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ho doesn't take for granted how far 
technology has come in just a few 
years? Jet packs and time travel 
look lame next to the far-reaching wish ful- 
fillment granted by our multitude of devices. 
But what happens when you put that much 
choice at everyone's fingertips? Endless 
Love, our excerpt from comedian 
i and sociologist Eric Klinenberg's 
new nonfiction book, Modern Romance, is 
a far-reaching (and hilarious) internet-age 
survey of how choice affects our favorite 
areas: sex and dating. It's guaranteed to be 
on everyone's lips this summer. What won't 
be, however, is the all but forgotten Deep- 
water Horizon oil spill; in The Poisoned Gulf, 
reports from the front lines, 
where workers and residents still struggle 
with unprecedented medical problems—not 
from the spill but from the cleanup. From 
the Gulf we turn to what we know best: 
women with beauty and smarts. As pio- 
neering sex researcher Virginia Johnson on 
Showtime's Masters of Sex, 
shows off her abundance of both. 
Find out how she approaches 
brainy bedroom scenes and 
overzealous fans in 20Q. Actor 
is a shape- 
shifter with career-making roles 
this summer in Avengers: Age of 
Ultron and Mission: Impossible— 
Rogue Nation; he opens up in our 
Playboy Interview about his side 
hustles (L.A. real estate) and per- 
sonal life (rumors about his nasty 
divorce). Love him or hate him, 
we get closer to the core of the 
man than ever before. 
is one of the few peo- 
ple we know who can follow an 
act like Renner's; he serves up a 
signature gut-wrenching short story in Dad 
All Over that may cast your own old man 
in an entirely new (albeit gruesome) light. 
In "Not Quite the End of Men,” economist 
delivers a Forum essay 
that readers of both genders will appreci- 
ate, dismantling the theory that men today 
are losing out in the job market. 
looks at a different tribe of beleaguered 
folks—Irish gypsies known as travelers— 
in The Ballad of John Joe Nevin, a profile 
of the celebrated boxer whose traveler 
heritage is interwoven with his career. In 
"Feminists With Benefits" 
pens another hilarious Women column 
on a weighty topic: redefining feminism 
by unabashedly embracing sex. Finally, in 
Wild About Harri we delve into the career of 
master photographer and art director 
who has devoted his life to the 
celebration of female beauty. Remind you 
of anyone? Here's another issue of progres- 
sive ideas and prepossessing women. АЦ 
you have to do is flip the page. 


PLAYBILL 


Linda Marsa 


Chuck Palahniuk 


< ш “ 

Vw : € 

4 E ty 
` 


q e 


VOL. 62, NO. 6-JULY/AUGUST 2015 


PLAYBOY 


GON LEE NES 


FEATURES 


54: THE POISONED 94 ENDLESS LOVE 116: BBQ IQ 68 DAD ALL OVER 


«ғ 


PHOTOGRAPHY, THIS PAGE, BY САР 


GULF 

The most disturbing 
aspect ofthe Deepwater 
Horizon tragedy isn’t 


The internet puts the 


: world at your fingertips. 
: What's wrong with that? 
Well, when it comes to 


The key to a kick-ass 
barbecue isn't fancy 
equipment. It's flavor— 
perfected for you here by 


CHUCK PALAHNIUK 
introduces usto a man 
who qualifies as the 
world’s best dad—toa 


the oil spill. As LINDA dating, according to CHRIS COSENTINO, a true bloody fault. 
MARSA uncovers, it’s AZIZ ANSARI, nearly master of the pit. 
the medical and legal everything. | | 820Q | 
aftermath ofthe cleanup. 120: SUMMER 
112: PLAYBOY'S GUIDE SCHOOLD 84: LIZZY CAPLAN 
64: THE BALLAD OF TO SEXTOGRAPHY Modern retro selections by The star of Masters of Sex 
JOHN JOE NEVIN With GIA MARIE and VINCENT BOUCHER will gets clinical about on- 
In Ireland, travelers are an ` RAQUELPOMPLUN's have your summer look screen nudity and tells 
ethnic group treated worse tutorial on taking the screaming “Surf's up!” DAVID RENSIN what has 
than dirt. TIM STRUBY perfect sexy selfie, you'll wherever you happen to be. changed—and what 
profiles the boxing need a bigger data plan. hasn't—since the 1950s. 
prodigy who could redeem 
the entire clan. чу, INTERVIEW 
88: WILD ABOUT HARRI 49: JEREMY RENNER 
This photographer Is he an Oscar nominee, a 
nonpareil creates portraits superhero, a tabloid mag- 
that redefine female net or areal estate mogul? 


sexuality. Get to know 
Harri Peccinotti. 


d 


mer "a 
Sixxler 


COVER PHOTOGRAPHY BY TONY KELLY 
ce 


As STEPHEN REBELLO 
discovers, Renner is all 
this and much more. 


L 


COVER STO 
It’s simple: Our Ва 
plus tunes, gorgeous § 
and plenty of sun to ta! 
them equals summer. 
Who doesn’t like beach 
Bunnies? Clockwise 
from top left: Heather 
Rae Young, Gia Marie, 
Stephanie Branton, 
Ciara Price, Chelsie 
=ч n, Roxanna June, Val 


Asa iland Audrey Allen. 


MISS AUGUST: Dominique Jane 


NOT QUITE THE 
END OF MEN 

Are blue-collar workers 
doomed in our economy? 


presents a glass half full. 


THE BS OF BBQ 
hasanews 
flash for every bro who 
has ever manned a grill: 
You're not a chef, dude. 


FEMINISTS WITH 
BENEFITS 
Feminism, to 

doesn't inhibit 
great sex. Quite the 
opposite—it enables it. 


DOPE STORY 


examines the hypocrisies 
ofour moralcrusade 
against steroids in sports. 


BOTANY CLASS 


runs 
down products to keep 


: you smelling springtime 


fresh all summer long. 


72 VOL. 62, NO. 6-JULY/AUGUST 2015 


CONTENTS 


AHEAD OF 

HER TIME 

Caroline “Tula” Cossey 
was like any other 
bombshell Bond girl—until 
tabloids outed her as 
transgender. Seeher 1981 
PLAYBOY shoot as a Bond 
girl and read about her 
pioneering journey. 


ETERNAL 
SUNSHINE 

Whether among lush fields 
or big waves, Miss July 
Kayla Rae Reid radiates 
pure heat. 


LADY IN RED 

Fate drew Miss August 
Dominique Jane to this 
Chinese New Year shoot. 
Lucky you. 


WET HOT 
AMERICAN SUMMER 
Photographer Carlos 
Nunez channels the golden 
age of Pirelli calendar pin- 
ups in a beachside fantasy. 


WORLD OF 
PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: 
Dani Mathers graciously Jeremy Renner 
accepts her Playmate ofthe 
Year crown; Alana Campos 
prowls a big ring. 


PLAYBILL 
DEAR PLAYBOY 


AFTER HOURS 


THE LAND OF ENTERTAINMENT 
INTERLANDI RAW DATA 
Sex becomes hilarious PLAYBOY 
through the wicked pen ADVISOR 
: of PARTY JOKES 


PLAYBOY ON PLAYBOY ON PLAYBOY ON 
FACEBOOK TWITTER INSTAGRAM 


Keep up with all things Playboy at 
facebook.com/playboy, twitter.com/playboy 
and instagram.com/playboy. 


GENERAL OFFICES: PLAYBOY, 9346 CIVIC CENTER DRIVE, BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA 90210. PLAYBOY 
ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY TO RETURN UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL OR GRAPHIC OR OTHER MATERIAL. 
ALL RIGHTS IN LETTERS AND UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL AND GRAPHIC MATERIAL WILL BE TREATED 
AS UNCONDITIONALLY ASSIGNED FOR PUBLICATION AND COPYRIGHT PURPOSES, AND MATERIAL 
WILL BE SUBJECT TO PLAYBOY'S UNRESTRICTED RIGHT TO EDIT AND TO COMMENT EDITORIALLY. 
CONTENTS COPYRIGHT € 2015 BY PLAYBOY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PLAYBOY, PLAYMATE AND RAB- 
BIT HEAD SYMBOL ARE MARKS OF PLAYBOY, REGISTERED U.S. TRADEMARK OFFICE. NO PART OF 
THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM 
BY ANY ELECTRONIC, MECHANICAL, PHOTOCOPYING OR RECORDING MEANS OR OTHERWISE WITH- 
OUT PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER. ANY SIMILARITY BETWEEN THE PEOPLE AND 
PLACES IN THE FICTION AND SEMI-FICTION IN THIS MAGAZINE AND ANY REAL PEOPLE AND PLACES 
IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL. FOR CREDITS SEE PAGE 152. TWO BRADFORD EXCHANGE ONSERTS IN 
DOMESTIC SUBSCRIPTION POLYWRAPPED COPIES. RJR/GRIZZLY INSERT BETWEEN PAGES 32-33 IN 
ALL DOMESTIC COPIES. CERTIFICADO DE LICITUD DE TÍTULO NO. 7570 DE FECHA 29 DE JULIO DE 
1993, Y CERTIFICADO DE LICITUD DE CONTENIDO NO. 5108 DE FECHA 29 DE JULIO DE 1993 EXPEDI- 
DOS POR LA COMISÍON CALIFICADORA DE PUBLICACIONES Y REVISTAS ILUSTRADAS DEPENDIENTE 
DE LA SECRETARÍA DE GOBERNACIÓN, MÉXICO. RESERVA DE DERECHOS 04-2000-071710332800-102. 


PRINTED IN U.S.A. 


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Constant Glow for up to 25 Yeors. 


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 H. 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 
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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, SLAVO] ZIZEK 
JAMES ROSEN special correspondent 


ART 


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


PHOTOGRAPHY 
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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 


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PAID INTERVIEW. WINE NOT INCLUDED. 


nano wren ERIC JONROSH 


A candıd conversation with the author-producer-actor-writer-director- 
raconteur-bon vivant-legend-fabulist on his epic return to television 


PLAYBOY: Where have you been all these 
years? 

JONROSH: In Hollywood mostly. I keep 
a low profile—not like my younger days 
when I seemed to make it into the gossip 
rags every time I got into a car or a young 
starlet. [Chuckles.] Now I'm confined to a 
few semi-welcoming watering holes and the 
guesthouse of an old lover. I get out for a 
steak or a lobster or a plate of eggs, but for 
the most part I park myself at my favorite 
booth in Billingsley's, drink the house wine 
and wait for the wine to run out or my heart 
to stop, whichever comes first. 

PLAYBOY: Are you excited about the release 
of your long lost masterpiece, The Spoils 
Before Dying? 

JONROSH: Í am. I really am. It was banned 
in 73 countries, you know. You have 
to remember this was the late '50s and 
Americans were even more idiotic than 
they are today. After the war, people feared 
everything, and that fear level drove people 
insane. The Communists, the homosexuals, 
the drug addicts and jazz musicians—America 
feared them all. Fear led to repression and 
repression is the enemy of art. Thus the 
film of my novel The Spoils Before Dying was 
pulled before it was ever seen. All copies were 
destroyed and I was brought before Congress 
to defend the book and the film. 

PLAYBOY: How did that go? 

JONROSH: I was exiled to Europe for 15 
years. It went splendidly. 

PLAYBOY: What's the film about? 


JONROSH: A jazz musician is accused of 
murdering his old girlfriend and he has 
three days to clear his name. It's a pretty 
simple mystery really. The best stories are 
simple. I fool around a bit with the genre. 
I was always a bit of a showman. I play 
with the conventions. It's not really done 
anymore but I challenge the viewer. Not 
like today. Filmmakers today serve up 
nothing but chocolate Johnnycakes and 
cotton candy. Old Eric likes to throw a 
handful of flies into their complacent soup 
and let them eat that. 

PLAYBOY: The Spoils Before Dying covers a 
wide range of subjects: homosexuality, 
commercialism vs. art, drugs, sex and racial 
equality. Do you now see why this movie was 
banned in 1958? 

JONROSH: Did I understand why some 
people thought it was too dangerous for 
the American public? Sure. Did I agree with 
those people? I was blacklisted. I couldn’t 
direct a cat food commercial... well, that’s 
not true, I was hired to direct a cat food 
commercial. I stole the money and shot 
Hard Ride the Spoils in New Mexico in eight 
days, a motorcycle picture with lots of action 
and lots of big-breasted women shot in 
the style of Ozu. It flopped. The cat food 
company was furious. [Laughs.] 

PLAYBOY: You never really played the 
Hollywood game. 

JONROSH: No sir, I did not. For that reason 
I was forced to finance most of my films 
myself. I wrote them. I directed them. 


Hair and makeup, effects, stunts? All me. 
Remarkable really. I suspect if I had learned 
to play the game a little better I wouldn’t 
be living in a guest house miles from the 
nearest glass of Beaujolais. 

PLAYBOY: In The Spoils of Babylon you used 
a mannequin as a main character. Will we 
be seeing more mannequins in The Spoils 
Before Dying? 

JONROSH: I cast the best person for the part. 
If that person is a lifeless hunk of plastic 
then so be it. That lifeless hunk of plastic 
could act circles around most of the talent 
in this town. But, yes, she does make a brief 
appearance. 

PLAYBOY: What’s next? 

JONROSH: I’m to be interviewed by PLAYBOY 
this afternoon. 

PLAYBOY: Um, yes? Are you familiar with 
PLAYBOY? 

JONROSH: Don’t be an idiot. I dated 
Bunnies in the ’60s. I was a Key Club 
member. In those days they had clubs, 
Chicago, New York, Des Moines, Kansas 
City, all over. I basically lived in the Lake 
Geneva, Wisconsin Playboy Club from ”72 
to 74. 

PLAYBOY: Thank you, Mr. Jonrosh. 
JONROSH: What? Hey, wait a sec. There's 
no wine with this meal? 

PLAYBOY: I'm sorry this isn't a meal. 
JONROSH: Come on, guy. Seriously? No 
wine? Who are you? The junior varsity 
version of a man? Okay... can I get a ride 
somewhere? 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY KATRINA MARCINOWSKI/IFC 
PROMOTION 


А groovy trip in free-form jazz. 


S 
> таст KRISTEN 
WILLIAMS WIIG 


ERIC JONROSH'S _ | | E 


" á | EPIC 3 NIGHT TELEVISION EVENT 


STARTS JULY 849P 


PLAYBOY ГА JULY/AUGUST 2015 


WORLD o 


PLAYMATE SIGHTING 


s ЖЕУ MANS 


EE Iw.» 


ION FROLICS 


A CELEBRATION OF DANI 


=» A vision in white as 
she donned a diamond- 
encrusted Rabbit Head 
necklace, Dani Mathers 
accepted her title as 2015 
Playmate of the Year at a 
May luncheon hosted at 
the Mansion. "I wasin a 
year full of such beautiful 
women. I'm still in disbe- 
lief,” she said. While guests 


NEWS 


^ PLAYMATE 


from around the world 
sipped custom cocktails 
such as the Dani-politan, 
the glowing PMOY gave 
an acceptance speech that 
underlined her commit- 
ment to Playboy. “I take 
this job very seriously 
and am proud to take on 
the role ofbrand ambas- 
sador,” she said. “I hope 


BIKINI BOD 
° Miss November 
2009 Kelley 
Thompson won 
first in her class in 
the bikini division 
at the National 


Better Bodies 
Championship. 


I can be the best repre- 
sentative there has been." 
Holding back tears, Dani 
also thanked her family, 
who were in attendance, 
saying they made her 

the woman she is today. 
Along with her title, Dani 
received $100,000 and 

a lease on a 2015 Mini 
Cooper S convertible. 


/ 


NIGHTLIFE 


Playboy 


PAST 


and 
A 


* PLAYBOY has 

been known for 
memorable cov- 
er art ever since 


PRESENT 


gold medal in 
cover photog- 
raphy for our 

60th anniver- 


Hef printed that sary edition. 
iconic first issue Our pictorial 
featuring Mari- The Immacu- 


lyn Monroe in 
1953. This year, 
the Society of 
Publication De- 
signers honored 
PLAYBOY with a 


late Kate Moss 
also picked up 
gold—reason 
enough to keep 
us on your 
coffee table. 


NOTES 


Physique Committee's 


A MAGICAL NIGHT 
° Life is shaping 
up to be a fairy 

tale for Miss 
September 2013 

Bryiana Noelle, 
who got engaged 

to pro skateboarder 

Rob Dyrdek at 
Disneyland. 


PLAYBOY 


AKNOCKOUT 


* “It was cool to 
get messages 
from people all 
over the world 
saying, ‘| saw 
you on TV,” 
says Miss Sep- 
tember 2012 
Alana Campos 
of being a ring 


girl for May’s day for inter- 
“Fight of the views,” says 
Century” be- Alana. “Manny 
tween Manny is a humble 
Pacquiao man, and | was 
and Floyd rooting for him, 
Mayweather. but both guys 
Tapped by were polite. It 
Tecate, the was a fantastic 
Brazilian babe honor to be 
was one of part of it." 
WE CALL DIBS | GOLDEN GIRL 
° Miss January * As a producer of 
2011 Anna Sophia the web series The 
Berglund appears Bay, Miss June 


in Ihe indie rom-com 
Dibs!, playing a 
woman, hired to fix а 
dude's broken heart. 
It's typecasting that 
makes sense. 


only four ring 
girls at the 
epic punch- 
out, which 
became the 
most-watched 
PPV event of all 
time. "We had 
to be ready by 
five A.M. every 


BEAUTIES AND THE BEASTS 


M 


eb The second Playboy Sessions 
concert proved to be a monster of 
an event. A throng of Playmates 
including Ashley Doris, Angel 
Boris, Brittany Brousseau, 
Stephanie Branton and Val Keil 
showed up at our Beverly Hills 
HO and took the stage to back 


1985 Devin 
DeVasquez took 
home a Daytime 

Emmy, beating out 
competition from 
Hulu and YouTube. 


up performance artists-rockers 
PPL MVR. Dressed in Yeti- 
style suits, PPL MVR screamed 
and stomped through a hair- 


raising set. To see the crazy for 
yourself—and find out if the 
Playmates were able to tame the 
beasts—visit Playboy.com. 


‚СОМ 
0 


RANDALL 
PARK 


* The Wet Hot 
American Sum- 
mer star tackles 
more questions 
in a video Q&A. 


ө 
#BLESSED 


* In our Guide 
to Sextogra- 
phy (page 112), 
Gia Marie and 
Raquel Pomplun 
share tips on 
what they do 
best: taking sexy 
photos. Lucky 
for you, we 
got it on film. 


BEHIND THE 
COVER 


* One boom lift, 
eight Playmates 
and plenty of 
free-flowing 
champagne. 
Watch how 
we pulled off 
July/August's 
sizzling cover. 


TOY STORY 


=» In col- 
action-figure 
Playboy asked 
art toys, now 


available at 
coartism.com. 


laboration with 
maker Blitzway, 


seven artists to 
design a line of 


NOTJUST 
— ANY — 
DATINGADVICE 


HOW TO MAKE DATE NIGHT 


UNFORGETTABLE 


DITCH YOUR 


PHONE 


Put down your phone 
and leave the status 
updates for after your 
date. Follow this simple 
piece of advice and 
you're more likely to have 
something to brag about 
- a second date. 


ALWAYS GO 


ORIGINAL 


Forgo a fancy restaurant 
and treat her to a night she 
won't soon forget. And don't 
be afraid to get creative 
with activities like kayaking, 
hitting up an old-school 
photo booth, or a BYOH 
(Bring Your Own Hornitos) 
drink and draw class. 


KILL THE 


FLOWERS 


Flowers were cool, back 

in the 1950s. Spare 

your date the burden of 
carrying a flower around 
the rest of the night and 
just bring your own charm. 


FOR MORE ADVICE AND EXCLUSIVE CONTENT VISIT 


PLAYBOY.COM/NOTJUSTANY 


gm 


- 


CLEAN | us a E 
IT UP +5 3/7 2 


You never know where “е. Ç 
the night may lead you. ZF 
So do your date the 

courtesy of not having 

to navigate through a 

maze of dirty clothes 

and give your pad a 

good pre-date cleaning. 


WATCH 


WHAT YOU EAT 
Order something sensible to avoid 
any embarrassing first date hiccups. 


SCENT .. 


RESPONSIBLY 


The way a guy smells 
is important, but be 
sure you stand out for 
the right reasons. A 
small dab of cologne 
on your wrists an 
neck is all you need. 


f Hornitos Tequila | ë @HornitosTequila | w @Hornitos 


HORNITOS: 


NOT JUST ANY TEQUILA. 


DRINK RESPONSIBLY | Hornitos* Tequila, 4096 Alc./ Vol O 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. 


Incorrect, Politically 
Bill Maher is my favorite political 
commentator (Playboy Interview, May). 
But the government doesn’t spend more 
on Social Security than anything else, as 
he says; in fact, the government doesn’t 
spend anything on Social Security. To 
date 100 percent of Social Security has 
been funded through employee and em- 
ployer payments. Characterizing it as a 
government expenditure is misleading. 
Mal Glendinning 
Spokane, Washington 


The only problem with the Bill Maher 
interview is that it could have been twice 
as long. Brilliant! 

Larry Behnke 
High Springs, Florida 


Maher repeats the Fox News false- 
hood that it's “on every page of the 
Koran to despise the unbeliever.” This 
erroneous pronouncement is evidence 
that Maher hasn’t actually read the 
Koran, that the interviewer gave him a 
free pass by not challenging this easily 
disproved claim and its underlying big- 
otry, and that Roger Ailes is smiling to 
find he has an unlikely new ally in the 


FURRY BUSINESS 


Love, love, love the May cover. I im- 
mediately spotted the Rabbit in Brittany 
Brousseau's fur coat, right above the 
RVI in the word interview. But the “cover 
story" points out the Rabbit Head on 
her ring. Is there also one on the coat, 
or are my old eyes losing it? 

Brian K. Cohen 
Hawthorn Woods, Illinois 
Let's just say we think you’re creative. 


Miss May is wearing fur on your 
cover. This is 2015; it is not acceptable 
to use fur. I have never been offended by 
PLAYBOY until now. 

Mitch Hodges 
Seattle, Washington 

The "fur" used in the cover shoot and in The 

Lap of Luxury pictorial is completely faux. 


A MAD, MAD WORLD 
It was my good fortune to work with 
one of America's greatest cultural trea- 
sures, Harvey Kurtzman, and his longtime 
creative partner Will Elder, in the early 
1970s (Book of the Month, May). Afterward, 
whenever Harvey was in Los Angeles, he 
would arrange to have my wife and me 
join him at the Playboy Mansion. Read- 
ing Bill Schelly's fascinating biography of 
him was like getting to spend a few more 
hours with my dear brilliant friend. 
William Stout 
Pasadena, California 


modern crusade to demonize one of 

the three great Abrahamic religions. 
David Fenner 
Seattle, Washington 


Bill Maher says "net immigration to 
America has been zero for years." May- 
be he's talking about legal immigra- 
tion. He should visit Arizona and watch 
the U.S-Mexico border for 24 hours. 

Gene Keefover 
Cottonwood, Arizona 


Bill Maher: Best. Interview. Ever! 
I didn't want it to end. 
Kelly Sheridan 
Lewes, Delaware 


WE’RE ON FIRE 
Your May issue features Action Bron- 
son’s smoke beard (Talk), a Seattle smoke 
needle (Travel), smoked fish (Food), Alexis 
Knapp's alluring smoky exhalations (En- 
tertainment), Joe Pesci standing in gun 
smoke (The Making of the Mafia's Ultimate 
Home Movie)—not to mention smokin’ 
hot women. I’m sensing a theme here. 
Ed M. Green 
New York, New York 


POGO’S THE MAN 
In “Who’s the Man” (Forum, April) 
writer Jeff Bercovici skewers the absurdity 
of political correctness and concludes by 
asking, “Who’s the real enemy here?” The 
definitive answer to this parting question 
comes from perhaps the 20th century’s 
greatest philosopher, Pogo, who said, “We 
have met the enemy, and he is us.” 
John Betsill 
Acworth, Georgia 


TUNE TOWN 

As a sixth-generation Texan, I take 
exception to Jessica Ogilvie’s descrip- 
tion of New Braunfels as “a thick, green, 
swampy town” (The New Bad Boys of Coun- 
try Music, April). Perhaps she neglected 
to see a city that boasts the confluence 
of the spring-fed Comal River and the 
trout-stocked Guadalupe River. How- 
ever, I do agree with her that Gruene 
Hall and the area’s other great venues 


make it a special place to enjoy up-and- 
coming acts. We are blessed with access 
to live music seven nights a week, and 
you never know if the band you just saw 
will be the next big thing. 
John Guenzel 
Canyon Lake, Texas 


SKIN IN THE GAME 
Wanting nudity to be illegal is one thing, 
but it should never be the case that men 
can go topless and women can’t (Barely 
Legal, May). Topless equality is what Scout 
Willis, Cara Delevingne and Miley Cyrus 
are working toward, and they should be 
applauded. Police in New York have been 
retrained so they know a person—man or 
woman—may go without a top in public. 
Phoenix Feeley, who writer Molly Oswaks 
reports was arrested for going topless, 
won a big court case after her illegal arrest. 
Sue Hall 
Norwalk, Connecticut 


I started the Free the Nipple campaign, 
which Molly Oswaks mentions in her 
article, to get a larger conversation going. 
It’s about gender equality—men and 
women coming together to fight oppres- 
sion. If someone finds toplessness offen- 
sive, they’re not getting the point. There’s 
a puritanical mentality in America that’s 
so ingrained in our culture that when- 
ever there’s something new, it’s seen as a 
threat. Just 100 years ago the ankle was 
seen as a threat to society, and now it’s the 


nipple. We’ve come a long way, but not far 
enough. Who would’ve thought the nip- 
ple would be the Trojan horse to carry in 
the conversation that reveals truths about 
inequality? This campaign is only going to 
get bigger. At some point, people are just 
going to accept female toplessness. 

Lina Esco 

Los Angeles, California 

Lina Esco wrote, directed and starred in the 

2014 movie Free the Nipple. 


BLOOMING AZEALIA 
I was thrilled to see Azealia Banks in 
your April issue (Wild and Uncensored). I 
love “212” and look forward to her new 
material. That damn music moves me! But 
please tell Azealia not to hold it against me 
that I was born white in the suburbs of 
Detroit. Thanks, PLAYBOY, for giving me a 
little of her mind and gorgeous body. 
Sarah Nunez-Bida 
Westland, Michigan 


I was happy to see a beautiful black 
woman on the cover of PLAYBOY (the last 
black woman I remember on your cover 
was Naomi Campbell), but when I read 
Azealia Banks’s interview with Rob Tan- 
nenbaum, I lost interest in seeing her 
nude. Banks quotes “Pharrell or Ken- 
drick Lamar” as saying, “How can we 
expect people to respect us if we don't 
respect ourselves?” I would answer her 
with my own question: How can you ex- 
pect other people to respect you if you 
don’t respect them? 

Adam Farley 
Springfield, Missouri 

We wouldn't want you to forget about Tisha 
Marie, Garcelle Beauvais, Mariah Carey and 
Shari Belafonte, all of whom graced our cover 
after Naomi. 


I'm an avid cat lover and really enjoyed 
your April cover. It made me curious about 
Azealia Banks, so I read the interview. All I 
can say is, I really like the cats. 

Lynda Graser 
Azusa, California 


NAILED IT 
Jason Silverstein (“Tolerating the In- 
tolerant,” Forum, May) nails the problem 
with Religious Freedom Restoration Acts: 
They attempt to exempt religion-based 
bigotry and discrimination. Instead of ac- 
quiescing to religious beliefs that perpet- 
uate archaic prejudices and stereotypes, 
we should have the intellectual honesty to 
tell big-baby religion it’s time to grow up. 
Lowell Cooper 
New Castle, Indiana 


EXPRESS YOURSELF 
Regarding Madonna: The Lost Nudes 
(May): There’s a reason they were lost. 
Nobody wanted to see them in 1979, and 
nobody wants to see them now. 
Jim Wagner 
Mesa, Arizona 


What the hell, PLAYBOY? You made a 
Madonna fan out of me. I’m shocked and 
awed by those black-and-white photos. 

Jeff Palmer 
Detroit, Michigan 


ALEXANDRA THE GREAT 
Alexandra Tyler is a beautiful woman 
(Almost Famous, April); she could be a strong 
contender for 2016 Playmate of the Year. 
David Barber 
Milton Keynes, U.K. 


Keep up the good work, PLAYBOY. 
You’re the only magazine that consis- 
tently shows the world real 10s. 

Vic Degacci 
Los Angeles, California 


Rarely have I seen so little of a 
Playmate. The Devil in Marge Simpson 
(November 2009) revealed about as 


much as can be seen in Alexandra 
Tyler’s pictorial. 


J.D. Nelson 
Burlington, Kentucky 


A little more of Miss April Alexandra Tyler. 


Every April pictorial is a photographic 
work of art. Each woman embodies, in her 
own sweet way, the absolute pinnacle of 
beauty. It's why I buy PLAYBOY. 

Mark Williams 
Columbus, Ohio 


SEE DICK TALK 
Dick Cheney’s right-wing lies are dis- 
gusting and degenerate (Playboy Interview, 
April). How do you like that...after 60 
years of positive sexuality and the cele- 
bration of beautiful womanhood, PLAYBOY 
has finally published real pornography. 
Lillian Moss 
Turners Falls, Massachusetts 


I have a reoccurring dream in which 
the women featured in PLAYBOY have 
pubic hair and Dick Cheney is tried as a 
war criminal. Some dreams do come true. 

Erik C. Potter 
Adna, Washington 


Dick Cheney embodies everything that 
is wrong with the U.S. He pushed for the 
invasion of Iraq for his own selfish rea- 
sons and still won’t admit what a blunder 
it was. There are none so blind as those 
who will not see. 

A. Danilov 
Sydney, Australia 


I enjoyed James Rosen’s interview with 
Cheney, though I disagree with many of 
the former vice president’s views. How- 
ever, in the introduction Rosen says 
“doctors know of no one besides Cheney 
who suffered his first cardiac event in the 


1970s and is still around to talk about it.” 
I had my first heart attack in 1977 and 
another last year; in between, I had two 
bypass surgeries, a pacemaker installed 
and later replaced—twice—and stents 
inserted on more than one occasion. 
Howard Loftesnes 
Bismarck, North Dakota 


Cheney’s callous remarks about tor- 
ture are in total conflict with his claim to 
being a Christian. 

Abraham Sadegh 
Hilo, Hawaii 


There’s only one thing Cheney has 
ever done that benefitted anyone other 
than himself: shot a lawyer. 

Ken DiGiacomo 
Youngstown, Ohio 


MAN AND HIS MACHINES 
Matt McCue overlooks two reasons 
younger men no longer covet expensive 
sports cars (Talk, “The Great Car Break- 
down,” March). First, younger men are 
laudably concerned about lowering their 
carbon footprint. The second reason is 
lowered expectations. If you can’t afford 
an expensive car, you convince yourself 
you don’t want one. A $600 phone is far 
more attainable than a $60,000 car, though 
I question its impact on attractive women. 
Steve Gordon 
Orlando, Florida 


PLEASE RISE 

Your May article The Magic Little Blue 
Pill is instructive and entertaining. (I can 
just see the British urologist dropping 
his pants to display his erect member as 
the women in the audience scream.) I 
am happy for men that this wonder drug 
is available. However, it bothers me that 
the “little pink pill” has yet to material- 
ize. Perhaps it’s because the savvy phar- 
maceutical industry knows that Cialis, 
Viagra and other erectile dysfunction 
drugs for men are generally reimburs- 
able through insurance, but birth con- 


trol for women historically has not been. 

Hence, there's potentially much less 

money to be made off a "female Viagra." 
Helene Leonetti 
Boca Raton, Florida 


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


19 


CHECK OUT THE NEW 


PLAYBOY.COM 


\ 
N 
N j 
N | 
\ 


YOU'RE WELCOME. 


STYLING BY TAYLOR SHERIDAN; HAIR AND MAKEUP BY SARA CRANHAM; BRA AND SKIRT BY CONTESSA LA 


BECOMING 
ATTRACTION 


Nosheen Phoen 
— "I WANT TO 

break the rules of 
what it means to be 
hot and sexy and a 
badass,” says actress 
Nosheen Phoenix. 
On HBO's dark 
political comedy 
The Brink, Nosheen 
plays a frisky Urdu 
interpreter to Tim 
Robbins’s secretary 
of state. Indeed, the 
London native cites 
her conservative 
upbringing by Paki 
stani parents as fuel- 
ing her rebellious fire. 
“We live in a time 
when you can finally 
express yourself, 
even if you're naked. 
I hope to inspire 
others who come 
from backgrounds 
where they've been 
told they can't do 
something," she says. 
“I'm here to make a 
difference." 


Photography by 
JOSH REED 


Y TALK|WHAT MATTERS NOW 


END GAMES 


Olympic Committee will 
decide the location ofthe 
2024 Summer Games, 
and if Chris Dempsey 
has his way, Boston 

will finish well off the podium. “It just 
doesn't make sense,” says Dempsey, the 
leader of No Boston Olympics, the city's 
top opposition group. His sentiments 
aren't uncommon: A poll by Boston's 
NPR station this April found that only 
40 percent of Bostonians want the 
Games in their city. 


ext fall, the International 


Cities have been shying away from 
hosting the Olympics since 1997, and 
Smith College economies professor 
Andrew Zimbalist says it's all about the 
benjamins. The IOC requires guarantees 
that public funds will cover costs not met 
through private enterprise. As a result, 
says Zimbalist, “there are few economic 
benefits to hosting." The lowest possible 
price is $10 billion; Beijing and Sochi 
cost more than $40 billion each. Boston's 
entire annual budget? Just $2.7 billion. 

Rio de Janeiro, the host for next 
summer's games, has budgeted for 


$13.2 billion—but costs are expected to 
reach much higher. Building a velodrome 
and aluxurious athlete's village will 
now take precedence over critical public 
infrastructure improvements. The only 
cities still vying for the 2022 Winter 
Games, unsurprisingly, are Beijing and 
Almaty, Kazakhstan. 

Inresponse, IOC president Thomas 
Bond has proposed 40 reforms, such as an 
increased focus on existing and tempo- 
rary structures and a $1.5 billion pledge 
for host cities. These reforms have drawn 
cities including Paris, Rome, Hamburg 
and Doha back into the running for 2024, 
but most ofthe policy changes don't 
decrease spending. That's because few 
ofthe IOC's 205 member nations have 
avested interest in lowering costs. “A 
lotofthose countries aren't hosting, but 
they get a share ofthe profits," says Allen 
Sanderson, a senior economics lecturer at 
the University of Chicago. 

Still, we all—government leaders 
included—sometimes act in economi- 
cally irrational ways. ^We lose money 
on alot of things in life—having dogs, 
boats, raising teenage daughters—that 
we're happy to do,” Sanderson points 
out. The Olympics bring prestige (don't 
discount every mayor's love of a good 
ribbon cutting) even at the cost of 
potential economic ruin. That's why 
recent Games were awarded to regimes 
such as China and Russia, Zimbalist 
says, where citizens don't have a say. 

The key will be 2024. If the commit- 
tee picks a cheaper bid, it could signify 
a shift. If not, only cities desperate for 
positive press will shell out to host 
future Olympics. 

Either way, count Boston out. “We have 
athoughtful, educated populace that 
thinks hard and asks questions," Dempsey 
says. "They've read and seen other cities' 
history enough to say, 'You know, maybe 
this isn’t what we need." "—Noah Davis 


Room With 


a Brew 


Forget the hotel 
minibar. BrewDog, 
a U.K.-based craft 
brewer, hopes to 
open a hotel with 
a beer tap in every 
room. The company 
plans to build the 
hotel and a second 
brewery near the 
location of its origi- 
nal brewery in Ellon, 
Scotland. BrewDog 
is currently crowd- 
funding the cost—a 
sobering $38 million. 


ILLUSTRATION BY PATRICK GEORGE 


id T'he 
X-Files 
predictthe 
future of 


TV? It sounds like 
something from Agent 4 
Fox Mulder’s filing 
cabinet. Butamidtalk 
ofresurrectingthe hit 
show; we found con- 
nections tothe origi- 


nal’s nine’seasons 
everywhere. The truth 
was, indeed, out there 
all along.—Will Levith 


{ Johnson 
“+ first lady 


Penny 


Side note: 


THE EPISODE 
“IMPROBABLE” 
FEATURES 


BURT 
REYNOLDS 
AS GOD. 


Ray 


McKinnon, 


assistant 


A SECRET SOCIETY PLOTS 


U.S. attorney =<. 


X-Files, Season 7: 


THE LONE GUNMEN 


(X-Files spinoff) 


From 
FBI 
agent i 
М{еКае! IX iy 
McKean j 4 
Saul's «ОФ t 
brother ү 


Laurie 
Hotden 
zombie 
survivor 
Р 


ot 


TO BRING ABOUT A ZOMBIE 


BETTER 
CALL SAUL 
> X-Files 
fans will 
remember 
Michael 
McKean as 
smirky FBI 
agent Mor- 
ris Fletcher, 
who is eerily 
similar to 
Chuck McGill, 
schlubby, 
reclusive 
brother of 
Jimmy McGill 
(a.k.a. Saul). 


APOCALYPSE. 


BREAKING 
BAD 


> Before cre- 
ating Break- 
ing Bad, Vince 
Gilligan wrote 
and pro- 
duced for The 
X-Files, on 
which Bryan 
Cranston 
plays a man 
on the run 

in the desert 
and Aaron 
Paul appears 
as a Pinkman- 
esque fuckup. 


DEXTER 


3 James 
Remar plays 

a Miami serial 
killer plagued 
by delusions 
on the X-Files 
episode “Dae- 
monicus” 
before a turn 
on Dexter as 
father of the 
Miami serial 
killer, to whom 
he appears in 
ghostly hal- 
lucinations. 
Creepy! 


THE 


CALL ITA 
HOW THE X 


EVERY SHOW ON TELEVISION 


| 


From 
zombie 


HOMELAND 


> In The 
X-Files' ninth 
season, 
Zuleikha Rob- 
inson plays 
the daughter 
of a terrorist. 
By season 
two of Home- 
land, Robin- 
son plays a 
terrorist. Side 
note: Rob- 
inson also 
accidentally 
blows herself 
up on Lost. 


Vince 
Gilligan 
producer 


* 


Bryan 
Cranston 
Walter 
White 


Aaron 
Raul 
Jesse 

Pinkman 


- FACTOR 


NSPIRACY. HERE'S 


LES INFECTED 


Joe 
Morton 
murderous 
father 


SCANDAL 


After play- 
ing a father 
accused of 
murdering 
the mother 
of his chil- 
dren on The 
X-Files, Joe 
Morton now 
plays Olivia's 
murderous 
father on 
Scandal. His 
X-Files attor- 
ney? Bellamy 
Young, Scan- 
dal's first lady. 


Bellamy 
Young 
first 
lady 


THE WALK- 
ING DEAD 
2 An X-Files 
story arc 
involving a 
government 
conspiracy 
includes 
actress Laurie 
Holden, later 
of Andrea 
fame, con- 
tracting a virus 
that turns her 
into a zombie- 
esque autom- 
aton. Sound 
familiar? 


“LL BE STRICTLY 
HEISENBERGIAN. , 


—X-Files, Season 7 


S 


ФА á 


James 
Remar\ ۾‎ 


murderer's À 


father / 


Set in 


MIAMI BEACH 


oo 
3 £ Me Former professor 
EI St} UNIVERSITY 
ree OF MIAMI 
pa From ч 
serial 
murderer 


Zuleikha 


terrorist 


From 
legal 


counsel 


SONS OF 
ANARCHY 


2 The X-Files 
counts numer- 
ous links 

to the SOA 
gang, but our 
favorite is cor- 
rupt assistant 
U.S. attorney 
Lincoln Pot- 
ter, played by 
Ray McKin- 
non, who also 
does a turn as 
X-Files serial 
killer Mad 
Wayne. 


<> / Robinson 


Accidentally 


BLOWS HERSELF 
UP ON LOST. 


24 


— |n the 
eighth season 
of The X-Files, 
Agent Dana 
Scully crosses 
paths with 

a CDC doc- 
tor played 

by Penny 
Johnson while 
investigating 

a biochemi- 
cal weapon, a 
threat John- 
son later faced 
as 24's schem- 
ing first lady. 


ILLUSTRATION BY PATRICK GEORGE 


24 


Y TALK|WHAT MATTERS NOW 


кы 


RANDALL 


PARK 


* After tackling every job from sling- 
ingFrappuccinos to peddling K-Y Jelly 
on TV,last year Randall Park found 
himselfin the middle ofa political crisis 
that nearly shut down Hollywood. As the 
guy who plays Kim Jong-un in The Inter- 
view, the Korean American actor took 
the spotlight to defend the controversial 
film just ahead ofthe debut ofhis ABC 
sitcom, Fresh Offthe Boat. Now, with 
two new comedies, including Netflix's 
Wet Hot American Summer series, he's 
ready for a breezier leg of his career, free 
of meddling, militant supreme leaders. 


“And if I can avoid doing another K-Y Jelly 


commercial, ГП be happy,” Park says. “I 
don't want to explain that to my parents 
again.”— Shane Michael Singh 


You're a 
newbie in WHAS's 
huge cast of return- 
ing players, includ- 
ing Paul Rudd and 
Amy Poehler. Which 
absurd story line do 
you intersect? 


PARK: I interact 
with Molly Shannon, 
which says a lot 
about my character. 
The series takes 
place over the 
course of one day, 
like the movie did; 
this time it's the first 
day of camp. It's 
completely ridicu- 
lous. It's so dumb. 


Did you 
have to wear moose- 
knuckle shorts? 


PARK: | did not 
have to wear the 
short-shorts, thank- 
fully. If | did, though, 
they would have 
been übershort. 


You're 
also in Amy 
Schumer's ma- 
jor film debut, 
Trainwreck. 


PARK: Women are 
putting out the most 
exciting stuff in 


Photography by CHRIS MCPHERSON 


comedy right now, 
and Amy is a genius. 
In Trainwreck, our 
boss is played by 
Tilda Swinton, and 
let me tell you, she's 
almost unrecogniz- 
able in this movie 
as a "real person." 
To see her that way 
was cool but jarring. 


Next 
year we elect a new 
president. What has 
playing douchey 
Minnesota governor 
Danny Chung on 
Veep taught you 
about politics? 


PARK: It has sharp- 
ened my ability 


to read between 
the lines and find 
subtext. But with 
that, politics now 
bum me out. It's too 
bad people care so 
much about wheth- 
er Hillary Clinton 
tipped at Chipotle, 
but they eat it up. 


Your Kim 
Jong-un was surpris- 
ingly lovable. What 
other baddie would 
you like to tackle? 


PARK: It'd be cool 
to see an Asian 
Dracula. We've 
had Blacula but no 
Asian one. It's time. 


N 


FLUSTRATION BY TODD DETWILER 


TALK|WHAT MATTERS NOW 


PICK YOUR POISON 


WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TAILOR-MADE PORN. YOU WANT IT? YOU GOT IT 


ijikai Kakikomi's 
fantasy—two overtired 
parents squeezing in 
aquickie among a sea 
oftoys—is not exactly 
standard porn fare. Yet 
a short erotic film based exclusively on 
his most intimate desires was produced 
for his viewing pleasure. Sitting down to 
watch the custom-made 10-minute romp 
for the first time, Kakikomi was curious 
and aroused. Afterward, he had one 
thought: “That's porn on demand.” 
This is the work of Erika Lust, 
the Swedish-born adult-film maker 
who runs XConfessions, a website 
that turns users’ desires into adult 
content. Every month Lust selects 
user-submitted “confessions” like 
Kakikomi’s, which she and her 
Barcelona-based crew then transform 
into erotic shorts. There’s no charge for 
this or for watchingtwo ofthe films, 
butifyou want access to the entire 
XConfessions catalog-including Boat 
Buddies With Benefits, Do You Find My 
Feet Suckable? and I Found Your Mother 


on Tinder—you’ll need a subscription. 

Characters in Lust’s films are “like 
any guy or girl on the street,” she says. 
It’s porn with premium production 
values, chock-full ofthe hallmarks of 
real sex: sweat, grunts and skin. The 
verisimilitude is key. “It’sthatideathat 
these little sex adventures could happen 
to them,” Lust says ofher audience. 

With porn accounting for an 
estimated 37 percent ofinternet content, 
the only thing you can’t google is desire 
itself. The industry of customized porn 
hopes to change that, to tailor the very 
fabric of porn around the limbs of our 
personal fantasies. 

“Fantasies are a way to expressa 
forbidden desire, to escape traditional 
gender roles,” says Justin Lehmiller, a 
social psychologist and author of the 
popular blog Sex and Psychology. *They 
serve to enhance sexual arousal." 

For Lust, porn is about giving users 
an active role in what turns them on. 
In a market usually flooded by men, 
female viewers constitute 40 percent 
of XConfessions' 70,000-member user 


base. Lust thinks personalized 

porn ean upend the experience of 
erotica for viewers, especially women, 
who are often starved for reflections 
of themselves. 

Timothy Stokely, CEO of Customs 
4U.com, wants to take the concept of 
personalized porn a step further by 
bringing it to the cam-girl fanatics. 
Users choose from more than 1,700 cam 
models and write up a brief description 
of what they want to see in their 
made-to-order experience. Models 
set their own prices, with amateurs 
charging as little as $20 and some 
pornstars commanding up to $1,000 
for a 10-minute flick. “A custom video 
is a highly personal product,” says 
Stokely, *in contrast to say, sitting in 
acam room with 10 other gentlemen 
or, worse, in a one-on-one chat with a 
model whose only interest is the time 
ticking down in the corner." 

Above all, what these custom 
pornographers hope to create is the 
most humanized porn experience yet. 

“One woman once said to me, ‘I’m 
jealous of the sex the people are 
having in your films.’ That's exactly 
the response I want," says Lust. “If 
you can see yourself in my films, then 
that makes it even hotter, don't you 
think?”—Kate Hakala 


FOOD "8 


GO BIG, a 
GO BISON ` 


CLEAN, LEAN AND FULL e 
OF FLAVOR, BISON IS THE 
MANLIEST OF MEATS 


es, grass-fed free-range 
bisonis the preferred 
protein ofthe modern 
hunter-gatherer crew, 
but when you taste the really good 
stuff, all thoughts of the Paleo diet 
willfly right out the window. The 
meat just tastes damn good. What 
you want is pasture-raised bison 
that has been-andthisiskey-field — 
slaughtered. “The low-stress life 
and death ofthe bison guarantee * 
consistently delicious meat,” says 
Sean Lenihan, founder of online 
retailer the Honest Bison. We ` - * 
concur. The sweet, mineral,pure- 
tasting meat will have you cheating y 
on your beefribeyethissummer. ` | 


Н Ingredients 
Bison ч 


1 bison toma- 
hawk steak 
Toma hawk Kosher salt 
Freshly cracked 
Steak я, 


2 tbsp. canola oil 


Order in bulk from 4 tbsp. butter 
TheHonestBison.com and 2 sprigs fresh 
you can cook bison all thyme 


summer long—starting 
with this seared steak 


Photography by FRANCESCO TONELLI 


Method 


Generously salt 
and pepper 
bison steak on 
both sides. Let 
meat come to 
room tempera- 
ture. Heat a large 
cast-iron skillet 
or griddle over 
high heat. Add 
canola oil and 
heat until smok- 


ing. Sear steak 
onone side until 
golden brown, 
about three min- 
utes. Turn steak 
over and contin- 
ue cooking. Add 
butter and fresh 
thyme to pan. 
Baste steak with 


foaming butter 
mixture and cook 
until internal 
temperature is 
120 degrees (use 
an instant-read 
thermometer 

to keep from 
overcooking the 
meat). Allow 
steak to rest 10 
minutes before 
serving. 


Raising 
THE BAR 


э Smoky, 
savory and 
citrusy, grass- 
fed-bison bars 
from Epic are 
a less sweet 
alternative to 
your typical 
protein bar. 


FOOD STYLING BY FRANCESCO TONELLI 


KENTUCKY STRAIGHT BOURBON WHISKEY 
BLENDED WITH HONEYLIQUEUR 


35% ALC./VOL. (70 PROOF) 


SERIOUSLY GOOD BOURBON. 


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ROCKS 


lex Day is abartend- 

er'sbartender: His 

New York bar Death 

& Co. is considered 

one ofthe world's 
top spots for mixology, and yes, he 
loves creating cocktails with vodka, 
the spirit often unfairly maligned 
among certain craft bartenders. The 
thinkingtypically goes that vodka 
doesn’t have enough character to 
make an interesting drink. Which 
makes about as much sense as say- 
ing white flour can’t produce a good 
loaf of bread. “Vodka provides a 
neutral playing field,” says Day. “It’s 
on that foundation that the rest of 
a cocktail's ingredients are given a 
platform to shine." Here he shares 
an original recipe and three varia- 
tions on classic vodka drinks. 


AMERICAN 
SPIRITS (1) The 86 Co. 


Aylesbury Duck: 
Three a wheat vodka 


Homegrown with character, 
perfect for mak- 


Bottles ing the mulligan. 
(2 Woody 
Creek: a smooth- 
sipping potato 
vodka from 
Colorado. (3) 
Zodiac: a new 
vodka offering 
made with Idaho 
potatoes. 


COLORADO 


Photography by FRANCESCO TONELLI 


The 
VODKA 
CLASSICS 


MOSCOW 
MULE 

2 oz. vodka, 
ginger beer and 
1⁄2 oz. lime juice 
over ice: "Use 
a spicy, high- 
quality ginger 
beer such as 
Bundaberg, and 
don't be shy 
about putting 
a good half 
ounce of fresh 
lime juice in the 
drink." 


VESPER 

Пр oz. gin, 
1 oz. vodka 
and %4 oz. Lillet 
Blanc, served 
with a lemon 
twist: “James 
Bond liked it 
shaken, but 
that’s bullshit. 
Choose a light 
London dry- 
style gin (such as 
Plymouth, even 
though that's 
not how Bond 
ordered it) and a 
vodka with some 
personality, such 
as Grey Goose.” 


FLAME 
OF LOVE 

2% oz. vodka 
and Y oz. fino 
sherry, served 
with an orange 
twist: “This 
drink is all about 
subtlety and el- 
egance. Because 
it’s really only 
two ingredients, 
the choice of 
those is crucial. 
Make it with La 
Gitana Manza- 
nilla, and don’t 
forget the or- 
ange twist.” 


DRINK STYLING BY FRANCESCO TONELLI 


FOLLOW THE BUNNY 


O O O O QO 


[playboy @ playboy @ playboy playboy + playboy 


30 


Y GEAR 


LET’S GET 
PHYSICAL 


IN THE NEAR FUTURE, VIRTUAL REALITY IS 
GOING TO MAKE YOU WORK UP A SWEAT 


P A few years ago, a 
team of scientists set 


stratospheric rise of 
World of Warcraft, a 


that players barely 
left their comput- 
ers. The video game 
industry tried hon- 
orably to fight the 


WHAT IF YOU 


CALL OF DUTY 


WITH 


PHYSICAL 
EXERCISE? 
trend with such prod- 
ucts as Nintendo's Wii 
Fit, an exercise game 
aimed at combating 


this sedentary life- 
style and getting you 


if you didn't reach 
your goals, your ador- 
able avatar would 
simply stare back at 
you, hands on hips, 
reflecting years of self- 
loathing in its wide, 
lifeless eyes. But what 
if you could combine 
the thrill of play- 
ing Call of Duty (or 
a zombie slayer or 
gun-toting theoretical 
physicist) with physi- 
cal exercise? 

The first step is 
the Oculus Rift, a 
virtual-reality headset 
created by Oculus VR, 
a company Facebook 
acquired for $2 billion. 
The headset hasn't hit 
shelves yet, but it has 
already inspired inde- 
pendent developers 
to create accessories 
for it. The most prom- 
ising is the Cyberith 
Virtualizer, an omni- 
directional treadmill 
equipped with motion 
sensors. Instead of 
hitting keystrokes, 
you control a charac- 
ter's actions with your 
movements, allowing 
you to jump, crouch 
or fire a weapon in 
your living room. 

"Games have always 
stood apart from 
other media as a way 


to interact with fic- 
tional worlds instead 
of being a passive 
observer," says Oculus 
VR co-founder Palmer 
Luckey. “In the more 
distant future, the 
majority of games will 
be designed with VR in 
mind." He isn't talking 


43 inches to 80 


80-inch version 


GO BIG 
THIS 
SEASON 


> Let them raise 
stadium ticket 
prices—T Vs are 
bigger, better 


pick is the new 
Vizio M-Series, 
which comes in 
screen sizes from 


inches and pro- 
duces gorgeous 
Ultra HD, the next 
standard of high 
def, capable of 
four times the res- 
olution of a current 
1080p HDTV. Built- 
in wi-fi connects 
to Netflix, Amazon 
Instant and 

other streaming 
services, and the 
TV automatically 
upgrades lower- 
resolution video to 


something close to 
Ultra. The 55-inch 
model ($999, vizio 
.com) is the best 
bargain, but the 


($3,999) guar- 
antees you'll be 
hosting this year’s 
Super Bowl party. 


sci-fi. Sony, Microsoft 
and HTC are already 
gearing up to release 
their own virtual- 
reality products in the 
next year or so, and 
for other indie devel- 
opers such as Sixense 
and PrioVR, the cre- 
ation of full-body 
motion controllers— 
either handheld or 
strapped directly to 
your body—is the next 
step. Soon you'll be 
able to kick and punch 
through games like 
Grand Theft Auto and 
Call of Duty. In effect, 
you will become the 
simulation. 

"For many years 
we've defined our 
experience as the 
piece of geometry in 
front of us," says Ted 
Schilowitz, a futurist 


who is creating virtual- 
reality experiences 

for 20th Century Fox. 
Schilowitz predicts a 
time when there will 
be no physical displays, 
only virtual ones. We'll 
be wearing our tech- 
nology, barely aware 
it's there. "In a few 
years it will be hard to 
separate if this is really 
happening to you or 
if it's something artifi- 
cial," he says. 

The future sounds 
exciting—and a little 
terrifying. Let's hope 
the machines don't 
take over when we're 
living in the Matrix. 
Spending our lives 
strapped to a chair 
definitely doesn't 
sound like the best 
workout regimen. 
—Katherine Brodsky 


MARK VON ULRICH 


ILLUSTRATION BY JUSTIN PAGE 


PERFECT 
SPORT 


MERCEDES-BENZ SAVES THE 
SPORTS SEDAN 


° Parking lots are filled with 
watered-down, almost-there 
sports sedans geared toward 
guys who want speed but also 
haverealresponsibilities in life. 
Mercedes-Benz set out to rescue 
us from this disappointment, and 
as werocketed around Portu- 
gal’s Autödromo Internacional 
do Algarve in the C63 S, a chic, 
polished and lightning-fast four- 
door, it hit us that M-B came 
damn close. 

The muscle behind the C63 is 
а 503-horsepower bi-turbo V8 
capable of producinga thrilling 
ride while still getting flogged 
on the daily. Like its predeces- 
sor, the latest C63 remains rear- 
wheel-drive but paired with a 
torque band that punches below 
2,000 rpm (1,750 rpm, to be 
exact); it has a sensible outward 
appearance but can turn fierce 
onadime. Skip the burnouts 


for a good stretch of tarmac, 
and you'll find a drive dynamic 
expected from something much 
less practical. The car shares its 
heart with another current AMG 
model: the GT S. While the C63’s 
steering and suspension setups 
are less aggressive than its two- 
seater cousin, they’re far from 
tame. Want proof? Benz’s usual 
drive settings of Eco, Comfort, 
Sport and Sport+ now includea 
Race mode. 

Inside, the cabin is done up 
in rich napa leather, contrast- 
ing stitch work and avibe that 
is anything but boring. Despite 
an infotainment screen that 
feels tacked on, it’s the first all- 
purpose sedan we've coveted ina 
long while.— William K. Gock 


MERCEDES-BENZ AMG C63 S Sedan 


Engine: 4-liter bi-turbo 7 Horsepower: 503 


Torque: 516 lb.-ft. / Zero to 60: 3.9 seconds 


Top speed: 180 mph / Price: $71,900-base 


too $ 
= НЕ 
Ф siss Q sss 
е e 
ER 
— 


POPULAR MECHANIC 


AN APP THAT DOES EVERYTHING BUT 
TURN A WRENCH 


3 Popping the hood 
isn't the only way 

to solve car trouble. 
Openbay, a company 
founded to connect 
car owners with repu- 
table local mechan- 
ics, has launched 
OpenbayConnect, a 
new app that diag- 
noses the problem 

on the spot. Plug a 
cellular-based node 
provided by Openbay 
into your car's OBD II 


port (standard on all 
U.S. vehicles sold after 
1995), and Openbay- 
Connect will gather 
and analyze vehicle 
diagnostics. In the 
event of a malfunc- 
tion, it sends a list of 
nearby garages that 
have an “open bay” 
for your vehicle, a 
service estimate and a 
list of user-generated 
reviews straight to 
your phone. 


31 


BOTANY 
CLASS 


PLANT-BASED ESSENCES 
FLOURISH IN SUMMER 
FRAGRANCES IN EVERY FORM 


here are subtler and 

smarter ways to smell 

fresh during the long 

hot summer than just 

splashing on some after- 
shave. Supplement your aromatic 
arsenal with these products that 
come in scents ranging from forest 
pine and spicy cedar to citrus rind 
and basil.—Vincent Boucher 


BONUS TIP 
* Curate your 
cabinet with 
cool-looking 
products to 
impress snoop- 
ing guests. 


Асе M E 


ND 


u 


Making Scents 


e 

$ ^ 

1. Chasing 2. Tree 
Trail Top-Off 
— Siskiyou — Escentric 


Trail Resin solid 
cologne from 
Juniper Ridge 
summons Pa- 
cific Northwest 
conifer forests 

in a handy 
pocket-size bees- 
wax formula. 


* $35 (5 oz), 
juniperridge.com 


Molecules' Es- 
centric 03 body 
wash is infused 
with an extract 
from the Sapin- 
dus mukorossi 
tree and has 
notes of green 
peppercorn, 
ginger root and 


Mexican lime. 


° $45 (6.75 oz), 
mrporter.com 


E 
= 
y 
5 


4. Market 
Green 

— Basil is good 
for more than 
pesto—it's the 
refreshing in- 
gredient in Gen- 
darme’s Green 
fragrance spray, 
in a reusable 


metal container. 


* $90 (6 oz), 
barneys.com 


3. Rind 
About 

— A moistur- 
izer for all skin 
types, Aesop's 
Rind Concen- 
trate body balm 
gets its kick 
from oranges. 
Keep it in the 
fridge as a quick 
post-sun cooler. 


* $35 (4 oz.), 
barneys.com 


% 


5. Beachy 
Clean 

— Saturdays 
Surf NYC 
teamed with 
the treatment 
experts at Bax- 
ter of California 
to make this 
vitamin- and 
aloe-packed 
Pacific Beach 
Soap in a citrusy 
herbal blend. 


* $8 (3.5 oz. ban, 
saturdaysnyc.com 


HAWAII'S BIG ISLAND OFFE 


AND CHALLENGING DIVERSIONS 


etother, lesser men sit idle within the 
confines of a beachside resort. The Big 
Island of Hawaii is too diverse a place 
for visitors not to go big before going for 
the beach and a beer. There are snow- 
capped volcanoes, black- and white-sand beaches 
and an underwater world that’s home to singing 
humpbacks, soaring manta rays and more than 
600 species of fish—plus eight of the planet’s 13 
climate zones. Which means that even though 
maitais are served aplenty and countless deck 
chairs are just waiting to be slumped into, in- 
trepid travelers will put those temptations off 
long enough to get the island’s red earth beneath 
their fingernails, swallow a bit of saltwater and 
scrape their knees against jagged lava rock until 
it draws (just a little) blood. After all, a beverage 


hard-earned is the very best kind. 


To the 
Mountaintop 


> The island was 
born from the 
mythic and geo- 
logic ooze found 
within Hawaii 
Volcanoes 


National Park 
where 
Mauna Loa 
volcano, a 
13,677-foot 
snow-peaked 
monstrosity, 
looms and its 
dainty yet fiery 


younger sibling, 
Kilauea, glows, 
thanks to its 
crater lake of 
molten lava. 

But the park is 
more than the 
sum of its peaks. 
It’s home to ab- 
stract geologic 
formations and 
climates ranging 
from alpine des- 
ert to rain forest. 
We recommend 
exploring it with 
Warren Costa 
(nativeguide 
hawaii.com), a 
trusted Hawaiian 
guide. His cus- 
tom trips include 


a collection of 
short two- to 
four-mile hikes. 
You'll see the 
Kilauea crater, 
walk through 
the famed Thur- 
ston Lava Tube 
and explore the 
misty forest. 

Of course, 
if you'd rather 
simply catch the 
views and feel 
the wind in your 
hair, consider a 
downhill bicycle 
ride from sum- 
mit to sea with 
Bike Volcano 
(bikevolcano 
.com). You'll 
start by cycling 
around the rim 
of the Kilauea 
crater before 
coasting through 
fern forests and 
past steaming 
volcanic vents 
as you cruise 
toward the deep 
blue waters. 


To the Sea 


» The Four 
Seasons Hua- 
lalai is the 
best and most 
luxurious resort 
on the island, at- 
tracting the likes 
of Dave Grohl 
several times a 
year. Its activi- 
ties desk offers 
many ways to 
have fun in the 


Pacific. Paddlers 
can hop in an 
outrigger or 
grab a board 
and stand-up 
paddle. 

If you're an 
experienced 
snorkeler, go 
spearfishing 
with Jeremy 
Selg and Top- 
shot Spearfish- 
ing Head 
out with a guide 
and spend the 
morning kicking 
down to depths 
of up to 30 
feet to hunt roi 
(peacock grou- 
per), an inedible 
invasive species 
introduced to 
Hawaiian waters 
in the 1950s 
whose explod- 
ing population 
has impacted 
the ecosystem. 
Your speared 
roi will become 
ish emulsion or 
ertilizer on local 
organic farms, 
and if you hap- 
pen upon some 
umaumalei, jack 
ish or giant 
trevally, you can 
shoot them too. 
Selg and his 
eam will slice 
sashimi for you 
o enjoy after 
the dives are 
done and pack 
he rest to throw 


on the grill. 
After nightfall 
the adventure 
doesn't have 
to end. Jack's 
Diving Locker 
(jacksdiving 
locker.com) 
offers the best 
night dives 
on the island. 
Offshore from 
Kona Interna- 
tional Airport, 
the crew sinks 
underwater 
floodlights 
to lure plank- 
ton, which 
attract hungry 
manta rays 
and occasional 
monk seals. 


There Will 
Be Beach 

> By now you've 
earned your 
right to hit the 
beach. You can 
get naked with 
the hippies and 
dreamers at 

the black-sand 
Kehena Beach in 
Puna, swim with 


sea turtles off 
Punalu’u or relax 
at Kekaha Kai 
State Park, which 
features pristine 
sweeps of white 
sand surrounded 
by a barren 
black lava flow. 
At sunset find 
Hapuna Beach 
near Waimea 

on the island's 
west side, where 
the white sand 
extends for half 
a mile, the water 
is crystal clear 
on calm days 
and the sunsets 
are Technicolor 
magnificent. 
—Adam Skolnick 


Kekaha Kai Beach 
» Hapuna Beach 
» Hawaii Volcanoes 
National Park 
» Punalu'u Beach 
b Kehena Beach 


34 


ENTERTAINMENT 


MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE— 
ROGUE NATION 


* Thetrailers make Mission: 
Impossible— Rogue Nation, the 
fifth in the series, look like a super- 
size buddy thriller featuring Tom 
Cruise's death-defying character 
Ethan Hunt and newly full-fledged 
IMF agent Benji Dunn (Simon 
Pegg). Pegg spent months scram- 
bling around London, Vienna 

and Casablanca with co-stars 
Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames and 
Rebecca Ferguson as they play 
team members trying to crush an 
international spy cartel. “[Direc- 
tor] Christopher McQuarrie says 
the relationship between Tom’s 


wig 


SUMMER 
CINEMA 


SEVEN REASONS 
TO COOL OFF IN A 
DARK THEATER 


character and mine is the emo- 
tional core ofthe movie,” says 
Pegg. “Benji’s an integral part of 
the story. He does more.” More, 


ADAM SCOTT 


The actor tells the 
naked truth about his 
comedy The Overnight 


as in joining Cruise as he hangs 
from the side of an Airbus A400 
at 5,000 feet? Says Pegg, laugh- 
ing, “No, but I was on set that day 
for my bit. Tom has already hung 
from the world’s tallest building; 
now he’s done it with a plane. To 
top it in the next one, he’s going A: 
to have to hang from something z 
in space. Despite the crazy stuff 
he does, the huge grin on his face 
tells you he's having a great time.’ 


» 


TEASE FRAME ; 
REBECCA HALL p 


— British American actress Rebecca 
Hall is caught in a love triangle with 
Benedict Cumberbatch during World 
War | on HBO's Parade's End (pic- 
tured). She questions another on- 
screen husband, Jason Bateman, in the 
dark thriller The Gift, in theaters in July. 


У DT 
TERMINATOR GENISYS 


This Terminator "reimagining" 


ships Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) 
back to 1984 to protect Sarah 


Connor (Emilia Clarke) from 
robotic assassins. 


ANT-MAN 


Dr. Hank Pym (Michael 
Douglas) persuades Scott 
Lang (Paul Rudd) to don a suit 
that makes him a miniature 
Marvel superhero. 


TRAINWRECK 


Amy Schumer co-wrote and 
stars in this Judd Apatow com- 
edy about a boozy journalist 
who's shocked when she falls 
for her latest interviewee. 


IN YOUR LIVING ROOM 


KINGSMAN: 
THE 
SECRET 
SERVICE 


By David Reddish 


* Director Matthew Vaughn (X-Men: 
First Class, Kick-Ass) brings his pen- 
chant for crazed action and jolly humor 
tothis retro spy romp that plays like 

an R-rated Bond movie amped on a 
tub-load of bath salts. Less an homage 
than a full reinvention of classic 1960s 
British spy thrillers, Kingsman works 
as both a comedy and an adolescent 
fantasy about street kid Eggsy (Taron 
Egerton), a recruit for an ultracompeti- 
tive antiterrorist network run by Harry 
Hart (Colin Firth). Vaughn keeps top- 
ping himself with elaborate set pieces 
featuring plenty of gadgets, stunts and 


droll comic work from Firth and Samuel 


L. Jackson, including a bloody church 


massacre and a kick-ass finale—a tribute 


to Ken Russell—that has to be seen to be 
believed. (Blu-ray) Best extra: Panel to 

Screen: The Education of a 21st Century 

Super Spy, a featurette on the evolution 

from cult comic to blockbuster. Y Y Y 


BLU-RAY” + DIGITAL HD 
JACKSON MICHAEL CAINE 


IN "SIT 


HE SECRET SERVICE 


SOUTHPAW 


* Jake Gyllenhaal buffs up for 
this gritty boxing flick about a 
professional fighter who falls 
apart after a stalker murders his : 
wife (Rachel McAdams). 


REGRETTABLE |: 


IU 


THE LEAGUE OF 


fg 


| iur T TANEC( 


TRE STONY OF тиити шш иши BASEBALL ы | 


MOLINA | 


JOAN RYAN 


BEST BEACH READS 


By Cat Auer 


WALKING 
WITH ABEL 
— Journalist Anna 
Badkhen travels 
by foot through 
Mali with nomadic 
Fulani cowherds, 
following the sea- 
sons, the stars and 
the “immutable 
movement” of an 
ancient way of life 
in this vivid, mem- 
orable nonfiction. 


THE LEAGUE OF 
REGRETTABLE 
SUPERHEROES 

— Jon Morris 
mines gold from 
long-forgotten 
comic books in this 
colorful, art-heavy 


THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. 


* This redo of the 1960s TV spy 
show stars Henry Cavill and i 

Armie Hammer as secret agents : 

who must stop a criminal orga- 
nization with Nazi affiliations. 


compendium of 
unsung characters 
that never caught 
on, including Lady 

Satan, Squirrel 
Girl and, our fave, 

Thunderbunny. 


CONFESSION 
OF THE 
LIONESS 
3 In this novel 
about predators, 
two diarists tell 
of a lion hunt in 
an African village, 
yet it is human 
nature around 
which the tale 


revolves. Beautiful, 


beguiling fiction 
from Mozambican 
Mia Couto. 


VACATION 


* Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) 
decides to road-trip with his 
family for one last jaunt to 
Walley World in this sequel to 
the National Lampoon classic. 


THE SEVEN 
GOOD YEARS 
> Etgar Keret's 

first nonfiction 

book comprises 36 
supershort witty 
vignettes, win- 
dows into his life 
as a dad, husband, 
son, Israeli, writer. 
Despite the humor- 
ous tone and quick 
pace, there's much 
to chew on in these 
bite-size stories. 


UNDER 
TIBERIUS 
Perhaps since 
we know the end- 
ing, Nick Tosches 
crafts a compel- 
ling origin story 


for Jesus—a 
"half-shekel thief" 
turned poser 
messiah—that's 
shot through with 
both brilliant, wise 
dialogue and a 
running joke about 
well-groomed 
anuses. 


MOLINA 
> Ex-MLB catcher 
Bengie Molina 
pays tribute to 
the “father who 
raised an unlikely 
baseball dynasty” 
in this sweetly told 
memoir. Baseball 
is the crux of the 
story, but the les- 
son is: family first. 


SELF/LESS 
e In this sci-fi thriller from direc- 
tor Tarsem Singh, cancer-ridden 
Ben Kingsley transfers his 
consciousness into the body of 
Ryan Reynolds. 


35 


36 


ENTERTAINMENT 
REASONS TO STAY INSIDE 


HBO SUNDAY 

The cable giant 
is featuring a slew 
of movie stars on 
one night. In addition 
to Colin Farrell and 
Vince Vaughn in 
season two of True 
Detective, Dwayne 
“the Rock” Johnson 
plays an ex-gridiron 
great who men- 
tors current players 
on Ballers, while 
Tim Robbins anq 
Jack Black star on 
the political satire 
The Brink. 


BLUNT TALK 

(B) Patrick Stewart 
(finally) returns to 
television via a Starz 
comedy, and thank- 
fully no sci-fi element 


TELEVISION 


is involved. Instead, 
Stewart plays a 
cable-news anchor 
who is predictably 
prickly. Family Guy 
guru Seth MacFar- 
lane is a producer, so 
you should probably 
keep your kids far, 
far away. 


zoo 

(C) Zombies are so 
2014. CBS's thriller 
ries to scare the 
hell out of viewers 
by imagining what 
happens when ani- 
mals attack...and 
hen keep attacking. 
James Wolk plays 

a badass zoologist 
rying to figure out 
why our furry friends 
have turned on us 


By Josef Adalian : 


SEX & DRUGS & 
ROCK & ROLL 
Denis Leary, so 
brilliant on Rescue 
Me, returns to FX 
as Johnny Rock, 
an aging musician 
whose early-1990s 
path to stardom was 
derailed by drugs 
and a penchant for 
screwing his band- 
mates' women. This 
dark comedy picks 
up 25 years later, 
with Rock still hop- 
ing for redemption. 


HUMANS 

This is shaping 
up to be the year 
of the robot. In the 
wake of Chappie and 
Ex Machina, AMC 
gets into the android 


game with a sci-fi 
thriller set in a world 
where synthetic per- 
sonal assistants are 
as common as iPads. 
William Hurt stars. 


WET HOT 
AMERICAN 
SUMMER: FIRST 
DAY OF CAMP 
Writer-director 
David Wain's 2001 
cult comedy—which 
introduced America 
to Bradley Cooper, 
Amy Poehler and 
many more—has 
been revived as an 
eight-episode Netflix 
prequel. Amazingly, 
almost all the gang 
from Camp Firewood 
are back for the 
reunion. 


GAME 


BATMAN: 
ARKHAM 
KNIGHT 


By Jason Buhrmester 


* The bestthing aboutthe 
Batman video-game series 
ishow dark the Dark Knight 
actually gets. On that point: 
Batman: Arkham Knight, the 


series conclusion, is the first 
with a “Mature” rating. That's 
because Batman has to kick 
the hell out of Scarecrow and 


agang of criminals intent on 
destroying Gotham. Batman 
is best when helurks in the 
shadows, luring enemies into 
traps or a knockout punch, but 
the controls alsolet him take 
on large groups of foes at once. 
This game marks the first 
appearance of the Batmobile. 
If things get too wild, call it in, 
slip into military-grade battle 
mode and let the missile bar- 
rage clear a path back to the 
Batcave. YY YY 


MUSIC 


THE DECLINE 
OF WESTERN 
CIVILIZATION 


By Rob Tannenbaum 


* Years before directing Wayne’s 
World, Penelope Spheeris began 
atrilogy of documentaries about 
L.A. musicians. The first two 
Decline of Western Civilization 
docs are among the greatest rock 
movies ever made—and until the 
release ofthis four-disc boxed set 
packed with extras, they existed 
only on VHS. As Spheeris moves 
from 1980 punk to 1988 hair metal 
back to punk in 1998, she warmly 
depicts the many varieties of 
misdeeds that result from mixing 
booze, drugs, boredom, wealth, 
poverty, anger and wit. They're 
grimy mementos of an earlier, bet- 
ter generation of rock films. Y Y YY 


e In addition to being our favorite 
online acronym, FFS is a collabora- 
tion between youngish New Wave 
foursome Franz Ferdinand and 
oldish New Wave duo Sparks. The 
group's perky, urbane songs cite 
Sartre, Liszt, de Kooning, Eames 
chairs, Hugo Boss and the Bundes- 
liga, making this eponymous album 
а cavalcade of cleverness. Y Y Y Y 


| 


¡AN FX ORIGINAL COMEDY SERIES 


YÍ NOT JUST ANY... 


кы 


PLAYBOY + HORNITOS PRESENT 


NOT JUST ANY 
PLAYBOY PAD 


NOTHING SAYS MORE ABOUT А MAN THAN 
WHAT HE HAS IN HIS HOME. TO ENSURE 
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Easiest color 
to produce in 
fireworks: orange 
Most difficult 
color to produce 
in fireworks: blue 


— —  -—— 


How much cities 
spend on Fourth 
of July fireworks 
displays: 
NEW YORK 
$1.9 million 
PHILADELPHIA 
$2.1 million 
BOSTON 
$2.5 million 


° For every extra 
hour of sleep a 
woman gets, she is 
14% more likely to 
have sex the next 
day, according to 
a University of 
Michigan study. 


Face 


THE FACTS 


° Women find stubble more 
attractive than a full beard, 
and a full beard more attractive 
than a clean-shaven face, 
according to a 2014 study. 


* Art students 

get busy far 

more often than 
their classmates, 
according to a 
survey by a British 
student newspaper. 
Who else is getting 
laid more than 
their peers? Those 
who love grilled- 
cheese sandwiches 
have more sex than 
those who dont, 
according to dating 
site Skout. 


GOOD HEAVENS 


dls 


What do 
Americans pray 
for? Accord- 
ing to LifeWay 
Research: 


—— o . 


FOR THEIR 
ENEMIES 


© 


WINNING 
THE LOTTERY 


© 


FAVORITE 
TEAM TO WIN 


© 


FINDING A SWEET 
PARKING SPOT 


© 


FOR 
CELEBRITIES 


MILLION 


Amount 
the state of 
Colorado made 
in 2014 from 
marijuana taxes, 
licenses and 
fees. 


© 
co 
ow 
L 
A 


«lll Carrier 11:00 AM 


е 
[==] hailand 
— О Bangkok 


Thailand 


Potential jail Sentence for postin 
hci oe image on social 
la in Thailand: up to 5 years 


Vik e Comment 


“ А Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm 
Jor Computing the Fiedler Vector 
of Graph Laplacians 99 


* Title of article co-authored 
by Baltimore Ravens offensive 
lineman John Urschel 

last year for the Journal of 
Computational Mathematics. 


* Seconds of 
laughter per 
minute earned 
by comedians, 
according 

to Comedy 
Evaluator Pro: 


n 
о 
= 
o 
о 
Ф 
n 
со 
- 


32.4 seconds 
27.6 seconds 
26.4 seconds 
25.2 seconds 
24 seconds 

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42 


WHAT HAPPENS WHEN BOY MEETS GRILL? 
MEET THE UGLY SIDE OF THE MALE EGO 


here are few times that men are 
as impressed with themselves as 
they are when they barbecue. And 
men are constantly impressed with 
themselves. They’re impressed 
with themselves when they watch 
a football game and predict a play 
that is obviously going to happen. When 
they win a bet on an event they had ab- 
solutely nothing to do with. When any- 
thing comes out of their penis. 

Men who cannot make dinner in the 
kitchen suddenly consider themselves 
Top Chef contestants as soon as they cross 
the patio threshold. They believe that 
heating meat over a propane-fueled 
Weber has no relationship to the girlie 
activity of heating meat over a gas-fueled 
stove. Nothing excites men as much as 
flipping things. I know this because the 
only other thing men cook is pancakes. 
I know this from watching a lot of porn. 

Men like to believe that women can’t 
work the grill because they’re afraid of 
fire, which men don’t seem to remember 
when they’re lavishing women with can- 
dles and a fireplace, thinking it will help 
them get laid. Grilling has been so hyper- 
masculinized that I have seen barbecue 
pits made out of oil drums, a howitzer, 
a police car and an airplane. There's a 
nationwide barbecue-competition circuit 
with events every weekend where men 
get to smell like smoke and drink beer 
while participating in a sport. Teams 
have names such as Slap Yo Daddy, Bub- 
Ba-Q and Hot Grill on Grill Action. And 
as in all great sports, there is a barbe- 
cue fantasy league. It's the only fantasy 
league where the real team names have 
puns just as stupid as the fantasy league 
team names. 

Cooking outside became a guy thing 
in the 1950s, when newly suburban men 
were encouraged to spend less time in 
bars and more time with their families. 
So they carved out a small space in their 
backyard and turned it into a bar. And 
because there's no TV with sports on to 


talk about, men have found something 
even more boring to talk about: how to 
barbecue. Men gather to critique the 
Grillmaster—which is what he likes to 
be called—for flipping too often or not 
often enough or keeping the fire too 
high or too low or in the wrong place. 
You can see why women stay away from 
the grill. And men. 

Grilling and smoking are the least 
work-intensive forms of making din- 
ner besides GrubHub. Grilling involves 
a cooking surface you don't even have 
to clean. The two most popular English 
words that come from the Carib Indi- 
ans are barbecue and hammock, though I 
would not be surprised if they also came 
up with GrubHub. 

The reason you rarely see 
women working a grill isn't 
because they aren't capable. 
It's because they're busy 
doing all the actual cooking 
while men stand at the grill 
and act as though they're 
making dinner There's 
always some woman chop- 
ping vegetables, preparing 
side dishes and baking dessert while 
the dude takes all the credit for flip- 
ping a piece of meat once and touch- 
ing it with his thumb 57 times—each 
time explaining that thing about how 
you can move your fingers in different 
ways to make your palm feel like me- 
dium rare or medium well. In a restau- 
rant, no one would ever call the person 
who does that job a "chef." He would 
be a lowly line cook. And he would be 
ordered around by the saucier. No one 
reviewing a three-star Michelin restau- 
rant says the sausages and onions were 
grilled with the deft hand of a sweaty 
fat guy nodding his head to Van Halen. 


BY 
JOEL 


STEIN 


w Y 


Yes, conceptually cooking outside 
is rugged and challenging. Lewis and 
Clark ate something called ash cakes, 
which were balls of dough thrown on 
the bottom of the fire and were not 
really so much cakes but very much 
ash. Cooking on a grill is cooking out- 
side only in the way that sleeping in a 
Fleetwood Providence RV is camping. 
And as with all male hobbies besides 
masturbating, a lot of unnecessary 
technology gets added. Brookstone of- 
fers an instant marinater that claims 
to deliver "all the benefits of marinat- 
ing without the time-consuming has- 
sle" of dropping meat into liquid and 
walking away for four hours. There's 
a $100 "Bluetooth smart 
grilling thermometer" a 
motorized grill brush and 
a Shop-Vac ash vacuum. If 
you have any of this stuff, 
you aren't mastering fire, 
you're mastering the same 
integrated circuits you mas- 
ter in your cubicle. Lynx 
makes a $9,000 Smart Grill 
that lets you activate it by 
saying "Cook steak" and then tells you 
when to flip it by talking to you. This is 
the kind of stuff men will show off de- 
spite the fact that it is so indulgent and 
lazy it should come with all the shame 
of getting a happy ending from a robot. 

Grilling is peacocking at its worst, 
with men hogging the one time the cook 
is put on display at a party instead of 
shoved in the background like a servant. 
We need to bring gender equity to the 
backyard party. And if we absolutely have 
to be sexist about barbecues, we could at 
least go to pool parties where women in 
bikinis sweat over a grill while we check 
on our burgers way too often. H 


FLAVIO MORAIS 


III 
| 
ШШ 


HERE S WHAT MEN NEED ТО KNOW ABOUT 
FEMINISM: IT MAKES FOR GREAT SEX 


eminism. You hear that word or 
see it in print and it causes you to 
feel something. It has more bag- 
gage than a bride or groom left 
at the altar. It turns a lot of peo- 
ple off, especially men. I get it. 
Feminism can come off as bitchy. 
Self-righteous. Whiny. Alienating. Man- 
hating. The opposite of sexy. It's why 
a lot of young female celebrities have 
distanced themselves from it lately— 
publicly proclaiming they aren't femi- 
nists. They think feminism is a dirty word. 
And I'm here to agree that feminism is 
a dirty word. But I differ on the kind of 
dirty.... A lot of women and men think 
feminism isn't sexy, but I think it's very 
sexy, and I think you should too. 

I want to start by apologizing for the 
sex I had early on in my sexual career. 
Not to the guys; I want to apologize to 
myself. I didn't know how much better 
it could be. There were some not-great 
experiences for both parties. He: "How 
is it?” Me: "Great." He: "Wait, it's not 
even in." Oops. He: "Did you finish?" 
Me: "I think I almost sort of kind of had 
something." He: "Did you fall asleep?" 
Me: "Just for a second." I thought sex 
was for the guy. I didn't know it was for 
me too. I was insecure about sex and, 
more specifically, about my body and ev- 
erything it did. One time I was hooking 
up with a guy, and his toilet overflowed 
after I'd gone number two; instead of 
asking him for a plunger, I scooped my 
poop out with a red Solo cup and threw 
it in his kitchen trash. Not my proudest 
moment. I was insecure because I was 
worried he wouldn't like me if he knew 
I was human. The guy must certainly 
have thought somebody he knew was 
inhuman when he found shit in a Solo 
cup on trash day. 

I'm not saying that finding my inner 
feminist made me want to start shitting 


with the door open, but feminism is 
about the freedom to enter every situ- 
ation as an equal, whether it's a voting 
booth or a romantic encounter in a 
guy's camper in your friend's drive- 
way. Being equal gives you confidence, 
and confidence is what good sex is all 
about. When I stopped worrying about 
what the guy thought of me and started 
thinking about what was fun for me (be- 
cause it was my hookup too), I started 
to enjoy sex. And that made sex better 
for everyone. I had a lot of fun with 
that camper guy (and just to be clear, 
he did have a house, but it was far and 
we might have had some/ 
many drinks). It would 
have been a perfect hookup 
if I hadn't had to go into my 
friend's house to use the 
bathroom in the morning. 
I know what you're think- 
ing after hearing about my 
Solo cup incident: Just use a 
bush. But that wasn't an op- 
tion since we were in bear 
country—grizzly bear country. So I did 
that bathroom walk through my friend's 
house and held my head up high, a walk 
of no shame, because I was not in fact 
ashamed. Why would I be ashamed of 
having a great time with an outdoorsy 
mountain man whose last one-night 
stand had been with a pack of wolves in 
a rock cave? Thank you, feminism! 
Feminism can sometimes seem like 
this giant tidal wave, big and amor- 
phous. But feminism is also intimate, 
personal and individual. It's happening 
in bedrooms (and campers) all over this 


BY 
HILARY 


WINSTON 


country. For me feminism is not only 
about the freedom to become president 
(seems like a done deal); it's also about 
the freedom to say to a guy, "You're four 
inches away from my clitoris." And not 
think my life is over if he's offended and 
won't marry me. And the freedom for 
him to say to me, “You're way too close 
to my butthole," or, ^You're way too far 
away from my butthole." And for me not 
to go into a crisis of confidence over that 
criticism is feminism. Yes, a lot of other 
things are feminism, but so is that. I will 
publicly apologize here to the guy I gave 
really, really tight hand jobs to. I wish 
I'd felt empowered enough 
back then to say, “Hey, how 
does this whole hand-job 
thing work? I haven't done 
this much and it's before the 
internet." If we had a time 
machine and that "victim" 
thought feminism would 
have saved him from my 
hand gripping his manhood 
with the force of a hundred 
rubber bands, then I bet he would have 
joined in all the feminist marches. 

I am very proud to be a feminist. And 
I'm not scared that boys won't like me 
because I am one. In fact, I hope after 
reading this you'll consider becoming 
(or staying) a feminist too. Because being 
equal is better for everyone. In bed (and 
in life) you deserve someone who wants 
to make themselves happy as much as 
they want to make you happy. It's how 
everyone actually gets what they want. 
Trust me, feminism is your friend—your 
friend with benefits. 


KOREN SHADMI 


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E 


My wife and I have been hav- 
ing sex on Sundays like clock- 
work. After years of being the 
instigator, I am pleased to 
report that she is now initiat- 
ing sex. Also, Гуе noticed a 
pattern: She consistently starts 
right after we watch Game of 
Thrones. What gives?—R.Q., 
Scottsdale, Arizona 

Game of Thrones has done won- 
ders for Sunday-night sex in for- 
merly fallow relationships: It has 
enough action—of both types—to 
keep guys interested and enough 
intrigue, soap opera-style plotting 
and romance for the ladies. While 
the rampant nudity and frequent 
sex are titillating to both men and 
women, the romance is likely what 
inspires your wife to make the 
moves. Several studies indicate that 
women respond to a combination of 
visual representations of sex and 
a story line/narrative, while men 
simply require the visuals. 


Do penis pumps and penis- 
enlargement pills really work? 
My penis is smaller than aver- 
age when not erect and about 
six inches when fully erect. My 
current girlfriend claims her 
previous boyfriends had much 
larger penises than mine but 
that she enjoys having sex 
with me. I don’t believe her.— 
S.T., Houston, Texas 

Pumps and pills don’t work. 
The thing you need to work on 
isn’t the size of your penis but your 
attitude about what yow've got. 
Over the years we have fielded 
countless questions about penis 
enlargement, average penis size, 
whether penis size matters, etc. 
First of all, your penis isn’t small 
compared with the general popu- 
lation’s. The latest study of any 
significance synthesized data from 
17 global studies to arrive at the 
following numbers, which should 
put your mind at ease: The aver- 
age erect penis is 5.16 inches long, 
and only five percent of men have 
а penis that measures 6.3 inches 
when erect. So you’re doing way 
better than average and are edg- 
ing toward what we would call, in economic 
terms, an upper-middle-class cock. 


І recently started working out at а 
gym. Looking in the mirror, Гуе no- 
ticed that my left biceps is markedly 
smaller than my right. Coincidentally, 
I'm right-handed. Is this normal, and 
how do I fix the imbalance?—M.D., 
Poughkeepsie, New York 

If you're doing curls with a straight bar 
or a preacher curl weight machine, it's easy 
to cheat, which means you could be avoiding 
giving your left biceps maximum resistance. 


PLAYBOY 
ADVISOR 


Use separate dumbbells, one for each hand, 
and make sure you bring the weights up and 
down through your biceps’ full range of 
motion with both arms. People always have 
а dominant arm that they use for opening 
doors, carrying groceries, lifting luggage, 
etc., which is what causes one arm to be big- 
ger than the other. Try to switch these ev- 
eryday tasks to your left, nondominant arm. 
You'll notice that it’s likely weaker from be- 
ing underused. Over time you will develop 
more symmetry, but don't overthink it. Ev- 
eryone's body is asymmetrical, and you're 
probably the only person who notices it. 


What are you supposed to wear 
when you go to a big boxing 
match? When I watch fights on 
TV I see some guys in T-shirts 
while others are wearing really 
nice suits.—G.S., Brockton, 
Massachusetts 

The closer you are to the ring, 
the better you should dress. In most 
seats, nobody will think you’re dis- 
respecting the event or yourself by 
wearing jeans and a hoodie. But if 
you’re sitting on the floor or the first 
few risers, there's a good chance 
you'll end up on TV or on the big 
screens, and here—more than in 
any other sport except tennis and 
golf—you don't want to look like a 
slob. At the very least wear a nice 
polo or crisp collared shirt. A blazer 
wouldn't hurt. Look at all the box- 
ers at the Manny Pacquiao-Floyd 
Mayweather fight: Mike Tyson, 
Sugar Ray Leonard and Oscar De 
La Hoya all wore blazers. Promot- 
ers can even gel away with wearing 
a tuxedo. 


When 1 was growing up, my 
father instilled in me a belief 
that, as a U.S. citizen, I should 
buy only American-made cars. 
His position was based pri- 
marily on patriotism, but as an 
adult I have followed this rule 
because I assumed it was bet- 
ter for the domestic economy if 
my money went to companies 
based in the United States. 
But now, with so many foreign 
vehicles being manufactured 
in the U.S.—and so many U.S. 
automakers having their cars 
manufactured and/or assem- 
bled overseas—my rule seems 
naively nationalistic and eco- 
nomically outdated. What's 
the reality?—C.B., Rochester, 
New York 

There are many realities at play 
in this issue. You're right that the 
Big Three automakers (GM, Ford 
and Chrysler) are sourcing many 
car parts from overseas, and conse- 
quently there is no car on the market 
that's 100 percent American-made. 
Some Big Three cars contain less 
than 50 percent American-made 
parts, and some foreign cars are made with 
up to 75 percent American parts. In either 
case you're supporting the U.S. economy to 
some degree. To ensure you keep most of the 
money on the home front, consult the handy 
annual American Made Index, which ranks 
cars based on both the percentage of domestic 
parts and their final point of assembly. The 
most recent top 10 are overwhelmingly Japa- 
nese, with the Toyota Camry and the Honda 
Odyssey being among the most American car 
models. But the number one most American 
vehicle is the Ford F-150—and it's made by an 
American company. If the F-150 is too big and 


SKIP STERLING 


45 


PLAYBOY 


46 


practical for you, you'll have to settle for the 
second American car on the list: the Corvette. 


lama healthy and energetic 38-year- 
old man. My wife and I recently started 
to dabble in swinging, but Гуе been hav- 
ing complications. I have lost my erec- 
tion on four separate occasions (three 
of which were with the same couple, 
whom we've known for many years and 
are comfortable with). I have a full erec- 
tion when we start out, but when I get 
ready to have sex with the other woman 
my erection disappears and I can't get 
it back. Both of the women we've been 
with are beautiful and I'm attracted to 
them. And I'm not bothered that my 
wife is with the other male. Can you 
help me with this psychological downer? 
It's rather embarrassing and puts a 
crimp on the experience for everyone 
involved.—R.G., Lubbock, Texas 

Sometimes your little head. lets you know 
what your big head is feeling. Just because 
you can't keep it up and. penetrate doesn't 
mean you can't participate in other ways. 
Swinging isn't always a—excuse the pun— 
tit-for-tat endeavor. There are many other 
sexual activities you can explore wholeheart- 
edly and still play a crucial part in the festivi- 
ties, either through oral sex or with toys. Also, 
it’s possible it’s not you but them. In swing- 
ing as in the non-swinging world, sometimes 
you need a little chemistry to get things go- 
ing. Maybe you and your wife haven't found 
the perfect partners yet. Either way, you’re 
still a relative newbie in the swinging world, 
so give yourself a break and don't put any 
pressure on yourself. Find a way to have fun, 
whatever form it might take. 


Ima 40-year-old man who has never 
been married. I work out regularly, 
practice good hygiene and make good 
money as an attorney. Prior to meet- 
ing my current girlfriend, I dated girls 
I’d met on Match.com and at my local 
gym. I was amazed at the carefree at- 
titude they had about condoms. They 
never insisted that I wear one and, as 
a matter of fact, never even brought 
the subject up. The girl I’m with now 
asked “Shouldn’t you wear a condom?” 
the first time—and after I told her I 
was fixed, she was okay with my going 
in bareback. I’m curious if this is a new 
trend. Aren’t women concerned about 
getting pregnant or catching sexually 
transmitted diseases? I’m sure I would 
be.—F.L., Sherman Oaks, California 
You should be concerned. And you should 
also take responsibility for your side of the 
equation and insist on wearing a condom 
whenever you are with a new date. Unfor- 
tunately, the cavalier attitude you describe 
isn’t a new trend, nor is it limited to your 
age group. According to a recent study, only 
60 percent of teenagers report using con- 
doms, and scarily, it turns out they’re prac- 
ticing safer sex than adults do. The same 
study showed that condom use actually de- 
clines with age. So as you make your way 


in life and the dating world, please do your 
part to help reverse that trend. 


For 25 years I was happily married to a 
wonderful woman. We were as close to 
perfect as a couple could get. That be- 
ing said, I lost her to cancer in 2012. It 
was, as you might expect, devastating to 
watch my wife slowly deteriorate and ul- 
timately pass away. Knowing this would 
be the case, I sought out counselors to 
speak to so I would be able to remain 
strong and care for her properly—and 
also deal with my grief afterward. Now, 
I’m doing quite well and feel I’m ready 
to date and possibly pursue a relation- 
ship. This is the problem: I have abso- 
lutely no idea what I’m doing when I 
meet women. I signed up with one of 
the more popular dating sites, but I 
find it too impersonal. Some of my close 
friends try to give me advice, but it all 
boils down to the fact that I was with 
this woman happily for so long that 
I feel really awkward when I speak to 
any other women. I try to be “myself,” 
but I have the feeling of being in way 
over my head. Am I thinking about 
this too much? Any advice is greatly 
appreciated.—G.P., Cleveland, Ohio 

It’s natural to be overwhelmed by emo- 
tions when presented with the idea of being 
with a woman other than your late wife, with 
whom you obviously had an especially close 
relationship. Grief is a powerful thing; it be- 
comes part of us. Three years into the griev- 
ing process isn't that long considering the 
length and depth of your relationship. You 
say you’re ready to try a new relationship, 
and that’s something to honor as mindfully 
as possible as you continue to move forward. 
The fact that you feel in over your head isn’t 
a sign you should ignore. Take it slow, take 
the pressure off yourself; and be honest about 
where you are in life with the women you 
meet and date. You may not be ready to com- 
mit and they may not be either, but only by 
moving forward with it will you learn where 
you stand in life. It’s good that you’re talking 
to friends about it and looking for help. Con- 
tinue to be open and honest and connected, 
but also consider going back to therapy or at 
least talking to a grief counselor about this 
change. This is a big step for you, and you 
don’t need to do it alone or without a bit of 
professional insight and support. 


| recently took a girl Гуе been really 
good friends with for three years on a 
date. We have a history of flirting, and 
I want something more with her. I told 
her how I feel and she said she feels 
the same. I learned she's moving out of 
town in a few months, which puts some 
pressure on the situation. If it works 
out, it will be a long-distance relation- 
ship. I've heard they're tough to pull 
off, but she's worth it. While we were 
on the date, she was giving me subtle 
hints to make a move, just with things 
she said, the way she looked at me and 
her body language. The problem is I 


don't want to make the wrong move. 
After I brought her back to her place, 
we just hugged and then went our sep- 
arate ways. Now I can't help but regret 
that I didn't go in for a kiss. My ques- 
tion is, do girls like it when guys just 
go for things like that? Also, would it 
be a good idea for me to do that the 
next time I see her? She's really cool 
and down-to-earth, so I'm not worried 
about ruining our friendship. I just 
need advice for the next time we go 
on a date, because it will be soon and I 
want to move our relationship further. 
I really hope you can help me.—T.A., 
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 

You sound as though you haven't had a 
lot of dating experience, so you might find 
it useful to hear about the hindsight of those 
on the other side. We've heard too many men 
in midlife say they wish they'd made a move 
when they had the chance. We're talking de- 
cades after a moment like this. With all the 
signs you've listed, you would be perfectly 
justified in making at least an exploratory 
move. If you're rebuffed, so be it. It sounds 
like your relationship can take the hit (we've 
also heard just as mamy stories from men 
who have weathered this sort of misunder- 
standing). Make the move. 


Lately I have been to a couple of res- 
taurants that have communal coed 
sinks. Men and women use separate 
bathrooms but wash their hands at the 
same place. This inevitably means peo- 
ple of both genders are waiting to use 
the same sink. I recently had to wait 
for a woman to touch up her makeup. 
Typically after urinating I don’t feel 
compelled to wash up, but I was afraid 
the woman would judge me if I didn’t. 
And she made me wait for the privi- 
lege. I’m not sure I’m into this much 
equality.—D.V., New York, New York 

Equality is one thing. Equivalent bath- 
room behavior is another thing altogether. 
In a shared space, always, regardless of the 
genders involved, be on your best behavior. 
Just because you trust yourself and your hy- 
giene doesn’t mean every other guy in the 
men’s room will wash up thoroughly. Not 
only are they potentially spreading their 
germs, you could be unwittingly bringing 
their fecal matter into your french fries when 
you go back to the table. Hygiene aside, be 
patient and polite. Wash your hands, put 
the seat down after you go, don’t primp your 
pompadour too much, and above all, don’t 
do what a particularly tall and somewhat 
tipsy male friend of ours did when he mis- 
took the communal sink for a urinal. 


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. 


@ 2015 Lorillard 


SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking 
Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, 
Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy. 


Think 


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e 


ım JEREMY RENNER 


A candid conversation with the indie darlıng turned action star 
about the important stuff: work, love, tabloid rumors and real estate 


Moviegoers tend to like Jeremy Renner best 
when he plays two-fisted, daring, close-to-the- 
vest tough guys. He was, after all, so convinc- 
ing as The Hurt Locker’s Army maverick de- 
fusing bombs in Iraq that he snagged a 2010 
best actor Oscar nomination. Playing a hot- 
wired, nothing-to-lose Boston bank robber in 
The Town the next year, Renner clinched a best 
supporting actor Oscar nomination. He's no 
less watchable when he dials down the macho, 
as he's shown as American Hustle's shady New 
Jersey mayor and as Kill the Messenger's perse- 
cuted whistle-blower. But he's completely in the 
zone drawing a crossbow as Hawkeye in the 
Avengers superhero flicks, busting out Muay 
Thai moves as a member of the Mission: Im- 
possible spy team and running up the side of a 
three-story building as a genetically enhanced 
black-ops agent in The Bourne Legacy. That's 
why this is the summer of Renner. He's in two 
epics: Avengers: Age of Ultron, which topped 
the box office, and Mission: Impossible— 
Rogue Nation, coming in July. 

Offscreen Renner is equally colorful. He 
caused talk for commenting on the bodacious 
breasts of Jennifer Lopez, his co-presenter, at 
this year’s Golden Globe Awards. He and his 
Avengers co-star Chris Evans stoked the internet 
outrage machine when they jokingly referred to 


‘As a very late bloomer, even physically, I was 
still always confident when it came to sports. I 
dominated in a lot of things. Even if I didn’t 
always like school, I had a practical sensibil- 
ity about things.” 


their fellow superhero Black Widow as a slut. 
Evans apologized, while Renner pointed out the 
obvious: He was talking about fictional behav- 
ior of a fictional character. He has also flipped 
the bird at those who speculate about his sexual 
orientation. On one subject, though, he has been 
tight-lipped: the gnarly ongoing divorce from 
his wife of 10 months, 24-year-old actress-model 
Sonni Pacheco, with whom he recently came to 
а joint-custody agreement concerning their two- 
year-old daughter, Ava. 

Jeremy Lee Renner (nickname Renni) was 
born in working-class Modesto, California 
on January 7, 1971 to a mother who ruled a 
roost of four kids and a father who managed 
a bowling center and later became a college 
administrator. (They divorced when Renner, 
the oldest, was eight.) After graduating from 
Beyer High School, where sports and playing 
in a rock band helped him overcome shyness, he 
attended Modesto Junior College, gravitating 
toward computer science until he discovered the 
school’s theater department. 

In 1992, after studying at the American 
Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, he 
moved to Los Angeles and landed the lead role 
in 1995’s National Lampoon’s Senior Trip, 
starred in a series of beer commercials and did 
TV movies and series guest spots including a 


"I was so small-town that when I won my first 
lead, in National Lampoon’s Senior Trip, I 
called my mom and told her, Тт going to 
Toronto to film a movie.’ But I didn’t even 
know where Toronto was.” 


role as a vampire on Angel. His 2002 Indepen- 
dent Spirit Award-nominated performance as 
the people-eating serial killer in Dahmer helped 
pave the way to his big-budget breakthrough role 
as a dirty cop m S.W.A.T., followed by 28 Weeks 
Later, The Assassination of Jesse James by the 
Coward Robert Ford and a stint on the short- 
lived 2009 NYPD cop series The Unusuals. 
But once Renner collected multiple award nom- 
inations for The Hurt Locker and The Town, he 
moved up to legitimate stardom. 

PLAYBOY sent Contributing Editor Stephen 
Rebello, who last interviewed Joaquin Phoenix, 
to catch up with Renner. Reports Rebello: 
“Jeremy Renner' experience augmenting his act- 
ing by dabbling in real estate has paid off: We 
met at his sprawling, sleek home, sitting on a ter- 
race that rings the Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired 
house. The view was spectacular. Renner has a 
watchful gaze that many people mistake for a sus- 
picious nature. But during our long conversa- 
tions I found him to be unexpectedly bighearted, 
philosophical and thoughtful. It’s astonishing to 
watch Hawkeye turn into Mr. Rogers when he’s 
playing at home with his two-year-old.” 


PLAYBOY: You've grabbed attention and 
critical acclaim for roles in indie-minded 
movies as different as The Hurt Locker 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL MULLER 


"T want to learn to fly a helicopter. Has hav- 
ing my daughter stopped me from that? We 
can croak at any moment doing the stupidest 
things. What message would that send? That 
living life with fear is a good thing?" 


49 


PLAYBOY 


50 


and Kill the Messenger, but audiences 
know you best as an action hero in The 
Avengers, Mission: Impossible and The 
Bourne Legacy. Are you anywhere near as 
fearless as those characters? 

RENNER: Fear is a huge part of most peo- 
ple’s lives. It’s a very oppressive human 
emotion, the most powerful human 
emotion. Every day from when I was 
22 to 32, I deliberately and consciously 
did things to fight fear. Things I was 
afraid of, like guns, sharks, heights, 
success, intimacy? I’ve checked those 
off the list. Even in the beginning of 
my career, my confidence always came 
from being fearless. I always went in to 
auditions with the attitude “I dare you 
not to cast me.” I went in and did what 
I thought was honest, truthful and just 
different. Maybe it was wrong. I didn’t 
care. Maybe they thought it was the 
worst. I didn’t care. I just went in, and 
still go in, with absolute fearlessness. 
It’s my strength as an actor. 

PLAYBOY: You mentioned guns. Many 
of your characters use them. Are you 
still afraid? 

RENNER: A gun is a really easy and ter- 
rifying thing to be afraid of. I like guns 
now, but I have only a couple—a couple 
at this structure and one at another. I got 
good at them, and then I found a love 
for them. 

PLAYBOY: Do you carry a gun? 

RENNER: No. For me it’s for home pro- 
tection or sport shooting or target 
practice. I’m not a hunter. I spent a lot 
of time training for movies, shooting 
and getting comfortable with weap- 
ons. There’s no fear for me ever in a 
weapon now. I also have a few swords, 
but that’s because of what they mean 
to me; there’s a lot of history behind 
them. They’re all tucked away and hid- 
den now that I have a baby. 

PLAYBOY: What risks won't you take? 
RENNER: None. I’ve been riding a mo- 
torcycle for a long time. I used to be 
kind of daring on it. Now I ride be- 
cause I enjoy the experience. I’m not 
a daredevil doing wheelies, and I don’t 
ride fast. That’s not because of my 
daughter; it’s because that’s where I’m 
at in my life. I'm not jumping out of 
planes. But would I, if I had the op- 
portunity? I’ve wanted to do that for a 
good 30 years, so I would consider it. I 
want to learn to fly a helicopter. Is that 
dangerous? Sure, I guess it’s just as 
dangerous as anything else in life. Has 
having my daughter, Ava, stopped me 
from doing that? We can croak at any 
moment doing the stupidest things. It 
would be a great disservice to her if, 
when she was older, she thought, Dad 
stopped riding motorcycles or started 
getting soft and protective of his own 
life because he wanted to be around 
for me. What message does that send? 
That living life with fear is a good 
thing? I’d rather that she knows Га go 
out with a smile on my face living ac- 


countably, consciously and responsibly 
in my actions. 

PLAYBOY: When was the last time you had 
to defend yourself? 

RENNER: I’ve never been in a real physical 
fight. There’s no reason to fight—unless 
I have to protect my life or the life of 
someone I care about. I’ve been in alter- 
cations, and there have been a few mo- 
ments when I had to put someone down. 
PLAYBOY: Who? 

RENNER: A drunk guy in a bar—it’s always 
that scenario. A guy got really drunk 
and pushed Julia Stiles, my co-star [in 
the 2005 movie A Little Trip to Heaven]. 
I kindly choked him out and remedied 
the situation. I’ve also had to choke peo- 
ple out because they pushed my mom or 
knocked my sister down, but I’ve never 
felt like a badass. 

PLAYBOY: Those sound like physical 
fights to us. Let’s talk about the inci- 
dent involving your sister that you 
mentioned in a 2012 interview about 
a Christmas Eve bar fight. You said, 


Igointo 
auditions 
with absolute 
fearlessness. 
It^s my strength 
as an actor. 


“This guy choked me with the scarf I 
was wearing. He called me a fag be- 
cause I was wearing a scarf! Then he 
shoved my sister and I got behind 
him and I choked him out—put him 
to sleep." That same interview was one 
of the few in which you've addressed 
rumors about your sexual preference. 
RENNER: Í was mad at the interviewer 
and was kind of hammering him, say- 
ing, ^I thought we were doing the 
cover of Hollywood Reporter, not OK! 
magazine." And while I was hammer- 
ing him, I figured, Okay, I'll speak to 
this. But as a general rule I don't re- 
spond to questions about my personal 
life. I'm not going to try to prove what 
I am or am not. It's silly, right? When 
you google yourself and the first thing 
that comes up is “Jeremy Renner gay," 
it's like, “Oh, now you've arrived. 
You're now a giant movie star." So I 
just had a big laugh about it. I don't 
care, ultimately, if that's what people 
want to think, read and care about. 


Fucking say whatever the hell you 
want about me. Look at where we're 
at socially—leaps and bounds ahead 
of where we started. That's an amaz- 
ing thing. To suggest that it's nega- 
tive, that being gay is a terrible thing, 
a perversion or whatever—I just don't 
get it. Don't you wish we were in a 
world where we're not shaming, judg- 
ing and boxing people in? 

PLAYBOY: Unlike many actors, you've 
managed to maintain a profitable side 
career for years, flipping houses with 
your longtime friend and business part- 
ner Kristoffer Winters. 

RENNER: In 2003 I had no money, but I 
had a contract to do S.W.A.T. My broth- 
er Kristoffer—he's a family friend for- 
ever, but I call him my brother—came 
into a little bit of money, 10 grand or 
something. We'd lived together prior to 
S.WA.T. and kept talking about how pay- 
ing rent was such a dumb thing because 
you can't write it off on your taxes. It's 
like throwing away money. We always 
wanted to invest in property. It became 
a situation where I could get a condo 
in the Valley and he could do the same, 
or since we already lived together, we 
could buy a house together. That's what 
we did, and we fixed it up the way we 
wanted for 30 grand. 

PLAYBOY: You flipped that house, right? 
RENNER: We had a little wine shindig at 
the house. Our real estate agent was 
there, and someone who was at the par- 
ty offered twice what we paid for it. We 
turned that money into a bigger house 
and kept rolling from there. Being ac- 
tors, we thought if it all went to hell, at 
least we'd have a roof over our heads. 
We didn't want to do the stock market 
or anything else, so we kept acquiring 
bigger structures, and now it's 20-some 
houses later between the two of us. 
Some we did on our own, but mostly we 
did them together. 

PLAYBOY: And your MO is to live in the 
houses before selling? 

RENNER: Each house has always been 
our primary residence. We never con- 
sidered ourselves flippers. We were 
just investing in the next home we were 
going to live in. We live in the houses 
while the work's being done. Most peo- 
ple couldn't do that, and we've done it 
umpteen times. It's like going back to 
camping and caveman days—no elec- 
tricity, no running water. [Director- 
writer] Preston Sturges was the first 
owner of the last house we were in, and 
Charlie Chaplin was married there. We 
wanted to preserve some sort of Holly- 
wood history in a very transient town. 
PLAYBOY: You guys made headlines in 
2013 for selling for $24 million a re- 
done art deco-style mansion that you 
bought for $7 million. By now some- 
one must have pitched you two on 
doing a reality-TV series on celebrity 
house renovation. 

RENNER: Í haven't done a house with 


Kristoffer in a while. I don't have a lot 
of time for that stuff anymore. He went 
off and did that big house on his own, 
then started a design firm. My mother 
and sister work there too. A lot of TV 
offers have come in. Ellen DeGeneres 
talked about me coming on as a judge 
on one of her shows. Kristoffer and I 
considered putting together our own 
TV show that I was just going to pro- 
duce but not appear in. 

PLAYBOY: What about the house we’re in 
right now? 

RENNER: The builder-owner of this house 
really had it pimped out for 1960, when 
it was built. It was like a Star Trek home 
with panels and buttons. It just needed 
to be brought up to today’s standards, 
and I wanted to keep the integrity ofthe 
home of this amazing couple who raised 
their two girls here. I have another 
home in Tahoe where I spend half my 
time, but this is my home now, and I'm 
pretty sure this is my last structure. It's 
something I built, and it's a representa- 
tion of every house I built and pretty 
much every movie I've done. This house 
represents a lot of who I am spiritually. 
'This will be my daughter's place in the 
future. I own it now, but Ava owns me. 
When she drew her first breath and with 
that palmar reflex grabbed my finger, 
the thought came to me, If all goes well, 
this same scenario will happen when I 
take my last breath. 

PLAYBOY: After you appeared as a pre- 
senter at the Golden Globe Awards in 
January, some criticized you for making 
a quip about your co-presenter Jennifer 
Lopez's cleavage in her low-cut gown. 
When it came time to give out the award, 
she asked, "You want me to open the en- 
velope? I’ve got the nails," and you said, 
"You've got the globes too." 

RENNER: I'd just watched the show's 
opening monologue, thinking, Those 
girls, co-hosts Amy Poehler and Tina 
Fey, are so funny, awesome and pretty 
racy. So I went out, and then that hap- 
pened. It's my sense of humor. I don't 
take things too seriously. I didn't watch 
any of the Globes. I went to have a drink 
at the bar, and I kept hearing people all 
night saying, "Dude, that was the funni- 
est thing," "Bro, that was the best part of 
the show." I was like, What are you talk- 
ing about? I was clueless. 

PLAYBOY: It blew up on social media. 
RENNER: Actually, Jennifer thought it 
was fucking funny and got a little sweaty 
and maybe even turned on by the whole 
experience. We partied at a couple of 
events afterward and had a good time. 
Other people started running their 
mouths about it. Everybody's entitled 
to an opinion, but I can't be bothered. 
We gave zero fucks. I would have made 
a public apology if it really hurt her feel- 
ings. It was the complete opposite, and 
she's gone on record as saying she thinks 
Renner's hysterical. 

PLAYBOY: You've been going through a 


highly publicized divorce from Sonni 
Pacheco, your wife of 10 months. You've 
settled the custody issues regarding your 
daughter, but some ofthe accusations that 
were made public from the court docu- 
ments must be especially uncomfortable 
for someone as private as you are. 

RENNER: I haven't slept more than four 
hours a night in the past week. My skin's 
breaking out. I've got dark circles under 
my eyes. I'm dehydrated. I look like 
shit. I felt pretty insecure walking into 
a photo shoot this morning, and I was 
running late because I had just gotten 
out of my fourth deposition for the di- 
vorce. I see anything that takes me away 
from my daughter, whether it's some- 
thing good like making Mission: Impos- 
sible 5 or something bad like my divorce, 
as a distraction and an obstacle. Now, if 
anything takes me away and I don't get 
to see her, I just won't do it. I don't care 
what you pay me. All my energy goes 
toward her and her well-being. We split 
the time with Ava equally now. When it's 


My dad's sex talk 
was *No glove, 
no love." He 
opened a drawer. 
“Here are 
the condoms." 


Daddy and Ava time, that's all I do. 
PLAYBOY: Your parents got divorced as 
well, right? 

RENNER: When I was eight and in third 
grade. They didn't have a lot of money, 
and after the divorce, we moved around 
a lot. Up until junior high, I thought a 
new grade meant a new school for every- 
body. Maybe that contributed to my shy- 
ness. I had to constantly either be very 
gregarious and go meet new people or 
just be the observer that I was and still 
am. I was the oldest of four kids, and my 
mother had her hands full at home. At 
that time, when I was young, my dad was 
managing a bowling center and ended 
up becoming a partner in another bowl- 
ing center in Lodi. After the divorce, he 
went to get an education and worked as 
an administrator at California State Uni- 
versity, Stanislaus, where he's been for 
the past 25 years or so. We're a very close 
family, all of us. 

PLAYBOY: What early jobs did you have? 
RENNER: I started working when I was 


10, delivering papers, working summers 
washing cars and then in high school 
bagging groceries. If I wanted some- 
thing, I had to go earn it. 

PLAYBOY: Did you ever work at your fa- 
ther's bowling center? 

RENNER: No, but I started bowling when 
I was three and had a 225 average at the 
age of 12. I toured a lot as a semipro 
and bowled against grown-ass people. 
Out of 500 competitors, I would take 
17th place. I was very competitive and 
played a lot of sports—baseball and es- 
pecially soccer. I was nimble, fast, small 
and wiry. In bowling, you have to beat 
your own score, though. If I didn't get 
225 or break 200, I couldn't deal with 
it. I always joke that the game put me in 
therapy. It didn't really, but it was some- 
thing I had to pull away from because I 
was not enjoying it anymore. 

PLAYBOY: What memories do you have of 
growing up in Modesto? 

RENNER: It was a great place to grow up 
in the 1970s. We didn't lock our doors. 
I was a latchkey kid, given a lot of free- 
dom, and all my friends were either 
doing good things together or getting 
in trouble together—stupid stuff like 
making bottle rockets or toilet papering 
a house. Or maybe I threw a water bal- 
loon at a car driving 50 miles an hour 
or shined mirrors in people's eyes while 
they were driving. A cop would come by 
the house, “Do you know what your boy 
did with his group of friends?" and slap 
us on the wrist. 

PLAYBOY: How do you most remember 
yourself back then? 

RENNER: As a very late bloomer, even 
physically, I was still always confident 
when it came to sports. I dominated in 
a lot of things. I knew I had separated 
myself from the pack. I was always light- 
hearted, funny, mischievous and didn't 
take things too seriously. I didn't feel 
confident until my senior year in high 
school, when I really was putting myself 
out there and being gregarious and fun- 
ny. I was always driven. Even if I didn't 
always like school, I had a practical sensi- 
bility about things. Getting good grades 
would get me more freedom. I never al- 
lowed myself a bad emotion or thought. 
That was all suppressed. [laughs] Hence, 
look at the characters I play now. All 
those roles are therapeutic. 

PLAYBOY: When did you discover sex? 
RENNER: When I stopped kicking and 
chasing around the soccer ball, I started 
chasing girls. It was later in high school 
that I blossomed in that realm. 

PLAYBOY: How did you lose your virginity? 
RENNER: My story is awful, just like every- 
body else's. It was just this random, un- 
comfortable thing, and I was so nervous. 
I remember my dad's sex talk was "Son, 
no glove, no love." When I was a teenag- 
er, he was a single dad, and I'm sure he 
was kind of prowling around. He opened 
a drawer. "Here are the condoms." 
PLAYBOY: When did you first use them? 


51 


PLAYBOY 


52 


RENNER: I was a senior and my girlfriend 
was a freshman in the same high school. 
She and her mom would come into the 
store where I was bagging groceries. 
They were new in town. We were hav- 
ing a little teenage party at my dad’s 
house—some of my bandmates, my girl- 
friend’s twin sister, some of their friends. 
It started at five in the afternoon. We 
had music going, had a couple of beers, 
and then, cut to midnight. Knowing the 
opportunity was finally going to present 
itself, I had put on the condom well be- 
fore we were actually going to do it. 
PLAYBOY: How long is “well before”? 
RENNER: Like four to six hours. I was 
so nervous, I didn’t want to put it on 
inside out or upside down or anything. 
It happened on my dad’s water bed, 
where we both sort of passed out. I’m 
pretty sure it was uneventful for both 
of us. I woke up to her mom calling 
on the phone. I felt bad that her mom 
was angry with me—as I think any par- 
ent would be. I'd still see them when 
I was bagging groceries. I’d see her 
at school. But she certainly wasn’t al- 
lowed to hang out after school any- 
more. They kiboshed it very quickly. 
PLAYBOY: Do you ever wonder if your ex- 
girlfriend has seen you in movies? 
RENNER: I think she’s still in Modesto, 
married and has some kids. But I have 
no idea what she thinks. Maybe she goes 
to the movies and thinks, Okay, Hawk- 
eye was my first. Or she could have a 
voodoo doll of me, for all I know. 
PLAYBOY: How did acting enter 
the picture? 

RENNER: It was out of the blue. I fin- 
ished high school and knew I should 
go to college. I’ve got a buck-75 IQ and 
was accepted to some good schools— 
the University of California, Berkeley 
was one of them. I would have had to 
borrow money to go to school without 
even knowing what I wanted to study. 
My dad was working as a counselor for 
kids coming out of high school. He rec- 
ommended that I stay in Modesto and 
get my undergrad work in math and 
science out of the way. He said, “For 
the rest of your units, go play. Pick a 
class and suck at it. Try the shit you 
never thought you would ever want 
to do.” He gave me permission to fail. 
He had no judgment about whatever I 
wanted to be. What a gift that was. 
PLAYBOY: So theater was your chance to 
go play? 

RENNER: I majored in computer sci- 
ence, but I also took a speech class. 
Terrifying. Finally, like throwing darts 
at something, I checked out an act- 
ing class. I thought, “I like Michael J. 
Fox on Family Ties. He’s funny. That’s 
what acting is.” Luckily, I had an 
amazing teacher, Charline Freedman, 
God rest her soul, who exposed me to 
what the life of an actor really is. Act- 
ing gave me a community, a commu- 
nion of people—a very exposing and 


vulnerable place but also a safe one 
because you’re hiding in a character 
when you're onstage. Suddenly I went 
full-tilt boogie into it. I was like, This is 
what I want to be doing. 

PLAYBOY: There’s a 1990 video of you 
on YouTube playing the Scarecrow in 
a junior-college production of The Wiz- 
ard of Oz. 

RENNER: That was the first play I invit- 
ed my family to come see what I was 
doing—acting, singing and dancing in 
front of 1,500 people. For my family 
it was a case of "Who is this guy?" I 
started doing tortured, heavier roles 
in emotional family dramas—Orphans, 
Ordinary People—and that's when I re- 
ally dug in with psychology. Studying 
psychology sent me on a journey of 
self-awareness. I had guidance from 
my father, who has studied psychol- 
ogy. He's also a theologist who in- 
troduced me to a lot of religions and 
exposed me to higher thinking and 
various philosophies. Psychology was 


Psychology was 
the subject I 
clung to. Acting 
and human be- 
havior became 
one to me. 


the subject I really clung to, and act- 
ing and human behavior became one 
to me. That helped me realize I need- 
ed to take off the blinders of a small 
town and go explore myself, my fears 
and my artistry. 

PLAYBOY: Were your parents okay with 
your serious acting ambitions? 

RENNER: They were supportive, but they 
didn't know quite what to do with me. 
I found out later that my parents were 
freaking out. Within this two-year peri- 
od, I went to San Francisco and studied, 
did play after play and said, “I’m moving 
down to Los Angeles." I'd never really 
spent any time there, but I knew that's 
where I needed to go. I didn't want a ca- 
reer in theater, because I would always 
struggle and not make much money, 
which wasn't the best scenario for me to 
be able to raise a family one day. 
PLAYBOY: In your early 20s you already 
had a goal to raise a family? 

RENNER: Well, to get married later in 
my life, but yeah. Like Jed Clampett, 


I packed up the old truck and moved 
a bunch of shit down. I got an agent 
quickly. I was very driven and even 
kept an organizer with a calendar. I 
worked enough to call myself a work- 
ing actor. But it was difficult for me to 
communicate to my family in Modesto 
what it was like here in L.A. They 
didn't see what we called "the suck” 
of it all—that I was living on 10 bucks 
a month, trying to stay warm, eating 
doughnut holes and living a few nights 
in my car. I leaned on the family I 
made down here—people who were 
doing what I was doing. I was so small- 
town that when I won my first lead, in 
National Lampoon’s Senior Trip, 1 called 
my mom and told her, "I'm going to 
Toronto to film a movie.” But I didn't 
even know where Toronto was. 
PLAYBOY: How quickly did you find your 
social groove in Hollywood? 

RENNER: Quickly. I was also in a band 
here as a side project with a bunch of 
rock stars from Tonic. We met up doing 
karaoke at the now sadly not with us 
bar J. Sloan's in West Hollywood and 
wound up doing a bunch of acoustic 
gigs around town. It had an Eagles 
kind of sound but edgier. It was fun, 
but that's when S.W.A.T. happened. 
I found a brother for life with Colin 
Farrell on that one, and my movie ca- 
reer really took off. 

PLAYBOY: Did casting people tell you 
that you had the face and vibe for 
darker roles? 

RENNER: My resting face can be very 
stern, like “murderous resting face." I 
inherited that from my mom, a nurturer, 
protector and tough, tough woman with 
a soft gooey center. She's like a mama 
bear: You poke her with a stick and you'll 
get a claw. My father has much more of 
the almost female energy—very emo- 
tional and communicative. My higher 
self is more tuned in with my dad. I still 
don't know how people perceive me, 
and ultimately I don't care. They seem 
to think I want to murder them or I 
want to fuck them. 

PLAYBOY: You mentioned earlier that 
you've recently had some distractions 
that have kept you from your daugh- 
ter, including Mission: Impossible—Rogue 
Nation, which of course stars Tom Cruise. 
Were the reports of production difficul- 
ties exaggerated? 

RENNER: This Mission was like all the 
Missions—great action set pieces with 
an idea of a story somewhere in there. 
There have been four successful versions 
before this one, so why would I fight 
the process? I just went and gave to the 
best of my ability in the scenario I was 
in. Now, was it the best scenario for me? 
'The best at what I'm good at? Fuck, no. 
Not having any information about what 
the heck is going on doesn't empower 
any artists to be at the best of their abili- 
ty. I trusted Tom Cruise, [director] Chris 
McQuarrie (continued on page 145) 


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When the Deepwater Horizon blew five years ago, 
a desperate BP flooded the Gulf with oil-dispersing 
chemicals. Did the cleanup do more harm than the spill? 


BY LINDA MARSA 


ILLUSTRATION BY EDEL RODRIGUEZ 
55 


David Hill never imagined that just 
doing his job would destroy his life. A 
fourth-generation fisherman raised in 
Bayou La Batre, a village on Alabama’s 
Gulf Coast, he also worked as a captain 
on 500-ton utility ships that service 
offshore-drilling platforms in the Gulf. 
The 55-year-old would routinely work 
from dawn to dusk during four-week- 
long stints on the water, earning himself 
and his wife a comfortable lifestyle, with 
a sprawling house on a 20-acre plot 
of land. “I had a thriving career and 
plenty of money in my pocket,” he says. 
“We could do whatever we wanted—eat 
out, go on vacations.” 

Then the Deepwater Horizon 
offshore oil rig exploded, killing 11 
people and spewing millions of gallons 
of oil into the Gulf. Hill joined the ar- 
mada hastily hired by BP, the British oil 
giant that owned the rig, to help con- 
tain the damage. He spent six months 
on the water, mopping up oil as lead 
captain on a 210-foot vessel. The ac- 
rid smell of petroleum mixed with the 
chemical dispersants used to break up 
the oil permeated the air. Hill and his 
crew were hammered with excruciat- 
ing headaches, coughing and nausea. 


“There was no way to escape,” he re- 
calls. “The fumes were so overwhelming 
they would drop you to your knees.” 
The well was finally sealed, after 87 
torturous days, on July 15, 2010. But 
Hill’s health continued to deteriorate. 
That November he was hospitalized with 
pneumonia-like symptoms, and doctors 
removed an infected lymph node from 
his left armpit. He was hospitalized 
again in January 2011 with pneumonia 
and quarantined in a glassed-in isola- 
tion room. He had an infection in his 
neck the size of a softball and his white- 
blood-cell count plummeted so low doc- 
tors thought he had leukemia. “They 
told me I had no immune system, and if 
my wife hadn’t brought me in when she 
did, I would have been dead,” he says. 
In the years since, Hill has had nine 
surgeries, including removal of his gall- 
bladder and thyroid. He suffers from 
severe bouts of diarrhea, stabbing pains 
that make it impossible to sleep and 
chronic itching that has left blisters 


and scars all over his body. He has no 
energy, his eyesight is failing, and his 
short-term memory is shot. No longer 
able to work, he has had to sell off his 
possessions and now lives in a mobile 
home on disability payments of $1,200 
a month while the unpaid medical bills 
pile up. “I’ve lost everything,” he says, 
barely choking back tears. "It makes me 
angry. I just wanted to help clean up the 
Gulf, and this is what I get for trying." 

Hill is not alone. Hundreds, perhaps 
thousands, of other Gulf residents are 
stricken with the same constellation of 
crippling symptoms. 

On the (continued on page 140) 


“I know a game we can play....” 


AHEAD ОК 


TIME 


An exclusive interview with Tula, the controversial 
woman who became the first transgender model to 
bare all in Playboy, almost a quarter century ago 


r 


D 


By Shane Michael Singh 


efore Bruce Jenner sat down with Diane 
Sawyer, before Laverne Cox earned an 
Emmy nod for Orange Is the New Black and 
before President Barack Obama appointed 


Indeed, Tula came into the world as Barry Cossey. She 
knew she was different from the beginning—a woman born 
in a man's body. In 1974, after years of hormone therapy and 
counseling as well as a breast augmentation, she completed 


the first transgender woman 

to a senior government 

position, there was Tula. A 

striking six-foot-tall British model whose 
face graced magazine covers and popped 
up in national ad campaigns for vodka 
and lingerie in the 1970s, Caroline "Tula" 
Cossey never yearned to be more than a 
working model and, someday, a wife. But 
when her enormous success as a model 
backfired into public hysteria, she had deci- 
sions to make. She could stand and fight, or 
she could run away. She chose to fight. In 
the wake of it all, Tula would become the 
first of many things, much to her surprise. 
In June 1981, Tula debuted as a Bond girl 
in For Your Eyes Only. To promote the film, 
she, along with the film's other Bond girls, 
appeared in a PLAYBOY pictorial, images 


from which appear in these pages. Tula's career was soar- 
ing. Life was good. But everything changed the following 
year. The British tabloid News of the World revealed Tula’s 
secret in a single headline: JAMES BOND GIRL WAS A BOY. 


Tula as Barry Cossey, born ina 
tiny Norfolk, England village. 


her transition with gender-reassignment 
surgery at a London hospital. 

The tabloid's revelation in 1982 turned 
her into a media sensation. She became 
known as the "transsexual Bond girl." Peo- 
ple around the world—some naive, some 
ill-willed and many flat-out confused— 
wanted to know her story. So she decided 
to tell it, to own it and become a poised, 
albeit reluctant, leader in educating the 
world about an ignored, misunderstood 
and often-maligned minority. 

Over the next decade, Tula would pen 
two memoirs, battle the British govern- 
ment to change her gender on her birth 
certificate and talk about her transi- 
tion on programs including The Howard 
Stern Show and The Arsenio Hall Show. She 
would also marry a wealthy businessman, 


who deserted her mere days after their honeymoon. As a 
beautiful woman at the forefront of a sociosexual-rights 
struggle, Tula approached PLAYBOY and asked to pose 
for the magazine. We signed on. In September 1991, she 


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became the first transgender woman to appear 
in these pages in her own pictorial. The picto- 
rial reignited a media firestorm. Hard Copy, for 
example, played Tom Jones’s “She’s a Lady” and 
Tower of Power's "You're Still a Young Man" as 
a lead-in to an interview with her. By 1993, Tula 
had disappeared from the public eye. 

At a time when the transgender commu- 
nity is experiencing a historical and cultural 
turning point in acceptance, exposure and 
understanding, PLAYBOY wanted to know what 
had happened to the groundbreaking model- 
author-activist. We found Tula, now 60, living 
a quiet married life in suburban Atlanta as 
Caroline Cossey, having ditched the pseudonym 
she adopted as a model. Coincidentally, she was 
in the process of converting her best-selling 
memoir, My Story, into an e-book for a summer 
release. In her first interview in 20 years, the 
Bond girl speaks candidly on a range of topics, 
from life after PLAYBOY to Bruce Jenner to her 
own public persecution. As she says of the chang- 
ing attitudes toward the trans community, “I 
feel like I was probably so many years too early.” 


PLAYBOY: Was your retirement from public life 
voluntary or forced? 

COSSEY: My career had definitely taken a 
turn. I was being offered only trans roles on 
shows like Hill Street Blues. I thought, No, 
that's not right. I didn't like it. There's a dif- 
ference between being known as Tula the 
transsexual international model versus just 
a successful model. It wasn't the same. I felt 
like a circus act. I was also on a tour for my 


second book, doing eight interviews a day. It 
became overwhelming, and I got burnt out. 
Two, three years into it I worried about my 
sanity. I wanted quiet. I wanted peace of mind 
and to fall back into society in a more regu- 
lar manner as a loving and supportive wife. 
For that reason, I became reclusive for an 
awfully long time. 

PLAYBOY: How long have you been married? 
COSSEY: This year is our 23rd anniversary. My 
husband is Canadian, and we got married in 
a church in Montreal. My birth certificate still 
said I was male, but they overlooked it when 
we got married, so it wasn't a problem. I'm 
enjoying my life right now in Atlanta. We have 
a little home here and a place in Florida on 
the beach. My sister is in America, as is my 
mom, and we spend as much time together 
as a family as possible. 

PLAYBOY: It's surprising you would choose to 
retire in the heart of the Bible Belt. 

COSSEY: When I first moved here, I'd tell peo- 
ple, and they'd be shocked. They'd say, “Oh 
my God, you'll wake (continued on page 136) 


LEY'S 
CHOICE 
Mows120w35 
TRAVEL SHOTS 


BEST 


FIGURE FANTASY 


typical late-summer afternoon 
in Ireland: mid-60s, windy, 
sunny, cloudy and a 99 per- 
cent chance of rain. I am in 
Mullingar, a town of 20,000 
in Westmeath County, 50 kilome- 
ters from the geographic center 
of the Emerald Isle. Westmeath is 
not known for rolling hills or ver- 
dant landscapes about which Yeats 
penned. There is no charming 
harbor or seaside vista as there is 
in Killarney or Kinsale. The land 
here is flat, the terrain the color 


of straw, and it’s about as pictur- 
esque as the outskirts of Toledo. 
Thankfully I am not here for the 
scenery but to meet a boxer, a 
Mullingar-born-and-raised fighter 
who may become Ireland’s next 
great champion. 

A little past noon that boxer whips 
his blue BMW into the parking lot. 
He is John Joe Nevin, a winner of 
seven Irish amateur national titles 
and a silver medal in the 2012 Lon- 
don Olympics. The driver's window 
lowers. I see a warm countenance. 


65 


66 


A gap-toothed smile. The unblemished face of a 
camera-flash-quick counterpuncher. “Hop in the back 
with the lads,” John Joe chirps merrily. 

The car is stuffy and hot, the air rife with Axe 
body spray. “So,” continues John Joe, introducing 
his very own E, Turtle and Johnny Drama, “dis is 
my brother Paddy Boy, dis is my cousin David and 
dis is my other cousin, Joe.” Like John Joe, they 
have crew cuts, sharp jawlines and garish tattoos. 
Unlike John Joe, they are not merry. They sit with 
legs spread and arms folded, saying nothing. While 
John Joe, 26, has fought across the globe from 
Kansas City to Kazakhstan, the others are far less 
comfortable around strangers. 

The chilly reception isn’t surprising. John Joe 
and the lads aren’t your typical Irish but travel- 
ers, also known—in varying degrees of derogatory 
parlance—as pavees, gypsies, knackers, tinkers and 
pikeys. Numbering an estimated 29,500 through- 
out Ireland, travelers are an ethnic minority who, 
for centuries, roamed the country and earned their 
livelihoods plying various trades and doing odd 
jobs. That has changed. Most of today's travelers 
have swapped their caravans for houses and have 
earned—fairly or not—a reputation for engaging 
in family feuds, drinking, bare-knuckle fighting, 
mooching off the state and making money in less 
honorable ways (stealing, scams, etc.). Internation- 
ally, thanks to Guy Ritchie's 2000 film Snatch and 
the U.K.-U.S. TV series My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, 
travelers are regarded with amusement, viewed 

as an odd and anachronis- 
tic lot prone to scrapping, 


Qutsiders are bad manners, petty crime 


and a tragic fashion sense. 
ine I On their own soil, percep- 
anomalies in сое tar less Kina The 


non-bleeding hearts, i.e., 
traveler com- the majority of the Irish, 
fall into two camps. Some 


munities, and look at travelers as decent 


folks with a hearty supply 


for the most of bad eggs, while others 


consider them a blight on 
part | am society on par with, say, 


locusts or smallpox. 
i We head southwest on 
received 4$ the N52 toward Tullamore, 
where a light afternoon 


warmly d$ all workout awaits. During the 


А 45-minute drive John Joe 
| RS d ud itor. muses about his professional 
future. On Saint Patrick’s 
Day in 2014, he made his 
victorious pro debut in Boston, and the significance 
wasn't lost on him. “I want to make a big impression 
in the U.S.,” he says. “Build a following in the North- 
east, get the Irish crowds behind me. Make people 
remember my name.” The boxer weighs the pros and 
cons of elite promoters such as Top Rank, Golden Boy 
and DiBella Entertainment. He stresses the need for 
a sound career strategy en route to his first title, talks 
about the marketing savvy of middleweight “Irish” 
John Duddy, a popular regular at Madison Square 
Garden. “You’re from New York, eh?” John Joe asks 
me. “Must have been something with that 9/11. They 
ever get them Eiffel Towers fixed?” 
But if Nevin wants to one (continued on page 146) 


"Edible panties too! God, Debbie—you’re the universal provider!” 


67 


ILLUSTRATION BY THE HEADS OF STATE 


"Objection, Your Honor! Prosecution is attempting 
"You call that cuddling?” to sway the witness!" 


“Td like to congratulate you on your "But you said Have a nice day when 
70 contribution to music!” you left this morning....” 


“I dom't know who to thank, but one or 
more of you gives great head!” 


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“Td tell you to shove it, but the last “It doesn't help matters, you know, 


guy I said that to tonight took me seriously." your humming ‘Send in the Clowns’!” 71 


all me the sunshine chick,” says Miss July Kay | | 
“Moye the humidity, the heat. I can lie па Af for 
ever No doubt the Virginia-bórn modello knows how 
to bring the heat—and she has fun doing it too. When 
not touring the A Monster Energy 
Kayla enjoys sipping tequila ón the rocks at 
vals or checking out a slick bar with Diplo's remix 
'unk ifLove" as her soundtrack. But she alsdknows 
how to chase—and achieve—her dreams. “Your mind is your biggest 
power. Your thoughts control your life,” she says of her philosophy. 
"If you want something, you must put positive energy into getting it. 
For me, PLAYBOY is proof of that.” While Kayla has AJways wanted to 
Pose for PLAYBOY, becoming Miss July seemed less certain. “July is my 
birth month, so from the beginning I prayed to be Miss July, THs is 
‘ . huge for me.” Kayla's perpetual pösitivity is hard to ignore, and she 
hopes it will help her launch a career in TV, à la Jenny McCarthy. 
“1 always want to be the best version of myself. A part of that is 
people knowing me not only as a Playmate but as an intellectual, 
determined and driven woman,” she says. "As 1 say, if you dream it, 
you have it. Right now, I feel like I can do anything." 


PLAYBOY.COM/KAYLA-RAE-REID 


P - zr 
all me the sunshine chick," says Miss July Кау eid. 
“Moye the humidity, the heat. I can lie in thë sif for“ 
ever No doubt the Virginia-born model also knows how 
to bring the heat—and she has fun doing it too. When 
not touring the motor-sportsjcircuitiwith Monster Energy 
er Girl; Kayla enjoys sipping tequila On the rocks at 
s music festivals or checking out a slick bar with Diplo's remix 

of Beyoncés “Drunk iñ.Love” as her soundtrack. But she also\knows 
how to chase—and achieve—her dreams. “Your mind is your biggest 
power. Your thoughts control your life,” she says of her philosophy. 
"If you want something, you must put positive energy into getting it. 
For me, PLAYBOY is proof of that.” While Kayla has always wanted to 
M pose for PLAYBOY, becoming Miss July seemed less certain. “July is my 
birth month, so from the beginning I prayed to be Miss July. THiS is 
huge for me." Kayla's perpetual positivity is hard to ignore, and she 
hopes it will help her launch a career in TV, à la Jenny McCarthy. 
“I always want to be the best version of myself. A part of that is 
people knowing me not only as a Playmate but as an intellectual, 
determined and driven woman,” she says. “As I say, if you dream it, 
you have it. Right now, I feel like I can do anything." 


PLAYBOY.COM/KAYLA-RAE-REID 


PLAYBOY'S PLAYMATE OF THE MONTH 


PLAYMATE DATA SHEET 


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PLAYBOY’S PARTY JOKES 


Check out my new gold Apple Watch,” a 
smarmy guy said to his co-worker. 

“That’s a terrible purchase,” the co-worker 
responded. “If I wanted to spend $10,000 on 
something that will be obsolete in two years, Га 
buy an engagement ring.” 


Most ofthe men and women at the gym are 
working toward the same goal: getting the per- 
fect female body. 


Q: Can you name two people who were shot 
in the back of the head in a theater? 

A: Abraham Lincoln and the guy sitting in 
front of Pee-wee Herman. 


Things were heating up at a bachelor party 
when the best man whispered into a stripper’s 
ear, “What's the craziest thing you've ever done 
for money?” 

She replied, “Gone to college.” 


What should you do when it’s raining and your 
wife is standing at the window looking sullen? 
Let her in. 


| never understood The Godfather," a not very 
smart man said to his friend. "After all the 
threats about sleeping with the fishes, how 
bad could a horse's head really be?" 


We know а guy and his wife who were happy 
for years. Then they met. 


An older woman was having difficulty at an 

ATM. She turned to the man behind her in line 

and asked, "Can you help me check my balance?" 
So he pushed her over. 


M; wife is so mad at me that I haven't talked 
to her in two days," a man said to his friend. 

"I haven't talked to my wife in two weeks," 
the other man said. “I’m too worried that I'll 
interrupt her." 


Do you know what's sweeter than the sound 
of children's laughter? 

The sound of silence from not having any 
fucking kids running around your house. 


А man had wanted to lose some annoying 
weight for years. Unfortunately he couldn't 
afford the divorce. 


We don't care for country music, but we don't 
mean to denigrate those who do. And for the 
people who do like country music, denigrate 
means "put down." 


Prank idea: Put on a neon-green bodysuit, 
break into a news studio and harass the weath- 
erman. No one watching at home will know 
why he's freaking out. 


We don't understand the phrase "If you get 
my daughter pregnant, you're marrying her." 
That's the equivalent of saying, “If you're 
not smart enough to put on a condom, you 
should be in my daughter's life forever.” 


The media say if America doesn't get its act 
together, in 40 years we'll all be speaking Chinese. 
Yeah, like we're smart enough to learn Chinese. 


My daughter asked me what it's like to have 
kids,” a woman said to her sister. “What do 
you think would be a good way 1 could dem- 
onstrate it to her?” 

The sister answered, “I would just interrupt 
her every 11 seconds until she cries.” 


D» 


Disappointment: Running into a wall with an 
erection and breaking your nose. 


Ladies, when a guy calls you hot, he's look- 
ing at your body. When a guy calls you pretty, 
he's looking at your face. When a guy calls you 
beautiful, he's looking at your heart. All three 
guys want to fuck you, though. 


Оле of the regulars dropped in to a tavern 
and told the bartender, “I’ve been given three 
weeks to live." 

“God, that's awful," said the bartender 
sympathetically. 

"It's not awful; it's great," the customer said, 
beaming. "That's how long my wife's going to 
be away on vacation." 


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


| pivioma of Srabuarj, 


"Guess what I'm addicted to." 


83 


THE FEARLESS AND FUNNY STAR OF 


PLAYBOY: On Showtime's Masters of Sex—about 
the lives and work of sex researchers Dr. William 
Masters and Virginia Johnson— you play Virginia. 
How tough is it to play someone real? 

CAPLAN: I didn't feel tremendous stress imper- 
sonating her because she’s not somebody enough 

people know so well that they could judge if I 
was moving or speaking like she did. I was let off 

^. the hook. It turned out I identified with her to 


3 | 0 eerie degree—her struggle, what it was like 
- ‘fora woman then. And yet, because I was mainly 
wn for doing comedy, not drama, I just 
" ii int shake the idea that the people who had 


WC. X ired me would quickly get wise to the fact that 
+. the wrong person for the job, that I was in 

over my head. Luckily, that’s what the real Vir- 

—ginia Johnson felt when she showed up for her ` 


including yours. How comfortabl 
you with being naked on-camer 


CAPLAN: It's certainly not boring. of the guys who take their shirts off Q4 


They give us pretty intense stuff to do push-ups or lift weights. The PLAYBOY: Masters of Sex takes place 
do. А standard-issue sex scene is one super-cut guys have these intense during the late 1950s and early 1960s, 
thing, but standing completely naked regimens. Not only do they work out an era when women ramped up 

and masturbating in front of someone all day, but they also don't drink any their struggle for liberation. Virginia 

is quite another. Arrgh. All that stuff we water and they swallow diuretics for Johnson keeps pushing the envelope, 
did in the second season is just now one day. That doesn't sound great. but you can feel her frustration at al- 
coming back to me. Гуе watched only I guess it's just as bad for the boys; most every turn. Things have changed, 
the first season and three episodes they're as vain as we are. but have they changed enough? 

from the second, in part because sea- CAPLAN: The tough pills that wom- 


son two started airing while we were 
still shooting. I realized that, as an 
actress, especially in this role—in fact, 


en are expected to swallow have got- 
ten better, but it’s naive to think we’ve 
come that far from the 1950s. Women 


only for this role so far in my career—it O O are still expected to accept a lower 
required a much different muscle ) 7 TW, n paycheck than a man for the same 
to make the show than to watch it. W H К N Y О U amount of work. And what about the 
Drama is such a departure for me. I SAN / difficulties every working mother 
wanted to trust my instincts and not DI S ( A ( )\ E R A faces, the stigma of leaving her child 
let viewing—and the inevitable self- a / 7 ў with а caregiver versus staying home 
criticism—affect my performance. I N | А \ \\ Н ( ) and giving ир her own dreams? 
don't know many actors who enjoy TO ) Ç There’s nothing on our show around 
watching their work anyway. At pre- W E A | V S the feminist issues that I don’t feel 
mieres they'll go to dinner during the TIG НТҮ. hasa huge echo today. If anything, it 
movie and then show up to the party. I E d makes me angry about today. [pauses] 
X7 rp IC Гуе never said this out loud before, 
Q3 W | | | | | К S , but I don't know if we'll get there in 
PLAYBOY: Yov're not the only one | my lifetime. Until we can convince our 
who takes off their kit on the show. In | | О | 4 | ) О \ T () own side—women—that this is a good 


addition to your test subjects, Michael H IM thing for all of us, I don't see how we 
Sheen, who plays Masters, strips fi NI. stand a chance convincing all the men. 


down for sex scenes with you—for E С) Qs 
research purposes only, of course. - = 
CAPLAN: I don't think Michael E 2 PLAYBOY: Women аге divided about 


Sheen does this, but definitely most equality too? (continued on page 138) 


WARDROBE AT THE WALL GROUP; MAKEUP BY MOLLY STERN AT STARWORKS ARTISTS; PROP STYLING BY SEAN DALY 


STYLING BY ANITA PATRICKSON AT THE WALL GROUP; HAIR BY CHRISTIAN WOOD FOR ТОМ! & GUY HAIR MEET 


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Now WHY Wolly You SAY 
SUCH ATHINGZ SVE 
NEVER LOT ANOTHER MAN 
LAY ONE FINGER ON MEI 


DECADES AGO LONDON-BORN 
LENSMAN HARRI PECCINOTTI CHANGED 
THE WAY WE LOOK AT THE FEMALE 
FORM. HIS CLASSIC IMAGES ARE JUST AS 
BOLD AND PROVOCATIVE TODAY 


ofully comprehend the power ofthe work of photo- 

grapher and art director Harri Peccinotti, please 

turn your attention to the photograph at the left of 

this paragraph and appreciate, for a moment, why 

it works: The tongue, in macro, laps at smudged 
lipstick, fine facial hair and milk in a surprising and graphic 
composition that is equally sexy and hyperreal. Bold and clev- 
erly cropped appreciations of women's bodies such as this are 
a hallmark of Peccinotti's work, which continues to influence 
artists and others today. Best known for producing two of the 
sexiest years in the already impossibly sexy Pirelli calendar 
series and for his work as art director at the groundbreaking 
U.K. women's magazine Nova in the 1960s and 1970s, Pecci- 
notti was behind countless commercials, advertisements, edi- 
torials and fashion shoots—and he's still working today. When 
we asked him if he set out to create an iconic body of work, he 
said, “No! I just have always found women incredibly attrac- 
tive and sensual, and when I take a picture, I look for that in 
them." To which we say, thank you, Harri. 


IMAGES COURTESY OF HARRI PECCINOTTI 


PECCINOTTI ON PECCINOTTI 
“This was for a Vogue fashion 
story in which the model was 
always taking something off. 'The 
way I look at things and take 
pictures today is the same as it 
was in the 1960s and 1970s: I try 
to shoot things as naturally as 
possible." 2. ^I do have a sort of 
malady for thinking of girls with 
no clothes on first and then putting 
clothes on them, rather than the 
other way around." 3. "In the early 
1970s, America closed the door 
for a year or two on photographs 
that showed nipples and crotches. 
These images might have been for 
an American magazine and were 
probably never used." 4. Peccinotti 
working on set. 5. "This was for 
a story about shoes for Nova. I 
tend to look at things graphically 
because I have always been an art 
director as well as a photographer." 
“This was for a calendar for 
bathroom products. We shot it in a 
green bathtub at the Meurice hotel 
in Paris. We put green shampoo in 
it. I wasn't intending to take a self- 
portrait. I just happened to notice 
my reflection, so I purposely put it 
near her crotch." 


7. “I sold Pirelli the idea of going to 
L.A. to photograph girls surfing. 
We didn't take a model. We had no 
hairdresser, no makeup, no noth- 
ing. When we arrived, there were 
no girls surfing and no waves. So we 
photographed girls we found on the 
beach. Being a close-up freak, I took 
graphic pictures of them. We stayed 
three weeks; it was real reportage." 
8. "I was shooting a vodka com- 
mercial, and the model's boyfriend 
visited her on set. I just took the pic- 
ture." 9. "This was for a Nova story 
about not shaving. When the editor 
saw it he said, "We can't publish that; 
so I told him it was an underarm." 
10. "Nova was special because it was a 
trial run to see if there was a market 
for an intelligent magazine targeted 
at women. I was completely free to 
do anything." 11. “Not a lot of people 
were photographing black models 

at the time. The necklace shot was 
for Nova, the cigar for a magazine 
called Adam and the fist for the 
French newspaper Le Matin de Paris. 
The black-and-white photograph is 
of Donyale Luna, Warhol girl and 
the first black supermodel, for Vogue 
U.K. I like beautiful women and 
don't care what color they are." 


Where may you touch? = ш 


Neth tanec oy ret А 


"Before I could say I’m not that kind of a girl,’ I was." 


y parents had an arranged marriage. This always 
fascinated me. I am perpetually indecisive on even 
the most mundane decisions, and I couldn't imagine leaving such 


an important choice to other people. I asked my dad to describe 
his experience to me. 


This was his process. 

He told his parents he was ready to get married, so his family arranged 
meetings with three neighboring families. The first girl, he said, was a 
“little too tall,” and the second girl was a “little too short.” Then he met 
my mom. After he quickly deduced that she was the appropriate height 


(finally!), they talked for about 30 minutes. They decided it would work. 
A week later, they were married. 


96 


And they still are, 35 years later. Happily so—and probably 
more so than most older white people I know who had non- 
arranged marriages. 

So that's how my dad decided on whom he was going to 
spend the rest of his life with. Meeting a few people, analyz- 
ing their height and deciding on one after talking to her for 
30 minutes. 

It was like he went on that MTV dating show Next and mar- 
ried my mom. 

Let’s look at how I do things, maybe with a slightly less 
important decision. How about the time I had to pick where to 
eat dinner in Seattle when I was on tour in the spring of 2014? 

First I texted four friends who travel and eat out a lot and 
whose judgment on food I really trust. While I waited for rec- 
ommendations from them, I checked the website Eater for 
its “Heat Map,” which includes new, tasty restaurants in the 
city. I also checked the “Eater 38," which is the site's list of the 
38 essential Seattle restaurants and standbys. Then I checked 
reviews on Yelp to see what the consensus was on there. I also 
checked an online guide to Seattle. I narrowed my search down 
after consulting all these recommendations and then went on 
the restaurant websites to check out the menus. 

At this point I filtered all these options down by tastiness, dis- 
tance and what my tum-tum told me it wanted to eat. 

Finally, after much deliberation, I selected a place: Il Corvo. 
A delicious Italian restaurant that sounded amazing. Fresh- 
made pasta. They did only three different types a day. I was 
very excited. 

Unfortunately, it was closed. It served only lunch. 

By now I had run out of time because I had a show to do, 
so I ended up making a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich 
on the bus.* 

This kind of rigor goes into a lot of my decision making. 
Whether it's where I'm eating, where I'm traveling or, God 
forbid, something I'm buying, I feel compelled to do a lot of 
research to make sure I'm getting the best. 

At certain times, though, this ^I need the best" mentality can 
be debilitating. I wish I could just eat somewhere that looks 
good and be happy with my choice. 
But I can't. The problem is that I 
know somewhere there is a perfect 
meal for me and I have to do how- 
ever much research I can to find it. 

That's the thing about the inter- 
net: It doesn't simply help us find the 
best thing out there; it has helped to 
produce the idea that there is a best 
thing and, if we search hard enough, 
we can find it. And in turn there are 
a whole bunch of inferior things that 
we'd be foolish to choose. 

Here's a quick list of things I can 
think of that I've spent at least five 
to 10 minutes researching: 

* Electric citrus juicer. (Waiting 
on this one to arrive in the mail. 
Hope I didn't fuck it up. Don't 
want too much pulp in my juice!) 

* Taxidermy. (I started off look- 
ing for a deer or bear, but I ended 
up finding a beautiful penguin in 
Paris. His name is Winston.) 

* Which prestigious cable drama 
to binge-watch next. (The Americans, 
House of Cards or Orphan Black? The 
answer: I watched all of them while 
telling my publisher I was writing 
this book.) 

* Bag for my laptop. 


* The next day I had Il Corvo for lunch 
and it was very delicious. 


Modern Romance 


YOU CAN STAND IN 
LINE AT THE GROCERY 
STORE AND SWIPE 

DU PEOPLE > FACES 
ON TINDER WHILE 
YOU WAIT TO BUY 
HAMBURGER BUNS. 


° Protective case for my laptop. 

* Internet-blocking program so I can stop using my laptop 
so much. 

° Museums. (Gotta peep the exhibits online before I commit 
to driving all the way out there, right?) 

* Coasters. (If you dig deep, you can find some dope coast- 
ers with dinosaurs on them!) 

* Vanilla ice cream. (Had to step it up from Breyers, and 
there's a lot of debate in the ice-cream-fan community—there 
are fierce debates on those message boards.) 

It's not just me, though. I may take things to extremes some- 
times, but we live in a culture that tells us we want and deserve 
the best, and now we have the technology to get it. Think about 
the overwhelming popularity of websites that are dedicated to 
our pursuit ofthe best things available. Yelp for restaurants. Trip- 
Advisor for travel. Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic for movies. 

A few decades ago, if I wanted to research vanilla ice cream, 
what would I have even done? Cold-approach chubby guys 
and then slowly steer the convo 
toward ice cream to get their take? 
No, thanks. 

Nowadays the internet is my 
chubby friend. It is the whole 
world's chubby friend. 


Aziz Ansari 


If this mentality has so pervaded 
our decision making, then it stands 
to reason that it is also affecting 
our search for a romantic partner, 
especially if it's going to be long- 
term. In a sense, it already has. 
Remember: We are no longer the 
generation of the “good enough" 
marriage. We are now looking for 
our "soul mates." And even after 
we find our “soul mates," if we start 
feeling unhappy, we get "divorced." 

If you are looking for your soul 
mate, now is the time to do it. Con- 
sider the rich social infrastructure 
of bars, nightclubs and restaurants 
in cities. Add to that the mas- 
sive online-dating industry. Then 
throw in the fact that people now 
get married later in life than ever 
before and spend their 20s in "early 
adulthood," which is basically dedi- 
cated to exploring romantic options 
and having experiences that pre- 
vious generations couldn't have 
imagined. (continued on page 132) 


“Oh, it's nothing. Just a periscope.” 


97 


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PHOTOGRAPHY BY 


SASHA EISENMA 


ed is perhaps the most compelling color, 

emblematic of desire, energy and passion. 

It's fitting, then, that this year's first red- 

headed Playmate, Miss August Domi 

Jane, is a woman who embodies all those 
qualities and also likes to ascribe meaning to life's 
seemingly random events. Raised in a California can- 
yon with dual citizenship in the U.S. and Ireland, 
Dominique has wanted to be a Playmate since she was 
a teenager, when she put stickers of the Rabbit Head. 
on herself at a tanning salon to get the shape tempo- 
rarily imprinted on her body. “Га always tell friends, 
‘One day..." she says. 

It wasn't until she walked into her pLaynoy shoot 
that she felt her years of pursuit had been vindicated. 
“I shot my pictorial at a place called the Good Luck 
Bar on Chinese New Year,” says the model, who holds 
а degree in fashion marketing. "Being a spiritual per- 
son, I can't help but think that PLayBoy came into my 
life at this moment for a reason.” 


N 


For Dominique, becoming Miss August in the Year 
of the Ram—a time for peace and clarity, according 
to the Chinese zodiac—follows an unbelievably wild 
period. After a friend recommended her, she found 
herself performing in the second-biggest concert tour 
of 2013, Kanye West's Yeezus. “Supposedly, Kanye him- 
self selected me from a group,” she says. “That tour was 
very religious, with the idea that you can be the greatest 
power in your own life. The opportunities the universe 
throws at me always seem to have greater meaning” 

Out ofthe spotlight, Dominique remains a chill, non- 
judgmental extrovert who loves food and prefers band 
‘T-shirts (the War on Drugs, Tom Petty and fellow red- 
head Florence Welch are musical favorites) over designer 
duds. "I like connecting with people and culture,” she 
says. As Miss August, she's sure to do plenty of that— 
and whatever else the universe has in store. “Not too 
long ago, if you told me I was going to be in PLAYBOY or 
onstage with Kanye, I would have said you're crazy.” 
Better believe it, Dominique. They call that destiny. 


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109 


"Here's where the act really starts to take off!" 


SUMMER, 


WELCOME ТО 21 PAGES OF UNINTERRUPTED SUMMER 
FUN, IN WHICH YOU WILL LEARN ТО: SHOUT A SEXY 
SELFIE (PAGE 112), PARTY LIKE A MASTER CHEF (PAGE 
116), BE THE COOLEST DUDE AT THE POOL (PAGE 120) 
AND REFINE YOUR ADMIRATION OF A SUN-BRONZED 
BATHING BEAUTY (PAGE 124). YOU'RE WELCOME. 


PHOTOGRAPH BY TONY KELLY 


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ace it: A sexy selfie 
is essentially the 
modern-day love 
letter or mixtape 
and a surefire way 
of getting some- 
one's attention— 
especially in the 
summer, when 
more clothes come 
off more often. But 
you have to do it 
right, which means 
getting away from 
mirrors in dimly lit 
bathrooms; bars 
and gyms. To help, 
we've enlisted pho- 
tographer Danny 
Lane and two 
Playmates for a 
consummate lesson 
in creating digital 
sex appeal. In 2015, 
there's really no 
shame in learning to 
love thy selfie. 


PLAYBOY'S GUIDE TO 


XT@GRAPHY 


FEATURING GIA MARIE & RAQUEL POMPLUN 
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANNY LANE 


Photographers take 100 
pics per hour to nail the 
perfect shot. Follow suit and 
produce 10 to 15 options 
with a variety of poses 
and angles. “Choose the 
one that feels completely 
different from the others,” 
advises Raquel. Shooting 
against a clean palette, such 
as solid-color bedsheets, 
makes your face the focus. 


LOCATION 
MATTERS 


` 


The professional- 
looking “nonselfie” 
is easier to achieve 
than you may think. 
This photo of Gia, for 
example, took only 
six minutes. Eliminate 
outstretched arms by 
using a camera's self- 
timer, which can take 
a burst of 10 photos 
at once. Make sure to 
prop your phone so the 
camera lens is at the 
same height as your 
eye line. “Don't let your 
face hog the frame,” 
says Gia. “You should 
always be showing off a 
little more of something 
else.” Lane also advises 
that you shoot near 
a window for optimal 
natural light. “The key 
is to find the light with 
your face,” he says. 


This selfie stick 
with Bluetooth 
($40) increases 
your range of 
angles, back- 
grounds апа 
frame space. Just 
promise not to 
use it in crowded 
public areas. 


Go old-school 
with Fujifilm's 
instant camera 
($100), which 
spits out a hard 
copy you can 
hand-deliver or 
leave behind. 


Shooting with 
one hand can 
be an exercise 
in dexterity. A 
shutter remote 
($39) simplifies 
snapping. 


The Bluetooth- 
enabled Podo 
($99) adheres to 
walls, glass and 
just about every- 
where else so you 
can perfect the 
full-body shot. 


Instagram and 
dating apps 
require that pics 
be cropped to 
an equal length 
on all four sides 
before uploading. 
The InstaSize app 
(free) squares 
photos of any 
dimension. 


LI 


BREAKING 
IT DOWN 


power? ae зу: / Wy 
Be. = 1 
Any photo A 

has the potential tc 


tacky than classy. (I 

one, will remove any 

tos.) Tease your body; 

it. "Keep your shirt on, or find cute 
censors,” says Lane. “It's cool to 
add an element of mystery. The 
less you see, the more you want.” 


SELFIE QUEENS 


NEVER SEND THE SAME SELFIE TWICE. HERE'S HOW TO CHANGE IT UP 


` go = Miss October 2011 

vli AMANDA CERNY 

P Y If you want people to look at 
y your body, Lane suggests look- 


y 
ing away from the lens. 


Miss June 2014 
JESSICA ASHLEY 
À Capitalizing on bright lighting 
and an even brighter smile—plus 
a tasteful tease of something 
more—Jessica's selfie is fun and 
flirty, with a hint of innocence. 


^ 


FINE-TUNE IT 


* "Dont retouch or edit 
your selfies too much," 
says Lane. Yes, apps 
such as Instagram and 
Photoshop Express, plus 


the preloaded filters on 
your camera, make it easy 
to correct uneven skin 
tones and hide wrinkles, 
but smart editing means 
altering the entire tone of 
a photo—as a black-and- 
white filter does (top 
left)—rather than "fixing" 
your face. Try using 

filters only to highlight 
your best features. For 
example, enhance freckles 
by sharpening the image 
and tweaking saturation 
(top right). For a romantic 
glow, add a vignette (bot- 
tom left). "Be true to your- 
self,” says Lane. "Nothing 
is weirder than meeting 
someone who doesn't 
look anything like they do 
in their pictures." 


0) 
r] W / 
' x 


Miss February 2009 
JESSICA BURCIAGA 
À Jessica has the epitome of a 
smize—that is, smiling with the 
eyes. Her subtlety draws you in 
and evokes intrigue. 


; \ 


Miss June 2013 


AUDREY ALLEN 
In this expert belfie (butt selfie), 
Audrey limits distraction by cov- 
ering the top half of her body. 


SURE, Y0U COULD 
PRETEND YOU'RE | 
A CHEF AT YOUR P 
NEXT SUMMER » 
COOKOUT. OR YOU 

COULD DO WHAT A 

REAL CHEF DOES 

ON HIS DAY OFF. 

WE GRILLED CHEF 

CHRIS COSENTINO, 

THE MAN BEHIND 

SAN FRANCISCO HOT 

SPOT COCKSCOMB, 
ON HOW TO 
COOK SMART 


Y 
Summer 
BBQ GUIDE 
2015 
v 


SS 


` NRY 
errr rrr rrr MA ESA IST 
E 


Y 


A or 
sit 
¿RON f 


w 
`` 
RA 


GRAB A 
GROWLER 


That summer co- advance and put it 
nundrum of whether ір the fridge to serve 
to have a cocktail later,” says Cosentino. 
or a beer is solved “Tt uses less hard 
with the negrowler, liquor with the same 
a combination of great flavor profile as 
the Italian negroni a traditional negroni 
cocktail and beer. and goes down nice 


“You can make it in and easy.” 


MAXIMIZE 
the 


MARINADE 


This sour, salty, 
sweet beer-can chicken 
is a low-maintenance 
crowd-pleaser. 
“You can set it and 
forget it,” says 
Cosentino. “Place it 
on the grill and 
spend time with your 
guests, then go 
back occasionally 
and glaze.” 


117 


HARNESS 
SWEET 
AND SOUR 
POWER 


“This watermelon 
and tomato salad 
is really refreshing 
on a hot day, and 
you have sweet 
and acidic flavors 
combined in one 
dish for good 
balance. It also 
looks great on a big 
platter and is easy 
to share.” 


y 
Summer 


BBQ GUIDE 
2015 
v 


FOOD AND DRINK STYLING BY FRANCESCO TONELLI 


N 
| ESS ` 
Ë 


SRS Ka, 
S 
ES 


N 
Š 
NS 


SS 


x SN 
ММММ ММ 


Our Guest 
GRILLMASTER 


CHRIS 
COSENTINO 


To help you get your 
grill on, we enlisted Chris 
Cosentino, former Iron Chef 
competitor and Top Chef 
Master and the eternally meat- 
centric restaurateur behind 
Cockscomb, in San Francisco’s 
South of Market district. 
Cosentino is known for his ex- 
pert ways with offal and other 
humble cuts, which means if 
he can make tribe tasty, he 
can turn beer-can chicken into 
something beatific. 


NEGROWLER 
Makes 6 cocktails 


° 5 oz. Bulldog gin 

* 5 oz. Campari 

* 5 oz. Cinzano 1757 

* 80 oz. Anchor Steam beer 
* Orange peel 


Combine liquids in a large pitcher, stir, 
then transfer to a growler. To serve, pour 
over ice and garnish with orange peel. 


SS 
S 
N SSS 


2 


BEER-CAN 
CHICKEN 


Serves 4 


° 1 4-Ib. chicken 

° 4 sprigs cilantro 

° 1 lime, cut into quarters 

° 1 can of beer (if you would drink it, 
use it) 

° Lime and fish sauce marinade (see 
recipe below) 

° Salt 

° Black pepper 


$ ¥ 
SAAR SARA 


Remove neck and giblets from chicken 
and discard. Rinse chicken inside and 
out, then pat dry with paper towels. Let 
chicken air-dry. Place cilantro and one 
lime quarter in the cavity of the bird. 

Open beer can and take several 
gulps (make them big gulps so the can 
is half full). Place can on a sturdy sur- 
face. Rub chicken with marinade, then 
season with salt and black pepper. Grab 
a chicken leg in each hand and plunk 
the bird cavity over the beer can. Trans- 
fer the bird-on-a-can to the grill and 
place in the center of the grate, balanc- 
ing the chicken on the can and its two 
legs, like a tripod. As the chicken cooks, 
brush with marinade so it bakes in and 
the sugars and lime juice caramelize. 

Cook chicken over medium-high 
indirect heat (i.e., no coals or burners 
directly under the bird), with the grill 
cover on, for approximately one hour 
15 minutes or until the internal tem- 
perature registers 165 degrees Fahren- 
heit in the breast area and 180 degrees 
in the thigh, or until the juice runs 
clear when the thigh is stabbed with a 
sharp knife. Remove from grill and let 
rest for 10 minutes before carving. 


LIME AND RED BOAT 
FISH SAUCE MARINADE 


Also works with pork and beef 


° Ya cup lime juice 

° 2 tbsp. Red Boat fish sauce 

° 3 tbsp. black pepper, coarsely 
ground 

° 1 tsp. chili flakes 

° ] tsp. sugar 


In a small saucepan, mix all ingredi- 
ents well and bring to a boil. Boil for 
three minutes, then let cool. 


š 
S 
SAAR 


ab 


WATERMELON AND 
TOMATO SALAD 


Serves 4 


SS 
cx 


° 1 Ib. heirloom tomatoes in 
assorted colors 
1⁄4 lb. mixed cherry tomatoes 
* ] watermelon 
Red wine vinaigrette (see 
recipe below) 
Sea salt 
Black pepper 
1⁄4 cup fresh basil leaves, torn 
1⁄4 cup fresh mint leaves, torn 
1 tsp. Aleppo pepper 
1 serrano chili, cut into paper- 
thin rings 


Cut heirloom tomatoes into different 
shapes and sizes such as wedges and 
thick slices. Cut cherry tomatoes in 
half. Peel watermelon and cut into 
one-and-a-half-inch squares, making 
sure to remove the seeds. 

In a large bowl, combine tomatoes 
and watermelon; drizzle with vinai- 
grette and toss to coat evenly. Season 
to taste with sea salt and black pepper. 
Add basil, mint, Aleppo pepper and 
serrano chili, and toss. To serve, place 
on a large platter for sharing. 


RED WINE 
VINAIGRETTE 


Makes %4 cup 


° 1⁄4 cup red wine vinegar 

* Juice of 1 lemon 

° 1⁄4 cup pure olive oil 

° Ya cup extra-virgin olive oil 

* Kosher salt 

* Freshly ground black pepper 


In a small bowl, whisk together vin- 
egar, lemon juice and pure olive oil 
until emulsified, then whisk in extra- 
virgin olive oil. Season to taste with salt 
and pepper. Use right away, or cover 
and refrigerate for up to two days. 


y 
Summer 


STYLE GUIDE 
2015 
Y 


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132 


ENDLESS LOVE 


Continued from page 96 


College, finding our careers, moving out 
on our own to different cities and parts 
of the world—in early adulthood we are 
constantly being introduced to new and 
exciting pools of romantic options. 

Even the advances in the past few years 
are pretty absurd. You can stand in line at 
the grocery store and swipe 60 people’s faces 
on Tinder while you wait to buy hamburger 
buns. That’s 20 times more people than my 
dad met on his marriage journey. (Note: For 
those wondering, the best hamburger buns 
are Martin’s potato rolls. Trust me!) 


When you think about all this, you have to 
acknowledge something profound about 
the current situation: In the history of our 
species, no group has ever had as many 
romantic options as we have now. 

So, in theory, this should be a great 
thing. More options is better, right? 

Well. It’s not that easy. 

Barry Schwartz is a professor of psychol- 
ogy at Swarthmore College who has spent 
much of his career studying the surprising 
problems that come from having an abun- 
dance of options. 

Schwartz’s research, and a considerable 
amount of scholarship from other social 
scientists too, shows that when we have 
more options, we are actually less satisfied 
and sometimes even have a harder time 
making a choice at all. 

When I thought back to that sad 
peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich I 
had in Seattle, this idea resonated with me. 

Schwartz’s way of thinking about choice 
grew popular when he published his book 
The Paradox of Choice. But for decades most 
people presumed the opposite: The more 
choices we had, the more likely we would 
be to maximize our happiness. 

In the 1950s the pioneering scholar Her- 
bert Simon paved the way for people like 
Schwartz by showing that most of the time 
people are not all that interested in getting 
the best possible option. Generally, Simon 
argued, people and organizations lack the 
time, knowledge and inclination to seek out 
“the best” and are surprisingly content with 
a suboptimal outcome. Maximizing is just 
too difficult, so we wind up being “satis- 
ficers” (a term that combines satisfy and 
suffice). We may fantasize about having the 
best of something, but usually we are happy 


to have something that’s “good enough.” 

According to Simon, people can be max- 
imizers and satisficers in different contexts. 
For example, when it comes to, let’s say, 
tacos, I’m a maximizer. ГЇЇ do a rigorous 
amount of research to make sure I’m get- 
ting the best taco I can find, because for 
me there is a huge difference in the taco 
experience. A satisficer will just get tacos 
wherever they see a decent taco stand and 
call it a day. I hate getting tacos with these 
people. Enjoy your nasty tacos, losers. 

If I'm picking gasoline for my car, 
though, I'm more of a satisficer. I drive 
into whatever gas station is close, load 
the cheapest shit I can to fill my tank and 
get the fuck out of there. It sounds pretty 
mean to my car, but I really don't give a 
shit and notice no difference in perfor- 
mance for the quality of gas. Sorry, Prius. 

Now, I understand that there is a cer- 
tain kind of “car guy" out there who would 
find my choice of gasoline as horrifying as 
I find the choice of suboptimal tacos. ТО 
that I say: Stop caring so much about gas- 
oline, you ding-dong! Spend that money 
on good tacos like a nice, normal person. 

What Schwartz suggests, however, is 
that cultural, economic and technologi- 
cal changes since the time Simon wrote 
have changed the choice-making context. 
Because of smartphones and the inter- 
net, our options are no longer limited to 
what's in the physical store where we are 
standing. We can choose from what's in 
every store, everywhere. We have far more 
opportunities to become maximizers than 
we would have had just a few decades ago. 
And that new context is changing who we 
are and how we live. 

I noticed this in myself with Christmas 
ornaments. Why would I be anything but 
a satisficer with Christmas ornaments? It's 
pretty standard. The balls, the string of 
lights, etc. Well, do some internet search- 
ing and you find some amazing ornaments. 
A Back to the Future DeLorean, little dino- 
saurs (!), a funny dude on a motorcycle. I 
ordered it all! 

These types of ornaments wouldn't have 
even entered my mind before the internet 
allowed me to see these other options. Now 
my standards for Christmas ornaments 
had gone up, and I wanted the best. Sadly, 
due to shipping delays, most of these orna- 
ments I ordered arrived in late January, 
but my tree was extra dope in February. 

Besides gasoline, it's damn near impos- 
sible for me to think of anything where I 
won't put in time to find the best. Pm a 
maximizer in nearly everything. Bottled 
water? Nope. You buy one of the bozo 
brands and you get bottled water that's 
just tap water in a bottle. Potato chips? Ruf- 
fles? No, thank you. Pass the Sweet Onion 
Kettle Chips. Candles? If you only knew 
how good the candles in my house smell. 

It's so easy to find and get the best, so 
why not? 


What happens to people who look for and 
find the best? Well, it's bad news again. 


Schwartz, along with two business school 
professors, did a study of college seniors 
preparing to enter the workforce. For 
six months the researchers followed the 
seniors as they applied for and started 
new jobs. They then classified the stu- 
dents into maximizers (students who were 
looking for the best job) and satisficers 
(students who were looking for a job that 
met certain minimum requirements and 
was "good enough"). 

Here's what they found: On average, 
the maximizers put much more time and 
effort into their job search. They did more 
research, asked more friends for advice 
and went on more interviews. In return, 
the maximizers in the study got better jobs. 
They received, on average, a 20 percent 
higher starting salary than the satisficers. 

After they started their jobs, though, 
Schwartz and his colleagues asked the 
participants how satisfied they were. What 
they found was surprising. Even though 
the maximizers had better jobs than the 
satisficers, by every psychological mea- 
sure they felt worse about them. Overall, 
maximizers had less job satisfaction and 
were less certain they'd selected the right 
job at all. 

The satisficers, by contrast, were gen- 
erally more positive about their jobs, the 
search process and their lives in gen- 
eral. The satisficers had jobs that paid 
less money, but they somehow felt better 
about them. 

Searching for a job when you're in 
college is hardly a typical situation, so I 
asked Schwartz if perhaps this study was 
just capturing something unique. It wasn't. 
Schwartz is an encyclopedia of psychologi- 
cal research on choice problems. If asked 
to give a quote about him for the back of 
a book cover, I would say, "This mother- 
fucker knows choice." 

As he explained it, the maximizers in 
the job-search experiment were doing 
what maximizers generally do: Rather 
than compare actual jobs, with their var- 
lous pros and cons, in their minds they 
wound up selecting the features of each 
particular job and creating a "fantasy job," 
an ideal that neither they nor, probably, 
anyone else would ever get. 

Johnny Satisficer is sitting around at his 
dum-dum job, eating his disgusting sub- 
par taco and thinking about hanging his 
generic Christmas ornaments later on. But 
he's totally happy about that. 

Meanwhile, I’ve just found out the taco 
place I researched for hours is closed on 
Sundays, and even though this year I have 
my dope Christmas ornaments, I'm wor- 
ried there's a better Christmas ornament 
out there that I don't know about yet and 
am spending my holidays with the inter- 
net instead of my family. 


When applied to modern romance, the 
implications of these ideas on choice are 
slightly terrifying. 

If we are the generation with the great- 
est set of options, what happens to our 


‘Tm on a fixed income too. I haven't been able to get 
more tham 10 bucks for a blow job in months.” 


133 


PLAYBOY 


decision making? By Schwartz’s logic, we are 
probably looking for “the best” and, in fact, 
we are looking for our soul mates too. Is this 
possible to find? “How many people do you 
need to see before you know you've found 
the best?” Schwartz asked. “The answer is 
every damn person there is. How else do 
you know it’s the best? If you’re looking for 
the best, this is a recipe for complete misery.” 

Complete misery! (Read in a scary Aziz 
whisper voice.)T 

If you are in a big city or on an online dat- 
ing site, you are flooded with options. Seeing 
all these options, like the people in the job 
example, are we now comparing our poten- 
tial partners not to other potential partners 
but rather to an idealized person whom no 
one could measure up to? 

And what if you’re not looking for your 
soul mate yet but just want to date someone 
and commit to a girlfriend or boyfriend? 
How does our increase in options affect our 
ability to commit? To be honest, even pick- 
ing lunch in Seattle was pretty tough. 

If we, like the people in the job study, are 
creating a “fantasy” person full of all our 
desired qualities, doesn’t the vast potential 
of the internet and all our other romantic 
pools give us the illusion that this fantasy 
person does, in fact, exist? Why settle for 
anything less? 

When we brought these ideas up in focus 
groups, people responded to these notions 
immediately. In the city with arguably the 
most options, New York, people discussed 
how it was hard to settle down because 
every corner you turned revealed more 
potential opportunities. 

I’ve felt it myself. For much of the past 
few years, I split my time between New 
York and L.A. When I first started dating 
my current girlfriend, when I was in New 
York, I’d see people everywhere and feel 
like, Shit, should I ever take myself out of the 
single world? There’s so many people! Then I 
got back to L.A., where instead of walking 
in streets and subway stations full of poten- 
tial options, I would be alone in my Prius 
(filled with shitty gasoline), listening to a 
dumb podcast. I couldn’t wait to get home 
and hold my girlfriend. 


But the surge of options is not limited to 
people in New York. As Schwartz told me, 
“Where did people meet alternatives 30 
years ago? It was in the workplace. How 
many shots did you have? Two or three peo- 
ple, maybe, who you found attractive, who 
were the right age, or you meet somebody 
your friend works with, and your friend 
fixes you up. So the set of romantic possi- 
bilities that you actually confront is going to 
be pretty small. 

“And that, it seems to me, is like feeding 
in an environment where the food is rela- 
tively scarce. You find somebody who seems 
simpatico. And you do as much as you can 
to cultivate that person because there may 


T If you listen to the audiobook version of this, 
Tm not going to say “Read in a scary Aziz whis- 
per voice” or this note, because I’m just going 
to do the actual voice, and I think it should be 


134 pretty terrifying. 


be a long drought after that person. That’s 
what it used to be like. But now,” he said, 
“in principle, the world is available to you.” 

The world is available to us, but that may 
be the problem. 

The Columbia professor Sheena Iyengar 
was one of Barry Schwartz’s co-authors on 
the job-hunting study, and she also knows 
a shit ton about choice. Through a series of 
experiments, Iyengar has demonstrated that 
an excess of options can lead to indecision 
and paralysis. In one of her most influen- 
tial studies, she and another researcher 
set up a table at a luxury food store and 
offered shoppers samples of jams. Some- 
times the researchers offered six types of 
jam, but other times they offered 24. When 
they offered 24, people were more likely 
to stop in and have a taste. But, amazingly, 
they were far less likely to actually buy any 
jam. People who stopped to taste the smaller 
number of jams were almost 10 times more 
likely to buy jam than people who stopped 
to taste the larger number. 

Don’t you see what’s happening to us? 
There’s just too much jam out there. If 
you're on a date with a certain jam, you can't 


Iwas never 
meeting people 
Ireally, really 
liked. Was 


everyone shitty? 
Or was I shitty? 


even focus, ’cause as soon as you go to the 
bathroom, three other jams have texted you. 
You go online, you see more jam there. You 
put in filters to find the perfect jam. There 
are iPhone apps that literally tell you ifthere 
is Jam nearby that wants to get eaten at that 
particular moment! 


How do we go about analyzing our options? 
On dates. And most ofthe time, boring-ass 
dates. You have coffee, drinks, a meal, go 
see a movie. We’re all trying to find some- 
one who excites us, someone who makes us 
feel like we've truly made a connection. Can 
anyone reach that high bar on the typical, 
boring dates we all go on? 

One of the social scientists I consulted 
is the Stanford sociologist Robb Willer. 
Willer said that he had several friends who 
had taken dates to a monster truck rally. 
If you aren't familiar with monster truck 
rallies, basically these giant-ass trucks, 
with names like Skull Crusher and the 
ReJEWvinator, ride up huge dirt hills and 
do crazy jumps. (Okay, I made up ReJEW- 
vinator, but it would be cool if there were 


a Jewish monster truck scene.) Sometimes 
they fly over a bunch of smaller cars or even 
school buses. Even more nuts, sometimes 
those trucks assemble into a giant robot 
truck that literally eats cars. Not joking. It’s 
called Truckzilla and it’s worth looking into. 
Frankly, it sounds cool as shit, and I’m look- 
ing at tickets for the next one I can attend. 

Anyway, for Willer’s friends it started as 
a plan to do something campy and ironic, 
since they weren’t big car and truck fans 
so much as curious about this interesting 
and kind of bizarre subculture. It turned 
out to be a great date event: fun, funny, 
exciting and different. Instead of the usual, 
boring résumé exchange, the couples were 
placed in an interesting environment and 
got to really get a sense of their own rap- 
port. Two of the couples he mentioned were 
still together and happily dating. Sadly, 
another one of the couples was making out 
in a small car that was soon run over and 
crushed by a monster truck named King 
Krush. Very unfortunate. 

Now, granted, I’m not saying that we 
should all show up on dates wearing bee- 
keeper suits. The dates that are not boring 
are not all super eccentric, vague things. 
The common thread is that they weren’t 
just résumé exchanges over a drink or 
dinner; they were situations in which peo- 
ple could experience interesting things 
together and learn what it was like to be 
with someone new. 


There is social science that shows that more 
interesting dates like this can lead to more 
romantic success. In their famous 1974 
study called “Some Evidence for Height- 
ened Sexual Attraction Under Conditions 
of High Anxiety,” Art Aron and Don Dut- 
ton sent an attractive woman to the Capilano 
River in Vancouver, Canada. The river runs 
through a deep canyon, across which were 
two bridges. One of the bridges—the control 
bridge—was very sturdy. It was constructed 
of heavy cedar, had high handrails and ran 
only about 10 feet above the water. The sec- 
ond bridge—the experimental bridge—was 
much, much scarier. It was made of wooden 
boards attached to wire cables and had a ten- 
dency to tilt and sway. The handrails were 
low, and if you fell, it was a 200-foot drop 
onto rocks and shallow rapids. 

Of the two bridges, only the second 
was, neurologically speaking, arousing. 
The researchers had the attractive woman 
approach men as they crossed each of the 
bridges. She then told the men she was doing 
a psychological study and asked if they’d take 
a brief survey. Afterward, she gave the men 
her phone number and told them to call if 
they had any additional questions about the 
experiment. The researchers predicted that 
men on the shaky bridge would be more 
likely to call, as they might mistake their 
arousal, actually caused by fear, for roman- 
tic arousal caused by attraction to the woman. 
Sure enough, more men on the shaky bridge 
made the call. 

Must have been a bummer for those 
dudes, though: 

“Hey, Sharon? It’s Dave from the bridge 
study. I know this may sound weird, but I was 


wondering...would you like to grab a coffee or 
something sometime?" 

"No, David. Sorry, this isn't Sharon. This is 
Martin. I'm a lab assistant. This was actually 
also part of the study. We wanted to see if you'd be 
more likely to call Sharon if you were on the more 
precarious bridge, and you were! This is great." 

"Oh, okay.... Do you know how to get in touch 
with Sharon?" 

"No, I don't. This is the decoy number we gave all 
of you guys. Man, she is something, though, huh? 
[long pause] All right. Thanks again. Bye, David." 

"Bye." [sad] 

Aron published another study, titled “Cou- 
ples' Shared Participation in Novel and 
Arousing Activities and Experienced Rela- 
tionship Quality" (damn, dude, shorten the 
names of your studies!), where he took 60 
couples who were doing okay and had them 
(a) participate in activities that were novel 
and exciting (e.g., skiing, hiking), (b) partici- 
pate in activities that were pleasant/mundane 
(e.g., dinner, movie) or (c) participate in no 
activity (this was the control group). 

The couples who did the novel and excit- 
ing activities showed a significantly greater 
increase in relationship quality. 

Now, many of you are probably thinking 
that this directly contradicts a study cited by 
Keanu Reeves's character at the end of the 
movie Speed. “I’ve heard relationships based 
on intense experiences never work," he says. 
"Okay," replies Sandra Bullock's character, 
“we'll have to base it on sex then." 

I'm not sure where Keanu's character, 
Jack Traven, got his information, but if 
you trust that Aron and his colleagues 
aren't bullshitting us, it seems like par- 
ticipating in novel and exciting activities 
increases our attraction to people. Do the 
dates you usually go on line up more with 
the mundane/boring or the exciting/novel 
variety? If I look back on my dating life, I 
wonder how much better I (and the other 
person) would have fared if I had done 
something exciting rather than just a stu- 
pid drink at a local bar. 

So maybe for your next date think it 
through and plan it out perfectly: 

Instead of dinner at a nice restaurant, go 
to dinner at a nice restaurant but hire some 
actors who can do solid German accents to 
show up and fake a 1980s Die Hard-style 
terrorist takeover of the place to create the 
danger effect seen in the shaky-bridge study. 
Then, after you narrowly escape, go outside 
and see that the road you have to take is 
super hilly and very dangerous. That's when 
you say, "Maybe we should take my ride." You 
point her to your car—that’s right, the mon- 
ster truck Grave Digger. After that, you ride 
home, where you leap over dozens of cars 
and shoot fire from the sides of your tires. 

Your date will be excited in no time. 


The quality of dates is one thing, but what 
about the quantity? When thinking about 
that question, I recalled a change I made in 
my own personal dating policy at one point. 
While I was single in New York, the city of 
options, I found myself and a lot of my 
friends just exploring as many options as we 
could. There were a lot of first dates but not 
as many third dates. We were consistently 


choosing to meet as many people as pos- 
sible instead of investing in a relationship. 
'The goal was seemingly to meet someone 
who instantly swept us off our feet, but it 
just didn't seem to be happening. I felt like 
I was never meeting people I really, really 
liked. Was everyone shitty? Or was I shitty? 
Maybe I was okay, but my dating strategy 
was shitty? Maybe I was kind of shitty and 
my dating strategy was kind of shitty too? 

At a certain point I decided to change my 
dating strategy as a personal experiment. 
I would invest more in people and spend 
more time with one person. Rather than go 
on four different dates, what if I went on 
four dates with one person? 

If I went out with a girl and the date felt 
like it was a six, normally I wouldn't have 
gone on a second date. Instead, I would have 
been on my phone texting other options, try- 
ing to find that elusive first date that would 
be a nine or a 10. With this new mentality, I 
would go on a second date. What I found is 
that a first date that was a six was usually an 
eight on the second date. I knew the person 
better and we kept building a good rapport 
together. I discovered things about them that 
weren't initially apparent. We'd develop more 
inside jokes and just generally get along bet- 
ter, because we were familiar. 

"If you're patient and you know what you 
like, you'll find what you like in another per- 
son. There's going to be things you don't like 
about them. They don't clip their toenails. 
They don't wash their socks." That wisdom 
came to me from Jimmy, a 24-year-old who 
had a positive attitude about the limited 
choices available to him in his small town. 

I told Jimmy I felt like he could find 
someone with clean socks and trimmed toe- 
nails, and maybe the bar was set a bit too 
low. "The point is there's always going to 
be something that bothers you, you know? 
But it's up to you,” he said. It took me some 
time to learn this. 


Just casually dating many people had 
rarely led to this kind of discovery. In the 
past I had probably been eliminating folks 
who could have possibly provided fruitful 
relationships, short- or long-term, if I'd just 
given them more of a chance. I just hadn't 
had enough faith in people. 

Now I felt much better. Instead of trying 
to date so many different people and getting 
stressed out with texting games and the like, 
I was really getting to know a few people 
and having a better time for it. 

After doing the research for this book and 
spending time reading papers with long-ass 
titles like “Couples’ Shared Participation in 
Novel and Arousing Activities and Experi- 
enced Relationship Quality," I realized the 
results of my personal experiment were 
quite predictable. 

Initially, we are attracted to people by 
their physical appearance and traits we can 
quickly recognize. But the things that really 
make us fall for someone are their deeper, 
more unique qualities, and usually those 
only come out during sustained interactions. 

In most cases, people's unique traits and 
values are difficult to recognize, let alone 
appreciate, in an initial encounter. There 
are just too many things going through 
our minds to fully take in what makes that 
other person special and interesting. People's 
deeper and more distinctive traits emerge 
gradually through shared experiences and 
intimate encounters, the kinds we sometimes 
have when we give relationships a chance to 
develop but not when we serially first date. 

There’s something uniquely valuable in 
everyone, and we'll be much happier and 
better off if we invest the time and energy 
it takes to find it. 

But seriously, if the person doesn't clip 
their toenails or wear clean socks, look else- 
where. There are plenty of options. 


“I had no idea this desert was so popular." 


135 


P L A Y BO Y 


136 


— te 


AHEAD OF HER TIME 


Continued from page 63 


up to dead animals on your front lawn!" But 
everyone has always given me the greatest 
respect. I've never had any major problems. 
One time I did have a fan who got a little 
touchy. He followed me into the bathroom 


and kind of grabbed me, telling me I was 
wonderful. That freaked me out. But that 
was the only situation. Actually, former 
mayor Maynard Jackson gave me honor- 
ary citizenship to the city, though he later 
rescinded it, saying ^I wouldn't have given it 
to somebody whose claim to fame was being 
transsexual." That was an insult. [laughs] 
PLAYBOY: Did you give it back? 

COSSEY: I did offer, but he didn't take it 
back. I still have it on my wall. 

PLAYBOY: Your birth certificate still identi- 
fied you as male when you got married. 
You had waged a costly eight-year fight 
with the European Court of Human Rights 
in the 1980s for the right to change your 
gender on the document. You won the 
case initially, but the British government 
appealed, and you lost on the appeal. It 
wasn't until 2004 that Parliament passed 
the Gender Recognition Act, which allows 
transgender people to change their legal 


“Hell! There was me thinkin’ we'd all sit round the campfire 
swappin’ yarns and singin’ songs!” 


gender. Did you have issues living in the 
U.S. as a woman with a certificate that iden- 
tified you as male? 

COSSEY: I got U.S. citizenship 14 years ago. 
When I went through the process, one of 
the documents you have to produce is a 
birth certificate. My heart sank. I asked if 
I could use something else, said that I had 
lost it, but they said no. When I produced 
it, I looked at the lady and gave her my 
birth certificate, my name-change form and 
my letter from a surgeon confirming my 
1974 surgery. She said, “Okay, fine." And 
that was it. I expected her to leave the room 
and come back with a load of people behind 
her, but no. It was amazing. It was actually 
harder for my husband to get citizenship 
as a Canadian. [laughs] My birth certificate 
has since been changed, but it was a similar 
feeling when I applied for a gun license. 
PLAYBOY: You own a gun? 

COSSEY: Yes. When I drive to Florida from 
Georgia I sometimes travel through unsa- 
vory areas, so I have one in my car. When 
I went to apply for the license, I thought, 
I bet I’m not going to get this. They take 
your fingerprints and do a background 
check, and I thought they would find me 
mentally unstable or something as a trans- 
sexual. I told my husband they'd probably 
think there was a psychological risk with 
me. I imagined them saying, "Do we want 
someone like that running around with 
a gun?" But it came through, and now I 
have to renew it every five years. I never 
had a problem in the States with any of 
those legal issues. 

PLAYBOY: Do you have more allegiance to 
the U.S. or the U.K.? 

COSSEY: I definitely feel more allegiance to 
the U.S. It causes arguments with my sis- 
ter because she says I’m anti-Britain. I'm 
not a royalist. I know for a fact [the editors 
of] News of the World were vile and spent 
quite a bit of money to get access to my 
medical files. That's how they got concrete 
evidence to run the story that exposed me. 
I do miss the antiquities of Europe, and 
I go back every year, but America is such 
a beautiful country if you've got fire in 
your belly. I still have the home where I 
was born back in my village, but I would 
certainly feel much happier to spend what 
time I have left in the States. 

PLAYBOY: In 1989 you married your first 
husband, Elias Fattal. After you returned 
from your honeymoon, News of the World 
printed another salacious headline, SEX 
CHANGE PAGE THREE GIRL WEDS, which outed 
you to Fattal's conservative family. They 
summoned him, and you never saw or 
spoke to him again. Your marriage was 
annulled and you received no entitlements. 
Did you ever find out what happened? 
COSSEY: There was no closure. I know he's 
now married and has kids. It still burns 
me. Sometimes it comes across my mind 
like, I need answers. You're left with a cer- 
tain amount of psychosis. He knew I was 
transsexual because I gave him my book 
to read. You have four years with someone 
and you feel you've covered everything. 
My heart was broken. The whole thing is 
ugly. But you pick up the pieces and get 
on with your life. 


PLAYBOY: It was after that marriage ended 
that you asked to pose for PLAYBOY. Why? 
COSSEY: I did PLAYBOY as a Bond girl before 
everything about me came out, and I was 
very proud. This time, I was in the mid- 
dle of my battle with the European Court 
of Human Rights. With the fight I was 
dealing with, trying to get recognition 
and everything, I thought it would be a 
great platform if PLAYBOY would allow it. I 
had done pinups and calendars and glam- 
our shoots, but to be the first transsexual 
in PLAYBOY, I felt absolutely honored. I 
remember being invited to the Mansion 
to meet Hugh Hefner. He looked into my 
eyes and I immediately knew he felt my 
story. He felt my cause. 

PLAYBOY: In hindsight, did appearing in 
PLAYBOY help the cause? 

COSSEY: It helped to no end. PLAYBOY's read- 
ership is mostly male and heterosexual, so it 
allowed me to get out there and prove that 
people like myself can be sexy and attrac- 
tive. That's what I aimed to do at that point. 
I wanted to fight for the right of recogni- 
tion. And PLAYBOY gave me the opportunity 
to ask for a whole hour on most of the talk 
shows. I did shows with Phil Donahue twice, 
Maury Povich, Howard Stern, Joan Rivers 
and Arsenio Hall. It wasn't just a 10- or 
15-minute segment; it was an entire hour. 
And it gave people the chance to get to 
know me, to feel the situation and hope- 
fully gain empathy and understanding. 
That was my goal, and PLAYBOY was a great 
platform for that. 

PLAYBOY: Your pictorial sparked as much 
interest and controversy as it did because 
in the 1990s there were few, if any, success- 
ful transgender actors, authors or activists. 
That's no longer the case, with transgen- 
der men and women now recognized on 
television, in office and elsewhere. 
COSSEY: Every time something positive hap- 
pens, I'm watching with my mouth open, 
gasping and thinking, Fabulous. Laverne 
Cox is so comfortable talking about it. It's 
the changing times. You used to see a gay 
friend on a TV show only because it was 
fashionable. It's not fashionable. It's real- 
ity. It's the way it is. 

PLAYBOY: What are your thoughts on 
Bruce Jenner's coming out as a transgen- 
der woman? 

COSSEY: It was a bit of a shock, to say the 
least. He's been such an incredible athlete 
and hero, with all those raging male hor- 
mones running through his body. Despite 
the media buildup, I actually forgot Diane 
Sawyer's interview was airing. But I saw 
clips in the days after. The guy is obviously 
going through a lot of pain and suffer- 
ing. I hope he finds his happiness, but 
it's going to be tough. I hope he's not in 
a hurry to get surgery. 

PLAYBOY: Why is that? 

COSSEY: Sawyer never asked him, “Does 
wearing women's clothes turn you on sex- 
ually?” That's what somebody needs to 
establish. It's actually the first thing a psy- 
chiatrist asked me in counseling. That would 
be a fetish, and there's nothing wrong with 
having a fetish. Life's too short; enjoy it, 
whatever. But I would hate for him to lose 
his three-piece suite and live to regret it. 


There's a big difference between being a 
transsexual and being a transvestite. Again, 
there's nothing wrong with being a transves- 
tite. If you want to live that way, fine. But 
I've seen and heard so many horror stories 
of people going through surgery, becoming 
miserable and killing themselves because it 
was not the right step for them. And it's a 
very painful surgery. I would hate for him 
to lose that part of his body and go through 
transition, especially at this stage in his life, 
because he's no spring chicken. He's in a 
public situation going through something 
so sensitive. I pray he gets the right coun- 
seling. It's not what's between your legs at 
the end of the day. 

PLAYBOY: Has the growing acceptance of 
LGBT people made life easier? 

COSSEY: I don't know if ГЇЇ ever stop feeling 
like a second-class citizen. It's embedded 
and instilled from birth. You grow up, you 
don't fit in, you don't belong, you're bul- 
lied. That doesn't go away in five minutes. 
I don't think it ever goes away. When I 
look back at it all, what I went through 
was tragic. But how do you deal with pain? 
You shrug it off. That's the British way of 
doing it, at least. [laughs] I do feel a hell of 
a lot better. I'm an optimist and try to make 
light ofthe tragedies I went through, to see 
the funny side, and that has helped tre- 
mendously. I'm never going to be ashamed 
of something I had no control over, but I 
don't want to walk around with it written 
on my forehead. I know I felt great when I 
was successful as a model, before my career 
took off in a different direction. 

PLAYBOY: Speaking of your career, the job 
that started—and nearly ended—it all was 
For Your Eyes Only. The Bond films are big- 
ger than ever, winning Oscars and raking 
in hundreds of millions of dollars. If you 
were to get a phone call tomorrow asking 
you to appear in another Bond movie, what 
would you say? 

COSSEY: There's not a big calling for 
60-year-old transsexual women. [/aughs] 
I would hear it out. I would never say 
no to something that's tastefully done, 
but I'm not expecting to grace any cov- 
ers anytime soon. 

PLAYBOY: This summer you're releasing 
the e-book version of your second auto- 
biography, My Story. What should new 
readers expect? 

COSSEY: The story itself is about injustice. 
I've always felt I was forced into this situ- 
ation. The book is obviously topical, and I 
hope it helps people. People go through 
my situation and they're rejected and 
resented and they have a hell of a time. I 
was blessed with a stable family and friends, 
and I don't know if I could have gone out 
into the open and stood up and fought if 
I didn't have them. I still get stacks of let- 
ters from people who say, “You made my 
transition easier." That's always going to be 
in my bones. With what time I have left, if 
I can help in any way, I will. Even PLAYBOY 
rerunning my pictorial means something, 
so thank you, Hef. Live and let live. We 
have such ugliness in this world over reli- 
gion, gender seems like a minor issue. 


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138 


LIZZY CAPLAN 


Continued from page 86 


CAPLAN: Yes. It’s disturbing. It’s not a 50- 
50 split, but some women have reacted 
to what I think is the wrong definition of 
feminism. It doesn’t mean you hate men 
or you hate sex or you're a butch lesbian. 
Feminism is about equality. And yet some 
women with sway in this world, especially 
with younger girls, are unwilling to iden- 
tify as feminists, and I don’t see how that 
helps. There are still some women fighting 
against other women who want to make 
their own reproductive decisions. That just 
blows my mind. 


6 

PLAYBOY: You did your first nude scene 
during a short arc on True Blood. Did you 
really prepare by getting smashed on vod- 
ka? What brand is best for helping loosen 
your inhibitions? 

CAPLAN: Wow, that feels like so long ago. 
I was just 25 and really nervous. The first 
time is scariest. I think I drank Grey Goose, 


kept in the freezer from the night before 
and mixed into a bottle of Vitaminwater—a 
surprisingly delicious cocktail. I drank the 
entire bottle and had to get my stomach 
pumped. [laughs] I don’t know who told 
me the facts of life about doing nude 
scenes, but it was “Do whatever you need 
to do to get through it.” I was encouraged 
to get loose. Unfortunately that’s not an 
option on Masters, even for the more in- 
timidating nude scenes, because they’re 
always in the middle of the day, with nine 
pages of intense dialogue. For the True 
Blood scene I had to walk across a room 
wearing only tiny panties and climb on a 
guy, and that was it. 


Q7 

PLAYBOY: Can you tell when someone you 
meet socially has seen you on-screen in the 
buff? What are the signs of creep factor? 
CAPLAN: It's usually a guy who can't stop 
smiling and whose eye contact is inappro- 
priately intense when he introduces him- 
self. They're incapable of hiding it. Very 
uncomfortable and stressful. But what 
am I going to do, be mad that people 
watch my show? 


8 

PLAYBOY: When actresses talk about disrob- 
ing on set one always hears the same thing: 
how wonderful the crew is, how sensitive. 
It's almost a cliché. What's it really like? 

CAPLAN: The crews are very respectful. It's 
a pared-down crew, the smallest group 
possible—the director of photography, 
producers, writers, makeup artist. And 
I really trust them. I've looked up from 
a scene, and no matter what, as soon as 


“Given the right conditions, most people will pay for a pizza 
they did not order.” 


they cut, everybody turns the cameras 
away and looks down at the ground. No- 
body's trying to sneak a peek. They also 
lock the set up tightly. For the particu- 
larly intimidating sex scenes, I double- 
check who will be behind the monitor. 
It's one thing to feel safe in the room, but 
with monitors broadcasting, you have to 
feel safe all over the set. It's a good thing 
there's no live feed in the cafeteria. That 
would be bad. 


9 

PLAYBOY: You've ае чье yourself as ап 
actress who has appeared in many roles, 
most of which you claim nobody has seen. 
But with a résumé that includes shows 
such as Party Down, The League, The Class, 
Related and The Pitts, as well as guest spots 
on New Girl, Smallville and your debut on 
Freaks and Geeks, plus roles in films includ- 
ing The Interview, Hot Tub Time Machine, 
Cloverfield, Bachelorette and Mean Girls— 
and this is just half of what you've done— 
you'll excuse us for not believing you. 
What's your stick-to-it secret? 

CAPLAN: I'm very competitive and ambi- 
tious. I've gotten angry when I didn't get 
a role. That fueled me for many years. In- 
stead of quitting, I just wanted to make a 
list of whoever I thought had wronged me 
by not hiring me. I'd show those mother- 
fuckers. I'm sure I've since gone to work 
for some of those motherfuckers, because 
at a certain point you have to let it go. 
If it were easy to be an actor or actress, 
then everybody would do it. We all have 
to start at the bottom. I'm grateful for 
every bad audition experience. It's given 
me a career I can be truly grateful for. We 
shouldn't be handed things. 


10 

PLAYBOY: Is it true ia avoid social media? 
CAPLAN: I've never been on Twitter, Face- 
book, Myspace or Instagram. I know 
myself well enough to know that I would 
spend far too much time obsessing over 
a tweet or a photo or an opinion. I un- 
derstand I’m part of a business, that it's 
not driven just by artistic integrity. You 
have to take into account the commerce. 
But being online is not my job. My job is 
to convince you that I'm somebody else. 
The less people know about me, the bet- 
ter I'm allowed to be at my job. I don't 
want to get a job because I have 500,000 
Twitter followers. I want to get a job be- 
cause I earned it. 


11 
PLAYBOY: What's duis thing you do in the 
morning and the last thing you do at night? 
CAPLAN: Besides open and close my eyes? 
I know what I should do: take a few deep 
breaths, a couple of moments of medi- 
tative thoughts, stretch, start my day. 
What I actually do is hit snooze about 
15 times, check my e-mail, get pissed 
off by something I read, get out of bed, 
drink two cups of coffee before I've eaten 
anything and start my day on the totally 
wrong foot. The end of my day should 
also involve some deep breathing, some 
light meditation and perhaps some more 


stretching. But it usually just ends with 
watching The Real Housewives. I love it. 
It's painful but so meaningless to my life 
that it’s like junk food. It’s white noise, 
and for some reason it relaxes me. 


Q12 

PLAYBOY: You once told Conan O’Brien 
about rifling through your parents’ X- 
Rated Cookbook as a child and seeing a 
breast tart and a meat-loaf penis. What 
else did you discover that you couldn't 
describe on the air? 

CAPLAN: It's been 25 years, but those are 
seared into my memory. The breast tart 
was beautifully photographed in that kind 
of grainy 1970s color. The dick meat loaf 
was just disgusting and unsettling. I don't 
remember anything 
resembling a butt 
or vagina, but the 
vagina could have 
been anything. Does 
a shellfish work for 
you? A hamantasch? 
It was probably 
some sort of cake or 
meat shaped into a 
sloppy-looking va- 
gina that could feed 
a family of four. 


013 

PLAYBOY: You’ve 
said you grew up a 
tomboy. When did 
you get into girlie 
clothes? 
CAPLAN: The show 
helped. Every single 
day I wear these 
long-line bras and 
girdles and stock- 
ings that I put into 
garter clips—just 
like your mom used 
to wear. That makes 
me feel like awoman 
before I even go into 
hair and makeup. 
I wore panty hose 
and tights when I 
was younger, but not 
stockings, which are 
very elegant. I like 
jeans and T-shirts, 
so I don't know if I 
would have matured into my womanhood, 
as queer as that sounds, without this job. 
Or maybe I’m just at the age when this 
starts to happen to all of us career tomboys. 
ГЇЇ credit the show. 


Q14 

PLAYBOY: When you were a kid, what was 
under the bed that scared you? 

CAPLAN: Seriously, every night I checked 
in my sheets for spiders and in my closet 
for monsters and/or robbers. I was always 
petrified someone was going to break into 
the house and kill me. Always. I think 
girls are raised to be more aware of who’s 
walking behind them on the street. You 
have to be more alert moving through 
your life than a guy does, which pisses 


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could pour ketchup on myself so it would 
look like I was already dead—and they’d 
leave me alone. It now seems sort of crazy 
that anyone who would break in would 
believe that someone else had gotten 
there first. Another problem: It takes too 
long to get the ketchup out of the bottle. 
I needed a squirt bottle. Terrible plan. 
Major holes. 


О15 
PLAYBOY: What would we find in your un- 
derthings drawer that would surprise us? 
CAPLAN: À severed human head. And a 
severed finger—but I won't specify which 


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one. [laughs] I’ve always found it hilari- 
ous how guys are shocked when they see 
what's in girls’ underwear drawers: It's 
the underwear we wear when you're not 
going to see us. I do have some going- 
out underwear, but I'm really not into 
dropping a lot of coins on sexy lingerie. I 
love lingerie, but it's more for me and for 
showing other girls. Guys, I've realized, 
can find anything sexy. 


Q16 
PLAYBOY: What do you find sexy? 
CAPLAN: I like when guys don't wear those 
boxer briefs that go to mid-thigh and look 
like bike shorts. It's harder and harder to 
find. They're very popular, but I think they 
look stupid. I prefer old-fashioned tighty- 


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whities or even just boxer shorts. When 
you discover a man who wears tighty- 
whities, you hold on to him. It's so old- 
school. They're great. 

Q17 
PLAYBOY: What don't women understand 
about men that they still need to learn? 
And vice versa. 
CAPLAN: For the ladies, I suppose it's 
worth assuming that whatever little physi- 
cal imperfections you obsess over in the 
mirror are in reality invisible to the man 
you're standing naked in front of. He is 
distracted, you see, by your breasts. For 
the men: that your girlfriend's girlfriends 
know everything about your penis and 
most things about your balls. 


Q18 

PLAYBOY: What kind 
of man has a chance 
with you? 
CAPLAN: À guy who 
wants a chance with 
me has to have a 
sick and dark sense 
of humor. [laughs] 
Гуе had a handful 
of serious relation- 
ships. I take that 
shit very seriously. 
Before breaking 
up I will try every- 
thing to make it 
work, because if I 
love somebody, it 
means a great deal. 
I don’t toss that 
word around eas- 
ily or frequently. 
But when it's over, 
there's a DO NOT 
RESUSCITATE sign 
hung around the 
relationship’s head. 
Sometimes it just 
doesn’t work out. 


019 
PLAYBOY: We've 
heard you’re a food 
thief who likes to eat 
off other people’s 
plates. You even 
have a special three- 
foot-long fork. 
CAPLAN: I did have 
the fork, but I'm careful to eat only from 
portions that seem untouched. I get that it 
might be weird for others, but I was raised 
not to create boundaries around my plate 
or around the plates of others. Besides, 
food just looks better when it's on someone 
else's plate. 


20 

PLAYBOY: We m ask: When did you 
master sex? And what's better than sex? 
CAPLAN: Immediately. [laughs] Nah, no 
one does it immediately. I was very lucky 
to have an ideal first sexual experience. It 
was good and sweet and safe. What's better 
than sex? Sex with someone I like. 


139 


PLAYBOY 


140 


THE POISONED GULF 


Continued from page 56 


surface, the Gulf region appears to have 
recovered from the worst environmen- 
tal disaster in U.S. history. Gone are the 
glistening slicks of crude that spread over 
thousands of acres, the brown sludge that 
inundated marshlands, the dead birds sat- 
urated in oil. Vacationers and sport fish- 
ermen are flocking to the sandy beaches 
and blue waters. And the oil business has 
bounced back, with about 60 deepwater 
drilling rigs sucking nearly 1.2 million 
barrels a day from beneath the Gulf. 

But look a little deeper, and all across 
southern Mississippi, Alabama and Loui- 
siana, in the funky tourist meccas that 
hug the jagged shoreline, in the fishing 
villages perched along the placid bayous 
and even in the prosperous towns that are 
home to petrochemical honchos, you hear 
the same stories: about once active and 
energetic boat captains and deckhands, 
oystermen and crabbers, shrimp fisher- 
men and others who were among the tens 
of thousands who worked on BP’s cleanup 
operation and whose health has since de- 
teriorated so much they can barely func- 
tion. Even some of their family members 
and neighbors, who inhaled the aerosol- 
ized chemicals in the air carried ashore 
by high winds, are sick. They are stricken 


with migraines, skin rashes, bloody diar- 
rhea, bouts of pneumonia, nausea, sei- 
zures, muscle cramps, profound depres- 
sion and anxiety, and a mental fuzziness 
so severe they can’t drive anymore, much 
less hold down a job. 

The horrific irony is that these illnesses 
do not seem to have been caused directly 
by exposure to the oil. Many scientists 
believe it was the unprecedented use of 
1.8 million gallons of dispersants, com- 
bined with the crude, that unleashed a 
toxic brew that has sickened locals with 
chemically induced illnesses doctors are 
unable to treat. The very stuff that was 
supposed to protect the Gulf and its peo- 
ple may have done more damage than 
the spill itself. 


After the well blew, BP and federal regula- 
tors were faced with hard choices, none of 
them good. The safest methods to prevent 
all that oil from reaching the shore and 
destroying fragile coastal ecosystems, such 
as skimmers that soak up surface oil like 
giant sponges, just weren't available on 
the scale needed. The decision was made 
to carpet bomb the spill with dispersants, 
especially one called Corexit, a chemical 
compound used to break crude oil into 
tiny droplets that are heavier than water 
so they can sink to the ocean floor or be 
eaten by tiny oil-chomping organisms. 
Within a week after the spill, tens of 
thousands of gallons of Corexit were be- 
ing dumped into the Gulf from C-130 
airplanes and blasted into the gushing 
wellhead by subsea robots. Everyone 
knew there would be consequences, 
but officials judged it a risk worth tak- 
ing. “It’s a trade-off decision to lessen 
the overall environmental impact,” Jane 
Lubchenco, director of the National Oce- 
anic and Atmospheric Administration, 
told reporters at a news conference in 
May 2010, a few weeks after the accident. 


“Poor bastard. Can’t even lick his own balls.” 


“When an oil spill occurs, there are no 
good outcomes.” 

Both BP and the Environmental Pro- 
tection Agency insist Corexit is safe. “The 
same ingredients contained in Corexit are 
also found in common consumer products 
such as household cleaners, food packag- 
ing, hand lotion and cosmetics,” says BP 
spokesperson Jason Ryan. 

But in 2013, investigators from the 
Government Accountability Project, a 
whistle-blower group, obtained a safety 
manual issued by NALCO, the maker 
of Corexit, spelling out the chemical’s 
health hazards. It warns that Corexit 
9527 (which was used until supplies 
ran out and BP switched to Corexit 
9500, considered less toxic) is an “eye 
and skin irritant. Repeated or exces- 
sive exposure...may cause injury to red 
blood cells (hemolysis), kidney or the 
liver.” The manual adds that “excessive 
exposure may cause central nervous sys- 
tem effects, nausea, vomiting, anesthetic 
or narcotic effects” and advises users to 
“wear suitable protective clothing.” The 
compound also contains 2-butoxyetha- 
nol, a toxin linked to cancer, respiratory 
and nervous system damage and neuro- 
logical problems found in many workers 
exposed to Corexit during the Exxon Val- 
dez cleanup. 

In combination with oil, Corexit be- 
comes even more dangerous. Crude oil it- 
self contains dangerous chemicals—heavy 
metals, benzene, hexane, toluene—that 
can cause leukemia and lymphomas and 
destroy parts of the brain that regulate 
memory and motor skills. Corexit and 
oil together are synergistic, with the dis- 
persant acting as an oil-delivery system, 
breaking down the crude so the toxins 
can seep through our skin. “The smell of 
crude is bad, but when it was mixed with 
dispersants, I had to clear my crew off the 
decks, it was so strong,” says Hill. “All of 
a sudden I'd have a severe headache and 
blurred vision. I noticed that we all had 
stronger headaches, sickness and nausea 
when we were around the dispersed oil." 

Worse, as water on the ocean surface 
evaporates, the oil and dispersants "be- 
come toxic hitchhikers on the water mol- 
ecules and particulates in the air," says 
Riki Ott, a marine toxicologist who has 
researched the Exxon Valdez and Gulf oil 
spills. Soon after the well ruptured, fierce 
winds and turbulent seas conspired to 
transport the tainted air inland, leaving a 
thick, oily residue on windshields, marsh 
grasses, outdoor furniture and homes up 
to 300 miles from the coast. 

Nothing to worry about, BP insists. 
“Extensive monitoring conducted by fed- 
eral agencies and BP shows that response 
workers and the public were not exposed 
to dispersant compounds at levels that 
would pose a health risk," says BP's Ryan. 
'The Coast Guard, the U.S. Occupational 
Safety and Health Administration and BP 
collected more than 30,000 air-monitoring 
samples from late April to October 2010. 
Results showed that exposures to hazard- 
ous chemicals were below levels that posed 
safety concerns, according to OSHA. 


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PLAYBOY 


142 


But Shanna Devine of the Govern- 
ment Accountability Project believes that 
BP and the government's characteriza- 
tion of Corexit was “highly misleading 
and irresponsible.” A two-year investiga- 
tion by GAP and the Louisiana Environ- 
mental Action Network (LEAN) found 
dozens of people who experienced an 
array of health issues that seemed to be 
related to the spill. A long-term National 
Institutes of Health study launched in 
June 2010 that is tracking 33,000 people 
who were exposed to the combined oil 
and Corexit has already found high rates 
of respiratory problems, skin conditions 
and profound depression and anxiety; 
further results are pending. Meanwhile, 
a University of Alabama study published 
in April found Corexit 9500 may dam- 
age human lungs. 


By July 2010, Marylee Orr, LEAN’s execu- 
tive director, was overwhelmed. “I was get- 
ting calls from frightened people at two A.M. 
because they were vomiting four and five 
times a day and suffering from anal bleed- 
ing, seizures and chest pains,” she says. 


She called Dr. Michael Robichaux, an 
ear, nose and throat specialist in south 
Louisiana and a former state senator, for 
help. “In 40-odd years of practicing medi- 
cine, I had never seen anything like this,” 
says the 70-year-old physician as he flips 
through a stack of medical files on the in- 
laid wooden table in his kitchen in Race- 
land, Louisiana. By early 2011, the wait- 
ing room in his office was filled with sick 
people from all over the Gulf. 

Because most of them didn’t have 
health insurance, Robichaux, a Marcus 
Welby clone with a full head of gray hair 
who’s known widely as Dr. Mike, set up 
a makeshift clinic in the bottom floor of 
his home and treated them pro bono. 
Initially, he was skeptical that their 
problems were related to exposure to 
the mix of oil and Corexit, but he gradu- 
ally became convinced. 

Robichaux worked closely with LEAN 
to do blood tests on more than 100 peo- 
ple, including cleanup workers, divers 
and residents of coastal communities that 
had been sprayed with Corexit. Many of 
the chemicals found in crude turned up in 
the blood samples. Robichaux's patients 


"Stop, or our drone will taser you." 


all had remarkably similar symptoms— 
irritability, memory loss, headaches, dizzi- 
ness, excessive fatigue, blurred vision and 
acid reflux, which was striking since they 
came from different parts of the Gulf. 

Jorey Danos was one of them. Blood 
tests found disturbingly high levels of 
chemicals linked to the oil spill in Danos's 
system. Thin and wiry with dark hair and 
eyes, his arms and neck covered in tats, 
he's a bundle of nerves. He paces in front 
of the tidy mobile home he shares with his 
wife and three children on a quiet street 
in Thibodaux, Louisiana, puffing on a 
cigarette. His life, he says, "has become a 
living hell." 

The 34-year-old former construc- 
tion worker took a job as a deckhand 
on one of the cleanup boats because the 
money—$300 a day—was too good to 
pass up. He spent three months working 
on the water. He became concerned about 
breathing in the “pungent air,” but when 
he repeatedly asked for a respirator, he 
was told he'd be fired if he wore one. BP, 
he was told, didn't want the news media 
seeing workers with protective gear. 

BP insists it didn't stop workers from 
using protective gear, but nearly half 
the cleanup workers GAP interviewed 
reported they were threatened with ter- 
mination when they tried to wear it. BP 
also says it never sprayed cleanup crews 
directly. Danos says he was doused with 
dispersant on four separate occasions over 
the summer of 2010. "It was a spray like 
a fire hose raining down from the sky," he 
recalls, “with no way to escape." 

One evening that fall, as Danos was 
driving home, he was stricken with such 
excruciating abdominal pains that he 
had to pull over. It felt like someone was 
stabbing him in the stomach. Afterward, 
his health went seriously downhill. Boils 
erupted on his neck, he couldn't sleep or 
be out in the sun, and he suffered from 
seizures and momentary mental black- 
outs. Today, Danos is no longer able to 
work and takes an arsenal of pills to get 
through the day. The family is surviving 
on his scant disability payments. “Doc- 
tors say I have about five years to live," 
he says grimly. 

In 2012, BP agreed to a $7.8 billion 
medical settlement that would compen- 
sate victims up to $60,700 per person and 
left the door open for people to file fur- 
ther claims if they developed more seri- 
ous problems. (Corexit's manufacturer, 
NALCO, was found not legally culpable for 
any harm caused by its product, since its 
role was simply to provide it to BP.) More 
than 10,600 victims have filed, according 
to the latest figures from the claims ad- 
ministrator. About 724 claims have been 
paid, for a total of $1,352,250, while an- 
other 2,137 claims were denied. The rest 
have so far been deemed “incomplete”— 
mostly due to a lack of medical records or 
other backup documentation. 

Many locals, especially those who work 
in cash-based enterprises such as fishing 
and tourism, don't have medical insur- 
ance or access to regular doctors, which 
makes it difficult to prove damages. 


And the situation is even worse under 
Obamacare: Because the Gulf states— 
Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, Florida and 
Louisiana—turned down the extra Med- 
icaid dollars offered under the Afford- 
able Care Act, hundreds of thousands of 
residents have actually lost their health 
insurance because they make too much 
money to qualify for government subsi- 
dies but can't afford to pay out of pocket. 
Plus, only about 64 physicians in the en- 
tire Gulf region, according to a recent 
survey, are toxicologists trained to deal 
with these types of ailments, which makes 
things doubly difficult. “BP's game is to 
require such a high level of proof that it 
is just unattainable,” says Joel Waltzer, a 
well-known New Orleans environmental 
attorney. Many have opted out of the set- 
tlement, calling it paltry payment given 
the gravity of their injuries, and are pur- 
suing individual lawsuits. 

To make matters worse, medical science 
can't do much about chemically induced 
illnesses. ^You can alleviate the symptoms, 
but there is no treatment," says Katherine 
Kirkland, executive director of the Associ- 
ation of Occupational and Environmental 
Clinics in Washington, D.C., who is help- 
ing medical clinics in the region with the 
aid of $105 million provided by BP as part 
of the settlement. 


Humans aren't the only ones still suf- 
fering from the spill's aftermath. Oyster 
beds and coral reefs have yet to recover, 
crabs still drip with oil, fish are sickly, 
and dolphins are dying in record num- 
bers. In fact, more than 1,300 marine 
mammals, mostly bottlenose dolphins, 
have been found dead or stranded since 
the spill, according to an analysis earlier 
this year by the National Marine Mam- 
mal Foundation. Other research has 
found that dolphins in oiled areas are 
underweight and anemic and have adre- 
nal gland and liver lesions. 

Mixing the spilled oil with dispersants 
made the poisonous components of the 
oil more of a threat to marine life. Geor- 
gia Tech researchers, in a 2012 study, 
found that combining Corexit with crude 
makes the oil 52 times more toxic to tiny 
marine organisms that are crucial strands 
in the aquatic food web. "It exposes the 
ecosystem to toxins it wouldn't have been 
exposed to before," says Rick Steiner, a 
marine scientist who helped with the Gulf 
cleanup and consults on oil spills all over 
the world. Fish won't swallow oil in large 
globs, but when it's broken down into tiny 
particles, it is more easily absorbed into 
their systems. The dispersants also en- 
able oil, which is buoyant and normally 
floats to the surface, to drift down to the 
ocean floor. A study by Florida State Uni- 
versity published in December 2014 de- 
tected as much as 10 million gallons of 
crude carrying the tell-tale chemical fin- 
gerprint of the Macondo oil buried in the 
Gulf's sediment. There, it becomes food 
for organisms at the bottom of the food 
chain, eventually working its way up into 
shrimp, oysters and crabs. 


Ollen Blanchard deals with the results 
every day. “Look at these crabs," says the 
courtly 70-something crab wholesaler 
with slicked-back hair and a thick Cajun 
accent as he holds two pieces of fresh 
meat. We're inside a dockside crabbing 
shed in Chauvin, a tiny bayou hamlet in 
south Louisiana, where three workers 
arrayed around a long metal table use 
special knives to pull the shells off doz- 
ens of the freshly caught crustaceans, 
readying them for shipment to markets 
all over the Gulf. 

One piece of crab in Blanchard's slen- 
der fingers is fluffy and white, but the 
other is slimy and sickly gray. "That's 
oil," says Blanchard. He estimates up to 
20 percent of the crabs are spoiled. He's 
lost as many as 300 in a night. “They just 
die in the tanks and we find them in the 
morning," he says. 

For Byron Encalade, the oil spill may 
be the death knell for Plaquemines Par- 
ish, a historically black region just south- 
east of New Orleans where his family has 
lived since the 1800s. The town's marina 
was once a thriving hub where thousands 
of pounds of catch were bought and sold 
daily. A normal season would produce 
millions of oysters. 

But since the disaster, the fisheries have 
collapsed. “My community is now basical- 
ly in poverty," says Encalade, president of 
the Louisiana Oystermen Association. A 
powerfully built six-footer with a genial 
moon face and a deliberate way of speak- 
ing, he once ran an oyster business that 
grossed up to $500,000 a year with five 
boats and a couple of 18-wheelers haul- 
ing seafood up and down the coast. Now 
the 60-year-old fisherman has drained 
his savings and lives with his father. “Oth- 
erwise," he says, "I'd be homeless." 

BP maintains that flooding and fresh- 
water intrusions from the Mississippi 
River after the spill are to blame for the 
loss of the oysters, which require brack- 
ish water to survive. But marine scientists 
like Ed Cake, whose ovsrER 1 license plate 
is a familiar sight along the Gulf Coast, 
think otherwise. A layer of oil remains in 
the shallow waters, he observes. "It may 
be another five to 10 years before the oys- 
ter beds recover, if they do at all," he says. 


On a brisk, overcast November morn- 
ing on Bayou Yscloskey, a sliver of water 
about 30 miles southeast of New Orleans, 
George Barisich, a 59-year-old fisher- 
man, stands over the stove in the galley 
of his 56-foot trawler. He deftly soaks 
freshly peeled shrimp in whipped egg 
yolks, then dredges them in flour before 
flipping them into a deep fryer. Barisich 
has been up since daybreak unloading 
his latest catch: more than 6,000 pounds 
of shrimp rounded up over the course of 
five days out on the Gulf. 

Barisich participated in BP's cleanup 
program. That Christmas, he was strick- 
en with severe pneumonia that left him 
bedridden for 30 days, and his lung ca- 
pacity is now permanently diminished. 
Like many Gulf residents, Barisich, who 


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PLAYBOY 


144 


is also president of the United Com- 
mercial Fishermen’s Alliance, thinks the 
cleanup was nothing more than a cover- 
up. “We were told it was an oil spill,” 
he says. “But this was a frigging geyser. 
Everybody was hiding the volume right 
away, because they know that the more 
oil that shows up and gets collected, the 
more the fines are going to be.” 

Indeed, BP faced stiff penalties for 
every barrel of oil it was responsible for 
leaking into the Gulf, giving the oil giant 
“a tremendous economic incentive to 
use dispersants to hide the magnitude 
of the gusher,” says Hugh Kaufman, se- 
nior policy analyst with the EPA’s Office 
of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. 
In September 2014, U.S. District Judge 
Carl Barbier found BP guilty of gross 
negligence, which means the company is 
liable for pollution fines under the Clean 
Water Act that could total as much as 
$13.7 billion. 

The dispersants, critics contend, allowed 
BP to mask how much oil originally leaked 
into the Gulf. “We used to call Corexit 
‘Hides It,’” says Rick Steiner. “Dispersants 
are the industry’s default go-to tool, but it’s 
all PR spin because it looks like something 
is being done.” 

These chemicals also diminished the 
total volume of oil that could be traced 
back to BP. “Using Corexit makes it 


more difficult to trace any lingering oil 
in the Gulf back to what gushed from the 
Macondo well,” says Scott Porter, a ma- 
rine biologist with Louisiana Universi- 
ties Marine Consortium. “Corexit works 
swiftly in the environment and erases the 
oil’s signature by breaking down the oil’s 
tell-tale fingerprint.” 

To be fair, BP did spend more than 
$14 billion on the cleanup. At its peak in 
2010, more than 48,000 people were de- 
ployed and nearly 100,000 worked on the 
cleanup in total; a fleet of 6,500 ships and 
approximately 2,500 miles of boom to con- 
tain or absorb the oil were dispatched, ac- 
cording to BP’s estimates. 

On the other hand, the company also 
lied baldly to the press, the public and 
the government about how bad the spill 
was. As part of a 2012 criminal settle- 
ment that called for BP to pay $4.5 bil- 
lion in criminal fines and other penalties, 
the company admitted that it withheld 
documents and provided false informa- 
tion to Congress on how much oil was 
flowing. Initially, the oil giant lowballed 
the numbers and claimed only 1,000 bar- 
rels a day were leaking, even though in- 
ternal company estimates indicated that 
up to 60,000 barrels a day were gushing 
out, according to documents BP later 
provided to congressional investiga- 
tors. If more accurate information had 


“No, we’re not settling this in a cage match in the garage.” 


been available earlier, “the response to 
the spill may well have been different... 
and successful containment and capping 
strategies could have been developed 
and deployed more quickly,” Edward 
Markey, then chair of the House subcom- 
mittee probing the BP spill, noted later. 
Markey also called the untested under- 
water use of such a large volume of dis- 
persants a “science experiment.” 

BP also barred journalists from oil- 
soaked beaches, asked cleanup workers 
and scientists conducting BP-funded re- 
search to sign confidentiality agreements 
and even had in-house discussions about 
attempts to “direct” and “influence” sci- 
entific research studies, according to a 
series of e-mails Greenpeace obtained 
under the Freedom of Information Act. 
“You could not speak about what you 
saw,” says George Barisich of the clean- 
up program. “That was one of the rules. 
Otherwise you’d lose your job.” 

In March, BP issued a report claiming 
that the spill didn’t cause a “significant 
long-term impact” to Gulf wildlife and 
fisheries and that the massive cleanup 
was largely successful in limiting the 
spill’s damage. But government officials 
and environmentalists dismissed the re- 
port for cherry-picking its information. 
“BP misinterprets and misapplies data 
while ignoring published literature that 
doesn’t support its claims,” declared the 
Natural Resource Damage Assessment 
trustees, a group of state and federal 
agencies charged with evaluating the 
spill’s impacts. 

The EPA is currently holding public 
hearings about the use of dispersants to 
contain the environmental damage of 
future oil spills—which are inevitable, 
given the upsurge in deepwater drill- 
ing and our unquenchable thirst for 
fossil fuels. No one has more at stake 
than Gulf communities. There, residents 
pride themselves on being hardy, resil- 
ient and independent, melded together 
over generations in tightly knit commu- 
nities that sit squarely in the hurricane 
belt. They’ve defiantly rebuilt in the face 
of one natural or man-made calamity af- 
ter another. But decisions made in those 
first panic-filled weeks after the Macondo 
well blew may have doomed countless 
people, animals and ecosystems and de- 
stroyed a way of life that has endured 
for centuries. “When a hurricane goes 
through, it damages everything. But it’s 
here today and gone tomorrow, and then 
you start picking up the pieces,” says 
Wilma Subra, a noted environmental 
chemist with LEAN. “This is a whole dif- 
ferent ball game, because the destruction 
just keeps going and going. People are 
too sick to work. They don’t have health 
insurance. They’ve lost their homes. 
They’ve lost everything.” 

People like David Hill. “I loved working 
in the oil fields and on the boats, but I can’t 
any longer,” he says. “When I see that stuff 
on TV about how BP made this a better 
place, it makes me angry.” 


PLAYBOY 


As 


JEREMY RENNER 


Continued from page 52 


and the studio, and I went with it. 
PLAYBOY: Any gut feeling on whether the 
trust was well-placed? 

RENNER: I love Tom, Simon Pegg and 
everybody else who is in that movie. I love 
my character. I was happy to be doing it. 
The ultimate challenge and difficulty on 
that movie and Avengers: Age of Ultron 
was that they both shot in London, which 
took me 11 hours away from Ava. That 
was what caused any cantankerousness, 
agitation or negative feelings I had about 
the whole moviemaking experience. All 
I worried about once I landed in Lon- 
don was, When do I get to see my little 
munchkin next? If I knew it was in two 
weeks, fine. If they said, "We don't know 
how long you're shooting," well, Mr. 
Renner's not going to be a happy man in 
that makeup trailer in the morning. If I 
did not have my daughter, I would have 
enjoyed being in London, and I would 
not have come back to the States hardly 


at all. But 40 flights from Los Angeles to 
London and back nearly killed me. 
PLAYBOY: You went public with your frus- 
trations in 2012 about how little your 
Hawkeye character had to do in The Aveng- 
ers. There's more of him in Avengers: Age of 
Ultron. Are you happier? 

RENNER: Not to be a dick, but I actually 
get to speak in this one. I have not seen 
the whole movie, but I just saw a scene the 
other day that I loved because all of a sud- 
den it made me think, Wow—that’s who 
Hawkeye is. Not that I want to go do a 
separate Hawkeye movie, but there's a lot 
to explore there. It's a near impossibility 
to be able to put that many huge charac- 
ters in a movie and still have everyone be 
happy. There's a lot more for me to do in 
this new one, among an even bigger cast 
with new baddies and new goodies. Every- 
thing that kind of worked in The Avengers 
is exponentially bigger in this one. 
PLAYBOY: This one's a much more team- 
oriented ensemble movie. 

RENNER: I saw Robert Downey Jr. twice 
on the last one, including off the set. Be- 
ing together a lot more on this one made 
the experience more fun. We got to 
make fun of each other's costumes. The 
challenge for director Joss Whedon was 
that putting Downey, Chris Evans, Chris 
Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Mark 
Ruffalo and me together is like herding 
kittens. All of us in one room? That's 
like a bunch of kids running around. It's 
perfect because we play a ragtag band 


of broken, flawed heroes. If it was just a 
bunch of guys flying around in suits and 
shooting shit—like, who gives a shit? 
With these characters, there's something 
to actually root for and fight for. You re- 
ally care about these people. 

PLAYBOY: Are you planning to do any 
follow-ups to The Bourne Legacy? 

RENNER: There's a huge, quite compli- 
cated history and backstory with that 
franchise. People are very precious about 
wanting to keep it highbrow and smart. 
'To continue doing those movies, there's 
got to be a good reason to keep telling 
that story. Those are things I have no 
part in, so I'll let the people who are 
good at what they do figure those things 
out and figure out the timing. But yeah, 
I would love to do another one. 

PLAYBOY: Adding things up, what kind 
of time is this for you professionally 
and personally? 

RENNER: I feel it's always an amazing 
time. You're talking to a guy who's really 
happy in his fucking flip-flops right now 
with his little daughter in her pajamas 
running around in the house, waiting for 
me. I've been born with a lot of love and 
still have even more love in my life. I'm 
a man like anybody else. I'm accepting of 
my flaws and of the good and bad things 
in my life. Even though there are some 
crappy things going on in life, I know 
there's a light at the end of the tunnel. 


REOCKABILIAS 


OVER WOO 000 LEMS EROM YOUR FAVORITE 


TOUR 1977 


145 


PLAYBOY 


146 


MTS 
ШҮ: 


IRELAND 


| 


THE BALLAD OF JOHN JOE NEVIN 


Continued from page 66 


day fight for a title in the world's most 
famous arena, he'll have to overcome more 
than just dangerous opponents. He must 
first survive the traveler life, one defined 
by startling prejudice and discrimination, 
poverty, soaring mortality rates, high inci- 
dence of suicide, poor health, long-standing 
feuds with neighboring traveler clans and 
the often Shakespearean complications of 
one's own family. Exhibit A? As John Joe 
parks the car and marches across the Tulla- 
more Aura Leisure Center lot, I notice he 


still has a slight limp. Last April, he made 
national Irish headlines with an altercation 
in Mullingar. Both his legs were broken. 
With a golf club. “I remember blood every- 
where and trying to push the bone back 
under my skin,” he says. “I was sure my 
career was over." The assailant? Not a mug- 
ger or a madman. It was his cousin, also 
named John Joe Nevin. 


An hour north of Mullingar in the city 
of Cavan, just above a carpet and furni- 
ture warehouse, sits the Cavan Boxing 
Club. For more than a decade John Joe 
has made the commute here three, four, 
sometimes six days a week. Normally a trip 
to the gym is as routine as brushing his 
teeth. But today is different. It is a big 
day. An important day. For the first time 
since his legs have healed John Joe will 
step back into the ring. 

The Cavan Boxing Club looks like 
most other boxing gyms. Walls covered 
in fight posters: Mayweather, Ali, Andy 
"the Quiet Man" Murray and John Joe 
Nevin. Dangling heavy bags, speed bags, 
double-end bags and a box full of used 
gloves, headgear and protective cups. Two 


"Hot enough for you?" 


rings covered in blue canvas. John Joe, 
sporting a yellow Brazilian Football Con- 
federation team shirt, long green shorts 
and red 12-ounce gloves, slips through the 
ropes of one ring and begins loosening 
up. He is a small five-foot-eight, short- 
legged and long-armed, having won his 
silver medal at 56 kilograms (123 pounds). 
Paddy Boy—a two-time national amateur 
champion (under 16 and under 21)—dons 
a pair of mitts and joins his brother. 

"Paddy's mad to get me back sparring," 
says John Joe with a grin. "He knows I'm 
rusty and he can catch me with a few shots." 

The bell rings. John Joe moves cautiously 
on his rehabbed legs. His punches lack tim- 
ing and purpose and the sound against 
the leather mitts is not a sharp crack but a 
muffled thud. Their father, Martin, with a 
shaved head and prominent paunch, leans 
on the top rope and watches without worry. 
He has seen his eldest son through more 
than 250 amateur fights. Although proud, 
he takes no credit. “Don’t know where he 
got it," says the 46-year-old. “I never laced 
'em up myself." 

Standing a few feet outside the ropes, 
another man watches intently, his own 
hands encased in red-and-black pads 
etched with BELFAST BoxiNG. Brian 
McKeown runs the gym and has trained 
John Joe for 13 years. With a white beard, 
broad back and gray-blue eyes, the 67-year- 
old Northern Ireland native exudes the 
strength and vitality of a ship captain or 
a Mafia don. In a heavy brogue, he hints 
about his past—professional boxing aspi- 
rations, involvement in the Troubles, a bit 
of hard time. He's the sort of man who, if 
he said he'd bitch-slapped Gerry Adams, 
Га believe him. 

His life now, however, revolves solely 
around boxing and his prized pupil. “I 
first met John Joe when he was 12 years 
old," says McKeown. “He had talent and 
was eager to fight, but he was unnatu- 
rally small. He was willing to give weight, 
height and age, but I was reluctant to do 
it because older boys were stronger, more 
mature and hit a lot harder. I was afraid 
John Joe might take a lot of shots and lose 
his appetite for it." 

Yet John Joe had been feasting off bigger 
boys since his first bout at the age of eight. 
"The lad was 11 years old and had six kilos 
on me, but I was mad to get at him," recalls 
John Joe. Martin had bought his son long 
baggy shorts à la flamboyant former cham- 
pion Prince Naseem Hamed. John Joe lost 
the bout but discovered his calling. “Each 
time he put me down, I got back up and 
did the Hamed shuffle," he says. 

The Mullingar traveler won his first 
Irish National title at the age of 11. After 
repeating four of the following five years 
(his only speed bump at the under-15 
nationals) he got a call from “the boys," 
a.k.a. the Dublin-based High Performance 
national team. Their offer? A 5,000-euro 
yearly stipend and a spot on the junior 
national squad. He didn't disappoint. By 
2008 John Joe had won his first senior 
national title and qualified in Pescara, Italy 
for the Beijing Olympics. 

An eventual second-round loss in China 


only fanned John Joe’s fire for the 2012 
Games. In London, however, there was rea- 
son for concern, namely, a brutal lineup of 
opponents. John Joe won his first two fights 
handily to set up a bout against Oscar Val- 
dez, one of Mexico’s top prospects. “I was 
pretty worried," admits John Joe. “He was a 
pressure fighter. Big hitter. Four Irish box- 
ers had tried him in the past and lost." John 
Joe didn't (he won 19-13). After another 
decision over reigning bantamweight world 
champion Lázaro Álvarez of Cuba, John Joe 
found himself three rounds away from an 
Olympic gold medal. 

Standing in his way was the U.K.'s Luke 
Campbell. “I'd beaten your man before," 
says John Joe. "And not only beaten him. I 
made fun of him in the ring." But the Irish- 
man admits he took his eye off the ball and 
lost 14-11. Disappointed, yes. Deterred? Not 
a chance. The next summer he steamrolled 
the European Amateur Championships in 
Minsk, and that October he announced he 
was turning pro. 

After one round of pads, McKeown lum- 
bers into the ring and takes Paddy Boy's 
place. ^Head up, son," he instructs, catching 
combinations with ease. "Drop the shoul- 
der, roll the right hand and finish with the 
hook." The bell rings, ending round two. 
Sweat dripping down his nose, John Joe 
leans his heavy arms on the rope. McKeown 
isn't worried about endurance so much as 
weight transfer. "Can you put the weight on 
the leg? Is that a problem?" 

I ask McKeown if there was ever a semi- 
nal, holy-shit moment when he knew John 
Joe was special. He mentions the time John 
Joe, as a 16-year-old, beat a man nine 
years his senior. He also mentions the 
qualifier in Italy where John Joe rallied 
in the last round to make the Olympics. 
But McKeown settles on the 2008 senior 
Irish lightweight title fight against Ulster 
vet Ryan Lindberg. "Lindberg was the 
defending champ and a top-class interna- 
tional fighter," says McKeown. “John Joe 
beat him with double and triple scores. 
That made me sit back and say, “What the 
fuck have I got here?’” 

But as McKeown will tell you, the sur- 
prise wasn't so much John Joe's talent but 
that the then 18-year-old was still fight- 
ing. Irish boxing gyms are brimming with 
young gypsy lads eager to box. For them, 
learning a right-cross, left-hook combi- 
nation usually takes precedence over the 
multiplication tables. “For fuck's sake, 
I'm surrounded by ’em,” says the trainer, 
laughing. “Pd say 50 percent of the kids 
who come here are travelers. Good lads. 
Have a chip on their shoulder. And I 
expect 'em to come, because fighting is 
such a part of traveler culture." By the 
time they're in their late teens, however, 
marriage, kids and social lives draw trav- 
elers away. Some have managed to stick 
with the sweet science, including light- 
middleweight Francie Barrett (17-3) and 
heavyweight Tyson Fury, currently ranked 
number three by The Ring magazine. "I 
followed a lot of my cousins into boxing," 
says John Joe. "As we got older, they went 
to the streets—smoking, drinking, girls. I 
had my eye on something bigger." 


He adds, with no shortage of sarcasm, 
“They're all living the dream now. It's just 
not my dream." 


Mist falls on a raw evening as I approach 
the Mullingar Greyhound Stadium. As a 
sound rule of life, one should never pass 
up an evening at the dog track. I cough up 
my 10-euro admission fee and meet John 
Joe, Paddy Boy and Mullingar native "Big" 
John Lynch, an indefatigably cheerful tree 
surgeon who claims to have set the world's 
record for the number of Christmas trees 
chopped down in less than two minutes. 
John Joe is on the phone. *Dad, I parked 
over in the lot of dat furniture store," he 
says. The store's neighborhood, and that 
of the track, is a bit unsavory. “Could ya 
drive by and check on it in a bit? Tanks." 
We head upstairs and discover a crowded 
bar and restaurant and a reasonably well- 
heeled local crowd that includes a bridal 
party. Five minutes to post in the second 
race and I lay a 20 on the caramel-colored 
long shot, number six. He comes in last. 
John Joe and Paddy Boy, wagering conser- 
vatively, win 12 euros on the favorite. John 
Lynch buys a round of beers and we spend 
the next several hours speculating on the 
soundness of canines and the fitness of the 
bridal party. A fine Mullingar night out. 
Slowly, however, I realize that everything 
isn't so fine. Here is John Joe Nevin, Olym- 
pic star (no everyday occurrence—Ireland 
has only 28 medals in its Olympic history) 
and hometown hero. He should be fight- 
ing off the fans, yet no one approaches him. 
No one congratulates him. Nary a hand- 
shake or a photo request. It's not that 
he's unrecognized. I see the whispers, the 
nudges, the furtive glances. It's just life for 


a traveler in a country where, according 
to a 2007-2008 study, 60 percent of the 
population wouldn't want a traveler as a 
family member, 40 percent wouldn't hire 
one and nearly 20 percent would deny trav- 
elers citizenship. 

None of this is news. “Prejudice is a way 
of life for a traveler," explains McKeown. 
“John Joe has realized it's a handicap he 
must overcome. For him to attain what he 
did is amazing." Fame doesn't seem to mat- 
ter. Nor does representing one's country. 
Fifteen minutes before his semifinal Olym- 
pic bout against the Cuban Álvarez, John 
Joe's phone rang. “Normally I wouldn't 
answer," he explains. “But I thought it was 
Father King, the priest in Dublin who calls 
before every fight to give me a blessing." 
It was no invocation but his uncle Michael 
calling from Mullingar. A group of 30 
travelers—John Joe's extended family— 
had shown up at a popular pub to watch 
the bout, only to be told that John Joe's 
parents and Paddy Boy were welcome, but 
the rest were not. The basis? They were 
travelers. "They had to go to a pub six kilo- 
meters out of town," says John Joe. He does 
little to hide his disgust and anger. “These 
pubs in Mullingar had been using my name 
to promote business, then they don't let in 
my family. It's not fair." 

The incident made national news as 
another example of blatant discrimination. 
Not that it made a difference. Shortly after 
John Joe won the silver medal, the owner 
of a popular Dublin restaurant sent a tweet 
that the boxer's relatives would soon be com- 
ing for the lead and copper. Upon John 
Joe's return to Mullingar after the Olym- 
pics, thousands of people lined the streets 
for the celebration, yet not a single hotel 
would rent his family members a room. And 


“This drug is used in executions in Texas, but in small doses 
it’s very relaxing." 


147 


PLAYBOY 


148 


there was the occasion in 2013 when the 
boxer returned from winning his European 
championship. When he sidled up to the bar 
in one of Mullingar’s tonier establishments, 
the barman stated bluntly, “We can’t serve 
you.” Then there was the night in Dublin 
when they went for a bite at a pub and were 
refused, as McKeown will attest. “They said 
he had on trackie bottoms, so he couldn’t be 
served,” recalls the trainer. “Make no mis- 
take. That’s just an excuse.” 

Suffering discrimination hurts, even for 
someone who doles out punishment for 
a living. “Some people might deserve to 
be put out but not all of us,” says John 
Joe. “Not all should be painted with the 
one brush. All people should be treated 
the same.” Any traveler will tell you the 
problem is only getting worse in Ireland. 
Complaints to councilmen fall on deaf 
ears. “Ali winning a medal helped change 
things for the better for blacks in Amer- 
ica,” claims the boxer. “Nothing’s changing 
for travelers here.” 

The dog track outing ends. Despite 
dropping 75 euros on those mutts, we all 
have, as the saying goes in these parts, 
quite a crack. John Joe continues to be 
friendly, genuine and funny. Paddy Boy, 
once defrosted, is equally kind and reveals 
a dry wit. As we part ways for the night 
I'm starting to think that perhaps John Joe 
and his kinfolk might be exaggerating a bit, 
blowing things out of proportion. 

I flag down a cab. The driver is a bespec- 
tacled avuncular-looking fellow in the 
neighborhood of 50 years old. “In from the 
States?" he inquires merrily. 

"Yes, sir," I reply. “Here doing a story 
on travelers." 

'The cabbie's smile disappears. 


"Any experience with them?" I ask. 

"They are hateful people," he states 
coldly. “The only good traveler is a dead 
traveler. If I could have all the traveler boys 
castrated and all the girls' tubes tied I would. 
They deal drugs, contribute nothing, and 
their fighting is ruining this country." 

"Even John Joe Nevin?" 

“He's called on me a few times. He's a nice 
fellow. But the rest of them?" 


Forty of "them" have convened at Martin 
Nevin's house. Unwelcome in town, Mar- 
tin wanted a place to have a proper pint, so 
he built his own pub in the backyard: two 
wood-paneled rooms complete with pool 
table, bar, several small tables, old-school 
jukebox and dartboard. The walls are cov- 
ered with hundreds of photos of friends 
and family, a handful of boxing title belts 
and a sizable tribute to David Nevin, John 
Joe's cousin and a talented amateur boxer 
who died of a heart attack in 2012 at the 
age of 25. This is the Irish equivalent of 
an American man-cave, the major differ- 
ence being that here the TV is a 32-inch 
afterthought tucked into a corner. Travelers 
don't huddle around the boob tube. They 
banter, play games and drink. And drink. 
And drink. It's only five o'clock and already 
I tally 300 empty Carlsbergs. 

This crowd, predominately male, under 
40 and related by blood and/or marriage, 
doesn't drink lattes. They do not go to 
spin class. They're a hardscrabble lot, 84 
percent of whom are unemployed and 
only 30 percent of whom will live past the 
age of 60, according to national statistics. 
The men are all named John Joe, Paddy, 
Huey, David, Michael or Christy. They all 


“Hi there! Ted Fletcher, former leg man!” 


sport crew cuts, goatees and large tattoos 
bearing either the family name or that of 
a wife, a son or fallen kin. Travelers are, 
above all, about family. Nevins pride them- 
selves on the scope and closeness of their 
clan. Martin, one of 18 siblings, boasts 
there are 400 Nevins living in the Mullin- 
gar area and upward of 1,500 worldwide. 
"Family is the most important thing in 
life," explains John Joe as he sips a beer. “I 
don't go a day without seeing everyone." 

While the love of family abounds, the love 
of a reporter asking questions and scribbling 
notes does not. Outsiders are anomalies in 
traveler communities, and for the most part 
Iam received as warmly as an IRS auditor. 
I don’t fear for my life, but if some of the 
revelers have a few too many, I don’t rule 
out bodily harm. 

I stick close to John Joe. Despite his fame 
and experience in the outside world, he 
is treated, at least within these walls, no 
differently from anyone else. With good 
reason. Aside from boxing, he has led a typ- 
ical traveler life. He dropped out of school 
at 14. He married as a teenager and has a 
four-year-old son named, unsurprisingly, 
Martin. He lives in an estate house in west 
Mullingar among other travelers. When 
I ask if he has ever considered moving 
(the prejudice, the golf club attack, etc.) 
he looks at me as though I’ve suggested 
he become Protestant. “Move? Never,” he 
says. “This is my home.” 

I venture for a bathroom break, the 
toilet being enclosed in a small shed in 
the driveway. On my way back I’m cor- 
ralled by Martin, who introduces me to 
cousin Ollie, an olive-skinned man built 
like a bank vault. I have heard of Ollie. 
In an off-the-record conversation, a vet- 
eran Mullingar Garda described Ollie as 
the most dangerous Nevin and possibly 
the most feared man in Mullingar. When 
I mention this, Ollie is pleased. He freely 
offers an example of his gift. “Last fight 
I had was against Hughie Fury, cousin of 
Tyson. About six-foot-six and 20 stone,” 
says Ollie of his 280-pound foe. “And God 
as my witness he didn’t do nothing to me. I 
gave him a punch and broke all his inside 
teeth.” I inquire about his nose, which 
looks rather off-kilter. “I broke my nose 
once but not with a man’s fist,” he says. 
“Was with a pool ball.” 

The two men then turn to a more seri- 
ous matter, one involving John Joe. (At 
this point I must address the issue of elo- 
cution. Traveler conversations are, by and 
large, difficult to follow: See Pitt, Brad as 
Mickey O’Neil in Snatch. And when they 
get their load on, they sound like drunken 
Swedes mumbling in their sleep. I can 
piece together this “serious matter” only 
after listening to the recording a dozen 
times.) A cousin of theirs, a boxer, had 
slipped into John Joe’s weight class, and 
the two fought. John Joe could easily have 
stopped the lad but didn’t. Brought him 
“nice and handy” through the rounds. 
Yet for some reason the boy’s uncle was 
mad—he wanted the boy to win. The fol- 
lowing Thursday all the parties involved 
were going to be at the same wedding, and 
Martin expressed concern. 


“Won't be a problem,” mumbles Ollie. 

“Don't want a problem,” mumbles Martin. 

“ГЇЇ make damn sure of it. Have it cleared. 
ГЇЇ personally see it." 

This conflict, to an outsider like myself, 
sounds absurd, pointless, much ado about 
nothing. But within the traveler commu- 
nity there is a minority, a very loud, vocal, 
persistent group that gives the Palestinians 
and Israelis a run for their money when it 
comes to fueling conflict. There are feuds 
between various traveler families. There 
are quarrels within traveler families. There 
are incidents between travelers and settled 
people. The reasons are often a mystery. 
'The by-products are not. And the very pub- 
lic and headline-catching incidents haven't 
been the best PR for travelers. 

Google "Irish traveler fighting." In 
addition to thousands of hours of video of 
bare-knuckle fights and traveler lads call- 
ing out other traveler lads, you'll find a 
variety of colorful links such as “Travel- 
ers fight in a church with slash hooks at 
a funeral" and “Irish travelers fighting in 
shopping center" and "Armed Gardaí at 
scene as fight between rival travelers reig- 
nites this morning." The repeat offenders 
are often familiar traveler families: Nevin, 
Myers, Dinnegan, Joyce and Quinn 
McDonagh. John Joe knows very well of 
his extended family's involvement. In 2009 
a judge called Patrick Nevin “the villain of 
the peace" and gave the then 20-year-old 
a two-year sentence for a broad-daylight 
beating. Christy “Ditsy” Nevin was the 
alleged ringleader in a 2007 attack on a 
family home and the infamous 2008 riot 
that involved 200 people in the Mullingar 
Dalton Park housing estate. (According to 
reports, the feud began over unpaid bets 
on a bare-knuckle fight.) 

I believe John Joe when he says he's 
never seen a bare-knuckle fight in person 
and hasn't taken part in any skullduggery 
or violence. Still, he knows firsthand how 
one can become a casualty of tribal jeal- 
ousy and family squabbles. Enough time 
has passed that the young fighter doesn't 
get emotional when talking about the 
brown, uneven inch-and-a-half-long scar 
on his right leg where the bone sheared 
straight through the skin. 

'That Saturday morning John Joe and 
Paddy Boy had driven to the nearby 
Ardleigh Crescent housing estate to try to 
settle an ongoing dispute between their 
cousin John Joe Nevin and his father (their 
uncle), Michael. A fracas broke out. John 
Joe the cousin claims he feared for the 
safety of his wife and infant. John Joe the 
boxer asserts the savage golf club assault was 
unprovoked and based purely on jealousy. 
Whatever the case, the fighter obviously got 
the worst of it. Paddy Boy grabbed a toy 
hurley stick from the car and came to his 
brother's aid. The whole event lasted maybe 
three minutes but left a bloodied and bro- 
ken boxer en route to the hospital with his 
career hanging in the balance. 

"At first I went into a deep depression," 
admits John Joe. These days he feels the 
experience made him stronger as a fighter. 
"] cherish boxing now." 

As for his cousin? "He'll have to meet his 


maker one day. Get his judgment then," says 
John Joe. After nine months, the two made 
peace over a pint and dropped the case. "It 
was just the right thing to do." 


Fore! Welcome to the Mullingar Golf 
Club, a 6,685-yard, par 72 course created 
by famous Scottish designer James Braid. 
Stroll around the clubhouse and you'll 
find a plethora of stuffy old-school coun- 
try club types straight out of Caddyshack. 
A perfect place for a couple of travelers, 
right? Well, the lads are here—John Joe, 
Paddy Boy, cousin David and other cousin 
jJoe— participating in the Irish Autism 
Action charity outing. 

I catch up with their foursome on the 
fourth tee (they started at the third hole), 
adjacent to the clubhouse. While other golf- 
ers are decked out in spikes, khakis and 
argyle patterns, the lads prefer more per- 
sonal fashion statements. John Joe wears a 
black polo, jeans and sneakers. Paddy Boy 
and David are in sneakers and sweatshirts. 
In black dress slacks, black shoes and a 
translucent white button-down, Joe looks 
like a waiter, his massive NEVIN tattoo clearly 
visible across his back. 

Paddy Boy is the first to tee off. In all 
my years Гуе never before witnessed a golf 
stance like his. Hands a foot apart on the 
club, he crouches low, as if hovering over 
a toilet seat. He swings, and the ball—not a 
shocker—trickles a few feet. “Fuck’s sake!" 
he cries. John Joe is next. As he tees up, 
a handful of young boys by the clubhouse 
recognize him and excitedly begin to take 
photos and shoot video. The boxer takes a 
massive hack and the ball bounces a paltry 
30 yards. “Don’t put that video on YouTube, 
lads," says John Joe with a chuckle. 

'The four are a golf course's worst night- 
mare. They leave a trail of unreplaced divots 
and unraked sand traps. They walk across 
active fairways and hit into a foursome 
ahead of them. The damp, blustery condi- 
tions and aggressive black flies don't help 
their play. Frustrations arise. 

"You can't use tees on your second shot. 
That's disqualification.” 

"What you score? I lost count." 

"The two lads are cheating the most." 

“I just want to win one hole.” 

"Boxing is way easier than golf." 

After five holes, the lads call it quits and 
head for the clubhouse. With all the golfers 
still on the course, the dining room is empty 
and the four of them pull up chairs by the 
bar. The place is posh, formal, and the stern 
faces of former club chairmen stare down 
at us from the walls. I wonder what they'd 
think of travelers in their midst. The bar- 
tender happily serves John Joe and his kin 
their pints. Brings them their food without 
an iota of indignation. 

I ask John Joe about his future, whether 
he thinks a title can help bridge the gap 
between the travelers and the settled people 
in Mullingar. “I don't know if it would," he 
replies. “But if I become world champion ГЇЇ 
just buy my own bar in town. Show everyone 
up. And ГІ let everyone and anyone in.” 


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PLAYBOY 


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DAD ALL OVER 


Continued from page 68 


the best things in life, the chill breeze and 
the sun half eclipsed behind heavy clouds. 
Dad who always said to take off your hoodie 
before using the new table saw, due to the 
two ends of the drawstring hanging down 
and what would happen, Dad warned, if 
those two hoodie strings caught the teeth 
of the table saw and yanked you facedown 
onto the spinning blade, making you look 
like a stitched-up Frankenstein the rest of 
your life—provided you lived. 

That fake Dad, who always looked on the 
bright side, the one who died—he wasn’t 
our Dad, who said never to wave our hands 
out the window of a moving car owing to 
Isadora Duncan, Dad, the most beauti- 
ful, the most accomplished dancer of her 
time, Dad, who climbed aboard a Bugatti 
roadster one time, a top-down sports car 
in Nice, France with all her friends watch- 
ing and bid them, “Good-bye, my darlings, 
I’m off to glory!” thinking she was only 
going for a joyride with a handsome 
mechanic. Dad never got tired of describ- 
ing the way Isadora Duncan wrapped a 
long silk scarf around her pale neck and 
tossed one end to trail in the breeze, Dad 
said, how dashing, how carefree, and how 
that flapping scarf-end wrapped itself 
around the spokes of the rear wheel and 
snapped her swanlike neck, Dad saying 
how the embroidered-silk noose jerked her 
body from the open vehicle and dragged 
her screaming and then dead down the 
cobblestone street within sight of the 
friends she’d only then bid good-bye. 


WHATS WRONG, 
ZACH? YOU 
LOOK SAD 
TONIGHT. 


Dad, for whom the glass was always half 
full of poison, that story was Dad all over. 

Dad acting like a stranger, the day in 
question, parked along that country road, 
he propped open the hood. The hood of 
his car, not to be confused with the hoodie 
that gets your stupid teenage face table- 
sawed in half. Head deep in the engine 
compartment, Dad being Dad, he has to 
notice the fan cowling is absent. The fiber- 
glass shield, the cowling that protects 
stupid people from the spinning, razor- 
sharp blades of the radiator fan, Dad would 
note it not being there. A detail the offi- 
cer at the scene and the medical examiner 
might overlook, Dad certainly wouldn't. 
Those aluminum blades aren't spinning, 
Dad would explain, due to the afternoon's 
cool ambient temperature, Dad, who went 
to automotive trade school and never let 
anyone forget it. Dad who said, "That's no 
way to treat a bicycle," and told you to put 
the chain guard back on because the world 
was, to Dad, nothing except gnashing gears 
and sprockets merely lying in wait to take 
a bite out of someone stupid. That Dad 
would never have knowingly leaned over 
a running automobile engine, not even in 
January with the viscous fan clutch disen- 
gaged, not Dad, with his necktie flirting 
with disaster. Not the Dad who knew the 
tensile strength of silk. 

Dad feeling the winter sun on his back, 
Dad, lying there, Dad, waiting for redemp- 
tion, Dad, ready for karma and physics to 
take their course. 

Nobody told the police, Dad, nobody ever 
mentioned, Dad, that Isadora Duncan was 50 
years old, a washed-up 50-year-old dancer, 
scrounging money off rich, married lov- 
ers, Dad, who knotted the scarf around her 
own neck, Dad, so tight around her swanlike 
neck, and said such a gallows speech, “I’m 
off to glory," Dad, so many elegant gestures 
ending as she tossed away the rest of her life 
as if by some stage-managed mistake. 

Dad would impress upon you that even 
smart people die stupid deaths. Dad's 
favorite being Tennessee Williams, the 
Pulitzer Prize winner, the Toast of Broad- 
way, Dad always exclaimed, who wrote А 
Streetcar Named Desire and Suddenly, Last 
Summer and The Glass Menagerie. 'The 


ITS MY WIFE. 
SHE GOTA NEW, 


HIGH-STRESS SOB,SO 


way Dad always built him up, Tennessee 
Williams was smarter than any 10 regu- 
lar people combined. Being a bookworm, 
he suffered chronic dry eyes, Tennessee 
Williams, and, as per Dad, was perennially 
squeezing drops. Poor Tennessee Williams. 
Dad's point being that even dry eyes can 
kill you—genius or not—if you're not 
paying your full attention, Dad. Tennes- 
see Williams, for instance, would twist off 
the top of Visine and hold the cap between 
his lips for safekeeping while he tilted back 
his head and dripped the drops into each 
eye. Dad’s version is Williams had done so 
his whole life until, alone in a hotel room, 
the playwright hiccupped or coughed or 
maybe only forgot the hold his lips had on 
the Visine cap and let it drop straight down 
into the back of his throat where there was 
no getting it out, not by himself. Dad’s 
point being, one slipup could leave you just 
as dead as Isadora Duncan choked to death 
with everyone looking on. No, that Dad, 
Dad the worrier, Dad the pessimist, would 
know how a man’s necktie can dangle like 
bait, snaking down between the blades of 
a not-spinning radiator fan. 

This Dad in particular would hammer 
into you how no machine knows the dif- 
ference between butchering you and not 
just meat. Knowing Dad, he'd tuck his tie 
between the buttons of his shirt, like a mil- 
itary tie, like a soldier who knows better 
than to let something flap in the breeze 
Isadora Duncan-style, waiting for it to get 
snagged on an outbound bazooka shell or 
a dropped atom bomb targeted for enemy 
territory. No, Dad, our Dad would untie 
the necktie and leave it tucked like a pocket 
square in the jacket he's got folded over the 
back of the front seat. That's just Dad, dis- 
believer of the surgeon general. The same 
Dad, he says most folks have their death 
all planned out but just don't know it. The 
Dad who'd never run the tank half empty 
for fear of drawing grainy sediments into 
the fuel line and glazing the piston rings 
he considers family. 

Not that Dad could stand accused of 
being overly fond of family. Leastways not 
his own, least of all his own three children, 
Dad, not at the end. Our Dad who blamed 
the pain medication for his saying, over 


Oo BaD?! 
HES LUCKY! SHE 
CUT ME OFF 


SHES CUT OUR SEX 
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Christmas dinner, Dad, that Heather was 
too fat and sloppy to catch a husband, Dad, 
and neither was her brain anything spe- 
cial to look at. That Dad, that same dinner 
announcing Todd might not be in the poor- 
house if he didn't have babies with every 
drug addict he came across, and also vis- 
à-vis Dad, that Patrick was a lazy coward 
who couldn't stick it out for even the first 
six months of automotive trade school. Dad, 
merry Christmas, Dad, our Dad who never 
said anything except to warn us away from 
hot stoves and exposed wires, the look that 
his eyes let slip was worse than what he'd 
actually said. Dad. Our Dad. The Dad of no 
do-overs. His eyes said, "Lo and behold!” 
His eyes recognized the way cancer would 
kill his kids, Dad, long before killing him. 

Or New Year's Eve, that Dad, that night 
Dad's cancer killed Mom. Drugs saying 
everything he did or didn't intend. Called 
his wife a cow, Dad, the mother of his kids, 
Dad, said she'd saddled him with three 
kids dull as dishwater, Dad, while other 
kids were walking on the moon and win- 
ning president of the United States, Dad, 
drinking his pain pills now with midnight 
swigs of champagne, Dad, Heather saying, 
Dad, "It's the Demerol," Dad, him calling 
Mom bitch and sow, Dad, through clenched 
teeth, hissing the words like the relief valve 
of a boiling-over radiator cap. Dad spewing 
venom, spewing bile. Dad called up, Dad, 
his head thrown back, looking up through 
the dining room ceiling, looking through 
the roof, raising his hands, Dad, in lamen- 
tation, in supplication, Dad asking, “God,” 
Dad, “why did you," Dad, “bestow upon me 
such stupid children?" 

Whether you wanted to know or not, 
Dad would explain that a radiator fan only 
spins when the block temperature reaches 
156 degrees Fahrenheit. Above 35 miles per 
hour, the way Dad tells it, the ram air enter- 
ing through the grille, it's enough to cool 
the coolant. Dad, the expert on all things 
viscous fan clutch, Dad's talk about silicone 
fluid can put you into a coma to rival death, 
how the fluid is held in a little reservoir, 
and minus that fluid's release the fan clutch 
won't engage, Dad droning on and on, until 
such-and-such a temperature. At that point, 
Dad says, it's already too late. Dad's all about 
there being no warning. No bell tolling. No 
do-overs. When that clutch engages, and 
here Dad would shrug to show his helpless- 
ness in the matter, those razor-sharp blades 
of the fan will activate at full spin. 

Nobody talked about the possibility, Dad, 
that wearing a hoodie over a table saw is 
something you do, Dad, to spite your face. 
That’s why it couldn't look like an inten- 
tional accident, Dad. His leaning forward, 
revving the engine, Dad, with his tie fish- 
ing for disaster and his stomach placed so 
hara-kiri close to the metal blades about to 
cut loose. Dad had to look stupid, Dad, to 
be punished, Dad, and have his life made a 
lesson of. Dad, our Dad had to die the most- 
stupidest death he knew of. 

Heather would blame, Dad, his blood 
alcohol, Dad, and his painkillers, while 
Todd would blame the side effects of chemo- 
therapy for Dad going against trade-school 
gospel. That engine running, Dad, the 


shadow of him helping keep things below 
156 degrees, Dad, he had nothing to worry 
about unless the sun peeked out from 
behind a cloud, poor Dad, as he worked 
a thick thumbnail into the slot-head screw 
that adjusts the idle, Dad like a lamb led to 
slaughter, Dad, made low, Dad bent over 
the engine block like the chopping block it 
would soon become. Dad not being himself, 
not the man who'd want some pathologist 
to come across such a, Dad, bloody mess. 
Dad's Cause of Death recorded as the sun 
coming out. The Death Certificate stating 
"Misadventure," Dad, a casualty of some 
momentary lapse in the windchill factor. 

Some force bigger than stupidity was at 
work here. Prometheus crucified, Dad, the 
engine block becoming both the rock and 
the eagle sent to rip out his guts. His pun- 
ishment, Dad, for bestowing too much of his 
brand of fiery, Dad, truth upon the world. 

Dad punishing a body that had betrayed 
him, Dad, intending a freak accident, his 
neckwear being his low-hanging bait, Dad, 
tempting fate. Killed by something we all 
knew better than to risk, Dad, his own 
blood offering. An uptick in ambient tem- 
perature, Dad, the silicone fluid released, 
Dad, his tie snaring him, yanking him 
down, Dad, holding him in place, Dad, 
choked and gasping. 

At that, by automatic, Dad, without warn- 
ing, the turning blades struck his stomach, 
Dad, curved blades, Dad, ripped through 
his shirt, Dad, scraping his belly, Dad, slic- 
ing, Dad, slashing, Dad, swiping out great 
scoops of flesh. Clean tissue and cancer 
alike, thrown aside, hollowing Dad into 
a husk. Cleaned like a fish, Dad, dressed 
like game. Eviscerated, Dad, but still alive, 
Dad, pulling away, meat, pushing with both 
hands, Dad, fingers spread open against 
the hot engine block, Dad, abandoning his 
own vital organs in his effort to escape. Dad, 
shoving back, Dad, blood, Dad, screaming, 
Dad, sprayed, Dad, clots and gobbets spew- 
ing, Dad, steaming in the winter air. Dad, 
his last meal half food and half shit. Dad, his 
bowels winding around the crankshaft pul- 
ley, scalding hot on such a, Dad, brilliantly 
bright, Dad, cold winter day. 

Dad martyring himself, Dad, making 
himself the biggest idiot, held down, Dad, 
sizzling against the searing hot engine 
block, Dad, like Saint Lawrence, Dad, 
grilled alive by Vatican prefects for reveal- 
ing too much. Dad making his dullard kids 
mental giants by comparison. Dad, tangled, 
Dad, tied down, Dad, knowing there'd be 
no life insurance if anyone caught a whiff 
of suicide, Dad, leading people to believe, 
leaving them without a doubt something 
this gruesome, something so agonizing, 
Dad, it had to be by accident. 

Nobody telling the police that Tennes- 
see Williams never in his life opened his 
mouth by mistake. 

Dad, a worthy tribute paid, Dad, his 
earthly body already beyond repair, Dad, 
his necktie the tether holding only, Dad, his 
mortal remains, Dad, while the rest of him, 
Dad, the idiot, Dad, the fool, Dad, ascended, 
Dad, redeemed. 

Y 


BRIAN STAUFFER 


FORUM 


July/August 2015 /// 


A 


NOT QUITE THE 
END OF MEN 


The future for men in the new knowledge 
economy isn’t as bleak as you might think 


Over the past 35 years each 
recession has seen the loss of 
factory jobs that haven’t reap- 
peared. During the 2008 
recession, 70 percent of posi- 
tions lost belonged to men; 
only 59 percent were regained. 
Their disappearance is just 
one reason the average male 
income has not experienced a 
sustained increase since 1968. 


Technological progress is 
the most obvious culprit. Our 
digital age may do wonders 
for Silicon Valley pocketbooks 
but not for the workingman's. 
Automation puts blue- 
collar jobs across all 
industries—not to 
mention the collec- 
tive authority unions 
once guaranteed— 
at risk. As such, 
women now com- 
mand the skill set to 
thrive in our postindustrial 
age, but don’t believe doom- 
sayers and pundits spinning 
apocalyptic narratives about 
the end of men and the mid- 
dle class just yet. 

What do those prophe- 
cies entail? Blue-collar jobs 


are toast, we’re told; men 
won't be able to provide for 
their families, and their place 
in the economy looks bleak 
next to their better-educated 
counterparts. It's a narra- 
tive ignited by writer Hanna 
Rosin with her Atlantic cover 
story and subsequent book, 
The End of Men, in which she 
argues that the collapse of our 
manufacturing-based econ- 
omy has allowed for the rise 
of women as breadwinners 
and leaders in a country that 
no longer has a place for 
male skills. Countless 
bloggers, econo- 
mists, writers and 
commentators have 
echoed her since. 
Nobody is arguing 
that sexism and wage 
disparity have disap- 
peared, however. Educated 
men still reap the greatest 
rewards from the modern 
economy. But blue-collar 
workers, who once made up 
our vanishing middle class, 
face an uncertain future. A 
survey from the Pew Research 


Center this February found 
that 87 percent of Americans 
describe themselves as mid- 
dle class, but only half fit the 
definition. Furthermore, the 
share of Americans living in 
middle-income households 
shrank from 61 percent to 
51 percent between 1970 
and 2013. 

Women's wages, however, 
are rising—up 78 percent 
since the 1970s, while men's 
wages have stagnated—though 
women still earn less than 
men. In the 1970s the average 
woman contributed 27 percent 
to her household's income; in 
2011, she contributed 37 per- 
cent. It won't be long before 
middle-class women outearn 
their male peers, given the 
growth of female-dominated 
industries and advanced edu- 
cation. The latter, especially, 
is where women are lapping 
men. Fifty percent of women 
between the ages of 24 and 
39 have completed a degree 
after high school, versus 41 
percent of men. 

But over the past 400 years, 
from agrarianism to small- 
scale manufacturing to the 
factory to corporate capital- 
ism, men have adapted at 
every economic turn, creat- 


Men have 
adapted at 
every eco- 
nomic turn in 
the past 400 
years, creat- 
ing winners 
and losers. 


ing short-term winners and 
losers. Harvard economist 
Lawrence Katz thinks that 
when the economy shifts, 
those who lose out experience 
"retroactive unemployment" in 
pursuit of jobs that no longer 
exist; however, he anticipates 
a bright future for men in the 
new economy. As an expert 
in the ways technology affects 
the middle class, Katz predicts 
the rise of the "new artisan" as 
a substantial trend in middle- 
class employment. 

His theory holds that tech- 
nology will commoditize 
and cheapen products in all 153 


FORUM 


industries but that artisanal 
workers will offer a superior 
interpersonal experience cou- 
pled with unique goods and 
services, commanding pre- 
mium prices in turn. Men, he 
notes, are especially well suited 
to such roles. “These kinds 

of jobs go back to colonial 
times,” Katz says. “Individuals 
brought their own ingenuity 
and creativity to provide small- 
scale, high-quality products. 

In the 19th century they were 
displaced by mass produc- 
tion, but technology is already 
bringing a resurgence of this 
type of work.” 

Edward Galla is just one 
example. For years, the con- 
struction contractor plied his 
trade on Martha’s Vineyard, 
underbidding competitors 
on high-end materials and 
pocketing the profits. Then, 
the internet democratized 
the information behind his 
market. “Suddenly, everyone 
knew where to go,” he says. 
His margins tanked. 

Galla embraced change, 


Expecting men 
to beoffice-work- 
oriented bread- 
winners is an 
outmoded idea. 


teaching himself how to 

use design software such as 
Autodesk, and his team today 
includes independent crafts- 
men from around the world. 
He drafts projects in 3-D, 
allowing the people in his 
network to make bids, sub- 
mit proposals and complete 
higher-quality work than was 
possible before—and they 
can do it without setting foot 
in Massachusetts. "Space is 
expensive in New England," 
he notes. By contracting 
with a custom cabinetmaker 
in Minneapolis, for exam- 
ple, he's taking advantage of 


P Assembly lines may be history, 
but the male skill set lives on. 


cheap Midwestern real estate. 

If Katz's prediction about 
new artisans comes to pass, 
the ways men and women fit 
into the economy will come to 
complement each other. Their 
roles will change, in some ways 
becoming more traditional and 
in others less: Women may be 
likelier to spend their careers 
in nine-to-five corporate posi- 
tions, enjoying the regular 
hours, benefits and predictable 
pay those jobs entail. Forty- 
nine percent of women already 
work in firms with more than 
500 employees, compared 
with 43 percent of men, and 
their share of the corporate 
pie is growing. That certainty 
will empower men to take 
on less predictable but pos- 
sibly higher-paying work in 
self-employment. 

A world in which men strive 
to learn new skills and take 
on riskier, entrepreneurial 
household roles may even 
prove more fulfilling than 
office work—but this requires 
changing our definition of a 
"good job." Expecting men 
to be better-educated, office- 
work-oriented breadwinners 
is an outmoded idea. The 
artisan of the future will still 
be skilled and possess just as 
much potential to provide for 
his family. The technologi- 
cal revolution is yet another 
turn in the cycle of economic 
progress, and workers of both 
genders must learn to adapt. 
The end of men is not nigh; 
the end of our dated notion of 
work, however, is. ш 


DOPE STORY 


Why do we punish athletes for seeking 


BRIAN STAUFFER | 


harmless performance advantages? 
ЕЕЕ“ 


The journey of humanity 
has been an unending search 
for an edge, an advantage, a 


performance enhancement 
that allows us to be stronger, 
smarter, faster and better than 
our fellow humans. Among 
man’s endeavors, sports have 
always been the easiest in 
which to observe those results. 
Perhaps that's why, no matter 
how exalted or overpaid ath- 
letes become, we still identify 
with them and their search for 
the limits of human achieve- 
ment. We understand they 
must go to great lengths for 
these achievements—rigorous 


JOBS ARE FROM VENUS w ww L l Wl W W i ss 


P Bureau of Labor 

Statistics data prove 10,000 
the obvious: Women 

are dominating the 
postrecession job 

market, gaining 65,000 
back three times as 

many jobs as men 

compared with pre- 

recession peaks. 60,000 


MEN WOMEN 


2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 


2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 


2011 2012 2013 2014 


training, severe diets, all man- 
ner of medical procedures 
and surgeries, and periodic 
abstention from sex, fluids, 
food and much of life as we 
know it. We seem to allow 
elite athletes every possible 
modification or enhance- 
ment save one: They may not 
take performance-enhancing 
substances described gener- 
ally as steroids, a category 
that encompasses a wide 
range of chemicals, almost all 
of which occur naturally in 
the human body. 

The two dominant argu- 
ments against steroids are that 
they are dangerous and that 
they are unfair. Neither stands 
up to much scrutiny. The first 
was made most famously by 
Lyle Alzado, the NFL defensive 
lineman who died of a brain 
tumor in 1992; in a 1991 Sports 
Illustrated cover story, he said 
he regretted his 15 years of ste- 
roid use and blamed them for 
his brain cancer. However, no 
scientific proof has ever linked 
the two. “To this day, he is the 
only person I know who used 
steroids and had brain cancer," 
says Dr. Norman Fost of the 
University of Wisconsin, a spe- 
cialist in medical ethics. 

But steroids have become a 
symbol of a larger moral fail- 
ing, stigmatized by, among 
other scandals, Alzado's death, 
the Ben Johnson doping case 
at the Seoul Olympics and 
Major League Baseball's loss 
of an entire era to 
inflationary statistics. 
However, steroids 
are classified as 
mere Schedule III 
substances, on par 
with the likes of Tyle- 
nol With Codeine. 
The New England 
Journal of Medicine concluded 
in a 1996 study that besides 
an increase in acne and breast 
tenderness in some subjects, 
“no other side effects were 
noted." The National Institute 
on Drug Abuse echoes on its 
website that "the incidence of 
life-threatening effects [of ste- 
roid use] appears to be low." 

Thousands of athletes have 
used steroids safely—though 
surreptitiously—since the 
1930s. John Romano is just 
one example, a 54-year-old 
former competitive body- 
builder who has been on and 
off anabolic steroids since 1982. 
"They have helped me retain 
muscle mass and recover from 


KARL TARO 


GREENFELD 


“The number 
of deaths we 
can attribute 
to steroids 

is really low. 
Aspirin is more 
dangerous.” 


— Charles E. Yesalis, professor of 
health policy and administration, 
Pennsylvania State University 


injuries," he says. “My blood 
work has always been perfect; 
every marker I have is excel- 
lent." By his own count he has 
coached thousands of body- 
builders over the past 25 years. 
"I have not encountered one 
negative effect in myself or my 
charges," he says. 

“The number of deaths in 
the world that we can attribute 
to anabolic steroids is really 
low,” says Charles E. Yesalis, 
professor of health policy and 
administration at Pennsylvania 
State University and author 
of Anabolic Steroids in Sport 
and Exercise. "Aspi- 
rin is dramatically 
more dangerous." 
And nobody denies 
that steroids, like 
all drugs, have side 
effects, but they are 
certainly less dan- 
gerous for a healthy 
adult male than tobacco or 
alcohol—yet those plagues on 
public health are legal. Per- 
haps that's why then senator 
Joseph Biden pivoted from cit- 
ing health effects to invoking 
the "fairness" issue when he 
announced harsher penalties 
for steroid use in 2004. "It'sa 
values issue," he said. "If kids 
think the best athletes are on 
the juice, what does that teach 
them? That cheating is okay." 

But the senator began 
with a false premise: that 
sports are fair. From the out- 
set, as David Epstein makes 
clear in his best-selling book 
The Sports Gene, there is noth- 
ing fair about sports. Some 


athletes are born with inher- 
ited advantages due either to 
size, weight and muscle mass 
or to genetic mutations such 
as those that enabled Finnish 
cross-country skier Eero Мап- 
tyranta to win seven Olympic 
medals over three Olympiads. 
Mäntyranta’s anomaly allows 
his bone marrow to produce 
an extraordinary number of 
red blood cells, which deliver 
oxygen to muscles. That trans- 
lates to greater speed over 
greater distances. Wouldn't 
a fairer race allow other ath- 
letes to increase their own red 
blood cells so each started with 
the same advantage? That is 
an effect of erythropoietin, 
or EPO, a substance banned 
by the International Olympic 
Committee but widely used by 
cross-country skiers and other 
endurance athletes, including 
Lance Armstrong, for precisely 
that purpose: to achieve the 
red blood cell production that 
Mántyranta sees naturally. 
Why then is Mäntyranta’s 
mutation legal while Arm- 
strong has been banished from 
competition for pursuing the 
same effect? "It's arbitrary," 
says Peter Singer, profes- 
sor of bioethics at Princeton 
University and author of The 
Most Good You Can Do. "These 
rules say what substances you 
can take, but in terms of pro- 
cedures, surgeries or other 


P How does America treat drug 
cheats? Just ask Lance Armstrong 


performance enhancements, 
it's capricious. Take an ath- 
lete living at high altitude so 
his lungs adapt to less oxygen. 
Why are these things legal and 
specific substances illegal?" 

He points out that one third 
of MLB pitchers have under- 
gone Tommy John surgery, in 
which a ligament in their elbow 
is replaced with a tendon from 
their own body or a cadaver, 


FORUM 


often resulting in improved 
performance. Similarly, many 
professional baseball prospects 
and golfers, including Tiger 
Woods, have undergone cor- 
rective surgery to improve 
their vision, an enhancement 
every bit as unfair as taking 
steroids to increase one's 
strength—but no senators call 
for hearings to decry this form 
of "cheating." “Inconsistency is 
the norm," says Yesalis. “When 
it comes to drug testing, the 
NFL, Major League Baseball, 
the Olympics all spend a lot of 
time working on that false wall. 
It's public relations." 

If athletes are aware of the 
few dangers of performance- 
enhancing drugs and are 
willing to take them anyway— 
under medical supervision, no 
less—shouldn't that decision 
be theirs alone? After all, it was 
their decision to take on the 
dangers of professional sports 
in the first place. Concussion 
awareness has not diminished 
the number of athletes elbow- 
ing for a shot at the NFL, nor 
have the obvious dangers of 
extreme sports led to their 
being banned. 

We have indeed drawn an 
arbitrary line, outlawing spe- 
cific substances, from anabolic 
steroids and EPO to human 
growth hormone and even 
an athlete's own transfused 
blood cells, while allowing or 


encouraging a host of other 
activities and procedures, 
each of which offers a com- 
petitive advantage to athletes 
who can afford them— which 
in international sports means 
athletes from wealthier, devel- 
oped countries. Our testing 
regulations also result in an 
advantage for athletes from 
those countries—including 
totalitarian regimes—that have 
the resources and science to 
beat the tests. 

Fair indeed. = 


155 


PHYSICAL EDUCATION WITH HEATHER DEPRIEST. 


Playboy ( 


THE DOCTOR IS IN—THROUGHOUT THE EBOLA EPIDEMIC, 
DR. SANJAY GUPTA'S REASSURING FACE WAS ON CNN AROUND 
THE CLOCK—AND FOR GOOD REASON. THE INDIAN AMERICAN 
MD IS ONE OF THE MOST TRUSTED MEDICAL EXPERTS IN THE 
U.S. IN THE PLAYBOY INTERVIEW, DAVID HOCHMAN VISITS GUPTA 
AT EMORY UNIVERSITY, WHERE HE PRACTICES MEDICINE, FOR 
A CHECKUP ON THE STATE OF OUR HEALTH. THE DOCTOR'S 
REMARKS ARE DAMNING: “WE'RE AT RISK FOR A PANDEMIC 
OF SOME SORT, AND I’M NOT SURE THIS COUNTRY IS READY." 


A BREATH OF FRESH ARIA—YOU PROBABLY KNOW JOSH GROBAN 
AS THE MOP-TOPPED CROONER WHO SINGS EASY-LISTENING 
TUNES TO SOCCER MOMS. BUT THE BARITONE VOCALIST IS A 
FUNNY, SELF-DEPRECATING GUY WHO SAYS HIS SONGS ARE 
SUREFIRE APHRODISIACS. (HE'S DATING KAT DENNINGS, AFTER 
ALL.) IN A20Q WITH ROB TANNENBAUM, GROBAN MAKES A COM- 
PELLING CASE FOR WHY MEN SHOULD LEARN TO LOVE HIS MUSIC. 


AMERICA”S SEXIEST CITIES—MIAMI, L.A. AND VEGAS ARE THE 
OBVIOUS GO-TO LOCALES FOR A GOOD TIME, WHERE BARE 
SKIN, STRONG COCKTAILS AND CARNAL FUN ARE GUARANTEED. 
BUT IT'S TIME TO USE YOUR FREQUENT-FLIER MILES TO EXPERI- 
ENCE SOMETHING MORE EXOTIC. IN PLAYBOY'S SURVEY OF THE 
NATION’S SEXIEST CITIES, WE UNCOVER SOME LESS-EXPECTED 
DESTINATIONS WHERE HEDONISM RULES. PACK YOUR BAGS. 


ЧО5Н GROBAN SINGS A DIFFERENT TUNE. 


| NEXT MONTH 


N 


SANJAY GUPTA DIAGNOSES OUR PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM. 


COULD OHIO STATE REPEAT? 


PIGSKIN PREVIEW—BETWEEN DEFLATE-GATE AND GROWING 
CRITICISM OF NCAA PRACTICES, AMERICAN FOOTBALL IS IN 
A PRECARIOUS PLACE. BUT 2015’S COLLEGE FOOTBALL SEA- 
SON IS FULL OF NEW BLOOD—AND A FEW GREAT UNKNOWNS 
ARE READY TO REINVIGORATE THE GAME. BRUCE FELDMAN 
SORTS THROUGH THE NOISE AND MAKES HIS PICKS FOR THE 
TOP TEAMS, PLAYERS AND COACHES TO WATCH THIS YEAR. 


THE NEW RULES OF WAR—JOSHUA FOUST ANALYZES AMERI- 
CA'S STAGNANT BATTLE WITH ISIS AND REVISITS A LONG LIST 
OF FAILED TRILLION-DOLLAR EFFORTS AROUND THE WORLD 
TO DETERMINE WHY THE MIGHTIEST SUPERPOWER CAN'T SEEM 
TO WIN A WAR. 


THE GRIEVING PROCESS—IN THE WAKE OF A FRIEND'S DEATH, A 
GROUP OF MEN DRINK AWAY THEIR SORROWS AT A SMALL-TOWN 
DIVE. IT'S A CORDIAL AFFAIR UNTIL ONE ADMITS SNEAKING 
SOMETHING INSIDE THE DEAD MAN'S COFFIN, WHICH PROVOKES 
PUNCHES AND GUNSHOTS. IN HIS SHORT STORY, SCOTT WOLVEN 
EXAMINES THE STRANGE WAYS WE HONOR THE DEAD. 


PLUS—MODEL HEATHER DEPRIEST SHOWS OFF HER ATHLETI- 
CISM IN A PHYSICAL PICTORIAL, WE GAIN ENTRY TO A LUXE 
(AND ILLICIT) SEX CLUB IN BEVERLY HILLS, FALL FASHION NOTES 
FROM SAVILE ROW, THE STUNNING MISS SEPTEMBER AND MORE. 


ISSN 0032-1478), July/August 2015, volume 62, number 6. Published monthly except for combined January/February and July/August issues by Playboy in national and regional editions, Playboy, 


9346 Civic Center Drive, Beverly Hills, California 90210. Periodicals postage paid at Beverly Hills, California and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product Agree- 
ment No. 40035534. Subscriptions: in the U.S., $32.97 for a year. Postmaster: Send all UAA to CES (see DMM 707.4.12.5); nonpostal and military facilities, send address changes to Playboy, PO. Box 62260, 
Tampa, 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. If you would rather not receive 
156 such mailings, please send your current mailing label to: Playboy, PO. Box 62260, Tampa, FL, 33662-2260. For subscription-related questions, call 800-999-4438, or e-mail playboy@customersvc.com. 


moods of norway 


7964 MELROSE AVE 
LOS ANGELES, CA 90046 


MOODSOFNORWAY.COM 


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MUSTANG 
AN AMERICAN CLASSIC 
COMMEMORATIVE WATCH 
1 


Piston-tough, 
Premium Grade 
Stainless Steel Case 


and Case Back 
2 


Custom Real Wood 
Watch Dial 


3 


Mahogany 
Stitched Leather 
Adjustable Band 


4 


Unique "Grommet" 
Details Around the Bezel 


5 


Original Mustang Horse 
with Red, White and 
Blue Stripes Logo on 

the Watch Face 


RESERVATION APPLICATION SEND NO MONEY NOW 


е PA wr — : 
BRADFORI ACHANGE 


= JEWELRY = 


33 Milwaukee Ave., Niles IL 60714-1393 


YES. Please reserve the “Mustang; An American 
Etched Commemorative | i Classic” Commemorative Watch for me as described in 
Tribute on the Back and Ул. this announcement. 

Side of Watch 


www. bradfordexchange.com/16704 


= Over, please... 


Ford Motor Company Trademarks and Trade Dress used 
under license to The Bradford Group. 
©2015 BGE 01-16704-001-Jx! 


MUSTANG 
AN AMERICAN CLASSIC COMMEMORATIVE WATCH 


A A 
BRADFORD EXCHANGE 


BUSINESS REPLY MAIL 


FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 7 MORTON GROVE IL 
POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE 


THE BRADFORD EXCHANGE 
PO BOX 806 
MORTON GROVE IL 60053-9956 


When the Ford Motor Company introduced the Mustang in the Spring 
of 1964, this first-of-its-kind "pony car" became an instant classic. 
Today, over 50 years later, you only need to say the name to conjure 
up an image of sporty styling and performance... with that prototypical 
long hood and short rear deck, the famous logo with galloping horse 
and red, white and blue stripes on the gas cap and steering wheel, and 
the cool touches of wood grain and chrome throughout the interior. 


Now you can pay tribute to this automotive legend with the "Mustang: 
An American Classic" Commemorative Watch, an officially licensed, 
custom design available only from The Bradford Exchange. 


The Mustang was indeed a distinctive original, and our designers have 
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finest contemporary timepieces. With this custom-crafted watch, you'll 
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Each precision crafted watch comes with a Certificate of Authenticity 
in a deluxe presentation case emblazoned with the original Mustang 
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Watch today at the remarkable price of just $119*, which you can 
pay for in 4 easy installments of $29.75. To reserve the "Mustang: An 
American Classic” Commemorative Watch, complete with a Certificate 
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well as a full-year limited warranty, send no money now. Just mail in 
your Priority Reservation as soon as possible! 


NO POSTAGE 
NECESSARY 
IF MAILED 
IN THE 
UNITED STATES 


Comes in a deluxe case 
emblazoned with original 
Mustang logo 


DIO OO TOT at o gr [HE [hg 


ies 


Sia 


= A 


kani 3 sik 1° Н. poppe Galas fer яой 
on a tabletop or wall. Mounting hardware included. Lighters ship unfilled; 


Ер lighter fluid not included. 
Zippo 
Wb 


* Collection showcases * Includes a custom lighted 
motorcycles that changed display case with glass cover, 
the world. Each bike in the valued at $100, for the price of 
collection represents a different a single lighter 
decade of Harley-Davidson® 
innovation 


ORIGINAL 


©2015 H-D. АП Rights Reserved. Manufactured by Zippo under license from Harley-Davidson Motor Company 


Mrs. Mr. Ms. 


тик Name (Please Print Clearly) 


BR ADFORD t dae T. ANGE 
LE Address 


9345 Milwaukee Avenue - Niles, IL 60714-1393 
Please reserve the A/ Agnew Tribal Lights 
Zippo® Collection for me as described in this 
announcement 

Limit: one per order. 


City 
State 


Over, please “Plus $8.99 shipping and service per edition. Limited-edition presentations restricted Email (optional) 


to 295 casting days. Please allow 4-6 weeks after initial payment for shipment. Sales ы 1 
©2015 ВСЕ 01-19027-001 -JISPI 5 subject to product availability and order acceptance. Display ships after Edition Two. 903689-E3029 


MOTORCYCLES 
THAT CHANGED THE WORLD. 


Zippo* genuine windproof lighters have been first choice with Harley-Davidson? riders 
for decades. Now these two iconic American companies have teamed up to bring you A 
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innovation. 

Proudly presented by The Bradford Exchange, the collection includes a custom 
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Zippo* lighters declare your independence from the ordinary. 


Protect, store and showcase 
your collection in the custom-designed display case that 


ВЕЕ тик : 3 к 
BRADFORD EXCHANGE | | NO POSTAGE ; 


NECESSARY 
BUSINESS REPLY MAIL 
FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 73554 CHICAGO IL 


IF MAILED 
POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE 


IN THE 
UNITED STATES 


THE BRADFORD EXCHANGE 
9345 N MILWAUKEE AVE 
NILES IL 60714-9891 


Zippo 


LIMITED TO 10,000 COLLECTIONS. 
ORDER NOW! 


Order the 11 limited editions (10 lighters 
plus display) at the issue price of 
$39.99* each. You'll receive one edition 
about every other month; cancel at any 
time by notifying us. Send no money 
now; just return the coupon today. 


“РРО, ZIPPO! and are registered 
trademarks in the United States and in many 
countries. The listed Trademarks are used in the 


| United States under license of ZippMark, Inc. 
| All Zippo lighter decorations are protected by 


copyright. Zippo Manufacturing Company. All 


+ Rights Reserved. 2015 


©2015 BGE 01-19027-001-JISP15 


30 


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You don’t complete me. 


- 


"pamasaı Subt ү IT ‘HONAN X4 SLOZO Ë