tine also brought a large pan 
> A of homemade lasagna for 
FIN the buffet.) Playmate danc- 
= ers Serria, Hiromi, Deanna 
р” Л and Heather performed 
м an impromptu routine 
4 f for the marines.... While 
in Los Angeles for the 
Mansion's New Year's party ran 
into movie star Jack Black as she dined at the Polo 
Lounge in Beverly Hills.... 
Meanwhile, on Central 
Time, was dressed 
in her Bunny costume to 
celebrate New Year's in 
Chicago. Playboy's Mid- 
west countdown took 
place at the Chicago Hil- 
ton and was headlined 
by Pitbull... Playmates 
also came out en masse 
to West Hollywood for 
Jermaine Dupri's new 
line of watches called Nu Pop Movement. Here 
are a few Playmates, including and 
(man, that girl is everywhere) with Bridget 
Marquardt and jeweler Pascal Mouawad. 


Miss April 1989 Jennifer Lyn Jackson 
passed away in her Ohio home in Janu- DID VOU 
ary. We will miss you, Jennifer. KNOW 


ADE 


= 


CLUB 


PLAYBOY CLUB CALENDAR 
MODEL SEARCH 


MISS PLAYBOY CLUB JANUARY 


CALENDAR GIRL DATA SHEET 


ons: Sense of Humor, muscles 


persondity 


Turn-offs: Bad Breath, bad teeth, 


REGISTER INSIDE PLAYBOY CLUB OR ONLINE AT 
Winner is chosen at Playboy Club on the last Sunday of each month + Must be present to win 
PLAYBOY, Rabbit Head Design and the Playboy Club are trademarks of Playboy and used under license by the Palms. 


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FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION: NONEGROUP.COM | TABLE RESERVATIONS: TABLES@9GROUPVEGAS.COM | 702.942.6832 
ROOM RESERVATIONS: PALMS.COM | 1.866.942.7770 


PLAYBOY FORUM 
HOW THE CITY LOST ITS SOUL 


AMERICAN CITIES ARE SAFER THAN EVER BEFORE—BUT AT WHAT COST? 


hen I was 17 and left my parents' house in Phila- 
W delphia for a college dorm in upper Manhattan, I 

found a cultural melting pot that fed my fantasies 
of urban life. Crowds on every street! Neon nights, makeshift 
clubs, poets and writers hanging out in dingy cafes! Times 
Square was a crazy theater ofthe absurd, and in the East Vil- 
lage hippies were running wild. The city offered space for 
us to be different—and to make common cause with others 
who wanted to be different too. 

This was no less true for earlier generations of cultural 
migrants. From the actress-protagonist in Sister Carrie to Ayn 
Rand's architect-hero Howard Roark, fictional characters 
of the early 1900s came to the big city—Carrie to Chicago, 
Roark to New York—to pursue their dreams. Zora Neale 
Hurston and W.E.B. DuBois fomented new forms of liter- 


ary and political expression in Harlem in the 1920s. During 
the 1950s, first in New York and then in San Francisco, the 
Beat generation thrived on the city's sexual freedoms. The- 
lonious Monk reinvented bebop at the Five Spot downtown. 
Bob Dylan fled Minnesota for Greenwich Village. 

Artists who came to New York when 1 moved there in the 
1960s gave us “happenings” and galleries in SoHo. Punk rock- 
ers sharpened our sense ofirony at CBGB on the Bowery and 
Max’s Kansas City near Union Square. Andy Warhol and the 
later East Village artists showed us New York was the place 
for endless self-creation. The whole experience taught us that 
Cities = Art and Art = Life. When did cities lose this feeling? 
Was it Reaganism or AIDS, as the musical Rent suggests, that 
took the Shangri-la of Avenue A out of our grasp? 

New Yorkers saw their city tighten up in the 1980s, when 
homeless people were chased out of town and hippies were 
replaced by yuppies. We found it getting more expensive 
during the dot-com boom of the 1990s, when working-class 
families who had lived in our neighborhood for years were 


gm 


replaced by young investment bankers, college students dou- 
bling up in railroad flats and recent art school graduates. We 
felt the mood shift after 9/11, when our elected leaders' pre- 
occupations turned to shopping and security. 

Money made a big difference. With capital flowing like 
Cristal, real estate investors, many of them from overseas, 
colonized the city with corporate entertainment venues and 
upscale condos. Mayors oversaw the crafting of a whole- 
some public relations image to attract smug suburbanites and 
uptight foreign visitors fearful of the city's graffiti, dirt and 
crime. Within a few years sleazy districts were Disneyfied. 
The new Times Square sprouted a Disney store and theater, 
as well as a Hello Kitty shop, an ESPN Zone and the corpo- 
rate headquarters of both Condé Nast and Nasdaq. 

It wasn't just Mayor Rudolph Giuliani who did us in, though 


his name became synonymous with New York's repressive 
revival during the 1990s. More-focused policing helped drive 
down crime rates; the AIDS and crack epidemics abated. Many 
dangerous urban areas—where people had gone slumming 
over the years in opium dens, jazz clubs and dive bars—were 
pacified by arrests followed by imprisonment, most often for 
sales of illegal drugs. Dicey neighborhoods were gentrified by 
affluent home buyers and stabilized by community organiza- 
tions that took charge of affordable housing. 

New York City lost its soul then, but it was just a flash point 
for what happened everywhere. Though American cities are 
cleaner, safer places than they were 30 years ago, they have 
lost the air of freedom that over the years lured so many to 
escape the boredom and conformity of mainstream culture. 
The unique constellation of raunch and glitz is gone. 

There are still dive bars and expensive restaurants, fac- 
tory ruins and desolate piers, illicit marketplaces for drugs 
and sex. But the city as we knew it has been homogenized, 
suburbanized and domesticated. Some critics look at the 


new upscale neighborhoods and blame 
gentrification. Local officials lusting 
after investment dollars praise revital- 
ization. Tourists call it fun. If you're a 
longtime city dweller, though, you're 
in denial. You still have urban space in 
New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, 
but you see downtown turning into an 
urban shopping mall, private guards 
patrolling local business districts and— 
despite the recession—housing prices 
continuing to rise. Cities are too expen- 
sive and too predictable to enjoy. 

At the same time, travel and technol- 
ogy have changed the way consumers 
cater to their vices. You can fly to Vegas 
for a weekend almost as easily as driving 
downtown. You can watch porn online 
instead of going to an adult-video store. 
Video games absorb youthful energies 
that used to be spent prowling the city's 

darker corners 


CITIES for excitement. 
k 
ARE TOO has led the wa 


has led the way 
to the safer city. 
But the East 
Village punk 
scene is dead, Harlem and other black 
neighborhoods are gaining white res- 
idents for the first time in years, and 
the indie music clubs of Williamsburg 
are threatened by rising rents and new 
condo towers (though, thanks to stalled 
financial markets, most of these are in 
remission). Zones once made toxic by 
industry and crime grow Whole Foods 
Markets, trendy restaurants and bars 
that wouldn't be out of place in any col- 
lege town. It’s not all bad. New York’s 
murder rate is lower than it has been 
in decades; the subways are no lon- 
ger marred by graffiti. Parks run by 
private business-improvement districts 
offer farmers’ markets, free movies and 
picnics on the grass. But these don’t 
replace the authentic city and its bohe- 
mian districts. There is no space where 
we can flaunt our differences. Both the 
creative bohemian city and the city of 
neighborhoods are fading. 

It’s time to change local redevelop- 
ment priorities and take a stand 
against the tastes fostered by corpo- 
rate culture. No more chain stores or 
mass-market entertainment venues! 
Low rents, less media exposure and 
fewer face-lifts for downscale districts! 
Instead of patronizing upscale cup- 
cake bars, let’s protect those small 
and dirty spaces where we have 
always cultivated difference. 


PREDICTABLE 


Sharon Zukin, professor of sociology at 
Brooklyn College, is author of Naked 
City: The Death and Life of Authentic 
Urban Places. 


FORUM 


WHERE ARE THE JOBS? 


THE FINAL INTERVIEW WITH HISTORIAN HOWARD ZINN 


How? Zinn was the greatest anti- 
authoritarian historian of his time. 
PLAYBOY's Sanhita SinhaRoy talked with the 
teacher, progressive activist and author of 
A People’s History of the United States (which 
has sold nearly 2 million copies) shortly 
before his death in January at the age of 
87. In this last conversation, Zinn dis- 
cussed our economic crisis and why big 
government is good for America. 
PLAYBOY: What’s your take on our job- 
less recovery? 

We need to go beyond what was 


to solve unemployment, it gave them a 
salary. They lived in camps around the 
country. They did enormously useful 
work restoring forests and cleaning up riv- 
ers and building bridges. The federal arts 
program was part of the WPA. We need 
an arts program in which the government 
will pay musicians, directors, actors, poets 
and writers to produce operas, murals, 
plays and books. There’s nothing like that 
in the Obama plan. It would take that 
kind of bold program to begin to solve 
the problem of unemployment. 


Fisher Body Plant 21 in Detroit: Government can’t rely on businesses to create jobs. 


done in the New Deal of Franklin D. 
Roosevelt, which was a jobs program the 
government unabashedly used to create 
the Works Progress Administration. The 
WPA created 8 million jobs. In proportion 
to the population today, a measure like 
that would mean new jobs for at least 15 
million Americans. The Democratic Party 
is stuck, and President Obama is stuck, in 
the idea of doing things through the mar- 
ket and depending on private businesses 
to create jobs. It’s like easing home owners’ 
problems by giving money to the banks or 
giving subsidies or tax benefits to employ- 
ers in the hope they will then create jobs. 
This will not happen. The government 
needs to guarantee jobs to everybody will- 
ing to work. If private enterprise won't 
hire people, the government must. The 
government hired people in the 1930s. 
It hired hundreds of thousands of young 
people in the Civilian Conservation Corps. 
Instead of drafting them into the Army 


PLAYBOY: With the November mid- 
term elections around the corner, it 
doesn't appear likely the president will 
get behind such a plan. 

When government begins to do 
things for the poor or the middle class, 
the cry goes up, “Oh, this is big govern- 
ment!” The Obama administration has 
been timid in the face of such cries. It 
hasn't come directly to the American peo- 
ple and said, “There's nothing wrong 
with big government.” The whole idea 
of the Constitution was to create a govern- 
ment strong enough to do the things the 
founding fathers wanted it to do. In fact, 
Republicans want big government; the 
war lovers want big government. We're 
paying more than $630 billion on a mili- 
tary budget, and no government is bigger 
than when you go to war. But the big gov- 
ernment that exists works on behalf of the 
elite, of the wealthy classes. Obama needs 
to educate the American people about the 


necessity for government to do things pri- 
vate enterprise will not. Look at Social 
Security, Medicare, the post office and 
the G.I. Bill. There's historic precedent 
for the government doing things private 
enterprise won't. If you fight for policy, 
even if you then lose the election, it's hard 
to dislodge those policies. The argument 
for being so cautious is that it's important 
for Obama to win the next election. But 
that's not as important as putting through 
economic policies that will be hard to dis- 
lodge no matter who is elected. 
PLAYBOY: Now that the Democrats 
have lost their filibuster-proof super- 
majority in Congress, what will this mean 
for financial reform and jobs creation? 

The Democratic Party isn't a 
fighting party on economic issues. Its 
reforms are so modest and timid that 
even if they were passed over the fili- 
buster, they wouldn't be fundamental 
reforms. I don't put as much stock in 
the importance of the filibuster as I do 
in the state of the Democratic Party, 
which is rather pitiful. I haven't seen it 
propose a real jobs bill. The economic 
stimulus that Obama proposed and that 
Democrats supported is a small step in 
the direction we need to go. We have a 
serious unemployment problem. The 
10 percent statistic underestimates the 
real situation because it doesn't account 
for people who have stopped asking 
for unemployment insurance and peo- 
ple who have been discouraged from 
looking for work. 

PLAYBOY: Is the term jobless recovery 
an oxymoron? 

The problem with the lan- 
guage of economics is that it's based 
on the stock market. If businesses and 
stockholders are doing well, and if the 
Dow Jones average goes up, it's assumed 
you have economic recovery. But you 
have to measure a recovery not by how 
people at the top are doing but by how 
people at the bottom are doing. If the 
indexes show a recovery but people are 
still unemployed or still losing their 
homes, then you don't have economic 
recovery. They ought to stop giving the 
Dow Jones average every night on televi- 
sion. Instead they should give figures on 
unemployment and foreclosures. 
PLAYBOY: What should government 
do about foreclosures? 

The government has to step in 
and declare a moratorium and declare 
that people won't lose their homes if they 
can't pay their mortgage. Instead of giv- 
ing a trillion dollars to financial institutions 
and hoping they will then make it easier 
for people to pay their mortgages, the gov- 
ernment has to help people directly. The 
Obama administration's reliance on the 
private sector is really the trickle-down 


theory—the idea that if you give people at 
the top a bailout of $1 trillion, they will use 
that money to help people in need. But the 
people at the top won't do that, because 
their motive is profit, not humanitarian 
concerns. Such bailouts should be replaced 
by direct aid to people in trouble. 
PLAYBOY: What can the average Amer- 
ican do? 

Not much individually. The only 
time citizens can do anything is if they 
organize, if they act collectively. The 
trade union movement is an example of 
that. Citizens need to organize in such a 
way that they can present members of 
Congress with demands and say, "We 
will vote for you if you listen to us.” Of 
course, this is not easy, and it 


Howard Zinn was a lifelong 
advocate for the working 
class. He called for direct ac- 
tion by citizens, as in the days 
of Shays's Rebellion (below), 
when farmers would not let 
courts take people's farms. 
“If government isn't going 
to stop these foreclosures," 
Zinn said, "citizens must." 


won't happen overnight. But we have to 
start at some point, and the starting point 
is people getting together to create orga- 
nizations. Neighbors can get together to 
stop evictions. This can be done at the 
local level. This was done in the 1930s 
when neighbors stopped the evictions 
of people who weren't able to pay their 
rent. Tenants' councils were formed, and 
when people were evicted from their ten- 
ements, their neighbors gathered and 
put their furniture back in the house. 
PLAYBOY: There has been some of this 
at the local level. Local law enforcement 
has suspended evictions, and nonprofits 
have engaged in civil disobedience in 
front of foreclosed properties. 

Direct action by citizens is exactly 
what's needed. This goes back to the 18th 
century in Massachusetts, when thousands 
of farmers gathered around courthouses 
and would not let the courts take away 
people's farms. If citizens would simply 
not permit homes to be taken away from 


their neighbors, the government would 
recognize it has to step in and do the 
same, but do it efficiently and legally. 
PLAYBOY: What will prolonged unem- 
ployment mean? 

It will mean the already great gap 
between the superrich and everybody 
else will be greater. Maybe the growth in 
unemployment will finally lead people to 
organize in a way they haven't before. If 
something terrible is happening in the 
economy, you hope it can at least impel 
people to become angry and militant 
and do what was done in the 1930s. But 
certainly the continuation of unemploy- 
ment will not be a good thing. 
PLAYBOY: Many European countries 
have unemployment rates hovering 
around 10 percent. Why is it wrong 
if the U.S. has the same? 

France has a high unemploy- 
ment rate, but unemployment benefits 
in France last several years, and the 
unemployed there get between 60 
and 75 percent of their salary. Our 
unemployed get nothing like that. 
The government has a responsibility 
to make sure unemployed people have 
an adequate standard of living by giv- 
ing generous unemployment benefits 
over a long enough period of time. 
Also, in other countries you get free 
health care whether you're employed 
or not. This is one of the scandals of 
the Democratic Party: It hasn't fought 
for true universal health care—free 
government-organized health care— 
as they have in Canada and France. 
The World Health Organization ranks 
the U.S. about 37th in health care. 
Here we are, the richest country in the 
world, and we're 37th in health care. 
PLAYBOY: How is this economic 
turmoil different from those we've expe- 
rienced in the past? 

It hasn't gotten as bad as the 1929 
Depression, when one third of the labor 
force was unemployed. Of course, we now 
have a higher unemployment rate than 
the statistics show. When they say there's 
10 percent unemployed, it really means 
there's 20 percent unemployed. So it's not 
as bad as it was in 1929. What we call an 
economic crisis is when things get very, 
very bad. In normal times, one out of five 
kids grows up hungry, people lose their 
jobs and homes are foreclosed. That's 
normal. When that situation exists, they 
don't call it an economic crisis. We have 
to understand that when you have an eco- 
nomic system in which wealth gravitates to 
the top and you have a permanent under- 
class of people living in poor homes and 
without health care, then you are in con- 
stant economic crisis. You have to rethink 
the kind of economic system you live under 
and take bold steps to change that. 


125 


126 


READER RESPONSE 


FOR OTHERS BUT NOT US 

Malise Ruthven’s apology for the hijab 
worn by many Muslim women (“Decod- 
ing the Veil,” January/February) contains 
a number of flaws, but two stand out. 
First, Ruthven ignores coercion. After 
a period in the 1950s and 1960s dur- 
ing which women across the Muslim 
world took off their veils, the religious 
right fought back. The resurgence of 
the veil in the past three decades is 
the outcome of a shift in values initi- 
ated by a male-dominated movement 


The veil: more than meets the eye. 


that tells Muslim women the veil is a 
nonnegotiable requirement of their 
faith. Ruthven refers in passing to acid 
attacks in Afghanistan but ignores far 
more widespread and powerful forms 
of inducement. The veiling trend has 
empowered a new generation of young 
men to exert many forms of social 
pressure on women, including mak- 
ing veiling a condition of marriage and 
harassing nonveiled women in the street. 
In this context, itis hard to see the turn 
to the veil as a free expression of resis- 
tance to Islamophobia or liberation from 
the tyranny of fashion. Second, Ruthven 
suggests veiling is the product ofan old 
association of bare skin with slave girls. 
But advocates of veiling do not invoke 
slave girls. Instead, they cite ambigu- 
ous passages in the Koran, such as one 
enjoining women to “guard their pri- 
vate parts [furuj].” Perhaps unwittingly, 
Ruthven takes the Islamist position by 
translating this phrase as to “be modest.” 
The demonization of Islam in the West 
is a serious problem. But to oppose it by 
justifying the veil is to buy into the false 
dichotomy between freedom of dress 
and Islam. (Indeed, some women in 
the Muslim world, such as rural women 
in Algeria, historically never wore the 
veil.) Ruthven's essay continues a tradi- 
tion of Western authors justifying the 


application of customs to others that they 
would not adopt for themselves. 
Marnia Lazreg 
New York, New York 
Lazreg, a sociology professor at Hunter Col- 
lege, is author of Questioning the Veil: Open 
Letters to Muslim Women. 


Ruthven notes that free women often 
wore the hijab, while slaves did not. Are 
there parallels to the controversial practice 
of female genital mutilation? If I under- 
stand the rationale, veiling is an attempt 
to avoid tempting men, while mutilation 
is an attempt to “desexualize” women. 

Albert Wang 
Fort Collins, Colorado 

It was far more likely for a free woman to 
be mutilated, as it was viewed as a sign of 
sexual purity that distinguished her from a 
prostitute or slave. 


Discussing Muslim attitudes toward 
women, sexuality and appropriate dress 
is the intellectual equivalent of arguing 
about how many angels can dance on the 
head of a pin. It is pointless to attempt to 
reason with religious believers. 

Richard Vidan 
Los Angeles, California 


PLAYBOY ON THE TRAIN 

I was reading the January/February 
issue on a commuter train to Boston 
when the conductor walked by, stopped, 
tapped my magazine and said, "You can't 
read that on the train." I can see why he 
would caution me if the train were packed 
and I had unfolded the Centerfold, but I 
was reading After Hours and no one was 
near me. Even when others are around, 


It's safe to read PLAYBOY on Boston trains. 


it's not as though I advertise my reading 
material. Were my rights violated? 
Michael Mackey 
Rockport, Massachusetts 
A train? We're used to fielding complaints 
from readers who have been told they can't 


read PLAYBOY on the plane. It's a murky legal 
area. A commuter train and airplanes are 
“common carriers," but the courts have ruled 
they can place reasonable vestrictions on trav- 
elers. As a practical matter we suggest that, 
if asked, you politely put the magazine away 
and let us know what happened. We'll alert 
the carrier of your complaint. For the record, 
the airlines, and now the Massachusetts Bay 
Transportation Authority, assure us they have 
no policies banning PLAYBOY. 


LOOKING FOR ANSWERS 

When I was 17 I found myself in 
the precise situation described by 
Joshua Tepfer in “Untrue Confessions" 
(November). After hearing I was being 
sought by the Chicago police, I went 
to the station to sort things out. That 
turned out to be the biggest mistake of 
my life. As soon as I arrived I was placed 
in an interrogation room and asked 


Why would the police lie? 


about a young man who, six weeks ear- 
lier, had been fatally shot by a group of 
Hispanic men. After two nights of ques- 
tioning and being falsely accused of the 
killing, I started to believe that maybe I 
had done it. Why would the police lie? 
I tried to envision myself doing every- 
thing the three detectives said I had. I 
was truly confused. Maybe I had done 
it but blacked it out. I felt hopeless. I 
was convicted of murder and given a 
50-year sentence based on "eyewitness" 
testimony. I kept my wits during the 
interrogation by telling myself that even 
if I had done the crime and blacked it 
out, I would have remembered going 
to and from the scene. 

Matthew Echevarria 

Menard Correctional Center 

Menard, Illinois 


E-mail via the web at letters.playboy.com. 
Or write: 680 North Lake Shore Drive, 
Chicago, Illinois 60611. 


FORUM 


. МЕМЅЕРОМТ  . 


Strike Force 


Like Native Americans who believed 
photographs captured their souls 
police officers continue to be sensitive 
about having their images or voices 
recorded. (See “No Photos Allowed,” 
November.) In Tampa a team of 16 
officers raided a home, looking for 
drugs and weapons. Within 20 min- 
utes a security camera had recorded 
a few of them powering up the home 
owner's video-game console to play 
Wii Bowling. “That is not appropriate 
conduct at a search warrant,” Sheriff 
Grady Judd said, although he quickly 
added it had been executed properly 
“from a legal sense.” In Boston, police 
have started detaining bystanders who 
record arrests with cell phones, accus- 
ing them of illegal wiretapping. (It's 
against the law in Massachusetts 
and 11 other states to tape someone 
without his or her consent.) Finally, 
in Hollywood, Florida an officer who 
rear-ended a motorist was recorded 
by his dashboard camera at the scene 
discussing with four colleagues how 
to frame her. When the chief said he 
planned to fire the officers, a union 
official dismissed the plan as a “public 
Iynching by a few elected city officials 
for their own political agenda.” 


Secular Jesus 


WASHINGTON, D.c.— The Christian cross is 
no longer just for Christians, according 
o Antonin Scalia. While hearing argu- 
ments in a First Amendment case, the 
Supreme Court justice expressed surprise 
hat a cross planted in a war memorial 
on public land couldn't also be seen to 
onor Jewish, Muslim or atheist soldiers. 
After all, it's “the most common symbol 
of the resting place of the dead" and 
hus secular by default, like Santa Claus 
and bagels. The other justices seemed to 
avor giving the land to a private group 
o avoid the question. 


Right From Wrong 


AUSTIN, TEXAs— Turned back in their efforts 
o teach creationism as science, right- 
wing lawmakers are targeting more recent 
istory. The state board of education has 
entatively approved a plan to require 
istory teachers to give lessons on key 
igures of the "conservative resurgence" of 
he 1980s and 1990s. The board voted 
o add Phyllis Schlafly, the National Rifle 


Association, the Moral Majority and the 
Heritage Foundation to a list of topics 
students must know, while excluding Sen- 
ator Edward Kennedy and Supreme Court 
Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Board member 
Don McLeroy, who proposed the change, 
said current standards are “rife with left- 
ist political periods and events." 


Aiming for the Heart 
WIXOM, MICHIGAN—Trijicon, a company that 
makes rifle sights used by U.S. soldiers 
in Iraq and Afghanistan to fight insur- 
gents and train local Muslim forces, 
has for years added coded Bible verse 
citations such as 2COR4:6 and 
JN8:12 to the serial numbers. 
The military prohibits prose- 
lytizing by soldiers to prevent 
accusations the U.S. is waging 
a Christian Crusade. The scopes 
allow the Taliban and Al Qaeda 
"to claim they're being shot by 
Jesus rifles," said Mikey Wein- 
stein of the Military Religious 
Freedom Foundation (military 
religiousfreedom.org). Faced with 


the prospect of losing $660 million in fed- 
eral contracts, Trijicon said it would not 
include the markings on future scopes. 


Black on Black 


SALTERS, SOUTH CAROLINA— Two black stu- 
dents who said administrators did nothing 
when they were violently bullied by black 
classmates for "acting white" won a 
$150,000 settlement. An uncle testified 
his niece was targeted because the family 
was "churchy" and "upright." The stu- 
dents' attorney said he knew of no other 
federal civil rights case involving intrara- 
cial harassment at a school. 


127 


| 


GRAPES 


She's 
Perfectly 


Claire 


CLAIRE DANES 
is a supporting 
actress in Me 
and Orson 
Welles but 
walked the red 
carpet at the 
ondon premiere 
with no support 
whatsoever. 
That's one way 
|j tostealthe 
spotlight. 


ERRO/ERROTICA-ARCHVES.COM 


\ 
Fine-Looking Woman 


With no defining trait other than her overwhelming charisma 
IVETA deserves to be introduced with words from D.H. Lawrence: 
"Beauty is not a fixed pattern or an arrangement of features. It is 
something felt, a glow or a communicated sense of fineness.” 


Breaking Surf 

The question used to be whether tennis player 
SERENA WILLIAMS was most vulnerable on grass, 
clay or hard courts. But after seeing this 
double fault in Barbados, it turns out 

she slips on the beach. The new 

question we ask is "Why 

does she need the extra 

flotation device?" 


More Than a Singular Sensation 
ELISABETTA GREGORACI is a triple threat as a dancer, 
an Italian TV personality and a Wonderbra model. 
After seeing the above photo, the San Diego Chargers 
are considering converting her into a placekicker. 


Aline from EMILIE AUTUMN's song "Thank God 
I'm Pretty”: “I'm truly privileged to look this good 
without clothes on.” Courtney Love's "anarchy 
violinist" has moved to front stage and is cur- 
rently touring with this crazy-hearts encore. 


Here's where you may have seen TAMMY 
~- VALLEJOS: WWE $250,000 Raw Diva 
Search, Any Given Sunday, Lingerie Bowl 
* ora Dallas Cowboys cheerleader calen- 
dar. Betcha she knows about sports. 


CUT A 
\ А UC Santa Barbara study determined (ѕсіеп- 


4 tifically) that gentlemen do prefer blondes and 
that they are the most aggressive women. Here's 
AGNIESHKA, a take-charge blonde we love. 


Hello, Old Friends 


We think JENNIFER ANISTON is more alluring 
now than when she popularized the Rachel hair- 
cut. Here she is walking onto the set of The Bounty 
Hunter, starring Gerard Butler and her nipples. 


Is anything 
sweeter 
than looking 
into the eyes 
of a precocious 
college student? 
Take this photo 
of NICOLE, for 
example: She 
needn't be wear- 
ing bobby socks 
or carrying a 
trigonometry 
book for you 
to see she's 
a supple but 
mature 19. No, 
her eyes and ? 
student body = 
don't require any å 
props—that's a = 
real college girl. * 


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} 


NEXT MONTH 


BASEBALL WHEN THE GRASS WAS FAKE. 


MADEMOISELLE DUPRE 


ASHLEY DUPRÉ—SAY WHAT YOU WILL ABOUT ELIOT SPITZER, 
BUT HE DIDN'T GO DOWN IN FLAMES FOR ANY LOW-RENT FEMME. 
GIVEN THE CHOICE BETWEEN HAVING MS. DUPRE AND BEING 
GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK, WE'D HAVE TO GO WITH ASHLEY. 


BASEBALL UNPLUGGED—BACK BEFORE CABLE AND THE INTER- 
NET, THE NATIONAL PASTIME WAS A LOT WILDER. HALL OF FAME 
WRITER TRACY RINGOLSBY COVERED THE GAME BEFORE THE 
AGE OF CELL-PHONE CAMERAS AND MEDIA TRAINING, AND HE 
SHARES SOME OF HIS SALTIEST STORIES. PLUS OUR PICK FOR 
WHO WILL WIN THE 2010 WORLD SERIES. 


FICTION BY ETHAN COEN—THE WRITING HALF OF THE COEN 
BROTHERS TAKES ON THE MATING HABITS OF ACADEMICS IN 
THIS SEND-UP OF SWINGERS AND INTELLECTUALISM. 


THE NEW JAMES BOND—INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES USED TO 
TRAIN SPIES AND SEND THEM INTO THE FIELD. NOW THEY 
RECRUIT THEM THERE. PHIL ZABRISKIE GOES TO LONDON ON 
THE TRAIL OF THE NEW BREED OF SECRET AGENTS WHO PER- 
FORM THE DARKEST OF DARK OPS. 


DAVE BARRY—THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING HUMORIST 
TAKES ON ONE OF A MAN'S MOST DELICATE DECISIONS—THE 
BIG SNIP. HERE’S HIS GUIDE TO SURVIVING A VASECTOMY 
WITH A MINIMUM OF EGO TRAUMA. 


ARE THEY EVER NOT PARTYING IN BRAZIL? 


MOST DAPPER CASTAWAY, SIX YEARS RUNNING. 


FASHION—WHEN IT COMES TO INTERNATIONAL SPORTSMEN, 
FORMULA 1 DRIVERS ARE THE PINNACLE OF COOL. WE HIGH- 
LIGHT SOME OF THEIR PRE- AND POSTRACE FINERY, SHOT ON 
LOCATION AT THE BRAZILIAN GRAND PRIX. 


ORIGIN OF SPECIES—ALMOST 40,000 YEARS AGO HUMANS 
MIGRATED FROM AFRICA TO EUROPE, WHERE THEY ENCOUNTERED 
THE NEANDERTHALS. NEW STUDIES SUGGEST THE TWO SPECIES 
МАТЕР, WHICH MAY SAY A HELL OF A LOT ABOUT HUMANITY TODAY. 


PLAYBOY PARTY SCHOOLS 2010—YES, IT'S A SCIENCE. WE'VE 
PERFECTED AN ALGORITHM BASED ON GIRLS, SEX, PARTIES, 
SPORTS AND ACADEMICS, YIELDING A MARCH MADNESS-STYLE 
BRACKET. WHICH SCHOOL WILL TAKE TOP HONORS? 


POLICE STORY—FOR 20 YEARS, CHICAGO POLICE COMMANDER 
JON BURGE ALLEGEDLY TORTURED SUSPECTS TO MAKE THEM 
CONFESS. JOHN CONROY AND HILLEL LEVIN BLOW THE LID 
OFF A WINDY CITY SCANDAL. 


MATTHEW FOX—IN THE PLAYBOY INTERVIEW, THE WHITE-HOT 
STAR OF LOST OPENS UP ABOUT WORKING WITH JENNIFER LOVE 
HEWITT WHEN SHE WAS 16 AND HOW HIS SHOW ENDS (KIDDING!). 


PLUS—THE ULTIMATE HOME KITCHEN, THE ORIGINS OF NEW 
ORLEANS'S JAZZ SCENE AND PLAYMATE KASSIE LYN LOGSDON. 


Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), April 2010, volume 57, number 3. Published monthly except a combined January/February issue by Playboy in national and regional 

editions, Playboy, 680 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60611. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, Illinois and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post 

Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 40035534. Subscriptions: in the U.S., $29.97 for a year. Postmaster: Send address change to Playboy, PO. 
130 Вох 8597, Red Oak, Iowa 51591-1597. For subscription-related questions, call 800-999-4438, or e-mail plycustserv@cdsfulfillment.com. 


CONGRESS AUTHORIZES 
NEW COINS HONORING 


“AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL” 


A spectacular site 
in your state has been 
selected to be on official 
U.S. coinage! 


Reservations now being 
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Supplement to Playboy Magazine 


CET YOURS MOKE UN 


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t took an Act of Congress to protect 
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illustrative purposes only. Coin designs not finalized at press time 


State Quarters 


culated coins — 
.S. mint! 


ography of each 
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n Accepted 
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lay to reserve 
ate Quarters 
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ADVANCE REGISTRATION FORM 


47 Richards Avenue no money 
Norwalk, CT 06857 now. 


1 YES! Please reserve my America the Beautiful State Quarters Collection. | understand 
= US. Mint Director Ed Moy j Б 
that either party may cancel this agreement anytime 


Name 


Please print clearly 


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For easy ordering: 
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be 


to acceptance 


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‚ade in 4-8 weeks. PCS is a p 


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CONGRESS AUTHORIZES NEW COINS 
HONORING “AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL” 


Ў 4 = - 
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IF MAILED 


IN THE 


UNITED STATES 
о З. Le 
RARE E VE 
| FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 353 NORWALK CT ESTATE SE > . 
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