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SETH ABRAMSON MICHELLE WOLF 
TRAVIS SCOTT KELIA ANNE 
NAS DAVID HARBOUR LIZZO 

THE REVEREND WILLIAM J. BARBER II 

FRANK GRILLO YUMNA AL-ARASHI 
FO PORTER ABIGAIL O NEILL 

YOLI LARA JORDAN EMANUEL 
ADRIENNE RAQUEL EILEEN KELLY 
GAIL SIMONE ROBERT COOVER 
APARNA NANCHERLA ADAM PALLY 
EVAN PRICCO LYNSEY ADDARIO 
BRANDE RODERICK JOHN WATERS 


ADRIENNE RAQUEL 


i: @adrienneraquel 


и 


у work is all about female етромег- 
ment,” says Raquel, who blessed this issue 
with a double dose of her dreamy aes- 
thetic. She shot Lizzo the Incomparable— 
"Lizzo is an entire vibe, says the 
photographer. "She's gorgeous, confident 
and funny, and she isn't afraid to speak her 
mind. Capturing her was effortless'—and 
2019 Playmate of the Year Jordan Eman- 
uel's 1980s art deco-inspired pictorial. "It 
oozed glamour,” she says of the latter. 


MARIA DEL RUSSO 


i: @mariadelrusso 


In an era of ascendant sexual fluidity, 
gender-swapping the voice behind our 
signature and historically male-penned 
Advisor franchise was an organic deci- 
sion. "It was definitely daunting, but I’ve 
always strived to discuss sex in a frank 
and positive way for everyone, regardless 
of gender expression," says Del Russo of 
taking on the role. In addition to PLAYBOY, 
Del Russo has written about sex and 
relationships for The Cut, Men's Health 
and The Washington Post. 


PLAYBILL 


JOHN WATERS 


"Get your lazy overeducated asses out in 
the streets where you belong," Waters de- 
mands. It's hard to imagine a more fitting 
contributor to this issue than the indie pi- 
oneer and creator of such campy classics 
as Pink Flamingos and Hairspray. The Bal- 
timorean button-pusher, whose Playboy 
stints include interviewing Little Richard 
and hosting a Playboy TV series, trains his 
off-color lens on activism in Act Badl, our 
exclusive excerpt from Mr. Know-It-All, out 
in May from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 


EVAN PRICCO 

i: @epricco 

As custodian of one of America's most 
impactful arts publications, Pricco was 
uniquely positioned to curate the art-as- 
activism edition of Playboy Symposium. 
With the introduction of a rising crop of 
artists who are both "participating in and 
sabotaging the gears of our contempo- 
rary art machine,” the Juxtapoz editor in 
chief makes the case that art remains 
one of the most potent vehicles for free 
expression in a culture saturated with 
memes and emojis. 


DAVID GILBERT 

t: @qavegilbs 

“What happens when a narcissist awak- 
ens to find herself invisible?" That's just 
one of the questions Gilbert explores in 
We Are Not Here, a short story that delves 
into the psyche of a fading starlet who 
must confront a specter from her past. 
Gilbert, whose writing has appeared in 
The New Yorker, Harper's and GG, is the 
author of three books, the most recent 
being & Sons. He is currently working on 
a new novel for Random House. 


CIARA O'ROURKE 


t: @ciaraorourke 


For The Green Scare, O'Rourke, an Austin, 
Texas-based journalist and contribut- 
ing writer for PolitiFact, examines the 
Trump administrations quiet suppres- 
sion of climate science. What scares her 
most about state-imposed censorship? 
“How pernicious it can be.” The 2015- 
16 Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental 
Journalism adds that "sources discussed 
self-policing to the point where some sci- 
entists were avoiding using the words cli- 
mate change without an order to do so.” 


CREDITS: Cover: photography by Kelia Anne, model Jesi Le Rae. Photography by: inside cover-p. 1 courtesy Playboy Archives; p. 4 courtesy Maria Del Russo, courtesy Susie Gilbert, courtesy Ciara O'Rourke, cour- 
tesy Playboy Archives, courtesy Craig Reynolds, courtesy Mike Stalter; p. 5 courtesy Virginia Heffernan, courtesy Marcus Reeves, courtesy Chris Riley, courtesy Shaughn and John, courtesy Rob Stites, courtesy Sam 
Taylor-Johnson; p. 12 courtesy Joyce Chin (2), Joe Fury/Global Media Group, Erica Loewy (2), Evan Woods (2); p. 13 courtesy Sunara Begum, courtesy Boris Breuer, courtesy Danny Clinch, courtesy Jimmy Fontaine, 
courtesy Michael Mayo, courtesy Rayscorruptedmind, Chad Martin; p. 20 courtesy Netflix, courtesy Starz; p. 21 courtesy Netflix, courtesy Starz; pp. 26-28 courtesy Jesse Hunniford/Dark Mofo, Hobart, Tasmania 
(3); p. 29 courtesy Brett Boardman/MONA, courtesy Jesse Hunniford/Dark Mofo, Rémi Chauvin/MONA (2); p. 30 courtesy Jesse Hunniford/MONA, Hobart, Tasmania (2); p. 31 Rémi Chauvin (4); p. 100 Moviestore Col- 
lection Ltd./Alamy Stock Photo; p. 103 Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images; p. 117 Sasha Maslov; p. 193 courtesy Robert Chase Heishman; p. 194 courtesy Nassia Curtis, courtesy Jermaine Palmer; pp. 208-219 cour- 
tesy Playboy Archives; p. 220 PICOT/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images; p. 221 courtesy Playboy Archives (2), Bertrand LAFORET/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images, PICOT/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images; pp. 222-227 
courtesy Playboy Archives; p. 228 courtesy Playboy Archives (3), Madison McGraw/BFA; pp. 229-235 courtesy Playboy Archives. Pp. 100-103 excerpted from Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder by 


VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN 

t: @page88 

Who better to further dialogue on the 
country's hottest-button issues than a 
pair of not-always-aligned cultural critics? 
In this installment of the Playboy Interview, 
Heffernan—a Wired contributing editor, 
Los Angeles Times columnist and co-host 
of Slates Trumpcast—dives deep with 
Proof of Collusion author Seth Abramson 
into bipartisan politics, literary tweeting 
and, of course, Kremlin collusion. 


APARNA NANCHERLA 

t: @aparnapkin 

Nancherla has made a name for her- 
self by actually being herself, neuro- 
ses and all, so she was a shoo-in for the 
humor section of our free-speech issue. 
In Hot Take It or Leave It, the Corporate 
and BoJack Horseman star weighs the 
power and pitfalls of forgoing reflection 
in an age of instant gratification. 


LYNSEY ADDARIO 

i: @lynseyaddario 

"n many countries where stereotypes 
about women in Islam are perpetuated, 
free speech is silenced or nonexistent,” 
says Addario, the Pulitzer Prize-winning 
photojournalist who has covered inter- 
national conflict and humanitarian crises 
for almost two decades. Of fellow pho- 
tographer Yumna Al-Arashi, the subject 
of Yumna in Focus, she says, "Through her 
nudes and self-portraits, and her ability to 
document her body freely, Al-Arashi is cre- 
ating a new narrative of Muslim women.” 


ROB STITES 
i: @rob.stites 


What do you get when you cross an il- 
lustrator with a bibliophile? The witty, 
whimsical visual that introduces James 
R. Petersen's Defying the Anti-Porn Po- 
lice, and some incisive commentary on 
the evolution of "sexual McCarthyism": 
"The strategies used to advance politi- 
cal agendas have evolved but are ulti- 
mately far easier to identify," says Stites. 
The Seattle-born Brooklynite's PLAYBOY 
debut also includes the etymologically 
gifted hound on page 125. 


GIL MACIAS 

i: @gilmacias78 

We sent PLAYypoY's own managing editor to 
dine with Frank Grillo for this issue's style 
feature. Despite his familiarity with Grillo's 
career, Macias, a longtime entertainment 
writer who specializes in pop culture, su- 
perheroes, cosplay and “all things geeky,” 
was struck by the action star's depth. 71 
expected to discuss fight culture but was 
blown away by how wise and layered he 
is,” says the 13-year pLavsoy veteran. "It was 
cool to witness those layers peel back.” 


MARCUS REEVES 
i: @mreeves2020 


Two weeks before hitting the Super Bowl 
halftime stage with Big Boi, Travis Scott 
joined a different hip-hop legend—the 
one and only Nas. Reeves, a reporter 
on music and youth culture for 20-plus 
years, moderated the PLAveov conversa- 
tion. “A main talking point was no matter 
how different this era of hip-hop is from 
those prior, the music's message is still the 
same,” says Reeves. "It's about represent- 
ing unheard voices of American youth.” 


John Waters, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, May 21, 2019, copyright © 2019 John Waters, all rights reserved; pp. 106, 232 illustrations by Neryl Walker; p. 209 "LGLZ DRGS” cartoon by Shel Silverstein, © Evil 
Eye, LLC, used by permission. Pp. 14-16 styling by India Madonna, hair and makeup by Bree Stanchfield; pp. 50-57 model Jordan Emanuel, styling by Ryan Young, hair by Patrick Shannon, makeup by Andre Love, prop 
styling by Alex Silva; pp. 58-65 styling by Kelley Ash, Dominique Bisson, April Roomet, grooming by Marcus Hatch, makeup by Jennifer Hanching, prop styling by Justin Fry; pp. 72-83, 87 model Fo Porter, styling by 
Kelley Ash, hair and makeup by Casey Gore, prop styling by Nico Maccioca, produced by Nicole Prokes; pp. 94-99 styling by Andrew Gelwicks, grooming by Jillian Halouska; pp. 104-105 styling by Jenny Haapala, hair 
by Corey Tuttle, grooming by Melissa Dezarate, makeup by Aidan Keogh; pp. 108-113 styling by Jason Rembert, hair by Shelby Swain, makeup by Ernesto Casillas; pp. 120-124 styling by Stephanie Tricola, hair by Wes- 
ley O'Meara, makeup by Michelle Kearns; pp. 126-137, 141 model Abigail O'Neill, styling by Kelley Ash, hair and makeup by Bree Stanchfield, prop styling by Justin Fry; pp. 150-157 styling by Annie & Hannah, grooming 
and makeup by Kat Bardot, prop styling by Justin Fry; pp. 158-163 (and cover) models Jesi Le Rae and Frances Florence Tomei, styling by Chloe and Chenelle Delgadillo, hair by Preston Wada, makeup by Sara Tagaloa, 
prop styling by Casey Hinders, manicure by Michelle Saunders, tooth gems by Michelle Neubieser at Sugar Tooth Jewels; pp. 172-183, 187 model Yoli Lara, styling by Kelley Ash, hair and makeup by Daniel De La Torre. 


PLAYBOY 5 


PLAYMATES & PICTORIALS 


/2 APRIL: FO PORTER 
The Americas Next Top Model 
alumna communes with some 
California dunes 


126 MAY: ABIGAIL O'NEILL 
An afternoon bubble bath 
(champagne included) with a 
remarkable Midwesterner 
158 TELL ME MORE 


A selection of cover outtakes 
from the Technicolor mind of 
photographer Kelia Anne 


172 JUNE: YOLI LARA 
The ambitious former beauty 
pageant contestant shows us 
around her native Puerto Rico 


YUMNA IN FOCUS 

Working on both sides of the 
camera, a fearless young artist 
makes pLayBoy history 


196 


COVER STORY 


When it comes to stand- 

ing up for free speech, our 
Rabbit firmly believes you 
should never just wing it; 
always be ready to mouth off. 


VOL. 66, NO. 2 


108 


DEPARTMENTS 


14 


18 


22 


26 


32 


ALSO: 


LET'S PLAY: EILEEN KELLY 
The Insta-savvy sex educator 

offers a fresh take on the birds 
and the bees 


TV: THE NEW BOOB TUBE 
With Game of Thrones nearing 
its series finale, we look at the 
changing norms of nudity on TV 


SEX: GOOD VIBES ONLY 
Repression can't penetrate the 
walls of a female-focused Tokyo 
bar packed with dildos 


TRAVEL: ART AT THE EDGE 
OF THE EARTH 

Nude swimming, black metal 
and a vagina wall: Take a trip to 
Australia's art mecca 


MAN IN HIS DOMAIN: THE 
REV. WILLIAM J. BARBER Il 
The North Carolina preacher 
uses his pulpit to unite saints and 
sinners in the name of equality 


The art of the Twitter 
clapback; Playboy Advisor on 
monogamy and masturbation; 
65 years of Party Jokes 


HERITAGE 


204 


208 


210 


215 


222 


ALSO: 


DEFYING THE ANTI-PORN 
POLICE 

Beware the moralizing 

mobs that try to restrict your 
freedoms 


THE SUBVERSIVE SCRIBBLER 
Revisiting the genius of poetic 
polymath Shel Silverstein 


THE RABBIT IN PARADISE 
In the lush tropics of Jamaica, 
Playboy staked its first 
international club venture 


WEED WARRIORS 
A look at how we backed the first- 
ever pro-pot consumer lobby 


BRANDE RODERICK 

From Mansion life to Trump 
rumors, our 2001 Playmate of the 
Year reflects 


The one and only Centerfold 
supergroup; Playmate chanteuse 
Jeane Manson; Vintage Advisor; 
Classic Cartoons and a water- 
skiing Bunny 


PLAYBOY INTERVIEW 
4| ЅЕТН ABRAMSON 


The professor, poet and 
Trump-Russia collusion 
whisperer sits down with 
Virginia Heffernan 


20Q 
94 DAVIDHARBOUR 


Talking body issues, mental 
illness and the power of 
celebrity with the new Hellboy 


PROFILE 
12O MICHELLE WOLF 


A year after a barn-burning 
stint at the White House 
Correspondents’ Dinner, the 
comedian plots her next move 


SPRING 2019—- CONTENTS 


FICTION 


142 


THE KISS 

Something to build adream 
on, indeed—a salute to lovers 
and lust by Robert Coover 


164 WE ARE NOT HERE 
Her cult-movie character was 
killed off, but she lives on. By 
David Gilbert 

COMICS 


144 VAMPIRELLAIN 


MAKE UP TO BREAK UP 
Everyone's favorite vampire 
from outer space cleans up the 
cosplaying scene—with a little 
help from her friends 


STYLE 


150 


FRANK GRILLO 

The tough-as-nails actor 
suits up; Tyler Durden vibes 
and hard-won insights on 
manhood abound 


14 


S 


FEATURES 


90 


98 


66 


88 


100 


104 


108 


114 


189 


PLAYMATE OF THE YEAR 
Jordan Emanuel went from 
Bunny to Playmate to PMOY; her 
life story is even more impressive 


RAPPER'S DELIGHT 

Travis Scott and Nas, two of the 
most important hip-hop artists of 
their generations, compare notes 


LOVE IN MANY PIECES 

It's a watershed moment in the 
normalization of polyamory; 
here’s a guided tour 


THE GREEN SCARE 

The scientific community 
grapples with the climate-change 
denier in the White House 


ACT BAD! 

“Filth elder” John Waters has 
some down-and-dirty advice for 
those ready to fight for their rights 


HOT TAKES & TAKEDOWNS 
Aparna Nancherla and Adam 
Pally consider the pleasures and 
perils of online commentary 


LIZZO THE INCOMPARABLE 
A pop force of nature gathers 
herself on the eve of a maniacally 
anticipated album drop 


STRIPPERS=WORKERS 
What will it take for America’s 
erotic dancers to get fair 
treatment in the workplace? 


THE PLAYBOY SYMPOSIUM 
Juxtapoz's Evan Pricco on 

the future of art and activism, 
featuring Yrsa Daley-Ward, 
Miranda Barnes and more 


PLAYBOY 


HUGH M. HEFNER 
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 


1953-2017 


SHANE MICHAEL SINGH, JAMES RICKMAN EXECUTIVE EDITORS 
ANNA WILSON PHOTO DIRECTOR 
ERICA LOEWY ART DIRECTOR 
CAT AUER DEPUTY EDITOR 


GIL MACIAS MANAGING EDITOR 


EDITORIAL 
RYAN GAJEWSKI, ELIZABETH SUMAN SENIOR EDITORS 
ARIELA KOZIN, ANITA LITTLE FEATURES EDITORS 
WINIFRED ORMOND COPY CHIEF; ROBERT BUSCEMI, AMY STEINBERG CONTRIBUTING COPY EDITORS 
MICHELE SLEIGHEL RESEARCH EDITOR; ANDREW SHAFER CONTRIBUTING RESEARCH EDITOR 


DANIELLE BACHER, DAVID HOCHMAN, JESSICA P. OGILVIE, STEPHEN REBELLO, ADAM SKOLNICK, ERIC SPITZNAGEL CONTRIBUTING EDITORS 


ART & PHOTOGRAPHY 
REGINA ROSATO ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR 
AARON LUCAS ART MANAGER 
NATALIE ALVARADO PHOTO RESEARCHER AND ASSET COORDINATOR 
SANDRA EVANS PHOTO COORDINATOR 
CHRISTIE HARTMANN DIRECTOR, PLAYBOY ARCHIVES 
JOEY COOMBE ARCHIVIST, PLAYBOY ARCHIVES 
AMY KASTNER-DROWN SENIOR DIGITAL MEDIA SPECIALIST, PLAYBOY ARCHIVES 
EVAN WOODS STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER AND VIDEOGRAPHER 


ALI MITTON, DAVID URBANKE, ANA DIAS CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS 


PRODUCTION 


LESLEY K. RIPPON PRODUCTION DIRECTOR 


PUBLIC RELATIONS 
JOHN VLAUTIN CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS 


TERI THOMERSON SENIOR DIRECTOR, PUBLIC RELATIONS; TAMAR APRAHAMIAN SENIOR DIRECTOR, PUBLICITY 


PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES INTERNATIONAL, INC. 
BEN KOHN CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER 
COOPER HEFNER CHIEF, GLOBAL PARTNERSHIPS 
JARED DOUGHERTY PRESIDENT, GLOBAL LICENSING AND JOINT VENTURES 
JULIE UHRMAN PRESIDENT OF MEDIA 
RACHEL WEBBER CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER AND PRESIDENT, CORPORATE STRATEGY 


REENA PATEL CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER, GLOBAL LICENSING AND JOINT VENTURES 


Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), Spring 2019, volume 66, number 2. Published quarterly by Playboy in national and regional editions, Playboy, 10960 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024. Periodicals postage paid at Los 
Angeles, California and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 40035534. Subscriptions: in the U.S., $39.99 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 420307, Palm Coast, FL 32142-0307. For subscription-related questions, e-mail playboy@emailcustomerservice.com. To 
commenton content, e-mailletters@playboy.com.»Weoccasionallymake portions of our customer list available to carefully screened companies that offer products or services we believe you may enjoy. Ifyou do not want 
to receive these offers or information, please let us know by writing to us at Playboy Enterprises International, Inc. c/o PCD, P.O. Box 420307, Palm Coast, FL 32142-0307, or e-mail playboy@emailcustomerservice.com. It 
generally requires eight to 10 weeks for your request to become effective. - 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 © 2019 
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 pages 4 and 5. 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. 


10 


Y 


Este d senem AS sd O 15 


To our readers: 


In this second issue of our 65th anniversary 
year, we focus on a topic that is just as relevant 
today as it was in 1953: freedom of speech. As 
our team set out to plan this issue, we agreed 
that the most radical, provocative and pro- 
ductive contribution we could make to the 
conversation is not to speak louder, but to lis- 
ten better. In these 234 pages, we are lending 
our platform to voices that have been dispar- 
aged, marginalized or missed—voices that 
some may even consider dangerous because 
they might just change your mind. 

Which brings us to the monarch butter- 
fly on our cover. Its scientific name means 
“sleepy transformation," suggesting a change 
that could catch you off guard if you aren't 
paying attention. This issue is a showcase for 
individuals with such transformative poten- 
tial. You probably haven't heard of all of them 
yet, but we believe they'll become critical 
mainstream voices very soon. 

This is the butterfly effect. Small events, 
like the beating of a monarch's wings, can 
cause enormous and unpredictable effects. 
With this idea in mind, it's worth noting 
that Kelia Anne, who shot our cover, is just 
25 years old. Like many young people today, 
Kelia innately understands that while we con- 
sider freedom of speech a fundamental right, 
it's also something delicate, potentially even 
endangered, that must be continually fought 
for and protected. We're proud to showcase 
Kelia's distinct point of view and look forward 
to seeing her make waves for years to come. 

The people you'll meet in this issue fall into 
the same category. First up, Seth Abramson 
has re-created the Twitter thread as a tool 
to provide one of the most rigorous and eye- 
opening dissections of President Donald 
Trump's relationship with Russia and other 
foreign powers. In a wide-ranging Playboy 
Interview, Abramson walks us through “proof 
of collusion" and explains why his “curatorial 
journalism" is as important to today's democ- 
racy as the mainstream press. 

In Rapper's Delight, hip-hop megastars 
Nas and Travis Scott make a joint prom- 
ise to their fans that they'll continue to tell 
their truths via music's most powerful genre, 


without censoring themselves for commer- 
cial or political expediency. Environmen- 
tal journalist Ciara O’ Rourke reports on the 
courage and steadfastness of government cli- 
mate scientists risking their careers to save 
our planet. And in Man in His Domain, the 
Reverend William J. Barber II, a celebrated 
orator who has been compared to Martin 
Luther King Jr., argues why hope must be im- 
mutable for all Americans. 

We dedicate our artist feature to one of 
our favorite photographers, Yumna Al- 
Arashi, who interprets free speech through 
arresting nude self-portraiture. Al-Arashi's 
work is “evocative, sensual, playful and a 
bit withholding," writes Pulitzer Prize- 
winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario in 
her introduction to the Yemeni American 
artist. And in our music feature, we present 
the formidable and undeniable Lizzo, who 
speaks inspiringly on creating a culture of 
body positivity. 

In our first-ever Symposium collaboration, 
we partnered with Juxtapoz, one of the coun- 
trys preeminent contemporary arts maga- 
zines, to spotlight six rising artists whose 
in-your-face, genre-expanding works defy 
convention and censorship. 

In 20Q, Hollywood hell-raiser David Har- 
bour preaches the importance of actors 
using their celebrity to promote awareness 
of social issues, and Michelle Wolf (in Chas- 
ing the Last Laugh) offers a lesson in staying 
true to oneself in today's dizzying climate. 
Finally, we offer the perspectives of three 
remarkable and eye-catching Playmates— 
Fo Porter, Abigail O'Neill and Yoli Lara— 
and the three brilliant photographers who 
shot them: Ali Mitton, Kayla Varley and Ana 
Dias, respectively. 

Every one of our contributors feels not just 
empowered by today's climate but responsi- 
ble for a better tomorrow. As do we. Instead of 
being disheartened by disunity and discord, 
we are energized by them. 

And so we leave you with one last provoca- 
tion: As we welcome in challenging ideas, we 
want to hear from you. Tell us what you think. 
We're listening. 


FINE LINES 


Myriad artists have reimagined Vampirella 
since Trina Robbins, using Playboy model 
and longtime employee Barbara Leigh as 
her muse, drew the now-iconic heroine into 
the comicsphere in 1969. Award-winning 
illustrator Joyce Chin conjures the latest 
Vampi for Make Up to Break Up, an exclusive 
installment penned by Gail Simone. 71 love 
her fearlessness,” says Chin of the char- 
acter. “She has always been unapologetic 
about her physicality, her sexuality and how 
she moves through the world.” 


12 


WORLD OF PLAYBOY 


BU] TIERE E KISSES 


With America furiously debating the parameters of free speech, we wanted this issue, 
including the visuals that introduce it, to reflect expression without limitation. To bring that 
concept to life, we tapped 25-year-old photographer Kelia Anne, among PLAYB8oY s youngest 
cover artists to date. Kelia Anne's surreal, colorful world, starring a preserved butterfly 
perched on the tip of model Jesi Le Rae's tongue, is at once inviting and startling, nostalgic 
and fresh. These tensions make for an arresting image while capturing the complexities 
of silence and speech. “l envisioned a scenario in which voices are expressed visually, as 
sweet and fragile, and silence is on the cusp of being broken,” says Kelia Anne. “1 also con- 
sidered the false negative implications associated with breaking it." The intimate shoot was 
rife with special moments: "At one point, Jesi was balancing the butterfly on her mouth, 
and her breathing was moving the wings. Everyone on set was in awe. Balancing a butter- 
fly on your tongue is no easy feat." 


29019 BUNNY BOWL 


Day drinking, anyone? Our Rabbit cele- 
brated Super Bowl LIII with the Bunny Bowl, 
a special edition of LAVO Party Brunch 
in Las Vegas, where football fans joined 
Playmates Gia Marie, Stephanie Branton, Ash- 
ley Doris and Carly Lauren for drinks, eats and 
touchdown-worthy tunes by DJ Lema. 


2019 PLAYBOY JAZZ 
FESIIVAL PREVIEW 


ANGÉLIQUE KIDJO Since performing 
at 2013's Jazz Fest, the Benin-born artist 
has picked up two Grammys, accepted 
Amnesty International's 2016 Ambassa- 
dor of Conscience Award and released 
a frontto-back reinterpretation of the 
Talking Heads' Remain in Light. It's hard to 
overstate her importance in world music 
and harder still to render in words the life- 
affirming experience of seeing her live. 


MACEO PARKER BIG BAND An indis- 
pensable part of James Brown's best 
years who has also played with the likes of 
Parliament-Funkadelic and Prince, Parker 
is an artist whose saxophone work resides 
THATS A RAP deep in our collective consciousness. He 

brings to Jazz Fest his Big Band, which 
backed him on last year's ebullient long- 
player It's All About Love. 


You'd expect setting up a téte-à-téte be- 
tween two of the world's most famous rap- 
pers to be complicated, but getting Travis 
Scott and Nas in the same room was sur- 
prisingly easy. In fact, the biggest challenge 
was getting them to stop: The two were 
going so deep during the Q&A for Rapper's 
Delight, they had to be interrupted so we 
could begin Scott's photo shoot. Above, a 
candid snap from that afternoon. 


DONNY MCCASLIN Blackstar, the album 
David Bowie released just days before 
his death, features the haunting tracery 
of this Santa Cruz-bred saxophonist. For 
McCaslin's 2018 album Blow., he kept alive 
the Starman's instinctual approach; the 
result is wild and restrained and much in 
between, but pulsingly alive throughout. 


SONA JOBARTEH The kora, a 21-string in- 
strument developed among a handful of 
West African griot families, remains under- 
appreciated in the U.S., despite cameos in 
the works of Taj Mahal, Herbie Hancock, 
Bjórk and others. Jobarteh brings a spe- 
cial intensity to her performances, in part 
because she's the first major female kora 
artist, but the diamond precision of her 
technique and voice is the main attraction. 


74 MICHAEL MAYO This Los Angeles native, 
still in his mid-20s, needs nothing more 
than his voice to stop you dead in your 
|  tracks—not just because his sorcerer-like 
4 facility with a loop pedal evokes hyp- 
notic works such as Kanye West's "Ultra- 
light Beam” and Imogen Heap's “Hide and 
Seek,” but because he possesses a vocal 
purity that comes along only a few times 
per generation. 


FUN IN THE PACSUN 


As September 2012 Playmate Alana Campos 
makes clear, Playboy's spring/summer 2019 
collaboration with PacSun takes athleisure 
to new levels of luxury. The collection fea- 
tures classic silhouettes, gold metallic de- 
tails and plenty of pointy-eared cameos. 
pacsun.com/pacsun-collections/ 


The 41st Annual Playboy Jazz Festival returns to the Hollywood Bowl 
June 8 and 9. Tickets: hollywoodbowl.com/playboyjazz/ 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANA TRIPPE і” 


CENSORSHIP. SPECTRUMS. CONSENT. THE NEXT SEXUAL 
REVOLUTION IS UPON US, AND "THE TALK" NEEDS TO BE 
REVISITED. WHO CAN WE TRUST TO LEAD THE CONVERSATION? 
MEET AMERICA'S NEXT SEX (ED) SYMBOL 


BY 


ANITA LITTLE 


It began with a kiss, as so many sexual awakenings do. Eileen Kelly, who attended Cath- 
olic schools in Seattle and comes from a devoutly religious family, still remembers how 
she felt when a teacher humiliated her for kissing a boy. “I was in third grade, I think, 
and it was just a peck on the cheek, but it had a lasting effect,” she says. "Shame was just 
so deeply rooted in how I grew up." 

Now 23, Kelly straddles the millennial generation and the coming-of-age Generation 
Z, a position that makes her one of the freshest faces in the movement to guarantee 
every person in this country access to a sex education that's inclusive, gratifying and 
medically accurate. She wants her generation to participate in more honest conversa- 
tions about sexuality, enter relationships with more realistic expectations and help 
demystify the stigmas that burden so many sexual curiosities and subcultures. 

"The sex ed we wish we had" is the simple but purposeful mantra of Kelly's brand, 
Killer and a Sweet Thang, which has exploded on Instagram and, since 2016, as a life- 
style website that publishes such pieces as “What Does Consent Look Like?" 

"Intro to BDSM Toys," "PrEP 101" and *How Porn Has Affected 

Millennial Sex Lives." Killer and a Sweet Thang launched as 
a Tumblr blog focusing on Kelly's own sexual misadven- 
tures, but she soon realized first-person sexcapades 
weren't enough. 

"The defining moment,” she says, “was when 
I realized I was sharing only one perspective, 
which was a narrow one—that of a white 
woman who lives in a big, liberal city. I've 
always had access to health care, for ex- 
ample. If I wanted people to come to my 
website and be able to learn and con- 
nect, it needed to be intersectional. I 
needed stories across the board." 

Today, more than 100 people contrib- 
ute stories to Killer and a Sweet Thang, 
which has spun off into another, more 
editorial-focused Instagram account, 
@birds.bees—the inspiration for Kelly's 
PLAYBOY shoot. Accompanied by GIFs, 
erotic photography and an unrelenting 
directness, Killer and a Sweet Thang's arti- 
cles, columns and social posts target young 
people who may find technical writing or 
government-provided information about sex too 
polarizing, out of touch or impersonal. 

Killer and a Sweet Thang's popularity couldn'tbe rising at 
a better time. "Sexual expression feels under fire," attests Kelly, 
who currently lives in New York. In December, Tumblr initiated a ban on 
all adult content in response to allegations that the platform had unwittingly hosted 
child pornography. Two months prior, sex-ed site o.School published an open letter call- 
ing out Apple's new iPhone iOS 12, alleging the software's parental controls blocked 
searches related to sex education, safe sex and masturbation. YouTube has similarly 


PLAYBOY 15 


been accused 

of blocking 

N LGBTQ con- 
tent. With 

no consensus 

among tech com- 

panies and social 

media platforms 

\ over how to host 

educational portrayals 
of and discussions about 
sex, openness around the 
topic is becoming harder to 
accomplish even as the world be- 
comes more connected. 

Not that learning about sex in Amer- 
ica has ever been easy. When most Americans think of sex 
education, they often picture a gym teacher listlessly point- 
ing to parts of the reproductive system on a whiteboard. (Mean 
Girls's oft-quoted “Don't have sex, 'cause you will get pregnant 
and die!" scene comes to mind.) And with sex education not 

required in 26 states, many people recall nothing at all. 

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 27 states and the Dis- 
trict of Columbia mandate that public school sex-ed programs, 
when provided, fulfill “certain general requirements"; of these 
states, only 13 require that the content be medically accurate. 
Overall, only nine require that discussions of sexual orientation 
be inclusive. Since sex education falls under states' rights, poli- 
cies vary widely. While California mandates that syllabi cover 
contraception, Texas stresses abstinence, despite research that 
proves abstinence-only teachings are ineffective. 

Kelly, who remembers first learning about STIs from an uncer- 
tified health teacher, says she has been fighting to reverse this 
culture her whole life. ^It wasn't even the lack of education for 
me,” she says. “It was the lack of conversation happening in fam- 
ily units, in the community, amongst peers. It was a very hush- 
hush bubble I grew up in." 

Kelly lost her mother before reaching her teens. Lacking the 
person most young girls turn to with questions ranging from how 
to use atampon to how to tell if you're in love, she was raised by a 
single father in a household of boys. Having to navigate the rough 
waters of puberty without a maternal figure sparked Kelly's pre- 
cocious curiosity about sexuality and her resolve to embrace the 
awkward questions whispered at sleepovers and in locker rooms. 

"Pleasure, safety, consent—these are conversations that 
should happen really young, way before a sexual-health class,” 
she says. “Even in most comprehensive sex-education courses in 
the United States, pleasure is left out of the equation." 

Combine the dearth of reliable information from schools, the 
ease of accessing X-rated content online and parents' enduring 
discomfort with having “the talk," and you’re left with a genera- 
tion learning about sex from peers, porn or pop culture. It shows: 
Among industrialized nations, the United States has some of the 
highest rates of sexually transmitted infections and teen preg- 
nancies. Compared with countries like the Netherlands, where 
sex education begins as early as kindergarten, America is behind 
the times. Kelly knows we can do better. 

*Your brain is the most powerful sex organ. That's why the 
internet—this safe, anonymous place where people go to figure 
out their desires—is such an important part of learning about 
sex," she says. 

That may be why we've also entered the age of the so-called 


16 LET'S PLAY 


“sexpert,” a time when you can barely go online without scrolling 
past a sex shaman who promises to coach you to a more perfect 
orgasm. The problem: Many of these “sexperts”—including porn 
stars, YouTube personalities and podcasters—have no formal 
backgrounds in sexology. This has caused a schism in the world of 
sex education, with trained educators voicing skepticism of self- 
described experts who may be more eager for followers and spon- 
sorships than for bringing the next revolution. Until she recently 
completed coursework in sex education from the Institute for Ad- 
vanced Study of Human Sexuality, Kelly had no sex-ed certifica- 
tion, and she notes it was a point of criticism for her detractors. 

“When I was studying and not certified yet, I felt that friction. 
And that credibility is absolutely needed. You wouldn’t take your 
car to get serviced by someone who wasn't amechanic,” she says. 

In person, she appears every bit the embodiment of her online 
self. With her wide green eyes, cherubic face and soft voice, she 
may be easy to underestimate. But after a few minutes of talk- 
ing with her, it becomes clear how she has built a legion of young 
followers who see her as a reassuring voice amid a confusing, 
hormone-laden minefield. Indeed, with more than 400,000 fol- 
lowers, Kelly’s personal Instagram feed remains the draw, and it 
would be foolish to ignore its genius. Part sex-ed course, part per- 
sonal diary, with plenty of pouty, lingerie-clad selfies in between, 
the @killerandasweetthang account is the visual analogue of the 
sexually curious and expressive 20-something. Of course, none of 
it exists without hardship—Kelly has been targeted by trolls and 
criticized by family members, and when she goes home, “people 
still don't understand what I do"—but she nevertheless hopes her 
work can change how all people approach sex. 

For now, with the culture wars droning on, there will be no 
shortage of those who want sex to remain an inscrutable mystery, 
reminding us of America’s puritanical origins. For the rest of us, 
there's Eileen Kelly, ready to drop some carnal knowledge on any- 
one willing to learn. Bg 


STYLING BY KELLEY ASH; OPENING PAGES: PANTIES BY NAKED INTERSECTION, RHINESTONE LEG CHAIN STYLIST'S OWN; THIS PAGE: LINGERIE SET BY LE PETIT TROU 


BURN NOTICE 


THE ART OF THE CLAPBACK 


Protest art has never been so visible or so damn amusing. From wordplay on placards at #Resistance marches to Cardi B blasting Repub- 
licans in a freestyle on the recent government shutdown, schooling the ignorant without relying on insults is an art form. (Our president 
wouldn't know that, of course.) Amid the shouting matches on social media, the clapback has emerged as its own genre of commentary 
among public figures. Derived from Ja Rule's 2003 song of the same name (meaning to "shoot back”), it has transcended the internet 
and entered the real world; Nancy Pelosi's gesture toward President Trump at the 2019 State of the Union was viewed as its farcical em- 
bodiment. In honor of Merriam-Webster's adding the term to its di tionary this year— definition: "A quick, sharp, and effective response 
to criticism"—we ranked some of our favorite slights. Enraged by ош selections? Clap back at us on Twitter апа Instagram: @Playboy. 


@KINGJAMES vs. 
@REALDONALDTRUMP 
“U bum @StephenCurry30 already 
@AOC vs. said he aint going! So therefore 
AARON SORKIN 


ain't no invite. Going to White 
House was a great honor until you 


"Ever wonder how expression that's 
showed up!" 


feminine, working-class, queer or 


POC isn't deemed as having ‘gravi- 
LeBron James's sportsmanlike behavior, in de- 


tas, but talking like an Aaron Sorkin 
character does? Men have ‘gravitas,’ 
women get “likeable.” 


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: equal-opportunity dragger. 
In January she joined Human Rights Campaign spokes- 
person Charlotte Clymer in questioning the liberal screen- 
writer's call for young Democrats to "grow up." 


@CHRISSYTEIGEN os. 
@GORGONFREEMAN 


“| have a best-selling 
book, great boobs, a 
family | love, am literally 
eating pasta on a lake in 
Italy and | married rich.” 


How ruthless is Teigen on Iwitter? 
Ruthless enough to have been 
blocked by the president. When a 
user suggested she had peaked, she 
replied with a reality check. 


(0MOONPIE vs. 
@SIGURBJORNL 


“Buddy it's Saturday night and 
you're talking to a marshmal- 
low sandwich on the internet. 


In 2017 the snack cake hit back at a hater. 
No joke: Junk food companies that bicker 
with people on the internet have become 
hilarious, existential reflections of society. 


17 ILLUSTRATION BY SARAH MAXWELL 


FEARLESS 


fense of fellow NBA champion Curry, whom the 
president disinvited from the White House, made 
headlines around the world and became one of 
the most popular tweets of all time. 


@IAMHALSEY vs. 
@TIMURMENGLI 


“Yeah, it’s crazy. | can show my tits in 
PLAYBOY, perform at the Nobel Peace, 
speak at the Planned Parenthood gala 
with Hillary Clinton, shake my ass on 
300 stages, give a speech at the United 
Nations, do 150 shots of tequila, get a #1 
album, and march in the streets of DC all 
in just one year!!!! Newsflash. A woman 
can be multi-dimensional.” 


FACTUAL 


We admit we're biased when it comes to Halsey and her 
response to a dude who suggested feminists shouldn't be 
photographed naked. A little louder for those in the back. 


I @JK_ROWLING 
vs. @OMFGNN 


In - Free - Countries 
| A 


| | 


=- 


umi 


om - Anyone - Can - Talk - 
| 1 About - Politics. 
Try sounding out the 
| syllables aloud, or ask a 
fluent reader to help.” 


"T1 
c 
= 
Z 
< 


The woman behind the best-selling 
book series of all time gave a civics 
lesson to a Muggle who told her to 
“stay out of politics.” 


sy ERIC SPITZNAGEL 


ІНЕ NEW 
BOOB TUBE 


Game of Thrones, which kicks off its final season on HBO this spring, 


redefined the TV sex scene. Sex and nudity on television aren't going 


anywhere—but they will need to evolve 


When Game of Thrones debuts its eighth and final season on April 
14, one thing will be glaringly apparent to longtime fans: There 
aren't nearly as many naked prostitutes in Westeros anymore. 

This is particularly disappointing to Samantha Bentley, who 
has played three different ladies of the night over several sea- 
sons of HBO's 47-time Emmy-winning series. “I was hoping 
maybe they'd have me back one more time before it ends," she 
says wistfully. *But it doesn't look like that's going to happen. 
It's a different show now." 

By “different,” she means, of course, less nude. Exposed 
flesh on Game of Thrones has dropped by a staggering 
81.8 percent from season one to season seven. This is a pretty 
dramatic shift for a show that actor Ian McShane, a onetime 
guest star, once dismissed as "just tits and dragons." 

Game of Thrones isn't a pioneer in gratuitous nudity on 
mainstream TV. Naked body parts have been slowly but 
surely sneaking onto American television since Dennis Franz 
flashed his butt on ABC's NYPD Blue in 1994. But it's the first 
critically acclaimed series to put nudity front and center. The 
show was once so enthusiastic about rampant nakedness that 
it inspired new terminology—including sexposition, a word 
coined by TV critic Myles McNutt to explain how Game of 
Thrones uses random unclothed bodies as window dressing for 
plot exposition. 

But the sex seems to have (mostly) disappeared, with no plot- 


driven explanation. The reason might be that the actors were 
becoming more resistant. Emilia Clarke, for example, has re- 
negotiated her non-nudity clause with the studio. Or maybe 
HBO was growing weary of the negative press—one former di- 
rector claimed he was pressured by producers to do more full- 
frontal scenes to satisfy the “pervert side of the audience" —and 
legal battles with sites such as Pornhub, where steamy Game of 
Thrones clips trafficked higher than actual porn. 

Whatever the reason, the lack of clothes-less activity in 
the Seven Kingdoms hasn't slowed the naked renaissance it 
helped spawn. Indeed, the boob tube has become, quite lit- 
erally, the boob tube. The number of TV nude scenes featur- 
ing women jumped from 497 on 27 different shows in 2008 to 
1,370 on 147 shows in 2018, according to Mr. Skin, an online 
database of nudity in media. Male exposure has seen a similar 
bump, from 72 scenes across 16 shows in 2008 to 736 scenes on 
149 different shows last year. 

The explicit carnality on recent shows can make Game of 
Thrones seem downright tame by comparison. All the tropes 
that first caused Westeros to appear so scandalous—incest, 
rape, prostitutes, woman-on-woman finger-banging, sex at 
funerals—have since played out on shows including Shameless, 
Harlots, The Deuce, Vida, She's Gotta Have It, Outlander, Al- 
tered Carbon and Orange Is the New Black. And they're show- 
ing much, much more than anything we witnessed on Game of 


ILLUSTRATION BY MARIE BERGERON 


Thrones. Last year gave us the first semi-erect penis on TV (on 
Netflix’s Easy) and the first nothing-left-to-the-imagination 
depiction of oral sex (on Starz’s The Girlfriend Experience). 

Put simply, we’re living in a golden age of TV nudity. But 
are today’s productions using the same sexposition playbook 
as Game of Thrones, or are they venturing into uncharted ter- 
ritory? Is it just nudity-by-numbers, or are they aiming for 
something more revelatory than, say, soft-core porn with bet- 
ter dialogue? 

Karley Sciortino maintains it’s the latter. “The nudity being 
shot for TV today is much rawer and messier and more impro- 
vised,” says the writer and actress who has done full-frontal 
nudity on Netflix’s Easy, including in that groundbreaking 
boner scene. “They don’t shoot scenes with angles that make 
your tits look perfect.” 

She prefers sex scenes that reflect what actually takes place 
in the bedrooms of human beings. “Sex is clumsy sometimes," 
Sciortino says. "People can't get the condom on, or they start 
laughing. There's a great moment in the first season of Easy 
where these people are having a threesome, and there's a baby 
monitor in the room. The baby starts crying, so everybody 
stops, and they go take care of the baby and then come back. I 
was like, Yeah, that’s real life.’ " 

On her new show, the Steven Soderbergh-produced Now 
Apocalypse (Starz again), Sciortino works behind the scenes 
as a co-writer and creator, and the cast isn't shy about dis- 
cussing their limits. ^There are a lot of conversations on the 
set about consent," she says. "They're not just having those 


20 ENTERTAINMENT 


"A lot of scripts 
don't have more 
direction for a 
Sex scene than 
“They go for it.” 


discussions—they're leading them. Once you create a safe 
space where actors feel they're in charge, they're more willing 
to take risks." 

That's very different from just a few years ago, when the cli- 
mate on TV productions, even at its best, wasn't about making 
actors feel safe. During filming for the first season of the HBO 
series Westworld in 2015, nude extras were asked to sign a con- 
sent form that warned them they'd be engaging in "graphic 
sexual situations" that would likely involve “genital-to-genital 
touching" and posing *on all fours while others who are fully 
nude ride on your back," among other acts. When the form was 
made public, HBO insisted it had been written by a casting 
agency without HBO approval. 

Esmé Bianco, who plays the frequently nude prostitute Ros over 
severalearly seasons of Game of Thrones—as a refresher, she was 
featured in the season one tryst coached by Littlefinger—has 
only praise for how she was treated by the director and producers. 
But she also has moments of post-MeToo hindsight. 

"You really had to be your own advocate back then," she says. 
“If there was something I didn't want to do, I'd have to speak 
up in front of the entire crew, which was predominantly men. 
That's really difficult in a job that's so competitive, and no- 
body wants to be seen as a troublemaker." 

Today, actresses don't have to make those difficult decisions 
alone. HBO hired longtime stunt performer and fight director 
Alicia Rodis to serve as the network’s first “intimacy coordi- 
nator." Working on shows including the upcoming Watchmen 
series—the TV adaptation created by showrunner Damon Lin- 
delof, who's such a fan of on-screen nudity that he claims the 
vanity license plate on his car reads FFRNTL—as well as The 
Deuce and Crashing, she acts as a liaison between the actors 
and the director, making sure the sex scenes involve more 
oversight than “a cock sock and a prayer,” she says. 

But it's not just about letting the actors have more input on 
how much skin they reveal. ^What looks good on a screen can 
be very different from what feels good," Rodis says. “A lot of 
scripts don't have much more direction for a sex scene than 
“They go for it.’ But that's not helpful to an actor. That just 
means do what you'd do in the bedroom. But what works in the 
bedroom doesn't always read on camera. It's like stunts. You're 
not actually going to punch someone in the face. You have to 
cheat it to the camera in a certain way." 

Her job isn't just about protecting actors but facilitating more 
believable sex scenes. "I'm not walking onto a set and trying 
to get everyone into down jackets," she says. "I want more sex 


Opposite top: Jamie (Sam Heugham) and Claire (Caitriona Balfe) heat up the sheets on Starz’s time-travel drama Outlander. Opposite bottom: A client (Siddhartha Rajan) 
gets to know escort Sally (Karley Sciortino) on Netflix's anthology series Easy. Above: Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman) goes face-to-face with a dancer on Netflix's dystopian 
sci-fi series Altered Carbon. Below: Lyn (Melissa Barrera) lounges on Vida, Starz's coming-of-age drama. 


scenes. But let's do them right. It comes down to giving actors 
better direction, and that can be as subtle as asking them, “Could 
you alter your hip movement to a swivel instead of a pop?’ ” 

Sciortino isn't convinced that what TV sex needs is more 
choreography. “You have to be careful not to over-monitor to 
the point where it becomes sterilized,” she says. "Acting needs 
enough room for spontaneity. These intimacy coordinators are 
great, but actors should also have the freedom to lose them- 
selves in a moment." 

Emilia Clarke, who has been repeatedly naked as the Mother 
of Dragons on Game of Thrones, has gone out of her way to justify 
why her nudity on the show is not just narratively necessary but 
empowering. “It was naked, but it was strong,” she told Stephen 
Colbert in 2016, explaining why Daenerys needed to emerge 
sans clothing from a fiery inferno after smiting her enemies. 

Jemima Kirke, a regular on the HBO series Girls who never 
shied away from being naked on camera, doesn’t feel so 
strongly that every instance of nudity needs to be fraught with 
significance. “Nudity doesn’t need to be sexual,” she says. 
“But it doesn’t need to be empowering either.” 

Kirke’s most memorable unclothed moment on Girls involves 
her casually eating yogurt while lounging naked on a couch, 
and she’d like to see more of that unremarkable nudity, where 
actors go au naturel just because being naked is part of being 
human. “If you’re an actor, then your body is there for telling 
stories,” says Kirke, who also shot several nude scenes in the 
recent film Untogether. “I don't think anything should be off- 
limits. I don’t mind being objectified. That’s my job as an ac- 
tress. I'm a part of the visual story." 

Sex on TV isn't going anywhere. If anything, we'll be seeing 
even more flesh on the small screen in the coming year. But it's 
not about how much square footage of naked skin is allowed 


or how graphically the sex is simulated; it's about actors being 
heard. ^We want to keep everyone safe," Rodis says, ^but there's 
also an artistry in this. The actors aren't just props. They should 
be involved in the decision-making." 

She remembers one of her first days on the set of The Deuce. 
She was sitting with an actress—she declines to name her— 
who was preparing to do a nude scene. “She seemed a little dis- 
tracted," Rodis says. “So I asked her, “Are you okay?' She was 
like, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘I know this is an emotionally 
volatile and very sexual scene. Are you okay with all of this?’ 
She looked at me and said, 'You know, I've been doing this for 
20 years, and I think that's the first time anyone's ever asked 
me that.’ ” E 


PLAYBOY 21 


A visit to Japan's 
premier dildo bar, an 
underground sanctuary 
where women are free 
to talk openly—and 
positively—about sex 
in an otherwise hush- 


hush culture 


BY 


SELENA HOY 


22 SEX 


I am surrounded by a sea of dildos: purple ones and black ones, foot- 
longs and pocket-size. Some of them vibrate; some rotate. Some have 
botanic-looking extensions, like sea anemones and exotic flowers. 
Some are shaped like rabbits, and others look like teddy bears. I'm 
inspecting a particularly eerie one with a face molded on its silicone 
tip when the bartender passes me a small pink device. It heats up and 
vibrates at different intensities via remote control. 

Unless previously informed about Vibe Bar Wild One, in Tokyo's 
Shibuya ward, one would have difficulty imagining its interior: Hun- 
dreds of phalluses line plush velvet booths on the third floor of an un- 
remarkable structure, its location announced by a modest sign. The 
weathered building, accessed via a dingy alley near the Shibuya rail- 
way station, is part of the Dogenzaka neighborhood. The bar hovers 
above a pachinko parlor, a convenience store and some cheap tav- 
erns. Upstairs, a sign at the entrance proudly declares WOMEN AND 
COUPLES ONLY. There is a buzzer, of course. 

Opened in 2013, Vibe Bar is a shrine to female pleasure in a coun- 
try where people aren't having much sex. A 2015 study by the National 
Institute of Population and Social Security Research showed that in 
Japan, 42 percent of men and 44 percent of women ages 18 to 34 who 
had never been married were virgins. Are people choosing alterna- 
tives to long-term partners? Indeed, Dogenzaka is home to several 
hostess bars that employ primarily female staffs to serve drinks and 
carry on intimate and flirty conversations. Strip joints, massage par- 
lors and “soaplands” (a euphemism for brothels), all bathed in pink 
neon, are within walking distance of one another. But most of these 
cater to men. Vibe Bar, run by a staff of just five women, is the outlier. 

"There are a lot of places for men to play, but there aren't that many 
places for women to talk openly about sex and be relatively safe," says 
Yuka Izumi, who handles Vibe Bar's events, public relations and bar 
management. ^We thought it would be good to have such a place." 


, 
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NIKO WU 


Alexandra Hambleton, an assistant professor of Japanese 
studies specializing in media and gender at Bunkyo Gakuin Uni- 
versity in Tokyo, asserts that Japan’s current sexual culture is a 
reaction to the country’s complicated history with the sex trade. 
“Female sexuality has long been viewed as something to be used 
by men. Women are supposed to be shy and coy and be convinced 
to have sex, as you see in a lot of porn,” she says. “Women are not 
supposed to be the subject of their own sexuality." 

Historically, the practice of selling an apprentice geisha's 
virginity was not unheard of. Additionally, from 1932 to 1945, 
the Imperial Japanese Army forced women in occupied terri- 
tories into sexual servitude, and military brothels remained 
state-sponsored businesses until 1946. After Japan's surren- 
der in World War II, General Douglas MacArthur, the newly 
anointed Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, abol- 
ished the licensed prostitution system. At the end of the war, 
however, the Japanese government destroyed many of the rele- 
vant documents in hopes of erasing evidence of the women who 
had died from rape, suicide or sexually transmitted diseases in 
the preceding years. 

What remained was Article 175 of the Penal Code of Japan, a 
piece of prewar legislation that forbids the distribution of “in- 
decent" materials. As part of an effort to transform an embar- 
rassing and violent sexual history, Article 175's prohibitions 
can be extended to sex toys. Under Japanese law, anything that 
comes into contact with the genitals must be classified as a 


Vibe Bar's front 
door is locked. 
This extra layer 
of security isn't a 
mistake. 


medical device and requires government approval. Adult goods 
are still sold, but not openly. 

It is only now, perhaps in response to sexual deprivation, that 
women have slowly begun to combat restrictions on their sexual 
freedom. "I'm past 40, but in my generation it took a lot of cour- 
age for a young woman to go to an adult-goods store by herself 
and buy a sex toy,” Izumi says. 

By her estimation, clerks in adult shops are “about 90 percent 
men," and most of the products are geared toward men as well. 
"Even if women come to purchase things and want to ask about 
the goods, if the employee is male, it's not likely that he has actu- 
ally used the goods,” Izumi says. “He won't know if it feels good or 
not, and he can't get to the core of the conversation." 

Businesses like Vibe Bar hope to shrink this longtime void. 

According to Hambleton, the recent boom in women's sex toys 
in Japan, which has a GDP of almost $5 trillion, is commerce- 
driven. “The only place anyone is able to explore female sexual- 
ity, even in a slightly feminist way, is within the marketplace," 
she says. “It’s problematic in that it’s commercialized—but it 
gives people a space that doesn't exist anywhere else.” 
Vibe Bar's front door is locked. This extra layer of security isn't 
a mistake. It's important that women who want to own their sex- 
uality take additional precautions, as many can be "subject to 
threats," according to Hambleton. 

After ringing the buzzer, I'm admitted to the bar. The first 
thing I notice is that the foyer's doorway resembles a giant 
labia. The walls are decorated with shunga murals, or fantasti- 
cal erotic woodblock illustrations of sensual pleasures featuring 
kimono-clad couples mid-coitus. An inviting glow radiates from 
the endless vibrators, which are accompanied by a variety of fla- 
vored lubes. Izumi tells me the decor is inspired by a womb. After 
returning to the beginning and learning about sex, gender, plea- 
sure and yourself, “you open the door and are reborn with a new 
erotic knowledge," she says. 

“A lot of men here don't prioritize sex. They work late hours and 
don't have that much energy when they finish work. It's easier to 
just watch porn and give themselves pleasure than to actually 
meet up with a woman," says a woman I'll call Kim. She has been 
dating in Japan for 18 years. “Women seem to be more content 


with their vibrators than dealing with men, because it seems 
like men can't be bothered.” Her observations are backed up by 
the results of a 2o17 Japan Family Planning Association survey, 
which concluded that 47 percent of married people hadn’t had 
sex for a month or more. Thirty-five percent of men cited “ex- 
haustion from work"; women's top response, at 22 percent, was 
sex is “too much trouble.” 

Unlike in the United States, in Japan it is uncommon to speak 
openly about sex. Sex education, beyond teaching basic biological 
functions, is not required in public schools. “That's why people 
like to go to hostess clubs," says Rinda (not her real name), who 
used to work in such bars. *Because somebody will kind of lead 
the conversation and you're allowed to talk about sex, whereas in 
normal life I don't think you can really do that." 

While the country outside Vibe's walls continues to struggle 
with conversations about sex, the bar's staff of self-educated vibe 
sommeliers is more than happy to answer questions, give rec- 
ommendations and talk specs. There's even a diagram of the fe- 
male anatomy printed on the menu, alongside a list of cocktails 
including cassis oolong and Calpis-hai, a yogurt-based soft drink 
with a shot of shochu. 

As for the most popular items at Vibe Bar, Izumi points to 
silicone cups with rotating attachments for nipple stimulation, 


and a vibrator shaped to massage the G-spot. Both products are 
among the 350 toys on display—toys that customers can touch, 
examine and even compare notes on with other customers. 

Beyond providing customer service, staffers continually present 
new products. Their varied backgrounds, including an adult-goods- 
company employee, an S&M queen and a member of the LGBTQ 
community, inform their expertise. While the bar itself is not a 
shop—think of it more like a Tesla showroom—once a customer is 
ready, she can go to one of seven Wild One shops or order products 
through an online portal under the same ownership. And because 
the Wild One company, which has been operating since 1991, has 
so many brick-and-mortar locations in Tokyo, it receives plenty of 
customer feedback to help it develop new products. For example: 
"A lot of people in Japan live with their parents, so we get requests 
for items that are battery controlled and silent," Izumi says. ^If it's 
too noisy, they're afraid it might vibrate to the next room, or if it's 
chargeable, they're afraid their parents might find out." 

Should more of these establishments pop up, Hambleton pre- 
dicts, women who were once afraid would finally have a way 
to explore and experiment. “They’d find they weren't the only 
people thinking about these things and discover they weren't the 
only women who were masturbating. For women who may have 
grown up not being able to talk openly about their sexuality, that 
is a powerful discovery." a 


PLAYBOY 25 


More than 1,500 

people jubilantly shed their 
clothes last June for Dark 
Mofo's annual nude swim. 
The event occurs at dawn 
after the winter solstice, 
when Hobart, Tasmania 
experiences the longest 
night of any city in Australia. 


26 TRAVEL 


^" 


How two festivals, one museum and an eccentric gambler's sex- 
and-death-themed vision are quietly transforming Tasmania into 


one of«he world's most titillating art destinations 


BY CHARLES SHAFAIEH PHOTOGRAPHY ey JESSE HUNNIFORD & REMI CHAUVIN 


PLAYBOY 


oments before dawn on the morning after 
the southern hemisphere’s winter solstice, 
more than 1,500 people, wearing only tow- 
els and red swimming caps, crowded onto 
a narrow beach in Hobart, Tasmania—one 
of the southernmost cities in the world. As 
the pink and orange pastel glow of the sun- 
rise bathed the crowd, a voice over a loud- 
speaker announced, “Now is the time: Take 
your clothes off!” A thunderous beat dropped, as did the towels, 
and with a collective scream that perfectly echoed the screeching 
gulls overhead, the swimmers threw themselves into the bracing 
waters of the River Derwent. Seconds later they reemerged, wear- 
ing expressions of ecstatic triumph. One newscaster, securing 
his towel, ran to kiss his wife and baby. “Saw some people from 
work," he said. ^We're best friends now!" 

This inclusive, anarchic spirit is fueling an increase in Tas- 
mania tourism, local and international, exceeding that of 
other Australian states. Universally acknowledged as an insti- 
gator of this shift is the Museum of Old and New Art, or MONA, 
opened in 2011 by local mathematician and professional gam- 
bler David Walsh. A short ferry ride upriver from Hobart in 
the suburb of Glenorchy, MONA has succeeded beyond even 
Walsh's predictions—it has had nearly 3 million visitors to 
date—and now sustains two music-and-arts festivals: Mona 
Foma in the January summer, and the more gothic Dark Mofo 
in the June winter, for which the mass cold-plunge skinny-dip 
has become a trademark event. 

Featuring exhibitions of such heavyweight artists as Marina 
Abramovié and Matthew Barney, MONA’s gallery, a labyrin- 
thine space carved into a Triassic stone cliff, eschews museum 
conventions such as wall labels and, says Walsh, the tendency to 
ignore the two biological imperatives that drive people to make 
art: “fucking and killing." It also pushes against the digitization 
of experience with the large-scale and sensorially disorienting 
works in its permanent collection, cheekily named “Monanism.” 
Take James Turrell's Unseen Seen, a kaleidoscopic light-based 


installation inside a giant white sphere. Walsh describes Tur- 
rell’s art as “heroin but without the side effects.” (Participants 
are required to sign waivers before entering.) 

Australian sculptor Greg Taylor's Cunts..and other 
conversations—a series of 151 life-size porcelain casts of vaginas 
spotlit along a darkened pathway—highlights in its scale each 
body part's individuality as well as the absurdity of censoring the 
female body on social media and elsewhere. Women can be over- 
heard telling companions about finding their double. (Versions 
of the sculptures also appear in the gift shop, as vagina-shaped 
hand soap.) 

Walsh, 57, whose fast-paced, irreverent speech and shoulder- 
length gray hair bring to mind Scottish comic Billy Connolly, 
made a fortune as a gambler using quantitative analysis. He has 
a savant-level understanding of probability and contends that 
human life is governed by chance. “The worst decision I ever made 
was the first bet I placed, because there was athree to five percent 
chance that it would have made me a compulsive gambler and 
destroyed my life,” he says, sitting at MONA’s Faro restaurant, 
where bartenders pour charcoal-black margaritas garnished 
with feral-pig eyeballs frozen in ice. “There was only one chance 
in a million or less that it would have made me wealthy.” 


Walsh's luck reverberates beyond MONA. International travel to 
Tasmania rose 18 percent in 2017 alone. In addition to the farmers’ 
stalls at the sprawling outdoor Salamanca Market (still Tasmanias 
most-visited attraction; MONA is second), an ever-growing number 
of farm-to-table restaurants are benefiting from the surge. And in 
December, MONA announced plans for Motown, a roughly $287 mil- 
lion mini-village featuring a five-star hotel, playground, theater, 
outdoor performance space, library and spa designed by Turrell and 
Abramovic that could open as soon as 2024. 

For now, the two festivals, both overseen by Walsh, remain the 
most distinctive MONA-affiliated events as much for the diversity 
of their offerings as for their democratic atmosphere, with no VIP 
areas or exorbitant ticket prices. Mona Foma, curated since its 2009 
inception by Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie, has welcomed 
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Amanda Palmer and Gotye, as well as 
more experimental work such as Eve Klein’s Vocal Womb, in which 
the opera singer performed while the interior of her body was pro- 
jected onstage via a laryngoscope. 

Among the dozens of acts at this year's Mona Foma were Grammy- 
nominated indie rocker Courtney Barnett; composer and sound 
artist Nick Ryan, who translated the movement of 27,000 pieces of 
space junk into sound; and Australian black-metal project Striborg, 
teamed with the Australian Art Orchestra. 

Despite Mona Foma's appeal as an escape from the northern 
hemisphere winter, the standout at this remote location is the 


PLAYBOY 29 


PF AWW yy 
ess V Л “ 
res | Whe А TN 
2 eT 


Dark Mofo festival's subversive curatorial mission. Founding 
creative director Leigh Carmichael sees it as a chance to re- 
claim darkness. The two-week-long citywide event celebrates 
all things transcendent, ecstatic and primal: “Why can't dark- 
ness be good?” Carmichael asks. “I understand why it's used as 
a metaphor for evil, but it isn't actually. It's also sublime. The 
night is atime to dream." 

David Lynch serves as a frequent inspiration. Last year's fes- 
tival featured a re-creation of Twin Peaks's Bang Bang Bar— 
part of the immersive Night Mass spread over five venues in 
central Hobart—and performances by Lynch muses Rebekah 
Del Rio and Chrysta Bell. The seminal industrial group Ein- 
stürzende Neubauten has become a repeat guest, along with a 
program of experimental operas, metal bands and frequently 
unclassifiable performers. 

Dark Mofo's often provocative artistic interventions, such 
as Siren Song in 2017, also separate it from Mona Foma's 
music-focused programming and, Carmichael believes, serve 
as its most remarkable aspect. Every day of the 2017 festival, for 
seven minutes at dawn and dusk, an ethereal composition burst 
forth from speakers throughout downtown. Few complained; 
apparently much of this city's population of more than 200,000 
has embraced projects one would expect to be tolerated only at 
more remote festivals like Burning Man. 

But not everyone appreciates the spectacle. A recent real- 
estate boom, influenced in part by the tourism boost, has seen 
Hobart surpass Sydney as Australia's least affordable city for 
rentals, which could force out local artists. Glenorchy, where 
MONA is located, remains one of the state's most disadvan- 
taged areas, as tourists typically go directly back to Hobart's 
more chic restaurants, shops and galleries instead of staying 
in the suburb. And local Christians took issue with the 33-foot- 
tall red neon inverted crosses installed along the Hobart water- 
front for last year's Dark Mofo. Hobart's then lord mayor, Ron 
Christie, sought to withdraw financial support for what he 
called the *shock festival." 

Last year the city council approved a performance by 73-year- 
old Sydney-based artist Mike Parr. For three days, Parr buried 
himself without food in a 25-square-foot steel room under- 
neath a busy downtown street. The piece's metaphoric res- 
onance of buried knowledge has a universal quality, but in 
Tasmania it evoked the island's violent history: In the first 
half of the 19th century, 90 percent of Tasmania's indigenous 
population was massacred by European colonists in the Black 
War—an attempted genocide that remains unrecognized by the 
national government and unknown even to many Australians. 
More than 3,000 people gathered as Parr descended beneath 
the street, a truck quickly sealed him in with asphalt and the 
first cars began driving over the chamber. In the crowd, var- 
ious Aboriginal groups both shouted support and peace- 
fully protested the action. The divide prompted discussions 
on neglected history that could be heard in coffee shops and 
restaurants throughout Hobart, among metalheads, visiting 
visual artists and locals alike. 

Traveling from the United States for upward of an entire 
day to visit an island of whooping and wailing nude swimmers 
and an unapologetically sex-and-death-forward museum may 
seem counterintuitive—but for Walsh, that's the whole idea. 
"Comfort can never change your viewpoint," he says. ^You can 
stay home and watch a good show on Netflix and be almost cer- 
tain to have a decent time, or you can go to a most likely bad, 
difficult artwork at Dark Mofo that isn't satisfying anyone— 


Above: Performance duo Inner 
Course engages bystanders in 
"complicit acts of mindful reprieve" 
at Mona Foma 2019. Right: Swedish 
singer-songwriter Neneh Cherry co- 
headlined the January event, which 
was held in the city of Launceston 
for the first time this year. 


Right: Audio-visual artist 
Robin Fox's Launceston 
Constellation showers 
visitors with interlocking 
laser beams that interact 
with sound. Below: 
Local artist Amanda 
Parer channeled Rodin 
when she created 

Man, a 423-cubic-foot 
floating sculpture, for the 
summer festival. 


Opposite top: Visitors to James Turrell's 
Unseen Seen are required to enter in 
pairs, sign waivers and carry panic 
buttons because of the pieces potentially 
overwhelming hallucinogenic effect. 
People have later reported feeling nostalgic 
for the stranger with whom they entered. 
Opposite bottom: Walsh has called 
MONA a "subversive adult Disneyland." 
Case in point: Randy Polumbos Grotto, a 
kaleidoscopic room Walsh has christened 
the "selfie capital of the museum.” 


but there's a one in 1,000 chance that it will change your life. 
There's no chance Netflix will." 

Familiar pleasures are easy to find, but they can narcotize you 
into a state of complacency. Enduring a long atonal concert or 
taking part in a sacrificial ritual may infuriate you but, in doing 
so, make you look at your surroundings differently, whether 
you're home or at the edge of the world. "Just because you have a 
shit time 999 times out of 1,000 doesn't mean you shouldn't do 
something," Walsh says. “It means you should." E 


PLAYBOY 21 


Manin Ais Domain 


THE REVEREND 
WILLIAM J. BARBER II 


- Commemorating what 
would have been Martin 
Luther King Jr.'s goth » 
birthday, Barber spoke 
at Stanford University's 7 
Memorial Church in 
January. The name of 
the event: Where Do We 
Go From Here? 


spy AMANDA PETRUSICH 


FROM HIS PULPIT IN GOLDSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA, THIS 
PROGRESSIVE PREACHER IS MUSTERING AN ARMY OF LOVE— 
COMPRISING SAINTS, SINNERS AND EVERYONE IN BETWEEN 


The precise origin of Watch Night—a New Year's Eve prayer ser- 
vice, common in Southern black churches, in which a congrega- 
tion assembles to recall the moment the calendar flipped from 
1862 to 1863 and Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclama- 
tion became law—is murky, but the sentiment involved is con- 
sonant with the season: Let us gather to celebrate the thrill of 
change and the promise of renewal. 

This past December 31, at the Pullen Memorial Baptist Church 
in Raleigh, North Carolina, parishioners had filled most of the 
pews by 6:30 Р.М. Latecomers jockeyed for standing room near 
the back. A banner stretching from one end of the balcony to 
the other read POOR PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN: A NATIONAL CALL FOR 
MORAL REVIVAL. A camera crew snaked power cords up and down 
the pulpit stairs, preparing for a live internet broadcast. The 
crowd was a mix of regular churchgoers, graying activists and 
young couples in expensive eyeglasses. Buttons broadcasting lib- 
eral causes and catchphrases (LOVE TRUMPS HATE, BLACK LIVES 
MATTER, NASTY WOMAN) were abundant. 

The night's headliner was the minister and activist William 
J. Barber II—newly minted MacArthur Fellow, former president 
of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP and co-chair of the 
revived Poor People's Campaign, a movement conceived by Mar- 
tin Luther King Jr. in 1967. Barber and I were scheduled to meet 
for a formal interview before the service, but his brother, Charles 
Barber, a minister in Georgia, had recently been diagnosed with 
inoperable pancreatic cancer, and earlier that day the situation 
had grown grim. One of his colleagues called to say that Barber 
needed to spend the day with family. 

My breath caught as I put my phone back on the hotel night- 
stand. How could anyone, faced with that kind of news, address 
a sprawling congregation, let alone send it into a new year armed 
with hope? 

Barber was born in 1963, in Indianapolis. Around his fifth 
birthday, his parents moved him from Indiana to a segregated 
kindergarten in Washington County, deep in North Carolina's 
so-called black belt. His father had grown up there and wanted 
to help desegregate the state's public school system. He became 
one of the first black teachers in the county; Barber's mother 
was the school's first black office manager. (She still works 
there: “The great-grandchildren of some people who called her 
nigger when we first came now call her Mama Barber," Barber 
writes in his book, The Third Reconstruction.) On weekends, 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK 


his father traveled around the state, holding revivals in one- 
room churches. “He was sharing the gospel message that gave 
him hope, believing that it was good news for others as well," 
Barber writes. ^But at the same time he was also building con- 
nections as an organizer." 

The elder Barber's decision to move his young family to 
the segregated South demonstrated his conviction that faith 
and activism are inextricable. “He believed that racism was 
against the imago Dei, the image of God in every person, and 
that systemic racism and poverty were forms of false wor- 
ship, idol worship, the worship of self over the care for all hu- 
manity," Barber tells me, speaking over the phone two weeks 
into the new year. ^My parents could have stayed in the Mid- 
west, but they chose to bring me to a segregated kindergarten. 
They came because a black principal asked them to come back 
home, and Daddy said that he accepted what he believed was a 
Macedonian call. In the Bible, the poor Christians said to Paul, 
‘Come help us.’ And he did.” 

Barber's home base is the Greenleaf Christian Church in 
Goldsboro, about 55 miles southeast of Raleigh. If you listen to 
old sermons recorded on crackly 78 rpm discs in the 1920s and 
1930s—preachers like the Reverend J.M. Gates of Atlanta hol- 
lering about how “death’s black train is coming"—you'll rec- 
ognize Barber's heavy, undulating cadences, the repetition of 
key phrases, the call-and-response rhythms, the rich, intoxi- 
cating music of his voice. The North Carolina-based writer 
Benjamin Hedin, author of the 2015 book In Search of the 
Movement: The Struggle for Civil Rights Then and Now, con- 
textualizes Barber's rhetorical powers within the civil rights 
movement. “I think oratory is the proper tradition in which 
to place Barber, rather than activist or nonviolent apostle,” 
he tells me. “Barber’s place is to offer from the pulpit, where 
it has traditionally been offered, a source of hope and renewal 
and moral clarity. It actualizes all the hope and aspirations so- 
ciety by itself cannot." 

Barber considers Duke professor and theologian William C. 
Turner one of the greatest influences on his spiritual life, and 
in conversation he's quick to cite Turner's comments about 
the link between belief and boots-on-the-ground advocacy: 
"Whatever you call it—being born again, touched by the spirit, 
moved by the divine, baptized in the water—whatever you call 
your ‘religious experience, if it does not initiate a quarrel with 
the world, and a quarrel with injustice, and a quarrel with 


PLAYBOY 33 


hatred, and a quarrel with discrimination, and a quarrel with 
division, then your claim to have had a religious experience is 
terribly suspect.” 
Barber is nothing if not cognizant ofthe difference between words 
and deeds. In 2013 he became known nationally for his involve- 
ment in the Moral Mondays campaign, in which he led the peace- 
ful occupation of the North Carolina capitol building. The action 
got national press, perhaps because it demonstrated Barber's sin- 
gular ability to balance faith, activism and an intersectionality 
that can surprise casual atheists and traditional believers alike. 

Pat McCrory, the state's new Republican governor, was deter- 
mined to attack policies designed to protect the poor or otherwise 
disenfranchised: He slashed unemployment benefits, signed a bill 
that opted North Carolina out of an expanded Medicaid program 
and repealed the Racial Justice Act, which had allowed death row 
inmates to challenge their convictions if they believed they had 
been subject to racial discrimination. He also deregulated moun- 
taintop fracking, eliminated tenure for public-school teachers, 
tried to prevent public health insurance policies from covering 
abortions and, in 2016, signed something called the Public Facili- 
ties Privacy and Security Act, a bit of legislation that, among other 
things, contained directives regarding bathroom use: Per its dic- 
tates, in government buildings people could use only the bathrooms 
that corresponded with the sex printed on their birth certificates. 

The Moral Mondays protests eventually spread to other dis- 
tricts and cities; more than 1,000 people, including Barber, were 
arrested in the first two years. In 2016, McCrory lost the election 
to Roy Cooper, a Democrat, making him the first sitting gover- 
nor to blow a regular general reelection campaign in North Car- 
olina since 1850. He later blamed his defeat on “the non-citizen 
vote," though it was almost certainly due to the economic fall- 
out following his endorsement of the Public Facilities Privacy 
and Security Act. News organizations estimated that it cost the 
state more than 1,750 jobs and more than $77 million in invest- 
ments and other spending, after corporations including PayPal 
and Deutsche Bank froze their expansion plans, Bruce Springs- 
teen and Ringo Starr canceled concerts there and the NCAA ex- 
cluded the state from hosting playoff games. 

In 2016 Barber again commanded national attention, during 
a 10-minute speech at the Democratic National Convention. He 
shuffled onstage in a dark suit and a lavender shirt. His beard 


WHEN WE TALK 
ABOUT MORALITY, 
WE'RE NOT JUST 
TALKING ABOUT 
CHRISTIANITY.” 


34 


was closely cropped and flecked with gray. He began, “I’m a 
preacher, and I’m a theologically conservative liberal evangeli- 
cal biblicist.” The crowd seemed uncertain how to receive this. 
“I work to conserve a divine tradition that teaches us to do jus- 
tice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God,” he went on. 
“I’m worried by the way faith is cynically used by some to serve 
hate, fear, racism and greed.” The crowd swooned. A headline 
in The Washington Post declared, THE REV. WILLIAM BARBER 
DROPPED THE MIC. 

Barber’s work is staunchly nondenominational, and he wel- 
comes individuals who are repulsed by institutionalized religion, 
have been cast out of their churches, are scarred by the right’s 
long-standing co-option of “morality” or find the very notion of 
God absurd. “Our movement is not asking people to be Christian. 
When we talk about morality, we’re not just talking about Chris- 
tianity. That's not even my only entry point; it’s am entry point,” 
Barber says. “We have black, white, brown, native, Asian, athe- 
ist, people of faith, people not of faith, young, old, gay, straight. A 
moral fusion movement is not about people becoming Christian, 
or any particular faith. A moral fusion movement says, ‘Listen, 
there are some issues that aren’t left versus right, Democrat ver- 
sus Republican, but right versus wrong.” 

In addition to his role at Greenleaf, Barber is president of 

Repairers of the Breach, a nonprofit that takes its name from a 
portion of Isaiah 58:12 (“Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you 
shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be 
called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live 
in”). The issues he cares about the most—voter suppression, en- 
demic poverty, health care—he sees as moral obligations, which 
we have heretofore collectively failed to prioritize or demand. 
Donald Trump’s presidency is merely a symptom of the moral 
void at the nation’s center, he insists, and hardly the cause of it. 
He reminds me that violence against the poor both preceded and 
will outlast this administration. 
Cornel West, also a decorated theologian, was an early sup- 
porter of Barber’s work. “He is a spiritual giant, a great freedom 
fighter and a grand organic intellectual,” West told me recently. 
“He puts a smile on Martin Luther King’s face from the grave. I 
have great love and respect for him.” Comparisons to King are 
not uncommon. 

In a way, Barber’s work is predicated on the idea that morality 
is self-evident. For decades, American popular culture has nor- 
malized self-idolatry and individualism, to the point that it’s now 
widely seen as a virtue: "I'ma worry 'bout me, give a fuck about 
you" is how Drake puts it in "Started From the Bottom," which 
remains (even if Drake is Canadian) as good a parable of the 
American dream as anything. America was founded on promises 
of independence and self-betterment, yet Barber is suggesting 
we should worry less about ourselves and more about our neigh- 
bors. His message is radical insofar as it requires a significant 
recalibration of the American psyche—away from grotesque ex- 
aggerations of the Horatio Alger myth and toward the promise of 
Emma Lazarus's “The New Colossus" mounted inside the Statue 
of Liberty. 

Barber can be a challenging subject, in large part because he's 
resistant to letting his ego overshadow the movement. He has 
submitted to his work so fully, it's difficult to cleave the man 
from the mission. It seems obvious Barber's advocacy comes 
at a personal cost, yet he's preternaturally adept at contextu- 
alizing his suffering in a way that inevitably diminishes it. His 
pain, whether physical, internal or existential, can always be 


managed. (The physical pain is very real: Barber suffers from an- 
kylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory disease that, over time, 
causes the vertebrae of the spine to fuse.) This too feels radical 
in an era of incessant broadcasting, in which the airing of griev- 
ances is its own online pastime. 

When I ask Barber if he ever fears for his safety— after Charles- 
ton and in light of massacres everywhere—he is reluctant to an- 
swer. “I look at violence in two forms,” he finally replies. "And I'll 
say it quickly. When Coretta Scott King was asked about violence 
after her husband's murder, she said, “Yes, but there are other 
forms of violence, like denying health care, denying education, 
denying culture, denying a living wage, denying labor rights.' 
Another form of violence is an apathetic attitude that refuses to 
address these other forms of violence. So I've experienced that 
kind of violence, first of all. But then, yes, I've also experienced 
the violence of..." He pauses. “I don't talk about it a lot or give 
glory to it, but I've received notes that say things like 'You're in 
the dead pool; you'll be dead by Christmas.’ I’ve seen the ugly, 
ugly things on the internet. I received some of that stuff in 2011, 
before Trump was ever around. But that's not the me I want folks 
to know." 

He is similarly reserved when I ask if he's considering a presi- 
dential bid. “I don't really have any desire to hold political office,” 
he says. But he is quickly energized as he segues to thoughts ofthe 
future, forecasting a movement peopled by citizens “who are will- 
ing to put their bodies on the line, their mouths to work, who are 
willing to lose their pulpits" to spread the essential message “that 
change has happened, change is happening, change can happen, 
change will happen and that we are the people." 

On New Year's Eve, Barber's sermon was preceded by at least 
an hour of singing and remarks from half a dozen other speak- 
ers, including the Reverend Liz Theoharis, his co-chair in the 
Poor People's Campaign. (She wore a clerical stole over her 


ministerial robes that read JESUS WAS A POOR MAN.) ^We never 
have a stage at a Poor People's Campaign event where a person 
stands by themselves," Barber says. “That's intentional. And we 
never talk about any one issue separate from any other, so that 
we're not fighting in silos." 

When he finally rose to speak—he had been sitting on the 
side of the stage, watching and listening, nodding, occasion- 
ally offering a quiet “That's right!" —he acknowledged that his 
day had been arduous. He then delivered a 45-minute sermon 
that gathered strength as it went, like a slab of snow cascading 
into an avalanche. He made the case that people helping one an- 
other on a national scale is possible. It shouldn't even be that 
hard. Reorganize the budgets; resist gerrymandering; make 
sure every citizen is healthy and allowed to vote. 

By the end, I was dizzy. We filed outside. Midnight was still 
three hours away. People shook hands in the cold, wishing each 
other well in the forthcoming year. 

A few days into January, Barber's brother passed away. “If 
he was going, it was a blessing that he was able to die with his 
mama singing the songs of the church to him," Barber tells me. 
His voice, that assured baritone, now sounds thin, and it qua- 
vers as he describes the funeral. But as it did in Raleigh, it gath- 
ers an inexorable momentum as he delves deeper into his work 
and his faith—how we can change and why we need to. Listen- 
ing to him on the phone, as in the pulpit on New Year's Eve, I 
feel awake, and hopeful. m 


МА Уи У 


ILLUSTRATIONS BY KATIE BAILIE 


PLAYBOY 
Advisor 


Sex writer Maria Del Russo advises a wman who has a knee-jerk 
reaction to her boyfriend's need to jerk. Plus, advice on dressing up, turning off 


Q: How many women watch porn and mas- 
turbate with their boyfriends? Online sex 
therapists seem to routinely advocate this 
practice, but I haven't met a single woman 
who actually engages in it. Here's my 
story: My boyfriend and I have a healthy 
sex life, but he admits that he masturbates 
to relieve stress. He loves porn, and he says 
he never looks at photos of me when he's 
flying solo because he doesn't want our in- 
timacy to be “superficial.” I'm already in- 
secure about my body, and I know I'll never 
live up to the women he's watching. I'm not 
a big fan of porn, nor do I need to mastur- 
bate when I'm in a relationship. Should I 
let him continue to do his thing, vocalize 
my insecurity or suggest mutual mastur- 
bation (and possibly humiliate myself in 
the process)?—E.V., London, U.K. 

A: Let's begin by acknowledging the utility 
of porn. Pornography is consumed largely as 
a stimulant for getting off—not, as you seem 
to fear, as a substitute for sex or as astandard 
of attractiveness. Couples may choose to 
watch porn together to set the mood. Some 
masturbate while watching it, others don't. 
Some watch together because they find it 
titillating, others because it's intriguing, and 
the rest do it because it's funny. 

In short, regardless of your relationship 
status, there are many reasons to watch 
porn. One thing is certain, though: 
Women absolutely partake alongside their 
boyfriends. Based on my research, few 
comprehensive surveys on this subject 
have been published, but with nearly 
100 million people visiting Pornhub 
every day, it would not be unreasonable 
to assume that some of those visitors are 
couples in healthy relationships. 


and going deeper during sex 


You should be grateful that your 
boyfriend is so forthcoming about his porn- 
viewing habits; he’s essentially handing 
you his unlocked iPhone. His relationship 
with porn and masturbation, as you 
describe it, seems to be a non-threatening 
one, given how he views them as separate 
from intercourse even though they’re just 
as integral to his emotional well-being. By 
the way, science is on his side: The mental- 
health benefits of masturbation include 
reduced stress, better-quality sleep and 
improved concentration. 

You, on the other hand, seem to have a 
more, let's say nuanced, relationship with 
masturbation, porn, sex and self-esteem. 
It’s important to be open with your part- 
ner about your insecurities—physical, 
emotional and sexual—because he who 
loves you may be able to help you over- 
come them. Forcing him into your com- 
fort zone by giving him an ultimatum 
isn’t the answer. Nor should you suggest 
mutual masturbation if you’re not legiti- 
mately curious about it. (He may not even 
be interested, because, as you suggest, 
he likes to compartmentalize.) Sexual- 
ity is complicated, and even when we have 
romantic partners, it can be beneficial to 
experience some of our sexual desires and 
fantasies alone. 

To reinforce why you needn’t worry 
about his habits, allow me to deploy the 
only kind of metaphor that can compete 
with sex: food. Sometimes you want noth- 
ing more than to slowly savor a succulent 
10-ounce Wagyu filet mignon and a glass 
of cabernet. Other times all you crave is 
a cold slice of day-old Domino’s pizza. In 
both cases, you're experiencing hunger; 


your means of satiation are merely cir- 
cumstantial. Have confidence in know- 
ing that pepperoni could never replace 
steak—and men /ove steak. 


Q: Technology has created so many ways 
you can be caught juggling your options: 
random numbers texting you, aflame call- 
ing while you're on another date, women 
messaging you in the middle of the night, 
Bumble notifications popping up unex- 
pectedly, people adding you to their Insta- 
gram stories without permission. What's 
the key to being on the grid while dating 
multiple people?—J.S., Rockford, Illinois 
A: Believe it or not, dating in 2019 is not 
that difficult. Turn on your phone's “do 
not disturb" function before your date 
begins. In reality, the only people who 
fear being caught dating other people are 
those who are being deceitful, so your 
question seems to indicate you want to 
date in secret. That, my friend, is a zero- 
sum game in the digital age. Be up-front 
about your goals with everybody you're 
dating. Anything else is a waste of your 
time and theirs. If you just want to have 
fun, let them know. If you're not ready to 
be exclusive, let them know. If you have 
no interest in something long-term, make 
that clear before having sex. 

At this point, most well-adjusted sin- 
gle people expect any social encounter to 
be interrupted by some form of technol- 
ogy. If you silence all your devices, your 
date will likely consider it chivalrous 
and refreshing. By the way, if you're on a 
first, second or even third date and she 
demands to know why other women are 
contacting you, run. 


PLAYBOY 3/ 


Q: What's the longest you can go with- 
out having sex with your girlfriend before 
you should worry about the health of your 
relationship?—R.W., Idaho Falls, Idaho 
A: What you’re actually asking is: Is 
sex a barometer for the strength of a re- 
lationship? The answer is no. There's 
no universal timeline that tracks when 
a sexless relationship enters the “Holy 
shit, we're in danger” zone. 

Here's the rub: Isn't the guarantee of 
sex what makes committed relationships 
so fantastic? Of course it is! Even so, I 
wouldn't dare suggest that a sexless re- 
lationship is an unhealthy one. Libidos 
ebb and flow. Stress, pregnancy, mother- 
hood, medication and menstrual cycles 
all have an effect on a woman's sex drive. 
You should be sensitive to any of these 
factors, should they apply. 

Because you're asking, I assume you're 
already concerned. Is your girlfriend 
aware that you're concerned? Does she 
know your definition of a *healthy" sex 
life? My advice is to seduce your girl- 


38 


friend to the best of your ability based on 
what you know turns her on. Should she 
demur, it's time to have a dialogue about 
each others’ expectations in the bed- 
room lest you start looking elsewhere to 
fulfill your very human needs. 


Q: If I had to make one luxury purchase 
to impress women, what should it be: a 
newer car, an expensive TV, a sophisti- 
cated wardrobe? I'm middle-income but 
want to own something that will wow every 
girl who meets me—something that proves 
Ihave class.—B.C., Seattle, Washington 
A: You’re reading PLAYBOY, so I assume 
you already understand that class is de- 
fined by attitude, not material goods. 
How you treat other women, the way you 
interact with waitstaff and how you talk 
about your exes and family will woo any 
well-adjusted woman more than Masera- 
tis or Maison Margiela. 

If you want to start presenting yourself 
to the world as a sophisticated man, how- 
ever, start with a smart wardrobe, which 


needn't be astronomically expensive but 
should be an investment—in both time 
and money. As Will Noguchi, senior vi- 
sual stylist of men's subscription ser- 
vice Bombfell, advises, “You need to shop 
smart. This means spending your money 
on key pieces rather than a wide range of 
fast-fashion items." He suggests starting 
with a fitted navy blazer, a classic leather 
jacket and a pair of dark-wash jeans. 
Jeans and leather jackets never go out of 
style; spend some extra money here as 
these pieces can be worn year-round. 

"Aside from versatility," adds Noguchi, 
“the most important thing to consider 
when updating your wardrobe is fit. Look 
for pieces with tailored or tapered fits to 
alleviate looking boxy. A 'trim' aesthetic 
will naturally give you a more expensive, 
elevated look." 


Q: I have been in a relationship for 
three years, and I recently played a joke 
on my boyfriend that I now regret. At 
Christmas, in front of my whole family, 


One of my more infamous dating stories 
involves spotting a hotter guy across the bar 
while I was on a date, faking a headache to 
end said date and then going back to the bar to 


pick up the hottie. 


I got down on one knee while holding a 
small box and pretended I was propos- 
ing to him. (In reality the box contained 
a small gift for my mom.) My boyfriend, 
caught off-guard, looked panicked—a 
reaction I didn't expect. We eventually 
laughed the whole thing off, but I haven't 
been able to get the desperate look on his 
face out of my head. I can't help think- 
ing that he'll never want to marry me 
someday, in which case what's the point 
of prolonging our relationship?—S.M., 
Cambridge, Massachusetts 

A: You had it coming. Do you recognize 
that? Say it with me now: “I recognize I 
made a mistake. I do.” Good. 

Marriage proposals are nothing to joke 
about, so consider your turmoil a refer- 
endum not only on your sense of humor 
but on your knowledge of your boyfriend’s 
headspace. I must assume he appeared 
panicked because you two haven't talked 
about your future together. 

Sit him down and have a conversation 
about where he sees this going. The two 
of you have been together for three years; 
at this juncture, talks of marriage and 
a proposal should be met with elation— 
that is, if a life of monogamy is what you 
both aspire to. Pick a time and place that 
will allow him to give you his full atten- 
tion. Don’t do it before bed or shout at him 
from the kitchen while he’s watching TV. 
Get to the point: “Where do you see us in 
two years? Can you imagine us getting 
married?” Until you talk to him about his 
plans for your future, you'll continue to 
worry yourself with speculation. 


Q: I’m having a hard time sustaining 
a relationship because I love the chase. 
I don’t go out to bars with men I’m dat- 
ing because my eyes wander. I recently 
stopped drinking because I recognized 


that, for me, getting drunk was synony- 
mous with picking up men and having 
drunk sex with strangers. This is a pat- 
tern. (By the way, it was easy for me to 
stop drinking, so I don’t think I’m an al- 
coholic.) Do I need to give myself more 
time to sow my oats, or might Ihave an in- 
timacy or commitment problem?—R.G., 
Miami Beach, Florida 

A: Oh, younger self, is that you? One 
of my more infamous dating stories in- 
volves spotting a hotter guy across the 
bar while I was on a date, faking a head- 
ache to end said date and then going 
back to the bar to pick up the hottie. The 
question is, Do you consider me talented 
or unstable? 

For me, the chase was a means of 
avoiding one very real issue. Yes, I was 
afraid of intimacy, but I was terrified of 
rejection. When you're constantly look- 
ing for the next best thing, there’s no 
way the person sitting across from you 
can hurt you. This is probably, at least to 
some extent, why you keep swiping left 
on men in real life. The thrill of catch 
and release insulates you from some 
harsher reality that no sex columnist 
should attempt to diagnose. 

You may not have a drinking prob- 
lem, but you most certainly have an in- 
timacy problem. I was able to deal with 
my vulnerability issues through ther- 
apy; you might benefit from the same. 
An even harsher reality check is that 
for many people who exhibit these pat- 
terns, sooner or later their options run 
out. Don’t rob yourself of the gift of get- 
ting to know a sexual partner on a deeper 
level. Fleeting sex, one-night stands, free 
drinks and first-kiss thrills can sustain 
you only for so long. I would hate to see 
what happens should you ever find your- 
self alone at last call. 


Q: I suffer from vulvar vestibulodynia 
and struggle with intense pain during 
penetrative sex. I'oe been going to physi- 
cal therapy for a couple of years. I also 
take duloxetine, which helps control nerve 
pain, and my condition is slowly improv- 
ing. I have a long-term partner who is 
empathetic and concerned about hurt- 
ing me, so we've been relying almost en- 
tirely on clitoral stimulation. I'm ready 
to try penetration again but have resid- 
ual anxiety from a lifetime of pelvic-floor 
dysfunction. How can I ease back into 
vaginal sex and shift my focus from pain 
to pleasure?—E.S., Malibu, California 

A: Vulvar vestibulodynia, a form of 
vulvodynia, is more common than you 
might think. It has been reported that 
up to 16 percent of women in the U.S. 
will experience vulvodynia in their life- 
times. And yet, most women who suffer 
from this condition do so in silence. It's 
understandable that you have anxiety 
around potential pain, and you're lucky 
to have a supportive partner. He's going 
to bean important part of reducing your 
anxiety around sex. 

Aside from being forthcoming about 
any anxiety you or your partner may 
have, come up with a safe word. Make it 
something non-pain-related and easy 
to say and remember. Agree that either 
of you is allowed to use it if sex gets too 
painful or if your anxiety starts to spin 
out of control. 

Sex is a form of pleasure, and pleasure 
takes work and communication, whether 
you suffer from vulvodynia or not. Every 
healthy sexual experience begins with a 
clear mind that's ready to focus on hav- 
ing fun, giving back and letting go. You're 
lucky to have an amazing partner who 
seems to want to prioritize your pleasure. 
Be open to the journey. ш 


PLAYBOY 39 


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PLAYBOY 
INTERVIEW: 


SETH 
ABRAMSON 


A candid conversation with America’s most dogged pursuer of the Trump-Russia 
story—a professor, poet and “metamodernist” out to prove collusion 


Seth Abramson is a hard fellow to read. A 
Twitter-savvy commentator on the presi- 
dent’s alleged Russia ties and author of 
the 2018 book Proof of Collusion: How 
Trump Betrayed America, he doesn’t 
look like a natty legal analyst, nor does he 
come across as an investigative reporter 
or a goggle-eyed conspiracy theorist liv- 
ing on rage, Adderall and likes. Instead, 
he could be a regional manager for a call- 
center chain, wearing roomy jeans, a suit 
jacket and extremely sensible shoes. Not 
long ago, he says, he wore nothing but 
athleisure pieces with sports logos. This 
suit jacket represents a recent, if only 
occasional, addition to his ensemble. 


With his book advance, he also bought a 
homely new Subaru sedan. 

As with the best normcores, Abramson’s 
rejection of style reflects its own punk de- 
fiance. Roomy jeans notwithstanding, he 
knows how to calculate an aesthetic ef- 
fect. On Twitter, Abramson helped pio- 
neer the literary form of the “thread.” 
Both admired and reviled, the thread 
uses a string of tweets to create a kind of 
argument in epigrams. Threads are per- 
sonality driven, and readers (including 
hate-readers) of Abramson’s tweets have 
gotten to know the eccentric New Hamp- 
shirite through his meticulous attention 
to the evidence of Trumpworld’s alleged 


collusion with the Kremlin. His threads 
demonstrate his almost robotic recall and 
gift for sequential thinking, his love of as- 
terisks as italics and, above all, his some- 
times tedious prolificacy. An Abramson 
thread can run to thousands upon thou- 
sands of words, which is no mean feat on 
a platform meant to inspire thoughts con- 
sisting of 280 characters or fewer. 
Abramson was born on Halloween 
1976, in Concord, Massachusetts. He’s a 
professor of communications art and sci- 
ence at the University of New Hampshire, 
as well as a published “conceptual poet” 
and a lawyer with five degrees—a B.A. 
from Dartmouth, an M.A. and a Ph.D. 


“I tend to involve myself in projects that 
create pretty spectacular threat matrices 
for alot of people. I wish it were otherwise.” 


“The test for us is not ‘Can we get to the 
information?’ but ‘Do we understand 
what we're seeing?’ ” 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS CHURCHILL 


“I see people on Twitter say to someone 
writing too much on any subject, ‘Don’t 
go all Seth Abramson on this.’ ” 


PLAYBOY 41 


from the University of Wisconsin, an 
MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop 
and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. As 
a poet, he has produced adventurous (and 
often weird) stuff such as a mash-up of 
many of the cruel things he's been called 
online. In 2018 he was named a columnist 
at Newsweek, but his position within the 
fourth estate is unfixed: Not only is he 
easily dismissed as a lefty Jerome Corsi 
or Alex Jones, but as a rule media gate- 
keepers don't like random Twitter free- 
stylers getting unlimited 
word counts and 600,000 
followers. No wonder out- 
lets from The Atlantic to 
Slate to The New Repub- 
lic have called Abramson 
"delusional," "hyperbolic" 
and stuck in a “conspiracy 
mind-set." 

And yet his case, launched 
on March 13, 2017 with a 
so-called “mega-thread” on 
the Trump-Russia connec- 
tion, is compelling. If Proof 
of Collusion seems woolly, 
its because Trump's rela- 
tionship with the Krem- 
lin is damned woolly. As 
of this writing, not one 
error has been found in the 
book, which offers what 
Abramson calls “a theory of 
the case” of Trump-Russia. 
The theory? That Trump 
and his aides conspired with 
the Kremlin and other hos- 
tile powers to exchange con- 
trol over American foreign 
policy for money and elec- 
tion help. 

PLAYBOY sent Virginia 
Heffernan—a columnist 
for Wired and the Los Angeles Times, 
host of the Trumpcast podcast and au- 
thor of Magic and Loss: The Internet as 
Art—to interview Abramson at a Hilton 
hotel in Manchester, New Hampshire; 
he lives nearby with his wife and two 
dogs. Heffernan reports: "Shortly after 
we met, Abramson told me that two re- 
porters had recently been dispatched 
to interview him for what he predicted 
would be ‘hit pieces. Square and pro- 
vincial, far from the cliquey Beltway 
and Manhattan pundits, he's plenty fun 
to drag. But a funny thing happened to 
the reporters: They didn't write their 
hatchet jobs, because they started to... 
like him. More than that, they started to 
believe him. As the Department of Jus- 


42 INTERVIEW 


tice continues to churn out indictments 
of major Trumpworld players, slagging 
journalists who have tirelessly docu- 
mented the Trump-Russia story has 
begun to lose its savor. 

"In person, it's Abramson's extraordi- 
nary kindness, his sly brain and his no- 
frills charm that get you. The fact that 
few major media outlets have ever had 
his back—the late media reporter David 
Carr once said he'd have no authority if 
his last name weren't ‘of The New York 


Times’—makes him more appealing, 
not less. He's a midrange sedan amid the 
sleek BMWs of the cable-news set, and 
when I'm feeling vertigo in Trump times, 
it's Seth Abramson I turn to for clarity. 
His analysis gives me confidence that 
someday this will end. And maybe there 
will even be justice." 


PLAYBOY: These are uncanny times. I 
walk through my days as an American 
thinking, simultaneously, We're under 
Russian occupation and Another day at 
the office. It exerts such a cognitive bur- 
den that the relief of seeing you spell it 
out is a kind of comfort you might not 
have intended to give. 

ABRAMSON: I can honestly say I never 


thought my writing would comfort any- 
one. I receive scores of messages every 
week saying that it has exactly that ef- 
fect, but my assumption on the front end 
of writing what I've been writing was 
that it would irk a large number of peo- 
ple. Even when I'm not writing about the 
law, my brain has been wired to think like 
a lawyer and to break down arguments 
in a particular way that I thought would 
actually frustrate most people, particu- 
larly those who aren't lawyers. 
PLAYBOY: But this is the 
Playboy Interview—irk is 
allowed. Frustration is al- 
lowed. Fury is encouraged. 
You can even cop to im- 
pure thoughts, like Jimmy 
Carter. Think of all the 
gonzo people who have 
done this interview: Miles 
Davis, Vladimir Nabokov, 
Yoko Ono. You're left- 
brained gonzo. 
ABRAMSON: Or Pynchon- 
esque, some people say. 
PLAYBOY: Okay, Pynchon- 
esque, meaning youre in 
your head and excruciat- 
ingly detailed. 
ABRAMSON: Normally, 
if youre a writer and 
someone tells you you're 
Pynchonesque, you would 
be thrilled. But when peo- 
ple describe me as Pyn- 
chonesque, they mean I 
might be seeing connec- 
tions between signals that 
are, in fact, completely 
discrete. 

PLAYBOY: And that maybe 
you're writing fiction. 
ABRAMSON: Right. 
PLAYBOY: With that in mind, I want you 
to prove collusion to me. 

ABRAMSON: As the left-brained gonzo 
that I am, the first thing we have to de- 
termine is what our frame of reference 
is. There's a certain amount of informa- 
tion about collusion that would be found 
compelling in a movie called Proof of 
Collusion. There's information that 
would hold water in court. There's in- 
formation that might make a corporate 
journalist say, “We now have proof of col- 
lusion.” Then there's a certain amount of 
evidence that would cause a partisan to 
change their perspective on the collu- 
sion question and say, “Hey, I was wrong: 
I thought there was collusion, and there 
isn't," or *I said there was no collusion, 


and in fact there is.” If we put partisan- 
ship aside, I believe there are several 
dozen incidents in the Trump-Russia 
timeline that should be received as col- 
lusion across any of those paradigms. 
One example is Donald Trump sitting 
down with his National Security Advi- 
sory Committee on March 31, 2o16. One 
of his advisors, George Papadopoulos, 
said to the assembled group, roughly, 
that he had secretly been in contact with 
agents of the Kremlin and that he had 
been tasked by these Kremlin agents 
to act as an intermediary in setting up 
a secret summit between Trump and 
the president of Russia that no one will 
know happened, and that the Kremlin 
had cleared him to do the scheduling 
and the logistics and the commu- 
nication between the two parties 

to ensure that the two are able to 
discuss geopolitical complica- 
tions in American foreign policy 
without anyone knowing about 

that conversation. 

PLAYBOY: What gives you the 
confidence to say this is some- 

thing that really happened? 
ABRAMSON: When The Wash- 
ington Post first reported what 
George Papadopoulos claimed to 

have communicated to Trump, 

they phrased it as Papadopoulos 
revealing himself “as an inter- 
mediary for the Russian govern- 
ment." Adding to that, I believe 
there's the legal language, which 

is that if you are acting as a Krem- 

lin intermediary who has been specially 
tasked by the Kremlin to communi- 
cate a message and also to schedule a se- 
cret summit, you are, legally speaking, 
an agent of the Kremlin. So let's apply 
that to the courtroom paradigm: George 
Papadopoulos, legally speaking, was act- 
ing as a special agent for the Kremlin in 
that situation. He informed an entire 
room of men working on Trump's cam- 
paign that he was a Kremlin agent for 
that special purpose. Their response to 
that was not to contact the FBI, not to 
fire him, not to tell him, ^Don't do this," 
but in fact to promote him to the speech- 
writing team for Donald Trump's first 
foreign policy speech. At that point, that 
speech was four weeks away. Across any 
of the paradigms I mentioned— political 
partisanship, the courtroom, journal- 
ism, Hollywood—that’s collusion. 
PLAYBOY: Especially the Hollywood 
one. Suave, bronzed Papadopoulos, with 
his instagrammability, his reality-TV 


aspirations, so eager to make himself 
useful — 

ABRAMSON: I truly didn't pick that ex- 
ample because I thought it was the best. It 
just came to mind. 

PLAYBOY: But seriously, what makes 
Papadopoulos’s appearance at that 
national-security meeting and his self- 
identification as a Kremlin intermediary 
soimportant that you mentioned it first? 
ABRAMSON: Papadopoulos's role in 
the Trump-Russia story is primarily 
that of a canary in the coal mine. He is 
constantly saying things to people con- 
nected to Trump and, in some cases, to 
Trump himself that should immediately 
cause those people—if they are acting in 
accordance with the law, American val- 


In polite 
society the 


presumption of 
innocence is an 


option, not 
a mandate. 


ues and our democratic processes—to tell 
him to stop or to amend their own behav- 
ior immediately. But they don't. 

I'll give another example. On April 26, 
2016, Joseph Mifsud tells Papadopou- 
los that the Kremlin has stolen Hillary 
Clinton's e-mails. According to Trump 
aide John Mashburn, who testified be- 
fore Congress, Papadopoulos did, in 
fact, communicate that information to 
the campaign. Well, great. The moment 
he communicates that information, it 
should have been clear to everyone in the 
Trump campaign, from Donald Trump 
all the way down, that if there's one thing 
you now cannot legally do under any cir- 
cumstances it's take any action to try to 
acquire Hillary Clinton's e-mails, be- 
cause you've been told that they were sto- 
len. So now you know that cybercrimes 
are being committed against the United 
States. You know that any such materi- 
als are stolen property. You know that 
they have value, which is why the Krem- 


lin stole them. If you solicit them or take 
them, that's an illegal campaign dona- 
tion from a foreign national—a thing of 
in-kind value. 

What happens is the moment Papa- 
dopoulos communicates that informa- 
tion to the Trump campaign, it sets off a 
firestorm of activity, from top to bottom, 
trying to get that stolen material. Papa- 
dopoulos didn't steal any material, and 
while he perhaps should have registered 
as a foreign agent, his decision to com- 
municate what someone had told him to 
someone else is not a crime. But it should 
have smacked the conscience and sense 
of legal responsibility of everyone on 
the Trump campaign. They should have 
changed their behavior from that mo- 

ment onward. In fact, I believe it 
did nothing but excite their de- 
sire to act in a criminal fashion as 
much as possible throughout the 
entire summer of 2016. 
PLAYBOY: It’s amazing when 
Trumpworld’s desire to go crime'ing 
gets excited. It’s like the jealous 
girlfriend meme: Paul Manafort 
walking hand in hand with crimes 
and ogling— 
ABRAMSON: 
crimes. 
PLAYBOY: Okay, but the other 
thing about Papadopoulos that’s 
relevant for the Mueller probe 
is that his yapping likely is what 
set off the FBI. The right has 
tried to say that it was suspicions 
about Carter Page, or the ap- 
pearance of the Steele dossier, that ini- 
tiated the FBI investigation. And it has 
tried and failed to frame those things, 
and thus the investigation into Trump's 
Russia ties itself, as unlawful and par- 
tisan. But as far as I know, the first cue 
to American intelligence services was 
the word from the Australian diplomat 
dude Papadopoulos spilled secrets to 
one night, reportedly when he'd had too 
much to drink. Is that right? 
ABRAMSON: Alexander Downer. 
PLAYBOY: Okay. You're damn good with 
the names. 
ABRAMSON: I would say this: The ques- 
tion of how the counterintelligence 
investigation into five members of 
Trump's campaign was initiated is en- 
tirely immaterial. 
PLAYBOY: What? 
ABRAMSON: If I told you that, instead 
of a missive from Australian diplomat 
Alexander Downer, it was a candygram 
from someone wearing a bunny suit who 


[Laughs] | More 


PLAYBOY 43 


showed up at the EBI office, said “Look 
into George Papadopoulos” and then 
vanishedinapuffofsmoke, would Icare 
if the FBI then started asking questions 
to see whether there was something they 
needed to investigate? I wouldn't, un- 
less they violated someone's constitu- 
tional rights with, say, a warrant that 
had no reasonable suspicion or probable 
cause behind it or an investigative stop 
with no reasonable suspicion behind it. 
But what excites the suspicion of a fed- 
eral agent in this situation is really only 
relevant to the right, because they have 
a Rube Goldberg-like theory of a fed- 
eral conspiracy that works only if the 
feds had some other hidden motive for 
initiating this investigation. Since we 
have no evidence of that, the question of 
how the investigation began is, at 
best, a legal question that would 
be handled at some future trial 
through a motion in limine [a 
pre-trial motion to exclude testi- 
mony or evidence]. 

A much more important ques- 
tion is how, when Papadopoulos 
ends up on the speech-editing 
team for Trump's first foreign 
policy address, the speech he's 
editing has effectively, as I see 
it, been written by a lobbyist 
for the Kremlin-controlled gas 
company Gazprom and Dimitri 
Simes, president and chief ex- 
ecutive officer of the Center for 
the National Interest, who has 
been described as friendly with 
Vladimir Putin. I believe that is another 
instance of, on its face, collusion. You 
do not have your foreign policy secretly 
written and edited by Kremlin agents 
and then represent your foreign policy 
as merely the product of your own Amer- 
ican values and belief in the best inter- 
est of America when you know that what 
you expressed were the Kremlin's val- 
ues and the Kremlin's agenda. That is 
prima facie collusion in the broad sense 
of that term. Yet we focus on Alexan- 
der Downer, which is the sort of *look 
at the monkey" trick someone might 
pull to keep you from focusing on what's 
important. Even if Downer had never 
existed or Papadopoulos had never re- 
layed any information to him—if, in 
fact, he had made up out of whole cloth 
this revelation from Papadopoulos— 
we already know that at least five allied 
intelligence agencies communicated 
to the U.S. around the same time that 
there were suspicious contacts between 


44 INTERVIEW 


Trump aides and associates speaking to 
Kremlin agents. 

PLAYBOY: But grant me that Papadopou- 
los supposedly blathering about collusion 
while drunk is cinematic—everyone's 
favorite "coffee boy." All right, give me 
another data point that you find persua- 
sive in the case for collusion. 
ABRAMSON: Let's stick with that 
four-week period. We don't just have 
the March 31 meeting and the fact that 
Papadopoulos contributed to the first 
foreign policy speech at the Mayflower 
Hotel on April 27, 2016. Let's stick with 
the same sort of fact pattern and find 
a third instance of collusion. Accord- 
ing to J.D. Gordon, who was the number 
two man on Trump's National Security 
Advisory Committee, the Republican 


Lately people 
call me a very 


old-timey word 
Inever thought 


I'd hear this 


much: grifter. 


National Committee platform on the 
subject of Ukraine was changed in a way 
that would benefit the Kremlin when 
the convention came around in July 
2016. Gordon told the Republican dele- 
gates with whom he was arguing about 
the platform that he was on the phone 
with Trump Tower, speaking with Don- 
ald Trump directly. 

They then changed the platform in 
a way that would benefit the Kremlin. 
Gordon immediately begins lying and 
saying that he had no role whatsoever. 
Paul Manafort says the same. Donald 
Trump says, “I had no role in that. I was 
not involved," even as alleged Krem- 
lin spy Konstantin Kilimnik is run- 
ning around Europe—and we know he's 
a former associate of Paul Manafort's— 
saying he made this change happen 
through his secret contacts with the 
Trump campaign. 

PLAYBOY: And more recently it has come 
out that Manafort seems to have shared 


campaign data with Kilimnik, who was 
known as Manafort's *Russian brain." 
ABRAMSON: Exactly. So we now know 
that there was an ongoing exchange of in- 
formation and even negotiations between 
Paul Manafort and Konstantin Kilim- 
nik about how much value monetarily 
Manafort was producing for Kilimnik 
and—through Kilimnik—to Oleg Deri- 
paska, the aluminum magnate who has 
said, "I don't separate myself from the 
state." Deripaska does not see any day- 
light between himself and Vladimir 
Putin, so why should we? 
PLAYBOY: Okay, we already have plenty 
of grassy knolls and book deposito- 
ries to talk about, but I'd say the Trump 
Tower meeting between Trump Jr., 
Jared Kushner, Russian lawyer Nata- 
lia Veselnitskaya and others, in 
June 2016, is maybe chief among 
them. Have I missed anything 
between April and—— 
ABRAMSON: Oh yes. Because by 
the time we even get to March 31, 
2016, I count the number of acts 
of collusion for which Trump and 
the Trump campaign are respon- 
sible as in the double digits. 

Let's be very clear that through- 
out the presidential campaign, 
from the moment Donald Trump 
announced his candidacy on June 
16, 2015, he was negotiating two 
multibillion-dollar Trump Tower 
Moscow deals—not just with 
Kremlin agents but directly with 
the Kremlin itself. That would be 

the Trump-Agalarov deal and the Trump- 
Rozov deal. Multibillion dollar. Trump was 
hiding this deal even from top executives 
in the Trump Organization. He lied about 
it to American voters by saying he had no 
association at all with the Kremlin or with 
Russian nationals. In so doing, in lying to 
Trump Organization executives, in lying 
to the voters, he was, every single time he 
lied—which was virtually daily—creating 
blackmail material for the Kremlin. 

This also creates the possibility of 
Trump's being charged with bribery if 
he was considering his businesses first 
when creating Russia policy. Those are 
not just acts of collusion as to each of 
those Trump Tower deals—the 2013 
Trump-Agalarov deal [which Trump was 
in Moscow negotiating during the pe- 
riod described in the Steele dossier] and 
the 2015 Trump-Rozov deal; those are en- 
tire courses of conduct that take months 
to unfold and have numerous sub-events 
within them that are collusion. 


PLAYBOY: All this reporting and your 
analysis are both alarming and cut- 
and-dried. If you’re just synthesizing 
known material, why do people keep say- 
ing you’re rushing to judgment, running 
roughshod over due process? 
ABRAMSON: Well, a few things. First, 
a lot of people misunderstand that the 
presumption of innocence is, in the law, 
what’s called a “trial presumption,” 
meaning it applies only for the jurors sit- 
tingin an actual criminal case. In polite 
society the presumption of innocence 
is an option, not a mandate. Number 
two, our standard for when and whether 
we apply the presumption of innocence 
doesn't have to be beyond a reasonable 
doubt. Let me give you an example: Don- 
ald Trump, according to The 
Washington Post, lies on aver- 
age 11 times a day. That means he 
would never be treated as a cred- 
ible witness in any courtroom. It 
means he can't be used as a source 
by reporters under basic journal- 
istic principles. It also means that 
in our conventional politics, no 
one, as a partisan, should support 
any politician who lies 11 times 
every day. I would even say that if 
you take another paradigm I was 
talking about, the Hollywood par- 
adigm, anyone who lies 11 times 
a day would be a terribly written 
character in a movie. 

PLAY BOY: Yes. 

ABRAMSON: I’ve decided I’m 
not going to credit any of Donald 
Trump’s words whatsoever unless 
they are “a statement against interest,” 
which in the law is considered to have a 
special quality of reliability because the 
statement doesn’t serve the speaker’s in- 
terests. I never quoted a defense attorney 
for the truth of a matter unless it was— 
and, frankly, Trump’s attorneys do this 
with stunning regularity—a statement 
against interest that never should have 
been made and therefore has indicia of 
reliability because it is a deviation from 
professional responsibility, something 
made as an excited utterance. 

PLAYBOY: Reading you and talking to 
you, I come away with the conclusion 
that, yes, you're left-brained gonzo, but 
you re also exceptionally earnest and pru- 
dent. It’s hard to reconcile this image of 
you with the one your detractors have— 
that you’re a crazy conspiracy theorist, 
an Alex Jones of the left. 

ABRAMSON: Lately people call me a very 
old-timey word I never thought I'd hear 


46 INTERVIEW 


this much: grifter. That is the ultimate 
way of saying I’m a deductive thinker— 
and as an academic, that upsets me more 
than anything else. Гуе made my life 
about building an inductive communica- 
tion practice. 

PLAYBOY: Once your critics can't prove 
a writer like you is a paid operative for 
George Soros or the Kremlin—— 
ABRAMSON: [Laughs] 

PLAYBOY: I guess that is confusing. Why 
would anyone want to tell the truth about 
our times on Twitter? The cynical view 
is there can be no motivation for truth- 
telling and repping "resistance" unless 
it's to pick up some DNC swag or some 
speaking gigs. 

ABRAMSON: That's exactly it. There 


The 
Washington 


Post is counting 
up his lies. They 
should be doing 


the opposite. 


are so many easier ways for someone 
with my educational and professional 
background to make money—many of 
which I was pursuing well before Don- 
ald Trump—than to go online and tweet 
45,000 times for free. The idea that any- 
one gets on Twitter thinking, Well, this 
will lead to a book deal, is just—no one's 
that crazy. But even separate from that, 
I think there's a reason #resistance is 
used as a slur. If you google my name and 
"resistance," almost every single article 
that comes up is a hit piece. The reason is 
that “resistance” also presumes a sort of 
deductive thinking, that you knew what 
the end result was going to be and then 
you figured out how to get there. You de- 
cided, “I am part of the #resistance; now 
how do I find my niche within that?" In 
fact, what the people writing those hit 
pieces don't want to acknowledge is that 
someone like me or like Walter Shaub— 
former director of the Office of Govern- 


ment Ethics—got into this because of our 
values, which are something you build 
inductively, not because Donald Trump 
is president and not because there's some 
movement you want to be part of. Donald 
Trump doesn't determine my persona or 
my values. 

PLAYBOY: You and I, though we share a 
suspicion of Trump, are not naturally fel- 
low travelers. If this were the summer of 
2016, we might not have seen eye to eye, 
because I supported Hillary Clinton and 
you supported Bernie Sanders. We've 
even mixed it up online about Tad Devine, 
Bernie's chief strategist and a running 
buddy of Paul Manafort. Things some- 
times get testy on that score, but mostly 
we—and I think most Americans—are 
aligned in wanting some expla- 
nation of why, after the election, 
most of us felt, This isn't Amer- 
ica. And the truth is it wasn't 
America. You have pointed out it 
was likely Russia, Saudi Arabia, 
Qatar and Turkey putting torque 
on the people who hold power. 
Some might say we have a Russian 
asset in the White House. 
ABRAMSON: Well, as you indi- 
cate, all it took to be a critic of 
Donald Trump was to have some 
sense of America's core values as 
ingrained in our rule of law and in 
our democratic processes. 
PLAYBOY: And maybe a passing 
interest in the Constitution. 
ABRAMSON: Right. And there- 
fore you can have people with 
incredibly heterogeneous back- 
grounds who find themselves in a 
position of offering a type of small-r *re- 
sistance" through their writing. 
PLAYBOY: Now let's talk about your work 
before all this. As a conceptual poet, your 
work seems to have been to afflict the 
comfortable, even destabilize our ideas 
of what counts as fiction and what counts 
as fact. But your purpose as a journalist 
seems to be the opposite: to lay down the 
facts, to comfort the afflicted. 
ABRAMSON: Well, Ican tell you I afflicted 
the comfortable so much as a poet that I got 
myself thrown out of the American poetry 
community. I have a background of being, 
maybe inadvertently, an affliction—in a 
way that is distressing to many. 

PLAY BOY: Do poets think your writing is 
paranoid or “Russophobic” or whatever? 
ABRAMSON: Oh no. Their objection was 
to my poetry, not to my journalism. 
PLAYBOY: That's kind of hilarious. I have 
to hear the story of you as a poetry-world 


affliction—like that Ultimate Fight- 
ing Championship logo. I mean, it's ob- 
vious something is going on with your 
work on Twitter that excites all kinds 
of violent reactions. A magazine I re- 
spect once told readers not to read or 
retweet you. What? Nobody has ever told 
me not to read Tucker Carlson or Mein 
Kampf. Can I tell you the truth? For a 
while, before you had a Simon & Schus- 
ter contract, I worried that you wouldn’t 
be able to publish a word in the main- 
stream media because you 
had been tagged as a con- 
spiracy nutter. So let’s talk 
about being hated, both in 
the poetry world and as a 
journalist. 

ABRAMSON: I think I tend 
to involve myself—and have 
for many years, well before 
Donald Trump—in projects 
that create pretty spectac- 
ular threat matrices for a 
lot of people. That’s not why 
I do what I do, at all. I wish 
it were otherwise. 
PLAYBOY: You make trou- 
ble. 

ABRAMSON: Yes, and my 
wife and friends have no- 
ticed that trend. So when 
people react to me in that 
way—partly for that rea- 
son and partly because 
they almost never actually 
dissect anything I’ve said 
in any detail, and if they 
do, not in a way that’s at 
all serious—I tend to think 
that the threat I’m pos- 
ing is not a threat to truth 
or knowledge or respon- 
sible discourse but one of 
these other data points in the matrix of 
threats that any highly fraught situation 
can create. 

PLAYBOY: In these times in particular, 
your professional failings can suddenly 
have existential consequences and could 
get you labeled “Vichy,” or a collabora- 
tionist. That can be terrifying. 
ABRAMSON: One of the things that give 
a certain sort of existential as well as in- 
tellectual and emotional comfort about 
being process-oriented is that if you ex- 
ecute the process to the best of your abil- 
ity, it doesn’t guarantee the right result, 
but it can guarantee peace of mind. So 
I never go to bed in a cold sweat about 
whether I might be wrong—not because 
I don’t think it’s possible that I could be 


wrong, but because I know that when I 
write on Twitter I’m bringing to bear 
my expertise as an attorney, as someone 
who has worked as a criminal investiga- 
tor, to the best of my ability. If the worst- 
case scenario is that I’m wrong, that 
isn’t going to concern me, because I’m 
invested mostly in process. But also be- 
cause what great news it would be for the 
country if I’m wrong. 

Now, how does that play into people 
who are full-time journalists working at 


corporate media institutions who are un- 
happy with what I'm doing? They see me 
engaging in a different type of process 
and in a different venue than they’re ac- 
customed to, and therefore they see it 
as a threat to their process. But if you’ve 
worked in the criminal justice system as 
I have for a number of years, that is the 
perfect locus for many different, and in 
many respects contradictory, processes 
to be performed at once: The processes 
that law enforcement brings to bear are 
very different from those of a prosecutor, 
which are very different again from those 
of a probation officer, a judge, a defense 
attorney—and yet they are all in the same 
room, and they all believe that ultimately 
a just result will, more often than not, be 


reached. Granted, it’s often not reached, 
but it is reached enough that we can re- 
main hopeful that the process, as we con- 
tinue to perfect it, will lead to more and 
more justice over time. 

PLAYBOY: It’s impressive that you don’t 
get brittle and defensive on Twitter. You 
hardly go a day without sticking to your 
subject, and you’ve carved out a lane 
for yourself: the Seth Abramson lane. 
A few times I’ve felt that you were try- 
ing for other Twitter styles, like quips, 
but I could almost see your 
discomfort. You want to 
go back to your patented 
long-thread process, which 
builds on itself and cor- 
rects itself as it goes. You 
usually acknowledge when 
you’ve made so much as a 
spelling mistake. 
ABRAMSON: Yes. 
PLAYBOY: I see you're 
having a little trouble with 
“Kilimnik,” by the way. 
ABRAMSON: Yes, but 
did you see that I issued 
a correction and noted 
that I had misspelled it 
as “Kilimnick”? All that 
happens in the open. One 
of the things I'm doing 
is letting readers see my 
process. One of the few 
positive effects of the dig- 
ital age is that we're better 
able to handle contradic- 
tory and ephemeral in- 
formation that we know 
might be fixed down the 
line. We're able to better 
deal with temporary cog- 
nitive dissonance and say, 
"Look, these two things 
are in conflict and I know one of them 
has to be wrong. I'l just remember 
each of them and hold them in my head, 
knowing that one is ultimately not going 
to be true." The conventional journal- 
istic process says no one can watch me 
at work. But I don't mind having people 
see me at work, and I don't mind being 
wrong, because I think my readers un- 
derstand I'm doing the best I can. I will 
admit when I'm wrong. 

PLAYBOY: That sounds pretty normal 
and sane, but what's this about being a 
“curatorial journalist" or, worse yet, a 
^metajournalist"? I'm going to tell you 
right now: The old newspapermen who 
still get the scoops don't like that fancy 
academic jive. 


PLAYBOY 17 


ABRAMSON: Yes, I know what they say: 
“Someone who’s a curatorial journalist 
or a metajournalist gets the benefit of a 
hard-news reporter’s work without doing 
the work.” That sort of intraprofessional 
tension is very common. Prosecutors 
don’t fully understand the work that de- 
fense attorneys do and vice versa. Still, I 
think it’s easy for a conventional, hard- 
news reporter to presume that what I do 
is easy. But ifit were so easy for reporters 
to fully immerse themselves in all the re- 
porting that has been done on a subject 
before they write, they’d all be, 
like me, reading Greek media, 
Lebanese media, Qatari media, 
British media. They’re not doing 
that, because they also have 
things Idon’t have: deadlines and 
pressure to get stories out ata cer- 
tain clip. I have to read much, 
much more than your average re- 
porter because I have to survey 
the whole field. I will never say 
that a hard-news reporter’s job is 
easy, and I wish they wouldn’t say 
what I do is easy. 

But many people understand 
how to do this curatorial work. 
It's about disposition. We live in 
a time when video gamers are 
being used to solve medical mys- 
teries, and the reason a large 
number of them are so good at 
solving mysteries that even ex- 
perts can't solve is because 
they're comfortable with fail- 
ure. The very definition of being 
a video gamer is to take a risk, 
find out it's a mistake, fail, die 
and then try again. Increasingly 
with services like Twitch, you're 
doing all those things in public, 
and you're willing to have peo- 
ple see you fail. We've gotten to 
the point where there's even con- 
sidered to be a certain beauty in 
failing spectacularly. In the digi- 
tal age we must handle an excess 
of information, and we better 
learn how to handle it and allow for fail- 
ure and false leads. That's how we're 
going to figure out how to survive. 
PLAYBOY: But there's also a certain in- 
tolerance of mistakes. 
ABRAMSON: Okay, so this is why I'm 
no longer a working poet. I wrote a poem 
that was perceived to be a mistake. It's 
actually a broader conversation in po- 
etry right now, about the openness of 
contemporary poetry to mistakes, fail- 
ure and recovery. 


48 INTERVIEW 


PLAY BOY: Was it seen as racist, like you 
wrote in Ebonics or you — 

ABRAMSON: No. 

PLAYBOY: I'm dying to know. 
ABRAMSON: I'm a literary remixer. I 
had a theory that there is certain lan- 
guage in the public sphere that's incred- 
ibly destructive. A young man who had 
killed some people had written a mani- 
festo, and I decided to take all the words— 
and only the words—in his manifesto and 
remix them into a statement of love and 
peace directed against his act of hatred. 


Donald Trump 
is the living 
embodiment of 
the internet. 
As a result, if 
he commits 
a criminal 
conspiracy, 
it's like the 
internet: 
Everything is 
too publie and 
too available. 


PLAYBOY: Was this the incel figure in 
California, Elliot Rodger? 

ABRAMSON: This was the incel fig- 
ure in California, yes. And a couple of 
things happened. Number one, a lot of 
people mistakenly thought the poem 
was written in his voice. It was not. It 
was actually an address to him. But a 
lot of people also said, understandably, 
that this language is so dangerous and 
so charged that even using it as mate- 
rial to create something completely 


different—even something intended to 
combat the hatred of his words—invests 
each of those words with a sort of power 
and utility when, in fact, we want to 
turn away from them altogether. 

I'm a metamodernist. I believe either 
we can find a way to use language to em- 
power ourselves to fight what we hate in 
that language or we can say that we're 
going to turn away. But we can't turn 
away; that's just letting the language con- 
tinue to damage us. But I'm no longer a 
poet, because I wrote that poem. 

PLAYBOY: Hold on: “metamod- 
ernist"? 

ABRAMSON: Yes. Mas'ud Zavar- 
zadeh, a University of Oregon 
professor, coined that term in 
1975. He believed that the pub- 
lic sphere needed a way of think- 
ing that was more pragmatically 
useful than postmodernism for 
actual activist ends. Postmod- 
ernism is a useful sort of private 
paradigm through which to emo- 
tionally and intellectually react 
to phenomena. But in the pub- 
lic sphere you need something 
more "between and beyond"— 
more meta—to achieve your very 
specific real-world ends. 

A good example of metamod- 
ernism is the early stand-up 
comedy of Sarah Silverman: this 
sort of “I’m just a little girl" rou- 
tine, but using it to undercut mi- 
sogyny in a really smart way. 
That would be considered sort of 
metamodernist. Oh, and do you 
remember the Saturday Night 
Live sketch of Kate McKinnon 
singing *Hallelujah" right after 
Hillary Clinton lost and Leon- 
ard Cohen died? That was a very 
metamodern moment because 
you don't know how to process 
it. What was the tone behind 
that? What was the intention? 
Her position was very hard to pin 
down, but that made it impossi- 

ble to look away from, and it was carry- 
ing such an emotional freight that even if 
you didn't understand why it moved you 
or whether you should be laughing or if it 
was in bad taste—at least for me, it made 
me feel better. 

So my poem was literally written with 
all this in mind, but many people felt 
it was a game in my head and that pub- 
lishing it was destructive: You're being 
insensitive to the feelings of others. If 
someone says, “This is really harmful," 


you can’t say, “No, it's not.” I mean, it is 
or it isn't, and that's something someone 
else gets to decide. Quite fairly so. 
PLAYBOY: Back to Kate McKinnon. 
When she performed “Hallelujah” 
that night, Breitbart jumped on it and 
tweeted, “We did it, fam. We broke 
them.” And that seemed so sadistic to 
me that now I tweet that line and tag 
Breitbart whenever the right is hav- 
ing its time in the barrel, to use a Roger 
Stone meme. 

ABRAMSON: Ah—meme drift! When 
the language becomes severed from the 
image in the first few stages, but eventu- 
allythe language and the image change. 
You know, I wonder sometimes whether 
I have become a meme, because I will 
see people on Twitter say to someone 
writing too much on any subject, “Don’t 
go all Seth Abramson on this.” But the 
funniest part for me is that there will al- 
ways be one or two people who say, “Who 
the fuck is Seth Abramson?” So it’s a 
meme fail, right? 

PLAYBOY: The other meme around you 
is when people put “1/3,218” at the end 
of a tweet, to suggest they're going to be 
threading for days. 

ABRAMSON: That drives me up a wall, 
because you can't thread that way. You 
thread not knowing how long the thread 
is going to be; that's the whole point. Peo- 
ple will say, “Seth Abramson, one out of 
2 million," and I wish it were that easy. I 
wish I knew that this was going to end at 
2 million. 

PLAYBOY: Okay, so you're accused of 
writing too long and of being a grifter. But 
people also say you're a fraud—and fraud 
is such a watchword of our time. We have 
aconspiracy to defraud the United States, 
in the words of Robert Mueller. Trump 
has been called a fraud with Trump Uni- 
versity and the Trump Foundation. 
ABRAMSON: I had a journalist with The 
Chronicle of Higher Education ask me, 
more than once, “Do you think you're like 
Donald Trump in any way?" And while I 
understood him asking the question be- 
cause the context of the article was about 
me developing a following on Twitter, 
what I really wanted to say was I think 
Donald Trump got elected because our 
fraud sensors are really bad right now. If 
you're reading my discourse on whoIam 
and how I came to write what I write as 
some sort of elaborate fraud while, in this 
country, just enough people were com- 
pletely blind to the obvious career-long 
and lifelong fraud that Donald Trump is, 
that suggests there's a problem. 


PLAYBOY: As an attorney, can you tell 
me if there has ever been anyone else so 
consistent in lying and who says so often 
the diametric opposite of the truth— 
like “No puppet, no puppet, you're the 
puppet"? 

ABRAMSON: Trump is revealing the 
truth through the lies, effectively. I've 
represented thousands of criminal defen- 
dants but never a single person who lies 
even 10 percent as much as Trump does— 
and I'm including people charged with fi- 
nancial crimes, armed robbery, you name 
it—which says to me that he is patholog- 
ical as a liar. But it is systemic, like any 
pathology, and therefore it gives you an 
opportunity to recognize the system and 
either work around it or somehow repur- 
pose it in a way that is generative. What 
I've said to people is that they should un- 
derstand any Donald Trump sentiment 
as being fundamentally a lie, and their 
goal should be to figure out if there's any 
truth anywhere in what he says, rather 
than looking for the lies. The Washington 
Post is counting up his lies. They should 
be doing the opposite: “How many truths 
can we find?" 

PLAYBOY: And in addition to the lies, he 
has boasted of things that are at the core 
of the potential crimes Mueller is investi- 
gating, like "Russia, if you're listening" 
and *Ilove WikiLeaks." I'm convinced we 
can get a confession out of him, but the 
way to do it would be to say, "You're right; 
there's no collusion. It's much bigger than 
collusion. It’s much more interesting 
than collusion. You've done something no 
American president has ever done—” 
ABRAMSON: My wife has made the 
point a million times that what report- 
ers should do is simply use what they 
know happened and turn it into praise. 
They should say to Trump, *You were 
smart enough to see that our interests 
are aligned with Russia's interests more 
than any previous president ever had— 
in fact, none of them realized it at all. 
You realized it and so you said, “Hey, if I 
can put us in a place where we're going to 
have peace with Russia, where we're both 
going to benefit, why shouldn't I?' More- 
over, you're a businessman who became 
a politician. You shouldn't have to give 
up making money. That's why we end up 
with so many terrible politicians: No one 
who has been successful wants to become 
a politician. You made a decision that you 
weren't going to give up your success and 
your ability to make money just because 
you were going to be a politician, and you 
realized in the bargain that it would ben- 


efit everybody. Why in the world would 
you ever apologize for that?" 
PLAYBOY: “That's right. I'm amazing 
and that's tremendous." 
ABRAMSON: And then he would have 
just confessed to something as close to 
treason as you're going to get without 
actually committing it. From a certain 
standpoint—and I realize now I'm going 
to take a dive into the theoretical—this 
administration is the first metamodern 
criminal scandal. All prior public cor- 
ruption scandals had to include a con- 
versation about how information was 
hidden and what we were able to access. 
That was where the drama was: "Can 
we get that 18 minutes of tape? Does it 
prove the case?" Donald Trump is the 
living embodiment of the internet. As a 
result, if he commits a criminal conspir- 
acy, it's like the internet: Everything is 
too public and too available. It's so pres- 
ent to us—the criminal conspiracy—that 
the challenge is “Do we have the correct 
frame of mind and discourse about how 
evidence works to recognize what is al- 
ready public?" It's a new type of criminal 
scandal the likes of which investigators 
have never seen before, lawyers have 
never seen before, journalists have never 
seen before, the public's never seen be- 
fore. The test for us is not “Can we get 
to the information?" but "Do we under- 
stand what we're seeing?" 
PLAYBOY: All this news-cycle poisoning 
has been an affront. We're already trau- 
matized by digitization. Concerned cit- 
izens have had to put every bit of energy 
into reading, investigating and keeping 
sane and wise in a political discourse that 
feels like chaos, vertigo and danger. 
ABRAMSON: That's true. But at the same 
time I hear a lot of people rising to that 
challenge: “I am going to educate myself 
on topics I never would have been inter- 
ested in if we weren't in a civic emergency 
right now." That is a story that, oddly, I 
think we don't hear very often in either 
left-wing, centrist or right-wing journal- 
ism. We have the conversation about fake 
news versus real news, whereas if we had a 
more complex post-internet conversation 
about information generally, we'd see that 
this whole thing has actually been a suc- 
cess story for people's willingness to en- 
gage with information in complex ways. 
And how exciting and ennobling is it 
for us, as a country, that so many of us are 
actually willing to learn new information 
and skills in order to make our country 
slowly, with many steps back along the 
way, a better place? ш 


PLAYBOY 49 


50 


PLAYMATE 
espere E EER 


Emanuel 


JORDAN 


In less than a 
year, she went 
from Club Bunny 
to December 
Playmate to 2019 
PMOY. The story 
of her path to 
Playboy royalty— 
told here in her 
own words—is as 
breathtaking as 
her beauty 


Ж 


% PHOTOGRAPHY BY ADRIENNE RAQUEL 


STYLING BY RYAN YOUNG; OPENING PAGES: TRENCH COAT BY PUSHBUTTON; THIS PAGE: DRESS BY TOPSHOP, JEWELRY STYLIST'S OWN 


glass boxes, and from all 
project ideas of what we're 
to look. Within our boxes, 
to point out our flaws 
and probe our feelings of inadequacy. As a double minority—a 
black woman in America—I'm subjected to a different magni- 
tude of all the above. So to have a monumental force like PLAYBOY 
supporting people who look like me, especially when it wasn't 
trendy or accepted, has been life-changing. 

Upon discovering I was one of two Playboy Bunnies who had 
become a Playmate and then Playmate of the Year, and the first 
African American to reach that milestone, I felt immense pride. 
PLAYBOY featured the first black Playmate in March 1965, before 
the Voting Rights Act bestowed the right to vote on all Americans 
across our nation. This iconic brand, which displays the most 
beautifully liberated women, was letting America and the world 
know that black women were among that group. But America as 
a whole had yet to even acknowledge black people as equals. So 
for me to reach this accomplishment now—when, according to 
a 2018 NPR piece, black women are among the least desirable to 
date; when people continue to behave as if we are good enough to 
sleep with but not to go out with; that we are side chicks and not 
wives; that we are fetishes and not humans with feelings; that our 
melanin makes us less attractive—is an honor I will forever hold 
close to my heart, not just for myself but for all the other black 
girls who are left to question their beauty. 

In a world where women are not permitted to make decisions 
for themselves without an earful of judgment, including self- 
inflicted and woman-on-woman bashing, PLAYBOY has pro- 
vided a platform to promote not only one's liberation, but one's 
intelligence. I am a woman with a degree from the University of 
Miami in broadcast journalism, music business and art history. 


I've dedicated my career to bringing life to images and convert- 
ing ideas into thought-provoking video and digital content. 
But my intelligence was called into question when PLAYBOY 
revealed that I was the December 2018 Playmate and I was told 
by another woman that I was less intelligent because I had used 
my body to make money. I was taken aback. It was a response 
I wasn't anticipating, as I didn't see the correlation between 
nudity and education. 

For a moment, I had forgotten about the glass container I'd 
been placed in, forgotten that we live in a place where women 
aren't allowed to be multidimensional. A woman can't be intel- 
ligent and attractive, a powerhouse and kind, intellectual and 
feminine, a mother and a boss, and most certainly not a sexual 
creature along with any of those roles. This body houses the same 
parts that all women share. Some of them provide sexual stimula- 
tion, but this is also the body that creates, carries and nourishes 
new life. What was it about my body that made it so shameful that 
it could suddenly erase all that I've done and have yet to do? 

Experiences like this inspired me to co-found a nonprofit 
called Women With Voices. I knew there needed to be a space 
where women of all financial backgrounds, races and ages could 
learn from and support one another. When women get together 
and connect over shared experiences, we understand there's no 
difference between us. And that empowers us all. 

Iam awoman who has suffered from anxiety and depression; a 
woman who, through her nonprofit, is actively working for social 
change. I sit and ward off questions like ^How is being nude 
empowering? How can little girls look up to you?" My answer: 
I empower myself and others by using Women With Voices, 
PLAYBOY and any other outlet to encourage people to unite, learn 
and follow what they know is true to their heart, because I am a 
woman with a voice. I am a woman who is proud of her body, her 
sexuality, her mind, her capacity for compassion. 

And I'm a woman who can deal with the judgment as long as 
it serves to aid women in liberating themselves—and standing 
confidently outside their glass boxes. 


PLAYBOY 53 


A rs 


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PLAYBOY 


5/ 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAYSCORRUPTEDMIND 


STYLING BY DOMINIQUE BISSON. VINTAGE JACKET; TURTLENECK AND BLUE VELVET PANTS BY SAINT LAURENT 


Hip-hop megastar Travis Scott discusses the freedom 
and constraints that come with breaking ground in music's 


most powerful genre 


et me get that blunt." Travis Scott pokes his head 
out from the backseat of his silver Bentley. His 
security guard lights up, tests his work and then 
passes it to his boss. The 26-year-old Houston- 
born rapper's bleached braids are all we see of him 
as he inhales and exhales, rolling up the windows. 
He insists on sitting in the luxury car—the same 
one he turned up in with his driver at the wheel— 
because the Hollywood Hills midcentury modern edifice that 
is the site of today's PLAvBov shoot imposes a strict no smoking 
policy. His entourage of 10, decked out in their leader's mer- 
chandise, never leaves the driveway, setting up a scene and an 
energy only a rap superstar could create. 

Scott is today's most hyped hip-hop artist, following a slow 
and steady climb that began with an appearance on Kanye 
West's 2012 compilation Cruel Summer. His career trajectory 
dramatically shifted last year when Astroworld, his third stu- 
dio album, debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard Top 
200 thanks in part to a laundry list of genre-defying features 
from heavyweights including Drake, Kid Cudi and James 
Blake. This winter, he translated his warped atmospheric 
soundscape into a two-leg experiential stadium tour of the 
same name, equipped with a Ferris wheel and splashes of color 
as trippy as his sparse staccato rhymes. And he has already 
performed at the Super Bowl. 

Such a freewheeling artist, backed by a major label and with 
six Grammy nominations, would not exist without the rappers 
who came before him. Scott agrees: Sitting next to him in the 
hazy car is the rapper Nas, whom Scott personally selected 
to discuss the evolution of hip-hop. *How you came into the 
game, it was kind of crazy," he says to Nas. 

Nasir Jones, the New York-born poet, began his music 
career in the early 1990s, about a decade after the Sugarhill 
Gang's “Rapper’s Delight" hit the Billboard Top 40. In 1994, 
Nas moved the needle with his revolutionary debut album, 
Illmatic, whose deft wordplay and expertly woven beats tell 
a vivid tale of a young man from the inner city. At the same 
time, rap, on its way to becoming the top-selling music genre, 
was still widely dismissed as a fad, too volatile and monoto- 
nous to last. 

Yet here they are, more than two decades later, sitting in this 
rare Bentley, two icons, from two different eras in the ever- 
evolving American hip-hop timeline, discussing the past, 
present and future of a genre that has both lifted them up and 
forced them to tear down the industry walls that confine them. 
Their hour-long conversation, presented here in edited and 
condensed form, begins with a discussion of the most glaring 


intro BY ARIELA KOZIN 


PLAYBOY 59 


differences between their debuts: the advancement of technol- 
ogy, the influence of social media and the power of the internet. 


SCOTT: Speaking of a time before all this technology, it was 
like, “Okay, I rap." You had to get to this popular producer 
in your city. He would hear your shit, and maybe he'd let you 
record and give you a beat. Then he'd bring you to the DJ, and 
radio was the main problem. But now it's like, man, I got my 
own social media. I can drop my shit. I can cater to my own 
followers. People can look at my shit if they want to. It's not 
like the radio, where somebody can stop people from hearing 
me. I can yell it loud right now: I want to rap! If people want to 
catch on to it, they can catch on to it. And then, if you want to 
explain what's going on in your personal life, you talk to your 
fans too. Back then you had to do a press conference. 

NAS: You can reach the world faster—a lot faster than back 
then. That's a great thing, because it was mind-boggling try- 
ing to figure out how to get this message out to people and 
market your record at the right time and then drop a single six 
weeks before the album. That's gone. 

SCOTT: You can reach the world now. 

NAS: Now you can just go, *Yo, the album will be out in a 
week." No single, no nothing. 

SCOTT: Whatever you want—— 

NAS: Because of the internet. We can go do a song right now 
and put it up. We don't have to ask nobody. The record indus- 
try actually follows what we do, especially once you make your 
name in the game. 

SCOTT: I’m guessing hip-hop used to be about bars and just 
a unique flow over beats. It was like straight soul, and man, 


60 


you're telling your story; it was just bar to bar, killing it, and 
not really about anything being catchy. It was just really raw. 

Nowadays, people might not see it that way, but it's the same 
thing. It's just as raw. But technology, man. We came up on 
iPhones, you know what I mean? We're at a point now where 
we don't even write our raps down. We're just going straight 
off the dome in the booth. I know from people I work with, like 
Young Thug and Quavo, most everyone likes going in and just 
laying down whatever's on their minds. 

The past generation knocked down so many doors where, you 
know, they were spitting a lot of pain, man. They was dealing 
with a lot of police stuff. We're still dealing with that now, but 
it wasn't so free. Now we got more of a voice at the label. We can 
kind of put out our own music whenever. You and I could do a song 
during this interview and upload it right now if we wanted to. 
NAS: That's right. Being an MC ora rapper, you got to change 
with the times. I can stay me, sure, but the challenge is to stay 
with what's going on. If you look at the great ones from back 
then, a lot of them have four albums; they had short careers. 
That's changed now. All the restrictions are gone. You can be 
free to make your music. 

When hip-hop started out, you only had a top five. You had 
a short list of dope rappers, from Ice Cube to Slick Rick. You 
could count them on your fingers. Hip-hop is such a big thing 
now that everybody's jumping in on it. There are so many dif- 
ferent styles that by the time you do the thing that you do, this 
dude over here done started a whole new way. You got to stay on 
top of what's going on just for the love of music. 

You said it was once about writing down the pain and all of 

that. Nowadays the pain has changed. We're after different 
things. We broke past the barriers. We understand what we 
need to do and we're in control of what we're doing, and no one 
can stop it now. No one can tell us what to do, what we can't do. 
Rap music can't be stopped now. 
SCOTT: I got a whole other line of respect for how you came 
into the game. Me, personally, when I was coming into it, I was 
never into rap-rap. I had tolearn to like it, because I didn't un- 
derstand it. 

I'm from Houston, so listening to East Coast rap and West 
Coast rap is a little different from the South. It's a different 
type of tempo, a different type of tone. So when I heard it, it 
just sounded foreign. But the swag, you know what I mean? The 
way you carried yourself. Just growing up listening and dialing 
into your albums, you hear the art of telling a story. I feel like I 
was a kid who was just by myself, alone in my mind all the time. 
I always had this, like, deep, just floating consciousness. 

One of my idols is Kid Cudi and the way he tells his stories 
about how he felt as a kid growing up, like where he's from. 
I related to that. I adopted my own form of storytelling— 
whether it's through melodies or through raps or both. And as 
a producer too, just studying other fire producers—Pete Rock, 
Kanye, Pharrell—I was always into mixing different genres. I 
wasn't stuck solely in one field. 

I like to bridge the gap between different styles of music. I 
always made my own beats and shit. I love James Blake, Toro y 
Moi and Bjórk. These types of people influenced me on an- 
other level. That's what's moved me. I mean, that's the type of 
picture I want to paint. 

When I was old enough to understand what you were spitting, 
it was just like, Oh, shit. Now that I know music, I can see how 
you came into the game. Like, man, I was online watching when 
you came out at a show, and you spit that verse. I forget — 


FAUX FUR COAT BY BALENCIAGA; VINTAGE WHITE BUTTON-DOWN; VINTAGE PINK FLOYD T-SHIRT FROM FOR ALL TO ENVY; JEWELRY SCOTT'S OWN 


VINTAGE WHITE PANTS; JEWELRY AND REEBOK SHOES SCOTT'S OWN 


“lm an expressive artist, 
put with media and shit, 


it gets misconstruec." 


NAS: “Live at the Barbeque”? 

SCOTT: “Live at the Barbeque,” yeah. When I saw that video, 
man, I felt like Iwas in the crowd. You know what I'm saying? I 
was like, “Yo, this nigga right here is fuckin’ crazy.” It kind of 
relates back to me when I was doing Astroworld. I want people 
to experience what it was like to listen to the album. Now, you 
sometimes lose the experience. Everything's digital, so you 
don't get the honor of going to the record store to get a record 
or a CD. You download it or stream it, and then that's it. 

You pulled up. You had an idea. You was figuring it out, man. 
Like it just took over my whole mind-set, though. I've been 
working toward, as an artist, just bringing back the experi- 
ence. For my first album, Rodeo, I made an action figure—— 
NAS: When I first saw you coming up with the action figure, 
I was like, “Damn, I wish I could have thought of that." And 
then I just heard your music, and I said, “This dude is coming." 
You was doing something I wish I did when I was in my 20s, 
which was not giving the camera much. If you go back to one 
of the interviews I did on Video Music Box, I don't look at the 
camera that much. Through the years, I would do award shows 
or whatever, and then I would skip the red carpet. The record 
label would be mad at me, that I'm up here and I'm selling all 
these units and I won't even walk the carpet. When you cover 
your face so you don't look down, I think, Damn, I wish.... 

Ilive vicariously through you when you do that, bro, because 
I feel you on that. You here to do the music and leave your stain 
on this world. Whether you be in front of them cameras or not, 
you don't even care. 

SCOTT: I don't care. That's my whole shit, bro. It's about the 
music. I just express what a kid my age is going through in a time. 

Being from Houston, a lot of my music is just talking about 
what I experienced growing up in my neighborhood, in my 
town. You just try to make moves and inspire people to go out 
and help others, to be a better person. Like, "Yo, let's be on 
this. Let's try to get on this type of wave." 

I wouldn't say I don't feel compelled to speak on political is- 
sues; sometimes you just don't want to speak too much on stuff 
you don’t know much about. It’s not like I’m not thinking about 
what’s going on in the world. I’m an expressive artist, but with 
media and shit, it gets misconstrued. As I’m sitting with you 
right now, I’m still figuring this out, you know? 

NAS: Politics definitely affects the way I think, but the way I 


write is my day-to-day life. I did a song talking about daugh- 
ters, because I have a daughter. “Daughters” was nominated 
for a Grammy. I feel it—that’s why I wrote it—but I had no idea 
it would be acknowledged like that when it came out. So I write 
about day-to-day stuff, and I don't plan to write anything po- 
litical, because then it's forced. It ain't a natural expression. 
SCOTT: Yeah. 

NAS: One thing we can't allow politics to do is take over our 
mind and make us fall into their game. What's going on in the 
news could consume our lives. If that happens, life doesn't go 
on. We need to continue going on. 

Ray Charles and Billie Holiday and all of those great acts 
were entertaining and going through worse times than now. 
They were inspiring us. When Michael Jackson did Thriller, 
that was during Reaganomics. He gave us something to look at 
other than the politics, the propaganda, the lies. He gave us in- 
spiration. And Whitney Houston, she came out and did songs 
that rocked us and inspired kids to want to sing and be great. 
The politicians want our full attention. They're hustling. I'm 
not getting caught up in that. I make music about life, and life 
comes before politics. 

SCOTT: You can never predict who's going to be the voice. 
NAS: As long as you got hoods, there's going to be — 

SCOTT: A voice. 

NAS: Those hoods are always going to yell out and say what's 
going on. It's going to get more fly and futuristic. But the mes- 
sage is always: We want food, shelter, health care and all the 
things we're deprived of. We want no police brutality. We want 
all these things. That's what hip-hop is talking about. I'm 
using this to get by. I'm drinking this to get by. I'm smoking 
this to get by. I'm selling this to get by. All those things are the 
ingredients for this rap thing, and that's never going to stop. 

We're sitting here in a fly-ass car and this is all we dreamed 

about—all our brothers coming up and having something out 
of this life, not just material things but having whatever you 
want, seeing the fruits of your labor. A lot of artists never get 
the chance to see that. 
SCOTT: We can do so much with our voices. We can go so 
crazy. Back then, man, I swear you can listen to a lot of albums 
and it was all making beats on one programmer, you know 
what I mean? It was only a couple of machines at the time. It's 
so crazy now. The technology is a new wave. It's so dynamic. 


PLAYBOY 63 


I collaborate with different artists like John Mayer and James 
Blake just for vocal compatibility, because we can stretch our vo- 
cals into the next level, and with the way we record now we can do 
so much. The programmer only lets us do so much. We got to put 
it on adisc, you know what I mean? 

NAS: The hip-hop game is about staying and sustaining and 
keeping it going. You're a great rapper, but they can't just put you 
inarapper box, because your music is going in so many different 
directions. You're a rock star, and it always was like that. It comes 
from the hood. It comes from the mud and then it blows up, and 
then who's going to hang around? Who's going to be the one that 
sticks around and keeps giving us that excitement? That's what 
makes you great, when you can maintain in this game. 

SCOTT: When I started, I never thought I could do arenas and 
be so big that so many people would come listen to the music 


64 


and know the words. I think what makes a great artist is just 
the people you touch. Are they moving to your music? Are they 
living their life to it? Are they rocking with it or feeling in- 
spired by it, or is it helping them get through something? 
NAS: This shit is a blood sport. This shit ain't easy. This is 
one of the hardest games ever. I love it right now because it's 
testing you. What are you made of? Can you survive? What do 
you have to offer in 2019? Because the moment you sleep, the 
moment you blink your eyes too long, your spot is taken. And 
that's the excitement of it. 

SCOTT: There's no barrier. There's just so much of a flow of 
things that we're trying to—we’re gettin’ it out, and we're ex- 
pressing it in a different way: what's happening during our 
time in life, what's happening in the streets. We just express- 
ing it in a different way. m 


LEFT: VINTAGE WHITE SUIT; JEWELRY AND REEBOK SHOES SCOTT'S OWN; RIGHT: VINTAGE PINK FLOYD T-SHIRT FROM FORALL TO ENVY; VINTAGE WHITE PANTS; JEWELRY AND REEBOK SHOES SCOTT'S OWN 


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ONE IN FIVE SINGLE AMERICANS HAS DABBLED IN NONMONOGAMY. 
MANY MORE HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT IT. WHY IS THE OPEN RELATIONSHIP 
SUDDENLY SO HOT? ARIANNE COHEN DISSECTS THE SEXUAL CRAZE 
EVERYONE IS WHISPERING ABOUT 


Lastyear, Dani and Robert, both age 33, split after 14 years together. 
To many, they appeared to be typical high school sweethearts who 
had grown apart. This was not the case. For some time Dani had felt 
attracted to women. She began to crave new sexual experiences. So 
five years ago, Dani and Robert opened up their marriage. 

First came brief stints on dating apps, which were quickly 
abandoned for the decidedly less turbid milieu of their friends 
group. Dani dated an acquaintance; they swung with another 
couple; that foursome eventually became a triad. And then a 
mutual friend rented the spare bedroom in their house. When 
he overstayed and began a fling with Dani, Robert wasn't happy 
with the situation. 

"I thought it was jealousy, that he didn't trust men," Dani tells 
me. ^I was more and more liking the philosophy of polyamory 
and feeling polyamorous, and it was not working for me to have 
this blanket limitation." 

Dani eventually moved out. 

I first heard about their split through office gossip. Dani's desk 
sits near mine at the Portland, Oregon co-working space we both 
frequent. We chatted benignly about her breakup one day over 
lunch; the way she told it, I assumed hers to be your standard 
monogamous marriage heading for divorce. There was no indi- 
cation she and her husband had been polyamorous: engaging 
consensually in multiple romantic relationships. I learned that 
detail months later via—you guessed it—office gossip. 

The thing you should know about me is that I've edited hundreds 
of New York magazine's "Sex Diaries," a series of weekly logs de- 
tailing people's sex lives in which extramarital partners routinely 
pop up. I've written widely on relationships, cavorted within Man- 
hattan's sex-positive, poly and porn scenes, and have been in both 
monogamous and nonmonogamous relationships. So I may qualify 
as one of the world's superior lunchtime gab partners on the topic. 

But Dani didn't openly advertise her nonmonogamy to her 
co-workers, her neighbors or me. And neither do I. If you haven't 
bedded or googled me, you wouldn't know my relationship his- 
tory. This, in a nutshell, summarizes the state of open relation- 
ships in 2019. Utterly prevalent. Vehemently unadvertised. 
According to a 2016 survey published in the Journal of Sex 22 Mari- 
tal Therapy, one in five single American adults has been in a non- 
monogamous relationship. Approximately five percent of people 
in relationships are consensually nonmonogamous at any time, 
excluding the additional percentage that is cheating. This means 
at least one person you know—a co-worker, friend or relative—has 
fucked multiple humans while in a relationship and with their part- 
ner's permission. In many queer circles, consensual nonmonogamy 
has become so standard it may be discussed before dating or even 
meeting, in the form of disclaimers on online dating profiles. 

Despite the one-in-five statistic, media and mainstream cul- 
ture have watered down consensual nonmonogamy, commonly 
portraying it as an accidental threesome and minimizing how 
nuanced these arrangements actually are. One popular in- 
stance operates under the X Mile Rule: *Sweetie, it's okay if you 
hook up on the road, but don't bring it home." Even more prom- 
inent (based on my experience) is the Monogamy Except...Rule: 
“Honey, you can occasionally go to that bathhouse (or dominatrix 
or BDSM club), but otherwise we are monogamous." The most 
specific form of nonmonogamy may be practiced by asexuals— 
comprising as much as one percent of the population—who 
partake so their sexual partners' desires can be fulfilled. 

You can be “monogamish” (mostly monogamous with occasional 


ILLUSTRATIONS BY TINA MARIA ELENA PLAYBOY 6/7 


excursions), “hierarchical” (maintaining primary and second- 
ary partners) or “polyfidelitous” (faithful to more than one part- 
ner). Some lifestyles coalesce around shared responsibilities of the 
household, kids or caretaking; others around sex. But despite or 
because of nonmonogamy’s current hotness—in the pages of this 
magazine, Ezra Miller announced he’s polyamorous, and Scarlett 
Johansson proclaimed, “I don’t think it’s natural to be a monoga- 
mous person”—the lifestyle has been reduced to somethingkinky, 
easily attainable or unstructured. 

Lital Pascar, a doctoral candidate at Northwestern University, 
researches media representations of nonmonogamy. “The media 
is hypnotized by polyamory,” she tells me. “It’s interesting how 
everyone is trying to sell you the same story: attractive white 
heterosexual couples, or even families, practicing polyamory as 
some naughty thing done on the side. In reality, it’s ethical, and 
partners are respectful of one another.” 


68 


pr » 
— 


Pascar points to an episode of Netflix’s Easy in which Orlando 
Bloom and Malin Akerman, playing a couple trying to spice 
things up, pursue a threesome. "It's just atool to make this couple 
more couple-y than ever," she says. In other words, Easy makes 
nonmonogamy look palatable because it's presented as being just 
like monogamy but with better sex. 

Polyamory has similarly popped up as a plot device on House 
of Cards, Transparent, I Love Dick and The Magicians. Insecure 
and She's Gotta Have It explore polyamory from black perspec- 
tives. TLC's reality show Sag Yes to the Dress recently featured a 
triad, and some argue that The Bachelor's success is based on a 
subconscious embrace of open relationships. There are at least 
a dozen podcasts devoted to the topic. In 2015, poly-dating app 
Feeld, originally called 3nder, launched in the United States; a 
year later, OkCupid added an “Open to Non-Monogamy” option. 
(Tinder and Bumble, the leading heterosexual dating apps, 


Internet groups led to coherent 
entities and more shared understandings 
of how to do open nonmonogamy. 


have yet to jump onboard.) In 2017, The New York Times Maga- 
zine asked, “Is an Open Marriage a Happier Marriage?” and in 
December 2018, Quartz ran an article longer than this one head- 
lined POLYAMOROUS SEX IS THE MOST QUIETLY REVOLUTIONARY POLITICAL 
WEAPON IN THE UNITED STATES. 

It's not—but a possible explanation for the extravagant head- 
line may be that polyamory requires rigorous conversations 
about consent. As we know, consent is reshaping our legal, 
media and social landscapes. Previously, states legislated cer- 
tain sex acts, relationships and marriages; before that, reli- 
gious codes or childbearing needs sanctioned them. Today our 
laws protect sex as something practiced between consenting 
adults. #MeToo has expanded the notion of consent into enthu- 
siastic consent—the idea that a partner should not only agree 
but be thrilled about it. 

This is all to say that today's culture is enamored with conver- 
sations about consent and relationships, and polyamory involves 
both. Thus polyamory has become increasingly 
visible—but not necessarily in a comprehensive 
way. What we're seeing is just part of the story. 
To understand why as a culture we're so 
curious about open relationships, you 
need to know how we got here. The his- 
tory of nonmonogamy is exceedingly 
checkered. Though the word polyamory 
originated only 27 years ago according to 
Merriam-Webster, we can safely date the practice 
to at least the 1800s. 

The 2010 book Sex at Dawn, popular among non- 
monogamists, includes examples of ancient and tribal 
nonmonogamy, but that history doesn't sit well with many 
anthropologists who argue that some of those scenarios were less 
than consensual, particularly for women, and dovetailed with 
practices such as pedophilia. In the Victorian era, nonmonog- 
amy popped up among groups resisting religion or the state. Mor- 
monism was founded in 1830, and free-love groups, including 
upstate New York's Oneida Community, which practiced com- 
munalism, prospered in the mid-1800s. Outside of Mormonism, 
though, none reached the popular consciousness as anything be- 
yond scandal and oddity. 

Around the same time, Western culture began to associate 
nonmonogamy with racial stereotypes: the Oriental concubine, 
the Muslim sheik with many wives, the African American male 
and his unstoppable libido. White women and the middle class 
were portrayed as boring and uptight. 

The next century presents a cycle of nonmonogamy squeak- 
ing into popular consciousness, only to be overshadowed by in- 
ternational events and shifts in cultural mores. In the 1920s, 
free-love movements flared among flappers owning their sex- 
uality, but the Great Depression snuffed out sexual expression. 


As newspapers depicted starving families and death through 
World War II, sexual freedom seemed frivolous. Post-war Amer- 
ica, of course, marked another era of sexual repression. 

By the 1960s and 1970s, swinging became prevalent enough 
to serve as a plotline in the 1969 Natalie Wood vehicle Bob & 
Carol & Ted @ Alice, which finished as one of the year's highest- 
grossing films. Although swinging is now remembered as sex 
parties for multiple couples, it once involved highly organized 
communities that emerged only when women became aware of 
their right to pleasure—and their right to leave. “Swinging was 
a way to save the couple," says Pascar. “It came with rules so the 
husband and wife wouldn't develop relationships with anyone 
else. It allowed the woman just enough freedom so the couple 
wouldn't fall apart." 

Swinging vanished in the face of 1980s conservatism. The 
Reagan administration hawked family values, with the president 
letting us know that “all great change in America begins at the 

dinner table." 
In 1981, U.S. hospitals began reporting cases of 
terminally ill gay men. Overnight, public in- 
terest in nonmonogamy flatlined. Com- 
munities tunneled underground as 
the public began to blame the sexu- 
ally adventurous for the AIDS crisis. 
(As we now know, closed-circle nonmo- 
nogamy poses no greater risk than monog- 
amy of sexually transmitted infections. Terri 
Conley, an associate professor of psychology at the 

University of Michigan, says research indicates that 

most STIs come from close partners, not casual ones, be- 

cause the latter practice safer sex.) As panic spread, many 

nonmonogamists either went monogamous or mute, making it 
difficult for newcomers to find like-minded people. 

For this reason, little has been reported on the nonmonogamous 
culture of the 1980s. As 52-year-old Carlos Peñaranda remem- 
bers of the response to the AIDS epidemic within the gay com- 
munity, “Nonmonogamy was generally not announced because 
of that whole stigma of slut-shaming and 'Oh, you're sleeping 
around, so you're just asking to get STDs апа AIDS.” 

Many sex researchers lost funding as attention turned to 
HIV and AIDS and the intimate relations of gay men. Bisexual 
men also came under scrutiny out of concern they could spread 
HIV to unknowing wives. Gay male relationships shifted pro- 
foundly, now needing to meld caretaking with romance and 
familial bonding. 

Meanwhile, straight nonmonogamy remained nearly absent 
from mainstream arenas, social or academic. *Sexuality stud- 
ies in general experienced a significant chilling with the George 
H.W. Bush administration," says sociologist Eli Sheff, an educa- 
tional consultant and respected pioneer in polyamory research. 
"They very much wanted to fund Christian things, so even AIDS 


Dani had entered 
polyamory 
expecting it to be 
about tucking. 


research was out of vogue, and sex positivity was not going to fly.” 
(Not that things are dramatically better now: In 2011, Sheff's 
own career became a cautionary tale when she was denied tenure 
at Georgia State University because of her lack of grant funding; 
she has been a visiting professor ever since.) 

A well-known, large-scale survey of U.S. sexual behaviors, 
The Social Organization of Sexuality, by sociologists at the 
University of Chicago, launched with the hope of support from 
the National Institutes of Health, but the U.S. Senate, led by 
conservative stalwart Jesse Helms, denied funding. Named a 
New York Times Book Review “notable book of the year” upon its 
eventual release in 1994, the book of the same name is still il- 
luminating: Religious people had just as many recent sex part- 
ners as the nonreligious, and people in conservative areas had 
the same transgressive urges as everyone else, though they were 
less likely to act on them. 

This brings us to the first known uses of the word polyamory. 
The earliest may be in a 1990 essay called “A Bouquet of Lovers: 
Strategies for Responsible Open Relationships” by Morning Glory 
Zell-Ravenheart. An online forum called alt.polyamory appeared 
in 1992. In-person meet-ups, such as the Loving More Confer- 
ence, followed, spurring a new wave of community. As with other 
marginal groups, the internet allowed people to connect, and 
polyamory thrived. 

The Ethical Slut, a 1997 book that describes how to be caringly 
promiscuous, became a bible of sorts. Meg-John Barker, a long- 
time researcher on nonmonogamy and a senior lecturer in psy- 
chology at the U.K.’s Open University, says such codifying books 
and internet groups led to “coherent identities and more shared 
understandings of how to do open nonmonogamy, with practices 
becoming more nuanced, sophisticated and diverse.” The Poly- 
amory Leadership Network, “a loose association” of about 180 
activists, launched online in 2008 and has since created an “ac- 
countability pod,” to collect stories of problematic behavior, and 
a “survivor support pod,” focused on victims. 

In short, communities helped polyamory develop a lexicon. 
Smart people once again began to keep tabs, legitimizing the life- 
style. The first European conference devoted to nonmonogamy, the 
International Conference on Polyamory and Mono-Normativity, 
convened in 2005. Universities began to extend funding again. 
Conley says she told faculty interviewers at the University of Mich- 
igan that her research was “not really fundable, so if I need big 


grants to get tenure, we can all just go home.” They hired her. She’s 
now among the top researchers in the field. 

After leaving Robert, Dani moved into her own apartment and 
studied More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory, 
a popular read among newcomers. She wishes she had consulted 
it earlier. While most polyamory beginners hurt people acciden- 
tally, she found herself bewildered by a larger shift in her iden- 
tity. “It was confusing for me, because while I wanted to open up 
romantic relationships, I realized I also wanted to just be more 
physical, like with friends. Sitting closely or having our arms 
around each other or even holding hands—I wanted to be more 
warm,” she says. 

Dani had entered polyamory expecting it to be about fucking 
but found a new way of thinking altogether: primarily, that re- 
lationships can be fluid. This made her reassess the boundaries 
around her other relationships. She became poly solo, a term for 
dating multiple lovers while maintaining one’s own finances and 
home. Her new girlfriend “took to polyamory like water,” she says. 

Some forms of nonmonogamy have better odds of success than 
others. Conley’s studies show that swinging and polyamorous 
relationships do “just as well or better” than monogamous rela- 
tionships in categories including trust, overall satisfaction, com- 
mitment, satisfaction with last encounter and rate of orgasm. 
But when Conley asked a group of her graduate students whether 
everyone should practice consensual nonmonogamy, the answer 
was a unanimous no. “They had read the research,” she says. To 
sum up, dating and sex take time and emotional energy—a lot of 
emotional energy—and intensive processing. “It’s perfectly rea- 
sonable that most people would be monogamous in our current 
societal structure. It’s a lot simpler to navigate life,” she says. 
Allow me to add another downside: Polyamory’s emphasis on 
meeting one’s own needs can translate into narcissism. 

Dani discovered the complexities of nonmonogamy experien- 
tially. After seven months apart, she and Robert reconciled. They 
now keep separate homes and identify as polyamorous. 

For most straight younger people today, the popular form of non- 
monogamy is nonhierarchical polyamory, according to More Than 
Two. (At 496 pages, the book is far from comprehensive: “We didn’t 
include things like what to do if a partner breaks an agreement,” 
co-author Franklin Veaux says.) Different from the stability of 
“anchor partners,” the cornerstone of nonhierarchical polyamory 


isegalitarianism. A partner of 2o years, for example, does not out- 
ranka new flame. This scenario is the antithesis of arrangements 
in which primary partners have veto power over other partners. 

Gay men tend to distinguish sexual partners from roman- 
tic ones. Peñaranda and his husband, Daniel Leyva, decided to 
open their relationship after six years of monogamy. Leyva is 17 
years Penaranda’s junior; this marriage is his first gay relation- 
ship. Penaranda, who had always practiced monogamy, was not 
initially thrilled about the prospect of opening up. “I had gotten 
hurt a number of times with guys stepping out on me when we 
were supposed to have a monogamous relationship, and I didn't 
want that to be the case here," he says. "But Daniel is young. He 
wanted to experience things." 

Note that Penaranda’s decision was based not on promiscu- 
ity but on preserving his relationship. That was also the case for 
Dani and Robert. Nevertheless, jealousy often arises. 

“We laid down some ground rules," Peñaranda says. “We al- 
ways have to be honest with each other and put each other first. 
No romantic dates. We're each other's number ones. There have 
been a few times we've said, ‘I’m not exactly feeling like number 
one right now, and we backtrack and fix it." 

Peñaranda and Leyva got prescriptions for Truvada, a pre- 
exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) that reduces the risk of HIV 
transmission. The rise of PrEP (which can be prescribed 
across the gender spectrum) has allowed gay men to have more 
casual sex, though gay and bisexual men on PrEP are 72 per- 
cent more likely to get STIs than gay and bi men not on the 
medication, according to a 2018 study published in the journal 
AIDS. When it comes to STIs, volume matters: Having unpro- 
tected sex with more than five partners a year increases STI 
risk significantly. 

Like Dani and Robert, Peñaranda and Leyva began their open 
relationship by using dating apps, which procured them a group 
of friends with benefits. ^We go to pool parties and stuff that are 
not called sex parties, but sex happens there. They always have 
a play area," Peñaranda says. As often happens in open relation- 
ships involving well-known play partners—or people with whom 
one has sexual relations often—the rules slowly began to lift. 
The limitations Peñaranda gave Leyva regarding certain sex 
acts disappeared. “Now he can go have whatever fun he wants,” 
Peñaranda says nonchalantly. 

Yet gay nonmonogamy, like straight nonmonogamy, continues 


to be an open secret, even with more of the population partici- 
pating. (A 2016 U.K. survey by gay men’s health charity GMFA 
reported more than 40 percent of its 1,006 gay respondents had 
been in an open relationship.) “Even now I don’t go, ‘Hi, I’m in 
an open relationship, ” says Penaranda. “I’m very protective of 
Daniel and of our lives, so I pick and choose who I let know.” 

As director of prevention research at the Ontario HIV Treat- 
ment Network, Barry Adam has “interviewed sizable numbers of 
couples who, it turns out, have other partners—a third person or 
individual additional partners.” But, he says, “even within those 
communities, there isn’t much talk about it.” He suggests the cul- 
tural adoption of gay marriage may have stymied frank conversa- 
tions, because society presumed gay marriages were monogamous, 
as that’s the presumption built into heterosexual marriages. “This 
creates a public silence about what’s really going on,” Adam says. 
“The public version is different than the practice.” 

Despite increasing interest, polyamory is far from accepted. 
Polyamorists can be fired by companies with morality clauses. 
“There are very few legal protections for openly nonmonogamous 
people, or ways of having their relationships recognized,” says 
Barker. Even Sheff, who writes a column for Psychology Today 
called “The Polyamorists Next Door” and who does not identify 
as polyamorous, has faced professional blowback regarding her 
polyamory research. “I’ve had quite a few people question my 
science in a very aggressive way. It’s as though they feel person- 
ally attacked. Maybe their dad cheated on their mom, or they’re 
cheating right now and have personal issues around it.” 

Amy Moors, an assistant professor of psychology at Chapman 
University, studied Google searches from 2006 to 2015. She 
found that searches for polyamory have increased significantly 
since 2011. Barring an international crisis, we can expect non- 
monogamy to continue to evolve—and be fetishized—though 
it’s far from being widely embraced. Generation Z likely won't 
adopt it as a dominant lifestyle choice (the way putting off mar- 
riage is now popular among millennials, for example), but the 
next wave in the dating pool—and Generation Alpha—may 
be willing to consider more relationship varieties en masse. 
As research indicates, monogamy doesn’t work for everyone, 
nor does it work all the time. At minimum, a seat at the table 
for consensual nonmonogamy raises the possibility of gabbing 
about it with co-workers at lunch. Maybe then we’ll all finally 
start talking about it together. a 


PLAYBOY 7/1 


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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALIMITTON 


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STYLING BY KELLEY ASH 


APRIL PLAYMAIE PLAYBOY 73 


The powerful undulations of California's 
coastal dunes are the perfect backdrop 
for April Playmate Fo Porter 


I started modeling in Los Angeles when I was 19 years old, 
after my agency, Nous Models, discovered me on America's 
Next Top Model. After five years, my natural womanly body 
started to emerge. I worked successfully as a *straight sized" 
model for many years, but as my body changed and clearly 
wasn't going to get back to where it had been at 19, I started 
tothink, What next? What would I do if not modeling? 

I got my Pilates certification as a backup plan, I got 
married, I grew out my pixie into a curly fringe, and I let my 
natural self shine, knowing all this goodness would guide the 
way! More and more I started eating what I wanted, work- 
ing out and being healthy on my own terms. I truly started 
accepting who I was naturally. 

Luckily for me, around this time the industry started to 
change. We saw a plus-size model on the cover of Vogue, and 
more clients were looking for curvy models. That's when 
things truly fell into place organically. My clients wanted me 
exactly how I was: curvy, with curly hair and tons of person- 
ality! This movement in the industry was a breath of fresh 
air for alot of us models with curves of any size. 

PLAYBOY came out of nowhere, and being a lifelong fan of the 
magazine, I knew the only answer was “Yes!” Ever since my 
friend Brook Power, who was 2017 Playmate of the Year, shot 
for PLAYBOY two months post-pregnancy, I thought, “Damn, 
girl! Get it! That is not only empowering but so incredibly 
badass in my book!" I wanted to feel that open, honest, con- 
fident and liberated. As Brook inspired me, I hope to inspire 
and empower any woman who is struggling with her natu- 
ral shape or has had challenges embracing who she is. People 
need to know there is no such thing as “the perfect bod." 

I am proud of how far I've come, and though it was not easy, 
I believe nothing great comes easily. No matter your sex or 
sexual orientation, I truly believe you have every right to feel 
proud of your existence. Considering I am a gay boy trapped 
in a woman's body, the best advice I've ever taken is from my 
fairy godmother, Ms. RuPaul Charles: *Honey, if you can't love 
yo'self, how in the hell you gonna love someone else? Can I get 
an amen up in here?" Let's all say it together, readers: Amen! 


74 


You have every 
right to feel proud 
of your existence. 


76 


| 
т 


ONSE TN 


PLAYBOY  /9 


DATA SHEET 


BIRTHPLACE: Phoenix, Arizona CURRENT CITY: Los Angeles, California 


ON DEEP ROOTS 


| grew up in Albuquerque, a small city 
no one ever leaves. I’m part of the one 
percent who were able to get out. I 
love my city and the people there, but 
you can get stuck. | was trying to get 
pregnant before | left because that 
was the norm for a girl my age: getting 
married and having a family. | realized 
that wasn't what | wanted. 


ON KIDS 


| used to be a preschool teacher. Chil- 
dren are so innocent; they say any- 
thing and everything. They don filter. 
They'll tell you how you look and how 
they feel. They'll tell you if you smell or 
if your face is crooked. It's a genuine 
interaction, and l love that. 


ON TRYING OUT 


| watched America's Next Top Model 
religiously from the age of 12 until | got 
on the show. Tyra Banks has always 


been my idol. | auditioned when | was 
still a teacher. My mom told me the 
show was in Phoenix and that | should 
try out. | was like, "I don't think that 
would work.” She said, "What do you 
have to lose? Just do it.” And the rest 
is history. 


ON RITUAL 


| recently went to Morocco. | experi- 
enced sensory overload—the smells, 
the tastes, the people running in front 
of you—but the culture is true to its 
history. They have the call to prayer 
five times a day. Everyone quiets down 
and bows their heads. It's beautiful. 


ON THE FORCE 


| love the Star Wars saga. Return of 
the Jedi is my favorite movie. | love the 
new movies that are coming out too, 
but Return of the Jedi is empowering, 
forceful and so good. Carrie Fisher was 
a bona fide badass. 


ON FANDOM 


| was a comics nerd from the womb. I 
do cosplay: Princess Leia was my first 
character, then Storm from X-Men, 
Chun-Li from Street Fighter Il, Gene 
Simmons from Kiss, Boba Fett, a full- 
body-painted Venom, and | was Lara 
Croft at least five times for Halloween 
growing up. Comic-Con, where are 
you? Who do talk to to get in this year? 


ON STYLE 


Im a huge tomboy. My favorite shoes 
are my low-top flame Vans. I like to say 
my style is Gwen Stefani. Any era, every- 
thing she wears, I'm like, Yes, yes, yes! 


ON REST AND RELAXATION 


My perfect day is waking up, opening a 
window to the elements—the ocean or 
a beautiful landscape—and just having 
my husband, my dog, a glass of wine 
and a joint. I'm always on the go, but | 
love taking time for myself. 


ALVWVWAW 1d 6LOZ 114dV 


A 


[HE 


OREEN 


SCARE 


THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HAS BEEN CENSORING GOVERNMENT SCIENTISTS, SIDELINING FEDERAL WORKERS AND 
DISCOUNTING EVIDENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE. IS IT TOO LATE TO SAVE THE PLANET? 


CIARA O'ROURKE 


On November 8, 2017, exactly one year after Donald Trump 
was elected president, the official Twitter account of Joshua 
Tree National Park had something to say. “An overwhelming 
consensus—over 97 percent—of climate scientists agree that 
human activity is the driving force behind today’s rate of global 
temperature increase,” the account tweeted. “Natural factors 
that impact the climate are still at work, but cannot account for 
today’s rapid warming.” 

It was a sunny, dry desert day in Joshua Tree, with tempera- 
tures climbing to 75 degrees. Only five months earlier, President 
Trump had withdrawn the United States from the Paris Agree- 
ment, a commitment by 184 countries to curb global warming 
and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by implementing new 
environmental policies. As Joshua Tree’s Twitter feed stated in 
a follow-up tweet, “Emissions from burning of fossil fuels have 
increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmo- 
sphere. This amplifies the greenhouse effect. Human activity is 
affecting the land, oceans, & atmosphere, altering the balance of 
the climate system & causing global changes.” 

Michael Mann, an outspoken climate scientist and Pennsyl- 
vania State University professor who earlier that year had re- 
buked a congressional committee for dismissing scientific 
research, thanked @JoshuaTreeNPS for its tweets, albeit with 
an ominous note. “I hope this account remains active and in 
your hands...,” he posted. 

Perhaps more than any president before him, Trump under- 
stands the power of social media, and @JoshuaTreeNPS’s tweets 
undercut the president’s views on climate change. Trump has 
called global warming a Chinese hoax and doubts whether humans 
are even contributing to it. One of his first actions as president was 


88 


placing a social-media gag order on departments such as the Envi- 
ronmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and 
the Department of Agriculture. 

Many of the president's political appointees have expressed 
similar doubts about human-caused climate change. Scott 
Pruitt, who helmed the EPA from February 2017 to July 2018, 
once said scientists aren't certain human activity is "a primary 
contributor." Energy Secretary Rick Perry argues that natu- 
ral causes, not carbon dioxide, are the main drivers. And Ryan 
Zinke, who resigned from Trump's Cabinet in December 2018, 
has said the cause of climate change *is far from being defini- 
tively resolved." 

Zinke's former domain, the Department of the Interior, em- 
ploys scientists and natural resource managers across its many 
bureaus and offices, including the Bureau of Land Management, 
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological Survey 
and the National Park Service. In all, the department employs 
some 70,000 people. After Joshua Tree's account tweeted about 
climate change, Zinke reportedly summoned the park's superin- 
tendent, David Smith, to Washington, D.C. 

According to a December 2017 story published by The Hill, 
Zinke brought Smith to his office to reprimand him. “Zinke 
made it clear to Smith that the Trump administration doesn’t 
want national parks to put out official communication on climate 
change," The Hill reported. Zinke's office disputed that descrip- 
tion of the meeting. 

Michael Halpern, deputy director of the Center for Science and 
Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says the situ- 
ation was "absurd." But it is also worrying, and a warning to all 
national park employees "that they're going to get the same kind 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY DEREK BRAHNEY 


of tongue-lashing if they share anything about global warming,” 
he says. “It only takes a few scapegoats to send a message to an 
entire agency that they should be keeping their heads down.” 

Kyla Bennett, a former EPA scientist and lawyer who now 
works with the nonprofit watchdog group Public Employees for 
Environmental Responsibility (PEER), speaks every day to sci- 
entists working for the government. “People are frightened," she 
says. “They're frightened they're being watched, that their cell 
phones are going to be confiscated and looked at, that their per- 
sonal computers are going to be confiscated. They are afraid. " 
Last year, the Union of Concerned Scientists and Iowa State 
University surveyed scientists from 16 federal agencies about 
their experiences working in the Trump administration. The 
report, "Science Under President Trump," includes accounts 
of censorship, self-censorship and political interference. 
About 630 survey respondents at agencies that work on climate 
change, or 18 percent of the sample group, agreed or strongly 
agreed that they had been asked to omit the phrase climate 
change from their work. 

"We've been told to avoid using words like climate change 
in internal project proposals and cooperative agreements," 
reported one respondent from the National Park Service. 

Another 700 respondents said they'd avoided working on 
climate change or using the phrase despite having received no 
explicit orders to do so. “Survey results also suggest that commu- 
nication issues extend beyond censorship of science to the right 


of scientists to speak about their work to the public, the news 
media and at professional meetings," the report stated. 

This winter, PLAYBOY interviewed more than a dozen current 
and former federal employees, climate scientists and advocacy 
groups about how federal employees discuss climate science 
under the Trump administration. Some describe being sidelined 
or point to scientists scrubbing the phrase climate change from 
reports and grant applications. Others say they can't comfort- 
ably mention global warming for fear of coming under scrutiny. 

Their stories aren't universal. Scientists at some agencies say 
the administration hasn't hindered their work. But many oth- 
ers express deep fears about both job stability and their research. 
They don't want to risk disrupting the continuity of climate- 
change data, some of which has been collected over decades, by 
drawing unfavorable attention to their studies. All but one current 
federal employee we interviewed asked to remain anonymous. 

"Everyone is so terrified," says Betsy Southerland, who worked 
at the EPA for more than 30 years and retired as director of sci- 
ence and technology in the agency's water office in July 2017. 
Before she left, staffers authoring technical reports were al- 
ready replacing the phrase climate change with extreme weather 
events, Southerland says. ^We were self-censoring." 

The reason for that, she explains, is EPA employees want to 
protect their ability to release research that has been under way 
for years, well before Trump's election. 

Michael Cox, a climate-change advisor who resigned after 
25 years with the EPA, noticed self-censorship in the Seattle 

office where he worked. People stopped saying “climate 
change" in meetings, he says, adding that the “climate- 
ready water utilities" program turned into "creating 
resilient water utilities." Overall, employees seemed un- 
certain about what they could or couldn't say and write. 

On March 31, 2017, Cox submitted his resignation 
letter to Pruitt. He was out the door. He could safely 
make some noise. 

“I am writing this note because I, along with many 
EPA staff, are becoming increasing [sic] alarmed 
about the direction of EPA under your leadership," 
he wrote. Cox criticized the administration for deny- 
ing fundamental climate science, slashing the budget 
and appointing political staffers openly hostile to the 
agency. “If, by some miracle you or your staff actually 
read this note, I can only hope you take a step back and 
realize that you are the leader of an organization of 
very hardworking, dedicated professionals who believe 
deeply in their work." 

It turns out someone did read Cox's letter. Ten days 

later, a lawyer filed a public-records request for Cox's 
correspondence when he resigned, according to The 
New York Times. The resulting e-mails revealed the 
names of dozens of agency officials, including ones Cox 
describes as colleagues who shared his concerns over 
management. The agency, which did not respond to 
PLAYBOY's interview request, later hired the same law- 
yer to do *media monitoring" at the EPA. 
Federal employees, when working, don't have the same 
free-speech rights as private citizens. Legally, it's a dis- 
tinction between right and privilege, a precedent set by 
the 2006 Supreme Court case Garcetti v. Ceballos, in 
which the court ruled that speech by a public official isn't 
protected when expressed as part of their job. 


Jeff Ruch, executive director of PEER, says this distinction 
is being wielded for partisan ends. According to Ruch, George 
Luber, an environmental health professor and leading expert 
on the disease effects of climate change, has been under inves- 
tigation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since 
March 2018, in part because he didn’t get renewed agency ap- 
proval to write a 2015 textbook. The head of the CDC's former 
Climate and Health Program (established in 2009 and effec- 
tively discontinued in December), Luber is now barred from 
going to his government office without permission, and if he 
does enter the office, he and his car are searched, according to 
Ruch. Luber is forbidden from speaking, responding to inter- 
view requests or answering congressional inquiries. Luber's 
dismissal was recommended in October, Ruch says, but walked 
back after Ruch took the story to The New York Times. Ruch sus- 
pects the CDC was self-censoring because Luber is a prominent 
voice in the science community. The CDC did not answer ques- 
tions about Luber or about how its employees can discuss climate 
change at work and in public. 

Ruch calls PEER a "shelter for battered staff." He also fields que- 
ries from scientists trying to publish their research, as only two of 
the 18 federal science-based agencies surveyed allow employees to 
submit their work to a publication without prior approval. 

"There's no doubt the Trump administration is editing scien- 
tific documents to the point where they're removing, for exam- 
ple, references to anthropogenic causes of climate change," 
PEER's Bennett says. “They are eliminating entire climate jobs 
and teams. It has gotten to the point where federal employees are 
afraid to even use the words." 

According to Bennett, department heads in many cases 
haven't officially directed scientists to stop using the phrase 
climate change, but "they've gotten the message loud and clear." 
They abide, she says, because their positions are precarious and 
they don't want to risk losing them. Some scientists will commu- 
nicate with Bennett only through encrypted mobile apps; others 
call from burner phones. 

Halpern, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, thinks some 
of the challenges over letting federal employees speak freely to 
the public and press stem from the aftermath of September 11. 
Under the guise of national-security concerns, federal employees 
became less accessible and control over speech from government 
workers increased significantly, he says. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is one 
of the most permissive agencies: NOAA employees don't need 
permission to talk to reporters, the agency said in an e-mail to 
PLAYBOY. U.S. Geological Survey employees, by comparison, 
must be granted permission before speaking to the press. “CDC 
scientists were told last year they needed to check with superi- 
ors before complying with even the most basic data requests from 
the press," Halpern says. ^We know people are less likely to tell 
the unvarnished truth if their bosses are listening or if they feel 
they'll be reprimanded for saying the wrong thing in the eyes of 
their political superiors." 

That pressure is not felt evenly by all employees. Because the 
EPA is a regulatory agency tasked with enforcing rules on busi- 
nesses and protecting endangered species, staffers may face 
more political and public scrutiny. But there are also unwritten 
rules, Halpern says: “Most nefarious is that a lot of directives 
aren't written down or communicated. They're simply hinted at." 

Joel Clement was the director of the Office of Policy Analysis at 
the Department of the Interior. He was at home in his Washing- 
ton apartment when a friend called one Thursday night in June 


NU 
ADMINISTRATION 
IS PERFECT, BUI 

WHAT WE RE 
SEEING NOW IS 
UNPRECEDENTED. 


2017. “Check your e-mail,” his friend said. He had been reas- 
signed, and he wondered if Clement had also been removed from 
his position. A message was waiting for Clement in his in-box. 
He too had been reassigned, in his case to a job in an account- 
ing office overseeing royalty income from oil and gas operations 
around the country. It was part of a purge, he alleges. DOI did not 
respond to questions about Clement. 

No supervisor spoke to Clement before his reassignment, but 
he says he fared better than some of his colleagues, who had been 
forced to move across the country with their families to begin un- 
familiar jobs. Many were shifted into positions for which they 
were ill-suited. Clement counted himself in that group: He wasn’t 
an accountant. But, he says, when he reported to work at his new 
office, the employees were wonderful, bending over backward to 
try to train their new boss on something he knew nothing about. 

Eventually, though, having lost the job he left the private sec- 

tor for, “I decided to keep my voice,” he says. Clement reported 
what had happened to the Office of Special Counsel in July, and 
in October he resigned. 
Former U.S. Representative Lamar Smith, who was chair of the 
House Science, Space and Technology Committee before the 
Republicans lost their majority in the 2018 midterms, chastised 
scientists two years ago for ignoring “the basic tenets of science” 
and pushing a personal agenda to justify claims about climate 
change. “Alarmist predictions amount to nothing more than 
wild guesses,” he said. 

It was March 29, 2017, and Penn State’s Michael Mann, who 
was appearing before the committee to discuss global warm- 
ing, fired back. “If you get attacked every time you publish an 
article,” he said, “if that causes you to become subject to congres- 
sional inquiries and Freedom of Information Act requests, ob- 
viously that’s very stifling, and I think the intention is to cause 
scientists to retreat.” The message to “the entire research com- 
munity,” he said, “is if you too publish and speak out on the threat 
of human-caused climate change, we’re going to come after you.” 

Many were wary of the Texas representative’s subpoena pow- 
ers after Trump was elected. (IF YOU LIKED THE INQUISITION, 


PLAYBOY 91 


YOU LL LOVE THE HOUSE SCIENCE COMMITTEE, read one Mother 
Jones headline.) But Smith had warred with scientists during 
Barack Obama’s presidency too. In 2015 he subpoenaed hun- 
dreds of internal e-mails from NOAA staffers after an agency 
scientist produced a study that found there was never a global- 
warming hiatus, as some believed. 

Halpern remembers Smith’s request as a “huge intimidation 
tactic”—but, he says, “attacks on government scientists predate 
this administration. It's not something the Trump administra- 
tion invented, but it’s something they’ve aggressively pursued.” 

PEER'S Bennett, for example, was a whistle-blower at the EPA 
during the Clinton administration and considers her previous 
work nonpartisan. Both Republicans and Democrats have inter- 
fered with science or regulatory enforcement to a certain extent, 
she says. But both environmental enforcement and science over- 
all are suffering the most under the current administration. 

Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, who has contributed to 
multiple federally mandated National Climate Assessment re- 
ports, asserts that when President George W. Bush was in office, 
there “absolutely was censorship. The Bush administration's ap- 
proach was to edit or censor documents themselves." Hayhoe, 
who teaches at Texas Tech University, adds, ^You'd send a draft 
in for review and you'd get these comments back and be like, 
“Well, you know, this is not accurate. " 

Since Trump was elected, Hayhoe has received dispatches 
from her federal colleagues about research proposals languish- 
ing on desks, awaiting political reviews that weren't required in 
previous administrations. Or research proposals being rejected 
or refused by political appointees. Funding woes. Self-policing. 


92 


“If you don't have to say “climate change,’ don't say 
it,” she says, “because it's like waving a red flag to 
a bull.” No administration is perfect, says Lauren 
Kurtz, executive director of the Climate Science 
Legal Defense Fund. Every modern administration 
has been accused of politicizing science— “but I do 
think what we’re seeing now is unprecedented.” 

“It’s not a secret the Trump administration is not a 
fan of science,” says U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 
scientist Mark Williams (not his real name). But he 
hasn’t been told explicitly or through veiled threats to 
distance himself and his work from climate science. 
“The mandate isto use the best available science, and 
that hasn’t changed,” says Williams, who has worked 
atthe USFWS for about a decade. 

The agency has, though. Sally Jewell, interior 
secretary under Obama, would send weekly video 
updates to staff; at press time, the USFWS under 
Trump remained without a director two years into 
his term. Still, Williams says, “the tendrils of the 
administration really go down only so far.” With 
some restrictions, scientists are free to talk about 
their research with the public, says USFWS chief of 
public affairs Gavin Shire. 

Thomas Miller (not his real name) supports the 
military’s scientific research in the Arctic and has 
worked for the federal government for more than a 
decade. During this time, he says, the mandate has 
been constant and clear: Employees who are not 
public affairs officers do not speak to the public. He 
keeps a personal Facebook page, where he posts up- 
dates and the results of research, but he tries to keep 

it apolitical. He was concerned, though, when he read reports 
after Trump’s election that the incoming administration was 
stripping data from public websites. When a guerrilla science 
movement emerged to preserve that information on independent 
sites, Miller shared the locations of some data sets with the orga- 
nizers to save that information. 

Outside his work group, Miller generally doesn’t talk about 
climate change—but not because a superior has suggested he 
shouldn’t. “The military as a whole skews conservative,” he says. 
"It's not worth getting into conversations with people who are sit- 
ting there denying science." 

More broadly, he thinks conservatism is the root of what he 
calls a *chilling effect" on science in the federal government. But 
Todd Lewis (not his real name), a research scientist at NOAA, 
says the political appointees at that agency "are actually fairly 
well-informed people, which I don't believe to be the case for 
most of the political appointees for other jobs. At this stage, un- 
like at the EPA, our research isn't being heavily impacted." 

He has noticed pushback on press releases, but he says that 
was common in previous Republican administrations. Ideally, a 
press release will include context to educate the public about the 
issue, but today there's more pressure to stick only with what ap- 
pears in the research the agency is publicizing. 

Notably, in November the Trump administration did not 
publicize volume two of the Fourth National Climate Assess- 
ment report, which concludes that humans are causing climate 
change. It is a massive and dire study that federal and volun- 
teer scientists, including Hayhoe, one of the lead authors, spent 
years working on. The government instead quietly released the 


findings on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year. 

Volume two is endorsed by 13 federal agencies, including the 
EPA and the Department of Defense. As media attention on 
the publication grew, the president's administration began to 
disavow its findings, suggesting it was biased or problematic. 
Trump said he didn't believe it. 

Hayhoe estimates that in the more than two years she spent 
working on the latest Climate Assessment, she could have pub- 
lished up to 10 of her own studies. The report involved hundreds 
of unpaid hours of work for others too. As someone not employed 
by the federal government, Hayhoe feels a responsibility to speak 
carefully and clearly on behalf of the hundreds of scientists who 
worked on the report. Many can't speak for themselves, she says. 

"This Assessment was a sacrifice by every single person," Hay- 
hoe says. “But it was a sacrifice made with full awareness that 
the climate is changing. It's us. It's here, and every human on the 
planet and especially in the United States needs to understand 
how climate change is already affecting us and the places we live. 
We feel a moral responsibility to share what we know." 

Hundreds of scientists have left the federal government since 
Trump took office. His election could disrupt the next generation 
of scientists, young graduates who “have decided not to go into 
this area because of uncertainty," says Jim White, an environ- 
mental scientist and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at 
the University of Colorado Boulder. 

Of course, thousands of scientists still work 
for the government. Todd Lewis, at NOAA, says 
they're keeping their heads down. “We have to 
keep our records going," he says. “We can't afford 
to play political games and risk long-term records 
somehow being interrupted." 

There is another concern among scientists and 

their advocates: that the Fifth National Climate 
Assessment, due in 2022, will come under height- 
ened scrutiny. They fear other projects will be 
canceled or more workers will abandon the agen- 
cies for posts where they can work more freely. 
But the biggest loss, according to Mark Williams 
ofthe USFWS, is time. Even if in two (or six) years 
environmental policies are reinstated and regu- 
lations again enforced, the planet will not have 
stopped warming. 

“A lot of things can change pretty much immedi- 

ately as soon as anew administration takes office,” 
he says. “But you never get that time back.” 
Many climate scientists have changed the way 
they talk about global warming. Hayhoe says the 
most effective place to start a conversation on cli- 
mate change is by finding common ground. An 
evangelical Christian, she tries to connect with 
people over their values—having enough clean 
water to grow crops, say. And she’s not alone: A 
growing cadre is framing climate change as a 
moral and ethical dilemma, according to White. 
From his perch as a professor, White is watch- 
ing recent graduates take jobs that allow them to 
blend science with advocacy—working at Protect 
Our Winters, for example—and lobby for climate- 
friendly policies. 

“It’s a really strange world when obvious physi- 
cal truths are pushed aside by tweets and Facebook 


posts that are clearly wrong but manage to capture people’s atten- 
tion,” he says. As a scientist and an educator, he’s worried about 
this trend. It undermines the scientific business model. But, he 
reasons, it also compels scientists to learn how to advocate for 
their discipline. They’re becoming more literate on how to effec- 
tively talk to laymen. 

Take Michael Cox, the former climate-change advisor who 
resigned from the EPA. He has reached a point where he doesn’t 
believe the science of climate change will gain traction with most 
people. “We’ve politicized this as a science debate,” he says. “It’s 
not a science debate. It’s a values debate. Crossing the mountain 
pass from western Washington to the more rural and conserva- 
tive east side, you aren’t going to talk about climate change. You 
ask them about water.” 

“Scientists have sat on the sidelines for along time,” says Clem- 
ent, who now works to expose political interference in science for 
the Union of Concerned Scientists. He and his colleagues were 
taught to maintain their integrity or stay neutral. But “they’re 
the ones who most need to speak up right now.” 

Meanwhile, Hayhoe would welcome the opportunity to connect 
with Trump, but only if he were genuinely interested in engaging 
on the subject—and so far, she’s seen no evidence of that. But if 
she ever does, she knows what she would say to him: “The world 
stands at a turning point, which may determine civilization. Do 
you want to be remembered as the hero who saved the world?" Ni 


INTERVIEW BY M Ë 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY TAYLOR MILLER 


THE STRANGER THINGS BREAKOUT GOES DEEP ON MENTAL ILLNESS, 
ADDICTION, DEATH THREATS AND OTHER STOPS ON THE ROAD TO HELLBOY— 
HIS FIRST (AND CERTAINLY NOT LAST) STINT AS A MAINSTREAM LEADING MAN 


Q1: You have been on five episodes of Law & 
Order. Did you ever get to a point where you 
thought, Really? Another one? 

HARBOUR: Wait, let me count: I've been 
on two normal Law @ Orders, two Crimi- 
nal Intents and one SVU. I callitthe Dick 
Wolf Subsidy for the Theater Arts in New 
York City, because it's the job everyone 
gets when they're doing an off-Broadway 
play and making $270 a week. There's 
no way you can pay rent on a Manhattan 
apartment with that kind of paycheck, 
yet it's a prestigious, wonderful job, so 
you need to do a Law @ Order every year to 
supplement your income. And the funny 
thing is, big stars who I love recognize me 
from Law & Order more than anything 
else. I remember Sarah Silverman grab- 
bing me and being like, “Law & Order!” 
And even when I showed up to work on 
Stranger Things, Winona Ryder’s big 
thing was my silver-thief character from 
a Criminal Intent episode. So yeah, there 
was a certain David Harbour cult follow- 
ing in the Hollywood community around 
my work on Law & Order. 

Q2: When did you first know you wanted to 
be an actor? 

HARBOUR: When I was five years old I 
played the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, 
and I loved it. Iwas a big hambone. Then 
when I got into high school I really wanted 
to act, but I had no examples of people who 
did that. I grew up in Westchester, New 
York, which was a lot of businesspeople, 
lawyers, doctors—a very upper-middle- 
class community. There were no exam- 
ples of a working actor, so I didn’t think 
it was possible. I went to college and tried 
to study some other things, but then when 
I got to New York I realized, right out of 
college, that I just had to do it. And so I 
waited tables. 

Q3: You've been very open about the fact 
that you have bipolar disorder and are neuro- 
atypical. What does society not understand 
about being bipolar? 

HARBOUR: I mean, there's so much. I would 
like to bring some light in terms of people 
not viewing madness as something alien 
to them. There’s an interesting thing in 
our culture where we have to brand cer- 
tain things as other than us because we're 
so terrified of them. It’s dangerous when 


we're segregating society so clearly into 
sane people and insane people, and I know 
that I’ve ridden that line. I have a lot of ex- 
periences on one side where I’m in an asy- 
lum and being treated like a crazy piece 
of trash, and then I’ve been in this other 
world where I’m treated like a big-deal 
celebrity that people have to run around 
getting coffee for. 

Q4: Your parents had you institutionalized 
when you were 25. How did that change you? 
HARBOUR: It was avoluntary institutional- 
ization. It was recommended because I was 
having your garden-variety manic episode 
that a lot of bipolar people have, which is 
nonviolent but strange and confusing and 
disordered. I think the best version of a bi- 
polar person I’ve ever seen done on-screen 
was Claire Danes in the first season of 
Homeland. She’s just talking and not mak- 
ing much sense, but it’s right on the edge 
of sense. It was sort of like that. You hit a 
wall and realize there’s a wall there, and 
you also realize you have an internal resil- 
iency that’s beyond anything you’ve ever 
known. The idea that I lost my mind and 
then came back and continued to act and to 
live in New York City revealed in me that I 
have mental fortitude, and it also gave me 
gratitude for every day that I’m not locked 
up. Of course I still have stresses, but truly 
I can breathe easy every day and go, “There 
is a hell, and I’ve been there, and every day 
that I'm walking around in New York City, 
even if people don’t like the movie I’m in, 
or whatever it is, I’m free.” 

Q5: You attended Dartmouth College, an in- 
stitution Newsweek once called one of Amer- 
ica's drunkest colleges. Did the school live up 
to its party reputation? 

HARBOUR: Yes. Yes. Yes. I drank all the 
time in college. I had a real problem with 
Dartmouth. I wanted to be an actor, but I 
sort of felt I had to have a fallback plan or 
something. I did that alot for my parents. 
I went to Dartmouth, and I was kind of 
angry and resentful and Idrank alot. You 
could definitely drink alot at Dartmouth. 
It was cold allthetime, so we would spend 
a lot of time in the basement, just drink- 
ing crappy beer. But I take responsibil- 
ity for my problem. When I got out of 
Dartmouth I was in my early 20s, and I 
got sober. I haven't looked back. 


Q6: You don't seem like a former Dartmouth 
fraternity member. How did that happen? 
HARBOUR: That's the conundrum I was 
dealing with. I grew up in a community 
that wanted me to be one thing, and I had 
a soul that didn’t want to be that thing. 
I felt human beings were different from 
me, and one way I could help to under- 
stand them was through this thing called 
acting. It was something I felt compelled 
to do. Had I had my complete druthers, 
I would have dropped out of high school 
at 16, moved to New York and auditioned 
and stuff, but I was in a world of prep 
schools and money and a certain way of 
being, and I didn’t have enough fortitude 
to stand up to that. I think ultimately 
that’s where the drinking and anger come 
from. Then you get out and realize over 
time that you might as well be yourself. I 
think that’s what has been developing in 
me—even up to today. 

Q7: Let's talk Stranger Things. What did it feel 
like to go from being a working actor to being 


HARBOUR: It's a double-edged sword. It's 
extremely gratifying even to be acknowl- 
edged as sexy when you're in your 40s, to 
be acknowledged as good, for people to like 
what you do. It just makes you feel great. 
I got into this business to move people, 
and clearly you're moving people in posi- 
tive ways, and that's a beautiful thing. For 
about the first three months I was on cloud 
nine, and then it started to become a little 
weird. I actually don’t like to go out as much 
now. The factthat people assume they know 
you is very strange. It feels like I'm on The 
Truman Show. Everybody has an impres- 
sion of me before I even meet them, even at 
the laundry or the deli, and that's something 
I haven’t dealt with most of my life. And in 
some ways I miss my anonymity; some car 
will cut you off in the street and you'll go, 
“Motherfucker,” and then they'll be like, 
“Oh, hey, man! You’re great.” And then 
you're like, Shit, I can't even yell at this guy! 
Q9: Do you think that as a kid you would have 
hung out with Mike Wheeler and the boys? 


context, and sometimes it is—then I'm 
cool with it. Whatever gets you to broaden 
your scope and find your own Hopper in 
your world—that guy or that girl at the 
deli who has a beautiful soul but is a little 
bit fat or whatever—that's what I want to 
expand in this world. I'm all for working 
out and being healthy, but this obsession 
with perfection, especially physical per- 
fection, is ludicrous, and it's ultimately a 
losing battle. I don't care how beautiful 
you are, you're going to hit 60, if you're 
lucky, and youre not going to look so 
great. You might as well enjoy yourself 
and other people for more than what they 
are physically. 

Q11: What was it like to go from being the 
“dad bod" champion to working with Ryan 
Reynolds's personal trainer to get in shape 
for Hellboy? 

HARBOUR: I couldn't do a lot of training 
because the thing is all prosthetics. A lot 
of what I was doing was power and strength 
training, and it does change your mind-set. 


ITS IMPORTANT, EVEN THROUGH DEPRES- 
AT THINGS THAT SCARE YOU. 


SION, TO LOOK 


part of amass cultural phenomenon? 
HARBOUR: It was super fun, but it was very 
unexpected. We were just hunkered down 
making the show, and I was completely neu- 
rotic about whether or not I was good in it 
and whether or not the show was good. I 
have no gauge anymore about whether peo- 
ple will like something. Then, the weekend 
it came out was unlike anything I’ve ever ex- 
perienced. I’ve done a lot of work over the 
years, and usually what happens is two peo- 
ple from my past will text and be like, “Hey, 
man, you're great in Rake.” That weekend, 
hundreds of people I hadn't spoken to— 
my phone lit up from all these contacts 
going, “Stranger Things, Stranger Things, 
Stranger Things.” And then these BuzzFeed 
articles came out about “Which Stranger 
Things character are you?" I was like, “Holy 
shit, I’ve never been a part of this.” I’m so 
happy it happened with Stranger Things, 
because I love it so deeply. 

Q8: How about those articles on your dating 
history and your new status as a sex symbol? 


96 200 


HARBOUR: Yeah, because I think they're 
exactly like my crew. I was never really 
part of the popular kids in middle school, 
but I was not the nerdiest of the nerds ei- 
ther. There was a kind of a middle group 
that I feel Mike and his group occupy. Peo- 
ple ask me sometimes which character on 
the show I identify with the most, and it's 
Noah. People thought I was a bit of a weird 
kid and overly sensitive, and so one of the 
reasons it was so fun to play Hopper was 
that I got to save that kid. In a way, it was 
likeIwas saving myself. 

Q10: Merriam-Webster posted a GIF of you 
on Twitter as a visual definition of "dad bod." 
You've been a good sport about it, but does it 
ever sting a bit? 

HARBOUR: It does, but I'm into expand- 
ing people's idea of what's sexy, because 
I think our culture is almost anorexic 
in terms of what it views as sexy. To me, 
human beings are sexy. If you want to ex- 
ploit the fact that my body isn't perfect 
but you find me sexy—if it's used in that 


When I'm working on a character, my sub- 
conscious starts to take over and I start to 
just do things and make choices like that 
character. When I play Hopper, it's a cer- 
tain way, and then when I played Hellboy 
it got into this kind of bestial thing. The 
weight training and all that stuff kind of 
fueled this hulking horde—this kind of 
bold mentality that I really liked. 

Q12: You go above and beyond with your fans 
when it comes to Twitter: You attended one 
fan's senior-year photo shoot and officiated at 
another's wedding. Will you do anything for 
your fans? 

HARBOUR: [Laughs] I won't do anything, 
but I got to this place with social media 
in general where it had become sort of 
an echo chamber. No good was coming 
of it, but I had a lot of feelings, so I was 
like, What can I do that would actually 
make people feel good and that would put 
me out there a little bit? I came up with 
these Twitter challenges. To me, because 
I've been through the gamut with social 


STYLING BY MICHAEL KINNANE; OPENING PAGES: SHIRT BY KENNETH COLE, UNDERSHIRT BY HANES; THIS PAGE: T-SHIRT BY J. CREW 


media, I now feel it's a bit of a game of 
double dare where you want me to stand 
on the table and quack like a chicken or 
whatever. Anything I can do to provide a 
little more joy in this weird world we're 
living in right now that is simple and pure 
and just unadulterated fun, I’m down for. 
Q13: Speaking of Twitter challenges, you got 
enough retweets for Greenpeace to send you 
to Antarctica. Do you have hope for human- 
ity's ability to solve climate change? 
HARBOUR: The simple answer is no. Ithink 
we’re in a really bad place, and I don’t 
know, with self-centeredness the way itis, 
that there’s any way out. So yeah, I get de- 
pressed. But I think it’s important, even 
through your depression, to continue to 
look at things that scare you. It truly is 
the most terrifying concern of our life- 
times, and it’s the concern that drives all 
other concerns. Ifyou have a problem with 
migrant caravans or illegal immigration, 
that's climate change: Food shortages and 
surpluses are happening in different areas 
and places are getting destroyed, and so 
people have to move. Most of the political 
concerns around this world stem from cli- 
mate change. If we could make the earth 
a more uniformly palatable place to live, 
there would be fewer wars over territory, 
resources and things like that. 

But even in the midst of inevitable defeat, 
you still have to seize the struggle, right? 
It’s kind of the idea of Albert Camus’s The 
Plague: We've still got to wake up every 
morning and go to work even if we know 
we're not going to stop the plague. 

Q14: Do you want to have kids one day? 
HARBOUR: I'm on the fence. To be hon- 
est, Idon't want to have a kid if in 15 years 
the planet is dead and they're 15 years old. 
Also, we do have a certain thing in our cul- 
ture where we deify family. It's like when 
anyone has a baby everyone's like, “Oh 
my God!" They're so happy for them. I 
want to imbue people who choose not to 
have babies with the same joy, because the 
greenest thing you can do for the entire 
planet is not to breed. I've done it for 43 
years—but you can all call me a hypocrite 
and notagood environmentalist when I do 
have ason or daughter five years from now. 
015: A lot of your work evokes the soulful, 
wounded leading men of the 1970s. Who are 
your acting heroes? 

HARBOUR: Certainly Jack Nicholson, Gene 
Hackman, Harrison Ford, Roy Scheider, 
Richard Dreyfuss. All these guys from 
those 1970s films, which is whereIlearned 
what it was to be a man. When Stranger 
Things came along and I thought I could 
do that for another generation, it was so 


98 20Q 


gratifying. I don't feel we show as much 
on-screen—or if we do, we give some nod 
to a character's damage but don't actually 
go into it. Their damage is too unpalatable 
for commercial entertainment and too in- 
dulgent for independent entertainment. 
It's hard to find that balance of a damaged 
hero you can get behind. 

Q16: In 2017, Stranger Things won a Screen 
Actors Guild Award and you gave a fiery 
speech calling out bullies and making the 
case for empathy. Where did that come from? 
HARBOUR: It's funny, becausethat speech 
has been interpreted by a thousand dif- 
ferent people a thousand different ways. 
I get death threats from the people who 
thought it was about Trump support- 
ers. For me, it genuinely was a cultural 
statement. I thought to myself, What 
would Hopper do? I've been a Hollywood 
outcast for so many years, but I wanted 
to give a bit of a cultural critique of the 
narcissism that we contribute to a cul- 
ture that makes people feel alone, as 
opposed to the ultimate, fundamental 
reason for art, which is to make people 
feel included. One of the things I'm so 
proud of about Stranger Things is that, 
like the "dad bod" thing, people can feel 
included. They can feel they don't need 
a perfect body; they don't need to be so 
witty and smart and strong. They don't 
sit back in awe of the characters; instead 
they actually identify with them and then 
see that those characters can do heroic 
things. In a way, we were the nerdy kids 
at the table, so I thought I'd get up there 
and say, "Let's dothis together. Let's con- 
tribute to a culture that creates empathy 
and destroys narcissism"—as opposed to 
getting dressed up and sort of being Kar- 
dashian about the whole thing. 

Q17: Which were more intense, the online 
comments or the IRL ones? 

HARBOUR: I think I was on the front page 
of Reddit or whatever, but there were also 
neo-Nazi death threats: “We know where 
you live" and *We got all the guns" and 
“We're coming for you, you piece of shit." 
A lot of people come up to me and say they 
love that speech. I've never had someone 
come up to me and say, “That speech you 
gave was a piece of shit, you dick." 

018: You talked in that speech about reject- 
ing bullies. Were you bullied at all in school? 
HARBOUR: Oh yeah, I think probably most 
of us were. But I don’t think bullying ends 
when you leave school. People are bul- 
lies in all kinds of ways. I have bullying 
qualities that I hate about myself. So that 
speech is as much for me as it is for other 
people. It's a reminder of things that I 


want in this world, ideals that I don't nec- 
essarily live up to myself. 

Q19: /f you had achieved your current level 
of success in your 20s, how do you think you 
would have handled it? 

HARBOUR: It would have been awful. I 
would have been a jerk. I would have been 
mean to waiters. My narcissism would 
have been through the roof. I would have 
felt entitled and deserving. But the great 
thing about success happening after the 
age of 40 is you don't really care. If there 
is any kind of divinity that has guided 
my life, it's the things that have been pre- 
vented from happening. I wanted that kind 
of success in my 20s, and I was prevented 
from having it, and then I wanted it in my 
30s, and it was prevented. Finally, after I 
turned 35, I remember completely giving 
up on that dream and thinking I was too 


old, and then it came to me. Like, okay, I 
got it—when I don't care, it comes to me. 
Q20: You've said that you've felt broken and 
alone most of your life. Has success helped? 
HARBOUR: Yeah. I feel more assured and 
more confident. Success doesn't make a 
dent in the fundamental issues I struggle 
with, like human relationships, but when 
I'm embroiled in that brokenness or that 
alone feeling, I can sort of rely on ^Well, at 
least my apartment's nice.” At least I have 
those things to fall back on. But the core is- 
sues are alifelongtrek through therapy and 
self-understanding, and those issues still 
exist and are just a product of being alive. 
As human beings we're these crazy and in- 
teresting creaturesthat have too much con- 
sciousness for our own good, these weird 
fleshy thingsthat walk around and are con- 
fused. I'm not apart from that at all. H 


EXCERPTED FROM MR. KNOW-IT-ALL: THE TARNISHED WISDOM OF A FILTH ELDER BY JOHN WATERS. PUBLISHED BY FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX, MAY 21, 2019. COPYRIGHT © 2019 JOHN WATERS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 


WITH LITERAL PISS AND FIGURATIVE VINEGAR, THE INIMITABLE DIRECTOR 
AND SELF-PROCLAIMED "FILTH ELDER" GIVES A MASTER CLASS ON HOW TO HARNESS 
HUMOR AND HORNINESS TO START A REVOLUTION 


I'm a Yippie at heart, a smart-ass late-1960s fake revolutionary 
who even today thinks riots are a good place to get lucky for sex. 
A refried radical who still knows how to throw the tear gas back 
at the police yet is never in the front lines of a standoff where 
you can get squirted with fire hoses or beaten with nightsticks. 
Iguess even then I understood that the “revolution” wasn't really 
going to happen, but the anarchy surrounding the idea at the 
time was certainly exciting. I'm white, so I never got a “rough 
ride" in a paddy wagon. The few times I was arrested I was always 
released from lockup on my own recognizance, not on bail like a 
poor person. I'm a brat, even at 72, and still look forward to politi- 
cal trouble. Civil disobedience is better than Botox any day. 

God, I miss the Yippies—those “Groucho Marxists," as they 
were referred to by ABC News. Angry left-wing hippies who were 
tired of giving peace a chance and instead staged hilariously dis- 
respectful political stunts such as throwing fake money to the 
crowds at the New York Stock Exchange and watching the peo- 
ple scramble to pick it up. Or threatening to put LSD in Chicago's 
water supply. “Levitating” the Pentagon with mind control dur- 
ing a demonstration to spook Republicans. I think I actually 
pissed on the Justice Department building in D.C. with a bunch 
of Yippies during a demonstration. You should have seen the hor- 
rified face of Attorney General John Mitchell as he watched the 
“piss-in” from his office window. 

The Yippie leaders wrote devilish little how-to books that cor- 
rupted further the hippie ideals of the times. Steal This Book by 
Abbie Hoffman became the first best-seller that had to be kept 
off the shelves and under the counter for a whole new set of obvi- 
ous reasons. Abbie Hoffman was my spiritual leader—a media 
manipulator who used humor as a weapon against his enemy. 
Even Andrew Breitbart, the late right-wing activist, admitted 
to me when we did Bill Maher's show together that Abbie had 
been a big influence on him—he just used the same tactics for 
the other side. 

Paul Krassner was our “Citizen Kane." Not only did he come up 
with the actual word yippie, he wrote and edited the most radical 
humor magazine of my lifetime, The Realist. Its outrageous cover 
story in May 1967, "The Parts That Were Left Out of the Kennedy 
Book," was so timely and rude that some media outlets actually 
believed he had the goods on what got censored in William Man- 
chester's book on the Kennedy assassination. Krassner's comic 
theory that LBJ supposedly penetrated the bullet hole in the 
throat of Kennedy's corpse with his penis must have been the cat- 
alyst that inspired me to shoot the entire Kennedy assassination 
scene with Divine playing Jackie and climbing over the trunk of 
the limo in that bloodied Chanel suit and pillbox hat just three 
months later for my film Eat Your Makeup. 

The Berkeley Barb was another useful radical publication— 


a weekly paper devoted to personal sex ads (thought to be very 
progressive at the time) and how-to advice about ripping off the 
establishment. Hidden in their classifieds were the actual AT&T 
codes, which changed annually, enabling you to invent phony 
working credit card numbers to make free long-distance calls be- 
fore there was such a thing as a cell phone. I remember fondly rip- 
ping off Ma Bell in phone booths all across the country for years 
thanks to The Berkeley Barb’s illegal consumer guide. 

The radical left was so homophobic that gay men were rare in 
the Yippie world until Jim Fouratt, one of the first gay activists, 
showed up at a rally to support Huey Newton at Yale University in 
New Haven and came out in between Black Panther speeches to 
rant about gay rights. Blacks may have had their Jim Crow laws 
to protest, but now it was time for “Mary Crow" laws to crumble 
too! Both the Panther men and the white Yippie men blanched 
at Fouratt's demands. Here was a new militancy that completely 
threatened the left's macho ideas. With no way to assimilate, 
these straight-guy leaders of both races were suddenly behind the 
times. All in one afternoon. 

Lesbians had always had a gripe with left-wing men's 
misogyny, but when Rat magazine came out and combined dyke 
power with militant feminist hetero-rage and a sense of humor 
against male pig behavior to women, a new Yippie message was 
born. The fully nude cover shots of “slum goddesses” announced 
that some left-wing men risked getting their asses kicked if 
something didn't change. Underarm hair on women became the 
new rallying cry against the hippie male gaze. Fags and dykes 
together were a definite new wing of defiance. 

Yet, was I the only gay man in the movement at the time who 
still felt excluded and hurt that there were no out queer men lead- 
ers in the Weathermen? How about the Chicago 7? Nope. AII 
straight men. Did prophet John Africa tell any black gay men 
to join his back-to-nature group Move before or after the first 
shoot-out with Philadelphia police? If so, I never heard about 
them. Was I the only gay activist in the world who felt discrim- 
inated against when I realized there were no homos inside the 
Manson Family? Come on, Charlie, even the most insane, ridic- 
ulous or dangerous cult needs a little faggotry to ignite a revolu- 
tion. I'm glad you're dead. You were the piggy. A hetero one. 

ACT UP finally came to the rescue, but many of my gay 
friends had to die of AIDS before that happened. Sure, at first 
there was the Radical Faeries group, but they were a little too 
hippie-dippie for me, and besides, I'd look stupid wearing wings 
and living in the woods of Guerneville. ACT UP took AIDS mili- 
tancy and the idea of public theater, then mixed lesbian and gay 
men's anger, and used it to wake up the world about the AIDS 
crisis. Larry Kramer may have been strident and obnoxious to 
some, but without his endless ranting about the slow testing of 


PLAYBOY 101 


COLLEGE STUDENTS, STOP 
STUDYING! GET YOUR LAZY 
OVEREDUCATED ASSES OUT IN THE 
STREETS WHERE YOU BELONG. 


AIDS medications, many of my HIV-positive friends who barely 
made the cut between AZT and the new drugs of today would be 
no longer with us. 

ACT UP were the warriors we always needed, chaining them- 
selves to a New York Stock Exchange balcony to protest the high 
cost of AIDS treatment or shutting down the Food and Drug 
Administration for a day to press for a cure. Not since One mag- 
azine, the first gay radical publication, published the headline 
I AM GLAD I AM A HOMOSEXUAL, in 1958 (!), had there been such 
unsissy brave militancy, such in-your-face defiance! When one 
"affinity group" of ACT UP in New York City performed a brief 
memorial at Judson church for AIDS victim Mark Fisher (“I want 
my own political funeral to be fierce and deviant,” he had writ- 
ten before his death) and then walked the body in an open cas- 
ket from Greenwich Village to George H.W. Bush's campaign 
headquarters and “indicted” Bush for murder the day before the 
1992 presidential elections, even the police kept their distance in 
shock and maybe secret respect. Bush lost to Clinton the next day 
but was never charged with a crime. The crime of silence. 

ACT UP soldiers were knights in tarnished armor fighting in 
“cum-smeared tanks," as John Rechy so touchingly and naively 
wrote in optimism years before the AIDS holocaust. Raiding a 
mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City to harass that 
asshole Cardinal John O'Connor, long an enemy of the gay com- 
munity who had recently come out against safe-sex education in 
the schools, some gay radicals drew the line at one of the protest- 
ers who grabbed a communion wafer, broke it in half and threw it 
to the ground. 

Not me! The Catholic Church is our enemy. They have bashed 
me, my culture and everything I believe in from the beginning 
of A.D., so I have no guilt about bashing them back right now. The 
anti-pope march that was held against Benedict XVI in London 
in September 2010 was a festive occasion that I luckily attended. 
Such a cool and cute crowd of pissed-off gay kids and sympathiz- 
ers of all races and sexual preferences. A sense of humor united 
all. FUCK THE POPE signs could be expected, but I WOULDN’T FUCK 
THE POPE was even better. FUCK THE POPE BUT USE A CONDOM 
reflected a new spin on political correctness. Of course, child 
abuse by the clergy and the covering up of this brotherhood of 
pedophiles was endlessly spotlighted (ABSTINENCE MAKES THE 
CHURCH GROW FONDLERS), and even new theories were floated 
with wit (JESUS HAD TWO DADDIES; OPIUM IS BETTER THAN 
RELIGION). “Pope? Nope!” chants went out, and when a big dyke 


102 


activist leader yelled to the crowd, “What do we want?" and the 
intelligent and unviolent crowd yelled back, *Rational thought!" 
I knew English restraint had reached a new level. Rational 
thought? Not exactly the fighting words of revolution, but what 
the hell, wit can be spoken softly. THE POPE WEARS A STUPID HAT 
said one decidedly unaggressive protester's sign. Could under- 
statement be the new dangerous? 

This new pope, Francis, the one everybody seems to love, is 
even worse, if you ask me. Anita Bryant did more for gay rights 
than this co-opting, faux-queer-friendly fraud ever did. At least 
Anita made us angry and inspired rebellion and fury against 
her stupid homophobia (which eventually ruined her career). 
But this new guy does nothing and pretends to be gay positive. 
Remember that song “Smiling Faces Sometimes" by the Temp- 
tations with the lyrics *Beware of the pat on the back. It just 
might hold you back"? This is Francis. “Good queer," he seems 
to reply when he utters, ^Who am I to judge?" about gay mar- 
riage. Who are you? You're the fucking pope for Christ's sake, 
that's who you are! 

He's even worse to women than he is to homos. The ban on or- 
daining female priests in the Catholic Church will *last forever," 
he recently announced. I guess his “Year of Mercy" is sup- 
posed to appease the weaker sex? Here he allows priests to for- 
give women who have had abortions—sort of like parking-ticket 
amnesty. He actually explained that these "expanded opportuni- 
ties" would be under his order for “obtaining the indulgences." 
Indulgences? Is he kidding? Didn't indulgences go out with the 
Reformation? Again, he changes nothing. Abortion is still a 
"grave sin." Do all the unrepentant abortion gals join the unbap- 
tized babies in limbo who are still waiting in total darkness for 
the privilege of seeing God, yet are now forgotten by the Church, 
which fairly recently announced that the very concept of limbo 
had been discontinued? 

Pope Francis believes in miracles even though his most recent 
rushed canonization of Mother Teresa came under scrutiny when 
doctors and state health officials debunked the claim that her 
prayers had cured a woman of cancer. Her cyst, not cancer, had 
been treated for months at a government hospital and destroyed 
thanks to medicine, not some Catholic hocus-pocus. 

How about a real miracle for Pope Francis? He becomes the 
first man to get pregnant and we give him a year of no mercy on 
deciding what women should do with their own bodies. Not until 
he'sgiven birth to a female transgender Christ child of a different 


color will we indulge him with a little queer mercy of our own. 

I'm a big fan of the Satanic Temple. These pro-separation- 
between-church-and-state, antireligious advocates who believe 
in Satan as a “metaphorical construct" are the closest thing 
we have today to the Yippies. I'm not a real satanist, of course, 
especially after Anton LaVey and his Church of Satan made it so 
showbiz cheesy in the 1960s. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't 
have a thing to wear to a goat sacrifice. But these new comic devil 
worshippers who have been billed as “First Amendment perfor- 
mance artists" who "offer tongue-in-cheek support to the fallen 
angel" know that the word satanist is a lightning rod for contro- 
versy that can be used for humorous activism. It’s hard not to rise 
to their hilarious devilish bait. 

I first heard of this group when they did one of their *pink 
masses" at the gravesite of homophobe Christian lunatic Fred 
Phelps's mother in Mississippi. A satanic graveside ritual per- 
formed after a religious enemy's death that turns the deceased 
once-hetero spirit gay seemed like a perfect new sacrament to me. 
The Satanic Temple also installed a “snaketivity” display next 
to the Christian Nativity scene that was set up at the Michigan 
state capitol. You could see the confused look of the children as 
they gazed back and forth between Beelzebub and baby Jesus. A 
child's right to choose is an important lesson in religious free- 
dom we should all fight for. 

When Bibles were allowed to be distributed in public schools 
in Florida, the Temple handed out a satanic coloring book to chil- 
dren in response. And in Oklahoma they unveiled plans to install 
right nexttothe Ten Commandments monument in the state cap- 
itol a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall bronze statue of Baphomet, the 
horned and hooved totem of contemporary satanism, sitting on 
a throne while two sculpted innocent children look up to him in 
wonderment. When the Oklahoma State Supreme Court ordered 
the Ten Commandments removed, the Satanic Temple scrapped 
the plan and moved the devil statue to its Detroit branch, where 
a local pastor complained the ceremony was “a welcome-home 
party for evil." It now rests unpeacefully in the Satanic Temple's 
headquarters in...where else? Salem, Massachusetts. 


Opening page: John 

Waters in 1998 on the set of 
Pecker, which he calls his 
“nice” movie. “It got made,” 
he says, “mainly because 
Japanese teenage girls 

loved Edward Furlong and 
he had agreed to star in the 
title role." Right: Waters 
with Divine in New York, 
attending the 1975 premiere 
of Female Trouble, the 
second film of his so-called 
trash trilogy. Star of that 
dark comedy and several 
other underground Waters 
films, Divine is best known as 
the filth-loving Babs Johnson 
in Pink Flamingos. 


Doug Mesner, a.k.a. Lucien Greaves, co-founder and spokes- 

person for the church, is charismatic in a demonic way. Yes, 
he wears all black and inverted-cross accessories, but what 
clinches his aura is a disfigured, scarred eye that never moves 
in its socket, which gives him a signature look that is at first 
unnerving and then just plain devilishly sexy. He's a trouble- 
maker in the tradition of Abbie Hoffman but still a serious 
fighter for freedom from religion, and he's a staunch oppo- 
nent of doctors who believe in “dissociative identity disorder," 
also known as multiple personality syndrome, which resulted 
in the Satanic Panic that swept our country and imprisoned 
many innocent day-care workers following the McMartin 
school child-molestation hysteria. (They were innocent, just 
in case you forgot.) Lucien crashes psychiatric conventions 
and confronts publicly the doctors who still believe in such 
nonsense. You should join him. Send money. Spread the word 
before they commit you! 
It's time to go beyond the valley of the Red Army Faction, over 
the top of the Venceremos Brigade and beneath the valley of the 
Jewish Defense League to create a whole new brand of capital- 
ist activism. One that uses a completely original positive form 
of comic terrorism to humiliate and embarrass our political 
and moral enemies. We can be rich, poor or the ever-vanishing 
in-between, but we need to regroup, conspire and attack with 
razor-sharp precision. College students, stop studying! High 
school kids have already walked out and made you look like 
slackers in the rebellion department. Get your lazy overedu- 
cated asses out in the streets where you belong. There's no such 
thing as “undecided” anymore. This time, unlike the 1960s, 
we're gonna win. 

Don't act up, ACT BAD! No matter what your sexual prefer- 
ence is, pretend you haven't gotten laid in six months and use 
that horny drive for release in a political way. Join our little 
coup d'état and get out there and cause unrest no matter who's 
running the show. Outside agitation ¿s the fountain of youth. 
Let it flow. B 


PLAYBOY 103 


HOT TAKE II OR LEAVE II 


CAN'T WAIT TO POST ABOUT THE LATEST TRENDING 
TOPIC WITHOUT CONSIDERING BOTH SIDES? I'M 
RIGHT THERE WITH YOU 


WHEN I AGREED TO WRITE A HOT TAKE ON 
hot takes, my first thought was Damn, Daniel, back at it again 
with the meta plans! (My brain is now essentially a series of doc- 
tored memes.) Next, I went to the dictionary to figure out what 
exactly I had agreed to. Merriam-Webster describes a hot take 
as ^a published reaction or analysis of a recent news event that, 
often because of its time-sensitive nature, doesn't offer much in 
the way of deep reflection." Lacks deep reflection? Perfect. Very 
on-brand for humanity's current iteration. 

Let me back up, though. You should know my credentials. 
I'm well-versed in strong opinions. I've been a stand-up come- 
dian for the past decade-plus. By its very nature, stand-up is 
all about hot takes. You're onstage, your voice authoritatively 
amplified, and, usually in a stylized or performative way, 
you're expounding on theories such as why religion and gay 
rights are not mutually exclusive, or pointing out some other- 
wise unquestioned absurdity in life. Like, when will the world 
be ready for “Mambo No. 6"? (Answer: Anytime—but more 
Monica this round, please.) 

Even the most abstract version of comedy has a point of view 
(which is just a fancy way of saying opinion). If people are 
laughing, they don't necessarily care if they don't agree with 
what you're saying. In fact, the standard response to stand-up 
is a series of equally strong opinions, as some of the audience 
will think you were “funny” and others, mostly on YouTube, 
will tell you to *kill yourself." 

By virtue of my profession, then, I'm going on record as pro- 
hot take. And like many comedians, I spend a lot of time on 
Twitter—the land of hot takes, as opposed to the opposite, 
which you might call freezing nonsense. Everyone with the 
gumption to start an account, which we now know doesn't even 
require sentience, can dissent and polemicize to their heart's 
(or algorithm's) content. 

Within free social-media platforms, the hot take is hand- 
clap emoji, 100 percent emoji, fire emoji. But woe unto the 
content creator who missteps. Most people—celebrities or 
not—are one tweet or viral moment away from being “can- 
celed." The outrage pendulum swings all kinds of ways. 

The positive end of this is accountability movements like 
#MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter. The more cautionary trajec- 
tory is expecting the same rigid good-versus-evil paradigms 
that often marginalize groups in the first place, painting their 
members as complete heroes or villains, forgetting that nearly 
all humans are a mix of both. It's scary to admit, but we all 
make mistakes. No one has a perfect take on everything, and 
nuance is crucial to understanding even those we perceive to 
be already on our side. (Oops, I'm veering into deep reflection 
now, and that's the opposite of clickbait—it's click wait.) 

Like hot takes, stand-up comedy can be reductive. You have 


104 HUMOR 


BY APARNA NANCHERLA 


to sacrifice gray areas for the simplicity of the joke. If you in- 
clude every point of view, you dilute the punch line. That’s not 
to say those views shouldn’t be voiced—in fact, giving voice to 
nuance is often how progress happens. But it’s also the reason 
hot takes can’t account for everyone and everything. 

In fact, in this very piece, by trying to acknowledge multiple 
angles of the what and why and how of hot takes, I essentially 
milked mine down to a tepid pudding. But perhaps that’s why 
we find hot takes so comforting: They’re decisive in a way the 
adult world often isn’t. But beyond all the absolutes, it’s nice 
to remember that many of us are trying our best. Tepid or not, 
that’s worth at least a pudding, if not more. (And if you freeze 
the rest of that pudding? Pudding pops!) И 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS SCHOONOVER 


STYLING BY JENNY HAAPALA 


LEFT: BLOUSE BY FRAME DENIM; RIGHT: SHIRT BY OUR LEGACY 


NU COMMENT 


BY ADAM PALLY 


¢ 


HERE’S A HOT TAKE ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH: 
I don’t believe it should be legal to post comments on the same 
web page as the content—and please don’t @ me” for this. Who 
am I? I’m film, television and now YouTube personality Adam 
Pally. I’ve been in many of your favorite movies and on TV shows 
that haven’t been successes. 

One year, I starred in a movie with dogs that finished in last 
place at the box office on the same day two separate networks 
canceled the two TV shows I was on (I’m exaggerating, though 
some days it does feel that way). Needless to say, internet com- 
ments have been part of my life and career since I started іп com- 
edy, all the iPhones ago. 

I can honestly say I have never read one online comment that 


HE WANTS EVERYONE'S VOICE TO BE HEARD—AS 
LONG AS IT'S NOT UNDERNEATH 
EPISODES OF HIS TV SHOWS 


changed my life for the better. Do I appreciate the compliments? 
Sure, but as is human nature, the negative ones drown out the 
positive ones. Am I a big Hollywood snowflake baby? Probably. 
But what I'm asking is, Why are we so excited to hurt each other 
in the most visible place possible, just because we can? 

I'm not saying it should be illegal for us to express our opinions 
on the internet. I do it regularly—on Twitter, Instagram, Red- 
dit, subreddit, subreddit of subreddit. But I wouldn't do it under- 
neath someone's content, because I'm not gonna talk shit to your 
face. I'm gonna talk shit behind your back, when I think there 
will be no consequences for you or for me. You know, like a nor- 
mal human being. 

It truly makes America special that people from all walks of 
life can voice how they feel in private or in public. As an artist— 
yes, Iam wearing a scarf as I write this—I would never challenge 
anyone's right to speak his or her mind. But if you want to com- 
ment about a video, do it on another page. I'm simply asking for a 
separation between the media and the opinions of the public via 
one small fucking link. 

A comment is different from a review or an opinion. A comment 
is a bother. Our thoughts on what we're experiencing shouldn't be 
directly associated with the experience's success or failure. And I 
see you getting ready to @ me* underneath the online version of 
this article, but if you do, PLAYBOY will put the comments on an- 
other page. (I probably should have checked with PLAYBOY first be- 
fore assuming they would put these comments on another page.) 

Imagine online commenting in the real world. In no way, shape 
or form would the Louvre let me walk in wearing a mask, tell 
everyone my name is baesaprocky349 and scream in front of the 
Mona Lisa that she's not all that—that, actually, she's not looking 
at me from every angle. I'd be taken out quicker than some of my 
shows have been taken off television. Am I saying my new show, 
Champaign ILL, on YouTube Premium, is the Mona Lisa? I sure 
am. I can say whatever I want; this is my article. 

Internet comments are dangerous, and they've been hit 
with restrictions due to sexual harassment, racism and anti- 
Semitic and homophobic trolling. So please stand behind me for 
commonsense internet-commenting laws. I realize this doesn't 
appeal to everybody, which is why I'm trying to convince you by 
calling them common sense. 

Speaking of trolling, I have no stats to back this up, but I am 
positive Russian bots are doctoring Happy Endings's Hulu view- 
ership. There's no way we're that low. 

That reminds me: While I have your attention, please watch 
Champaign ILL on YouTube Premium. And now that I think 
about it, feel free to leave a comment. I'm nothing if not a man of 
no convictions. E 


"I'm still not entirely sure what “don't (0 me” means. 


PLAYBOY 105 


PLAYBOY S PARTY JOKES 


IN HONOR OF OUR 65TH ANNIVERSARY YEAR AND THIS ISSUE'S THEME, WE PRESENT AN 
AMUSING ASSORTMENT, PULLED FROM THE ARCHIVES, ON THE VAGARIES OF SPEECH 


HAVING just been criticized in a party conclave, the politician 
wryly told newsmen, “I’ve just learned the difference between 
a cactus and a caucus.” 

“What's that, Senator?" he was asked. 

“Im the case of a cactus," he retorted, “all the pricks are on 
the outside." 


OUR Unabashed Dictionary defines censor as a person who 
sticks his no's into other people's business. 


THE editor of a small weekly newspaper, in a rage over sev- 
eral congressional bills that had recently been passed, ran 
a scathing editorial under the headline HALF OUR LEGISLA- 
TORS ARE CROOKS. Many prominent local politicians were 
incensed, and tremendous pressure was exerted on him to 
retract the statement. He finally succumbed to the pressure 
and ran an apology with the headline HALF OUR LEGISLATORS 
ARE NOT CROOKS. 


A woman visited her doctor for her annual exam. The doctor 
asked, “Are you and your husband sexually active?” 

“Yes,” the woman said. “We have verbal sex every day.” 

“Verbal sex? I think you mean oral sex,” the doctor said. 

“I mean verbal sex,” the woman said. “Every morning my 
husband and I pass each other in the hall and say, ‘Fuck you!’ ” 


GRAFITTO spotted on a tavern wall: THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT 
THE EARTH (IF THAT’S OKAY WITH THE REST OF YOU). 


AT a recent Georgetown reception for a retiring diplomat, two 
State Department underlings struggled with small talk. Finally, 
one asked the other, “Tell me, Harry, what do you consider the 
two most interesting topics of conversation nowadays?” 


106 


“Sex and politics, I guess,” Harry replied. 
“I agree with you there,” said the first, nodding. “What 
about the second topic?” 


THE young reporter was interviewing a woman who had just 
reached her 100th birthday. 

“To what do you attribute your remarkable good health?” 
he asked. 

“Well,” she replied, “I’ve always eaten moderately, worked 
hard, I don’t smoke or drink, and I keep good hours.” 

“Have you ever been bedridden?” the reporter asked. 

“Well, yes,” said the elderly lady, “but don’t put that in 
your paper.” 


AMERICANS are people who insist on living in the present, 
tense. 


AN underground newspaper suggested recently that the 
marijuana question could easily be settled by a joint session 
of Congress. 


THE attorney was briefing Mrs. Harris before calling her to 
testify. “You must swear to tell the truth,” the lawyer warned. 
“Do you understand?” 

“Yes. I’m to swear to tell the truth.” 

“Have you any idea what will happen if you don’t tell the 
truth?” he asked. 

“Texpect,” she replied, “our side will win.” 


CERTAINLY, America has its problems,” the pompous politi- 
cian roared. “But we're still the only people in the world who are 
free to criticize our courts, our Congress and our president." 

"That's what you think," the foreign diplomat retorted. 
“People all over the world are criticizing your courts, your 
Congress and your president." 


OUR Unabashed Dictionary goes on 
to define sex survey as “asermon 
on the mount." 


SIGN at the entrance of a nudist 
colony: PLEASE BARE WITH US. 


BLOPER 


“This 15 Jake. He's not politically correct or even generally correct." 


PLAYBOY 10/ 


FANS HAVE BEEN 
Š AWAITING HER NEXT 
N ALBUM FOR THREE 


YEARS. CAN THE 


the INCOMPARABLE 


MOST FEARLESS (AND 
GENRE-DEFYING) 
ARTIST FINALLY BREAK 
THROUGH? 


BY 


EVE BARLOW 


Ü 


STYLING BY JASON REMBERT; LEFT: LACE BODYSUIT BY YANDY, FEATHER BOA FROM NY VINTAGE, TIGHTS BY YANDY, RING AND EARRINGS BY HOUSE OF EMMANUELE; RIGHT: BODYSUIT BY YANDY, ROBE BY NONYE B, TIGHTS BY YANDY, NECKLACE FROM NY VINTAGE 


LIZZO TOTTERS INTO THE KITCHEN, FLASHES OF HER 
legs peeking through fishnets, her silhouette wrapped in a 
bodice. The artist begins to improvise her way out of her stilet- 
tos with a riff on the Weeknd's “Can't Feel My Face.” 

“I can't feel my feet when I'm in shoes,” she coos. “But I 
love it.” 

An order of pad thai arrives promptly at six р.м. She has 
been on set at this 1970s-Barbie-themed Hollywood apartment 
since this morning, and she hasn't eaten all day. "I'm happiest 
when I'm working or eating,” she says with a laugh that sounds 
like nothing less than a celebration of life. “Sometimes I can 
work and eat, like right now. That's when I'm real happy. Ha!” 

Happiness isn't what Lizzo is serving; Lizzo serves posi- 
tivity. Positivity is an outlook—it’s something you have to ac- 
tively practice. Sometimes positivity results in happiness. 
Yesterday Lizzo wasn't happy. On Twitter she was subtweet- 
ing someone who had upset her (“You a LYIN ASS NIGGA... 
IM SICK AND TIRED OF BEING TOLD YA BUM ASS FAIRY- 
TALES”). She calls her online presence a “body-positive per- 
sona.” Persona. That's key. Her music matches that persona. 
Her most-streamed song, “Good As Hell,” is a petition to 


women to prioritize themselves in relationships: “If he don't 
love you anymore / Just walk your fine ass out the door.” 

Lizzo wears her moods publicly to counteract the false nar- 
rative that being “positive” means surfing a perpetual high. 
“I found when I'd meet people at shows they'd be like, ‘Yo, are 
you always so happy?” And I'd be like, “Why people be asking 
me that?”” she says, waving her lacquered talons. “If I'm only 
showing the most positive moments, there's nothing to root 
for.” But, she warns, “I don't think everybody should do it. 
That's not their commerce. Keep taking pictures of your cat. 
You don't have to do the heavy lifting.” 

It's strange, the emotional intimacy we share online. I tell 
Lizzo this, and she nods. She knows that our culture of detach- 
ment creates opportunities for openness and likens her on- 
line relationships to a therapist-patient dynamic. Leaning on 
friends and family is harder. Your problems become their prob- 
lems. “Social media cuts that mess out,” she says. “I don't know 
how to describe it yet. This is new to all of us.” You could say 
Lizzo is part of a vanguard that's forging a more symbiotic, em- 
pathetic purpose for social media, an increasing consciousness 
of what we say and how we choose to say it. The internet is real 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY ADRIENNE RAQUEL 


life now; even without “that mess,” cyber relationships go deep. 
"It's not Myspace and LiveJournal anymore, bro," Lizzo says. 
The internet can't address physical solitude, though. “I’ve 
been extremely sad," she says. Lizzo, 30, has spoken previ- 
ously about her lowest point: She was 21 when her father died, 
and soon after she experienced homelessness. ^When I'm re- 
ally sad I have no perspective," she says. “ “This is the end! 
Nobody cares!’ Having perspective is my remedy. I'm gonna 
have the opportunity to experience the opposite of this. What 
is the opposite of being lied to? Trust. So I meditate on trust. 
That's hard to do, though, sis. I don't wallow into the future or 
the past like I did. I ask, "What am I feeling right now?” " 
Melissa Jefferson was born in Detroit and performed in her 
first marching band in the eighth grade. She learned to rap in 
high school, coming to hip-hop late; her childhood was spent 
in church. She co-founded the all-women ensembles the Chal- 
ice and GRRRL PRTY and studied applied music at the Uni- 
versity of Houston. In 2011, after her father's death, she moved 
to Minneapolis. There she struck up creative partnerships 
with Prince and, separately, producer Lazerbeak, with whom 
she produced her 2013 debut, Lizzobangers, on a shoestring 


is a lifestyle. I'm not a famous person, so I don't live that life- 
style." For now, she goes only where she's needed: online and 
to venues. “Bitch, I'm not gonna go where I ain't invited," she 
says. “It could be Jesus's 35th birthday party at the 40/40 Club 
with Jay-Z and Beyoncé turning water into wine. If my name 
isn't on that list and those people don't have an emotional con- 
nection to me, I don't give a fuck." 

But social media attracts а lot of phonies too. Does it ever get 
to be too much? “You better believe I'm gonna take me a break 
once I'm not needed. I don't like looking at my phone all day. 
Phones burn my fingertips. Look! Look at this burn on the tip 
of my finger!" She puts her finger in front of my nose. There is 
indeed a small patch of hardened skin. (“You so cute,” she says 
with a giggle. ^Your eyes crossed.") 

It's not enough for pop to be entertaining in 2019. Having 
an A-list producer no longer guarantees artists a Billboard top 
10. An artist needs to say something. Luckily, Lizzo has always 
had something to say. In 2013 she independently released the 
music video for “Batches & Cookies." In one scene, she rubs 
down a topless man with butter. In another, she stands outside 
government buildings in the Midwest with her sidekick, who 
is waving a rainbow flag. This was nearly two years before the 


“THE IMPORTANT THING IS MAKING SURE 
THIS SHIT DON T BECOME A TREND. WE 
GOTTA FIX OURSELVES IN THE CULTURE.” 


budget. Her reputation continued to build with the 2016 EP 
Coconut Oil, and by 2018 she was touring with Florence and 
the Machine and Haim, guest judging on RuPaul’s Drag Race 
and appearing on the digital cover of Teen Vogue. 

Last October she posted a video of herself playing the flute 
at a show—an instrumental interlude in her then unreleased 
song “Bye Bitch.” Thirteen seconds in, flanked by two backup 
dancers, she breaks into a choreographed routine, her left leg 
kicking forward in rapid fire, her arms pumping. The audi- 
ence erupts. She takes her flute to the mike once again before 
delivering the song’s final lyric: “Bitch, you emotional!” Lizzo 
captioned the video “HAVE U EVER SEEN A BITCH PLAY 
FLUTE THEN HIT THE SHOOT?!” It has gained more than 
5 million views and motivated her to release “Bye Bitch” on 
SoundCloud; Rolling Stone short-listed it as a “song you need 
to know,” writing that it “barely scrapes the surface of what 
Lizzo is capable of as an artist.” 

Lizzo came to southern California “by osmosis” about three 
years ago. MTV paid for her relocation as part of a deal for her 
to co-host Wonderland, a short-lived live-performance show. 
“I never said I'd move to L.A.," she says. She doesn't dislike 
Los Angeles. “Of course, I don’t like traffic or fault lines,” she 
says, laughing. She doesn’t party either, because Lizzo consid- 
ers celebrity a choice. “I don’t do famous-people stuff. Fame 


110 MUSIC 


Supreme Court decided Obergefell v. Hodges and half a decade 
before the creation of #20gayteen, an online LGBTQ move- 
ment launched by rising pop star Hayley Kiyoko that encour- 
ages queer people to fight back against repression. 

When it comes to body positivity, she was an advocate before 
Lane Bryantturned the movement into a marketing campaign, 
before Project Runway began to feature plus-size models and 
before Sony's brief casting of Amy Schumer as Barbie. Her 
song “En Love" was released in 2015. “Га never heard any- 
body say that before, so I thought, I'ma say it. I needed to hear 
it," she recalls. “People at shows would be so shocked when 
I'd sing ‘I’m in love with myself.” But Lizzo isn't angry that 
corporations capitalize on change. She argues that Beyoncé's 
use of the word feminist brought awareness to a new genera- 
tion. "The important thing is making sure this shit don't be- 
come a trend. We gotta be undeniable. We gotta fix ourselves 
in the culture so that we're unshakable. Body positivity has to 
be mainstream." 

Lizzo also uses her position to promote diversity. Today, she 
gets riled up talking about gender politics. "The way we talk 
about gender has to change," she says. “Gender doesn't really 
exist. We created social gender, so we gotta destigmatize it, take 
the importance off of skirt versus pants. That's not even real, 
dog. What are you fucking talking about? “This is a boys’ club.’ 


FROM TOP: FUR COAT BY ADRIENNE LANDAU, LINGERIE BY CURVE MUSE, NECKLACE FROM NY VINTAGE; LINGERIE AND TIGHTS BY YANDY, JEWELRY BY HOUSE OF EMMANUELE; LACE BODYSUIT AND 
TIGHTS BY YANDY, FEATHER BOA FROM NY VINTAGE, JEWELRY BY HOUSE OF EMMANUELE; FUR COAT BY ADRIENNE LANDAU, JEWELRY FROM NY VINTAGE, TIGHTS BY WOLFORD, SHOES FROM NY VINTAGE 


Getyour dumb ass outta here. This is agirls’ club, ho. Shut up.” 

All of this manifests itself in her music. “Scuse Me” from 
Coconut Oil is a letter of self-love. “I don’t need a crown to know 
that I’m a queen,” she sings. That became her slogan. Last 
year’s “Boys” was a Prince-like number with a “SexyBack”-type 
motif. Just as Lizzo is free of shackles, her music defies genre. 
It mimics her story of outsiderdom. She wants her audiences 
to act regal—to feel entitled to do whatever the hell they want. 
“It's impossible for me to do what anybody else does. I tried and 
it wasn’t good,” she says. 

Her forthcoming album, Cuz I Love You, out April 19, has 
been in the making for three years. She refuses to reveal any- 
thing about the project except that she’s producing it with 
Ricky Reed, her collaborator since 2015. “This album is where 
Lizzo comes into her own not only as vocalist but as producer, 
arranger, overall visionary,” Reed says. “We would have ses- 
sions where we wouldn’t even record anything. We would just 
sit down together with the productions and try different in- 
struments, arrangements, forms. There is not one split second 
of this album not touched by her.” 

“My individuality is a gift, but it’s my biggest creative obsta- 
cle,” Lizzo says. “I can do everything. I wanna do everything. I 
can rap fast, sing big, say things people never said before.” Her 
character voices are comical and powerful; she laces rhymes 
with intellect and oddities. Rapping was her break, but it was 
also a mask. Reed helped her find her voice. “I could freestyle 
sing over any trap song. That’s safe, that’s easy. But what hap- 
pens when I really unleash what I wanna say? I’ve learned not 
to be afraid of who I am.” This album, it seems, will center 
around singing, not raps and jibes. “I thought, Yo, what would 
Aretha Franklin’s rap record sound like in 2019?” she says, 
deadpan. “She didn’t hold back. She was a G.” 

The driving force behind Lizzo’s compulsion as a truth-sayer is 
a spiritual one. She senses emotional turmoil around her. Star 
signs and charts are fixtures in her day. “I’ve always felt the 
whole world, you know?” she says. “I don’t think I'd be able to 
write songs if I wasn’t an empath.” Recently something’s been 
up. “These last couple weeks, sis?” She pretends to wipe sweat 
off her brow on this lukewarm December day. “Woo! They’ve 
been crazy. It’s universal—when you look at the news and the 
news looks like how you feel; when you listen to music and it 
sounds like how you feel. Everybody’s having similar illnesses.” 

She references Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former 
attorney. “He said that Donald Trump led him from the light to 
darkness.” Lizzo has always been a fan of the adage “It’s dark- 
est before dawn,” but now she has a different read on it. “When 
you're in the moment, when it’s dark, it's gonna get darker, but 
it’s always gonna get light. Right now, it’s dark until we snap 
and it'll lead us to the light." The lightness is coming in early 
2019, according to her own clairvoyance, and perhaps not 
coincidentally, so is her new album. “Maybe that’s why it took so 
long,” she says. “We needed all this shit to want some medicine.” 

Lizzo may be what the music world needs, even if the indus- 
try has yet to signal the wide embrace she deserves. Until then, 
she counts her blessings. Today is one of them. “This is a literal 
dream,” she says, looking around at her PLayBoY shoot. “I watch 
movies about influential people’s lives—things they’ve done, 
boundaries they break. When you are yourself, you don’t realize 
the impact you have. Sometimes I be forgetting the impact I can 
have. This is one of those moments that remind me.” 


PLAYBOY 111 


„ай зу EEE “> 


JESSICA р OGILVIE 
Even as 
Catwalk and eh 


they entertaj 


N you from the 


ampagne room, America's 


izelle Marie was on her way home to New 
York City after working a shift at the 
Stadium Club, a Washington, D.C. estab- 
lishment whose website promises “the most 
talented exotic entertainment in the indus- 
try.” It was October 2017, and the 29-year- 
old dancer was flush with cash. 

But as the black car she’d hired whisked her homeward, 
Marie’s satisfaction turned to frustration. Scrolling through 
the social media feeds of other strippers, she saw, over and 
over, their complaints about club practices that prevent 
dancers from earning the kind of money she’d just made— 
specifically, the growing ranks of female bartenders who wear 
revealing clothing, dance provocatively and sometimes liter- 
ally stand between strippers and their tips. With online fol- 
lowings that can hit six figures, these so-called “startenders” 
are a reliable draw for customers and an easy distraction from 
the women working onstage. 

In a moment of exasperation, Marie typed up her feelings 
and posted them to Instagram: “I’m so sick of seeing my fellow 
dancers in New York complain about deserving what is sup- 
posed to be theirs. Me nor any dancer should have to leave the 
comfort of their own home/city to make a fucking check." 

For the next few days, Marie kept posting about the prob- 
lem using the hashtag #NYCStripperStrike. By the end of 
the week, she was trending. Local and national media picked 
up the story, and Marie gained tens of thousands of follow- 
ers. Over the next few months, she and other dancers joined 
larger protests, holding signs with slogans like OUR BODIES, 
OUR MINDS, OUR POWER; TWERK IS WORK; and STIGMA DRIVES 
VIOLENCE at the Women's March on Central Park West and the 
International Women's Strike in Washington Square Park. 

While startenders were her impetus, Marie had other, 
broader concerns as well. Across the U.S., strippers' rights are 
routinely and flagrantly infringed, with violations ranging 
from wage theft and employee misclassification to racial dis- 
crimination and sexual harassment. And according to many 
of the strippers we spoke with, few people inside or outside the 
clubs seem to care. 

"There is this treatment of strippers by people who run the 

joints that we don't matter and that we are replaceable," says 
Jacqueline Frances, a New York-based dancer, comedian and 
activist. "There isa really profound disrespect for strippers by 
management-— by everyone.” 
Stripping is legal sex work in America, but states and coun- 
ties have the right to regulate strip clubs—and many do, often 
quite spiritedly. Municipalities from San Diego to Tampa en- 
force a so-called six-feet rule, for example, which stipulates 
that dancers must stay two yards away from patrons. Oth- 
ers impose regulations regarding how much nipple or areola 
women can reveal, how much underboob or underbutt or—in 
New York, for instance—what percentage of a club's square 
footage can be dedicated to adult entertainment. But even as 
they legislate dancers' movements and clothing down to frac- 
tions of an inch, lawmakers tend to ignore the fact that those 
same workers' rights are being roundly disregarded. 

Among the industry's biggest problems is the corrupt and 
byzantine way money flows within its ranks. To begin with, 
strippers are typically classified as independent contrac- 
tors rather than employees. This means they should be able 
to come and go as they please, charge whatever they choose 


116 


to charge and dress as they see fit. Instead, many dancers de- 
scribe being assigned shifts, told what to charge and held ac- 
countable for keeping certain hours. Such regulations should 
qualify them as employees of the club rather than indepen- 
dent contractors paying for the privilege of working there. But 
strippers are frequently denied the legal protection afforded 
W-2 employees, including payroll taxes, health care and work- 
ers' rights protections. 

“Club owners want the benefits of you being an independent 
contractor, but they're treating you like an employee,” says 
Logan Dee, co-leader of We Are Dancers USA, an organization 
that advocates for strippers' rights. “You are getting the crap 
end of both sticks." 

Susan Crumiller, a New York-based attorney who works with 
&NYOStripperStrike, says that such misclassifications are a 
way for club owners to save money by cheating dancers and the 
Internal Revenue Service alike. 

"It's ultimately tax avoidance, and it's also labor-law avoid- 
ance," she says. "You're basically falsely claiming that you 
don't need to treat them in all the ways we have decided an em- 
ployer must treat an employee." 

Dee adds that the lump sums strippers are often required 
to hand over to clubs every night—^house fees," in stripper 
parlance—aren't subject to any oversight, meaning clubs can 
charge dancers as much as they want. 

“I have to pay to work,” she says. “It’s like a hairdresser, 
where you rent out a space. In theory, it sounds great—like I'm 
paying for their space, and whatever I make, I take home. But 
the fees are not regulated, and they can be astronomical." 

In the New York City clubs where Gizelle Marie has worked, 
including Starlets NYC and Club Angels NYC in Queens, and 
Club Lust in Brooklyn, house fees varied by hundreds of dol- 
lars, she says. (Management at all three establishments either 
did not respond to or declined requests for comment.) 

“On slower nights it could be $60 to $100," Marie says. “If it 
was a big event, it could be $150 to $300." 

In addition to house fees, strippers often hand over a percent- 
age of revenue from lap dances and VIP rooms, as well as a per- 
centage of their stage tips. They're expected to tip other staffers, 
including DJs, bartenders, house mothers, security workers and 
sometimes management, and some clubs charge extra fees for 
being late, missing shifts or other alleged infractions. 

Case in point: Comfort Alabama Carter has worked with just 
such clubs. The 22-year-old has dewy porcelain skin and sleepy 
hazel eyes, a tattoo of a scorpion on her left hand and more 
than a dozen others embellishing the rest of her body. She 
loves dancing, she says. “The only thing that makes me not like 
working at these clubs is having my money taken from me.” 

At many clubs, Carter explains, management asks for 
money from dancers with virtually no rhyme or reason. Such 
payments are calculated at varying rates depending on a tan- 
gle of factors: what time women arrive at work, how many lap 
dances they sell, which manager happens to be working that 
day, whether it’s a weeknight or a weekend. Some dancers are 
subjected to a 60-40 split when it comes to the money they 
make from lap dances—the house takes 40 percent, and the 
dancer takes 60—but that rate can change on a whim. 

According to Manuel", who has worked on and off for 10 years 
as a strip-club manager and DJ in Los Angeles, the mandate to 
collect house fees and portions of lap dance fees comes from the 
top. “Manuel” and other names marked with an asterisk have 
been changed.) That means managers, who are more likely to 


ILLUSTRATION BY QUENTIN MONGE 


interact with dancers on a daily basis, don't necessarily have 
any say over how much they charge, at least up front. 

“Clubs have a chain of command,” he says. “Some clubs have 
everything from a vice president to a president to district and 
regional managers. It’s always up to the owner or the people up 
the chain of command.” 

Adding to the confusion, says Valerie Stunning, a Las Vegas- 
based stripper and online activist, is the unspoken rule that 
dancers who tip bouncers and VIP-room hosts at a higher per- 
centage will be given access to higher-paying customers. 

“A lot of the VIP hosts and managers—mostly it happens in the 
bigger, corporate clubs—orchestrate these rings of girls who are 
giving them extraordinary amounts of the money they earn in 
exchange for introductions to the high-paying clients, so the rest 
of us don't really ever have access to them,” she says. 

Stunning says she learned this the hard way 
at one of the first Vegas clubs in which she 
worked. One night, as she walked across 
the floor to approach a customer 
who was sitting by himself in a 
remote part of the club, two 
bouncers walked in front of 
her, stood side-by-side and 
prevented her from going 
any farther. 

"They were all ex-UFC 
fighters; they were 
massive," she says. 
"They literally stepped 
toward the center of 
the entry point to 
physically block me 
from entering because 
I wasn't one of the girls 
they worked with." 

The experience has 
led Stunning to make a 
grim comparison. "It's my 
opinion," she says, "that this 
kind of behavior is just another 
form of pimping." 

For women of color, things are even 
worse. Clubs that are considered upscale 
often hire lighter-skinned and white women al- 

most exclusively, and at clubs in lower-income neighborhoods 

or predominantly black or Latino areas—referred to by several 
women we interviewed as “urban” clubs—darker-skinned women 
must abide by different rules than their lighter-skinned colleagues. 

Chanel“, who has worked on #NYCStripperStrike with Marie, 
says she was a victim of blatant colorism in several locations. 

"I wouldn't be allowed in VIP rooms when certain people would 
be in there, I would have to pay different house fees than other 
girls, or I would have to get dressed and get hair and makeup in 
a different area than other girls," she says. ^I wasn't able to work 
on certain nights. I would be basically just overlooked and over- 
shadowed, and I would rarely receive the recognition that was 
reserved for being a hard worker." 

Siobhan Brooks is chair of the African-American studies de- 
partment at California State University at Fullerton and author 
of Unequal Desires: Race and Erotic Capital in the Stripping 
Industry. She notes that discrimination against women of 


Qr s 
“e PHOTOGRAPHY BY SP: 


color—and particularly darker-skinned women of color—is both 
rampant and familiar in the industry. 

“That isa very common grievance, and it is also very old,” she 
says. “Darker-skinned black women are restricted from those 
lucrative positions. They’re usually put on shifts where you 
won't make a lot of money, and they have a harder time asking 
for money. They're haggled down more; there will be more resis- 
tance to giving her what she is worth." 

Because of where so-called urban clubs are located, Brooks 
says, they become wrapped into the bigger picture of neighbor- 
hoods that are underserviced across the board. 

"Urban clubs mirror any inner city's lack of resources," she 
says. “You have housing projects located in those areas. You may 
not have banks; you may have check-cashing places that surround 
those types of clubs, as well as underfunded schools, dilapidated 

buildings, over- or underpolicing." Results include 
"less investment in the dancer," which in 
turn can attract customers who "feel 
like they can get away with rape." 
And when it comes to women of 
color getting hired at so-called 
upscale clubs, discrimina- 
tion thrives as well. Those 
businesses may have un- 
spoken quotas regard- 
ing how many women 
of color they hire, or 
they may bring on 
only lighter-skinned 
dancers. All of these 
factors can  ulti- 
mately correlate with 
the way women are 
treated once they ar- 
rive at work. 
"There's more of a 
stigma in the urban clubs 
that women are less edu- 
cated and you can take ad- 
vantage of them,” says Brooks. 
“In the upscale clubs, you have 
your Julia Roberts stereotype— 
that they’re educated and this is a 
stepping stone.” 

Although women of color undoubtedly have it harder in 
this environment, dancers of all races are at heightened risk 
of sexual harassment and assault. Exact statistics on how fre- 
quently exotic dancers experience such violations are difficult 
to come by, as no governing body tracks complaints or accusa- 
tions. But women report being groped by customers and manag- 
ers alike, and even by police. 

In those instances, says Dee, strippers have nowhere to turn. 

“If you get raped at work, what are you going to do—file with 
human resources?” she says. “Call the cops? You think the club 
is going to let those cops in? And even if they do, they’re just 
going to tell you, ‘What did you think? You’re a stripper. Strip- 
pers can’t be raped.’ " 

Onstage at Dames N’ Games, a topless club in a desolate corner 
of downtown Los Angeles, blue and red spotlights shine onto 
the stage as a sinewy woman in a pink schoolgirl skirt pretzels 


PLAYBOY 11/ 


66 


“IF YOU GET RAPED AT WORK, WHAT 
ARE YOU GOING TO DO—FILE WITH 
HUMAN RESOURCES? 


herself around a brass pole. The strains of Marilyn Manson’s 
“This Is Halloween” blare through the speakers, and by the time 
the song is over, she has peeled off her black bralette and is undu- 
lating her hips in front of four men who sit captivated at the tip 
rail, tossing money. 

On the main floor, half a dozen other women circulate, sip- 
ping drinks and draping themselves over customers, whispering 
to one another or stretching their legs against the walls. Among 
them is a young woman with glossy chestnut hair, dressed in 
a one-piece bodysuit whose back consists of little more than 
a string. Sasha” sits down with me at a high bar table, a pint of 
beer in front of her, and explains that she’s been working here 
for a year and likes it because it’s “more transparent” than other 
places she’s worked. 

The payout system at Dames N’ Games (part ofthe Spearmint 
Rhino empire, one of the largest chains of gentlemen’s clubs in 
the country), she says, amounts to management taking $3 or $4 
out of every $20 she makes on lap dances, depending on whether 
one or two managers are working that evening. That means $100 
VIP-room dances cost her $15 to $20; $300 VIP-room dances cost 
$45 or $60; and so forth. 

Sasha works there as an independent contractor, so she runs 
up against many of the same issues as Carter, Marie and Dee. 
For the most part, dancers’ attempts to fight the system haven’t 
gained much traction, even when they file lawsuits like the one 
brought against Spearmint Rhino in 2012. (PLAYBOY reached out 
to Spearmint Rhino Consulting Worldwide, Inc., which owns 
Spearmint Rhino, for comment; a press relations representa- 
tive referred us to the contact form on the club's website.) That's 
not surprising, says Stunning. Other, similar lawsuits, typi- 
cally brought by dancers who believe their wages have been ille- 
gally garnished, have unfolded throughout the country. But little 
changes in their wake. 

“In eight years of stripping, I've received at least five different 
notices that are like, ‘So-and-so are filing a lawsuit, ” she says. 
"The club settles the suit and makes a few amendments in the 
paperwork we sign when we get hired, and then things continue." 

A raft of workplace dysfunctions contribute to the problem, 
some of which workers from more vanilla industries would rec- 
ognize. Susan Minato, co-president of the labor union Unite 
Here Local 11, points out that complaining about customers goes 
against service providers' very job description. 

"In hospitality, the idea is the [service provider] is there to 
make the guest feel good, to entertain you and to serve you," she 
says. “If something goes wrong, complaining about a guest puts 
them in a very awkward situation." 

But Crumiller believes a big reason such legal efforts haven't 
resulted in real change is that the culture at large, while it may 
treat others in the service industry with at least rote courtesy, is 
decidedly not on the side of strippers. 


118 


“Dancers are a very marginalized group, says Crumiller. 
“They are very vulnerable, and part of it is because, as a society, 
we don't really care about these women." 

Stunning adds that women in this line of work often don't ac- 
knowledge the validity of their jobs even to themselves, internal- 
izing the message that their work has no value. 

“A lot of the women who do this job, even if they're not ashamed 
of it, are holding out, waiting to go work a ‘real job,’ or whatever,” 
she says. “They don't believe anyone is on their side if their rights 
are being violated." 

This is where Gizelle Marie and her allies come in. 

When Marie began organizing #+NYCStripperStrike, her work be- 
came part of agrowing number of endeavors— on social media, in 
private community meetings and even in courtrooms across the 
country—spearheaded by strippers who are done being treated 
as though they have no standing under the law. Today, there are 
glimmers of hope that their efforts will pay off. 

As of August 2018, Marie and another woman working as 
a stripper in New York City have filed three different com- 
plaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 
The complaints address issues of sexual harassment and dis- 
crimination and could lead to lawsuits. In California, a State 
Supreme Court decision in April 2018 made it more difficult 
for businesses to classify workers as independent contractors, 
which some strippers believe could affect their classification 
in clubs. Many strippers were galvanized by the April 2018 pas- 
sage of the U.S. House and Senate bills known as FOSTA-SESTA 
(the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling 
Sex Traffickers Act), which cracked down on what sex workers 
can and cannot say online—a move many such workers felt ul- 
timately placed them in harm's way. And then there was Insta- 
gram's sudden decision in May 2018 to censor any posts with the 
hashtag #stripper or #strippers. 

To Antonia Crane, a Los Angeles-based writer and stripper, 
this is a rallying point. Part of the first and only stripper union 
created in San Francisco in the late 1990s, Crane says the efforts 
she sees among the stripper community now—along with the 
recent political events—have created a growing movement un- 
like anything she's seen before. 

"It's a really crucial time," she says. “We need to do a lot, and 
it's important that we do it right now." 

A year and a half after her initial Instagram post, Marie is trav- 
eling the country to meet other women (and spend time away 
from an environment in New York City that she felt had become 
toxic). She has been spreading the word, building bridges and 
joining forces with other strippers. If she succeeds—if the women 
providing the entertainment at strip clubs demand justice as a 
united front—there will be little owners can do to stop them. 

After all, says Marie, “without us, there would be no club.” E 


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PLAYBOY 119 


STYLING BY STEPHANIE TRICOLA AT HONEY ARTISTS; DRESS BY PRABAL GURUNG, JEWELRY BY MICHELE VARIAN 


HANINO | 
AST LAU 


One year after earning the disdain of Republicans, 
journalists and a few liberal women, Michelle Wolf is 
ready to do it again—and maybe help the country too 


sy STEPHEN RODRICK 


Michelle Wolf is nota fan of Donald Trump humor. She thinks it's 
all a bit hacky. “I personally hate Trump jokes," says Wolf, who 
a year ago vowed to burn down the annual White House Corre- 
spondents' Association Dinner and then did so in such definitive 
fashion nothing was left except scorched tuxedos. She doubles 
down: “I have not heard a good Trump joke in years." 

Alas, on a recent frozen night at New York's legendary Comedy 
Cellar, three ofthe four comedians who take the stage before Wolf 
unleash Trump jokes. They are all lame. Then Wolf makes her way 
to the mike through a maze of tables occupied by drunk accoun- 
tants and couples on first dates. She's wearing blue jeans, a gray 
sweater and a muted pair of Nikes. (The long-distance runner 
has become known for performing in glam high-topped sneaks, 
her collection being her concession to consumerism.) Her trade- 
mark voluminous curly red hair—which Wolf once described on 
The Daily Show With Trevor Noah as a hybrid of classic Annie and 
modern African American Annie—has been straightened. 

Wolf is working on new material, which means her routine is 
semi-embargoed. Suffice it to say, there are no Trump jokes. Her 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID URBANKE 


2017 HBO special, Nice Lady, featured bits on period farts, the 
impossibility of the modern woman having it all and a theory 
that men's testicles resemble a goblin's coin purse. Her new mate- 
rialisin the same unfiltered vein. 

At one point she seems to suggest—in a high-pitched voice she 
jokes often attracts stray dogs—that men don't need to worry 
about the women's movement because women have a tendency 
to devour their own. For anyone who paid attention to the af- 
termath of Wolf's Correspondents' Dinner set, it's obvious why 
sharing this is not in breach of the embargo. 

When Wolf finishes a few minutes later, she leaves the claus- 
trophobic basement to applause exponentially louder than the 
combined clapping for all the dudes with the Trump jokes. It was 
her 10th show of the week. 

Before April 28, 2018, you may have recognized Michelle Wolf 
only from bits she did on Late Night With Seth Meyers and The 
Daily Show. She'd written jokes for Chris Rock's 2016 Acad- 
emy Awards monologue and nabbed her HBO special a year 


PLAYBOY 121 


"TM NOT SUPPOSED 
TO BE YOUR MORAL 
COMPASS. ГМ NOT 
SUPPOSED TO BE YOUR 
PHILOSOPHER.” 


later. But last year’s Correspondents’ Dinner propelled her 
into a different orbit, one filled with Fox News condemnations 
and finger-wagging from professional women who thought 
she’d been too harsh on White House press secretary Sarah 
Huckabee Sanders, a proven serial liar. Some even suggest the 
WHCA's decision to have presidential biographer Ron Cher- 
now deliver this year’s keynote was in response to Wolf’s po- 
larizing set. It’s the first time a comedian hasn’t performed at 
the event since 2003. 

There’s just one thing: Michelle Wolf does not give a fuck. She 
knew exactly what she was doing. 

When Wolf was first approached to speak at the dinner—D.C.’s 
chummy get-together between plush talking heads and the plu- 
tocrats and politicians they’re supposedly holding accountable— 
she thought there must have been a mistake. “They were like, 
"We'll get a woman, ” she tells me backstage at another of her 
shows, this time at Nashville’s Zanies. “I’m sure they thought, 
She won’t do anything crazy. She’ll be nice.” Wolf smiles. “They 
should have done more research on me.” 

While Wolf is wary of her comedy epitaph becoming “The Girl 
From the Correspondents’ Dinner,” she’s happy to set the record 
straight and settle some scores. Before accepting the gig, Wolf 
talked with Meyers, her ex-boss and mentor, who had given the 
dinner keynote in 2011, and asked if she should do it. He told her 
yes but warned about performing in a room with bad acoustics 
and drunken robber barons barely paying attention. 

“T made the decision to not cater to them,” Wolf tells me. “I 
don’t like what they’re doing right now. I don’t think it’s the right 
time for them to have a chuckle at the way things are going.” 

Before she took the stage, a comedian friend slipped her a note: 
“Burn it down.” Another texted, “If they're cringing, you're doing 
it right.” Shortly before the ceremony started, she ran into Mar- 
garet Talev, a Bloomberg reporter and WHCA board member. 
That’s when she realized the organizers were in for a shock. Talev 
asked if Wolf would be wearing a gown. She told Talev she was 
going to wear a suit. 

“Margaret said, ‘Oh, I’m wearing pants too. It’s like my little 
stick-it-to-the-man.’ I thought to myself, Oh, you have no idea 
what is coming,” Wolf says. 

What has been forgotten in the swirl of post-dinner contre- 
temps is that Wolf was an equal-opportunity slagger. She went 
after Al Franken, who had been forced to resign after allegations 


122 PROFILE 


of groping: “Things are changing; men 
are being held accountable. Al Franken 
was ousted. That one really hurt liber- 
als. I believe it was the great Ted Ken- 
nedy who said, ‘Wow, that’s crazy. I 
murdered a woman.” 

She threw a zinger at liberal saint 
Rachel Maddow, calling her “the Peter 
Pan of MSNBC, but instead of never 
growing up, she never gets to the point." 
She went after MSNBC's Morning Joe 
hosts: "I watch Morning Joe every 
morning. We now know Mika and Joe 
are engaged. Congratulations, you guys. 
It’s like when #MeToo works out." 

Wolf also nailed the Trump Industrial 
Complex wherein the media wrings its 
hands over the president while gleefully 
amping his every movement for profit: 
"He's helped you sell your papers and your 
books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you're 
profiting off of him. If you're going to profit off of Trump, you 
should at least give him some money, because he doesn't have any." 

But a year later, the post-game analysis remains critical 
of Wolfs purported woman-on-woman comedy crimes—not 
against Maddow or Mika Brzezinski but Sanders. 

“We are graced with Sarah's presence tonight," said Wolf. 
Sanders sat a few feet away. “I have to say I'm a little starstruck. I 
love you as Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid s Tale.” The room grum- 
bled at the reference to a character who delights in oppressing 
other women. Wolf pressed on. *I actually really like Sarah. I 
think she's very resourceful. She burns facts, and then she uses 
that ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Like maybe she's born 
with it; maybe it's lies. It's probably lies." 

Wolf left the stage to a confused reception. Then the social 
media monsters began breathing napalm. 

The Hill called her “fame-hungry” and The Hollywood 
Reporter pushed out the headline MICHELLE WOLF GOES Low 
WITH RAUNCHY HUMOR. Trump trashed her—which was to be 
expected—but then women in the press began coming to Sand- 
ers's defense. NBC majordomo Andrea Mitchell said Wolf owed 
Sanders an apology. New York Times reporter and Trump whis- 
perer Maggie Haberman tweeted, "That @PressSec sat and ab- 
sorbed intense criticism of her physical appearance, her job 
performance, and so forth, instead of walking out, on national 
television, was impressive." 

Haberman's remarks earned the biggest eye roll from Wolf. 
“She's part of the problem; she's 100 percent access journalism," 
Wolf says, taking a sip of her drink (prosecco mixed with Aperol) 
and shaking her head in wonder. “Like Andrea Mitchell, Mika 
Brzezinski—they all came out and said things, and I was like, No, 
you guys just want to maintain your access—especially Maggie. 
She's working on a book. They also had to say it to take attention 
away from my calling them out for using Trump to make money." 

Wolf points out that Sanders didn't stand earlier in the ceremony 
when reporters received awards. She explains that she wasn’t 
making fun of Sanders's appearance; if Wolf regrets anything, it 
is not adding an extra beat expressing her sincere appreciation for 
Sanders's makeup. (Sanders politely declined pLayzoy’s request for 
comment.) She also notes that no one complained about her jokes 
citing Paul Ryan's lack of balls and Chris Christie's weight. 

“What still bothers me is the way so many in the press criticized 


her,” Meyers says. “She wasn’t a contest winner. She was a come- 
dian they hired based on her body of work. Why should she tamp 
down her style to fit some weird idea of decorum most people 
don’t care about?” 

A month later Netflix premiered The Break With Michelle Wolf, 
which she executive produced. Some say Wolf’s set was designed 
to drum up excitement for her show, but with only a 10-episode 
order—consider how many shows Conan O’Brien needed before 
he got good—The Break had little chance to succeed. It has some 
bright moments, however, including her roast of the comedic po- 
litical lectures popularized by John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight 
and Meyers’s Late Night segment “A Closer Look.” On The Break, 
Wolf skewers the format, calling hers “Segment Time." 

"It doesn't necessarily make you think more or change your 
opinion at all," says Wolf of the format. “It just reinforces what 


you think, and we're living in a climate right now where things 
are so off-balance that people just want someone to say a logical 
thing. I don't think that's the right way to do comedy." 

She starts to laugh. 

"But they still have shows, so what do I know?" 
The great irony in Wolf being trashed by powerful women is 
that she has built her entire career highlighting, in a sometimes 
graphic manner, how unfair life can be for women, whether it's 
working mothers or Hillary Clinton. On her HBO special, she 
says, "If you're a woman in power and think you're well-liked, you 
are so wrong. There are e-mails to prove it." She has described 
HRC as unlikable—the kind of person you run to the bathroom to 
avoid at a party. But she believes that's how a woman in power has 
to be. She will never come offlike a good old boy. 


PLAYBOY 123 


“I would have loved if Hillary had been like, ‘Hey, you 
guys are being real sexist talking about my smile, and 
yeah, I fucked up on the e-mails, okay, but I'm a grand- 
mother, and I know what I'm talking about. I've been 
here forever. I'm super qualified, " she says. 

I ask Wolf if she’s had feminist mentors. “That's an 
interesting question. I don't think I've ever been asked 
that," she says. Instead of naming a comedian or an 
author, Wolf focuses on her childhood in *the middle 
middle class" of Hershey, Pennsylvania. She idolized 
her two older brothers and wanted to go wherever they 
went, which meant pretending she was one of the dudes. 
“I don't even think my brothers knew I had a period," 
Wolf says. *It was one of those things where I was just 
trying so hard to fit in with the boys that it was like, 
They can't hear about this." 

Unlike Chris Rock, who was doing stand-up in his 
teens, or Judd Apatow, who interviewed comedians at 
the comedy club where his mother worked before his tes- 
ticles had dropped, Wolf came to comedy later. She grew 
up a track athlete and cites that as a source of motiva- 
tion when trying to write new jokes. (“You might have 
set a personal best, but they just move the bar higher 
until you fail," she says.) She went to the College of Wil- 
liam & Mary, joining a track and field team there, but 
injured herself; that ended her sports career. 

Itleft her wondering what to do next. The first thought 
wasn't comedy. ^I knew I wanted to make money," she 
says, citing a comfortable childhood during which she 
was surrounded by friends who were supremely more 
comfortable than she. After graduating with a kinesi- 
ology degree, she went to work at Bear Stearns during 
the Great Recession and saw older colleagues lose every- 
thing. To this day, Wolf doesn't trust the stock market; 
her money sits in a noninvested Schwab account. 

She went with friends to a taping of Saturday Night 
Live and was hooked. She started taking improv classes 
and switched to stand-up about seven years ago. She 
eventually got noticed by Meyers. “Everything about her 
path to comedy seemed like it would be a plus for us— 
passionate, hard worker, risk-taker," he says. "Plus we 
fell in love with her lilting, almost hypnotic voice." 

Wolf worked for Meyers for two years before Trevor Noah 
poached her. While she takes pains to point out the men who've 
helped her, she recognizes it wasn't a level playing field. 

"There are plenty of male comics who have kids and go on the 
road. Women wait to have kids later, when they're more success- 
ful and can afford help," says Wolf. One of the other double stan- 
dards that chafes her is what she perceives to be a woman's need 
to answer for a man's behavior. Recently, Wolf encountered pick- 
eters after appearing on a bill at the Comedy Cellar with the de- 
throned Louis C.K., someone Wolf once opened for on the road. 
She endured women asking how she could call herself a feminist 
and have her name on the same show as the serial masturbator. 

"Journalists just want a headline about Louis, and to me, that's 
not helpful and definitely not my responsibility," says Wolf. This 
is the only moment during our interview that she gets testy. "It's 
not my job to clean up the mess of something a man did. I'm not 
going to sacrifice my spots at a place where I'm most productive 
just to prove a point that's not going to go anywhere." 

This year, Wolf has indeed not sacrificed her spots. She's tour- 
ing the U.S. through May and hops overseas this summer. She 


124 PROFILE 


has auditioned for a few acting roles, but most of her time is spent 
working on her next special and tour. She recently ran a 50-mile 
ultra-marathon and found herself turning jokes over in her mind 
until mile 42, when she nearly passed out. *You have to keep mov- 
ing or it can all go away,” she says. 

And she watches the 2020 presidential race with trepidation. 
While her comedy features support for abortion rights and im- 
proving living conditions for mothers, she dreads any female can- 
didate making that her platform when so many families struggle 
to put food on the table. “I hear Kirsten Gillibrand is going to run 
on gender,” she says. “That's a terrible idea, because you're going 
to get only the people who care about that. You can't eat equality. 
You re going to vote for the candidate who can get you a job.” 

Wolf knows this sounds bad—perhaps slightly anti-woman. 
She faces her palms out in the universal “Who knows?" pose. 

“I’m not supposed to be your moral compass,” she says. “I’m 
not supposed to be your philosopher. I'm not supposed to be your 
religion. I'm just supposed to be the person who says the thing 
that makes you laugh. And maybe makes you think differently." 

Wolf pauses for a moment, pushing back her straightened hair. 

“But most of all, makes you laugh." m 


New Old Expression: "Useless as a hound in а skiff” 


PLAYBOY 125 


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128 


With an irrepressible energy kindled 
in her native Kansas and fanned on 
the West Coast, May Playmate 
Abigail O’Neill is on a mission 


When I was 18, I packed my bags, rounded up $2,000 and 
got out of Kansas without saying a word to anyone. I had 
grown up in Wichita and gone to the University of Kansas 
in Lawrence for a semester, and suddenly I was moving to 
Seattle. I didn't know anyone there, but I wasn't happy in 
Kansas, where I knew everyone and just felt complacent, 
like I wasn’t destined to be there. I knew the only way I could 
change that was by changing my life. It was scary—I slept in 
the car on the way up—but like they say, without great risk 
there's no reward. 

Around the same time, I got really, really into nutrition 
and fitness. I transferred to Seattle University to study 
business and sports nutrition. And I started modeling—all 
fitness at first, because so many of those brands are head- 
quartered in the Northwest. It was my agent at Wilhelmina 
who brought up the idea of modeling for PLAYBOY. To be hon- 
est, I was a little worried about what my dad would think, but 
at the same time I was excited. The PLAYBOY team told me, 
“Youre going to be part of the family." I really liked that, and 


I enjoy what the brand is turning into. It has evolved, and the 
pictorials are done tastefully—it's art. 

The shoot was so much fun. I was sipping champagne in 
the bathtub! And the nudity? I'm pretty comfortable. Some- 
times I’m alittle shy, but I'm getting past that. As long as it's 
done well, I have no problem. The human body is beautiful. 

Peoplelook at my body like, *Oh, you were born with that," 
but I worked hard to be where I am right now. I had been 
skinny fat—naturally skinny but not really in shape—before 
I got into training. I started buying my own groceries at the 
age of 13 or 14, because my family doesn't eat healthily. It 
started off, I'm not going to lie, as more of an eating disor- 
der, but I turned it into educating myself and figuring out 
what I was putting into my body. I've learned so much from 
the way I train and what I’ve done for my health. I think a lot 
of other women can too; that's the reason I started training, 
the reason I shot for PLAYBOY. I still have a lot of things to 
work through, but working out and building that foundation 
have given me new confidence. 

That confidence is the reason I want to make a career 
of this. I know I can help other people, specifically other 
women, find the confidence I didn't have. We're all 
searching for it in different ways, but if you can empower 
yourself and others, it's a beautiful thing. I just want to 
keep growing. 


PLAYBOY 129 


130 


PLAYBOY 133 


DATA SHEET 


BIRTHPLACE: Wichita, Kansas CURRENT CITY: Los Angeles, California 


ON THE SIMPLE LIFE 


We didn't have cell phones when we 
were young; at least | didn't. We were all 
about going outside, playing, riding our 
bikes—just a simple, fun life. I’m glad | 
was raised in the Midwest, because it 
gave me a better sense of things. | feel 
I'm a lot more grounded because of it. 


ON FAMILY TIES 


| have two older siblings, one younger 
sibling and four step-siblings. My dad 
remarried, and all the kids are about 
the same age. We all went to school to- 
gether. Now most of us are out of the 
house, so family gatherings are big. 


ON LEAVING HOME 


My family supports me through ev- 
erything | do. My dad convinced me 
that if | was ever having a hard time, 
| could come back to Kansas, but I 
think they've given up on that. Clearly, 
| made the jump. 


ON COMPETITION 


I'm always thinking, How can | be bet- 
ter than | was yesterday? What can I 
do differently? You shouldn't think 
of other people as competition, but 
so many people out there are “on it,” 
and if you're not, you're going to get 
washed away. 


ON FITNESS GOALS 


When I lived in Seattle | went hiking 
every weekend. | never went out—l 
worked out. I’m always trying to find a 
new way to work my body. l'm a trainer 
at heart; that's my forte. I like anything 
that gets my heart racing. 


ON LOVE & HIP-HOP 


I'm into old-school hip-hop, so obvi- 
ously I love Biggie Smalls, Tupac, Nas 
and Ja Rule. | was raised around all 
that stuff. My favorite song since | was 
a kid is "Into You" by Fabolous featuring 
Tamia. When | get married, | don't know 


Al ehe 


how it will happen, but that song has to 
be played somewhere. 


ON RELATIONSHIPS 


I'm a relationship girl; | dont sleep 
around. Every guy | sleep with, | date, 
and its because | get attached. I've 
never been on Tinder or anything like 
that—its not really my scene—but I 
think it has definitely changed the 
game. Hooking up is all people seem 
to want to do nowadays, and they do it 
so casually. l've never looked at it that 
way. What's the point? 


ON MOTIVATION 


| firmly believe that you should never 
be the smartest person in the room. 
What motivates me is knowing my 
potential, knowing what | want. 
Things won't always go my way, but 
the hope and the possibility of mak- 
ing things happen are what wake me 
up in the morning. 


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ETERNAL YET EPHEMERAL, 
LUST COMES SHARPLY INTO FOCUS...AND FADES 


Fiction BY ROBERT COOV ER 


heir lips are poised to meet in a classic gesture of 
pure desire. Her lips are soft and vulnerable, easily 
bruised, his more determined, principled, their 
mouths slightly open as though to ask a question. 
Do they know each other? It doesn’t matter. Only 
the imminent meeting of their yearning mouths 
matters. There is something gravely intimate 
about the moment, something almost sacred in its 
graceful choreography. 

He is handsome in a rugged honest way; she is radiantly 
beautiful. A disembodied narrative voice is quietly cataloging: 
her heaving bosom, her flushed throat, her fluttering eyelids, 
her supple hips. Which could be where the man’s unseen hands 
are, just below the frame, these his general impressions. Are 
their lips moving? Perhaps they are whispering something to 
each other. Or maybe they simply like the feel of moving lips, 
brushing softly against their own. 

The voice speaks now of the frame’s grip on а composed reality, 
its power to clasp and hold an image abstracted from the cease- 
less flow of time, as the two gaze longingly into each other’s eyes. 
A tear glitters in one of hers. His, shadowed by the brim of his 
fedora, betray an infinite sadness, and we too feel sad; how can we 
not? In their eyes—lenses facing in and out at the same time—we 
see what they see and feel what they feel. We are inside their kiss, 
tasting the proximity of their lips, suffering their anguish, their 
ardor, their aroused anatomies (there are chemicals involved, 
hormones). We know nothing about them beyond this embrace, 
but we sense that, whoever they are, they are about to part. 

Yes, something is ending. This is a farewell kiss. The steady 
rightward drift of the poignant image toward the looming edge 
(she seems about to swoon!) confirms this. As does the gentle 
voice, speaking now of the panoramic frame’s generous pleni- 
tude, its sensuous embodiment of the rational—or maybe the 
irrational?—as it succumbs to the roar of city traffic. Their lips 
have not yet met, but too late, they are crossing the threshold 
of the frame and disappearing into the obscure uncertainties 
beyond, swept away by the noisy rush of a congested city through- 
way. As hundreds of cars and trucks race by in both directions, 
brakes shrieking, horns and sirens blaring, a phantasmal image 
of the parting lovers appears on them, as though to say such a 
vision is not easily dismissed. We catch intermittent glimpses 


ILLUSTRATION BY SPIROS HALARIS 


on the traffic’s flickering blur of their eyes, their mouths, their 
hats—though without the comforting integrity of the frame: It 
is impossible to know what is the container, what the contained. 
But then the traffic too slides away into the emptiness at the ad- 
vancing edge, carrying the ghostly lovers with it, the automotive 
roar sinking to a background hum, and then that dies too. 

The throughway unravels to an empty country road, spooling 
through a bleak desert landscape like the thread of time. It is 
utterly silent out here, but for a soft breath of wind and the dis- 
tant caws of predatory birds. After miles and miles of flat empti- 
ness, a lone structure appears on the side of the road, a building 
long since abandoned, its roof fallen in, its doors boarded up, 
its broken marquee atilt. There is an old poster, yellowed with 
time, affixed to the wall under the marquee. It advertises a movie 
called The Kiss, and the two parting lovers are pictured on it in 
the same iconic scene of pathos and desire seen before. 

One can hear, like wind chimes, the faint echoey tinkle of carou- 
sel music. As we approach the tattered poster, the image on it piv- 
ots, and we now face the slightly crossed eyes of the woman, gazing 
up wistfully into the face of the man, just beyond her nose, his 
back to us. She is still dressed in glowing white, and he is hatted, 
but the rest of his clothing is gone, his pale buttocks being used 
now as a screen for the projection of the original image: their rapt 
gaze, their yearning mouths, she on the verge of swooning. It is like 
a frame within a frame, reminding us of the rugged persistence 
of imbedded memory. The picture is grainy and water-spotted, 
adding to its romantic old-movie atmosphere, though that may 
be due in part to the texture of the screen. The darkness between 
histhighs seems to beard her, and their embrace is cloven and dis- 
torted, but their longing gaze across the dark divide still compels 
attention, and cues our own emotions. Their melancholy is again 
our melancholy, their ardor our ardor, the screen's imperfections 
only augmenting the tender gravity of the moment. 

But then it is over. The projected embrace recedes, as does its 
screen and the man who provided it, the wistful woman too—they 
all shrink away, as if to say we have seen all there is to be seen. 
There is only the desolate country road, the ruined cinema, and 
soon they are gone too—in the dreadful silence, a distant snap of 
elastic against flesh can be heard, a rip, a gasp—leaving only the 
ever vaster emptiness of the desert, stretching in all directions as 
far as the eye can see, like an image of the end of time. m 


PLAYBOY 143 


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FRAN 
GRILLO 


FIGHTER, FATHER AND FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH: 
WHY THE HOLLYWOOD HEAVYWEIGHT IS JUST GETTING STARTED 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN PFLUGER 


Sundown in Los Angeles. A battered maroon Buick is parked 
near a rocky, industrial train yard. Showing off his physique 
through a tight white tee and $500 jeans, Frank Grillo emerges 
from a photo studio, his hair perfectly coiffed. Fake abrasions 
rough up the contours of his face. He's holding a pink cocktail. 
Everyone notices. 

Hopping onto the roof of the car, Grillo thrusts himself into an 
action-hero pose. This comes naturally to him. For a moment it 
looks asthough he's aboutto hurl a battle cry into the night sky. In- 
stead, he launches into song: “It’s raining теп! / Hallelujah!/ Its 
raining men!” 

“Do it again!" a crew member encourages. 

“Fuck no!” Grillo replies, grinning. The crew bursts into laughter. 

This is my first glimpse of the martial-arts enthusiast who 
has become one of Hollywood's most dependable and in-demand 
action stars. The actor has been the muscle in such films as War- 
rior, The Grey, Zero Dark Thirty, End of Watch and two Purge 
outings, as well as on television in Law @ Order: Special Vic- 
tims Unit, Prison Break and Kingdom. He stars in the highest- 
grossing film ever released in China, Wolf Warrior 2, and this 
spring he'll briefly reprise his role as Crossbones in Avengers: 
Endgame, a tentpole blockbuster that, among Grillo's credits, 
follows the bare-knuckle-fighting indie thriller Donnybrook, in 
which he plays—in his own words— “pure fucking evil.” 

If we're to trust IMDb, Grillo is currently attached to no fewer 
than nine films, at least five of them expected this year. But his 
Netflix docuseries, Fightworld, released in October, may be 
his most compelling work to date. In the five-episode study of 
fighting cultures around the world, viewers see another side of 
Grillo, his temperament far from that of the brawny tough guy 
filmmakers hire him to be. Although he occasionally spars with 
the series' fighters to absorb their styles, Grillo spends most of 
his screen time observing both male and female athletes. Over- 
all, Fightworld is an exploration of masculinity and strength at 
their most controlled and recognizable. 


150 STYLE 


story в, GIL MACIAS 


stvunse ANNIE & HANNAH 


Over drinks in downtown Los Angeles after his shoot, the 
actor reflects on channeling a Fight Club-inspired sex symbol 
for PLAYBOY, of all publications. “I love going outside my comfort 
zone, and the shit we did today was wacky,” he says. “You know, I 
like that. It's all good. I'll tell you what: Getting older and doing a 
lot of work on myself, and watching my kids grow up and becom- 
ing more well-rounded human beings, I don't judge things any- 
more. I don't judge myself. I don't judge other people, because 
everybody's on this journey." 

Grillo, who turns 54 this June, says he “coasted” through the 
midlife crisis of entering his 50s. He gives Liam Neeson credit 
for “clearing the path for the older action hero," but Grillo's 
physicality is all his own. “Every weekend, I get on my dirt bike. 
I go into the mountains. I ride like I did when I was 25," he says. 
"I'm in the gym every fucking day. Until my body shuts down, I 
am what I am." 

That declaration leads me to ask about his on-set drink choice. 
Itturnsoutthe mystery pink tipple was Whispering Angel rosé— 
not exactly the juice one would expect a brooding Bronx-born 
actor to order. But what's considered masculine these days, any- 
way? Grillo recognizes it as a point of contention in this cultural 
moment, and he doesn't shy away from addressing it. “I drink 
rosé all the time," he says matter-of-factly. ^I get facials; I drink 
rosé. I need balance. What am I going to do, walk around with 
boxing gloves around my neck?" 

A regular at L.A.'s boxing gyms, Grillo put his love for fighting 
to use on Kingdom, DirecTV's MMA series that ran from 2014 
to 2017 and co-starred Nick Jonas as Grillo's closeted son. In the 
penultimate episode, Jonas's character comes out to his father, 
which leads to tragedy. Sexual orientation isn't a talking point 
on Fightworld, and in the real world openly gay male MMA fight- 
ers remain scarce. I ask Grillo whether MMA should be more 
welcoming of LGBTQ people and if he encountered any closeted 
fighters while filming Fightworld. “I don't think we're at that 
place yet, which is unfortunate," he says. "There might be a few, 


WHITE T-SHIRT BY KELLY COLE, VINTAGE GOLD CHAIN, VINTAGE GOLD BRASS KNUCKLES 


but it's still a hypermasculine, hyper-macho thing. I'm 
sure there are more than we know of. It's not something 
anybody walks around waving the flag for, you know?” 

Grillo recognizes the necessity of visibility, however. 
He says he lost a friend to AIDS, and he has always been 
surrounded by gay men in his personal life. “My kids’ 
godfather is gay. My favorite couples that my wife and I 
go outwith are gay guys. They’ve been friends of ours for- 
ever. They have kids; we have kids. I’ve had friends come 
out early in their lives; I've had friends come out after 
they were married." He goes on: “I have three sons. If any 
one of them told me they were gay, I would be like, ‘Good, 
that's great. Okay, you're gay. Big fucking deal.' Like that 
shouldn't even be an issue. That's like saying 'I'm Ital- 
ian' or 'I'm Irish.' Even my goomba father, who's now 75 
years old, loves my gay friends, and my gay friends love 
him, you know what I mean?" 

It may be surprising to hear Grillo speak so forcefully 
in support of a group not his own, but should it be? The 
actor time and again has shown he can break out of any 
box his résumé may suggest. Over a two-hour conversa- 
tion, he tackles more topics than I could ask for: spiri- 
tuality, transgender rights, his disdain for Trump. He's 
intentional in every move, every utterance—perhaps a 
trait he learned from fighting. 

Given how ingrained fight culture is in Grillo's life, 
I'm curious about how he approaches the sport with 
his children. 

“Т always tell my kids, ‘Avoid violence, avoid confron- 
tation,” he says. "You don't want confrontation. What 
you want is the ability, if confronted with violence, to 
defend yourself." 

Indeed, Grillo's most important role is that of father, 
and his three sons are no strangers to the boxing gym. 
During his Fightworld travels, he encountered many 
young fighters, some living in extreme poverty. The pri- 
mary lesson he took from that experience was as a father. 
“Here's the deal about my kids,” Grillo says. "They've 
been privileged. They've lived really good lives. It's what 
every parent wants to do for their kids: to make their 
lives better than my life was—and I had a shitty child- 
hood. But one thing I instill in them is to understand the 
value of everything they have and to appreciate it.” 

He adds, “You must give some of what you have to other 
people; that’s key. You must pay it forward all the time, 
even if you don’t have a lot. If you continue to pay it for- 
ward, we raise better human beings.” 

Earlier, Grillo mentioned a need for balance in his 
life. He’s an action star and a boxer, and he’s raising 
three sons. His life seems filled with testosterone, and 
rosé only goes so far, right? Did he ever wish he’d had a 
daughter? He vigorously shakes his head. 

“Look at me in the face,” he says. “No. There’s a famous 
saying: Have a boy, worry about one penis. Have a girl, 
worry about all the penises.” 

Although Netflix passed on a second season of Fight- 
world, there’s no slowing down or hanging up the gloves 
for the actor who may yet become a Hollywood leading 
man in his 50s. “The martial artist Helio Gracie died at 
95, rolling with his sons and his grandsons,” Grillo says. 
“Tm not going to hang it up. I'll slow down. I’m not going 
to punch as fast—but it ain't happened yet." 


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WE COULDN'T RESIST SHARING A FEW EXTRA 
GEMS (INCLUDING ONE TOOTH GEM) FROM OUR 
COVER SHOOT. ENJOY, AND REMEMBER: NO 
MATTER WHO YOU ARE, YOU HAVE A MOUTH. USE IT 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY 


KELIA ANNE 


LING BY CASEY HINDERS 


LING BY CHLOE & CHENELLE DELGADILLO; PROP 5ТҮ 


STY 


Fiction sY DAVID GILBERT 


here I am, 24 years old, playing 18, a young 18, 
emerging from the lake in just T-shirt and pant- 
ies. I will be murdered soon. I am sitting next 
to my murderer. His name is Charlie Mooks, 
which is an ideal name for a murderer but a ter- 
rible name for an actor. Charlie hugged me when 
he saw me even though I haven’t seen Charlie in 
decades. But we are bonded by that knife across 
my throat. Charlie’s still huge, with more belly 
and less chin, patches of rosacea running across his face. He’s 
a grandfather now. “I’ve got five grown children,” he told me in 
the green room, shaking his head at this amazing fact. No one 
ever believes how many grown children they have. As Charlie 
talked, I recalled the Sephora I had passed when I was getting 
coffee. I knew the perfect moisturizer for him: an energizing 
vitamin C day cream. Maybe a protein booster serum as well. 
“I sell insurance, but don’t worry, I’m not going to hit you up,” 
Charlie said, after which he indicated good humor by laughing. 
He always was a terrible actor. But he’s a naturally frightening 
presence: bald and dented, as close to being deformed without 
actually being deformed. Flakes of dead skin cling to the sides of 
his nose. I want to reach up and scoop the crud free. Like clean- 
ing leaves from a gutter. I would show him. He would be amazed. 

Another middle-aged man-boy steps forward, and I brace for 
conversation, imagining a cue card printed across his chest. 
He seems to be wearing a subtle costume which registers as a 
vague misunderstanding of how clothes should work in the 
world, particularly with his body type. He resembles a pear atop 
a pumpkin. I smile to put him at ease, but he's not nervous. He's 
paid decent money for this Horrorfest encounter: $50 for the 
personalized photo, $20 per additional item signed. He leans 
in close, the transactional nature breaking normal bounds. His 
complexion is cratered around the cheekbones, and I picture 
the moon in a fedora. He has a leather sheath strapped to his 
thigh, and I assume a plastic machete is tucked inside, though 
the handle has the matte finish of real metal. “Hello there,” I 
say as though there is his name. 

"Really cool to meet you," he says, nodding, “really cool, oh 
yeah, wow." 


ILLUSTRATIONS BY SPIROS HALARIS 


His voice surprises me. It is false yet effective, its smooth 
tone reminding me of late-night DJs listened through clock 
radios: me a teenager in bed, constructing saviors in my head, 
soft and sympathetic, unlike this face before me, which is wax- 
ing gibbous with unkempt sideburns. For some reason I expect 
he can play the harmonica. 

"Nice to meet you too," I say. 

I already have the Sharpie dangling over my chest, waiting. 

“I was 10 when I first saw Night's Scream,” he says. 

“Oh,” I say. 

They almost always tell me their age, particularly when their 
age was young, as though this indicates precociousness rather 
than lax parenting. A few had seen the movie in an actual the- 
ater, usually with an older brother, or snuck in with friends, 
or simply strolled in, since this was the mid-1970s and what- 
ever was happening on the streets was probably worse. But 
most had caught me through the years on cable, or on VHS and 
then DVD, or now streamed on demand, so they watched me 
while sitting in living rooms or finished basements, puddled 
in beanbags, draped across chairs. They convened in pubes- 
cent groups. Sleepover scares. Occasionally girls joined in be- 
cause they had been dared and being frightened with boys was 
the gateway to being a woman. Or the girls saved me for their 
own intimate affairs, after years of being tempted by soft-core 
chills—tonight, they would go all-in; tonight, they would see 
all that blood. Those girls have the best screams. The horror 
seems almost joyous for finally being public and permissible. 
But there are few girls in line here. 

“I watched with my dad,” he says. 

“Oh, yeah?” I say, Sharpie still dangling over my chest, still 
waiting. 

“Because I used to be scared of moths,” he says, “a total 
fraidy-cat.” 

“Well, moths can be scary,” I say, which I believe is true. 

“But I'm not scared of them anymore,” he says. 

I conjure piranha-like moths swarming his head, but all I say 
is "That's great.” 

“I became scared of other things, worse things,” he says. 

"It's a scary world,” I say. 


PLAYBOY 165 


The others are better atthis than Iam. Certainly more expe- 
rienced. Charlie Mooks begins by asking their names so he can 
start the signing and the handing back and the moving along 
process, formal yet friendly. But Charlie has the longest line 
and the most committed fan base. As tribute, some wear cheap 
donkey masks. The more extreme do the prosthetic makeup 
underneath, with the eyes and the teeth and the drool—they 
seem to really love the drool. These people also visit my line 
and greet their first victim by braying, and I pretend-gasp like 
these are the neighborhood kids on Halloween. I try thinking 
nice thoughts, like look how creative they are, how passionate, 
but in the end they're all my murderers. I make a point of writ- 
ing their names over my poking nipples— Stanley, Frankie, 
Miguel—constructing a bra from black felt. And my old ridicu- 
lous stage name takes care of the panties and the conspicuous 
darkling V-shaped mound. When I dot the ¿in my belly button I 
think of Tania, roughly this size, resting in there. Then I hand 
the photograph back, having dressed myself in their desire. I've 
noticed Amy and Beth and Laura and Kim gauging the number 
of people in my line, ordering themselves after my early iconic 
death. I'm especially popular because this is my first conven- 
tion. Even Karen seems to keep track, Karen who was the only 
survivor, who had the career before and after, until getting 
older took her life. These conventions are her main occupa- 
tion. Plus she sells vitamins on Facebook. She also dabbles in 
real estate. She's the kind of person who calls herself an entre- 
preneur, who has this printed on business cards: Karen Locke, 
Entrepreneur. In the green room she greeted me like we were 
reunited best friends, and I had one of those moments where I 
had to find the person I once knew within the fright of aging. I 
tried keeping my expression neutral; I even said “You look won- 
derful" with stubborn conviction, like the situation was touch 
and go and she needed my support. But I understood the sen- 
timent was contagious, Karen regarding me under the same 
grim prognosis. We were old. And we would soon watch our- 
selves during the special 40th anniversary screening, would 
hear the audience laugh and cheer every outrageous kill, recite 
particular lines of dialogue, while we slunk lower in our desig- 
nated row, feeling the loss beyond the blood. Even when flayed, 
our skin was glorious. 

"I didn't want you to die,” he tells me. 

"You were watching the wrong movie then," I say. 

“But my dad knew you were going to get it,” he says. 

“Dads,” I say. 

“Гуе come from Topeka," he says. 

"That's along trip," I say. 

“But I don't live in Topeka,” he says. 

“Oh,” I say. 

^I just flew from there," he says. 

"Right," I say. 

“To be here," he says. 

“Oh, well, welcome,” I say as though I represent the chamber 
of commerce and I hope he will enjoy his stay in our fair city. 
I don't live here myself. Not anymore. Not since my downtown 
days when things were fun and strange, when being irrespon- 
sible had this varnish of liberation. I was braver back then. 
I recall being fierce and for the most part lucky. I ran in cir- 
cles that ran in circles with semi-famous people— Patti Smith, 
Willem Dafoe, David Byrne—until their centrifugal force threw 
me into more obscure corners. I also burned some bridges. This 
is standard-issue nostalgia, while in front of me looms some- 
one who seems congested with an undiagnosed dairy allergy. I 


166 FICTION 


notice his breath. It smells of feet. Like his tongue is barefoot 
in his sneaker mouth. *So what's your name?" I ask. 

He thinks for a moment, then he says, "Bob." 

“Bob?” 

“Yes,” Bob says, “Bob.” 

“Okay, Bob it is.” I orient the photo against my looming 
Sharpie. The organizers came up with these publicity stills, 
which are retrofitted for the cause since Night’s Scream had 
neither the budget nor the prestige to warrant an on-set pho- 
tographer. And certainly nobody asked my permission, or my 
opinion, on the particular image used. I had signed away my 
rights for $500 and was frankly amused by the opportunity, 
having already debased myself multiple times for free. So there 
I am, drunk and fritzed on Quaaludes since this is late May in 
Maine and Terry Lester has pumped me with whatever might 
keep me pliable. But I'm messing up my entrance via freezing 
water, like the Lady of the Lake's slutty sister, which Terry is 
treating as the most important shot in his dumb movie—me 
trying again and again in sheer panties and child-sized T-shirt, 
Terry screaming, me on the verge of hypothermia though the 
crew has diagnosed my distress as spoiled-bitch syndrome. 
Only Charlie Mooks cares. Between takes he warms me in his 
meaty, mole-flecked arms, his pulsing midsection giving me 
the dick version of CPR. “There, there," he says, as he rubs my 
back. He's stoned and has been offering me mushrooms when- 
ever we're alone. But the truth is, I have never looked as good as 
Ilook in this photo. It's undeniable. I can see the longing in my 
eyes and, buried deep, the electric rage that tightens the focus 
into the brutalized woman the world wants me to be. I'm star- 
ing at the assholes on the shore, all of them amateur sadists. I 
am alone, and I am dying, and I am beautiful. Plus my body is 
perfect. Like absurdly perfect. I'm also four weeks from learn- 
ing I'm pregnant. Maybe this is why I'm glowing. Or maybe I'm 
investing myself with meaning. Searching for signs and sym- 
bols. Tania inside me holding on for dear life. Oh sweetie, I 
think, for her and for me, as I land the Sharpie on my forehead 
and write For and inscribe Bob across my breasts. I add below, 
Don't come inside me, okay? Which is cribbed from my last line 
of dialogue. That always gets them grinning. Then I finish with 
the flourish of Zoe Palindromos. This handle was foisted on me 
during my days in the art-slash-club scene, when queer men 
threatened pretty girls with stardom. Their homosexuality 
stood in for integrity. Eventually they fed us to photographers. 

“Here you go”—I pause so I can land his name— “Bob.” 

In many ways I am still an actress. 

Bob admires the photo. *You're my favorite here,” һе tells me. 

“Oh, thanks,” I say. 

"I really hate when you die,” Bob says. 

“Yeah,” I say, "but here I am." 

Then Bob half-whispers, *I know your real name." 

“Do you?" I say. 

He nods. "Zoe Akeldama, from Massapequa, Long Island." 

I remain cool and say, “Ding ding ding.” 

"And then you were Zoe Lobeki, and then Zoe Marston, and 
now Zoe Newhart who lives in Dos Rios Triangle, Sacramento." 
Bob says this like he's in on the joke even though there's no iden- 
tifiable joke. And while I know I exist on Wikipedia, on IMDb, 
on Fangoria and other websites dedicated to the horror genre, I 
have no idea how deep I might sink in the internet, how far this 
Bob character can reach into me. Political donations? Real es- 
tate transactions? Lawsuits filed? Has he hacked my Facebook 
page? My Instagram? Does he know that my irises are blooming? 


“Well,” I say, “thanks for coming,” and I straighten up and 
regard the people waiting behind him, hoping they might pro- 
vide relief. But they are more of the same. The zombie. The 
space alien. The amputee turning his loss into kicky special ef- 
fect. The people in normal clothes appear even more sinister. 
I notice the rare young woman dressed in denim shorts and 
tank top—the kind of outfit I wore the night I was slaughtered. 
Who knows how this particular girl will be savaged? By spear? 
By pitchfork? By blunt force trauma via rock or log or what- 
ever else is handy and vicious? If she is me, she can expect the 
kitchen knife across her throat while she’s on top of her jock 
boyfriend—really fucking him good, as Terry commanded, like 
the best fuck of his life. It was night and we were in the woods, 
on a mattress hidden by ferns, and I remember the crew on the 
other side, their shabby voyeurism like the atmospheric dis- 
turbance before lightning—charged and obscurely dangerous 
yet impossible to really fear. Brad was beneath me, sweet Brad, 
who died of AIDS in the early 1990s. He was so nervous. And 
I wanted to make our moment seem real, wanted those pricks 
watching us to feel our brief humanity, so I improvised and told 
Brad not to come inside me, in order to ground things, to ex- 
press our authenticity, while Charlie Mooks approached from 
behind, his massive blur stepping into donkey-masked distinc- 
tion. The rest is well-known: Charlie grabs my chin and slits 
my throat. Blood pours down my chest, over my bare breasts— 
like tainted milk, as the script described. And then Charlie 
pushes me on top of Brad and turns us into his macabre buck- 
ing bronco—hee-haw, hee-haw—until Brad comes despite the 
awfulness from above. My postmortem is his postcoital. Brad 
would get his later, when he rushed and attacked Charlie with 
an ax. Lord, what fools these mortals be. 

Bob reaches into his canvas satchel. 

“I have something else for you,” he says. 

I'm expecting the Night's Scream poster, or the VHS tape, 
or even the PLAYBOY from after the movie was released. Those 
photos predate my cinematic debut, taken under the guise 
of the anti-artistic artistic nude, meaning raw and ordinary, 
meaning Harry Englander appreciated my unshaved armpits 
and my knees casually spread apart. I have signed all varieties 
of myself today. I have been a good sport, I think. 

"Okay," I say. 

But instead of these things, Bob places in front of me a year- 
book. The cover is white with a series of curved strata, red and 
orange and yellow, bulging from a rounded core, like the geo- 
logical representation of an eyeball. After a moment I realize 
what this is—the Sachem from 1972—and I gasp loud enough 
for Charlie Mooks to glance over. 

Bob is pleased. “I collect them," he says, “yearbooks of fa- 
mous people." 

I smile and tell Bob I'm hardly famous. I open the yearbook 
near the middle and am immediately greeted by era-specific 
hair. Us girls have long feathery manes, parted in the middle, 
framing faces beaming and wide. Our heads seem to tilt under 
the uniform weight. I had forgotten about this trend, or rather, 
had forgotten about the ubiquity of this trend. It's staggering. 
I can practically smell the Prell. The boys have a bit more vari- 
ation. There are a few short-haired Republican types—hello, 
Ryan Nellows—but even they are weedy around the edges, 
while the rest fall within the shoulder-length dude category. 
I'm struck by my instant familiarity with names and associ- 
ated personalities. Kirsten Lee. Veronica Lemon. Anthony 
Looper. Every photo is like a paused frame of film. I can see 


Anthony's dimples deepen, Kirsten twirling her hair. "This is 
amazing," I say. 

Bob reaches forward and turns a few pages. "There," he says. 

Ilook for me but I am not there. 

Then Bob points to a picture, bottom right. 

I see a boy with a toothy smile and bushy black hair, like a 
mink hat with ear flaps. 

“Jerry Seinfeld," Bob says. 

Of course. Jerome Seinfeld. Right near Barbara Schein and 
Amy Schmidt. Jerry whom I hardly knew, yet I catch his smile 
corkscrewing into a smirk. There is post-1972 writing nearby— 
To Bob, Thanks for the blast from the past, Jerry Seinfeld— 
which streaks across Barbara and Amy like bratty graffiti. 

“I got him to sign this a few years ago,” Bob says. 

“Uh-huh,” І say. 

“Hegotarealkick out ofit,” Bob says. 

“I bet,” I say. 

“Do you know him?” Bob asks. 

“Not really,” Isay. “It was a big school.” 

Bob then flips toward the beginning of the senior pictures 
and finds me nestled between Linda Abate and Roger Aledort. 
Iam а cataract of pure blonde hair though I lack the easy smile 
of my classmates and instead edge toward mystery. But I was 
legend at Massapequa High. Jerome Seinfeld would’ve remem- 
bered me—they all would've remembered Zoe Akeldama. But 
I was too aloof to be popular, confusing beauty with maturity, 
and when I was done with the school, I was done with these 
people. But seeing this picture is like seeing a missing person 
posted on a milk carton or a post office bulletin board, flashed 
on the six o'clock news, like something awful has happened and 
this is evidence of more innocent days. And it isn't just me. All 
the boys seem killed in Vietnam, all the girls murdered in the 
woods. The class of 1972 might as well be decomposing under 
groovy hair. 

"There I am," I say. 

I think of Tania, how she might see herself in my skeptical 
eyes, my dubious grin. 

“You were a happy accident," Bob tells me. “I was going 
through the yearbook, just looking at the pictures, when I came 
across yours, and I was like, I think I know her, and then I was 
like, it's the girl from Night’s Scream. I’ve seen the movie like a 
thousand times.” 

“Uh-huh,” I say. 

“And I thought, how cool to have both your autographs,” Bob says. 

“Sure,” I say. 

Im holding the Sharpie over myself, wondering where to 
sign and what to write, when a thought comes to mind: Maybe I 
could keep the yearbook for the rest of the day; maybe over din- 
ner I could show Tania this teenage glimpse of myself; maybe 
we could squeeze in an early laugh and this would loosen things 
up between us. She might even regard me with more human- 
ity and less suspicion. Look, I could say, I was young once. I 
was not born your mother. So I ask Bob if there’s any chance he 
might lend me the Sachem, just for the night, and afterward I 
could leave the yearbook with the front desk of my hotel. “My 
daughter would really get a kick out of this,” I tell him. 

Bob’s face practically contorts in pain. 

“Um,” he says. 

“I promise I'll leave it there.” 

“It’s just——” 

“Т can give you my phone number, just in case,” I say. 

“Yeah?” 


PLAYBOY 167 


“Sure,” I say, and I grab the already signed photo of myself 
and write on the back the name of my hotel and my phone num- 
ber. I realize how this must look, and so I glance up and smile, 
but Bob seems to be checking the numbers against the numbers 
he already has scratched in his head. I notice Charlie Mooks's 
continued sideways curiosity. I wonder if he still thinks of me, 
if he envisions this Bob character strung up by the legs, a chain 
saw ready to split him in half. 

“Thanks so much,” I say. “I really appreciate it." 

Bob takes the photo and reinspects the information. “You 
promise?” he asks. 

“I promise,” I say. 

He slips the photograph 
back into his satchel. 
“Okay,” he says. 

“Okay,” I say. 

“Bye,” he says. 

“Bye,” I say. 

Bob turns and heads 
back into the crowd, his 
hand resting on the hilt 
of his machete, as though 
he might need to cut his 
way through these other 
versions of himself. 
Throughout the after- 
noon my phone buzzes 
with texts from Bob re- 
confirming the address 
of the hotel, the time 
of pickup tomorrow, or 
maybe tonight, buzz, 
buzz, buzz, and I text 
back my assurances in 
as few words as possi- 
ble. But I'm amused. By 
five o'clock the cast of 
Night's Scream is done 
with our commitments, 
and we gather back in 
the green room to collect 
our belongings. The per- 
formance of the last five 
hours has left me gutted, 
as well as embarrassed 
for myself. All that smil- 
ing. The fake pleasant words. The put-on enthusiasm. I feel even 
more distant from myself than normal, like my head is float- 
ing on a string. But the others seem invigorated by the residual 
fame. I do my best to linger and participate in their small talk, 
but the purpose of our being together fast evaporates and I get 
clammy in their company. I need fresh air. I need escape. I have 
no bygone fondness for these people. I'm like a pair of scissors 
saying good-bye. 

Charlie Mooks insists on a hug. I can smell his deodorant 
fighting against the odor of wet leaves, and I think of myself 
rotting inside his massive bag of flesh. He squeezes me tight. 
I can sense his hard-on underneath—or the memory of his 
hard-on. *We're so glad you came,” he says as he presses into 
my dead self. 

“Me too,” I lie. 


168 FICTION 


“Hope to see you at one of these things again,” he says. 

“Yes,” I say, knowing I will never do this again. 

Charlie releases me, and I grab my things and wave a final 
good-bye. The rest of the gang are going for a drink, maybe 
multiple drinks, ha-ha-ha. Once I’m gone I know they will 
anatomize me, will compare me to the person I was back in 
Maine. How І paraded about. How I suffered. How I was the vic- 
tim long before any blade crossed my throat. I can already hear 
them taking me apart. Dragging me to the ground. But at least 
I know I hated them first. Amy in her ridiculous red hat. Laura 
in her tacky vintage dress. Karen with her résumé on parade, 
how her life has never been better, how blessed she is, in her 
cheap Talbots blouse, the 
underarms pitted through. 
Back in my hotel room I 
freshen up and then head 
uptown for dinner with 
Tania. There have been no 
new texts from Bob since 
the initial volley. In the 
taxi I send him a single pe- 
riod, imagining his reac- 
tion. Mistake or meaning? 
A pip of dust on the screen? 
But there is no reply, no in- 
decisive ellipsis. Nothing. 
And I’m briefly worried for 
Bob. Is he doing all right in 
the big city? I arrive at the 
restaurant early. It’s near 
Tania’s apartment. I had 
hoped she was going to in- 
vite me over beforehand so 
I could get a glimpse of her 
life, but she had insisted 
on just meeting here—so 
here I am, drinking spar- 
kling water when what I 
want is vodka. The restau- 
rant seems to cater to the 
solo diner. Framed museum 
posters cover the walls. 
Sheets of white paper stand 
in for tablecloths. Having a 
reservation feels somewhat 
humiliating. This is hardly 
the special night I had imagined. Plus I’m a picky eater. 

For distraction, I take the Sachem from my shoulder bag. The 
inside cover tells me the yearbook belonged to Paul Fatone. I 
have no recollection of Paul Fatone. His photograph sparks 
nothing but another assault of hairstyle molded against white 
suburban face. But Paul Fatone must have been popular. There 
are scrawls everywhere from fellow seniors, the innocuous 
words of teenagers using the lingo of the day. They inscribe 
their parting gibes as though on a piece of novelty tomb- 
stone, the earth beneath forever summer. I search for a few old 
flames. Nathan Lobo. Bill Ferguson. Toby Stankowski. None of 
them lasted for more than a month before they disappointed 
me, and while I gave myself easily—Ryan Feller took my vir- 
ginity in ninth grade—I departed just as easily and enjoyed 
the notion of their pining, even enjoyed the gossip afterward. I 


liked being talked about even if every word stung. And I would 
give my own details to the girls, how the boys’ dicks were small 
and their performance sweaty and quick, how the only good 
part was when they let me harvest the pimples on their backs. 
And then I would go and screw another boy to further remove 
meaning. It was free love but with a nihilistic stain. On page 
75 I come across my only close girlfriend, Sally Gimble. By 
graduation she was no longer speaking to me, which was fine 
since I knew from the beginning we had an expiration date. A 
few years ago I searched for her on Facebook. She still lives in 
Massapequa and is married with two sons. I didn't bother with 
the friend request. Her boys looked like rapists. 

The front door of the restaurant opens and I see Tania—my 
Tania, my baby girl, right there. The sight of her fills me to 
the tips of my fingers and toes. It's like I have ballast again. 
I straighten and lift my chin toward the light of our reunion. 
She must see me—I can see her, but first she says hello to the 
maitre d', this French crone, the two of them exchanging 
a European-style kiss. I wonder how often Tania eats here. 
Does she have her normal spot at the bar, where Jules or Mau- 
rice or Emile serves her too sweet white wine? Tania and the 
crone laugh, Tania with her hand on the crone's shoulder. I 
want to wave but I won't. I'll let her have this moment. Tania 
looks the same and yet different since I saw her five years ago: 
the Christmas visit before she went to San Francisco for New 
Year's. Just two days with me during which half the time she 
was sleeping. And I gave her wonderful gifts. She gave me a 
scarf. Tania seems more middle-aged now. Rounder. Her hair 
has remained short but is dyed a brighter lollipop red. She 
looks like her father if her father was transitioning to a woman. 
Her fashion sense appears based on taking long flights—loose- 
fitting clothes, sandals, a backpack. A walk through a security 
checkpoint seems implied. There are probably two paperbacks 
in that backpack. And a Playbill for a matinee. And some sort 
of sour candy loose from its wrapper, shedding its dust. And a 
gratitude journal where she keeps track of what she's thank- 
ful for, from friends to foods to television shows to masturbat- 
ing in the bathtub. There's no Mom in there—oh, and catalogs 
of dreams, conscious and unconscious, described over endless 
pages. I almost feel sorry for her. She's probably speaking bad 
French right now. 

Tania finally breaks free from the front of the restaurant and 
comes toward me. Her smile tightens, withholding the fullness 
of expression, no doubt because I am her mother, and so I offer 
her the same expression in return. I remain seated and formal. 
Like a great-aunt. Because this is what she wants. I notice her 
quick examination of my face—the wrinkles and age spots, the 
blondish scars on my nose and forehead from the basal cell car- 
cinoma. I feel tattooed by those eyes. She still refuses to pluck 
those black hairs from that mole on her chin. I have tweezers in 
my bag, but I’ll refrain from saying anything. 

“Mom,” she says, spreading her arms, “you’re here!" She was 
once a child actress. 

“Hello, sweetheart," I say. 

"Back in the big city," she says as she takes her seat. 

“Well, first time I've been invited," I say. 

Tania does that Tania thing with her lips. “How was the 
event?" she asks. 

"It was a convention," I say. 

"Right, horror movie stuff," she says. 

“Well, yes, all sorts of cinema really, and people were very 
excited we were there. It really was something. You should've 


come. A bigger crowd than I imagined. Lines and lines of 
people. My hand is wrecked from signing things," I tell her, 
showing her my hand. 

“Very cool," Tania says. "And was it fun seeing everyone from 
the cast again?" 

“Not really," I say. “Charlie Mooks sells insurance." 

^Who's he again?" Tania asks. 

"The killer," I say. 

"Right right right," Tania says. 

“He’s even more disgusting today," I say. 

“Oh,” Tania says. 

"And everyone just seems so old," I say, "including myself." 

"Please," Tania says, who seems almost older than me. 

"And even worse," I tell her, ^we had to watch ourselves dur- 
ing the screening, up there on the big screen, when we were all 
so young and beautiful and worthy enough to be slaughtered by 
a madman." 

Tania grins. 

“What?” Task. 

“That’s funny,” she says. 

“Maybe you can’t understand,” I say. 

Tania sits back in her chair. “Yeah, maybe,” she says. 

“It’s just strange,” I say, “seeing ourselves all fresh-faced and 
pert. It’s like watching an old home movie but with horrible 
graphic violence.” 

“Uh-huh,” Tania says. 

“Anyway, it was a long hellish day. Literally. Like I saw 
visions from hell.” I glance around the restaurant and can- 
not help the next line—it’s practically dictated by inevitable 
forces. “Speaking of hell, do you enjoy this neighborhood? Be- 
cause when I lived in the city it was all about downtown. SoHo. 
East Village. The Upper West Side was considered, I don’t 
know, sleepy and dull,” I say. 

Tania readjusts her napkin. “Don’t think that’s changed 
much,” she says. 

"I remember—” 

The waiter shows up. He places his hand on Tania’s shoulder 
and Tania beams. 

“Hello, beautiful,” he says. 

“Bonsoir, George,” Tania says. 

I’m almost embarrassed for her. 

“Where have you been hiding, my lovely?” George asks. He 
must be in his late 50s and he’s attractive in the way waiters 
can sometimes be attractive: attentive and clean and con- 
scious of posture and purpose. He has a mustache, which I 
normally hate, except on the rare occasion when they tran- 
scend my bias and become mysteriously powerful. George has 
such a mustache. 

“Traveling,” Tania tells him. 

“To exotic lands?” George asks. 

“Buffalo,” Tania says. 

I smile at Tania; I smile at George; I smile at Tania and 
George. 

“T hear it’s magical this time of year,” George says. 

^I did see Niagara Falls," Tania says. 

"And?" George asks. 

"Pretty great. Went on the Maid of the Mist," Tania says. 

I keep smiling, at Tania, at George, at Tania and George. 

“Is there a better name?” George says. “Maid of the Mist,” he 
repeats with a flourish. 

"It was beyond," Tania says. "The sound. The power. Like a 
glacier but all movement." 


PLAYBOY 169 


“A glacier moves,” George says. 

“But very slowly," Tania says. 

“Until all at once," George says, making a calving gesture 
with his hands. 

Finally Tania notices me, or remembers I'm in this scene as 
well. 

"George," she says, "this is my mother." 

George turns to me. ^Hello, Tania's mother," he says. 

“Zoe,” I say. 

George's mustache arches like an eyebrow. *Ah, Greek for 
life," he says. 

"Yes," I say, though I never trust when service people know 
these kinds of things, or I find the idea of their deeper knowl- 
edge somewhat unsettling. It's like seeing someone handsome 
who works on a road crew—it does not jibe with my worldview. 
"So what are the specials, George?" I ask, sticking to the menu. 

"The specials?" George asks. 

"Yes," I say. 

"Everything is special," George says with inclusive gusto. 

"Okay, great, but what are the specials really?" I ask again. 

"Just what's on the menu,” George says. “The lamb is very good.” 

Tania blushes. I'm guessing she's a regular consumer of the 
lamb. 

“ГІ have the lamb then," I say, handing back the menu. 


"Is he your boyfriend?" I repeat because I'm stubborn with 
the newfound attention. 

“Um, no," Tania says, “he's not my boyfriend." 

"It's just, he's cute," I say. 

"Stop," Tania says. 

“I thought you two had some repartee,” I say. 

“Can we change the subject?" Tania asks. 

“You obviously get along." 

"Stop," Tania says. 

“Okay,” I say as though uncertain of the ground rules. “So, 
Niagara Falls...." 

“And not that either," Tania says. 

And so begins the back-and-forth of mothers and daughters 
immemorial. Everything I ask is too personal; everything I say 
is too banal to warrant a proper response. And Tania gives me 
the minimum, mostly yeses and nos and a few spare details— 
her job, her friends, her rescue dog—which hardly defrays the 
general sense of sadness and loneliness I imagine from her life. 
The poor girl. She speaks as if she has a lawyer present, glancing 
to the side when I pose basic questions, seeking, it seems, coun- 
sel from David Hockney at MoMA. And she can barely muster 
any curiosity about my own day-to-day existence and instead 
seeks confirmation of the same old, same old, as though I’m not 
real, as though I am merely someone in prosthetics acting as her 


| NEED FRESH AIR. | NEED ESCAPE. | HAVE NO 
BYGONE FONDNESS FOR THESE PEOPLE. | M 
LIKE A PAIR OF SCISSORS SAYING GOOD-BYE. 


Tania looks surprised. “We’re doing this already?” she asks. 

“Why not?” I say. “George is here, and he seems ready and 
capable and even eager, and it’s been a long day, and I’m hun- 
gry, and I hear the lamb is very good, and that's just fine by me. 
Oh, and ГІ have another sparkling water as well and maybe 
some bread." 

"Okay," George says. "And you, Tania?" 

“Um, I guess I'll have the chicken paillard,” she says. “And 
I'll stick with regular water." 

"Excellent," George says, and he executes a shallow bow be- 
fore leaving. 

There's a moment of post-ordering silence before I say, ^He 
seems nice." 

“Uh-huh,” Tania says. 

*You come here often?" I ask. 

“Enough,” Tania says. 

"Is he maybe your boyfriend?" I ask, which I know is a 
supremely foolish thing to ask, and yet the words are released 
before I can do anything, spoken from this voice within my 
voice, like a stage prompt from the wings. 

Tania tilts her head. ^What?" she asks. 


170 FICTION 


mother. And she once adored me. Would practically dress up as 
me. I flatten in the chair. Whatever misguided enthusiasm is 
leaking away, moldering and stale, like my love is just the reek 
of my own breath. 

"Have you seen your father?" I ask, raising the stakes, but I 
need fuller consideration. 

“Of course not," Tania says. 

"I was just wondering," I say, “since you're both in the city." 

“Why would I see him?" she asks. 

“I don't know. Don't blame me for that,” I say. 

"I don’t want to see him," Tania says. “At all. Like never.” 

"Okay," I say. 

At some point George appears with the food. 

"Here's the lamb. And the chicken," he says. 

I look up at him and say, "Im curious, George, are you 
married?" 

Tania tightens from across the table. 

“No,” George says. 

"Never?" Iask. 

Tania leans forward. I am finally fully present in her eyes. 

"I'm a widower,” George says. 


“Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry. When did your wife die?" I ask. 

“Um, Mom," Tania says. 

George smiles despite himself. "About three years ago," he 
says. 

“And how did she die, if you don't mind me asking?" I ask. 

“Mom,” Tania says again. 

George nods like a boat on waves. “Cancer,” he says, 

“Mom,” Tania says, "stop." 

"There's no shame in this,” I say to her. “Just an honest and 
open conversation, right, George? I myself am a survivor. Basal 
cell carcinoma.” I point to the various divots on my face. "And a 
nasty squamous cell carcinoma on my back. Fair skin and alove 
of bikinis, not a good combination. Certainly not the same, of 
course, not by a long shot, but still gets you thinking. I also had 
a thyroid scare last year. I don't know if I told you that, Tania." 

"Enough," Tania says. 

"It was in her brain," George says. "Or started there." 

“How horrible for you," I say. 

“Yes, well, mostly horrible for her," George says, his head 
back on the shore. 

“I can’t imagine," I say, though I can. 

"Anyway, George says, “bon appétit," which rings hollow 
yet true. 

"Yes, thank you, George," I say. “Looks delicious. Thank you.” 

I regard the lamb in front of me. I hate lamb. 

In five minutes, maybe six, Tania will get up and leave. I 
know this like I know she can sometimes cry so hard that she'll 
vomit. Like I know she can hold her breath almost to the point 
of fainting. Like I know she can stay locked in the bathroom 
until the fire department has to be called. Her face is redden- 
ing now. Blotches appear on her neck and chest, like her skin is 
litmus paper and I am the test. She never could hide anything 
from me. She holds her knife and fork like handlebars and she's 
speeding downhill, reckless and strong-willed, running away 
from home again. I notice the votive candle on the table flicker- 
ing. George has forgotten the bread. I start in on the lamb, cut- 
ting and then inspecting the meat. It's like I'm performing an 
autopsy. I realize there's a specific word for what the flame is 
doing, which suddenly seems important to remember. Flicker, 
flutter, shiver, shudder. I keep my eyes focused on the plate, on 
the growing pile of excised meat. All of the restaurant seems 
constituted around our silence and the predestined end of our 
silence. We are the main event. Twinkle, sparkle, glimmer. I 
sound like a witch in my head. If only Tania knew how much I 
loved her. Gutter—the flame is guttering. That's when I look up 
and give Tania a satisfied smile. I never even had the chance to 
mention the yearbook. 

The bar at the hotel is hardly full, which is both a relief and a 
disappointment, and yet the bartender lingers on the oppo- 
site end, chatting with others while I embarrass myself with 
a series of meaningful glances. Perhaps he's trying to instill 
some dismissive cool onto the place. Because otherwise this 
could be a New York-themed restaurant in Des Moines. And 
the lighting is beyond hideous. My pores seem possessed by 
lampreys, angry and alive, sucking up the fluorescence. I'm 
sure everyone can hear my skin scream. But nobody turns to- 
ward me, not even the nearby older gentleman in his dated 
pinstripe suit. He's around my age. His hair is thinning and 
slicked back, his scalp vaguely corpse-like. Forty years ago his 
attention would've angled toward me in a near instant. Shoul- 
ders followed by head followed by eyes. The testing of the space 


between us. The unavoidable hello. But he's only interested in 
his phone, and I'm still waiting for the bartender. Billy Joel 
plays on the stereo. Then the Ramones. It's as though the play- 
list has been created by a schizophrenic New Yorker. 

Itake a deep breath, which spurs an extravagant yawn. 

I imagine a pair of clear blue eyes peering from my throat. 

“Fuck,” I say as I finish the yawn. 

The older gentleman looks at me. 

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” I say. 

He extends me a thumbs-up and returns to his phone. 

Once again I glance down the bar. 

Does the bartender think I already have a drink? 

I reach into my bag and grab the Sachem—the goddamn 
Sachem, and I find myself sort of laughing, because it's been 
a long and impossible day and here I am in this hotel bar lis- 
tening to “I Wanna Be Sedated” and as far as I can tell I barely 
exist in this world. I open the yearbook and find Zoe Akeldama. 
I should sign the thing already. For Bob. Dear Bob. Sweet Bob. 
And though I have a pen in my bag, I think about asking the 
older gentleman for one, just to confirm my reality. Oh, ex- 
cuse me, sir. My mother once told me she would have named me 
Athena if she had known just how beautiful I would become. So 
typical that she had gotten the goddess wrong. But her life was 
so meager. The dental hygienist. The first-generation Ameri- 
can. The paltry success story. Zoe Akeldama would have gotten 
a drink here no problem. And whatever drug she wanted. And a 
weekend trip to someplace warm. And a stupid role in a stupid 
movie, which was always the stupid dream. I carefully rip the 
page from the yearbook, like removing a check from a check- 
book. The older gentleman looks at me again. I smile and ball 
the piece of paper and toss it in the direction of the bartender. 
It hardly causes a stir. 

“That was me,” I tell the older gentleman. 

His extends me another thumbs-up and returns to his phone. 

This is New York, I think. This is me in New York. This is me 
sitting here in New York. 

I look at my hands. Always a mistake. 

I’m tempted to grab my tweezers and work on random 
knuckle hairs but instead I pick up my phone. 

No new texts; no new e-mails. 

Nothing. 

Four middle-aged women enter the bar, probably 20 years 
younger than me. They seem to be celebrating something, their 
festivity instantly grating. They semaphore whooping with 
their arms. No doubt they will all order cosmopolitans and be 
further transformed. 

I think about Bob. I think about Bob roaming the streets in 
his fedora and faux machete, playing the character he always 
wanted to be, but the tall buildings are almost overwhelm- 
ing, the crowds and the lights, the sudden sounds, all the fears 
greater than any moth streaking toward him in the moon- 
light. And yet Bob persists, Bob does the sights, Bob eats a pret- 
zel and a hot dog, Bob goes into Madame Tussauds and poses 
next to Freddy Krueger and Frank Sinatra, Bob navigates these 
mysterious scenes and wonders where all these people live and 
how they live and what they do for a living, Bob assuming he’s 
the only stranger here, the only audience member to this cu- 
rious show. Then he gets three texts in quick succession. Like 
whispers through a crannied hole. 

“Come to Room 2024.” 

“Come right now.” 

“T have what you want.” ш 


PLAYBOY 1/] 


^at thi 
o. i 


NT 


STYLING BY KELLEY ASH 


JUNE PLAYMATE 


PLAYBOY 1/3 


Join Yoli Lara, our June Playmate, 
on a tour of her native Puerto Rico 
and her radiant spirit 


MYISLANDISEVERYTHING TO ME. 

When Hurricane Maria hit back in 2017, it was dev- 
astating to my hometown of Toa Baja, which is on the 
outskirts of San Juan and right near the beach. I was liv- 
ing and working as a model in Los Angeles at the time. 
I wanted to go home immediately and help my family 
and my people put the pieces back together, and I had 
an idea how I could make the biggest impact. I told my 
mom, “I’m moving back, and I’m going to compete for 
Miss Puerto Rico in the Miss Universe pageant." My 
mom said, “You're crazy—you're already established in 
Los Angeles. Why do you want to come back to the is- 
land?" I told her, “I want to use that platform to say 
something and for people to hear me." 

I moved back to Puerto Rico the following April. Nobody 
in the industry knew me, and I'd never done a pageant in 
my life. While I was there, I worked with Waves for Water, 
a nonprofit that was installing handmade water filters 
all over the island. They sponsored a project I did for the 
pageant: One of the schools in my hometown didn't have 
any water, so we installed a cooler and did a presenta- 
tion where we ran dirty water through the filter so it was 
totally clean. They do wonderful work, and I was blessed 
that they helped me use that experience in the pageant. 

Winning Miss Puerto Rico would have been a dream, 
but it wasn't in the cards for me. Around the time of the 
pageant, my modeling agency in Los Angeles dropped me 
because I wasn't there. (Luckily, they ended up giving me 
a second chance.) When I came back here, I had nothing; I 
had given up everything to go back home. It was frighten- 
ing, but I didn't care. I gave 110 percent of myself, and even 
though I didn't win I felt like a winner with everything I 
had done—the pageant, the rebuilding, everything. 

And if I had won, I wouldn't have been able to do this 
story! It wasn't even two weeks after I got back to Los An- 
geles that PLAYBOY contacted me. I remember thinking, 
This is it—my validation. If I work hard and treat people 
with respect, the universe follows through. I said yes be- 
cause I think any chance a woman gets to showcase her 
power is a great opportunity. 

I didn't get this opportunity because I look the way I 
look; there are 10,000 girls who are more beautiful than I 
am, who have all the things a magazine would be lucky to 
have. I got this opportunity because I have something to 
say. I fell down, I got up. Even though one door closed, it 
doesn't matter, because down the road I'm going to have 
a good time. That's what I want people to say at the end of 
my journey: “She did it.” 


174 


) 
I didnt get this, 
opportunity # 
because 204% 
the way I look. 
I got it because 
I have some- 
thing tay. 


176 


PLAYBOY 177 


178 


DATA SHEET 


BIRTHPLACE: Bayamón, Puerto Rico CURRENT CITY: Los Angeles, California 


ON HAPPY PLACES 


For me, the beach is everything. I’m an 
Aquarius, and my full first name has the 
ocean in it—the mar in Yolimar. | was 
born on an island, so | feel very tied to 
the ocean. Most people are like, "Oh, 
we're going to the beach!" But for me 
it's a spiritual, cleansing adventure. 


ON CAUTIONARY EXAMPLES 


| was very influenced by Disney mov- 
ies. My favorite is Pocahontas because 
she stays with her family and her tribe; 
she doesn't live her dream. When | saw 
that story | was like, "No. Even though it 
will kill me in my heart, | want to reach 
for my dreams.” | left Puerto Rico and 
all my family; | knew | had to step out of 
my comfort zone. 


ON PAIN AND GAIN 


Growing up, | couldnt see my mom 
that much because she worked full- 
time, so | spent a lot of time with my 


grandma. She would braid my hair for 
school, fixing it in two little pigtails. It 
hurt so much! My hair is really curly, 
and she would make those braids so 
tight. But they were always intact, even 
at six p.m. when | returned from school. 
| always looked fabulous, thanks to her. 


ON OPPORTUNITY 


| did my first photo shoot when | was 
14. They were looking for models for a 
hair show, and | remember my mom 
saying, "You're not going to dye your 
hair” But | knew | would take the op- 
portunity. They wanted to dye my 
hair blonde with streaks of red and 
orange—very futuristic. | said, "Let's do 
it. Whatever it is, lets do it.” | went to 
school the next day and got sent right 
back home- literally, walk in, walk out. 


ON REJECTION 


| wasn't a conventional model; like all 
the women in my family, | have a tiny 


waist and big hips. I’m used to it now, 
but at those early castings | would 
always hear, "You're perfect, but your 
hips are too big.” | would be like, “I can't 
do anything about it, because that's 
literally how my body is. | can't just 
grow or shrink.” | learned that the job 
entails rejection. 


ON PROGRESS 


I'm grateful that industries now аге 
more inclusive regarding race, shape, 
size, color and gender. | think people 
are more open to change and diversity 
and to accepting different things. 


ON RIRI 


Rihanna is one of my idols. She's from 
Barbados and was discovered on the 
island. She sings, she dances, she does 
it all—and she has a tiny waist and big 
hips. When | was growing up | would 
watch her singing "Umbrella" and say, 
"| want to be like her” 


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GUEST EDITED BY EVAN PRICCO 


Playboy taps JUXTAPOZ ; editor in chief to assemble a special 
multimedia exploration of art, freedom and activism. Here, six rising 
artists present works that further conversations and ignite new ones 


It's amazing how, in the not so distant past, some of the best 
American art decorated your neighborhood post office. And 
perhaps even more surprising is the fact that this idea—that 
tax dollars should be used to make art a part of daily life—was a 
mandate from the U.S. government. 

Under the New Deal's Works Progress Administration, or 
WPA, which in turn created the Federal Art Project, the gov- 
ernment prioritized putting art to work. Of course the United 
States wasn't the first country to do so; just about any civiliza- 
tion you can name has a history of beautiful public architec- 
ture, but for Depression-era America it was a declaration of 
confidence and creativity. The country needed to make a name 
for itself on the global art stage, and the local post office was 
going to help it get there. So if you went to the mail drop in Kel- 
logg, Idaho in 1941, you would see the mural Discovery by the 
then emerging American artist Fletcher Martin hanging above 
the postmaster's door. 

These days, art, especially in connection to politics, looks 
less like it did during the heyday of the WPA and more like an 
extension of grassroots protest and advocacy. You could argue 
that artists, designers, musicians and poets spread creative 
capital for Barack Obama throughout the 2008 presidential 
campaign—so much so that many believed Shepard Fairey's 
Hope posters had been bankrolled by the candidate. What orig- 
inated as an organic image became the emblem of a world in 
which art and politics could exist hand in hand. 

The government may not have been paying for the arts, but 
in some ways, the transformative political experience that we 
saw with Fairey's Hope helped spawn a new movement. Run the 
clock forward to the 2016 election, and one can't forget how a 
particular candidate sparked perhaps the most outrageous pro- 
test art America has seen, with "Make America Great Again." 


That candidate—inspired, perhaps unwittingly, by 20th cen- 
tury masters of the propaganda poster—ended up increas- 
ing the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts after 
threatening for more than a year to gut its programs. I swear he 
did it by accident. 

In an era when there seems to be a constant struggle to iden- 
tify what America is, or should be, art reflects the moment and 
at the same time fights against the notion of singularity. Those 
early WPA organizers understood that art in daily life was a 
necessary condition for healthy discourse. As we have collec- 
tively stepped away from this federally sanctioned practice, the 
myth of our unified identity has become evident. 

There's a reason public art is so popular—why we have art in 
doctors' offices and airports and on city streets; why many psy- 
chologists say art programs in prisons are a kind of therapy. Art 
makes you feel, dare I say...good? But for so many years art has 
been associated with the left wing, with antiauthoritarianism— 
as seen in everything from the Black Panthers' poster art to 
Barbara Kruger's anticonsumerist wordplay and even Fairey's 
Obama work. The most daring art tends to be linked to protest, 
and many in power would probably prefer those works to be in- 
accessible to a wider audience. 

Art has been displaced in our culture, but the artists in this 
feature are developing new ways to examine our greater selfhood 
in an era of disruption. Their artis made with personal and soci- 
etal implications in mind. Some of it comes from the heart of the 
justice system, a full turn from the origins of the WPA. 

These artists don't create art for art's sake. Their works aren't 
sharks in formaldehyde—fascinating yet so ostentatious that 
their meaning is lost in spectacle. This is a look at those who are 
creating monuments to living, breathing connection in times of 
discord—and something for us to live with. 


PLAYBOY 189 


MIRANDA BARNES 


A true understanding of activism came to me first with the kill- 
ing of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and then in 2014 with those of 
Michael Brown and Eric Garner. 

I feared for my younger brothers, my father, my friends and 
any black man in this country who could be subjected to vio- 
lence and have his death played out in the media so widely and 
publicly. I feared for myself, as a young black woman, and the 
thought that I would eventually have black children. 

Those years solidified my choice to attend John Jay College 
of Criminal Justice in New York City and eventually graduate 
with a B.A. in humanities and justice, in 2018. I also came to 
the realization that the art world lacked stories like mine, so I 
started to take my photography more seriously and document 
topics I believe in. I felt a responsibility as a black photographer 
to highlight the black narrative missing from the mainstream 


190 SYMPOSIUM 


landscape. That conviction remains to this day. 

The two photos on these pages are from my coverage for The 
New York Times of the 5oth anniversary of Martin Luther King 
Jr.'s assassination. I chose them because I believe that what 
King achieved in his short time here is the epitome of activism. 
He carried the burden and the stress of millions of black Ameri- 
cans, championing equality for all. 

These images, I hope, serve as a reminder that at the same 
time King was a legend, he was also a father, husband, brother 
and friend. Despite his status and accomplishments, at the Lor- 
raine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, he was still a black man 
gunned down in America. 


Barnes is a Caribbean-Anglo American photographer whose 


work challenges racial stereotypes. 


BOTH IMAGES: LORRAINE MOTEL, MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE. MEDIUM-FORMAT FILM ON NEWSPAPER, 2018 


YRSA DALEY-WARD 


I Have a Frien 


| have a friend who means well. She comes to see me often and brings 


candles, sweets and sage. At the end of the night on the town she'll say, 


"text when you're home safe, babe.” 

Strange then, that when it happened, 

when it happened, and | told her she said, 

‘Why were you there alone? You know what he's like.’ 

| have a friend who ‘means well. She knows how to soothe things like 
depression (golden root, blueberries, orange scent) and will always want 
to celebrate your birthday—but when there's a man in the room she 
jokes about your faults. 

| have a friend who means well, so well, but doesn't trust anyone around 
her boyfriend; will laugh out loud at his bad manners, will make excuses 
for his hate, will placate, will rearrange our plans together if he suddenly 
has a free night. | have a friend who knows herself and forgets herself in 
a blink. A friend that says things like Yeah, but I’m sure she provoked him. 
I've got a well-meaning, dear soon to be not friend who says not all men, 
and, men will be men... 

but my man would never. 

| love my friend. My friend who says what did she do what did she drink 
look what she wore what does she think she is? | love my friend. | love my 


friend, but it's over. 


Daley-Ward is a writer of mixed West Indian and West African 
heritage whose most celebrated works include a memoir, The Terrible, 
and a collection of poems, Bone. 


192 SYMPOSIUM 


NATHANIEL MARY QUINN 


Consider the history of the treatment of black and brown folks 
in America. Look at the ongoing treatment of unarmed black 
men at the deadly hands of a number of unhinged and rogue po- 
lice officers. Then look at my work The Making of Super Nigga. 

In 2015 I found myself compelled to make art in response 
to the wretched reality that is the bedrock of our great United 
States. Here, the white police officer (or "Super Nigga") mu- 
tates into the beastly men he has succeeded in demonizing and 
murdering in cold blood. 

The police officer is mangled, wracked by his violent history 
going back to the Ku Klux Klan and ruled by his terror. He is 
bound at the hips by the imagined large and mighty penis of 
the black man who overpowers him and represents the center 
of his inferiority and insecurity. And of course, no depiction 
of an officer would be complete without his gun ready at hand, 
his only recourse for fighting against the fears—the fear of that 
black man—that lie within him. 

The subject is dressed in a vintage-like Superman costume 
with the colors of the American flag. Superman, an American 
hero, is in fact an immigrant who pretends, as his disguise, to 
be clumsy and incompetent in order to fit in. The police officer 


THE MAKING OF SUPER NIGGA. MIXED MEDIA ON VELLUM, 50 X 38 INCHES, 2015 


thinks he needs his uniform to declare himself better than the 
lesser earthly mortals. 

In today's political climate—both here in America and 
around the world—there is a growing upheaval about the so- 
called majority's replacement, the changing of the guard, the 
fear that jobs and professional opportunities are somehow 
being taken from superior white men and given to black and 
brown folks. 

We shall never forget the age-old chant of those Nazis 
marching down the street in the land of the brave and free that 
fateful morning in Charlottesville, Virginia. “Jews will not 
replace us! Blacks will not replace us!" And yet, their severe 
lack of competence prevents them from realizing the indisput- 
able fact that they are not being replaced; simply put, they are 
being outperformed. 

Asaresult, and scarily so, they're all becoming Super Niggas. 


Quinn grew up drawing comics in the public housing projects 
on Chicago's South Side. Today he's a Brooklyn-based mixed- 
media artist who creates powerful composite portraits that 
explore social issues. 


TIMOTHY CURTIS 


My career started on the streets of Philadelphia. I turned to graf- 
fiti at the age of nine, when my friend Fat Steve gave me my first 
tag, “Pipe.” I stole some markers and a few years later taught my- 
self calligraphy; I became fascinated with varying lines and how 
they communicated contrasting feelings and emotions. 

Philadelphia graffiti culture has a style all its own, focused on 
long lines and embellishment and bound by friendship. No mat- 
ter what neighborhood I bounced to or from, I was never alone. 
My friends were every race, color and religion, but we found com- 
mon ground in being impoverished and fatherless. None of us 
knew much beyond our art 
and getting into trouble, but 
we always knew love. 

Even in prison, camara- 
derie was my means of sur- 
vival. In 2015, at the end of 
an eight-year sentence, I cre- 
ated a 75-foot painting in 
the gymnasium at Somer- 
set state prison with fellow 


194 SYMPOSIUM 


BLUES PRISONERS. OIL ON CANVAS, 84 X 96 INCHES, 2019; DESTROY SOMERSET. 75 X 15 FEET, 2015 


inmates. The goal was to paint something that pushed against the 
system's deep-rooted hatred for the poor and people of color. My 
collaborators were all serving life sentences, so the walls stand 
for them. We painted a brown fist holding a 100-pound kettlebell 
smashing "Somerset" to pieces. The explanation I gave the prison 
staff, however, referenced the CrossFit program. This was my 
“Good-bye, fuck you!"—a proclamation that no prison could kill our 
spirits or creativity. 

My work, including the piece above, focuses on powerful lines 
that put my emotions into action. It's intended to provoke thought, 
connection and happiness. I aspire to create a new visual language 
available to all people. I don't claim to know what makes art great; 
I just keep drawing and painting, hoping to find out one day. 

In my experience, activism is powerful when it's loud and 
when it's soft. Sometimes it's the quiet, cautious works—the 
ones that feel like a secret shared among a select few—that make 
communities feel closest. 


Curtis, a self-taught artist born in Philadelphia and based in New 
York City, focuses on calligraphy and graffiti-inspired line work. 


IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT BORDERS. RAZOR WIRE AND FLOWERS ON CONCRETE, 2017 


ICY AND SOT 


It all began with skateboarding, when we were just 2Land 15. We 
would spend our days in 2006 skateboarding around Tabriz and 
post simple self-made stencils and stickers all over the city. We 
didn't know anything about the international street-art move- 
ment at the time, but we soon became obsessed with learning all 
about it. But street art is heavily censored in Iran. 

While the strict laws inspired our creativity, enforcement 
mäde it difficult to grow as artists. When we started to get 
attehtion and received international orders, we couldn't even 
ship the works, because mail was searched for contraband. We 
had to cover a given work with another, more traditional can- 
vas. Still, we never lost our motivation. 

After six years of working in Iran—and dealing with all the 
stress, fear and lack of support that comes with life as an art- 
ist there—we decided to leave. In 2012 we planned our first solo 
show in New York City, got our visas and finally made it to the 
United States. We haven't left since. 

The freedom of America makes it so much easier to create, to 
experiment. But our knowledge of the lack of freedom in other 
parts of the world—issues of human rights, capitalism, censor- 


ship, ecological justice—continues to inspire, even as we've 
evolved beyond single-layer stencil work. 

Still, despite the constant change in medium, we're sure to 
keep our work simple. With simplicity, we maintain a voice that 
can communicate across languages, regions and education levels. 

We hope this piece falls in line with our goal to reach across 
any barriers that divide people all over the world. In Imagine a 
World Without Borders, the flowers cover the razor wire in pro- 
test. While barbed wire is meant to keep people out, flowers wel- 
come people in. 

Regardless of where they come from, all humans should be 
welcome. Immigrants, like us, leave what they know not be- 
cause they want to but because they must. Sure, this work may 
play only a small role in your day, but maybe—even just for a 
moment—we can help you escape from the chaos and imagine 
a better world. 


ICY and SOT are self-taught brothers from Tabriz, Iran who are 
inspired by their personal experiences with artistic and polit- 
ical censorship. 


The young photographer-artist becomes the first Muslim woman 


to appear nude in Playboy-on her own terms and through her 


own lens. Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario 


explores the significance of Yumna Al-Arashi’s work 


or 65 years, the contours of women’s bodies have 
been splashed across the pages of PLAYBOY. As a lit- 
tle girl, I remember stealing away with my older 
sisters to my uncle’s top-floor apartment in our 
family-run hair salon to stare at the glossy images 
of naked women spread across triple-page folds. 
We laughed giddily as we wondered when our bod- 
ies would develop into such delicious and desirable 
shapes. Sometimes the woman in the photograph 
fondled herself, looking directly into the lens; other times she 
glanced back playfully from behind, her legs spread apart just 
enough. Her hair, tossed over one shoulder, looked either fresh 
out of bed or reminiscent of Farrah Fawcett's. The message to 
me was simple: A sensual woman was always ready for sex. 

So some might find it surprising that this series of fully nude 
self-portraits for the magazine is by a Muslim: Yemeni American 
photographer Yumna Al-Arashi. But that seeming contradiction 
is exactly what drives Al-Arashi as a visual artist. She began her 
career as a photojournalist but transitioned to art and fashion 
after growing disillusioned with the confines of documentary 
photography, including a sense that Western viewers preferred 
Muslims, particularly Muslim women, to be portrayed as one- 
dimensional, oppressed and miserable. “She is always holding 
a dead baby or crying in the desert, or her home has just been 
bombed,” says Al-Arashi, describing a typical image to me. 

As a photographer working for Western media outlets, Al- 
Arashi worried she was perpetuating the fallacy that Muslim 
women exist only in a boundless landscape of helplessness, war 
and devastation. It bothered her. “We are so dynamic,” she ex- 
plains, *and we are all so different—just as any other type of 
person is. I felt I could use my voice to show another side rather 
than portray the same negativity." 

For years, Al-Arashi has used the body—hers and her friends'— 
as a subject in her photography and videography. “It conveys so 
much emotion that a normal portrait doesn't," she says. 

In her 2017 photo series Shedding Skin, Al-Arashi cap- 
tures women inside a hammam, or traditional bathhouse, in 


Lebanon. It evokes intimacy and sensuality and succeeds at 
peeling away layers of misconceptions about Muslim women. 
Although not every woman featured is Muslim, the mere notion 
of Middle Eastern women agreeing to be photographed naked 
proved groundbreaking. 

When conceptualizing a shoot, Al-Arashi lets her surround- 
ings and mood guide her vision. ^For me, a nude self-portrait 
feels like a diary entry," she says. “I can't plan a diary entry. 
I can't plan the emotions." She works primarily in private 
spaces—at times difficult in her current home city of London— 
and shares the results on social media and in articles and ex- 
hibitions. Her photographs are evocative, sensual, playful—and 
a bit withholding: Information in the frame is often hidden by 
vegetation, a curtain, a billowing scarf or a body of water in 
which she's strategically immersed. 

Al-Arashi claims her self-portraits are "the complete op- 
posite of sexual," so she was understandably surprised when 
PLAYBOY approached her with this unprecedented assignment. 
"If they'd asked to feature me as a model in PLAYBOY, 100 percent 
I would have said no,” she says. "As an Arab American, a Muslim 
and a woman in general, our bodies are often not our own. Hav- 
ing a female editor ask me to portray myself the way I wanted to 
be seen is really badass and history-making. It's usually a man 
photographing a woman in an objectifying way. But the idea of 
me interpreting the way I would like to be seen in PLAYBOY, un- 
derstanding what that means and who the audience would be: If 
the audience is male, what do I want to show them as a woman 
taking photos of herself the way she wants to be seen? How do I 
want to communicate my nudity and my body? How do I want to 
talk to the male gaze for the first time?" 

Her nude self-portraits, shot in the Philippines, succeed per- 
haps where her photojournalism failed. She is expanding the 
perception of Middle Eastern women by showing a portrait we 
rarely see: an Arab American Muslim woman unveiled, con- 
fident and in control of her image. On her Instagram feed is a 
scene from northern Yemen featuring Al-Arashi, swathed in 
a black abaya and black hijab, set against a spare, moon-like 
landscape. The caption: ^A self portrait in Yemen. Don't under- 
estimate women. We made you." 


PLAYBOY 19/ 


198 


PLAYBOY 199 


PLAYBOY 201 


PLAYBOY 


RII 


ШЕ ОЕ ЕКЕ TEIN 


FEE ВЕЕ 


THE JAMAICA CLUB 


WEED WARRIORS 


TRE SINGING FLATMATES 


JEANE MANSON 


BRANDE RODERICK 


VINTAGE ADVISOR 


DEFYING IHE 
ANII-PORN POLICE 


IS SEX A MENACE TO SOCIETY? RECENT SOCIAL MEDIA PURGES ARE EERILY 
EVOCATIVE OF A REAGAN-ERA ATTEMPT TO CENSOR PLAYBOY 


spy JAMES R. PETERSEN 


Last November, Apple’s App Store removed Tumblr from its digital 
shelves after concerns arose that objectionable images, including 
child pornography, were slipping through the blogging platform’s 
content filter. Within a month, all of Tumblr’s explicit adult mate- 
rial had disappeared from public view. The concerns were serious 
and legitimate, but the rush to purge exploitative items from the 
site also ensnared vast swaths of perfectly healthy sexual content. 

The episode eerily 
echoed past culture wars. 
An overly broad effort to 
stamp out sexual expres- 
sion? We've been there. 
In 1968, at the height of 
the sexual revolution, 
President Lyndon B. 
Johnson established the 
Commission on Obscen- 
ity and Pornography. Its 
aim was to determine 
whether porn had nega- 
tive social effects, and 
its conclusions, reached 
in 1970 and based on sci- 
entific study, were clear: 
There was no connec- 
tion between consuming 
pornography and par- 
ticipating in antisocial 
behavior. A decade and 
a half later, the Reagan 
administration decided 
that it wasn’t going to let 
little things like facts get 
in the way of a conserva- 
tive crusade. 

The 1980s were a cul- 
tural battleground, a time when misinformation frequently com- 
bined with moral panic to great inflammatory effect. Remember 
the Parents Music Resource Center, the coalition that took on the 
music industry in 1985 to protect kids from what it believed were 
inappropriate lyrics? Having labeled a Twisted Sister song pro- 
rape, PMRC co-founder Tipper Gore must have been surprised to 
hear singer Dee Snider testify in a Senate hearing that he was in 


ILLUSTRATION BY ROB STITES 


fact a faithful Christian and that “Under the Blade” was actually 
about the fear of surgery. “The only sadomasochism, bondage 
and rape in this song is in the mind of Ms. Gore,” he said. 

At the time, fundamentalists and other anti-porn activists were 
fighting to control the public image of sex—to put the hard-won 
sexual freedoms of the 1960s and 1970s back in the box. The so- 
called religious right was on the rise and had a friendly audience 
in the White House: “We 
consider pornography to 
be a public problem,” said 
Reagan in 1984. In May 
1985, Reagan’s attorney 
general, Edwin Meese, 
troubled by the rise of 
cable television, video re- 
corders and dial-a-porn 
phone sex, among other 
developments, called for 
a reexamination. “Por- 
nography now is avail- 
able at home to almost 
anyone,” he said. 

Unlike its predeces- 
sor, the Meese Commis- 
sion on Pornography was 
more interested in an- 
ecdotes than in scien- 
tific evidence. Holding 
public hearings in cities 
across the country, the 
11-member group heard 
from 208 witnesses, in- 
cluding 30 alleged vic- 
tims of porn—one of 
whom  bemoaned the 
"connection between sex- 
ual promiscuity, venereal 
disease, abortion, divorce, homosexuality, sexual abuse of chil- 
dren, suicide, drug abuse, rape and prostitution to pornography." 

PLAYBOY publisher and editor in chief Hugh Hefner stood 
firmly in opposition to the commission, whose efforts he called 
a “witch hunt.” The commission “trundled out a parade of born- 
again basket cases, anti-sex feminists and fun-hating fundamen- 
talists," he wrote in a January 1986 editorial. (Hefner was far 


PLAYBOY 205 


from the only critic of the commission; other prominent detrac- 
tors included feminist Betty Friedan, novelist Kurt Vonnegut 
and actress Colleen Dewhurst.) Many of those who gave testi- 
mony at the hearings seemed to advance the domino theory of 
porn—that a single exposure would lead to a growing appetite 
for the bizarre, the violent, the perverse. One born-again Chris- 
tian claimed he went from seeing a deck of pornographic playing 
cards at the age of 12 to shoplifting copies of PLAvBOY from the 
local grocery store to engaging in bestiality with the family dog. 

Barry Lynn of the American Civil Liberties Union noted a dis- 
tinctly conservative bias across the hearings. He calculated that 
ofthe 208 witnesses, "at least 160 (77 percent) were urging tighter 
controls over sexually explicit material," including law enforce- 
ment officers, elected officials, representatives of anti-porn 
groups and several prominent anti-porn activists. “Only two per- 
sons who might be characterized as avid consumers of the ma- 
terial stepped forward to testify," Lynn reported. ^Commission 
investigators went out of their way to locate anti-pornography 
witnesses, sometimes even going so far as to help write the state- 
ments of victim witnesses." 

The commission itself seemed far from impartial. Six of the 
members had, according to Lynn, a “clear anti-pornography bias.” 
Two others opposed the distribution of sexually explicit content. 
“Not a single person who was known to be skeptical about the evi- 
dence linking pornography to violence or to be concerned about 
the First Amendment implications of anti-pornography legisla- 
tion was appointed to the commission," Lynn said. And instead 
of taking a neutral approach to evaluating adult content, commis- 
sioners viewed images taken from the truly disgusting and crimi- 
nal extremes, called them porn and then used that same word to 
describe practically all sexual expression. (Our favorite ridicu- 
lous vignette? As the panel viewed one picture, a supposed expert 
described it as a close-up of “a vagina surrounded by a woman.") 

This, Hefner declared, was *sexual McCarthyism," aterm he pop- 
ularized. The hysteria of the Reagan administration, Hefner ar- 
gued, was akin to the infamous Red Scare tactics of Senator Joseph 
McCarthy of the House Un-American Activities Committee. In 
1950 McCarthy had proclaimed that he had the names of supposed 
Communists serving in the State Department and compiled black- 
lists of suspected “Reds.” A pamphlet called Red Channels outed en- 
tertainers who worked with people on the blacklist; fellow travelers 
were made out to be as traitorous as alleged Communists. To Hefner, 
the parallels with the Meese commission were glaring: It was "trial 
by headline—unsupported by evidence, unchallenged by cross ex- 
amination or witnesses for the defense—it is not due process. But it 
is the method of the Meese commission as it was for McCarthy.” 

In the 1980s, this tactic evolved: Now representatives of the 
state were choosing depictions of acts that all Americans could 
agree were wrong and then widening the definition of “wrong” to 
include virtually anything the crusaders found offensive. 

Among the witnesses appearing before the Meese commission was 
Donald Wildmon, head of the National Federation for Decency. 
The Methodist minister from Tupelo, Mississippi had declared his 
own war on sex, hiring elderly women to count the jiggle scenes on 
an episode of Charlie's Angels; his monitors were also tasked with 
tallying the number of times the cast of Saturday Night Live used 
the word penis, and creating lists of advertisers on shows that of- 
fended them. The results were presented in a publication called 
the NFD Informer. Wildmon organized boycotts outside stores 
that sold PLAYBOY and wrote threatening letters to heads of cor- 
porations, advising them that they were complicit in the porn 


206 HERITAGE 


industry for helping distribute smut. Coca-Cola, Time Inc., Simon 
& Schuster and more were targets of Wildmon's ire. (SARA LEE 
IS LEADING PORN PUSHER, declared one NFD Informer headline 
about the frozen-dessert company.) In a July 1986 editorial, Hef- 
ner called him out: "From his perspective, nudity, sex education, 
birth control, sex between unmarried consenting adults—even 
evolution—are indefensible. So he has been harassing companies." 

For three years, the Southland Corporation, a major operator of 
7-Eleven stores, treated Wildmon as the nuisance he was. Then, 
perhaps with visions of McCarthy waving a list of supposed Reds, 
Wildmon gave the Meese commission his enemies list, proclaiming 
that Southland was among "the leading retailers of porn magazines 
in America.” In February 1986, Alan Sears, executive director of the 
commission, mailed an ominous letter on Justice Department sta- 
tionery to the heads of many businesses. The commission had *re- 
ceived testimony alleging that your company is involved in the sale 
or distribution of pornography," the letter read. "This commission 
has determined that it would be appropriate to allow your company 
to respond to the allegations prior to drafting its final report sec- 
tion on identified distributors." What Sears didn't mention is that 
the testimony came from one of the commission's own members. 

With its none too subtle "Are you now, or have you ever been" 
tone, the letter intimidated executives of Southland, Peoples Drug 
Stores, Rite Aid and others into pulling PLAYBOY and other maga- 
zines offtheir shelves. 

Hefner immediately saw the First Amendment implications. 
The Sears letter banned "the distribution and sale of PLAYBOY 
magazine and of other lawful publications without affording 
those magazines a fair hearing before an impartial tribunal," he 
wrote. Without due process, the magazine had effectively been 
declared obscene. Although 4,500 7-Eleven locations stopped sell- 
ing PLAYBOY as a result of the letter, the key issue for Hefner was 
not financial but constitutional. “Justice Robert Jackson once 
said it was not the government's role to impose orthodoxy on 
America's citizens—nor to impose a couple of obsessed individu- 
als' views of what is acceptable and what is not. The victimization 
of 7-Eleven is a tragedy, not as much for PLAYBOY—two thirds of 
our circulation comes from subscriptions—as for all of us." 

PLAYBOY took its objections to court, filing a lawsuit against 
Meese, Sears and other members of the commission. The Ameri- 
can Booksellers Association and the Council for Periodical Distrib- 
utors Association soon joined the suit. In July 1986, the case was 
decided in PLAYBOY'S favor. *A deprivation of a First Amendment 
right, that is a prior restraint on speech, a right so precious in this 
nation, constitutes irreparable injury," ruled the federal judge. 

The Meese commission apologized for the Sears letter, declar- 
ing publicly that PLAYBOY was not obscene, and it refrained from 
including a blacklist of supposed offenders in the final version of 
its report (which, we like to remember, Meese presented to the 
public while standing before a bare-breasted statue of Justice). 
But itis notable that a draft version of the report contained, along 
with Wildmon's blacklist, disturbing proposals for the creation 
of citizen groups that would monitor stores and networks for evi- 
dence of obscene material—in other words, morality police. 
Efforts like those of Tumblr and the Meese commission may start 
with noble objectives—eradicating child porn, preventing sex- 
ual slavery and violence—but they can easily slide down a slip- 
pery slope into a cultural totalitarianism under which morality 
is policed and sexual content is indiscriminately suppressed. All 
Americans must stay vigilant against such censorship. Nothing 
less than our personal freedoms are at stake. m 


NYET-SKID CONDOM 


THE GOOD Fight 


We get it: It can be easy to overlook the words in this magazine. So every now and then we like to remind our readers 
that since its inception PLAYBOY has championed First Amendment rights—in print and in court. That work continues 
today as we spark urgent conversations through the Playboy Interview, with recent subjects ranging from dissident 
artist Ai Weiwei to pro-choice leader Cecile Richards, and our photography, with stunning portraits of the proudly 
hijabi reporter Noor Tagouri, a Bunny-eared Ezra Miller and so much more. Below, take a tour of some other notable 
free-speech moments from the company’s first half-century. 


Hugh Hefner successfully fights the 
U.S. Postal Service's attempts to censor 
PLAYBOY by refusing to deliver copies of 
the magazine. "We dont think Postmaster 
[Arthur] Summerfield has any business 
editing magazines," Hef says. "We think 
he should stick to delivering the mail." 


А Pad 


Qu 


Proving its devotion to constructive satire, 
the magazine runs pages of a mock Soviet 
pLavsoy (slugged “Social Uplift for Com- 
rades”), complete with a tractor pictorial 
and an ad for a “nyet-skid condom.” 


Playboy CEO Christie Hefner launches the 
Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award. 
With recipients over the years ranging 
from Penn & Teller to Zephyr Teachout, the 
award recognizes artists, educators, poli- 
ticians and journalists who put it all on the 
line for our freedom of speech. 


PLAYBOY goes to bat for the newly avail- 
able birth control pill—at the time a wildly 
taboo subject in America. "To millions for 
whom children are economically, physi- 
cally or psychologically inadvisable ran a 
piece in the June issue, “the pill promises to 
become a connubial boon.” 


Having championed safe, legal abor- 
tion for a decade in the magazine—and 
running dozens of letters from women 
who had risked everything on back-alley 
procedures—Hef files an amicus curiae 
brief in the Roe v. Wade case. 


Hef lands the Anti-Defamation League's 
First Amendment Freedoms Award. Wil- 
liam F. Buckley, writing about the black-tie 
reception held in Hef's honor, muses, "If the 
guests arrive wearing only a black tie, that 
will be more than some of the guests wear 
at Hef's other parties." 


After Playboy TV expands to 24-hour programming, our lawyers once again find themselves invoking the First Amend- 
ment. The Supreme Court sides with the Rabbit, ruling that a section of the 1996 Telecommunications Act—requiring 
cable providers to limit sex shows to certain times and to scramble the signal for non-subscribers—constitutes a content- 
based restriction, thus violating the company’s free-speech rights. 


For the brazen act of depicting a topless 
Jayne Mansfield in bed before a besuited 
man, Hef is arrested on obscenity charges. 
The case against him melts into a mistrial 
and inspires Hef to write in the Playboy 
Philosophy: “We must be constantly on 
the alert to make certain that the label of 
'obscene' is not used to censor other areas 


of free speech and press." NW 


= 
1 


Comedian Lenny Bruce faces his own ob- 
scenity trial after a particularly barbed set 
in New York. Hef, who amplified Bruces 
reputation as an incendiary truth-teller 
through the magazine and Playboy's Pent- 
house, helps fund his legal fight. 


The famously puritanical Meese Com- 
mission sends menacing letters to PLAYB0Y 
retailers, about 10,000 of whom promptly 
remove the magazine from their shelves. 
A district court declares the 

letters a form of censorship and x 
orders them withdrawn. x A 

Ақ 


ILLUSTRATIONS BY MONICA GARWOOD 


REMEMBERING SHEL SILVERSTEIN, PLAYBOY'S BELOVED 
"PROTO-PUNK" POET AND CARTOONIST 


sy SASCHA COHEN 


IT WAS A POEM ABOUT A GIRL WHO WANTED 
a pony that first landed Shel Silverstein in trouble. Published 
in his 1981 collection of illustrated children's poetry, A Light in 
the Attic, “Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony" angered par- 
ents for its supposed glorification of suicide: Horse-obsessed 
Abigail stops eating and sleeping and eventually dies, “All 
because of a pony / That her parents wouldn't buy." Or maybe it 
was Silverstein's cheeky closing lines that had truly upset the 
moms and dads who pushed to ban the poem: “This is a good 
story / To read to your folks / When they won't buy / You some- 
thing you want." 

For years Silverstein's work hovered near the top of the Amer- 
ican Library Association's list of most-challenged books. 
Community groups in seven states attempted to ban from 
elementary classrooms A Light in the Attic and an earlier vol- 
ume, Where the Sidewalk Ends, for being "suggestive," “sick” 
and “disturbing to young minds." Given the antiauthoritarian 
spirit that animates much of Silverstein's writing, the push- 
back is perhaps unsurprising. With his carnivalesque illustra- 
tions and tales of misbehaving, manipulative kids, Silverstein 
was a disruptor within the genre of children's literature. Yet his 


208 HERITAGE 


distinctly mischievous streak would be familiar to those aware 
of his earlier work as an artist catering to more mature readers. 
A longtime doodler, Silverstein walked into Playboy's Chicago 
office one day in 1956 and dropped off an unsolicited portfolio. 
Upon seeing his work, Hugh Hefner quickly bought several draw- 
ings for the magazine. It was the beginning of a long and fruitful 
collaboration, as well as a lifelong friendship. 

Over the next two decades, Silverstein—whom the magazine 
labeled, at various points, PLAYBOY'S “peerless prankster,” ^wan- 
dering beard" and “whiskered wit"—was a regular contribu- 
tor. He landed a dream assignment: traveling around the world 
to scribble his impressions of destinations including Moscow, 
Italy, Africa and Paris. Silverstein sketched himself as a tourist 
in these exotic locations and liked to use clever captions to com- 
ment on local customs— and to poke fun at himself. In a cartoon 
from his Switzerland visit, he sits in the town square and re- 
marks, “ГЇЇ give them 15 more minutes, and if nobody yodels, I’m 
going back to the hotel." His Silverstein in Hawaii entry depicts 
a hula girl draping a chain of flowers around his neck, comment- 
ing, "It's spelled /-e-i, sir, and I’ve heard that joke 3,227 times." 


“LGLZ DRGS” CARTOON BY SHEL SILVERSTEIN. © EVIL EYE, LLC. USED BY PERMISSION. 


“It was supposed to say ‘LEGALIZE DRUGS’ ...but E is out trying to 
Score, A and I are on an acid trip, the other E just got busted, 
and U was simply too strung out to show up!" 


Opposite page: Silverstein sketches a London scene for the June 1967 issue, his second time covering the city for the magazine. Above: His 1968 dispatch from San 
Francisco, Silverstein Among the Hippies, ran in two parts over the summer of 1968 and included 27 original illustrations, including the one shown above. 


His humorous travelogues became the second-most-popular 
PLAYBOY feature—after the Centerfold, naturally. 

Silverstein was PLAYBOY'S liaison to new subcultures stirring 
across the country during a period of potent social transforma- 
tion. Throughout the 1960s, he documented America's burgeon- 
ing counterculture, illustrating the new slang and sexual norms 
of the beatniks in Greenwich Village and the free-love hippies in 
San Francisco. He reported on a nudist camp in Pennsylvania 
“in the interest of journalistic expression and a freer press,” he 
wrote with a wink. His 1965 dispatch from Cherry Grove, a gay 
resort community on New York's Fire Island, prompted reader 
praise for its “total absence of moralizing.” 

“He came along at a time when things were starting to happen 
in many different directions, and he ran with all of it," says fellow 
cartoonist Jules Feiffer, who remembers that Silverstein portrayed 
the world around him with "a great sense of play and mischief." 

Silverstein had a particular affinity for the freakish and the 
monstrous—see, for example, Silverstein’s Zoo, a collection 
of unusual animal drawings paired with nonsensical verse, 
or Uncle Shelby's Kiddie Corner, a series of twisted nursery 
rhymes definitely not intended for children. Literary scholar 
Joseph Thomas describes Silverstein's distinctive drawing style 
as “proto-punk, sketchy and improvisatory,” different from the 
more polished comics found in PLAYBOY’s pages and lending the 
brand a dash of gritty bohemianism. Some of Silverstein's early 
cartoons, Thomas says, "look like pieces that were jotted down 
on a bar napkin." Yet he was a classic perfectionist, taking great 


care to arrange his compositions. It takes a real artist to make 
work that looks so effortless. 

Silverstein, who died 20 years ago this May, brought this devo- 
tion and energy to all his creative projects. Although his work 
has, as Thomas says, the “folksy quality” of outsider art, Silver- 
stein nevertheless achieved enormous mainstream success. In 
addition to his best-selling books, he won a Grammy for his song 
“A Boy Named Sue,” and he collaborated with luminaries such as 
David Mamet and Bob Dylan. 

Those who knew Silverstein describe him as unconventional, 
with a devil-may-care attitude and footloose lifestyle. Feiffer re- 
members his friend fondly as a "free spirit, a legitimate wild man," 
and “abad boy wholiked to play around." His signature outfit was a 
pirate shirt, tattered leather jacket and jeans with sandals, and he 
often carried a guitar. He partied with Hef at the Chicago Playboy 
Mansion and attracted scores of women— but he didn't want to set- 
tle down. “I don't find that one town or one woman, or one job or 
one career makes me happy. What makes me happy is changing all 
the time," Silverstein, who never married, once said. 

That his work was frequently banned hasn't stopped readers of 
all ages from connecting with the material: Silverstein's books 
have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more 
than 35 million copies. 

Two decades after his death, he remains an American original. 
“He has no imitators,” says Feiffer. “There's no way to try to be 
what Shel was. He was all himself." m 


PLAYBOY 209 


sy CAT AUER 


Christened in 1965, 

our first international 
club kicked off an 
especially heady chapter 
in Playboy history 


In early 1964, Playboy was riding high on the success of its nascent 
network of clubs in cities as far-flung as Chicago, New York, Phoe- 
nix, Baltimore, Cincinnati and New Orleans—a veritable galaxy of 
nighttime hot spots. Business was better than good: The company's 
net sales and revenue topped $30 million, and executives continued 
to dream big. It was time for an international club, one that would 
add something new to the Playboy mix: overnight accommodations. 
For the first Playboy hotel, they turned their eyes southward. 

Jamaica had less than two years earlier transitioned from Brit- 
ish rule to independence, and its young government was hungry for 
foreign investment. The gears started turning in Playboy founder 
Hugh Hefner's mind, and in January 1964 the company paid 
$2.75 million for a beachfront property on the island's north coast. 
More than $1 million went into renovations to bring the resort up 
to Playboy standards. Bunnies were flown in from the U.S. to train 
locals in the art of the Bunny dip, perch and stance; it was Hefner's 
goal to eventually have a majority-Jamaican staff. (He also wanted 
to be sure they were taken care of, and the company boasted that 
“new health and welfare benefits, which the club provides its em- 
ployees, represent a first in the Jamaica hotel industry.") 

The resulting slice of luxury, nestled in the lush Caribbean rain 
forest outside Ocho Rios, was christened the Playboy Club-Hotel and 
opened to great fanfare in January 1965. The company flew in a sta- 
ble of lucky journalists for the official weeklong launch. Jamaican 
prime minister Alexander Bustamante attended opening night, as 
did official representatives of Queen Elizabeth II. 

With more than 200 rooms—160 air-conditioned units in the 
main building and 44 lanai rooms on the beach—the resort was 
set up to handle crowds. Guests were spoiled for choice of activity: 
Snorkeling, scuba diving, boating, waterskiing and fishing (in a 
cove known as Bunny Bay) were on offer. There was horseback rid- 
ing, tennis and shuffleboard. Cruises in a glass-bottom boat; tours 
to the nearby Dunn's River Falls—a 600-foot-tall cataract—and 
the luscious Fern Gully; dollar-bet pari-mutuel goat races...and for 
those who preferred indoor recreation, a full room-service menu. 

Alongside regular vacationers, corporations including 3M and 
General Electric booked time at the resort—as did "the entire offi- 
cer complement of the USS Fearless," according to VIP magazine. 
Attendance was surely goosed by full-page ads in PLAYBOY, which in 
1965 had a circulation of 3.5 million. 

The warm reception for the Jamaica outpost kicked the compa- 
ny's confidence into overdrive. In the late 1960s and early 1970s sev- 
eral huge hotel complexes went up: in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin (360 
rooms), Chicago (400 rooms), Miami Beach (500 rooms) and Great 
Gorge, New Jersey (700 rooms). Initially the Jamaica and Wiscon- 
sin locations did well, but not the others, and it became clear that, 
for allits glamour, the empire was overextended. As executive Victor 
Lownes later recalled, “I only wish Jamaica had flopped. If Jamaica 
had flopped, they wouldn't have made all those other big mistakes." 

By the mid-1970s the island's fortunes had shifted as well, the 
political situation increasingly unstable. In March 1977, the resort 
was shuttered, bringing to a close Playboy's dozen years of tropi- 
cal paradise. Still, with all due respect to Lownes, the club saga is a 
reminder that Playboy would be nothing without big dreams. 


Preceding pages: Playboy's first resort boasted an 800-foot-long white-sand beach. 
Inset: The famed one-piece Bunny corset was updated for outdoor service: “Resort 
Bunnies” sported two-piece waterproof suits. This page, top: Playboy’s club magazine 
described the Dunn’s River Falls experience as a “safe but slippery upward climb from 
boulder to boulder through the misty spray to the top of the falls and down again.” 
Middle: With aview of the distinctive yellow-and-white rotunda of the main dining 
room and the bay beyond, this romantic spot was nicknamed the Bunny's Nest. Left: 
The Shipwreckers, the resort’s roving calypso band, provided live poolside music. 


ж BR 
u i 


Above: More than two dozen Bunnies staffed the club's five bars and other dining areas. The drinks menu included everything from Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee 
to cocktails such as the Rabbit Punch—a rum, fruit juice and Galliano concoction. The versatile Bunnies led lessons on “all the latest Latin and American dances,” 
as well as how to limbo. Below left: Snorkelers consider an underwater kiss in the reef-protected cove. Below right: Guests could play volleyball on the beach or in 

the Olympic-size pool. Come nighttime, the pool was the scene of a synchronized water show. 


”- 


tu e's brilliant greenery rivaling the club’ stylish 
n group. The property has changed hands since being 


'on as a Beaches resort. 


< WARRIORS 


Ihe pot we smoke, vape and eat owes its increased legal 
status to a handful of pioneering activists—and, in one 


case, a platform and war chest provided by Playboy 


*PLEASE, PLAYBOY, KEEP UP YOUR FIGHT AGAINST OUR 
barbaric marijuana laws." This January 1969 entreaty from a 
reader, regarding a Texas man who had received a 50-year sentence 
for selling a matchbox full of marijuana for $5, was one of more than 
three dozen letters about marijuana the magazine printed that year 
alone. One reader had been busted for .87 milligrams—about “four 
seeds and 15 grains of leaf"—found in his former apartment. The 
husband of another faced up to 10 years in prison for possessing 20 
milligrams, about seven thousandths of an ounce. At the time, sell- 
ing pot to a minor in Georgia could get you life in prison; a second 
offense, the death penalty. A simple possession sentence in Louisi- 
ana? Upto 99 years in jail. 

To most observers, the punishments clearly did not fit the crimes. 
Personal liberties were at stake, and that was enough to catch 
PLAYBOY's attention—though of course the pleasurable aspects 
of pot use fell squarely within the magazine's wheelhouse as well. 
PLAYBOY had been covering marijuana-related topics since at least 
1960, when it convened a panel of jazzmen including Duke Elling- 
ton and Dizzy Gillespie to talk about narcotics and music. Later that 
decade, the magazine published a professional assessment entitled 
Pot: A Rational Approach. *Not only is marijuana comparatively 
harmless on the face of all the evidence," wrote trailblazing psychi- 
atrist Dr. Joel Fort, “but there are even reasons to believe it may be 
beneficial in some cases." The title could well describe the course 
of action that publisher Hugh Hefner felt his magazine should take 
when it came to the drug. It would not endorse but would explore, 
calling attention to unjust laws and outmoded thinking. Support- 
ing Americans' prerogative to choose came naturally to Hefner, who 
early in his multi-installment Playboy Philosophy had declared he 
would maintain “the right to hoot irreverently at herders of sacred 
cows and keepers of stultifying tradition and taboo." 

Then, in 1970, Hefner met an ally. The state of pot in Amer- 
ica would never be the same. 

Keith Stroup, a young lawyer in Washington, D.C. who had been 
radicalized by the Vietnam war, was trying to establish the coun- 
try's first pro-pot consumer advocacy lobby—a revolutionary idea 
well-suited to the era. The newly formed Playboy Foundation, he 


ILLUSTRATION BY TARA JACOBY 


thought, might grant him some much-needed support. Stroup ap- 
plied for funds and was eventually invited to make his case to Hef- 
ner in Chicago, where he explained that with his nascent National 
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws he would cam- 
paign against marijuana prohibition and advocate for just laws 
and the fair treatment of users. A few days later, Stroup got an offer 
of $5,000 from the foundation, with the possibility of more fund- 
ing should his organization demonstrate its value. It quickly did. 
"Within a few months, Playboy had committed to $100,000 a year 
in direct funding to NORML," Stroup says. The funding lasted 
throughout the decade. In addition, the magazine donated free 
full-page ads, which Stroup estimates brought in about $50,000 
for NORML every time they ran, and Playboy held NORML fund- 
raisers at both the Chicago and Los Angeles mansions. The mag- 
azine's coverage, including a 1977 Playboy Interview with Stroup, 
was also a boon to the group, which needed to win the hearts and 
minds of tokers and teetotalers if it was to effect real change. 

“During the 1970s, whenever we would help some poor victim 
get out of jail who'd been locked up on a nonviolent marijuana 
offense, the Playboy Forum would feature that case," Stroup 
says. “It was incredibly helpful to us." 

Stroup and other NORML lobbyists crisscrossed the country, 
seeking out state-level legislators willing to introduce decriminal- 
ization proposals and using the funding to send expert witnesses 
to the state hearings, "so that legislator looked like he knew what 
he was doing rather than looking like some radical," Stroup says. 
It worked: From 1973 to 1978, 11 states decriminalized marijuana, 
starting with Oregon. NORML also decided to take its battle to 
court, bringing the very first lawsuit against the government for 
classifying cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug—a designation it shares 
to this day with heroin. 

Today, 66 percent of Americans support legalization—a far 
cry from the mere 12 percent that did in 1969. To a significant 
degree, this shift in public opinion is due to the work NORML 
has done over the decades. “But for that incredible support of 
the Playboy Foundation and Hugh Hefner individually," Stroup 
says, “I don't think NORML would have lasted beyond the first 
six months." We'll smoke to that.— Cat Auer 


PLAYBOY 215 


"I THINK POT IS A LOT 
LESS HARMFUL THAN 
ALCOHOL FOR MOST 


PEOPLE. WHAT HAPPENS 


TO PEOPLE ON POT? 
THEY GET MELLOWT" 


—WILLIE NELSON, NOVEMBER 2002 


WE USED TO BE TERRIFIED IF WE 
EVEN SAW SOMEBODY TAKING 

A PUFF ON A JOINT. BUT NOW, IF 
YOU'RE A PARENT, YOU PRAY TO GOD 
THAT ALL YOUR CHILD IS DOING IS 
SMOKING MARIJUANA. 


—SPIKE LEE, JULY 1991 


216 HERITAGE 


NORML founder Keith Stroup, in the Fe e Bea d nt 
of the Playboy Inter es the moke 
ig 


| g for as ап “o 
s early as 1962, plen i of 2 s hav 
weed in the interview; here are 


es ei min "rs nce 
iam ed thei e ughts o 
= of our favorites. 


s< > 


“THERE IS NO QUESTION THAT 
MARIJUANA IS A SENSUAL 
STIMULATOR—AND THIS EXPLAINS 
NOT ONLY WHY IT'S FAVORED BY 
YOUNG PEOPLE BUT WHY IT AROUSES 
FEAR AND PANIC AMONG THE MIDDLE- 
AGED, MIDDLE-CLASS, WHISKEY- 
DRINKING, BLUE-NOSED BUREAUCRATS 
WHO RUN THE NARCOTICS AGEN SHS. 


—TIMOTHY LEARY, SEPTEMBER 19 


"I THINK IF MARIJUANA 
COULD REPLACE 


CIGARETTES SS 
LIQUOR, WE'D BE DOING 
EVERYBODY А SERVICE. Æ 
MARIJUANA IS THE 
PEOPLE'S TRAFFIC." 


—GERMAINE GREER, JANUARY 1972 


NOBODY OVERDOSES ON WEED. | VE SPOKEN TO 
HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE—PATIENTS, SCIENTISTS, 
RESEARCHERS... | THINK IT SHOULD BE A LEGALIZED 


MEDICATION IN THIS COUNTRY. 


—SANJAY GUPTA, SEPTEMBER 2015 


BY 


STEVE PALOPOLI 


IN THIS AGE OF ALEXA AND SIRI, WHEN 
accessing information is usually as easy as shouting at your 
electronic device, it can be surprising to encounter a question 
with an elusive answer. This is doubly true of any topic related 
to Playboy’s past, much of which has been thoroughly docu- 
mented by fans, collectors and historians. 

But ask Google about Playboy’s one and only girl group, and 

you'll find just such a search-engine stumper. Although many 
of the specifics surrounding the group have been lost to time, 
the story of the Singing Playmates—one of lofty ambition, in- 
ternational scope and a bond that has lasted decades—is well 
worth telling. 
The Singing Playmates were formed in the late 1970s on the 
initiative of July 1977 Playmate Sondra Theodore. “It was her 
idea," says July 1981 Playmate Heidi Sorenson. “She was the 
lead in our group. And her voice was just out of this world." 

The lineup changed over the years, but the core consisted of 
Theodore, Sorenson, Michele Drake (May 1979), Kelly Tough 
(October 1981) and Nicki Thomas (March 1977). Another figure 
central to the group was their producer, Vic Caesar, who looked 
and sounded like the radio disc jockey Wolfman Jack and was 
most famous for writing a Richard Nixon campaign song. (He 
also arranged the surprisingly famous theme to the Playboy 
pinball game.) 

“He was like our den mother," says Tough. “We loved Vic 


the Mansion's guesthouse, so Sorenson was able to hear every 
song they were working on. After they left for the day, she would 
go in and practice with their equipment. 

"I was so determined to get into this group, you have no idea," 
says Sorenson. “I memorized everything. I learned all the har- 
monies. One day I talked Vic into letting me sing along during 
the rehearsal, and the rest is history." Determination was key: 
Rehearsals were five days a week, eight hours a day. “Tt was full- 
on. Everybody went into this 100 percent," she says. 

Things got even more serious when famed dancer and cho- 
reographer Miriam Nelson was hired to polish up the act. Nel- 
son, who passed away in 2018 at the age of 98, had collaborated 
with the biggest stars of the golden age of Hollywood, from Judy 
Garland to Doris Day. The practice space moved off Mansion 
grounds to alocation on Sepulveda Boulevard. 

"Hugh Hefner had converted a store into a rehearsal hall 
with a new dance floor, mirrors on the wall, a ballet barre and 
couches, chairs and a well-stocked refrigerator," Nelson wrote 
in her memoir My Life Dancing With the Stars. "It goes with- 
out saying these young women were beautiful and had gorgeous 
bodies, but their singing was fair and their dancing was fairer. I 
had my doubts about their abilities, but Mr. Hefner was paying 
terrific money." 

“We got pretty strict,” says Drake. “Miriam’s job was to whip 
us into shape to become a Vegas act. We were very lucky to have 
her. She started us off in one-and-a-half-inch heels and got us 


“They had such energy that for the first time, I 
could see this act was going to work just fine.” 


because he pushed us, and he protected us too. I give him a lot of 
points for putting up with us, because we were a handful.” 

For several of the Playmates, getting into the group wasn’t 
easy. 

Drake had come out of the Los Angeles rock scene, where she 
was running around with members of the Knack and Joan Jett’s 
former band the Runaways. The first time she auditioned for 
the Singing Playmates, she didn’t make it. For her second try- 
out, she says, she brought along a little extra star power: Actor 
Dan Aykroyd escorted Drake in a limo to the Playboy Club. Still, 
she didn’t make the cut. Determined to change her fate, Drake 
presented Theodore and Hefner with a tape of herself perform- 
ing a song she’d written about an ex-boyfriend. “You wrote 
that?” she remembers Hef exclaiming. "You're in!” 

Sorenson’s first audition didn’t go well either, and she ini- 
tially wasn’t chosen for the group— “probably because I was too 
self-conscious,” she speculated in the story that accompanied 
her Playmate pictorial. At the time, she resided at the Playboy 
Mansion (“I think I have one of the records for living there the 
longest, actually,” she says today), a situation she decided to 
turn to her advantage. The Singing Playmates rehearsed inside 


218 HERITAGE 


up to two-and-a-half- to three-inch heels. She was a true pro. 
She knew what she was doing.” 

One day Hef swung by the practice space, unannounced, to 

see how the group was coming along. “The girls really put on a 
show for him,” Nelson wrote. “They had such energy that for the 
first time, I could see this act was going to work just fine.” 
The Singing Playmates got a taste of performing live with ap- 
pearances at small clubs around L.A., billed under a different 
name so they could get some more or less anonymous practice 
time under their belt. “It was really funny,” says Tough. “We 
would show up to a small venue in a big black limousine. When 
we were onstage, people were standing right at our feet. All 
these guys would be looking up at us while we were singing, like, 
"Who are these broads?’ " 

By this time they had honed a highly choreographed song-and- 
dance routine that included a tune the popular soul singer Barry 
White had written, called “I’m So Glad That I'm a Woman." The 
set consisted mostly of medleys to which they could match their 
costumes: standards performed in top hats and tails; coun- 
try songs in tight pants, vests and cowboy boots. Sometimes the 


The Singing Playmates made multiple appearances at small venues in the Los Angeles area, including Danny's Apple nightclub in 1981, above. 
Pictured: Heidi Sorenson, Lorraine Michaels, Kelly Tough, Sondra Theodore and Jeana Tomasino. 


singers conducted their wardrobe changes onstage, behind a 
scrim, allowing audiences to see their silhouettes. 

They headed to Vegas and performed for The Mike Doug- 
las Show; did a set on the nascent Playboy Channel (a stop 
for other musical acts as well, including Merle Haggard); and 
were booked at various Playboy Clubs, including the casino in 
Atlantic City, where Michele Drake remembers zero-degree 
temperatures outside and a lack of heat onstage—not to men- 
tion one bone-crunching set in particular. “I grabbed a guy’s 
tie, slipped and fell and broke my index finger," says Drake. 
The next night she persevered, gripping her mike despite the 
splint on her injured digit. 

Billboard sent a reporter to Atlantic City to cover the act, 

though he seemed to be more interested in the Playmates them- 
selves than in their singing: “There was not much skin to see. 
Instead, they were perky and wholesome in the peekaboo 
Playboy manner, just slightly naughty. They sang about their fa- 
vorite brands of designer jeans." 
The late months of 1981 brought the group even more exposure 
through two major holiday-related television productions: a 
New Year's Eve performance on The Tonight Show Starring 
Johnny Carson, during which they played White's song and 
discussed posing for PLAYBOY, and an appearance on George 
Burns's (Early) Early, Early, Christmas Special, for which 
they performed in several skits and sang “Jingle Bells,” among 
other numbers. 

May 1967 Playmate Anne Randall (now Stewart) joined the 
group for the Christmas taping, stepping in for Jeana Tomasino 
(November 1980). Stewart, already established as a film and TV 
actress, was game, but she was older than her cohorts and dis- 
liked the opening sketch, for which she and the other Playmates 
were required to don “antlers,” pull a gift-laden sleigh and tap 
their “hooves” on command. 

“My family was furious at me because I was hiding behind ev- 
erybody,” Stewart says, “but I was 37 and wearing reindeer ant- 
lers, stamping with my foot! I was humiliated." Today she looks 


back fondly on the episode and the opportunity to do a vaude- 
ville routine with comedy legend Burns, who seems to have 
charmed the whole group with a vibe Tough describes as "dirty 
old man— but in a very polite and respectful way." 

The television shows had gotten them some much-needed 
attention, but the group still wasn't taking off. Around this 
time Tough decided she couldn't put the rest of her career on 
hold any longer. She recalls that the breaking point for her 
came after a famous country crooner, who had caught the Sing- 
ing Playmates' act in Los Angeles, sent a couple of producers to 
work on demos with them. “I walked in and they had ordered a 
case of Cristal champagne—on our ticket—and they were doing 
coke on the soundboard and flirting with the girls. It cost a 
lot of money, and I didn't see much work get done that night," 
Tough says. For her, it was time to say good-bye. 

The rest of the group soldiered on, doing international shows 
in places like Japan and the Philippines. "Things were a little 
dicey,” Sorenson remembers about the Manila trip. “It was mar- 
tial lawthere at that time, and we were pretty sure we were being 
followed. There were guys with machine guns on every corner." 

By 1983 the group was recording demos in Los Angeles, but their 
momentum was fading. ^We were moving more mainstream, a lit- 
tle bit more pop,” says Sorenson. “The last stuff we did was really 
good, and then everything fell apart, unfortunately." 

“Let's just put it this way: Life was happening to everybody,” 
Drake says. “There's no blame. But it is a shame that we didn't 
go any further. The type of act we had would have been perfect 
for a USO tour." 

Nearly four decades later, many of the members remain in 
contact. “We were all really close," says Tough. “We saw each 
other five days a week, eight hours a day. It was a lot of fun, and 
I'm really happy I did it." 

"The group was like a little family," says Sorenson. "It was an 
exciting time, and the Singing Playmates were a part of that." 
Though the curtain came down on that era of Playboy history, 
the story of the Singing Playmates will live on. Alexa and Siri, 
take note. m 


PLAYBOY 219 


The 
aan 


WITH MILLIONS IN SALES, JEANE MANSON 
A A PLATINUM-RECORD PLAYMATE 


Opposite page: Jeane Manson performs in France in 1977. Clockwise from top left: Manson in 1981 (in addition to playing piano and guitar, she speaks three 
languages); an outtake from her August 1974 Playmate pictorial; a televised performance with Julio Iglesias in 1980; the May 1977 cover of Playboy France. 


JE SUIS NEE UNE SECONDE FOIS—“I WAS BORN 
a second time"—croons Jeane Manson on her hit 1976 single “Une 
Femme." The song is a love ballad, one she co-wrote, but the lyric 
could apply to her career: First she was an actress and August 1974 
Playmate. Then she skipped across the pond and was reborn as a 
sensation in Europe. 

Perhaps more remarkable than the millions of records Manson 

has sold over her career—a very successful act two, indeed—is the 
factthat few in her home country have ever heard one. 
Born in Cleveland and raised for more than a decade in Mexico 
City, Manson displayed a keen performative and musical bent as 
a young girl, taking up piano and guitar at the age of eight. After 
moving back to the States as a teen, she studied drama and voice. 
Manson began writing songs while living in Los Angeles, and in her 
early 20s pursued acting as well, taking roles in campy thrillers— 
like 1973's The Young Nurses (for Roger Corman's New World Pic- 
tures) and 1974's Terror Circus—to support herself. 

In the early 1970s, her friend Cyndi Wood (1974 Playmate of 
the Year) introduced her to Hugh Hefner and brought her to the 
Playboy Mansion. Posing for the magazine seemed a natural choice 
in that sexually liberated era, Manson remembers. Hefner wanted 
to feature her in the magazine but kept sending her back for more 
shoots, which ultimately worked out in her favor. *For about two 
years, I was working for Playboy,” she says. “Thank God! It helped 
me survive in Hollywood." 

But modeling was never Manson's goal. Dissatisfied with the 
film work she was getting, she decided she needed a new start in a 
totally new place. “I wanted to be a serious actress and not just do B 
movies," she says. “I wanted something more interesting—Italian 
or French or Spanish films." 

The same month her Centerfold finally hit stands in 1974, Man- 
son flew to Europe with a single suitcase, her guitar and the ambi- 
tion to take her career to the next level. 

She got off to a good start: Manson briefly worked for legendary 
film producer Dino De Laurentiis, who sent her to Rome to meet 
Federico Fellini. “But I was still kind of starving,” she says. So when 
she got an offer to act in a French TV commercial, she jumped at 


the chance. It turned out to be a life-changing decision. Shortly 
after booking it, Manson landed a contract to do an album. 

"France opened its doors to me," Manson says. “It was quite 
amazing." To acclimate, she taught herself French through singing 
and songwriting. And because her given name, Jean, is masculine 
in French, she added an eto the end, becoming Jeane Manson. 

Her sultry vocals caught Europe's attention. She turned Jean 
Renard's "Avant de Nous Dire Adieu" (“Before We Say Goodbye") 
into a massive hit in France in 1976—despite being brand-new to 
the French language. 

“I knew it was going to be big,” recalls Manson. “They gave me 
that song and said, ‘Oh, you'll sell 50,000.’ And I said, ‘No, I'm 
going to sell 500,000.’ I was very proud when it sold a million." 

A string of French hits followed, including "Une Femme,” “Ce 
N'est Qu'un Au Revoir" and *Vis Ta Vie." In 1979 Manson's budding 
fame led to one of the continent's most prominent gigs: competing 
in the Eurovision Song Contest. Manson continued to act, starring 
in various European films and TV shows. She has recorded in all 
three of the languages she speaks—English, French and Spanish— 
though of her 26 albums released over four decades, only a couple 
have been in her native tongue. Some of her early English-language 
recordings were produced by Vic Caesar, who worked with the Sing- 
ing Playmates around the same time. What's French for full circle? 
Today Manson continues to record and tour, including a recent 
series of gospel performances in cathedrals across France. Though 
she has written and recorded mostly pop and country-western 
music, gospel themes stretch back to her 1977 hit "La Chapelle de 
Harlem." She feels no conflict between her more spiritual work and 
her sexier songs and Playmate past, though she admits to being cu- 
rious about what might happen should she be recognized: “I some- 
times wonder ifthe priests are going to look me up on the internet." 

Will her music ever gain widespread recognition back home? 

“It's never too late," she says from her home in Peralada, a medi- 
eval Spanish village near the border of Catalonia and France. "My 
dream is still to come back to the U.S. and sing at Carnegie Hall. 
Can you imagine? A Playmate at Carnegie Hall." 

Now that’s an act three we'd love to see.— Steve Palopoli 


PLAYBOY 221 


I GREW UP IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA 
wine country and moved to Los Angeles to be an 
actor. In the beginning, I slept on a couch and 
didn't have a car. I was trying to fulfill a dream— 
I'd done some television prior to becoming a Play- 
mate, shows like Beverly Hills, 90210 and Love 
Boat: The Next Wave, but PLAYBOY was my big 
stepping-stone. 

Id always wanted to be a Playmate. When my 
mom was pregnant she saw a girl named Brande, 
spelled with an e, in her uncle's copy of PLAYBOY. 
My mom wanted me to be beautiful just like this 
woman, so she named me Brande. The very first 
time I met Hef—a mutual friend took me to the 
Mansion for Sunday-night movies—I explained the 
story of my name. Hef took me to his library, and 
we flipped through magazines to see if we could 
find this girl. We didn't, but it was wonderful to 
meet him. The next time I saw him was at a night- 
club in L.A. I said, “I’m the girl whose mom named 
her after a PLAYBOY model!" He invited me to sit 
with him, and that's when our friendship started. 

I was Hef's girlfriend for two years, starting in 
1998, which I've never really talked about. He had 
a huge impact on my life. He taught me so much 
about the entertainment business and how to han- 
dle success. People assume he's a party guy; what 
they don't know is he was very loyal. When he was 
with me, he was with me. It was a time when you'd 
go to parties and hang out with people like George 
Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz. 
We didn't have camera phones or social media; we 
didn't have to worry about TMZ. 

My April 2000 Playmate pictorial was shot at a 
winery near where I grew up. I was in my element, 
stomping grapes. My family was even in one of the 
photos featured in the magazine; we still laugh 
about it. I got cast on Baywatch Hawaii shortly 
after I shot that pictorial. I moved to Hawaii to 
do the show and got to hang out on the beach and 
swim in the ocean all day. 

Then I got the call from Marilyn Grabowski, 
PLAYBOY'S photo editor, asking if Га like to be 
2001 Playmate of the Year. I said yes and hung 
up, screaming and jumping up and down in ex- 
citement with my girlfriend Stacy Kamano. The 
shoot was in St. Barts. І remember lying on а ham- 
mock on top of a cliff outside the house, looking 
at the water and feeling so thankful. I still felt 
shy, though, taking nude pictures in front of guys 
standing there with lighting equipment. I know 
it sounds weird, but I’ve always been on the con- 
servative side. Being an actress helped me pose 
naked—I just put myself in the role, that beautiful 
sexy person, and played it. 

When I auditioned for the movie Starsky & 
Hutch, Ben Stiller and the director, Todd Phillips, 


were in the room. They said, “Weren't you on The 
Surreal Life?" I said yes, and they were like, *Oh 
my God, we love that show. We love Emmanuel 
Lewis!" So I thought, Hmmm. I went and got an 
autographed Emmanuel Lewis eight-by-10 head 
shot—“To my man Todd, hire my girl Brande"— 
and sent that to him. I got the part. Always go the 
extra mile to get what you want. 

When I lived at the Mansion I was like the mother 
hen, a mama bear; other Playmates would always 
come to me for advice. After I did my first Celeb- 
rity Apprentice, I thought, Now’s the time to write 
a memoir. It became a 2010 self-help book based on 
my life experiences, called Bounce, Don’t Break. 
Jenny McCarthy reviewed it, and Donald Trump 
contributed something to it; so did Hef. 

Right around the 2016 election the media printed 
blatant lies, saying Donald had been constantly 
proposing to me on the set of Celebrity Apprentice. 
Nothing could have been further from the truth. Of 
course he flirts—he flirts with everyone—but he 
was nothing but respectful to me. He never acted 
the way the media tried to portray. I went to the in- 
auguration, and it was an amazing experience. The 
energy there was just unbelievable. 

Around that time I started to move away from 
entertainment. Part of it was because I had missed 
my youngest son’s first day of kindergarten be- 
cause I was in Louisiana, shooting a movie. And 
that broke my heart. Being a mother is the best 
thing I’ve ever done, and I never wanted to miss 
anything again. I went back into real estate—I'd 
graduated from high school a year early and got- 
ten my real estate license when I was 18. My web- 
site is YourCelebrityRealtor.com. I spent 20 years 
working to build up my name, so I’m going to use 
it! But I still need a creative outlet. To promote my 
listings, I make videos—I write out the shot list, 
I plan the script, I direct. So I still get to scratch 
that artistic itch. From time to time I'll still doa 
TV show, like Battle of the Network Stars, or the 
occasional movie cameo. 

Now I live in Temecula. I always wanted to have 
a vineyard and raise my kids with an upbringing 
similar to the one I had. I have five acres. It's a won- 
derful way of life. We're growing, and will eventu- 
ally sell, the grapes. I plan to do my own rosé. I'm 
calling it Tara, first of all because my house kind 
of looks like the house in Gone With the Wind, 
but also because of what I've lived through. Going 
through divorce, rebuilding, starting from scratch 
and having strength—it's like the sentiment from 
the movie: “ГІ never be hungry again.” Calling it 
Tara Vineyards symbolizes that comeback feeling 
for me. It's not easy being a single mom and work- 
ing full time, but I've always been very driven and 
motivated. I just get out there and do it. 


Far right: “Marilyn Grabowski always tried to come up with scenes that had to do with you as a person,” Roderick says of her 
April 2000 pictorial, outtakes of which are shown here. *For me she thought of wine country, which was perfect. It was cool being 
able to shoot in my hometown. I recently went wine tasting at the same winery where we did my photo shoot!” Right: “I got a rose 
tattoo on my ankle when I turned 18. You know how it is: You turn 18 and suddenly youre allowed to do things—get a tattoo, buy a 
lottery ticket. The rose is the flower of my birth month. I got a second tattoo when I was 19, on my stomach. No more since then!” 


224 HERITAGE 


 — > s.s - --- 


This page апа opposite: 
More outtakes from 
Roderick's photo shoots. 
"Playboy catapulted me to 

so many other things in my 
life. It shaped the person Iam 
today. So did the fact that I 
was able to share a part of 
Hef's life, a part nobody ever 
gets to see. I hold that inside 
my heart; it’s so special to 
me. I’m thankful for that.” 
Opposite, bottom left: “The 
shoot with the magnolias was 
at the Japanese gardens in 
Los Angeles. Very beautiful.” 
Opposite, bottom right: 

"I don't remember shooting 
with the parrot at all!” 


PLAYBOY 22/ 


| | 
i \ Ñ 
Above: Roderick's PMOY shoot. “St. Barts was the best. Iremember very clearly the beautiful teak sailboat we shot on." Opposite, top left: Playmates of the Year Raquel Pomplun 
(2013), Brande Roderick (2001), Nina Daniele (2018) and Tiffany Fallon (2005) at the New York Playboy Club in 2018. “Iwas a VIP guest at the opening of the club with Tiffany,” 
Roderick says. “It was so much fun to talk to the younger girls. Whenever I meet a new Playmate, there's aninstant bond of sisterhood.” Opposite, top right: “Most of the Baywatch 
girls had been in the magazine,” Roderick remembers. “Baywatch and PLAYBOY had a wonderful marriage for a while. It was only natural, because both exuded that brand of sunny, 
blonde, southern California sexiness.” Opposite, bottom right: “That was the very first episode of the first Celebrity Apprentice I did, with Joan Rivers! Playboy gave us a check. It 


drew a lot of attention, raised tons of money, and it was fun getting the support from my Playboy family." Opposite, bottom left: “ got an amazing prize package for Playmate of 
the Year—a car, a motorcycle, a personalized Gibson guitar and lots more. I had ridden dirt bikes before then but never motorcycles.” 


PLAYBOY 229 


CLASSIC 


"Harold, aren't you going to give your sweet old 
grandmother any pot?” 


= дағ” Booth 
we a” EZ 
Tm an American taxpayer! I've already "Gee, boney, I'm sorry, but you did say to 


been ripped off!” talk dirty." 


CARTOONS 


pu 


(o MES бе 
A. 


АЙ Ро, Ley 


1/7 
ій 
I Фо, ч — p 


3 ME zn ы. 
UCA IR уд AID 


As he opened the top button of her blouse and exposed 


more of her lovely skin, Rodrics heart pounded fiercely. 


His hands quivered as he reached to complete his task. 
‘Stop!’ commanded Father Antonio.” 


“What a pity. We were so hoping 


you were bisexual. > 


“Why do you have to be such an asshole? 
The doors open!” 


You wouldn't keep pictures of your ex on your desk, so why keep them on 
your phone? The Playboy Advisor offers some timeless advice on letting go 


FROM THE MARCH 1998 PLAYBOY 


As a birthday gift last year, my then girlfriend gave me erotic 
photos of herself. She made me promise never to show them 
to anyone, and I never have. We had a bad breakup, and now 
she wants them back. A friend who is a lawyer says I have no 
legal obligation to return them since they were a gift. I want to 
do the right thing but would like to keep them as mementos of 
our relationship. Despite how things turned out, I have good 
memories of our time together. What should I do?—S.W., Pitts- 
burgh, Pennsylvania 

Keep your memories and return the photos. If you miss the 
photographs more than you miss her, you didn't have a rela- 
tionship worth remembering. 


OUR ADVISOR REFLECTS 


Our 1998 Advisor's advice to return the photos is still appro- 
priate, but for reasons that go beyond one's desire to hold on to 
memories— primarily, the rise of revenge porn. In 1998, dial- 
up internet was far from its zenith, with only 41 percent of 
adults online, according to a 1999 Pew Research Center report. 
Though porn was proliferating across the web, it wasn't until 
the mid-2000s that camera phones became ubiquitous and 
ushered in the era of dick pics and nude selfies. That laid the 
foundation for revenge porn as we know it—and reaffirmed 
the necessity of honoring our exes' wishes to return or delete 
erotic photos of them. 

Revenge porn is defined by Merriam-Webster as "sexually 
explicit images of a person posted online without that person's 
consent, especially as a form of revenge or harassment." That 
definition may be misleading, however, according to the Cyber 
Civil Rights Initiative, which reports that nearly 80 percent 
of perpetrators are not motivated by revenge or ill will toward 
the photo's subject. As such, CCRI prefers the term noncon- 
sensual pornography, as it encompasses the sharing of images 
originally obtained consensually—such as during an intimate 
relationship, as S.W.'s were—and those obtained without con- 
sent, such as via hidden cameras or hacking. 

One of the original (and arguably most infamous) purveyors 
of revenge porn is Hunter Moore, creator of the now-defunct 
site Is Anyone Up? In 2012, the FBI began investigating Moore 
for posting nude photos of women, some of which had been 
submitted by men who wished to humiliate the subjects. The 
results were harrowing for the victims. In addition to being 
slut-shamed and bullied on the internet, some of the women 
went so far as to quit their jobs and change their names. (In 
other cases, revenge porn has even reportedly led to suicide.) 

The site was shut down in 2012. Moore, sentenced to two and 


232 HERITAGE 


a half years in prison for aggravated identity theft and illegally 
accessing someone else's computer for financial gain, is already a 
free man and has written a book. 

Despite Moore's conviction, revenge porn has continued 
to infect our cultural psyche to an alarming degree. Numer- 
ous reports have surfaced of hackers infiltrating cell phones, 
cloud storage sites, personal laptops and other digital spaces 
where people commonly store intimate photos. Female celeb- 
rities including Rihanna, Kate Upton, Miley Cyrus, Kirsten 
Dunst, Gabrielle Union and Jennifer Lawrence have become 
targets of nonconsensual pornography. Speaking to Vanity 
Fair about her experience, Lawrence called the data breach a 
"sex crime." Male celebrities haven't been spared either: Nick 
Hogan, Cheyenne Jackson and Tyler Posey have all had their 
personal photos leaked online. 

Many people have argued that apps such as Snapchat and the 
Facebook-owned Instagram, both of which allow users to send 
and receive private images that expire after viewing, have con- 
tributed to the rise of revenge porn. In 2017, Facebook found 
itself at the center of an intense revenge-porn scandal when 
members of a user-created group, Marines United, were caught 
sharing explicit images of female colleagues, who were then 
subjected to threats and harassment. Facebook eventually shut 
down the group, and seven marines were court-martialed in 
the aftermath. 

Facebook is still struggling to keep a lid on the problem, as 
are other photo-hosting apps. Some have launched safeguards 
to flag inappropriate content for review, but flagged images 
can stay online for hours before moderators remove them. To 
combat revenge porn, Facebook recently initiated the roll- 
out of a pilot program in which the company asks users to up- 
load intimate photos of themselves so its software can register 
them and block subsequent uploads. Users largely agree the 
program is a dicey solution to a massive problem. 

Although our 1998 Advisor question claims that one has no 
legal obligation to return something received as a gift, some 
40 states and the District of Columbia now have statutes 
against revenge porn, so keeping intimate photos of your ex, 
іп our opinion, is riskier than it's worth— especially since 668 
data breaches occurred by mid-2018, according to Statista. 

Legal risk aside, you absolutely have a moral obligation here. 
We should all understand why our exes would want their nude 
photos returned—or, in these digital times, proof they've been 
deleted. That's because we should all have the right to express 
our sexuality to our romantic partners without fear of retribu- 
tion. Return or destroy your ex's nudes and enjoy the memories. 
It's the right thing to do.—Maria Del Russo 


PLAYBOY CLUB 
”JNEW YORK 


RESTAURANT | BAR | LOUNGE | PRIVATE EVENTS 


512 W 42"? STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 


WWW.PLAYBOYCLUBNYC.COM | @PLAYBOYCLUBNYC 


т т B=... . " E mmm - -- M 
an en In *vtLt't'gvt Y ** 991 91 101 


MIAMI BEACH, 1970 


Bunny Kathie makes waves outside the Miami Playboy Club. 


234 HERITAGE