Skip to main content

Full text of "PLAYBOY"

See other formats 


` 


1 


IATHERS | 


DA 


\ 


2015 


Playmate 


of the Year 


London + New York * Los Angeles > San Francisco + Bal Harbour 


Ziggy & Stephen Marley: Ай 
Photographed by Danny Cliné 


johnvarvatos.com 


woo'ssano 


THE 
VODKA 
THAT'S 
EVEN 
BETTER 
IN 
REAL 
LIFE. 


Vodka. 40% Alc/Vo 
rk, NY ©2015 Spiri 


'om Russian Grain. Sto! 


ger some, freedom is simple: a paid-off 

иш mortgage, a week on a sailboat, a six- 
Ш pack after work. Then there's Harry 
Devert. After his monotonous finance job 
drove him to the brink, Devert swapped his 
$2,500 watch for a motorcycle he didn't know 
how to ride and took off from New York for 
the World Cup in Brazil. When his body turned 
up in Mexico, it became clear he'd encoun- 
tered more than thrills. Jason Mc n 
unravels the strange saga in A Wrong Turn in 
Mexico. What's more liberating (momentarily, 
at least) than the sight of a beautiful woman? 
Artistry in Rhythm, photographer М a 
ili's pictorial with world-class 
Russian gymnast and model Kira Dikhtyar, 
provides a convincing answer—and further 
evidence that the human body is the high- 
est form of art. Speaking of bodies of art, our 
Playmate of the Year has been announced, 
and another stunner Joins that rarefied sis- 
terhood. Michael E , no stranger to 
the demands of framing our beauties, shot 
smoking-hot D ers on the road to 
Hollywood, as befits her rising- 
star status. Next, in the Playboy 
Interview, writer, TV commen- 
tator and scholar of religions 
Reza Aslan has the unenviable 
job of defending Islam to a ter- 
rorized world—one he performs 
so masterfully, you'll likely see 
things through a new lens when 
he's finished. We have two sto- 
ries on odd addictions this month: 
First, brilliant sitcom writer Ted 
Cohen offers fiction about a 
man addicted to being a dick; in 
Odin, the death of a dog from a 
broken marriage prompts flash- 
backs and heinous thoughts that АШ 
become a study in the limits of 
misanthropy. Second, in Going Deep, Adar 

[ reports on athletes addicted t to 
near-drowning—otherwise known as the 
extreme sport of free diving, which pits man 
against himself as he plunges as far into 
the deep as he can go. It's all about that 
post-dive buzz. Or, for most of us, that post- 
cocktail buzz, which n serves 
by the barrel in our 2015 Bar Guide, Just 
Drink It, Don't Overthink It. For a buzzkill, 
see No Sex, Please, We're Japanese, Neal 
ler’s exploration of the world's grow- 
ing lack of interest in sex. He reports on the 
problem's epicenter, a country where cyber 
fantasies have replaced actual dating. What 
lessons can be drawn for our shores? Bet- 
ter delete Tinder before you dig in. Finally, 
tape up for 20 rounds against Fox ‚Business 
Network reporter C 
explains in 20Q what 25 years as a financial 
journalist (and ex-boxer) have taught him 
about the mob we call Wall Street. Having 
the confidence to call out the powerful on 
their bullshit? That's freedom. Let it ring. Neal Gabler 


Ja Мсбаһап 


IG CROWN 


b 
3 
a 
o 
с 
а. 


Ў 


Мен чнч 
үүнүү, 


VOL. 62, NO. 5—JUNE 2015 


CONTENTS 


FEATURES 


54: A WRONG 
TURN IN MEXICO 
Quit yourlife, buy a 
motorcycle, take off for 
Brazil. JASON MCGAHAN 
traces how a bucket-list 
dream became Harry 
Devert's nightmare. 


66. GOING DEEP 
Free divers risk their 
lives to transcend 
physical limits. ADAM 
SKOLNICK profiles an 
ancient sport that is more 
popular than ever and 
makes other extreme 


athletes look timid. 


70 JUST DRINK 
IT, DON'T 
OVERTHINK IT 
Bartending's edgiest 
trend keeps it simple, 
smart and real. Retire 
your zester and raise 
abeerto ALIA AKKAM's 
anti-mixology rebellion. 


88 NO SEX, PLEASE, 
WE'RE JAPANESE 


NEAL GABLER 


aspectof Japan' 


the rest of our potentially 
sexless world. 


COVER STORY 
Our Rabbit waits in the 
shadowsas the dazzling 
Dani Mathers takes the 
spotlight as your 2015 
Playmate of the Year. 


what it portends for 


74 


92 


49 


| D 


{ MATHERS 


` Playmate 


РІСТ 


ODIN 

In Latham’s world, drugs, 
surgery, melancholia and 
a failed marriage swirl 
into a portrait ofa man on 
the edge of being broken. 
By TED COHEN 


CHARLIE 
GASPARINO 

What draws the Fox 
Business Network reporter 
tothe WallStreet barbar- 
ians he covers? ROB 
‘TANNENBAUM draws out 
le 
for the 99 percent. 


ns, Stories and advice 


INTERVIEW 


REZA ASLAN 
The prominent sı 
religion suffer 
DAVID SHEFF discov: 
how Aslan finds the cour- 
age to defend Islam to an 
antagonistic public. 


holar of 


ANI 


of the Year 


Page 


OO 


PHOTOGRAPHY, 
THIS PAGE AND COVER, 
BY JOSH RYAN 


Ped 


М 
i 


an o 


PLAYMATE: Kaylia Cassandra 


LIFE AFTER 

D.A.R.E. 

Synthetic marijuana is a 

wholly different and 

fr ann ofdrug. 
surveys 

the new strategies needed 

to fight its resurgence. 


HOTEL, MOTEL, 
HOLIDAY INN... 

SL STEIN's secret 
aphrodisiac for women: a 
luxe hotel room, because 
an unworried тіпа is the 
devil's plaything. 


ABOUT THAT 
NIGHT 


N's most 
intimate quirks emerge 
during hookups. And that 
makes running into 
those who have seen 
them that much harder. 


OPTIMIZING YOUR 
MISERY 

ERCO pres- 
ents atruly disruptive 
idea for Silicon Valley: 
productsthat aimtosave 
ourtime, not waste it. 


TIME 
MANAGEMENT 
Afinetimepiece speaks 
volumes on your behalf. 


indexes today's sharpest 
watches, from dress to dive 
to sport, for any type of guy. 


VOL. 62, NO. 5-JUNE 2015 


PLAYBOY 


CONTENTS 


ARTISTRY IN 
RHYTHM 

Kira Dikhtyaris a gold- 
medalgymnast, passionate 


artistand global model. 
Aboveall, she's mesmeriz- 
ingly beautifulin motion. 


RETRO FIT 

Miss June Kaylia 
Cassandra, in a pictorial 
straight out of Mad Men, 
exhibits the perks of her 
health-focused lifestyle. 


PLAYMATE OF 
THE YEAR 2015 
Forawoman as 
captivatingas Dani 
Mathers, standing 
out from the 
crowd—whether in 


film, radio, our 
pages or wherever 
else her career takes 
her—is only natural. 


WORLD OF 
PLAYBOY 
Pixels fly when Conan 
O'Brien's in-house joystick 
jockey throws down with 


20Q: Charlie Gasparino 


our Gamers Next Door; a PLAYBILL 
country-music star fea- DEAR PLAYBOY 
tured in our April issue AFTER HOURS 
unveils rocking new Rab- == 
bit ink; Stephanie Glasson ENTERTAINMENT 
hits the beach to debut her RAW DATA 
sizzling line of swimwear. PLAYBOY 
ADVISOR 
PARTY JOKES 
Q PLAYBOY oN o PLAYBOY ON © PLAYBOY ON 
FACEBOOK TWITTER INSTAGRAM 
SOCIAL Keep up with all things Playboy at 


facebook com/playboy, twitter.com/playboy 
and instagram.com/playboy 


ER DRIVE, BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA 90210. 
N UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL OR GRAPHIC OR 
ND UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL AND GRAPHIC MATE 
LY ASSIGNED FOR PUBLICATION AND COPYRIGHT 
TO PLAYBOY'S UNRESTRICTED RIGHT TO EDIT AND 
T € 2015 BY PLAYBOY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 
ВВІТ HEAD SYMBOL ARE MARKS OF PLAYBOY, REGISTERED US. 
О PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL 
IN ANY FORM BY ANY ELECTRONIC, MECHANICAL, PHOTOCOPYING OR 
ISE WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER. 
PLACES IN THE FICTION AND SEMI-FICTION IN THIS 
CES IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL. FOR CREDITS SEE 
'S IN DOMESTIC SUBSCRI POLYWRAPPED 
NO. 7570 DE FECHA 29 DE JULIO DE 1993, Y CER- 
ENIDO NO. 5108 DE FECHA 29 DE JULIO DE 1993 EXPEDIDOS POR 
IFICADORA DE PUBLICACIONES Y REVISTAS ILUSTRADAS DEPENDIENTE DE LA 
JON, MÉXICO. RESERVA DE DERECHOS 04-2000-071710332800-102 


PRINTED IN U.S.A. 


$ 
6 
$ 
t 


www.outlive.life 


IN THEATERS JULY 2015 


x 


PLAYBOY AND SELF/LESS ARE BRINGING YOU THE CHANCE OF A LIFETIME! 
STARTING ON 6/15, ENTER FOR A CHANCE TO WIN TWO VIP TICKETS TO THE NEXT PLAYBOY MANSION EVENT 
FOR DETAILS GO TO PLAYBOY.COM/SELFLESS 


PLAYBOY AND RABBIT HEAD DESIGN ARE MARKS OF PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES INTERNATIONAL, INC. 


10 


PLAYBOY 


HUGH M. HEFNER 


editor-in-chief 


JIMMY JELLINEK 
editorial director 
STEPHEN RANDALL deputy editor 
MAC LEWIS creative director 
JASON BUHRMESTER, HUGH GARVEY executive editors 
REBECCA Н. BLACK photo director 
JARED EVANS managing editor 


EDITORIAL 
SHANE MICHAEL SINGH associate editor; TYLER TRYKOWSKI assistant editor 
COPY: WINIFRED ORMOND copy chief; CAT AUER senior copy editor 
RESEARCH: NORA O'DONNELL research chief; SAMANTHA SAIYAVONGSA research editor 
STAFF: GILBERT MACIAS editorial coordinator 
CARTOONS: AMANDA WARREN associate cartoon editor 
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: MARK BOAL, T.C. BOYLE, ROBERT B. DE SALVO, STUART DYBEK, MICHAEL FLEMING, NEAL GABLER, KARL TARO GREENFELD, KEN GROSS, 
DAVID HOCHMAN, ARTHUR KRETCHMER (automotive), GEORGE LOIS, SEAN MCCUSKER, CHUCK PALAHNIUK, ROCKY RAKOVIC, STEPHEN REBELLO, DAVID RENSIN, WILL SELF, 


DAVID SHEFF, ROB MAGNUSON SMITH, JOEL STEIN, ROB TANNENBAUM, CHRISTOPHER TENNANT, DON WINSLOW, HILARY WINSTON, SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK 


JAMES ROSEN special correspondent 


ART 


JUSTIN PAGE managing art director; ROBERT HARKNESS deputy art director; AARON LUCAS art coordinator; LAUREL LEWIS designer 


PHOTOGRAPHY 
STEPHANIE MORRIS playmate photo editor; MATT STEIGBIGEL photo researcher; 
MICHAEL BERNARD, GAVIN BOND, SASHA EISENMAN, JOSH RYAN Senior contributing photographers; 
DAVID BELLEMERE, CRAIG CUTLER, MATT HOYLE, ELAYNE LODGE, JOSH REED, DAN SAELINGER, PETER YANG contributing photographers; 
KEVIN MURPHY director, photo library; CHRISTIE HARTMANN senior archivist, photo library; KARLA GOTCHER photo coordinator; 
DANIEL FERGUSON manager, prepress and imaging; AMY KASTNER-DROWN senior digital imaging specialist; OSCAR RODRIGUEZ senior prepress imaging specialist 


PRODUCTION 


LESLEY K. JOHNSON production director; HELEN YEOMAN production services manager 


PUBLIC RELATIONS 


‘THERESA M. HENNESSEY vice president; TERI THOMERSON director 


PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES INTERNATIONAL, INC. 


SCOTT FLANDERS Chief executive officer 


PLAYBOY PRINT OPERATIONS 
DAVID G. ISRAEL chief operating officer, president, playboy media; 


TOM FLORES senior vice president, business manager, playboy media 


ADVERTISING AND MARKETING 
MATT MASTRANGELO senior vice president, chief revenue officer and publisher; MARIE FIRNENO vice president, advertising director; 

DAN DRESCHER vice president, integrated sales; RUSSELL SCHNEIDER east coast digital director; AMANDA CIVITELLO vice president, events and promotions 
NEW YORK: JENNA COHAN fashion and luxury director; MICHELLE TAFARELLA MELVILLE entertainment director; ADAM WEBB spirits director; 
MICHAEL GEDONIUS, PATRICK MICHAEL GREENE account directors; MAGGIE MCGEE direct-response advertising; JASMINE YU marketing director; 

KARI JASPERSOHN senior marketing manager; AMANDA CHOMICZ digital marketing manager; ADRIANA GARCIA art director; ANGELA LEE digital sales planner 
CHICAGO: TIFFANY SPARKS ABBOTT midwest director 


LOS ANGELES: JONATHAN HOMAN, DINA LITT west coast account directors 


PLAYBOY Y 
ViP 


© 2012. Playboy. PLAYBOY and Rabbit Head Design are trademarks of Playboy and used under license by Coty | 


presstopl 


== 


SEDUCTION ISA GAME ONLY TRUE 
PLAYBOYS DARE TO PLAY! 


Sears playboystore.com P playboyfragrances.com‏ ا 


PLAYBOY / JUNE 2015 


WORL 


Dof 


PLAYMATE SIGHTINGS / MANSION FROLICS Й NIGHTLIFE NOT 
Playboy 
— 
and 

* In 1959 the about $3 each 
Playboy Jazz and the concert 
Festival debuted drew 68,000 
at Chicago attendees. In 
Stadium withan 1979 the festival 
all-star billing moved to the 
that included Hollywood 
Louis Arm- Bowl, where 
strong, Duke Hef made it an 
Ellington and annual event. 
Ella Fitzgerald This year's con- 
(below center). cert (June 13 
Comedian Mort and 14) features 
Sahl (below Aloe Blacc, 
right) emceed, Herbie Hancock 
seats sold for and more. 


GAME NIGHT AT THE MANSION 


© If battling Playmates Talon (right) invited Evil: Revelations 2, Pamela 
in a video game tour- expert button-masher and Amelia, who'll be at 
nament at the Playboy Aaron Bleyaert (cen- E3 in L.A. this month, 
Mansion sounds like your ter), who teaches Conan say they could teach the 
unattainable fantasy, O'Brien how to play carrot-topped funnyman 
prepare to be jealous. popular video game: a thing or two them- 


For an ey 


sode of their on Conan, to the Man- selves. "Conan might be 


web series Gamer Next sion's game house for a a little intimidated by us, 
Door, Miss October 2012 few matches of virtual though," says Pamela, 
Pamela Horton (left) and combat. After facing off laughing. In our opinion, 


Miss June 2012 Amelia with Bleyaert in Resident he'd be a fool not to be. 


LIKE MOTHER... 
* PMOY 1982 
Shannon Tweed's 
latest reality show, 


HOT SHOTS 
* Fashion 
magazine i-D hired 
Miss June 2004 
Hiromi Oshima 
to photograph 
emerging musicians 
including Blood 
Orange and 
Connan Mockasin. 


| 


PLAYMATE 
NEWS 


focusing on m her 
relationship with 
her daughter, 
premiered on cable 
network Up. 


PLAYBOY 


NICE INK 


+ In our April Music), he 
issue, writer tattooed the 
Jessica Ogilvie ^ iconic Rabbit 
traveled to Head on his 
Texas with right ankle. 
photographer It's fucking 


Rylan Perry awesome to 


to meet three be in PLAY& 
renegade says James. "It 
country-rock was the first 
bands that are ^ magazine! 
reinventing the ever saw. | was 
genre. Colton like, | have tc 
James, bass get a tattoo. 
player for the They say a 
Dirty River rabbit's foot 
Boys, was so brings good 


ecstatic about 
the story (The 
New Bad Boys 
of Country 


luck; perhaps 
a Rabbit near 
your foot can 
do the same? 


THE SWIMSUIT ADDITION 


eb “As part of the pLaysoy fam- 
ily, I traveled a lot and became 
influenced by fashion around 
the world,” says Miss July 2004 
Stephanie Glasson. “1 live on 
the beach now and spend most 
of my summer in swimwear, so I 
decided to design my own line, 


especiz starting a busin 
was always a dream of mine.” 
After three years of development, 
Stephanie is now selling her 
collection, Sadie Ray Swimwear, 
online. “My designs represent me 
in a plethora of ways: unique, fun, 
sophisticated and of course sexy.” 


JESSICA 
BARTH Q&A 
* The actress, 
who reprises 

her role as 
Tami-Lynn in 
Ted 2, answers 

some burn- 
ing questions 
on the set of 
her Becom- 
ing Attraction 
photo shoot, 


DIVING INTO 
THE ABYSS 
* Watcha 
breathtaking 
video of one free 
diver's descent 
into the deep 
blue sea, as 
profiled in Going 
Deep (page 66) 


ө 
А РАТЕ WITH 
DANI 
* Go behind the 
scenes with this 
year's Playmate 
of the Year, 
Dani Mathers. 


EASTER TREAT 
* Miss February 
1990 Pamela 
Anderson, still 
ravishing al 47, 
stopped by the 
Mansion for the 
annual Easter egg 
hunt—and to say 
hi to an old friend. 


PHOTO FINISH 
* Talk about a 
runner's high. 
Miss September 
2014 Stephanie 
Branton smashed a 
5К race to support 
CRE Outreach, 
which aids military 
veterans іп L.A. 


0M6, BUNNIES! 


el In case you 
missed it, Apple 
released a bevy 
of new iPhone 
emojis. Our 
favorite? This 
leporid pair, who 
look strikingly 
similar to some 
girls we know. 


14 


Veep Show 
As White House stage manager for the 
worst eight years in modern American 
history, Dick Cheney delivers a delicious 
irony by calling Barack Obama “the worst 
president” in his lifetime (Playboy Inter- 
view, April). Cheney takes no responsibil- 
ity for creating the wholly preventable 
disaster in Iraq, for putting two wars and 
Medicare Part D on a credit card or for 
presiding over the most serious economic 
train wreck in decades. Nor does he seem 
capable of giving Obama any credit for 
getting our economy back on its feet, 
for tracking down Osama bin Laden— 
or for anything else. The interview seals 
Cheney's reputation as a partisan hack 
rather than a leader or statesman. 
Michael Reinemer 
Annandale, Virginia 


I had great expectations for the Cheney 
interview. What a disappointing piece of 
fluff. He rails against Obama without an- 
swering one question about nonexistent 


MAP KVETCH 
I'm not sure where Jessica Ogilvie 
thought she was, but Gruene Hall is 
not situated in a "thick green swampy 
town near the southern tip of Texas" 
(The New Bad Boys of Country Music, 
April). It's in the small town of Gruene, 
"Texas, about 12 miles northeast of New 
Braunfels in Texas Hill Country, near 
the center of the state. But what really 
amazes me is that she fails to mention 
the Austin music scene—home of both 
the old and the new bad boys of country 
and the heart of Texas music. 
Bob Stephenson 
Clute, Texas 
The honky-tonk is indeed deep in the heart 
of Texas. 


ADVANTAGE PLAYBOY 

I love David Bellemere's tennis- 
court pictorial of Katrina Elizabeth 
(Match Point, March), but the other- 
wise fantastic image on page 59 looks 
photoshopped to add a tennis ball that 


weapons of mass destruction, his justi- 
fication for the Iraq invasion or the fact 
that Iraq's problems are his doing. You 
had him in the chair and you blew it. 
Craig Meacham 
Truckee, California 


Cheney and I see eye-to-eye on 
nothing—except the importance of 
PLAYBOY. You landed a huge name and 
published a thought-provoking piece. 
Frank Bell 

New York, New York 


Cheney is being too kind when he 
critiques Obama as the worst presi- 
dent of his lifetime. Cheney was born 
during the FDR administration, which 
means he has only 12 presidents to 
compare Obama with. 

Eugene R. Dunn 
Medford, New York 


With all his medical issues, one 
can't help but be awed by the strength 
Cheney shows. I have always been fas- 
cinated by the audacity of those who, 
like him, act so cavalierly toward the 
lives of others yet fight so tenaciously 
when it comes to preserving their own. 

Leonard Stegmann 
Half Moon Bay, California 


Cheney's life is proof positive of how 
far unyielding certitude can take one. 
No agonizing reappraisals for this man. 
He may have been frequently wrong but 
was never in doubt. 

Eric Peter 
Wexford, Pennsylvania 


obscures part of her body. You shouldn't 
censor photos; it kills the artistic value. 
Brett Stephens 
Kansas City, Missouri 
Your eyes deceive you. Playboy Photo Direc- 
tor Rebecca H. Black confirms the image was 
shot like that; no tennis balls were added. 


STRONGLY WORDED 
Writer Ethan Brown seems to revere Lil 
Boosie—an overrated artist whose fame is 
based on hatred of law enforcement—as 
the next coming of Jesus Christ (The Resur- 
rection of Lil Boosie, March). Brown portrays 
Louisiana law enforcement in a negative 
light while praising Boosie's lyrics (“hands 
up” and “shoot the cops”) as the protest 
anthems of Ferguson, Missouri. Now that 
the attorney general says Michael Brown 
didn't have his hands up and that two 
police officers have been shot in Fergu- 
son, perhaps Ethan Brown will reconsider 
implying Boosie's lyrics are harmless. 
Nolan Kelley 
Maurepas, Louisiana 


DE-PANTSING 
Thank you for publishing Mickey Rap- 

kin's denim safari (Into the Blue, March). 

His article is an intimate portrait of fire- 

cracker Brit Eaton and his adventures 

in deserted mine shafts and old barns. 1 

could practically smell the cat piss. 
Alexis Whitham 
Oakland, California 


I enjoyed reading about Brit Eaton but 
was annoyed to learn he recovers vintage 
denim from "abandoned farmhouses." 
Chances are those dilapidated homes still 
belong to someone and "Indiana Jeans" 
is stealing from the owner. And if the 
jeans have historical value, shouldn't he 
follow the wise words of Indiana Jones? 
To wit, “They belong in a museum!" 

Bob Green 
Helena, Montana 

Brit Eaton responds: "I'm no more a thief 
than is a bird that finds an empty nest and 
picks out a few twigs with which to build its 
own nest. And I have indeed donated and sold 
clothing pieces to museums." 


Like most PLAYBOY articles, Into the 
Blue is simultaneously entertaining and 
enlightening. Rapkin says copper crotch 
rivets disappeared because of wartime 
rationing, but I remember a different 
story. According to a show I saw, a Levi 
Strauss company bigwig on a camping 
trip experienced a phenomenon that 
led directly to the disappearance of the 
crotch rivet. It was common to squat 
around the campfire, and that copper 
rivet was exceedingly efficient at transfer- 
ring a searing pinpoint burn to the fam- 
ily jewels. Soon after the bigwig's trip, the 
jeans were constructed without that rivet. 

Scott Neal 
Portland, Oregon 

Who knew this would be such a hot-button 
issue? Your story is a great fireside tale, but 
the demise of the copper crotch rivet due to 
rationing is a fact our research editors con- 
firmed with Levi's. 


ALL ABOUT OIL 

Robert Levine says “higher oil prices 
are inevitable” (“Cheap and Crude,” 
Forum, April). His solution for dealing 
with changing oil prices: Slap a tax on 
gasoline to make alternatives affordable. 
I have searched іп vain for evidence that 
this would work. Fixing climate change 
is the only valid reason to encourage 
large-scale adoption of alternatives to 


fossil gasoline. It requires a global cap on 
carbon dioxide emissions from burning 
fossil fuels, which need to be phased out 
by the end of this century. Low oil prices 
would help this transition, which would 
take at least 50 years. For example, solar 
gasoline—which cannot warm the cli- 
mate because burning it adds no carbon 
dioxide to the atmosphere—can fully re- 
place fossil gasoline. (Solar gasoline can 
be made with solar energy, atmospheric 
carbon dioxide and water.) Consistently 
low oil prices lead to lower commodity 
prices, reducing construction costs for 
renewable energy facilities. There is a 
good case for placing a global cap on fos- 
sil carbon dioxide emissions. There is no 
case for a gasoline tax. 
Kevin Cudby 
Wellington, New Zealand 
Cudby is author of From Smoke to Mir- 
rors: How New Zealand Can Replace Fossil 
Liquid Fuels With Locally Made Renewable 
Energy by 2040. 


OH, KAYSLEE 
My blood pressure shot up when I saw 
Kayslee Collins (Behind the Music, April). 
How about more of her? 
Donald Jean 
Richmond, Quebec 


I'm sure I wasn't the only one blown 
away by the breathtaking beauty of Kayslee 
Collins. She's wonderful; her confidence 
shows. Your magazine is unparalleled. 

Ryan Mackey 
Conneaut, Ohio 


I'm a longtime PLAYBOY reader. Without 
exaggeration, Kayslee Collins is the most 
gorgeous Playmate of all time (Venus in 


Kitty's Got Claws 

Azealia’s pictorial (Wild and Uncen- 

sored, April) is sexy and sassy, as is she. 

I like a woman who speaks her mind 

even when she knows she'll catch heat. 
Jessica Jones 

Chicago, Illinois 


To support everyone’s views, regard- 
less of their harmful words, is certainly 
your choice—that's one of the freedoms 
we enjoy in America. Azealia Banks is 
so self-absorbed she forgets (or doesn’t 
realize) that the country she professes to 
hate gives her that freedom. 

Julie Tilert 
Greenville, South Carolina 


Banks says, “I hate fat white Ameri- 
cans” and “I’m going to call you a fag 
or a cracker or a bitch.” This is the 
exact opposite of what I expect from a 
magazine that fought for racial equal- 
ity by featuring black models, includ- 
ing Jennifer Jackson (March 1965), 
Jean Bell (October 1969) and Darine 


Is Kayslee Collins dangerous to your health? 


Furs, January/February). I subscribe but 

bought extra copies—some for friends. 
Walter L. Sherfey 
Jonesborough, Tennessee 


AMBASSADOR GEARHEAD 
Considering the U.S. effort to reestab- 
lish diplomatic ties with Cuba, and all 
the vintage American iron rolling about 
on that island (Engine Trouble, March), 
it would be appropriate if the president 
appointed Jay Leno as our ambassador 
to Cuba. As a well-known car guy, he’d be 
the perfect choice for smoothly engaging 
the gears between our two countries. 
John Betsill 
Acworth, Georgia 


Stern (October 1971) during a time when 
it was more or less unheard of. I support 
free speech and truly appreciate Banks's 
talent, intelligence and beauty, but I feel 
that by featuring her on your cover you're 
saying that racism and the pejorative use 
of the word fag are acceptable. 

Rachel Gilbert 

Chandler, Arizona 

Banks's opinions are entirely her own, and 

we support her right to express them no matter 
how strongly we may disagree. 


Were Ellen von Unwerth's amazing 
photos of Azealia Banks splashing in 
milk inspired by David LaChapelle's 
sensational image of Naomi Campbell 
in her PLAYBOY pictorial (She Works 
Hard for the Money, December 1999)? 
And are those two cats for real? 

Freddy Walker 
New York, New York 

Posing in a milk bath was actually 
Banks's idea, as a play on the "chat noir" 
theme of the photo shoot. And yes, the two 
cats are real (and fabulous). 


E-mail LETTERS@PLAYBOY.COM or write 9346 CIVIC CENTER DRIVE, BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA 90210 


FRECKLE FACE 
PLAYBOY always has the world's finest 
women. It’s rare that I’m stunned by beau- 
ty (usually it's race cars), but Chelsie Aryn 
is the most exquisite woman I've ever seen 
(Once Upon a Time in the West, March). My 
immediate impression: She's devastating. 
Matt Bauer 
Plano, Texas 


Ah, you let Chelsie Aryn wear her 
mask of freckles. Thanks. 

Ken Crockett 

Austin, Texas 


THE RULE OF THREE 
Regarding how the FBI brought down 

the Silk Road sites (Web of Lies, April), 

there's an old Russian saying to keep in 

mind: "When three meet to conspire, 

two are informants, and one is a fool." 
Justin Skywatcher 
Wellsburg, West Virginia 


MORE ON DICK CHENEY 
Cheney? Really? Was Satan on vacation? 
Richard Hodges 
Plano, Texas 


Instead of being interviewed in PLAYBOY, 
Cheney should be in the Hague, as should 
George W. Bush and Paul Wolfowitz. 

Stephen Van Eck 
Lawton, Pennsylvania 


Cheney's arrogance about Guantánamo 
is mind-boggling. There's never an excuse 
for torture. Just ask John McCain. 

Leonard McManis 
Rockford, Illinois 


NOT JUST 


— ANY — 


ADVICE 


FROM 2013 PLAYMATE OF THE YEAR 
RAQUEL POMPLUN 


\ 


For more adventure this summer, 
follow Hornitos® as they show their 
agaves what it takes to become 


Not Just Any Tequila. dl е 
r а 
Ki Hornitos Tequila 


@ GHornitosTequila 
B GHomitos 


ADVERTISEMENT 


—— HOW ТО HAVE -— 


NOT JUST ANY SUMMER 


SUMMER OFFERS EVERY MAN A CHANCE AT REINVENTION. 


LET RAQUEL BE YOUR GUIDE FOR MAKING SUMMER 2015 THE SUMMER 
YOU BECOME THE MAN YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO BE. 


1 FACE YOUR 


FEARS 


Take a swim with a 
shark. Jump out of 
a plane. Talk to the 
hottest girl in the bar. 
Whatever it is, stare it 
down without being 
the one to blink. 


BECOME 

2 ONE WITH 
Leave the city 
behind and 
venture into the 
great outdoors to 
get in touch with 
your primitive side. 


PUT DOWN YOUR 


AIR GUITAR 


AND PICK UP A REAL ONE 4 GO OFF THE 
Whether you're into classic rock or 

EDM, you don't have to go to a festival B EAT E N PATH 
to enjoy live music. Try a real instrument Spend your summer vacation 

this summer and create your own stepping out of your comfort zone 
playlist (covers are allowed). and taking the road less traveled. 


«ғғ, 
5 LEAR N ue OF LOVE 


Looking for a connection in a foreign country? Speak the 
language of love by asking her out in her native tongue. 


FOR MORE ADVICE AND EXCLUSIVE CONTENT VISIT 


PLAYBOY.COM/NOTJUSTANY 
HORNITOS 


NOT JUST ANY TEQUILA 


DRINK RESPONSIBLY | Hornitos" Tequila, 40% Alc./ Vol © 2015. Sauza Tequila Import Company, Deerfield, IL 
© 2015 Playboy Enterprises International, Inc. PLAYBOY, PLAYBOY.COM, PLAYMATE and the 
Rabbit Head Design are marks of Playboy Enterprises International, Inc. 


More at: 


www.blucigs.com/plus 


MAKEUP BY SAI 


2 spoons—the ani- 
< mated plushie on 
2 screen. “Being 


= come easy to me,” 
5 she adds. "It's 
* super hot to һам 


8 the foulmouthed 


¿ in tow. "It's FUN 


_ Photography by 
` JOSH REED 


BECOMING 
ATTRACTION 


“I САМ TAP into 
sex appeal, but 
| have an edge 
that people don't 
expect,” says 
actress Jessica 
Barth. That edge 
is what makes 
the Philly native 
a scene-stealer in 
Seth MacFarlane's 
highly anticis 
pated sequel 
Ted 2, in which 
she returns as 


teddy Бёа wife; 
raunchy humor 


to play someone: 
so outlandish,” 
says Jessica of 
her character, 
who marries—and 


funny has always 


a sense of humi 


= We wholeheal 


edly agree: 


20 


TALK| WHAT MATTERS NOW 


PERSONALITY CRISIS 


MODERN BASEBALL HAS EVERYTHING GOING FOR IT, EXCEPT AN IDENTITY 


aseballis a 
bunch ofthink- 
ing"aNew 
Jersey 15-year- 
oldtold The 
Washington 
Post's Marc Fisher in April, 
“and I live a different lifestyle 
than baseball.” This was in 
one ofthe “baseballis dying” 
articles that arrive every year 
around opening day and then 
again usually in October, 
even amid record revenue and 
attendance, unprecedented 
labor peace and billion-dollar 
television deals. Thisis a 


very baseball thing—evenin 

triumph, the sport can be 

counted on to worry aloud 

that it's too meditative, too 

smart, too good for this world. 
But if the game cannot 

and should not mess with 

its beautiful, languorous 

essence, it’s worth noting 

that baseball іп 2015 is kind 

of boring—not because of 

its pace or aesthetics but 

because of its personality. 
Because of how the game 

is shaped, baseball does not 

allow as much on-field expres- 

sion as other sports. Watching 


Russell Westbrook assault the 
basket or Marshawn Lynch 
vaporize a defensive back is 
thrilling because of the style 
and personality that animate 
the performance. Baseball 
players, by contrast, mostly 
do things the same way, out of 
necessity—there are only so 
many ways to throwaslider 
and even fewer ways to hit one. 
And when Bryce Harper, the 
Washington Nationals’ ultra- 
brash 22-year-old prodigy, 
experimented in spring train- 
ing with luring base runners 
into testing his laser ofan arm 


through some strategic lolly- 
gagging, his manager quickly 
shut it down. Not because it 
didn’t work—Harper threw the 
baited runner out—but because 
it's risky and because such 
things are just not done. 

Baseball's unwritten rules 
are followed alot more scru- 
pulously than its written ones. 
These rules had a purpose 
back in the game's raggedy pre- 
history. “The early struggle of 
pro baseball was to transform 
itself from a place for rowdies 
and gamblers to something you 
could feel comfortable bring- 
ingthe kids to,” says baseball 
writer Steven Goldman. “It's 
amazing how much ofthe early 
ethos ofthe game was avoiding 
conflict through not embar- 
rassingthe other guy." 

Generations on, baseball 
continues to police itself with 
grim, constipated zeal. If Yasiel 
Puighasthe audacity to act 
impressed after doing some- 
thingawesome, he'll be dodg- 
ing fastballs and salty quotes 
from opponents. Mets closer 
Jenrry Mejia's elaborately 
choreographed victory celebra- 
tions drew priggish public crit- 
icism from his own manager. 

There are other, practical 
reasons for baseball's per- 
sonality deficit—more than a 
quarter of big leaguers speak 
English as a second language, 
and American-born MLB play- 
ersare more likely to be white, 
well-to-do and from a hand- 
fulofwarm-weather states 
than before. If the various 
interchangeable white dudes 
of Major League Baseball all 
seem alike—an ocean oftall 
guys with beards—it's because 
they mostly are. 

While baseballis currently 
without radicalslike Dock 
Ellis—the cornrowed icono- 
clast who pitched a no-hitter 
while frying on acid back in 
1970—there are exceptions to 
the scrupulously square rule. 
David Ortiz says and does 
whatever the hell he wants, and 
we're allricher for it; Dodgers 
pitcher Brandon McCarthy is 
as funny as anyone on Twitter; 
Puig's pound-for-pound swag- 
geris unmatched in any sport. 
These are outliers, but they're 
astart, and areminderthatthe 
sport could close the fun deficit 
ifitwanted to. Baseball is not 
dying, which is good. It might 
as well live alittle —David Roth 


ILLUSTRATION BY JOSEPH CIARDIELLO 


MATCHMAKERS 


YOUR SUMMER SEX LIFE STARTS WITH THE 
RIGHT APP. LET OUR GUIDE HOOK YOU UP 


А ea 


* Don'tget caught with your pants down on the wrong app this sum- 
mer. Techies have rolled out so many incarnations of digital dating 
thatonline profiles now beget different endgames based on the app 
they livein. Some deliver whips and chains; others, a ball and chain. 
To help, we've charted the most popular dating apps, considering pref- 
erence, motive and mood. Your summer of love hereby commences. 


LET'S GET SERIOUS 


. «<--- 
Ashley The 
Madison League 


This invite-only 
app for the elite 
has a waiting list 
thousands decp, 
for those seeking 

a truly “exclusive” 
relationship. 


Cheaters 
gonna cheat. 
For spouses 
looking for 


. 
Daddyhunt 


Who's your 
daddy? Where 
younger gay men 
can find silver 
foxes who'll pick 
up the check. 


ТІГУ 
Lulu 
The Yelp of 
ng apps, 


. 
Tinder Plus 


УП» 


Christian 
Mingle 
Expect to 
BYOB on 
your first 

date (that's 

“bring your 

own Bible”). 


ATT 
Match 
Match is for 
personalities, 
not personas, 
so dont plan 
б on hooking 
Y up without 
some serious 
face time. 


AOS 
Bumble 
To all the 

single ladies: 

This Tinder 
look-alike 
puts you 
in control 


x 


. 
Grouper 
It's all about safety in 
numbers with Grouper, 
which sets up trios of 
friends on group dates. 


A 
/ OkCupid 


so you can 
avoid those 
looking to 
just cop a 
feel. 


Compatibility scor 


profile 


ate and га m I t 
Jie andan The granddad of dating pictures, news feeds, personality 
bs [H-Hwholdidntt apps now lets you undo questions, preference filters, instant - 
т RE swipe snafus and search for messaging and then some. You > 
wy) f bel mates and dates around the know what they say: If you want a ES 
5 : world, for a small fee. relationship, you have to work for it. = 
E ес! 
E LL CS 
ы “ | 74 
=] Tastebuds iz 
-- Takes "W nd of music 
Happn do you like?" to the next 
5 level. Don't wait until the 
. Fe about the one who got А 4 
Down rid SEHE third date to find out she's 
" ; dea really into Ed Sheeran. 
Formerly known as essentially Missed Connections, : 
i TQ aif so you can finally learn the 
Bang With Friends, ) ) 
until the makers name of that hottie you see on 5 
realized nobody the subway every morning. wy Like 
“bangs” anymore. This . 
app filters through Hinge 
your Facebook friends 5 is 
to ind possible Force your friends 
ү з ч Б a to introduce you to 
sex partners, because "I can't get over you/ You heirhbtfriend 
apparently life isn't ч А their hot friends. 
appa ) 9 left your mark on me.” This le ا‎ 
awkivárd enough Г (We only hope you'd 
awkwa 8 app uses Drake lyrics in TEI 
already. x 2-4) do the same.) 
) texts to woo your next boo. 
Hey, it worked for Rihanna. 
aT TS 
. 
Bristlr PES 
For bearded men and the \ i 
Grindr women who love them. | 
- . CuddleBids 
A directory . s 
Н Her Ar a bigs a 
Paaren Scruff Are you a big spoon or a 
Headless toned Lesbi-honest, little spoon? Find a snuggle 
tortas looking For bearded men and this is the best buddy with this app that 
for "workout" the men who love them. one for women matches those who want to 
buddies. seeking women. cuddle and be cuddled. 
> т 
LET'S HOOK UP 


21 


PLAYBOY: Nicky 
found herself in a 
precarious situation 
at the end of last 
season. Will there be 
consequences? 


LYONNE: Shit 
really goes down 
this season. Every 
character has her 
own individual 
wormhole—an 
endless beast of 
psychological 
trauma. That's life! 


PLAYBOY: You've 
been acting since 
you were six. Is there 
a role you haven't 
played? 

LYONNE: In my 
personal life, | have 
so many dynamics 
with men, but | rarely 
play that on-screen. 
I'm usually the alpha 
character—a hero 

| wish | could be in 
real life. It's ironic, 
because so many 
actresses have the 
opposite problem. 
PLAYBOY: How do 
you feel about nude 
scenes? 

ES 

= LYONNE: | always 
a | félt like saving my 
tits for the right 


RS 


it when they were: 
perkier, because 

iow it's going to. 
de significantly ` 
less exciting. For 
ahybody who sees 
them in a future 
as-yet-unknown 
project, | want them 
to think, Damn, | 
wish | had been 
(Seeing those tits for 
years! Maybe | can 
even push it back 
until I'm 40. 
PLAYBOY: And in 

“%: | real life? 

eStritchrasp and ] | j КУ > LYONNE: I'm usually 

y 1 ind WC E / с "topless making 
Büpnearind seres | Je Е coffee, but other than 

sex and showering, | 


үт VN 
(ГА CHEEKY CONVERSATION WN 
| FAVORITE RAZOR-SHARP AGTRE 
| қ N 


N 


* There's somethi out Natasha | 
| Lyonnethat doesn't bite fit—and that's 
agood thing/She's an actress who could 
! easily belongin a iffere 
Bette Davis ey 


en wear T-shirts 
¡no underwear, 


Ape for heri recovering he С 
AN ` Nicky Nic REL 
77 Neu Black, which returns th 


Wé love Nicky because ro rela 
talking dame in a 21st cen topless, then that's a 


good look for you too. 


\Eyonne, it’s the perfect fit. 


\, 


J.R. MANKOFF/AUGUST 


EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT 


SUPERHEROES IS WRONG 


hen writer Geoff 
Johns and art- 
ist Gary Frank 
approached the 
first volume of 
Batman: Earth 
One—their New York Times best-selling 
reboot of DC’s iconic Dark Knight—they 
weren't afraid of the hand-wringing, 


“Why have you ruined my life?” whin- 
ing that seems to follow every superhero 
movie casting or teaser poster reveal. 
Because Johns understood a very basic 
maxim: “If it's great, it becomes canon.” 
With the sequel, Batman: Earth One, 
Volume Two, having recently hit shelves 
ona wave of anticipation, it seems their 
tinkering with Bruce Wayne's origin 


story has met with more approval than 
outrage. It's proof that the reputation 
comic book fans have for reacting vio- 
lently to change has been grossly exag- 
gerated. Comic books survive on their 
ability to adapt and evolve, something 
particularly true with Batman. “We 
had alot of conversations atthe start 
about Bruce Wayne and Batman and 
what it was all about,” says Johns. “And 
there were certain things we felt were 
immutable, the DNA of the character.” 
But beyond that, both Johns and Frank 
agreed that Batman's elasticity over the 
years—from Adam West's pop-colored 
camp to Frank Miller's dark and bit- 

ter old Bruce to Christopher Nolan's 
stripped-down, real-world Gotham— 
actually gave them more freedom. “When 
it feels like everything has been done, it's 
kind ofa liberation," says Frank. “The 
ground has already been broken, so you 
don't necessarily feel that you need to 
stay true to any one version." 

In volume two we once again see Bruce 
Wayne finding his way as Batman, with- 
out iconic elements such as a Batmobile 
or even a Batcave. “If you're building an 
alternative Batman universe, there's 
atemptation to just tick off boxes and 
characters, and they feel shoehorned in," 
explains Frank. “We wanted genuine 
reasons for including them in the story." 
For Johns, each character's DNA needs to 
remain true, but the structure around that 
is fair game. “I think Batman is one of the 
most elastic fictional characters in his- 
tory,” says Johns. “He can be for five-year- 
olds or he can be for adults. It allows us 
creative freedom to explore this mythol- 
ogy.” The term mythology is key, as Johns 
claims that big DC icons such as Batman, 
Superman and Wonder Woman have “god- 
like status.” But at the end of the day, he 
admits, success or failure comes down 
to something distinctly human. “It’s all 
about execution, man,” Johns says. “When. 
things succeed, they stick. If people 
rejected the Batmobile the first time out, 
it wouldn’t have appeared again.” 

He adds, laughing, “Batman had a zebra 
costume once. You don't see that hanging 
in the Batcave, do you?"—Eric Alt 


SHARPER IMAGE 


> What does the Apple 
iPhone have in common 
with an 18th century Japa- 
nese sword? Marc Newson, 2 
the legendary designer 


i who joined Apple last 
i year, recently collaborat- 
i ed with Japanese design 
studio WOW and a ninth- 
i generation swordsmith to 


i create traditional Japa- 
i nese swords. Ten sword- 
i and-dagger sets were 

i produced. Asking price 
і $300,000. 


A = Acura · Audi - BMW - Buick - Cadillac - Chevrolet - Chrysler - Dodge - Ferrari - Ford · СМС - Honda - Hummer - Hyundai - Infiniti 
Accessories Available for | Isuzu · Jeep - Kia - Land Rover - Lexus - Lincoln - Maserati - Mazda - Mercedes-Benz - Mercury - Mini - Mitsubishi - Nissan 
Oldsmobile - Plymouth - Pontiac - Porsche - Saab - Saturn - Scion - Subaru - Suzuki - Toyota - Volkswagen - Volvo · and more! 


Я Ж Ж EE American Customers Canadian Customers European Customers 
Order Now: 800-441-6287 | = WeatherTech.com WeatherTech.ca WeatherTechEurope.com 


O 2015 by MacNeil IP LLC 


FOOD 


GO 
NUTS 


THERE'S MORE TO THE 
TRENDY TROPICAL 
INGREDIENT THAN 
COCONUT WATER 


* While coconut water is 
afine hangover treatment 
and a decent natural sports 
drink, let us not forget the 
other uses ofthis fruit 
that's trending in certain 
culinary subcultures. The 
paleos like it for its hunter- 
gatherer origins, and the 
Ayurvedic crowd touts 

its healing powers, but 

we love it for its versatile, 
umami-rich, fatty yum 
factor. Here are three 
satisfying ways to crack 
the coconut code that don't 
feel a bit like dieting. 


THREE CRAZY-EASY COCONUT RECIPES 


Szechuan Coconut Shrimp 

> Combine % cup shredded coconut, Y 
cup panko bread crumbs and 1 teaspoon 
ground Szechuan peppercorns in a bowl. In 
another bowl, beat two eggs. Dip shrimp in 
eggs, then in coconut mixture. In a medium 
pan, fry shrimp in % cup 375-degree veg- 
etable oil until golden brown on each side. 


Photography by DAN SAELINGER 


Coconut Collins Cocktail 

> In a tall glass filled with ice, combine 

2 ounces gin, % ounce freshly squeezed 
lime juice, % ounce agave syrup (made with 
equal parts water and agave nectar) and 

4 ounces raw coconut water. Top with spar- 
kling water and garnish with lime wedge. 


Coconut Rum Ice Cream 

> Combine two 13-ounce cans full-fat 
coconut milk, 1/2 cups sugar, 2 tablespoons 
dark rum and М teaspoon vanilla extract in 
a blender. Pour into a large metal bowl and 
put in freezer. Whisk every 30 minutes until 
creamy and frozen. 


FOOD STYLING BY BIRTE VON KAMPEN 


SERIOUSLY GOOD BOURBON. 


COMPARTE EvanWilliamsHoney.com f 


DRINK 


DOUBLE-SHOT THE 


> Who says a cocktail 
needs to be in a single 
glass? By downing a shot of 
something strong and then 
following it with a contrast- 
ing set of flavors, you can 
create a sort of multichapter 
cocktail that's greater than 
the sum of its parts. 


PICK YOUR POISON 


SANGRITA 


BULL SHOT 


CHOCOLATE 
CANDY 


ANTS 
ON A LOG 


Photography by SATOSHI 


1. TAKE A SHOT 


1% oz. 
blanco tequila 


1% oz. vodka 


TA oz. gin 


1% oz. PX sherry 


> 9 


T4 oz. room-temperature 


CUT TO 
THE CHASER 


A TOP BARTENDER DECONSTRUCTS DRINKING 
WITH SOPHISTICATED TWO-SHOT COCKTAILS 


or several years the pickleback (a shot of 

whiskey chased by a shot of pickle juice) 

has dominated the bar world as the one- 

two punch drink to beat; it's astrong and 

savory shortcut to a boozy good time. To 
elevate this two-act structure to the next level, 
we tapped bartender Jim Meehan (whose drinks- 
recipe app PDT Cocktails is available in Apple's 
App Store) to create four complex two-shot cock- 
tails worthy of the expert home bartender. 


TOP SHOT S м 


2. CHASE THE SHOT 3. CHEW ON THIS 


% oz. orange juice 
combined with % oz. 
pomegranate juice 


Lime wedge dusted 
with salt 


Lemon wedge dusted 


beef bouillon with cayenne pepper 


1% oz. freshly squeezed 
raspberry juice 


Square of dark chocolate 
(85 percent cacao) 


Small piece of 


1% oz. celery juice 
а Ji peanut brittle 


FOOD STYLING BY VICTORIA GRANOF 


FOLLOW THE BUNNY 
00000 


[playboy playboy @ playboy playboy «playboy 


Geeky black sunglasses feel played out, so this 
summer look for something a little see-through. 


Crystal clear, pale amber or smoky gray, these trans- 
parent frames complement your mug rather than 


hide it. Just choose the best shape, which is usually 


SUMMER'S BEST the opposite of your features—rounded frames on a 
SUNGLASSES ARE square face and vice versa. And blue- or green-tinted 
A MATTER OF FULL lenses harmonize easily with the gentle faded colors 
TRANSPARENCY of the sunny season.—Vincent Boucher 


Photography by JOSEPH SHIN 


Made 
the 
Shades 


© N-Y-See 


John Ve 


Manly 
Oakley 
wt 


oakley.com 


@ Touch of 
Gray 


There's an echo 


Ш GROOM TO WIN 


AMERICAN 


aw ai ләт 
ы | CREW 


Wherever your victories take you American Crew offers a complete 
range of shampoos, conditioners and hair styling products that allow 
men to look their best. Because your victory doesn't stop on the inside. 


For more information, please go to AmericanCrew.com. Follow us: f yu 


TRAVEL 


can view 300 taurant, imag- young and 
years of Russian ined by French rowdy, and you 
naval history, celebrity chef should remain 


including the Alain Ducasse, alert, but it's 
н а D-2 submarine remains one also gritty in 
v қ , + Narodovole of the best- the best way, 
\ Ut ІНЕ SUN one of Russia's reviewed spots can be friendly 
first diesel subs. in town, Or ditch and is often 
t's 10 p.M.,the sun is high, and a swirl of college kids sip cham- the hotel and the gateway to 
pagne on the banks of the wide Neva River. Three fortunate Room With find one of the a long, spec- 

i ч lea аў antes View city’s excellent tacular night 
dudes in button-downs and nearly a dozen Russian beauties in a Л Georglankitch- Fidel ($2 to $6 
cocktail dresses, clinging and revealingin alltherightplaces, > The WSt. ens, such as cover charge), a 
rotate in and out of a series of group selfies, which they then Pen un Khochu Kharcho crumbling relic 

beam up to a satellite and into the social-media universe. And why De AE where the that rings with 
not? They're enjoying a perfect summer's day in the middle of the offer sleek lime- nerfs qm n отеу 
кеі У В perfec е- s the top op- 
St. Petersburg night, and they take a mean picture. stone entries pared and the tion. But there 
high SONDA Georgian wine are worthy 
rain showers 5 > " 
of gently arc- cruise, you'll permanent aid БІЗ ӨНЕ Is alwondertul alternatives 
ing streets and glimpse massive collection and curtains (a Surprise 
18th and 19th cathedrals hewn creative rotating summer must). All That Jazz 
century apart- from stone and exhibits featur- ^ Theeighth-floor РОМУ, See 
ment buildings crowned with ing Russian terrace enjoys Partner » St. Peter 
with tarnished gold, includ- artists. Cold magnificent > The adventur- burg loves its 
roofs that recall ing the color- war and military ^ sunset views ous should hit jazz, and the 
Montmartre ful Church of buffs willappre- over the city, St. the Dumskaya Hat E were 
Sputnik Tours the Savior on ciate the Central Isaac's and the district after prop nm. 
will get you onto Spilled Blood Naval Museum Neva,anditsin- dinner. Sure, it's a e 
the rooftops and апа St. Isaac's where they house Mix res- hard-drinking IUE E 
inside the hid- Cathedral on Saturdays 
den courtyards ^ which was built (weskendsare 


for amateurs). 
It's a hip and 
sophisticated 
scene anda 
perfect second 
stop before you 


Set Your Sites you other- by 500,000 


wise miss. It 
s men and of- 
> Just over the ^ maybeatouch ү ۴ 
fers a rooftop 


E ا‎ colonnade with 
Finland, historic but you can ER 
St. Petersburg also sightsee by e 


is a UNESCO- canal if you hop the city. In hit the clubs. 
certified on BRE OF the addition to tour- On to Dom Beat 
jewel box of many boat tours '"9 the Hermit- which lures 
art, music and offered allover 298: serious the best DJs in 
style. Summer the old city art fans should Europe, for its 
is blessed with visit Erarta, an dance parties 
white nights апа Gawk This off-the-beaten- under mirror 
outdoor music Way track, subver- balls and ladies 
festivals, and it's Way sive modern art sipping bubbly 
the ideal timeto > No matter museum with in stilettos. 


explore the knot which way you an intriguing —Adam Skolnick 


RECON Leader Chronograph Alarm Series No. 8841 (kilometers) or 8842 (miles): 48mm, carbon 
reinforced polycarbonate case with stainless steel case back, World Time City Zones bezel, 
antireflective sapphire crystal, walking tachymetric scale, water resistant to 100 meters, PU watch 
strap has an inch/cm measurement [for use on maps) and comparison chart, and Luminox self- 
powered illumination. Swiss Made. 

Preferred timepiece of Swiss Special Forces and outdoor enthusiasts. 


www.luminox.com 


focebook.com/Luminox f 


„ALWAYS 
S. VISIBLE 


Constant Glow for up to 25 Years. 


GEAR 


CUTTING 
THE CORD 


> Why do I pay for awful stuff 
I never watch? Such has been 
the universal consumer lament 
since the dawn of cable TV. 
You want only ESPN but have 
to fork over extra cash for 16 
home shopping channels. It 
will get worse. Studies show 
the average cable bill will climb 
to $200 a month by 2020. The 
good news is that the old way 
of watching TV is over, gone 
the way of the VCR and the 
TV antenna. You can now drop 
your cable subscription and 
stream your favorite shows to a 
device—a game console, a lap- 
top, even a mobile phone. 
Cobbling together a plan to 
meet your viewing needs isn't 
too hard. For $8 a month, Hulu 
Plus has a huge selection of 
major network shows. By fall, 
Apple will offer a 25-channel 
streaming package for $40 a 
month, including CBS, Fox and 
ESPN, for use on all devices, 
including iPhones. Sling TV's 
"Best of Live TV" package 


LET US CELEBRATE THE DEATH OF CABLE TV 


currently offers 20 networks for 
$20 a month, including CNN, 
Т! ; AMC and ESPN, with 
additional channels available in 
bundles, such as “Sports Extra” 
(ESPN News, ESPN U, etc.) or 
“Hollywood Extra” (EPIX, Sun- 
dance, etc.), for $5 more. . Sony! s 


PlayStation Vue offers the most 
channels: 50 for $50, includ- 
ing INT, NBC and AMC (albeit 
without ABC and ESPN). Vue 
is available only on PlayStation 
and the price is comparable 

to that of a basic-cable bill, 

but it includes a customizable 


interface and a DVR that stores 
shows in the cloud, not on your 
PlayStation hard drive. 

The most compelling reason 
to dump cable is HBO Now. 
The $15 monthly service began 
as an Apple exclusive but is now 
offered by Sling TV and Cable- 
vision, mong others. HBO 
Now archives everything from 
Game of Thrones and Boardwalk 
Empire episodes to documenta- 
ries and other content. 

Despite the many options, 
you can still encounter pro- 
gramming gaps. You probably 
won't see local news, though 
you might find it free online 
(check Livestream.com and 
LiveTV net). And while 
you can subscribe to MLB, 
NHL and NBA streaming pack- 
ages for $50 to $130 per season, 
watching every local game won't 
be possible due to blackout 
ions, as often happens 
with cable. The biggest hang- 
up? The NFL, which offers 
a streaming package only to 
DirecTV subscribers and non- 
subscribers in limited markets. 

Still, change is on the wa: 
Eleven million households 
the U.S. (roughly 13 percent) 
have only broadband internet 
and no cable-television subscrip- 
tion. Studies predict that in two 
years that will jump to 17 mil- 
lion. In five to 10 years, you can 
expect to cherry-pick anything 
you want to watch, from net- 
work shows to online hangouts 
with the stars. Cable won't be 
king. You will. —Harold Goldberg 


” 


LOW-DOWN AND DIRTY 


/ 


/ 


MOTORS 


Sierra Nevada 


Anywhere, 
Colorado 


SMALL SUVS TAKE OFF-ROADING TO UNEXPLORED TERRITORY 


* Off-roadingis as 
much about brains as 
about brute strength, 
and the latest movein 
SUVs proves it. The 
Land Rover Dis- 
covery Sport (base 
price: $37,070) isa 
compact SUV that uses 
apunchy, turbocharged 
in-line four and the 
company's time-proven 
Terrain Response 
system to make mince- 
meat of mud and rock. 
We drove one through 
aragingIcelandic 
creek to test the truck’s 
claimed wading depth 


of 23.6 inches. The Dis- 
covery Sport caneven 
accommodate seven 
thanks to an optional 
5+2 flexible seating 
system that, when laid 
flat, delivers aload 
floor as longas that 

of a Range Rover. The 
new Jeep Renegade 
(base price: $18,990) is 
abudget-friendly little 
hauler with personal- 
ity. Though not as rug- 
ged as the battle-ready 
Jeep Wrangler, the 
Renegade is surpris- 
ingly tough, especially 
in Trailhawk trim, 


which includes eight 
inches of ground clear- 
ance and 19 inches 
of water fording. The 
Renegade manages 
decent gas mileage, 
pulling 24 mpg from 
the 2.4-liter engine 
(though four-wheel 
drive may test that), 
while the interior is 
arolling tribute to 
off-roading, down to 
the map of Moabin 
the center storage bin. 
Its size and power are 
built to tough it out in 
tight spaces. 
—William K. Gock 


36 


Y | ENTERTAINMENT 1 


JURASSIC 
WORLD 


* A genetically spliced superdinosaur is stomping 
terrified tourists in a prehistoric safari theme park, 
andit turns out the creature is ferociou culating 
and crazy in the head. Welcome to Jurassic World, 
Hollywood's third try at recapturing the adrenaline 


rush and sense of adventure that made 1993's Steven 


Spielberg-directed Jurassic Park iconic. “The traile: 
make it seem like a relentless thrill ride of violence 
and insanity," says director and co-screenwriter 
Colin Trevorrow ofthe sequel, which stars Chris 


TEASE 
FRAME 


> Sizzling 
Brazilian American 
actress Morena 
Baccarin earned an 
Emmy nomination 
for her role on 
Showtime's 
Homeland 
(pictured) and has 
a recurring role 
on Gotham. Catch 
her next on the big 
screen in the action 
comedy Spy. 


Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Judy Greer and Vincent 
D'Onofrio. “It is, but our goals were to get beyond just 
people running from dinosaurs. We made arule that 
no animal would do anything that animals on this 
planet can't do today. We've found ways to respect the 
characters from the earlier film: x has lots 
to do that will make fans and newcomers excited. As 
far as the human characters, if you don’t like them, you 
don't care if they get eaten. We've added elements of 
sexual tension and borrowed a page from Hollywood 
screwball comedies. I had Chris Pratt—who's endear- 
ingly funny and such a badass with a gun that you 
know he will fuck up a dinosaur if he has to—watch 
screwball and adventure movies like The Aj 
Queen and Romancing the Stone. We haven't sneal 
previewed the movie, so it’s a thrill knowing I'll be see- 
ing it fresh with an audience. I want people to rip the 
seats out of the theaters and burn them in the streets.” 


THE WIRE: THE 
COMPLETE SERIES 


* The Wire concluded its five-season 
run on HBO in 2008 with just a hand- 
ful of awards but with critical acclaim 
almost cultish in its fervor. This Blu- 
ray box invites newbies and devotees 
alike to plunge into series creator 
David Simon’s mesmerizing depiction 
of Baltimore, a city struggling under 
the overlapping dysfunctions ofits 
institutions. Originally broadcast in 
the 4:3 aspect ratio, the 60-episode 
show feels more appropriately filmic 
inthis HD debut after being remas- 
tered into 16:9 widescreen. (Digital 
HD) Best extra: a panel discussion 
from last year that includes Simon and 
about a dozen cast members. Y Y Y Y 


LISTEN CAREFULLY 


ENTOURAGE 


Was it tough to 
switch back into 
Ari Gold mode? 

А: You just 
lock into those 
qualities, which 
are the antithesis 

of my own 
qualities—his 
quick-twitch 
reactive temper, 
his overly 
emotional 
investment and 
his complete 
focus on money 
and getting there 
by any means 
necessary. | was 
lucky enough to 
play him for eight 
seasons, and there 
are a lot of good 
examples of Ari 
Gold around. 


Are you tight 
with co-stars 
Adrian Grenier, 
Kevin Dillon, Kevin 
Connolly and 
Jerry Ferrara off 
camera? 

А: I'm gone seven 
months out of the 
year doing my 
show Mr. Selfridge 
in England. I'm out 
of the loop with 
American culture 
and sometimes 
with relationships 
| haven't seen a 
lot of the guys, 
but it was great 
to be back with 
them. 


How do 
you think the 
Entourage movie 
will play to people 
who haven't 
watched the show? 
A: It's great to 
take a ride with 
the boys again. 
The movie is 
about Hollywood, 
but it's also 
about loyalty and 
friendship. | hope 
people laugh and 
want to spend 
time with their 
own friends after 
seeing it.—S.R, 


* The short one, the chubby one, the ginger, the one with 
glasses and the other one: Even those of us who love Hot 
Chip can't find a sexy way to describe the British electro- 
pop quintet. On Why Make Sense?, the group's sixth and 
best album, they continue to meld synth-fired New Wave 
with R&B tenderness and crowd-pleasing dance music. 
"Huarache Lights" celebrates a DJ's power to make a fes- 
tival crowd “bathe in the light" but mocks it as well—this 
is the least booming club music you'll ever hear. Hot Chip 
replaces volume with inventive touches that make its 
music both contemplative and extroverted. Maybe one 
day we'll learn their names. YYYY 


TELEVISION 


* Charles Manson may be 80, 
but Hollywood's fascination 
with him remains strong. 
Aquarius, the latest attempt 
to find entertainment 
valuein California inmate 
B33920, thankfully doesn't 
make Manson its chief star. 
Instead, it's the story of Ser- 
geant Sam Hodiak (David 
Duchovny), a 40-ish (and 
fictional) homicide detective 
tryingto help an ex-flame 
after her teenage daughter 
goes missing. Since it's 1967 
Los Angeles, we immediately 
guess what has happened to 


the girl: She's fallen under 

the spell of young Charlie. 
Hodiak's mission, with the 
help of a younger undercover 
cop spying on the dangerous 
hippies, will be to find her 
before she joins the Family 
for good. Introducing this 
made-up story into the Man- 
son mythology is cheesy, but 
it at least brings some tension 
to what has become a very 
familiar tale. There's also 
aton of period music (and 
incessant pot smoking) for 
anyone looking to take a sum- 
mer nostalgia trip. YY 


BANDITOS’ 
TOP FIVE 
ESSENTIAL 
SONGS 


COREY PARSONS, 
LEAD SINGER 
OF SOUTHERN- 
ROCK UPSTARTS 
BANDITOS, PICKS 
HIS FAVORITE 
AMERICAN CLASSICS 


RANDY NEWMAN 
‘Political Science” 


BLAZE FOLEY 
“Big Cheeseburgers and 


Good French Fries” 


IGGY AND THE 
STOOGES 
“Search and Destroy” 


NEIL YOUNG 
“Unknown Legend” 


PAUL SIMON 
“American Tune” 


ends 


BOOKS 


THE TRUTH AND 
OTHER LIES 


* Do we ever truly 
know anyone? In 
Sascha Arango's 
excellent psycho- 
logical thriller, 
Henry Hayden 

is a best-selling 
author who hasn't 
written a single 
word, a devoted 
husband who 
cheats, a lover 
who hates his mistress and a bully 

who saves his victim. Among his many 


SASCHA ARANGO 


secrets is that his wife, Martha, writes 
his books. Yet storytelling—or, rather, 
lying—is essential to his manipulative 
character. And oh what a tangled web 
he weaves after Martha disappears 
under questionable circumstances, a 
situation that threatens him with expo- 
sure. To what gruesome lengths will 
he go to protect himself? Arango, who 
nned episodes of Tatort ("Crime 
e”), a long-running detective 


procedural in Germany, maintains the 
perfect pace to keep you hooked in this 
riveting, bleakly existential novel. YY YY 


SICK IN THE HEAD 


SICK ın 
THe HEAD 


• To get good 
at something 
start young 
and dream 

big. Before 
writer-director 
Judd Apatow 
conquered Hol- 
lywood, he was 
a 15-year-old kid 
hungry for a life 
in comedy. He 
finagled interviews with stand-ups he 
admired (Leno, Shandling, Seinfeld), 
pumping them on how to develop 
jokes, get booked, handle hecklers. 
Eight of these early "conversations 
about life and comedy" from 1983 
and 1984 form the beating heart of 
Apatow's book, along with 30 more 
recent ones starting in 2005. There's 
something sweet yet canny about 

a kid asking Martin Short to explain 
SCTV. Apatow learned well; he spent 
the book's 20-year gap putting the 
lessons into practice. The more recent 
interviews (highlights: Harold Ramis, 
Roseanne Barr, Spike Jonze) are shot 
through with shoptalk and insider anec- 
dotes. If Apatow's gift for comedy is a 
sickness, may he never be cured. YY YY 


JuDD 
APATOW 


— Comedy 


37 


PLAYBOY + HORNITOS PRESENT 


NOT JUST ANY 
MEGAYACHT 


SUPER CARS, DRONES AND PRIVATE JETS: 
THERE'S NO LIMIT TO THE KIND OF 
LUXURIES EVERY MAN DREAMS OF 
ACQUIRING. IN THIS FIRST INSTALLMENT 
OF AN ONGOING SERIES WE HIGHLIGHT 
SOME OF THE MORE ELITE THINGS IN LIFE, 
BEGINNING THIS MONTH WITH MEGAYACHTS. 
HERE'S A ROUNDUP OF OUR FAVORITES AND 
WHY WE THINK THEY'RE SO COOL 


VRE - 


BRONZE BEAUTY BATTLESHIP INSIDE SURPRISE 


GLIDE RIGHT IN 


= In an industry that's naturally extravagant, айе 
kicks it up a notch. The yacht features a hydraulic- 
operated hatch that functions as a drive-in garage 
for personal speedboats—meaning guests can 
actually drive their speedboats right into the ship. 
Oh, and the space doubles as an indoor ocean pool 
when it's not being used for storage. No big deal 


^ Designed without 
a specific client in 
mind, The Belafonte 
is making waves with 
potential buyers. The 
ship boasts five cabins 
and an owner's suite 
that spans 84 square 
feet, it's the outside 
that makes a stunning 
first impression. Along 
with mahogany rails 
and stainless steel 
detailing, the yacht's 
retro bronze exterior 
makes it an instant 
standout in the water. 


— The Azzam has held 
the title of the longest 
megayacht since July 
2013, but perhaps the 
most exciting feature 

of the megayacht is its 
rumored interior and 
high technology. Owned 
by the president of the 
United Arab Emirates, 
The Azzam is said to 

be equipped with a 
bulletproof master suite 
and missile defense. 
Because you never know 
what you may encounter 
on the high seas 


— You may not be able $ 
to tell from its clean 
white exterior, but the 
inside of the Dubai 

is infused with bold 
colors, intricate design 
and detailed mosaics. 
The main attraction 

of the ship's stunning 
interior is the dramatic 
circular staircase 

with glass steps that 
change color and allow 
for a visually exciting 
stroll between the 
social area and the 
yacht's seven decks. 


Bottle service at nightclubs is so last year. Spearheading the latest 
trend of chartering yachts, the new website YachtLife.club allows you 


E MIAMI NICE 


to party on your own luxury yacht for the day in Miami, #YachtLife 
members are guaranteed yachts on demand. 


PLAYMATE OF THE YEAR, 
MEET TEQUILA OF THE YEAR. 


THE MOST HIGHLY 
AWARDED TEQUILA OF 2014 


GET YOURS AT WWW.RESERVEBAR.COM 
FIND OUT MORE INFORMATION AT WWWW.HORNITOSTEQUILA.COM 


СТ‏ ی یہہ 


Based on collective awards won in the 13 major spirits competitions 
Drink Responsibly. Homitos® Black Barrel? Tequila, 40% alc./vol. ©2015 Sauza Tequila Import Company, Deerfield, IL 
PLAYBOY, PLAYMATE, PLAYMATE OF THE YEAR and the Rabbit Head Design are marks of Playboy Enterprises International, Inc, 


SIGNIFICA, INSIGNIFICA, STATS AND FACTS 


CRUEL 


and 


UNUSUAL 


The first 
treadmill, 
invented in 

1818, was 
designed to 
be used in 
prisons as a 
"correctional 
tool” to 
punish 
inmates. 


LAUGH IT UP 


Percentage of women who 

feel a good sense of humor is 
justas important in a mate у 
as physical attractiveness 


^ 


Percentage of 
men who feel 
the same 


25.000 


Approximate number 
of people South Korea 
had jailed since 1985 for 

cheating on their spouses 

The 62-year-old law 

criminalizing adultery was 
repealed this year 


JUST 
KISS 


1 Time Out 
survey of 

11,000 pe 
revealed 


percente 


40% 


28% 


21% 


20% 


CUTTING IT 


The average 
maximum 
compensation, 
according to 
ProPublica, 
for the loss 


of one 


TESTICLE 
$27,678 


PINKIE 
FINGER 
$11,343 


THUMB 
$42,432 


FOOT 
$91,779 


The top five 
women artists 
streamed by 

1 men 


LADIES FIRST = 


on Spotify: 


ХХХ 


AAR 


PAYING 
FOR IT 


Thanks in 
part to stricter 
regulations, 
the legal 
brothel 
industry in 
Australia 
is expected 
to grow to 
more than 
$180 million 
by 2019, 
according to 


IBISWorld. 


WIMBLEDON 


by the Y 


NUMBERS 


Number oft tennis balls 
used during the Wimbledon 
Championships 


290 million 
Number of tennis balls it 
would take to fill Centre 

Court (with the roof closed) 


10,000 


Number of 
copies of the Seth 
Rogen movie The 
Interview dropped 
on North Korea 

via balloon by 
South Korean 
activists. 


60 minutes 
Time that Rufus, a Harris 
hawk, spends flying the 
grounds to deter pigeons on 
most competition mornings 


Limited Mintage Striking... 


WORLD'S FIRST 


The 2015 $100 SILVER PROOF 


Collectible 
2015 date 


Mirrored proof 
background 


GovMint.com Announces the Limited Mintage 
Striking of an Extraordinary Silver Proof 
—the Newest United States $100 Bill Struck 
in 99.996 Pure Silver. Discount Price $99 


This extraordinary piece 
of pure silver has a sur- 
face area that exceeds 

15 square inches...and it 
contains one Troy ounce 
of pure silver! 


And now, during 
a limited strike 
period, the very 
first Year 2015 $100 Silver 
Proof is available from GovMint.com at a 
special discount price—only $99! 


Exquisite Detail 
The historic 2015 $100 Silver Proof is an 
exquisite adaptation of the United States 
Treasury's recently redesigned $100 Federal 
Reserve Note—only the third new $100 
bill design in 100 years. It is a true artistic 
masterpiece that will always be treasured. 


99.9% Silver 


Best of all, this stunning Silver Proof is even 
more beautiful than the original, because it's 
struck in precious silver! 


— سسس 
E] 145‏ 


UNITED STATES 


p 5 


OF AMERICA, 


Larger Franklin 
portrait 


Liberty Bell, quill pen 
& July 4th date 


It is a landmark in proof minting, combining 
unprecedented weight with extraordinary 
dimension. The specifications for this 

colossal medallic proof are unparalleled. 
Each one: 

* Is Individually Struck from Pure 
.999 Silver. 

* Weighs one Troy ounce. 

* Has a Surface Area That Exceeds 
15 Square Inches. 

* Contains 31.10 Grams (480 Grains) 
of Pure Silver. 

* Is Individually Registered and Comes 
With a Numbered Certificate of 
Authenticity. 

+ Is Fully Encapsulated to Protect Its 
Mirror-Finish. 

* Includes a Deluxe Presentation C 


Advance Strike Discount 


The price for the 2015 $100 Silver Proof will 
be set at $129 per proof. 


However, if you place your order now, you 
can acquire this giant silver proof at the 
special advance strike discount price— 
only $99. 


NOTE TO COLLECTORS: When you place 
your order for the $100 silver proof, it will be 
processed immediately, and the earliest orders 
will receive the coveted lowest registration 
numbers. 


GovMint.com • 14101 Southcross Ог. W. Dept. FRN173-01 • Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 


Prices and availability subject to change without notice. Past performance is not a predictor of future performance. 


October 2014 


015 GovMint.com. 


Mint.com® is a private distributor of worldwide government coin and currency issues and privately issued 
bles and is not affiliated with the United States government. Facts and figures deemed accurate as of 


Minted in one Troy ounce. 
of .999% fine silver 


Actual size is 6" x 24" 


Additional Discounts 
Substantial additional discounts are 
available for serious collectors who wish 
to acquire more than one of these exquisite 
silver proofs. 


Year 2015 $100 Silver Proof 
1-4 proofs - $99 each + s/h 
5-9 proofs - $95 each + s/h 
10+proofs - $89 each + s/h 


There is a limit of twenty $100 Silver Proofs 
per order, and all orders are subject to 
acceptance by GovMint.com. 


Only 9999 Available 
GovMint.com will limit striking to only 
9999 One Troy Ounce Silver Proofs for the 
year 2015. Once the edition is sold out, no 
more 2015 silver proofs can ever be struck. 
Orders only will be accepted on a strict 
first-come, first-served basis according to 
the time and date of the order. Call today 
for fastest order processing. 


For fastest service call today toll-free 


1-800-514-6468 


Offer Code FRN173-01 


| Please mention this code when you call. 


THE BEST SOURCE FOR COINS WORLDWIDE" 


42 


WHAT IS IT ABOUT A HOTEL ROOM THAT 
MAKES THE WOMAN IN YOUR LIFE GO WILD? 


or years I stupidly didn't care 
which hotels I stayed in. Some were 
called residences, some invoked 
holidays, many had a number in 
their name for reasons that made 
me assume their first attempts at 
running a motel had failed. But 1 
didn't understand why anyone would 
pay a lot of money for a place where 
you spend the vast majority of your time 
unconscious. This is why they do not 
make rococo boxing rings. 

I had a friend who would—for his 
live-in girlfriend's birthday or their 
anniversary—book a hotel room in the 
same city they lived in. Which is clearly 
insane. I couldn't figure out why his 
girlfriend liked this. "Hey, for your 
present, I'm taking you on vacation— 
down the street!" That's like buying her 
a piece of jewelry she already has and 
making her pack a suitcase to get it. 

Then, when I had to book a hotel 
through a magazine's travel department 
and they suggested the Mondrian, an 
expensive place in Los Angeles, I took it, 
since I was traveling with a girlfriend I 
wanted to impress and I was a magazine 
writer, which doesn't impress anyone. 
The huge lobby, the employees constantly 
saying hi—all of it did nothing for me. 
But interestingly it made her want to 
have sex. I don't think it even mattered 
that the sex was with me; I think she 
just wanted to have sex inside that hotel 
room. If I had understood all of this ear- 
lier, not only would I have booked way 
nicer hotels, but I would have gone to 
Cornell's hotel school. 

I've since learned that when a woman 
walks into a hotel room she immedi- 


ately starts to think about sex, whereas 
I think about sex no matter where I am. 
I'm thinking it's a good time to have sex 
when we're hiking in a forest. When 
we're in a car. When we're at a place with 
a one-person bathroom. When we're at 
a place with a bathroom for a whole lot 
of people but it has stalls with doors on 
them. Basically anytime we're in a room 
and our biological parents are not. 

Women think about sex in a hotel 
room because it's the one place they 
don't have to stress about stuff. Dinner? 
Not their responsibility. The pile of laun- 
dry that has to be cleaned? There isn't 
one. But there's about to be. You can say 
lame stuff like that in a hotel 
room and still have sex. 

There's no stack of bills, 

no stack of dishes in the 
sink, no stack of magazines 
they're supposed to read. 
In other words, when the 
worries of the world are re- 
moved, women think just 
like men. Or the logical con- 
trapositive: Men's minds are 
always empty. 

The hotels pay-per-view television 
still has porn, which seems to make no 
sense in this age of wi-fi. It's there be- 
cause women will playfully suggest 
watching porn in a hotel room even if 
you can never coax them into doing that 
at home. Because on a hotel TV—for 15 
discreetly billed dollars (approximately 
infinity higher than the cost of far supe- 
rior porn online)—porn is classy. This 
super nice hotel, after all, has sanctioned 
it. This is rich-people porn. Porn in 
which men might ask permission before 
they come on your face. 

I would have imagined all this to be 
even truer in a crappy motel room, 
which is a place where you don't have to 
think about anything, and when you do 
think about something it's really, really 


dirty. In fact, I have no idea what people 
do in cheap motel rooms besides have 
sex. Maybe drugs. But they probably 
have sex after the drugs. 

Butinabad motel women are right back 
to worrying about things—specifically, the 
kind of things that happen in bad motels. 
Bedbugs, dirty bathrooms. Even women 
who fantasize about bad things happen- 
ing to them want to act those things out 
only in a really nice hotel room. 

The reason men cheat when they're 
away at conferences isn't that they know 
they won't get caught. They would cheat 
anyway. It's that conferences are the only 
time women are attracted to them. Be- 

cause the women at confer- 
ences have hotel rooms. And 
for them, not using a hotel 
room for sex is like showing 
up at happy hour and not 
eating the chicken wings is 
for us. The point iss Women 
will have sex with you in a 
hotel even if you're married 
and just ate chicken wings. 

I clearly don't know how 
women think, but I do know they think. 
All the time. And if you can find some- 
thing to turn off all that thinking for 12 
to 18 minutes, it's worth the money. It's 
why there are spas, yoga studios, sero- 
tonin inhibitors and fashion magazines. 
And nice hotel rooms. If a hotel room 
comes with a glass of wine when you 
walk in and has a robe in the bathroom, 
make a reservation. 

And you can do this anytime. You 
barely need an excuse. "Oh, I think I 
might drink a lot at dinner, so let's get 
a hotel nearby" works. She won't men- 
tion Uber. She won't question all the 
times you drank a lot and didn't suggest 
getting a room. Because she'll already 
be thinking about sex. And some other 
stuff. But once she gets to the hotel, she'll 
forget all about the other stuff. a 


MELODY NEWCOMB 


ABOUT 
THAT NIGHT 


NOTHING IS MORE AWKWARD THAN RUNNING 
INTO THAT GUY YOU SLEPT WITH ONCE 


've always appreciated getting a 
heads-up from the host of a party 
if someone I’ve been intimate with 
is also invited—the “FYI, someone 
you slept with is going to be at my 
party” message. You don’t want to 
get caught with a Fritos Scoop full 
of seven-layer dip in your hand when 
someone who has seen you naked walks 
up with a hot, Scoop-less date. Running 
into a real ex is a whole other thing, 
but for me, running into the one-night/ 
one-week stand has always been more 
embarrassing. Until recently I didn’t to- 
tally understand why. 

I once hooked up with a guy who was 
just out of a relationship, as was I, and 
we both agreed to one fun night with 
no follow-up e-mails or calls or dates 
or obligations. Just a one-off. A fun-off. 
(Just an aside, a name-drop without the 
name: The guy became super famous a 
short while later.) We made out in a bar. 
On the street in front of the bar. On the 
curb in the residential neighborhood 
surrounding the bar, when the bouncer 
made it clear he didn’t have the same en- 
thusiasm for us that we had for each oth- 
er. The guy’s friend eventually dropped 
us off at my place. It didn’t take long for 
him to “tour” my junior one-bedroom 
and meet my two cats. It was clear he was 
not a cat person. I would usually keep 
the cats out of the bedroom, but this was 
a one-night-only thing and the cats were 
not, so they stayed. We had a good time, 
but we were pretty drunk. It was neither 
of our best work, but I would stand by it 
in court. “He did this. Then I did that. It 
all worked together. It was a fun-off!” I 
think the jury would rule it was an aver- 
age hookup and that we both had noth- 
ing to be embarrassed about. So when 
the alcohol went from giving us energy 
to making us dead tired, we gave in. We 
celebrated a job well-enough done by 
snuggling up to each other, strangers, 
on my queen-size pillow-top. 

His body wrapped around mine. Legs 
touching. Arms touching. Faces touch- 
ing. Strangers just hours earlier now with 
touching faces! Two slumbering strangers 


TONY HUYNH 


totally and completely vulnerable. I sleep 
in the fetal position. He assumed the big 
spoon. I have a little whistle in my nose 
that I’m self-conscious about. He snored 
lightly and bit his fingernails. That hope- 
fully made us even. I stared at his face 
while he slept. (I’m aware that sounds 
creepy.) That’s something else, looking 
at a person’s sleeping face. Seeing their 
wrinkles fade away as their muscles relax. 
Feeling the tension of life leave their body 
for a few hours. Feeling their toe hair. 
And those rogue hairs on their neck that 
don’t even know what kind of hairs they 
are. You spend more time cuddled up 
with a person post-hookup 
than you do actually hooking 
up. Which is why, I realized, 
I was embarrassed when I 
ran into this now famous 
guy. We'd been more than 
"intimate with each other"; 
we'd been intimate with each 
other. Sleeping together was 
more intimate than "sleep- 
ing together" I drooled. I 
freaking drooled! 

I'm not embarrassed about the sex. 
Or that he's seen me naked. I thought I 
was, but I'm embarrassed that he knows 
my nose whistles. I'm embarrassed that 
we held each other. That I stared at him 
sleeping. That we slept intertwined for 
a long time (minus the few minutes I 
left to quietly fart into towels—I'm very 
ladylike). But why? Why is that type of 
intimacy embarrassing and sex is not? I 
guess because we're kind of less vulner- 
able during sex, when our animal in- 
stincts take over. It's afterward that we're 
back to being regular humans who bite 
their nails and put down shower curtains 


BY 
HILARY 


WINSTON 


in the hallway every night because their 
cats pee on the carpet. 

I've hooked up with a lot of guys, and 
I don't really remember the hooking up, 
but I do remember intimate things about 
them. A tattoo of a dragon that had faded 
and bled into a fat snake. A tan line that 
revealed the dude was the owner of some 
kind of European-cut swimsuit. And I 
remember things from their bedrooms: 
posters of bands that once defined them 
(Rush), books they aspired to read on the 
floor (Crime and Punishment) and books 
they'd actually read (Gone Girl, a sort of 
Crime and Punishment light). Souvenirs 
from the life they'd lived (a 
college diploma). And evi- 
dence of the life they wanted: 
a book on screenwriting, a 
new guitar, a travel guide to 
Argentina from 10 years ear- 
lier. And then there are our 
bedrooms and what they re- 
member about us: our one- 
night stands, nose whistles, 
regrettable tattoos and empty 
Tylenol PM bottles. The Brides magazine 
on the nightstand, clearly not being read 
by any soon-to-be bride. They take these 
mental Polaroids of us, as we do of them. 

But maybe it's not so embarrassing. 
Maybe that real intimacy is weirdly beau- 
tiful, your body and your life lazily inter- 
twined with a stranger for the night. Just 
two humans being human. So next time 
you're at a friend's party and you run 
into a girl holding a Fritos Scoop who 
you know from personal experience 
drools and sneaks off to fart into towels 
in the middle of the night, be kind—and 
maybe she won't tell anyone you like to 
be the little spoon. 


Diamond & Gel 
AT THIS PRICE, IT*S A STEAL 


Bracelet: $149 Ring: $139 Set Price: $249 (Save An Extra $39) + S&P 


Premium grade 316L solid stainless steel is the starting point for our magnificent Daniel Steiger Diamond Steel 

Bracelet & Quattro Ring collection. The stylish bracelet features a plaited leather strap, 18k yellow gold plated 

accents and 4 genuine sparkling diamonds, the perfect balance of casual yet luxurious. The multi layered 

Quattro ring is lavishly plated in 18k yellow gold & the middle Steel band is set with 4 genuine diamonds. Each 
piece is dispatched in one of our magnificent presentation cases. 


С OUR CREDIT CARD HOTLINE TOLL FREE 24/7 ОМ 1-877 550 9876 


And Quote Promo Code: 


Р1В15600А 


OR order online at www.timepiecesusa.com/plb156 And Enter Promo Code PLB156QUA 


Tim 


Lama very sexual individual 
with a wonderful wife of more 
than 20 years. She has given 
me countless phenomenal blow 
jobs; if we could bottle and sell 
her technique, we would be 
millionaires. In addition to the 
incredible oral sex I get several 
times a week, we still regularly 
have intercourse—just not 
early in the day. I have never 
been able to convince her to 
experiment with morning sex, 
even though I always have 
enormous morning wood. How 
do I get her excited about sex 
in the A.M.?—].G., Oklahoma 
City, Oklahoma 

Have you tried brushing your 
leeth first? 


І got my опе апа only tattoo 
in 1980, immediately after 
I'd completed basic training. 
A year later I grew unhappy 
with the tattoo and tried to get 
rid of it with a DIY remover; it 
was painful and made a mess of 
the design. Then, a few years 
after that, I went to a doctor 
for dermabrasion treatment. 
The process was excruciating, 
but it succeeded in removing 
95 percent of the ink—along 
with some skin pigmentation. 
Despite my unpleasant and 
painful experiences, I'm con- 
templating getting another 
tattoo. But this time I want 
to know in advance about my 
removal options. What is state- 
of-the-art tattoo removal like 
today? Have things changed in 
the past three decades?—D.G., 
Houston, Texas 

Tattoo-removal technology has 
advanced since your last brutal 
brush with dermabrasion, but a 
tattoo is still not an easy thing 
to undo. It remains painful and 
complicated, no matter the process. 
Dermabrasion was the quickest 
route to removal, but it frequently 
had the unfortunate side effect of 
leaving a scar, which is why that 
process has fallen out of favor. La- 
ser removal is now the most com- 
monly performed procedure, but it 
can be costly and take upward of 10 visits 
to completely remove the ink, depending on 
the size and complexity of the tattoo. Remov- 
ing a tattoo with multiple colors may require 
various laser types, because not all lasers 
are capable of destroying all pigments. (If. 
you really want to nerd out, the only accept- 
able types of lasers for tattoo removal are 
Q-switched lasers in ruby, alexandrite or 
Nd:YAG, each one doing a better job than 
the other at destroying certain pigments. 
The more colorful and complicated the tat- 
too, the more laser types will be involved in 
its removal.) If you're not willing to commit 


PLAYBOY 
DVISOR 


I was raised a Catholic, but now I'm agnostic. Despite 
this, I still find myself shouting *Oh God!" during 
orgasms. I have long wondered what women in other 
countries shout when they climax. What do you 
think?—G.V., Toledo, Ohio 
Much has been said about the sudden apparent religiosity 
that descends on even the most ardent agnostics and nonbeliev- 
ers at the moment of orgasm. References to a deity certainly 
cross borders, showing up in the German "Oh Gott" and Span- 
ish "Dios mio," but we think these uses are more likely to be 
happy expletives rather than prayers. Along with variations on 
the "Oh God" theme, there are of course international versions 
of “I'm coming": “Iku” in Japanese; "Me corro” in Spanish; 
“Je viens" in French. No matter your faith or nationality, in 
that moment it's all metaphor—or, better yet, metaphor-play. 


to a tattoo for life, consider opting out. The 
adage remains: Think before you ink. 


For several years my wife and I have 
been collecting whiskey. Our collection 
now includes more than 150 bottles, 
and its total value is somewhere be- 
tween $10,000 and $15,000. We are 
wondering what options exist to pro- 
tect our investment. Recently we've 
seen advertisements for whiskey insur- 
ance to protect against broken bottles, 
theft and unauthorized consump- 
tion. Are these legitimate companies 


and policies, or are we better 
off purchasing a rider on our 
homeowners insurance?—J.K., 
Glenville, New York 

Contact your insurance agent 
and check your current coverage. 
It's possible your collection is al- 
ready covered along with the rest 
of your belongings. If you do need 
a rider or have to increase your 
coverage, that will likely be much 
easier and more cost-effective than 
buying a separate policy. Whatever 
you choose to do, be sure to docu- 
ment each bottle on an itemized list 
and in photographs. Store these 
records off-site or online. Should 
misfortune befall your fine stash, 
you'll be glad you have these files 
to refer to. 


My wife and I have been to- 
gether for about two decades 
and have always had a good 
sex life and a great marriage. 
Shortly after we married we got 
into gameplay and soft swing- 
ing with a couple we knew. Un- 
fortunately, the couple we were 
swinging with separated. I still 
have fantasies about engag- 
ing in gameplay and possibly a 
threesome with the man from 
this couple and my wife; he’s 
still a close friend of ours. Is 
this a good idea? Is it normal?— 
D.L., Tampa, Florida 

As much as we would all be com- 
forted by the notion of normalcy, 
there's no such thing. If you're 
asking whether what you're sug- 
gesting is commonly accepted in 
society, it depends entirely on what 
society you're part of. You are al- 
ready part of the swinging culture, 
in which having sex in front of 
other men is statistically more com- 
mon than in society at large. As for 
whether it's a good idea to have a 
threesome, of course it's okay if ev- 
eryone is on board. You seem to be 
a liberal and freewheeling crew, so 
we can't see any harm in al least 
inquiring. Just be prepared for a 
yes or a no, and if both your wife 
and your friend go for it, be sure 
to lay out the ground rules and ex- 
pectations ahead of time. 


Lam 43 and look good for my age. 
I attribute this to diet, exercise and 
drinking a lot of water. Because I keep 
myself well hydrated, I have a hyperac- 
tive bladder. I usually have to urinate 
two times during the night. To avoid 
disrupting my sleep too much, I pee 
in a glass cup, which I clean regularly 
and keep beside the bed. I just started 
a new relationship and haven't yet 
exposed my girlfriend to my nighttime 
routine. Her bedroom doesn't have 
an attached bathroom, and I must go 


45 


PLAYBOY 


46 


down steep stairs to use the toilet at 
night. Sometimes I can't go back to 
sleep afterward. Is using my pee cup 
at night poor etiquette while I’m in a 
relationship?—U.L., Peoria, Illinois 

It would be one thing if you were living 
in a cabin in the woods in the dead of winter 
under threat of attack from hungry bears with 
an outhouse as your only option for relieving 
yourself. But the days of chamber pots are 
long behind us, and it's time for you to retire 
this quirky indulgence before you scare away 
your new girlfriend. Try tapering off your 
waler intake during the evening hours, basi- 
cally refraining from your hyperhydration 
routine after six рм. Just make sure you get 
plenty of water earlier in the day. 


Not too long ago, my best friend became 
my boss. Soon after, he disciplined me at 
work over a slight matter, and I didn’t 
think it was at all warranted. The whos 
and whats aren’t particularly significant, 
but the result is that now I’m conflicted 
about being the best man at his upcom- 
ing wedding, a commitment I made well 
before our disagreement. Prior to the 
incident at work, I would have unhesi- 
tatingly served as his best man, but now 
I can't help but feel as though I would 
be disgracing his marriage if I am not 
fully committed. Am I being overly sen- 
sitive, or does my friend have an obli- 
gation to work this out with me to my 
satisfaction?—T.C., Lubbock, Texas 
Don't let one small offense undo the years 
of goodwill you've clearly built up with each 
other. To refuse to be your friend’s best man 
over this isolated instance, which you even 
characterize as “slight,” would be petty. Is it 
possible you're resentful of him for becoming 
your boss and getting married? Could the 
incident have been caused by your friend’s 
insecurity in his new role as your superior at 
work? Whether the answers are yes or no, the 
whats aren't actually that important, as you 
say. We're guessing that if you bury the hatchet 
and support your good friend on his wedding 
day, you'll feel a lot better about everything. 


l havea problem with condoms slipping 
off while I'm having sex. I use regular, 
nonspecific sizes. I read some recent re- 
search that shows the average length of 
an erect penis is 5.2 inches, while the 
girth is 4.6. Mine is longer than 6.5 
inches while erect with a girth well be- 
yond 4.6 inches. This condom mishap 
has occurred a few times throughout 
my life, and I have friends who have 
complained about a similar problem. 
They feel snug when they go on but 
then suddenly slip off and disappear. 
Short of having to hold the condom 
to my shaft (Га rather be doing other 
things with my hand), what can I do? 
Are there any condoms especially made 
to stay put?—C.B., Helena, Montana 
Try going down a size in terms of your 
circumference. Look for condoms labeled or 
marketed as "snug" or "slim." (Don't worry, 
you will never have to ask for condoms in 


a size small—there’s no such thing, just as 
there are no 13th floors in most buildings.) 
Trojan ENZ and LifeStyles fit on the snug- 
ger, slimmer side. Also take care not to get 
any lubricant on the inside of the condom, 
which can cause it to slip off. In the interest 
of safe sex, don't abandon your hand-grip 
technique until you've made absolutely sure 
you've found the proper fit. 


Lam planning a trip to Japan next 
spring that will hopefully coincide with 
the blossoming of the cherry trees. In 
addition to that, I plan to see Mount 
Fuji, the white castle in Osaka and the 
Imperial Palace, among other sights. 
Another must for my vacation is book- 
ing an evening with a geisha. I'm aware 
that geishas are not prostitutes, and 1 
am not expecting anything sexual. I'm 
more interested in a maiko, or appren- 
tice geisha, because of her stricter at- 
tention to detail, more colorful kimono 
and makeup and elaborate hairstyle. I 
would love a one-on-one evening (prob- 
ably with an interpreter) or perhaps a 
tea-party setting, or a combination of 
the two. I've read that a formal intro- 
duction is necessary, but I don't know 
what that means. The best geishas are 
in Kyoto, so I'm interested only in that 
city. How much would a geisha experi- 
ence cost, and how would I go about 
booking one?—R.H., Toledo, Ohio 

For a couple hundred dollars you can join 
a group experience at a popular ryokan (the 
term for a traditional hotel in Kyoto) and 
performance space called Gion Hatanaka, 
which includes musical and dance perfor- 
mances by geishas and the opportunity to 
speak with them, albeit briefly. You may 
have to share a table with other guests, but 
you can book this in advance online. It has 
gotten rave reviews. For a more intimate ex- 
perience you might want to book a five-star 
hotel in Kyoto and use its concierge to ar- 
range a dinner at a restaurant with a geisha 
and translator. These experiences can cost 
upward of $1,000. 


Are airline miles worth the trouble? 
Friends tell me they're getting tough- 
er and tougher to redeem. I recently 
started traveling cross-country for work 
and am wondering if I should commit 
to one airline's frequent-flier program 
in the hopes that ГЇЇ eventually earn 
enough miles to fly to Asia without hav- 
ing to shell out any cash.—L.M., Sha- 
ron, Pennsylvania 

It's true that blackout dates and crowded 
flights make it harder to redeem miles, but 
it doesn't hurt to commit to one carrier, par- 
ticularly if your company is paying for your 
tickets. Just be sure the carrier flies to (or 
partners with airlines that travel to) your 
fantasy destination. To get a jump-start on 
stockpiling miles, search online for credit 
cards with big sign-up bonuses. A 40,000- 
mile sign-up bonus isn't uncommon, and if. 
you pay all your big bills through that card, 
you should be able to accumulate enough 


miles to get a free flight to Asia within a 
year. Don't expect to be able to redeem miles 
during peak travel times such as spring 
break, Christmas and high summer. And be 
sure to zero out your balance every month, 
as interest charges can rapidly eat up the 
value of the miles you've earned. 


After decades of wearing standard 
neckties I recently switched to bow ties. 
I watched several YouTube tutorials 
to learn how to tie one and now have 
four bow ties in my collection. I wear 
them as often as I can. Here's my first 
question: How appropriate is it today 
to wear a bow tie instead of a neck- 
tie? Bow tie wearers are definitely in 
the minority, especially in the business 
world, though I have received many 
positive and complimentary comments 
when I've worn mine. Second: Some- 
times the aristocratic characters on 
Downton Abbey wear white ties. Where 
can I buy one, and on what sort of occa- 
sion would I be able to wear it?—A.L., 
Oneonta, New York 

The appropriateness of a bow tie in a 
business setting is entirely dependent on the 
kind of business you’re talking about. Any- 
one who wears a bow tie is going to be seen 
as a person who wants to stand out from the 
crowd. In creative industries such as adver- 
tising, design or fashion, this can be a good 
thing, as the ability to make bold statements 
is seen as a desirable character trait and 
skill set. In finance or pharmaceuticals, not 
so much. But if you're going to wear a bow 
tie, knowing how to actually tie it shows true 
commitment to the look. You should probably 
avoid white ties altogether, as they are re- 
served only for the most formal of occasions 
(which would be designated as such by the 
organizer). If you do go white tie, go all-in: 
waistcoat (that long-in-the-back penguin 
suit), patent leather shoes. That said, don't 
hold your breath for such an invitation. 


l love going down on my wife. What 
are the risks for my mouth and throat 
regarding whatever bacteria or viruses 
may normally be found down there? 
Neither of us has ever had another 
partner.—Y.W., Queens, New York 

If you are both as virginal as you say, then 
you have little to worry about and should en- 
joy your comparatively unique status as each 
other’s lifetime one and only. There is a small 
chance that if she were to have a yeast infec- 
tion you might develop an oral yeast infec- 
tion, known as thrush, but it’s treatable and 
should in no way discourage you from hav- 
ing your cake and eating it too. 


For answers to reasonable questions relating 
to food and drink, fashion and taste, and sex 
and dating, write the Playboy Advisor, 9346 
Civic Center Drive, Beverly Hills, California 
90210, or e-mail advisor@playboy.com. The 
most interesting and pertinent questions will 
be presented in these pages each month. 


FOR THE T-S 


VISIT PLAYBOYSTORE.COM TODAY! 


INTRODUCING 
PLAYBOY COLLECTOR'S EDITION ART TOYS 


in А Е у - 
SELECT TOYS AVAILABLE NOW | COARTISM.COM 


m www. REZA ASLAN 


A candid conversation with the outspoken scholar of religion as he 
takes on atheists, Jews and Christians, as well as his fellow Muslims 


If it's true that in polite company one should 
avoid the subjects of politics and religion, don't 
invite Reza Aslan to your next dinner party. The 
Iranian American professor, author and pundit 
has voiced views on precisely these topics that 
have placed him at the center of contentious na- 
tional debates and inspired threats on his life. 

As fundamentalist Muslim factions perpe- 
trate beheadings, suicide bombings and mass 
shootings in the name of their religion, Aslan 
has emerged as a defender of Islam, though he 
writes and speaks—in books, on CNN, in The 
New York Times and elsewhere—about all reli- 
gions, including Christianity; indeed, his 2013 
number one best-seller is Zealot: The Life and 
Times of Jesus of Nazareth. He has also writ- 
len the best-sellers No god but God: The Ori- 
gins, Evolution and Future of Islam, and How 
to Win a Cosmic War. The latter is an in-depth 
study of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other mili- 
lant groups and religious violence in Judaism, 
Christianity and Islam. 

Commentators on both the left and the right 
sometimes vilify Aslan, but he gives as good as he 
gets. Of some of his most prominent adversaries, 
he has called Richard Dawkins, author of The 
God Delusion, a "buffoon" and dismissed Sam 
Harris, the neuroscientist and author of Waking 
Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, 


as "an atheist fundamentalist.” Writing in The 
New York Times, Aslan attacked Bill Maher 
after a segment of Real Time on which Maher 
and Harris got into a heated exchange with Ben. 
Affleck about Islam, which Harris said is "the 
mother lode of bad ideas." (Affleck charged that 
their characterizations of Islam were “gross” and 
“racist.”) In the Times, Aslan wrote, “Making a 
blanket judgment about the world's second larg- 
est religion—is simply bigotry.” 

Aslan was born in Iran but came to the U.S. 
with his family in 1979, when he was seven, 
during the Iranian revolution. They settled in 
Oklahoma and then in northern California. In 
America, Aslan, born Muslim, became an evan- 
gelical Christian but returned to his native faith 
while attending Santa Clara University. He 
earned a master's degree in theological studies 
from Harvard and then a Ph.D. in the sociology 
of religions from the University of California, 
Santa Barbara. He also has an MFA from the 
University of Iowa, where he was named the 
Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. 

Aslan is currently shooting a documentary 
series for CNN called Believer (he describes it 
as "about religion the way Anthony Bourdain's 
show is about food”), producing a series for ABC 
based on the biblical story of King David and 
working as a consulting producer for the HBO 


series The Leftovers. In addition, he works as 
a professor of creative writing at the University 
of California, Riverside. He's married to Jessica. 
Jackley, an investor and entrepreneur who co- 
founded Kiva, the nonprofit micro-lending 
agency. They have three sons. 

At a time when the militant Islamic group 
ISIS and terrorist attacks in Europe dominate 
the news, PLAYBOY sent contributing editor 
David Sheff to meet with Aslan. Sheff, whose 
last Playboy Interviews were with Chinese artist- 
dissident Ai Weiwei and sex-advice columnist 
Dan Savage, reports, “Aslan is a professor, so it 
was unsurprising that he was articulate and im- 
passioned on the subjects about which he teaches 
and writes. He spoke loudly and forcefully, as if 
we were in a lecture hall rather than a chic Hol- 
Iywood restaurant. Afterward, a woman who'd 
been sitting at a nearby table told me she'd been 
eavesdropping. ‘Before dinner I'd have agreed 
with Bill Maher,’ she said. ‘I believed the Muslim 
religion to be violent—jihad and the 72 virgins 
and all that. I see I was wrong.’ She'd learned 
what many of his adversaries know: ‘When Mr. 
Aslan starts talking, he's very convincing.” 


PLAYBOY: How do you feel being de- 
scribed as an apologist for Islam? 
ASLAN: The thing is, I get it from both 


“I get it from both sides. The religious groups 
think I'm too secular in the way I define reli- 
gion, and the atheists paint me as a religious 
apologist because I refuse to denounce religious 
belief as irrational and illogical.” 


‘A generation from now, our children will look 
back on the rabid, despicable anti-Muslim 
rhetoric that has become part of the main- 
stream dialogue in this country and wonder 
what the hell was wrong with us.” 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHARLIE LANGELLA 


"I have so much love and affection and esteem 

for Jesus the man and what he preached that 
when I see people bastardizing that teaching 
for their own grotesque political and economic 
advantage, it enrages me.” 


49 


PLAYBOY 


50 


sides. The religious groups think I'm 
too secular in the way I define religion, 
and the atheists paint me as a religious 
apologist because I refuse to denounce 
religious belief as irrational and illogical. 
PLAYBOY: But in the wake of extreme 
violence committed in its name, are you 
surprised the Muslim faith is criticized? 
ASLAN: There's something deeply schizo- 
phrenic about this country. We were 
founded on the very principle of reli- 
gious freedom, and yet, if you look at 
our history, we have always transformed 
religious minorities into scapegoats, into 
the other. In the 19th century we passed 
federal laws to curb Catholic immigra- 
tion to the United States. In the interwar 
period, anti-Semitism in this country 
was at absurd levels. You even had a 
business leader like Henry Ford forcing 
his dealerships around the country not 
to sell to Jews. Everything that was said 
about Catholics and about Jews is now 
being said about Muslims. "It's not really 
a religion, it's a political ideology." “How 
could you be loyal to Islam and loyal to 
America at the same time?" A generation 
from now, our children will look back 
on the rabid, despicable anti-Muslim 
rhetoric that has become part of the 
mainstream dialogue in this country and 
wonder what the hell was wrong with us. 
Then we'll find somebody else. 

PLAYBOY: In the meantime, however, un- 
speakable violence is being carried out 
by people who claim to be doing so in 
the name of Islam. 

ASLAN: Violence in the name of Islam 
is absolutely out of control, especially 
in the Middle East, which is facing pro- 
found political, economic and social in- 
stability. With all that, religious radical- 
ism, regardless of what religion you're 
talking about, surfaces. In the Central 
African Republic, the problem of reli- 
gious radicalism in that unstable country 
is Christian radicalism. You have Chris- 
tian youth slaughtering women and chil- 
dren with machetes. In Myanmar, an 
unstable part of the world that's major- 
ity Buddhist, you have acts of extreme 
Buddhist violence. Marauding Buddhist 
mobs are killing women and children in 
the name of Buddhism. 

PLAYBOY: But there's no denying that many 
of the most brutal attacks are committed 
in the name of Islam by fundamentalists— 
for example, the mass shootings in Janu- 
ary at Charlie Hebdo in Paris. 

ASLAN: The tragic attacks in Paris are a 
culmination of a decades-long crisis of 
identity that has gripped large parts of 
Europe. For many Europeans, it is becom- 
ing increasingly difficult to define what it 
means to be British, to be French, to be 
German. The European Union has dis- 
solved the borders and boundaries that 
separate Europeans into distinct nation- 
states. In doing so, it has diminished the 
sense of national identity that has formed 
a bedrock of the continent. As difficult as 
this process has been for indigenous Eu- 


ropeans, it is even more difficult for im- 
migrants, particularly those from North 
Africa and the Middle East. They were 
never given an opportunity to assimi- 
late into European culture. They were 
crowded in ethnically segregated neigh- 
borhoods. They were not given the op- 
portunity to integrate into European so- 
ciety. In many cases they were not given 
citizenship. So they felt neither European 
nor Middle Eastern. It's no wonder you 
see the extreme polarization throughout 
Europe between, on one hand, far-right, 
ultra-nationalistic, even neo-Nazi groups 
like UKIP in Britain or Pegida in Germa- 
ny that blame all their troubles on immi- 
gration and multiculturalism and, on the 
other, identity-less youth who feel they're 
under attack by their own populations. 
This is precisely why jihadism has found 
a foothold in Europe. Jihadism thrives in 
these kinds of identity vacuums. The mes- 
sage they preach to Europe's young Mus- 
lims is that the reason they don't feel Brit- 


For the vast 
majority of 
Americans, the 
only Muslims 
they know are 
the Muslims 
they see on TV. 


ish or French or German is because they 
aren't. Nor are they Turkish or Algerian or 
Pakistani. They have no national identity 
whatsoever. The very concept of nationali- 
ty is a sin; it’s anathema to Islam. They are 
Muslims and nothing more. They are part 
of a global community under siege and 
it is their duty to come to the aid of any 
Muslim, anywhere in the world, to defend 
Islam, particularly from Europe. This is a 
compelling message for a great many of 
Europe's Muslim youth. It must be coun- 
teracted with a robust attempt to make 
these young people a part of Europe, to 
make them feel as though they have a 
home there. Otherwise we will be dealing 
with these kinds of tragic consequences in 
Europe for many years to come. 

PLAYBOY: With the emergence of ISIS 
in the Middle East, the tactics being 
used have been horrifying. In The New 
York Times you wrote about Bill Maher's 
response to President Obama's asser- 
tion that ISIS doesn't represent Islam 


and Maher's statement that Islam has 
“too much in common with ISIS.” You 
wrote, “People of faith are far too eager 
to distance themselves from extremists 
in their community, often denying that 
religious violence has any religious mo- 
tivation whatsoever.” Isn't it crucial to 
make a distinction between extremists’ 
actions and the basic tenets of Islam or 
any other religion? 

ASLAN: I understand the desire among 
any community of faith to distance them- 
selves from extremists within their com- 
munity, to label them as "not us." When 
you had Anders Breivik, the Norwe- 
gian self-described "Christian warrior," 
slaughter 77 people in Norway, the vast 
majority of them children, most Chris- 
tians in this country said "That's not 
Christianity; he's not a Christian" in the 
same way that when we see a member of 
ISIS beheading women and children and 
selling women into sexual slavery, most 
Muslims in this country say "That's not 
Islam; he's not really a Muslim." Well, 
here's the thing. Anyone who says he's 
a Muslim is a Muslim. Anyone who says 
he's a Christian is a Christian. If some- 
one says they're acting in accordance 
with their belief system, we should prob- 
ably take their word for it. I get why we 
don't want to, because it's grotesque and, 
frankly, hard to justify when compared 
with what these religions actually preach. 
PLAYBOY: Is it not true that jihad is an es- 
sential part of the Muslim faith? 

ASLAN: If that were true, it would mean 
the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world are 
currently out killing apostates. What we 
have now is a bunch of armchair experts 
either scouring the scriptures for bits of 
savagery or watching the news and us- 
ing that as some kind of field research 
and passing themselves off as experts in 
the lived experience of billions of people 
around the world. It's silly and offensive, 
and for the life of me I cannot under- 
stand why anyone takes it seriously. 
PLAYBOY: It's because perpetrators of vio- 
lence take it seriously. 

ASLAN: We live in a Christian-majority 
country. Seven out of 10 Americans self- 
identify as Christian. Christianity oozes 
from the very fabric of this country. Our 
laws are based in large part on Chris- 
tian morality. When they're confronted 
with extremism in the Christian com- 
munity, it's easy for Americans to see it 
as an outlier. If your neighbor is a Chris- 
tian, if your grocer is a Christian, if your 
teacher is a Christian, if your best friend 
is a Christian, when you see someone 
do something appalling in the name of 
Christianity, you have an easy reference 
point for defining that as extremist. But 
one percent of America's population is 
Muslim, and about 37 percent of Ameri- 
cans claim to have ever met a Muslim. 
And so there isn't that reference point. If 
the only Muslim you've ever heard of is 
the Muslim you see on Sean Hannity—— 
PLAYBOY: Or Osama bin Laden. 


ASLAN: Or Osama bin Laden, yes, then 
that's your view of Islam. The media re- 
port on the plane that crashed, not the 
plane that took off. If the only thing you 
knew about planes was what you read in 
the media, you would assume that every 
plane crashes. For the vast majority of 
Americans, the only Muslims they know 
at all are the Muslims they see on TV, 
and the only Muslims they see on TV 
are fanatics and extremists, so it makes 
perfect sense that they would draw these 
facile connections between the Muslim 
they see on Fox News and the Muslim 
they may confront in their neighbor- 
hood. As any social scientist will tell you, 
perceptions are altered not by informa- 
tion or data but by relationships. If you 
simply know a single individual in an 
“out” group, it absolutely transforms 
your image of that group. My mother- 
in-law is a perfect example of this. She 
thought all Muslims were what she saw 
on Sean Hannity. Then she met me. 
PLAYBOY: So your wife isn't Muslim? 
ASLAN: She is the WASPiest WASP you 
will ever meet in your life. She's from 
Pittsburgh, salt-of-the-earth white evan- 
gelical Protestant. 

PLAYBOY: Did your families have trou- 
ble with each of you marrying outside 
your faiths? 

ASLAN: It was a little strange. I was the 
first Muslim her family had ever met. 
Jessica's mom would freely admit that 
the only thing she knew about Muslims 
was what Sean Hannity told her. It's 
a testament not just to that family but 
to the power of relationships in trans- 
forming people's perceptions, because 
she went from worrying about how her 
grandchildren would grow up around 
what she called "all that violence" to ab- 
solutely falling in love with me and with 
Jessica and my relationship. We have 
the closest, most wonderful relationship 
you could imagine. And even better, she 
stopped watching Sean Hannity. 
PLAYBOY: But it's not only Hannity and 
other commentators from the right who 
fuel the fires about Muslims. Bill Maher 
is a liberal. 

ASLAN: Which is troubling. Now it's not 
only the conservative xenophobes who 
are making this argument. It's self- 
styled liberals who are doing it in the 
name of liberalism. Bill Maher's entire 
point is that liberals don't criticize hor- 
rific human rights abuses carried out by 
Muslims, which is ridiculous. It's an ig- 
norant statement if I've ever heard one. 
The people at the forefront of the femi- 
nist movement in the Muslim world are 
liberals. The people at the forefront 
of the democratic movement in the 
Muslim world are liberals. The NGOs 
fighting against barbaric practices like 
stoning or female genital mutilation 
are liberals! What Bill Maher means is 
“Liberals don't hate Muslims like I do,” 
and therefore they're not really critical 
of it. But that is not a liberal value. It's 


becoming harder and harder to tell the 
difference between a conservative and 
a liberal when it comes to this issue of 
xenophobia against Muslims. 

PLAYBOY: On Maher's show, the actor Ben 
Affleck became the defender of Muslims. 
ASLAN: Although Affleck couldn't properly 
put into words the emotions that were 
welling up in him when confronted with 
such obvious and undeniable bigotry, 
the emotions themselves are reflective of 
a liberal viewpoint. A true liberal cannot 
abide any kind of blanket generalization 
of anyone—of any race, creed or ethnicity, 
period. So what you saw in that passionate 
response was true liberalism. 

PLAYBOY: Maher, Richard Dawkins and 
Sam Harris are prominent atheists. 
You've frequently criticized the new athe- 
ist movement, but the number of atheists 
in America is increasing. How do you ac- 
count for the growing interest in atheism? 
ASLAN: Yes. It's almost seven percent, ap- 
parently, though the latest Pew poll puts 
it at three percent. It's nominal. We have 


Atheists have 
this fantasy 
that we'll rid 
ourselves of 
religion and 
we'll have peace. 


been talking about the death of God for 
a long time. At a certain point we have to 
just come to the realization that religion 
is not going anywhere. On the contrary, 
I would argue that religion is a greater 
force in the world today than it has been 
in centuries. I think atheists have this 
fantasy that eventually we'll rid ourselves 
of religion, and when we do, we'll have 
peace and prosperity and harmony. That 
was the entire premise of the 20th centu- 
ry, wasn't it, that if we just simply remove 
religion as a major factor of identity and 
instead identify ourselves according to 
nationalism—secular nationalism—then 
we'll have the peace and prosperity we're 
always searching for? That led to two 
world wars and the death of tens of mil- 
lions of people in the name of nationalism 
and secularism. I think this fantasy that 
the way to deal with religious violence is 
to get rid of religion has to go away. 
PLAYBOY: Do you agree that fundamen- 
talism is most often born of social ills, in- 
cluding poverty? 


ASLAN: There's no question that religious 
extremism is intimately tied to socio- 
political and socioeconomic factors. At 
the same time, it's overly simplistic to 
say that if you deal with socioeconomic 
issues, it will necessarily excise religious 
fanaticism. It won't, but they are inti- 
mately connected, because religion is not 
about the things you believe or the things 
you do; it's about who you are. It's your 
very identity. It encompasses your poli- 
tics, your economic views, your ethnicity, 
your culture, your gender, your sexual 
orientation. It is one of a multiplicity of 
factors that define who you are as a hu- 
man being, and so it cannot be extracted 
from those things. 

PLAYBOY: Do you agree that U.S. 
policies—for example, in the war on ter- 
ror, the use of drones and the collateral 
damage they inflict—encourage reli- 
gious fanaticism? 

ASLAN: We've long known that religion 
provides a powerful language to express 
grievances, dispossession and margin- 
alization, because religion has the most 
currency for the masses. Was the war on 
terror expressed to the American pub- 
lic as a complex pseudo-military police 
investigation of an international crimi- 
nal conspiracy? No. It was expressed as 
a battle between the forces of good and 
evil. That's something every American 
can understand, because that language 
affects us in a deep and personal way, 
whether we're religious or not. When 
you're confronted with any experience 
of marginalization or dispossession, 
when you have grievances that go un- 
addressed or aspirations that cannot be 
met, or when you feel as though your 
safety, security and very identity are un- 
der attack, religion steps in in a beautiful 
way to provide the language you need to 
express that frustration and alienation. 
Of course drones dropping bombs hap- 
hazardly on civilian populations is going 
to result in greater religious extremism. 
Of course dispossession of land and the 
removal of opportunity are going to re- 
sult in religious extremism. 

PLAYBOY: Given that, how should the U.S. 
address beheadings, suicide bombings 
and similar terrorist tactics of religious 
fundamentalists? 

ASLAN: First of all, let's be clear about 
something. Fundamentalism is a reac- 
tionary phenomenon—to social prog- 
ress, to liberalism, to scientific advance- 
ment. If you understand fundamentalism 
as a reactionary phenomenon, then you 
recognize that it will always exist as long 
as social advancement and social prog- 
ress exist. There will always be those 
who, perhaps because they feel left be- 
hind by that advancement, revert to the 
most static, basic tenets of their beliefs. 
That's a long way of saying there ain't 
nothing we can do about fundamental- 
ism. I don't have a problem with funda- 
mentalists. If you are a Christian who 
believes that women should be seen and 


51 


PLAYBOY 


52 


not heard, fine. I think that's despicable, 
but so what? If you are a Muslim who 
believes that all gay people are going to 
burn in hell, fine! I think that's disgust- 
ing and I disagree, but who cares? I don't 
have a problem with your beliefs. I have 
a problem when your beliefs turn into 
actions that violate basic human rights. 
That's what we should be focusing on: 
not people's beliefs but people's actions. 
PLAYBOY: But every day those beliefs do 
lead to actions—horrific actions. 

ASLAN: But painting all believers with the 
same brush as the extremists just alien- 
ates all believers. It turns them away 
from us, when in reality they are the 
most valuable tool in our arsenal against 
fanaticism and extremism. 

PLAYBOY: How are they a tool? 

ASLAN: If you аге а fanatic or an extremist 
who is killing people, enslaving people, 
violating their most fundamental human 
rights, you need to be confronted in 
the strongest terms possible—militarily, 
ideologically, legally, whatever it takes. 
However, at the same time, we have to 
understand that a lot of the succor these 
fanatics gain comes precisely from the 
impression that they are fighting for 
the rights of the aggrieved masses. ISIS 
draws people to it because it claims to 
be addressing their grievances. Unless 
we're willing to address those very le- 
gitimate grievances, we may be able to 
counteract the militants themselves, but 
we'll never counteract the ideology be- 
hind that militancy. 

PLAYBOY: Is that also true of the Taliban? 
ASLAN: It's similar in the sense that griev- 
ances are important and addressing 
grievances is important. There is, how- 
ever, a major difference between groups 
like Al Qaeda and ISIS and groups like 
Hezbollah and Hamas. The notion that 
these groups are the same, as Benjamin 
Netanyahu never tires of saying for his 
own propagandist reasons, or as George 
W. Bush liked to say—not for propagan- 
dist reasons but from a position of utter 
ignorance—is an incredibly dangerous 
misunderstanding. Al Qaeda and ISIS 
are jihadist organizations. Hamas and 
Hezbollah are Islamist organizations. An 
Islamist is a religious nationalist. His en- 
tire agenda stops at the borders of what 
he considers his nation-state. Hezbollah 
is utterly uninterested in any non- 
nationalistic ideology. Hamas wants Pal- 
estine and nothing else. When you want 
something concrete and measurable, 
there's room for debate, there's room 
for dialogue, there's room for negotia- 
tion. Most important, there's room for 
moderation. Indeed, what we have seen 
over and over again is that when Islamist 
groups have an opportunity to take part 
in the political process, one of two things 
happens: Either they moderate their 
ideologies, as the Justice and Develop- 
ment Party in Turkey did, and they ex- 
perience enormous political success, or 
they don't moderate their ideologies, as 


the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt did, 
and they crash and burn spectacularly. 
In contrast, jihadists are not just 
transnationalist; they are antinational- 
ist. ISIS and Al Qaeda not only are un- 
interested in nation building, they want 
to get rid of all nation-states. They want 
to reconstitute the globe as a single 
world order under their control. That's 
what the caliphate means for them—a 
new world order. 
PLAYBOY: Many fundamentalists also 
want to erase Israel. What's your 
response to Netanyahu's controversial 
appearance before Congress in Wash- 
ington in March? 
ASLAN: At this point Netanyahu is the 
best thing to have ever happened to 
those seeking not just negotiations be- 
tween the United States and Iran but 
rapprochement. His tired, over-the-top 
rhetoric, his clear desire to scuttle ne- 
gotiations and his refusal to offer any 
alternative—not to mention that he has 


Painting 
all believers 
with the same 
brush as the 
extremists just 
alienates all 
believers. 


been wrong about Iran for 25 years— 
only reinforces the argument of those 
who claim that without a negotiated 
compromise to Iran's nuclear program 
the only alternative is war. The one thing 
this man has managed to do is unite 
those forces struggling for peace in a 
way that even six months ago I would 
have said was inconceivable. 

PLAYBOY: You support negotiating with 
Iran, but how should we respond to the 
nation's fundamentalist factions? 

ASLAN: We must remember that the great- 
est weapon in the fight against fanaticism 
is the vast majority of the religious com- 
munity that shares a set of similar beliefs 
but rejects the extremist interpretation 
of those beliefs. When we color the entire 
community as extremists, we're doing 
something that is self-defeating in our 
fight against extremism. 

PLAYBOY: This goes back to President 
Obama repeatedly emphasizing that 
violence by Muslim extremists isn't a 


reflection of Islam. Is it important that 
he does so? 
ASLAN: Yes, and he is smart enough to 
know that the kind of simplistic and 
bigoted rhetoric we hear so often from 
the anti-Muslim crowd is a detriment 
to our national security. However, it is 
important to understand that, techni- 
cally speaking, the president is wrong. 
The members of ISIS are Muslim for the 
simple fact that they declare themselves 
to be Muslim. We can say that their Is- 
lam is an extreme form of Islam, that it's 
anti-Koranic, that it's in opposition to the 
overwhelming majority of Muslims in 
the world, but there is no Muslim pope. 
There's no Muslim Vatican that gets to 
decide who is and who is not a Muslim. 
PLAYBOY: But how is it anti-Koranic? It's 
not anti their Koran. 
ASLAN: Right. It picks and chooses the 
verses it likes and ignores the ones it 
doesn't, which, by the way, every Muslim 
does, as every adherent to every religion 
in the world does. It’s why Christians 
can be capitalists. 
PLAYBOY: Meaning? 
ASLAN: If you look at the beginning of 
Jesus's life, you are talking about an ex- 
tremely poor, uneducated, very likely il- 
literate, marginal Jewish peasant in the 
backwoods of Galilee, someone who can 
be referred to as a country bumpkin, who 
despite all that, through the power of his 
charisma, his creativity and his teach- 
ings, started a movement specifically on 
behalf of the poor and the weak and the 
marginalized—a movement that was seen 
as a threat to the prevailing powers of the 
time, and they ultimately arrested, tor- 
tured and executed him for sedition. 
PLAYBOY: This is the subject of your book 
Zealot. In it, you say that in his life, Jesus 
was a political figure even more than a 
religious one. Why is that relevant? 
ASLAN: This is a man who loathed wealth 
and power, who was adamant in his con- 
demnation of political and religious au- 
thority, a self-styled gatekeeper of salva- 
tion, who preached almost exclusively 
to the poor and the marginalized, whose 
entire conception of what he called the 
Kingdom of God was predicated on the 
reversal of the social order, where the rich 
would be made poor and the poor would 
be made rich, where the hungry would be 
fed and the fed would go hungry, where 
those who rejoice would mourn and those 
who mourn would rejoice, where the first 
would be last and the last would be first. 
Marxism talks about everybody be- 
ing on the same field, but this man is 
talking about switching places! There is 
something so radical and revolutionary 
about that idea that has been completely 
lost in the marriage of Christianity with 
power. If you know that, how can you 
have someone like [televangelist] Joel 
Osteen making millions and millions of dol- 
lars preaching what he calls the “prosper- 
ity gospel”—this idea that what Jesus really 
wants for you is (continued on page 116) 


MANUFACTURED AND DISTRIBUTED BY TIME CONCEPTS, LLG 
2301 KERNER BLVD, SUITE А? | SAN RAFAEL, CA 94901 USA 


INFO@TIMEGONGEPTS.NET 


AWRONG TURN IN MEXICO 


BY JASON MCGAHAN 


56 


ight Mexican sol- 
diers form a loose 
perimeter in the 
grass, machine guns 
slack at their sides. 
Fifty yards back in 
the direction of the 
highway, a metal 
sign along a gravel 
road announces the 
entrance to a lonely 
beach called La 
Majahua. The men, 
members of the 

75th Infantry Battal- 
ion of the Mexican 
National Defense Forces, are there following up on 
an anonymous tip about a body. They have found 
what they were looking for: a motorcycle, caked in 
dried mud, lying on its side, propped on a wood- 
pile. Two large trash bags, bulging and tied shut, sit 
beside the bike; a faint odor of decay emanates from 
them. A seasoned crime reporter at the scene, accus- 
tomed to the smell, estimates the remains inside 
have been decomposing for at least a month. It is 
4:30 p.m. on July 10, 2014. 

The men exchange observations about the site, 
noting the fresh set of vehicle tracks leading from 
the dirt path to the bike and how the motorcy- 
cle has been stripped of its gauges, handlebars, 
motor and seat. The vehicle ID number, however, 
remains visible. Dried mud encrusts every inch 
of the bike; investigators agree that it was buried, 
then later exhumed and left in the open, where it 
was sure to be found. 

The oldest soldier extends a BlackBerry in front 
of him to take a photograph while an officer in a 
camouflage hat quietly inspects it. Back at head- 
quarters, the battalion's high command receives the 
photo and a message from the scene: "It's him." 


In 2012, Harry Devert returned to his home- 

town of Pelham, New York, a suburb 10 minutes 
north of the Bronx, after five years of adventur- 
ing around the world. He arrived just before 
"Thanksgiving, having been home only a few times 
during the previous years and never for more than 


“HARRY DIDN'T CON- 
SIDER FACTORS LIKE 
RISK OR TIME. WHERE 
HE WENT WAS SIMPLY 
A MATTER OF WHAT 
HE WANTED TO SEE." 


a couple of weeks at a time. He would visit with 
his widowed mother, meet with the renters in the 
house his father had left him and grab a beer with 
friends. He never unpacked. 

His mother, Ann, was walking her dog when she 
noticed the next-door neighbor talking to a scrawny 
stranger with a full beard and dressed like a guru 


in flowing pants. She didn't recognize her only son. 
Devert was 31, and his friends were getting mar- 
ried, buying houses and having kids. The neighbor 
who worked for the family business five years ago 
now ran it. The friend who traded stocks and blew 
through 10 grand in one night in South Beach was 
married on Long Island with two kids. Devert saw 
the ex-girlfriend he almost married wipe up baby 
spit-up with a dish towel. 

He wrote in an e-mail, "What had I been doing 
this whole time? Had I been running away from 
all of this? Was I scared to face this world I barely 
recognized? Was growing up more terrifying than 
falling down the side of a cave in the middle of a 
Vietnamese jungle days away from any human life 
whatsoever, trying to just fight to keep my eyes open 
because I thought that if I let myself fall asleep that 
T'd never wake up like always seems to happen in 
the movies? Yes, actually, very much so." 

The novelty of being home wore off quickly. 
Devert needed money to travel, but no one would 


hire him. Six weeks as a vol- 
unteer at the Mother Teresa 
Center in Calcutta and a 
month working in rice pad- 
dies for room and board in the 
Philippines weren't going to cut it 
with prospective employers. Finally, 

a friend's wife got him a job in human 
resources on Long Island. 

Then a neighbor from his days in Miami 
got in touch to say she was living in New York. 
"They met for a drink in Midtown, and he was 
awestruck. Sarah Ashley Schiear had just wrapped 
up shooting for The Taste, a cooking competition 
show on ABC. It was scheduled to air in January 
2013 (she finished third out of 16 contestants), and 
she had moved to New York to open a pop-up res- 
taurant and capitalize on her TV exposure. 

Schiear was direct, practical and ambitious, 
and, most eye-opening to Devert, she made a liv- 
ing doing what she loved. Devert did nice things for The motorcycle was an 11-year-old olive-green 
her, including assembling IKEA furniture for her Kawasaki KLR650, a.k.a. the Swiss Army knife 
new apartment in NoHo and showing up to support of motorcycles, a.k.a. the poor man's BMW. It's 
the opening of her restaurant (he clinks champagne ап all-terrain dual-purpose motorcycle built to 
travel long dis- 
tances on- and 
off-road. Devert 
bought it from 
an ex-Marine in 
Brooklyn with 
$2,500 he got 
from selling an 
anniversary-edition 
Cartier watch, one 
of the last memen- 
tos from his days 
in finance. Devert 
climbed aboard, 
rode 10 feet and fell over sideways. He got back 
on and started it up, kicked the bike into first 
gear and tumbled to the ground again. 

Not knowing how to ride a motorcycle was part 
of the adventure for Devert. The idea—a two-year 
motorcycle journey to Brazil—was born of a fan- 
tasy, a totally impractical plan that he intended 
to see through to reality, risks be damned. Like 
the time in Vietnam when he set off in search of 
the world's largest cave with nothing but the dim 
memory of a photograph he had seen in National 
Geographic. The magazine kept the location of the 
cave a secret, and Devert headed off during rainy 
season with no trail. He spent eight days lost in the 
jungle and ran out of food, but he found the cave 
and returned with a photo identical to the one on 
the magazine cover. 

"If Harry had been born in the 15th century 
he would have been Christopher Columbus," 
says one traveling partner, Pau Balaguer. "He was 
extreme, too extreme." Balaguer, a native of Bar- 
celona and a former stock trader, met Devert in a 
swimming pool in Pai, a backpacker town in north- 
west Thailand, and recognized him as a kindred 
spirit. Devert was limping badly from an injury he 
sustained during the Buddhist New Year celebra- 
tion in Chiang Mai. Leaping from one moving 
truck to another, he slipped, sliced his pinkie toe to 
the bone and eventually had the gash stitched up 
(“with the help of a bottle of whiskey and a sock to 
bite down on," Devert later wrote). 


glasses with two ladies in a promotional video). She 
told him he had the charisma to host a video travel 
blog (he declined) and encouraged him to write a 
memoir in the vein of Eat, Pray, Love. 
His mother overheard phone conversations and 
sensed the tenderness in Devert's voice. 
Schiear loved his stories about places 
like Nepal and Venezuela, about 
families who invited him into 
their homes and how he woke 
up with kids crawling all over 
him. She sensed he was special 
and told him he could be famous. 
“I tend to think of myself as posi- 
tive and seeing the good, but no, 
no, no," Schiear says. "He is honestly 
like an angel." 


% шы 


57 


58 


“THERE WERE 
RUMORS OF DEA 
AGENTS IN THE AREA. 
TO GO AROUND 
FILMING PEOPLE WAS 
SUICIDAL." 


They traveled together in Thailand, Cambodia 
and Laos. They wrecked their motorbikes on an 
eight-day loop of villages in Laos, feasted on cow 
eyes at a village wedding and were arrested for 
hitchhiking in Pakse. In Cambodia, security guards 
at Angkor Wat permitted them to stay after hours 
and watch the sunset from the temple walls, and 
the nephew of Prime Minister Hun Sen allegedly 
threatened them with a knife at a party in Phnom 
Penh. In Laos, Devert bought a bag of mush- 
rooms and woke up at dawn, alone and naked on a 
stranger's roof in Luang Prabang. 

"Maybe your mind thinks that this is your limit, 
but with Harry you feel so comfortable that your 
limit goes to the double. And you feel safe. You feel 
like, I'm a good person, so all the people around 
me are good people. Why would something bad 
ever happen to me?" Balaguer says. "Very deep 


in my soul I was thinking Harry will die young 
because he took too many risks." 

In October 2013, three months before Devert hit 
the road again, he posted the first entry about his 
trip on his new website, A New Yorker Travels. The 
headline read, NYC TO THE TIP OF SOUTH AMERICA ON A 
MOTORCYCLE I DON'T KNOW HOW TO RIDE. He included 
a Google map of his proposed route, a bold squig- 
gly line that would have made Che Guevara blush: 
18 countries in two years, from New York to Cal- 
ifornia to Mexico, touching every country in 
Central America from Belize to Panama, then a 
ferry to Colombia, a loop through Venezuela, then 
down the length of the Pacific coast of Ecuador and 
Peru, into Bolivia and across northern Argentina 
to Brazil in time for the 2014 World Cup. When 
the Cup ended he would head to Uruguay and far- 
ther south through Argentina's Patagonia, as far 
south as South America goes, to Ushuaia, the city at 
the tip of Tierra del Fuego. The sheer impossibil- 
ity of the journey lent it the aura of not only a great 
adventure but a great feat. He thought he would 
document the trip and maybe write a book about it. 

"Some people dream of traveling the world, 
climbing mountains, sailing across oceans or down 
jungle rivers, and some people dream about owning 
a house, getting a promotion, buying a new watch 
or eating at a new restaurant," he wrote in the last 
essay he published on his (continued on page 128) 


“T am dressed for a costume party, darling.” 


59 


As an international model 

and a gold medalist in 

the sport of rhythmic 
jymnastics, Kira Dikhtyar 

15 both an artist and an 

athlete—a stunning 

champion of balance, 

poise, dexterity and dance. 

Here, as a blank canvas 

brushed with soft strokes 

of lambent color, this 

oscow-born beauty is 
even more of a perfect то 


u2399 »nuepy Surg 
əy} u22419q әтрооп 333 
passim e oxi pa4ejds 

‘sug NOY зела 
эпо uo ѕләјәш ZT 01 
UIIMS 0) porn 1949 рец 
Ápoqou *ure3e uy L 
"simuour 10} *opou aeu 
ur аиэшош jeu 10; Sur 
-uren u22q рән ‘эшоц 
зщ sem рие Suor] 
pue ‘je 123je апо? 
әшоц sıy SEM o[oH ang 
sueaq Хопәйәшә ue 
qons ayedionue 3,uprp 
oSpruqnag, ‘әзе 001 SEM 
її 219J9q 22ej1ns әш 
оз eq unq ¡md pno? 
ѕүетотро ‘YILI зиро? 
ѕләлтр Mayes ou) yadap 
е е SSIUSNONSUO) ISO] 
оз әләм IBPLIQNAL JI 
тәйцәр E ose sem 3r 3nq 
“yıdap әлп$рәш 0) әлә) 
sem ado. ayy, "Mo[oq 
ssoux.rep «зәр ou олш 
рәлеәйдевір eu ado. e 
олио шщ paddıp spend 
yser Moped 148 11q ш 
ino paxpap saspnf very) 
jo эпо әрцм uontsod 
озш шщ рәмоз ‘Kur? 
Mg 'әлм sry ‘SU sty 
1peauoq Jayjoue pue 
ypau sry Sun1oddns 
9[poou ureoj Y UM 
*p10221 PJIOM р yeaıq 
01 SUH NOY вләзәш 
201 оз 2Arp оз pasedaad 
*seureqeq “pue[s] Suo 
эп$пл yo 2402 Surdand 
e ‘JOH әп s,ueaq 
әлоде эпох uonnaduroo 
эш отш рэзеор “pg 

uoq 'oSpraqna, 

urn “F106 

“q ләдшәзәд u 


ADINTOAS WVAV АЯ S2LIOJS цим o3priqnag, 
рәүеЗәл әң "puerreu L 

Әәл} әлдцәсішоэ JO риом snojeA4euu <5по|мәсі ay] episu| по риу оў 3insand ѕѕәрдиәјәл wo. pou.n3a1 snf pey 
ayy ш ¡e sxsu 5$әзәчзе Jo dnoı6 peuruuejep ‘jews y гле Jo y3e2a1q ә|бш e uo об иеш ue» ees ay] yjesuaq Je) MOH oym puarıy poo3 е UM 
зе е pojuo1 pue 19104 

азза ӘМІОО е ш PONIOM oy әләҷм 
“пораот ат papue] әң 

`Зицәлел) 1пәм pue 

xpedyoeq v рәддел8 

“воо ge] sty paupirp ay 

ов ‘wiry pa1oq 412915 

ay) зп 10јелоде pue] 

-pny do} v ur ләәшӛпә 

onauas v se 818 e 108 oq 

uaym puru əy} jo әні 

e 10] pounsop pouroos 

ay “әзәүчзе әлппәйшоэ 

E J9A9N `рәчәлләзи1 

рчејеәл MƏN UL ÁJISIDA 

-jun pue |00908 y3ry 

youn “ш yop оз pauad 

-dey siusued sry 2104 

uvisoudjog IAIM 

. ut s[[2us 103 8шлтр Aq 

E Ajosuraq ureu 


ртом un weg 19q104q SIU 
р 


68 


“YOU ИЕ ИЕ 
НАМЕ МО 
FEAR” 


of free divers he saw seemingly defy 
human physiology and dive far deeper 
than scuba divers off Ko Tao. 
Trubridge was intrigued. He re- 
searched online and learned that free 
diving wasn't just about underwater 
exploration but was also a competitive 
sport. During depth competitions, he 
learned, athletes compete in three main 
disciplines: constant weight (in which 
divers dolphin-kick to depth wearing 
a monofin); free immersion (in which 
athletes pull themselves along a line to 
depth, then back to the surface, without 
fins); and, most difficult of all, constant 
no fins (in which competitors dive using 
a modified breaststroke, without fins). 
Trubridge flashed to those early days 
underwater, shut off the computer and 
began to practice dry breath holds on 
his bed. But he knew he'd need to get 
back to the tropics to see if he had what 
it took to be a competitive free diver. 
He quit his job and traveled to the Bay 
Islands in Honduras, where he spent 
weeks lengthening his breath hold and 


diving deep. Next, he drifted to Sar- 
dinia to train with Italian free-diving 
legend Umberto Pelizzari. Trubridge 
began to compete, but a lack of accessi- 
ble dive sites with consistent conditions 
hampered his performance. Then, in 
2005, he found Dean's Blue Hole. 

An underwater cavern flipped verti- 
cally to a depth of 202 meters, it's shel- 
tered by 15-meter limestone bluffs and 
is just three steps from a spectacular 
white-sand beach. Conditions are hard 
to beat. Within a few years, so was Tru- 
bridge. The first time he broke a world 
record, the free-diving community 
took notice and began to travel to Long 
Island to train and compete alongside 
him. Most of the divers arrive in the 


Previous page: William Trubridge on his 
way to depth. This page: 1. Accompa- 
nied by safety divers, Alexey Molchanov 
ascends Dean's Blue Hole in the Baha- 
mas. 2. After the successful completion of 
his dive Molchanov receives a white tag. 
3. Halfway to a record, Sofia Gomez Uribe 
grabs a tag from the bottom plate. 


Bahamas just before the Vertical Blue 
competition, the Wimbledon of free 
diving, an event Trubridge owns and 
typically dominates. His stirring per- 
formances at Dean's Blue Hole, with 
records and medals on the line, are the 
main reason Trubridge is considered 
the best free diver alive. 

Yet, by the time he clipped onto the 
line last December, his position at the 
top was tenuous. Vertical Blue 2014 
drew national record holders from 19 
countries. Among them was Alexey 
Molchanov, then 27, a Russian swim 
prodigy turned free diver who was al- 
ready the deepest man in the sport. In 
September 2013 he dived to 128 me- 
ters, covering a distance greater than 
the height of an 80-story building and 
breaking his own world record in con- 
stant weight. Trubridge still owned the 
free-immersion world record at 121 
meters and the constant-no-fins record 
at 101 meters, swimming a distance 
greater than two football fields, with- 
out fins. Yet Molchanov beat Trubridge 
for an overall competition title for the 
first time last May at the Caribbean 
Cup and went on to lead the Russian 
men to team gold at the world cham- 
pionships. By (continued on page 110) 


CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: DAAN VERHOEVEN: LIA BARRETT: DAAN VERHOEVEN 


"Well, I may be expensive, honey, but remember—I’ve got my very own frequent flier program!” 


69 


Y 


к 


BAR GUIDE 


2015 


W 


ERE OFFICIALLY OVER THE PRE 


PROHIBITION-DRINKS SHTICK, AND SO ARE 


AMERIC 


AS BEST BARTENDERS. LET US RAISE A 


GLASS ] 


ГО THE SIMPLER, SMARTER COCKTAIL 


By Alia Akkam 


Smoked Fruit 


Del Maguey Vida 
Mezcal 8: I 
Fruitesse 


National 
Anthem 


Brooklyn Lager & 
Old Weller Antique 


Bourbon 


Apples and 
Vanilla 


Not Exactly 
a Paloma 


Stiegl Radler & Siete 
Leguas Blanco Tequila 


72 


BAR GUIDE 


as] 
anced concoctions 


naissance, such a shoddy 
Ik-slinging just won't fly. 
ly quality on their minds, some 
husiastic barkeeps have decided to give 
ese once-bastardized libations an upgrade. 


Amaretto Sour 


By Jeffrey Morgenthaler, 
Pépé le Moko, Portland 
Jeffrey Morgenthaler 
decided it was time to 
give new life to that 
cloying 1970s go-to, the 
amaretto sour. In this 
rendition, served at his 
speakeasy, he shuns the 
sweet-and-sour mix for 
lemon juice and amps 
it up with bourbon and 
egg whites. 


Ya oz. egg whites, 
lightly beaten 

3/4 oz. Booker's over- 
proof bourbon 

10z. fresh lemon juice 

T/ oz. amaretto 

2 tsp. simple syrup 


Shake ingredients with ice 
cubes until well chilled; 
strain into an old-fashioned 
glass filled with ice. 
Garnish with lemon peel 
anda brandied cherry. 


Long Island 
Iced Tea 

By Mike Criss, the 
Nightingale Room, 
Houston 

At Mike Criss and 
Bobby Heugel's 
Nightingale Room, 
one of the featured 
drinks is the Long 
Island iced tea, a 
throwback to Criss's 
club-bartending 
days. This version 


of the often reviled 
multispirit cocktail is 
fresh and satisfying. 


1/2 oz. each Old Tom 
gin, rhum agricole, 
tequila blanco and 
simple syrup 

1 oz. fresh lemon juice 

Top with Mexican Coke 


Pour ingredients into a 
collins glass filled with ice 
and stir to combine. 


Piña Colada 

By Chad Solomon, 
Midnight R D 
Fresh juices and good 


rums upgrade the 
classic. 


1⁄2 oz. each fresh lime 
juice, coconut milk, 
rhum agricole blanc 

102. Wray & Nephew 
overproof rum 

1/4 oz. coconut cream 

1'% oz. fresh pineapple 
juice 

3 drops mineral saline 
(1 tbsp. salt dissolved 
in 4 oz. water) 


Combine ingredients in a 
shaker and shake without 
ice. Pour into a 16-ounce 
hurricane glass filled with 
crushed ice. Stir to dilute, 
top with more ice and gar- 
nish with pineapple wedge 
and freshly grated nutmeg. 


Ве 2 


“Our piña 
colada 
takes the 
classic and 
punches 
itup with 
fresh juice, 
funkier 
and fruitier 
rhum 
agricole 
and 
Jamaican 
pot-still 
rum, plus 
salt, fat and 
acid” 


—CHAD SOLOMON 


DRINK STYLING BY SKYLAR THOMSON: BARTENDER ILLUSTRATIONS BY STEPHANIE SLEIMAN 


A Better 
Basic Bar 


STEP ASIDE, MUSTACHIOED 
MIXOLOGIST, AND JUST 
GIVE US A DRINK 


> The posh, tin-ceilinged speakeasy 
will always hold a special place in the 
hearts of drink aficionados. But it's 
time for the pretense-free casual bar, 
where cocktails and beer are relished 
in equal measure, to take over the 
spotlight. Here are five newish laid- 
back lairs in which to tie one on. 


Link Ray 
1. Lost Lake 


+ Tiki guru Pau! 


Уа oz. 
1/1 от. 
3/4 oz. lime juice 


3. The 
Nightingale 
Room 


5. The 
Happiest 
Hour 


Normandie 


Club 


Odin 


Latham had one friend left in the world, 
and now he's dead 


normally don't answer the phone when I'm uploading a 
picture of my cock to the internet, but it was Jess, and she had 
taken Zack out of state. 

"Speaking," I said. 

“Why do you answer the phone like that?" 

"Are you calling principally to question my phone etiquette? 
Because I know plenty of other women who can do that who I 
still get to fuck." 

"Odin died." 

I watched the picture come up bar by bar: the pecs with their breasty 
shadows, the taut overhang of the belly positioned to obscure my face 
and finally the cock itself, the undampable springing leftness of it, the 
tragic, gut-punch tapering, like a Nike Swoosh on a set of angry pink 
razor-burned balls. 

Delete, man. Fucking deee-leet. 

"Latham?" 

"When?" 

"I'm not sure. He was asleep this morning when JP left for work, and 
then when he got home Frank was barking like crazy and led him into our 


Our room. 

“—and he was under the bed." 

“Did you tell Zack yet?" 

“No. Betsy and I took the kids to Legoland today, and he's so happy. I'll 
do it tomorrow." 

Betsy was Jess's high school friend. She had spoken at our wedding and 
then been the architect of my demise. She lived in San Diego now with 
Mike and their kids, on a street that ends in the ocean. At the corner of Via 
de la Paz or some such shit and the petering sand grains of America. 

“JP’s waiting for you at the house.” 

“TIl be there in 10 minutes." And then, instead of hanging up, “Can I 
say hi to Zack?" 

Pause. "Okay." 

I heard her walk into the other room, then him rabbiting around with 
Harlan and Juno, the hysterical pitch of it, laughter (continued on page 124) 


ТОД 


; FORGET A FANCY NIGHT OUT ON THE TOWN. IF 
OU WANT TO IMPRESS THE FABULOUSLY PHYSICAL 
MISS JUNE, YOU'LL NEED TO WORK UP A SWEAT 


yg. зу SASHA EISENMAN 


or Miss June Kaylia Cassandra, feeling sexy is all about having a 

healthy mind, body and spirit. Her mission in life is to be her best 

self, which means greeting every morning with a smile (“Posi- 

tive thoughts breed positive outcomes,” she says) and working 

to six times a week to maintain her killer body. “Being fit 

nitely part of being the best possible me,” says the aspiring 
medical assistant. "It's not only the way my body looks but how it feels on the 
inside. We have only one body, so I take care of and love mine.” Outside the 
gym, Kaylia enjoys watching Minnesota Vikings football, snowboarding, hik- 
ing, walking her Labrador puppy and spending quiet nights at home. “A glass 
of red wine, sitting on a sofa and being comfortable—there's something very 
appealing and sexy about that," she says, alluding to the inspiration behind 
her 1960s-themed рі.лүвоу pictorial. "Maybe it's because I appreciate modesty. 
Asa small-town girl, I'd rather be cute and comfortable than try to impress 
other people,” she says. “The only person I ever compete with is myself." 


PLAYBOY.COM/KAYLIA-CASSANDRA 


| 
; 


PLAYMATE DATA SHEET 


NAME: Kayla С ASSaNadra | | 
көт, SB WAIST SS —— aS ‚ ЭЧ ' $ 5 % 
HEIGHT: CAP E SSS Y $09 109 Y ee > i 2 

BIRTH DATE: 2-22-40 BIRTHPLACE: Grand sora N D 
aree DASE \ n SV E one Uli | | 


KNOW mu name. (rS pranounced к.А-10) 
men Lond remain numDIc HE SUCCES. 
EE ANA dont like MEN who 
Enese SOU OT GORA сало OMEN 
THE LOVE OF MY LIFE: DE M e (COON ¡Y О. 
beo л э 
GUILTY PLEASURE: rag MO i+ | D SHO Ж 
Gut 40 ee FOvOrike acor, JASON 
NÓ eye ame Neve OU ССссс\ў 
Out Ole NOt ХОС i \ 
MY ADVICE: qi S Dr 

Cr uou! Teese ; 


inner ned. E TORN 


PLAYBOY'S PARTY JOKES 


The idea of “ladies first” was obviously 
invented by a guy who wanted to check out 
women's asses. 


How can you make a neat freak scream? 
After you fuck her, wipe your dick on her 
bedroom curtains. 


А man walked into a library and whispered 
to the librarian, “Do you have a book on small 
penises?" 

“I don't think it's in yet,” she answered. 

He replied, “Yes, that's the one.” 


When you get married, S&M night turns into 
her sleeping while you masturbate. 


А new survey found that Chipotle is the most 
popular restaurant to take a first date. It's also 
one of the most popular places to break up if 
the man is still taking the girl to Chipotle on 
their third date. 


Ira guy remembers the color of his date's eyes 
after their first encounter, chances are she has 
small boobs. 


Where did you get that Rolex?” a man asked 
his co-worker. 

“My lesbian neighbors gave it to me for my 
birthday,” the co-worker said. “They asked me 
what I wanted, but they misunderstood when 
I told them, ‘I wanna watch.” 


An elderly man was out for a drive when he 
received a phone call from his wife. “Dear, be 
careful,” she said. “I just heard on the radio 
that one idiot out there is driving the wrong 
way on the highway.” 

“Are you kidding me?" he said. “There are 
hundreds of them!" 


To bimbos, men are like bank accounts: 
Unless they have a lot of money, they don't 
generate much interest. 


A girl asked her mother, “Where did you and 
Daddy meet?" 

"At a picnic," the mother answered. 

"Did I go there with you?" the girl asked. 

The mother answered, “No, sweetheart, but 
you were with me on the way back." 


What's the difference between a bitch and 
a whore? 

A whore sleeps with everybody at the party, 
and a bitch sleeps with everybody at the party 
except you. 


Why did the prostitute look into getting a sec- 
ond vagina implanted in her hip? 
She wanted to do a little work on the side. 


How is being in the military like getting a 
blow job? 

The closer you get to discharge, the better 
you feel. 


What goes in hard and dry but comes out soft 
and wet? 
Chewing gum. 


What's the difference between the G-spot and 
a golf ball? 

Men will spend more time looking for a 
golf ball. 


Senator,” an aide called, “there's someone on 
the phone who wants to know what you plan 
to do about the abortion bill." 

He responded, "Tell them I'll have a check 
in the mail by the morning." 


A man was admitted to the hospital with a 
horrendous sunburn all over his body. “Rub 
aloe vera on his skin, give him an IV drip to 
maintain his hydration and have him swallow 
a Viagra," the doctor told a nurse. 

"But why Viagra?" the nurse asked. 

The doctor answered, “It will keep the sheets 
off his thighs and stomach." 


Dear Playboy Advisor: My wife says I don't use 
enough lubricant before we have sex. Exactly 
how many beers am 1 supposed to drink before 
I bed her? 


One of the little-known side effects of Viagra 
is a headache. Often when a husband takes the 
pill, his wife gets a headache. 


Send your jokes to Playboy Party Jokes, 9346 Civic 
Center Drive, Beverly Hills, California 90210, or 
by e-mail to jokes@playboy.com. 


“What say we put this off until we get rescued?” 


WILNE THE HELL IS GOING ON 
(OR NOT GOING ON) IN JAPAN? 
AND IS IT SPREADING? 


It was a fairly typical adolescent story. He 
was the new kid, a sophomore transfer student at 
Towano High School in Japan. It took him a while 
to acclimate, but he eventually met three beautiful 
female classmates, each with soulful dark eyes and 
distinct personality quirks. Manaka was cute, in- 
nocent, effervescent and athletic, a fellow member 
of the school's tennis team. Rinko, who worked on 
the school library committee with him, was stand- 
offish at first, even brusque, someone you had to 
get to know before she would let down her guard. 
Nene, whom he met at his after-school job where 
she also worked, was a year older and a bit more 
experienced—a sensitive soul. 

Over the school year, he continually ran into all 
three, and he began dating each, getting to know 
their demons in the process. Manaka felt alienated 
and alone. Rinko had to struggle with a new step- 
mother. Nene provided comfort to everyone but 
found little solace herself. So he talked to them, 
comforted them, helped them and, not incidentally, 
racked up points with them. Sometimes it was diffi- 
cult juggling the relationships. They would call him 
at the same time or want to see him at the same 
place. What made it even more difficult was that the 
s were so eager to please him that they would ask 
him what he preferred and then try to conform—in 
their clothes, their hairstyles, their personalities. 

Eventually, he settled on Rinko, and she on him, 
and thus began a whirlwind of dates, gifts, selfies. 
chats, e-mails, compliments and sweet murmurs of 
“I love you,” which she once asked him to repeat 
publicly a hundred times. Meanwhile, she provided 
support, encouragement and her own professions 
of love. Then came the PDA and Rinko flaunting 
herself in a bikini and the boy gently touching her, 
as teenage boys are wont to do. And then...nothing. 
The affection never progressed to sex, and there 
was a good reason it didn't: Manaka, Nene and 
Rinko weren't real girls. They were digital cartoons 
in a dating-simulation game called Love Plus: The 
romantic high school sophomore was ап avata: 

Love Plus was released by the Japanese game 
maker Konami in 2009 for the Nintendo DS gaming 


system, and it immediately be- 
came the most popular dating 
simulation in the country; it 
has sold more than 600,000 
copies in its five years on the 
market. As one reviewer put it, 
the game was “designed with 
addiction in mind.” According 
to one report, the first thing 
some male players do each day 
is check their in-box for e-mails 
from their digital girls. Wives 
complain that the game pulls 
their husbands away from 
them and disrupts their families. One aggrieved wife 
said of her husband, “He's always chatting with a 
tual girl through the screen, as though he were dating 
is wife, I can't stand it anymore." And worse, 
because it is DS, it is portable—even more portable with 
the addition of phone apps—which permitted Konami 
to organize a holiday weekend in the beach town of 
Atami where players could take their "girlfriends" for 
a getaway. In fact, some men are drawn so deeply into 
their virtual romances that the game has an SOS button 
for occasions when the player may feel suicidal. Tap it 
and the girl will try to buck up your spirits. But you can 
use it only once per game. 

Clearly, many players treat it as if it 
were life, not a game. According to one 
review, Love Plus is *about a fully fledged 
relationship between two loving people." 
And therein lies a problem—a big prob- 
lem. Fewer and fewer Japanese men 
seem to be having sex with real women, 
so much so that the press has labeled the 
phenomenon the “celibacy syndrom: 


Get ready for some heavy 


The Japan Family Planning Association 
conducted a survey in 2014 of 3,000 men 
and women and found that 48.3 percent 
ofthe men and 50.1 percent of the women 
had not had sex in the past month—up 
roughly five percent from a study con- 
ducted two years earlier. More than 20 
percent of men between the ages of 25 
and 29 expressed little or no interest in 
sex, while 45 percent of women from 16 
to 24 admitted they were “not interested 
in or despised sexual contact.” In another 
survey, 2: 23.8 percent of women called sex 
“bothersome.” Yet another survey found 
that 61 percent of men and 49 percent of women age 18 
to 34 were not in any romantic relationship and that 30 
percent of men in their 20s and 30s had no dating expe- 
rience whatsoever. Yet another study revealed that 36.7 
percent of men had not had sex for more than three 
years. Among men between the ages of 40 and 59, 60 
percent said they could be considered sexless. 

Why so many studies? Because Japan is not just hav- 
ing a sex crisis. Its having a birthrate crisis—this in a 
country where the birthrate was already lower than 
that of most industrialized nations. If the current trend 
continues, Japan’s population will shrink by a third by 
2060. No sex, no babies, no growth. It's one of the most 
bruited-about issues in that nation. 

And it isn't only about population growth. Sexual fr 
quency is directly correlated to higher levels of happi- 
ness. In fact, a study by the Well-Being Program at the 
London School of Economics' Center for Economic Per- 
formance showed lovemaking as the highest-rated activ- 
ity in contributing to individual happiness. As Japan's 


T 


JAPAN IS 
NOT JUST 
HAVING 
A SEX 
CRISIS. IT’S 
HAVING A 
BIRTH- 
RATE 
CRISIS. 


y 


population is declining, so apparently is its sense of joy. 
And be forewarned. Some evidence suggests that in 
this, as in many other areas, Japan may simply have al- 
ready arrived where other nations, including the Unit- 
ed States, are headed. There can obviously be no such 
thing as a “post-sexual” world or there wouldn't be any 
world at all. Still, something seems to be happening to 
our libidos. Which raises two burning questions: What's 
going on? And is Japan's sexless present our future? 


To answer those questions, it helps to play detective 
and find out exactly who stole Japanese sex. The Japa- 
nese themselves often accuse a generation of disaffected 
young men who have abandoned traditional masculine 
roles. Some of these are hikikomori, the equivalent of the 
American adult male who lives in his parents' basement. 
These are withdrawn souls who seldom emerge from 
their hermitage. But as suspects go, this group hasn't 
forsworn sex. They never had sex to begin with. 

A more likely group of suspects is the "failed men" or 
"effeminate men" or, more colorfully, the “herbivores,” 
a term coined by Japanese writer Maki Fukasawa to 
describe androgynous young Japanese who actively es- 
chew any sex, heterosexual or homosexual, or at the 
very least don't prioritize it, as opposed to carnivores, 
who do. According to one study, nearly half of Japa- 
nese men between the ages of 20 and 
34 identified themselves as herbivor: 
even though many of them explicitly s 
they were heterosexual. By one account, 
given the option, they preferred buying 
an expensive rice cooker over more tradi- 
tional male accoutrements, liked hosting 
dessert-tasting clubs and enjoyed getting 
spa treatmen 

But if you're looking for the single larg- 
est subculture of sexual abstainers and 
the group most often charged with se» 
diminution, go to Akihabara, a district in 
lower Tokyo that was once the app 
center of the city, then the computer and 
technology center, and is now the man- 
ga (comic book) and anime (animation) 
center, where store after store after store 
sells pictures and objects related to com- 
ics and animation. Basically, Akihabara is 
geek city, and its inhabitants are known as 
otaku. Accor ding to Patrick Galbraith, an 
otaku scholar and author of Debating Otaku 
in Contemporary Japan, the term arose in 
the 1980s to describe young men and women who were 
intense fans of one particular thing but who were also 
"lacking in social common sense,” which is to say they 
didn't navigate the social world very well. In America, 
for example, Twilighters, who are fans of the Twilight se- 
ries, or Gleeks, who are obsessed with the TV show Glee, 
would be olaku. In Japan, otaku were especially fixated 
on manga, anime and computer and video games. 

How fixated? Well, as Galbr ys, over time they 
became very fixated. Throughout the 1980s, otaku be- 
came emotionally and sexually invested in what are 
known in Japan as bishojo, or “cute girls,” those big- 
eyed, pert-nosed, round cartoon girls you often see in 
anime. In fact, some otaku had become so invested that 
Manga Burikko, a magazine that catered to otaku, drew 
readers’ protests for including nude photos of real-life 
girls alongside cartoon nudes. Many readers demanded 
erotic bishojo only. 

If that sounds weird to us, and it should, it sounded 
equally weird to most Japanese. (continued on page 119) 


"Didn't you get my text?" 


ш 
z 
5 


Photography by 
MATT HOYLE 


Charlie 
GASPARINO 


THE FOX BUSINESS NETWORK'S CHIEF RABBLE-ROUSER 
HAS SOME ADVICE FOR YOU: DON'T HIRE A BROKER, 
DON'T WATCH CNBC AND DON'T SEND HIM MEAN TWEETS 


al 
PLAYBOY: As a senior correspondent for Fox Business 
Network and author of five intensely detailed books about 
Wall Street, you spend your days on the phone with people 
who work in finance, and a lot of your nights in bars with 
them. What do you like about these people? 
GASPARINO: That's a good question. There's an attrac- 
tion, like the attraction to the devil in Paradise Lost. Wall 
Street is a cesspool. I write about some of the good stuff. 
I often write about the bad stuff. In order to get that 
bad stuff, you have to mingle with the people who know 
what's going on. Wall Street guys are type-A personalities. 
They're a little crazy, they're profane, they're smart. And 
their world fascinates me. 


Q2 
PLAYBOY: You just drew a parallel between bankers and 
Satan. How much evil is there in finance? 
GASPARINO: I've been covering Wall Street since 1990. 
I remember going to my old boss Bob Greene, who was 
the investigative editor at Newsday and won Pulitzers for 
covering organized crime. I said, "How come you don't 
do more Wall Street reporting?" He said, "I like doing the 
Mob." I said, "Wall Street is the real Mob." That doesn't 
mean they're all bad guys, but there is an evil side to them 
that needs to be exposed. And Wall Street guys love to talk 
about their business. Do they fess up to doing bad stuff? 
After a few drinks, some of them do. Usually they fess up 
about someone else, and that's where you get your stories. 


WALL STREET IS 
THE REAL MOB. 
THAT DOESN'T 
MEAN THEY'RE 
ALL BAD, BUT 
THERE IS AN EVIL 
SIDE THAT NEEDS 
TO BE EXPOSED. 


Q3 
PLAYBOY: So buying a few 
rounds of drinks for your sources 
is part of your reporting process? 
GASPARINO: I can’t drink like 
I used to, but I can drink a lot 
and not be drunk. I can put them 
down, and in the context of put- 
ting them down, I can report and 
get stuff out of people—usually 
on the second round. In terms of 
drinking, the financial crisis was 
rough. I was drinking at two A.M. 
once and went on the air at 6:30. 
I wasn't buzzed; I was hungover, if 
anything. People were drinking to 
soothe their sorrows, because we 
were imagining bread lines. 


Q4 
PLAYBOY: How do you feel 
about the way Wall Street guys 
are depicted in the media? For 
the past few decades people have 
viewed them as rock stars, no? 
GASPARINO: I remember in the 
1990s how revered Wall Street was. 
If you watch Sex and the City, the big 
catch for one of the girls is some 
guy on Wall Street. The zeitgeist 
has changed. Now Wall Street is 
demonized and attacked in popular 
culture. Don’t get me wrong; 
they're still making money, but the 
perception is different, and rightly 
so. I think the public hates them. 


Q5 
PLAYBOY: Given your distrust of 
Wall Street, what do you tell peo- 
ple who are just getting started as 
investors? 
GASPARINO: If you're 30 years 
old, the biggest thing you should 
be doing is saving and dividing the 
money into a stock portfolio. You 
don't necessarily need a broker 
to do that, by the way. Open a 
Charles Schwab account. If you 
put your money in an S&P 500 
fund a couple of months after Tim 
Geithner became Treasury secre- 
tary for Barack Obama, you made 
a lot of money. When you start ac- 
cumulating assets, having a broker 
isn't a bad thing. People tend to 
believe anything their broker says 
about tech stocks, but they tend 
not to believe everything a used car 
salesman says about a car. You need 
to understand the markets, because 
your broker has an agenda. There's 
a good chance he'll try to sell you 
some shit. If you understand that, 
you'll be okay. By the way, you can't 
get a real broker right now unless 
you have about $500,000. 


Q6 
PLAYBOY: It’s cruel that the 
people who most need financial 


advice can't get it. That's changed 
over the past 30 years, right? 
GASPARINO: Yes. I broke a 
story when I was a reporter at 
The Wall Street Journal that I'll 
never forget. In 1999 I got a call 
from a Merrill Lynch broker on 
Long Island, where they do a 

lot of high-net-worth investing. 
He said, “My branch manager 
sent around a memo today. He 
doesn't want us dealing with poor 
people." He faxed me the memo. 
“We at Merrill Lynch want to deal 
with the future rich people of 

the world. As a result, you can- 
not take an account for less than 
$100,000. If you want to deal with 
poor people, you can get a nice 
job at the United Way." When I 
contacted Merrill, they tried to get 
me to not write the story. "What 
can we trade you not to write this 
story? You want an interview with 
our CEO?" I said no way. The 
story was too good. 


Q7 
PLAYBOY: So for people who 
don't have brokers, are there 
people on television they should 
pay attention to? 
GASPARINO: Me. Listen to me. 
No, I try not to give investment 
advice. One of the things I like 
about Fox Business Network is that 
we don't tout stocks, unlike CNBC. 
I worked at the other network and 
have a lot of friends there, but that's 
a network of touting. Be very suspi- 
cious of that. You always step on 
your dick when you listen to touts. 


ов 
PLAYBOY: Is Jim Cramer а tout? 
GASPARINO: Jim Cramer's a 
friend of mine. I don't think he's 
evil. I think there's a perception that 
he's out there to screw people. He's 
not. Listen, the best hitters in base- 
ball hit .300, right? Warren Buffett 
has screwed up a gazillion times. 


Q9 
PLAYBOY: Who do you want to 
see in the White House in 2016? 
GASPARINO: Marco Rubio, 
because he's a free-market person, 
but Hillary Clinton would be 
a better candidate, if she's not 
defined by the far left of her 
party. This will show you what an 
enigma I am at times: I've been 
reading stuff about Elizabeth War- 
ren, and I agree 100 percent. She 
was talking about the revolving 
door between Washington and 
Wall Street. Jack Lew and Bob 
Rubin wrote an exemption on 
Dodd-Frank that allows banks to 
no longer put derivatives in a sub- 
sidiary. (continued on page 122) € 


{OP STYLING BY PAOLA ANDREA 


SS 
EDS 


“The car obviously loves you, sir!” 


95 


LN 
WATCH LIST — 


COUNT DOWN THE HOURS 
WITH STYLE AS WE ASS > 


THE NEW INVENTORY 
OF ATTENTION.WORTHY 
WRISTWATCHES 


1. FELLOW'S 
TRAVELER 


The Rambler 


shinola.com, $ 


2. JET TO SET 


* Michael Kor 


50 


ntro 
tair 

ersic 

JetMaster chr 
'ograph that ha 
a sporty black 
il n 
ase n 


echani 


JetMaster, mic 


kors.com, $275 


3. DEEP DIVE 
of erf 


R 


5. SEAL IT 


lumi 


6. SLIM DUNK 
* Breitling give 


PLL? ЫР 


ESSENTIAL 
FOR THE 
OFFICE AS 
WELL AS THE 
EVENING 
HOURS, THE 
BEST DRESS 
WATCHES DIS- 
PLAY SUBTLY 
CALIBRATED 
DESIGNS 


заці 
co.uk, $218 


2. VINTAGE VIBING 


3. SEE THE WHITE 
۷ y 


Carrera Calibre 
18, tagheuer.com, 
$6,400 


, calvinklein 
com, $1,600 


4. JUSTMY 
TYPEFACE 


5. BACK IN TIME 


Grande 5 
jcrew.com, 


& 


6. AUTO GRAPHIC 
* Venerable 
watchmaker 
Hamilton ex- 


its Regulator 
Auto—a design 
statement as well 


ator Auto, 
com 


1. RUBBER SOUL 


* Gucci adapts 
to the digital age 
with its oversize 
І-биссі sport 
watch, which has 
an orange-over- 
black perforated 
rubber strap and 


a bold digital 
display in a steel 
case. 


I-Gucci, gucci.com, 
$1,550 


2. ORANGE CRUSH 
* The household 
name in watches 
crushes it with 
the Timex 80, 
kitted out with 
an adjustable 
stainless-steel 
mesh band with 
gold-tone finish 
and а hipster- 
friendly citrus- 
orange lens. 


80, timex.com, $75 


3. ONE WORD: 
PLASTIC 


* In bold Aegean 
blue, the Patmos 
chronograph by 
Swatch packs a 
punch in plastic 

EN with its matte- 
ير‎ finish case and 
bezel and white 
luminescent 
indices on an 
embossed sili- 
cone strap. 


ІШІК 


Patmos, swatch 
«com, $120 


4. MARITIME 
MARKERS 

* Nautica's matte- 
black-plated 
stainless steel 
BFD 105 sport 
watch boasts a 
gunmetal dial 
with neon mark- 
ings, a mineral- 
glass face and 

a resin-coated 
leather strap. 


IAUTICA, 


GET SOME 
COLOR WITH 
THESE SPORTY 
WATCHES THAT 
COMBINE FUN, 
FUNCTION 

AND A POP OF 
ORANGE 


BFD 105 Date 
Watch, nautica 
.com, $110 


5. TOUCH TONED 


* Tissot's T-Race 
Touch quartz 
chronograph 
features an alu- 
minum case and 
a rubber strap. 
With a tap of your 
fingertip, it times. 
your laps and 
tracks your stats 
in its logbook. 


T-Race Touch, 
tissotshop.com, 


$575 


MATHERS 


Л 


CHANNELING THE 
(MBITIOUS, WAYFARING 

ENERGY OF A GIRL CHASING 

DESTINY, DAM MATHERS 

VIVACIOUS, FEARLESS 

AND SWEET FINDS HER 

HOLLYWOOD ENDING IS 

JUST THE BEGINNING 


City of Angels, an exuberant Da is against a dee] 
blue dusk. "California can be s y s ei 
from here, I feel those quali a part of me too is the 
road so many ingenues take to chase their dreams—and where a 
lucky few, like Dani, realize them. "I've wanted this for so long," 
she says. "Like with any accomplishment, you work hard and hope 


it will pay off, but I can't believe I did it." Meet your 2015 Playmate of the Year. 

Dani is the real deal, a self-motivated go-getter whose list of accomplishments 
surpasses ordinary expectations. As an actress, this past year she appeared in the 
blockbusters Neighbors and Furious 7. As a budding media personality, she created 
and helmed Funny Bunny, her comedy talk show on Playboy Radio. And as an aspir- 
ing entrepreneur, she continues to explore opportunities to unite her career with 
her passions. "There are a million things I want to do, and I think I could be good 
at a lot of them," she says. "I truly want to be a Jane of all trades. But first I'm com- 
mitted to being a great PMOY, and I'm going to work my hardest to show everyone 
how appreciative I am for this opportunity." 

She's off to a good start. Since becoming Miss May 2014, Dani has represented 
PLAYBOY at events around the country, including Comic-Con and Super Bowl XLIX. 
“The second I put on my teal Bunny suit, I become proud and stand tall. I believe 
in PLAYBOY," she says. 

The five-foot-one bombshell, who recently chopped off a few inches of her sig- 
nature blonde locks (this pictorial serves as her debut as a short-haired model), 
even gained some personal insight as a Playmate. "Only recently did I realize how 
much 1 love talking to people,” she says: "I love my job, and I'm not going to be 
quiet about it. I can't wait to spend more time meeting people face-to-face. No 
doubt the masses wiH-be lining up for you, Dani. 22. 2 -2- 


Lente». 


; | Pers 


Leslie Lessin 


M 
Camille Clark 

it Aim Artists Ag 
HAIR 
Jorge Serrano 

t the Only A 


er 
MANICURE 

Emi Kudo at Opus 
Beauty, using OPI 
PROP STYLING 


ydney 
Griggs Cullen 


PLAYBOY 


110 


GOING DEEP 


Continued from page 68 


the time Molchanov arrived on Long 
Island, he looked like the best man in 
the field. 

Friendly rivals, the two couldn't have 
more different personalities. Trubridge, 
six feet tall and rail thin, favors yoga 
and a mostly vegetarian diet over weight 
training. He's also an introvert, spend- 
ing his downtime at his Long Island 
home with Brittany—a bikini model 
and yoga instructor—or studying his 
dive profiles, seldom socializing with 
other athletes. The ripped, five-foot-11, 
180-pound Molchanov is a weight- 
lifting evangelist with the bulging legs of 
a sprint cyclist. He's also a social animal. 
After his dives at Vertical Blue he'd of- 
ten flirt with cute free divers and lead 
group ocean swims. The Russian and 
Eastern European divers playfully call 
themselves the Eastern Bloc, and Mol- 
chanov, who lives in Moscow, is their 
leader. Trubridge is an island. 

Competitive free diving is by no 
means a large universe, but it is growing, 
with new centers opening up wherever 
deep water is accessible. Rank-and-file 
athletes are similar to triathletes. They 
are extremely fit but not very young. 
Most are self-funded. The majority are 
over 30, and some are over 40. Among 
them are professional landscapers, elec- 
tricians, software developers, architects, 
marine biologists and medical doctors. 
Michael Board, the best diver out of 
England, is a former Royal Marine who 
once patrolled the notorious and deadly 
Baghdad airport road as a highly paid 
military contractor during the Iraq war. 
He used that cash to open a flourishing 
free-dive center in Indonesia, which he 
runs with his girlfriend, Kate Middle- 
ton, a Kiwi national record holder and 
internationally known yoga instruc- 
tor. Estrella Navarro Holm is a former 
Miss Baja California and a current na- 
tional record holder in Mexico. Lena 
Jovanovic was an anti-Milosevic activist 
in Serbia who had to flee the country 
during the Bosnian war and now sells 
real estate in Orange County, Califor- 
nia. Tomoka Fukuda was an Okinawan 
hairstylist who earned fame as an elite 
free diver in her native Japan. Jonathan 
Sunnex, another New Zealander and 
the head safety diver with a personal 


best of 105 meters, once earned six 
figures as an electrician in Australian 
mines before he was 25 years old, but 
ditched the dust to compete and teach 
free diving full-time. 

All of them are addicted to a sport 
that is both an athletic quest to push 
the limits of the body and mind beyond 
what anyone thought possible, and a 
spiritual experience. When they over- 
come their fears, ignore their urge to 
breathe and surrender to the sea down 
deep, they become a speck of pure con- 
sciousness in a vast dark abyss. Time 
slows, and the deeper they fall, the 
tighter the sea seems to squeeze until 
they feel a merge, a total loss of self. 
But they like their numbers too, and 
each time athletes hit a new depth, they 
feel a new charge, a new pride. When 
they go to bed that night, they revel in 
accomplishment, and when they wake 
the next morning, they set a new goal, 
a new depth, a new number—one they 
have a hard time letting go of until it's 
in their rearview. That's true for begin- 
ners, and it's especially true for com- 
petitors gunning for records. 


Free diving is universal. Anybody who 
has ever kicked to the bottom of a pool 
or reef has done it, and it has served 
humanity for millennia. In the fourth 
century, Roman free divers helped erect 
and destroy wartime underwater barri- 
cades. The Ama, a culture of Japanese 
women, have made sailors swoon while 
free diving for oysters and pearls for 
more than 2,000 years, and lobstermen 
and spear fishermen have hunted the 
waters of Europe, Africa, Polynesia and 
Indonesia for centuries. 

Competitive free diving got its start in 
1949 when an Italian airman, Raimondo 
Bucher, dived to 30 meters to win a 50,000 
lira bet. Doctors at the time predicted his 
certain doom, but Bucher pulled it off, 
launching a never-ending race to become 
the deepest man in the world. 

In 1966 the great Italian free diver 
Enzo Maiorca extended the record to 
62 meters, only to have it eclipsed by an 
old U.S. Navy submariner named Bob 
Croft, who dived to 64 meters. French- 
man Jacques Mayol, next on the scene, 
introduced yoga concepts to the sport. 
Mayol and Maiorca traded the record 
back and forth through the early 1980s, 
their friendship and rivalry inspiring Luc 
Besson's film The Big Blue. 

Those were all no-limits dives, with 
athletes using weighted sleds to carry 
them down and balloons, which they'd 
inflate underwater, to bring them back 
to the surface. It wasn't until 1978, when 
Stefano Makula, another Italian, swam to 
50 meters with fins, that self-propulsive 
free-diving competitions were recorded. 
Italians dominated that category as 
well, until 1987, when Cuban Francisco 
“Pipin” Ferreras dived to 67 meters. No- 
limits free diving was still king, however, 


and Ferreras became the deepest man in 
the world in 1989 when he took a sled 
down to 112 meters in his native Cuba. 

In 2002 Ferreras trained his wife, 
Audrey Mestre, for an attempt to break 
the no-limits record with a dive to 171 
meters. She'd helped him train for years, 
and he often pushed her to compete, 
but Mestre's attempt was underfunded. 
Safety protocols weren't tight enough, 
and when the balloon that was supposed 
to bring her back to the surface failed 
to inflate, Mestre was doomed. She was 
underwater for more than eight and a 
half minutes and never revived. Some 
accused her champion husband of foul 
play, and her story is reportedly set to 
become a major motion picture starring 
Jennifer Lawrence. 

In 2012, after two high-profile near- 
fatal accidents, the Association Internatio- 
nale pour le Développement de l'Apnée, 
known as AIDA International, stopped 
sanctioning no-limits attempts. The quest 
was deemed too hazardous and was by 
then considered more a personal feat and 
less an athletic achievement than other 
competitive free-diving disciplines, which 
everyone assumed were completely safe. 
That's why it was so shocking when Nich- 
olas Mevoli, the first American to swim 
to 100 meters, died at Vertical Blue on 
November 17, 2013 while attempting to 
break an American constant-no-fins re- 
cord with a dive to 72 meters. His was the 
first death in international competition, 
and it shook the sport. 

A Nassau autopsy determined that al- 
veolar blood vessels had hemorrhaged, 
filling Mevoli's lungs with blood and 
plasma. Meanwhile, a still unreleased 
follow-up autopsy, conducted at East 
Carolina University and led by Ameri- 
can free diver Kerry Hollowell, will show 
that Mevoli had pervasive scar tissue in 
his alveoli (the lungs' air sacs). Hollowell 
also found a preponderance of repair 
cells called macrophages, which proves 
some of Mevoli's injuries were recent. 
The most recent wound was determined 
to have occurred on the Friday before his 
last dive, when he surfaced with blood 
dripping from his mouth. 

I happened to be there the day he 
died, reporting on Vertical Blue for The 
New York Times. After a year of investigat- 
ing Mevoli's life and death for a forthcom- 
ing book, I've learned that for almost two 
years he had been diving despite repeated 
lung injuries. Over and over he would 
tear the walls of his alveoli, an injury 
known as lung squeeze, and cough blood. 
Sometimes he would take days off; fre- 
quently he would not. He was not alone. 
Many athletes have done deep dives 
within days of a squeeze. The best dive 
in Molchanov's career, when he broke 
his own constant-weight world record 
by swimming to 128 meters at the 2013 
world championships, occurred just six 
days after the worst squeeze he's ever had. 

AIDA judges and event doctors have 
improved their screening processes since 


“Who's swimming?" 


111 


SPECIAL 
COLLECTOR'S 
EDITIONS 


1 
EDITION 


FOR A SPECIAL ONE-YEAR 
SUBSCRIPTION PRICE OF $49.97, 
E-MAIL PLAYBOYSPECIALEDITIONS @ 
CUSTOMERSVC.COM 


Mevoli's death and become more vigi- 
lant in detecting lung injury. Still, prior 
to Trubridge's record attempt at Vertical 
Blue in 2014, a few divers who passed an 
oxygen-saturation test designed to detect 
lung squeezes had hidden their symptoms 
and were cleared to dive. Mevoli's death 
should have been a wake-up call to ath- 
letes conditioned to push their limits, but 
for some it only raised the stakes. They 
weren't just competing against one anoth- 
er or themselves any longer. They were 
looking to cheat death too. And that only 
added to the buzz. 

"At the surface you have to accept that 
you might die," said Samo Jeranko, a Slo- 
venian record holder and one of the deep- 
est men in the world, after his 107-meter 
dive. "You must have no fear. 


When he arrived on Long Island in mid- 
November, Molchanov was entering his 
prime. “1 won't try to win," he told me 
playfully. *I will win." Meanwhile, Tru- 
's pre-competition training had 
iss. A week before the event 
n dive to 100 met A 
later he blacked out on the surface 
attempting 93 meters 

Nobody knew what to expect on De- 
cember 2 when Trubridge" s dive would be 
televised live to millions in his native New 
Zealand, thanks to their national beer 
brand Steinlager, his main sponsor. The 
company paid him six figures to shoot a 
riveting commercial and make the whole 
country proud. 

For nearly six minutes Trubridge lay on 
his back, face up, and appeared to be in 
a deep trance. He was working to lower 
his heart rate, which would help conserve 
oxygen. Behind him a Steinlager banner 
hung from the bluffs. Seventy athletes and 
fans, including Molchanov, surrounded 
the competition zone. With 20 seconds to 
go, Trubridge built toward peak inhala- 
tion, filling his belly and then his chest with 
air before funneling it into the subclavian 
air pockets beneath his shoulder blades. 
Next he began to pack his lungs by slurp- 
ing air, using his tongue a: 
each mouthful down. Forty packs later, he 
flipped and slipped below. 

Within three elegant strokes he had 
passed a rugged reef on sloping sand 
that dropped off at the edge of the hole, 
rimmed with limestone cliffs at 10 meters. 
He was now at neutral buoyancy. After 
three more strokes and another 10-meter 
drop there was a second set of cliffs, and 
the walls receded. Now the blue hole was 
dark as a moonless night and about twice 
as wide as the cove appeared from the 
surface. Negatively buoyant, Trubridge 
stopped swimming and became as stream- 
lined as possible. He closed his eyes and let 
gravity do the rest. It was time to go deep. 

When free divers gush about their sport, 
most describe the sink phase. Free fall. 
During free fall some athletes confront 
their deepest fea: they travel about 
one meter per second. Others experience 
lucid dreams, but when they reach their 
target depth, dream time is over and they 


a piston to stuff 


must swim against that negative buoyancy, 
which is like fighting through a swift cur- 
rent. With each stroke they get closer to the 
light, and when they reach 10 meters they 
are once again positively buoyant. The 
hard part is over. Fresh air, fresh life is just 
seconds away. 

As Trubridge's descent intensified and 
the increased atmospheric pressure com- 
pressed his lungs, the blood vessels in his 
arms and legs constricted, shunting blood 
to his core. The blood vessels in his heart 
and brain dilated, flooding them with oxy- 
gen, and his spleen contracted, distribut- 
ing a fresh supply of red blood cells and 
increas able oxygen. By the 
second minute, pulse had dropped 
to less than half his resting heart rate on 
land. Put it all together and you have the 
mammalian dive reflex, a term coined 
by scientists who documented a similar 
response in dolphins and seals. All hu- 
mans have the capacity to trigger the dive 
reflex, but athletes like Trubridge have 
learned to maximize it for peak oxygen ef- 
ficiency, which allows them to swim deep- 
er and stay down longer than any humans 
have before. 

Although Trubridge had been underwa- 
ter for two minutes, his body didn't register 
an oxygen shortage as he approached 102 
meters, because with each additional atmo- 
of pressure, which occurs every 10 
s, the partial pressure of oxygen in- 
creases. His system held less oxygen than 
when he began, but the percentage of oxy- 
gen in his blood was more than adequate to 
sustain consciousness. 

As he began to swim back against the 
however, a buildup of car- 
bon dioxide signaled to his brain's 
respirato -reflex center that something 
wasn't right. His intercostal muscles re- 
sponded with violent contractions—every 
10 seconds another gut punch—while lac- 
tic acid lit his legs on fire. He rose higher 
with each stroke, but that meant a contin- 
uous drop in partial pressure of oxygen. 
Hypoxia clouded his bi 


were also free dive 
to escort him to the 5 
proached 10 meters the mammalian dive 
reflex had already flipped; the blood 
was leaving his brain and core and was 
headed to his extremities. Starved of ox- 
ygen, his lips had turned blue, but that 
halo of turquoise light was getting closer 
by the second. His record, and a fresh 
breath, was still within reach. 


When I landed at Dean's Blue Hole in 
2013, I didn't set out to become a free 
diver, but the sport gripped me: the way 
the athletes meticulously prepared for 
more than an hour for their three to four 
minutes underwater; the way they moved 
with rhythm, elegance and daring; the 
suspense at the surface while everyone 
waited, wondering what was happening to 
the divers below, and the deep peace the 
divers felt after they rose up clean. You 
could see that buzz in their eyes. It looked 
a lot like bliss. I was there for the sport's 


[CIGARS 


IN TERNATIONAL 


If you're on the prowl for the ultimate cigar deal, look no E. 
further. Ten premium handmade cigars from Rocky Patel, 40-CAPACITY “- 
Gurkha, Carlos Toraño, and many more. That's worth the 

price of admission alone. But I'm also including a gorgeous DESKTOP L k 
desktop humidor. The whole package is worth *160, but “ae 3 
it’s yours for just 219%, I'm losing on this one, because Pm HUMIDOR CN ^ 4 
confident that after you experience the quality, freshness, ——— ы > 
and value we deliver, you'll become a customer for life. x 


Includes 1 each of: La Perla e Amati e Ramón Bueso е Bahia e 5 Vegas e Mark Twain 
Arganese e Gurkha ө Rocky Patel e Toraño + 40-Capacity Desktop Humidor 


mention code SA1533 
H nsibility of . r avail first-ti ri 74 
www.CigarsIntl.com/SA1533 | 42% ron ime ылда шшш may ecos, Cone mendond v 


only sells products to adults who meet legal age requirements to purchase tobacco 


You must enter complete web address for special offer products. For more information please see www.cigarsintemational.com/ageverify 


PLAYBOY 


114 


CREDITS: COVER: MODEL DANI MATHERS, 
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOSH RYAN, HAIR 
BY JORGE SERRANO FOR THE ONLY 
AGENCY, MAKEUP BY ASHLEY HAR- 
RIS, WARDROBE STYLING BY LISA BAE 
FOR THE REX AGENCY. PHOTOGRAPHY 
BY: P. 5 COURTESY ALIA AKKAM, COUR- 
TESY MICHAEL BERNARD, COURTESY 
TED COHEN, COURTESY NEAL GABLER, 
COURTESY VICTORIA JANASHVILI, COUR- 
TESY JASON MCGAHAN, COURTESY ADAM 
SKOLNICK, MATT HOYLE, CHARLIE LAN- 
GELLA; P. 8 SASHA EISENMAN, MATT 
HOYLE; P. 12 COURTESY UP ENTERTAIN- 
MENT, CHRIS FORTUNA, BOA SIMON; 
P. 13 ELAYNE LODGE, FACEBOOK.COM/ 
THEDIRTYRIVERBOYS, INSTAGRAM.COM/ 
MISSSTEPHANIEBRANTON, WILDCARD 
PHOTO; P. 14 NICHOLAS KALMAN, CORY 
PIEHOWICZ; P. 15 JOSH RYAN, ELLEN 
VON UNWERTH; P. 21 COURTESY A&E 
NETWORKS, ALAMY (7), DREAMSTIME, 
GETTY IMAGES, OSTEVE SANDS/BAUER- 
GRIFFIN.COM, RAPHAEL, TWENTIETH 
CENTURY FOX/PHOTOFEST; P. 23 ALAMY; 
P. 32 FACEBOOK.COM/DOMBEAT, KHOCHU 
KHARCHO RESTAURANT, VLADIMIR SIDO- 
RENKO; P. 34 ALAMY; P. 36 COURTESY 
HBO, COURTESY UNIVERSAL PICTURES, 
GETTY IMAGES; P. 37 COURTESY STEVE 
GULLICK/DOMINO RECORDING COMPANY, 
COURTESY TIM PALEN/NBC, COURTESY 
RANDOM HOUSE, COURTESY SIMON & 
SCHUSTER; P. 40 ALAMY (6), FOTOLIA, 
GETTY IMAGES (2), SONY PICTURES; 
P. 56 FACEBOOK.COM/HELPFINDHARRY 
(2); P. 57 FACEBOOK.COM/HELPFIND 
HARRY (2); P. 58 LEONARDO MARTINEZ 
PERALTA; P. 73 THE HAPPIEST HOUR/ 
ANDREW KIST, LOST LAKE/CLAYTON 
HAUCK, THE NIGHTINGALE ROOM/CECI 
NORMAN; P. 74 DEPOSITPHOTOS.COM, 
SHUTTERSTOCK; Р. 89 SHUTTERSTOCK; 
P. 136 AP IMAGES; P. 137 GETTY IMAGES; 
P. 138 KURT ISWARIENKO, MICHAEL 
MULLER, ZED NELSON, JOSH RYAN. P. 19 
HAIR AND MAKEUP BY SARA CRANHAM, 
STYLING BY TAYLOR SHERIDAN, BAN- 
DEAU TOP BY YVES SAINT LAURENT; 
PP. 76-85 MODEL KAYLIA CASSANDRA, 
CREATIVE DIRECTION BY MAC LEWIS, 
HAIR BY TONY VIN, MAKEUP BY ERIN 
LEE SMITH AT ATELIER MANAGEMENT, 
PRODUCTION BY STEPHANIE MORRIS, 
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT LAUREL LEWIS, 
PROP STYLING BY CYDNEY GRIGGS CUL- 
LEN, WARDROBE STYLING BY JENNIFER 
HERREMA; PP. 100-109 MODEL DANI 
MATHERS, PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL 
BERNARD, CREATIVE DIRECTION BY MAC 
LEWIS, PHOTO DIRECTION BY REBECCA 
BLACK, HAIR BY JORGE SERRANO AT 
THE ONLY AGENCY, MAKEUP BY CAMILLE 
CLARK AT AIM ARTISTS AGENCY, MAN- 
ICURE BY EMI KUDO AT OPUS BEAUTY 
USING OPI, PROP STYLING BY CYDNEY 
GRIGGS CULLEN, STYLING BY LESLIE 
LESSIN AT BRYDGES MACKINNEY, CAR 
PROVIDED BY SIMPLYRAC.COM, BRA BY 
COCO DE MER, BRA BY TOPSHOP, TOP 
BY FERN BY COOPER, STOCKINGS BY 
LASCIVIOUS, COAT BY BRIAN LICHTEN- 
BERG, SKIRT BY BRIAN LICHTENBERG 
CUSTOM, THONG BY ONLY HEARTS, SPE- 
CIAL THANKS TO YANDY.COM, SPECIAL 
THANKS TO THE SAFARI INN. 


darkest moment, and for an entire free- 
dive season afterward I watched dozens 
of athletes black out or come up spitting 
blood, and still I needed to know what 
it felt like to keep diving when every im- 
pulse I had told me to come up. I wanted 
that buzz, so I sought out arguably the 
best free-diving instructor on earth. 

“This is not some spa vacation. This is 
gonna be action-packed." Kirk Krack, 46, 
the boyishly handsome owner and lead 
instructor of Performance Freediving In- 
ternational, stood at the front of the room. 
"We're here for performance," he said, "to 
get you your best depth." 

It was day one of РЕГ four-day interme- 
diate free-diving course in Kona, Hawaii, 
and I could already see why Krack is so 
esteemed. He has trained everyone from 
Navy SEALs (including members of SEAL 
Team 6) to Red Bull-sponsored big-wave 
surfers Mark Healey and John John Flor- 
ence to magician David Blaine (whom he 
helped through an oxygen-assisted breath 
hold of more than 17 minutes) and even 
Tiger Woods. They all come to him, a kid 
from the Saskatchewan prairie, because he 
has coached dozens of athletes—including 
his wife, Mandy—to 23 world and hun- 
dreds of national records. 

Once a tech diving instructor and 
scuba-shop owner in the Cayman Islands, 
he loves teaching new blood so much that 
he'd flown to Hawaii's Big Island direct 
from a film set in London, where he'd 
been acting as a technical advisor, to lec- 
ture 13 newbies in a cramped scuba-shop 
classroom in a mini mall. “You're all gonna 
have a little hill to climb, a little hump to 
get over," he said, "but by the end you'll be 
doing things you never thought possible." 

I nodded, well acquainted with my men- 
tal mountain. An avid open-ocean swim- 
mer, I thought the sport would be easy for 
me. Га spent the previous November on 
Long Island, picking up bits and pieces 
from athletes who'd dive with me to make 
me feel comfortable. I didn't. At first I 
couldn't equalize. Then the pressure below 
10 meters would become so intense, I'd 
bolt for the surface. I felt the pain but not 
the fun. After several attempts I managed 
to get to 19 meters and back. Afterward 
free-diving photographer Daan Verhoeven 
swam over and said, "That's some of the 
least-relaxed free diving I've ever seen." 
Not a compliment. 

Relaxation is the key to efficient free div- 
ing because relaxed muscles use five times 
less oxygen than tense ones. Which is why 
at the end of day one, Krack guided the 
class through a relaxing breath exercise as 
we lined the edge of the pool behind Jack's 
Diving Locker. He reminded us to breathe 
from the belly and exhale for 10 seconds. 
Longer exhales lower the heart rate. Soon 
we were holding our breath, facedown in 
the pool, for one minute, then two, then 
three and four. We were practicing a free- 
diving discipline known as static apnea. 
One of the sport's three pool disciplines, 
it's also an effective training tool. Krack 
told us that those who could hold their 
breath for three minutes in static could 
hold their breath half that long while swim- 


ming. If diving to depth takes one meter 
per second, that means a three-minute 
static translates to a 45-meter dive. 

One AIDA judge describes static this 
way: "It's like putting your balls in a draw- 
er and slamming it shut over and over 
again." On my last attempt, I made it to 
three minutes 20 seconds but came up af- 
ter one drawer slam. As my breathing nor- 
malized, I looked around and watched as 
several of my classmates fought their own 
nature. Some trembled and shuddered as 
the drawer kept slamming and the urge 
to breathe became overwhelming. It did 
not look fun. The best student got to five 
minutes 45 seconds before gasping for air 
and nearly blacking out. By then I'd seen 
dozens of athletes black out at competitions 
and get revived moments later, and that 
wasn't an experience I was looking for. I 
wasn't in Kona to push my limits that hard, 
Itold myself. I just wanted to go a bit deep- 
er and feel comfortable enough underwa- 
ter that when I surfaced I'd have that buzz 
Га seen in the gaze of so many athletes. 
Also, if you're writing a book about free 
diving, you probably shouldn't suck at it. 

The Kona coast does not suck. Dry and 
rugged, it's blessed with coffee plantations, 
lava flows, horse ranches and a checker- 
board coastline of white- and black-sand 
beaches. In the winter, humpbacks breed 
and breach offshore, their haunting song 
audible underwater, and on clear days you 
can see Maui floating in the distance. Free 
divers love it because there's deep water a 
short swim from the beach at Honaunau, 
a slender cerulean bay framed by two lava 
headlands. Divers call it Two Step, for its 
rocky entryway to the blue. South of the 
bay is Pu'uhonua O Honaunau, both a 
national historic site and a sacred spot for 
native Hawaiians, with a collection of tradi- 
tional temples among the palms. 

Krack and his team of instructors set 
up their rig of four lines dangling with 
weighted bottom plates. We started with 
free-immersion dives and then moved into 
kick cycles. Counting kicks helps divers 
track their depth. With extra-long free-dive 
fins offering more thrust than the scuba 
variety, it should take roughly six strong 
kick cycles to get to 10 meters and then six 
softer kick cycles to get to 20 meters. 

My frustration bloomed immediately. 
I had trouble equalizing below 12 me- 
ters and had that familiar urge to breathe 
again, which felt like claustrophobia. 
Meanwhile, the rest of my group—Keoki, 
a Honolulu surfboard shaper turned in- 
vestment advisor; and Drew and Joe, two 
pot farmers from Santa Cruz—hit every 
plate. On day two Krack saw a hitch in 
my approach. I was tucking my chin too 
much while breathing up at the surface 
and sucking water into my snorkel, which 
made it impossible to relax and get the 
deepest breath possible before I started 
to dive. On my free-immersion rope de- 
scents, I was moving too fast. He demon- 
strated a slow-motion pull technique that 
would lengthen the dive but require less 
energy. His demonstration was so slow it 
looked like torture waiting to happen. To 
make matters worse, the wind was strong 


and the swell rough. As I was tossed in the 
tides, my brain-speak was on full blast, 
broadcasting all manner of excuses. 

The weather gods want you to fail. 

Your wet suit is too tight. You drink too 
much beer. 

You have the lung capacity of a pygmy 
chimpanzee. 

Krack calls that noise self-talk. On the 
first day he said, "If I could unplug your 
brain, you'd hold your breath for six min- 
utes and dive to 60 meters. That's your 
physiological capacity." What gets in the 
way is stress—some of it real, some of it 
imagined. He meant that if I let it, the rol- 
licking sea, my neurotic mind and the ef- 
fort to assimilate new techniques into fluid 
habits would cause my heart rate to rise, 
my muscles to tense and my brain to con- 
firm that yes, I suck at free diving. 

After failing to reach the plate on the 
first four dives of the second day, all free- 
immersion dives, I'd had enough. For 
months I'd been stopping short. It was 
time to kill the devil on my shoulder and 
push through discomfort. This time, I 
decided to make five more pulls after the 
point of discomfort. On my third pull, I 
glimpsed the 15-meter mark on the line 
and decided to press on. Soon I hit 20 
meters, a depth I'd long aspired to. Krack 
hovered beside me as I looked down at a 
shimmering white-sand bottom. My urge 
to breathe was gone. I wanted to keep go- 
ing down, not up. I hung on the line for 20 
seconds, enjoying every bit of it. Later that 
day, I kicked down to 23 meters and back 
without the faintest struggle. 

The next morning was our final open- 
wate: оп. For the first time as an as 
ing free diver I approached the water 
laxed and confident. My goal in the cour: 
to hit 30 meters, or 100 feet, and I was 
dy. Ten warm-up dives later I'd have 
my opportunity. I prepared by breathing 
up slowly and calmly while watching Keoki 
kick down. A strong surfer, he'd been a star 
throughout class, but this time he surfaced 
hypoxic and blacked out. He came around 
right away thanks to Drew, who employed 
the safety techniques we'd learned like a 
seasoned pro, but it was still alarming. One 
hundred feet sounds deep to a layman, but 
it was nothing compared with the depths 
I'd seen divers hit in competition. In fact, I 
hadn't known it was possible to black out at 
that depth, especially with fins. 

Ilooked back down to try to relax as my 
heart thumped. The plate seemed to dis- 
appear in the hazy blue, and my self-talk 
cranked back up, but this time I shifted the 
conversation and visualized success, just as 
Krack had taught us. I had my technique 
down, I told myself, and Га been tapping 
that plate all damn day. I counted off my 
five purging breaths to reduce my car- 
bon dioxide levels, took a peak inhalation, 
duck-dived and kicked down. 

After my second kick cycle I stopped 
moving altogether. The seconds ticked 
on, but time stretched out as I enjoyed 
my entry-level 10-meter free fall. I hit the 
plate, turned and dolphin-kicked to the 
surface. At the 10-meter line I stopped 
kicking hard and simply floated up. It 


felt good to take my time. At the surface a 
deep calm suffused my brain. 

Many of Krack's students have told him 
he changed their lives by proving to them 
they can do more than they'd ever imag- 
ined. By pushing to go deeper, past my 
own discomfort, Га uncovered my most 
subversive limiting factor of all: my nega- 
tive self-talk. I indulge it far too often, and 
not just in the water. Too frequently my 
autopilot bleats out messages explaining 
why I can't, which gets in the way of believ- 
ing that yes, I fucking can. 

My goals were to not suck at free div- 
ing and to feel that post-dive buzz. I'd 
achieved both, but I gained much more. 
As a kid, I'd dreamed of floating through 
outer space; when I became an avid scuba 
and tech diver, I experienced the next best 
thing by exploring another world right 
here on planet Earth. Now I'd ditched 
the gear entirely, yet I was still capable 
of floating through space, because I'd 
learned to conquer the final frontier: not 
the ocean—nobody can conquer nature— 
but that infinite sea of mystery, ability and 
doubt that lies within. 


Perhaps that's why athletes such as 
bridge and Molchanov, as well as recre- 
ational free divers everywhere, feel the 
pull to go deep and then deeper still. On 
each successful dive they learn more about 
themselves. It strips away limitations, in- 
spires confidence that they can do and be 
more. Of course, at the competitive level 
that drive can become an ol ion, which 
can be extremely dangerous. Fatal, even. 

Trubridge didn't get his world record. 
He blacked out just below the surface, but 
the safety divers brought him up and he 
came around quickly. He left the beach 
that day despondent, but he had two 
more dives to go and needed to hit both 
to get on the podium. 

A win seemed out of the question the 
next day as Molchanov prepared for his 
no-fins dive to 95 meters. "I expected 
him to get it," said Trubridge. When he 
didn't, Trubridge saw an opening and 
won the competition with back-to-back 
dives of 120 meters in free immersion and 
117 meters in constant weight. A lesser 
competitor might have been consumed 
with doubt after a high-profile failure and 
perhaps hedged a bit on depth, consider- 
ing he'd just blacked out. The buzz within 
the free-dive community suggested that 
diving again so soon might be dangerous 
and that he was setting the wrong exam- 
ple. Trubridge didn't listen. For better or 
worse, he believed, and thanks to a clutch 
performance, he was still on top. 

"It was a little topsy-turvy," Trubridge 
said as we sipped icy Steinlagers on the 
white sand, staring out to the blue hole. 
"But it does feel really good to have fin- 
ished this way." His smile was wide, but I 
could tell he was distracted. His engineer- 
ing brain was already probing for areas of 
improvement, considering what it would 
take to go just a bit deeper. 


WORKS FOR YOU... 


OR YOUR 


| POWER 


75 FAST- 


MONEY BACK! 


EXTENDING FORMULA | 


ACTING LIQUID SOFT-GELS 


DIETARY SUPPLEMENT 


Availablefor purchase with coupon in fine stores 
everywhere or online at: 


www.appliednutrition.com 
Enter Coupon Code: 011859 


LIBIDO- 


E 


MAX for MEN 


75 Count ONLY 


10363/26387 


MANUFACTURERS COUPON 
a. 


о 


PLAYBOY 


116 


REZA ASLAN 


Continued from page 52 


to drive a Bentley? Not only is that now con- 
sidered a legitimate version of Christianity, 
it's currently the fastest-growing Protestant 
movement in America. In this country we've 
seen a misappropriation of Jesus to promote 
extreme right-wing views about gays, guns, 
immigrants and poor people that not only 
violate everything Jesus taught but would be 
scandalous to Jesus were he to actually hear 
what these people constantly claim when they 
speak in his name. 

PLAYBOY: Is this what inspired you to write 
about Jesus as a historical figure? 

ASLAN: I have so much love and affection 
and esteem for Jesus the man and what he 
preached that when I see people bastard- 
izing that teaching for their own grotesque 
political and economic advantage, it en- 
rages me. In the same way that I can intel- 
lectually say Osama bin Laden is as much 
a Muslim as I am—a Muslim is whoever 
says he's a Muslim—and yet I can't help 
but have an emotional reaction when I see 
someone taking part in abhorrent actions 
in the name of Islam. 

PLAYBOY: Do you accept that as an essential 


problem with religion—that people inter- 
pret it to suit their purposes? It's a claim of 
the new atheists with whom you spar. 
ASLAN: Absolutely. You can have two peo- 
ple of the same faith look at the exact same 
verse of scripture and come away with two 
opposite views. In this country 200 years 
ago, both slave owners and abolitionists 
not only used the same Bible to justify 
their viewpoints, they used the exact same 
verses to justify their points. 

PLAYBOY: But if religion is endlessly inter- 
pretable to suit anyone's purposes, doesn't 
it lose its meaning? 

ASLAN: That's an overly simplistic way 
of thinking about it. I believe the Koran 
is divinely inspired. I believe the Bible is 
divinely inspired. I believe the Bhagavad 
Gita is divinely inspired. I also believe 
Abbey Road is divinely inspired. 

PLAYBOY: Do you believe that miracles re- 
ported in the Bible are true? 

ASLAN: I think the word miracle is problem- 
atic, because it has come to mean a break in 
the natural order of the universe, and that 
definition requires a miracle to have some 
kind of divine aspect to it. When I think of 
the ancient mind, the conception of miracle 
then was quite different. It wasn't a break in 
the natural order of things, because the natu- 
ral order of things was steeped in magic and 
miracles. It's not unusual to think of Jesus as a 
miracle worker or as an exorcist or healer. We 
read the gospel and see Jesus healing people 
and say, "Whoa! That must be what set him 
apart from everybody else," except there 
were hundreds of miracle workers just like 
Jesus walking around doing the exact same 
thing Jesus was doing. It was not that weird. 


“Uh...Ms. Stronmeyer, please bring me my elephant gun.” 


PLAYBOY: Do you believe Jesus actually 
made the blind see and the deaf hear? 
ASLAN: Was a person [healed by Jesus] who 
was thought to be possessed actually an 
epileptic? Was a person who was thought 
to be dead actually in a coma? They had no 
conception of a coma or epilepsy. They saw 
the healing of those illnesses as miracles. 
That's one way to put it, I suppose. 
PLAYBOY: What about the parting of the 
Red Sea? 

ASLAN: I know a lot of people love to say 
things like *Oh well, you see, it appears as 
though Moses parted the Red Sea because 
there were these tectonic shifts that gave 
way" and "There was a tide issue." That's 
an attempt to bring 21st century thinking 
into ancient times. Stop! Stop! It's true that 
plenty of real events have been given myth- 
ological explanations. The flood is a great 
example of this. We have flood narratives 
that go way back. In fact, the earliest writ- 
ten text ever, Enuma Elish, which predates 
the Bible, mentions a flood and a man who 
builds a boat in order to survive it. I say 
just appreciate it for what it is, which is 
myth, and understand it for the truth it's 
trying to reveal, not the facts it's discussing. 
PLAYBOY: What about the Resurrection? 
ASLAN: What is a historical fact is that very 
soon after Jesus's death, his followers were 
convinced he rose from the dead, and that 
belief is what founded this religion. It had 
nothing to do with anything Jesus himself 
said or did. 

PLAYBOY: How do you explain the 
Resurrection? 

ASLAN: Was it a mystical experience or a 
psychotic event or mass psychosis? Put 
it into whatever your particular modern 
scientific need to explain something is. I 
don't know if I'm unique in this way, but 
I'm not thirsting for some sort of explana- 
tion. I revel in mythology because I under- 
stand what it is. 

PLAYBOY: Although you were born a Mus- 
lim, for part of your life you converted 
and believed in Jesus as the savior. What 
prompted your conversion to Christianity? 
ASLAN: I grew up in a family of lukewarm 
Muslims and exuberant atheists. My moth- 
er was the lukewarm Muslim, somebody 
who came from a culture in which Islam 
infused your very identity, very much in 
the way that Christianity infuses the iden- 
tity of many Americans. My father, on the 
other hand, was militantly atheistic—in 
fact, deeply antireligious. He was the kind 
of person who would get along very well 
with Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris. His 
distrust of religion ended up saving us. 
PLAYBOY: How did it save you? 

ASLAN: My father, who never trusted anyone 
wearing a turban, had no interest in sitting 
around to see how the revolution in 1979 
was going to work itself out. When Ayatollah 
Khomeini returned, he made these grand 
statements about how he had no interest in 
any kind of political role, that he just wanted 
to go back to his studies and his family. My 
father heard that and said, “Bullshit.” He 
thought it would be a good idea for us to 
leave Iran until things settled down. It turns 
out my father was right, which he reminded 
me of every day until he died. 


PLAYBOY: Why did you become a Christian? 
ASLAN: In Iran, Islam was part of my cul- 
tural experience, but when we came to the 
United States in the 1980s, it was an era 
of tremendous anti-Muslim sentiment. 1 
spent a good part of the 1980s pretending 
to be Mexican—which, by the way, did not 
help matters at all. This says something 
about how deeply in trouble your particu- 
lar ethnic community is when you assume 
Americans will treat you better if you 
say you're a Mexican. We scrubbed our 
lives of any hint of Islam. My mother still 
prayed occasionally, but we never would 
have described ourselves as Muslims in 
any serious way. 

PLAYBOY: Did you believe in God? 

ASLAN: I believed in God, yes, but I didn't 
have any framework for that belief, and 
I had no real opportunity to explore any 
kind of meaningful spirituality until I was 
in high school. I went with some friends 
to an evangelical youth camp in northern 
California, and it was there that I heard 
the gospel story for the first time—this in- 
credible story about the God of heaven and 
earth coming down in the form of a child 
and dying for our sins; this promise that 
anyone who believed in this story would 
also never die but have eternal life. It was a 
transformative experience for me. 
PLAYBOY: Why then did you ultimately re- 
ject Christianity? 

ASLAN: It just so happened that it was an 
extremely conservative, fundamental- 
ist, evangelical branch of Christianity I'd 
joined, one that was predicated on an abso- 
lute sense of biblical literacy and inerrancy, 
and that idea was force-fed to me from the 
very beginning of my spiritual journey as 
a Christian. Within that belief were the 
seeds for my downfall as a Christian, be- 
cause I have never been the kind of person 
to just simply accept what someone tells 
me. I would go to church and hear these 
sermons about what the Bible says. Unlike 
most everyone else in my community, I 
would actually check, and I would discover 
that the Bible actually didn’t say what the 
pastor told me it said, or if it did say that, 
it said so in a completely different context 
than what my pastor was telling me, or if it 
even had that same context, that it could 
be interpreted in multiple ways that were 
in conflict with what my pastor was telling 
me. So even at 16, 17 years old, I would 
show up to Bible studies and raise my hand 
and say, “I’m not sure that’s really what this 
scripture says.” The response I would get 
from this community was that they would 
lay hands on me in order to pray the doubt 
away. It did not take long for me to realize 
that while I was being fed spiritually in a 
way that I deeply desired, there was some- 
thing inherently off about the particular 
community I was receiving this spiritual 
edification from. 

PLAYBOY: In general, are young people the 
most susceptible to indoctrination into ex- 
treme forms of religion? 

ASLAN: Yes, they are naturally drawn to 
fundamentalism, because it provides ready- 
made, very simple black-and-white answers 
to questions they are just beginning to ask. 
It's why when you look at a lot of these 


extremist groups around the world, they 
tend to be inundated with young people. 
PLAYBOY: How much is belief in religion 
about the promise of being saved versus the 
threat of punishment if you don’t succumb? 
ASLAN: The thing I am most disturbed 
about when it comes to religiosity is how 
much of its morality is predicated on some 
kind of divine reward or punishment. 
Whatever else one wants to say about athe- 
ists, they are not amoral by any means. On 
the contrary, they are far more moral than 
most religious people are because their 
sense of right and wrong is not based on 
some kind of divine reward and punish- 
ment that may or may not arise, whereas 
so many religious people act almost single- 
mindedly on this perceived, imagined idea 
of what will happen to you in the afterlife. 
PLAYBOY: A common refrain about suicide 
bombers is that they're motivated by Islam's 
promise of a reward in heaven of 72 virgins. 
Is that accurate? 
ASLAN: It is not. I think people would be 
surprised at how little any religion what- 
soever plays in the act of suicide bombing. 
Nearly half of all suicide bombers in the 
past 30 to 40 years have been nationalists 
and have blown themselves up for what 
can only be described as secular reasons. 
The other half of that group, the religious 
ones, are very clearly divided among Chris- 
tians, Muslims and other minority religious 
groups. Suicide bombers who failed in their 
missions and were arrested and interviewed 
almost to a person never mentioned the 72 
virgins or the promise of rewards at the end 
of times. What you most often hear are jus- 
tifications that marry religious, political and 
economic issues. They are just as likely to say 
they are doing this for the very real financial 
reward their handlers have promised their 
families. They will often say that they are us- 
ing their bodies as a kind of smart bomb in 
a war they are convinced they are fighting, 
even though the other side may not be fully 
aware of that war's existence. 
PLAYBOY: How devouta Muslim are you now? 
ASLAN: When you study the religions of 
the world for a living it becomes difficult to 
take any one religion all that seriously. You 
realize very quickly that religion is nothing 
more than a language of symbols and met- 
aphors to express something that is univer- 
sal. To put it another way, religions are just 
different paths to the same destination. 
Nevertheless, it's important to choose a 
path if you want a deep, meaningful, spiri- 
tual life. As the Buddha once said, if you 
want to draw water you do not dig six one- 
foot wells. You dig one six-foot well. Islam 
is nothing more than my six-foot well. But 
I know what the Buddha knew, which is 
that no matter what well you draw from, 
the water is the same. 
PLAYBOY: Do you pray the required five 
times a day? 
ASLAN: I pray whenever I want to com- 
mune with God. I am not interested in the 
external shell of religion. I'm interested in 
breaking through that shell and experienc- 
ing God directly. 
PLAYBOY: In which religion will you and 
your wife raise your children? 
ASLAN: If religion is nothing more than a 


20% 
Off! 


FREE 
matching 


Gorgeous robe 
sheer lace top, 
belt, fur trim & 


Queen size fits 1 
7353 only $4195 - 
Order Gift D1504 
6730 


Don't play the game. Change it. 
THE ESSE LOUNGER К STAGE 


liberator.com 


117 


PLAYBOY 


118 


language to express faith, then we want them 
to be multilingual. We want them to be fa- 
miliar with all the religious languages of the 
world so that when they're at a place where 
they want to express their personal faith they 
can choose whichever language they feel 
more comfortable with, whether that's my 
language, Islam, or my wife's language, Chris- 
tianity, or any other language. Itmakes no dif- 
ference at all as long as they are on the path, 
as long as they are searching for meaning. 
PLAYBOY: When you became disenchanted 
with Christianity, was your anger directed 
toward the interpreters of the Bible or the 
Bible itself? 

ASLAN: When I went to university and de- 
cided to study the Bible for a living, it took 
approximately five minutes to learn that the 
Bible is full of the most obvious and blatant 
mistakes and contradictions. And because 
my entire spiritual edifice was built on a 
foundation of inerrancy and literalness, the 
whole thing collapsed. I was very bitter. I felt 


as though I'd been sold a forgery. But my 
anger was toward Christianity in general. 
It's embarrassing to admit, but for a while I 
would feel this sense of satisfaction in disturb- 
ing other people's religious beliefs, because I 
was an expert on the Bible and I loved tak- 
ing people who were certain in their belief 
system and destroying that certainty. I would 
get a sick sense of pleasure out of it, and it 
was, in a sense, a kind of revenge for feel- 
ing I'd been duped. But a couple of things 
happened. Number one, I couldn't help 
but realize that these fundamentalists whose 
certainty I was deriving so much pleasure in 
destroying seemed a lot happier than I was. 
And I thought to myself, What kind of an 
asshole am I that I'm going out of my way to 
disrupt somebody's happiness out of a sense 
of vengeance for what I feel was done to me? 
Secondly, as I started to study comparative 
religions more and more, I became much 
more adept at understanding what religion 
actually is and how it's differentiated from 


"Sounds like you have a contagious disease, Mrs. Hogaboom. 
Га suggest you see another doctor." 


faith. We think that religion and faith are the 
same thing, but they're not the same thing. 
PLAYBOY: Explain the difference. 

ASLAN: Faith is individualistic, it's inexpress- 
ible, it's ineffable. Religion is nothing more 
than the language we use to express faith. A 
lot of religious people have seamlessly mar- 
ried their religious identity with their cultur- 
al, ethnic and nationalist identities. They feel 
as though their particular experience of reli- 
gion is what everybody's experience is. The 
irony, of course, is that often critics of religion 
make the same mistake, but in reverse. They 
will look at scripture or theological arguments 
about religion and make grand assumptions 
about the lived experience of religious peo- 
ple. For me, being somewhat in the middle of 
the argument between the religiously devout 
and the atheistic secularist and recognizing 
that neither understands what the other is 
experiencing or even saying has become both 
a career and a gigantic headache. 

PLAYBOY: Is it all a headache, or do you take 
pleasure in battling with the likes of Maher, 
Dawkins and Harris? 

ASLAN: It's starting to become no longer fun 
primarily because, well...I'm just going to 
be perfectly honest: because of Sam Harris. 
Harris has a very large, very devoted, very fa- 
natical social media following, and they don't 
like it when you're mean to their master, and 
they let you know. He has this troll army. I 
joke that Harris must be the first atheist in 
history to have accidentally launched his 
own religion. It’s uncanny. He is the oppo- 
site of charismatic. But I can write anything 
I want about Richard Dawkins. Some people 
will disagree or agree. They will not hijack 
my entire Twitter feed for days at a time. 
PLAYBOY: Can't you simply ignore Harris 
and the army? 

ASLAN: I have to say there is something im- 
mature about me in that I still have a sort 
of devilish desire to be difficult to people 
like him who seem so easily riled up. Fa- 
naticism comes in a lot of different forms. 
PLAYBOY: Does this divisiveness take away 
from the conversation about religion or 
add to it? 

ASLAN: In a sense, the atheist fanatics provide 
a valuable negative pole that only makes my 
views that much more reasonable. Look, as a 
public intellectual, my dream has come true. 
It is to get people to talk about the things I'm. 
interested in. For me, just the fact that we're 
having this discussion, that conversations my 
friends and I have all the time, that my stu- 
dents and I have all the time, are now taking 
place in The New York Times and The Wash- 
ington Post, on TV, in coffee shops. I can't be 
more thrilled about that. It's not about me. 
Tve become a catalyst for what I consider to 
be a much-needed conversation in this coun- 
try about religion, politics and the role of both 
in society. But the criticism has gotten worse, 
more violent, more vitriolic, and it has begun 
to affect my family, even my wife sometimes, 
and that bothers me. I would be lying if I said 
it doesn't affect me. At least my kids are left 
out of it for now. But Aristotle said something 
I can't forget: If you want to avoid criticism, 
say nothing, do nothing, be nothing. That's 
just never been an option for me. 


JAPANESE 


NO SEX, PLEASE, WE'RE JAPANESE 


Continued from page 90 


And that is when otaku became a synonym 
not for geeks but for oddballs who lusted for 
bishojo, and not just oddballs but downright 
perverts. And as far as sex was concerned, 
that's when the otaku began to be viewed 
not just as shy fellows who were afraid of 
women but as men who were incapable 
of real sex. “See, these otaku are definitely 
lacking something in the masculine behav- 
ior department,” wrote one critic. “Most of 
them leer over cutouts of Minky Momo and 
Nanako [anime characters], yet can't bring 
themselves to speak to an actual woman.” 
Otaku became outcasts. 

The Japanese coined a name for their 
sexual obsession: “two-dimensional com- 
plex.” Some men carry life-size pillows of 
their favorite manga, anime and video game 
characters, taking them to movies, cafés and 
shops and expressing their feelings to them. 
Others play Love Plus, and one man actually 
arranged to “marry” his digital girlfriend 
Nene in a televised ceremony. “Now that 
the ceremony is over,” wrote the groom to 
a Japanese blogger, "I feel like I've been able 
to achieve a major milestone in my life. Some 
people have expressed doubts about my ac- 
tions, but at the end of the day, this is really 
just about us as husband and wife.” 

Perhaps the most bizarre manifestation of 
the two-dimensional complex is hentai, which 
refers to highly explicit sexual animations 
that depict not only boy-girl intercourse but 
bestiality (squid and octopus tentacles are 
particularly popular), rape, violence, incest 
and the fantasy of cartoon girls with animal 


characteristics such as horns and dog ears. 
Anything goes in hentai. But its defenders 
insist this isn't just a matter of pure arous- 
al, even though in one study a majority of 
otaku admitted to masturbating to hentai. 
They say otaku have real feelings for the 
cartoon girls, just like the feelings gener- 
ated by Love Plus. One hentai artist told Gal- 
braith, “Look, it's about liquids. You either 
come or you cry.” But whether you cry or 
come, you aren't having real sex. You're 
having a strange facsimile of sex. 
And that's the problem. 


So it's the guys' fault. Except that young Jap- 
anese women haven't shown much interest 
in sex lately either, if you remember those 
statistics—those 49 percent of young women 
who weren't in a romantic relationship and 
those 45 percent who weren't interested in or 
actually despised sex. That certainly seems to 
have affected relationships. The number of 
married couples in Japan is in steep decline, 
which may not speak to the frequency of sex 
but does speak to the plummeting birthrate, 
since the Japanese stigmatize illegitimacy. 
One in four women in their 20s is unlikely 
ever to be married, and 40 percent are un- 
likely to have a child. Some female abstain- 
ers seem to be responding to the changing 
male persona. They want stronger men, not 
herbivores and otaku. According to Japan's 
Institute of Population and Social Security, 
90 percent of young women said that stay- 
ing single is "preferable to what they imagine 
marriage to be like." And some men seem to 
be responding to the changing female perso- 
na of stronger, more independent women— 
a persona that earned the sobriquet "devil 
wife" for women who continue to work after 
marriage. One man told a reporter, "I don't 
like real women. They're too picky nowa- 
days." Meanwhile, an unmarried Japanese 
female magazine editor said, "Maybe we've 
learned how to service ourselves." Gyne- 
cologist Kunio Kitamura has another expla- 
nation. He thinks women feel "sex is more 
trouble than it's worth." 

And to complete the picture, it isn't just 
singles who have gone sexless. Married cou- 
ples in Japan are abstaining from sex too. 
That Family Planning Association survey 


Сз. 
тм NOT THAT 


FORGIVE ME 
IVE NEVER TRIED 
TO KISS MY MODEL 


found that 40 percent of married couples 
are sexless, defined as having sex fewer than 
12 times a year, and couples who have sex 
three or more times a week are only three 
percent of the married population. A survey 
of 600 married women found that 26 per- 
cent hadn't had any sex in the past year. Of 
course, the Japanese have a name for this 
too: “sex disgust syndrome.” 

But before you conclude that the Japa- 
nese are just a lot of abstinent weirdos, you 
come upon another clue in the search for 
the missing sex: the evidence referred to 
earlier that declining sexuality seems to be 
an international phenomenon. In Britain, 
for example, the National Survey of Sexual 
Attitudes and Lifestyles revealed that sexual 
frequency among men and women age 16 to 
44 has dropped in the past decade from an 
average of 6.2 times per month for men and 
6.3 for women to 4.9 and 4.8 respectively— 
compared with four times a month for the 
young Japanese. Said the principal inves- 
tigator of the survey, Dr. Anne Johnson of 
University College London, “We tend to 
think that these days we live in an increas- 
ingly sexually liberal society, but the truth is 
far more complex.” Brits are having less sex 
now than they used to. 

A survey on sexual frequency commis- 
sioned by the condom manufacturer Durex 
found that Greece was the most active coun- 
try, with 87 percent of Greeks having sex 
weekly. Russia (80 percent), China (78 per- 
cent) and Italy (76 percent) also rated high in 
sexual activity. But amorous France listed at 
70 percent, Germany at 68 percent, Canada 
at 59 percent and the United States at 53 
percent, which placed it above Japan at 34 
percent. All of which suggests, again, that we 
aren't as randy as we like to think we are. 

To get deeper inside those statistics, you 
can look at the 2010 National Survey of 
Sexual Health and Behavior conducted by 
the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University. It 
shows that 56.9 percent of single American 
men age 18 to 24 did not have vaginal sex 
in the previous year, which falls to 46.6 per- 
cent for men 25 to 29 years old. (For women 
the numbers were 50.8 percent and 43 per- 
cent.) But even for those men with partners, 
not spouses, the numbers were 26 percent 
and 20.8 percent respectively, and only 30 


PLAYBOY 


120 


percent and 36.4 percent of those respec- 
tive age groups were having sex weekly or a 
few times a month. Another researcher con- 
cluded that American men over the age of 
18 may claim they average 63 sex acts per 
year, but they're not telling the truth. The ac- 
tual figure, he has determined, is 30 times— 
once every 12 days. Not exactly orgy stats. A 
similar 2008 study by the Centers for Disease 
Control and Prevention's National Center 
for Health Statistics determined that fully 27 
percent of men 15 to 24 had never engaged 
in sex at all—up from 22 percent in 2002. 

And if the frequency is dropping, so is 
the level of sexual satisfaction, which, ac- 
cording to the Durex survey, includes the 
ability to have an orgasm, freedom from 
sexual dysfunction, good health and an 
“exciting” sex life. Greece again had a high 
percentage—those horny, happy Greeks!— 
at 51 percent. Further down were Germany 
(38 percent), France (25 percent), and the 
United States and Canada tied at 48 per- 
cent, which is still above the international 
average of 43 percent. (For the record, 
Japan is at 15 percent.) A more recent 
Durex survey of Americans, from 2012, 
itemized their sexual complaints—too fast 
(37 percent) and infrequent simultaneous 
orgasms (37 percent)—and added that 65 
percent daydream about making love out- 
side the bedroom. So here it is: Like the 
Japanese, we don't seem to be having all 
that much sex, and most of us aren't par- 
ticularly enjoying the sex we do have. 

You may have gotten the idea by now 
from all this data that it's a pretty grim pic- 
ture. But before we try to identify the world- 
wide culprit responsible for the lack of sex- 


SUNDAY SERVICE 


9:00AM 
کے‎ оао 


COLLECTIONS 


ual interest, a few caveats are in order. The 
first is that not everyone buys into the idea 
of rampant sexlessness. Some Japanese say 
the whole focus on sexlessness is just a sen- 
sationalist Western spin that took off when 
The Guardian website in Britain posted a 
2013 article with the luridly provocative title 
“Why Have Young People in Japan Stopped 
Having Sex?” These defenders of Japanese 
sexuality say that one could make an anec- 
dotal case, at least, that there is a lot of sex 
going on in Japan, which accounts for the 
fancy love hotels, where couples escape for 
discreet affairs, and for the persistence of 
a highly sexualized yanki culture of young 
revelers who stand in stark contrast to the 
otaku. Some think the Japanese are so com- 
fortable with sex that they don't need to talk 
about it, even to pollsters, or that they can 
be more honest, which may apply to the rest 
of the industrialized world as well. As Merry 
White, a Boston University anthropologist 
who specializes in modern Japanese culture, 
surmises, “Maybe sex is so normal that it's 
lost its excitement”—by which she means 
not the excitement of the sex act itself but 
the excitement of talking about it. 
Moreover, though it's clear marriage rates 
are falling not only in Japan but throughout 
the industrialized world (from 72 percent of 
Americans in 1960 to 51 percent now), some 
of this may have to do with increased rates 
of cohabitation and not declining interest in 
relationships. For example, in the United 
States since 2010 a plurality of people be- 
tween 25 and 34 have never been married. 
To underscore that, in a 2010 Pew Research 
Survey, nearly 40 percent of Americans said 
that marriage was “obsolete.” And while 


it's true the birthrate in Japan and, again, 
in most of the industrialized world, is de- 
clining, one can't extrapolate from that fact 
that people are having less sex. That's what 
birth control is for. And finally there's the 
question of what constitutes sex. Even if 
young people are having less vaginal sex, 
it's possible they're having other kinds of 
sex that don't show up in surveys. 

And yet, even when you take those cave- 
ats into consideration, it is difficult to avoid 
the evidence that sexual activity has dimin- 
ished. We know the what, and we know the 
who. But we still need to find the why. 


You may get closer to the source when you 
think of those men playing Love Plus and its 
later iteration, Love Plus +. The Japanese 
have blamed those game-obsessed, manga- 
obsessed, anime-obsessed otaku, but the otaku 
aren't the cause of the decline in sex. They 
are examples of it. What they have discov- 
ered is that technology can provide many 
of the satisfactions of sex, though obviously 
not its most powerful satisfaction, and in do- 
ing so, they may point to a different kind 
of sexual future. And yet, what seems new- 
fashioned—two-dimensional love—may ac- 
tually be very old-fashioned. Looking for the 
sorts of relationships that they have been un- 
able to enjoy with real women, deep and car- 
ing relationships, the otaku displaced that de- 
sire onto manga and anime characters. You 
could say they were looking for true love and 
found it. Sure, vaginal sex would have been 
great, but it wasn't the primary objective. Or 
as the otaku expert Patrick Galbraith has ob- 
served, "Sometimes what people say about 
otaku is that they are asocial or antisocial. But 
I think in most cases they are just social in a 
different way." That is, digitally social. 

You might think of it like this: Many young 
men and women in Japan, and many in the 
United States for that matter, are suffering 
from an intimacy gap—the gap between what 
they want, which is real and compliant part- 
ners, and what they can have in a fast-moving, 
pressurized, atomized world. According to 
one survey, 82.2 percent of Japanese men in 
their 20s who were not in a relationship never- 
theless said they still wanted to have sex. Now 
technology can sort of fill that gap without all 
the Sturm und Drang of human relationships, 
which is a large part of the appeal of Love Plus. 
It's painless. Computer scientist David Levy 
even predicts a time when our partners will 
be replaced by robots—essentially partners 
designed to our s| i 

Part of this is narcissism. Part is conve- 
nience. When it is so much easier to fill the 
intimacy gap with technology than with real 
human companionship and real-life sex, a 
whole lot of people are likely to do so, de- 
spite the very real physical deficits. Indeed, 
we have a culture of digital intimacy, some of 
which can lead to real intimacy—everything 
from sexting to social media to dating apps 
such as Tinder, of whose users one New York 
Times reporter recently wrote, “Their erotic 
energy was focused on the touchscreens of 
their smartphones.” Digital connection is 
so rampant among millennials that there 
are now “textlationships,” those that are 
conducted exclusively by smartphone (and 


obviously sexless), as distinguished from 
those that are IRL—“in real life.” The fact 
that we have an acronym for non-digital re- 
lationships speaks volumes. And while social 
media can certainly facilitate hookups and 
should lead to more sex, we've seen that 
they haven't necessarily had that effect. Even 
among collegiate 18- to-25-year-olds, a randy 
and ripe group if ever there was one—and 
one that is addicted to social media—a Uni- 
versity of Portland study comparing sex from 
the period 1988 to 1996 with sex from 2002 
to 2010 showed that in the latter era 59.3 
percent had had sex in the past year, down 
from 65.2 percent in the earlier period. 

While it is possible that having more access 
to more partners, as social media allows, has 
made men and women pickier rather than 
more promiscuous, it is equally possible that 
technology in this country is as much a sub- 
stitute for intimacy as it is in Japan. For $25 
a month a new service called Invisible Boy- 
friend creates a virtual BF who sends e-mails 
and texts to girls hoping to stop their parents 
and friends from pestering them with ques- 
tions as to why they aren't in a relationship. 
The user chooses the name, physical char- 
acteristics and personality of the phantom 
lover. And for those who want to take a deep- 
er plunge into virtual intimacy, there has 
long been the popular website Second Life, 
which is self-descriptive. Users choose an av- 
atar who then interacts with other avatars in 
an alternative reality. Those interactions in- 
clude romance, though one has only to visit 
a Second Life forum to see that these virtual 
relationships are just as fraught as real ones. 
"If we were meant to be that fictional person 
we created," commiserated one Second Life 
user to another, “we would be already. Even- 
tually the truth comes out." 

But technology is a capability. It isn't a mo- 
tive, and motive is what we're looking for. That 
leads us to the real issue—the reason otaku are 
fixated on manga and anime, the reason so 
many young people around the world are 
seeking intimacy in the digital realm of social 
media and not IRL, the reason there seems to 
bea reluctance to form relationships and, yes, 
the reason sex doesn't seem to be as much fun 
for many folks as it used to be. 

"That reason is anxiety. 

Begin with Japan. Perhaps more than 
any other industrialized country, Japan 
is gripped by anxiety or, rather, anxiet- 
ies. Japan had always been the land of the 
salaryman—“everyone employed from cra- 
dle to grave, everyone more or less sure of 
his future," as Merry White puts it. Japan's 
exceptionalism was that life was both pre- 
dictable and secure. But then came the eco- 
nomic downturn of the 1990s and the great 
deflation, and suddenly the salaryman was 
a "dinosaur" to use White's term. All the 
predictability, all the security was gone. The 
hardest hit was the Japanese middle class, 
and the hardest hit in the middle class were 
the young. They were thrust into what one 
cultural anthropologist called the "precari- 
at," meaning they were living precariously. 
By one study, only 3.5 percent of men age 25 
to 34 make more than the average worker's 
income. With diminished economic pros- 
pects came diminished prospects for mar- 
riage and for children and even for sex. Jeff 


Kingston, professor at Temple University in 
"Tokyo and author of Contemporary Japan, calls 
the economic catastrophe, from which Japan 
has still not fully recovered, a “betrayal.” 

The anxiety that came from that betrayal 
has had tremendous ramifications. It has 
forced young Japanese to "invent the world 
you're going to have to live in," according to 
White. And it is that reinvention that has con- 
tributed to the new sexual landscape. They 
know they can't operate the way their par- 
ents did, even if they wanted to. But many of 
them have decided they don't want to. Their 
lifestyle, including its sexual aspects, is a kind 
of rebellion against the old Japanese values 
of a stable middle-class life. 

Seen this way, the hikikomori, the kawaii 
(cute) boys, the herbivores and the otaku are 
not just peculiar. They're deliberately, will- 
fully peculiar. They want to challenge the 
culture that failed them and, frankly, failed 
itself. After all, many of those older sex- 
less married couples say they work so hard 
now that they're too tired for sex. "There's 
an ideal that people don't match or want 
to match," says Galbraith, "so that increas- 
ingly they're not finding themselves in those 
kinds of relationships that are recognized as 
committed, reproductive relationships." In 
effect, not having sex, not getting married, 
is a way to stick it to society—to take the psy- 
chological damage society inflicted on them 
and give it a political twist. 

Of course Japan is hardly the only nation 
suffering from economic hardship and anxi- 
ety. And that's where the rest of the world, 
including the United States, comes in. (How 
to explain those sexy Greeks, who are in dire 
economic straits, is a conundrum.) While 


they may not all be in the throes of rebellion, 
worldwide there is now an entire generation 
wounded by postrecession economic, social 
and even sexual anxiety, and many of them, 
like the Japanese, are in the process of rein- 
vention, trying to figure out new modes of 
survival, new forms of intimacy, new ways of 
avoiding commitments they can't fulfill. As 
MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle writes in 
Alone Together, an analysis of technology and 
interpersonal relationships, "We look to tech- 
nology for ways to be in relationships and 
to protect ourselves from them at the same 
time." Basically, this generation is afraid. 
None of this is necessarily irreversible. In 
time, anxiety can subside, people can regain 
their economic footing and their confidence, 
as is happening in America right now, and 
presumably the desire to have IRL relation- 
ships, sexual and otherwise, can return. It's all 
biological, says Justin Garcia, a research fellow 
at the Kinsey Institute who has studied the ef- 
fect of technology on sex. "There are certain 
things that happen when you see someone, 
when you taste someone, when you smell 
someone, when you hear the sound of their 
voice," he says. "And we have mechanisms 
that have evolved in our brains to respond to 
those types of unique human interactions." 
"That's why, Garcia believes, technology can 
never replace sex. You can't get all those 
things from Love Plus or Invisible Boyfriends 
or sexting or robots, so no matter how many 
people have sought refuge from their anxi- 
eties in virtual intimacy, disappearing sex is 
likely to make a reappearance. Or as an odds- 
maker might say, never bet against sex. 


“Td like you to try this drug the FDA just approved before they 
1. 


come to their senses and recall i 


» 


121 


PLAYBOY 


CHARLIE GASPARINO 


Continued from page 94 


What the fuck is that? Fucking Citigroup 
is writing that law. I agree with everything 
Elizabeth Warren said. Sometimes people 
at Fox think I have a little Trotskyite mus- 
tache. They think I'm a little too liberal. 


10 

PLAYBOY: Your polis are difficult to figure 
out. You call Wall Street evil, but you like 
free markets. You're in favor of gun con- 
trol. You occasionally say good things about 
Obama. How does that go over at Fox? 
GASPARINO: I'm not the most right-wing 
nut in the world. Far from it. I was on the 
air the other day when Ben Stein called AI 
Sharpton a weasel. I said, “Let's be clear, 
he's not a weasel. I've known Al Sharpton a 
long time. I don't like a lot of stuff he does, 
but he raises some important issues about 
the way the black community perceives 
police forces in this country." I never got 
so many nasty tweets! People called me a 
greaseball for defending Sharpton. I told a 
few people to go fuck off. 


11 

PLAYBOY: Why did = leave CNBC for Fox? 
GASPARINO: I wanted to work here. This was 
my career path: a bunch of shitty publica- 
tions to a less shitty publication to New York 
Newsday, then I finally got to The Wall Street 
Journal. 1 was making pretty good money 
at CNBC. Did I get paid more by Fox Busi- 
ness Network? Absolutely. I have zero stock 
options, just so you know. God forbid I had 
stock options tied to our ratings right now, 
because I'd be in real trouble. But if it works 
out here—I'm not saying it will happen, but 
it might—the payoffis going to be great. And 
not just the money payoff, but the payoff of 
creating something. 


Q12 

PLAYBOY: Fox Business Network is strug- 
gling much more than Fox News, in terms 
of ratings. What does Fox do well? 

GASPARINO: One of the biggest problems 
with TV is predictability. I know Rachel 
Maddow really well, and she's brilliant, 
but she's predictable. The rest of them on 
MSNBG, I always know what they're going 
to say. Fox is actually really good at this. It's 
less predictable. You may not think so, but 
I'm telling you, Bill O'Reilly is not doctri- 
naire. There's more of a debate at Fox than 
on other networks. Do I think Sean Hannity 
likes President Obama? No. Do Ed Henry 


122 and James Rosen hate Obama? No way. We 


have both sides of the story. CNN does too, 
but I think we do it better. There has to bea 
reason our ratings are better. 


Q13 

PLAYBOY: You covered Eliot Spitzer start- 
ing in the late 1990s, when he was attorney 
general of New York and prosecuted Wall 
Street executives and sued Richard Grasso, 
who was chairman of the New York Stock 
Exchange. Did you know Spitzer was a 
creep before the rest of us knew? 
GASPARINO: I don't consider him sleeping 
with hookers being a creep. I'm more of a 
libertarian when it comes to stuff like that. 
"That's his personal life. My wife would hate 
me to say that, and not one woman on the 
planet will agree. He was a creep in terms 
of the hypocrisy. He busted people for that 
same stuff. He took a deposition of Grasso's 
secretary to suggest that Grasso was having 
sex with her. At one point during a deposi- 
tion he tried to suggest that Grasso had a 
love child, just to embarrass him. There was 
a rumor at some point. Grasso said, "We un- 
derstand he's got something going on with 
some young girl." That went in one ear and 
out the other. But I said to Grasso, "Spitzer's 
gonna step on his cock someday." [laughs] 1 
never thought it would be so literal. 


14 

PLAYBOY: Some Е. are libertarians be- 
cause they want to be able to take drugs legally 
and own lots of guns. Are you one of them? 
GASPARINO: When I was a kid I smoked a 
little pot and stuff like that, but I was never 
heavy into drugs. We're putting African 
American kids in jail for cocaine. We're 
destabilizing lower-middle-class families. 
Should they be in the same cells as rapists 
or murderers? Guns are a different story. 
I don't think we should be selling subma- 
chine guns on the corners, and I know 
some libertarians who believe that. I dis- 
agree with libertarians on a lot of stuff. 


15 

PLAYBOY: You've aidi President Obama fun- 
damentally doesn’t understand the Ameri- 
can economy. The stock markets are way 
up, and unemployment is down. Don’t you 
owe him an apology? 

GASPARINO: Listen, the stock market's better, 
but who's making money? Me. Fat cat Gaspa- 
rino and all the fat cats at Fox. We're doing 
great! The average person hasn't done well. 
Wages are shitty. If you write code, you get a 
job. If you want to flip burgers, you can prob- 
ably get a job. It's the stuff in the middle that's 
getting tight. When Obama first took over, he 
was threatening to raise taxes and planning a 
stimulus to get us out of the financial crisis. 
He was both destimulating the economy and 
trying to stimulate it. And he should not go 
on jihads against businesses when he needs 
them to hire people. 


Q16 
PLAYBOY: What was your record as an ama- 
teur boxer in the Bronx? 
GASPARINO: Three and one. I had four official 
bouts, but Гуе been in the ring hundreds of 
times. I did it for a long time. My mother was 
begging me to quit. I was going to fight in the 


Golden Gloves in 1980, and I didn't, because 
I got into girls and stuff. I was once sitting at a 
bar stool, and I saw my sparring partner win 
the semifinal bout. I was as good as him. That 
was probably the biggest mistake of my life. 
That was one of the things that drove me in 
this business—I decided I'm never going to 
give up. There's a persistence in my report- 
ing that I take from that, because I fucked 
up by skipping the Golden Gloves. My father 
told me that every day. 


17 

PLAYBOY: Your dad = tough guy, wasn't he? 
GASPARINO: He was a really tough guy, a 
street guy. He grew up without a father, in 
a tenement in the Bronx. He was a scout 
sniper in the Marines. And he worked as a 
wire lather—it's a type of ironworker. It was 
a very dangerous job. He fell off a scaffold 
10 times. Maybe that's why he died in 1985 
when I was in journalism school. I don't 
know, but he had Parkinson's disease. He 
was a blue-collar Democrat who sometimes 
voted Republican. He was a big Nixon guy 
but also voted for Teddy Kennedy. And he 
was very big in his union. He believed that 
the top one percent shouldn't control ev- 
erything. That runs through my veins every 
day. When Fox goes on the attack against 
unions, I'm like, Let's back up a minute. 


18 

PLAYBOY: Was your bs temperamental like 
you are? 

GASPARINO: He was a fighter. Some guy 
threatened my mother once. My father 
took out an Ernie Banks bat, walked to 
the guy's house and stayed there for three 
hours. I grabbed the bat and ran away, and 
he still stood there. The cops came. Then 
the guy called my mother another name, 
and my father decked him. My old man 
hated bullies. And that's part of my thing 
with Twitter—I hate bullies. Twitter's full of 
them, and that pisses me off. 


19 

PLAYBOY: Let's talk Бы Twitter. In Novem- 
ber you tweeted a number of insults at Ron 
Insana of CNBC. You called him “fat boy,” 
“fat slob,” “not just fat but dumb,” “disgust- 
ing slob” and, for an encore, “a putrid, bald- 
ing, disgusting fat-cat bootlicking sycophantic 
douche.” Is that any way for an adult to talk? 

GASPARINO: If you're going to throw the first 
punch at me, be ready for nuclear war. Tell- 
ing someone to go fuck themselves is com- 
pletely within the bounds of ethics, especially 
when they're wrong and I'm right. Truth is a 
defense. The guy we're talking about is a fat, 
unctuous, sycophantic Wall Street suck-up. 
He'd been saying stuff about me behind the 
scenes, and then one day he said it on Twitter, 
and I lost it. I’m a combative person. I have to 
admit, I am kind of a prick at times. Even my 
friends will say, “He's an asshole.” 


Q20 
PLAYBOY: Does your wife read your Twit- 
ter posts? 
GASPARINO: Yes. And she says, “Oh my God, 
what are you doing?” Often. 


BetterSex.com’ Have the best sex you've ever had — Now! 


Highly Erotic. Shows Real Couples Demonstrating Real Sexual Techniques. — 


WINNER 
TELLY AWARD 


SSSS Award of 
Excellence. 


7 " mm 
| m m DT (f ШТ 


- 4 v 


BUY THESE 3 DVDS & F Б E E NS | | 
GET THESE 4 DVDS 


"0 түү Tm 9% 
Шу |) MN 


E YOUR LOW] 


$99, 95 $82 nN 


= EROTIC INDULGENCES: WET, WILD & WICKED: 
a | Expand the boundaries of sexual play and fantasy. 
3 | INCREDIBLE ORGASMS: BetterSex. com For fastest замке. or to 
= | Unlock mysteries for amazing orgasms. 7 Search 7 request a FREE catalog call: 
Enter code 8PB277 into the search 
SÀ BETTER SEX? GUIDE TO GREAT ORAL SEX: box for this amazing offer. ext. 8PB277 
= 0 
3 The world's greatest oral sex techniques for him & her. Е | 
DEF IL: SINCLAIR INSTITUTE, EXT. 8AB55 PO BOX 8865, CHAPEL HILL, NC 27515 
x) EXPLORING GUILTY PLEASURES: YES, SEND ME ALL | 620,95 METHOD OF PAYMENT 
2 Intensify you sexual satisfaction with erotic 7 RED HOT ovos! " C Check or Bank Money Order (Sorry, No Cash or 0005) 
2 | movies, sensual fantasies, and more. == 
POSTAGE& | $8.00 | CHARGEMY: [VISA [MC [AMEX []piscovER 
= THE BETTER SEX® GUIDE TO ANAL PLEASURE: = = ii 
> Tricks and tips for anal eroticism to help you reach new RUSH PROCESSING x 
э heights of pleasure ADD $2 $2.00 
SIGNATURE 
en FREE CATALOG | EREE 
û þ TOYS FOR BETTER SEX: SUBSCEIEDON NAME 
а) Real couples demonstrate the joys of toys. NC orders please add 
6.75% sales tax ADDRESS 
32 WAYS TO PLEASE YOUR LOVER: реттен 
2 Keep it spicy with fun and creative positions and techniques. cry STATE 1р 


=> ое چ‎ ES کے‎ шы 1 کو :کد چ‎ ӨЙ 


Sinclair Institute, ext. 8PB277 PO Box 8865, Chapel Hill, NC 27515 + To protect your privacy, your order will be packaged and delivered discreetly. 


PLAYBOY 


Continued from page 75 


indiscernible from tears, and 1 forgot for 
a second that she had called me not out of 
kindness, or even decency, but because the 
court had ordered it. 

“Daddy 

“Hey, budd ” 

“Harlan an’ me taught Juno fish bump oh 
crap buhronicles!” 

Then all I heard was iPhone eating car- 
pet, followed by more sounds of blunted, 
faraway joy. After a minute Jess picked up 
the phone. 

“Sorry. I got him something for Christ- 
mas and he saw me taking it out of the bag.” 

Like always, it was out of me before I even 
knew it had words to latch onto. 

“Why are you always trying to turn him 
against me?” 

“I don't know, Latham,” she said. “I think 
you're doing a pretty good job of that all 
by yourself.” 


Jess and I met in Baltimore during our car- 
diology residency at the U of M, where we 
were both shit-talking and fuck-you fat. We 
would smoke outside with the EMTs and get 
drunk at happy hour with the nurses. Most 
of the other residents—the skinny Asians 
who grew up in suburbs named after office 
parks and dreamed of becoming dermatol- 
ogists or pediatricians or GPs, as well as the 
occasional Jewish boy who still hadn't got- 
ten the memo to come to Wall Street—gave 
us a pretty wide berth. 

Our patients were junkies and the war 
homeless. On the rare nights that they didn’t 
get knifed or raped or OD'd, they would put 
their fists through windows or run headlong 
into razor wire to get a bed. 

“T got an SHP in 4-12,” I would say. 

“SHP?” would say Richard Lu or Sin- 
jin Park or whoever. “It’s a purpura, right? 
Vasculitis?” 

“No, fuckhole,” Jess would laugh. “It’s a 
subhuman piece of shit.” 


I took her to Crisfield, where I grew up, 
at the piss-end of Chesapeake Bay. We slept 
in my grandmother’s old twin bed, all 400 
pounds of us. We drove around and bought 
beer and cigarettes and went crabbing in 
the shallows without a license just like 
Uncle Malcolm had taught me. When the 
police boat came by we hid on our knees 
in the bay grass, and when it was gone Jess 
blew me unapologetically while the egrets 


124 looked on, pouty and bored. My parents 


kept a brooding distance all weekend, curi- 
ous about the smart part of me—the part I 
had cultivated on my own, in secret, afraid 
that if they found out about it they would 
stamp it out—and what it had brought 
home. We were as exotic to them as black 
people, or happiness. 

Malcolm was my mother’s brother and, 
other than me, the only one who got out. It 
was to get a Ph.D. in poetry, I think, though 
that was clearly off the table by the time I 
was born. He had a long, rosacea-ruined 
face and was always coming from someplace 
different, Burlington or Amherst or New 
London, some college town with a public 
square where an old man could hang out 
with the runaways and oi punks and buy 
them beer and later try to suck their dicks 
and get beat up and do it all over again 
the next day. When I was a kid he would 
show up every year in the general vicin- 
ity of Christmas and upend a black plastic 
yard-waste bag onto the floor. There'd be lip 
balm, tube socks, roll-on, disposable light- 
ers and sometimes penny rolls from the 
bank taking off for the corners in their red 
construction-paper jackets. 

“If the mayor wants a Filet-O-Fish," he'd 
say, "you'd better get him one. That stylish 
bastard is on a hot streak!" 

Or "You don't believe me? Go to the Ritz 
and ask the white bartender. He'll remem- 
ber. I'm the one who put his cigarette out 
in Bob Lowell's butter dish!" 

And often there was song: "Degree! 
Degree! I'm getting a degree!/In compara- 
tive histology!/Microbes dance and microbes 
sing/ But the macrophage eats everything!" 

Even a six-year-old can tell true joy from 
booze-fueled mania, but it was unusual to 
hear anyone make any noise in the house 
at all the rest of the year, so I took what I 
could get. 

And he always had something special in 
the car for me: a plastic flying-saucer sled 
or a carving knife for whittling the marsh- 
softened wood or something from Heathkit. 

The last time it was a brand-new Marlin 
bolt-action .22. 

Even though the clouds were already pink 
he led me out into the woods and showed 
me how to load and aim. I shot the dirt and 
took the branches off some trees, my shoul- 
der stinging from the weight. 

"Now for a real target," he said. 

He found a sapling that was roughly his 
height, then took off his mackinaw and 
threaded a spindly branch through each 
arm so the tree looked like it was holding 
its arms up over its head in surrender. 

And then, while he hooted and shimmied 
and shivered, I put hole after hole in his 
jacket, the smoke rising off it like steam. 

When I ran out of ammo, he took a step 
back and looked at what I'd done. Tears and 
snot ran down his face, from the cold, I hoped, 
though I wasn't trying to look too hard. 

“I keep no rank nor station,” he said. 
“Cured, I am frizzled, stale and small.” 


The next December I was in the woods 
when a fierce wind tore through. I looked 
up to see the last of the yellow leaves rattling 
in the tall trees. 

My mother was in the kitchen. 


"Where's Uncle Malcolm?" I asked her. 
“I don't know,” she said. “Indianapolis?” 


About 25 years later I happened to pick 
up a greasy Norton Anthology that one of 
Jess's roommates had left on top of the toi- 
let tank. 

There it was: “I keep no rank nor 
station...” 

“Home After Three Months Away.” 

By Bob Lowell. 

Ilooked at it awhile, trying to find some- 
thing, but in the end it's just a piece of 
smugly unilluminating faggotry. 


Jess moved in at the beginning of June, just 
before the last year ofour residency. Ihad a 
structurally unsound townhome deep in Car- 
roll County that she did her best to humanize. 
A trio of majolica roosters appeared on the 
kitchen counter one day, a little wastepaper 
basket in the bathroom the next. Trivets. 
Glass ashtrays. Copper-bottomed skillets 
hanging from cast-iron curlicues. Buffers 
against the tendency of things to burn or 
stain or otherwise go to shit. 

The dogs were not on anybody's to-do 
list. We were driving home from breakfast 
one day and saw a cardboard sign propped 
up against the mailbox at the end of some- 
body's driveway. 

BULLDOG PUPPIES it said. 

A тору tweeker in cut-off jeans and a St. 
Barts T-shirt answered the door and led us 
into the kitchen, where five of them were 
nursing blindly on a Cookie Monster doll. 

"Where's the mother?" Jess asked. 

"I don't know,” the guy shrugged. "This 
is how they came." I noticed, for the first 
time, that he was wearing lipstick. 

Jess sat down on the floor and lifted the 
dogs out one by one. Within a minute they 
had nosed into her crotch and fallen asleep 
in a big pile. I have a picture of that on my 
old phone, wherever that is. Of the moment 
when she looked up from the pile to find 
my face. 

We took two, because that's what you do 
when you're still in that place where you 
think you can control somebody else's lone- 
liness, animal or otherwise. They'll keep 
each other company, we thought. They'll 
talk dog. 

So that's how it was that summer: me and 
Jess and Odin and Frank out on the splin- 
tery, listing deck. Reading. Ashing in the 
glass ashtrays. The dogs loose and slack as 
spilled milk, their bellies sunburning while I 
rode Jess's clit with the ball of my foot, bear- 
ing down and easing up on it like a pedal 
until she pulled me into bed to finish the job. 

And then one night after I came, I pro- 
posed to her. Odin, roused by the noise, 
loped in and licked my balls. 

Yet. 

Yet, yet, yet. 

It became clear pretty fast that mar- 
riage and me were not going to be on the 
same page. 

I think it was when Jess decided to get 
skinny. There wasn't any conversation about 
it. I just walked in one day and found a 
treadmill in the dining room. 

“It's for both of us," she said. 


"Yeah, okay,” I said. “I'll try not to hog it." 

She was on it all the time. More and more 
of her sloughed off, until all that was left was 
the treadmill and cigarettes. 

And then just the treadmill. 

I would take Odin and Frank out for a 
walk and hear the thrum-stomp-thrum through 
the open window. 

The smart part of me fought hard but, as 
always, proved no match for the rest. 

I am being cuckolded by a machine, I 
thought. 

She is already running away. 

And the dogs would squat and shit, look- 
ing up at me with naked affection as they 
bore down. 


On our wedding night I smoked crack 
with the busboys at the hotel and then, 
apparently, told Jess's mother about the 
time I stapled some SHP's broken face back 
together because it would have taken half an 
hour to stitch properly. Out on the dance 
floor I got in her Bones-producing brother's 
face and licked his glasses. 

"That night in bed, Jess tried to talk to me. 

“Whatever,” I said. "I liked you better 
when you were fat." 


There were two decent cardiology prac- 
tices in Memphis and both had openings, 
so we moved there. We bought a house in 
a new development and a big piece of land 
southeast of Oxford, Mississippi for me to 
run the dogs on. Jess called it the Duchy 
of Swampfucker. 

Itook up with a nurse who had a gift for 
prescription fraud. With a Percocet in me 
I found that I could see patients and make 
small talk. With two, I could get the grand- 
mas in holiday sweaters who ran the hospital 
gift shop to fight over who was going to take 
me to lunch. 

I would go down the cafeteria line and 
choose ribs, chicken, sweet potatoes, green 
beans, corn pudding, catfish, hot rolls, 
okra, pasta with Italian gravy and pie. Lit- 
tle pleated Solo cups of comeback sauce 
or remoulade would hydroplane raffishly 
across my tray. 

One day there was a new lady behind the 
steam table. She was maybe 60 and bigger 
than I was by almost another me. 

“You look like somebody,” she said. 
“Paula? Who he look like?” 

When she moved I saw the roll and kink 
in her hip. Dysplasia. 

“T don't know.” 

“Yes, you do. It's the one from that 
movie.” 

“How am I supposed to know what movie 
you're talking about?” 

“You know. The one where he put his foot 
through the windshield.” 

"I don't know nothing about no 
windshield." 

"Yes, you do. It's the Pineapple movie." 

"Pineapple Express? You think he look like 
James Franco?" 

“No, not him. The other one." 

“The Rogen one?" 

“No, not him either.” 

“Ain't nobody else in that movie, Teesha.” 

“Come on, now. You know who I'm talk- 
ing about.” 


"I am done with this conversation.” 

“The Jamie Foxx one! He in the Jamie 
Foxx one about the president.” 

“Channing Tatum?" 

“That's who!” She put an ice-cream scoop 
of pimento cheese on my plate. “You look 
just like Channing Tatum.” 

Something unfurled inside me. 

I could swear it was the smart part, in 
reckless, unfathomable bloom. 


On my next day off I drove out to the 
Duchy and let the dogs loose. After a couple 
of hours of hunting I found an arm-thick white 
ash branch about seven feet long, dragged it 
back to the truck, and drove home. 

For the next month or so I would pull the 
branch out of the truck bed between patients 
and whittle it down with the knife Uncle 
Malcolm had given me all those years ago. 
The wood was smooth and slippery, and I 
had to stop every few minutes to dry the 
sweat off my hands. Even so, one time I ran 
the knife right through the tip of my thumb 
and had to pop another Perc and stitch it up. 

When I had a proper walking stick, I 
rolled it in a piece of bright green felt and 
brought it to the cafeteria. 

She wasn't there. 

"Where's Teesha?" 

“You didn't know? She took that job in 
West Memphis. Closer to her grandkids." 

I walked through the cool halls and then 
the lobby atrium and kept going until I 
found myself way out in the auxiliary park- 
ing lot, where I unwrapped the stick and 
beat the asphalt with it until the grip broke 
off and skittered away. When it came to a 
rest, there was Channing Tatum's fist-size 
face, perfectly rendered in white ash, star- 
ing down the hard Memphis sun. 


On the last night, I stopped by the nurse's 
place in Orange Mound after work. She 
made me a couple of drinks and then, while 
I was fucking her, slipped an Opana into 
my asshole. 

I got home two hours late for the dinner 
party we were having for Jess's partners. 
I was supposed to smoke some salmon on 
a cedar plank in the Big Green Egg, but 
Jess had just stuck it under the broiler, and 
everyone had eaten it in mortified, un- 
Southern silence. When I walked in they 
were drinking red velvet vodka in the living 
room and playing some portable electronic 
game called Catch Phrase! that one of the 
wives had brought. 

“Wu-Tang Killa Beez, we on a swarm! Wu- 
Tang Killa Beez, we on a swarm!” 

Ilay down on the couch and put my head 
in Jess's lap. 

“All right,” one of the wives said, all watery 
and chipper, “this is one word, three sylla- 
bles. It's a person who is very concerned, 
very anxious about things——" 

"What is cunt?" I said. 

"Latham," Jess said. 

“The last syllable is a kind of growth, I 
think it is viral, like a little bump you might 
have on——" 

“What is assfister? What is coozedribble?” 

“Why are you answering in Jeopardy 
form?" one of the doctors said, trying to 
put some kind of headlock on the situation. 


DIVE BAR 


SHIRTELUD 


Playboy's Privacy Notice 


We occasionally make 
portions of our customer 
list available to carefully 
screened companies that 
offer products or services 
we believe you may enjoy. If 
you do not want to receive 
these offers or information, 
please let us know by 
writing to us at: 


Playboy Enterprises International, Inc. 
c/o CDS 

PO. Box 37489 

Boone, IA 50037-0489 

e-mail PLYcustserv@cdsfulfillment.com 
tel 800.999.4438 or 515.243.1200 


It generally requires eight to ten weeks 
for your request to become effective. 


125 


PLAYBOY 


126 


“This isn't Jeopardy.” 

“Wart,” someone said. 

“Yes!” 

“Worrywart!” 

“Dingdingdingding!” 

“What is your mother fucks AIDS 
monkeys?” 


I got the divorce papers before I even 
knew she was pregnant with Zack. She got 
the house, the money, the dogs and most of 
the boy. I got the land and the right to bury 
the dogs on it. 


JP had moved in with Jess when Zack was 
two. He called himself Armenian but was 
raised in Paris by his filthy rich pill-dulled 
mother and her second husband, a famous 
psychiatrist who hated children. JP was 
kind, soft, inquisitive and forbearing and 
held eye contact longer than necessary. How 
he ended up in Memphis I knew at one time 
but have forgotten. 

When I pulled up to the house he was 
standing in the driveway next to his 1990s 
Volvo wagon, which was filled with the Ori- 
ental rugs he sold for a living, their whorled 
ends jammed up against the back window. 

“I am so sorry,” he said and gave me a 
big hug, pressing his belly against mine, his 
beard on my neck. 

“Tell me the truth,” I said, all gravitas. “Are 
you touching my son's weenie in the night?" 

He shook his head wearily. "Come on. I'll 
show you where he is." 

A great push of forced-air heat, with its faint 


recycled smell of myself, met me at the door. 

And then the rugs. 

JP had covered the floors with them in 
overlapping layers, pink and gold rosettes 
interrupted by silver birds and sky-blue 
swastikas and dolls with orange hearts and 
moons and fists and hot white points of light, 
like a fireworks show where the fucked- 
up technician keeps pressing the button 
too soon, releasing another one and then 
another and another, before the last has 
turned to smoke. 

I wished I had done just one more bump. 

Or maybe one less. 

When we reached the bedroom, JP put 
a hand on my shoulder. “I tried to get him 
out myself, but he's stuck. Maybe if I lift, 
you can pull?" 

I got down on all fours. Odin's belly had 
distended with the rigor mortis and was 
wedged against the box spring. When JP 
lifted the bed I grabbed both sets of paws 
and tugged as hard as I could. He came out 
in sharp little judders, his fur catching on 
the carpet fibers. 

He was bigger than the last time I had 
seen him. Tiny white hairs had begun to 
mist his eyes and his black lips. But the main 
thing was how stiff he was. The pink drum 
of a belly. The invisibly trussed legs. Even 
the jowls looked frozen in place. 

JP left for a minute and came back with 
one of the rugs. 

“This was his favorite. I was measuring it 
one day, and he climbed on, and that was 
it. Odin's forever." 

"Don't do that." 


"Where's the sunscreen?" 


He shrugged. "It is happening." 

We rolled him up in it and put the whole 
thing in the truck, and after I had a smoke 
I went back into the house to take a piss and 
wash my hands. When I pulled one of the 
hand towels off the bar, I saw a Zack-high 
smear of dried—what? blood? snot? shit?— 
behind it on the wall. 

I closed my eyes. 

More fucked-up fireworks. 

Patterns strangled and stomped on, col- 
ors raped and replaced. 


By the time we were on the far side of 
Oxford, I could tell that JP was working 
himself up to do some serious empathizing. 

"So, Latham," he said. He was always very 
big on addressing people by name. “How 
are you?" 

"Fine, Jean-Pierre," I said. "How are you?" 

"Are you still seeing Sharonda?" 

“It's not polite to answer a question with 
a question." 

"Really? We are really doing this?" 

"Yes. Apparently we are." 

“Can I ask you something?" 

“No.” 

“Do you really hate everything that much?” 

“No. I love that in most public restrooms 
now they put a trash can right by the door 
so you can open it with a paper towel and 
then throw the paper towel away. I think 
that is truly stellar.” 

“You know, we both want to help you get 
your privileges back. Even Jess.” 

“And coming. I love coming. That shit 
never gets old.” 

He sighed again. “It is always épater with 
you. Epater, épater. Pretty soon people are 
going to stop trying.” 

“God, I sure fucking hope so.” 


When we pulled onto the fire road it was 
almost midnight. I parked and we carried 
the rolled-up rug across a narrow valley, 
more of a divot, really, to a flat spot under 
the big red cedar that Odin and Frank liked 
to nap under. 

The moon was high and clear, so we 
turned off our flashlights and set to, shovels 
flinting on the rocky soil. After a few minutes 
JP stopped to wrap his underused hands in 
some gauze from the first-aid kit and talk 
about the landscape and the Deep South 
and the beauty in specificity. The deep, sing- 
songy Frenchness of his voice running on 
like an unseen stream. 

An hour or so later, when we had a hole, 
we unrolled Odin to look at him one last 
time in the cold light. 

I couldn't do it. I couldn't put him in the 
ground like that, in that permanent flinch. 

So I waited. I sent JP back to Memphis in 
the truck and sat by Odin’s body for three 
days, batting the flies away, the crows, the 
scavengers. Watching the looseness, the sag 
and slack of it, slowly return. Watching him 
unburden himself of death. Watching him 
return to his body. 

I buried him. 

Then I walked down the road till I found 
a pay phone and tried to think of who to call 
to take me home. 


How to Tell Time Like a Man 


Our digital-analog hybrid has two sides... tough and tougher. 
Get it now for an unbelievable $59! 


our watch shouldn't cost more than 
Y your car. It should look and feel like a 
power tool and not a piece of bling. 
Wearing it shouldn't make you think twice 
about swinging a hammer or changing a tire. 
A real man's timepiece needs to be ready for 
anything. But that's just my opinion. If you 
agree, maybe you're ready for the Stauer 
Centurion Hybrid. Use your Exclusive 
Insider Promotional Code below and I'll 
send it to you today for ONLY $59. 


This watch doesn't do dainty. And nei- 
ther do I. Call me old-fashioned, but I want 
my boots to be leather, my tires to be deep- 
tread monsters, and my steak thick and rare. 
Inspiration for a man's watch should come 
from things like fast cars, firefighters and 
power tools. And if you want to talk beauty, 
then let's discuss a 428 cubic inch V8. 


EE 
ІІІ ШЫ » 


Did I mention the $59 price tag? This 
is a LOT of machine for not a lot of money. 
The Stauer Centurion Hybrid sports a 
heavy-duty alloy body, chromed and 
detailed with a rotating bezel that allows 
you to track direction. The luminous hour 
and minute hands mean you can keep 
working into the night. And the dual digital 
displays give this watch a hybrid ability. The 
LCD windows display the time, day and 
date, includes a stopwatch function, and 
features a bright green electro-luminescent 
backlight. We previously offered the 


Centurion for $199, but with the exclusive - INSTANTLY! 
promotional code it's yours for ONLY $59! " ш 
No matter what, this watch can keep М When you use your 
up. Thanks to the Stauer 30-day Money = Promotional Code 
Back Guarantee, you've got time to prove it. 
If you're not totally satisfied, return it for a 
full refund of the purchase price. You also 


Stauer Centurion Hybrid Watch— $199 


get a 2-year replacement guarantee on both Promotional Code Price Only $59 
movements. But I have a feeling the only ¢ 7050 
problem you'll have is deciding whether to or two payments of Y da S -— 4 S&P 


keep the Stauer Centurion on your dresser M z 
154 Order now to take advantage of this fantastic low price. 
or tucked inside your toolbox. 


ЖЖЖЖ 1 -800- 333- 2057 


“I work in the surveying and 
construction industry... 
This is my work horse watch 


and I am proud to wear it." St е 14101 Southcross Drive 

— CSS. from Fort Worth, TX AUT? isse Minnesota 5 
Digital-Analog Hybrid + Dual digital displays • Heavy-duty chromed body • 3 ATM Water Resistant 

LCD windows for time, date and day + Luminous hands * Contrast Stitch Band fits a 7 1/4"-9 1/4" wrist 


BUSINESS 


` Rating of A+ 


Dept. CNW384-03 
7 www.stauer.com 


Smart Luxuries—Surprising Prices” 


PLAYBOY 


A WRONG TURN IN MEXICO 


Continued from page 58 


website, on January 13, 2014. “No matter 
what it is, however, I feel like adventure is 
that delving into the unknown, and every- 
one has that desire in them.” 

Twelve days later Devert disappeared. 


Erik Dissinger was on call late on the night of 
December 9, 2013 when an emergency crew 
radioed for a tow at the scene of a motorcy- 
cle crash on Interstate 4 in Daytona Beach, 
Florida. A car had cut off a motorcycle, 
knocking the rider off balance and sending 
his bike skidding into the right lane. The 
rider had gotten up and run into oncoming 
traffic, waving the cars away from his bike. 

Dissinger sized up the rider as a 
weekend-warrior type. Dissinger, on the 
other hand, looks every bit a repo man. 
He is 300 pounds and five-foot-11 with a 
bull neck and Fu Manchu beard, and he 
rides a Harley. He loaded Devert's damaged 
bike onto the truck, and they drove it to a 
mechanic who stayed open late. Dissinger 
asked how far Devert was riding and was 
astounded at the answer: Brazil. No one 
goes that far for his first real ride. 

^He came from a totally different side 
of life than me, but the way he said he felt 
riding is the same way all of us bikers feel rid- 
ing," Dissinger wrote in a Facebook message. 

An hour later, they were parked in front 
of the hotel, still talking. Dissinger was sell- 
ing him on Daytona's annual Bike Week, 
and Devert promised to come back for it. In 
his hotel room, Devert published a photo 
of the bike on Instagram. "Grateful to be 
alive is an understatement. Hopefully this 
won't delay my trip too long. One of the 
best days of my life." 

South Florida is an odd place for a stop- 
over for someone riding from New York to 
Mexico, but Devert was looking for some- 
thing from his past. Devert was 18 and a 
trainee in the Army reserves when his father, 
Georges, a Frenchman and successful insur- 
ance broker, was diagnosed with cancer. 
Harry was born outside Paris in Saint-Cloud, 
and Georges went to great lengths to initi- 
ate his son into French culture, even after he 
and Ann divorced. Harry grew up in Pelham 
but skied the French Alps on winter break 
and spent summers on the French Riviera. 
Georges used to say of his son, "C'est mon 
oeuvre” —"He is my work of art." 

Georges was a playboy and an adventurer 
and already 56 years old when his son was 


128 born. He had been in the French airborne 


division during World War II and lived in 
Algeria during that country's war for inde- 
pendence. He was a mountain climber and 
a deep-sea diver. “I idolized him," Harry 
wrote. "I still do." 

The Army granted Devert leave to visit 
his ailing father in France, but before he 
could depart, news arrived that his father 
had died. "Harry screamed and thrust his 
fist through the door and just ran out of the 
house and ran for hours," his mother recalls. 
"I always felt that when he started traveling, 
it was to escape all those memories. And the 
chances he took—I sometimes thought it 
would be the same to him if he died, because 
that's where his father is." 

A couple of years after his father died in 
1999, Devert moved to south Florida. He 
had invested the money he inherited from 
his father in the stock market and discovered 
a knack for day-trading. Linda Raschke, a 
hedge-fund trader, recruited him to run 
her chat room in Wellington, Florida. He 
moved into an apartment complex in West 
Palm Beach with a pool and went to work in 
Wellington 12 hours a day. But something 
was amiss. When he was leaving for work, 
the young traders in his building were just 
getting home from partying. They made a 
couple thousand dollars in a day and were 
drinking beer at the pool by noon. 

After six months, Devert quit the 
hedge fund to join them. He made hun- 
dreds of thousands of dollars a year and 
blew through all of it. While other traders 
invested in real estate, purchased engage- 
ment rings or saved money to open a firm, 
Devert invested in Burberry pants, Dolce 
& Gabbana sunglasses and a collection of 
Cartier watches. 

"He spent all his money on nightclubs 
and girls," his mother says. "He didn't have 
much that was concrete to show for it. He 
was like Mr. Miami." 

By 2007, algorithms that could predict 
the market rendered traders like Devert 
nearly obsolete. His friends cashed out and 
found other work. He moved to Paris and 
then Barcelona for a year, living the life of a 
beach bum, day-trading for spending money 
until he lost the shirt off his back. He would 
tell people the market crash made him a 
humbler person. 


When Sean Axani opened his door to 
welcome Devert to his home in Fort Lau- 
derdale, he noticed his old friend's riding 
jacket was shredded. Devert turned down a 
replacement. He preferred to wear the one 
he had. It had been years since they'd seen 
each other, and Devert was different. The 
flashy personality was gone, the clothes were 
casual, the conversation understated. They 
had drinks beside Axani's swimming pool, 
and Devert said he wanted a family. This was 
going to be his last adventure. 

Schiear flew down for a visit. They walked 
on the beach and talked about what they 
wanted out of life. He had built up in his 
mind the notion that his trip would make 
him a success, and now he was afraid of 
failure. She told him not to put too much 
pressure on himself to make a career out of 
his trip. On their last day together in Miami, 


Devert told her he loved her, and after a 
tearful good-bye they made plans to meet 
in Guatemala. 

He made one last stop, in Tampa, to see 
Daniella McClutchy, an ex-girlfriend who 
had just given birth to her second child. He 
talked about wanting a family, but when it 
came time to leave, he couldn't wait to get out. 
the door. "It was that inner demon he was 
always battling," McClutchy says. "It's like an 
addiction. This fear of missing a good time 
was really something Harry always battled." 

He raced to New Orleans in time for 
Christmas and from there made it to the 
Mexican border in two days. He entered 
Mexico on December 28, 2013, commemo- 
rating the achievement on Instagram with 
a photo of a muddy road and a caption: 
"After crossing the border at Matamoros 
in the morning I spent the rest of the day 
getting chased by stray dogs...speeding 
by horses and chickens on the side of the 
road...dodging crater-size potholes...at mili- 
tary checkpoints...and riding on roads like 
these (this is actually one of the better ones). 
Made it to Tampico caked up to my waist in 
mud...parts of my bike falling off from the 
crazy roads...perfect excuse for a night filled 
with tequila and beer with some locals I met. 
Wouldn't have it any other way. Forgot how 
much I loved Mexico." 


For generations, the people of the village 
of Macheros in the green mountains of 
central Mexico have witnessed one of the 
world's great natural wonders: the annual 
arrival of millions of monarch butterflies. 
Howard Joe, a radiation oncologist from 
Victoria, British Columbia, and his girl- 
friend took a vacation to Macheros to see 
the butterflies. 

After riding horses up a long rocky trail 
to the summit of Cerro Pelón on January 
24, 2014, the first thing they noticed was a 
bearded man in a hooded sweatshirt and 
sweatpants, lying in the middle of the trail. 
"It was really strange, because we'd just 
gone two hours up a mountain, and here 
was this white dude in the middle of the for- 
est by himself. He wasn't very talkative," says 


Joe. "He was almost hypnotized by these 


butterflies, which were flying all over him 
and all around us." 

Devert had been sprawled there scrib- 
bling notes about his travels in a notepad 
all morning, recalling the 27 days he had 
already spent in Mexico, from caving alone 
in the Sierra Madres to visiting the ancient 
city of Teotihuacán. He had made his way 
through the rough-and-tumble state of 
Michoacán (where his mother had studied 
abroad when she was 19) and hiked to the 
top of Paricutín, the youngest volcano in 
the world. 

Omar Martínez, a friend Devert had met 
in Barcelona, invited him to the charrería, 
a rodeo competition in his hometown of 
Uriangato, Guanajuato. When Martínez's 
charrería team advanced to the finals, Devert 
made up his mind to come back the next 
weekend to watch. 

“Harry didn't consider factors like risk 
or time," Martínez says. "Where he went 
was simply a matter of what he wanted to 


see and experience. Beyond noticing the 
danger, it was a matter of being more wor- 
ried about the richness of the experience 
ahead than getting bogged down in con- 
cerns about his safety." 

When Devert found out that Howard Joe 
had come from Zihuatanejo, a city on the 
Pacific coast, he lit up. The final scene of 
The Shawshank Redemption, one of his favor- 
ite films, is set in Zihuatanejo. He decided 
on the spot to make it his next destination, 
asking, "What's the fastest way there?" 

The safe way is via the turnpike, Joe 
said, pointing at Morelia on a road map 
and tracing the line that curved downward 
to the coast. Devert didn't like the looks of 
the route. It would mean backtracking 95 
miles to Morelia and paying a toll. “What's 
it like going straight?" he asked, pointing to 
another route to the coast along Route 51 
and Route 134. Joe shook his head, warn- 
ing him that the locals said it was nothing but 
potholes and bandits. Devert looked up from 
the map and repeated the words potholes and 
bandits. "Sounds like fun," he said, grinning. 

"He seemed to be someone who really 
wanted adventure,” Joe says. “ ‘Oh, people 
with guns? Okay, that might be kind of cool. 
Or potholes? Yeah, I'd like to negotiate that 
on my bike.’” 

Devert's serenity amused one of the other 


WeeviL You've SPENT out. ENTRE SMR! 
VACATION HERE IN SANTA MoNicA 
TAKING Pictures оғ әзге WITH | 
b TUAT FERSHLYGSINER XXX PHONE 
CAMERA E YeRS- Y HWE д Good MUD 


|76 TRADE Youn BAAN INSTA 


MR-DUE 6 ект: г. SHULD 87р TAKING | 
SELFIES Амр USE MY OBSESSION < 
| WTA DietÁl TEctue Lei y FR Tue 

BETTERMENT oF MANKIND. 

" t 


visitors that day, Jen Newenham, an ecolo- 
gist from South Africa, enough that she took 
a photograph of him. It is believed to be the 
last photo taken of him alive. 


The gas station attendant watched the lone 
rider on a green motorcycle come around 
a blind curve on Route 51 just north of 
Huetamo, six soldiers following behind him 
perched on an Army Motorized Patrol vehi- 
cle. The rider pulled off the road and didn't 
notice until it was too late that the atten- 
dants were washing the concrete in front 
of the pumps. 

The bike slid one way and its rider bailed 
to the other, jogging with momentum until 
coming to a stop. The attendant remembers 
how the rider laughed, took off his helmet 
and flashed a smile. He picked the bike up 
off its side and pushed it over to the pumps. 

"Zihuatanejo, muchachos!" the rider 
shouted. 

The army patrol drew to a stop beside 
the diesel pumps a hundred feet away. The 
soldiers were from the 90th Infantry Bat- 
talion, stationed 35 miles away at a military 
installation in Tiquicheo. 

About an hour earlier, back at the base, 
the lieutenant in command of the patrol 
had noticed the motorcycle, equipped with 


ТӘ THE Troogue Ua YR. GENE PAG OS 

ALL You CAN TANK ABAT IS YouRSEWES- 

TE NEVER SEEN A NORE AARESSISTIC, 

ME-ORIENTED біле се No- KS 

IN MY LIFE. NEXT To MY GENERATION 
- е 


On Tue OTHER HAND, OST WE Жеке 
CONT HURT 


saddlebags, and called for its rider to halt. 
He asked the rider for his name and occupa- 
tion, where he was coming from and where 
he was going. Devert gave his name, said 
he was a writer from New York and that his 
destination was the World Cup in Brazil. 

“Your proximate destination,” the lieu- 
tenant barked. 

“Ah, the beach in Lázaro Cárdenas,” 
Devert said. 

This was not the truth. Devert's destina- 
tion was Zihuatanejo, a hub of surfer beaches, 
coastal lagoons and crystal-blue bays an hour 
east of Lázaro, an industrial port city similar 
to Long Beach, California. Maybe he changed 
his plans or shot wide of the mark on purpose 
because he didn't like the question. 

The colonel in command of the battalion 
approached and admonished Devert to be 
cautious on the narrower road ahead, where 
vehicles bearing heavy loads raced by in the 
opposite direction. The colonel added one 
last piece ofadvice: “To avoid being robbed 
or assaulted, pay no attention to any civil- 
ians who order you to pull over." 

Before leaving the base, the colonel had 
told the lieutenant, "Keep an eye on him 
all the way to Huetamo and make sure he 
arrives safely." 

The lieutenant said he tried to do as he 
was told, but the American motorcyclist was 


TAT Dees it! I BELIENE (N FREEDOM. 
oc EXPRESSION AS Mutt AS Tue NEXT 
Соу, БОТ TAKING SELES (дї 
HomEcess PEOPLE (S WHERE г Грац) 
The LINE! GoTe ТАЕ BEA AND TAKE 
Ced RES WITH THE CLAMS 
FoR AU I CARS. DUST A 
SET y 
Epon MEZ 


PLAYBOY 


130 


unpredictable. At first, he sped ahead. Then, 
at the village of Piedra China, the soldiers 
found him standing on the side of a bridge, 
taking photographs. At the crossroads in La 
Eréndira, he flew past the army patrol, and 
the lieutenant said they didn't catch up to 
him until he reached the gas station north 
of Huetamo. From there, the lieutenant 
claimed, he and his men proceeded into 
town to retrieve a replacement vehicle part, 
which had been their original assignment. 

The pump attendant remembers it dif- 
ferently. The army escort arrived right 
behind Devert, he recalls, but then turned 
around and drove back in the direction of 
Tiquicheo. He watched Devert remove the 
GoPro camera from his helmet, set it on 
top of his bike and improvise a dance step 
as the camera filmed. He danced with his 
arms raised as if to feign the close embrace 
of a partner. "Sort of a cumbia," the atten- 
dant remembers. 

For the first time in three days Devert 
had cell phone service, and he saw a new 
message from Schiear on WhatsApp. "It was 
some personal stuff," she says of her mes- 
sage. "I was telling him I did this little recipe 
story for Esquire. He was really excited about 
it. It was short, like, 'Oh, that's great, baby; 
you're amazing.” 

They chatted, fitting a ton of innuendo 
into a few hastily typed phrases, written with 


hearts and smiley faces, calling each other 
babe and “lova.” Then Devert changed the 
mood entirely. 

“Just got an hour-and-a-half-long escort 
out of some area it was too dangerous for 
me to be. Stopping for lunch and...voila 
internet. Gonna get back on the road soon. 
Apparently there's another military escort 
waiting for me in some other town.... I'm 
running way late because of the crazy mili- 
tary stuff... hopefully get a chance to talk to 
you tonight when I (hopefully) finally arrive. 
Missing you. Mucho." 

"To Schiear, the message seemed like the 
windup for another adventure story. She 
didn't feel afraid, not at first, because noth- 
ing had ever happened to Devert that he 
hadn't been able to handle. On Sunday 
morning she was more annoyed than scared 
when she saw he still hadn't written. Devert 
contacted her nearly every day, but Mon- 
day, Tuesday and Wednesday came and 
went without a word. On Thursday, Janu- 
ary 30, five days after her last contact with 
Devert, Schiear felt certain that something 
was wrong. "I walked into my apartment 
and I was like, I know he's not going to call. 
I just can't imagine my phone ringing." 

She shared Devert's last message with 
his mom, whom she had never met. Ann 
was beginning to worry too; Devert had 
not phoned home to commemorate his late 


"Hi. I'm Larry and I'm totally in favor of women being in 
charge of their own reproductive rights." 


father's birthday. Every January 29 for the 
previous 14 years Devert had phoned his 
mother, and they sang "Happy Birthday" 
over the phone in French. Devert would 
bake a cake wherever he happened to be. 

A hacker friend in Pelham tracked down 
the GPS coordinates of where Devert had 
sent his final text message from: Huetamo. 
The jurisdiction for the military escort 
ended in the very spot where the patrol 
vehicle had allegedly stopped. A separate 
battalion of the Mexican army stationed in 
Huetamo reports it did not take part in any 
second escort for Devert. From that point 
on, he was on his own. 


The danger in Tiquicheo was emblematic 
of the entire region. A phenomenon akin to 
nuclear fission was under way, only instead 
of an atom splitting and exploding it was a 
monolithic drug cartel called the Knights 
Templar. Thousands of army and federal 
police deployed to the area, and cartel 
leaders—once untouchable—were being 
arrested and killed. The pressure caused 
the nucleus of the cartel to split in two, cre- 
ating a chain reaction of turf wars in dozens 
of municipalities in the state of Michoacán. 

“If what is happening in Michoacán is 
not a war, it certainly looks like one," wrote 
reporter Verónica Calderón, a native of 
Michoacán, in El País. 

When Devert steered his motorcycle 
back out onto Highway 51, the attendant 
watched him wave good-bye to the army 
escort and ride the last mile to Huetamo 
unescorted. This is where Devert's tracks 
fade from view. A second fuel attendant 
in Huetamo claims to have filled Devert's 
gas tank on the same day at a station only 
a quarter mile from the first. 

In his seven years on the job, the sec- 
ond attendant believes, Devert was the first 
motorcyclist he had seen traveling Huetamo 
alone. When asked about the possibility of 
violence, the attendant does something 
locals do whenever the subject of the car- 
tels comes up: He gestures toward the hills. 
From high up there, the cartel can see every 
movement down below. 

"A military escort for a tourist who is alone 
will attract the wrong kind of attention," the 
attendant says, wiping his face. 

In addition to the permanent army pres- 
ence at the northern limits of town, the 
federal police had set up camp in the Hotel 
María Isabel Valmar downtown 10 days 
before Devert arrived. A nest of sandbags on 
either side of the hotel entrance announces 
the temporary barracks. It is the peak of 
midday heat, and the police commander in 
Huetamo sits with an adjutant officer at a 
glass table beside the dipping pool. 

The commander has just finished saying 
that drug traffickers don't bother tourists 
because they make millions from export- 
ing marijuana and opium; they don't rob 
for the sake of robbery. Devert's expensive 
gear—his motorcycle, GoPro camera, laptop, 
camera and iPhone—along with his French 
and American passports and billfold hold- 
ing thousands of pesos, were liable to arouse 
suspicion, not envy. To organized crime in 
Mexico, a corpse is more valuable than 


goods, especially an American corpse, the 
commander says. Dumping a body in enemy 
territory forces the government to enter the 
area, ask a lot of questions and clean up the 
zone, thereby weakening the enemy. 

“There were rumors of DEA agents in the 
area,” he says. “To go around filming people 
back then was suicidal.” 


In Pelham, Ann posted a message to Devert's 
Facebook page, appealing to her son's 1,848 
friends: "Has anybody heard from Harry?" 

Nobody had. 

Ann, Schiear and a host of volunteers cre- 
ated the Facebook page #HelpFindHarry to 
gather tips and coordinate a search in Mex- 
ico. Nearly 30,000 Facebook users around 
the world joined the page and volunteered 
to help. A notice on Devert's disappearance 
that the U.S. Department of State posted 
online attracted an astonishing 600,000 
page views. Sympathizers were attracted 
by Devert's Instagram photos, his effu- 
sive essays on the virtue of adventure, his 
outlandish motorcycle journey and the mys- 
terious circumstances of his disappearance. 

"Those factors also turned Devert's disap- 
pearance into gripping TV. The story was 
binational: CNN en Espanol broadcast the 
smiling face of the American motorcyclist 
beside a map of the war zone he'd traversed 
in Mexico, and the national TV news chan- 
nels in Mexico broadcast daily updates on 
the search. The legend of El Trotamundos, 
the missing American wanderer, was born. 

Soon the #HelpFindHarry Facebook 
group received tips from anonymous 
accounts with names such as Courage for 
Michoacán and For a Free La Huacana, 
warning that Devert had been mistaken for 
a DEA agent and been picked up at a cartel 
checkpoint. On February 12, 18 days after 
Devert's disappearance, Facebook user For 
a Free La Huacana posted, "I heard they 
thought he was with the DEA and they took 
him away only for questioning. But the 
heat has come down and now they don't 
know what to do." Other users claimed the 
Knights Templar cartel invented this story 
to sow discord in the ranks of its enemies. 

On February 21, a feature article about 
Devert appeared in Excelsior, a major daily 
newspaper in Mexico City. The headline 
read AMERICAN MOTORCYCLIST DISAPPEARED IN 
GUERRERO, NOT MICHOACÁN. The story claimed 
a law-enforcement source with knowledge 
of the investigation told the newspaper that 
Devert had arrived safely at the Pacific coast 
of Guerrero, only to be kidnapped after a 
meal in Troncones, a surfer town 20 min- 
utes from Zihuatanejo. 

The source of the information was Bryan 
Jiménez, alias Cheeks, a local hoodlum who 
offered the information during police ques- 
tioning. Jiménez claimed Devert's arrival 
had aroused the suspicion of El Tigre, a 
crime boss who runs the drug rackets in 
Zihuatanejo. El Tigre, whose real name is 
Adrián Reyes Cárdenas, had worked for the 
Knights Templar but became its enemy after 
he and another cartel member left to form a 
breakaway group. They adopted the name 
the Guardians of Guerrero. 

Jiménez, who worked for El Tigre, 


claimed his boss had Devert picked up after 
suspecting he was a DEA agent. The Excelsior 
report claimed that Devert was interro- 
gated at a ranch called La Palma near the 
city of Petatlán, about an hour away from 
"Ironcones, and that El Tigre himself was 
spotted riding Devert's motorcycle. 

Locals in Troncones find this story hard to 
believe; they say the kidnapping ofa foreign 
tourist in town would not have gone unno- 
ticed or unreported. The U.S. Embassy did 
its own follow-up and told Ann that Bryan 
Jiménez, the key witness in the story, was a 
fictitious person; however, the federal reg- 
istry lists a prisoner named Bryan Jiménez 
as being held in a maximum-security fed- 
eral prison in the state of Nayarit. A federal 
investigator says the sighting of Devert was 
“unconfirmed.” 

Confirmed or not, the Excelsior report 
immediately turned El Tigre and the Guard- 
ians of Guerrero into the prime suspects in 
Devert's disappearance and made enough of 
an impact to elicit a public denial. On March 
23, the Guardians of Guerrero posted on 
their Facebook page: “Who are these stupid 
fucking people who blame us for the disap- 
pearance of the American Harry Devert? 
One more time, we'll make it clear to our 
Facebook followers: The Guardians of Guer- 
rero did not kidnap him. He disappeared 
before he made it to Zihuatanejo, which is 
why it couldn't have been us.... The Knights 
‘Templar have him and they did this to fuck 
us over and turn up the heat on us, but they 
fucked up because the whole search is going 
on in the area where he disappeared, and 
that is why we aren't worried.” 

The argument between cartels was not 
confined to social media. On March 28, 
the Mexican army rushed to take down 
four banners that appeared on a stretch 
of highway in La Unión, reading EL TIGRE 
IS INVOLVED IN THE DISAPPEARANCE OF EL. 
TROTAMUNDOS! They were signed Pueblos Lib- 
erados (“Liberated Peoples”), a previously 
unknown group that claims to be a civilian 
self-defense guard against organized crime. 

Ann viewed the banners with skepticism. 
“My thinking was that the banners were 
just trying to shove the blame somewhere 


away from where it belonged,” she says. In 
fact, when Mexican authorities arrested the 
leaders of Liberated Peoples a year later, a 
well-known enforcer for the Knights Tem- 
plar was among them. 

On April 21, 2014, the Guardians of 
Guerrero responded with four banners of 
their own: WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE 
DISAPPEARANCE OF THE AMERICAN AND WE KNOW 
FOR CERTAIN THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR DID IT FOR 
STRATEGIC REASONS. 

The banners also claimed the Guardians of 
Guerrero had wrested the eastern half of the 
municipality of La Unión from the Knights 
Templar. An unconfirmed April 2014 report 
claimed the Guardians attacked a Knights 
Templar stronghold, kidnapped four inhab- 
itants and tortured them to find out where 
the body of Harry Devert was buried. 


When federal crime investigators opened 
the trash bags stashed alongside Devert's 
motorcycle near the beach in La Majahua, 
they found a jigsaw puzzle of bones, teeth, 
clothing and a motorcycle helmet. The 
trash bags were clean on the outside, but 
the remains and clothing inside were coated 
in a thick layer of dried mud, an indication 
the body was originally buried somewhere 
else (probably near the area it was found, 
according to official sources). The rider's 
leather jacket and boots were missing. He 
was buried in his socks. 

John Doe had been dead anywhere from 
two to six months. The body had decom- 
posed so thoroughly that scientists had no 
soft tissue to inspect for marks of torture. 
The fingers and thumb were missing from 
the left hand. The right hand was nowhere 
to be found. The skull was broken into 16 
pieces, but there was no sign of a bullet 
wound. He was bludgeoned to death, and 
the fatal blow damaged the part of the brain 
stem that regulates breathing. The victim 
died from a shortage of oxygen to the heart. 

Ann flew to Mexico for a DNA test. She 
didn't need the results to know it was her 
son. She recognized his string bracelets the 
second the examiner pulled them out of a 
little manila envelope. DNA tests indicated 


COCHRANE 


“Nothing personal, Marvin, but I think you should put your name 
on the waiting list for a penis transplant.” 


131 


PLAYBOY 


132 


with more than 99 percent certainty that Ann 
Devert was the mother of John Doe. 

“One of them showed me the pictures of 
the skeleton they put back together, and I 
realized it did not horrify me,” Ann says. "My 
own imagination was a lot worse. And seeing 
his bones, which I hadn't planned on doing, 
also held no horror for me. Because it wasn't 
Harry anymore, it was only his bones." 


At a press conference one week after the 
discovery, Iñaky Blanco Cabrera, attorney 
general for the state of Guerrero, revealed 
that a significant amount of marijuana and 
cocaine had been recovered at the scene. 
The amount of drugs was a closely kept 
secret until now. Crime-scene technicians 
found a cellophane bag containing dozens 
of individual doses of cocaine, half a gram 
each—two thirds of an ounce in all—ready 
to be sold, according to sources. One of the 
two trash bags at the scene held 30 pounds 
of marijuana. 

The whispers haven't reached Ann 
directly, but a reliable source informed her 
what officials in the Mexican government 
have said in private—that Harry Devert was 
a drug trafficker. The rumors about him sur- 
faced long before his body did: Why else 
would a lone biker ride through a cartel war 
zone? The drugs found at the crime scene 
strengthened the insinuation. 

But law-enforcement officials concur that 
the crime scene was tampered with and 


that the body was moved from somewhere 
else, which leads Ann to question where 
the drugs came from. "They moved the 
body from its original location to the field 
where it was found, where the earth had 
not been disturbed, and the terrain there 
did not correspond to the body and bike," 
she says. "That's why the drugs are laugh- 
able, because you can't move yourself after 
you're deceased and take drugs with you." 

Officials also found a payment ledger 
marked "Knights Templar/Pueblos Libera- 
dos" containing the nicknames of a dozen 
leading members of the cartel in the area. 
A cash amount in Mexican pesos was jotted 
beside each nickname in a separate column. 
The second page contained the record of 
two large cocaine transactions: a payment 
of 100,000 pesos to someone called the 
"Teacher, and another for 300,000 pesos to 
El Chapulín. Both the payments, the led- 
ger indicates, were withdrawn from "the 
cocaine account." The third page included 
records of regular payments owed to "look- 
outs" paid to report on suspicious activity 
in 10 different towns spread out along the 
coastal highway to Zihuatanejo, including 
the village of Lagunillas, about 400 yards 
from the abandoned pasture where Devert's 
body was dumped. 


. 
This January Ann traveled to Mexico to 
observe the one-year anniversary of Har- 
ry's final days and to get answers. She paid 


“Make up your mind, Chester. What's it gonna be? You want 
the meaning of life or a white-hot topless pole dance?” 


homage to her son in Macheros, hiking up 
to the monarch butterfly preserve, where 
she buried two string bracelets of his that 
were included with his remains. Then she 
took a bus to the Office of the General Pros- 
ecutor in Morelia to see the homicide file. 

Worried investigators warned her not to 
tell anyone where she was or what she was 
doing. According to Ann, documents in the 
homicide file suggest that investigators do 
not believe Harry was kidnapped in Tron- 
cones, as the Excelsior article claimed, but at 
a checkpoint on the highway at the northern 
limits of Nueva Italia, Michoacán, after which 
he was brought to a safe house in Zicuirán. 

The information came from an anony- 
mous witness who, the file indicates, came 
forward of his own volition a month after 
Devert's disappearance. The prime suspect 
is a drug trafficker from Michoacán who is 
suspected of exporting an average of two 
tons of crystal meth per month to Dallas, 
Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose, 
California. The suspect was an associate 
of the Knights Templar until a falling-out 
one month before Devert arrived. The men 
under the suspect, the informant said, boast 
that they have the support of the federal 
police and the Mexican army. 

These were the men stationed at the 
checkpoint in Nueva Italia when Devert 
appeared on the afternoon of January 25, 
en route to the coast. "They signaled for him 
to pull over and, upon confirming that he 
is American, transported him to Zicuirán to 
investigate whether or not he was working 
for the DEA," the informant claimed. 

Mexican federal investigators performed 
a background check on the men named in 
the statement and found records for three 
canceled arrest warrants in Mexico and 
two drug arrests in San Jose, California. 
A note left in the file by one of the investi- 
gators mentions that the suspect donated 
$17 million to the election campaign of the 
governor of Michoacán. 

After delaying nearly four months, a fed- 
eral police investigator finally traveled to La 
Huacana in June to investigate the asser- 
tions made by the anonymous informant. 
He drove his department-issued white 
pickup truck to the towns of Zicuirán and 
El Chauz and detected no sign of a check- 
point. In town, he questioned locals about 
the men who allegedly work for the suspect. 
They said they had never heard of them. 
Back in Morelia, Ann Devert was told in 
plain language that the people who killed 
her son will never be caught. 


"I wanted to tell my friends and loved ones 
(who really are the same thing because I love 
all my friends) that I died doing what I loved, 
and while I knew I couldn't keep escaping 
death forever, that I at least hoped to keep it 
up until I was nearly a hundred years old... 
but that I was okay with this. Our time here 
is so short, and many people I have known 
have passed on before their time, people bet- 
ter than myself.... It would only be fair for 
me to have to go as well."—e-mail draft written 
by Harry Devert in 2012, found after his death 


QUALITY TOOLS AT R ULOUSLY LOW PRICES 


How Does Harbor Freight z SUPER COUPON 

Sell GREAT QUALITY Tools гр < 

at the LOWEST Prices? 1 1 

І П 

We have invested millions of І WITH ANY PURCHASE 1 

dollars in our own state-of-the-art І 1 

quality test labs and millions more ] E : 

in our factories, so our tools will go 1 TAPE | 

toe-to-toe with the top professional I MEASURE 1 

brands. And we can sell them for 1 9030590514737. 1 

a fraction of the price because we I І 

cut out the middle тап and pass ч 
the savings оп to you. It's just that 1 
simple! Come visit one of our 1 

550 Stores Nationwide. П ІШІ DELL " ІШІ ШШ ШШШ П 

ғ -“ -- -- -- ж. == -- же = d 


AAA ———————4h 


7 26", 4 DRAWEF S РЕСЕ FULLY POLISHED 
е TOOL GART ri- WOW SUPER С COUPON 


| WINNER + rtr 
ЕСЕН аа 


ы” WRENCH SETS CENTRAL ЗЕ S PANCAKE 

Y 5 ar EX. e PNEUMATIC AIR ta 
1 60637/6161" 

+ 5801b. Capacity 


JEG. PRICE 
279.99 200000008 APIS 


+e um DIENTEN) T LLL vui 


aT METRIC 
ІШІ?! LOT 42305/69044 
АА: К, > 


WOW SUPER COUPON 
10 FT. x 17 FT. PORTABLE GARAGE 


—- 


Batteries 


І 
included. ‚PRICE 


: $7.99 й 
LLL A LIT (КОШИ 95 


i 1207 255517 


PITTSBURGH ШЕШІ 


m 4000 PEAK, WER 4 
super "^ 3200 RUNNING WATTS MOVENS КАЛКЫП 


С í ERROR. bus: 
¦ STEEL FLOOR JACK > - ^ 10160675/59728! 


1 LOT 69227/621 t CALIFORNIA ONLY ı 
p m shown x ' 


REG. PRICE | 
+ Weighs 74 Ibs. i 


song ШШ ' ! me O 


a 
OLT CORDLESS "x 50 FT. HOSE: 
b^ DRILL/DRIVER CENTRAL : 
WITH KEYLESS CHU D sont 


+ 250%. 
Capacity 


REG. PRICE $39.99 


meque ! 
ШИШИШИ! ҮШ 59499 % | ПІШІП REG, PRICE | 


214586820 $149.99 ; 


* 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed * No Hassle Return Policy 550 Stores Natiom 
e Over 25 Million Satisfied Customers + Lifetime Warranty on an Hand tools * HarborFreight.com 800- 423-2567 


CHECK OUT THE NEW 


PLAYBOY.COM 4 


YOU'RE WELCOME. 


FORUM 


June 2015 /// Toxic Chronic /// Death by 1,000 Clicks 


LIFE AFTER D.A.R.E. 


Basement chemists synthesized a 
marijuana alternative that's wreaking 
medical havoc. The tactics needed to 
fight it aren't your daddy's war on drugs 


Five years ago America was 
introduced to synthetic mar- 
ijuana. After scientist John 
Huffman discovered that 
slightly altering the chemi- 
cal formula for cannabinoids 
could achieve effects similar 
to those of THC, drug mak- 
ers jerry-rigged his findings 
and carted the result out to 
head shops and gas stations, 
and a nation under strict 


drug prohibition toked up. 
Its unregulated production is 
ent of bathtub meth: 
from Chinese 

xed with 


on plant mulch, packaged 
and shipped off to be sold 
and smoked. By achieving 
neurological effects similar to 
those of marijuana 
but without the 
legal consequences, 
shady chemists 
created a hit. 

Before long, their 
hit became a medi- 
cal nightmare. In 
2010 synthetic mar- 
ijuana caused an estimated 
11,406 emergency-room vis- 
its nationwide; in 2011 the 
number jumped to 28,531. 
Most alarming is the drug's 
child-friendly marketing, with 
brand names that sound like 


cereal: Scooby Snax, Spice, 
LOL and Galaxy Gold. 

Lance Dyer is the most 
prominent figure in the cru- 
sade against the drug. Along 
with the organization War- 
riors Against Synthetic Pot, he 
descended on the Texas state 
capitol this February to lobby 
for stricter enforcement. The 
Georgia native's motivation is 
personal. Three years ago his 
14-year-old son, Dakota, who 
had no prior mental health 
or drug issues, fatally shot 
himself in the head after, his 
father claims, he smoked a 

с cannabinoid. Dyer 
held their son as 
he took his final breaths; one 
month later, Dyer sold his 
small business and has spent 

the years since advo- 
cating for tougher 
legislation. 

Instead of banning 
synthetic marijuana 
outright, legislators 
banned the specific 
molecular structures 
of synthetic cannabi- 

noids. Manufacturers played 
cat-and-mouse in response, 
tweaking their product to cre- 
ate compounds not targeted by 
the laws. Before long, the DEA 
stepped in, applied the Fed- 
eral Analogue Act, which bans 


chemicals “substantially simi- 
lar” to controlled substances, 
then began a law-enforcement 
sweep named Project Synergy 
I & II. By 2014 more than 377 
importers had been arrested 
and hundreds of kilograms of 
synthetic pot, along with more 
than $71 million in cash and 
assets, had been seized. 

The drug's popularity has 
fallen since its peak in 2011, 
but Texas and some other 
states experienced a signifi- 
cant spike in use last year. Over 
one 48-hour period in Dal- 
las in May 2014, 40 people 
were hospitalized due to the 
drug; in November, Austin 
had more than 25 hospitaliza- 
tions. In 2012 Texas logged 
71,069 arrests for marijuana 
possession, second only to New 
York out of the 48 states that 
report such data to the FBI. It’s 
enough to make one wonder 
if users are forced to seek syn- 


Over one 48- 
hour period 
in Dallas in 
May 2014, 

40 people 
were hos- 
pitalized due 
to the drug. 


thetic alternatives in the face of 
marijuana's outsize legal risk. 
Some attribute the sudden rise 
in use to a shift in supply: After 
the Project Synergy sweep, 
manufacturers began to import 
over the Mexican border 
instead of through the coasts. 

Dyer and WASP are a new 
kind of antidrug crusader that 
emerged in the wake of the 
failed war on drugs and the 
liberalization of Americans" 
opinion of marijuana. WASP 
models itself after Mothers 
Against Drunk Driving; the 
comparison is dismaying given 
that MADD's prohibitionist 
campaigns are calculated for 
maximum public awareness (it 
has called for the arrest of bar 
patrons for public intoxication 
and campaigned against Cali- 
fornia's medical-marijuana 
proposition). 

Dyer can seem equally cal- 
culating. After years of giving 


185 


FORUM 


legislative testimony, he has 
become media-polished, using 
the same language and teary 
voice each time he describes his 
son's death. Yet his approach 
and beliefs differ radically from 
those of his antidrug predeces- 
sors. He characterizes synthetic 
marijuana as an exceptional 
drug whose pharmacology 

and effect on the brain are not 
entirely known. Stories shared 
by WASP members highlight 
the terrifying effects it can 
have: the teenager whose heart 
stopped without apparent 
cause; the Navy veteran who 
was found on a soccer field, his 


Why not 
legalize 
natural weed 
so users aren't 
driven to 
alternatives? 


left arm slit open and a packet 
of Spice nearby. 

Puritanical champions of 
total drug prohibition have lost 
their standing among legisla- 
tors and the American public. 
"The model legislation WASP 
has writt hews punish- 
ing individual users, who are 
mostly kids, and targets manu- 
facturers and peddlers instead. 
Dyer, for his part, does not tar- 
get other "legal highs" such 
as kratom, a mild and natu- 
rally mood-altering leaf from a 
Southeast Asian tree; he merely 
wants to ensure that synthetic 
cannabinoids don't end up in it. 

Dyer doesn't target mari- 
juana either. Although he 
doesn't embrace pot, he sup- 
ports its medical uses and 
believes prohibitionist efforts 
are ineffective. People will 
always get high. According 
to one university study, syn- 
thetic cannabinoids are, after 
marijuana, the most-used 


This suggests an obvious ques- 
tion: Why not legalize real, 
natural weed so users aren't 
driven to dangerous alterna- 
tives? Even inventor Huffman 
is dismayed at what his cre- 
ation has become and supports 
marijuana legalization. Unsur- 
prisingly, the marijuana 
industry supports antisynthetic 
efforts; even the DEA doesn't 
conflate synthetic marijuana 
with real marijuana. "There's 
never been an overdose on 
marijuana," said one DEA 
public relations offic 
even against calling it synthetic 
marijuana." 

"That isn't typical antidrug 
rhetoric, nor is Dyer's. The day 
after his capitol visit, he deliv- 
ered a talk to schoolchildren 
in Atlanta that he emphasized 
wouldn't be a standard DARE 
lecture. “The first words they'll 
hear out of my mouth are ‘I’m 
not giving you the don't-do- 
drugs speech; you hear that 
all the time,” he told me. "I 
say, ‘If you feel the need to try 
a mind-altering substance, if 
you succumb to peer pressure, 
don't do this one. Don't do 
synthetic cannabinoid: 

As home chemists get sav- 
vier and the globalized drug 
industry makes it easier for 
new creations such as syn- 
thetic marijuana to take hold, 
it's clear the shift in approach 
is necessary. Not everything 
that's for sale can be assumed 
to be regulated. A successor to 
synthetic marijuana is sure to 
come, and as long as drug pro- 
hibition remains in effect in 
America, Dyer's is a message 
that even good, God-fearing 


OPTIMIZING YOUR 


MISERY 


Is your smartphone making you stupid? 
Relax, there's an app for that 


Every three months, 
Mark Zuckerberg gets on 
a conference call with his 
investors to brag about 


mental bandwidth his com- 
pany is monopolizing. It's 
an alarming amount. The 
average Facebook user 
spends 40 minutes a day 
liking, commenting, shar- 
ing and friending, mostly 
on mobile phones. Multi- 
plied across Facebook's user 
base of 1.3 billion people, 
that's more than 850 million 
person-hours every day. The 
typical user of Instagram, 
which Facebook also owns, 
spends another 21 minutes 
each day bestowing tiny red 
hearts on other people's 


drug among high schoolers. potheadscangetbehind. W how much of the world's vacation photos. If you're 


ШЕШ DOPE IN THE HEART OF TEXAS IE 


> Thirty state poison-control воо | t 2012 2018 2014 STATE TOTALS, 2011-2014 
centers have disclosed their data 700 TEXAS 2,308 
on synthetic marijuana “expo- (ARIZONA) 500 ч 
sures” (encounters between 500 ARIZONA 808 
the centers and people who [CALIFORNIA 400 N 
have used the drug). The five = з00 ==... CALIFORNIA үр 
at right had the most incidents INDIANA 500 амен | - INDIANA 683 
since 2011. In 2014 Texas had 782 100 == MICHIE 

186 cases—the most ever recorded. n o MICHIGAN ВВЕ 


one of the 280 million peo- 
ple who use both services, 
you probably burn a full 
hour each day “connecting” 
with friends or strangers 
through a three-by-five-inch 
pane of glass. 

Then there's Twitter, 
YouTube, Candy Crush, 
Snapchat, Clash of Clans, 
Tinder and Vine. There's 
plain old e-mail and text 
messaging and Google 
Maps and—God help 
you—podcasts. If there's 
a category of your life that 
can't currently be con- 
ducted, expedited or 
simulated on a smartphone, 
you can be reasonably cer- 
tain there's a team of 
well-funded Stanford drop- 
outs in a converted Silicon 
Valley warehouse proto- 
typing it right now. The 
quantity of financial and 
intellectual capital pour- 
ing into the development 
of sticky smartphone apps 
makes the Manhattan Proj- 
ect look like a 
science fair. The 
frivolity of many 
of these apps 
belies their techni- 
cal sophistication: 
The algorithm 
underlying Face- 
book's News Feed 
crunches more than 100,000 
variables before deciding 
whether to show you your 
co-worker's baby photos or 
that fake skydiving-elephant 
video first. 

Thanks to the efforts of all 
these lavishly compensated 
geniuses, fiddling with our 
phones has been elevated 
from a bad habit to a life- 
style. The average American 
spends a total of three hours 
a day fussing with a mobile 
phone, making it our third 
most time-consuming activity 
after sleep and work. Those 
figures swell to grotesque pro- 
portions in younger cohorts. 
One recent survey of college 
students found them on their 
phones eight to 10 hours a 
day; in another survey, text 
messaging alone consumed 
more than three hours. 

The health effects of this 
mass shift in behavior are 
only just coming into focus. 
Heavy phone use has been 
shown to cause neck and 
shoulder pain, eye strain, 
headaches and repetitive 


BERCOVICI 


stress injuries to the thumb 
and wrist. Texting while 
driving is a major con- 
tributor to traffic deaths, 
and hospitals report ris- 

ing numbers of accidents 
from texting while walk- 
ing. Chronic stress and sleep 
problems are contributing 
factors in a wide range of 
maladies, from heart dis- 
ease to weakened immune 
systems; round-the-clock 
smartphone use has been 
linked to both. Then there’s 
the effect on productiv- 

ity. By encouraging us to 
multitask and fragment- 

ing our already perilously 
divided attention, our 

apps tax our finite cogni- 
tive resources. One study 
showed that receiving a noti- 
fication for an unread e-mail 
while working decreases our 
effective IQ by 10 points. 
The phones get smarter; we 
get dumber. 

Compulsive sensation- 
seeking despite mounting 
self-harm: That's 
pretty much the 
definition of addic- 


BY tion. Yet this 
JEFF 


generation of tech- 
company leaders 
frame themselves 
not as drug dealers 
or junk-food ped- 
dlers but as saviors. In the 
utopian ideal of Silicon Valley, 
“making the world a bet- 

ter place” is a cliché no one 
is ever embarrassed to recy- 
cle. Nobody talks in terms of 
profit, only about “serving 
the needs of the user.” Some- 
times it gets absurd: Asked 
why he wears a plain gray 
T-shirt every day, Zuckerberg 
once said it was so he'd be 


Compulsive 
sensation- 
seeking despite 
self-harm: 
That's the 
definition of 
addiction. Yet 
tech-company 
leaders frame 
themselves not 
as drug dealers 
but as saviors. 


free to "make as few decisions 
as possible about anything 
except how to best serve this 
community." 

Imagine if the CEO 
of a supermarket chain 
revealed that his customers 
were spending hours in his 
stores every week, emerg- 
ing sick and dazed—and 
then claimed he was merely 
"serving the community." 
Wouldn't someone respond 
by suggesting that, just 
maybe, his stores needed a 
redesign? 

The big difference, of 
course, is that grocery 
stores want something 
straightforward from you: 
your money. App makers 
want it too, but they mostly 
aren't bold enough to ask 
for it; instead they rely 
on selling your time to 
advertisers. It's a two-party 
transaction, and anything 
bad that happens to the 
third party—you, the user— 
is what economists call an 
externality, a consequence 
they have no incentive to 


FORUM 


worry about. When there's 
a runaway phenomenon 
that everyone deplores but 
no one knows how to stop— 
global warming, antibiotic 
overuse, 24-hour cable 
news—there's usually an 
externality to blame. 

The good news is that 
this is the sort of problem 
that contains the seeds of 
its own solution. The num- 
ber of apps vying for your 
time is a ski-jump curve; 
the number of minutes in a 
day is a flat line. Very soon, 
we will reach peak atten- 
tion. Just as $4-a-gallon gas 
created a booming market 
for Priuses and Teslas, peak 
attention will create the con- 
ditions for new companies 
that use your time effi- 
ciently to thrive. It's already 
happening: Some of these 
start-ups, such as Checky 
and Moment, exist explic- 
itly to help users break free 
of the screen-addiction 
feedback loop; others are 
simply run by people who 
know that optimizing for 
time spent, above any other 
metric, yields lousy prod- 
ucts and empty experiences. 
“The problem with time is 
it's not actually measuring 
value," Twitter co-founder 
Evan Williams recently 
wrote. "It's measuring cost 
as a proxy for value." 

In fact, the most 
successful tech enterprise 
of the past 20 years arose 
from just this kind of 
thinking. Back before it was 
an omnipresent colossus 
that wanted to own every 
part of our lives, Google 
was just another start-up 
looking for a way into them. 
Larry Page and Sergey 
Brin faced a catch-22 in 
presenting search results: 
The faster they got a user 
to the right answer, the 
sooner that user jumped to 
another site. Rather than 
run from the paradox, 

Page and Brin embraced 

it, believing users would be 
smart enough to return to 

a service that treated their 
time as valuable. Google has 
had its share of misfires over 
the years, but its search tool 
is the rare tech product that 
shows no sign of becoming 
obsolete. 

Anyone want to start the 
next Google? 


W 137 


138 


WHY NO ONE CAN RESIST HEATHER DEPRIEST. 


"TIS THE SEASON—IT’S HEATING UP OUTSIDE, AND WE HAVE 
ALL THE TIPS AND TRICKS YOU NEED TO STAY COOL IN OUR 
HOT SUMMER FUN PACKAGE, INCLUDING HOW TO THROW 
THE ULTIMATE BACKYARD BASH AND THE BEST BEACH DUDS 
FOR LIFE IN THE SUN. PLUS, A FEW PLAYMATES MAKE SURE 
YOUR SUMMER OF LOVE IS UP TO SNUFF WITH A CONSUM- 


MATE LESSON IN SEXTING AND SELFIES. 


WAR OF THE WORLDS—JOSHUA FOUST OF THE FOREIGN 
POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE LOOKS AT THE RISE OF ISIS 
AND OUR FAILED EFFORTS IN AFGHANISTAN, IRAG, SYRIA AND 
AROUND THE WORLD TO DETERMINE WHY AMERICA KEEPS 
LOSING ON THE BATTLEFIELD. HIS CONCLUSION? CONVEN- 
TIONAL WARFARE DOESN'T WORK ANYMORE. 


AZIZ ANSARI—THE COMEDIAN TURNED WRITER GIVES PLAYBOY 
AN EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT FROM HIS NEW BOOK, MODERN 
ROMANCE, IN WHICH HE TACKLES PERHAPS THE GREATEST 
QUANDARY OF ALL TIME: WHY AM | SINGLE? 


THE FIGHTER—JOHN JOE NEVIN 15 AN OLYMPIC-MEDAL- 
WINNING BOXER FROM IRELAND WHO HAS HAD HIS FAIR 
SHARE OF HARDSHIP. BOTH HIS LEGS WERE BROKEN BY A 
COUSIN LAST YEAR, AND HE'S HAD SCUFFLES WITH THE LAW. 
BUT NEVIN IS ALREADY BACK IN THE RING AND EVEN HAS HIS 


such mailings, please send your current mailing label to: Playboy, P 


NOTHING KEEPS BOXER JOHN JOE NEVIN DOWN. 


йота 90910. Periodicals postage paid at Beverly Hills, California guy at additi 
prassi in the U.S., $32.97 for a year. Postmaster: Send all UAA to CFS (see DMM 707 4.12.5); nonpostal and military facilities, send address changes to Playboy, PO. Box 62260, 
mpa, FL 33662-2260. From time to time we make our subscriber list available to companies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers. Ifyou would rather not receive 
Box 62260, Tampa, FL, 33662. 


NEXT MONTH 


THE IMPOSSIBLY TALENTED JEREMY RENNER. 


SIGHTS ON THE WORLD TITLE IN 2016. TIM STRUBY TRAVELS TO 
IRELAND TO MEET A MAN PUTTING UP ONE HELL OF A FIGHT. 


JEREMY RENNER—FRESH FROM SMASHING BOX OFFICE 
RECORDS IN THE AVENGERS SEQUEL, JEREMY RENNER 


GOES FOR MORE BLOCKBUSTER GOLD IN THE LATEST CHAP- 
TER OF MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE. IN THE PLAYBOY INTERVIEW, 
THE REVERED INDIE ACTOR-ACTION STAR TELLS STEPHEN 
REBELLO ABOUT THE GOOD (FATHERHOOD, OGLING JENNI- 
FER LOPEZ), THE BAD (AWKWARDLY LOSING HIS VIRGINITY) 
AND THE UGLY (A MESSY AND PUBLIC DIVORCE). 


SEX ED—AS SEX RESEARCHER VIRGINIA JOHNSON ON 
MASTERS OF SEX, LIZZY CAPLAN SPENDS A LOT OF TIME 
IN THE BUFF. IN 20G, THE ACTRESS REVEALS EVEN MORE 
TO DAVID RENSIN, INCLUDING HER SCARY RUN-IN WITH 
A MEATLOAF PENIS AS A KID, HER CURSE-LADEN BRAWL 
WITH A GARBAGE COLLECTOR AND HER FAVORITE TYPE OF 
UNDERWEAR—ON MEN AND ON HERSELF. 


PLUS—MISS JULY AND MISS AUGUST DOUBLE THE FUN, A 
MEMENTO MORI FROM CHUCK PALAHNIUK IN THE FORM OF 
EXCLUSIVE NEW FICTION, GUESS GIRL HEATHER DEPRIEST 
SHOWS OFF HER PERFECT FORM, A PHOTO ESSAY SALUT- 
ING EROTIC PHOTOGRAPHER HARRI PECCINOTTI AND MORE. 


nal mailing offices. Canada Post Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product. pede 


. For subscription-related questions, call 800-999-4438, or e-mail playboy@customersvc.com. 


), 
A spinnaker design and package 
ЧЁ of Lovilard Licensing E LG. oe 


SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Cigarette 
Smoke Contains Carbon Monoxide. 


222 BENIGHTMARE 
ы cor BEFOREHRISTMAS 


Cuckoo Clock 


On the hour, Zero 
emerges to the 

beloved song from 

Danny Elfman's 

brilliant score, 

ғ] “This is Halloween” 


AWe 
- ]t Lights Up — 


"e FRE 


‘Olssued in a limited edition of 
295 crafting days; accompanied 
by a Certificate of Authenticity 


Not sold in stores 
Bene, 
ТІМ BURTON S 


THE NIGHTMARE 
BEFORE CHRISTMAS 


RESERVATION APPLICATION SEND MO MONEY NOW 


9345 Milwaukee Avenue - Niles, IL 60714-1393 
YES. Please reserve the The Nightmare Before 
Christmas Cuckoo Clock for me as described in this 
announcement 

Limit: one per order. 

Mrs. Mr. Ms. 

Address 

City 


State 


(including weigh E-mail (optional) 
Requires 3 P vec 17АА” 01-18084-001-E30291 
batteries (not included). 


www.bradfordexchange.com/nightmareclock 


Sun 
ТІМ BURTON 
THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS 
Cuckoo Clock 


“Boys and girls of every age 
Wouldn’t you like to see something strange?” 


Tim Burton and Disney certainly thought you might when they 
created the masterpiece The Nightmare Before Christmas, and for 

20 years audiences have been clamoring for more. Now, an all-new 
treasure captures the spectactular spookiness of this family favorite in 
the officially licensed The Nightmare Before Christmas Cuckoo Clock, 
proudly presented by The Bradford Exchange. 


Lights... music....motion! 


Towering a grand 21 inches high, this sculptural first of its kind 
features hand-painted elements in vivid, nightmarish colors. At the flip 
of a switch, the windows of Jack’s Tower, the ghosts, and pumpkins 
illuminate with glowing light for perfectly spooky ambience. 

And whar would any tribute to The Nightmare Before Christmas 
be without its famous music? Instead of a traditional cuckoo on the 
hour, this clock plays “This is Halloween” while Zero pops in and out 
of the doors atop the Town Hall. 

The clock is powered by a precision quartz movement and features 
an embellished clock face complete with spider web design. A swinging Fully-sculpted 


brass-toned pendulum is decorated with the Halloween Town Spiral clock features 

Hill. Decorative pine cone weights hang below, with Shock and Barrel Jack Skellington, 

clinging to chem! Sally, Lock, 
Your satisfaction is guaranteed Shock and 

This one-of-its-kind timepiece is custom crafted in a limited edition Barrel, Jack's 

and strong demand is expected. So act now to acquire the The tower and the 


Nightmare Before Christmas Cuckoo Clock at its issue price, payable in Town Hall 
four monthly installments of $49.99 each, for a toral of $199.95*. Your 
purchase is risk-free, backed by our 365-day guarantee, Send no money 
now. Just mail the Reservation Application today! 


NO POSTAGE 
NECESSARY 
IF MAILED 
IN THE 
UNITED STATES 


BUSINESS REPLY MAIL — 
FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 73554 CHICAGO IL ЕЕС 
POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE ——— 
ZZ == | 
—— ؛‎ Jack's Tower, the pumpkins, and 
THE BRADFORD EXCHANGE m—nmumua | ghosts are brilliantly illuminated 
9345 N MILWAUKEE AVE ¦ with LED lights within, either on 
NILES IL 60714-9891 | the hour, or with a switch so you 


: can control the lighting. 


Over, please ... 


OO LEUTE LT FETTE ee OIT DELLI LET ELE Н 02015 ВСЕ 01-18084-001-18 


М 
з Вр Б ы СЕ СР а в "INT AECA I2 INAANAITT О б ра «йд р, 
A J A Ў Ј ) N UV IATL: ТА, PAD A 11 AL J J 
TITAN HT TTT TT ту TAT, 
J 2 » 2 x 
A JAN) a л LUOU ЫЈ А A J А Ј J 


Comes in a deluxe wood 
presentation case with 
engraved plaque 


-— 
RESERVATION APPLICATION SEND NO MONEY NOW 
BRADFO 
Reservations will be acce; 
first-come-first-served basis. 
Respond as soon as possible to P.O. Box 806, Morton Grove, IL 60053-0806 
BESTE PER IAE YES. Please reserve the “Honor, Courage & 
Nor Commitment” USMC Tribute Ring for me as described in this 
= announcement SATISFACTION GUARANTEED 


To assure a proper fit, a ring sizer will be sent to you after your reservation 
has been accepted. 


AVAILABLE 
IN STORES! 


Over, please... 


Signature 


Magnificeetly 
detailed trom 
every angie 


Mrs. Mr. Ms. 


Actual Size Addr 


www.bradfordexchange.com/18594 


Steadfast in their core values, Marines have dedicated their lives to 
the noble tradition of serving their country with honor, courage and ~ 
commitment. Now, you can show your allegiance to the enduring 
Semper Fi spirit of the United States Marine Corps like never before, 
with a new limited-edition jewelry exclusive as distinctive as the 
Marines that it salutes. 


Our “Honor, Courage and Commitment" USMC Tribute Ring is 
individually crafted in solid sterling silver with 18K gold plating, and 
features the Marine Corps emblem of eagle, globe and anchor in raised 
relief against a custom-cut genuine black onyx center stone. The 
striking contrast of silver and gold continues in the rope borders that 


тик 
MED EXCHANGE 


BUSINESS REPLY MAIL 


FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. MORTON GROVE IL 
POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE 


THE BRADFORD EXCHANGE 
PO BOX 806 
MORTON GROVE IL 60053-9956 


surrounds the central emblem and the sculpted eagles on each side. 
Adding to the meaning and value, the ring is engraved inside the band 
with: Honor « Courage « Commitment and United States Marines. 


A bold statement of everything Marines stand for, this custom ring 
comes in a deluxe wood case with a plaque engraved with the same 
words that are on the ring, and includes a Certificate of Authenticity. 
An exceptional value at $249*, you can pay for your ring in 6 easy 
installments of $41.50. To reserve yours, backed by our unconditional 
120-day guarantee, send no money now. Just mail the Reservation 
Application. But hurry... this edition is strictly limited to only 5,000! 


www.bradfordexchange.com/18594 


NO POSTAGE 
NECESSARY 
IF MAILED 
IN THE 
UNITED STATES 


Мот 
AVAILABLE 
IN STORES! 


COLIN  — INCE TAYLOR 
FARRELL VAUGHN LE McADAMS KITSCH 


TRUED FECTIVE) 


6/21 9PM HBO Ж, 
OR WATCH IT ON HBONOW” \ с