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THE SPIRIT LIVES ON.

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Introducing Kayla Collins, your 2016 Miss Blackheart.
Readers and fans voted, and we can promise she’s bold, brazen
and bawdy enough to carry the title.

GET TO KNOW KAYLA

Kayla’s sexy and seductive attitude steals
the hearts of everyone she meets.
Touring the world as a DJ, Kayla proves
that she can turn up in more ways than
one. When she’s not captivating a

crowd, she’s winning over the camera
with her seductive stare.

WANT TO KNOW MORE? GO TO PLAYBOY.COM/MISSBLACKHEART

or”

Think Wisely.
Drink Wisely.

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FRAGRANCES FOR HIM

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K Sears playboystore.com F playboyfragrances.com

Karl Ove Knausgaard

The literary giant makes high drama
of the banality of daily existence.
From the fifth volume of his autobio-
graphical My Struggle, making its U.S.
debut this month, comes The Morning
After, an account of the author's for-
mative erotic experience: his discov-
ery of masturbation. It exemplifies
the power of his work by revealing,
through the particulars of one man's
life, our irreducible humanity.

Theo Wenner

To shoot cover model Sarah
McDaniel for her pictorial Who
Is Sarah McDaniel and Why Are
We Obsessed With Her? Wenner
drew on his impressive career
of capturing intimate moments
with celebrities—including Adele,
Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift,
natch—to create a style of portrai-
ture that's at once intimate, raw
and spontaneous.

PLAYBILL

Don Winslow

After plumbing the psychopathy of
Mexican drug lords in his novel The
Cartel, which The New York Times
named a best book of 2015, Wins-
low turns his eye to crime in ocean-
front San Diego. Boone Daniels’s
Rogue Ride is a short noir fiction
about a murder, a corrupt police
department and one investiga-
tor's attempt to bring justice to the
wrongly accused. Surf's up.

Rachel Rabbit White

We've been in the advice business
Since 1953. No topic, regardless
of how commonplace, degenerate
or downright weird, has been off-
limits for our Advisor. We now hand
those reins to a woman prepared
to help you navigate contemporary
sex and love. Meet Rachel Rabbit
White, the new Playboy Advisor.
Prepare to talk about sex as you
never have before.

Ture Lillegraven

How do you photograph two of
the funniest women on TV? Easy:
Turn on the flash and try to keep
up. After all, llana Glazer and Abbi
Jacobson—the stars of Broad
City and subjects of this month's
200—don't need much in the way
of direction. They're a (comedic,
female, eccentric) force unto them-
selves, and Lillegraven has the tal-
ent to keep pace.

Javier Valadez

My Deportation is the story of an
American ripped from a life he’d
built from scratch. En route to
redemption after misdemeanor con-
victions, Valadez was injecting new
life into the Dallas arts scene until
the father and fiancé was awakened
one night by armed immigration offi-
cers. His story is a reminder that this
country can be a cruel place for the
foreign-born and undocumented.

Erin Gloria Ryan

The former managing editor of
Jezebel explains why the resur-
gence of the intrauterine device, or
IUD, represents arevolution in con-
traception. With an election loom-
ing and health care rights caught in
Republican crosshairs, God Bless
Birth Control makes clear the high
stakes involved in giving women
unprecedented control over their
reproductive choices.

Bret Easton Ellis

The author of American Psycho
and Less Than Zero—and foremost
chronicler of human depravity—has
a few thoughts on contemporary
carnality. Modern Sexuality: A Case
Study traces the changing land-
scape of American sex and pornog-
raphy, from the innocent hedonism
of the 1970s to our current trigger-
warning culture, and deconstructs
how PLAYBOY changed it all.

MARK NASON.
LOS ANGELES

CONTENTS

Departments
NO FILTER inside the Technicolor mind of Iliza Shlesinger 13

DRINKS stay golden with this tasty take on aclassic 14

ALSO: cocktails in Cuba; tech for music lovers; all the car $400,000 can buy; deconstructing the sneaker collaboration
MY WAY Pro racer Tanner Foust on his high-speed life 28
ADVISOR Hello, operator—hot phone sex with Rachel Rabbit White 32
THE RABBIT HOLE Gallimaufry guy Ben Schott on wearing only a smile 85
209 Broad City stars Abbi Jacobson and Папа Glazer 36
MOVIES Jesse Eisenberg on beingthe bad guy 42
ALSO: TV's case of the missing smartphone; Far Cry Primal and the mother of all tongues; U.K. rockers Savages
FRANCOFILE James Franco in conversation with writer David Simon 80
SEX Erin Gloria Ryan sings the praises of the IUD 52

POLITICS John Meroney on how Donald Trump is killing off strategists 56
Features

INTERVIEW Rachel Maddow on freaky GOP candidates, Hillary's tractor beams and the presidential election 58
SARAH MCDANIEL The Snapchat star shows us what makes her so snappable 66
MY DEPORTATION Javier Valadez considered himself a Texan; immigration officials disagreed 76
MISS MARCH you'll want to bookmark this chapter of Dree Hemingway's life 84
MODERN SEXUALITY: A CASE STUDY by Bret Easton Ellis 98
THE MORNING AFTER An exclusive excerpt from Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle: Book Five 102
MYLA DALBESIO The model-photographer teaches a master course in the sexiest of selfies 108
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE step into the playful, pervy world of Jay Howell, a wizard with pen and marker whose vibrant
characters pulsate with punk spirit 114

FICTION Boone Daniels's Rogue Ride by Don Winslow 118

ON THE COVER Sarah McDaniel, shot by Theo Wenner. Our Rabbit loves the social scene, but he'll take a private neck nuzzle with Sarah any day.

PLAYBOY

HUGH M. HEFNER
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

JASON BUHRMESTER EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
MACLEWIS CREATIVE DIRECTOR
HUGHGARVEY DEPUTY EDITOR
REBECCAH. BLACK PHOTO DIRECTOR
JAREDEVANS MANAGING EDITOR

EDITORIAL
CAT AUER, JAMES RICKMAN SENIOR EDITORS
SHANE MICHAEL SINGH ASSOCIATE EDITOR; TYLERTRYKOWSKI ASSISTANT EDITOR
WINIFRED ORMOND COP Y CHIEF; NORAO'DONNELL RESEARCH CHIEF; SAMANTHASAIYAVONGSA RESEARCH EDITOR
GILBERT MACIAS EDITORIAL COORDINATOR; AMANDAWARREN ASSOCIATE CARTOON EDITOR
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: VINCE BEISER, NEALGABLER, DAVID HOCHMAN, STEPHEN REBELLO, DAVID RENSIN, DAVID SHEFF, ERIC SPITZNAGEL, DON WINSLOW

JAMESFRANCO EDITOR AT LARGE
JAMESROSEN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

ART
CHRISDEACON SENIOR ART DIRECTOR; AARONLUCAS ART MANAGER; LAURELLEWIS ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR

PHOTOGRAPHY
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS: CHANTALANDERSON, DAVID BELLEMERE, GRANTCORNETT, ELAYNE LODGE, KATE PARFET, ANGELO PENNETTA, MAGDALENA WOSINSKA
EVANSMITH PHOTO RESEARCHER
KEVIN MURPHY DIRECTOR, PHOTO LIBRARY; CHRISTIEHARTMANN SENIOR ARCHIVIST, PHOTO LIBRARY
KARLAGOTCHER PHOTO COORDINATOR; AMYKASTNER-DROWN SENIOR DIGITAL IMAGING SPECIALIST

PRODUCTION
LESLEY К. JOHNSON PRODUCTION DIRECTOR; HELENYEOMAN PRODUCTION SERVICES MANAGER

PUBLIC RELATIONS
THERESA M. HENNESSEY VICE PRESIDENT; TERITHOMERSON DIRECTOR

PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES INTERNATIONAL, INC.
SCOTTFLANDERS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
DAVIDG.ISRAEL CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, PRESIDENT, PLAYBOY MEDIA
PHILLIPMORELOCK GHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER
CORYJONES CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER
NEVILLE WAKEFIELD CREATIVE DIRECTOR, PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES

ADVERTISING AND MARKETING
MATT MASTRANGELO SENIOR VIGE PRESIDENT, GHIEF REVENUE OFFICER AND PUBLISHER
MARIEFIRNENO VIGE PRESIDENT, ADVERTISING DIRECTOR
RUSSELL SCHNEIDER EXEGUTIVE DIRECTOR, INTEGRATED MEDIA SALES; AMANDACIVITELLO VIGE PRESIDENT, EVENTS AND PROMOTIONS
NEW YORK: MALICKCISSE DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING OPERATIONS AND PROGRAMMATIC SALES
ANGELALEE DIGITAL CAMPAIGN MANAGER; MICHELLE TAFARELLA MELVILLE ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR; ADAM WEBB SENIOR DIRECTOR, SPIRITS
MICHAEL GEDONIUS ACCOUNT DIRECTOR; TYLERHULIS SENIOR ACCOUNT DIRECTOR; MAGGIE MCGEE MEDIA SALES COORDINATOR
OLIVIA BIORDI MEDIA SALES PLANNER; JASMINEYU MARKETING DIRECTOR; TIMOTHY KELLEPOUREY INTEGRATED MARKETING DIRECTOR
KARIJASPERSOHN ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, MARKETING AND ACTIVATION; AMANDA CHOMICZ DIGITAL MARKETING MANAGER
VOULALYTRAS EXEGUTIVE ASSISTANT TO SENIOR VIGE PRESIDENT, CHIEF REVENUE OFFIGER AND PUBLISHER
CHICAGO: TIFFANYSPARKS ABBOTT SENIOR DIRECTOR, MIDWEST
LOS ANGELES: DINALITT SENIOR DIRECTOR, WEST GOAST; KRISTIALLAINSENIOR MARKETING MANAGER
VICTORIA FREDERICK SALES ASSISTANT

Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), March 2016, volume 63, number 2. 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 Agreement No. 40035534.
Subscriptions: in the U.S., $32.97 fora year. Postmaster: Send all UAA to CFS (see DMM 707. 4.12.5); nonpostal and military facilities, send address changes to Playboy, P.O. Box 62260, Tampa, FL 33662-2260. From time
totime 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 such mailings. please send your current mailing
label to: Playboy, Р.О. Box 62260, Tampa, FL, 33662-2260. For subscription-related questions, e-mail playboy@customersve.com. • 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
toeditand comment editorially. Contents copyright © 2016 by Playboy. All rights reserved. Playboy, Playmate and Rabbit Head symbol are marks of Playboy, registered U.S. Trademark Office. No part of this book may
be reproduced, stored ina retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any electronic, mechanical, photocopying or recording means or otherwise without 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 125. Four The Bradford Exchange onserts in domestic subscription
polywrapped copies. RJR/Grizzly insert bound between pages 28/29 in all copies. Certificado de licitud de titulo No. 7570 de fecha 29 de Julio de 1993, y certificado de licitud de contenido No. 5108 de fecha 29 de Julio de
1993 expedidos por la comision Calificadora de publicaciones y revistas ilustradas dependiente de la secretaría de gobernación, Mexico. Reserva de derechos 04-2000-071710332800-102. Printed in USA.

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“Women’s magazines

tell us if you don’t have your

shit together by age five,
отте _„
screwed.

“The two sexes are
on different time-
tables, and maybe it’s
because guys see in
black-and-white while
women See in color.
Men are very visual;
women are cerebral.
I've become cognizant
of that as I’ve gotten
older. It's what makes
it hard for us to com-
municate. But | don't
chastise men for it,
because women are
equally crazy. | want
the genders to hear
that and be okay with
it. Own it.”

Illiza Shlesinger hosts
TBS's new relation-
ship game show,
Separation Anxiety.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAN MONICK

DRINKS

із drink, the gold pal, definitively achieves that. It's siraple ed, unpretentious butnotcom-
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ersion are gold hued, hence the
and surprising and makes sense
ht: an excellent spirit, a good ver-
as the old pal (2 oz. rye, % oz. dry
z; blanc vermouth, % oz. curacao).

The modern cocktail was in need ofa hard reset, a
batively so (like, say, an artisanal Long Island iced . The ingredients are excellent, but they are few. Itcomes ci

tame. The bright, melony с garni i
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ПЕЕТАМНЕМРУ. СОМ

DRINKS

How to
Pick Up
Your
Bartender

The owner of Brooklyn’s Leyenda tells
you how to ask her for a date

I’ve been bartending for more than 10 years in
all sorts of bars in all sorts of countries. I've
seen pickups that have gone incredibly well
and have wanted to ask the guy (or lady, for
that matter) about his
technique and just how
he did it. Much more of-
ten, though, I’ve seen epic train wrecks, just
crash-and-burn types of scenarios—the kind
of thing that makes me want to hide behind
my bar to avoid the shrapnel. But sometimes I
can’t escape, and that’s because it’s me they’re
trying to come on to. Want to pick up a bar-
tender? Here’s the approach:

You know what’s great? Nice people. So be
nice. And be chatty. I love it when someone at
my bar actually wants to chat rather than stare
at his cell phone. It’s a breath of fresh air and
sure to get my attention. That said, Friday night
at 10:30 isn’t the time to ask me my life story.

I owe you nothing. Sorry, but just because
you're buying a drink and tipping handsomely
doesn’t mean you own me. I work in the hospi-
tality industry. That means my job is to be nice
to you and—you guessed it—serve you drinks.
Nothing else.

I'm good at my job and I like it. A lot of peo-
plein this field are here because they love it, and
some have left other, more mainstream jobs to
be here. Don’t assume because I sling drinks
thatI’ma failed actress/singer/model. Bartend-
ingisacareer. If you're trying to pick me up, you
should think what I do is cool, because it is.

To my bros out there: Don’t get upset if
you're served a drink that’s pink or in a
coupe glass. That’s just being douchey. No self-
respecting bartender will go home with some-
one who cares about something so stupid. I can

sy IVY MIX

PHOTOGRAPHY BY WIISSA

drink mezcal or scotch or rye on the rocks—
why can't you enjoy that pink drink? Get rid of
theoutdated cocktail biases and enjoy.

Ask if you can buy me a drink. Key word
here: ask. I may not want one. And if you do
buy me one, ask what I like. This goes without
saying when you're trying to pick up anyone—
be it the bartender or the lady sitting next to
a vacant chair. If you're well versed in cock-
tails, suggest one you've had before and ask if
I've ever had it or would like to try it. Do I like
manhattans? Why yes, I do! Have I ever had a
Bensonhurst? Maybe not. (Seerecipe atright—
if you like the classic manhattan, ordering one
of these could be good for you, or for her.)

If you have the nerve to leave your number
on your receipt, you should have the nerve to
tell me you've done so. When you pay, say you'd
love to take me out sometime and that your num-
ber is on the receipt. Don’t ask for my number.
That's awkward, and I may not want to give it.

The best thing to do is become a regular
and get to know the bartender. I’ve become
good friends (and yes, scored a few dates)
with guys on the other side of the bar. Gen-
erally it’s because they've come in again and
again. It’s nice to know the bartender, and it’s
nice for us to know you.

And here's the drink I'd want you to buy
(or make for) me:

The Bensonhurst

1% oz. rye whiskey

% oz. dry vermouth

У 02. Cynar

% oz. maraschino liqueur

Stir in a pitcher filled with ice, strain into a
cocktail glass and serve with a lemon twist.

INTRODUCING
PLAYBOY COLLECTOR S EDITION ART TOYS

SELECT TOYS AVAILABLE NOW | COARTISM.COM

Cigars and daiquiris at
ElFloridita, May 1997.

DRINKS

Where to Drink in Havana Before
It Becomes Margaritaville

Charles Joly made a name for himself in the
rarefied world of molecular mixology at the
Aviary in Chicago and now consults for some
of the world's top bars and spirits companies.
But sometimes even the most highly skilled bar-
tenders just want a damned fine daiquiri ona
hot day. The well-traveled Joly counts Havana
as a necessary pilgrimage for any serious bar-
man. With travel restrictions loosening and
development on the rise, it’s only a matter of
time before the magic of Cuba's transitional
moment has passed. Here are Joly’s notes on
where to drink in Havana right now.

El Floridita: Obispo No. 557 esq. a Monserrate
“Arguably the most famous bar in Cuba, El
Floridita was a haunt for celebrities during
Prohibition and the place where Heming-
way preferred to drink his daiquiris. Today it
is home to legendary Cuban bartender Con-
stantino. Tourist buses come and go, so post

up at the bar instead of slurping down a dai-
quiri and moving on. Once the bartenders
recognize you're not just a flashbulb tourist,
things warm up. This is the ‘cradle of the dai-
quiri,’ so let the barkeeps do their thing. The
daiquiris are blended, as they have been for
years, and go down easy. Order up a mulata
(essentially a daiquiri with dark rum and cof-
fee liqueur).”

Hotel Nacional de Cuba: Calle 21 y O

"The Hotel Nacional drips with history. Don't
expect a slick, modern hotel but rather savor
what has been preserved and restored over the
pastcenturyuntil the multinationals inevitably
start building in town. This location gave birth
to several classic drinks: Try the namesake
Hotel Nacional (rum, pineapple juice, apricot
liqueur and lime juice) ora Mary Pickford (rum,
pineapple juice, grenadine and maraschino
liqueur). Then head out to the lawn and grab a

table next to the 19th century coastal cannons,
relics that still stand guard over the bay.”

Dos Hermanos: Avenida del Puerto No. 304
“One of the oldest bars in town, Dos Herma-
nos was another hot spot during Cuba's hey-
day. Wander to the nearby craft market in a
port warehouse for Cuban mementos. A light
breeze drifts through theopen doors. Enjoy the
live music and order a good old Cuba libre: sim-
ply rum, Coke and lime juice.”

La Bodeguita del Medio: Empedrado No. 207
“Pick up the literary theme again and head to
this spot favored by Pablo Neruda and Gabriel
García Márquez. This is one place where the
bartenders will never complain about the ex-
trawork of muddlingup a fresh cocktail. It can
be tourist heavy at times, so claim a spot, wait
for the wave to subside and start working on
your next novel."

SEE WHERBSOOD TASTE
TAKES YOU.

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THE SCENE

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THE SCENE

GE TAWAY

From the guys’ weekend away to the island cruise with
your leading lady, be sure to carve out chill time away

from the grind

STAND OUT ON

THE SLOPES
Hitting the slopes on
your next vacay? Bring
a PLAYBOY Playmate
along with the Burton
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intimately placed ink
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úñez. burton.com

THE LINEN LIFE

Hit the beach with style
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PASSING DETAILS
You've planned all the
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UNDERSTATED COOL
Keep your cool under the
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THE SCENE

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McLaren 675LT, it takes a split second to realize
this breathtaking piece of machinery is engi-
neered to completely rattle the laws of science.

The performance numbers for our Napier
green $400,000 test model alone are enough to
dazzle a car lover. Take, for starters, the street-
legal 675LT's zero-to-60-mph time of 2.8 sec-
onds. With a curb weight of 2,712 pounds—
still one of the lightest cars in its class—the
McLaren is practically as quick as Ducati's
flagship 1299 Panigale, a 367-pound super-
bike rated as one ofthe fastest in the world. And
given the 675LT's quarter-mile time, the sleek,
low-profile racer is capable of covering the
length of a football field (end zone to end zone)

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KATE PARFET

in a mind-blowing 1.72 seconds at 142 mph.

Notto mention that—in a dream world where
supercars aren't subject to speed restrictions—
the McLaren could travel the 281 miles from
Detroit to Chicago in a little over an hour at its
top speed of 205 mph. The first car in nearly
two decades to wear the racing brand's iconic
Longtail name, the 675LT owes most of its
stunning qualities to the McLaren P1, from
which it is derived.

Even the 675LT's combined fuel economy of
18 miles per gallon is a modern-day marvel of
sorts, given that its 3.8-litertwin-turbocharged
V8hasapeakoutputof 666 horsepower and 516
pound-feet. And with a power-to-weight ratio
of four pounds per hp, the car weighs about the

same as a 2016 Honda Civic—but has almost
four times the horsepower.

Insane, right? And yet the numbers don't
even begin to capture the rush you feel be-
hind the wheel while strapped into the
carbon-fiber-shelled bucket seats of the
McLaren 675LT. Every element of the seven-
speed dual-clutch-equipped supercar is engi-
neered to boggle the mind as a road car, from
the Formula One-style front-end plates to a
new tech feature called *ignition cut" that fa-
cilitates lightning-fast shifts.

Only 500 units of the McLaren 675LT were
manufactured, which leads us to one final
digit: the number that remain unsold. And that
would be zero.—Marcus Amick

WeatherTech

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Made in the USA

MY WAY

TANNER
FOUST

The rallycross champ, Top Gear host, stunt driver and world-record
holder has done his share of drifting, both on and off the track

as TOLD то SEAN MANNING

My dad had this yellow Porsche 912. It had
sheepskin seat covers and camel leather in-
side. He bought it when I was three years old,
right when my folks got divorced. I would
spend the summers in Denver at his house. I
remember when I was about five years old, my
dad was turning right—I literally can smell
the car thinking about this—from Colorado
Boulevard onto Hampden Avenue. It was prob-
ably a second-gear corner, and he got after it
a little bit, and the tires squealed. I'd never
heard that before. I'd never felt that before. I
was just hooked on cars from that day on. I was
the annoying one who called out the type of car
by its headlights. By the time I was 10 I could
fully drive a stick.

In college at the University of Colorado, I
ended up doing a pre-med major called en-
vironmental, population and organismic
biology—which was really hard to say without
saying “orgasm.” In the meantime, I worked
for this guy named Bill Kitchen. He invented
amusement-park rides. It was the first time
I thought about making a living doing some-
thing fun rather than having ajob and a hobby.
Iworked for Bill for my last three years of school
and a little while after that. He moved his com-
pany to Florida. After graduation, I went and
worked in Orlando for three or four months, but
I missed the mountains. I flew back to Colorado,
not really having much ofa plan. On the plane I
was thinking, What the hell am I going to do? I

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MAGDALENA WOSINSKA

got good grades and put in all this effort. There
were a lot of questions from my family. What’s
next, med school? I’d done everything because
everybody told me to, but now I had no clue what
I really wanted to do. I just happened to be sit-
ting next tothe window. When we were landing,
I looked out and saw Second Creek Raceway. I
drove there straight from the airport.

When I got there, this guy told me to step
away from the track. His name was Rich Dahl.
He had ateam of club racers, so I volunteered for
his team. I was a terrible mechanic. But from
my time working for Bill, Iwas good at business
and organization. I helped Rich do stuff on his
computer, put stuff into Excel spreadsheets. 1
worked for him for eight months. Out of that 1
got enough driving time to get my license and
eventually do one race.

Whatever skills you have, even if your only
skill is Minecraft, just get into that industry.
Ifyou maintain interestand arethinking about
it as soon as you wake up and thinking about it
as you go to sleep, then you'll get good. And if
you start from the bottom up, you'll be well-
rounded. You'll have some foundation in the
business and some security.

At about the five-year mark, I heard from
the family, “Well, I guess you're going to stick
with this.” And you know what? Now I own that
exact Porsche my dad drove me around in. I
bought it from him. I probably paid a little over
the Blue Book value. Heknewhehadme. BE

IWAS THE
ANNOYING ONE
WHO GALLED
OUT THE TYPE
OF CAR BY ITS
HEADLIGHTS.

One of the eminently fascinating if over-
exploited trends in contemporary consumer
culture is the fashion collaboration, in which
Brand A (usually a very big company with deep
pockets and distribution) joins forces with
Brand B (usuallya very coolcompany or person
with major cultural cred) to create something
that brings the best of both partners together
in one product. This, in theory, results in some-
thing unique and introduces each brand to a

STYLE

new audience. Sometimes it makes sense, as in
the case of the LeBron James Nike line of foot-
wear and clothing. Sometimes it’s intentionally
absurd, as in the case of the Supreme partner-
ship with Kidde fire extinguishers. Shoes are
the most visible example: Kanye West’s Yeezy
line, with partners including Nike and Adi-
das, has yielded styles that top $93,000 on the
resale market. One of the earliest and most
famous footwear collaborations is the Adidas

Stan Smith effort, which in 1971 paired the then
leading men’s tennis player with the then fledg-
ling German footwear company. Last year’s
Pharrell Williams Billionaire Boys Club pony-
hair Adidas Stan Smiths (that's four, count em,
four brands) is a head-spinning quad-collab.
We spoke with Adidas senior project manager
Jimmy Manley for a look at how Adidas collab-
orates with athletes and artists to create new
product lines that punch through the noise.

ANATOMY OF A COLLABORATION

The not-so-straight path Adidas collaborations take from idea to sale

THE INSPIRATION

As skate style goes mainstream,
Adidas, as well as other brands,
retains its cred by sponsoring pro
athletes. Skating legend Dennis
Busenitz (pictured above) worked
with Adidas on its first pro skate
line, which recently released an
apparel and footwear collaboration
with rapper A$AP Ferg.

THE PROCESS

Skater and artist Mark Gonzales
(above) gave both function and
form to his numerous collabs with
Adidas. Of A$AP Ferg’s Traplord
x Adi-ease edition (opposite page,
top), Jimmy Manley says, “Ferg's
music literally made its way onto
the product” in the handwritten
lyrics on the laces.

PHOTOGRAPHY AT LEFT BY GRANT CORNETT

THE BUZZ

Before ASAP Ferg (above) released
his Traplord line, it became known
the collection was an homage to
deceased bandmate ASAP Yams,
which helped propel early interest.
Manley says, “At some point Ferg
shared that he went to art school,
and that’s where the idea of him
doing a Yams painting came from.”

THE DROP

To see the debut of Ferg’s collec-
tion, you had to attend Art Basel
Miami, where the ASAP Yams
painting was displayed. Resellers
line up overnight on highly antici-
pated drop days. If that’s too much
of a hassle, play collaborator your-
self and customize your own Su-
perstars online.

ADVISOR

ITHINKTM

ADDICTED TO PHONE SEX.
Is That Such a Bad Thing?

Q: I'm a 25-year-old guy in a chill and
® loving seven-month relationship.
However, Ican’t stop calling phone-sex lines.
Who has phone sex in 2016? Let me explain:
1 first came across a pop-up ad for a phone-
sex site while watching a cam-girl show a
few years ago. I signed up and was hooked
immediately. Sure, webcams are fine, but
they leave nothing to the imagination. When
I started dating my
girlfriend, we were in-
separable. Then things
became routine, and now I look for excuses so
I can avoid sleeping at her place; I just want
to go home and get back on the phone. It irri-
tates my girlfriend that I don’t want to stay
over, but I see no reason to quit my habit.
What should I do?

e First, let me delight in your fetish. Oh,
@ phone sex. That gentle rhythm of whis-
pers and obscenities. Those indecipherable,
breathy questions that, only partially compre-
hended, could be answered with a moan. The

ey RACHEL RABBIT WHITE

easy role-play that comes when you don't have to
look each other in the eye. Oh, how I miss phone
sex. When I was a teenager, AOL instant mes-
saging made for awkward “cybersex,” though
of course we attempted it. “R u fingering your-
self?" some stranger would type. *Ya. Feels
good," I'd type back, sitting on the swivel chair
fullyclothed, my hands resting on the keyboard.
Butbackthen, the phone was my medium. I must
have spent half my teen
years beneath the duvet,
breathing into a cord-
less phone, asking boys from neighboring high
schools to be more specific: What was it about
me that was hot? What was it, exactly, that they
would do to me if they were there? Right. Now.
Phone sex may not be the most popular
masturbation aid, but it's not so bizarre. One
of my dearest and most beautiful friends
works at a phone-sex site. I asked her about
your question. ^In my experience, there are
two types of guys who call,” she says. “Those
who do it for kicks and those who think it's
‘going somewhere.' I'm constantly pressured

ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE PERRY

by the latter to meet in person, provide my
address, etc. I have to explain that this is a
fantasy and that they have to respect the
boundaries of the fictional relationship. Vir-
tual sex can be a blast—if kept virtual. Guys
should never feel guilty about it."

Thereal problem is when your virtual sex life
cuts into your real sex life. What are the chances
your girlfriend will break up with you ifyour in-
timacy continues to decline, and would you be
okay with that? How will nightly phone-sex ses-
sions affect your daily life? Perhaps you're more
interested in exploring extremes—in intensity,
in approaching edges, in your limits. It’s clear
you're someone who is searching and asking
questions. And I can’t blame you for that. But
real sex is pretty spectacular too.

My phone-sex operator friend adds: “If he
isn’t having sex with his girlfriend, that’s in-
dicative of a problem. He should talk to her and
work on the issue, because obviously he could
lose her. Maybe unconsciously that’s what he
wants; in that case, tell him to call me.”

Questions? E-mail advisor@playboy.com.

CHECK OUT THE NEW

PLAYBOY.COM

YOU'RE WELCOME.

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THE RABBIT HOLE

ON NUDITY

—INSTAGRA/M/AMMARIES—

Although Instagram ac-
knowledges that “peo-
ple might want to share
nude images,” the com-
pany prohibits shots
of “sexual intercourse,
genitals and close-ups
of fully nude buttocks.”
Female nipples are
banned unless they de-
pict “postmastectomy
scarring” or breast-feeding. (Nudity in pho-
tos of paintings and sculptures is fine.) A host
of celebs have run afoul of this code, including
Rihanna, Chrissy Teigen and, inevitably, Miley
Cyrus (pictured). Chelsea Handler asked, “If a
man posts a photo of his nipples, it’s okay, but
not awoman? Are we in 1825?”

——— MEDIEVAL NUDITY

For medieval theologians, nudity could be cate-
gorized into the following four symbolic types:

NUDITAS NATURALIS
The animal condition of human nakedness.
NUDITAS TEMPORALIS
A metaphorical nakedness of poverty.
NUDITAS VIRTUALIS
The nakedness of Adam and Eve in Eden.
NUDITAS CRIMINALIS
The vain, lustful nakedness of the sinner.

— — —NUDE DREAMS ——

Sigmund Freud suggested that the "great
majority" of us have dreams in which we are
naked in public, but he observed that while the
dreamer feels deeply embarrassed, the imag-
ined onlookers usually remain perfectly indif-
ferent. (Incidentally, a 2012 survey found that
only eight percent of Americans sleep naked.)

sy BEN SCHOTT

“You don’t have to be naked to be sexy.”
—NICOLE KIDMAN

— — —MISCELLANUDE —

The G-string and the thong both became pop-
ular during the 1939 World's Fair, when New
York's diminutive mayor Fiorello La Guardia
insisted the city's nude dancers cover up. Y In
1973, during PBS's broadcast of Steambath, TV
viewers discovered for the very first time what
naked women look like. Y The winter 2015 edi-
tion of V magazine features five female nip-
ples, two of which belong to Miley Cyrus, who
also hints at the runway of her Brazilian. Y De-
spite its title and premise, the 1997 movie The
Full Monty fails to show full-frontal nudity.

Y Director James Cameron insisted the female
Na’vi in Avatar have breasts, even though they
aren't placental mammals and therefore don't
breast-feed. His justification: "Because this is a
movie for human people!" (Incidentally, artists
have long debated whether belly buttons should
be depicted on Adam and Eve, since they are
God's creation.) Y The essayist William Hazlitt
gave three reasons why burglars should operate
in cuerpo—that is, naked: (1) it is cool and airy,
(2) it speeds escape and (3) “Dogs are alarmed at
the sight of naked men.” Y The Ponte delle Tette
(“Bridge of Tits") in Venice is so named because
Renaissance-era prostitutes used it as a “shop
window,” baringtheir breasts to entice potential
clients ingondolas below. Y Clark Gable is credit-
ed with freeing the male nipple when, in the 1934
film It Happened One Night, he disrobes to reveal
his torso: Sales of men’s undershirts collapsed.

—— SOME LIKE IT HOT— ———

In 1960, Marilyn Mon-
roe told Marie Claire
that her claim of wear-
ing to bed only a few
drops of perfume was
born of modesty: “You
know they ask you ques-
tions... Just an exam-
ple: ‘What do you wear
to bed? Do you wear a
pajama top, the bottoms
of the pajamas or a nightgown?’ So I said,
‘Chanel No. 5!’ Because it’s the truth! And yet
I don’t want to say ‘nude,’ you know? But it’s
the truth.” Two years later, Marilyn was found
dead, in the nude, as immortalized in the song
“Candle in the Wind.”

——NIP-SLIP GLOSSARY ——

The deeply creepy book Mr. Skin's Skincyclo-
pedia is subtitled The A-to-Z Guide to Finding
Your Favorite Actresses Naked. Soif youurgently
need to see, say, Susan Sarandon unclad, Mr.
Skin lists 14 movies to watch. Pedantically, the
book defines its own coding system for nudity:

BREASTS ..... both bouncers visible in one shot
BUNS. cs ra ran butt crack
BUSH ..... pubic region, however hairy (or not)
FEN... both breasts and bush visible in one shot

NIP SLIP...... momentary, usually accidental

incident of a milk-spout spilling into view
NES run left nip slip
NIPSDIERB.. ааа right nip slip
DE een left breast
ани аи IRE RR right breast
THONG ........ butt cheeks visible, but(t) crack

is concealed by flosslike undergarment

Calamitous "wardrobe malfunctions" befall
celebrities with such regularity a cynic may
wonder just how accidental nip slips really are.

AS NAKED AS: Adam & Eve - death - a flea - a frog - the Graces - a jaybird - a nail - night - a Norfolk dumpling - a peeled apple - the sea - a ship’s figurehead - the vulgar air - the winter earth - a worm

EUPHEMISMS: in the buff- wearing your birthday suit - starkers - stitchless - skyclad - in a state of nature - bare-assed - in Adam's dress - Adamite - denuded - like the emperor - in puris naturalibus

20Q

CITY

Abbi Jacobson and llana Glazer don't
know if they're successful yet, but they do
know how to explain pegging to your mom

От: Broad City is іп its third season. The show is criti-
cally acclaimed and has a fiercely loyal and devoted
audience. But do you feel successful?
ILANA GLAZER: I don’t know. It feels good.
It feels like we're doing okay. But have you
“made it” if you don’t own a washer-dryer?
ABBI JACOBSON: This is a topic of conversa-
tion we have all the time, because neither of
us has a washer-dryer.
Q2: You seriously discuss how neither of you are able
to do laundry in your own homes?
GLAZER: All the time. We were talking about
that this morning.
JACOBSON: Just a couple of hours ago, actu-
ally. Ilana said to me that she doesn't have a
washer-dryer, and that seems weird.
GLAZER: It would be weirder to have one.
JACOBSON: It would. But why does having a
washer-dryer seem way beyond insane?
GLAZER: I think it would be life-changing. It
would be huge.
Q3: Your characters on Broad City are pretty poor, yet
they live in New York City. Is that still possible?
JACOBSON: I don't know if they're actually
poor—I mean, at least compared with actual
poor people.
GLAZER: Their parents help out.
JACOBSON: They come from middle- orupper-
class families, and they're living in the city
right up against these tiberwealthy people. So
they end up with these day jobs they might not
necessarily care about.
GLAZER: Youcan survive in New York without
much, ifyowre careful. You have to make your
own food at home and not buy a lot of clothes.
JACOBSON: Having a bicycle helps.

BY
ERIC SPITZNAGEL

PHOTOGRAPHY BY

\ TURE LILLEGRAVEN

Q4: A lot of female comedians, including Amy
Schumer and both of you, have been accused of
“sneaky” feminism. The Wall Street Journal ex-
plicitly described Broad City as “sneak attack
feminism.” Why are you so sneaky?
JACOBSON: We're both totally up-front
and proud feminists. We're not being all
secretive about it. I feel we’re pretty bla-
tant in our approach.
GLAZER: I think it’s kind of crazy that
we're still calling comedians “female
comedians.” That seems more like a
sneak attack.
JACOBSON: I mean, sure, if you play the
episodes of Broad City backward, there
are hidden messages.
GLAZER: “Diiiie, men.” If you play any
Broad City episode backward, that’s all
we're saying.
Q5: Broad City has been compared to Lena Dun-
ham's HBO series Girls. Both are about white upper-
middle-class women who live in New York City and
have lots of sex. How are the two shows different?
GLAZER: If somebody asks, I usually just
tell them to google it.
JACOBSON: Or watch it and see if they’re
different. Do your own homework.
GLAZER: It’s so weird that that’s a thing.
Like, “You tell me why I’m going to watch
these two shows about talking and walk-
ing vaginas.”
JACOBSON: Who has time for that?
GLAZER: You ve got the one show about
some vaginas.
JACOBSON: And then there’s that other
show with the other talking and walk-
ing vaginas.
GLAZER: I’m not going to watch two TV
shows with vaginas in them unless some-
body tells me why they're different!
Q6: Hillary Clinton is a guest on your show this
season. Is the U.S. about to elect its first female
president?
JACOBSON: I think we are, hopefully with
Bernie Sanders in the Cabinet.
GLAZER: Bernie as vice president?
JACOBSON: That would make for a deli-
cious world, right?
GLAZER: We're big Hillary supporters, for
alotof reasons.

JACOBSON: I really like Hillary’s women's
rights agenda. I like her thoughts on the
environment and what we do with trash
and how we dispose of itand what we make
shit out of. And stuff relating to trees and
the earth and animals and shit, like food
production. And climate change. Obvious-
ly there’s a huge problem going on.
GLAZER: Yeah, climate change is huge.
JACOBSON: Shit is getting dire.

Q7: You two should be writing campaign slogans

for her. “Hillary Clinton in 6: Shit Is Getting Dire.”
JACOBSON: Right? And that’s because
it’s true. Shit is getting dire, and it’s not
enough to just talk about it. You have to do
something toward changing things.
GLAZER: Which Hillary will.
JACOBSON: We need somebody to stand
up and say, “It’s all about climate issues
and shit” and then do something about
that shit!

Q8: Your characters on Broad City will do almost

anything for each other, including be each other's

doo-doo ninjas. Is that a lesson in what true female

friendships should look like?
GLAZER: That's not a lesson in female
friendships but rather in ride-or-die
friendships.
JACOBSON: Exactly. It's exciting to write
characters who love each other and fight
for each other.
GLAZER: There's this belief with no mer-
it that media with women at the center
applies only to women, but media with
men at the center applies to everyone.
Abbi and Ilana's friendship represents
that ride-or-die dynamic for anyone to
whom it speaks, not just women.

Q9: How well do you know each other? Tell us

something about the other that she doesn't know

you know.
GLAZER: Okay, here's something. The
other day, Abbi knew I was wearing a
new shirt.
JACOBSON: Yep, that's true.
GLAZER: She just knew. I didn't have to
tell her. That's when you know you know
somebody: when you know every piece
of clothing they have in their wardrobe.
That's friendship.

Q10: llana, your bras have become almost mythi-
cal; the strappy one has its own Reddit forum. Are
they from your own wardrobe, or do you have a
whole think tank devoted to creating aesthetical-
ly complicated bras?
GLAZER: Our costume designer, Staci
Greenbaum, really had her finger on the
pulse with that bra, as well as our shop-
per, Catharine Stuart, who's out on the
fashion streets doing the purchasing. I
callit the goddess bra because it's pseudo
Grecian goddess. I feel like there was a
BDSM thing going on in fashion recently,
with leather harnesses and bodices, and
this goddess-bra trend is like the sweat-
pants version of the harness. That style
has been popping up everywhere. I don’t
totally get the mythical part; that may
just be what’s filling the bra. My boobs.
And Abbi's butt. Very powerful.
Q11: We've also heard that you're more uncom-
fortable with the kissing scenes than the nude
scenes. Please explain.
GLAZER: It just feels more intimate some-
how. You meet this person, then your
mouth is on their mouth, and the whole
thing is being choreographed by your
friend, and 70 people are on the set watch-
ing you doit. It feels weird. It feels abrupt.
It isn’t natural. It’s a contrived thing.
You're not usually making out in front of
70 people. The nude thing, I don't know.
It’s sillier somehow. It’s more like physi-
cal comedy. But kissing someone, it feels
invasive to have everybody watching me.
Q12: You've brought pegging into the mainstream.
Before you used it as a comedic device on Broad
City, did you know what pegging was?
JACOBSON: Oh sure. We do our homework.
GLAZER: We're very knowledgeable. And
in order to write the episode, we kind of
required the entire production staff to
experience it—the writers, actors, pro-
ducers, people at the network.
JACOBSON: Rightdown tothe lighting peo-
ple. Andthegrip. He was essential.
GLAZER: We’re all about authenticity.
I hope you didn’t get from that episode
that we think pegging is weird. We think
it’s the opposite.

“YOU TELL ME WHY I'M GOING TO
WATCH THESE SHOWS ABOUT
TALKING AND WALKING VAGINAS.”

STYLING BY KAT TYPAI DOS

JACOBSON: I think it’s hot. I’m glad I did
it for the show.
Q13: Not everybody knows what we're talking
about. Could you help us explain to, let’s say, our
mothers—in the most delicate, inoffensive way
possible—what we mean by pegging?
GLAZER: Sure. Just tell her pegging is
when a woman wears a strap-on with a
very hard dildo and then puts it into a
guy’s butthole, with lubricant and fore-
play. Wait, why are you having to ex-
plain this?
JACOBSON: Does your mother not watch
Broad City?
GLAZER: There’s something wrong with
your mom.
Q14: Do your parents watch the show, or just the
parts you’ve preapproved for them?
JACOBSON: They watch everything;
we'll just warn them in advance about
some of it—“Next week is going to be
a big one,” or whatever. But they sit
through every episode anyway, even

when it gets explicit. And they should.
GLAZER: Some things are a little more
risqué than others, but I think they un-
derstand where it’s coming from.
JACOBSON: Broad City has a wild side,
but it also has a heartfelt side. It’s very
human. I think that’s something both
our parents are very proud of.

Q15: Even the drugs?

GLAZER: Sure. I vape with my parents
in the house. My parents don't really
get high, which bums me out, but I vape
with them around. It’s just like a glass of
wine. The family of the future is parents
and kids who get high together. That’s
crazy tome, but it's so cool. I ike the fact
that my parents are fine with it, even if
they won’t do it with me.

Q16: When fans meet you, do they want your au-
tograph or do they want to get stoned with you?

JACOBSON: They mostly want to smoke—
that more than the autograph.
GLAZER: I never want to do it. It’s not a

fun high. I’m just nervous and hyper-
aware. But I like it when people just give
us weed. That's fucking awesome.
JACOBSON: When we were on tour, alot of
people just dropped joints on the merch
table forus. That was great. Every time, I
was like, “Thank you so much."

GLAZER: It’s a true donor spirit.
JACOBSON: There was this one lady in
Colorado who made us something ce-
ramic; it could have been either a ring
holder or a bowl cleaner. She was just
like, “Here you go.” And we were both
like, “Oh my God! Thank yoooou!”

Q17: llana, weren't you in an antidrug club in
high school?

GLAZER: I was, yes! [laughs] You got to
miss class to do it; like, many periods of
school. And then they took us to an ele-
mentary or middle school, and we told
kids they could be cool when they grew
up even if they didn't do drugs.
JACOBSON: You didn’t start smoking?

GLAZER: No.
JACOBSON: It just seems like it would’ve
been a great opportunity. You get out of
school]; you’re hanging out.
GLAZER: Yeah. What did Ido with that ex-
tratime?
JACOBSON: Why skip school if you're not
going to smoke?
GLAZER: Exactly. But I didn’t start smok-
ing weed till my junior year. I had a boy-
friend who smoked a lot, and I was like,
Oh, I guess I’m moving on to this phase of
life. [laughs] I didn't fight it at all.
Q18: You've done some amazing things with Twit-
ter, from pestering Whole Foods into letting you
shoot at one of its stores to almost getting Diane
Keaton to be a guest star on Broad City. Does it
work both ways? Could fans Tweet-beg you into
dating them or hosting their bar mitzvah?
GLAZER: I would love to host someone's
bar mitzvah. I would love to do that.
JACOBSON: I wonder how much we could
get paid for that. It would have to be
some Los Angeles Jewish dad paying for
it, right?
Q19: Here's a dilemma. You have $100 to spend in
Bed Bath & Beyond. What do you buy, and do you
use coupons?
JACOBSON: We have $100 to spend? Okay,
let's think about this rationally. I need
some hangers.
GLAZER: You should get the velvet ones.
JACOBSON: Yes, some velvet hangers. I
need some trash bags. I need.... What do
I need? Папа doesn't have a teakettle. We
would get you a top-of-the-line teakettle.
Q20: Why do we have a weird feeling we could
leave theroom right now and come back in an hour
andthe twoof you would still be talking about this?
JACOBSON: Could you stop with the ques-
tions for a minute? We're trying to fig-
ure this out.
GLAZER: I would get a heating pad. I gave
my heating pad away and I would really
love one. The lasttime I was in Bed Bath
& Beyond, I was with you, actually. We
got you a lot of candles. Was it a dozen?
JACOBSON: [Laughs] I do need a dozen
candles.
GLAZER: I don't like their candles. I just
don't like the glass candleholders. It's
like wasting all this glass.
JACOBSON: But then you have all these
candle containers. You can reuse them.
GLAZER: I don't know. I'm not con-
vinced. [|

LexLuthorisbald, exceptwhenhehasawildmop
of red hair. He's a stone-faced Kevin Spacey, ex-
ceptwhen he’s anascot-sporting Gene Hackman.
And he’s a sociopath bent on world destruction,
except when he’s a deep soul who questions his
own powers. In short, Superman’s archnemesis
is a complicated man. Who better to play him in
2016 than Jesse Eisenberg, who slides from one
difficult role to the next: In the past year, he’s
grieved alost parent in Louder Than Bombs and
sparred with David Foster Wallace in The End
of the Tour. But Batman v Superman: Dawn of
Justice marks his first straight-up villain role.
We asked about the part's complexities, and he
told us about mocking co-stars Ben Affleck and
Henry Cavill on camera.—Stephen Rebello

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAKE CHESSUM

FILM

Reinventing Lex

In his first outing as a blockbuster villain, JESSE EISENBERG has us rooting for the bad guy

On Luthor’s crooked
moral compass:
“The character is a
more modern, psy-
chologically realistic
concept of Lex Lu-
thor. He has a way of
using language that’s
specific to the way his
mind works. He strug-
gles with interesting
philosophical dilem-
mas, such as that of
the individual having
too much power, even
if that individual is
using that power for
good. Superman has
so far been using his
powers to do good,
but is it safe to have
someone like that
walking the streets?”

On inhabiting the
role: “He reminds
me of one of those
characters in old
Greek theater who
explicitly state the
philosophical dilem-
ma at hand in a way
that feels in line with
that character's in-
terests and voice.
This is the kind of
role actors really like
to play, because you
don't feel it's a prob-
lem if you color out-
side the lines. | can
be as funny as | want,
and can be as sad
as | want, because
the character's also
going through real
internal conflict."

Оп the long Luthor
lineage: “The previ-
ous movies are inter-
esting to watch, but
they feel unrelated.
This incarnation

of the character is
drawn so different-
ly. Ра read the comic
books, but | figured
out pretty quick-

ly there's not much
there that relates to
an acting role; it's just
a different format.
You know the old
joke about actors—
if you're playing the
messenger, you think
it's a play about the
messenger—but the
main characters are
wonderful as well."

On working with
Cavill and Affleck:
“They're both very
smart, funny people.
We were all sort of
adjusting things to
make the scenes as
good as they could
be. Henry already
played Superman in
another movie, so he
had a strong idea of
his character. That
was fun for me be-
cause | could play
with that. It was also
strange, because |
have a lot of respect
for both of them, yet
my character mocks
them a lot. But that
was just the nature
of the thing.”

Your TV
Hates Tech—

and You Secretly Do Too

Why are our beloved devices all but absent from the most popular shows on cable?

From the smartphones that hotline-bling in
our back pockets to the laptops aglow with
Facebook updates, technology takes up every
corner of our lives. How are we supposed to
Netflix and chill with so many other screens
vying for our attention?

Maybe that’s why our favorite TV shows tend
to steer clear of such modern trappings. We
love watching people do things we ourselves
wouldn’t. (See: building a drug empire, fight-
ing dragons, living without Facebook.) From
the recently departed Mad Men and Downton
Abbey to the wildly popular Game of Thrones
and The Walking Dead, TV shows devoid of
Twitter, Tinder and Taylor Swift videos have a
strange allure.

Look at Mad Men, which takes place in a world
where driving a lawn mower is exciting and
computers are so new and scary that they drive a
character to cut offone of his nipples. Watching
sexy people misbehave, without the shackles of
aspouse checking in via text, is damn near irre-
sistible. A modern-day Don Draper would most
likely be some potbellied guy who spends his
nights browsing Ashley Madison and dodging
WhatsApp messages from his second wife.

Downton Abbey offers a similar reprieve, al-
beit without Jon Hamm's immaculate chest
hair. The Abbey set is far too busy worry-
ing about sinking ocean liners, Spanish in-
fluenza and deathbed marriages to consider
fantasy-baseball stats or Missy Elliott’s first
music video in seven years. And the poor Earl
of Grantham could have saved his family from
ruin if he’d only had an app to organize his
finances, but what fun would that be?

ILLUSTRATION BY NOMA BAR

Of particular note is The Walking Dead,
which presents an intriguing premise: not its
zombie apocalypse, a plot we’ve been mining
since the 1960s, but its placement in a time
that looks a lot like ours except for its total
lack of devices. Its characters, former iPhone
junkies just like us, have to learn to live off
the grid. (Also, with zombies.) They could
avoid so many deaths and inexplicable resur-
rections if they had Facebook, Twitter or Yelp,
where the survivors could post status updates
or review weapons. More than the breakdown
of modern society, it’s the show’s underlying
question—Is it better to have tweeted and lost
than never to have tweeted at all?—that keeps
us coming back.

The absence of tech in shows isn’t just a fan-
tasy for viewers; it’s an important logistical
workaround for storytellers too. As myriad writ-
ers and directors know, the unlimited amount
of knowledge at our fingertips eliminates a lot
of the fruitful problems you would normally
find in fiction. The wrong-turn premise of the
most basic plot line doesn’t happen in the age
of Google Maps. Even the smartest TV shows of
recent history have had to rely on spotty signals
or missing phones to throw more obstacles at
their protagonists. (See: The X-Files, on which
cell phones always crap out when it's convenient
for the writers, or The Sopranos, on which one
prominent character dies because he forgets his
phone and doesn’t receive the call warning him
of approaching hit men.) Broad City memora-
bly mocks our digital addiction in a season one
episode: Abbi loses her phone in aclub, spurring
a frantic citywide search, because how are you

supposed to get laid without your phone? No,
seriously—I don’t know.

This brings up another explanation for TV’s
digital detox. The average American is con-
scious for 16 to 18 hours a day and spends 11
of those hours looking at some sort of screen.
When we’re gawking at the TV, we prefer shows
that don’t remind us of all the other screens we
could be gawking at.

A notable exception is the USA Network new-
comer Mr. Robot. It obliterates the tech-on-TV
problem by aiming its focus squarely at tech-
nology and how we interact with it. It doesn't
just give us tech-geek details—it revels in them.
Every facet of its characters’ lives is tethered to
technology, every minute detail susceptible to
the prying eyes of anyone with internet access.
Data courses through the show’s veins like so
much blood rendered in ones and zeros.

It’s a modern folie 4 deux, us and our tech-
nology. That we escape from media and tech-
nology by watching media on technology would
make Camus laugh. There’s something entic-
ing about the prospect of an unplugged life:
You don’t want to permanently banish technol-
ogy, because you love it, but its absence feels
exotic. Through TV we can imagine ourselves
donning luxurious furs and slaying white
walkers; when the credits roll, we can jump on-
line to post our outrage at the (supposed) death
of our favorite character. But in the same way
that the Glenns and Jon Snows of the world will
never really die, we'll never really leave tech-
nology behind. We can delve into the deliri-
um of life without our devices, but we always,
inevitably, return.—Greg Cwik

TALK
LIKEA
GAVEMAN

Far Cry Primal will make you
rethink language—if the saber-
toothed tigers don't get you first

GAMES

The cavemen are pissed off, their ragged blades
swinging at your head. But what the hell are
they saying? Language was French publisher
Ubisoft’s big challenge when, two years ago,
it began work on the next game in its Far Cry
series. For Far Cry Primal (PC, PS4, Xbox
One), Ubisoft has created a Stone Age world full
of cavemen who started the world’s first wars.
Yet the words used 12,000 years ago weren’t
apelike grunts and screams. Those hairy guys
had a remarkably complex language—one no
gamer alive today understands.

“Weused Proto-Indo-European, the motherof
all tongues,” says game director Thomas Simon.
It's downright weird to hear hulking protagonist
Takkar speak with whatconsultant Andrew Byrd,
a linguistics professor, calls “something like
German” with some Middle English thrown in.
Byrd created a distinct version of PIE for each of
Рита? three tribes. One version has 15 vowels.

“Communicating was actually more com-
plex then,” says lead story writer Kevin Shortt.
Far Cry developers asked Byrd for a stripped-
down language, says Shortt, “then went with the

premise that actions speak louder than words.”
Players may even pick up the words for “bear” or
“tiger” when characters shout them repeatedly.

The game makers also looked at films such as
1981's Quest for Fire, in which the gestures of
the prehuman characters are so impassioned,
evocative and witty, no language is needed. “We
wanted our actors to emulate that,” says Simon.

For three separate shoots last year, Byrd’s
wife, Brenna, also a professor and linguistics
expert, flew to Toronto to teach Primal's ac-
tors PIE “as if it were areal, current language.”
Butwhen you're exploring alone, there's no lan-
guage at all. Against a wash of ominous wind,
the crack of a branch can herald a beast sneak-
ing from behind to rip flesh from your bones.

“Humans used to be part of the food chain,
not on top of it," explains Simon with a grin.
“We wanted to reinforce the feeling that nature
is fullofterror." Yetthrough the savagery, as the
strange, ancient tongue becomes ever more fa-
miliar, you learn that communication isn't just
a means of survival; it's an essential key to evo-
lution itself.—Harold Goldberg

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MUSIC

A Savage Journey

For fans, Savages shows had become religious experiences; Adore Life,
the U.K. band's second album, is their New Testament

Savages hit a sharp turning point as they were
finishing the tour in support of their 2013 de-
but, Silence Yourself. The London-based four-
some realized that the frenzied reaction they
were getting was atypical: The fans seemed to
be having near-religious experiences. “There
was a point where we couldn't ignore it any-
more, and we had to find a way to give back,”
recalls frontwoman Jehnny Beth (above far
left). “They didn't just like the band; they
really believed. And I think when you’re a
musician, you can't help but feel a certain re-
sponsibility from that.”

Their response was Adore Life, a haunting
exercise in postpunk that doesn't rewrite the
genre's rules so much as it stomps on them
with steel-toed Dr. Martens. Listening to
“The Answer,” the album's first single, it's
easy to understand why people react so vis-
cerally to the band, which also includes gui-

PHOTOGRAPHY BY COLIN LANE

tarist Gemma Thompson, bassist Ayse Hassan
and drummer Fay Milton. While their first al-
bum saw the band creating ambitious art rock
in the spirit of Gang of Four and Joy Division,
Adore Life expands on their more abstract
and chaotic moments, resulting in a sound
that's abrasive yet layered—and captivating
throughout. “This record has a very personal
attachment for some people,” Beth explains.
“It allows them to start questioning things
they had buried somewhere.”

Beth, who is originally from France, de-
scribes Adore Life as an “anxious record.” In-
deed, psychic weight is palpable in everything
from the hypnotic groove of “Sad Person” to
the surprising vulnerability of “Mechanics.”
“When we started the band, the idea of writ-
ing loud and fast music was a conscious rebel-
lion against the London scene at the time,”
Beth says about the formation of Savages in

2011. “You always set out to create the band
you aren't able to find, and it seemed like you
needed a softer message and softer music in
order to make it. We wanted to take a step away
from that and see what happens.”

It should come as no surprise, then, that
Beth has expectations for the album that go be-
yond viral marketing campaigns and Sound-
Scan tabulations. She excitedly recounts a
story about a fan who quit his job after being
inspired by the aptly titled *Fuckers"—a song
they wrote in the heat of that fervent response
they were getting on tour.

“I think this record might help listeners
introduce some sort of change; it's one of
the best things a record can do," Beth says.
At their core, Savages want to be that spark,
igniting a fire that smolders long after the
music fades out. “It would be a gift," Beth says.
“It would be a miracle almost.”—Jonah Bayer

y Evan |

| Шам

E SINCE 1783
N SO nn =
сы
Wy.
E Z STRAIGHT ° Y EN
iui / \ Y -
TN Bowbon | ^ SER
T |
H у ا‎
| | DISTILLED IN KENTUCK
|| DISTILLERY Ç

WILLIAMS
ALC/VOL

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SERIOUSLY. GOOD BOURBON.

EvanWilliams.com f

COLUMN

FRANCOFILE

The Wire creator David Simon talks about the birth of the sex industry, the failure
of the drug war, the role of journalism and meeting President Obama

JAMES FRANCO: Your new HBO
miniseries, The Deuce, is set in New
York’s old 42nd Street, when itwas full
of strip clubs, prostitutes and pimps.
What attracted you to that world?
DAVID SIMON: We're trying to cap-
ture an extraordinary demimonde
that sprang up in the middle of one
of America’s greatest cities. It had al-
most no precedent in terms of sheer
glorious degeneracy. It was the Wild
West. In a country that has always
had puritan pretensions, it was atime
when sex came rocketing out of the
closet in every possible form. Pioneers
in this new industry at that moment
lived through extraordinary experi-
ences, and in the end many of them
paid extraordinary costs.

Onone layer it’s abeautiful critique
of unrestrained capitalism, of the
idea that you can put a price on any-
thing and sell it. There’s absolutely a
market for sex; there always will be
and there always has been. But if we
give it free rein—and in some basic ways
I think we have—what does that do to all of us?
FRANCO: So it’s a look at what happens when
capitalism meets sex?
SIMON: And what is the cost? What happens
to the various forces involved? Where does the
money go? What happens to labor? There's a
lot we can say about what it means to live in a
country where profit is exalted to the extent it
is in America. There’s a lot we can critique, and
I find that really interesting. The sex industry
has an undercurrent; regardless of how benign-
ly somebody tries to approach it, there’s a core
value of misogyny—you know, the use and mis-
use of women. I’m interested in honestly and
maybe even brutally exploring that, because
I think we tend to treat the commodification
of sex as some sort of comic by-product of our
worst instincts. I’m not sure it’s quite so funny.
FRANCO: You started your career as a newspa-
per reporter in Baltimore, and your first book
became the award-winning TV series Homi-
cide: Life on the Streets. Your next book, The

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVE MA

BY
JAMES FRANCO

Corner, was turned into a miniseries for HBO
and paved the way for you to create The Wire.
What did you want to capture about Baltimore?
SIMON: I remember thinking, If they give us
this show, I don’t want to do the same thing
every year. I don’t want to just introduce a few
more interesting characters or a better villain.
Jesus, put agun in my mouth if I'm going to play
that game. Itoccurred to me that if they were go-
ing tolet me critique the drug war, which is what
I wanted to do with the first season of The Wire,
and explain why the entire city infrastructure
had gotten lost in that dystopian policy, that the
next season would have to explain the allure of
drug culture in terms of the death of the work-
ing class. Every season I wanted to carve up an-
other piece of the city and try to build a Balti-
more that wasa sociological critique of where we
find ourselves and go for as longas they'd let me.
FRANCO: You were interviewed by President
Obama. How does having the presidentasa fan
affect your material?

SIMON: When I actually could have
claimed some expertise in terms of
where the drug war was going awry or
why the clearance rates on homicides
were declining or why we were solv-
ing fewer murders and why the city
was becoming more problematic to
police—when I actually knew these
things and had the facts because I was
a reporter—nobody gave a fuck. No-
body wanted to talk to me. They weren't
inviting me to the White House to dis-
cuss this shit. They weren't inviting me
to much of anywhere. I was just a grunt
in the trenches. I could write my sto-
ries, and the police department would
read them and every now and then the
Sun would get behind me and write an
editorial on somethingI’d written. I’m
not diminishing that work; I found itto
be incredibly gratifying and meaning-
ful, and itall begins with that. Frankly,
if we were a healthier society, it would
end with that. Journalism, when it’s
done well, would be sufficient to pro-
voke real change and real argument
and real discussion. We're not that healthy any-
more, and some of the best journalism doesn’t
get the attention it should. But if you take it
and transform it into a cathartic narrative of a
kind that has always been the elemental force
behind drama, if you do that and make people
care about characters and about the outcome of
afictional story—holy shit, all ofa sudden you're
getting invited to college campuses and they’re
asking you what you think.

We can laugh at it, but a lot of people know all
the social science that underlies the Holocaust.
They can explain it to you in chapter and verse
and with great detail about the sociopolitical and
geopolitical forces and the human dynamic that
led to the Holocaust. And all of what they know
may not be nearly as powerful as the diary of a
teenage girl hiding in an attic in Amsterdam and
wondering whether she’s going to Auschwitz or
not. Inthe microcosmic use of Anne Frank as the
narrative constant, the Holocaust comes alive.
Sometimes it takes a teenage girl. a

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BLENDED WITH HONEY LIQUEUR ©

35% ALC./VOL. (70 PROOF)

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" 3

SEX

God Bless Birth Gol

The IUD is not only the most practical and effective contraceptive available. It is revoluti8
freedom from anxiety and fear—and a slap in the face of puritanism

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MOLLY CRANNA

“Imagine,” my religious-education teacher said one
Wednesday evening, her eyes glazing over lustily, “ifevery

time you had intercourse, you were giving yourself over
entirely to your spouse, holding nothing back.” I was 16.

I could not imagine anything so unsettlingly submissive.

My classmates, one of whom was pregnant, scribbled
notes to one another and coughed into the fertile silence.
Our teacher sat up, staring down those who hadnt
averted their eyes to the floor or ceiling quickly enough.

“That’s why we believe birth control is an af-
front to dignity,” the teacher scolded. “That’s
why we as Catholics don’t contracept.” I nod-
ded, knowing even then that my ideal relation-
ship involved a lot of condom-free sex and as
few pills as possible. At the time, such a life-
style amounted to a fever dream.

Today, the American sexual climate remains
muddled by puritanism, slut panic and pure
Luddite fear, but in one fell swoop, the modern
woman has the power to undo decades of mis-
placed morality and bullshit finger wagging.
Enter the IUD, or intrauterine device. Discreet,
long-lasting and reversible, it has the potential
to lead American women into the next sexual
revolution. Not even abat-shit-crazy conserva-
tive sweep in 2016 can stop it.

Over the past few years, IUDs have exploded
in popularity, rebounding froma prior genera-
tion of the technology that almost killed it for
good. This was the Dalkon Shield, a Pac-Man
ghost-shaped model introduced in 1971 that
killed a handful of women, subjected tens
of thousands more to serious pelvic injuries
and led to a product-safety lawsuit second in
size only to cases involving asbestos. Many
thought the IUD would never recover, but
the modern version couldn’t be further from
its forebear in safety and efficacy—one 2013
study found that less than one percent of users
experience complications. Attitudes are shift-
ing: Last year, the Centers for Disease Control

found that use of long-acting reversible con-
traceptives had increased fivefold over the
past decade, with IUDs leading the charge.
For women several years away from wanting
children, long-acting reversible contraception
is a low-maintenance godsend; after a check-
up, awoman can basically forget about her IUD
for three to 12 years, depending on the model.
That’s more than enough time to wait out any
future antisex chucklehead before he throws a
Nixonian double peace sign on his way out of the
White House. That's more than enough time to
work up the courage to break up with that dick
who doesn’t like his woman to take pills, and
more than enough time to hide one’s sexual ac-
tivity from disapproving parents or partners.
Onapractical level, having an
IUD means no more last-minute
panic over renewing prescrip-
tions before an extended week-
end, no more fealty to the demanding sched-
ule of a blister pack. It means knowing that if,
for some reason, a woman were to be dropped
into a Blue Lagoon situation with a handsome
stranger, she wouldn't have to worry about a
pregnancy complicating her island time. It
means fewer tampon-purchase pit stops, a re-
lief for women and their good-hearted boy-
friends alike. It means, for women who believe
their choice of birth control is nobody’s fucking
business, no more telltale pill packs in the med-
icine cabinet or repeat trips to the pharmacy.

sy ERIN
GLORIA RYAN

Next to the IUD, lesser forms
of contraception seem as archaic
as Fred Flintstone’s foot-powered
car. Having one means free-
dom from the daily responsibil-
ity of the pill or subjecting one’s
body to the hormones (and side
effects) of a birth-control shot.
Less than one percent of wom-
en who use IUDs get pregnant
each year. The CDC estimates
that nine percent of women who
rely on the pill get pregnant each
year; for those who use condoms
the rate is an anxiety-inducing one in five. No
matter how lockstep pro-choice or pro-life acou-
ple may be, the stress of anunplanned pregnan-
cy is something everybody would rather avoid.

Much of the public anxiety about the mar-
riage of sex and technology is based on the fear
that it will drive people apart, reducing us to
dead-eyed fuck zombies humping everything
within reach. One can barely open a browser
without scrolling past articles bemoaning the
alienation sown by dating apps such as Tin-
der. Five years ago it was the threat of a vague
“hookup culture” set to overtake American
dorms and high schools. Five years before that
it was the ravages of internet porn. Five years
from now it will be something else—perhaps
sex with robots? But amid the
social prognosticating and pearl
clutching comes the resurgence
of the IUD, an innovation that
promotes exactly the sort of unburdened yet
intimate relationships the handwringers have
warned are becoming extinct.

Among women in my demographic—New
Yorkers whose apartments are barely big
enough for a shower, let alone a baby—getting
an IUD feels like joining a sorority. In the
months after I got mine, the city transformed
into the world’s grimiest pharmaceutical ad,
starring myself and women I know in varying
degrees swapping uterine updates over beers
at Sharlene’s. I’ve found myself showing up

at my office and immediately Gchatting with
a co-worker about cramps. I’ve caught myself
singing the praises of my gynecologist’s skill-
ful hands in public. “She’s like a ninja with
my cervix!” I told a friend, out loud, in a nor-
mal speaking voice, during rush hour. “It will
change your life,” one usually snarky friend
told me with alarming sincerity the day I made
my appointment. She was right. It did. None of
us has ever been less pregnant.

The It status of the IUD is a fairly recent de-
velopment. It wasn't until 1965's Griswold v.
Connecticut that the Supreme Court declared
alaw barring contraceptive drugs unconstitu-
tional. Six years later the disastrous Dalkon
Shield went to market. It would take until 1988
for a modern IUD, a T-shaped copper device
that looked and acted nothing like its predeces-
sor, to hit American pharmacies. It remained
unpopular: Women, it turned out, were still
a tad disturbed by the fact that the last mass-
market IUD was an inadvertent torture device.
A small plastic hormonal IUD called Mirena,
which lasts five years, quietly emerged in the
1990s, followed by even smaller models in the
2010s: Skyla (three years) and Liletta (three
years), both so dainty a teenager can use them.
Apparently birth control is most marketable
when its name conjures images of fairies strip-
ping their way through grad school.

In 2011 a government agency determined
that under the Affordable Care Act birth con-
trol qualifies as preventative care and IUDs
must be covered co-pay-free. This was welcome
news for many women, because those who can't
afford to pay up front for an IUD likely can't
afford to have a child, which I've heard can be
quite expensive.

In fact, from 2009 to 2014, a $25 million
grant provided more than 36,000 Colorado
teens with long-acting birth control. The result
wasa 48 percent drop in unwanted pregnancies,
saving $79 million in Medicaid. Yet last year
Republican lawmakers killed a bill to provide
$5 million to continue the program, caving to
constipated right-wing talk-radio hosts and re-
ligious conservatives, who for years had claimed
IUDs were abortifacients and using them was
equivalent to murdering a human baby.

An important aspect of my Catholic edu-
cation, and of Judeo-Christian morality writ
large, focused on reasons to both fear and
crave sex. I was taught that the only good sex
happens between married, heterosexual, raw-
dogging adults. Experiencing its pleasure was
justifiably punishable with the pain of child-
birth, dependingon how petty God felt that day
(and whether he hated you enough to fashion
youinto a baby girl).

9-choice

QERIN _

IUDs last for years—longer, hopefully, than political headwinds.

We were taught that married women who
used birth control committed “the sin of abor-
tion every day,” not understanding that even
when stretched to its most fantastic limits, an
IUD could result in an abortion every day only
if a woman were successfully ovulating every
24 hours and her frequent eggs were being fre-
quently fertilized by an insatiable sex machine
husband. Believing that using an IUD is like
having an abortion every day is like believing
that every baseball pitch results in a home run.

Religious beliefs about contraception should
have no bearing on public policy governing
health care access, but they do. In 2014 the Su-
preme Court ruled that Hobby Lobby and oth-
er *closely held" private, for-profit companies
were within their rights to withhold contra-
ceptiveaccess from insured female employees,
provided the company brass's beliefs were “sin-
cerely held.” During arguments, lawyers for
Hobby Lobby referred to the morning-after
pill and IUDs as abortifacients, which, while
scientifically incorrect, proved to be “sincere-
ly held” enough for the court. In the end, every
justice on the winning side of that five-to-four
vote was a Catholic man.

In December, the Supreme Court heard oral
arguments in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Bur-
well. Under Obamacare, religious organiza-
tions that refuse to provide birth control for
their employees must sign a form declaring
their intent, which forces insurers to offer

third-party, unaffiliated coverage. In this case,
plaintiffs have argued that simply signing that
form makes them indirectly responsible for em-
ployee birth control. If religious conservatives
prevail, it would not only bea decision dramati-
cally out of step with the beliefs of the American
people, it would be an absurd judicial capitula-
tion to the will of those who believe their reli-
gious rights extend to the bodies of others.

More prominent and noisy than a Supreme
Court case, of course, is the impending presi-
dential election. If a Republican is installed in
the White House, it’s highly likely that, in an
effort to appease the deep-pocketed wing nuts
of the right, the no-co-pay birth control ben-
efit of the Affordable Care Act will be swatted
down on day one. None of the candidates has
thus far unveiled an “Everybody Gets Preg-
nant” platform, but the end of Obamacare
would mean the resurrection of old barriers
between women and IUDs.

IUDs work. Without insurance, the next sex-
ualrevolution will be beyond the reach of most
American women. But we women have the up-
per hand: An IUD is a fool- and asshole-proof
invention that can, once and for all, establish
thateach woman's body belongsto her and only
her. As far asthe human body is concerned, it's
strongerthan a fenceora missile shield or atax
break. It's what will keep us from backsliding
into the Dark Ages. No matter who is in office.
And thank God for that. L|

ү "See Mu Story’ At:

www.blucigs.com/plusworks

СЕ

| + Real Draw
| © "UTE S * Maximum Hit
۰ + Big Flavors

CLASSIC TOBACC

POLITICS

DEATHOFA
ONSULTANT

Trump, Hillary, Bernie and the business of authenticity

It was three A.M. and Stuart Stevens
paced frantically in his hotel room.
Hours earlier he had received the latest
campaign polls, and his candidate was
behind by several points. Now Stevens
couldn’t sleep. He anxiously e-mailed
ideas to colleagues, rethought the lat-
est cut of an ad and crafted lines for a big
speech less than 24 hours away. Hewasin
the fight of his life.

That was four years ago, when Stevens
ran Mitt Romney’s presidential cam-
paign. Now, as the 2016 election cycle
kicks up, similar scenes are playing out
across the country. Huddled in hotels is
asuper-elite group of consultants—chief
strategists for a nearly Sı billion enter-
prise known asa presidential campaign.

Sometimes the job pressure is so in-
tense that strategists puke, as Stevens
did when he sent an unscripted Clint
Eastwood on stage with an empty chair
and the star had a “conversation” with an imagi-
nary President Barack Obama for an excruciat-
ing 12 minutes of prime-time TV. Backstage, Ste-
vens also threw furniture. But he and others in
the business say it’s worth enduring the pressure
for the high that comes with it.

“The work has all the fun of combat, but no-
body dies—or at least not very often,” says
Stevens. “The appeal is simple: Your guy is good,
the other guy is evil, and every day you wake up
trying to beat the crap out of the other guy.”

Political strategists have operated behind the
scenes since at least 1932, when Franklin D. Roo-
seveltfirst ran for the White House. During acam-
paign stop in Pittsburgh, FDR pledged to overhaul
the federal budget, but four years later, when he
was up for reelection, the government was still
spending more than it was taking in. Roosevelt
turned to his advisor. “I’ve got to go back to Pitts-
burgh,” he said. “The last thing I said there was
that I was going to balance the budget. What do I
say now?" The strategist replied, “Mr. President,
deny that you've ever been in Pittsburgh.”

sy JOHN MERONEY

That kind of cunning earns today’s top strat-
egists up to $100,000 a month. For that money,
they teach politicians how to walk and talk, and
even tell them what to wear. Most aren’t zeal-
ous ideologues. They don’t believe they’re car-
rying out a lofty patriotic duty. They just love
agood fight.

“Doing this is like coachingin big-time college
sports or the NFL,” says Steve Schmidt, chief
strategist for John McCain’s 2008 presidential
campaign. “You make thousands of decisions,
and all of them play out in the leads of the news,
day after day, for the whole world to see.”

The appeal is primal. “I fancied myself more of
an angry linebacker type, running around look-
ing for somebody to hit,” says Stevens. Plus, these
consultants help shape the national conversa-
tion. That ability toinfluence becomes addictive.
When McCain told Schmidt his campaign was
broke, Schmidt—so exhilarated by the work—
offered to stay on for free.

Just when it looked as if the usual strategists
would orchestrate another campaign season,

last spring Donald Trump announced
his candidacy and dumped the whole
political process on its head. Trump
doesn’t employ high-priced strategists,
and his taunts to the “losers” who do
helped drive up his poll numbers. When
veteran strategists Alex Castellanos
and Charlie Black appeared on Meet the
Press last year, moderator Chuck Todd
said, “You guys are who [Trump’s] run-
ning against.” Trump had violated the
number one rule of politics: Don’t give
away the game.

Trump's message resonates in part
because he confirms what increasingly
media-savvy voters have gleaned from
a steady diet of social media, House of
Cards and cable-TV news: Namely, we
see through the sham. That's why Kate
McKinnon’s parody of Hillary Clinton
on Saturday Night Live last fall rings
so true. “I think you're really going to

like the Hillary Clinton that my team and I have
created for this debate,” she says as Clinton.
“She’s warm—but strong. Flawed—yet perfect.
Relaxed—but racing full speed toward the White
House like the T-1000 from Terminator.”
Eschewing scripted speeches and talk-
ing about how the system is rigged also pro-
pelled Democrat Bernie Sanders into becoming
Hillary Clinton’s most potent challenger. Sand-
ers showed he didn’t need a Beltway team to
fashion his persona. He uses leading Democrat-
ic strategist Tad Devine for operational needs,
not for brand building. Besides, Devine claims,
Sanders has been the same since he was elected
to Congress in 1990. “He has always spoken his
mind. The message that he’s delivering in this
campaign, he has delivered for a decade.” Still,
Devine admits that a seismic shift is under way,
even if neither Sanders nor Trump makes it to
the Oval Office. The game that political strate-
gists used to play has been put to rest for good.
“Authenticity,” says Devine, “is nowthe coin of
the realm.” m

BURTON

PROCE

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it in ink.

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— l

INTERVIEW

RACHEL MADDOW

Upstairs in MSNBC's studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, Rachel Maddow is prac-
tically mainlining the news ofthe day. Her staff of 20 (women outnumber men and diversi-
ty of skin color, gender expression and age is clearly valued) calls out headlines as Maddow
scribbles in micro-script on a whiteboard: bombs in Kandahar, pollution in Beijing, idiocy
on the campaign trail, a two-star Navy admiral reprimanded for public drunkenness and
nudity. “Oh, I love when government and nakedness collide,” Maddow says to big laughs.
Of 50-odd story possibilities, roughly six make The Rachel Maddow Show, the nightly news
and opinion program with a strong lefty bent that debuted two months before Barack Obama was
elected in 2008. With nearly a million viewers each night, it is MSNBC's highest-rated prime-
time series and will inevitably boom bigger as November s presidential election draws nearer.

At 42, Maddow isn’t like other TV talking
heads. She was the first openly gay anchor to
host a major news program in the U.S. and has
never pretended to be a golden girl. “I once had
long, straight blonde hair but then cut it short
and came back looking like Rick Santorum,”
she says. Maddow does not mask her liberal-
ism, but even right-wingers respect how sharp,
well-informed and sane she is. Her 2012 best-
seller, Drift, on America’s slide into perpetual
war, includes a blurb from Fox News chairman
and CEO Roger Ailes,

Maddow grew up in conservative Castro Val-
ley, California, where her former Air Force
captain father was a lawyer and her mother a
school administrator. By the age of seven she
was reading the newspaper; in her teens, she
was a standout athlete turned AIDS activist.
She went to Stanford University and then to the
University of Oxford as America’s first openly
gay Rhodes Scholar. She holds an Oxford Ph.D.
in political science.

Academia could not contain Maddow’s enthu-

siasm for talk, and she broke into radio in 1999
after an open call at WRNX in Amherst, Mas-
sachusetts. (That same year she met her part-
ner, Susan Mikula, an artist; the Berkshires
remain their primary residence.) Obsessive
about research and with a gift for crystalliz-
ing even the wonkiest white papers, Maddow
helped launch Air America in 2004 before land-
ing her nine P.M. spot on MSNBC in New York,
where PLAYBOY Contributing Editor David
Hochman recently met with her for a couple of
days. Hochman has interviewed many pundits
for PLAYBOY—Sean Hannity, Michael Savage,
Bill Maher, Chris Wallace—but had never met
an anchor who works as diligently as Maddow.
He reports: “She’s like the girl in high school
who reads every assignment, aces every test,
does all the extra credits and still manages to
run the yearbook, win the swim meet and get the
president of the United States to write her back.”

PLAYBOY: After almost eight years of Presi-
dent Obama, we are once again talking about

PHOTOGRAPHY BY AMY TROOST

change. As а liberal, are you still feeling hope?
MADDOW: Theoretically. But historically
speaking, after Democrats hold two terms in
the White House, the public picks a Republican
to replace them. There are a lot of determining
factors in who wins. People say it’s the price of
gas and the growth in the economy, but some-
times it’s the we’re-ready-for-something-new
thing. There’s a reason that, almost without
fail, in every midterm election the president’s
party loses seats. There are psychological
cyclesin American politics that are pretty easy
to read, and in 2016 Democrats are facing one
of those cycles in which they are structurally
disadvantaged. It’s a matter of civic and inter-
national interest whom the Republicans pick,
because even if they pick a fascist, structurally
speaking that fascist or that con man, let’s say,
will have a50 percent chance of becoming pres-
ident of the United States.

I'ma liberal, but the thing that interests me
most in American politics is center-right to far-
right politics, because (a) it’s a laugh a minute

and (b) there’s no stasis. There’s no solid core
moving forward. You never know who's going to
come along.

PLAYBOY: Donald Trump's strong come-on
was certainly a stunner. What conditions gave
riseto his popularity?

MADDOW: First of all, anybody in day-to-day
political coverage who says they saw it com-
ing you can write off for the rest of their life.
Trump' explosion was not just improbable,
it was laugh-out-loud funny. But it's not like
there's no precedent for this. Silvio Berlusconi,
the longest-serving Italian leader after World
War II, was azillionaire media guy with bunga-
bunga sex parties who had no political pedi-
gree whatsoever and just got in there and did
aterrible job and embarrassed the nation. But
they picked him. Jesse Ventura was elected
governor of Minnesota and
then didn't really do anything.
Arnold Schwarzenegger became
& non-consequential governor
of California purely on the basis
of having had a tough-sounding
tagline in one of his movie fran-
chises. People make decisions
like this all the time, even en-
lightened persons.

PLAYBOY: Some celebrity can-
didates turn out okay. Ronald
Reagan did well for himself.
MADDOW: Ronald Reagan wasa
consequentialguy. Al Franken is
a very serious and effective Min-
nesota senator. Former child
star Sheila Kuehl does mean-
ingful work for California. That
said, to go from being a race-
baiting nativist buffoon reality-star profes-
sional sexist to being the distant front-runner
for the Republican presidential nomination,
even for a while, says almost less about Trump
than about the Republican Party.

It's fascinating how Republicans pick their
candidates. Honestly, I think the Republican
Party's voters are drunk. I'm sure they're hav-
inga great time and they feel euphoric, but you
can'teataton of greasy food and not feel terrible
inthe morning. I mean, Ben Carson!

What's amazing is that the conservative
movement since the Reagan era has been
telling conservatives that government is the
problem, which makes experience running
government a mark on your record. Having
constructive ideas about what government
could do makes you a suspicious character.
Honestly, the very idea that you would thirst

INTERVIEW

to hold high government office in Washing-
ton, D.C. almost inherently disqualifies you
as a Republican. So everybody is qualified, and
therefore you pick the person who most enter-
tains you. It's a weird thing.

PLAYBOY: Weren't we supposed to be in the
middle of another Bush vs. Clinton battle
right now?

MADDOW: That was the assumption ever
since Obama became the clear nominee in
2008— Hillary vs. Jeb. Now, eight years later
we're in a campaign where we've watched Jeb
Bush set fire to tens of millions of dollars and
get in trouble every time he opens his mouth.
Atone point he actually said, “You are look-ing
at the nominee and I am go-ing to face Hillary
Clinton and I am go-ing to whoop her.” Come
on, Jeb. You actually have to drop a g some-

TEN TO 15

PERCENT HATE
ME, THINK PM

AMAN ORA

SOCIALIST AND
WANT ME DEAD.

where if you're gonna talk like an everyday
person. You have to use a contraction.
PLAYBOY: Regardless of which candidates are
still in the running when this publishes, which
Republicans have the most to offer?
MADDOW: The general election is so hard to
talk about in the abstract this year, because all
the Republican prospects have been so freaky-
making. Look at Ted Cruz, who always appears
to me as if he’s portraying a character rather
than being an actual politician. It’s impossible
to know what he truly believes. Marco Rubio,
on the other hand, hasn’t really done anything
in his life other than bea politician. I just can't
figure out how he spends his time. He made
this interesting and dramatic commitment at
the outset of his presidential campaign that he
would not run for reelection to the Senate be-
cause he's so confident he'll be president. But

then it became an issue that he doesn't show
up to vote. He has the worst voting record in
the Senate, yet he clearly takes meetings every
time a hedge fund billionaire calls. It's hard to
see Marco Rubio supporting anything other
than Marco Rubio.

PLAYBOY: Now or in the future, what about
Chris Christie?

MADDOW: My Spidey sense tells me he's going
to доме іп New Hampshire. We'll know by the
time people read this. He's a good campaigner.
He has charisma. He has the right tough-guy
persona he can turn on and off when he wants.
Okay, so he has been like Godzilla stomping
on New Jersey as governor. A true disaster.
Republicans don’t care about that. But if Chris-
tie makes it to March and April, the problem
is the Bridgegate trials will be starting, people
will be pleading not guilty, and
fingers will be pointing at him.
PLAYBOY: Moving on to the
Democrats, what does Hillary
Clinton need to do to win?
MADDOW: She has to avoid un-
forced errors. The political track
we've scen a few times with Hil-
lary is that when she’s ahead she
gets a little loosey-goosey. When
people start talking about her as
inevitable, she believes she’s in-
evitable and sort of moves on to
the next thing. You can't do that.
Hillary stops paying attention to
thefundamentals of beinga good
candidate when she's ahead.
PLAYBOY: Carly Fiorinaquipped
last year that if you want to
stump a Democrat, ask him or
her to name something Hillary Clinton has ac-
complished. What has Clinton accomplished?
MADDOW: She has a pretty good legislative re-
cord as a senator. Her time as secretary of state
was accomplished. Most of what we did in Libya,
whether or not you like it, was orchestrated by
her. I think getting China onboard with the cli-
mate deal had a lot to do with her. Getting to
Osama bin Laden. Improving America’s status
abroad. But that question is bullshit. Let’s talk
about Carly Fiorina’s accomplishments at HP
when she left versus when she got there.
PLAYBOY: Presuming Clinton is the nominee,
whom should she pick as arunning mate?
MADDOW: Sadly, I feel her running mate defi-
nitely has to be a dude, even though there are so
many women coming ripe in their political ca-
reers who would be amazing. Missouri senator
Claire McCaskill would be amazing. Minnesota

HAIR BY BRIAN BUENAVENTURA AT MANAGEMENT ARTISTS; MAKEUP BY JUNKOKIOKA AT JOE MANAGEMENT

senator Amy Klobuchar would be amazing. Ob-
viously Elizabeth Warren if you have a more con-
servative candidate like Hillary Clinton.

Everybody says Clinton is going to pick
Julian Castro, the HUD secretary, but I’ve been
trying to start another rumor. Maybe saying it
in PLAYBOY will finally make it take hold. It
makes total sense to me that she'll pick Stan-
ley McChrystal, the Army general who had a
bad ending because of a Rolling Stone inter-
viewin which he ripped into Joe Biden. There's
a sort of realpolitik gender issue around Clin-
ton getting the nomination that requires she
pick a Grizzly Adams as her vice pres-
ident. But it can't be somebody who
might overshadow her to the extent
that people see the man in charge and
the woman ina supporting role. It can't
besomebody who feels he ought to be at
thetop ofthe ticket.

McChrystal doesn't come from atra-
ditional political background, which I
think makes a lot of sense. Also, this
election may come down to who has the
best national security message. The
one Hillary has is really different from
President Obama's. She told me to my
face that she's not as hawkish as peo-
plethink she is and she won't be a more
aggressive commander-in-chief, but I
don't believe her.

PLAYBOY: What difference would it
make to have a woman as president?
MADDOW: It breaks the glass ceiling,
which means the next woman to do it
will be the second woman. Not that
it always works that way. Britain had
just the one; Israel had just the one.
You do see when other countries get a
female leader, particularly an iconic
female leader, it doesn't necessarily
open the floodgates. It isunusualthat
we're this old, robust democracy and plural-
istic society, and we haven't gotten ours yet.
The gender achievement at the top in every
single political representation really sucks.
I mean, we're super-psyched that we have 20
women senators. Yay, 20! Um, there are 100.
Ican do that math.

It's worse in the Republican Party, but inthe
Democratic Party women aren’t hitting the top
tiers as fast and as frequently as statistically
they ought to be, even when you compare us
with other countries. I can’t help but think that
electing a woman president might speed that
pace a bit. Still, if Clinton gets elected, that’s
about her, and her legacy will be determined

INTERVIEW

by how good a president she is. Just being a
woman gets you only so far.

PLAYBOY: You've spent time knee-to-knee
with Clinton and Bernie Sanders. What are
they like off camera?

MADDOW: It’s fascinating. I did an hour-
long interview with Hillary in the studio last
fall, right before the televised forum I did with
the candidates in South Carolina. We had no
ground rules. She had no idea what I was going
to ask. When she came in, she listened to me
so hard it felt like she was prying my thoughts
out of my brain through my eyeballs. Hillary’s

got tractor beams. She was so intently focused
and had a ton to say about every issue. It’s the
same way Bill Clinton would give press con-
ferences when he was president and wouldn’t
want them to end. He'd just be like, “Bring it
on." She kind of has that going on. She's not
that guarded. She has something to say about
everything. She's policy-minded—that to me is
а пісе form of seriousness in a politician—and
hasan ability to handle a wide range of subject
matter. Very impressive.

But then, a couple of weeks later, at the forum
in South Carolina, it wasn't just us and the
camera guy in the room. There were 3,000 peo-
ple, and it was as if I wasn’t there. I would ask

her a question and she would physically turn to
the audience and answer. I was like, “Yoo-hoo,
over here!”

PLAYBOY: Was Sanders like that too?
MADDOW: The thing that’s interesting about
Bernie is that he is a freaking good politician,
and he’s aggressive. We hada commercial break
inthe middle of our discussion because I wanted
to have a reset. During that break, Martin
O'Malley was hyperventilating. Hillary started
playing to the audience again and waving to peo-
ple like she was campaigning. Bernie was work-
ing me to ask the questions he wanted for the
second half. He was like, “When we come
back, are you going to ask me about...?”
I was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. You’re
supposed to be Mr. Socialist.”
PLAYBOY: Can you picture him being
president?

MADDOW: Bernie Sanders is running
this fascinating campaign where he’s
all about people being angry and dis-
satisfied and frustrated. He wants you
to be disaffected and frustrated about
an economic system that keeps you
from ever ascending the ladder. That is
a great emotion to tap into for a politi-
cian but a hard lesson to sell in terms
of where people should channel it. If
that message works for you, it's cathar-
tic. People love him. They really do feel
the Bern. He gets tens of thousands of
people to turn out, but that sort of eco-
nomic populism is a tough sell. The di-
agnosisis right; the cure isn't easy. My
prediction for Bernie: populist hero
forever but hard to imagine him still
being thereat the convention.
PLAYBOY: Let's talk about your
MSNBC show. What do you say to peo-
pleon the right who see the lion's share
of your segments going after corrup-
tion and extreme views among Republicans at
atime when we've had a Democratic president
for seven years and a Congress in which Dem-
ocrats have held at least equal power? Is your
outrage selective?

MADDOW: I don't think so. I defy anybody to
have shown more glee or spent more minutes
of airtime enjoying the spectacularly corrupt
and profane downfall of Rod Blagojevich in
Illinois. I don’t know of any other national
news coverage for astory like that of Kathleen
Kane, the first elected Democratic attorney
general in Pennsylvania, who leaked embar-
rassing racist and pornographic work e-mails
of government officials and police officers

that were part of a secret grand jury docu-
ment. I mean, hello! California state senator
Leland Yee, who went down for your standard
corruption plus selling shoulder-fired mis-
siles and rocket-propelled grenades. That
stuff is gold. I don’t want to go so far as to say
I enjoy it, but I am enthusiastic about cover-
ing profane corruption and extremism when
anybody brings it to the fore. But certainly I
love covering Republican politics in general
more than I like anything else in American
politics. It’s just my area of interest.
PLAYBOY: Do you think emotions and opin-
ions have overtaken analysis and facts in the
American media? Or is it just some collective
fantasy that news used to be more objective?
MADDOW: I don't have any animus toward
the old news model, but I do think it's fac-
ile and reductive to claim
news was once unbiased
and is now biased. Every
time you choose which sto-
ries areimportant that day,
you're using news judgment
and your subjective per-
spective on things. I lived
through a lot of news cycles
as an American citizen be-
fore I was ever in the media.
Much of the news I cared
about was designated as un-
important, frivolous or not
worthy of mainstream at-
tention, and that was some-
one’s political decision.
PLAYBOY: Which stories
are you talking about?
MADDOW: Well, I’m think-
ing about the AIDS movement. Growingup asa
gay kid in the 1980s and 1990s in the San Fran-
cisco Bay Area when that devastating epidem-
ic hit, and it being literally laughed at in the
White House briefing room and never treated
by mainstream media as anything other than
a sidebar medical issue or a human interest
story about fags. That was someone’s subjec-
tive decision. I make subjective decisions too.
Ijust own it.

PLAYBOY: You were an activist before you were
an anchor. Do you still feel like one?
MADDOW: There are some connections. As a
teenager and well into my 20s, being an activist
was what I did full-time. I wanted to be good at
it, and in order to be good and to get stuff done,
I needed to make great arguments. That’s dif-
ferent from being good at being bossy, which
I’ve always been. As I got into AIDS activism

INTERVIEW

in particular, I consciously sought to build the
skills to make persuasive arguments so could
help effect change.

The media side of me is different from the
activist side. As a media person, I like explain-
ing things. Most of what I do is take the uni-
verse of known information and explain what's
important about it, what's new about it and
what to watch for next. I find that explanatory
work very satisfying. We have this little man-
traon the show: Increase the amount of useful
informationinthe world. Explain what's going
oninawaythat resonates with people and helps
them understand what's truly important about
it. That's what I try to do. Some people like it.
Others can't stand it.

PLAYBOY: Whatis your hate mail like?
MADDOW: It’s interesting. I get a lot of it, but

THE FIRST TIME I
THOUGHT I MIGHT
BE A LESBIAN,

I REMEMBER
THINKING: BUT I
HATE SOFTBALL.

it has always been the same percentage of neg-
ative to positive. The first media job I ever had
was in 1999 and 2000. I wason the radio, on The
Dave in the Morning Show on WRNX in west-
ern Massachusetts. I was the lesbian newsgirl
sidekick, and part of the shtick was that I was
gay and looked like a dyke. That offended some
people. Typical hate mail was the samethen as
it is now: all caps, misspelled, saying that I’m
a man or I'm going to hell for being gay or that
I'm a socialist. Or “I’m going to kill you." That
was 10 to 15 percent. Then I moved to my own
show in Northampton, Massachusetts. That
was Big Breakfast. It was the same thing. Then
I got to Air America and had a national plat-
form, and again it was the exact same propor-
tion. Then I get a show on MSNBC, and again
10 to 15 percent hate me, think I’m a man or a
socialist and want me dead. Fortunately NBC

security is really good. If you look out that win-
dow, you'll see snipers.

PLAYBOY: Speaking of which, have you heard
any interesting solutions for gun violence?
MADDOW: Yes, there are good ideas outthere,
like the micro-stamping of ammunition so
you can trace every bullet. Most gun deaths
in America are not mass shootings; most are
small-scale crimes. Being able to solve gun
crimes by connecting bullets to the people us-
ing them could really help. We did that with
Tasers. A Taser shoots this confetti that helps
you identify it. Why can't we do that with
guns? Also, smart guns, which they have in
other countries, as well as in the most recent
James Bond movie. Nobody other than you can
fire the weapon. That won't solve everything,
but it will help with the day-to-day violence
and accidents.

PLAYBOY: What would it
taketogetthe National Rifle
Association on board with
changes like those?
MADDOW: Raw political
force. The power of the NRA
used to be that it held sway
over Democrats in a way
that was unusual for a right-
leaning interest group. More
and more, the NRA is just a
Republican interest group.
As recently as the Bill Clin-
ton era and even after, in
the George W. Bush era,
à considerable number of
Democrats used to com-
pete on the basis of their
good standing with the
NRA. Democrats now compete on the basis of
who is the most aggressive against the NRA.
That hasn't leaked over into Republican poli-
tics yet, but Democrats have really changed.
When Democrats win, the NRA loses. It was a
brilliant strategy for decades to be able to keep
its hold on Democrats, but it just pushed it too
hard. Ithink Wayne LaPierre made them into
an embarrassing organization that no Dem-
ocrat wants to be a part of now. That’s really
going to hurt them, but it will require raw
Democratic political power. Ifthe Democrats
use their political might in the 2016 election,
within four years the NRA could be effectively
dead in terms of strangle-holding those fed-
eral issues.

PLAYBOY: We keep seeing videos of police-
related shootings, whether captured on
smartphones and shared through social media

or released by police departments amid public
pressure. Much of the furor is fueled by race. Is
the situation as dire as it looks?

MADDOW: I think so. Policing in our country
is something in which authority is dispersed
in a way that doesn’t always lend itself to the
kind of stuff you want to see on the news. Ob-
viously I think choosing to be a police officer
is an incredibly patriotic and honorable thing
to do. But running a good police organiza-
tion in this country is something for which we
don’t have high expectations. We expect po-
lice departments to have trouble, and we don’t
give them much help in terms of run-
ning themselves in a way that avoids
that. It’s a management problem and
a government-accountability prob-
lem that are long-standing. You should
expect things to go wrong when you
give people guns and the authority to
physically control others. But cameras
are the beginning of the solution. The
more cameras out there, the more in-
cidents come to light. It helps you see
the different fault lines, and there are
many fault lines in America.
PLAYBOY: The country feels as divided
as ever.

MADDOW: We're a raucous, fight-it-
out kind of country, and we always have
been. America had a civil war. People
used to beat each other to death with
canes on the floor of the Senate. We had
race riots.

You get a lot of happy talk about heal-
ing and unity. That can be inspira-
tional, but when fault lines ease, new
ones always form. You can see the split
by race. You can see it by class. Urban-
rural, red state-blue state. Insurrec-
tionist versus statist. The naysayers ver-
sus whatever Obama tried to get done.
PLAYBOY: Give us your report card on the
president's two terms.

MADDOW: Obama will go down as one of the
more consequential and good presidents in
American history, mostly because of what he
did with what he was handed. Recovering from
the Great Recession alone made me glad Paul
Ryan wasn'tin the vice president's office trying
tomake economic policy and going, “Hey, we've
got to cut taxes for the rich!” In many ways,
Obama held the tiller firm and got us through
aterrible time.

PLAYBOY: Major disappointments?
MADDOW: The amount of war-making he’s
done. I'm shocked we're still in Afghanistan.

INTERVIEW

We've restarted the war in Iraq, and now we
have a new war in Syria to go with it, and in the
interim we had a war in Libya, plus Somalia,
plus Yemen. It felt like circumstances drove
him more than he drove circumstances. That
said, could you do differently?

There isn't an Obama doctrine. The closest
wegottoan Obama doctrine was what Secretary
Clinton articulated in the firstterm, which was
that we're going to remake the world diplomati-
cally. We're going to up our soft-power capabil-
ity and reshape circumstances that way. That
didn't work. Partly it's because Obama wasn't a

progressive. He was a centrist. We need an ag-
gressive progressive national security agenda.
Guys like Chris Murphy and Tim Kaine in the
Senate have been really good about that. Con-
gressman Adam Schiff and Hillary Clinton
are both redefining national security. That's
where the vacuum is. The Republicans have
nothing to offer on this at all. Nothing. Lind-
sey Graham is the only one with any sort of for-
eign policy idea, and it's weird how much the
Republicans hate him. He's got so much going
on as far as what they supposedly care about.
He's like John McCain on steroids in terms of
how many wars he wants. He's adorable. But his
name is Lindsey and he's not married. Is that

the worry? You'd think he'd have the angry
Republican hordes rallying around him.
PLAYBOY: Why is the right so much better
than the left at channeling fury? There's really
no book industry or talk radio industry for lib-
eralsas there is for conservatives.

MADDOW: That's true. The commentary in-
dustry on the right makes zillionaires out of
these people. That gives them tons of incen-
tive to be outrageous and provocative. Watch
Rush Limbaugh, who is really washed up at
this pointas a radio host. He's been around too
long and he says too many of the same things.
But every once in a while he makes a
calculated decision to say something
to get himself in trouble. It's his little
cry for attention. He trolls everybody,
everybody's outraged, and people pay
attention to him for another week.
Then he disappears again.

PLAYBOY: It's a survival strategy.
MADDOW: It's marketing. If you tell
people, “Don't listen to anybody else.
You can trust only me. Everybody else
is out to get you," not only do you get
them to listen to you, but you get them
to listen to you exclusively. That's how
Fox News is so dominant in cable news.
It's not that a majority of the country
watches it. It's just that it has locked up
all the conservative audience. Frankly,
that creates real problems for conser-
vative politicians in that their feedback
loop is closed in terms of outside infor-
mation and which stories are relevant,
including understanding how their
rhetoric is going to be heard. If they
only hear themselves reflected back by
people who agree with them, they have
a hard time dealing with a general-
election audience. I think we've seen
that with everybody from Mitt Rom-
ney on down. We on the left have never made
that case: Don't watch anybody else, or every-
body else is terrible and part of a conspiracy
and lying to you and against you. Maybe we
should have.

PLAYBOY: How much money would you need
to go head-to-head in a debate with Ann Coul-
teron your show?

MADDOW: [Sighs] Theone ruleIhaveabout my
show is that, by virtue of being invited, I’m tell-
ing my viewers that this person has something
to say that you ought to listen to. That's the rule.
Ann Coulter would not meet that requirement.
PLAYBOY: Do you see Fox News as an evil
empire?

MADDOW: There are people on FoxIrespecta
lot. I’m friends with Greta Van Susteren. Real
friends. She’s a good social drinker, she’s fun-
ny, her husband's hilarious, and she always has
great stories about, like, just coming back from
Burundi. She’s a warhorse. Shepard Smith is
awesome. The same way I want to hear Bill
Maher talk about his interesting life, I want
to hear Shep talk about his. He’s a fun-loving
guy who’s got the tiger by the tail. Because
he’s on Fox, he’s Mr. Gravitas, but he’s such a
crazed football fan that at some point he will
cast a bet on a game that results in a face tat-
too. I used to love Glenn Beck on the radio be-
fore he went into Fox. He was approaching my
hero Howard Stern in terms of how good he
was with the medium. But then he went into
messianic territory. He thinks of himself in
religious terms now, which is
no fun for anybody.

PLAYBOY: Did you ever hang
with Bill O'Reilly?

MADDOW: I met him once.
He’s very tall and he has a
very soft handshake. When
some guys shake hands with a
woman, they turn their hands
at the last second. You think
you're going to get a normal
handshake, and then all of a
sudden it’s like a little garden
spade. It’s like holding a sock
puppet. I don’t know if that’s a
chivalrous thing, but I wouldn’t
think he’d turn his hand like
that with a man. Maybe he
thought I was a dude and then
realized I was a woman and
quick-changed it.

PLAYBOY: Just in terms of appearance and
charisma, who’s the hottest anchor on TV news?
MADDOW: It is weird to be in an industry
where everybody is so good-looking. I do not
think of myself as a physically attractive per-
son. I think of myself as a goober. I dress like
an eight-year-old with a credit card, and I eat
like that too—burritos or pizza or s'mores.
That's it. But these ostentatiously attrac-
tive people! Thomas Roberts on MSNBC is a
golden god.

AII those blondes on Fox. I mean, if I worked
at a place where they did not allow you to wear
sleeves, could you imagine? Or where all desks
had Lucite bottoms so you could show your
shins. Jesus, I feel very lucky that at MSNBC
they're like, *You're fine in the $19 blazer."
PLAYBOY: By the way, is it true you came

INTERVIEW

out as gay by posting it on a bathroom wall
at Stanford?

MADDOW: I put up a public letter in the stalls
in my dorm. I was a freshman and very cocky
and had incredible self-regard, as all good
17-year-olds do. I hadn't known I was gay for
a long time. I was just figuring it out. There
were very few openly lesbian students. Once I
was sure, I quickly realized that I did not want
to be acloseted person—that that was a weak
place to be.

PLAYBOY: Had you dated guys?

MADDOW: Oh yeah, I had high school boy-
friends and stuff. But there was an incho-
ate sense of confusion and brokenness. Boys
weren't as thrilling to me as they were for my
girlfriends, and I definitely found myself
drawn more to the charming young women

NO PUNDIT

SHOULD HAVE
ANYTHINC TO
DO WITH THE
PRACTICE OF
POLITICS, EVER.

in my lifethan to the men.

PLAYBOY: Did you have sex with guys?
MADDOW: Oh right, this is PLAYBOY. [laughs]
It's none of your business! The point is, I
stopped thinking of myself as broken when
it occurred to me that I might actually not
be just a failed heterosexual. I might be this
other thing. It was sort of an abstract concept.
The first time I consciously thought I might
be a lesbian I remember thinking: But I hate
softball. Then I went to college and started
sleeping with girls and was like, Ah, that's
what my body's for!

PLAYBOY: Is it easier to be gay in America
in 2016?

MADDOW: It's definitely different. The big-
gest change is that gay culture is more nor-
mative. It was really important to me as a kid

coming out that there was a gay community
with physical gay places in the world. People
coming out today don't feel they have a spe-
cific spot. They don't have to go to a bar. They
don't have to belong to gay associations or use
gay travel pathways. Kids are coming out on
Facebook now.

PLAYBOY: How has marriage equality
changed things?

MADDOW: It's strange. Gay cultural expecta-
tions around monogamy and long-term relation-
ships and even around what you call each other
are following the straight model of marriage.
That's fine if you think the straight model of
marriage is awesome. [Editor's note: Maddow
and Mikula are not married.] Ultimately, T
think you'll see the same patterns in married
gay couples that you see in married straight
couples. As gay people get more
integrated into society and are
less ghettoized, our lives will be
just like everybody else's, and
that's sad to me. Sometimes it
fitsto be mainstream and some-
times it doesn't. I don't want to
give up everything that made my
community awesome before we
were accepted.

PLAYBOY: What's your take on
Caitlyn Jenner?

MADDOW: I’m so pop culture
illiterate that I did not know
there was a connection between
Bruce Jenner and the Kardashi-
ans. It also took me a long time
to figure out that the Kardashi-
ans don’t have jobs. But the nice
thing about Caitlyn Jenner is
that America gets to hear from
a transgender person talking about transgen-
der issues. The idea of transgender-equality is-
sues being litigated by the gay community al-
ways rubbed me the wrong way. People should
be able to speak for themselves on their own
terms. If what the media needs to actually talk
to atransgender person is for that person to be
famous, then let that be step one.

PLAYBOY: Do you feel the same way about
Charlie Sheen and the fight against HIV?
MADDOW: Oh my God. The universal
through line for AIDS, civil rights, refugees,
anti-Semitism, people who are maligned
and excluded and denounced as dangerous
and insidious—the universal through line
for making that better, for curing it and for
fighting back is people speaking on their own
terms. So it’s one thing for Charlie Sheen to

come out and doa PSA saying “Be nice to HIV-
positive people.” Charlie Sheen coming out
and saying “I am HIV positive” is abundantly
more powerful.

Coming out matters. Coming out is powerful.
It doesn’t work only when saints come out. It’s
about seeing people as fully human entities and
having to reckon with whatever it is you don’t
like about them in nonreductive human terms.
That's the magic. That's how the moral arc of
the universe bends toward justice.

PLAYBOY: Let's switch gears. What do you do
on your rare days off?

MADDOW: I’m a music fan. I’m kind
of obsessed with Frank Morgan and
jazz guys like that. I’ve got a Theloni-
ous Monk problem. I also love all coun-
try music. I want to be an evangelist for
this guy from Oklahoma named John
Moreland, who is literally the Bruce
Springsteen of our era, though no-
body knows who he is. There’s a band
called Lucero that turned me into a
major fangirl recently. So music, a lit-
tle fly-fishing, and I’m a good drinker.
I like my beer, and I can mix a pretty
impressive cocktail.

PLAYBOY: What's your go-to?
MADDOW: An aviation is kind of a mar-
tini, in that it starts with two ounces of
Plymouth gin. I keep the cocktail glass
in the freezer while I mix the gin ina
shaker with three quarters of an ounce
of fresh lemon juice, two teaspoons of
Luxardo maraschino liqueur and a bar
spoon of créme de violette. Add a lot of
ice. Stir very quietly. Take the glass out
of the freezer, strain drink into glass,
marvel at the sky-like color, drink too
fast, make another one.

Otherwise, I work 12-ish hours a day,
five days a week, 50 weeks a year, and I
don’t take vacations and I don't have lunch. I eat
two meals a day at my desk. I live what I think
of as my own life between two A.M. Saturday
morning and seven A.M. Monday morning. On
weekends, I have a place behind our house in
western Massachusetts where I watch football,
and there's a hot tub in it. I get to see Susan,
whois patient enough to put up with me. With-
out her, I might not be able to get out of bed on
Monday morning.

PLAYBOY: You've spoken about struggling
with depression. Is that something you still
deal with?

MADDOW: Depression is a very real, very
present part of my entire adult life. It doesn't

INTERVIEW

cure itself and it's not sadness. It's a different
thing. I've experienced the full range of emo-
tions from happy to sad, just like everybody
else, but for me the way depression mani-
fests is a sort of suppressing of everything,
good and bad, and I kind of disconnect. It's
like somebody hits the mute button. It's very
lonely, and it can be alienating.

PLAYBOY: How do you get through it?
MADDOW: Well, that's the thing I need to be
most deliberate about in my life. I can't make
the depression go away, but I can be cognizant
of it. It helps to be able to talk about it. It's

lifesaving to me that Susan both knows about
itand understands it and pays attention to me
on those grounds. As I’ve gotten older, the exact
cyclical experience of it in terms of how long
it lasts and how frequently it comes changes a
little, and I just try to be patient with myself. If
it ever becomes permanent, I'll need to treat it
medically, but right now I don’t.

PLAYBOY: You appear quite chipper on TV.
MADDOW: It’s adrenaline. Doing the show is
like jumping out of an airplane. Here it comes.
It’snine o'clock. This is going to happen no mat-
ter what I do.

PLAYBOY: What's the future of news? Will the
era of the talking-head anchor go on forever?

MADDOW: Five years ago, if you'd told me
we would still be doing news this way, I would
have called you crazy. Everybody always pre-
dicts we’re going away, and yet here we are.
Even network news is doing as great as it ever
has. I think there's one very simple reason we
persist, which is that there are some things
you want to watch live. Yeah, you may want to
watch on your phone or your tablet instead of
your TV, but you need a person who gets infor-
mation and explains to you what's going on ina
way you can visually connect with. Showingyou
the pictures, telling you what they are. That's
what keeps me in business.

PLAYBOY: Do you ever think about
getting into politics? What would a
Maddow administration look like?
MADDOW: At the White House?
Jesus, no! It would look like me get-
ting sworn in and handing it over to
my vice president, Amy Klobuchar,
before immediately resigning. No
pundit should have anything to do
with the practice of politics ever, ever,
ever. It would be like taking the aver-
age caller into an ESPN show and let-
ting him go, *Snap the ball to Brady."
You just don't do it.

PLAYBOY: Humor us a little. What
would you most like to fix about this
country?

MADDOW: Well, we have some foun-
dational challenges. The fact that we
don't have a middle class and haven't
for a generation now is foundational
to whether or not our government can
ever work again. I think the threat of
climate change, and what that's doing
already, is sobering. I think the apa-
thy and disdain for our own political
processes is a real problem, not just
because I like our political processes
but because that's the mechanism we have to
fixwhatever issues come up.

Government works. That's the most lib-
eral thing about me. If we continue to treat
government as the problem instead of the so-
lution, we'll never be able to harnessthe power
to fix whatever's broken. We need to restore
American enthusiasm for our civic processes,
because it's the only government we've got.
Whether or not you like the people who are
running it, we have to believe in the system of
government. It sucks, but it's better than all
the others. I'd fix that. Also, pleated khakis
and people putting blue cheese in their olives.
Those are disgusting. L|

Who Is Sarah McDaniel and Why
Are We Obsessed With Her?

Last October, Sarah McDaniel, a consum-
mate Snapchat and Instagram user, skyrock-
eted to internet stardom when her striking
appearance—we’re talking about her differ-
ent eye colors, the result of a hereditary condi-
tion called heterochromia iridum—garnered
a lot of important “likes.” Meteoric rises are
often years in the making; for Sarah, becom-
ing a sensation took milliseconds. News outlets
around the world, from The Mirror in England to
Univision in Mexico, took notice. Her online fol-
lowing swelled by thousands. The talent scouts
at Guess wanted in. Then Grammy-winning
überproducer and DJ Mark Ronson offered her
arolein the music video for “Daffodils” (the sec-
ond single off his album Uptown Special), shot
by Theo Wenner. Wenner, the high-profile scion
of the founder of the media company behind
Rolling Stone, had just finished photographing
Adele. When he met Sarah, he gave her a single

direction for the video's three-day shoot in the
Bahamas: to be her supercasual self, as if she
were on vacation. She nailed it.

Perhaps it’s Sarah’s deeply transfixing,
star-making irises, but we want to wake up
next to her every morning. Or maybe it’s some-
thing more? Maybe it’s her unapologetic atti-
tude. Sarah is neither shy nor humble; her
Instagram handle is @krotchy, and her feed
is a campy mix of perfectly squared selfies
and biting, salacious wit. “My sense of humor
is being an asshole,” she says. In conversa-
tion she appears more genuine than any of
the actresses peddling publicist-penned talk-
ing points on late-night TV. Sarah describes
herself as “loud, weird and annoying,” admits
she didn’t know about Wenner’s storied past
before they met and has zero qualms about
posting a picture of herself going to town on a
Chipotle burrito. *My agency gets upset about

PHOTOGRAPHY ev THEO WENNER

it. They don't like my user name. They think I
post raunchy stuff. They want me to post only
salads and not have a personality. But my job
as a model is to portray, to act. When I go on-
line, it's to let people know who I am,” Sarah
says. "Imagine if you met a girl who was quiet
and meek and didn't want to talk to you. How
fun is that?" No fun at all, which is why we
wanted Sarah and Wenner to team up again,
this time ina Manhattan hotel, to capture the
beautiful rawness of a 21st-century digitally
connected, unfiltered woman whois making it
all happen without letting anything go.

"The idea was to look at me from a boy-
friend's perspective," Sarah says. *This is
very intimate. I'm not even wearing makeup."
When most of us are obsessively filtering,
fluffing and faking it, Sarah’s realness—or
should we call it It girl-ness?—is enough to
getus high. Put simply, it's addictive.

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MY
DEPORTATION

Javier Valadez was a crucial part of the Texas arts scene until the day he was deported.
This is a first-person account of his one-way trip to Mexico

sy JAVIER VALADEZ puorocrarny в, CHANTAL ANDERSON

It was still dark when they came for me. I hear
that’s what they do—sleaze up before dawn
when you’re too confused and disoriented to
remember anything about warrants or law-
yers or the rights you have and the rights you
don’t. Me? I was ass-naked when I answered
the door. Their knocks were violent enough to
rustle my two dogs awake and make them bark
ferociously. It was the most panicked wake-up
call Гуе ever received.

I cracked open the front door just enough to
peek outside. On my stoop I saw four large men
dressed head to toe in black, guns strapped at
their waists. They asked my name and said they
were looking for someone who lived at my ad-
dress. I gave them a fake name, and that was
perhaps my first mistake.

I assumed the men were local law enforce-
ment canvassing the neighborhood for infor-
mation ona midnight crime—youknow, watch-
ful officers stopping by to warn me. The day
before, I'd dropped off my fiancée, Cassandra,

andour 20-month-old daughter, Sophia, at the
Dallas/Fort Worth airport. They were head-
ing to Saltillo, Mexico to visit my mother, a
trip Cassandra insisted on making every six
months or soto acquaint our daughter with my
family, with whom I had more or less fallen out
of touch. And so I was home alone, save for my
dogs, and it was as if the men outside my door
knewthat. Astheir questions kept coming, my
naivete faded. It became clear they were look-
ing for me. My face grew numb. My legs shook.
My balls shrank.

Itold them I needed to put on some clothes
before coming outside. I couldn't think what
the police would want with me. Yeah, I was on
probation after being booked a few years earlier
fordrunk driving and holding athird ofa gram
of coke, but I hadn't broken probation. There
were no outstanding warrants for my arrest. I
was followingthe rules, on good behavior.

Iran upstairs and called my stepfather. “Ev-
erything will be okay,” he told me. Despite his

calmness, I felt terrified. Tears formed and my
handstrembled. “Just do what they say," he said.

Iwas 26 and had already been arrested three
times, once for drunk driving and twice for
drugs, so I knew the drill. They'd probably
take me to some overly air-conditioned cell
in the county jail for questioning, so I dressed
warmly. I also grabbed $840 in cash for bail
and phone calls. If they ended up cuffing me,
Iwanted to be prepared.

When I stepped outside I finally got a clear
viewofthe men. Each wore a patch ofthe Texas
flag on his uniform and had pouice stitched
across hischest, but none hadavisiblebadge or
ID. One handed me a document with the words
Operation Fugitive printed along the top. It
had all my information: my name, address,
place of employment. I knew then the game was
over. I told them I was in fact Javier Valadez.

“We're federal immigration agents,” one of
the men said. “We're arresting you for being in
the country illegally.”

1. Before being deported, Valadez, co-founder of a successful Dallas culture magazine, was considered one of the city’s preeminent publishers. 2. Pages from the second issue of
THRWD, the magazine Valadez launched in 2012. 3. A picture of Cassandra, now Valadez’s wife, when she was eight months pregnant, taken in Austin.

I froze. The idea that these men were
Immigration and Customs Enforcement offi-
cers never crossed my mind. I had lived in the
United States since I was 12. I grew up around
Dallas and graduated from high school there.
І had attended the University of Texas and re-
ceived my associate’s degree from a commu-
nity college. I’d created a successful arts and
culture publication that had just been voted
best magazine by the Dallas Observer. I paid
my taxes. I spoke English.

As the men escorted me to a waiting SUV, I
explained that I was on probation but was up-
holding the law. I told them I wasn’t acriminal.

“You might have paid for your crimes to the
state of Texas,” one snarked, “butyoustill have
to pay for your federal crimes to the United
States.” The streets were eerily silent. My
neighbors were still asleep. I took another look
at my house. It would be the last time I saw it.
My family moved to the United States from
Monclova, Mexico in July 2001, after I’d grad-
uated from elementary school. I was 12. I don't
remember much prior to moving to Dallas,

except that we were making the move because
my father could make better money working
construction in Texas. On the nine-hour drive
north, I sat in the back of our Ford Escort next
to a box of my childhood belongings, knowing
nothing about our new home. I remember feel-
ing numb. “Don’t look back, kids,” my dad said
to my sister and me. I never did.

My parents came into the States on a six-
month tourist visa. This was before 9/11, when
immigration laws were relatively loose. It was
easy to get into the States then, and that’s prob-
ably why my parents had no intention of adjust-
ing our status after we settled. I could chalk it
up to the fact that no one warned them of the
consequences, but really, it was simple igno-
rance. They wanted my sister and me to assim-
ilate quickly, so a month after our arrival my
mother enrolled usin Reed Middle School in the
Dallas suburb of Duncanville. I knew enough
English to get by, but the school put me in an
English as a second language class. I hated it.
The other Spanish speakers in ESL were older
and most were troublemakers who spent more
time goofing around than studying. They relied

on the teachers to do their homework and took
advantage of the language barrier. I wanted out,
sol worked hard and studied obsessively. After
ayear, the school transferred me into the regu-
lar curriculum, where I finally got to sit side by
side with the American kids. That’s when I be-
gan to embrace my life in America.

The Mexican kids at my school were heavily
influenced by American culture, and I became
friends with them because ofthat. Together we
made it a point to speak only English. We didn't
want to be judged by the “cool” American kids
or be excluded by them. We took up skateboard-
ing, which was the first time I understood the
American dream. My skateboard gave me a
high I'd never felt before; it gave me real free-
dom. A group of us often ventured into down-
town Dallas and skated into the night while lis-
tening to 1990s punk, rock and hip-hop. We’d
ask strangers to buy us 40s from the 7-Eleven,
and if the cops came, we'd scatter. It was thrill-
ing. I felt like I was living in Harmony Korine’s
Kids. It was the first time I truly felt like an
American teenager.

After I became fluent in English, it was

almost as if I weren't Mexican anymore. Most
people assumed I was Jewish, French, Arabic
or Caucasian. I made good marks in art classes,
dated a blue-eyed blonde on the cheer squad
and became president of the drafting club. No
one questioned my ethnicity, let alone my im-
migration status. I forgot about it and stopped
feeling like a foreigner. I belonged to the coun-
try I lived in. I was American.

I wasn’t well informed about the naturalization
process because it was easy not to be. My mother
gave birth to my younger sister at a Texas hos-
pital, endowing her with birthright citizen-
ship. My parents were able to buy a home and
cars and have credit cards, all without having
legitimate Social Security numbers. Capitalism
doesn’t care where you're from or towhom you're
related. If everyone in the system works in his or
her own self-interest, the law turns a blind eye.

That became all the more true in 2001 when
Governor Rick Perry signed into law a provision
allowing undocumented immigrant students to
receive in-state tuition if they promised to ap-
ply for permanent status later. The only catch
was you had to be a Texas resident for at least
three years and have a Texas high school diplo-
ma. I qualified and attended the University of
Texas, Arlington, where I studied petroleum
engineering. I got a driver’s license, a job and
my own apartment, all without proper docu-
mentation. For years I thrived and enjoyed the
promise of America, but in 2012, the law caught
up with me—though it had nothing to do with
my citizenship status.

My parents divorced in 2011. For the first
time since moving to Texas, my dad couldn’t
find a steady job without documentation. This
was at the height of the Great Recession, when
the unemployment rate was 10 percent, so get-
ting a job without alegitimate SSN or work per-
mit was impossible. My father had gone froma
well-paying construction job to a maintenance
job at an apartment complex to being jobless.
On top ofthat, my parents’ mortgage was one of
the thousands of predatory loans handed out by
lenders during the housing bubble. Their inter-
est rate skyrocketed and they struggled to pay
their bills, further straining the family. It came
to ahead when my father packed up and headed

back to Mexico, leaving me with my mom and
soon-to-be stepfather, who purchased our home
directly from my dad. *Don't look back," he'd
once told me, and I don't believe he did.

My dad and I had become best friends when
things got rough. I made an effort to see him.
Mexican men commonly avoid obvious affec-
tion; we were an exception. When he left for
Mexico, his absence hit me hard. I broke off
all communication with him and turned to
pot and booze. I was depressed and wrapped
myself in a sheath of hazy pleasure to distract
from the pain. I tried to focus in school, but
my smoking and drinking turned habitual.
By May 2011, my abuse had gotten so bad I had
no choice but to drop out of college, vacate my
apartment and move back home.

I pretended I was fine, and that was enough
to appease my mom. At one point she found
marijuana in my room but ignored it. She
should have confronted me. I should have
asked for help. Instead I did nothing. In April
2012 I was arrested at Cedar Hill State Park on
my way to meet friends at a campsite. The cops
busted me carrying a fair amount of weed and
a small amount of cocaine. I don't use coke—I
was holding it for a friend—but, as they say, the
dog never really eats the homework. By Septem-
ber of the same year, I was arrested twice more
for marijuana possession and once for drunk
driving. Itwas the end of the line. I had spiraled
deeper and deeper into self-sabotage, mani-
acally snuffing out the light of my own dream.
For the first time since I'd crossed the border at
12 years old, the law noticed me.

I was convicted of DWI and misdemeanor
drug possession and put on two years’ proba-
tion. The state sentenced me to random testing
and substance-abuse counseling and installed a
Breathalyzer in my car. My family, having spent
thousands of dollars on my court fees, didn’t
think much of me. The all-American do-good
narrative I aspired to had crumbled into dust.
The first time I was released from the county
jail for marijuana possession, I didn’t call my
family. Га spent four days locked up, and the
chilling solitude had forced me to stew in em-
barrassment and humiliation. I wasn't ready to
face them. Instead I turned off my cell phone,

lit a cigarette and wandered downtown Dallas.
Iwas aimless. Alone, I started to see the streets
in a different way. This city was my home, but
Ihad lost sight of how much it had given me. I
reflected on my mistakes, desperate to atone. I
knew I had talent, and I knew a lot of talented
people—artists, writers and other creative folk.
Dallas had so much bubbling artistic value and
offered more than football, cheerleaders and
honky-tonks. It could go head-to-head with San
Antonio and Austin as the state's beating cul-
tural heart. I knew this. Smart 20-somethings
who'd grown up in Dallas knew this. And then,
just like that, everything made sense.

I was working at a printing company and
knew the ins and outs of publishing. I had ac-
cess to photographers, designers, artists and
writers. All I needed to do was assemble the
right people in the right room and make them
believe in this incredible idea I had: I wanted to
create a new kind of culture magazine for Dal-
las dwellers, by Dallas dwellers. I wanted to give
back to my city, but more than that, I wanted
to jolt it with a radical current of new energy.

I knew! could afford to print the magazine in-
house at my company, but my mind has always
been more artistic than editorial. So I tapped
my friend Lee Escobedo, who studied journal-
ism, and he tapped his friends, and soon enough
we had a devoted team of doers with a hell-yeah
attitude. We decided to name our magazine
THRWD, defined by us in the first issue as “an-
other word for: cool, dope, cray cray, or fuck'd
up.” The first issue launched in late 2012 with a
masthead that included an art director, an edi-
tor inchief, 12 contributors and me on board as
creative director. “Dallas is our home. Staying
localis our first priority," we wrote in the inau-
gural issue's manifesto. “Are you THRWD on
life? I'm talking fucked-up on creativity, faded
on expression? Good. That means you're alive.
The simple act of reading this puts you on the
first step to getting THRWD. Read it on the
train, while takinga shit or after along fuck.”

We profiled local printmakers and bands on
the rise. We covered everything from interra-
cial dating and race relations to new restaurants
and budding bars. We interviewed ethnically
diverse painters, printed original poetry and
quoted Susan Sontag and Tony Kushner. The

IF EVERYONE IN THE SYSTEM WORKS
IN HIS OR HER OWN SELF-INTEREST,
THE LAW TURNS A BLIND EYE.

magazine was a success. The local NPR affiliate
described THRWD as a hub for “collaboration,
cross-pollination and DIY culture.” We became
recognized enough in Dallas that we celebrated
our one-year anniversary by throwing a concert,
THRWD Fest, which drew our “usual hip and
knowledgeable crowd," as described by D Maga-
zine. In July 2014 I was named Dallas's *avant-
gardist publisher" and one of the city's 100 lead-
ingcreativeentrepreneurs. Soon after, the Dallas
Observer voted THRWD “best zine in the city.”

It wasone of my proudest moments, foremost
because it meant I'd escaped my darkness. I'd
created something tangible, respected and ben-
eficial to the city I loved. I felt I was paying my
debt. Riding on those good vibes, I fell in love
and became a father. I looked forward to marry-
ing Cassandra and finally receiving citizenship.
Life made sense again.

Six months later, ICE pounded

on my front door.
When I arrived at ICE's field office
in Dallas, the officers let me make
three phone calls. I called my step-
father, my lawyer Robert Simmons
and my employer. I couldn't call my
fiancée because she was in Mexi-
co, but my stepfather said he would
contact her. Again he assured me,
“Everything will be okay" My
lawyer said it was strange they'd
booked me when I had a clean pro-
bation record. ^I have it under con-
trol," hesaid. WhenItold my bossI
couldn't come to work that day, she
made a joke. ^I could have guessed
bythecaller ID,” shesaid. Everyone
sounded calm, cheery even.

I waited for seven hours with the other men
ICE had poached in the middle of the night
before armed guards transported us via a
90-minute bus ride to the Johnson County
Detention Center in Cleburne, Texas. There, we
were taken to an isolated compound of four brick
buildings. Like all government facilities, these
hummed with fluorescent lighting and were
cooled to bone-chilling temperatures. We were
fed ham sandwiches and shown two videos. One
warned us about sexual abuse among inmates.
Theother wasa primeron navigating immigra-
tion court. When that video played, I saw hope
in the eyes around me, but I felt nothing. In my
mind, I didn't belong there in the first place.

The other detainees were different from me.
One kid was “celebrating” his 21st birthday. He
told me how he'd gotten lost walking through the
desert on his way to the States and had to drink
his own piss to survive. A man from Honduras

told me hed seen an Indian man die in the des-
ert on his journey. The Indian hadn't known how
hard the walk would be and collapsed from ex-
haustion. His heart gave out soon after. Others
had similar stories. Some worried their preg-
nant wives would be raped; others pretended
to be married to strangers. The stories were
shocking, but the tone of the men telling them
said otherwise, as if it had all been normal, or at
least expected when you enter the U.S. that way.

I met Nigerians, an Egyptian and someone
from the Congo. They were all nice enough,
but I didn’t meet anyone like me. I didn’t meet
anyone who grown up in the States, attended
a public university and started his own maga-
zine. I met only desperate men, some of whom
had been locked up for months and whose sac-
rifices seemed far greater than mine. After

I MADE SURE

TO SPEAK ONLY

ENGLISH. I
WANTED THE
GUARDS TO

KNOW I DIDN’T
BELONG THERE.

talking to enough of them, I discovered that
most of us were on probation—and I realized
that’s why Iwas among them.

In 2012 President Barack Obama authorized
new ICE guidelines for alien detention that cen-
tered on criminal activity. Undocumented im-
migrants convicted of a felony or multiple mis-
demeanors moved up the chain and became
prime targets for deportation, and I had three
arrests under my belt. Good behavior is ignored,
apparently, and state and local law enforcement
were expected to work hand in hand with fed-
eral officers to identify illegals with a record.
I've heard stories of ICE officers camping out at
probation offices, waiting for people to come to
their appointments so they could seize them on
the spot. I think that’s how my record fell into
the hands of ICE. In fact, our criminal records
were so finely sewn into our identities at the de-
tention center that upon arrival we were given
color-coded jumpsuits. Those who wore red had

violent records. Those who wore green, аз I did,
had more than one misdemeanor conviction. It
was a visual reminder that ICE considered us
threats to our communities.

I spent my first days sleeping too much and
trying to cope. Ihad too many questions and no
answers from my lawyer, so to ease my stress I
learned the routine. It was tedious and dehu-
manizing. You had to shit and shower in the
open. Breakfast, which was usually watery grits
or biscuits soaked in salty gravy, was served at
four лм. Lunch and dinner consisted of fried
chicken mush, runny macaroni and cheese or
shriveled hot dogs. Our sole beverage option
was Kool-Aid dispensed from a five-gallon Ig-
loo cooler; sometimes it was too sweet, other
times it was sour. The kitchen staff had a sense
of humor, though. They included a jalapeño
pepper with every meal, under the
assumption that every immigrant
loves spicy food. Racism was alive
and well within those walls.

Meals were measly and by the late
evening bellies growled for more.
Detainees with money bought ra-
men from the commissary, while the
poorest made a powdery soup from
water, Cheetos crumbs and left-
over bread scraps. Every night the
walls echoed with the sound of guys
banging their ramen packets on the
floor to crush the noodles and make
room for hot water. Г never forget
the plastic crinkling throughout the
tank—what we called the jail cells.

Days went by, then weeks. The
metal bed frames kinked my back,
and the constant cacophony of for-
eign languages deafened me. As in high school,
I made sure to speak only English. I wanted
the guards to know I was different from th
others, that I didn’t belong there. They hear
the stories of every detainee—some hopeful,
many hopeless—and witnessed the emotional
breakdowns of those who didn’t make it back
to the American wonderland. I wanted them
to believe I was getting out. I was able to call
my fiancée every day and night; I dreamed of
her and my daughter rescuing me at dawn, the
guards giving me a woeful apology and a slap
on the back. I constantly reminded myself of
my accomplishments so as not to be broken as
Icurled up in my green uniform.

е о

То my surprise, news of my arrest spread in
Dallas. I didn’t want people to feel bad for me,
but I knew my friends would help however
they could. In less than two weeks, my friend
Stephen Ketner galvanized the local creative

communityandhelda “Free Javi” fund-raising
concert at the Free Man, a Creole lounge in
Deep Ellum, Dallas’s go-to hood for enter-
tainment. The concert sold BRING JAVI HOME
T-shirts, raised $4,000 and caught the atten-
tion of immigration activists and pro bono law-
yers seeking a gold star on their CVs.

Local activists jumped on my story, wanting
to use it as the springboard for a movement. I
had no qualms about stepping into the spot-
light, even ifitexposed my criminal record, be-
cause I wanted people to feel the same injustice
I felt. The Dallas Morning News spun my story
into a broader feature on ICE's predatory raids.
On the day of my first trial, Dallas's CW affili-
ate aired a story featuring my fiancée, my law-
yer and Stephen Ketner. I watched it from the
detention center's rec room with my fellow de-
tainees. For the first time since being hand-
cuffed, I felt big. At that moment, my story
wasn't just a random headline amid the nation-
al white noise about immigration reform; it was
the story of every man who sat beside me. I was
proud of Cassandra for baring her emotions on
camera. “Every time the door rings, [Sophia's]
like, ‘Dada? Dada?) thinking it's him," Cassan-
dratold the reporter. *It melts my heart."

It was the first time I'd seen Sophia's face in
weeks. I cried. Seeing them both was a punch to
thegut and made me even more anxious, angry
and stir-crazy. It was incredible that my story
had become so hot, but after seeing my daugh-
ter, all I wanted was a reunion.

After three weeks, my lawyer came to see
me. I expected him to have some long-winded
bureaucratic game plan, but my situation was
more dire. He told me my convictions disquali-
fied me from President Obama's Deferred Ac-
tion for Childhood Arrivals initiative, which of-
fers a reprieve to illegals brought to the States
as children by their parents. DACA, enacted in
2012, had become asafety net for thousands, but
my drug-possession charge made ita dead end. I
had only two choices: stay in detention and fight
the system, or leave the country voluntarily.

Under voluntary deportation, I would have to
leave the country within a few days but wouldn't
be barred from coming back. Regular deporta-
tion usually comes with a 10-year ban, but leav-
ing *voluntarily" doesn't. Fighting the govern-
ment, my lawyer said, would be a nightmare.
Ata minimum, it would involve finding a proxy
to marry Cassandra immediately, convincing
a judge to grant me bond and filing paperwork
every few months to achieve a constantly chang-
inglegalstatus, from migranttotemporaryresi-
dent to permanent resident.

My fiancée wanted to hire more lawyers
and enlist activists to promote the cause. My

Valadez was held by ICE for 26 days before being dumped on the U.S.-Mexico border in Laredo, Texas.

friends said I could be the face of immigration
reform—the guy who went up against the big-
gest, baddest government in the West. Despite
their enthusiasm, only one thing was certain:
'There was no guarantee a judge would go for
any of it—in fact, my lawyer said I barely had
a chance of winning. Have 15 seconds of fame
ever swayed agovernment?

And so I made my decision.

On April 23, 2015, the day of my final hear-
ing, 100 people volunteered to rally outside and
pressure the judge for a deferral, but my lawyer
asked them to back down. After I was denied
bond, he gave the court my decision: voluntary
deportation. The judge ordered me out of the
country no later than April 30 and slammed his
gavel. My lifeas an American was over.

Many people don't know that ICE doesn't give
youan exact time for when it will haul your ass
to the border. It makes coordinating your own
eviction, from saying good-bye to family to fig-

uring out finances to finding a place to live on
theother side, nearly impossible. Instead, with-
out much warning, guards wake a select few at
two A.M. and bus them to Dallas for processing.
Since there was no knowing when it would be
my turn, I devised a system. I told Cassandra
I'dcall herevery morning by 11 A.M. If shedidn't
hear from me, it meant my time was up.

My deportation did come with a silver lining.
My mom and my sisters were living in Mexico,
which meant I had somewhere to go. My oldest
sister had moved to Monterrey after graduat-
ing from high school. She didn't see much of a
future for herself in the U.S. without papers and
thought attending college in Mexico was more
promising. Four years later, my mother, des-
perate to visit her, tried to purchase an Ameri-
can visa from someone who turned out to be an
undercover ICE agent. It's a standard ICE ma-
neuver: luring undocumented immigrants into
a sting operation with the offer of fake docu-
ments. Agents arrested her at a gas station near

her home and held her for three months. She
was finally deported on Thanksgiving 2013 and
banned from reentering the country for 10 years.

I barely spoke to my mom after she was
deported, and I became the sole remnant of
my family's attempt at the American dream.
My life was in America, she wasn't, and it was
hard for me to align our two worlds. Now I was
in the same boat she was, and she was ready
for me to “come home.” Cassandra said they
seemed to have adjusted to living in Saltillo,
based on what she saw during her visits with
Sophia, but it was no doubt going to be an awk-
ward homecoming.

April 30, 2015 felt a lifetime away. Every
morning I woke to the sounds of guards clang-
ing on bunks and inmates shuffling out of the
tank. On April 28 I stayed up until two a.m., but
the guards didn’t come for me. When I woke
eight hours later and went to call Cassandra,
however, a guard yelled out my ID number. It
was time. I ran to the phone and dialed, but the
tank’s door opened before the call connected. A
guard began barking orders, so I waved over a
detainee named Joseph, who spoke a little Eng-
lish, and told him to tell Cassandra what was
happening. The door slammed in front of me
and I stared through its small window for a sign.
Joseph looked back at me and gave a thumbs-up.

Seventeen of us were collected that afternoon.
The guards gave us back our civilian clothes and
whatever cash we’d carried on our way in. I felt
my identity return with every piece of clothing
I put on. In the bathroom, I folded my $840 into
my sock. I was afraid someone across the bor-
der would be desperate enough to rob me for it.

We marched past the glass-walled tanks to-
ward the building’s exit, and I felt the hard
stares of those still locked up. I threw a peace
sign. [wanted to wish them luck in their battles.

The guards shackled our ankles and wrists to
our waists and transported us to Dallas. There,
we signed more paperwork. As always, I spoke
only English. “Why are you here?” an officer
asked, surprised. I couldn’t do anything but
laugh. At one p.m., they took us outside.

There it sat: our metal chariot, idling, ready
to haul us away. Itlooked like a normal bus from
the outside, but inside steel walls punched with
tiny holes separated the cabin into three sec-

tions. The windows were horizontally barred
and the seats were molded plastic. A festering
open toilet at the back stunk up the entire bus.

An officer handed us bottled water and
brown paper bags. Each bag contained three
cookies, two bologna sandwiches and four
peanut-butter crackers. This was supposed to
hold us over on the eight-hour drive to the bor-
der, but because our wrists were chained to our
waists, we could hardly eat. To get a sip of wa-
ter, you had to slouch in your seat while your
seatmate poured it into your mouth. I felt like
a baby being fed a bottle.

Thebuscareered south on1-35 and passed my
former office. All those years, I'd had no idea I
was working two exits from ICE. A sharp pain
shot through my body as I stared at the building
where I'd realized my dreams. Everything I'd
built out of my struggles began there. I paid my
bills, rent and tuition because of that job. Now I
was chained up like a dog. In a fewblinks, the of-
fice disappeared behind us. I held back my tears.
I couldn't cry in front ofthe other men.

We barreled toward Laredo, Texas, our final
destination, blasting none other than the all-
American red, white and blue beats of country
twang. Some detainees talked abouttheir plans
on the other side. One guy from Jalisco said all
he wanted was an ice-cold Corona and street ta-
cos. Another said it had been 15 years since he
last saw his grandparents, and he was excited
to reunite with them. Few were that optimis-
tic. Some had no family in Mexico and were be-
ing expelled to a country where they knew no
one. An older guy planned to camp out for a few
days before hiring a coyote to bring him back. “I
can't leave my girlfriend alone,” he said, laugh-
ing. I just stared at the barren landscape.

Laredo is one of the busiest land ports to Mex-
ico anda hotbed of drug-war violence. We had to
be dropped off before sunset for our own safety. I
tracked our distance by the settingsun and pass-
ing city skylines. Iwatched Waco, Austin and San
Antonio creep up and fade between long drags of
flat fields and humble hills. When the sun began
to kiss the horizon and the greasy fumes of ta-
querias wafted in from outside, I knew we were
close. Sure enough, we arrived at sunset. There
it was, the end of the road: Laredo fucking Texas.
The grand finale of my American dream.

As the bus pulled into a parking lot along the
Rio Grande, an officer handed us keys through
the security door and told us to unlock each
others’ shackles. Outside, the fattest redneck
I've ever seen chucked our bags from the bus
onto the broken asphalt. It pissed me off. Those
bags contained everything we owned, and this
piece-of-shit guard treated them like trash.

Two Border Patrol agents escorted us across
the bridge to the international border. It was
their job to make sure we crossed the line and
stayed there, and their eyes never left us. I
stared at the man-made border before me, dis-
illusioned. It was nothing more than afew thick
strokes of white paint, so many inches wide, yet
it held more power than the dreams of a thou-
sand men. The Rio Grande rippled with gold
and green as the sun took its last lick of the
horizon. A great life, nearly 15 years’ worth,
replayed in my mind. I looked due north and
snapped a picture on my phone, unsure if I
would ever see that view again. Then I stepped
into Mexico.

As I crossed the bridge, I took my money out
of my sock and tucked a $100 bill in my pocket.
The rest of it went between my balls. Mexican
authorities met us at the end of the bridge and
handed out food sacks with crackers, a can of
tuna, cookies and an orange. They knew some
of us had little or no money. We filled out more
paperwork, received temporary IDs and were
given access to the facility’s phones and bath-
rooms. After that, we were on our own.

My phone was still getting a U.S. signal, so I
called my fiancée, stepfather and mother to tell
them I'd made it to Mexico. They were relieved
to know I was finally free. My mother planned
to pick me up in Monterrey, but that was three
hours away. I needed to find a way to get there.

An officer directed me to a van that would
take us to a bus station at no charge. Seven of
us hopped on, but the van had no seats or win-
dows in the back, so we sat on the floor. It felt
as though we were being smuggled into Mex-
ico instead of out. The bus station didn't ac-
cept American currency, so I bought pesos off
akid selling them at an inflated exchange rate.
When an American movie dubbed in Spanish
played on the bus’s TY, it hit me. I really was
back in Mexico.

ISTARED AT THE MAN-MADE BORDER
BEFORE ME. IT WAS NOTHING MORE THAN
A FEW THICK STROKES OF WHITE PAINT.

1.A photo of Valadez and Cassandra at their baby shower sits on a microwave in their new home. 2. Valadez had planned to apply for permanent residency after he married Cassandra.
ICE thwarted those plans. 3. Saltillo, with a population of about 700,000, has been compared to Detroit because of its tough industrial job market.

I arrived in Monterrey around one A.M. My
mother had yet to arrive, so I killed time in the
depot, taking stock of the unfamiliar candies
and snacks. Everything looked foreign to me.
All of a sudden I heard three women scream-
ing "Javi! Javi! Javi!" I turned around and saw
my mom and sisters running toward me. They
showered me with kisses, and I held my mom
tight. It was our first embrace in years and the
first time I felt safe since being arrested.
Saltillois an industrial city with dozens of fac-
tories for mining, steel, concrete and auto man-
ufacturing, including Chrysler. The city has a
competitive job market, and my limited engi-
neering studies aren't enough to bank a well-
paying job. Instead I’ve had to settle for a job I
found on Craigslist, working at a law firm that
handles Social Security-related cases. I work
from home and get paidin U.S. dollars. The iro-
ny of staring at SSNs every day isn’t lost on me.

Cassandra moved to Saltillo with Sophia to
be with me, and we finally got married. She got
ajob as an English teacher in a private school
and found a support group for expat wives in

similar situations. Me? I refuse to dive into the
Mexican culture and still read U.S. news every
day. I hear that THRWD is still going strong.
Being with family helps, but it also hasn't let me
fully feel the sadness of being expelled. Cassan-
dra cries often. I feel guilty and tell her things
could be worse. She hates it when I say that.

My presence hasn't turned my family's world
upside down; they've all gone back to their rou-
tines and schedules. I feel like a foreigner in
Saltillo. Ireturned to Mexico without my pass-
port or birth certificate, so, as in the States, I'm
living an undocumented life. In a way, I’m nei-
ther here nor there. Cassandra likes the out-
doors, so we explore the desert and mountains.
It gives her a breath of fresh air and time to for-
get about our struggles.

Our new jobs are not enough to secure a
good future for Sophia, but I won't give up. Pm
a creator. I'm clever and resourceful. I like to
fix things. It's those characteristics that got
me the life I wanted in Texas. My future may
be fucked-up now, but I'm hell-bent on turn-
ing it around. I'll never stop thinking about
the U.S. It's hard to separate myself from my

former life and the place that gave me every-
thing. America is a fantastic place to accom-
plish anything you set your mind to, and I'm
lucky to have lived the life I did. I'm thankful
for the support of Dallas and my friends, who
always saw me as one of their own.
Weundocumented immigrants are obscure,
yet we try to live our lives as normally as pos-
sible. Most of us just want to work hard, raise
our family and be part of a community. I un-
derstand the consequences of the law, but the
system is flawed. It's unjust, discriminatory
and, yeah, even racist. In the current mine-
field of state and federal laws, provisions and
exclusions, a huge sector of America's hard-
working population is in limbo. One day we are
welcomed and encouraged. We're hired to build
houses, clean bathrooms, babysit and cook in
restaurants. The next day we're in shackles,
walking across the border with our tails be-
tween our legs. No money. No family. Only the
shadows to welcome us home. It's scary shit.
For now, though, I'll try my best to enjoy this
“vacation” and keep working on myself. As my
father once said, *Don't look back." [|

PLAYMATE

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANGELO PENNETTA

Dree Hemingway is packing for a two-week solo vacation in Costa Rica. In her carry-on bag go The Circle by Dave
Eggers and M Train by Patti Smith. It’s not surprising that Miss March—great-granddaughter of writer Ernest and
daughter of actress Mariel—enjoys good lit. But this striking model and actress—who is as close as you can get to an
American royal —wants to be clear about something. “I'll break down my family in two seconds,” she says. "They're
my family. My last name isn't anything but a wow factor. It says nothing about me.” She's not being impudent. Dree
has charted her own way, winning the Robert Altman Award at the Film Independent Spirit Awards for her role in
Sean Baker's Starlet, validating that yes, she has sizable talent. She'll next act alongside Pamela Anderson in the indie
film The People Garden, as well as with Chris O’Dowd in Love After Love. “Everything in my life is grounded in feel-
ing,” she says. “The only thing you can do that’s really fucking beautiful is to own yourself.” This idea is what attracted
Dree to PLAYBOY. She elaborates: “My pictorial captures all of me—the sexy Dree, the childlike Dree, the funny Dree,
the tomboy, the Lolita.” It's a big moment for a woman who has been both buoyed and buried by expectations. Which
brings us back to her solo adventures—and her books. “It’s important to be with yourself,” she says. “We forget how to
do that. We forget that it’s okay to live without validation. Don t be afraid to fuck up and create and embarrass your-
self. Put down your phone. Get back into reading. Feel something. That’s the only thing I want out of this.”

I aaa an

Келсе кече тууу Loi

ERA

AN3W39VNVN QUVMOH WIL GO3NOL1N33 HL38 AS INITALS!LNIW39VNVW QUVMOH WIL НОЗ NOLHONOH VSIT Ав dN3N VW !3IUEWWOI + LUV 803 WVHONV?183H1S3 A8 YIVH

DREE HEMINGWAY

AGE: 23 BIRTHPLACE: Sun Valley, Idaho GURRENT CITY: East Village, New York

MY PATH TO PLAYBOY

PLAYBOY’s images were so iconic in
the 1960s, beyond anything else
going on at the time. That's the
dream for me, to be a part of that,
because so many publications,
especially т fashion, throw out the
same exact story. There's nothing
to compare this next chapter to.
Not to mention, my mother posed
for PLAYBOY years ago.

THE BIGGEST MISCONCEPTION
ABOUT ME

l once heard that people thought I
was wild and crazy, which is funny.
| wear my heart on my sleeve and
don't listen to what other people
think about me. But with this pic-
torial | do want people to see me
in a different way than they have.

IF YOU WANT TO BUY MEADRINK
All I drinkis tequila.

MY FAVORITE PART OF NEW YORK

Walking all over the city while lis-
tening to music. Music is my ther-
apy. Sometimes l'Il walk across the
Williamsburg Bridge to Brooklyn
for no reason. I'll walk for hours.

IF YOU'RE GOING TO WATCH ANY
FILM THIS YEAR, WATCH THIS

Jodorowsky's Dune, a documen-
tary about Alejandro Jodorowsky's
failed effort to make Dune. He's an
avant-garde director whose influ-
ence can be seen in the work of
everyone from George Lucas to
Ridley Scott. Also, please watch
The Holy Mountain. It's the most
insane movie ever.

@DreeLouiseHemingway ҸӰ @DreeLoveChild

MY BEST KISS

I've always wanted that kiss at the
water fountain in Great Expecta-
Lions. It's the best kiss I never had.

MY MOST OVERPLAYED TRACK

loverplay a lot of alt-J.

IF I COULD PLAY ANY ROLE

Juliet, but only in Baz Luhrmann's
Romeo + Juliet.

THE APEX OF MY CAREER SO FAR

| am more proud of Starlet than
almost anything else I've done.
Director Sean Baker is incredible.
He has a peculiar mind, and he just
rolls with it. Hopefully РИ be able
to work with him again—actually,
I know 1 will.

— 22 “EY

in.
U
le Oe

N uu,

Z Sa aio i

. РРР ”
FEW Кы a Ms e REV nr
тт? "єй

Exhibit A Exhibit B

Exhibit C Exhibit D

Modern

Sexuality:

A Gase Study

sy BRET EASTON ELLIS

I suppose it was only a matter of time before рглувоу decided to stop running nude photos, but
now that it’s happening it’s still a reminder of how far we've evolved—or devolved, some may
argue—in terms of our notions about female nudity and how sexual liberation is portrayed in
the culture. For a generation of boomer men, PLAYBOY was a liberator, and certainly for me as
a member of Gen X, finding my father’s stash of PLAYBOYS in the bottom cabinet of his night-
stand was my gateway to the world of nudity and sexual imagery. Despite my preferences,
the nudity in PLAYBOY was fascinating because there was nothing to compare it to; the illus-
trations in the copy of The Joy of Sex my parents kept hidden in their closet were powerfully
erotic, but they were only drawings. The photographs in pLaysoy were tactile and alive with
the color of flesh, and sometimes nude men appeared in the layouts (merely decorative and
never the main attraction) and in the stills from the annual Sex in Cinema rundown. PLAYBOY
and, later, other magazines were my introduction to the idea of the male gaze as I lay on the
green shag carpet next to the water bed in the groovy San Fernando Valley of the mid-1970s.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MOLLY CRANNA

As 1970s kids we had no helicopter
parents—we navigated the world more or less
alone, our explorations unaided by parental
authority. In fact, my parents and the parents
of my friends seem, in retrospect, incredibly
permissive in comparison with today's par-
ents, who document their kids’ every move
on Facebook, keep them in safe spaces and
award them ribbons, trophies and gold stars
just for trying. Our parents were not around
allthat much, or more accurately, they left us
to our own devices.

That meant our parents were fairly lenient
about the entertainment we consumed.
Sometimes R-rated movies were fine and
sometimes they weren't, depending on what
they contained and how far they went. This
laissez-faire attitude about content would not
be acceptable for today’s snowflake kids, but
in the 1970s it was not unusual for an 11- or
12-year-old to have seen multiple screenings of
The Omen in the summer of 1976 (brought in
by a friend’s older sibling) or Saturday Night
Fever in the early winter of 1978 (my mom took
me because she had a crush on Travolta) or to

Exhibit E

listen to the racy original cast recording of A
Chorus Line or flip through Jacqueline Susann
and Harold Robbins novels or hear adults
openly talk about drugs or watch sketches
about people doing cocaine on Saturday Night
Live or be drawn to the allure of disco culture
and unironic horror movies. We consumed all
this, and nothing ever triggered us. We never
freaked, even though the darkness and the bad
mood of the era were everywhere. In the wake
of Vietnam and Watergate, pessimism was
the national language—pessimism as a badge
of hipness and cool. And in a pre-AIDS soci-
ety, sexuality was discussed casually, without
anxiety or menace. The body was free of all sig-
nifiers except pleasure. There was no fear or
dread in sexual imagery. It was, I've increas-
ingly realized as I’ve gotten older, an incred-
ibly innocent time even though we decidedly
felt it wasn’t as we were living through it.

It was an era when magazines were the only
place to find sustained images of nudity. There
was nudity in American movies in the 1970s,
but you had to first watch the movie on cable
and then time it in order to catch the nudity

or soft-core sex scene you wanted to watch
again when you were, um, alone. (This hap-
pened many times with me and the sex scene
between Diane Keaton and Richard Gere in
Looking for Mr. Goodbar.) We were a long way
from the advent of the DVR, and VHS cassettes
were not yet ubiquitous. Porn was still shown
in theaters. ‘The only way you could see images
of naked people was by getting your hands on
a magazine, and for many boys and girls the
portal into the world of nudity was PLAYBOY.
It’s hard to remember in this era of nude self-
ies, porn spam and phones with every kind of
sex act available on them within seconds that
nudity was still taboo, a secret thing, some-
thing private, and that pictures with posed
models were actually exciting. They raised the
temperature; they got things going. These pho-
tos were our introduction to a deeper world of
actual sexuality.

I saw my first pornographic film in ninth
grade when a wealthy friend who lived in Bel
Air had a sleepover. It felt incredibly taboo,
and even though I knew it was terrible porn—
unattractive performers, poorly shot—it still

100

PROP STYI ING RY CYDNFY GRIGGS

offered a jolt. I understood I had crossed into
another world with no looking back. As south-
ern California kids, it wasn’t until we were
mobile with cars at 15 and 16 that we began to
obtain and trade cassettes like contraband.
I use that word because at a certain point the
availability was so fraught with difficulty and
there were so many impasses that the films
were still surprisingly hard to come by. Our
needs demanded an incredible amount of sheer
willand planning, but the testosterone-crazed
energy of adolescent-male sexuality aided usin
getting what we desired. Added note: In its own
way the hunt was part of the fun.

Of course, some 1970s feminists com-
plained about PLAYBOY and porn in gen-
eral, As males, we were confused: What was
wrong with looking at beautiful women? Or
beautiful men? What was wrong with the
gender-based instinct to stare and covet?
Why shouldn’t this be made more eas-
ily available to horny boys? And what was
wrong with the idea of the male gaze? No ide-
ology was going to change these basic facts
ingrained by biological imperatives. For ex-
ample, we learned that a man’s orgasm is a
very different thing from a woman's orgasm,
so, like, what's up? Why should we be turn-
ing away from our maleness? This is a ques-
tion we still ask today. My male friends often
wondered, Who is empowered here? “It’s cer-
tainly not me. I'm staring at this beautiful
woman I desperately want and will probably
never meet"—which intensified the fantasy
of it all. It left a slight sense of punishment
and disdain overlayingthe enjoyment, which
probably added to the expe-
rience. Doesn't it always?

In retrospect the 1970s
feminist reaction to PLAYBOY
seemed unfair to us because
aman's options pre-internet
were so severely limited, es-
pecially if he were given
only one or two issues of a
magazine per month as à
sexual aid. To add criticism
toour desires seemed cruel. Today the idea of
actually going to a store and renting or buy-
ing porn and having that as your only go-to
source for a month is unthinkable. And yet, in
a world now long gone, that's how many men
obtained sexual images. Because they were
rare, we imbued them with a deeper meaning
and made them more powerful than perhaps
they actually were. Later, DVDs led to the in-
credible array of pornography on the internet,
and I marveled at the amount of choice that
was so effortlessly available.

And yet, this availability changed my rela-
tionship to nudity: It made it more common-
place. It felt less exciting, like ordering a book
from Amazon instead of walking toa bookstore
and browsing for an hour, or purchasing shoes
from Zappos instead of heading to the mall and
trying them on while interacting with a sales-
person. And I think this cooling of excitement
in all levels of the culture has to do with the dis-
appearing notion of investment.

When you went to a record store or a book-
store or a movie theater or a newsstand, you
took the time to place a certain amount of in-
vestment in buying the record or purchasing
the book or watching the movie or hunting
for sexual images. This investment was in-
volved in a deeper attempt to connect with
the album cover, the book jacket, the film,
the porn. You had a rooting interest in enjoy-
ing the experience because you had invested
effort and time, and you were more likely to
find gratification because of this. The idea
of dismissing a book after five pages on your
Kindle, turning off a Netflix movie in its
first 10 minutes or not listening all the way
through a track on iTunes was not an option,
because of your investment. Why would you
do that when you had driven to a theater, a
bookstore, Tower Records, the newsstand on
Laurel Canyon Boulevard?

But what happens when sexuality is au-
tomatically available to us without invest-
ment? When a book or a record or a movie
or a naked woman or five naked women or a
naked woman engaged in a gangbang with
five hung men is only a click away? When

nudity and the idea of sexual gratification be-
come so commonplace that you can instantly
hook up with someone and see naked pics of
that incoming sex partner within seconds,
where the casualness ofthe exchangeison the
same wavelength as ordering a book online or
downloading a new movie on Apple TV? The
lack of investment renders everything on the
same level: Everything is availableto you with
no effort or dramatic narrative, so who cares
if you like it or you don't?

I don't miss the awkwardness of having to

buy or rent porn in person and feeling the at-
tendant's (imagined) judgment and shame,
justas the idea of a hookup app makes things
easier and more efficient for some people.
But what does this efficiency do to the idea
of investing in your desires and your fanta-
sies and your ultimate gratification? When
everything is just a tap away on your screen,
what does this do to the idea of actually work-
ing hard and procuring something through
effort? The pulse-pounding excitement—the
suspense!—of the investment you once put
into seeing erotic imagery is now replaced
by a ho-hum and easy accessibility. This has
changed our relationship to nudity and our ex-
pectations for it, as well as for watching sexual
acts. There was a romance to nudity in the
early days of pLayBoy, an ardency, an other-
ness and a specialness that are missing in the
age of Tinder, with its speedy and Darwinian
confirmation that men like only convention-
ally hot women and hunt for sex everywhere at
all times. By comparison PLAYBOY seems like a
gentle and soothing fantasy.

So some things change and some things
don't change—even though liberal and ide-
ological sentimental narratives wish they
would. Nudity doesn't mean as much as it
used to, because it is ubiquitous in the culture
now. Young women and men celebrating their
bodies are free ofthe insecurities of previous
generations. This could be seen as healthy
self-empowerment or as an example of cor-
porate narcissistic flaunting for Instagram.

PLAYBOY has evolved. There is no reason to
be a nostalgist about this, because in some

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN
SEXUALITY IS AVAILABLE TO
US WITHOUT INVESTMENT?

ways were much better off. The opportu-
nity for sexual gratification is now a tap away
for many people, and nudity is no big deal.
PLAYBOY helped shape this moment. PLAYBOY
began these conversations—a revolution—so
many years ago with its images of beautiful
naked women. And even without nudity each
month, we continue to conform to one aspect
of it that will never go away: Fashions change,
asdoesthe way we access images of nudity and
sex, but beauty, no matter in what form or on
what screen, will always be idealized. [|

101

No one dissects the life of the modern man like Norwegian author Karl Ove
Knausgaard. With uninhibited honesty his staggering six-volume autobiog-
raphy scrutinizes women, sex, drinking, music, being a son, being a father
and the workings of the male mind. Nothing is off limits, including his in-
experience with masturbation. In this exclusive excerpt from My Struggle:
Book Five, published this month by Archipelago Books, Knausgaard goes
carousing on a college night out and soon discovers erotic inspiration.

sy KARL OVE
KNAUSGAARD

After lessons on Friday we went out. Hovland
and Fosse took us on their obviously well-worn
path to Wesselstuen. It was a great place, the
tables were covered with white cloths, and as
Soon as we sat down a waiter in a white shirt
and black apron came over to take our orders. I
hadn't experienced that before. Our mood was
niceand relaxed, the week was over, Iwas happy,
there wereeight ofus carefully selected students
sitting round the table with Ragnar Hovland,
already a legend in student
circles, at least in Bergen,
and Jon Fosse, one of the
most important young post-
modern writers in the country, who had also re-
ceived good reviews in Sweden. I hadn't spoken
tothem privately yet, but now I was sitting next
to Hovland, and when the beer arrived and I'd
had aswig, I seized the opportunity.

“Tve heard you like the Cramps.”

“Oh?” he said. “Where have you heard such
malicious gossip?”

“A friend told me. Is ittrue? Are you interested
in music?”

“Yes, I am,” he said. “And I do like the
Cramps. So, yes.... Say hito your friend and tell
him he's right."

Hesmiled, but there was no eye contact.

“Did he mention any other bands I liked?”

“No, just the Cramps.”

“Doyou like the Cramps then?”

“Ye-es. They’re pretty good,” I said. “But the
music I listen to most at the moment is Pre-
fab Sprout. Have you heard their latest? From
Langley Park to Memphis?”

“Certainly have, although Steve McQueen is
still my favorite.”

Bjorg said something to him from across the
table, and he leaned over to her with a polite ex-
pression on his face. Jon Fosse sat beside her
and chatted to Knut. His texts had been the last
ones we went through, and he was still full of it,
Icould see that. He wrote poems, and they were
remarkably short, often only two or three lines,

sometimes only two words beside each other. I
didn’t grasp what they were about, but there was
something brutal about them, and you wouldn’t
believe that when you saw him sitting there
smiling and laughing; his presence was almost
as friendly as his poems were short. He was gar-
rulous as well. So personality wasn’t the reason.

I put my empty beer glass down on the table
in front of me and wanted another, but I didn’t
dare call over the waiter, so I had to wait until
someone else ordered.

Petra and Trude sat beside me chatting. It
was as if they knew each other from before.
Petra suddenly seemed very open, while Trude
had completely lost her stern, concentrated de-
meanor; now she had a girlish air, as though a
burden had been lifted from her shoulders.

Although I couldn’t really claim to know
any of the other students, I had seen enough
of them to form an impression of their char-
acters, and even though these didn’t necessar-
ily coincide with their texts, except in the case
of Bjorg and Else Karin, who both wrote the
way they looked, I felt pretty sure I knew who
they were. The exception was Petra. She was a
mystery. Sometimes she would sit quietly star-
ing down at the desk, with no presence in the
room at all; it was like she was gnawing at her
insides, I thought then, for despite not moving
and despite her eyes being fixed on the same
point, there was still an aggression about her.
She was gnawing at herself, that was the feel-
ing I had. When she eventually looked up there
was always an ironic smile playing on her lips.
Her comments were usually ironic, and not in-
frequently merciless, though somehow cor-
rect, albeit exaggerated. When she was enthu-
siastic this could vanish; her laughter might
then become heartfelt, childish even, and her
eyes, which so often smouldered, sparkled. Her
texts were like her, I thought, as she read them,
just as spiky and grudging as she was herself,
at times clumsy and inelegant, but always full
of bite and force, invariably ironic, though not

105

without passion even so.

Trude got up and walked across the room.
Petra turned to me.

"Aren't you going to ask me what bands I
like?” she said with a smile, but the eyes she
fixed on me were dark and mocking.

“I could,” I said. “What bands do you like?”

“Doyou imagine I care about boys’ room ban-
ter?” she said.

“How should I know?" I said.

“Do I look like that type of girl?”

“In fact, you do,” I said. “The leather jacket
and everything."

She laughed.

"Apart from the stupid names and all the
clichés and the lack of psychological insight, I
quite liked what you wrote," she said.

"There's nothing left to like," I said.

“Yes, there is,” she said. “Don't let what oth-
ers say upset you. It's nothing, just words. Look
at those two,” she said, motioning to-
ward our teachers. “They're wallow-
ing in our admiration. Look at Jon
now. And look at Knut lapping it up.”

“First of all, I'm not upset. Second
of all, Jon Fosse is a good writer."

*Oh really? Have you read any of
his stuff?"

“А little. I bought his latest novel on
Wednesday."

“Blood. The Stone Is," shesaid ina
deep Vestland voice, fixing me with
her eyes. Then she laughed that heart-
felt bubblinglaugh of hers, which was
abruptly cut short. “Ay yay yay, there's
so much posturing!” she said.

“But not in the stuff you write?" I
said.

“Гуе come here to learn,” she said.

“I have to suck as much out of them as I can.”

The waiter came over to our table. I raised
my finger. Petra did the same; at first I
thought she was taking the mickey out of me
but then realized she wanted a beer too. Trude
came back, Petra turned to her, and I leaned
across the table to catch Jon Fosse’s attention.

“Do you know Jan Kjærstad?” I said.

“Yes, abit. We’re colleagues.”

“Do you consider yourself a postmodernist
as well?”

“No, I’m probably more of a modernist. At
least compared with Jan.”

“Yes,” I said.

He looked down at the table, seemed to dis-
cover his beer and took a long draft.

“What do you think of the course so far?”
he said.

Was he asking me?

I flushed.

“Tt’s been good,” I said. “I feel I’ve learned alot
inashort time.”

“Nice to hear,” he said. “We haven’t done
much teaching, Ragnar and. It's almost as new
tous as itis to you.”

“Yes,” I said.

I knew I ought to say something. I sudden-
ly found myself at the beginning of a conversa-
tion, but I didn’t know what to say, and after the
silence between us had lasted several seconds, he
looked away, his attention was caught by some-
one else, whereupon I got up and went tothe bath-
room, which was behind the door at the otherend
of the room. There was a man peeing in the uri-
nal; I knew I wouldn't be able to perform with
him standing there, so I waited for the cubicle to
become vacant, which happened the very next
moment. There was some toilet paper on the floor
tiles, wet with urine or water. The smell was rank
and I breathed through my nose as I peed. Out-

IFELT PRETTY

SURE I KNEW
WHO THEY
WERE. THE

EXGEPTION WAS
PETRA. SHE WAS

A MYSTERY.

side the cubicle I heard water rush into the sinks.
Immediately afterward, the hand drier roared.
I flushed and went out, just as the two men left
through the door, while another older man with
a huge gut and a ruddy Bergen face came in. Al-
though the toilet was a mess, with the floor wet
and dirty and the smell vile, it still had the same
solemnity as the restaurant outside with its white
tablecloths and aproned waiters. No doubt it had
something to do with its age: Both the tiles and
theurinals came from adifferent era. Irinsed my
hands under the tap and looked at my reflection
in the mirror, which bore no resemblance to the
inferiority I felt inside. The man positioned him-
self, legs apart, by the urinal. I thrust my hands
under the current of hot air, turned them over a
few times and went back to the table, where there
was another beer waiting for me.

When it was finished and I had started on
the next, slowly my timidity began to ease; in

its place came something soft and gentle and
I no longer felt I was on the margins of the con-
versation, on the margins of the group, but in
the center, I sat chatting first with one person,
then with another, and when I went to the toilet
now it was as though I took the whole table there
with me, they existed in my head, awhirl of faces
and voices, opinions and attitudes, laughter and
giggles, and when some began to pack up and go
home I didn’t notice at first, it happened on the
extreme periphery and didn’t matter, the chat-
ting and drinking carried on, but then first Jon
Fosse got up, followed by Ragnar Hovland, and it
was terrible, we were nothing without them.

“Have another one!” I said. “It’s notsolate. And
it’s Saturday tomorrow.”

But they were adamant, they were going home,
and after they had gone the urge to leave spread,
and even though I asked each and every one of
them to staya bit longer the table was soon empty,
apart from Petraand me,

"You're not going to go as well, are
you?” I said.

“Soon,” she said. “I live quite a way
out of town, sol have to catch the bus.”

“You can crash at my place,” I said.
“I live up in Sandviken. There's a sofa
you can sleep on.”

“Are you that keen to keep drink-
ing?” she laughed. “Where shall we go
then? We can’t stay here any longer.”

“Café Opera?” I suggested.

“Sounds good,” she said.

Outside, it was lighter than I had
expected; the remnants of the sum-
mer night’s luster had blanched
the sky above us as we ascended the
hill toward the theater, past the row
of taxis, the ocher glow from the
streetlamps as if drawn across the wet cobble-
stones, the rain pelting down. Petra was carry-
ing her black leather bag and although I didn’t
look at her Iknew her expression was serious and
dogged, her movements rigid and awkward. She
was like a polecat: She bit the hands of those who
helped her.

At Cafe Opera there were many vacant tables,
we went up to the first floor, beside a window.
I got us two beers, she drank almost half hers
in one swig, wiped her lips with the back of her
hand. I searched my brain for something to say,
but found nothing, and drank almost half mine
in one swig too.

Five minutes passed.

“What did you actually do in northern Nor-
way?” she said out of the blue but in a matter-
of-fact way, as though we had been chatting for
ages, while staring into the nearly empty beer
glass she was nursing in front of her.

104

“Iwas ateacher,” I said.

"Iknowthat," she said. “But what made youde-
cide to do that? What did you hope to achieve?”

“I don't know,” I said. “It just happened. The
idea was to do some writing up there, I suppose."

“It’s a strange notion, looking for work in
northern Norway so you can write."

"Yes, maybe it is."

She went to get some beer. I looked around me;
soon the place would be full. She had rested her
elbow on the bar, held up a hundred-krone note,
in front of her one of the barmen was pouring a
beer. Her lips slid over her teeth as she knitted
her brow. Onone of the first days she told me she
had changed her name. Hersurname, I assumed,
but no, she had changed her first name. It had
been something like Anne or Hilde, one of the
most common girls’ names, and I had thought a
lot about Petrarejecting her first name, because
personally I was so attached to mine, changing
it was inconceivable, in a way everything would
change if I did. But she had done it.

Mom had changed her name, but that was to

The author outside his home in Ystad, Sweden.

Dad's surname, it was a convention, and when
she changed it again, it was back to her maid-
en name. Dad had also changed his name, that
was more unusual, but he had changed his sur-
name, not his first name, which was him.

She walked across the floor, half a literin each
hand, and sat down.

"Whodo you think will make it?" she said.

“What do you mean?”

"Inclass, at school."

Ididn'tcare much for herchoice of word, I pre-
ferred academy, but said nothing.

"Idon't know," I said.

“Isaid think. Of course you don't know."
Iliked what you wrote."

Flattery will get you nowhere."

"It's true."

"Knut: nothing to say. Trude: posturing.
Else Karin: housewife's prose. Kjetil: childish.
Bjerg: boring. Nina: good. She's repressed, but
she writes well."

She laughed and slyly glanced up at me.

“What about me?” I said.

“

a MA

s 7
EN
4

“You,” she snorted. “You understand noth-
ing about yourself and you have no idea what
you're doing."

*Doyou know what you're doing?"

“No, but at least I know I don't know,” she
said and laughed again. “And you're a bit girlie.
But you've got big strong hands, so that makes
up for it."

Ilooked away, my insides on fire.

“Tve always had a wicked tongue on me,”
she said.

Itook somelong swigs ofthe beer and scanned
theroom.

*You weren't offended by that little gibe,
were you?” she said with a giggle. “I could say
far worse things about you if I wanted."

“Please don't,” I said.

*You take yourself too seriously as well. But
that's your age. It's not your fault."

And what about you then! I felt like saying.
What makes you think you're so damn good?
And if I’m girlie, you're butch. You look like a
man when you walk!

I said nothing though, and slowly but surely
the fire subsided, not least because I was begin-
ning to get seriously drunk and approaching
the point where nothing meant anything any-
more, or to be more accurate, when everything
meant the same.

Acouple more beers and I would be there.

Inthe room, between all the occupied tables,
strode a familiar figure. It was Morten, wear-
ing his red leather jacket and carrying a light
brown backpack on his back and a folded um-
brella in his hand, the long one I had seen be-
fore. When he spotted me his face lit up and he
rushed atfull speed across to our table, talland
lanky, his hair spiky and glistening with gel.

“Hi there!” he grinned. “Out drinking, are
you?”

“Yes,” I said. “This is Petra. Petra, this is
Morten.”

“Hi,” Morten said.

Petra gave him a once-over and nodded, then
turned and looked the other way.

“We've been out with the academy,” I said.
“The others went home early.”

“Thought writers were on the booze 24/7,” he
said. “I’ve been in the reading room until now. I
don’t know how this is going to work out. I don’t
understand a thing! Nota thing!”

He laughed and looked around.

“Actually I’m on my way home. Just popped by
to see if there was anyone I knew. But I'll tell you
one thing: I admire you writers-to-be.”

He looked at me seriously for a moment.

“Well, I'm off,” he said. “See you!”

When he had rounded the corner by the bar I
told Petra he was my neighbor. She nodded casu-
ally, drank the rest of her beer and got up.

“TIl be off now,” she said. “There's a bus in 15
minutes."

She lifted her jacket from the back of the chair,
clenched herfistand put itin the sleeve.

“Weren'tyou going to sleep at my place? It's not
aproblem, you know.”

“No, I’m going home. But I might take you up
onyour offer another time,” she said. “Bye.”

So, with her hand around her bag and a stead-
fast gaze ahead she walked toward the staircase.
Ididn’tknow anyone else there, but sat for alittle
longer, incase someone turned up, butthen being
onmy own began to prey on my mind and I puton
my raincoat, grabbed my bag and went out into
the blustery night.

I woke up at around 11 to rattling and bang-
ing inside the wall. I sat up and looked around.
What was that noise? Then I realized and
slumped back into bed. The mailboxes were
on the other side of the wall, butso far Ihadn’t
slept long enough to know what it sounded like
when the postman came.

Above me someone was walking around
singing.

But the room, wasn't it remarkably light?

I got up and lifted the curtain.

The sun was shining.

I got dressed, went over to the shop and
bought some milk, rolls and today’s papers.
When I returned I opened the mailbox. Apart
from two bills that had been sent on to me there
were two parcel-delivery cards. I hurried to
the post office and was given two fat parcels,
which I opened with the scissors in the kitchen.
Shakespeare’s collected works, T.S. Eliot’s col-
lected poems and plays, Oscar Wilde’s collected
works and a book with photos of naked women.

I sat down on my bed to flick through it,
trembling with excitement. No, they weren’t
completely naked, many of them were wearing
high heels and one had a blouse hanging open
around her slim tanned upper body.

I put down the book and had breakfast while
reading the three papers I had bought. The
main news in Bergens Tidende was a mur-
der that had taken place yesterday morning.
There was a picture of the crime scene, which I
thought I recognized, and I had my suspicions
confirmed when I read the text underneath:
The murder had been committed only acouple

of blocks from where I was sitting now. Andas if
that wasn’tenough the suspected murderer was
still at large. He was 18 years old and attended
technical school, it said. For some reason, this
made quite an impression on me. I pictured
him at this moment, in a basement apartment,
so I imagined, alone behind drawn curtains,
which every so often he parted to see what was
going on in the street, he viewed it from ankle
height, his heart pounding and despair tearing
at his insides because of what he had done. He
punched the wall, paced the room, consider-
ing whether to hand himself in or wait for a few
days and then try to get away, on board one of
the boats perhaps, to Denmark or England, and
then hitchhike his way down through Europe.
But he had no money and no possessions, only
what he stood up in.

I peered out the window to see if anything un-
usual was happening, uniformed officers gath-
ering, for example, or some parked police cars,
but everything was as normal, except for the
sunshine, that is, which hung like a veil of light
over everything.

I could talk to Ingvild about the murder, it was
a good topic of conversation, his presence here,
in my part of town, right now, while virtually the
wholc of the police force was out looking for him.

Perhaps I could write about
that too? A boy who kills an old
man and goes into hiding while
the police slowly close in on him?

I would never ever be able to
do that.

A wave of disappointment
washed over me and I got up,
took the plate and glass, put them in the
kitchen sink, together with all the other dirty
crockery I had used during the week. Petra
was wrong about one thing, and that was that
I didn’t understand myself, I thought, looking
across the resplendent green park as a wom-
an crossed with a child in each hand. Self-
knowledge was the one quality I did have. I
knew exactly who I was. Not many of my ac-
quaintances knew as much about themselves.

I went back into the living room, was about to
bend down to browse through my records when
it was as if my eye was dragged toward the new
book. A stab of joy and fear went through me. It
might as well be now, I was alone, I had nothing
in particular to do, there was no reason to de-
fer it, I thought, and picked the book up, looked
over my shoulder, how could I take it down to the
bathroom unnoticed? A plastic bag? No, whoon
earth takes a plastic bag with him to the toilet?

I opened the button of my jeans and un-
zipped, pushed the book down, covered it with
my shirt, leaned forward as far as I could to see
whatit looked like, whether anyone would real-
ize I had a book there.

Maybe.

What about taking a towel with me? If any-
one came I could casually hold itover my stom-
ach for the few seconds the encounter lasted.
Then I could have a shower afterward. Nothing
suspicious about that surely, going to the toilet
and then having a shower.

And that was what I did. With the book
stuffed down my trousers and clasping the big-
gest towel I had I went out the door, crossed the
landing, down the stairs, along the corridor,
into the bathroom, where I locked the door,
pulled out the book and began to leaf through.

Even though I had never masturbated before
and wasn't exactly sure how to do it, I still knew
how, the expressions "jerk off” and “beat the
meat" had been ever-present inall the wanking
jokes I had ever heard over the years, not least
insoccer changing rooms, and so with the blood
throbbingin my member Itook itout of the little
pouch formed by my underpants, and as I ogled
thelong-legged red-lipped woman standing out-
side a kind of holiday bungalow in the Mediler-
ranean somewhere, judging by the white walls
and the gnarled trees, beneath a line of wash-
ing, with a plastic bowl in her hand, although
otherwise completely naked, while I looked and
looked and looked at her, all the beautiful erotic
lines of her body, I wrapped my fingers around
my dick and jerked it up and down. At first the
whole shaft, but then after a few times only the
tip, while still staring at the woman with the
bowl, and then as a wave of pleasure rose in me,
I thought I should look at another woman too,
to make maximum use of the book, and turned
over the page, and there was a woman sitting
on a swing, wearing only red shoes with straps
up her ankles, and then a spasm went through
me and I tried to bend my dick down to ejacu-
late into the toilet, but I couldn't, it was too stiff,
so instead the first load of sperm hit the seat
and slowly oozed down while later blobs were
pumped out, farther down, after I had the great
idea of leaning forward to improve the angle.

Oh.

Гра done it.

I OGLED THE LONG-LEGGED RED-
LIPPED WOMAN STANDING OUTSIDE,
THE EROTIC LINES OF HER BODY.

Thad finally done it.

There was nothing mysterious about it after
all. On the contrary, it was incredibly easy and
quite remarkable that I hadn't done it before.

I closed the book, wiped the seat, washed
myself, stood stock still to hear if, contrary
to expectation, anyone was outside, shoved
the book back down my trousers, grabbed my
toweland left.

It was only then that I wondered if I had
done it right. Should you shoot into the toilet?
Or maybe the sink? Or a wad of rolled-up toilet
paperin your hand? Or did you usually doitin
bed? On the other hand, this wasanextremely
secretive business, so it probably didn't mat-
ter if my method deviated from the norm.

Just as I had put the book down on the desk,
folded the unused towel and placed it in the
cupboard there was a ring at the door.

I went out to answer it.

It was Yngve and Asbjorn. Both were wear-
ing sunglasses, and as on the previous occa-
sion there was something restless about them,
something about Yngve's thumb in his belt loop
and Asbjorn’s fistin his trouser pocket or them
both standing half-turned away until I opened
the door. Or perhaps it was the sunglasses they
didn’t take off.

“Hi,” I said. “Come in!”

They followed me into my room.

“We were wondering if you felt like coming
with us into town,” Yngve said. “We're going to
some record shops.”

“Great,” I said. "I've got nothing to do any-
way. Right now?”

“Yes,” Yngve said, picking up the book with
the naked women. “I see you’ve bought a pho-
tography book.”

“Yes,” I said.

“It's not hard to guess what you're going to
use that for," Yngve laughed. Asbjørn chuckled
too, but in a way that suggested he wanted this
aspect of the visit over as quickly as possible.

“These are serious pictures, you know,” I
said as I put on my jacket, bent over and tied
my shoes. “It’s a kind of art book.”

“Oh yes,” Yngve said, putting it down. “And
the Lennon poster has gone?”

“Yes,” I said.
Asbjørn lit a cigarette, turned to the window
and looked out. L|

107

acte ee

PHY BY MYLA DALBESIO

Aw:

You may not recognize her name, but you probably know about Myla
Dalbesio. In 2014 she became the face of a Calvin Klein underwear cam-
paign that sparked a heated debate about standards of female beauty.
Because of her body type, Myla was celebrated in the media as “Calvin
Klein’s first plus-size model.” She was a size 10, whereas many models
wear size four or six. To put this in context, size 14 is the national average
for women. She was interviewed on and and the public conversation on
blogs and social media focused on the modeling industry’s questionable
expectations for women’s bodies. For awhile Mylabecame the poster child
for positive self-image. But today she’s over it. “I’m happy to talk about it,
and I feel passionate about it—but can we change the conversation, please?
Can we talk about something else?”

Yes, let’s change the conversation. It’s hard not to once you get to know
the real Myla, a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is influenced by
“sexual femininity, mystical nature and the place where the two meet.”
A few years ago she began photographing herself nude in hotel rooms for
aproject titled “I’m naturally attracted to women’s bodies. Asa woman,
like others, I’m focused on my own,” she says. “For me, these photos were
about having an organic form—the female body—in the middle of the
hard, lonely symmetries of hotel rooms. It was about traveling and how
the concept of loneliness is something that can be enjoyable and plea-
surable.”

For this story Myla traveled alone from her home in New York City
to California. Her stopping points: the sweeping Joshua Tree National
Park, the sun-soaked streets of Los Angeles and two of Palm Springs’
most stylish boutiques, the Ace Hotel and Hotel Lautner. Her equipment:
a Polaroid, a Contax point-and-shoot and a photo booth. Her task: illus-
trate a visual lesson in how to shoot a woman, by the same woman.

“Twas terrified going into this project,” Myla admits, laughing. “Iusu-
ally shoot only in controlled environments, and the lasttime I took a solo
road trip was 10 years ago. I was terrified of being alone for that long."

Despite those doubts, the results are magnificent. “It was three days
of pushing myself, chasing light, setting up the tripod, pushing the
10-second self-timer, scrambling around naked with no shoes on, feeling
cactus needles lodge in my feet and getting into position. And then doing
it over and over again. I almost broke down, but out of that came clarity.”

It was worth it, and for Myla the message is evident. "There's an
accepted idea that women who are free with their bodies—be they strip-
pers, nude models or porn stars—are broken, put-upon. That's sad
and disappointing." she says. “It doesn't have to be like that. My self-
portraits—call them selfies if you want, I don't care—have changed my
self-image over time. Seeing beautiful photos of myself has bolstered
me. It makes me feel better. If girls want to take gorgeous photos of
themselves, or if boys want to, who the fuck cares?”

ades to pose f

thi
-she’s not à

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

Long before he designed the main characters on the Fox cartoon series Bob's Burgers or co-
created Nickelodeon’s Sanjay and Craig, Jay Howell liked to draw his lanky bug-eyed fig-
ures onto the pages of found magazines (like this one) and free-bin erotic novels. “It kind
of satisfied my sick desire to feel like I'd accomplished something bigger,” he says. “It’s like,
Hey, I’m part of the magazine now!” In addition to showing his work up and down the coast
and illustrating skateboard decks for Consolidated and for Creature, the Bay Area native
is probably the only artist with both Vans and Gucci collaborations under his belt. And now
that the self-described “posh spaz” is our inaugural Artist in Residence, Howell’s dream of
appearing in the magazine has actually come true. He tells us he
loves to “get high and fly first class” with a PLAYBOY in hand, and
he excitedly describes how the great Shel Silverstein, having served
as head cartoonist here in the 1950s and 1960s, traveled the globe as
a sort of illustrator-journalist for the magazine. “I mean, imagine
that. That’s so fun!” Clearly the two artists have a connection beyond
the Rabbit banner: Their work just feels good. “I try to be in a good
mood constantly, so yeah, I'm a hippie,” Howell says, adding, “but I
also own guns and love to drive fast cars.”—Kevin Shea Adams

114

DRINKS

How to
Pick Up
Your
Bartender

The owner of Brooklyn’s Leyenda tells
you how to ask her for a date

sy IVY MIX

PHOTOGRAPHY BY WIISSA

drink mezcal or scotch or rye on the rocks—
why can't you enjoy that pink drink? Get rid of
theoutdated cocktail biases and enjoy.

And here's the drink I'd want you to buy
(or make for) me:

The Bensonhurst

1% oz. rye whiskey

% oz. dry vermouth

У 02. Cynar

% oz. maraschino liqueur

Stir in a pitcher filled with ice, strain into a
cocktail glass and serve with a lemon twist.

FICTION

sy DON WINSLOW

118

FICTION

There are some waves you shouldn’t ride. « Boone
Daniels has always known this but realizes
it anew as he drops a microsecond late into an
eight-foot left whipped up by an offshore wind.

It's winter and the Dawn Patrol is out in
force—not at their usual spot off Crystal Pier
in Pacific Beach but way up at Swami's, where
thebig north swell that just arrived is going off.

Johnny Banzai is out there, and Dave the Love
God. High Tideand Sunny Day and Hang Twelve.

Boone's crew.

His people, his friends.

It's high tide, no beach, and a wicked back-
wash bounces off the bluff.

Boone tries to check out, but the wave won't
let him. It holds him in, then bounces him and
he knows he’s going off the board and there’s
nothing he can do but wait it out.

The hydrodynamics change and he feels the
leash jerk his ankle as the board shoots ahead,
pulling him into the bluff. The physics won’t let
him bend up and unsnap the leash. Every seri-
ous surfer practices for this, trains to hold his
breath, not panic and keep track of which way
is up so that when the wave finally releases him,
he won’t do further damage by plunging down
instead of up.

The wave crashes him against the bluff
and he turns to take the blow on his shoulder.
There’s a moment of calm that he uses to grab
his leash and climb up it to the surface, where
he sees another wave about to roll in on him.

He ducks and it smashes him against the
bluff again.

Boone comes up and thankfully that was the
last of the set and he can make it to the narrow
stretch of shore south of the point.

He’s bruised and cut, but he’s alive.

His board, however, is snapped in two.
When Boone gets up to the little parking lot
above Swami’s, Alan Burke is waiting for him,
leaning against his classic 1951 Ford woodie.

Burke is San Diego’s best defense attorney.

He looks at Boone’s snapped board.

“Bummer.”

Boone nods. It was a fine board that had a lot
of rides under it, a lot of history. He’ll miss it.

“You going out?” Boone asks as he walks to
his van.

“Too big for me,” Burke says, following him.

“I know my limitations.”

Boone respects that, figures that Burke came
out just to look.

“Actually, I figured I’d find you here,” Burke
says. A north winter swell, Swami’s is where
you'll find the real gunners. “I didn’t figure
you'd almost drown, though."

“What’s up?” Boone asks, unzipping the
back of his O’Neill winter suit and toweling off.
There are streaks of blood on the towel. Then he
pulls on a heavy sweatshirt with a hood.

It's cold.

“Iwant to hire you,” Burke says, “as my inves-
tigator on a case."

“What’s the case?" Boone asks.

“Joe Phillips.”

“Forget it,” Boone says.

Phillips killed acop.

Justin Healey was just three years on the job.

An Iraq vet with a wife and alittle kid.

He was sitting in his squad car parked out-
side a 24-hour convenience store up in North
County when a guy came up from behind and
shot him in the face. The responding officers
found Joe “Trashbag” Phillips, a homeless
drunk, walking with the gun, ashitty old AMT
Hardballer, half a mile away.

His prints were on it.

The paraffin test showed residue on his hands.

And he confessed.

Slam dunk.

Boone’s only surprised that Trashbag made it
to the house at all and wasn’t shot resisting ar-
rest with a firearm in his hand.

Well, he’s also surprised that Burke has the
case. Alan Burke is expensive. Trashbag should
have gotten a PD, and then side out.

“Pm with the Equality Project,” Burke, a
liberal Democrat in a town with a conserva-
tive Republican bar, explains now. “My num-
ber came up."

“Minedidn’t,” Boonesays, getting into hisvan.

His shoulder hurts and he wants a hot shower.

Boone left the San Diego police force under
acloud, not exactly popular with all his broth-
er officers.

But they were his brother officers.

And Boone, although he didn't know Healey,
isn'tgoing to help defend a cop killer.

*You don't know the facts," Burke says.

“T know enough."

“The motto of the ignorant,” says Burke.

Boone lets out a huff of air. “Give me 30 min-
utes. I need a shower. You can buy me breakfast
at the Sundowner.”

Burke smiles.

A hot shower after a cold ocean is one of life’s
greatest pleasures.

Boone has a shower in his small office on
the second floor above Pacific Surf. When he
comes out, Cheerful is sitting at his desk, going
over the numbers.

Cheerful is a saturnine old real estate bil-
lionaire whose sobriquet is an ironic comment
on his caustic personality, the way you call a
tall man Shorty or a skinny guy Fatso. Boone
loves him, though, and not only for the fact that
Cheerful has made it his hobby to try to man-
age the finances of Boone’s private investiga-
tion business.

Boone starts to get dressed.

“Where are you going?” Cheerful asks,
frowning. He had hoped to torture Boone in
the hot sea of red ink spilled across his month-
ly statement.

“To meet Alan Burke.”

“Good,” Cheerful says. “You need income.”

“That’s too bad,” Boone says, “because I’m
not taking the case.”

Boone walks downstairs.

Hang Twelve, a soul surfer with six toes on
each sandaled foot, is behind the counter.

“Boone,” Hang Twelve says. “That was some
wave you rode.”

“Itrode me,” Boone says, walking out the door.

The Sundowner is a surf joint just half a
block down the street in Pacific Beach. Icon-
ic boards hang from its ceilings, surf posters
on its walls. At night it’s aclub for the partying
PB crowd, but in the daytime it serves surfer
food—protein and carbs.

Burke’s already in one of the booths.

He has afile out on the table.

Boone slides in across from him.

“I ordered,” Burke says, knowing that Boone
has no need to. The second they see him come
in, the cooks fire up his regular—eggs machaca
with black beans and flour tortillas on the side
and a mug of black coffee.

Boone is the unofficial security at the
Sundowner.

He keeps an eye on the place.

ILLUSTRATION BY GEMMA O'BRIEN

119

In exchange, the place looks out for him.

“What facts don't I know?” Boone asks. He
doesn’t like disappointing Alan, so he wants to
get it over with.

“There were no witnesses,” Burke says.

“He had the weapon.”

“He says he picked it up in a ditch.”

Boone has to admit to himself that part
makes sense. Joe Phillips is called Trash-
bag for a reason—he walks up and down
the Pacific Coast Highway in North Coun-
ty with a black plastic trash bag into which
he throws stuff he finds along the road. Un-
kind wags have joked that there should be a
sign along the road—THESE MILES SPONSORED BY
TRASHBAG PHILLIPS.

There are а lot of stories about him—he was a
millionaire who lost everything, he was an av-
erage guy who lost his mind when his wife died,
he was a highly decorated war hero whose body
came home but whose mind didn’t.

Boone doesn’t believe any of them.

And he believes that Joe Phillips killed acop.

“Positive residue test,” Boone says.

“Middle Ages technology,” Burke says. “They
might as well have dunked him in the river like
awitch.”

“He confessed.”

“Oh, come on,” Burke says. “Trashbag has
a wet brain. And you know how this works—a
good detective in the room could make this guy
say any thing.”

He slides some paper across the table.

Boone looks at the transcript of the interview.

First thing he looks at is the interviewing de-
tective's name.

Steve Harrington.

Harrington was instrumental in Boone's
leaving the force. Boone is a gentle man with
few, if any, hatreds.

But he hates Harrington, and the feeling is
returned in spades.

Burke tries to suppress a smile. He knows he's
played a potentially winning card and presses.
“You know what you won't see anywhere in that

FICTION

interview, Boone? Motive.
Why did Trashbag just walk
up and shoot a cop? Why?”

"He's psychotic?" Boone
says. "Voices in his head? Jim
Beam told him to? I dunno,
and it doesn't matter."

If you have means and
opportunity, you don't need
motive.

“All I’m asking you to do is
meet him, okay?" Burke says.
“Just meet him."

Sunny Day stridesover with
Boone's food.

That's what Sunny does, she
strides. Probably the best surf-
er in PB, maybe in San Diego,
her long legs won't do anything
but stride. She sets the plate in
front of Boone and says, “You
got your ass kicked out at Swa-
mi's. Sorry about your board.”

“Thanks.”

“Ги going out again after my shift.”

Although Sunny's a better surfer than Boone
is, he worries about her. “Be careful.”

“Always,” Sunny smiles and then walks away.

She and Boone have an on-and-off thing go-
ing. Right now it’s off, but he’s still her best
friend in the world and she’s his.

Burke watches Sunny stride away and says to
Boone, “You're an idiot.”

“I know.”

He digs into the food.

Boone tries to keep life simple. Good surf-
ing, good food, good friends—that's life. He
tries to make a living without doing anything
too sleazy, and he tries to do the right thing.

This isn’t always easy given his line of work.

“Okay,” he says after taking a bite of awarm
flour tortilla. “ГИ meet him. But that's all.”

The black beans are excellent.

Maybe Trashbag didn’t do it.

BOONE TRIES TO MAKE A
LIVING WITHOUT DOING
ANYTHING TOO SLEAZY.
THIS ISN’T ALWAYS EASY.

This conclusion really pisses Boone off as he
drives his van away from Central Holding.

He'd sat across the table from Trashbag and
listened as Burke took him through the whole
thing, and Boone had never seen a more con-
fused man in his entire life.

It was hard to imagine this scared, small
white-haired man—clearly a long-gone
alcoholic—picking up a gun and firing into
anybody, never mind a cop. And he couldn’t
answer basic questions——

What did Healey look like?

What time was it?

And——

Why did you do it?

Trashbag just said that he was done answer-
ing questions and they could do whatever they
wanted with him, he didn’t give a shit. He
seemed а lot more concerned that the jail was
dirty and they wouldn't let him clean it up.

As they left the building, Boone said, “Go
with the insanity defense.”

“A cop killer?” Burke asked. “What San
Diego jury is going to accept that? They can’t
wait to strap him to the gurney.”

Burke was right, Boone thought.

He'd seen the TV coverage.

The funeral.

The officers in their dress uniforms.

"Amazing Grace" on the bagpipe.

Thegrieving widow with the little boy.

Burke would try to get the trial moved, but
it wouldn't happen. No judge would risk it. San
Diego is a military town that loves its soldiers,

120

sailors, marines and its cops, many of whom
are former military.

Trashbag is fucked.

Burke pressed him to take the case.

Boone said he’d think it over.

Now, driving back to PB, he does. “No” is the
smart answer, because “yes” brings a big wave
down on his head. PIs have to work with cops
or they can't work, so taking on a cop killer de-
fense is, career-wise, sticking a gun into his
own mouth.

He wins the Phillips case, he loses his living.

Boone knows how it works—the whole city
comes at him. His license gets looked at, safety
inspectors find problems in his office, he gets
stopped for running every yellow light.

And then there are the relationships.

The other detective on the case is John
Kodani.

Johnny Banzai, one of Boone’s best surfing
buddies and closest friends. Boone has dinner
at his house, chats with his wife, plays on the
floor with his kids.

And he’s a good cop.

Whose career will get jammed up if a cop
killer skates.

Or if he got the wrong guy.

No, Boone thinks as he pulls into a parking
slot outside Pacific Surf, this is a lose-lose prop-
osition. Any way it turns out, you’re fucked.

He decides to call Alan and take a pass.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands of
innocent people behind bars, Boone thinks
as he goes up the stairs. Trashbag might be
better off there. Three meals a day and a bed,
anyway.

Hecalls Burke.

"Okay," Boone says. "I'm in."

Even though he knows that there are some
waves you shouldn't ride.

Boone goes back to the file.

When he goes down to his van later, a parking
ticket is stuck on the windshield, his left tail-
light is smashed and there’s a “fix it” ticket for
that too.

It’s just starting, Boone thinks.

This is only the small shit.

Akemi, the young Chaldean guy behind the
counter of the convenience store, gives Boone
asardonic smile. “Did I know Trashbag? That's
not exactly the way I'd put it, my brother.”

The Chaldeans are Iraqi Christians. Many
of them immigrated to San Diego during the
war, and now they own a lot ofthe local conve-
nience stores.

FICTION

Good people, Boone thinks.

*How exactly would you put it?" Boone asks.

“He’d walk by here every night," Akemi says.
“Sametime. I think he lives down in the under-
pass, a lot of them do."

"Every night?" Boone asks.

*With that black garbage bag over his shoul-
der," Akemi says.

“Was he a problem?”

“Not really," Akemi says. “We threw him out
a few times when hed try to pocket the little
booze bottles here at the counter. But I didn't
think he was a bad guy, just sad, until he did
this terrible thing."

He shakes his head.

“Did Officer Healey come in here every night?"

Akemismiles. "Like clockwork."

Boone knows what the smile means. The cof-
fee is on the house. He doesn't have anything
against it and neither does Akemi. Conve-
nience stores like cops coming in, and the job
should have its small perks.

“What did you see that night?" Boone asks.

"Like I told the detectives," Akemi says. “I
heard shots. I called 911."

"You stayed inside."

“Trouble will find you,” Akemi says. “You
don’t have to go out and look for it.”

This, Boone thinks as he leaves the store,
is true.

Boone walks the dirt path along the side of
the road.

It’s well worn, trod by the homeless.

They have their routes and their routines,
Boone knows. It keeps them barely attached to
the world.

He stops halfa mile from the store at the spot
where the arresting officers picked Trashbag
up with the murder weapon. There's not a lot
around—some warehouses, a vacant lot.

Boone walks down to the highway underpass
that Trashbag called home.

The cops periodically “clean them out,” but
the homeless come back at night. Now there are
cardboard boxes and a few old blankets. Some
old plastic jugs for drinking water, some emp-
ty half-pint booze bottles and cigarette butts.

One of the blankets moves.

A woman—at least Boone thinks she’s a
woman—pokes her head out.

“TIl go,” she says.

“Tt’s okay.”

"You a cop?"

“No,” Boone says. Not anymore. "What's
your name?”

"Mary."

“TROUBLE
WILL FIND
YOU,” AKEMI
SAYS. “YOU
DON”T HAVE
TO GO OUT
AND LOOK
FOR IT.”

“Mary, I’m Boone. You know а guy they call
Trashbag?”

“That Joe, he’s gone now,” Mary says.

“Hey, Mary?” Boone asks. “Did Joe have a
gun?”

“Joe, he didn't,” Mary says. “He wanted
one, though.”

“Why?”

Mary whispers. “Said he was gonna kill
acop.”

Boone feels his heart sink.

Trashbag did it.

“A cop named Healey?” Boone asks.

“No,” Mary says. “That Healey, he was nice,
he would bring food sometimes. Joe liked him.”

“So...”

Mary smiles. Her teeth, what there are of
them, are black. “If Joe kills anyone, it would
be Langdon. That Langdon, he's mean. Always
movingus along, shovingus around. Joe said he
would take care of it. Youcan't push that Joe too
far. Г leave now."

“No, go back to sleep,” Boone says. He takes
10 bucks from his pocket and lays it on her
blanket. “Then get yourself something to eat,
okay?”

But she’s already asleep.

Trashbag Phillips killed the wrong cop, Boone
thinks.

Drunk, he mistook Healey for Langdon,
walked up and “took care of it.” To defend the
only family he knew.

Boone goes back to the office and gets on
the computer.

To try and answer the question—who is
Joe “Trashbag” Phillips? Is he the kind of

121

man who’d take care of things with a gun?

Turns out he is.

Boone tracks down a bunch of legends about
Trashbag—he’s not a former millionaire, not a
grieving widower, but he is a war hero.

Vietnam, Tet Offensive.

Already wounded, Staff Sergeant Joseph
Phillips counterattacks an NVA unit that hit
his company hard. Kills seven NVA, drags two
of his buddies to safety and holds the position
until the choppers get there.

That’s how the Silver Star citation read.

So he is the kind of guy who would defend his
people with a gun.

Case is pretty much closed, but Boone goes
back to the file to make sure he has italltied up.

Then he sees it.

Boone finds Darren Langdon at a shooting
range all the way out in El Cajon.

He waits in the lobby and leafs through agun
mag as the cop finishes taking out a silhouette
target with his Glock.

Three in the chest.

Threein the head.

Langdon comes out.

Tall, short black hair, handsome.

Definite alpha male.

"Officer Langdon?" Boone says, showing his
ID. “My name is Daniels. I'm an investigator
assisting in the defense of Joe Phillips."

“Yeah, I know who you are." It’s pretty clear
from the look of disgust on his face that he

JOHNNY
GIVES HIM
ALOOK
THAT GOULD
BURN
THROUGH
STEEL. “YOU
LEAVE THE
WIDOW
ALONE.”

FICTION

doesn’t much like who Boone is. “Didn't you
let a baby killer go before you left the job? Now
you're trying to spring a cop killer."

“Just a couple of questions," Boone says.

“Get out of my way."

“Don’t make us do this the hard way,”
Boone says. “I came here as a courtesy. I can
get a subpoena."

Langdon sighs. “Whatdo you wantto know?"

“Did you ever see Phillips before you arrested
him?" Boone asks.

"Read the file."

“It says you hadn't," Boone says. “But he
walked that way every night, on your tour."

“If I knew every bum on my tour —"

“You used to shove him around, though,
didn't you?" Boone asks.

Boone sees Langdon's face go all red.

Soit's true.

“I got a 10 double zero and I went after the
shooter,” Langdon says. “I found him. We done?”

10-00. Radio code for *officer down."

"Didyoulie about knowing him," Boone asks,
"because you think maybe he shot Healey in
stead of you?"

“Justin Healey was my best friend,” Langdon
says. “I’m his boy's godfather.”

“T know. That's maybe why——”

A knot of men have gathered behind him.

Off-duty cops, Boone knows. Something you
find at firing ranges. They all give Boone the
stink eye, and one of them says, “Get the fuck
out of here, shithead.”

That seems to make Langdon more aggro.
“Why don’t you and I go outside?”

Boone says, "I'm confused. Do youwant me to
go outside to leave or so you and I can dance?”

“You call the wolf,” Langdon says, “you get
the pack.”

“All together or one at atime?”

“Your choice, asshole,” Langdon says.

Boone puts his hands up. “I’m sorry for
your loss.”

As he goes out the door, he hears laugh-
ter and shouts of “Pussy!” and “Bitch!” and
“Turncoat!”

Boone sits in his van and takes a deep breath.

If I was them, he thinks, maybe I'd act the
same way.

The black-and-white pulls Boone over on Gar-
net Avenue. “License and registration, please."

“Come оп, man,” Boone says.

He knows Juan Garza from his days on the job.

“Step out of the car, sir,” Garza says. “I’m go-
ing to search the vehicle.”

“On what grounds?”

“I smelled marijuana,” Garza says.

“As I drove past?” Boone asks.

“Please step aside.”

Boone steps aside while Garza takes the van
apart, front and back, and none too neatly. He
knows Garza isn’t going to find anything but
wet suits, fins, booties, some In-N-Out wrap-
pers and a few old go-cups.

Unless, of course, he plants something.

“Find anything?” Boone asks.

“You have 13 days to get that taillight fixed.”

“Okay.”

He knows it’s not going to stop there.

That night Boone sits in his small cottage at the
end of Crystal Pier.

The other cottages are part of the hotel,
but Cheerful used his considerable leverage
to buy this one, and he rents it out at a nomi-
nal fee. Boone helped him out of a bad black-
mail jam once and Cheerful wouldn't take no
for an answer.

The cottage sits right over the water and
Boone can feel the swell roll under him.

Trashbag Phillips walked the same route
every night.

He didn’t owna gun.

Langdon knew him and lied about it.

He got the call and went after the shooter.

But how did he know where to go?

Boone hears a knock at the door and goes to
open it.

“Tell me I hear wrong,” Johnny Banzai says.

“No, you hear right.”

Boone walks in and Johnny follows him.

“He's a cop killer!” Johnny, usually the most
calm and rational of men, yells. “He killed a
brother officer! Doesn’t that mean anything
to you?”

“Yes, if he did it.”

“He confessed.”

“I watched the video,” Boone says. “Har-
rington worked him.”

“I was on the other side of the glass,” Johnny
says. “Did I work him too?”

“Td never think that, John,” Boone says. “But
if you take another look at the video, the tran-
script, I don’t think you'll be happy with it.”

“You know what they’re calling you at the
house?” Johnny says. “Traitor. There’s guys
that want to come over here right now and clean
your clock.”

“Harrington?”

“He’s in the car,” Johnny says. “I made him
stay outside.”

“Hey,” Boone says, “any time he wants to
dance.”

122

Johnny walks to the window and looks out at
the dark ocean.

“You know Darren Langdon?” Boone asks.

“He’s agood cop,” Johnny says. “Where are
you going with this?”

Boone runs it down for him.

Johnny shakes his head. “I wouldn’t put it
above Langdon to job a skell to clear a case.
But not on his best friend. He’d want the real
shooter and that's who we got.”

"Then why is he lying about knowing
Phillips?”

“So he doesn’t get the kind of dumb, irrel-
evant questions you’re asking now,” Johnny
says. “Offthe statement of some old wino with
a grudge against him. I know you have a beef
with the job——”

“Т have no beef with the job."

“Yeah, okay,” Johnny says. “But you're tak-
ing it too far. You're working for the piece of
shit who killed Healey, and now you want to
jam Langdon up too? What happened to you,
Boone?”

It’s areasonable question, Boone thinks.

Three years ago he and Harrington picked up
asuspected child abductor and Boone wouldn’t
go along with driving out in the country and
tuning him up until he told what he did with
the little girl.

The skell walked.

They never found the girl.

And Boone became a pariah on the force un-
til he finally pulled the pin and walked away.

He still asks himself if he did the right
thing.

“Tm telling you, something about Langdon's
wrong,” Boone says.

FICTION

BOONE DROPS TO THE
GROUND AS THE BULLETS
WHIZ OVER HIS HEAD.

“You're wrong,” Johnny says. “I’m telling
you, back the fuck off.”

“Someone else who might have had a reason
to kill Healey,” Boone says.

“Model husband,” Johnny says. “Model
father. Model cop.”

“Maybe he told his wife something.”

Johnny gives him a look that could burn
through steel. “Don't doit. You leave the widow
alone. My hand to God, you go anywhere near
Sharon Healey, Г11—”

*You'll what, Johnny?"

Johnny says, “Don't make us go there,
Boone."

He walks out.

Boone's out in the water a little before first
light.

Maybe his favorite time of the day, the sky a
dark pearl and everything quiet.

The Dawn Patrol comes out.

Sunny, of course, in her blue winter suit.
Then Hang Twelve, already a little baked.

Then High Tide, the 380-pound Samoan,
the former chief of the Samoan Lords before
he left the gangbanging life for a job and a fam-
ily. He paddles out to Boone on a board the size
of asmall yacht. “Mornin’,
bruddah. What I hear
about you? You makin’
trouble again?"

“I guess so, Tide."

“You keep your chin up,”
Tide says, "and your head
down, yeah?"

“Yeah?”

“My old boys hear
things,” Tide says. “Hear
you might be next up for a
bullet.”

Boone knows that Tide
doesn’tgangbanganymore,
but he keeps in touch with
his old friends.

It’s worth listening to.

Last out is Dave the Love
God, his sobriquet a play

on lifeguard, because Dave is the most famous
lifeguard in a town where kids idolize them
like kids in other cities worship basketball
players and because he has an equally impres-
sive reputation among the tourist chicks as the
best vacation sex this side of anywhere.

Other than Sunny, Dave is Boone’s best
friend. They’ve surfed together since they
were grems.

“Where’s Johnny?” Boone asks.

“Not coming out today,” Dave says. “Or any
day you're here.”

“Hetold you what's up?”

“At length,” Dave says.

“What do you think?"

“I think you can’t save everybody,” Dave says.

Which is some statement coming from a man
who has saved almost everybody and still pri-
vately grieves for the ones he couldn't.

*But don't you have to try?"

“The ocean does what it does, regardless,"
Dave says. He looks behind him and then pad-
dles for the wave.

Sunny comes up beside Boone. “I hear you
have troubles."

^Any wisdom for me?"

“You have to decide,” she says, “which waves
are worth riding. Because one day, one of them
is going be your last. This wave? You won't go
down alone. You'll take your friends with you.
And for what, Boone? Your need to be right,
to be just, to make up for some sin you think
you committed?”

She paddles away.

Riding in, Boone remembers that the Bud-
dha said, “Admirable friendship, admirable
companionship, admirable camaraderie is the
whole of a holy life.”

The Dawn Patrol—these are his friends, his
companions. Their camaraderie means every-
thing to him.

And now that’s torn, and he feels the tear like
awound.

Cheerful is in the office.
The Cheerful don’t surf.
He ownsa good piece of the oceanfront real

125

estate in Pacific Beach but never goes near
the water.

Nowhesays, "I've beengetting callsabout you.”

"From?"

"The mayor," Cheerful says. *The head of
the chamber. A couple of men I do business,
play golf with. They think I should cancel your
lease. If I want to keep doing business here.”

“What did you tell them?"

"To go fuck themselves," Cheerful says.

It makes him cheerful.

Boone picks Langdon up outside the North-
ern Division after his tour and follows him
up through La Jolla to Interstate 5, where he
gets off at the 56 and then turns in toa Hamp-
ton Inn.

Langdon gets out of the car and goes in.

Only five minutes later a red Toyota Camry
pulls into the lot, and Boone sees who gets out.

He waits an hour and a half and then follows
the Camry up the 5, then into Carlsbad, where
it turns in to the driveway of a single-family
home ina new development on a hill where they
used to grow flowers.

When Sharon Healey gets out of her car,
Boone gets out of the van with his hands up by
his shoulders and says, “Mrs. Healey. Could I
speak with you for a moment?”

Sharon’s a small woman, petite, pretty.

Light brown hair, cut short.

She strikes Boone as a little timid—the un-
kind word would be mousy—but then again he
figures she’s probably still in shock.

“You scared me,” Sharon says. “It’s four in
the morning. Who are you?"

“My name is Daniels, and I——”

"They told me not to talk with you."

I'll bet they did, Boone thinks.

"I know you're grieving,” Boone says. “And
I’m sorry to bother you. But you want them to
find the man who killed your husband.”

“They did.”

“See, I don’t think they did,” Boone says. “Is
your little boy at home?”

FICTION

“He’s spending the night
with my parents.” She starts
to walk away from him to the
house.

“How long have you been
sleeping with Darren Lang-
don?” Boone asks.

She turns around, startled.
“I—how dare you——”

“Hampton Inn,” Boone
says, “Carmel Valley. What's
itbeen? Six months? A year?”

“Those are lies.”

“No, they're not, Mrs. Heal-
ey,” Boone says. “Now we can
do this any one of several ways.
You can come with me now
and I'll bring you to a detective
who'll take your statement, or
I can tell that same detective
what I know and he'll show
up at your door. Which do you
want to do?”

“Am I under arrest?”

“I don’t have that authority,” Boone says.
“Adultery isn’t illegal anymore, and that’s all
we know that you ve done. But you want to get
out in front of this. If Darren Langdon killed
your husband, you want to be a witness, not an
accomplice.”

She doesn't say anything.

"Here's what Iknow happened," Boone says.
"You and Langdon were in love and he decided
to get rid of the obstacle, so he walked up
and shot his best friend in the face. Then he
dropped the weapon where he knew Trashbag
Phillips would find it and arrested him. Only
reason he didn't gun Phillips down was that
there were other cops there. WhatI don't know
is whether you knew about it, before or after."

"I'm not talking to you."

“You have a little boy with no father," Boone
says. "You want him to have no mother too?
Because unless you clear yourself, you're go-
ingaway."

THE WAVE HITS HIM
LIKE A TYSON LEFT
HOOK THROWN FROM

THE CANVAS.

Sharon looks up. “ГЇЇ come with you.”
He walks her out to thevan and she climbs in.

Boone’s call wakes Johnny Banzai up.

“Meet me at my place,” Boone says. “Sharon
Healey wants to make a statement.”

“I told you——”

Boone clicks off.

The flashers hit just as Boone’s pulling onto
the pier.

“Driver, pull over.”

“Get on the floor,” Boone tells Sharon.

He pulls over.

The black-and-white pulls up about five
yards behind him. In the rearview mirror,
Boone sees Langdon walk toward the driver’s
side, his weapon pointed out in front of him.

“Driver, get out of the car! Put your hands
behind your head and walk backward to me!”

Boone does.

Then Langdon yells, “Gun! Gun

Langdon fires.

Boone drops to the ground as the bullets whiz
over his head.

Sharon opens her door and runs in a panic.

“Sharon, no!” Boone yells.

But it makes Langdon stop shooting and
Boone gets up, grabs Sharon and runs for
the pier.

Running from a cop is almost always the
wrong decision.

Unless you know the cop is going to kill you
and lay a throw-down weapon on your corpse.

Then run like hell.

Boone makes it onto the pier despite Sharon

”

pulling against him and screaming, “Darren,
it’s me! It’s Sharon!”

She doesn’t realize that now he has to kill
her too.

Langdon's coming up behind them.

They're trapped.

Even if Boone had time to get into his cottage
it only means he dies there instead of the pier,
so he keeps them moving.

To the end.

Then there's only one way out.

He grabs Sharon by the waist and hefts her
over the rail.

Throws her into the ocean.

Then he follows.

The frigid water swallows them.

He comes back up and makes out Sharon
thrashing in the dark gray pre-dawn sky and
grabs her.

“It's okay," Boone says. “I have you."

Except he knows it's not okay. He can see
Langdon at the end of the pier, looking for
them, his gun sweeping right and left. And
even if the rogue cop doesn't kill them, the
water might—they might freeze before he can
swim them to the beach.

Muzzle flashes, the crack of pistol fire.

Boone pulls Sharon under the water.

She fights him, panicking.

He brings them back up to see....

In the words of Dave the Love God, “the
ocean does what it does regardless." It just
doesn't care, and now it summons up a wall of
water and throws it at Boone.

Arogue wave.

Big, burgeoning, unstoppable.

You can't outrun a wave.

You can't outswim it either.

If he were alone, Boone would turn and face
it, diveintoitand underas deep as he could, but
he can't leave Sharon to drown.

So he wraps his arms around her tight as he
can and gets ready for the blow.

The wave hits him like a Tyson left hook
thrown from the canvas, blows him backward,
takes him to the bottom and rolls him.

Over and over again, as he holds on to Sharon
and tries to keep her body compact, and the
wave holds them down, punishes them for their
temerity in being there in the first place, and
the cold is agonizing and eats up oxygen until
finally it stops and Boone pushes up and——

The second wave is bigger than the first, and
now they’re in the impact zone and it crashes
down on their heads and explodes like a bomb
and Boone can't hold on as Sharon is blown
from his arms and all he can do himself is try

FICTION

tosurvive as the wave holds him down and his
lungs scream for air and then the wave slams
the back of his head on the bottom and he starts
to black out and that will be death—drowning
in the dark, cold water before the sun can warm
him one last time.

Then ahand grabs him and pulls him up.

Dave’s in the whitewater, pulls him and then
pushes him onto High Tide’s big board.

Boone gasps, “There's awoman—”

“Sunny has her.”

Stretched across the board, Boone looks
over and sees Sunny hoist Sharon onto Hang
Twelve’s board.

On the pier, Johnny Banzai has his gun
trained on Langdon.

“Let’s get you in,” Dave says, “before the
hypothermia hits.”

They paddle toward shore.

The Dawn Patrol is out.

San Diego winter sunsets are magnificent.

Boone thinks it has to do with the clarity of
the air.

He flips a piece of fish on the grill on the
pier outside his cottage and asks Johnny, “Did
Langdon give it up?”

“He gave her up,” Johnny says. “She pulled
the trigger, but they planned it together. She
says Healey beat her. I don’t know.”

“Crazy.”

“T owe you an apology,” Johnny says. “You
were right.”

“Tthoughtit was Langdon. So Iwas wrong too.”

Wrong about a lot of things, Boone thinks.

I was wrong about Joe Phillips.

Johnny lifts a beer to him. “Here’s to being
wrong.”

It’s chilly out and they’re wearing sweat-
shirts. So are Sunny and Dave. High Tide’s ina
T-shirt, but Boone figures he provides his own
insulation, and Hang Twelve never seems to
feel the cold.

Boone slides the fish into a tortilla and hands
it to Johnny.

It’s aritual, Boone making fish tacos for the
Dawn Patrol. They do it once a week, twice in
the summer. Sundays, though, it’s just him and
Sunny, wherever their relationship is at.

But now it feels good to have them all with him.

His friends.

His family.

The swell is over, the sea is calm.

There are some waves you shouldn't ride,
Boone thinks, looking out at the sunset.

But most of them you should.

Especially the rogues. L|

CREDITS: COVER AND PP. 66-75: MODEL SARAH
MCDANIEL, PHOTOGRAPHY BY THEO WENNER,
CREATIVE DIRECTION BY MAC LEWIS, PHOTO
DIRECTION BY REBECCA BLACK, HAIR BY SHIN
ARIMA USING R+CO FOR FRANK REPS, MAKEUP
BY CAROLINA DALI AT THE WALL GROUP, MAN-
ICURE BY GINA EDWARDS AT KATE RYAN INC.
FOR KISS, STYLING BY ALLISON LEVY. PHOTOG-
RAPHY BY: P.6 COURTESY CHANTAL ANDERSON,
COURTESY JERRY BAUER/SIMON & SCHUSTER,
COURTESY TURE LILLEGRAVEN, COURTESY
ANDRE L@YNING, COURTESY ERIN GLORIA
RYAN, COURTESY THEO WENNER, COURTESY
RACHEL RABBIT WHITE, JEFF BURTON; P. 8 AN-
GELO PENNETTA; P. 18 PETER BISCHOFF/GETTY
IMAGES; P. 31 COURTESY ADIDAS (2), DARIO CAN-
TATORE/GETTY IMAGES, TAYLOR SCALISE; P. 35
COURTESY MILEY CYRUS/INSTAGRAM, ALINARI
VIA GETTY IMAGES, ED FEINGERSH/MICHAEL
OCHS ARCHIVES; P, 42 JAKE CHESSUM/TRUNK
ARCHIVE; P. 46 COURTESY UBISOFT; P. 54 CHIP
SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES; P. 102 GIUSEPPE
CESCHI/GETTY IMAGES; P. 105 © JOACHIM
LADEFOGED/VII/CORBIS IMAGES; PP. 106-107
GIUSEPPE CESCHI/GETTY IMAGES; P. 115 KEVIN
SHEA ADAMS; P. 126 ALEXAS URBA/PLAYBOY
ARCHIVES. P. 13 HAIR BY SIENREE DU AT CE-
LESTINE AGENCY, MAKEUP BY DINA GREGG AT
CELESTINE AGENCY, STYLING BY TAYLOR SHER-
IDAN; P. 14 PROP STYLING BY JANINE IVERSEN;
P. 16 STYLING BY HIRO YONEMOTO FOR ATE-
LIER MANAGEMENT; P. 25 PROP STYLING BY
JANINE IVERSEN; P. 30 PROP STYLING BY JA-
NINE IVERSEN; PP. 36-40 HAIR BY JEANIE SYFU
FOR ATELIER MANAGEMENT USING TRESEMME,
MAKEUP BY KERRIE JORDAN, PROP STYLING BY
BRIAN CRUMLEY FOR ROB STRAUSS STUDIO,
STYLING BY KAT TYPALDOS AND STEPHANIE
SINGER; PP. 59-65 HAIR BY BRIAN BUENAVEN-
TURA FOR MANAGEMENT ARTISTS, MAKEUP
BY JUNKO KIOKA FOR JOE MANAGEMENT; PP.
66-75 BLACK-AND-WHITE TOP BY AMERICAN
APPAREL, ROBE MODELS OWN, PANTIES BY
HELLO BEAUTIFUL; PP. 84-97 HAIR BY ESTHER
LANGHAM FOR ART + COMMERCE, MAKEUP BY
LISA HOUGHTON FOR TIM HOWARD MANAGE-
MENT, FASHION EDITING BY BETH FENTON FOR
TIM HOWARD MANAGEMENT; P. 86 TOP BY CAMP
COLLECTION CUSTOMIZED BY BETH FENTON,
JEANS FROM EARLY HALLOWEEN IN NYC; P. go
VINTAGE DRESS FROM NEW YORK VINTAGE.

PLAYBACK

JAMAICA, 1970

Quite a catch: Hef and Barbi Benton ona Caribbean fishing trip.

126

FOLLOW THE BUNNY

00000

/playboy @playboy @playboy playboy «playboy

Shown smaller than actual height of 18 inches
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UL approved; Includes one standard CFL bulb
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The Star Wars Lightsaber
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For Jedi and Sith alike, the lightsaber is the signature tool that
marks a true master of the Force. Now, the lightsabers used by
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Lamp, available exclusively from The Bradford Exchange.

Obi-Wan Kenobi described the lightsaber thus when he first
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a legacy of power and heroism. The handles are finished in

the gleaming silver and black of the original designs and the
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A custom cloth lampshade features handsome artwork of
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The lightsabers are perfectly recre-

"T
The Star Wars™ Lightsaber Legacy Lamp comes with a ated from those used by Luke and

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ar 3° 9%* high. Dispi collection on a tabletop or wall
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"S OF Ам

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Protect, store and showcase
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102015 The Headford Exchange Mint
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A TREASURED MORGAN RETURNS IN STUNNING PROOF QUALITY

For collectors, few coins hold the allure of the Morgan Silver
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Due to meltdowns and hoarding it is estimated that
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, С
awthorne EXCLUSIVE Celebrating pers рта ORIGINALS!
эъ P 3

THE CHEVROLET. нашо CAR EXPRESS

A fine collectible,
Not intended for children under 14, All WAYS

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO RUN YOUR TRAIN!
Along with Shipment
En Two, the "Engine," you'll
je receive a FREE 14-piece
wm = track set, power-pack [PE

and speed controller
WIE ia

YES! Please enter my order OFFER—PLEASE RESPOND PROMPTLY.
for the Chevrolet? Muscle Car ЖЕ — —
Express electric train collection, | mati 9945 Milwaukee Avenue
beginning with the “Diesel: Miet, L 0014-1999;

ere : : Humore VILAGE Division
Locomotive” as described in .
| | ' Signat
\ í d this announcement, EL
` | ı Mrs. Mr. Ms.
ү , Г { Мате Poasa Prri Gary
a SEND NO MONEY NOM, uu,
| City
š Certificate of Authenticity ү
Each Removable Car is a Sculpted & 365-Day Money-Back Guarantee ' Эш 2
Tribute to a Chevy? Muscle Car E
MASTERPIECE a change conce а ni tct 917847-€90201

, Pete aw 4-6 weeks alter initia payment kor shipment

/ K "

; Museu См
Mans 7-04
Shipment One
“Diesel Locomotive”

Shipment Two

In tribute to the automotive genius whose four-wheeled marvels continue
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look like the classic cars from all decades of these historic automobiles,
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Shipment Three Shipment Four

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y
„—

^
—

STOLICHNAY

HERE’S TO
LEAVING
JUST A
LITTLE TO
THE
IMAGINATION.

)LICHNAYA, STOLI

its Irternztio

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