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THE WORLD'S
MOST DANGEROUS
PARTY CITY
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THE INTERVIEW:
DON CHEADLE

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BEYOND TEQUILA
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EVERY HIPSTER

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MISS APRIL
CAMILLE ROWE

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SMARTER, STRONGER, FASTER. THE 2016 CHARGER, VIPER AND CHALLENGER.

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Don Cheadle

To paraphrase the man himself: Hol-
lywood is a business built on sand, a
town that eats you twice, where act-
ing and reality become one. Even
after a 30-year career, Cheadle is still
on the balls of his feet. With the pre-
miere of his riskiest project yet—the
Miles Davis biopic Miles Ahead—as
well as House of Lies and superhero
roles to attend to, the screen legend
explains why in his Playboy Interview.

Matt Farwell

Veterans commit suicide at twice the
rate of civilians, and posttraumatic
stressis often the cause. Farwell, who
served as an infantryman in Afghani-
stan, struggled to regain his footing
after returning to the U.S. With his
life spiraling out of control and other
treatment options exhausted, it took
an experimental injection to get him
back on solid ground; he reports his
own story in The God Shot.

PLAYBILL

Guy Aroch

It’s hard to tell whether Aroch could
have captured his intimate portraits
of Playmate Camille Rowe had the
two not been longtime friends. And
it’s hard to tell whether Rowe looks
to the camera as alover, a best friend,
a partner in crime or something else.
As only a master can, Aroch uses the
space between himself and his sub-
ject to capture an indescribable re-
lationship, leaving us full of wonder.

Chantal Anderson

Our March article on Javier Valadez's
deportation drew much of its emo-
tional weight from its photography,
thanks to Anderson, aLos Angeles-
based photographer, documentar-
ian and journalist with a talent
for capturing visual narrative. Few
others could make a Porsche look
downright gritty, as she does in The
Hottest Topless Porsche Ever in this
month's Auto page.

Marie Calloway

Calloway is a writer who stares down
the harshest details of human expe-
rience and refuses to flinch—and her
work is all the richer for it. In Insipidi-
ties Calloway examines the world of
a woman whose existence is a tangle
of apparent contradictions; in her sex
life and beyond she both encourages
andinverts the relationship between
domination and subjugation. What
results is fiction that burns.

Rebecca Black

Photo Director Rebecca Black came
to the magazine fresh from co-
producing the Sundance-opening
documentary Queen of Versailles.
The same drive to draw high art
from reality motivates her aesthetic
vision for PLAYBOY's pages. In a world
where Instagram has swept aside the
airbrush and authenticity reigns su-
preme, her effort to give expression
to the female form is as vital as ever.

Aurel Schmidt

This month's Artist in Residence
doesn't just cross high culture with
low: She injects both with steroids,
mashes them into an unrecogniz-
able pulp and sets the concoc-
tion on fire. Schmidt's multimedia
art is as varied as her work's emo-
tional range, which can conjure sex,
heartbreak, madness and existen-
tial angst—sometimes in the same
breath. Trust us, it works.

Adam Skolnick

After two decades of reporting from
around the world, travel started to
feel bland to Skolnick. His jonesto es-
cape cookie-cutter tourism brought
him to Lagos, Nigeria, where hustle is
kingand the streets buzz with music,
danger and chaos. Welcome to the
last genuine city on earth, where no
one escapes without searching their
soul. Skolnick asks: Is Lagos the Most
Dangerous Party City on the Planet?

CONTENTS

Departments

NO FILTER Allie X reveals her shadow self 15
DRINKS Meet tequila’s hotter agave siblings 16
STYLE American watches reclaim their crown 20
AUTO The new Porsche Boxster Spyder is the ultimate cure for spring fever 24
ADVISOR Grow up and dump your man-child friend 26
MY WAY Cashmere king Greg Chait is emperor of his own Rome 28
ALSO: the smart side of a very dumb phone; gender-bending colognes
THE RABBIT HOLE Myriad marijuana miscellany by Ben Schott 81
200 Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk traces his rise to unlikely leading man 82
TV True-crime shows that are anything but Dateline 86
FILM Patrick Stewart’s latest roles—damaged anchorman and white supremacist—may finally put Picard to rest 41
FRANCOFILE James Franco talks shop with Game of Thrones director Michelle MacLaren 44
POLITICS John Meroney on why we put ourselves through the circus we call primaries 46
CULTURE John Albert observes how hipsters go shooting 48

ALSO: five crime writers on truth and consequences; Dark Souls III: video game as torture device; Parquet Courts' erudite rock
Features

INTERVIEW what’s on Don Cheadle's mind as he releases the riskiest project of his career? 52
MOLLY STEELE we turn the lens on a limit-defying, beyond-beautiful photographer 60
THE GOD SHOT Matt Farwell relates a veteran's true battle: staying sane after returning home 68
FICTION 7nsipidities by Marie Calloway 74
MISS APRIL Camille Rowe sends her love from Paris 80
IS LAGOS THE MOST DANGEROUS PARTY CITY ON THE PLANET? by Adam Skolnick 94
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE witness the bizarre, shameless world of Aurel Schmidt 102

ON THE COVER (AND OPPOSITE) Camille Rowe, photographed by Guy Aroch. Diamonds aren't a girl's only friend:
You'll find our Rabbit hanging cozily on Camille's vintage necklace.

PLAYBOY

HUGH M. HEFNER
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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

EDITORIAL
CATAUER, JAMES RICKMAN SENIOR EDITORS
SHANE MICHAEL SINGH ASSOCIATE EDITOR; TYLERTRYKOWSKI ASSISTANT EDITOR
WINIFREDORMOND COPY CHIEF; SAMANTHA SAIYAVONGSA, ELIZABETHSUMAN RESEARCH EDITORS
GILBERT MACIAS EDITORIAL COORDINATOR; AMANDA WARREN EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: VINCE BEISER, NEALGABLER, DAVID HOCHMAN, STEPHEN REBELLO, DAVID RENSIN, DAVID SHEFF, ERIC SPITZNAGEL, DON WINSLOW

JAMESFRANCO EDITOR AT LARGE
JAMES ROSEN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

ART
CHRIS DEACON SENIOR ART DIRECTOR; AARON LUCAS ART MANAGER; LAURELLEWIS ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR

PHOTOGRAPHY
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS: CHANTALANDERSON, GRANT CORNETT, ELAYNE LODGE, KATE PARFET, ANGELO PENNETTA, MAGDALENA WOSINSKA, TREY WRIGHT
EVANSMITH PHOTO RESEARCHER
KEVIN MURPHY DIRECTOR, PHOTO LIBRARY; CHRISTIE HARTMANN SENIOR ARCHIVIST, PHOTO LIBRARY
AMYKASTNER-DROWN SENIOR DIGITAL IMAGING SPECIALIST

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

PUBLIC RELATIONS
THERESA M. HENNESSEY VICE PRESIDENT; TERI THOMERSON DIRECTOR

PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES INTERNATIONAL, INC.
SCOTTFLANDERS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
DAVIDG.ISRAEL CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, PRESIDENT, PLAYBOY MEDIA
CORY JONES CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER
NEVILLE WAKEFIELD CREATIVE DIRECTOR, PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES

ADVERTISING AND MARKETING
PHILLIP MORELOCK CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER AND PUBLISHER; MARIEFIRNENO VICE PRESIDENT, ADVERTISING DIRECTOR
RUSSELLSCHNEIDER EXECU TIVE DIRECTOR, INTEGRATED MEDIA SALES; AMANDACIVITELLO VICE PRESIDENT, EVENTS AND PROMOTIONS
NEW YORK: MALICKCISSE DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING OPERATIONS AND PROGRAMMATIC SALES
ANGELALEE DIGITAL CAMPAIGN MANAGER; MICHELLE TAFARELLA MELVILLE SENIOR DIRECTOR, ENTERTAINMENT AND BEAUTY
ADAM WEBB SENIOR DIRECTOR, SPIRITS; OLIVIABIORDI MEDIA SALES PLANNER; JASMINEYU MARKETING DIRECTOR
TIMOTHY KELLEPOUREY INTEGRATED MARKETING DIRECTOR; KARIJASPERSOHN ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, MARKETING AND ACTIVATION
AMANDACHOMICZ DIGITAL MARKETING MANAGER; VOULALYTRAS EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT AND OFFICE MANAGER
CHICAGO: TIFFANYSPARKSABBOTT SENIOR DIRECTOR, MIDWEST
LOS ANGELES: DINALITT SENIOR DIRECTOR, WEST COAST; KRISTIALLAIN SENIOR MARKETING MANAGER
VICTORIA FREDERICK SALES ASSISTANT

Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), April 2016, volume 63, number 3. 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 for a 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
to time we make our subscriber list available to companies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers. If you would rather not receive such mailings, please send your current mailing
label to: Playboy, P.O. Box 62260, Tampa, FL, 33662-2260. For subscription-related questions, e-mail playboy@customersvc.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
to edit and 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 101. Four Bradford Exchange onserts in domestic subscription
polywrapped copies. Showtime insert bound between pages 40/41 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.

INTRODUCING
PLAYBOY COLLECTOR S EDITION ART TOYS

CET] | HV \ £A m E
X COR WP - |
SELECT TOYS AVAILABLE NOW | COARTISM.COM

NO FILTER

“I'm no expert on Carl
Jung, but I’m connected }
to his concept of the
shadow self. So the Xin
my name stands for the
variables in life. We all
have an X. My music is
about the journey to find-
ing a sense of wholeness.
But I'm not some religious
cult leader telling people
they won't be whole until
they do the same. Being
confused is a big part
of it. After all, the least
complex thing about me
is that I'm a white girl who
grew up in the suburbs."
CollXtion Il, Allie X's next
release, is out this spring.

en
pposed to

ts.”

“It’s liberating y

you realize we’

ha dark tho

PHOTOGRAPHY BY OLIVIA JAFFE

DRINKS

YES,IT'S COOL TO DRINK

CACTUS

Our resident bartender on why now is the perfect time to shake things up with your margarita

You know by now that tequila is cool again, as
evidenced by the multitude of premium bot-
tles designed to go down easy. And with warm
weather on the way, it's high time to expand
your cocktailian mind with the lesser-known
agave spirits from Mexico. While smoky
mezcal—made in Oaxaca from the espadin
agave—has been trending recently, it's being
matched in popularity by single-varietal ver-
sions from other regions. Though technically

a mezcal because it comes from the agave
plant, tangy and intense raicilla is distilled
in the Mexican state of Jalisco and thus falls
outside the mezcal denomination of origin.
Bacanora hails from Sonora; it tends to be
less smoky and tastes quite vegetal, almost
like juniper and basil. Sotol is created in a
similar manner as mezcal (generally speak-
ing, agaves are roasted and smoked in an in-
ground pit before their juices are distilled)

but comes from a member of the evergreen
family that looks like an agave. The result is a
clean, crisp, vegetal spirit that's awesome for
making cocktails. And there's some poetry in
these drinks: Once, in Guadalajara, a man told
me that tequila makes drinkers shine—the
agave, having soaked up all that heat and sun
for many years, just has to come out when we
drink it, he explained. So drink up and bring
on summer from the inside out.—Ivy Mix

How to Mix Mexican

Alternative agave drinks to order at the bar (or add to yours)

EL JOLGORIO MEZCAL

This brand produces nine
distinct bottlings, each from

a different variety of agave

and by a different distiller. At
about $100 a bottle, it should be
savored as a sipper—or mixed
with extreme precision.

SOTOL POR SIEMPRE
Chihuahua-based Por Siempre
uses alembic pot stills to
preserve the smokiness the
fruit picks up as it's being
roasted. In this case the fruit
isn't agave but the desert spoon
plant—a.k.a. sotol.

THE JAVELINA

DEL MAGUEY ESPADIN
ESPECIAL

This very limited bottling is

one of the benchmark mezcals
on the market. It's extremely
complex, with floral, citrusy,
salty and butterscotch notes—a
mezcal to be sipped, for sure.

Think of this celery-flavored cocktail as a fresh and savory (and slightly spicy) alternative to an old fashioned.

1% oz. Sotol Por Siempre + % oz. fresh lemon juice + % oz. simple syrup *

% oz. Velvet Falernum + 2 dashes Bittermens Hellfire Habanero Shrub

Muddle two or three one-inch celery pieces in cocktail shaker. Add liquids. Shake and strain into rocks glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with thinly sliced celery stalk.

en 9 ES

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GRANT CORNETT
3 ? x
— FE

T e | ৬৬৬৬
Smartest
Dumb
Phone

Imagine a mobile phone that can't take a photo,
run an app or give you directions. It sounds retro
and strangely refreshing. The Jasper Morrison-
designed MP 01 from Swiss company Punkt is
basic and black in a way that makes Apple prod-
ucts look weak and fussy. While the MP o1 will
never replace your smartphone, think of it as a
backup phone or a blissful downgrade in connec-
tivity. Free ofthe distractions of shitty Instagram
photography, lazy geolocation and clichéd emojis,
you may feel your urge to dip into the data stream
subside, if only for a moment. $295, punkt.ch

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GRANT CORNETT

- TN |)

A af
'OGRAPHY BY GR

STYLE

It’s Time
to Buy an
American

Watch

How to get in on the ground floor
of this homegrown revolution

With all due respect to Switzerland, the United
States is poised to reclaim its status as the
global leader in watchmaking. In the mid-
and late 19th century, stateside watch brands
were unveiling innovations left and right, only
to be overtaken by the Swiss during the Great
Depression. But today, with Detroit-based
Shinola seeing success with its locally assem-
bled Runwell, *we are currently in the middle
ofan American watchmaking revolution," says
Michael Wilson, co-founder and chief executive
of Kansas City-based Niall. Although the Niall
GMT's movements are still produced in Swit-
zerland, most of its production happens within
10 minutes of the company's main office.
Kobold (launched in 1998 by founder Michael
Kobold as part of a school project at Carnegie
Mellon University) also relies on Swiss move-
ments, but when the company released its Spirit
of America model back in 2006, it was the first
large-series timepiece to be produced in the
U.S. in nearly 40 years. Now Los Angeles-based
Weiss Watch Company is set to take things to
the next level with the spring launch ofthe first
scalable production of a watch movement in the
U.S. in five decades. Founder Cameron Weiss
designed the 120-part mechanical movement,
and the entire thing is manufactured in L.A. by
a team of artisans cobbled together from dif-
ferent fields. The initial watch outfitted with
the American-made movement is a limited-
edition run, but there are ambitious plans for
expansion. The company’s aviation-inspired
Field Watch with aged leather strap will soon
be head-to-toe American. And now it’s com-
ing full circle: Weiss says, “I have even been ap-
proached by Swiss companies looking to source
watch parts from Weiss Watch Company here
in the U.S."— Chadner Navarro

Weiss Standard Issue Field Watch, white dial, $950.

STYLE

The Future

ofFragrance

Is Unisex

Postgender cologne is having a
moment, and it smells pretty good

When Calvin Klein launched CK2, the new up-
date of its legendary unisex cologne CK One,
it did so with much postgender fanfare. In
addition to a bottle with multiple anatomical
interpretations (pictured at right), a provoca-
tiveadcampaign shotby artphotographer Ryan
McGinley features models paired in various guy-
guy, girl-girl, androgynous guy-androgynous
girl configurations. The company says the fra-
grance “celebrates the diversity of connections
between two people...defined by who they are,
not what they are” and that it is a “gender-free
fragrance for a man or a woman, without prej-
udices.” So what exactly does a prejudice-free
fragrance smell like? In this case it’s bright
and cucumbery, with the subtlest of sweet wood
notes. It doesn’t indulge in the typical markers
of masculine (super earthy) or feminine (floral)
and as such is something versatile, inoffensive,
everyday and, in a word, normal.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GRANT CORNETT

CK2, $75 for 3.4 ounces.

Three (Manly) Postgender Fragrances

LE LABO SANTAL 33
If you want to musk
up, this is the hipster
cologne to do it with
(smelled in emerging
zip codes in New

York and L.A.). It's
intoxicatingly woodsy,
funky and spicy—and
best used sparingly.

ESCENTRIC
MOLECULE O1

This cologne has
grassy, fresh-cut wood
aromas and reacts to
your body chemistry to
create a unique scent.
Women will need
tolean in to smell it,
which is a good thing.

BYREDO

ROSE OF
NO MAN'S LAND

tav og run

BYREDO ROSE OF
NO MAN’S LAND
Named for the front-
line nurses of World
War 1, this unisex
perfume has subtle
rose notes; wearing
itisatruetest ofa
man's trans-scent-ual
confidence.

AUTO

The FRUITS VEGETABLES)
Hottest ^ GROCERIES |
Topless € MEATS
Porsche Wins =
Ever |

The new Boxster Spyder is lighter,
faster and just about all you could
want in a roadster

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X ৩১৫ d

০৫১৫

১৮১০১,
DER

Call us superficial, but we think the Speed
Racer-like humps behind the headrests of
the 2016 Boxster Spyder are its coolest fea-
ture. And if you’re into the substantive side
of driving, you won’t be disappointed either.
We found the new top-of-the-line Boxster
as addictive cruising Sunset Boulevard as it
was powering through the sloping volcanic
byways on the Big Island of Hawaii—though
thelatter definitely leaves you more tempted
to pony up a down payment on the $82,100
auto. It's easy to get a little cocky driving
the topless two-seater because of how well
it handles as you push in and out of turns.
Powered by the same 3.8-liter six-cylinder
engine that drives the Cayman GT4, with a
few tweaks, the Boxster Spyder's overhaul
includes a lighter aluminum body, a tighter
version of the 911 Turbo's electromechanical
power-steering system and brakes from the
400-plus horsepower 911 Carrera S in-line.
Inside and outside, it's the best bang-for-buck
Porsche yet.—Marcus Amick

৫

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHANTAL ANDERSON

LITA

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THE NUMBERS

PRICE: $82,100
HORSEPOWER: 375
TORQUE: 309 LB.-FT.

ZERO TO 60 MPH: 4.3 SEC.
TOP TRACK SPEED: 180 MPH

MPG: CITY 18/HIGHWAY 24

ADVISOR

My Friend's a Self-Involved

SENSITIVE DOUCHEBAG

Q: I kind of hate my best friend. Dan was
o

my college roommate. Iwas the shy kid
from nowhere; he was the one with experiences
beyond his years. He lost his virginity on a hay-
ride, did mushrooms at 14 and could always
outtalk everybody else in the room. He intro-
duced me to everything: drugs, girls and drama.
Flash-forward a decade. I've landed a decent
job and a comfortable living situation, while
Dan is still living like
a 21-year-old. He works
part-time at a grocery
store and wakes up next to a new Tinder date
every morning. Maybe it's jealousy, but lately
I find him to be grotesque. These days we don't
have much to talk about, unless the subject is
Danand how many chicks he's hooked up with or
drugshe's done. I'm starting to think our friend-
ship has run its course. Am I being too sensitive,
oris Dana total douche caboose I need to drop?

e It sounds as though Dan is what I like
€ to call a “manic pixie fuck-boy.” The
MPFB is marked by his slight handsome-

sy RACHEL RABBIT WHITE

ness, impressive speech, emotional meltdowns
and an insistence on making your life more
“meaningful”—whether you want him to or
not. Inthe romantic realm, breakingup with an
MPFB is hard because, well, there's never actu-
ally any true “dating” in the first place. Your con-
nection with Dan is a platonic alliance between
bros, but a common toxic friendship narrative
keeps you together: The MPFB gets to fuck up,
and in turn you get to be
the “real adult,” the one
with your shit together.
To discuss these dynamics I brought to-
gether a cadre of Prada-bag-wielding bitches
who refuse to settle but are not impervious to
the MPFB’s charms. After comparing notes
on archetypal MPFBs—Shia LaBeouf! Ethan
Hawke!—we got down to the issue at hand. One
of the girls, Helena, 26, sat forward with a se-
rious expression. “They’re unstable, and that’s
what is interesting to us,” she said. “Other
women would walk away within minutes of
meeting this type of dude, but the cycle of being
chased and then rejected is intoxicating.”

“J often casually date MPFBs," said Maureen,
29. "I treat them with as much humanity as
they treat me: none. And that's why it's neces-
sary to ghost on them. Of course they'll blow up
your phone. If it gets bad, just send a text say-
ing you need to break it off, and leave it at that."

"But a manic pixie fuck-boy never really lets
go,” warned Gabby, 22. The girls concurred en-
thusiastically. “You agree to take space, and the
next thing you know, he's based a character in
his novel on you." (Be grateful, Sensitive Bro,
that you'll never have to read your “fictional” sex
scene in which an MPFB narrates the thoughts
running through his mind as he goes limp, sud-
denly aware of a certain existential malaise, the
sound ofthe curtains rustling in the A/C.)

Defriending the douchebag is the best way
to break the cycle you're stuck in. Friendship
works only when it's voluntary. The people in
an MPFB's life are a captive audience to his
genius. There is no contract binding you to
Dan—only the bro-ment, which you should
enjoy, not endure. Ghost away.

Questions? E-mail advisor@playboy.com.

ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE PERRY

Y PLAYBOY SHOP com

Take 1096 off with promo code SHOP10 at playboyshop.com through April 30, 2016.

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MY WAY

I think, live, work and talk in a stream of con-
sciousness. Let's just call it a fluid life. A trip to
Tokyo, 10 executed ideas, six great meals, four
dips in the ocean, two dates, three trips to a Rus-
sian banya, countless beers with friends, one
and a half major hangovers, a lot of quality fam-
ily time and much dreaming—these are only a
fraction of what can happen in atypical week.

When I think about what “my way” means in
my personal language, it translates to “living
free and unwavering belief.” Dylan Thomas’s
poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”
resonates with me because it’s beautiful—and
because it partly describes my process.

I have literally and metaphorically been say-
ing “when in Rome” my whole life, in my busi-
ness, my personal life, my family life. But my
Rome isn’t so much about conforming to soci-
ety as it is about conforming to the spirit of the
moment, whatever that may be. Let me explain.

Want to go to Normandy for aday? Sure. Make
an eight-foot cashmere teddy bear? Make it 12
feet. Eight days to finish a collection? Totally
possible. It may seem fragmented, but viewed
all at once, everything adds up.

A lot of people need to go far away to find them-
selves, or need to head to big social gatherings to
have fun, or needa drink to relax, or have to go to
an office to work, or have to drive a certain car to
feel good. These are things I do and like, but they
can be limiting if you overcommit to just one as
the solution. I view them as evolving tools in an
ever-expanding tool kit put to use for the greater
good of Rome. Let me explain further.

When I close a big deal: Rome. Find just the
right color: Rome. Have a beautiful moment
with my kid: Rome. Figure out a modern-family
tactic with my ex and her new husband, whom I
callafriend: Rome. Have acrush onagirl: Rome.
Brainstorma totally insane but executable proj-
ect: Rome. Fight for a belief even though no one
thinks it's going to work: Rome. Have the free-
dom to make the hard decision: Rome. Take
small hits: Rome. Take major hits and get right
back up: Welcome to the Vatican.

Not pursuing a dream because of imagined
fears: not Roman. Staying with a shit projectout
ofego: not Roman. Justifyinggood when great is
possible: Roman suburbs at best.

I applied this ethos to the creation of the Elder
Statesman, and a beautiful monster was born.
She’s a vehicle for my expensive eye, my weird-
ness, my addiction to work and fun, and my need
for creative instant gratification. She’s forever
young, fertile, sensitive and sometimes mean,
but she’s beautiful, strong and sweetly naive with
avery old soul. I built something I could love. Ni

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|] il 1 1
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Made in the USA NA [eer 1) c /

THE RABBIT HOLE

ON MARIJU

4:20

Just as 2:30 is the only
time for a dental ap-
pointment, so 4:20 is
the best time (or date)
to get high. The ety-
mology of this *stoner
code" is still debated
ad absurdum, but it's
safe to say that it has
nothing to do with:

_ Adolf Hitler's birthday (4/20/1889)
F :

__ A Columbine remembrance (4/20/1999)

The most likely origin dates to 1971 and a
quartet of San Rafael High School stoners (the
“Waldos”) who met (by a wall, hence the nick-
name) to get high at 4:20 in the afternoon. ¥
Contrary to myth, the clocks in Pulp Fiction
are not all set to 4:20; however, Bill Murray is
seen wide-awake with jet lag at precisely 4:20
A.M. in Lost in Translation.

JAZZ CIGARETTES — —

The Jazz Age was infused with marijuana,
which vipers (devotees) called tea, reefer,
muggles and gage. The influence of weed is
more than hinted at in a range of jazz songs:

“The Man From Harlem” . Cab Calloway

“Texas Tea Party” - Benny Goodman

In his 1959 study “The Use of Drugs by Jazz
Musicians,” Charles Winick asked 357 New
York jazz artists about their narcotic use:

MARIJUANA HEROIN
BOG A tried at least once 53%
54% % occasional user.. 24%
2596 3co os regular usern 1696

er BEN SCHOTT

“4:20 mean you either roll up or roll out.”

—METHOD MAN
— ———SPLIFFCELLANY — — —

০৮5

Ag-tetrahydrocannabinol

CH;

The *marijuana detection window" for urine
testsisacrucialissue for drugcourts (and some
job applications). Yet the common belief that
“washout” takes 30 days may be an overesti-
mate; research from 2006 suggests that weed
may be detectable for only three (light, occa-
sional use) to 21 days (heavy, chronic use). But
don’t blame us if you get busted. Y The slang ^B"
refers to the amount of dope that fits inside a
matchbox. Y A 2010 Lancet study ranked 20 il-
licit and licit drugs by the overall harm they
cause, with the most harmful in first place:

— mee’ Alcohol | 11 Ketamine
2545৮758885 Heroin: | 12 Methadone
e Crack cocaine 13 Mephedrone
4. Methamphetamine i444 Butane
l COCAINE ! i888 Khat
5556555525৫ Tobacco 16. Anabolic steroids
558: Amphetamine | 17............ Ecstasy
75447 Cannabis | WB... LSD
+ OVE TESS GHB 19... Buprenorphine

10. Benzodiazepenes 20 Mushrooms

Inter viewed by the BBC,
Chico Marx revealed how
his brother Julius acquired
his now famous nickname:
“We used to wear a lit-
tle bag around our neck,
called agrouch bag. In this
bagwe would keep our pen-
nies, some marbles, a couple of pieces of candy,
a little marijuana, whatever we could get.” Y

— —— — POLL YOUR OWN — — —

*Do you think the use of marijuana
should be made legal, or not?" —Gallup poll

LEGAL NOT LEGAL

Below are the rates of marijuana use within
the U.S. population, surveyed in 2014:

96 lifetime pastyear past month
TOTAL 44 18 8
Male 50 17 11
Female 39 10 6
Age: 12-17 16 13 7
18-25 53 32 20
>26 46 10 7

When users report how they got their last
hit, a friend with weed is a friend indeed,
but a friend who shares is a friend who cares.

Got it free or shared someone else's 48%

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,

“National Survey on Drug Use and Health,” 2014

—FOUR STAGES OF SCHWAGG-

Excited mental well-being
accompanied by motor excitation
Mental confusion accompanied
by illusions and hallucination

Depression and sleep

SOURCE: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 1951

DOPE-CABULARY: Acapulco gold - Aunt Mary - bhang - bifter - Bob Hope - chronic - doobie - dutchie - gage - ganja - giggle-smoke - grass - hash - hashish - herb - joint - kif - kush - kutchie - loco weed -

Mary Jane - Mary Warner - mohasky - mooters - mota - mu- muggles - paca hash - pot - reefer - roaches - schwagg - sinsemilla - soles - sticks - tea - temple balls - tool - wacky-tobacky - weed - whoonga

20Q

You'll be glad to know that the star of Better Call Saul and W/ Bob & David—two of the most
adored spin-offs in recent TV history—is not comfortable with his newfound success

Q1: Your longtime manager, the late Bernie Brill-
stein, said, "When your time has come, success
will find you." Where were you when it happened?

ODENKIRK: Sitting in an office at
Raleigh Studios, writing a pilot that was
destined to fail—one of many. I got a
phone call from my agent. “You're going
to get offered a role,” he said. “Don't say
no. It's a good one.” I don't know why he
felt he had to remind me: I'd been say-
ing yes to everything. I was in devel-
opment on a couple of projects. I was
directing commercials. I'd shot three

you show up for a day. But it's not really
filling your life. I felt a little lost in the
wilderness. So I get this call, and the
show was Breaking Bad. It was a drama
and a different kind of acting than any-
body had asked me to do before. I'd never
seen the show. I called a friend who had.
“Oh yeah, that's my favorite show,” he
said. “You gotta do that.” It helps to have
someone go, “It's awesome.” So 1 said
okay. I had to fly to Albuquerque. I took
the bus to the airport. From then on,
good things started happening.

zelhaus,” the spin-off from Hogan's

Heroes where Sergeant Schultz opens a

noodle restaurant after the war. Lasted

for eight seasons in Austria.
Q3: In his recent Playboy Interview, Bryan
Cranston said he rents you his house in Albu-
querque and you sleep in his bed. What are your
dreams like when you slumber in the bed of the
one who knocks?

ODENKIRK: I dream of being chased by

Emmys trying to give themselves to me.
Q4: What was Bryan's best advice on how to be
a leading man?

ODENKIRK: I wanted to know how hard
it was to have my own show. He was
very encouraging: ^You ran Mr. Show,

films. I wrote a show about four dads,
Incompetent Husbands, and I wrote a
show about minor league baseball, San

Q2: At the final Breaking Bad wrap party you
said, "A TV series is ultimately judged by its spin-
off." What are your favorite spin-offs?

Diego Snakes. 1 wrote a couple of mov-
ies. I was also doing little roles here and
there, stuff a friend asks you to do and

ODENKIRK: IfI said Petticoat Junction,
would you believe me? You would be a
fool. No, my favorite is “Schultz's Schnit-

so you've already been a leader on set.
You're ready for this." I said, “I know
that, but how do you do it? What does

BY DAVID RENSIN PHOTOGRAPHY BY AMANDA DEMME

your day look like?" He said, *Oh, okay.
You wake up, you study your lines, and
you get to work. At lunch you study your
lines. You have them make you dinner—
because you will not have time to get
dinner—and then you go home and study
your lines. You study your lines in the
airport. You study them on the plane.
You study your lines when you're back
home. That's how you do it." Maybe it
sounds obvious, but he made it concrete.
You work hard.

Q5: It sounds like there's no time for fun.
ODENKIRK: There are times when, if
the dialogue is fairly dry, I have a great,
deep-seated need to be goofy. I might
ask the director if I can just do a take
where I get to be stupid, to get it out of
my system. On the movie Nebraska I
had to read a news report. I could not
get through that thing. I said, *Can I
just do a silly one? Please? Shoot it, but
Imjustgoing to completely make fun of
everything I'm saying.” Once I did that I
was able to do it straight. On Better Call
Saul there's a courtroom scene in the
first season, a montage of me walking
around yelling and lecturing. That's all
me goofing around.

Q6: Under what circumstances would you call Saul?
ODENKIRK: A car accident? [/aughs]
Please tell me I’ll never have to call one
of those lawyers.

Q7: Late last year you and David Cross did a

highly anticipated four-show run on Netflix of

your inimitable brand of sketch comedy provoca-
tively titled W/ Bob & David. Where is Mr. Show
now and what is he doing?
ODENKIRK: He's in Ukraine and is avery
successful live stage act touring Eastern
Europe. I imagine it's still very popular
in Turkey.

Q8: Given your recent noncomedy commitments,

how much did you feel you had to re-hone your

comedy edge when you did W/ Bob & David?
ODENKIRK: I didn't. I’ve done it for 25
years pretty much day in and day out.
If I had to write a comedy show start-
ing today, I wouldn't be intimidated by

it. You have to remember a few things,
but I don’t think it’s that hard. We did
W/ Bob & David in just a few months.
We kicked right into it. And we want
to do more if we can and be even more
different—like the “Salesman” piece
in the last show, where we riffed on the
Maysles brothers documentary Sales-
man. I had also recently done [IFC
sketch series] The Birthday Boys. I
was in the writing room every day for
months, even while I was doing Better
Call Saul. In fact, there are probably
four sketches in W/ Bob & David that I
wrote for The Birthday Boys. So I don't
feel that far away from comedy. But ask
me in two years.
Q9: When you were a guest on Marc Maron's
WTF podcast, he said many of his listeners re-
gard Mr. Show as "the starting place of modern
comedy.” Do you agree?
ODENKIRK: Mr. Show was a really strong
point-of-view sketch show at atime when
there weren't many. Anything like that
is always a touchstone for people, and it
inspires them to think, What about my
sensibility? If these guys can do it so
purely and so directly, it gives me hope.
I spent years writing on Saturday Night
Live, and I learned about sketch writing
from Jim Downey, Robert Smigel and Al
Franken. Those guys are really good. I
came to Mr. Show wanting to do the best
work I could do, so it has a rhythm to it.
The sketches have fairly good construc-
tion overall. I think it's true, but you'd
have to ask the people who claim to be
inspired by it.
Q10: You've cited Monty Python as a major in-
fluence. Have you ever discussed Mr. Show with
any of them?
ODENKIRK: I interviewed John Cleese
onstage in San Diego for his latest book.
Icertainly told him about Mr. Show, but
he'd never heard of it. No idea. He didn't
know Breaking Bad either. I didn't care.
It's my job to know their stuff. Monty
Python truly was the inspiration for
me to try anything in this business. It

makes me so happy. I don't think the
stuff I’ve done is Monty Python level,
but I'm proud that the material Dave
and I dois grounded there. Okay, “more
leaden” could be another term. But I'm
okay with that.

Q11: /s it true you originally wanted to do drama?
ODENKIRK: Even though I wanted to
do sketch comedy, onstage I felt like,
What am I doing up here? No one wants
to look at me when I'm standing next to
David Cross or Chris Farley or Jay John-
ston. Those guys are fun to watch doing
sketches. Instinctively I felt I might ac-
tually be fun to watch in a good drama.
I have a complex energy. You watch and
go, “That guy says he wants one thing,
but what does he really want?” That
really works in drama when you're look-
ing for ulterior motives; in sketch com-
edy it's not good. Sketch comedy should
be simple, fun, direct. [pauses] 1 know
what you're going to say: that I do fine
with sketch comedy. Okay. But I'm not
as good as those guys.

Q12: What about David Cross makes you jealous?

Would David be even funnier with hair and you

with less hair?

ODENKIRK: He's funnier than me. He's
one ofthe funniest people I've ever met.
He's quick with a joke, a line, a turn. I
can be quick, but he's quick 90 percent
of the time, compared with my 40 per-
cent. I'm serious. He takes an attitude
quicker and he's got a comic dimension
that's readily understood. And he's
super funny just the way he is. I might
be funnier bald—totally bald, instead
of half bald.

Q13: When you work with David Cross, why does

your name always come first in the titles?
ODENKIRK: Could you not bring that up,
buddy?

Q14: In a Better Call Saul podcast you discussed

Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman getting comfort-

able in his own skin. How and when did you get

comfortable in your own skin?
ODENKIRK: I'm not very comfortable. I'm
pretty restless. Youshould get comfortable

EVEN IF YOU LIKED ALL THE STUFF IDID
IN THE PAST TWO YEARS, YOU'D THINK,
BUT YOU'RE A SKETCH CLOWN.

at some point, don't you think? Like
somewhere around the age of, uh, 53. It's
hard to find balance in life. Maybe now
Ima little more sure of what I can do,
which also includes what I can't do, so I'm
alittle more secure with saying, “It’s okay
Ican’t do that; it’s not me." For instance,
you're asked to do things for PR, and
when I was younger I'd say, “Yeah! Any-
thing to get the word out. I mean literally
anything.” But now I know who lam, and
Iknow when something’s not good for me
and when I won't be fun.

Q15: Which you demonstrated on Jimmy Kim-
mel Live! when you gave him a list of tough
questions to ask you because you thought peo-
ple were too nice to you.

ODENKIRK: That joke was meant to

come out of honesty. I'm sorry, I can't
help but think that, however much
somebody appreciates this great work
I've been allowed to do, they also have
another question, which is “Look at
your fucking head. Why are you even
on a show?" I would ask it. I’m proud
of the work I've done. I think it's good,
and I'm glad it works. I don't try to tank.
But I still think that even if you liked
all the stuff I got to be a part of in the
pasttwo years, you'd think, But you'rea
sketch clown. What right do you have?
Years ago, I remember being shocked at
how my friends in comedy oftentimes
couldn't take criticism of what they
did—which is weird, because all we do
is criticize. We make fun of everybody

in the world for being indulgent, hypo-
critical and full of themselves. That's
what comedy is: pointing out idiocies.
Soshouldn't we expect and even look for
people to do the same to us?

Q16: As you said, you're good at playing a dra-

matic character who is more complex beneath the

surface. So what does Jimmy McGill really want?
ODENKIRK: Sadly, respect from the
people he loves: his brother, his girl-
friend. I wish him luck with that. Also,
to get lucky. He's cynical but good-
hearted. He's very much an everyman.
Jimmy is so much more relatable and
likable than Saul Goodman. He even
says, to Walter White, “My name isn't
Saul Goodman. I'm not Saul Good-
man." In Breaking Bad you only see
one very small part of his life. We don't
know what his world looks like outside
thatoffice.Ithink wecan assume, from
his energy, that he's got some equilib-
rium in his life, briefly. But there's no
certainty. I hope the viewers of Better
Call Saul notice that.

Q17: How do you find your equilibrium?
ODENKIRK: Riding my bike up to the
Griffith Observatory. Just being dis-
tracted, not trying to solve a problem
or get something down on paper. Espe-
cially in Los Angeles, because the dan-
ger of riding in traffic really focuses you
and makes you think of whatyou want on
your tombstone.

Q18: When do you get scared?

ODENKIRK: I got scared about Better
Call Saul when I saw the billboards go
up. Up until then it's just a project I'm
raring to go make happen and do the
best we can with. I'm like, *Let's go!
Let's go! Yeah! Who knows what we can
do with it! It's exciting!" And then the
billboards go up and you go, *Uh-oh.
People are going to watch."

Q19: Where do you keep the 1989 Emmy you won

for writing on SNL? And the 1993 Emmy from The

Ben Stiller Show?

ODENKIRK: They're at my wife's office,
and I think they're impressive there
and make people smile. If I looked at
them every day my blood would curdle
and my ego would turn to an evil snake-
eating-itself kind of creature.

Q20: /s it necessary to suffer for art?

ODENKIRK: Yes. Come on, do you trust
anyone who enjoys doing their work
too much? I don't. That's how you get A
Prairie Home Companion and Thomas
Kinkade shit. L|

You Gan’t Handle

THE TRUTH

We're more fascinated with true crime than ever before. But what are we really looking for?

It has been a banner couple of years for true-
crime creeps. We're accustomed to bingeing
on Investigation Discovery with the curtains
closed, but the rise of what could be called
"prestige true crime" on cable, streaming
networks and the podcastosphere has al-
lowed us to come out of the closet. Being fas-
cinated with murder is beyond trendy; it's
highbrow, crowned with the laurels of NPR,
HBO and Netflix. You can hardly go online
without brushing past a think piece on Serial
host Sarah Koenig's introspective slant on in-
vestigative journalism, an update on the trial
of Robert Durst, whose bathroom bombshell
capped off the final episode of The Jinx, or a
Making a Murderer subreddit dedicated to
Steven Avery's court documents.

But is all prestige true crime created equal?
We now live in the world of *Fancy Dateline,"
where the line between art and exploitation
can get blurry. Case in point: The Jinx began
as a fascinating portrayal of
a New York real estate scion
who escaped retribution for his
numerous suspected crimes, but thelatter half
of the season devolved into director Andrew
Jarecki's dogged pursuit of a confession. And
for all The Jinx’s pedigree and elevated pro-
duction values, its format—stern male host,
cheesy reenactments—soon took on a famil-
iar network glare.

Those reenactments are a far cry from the
methods of documentarian Errol Morris, whose
groundbreaking 1988 film, The Thin Blue Line,
resulted in an innocent man's exoneration.
Morris's abstract, balletic dramatizations
change as the movie progresses, morphing to
match each subject's version of events. The
idea, he tells us, is that *consciousness is a re-
enactment. We all reconstruct reality for our-
selves again and again and again." The Jinx, on
the other hand, keeps its reenactments to a sin-

PHOTOGRAPHY BY TREY WRIGHT

er KATIE WALSH

gle POV. “Are they asking you to think about the
nature of the crime,” Morris asks, “or are they
just showing you the crime?”

Other series trade closure for ambiguity. Dur-
ing the first season of the Serial podcast, Koenig
spotlights her bewilderment at the then 15-year-
old murder of Baltimore teenager Hae Min Lee.
Koenig becomes an audience proxy, wrestling
with seemingly incompatible facts. Her bond
with Adnan Syed, Lee’s ex-boyfriend and the
man convicted of her murder, further compli-
cates her position. Far from alienating listeners,
that factual and ethical murkiness drove hordes
of armchair detectives to their keyboards to an-
alyze whatever evidence they could scavenge on-
line. The show's uncertainty, carried along by a
plucky soundtrack and Koenig's nerdy charm,
became a hallmark of quality.

The filmmakers behind Making a Murderer
likewise accepted that the truth would defy
their show’s allotted run-time. The tale of
Steven Avery, a man exonerated
by DNA evidence after 18 years
in prison on a sexual assault
charge and then convicted again, this time of
the rape and murder of photographer Teresa
Halbach, took a decade to adapt into roughly
10 hours of streaming television. Moira Demos
says that when she and her co-director, Laura
Ricciardi, set out for Wisconsin, they had a lot
of questions: “We thought the questions might
lead to answers, but actually, each question
just led to a thousand more questions.” They
sought to preserve that experience for view-
ers by collecting as many primary-source
materials as possible—including interviews,
documents, courtroom tapes and original
documentary footage—and then “immers-
ing the viewer in these materials to let them
try to experience the case for themselves,”
says Ricciardi. But the series is taking a beat-
ing for neglecting to include specific pieces of

evidence that might have further implicated
Avery, and prosecutor Ken Kratz has publicly
criticized the show’s presentation of events.
A Wisconsin radio reporter who appears as
part of the media pool in the series has even
announced a podcast, Rebutting a Murderer.
If anything, the truth behind Halbach’s death
seems further away than ever, but that doesn’t
mean we'll stop searching for it.

The trend continues to expand and mutate:
Older series such as SundanceTV’s The Stair-
case are being dusted off for new fans, and Mor-
ris is working on another crime documentary,
as well as a book about how movies have in-
fluenced criminal investigations. True crime
even bleeds into fiction: USA Network has an-
nounced the “docustyle” crime drama 8 Years
Lost, while the upcoming fifth season of the
cult comedy series Arrested Development has
been billed as *Making a Murderer meets Don-
ald Trump." And the colossus of modern true
crime finally arrived in February with The Peo-
plev. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.

Maybe the difference between true crime
and prestigetrue crime is thatthe latter leaves
you craving more information—and more en-
gagement. A common complaint among pop-
culture editorialists involves the overheated
and unregulated nature of online speculation
surrounding these series. But to Demos, the
high stakes and complexity that come with
real-life crime stories serve as “an antidote
to apathy." She adds that *people are craving
that—to get involved in the world." When we
witness injustice, the desire to be involved in
righting a wrong is almost too enticing. And
maybe that's enough. If nothing else, this new
wave of true-crime entertainment has shown
millions of Americans the guts of our criminal
justice system—a system that's convoluted,
fallible and all but indistinguishable from the
gavel-banging operas of prime time. E

BOOKS

Five True-

Crime Authors,

One Question

e Po you feel you arrived at
e an indisputable truth about

your subject, or did you end up
with more questions than answers?

TheLong Shadow of Small Ghosts by Laura Tillman
Years after an unthinkable murder, a small town
decides whether to raze the crime scene.

“I came away with a multitude of questions,
some of which haven't yet been resolved and
may never be. This story is ambiguous and
messy by nature, and tailoring it down toa neat
thesis would be dishonest. I hope that by leav-
ingthings open-ended I've given readers space
to engage more directly with these questions
to come to their own conclusions.”

I Will Find You by Joanna Connors

The author investigates her own rape, finding
connections with the perpetrator's family.

“For me, telling my story didn't bring peace or
closure. I learned a key lesson: The rape will
always be part of who I am, and I can't change
that. I will never, ever be fearless. But it gave me
something better: I am open instead of closed.
I want connection. I want to hear the stories.”

Boy With a Knife by Jean Trounstine

A classroom murder leads to a damning look at
the way our system sentences minors as adults.
“T spent seven years writing this book. I began
with a question about why a young man who
killed someone at 16 could be sentenced to life
in prison with only the hope of parole after 15
years. My research into how we arrest, judge
and sentence our juveniles who commit crimes

took me to more questions about our justice
system. I became convinced that our laws need
to catch up with our knowledge.”

Alligator Candy by David Kushner

A reporter delves into his past to confront the
tragedy of his brother’s childhood murder.

“T suppose I wound up with a little of both—
although I don’t know if there is such a thing
as indisputable truth. I do think, though, that
one of the main reasons I wrote the book was
to feel a better sense of who my brother was as
a person, and I’m grateful I achieved that for
myself. Everyone faces unexpected challenges
that seem insurmountable. Perhaps by read-

JOANNA
CONNORS

ingour story, others can be inspired to not only
survive but grow from their own trials.”

The Father by Anton Svensson

Translated from the Swedish, this stranger-than-
fiction story of atrio of bank-robbing brothers is
told by a fourth brother from the fringes.

“This is my truth, my way of looking at what
happened to my brothers. If you write a book
that has the starting point in your own life
soil, it is like growing questions in a green-
house. They will find you faster, force them-
selves at you and create trouble, but now and
then you will also find an answer that is there
just because the book was written.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY TREY WRIGHT

Y PLAYBOY SHOP con

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THE
S&M OF
GAMING

Dark Souls creator Hidetaka
Miyazaki will humiliate you and
leave you baying for more

GAMES

It wouldn't quite be accurate to call Dark Souls
III, out worldwide this month, the most antici-
pated video game of the year. Of course there's
every reason to be excited about its arrival: The
release of a new game from the visionary and
reclusive developer Hidetaka Miyazaki is al-
ways an event, and after Bloodborne, his Gothic
masterpiece from last year, fans are desperate
to revisit the Souls franchise. But anticipating
the next installment is a lot like trying to psych
yourself up for aboxing match knowing full well
that, win or lose, you'll be beaten to a pulp.

In each of Miyazaki's games you play a pa-
thetically under-equipped milquetoast, feeble
where most heroes are mighty, plunged into a
medieval hellscape with a coat of shabby armor
and an ineffectual sword. It's common enough
for action titles to build to a formidable boss
battle or make you slog through an arduous set
piece late in the game, but Dark Souls III (PC,
PS4, Xbox One) is something else entirely.
You'll find yourself handily trounced by the
very first enemy you encounter—and, rest as-
sured, by every enemy you encounter thereafter.

But that's precisely Miyazaki's appeal.
Most games arm you to the teeth, careful not
to let the difficulty level interrupt your fanta-
sies of heroism and power. Miyazaki aspires
to a higher sort of satisfaction. Conquering
even a portion of one of his games feels like
a serious accomplishment. You never for-
get the moment you finally defeat the knight
who kept filleting you, or the first time you
stand your ground against a dragon and ac-
tually survive. Your math teacher was right:
The more difficult the problem, the more re-
warding its resolution.

Every time Miyazaki makes a new game he
raises the challenge—pretty astonishing, given
that the urtext of the series, Demon’s Souls, al-
ready seemed virtually impossible. That’s how
he keeps the thrill fresh and how a Souls fan,
no matter howaccustomed to the gauntlet, will
always have another trial to brave. Perhaps at
some point we'll hit the wall and the appeal will
exhaust itself. But for now, that balance of plea-
sure and pain is irresistible. We can’t wait to be
agonized all over again.—Calum Marsh

> Gf) DOWNLOAD THE APP AND START YOUR FREE TRIAL

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Before he was knighted (leading to the much-
loved Twitter handle @SirPatStew), before he
was Professor Charles Francis Xavier in the
X-Men movies and Captain Jean-Luc Picard on
Star Trek: The Next Generation, and before he
started bagging Olivier Awards for his work with
the Royal Shakespeare Company, Patrick Stew-
art had this friend who pulled a knife on him.

“We were drinking ina pub, and he followed
me into the men’s room and stood barring the
door with the knife in his hand,” Stewart re-
calls. “I thought I wasn’t going to get out alive.
We talked and talked, and finally he put away
the knife. I had that experience in mind while
playing this bad, violent, unspeakable charac-
ter in this new movie—only with the man I play,
you couldn’t exactly have a rational chat.”

The bad man in question is the centerpiece
of Green Room, abrutal thriller written and di-
rected by Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin). Stewart
plays the velvety-voiced leader of backwoods
white supremacists who terrorize a touring

FILM

Stewart Into Darkness

From damaged anchorman to backwoods bigot, Patrick Stewart is doing his bravest work yet

punk band (played by Anton Yelchin, Imo-
gen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole and Callum
Turner). “It was the unlikely nature of the role
that caught my attention,” Stewart says. “I got
to page 35 of the script, put it down and went
around my home making sure all the windows
and doors were locked. I thought, If the script
can terrify me like this in the comfort of my
home, what will it be like in a movie theater?”
About his choice to play a character who, bald
head aside, is light-years away from Stewart’s ele-
gant and sympathetic oeuvre, he says, “He made
me think of Norman Bates in Psycho, who seems
so mild, quiet and reasonable—for a while. I’ve
been looking for roles that will help fracture the
perception of me. Jean-Luc Picard and Charles
Xavier came to characterize who Patrick Stew-
art was, in away that I didn't particularly enjoy."
Mild, quietand reasonable aren't exactly how
you'd describe Walter Blunt, the sexed-up an-
chorman protagonistof Blunt Talk. Inthe Starz
series, brainchild of Seth MacFarlane and

Bored to Death creator Jonathan Ames, Blunt
gets arrested with a transgender prostitute,
dreams about Burt Lancaster in tights and be-
gins to deal with PTSD from his army service
during the Falklands invasion of 1982—and
that's just season one. “To play Walter's wacky,
unpredictable behavior is always fun, but his
PTSD is something I'd love to see us explore
much more," says Stewart, whose father suf-
fered from the condition. “It's a massive prob-
lem with veterans and military personnel."

But don't let the heavy roles fool you:
SirPatStew, ageless bon vivant, lives on. With
the 75-year-old's ongoing commitments, in-
cluding another Wolverine movie, how can he
hope to be available when Taylor Swift—who
made him part of her “squad” after he recited
her lyrics on NPR—invites him to one of her
pajama parties? “I’ll pack a book of etiquette
so I can make absolutely certain I don't misbe-
have or offend in any way. The invitation has
not yet come."—Stephen Rebello

MUSIC

Thi

The last time Austin Brown was at New York's
Ace Hotel, he was getting fired from his job
as a bellboy "for being criminally late," he ex-
plains over bites of bone marrow in the hotel's
restaurant. Rising early was a challenge for
him, but don't ever question the work ethic
of Brown or bandmate Andrew Savage, the
dual frontmen of Brooklyn's Parquet Courts:
They're one of the most driven bands in mod-
ern rock. They've managed at least one annual
installment of their word-
drunk storytelling and spiky
riffs since 2011, growing more
assured with each outing. “Any
artist who's excited about their
new songs," Savage says, “isn't
going to want to wait."
Starting with the 2012 sin-
gle “Stoned and Starving,”
Parquet Courts have become
indie standard-bearers, year-
end-list regulars and music
festival mainstays. Along the way, they’ve
jammed onstage with members of Pavement
and Sonic Youth—role models for smart
bands in search of mainstream success with-
out creative compromise. The Courts’ fifth
album, Human Performance, hits on two lev-
els: It’s their most nuanced set of songs, and
it comes closest to capturing the explorative
guitar storms of their live shows (especially
the psych epic “Berlin Got Blurry”). And
while their previous albums presented them
as wiseass young New Yorkers happy to let you
know they’re too smart to be fooled by any-
one’s crap, this one finds Savage and Brown
focusing on the heart instead of the brain.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BEN RAYNER

The

n
Man’s
Indie Band

Long the poster boys of erudite Brooklyn indie rock, Parquet Courts
lay themselves bare on their new album, Human Performance

king

The band, which also includes bassist-singer
Sean Yeaton and Andrew’s brother Max on
drums, took their time on the album, record-
ing in multiple studios while on tour. Savage
was reeling from the messy end of his first
major adult relationship, and Brown was
dealing with a debilitating depression. The
latter subject is addressed on album opener
“Dust,” of which Brown notes, with a wipe of
his hands, “Once you notice it, you see that
it’s everywhere.”

With Human Performance,
the band members appear to be
more comfortable with them-
selves and less wary of stepping
onto a larger stage. After sev-
eral releases with the tiny New
York label What’s Your Rup-
ture? they signed with Rough
Trade, the venerable U.K. indie
that has brought us everyone
from the Smiths to the Strokes.
Parquet Courts have a reputation for eschew-
ing social media, interviews and press photo-
graphs (instead releasing often deliberately
unprofessional snaps), an anti-everything
stance Savage chalks up to his childhood as
a punk kid in Denton, Texas. Maybe they've
loosened up on the press obligations and made
an album containing hooks and piercing ob-
servations in equal measure, but that Denton
kid would be happy to know the band's first
release for Rough Trade was the EP Monas-
tic Living, an instrumental tangent that's as
harsh as Human Performance is warm. “A lot
of people hate it," Savage says, adding with a
smile, “which is great."—Michael Tedder

From left: Austin Brown,
Max Savage, Sean Yeaton
and Andrew Savage.

COLUMN

FRANCOFILE

Game of Thrones director Michelle MacLaren on dealing with diva bears, making
Breaking Bad and the art of sex scenes

JAMES FRANCO: You and I worked
together on The Deuce, which in-

volved me getting partially naked.

You came to me and were very spe-

cific about what you were thinking

for the scene. What if I had said no?
MICHELLE MACLAREN: You have

to approach sex scenes like an action

shoot. You have to be matter-of-fact,

almost mathematical. As soon as you

start being weird about it, everyone

starts acting weird. We knew exactly

what we were going to do and how we

were going to approach it. There were

a lot of discussions beforehand with

the actresses as well. I don't believe in
gratuitous sex or violence. If it serves

the story, great. But I don't want to kill
someone just because it’s a cool, violent

shot. In this particular story, nudity is
important. It’s also important to be

real. I’ve done a lot of sex scenes. I’ve

done Game of Thrones. [laughs]

FRANCO: You also directed a bear

in Game of Thrones.

MACLAREN: The trainer came on

the set and said to the crew, “Okay, there’s no
food on set, there are no angry voices, there’s
no yelling, and everybody has to participate.”
We said, “What does that mean?” He said,
“Every time the bear does something right,
the whole crew has to clap and cheer.” So ev-
ery time he did something right, we would
all go, “Good boy, Bart!” It made him really
happy. It was great. We were shooting the sec-
ond day and were almost done, but we needed
one key shot. It was January or February,
which is hibernation season for bears, and
Bart decided he was done. He turned around
and started toward his trailer. We needed the
shot, so we started going, “Come on, Bart!
You can do it!” And I swear to God, like a diva,
he stopped, slowly turned around and looked
at us as if to say, “Oh, all right.” Then he saun-
tered back to the set and did the shot.
FRANCO: You got your start on The X-Files
with Vince Gilligan. How did you join him on
Breaking Bad?

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVE MA

BY
JAMES FRANCO

MACLAREN: After The X-Files, I had one
credit to my name. I would get jobs directing,
but it was here and there. It was tough. I had to
produce to support my directing habit. Vince
and I are friends. He called me up and said,
“Michelle, will you help produce this pilot
with me called Breaking Bad?” He pitched
the story to me, and I said, “You are the only
person I know in Hollywood who could sell a
story about a high school teacher dying and
selling drugs.”

FRANCO: Were you really responsible for the
most expensive episode of Breaking Bad?
MACLAREN: No, that is so not true! [laughs]
I was directing an episode called “Four Days
Out.” I got the script and thought, Oh my God,
they want this to be a bottle episode. A bottle
episode is one that has very few actors in it,
and it’s usually shot in one location. The idea
is to save money. I remember thinking, God-
damn it, I’m doing a bottle episode. I didn’t
know how lucky I was to do an episode with

Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul
stuck in an RV. So I said to them, “I
know you want this to be a bottle epi-
sode and you want to shoot the whole
scene onstage in an RV, but what’s
outside the window? What are the
guys seeing when they go outside?”
I got them to shoot part of it in the
desert and part of it onstage, and it
evolved into a visually awesome epi-
sode. Since it started off as a bottle
episode, it did end up costing more
money than they thought it would. So
Vince told the story in an interview
that it was the most expensive Break-
ing Bad episode, which is so not true. I
busted Vince about it, and he was like,
"I know, I'm sorry.” Now I’m going to
tell him this happened.
FRANCO: Is it true Jesse Pinkman
was going to be killed off?
MACLAREN: Originally, Vince was
going to kill Jesse. I think after the
pilot, he went, “This guy’s great.” But
I also know that he credits the writ-
ers’ strike with a lot of the show’s suc-
cess. There was a long hiatus because of the
strike, and during that time Vince changed
his mind about some things. When he came
back, the show went in a different direction.
But yes, Jesse was going to be killed off.
FRANCO: The Deuce is set in New York City’s
Times Square in the 1970s, a very particu-
lar time and place. There are a lot of female
prostitutes in the story who are not treated
so well. How do you deal with subject matter
like that?
MACLAREN: It was avery sexist time. That'sa
good question, because when I read the script,
I thought, Can I do this? David Simon is really
great about writing stories that are controver-
sial and attack an issue head-on. This story is
a part of our history that is very real and true.
When I wrapped my head around it like that,
I realized it’s important to tell these stories
and show where we evolved from. It’s interest-
ing: Some of the moments are empowering for
women in an unexpected way. L|

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properties and the bottle shape are trademarks or registered trademarks of Spirits International, B.V.

POLITICS

ER or
nm PEOPLE

The political establishment hates primaries and candidates barely
survive them, but they're the voters' biggest weapon

“You know what, guys? This isn't easy.” That
was Barack Obama's admonition to his cam-
paign aides back in 2008 after staffers accused
Hillary Clinton of being a fake. Clinton had
broken down at a café in Portsmouth, New
Hampshire while discussing how passionate
she was about running for president. Regard-
less of her sincerity, Obama could appreciate
that they were both in one ofthe most grueling
stages of a presidential campaign.

Eight years later, here we are again at the
presidential primaries, when the winnowing
for the White House hits full force and each
side picks a dog for the fight. It's amonth when
Democrats and Republicans in 29 states cast
ballots in primary elections in a frenzy of strat-
egizing and espionage that sends Washing-
ton's political class and its biggest donors into
fits and convulsions.

As famed Making of the President author
Theodore H. White once put it, the primary is
America's original contribu-
tion to the art form of democ-
racy, and political pros hate it
because it “removes the nomination of candi-
dates from the hands of cynical party leader-
ship and puts it directly in the hands of the
people." And in this year's cycle, unlike most
in recent memory, voters have given a giant
middle finger to the so-called establishment
in both parties.

For those who want to blame someone, start
with Theodore Roosevelt. He served as presi-
dent from 1901 to 1909, but by 1912 he was
looking to get back into the game and decided
to challenge the sitting president, William
Howard Taft, for the Republican nomination.

sy JOHN MERONEY

Todo so, Teddy had to circumvent the wise men
in Washington's (then) smoke-filled rooms, so
he pushed the idea of primaries—let the people
rule, heexhorted. Roosevelt never made it back
to the White House, but he planted the seed.

It didn't reach full flower until 1972. Under
thissystem, the candidate who wins a majority
(or a plurality) of the state primaries gets the
national party nomination. John F. Kennedy,
Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Obama all
benefited from this system, because none of
them were Washington's darlings.

“The whole point of this was to get it away
from the bosses and democratize the process,"
says former Massachusetts governor Michael
Dukakis, who defeated Capitol Hill heavy-
weights Al Gore, Joe Biden and Gary Hart for
the 1988 Democratic nomination. “Have we
done that? Well, yeah."

That accomplishment carries a lot of risk.
The grassroots might be galvanized by a can-
didate who doesn't follow
the capital's rules, such as a
real estate billionaire from
Manhattan or a democratic socialist sena-
tor from Vermont. The likelihood that voters
will continue to deviate from politicians such
as Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush and turn to-
ward mass movements that oppose Wall Street
bailouts and U.S. interventionism is sending
shock waves across D.C. Neoconservative New
York Times columnist David Brooks is afraid of
whom voters might favor; he admitted on PBS's
NewsHour, “I wish we had gray men in suits—
[big] donors and other people going and say-
ing, We're just going to pick this guy.“

Until Brooks and other establishment ty pes

get their wish, the grind will continue. When
I ask former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gin-
grich, who ran for the Republican nomina-
tion in 2012, what he considers the worst part
of the primaries, he laughs and says, “Raising
money." With the exception of Donald Trump,
who says he is funding his own campaign, most
candidates would agree. Then there's what
Dukakis recalls as the constant "getting out of
bed in the morning, going to an airport, going
up in the air, coming down, making a speech,
going back to the airport, up in the air, coming
down and making another speech."

Others see advantages to the long primary
slog. ^You get your ideas tested," says conser-
vative commentator Patrick Buchanan, who
ran an insurgent campaign for president three
times beginning in 1992. "You'll be up there
speaking and suddenly there's a round of ap-
plause for something you've just said and you've
said it differently than before. You build up
your case and your argument and your speech."

On the road to the White House, the prima-
ries are the most difficult hurdle. It's where
candidates learn which issues rouse voters and
sharpen the themes they hope will carry them
through to the fall. Until they win election
night, candidates make those stands in local
diners, living rooms, makeshift cable news
studios and—in the case of Trump and Bernie
Sanders giant sports arenas that pack tens of
thousands of voters, all the while praying that
nothing fizzles or, worse, derails their presi-
dential hopes. As JFK said while working his
way through those final weeks, “If they don't
love you in March, April and May, they won't
love you in November." E

Celebrities, athletes and
VIP guests enjoyed a

DJ set by Alesso as

24 Playmate Bunnies
tore up the stage.

PHOTO CREDIT: GETTXG IMAGES

On February sth, guests celebrated the future of Playboy and the
newly redesigned magazine at the hottest event in San Francisco
during the biggest weekend in pro football.

- Thank You To Our Partners

ELFEN DODGE

১6১ ona

The star-studded event took place in Lot A
of AT&T Park.

Rapper and entrepreneur 50 Cent celebrates the weekend with Playboy Playmates Eugéna Washington; 11101 ` d
Oshima, Carly Lauren and Ashley Doris who wore Bunny Costumes inspired by the gold detailing on/his limited Actress AnnaLynne McCord poses with a 2015
edition EFFEN? Vodka football bottle. Dodge Viper GTS on the red carpet.

mates Pamela Horton and Raquel Pomplun
entered the party through a time portal tunnel TV zu * u
ersonailty/ @cöfding artist u
that took guests on a visual journey of the NidieLachéy M M by Alesso Pro football player Michael Sam DJ'Ruckus p
history of Playboy and auto partner Dodge. DJ Politik. arrives at the Playboy party: en stage:

7০০০০ Gooding, Jr. joins * E

CULTURE

DO SILENGERS
LOOK GOOD WITH
SHINNY JEANS?

Meet the gun-loving, indie-music-listening, hipster-beard-growing
millennial entrepreneurs disrupting the gun industry

Out on the horizon, halfway to Cuba, jagged
streaks of lightning illuminate the still waters
of the Gulf of Mexico. Inside a Key West resort,
agroup of men congregate outside a private din-
ing room. Several have the noticeable bulge of
barely concealed firearms. A few are dressed
in pastels approximating the look of the 1980s
television show Miami Vice.

The crowd in the dining room is almost exclu-
sively white and male. There are some obvious
ex-military men, an assortment of press and
a few punkish action-sports types. On a small
stage are several covered display cases framed
by two large video screens. An intense-looking
man in his 30s named Josh Waldron takes
the podium. He is a co-founder of SilencerCo,
a company that designs and sells high-tech
gun silencers. He and his col-
leagues are in Key West to in-
troduce several new products:
the Hybrid, a silencer compatible with pistols,
rifles and submachine guns; the Radius, a
mounted range finder; and their newest prod-
uct, a futuristic, angular-looking pistol with a
built-in silencer called the Maxim 9, which is a
dead ringer for RoboCops service weapon.

But these tools of combat are being target-
marketed to an unexpected crowd. Imagine a
New York City coffeehouse. The customers are
in their 20s and ironically tattooed. They sip
fair-trade coffee and stare at a line of silvery
MacBooks. Now imagine a large percentage of
them armed with concealed weapons. Sure, it's
an unlikely scenario. But if middle-class kids
raised on first-person-shooter games such as

PHOTOGRAPH BY CAESAR SEBASTIAN

sy JOHN ALBERT

Call of Duty were to eventually transition from
online to actual firearms, it might not be far
off. The gun debate tends to be defined by the
fringes: bird-sanctuary-occupying “patriots”
on one side, angry Birkenstock-wearing vegans
on the other. The rest of us...well, we're probably
more in the middle than we might admit. We
abhor mass shootings, but we don't object to a
whole lot of gunplay in our movies. We love ani-
mals, but we eat tons of meat. So when a com-
pany like SilencerCo sets its sights on so-called
hipsters and racks up more than 250,000 Insta-
gram followers while indie-rock darling Ryan
Adams has fewer than 100,000, all bets are off.
If you think gun silencers are illegal, you're not
alone. Now often referred to as “suppressors,”
they're legal in 41 states. That
said, they remain intensely reg-
ulated as part of the National
Firearms Act of 1934, alongside machine guns,
short-barreled shotguns and rifles. Most admit
the inclusion of silencers in that list has much
to do with a combination of Depression-era
poaching fears and a history of bad press that
has marked them, according to the American
Suppressor Association, as “assassins’ tools.”
Advocates for suppressors, including the folks
at SilencerCo, argue that the devices merely pro-
tect the hearing of the nearly one in three Ameri-
cans wholegally own and shoot firearms. In addi-
tion, SilencerCos artfully designed website touts
an increase in accuracy due to less noise and
recoil. The company has mounted a combined
political and marketing campaign called *The

Hearing Protection Act" that includes a #Fight-
TheNoise hashtag along with photos of men,
women and children with duct tape over their
mouths holding suppressed firearms. It calls fel-
low suppressor advocates "the Suppressed"—a
term the company has trademarked. And while
the campaign undoubtedly makes some valid
points regarding logic and legality, it all evokes
a victim mentality not dissimilar from much of
the so-called patriot movement.

No matter where you stand on the firearms
divide and the role of the federal government,
the fact is, even the best silencers are far from
silent. A suppressed gun still sounds very much
like a gun, just not ear-shattering. The notion
that you could shoot someone at a crowded
cocktail party and go unnoticed is absurd. Knox
Williams, president of the American Suppres-
sor Association, an industry-sponsored pro-
silencer advocacy group, is not pleased with
this misconception. “It's guilt by association,”
he says. “James Bond has done us no favors. The
only times I've seen suppressors used in movies
and television is by assassins. That's the only
time most people have seen a suppressor, and
they think it will sound like that. But the sound
effects they use have no basis in reality.’

As a result, purchasing a suppressor, even in
states where it is legal, is far from simple. The
process involves arduous paperwork, a signature
from law enforcement, a hefty $200 federal tax
and a waiting period of four months or more.
Regardless, suppressors are steadily gaining in
popularity, and no one sells more of them than
upstart SilencerCo out of Utah. It does so by

3 ৮1১

de
N

PITA ARTO Um v

`
a * | | !
f

„

Clockwise from top: Target practice at the launch event; a still from a Miami Vice-inspired SilencerCo promo
video; weapons on display; Rick Grimes packs a SilencerCo-equipped pistol on The Walking Dead.

deliberately ignoring almost every marketing
convention ofthe existing firearms industry.

SilencerCo's Key West event delivers the req-
uisite product specs, but that's where similari-
ties to your typical industry presentation end.
Each product is introduced with its own state-
of-the-art video featuring atmospheric postrock
(think the Friday Night Lights soundtrack) and
production values rivaling any action-sports
company. SilencerCo creative director Michael
Shumway explains the tactic: ^I think getting a
younger demographic involved is something the
firearms industry as a wholeis ignoring. We hire
people from industries that are more progres-
sive. The influences that drive us are not other
firearms companies. Action sports are a big one
and, as far as technology goes, someone like Ap-
ple because of the speed at which they innovate.”

The quest to connect with a younger demo-
graphic has benefited from recent high-profile
product placements. The company may bristle
at the depiction of silencers-suppressors as
assassins' tools, but its popular Osprey model
has annihilated zombies on The Walking Dead
and figures prominently in the latest Mission:
Impossible film, Rogue Nation. SilencerCo prod-
ucts have also appeared in a number of video
games, including the hugely popular Call of
Duty. Shumway insists none of it has been pay-
to-play. *We work with a lot of the prop houses
in Los Angeles,” he says. “A lot of movies contact
us directly because they think our products look
cool. We also work directly with a lot of video
game studios when they're developing games.”

While most of the firearms industry con-
tinues to embrace the aesthetic of “tacticool,”
fetishizing military special ops and law en-
forcement, SilencerCo aims for the decidedly
younger, tattooed X Games crowd. A recent
video has extreme mountain biker Cam Zink
riding through the desert, executing aerial ma-
neuvers and firinga suppressed automatic rifle.
The company's website also features photos of
hipster DJ Steve Aoki visiting the Utah facility
and shooting an assortment of guns.

That's all part of a strategy that Christian
Lowe, editor of Shooting Sports Retailer maga-
zine and a longtime firearms writer, finds fasci-
nating. “It's intriguing to me that this company
is fully embracing beards and skinny jeans;
he says. “It's an interesting tactic for them to
place themselves as a company in the firearms
market. As someone who follows the industry, I
don't see a risk of them alienating anyone. I do
wonder if the demographic they're targeting is
actually going to buy suppressors.”

Following the Key West dinner presentation
is a lavish party on the beach complete with a

retro 1980s band, a sullen alligator posing for
pictures, an open bar and complimentary mas-
sages. Amid it all, sitting on opposite ends of
a large sectional, are Jep Robertson of the TV
show Duck Dynasty and Chris Cheng, winner of
the History Channel's shooting show Top Shot.
Cheng, who is Asian and openly gay, lives in San
Francisco with his husband.

“One of the things I've discovered over the
past few years is what I call closeted gun owners,’
Cheng says. “There are alot of people exactly like
me who are afraid to reveal this part of their lives.
For alot of my tech and foodie friends who enjoy
shooting, it’s something I still see them wanting
to keep under the table. I would hope that every-
one would come out as a gun owner, and I would
also hope that everyone would come out as gay.
But depending on where you live or where you
work, there could be negative consequences.”

The festivities on the beach are abruptly inter-
rupted by a torrential down-
pour that sends attendees run-
ning for shelter. A short time
later the rain stops and the par-
ty resumes. A chorus of male
voices soon echoes throughout
the resort, singing along en-
thusiastically with the band.
By morning, multiple reports
have the female lead singer and
a male backup singer frolicking
naked in the pool.

cesia X GAMES CROWD.

unorthodox path in the fire-

arms world, it's an ethos that

ties directly to its founding.

While most gun-related companies are at least
several decades old and deeply rooted in mili-
tary culture, SilencerCo was started eight years
ago by a musician and a photographer.

Josh Waldron and Jonathon Shults are child-
hood friends. Waldron worked as a professional
photographer, snapping images for publica-
tions including Newsweek, Outdoor Life and
Forbes. Shults was a bass player and a recording
studio engineer. “We both come from the belief
that if you're going to do something in life, you
should enjoy it,” Waldron says. “Which is why
we got into the creative world. But in Utah it's
hard to make a living doing art, so we were look-
ing for another opportunity. We've always been
passionate about firearms, and even though we
were artists, we've always shot guns.”

They say it was originally supposed to be a
hobby. They got hold of a silencer one day, and
sound engineer Shults became intrigued by the
mechanics. “I’ve been a tinkerer since I was a
kid,” he explains. “In fact, that's where the engi-

neering side of music came in. I was fascinated
by the silencer. It's similar. You're dealing with
sound—how to get the explosion to be quiet. We
took it apart, and my mind just started click-
ing” Waldron offers an additional explanation:
“Something about Jonathon that a lot of people
might not know is that he's a genius. Literally.”
Two factors moved the endeavor from hobby to
full-fledged business. Along with Shults's quick
mastery of the mechanics was a shared percep-
tion that the existing competition was vulner-
able. “I thought, You know what, man? These
guys suck,” says Shults. “I told Josh, “Dude, with
your background and my background we can
have areal company and not just something we're
gonna do in the garage!” When they started in
2008, they say, approximately 18,000 silencers
were sold in the United States that entire year.
SilencerCo now ships more than 7,000 silencers a
month. “We created that market,’ Waldron says.

SILENCERCO
AIMS FOR THE

YOUNGER,
TATTOOED

Although Waldron claims to be a fan of such
left-leaning musicians as Ryan Adams and the
band Wilco, it's hard to imagine the admiration
is reciprocated. SilencerCo boasts a relation-
ship with the aforementioned Robertson, who
has publicly supported his father's homopho-
bic and anti-civil rights statements. In addi-
tion, Waldron's defense of guns and the Second
Amendment echoes perfectly the fervor of the
NRA. "Shooting is a culture that is ingrained
in America; Waldron says. “The only reason
people are scared of it is because the media has
put a twist on what firearms are. I'm a conceal-
carry person. It's empowering to know I can
protect my family. And to have some politician
think they can take that right away from me
puts us in the same position as Nazi Germany”
The morning after the beach party, the attend-
ees, looking a bit worse for wear, gather for the
main attraction—a voyage to a nautical firing
range in international waters. As the group

assembles on the dock, another sudden down-
pour sends everyone scrambling for cover. The
ensuing search for Dramamine resembles a
scene from William S. Burroughs's Junky. Min-
utes later a water taxi filled with attendees bobs
and rolls toward a large chartered catamaran.
Shults promptly vomits overthe side and decides
to return to land. There are looks of trepidation
all around. Only those who are ex-military, in-
cluding SilencerCo chief revenue officer Jason
Schauble, an Iraq war vet with a Silver Star, a
Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, seem unfazed.
“Twas a marine, Schauble offers with a smile.

The catamaran eventually reaches interna-
tional waters. Crew members crank techno
music and grill burgers while young SilencerCo
employees lay out an arsenal of suppressed fire-
arms and shove a pontoon of Osama bin Laden
and zombie targets into the churning ocean.
Someone asks with a laugh where the Hillary
Clinton targets are before be-
ing reminded that she has
Secret Service protection. In
the following few hours, the
sound of discreet vomiting
is matched only by the sound
of (suppressed) gunfire. The
biggest attraction by far is the
Maxim 9 prototype. The sleek
handgun with a built-in sup-
pressor is an anomaly with the
potential to revolutionize both
the suppressor and the fire-
arms industries. It is also an
admittedly risky endeavor for
SilencerCo in the traditionally
conservative gun world.

“We want customers to eventually go into
a gun store and ask, “Do I want a loud gun or a
quiet gun?" " explains Shults. “And the only way
for us to start that is to make a quiet gun. No
one has really done it before, so we don't know
what the market is. It's definitely a risk. But like
everything else, if we think it's cool, it usually
means it's going to be pretty awesome. We want
to reach for the stars, right?"

And that appears to be exactly what Shults and
Waldron are doing, though their particular stars
inhabit a galaxy of high-tech weaponry. Beyond
suppressors, range finders, affordable night-
vision devices and their new hybrid pistol, their
end goalis to create and market what they refer
to as “weapon systems.” “We want to create the
firearms industry 2.0,” Waldron says. “To create
a market and an industry that are sexy to a new
generation, because there's nobody out there
trying to appeal to them. They're playing video
games with all this fictional technology, and we
want to make it happen in real life” L|

INTERVIEW

DON GHEADLE

There's a make-or-break moment in any movie based on the life of a pop culture giant—a
moment when you either feel the performance burrowing under your skin or realize it’s just
dancing around the truth instead of channeling it. In Miles Ahead, a fractured, free-form
big-screen riff on jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, that moment comes when Don Cheadle, play-
ing the spiky, otherworldly Prince of Darkness, as Davis was known, takes the stage and
plays the trumpet for the first time. You breathe a sigh of relief. Cheadle has the Davis of
the 1960s down pat. The turbulent charisma. The coiled movements. The death stare. It's
all there and more, and it's thrilling, especially for die-hard Davis fans and anyone who
has read the man’s 1962 Playboy Interview—the very first in the magazine's history.

When Miles Ahead, which Cheadle also co-
wrote, co-produced and directed, shows us
Davis in his late-1970s and 1980s incarna-
tions, when he was infamously drug-addicted,
violent and dressed like some ineffably hip de-
posed king, Cheadle is equally in the pocket.
Even when the movie wobbles, the man never
stops giving a bone-deep performance.

Miles Ahead is not only a landmark—who
makes period movies about jazz musicians
anymore?—it's also a big, ballsy move for
Cheadle. After all, he has been everywhere
in movies and on television for the past 30-
plus years, but not often enough where he
belongs: over the title and in the spotlight.
If any proof is needed, just look at what
happens for him when things click as they
should. Check out his Emmy-nominated,
Golden Globe-winning work as a morally
bankrupt but weirdly relatable management
consultant on House of Lies, now in its fifth
season on Showtime. Then there's his Oscar-
nominated performance as a hero who shel-

ters refugees from ethnic cleansing in Hotel
Rwanda. He also co-produced and starred in
the controversial Crash, which won the 2006
Oscar for best picture—another achievement
that stands on the shoulders of his scene-
grabbing supporting roles in Devil in a Blue
Dress, Boogie Nights and Out of Sight.

Cheadle can be serious and seriously funny,
as in those Ocean's Eleven hits, and he holds
his own against tsunamis of CGI as James
“War Machine” Rhodes in two Iron Man
epics as well as in Avengers: Age of Ultron
and the upcoming Captain America: Civil
War. Off-camera he's more apt to show his
serious side, serving on the advisory board
of Citizens’ Climate Lobby and co-writing
Not on Our Watch, a self-professed “activist
handbook.” His ongoing work with the United
Nations on climate change and his efforts
with George Clooney to stop the genocide in
Darfur earned them the 2007 Peace Summit
Award, given by Nobel laureates.

The man is intensely focused and appar-

ently has been from way back. He was born in
1964 in Kansas City, Missouri. With his clini-
cal psychologist father, Donald Frank Chea-
dle Sr., his educator mother, Bettye, and his
siblings, Cindy and Colin, he relocated fre-
quently throughout childhood. Making his
bow in a fifth-grade school production of
Charlotte's Web, Cheadle got bitten by the
acting bug. In 1982 he moved to California
to attend the California Institute of the Arts,
turning down musical as well as acting schol-
arships to top universities.

Cheadle tasted success early enough that,
unlike many new actors, he never had to gig
as anything but a performer. He made his big-
screen debut in 1985's Moving Violations and
appeared on such hit TV series as L.A. Law
and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He played an
uptight hotel manager on 1992's The Golden
Palace, a short-lived spin-off of The Golden
Girls, then moved right into three years as a
sobersided district attorney on Picket Fences.
Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, he

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREAS LASZLO KONRATH

alternated between indie-minded features
such as Reign Over Me and bigger films such
as Swordfish, somehow squeezing in an arc
on the hit series ER along the way. The meaty
roles have never stopped coming for the ver-
satile, intense actor with the good-guy vibe.

We sent writer Stephen Rebello, who most
recently interviewed Christoph Waltz and
Ron Howard for PLAYBOY, to Cheadle's sleek,
multistory, modernist palm- and bamboo-
shaded Santa Monica Canyon compound,
which heshares with interior designer and ac-
tress Bridgid Coulter (Westworld, Rosewood)
and two dogs, Kandi and Sasha. Their chil-
dren, 21-year-old Ayana Tai and 19-year-old
Imani, are both in college. Rebello reports:
“Cheadle, whom I'd met decades ago when he
was just about to appear in Mission to Mars,
put on some sublime classic
jazz tracks, poured water and,
despite his crazy schedule,
looked rested, chill and alive
in the moment. He emits Zen
calm and stillness, but his eyes
are in constant motion, and he
takes in everything. Almost
involuntarily, he imitates
virtually anyone he's talking
about—an outgrowth of his sly,
droll sense of humor."

PLAYBOY: In the five seasons
you've starred on Showtime's
funny, cynical House of Lies,
your Los Angeles-based man-
agement consulting firm char-
acter, Marty Kaan, is shown
grinding with hot lesbians, en-
joying a couple of anything-goes
orgies and having angry anal sex with his ex-
wife, played by Dawn Olivieri. What reactions
do you get from fans, especially those who
know you from playing, say, a real-life anti-
apartheid hero in Hotel Rwanda or the military
man-superhero you play in Iron Man, Aveng-
ers and Captain America?

CHEADLE: It still feels like the audiences are,
to some degree, segregated. The ones who know
me from House of Lies don't necessarily know
anything about the other movies I've been in.
They also tend to take the Marty Kaan charac-
ter at face value.

PLAYBOY: Meaning what? Do they propose
orgies?

CHEADLE: Some come up to me with a sala-
cious sort of thing: “Hey, hey, hey, you’re all
right," you know? I also get real-life manage-

INTERVIEW

ment consultants who come up and say, “I love
Marty and I love that show. It makes me really
think about what 1 do—although it's nothing
like that.” But others will go, “Oh, it's exactly
like that.” And Pm like, “Bullshit.”
PLAYBOY: Because the show is revved up for
the sake of making fun, sexy TV?

CHEADLE: I didn't know anything about
management consulting until we started in-
terviewing people when we were putting the
show together. My hair was kind of blown
back, because for the young cats it was:
“You’re traveling four nights out of the week.
You don't have a home life to speak of. You're
making all these transitory, one-off rela-
tionships that get about as deep as a thimble.
You're drinking and partying alot and maybe
tryingto self-medicate, because if you have a

IWAS ALWAYS

THINKING,

ACTING BETTER
WORK, BECAUSE
MY FÁLLBACK

IS JAZZ.

conscience and know what you're doing, it's
really dark."

PLAYBOY: Lots of travel, little home life,
transitory relationships, partying and self-
medicating. That sounds like some people's
perception of an actor's life.

CHEADLE: When we were preparing the
show and drilled down into all this research
about management consulting, I did think,
You know, actors could do this job really well
if they just knew how and what to say. Actors
study the psychology of people, whether from
a learned perspective or from a layman's per-
spective. We're fascinated by why people do
what they do. You're trying to find those vul-
nerable parts of yourself and see those vul-
nerable spots in others. That's what those
management consultant guys zero in on too.

Where are the person's weaknesses? Where's
the fissure, and how do I drive a stake in there
and make ita chasm that I can now inject my-
self into?

PLAYBOY: Socertain actors might easily turn
their talent —

CHEADLE: For evil? Absolutely.

PLAYBOY: You play a character with sexual
swagger and magnetism, which can account
for the salacious attitude some fans show you
now. Is it just tickle and tease, or do they ever
give you the impression that they'd like to
sample that?

CHEADLE: If it's happening, I'm totally
not picking up on it. Bridgid and I have been
together 22 years. She'll walk behind me,
notice somebody and go, *You didn't see
that?" And I’m like, “No.” The women I'm
around for work? It's work. I
don't really hang out. I don't
go to clubs and usually don't go
out to dinner without Bridgid
or my family. I'm kind of a
homebody. So is Bridgid. There
aren't a lot of opportunities to
jam me up or try to hand mea
phone number as I'm going to
the bathroom. We are not going
to bebumping rails in the rest-
room, you know? People don't
feel a frivolous vibe coming off
me. I think I project to people
"Im serious." It's like, “Oh,
that's the dude who was the
goodwill ambassador in Hotel
Rwanda." Besides, it's been
scientifically proven that when
you become domesticated your
testosterone levels drop and
your estrogen levels rise.

PLAYBOY: You've never embarrassed your
family or yourself by pitching a diva fit on a set
or getting caught in a compromising position.
CHEADLE: I know. I should. 1'11 have to get
into a fistfight with my agent in the middle
of the Cannes Film Festival or something.
Then my career might have an uptick. When
I moved into this house, the paparazzi and
TMZ followed me—for about three minutes.
They were like, “Ugh. You're really just going
to go grocery shopping? Well, shit. Call us
when you're exciting.”

PLAYBOY: Outside of House of Lies and your
upcoming Miles Davis movie, which was filmed
on a modest budget, Hollywood hasn't often
spotlighted you as the big male star in big-
budget movies.

CHEADLE: You know the Will Smith movie
Concussion? I passed on developing that in-
dependently. We didn't have a studio behind
us, and I wanted to tell the story of the NFL
players, not a doctor. Also, I didn't want to use
names like the Arizona Pigeons or the Denver
Ducks. If we couldn't say “NFL” and couldn't
use the real logos and uniforms, I didn't see
how it was going to get made well. I thought it
was going to need a superstar like Will Smith
and a big studio to deal with what was going to
happen with the NFL.

PLAYBOY: Have you ever been up

for movie roles that went to, say,

Will Smith, Denzel Washington or

Jamie Foxx?

CHEADLE: We are by nature jour-

neyman actors and are also by na-

ture terrified that whatever we last

did is going to be the last one. Be-

fore I did House of Lies I had eight

or nine months of not knowing

what my next job was. I also had

four or five movies that didn't get

put together, and it was, *Oh, Will

is doing that" or, "Jamie is doing

that." I was talking to Matt Damon

before hedid The Martian, when he

hadn't worked for a whole year and

a half. He was like, *Dude, I don't

know." I said, “You're good. You're

Matt Damon." He said, *Am I? I

don't know that I'm still me." You

don't ever know, because you don't

get an announcement from Hol-

lywood that says, “Thank you very

much. Good-bye." It's just like, Oh,

it's not happening. It's death by at-

trition. Nobody in Hollywood calls

you to say, “It's a wrap." You just

stop getting called. It's a business

built on sand.

PLAYBOY: Ron Howard recently

talked in PLAYBOY about working with the vet-
eran movie actor Don Ameche, who won an
Oscar in 1986 for Howard's Cocoon. Ameche
warned Howard not to be nostalgic for the so-
called good old days of Hollywood in the 1930s,
1940s and 1950s, when an actor would get slot-
ted and ty pecast and rarely, if ever, got to Show
all he could do.

CHEADLE: My black friends and I talk a lot
about this. What's interesting is that if you
were under contract to a movie studio back
then, they could say to you, "Listen, kid,
youre making 25 movies this year," which
would have been like being in a touring com-

INTERVIEW

pany. That's great, but I don't get misty for
the good old studio days. I'm black, so I'm
pretty sure the roles I would have wanted to
play and been able to play would have been
four times a year, maybe—if that. There are
old movies I love to watch, of course, but I
watch a lot of the actors and hear people say,
“Oh, she's great,” and I'm like, “That per-
son was a fucking raging racist." Or sexist.
Or every -ist. People say, “They were just
men and women of their time.” Oh, you mean
when you could be openly racist or sexist or

homophobic? And certain people in politics
would like to get us back to that.

PLAY BOY: So does that mean you won't be
voting for, say, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz or
Ben Carson?

CHEADLE: Right. And what I want to say to
those people who support them is something
they always fail to see: You're not in the club.
They don't want you in the club. All those peo-
ple you're supporting? Donald Trump? He
isn't a friend of yours. He doesn't have your
back. Everyone believes they have to back
that stuff becausethey think they're suddenly
going to be on that team.

PLAYBOY: Justas soon as they snag that win-
ning lottery ticket.
CHEADLE: Exactly.
PLAYBOY: The characters on House of Lies
sometimes abuse power for the fun of it,
behavior that rears its ugly head in many
fields, including politics and the entertain-
ment business. Have you been around much
of that behavior?
CHEADLE: I've been an actor for 30 years, and
I've been really fortunate. I've had very few in-
stances of an actor—and, let's be honest, it's
almost always an actor—doing that.
There's so much largesse in Hol-
lywood. An actor friend of mine
always says that success doesn't
really change you, it just kind of
makes you more of what you already
are. And you get full support to be
whatever you are. If you're generous,
you have more to give now. You can
also bean asshole. You can be a bas-
tard. If you're neurotic, scared and
suspicious, you have a whole army
of people to project that on and act
out on. That behavior is accommo-
dated, as long as you have the rat-
ings or the box office. As soon as it's
not working, people get to eat you a
second time. The first time is when
they build you up. The second time,
everybody wants to out you.
PLAYBOY: One of the very few
times you've gotten publicly dinged
was in 2010, when you replaced Ter-
rence Howard in the role of Lieuten-
ant Colonel James Rhodes in Iron
Man 2. Howard has talked about the
incident in interviews, suggesting
that when Robert Downey Jr.'s sal-
ary demands strained the budget,
they wanted to pay Howard less than
what was promised and he balked.
What really went down?
CHEADLE: I met with the Marvel people on
Iron Man. Several wanted to hire me. Several
wanted to hire Terrence. They went with Ter-
rence. With the second Iron Man, they said to
me, “It will not be him again. It will be you or it
will be the next person after you say no to us."
Idid nottake a job from Terrence. It was a va-
cant role. He was not being asked to continue.
PLAYBOY: Did youand he ever hash things out?
CHEADLE: The day after I said yes to the job,
I was at Universal on the way to a meeting.
The first person I saw was Terrence’s man-
ager, whom I know. I said, “You all right?”

and she said, "It's just kind of fucked-up how
this whole thing happened. But we're 100. We
know what's good." I was like, “And I hope he
knows,” and she said, “Well, here he is,” and
there was Terrence. I said, “So, dude, I'm sorry
the way this whole thing happened. This is
messed up.” He was like, “Yeah.” There's never
been anything personal between him and me
about that. Terrence and I tried to get Talk to
Me made, and I was one of the producers of
Crash who approved him and wanted him in
that movie.

PLAYBOY: You talked earlier about Hol-
lywood eating people twice. Your frequent
co-star Robert Downey Jr. had a big career
buildup in the 1980s and 1990s, then ran
into difficulties with substance abuse, ar-
rests and rehab and served jail time, but he
rebounded stronger than ever
playing Tony Stark in the Iron
Man and Avengers movies.
Some Hollywood snipers now
accuse him of having become
arrogant, corporate and politi-
cally conservative.

CHEADLE: I don't see him much
outside of work. I don't know him
deep down. Robert and I have a
great working relationship. It's
like a friend of mine was say-
ing about a restaurant he'd gone
to: *I love the food, but the ser-
vice is terrible." When I said, *I
got really good service there," he
said, ^Oh, Don, did you?"
PLAYBOY: Meaning that, being
famous, you tend to get better
treatment.

CHEADLE: Yeah. So I have to qualify every-
thing. He’s good to me. I don’t know how he
treats people outside. I don’t know anything
about his politics. We don’t talk politics. He’s
never been untouchable or at arm’s length
to me—very much the opposite. I’ll tell you
a funny story about Robert, Jeremy Renner,
Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth when we
were in London. About 11 o'clock one night we
decided to go out to this crazy burlesque club
in Soho. The streets were packed. It was amob
scene with everybody in London drunk off
their asses and we couldn't get a taxi, so the
five of us, with minimal security, headed out
walking. We were trying to be low-key, kind of
hiding, and nobody gave a shit. They weren't
even looking at us. Chris Evans starts going,
"This is Iron Man right here. I got Thor right
here, guys. This is War Machine. I'm Captain

INTERVIEW

America. Nobody?" Nobody cared. They were
like, *Mate, get out of the way." I loved it.
PLAYBOY: Could you have gotten away with that
if you'd been with your Ocean's Eleven co-stars
George Clooney, Brad Pittand Matt Damon?
CHEADLE: Obviously George is a huge star,
and Matt too, but Brad's his own thing. I
mean, whenever we wanted to take the heat
off us and go somewhere, Brad just went in
first and everybody would go crazy. Then the
rest of us could go anywhere—the Vatican, the
Colosseum, wherever. We always threw Brad
under the bus.

PLAYBOY: Do those kinds of humbling ex-
periences help guard against getting full of
yourself?

CHEADLE: No. The kind of life I lead, I don't
even think about that. I always think of myself

TrM KIND OF A
HOMEBODY. WE
ARE NOT GOING
TO BE BUMPING

RAILS IN THE
RESTROOM.

as Don from the Midwest who’s still hustling
and trying to get jobs.

PLAYBOY: Have you ever taken home any of a
character’s worst traits once you finished work
for the day—whether Marty Kaan from House
of Lies or another character?

CHEADLE: It feels pretentious sometimes
when [hear actors say that they do, but when you
try to inhabit somebody and their energy, per-
sonality, habits—the things you do to try to cre-
ate a character—your nerve endings don’t know
that when, say, you’re screaming and tense,
you're not actually mad. Your body doesn't know
you're faking. There can be residue. Sometimes I
get home from House of Lies and I move quicker.
I’m short and clipped. Someone will say some-
thing and I have to think, Whoa, take it easy. I
have to sit down, drinka glass of water or go into
the sauna and just sit and be still.

PLAYBOY: Have you had much of that while
filming this new season?

CHEADLE: This season has pretty much been
no days off and all of us working every day.
What Marty is wrestling with this season is
“Am I really this thing I’m projecting, or is it
just a suit I put on so I can go out and do these
things? Am I a guy who wants to care about his
kids and figure out what’s happening with his
relationships, with [Kristen Bell’s character]
Jeannie?”

PLAYBOY: But what if this role had come to
you when you were in your 20s or 30s?
CHEADLE: [Laughs] Bridgid and I listen to
our single friends talk about dating and I’m
like, “What?” Their attitude is, “Yes, you old
motherfucker, that’s how it works now.” One
of my friends has an app where there are no
profiles, just photos. It’s like,
“This one? Yeah. That one? No.”
Not everybody can join. There’s
a vetting process that's like the
velvet rope at the old Studio
54. But when I went to school
at CalArts in 1982, it was live-
wire. It was wild. We had coed
rooms. The pool was clothing
optional. It was just wide open,
and everybody was exploring.
Artists were free, and all of
that was encouraged. I know a
couple of people who either had
AIDS or got AIDS at school. But
it was still pretty nascent, as
far as we knew. Once the par-
ents left, a senior or older stu-
dent would be like, “All right,
here’s what’s up.” I didn’t know
that going in. I was there to study.
PLAYBOY: Let’s talk about your road to
CalArts and how you grew up. Your mother
is a retired educator. Like your character on
House of Lies, your real-life father is a retired
psychologist.

CHEADLE: My mother taught third to sixth
grade. My father specialized in clinical and
child psychology and worked for a hospital but
then had his own private practice. They were
both very supportive. I was born in Kansas
City, but we moved as my father was getting
his undergrad degree here, his M.A. inanother
place and then his Ph.D.

PLAYBOY: Was moving tough on you?
CHEADLE: I’m playing armchair psycholo-
gist now, but making friends became a skill.
I had to find the funny and joke my way into
cliques that had been established before I got

GROOMING BY ERIC FERRELL FOR DION PERONNEAU AGENCY; HAIR BY QUAN PIERCE FOR DION PERONNEAU AGENCY

there. We moved to Denver at the tail end of
the fifth grade, and I was super lucky because
Igotateacher who was a combination music-
theater teacher—the kind who brings out the
bells, glockenspiel and drums. She cast me
as Templeton the rat in the stage version of
Charlotte’s Web. Both my parents were very
playful and silly, and I liked to act, so I was al-
ways playing around any way. The teacher gave
real acting notes, like “What's a rat? How does
a rat move? What's his center?” It was about
playing but on a higher level, and it sent me
on this whole quest of investigation

and research. And then, when you

sing a song, the audience leaps up,

and yov're like, “What?”

PLAYBOY: Did that hook you on

acting?

CHEADLE: Yes, but I loved music

too. I played—and play—piano,

bass, trumpet. At East High School

in Denver I was with a really good

jazz group with a fuck-everybody,
us-against-the-world inner-city at-

titude. Everybody in the group was

steeped in the love and understand-

ing of music. I was 16, 17 years old,

and my group was gigging at a festi-

val where the a cappella jazz group

Rare Silk was singing. They said to

me, *We'll beatthis club in Larimer

Square tonight. Why don't you come

sit in?" They sang a couple of num-

bers, then handed me the mike.

So picture me in a club I wasn't

old enough to go to, the band guy

asking, ^What do you want to do,

Don?" and me saying, “Okay, let's

do ‘Perdido.’” I must have been a

novelty. When I graduated high

school, I had a couple of scholar-

ship opportunities to places like

Carnegie Mellon to study vocal jazz

and instrumental jazz, and another couple of
scholarships to study theater.

PLAYBOY: How did acting finally win over
music?

CHEADLE: I wasn't going to put in the kind
of work as a musician that it would take to get
to alevel I wanted to get to. I knew it was going
to be crushing. I saw the sacrifices real musi-
cians were making, and I wanted to have fun.
That's how I came to CalArts. I got nothing
but support from my family, who were like,
"Great, go have fun."

PLAYBOY: Did either of your parents have any
show-business aspirations?

INTERVIEW

CHEADLE: My mother sang in choir. I
remember calling my mom when I first
started working at acting and kind of going,
"I don't know about this. I don't know if it's
going to work out for me." She said, “What do
you mean you don't know? That's what you've
said you wanted to do for years. You went to
school for it. You're out there. Just keep doing
it.” [learned that my mom really wanted to try
to have a career in show business. It meant a
lot to me that she said that, because I needed
itat that point.

PLAYBOY: Did you leave behind girlfriends?
CHEADLE: I had a girlfriend at the time,
through junior high school and high school.
PLAYBOY: How did you lose your virginity?
CHEADLE: The normal way: in the car on the
way to the prom. It was with that girlfriend. She
was a year younger than me, 16. When it was
discovered that we were having sex, it didn’t go
over well with her father. He wanted the rela-
tionship dead, right then and there. She felt she
could tell her parents the truth because we were
going to Planned Parenthood to get protection.
If we were going to have sex, we didn’t want to
have a baby, so we were going to do it right. But

her parents went crazy, called my parents and
said, “That’s it. They’re done.” It was devastat-
ing. I kind of ended the relationship. It was like,
“You have another year in school, and you're in
Denver. I’m here in California at CalArts. I’ve
just discovered my dick, and I don’t think that
this is going to work.”

PLAYBOY: How did you break the news?
CHEADLE: It was Christmas break when I
went home. It was terrible timing. I mean, I had
started to party and here it was, the first time
I'd seen her, so I told her right away. It wasn't
going to work if I told her as they
sang “Auld Lang Syne," you know
what I mean?

PLAYBOY: Did you and your girl-
friend go cold turkey, or did you see
each other later?

CHEADLE: I was trying to com-
municate. I’d call her house and it
was like, click. It was very tough.
I imagine if I were the parent of a
16-year-old girl and she told me she
was having sex, I don’t think I would
have reacted the same way he did.
But it would have been difficult.
PLAYBOY: You have two kids. Have
you gone through any of the same
challenges?

CHEADLE: Not really. My youngest
is 19, and she never really had boy-
friends. None of the boys were re-
ally interested in her at school, or
the ones who were interested in her
she was only interested in until her
senior year. But she was like, “I’m
not going to mess around with any
of these knuckleheads. I’m going to
school; I’m out of here.” My oldest
has worked on several movies with
me as a camera assistant.
PLAYBOY: After graduating from
college you started booking TV com-
mercials, TV series and music videos.
CHEADLE: I was always thinking, Acting
better work, because if it doesn't, my fall-
back is jazz.

PLAYBOY: As you were coming up, you worked
alongside many big names. Who stands out?
CHEADLE: So many. I took a dance class at
CalArts, and my friend at school, Jesse Bor-
rego, went to an open call of 3,500 people and
got cast on Fame. He left school to go do that,
and we're still very close. His daughter's my
goddaughter. Anyway, I did a lot of stepping
in a big Coke commercial. They spent a ton of
money on it, but they never showed it. Around

the same time, I gave my dog Jesse a ride to a
music video that [Fame star and choreogra-
pher] Debbie Allen was directing and choreo-
graphing for Angela Winbush. I was watching
the video and Jesse said, *You should do this."
I was like, “You guys are doing grand jetés,
leap kicks—I can't do that shit. I move. I’m not
a dancer." Debbie Allen heard me and said,
“Oh, you don't like my choreography?" I said,
"I don't want to dishonor it. Those great danc-
ers should do your choreography and I should
go." As I was leaving she comes running out
of the studio and goes, *You know what? You
can't leave." She was just like Debbie Allen
on Fame, where I later played a dancer who
couldn't dance. She told me, *Don't you ever
say you can't do something. Don't ever say no
to an opportunity like that. Don't limit your-
self like that. When they asked
me to choreograph the Oscars, I
was like, ‘Yes.’ I had no idea what
I was going to do. You figure it
out.” I did the video.

PLAYBOY: It’s hard to imagine
you on the sequel to The Golden
Girls, The Golden Palace, but
there you were.

CHEADLE: With Cheech Marin.
I had a ball with him and with
Estelle Getty, Rue McClanahan
and Betty White. They were hi-
larious, smart and sweet. Betty
was a fucking exceptional person
to be around. They had a hard
time lighting both of us because
she’s so Betty White and I’m so
dark. So she showed up one day
with her hair dyed brown. I was
like, “Why?” and she goes, “Well, you know,
our lighting will work out better.” I loved doing
that show. It ran for only one season. Nobody
wanted to see The Golden Palace. They wanted
The Golden Girls. They wanted to see those four
women—although Bea Arthur had left—talk
about sex and shit.

PLAYBOY: You had a huge breakthrough in
1995 playing a sociopathic, scene-stealing hit
man in the movie Devil in a Blue Dress. Some
people said you even managed to steal the film
from Denzel Washington. We met back then,
and when Washington’s name was brought up,
you got quiet. Were you two copacetic?
CHEADLE: Professionally, Denzel was about
toskyrocket. There was stuff going on with him
that didn’t have anything to do with me. There
was just tricky shit sometimes. I was so enam-
ored of him and amazed that I was getting the

INTERVIEW

opportunity to act with him. I just tried to be-
come that dude I played 24-7, and I had really
studied, gone to Texas, gone to the wards and
met gangsters. I would show up on set, get the
clothes on, and when I would come out of the
trailer, Ididn’t come out of that character until
Ileft. It was all because I was like, “I got to be on
my game. I’m playing with Magic. I can’t drib-
ble the ball off my foot out of bounds.” To me
it was really serious. More recently I did Flight
with him. We're all good in the hood.
PLAYBOY: You've blended your acting prow-
ess and musical gifts in Miles Ahead, a kind of
anti-biopic of one of the greatest trumpeters,
composers, innovators and mad geniuses who
ever lived, Miles Davis. Being the star and the
director, how does the film measure up to the
one you dreamed?

I WANTED TO
MAKE A MOVIE
THAT MILES
WOULD HAVE
WANTED TO

STAR IN.

CHEADLE: You know when you see photos of
people who've climbed Everest? People often
think they pop champagne and cheer. A lot of
times it’s just like, I climbed this fucking moun-
tain. I was sort of told by Miles's nephew that
they were going to do a movie about his life and
Iwas going to star in it. And then people started
calling, and the energy came this way. I wasn't
out there chasing any Miles Davis movie. I
didn't really want to do a biopic, having been
in several of them, famously, including Hotel
Rwanda, Talk to Me and The Rat Pack, and
won awards for them. I didn't want to be ham-
pered by facts. I didn't care about when Miles
met Charlie Parker. I didn't care about when
he first heard the birds sing the note that made
him think about ^B Flat Blues.” Especially with
aperson like Miles, whose entire life was acan-
vas to create whatever he wanted—a style of

clothes, music, a way of talking, the women in
his life—I didn't want to create some up-and-
down story about him.

PLAYBOY: At its best, the movie plays like
some crazy impressionistic mosaic.
CHEADLE: When I met with the family, the
approaches I heard all felt like different ver-
sions of the same biopic. I said, “I can try
to do Ray, but do you think he'd really want
that?" If someone comes to you with some-
thing different, fresher or elliptical, like
“Miles is a gangster,” that would be interest-
ing to me. I could see this sort of 1970s movie:
snap zooms, push-ins, “Don Cheadle is
Miles Davis as Miles Davis in Miles Ahead."
I wanted to make a movie that Miles would
have wanted to star in. I drove away from my
meeting with the family, got seven blocks and
thought, Nobody's going to do
that unless I do. I called them
back and said, *I think I have
to do it."

PLAYBOY: Didany other movies
inspire you?

CHEADLE: Every time my co-
screenwriter, Steven Baigelman,
and I thought we were going
down the road of making some-
thing didactic and linear, we'd
watch Walk Hard: The Dewey
Cox Story, laugh and get terri-
fied again. We also watched Toto
the Hero because of the way it
deals with flashbacks—they're
like fissures that shoot the main
character off to here, then slam
him back into his present-day
life at a 90-degree angle. When
I was making it, I was terrified. I tried to give
it away and hire another director. I would have
been relieved if it had gone away, because it
was just too, too hard. I had to learn to play the
trumpet. I was the lead actor, director, writer,
producer. I paid for it, did the music, raised the
money. I was everything. It's not necessarily
the smartest thing to do. I don't think I would
like to do it like that again. The first time I
watched it, I left the editing room and didn't go
back for weeks. All I could see was everything I
hadn't achieved.

PLAYBOY: Jazz music, a period look—not the
easiest movie to get financed, right?
CHEADLE: Putting the movie together with
the financiers, it was like, “Who's the white
dude in it?" Not a white dude sitting shotgun;
he had to be in the driver's seat. Until we got
Ewan McGregor to play the journalist tracking

down Miles, it was not happening. Thank God
Ewan came in and did it, and he's great in it.
PLAYBOY: Did you ever ask your Ocean's co-
star Brad Pitt to play the guy?

CHEADLE: No. Maybe I mentioned it to
George Clooney. I know what they want to do
and who they want to work with. Miles Ahead
is a bit of a proving ground for me. I don't
mind having to prove it that way. Idon't mind
it being a meritocracy that way. I'm very cir-
cumspect with the roles I take. I’ve done mov-
ies with first-time directors where I've had
to be like, *No, we have to hang
out. I've gotto talk to you for a long
time, because we're going into bat-
tle and it's toolonga time to spend
with somebody if they're not really
solid." When Paul Thomas Ander-
son asked me to do Boogie Nights,
he'd done only Hard Eight. Paulis
the most wonderfully arrogant per-
son, full of his own shit. We met at
a deli, and he kept saying, “If you
don't do this movie, you're going
to be very upset that you didn't."
Finally he dropped all the bullshit,
and I was like, “Oh, I can see you're
for real now."

PLAYBOY: Following up on your
Miles-as-gangstertakeinthe movie,
there's a lot of gunplay involving a
paranoid, drugged-out Miles and
the music journalist—some serious,
some comic. In real life, do you feel
the need to be armed?

CHEADLE: No. I've thought about
it. My mom grew up in a sketchy
neighborhood in Kansas City, and
she used to carry a little .22. She
told me, *I had to stop carrying a
gun, Don." When I asked why, she
said, “Because “excuse me” turned
into ‘move.’ " It's dangerous to carry
a gun, because at some point you stop having
to be polite and it's a stone's throw away from
“Fucking do what I told you to."

PLAYBOY: Things escalate fast.

CHEADLE: It's not about the gun; it's about
what you're going to do with it. Are you that
dude? Most of us are not that dude. Criminals
come ready. The bad guys are going to walk up
to you with your gun out and say, “Give me that
fucking gun,” slap you around with it and rob
you. This gangster friend of mine who is now in
a wheelchair is like, “I used to just walk up and
take guns from dudes and go, ‘You're not seri-

2”

ous. ” He made a career out of that, as a lot of

INTERVIEW

gangbangers do. He messed up and picked the
wrong guy one time—that one out of 50 dudes
who was serious.

PLAYBOY: At the risk of sounding cheesy, did
you ever feel Miles Davis’s presence while mak-
ing the movie?

CHEADLE: Only his approach of “Fear no mis-
takes, for there are none. Jump off a ledge." If
he heard you rehearsing a solo in your hotel
room and you came down and played that
same shit onstage, you were fired on the spot.
It's like, “I’m paying you to rehearse in front of

people. I'm paying you to find it." Miles Ahead
closed the New York Film Festival. I was wait-
ing to go onstage to introduce the movie, and
my daughter Imani said, “I’m 19 now, and I
remember sitting on your lap when I was 10
and you were on the phone talking about this
movie. You're here, you did it, and people are
watching it. Come here with me, Dad. Be here
with me.” From that moment on, I’ve been
like, “This is great.”

PLAYBOY: What can we expect from the new
Captain America: Civil War?

CHEADLE: If Iopen my mouth about it, I feel
asthough there's a red dot pointed at my fore-

head. Like there's a sniper behind that tree
right there and he's saying, *Go ahead, tell
him shit, Don." I'm excited that the Russo
brothers, Anthony and Joe, directed it, be-
cause they want to bring back the good old
days ofthe first Iron Man. They're edgy dudes
who don't come from a Marvel or comic-book
background. Hopefully they're able to infuse
the movie with this more confrontational,
darker energy. They're also doing Avengers:
Infinity War—Part I and Part II, which I
think will start toward the end of this year
and go into 2017.

PLAYBOY: Does your character
have more to do this time?
CHEADLE: If things keep going the
way they have been, I will continue
to make more but work less than
ever. I was on Captain America four
days or something, because they
scan you doing 55 expressions; they
send you in acircle and take images
of your entire body. So in the movie,
as soon as that visor goes down, it’s
a drawing or a stuntman. It’s not
even us anymore.

PLAYBOY: Some of the Marvel mov-
ies have been great, but others have
been the same old, same old. Why do
audiences keep going?

CHEADLE: It’s wanted. It’s de-
sired. I want to hear Robert Downey
Jr. talk shit and be flip to Captain
America. I want Captain Amer-
ica to have a stick up his ass and
tell Tony Stark about not curs-
ing. I want to see Thor know he’s
the shit. These characters are im-
portant to people. They’ve grown
up with them, if not in the mov-
ies, then in comic books in their
bedrooms, reading at night with a
flashlight when they weren’t sup-
posed to. That goes deep for people. The Mar-
vel people understand better than anybody
that we've got to start fucking with this genre
a little bit. Guardians of the Galaxy wasn't
like Avengers, and neither was Ant-Man.
PLAYBOY: So when you add it all up, would you
say you've finally made it?

CHEADLE: Fifty percent. As an actor I'm al-
ways terrified I’ll never get hired again. I'd say
there's a better than 50 percent chance that I
can work and make enough money so I won't
lose my house. Maybe now I can go do a play and
not think, Are they going to forget about me?
That, to me, is making it. [|

Photographer Molly Steele is celebrated.
with newfound attention, she's eager to;

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATE

Molly Steele never intended to be a photographer. Two years ago she found herself in a rut, work-
ingtwo jobs while studying botany as a full-time student. *I was overwhelmed and had no room
in my head for my own ideas. I decided to break from everything and use the money I'd saved to
buy a car and pursue photography. I haven't done anything else since.” Today, the 27-year-old is
lauded for her self-funded photography, which she shares on Instagram and describes as *pri-
marily outdoors with a voice of solitude." While her online following of nearly 60,000 has un-
doubtedly fallen in love with her Walden-esque journeys into isolation, she's ready to push her
art into another realm, turning the lens back on humanity. *If I were alive during the Vietnam
War, I would have been a war photographer. I’m interested in experiencing the things I shouldn't
experience alone,” she says. Recently, Molly spent time living offthe grid in a hut with a sexage-
narian hippie. Last year she was arrested in Kansas for freight hopping. “Pm intrigued by off-
kilter lifestyles, but the deeper I go into documenting them, the more danger I put myself in. I

ser

don't tell my parents half the stuff I do until afterward," she says. “Through it all, I find myself
saying that if something bad goes down, it's my fault because I was asking for it. That's what's
heartbreaking—that, as a young woman, I can be victimized because someone else sexualizes
me.” For Molly, appearing in PLAYBOY is, in some way, an avenue to combat a fear that her cre-
ative drive (and safety) may be compromised by the gaze of others. *What does it mean for me, a
photographer, to use my body as a vessel for communicating my art? I want people to believe in
the integrity behind what Pm doing. I want to move this machine forward. I want to be set free."

dee
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Can a single injectio 5916 : severe PTSD? An
g e really is a cure for war

I would be pissed I didn't get this shot earlier if I weren't so
gratefull got it at all. I haven't been quite right since the war,
posttraumatic stress and all. Nothing I did in seven years
of trying to get back to normal—therapy, meds, madcap
schemes—really helped. It turns out a big part of the cure was
under my nose the whole time. Well, six or seven inches under

my nose and a couple of inches back and to the right, in a clus-
ter of nerves by the spinal column called the stellate ganglion.
Two injections of a couple of local anesthetics—lidocaine,
the same thing dentists use, and bupivacaine—into that
part of the neck and I was pretty much back to my old self-

ILLUSTRATION BY JUSTIN METZ

Dr. Eugene Lipov, the man who administered
my shot and who has pioneered the use of the
so-called stellate ganglion block for PTSD, tells
me the Navy SEALs call it the God shot. Well,
SEALs have their sea stories. Here is mine.
Icameback from Afghanistaninthe spring of
2007, developed insomnia that was eventually
diagnosed as PTSD in 2008 and every
few months for the next fiveyears had

sy MATT

longest war in Ameri-
can history and the least
debated. Most of the
U.S. isn’t really at war.
It is spaced-out in front
of glowing rectangles.
At any given time, only
about one half of one per-
cent of Americans are
in the military. That’s
about the same number
who identify as New Age
or Hindu. This number includes all members
of the military—from stateside desk jockeys
to foul-smelling infantry privates—and most
are serving in soft jobs, whether or not they’re
deployed. The infantry makes up only 15 per-
cent of the Army; by comparison, elderly people
make up 14 percent of the general population.

Of post-9/11 veterans, 20 percent
suffer from PTSD. Only 50 percent

either a major legal or psychological FARWELL say the war in Afghanistan was

issue—the kind that led to hospital-
ization or jail time. As hard as I had to fight in
Afghanistan, I had to fight doubly hard to get
here, a place where I'm celebrating two years
without getting locked in a loony bin or a cell.
During my 16 months as a U.S. Army com-
bat infantryman in Afghanistan, the enemy
lived outside the wire and had no face. He hid
in plain sight and used IEDs or indirect fire.
Back in the States, the enemy also hid in plain
sight. The thing is, he wore my face and occu-
pied my brain. This isn't a war story. This is a
postwar story.
Let's break it down by the numbers.
America has been at war for more than 14
years since September 11, 2001. This is the

worth it. And in 2012, 45 percent of
the 1.6 million veterans of Afghanistan and
Iraq applied for disability benefits from the
Department of Veterans Affairs.

"The mental health of our troops is very
much a national security issue," says Dr.
Elspeth Ritchie, a former military psychia-
trist who held the top mental-health job in the
Army. “If we don't take care of our veterans,
people aren't going to want to sign up and join
the military."

Ofthe approximately 2.7 million Americans
who have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan,
17,000 earned Combat Medical Badges, 78,000
earned Combat Infantry Badges and 121,000
earned Combat Action Badges—signifying
that these soldiers have faced a degree of

HERE I WAS, A TRAINED
KILLER, AND I GOULDN’T EVEN
MANAGE TO KILL MYSELF.

mortal danger. As with any award, these num-
bers may be somewhat inflated, but they still
serve as a good metric: About eight percent of
those deployed overseas are actually “in the
shit,” as they say in the movies. So what hap-
pens when they come home? I can only go by
my own experiences and what I know from the
guys in my old unit, but man, are we fucked-up.
My friend Charlie killed himself a year ago,
four days before Christmas. There was no life
insurance, nothing to take care of his wife and
children after his death. Then there was Kris,
a super-squared-away platoon sergeant I knew
in Afghanistan. He shot himself in the heart
last year so he could still have an open-casket
funeral; he left a note for his mother to make
sure he was wearing his dress uniform in the
casket. Mike overdosed on pills, booze and her-
oin when I was still in the Army. Those are the
first three men whocome to mind, but there are
many more. Roughly 30 out of 100,000 recent

veterans commit suicide, nearly double the
civilian rate. It’s one of the top problems fac-
ing vets, among other serious issues, including
chronic homelessness.

I tried to kill myself in 2009. I was drunk as
hell and driving my brother’s immaculately
maintained 1988 Jeep Comanche, which he’d
left in my safekeeping while he was stationed
in Germany. I tried to flip the truck into a river,
make it look like an accident. It didn’t work,
and I wound up in jail for three days (I'd been
difficult for the police to subdue) and then the
psych ward on the fifth floor of the Naval Medi-
cal Center Portsmouth for 12 days. One day in
group, they asked why I'd tried to kill myself.

Iasked if Icould use the whiteboard. I drew a
simple utility graph: This line represented liv-
ing; this line represented dying. The benefits
of dying outweighed those of living. I felt only
anger, rage and shame and that I wasn't doing
anything but hurtingother people. They put me
on suicide watch for the rest of the day.

Farwell spent 16 months in Afghanistan as a U.S. Army combat infantryman; above, patrolling in Naka
district, Paktika province, summer 2006.

I would have spent more
time in the locked ward but
for the intervention of Baddr,
a friend from college who was
in med school and by sheer co-
incidence serving his psych
rotation on my floor. The first
thing he said to me was “Matt,
when I said we should get lunch, I didn't mean
here and I didn't mean every day.” After 12 days
of wearing scrubs and working on puzzles, I was
finally discharged. It was Baddr who turned
the tide. He told the doctors, who were reluc-
tant to release me, that if I said I wouldn't try
to kill myself again, I was telling the truth. I
haven't attempted suicide since.

For a long time, though, I wished my at-

tempt had been successful. Here I was, a
trained killer, and I couldn't even manage to
kill myself.
I bounced around for a couple of years, liv-
ing a less than stable life. The last time I was
psychiatrically hospitalized was at a civilian
psych hospital in Idaho, from December 25,
2013until just after New Year's. On Christmas
Eve I had jumped out of my dad's truck while
he was driving it 45 miles per hour just north
of Jackpot, Nevada. ER doctors treated me for
light abrasions and wanted to send me to the
VA hospital in Boise, but my dad insisted I be
taken to Canyon View, the local psychiatric
ward in Twin Falls, Idaho. I'd spent the previ-
ous month unraveling spectacularly in Berke-
ley, California, where my ex-girlfriend was a
student. When she'd had enough, she called my
dad, and he wanted answers.

My dad had already lost a son—my older
brother, Chief Warrant Officer Gary Marc
Farwell, who was killed in a helicopter crash
on February 3, 2010. He wasn't about to lose
another. Plus, hed already gained some grim
experienceinthis, havingtwice driven from Ar-
kansasto Virginiato medevac my sorry ass. The
first time was when I broke my back crashing
into a tree. I was drunk, which was bad, but I had
been on my way to help an Army buddy who was
in a bad way, so I considered it a karmic wash.
The second time was after we buried my brother
and his helicopter crew's “commingled re-
mains" at Arlington National Cemetery, a year
after burying most of his body in Idaho. I don't
know why it took almost a year for the Army to
figure out they had pieces left over, but some-
times things go wrong in large organizations.

After the burial, my folks went back to Ar-
kansas, my brother's wife and kids went back
to Idaho, and I went to jail for 10 days for a pre-
vious drunk-driving charge, wearing the same

suit I'd worn to the funeral—in fact, the guards
thought I was a lawyer and were about to callin
a warrant on me for not checking myself into
jail. That was an odd experience.

After I got out, I went to a bunch of bars in
northern Virginia. The next few days are
spotty, but I know for sure that I got arrested
twice in two days at Reagan National Airport,
both times for being drunk. For running out on
abartab, Iwascharged with defraudingan inn-
keeper; the charge was later dropped. I think I
still owe a bail bondsman $20. I spent at least
one night in a hospital, leaving without being
discharged, fight-or-flight reflex on full alert.
Ican'tsayIrecommend it. I definitely don't rec-
ommend pulling out one's own catheter.

I showed up on a childhood friend's doorstep,
and she helped me more than I deserved, bring-
ing me to her parents' place in Yorktown, Vir-
ginia, drying meout and calling my dad to come
pick me up. Her father, a Vietnam cavalryman,
seemed to understand and offered some wise
words I'm still trying to follow. (Thank you, sir.)

My point is, I had been on quite a few cross-
country journeys with my father already, not
always under the best circumstances. But the
one in 2013 was different, and not just be-
cause I had jumped out of the truck airborne-
style. This one scared the hell out of me, and I
started to get serious about getting help. Life
was pain. The therapy I had received while still
in the military was a tourniquet on a bleeding
wound—it kept me from dying right away, but
itsureas hell wasn'ta permanent solution. The
therapy I got from the VA wasn't much better.
The VA recognizes two treatments for PTSD as
"evidence-based" and "gold standard": talk-
based protocols and medication.

They didn't work so well for me. I was kicked
out of one of the VA's flagship PTSD programs
in Menlo Park, California, and my medication
history spans nearly the whole alphabet, miss-
ing only four letters. “Most studies show that
if you get the treatment and stick through it,
about two thirds get better,” says Ritchie. “But
only one third sticks to the treatment.”

IknewIwas part of the problem—I had trou-
ble conforming to the brand of middle-of-the-
road flowchart medicine that seemed most
effective on older Vietnam veterans who were
so beaten down they'd take anything. There
had to be something else. I looked into MDMA
trials in Charleston, South Carolina and noted
that psilocybin also showed promise. Then I
started calling around.

I first heard about the stellate ganglion
block in 2014 from Dr. Frank Ochberg, a lead-
ing expert on posttraumatic stress injury. He
and many others, including former president

T 5
Jus SES
CUO

Farwell and other soldiers playing soccer with children in Terwa district, Paktika province, Afghanistan.
Nearly 20 percent of post-9/11 soldiers suffer from PTSD. Only 50 percent say the war was worth it.

George W. Bush and retired Army vice chief
of staff Peter Chiarelli, are working to replace
the term posttraumatic stress disorder with
posttraumatic stress injury, which better re-
flects the very real neurological and biological
changes that occur in the body after trauma.
Ochberg introduced me to an informal group
of psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and
journalists. Years later, one of my closest friends
would refer to Ochberg as my guardian angel.

I didn't get the shot then, but I should have.
Instead I hunkered down for the next year and
a half, trying to keep myself out of jail and out
of the mental hospital, trying to keep myself
normal. I moved out of my parents' house in
Arkansas and rented a place a few miles away.
My girlfriend moved from California to be with
me, and I tried to live like a normal person. It
worked, sort of. I mowed my lawn, grew a gar-
den, stayed out of trouble and the nuthouse.
Still, I couldn't sleep, couldn't focus, couldn't
give my girlfriend the attention or love she de-
served, couldn't get my shit together on any-

thing but the most basic level. After almost
nine months of enduring all the awful crap that
living with me entailed, she made the best deci-
sion for us both. She left me.

Sleep was still hard to come by. When I did
sleep my sheets were soaked in sweat by the
time I woke up. 1 moved into a smaller apart-
ment, got a cat and worked on my writing.
While researching another story in 2015, I
spoke with a genuine hero of the war in Af-
ghanistan. His nameis Jason Amerine, and he
was a lieutenant colonel in the Special Forces.
In 2001 he led the firstteam into Afghanistan,
saved Hamid Karzai’s life and lost three Ameri-
cans and more than 20 Afghan allies under his
command when a 2,000-pound bomb dropped
from a U.S. plane hit their position. Our con-
versation drifted to PTSD, and he told me he'd
gotten the stellate ganglion block. He admit-
ted to having reservations about giving up the
familiar pain PTSD provides.

"The sum of all my experiences was mean-
ingful to me, and I didn't regard them

Left: Farwell, hooked up to an IV, in front of his Humvee in Ghazni, Afghanistan. Right: A medical team at the Ashton Center for Day Surgery
outside Chicago preps Farwell for a stellate ganglion block injection, which has shown promise in treating PTSD.

negatively, even though my body was screwed
up, even though I undoubtedly had a degree of
PTSD,” Amerine said. “I didn't want it to all
magically go away, because that was who I was.
If I was gonna think about my men who died,
I wanted to feel that, and I just didn’t know
what the shot would do.”

My interest piqued, I decided maybe it was
time for me to get the shot. After all, what harm
could it do?

First I asked my psychiatrist at the VA if she
could refer me for a stellate ganglion block.
Then I had to tell her what it was and explain
that it’s commonly used in pain management.
She didn’t know of any VAs that offered the
procedure, so she put in a note to my primary
care doctor, whom I visit once a year or so, to
see if I could get the block for pain manage-
ment. My medical records show that this re-
quest was denied, though no one ever called
to let me know. So I called Ochberg. He called
Lipov, and Lipov called me and invited me to
get the shot and write about it. A couple of days
later, he asked if I would be interested in going
on a daytime TV show on which a panel of doc-

tors discuss medical issues with guests. I flew
to Los Angeles and did the pre-show, and met a
guy who'd had the shot. His wife claimed it was
magic. I went on the show and basically acted
like abummed-out weirdo, but I met Lipov for
the first time. He was there with a documen-
tary filmmaker and the TV show crew. Which
is how, a couple of weeks later, I had the odd ex-
perience of watching rough-cut video of myself
atthe exact moment I gained some measure of
my life back and left the last sweat-stained
sheets on a hospital gurney.
Dr. Eugene Lipov is in the frame. He's giving
methe injection. He's wearing light blue scrubs
and a surgical cap with an American flag pat-
tern, looking vaguely like a doctor who has
swapped heads with a biker. Behind the lens is
Kris, a tall, broad-shouldered Californian by
way of Pennsylvania who acts as field producer,
cameraman, editor and all-around virtuoso for
the show. This whole thing is meta, an out-of-
body experience.

“We are treating Matt today. So Matt has had
PTSD,” Lipov says, pausing to ask, “Do I look at
you or the lens?” Kris prompts Lipov to act nat-

ural. “Matt is here today because he has severe
PTSD. He's tried multiple therapies that have
failed, and he wanted to see if the stellate gan-
glion block works. I found in about 2006 that a
stellate ganglion block returns the brain to its
pre-trauma state.”

“Why?” Kris asks from behind the camera.
It's a leading question, but the narrator inside
me is grateful. I haven't done as much research
as I should have going into this; I'm impulsive
by nature.

"It's an old anesthetic process used since
1925 for pain management,” Lipov says. “I
found in 2006 it seems to reboot the brain,
and a very common question is: Why can an
anesthetic block that lasts eight to 12 hours
give years of relief? All I can offer is a hypoth-
esis. PTSD is a biological condition. When
somebody has severe trauma, military or oth-
erwise, it promotes something called NGF—
nerve growth factor. Turns out when NGF is
secreted from the brain and then turns off,
it leads to nerve fibers sprouting in the neck.
With the stellate ganglion block, those nerve
fibers die off."

He holds up a medical demonstration skull

with part of a spinal column running under the
white bubble that would normally hold brains.
Ive already made the “poor Yorick" jokes.
Lipov points at the neck bones.

“The first injections are done on the right
side of the neck near the C6 and the C7 verte-
brae. These are safer. If it works at this point,
we stop. If it doesn't, then we go for a block
at about the C3. How do we judge if it works?
The body gives clues in the form of a Horner
syndrome." This is when the right eyelid gets
droopy. A few patients need a booster shot a
year later, but most never do.

Then Lipov gets right to the point. Before
the procedure, he asks patients to think of the
worst thing they've ever seen and feel it. Then
heasksthe patientto do the same afterthe shot.

After the first injection, Lipov asks, *How
do you feel?"

"Kind of awake, a little bit loopy," I reply.

"Can't tell any difference?"
Lipov asks.

I reply, “Hard to tell.” He'd
given the injection in the cor-
rect spot, using an X-ray and
a dye to guide the .22-gauge
needle. My memory of this
is spotty because for most of
the time I was racked out and
strapped down on a gurney,
snugunder the somatic blanket
provided by propofol, Michael
Jackson's favorite drug. My
dad calls it *milk of amnesia."

Lipov puts me under and ad-
ministers the second injection.
Later he and Kris come back to
wake me up. Lipov lightly taps
me while I snore under the thin
white hospital blanket. “Matt,
Mr. Sleeping Beauty," Lipov croons in his
Ukrainian accent. I startle briefly and then ask
if Iam done. Yes, Lipov affirms. Yes, finished
with the second shot.

“Oh...hey,” I say weakly.

“Feel any different?" Lipov asks.

“Yeah, uh...,” I'm trying to think of how to
frame my thoughts, and the fact that a camera
is pointed at me isn't helping.

“Feeling chilled?” Lipov prompts.

“Yeah!” I reply, noticing how relaxed I am.
It'sa weird feeling, one I'm not used to, and I'm
grateful. Lipov turns to Kris and says, “Same
response as the other guy." The other guy is a
former marine I met in the waiting room. His
mom and my dad became fast friends, swap-
ping their own war stories of dealing with un-
hinged children.

Lipov asks if this second injection feels any

different. Again my response is lame. “Yeah,
Iwokeup and smiled with this one." Lipov and
Ihigh-five.

I noticed the difference the day after my injec-
tion. My dad—an enlisted submariner who'd
sailed on a World War II-era diesel electric
boat—and I toured Chicago, including a visit
to the Museum of Science and Industry.

I was able to tour the museum's German
U-boat, which was crowded and loaded with
loud noises and flashing lights, without freak-
ing out, without my blood pressure rising. It
wasn't until halfway through the tour that I
realized that nothing about it—the lights, the
sounds, the claustrophobia, the crowd—was
freaking me out.

In Chicago I also saw my friend Baddr, the
med student who'd seen me the very first time
I'd gone to a psych ward, back in 2009. Now a

BEFORE THE

PROCEDURE, LIPOV
ASKS PATIENTS

TO THINK OF
THE WORST

THING THEY’VE

EVER SEEN.

surgeon, he’d read more on the shot and de-
spite initial skepticism thought it held prom-
ise. “Quacks don’t publish,” he said.

I slept great that night. And I’ve slept well

almost every night since.
A month after receiving the stellate ganglion
block, I traveled to Washington, D.C. to talk to
some people for a book I'm writing. It was early
December. I hate Washington. I didn’t always,
but that changed with the war and my brother
and his crew’s burial across the river at Arling-
ton. Ripped open some scabs, that did.

Now, four years later, I was at the cemetery
again. It was a Monday. I wanted to get it out
of the way, as callous as that sounds. I brought
some flowers, pins and mementos and stood
in front of the grave for a while. Looking at the
new rows of tombstones and tilled earth that

had grown in since the last time I'd visited, I
thought about the fact that sharks continue
to grow teeth throughout their life. After a
few minutes, I figured I'd paid my respects. I
had another appointment. My body moved to
the position of attention, and I saluted. Tears
formed. I moved to the position of parade rest
and studied how I felt. I was sad. I missed my
brother. I was angry he was dead. But I wasn’t
going to pick a fight or slam back 20 shots of
Jameson. It was far different from how I'd felt
four years before.

It was December 7, the anniversary of Pearl
Harbor. That night I was still keyed up, so I went
walking through D.C.’s Adams Morgan neigh-
borhood. I followed a bunch of kids dressed in
ugly Christmas sweaters with short shorts and
tight bodies into a random bar in Georgetown.
Bars, sober, are hilarious for me now; I like to
goand observe the action. It’s a way, I suppose,
of understanding what I was
like for many years, without
the group-therapy revival nar-
ratives of AA, which drive me
nearly as insane as group ther-
apy at the VA.

I watched these kids. They
were celebrating a friend's 21st
birthday with the requisite 21
shots. They were rich kids. Not
acareinthe world. I sat down at
the bar, drank a Diet Coke and
tried to figure out how I felt.
White-hot anger would previ-
ously have been my default set-
ting: They were sitting here,
celebrating, at the same age I
was shitting myself in a forti-
fied compound that was crum-
bling in Ghazni province. But
now it didn't make me angry.

It made me alittle sad. That's true. But mostly
it just made me feel separate. Not isolated. Sep-
arate. That's a distinction, one that makes me
think back to my Mormon roots, when elders
used to “set us apart" for religious callings.
After Afghanistan, I left the church, and now
Ireally don't know what I believe, beyond that
ifa god or ether exists, it has a sense of humor.

I felt set apart. Priestly, perhaps. I had car-
ried out extreme violence. I had suffered for
it. And yet I didn't have to. It was my choice to
make, and I made it. I felt possessed of some
special knowledge, essential to life, that these

naifs had yet to grasp.
I wasn't angry. And I could sleep. And that
was a start. a

Additional reporting by Elsa Givan.

Joni longs for a life ot the mind but'settles for illicit visits with *
married men and:sweatyehotel hooktips:with clients

iLLUsTRATIO v8 SIMON PEMBERTON

FICTION

David: In order tounderstand quantitative easing you have to understand what
abubbleis. Basically, abubble happens when the value of assets—that’s stocks or
houses or something—just starts going up so much that people feel like they’re
wealthier. They haven't actually gotten any more income, but the assets they
own are worth more and more. Say you have a house and it triples in value and
so you think of yourself —your net worth—as being a lot higher, so you go out
and spend more money. That's called the wealth effect. Have you heard ofthat?

Joni kicks her shoe so that it skims right past
David's ankle and lands beneath the black-
board where he's standing.

David turns to look at her. Their eyes meet
briefly before each turns away, Joni's face
flushing. She bites her bottom lip.

Joni: No.

They are in an empty classroom at Columbia,
where David is a graduate student, a transplant
from South Africa.

David: So the wealth effect is the fact that
when the value of your assets rises you spend
more of your income. You save less money be-
cause you feel like your house is doing the sav-
ing for you. So, asset bubbles, wealth effect.
What happened in these recent bubbles was
based in housing. A really high percentage of
GDP growth in the 2000s was from people bor-
rowing against the value of their homes, tak-
ing out loans on their homes and spending the
money. Like if you bought....

David continues, but Joni does not hear. His
voice is a sound that pleases her, that enters her
and leaves her just the same.

She had genuinely wanted to learn when she
asked David to tutor her—paid him $100 for
his time and companionship—but she finds
herself unable to follow. Impressive-sounding,
incomprehensible words flow in and out of
her ears, as if she were listening to a lecture
in French. She focuses on the things she likes,
sensual things: the sound of his accent, the
tap of the chalk as he writes, the silhouette of
his tall, slender body, the air of authority that

beingatthe front of a classroom gives him.

And she likes the feeling of breaking a rule,
of sneaking into an empty school she isn't even
enrolled in after midnight, the sense of cama-
raderie she feltgliding through the large empty
hallways in the dark with David. Perhaps it is
the air of the illicit that makes her unable to
focus on economics.

David: Do you have any questions?

David fetches the champagne she brought for
them and the mugs he stole from the staff break
room and sets them next to her. She slides her
bottom across the black table, reaches up and
gently places her arms around David's neck,
softly kissing the sides.

He doesn't stop her, but he hesitates. He is
looking straight ahead, seeming
not to know what to do. Joni runs
her chubby fingers through his
blond hair and continues to kiss his
neck and ears. He kisses Joni's mouth lightly.

David's eyes revealatrace of something he is
normally able to suppress. He places his hand
on Joni's thigh.

David: I'm going to get in trouble for kissing
my students.

They gather the champagne and mugs and
walk to the staff room. The mood changes.
Joni cannot keep the momentum going, does
not know what to say to David now. He washes
the mugs silently. When he is finished he looks
past her as if to say it is the end of her lesson,
time to go home now, school is done for the day.

As they walk by David's office, Joni places

er MARIE
CALLOWAY

her hand on the doorknob and turns to face it.
She does not want to leave him. Joni looks over
her shoulder at David.

Joni: I have to show you something.

She walks into his office and sits at his desk,
which is covered in a flurry of books and stu-
dent papers.

David follows her, closing the door behind
him but for aninch.

David: What do you have to show me?

He sounds as if he knows she is up to
something.

Joni stares shyly at the dull linoleum floor.
She thinks about calling the whole game off,
but she does not want to give up so easily. She
thinks, I have to answer his question—he is the
teacher, after all—and so she lifts
her black dress to reveal large white
breasts, sagging out of a purely dec-
orative quarter-cup red lace bra.

David: Oh, those are impressive.

Joni: See, it’s cute. Because of the lace.

David: Yeah.

He nods absentmindedly.

Wordlessly, mindlessly, he approaches her,
and his slender hand, ringed finger and all,
reaches out and touches her breasts delicately,
cups them. David always handles her so gently.
He is the only man ever to have touched her in
away that was always pleasant. But six months
after they met, friends of friends, she wonders
if it is that same gentleness (timidity perhaps)
that makes him run away after just a kiss. Will
he finally give in tonight?

FICTION

She places her fingers on his belt buckle and
snakes toward the clasp. He sighs wearily.

David: It's getting late. You should probably
go home.

She has been too rash, and David has pan-
icked and sent her away.

David is married, afraid of taking advantage,
afraid of intimacy. But Joni doesn't care. She
wants him to get over it. She wants him to fuck
her in his office. She has long fantasized about
a professoror TA like David leaning her against
the bookcases full of Marx and Ricardo and tak-
ing her. The fact that he is married and 15 years
her senior only adds to it. His guilt is getting in
the way of her pleasure, yet it is also indirectly
partofthe causeofher desirefor him. How much
longer will it be until she can feel pleasure? Oris
it actually just the chase, the anticipation that
she enjoys? It doesn’t seem to matter. Time is
running out. She is 23, too old—in her mind—to
be aschoolgirl. Too old to be thrilled by sleeping
with older men, married men.

A long cab ride home to her Alphabet City
apartment. She stares out the window. New
York is hideous, with gray dilapidated build-
ings and filthy streets mottled with failed
asphalt and garbage heaps. And the peo-
ple are even worse. It’s like living inside an
eternal cocaine comedown. Why does any-
one live here?

In New York she always wants to break the
rules because she can’t fit in, isn’t capable of
it. She wants to want to learn about economics,
but all she can focus on is sex with the man who
is supposed to tutor her. She is a bimbo, and
true to bimbo form she cannot accept it. Even
though she always ends up like this, vaguely
humiliated after his polite rejection. “Misery
and the Bimbo Form.” Yet she will continue to
surround herself with smart people like David.

It is unsurprising but eye-opening how it fol-
lows, from the statement (often incorrectly
attributed to Primo Levi) that Palestinians
are the Jews’ Jews, that whores are women’s
women. Textbook.

Honestly, one reason I sense that sex workers
who aren't forced into the trade are subject to
so much hatred is that the implication of their
work is that the patriarchy doesn’t spoil gen-
eral heterosexual relations. And that awoman
can use sex to her own ends. I don’t mean that
in an idealizing way regarding how sex work
actually operates; I mean that there's a funda-
mental refusal of the premise that “sexual ac-
cess" in itself is a kind of harm or wrong, which
is what is absolutely implied when you hear
about patriarchy being all about sexual ac-
cess to women. It certainly is, in part, but that
doesn't mean you confront the patriarchy when
you deny sexual access.

I'm not sure I'm expressing this with the
requisite nuance.

Put another way, it's the structures of sex-
ual access, rather than the desire for it, that get
conflated. And the latter usually supplants the
former in critiques of sex work, porn and so on,
and it tends to focus on women who find their
sexuality viable. Not unproblematic, not pain-
less, just viable. And not because they're brain-
washed by patriarchy, but because they happen
to be well-adjusted against the ubiquitous sex-
ual conservatism.

But many people are deluded that we live in
a world of sexual liberation. The mainline fem-
inist argument is that women are not sexually
liberated but men are—at women’s expense. Not
inmy view. Men sexually exploit women all over
the place. That’s not a product of liberation but
of the ongoing conservative organization of sex-

ual exchange. The fact that women can't access
men sexually in anything like a public and im-
personal way says everything about this.
George: You know, you remind me of...an
actress from a French film.

Comparing a doughy ginger like Joni to a
Karina or a Bardot is laughable. No, she is more
reminiscent of a Todd Solondz character. But
he knows that, and he knows how to flatter her.
Still, she has never been able to fully suspend
her disbelief.

He had asked her to meet him in front of Cof-
fee Shop on 16th Street near his office in Union
Square, where he works as a bespoke shoe-
maker. She feels embarrassed standing in front
of such a place, with its garish blinking neon
sign and NYU freshmen clientele and fried
plantains covered in off-puttingly red ketchup.

They have not seen each other in eight
months. She likes his well-fitting corduroy
suits, his blond hair and the thick-framed
glasses he wore specifically because he's aware
of Joni's infatuation with intellectuals.

George is Joni's older married friend. She re-
members part of their very first conversation:

Joni: Do you have a wife?

George: Yes, but I don't have a girlfriend.

But now, hetells her, he has five of them.

George: Sometimes I feel bad, cream-pie-ing
these 21-year-old Jewish girls on the floor of
my office. But I'm like Don Draper. I'm think-
ing of pitching a column about my sexcapades
to somewhere like Esquire or PLAYBOY, some-
where with real money.

Sensing Joni's disapproval, he defends
himself.

George: In New York there are so many beauti-
ful girls, it's like a buffet! I mean, wouldn't you?

Joni smiles, unsure of what to say.

George: Nah, you'd just have a bite of potato
and go to bed.

They walk in silence. Joni does not want to
goto his office but follows him there any way.

George: I remember you being quiet. I don't
remember you saying nothing.

It'strue. She has still not forgiven him for the
night after the Verso party.

Who goes to a Verso party?

Bitchy East Coast girls who grewupin an idyl-
lic Boston suburb and went to Sarah Lawrence,
who have parents who read books (instead of
growing up in a cultural wasteland that exists
solely to provide casino service and labor, in a
family where avoiding teenage motherhood and

1. Anonymous.

attending a third-tier state college were almost
unattainable achievements). Pompous girls
who desperately want to be boys or—lower in
the hierarchy- catering girls who serve a purely
aesthetic and/or care role to the boys.

Mediocre, mean, arrogant boys. So many of
them. More boysthan subway rats. Rat Bastard
who had twice (twice!) soberly hit and humili-
ated hisgirlfriend in public apropos of nothing.
Now he is held up by New York as an example
of a good male feminist—in contrast to all the
bad ones, and there are so many bad ones—
but he's good, he says, because he critiques his
own overwhelming but problematic instinct to
protect women.

Joni heard a blonde catering girl squeal to
him, *Your dog is such a Situationist!" and
climbed out on the fire escape. Or tried to. Her
sock caught the corner of the frame and she
fell on her knees. (“Fuck!”) Partygoers saw her
and scoffed. She climbed down tothe street and
called George, not knowing who else.

They were in his office then too. She sat on
that rug—the cream-pie rug, apparently—
legs crossed, revealing pink panties, eating
a rare steak with her bare hands. Chew-
ing deeply into thick sinew, ripping it
apart, myoglobin trickling between fleshy
fingers—she licked it off like berry juice.

An “old-fashioned meat-and-potatoes
British affair" is what George called it.

He gave the black delivery boy a 50 per-
cent tip to impress her and she did feel
happy, yet slightly embarrassed, when the kid
jumped for joy.

She excused herself to go to the bathroom
down the hall. She needed to expel the six tall
boys of Bud Light, whose brackish taste she
did not like but which she chose knowing they
would sneer at her at the Verso party for drink-
ingit. Those quiet looks that said so much. Sit-
ting on the toilet in the dim gray bathroom,
Joni imagined their disgust: Very tacky. She
seems to pile on the carbs as heavily as her
makeup. Graceless. Graceless.

She certainly felt graceless when she re-
turned to find George holding her phone, look-
ingthrough her e-mail.

George: Isn't that funny! You're having sex
with everyone but me. Can get all these hot
JAPs but can't get a hooker to do it with me.

Despite allthe clammy, unwashed body parts
thathad been jammed inside her, she had never
felt so violated by a man.

Joni's mind reels; why did she agree to meet
with him today? She once liked him because
he had taken her to see the delicate My Night

FICTION

at Maud’s at Film Forum, had eaten steak tar-
tare out of the palm of her hand at Balthazar
(“like a good boy”) and because she had sat in
hisoffice on calm summer afternoons sipping
$4 iced tea, admiring the jovial, charming way
he interacted with clients and how he gently,
meticulously spent hours perfecting a child’s
tiny leather shoe.

But that seems long gone. Now there’s just
this. There is only ever this moment. An ob-
noxious alcoholic who trolls Tinder for girls
(age range 18 to 25), too cowardly to admit to
himself what he is doing (see: his wife’s sup-
posed “tacit agreement”) yet too much of an
asshole to be ashamed and not brag about it. He
isaman whocalls himself Super Dad for taking
off one afternoon a week from cheating on his
pregnant wife to bring his son to the park. He
embraces no conclusion, no role entirely.

Joni’s rule is that if you do something, you
should do it completely. She would like to say
that no matter how many flaws she has, she
wants to fully experience the consequences of

saic of George in her brain. After all, she was
neither sleeping with George and having a tor-
rid love affair nor ignoring him and, what—
maybe telling his wife?

His wife. George’s favorite pastime is justify-
ing cheating on his pregnant wife.

George: I’m not saying I deserve a medal for
what I did. Cleaning piss out of the sheets, rub-
bing vomit out of the carpet. And once when
she was drunk, we were fighting and she was
standing in the door of our bedroom and said,
"You're not man enough to hit me." So, so I did.
AndIwas made out to be the bad guy, when she
started it! What was I supposed to do, Joni?

As he says this he staggers toward Joni,
grabs her wrists and presses his body to hers.
His pungent whiskey smell nauseates Joni. He
cannot stop telling her about his penis.

George: Do you think I'm a scumbag for hav-
ing sex with a hooker? It was aclassy $600 one.
AndIthinkI was quite achange of pace for her.
First I thought, She's faking it, she's faking it,
whatever, but then at the end I started to really

SHEISN'T ASHAMED OF THE
THINGS SHE DOES FOR MONEY;
SHE'S DONE WORSE FOR FREE.

her actions. Her favorite example is how she
tells herself she is an escort and so she is the
most high-end escort one can be. At least when
one weighs 162 pounds. She ignores the ways
in which she does not measure up. She loves
to make generalizations, black and white. It
makes life more comprehensible. Amy, her old
friend, had told her that relationships are a
“dynamic process." But she wants aright party
(Joni) and a wrong party (whomever she dis-
agrees with), determined by completely static
rules. Amy was now convinced she could not
enable Joni to do evil things like date a mar-
ried man. (“We don’t do that!”)

Joni hates moralizing. “Let us have a bit of
fun first.” She often thinks about Molly Bloom’s
soliloquy—has read it many times, listened to it
being performed—but has not bothered with
any other Joyce, does not care. She likes to read
it at face value, feels validated by it. A bad femi-
nist looking for a good time.

Of course, here she was with George, but did
it count if she didn’t verbalize it? Just flash a
smile and play with her hair, forming the mo-

give it to her and she says, “You are like a pas-
sionate Italian man, not British!” Some Rus-
sian girl who could barely speak English.

He hiccups.

George: Now I'm going to sit down and you're
going to sit on your Uncle George’s lap.

As he moves to sit she pushes him off her
so that he falls to the floor, and she escapes.
She cannot stand to talk to that kind of man
for free.

Why is my life so lurid these days? she wonders
as she begins to cycle—her thick, firm legs the
only solid part of her, the only powerful part
of her. Those legs that turn the wheels of the
vintage banana-pudding-yellow cruiser, the
one she bought for $60 on Long Island three
months ago. The one her friends laugh at due
to its rust and bodiless pedals but which she
loves, truly loves.

The leftist reading group meets every Wednes-
day night at six. A different kind of left than
the Verso party crowd. People who've spent

their lives working and avoiding work and
sneaking away at work to read obscure Turk-
ish communist texts, people whose parents
couldn't pay for them to go to Harvard or
Brown and who go on to intern at n+1. People
who didn't secretly aspire to become socialites
among The Nation's readership.

Sarah: —moved away from the Communist
Party, put out things that were kind of crucial
to the commie left in the 1960s and of course
the 1970s and Bologna was also a leading intel-
lectual working on oper...oprerr...workerism—
and some of the other things that are important
at this time is a movement away from the tra-
ditional labor movements and the women’s
movement, the student movement coming in
and having to redefine what the workers’ move-
ment was, now that it had been sort of starting
to separate from the traditional labor move-
ment. And so a lot of these articles are attempt-
ing to reiterate, like, what to do with that split.
And the way that Tronti describes that I find

FICTION

from his beloved Italian CP against leftcoms
and Trots, and said, “Is this what is aspired
to?” They write these shitty soc-dem papers.
So boring. You can even tell who their Ph.D.
advisors are cause they'll, like, wheel out
the hobbyhorse of their advisor’s old papers
at any opportunity. [breathlessly] “This
calls for guaranteed minimum income!” I
don’t get people who think leftist politics
are about, like, somehow for 40 years we’ve
failed to market these reforms right and we
have to find some magic formula to sell them
to people. If history hinges on these cre-
tins’ amateur-hour PR, then that’s the most
depressing thing ever

And so on. She doesn’t understand but loves
the gossip, the tone, the ability to feel like an
insider, as if she has some special knowledge
(even if only superficially by association)
that makes her privy to something no one
else in New York knows. But she doesn’t re-
ally know. Joni has been a part of the group

JONI GUZZLES THE CHAMPAGNE
AND EATS STEAK WITH HER

really nice, that the moment of discovery has
returned, that the time of political vanguards
is over and that gives us a new way to discover
political organization

A circle of chairs in a classroom.

Joni is late; she is always late. Late or not, it
doesn't matter. She is never present. She drifts
in and out of listening, does not care about any
of this. Even her wish to care is vain and in-
sincere. She wants to be an impressive orator,
wants to destroy rat boys in political debates
and wants someone to declare her intelligent.
She wants to hang around now as much as she
did when she first met them and thought to her-
self, These people are intelligent and compel-
ling and I want to be them.

She nods at sophisticated-sounding remarks
her fellow readers make and waits impatiently
to gossip with the more socially competent
members afterward. And they certainly gos-
sip. Two hours later at a nearby bar, of a long-
haired particularly odious and bespectacled
Stalinist boy:

Paul: He wrote this shitty article and in
the comments section, a scan of a kill order

BARE HANDS.

for only four months. Joni decides that she
can leave, that there is no chance of having
anything to contribute, that she lacks all con-
text. She has to leave, actually, because she
must work tonight.

“Are you going to be okay?”
The warm Manhattan night makes her feel
calm but sickly. She breathes deeply. She is not
drunk, yet the air will make her sober.

She hails acab to the Renaissance Hotel.

Yes, she has to work. Unlike the real Marx-
ists, Joni does not hate work. She only dreads
everything leading up to work: how she must
jam her legs into forever-running stockings
and fasten unhookable hooks before finally
throwing it all on the floor, telling herself
that men don’t even like lingerie anyway;
the car sickness she feels as she clumsily at-
tempts to apply eyeliner in the back of a cab;
the lotion she rubs on the patches of missed
leg hair before scraping it away with a pink
disposable Bic. A boy once told her he under-
stood the uneven division of affective labor
and that’s why he doesn’t mind paying for

girls on dates. If only clients were so under-
standing, paying her her hourly rate for the
time it takes to get ready.

But tonight she does not do any of that. It
does not feel necessary.

She stumbles into the elevator and presses
her head against the metal for support. With
her eyes closed and the cool, sticky feeling of
the metal pressed against her swollen face, she
thinks back to several months before.

The day after her 23rd birthday, David had
suddenly, cryptically asked her over Facebook
Chat if she’d like to meet for coffee at Ninth
Street Espresso. It’s true that the night before
they had shared a first kiss, and it’s also true
that they had held hands, running, laughing,
pleasantly warm air in their faces, Joni’s com-
ically stocky legs pumping, trying to keep up
with David’s long slender ones. And it’s even
true that when they had stopped and David an-
nounced he couldn't go to the bar because he
had to work, she had slapped him. He sput-
tered indignantly as she ran away, wide-
eyed, manic and giggling. And it’s true that
when they met at Ninth Street Espresso she
had cheerfully shown him the photos of her
stumbling around half-naked in the bar the
night before, near-blackout intoxicated.
David: Joni—I think you’re very beauti-
ful and sexy and really interesting. You’re
just my type.

Joni could not contain the smile her joyful
expectations created, clutching her hand to her
racing heart, thinking, Oh, he’s compliment-
ing me—he’s going to ask me out!

David: But I’m not ready. I freaked out when
you kissed me.

Stupefied silence.

Joni: I’m not good at these conversations.

David: I’m not either.

Alull.

Joni: [Pleadingly] I'm not...socially...adept...
enough...to navigate...this conversation!

She stared at the ground, sucking on her
thumb, and brushed her hair in front of her face.

David sighed softly. She hoped he saw her
then: vacuous, struggling, not just unwill-
ing but actually incapable of responding.
His eyes stopped scanning; he changed into
someone easier. The superficial but courte-
ous and patient person she imagined he be-
came when he interacted with his younger,
slower students.

David: So did you read those books I gave you?

Joni: Yes, I really like Women as Lovers. But
I didn’t start the other one yet. Um.

They both stared at the adjacent wall.

Joni trembled. She could not stand sitting
in uncomfortable silence—a situation she
was intimately familiar with, one that never
stopped feeling like suffocation. She sud-
denly nodded.

Joni: Will you walk me home, please?

Soon they stood in front of Joni's building.

David: So, see you around?

Joni nodded again, thinking, Not all boys
can handle being slapped. Even though they
all deserve it.

In her apartment complex's elevator she
pressed her cheek against the metal doors, try-
ingto cool her burning face.

Yes, that day was so humiliating. She isn't
ashamed of the things she does for money; she
knows she has done worse for free.

But now she is being paid. She is on a differ-
ent date. A four-hour dinner date with an in-
vestment banker.

He does not comment on Joni's intoxication.

She holds him, strokes and gently pecks the
top of his fat bald head. She feels genuine af-
fection for her clients, but only in acustomer-
loyalty-program kind of way. (Thanks so much
for coming!) Their intercourse is nothing
much. Joni wonders how it is that this man,
like so many men, arrived in middle age with-
outever learning how to touch a woman.

She guzzles the champagne the banker offers
her. And again she eats room service steak with
her bare hands, lifting the fillet to her mouth
and ripping it apart with her hands. Still, out
of habit her mouth is closed, she chews primly.
She sees but does not understand the banker's
nonplussed expression.

She wipes her mouth on her arm and curls up
next to the banker.

It speaks volumes, though, that men don't
achieve any sustained insight into how to have
good sex. It's an indication of how back-to-
‚Front things are when sexual activity is an un-
pleasurable site of experience. Gertain strains
of feminism seem to take this awfulness as in-
dicative of women's libidinal structure or
something, like the inherent unpleasantness
of sex. It's odd. I don't know. Sex should be a
site of pleasure. Not in some natural Edenic
sense but because it can be. Is that so naive?
Obviously it's difficult, if not impossible, to
extract sex from the asymmetries of patriar-
chal society, so sex is unpleasant perhaps to
the degree that it exacerbates or makes mani-
‚fest those inequalities. But in that sense, sex is

FICTION

no different from any social activity, includ-
ing pleasant activities.?
She wakes up.

She sees bright light—white light.

She feels heavy in a white bed—a hotel bed.

She's curled up next to someone— her client.

She springs up like a Bobo doll, clutching the
white comforter to her breasts.

Joni: Oh my God! I’m so sorry!

Bizarre, haunted, empty. Containing the de-
sireto panic, to scream, to destroy. To confront
herself: How could you?

Client: It's all right. You were sleeping so
soundly, I didn't want to wake you.

Her body feels, looks untouched. She wants
to stick her fingers into herself to examine if
there is any blood or semen, but her body is
frozen with shame. All she feels capable of
doing is fixating on the TV screen. It is sud-
denly captivating.

Along,smooth, panning shot ofa sleek black
gliding SUV cuts to another shot of a white fa-
ther and son duo, wearing camouflage, saying,
"Rebecca has been in the wrong Los Angeles."

Client: It's not fair they suspended that guy.
Whatever happened to free speech?

Joni: You're so right! Right, right, right,
right, right.

Instinging, shaming fluorescent light, heart
racing, she assesses herself, pink clammy fin-
gers spread on pink dry flesh. Finds nothing
amiss. Nothing new. Same old, same old.

Thank God he did not take advantage, she
thinks.

Guilty and grateful, Joni tries to throw
2. Anonymous.

$500 of the $2,000 onto the counter but it
lands on the floor.

She slinks away head down, walks self-
consciously in the way one does when trying
not to look drunk.

She tumbles headfirst into a cab. Feeling the
cool leather seat stick against her face, feel-
ing her drunkenly pliable body sway with the
movement of the car, she thinks of Coetzee's
protagonist in Disgrace, who in the back of his
car has sex with an intoxicated streetwalker
(“street worker,” she corrects herself), one so
intoxicated she cannot manage a single coher-
entword. Tothink she—Joni—had gotten upset,
wanted Coetzee to have a more enlightened view
of sex workers. I'm not like that, she thought.

Joni does not want to think of what she ac-
tually is like. When her co-workers tell stories,
they are not like hers, and they would cringe
and say “Oh honey" if they knew. The bad
whores have to be shamed, for they make the
others look bad. She instead focuses on her in-
dignation at Coetzee.

At home she lies on her now blackened bed,
boughtsecondhand from a discount mattress re-
tailer out of Queens via Craigslist. It is, as it has
been forthe past three months, strewn with cig-
arette butts (Marlboro Lights). At first shetried
to contain the butts to her bed, but now they soil
the things she keeps on her floor: clothes (For-
ever 21), three thoroughly worn pairs of identical
black shoes (Toms), 14 empty tall boys (Miller
Lite), the book she has been semi-honestly tell-
ingpeople she's *readingright now" for the past
seven months (Ann Rower), a broken $250 net-
book (Acer) and an open tube of lipstick (Duane
Reade). Her room is otherwise vacant. B

PLAYMATE

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GUY AROCH

“Camille Rowe isn't just a model. It's not who I am.” It's a brisk Sunday night in the City of Lights, and Miss April
is in her Le Marais apartment, preparing a dinner of fish, fennel and Moroccan carrots. “I’m grateful for all I have,”
she continues, *but I've also had sleepless nights of feeling misunderstood. I had tolearn how to separate myself from
my job.” She pauses and puts her focus back on dinner. “The thing is, my entire family is in the restaurant business.
My siblings, my father and my grandparents all started as chefs and got their own restaurants. I'm a good cook, but in
relation to them, I'm terrible,” she says, laughing. Indeed, Camille, a native Parisian, veered from her family’s rich his-
tory as restaurateurs when a modeling scout discovered her at a café. Next came campaigns for Louis Vuitton and Dior,
numerous magazine covers and a move to New York City when she turned 21. But tonight, she's back in her hometown
to shoot her first major film role—and like the delicate cuisine she prepares, the film is a toast to her roots. *I can't
reveal the title yet, which is annoying, but I can say it's a comedy by a popular, respected French director. And yes,
Ispeak French in it." Camille hopes acting, along with her PLAYBOY cover, will propel her into a higher stratum where
her voice is as recognized as her face. "You're in the public eye as a model, but you're rarely asked to speak—and even
then, they ask only about your beauty routines. Now, though, people are starting to care what I have to say. It's why I
wore my own clothes and styled myself for this shoot,” she says. "This was my vision, and it's a proud moment for me.”

|;
ং

CAMILLE ROWE

AGE:26 BIRTHPLACE: Paris, France GURRENT CITY: Chinatown, New York

MY PATH TO PLAYBOY

Pve collected PLAYBOY magazines
from the 1960s and 1970s since
| was a teenager. The entire aes-
thetic and the girls themselves
are so classically beautiful, which
is what we tried to imitate with
my pictorial. | gave my opinion on
everything; I’m so happy it hap-
pened this way.

THE BIGGEST MISCONCEPTION
ABOUT ME

Pve definitely been branded
in the modeling industry as a
Franco-American. As such, for
the longest time people assumed |
didn't speak English or that | spoke
with an accent. I’m kind of sick of
people asking whether | feel more
French or more American.

WHAT I STUDIED IN COLLEGE

l attended film school at the Amer-
ican University of Paris, where
| studied screenwriting. In high
school | watched Jim Jarmusch's
Down by Law for the first time; |
knew then | wanted to write movies.

MY FAVORITE SEX SCENE

| love how free Brigitte Bardot is,
and | used to obsessively watch
thattragic, tragic movie Contempt
on repeat. Brigitte's name in the
movie is also Camille, so | guess |
weirdly related to her. But the sex
scene between her and Michel
Piccoli is so beautiful. When she
asks him if he loves her totally, he
replies, "Totally, tenderly, tragi-
cally." | love that quote so much |

gotatattoo of it.

@FingerMonkey W @CamilleRowe

MY FAVORITE SPORT

My mom is from southern Cali-
fornia and was mortified by the
thought of raising children who
didn't know how to surf. So every
summer we were sent to surf
camp. lm no expert, but | love it.
| love that it's a sport that relies
on your understanding of nature.

AN INSIDER'S TIP FOR VISITING
PARIS

My favorite bookstore is San Fran-
cisco Book Company on Rue Mon-
sieur le Prince. It has a lot of first
editions, rare books and obscure
paperbacks from the 1960s and
1970s. It's tiny, but you'll spend
hours there. The placeisatreasure
chest. Plus, the owner is this sassy
American man who is hilarious.

a gan

ts NN
Em AL d

BE)
\ \

IS LAGOS PIE
MOST DANGEROUS
PARTY CITY ^

ON THE PLANET?

n. Nigerian music influencing American hip-hop and EDM, Adam Skolnick travels to the
world capital of Afropop and finds a city that's both captivating and conflicted

a PHOTOGRAPHY BY GLENNA GORDON j
+
’ টি
* P ond

— “i
we y ; p" -

Cova, a club in
Victoria Island, pops
on a Sunday night.

It was midnight on Saturday and the club was
heating up. Some men were decked out in black
tie, others in Ankara print caftans and match-
ing fezzes. They leaned on the bar in double-
breasted sports coats
sy ADAM and Windsor knots,
SKOLNICK and glided across the
dance floor in high-
dollar sneakers, draped in silver and gold
chains, eyeballing women of all shapes and
shades who dazzled in designer gowns, slinky
dresses, short shorts or miniskirts, by turns
accentuating or revealing ample curves, long
legs or an elegant neckline.

It was my second night in Lagos, Nigeria, and
once more I was in a room of clinking glasses
and rumbling bass, a room filled with Nigeria's
upper crust bouncing to indigenous Afropop.
Everything was washed in hot pink. Beams from
a bank of rotating lights glinted off gaslight
chandeliers and mirrored ornaments behind
the bar. Bottles of Dom Pérignon set in buckets
of dry ice left vapor trails as they streamed from
the bar in the arms of statuesque African beau-
ties conveying them to booths manned by oil
or telecom executives, real estate developers,
entrepreneurs and their guests.

Many of them, still in their 20s and 30s, were
already millionaires, and all of them were hus-
tlers. This was Lagos (pronounced “lay-gos”)
after all, and one conceit is that everybody here
has three hustles: An oil mogul may also own a
restaurant while bankrolling a recording ses-
sion with an up-and-coming MC. On the street

level it's no different. In this export-dependent,
corrupt, dangerous city, whether you're living
high or low, one job never feels like enough.

And the never enough is why I was there. The
truth is, I was the jaded traveler incarnate. I'd
been to 45 countries on six continents, report-
ing, adventuring and partying. The road was
alive, and each destination had its own dis-
tinct flavor. Whenever I'd sacrificed comfort,
I typically earned a double shot of authenticity
and inspiration.

Then, sometime in the past decade, authen-
tic flavor became hard to find. The 21st century
travel landscape has morphed into a dreaded
sameness in the form of ubiquitous craft cock-
tails, gourmet small plates and high-tech
hostels designed to look and feel like an MTV
wonderland. Canopy walks are no longer an ex-
otic promise from a singular lush rain forest but
an expectation too easily realized. The bars, the
beaches, the hotels, the city streets, the adven-
tures seem attuned to the collective globalized
culture rather than rooted in their own timeless
traditions and natural gifts. All of which is only
augmented by too many Google Earth views and
TripAdvisor consultations.

But Lagos, for all its money, glamour and
status as the world capital of Afropop, seems
immune to all that. Thanks to its crime-riddled

LAGOS OFFERS THE
. IF

THAT MEAN

HAVING TO

WATCH YOUR BACK ON
THESTREET.

reputation, ithas become the dark frontier ofthe
global party circuit, a place of cognac-washed
clubs, B-boy block parties and Afrobeat root
systems. There are no carbon-copy full-moon
raves or overly organized pop festivals featur-
ing homogenous EDM robots with $100 hair-
cuts. Instead Lagos offers the elusive electrical
charge that all travelers crave: the authentic,
even if that means having to watch your back on
the street at all times.

Out in front of Sip Lounge, blinged-out revel-
ers, the ajebotas (“butter eaters,” Yoruba slang
for rich kids) stepped from tinted Range Rovers
and Lexus SUVs amid nearly invisible beggars—
the disabled, the orphaned, the displaced. Along
the way they kept their eyes peeled. It wasn't the

A woman walks by the pool at a party hosted by Quilox and promoted by Bizzle.

beggars they were concerned about, nor was it
the overt presence of danger that raised their
antennae. It was the potential for mayhem.

Every privileged soul I met in Lagos had at
least one story about staring down the barrel of
a gun or the edge of a knife (the poor and work-
ing class are mugged and robbed just as often),
and there were few better targets than the play-
ers heading to Industry Night at Sip Lounge.
Lagos is a city of approximately 20 million peo-
ple where some 9,000 millionaires float upon a
sprawling mass of ajepakos (Yoruba slang that
roughly translates as “twig eaters”). Accord-
ing to estimates, more than 4 million are un-
employed and millions more earn low wages on
the black market, which means lurking on the
poorly lit streets are countless desperate people
who may resort to home break-ins, carjack-
ing and kidnapping rather than beg for spare
change to make ends meet. Precious few of the
established players in Nigeria's booming music
industry offered any penance as they streamed
in to mingle with the gilded business class and
an occasional hopeful Afropop upstart.

In recent years, a handful of Afropop art-
ists have hit the popular charts in the U.S.
and Europe, and remixes and collaborations—
Wizkid with Drake and Skepta, and P-Square
with Rick Ross—pop up on YouTube and Sound-
Cloud. Major Lazer may sample a polyrhythm
and a Yoruba lyric from Burna Boy, while Wiz-
kid adopts a Lil Wayne swagger. But in Africa
the music is everywhere. Lagos is the labora-
tory and the loudspeaker, conjuring and blar-
ing Africa's continental soundtrack to all 54
countries of the motherland.

At two A.M. one of the biggest stars in the
room, Burna Boy, stood in his booth, wearing
a straw hat and a gold medallion over his white
T-shirt. He took a long pull from the Hennessy
bottle in his right hand and reached for the mike
with his left. The hype man set the mood. All
heads turned. DJ Obi, a Lagos mainstay, laid
down a beat, and Burna Boy launched into his
hit “Like to Party."

Imagine hitting the clubs in Toronto or New

York and seeing Drake or Jay Z grab the mike.
That rarely happens, but in Lagos clubs, when
artists turn up—which they often do—they
almost always deliver. The promise of priceless
impromptu performances and ostentatious dis-
plays of wealth are two reasons the Lagos club
scene is world-class.

As the giddy clubbers moved en masse to
the dance floor, many of them holding up their
phone to capture their Burna Boy moment,
mine vibrated in my pocket. It was Bizzle, the
most unlikely of industry power players and
a respected influencer in the Afropop multi-
verse. All around me his colleagues trickled
in; the party was peaking, but he told me to
meet him at Club 57.

I found him there at three A.M. in his peach
Ankara outfit, laser lights darting over his
head, women everywhere. The music was so
loud it was hard to hear, but every few minutes
another old friend or acquaintance, or a music
manager with a demo, stopped by to deliver a
pitch or offer an invitation.

“He's got a good spirit,” said musician Seun
Kuti, who was dancing in a nearby booth and
is the youngest son of the legendary Fela Kuti.
"Everybody who has come across him has some-
thing good to say about him, but most of them
say hello because they need him."

Bizzle, born Abiodun Osikoya, is the
30-year-old A&R manager for Mavin Records,
and like so many successful Lagosians, he was
born rich. When he was in high school, a wave
of *returnees"—children of the Nigerian dias-
pora educated overseas and tired of bashing
their heads against the European and Ameri-
can glass ceilings—came home in search of
real opportunity and a chance to shake off the
anxiety of racism.

As far as many of the returnees were con-
cerned, the old stories of Africa—the ones about
war, poverty and corruption—were outdated. It
was a new Africa now. Mobile-phone technol-
ogy wired the continent, investment and en-
trepreneurship were flourishing, and Nigeria,
with its oil wealth and energetic population—a
significant portion of which was under 35—was
poised for unprecedented growth. Lagos even
had a new sound.

If you were to track Nigerian music on a his-
torical graph, you would see a spike in inter-
national interest and record sales around the
heyday of legendary highlife acts such as King
Sunny Adé, defined by joyful guitar licks, and
Fela Kuti—the rebellious political activist and
progenitor of the infectious, brass-heavy Afro-
beat sound. Both became international stars in
the 1970s, but beginning in the 1980s, Nigerians
gravitated toward Western music. By the time

A posh wedding in Lekki filled with guests from the music and film industries and complete
with “spraying”—throwing money in the air in the bride and groom's direction.

Bizzle was in college, however, not long after the
millennium, Nigerian music was back on the
upswing. Independent record labels flourished,
and MTV took notice, setting up a cable channel
that streamed primarily Nigerian music videos
24/7. Copycat channels soon followed, and
Bizzle and his contemporaries were hooked on
the new Nigerian sound. When he went to Liver-
pool for college, he brought the music with him.
A superfan, he combed the internet each night,
and whenever he discovered a fresh track or
video, he'd post it on Facebook, where he grew a
cult following. His time came after he graduated
from college, and Storm Records, one of Lagos's
top independent labels at the time, offered him
a job. He moved back home to become the label's
social media and road manager.

"In the past six years, the music has
changed alot. People came back, bringing new
influences and a new lifestyle," Bizzle said,
citing Burna Boy, Davido and Tiwa Savage as
examples. But it is the power of social media
that has made Nigerian music the sound of the
African continent and helped it find listeners
in Europe and the Americas.

Of course, Lagos being Lagos, Bizzle has
his own hustles. In addition to his work with
Mavin, he has become a successful club pro-
moter and co-hosts three club nights a week.

He does well, but he isn't satisfied. The trap-
pings of true wealth in Lagos include a fat
yacht and a mansion in Ikoyi. Bizzle craves
both and is angling to open his own clubs to get
there. “Owo ni koko," he said. “That's Yoruba
for ‘Money is the main thing.“

What's true for Bizzle istrue for Lagos.

The next day I met him at a late-afternoon
pool party hosted by another of Bizzle's part-
ners, Quilox nightclub. The pool, set in a private
entertainment facility, waslined with curtained
cabanas—the type you seein Las Vegas—and the
event lured heavyweights from across the spec-
trum of Lagosian arts and industry. Despite the
flash, though, the venue itself was unfinished.
The view from the bathroom overlooked con-
struction rubble. We were partying steps from
a dirt parking lot off the thrumming Lekki-Epe
Expressway, which connects the residential
neighborhood of Lekki with Victoria Island—
home to hotels, restaurants, banks and oil
company offices. Somewhere beyond the party,
countless Lagosians dealt with hunger, mad-
dening traffic, corrupt cops and intermittent
electricity—not to mention an ominous existen-
tialbogeyman, the Islamistinsurgency in north-
ern Nigeria led by bloodthirsty Boko Haram.

Well after dark, everyone reconvened at
Cova, a nightclub on the top floor of a mall

in Victoria Island. In the small hours I found
myself pinned in a VIP space next to the
sound booth where DJ Caise, Lagos's premier
Afrohouse man, was on the decks. A spliff was
sparked. It found me, and I inhaled new Af-
rican Zen while a big hitter across the room
ordered bottle after bottle of champagne. The
hype man counted them off but had trouble
keeping up. A procession of waitresses passed
by as the number climbed into the teens.

"Seventeen bottles, 18, 19 bottles! Twenty

mothafuckin' bottles!" DJ Caise cut the music.
“What the fuck, nigga?” The hype man paused,
momentarily speechless. The crowd laughed in
collective disbelief. “This ain't a party. This isa
mothafuckin' movie!"
Lagos is certainly cinematic, but it isn't pretty.
A massive jigsaw of moldering concrete with
almost no greenery, it is the largest city in Africa
by population. Although it incorporates dozens
of neighborhoods, the city breaks into roughly
two sections: the Island and the mainland.
The Island is set across a wide brackish lagoon
from the mainland and connected with three
separate bridges. Although just one landmass,
it's home to several neighborhoods, includ-
ing Victoria Island, Lekki and Ikoyi, where the
high-end nightlife and shopping happen, as well
as some tough neighborhoods, including Lagos
Island, home to the city's largest market and its
roughest red light district.

While the Island features steel-and-glass
skyscrapers, posh boutiques, ample space and
wide, paved roads, mainland ghettos are jum-
bles of tin-roofed cinder-block walk-ups and
spiderweb electric lines sagging over often un-
paved roads running parallel to open sewers.
Unemployment is rampant, health services are
woefulandemergency servicesare nonexistent.
If someone collapses from heart failure or a rob-
bery is in progress, Lagosians have no reliable
number to call. People die every day from treat-
able illnesses and kids learn early that life on
the mainland is cheap, which is why most grow
up dreaming of one day making it to the Island
to claim a piece of the good life.

1. Clubgoers dance at a pool party hosted by Quilox
nightclub. 2. Locals mingle at a bar in Obalende, a
rough neighborhood in Lagos. 3. Abiodun Osikoya,
a.k.a. Bizzle, is one of Nigeria's top music promoters.

4. A couple dances at Quilox. 5. Bottle service is a
common part of club culture; here, women deliver
bottles of Dom Pérignon, complete with sparklers, to
waiting customers. 6. Seun Kuti, Fela's youngest son,
performs on a Saturday night. 7. At a Friday night Lagos
Island street party, musicians practice their songs and
dancers practice their moves. 8. Models dance near the
bar at Club 57, a high-end nightspot in Lagos.

But if you trace the roots of the music that
saturates Island nightclubs, they always lead
back to the mainland—that vortex of strug-
gle and wellspring of Lagosian soul. That's
true in a spiritual sense as well as musically.
What makes Afropop great is its foundational
rhythms and melodies. Defiant and buoyant,
they recall Nigerian music of decades ago,
namely the works of the legendary Fela Kuti,
pioneer of the Afrobeat sound and an icon on
the level of Bob Marley and James Brown.

Fela's songs were anthems, his rhythms
gathering storms of rebellion. He sang out
against political corruption and in favor of
social justice. At one point he created his
own mainland commune, Kalakuta Republic,
where his son Seun grew up.

"It was a community of people from every
walk of life," Seun said, “from ex-cons to law-
yers and accountants to electricians. It was a
vibrant place. There was no seniority. Every-
body was equal." What attracted them to Fela
was his music. "Afrobeat is a voice for the peo-
ple," Seun said.

It's also electrifying and funky. Fela lit up
recording studios and dance halls from Lagos
to London to Los Angeles, and if you listen
closely to his tunes, you hear not the roots of
Nigeria's future sound but the seeds of today's
EDM trance anthems.

At his peak, Fela was as rich as any oilman
in thecity. He would carry around trash bags of
money and buy multiple cars at atime. A mari-
juana enthusiast of the highest order and an
early dab king, he made his own hash oil and
carried a jar of it around with him. He built
his own concert hall, the Shrine, and played
inexpensive shows to audiences filled with
the disenfranchised. Whenever he could he
would challenge the generals, charging them
with corruption in the streets, which explains
why the military government considered him
a problem. They arrested Fela multiple times
and burned the Shrine and Kalakuta to the
ground in a raid that killed Fela's mother.

Former General Muhammadu Buhari,
one of Fela's jailers, was elected president
in March 2015 after a campaign in which he

The streets of Obalende, a rough neighborhood in Lagos, are packed
at night with clubgoers.

promised to clean up government once and for
all—a dubious claim from someone many citi-
zens suspect bilked the country of oil wealth
decades ago. Thanks in part to Buhari, Fela
died broke in 1997.

Seun now lives in Ikeja, a mainland neighbor-
hood not far from the old Kalakuta and the New
Afrika Shrine, which hisolder brother, Grammy-
nominated artist Femi Kuti, built and where he
performs once a month. Seun rents a large town-
house, though it's not in great condition, and
drives an eight-year-old Mercedes. Femi is a bet-
ter earner and lives in the Lagos outskirts, but
he supports a big family, and both artists must
also provide for their large bands, which include
as many as 16 musicians. They're celebrities,
but they are also firmly entrenched in Nigeria's
middle class. Ina city asexpensiveas Lagos, that
often means a paycheck-to-paycheck livelihood,
and they are as unlikely to pop bottles in the

THE HYPE MAN PAUSED,
THEN SAID, “THIS AIN'T
A PARTY, THIS IS A
MOTHAFUCKIN” MOVIE!”

clubs as they are to rave about the new Africa
and all its progress and opportunity.

“Don't believe the hype,” Seun said. “People
who have been poor since I've been a kid are
still poor today.”

When I caught up with Femi in the record-
ing studio, he told me he thinks people who
talk about a new Africa and a growing economy
“have sold their soul.” He added, “Health care
services are bad, the roads are still bad, the
poverty level is bad, and just because a hand-
ful of people are benefitting from the stolen
money"—referring to suspected government
embezzlement—“you say the economy is im-
proving? Yes, a few people are doing well, but
generally speaking Nigeria is very sick."

Seun and Femi take after their father. Their
music is political, entrancing and immersive,
and has an audience both at home and abroad.
But like Fela's, their songs can stretch to over 10
minutes, which means they aren't hit makers,
and when young Nigerians dream about becom-
ing pop stars, they don't imagine themselves as
Fela's kids. They want to be Wizkid.

One of Nigeria's biggest pop stars, Wizkid
grew up hanging out on the street corners of
Ojuelegba—a working-class Lagosian trans-
port hub teeming with beat-up canary yel-
low minivans and tricked-out three-wheeled
keke napep (Nigerian tuk-tuks). It's an all-
hours marketplace, rife with petty crime and

prostitution. That's where he spent his free
time, rhyming and dancing for hours on end,
checking out the girls and absorbing the strug-
gle. At night he hung out in low-rent recording
studios and eventually laid down some tracks.
His stardom was immediate, and local kids
across the city don't just dream of following in
his footsteps, they're hustling to get there.
Over the 10 days and nights I spent in Lagos, I
sought out every party I could find. One night
I wandered down a narrow lane near city hall,
in Lagos Island, and found a block party. A
crude stage had been set up, flanked by enor-
mous speakers and covered with a carpet rem-
nant opposite a soundboard set against a wall
of the local bar. The neighborhood, Campos, in
the Brazilian quarter in Lagos Island, was so
named by freed slaves who settled there after
returning from Brazil and Cuba in the late 19th
century. Lagos has along history of returnees.

On this night, three generations of their de-
scendants sat at plastic tables, drinking Orijin
Bitters and oversize bottles of Star beer and
watching the young people dance and perform
original tunes. Toward the end of the night,
Dreamchaser, a lean 26-year-old MC, let loose
his infectious raspy flow. His Yoruba and pid-
gin English poetry was supported by an Afro-
beat rhythm as teenagers and 20-somethings
rushed the stage, break-dancing and twerking
in the beams of oncoming headlights.

"It's all about a girl I want to love but can-
not because I don't have the money," Dream-
chaser said afterward. His song is his truth. A
barman in Lagos Island, he's lucky if he earns
$300 a month. Though talented, he has been
hustling for more than eight years and hasn't
made a dime. In fact, he saves his pennies for
months to spend the necessary 50,000 naira
(approximately $250) anytime he wishes to re-
cordatrack, yet he remains undaunted. “I still
believe I can make much money in what Iam
doing. I believe that for real.”

His words echo those of Sanue Chemeka,
27, a college student I met in a fast-food res-
taurant in Lagos Island. He was working the
register, and near closing time he and his
buddy were entranced by an Ice Prince video
strobing on the flatscreen in the dining area.
Their eyes lit up as Ice Prince and his homeys
posed around sexy dancers and drove high-
end sports cars. It was aspirational eye candy
for a couple of guys struggling to get by on less
than $200 a month. While pursuing a degree
in electrical engineering and holding down a
job, Sanue's third hustle is his music.

“They call me Rude Boy,” he said. “I have some
tracks.” I smiled because his vibe was more pie-

MY DRIVER SAID, “IF WE
GO BACK, THERE WILL BE
A MOB WHO WILL ROB US
AND MAYBE HILL US."

eyed and warm than rude-boy cool. I asked him
what he loved about Afropop. He paused to listen
to Ice Prince and said, *The sound is sweet. It's
ours, and they can't take it away from us."

So much of life in Lagos is a struggle for the
average guy and even more difficult for poor
Nigerian girls growing up in cramped confines
where sexual violence is commonplace. Credit
is extraordinarily difficult to obtain, and even
my own credit cards were cut off after one or two
charges in Lagos. As a result, the city runs on
cash, which makes it almost impossible to tran-
scend poverty. That’s why you see Lagosians of
all ages selling anything and everything they
can find at roadside intersections and even on
the expressways when traffic grinds to a halt.
One industrious little girl alternated between
doing her homework on the curbside as traffic
roared and slaloming among moving cars to
sell bags of groundnuts when it slowed enough
for commerce. Meanwhile, plenty of Lagosians,

caught in their city’s unforgiving economic
grip, stray toward crime instead.

“Put yourself in the shoes of those who are
committing crime,” Femi Kuti said. “I have two
children, I have no money, I can’t get a job, and
someone invites me to steal a car. Maybe one of
my children is sick. In this country, people die
because of 1,000 naira"—approximately $5—
"and you expect this guy not to rob and steal?"

Good middle-class jobs are so hard to come by
in Nigeriathatwhen the government announced
it was hiring fewer than 5,000 people in March
2014, close to 500,000 showed up to apply. The
resulting stampedes killed at least 16 people.

That cocktail of desperation, corruption and
income disparity has earned Nigeria a repu-
tation. I've traveled to my share of hazardous
countries and reported from minefields and war
zones, but I never received so many warnings as
I did when I told friends who had never been to
Nigeria that I was headed to Lagos. Yet despite

Wizkid is one of Nigeria's biggest names. His song "Ojuelegba," which he remixed with
Drake and Skepta, describes this crowded Lagos neighborhood.

100

the city's crime and poverty, I rarely felt in dan-
ger. In fact, I felt taken care of, whether I was at
a nightclub or a block party. I started to believe
those well-meaning warnings were grounded
more in unconscious racism than in reality.

The Lagosians I met were almost all hard-
working, optimistic and warm, fueled by inge-
nuity and a belief that things can get better. For
them, Afropop is a source of pride. It's home-
grown, combining Nigerian roots music with
hip-hop influences that were once banned from
radio play and could only be heard underground.

"The music symbolizes hope," said Nseobong
Okon-Ekong, a lifestyle and entertainment edi-
tor for ThisDay, one of Lagos's top newspapers.
“Hope that it is possible to transform from no-
body to somebody."

Seun Kuti enjoys Afropop, especially when
out with friends. “That's what the music is for,”
he said, “to go out and have fun, which is why
the brand is growing." Still, he wonders whose
dream the artists are selling and who it serves.

"I don't like to judge people,” he said, “but it's
ashame that most of our art in Africa is glorify-
ing cheap consumerism. We cannot measure
our own success by the amount of things we can
afford. Everybody wants the status symbol of
Gucci, of $250,000 cars and $2,000 shoes, basi-
cally giving up all we make to buy things we do
not produce in Africa, and art in Africa is pro-
moting this lifestyle. This makes it difficult in
terms of development of Africa as a viable eco-
nomic power. Our dream has to be the African
dream—the dream of economic liberation, to
control our resources how we want and develop
our societies in a way that benefits us first.”

Seun and Femi Kuti are doing their part to
further their father's message rather than chase
dollar signs. When I met them, Femi was in the
studio finishing up his 11th record, indepen-
dently financed, of course, and Seun was pre-
paring for his Halloween show at the New Afrika
Shrine with Egypt 80, which was his father's
band. Seun has been leading it since he was 14
years old, when Fela died.

Not long before midnight on the night of the
show, they took the stage, and the cavernous,
tin-roofed, concrete-floored dive that is the
Shrine filled with the soulful thunder of Afro-
beat. Though not to a packed house, Seun's per-

People dance till four a.m. at Quilox nightclub.

formance was masterful. Trim, glistening with
sweat and with his FELA LIVES tattoo visible
across his shoulder blades, he sounded eerily
like his dad as he blew his alto sax and sang his
raw vocals in call-and-response with two beau-
tiful backup singers and dancers, their beaded
hair, sashes and skirts flaring and shaking in
time. By the end of the night, the crowd, almost
all of whom lived on the mainland, was shout-
ing and singing along with him. They high-
fived him and threw their fists in the air, and
Ithought back to what Femi had told me in the
recording studio a few days before.

“We have no education, no electricity. We
can't put three square meals on the table," he
said of his resilient countrymen. "After slav-
ery, coming out of years of corruption, for us
to have accepted and survived this turmoil, we
must be a great people."

On the long drive back to my hotel, Femi's
words and his brother's music lingered in my
mind. It takes 45 minutes to get to the Island
from Ikeja, without traffic. When gridlock
snarls, which is often, it can take four hours.
High on Nigerian kush and feeling perfectly at

home as we cruised the dark empty streets at
four A. u., I was dreading my flight out the next
day. I wanted more music, more Lagos. Then,
out of the shadows, she came toward the car.
A slender mocha-skinned beauty in one bro-
ken heel and a tight white dress splattered in
blood. Her lower lip was busted open, and she
staggered toward the driver’s side, banging on
the window.

“Help me,” she gasped. The driver swerved,
narrowly missing her. She spun and fell to her
knees on the asphalt.

“What the fuck," I yelled.

"It'satrap," the driver said, accelerating and
leaving her in the dust. “I’m telling you, it's a
trap. If we go back, there will be a mob of men
who will rob us and maybe kill us.” My driver
had once been held up by a mob in the street and
was eventually locked in his own trunk. *They
could have automatic weapons, those guys."

I turned back. Aside from the girl, the street
was completely empty. Was he right? Was she
bait, or was she the one in danger? I'd like to say
we went back to check, but this was Lagos after
all, so we kept driving. a

CREDITS: COVER AND PP. 80-93: MODEL CAMILLE ROWE, PHOTOGRAPHY BY GUY AROCH, HAIR BY DENNIS LANNI AT ART DEPARTMENT AND MARKI SHKRELI AT TIM HOWARD MANAGEMENT, MAKEUP BY DEANNA HAGAN AT KATE RYAN INC., STYL-
ING BY LIZ MCCLEAN AT BRYDGES MACKINNEY AND EMILY BRIGGS, SET DESIGN BY ISAIAH WEISS AT NYC SET DESIGN, PRODUCED BY JOHNNY PASCUCCI/PHOTOBOMB PRODUCTION, SPECIAL THANKS TO KELLY PENFORD AT JED ROOT. PHOTOG-
RAPHY BY:P. 9 COURTESY GUY AROCH, COURTESY MARIE CALLOWAY, COURTESY MATT FARWELL, COURTESY AUREL SCHMIDT, COURTESY ADAM SKOLNICK, ANDREAS LASZLO KONRATH, CARLOS NUNEZ, ELIZABETH WEINBERG; P. 10 GUY AROCH;
P.15 OLIVIA JAFFE; P. 16 COURTESY DEL MAGUEY, COURTESY EL JOLGORIO MEZCAL, GRANT CORNETT, ALLISON WEBBER; P. 18 GRANT CORNETT;P. 20 GRANT CORNETT; P. 22 COURTESY BYREDO, COURTESY ESCENTRIC MOLECULES, COURTESY
LELABO, GRANT CORNETT; P.24 CHANTAL ANDERSON; P. 28 KATE PARFET;P. 31 AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES, ULLSTEIN BILD/GETTY IMAGES; P. 32 AMANDA DEMME; P. 36 TREY WRIGHT; P. 38 TREY WRIGHT; P. 40 COURTESY BANDAI
NAMCO ENTERTAINMENT; P. 41 COURTESY A24; P. 42 BEN RAYNER; P. 44 DAVE MA; P. 46 MOLLY CRANNA;P. 49 CAESAR SEBASTIAN; P. 5o COURTESY AMC, COURTESY SILENCERCO (3); PP.53-59 ANDREAS LASZLO KONRATH; PP. 60-67 NATE WALTON;
PP. 70-72 COURTESY MATT FARWELL (4); PP. 94-101 GLENNA GORDON; P. 102 COURTESY AUREL SCHMIDT; P. 106 STAN MALINOWSKI/PLAYBOY ARCHIVES. P. 15 STYLING BY SHELLY GLASCOCK, HAIR AND MAKEUP BY SARA CRANHAM; P.17 PHOTO AS-
SISTANCE BY JOE LINGEMAN, PROP STYLING BY JANINE IVERSEN; P. 18 PHOTO ASSISTANCE BY JOE LINGEMAN, PROP STYLING BY JANINE IVERSEN; PP. 20-21 PHOTO ASSISTANCE BY JOE LINGEMAN, PROP STYLING BY JANINE IVERSEN; P. 22 PHOTO
ASSISTANCE BY JOE LINGEMAN, PROP STYLING BY JANINE IVERSEN; PP. 32-35 WARDROBE STYLING BY ANNIE CASTALDI AND HANNAH GREENBLATT, GROOMING BY JACQUELINE BUSH, PRODUCED BY STEPHANIE WESTCOTT, VIDEOGRAPHY BY
ERIC LONGDEN; PP. 52-59 PHOTO ASSISTANCE BY JOSH ELAN, STYLING BY NICOLAS KLAM AT JED ROOT, GROOMING BY ERIC FERRELL AT DION PERONNEAU AGENCY, HAIR BY QUAN PIERCE AT DION PERONNEAU AGENCY, PRODUCED BY MATTHEW
YOUMANS AT N. A. P. P. 81 T-SHIRT BY TOPSHOP, PANTIES BY ARAKS, VINTAGE PLAYBOY NECKLACE; PP. 82-83 T-SHIRT BY WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND, LEVI'S VINTAGE ORANGE TAB JEANS; P. 85 PANTIES BY KIKI DE MONTPARNASSE; P. 86
BLOUSE BY WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND, VINTAGE PLAYBOY NECKLACE; P. 87 T-SHIRT BY CALVIN KLEIN; PP.88-90 PANTIES BY KIKI DE MONTPARNASSE; P. 92 BRA AND PANTIES BY ARAKS, SOCKS BY FALKE; P. 93 RINGS MODEL'S OWN.

101

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

AUREL
SCHMIDT

Andy Warhol famously depicted a banana that peels back to reveal fleshy pink fruit on the
cover of The Velvet Underground & Nico, but New York-based artist Aurel Schmidt doesn't
play it so subtle when it comes to making winking reference to the phallus—or pretty much

anything else, for that matter. In one of her exquisitely rendered drawings, the banana
peel encases an anatomically perfect penis. Schmidt’s work—which also includes ceram-
ics and mixed-media pieces employing everything from coffee to wine to cum—wrestles
ith addiction, self-image, sex and the body, hashing together the sacred with the profane
to achieve sometimes grotesque fun-house results. Her most recent series, Blast Furnace
of Civilization, includes a colored-pencil drawing of a haloed, winged cherub whose body
is a plucked and flayed chicken stuffed into a pair of Campbell s Soup-branded Converse
All Stars. Schmidt is as adept at casting glazed porcelain statuettes as she is with works
on paper, and her art seems most engaged when mining the trash stratum, both literally
and figuratively. In the series Burnouts Es Party Monsters, she presents crude and sad
portraits of the high life with illustrations of used condoms, rolled dollars, cigarette butts
and discarded panties as stand-ins for facial features built
around actual cigarette burns. And in our favorite drawing,
Schmidt toys with the iconic Playboy Rabbit Head, melding
it with the austere image of an Indian Buddha head. Schmidt
says the piece came from an affection for the Rabbit Head, a
symbol she sees as both “posh” and “sexy.” In this new bas-
tardization, it becomes, as she describes it, a “Western-
ized Buddha, the bodhisattva who has maybe scored some
high-quality cocaine while on a meditation vacation in the

A Opposite Sacred Valley of Peru and engaged in tantric sex on organic
page: Pink Eye. Pencil, colored pencil and

acrylic on paper, 15 x 15 inches, 2006. b 000-thread-count sheets. Eric Steinman

44
.

0১১4 “i

va DER
ae |
VIAS

pe |
0 à

9, AS

RCS dA
72027

Opposite page: Master of the Universe/Flexmaster 3000. Pencil, colored pencil, acrylic, beer, dirt and blood on paper, 89.5 x 52.5 inches, 2010. Top left: Sweetheart. Pencil and colored
pencil on paper, 9.5 x 7 inches, 2014. Top right: Se/f Portrait 4. Pastel on paper, 14 x 14 inches, 2013. Bottom left: Untitled (Lettuce Vag). Colored pencil on paper, 17 x 17 inches, 2013.
Bottom right: Buddha Bunny. Colored pencil on paper, 11 x 9 inches, 2015.

105

PLAYBACK

CHICAGO, 1967
To the original playboy, we raise a glass. Happy 9oth birthday, Hef.

106

MARK NASON.

LOS ANGELES

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Backed by an
Unconditional

IF MAILED
IN THE
UNITED STATES

d 2 reason within 120 days of receipt of your ;
| @ ring, you wish to return it, we will refund
: the full purchase

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Everything you need to run your train!

creates a 56" x 38" oval—

46-piece track set—
speed controller and power-pack
included—a $100 value!

el Tur holiday হি the dd I A.
Through the Years Express

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0 HO-scale electric train collection

es! Please enter my order
for one COCA-COLA* Through
the Years Express illuminated
electric HO-scale train collection,
beginning with the “Diesel
Locomotive” as described in this
announcement,
SEND NO MONEY NOW,
Certificate of Authenticity &
365-Day Money-Back Guarantee

| www.bradfordexchange.com/CokeYears

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Fine collectible, Not intended for children under 14. R ALWAYS

Powerpack Included with
-a $100 value!

FREE! Tracks, Speed df Contr roller & |
Shipments 2 & 3—a

| BRADFORD EXCHANGE 9345 Milwaukee Avenue Niles, IL 60714-1393
HAWTHORNE VILLAGE Division

‘Signature

+ Mrs. Mr. Ms.

À Name (Please Prnt Clearly)

ı Address

' City

* State Zip

' E-Mail

। "Pus $9.99 shipping and service. Al sales are subject b acceptance and product availabilty 917924-E30201

| Please allow 4-6 weeks after initial payment for shipment

” Shipment One Shipment Two

Diesel Locomotive Engine and FREE Track Set
Santa wasn't always a jolly white-bearded man in a red suit. In fact, the
beloved holiday icon that we know and love today didn't arrive until 1931
thanks to the holiday advertising of COCA-COLA’,

Now bring the joy of the COCA-COLA Santa
to your holidays each and every year!

In tribute to over 80 years of the COCA-COLA Santa, Hawthorne presents

the exclusive COCA-COLA Through the Years Express, Each car of this
| illuminated train features classic, full-color advertising art and slogans

CUT ALONG DOTTED LINE

NO POSTAGE
NECESSARY
IF MAILED

BRADFORD EXCHANGE
[1 orm

IN THE
UNITED STATES

BUSINESS REPLY MAL) = fans, Act non!
FIRST-CLASS MAL PERMIT NO. 73554 CHICAGO IL mm ARRE This train collection ls net available
POSTAGE WILL BE PAD BY ADDRESSEE er MRE in any store! Send no money now; just
MEE complete and mail the post paid
Mec বত Reservation Application today!
AAA
THE BRADFORD EXCHANGE Richly decorated with full
9345 N MILWAUKEE AVE — color COCA-COLA holiday nt
NILES IL 60714-9891 advertising art spanning the BRADFORD EXCHANGE
decades since the 30's!
HAWTHORNE VILLAGE DIVISION
(aca Ca graphics The Coca-Cola Company, COCACOLA COKE, the Contour
Botte es, the Red isc keon and the COCA-COLA Sarta are demus ol —
Coca Can Mrs wer Derby ave lg ...

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Shipment Three
Dome Car with FREE Power Pack & Speed Controller

showcasing a different decade beginning with the 30's! This highly
sought and collected artwork—selected from the actual archives of The
Coca-Cola Company—reflects priceless memories and heartwarming
holiday scenes you'll want to relive again and again!

An exceptional value you'll find quite refreshing!
Begin your illuminated HO-scale train collection with the Diesel
Locomotive that can be yours for three easy payments of $26.66*, the
first billed before shipment. Soon, you can look forward to adding
coordinating COCA-COLA Through the Years Express cars including the
FREE tracks, power-pack and speed controller ... a $100 value! They will be
billed separately, each at the same attractive price as Shipment One, and
shipped about one every other month. You can cancel at any time and our
best-in-the-business 365-day guarantee

A must-have for rail

|
— enthusiasts and COCA-COLA

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8

Actual size 13* wide x 9%" high. Display your collection
on a tabletop or wall. Mounting hardware included
Lighters ship unfilled; lighter fluid not included

* Authentic Zippo * Custom, glass
windproof lighters with covered display case
time-honored Jack with Old No. 7° logo
Daniel's imagery

Mrs. Mr. Ms
Name (Please Pret Carty
9345 Milwaukee Avenue - Niles, IL 60714-1393 Address

YES. Please 2c ept my order for the Jack Danicl's* City

Collection as described in th

no money now. I will be billed with shipment

E 4 "
a. ৮ J ^ Limit: one per order. State
www.bradfordexchange.com/9042 1 1

Over, please

SEVEN SALUTES TO OLD NO. 7°

With a keen appreciation for tradition, quality, and an independent spirit, no doubt
Mr. Jack would've appreciated very much the history behind every genuine Zippo?
windproof lighter.

Now these two iconic companies with a combined 250 years of history between
them have teamed up to bring you the Jack Daniel's? Collection. A true original, it
showcases 7 iconic Jack Daniel's? images on genuine Zippo? windproof lighters.
Each is a stunning black and silver salute (with a splash of amber here and there for
good measure). Chromed-out and completed with a Zippo bottom stamp, they're
rare beauties, finely crafted. Proudly presented by The Bradford Exchange, the
collection also includes a custom, lighted display showcase.

Á
SIGA

Protect, store and showcase
your collection in the custom-designed display case that can be hung
on a wall or displayed on a tabletop

— ALONG DOTTEDLINE on...

NECESSARY
IF MAILED

BRADFORD EXCHANGE | | | | NO POSTAGE :

IN THE
UNITED STATES

BUSINESS REPLY MAIL

FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 73554 CHICAGO IL
POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE

THE BRADFORD EXCHANGE
9345 N MILWAUKEE AVE
NILES IL 60714-9891

Zippo
STRICTLY LIMITED.

ORDER NOW!
Order the 8 limited editions (7 lighters
plus display) at the issue price of
$39.99* each, payable in two install-
ments of $19.99, the first due before
shipment. You'll receive one edition
about every other month; cancel at
any time by notifying us. Send no
money now. Return the coupon today.

JACK DANIEUS and OLD NO. 7

PPO: ZIPPO, ana @ aro registered
trademarks in the United States and in many
Countries. The listed Trademarks are used in the
United States under license o! ZippMark, Inc. All
Zippo lighter decorations are protected by copyright.
Zippo Manutacturing Company.

02016 The Bradford
01-21910-001 -J1516

SUPER BOWL 90 SHOT GLASS COLLECTION

An Officially-Licensed NFL Collectible Honors the Gridiron's Greatest Games From the Last 50 Years

Shot glasses are approximately 2%” tall. Wooden display case is yours for the same low price as a set of five glasses
and measures 25" wide x 22" high. Hanging hardware included

Original, MARKET-FIRST DESIGN not sold in stores

— THE
BRADFORD EXCHANGE

Super Bowi played for the last 50 years 9345 Milwaukee Avenue - Niles, IL 60714-1393
o £ x

for me

Shot glasses are hand-crafted of glass
e
Front of the glasses feature 50 years of official Super Bowl logos
ES
Back of the glasses feature official team logos and game stats
e

904304- E30291

“SUPER BOWL 50"
SHOT GLASS COLLECTION

Every game. Every winner. Every historic moment of the last
50 years. Every bit of it has been captured and distilled into
a monumental collection unlike anything you've ever seen...
presenting the "Super Bowl 50" Shot Glass Collection.

A huge, historic, one-of-a-kind,
officially-licensed NFL tribute

Exclusively designed and presented only by The Bradford
Exchange, this must-have Super Bowl 50 collectible
commemorates each and every Super Bowl on a high-quality
shot glass. Offered in sets of five glasses, and crafted of high-
quality glass, each shot glass features the highlighted year's
official Super Bow! logo on the front and the important game
stats (teams, logos and scores) on the back. Of course, each
1.5-ounce glass is also drink-safe so you can continue to toast
the winners forever more.

A sleek, black wooden display complete with the official Super
Bow! 50 logo is the ultimate finishing touch — letting you
display your epic 50 glass collection anywhere you like. And,
it's yours for the same low price as each 5 glass set!

Act now to acquire each 5 shot glass set in the “Super Bowl
50” Shot Glass Collection plus the custom display in two
convenient installments of $29.98, for a total of $59.95* each.
Your purchase is risk-free, backed by our 365-day money-

back guarantee and you may cancel at any time simply by -very glass in this epic 50 shot glass collection sports the
notifying us. Send no money now. Just complete and mail the fficial Super Bowl logo of the year it r« presents on th
Reservation Application today! ©2016 BOE 01-22951-001-45 front and game info on the back
| | | | NO POSTAGE :
NECESSARY
IF MAILED +

IN THE

UNITED STATES

BUSINESS REPLY MAIL

FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 73554 CHICAGO IL

POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE

THE BRADFORD EXCHANGE
9345 N MILWAUKEE AVE
NILES IL 60714-9891

: www.bradfordexchange.com/sbSOshots

‘ Over, please ...
ee OIDO LTL =

e, e Atar

SEE WHERE GOOD TASTE
TAKES YOU.

EFFEN

#EFFENVODKA

Drink Responsibly. EFFEN® Vodka, 100% neutral spirits distilled from wheat
grain,40% alc./vol. (80 proof) ©2016 EFFEN Import Company, Deerfield, IL

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