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Edwidge Danticat

Newly discovered words from the late,
great Maya Angelou are in good hands
with novelist Danticat: One of the first
English-language books she read after
moving to the U.S. from Haiti at the age of
12 was Angelou's | Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings. “She never allowed racist, sex-
ist, homophobic or other kinds of demean-
ing talk in her presence,” Danticat says of
the subject of our Heritage feature A Phe-
nomenal Woman. “We can be free to speak
and not destroy others with our tongues.”

Blaise Cepis
i: @itsalrightwerealright

There’s nothing new about capturing im-
ages of nude women, but when a photog-
rapher introduces a trampoline into the
equation, elevation ensues. Enter Cepis’s
Free Form, a delightfully disorienting pic-
torial of “seemingly flying and levitating”
models. This contribution from the Philly-
born artist is a “literal interpretation of
freedom,” he says. “They are free of loca-
tion, free of time, free even of gravity—it’s
like skinny-dipping in the sky.”

Jesse Hyde
t: @jessehyde7

In When Spirituality Goes Viral, the Salt
Lake City-based journalist delves into the
life of spiritual leader Bentinho Massaro,
whose rhetoric some believe incited a sui-
cide. “Historically, a cult leader was lim-
ited by geography and traditional social
networks,” says Hyde. “Today, dangerous
ideas spread more quickly thanks to social
media, which is built for bingeing. That's
scary, but it’s an open question whether a
cult can really take off entirely online.”

Chuck Palahniuk
t: @chuckpalahniuk

“I’m always proud to show up in the pages
of PLAYBOY,” says Palahniuk. Since 2000 he
has contributed more than a dozen pieces,
including “a feature about farm-equipment
demolition derbies in the 50th anniversary
issue, which shockingly seems like just last
year.” In his short story Repercussions, he
explores how far a mother will go to pro-
tect her son. Palahniuk’s latest project, the
graphic novel Fight Club 3, launches as a
12-part series starting in January.

Kimou Meyer
i: @groteskito

Over the past 20 years, Kimou Meyer,
a.k.a. Grotesk, a Swiss-born graphic de-
signer, has become a player in New York's
underground, drawing on his classical
training and outsider perspective. His il-
lustration of a Rabbit sculpture in honor of
PLAYBOY's 65th anniversary is the rare car-
toon that requires no caption. “Like most
masterpieces, PLAvBov, and by extension
the Rabbit, has only gained value since its
controversial beginnings,” Meyer notes.

Sarah Maxwell

i: @sarahmaxwellart

When reading the five Playboy Symposium
essays to inspire her accompanying art-
work, illustrator Maxwell (who also provided
the NSFW visuals for Dirty Talk) was struck
by Christopher Stroop’s piece on bad-faith
arguments regarding free speech and reli-
gion. “Being an openly lesbian artist, | want
to create a platform for the community to
be seen and normalized,” the Paris-based
Texas native says. “Love is something ev-
eryone can relate to, regardless of gender.”

CREDITS: Cover: photography, creative direction and concept by Marius Sperlich, prop styling and makeup by Joanna Bacas. Photography by: inside cover-p. 1 courtesy Playboy Archives; p. 4 courtesy Ravell Call, courtesy Justin Hogan,
courtesy Adam Levey, courtesy Sarah Maxwell, courtesy Lynn Savarese, courtesy Lucas Walters; p. 5 courtesy Silvia Grav, courtesy Ryan Pfluger, courtesy Eric Powell, courtesy Sasha Samsonova, courtesy Natasha Wilson (2); p. 12 Joe Fury;
p. 13 courtesy Marius Sperlich (3), Paul Chen, Carlo Mari, Paul Griffiths Photography, Art Paul, Rankin; p. 38 courtesy Playboy Archives; p. 39 courtesy Playboy Archives (7), courtesy Playboy Poland; p. 40 courtesy Playboy Archives (3), John
Hart, Andrew Hewkin, Landis Smithers for Playboy; p. 41 courtesy Victoria Fuller, courtesy Playboy Archives (9), courtesy Playboy Japan/Hajime Sorayama, courtesy Playboy Philippines; p. 52 Wiissa; p. 53 Ana Dias, Christopher Von Steinbach
(2); р. 54 Kyle Deleu, Dove Shore (2); р. 55 Dove Shore; р. 56 Christopher Von Steinbach; р. 57 Ana Dias, Kyle Deleu, Ali Mitton; pp. 60-63 courtesy Bentinho Massaro; р. 64 courtesy Alex & Anne Fotografie; р. 65 courtesy Bentinho Massaro;
p. 144 courtesy Deawnne Buckmire; p. 187 Evan Woods; р. 188 Evan Woods; р. 189 Steven Gomillion, Evan Woods (3); p. 190 Sam Deitch, Carl Timpone, Evan Woods; p. 191 Griffin Lipson, Carl Timpone; р. 205 Patrick Fraser/Contour RA/Getty
Images; p. 206 Granamour Weems Collection/Alamy Stock Photo; p. 207 Aaron Rapoport/Corbis Historical/Getty Images (3); p. 209 Everett Collection Inc./Alamy Stock Photo; pp. 210-225 courtesy Playboy Archives; p. 226 Everett Collection

Natasha Wilson
i: @deanastacia

With her trademark dreamy, surrealist lens,
Wilson captures the complex women of A
New Wave, inspired by nostalgic ideals
of journalism. “It’s not about sexuality as
much as it’s about freedom and confi-
dence. It’s not about skin so much as ex-
pressing yourself,” she says. “I try to carry
that energy and message through every-
thing | do. Whether they’re clothed or
nude, as long as I’m conveying that mes-
sage of liberation, that’s all that matters.”

Riki Blanco

i: @rikiblanco

Madrid-based illustrator Blanco drew from
his own experience to craft a piece for
Red Tide Rising, Adam Skolnick’s essay on
American socialism. He also created the
art for Chuck Palahniuk’s Repercussions.
“Everything is party, confetti, diversity, re-
spect, community,” he says of his creative
process. On addressing free speech in a
challenging political climate: “My work is
almost always allegorical. Fortunately for
artists, ambiguity gives us some leeway.”

Ryan Pfluger

i: @ryanpfluger

Bradley Cooper, Meryl Streep, Ange-
lina Jolie and now Ezra Miller and Roxane
Gay: Pfluger brings his inimitable point of
view to each of his subjects. “Identifying
as queer and having a mostly queer crew
changes the environment and how a sub-
ject reacts or embraces that,” he says. The
shoot with Miller “came together in a very
collaborative way. He’s a unique individual
with a fluidity in gender expression.”

Eric Powell

t: @goonguy

Writer and artist Powell’s much-revered
comic book series The Goon turns 20
this year. He created the latest install-
ment, The Goon in the Maltese Bunny, ex-
clusively for our pages. The stand-alone
piece pays homage to our iconic Rabbit—
and marks Powell's PLaveov debut. The
Eisner Award-winning Nashville native
is bringing his ever-evolving series back
to its original publisher, Albatross Funny-
books, with a new issue out in March.

Stormy Daniels
t: @StormyDaniels

Director, porn star, author...American
superhero? Since early 2018, Daniels has
elevated herself from potential media
casualty to cultural icon in the making.
^Whatever it is you choose to do with your
life, fuck everyone else, as long as you can
face yourself in the mirror," she says. In
The Art of the Real, photographer Sasha
Samsonova captures Daniels's raw hon-
esty in a Helmut Newton-inspired picto-
rial, amplified by Sloane Crosley's essay.

"

Taylor Ferber
i: @talktometaylor

“Don’t underestimate the intelligence of
a woman who reveals her body,” says Fer-
ber, a red-carpet journalist known for her
celebrity interviews shot with a selfie stick
and featured on her vlog, Talk to Me. She's
also the coalescing force behind A New
Wave, our revealing look at Ferber and five
contemporaries that challenges clichéd
notions of "smart professional women."
Ferber says: "How we express ourselves
shouldn't be defined by anyone but us."

Historical/Alamy Stock Photo; p. 227 courtesy Playboy Archives, Kai Mort Shuman/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images, Michael Ochs Archives/Stringer/Getty Images; page 234 courtesy Playboy Archives; inside back cover courtesy Play-
boy Archives. Pp. 125, 232 illustrations by Neryl Walker. Pp. 14-16 styling by Jill Vincent, makeup and hair by Bree Stanchfield; pp. 28-31 prop styling by Jordan Rudd; pp. 34-35 grooming by Bree Stanchfield; pp. 43-50 grooming by Bree
Stanchfield; pp. 72-83, 87 model Vendela at Photogenics, styling by Ali Dariotis, hair and makeup by Sara Cranham; pp. 96-101 photography by Micaiah Carter at GIANT Artists, styling by Jason Bolden at TACK artist group, hair by Tym Wallace
at Mastermind MGT, LLC, makeup by Ashunta Sheriff at Mastermind MGT, LLC, prop styling by Justin Fry; pp. 102-107 models Priscilla Bass, Jorlenne Caraballo, Magne, and Maggie White, styling by Emily Dawn Long, hair and makeup by
Stefania Costanzo, produced by Hannah Kinlaw, line produced by Naim Naif; pp. 112-116 hair and makeup by Bree Stanchfield; pp. 126-137, 141 model Megan Moore at Frank Model Management, styling by Kelley Ash; pp. 7, 152-159 grooming
by Carissa Ferreri; pp. 6, 172-183 model Miki Hamano at Frank Model Management, styling by Kelley Ash, hair and makeup by Bree Stanchfield; pp. 160-165 styling by Kelley Ash, makeup and hair by Sara Cranham, Madeline North and Bree
Stanchfield, prop styling by Meghan Czerwinski; pp. 192-197 styling by Kelley Ash, makeup and hair by Bree Stanchfield; pp. 200-204 model Taya Vais, makeup and hair by Elza Ferrari and Julia Adam, wardrobe and set styling by Sofiya Urbán.

PLAYBOY 5

CONTENTS

Playmates & Pictorials

72

102

172

198

JANUARY: VENDELA

A boxing gym and an unconventional
beauty help us kick off 2019

FREE FORM
Photographer Blaise Cepis turns
heavenward for his guiding light

FEBRUARY: MEGAN MOORE
The radiant Washingtonian returns to
our pages via a sun-dappled stream

MARCH: MIKI HAMANO
Our Japan-born March Playmate
(above) embodies freedom—her way

EXTRA CREDIT

A tantalizing treat from the annals of
PlayboyCenterfolds.com featuring
sapiosexual Taya Vais

Heritage

205

210

218

226

228

ALSO:

A PHENOMENAL WOMAN

Lost, now found: a 1999 interview with
poet Maya Angelou, featuring a new
introduction by Edwidge Danticat

HARE FORCE ONE
It's a bird, it's a plane, it’s Hugh
Hefner's luxury jetliner

MARILYN COLE
The Bunny, Playmate and PMOY tells us
how she first fell down the Rabbit hole

THE KING OF FREE SPEECH
Remembering comic Lenny Bruce, the
"surgeon with a scalpel for false values"

WHAT I LEARNED FROM
PLAYMATES

Former PLAYBOY editor James R. Petersen
on his very special education

Playboy After Dark turns 50; a new twist
on an old question in Vintage Advisor;
Classic Cartoons and a Bunny New Year

VOL. 66, NO. 1—WINTER 2019

2

Departments

14

20

22

26

34

ALSO:

LET’S PLAY: JANICE GRIFFITH
Get to know the adult-film actress and
cryptocurrency evangelist

MAN IN HIS DOMAIN:

TREVOR PAGLEN

The fearless artist prepares to launch
one of the first-ever space sculptures

SEX: TELL ME WHAT YOU SEE
Advanced algorithms will know what
kind of porn you like before you do

DRINKS: CHEERS AND JEERS
What to do when the alt-right starts
congregating at your local?

HUMOR: CELEBRITIES ARE
SUPER COOL

Paul W. Downs brings new meaning to
the concept of celebrity journalism

A Rabbit review, American socialism,
female superheroes and more

Playboy Interview
43 SAM HARRIS

The humanist thinker goes long on
everything from mindfulness to the
so-called Intellectual Dark Web

200

96 TARAJI P. HENSON
The What Men Want star holds
nothing back

Profile
112 ROXANE GAY

Two afternoons in L.A. with one of our
most incisive cultural critics

Features
52 PLAYMATE REVIEW

Reacquaint yourself with the beauties
of 2018 and make your pick for the
next PMOY

98

88

108

142

160

192

WHEN SPIRITUALITY
GOES VIRAL

Following a death in his flock, Bentinho
Massaro plots the next move

PEACE THROUGH PUNK ROCK
Inside the Yangon, Myanmar scene—
a spiky bastion of free expression

EMIR SHIRO UNCENSORED

The artist amplifies his message using
the power of suggestion

MURDER, THEY RAPPED
When hip-hop lyrics are used as
evidence in criminal trials

ANEW WAVE
Meet six journalists who can make a
statement without writing a word

THE ART OF THE REAL

Zero clouds gather over the
conscience of Stormy Daniels

Cover Story

Style
152 EZRA MILLER

The cross-genre actor gleefully
obliterates convention

Comics
166 THE MALTESE BUNNY

The Goon makes his PLAYBoy debut in
this funny-bunny noir from Eric Powell

Fiction

66 REPERCUSSIONS
The brisket is but the first victim in
Chuck Palahniuk’s latest short story

18 THE MODERN ERA
A destination breakup? Only in Los
Angeles. By Sarah Braunstein

ALSO: Inside Playboy Club New York; the
Playboy Symposium: five takes on
freedom of expression

At the center of the conversation, our Rabbit poses
an important question. Cover art by Marius Sperlich.
Read more about Sperlich’s work on page 13.

PLAYBOY 7

PLAYBOY

HUGH M. HEFNER
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

1953-2017

COOPER HEFNER CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER
JAMES RICKMAN, SHANE MICHAEL SINGH EXECUTIVE EDITORS
ANNA WILSON PHOTO DIRECTOR
ERICA LOEWY ART DIRECTOR
CAT AUER DEPUTY EDITOR

GILMACIAS MANAGING EDITOR

EDITORIAL
ANNA DEL GAIZO, RYAN GAJEWSKI, ELIZABETH SUMAN SENIOR EDITORS
ARIELA KOZIN, ANITALITTLE FEATURES EDITORS
WINIFRED ORMOND COPY CHIEF; ROBERT BUSCEMI, AMY STEINBERG CONTRIBUTING COPY EDITORS
MICHELE SLEIGHEL RESEARCH EDITOR; JAMIELOFTUS CONTRIBUTING RESEARCH EDITOR

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

ART & PHOTOGRAPHY
CHRISTOPHER SALTZMAN CONTRIBUTING DESIGN DIRECTOR; REGINA ROSATO CONTRIBUTING ART DIRECTOR
AARON LUCAS ART MANAGER
NATALIE ALVARADO PHOTO RESEARCHER AND ASSET COORDINATOR
SANDRAEVANS 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

KYLE DELEU, ALI MITTON, DOVE SHORE, CHRISTOPHER VON STEINBACH CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

PRODUCTION

LESLEY K. RIPPON PRODUCTION DIRECTOR

PUBLIC RELATIONS

TERI THOMERSON SENIOR DIRECTOR, PUBLIC RELATIONS; TAMARAPRAHAMIAN SENIOR DIRECTOR, PUBLICITY

PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES INTERNATIONAL, INC.
BENKOHN CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
JULIE UHRMAN PRESIDENT OF MEDIA
JARED DOUGHERTY CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER
REENAPATEL CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER, MEDIA AND LICENSING

JOHN VLAUTIN CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS

Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), Winter 2019, volume 66, number 1. 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 comment on content, e-mail letters@playboy.com. + We occasionally make portions of our customer list available to carefully screened companies that offer products or services we believe you may enjoy. If you do
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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
© 2018 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 in a 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 2 and 3. 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 secretaria de gobernación, Mexico. Reserva de derechos 04-2000-071710332800-102. Printed in USA.

10

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To our readers:

Welcome to PLAYBOY’s 65th anniversary issue—a 234-page celebration of who
we were, who we are and how we’re changing.

PLAYBOY launched in 1953 to a country booming with postwar prosper-
ity and optimism. Our first issue hit newsstands on the heels of the Kinsey
Reports. The sexual revolution of the 1960s was almost a decade away.
PLAYBOY was the platform for leading writers, artists and photographers to
express themselves with total freedom, the place where sex was never taboo
and where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were to be enjoyed by all.

But the world has changed in unimaginable ways in the 65 years since our
first issue. Much that was taboo then is mainstream now. How can PLAYBOY
keep pushing boundaries and make a difference in 2019? By continuing to grow.

Consider this a new beginning—and a work in progress. Today, we strive to
be more inclusive, stretching and redefining tired and frankly sexist defini-
tions of beauty, arousal and eroticism. We’re committed to the democratization
of pleasure, which means we're steadfastly sex-positive, and we'll fight abuse,
harassment and discrimination in all its forms. Building awareness for gender
equality and sexual health issues, advocating for civil rights and speaking out
for the public good are not just complementary but intrinsic to PLAYBOY’s pur-
pose. This issue represents our vision of the world, a place for everybody and
every body to experience delight, surprise and joy. After all, freedom is mean-
ingless if it’s enjoyed by only a privileged few.

With that vision in mind, we’re keeping what works—what’s truly in our
DNA—and building from there. We'll continue to introduce new voices
throughout our pages, in front of the camera and behind it. Our pictorials will
remain as bold and provocative as ever. This work will be produced by an edi-
torial staff that today is more than 50 percent women.

In the pages of our first quarterly you'll find neuroscientist-philosopher Sam
Harris and cultural gadfly Roxane Gay. You'll learn about punk rock in Myanmar
and an entrepreneur using cryptocurrency to help sex workers get paid. You'll
see Stormy Daniels in anew light and visit the bars in America that have become
unwitting sanctuaries of the alt-right. Adding their viewpoints to the issue are
luminaries like Taraji P. Henson, Ezra Miller, Edwidge Danticat, Sloane Crosley,
Marius Sperlich, Chuck Palahniuk, Blaise Cepis and Trevor Paglen.

Sixty-five years ago we started a conversation about sex, pleasure and free-
dom. The forces we fought against back then—repression, silence and fear—
have not gone away. And as one of the most critical thought leaders in the
room for well over half a century we believe that now is the perfect time to take
the conversation further.

Join us.

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WORLD OF PLAYBOY

BUENOS DIAS

Our Rabbit traveled to the Vegas Strip in November
for Playboy’s 2018 Dia de los Muertos Party at Tao
Las Vegas. The celebration, which followed a slew
of Playboy Halloween-related festivities across the
globe—including at Playboy clubs in London and
New York—was hosted by Playmates Carly Lauren,
Stephanie Branton, Gia Marie, Kristy Garett,
Cassandra Dawn and Shauna Sexton, who danced
the night away in flower crowns and Coco de Mer
lingerie, with the help of DJ Vice.

nu м?ч
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w N

SPIRITS

Playboy Club London’s an-
nual Halloween bash served
as the official launchpad
for the Gothic Gin Garden,
a six-week-long pop-up pre-
sented in association with
Tanqueray. At the Bunny-
hosted preview, Keyholders
customized gin and tonics
with accoutrements plucked
from a “sprig wall” amid a
fairy tale-themed “botani-
cal gin garden.”

ту
*

— \ \\
UNCOVERED

To bring to life the theme of our 65th anniversary issue—is freedom of
expression absolute in our country?—we tapped 27-year-old internet
sensation and art director Marius Sperlich. This marks the first time
in 19 years that PLAYBOY has commissioned a visual artist for our cover,
and we couldn’t be more pleased with the result: Sperlich’s macro-
photography imbues an undoubtedly American cultural moment with
the ironies and injustices surrounding free expression and censor-
ship in the United States. Phases of Sperlich’s creative process appear
above. “Change is in the air as a new generation of ideas takes hold,” he
says. “Demonstrations are the embodiment of unity—people banding
together from all walks of life for a cause. The censored nipple func-
tions as the poster child for a much broader problem of social injustice,
and our protestors want to know: Is this really the land of the free?”

h.
WORKOFART

PLAYBOY'S founding art director is the subject of a
new documentary, Art Paul of Playboy: The Man
Behind the Bunny, which offers a rare look at the
late icon’s career, including his 30-year tenure at
PLAYBOY. Interweaving archival footage and con-
versations with artists, colleagues, Hugh Hefner
and Paul himself, the film, per director Jennifer
Hou Kwong, “presents a serious and creative
part of PLAYBOY in a positive light that has never
been done before.” Not long after the doc’s premiere at the Chicago
Film Festival, Chicago gallery One After 909 debuted RaceFace, an
exhibition of imagined faces based on Paul’s observations about race
and prejudice from his perspective as a Jewish man.

WITH LOVE FROM ITALY
One year after Hugh Hefner’s death,
we paused to celebrate our founder’s
life in true Playboy style. On Sep-
tember 27 in Milan, Playboy Italy
Playmate Giulia Borio unveiled Caro
Amico Ti Scrivo, or “Dear friend, I
write to you,” an exhibit of 27 large-
format images by photographer
Carlo Mari.

COCO,
DO YOU LOVE ME?

We'd like to take a moment to
thank British lingerie brand Coco
de Mer for styling the Playmates
at our Día de los Muertos event
(opposite page). In January, the
brand launches its latest collabo-
ration with us: Playboy by Coco de
Mer. Each piece pays homage to a
past issue of PLAYBOY. See more at
coco-de-mer.com.

PLAYBOY 13

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d

Cryptocurrency hasn't
been the sexiest tech
craze—but that's about
to change. Meet the
woman hoping to
modernize (and protect)
the transactional
relationship

14 - LET'S PLAY

JANICE
СМЕЕТЕ

Janice Griffith, an AVN Awards best actress
nominee and co-founder of SpankChain, a
start-up that aims to make sex work safer via
blockchain technology, is no manic pixie porn
girl. Along with her political activism (she
promotes the decriminalization of sex work
alongside Sex Workers Outreach Project),
her vocal opposition to racism in the adult
industry (she’s an outspoken critic of market-
ing that fetishizes nonwhite performers) and
her entrepreneurship (in June she launched
Fleshlight’s first-ever “medium-toned” toy),
her passion remains having sex on camera
and being paid for it.

And much of what the 23-year-old New
York native does online and off is geared
toward protecting her right to do so. That
includes her current efforts to resolve the
dangers now facing sex workers in the United
States following passage of the Allow States
and Victims to Fight Online Sex Traffick-
ing Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffick-
ers Act. A set of anti-trafficking bills signed
into law by the president last April, FOSTA-
SESTA gives officials the right to police web-
sites that host advertisements for sex work,
effectively equating illegal sex trafficking
with consensual sex for pay.

Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd,
on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice,
released a memo stating that a certain provi-
sion of FOSTA may be unconstitutional and
that the act “is broader than necessary be-
cause it [extends] to situations where there is
minimal federal interest, such as to instances
in which an individual person uses a cell
phone to manage local commercial sex trans-
actions involving consenting adults.” Pro-
free speech groups, including the American

16 LET'S PLAY

Civil Liberties Union, have come out in oppo-
sition to the legislation, saying it drastically
weakens protections against internet cen-
sorship. And by censoring and criminalizing
the presence of sex workers, Griffith argues,
FOSTA-SESTA removes their ability to vet po-
tential clients, creating more risk within an
already marginalized population.

“Policing women’s bodies and what we can
do for money is a huge problem we're con-
stantly facing,” says Griffith. “I know sex
workers who have died or gone missing be-
cause they lost access to screening services.
How far can FOSTA-SESTA overreach? What
will it lay the precedent for?”

It’s important to note that Griffith doesn’t
differentiate between adult performers and
other sex workers. Some inside the adult indus-
try perceive a pecking order in which they place
themselves higher than those who exchange
money for intimate sexual activity. Griffith
laughs that off, saying, “We’re all whores to
them.” That’s what prompted her to engage the
adult industry with the tech community in a
way that doesn’t simply monetize but protects.
Primarily she wants to create safer options for
reliable financial transactions.

“Right now, models want to accept money
and people want to give us money, but
there’s no way to make that happen,” she
says. “My Cash App was shut down, and
for what reason?” The answer, of course, is
that sex workers are not a protected group
within the United States, allowing payment
processors to discriminate against them
and the services they provide. At the fed-
eral level, selling your body falls within the
same legal and financial category as selling
marijuana. Most FDIC-insured banks can’t
touch the money.

Enter SpankChain. “Cryptocurrency has
the potential to give us more agency with
what we do,” Griffith explains. Founded in
2017 by a team of six that includes Griffith, a
UX designer, a software developer and a self-
described “Russian hacker,” SpankChain
aims to “create the infrastructure for por-
nographers and sex workers to accept crypto-
currency іп a safe way” by using a blockchain
network called Ethereum. (That means users
trade not in Bitcoin but in a currency called
ether.) The start-up has gained the atten-
tion of Forbes, and CoinDesk, an outlet that
covers the cryptocurrency market, has ap-
plauded its efforts to keep transaction fees
low for its users. “The smartest thing you can
dois be financially independent of platforms
like PayPal, Venmo, Square,” says Griffith.
For her, the blockchain, while largely dis-
counted by Wall Street as the nebulous Wild
West of banking, may be the key to economic
freedom for sex workers.

Formerly а girl of the Warped Tour persua-
sion, Griffith entered porn about five years

ago. Early on, she had purple hair, multi-
ple body and facial piercings and gauged
ears. Her hair is now natural and her ears
sewn up, yet she still labels herself “al-
ternative” based on how the industry she
works in handles her racial ambiguity. “I’m
half white, half Indian,” she says matter-
of-factly. “They can’t pigeonhole my eth-
nicity. Every scene I shoot is interracial.”
She'll have sex with performers of all races
and ethnicities but refuses to participate
in scenes promoted as interracial, a porn
category that generally features sex be-
tween whites and blacks. She also refuses
to participate in certain scenes depicting
workplace relationships or unfair power
dynamics. “The plot matters. It's so high-
concept now,” she says. “We're not just hav-
ing sex.”

Griffith's passion for porn has gotten
her into plenty of trouble. She has been ei-
ther banned or deleted from Twitter and
Instagram at various points in her career.
In response to her love for pornography,
trolls often taunt, "Imagine what her dad
thinks." (*My dad loves me uncondition-
ally," she counters.) Still, none of this has
made Griffith want to step away from the
adult industry. Rather, she hopes to con-
tinue establishing herself as a respectable
voice within her chosen field, with no ulte-
rior motives involving breaking free, cross-
ing over or moving on. She won't be pushed
out. If the industry loses her, it will be be-
cause she wanted to leave. In the mean-
time, Griffith isn't hell-bent on impressing
you. But if you pay attention, she may do so
anyway. m

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KAYLA VARLEY

STYLING BY JIL VINCENT

The way we speak about sex has always been, shall we say, nuanced. Here, our Playboy Advisor offers a study
of numbers and nomenclature related to the lewdest lexicon in the English language. (No offense)

мокоо TRUMP

of AD Ç IC E | CBS bleeped both words in
{ Robert De Niro’s speech at the
| 2018 Tony Awards. O
| О

o "'Cum' is not a word. We don't have three-letter
satisfaction among couples alternate spellings for other four-letter words
who are casually dating or that have double meanings. You wouldn't write CENTURY
having casual sex. ‘| want to suk his dik.'" —Dan Savage widely accepted date of

fuck’s first publication
[Playboy's Copy Chief agrees; in addition, cock
ring, blow job, butt plug and doggy style are all
rendered as two words, not one.]

16

first printed reference to pussy in a sexual context

CUNT
ә WAYS

GROPECUNTELANE a street
name in London's supposed
red-light district, circa 1230

Sexting has a less positive
impact on people in very
committed relationships,

however,

according to a 2015
study by Drexel University
researchers.

DON'T SAY A WORD

RED PINEAPPLE VANILLA
UNICORN KELLY CLARKSON HUFFLEPUFF

terms listed in a 2018 survey of the most popular safe words
used during kinky sex, as reported by sex-toy maker Lovehoney

KUNTA Cunts Old Nordic origin word,
meaning women’s genitals,
per the Oxford English Dictionary

KUNTHI Sanskrit for female genitalia

a KUNTI paternal aunt ofthe Hindu god Krishna
Sneeze in her satchel

Great Depression-era slang for cunnilingus “| GUESS THAT CUNT GETTING EATEN”

—lyrics in Azealia Banks's 2011 hit “212”

4.1 MILLION

number of Google search results for “cum-a-holic”

Icing expert
World War ІІ-ега slang for blow job enthusiast

. BY ANNA DEL GAIZO
Eating pound cake

World War 11-ега slang for anilingus

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SARAH MAXWELL

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It took long enough, but with Captain Marvel flying into
finally getting their fair chance to save the

When director Rachel Talalay went to San
Diego Comic-Con in 1995 to promote her
film Tank Girl, based on a British comic
about a superpower-less woman who, well,
drives a tank, the fest was a fraction of the
spectacle it is today. Back then, the event
was a more honest celebration of comic
books, with far less coopting by studios
looking to push their movies and TV shows.
That’s mostly because movies and TV
shows based on comic books were
rare. According to Talalay, who now
directs for television on shows in-
cluding The Flash and Supergirl,
another crucial difference between Comic-
Con of the 1990s and Comic-Con today was
how few women filed inside the conven-
tion center. “When I took Tank Girl there,
I brought in this female audience who had
nothing,” Talalay says. “The only women in
Comic-Con were the booth babes.”

Tank Girl ultimately flopped. Talalay
blames executives who, she says, pushed
her out of the editing process and turned
the film into something nonsensical. Two
decades later, much has changed in the
comics-based entertainment ecosystem, as
exemplified by the March release of Captain

18 ENTERTAINMENT

ву ERIC
DUCKER

Marvel—the first film from the Marvel
Cinematic Universe to have a female lead.
Set in the 1990s, it follows Carol Danvers, an
Air Force pilot with special powers who gets
embroiled in an intergalactic war. Head-
ing into its release, the film has unprece-
dented momentum and appeal. Avengers:
Infinity War ended with a wallop, and it’s
clear Danvers and her alter ego will play a
substantial role in cleaning up Thanos’s cos-
mic trauma in the fourth Aveng-
ers installment, scheduled for May.
Captain Marvel also has the oppor-
tunity to prolong the hot streak
Marvel Studios has achieved in its so-called
“phase three,” with the critical and com-
mercial successes of Black Panther, Thor:
Ragnarok and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
And with the ascendant Brie Larson in the
lead role, Captain Marvel is the first Marvel
Studios film headlined by an Oscar winner.
“It’s going to be one of the biggest movies of
the year,” says Paul Dergarabedian, a senior
analyst at comScore, a leading media ana-
lytics company. “It’s no question.”

Such confidence in a female-led film is a
new phenomenon in Hollywood, especially
within Marvel Studios and its corporate

parent, Disney, which bought the company
in 2009. Over the course of 10 years and
20 Marvel Studios movies, female super-
heroes have served as supporting players
(the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy
series) or shared equal billing in a sequel
(Ant-Man and the Wasp). DC Films and
Warner Bros. haven’t done much better in
their decades-long partnership. Warner
has released seven live-action films about
Batman, six about Superman and one
about them fighting each other. It wasn’t
until 2017 that the studio finally put out its
first stand-alone female superhero movie,
Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman didn’t just collect
more than $800 million at the global box
office; it positioned the studio—whether
intentionally or not—at the forefront of a
culture-defining moment, one informed
by the 2016 election and, to be more insu-
lar, a lack of enthusiasm for Batman post-
Christopher Nolan. “Wonder Woman had a
particular resonance among female view-
ers, and even male viewers who wanted
their daughters to be inspired by her
character,” Dergarabedian says, perhaps
referring to the fact that the film inspired

ILLUSTRATION BY YOUR CINEMA

women-only viewings across the country, as
well as one of the most popular Halloween
costumes of 2017.

With Wonder Woman, DC Films finally
delivered to a movie audience that, nation-
ally, is becoming less male and less white.
“We've known for years that fandom has
become more inclusive, more diverse and,
frankly, more feminine than ever,” says
Matthew Smith, a professor at Radford Uni-
versity and author of Critical Approaches
to Comics. The record-breaking box office
tallies of both Black Panther and Wonder
Woman prove Smith’s assertion. “The real-
ity that you would market only products that
are tailored to an audience of white males is
surprising,” Smith continues. “There’s more
money available to you. Why are you not
going after that money?”

For comic book enthusiasts, the answer
is clearly that for so long, Hollywood
didn’t know the formula. Aside from Tank
Girl, Catwoman and Elektra, both com-
mercial flops, were released within six
months of each other between 2004 and
2005. Halle Berry’s and Jennifer Garner’s
films failed for various reasons, including,
respectively, divorcing Catwoman from the

Batman universe and creating a Daredevil
spin-off that no one wanted.

Their poor showings (Catwoman made
$40 million domestically and Elektra $24 mil-
lion) justified to film executives that they
needn’t invest in movies about female super-
heroes, and that line of thinking prevailed for
more than adecade.

But Dergarabedian likes to counter that
dry-era theory by noting the precedent of
commercially successful female-led action
movies predating Wonder Woman. He cites
Sigourney Weaver’s portrayal of Ripley in the
early Alien movies and, more recently, Jenni-
fer Lawrence in The Hunger Games franchise,
the first film of which established March as
a reliable month for launching blockbusters.
Following her 2015 performance in Mad
Max: Fury Road, Charlize Theron starred in
Atomic Blonde, which completed her evolu-
tion into a bankable action heroine after Aeon
Flux’s 2005 failure. Scarlett Johansson car-
ried Luc Besson’s sci-fi action flick Lucy to
almost $500 million worldwide in 2014. And
yet, for almost a decade, Johansson’s Marvel
character remained a supporting player. That
will change soon; Marvel green-lit a Black
Widow stand-alone film last year.

When Black Widow debuts, it will be the
directorial work of Australian filmmaker
Cate Shortland. Her hiring is an example of
how, in the midst of Time’s Up, female inclu-
siveness is finally registering on both sides of
the camera. Catwoman and Elektra were both
directed by men; Wonder Woman clearly ben-
efited from the vision of Patty Jenkins, who
is directing its sequel, Wonder Woman 1984.
Captain Marvel also has a female director
(albeit as half of a husband-and-wife team,
Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck), and six of its
seven credited screenwriters are women.

Even with all the goodwill, Captain Mar-
vel isn’t a sure bet. For one, outside comic
book fan circles, the Air Force pilot is a
largely unknown figure—as is an earlier
incarnation, Ms. Marvel—even though she
has been around in various forms since the
1970s. But optimists would argue that this
lack of familiarity could work to the film’s
advantage. After all, does anyone need to see
Bruce Wayne’s parents die yet again? Cap-
tain Marvel might make you actually give
a damn about the Kree or the fact that the
hero glows in the trailers like she’s tripping
on ayahuasca. It also might make you wonder
what took so long. m

PLAYBOY 19

=

قت س —
— =
= =

~

Trevor Paglen stands
beneath Prototype
for a Nonfunctional
Satellite (Design 4;

Build 4)—a predecessor
of Orbital Reflector—

at the Smithsonian
American Art Museum in
Washington, D.C.

Manin His

DOMAIN

TREVOR PAGLEN

With Orbital Reflector, the artist has created one of the first-ever space sculptures. What it reflects
might change the way you view the cosmos—and your fellow earthlings

“There’s no such thing as a civilian space
program, and there never will be,” Trevor
Paglen says with a resigned laugh. It’s early
October, and we're talking in an office at New
York University’s AI Now Institute, where the
44-year-old is an Artist Fellow. But lately he’s
been spending time in Nevada, working on
one of humankind’s first works of fine art to
be displayed in the infinite gallery of space.

Space is having a moment, in ways Paglen
finds both troubling and inspiring:

“an advertisement” aimed at the military, im-
plicitly marketing the Falcon Heavy rocket as
a cargo carrier that can lug much more than
an electric car—a payload filled with sur-
veillance satellites, for example. In fact, it
was widely reported that SpaceX’s Falcon 9
launched a government-owned payload into
an undisclosed orbit on a January 2018 trip.
“The market that drives the creation
of launch vehicles is a military market,”
Paglen says, one that “SpaceX is

Elon Musk has launched a SpaceX EN very actively trying to break into,
Falcon Heavy rocket equipped with a ZACH and has broken into.” The artist
Tesla; more than 600 customers have SOKOL adds, “It's telling a different story

paid upward of $200,000 each for a

seat on Virgin Galactic's commercial space-
flight; President Trump has announced his
so-called Space Force (designed to ensure
“American dominance in space”). Just as it
was in the 20th century, modern space ex-
ploration is a springboard for nationalistic
myth-making. But Paglen—a 2017 MacArthur
Fellow and geography Ph.D. known for “show-
ing what invisibility looks like” by docu-
menting classified reconnaissance satellites,
National Security Agency listening stations,
weapons test sites and other clandestine
structures—sees space exploration through
a different lens: Space is entirely a “weapon-
ized” place as far as we earthlings are con-
cerned, and all recent advancements in the
industry are outgrowths of the Cold War.

“When we're looking at spaceflight,” he
says, “it has everything to do with military and
other attempts to exert power over the planet
from that high ground, whether that’s surveil-
lance, targeting or delivering weapons.”

Take Sputnik. As much as it was a testa-
ment to human ingenuity, it was also a dem-
onstration of the Soviet Union’s ability to
shuttle a nuclear weapon to the other side of
the planet. The same arguably goes for SpaceX
today: That intergalactic Tesla was essentially

PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEPHEN VOSS

than [competitor] Lockheed,” but
it’s gunning for the same contracts.

Call it Orbital Realism: Space travel is
inextricable from the military-industrial
complex. So how can an artist hold up a mir-
ror to such a vast and shadowy milieu? If
you're Trevor Paglen, you do just that: You
design a giant reflective sculpture, and you
shoot it into space.

Paglen’s extraterrestrial artwork is named
Orbital Reflector. If all goes to plan, the
diamond-shape, 100-foot-long inflatable ob-
ject will have ripped through the night skies
in low orbit for about six to eight weeks after
its launch in late November. It will look just
like a slow-moving star in the Big Dipper and
will complete a revolution around the world
about every 90 minutes. Ultimately, it will
burn to nothing in Earth’s atmosphere.

The project highlights the extent of the mil-
itary's reach through an inherent contradic-
tion: Orbital Reflector, built by aerospace
contractor Global Western, will be sent to-
ward the stars inside a CubeStat satellite on a
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. More likely than not,
the freight will also include at least one spy sat-
ellite. But the venture also serves as a nice foil
to themes present throughout the artist’s oeu-
vre: On top of depicting what invisibility and

government secrecy look like, Orbital Reflector
may prompt us to see the cosmos anew.

“T think it’s provocative to say, ‘I’m going to
make something and put it in the sky and it
will be visible from Earth,” Paglen explains.
"You're provoking a conversation about what
the legitimate uses of space are. You're pro-
voking a conversation about who should have
the rights to do what in a space—pardon
my pun—that we instinctually think of as a
shared resource, which it is.”

“Trevor is not advocating that artists begin
shooting satellites into orbit,” says David
Walker, executive director and CEO of the
Nevada Museum of Art, which partnered
with Paglen on the project. “What he’s doing
is asking us to reconsider the preciousness of
Earth.” And of course Orbital Reflector’s lo-
cation gives it a simple, striking characteris-
tic: “More people will see it and know about it
than just about any artwork that’s ever been
created,” Walker says.

Early in our conversation, Paglen tells me
about Nikolai Fedorov, a 19th century Rus-
sian philosopher who wrote about space as a
mystical tool that could reincarnate every-
one who had ever lived. Space, he believed,
would help humanity achieve something
akin to the Kingdom of Heaven. The proto-
transhumanist would go on to influence the
architects of the early Russian space program.

“That seems unthinkable,” Paglen says of
cosmism theories, “and to me, that’s what art
aspires to: not only to challenge you to think
in a different way but to see in a different way.”

Later, he reiterates his interest in the phi-
losopher and the value of challenging our
sense of reality through otherworldly ideas.
“If you can imagine that, then maybe you can
imagine having more social justice or having
more equitable health care policies or what
have you,” Paglen says. He laughs again, with
less resignation this time. a

PLAYBOY 21

/

ШІНШІ
ІШ

=
а
N
=
=
š
=

BY TERENA BELL

IMAGINE A PROGRAM THAT COULD PREDICT YOUR EVERY
FETISH, MEMORIZE YOUR EVERY DESIRE. WOULD YOU USE IT?
ONE PORN COMPANY THINKS YOU WOULD. INSIDE THE LATEST
ADVANCEMENT IN SEX, TECH AND GETTING OFF

In the fourth season of Silicon Valley, HBO’s Emmy-winning,
Cupertino-mocking comedy series, one of the characters develops
a visual-recognition app that can identify food in pictures, classi-
fying every image as either “hot dog” or “not hot dog.” When one of
the guys uses the app to take a dick pic, he discovers that he does, in
fact, have a “hot dog.” They end up selling the technology to video-
streaming app Periscope, which plans to use it to detect porn.

Visual-recognition technology is, of course, nothing new. Most
social media companies—dating apps included—use computer vision
to enforce community guidelines and root out X-rated images. If
Instagram or Facebook has ever deleted one of your photos, it’s because
computer vision told it to. For the most part, its function has been to
prevent adult content from spreading where it doesn’t belong.

xHamster, one of the highest-trafficked porn sites, has other plans.

Currently, to find a specific scene on the site, users have to browse
a category page or search a tag. xHamster vice president Alex
Hawkins wants to move toward searches without words—ones in
which “AI facial and body recognition tech” will access your view-
ing history “to identify similar performers or the same performer or
similar videos.” The question is, can it be done? Distinguishing one
hot dog from another hot dog isn’t easy—that is to say, recognizing
something as pornographic is a different skill from finding the best
video for you. In a world where most computer-vision technology is
developed to identify tangible objects such as clothing and food, can
an algorithm be trained to know your sexual desires?

The answer, according to Matias Klein, chief executive officer of
the artificial intelligence company Kognition, depends on data. “The
accuracy of the model is highly dependent on the quality of the input
training data,” he says. And data sets aren’t always interchangeable.
In other words, the same machine-learning engine that recognizes
shirts and sandwiches won’t instantly know porn. “Which categories
will be created is a human-level decision, not necessarily a computer
task,” explains Albert Bou Fadel, chief executive officer of technol-
ogy company SmartBarrel. “It isa human filter that will decide what
to keep as a category and what to disregard."

His question is a subjective one about what porn is and what it isn’t.
That’s important, given that watching porn is a deeply personal expe-
rience. If we each have our own idea of what’s sexy, how can we collec-
tively train a computer? To the machine-learning systems of today,
there are few visual differences between nipple play and checking

24 SEX

yourself for breast cancer: Both show a hand circling around nip-
ples. One is clearly sexual; the other is not. This illustrates a problem
Facebook has encountered and why the platform has been criticized
for mislabeling photos of women breast-feeding as porn. “Building
and labeling a training data set and then designing and optimizing a
deep neural network is not a trivial task,” Klein says.

In 2016, Yahoo made one of its deep-learning algorithms public
by open-sourcing its code for the entire internet to use. What’s fas-
cinating about that release is that Yahoo explicitly told the public
its algorithm does not detect porn but rather flags visual content
“not suitable/safe for work (NSFW), including offensive and adult
images.” As Yahoo research engineer Jay Mahadeokar and prod-
uct manager Gerry Pesavento wrote in a company blog post, “De-
fining NSFW material is subjective.” Unlike the hot dog app on
Silicon Valley, Yahoo’s system isn’t designed to give users a hard
yes or no. Instead, it analyzes images individually, assigning each
a score based on how likely it is to be offensive. “Developers can use
this score to filter images below a certain suitable threshold,” the
two explained, “or use this signal to rank images in search results.”

Because we live in atime when you can’t publish a NSFW detector
without someone hacking it, a young computer programmer named
Gabriel Goh quickly manipulated Yahoo’s algorithm to produce
extreme versions of NSFW imagery. (In programming speak, Goh
accomplished this “by maximally activating certain neurons of
the classifier.”) If you were to look at the images—highly exagger-
ated, colorful, mutated and abstract versions of male and female
genitalia—you’d notice there's little about them that's sexy. To echo
United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s infamous
words on porn, “I know it when I see it.” This isn’t it.

Because of how open source works—once code is shared with
GitHub’s tech community, it’s available for anyone to play with—
Yahoo can’t track how many engineers have used the tool for its in-
tended function. But people are indeed using it, based on the chat
boards on start-up accelerator Y Combinator. There, engineers
have complained that Yahoo’s system works well detecting porn for
white performers but not for those of color. One user, niftich, sug-
gests Yahoo’s training data must have included more white actors,
which brings us back to Klein’s point about the importance of data.

Indeed, the porn industry has been heavily criticized for treat-
ing minority performers more as fetishes than people. According

to a 2013 study from data journalist Jon Millward, “Deep Inside:
A Study of 10,000 Porn Stars and Their Careers,” 70.5 percent of
female stars are white. But user aabo notes that the difference in
system performance may “also reflect what is most distinguish-
able. Which is easier for [the computer] to confidently distinguish:
black pubic hair on black skin, or black pubic hair on white skin?
Darker nipples on black skin, or darker nipples on white skin?”

Nipple color, waxed versus unwaxed pubic regions and other pre-
cise physical characteristics are where visual recognition may truly
revolutionize search. “This level of specificity is hard to do with key-
word searches alone,” says Hawkins. “Specifically, with a platform
like ours, where self-produced amateur content is often uploaded
without significant keywords or descriptive text, these unarticu-
lated visual identifiers can help connect the content.” In his view, a
computer may be better able than language to tell us what we want.
With xHamster’s system, which the company began developing in
July 2017, Hawkins says, “the AI can help identify performers simi-
lar to one a viewer already likes, matching body and facial structure
and other identifying features.”

Hawkins points out that xHamster isn’t using Yahoo’s tech—its own
tech is already in use. For example: When you visit xHamster.com,
the site drops a cookie that tracks the videos you view. When one clip
ends, the system uses that video’s visuals to recommend what you
should watch next. Right now, the software focuses on facial char-
acteristics and body types. An ideal system would pick up on every
other visual element that could make or break the mood. From large
tattoos to badly lit rooms, from women pulling back their hair with
1980s headbands to nature settings, visual-recognition software
could help porn platforms create an endless array of previously
unimagined categories.

“This,” Hawkins says, “becomes increasingly important as we
move toward virtual-reality productions, which move consum-
ers further and further away from the keyboard.” In November,
xHamster launched a VR platform that allows viewers to navigate
using eye movement. This is critical to bringing a VR world alive—
and because our eyes naturally fixate on what our brains deem at-
tractive, eye tracking might one day also help visual search pinpoint
exactly which seconds of video turn us on the most. “Our current
database now includes more than 1 million individuals and 3 million
videos,” Hawkins explains—everything from real-life exhibitionist
couples to independently produced fetish clips. At the time of this
writing, xHamster’s internal tech team had analyzed some 35,000
of these videos, webcam performances and studio clips.

Hawkins claims the goal isn’t just to offer better search results
but to help fans and performers connect to create a pathway to find-
ing more porn featuring the people they like. Visual recognition
won't stop at recommending another (possibly free) clip to stream.
It will direct—and up-sell—you to upcoming webcam engagements
or specific channels.

Of course, in threesome and orgy videos, xHamster’s system still
isn’t sophisticated enough to determine who turns you on the most. As
with computerized translation, chatbot development and other types
of machine learning, AI engines learn not only from the data engi-
neers who train them but from real people who provide feedback on
system results. Along with eye tracking, user feedback might someday
help xHamster pinpoint which performers are more engaging.

Bou Fadel calls visual recognition “a work in progress,” something
that will take years to perfect. “Computer vision today is still a black
box. There’s a lot of science and theories of how it works, but for the
most part, we're scraping the surface,” he says. In the meantime,
hackers, xHamster’s team and porn giants will continue to tweak
algorithms, unveil virtual-reality programs and track your view-
ing, all in an effort to find a single formula for predicting the sex-
ual desires of all humankind. The biggest takeaway? Deleting your
browser history may soon become pointless. a

IS PORN
AHUMAN
RIGHT?

ADULT CONTENT SEEMS TO
BE EVERYWRERE—WITH ONE
OMINOUS EXCEPTION

Here’s a fact: One of America’s most popu-
lar pastimes, which in turn satisfies a biologi-
cal need, is also one of the most denounced and
contested—the consumption of adult content.
Porn is avast and limitless ocean that feels ubiq-
uitous to those of us who can freely access it. But
in this country’s correctional facilities, it’s at
risk of being outlawed amid increasing govern-
ment overreach. Do prisoners have a right to the
same sexual imagery as the rest of society?

Policies vary from state to state, but in 2017
Charles E. Sisney, an inmate in South Dakota,
backed by the American Civil Liberties Union,
challenged the state’s Department of Correc-
tions’ pornography policy, which bans prisoners
from purchasing or possessing adult content.

Similar bans have popped up in Nebraska,
Connecticut and Michigan. The general argu-
ment is that banning adult content promotes
safer environments and quicker rehabilitation,
but virtually no studies have examined the links,
positive or negative, between porn consumption
and inmate behavior. These bans can also create
underground barter systems, wherein pornog-
raphy that slips through can fetch a potentially
violent premium in prison yards.

The question is, if states can police adult
content in prisons, will they stop there? What
counts as “pornographic,” and will the authori-
ties know it when they see it? Not so coinciden-
tally, Sisney’s court case in South Dakota had
him also challenging the confiscation of manga
comics, erotic novels and a book of modern art—
reading material all deemed too explicit by the
Department of Corrections. And in Florida,
Prison Legal News is petitioning the Supreme
Court over the state’s ban on the magazine in
prisons. It may be a leap to suggest that restrict-
ing the consumption of certain media by popula-
tions deemed to be less worthy will threaten one
of the most important promises on which this
country was founded. It’s not a leap, however,
to suggest that censorship may be a word we're
cozying up to too often.—Anita Little

and Jeers

P

+e

What to do when an extremist group decides to gather at your local
bar? Inside a cultural and constitutional quagmire

Make Westing, a popular bar in Oakland,
California, has a front patio that some pa-
trons refer to as the city’s front porch. “We
have a huge crowd, and it’s everything—it’s
black, it’s white, it’s old, it’s young,” says a
representative of the bar, who asked not to be

named. Imagine their surprise last summer
when an assistant manager saw a Reddit post
claiming that a local chapter of the Proud
Boys would be meeting there.

26 DRINKS

The bar had a choice to make: Let the group
in or kick them out. “We were between a rock
and a hard place,” the rep says. “If we said,
‘Fine, come,’ we'd get destroyed in a liberal city
like Oakland. And if we didn’t let them come,
the alt-right would come after us.” (Started
during the 2016 presidential campaign by Vice
Media co-founder Gavin McInnes, the Proud
Boys reject the “alt-right” label; the group calls
itself a “Western chauvinist” organization.

The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies
it as a hate group.) After consulting with law-
yers and other bars in the neighborhood, Make
Westing decided to “figure out what good we
could possibly bring to this.” They created
a Facebook post disavowing racism and an-
nouncing an event of their own for the day of
the planned Proud Boys meeting—one that
would raise money for Black Lives Matter, the
ACLU and other organizations.

The day before Make Westing's event, Afri-
can American teenager Nia Wilson was mur-
dered by a white man at an Oakland train
station, and the organizers of a march sched-
uled for the next day decided it would end at the
bar. Suddenly, Make Westing was at the cen-
ter of an upheaval: Even the mayor of Oakland
tweeted a link to its original Facebook post,
which reached more than 100,000 people.

On the big day, the Proud Boys didn’t show.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MAURIZIO DIIORIO

Make Westing’s event raised thousands of dol-
lars for Wilson’s family and various progres-
sive causes, but the bar experienced online
and voice-mail vitriol from both sides. “No
matter what we did, we were wrong in a lot of
people’s eyes,” the bar’s representative says.
In this apparent civil-liberties stalemate,
the staff of Make Westing is not alone. In
September, a group of alleged white nation-
alists harassed and pepper-sprayed a Demo-
cratic Socialists of America meeting at a bar
in Louisville, Kentucky. In July, six skin-
heads were charged with ethnic intimidation
and simple assault after beating an Afri-
can American man at a bar in Avalon, Penn-
sylvania. Later that month, Joey
Gibson—a U.S. Senate candidate and

the leader of Patriot Prayer, a far- HO

right group whose marches and ral-

lies have turned violent several times—urged
followers in a Facebook Live post to contact a
Vancouver, Washington bar that had kicked
him out. The bar was inundated with harass-
ment and threats.

It can happen the other way too: In Los An-
geles last summer, a scuffle broke out in a bar
one Saturday night after a Proud Boys gath-
ering wasn’t ejected quickly enough and op-
ponents of the group showed up en masse.
The bar closed that night and Sunday. Its
owner, who was not at the bar during the inci-
dent, issued a statement: “I am ultimately to
blame for not having a policy in place to deal
with this sort of thing that could be imple-
mented in my absence,” he wrote. “I’ve just
never had any experience with something
like this before.”

The political and business consequences of
refusing to serve certain people may be compli-
cated, but the legal consequences are not. “You
have a First Amendment right to associate with
some and to disassociate with others,” says
Matt C. Pinsker, a constitutional law expert
and adjunct professor at Virginia Common-
wealth University. “The general rule is private-
property owners can do whatever they want
as long as it doesn’t discriminate against a le-
gally protected class,” including those based on
race, gender, ethnicity, religion, age, disability
and a few other categories—but definitely not
including political views. (Sexual orientation
is a protected class in some states but not fed-
erally; see the Supreme Court’s 2018 Master-
piece Cakeshop decision.) Technically, then,
business owners and staff “can discriminate
against other groups,” Pinsker says. “If you
have something you find morally appalling,
you have the right to exclude them from your
bar. Some people might find fans of the wrong
football team morally appalling, and others
might find neo-Nazis morally appalling.”

Even on a small scale, the decision to kick
someone out for their beliefs is fraught. San
Diego bartender Ashley Wardle learned this
firsthand when she eighty-sixed a customer

wearing a Proud Boys shirt last summer. “I
was the person in charge at the time; none of
the owners were in,” she says. “I told him, “I
can’t serve you at this bar wearing that shirt.’
He said, “Well, now who's the bigot?’ "

The customer left, and Wardle thought
that was the end of it. But a few days later,
her phone started blowing up with messages
from her bosses. She heard the guy she’d
kicked out had posted about the incident on
several far-right websites, and the bar was
getting hit with negative reviews and posts.
One now-deleted tweet from a local conser-
vative activist even named Wardle specif-
ically. The bar’s owner worked quickly to
have the online abuse taken down,
but the experience contributed to

RN Wardle’s decision to find a differ-

ent bartending job soon afterward.
(Fearing further reprisals, the owner also
asked that this story not name the bar.)

“I kick people out for being too drunk,
but that was the first time I’ve had to deal
with anything like this,” Wardle says. “Like
most bars, this is a small start-up. There was
barely a training or an employee manual, let
alone a policy for this situation. The idea of
an alt-right person coming in the bar was not
even in the owner’s mind.”

Make Westing’s representative agrees:
“If you're fighting or treating people poorly,
you're kicked out; you're banned. But there
was no specific policy on the Proud Boys."
There's still no specific policy at Make West-
ing, and the representative is ambivalent
about the bar being drawn into this contro-
versy. ^Hopefully it brought more good than
bad, but I don't know."

Wardle doesn't regret her actions. ^Wear-
ingahate group's shirt is a statement of hate;
it was designed to provoke a reaction," she
says. “Whether or not he was a member of
this group, his shirt made him one. As bar-
tenders, our responsibility goes way beyond
just putting stuff in glasses. It's creating a
space that's inviting and safe."

Most bars, of course, don't have consti-
tutional scholars on staff. But there may be
hope in numbers: In advance of the Unite
the Right 2 rally in Washington, D.C. last
August, the Restaurant Association of Met-
ropolitan Washington sent a "toolkit" to its
members, affirming their freedom to refuse
service to white nationalists and other politi-
cal groups. The event and its counterprotests
were relatively peaceful, especially compared
with the deadly Charlottesville rally of 2017;
D.C. saw only one arrest. But with hard-right
groups growing ever more bold since the 2016
election, standoffs like these won't be going
away anytime soon. Proprietors, pint pull-
ers and patrons will have to decide for them-
selves whether extremist groups should hide
in the shadows or be exposed to the (neon,
possibly smoke-wreathed) light. m

PLAYBOY 27

Into sex toys? Come visit Los
Angeles, where you can rent
Emma (Vivant Dolls) for $119
an hour. Retail price: $1,299.

An unusual form of sex tourism wants to set up shop in the States.
Can our country handle it in the era of #MeToo?

sy SUSAN SHA IN

n a quiet street in northern Toronto, among well-kept yards, luxury cars and a small
Christian-owned business, sits a five-bedroom stone house. A neatly coiffed woman drives
by in a Mercedes, likely unaware of the home’s inhabitants: six bare Barbie-proportioned
life-size silicone dolls available for rent by the half hour or the hour. All day, every day, while
life and oxygen and men move around them, the dolls lie stock-still on white sheets, their
anime-esque eyes staring vacantly at the building’s stately high ceilings. This is the head-
quarters of Aura Dolls.

Opened in September 2018, Aura Dolls is one of the first sex-doll brothels in North America. It charges
patrons 120 Canadian dollars for an hour with one of its “classy, sophisticated and adventurous ladies.”
Aura’s owners—anonymous Canadian entrepreneurs—came up with the attraction when they discovered
similar successful establishments while vacationing in Japan. In the past two years, sex-doll brothels have
popped up in countries throughout Europe, including Spain, France, Germany, Denmark and Austria, and
have now begun to roll into North America—but not without public outcry.

Last year, another Canadian-based company, KinkySdollS, attempted to open the first such brothel in
the United States, in Houston. Before KinkySdollS could even hang new signage, Houston’s city council
blocked it by updating a local ordinance to ban citizens from partaking in sex at a business with any device
that resembles a human. “I know there’s some people that will sit there and say, ‘What does the City of
Houston have to do with any of this?’ " councilman Greg Travis told USA Today at the time. “And the answer
is we're not getting into your bedroom, but don’t bring it into our district. Don’t bring it into our city. This is
not a good business for our city. We are not Sin City.”

Beyond triggering neighbors, sex-doll brothels have raised serious questions about sexual ethics and
power dynamics. In 2017, the world’s first known such brothel, Barcelona’s LumiDolls, was reportedly
bombarded with requests for childlike dolls and bedroom scenes glorifying rape. Last fall, Vancouver’s
BellaDolls was blasted for encouraging customers to “forget the restrictions and limitations” that accom-
pany “a real partner.” And Aura marketing director Claire Lee tells me the company’s workers have found
dolls “all bent up” after sessions and have even had to ban one customer who showed up with fake blood.

Despite these disturbing stories, brothel owners argue they’re not doing any harm—and may actually

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MOLLY CRANNA PLAYBOY 29

be providing a valuable service to society. Lee claims the majority
of Aura’s patrons aren’t miscreants but people whose sexual needs
aren’t being met elsewhere, such as those diagnosed with autism or
suffering from social anxiety, men with uninterested wives and wid-
owers seeking companionship. One of the brothel’s most frequent
customers, she says, is a man in his mid-30s who comes in several
days a week, several hours at atime, to have sex, cuddle and watch TV.

It may be easy to imagine Aura as a cross between a seedy massage
parlor and a realized Westworld, but it’s quite the opposite. There’s
no bar and no flirting. Instead, the entire experience is designed to
eliminate human interaction. After arriving, patrons text Aura’s
control room, which remotely unlocks the front door. (Before leav-
ing, they'll text again to ensure they won't run into anyone on the
way out.) A small sign instructs visitors to “remove shoes and leave
payment,” and the interior lighting is dim and romantic, with white
fabric enshrouding the windows. During my visit, I meet Anna lying
on an unremarkable bed.

Anna, I’m told, is the most popular doll, and she proudly flaunts a
32H bust. With no blood flowing through her, a space heater whirs
in an attempt to keep her warm. Her makeup looks fresh because it’s
reapplied every day. Her fake eyelashes are secured with heavy-duty
Gorilla Glue.

Across the hall in another room sits Yuki, an underage-looking
“Korean” doll whose touted personality traits—including “submis-
sive” and “innocent”—conjure racial stereotypes. Within arm’s reach

ЗО TRAVEL

is everything you'll need to get to know her: three LifeStyles condoms,
paper towels and a bottle of K-Y Jelly. A remote control sits on the side
table, encased in a plastic bag. When maneuvered, it lights up a televi-
sion screen with Pornhub’s home page.

Down a spiraling staircase is more silence and silicone. Inside
room number three I meet Scarlett (ethnicity: “American”). When
the door shuts, her manicured fingers jiggle, and I can’t help but
think of the 1998 animated movie Small Soldiers, a PG-13-rated ver-
sion of Toy Story in which the Barbie dolls are far more violent than
you'd imagine. As with the other dolls, conversation isn't Scarlett's
strong suit. Her fans likely come only to enjoy one of her three holes,
each of which features “different yet unique textures, ridges and
tightness.” Scarlett’s skin is velvety, if not exactly warm, and her
accoutrements feel surprisingly real. The entire time I’m there, her
eyes remain wide open, unblinking, glassy, ready to experience what
people pay to do to her. She will never say no.

Of course, when you're inanimate you can’t say “Keep going” or
“Stop.” No “Is this okay?” or “Does this feel good?” Even the most
advanced sex dolls on the market—equipped with artificial intel-
ligence, self-lubrication and heated skin—can’t hold a conversa-
tion. This has attracted scrutiny in the #MeToo era, as it effectively
means they can’t give or revoke consent. Matt McMullen, founder
of sex-doll manufacturer Abyss Creations, calls the consent de-
bate “severely premature.” He recently launched Harmony, a doll
equipped with an artificially intelligent head that fits onto his

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company’s voluptuous bodies. Harmony can answer basic ques-
tions about her favorite movies and remember facts about the user.
Although intelligent, she’s certainly not conscious—nor should she
be, as that’s her main draw.

“T don’t think a sex doll or robot should have the ability to say yes
or no any more than my toaster,” says McMullen. “When we've cre-
ated an AI that’s truly self-aware and fully capable of experienc-
ing the things human beings experience—such as pain, rejection,
abuse—they would no longer be simple machines.” That, he says, is
when the issue of consent should come into play. McMullen doesn’t
believe men’s behavior with robots will bleed into their behavior
with women, as “most stable-minded humans will know the differ-
ence.” He points to video games, in which players gleefully steal cars
or jump off buildings but would never do so in real life.

Christa B. Daring, executive director of the U.S. chapter of the Sex
Workers Outreach Project, also thinks of sex dolls—even ones with
Al—as toys, not stand-ins. “There's no requirement to gain consent,
because it’s an object,” Daring says. “I don’t gain the consent of the
vibrators I use. I don’t think that depletes my ability to gain consent
with humans.” On the same page is Barbara G. Brents, professor of
sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “We learn our be-
haviors from a wide variety of sources,” she says. “To think a few sex
dolls are going to dramatically remake gender relationships and the
notion of consent is kind of ridiculous.”

The United Kingdom’s Campaign Against Sex Robots views the

issue differently. On its website it states the machines “are poten-
tially harmful and will contribute to inequalities in society” for
reasons including the sexual objectification of women and chil-
dren, the reduction of sex workers to “things” and the dimin-
ishment of human empathy. The founder, stating that “PLAYBOY
promotes and profits from the dehumanization of women,” de-
clined to comment for this article.

As for the sex-tourism industry in general, experts don’t imagine
these dolls will create new tourist economies anytime soon—at least
not until the technology has advanced significantly. Brents cites
her research on sex workers, which found that only half the respon-
dents list “sexual gratification” as their primary reason for paying
for sex. The rest seek intimacy, connection and communication.
“Most females and males want a human on the other end of that
genital,” she says.

When more realistic, “thinking” robots are inevitably created,
University of British Columbia economist Marina Adshade says,
they could render human sex workers obsolete altogether. A frequent
writer on robots and relationships, Adshade sums this up as “tech-
nology replacing labor. And I think it’s inevitable.”

After I leave Aura, I stroll past a row of elegant houses. A woman
stands at an upstairs window. She pulls the curtain back and, while
speaking to someone on her phone, glares at the brothel. The future
is just beyond her doorstep, and she’s not happy about it. Б

PLAYBOY 21

What if the only way to make America
great again is to embrace the political system
it has historically feared most?

ву ADAM SKOLNICK
ILLUSTRATION BY RIKI BLANCO

ast October, President Trump wrote
a USA Today op-ed in which he ar-
gued that Democrats have become
“radical socialists who want to
model America’s economy after Ven-
ezuela. If Democrats win control of
Congress, we will come dangerously
closer to socialism in America.”
Well, Democrats won the House and
fell short in the Senate. So what happens if
they conjure aclean sweep in 2020? Should we
fear economic collapse at the hands of social-
ists in Democratic pantsuits?

It’s worth asking, because at this moment all
across America tens of thousands of socialists
are working to take the reins of government—
and when they run, they campaign largely as
Democrats. The way Trump and the GOP spin
it, socialism breeds economic doom. But what
drives the new American socialist hustle is
the counterintuitive idea, rooted in economic
theory and hard data, that socialist policies
could actually grow the economy. According
to the numbers, if we really wanna MAGA,
the smart move would be to embrace a politi-
cal model America learned to loathe long ago.

The Democratic Socialists of America, the
most visible socialist organization in the coun-
try, launched in 1982 as a coalition of Marxist
holdouts who had weathered the red scare of
the 1950s—when Communist Party members
were tracked by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, inter-
rogated by Senator Joseph McCarthy, fired
from jobs and blacklisted in Hollywood—and
younger activists who emerged from the anti-
war movement of the late 1960s. The DSA had
6,000 charter members but had been in the
shadows for more than 30 years.

Then Bernie happened.

The only democratic socialist in the Sen-
ate, Bernie Sanders promised Medicare for
all, free college tuition and a $15 minimum
wage, and he stoked his 2016 campaign with
the rage of those fed up with playing a rich
man’s rigged game. Federal Reserve data
show that the top 10 percent of Americans in
2016 owned 77 percent of the country’s wealth
(the top one percent owned 38.5 percent),
while 40 percent of Americans would have
to sell something to cover a $400 emergency
expense. According to Dean Baker, a senior
economist at the Center for Economic and
Policy Research, the child poverty rate in the

у: `

U.S. is more than 20 percent. To Sanders and
his followers, none of that adds up.

Bianca Cunningham, a young African
American labor organizer, was one of those
followers. Cunningham, now 33, wasn’t par-
ticularly political until she graduated from
college and took a retail job at Verizon Wire-
less in Brooklyn, where she heard about and
experienced sexual harassment and bullying
in the workplace. She contacted the Commu-
nication Workers of America, seeking sup-
port, and went on to unionize seven Brooklyn
Verizon stores. The CWA was deeply involved
with Occupy Wall Street and was one of the
few unions to endorse Sanders. Early in his
candidacy, Sanders appeared alongside Cun-
ningham in front of a Verizon store.

“After he lost,” Cunningham says, “we
thought, Are we gonna let this momentum
die or build off of this? So we ducked under
the existing DSA umbrella. That was the be-
ginning.” The DSA had been involved with
the Sanders campaign since 2015, so it was
a natural fit. Cunningham remembers that
at her first DSA meeting, in the summer of
2016, she saw only 25 people. Then 50. The
first gathering after Trump won, she recalls
seeing 500. This so-called Trump bump hap-
pened in chapters across the country.

Meanwhile, a handful of former Bernie cam-
paign staffers formed an organization called
Brand New Congress, with a mission to elect
a range of congressional candidates under a
common platform inspired by Sanders's cam-
paign. They hoped to raise enough money to
run more than 400 candidates—“regular peo-
ple like us,” says executive director Isra Alli-
son, “teachers, engineers, scientists”—and
wound up with 31 in the 2018 primaries. BNC
is not affiliated with the DSA, but its breakout
star, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also a former
Bernie staffer and the youngest woman ever
elected to Congress, came out of the revital-
ized New York City DSA.

Ocasio-Cortez is not alone. Card-carrying
DSA member Rashida Tlaib was elected to rep-
resent Detroit in Congress. And before either of
them made headlines, the DSA's Lee Carter, a
Marine Corps veteran, was elected to Virginia’s
House of Delegates from a Republican district.

Point to just about any relevant political
scrum of 2018 and the DSA was there. That
West Virginia teachers’ strike that resulted

in a five percent salary bump was sparked by
DSA affiliates in the state. When the family-
separation crisis was white-hot, it was Metro
D.C. DSA members who tracked down Home-
land Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and
shamed her out of a Mexican restaurant. DSA
members were in a Senate office on Capitol
Hill during the Kavanaugh protests.

According to a recent BuzzFeed poll, 48 per-
cent of millennial Democrats and 23 percent
of millennial Republicans identify as demo-
cratic socialists. “We have no recollection of
the Cold War,” Cunningham says. “We didn’t
live through the red scare. We don’t have these
stigmas in our mind.” There are now 52,000
active DSA members and counting.

Trump and the GOP don’t like their poli-
cies because they'll demand higher taxes on
the rich—a four to 12 percent hike, according
to Baker. In the Republicans’ preferred free-
market model, economic growth comes only
from business investment, not government.
That’s why they passed the nearly 40 percent
corporate tax cut that sent the deficit soaring.

As muchas Republicans enjoy watching cash
trickle down, the engine of any economy is not
corporate investment but aggregate demand—
the day-to-day spending on goods and ser-
vices. Socialist economist Richard Wolff calls
the policies that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez
seek “trickle-up economics.” They want to put
money back into the hands of everyday peo-
ple and let it circulate. Consider this: Venezu-
ela doesn’t have an elaborate social safety net;
Norway does. There, 80 percent of the country
is middle income (compared with America’s 52
percent), and the economy is thriving.

We've even tried it here before. After the
Great Depression, President Roosevelt, com-
pelled by organized labor and a fierce, pre-
blacklist Communist Party, pushed a New
Deal through Congress, establishing Social Se-
curity, a minimum wage and a jobs program.
And we taxed the rich to pay for it. The 1944 GI
Bill helped working-class veterans attend col-
lege for free. What happened next was a whole-
sale redistribution of wealth and 30 years of
sustained growth that the majority of Ameri-
cans shared. The New Deal built the modern
middle class. It hatched the American dream.

You might have heard of those days, the
ones so many are nostalgic for. You know,
back when America was “great.” a

CELEBRITIES
ARE SUPER COOL

At a time when the free press is under attack, we sent Broad City’s Paul W. Downs
to execute the highest form of journalism: the celebrity profile

ву PAUL W. DOWNS

34 HUMOR

s I sit at the bar at the Hearth & Hound in Hollywood, a
hip restaurant my subject suggested because it’s helmed
by a female chef, I can’t decide if I should get a drink
or not. Maybe a drink will take the edge off, cool my
nerves. I’ve done this kind of thing countless times, and
yet somehow I’m nervous. I guess it’s not that surpris-
ing. It’s not every day I get to profile a bona fide multi-
hyphenate. Paul W. Downs is a comedian, actor, writer,
producer and director. And judging from his body, he
could be a dancer. But I don’t want to drink if he’s not drinking, so I
order a sparkling water and wait.

I don’t even need to look behind me to know he’s entered the room.
People in the restaurant perk up. When I do turn around, I realize it’s
because he’s waving to them, blowing kisses at random patrons. He
doesn’t seem to know these people, but it doesn’t matter—that’s just
how warm he is, how generous with his attention. Standing an impres-
sive five-foot-nine, he somehow seems larger, more commanding.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says. “I was
just driving back from canvassing
in a congressional swing district
up north.” Wow. How Downs finds
time to volunteer is hard to imag-
ine. At the time of this interview, he
had just wrapped shooting in New
York on the critically acclaimed
Broad City’s fifth and final season,
launching in January. Not only is
he one of the show’s main writers,
an executive producer and a beloved
cast member (he plays Trey Pucker),
this season Downs is adding “direc-
tor” to his repertoire.

But this is only the tip of the ice-
berg: With his partner and live-in
girlfriend, Lucia Aniello, Downs
helms a production company called
Paulilu (a clever take on Desilu);
the company produced 2017
Rough Night (which grossed nearly
$50 million at the box office) and
Comedy Central’s Time Travel-
ing Bong, a prestige miniseries.
He’s currently writing a Kevin Hart
movie for Universal and producing a
sketch show that’s in development at the aforementioned cable chan-
nel. And those are just the projects he’s “allowed” to talk about.

“Oh, you're just having water? Mind if I drink?” he asks. Damn.
Guess I should have had that cocktail after all. He orders a glass of
Rioja, so Iget one too. Downs has a disarming quality about him. He
looks, as the internet will attest, like a Disney prince. His dark brown
hair and blue-gray eyes twinkle as he talks. But it’s his quick wit and
bawdy humor that make him such an enigma. Не reminds me of a
young Martin Short with the sex appeal of Jessica Rabbit. And then
our conversation begins.

DOWNS: Your most recent film role is in Netflix's Like Father, which
was the streaming service's number one movie in 100 countries the
weekend it premiered.

DOWNS: I know— pretty crazy.

DOWNS: Kelsey Grammer is known for his iconic roles on television
but hasn't made so many films. Was it your involvement that drew
him to the project?

DOWNS: No, no. He and Kristen Bell were already attached when I
was cast.

DOWNS: Really? I'm surprised. Well, in the film you play a family

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NICK RASMUSSEN

psychologist who is obsessed with the relationship between Kelsey
and Kristen. What did it feel like to give advice to one of TV's most
iconic therapists, Dr. Frasier Crane?

DOWNS: Oh, it was so trippy. But an honor.

DOWNS: How do you stay in shape?

DOWNS: Right now, a lot of volunteering. You burn a lot of calories
walking door to door and canvassing. Also, resistance training.

Clearly. I go on: “As a movie star——” but he stops me. “I’m not a
movie star," he says earnestly. “But you are,” I tell him. “You star in
Rough Night opposite Scarlett Johansson, with Kate McKinnon,
Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer and Zoé Kravitz...”

“Well, when you put it that way, I guess. But I don't consider my-
self a movie star." It's that kind of humility that is so surprising, so
refreshing from someone as awe-inspiring as he is. His ability to stay
grounded, his modesty—not to mention small pores—are what make
him so appealing. He's a hot movie star who doesn't even know he's a
hot movie star. I'd say he was stupid
for not knowing, but I can't, because
he's objectively so damn smart.

DOWNS: In Rough Night you play
Scarlett Johansson's love interest.
Scarlett has obviously had her share
of on-screen romances. How thrilling
do you think it was for her to kiss you?
DOWNS: [He flashes that movie-star
smile, narrowing his eyes and shak-
ing his head. He's not going there....]
You’d have to ask her that.

So we did. And she declined to com-
ment. But this journalist can only
infer why: Paul W. Downs was proba-
bly the best kisser she'd ever encoun-
tered and she didn't want to insult the
likes of Chris Evans, Hugh Jackman,
Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz.

At this point we have finished our
drinks. I tell him PLAYBOY will pay,
but he insists on covering the bill.
Chivalry isn’t dead! At the valet
stand, I start to call a Lyft. “I can give
you a ride home if you want,” he of-
fers. I say I shouldn’t, but he insists.

Downs hits the gas—well, the pedal—of his Lexus hybrid SUV. It’s
incredibly smooth, and I feel my stomach drop. “Don’t worry, I got
you,” he says as we slow for traffic. I learn that the car isn’t even his.
It’s his girlfriend’s. It might seem hard to look badass in your girl-
friend’s hybrid, but somehow he does. I can’t help but look down at his
body, at the slate jeans hugging his thick thighs. I’m in a long-term
monogamous relationship with a woman, but I still think to myself,
Yeah, Id hit that.

We arrive at my hotel. As I get out, I wonder if I should ask him up.
I don’t want this night to end. But I decide that’s crazy, so we say our
good-byes. It’s not like me to editorialize or fan out, especially to an
interview subject, but I can't help it. “You're one of the greatest come-
dic minds of our generation," I blurt out. “I wouldn't say that,” he says.
I fire back, “Well, I would. And I'll be publishing it in this magazine.”
He smiles that smile and drives off. I go up to my room, call room ser-
vice for another Rioja and masturbate until I fall asleep.

Editor's note: Paul W. Downs was asked to provide 1,200 words for this

piece but turned in more than 8,000. Special thanks to his editor for
his overtime on this feature.

PLAYBOY 35

Playboy Advisor

Sex columnist Anna del Gaizo offers some “fatherly” advice to a woman who can't bite her tongue
in the bedroom. Plus, advice on rolling in the hay, shower sex and separation anxiety

o! think Pm addicted to calling men “daddy” during sex. It just comes
O out! Sometimes they're into it; other times they freak out. I know

what you're thinking: daddy issues, right? But I have a relatively healthy

relationship with my father. I never used the word in this context before my

last boyfriend, when it just happened to become our sexual dynamic. Now
Fm hooked. What does it mean, and what should I do?—J.K., Pella, Iowa

Indeed, most people assume that if you
@ have the urge to call your sexual part-
ners “daddy” during sex, you must have daddy
issues. Most people are wrong. That argument
may have held sway when Sex and the City was
considered an authority on all things libidinous,
but it’s a new day. You don’t have a Lolita com-
plex either. Any adult woman—or man—with
a healthy amount of self-esteem is free to get
off on father-figure fantasies without needing
a trip to the therapist. Thanks to the ubiquity
of May-December relationships, plus Ty Dolla
$ign’s immortal song “Zaddy” (though it’s im-
portant to point out zaddy and daddy denote
two different personas; a zaddy is a sexy man
with swag, while a daddy is an attractive older
man) and the internet’s meme-ification of the
word, the once salacious and incestuous mon-
iker has become as destigmatized as anal sex.
Thus, in 2019, whispering “Daddy!” in a
dude’s ear might as well be the equivalent
of telling him “You're hot.” That's because
“daddy” doesn't suggest just age but value—
the oldest, best or biggest. Whether it's a
reflection of our innate desire to feel subservi-
ent in sex or to challenge taboos, this fixation
is nothing more than human nature at play.
What was once forbidden is now verging on
vanilla—but that doesn’t mean every guy you
pounce on wants to play papa. I’m guessing
you and your ex had a, well, robust sex life—
not that it should be of much consequence
now. The last thing any of us wants is to be
sized up against a sexual partner’s ex in bed.
When you call men “daddy” in the throes of
passion, you're putting on a performance—one
that may make you feel simultaneously inno-
cent, insurgent and vixen-like. You're also giv-
ing him power. Is it possible the less control you
feel, the more earth-shattering your orgasm?
Fantasies make sex fun, and let’s not forget that

36

ILLUSTRATION BY KATIE BAILIE

who we are during sex rarely aligns with who we
present as in life. But both partners need to de-
sire a fantasy, and that can’t be forced. Read the
(bed)room, quit imposing this on squeamish
men, and keep your addiction in check. Better
yet, try indulging in some of his fantasies. You'll
eventually discover one that gets you both off.

e | love partying on molly instead of
Ө: drinking or smoking weed. The prob-

lem is, even though I feel extremely horny while
high, I can’t get hard. Is there such a thing as
microdosing molly so I can be hard and high at
the same time?—K.H., New York, New York

@ Life is a cruel jokester, isn’t it? What

® makesus horny also keeps us from com-
ing. First, if you choose to do molly, keep in mind
that it’s illegal. Second, if you do ingest, do so in
moderation, as you don't want to lose your brain-
power along with your boner. Molly—in theory,
MDMA in its purest form—causes a generous
release in the brain of serotonin, dopamine
and norepinephrine, all neurotransmitters
that make you feel happy. It also increases oxy-
tocin, often called “the love hormone,” which
helps solidify emotional bonds. In other words,
molly elevates you to vertiginous levels of eupho-
riaand desire. You become a touchy, emotional,
overly aware lust machine.

At the same time, some effects of MDMA
are similar to those of adrenaline. It serves as
a vasoconstrictor, narrowing blood vessels to
your penis, among other areas. No blood flow
means no hard-on, which means no climax.
This is what you’re experiencing, and it’s why
no matter how sexual you may feel while rolling,
you can’t close the deal. There’s a reason molly
and its MDMA-centric predecessors have had a
reputation as nothing morethan a “party drug”
since the heyday of Studio 54: It’s best suited for
dancing, socializing and cuddling.

Although microdosing psychedelics is trend-
ing these days, we’re talking about aligning stim-
ulated brain chemistry with the pulse of your
circulatory system. There’s no guarantee that
using less of a psychoactive over a longer time
will simultaneously make you horny and hard.

I must note that a cocktail of Viagra and
MDMA, two substances that can impact your
blood pressure, will seriously harm your car-
diovascular system and could cause a heart at-
tack. Don’t even think about mixing the two.
If you're hell-bent on blending the joys of sex
with the thrill of a dopamine rush, here’s a tip:
Try falling in love instead.

e Just got my own one-bedroom apart-
@ ment for the first time and want

to make it a place that impresses women as
much as it does my parents when they visit.
But I dont have a trust fund. What can I
do to elevate my place without breaking the
bank?—J.U., Santa Barbara, California
@ Congratulations! Bonus points for
O landing your first adult apartment

and doing it on your own. When in doubt, or in
debt, keep it simple. Eliminate clutter by hid-
ing it in something multifunctional like a hand-
some wooden storage bench. Dump anything
that whispers “college dorm,” such as multi-
head floor lamps. If your bed isn’t a place you
really want to sleep, howcan you expect anyone
else to want to sleep there? Invest in a queen- or
king-size with a headboard, high-thread-count
sheets (a combed cotton in the 300-to-400
range will work) and matching pillow shams.
Bare walls are a mood killer; even a single ac-
cent wall painted a soft, neutral color enhances
a room. Tape on walls is even worse, so frame
your posters and prints. Naked windows will
make your interior feel cold and do nothing to
protect from harsh morning light; spring for a
set of curtains, which are cheaper and more el-
egant than blinds. If you’re able to renovate an
entire room, start by upgrading old fixtures—
all you need is ascrewdriver and new doorknobs,
cabinet hardware and light-switch covers.
Lighting can also make a difference. You
don’t need to invest in pricey new fixtures; just
switch in 60-watt light bulbs for fluorescents,
which make even the nicest furniture look aus-
tere. Finally, acoffeemaker, an extra set of fluffy
towels and a clean bathroom—don’t forget the
bath mat—willensure your apartmentis a place
where women won't regret spending the night.

e Are steam-room hookups just some-
@ thing Hollywood made up? I joined

a new gym, and the locker room is full of hot
women. (Yes, I’m a lesbian.) I’m not into pub-
lic sex; I'm talking about following someone
into a shower stall and discreetly eating her
out. I would like to explore this, but I'm afraid
Pll end up getting banned—or, even worse,
humiliated.—R.G., Atlanta, Georgia
A: Fear not: Such illicit hookups aren't
@ merely myths. As many gay men will
attest, the gym locker room has been known
to facilitate many sweat-soaked Grindr trysts.
The women’s room, however, doesn’t play host
to all that much action, in my experience. Call
it the double standard of cruising.

That’s not to say it doesn’t happen. Public
sex, from restaurant bathrooms to department
store fitting rooms to remote beaches and be-
yond, is as timeless as it is tantalizing. But let's
be clear: It’s one thing to sneak into a shower
stall with a woman you already know (go for it,
if you don’t care about your gym membership)
and another to force yourself on an unsus-
pecting stranger. There’s nothing wrong with
wanting your reality to be a little more porno-
graphic, but don’t get accused of sexual assault
in the process. Never follow someone into a pub-
lic shower stall, no questions asked.

e My wife of 10 years told те she wants
@ toseeother people as a kind of test. We
both realize things haven't been perfect in our
marriage, but I didn't see this coming. She has

already gone for it, and I let her because I want
to respect her wishes. But I'm out of practice.
I don't know how to pick up women, let alone
tell them I'm married. I've never even used a
dating app. How do married people date in
2019?—P.W., Ypsilanti, Michigan

e tmay betempting to wallow in doubt,

O butyouneed to view this аз an opportu-
nity. You've been granted more than a hall pass:
You've been given an entire summer break, and
there's no better time to pursue self-discovery.

But first, some questions. What do you want
from this? Do your friends know? Did you *let
her" go for it because you secretly yearned to
dabble yourself? It sounds as though you didn't
have much of a choice, but there’s no going back,
so start by embracing what lies ahead.

There’s a big difference between two mar-
ried people dating as a couple and two mar-
ried people dating independently. You’re in
the latter category. Essentially, you’re now a
single man in the dating world. You don't need
to announce you're married to every woman
you meet, nor should you slap it on your pro-
file when you download a dating app (or five).

If your closest friends are aware of the situa-
tion, start by getting out there the old-fashioned
way: Go to abar, social gathering, sports event,
networking party—any or all of the above—and
just talk to other women. If that doesn’t do it,
here’s a refresher on popular dating apps and
the varying levels of discretion they offer: Bum-
ble, which lets women pick up men, is your best
option since you re hesitant to approach women
right off the bat; Raya is for influencers and suc-
cessful creatives (the size of your Instagram fol-
lowing factors in whether you can play there);
and Tinder provides endless options for people
who want to “see a movie,” a.k.a. get laid fast.
Even Instagram can function as a dating app.
(Oh, and avoid Hinge, which can make matches
based on mutual Facebook friends.) Try a few,
commit to one and go fish. Get a sense of who
else is swimming in the sea. There are no hard-
and-fast rules for messaging on apps aside from
starting all conversations with hello. And guess
what—you're not required to meet any of these
women in person unless you actually want to.

Now, on to the topic of sharing your mari-
tal status. Don’t lie, but don’t overshare either.
Technically you’re separated, so give the wed-
ding band a break while you and your wife fig-
ure out what you both want. (Unless, of course,
she’s still wearing hers on dates. She likely
isn’t.) Stop thinking of yourself as someone’s
husband and start thinking of yourself as the
man you are. Any well-adjusted woman who
says she’s never had to confront questions of
monogamy and commitment is lying to you. In
other words, don’t stand for any of your dates
judging you. A marriage in harmony, an abun-
dant dating life—both lifestyles are great. But
neither outranks finding autonomy and hap-
piness in yourself. Use this time wisely.

Questions? E-mail advisor@playboy.com.

PLAYBOY 3/7

Rabbit
TALES

From Warhol's Factory to a Texas highway to a research lab at МІТ,
the Rabbit Head has inspired artists of every ilk from every corner of
the globe for 65 years and counting. Here’s a warren of our favorites

A few weeks before PLAYBOY's first issue was
due at the printer, Hugh Hefner and graphic
designer Arthur Paul set out to create a sym-
bol to represent the nascent publication’s
visual identity.

“I wanted it to be something so simple that
when you made it larger you could do many
things with it,” the late Paul recalled in a 2018
documentary about his profound impact on
the relationship between art and publishing.

But back in 1953, PLAYBOY's founding art
director had no clue that the sophisticated,
mischievous bow-tied rabbit with a cocked
ear that he'd drafted in under an hour would

Cover Stories

PLAYBOY

BY LIZ SUMAN

¥

become arguably the most recognizable sil-
houette in the world.

“If Td had any idea how important that little
Rabbit was going to be,” Paul said, “I probably
would have redrawn him a dozen times.... As it
was, I did one drawing and that was it.”

One take was all it took. The symbol made its
cover debut on the magazine’s third issue (hav-
ing graced the interior of the first two). And
since the 1960s, it has appeared—sometimes
prominently, often cleverly hidden—on nearly
every cover. (A careful scan of this story will re-
veal the first Rabbit to hide within PLAYBOY's
pages. Hint: It's not one of LeRoy Neiman's

УУ Ye IN Же
7 г `Z

Femlins.) The Rabbit's reach quickly extended
beyond the magazine: In 1959, a letter mailed
from New York addressed with only the sym-
bol was delivered to Playboy’s Chicago head-
quarters; by 1964, the Society of Typographic
Arts had ranked it among the top logos ever de-
signed in the United States.

From Andy Warhol’s immediately recogniz-
able red rendition (opposite page) to Neiman’s
delicate expressionist version (above; fea-
tured on a 1991 Christmas card and previously
unpublished), the Rabbit Head continues to
serve as a blank canvas for artists nearly seven
decades after Paul executed his “simple” idea.

PLAYBOY
)

1956

April 1956 was the first
time PLAvBoY's rakish am-
bassador graced a cover
prominently and alone
(and in reverse), signi-
fying that PLAvBov didn't
require bare skin or big
names to sell magazines.

38 ART

Paul's inventive art
direction set PLAYBOY apart.
Example: This Don Bron-
stein photo reimagined by
an actual puzzle maker in-
spired a jigsaw series that
gave readers a new way
to take the Rabbit home.

The art department in-
fused this cover with the
spirit of the 1960s—and
teased a pictorial called
The Provocative Art of
Body Painting—by brush-
ing a psychedelic Rabbit

onto model Sharon Kristie.

1971

Darine Stern is celebrated
as the first African Ameri-
can to appear solo ona
PLAYBOY cover. Her Rabbit-
styled throne inspired a
perch for future cover
models Lindsay Lohan
and Marge Simpson.

1971

“When you got the phone
call early in your career

it meant you were going
somewhere,” one artist
said of longtime associ-
ate art director Kerig Pope,
who co-created this sim-
ple, elegant cover.

«GER

SEXUAL SURREALISM

In the early 1970s, PLAYBOY asked Salvador Dalí to conceptualize his
erotic fantasies, then dispatched staff photographer Pompeo Posar to
the small Spanish village of Cadaqués to help the artist realize them.
As you can see, our Rabbit—with the support of a blonde quintet—
plays a central role in Dali’s escapist visions. The artist's goal for the
exercise, which was unveiled in a 1974 pictorial, was as clear as his
fantasies were surreal: “The meaning of my work is the motivation
that is ofthe purest—money. What I did for PLAYBOY is very good and
your payment is equal to the task.”

Memorable Muses

X-RAY OF THE 805

What do Marilyn Monroe,
Campbell’s soup cans and
the Playboy Rabbit have in
common? By 1986, all three
icons had joined the ranks of
subjects cranked off the as-
sembly line of Andy Warhol’s
Factory. “I’ve got bunnies on
the brain,” he said of the as-
signment for PLAYBOY's Jan-
uary 1986 anniversary issue.
The piece would be one of
Warhol’s last major works be-
fore his death, and no Rabbit
better captures the opulence
and commercialism of the de-
cade than the artist’s stylish
double-exposed version, which features bold slashes of cotton-candy
pink and neon purple colliding on a lipstick-red canvas.

HOP ART

Prolific pop artist Keith Har-
ing brought his abstract ren-
derings of playful characters
and progressive social ideas to
PLAYBOY's pages several times
in the 1980s. Bunny 42, dubbed
Bunny on the Move by the art-
ist, is a rerelease of a never-
published cover, part of a series
commissioned by PLAYBOY in
1986—four years before the
artist's death.

1976

“Have you ever noticed
how your Rabbit resem-
bles a butterfly?” mused
Vladimir Nabokov in a 1968
letter to Hef. A drawing by
the novelist-lepidopterist
led to this cover by pinup
artist Dennis Magdich.

1979

Award-winning costumer
Bob Mackie has dreamed
up sequin-drenched
gowns for everyone from
Cher to Barbie to PMOY
Monique St. Pierre, who
donned this silver one for
our June 1979 cover.

Robert Hoppe super-
imposed the Rabbit onto
this dreamy purple-and-
platinum specimen of
the glamorous art deco
cityscapes that made
him Hollywood's go-to
poster and set designer.

1994

“His paintings are like
drugs,” Jeff Koons said of
mentor Ed Paschke's cre-
ations. “They affect you
neurologically.” Chicago
artist Paschke constructed
this neon Rabbit for our
AOth anniversary.

2011

Playboy Poland, one of
PLAYBOY' S 22 international
counterparts, has pub-
lished at least seven Rab-
bit Head covers since
1992. This button-pushing
digital image graced its
February 2011 issue.

PLAYBOY 39

The Rabbit Reimagined
CUBIST COLLAGE

British artist Andrew Hewkin created this never-before-published
Rabbit for Playboy’s Chicago headquarters in 1991. In addition to
a clear affinity for Picasso, Hewkin’s mixed-media interpretation
stemmed from a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Vietnam in the spring of
1991. Hewkin tells PLAYBOY from his London studio, “I traveled all
around and developed a new dimension to my work using collage and
works on paper. Hence, the design for the Rabbit Head was influ-
enced heavily by my travels in a war zone that had defeated the USA.”

BAS'S BUNNY

This radiant Rabbit was painted
by elusive Dutch multimedia
artist Bas van Reek in 1992. It's
undoubtedly one of our favorite
fine art depictions, but its back-
story is somewhat of a mystery—
few details are known about the
piece or the man who created it.

№4 ==

PLAYBOY MARFA

In the summer of 2013, Neville Wakefield, Playboy’s then creative di-
rector for special projects, tapped artist Richard Phillips to create a
temporary roadside installation outside Marfa, Texas. Public response
to the project, which centered on the world’s tallest Rabbit Head, was
decidedly mixed. Countless #PlayboyMarfa selfies flooded the internet,
and Phillips made a convincing case for the piece as a visual reconcili-
ation of the brand’s legacy with its future; locals deemed it an eyesore
packaged as art. Love it or hate it, the piece elicited an undeniably pro-
vocative conversation about the line between art and advertising.

CHEMICAL BOND

In 2007, PLAYBOY reader John Hart
had a big idea about a small thing.
As an experiment, Hart, an
MIT researcher specializing
in nanostructures, created a
quarter-millimeter-wide Rab-
bit Head-shaped carbon nano-
tube by baking a silicon wafer
in a high-temperature furnace
containing carbon gas. “A chem-
ical reaction draws up millions of
parallel nanotubes in any shape you
specify,” Hart told PLAYBOY at the time.
Hart’s creation, now housed in the Museum of Sex
in New York City, is the world’s tiniest Rabbit Head.
“The bow ties are about the width of a human hair”

Self-taught American sculptor
Ernest Trova spent more than
two months creating this seven-
by-four-foot stainless-steel Rab-
bit Head for PLAYBOY in 1997,
and the heavy hinged hare now
greets guests from the lobby
of the company’s world head-
quarters in Los Angeles. The
sculpture, which features a
flappable ear and bow tie, is the
only known kinetic version of
the Rabbit.

AO ART

ROCK THE RABBIT

Each year from 2007 to 2011,
Playboy tapped some choice mu-
sical artists to remix its logo for
a recurring campaign called
Rock the Rabbit. The impressive
lineup included Duran Duran,
MGMT, Daft Punk, Iggy Pop and
dozens more. English electronic
band Hot Chip is behind this
playful abstract reimagining,
which was featured on a T-shirt.

THEPOWER OF ONE

Pop artist and January 1996
Playmate Victoria Fuller created
The Power of One after viewing a
production ofthe Pulitzer Prize-
winning play Harvey. “The play
was about a man who had an in-
visible friend who was a big rab-
bit," says Fuller. “Mr. Playboy,
the Rabbit Head and Hef himself
are all Hef to me. Today I see this
piece as the spirit of Hef and how
the power of one man created
such an iconic brand."

Bathing Beauties
Our cheeky July
1966 cover (inset)
was shot by staff
photographer
Larry Gordon on a faux beach

in Chicago. Forty-seven sum-
mers later, the sexy sandy shot
inspired Tony Kelly's aquatic con-
figuration (July/August 2013). It
features 25 synchronized swim-
mers, including Olympians and
Vegas performers—to date the
most women ever gathered to ap-
pear on our U.S. cover.

m=

ШІП

[Al

Elegant Erté
The Rabbit
kicked off 1987
on a celebratory
note with one of
the magazine's most striking
covers (inset): an original piece
by Erté, the Russian art deco
pioneer renowned for his exqui-
site costumes for Paris's Folies
Bergere (and once, famously,
Dutch courtesan and spy Mata
Hari). Playmate of the Year
Stacy Sanches reenacted Erté's
romantic vision in 1996.

ROGER RABBIT

Roger Brown, an Alabama-born artist associated with
the Chicago imagists, had a lifelong appreciation for
Southern folk art and functional, handmade art objects.
He created this five-foot-tall painted wooden Rabbit for
Playboy's Chicago offices in 1992,

PLAYBOY

омела инг "04 мм = 9
j

PLAYBOY

Human Hares
Playmate of
the Year Donna

Michelle—a س‎
former New York

City Ballet dancer—created the
first human Rabbit Head in 1964
(inset). Flash forward four de-
cades to futuristic pinup artist
Hajime Sorayama’s version for the
September 2003 cover of Playboy
Japan. “My longings were not so
much carnal as they were an ad-
miration of women as goddesses,”
he said of his love of pinup.

PLAYBOY

Skin-Deep
Art Paul and
associate art
director (and
Vargas biog-
rapher) Reid Austin designed
this faux cutout cover (inset),
photographed by Pompeo Posar
and featuring Playmate Kathy
Douglas, for PLAYBoY’s eighth
anniversary issue in Decem-
ber 1961. Playboy Philippines
presented a more risqué inter-
pretation of the concept for its
March/April 2015 issue.

PLAYBOY 41

PLAYBOY CLUB
2 МЕУ YORK

RESTAURANT | BAR | LOUNGE | PRIVATE EVENTS

512 W 42"? STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

WWW.PLAYBOYCLUBNYC.COM | @PLAYBOYCLUBNYC

PLAYBOY
INTERVIEW:

SAM
HARRIS

А candid conversation with the scientist, humanist and (depending on whom you ask) Intellectual
Dark Web overlord on American orthodoxies—religious and secular, liberal and conservative

At a moment when public discourse seems
increasingly split between the virtue-
signaling left and the dog-whistling right,
Sam Harris inhabits what some call the rad-
ical center. A philosopher, neuroscientist,
critic of religion and defender of controver-
sial thinkers under siege, he is more or less
equally dubious of Donald Trump, Islamic
fundamentalism, identity politics and lib-
eral sanctimony. If you believe deeply in
something—from God to Kanye—chances
are Harris has a pin to pop your balloon.

The New York Times last year lumped Har-
ris in with a rising band of outsider pundits
dubbed the “Intellectual Dark Web” along-
side such high-minded provocateurs as psy-
chologist Jordan Peterson, mathematician
Eric Weinstein and Daily Wire founder Ben

Shapiro. Aside from being mostly white men,
they have little in common other than as-
sorted eyebrow-raising opinions that argu-
ably keep them locked out of mainstream
media and academia. Screw affirmative ac-
tion! Bring on stricter border control! Mul-
ticulturalism sucks! Harris dismisses the
whole alliance as kind of a joke.

With his 2004 best-seller The End of
Faith, Harris found himself part of another
group of agitators: the so-called Four Horse-
men, a loose affiliation of atheists includ-
ing Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and
the late Christopher Hitchens. In his 2010
book The Moral Landscape, Harris argues
that science is the key (the only one, really)
to understanding morality and well-being.
Promoting 2014's Waking Up: A Guide to

Spirituality Without Religion on HBO’s
Real Time With Bill Maher, he argued to a
beet-faced, table-pounding Ben Affleck that
radical Islam is a global menace. The actor
accused Harris of being “gross” and “racist”;
Harris later said Affleck was likely roided up
from his latest Batman gig.

A student of Buddhism and medita-
tion, Harris rides through such rages with
unnerving equanimity, as in a 2018 pub-
lic showdown with Vox.com founder Ezra
Klein on the debate around race and IQ. In
a nutshell, Harris said there could be a link;
Klein called that theory racist. (Klein him-
self sat for a Playboy Interview, with the
same writer who spoke with Harris, for our
May/June 2017 issue.) “To Harris,” Klein
said in a follow-up post, “identity politics is

“Your points trump other points, and that’s one
reason we're so politically dysfunctional. The
left eats itself in a way that the right doesn't."

“You should be able to come back from any-
thing as long as you can show the path you took
that has made you a different person.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTOPHER PATEY

“It wasn’t until I took MDMA that I realized
there are states of consciousness that ex-

plain somebody like Jesus.”

PLAYBOY 43

something others do. To me, it’s something
we all do, and that he and many others re-
fuse to admit they’re doing. This is one of
the advantages of being the majority group:
Your concerns get coded as concerns; it’s ev-
eryone else who is playing identity politics.”

But whether or not you agree with Klein,
it’s hard to deny that Harris’s priority and
passion is the exploration of big and maybe
unanswerable questions: Is there such a
thing as objective moral truth? Are some
values more valuable than others? And
where does the dizzying advance of technol-
ogy factor in?

Samuel Benjamin Harris was
born on April 9, 1967 in Los An-
geles. He won't confirm many
personal details, citing fam-
ily security concerns, but he is
happy to reveal that he first ex-
perimented with MDMA while
he was a student at Stanford
University and that he experi-
enced a spiritual epiphany. He
left Stanford midway to study
mysticism and Eastern reli-
gions in Asia, returning to get
a degree in philosophy in 2000.
He later received a Ph.D. in
neuroscience from UCLA.

These days Harris is among a
new breed of public intellectual.
Unattached to any particular
institution, platform or even
doctrine, he lectures, writes
and tweets wherever his mil-
lions of followers show up to lis-
ten. His award-winning Waking
Up podcast is in its eighth year,
and January marks the debut
of a new series, Experiments
in Conversation, involving a
range of leading thinkers and a
live audience. Harris is married
to Annaka Harris, a mindful-
ness teacher and author of the
children’s book I Wonder; they
have two daughters.

PLAYBOY Contributing Editor David Hoch-
man, who last interviewed Planned Parent-
hood’s Cecile Richards for the magazine, spent
a Saturday afternoon with Harris in West Hol-
lywood. Dressed in a button-down shirt, dark
blazer and jeans (“picture Ben Stiller as your
dissertation advisor,” Hochman says), Har-
ris was Zen calm but ready to rile.

“Sam is a true intellectual product of our
moment,” Hochman says. “He’s like a walk-
ing version of the internet, except without
the annoying video buffering and pop-up ads.
He harbors no regrets but admits to imbuing
some of his arguments with ‘a little too much
topspin.' He can come off serious at first, but
once he gets rolling, he's dazzling as a thinker
who's fearless in his beliefs and also quite

44

persuasive. He'll present an idea on culture,
politics or sex that makes you go, “Wait—no,
no.' But hear him out and you often find your-
self thinking, Okay, I see your point. So it
made sense to start with a question about the
points that people tend to miss."

PLAYBOY: For a mild-mannered guy, you
inspire an unusual amount of controversy
with your views, whether it's suggesting
that IQ might differ across races and ethnic
groups, supporting the use of torture or saying
you would get rid of religion before getting rid

of rape. What do people get wrong about you?

HARRIS: I'm interested in how we think
about problems and how we can talk about
them, right? My interest in the thing I'm
talking about is often one level removed
from the thing I'm actually talking about.
It’s like a meta level of interest, but I'm being
mistaken as somebody who is just really in-
terested in that thing. Let's take torture: My
interest is not in torture per se. I'm inter-
ested in ethical bedrock. Now, to even en-
tertain the efficacy of torture brands you as
a moral monster, but the cost of doing busi-
ness in times of war demands that we get it
right. In ethical terms, the collateral dam-
age of dropping bombs could be far worse
than, say, a case of justifiable waterboard-
ing. The same goes for the conversation

about race and IQ. My interest is not in mea-
suring intelligence, much less measuring
differences in intelligence between groups.
I have zero interest in that. I am concerned
about the free-speech implications of where
we're going with all this and the fact that
people like the political scientist Charles
Murray are being de-platformed in the pur-
suit of intellectual honesty on the subject.
The example I often use is, if we want to get
to ethical bedrock, we should be able to say
things like “Why can't you eat babies? There
are sometimes extra babies in the world, and
they're full of protein. Can't we
eat them?" This is not a con-
versation about eating babies;
this is a conversation about how
you can close the door to this
idea that we both recognize as
repellent and why we recog-
nize it that way. But there are
people out there who will say,
“Hey, Sam Harris is that guy
who wonders why we can't eat
babies."
PLAYBOY: Orthe guy who once
wrote, "It's difficult to imagine
a set of beliefs more suggestive
of mental illness than those
that lie at the heart of many of
our religious traditions."
HARRIS: You can always find
a case where it's hard to see the
downside to somebody's reli-
giosity if it's innocuous, if it's
not linked up with any politi-
cal program that's going to im-
pose misery on other people or
infringe on their rights. But an
understanding of the world that
is based on the infallible word
of God requires a kind of will-
ful ignorance—bordering on
madness—of history, science,
common sense and human de-
cency. For true believers it's not
just “It makes me feel good to
pray" or “Honor thy father and thy mother.”
They also believe things about the status
of gay people or, in the extreme case, what
should happen to people who don't believe
as they do. They apply biblical thinking to
wildly complex modern problems. Climate
change? That's not something you need to
worry about when you're waiting for the Mes-
siah. Granted, there are wonderful people
who are helped by their religion in some local
circumstances. I would never dispute that. I
would simply say that there are rational al-
ternatives that don't link up with anything
that's divisive with respect to a modern un-
derstanding of the world. In fact, I think this
problem of religious sectarianism is fueling
the energy of partisanship that's so strong
right now in politics and elsewhere.

PLAYBOY: So our cultural divide is not a
problem of left versus right?
HARRIS: Even when it’s not religious, we
divide ourselves into religious sects. You’ve
picked your house of worship and it’s very
hard to see what’s wrong with your unshak-
able faith. And of course it’s all too easy to see
what’s wrong with the other side, so you get
into us versus them versus them versus them,
and it never ends.
PLAYBOY: Do you see a pathway to some sort
of unity in the Trump era?
HARRIS: I think there are moves to make,
which most people now decline, that could
make the national conversation infinitely
more productive—for instance, by not at-
tacking the straw-man version of your oppo-
nent’s argument as opposed to what we now
call “steel-manning” their argument. You
see straw-manning on Twitter every
second, and it’s led by Trump. People
attack your position by misrepresent-
ing your argument, thereby defeat-
ing it. Steel-manning is much rarer.
It’s when you restate your opponent’s
position in a way that he or she can’t
find fault with. Your account might
even improve their position. “I’m pro-
choice and you're pro-life. Let me tell
you why I think you're pro-life, and
why you're opposed to abortion.” At
which point the person says, “You
said it better than I could.” Then you
can make an argument against that.
That's the only place to start. You have
to do the work to understand the other
person's point of view. But that's al-
most never done.

Something I deal with a lot is what
I call “leftist mind reading,” where
people pretend to understand your view or
your motives better than you do. So no mat-
ter what you say, they engage in a game of
telepathy—actually pseudo-telepathy—telling
you what you believe even if it's not accurate.
PLAYBOY: You're frequently called out by
the left for criticizing Islam.
HARRIS: As a set of ideas, the link between
Islam as a religion and suicidal terrorism
worries me. But the person on the left who
has taken issue with that will say, “Well, ac-
tually, you're just racist. You don't like people
from the Middle East.” Or, “You were born
Jewish, and you're just caught up in your own
identity politics.” God forbid you utter some-
thing that's susceptible to the worst possible
interpretation, and they’ll hold you to that
interpretation no matter what else you say.
There’s no room for “That came out wrong”
or “That’s not exactly what I meant.” In pub-
lic dialogue today, there’s no way to take your
foot out of your mouth. There’s a lack of char-
ity in these conversations, coming from both
sides, where people want to hold each other
in this very litigious way to the worst possible

reading of whatever they say. Or worse still,
they'll lift something out of context to such a
degree that it can be reasonably understood
to have the exact opposite meaning of what
you intended. This is how you score points in
the new economy of reputation assault. Any
blow you can land, you should land.
PLAYBOY: But why don’t these assaults work
on Trump himself? The blows don’t land.
Call him bigoted or sexist or corrupt and his
base ratchets up the support.

HARRIS: This has been mysterious to many
of us. Trump has managed to gather an au-
dience of people who do not care about all
the ways in which he’s obviously a morally
damaged person. There’s something socio-
pathic about him. He’s just malignantly
selfish; he lies with a frequency and veloc-
ity we have never seen in public life. It’s not

Even when it’s
not religious,
we divide
ourselves
into religious
sects.

just that he lies; he is fundamentally hostile
to the truth. Most liars lie in a way that pays
respect to the norm of truth-telling so as to
be undetected. They insert the lie in the log-
ical spot where the piece would complete the
puzzle. Trump doesn’t care about the puz-
zle. He lies and then contradicts himself
two seconds later. If it gets pointed out, no
problem; he just keeps moving forward, and
something like tens of millions of grown-
ups in the country, according to polls, still
think Trump can do no wrong.

PLAYBOY: Explain the neuroscience around
giving Trump that pass.

HARRIS: Trump comes out of a space in
the brain that doesn’t represent reality. It’s
the same space that draws people to profes-
sional wrestling. Trump’s base doesn’t care
whether Russia hacked the election; they
just like watching the wrecking ball. For the
most part, these are people who think the
system has screwed them, so any change is
something to cheer. That's an intuition I can
understand. If your life is terrible and you
locate the source of that misery—the media,

immigrants, Nancy Pelosi—then disorder
from a guy like Trump just feels like it re-
rolls the dice. Things can only go up from
miserable, right?

PLAYBOY: There’s some overlap between
Trump’s base and yours. Right-wing meme
lords love you and your cohorts in the Intel-
lectual Dark Web.

HARRIS: First of all, I'm not even sure I could
name who is in this so-called IDW. I mean,
there are people who occasionally get men-
tioned as being in it whom I’ve never heard
of or wouldn’t want to be associated with. But
the core people—Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan,
evolutionary theorist Bret Weinstein and his
brother, Eric, who coined the term—are peo-
ple I enjoy having conversations with. To me
it’s a tongue-in-cheek concept that others are
more attached to than Iam.

The response to it is informatively
deranged, because it has been at-
tacked not just as right-wing but as a
fascist cabal—like right of right. And
yet I believe virtually everyone in the
group is center or left of center or even
well left of center. I would put myself
at left of center. Someone like Bret
Weinstein is as left as you can get on
every topic. The only actual conser-
vative I can think of is Ben Shapiro,
and Ben and I disagree about almost
everything. He’s an Orthodox Jew,
he’s not in favor of gay marriage, and
he questions climate change. But he’s
committed to the same rules of intel-
lectual honesty and to the same prin-
ciples of charity with regard to other
people’s positions. And yeah, some
of my views and criticisms can defi-
nitely be attractive to certain people

on the right who are looking to put another
arrow in their quiver, but those people cer-
tainly can’t listen or read for very long before
they become uncomfortable with the other
things that I believe.

PLAYBOY: You believe liberals are too soft
on defending America’s borders.

HARRIS: National borders make sense.
Open borders would be a catastrophe. The
moment you admit that you want borders,
then you need a real information system that
tracks everyone who comes across those bor-
ders, because you don’t want to let in jihadis.
You don’t want to let in people carrying Ebola
from a trip abroad. You need to know where
people have been and why they were there
and who they are, down to whether they have
their vaccinations. And all of this, in prin-
ciple, is coercive: It’s backed up by guns.
There’s somebody standing there with a gun
who is not going to let you jump the turnstile
at passport control. Now, on the left, nobody
wants to hear this. They basically say, “You
are a racist asshole if you want to keep any-
one out.” And if that is the view on questions

PLAYBOY 45

like that, I think we're guaranteed four more
years of Trump, because at least half of our
society has run out of patience with that.
PLAYBOY: How can the left get its groove
back?

HARRIS: We have to become decoupled
from identity politics and political correct-
ness. There's this growing assumption that
you can voice a strong opinion about a seg-
ment of the population only if you are part
of that segment. If I'm a white guy and the
conversation turns to the topic of race and
violence, it would be considered unseemly
for me to offer a solution to the problem of
crime in Chicago. That's insane. The shoot-
ings in Chicago are just off the charts; it's a
war zone. Whatever the solution is, it likely
has to do with generic enough factors of so-
ciology and economics and policing that peo-
ple should be able to talk about it regardless
of the color of their skin. Whatever is

true is true, and let the best idea win.

But the idea that you have no stand-

ing to talk about these excruciating
social problems unless you've per-
sonally suffered them? In fact, that's
exactly backward. If you have person-

ally suffered these things, very likely
you're not the best person to talk about

them. That's what we mean by bias.

As a survivor of rape, only I can talk
about rape. Well, no, as a survivor of

rape, let's talk about how traumatized
you've been by rape, and then we get

into a very different conversation. So-

cial policy is probably not best engi-
neered by people who are so close to

the problem that it has destroyed their

lives. It's all they can think about.

They have no other perspective. They

don't want to hear another perspective.
PLAYBOY: Isn't the point to give voice to
social groups that have been traditionally
silenced or marginalized because of their
race, gender, religion, oppression and so on?
HARRIS: The problem is that public dis-
course is turning into an exercise in confir-
mation bias. With identity politics, you find
your side of the argument and silo yourself in.
It has become a kind of victimology that I de-
scribe as the unhappiest game of Dungeons &
Dragons: You and all your people have these
victim points in a sort of grievance Olympics.
Your points trump other points, and that's
one reason we're so politically dysfunctional.
The left eats itself in a way that the right
doesn't. If someone makes the slightest mis-
step, they're destroyed by the left-wing mob
that is more woke than they are. There are
literally cases of a Latina feminist lesbian
professor not being woke enough for her stu-
dents because she wants to keep teaching the
classical Western canon. And this person es-
sentially gets burned as a witch for not being
left of left of left of left.

46

PLAYBOY: Do you see any downside to the
#MeToo movement?

HARRIS: I'm 100 percent in favor of the core
of the #MeToo movement. There are guys
who have been behaving terribly, rapists and
criminals who should be in prison. And then
there's this other area of intolerable sexual
harassment and crudeness for which there
has traditionally not been much of a sanc-
tion. Now there is, and that's all good, right?
PLAYBOY: Is therea but?

HARRIS: But there's a lot of confusing stuff
to work out. Where are the boundaries?
What's the difference between somebody
with Asperger's who just doesn't know how
to flirt and somebody who's a scary harasser?
That could be difficult to sort out in an office.
We're still trying to navigate in this space,
but I'm worried that the totally rational, ethi-
cal, defensible subset of concerns here is now

I'm not even
sure I could
name who is in
the IDW. To me

its a tongue-in-

cheek concept.

an island in a sea of moral panic that's going
to do immense harm to good people.

There are the monsters on one side, where
we have Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein.
They belong in prison. But then we've got Al
Franken, who maybe is guilty of something
worth worrying about, but it's definitely not
what the first guys did. And then over here
we have Aziz Ansari, where it's not even clear
that this was anything other than a bad date.
Things get more innocuous still when some-
body makes a joke that two years ago every-
one would have laughed at, and now this
person's worried about their career. Matt
Damon said clearly that we have to make
these distinctions, and for that he experi-
enced a tsunami of pushback, which ended
with him apologizing: "I'm not going to say
anything more about this ever again." Right.
I mean, if Matt Damon isn't secure enough in
his career to not have to apologize for a com-
pletely reasonable thing, we have a problem,
because he should be unsinkable.

Or let's look at Louis C.K., one of the fun-
niest comics we've ever had, who's now

dealing with #MeToo accusations. I think
he was unlucky in the timing. Everyone was
viewing his situation through the lens of
Harvey Weinstein.
PLAYBOY: Several women accused Louis
C.K. of masturbating in their presence. Isn't
this another case of a celebrated male think-
ing that when you're a star you're allowed to
do anything?
HARRIS: Well, unless there's something I
don't understand about Louis C.K.'s situa-
tion, it seems nobody was coerced and no-
body felt they couldn't leave the room. Yes,
the problem comes when there's a power im-
balance. The worst situation would be if he
tried to do something to harm somebody's
career or discourage them from talking.
That would be nefarious. But if you're just
talking about a guy who's got this masturba-
tion fetish and he's asking people if he can
masturbate in front of them and they
say yes and he does it, that's a world
away from what is alleged about Har-
vey Weinstein. So then what happens
to someone like Louis C.K.? Starve to
death and never work again?
PLAYBOY: Do you think Roseanne
should still have a TV job after her
tweet last year comparing black
Obama aide Valerie Jarrett to an ape?
HARRIS: There it's harder. There are
so many variables. Roseanne clearly
was dealing with some mental health
issues, popping Ambien all the time.
If you saw her conversation in the af-
termath with Joe Rogan you know
she's dealing with lots of chaos. You
don't know exactly whose thumbs
were on her phone. She also claimed
quite credibly that she didn't even
know Valerie Jarrett was black. Like, if you
google Valerie Jarrett and look at the photos
that come up, it's not entirely obvious she's
black. That's plausible. For me, strangely, the
racism here is in the mind of the person in-
terpreting the tweet. It's like, okay, so you're
saying that black people look like apes?
That's how you're going to read this? Because
if Roseanne called her a horse, I think we
wouldn't be having this conversation.
PLAYBOY: But there are tropes in our cul-
ture that signify deeper meaning. There's
a history of African Americans being com-
pared to apes and monkeys.
HARRIS: But that wasn't necessarily what
was in the mind of Roseanne at that mo-
ment. Or let's look at what happened with
Megyn Kelly getting fired by NBC. I don't
know Megyn Kelly; I don't know what her
actual beliefs are, but she tried to have a
conversation about Halloween and why you
can't go out in blackface. She said, “When
I was a kid, you could paint your face if you
wanted and go out as Diana Ross." Appar-
ently she didn't know that statement was

radioactive. The term blackface didn’t link
up in her mind with minstrel shows and all
this other stuff in our culture we're right
to be very critical of. She just meant that if
you're dressing up as a character, light- or
dark-skinned, why can’t you put makeup on
to make yourself look like that character?
That should absolutely be something we're
able to talk about on television. And you ei-
ther have a good argument or you don't.
Kelly can then say, “No, that’s not what I
meant. It’s horrible. The racism, the KKK—I
disavow all of that.” Instead it becomes “You
said you're okay with blackface!” Even with
a hostage-style apology, Megyn Kelly was
doomed, which I think is wrong. I think in
principle you should be able to come back
from anything as long as you can show the
path you took that has made you a different
person. We need to have a better pro-

cess for this. People who were mur-
derers or neo-Nazis can talk about

how they’re different now, and that
becomes valuable in deprogramming

other people.

PLAYBOY: What about all these fallen
priests accused of being pedophiles?
HARRIS: That’s a super hard case.
Pedophilia presumably has some neu-
rological underpinning that we don’t

yet understand. It’s interesting to no-

tice that if we did understand its ge-

netics and its neuroanatomy, then we

could cure it, right? Maybe it turns

out that every pedophile you’ve ever

met has this special case of epilepsy,

and if we could just zap this one part

of the temporal lobes, they would be

done. They might be gay, they might

be straight, maybe they don’t like

kids, but they feel the exact same way about
pedophilia that you do, which is that it’s bad.
We've got to solve that problem. Then we
could just treat people and there would be no
moral judgment at all.

But because we’re not there, we have this
hugely moralistic way of thinking about it.
In the case of the Catholic Church you have
an institution that is cynically protecting its
reputation by moving these people from par-
ish to parish, knowing they’re going to revic-
timize kids. You’ve got an institution with
billions of dollars suing people into silence.
The church is bankrupting people who they
know are legitimate victims, trying to dis-
credit them on the witness stand and then
gloating about their success. We have their
files where they say, “We won even though
we knew the cases to be legitimate.” It’s the
quintessence of evil.

PLAYBOY: By the way, do you remember
the moment when you determined that God
doesn’t exist?

HARRIS: Growing up, I was an atheist who
didn’t know I was an atheist. I just thought

48

religion was a sham and it was either crazy
people, epileptics or liars who had man-
aged to give birth to these institutions. I had
read Bertrand Russell but didn’t know any-
thing about organized atheism in the United
States. Madalyn Murray O’Hair [founder of
American Atheists] was not a name I would
have recognized. But I was raised in a secu-
lar household where there was no talk of re-
ligion. I remember in my Great Works class
at Stanford, which you had to take freshman
year, we read the Bible. I remember harangu-
ing the teacher: With all the great books we
could read, why are we reading Leviticus?
This is not the best of anything. It’s not the
best philosophy; it’s not the best writing. It’s
just ancient rigmarole that shouldn't be in-
forming our lives.

PLAYBOY: Whoever wrote the Bible should

The universe
may not care

about us, but it’s
not out to get us.
The sky really is

the limit.

get at least some credit for a best-seller that
has been charting for thousands of years.
Don’t those stories matter?

HARRIS: The Bible is just an accident of
history. All these religious texts are just
books that survived. I mean, someone had
to win. We’ve got Plato, Socrates and Aris-
totle too, but does that mean they were the
three best minds of that generation in Ath-
ens? Well, not necessarily. There could have
been three other people who just didn’t get
written about or whose books burned in
the fire at Alexandria. It’s just historical
contingency how we got what we got, and
rather than fixate on that legacy, we should
be equipping ourselves to produce the best
ideas that we can. There are good parts of
the Bible, things worth keeping. The Golden
Rule is good—let’s keep that. But that ap-
peared in other places too.

I mean, the flip side of this is you have to
imagine how good a book could be if it were
actually written by an omniscient person or
deity. Forget omniscience even. If you and I
decided today to write something and then

broadcast it back 2,000 years, we could eas-
ily write something that would be miracu-
lous had it been written 2,000 years ago. But
there’s nothing like that in the Bible. All we
would need to do is put in a paragraph about
what we currently know about light and its
relationship to electricity, what we currently
know about the biological basis of inheri-
tance and DNA, and you could see in a single
paragraph that it was a miracle. If someone
finds that tomorrow in an urn written in
Aramaic, that would prove that the source
was a supernatural author. Otherwise we
could be doing this with Harry Potter.
PLAYBOY: How did taking ecstasy in college
change your view of the divine?
HARRIS: It wasn’t until I took MDMA that
I realized there are states of consciousness,
like the one I just spent six hours experienc-
ing, that explain somebody like Jesus
and what it was like to be bowled over
by being with him. And that’s how you
could get a religion or a cult. It didn’t
reset my views about the veracity of
revelation, but it completely changed
my sense of what the project was in
terms of living a good life, because I
knew I wanted to live more that way
than how I had intended to live before
taking MDMA.
PLAYBOY: What is your drug use like
now?
HARRIS: Very rare. I’ve taken some
edibles for sleep of late, with indiffer-
ent results. But I can go for years with-
out smoking cannabis. I drink socially.
PLAYBOY: Would you be okay if your
young daughters one day experi-
mented with any of these mind agents?
HARRIS: I wrote in my book Wak-
ing Up that if my daughters don’t try at least
one psychedelic at some point in their lives,
I would think they will have missed a very
important rite of passage. I still think that’s
true, though when the time comes, ГИ be
wanting to curate that choice a little more
heavy-handedly than I let on in that para-
graph. I would follow Michael Pollan’s ad-
monishment [from his book How to Change
Your Mind] and take LSD under supervi-
sion. It is now becoming more professional-
ized, with psychotherapists actually doing
this work.
PLAYBOY: Were you a nerd in high school?
HARRIS: [Laughs] No, I was successfully
social in high school. I was a very good stu-
dent, but I would have fun and party. I would
get stoned on the weekends. In retrospect,
it seems pretty balanced, though there was
probably a little too much binge drinking. It
wasn’t like the hookup culture you have now,
but I had a few serious girlfriends.
PLAYBOY: While we’re on sex, what’s your
view of pornography?
HARRIS: I’m of two minds about it. On the

one hand, it’s totally fine and benign. Ob-
viously there should be no laws against it.
That’s just a straight-up free speech issue.
I’m sure there are people working in the in-
dustry who are not casualties of it; they’re
just really into sex and it’s a rational way for
them to make money. They’re not addicted
to drugs. They’re not being mistreated by
anybody. They have healthy relationships.
They weren’t raped by their stepfathers. It’s
all fine. It’s not part of the symptomology of
some immense psychological suffering.

And I’m sure the worst of the worst stories
we can imagine are also true,
where it’s about junkies get-
ting their next fix, people being
coerced into situations, sexual
slavery. You pull up a video on
Pornhub and you don’t know
what you're looking at. It could
be somebody who was kid-
napped. This industry makes
money based on everyone’s
fascination with sex, and you
could be supporting the worst
people on earth who are victim-
izing people. So that's the real-
ity of the industry.

PLAYBOY: What about the user
experience?

HARRIS: Well, there are people
who can look at pornography
and it can be part of a com-
pletely healthy sex life, where
they have healthy relationships
and are happy. Nobody sees it
as analogous to cheating on
their partner or diminishing
their sexual connection. A cou-
ple can watch it together and it
improves their sex life. That’s
the healthy version, but then
there are obviously people who
are addicted, who can’t have
healthy relationships. It’s a
stand-in for people who are not
able to navigate social connec-
tions. And now you have 12-year-olds getting
their sexual education by randomly seeing
videos of grown-ups doing unthinkable acro-
batic and demeaning sex acts. There’s some-
thing there that’s worth worrying about.

As with so much of technology, we’re run-
ning a psychology experiment on ourselves
and we don’t know how it’s going to come out.
It’s unnatural to have endless access to im-
agery of people. Pornography aside, this is
something I completely missed in my dating
life, but I don’t know what Tinder is doing to
the prospect of finding meaningful relation-
ships. It gives the sense that there’s always
someone else behind the person you're con-
sidering. It’s the paradox of choice, where
you're never satisfied because you have end-
less options.

PLAYBOY: Let’s change pace and do a light-
ning round. Am I wrong for grilling up ham-
burgers and hot dogs this weekend?

HARRIS: I think factory farming, as gen-
erally practiced, is indefensible. I think we
should put economic pressure on the sys-
tem to become as benign as possible. Ul-
timately that might mean everyone being
vegetarian, but I don’t think being vegetar-
ian is idiot-proof in terms of human health.
I try to support the grass-fed, ecologically
sound, cage-free version of everything I
eat. And I’ve actually invested in a start-up

called Memphis Meats, which is cell-culture-
based—a so-called clean meat company
start-up, which hopefully will get to scale.
That would be meat that completely takes the
animal out of the equation. You take a single
cell from the cow that you want to turn intoa
steak—it’s literally a tiny muscle biopsy—and
that then gets amplified and cultured. It’s
not quite there yet. Last I looked, they had
an $18,000 meatball, but apparently it tastes
good and their cost is coming down.
PLAYBOY: What are your binge-TV indul-
gences?

HARRIS: Game of Thrones, Westworld,
Breaking Bad, Mad Men. І like Ozark a lot.
Darren Aronofsky, a great filmmaker, has a
new show called One Strange Rock, which is
basically his version of Cosmos.

PLAYBOY: Do you have any hidden talents?
HARRIS: I have a black belt in ninjutsu. Re-
member the ninja? However, that was in
the pre-MMA era, when almost every mar-
tial art was a pantomime of fake violence.
The training was very similar to Krav Maga
today—not entirely useless but not 100 per-
cent legit either. More recently, my midlife
crisis took the form of getting into Brazil-
ian jujitsu. I’m just a blue belt, though, and I
keep getting injured.

PLAYBOY: Kanye West—go!

HARRIS: I was never a Kanye fan and he’s
a bit chaotic as a political com-
mentator. I do not understand
a person who looks at Trump
and says, “Yeah, that’s exactly
what I want my president to
be.” That’s a strange mental
space to live in.

PLAYBOY: Favorite Ben Affleck
movie?

HARRIS: I thought Argo was
good. I don’t think I saw his
last Batman movie. As you
know, Ben and I have a check-
ered history, but I don’t have
anything bad to say about him
as an actor or a director. He’s
just not a religious scholar.
PLAYBOY: What do you sing in
the shower?

HARRIS: I don’t really sing. I
can chant. Mostly it’s Hindu
music. I can hang out with the
Hare Krishnas.

PLAYBOY: Let’s talk about
mindfulness, since it's now a big
part of your platform. What’s
your take on the concept?
HARRIS: Mindfulness is about
freeing yourself from certain
patterns of mind so that you re-
alize you are not your thoughts.
I draw this analogy between
the mind and kidnappers: It’s
as though you've been kid-
napped by the most boring person on earth
and just forced to listen to this guy all day
long. Literally, the conversation starts the
moment you wake up and doesn't end until
you fall helplessly asleep at night. Mindful-
ness is an alternative to that, but it takes
some training to get it. If you can notice a
thought as athought, ifyou can step back and
relinquish your identification with that pro-
cess and just notice it as a process, as a kind
of automaticity in your mind, then you're no
longer a hostage.

PLAYBOY: Howis your Waking Up meditation
app different from all other meditation apps?
HARRIS: If you want to learn to medi-
tate, there are half a dozen apps that will
teach you, and they're all well-made. My
app is more intrusive. The real purpose of

PLAYBOY 49

meditation is to recognize something about
the nature of your mind. In the guided med-
itations I’m trying to get you to realize that,
for instance, there’s no self in the middle of
consciousness. There’s no thinker in addi-
tion to the thoughts that arise in your mind.
Traditionally, that has been the very center
of the bull’s-eye in a Buddhist meditation
practice and for practitioners. But it’s some-
thing you can spend a lot of time meditating
on and not notice.
PLAYBOY: Who is on your dream list of pod-
cast guests?
HARRIS: Га like to talk to Ed Witten, the
physicist other physicists will tell you is the
smartest physicist they've ever met. Film-
maker Deeyah Khan is a Muslim woman
who made a documentary on white suprem-
acy in the U.S. She’s like Kryptonite for neo-
Nazis because she’s a gorgeous woman
of color those guys want to bond with,
but then she says, “Wait a minute. You
want to throw me out?”

I would also consider talking to
some quintessentially bad people
just to see if there’s an interesting
ethical conversation to be had. The
Unabomber might be too far gone,
but it would be fascinating to actu-
ally get into the head of someone
like Bernie Madoff and try to fig-
ure out why he did what he did and
what he thinks about it now. There’s
a kind of uncanny valley phenome-
non that happens ethically, where if
you make someone bad enough, it’s
fine to talk to them. Like you can in-
terview Osama bin Laden or Hitler—
great, no problem. You don’t have to
waste time signaling to your audience,
“Well, listen, I didn’t support Auschwitz.”
But if you were to have Richard Spencer on
your podcast, then you’ve given a platform
to a dangerous asshole. That’s an interesting
problem for me to navigate.
PLAYBOY: What do you most want to know
about the future?
HARRIS: I’m very interested in the revolu-
tion we're on the cusp of right now with intel-
ligent machines and the way they’re going to
transform our life. I can’t wait to see the im-
plications of the outsourcing and improve-
ment of our understanding of ourselves as
we become more cyborg than we already are.
When I look at how dependent I am on my
phone, I can’t even remember what it was like
to arrange to meet someone in public. “ГІ
meet you at three.” And if that person didn’t
show up? You would call their answering ma-
chine and hope they’d call in to check their
messages. Now we just expect to connect
with everyone instantaneously.

There are going to be so many binary
changes like that, and I think they’re going to
get weirder and weirder. The current picture

50

of immunology, for example, is that we're ba-
sically always getting cancer and we're al-
ways fighting cancer. Cancer is just a sort of
background noise problem we're always deal-
ing with. But at a certain point you might
have nanobots detecting cancer. You'll be
able to look at your phone and see what your
cancer levels are. We'll look back on cancer
the way we now look back on polio, as some-
thing that was absolutely terrifying.

The fact is, with so many things we don’t
even know to ask the question because we
can't imagine what the shape of the an-
swer would be. It’s not crazy to think that
we could be among the last generations for
whom aging is the default reality. I’m rea-
sonably persuaded that you can view aging
as a kind of engineering problem that can
be solved. This is gerontologist Aubrey de

The truth is Im
agnostic about
the afterlife part.
Certain very
strange things
are possible.

Grey's argument. We may not get there in
our lifetimes or our kids” lifetimes, but at
a certain point you solve the problem. The
universe may not care about us, but it's not
out to get us. And so there are problems we
can solve that will stay solved. The sky really
is the limit, which in that context will make
getting hit by a bus or a flying car that much
more anomalous and horrible.

It's one of the reasons I think the left is so
poised for embarrassment—because politi-
cal correctness and identity politics and vic-
timology can't survive contact with all the
information that's coming from big data and
genetics. We're going to be inundated with
information about human difference, but po-
litically we know what the right answer is.
Separating ourselves by identity can’t mat-
ter. We know we want political equality;
we're anchored there. So when we look for
mean differences in populations, we're guar-
anteed to stumble upon facts that are politi-
cally inconvenient.

PLAYBOY: Like the fact that we're all basi-
cally the same.

HARRIS: That's right. There are just lucky
people and there are unlucky people, and we
should be compassionately concerned about
disparities in luck and trying to create sys-
tems that make it effortless for us to collab-
orate in ways that make the world better for
everyone. We can't rely on people to be saints
or even want to become saints. We have to en-
shrine what people will agree to in the wis-
est moments at the level of our institutions
and our laws and our systems so that in our
weaker moments, when we're selfish or bored
or filled with anger or anxiety, we're still run-
ning on rails and going in the right direction.
PLAYBOY: Incidentally, what if you're wrong
about God and the afterlife?
HARRIS: The truth is I’m agnostic about the
afterlife part. I don’t know how conscious-
ness arises, and therefore I don’t know if by
definition it ceases when we die. I
mean, we just don’t know. Certain
very strange things are possible. It’s
possible that we are in some kind
of computer simulation right now.
There are not-crazy arguments that
could lead you to be open about that.
Philosopher Nick Bostrom’s simula-
tion argument is that we're intelligent
enough creatures to produce intelli-
gent machines, and eventually, if we
don’t kill ourselves first, we will pro-
duce simulated worlds in these simu-
lated machines filled with creatures
with a level of consciousness as it is in
our human brains. And we'll get bet-
ter and better at this, and at acertain
point simulated worlds by defini-
tion will outnumber real worlds—and
not just by a small number, because
there’s only one real world out there.
They'll outnumber the real world by trillions
and trillions of times. So then you have to
ask yourself if it is more likely that you’re in
a real world or a simulated world. Then you
can add alien civilizations, and we're in a
kind of computational space. Once the sim-
ulations get good enough, we can't expect to
know the difference between simulation and
reality. That's a way of talking yourself into
assuming that it's quite possible you’re in
something like the Matrix already. If that's
true, well, then what would it mean to believe
in God, and are we on the hard drive of some
alien supercomputer?
PLAYBOY: Either way, do you plan on being
cremated?
HARRIS: I don’t know. I don’t think it’s in
my will. For some reason, I have a bias for
burial just because I like the idea. I like cem-
eteries. I guess you could spread someone’s
ashes, but it’s nice having a place where peo-
ple can go to think about the person.
PLAYBOY: What would you like it to say on
your tombstone?

HARRIS: A big number—1967 to 2267. Е

э

I never know what to do with myself at these events.

ç

5

PLAYBOY

zL of thé
dinary women

ould become our

2019 Шу сі the **
WeargWe ll reveal the

Wimmer in our Spring

2019 issue

OCTOBER
Olga de Mar

“Feeling feminine and showing
weakness is beautiful to me. Only a
strong woman сап show herself to be
weak, and the same go@S for men."

FEBRUARY
Megan
Samperi

“| like going fast. |
drive like a dude—
опе hand on the
Wheel, a leg up,
hilling With my
usic my dude

re -

Í

| w

P

MARCH
Jenny
Watwood

“I'm all natural—
my eyelashes, hair,

- ‘boobs. My lips аге
just puffy, and |

have smile lines
ause Waugh all
nese lines
orte
it — Ри not
doing anything to
change them.”

MAY
Shauna
Sexton

“Pve had to deal with
a lot of shit in my
life. | know a lot of
people idolize other
individuals, but you
have to be able to be
alone with yourself.”

Qu

, «
-

»

andra

/

| ting your,
е come through
ab a diffe nt
ess She likes to
апа for me, subtlety
péaks louder. | like to leave
a little tothe imagination— 4 ^
AS

most of the time.”
A

DECEMBER
Jordan Emanuel

“Our country is called the United States,
but we’re not that united. | think we need
to let people live however they choose
to. Let’s appreciate our differences. If we
took the time, we’d learn alot.”

L

way. >”
ы

^ Ame
— x

- З

JANUARY

with major regréts. Sometimes you get
so caught up in the mundane everyday
ings, you forget to slow down. Life is

- You have to relax and enjoy it."

NOVEMBER
Shelby Rose

“Рт pretty open. | like to try things.
I’m not one of those people who аге
like, ‘I’m just going to sit in my square
little life.”

JULY
Valeria
Lakhina

“| just like talking to
people—friends in the
world of psychology,
from my camera
crew, yoga teachers.

| love having long
conversations about
húman nature.”

_ SEPTEMBER
Kirby
Griffin

^ “People sense when

you're open and
truthful. Stay їгие . #
to yourself, treat
people the way your
want to be treated

and wake up grateful
every day.”

WHEN SPIRITUALITY

Goes Viral

Meet the magnetic young man who's using social
media to upgrade humanity—and whose Insta-pulpit
threatened to crumble after the death of a follower

~ --

ILLUSTRATION BY

DAN BEJAR

He appears on the screen, calling from an undisclosed location.

His name is Bentinho Massaro, and as far as
young New Age leaders go, he’s a sensation.
I’ve been watching his YouTube videos, which
have netted more than 10 million collective
views. He’s on a stage in Sedona or Maui or
his native Netherlands. A crowd of hundreds
gathers at his feet. He sits in the lotus posi-
tion, hands folded in his lap. He is blond and
delicately handsome, and he speaks with a
slight accent. He wears mostly loose-
fitting yoga clothes, as if he might
break into a flawless downward dog at
any moment, and he exudes an energy
that his followers, whom he calls Wanderers,
seem to find magnetic, even hypnotic.

He agrees to talk with me on Skype about
his teachings and the controversy that sur-
rounds him. He is going to scan me, he says,
to get a sense of my intentions.

Massaro is part of a new generation of
spiritual teachers who use social media to
spread their message and gain followers.
There are shamans who lead retreats for
Silicon Valley executives and swamis who
can read your chakras over Skype. Their
ranks include Audrey Kitching, the pink-
haired model and crystal-healing muse
with more than 500,000 followers across
Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, and Amy
Woodruff, the kundalini yoga instructor
who rocketed to fame after posting a pic-
ture of herself doing a headstand while
breast-feeding her daughter.

ву.) ESSE
HYDE

At 30 years old, Massaro is a master of dig-
ital spirituality. He has a slickly designed
website offering online courses on enlight-
enment, a YouTube channel with more than
75,000 subscribers and a Facebook page with
more than 300,000 likes.

Like Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh with his
scores of Rolls-Royces, Massaro seems to
have no interest in eschewing the good life.
He posts photos of himself hanging
out with his girlfriend, free-diving
off the coast of Bali and rock climb-
ing in Colorado. He can be seen ad-
miring his ripped physique and savoring
whiskey and cigars, all of it interspersed with
messages of positive affirmation and limit-
less possibility.

In the world of New Age teachers, he was
the next big thing. And then something
called the Sedona Experiment II went horri-
bly wrong.

There was a death, a police investigation,
physical threats. Online, his critics called him
“Steve Jobs meets Jim Jones,” a reference to
the notorious Peoples Temple leader who led
a mass murder-suicide in 1978. Massaro tells
me this insinuation is absurd. He is misunder-
stood. He is on a mission to help civilization
upgrade. And because he is a disrupter, blow-
back is inevitable. He asks why I want to write
about him. “It’s going to take a lot of your time
and you're going to delve into a world that per-
haps is fairly new to you,” he says.

Massaro engages with a participant at a retreat in Maui, Hawaii.

60

I explain that I grew up in the Mormon
Church and that after experiencing a crisis
of faith a few years ago I've been on a spiri-
tual journey of my own. I'm intrigued by his
teachings and want to learn how he gained
his devout following.

He nods slowly, and I sense he understands
me, even though we're a generation apart and
have little in common. There's a look of com-
passion in his eyes. I find my skepticism dis-
sipating ever so slightly. And then he starts
gazing at me with an intensity I've seen him
summon in his videos. When he does this on-
stage, it can last for 10 minutes, sometimes
longer. A slight smile will appear on his lips,
as if he has sensed the aura of whomever he's
gazing at, and it pleases him. With me, it
lasts for only a moment, but I wonder what he
sees within me.

I tell him Га like to meet him and his team,
who help him with graphic design and video
production. I want to understand why people
have abandoned lovers, homes and careers to
follow him. I want to understand instagram-
mable spirituality.

I also want to know if he's a misunderstood
teacher, as he insists, or a cult leader for the
digital age, espousing dangerous concepts
that can lead people to their deaths.

What I don't tell him is that I'm also won-

dering if hecan help me.
According to Massaro, his origin story
goes something like this: He was born and
raised in a middle-class neighborhood of
Amsterdam, not far away from its famous
canals, tulips and 15th century homes. His
father worked for an energy company and
his mother taught elementary school, and
they endured what Massaro, an only child,
describes as "bouts of poverty, when he
sometimes went hungry.

From an early age he felt he was special, ex-
traordinary even, both blessed and burdened
with a message he had to share with the
world. He says that at school he was known
affectionately as “the weird kid” with one of
the highest IQs in class even though he was a
lazy student. He was more interested in tele-
kinesis: He tells me he would spend class
periods trying to move straws or pieces of foil
across his desk with his mind.

His parents were undergoing a spiritual
awakening of their own thanks in part to
the Silva Method, a self-help meditation pro-
gram popular in the 1960s. They believed
they could use it to train their minds to con-
trol objects, view distant locations and, even-
tually, connect with a higher intelligence.
They enrolled Massaro in a children's course,
which he says he quickly mastered.

"It resonated as home for me," Massaro

says. “Ialways knew I’m asuperhero. I always
knew everyone can do anything they want.”

He began reading Deepak Chopra, an-
cient scripture and yogic philosophy. He
became particularly fascinated by The Law
of One, a series of books purportedly con-
ceived by a non-human intelligence named
Ra. He also absorbed the basic teachings
of nonduality, or the idea that the universe
is one substance and we’re all a part of it,
whether we call that substance awareness,
consciousness or even God—a concept at
the core of some Buddhist strains and ev-
erything from Jewish kabbalah and Chris-
tian mysticism to The Matrix. Visions of
India began popping into his head, and at
18, he and his then girlfriend decamped for
Rishikesh, the birthplace of yoga and much
of the Beatles’ “White Album.” He lived
in the country for six months, riding rick-
shaws, hopping from one hostel to another,
meeting with swamis, and practicing yoga
and meditation.

“Tt was a Buddha-like quest,” he tells me.
“The Buddha said at some point after seek-
ing, ‘I won’t get up from under this tree
until I’m enlightened, until I've found what
I’m looking for,’ and it was kind of a simi-
lar result.”

Not long after he got back to the Neth-
erlands, Massaro began posting videos
on YouTube, sharing what he’d found. He
quickly gained a following because of what
he describes as his ability to distill centu-
ries of wisdom into concepts anyone can
understand.

“For the advanced seeker I am a breath
of fresh air, or the teachings are a breath
of fresh air, because they've never heard
it so clearly before,” he tells me. “If you
had researched all these philosophies and
practices—anyone who has agrees that my
teaching is genius.”

His fame spread to the United States, and
in 2011 he was invited to speak at the Science
and Nonduality Conference, an event that
draws such New Age luminaries as Chopra
and Adyashanti. A few years later he was fea-
tured on an audio series produced by Sounds
True, the company that publishes the audio
and video teachings of Eckhart Tolle. But the
more time Massaro spent with other gurus,
the more disillusioned he became.

“I had attained greater clarity and pu-
rity of mind than most of these other teach-
ers,” he says. “Now it was like, Well, wait a
second—it’s up to me. It was really powerful
to realize that if I want to change the world,
if I want to upgrade spirituality, I'm the one
who has to do that.”

Massaro says he clashed with other spir-
itual teachers because he was drifting
outside standard nondual teachings and
talking about the law of attraction, pop-
ularized by the book The Secret, which

“T ALWAYS KNEW I'MA
SUPERHERO. | ALWAYS
KNEW EVERYONE CAN DO
ANYTHING THEY WANT.”

holds that we have the power to bring into
our lives anything we focus on, good or
bad. As Massaro started blending that idea
with Eastern philosophies such as Advaita
Vedanta, he says he was disinvited from
conferences. His Sounds True interview
was taken down.

But none of this slowed his rise. By 2016,
videos he’d posted on YouTube were getting
thousands of views. He had moved to Boul-
der, Colorado, which has been described as
the “New Age’s Athens.” Seated at the base
of the eastern scarp of the Rockies, the city
is home to the first Buddhist-inspired col-
lege in America. It’s the sort of place where
you'll find ads for psychic reprogrammers
and past-life-regression experts. Massaro
rented an office downtown and assem-
bled a team who understood video editing,
web design and social media. He launched
Bentinho Massaro TV, a subscription-based
repository of his teachings. The followers
he gained online were encouraged to attend
his retreats, which have cost $5,000 for
nine days.

In early 2017 Massaro decided to move
his operation to Sedona, Arizona, another
New Age mecca. Wanderers who had quit
jobs to follow him to Boulder moved with
him, fanning out across the city to rent
homes and attend his regular talks, which
he also live-streamed, at the Sedona Cre-
ative Life Center.

He started hosting retreats in luxurious re-
sorts, surrounded by followers so devoted he
says he had to hire bodyguards and lay down
a rule: If he was wearing sunglasses between
sessions, attendees shouldn’t approach him.
The whiskey-and-cigars posts began to dot
his feed. He says his team was bringing in up
to $120,000 a month.

As Massaro’s following grew, his teach-
ings became more grandiose. In one inter-
view he said he didn’t want to have children
because he already had 7 billion of them:
“The people of this world are my children.”

He claimed that he had the power to tele-

port, levitate and move mountains—that
he was an “upper-density spirit” who had
descended to the earth to help civiliza-
tion upgrade. “My vision is to buy a large,
amazing piece of land and to start a new
city of sorts with all of you and a teaching
like mine as a focal point,” he said during
a talk at the Sedona Creative Life Center.
“There’s amazing potential to live in a new
way and to create a little pocket that is an
initial example of what is possible for all of
humanity. So I see it as a flower popping up
through the mud.”

In the fall of 2017 Massaro started to talk
about a new retreat, called the Sedona Ex-
periment II. He had already held the first
Sedona Experiment with about a dozen of
his most devoted disciples. To market the
sequel, which he wanted to expand to more
than 100 followers, he bought the domain
name sedonaexperiment.com and posted a
short video trailer in which he explains that
he’s shifting his followers’ “sense of iden-
tity from being human to being not human”
and eventually arriving at a place called
“infinite consciousness.”

By this point, the Sedona police had
begun to get complaints. Sedona is a small
city of about 10,000 people, and it relies
heavily on tourism. Of its nearly 3 mil-
lion annual visitors, some come to browse
the downtown galleries or to hike or moun-
tain bike, but thousands come to visit the
vortices, get their auras photographed or
cleanse their chakras. Sedona has also at-
tracted its share of fanatics and cult lead-
ers. In 2010 there was a noticeable drop
in visitors after a celebrated guru named
James A. Ray presided over a sweat-lodge
ceremony near Sedona that had resulted in
three deaths the previous year.

According to reporting by The Arizona
Republic, there were now similar com-
plaints about Massaro. Someone told the
Sedona police chief that Massaro encour-
aged his followers to live on nothing more
than grape juice for weeks at a time. (The

PLAYBOY 61

Sedona police declined PLAYBOY’s inter-
view request.) He had encouraged his fol-
lowers to cut off ties to friends and family
if they got in the way of enlightenment, and
to look forward to their own deaths. “Don’t
fear death; be excited about it,” he says
with a smile in one video. He said he was
unafraid of his own death and once wrote,
“Looking forward to death makes you truly
come alive.”

“Wake up to something important,” he
says in another clip. “Otherwise, kill your-
self.... Make that agreement every day: You
either kill yourself or you dedicate yourself to
something important.”

Before long, a detective would be repeating
those words back to him.

A few days before the second Sedona Exper-
iment, an article was published on the blog-
ging platform Medium by an activist and
writer named Be Scofield, who had infil-
trated Massaro’s inner circle. “Tech bro guru

video snippets of Massaro yelling at a female
follower and a Facebook post advancing con-
spiracy theories like Pizzagate.

“It has no context for me,” he said of the
cult label. “It feels so empty and meaning-
less. Like, okay, great. Yeah. We’re a cult. It
doesn’t change what we are.”

He told those who had gathered for the
12-day retreat that a better label would be
a “social memory complex.” In the coming
days they would grow so close that the elec-
tromagnetic fields of their consciousnesses
would merge and they would become one,
bound by the bliss of enlightenment, and
“penetrate the Absolute.”

On the seventh day of the retreat, accord-
ing to the Republic, two detectives showed up
at Massaro’s house to ask him about one of
the participants in the Sedona Experiment.
His name was Brent Wilkins, a 34-year-old
former tennis pro who had drifted in and out
of Massaro’s inner circle. According to what
Wilkins’s parents told police, he had quit

T VE ASKED MYSELF, IF
BUDDHA OR JESUS LIVED
TODAY, WOULD THEY HAVE
A FACEBOOK PAGE?"

has arrived,” Scofield writes. “The OS has
been upgraded. Cult 2.0 is upon us.”

Scofield traces how Massaro had used
start-up principles and “growth-hacker
marketing” to build a New Age empire.
His product was spiritual ideas, and using
Facebook and YouTube he could test out
this product at no cost, noting what reso-
nated by analyzing clicks. Massaro had
also founded something called Trinfin-
ity, Scofield writes, a murky entity that
sounds like something from the mind of
L. Ron Hubbard or a Batman comic. Trin-
finity Corp. had a master plan that would
be executed in four phases. It would start
with apps, virtual-reality machines, an
astral-projection inducer, film and TV stu-
dios and a publishing platform, and would
culminate with Trinfinity City.

As the second Sedona Experiment began,
Massaro took to the stage to address the alle-
gations raised in the article, which included

62

his job back East and moved to Boulder to
follow Massaro. For two years he poured ev-
erything he had into finding enlightenment
through Massaro’s teachings. At one point
he had come home at his parents’ urging
and admitted to a psychiatrist that he some-
times thought of hurting himself. He spent
a week in a local psych ward and vowed to
stay in Virginia when he got out. They hired
a cult-extraction specialist, but before long
Wilkins had returned to Boulder.

“T want to go back to your words,” detec-
tive Chris Stevens said. ““Wake up and do
something important. Otherwise, just kill
yourself.’ "

“Right,” Massaro said.

Massaro recalled that Wilkins had met
with him at a party prior to the retreat and
expressed his doubts about participating in
it. He sometimes had “freak moments” at
retreats. But Wilkins was always swinging
from doubt to certainty. At the end of the

conversation, Wilkins had held Massaro to
his chest.

“He’s confused, right?” Stevens asked, his
voice sharp on a recording later obtained and
reported on by The Arizona Republic. “He’s
trying to figure out his life?”

Massaro voiced his agreement.

“And he’s not doing anything? What do you
think might be the outcome?”

“Um, not that. But I understand. I under-
stand.”

And then Stevens told Massaro that
Wilkins had killed himself.

“No,” Massaro said softly.

Wilkins had been found at the bottom of a
225-foot cliff in Sedona. In his pocket they’d
found a name tag: THE SEDONA EXPERIMENT
II. PARTICIPANT.

As police decided whether to charge Mas-
saro, the empire he had built began to tee-
ter. (Sedona police ultimately did not press
charges.) Followers turned on him. Threat-
ening messages appeared online. He no lon-
ger felt welcome in the community that had
been his home base for years.

It was as though a dark cloud had moved
into Sedona, he tells me, “like a scary
movie.” The energy had shifted there, and
he no longer felt welcome. And so, after
careful consideration with his two lovers
at the time, they went on the run, revealing
their whereabouts and what was next to only
a handful of people.

At the time of our first Skype session, Mas-
saro appears to be still on the run.

There are pictures of him in Hawaii and
the Netherlands, in Egypt in front of the pyr-
amids and in the misty jungles of Colom-
bia, meeting with a reclusive tribe called the
Kogis. The captions on his Instagram feed
are vague, perhaps intentionally so. At times
it seems he’s ready to retire, and then a post
surfaces in which everything he once proph-
esied still seems possible.

In late August he invites me to visit him in
Boulder, suggesting a trendy restaurant off
Pearl Street, the downtown pedestrian mall
where you can pay for someone to balance and
align your energies, buy pot or get smashed
among rowdy University of Colorado coeds,
who have just arrived for the fall semester.

I've been waiting for half an hour, at a table
Massaro has reserved in the back, when I see
him enter. He is of average build and carries
himself with confidence, scanning the room
as though he owns the place. He’s flanked by
three staffers, the Wanderers I’ve heard so
much about. There’s a tall and willowy blonde
who left an international modeling career
to follow him; a recent University of Colo-
rado grad who helps with writing and graphic
design; and an aspiring filmmaker from
Florida who helps with videos. I’ve seen all of
them on Massaro’s Instagram feed.

NL

A November 2017 post promoting the Sedona Experiment II and tagged, in part, #selfrealizationschool and #realizetheabsolute.

Over the next two hours, as the members
of his team explain why they've abandoned
careers or moved across the country to follow
Massaro, their leader sits near the head of
the table with a pleased look on his face, cut-
ting in here and there to explain some eso-
teric spiritual concept. I sense him watching
me as he sips his cocktail.

I had expected Massaro to be aloof, that
it might take some work to get around the
facade of an upper-density spiritual teacher,
but in person the so-called tech bro guru
seems mostly like a bro. He peppers his con-
versation with references to comedies like
Wedding Crashers, laughs about the time
he tried out for the Netherlands version of
American Idol and forgot the lyrics to an
Elton John song, and seems delighted to
learn little biographical details I tease out
about his team.

If he's scanning me again, I'm scanning
him too, wondering if he really believes he
descended from another planet to help Earth
upgrade, as he says in one of his posts. To me,
he seems nothing like the sociopathic narcis-
sist who reportedly once told a girlfriend she
was disrupting his flow into eternal bliss.

He muses that maybe the best way to
spread his message is entirely online. In-
person retreats are too messy. People always
approach him between the sessions, a ten-
dency both exhausting and tedious.

"It always feels—I wouldn't say scary, he
says. "But I can't be personally responsi-
ble for every person in a group. I don't know
where they come from, their issues."

Iask if he's referring to Brent Wilkins.

“No, not at all. I don't feel responsible for
his death. I've always felt this. I know I'm not

64

responsible ultimately. They're responsible
for signing up for the retreat, their medita-
tions, how they interpret things I say."

Before long, their attention turns to me.
I describe my path out of Mormonism and
how it led to a dark period during which I
felt an existential void and lack of any sense
of meaning. The Wanderers, all in their 20s,
nod and smile as if they've been there too and
know the secret to my wandering.

Massaro suggests we continue the conver-
sation the next day but instructs me not to
call him before noon. He usually stays up all
night, he explains, because that's when the
“world goes to sleep. All the brains quiet. I
can feel the conscious mind drop into the
subconscious mind."

We meet the next afternoon at a coffee
shop in a suburb of Boulder, where Massaro
and his team are living with the parents of
one of his followers. He tells me they're look-
ing for a place where they can all live and
work together. Without his team, he doesn't
seem quite as upbeat, and I think of some-
thing I've heard: that he's rarely without at
least one of them by his side. Or maybe he's
just groggy after staying up all night.

He dodges questions about what they're up
to, saying he can't really get into it, and ex-
plains how difficult the past year has been
for him.

"Friends were turning against me. Peo-
ple were threatening me and my loved ones,”
he says. "I'm sure famous people get this all
the time, like threats on social media, com-
ments, messages, messaging through our
site. “You deserve what's coming for you.
Just wait and see.’ Or You're responsible for
Brent's death.’ "

On Wilkins’s suicide, he offers this:
“Maybe it was a powerful moment. I don’t
know. Maybe it was a super powerful mo-
ment. I don’t recommend suicide for anyone,
but I also don’t judge it. I think sometimes,
for some people, it is a powerful decision.”

I ask if he has ever considered suicide.

“Oh yeah,” he replies. “I think every sane
person has contemplated suicide every
once in a while.” Reality is an illusion, he
reminds me. Our bodies are too. It’s like a
video game.

"You're playing a video game. You know it’s
not really you; it’s not ultimately real. The
video game ends. If you fall down a cliff, you
still exist. You just walk away from the game
console and you're fine.”

I came here wondering if I could find a
sense of peace outside organized religion,
trying to be as open as I could to a new sort
of spirituality. In one of our Skype sessions,
Massaro agreed that he had tapped into the
cultural zeitgeist that allowed him to reach
people in away atraditional spiritual teacher
no longer could —especially with millennials,
the generation least likely to identify with a
religious group, according to a Pew Research
Center survey.

“Гуе asked myself, if Buddha or Jesus lived
today, would they have a Facebook page?”
Massaro says. Instagram in particular is a
medium he finds conducive to spirituality.
“The pictures have an energy,” he explains.
“It's why people stare at gurus in the East:
They have a certain power.”

He says he shows a life of abundance be-
cause otherwise millennials wouldn't click
on any of his photos. I admit I find some of
this confusing: He talks about overcoming

Massaro leads a guided meditation “on the healing and forgiveness of each other and mankind.”

attachment and desire, yet he seems to like
nice things.

“Is that really what I like, or is that part of
the message?” he asks. He compares himself
to a martial artist, responding intuitively to
what’s coming in. The “collective” likes to
see pictures of “an epic life,” and so he posts
them to draw his followers in.

The more he talks, the more worn out I
feel. Maybe I don’t want to get to the place
where all thinking stops, or to feel eternal
bliss, or to get beyond consciousness to “the
Absolute,” an idea that, no matter how long
Massaro talks and what kind of diagrams
he draws on the napkin before me, I cannot
wrap my head around. I think of something
the Buddha said, about how the whole point
of non-attachment is to get to a place where
you don’t really care if you're not in a state of
bliss or if you have a toothache or if your life
just seems really shitty.

After my Boulder trip I call Naomi Melati
Bishop, a writer and self-described mil-
lennial hippie who has done Mayan steam
baths, traveled 10,000 miles tracking down
a mystic and become Facebook friends with
her shamans. She acknowledges that social
media might be great for raising awareness
of things like crystal healing or that studio in
Brooklyn that offers shamanic purification
rituals, but it can also present an inaccurate
picture of what it takes to attain something
even close to enlightenment.

“Many of these practices are based in East-
ern traditions that are thousands of years
old, and when you take it out of that context,
people are practicing only slivers of the thing
itself, so it becomes fragmented and frac-
tured,” she says. “People are simultaneously

becoming more enlightened and more lost.”

I wonder if Massaro would even exist as a
spiritual teacher without Facebook, Insta-
gram and YouTube. I also wonder if he’d be
doing any of this if he couldn’t post about it
and track how many likes he gets.

“Ultimately it’s about practicing what you

post,” Melati Bishop says. “Are you living a
lifestyle that’s aligned with what you’re say-
ing? Would some of us still be meditating if
we couldn’t prove it online?”
Massaro stays in touch. He texts me on
WhatsApp to vent about a documentary on
YouTube that makes him look like a cult
leader, explaining that he allowed the film-
makers access to a retreat he held in the
Netherlands thinking they would portray
him fairly. Instead, they spliced together
snippets of Massaro saying things like
“When you stumble upon a point of view that
feels good about someone else being raped,
are you willing to accept that point of view?”

The video shows him once again confront-
ing the C word: “I don’t really have a defini-
tion of cult. But you could break it down as
Curious and Unconditionally Loving Tribe,
C-U-L-T. That would be the positive expres-
sion of acult.”

Not long after, I’m alerted to a new post on
Facebook, this one by Massaro’s ex-girlfriend
Jocelyn Daher. She describes how Massaro
told her he couldn’t have sex with her unless
she lost weight because fat suggests stored
toxins. She describes three months of eat-
ing only fruits and vegetables, dry fasting
and working out twice a day. On a related blog
post, she describes her time with Massaro as
“10 months of complete obliteration of every-

thing I knew myself to be.” His disciples hov-
ered near him, looking for constant approval,
Daher writes, but none of them seemed
happy; they all seemed lost.

As their relationship progressed, he told
her she was preventing him from accessing
his “God-self.” “I remember one time he said
to me that my mind to him was like having ‘a
fly in the room.’ My ‘personhood’ seemed to
be an annoyance and a hindrance to his “ab-
sorption into the all.’”

In the weeks after I meet Massaro, he con-
tinues to post affirming messages, encourag-
ing his then 23,000 Instagram followers to
stop doubting themselves and unlock their
potential through forgiveness.

But then something shifts. Massaro’s posts
begin to take on a menacing edge. The week
after Daher’s piece, he posts videos on Insta-
gram in which he suggests that most people
aren't up to the task of pursuing “real spiri-
tuality” and don’t know what real love is. He
posts a picture of another girlfriend, the for-
mer model, saying women who think they’re
oppressed are living in a fantasy world. It
seems like a shot at Daher, who described
their relationship as oppressive. He tells his
critics to get off his page.

“You're mostly blind,” he writes in one
post on Instagram around that same period.
“You're ruining your life; no one else is. Most
of you are nowhere near who you truly are.”

The comments, many of them negative,
start to flood his feed.

I think of the last time I saw him, the two of
us sitting outside a coffee shop. I asked him
if he ever thought about quitting. He did, he
said. Sometimes he just wanted to go “sit on
arock in India.” But he wasn’t like other spir-
itual teachers. There was something alive
in him. “There’s a fire, a passion, a devotion
that’s willing to die for the cause,” he’d told
me earlier.

He asked me what I think happens when
we die, and I told him I wasn’t sure. “I used to
think it just fades to black,” I said. “The light
goes off. We cease to exist.”

He nodded, and for a brief moment I saw
something I hadn’t seen in him before—a
crack of doubt. He didn’t seem like a New Age
guru with all the answers or an enlightened
being who had achieved upper-level den-
sity, whatever that means. We were just two
dudes, sitting outside a strip mall in Colo-
rado, sipping coffee and trying to figure out
if any of this had any meaning.

“But now I wonder,” I said. “Maybe there is
something beyond this.”

The light returned to his face, and he nod-
ded with excitement, once again the spiritual
teacher so many had found online. It seemed
he really believed he could help me, that I too
could find eternal bliss and that, if I listened
long enough, it would all make sense.

I just had to trust him. m

PLAYBOY 65

| AA ⁄

PAS =

№ А _ 5
= | ' ү
一

Mindy
fakes
everything
=

FICTION BY Ес

CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Mindy grabbed the knife. Practiced this she
had not. They hadn’t rehearsed anything
because Benjamin, Benny, was hopeless. If
he so much as sneezed it sounded fake.

The Singers had set out a brisket, sliced
and everything nice, with the carving knife
sticking out at a help-yourself angle. Little
pots of different World Market mustards
sitting around the platter. The perfect wit-
nesses: the Singers, the Goldblatts, the Fut-
ters, the Hartzogs and the Taubmans. That
girl, that Myra, from the yoga place, she was
there for whatever reason. Mindy waited
until Leo Hartzog pointed his camera phone
recording Ilene telling some cockamamie
story about pitching something to Google.
That’s when Mindy wrapped her fist around

ILLUSTRATIONS BY RIKI BLANCO

the knife handle. Some stainless steel Ger-
man job. A Wiisthof brisket slicer. She’d
downed only the one dirty martini Len Fut-
ter had handed her.

She yanked the knife out of the brisket.
Too hard, obviously. Adrenaline would do
that. Too fast, to judge from how the brisket
toppled. Toppled and rolled, a slab of dead
meat batting aside little pots of mustard, ra-
mekins of chopped onions, the brisket escap-
ing the platter and greasing a path across the
limed oak table. From West Elm? From Pot-
tery Barn? Before taking a plunge—blat—
onto poor Yael Singer’s cowhide accent rug.
A juicy splat that piqued everyone’s atten-
tion until Mindy swung the serrated blade
toward Benny’s neck.

She brought the knife down, the dull side
not the honed edge, chopping his shoulder.
With no more force than an Arthurian queen
bestowing knighthood upon him. Reddish
Chinese mustard and yellow-brown honey
mustard all over the white collar and sleeve
of his Perry Ellis dress shirt.

His cow-eyed, slaughterhouse expression—
here was something her husband could’ve
faked never had he lived to be Methuselah.
With her free hand Mindy caught his wrist
and twisted that arm behind his back. Held
the knife against the bobble of his Adam’s
apple and sawed it back and forth. Against
the little dots of Benny’s shaved beard. She
held him the way she’d play a hairy cello.
No one noticed, what with mustard on the

PLAYBOY 6/

blade, how she was pressing the dull side of
the knife against his windpipe, harmless—
messy but harmless. Bowing him like a cello.
No, no amount of rehearsing could’ve brought
these tears to Benny’s eyes or made him keen
the way he did. Like a dolphin he sounded, or
like some killer whale, keening.

She screamed, “Rape me again, you dirty,
penis-stinking bastard, and ГИ kill you!”
And to Ben’s credit he played along with her
routine. For his crying, he’d later blame the
horseradish. Mixed in some mustard it was,
held so close to his tear ducts.

Even in that moment, with the camera
phone rolling, Mindy had to wonder who'd
served Dylan Thomas those 18 shots of whis-
key at the White Horse Tavern. Wondering:
Was whoever poisoned Dylan Thomas some-
one helpful? Or maybe some bartender who
yearned to see dead the preeminent Welsh
poet of the age. That’s where Mindy’s head
was at: disassociation. Hers was a classic case
of disassociation.

Mindy worked the serrated brisket slicer
against her husband’s throat with the Gold-
blatts and the Taubmans and the others
watching, and she delivered the line they'd
agreed upon. A second time, quietly, almost
hissing, “Rape me again, you bastard....” This
wasn't improvisation. Shed been warning
him since Noah’s attack. Their performance
was all about Noah’s attack. And finally
Benny recognized his cue.

To his credit, Benny wrapped his strong,
sober hand around hers and choked her
wrist and rapped her hand, twice, against
the Singers’ silk wallpaper, until she let
go. The knife diving to stab the wood
floor at their feet. Chili-infused mustard

spattered, red-brown, on the pretty wall.

The scene, like some old-world saying
Mindy’s long-departed Unka would always
say at such a time, this was. Half of what
the man said a real person knew to not
hear, but on occasion her Unka had been
touched like genius.

Yael Singer stooped over the fallen bris-
ket. Her hands hovered above it, hesitated
and sprung forward to clamp together on
the slab. Her face twisted in a grimace, she
hefted the meat and carried it at arm’s length
like so much butchered...flesh. The awful
stain it left, a red puddle, as if Benny had
actually bled out. Mindy hadn’t been chop-
ping, but they’d seen chopping. Myra from
yoga stood with both hands palmed over her
mouth. She screamed a moment too late as if
meeting some obligation, the silly girl. A thin
someone-needed-to-scream scream.

Benny held Mindy’s wrist with a power
she’d forgotten he had. He’d been conflicted
about the rape line, when they’d discussed it.
But she was glad to say it twice. Glad for the
camera phone. How it might all look in court.
In their moment of faked struggle she con-
sidered collapsing against him, but the mus-
tard would spoil her vintage Bill Blass. She’d
had her hair set that afternoon. The look she
was working was Dynasty. Like Alexis Colby
chopping off Krystle Carrington’s head on
that one episode of Dynasty.

“Yael,” Benny said when she brought the
coats. He regretted the wallpaper, silk hand-
woven with green parakeets, from China.
He’d told her, “The brisket was delicious.”

His shirt smelled so good Mindy had to
swallow. On the way home, she made Benny
stop for takeout at Arby’s.

EVEN IF SHE WERE

SEEN, WOULD IT LOOK

50 BAD ТО BE CAUGHT
APPARENTLY STILL TRYING
TO SAVE HER MARRIAGE
WITH FURTIVE SEX?

68 FICTION

With the red-brown smears on his cheeks
and nose, Benny looked like their Noah had.
Like father, like son. Like Noah had looked
coming home from school.

In all honesty her Benjamin, Benny, he
wouldn’t rape a fly.

Their next act should be her filing a re-
straining order against him. Subpoenaing
hostile witnesses and the like. The first par-
ents to pull this stunt, they were not. Check-
ing into a shelter for abused women, Mindy
should be. They needed to build a narrative,
she argued, but Benny put the kibosh on her
women’s sheltering.

Oh, the injustice that her Noah, her baby
boy, should be compelled by cold geography
to attend the school he did. An institute of
higher learning that boasted a Prison Skillz
Track. A verified course of matriculation.
A public academy that offered a sex worker
track. A prizefighter her Noah was not.
No more than his father could act his way
out of a paper bag. For the steep taxes they
paid, their Noah should go to school to be a
punching bag?

A boy of such rich talents? Gifted how he
was, this boy was wasted on Ansel Park, when
where he wanted to go was Delmar Fields,
a magnet school. Japanese immersion they
had. So what if Delmar Fields was three dis-
tricts over?

Who the animals were, Noah wouldn’t
say. Who’d beaten him bloody, they were ju-
veniles. For any low-life animal boys to see
another boy so gifted by fate, these less for-
tunate would understandably go crazy jeal-
ous. Especially seeing how they’d tested too
low to be anything in life, and Noah, here’s
Noah excelling in Computer Lab and seeing
a girl Mindy couldn’t remember the name
of except this girl was an angel from what
Noah told people.

Already families like the Brumes paid for
schools, plenty. Paid for the free breakfasts
and free hot lunches for such animal ver-
min who'd send a child home with almost
a broken nose. At issue was the principle of
the thing.

Driving home from the Singers’, Mindy had
said as much. “Stop by the Arby’s,” she’d said.
“T want you should see the big picture here.”

Mister Social Justice. Mister Make-
Everything-Right, Benny wanted they
should foot the bill for private school. Was
he crazy? He was crazy. A family should pay
twice over, through property taxes and pri-
vate tuition, for getting their only son not
beaten to a pulp?

Benny she told to butt out. Waiting in the
takeout line at Arby’s, Mindy said, “Don’t
take this the wrong way, Benjamin, but you
are a weak man. A very weak man and aterri-
ble father.” She ordered two beef-and-cheese
sandwiches. The melty kind. Telling Benny,
“No offense.”

If she'd managed to hammer anything
into Benny’s head, it was the fact that he
had serious limitations. That he lacked all
imagination was chief among them. Their
son walks home from school with his eyes
beaten purple as two prune Danish, and his
nose like a squashed eggplant, and achipped
tooth, his blood all down the front of his
shirt, and all this boy’s father can say is,
“Noah, we'll look into it.”

A reaction like that, no father should feel
proud of. No, placid Benny could go to his of-
fice. Benny could watch the market and type
out his buy and sell orders. Starting with the
knife at his throat at the Singers’ party and
her making accusations of rape, it was Mindy
who got the ball rolling. As her boy’s only
mother she was planning to rescue him from
further assailment.

What would it hurt if she saw her own sit-
uation improve? Why couldn’t Noah’s sal-
vation throw a little good fortune her way?
In the car, she checked for napkins in the
bag of Arby’s. Folded on top of the hot sand-
wiches were paper napkins. “Okay, drive,”
she told Benny.

She lifted a sandwich from the bag and
spread a paper napkin across her Bill Blass.
“You only have yourself to blame,” she said.
She talked while chewing, she was so hungry.
“T told you not to wear the Perry Ellis.”

It was decided theirs would be a marriage
in trial separation. What Winchell always
called a don’tinvitem. With Mindy renting
a cheap studio apartment in the vicinity of
Delmar Fields, each day she’d leave the house
in Ansel Park, sneaking out early so as not to
be seen by Yael Singer. Even if she were seen,

would it look so bad to be caught apparently
still trying to save her marriage with furtive
sex? She’d drive Noah to his new school, then
spend her day painting in the apartment.
Every afternoon she'd dress up in a uniform
from a store that sold uniforms, and leave as
if to work the night shift somewhere. She’d
eat Arby’s melty sandwiches every lunch.
Day’s end, she’d collect their boy and spend
the nights at Ansel Park.

Nights, over the dinner table, Benny would
ask, “How’s the painting business?”

Noah would be immersed in his Japanese,
and she would have a fabled room of her own.
That’s not to say the Ansel Park house didn’t
have rooms more than a family of three could
use, including the indoor sports court no one
ever set foot inside, but a cheap apartment
Mindy could move her old college furniture
into, her posters and music on compact disc,
her paints and easel.

She tried to see the stained grout and
splintering cabinet doors the way the future
would. The way pilgrims would: as sanc-
tified. Not as shabby, but as a place a revo-
lutionary artist had set out to conquer the
world. Mindy Brume’s garret. The scut-
tling brown spot along the baseboard, be it
a small mouse or a mammoth cockroach, it
only added to her street credibility. Future
scholars would marvel over this chipped
paint. Lead-based paint. Brain damage
waiting to happen. In this neighborhood of
fetal alcohol everything.

The edges of asbestos tile peeled up from
the cracked concrete floor. To think so many
future masterpieces would be painted in the
presence of these spiders. That made her
think of Charlotte’s Web. And that, those spi-
ders, made her smell the barbecue from the
Arby’s down the block.

After a fascinating morning spent apply-
ing for social welfare benefits and sketching
her fellow applicants, who should she meet
but her next-door neighbor. In the park-
ing lot, he was, the neighbor. Crawling out
from under а car. He smelled, but like a soft
cheese, like one of the very expensive arti-
san cheeses, like the free-trade ones pack-
aged afloat in sterile urine sealed within a
food-grade pig bladder. Like her Unka al-
ways said that she couldn’t remember, but
that translated to “A nose is the best judge of
character in buying eels.”

The stranger popped a beer and handed it
to her.

Mindy took a swig. Looked at the can. “I
really shouldn’t be drinking.”

He asked, “Are you expecting a baby?” No
male model, his beer belly stretched the front
of his T-shirt. Fat he looked, but in that way
that made a grown woman feel more femi-
nine. Where the T-shirt rode up in front, his
skin showed. Scars were all it was, that skin.
Little red train tracks like from staples, like

PLAYBOY 69

from surgery after being gutted by a land
mine. Shiny, red train tracks crisscrossing
his belly.

Mindy laughed. Took another swig. Shook
her head. Beer for lunch. She was already
blending in.

Dripping plastic faucets and overloaded
aluminum wiring that made every light
switch feel warm to the touch. She pictured
Georgia O’ Keeffe in her adobe hut commun-
ing with rattlesnakes. Emily Dickinson in
her sooty attic isolation.

“So you're not pregnant?” Her neighbor
wasn't convinced.

She raised the can in a toast. She reached
across the space between them, took him
around the wrist and twisted until she could
see his watch. “Not since...,” she noted the
time, “two hours ago.” His wrist felt solid
and hairy. She twisted, and he let himself be
twisted by scrawny, weak her.

Still, he didn’t understand.

"I'm pro-choice, but I didn't get to choose,”
she stressed. “My old man....” She let her
voice trail off.

He looked away as if embarrassed or

With her French manicure and waxed legs.
Vassar written all over her. She cleared her
throat. “This isn’t my real voice.”

Maybe he’d buy that she was a sex worker.
Daytime she’d be at the apartment, wind-
ing down. Nighttimes she implied she spent
screwing some monied power broker or a cap-
tain of industry. This lie would make the im-
perfect lie about being a waitress perfect.

Everyone living in the complex, they were a
refugee from something. Somewhere.

His listening was a pit she kept falling into.
Or it was a hole she wanted to fill with her
words. She told him she'd contracted gonor-
rhea in her mouth one time and had let it go
too long, and after that she had this voice,
different than before, deeper on account of
her vocal cords being scarred. It was a test.
She was shit-testing him. The stranger never
looked away or flinched. Because he was un-
fazed or because of the language barrier, she
wasn't certain.

Gonorrhea wasn't likely the first word
they taught in ESL so talking to him felt
nice, relaxed, like talking to a nice dog, like
a retired pit bull, you could fantasize hav-

Noah, she asked, “Those boys who hit you?
How did they hit you?” She added, “I mean,
with sticks or what?"

Noah sighed. The only way to describe such
a sigh was as a confessional sigh. As if the jig
was up. “You remember Natasha?” he asked.

Mindy didn’t.

"She was sort of with me," he said.

The angel he meant.

"She transferred to Delmar." Not to mince
words, but their Noah had beat himself to his
own pulp. That's the genius they'd raised.

From behind, somebody honked. Mindy
hadn't realized she'd slowed to a crawl. To let
everyone pass she pulled to the curb. ^You
did a very good job." Nurturing she tried to
sound, that's instead of shocked. Then as if
just curious, she asked, “How’d you do it?”

Noah's method had been to stand in their
indoor sports court and throw a basketball
against the concrete wall, close his eyes and
step into its return path. A mouth guard, he
wore, like from boxing. God bless him. For
smaller bruises he'd catch a racquetball in
the face.

When Benny got home and found Mindy

SHE REMEMBERED THE WOMEN TURNED INTO
MEN MADE FAMOUS BY DISCARDED WOMEN.

ashamed on her behalf.

She pressed on, “He didn't want it." She
took a long draw on the beer can, then forced
atragic smile for her fake dead baby.

This would become the pattern of her days:
She'd leave Ansel Park each morning and
drop Noah at his new magnet school. A kiln,
they offered. Portuguese immersion. A per-
son could do worse. All that, and Noah had
tested as the smartest from his cohort. While
he was in school, she'd pretend to live at the
apartment. Noah, Mister High and Mighty,
he wouldn't show his face at the apartment,
he hated the place so much. Chess Club he
took after school, and Rocket Club, to help
his college applications but actually to avoid
the spiders and her painting him. The rent
she paid didn't compare to the tuition they
saved by fake-living in the district. Being
fake-trial separated. Headed for fake-divorce
due to faked domestic abuse.

Mindy was trying on a new her. This neigh-
bor was the mirror she watched herself re-
flected in. She saw the way he must see her.

/O FICTION

ing reckless afternoon sex with. The exact
words didn't matter.

She looked at his scarred gut. Looked long
enough to let him see that she was looking.
Someone had tortured this man cruelly and
Mindy kept waiting for that cruelty to sur-
face in him.

She remembered Gauguin's bare-breasted
Tahitian women. Toulouse-Lautrec's ghastly
parlor-house whores. All the women turned
into art by men and then forgotten. All the
men made famous by discarded women.

Under the sun his pale face had darkened
and his dark hair had lightened until they
were the same red-brown. A detail maybe
no one except a true artist would note. All of
those forgotten women she would avenge. He
would be her muse. Like a Bridges of Madi-
son County-type situation only with her as
the savvy artist and him as the dim-witted
foreigner. That seemed like progress as these
things went. Trust her, he didn't, not to date.
She needed his trust.

That evening in the car, driving home with

with both eyes blackened and a swelling on
her forehead so tight it looked to split the
skin, that and a fat lip, with racquetball
bruises on her neck and collarbones, she as-
sured him it was just to keep up appearances.
To placate him she brought up how much
she’d be getting in food stamps and rent as-
sistance. The government was practically
paying them to send Noah to a better school.
On Ivan, the bruises did the trick. His
name was Ivan, her neighbor. He accepted
her life as a prostitute brimming with dis-
eases and still kissed her hurt mouth. He
seemed to appreciate that she wasn't starved
to prison-camp thinness. Not like that Myra
from yoga everyone said was so perfect. Ivan
would lay claim to big handfuls of her and
marvel over her skin. Beautiful she was,
merely by not being scarred by barbed wire
and dog bites. His smell she got acclimated
to, and he wore a fresh condom every time
without her having to ask which put him a
notch above Benny on the gentleman scale.
Such a man she'd never met. Ivan wept

over her bruises. Kissed them, he did and
swore to end the life of the whoremonger
who beat her so savagely. A Fifty Shades of
Grey situation it was, except she had to beat
herself. This too seemed like progress as
gender relations went.

Noah on the contrary, her genius, shaped
up to be her problem child. Driving back to
the house one night he announced that his
angel, his Natasha, her parents had relocated
to Burien. Such a gifted, talented boy he was,
Noah wanted to transfer back to Ansel Park.
Forget the kiln and Japanese immersion.
This, after Ivan had bought her a car, a Ford,
so a prostitute riding the bus she’d stop hav-
ing to be. Such a romantic, that Ivan. Driv-
ing her clunker Ford back to Ansel Park,
she asked Noah, “You want I should tell your
father you beat yourself?”

It sounded dirty, but he knew what she
meant.

What she didn’t say was how proud she
felt. Her Noah hadn't inherited his father’s
talent for lousy acting. Benny with his
always-smiling, Benny couldn't hold a can-
dle to Ivan in the sack. But as her Unka was

and the landlord would show Ivan the unit
with her uniforms hanging in the closet, her
dirty Arby’s bag on the counter while she’d be
vanished Amelia Earhart-style.

Right during sex someone came honk-
honking, some car, into the parking lot.

From the window she looked to see Benny
pull in. Benjamin, who'd collected Noah
from his last day at Delmar Fields. Happy
smiling like a dog he was. Like a golden
something dog, he stepped out of his car and
called up to her window, “So this is where you
live? What a dump!”

Before she could answer, Ivan happened.
Tell Benny to run, she wanted to, but Ivan
burst out of the apartment door wearing only
boxer shorts and his scars. Ivan snatched up
something from his open toolbox beside the
fake-broken-down Ford. The whatever tool
it was, Ivan ran up and backhanded Benny
with it. Swatted Benny across the face. One
of those knives it was, like from cutting car-
pets with a sliding-out razor blade. Mindy
could see because Ivan flung the knife away
and disappeared sprinting down the street.

Benny, that Benny, he had her going. He

from both corners of his wide-open mouth.
Pretend twitching, facedown in the gravel,
he was, while from the apartment window
Mindy filmed with her camera phone and
shouted, “Bravo, Benjamin Brume!” And,
“You're not fooling anyone, mister!”

And like maybe they took acting les-
sons together, but their Noah jumped out
of the car in slow motion and fell, skidded
and fell in his hurry, crawling across sharp
gravel on his hands and knees he did. Noah
crawled to his father to fake a tourniquet
around his father’s neck using only his bare
hands, shouting, “Dad! Don’t die, Dad!”
even as they’re both hamming it up in a
flood of Chinese mustard.

Yael Singer, Mindy half expected to
jump out from behind a tree, this looked so
phony. The Goldblatts and the Futters and
that Myra, all watching to see Mindy get
what’s coming to her. With sirens, yes am-
bulance sirens even her Benny had paid to
come screaming closer and closer for added
realism. Benny who’d thought of everything,
such a stage manager he was. Her Benjamin,
whom she'd married and given a son, and who

ART BY MEN AND THEN FORGOTTEN. THE
ALL OF THOSE WOMEN SHE WOULD AVENGE.

fond of saying, not that she could remember,
but in English it came out as, “No good eel
doesn’t get stale.”

Not that she told Noah, but she was glad to
be fake-reconciling from her fake-separation
for fake-spousal abuse. She’d only ever told
Ivan her name was Liana. Her crap from col-
lege, the Ford he’d bought, she could walk
away from. Simply leave the keys on the
apartment counter and pull the door shut,
locked behind her. Ivan wouldn’t have a clue
where to look.

Their last afternoon in the sack, Mindy
looked around at the mildew. Her way to say
good-bye was by giving Ivan an Arby’s sand-
wich they could share in a bed she’d never
have to make. Dirty sheets she would leave
behind. Disappear she would, step into her
Jil Sander slacks and catch the bus to her
fake sex workplace. She’d told Ivan the Ford
was idling rough, dying at stoplights, so he’d
hauled out his toolbox to make repairs. Not
the truth, Mindy’s story, but reason enough
to abandon the car. Give it a week, two weeks,

truly did, the way he put both hands over
his throat and hot Chinese mustard from
Williams-Sonoma came gushing out between
his fingers. But gallons it was, pouring out.
Red-brown mustard that must cost a fortune,
it was so much, especially for Benny who’d
obviously spared no expense to teach her a
lesson. Of course he’d hired this Ivan person,
who most likely was mowing someone’s lawn
in Ansel Park and who wouldn't say no, not if
it meant getting paid to screw Mindy and get
Benny’s revenge for the brisket at the Sing-
ers’ party. As if this time his throat was really
cut, except it looked so fake.

Benny was that kind of petty, he was. All
this pettiness just to prove he could act.

From the window Mindy watched her hus-
band sink to his knees. His eyes, he was mak-
ing the same slaughterhouse eyes hed made
with the brisket knife. Whatever secret ap-
paratus he’d rigged it was pumping tons, yes
tons of expensive Chinese mustard into the
gravel, and he pretended to topple forward.
Fake-gasping with Chinese mustard gurgling

rewarded her by fake-going limp in the arms
of their Noah in the dirty parking lot all be-
cause of her ruining his favorite Perry Ellis.

A little embarrassed Mindy felt now about
how loose she’d got, how soft and loose she’d
got so fast with this hired Ivan. That shill,
Ivan, she’d wanted him so bad. Well, the joke
was on her. Hah-ha! And like something else
she couldn’t remember, it came to mind.
More immigrant wisdom, but when her Unka
said it, the words came out “To a liar the
whole world looks like a lie.”

Well the joke, the final punch line would
be Benjamin Brume, double hah-ha, because
he’d never know to laugh. And such a joke!
Her monthly period Mindy hadn’t had in six
weeks. It could be more, maybe, but play-
acting Benny, her playing-dead husband
would be raising the child of his hired Ivan.

The scope of his routine, not to mention the
expense, all to humiliate her, Mindy Brume.
She stood in the apartment window looking
down, she did, then put aside filming and
started to clap her hands. But very slowly. №

PLAYBOY /]

i-o Af “+++ ъ >

РНОТОСКАРНУ ВУ

JOSH RYAN

JANUARY PLAYMATE PLAYBOY 73

We're kicking off the year with an extraordinary January
Playmate: Vendela will challenge, charm and inspire
you, if you have the guts to get in the ring

People often paint a picture of me way before they even meet me.
They think that I am a certain way because of my shaved head and
tough look. In reality, I’m extremely shy. A friend once said, “You
look like a badass, but deep inside you are as soft as baby shit.” Still,
I am able to tap into a certain confidence in front of the camera—a
safe zone where I can access my alter ego. I get to switch between this
tough character, when I’m on set, and the real-life version of me. I
guess that’s why people get so confused.

As much as I’m not what people expect, I always try to be up-front
with who I am. I’m very blunt and sarcastic. Also, everything I do is
all or nothing. This is why I sometimes struggle with social media. I
try really hard to make people laugh and feel good about themselves.
I don’t want people to go through my Instagram and leave it feeling
worse. I try to keep it as real as possible without publicly ranting
when I’m having a bad day or putting my private life out there and
disrespecting the people around me.

I try to be someone people can relate to. That’s why I’ve been very
open about my experience getting out of an abusive relationship a
few years ago, all while having issues with alcohol and eventually
getting sober. I know these are things that many people struggle
with but may not be comfortable discussing. I want to show people
that they don’t have to be strong all the time and that it’s okay to have
flaws because we all have them.

My goal is to be a strong role model. I love lending support to other
women—helping them be confident with who they are and the skin
they’re in. We often beat ourselves up about things we can’t control.
People have been telling me my whole life that I can’t be a model be-
cause I’m only five-foot-five, and I still struggle with that. I grew up
in Sweden, where you're supposed to go to school, get a degree, get
a good nine-to-five job, get married, have kids and buy a house—
and that's it. My dream has always been so much bigger than that,
but I had to fight my way out of my comfort zone to get to where Iam
today. І came to the U.S. around two years ago, with a thousand bucks
in my bank account, to go to school. Since then I’ve achieved so much
more than I could’ve ever imagined.

It’s important to take risks in order to get where you want to be in
life. Don’t ever settle. a

74

PLAYBOY /5

77

w. >> ӘБ
"a Фурье
`< — n ке

DATA SHEET

BIRTHPLACE: Stockholm, Sweden CURRENT CITY: Los Angeles, California

ON BIG BREAKS

| booked one of my first big jobs when | got
a call from an agency | didn't even know |
was signed to. They were like, “Are you still
bald? We've got a job for you.” lt was to
be the first female face of the video game
Battlefield 1. A lot of people supported it,
but a lot of others hated that they put a
girl on the cover.

ON POSING NUDE

It's so empowering. We should be proud
of our bodies. We all have the right to
be naked and embrace the body as art.
But with nude shoots, | have to be really
comfortable. | won't shoot something
passive; I'll only shoot something that
makes me feel powerful.

ON INDULGENCE

The walloaper on my phone is a picture
of garlic bread. | just love food, especially
creme brúlëe, cheesecake and ice cream.

ON MEN

| like darker, athletic guys. | work out a lot
and take care of my body, so | expect guys
to do the same. It doesn't mean he has to
be super shredded, but | want to feel safe
with my guy. | also need a guy who can
be sarcastic back to me, you know? Im
a sarcastic asshole most of the time, so |
need someone who can deal with it.

ON ATTRACTION

| love a man bun. | really love long-haired
guys. | dont know why. | don't like beards,
but | like a man bun! Maybe it’s the juxta-
position of a guy wearing his long hair tied
up in a bun with my shaved head.

ON BOXING

My trainer and | laugh so hard every ses-
sion. | love boxing, but I’m so uncoordi-
nated. Не! show me a combination,
down to every distinct punch, and my
reaction is just “Huh?” Every single time.

ON TOUGH LOVE

I'm very straightforward. | say exactly what
| think, and some people get butt-hurt. |
love very deeply. | would do anything for
the people closest to me. If | cut you out,
| have a really good reason. But it takes a
lot for me to get there. | love hard, and |
give tough love.

ON INSTINCT

In relationships, in friendships, in the
workplace, if youre not comfortable
doing something, always trust your gut
feeling. Don't ever do something you
really don't want to do.

ONBRAVERY

I'm working on taking more risks in my
work. PLAYBOY is one of those risks that was
out of my comfort zone and ended up
being a great choice. | don't want to be too
scared. | don't want to grow up and get old
and be like, What if | had done that?

PLAYBOY 57

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P 89

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3JLVNAV1d 6107

ALVWAVW 1d 6LOZ AUVNNVE

In America, punk has
become a safe and
predictable rite of passage;
in Yangon, Myanmar's
largest city, it’s a matter
of life and death

STORY AND PHOTOS BY
DANIEL С. BRITT

Peace Ihrou

PUNK

88

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Min Sid, singer of
Yangon punk band
Outcast, hasa
smoke at Shwedagon
Pagoda.

PLAYBOY 89

Min Sid’s upper lip curls and his tattooed
hands twitch at the wrist. Slight spasms grab
at the 22-year-old punk rocker’s cheek as
he examines the sharp silhouettes in front
of him. Onstage at the Caribbean-themed
Pirate Bar in downtown Yangon, he’s a liv-
ing metaphor for his country, Myanmar—its
modern skin and its bone-deep agony.

He wrote songs in 2017 while weaning him-
self off heroin with street methadone and
amphetamines. Tremors still run like fall-
ing dominoes up his arms and into his face,
a steady hum below Min Sid’s smile as he
watches 50 punks, all dyed Mohawks and
fishnet T-shirts, fall over one another. Every-
one is sloppy-friendly drunk, and everyone
in the room loves Min Sid, the Yangon punk
scene’s rising star. Everyone is his brother—
his “bruzaaah!” Still, he can’t help but won-
der if the police will cut the power to the
show, as they have in the past, or how many
of the taxi drivers hopping out of their cabs to
eyeball the crowd are paid police informants.

For these 20-somethings dousing one an-
other in beer, this is a gathering of chosen
family. The Yangon punk scene breaks down
into three waves stretching back to the mid-
1990s, and luminaries from all three are in
attendance. Shway (not his real name), the
reclusive founding father of Yangon punk,
with hair too thin to be teased into a Mohawk,
perches on a bar stool with his video camera.
He brought the first punk CDs—bootlegged
compilations of songs by New York band the
Casualties—into the Yangon open-air mar-
kets in 1996. Kyaw Thu Win, a.k.a. Kyaw
Kyaw, is credited with founding the scene’s

90

more worldly and web-savvy second wave.
His band, Rebel Riot, has been covered ex-
tensively by European journalists and young
documentary filmmakers ever since. Tonight
he’s master of ceremonies, popping in and
out of the spotlight, hyping the younger mu-
sicians and rallying the crowd with chants:
“Fuck discrimination! Fuck the war!”

At punk shows from Oakland, California
to Ridgewood, New York, cries like these are
obligatory, implied or mocked, and the stud-

ded jackets are Halloween costumes—relics
of a scene supplanted by myriad subgenres.
In Myanmar, where decades of discrimina-
tion have tumbled into genocide and the civil
war has been nursed by successive junta lead-
ers to span the past seven decades, “fuck the
war” means fuck the norm. It means fuck
the one thing all 135 ethnicities in Myanmar
have in common—life dangerously close to
blood-speckled grass and villages set ablaze
by government soldiers.

Ten or 20 foreign aid workers pepper the
floor, swaying above the native crowd like pale
palms in thick tennis shoes. (Most nights,
Pirate Bar is where this group seeks new faces
in the humanitarian dating pool.) Like every
other damp, green-lit gin mill and beer sta-
tion in Yangon, Pirate Bar tends to observe an
unspoken ban on political discussions, with
a special sensitivity to opinions about the
Rohingya exodus from Myanmar’s Rakhine
state. So it’s an unlikely place for an ideo-
logical cri de coeur, but on this April night,
the world churning around the pencil-thin
punk musicians of Myanmar’s largest city
has made it one. Since Shway’s first efforts,
a line has been drawn between Yangon punks
and the rest of their conservative homeland.
When Min Sid and his band, Outcast, take
the stage, they’re entering their country’s cul-
ture war, a shouting match between the Bud-
dhist majority, more than 35 million strong,
and asmall community of derelict punk rock-
ers, starving artists and university students.

Both sides have their heels dug in, jockey-
ing for the philosophical heart of a military
state only recently reopened to the West with
the free election of Aung San Suu Kyiin 2015.
The three-front civil war the government
has waged against minority populations for
the past 70 years has been decried in only
a few places in Myanmar; Pirate Bar is one
of them. Cops generally tolerate the punks,
but the bar is only a mile from the notori-
ously corrupt Kyauktada police station, so all
bets are off. In January 2018, Kyauktada sta-
tion cops forced poet and Muslim civil rights
activist Than Toe Aung into the back of avan.
They beat him there and at the station before
his family paid a bribe for his release.

Suddenly power chords pummel the thick
air, ascending in pitch and volume; in his
mind, Min Sid begins to levitate. Music is

Opposite: A Yangon punker mounts а charm offensive. Above, clockwise from top left: Min Sid strikes a biblical pose outside
Shwedagon Pagoda; punks take a break from Pirate Bar's beer-soaked mayhem; Kyaw Kyaw displays a print from the photo
shoot that resulted in personal threats and his written promise that he'd leave the Buddha out of future Rebel Riot endeavors.

like heroin in that way, he says later: It makes
him feel like he’s floating. He turns his back
to the crowd and focuses on the scrawny
musicians onstage with him.

He screams into the mike, “Break bounda-
raaaay!”

He’s floating above the boundaries he
grew up with—a nationalist education, a tra-
ditional Burmese society based on confor-
mity and a marathon of military assaults

that formed a circle of death around Yangon.

He aims his addled truth at the ceiling:
“Cunt authoritaaaay!”

A few blocks beyond Min Sid’s voice, in the
Yaw Min Gyi neighborhood, Buddhist devo-
tees young and old lay down long red carpets
on closed-off streets. It’s only a few weeks
before the April New Year’s celebration, and
plush outdoor meditation rugs line large
portions of the city. Rocking back and forth

PLAYBOY 201

with their eyes closed, somewhere between
wakefulness and sleep, monks lead the crowd
droning mantras for hours into the hot night.
Burma, the former British colony and Japa-
nese puppet state, rejected its colonial name
in 1989 in exchange for Myanmar, a move
meant to acknowledge not just the ethnic Bur-
mese majority but all the ethnicities within its
borders. That may have been the government’s
last move toward inclusivity. Its attacks on the
Rohingya, Kachin, Shan and Karen people
in 2017 and 2018 make Myanmar’s overarch-
ing domestic policy look like a race to violently
displace minorities—for mineral resources in
the case of the Kachin, for poppy farmland in
the case of the Shan and Karen, and for fear of
a religious and cultural takeover in the case of
the Rohingya Muslims.

The Myanmar government of the 1990s was
as opaque and as opposed to freedom of ex-
pression as it is today. Large expanses of the
countryside were closed to journalists and the
public, as they are now. Locals say much of that

was enacted by the British Governorate in
1923 to classify evidence of corruption as
an official state secret, allowing colonials to
jail Burmese insurgents.

Myanmar’s openness to Western busi-
ness can be seen in the expat boat parties
in the port of Yangon and the slick bars and
English-language classrooms popping up all
over the city. Distrust of the Western media
and international standards of free speech,
which flowed in with the American and Euro-
pean money, is just as plain.

“Fake news from America!” is a frequent
café reaction to New York Times stories that
treat Myanmar government militarism as acts
of war instead of self-defense or antiterror-
ism measures. Inquisitive foreigners are likely
to be told they have no right to speak about
Myanmar, but the reality of this young democ-
racy is that natives are also limited in their
right to talk about their country. Laws govern-
ing protest, telecommunications and defama-
tion, many left over from British colonial rule,
are still used by the government to jail critics.

“BUDDHA DIDN'T NEED
ANYBODY ELSE. HE
WENT HIS OWN WAY,
LIKE JOHNNY CASH.

land was grabbed by the military and privately
mined for jade or divided into government
contract farms. Those who got too close to ex-
posing the illegal economies in those regions
were jailed or disappeared altogether, accord-
ing to Kyaw Kyaw. “There is danger for people
who make noise—still today,” he says.

The journalist Soe Moe Tun, reporting on
illegal logging in the Sagaing region, was
beaten to death in late 2016. The same year,
two reporters’ homes were threatened with
bombs in the Rakhine and Kachin states.
In another case, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe
Oo, two Reuters reporters who uncovered
a mass grave and verified the summary ex-
ecution of 10 Rohingya men by government
soldiers and Buddhist villagers in Rakhine
state in the fall of 2017, have been sentenced
to seven-year prison sentences for violating
the Official Secrets Act. A vague and anti-
quated piece of colonial legislation, the OSA

92

Human Rights Watch reports that by the
beginning of 2016, 166 people were awaiting
trial for breaking the Peaceful Assembly Law,
including students who'd protested against
the role of the military in government, farm-
ers who'd protested the confiscation of their
land for government gem mines and journal-
ists who'd protested the arrest of other journal-
ists. The legislation’s vague language penalizes
“statements likely to cause fear and alarm” and
those who “disturb the public tranquility.”

To make matters worse, political activism
in Myanmar fell into complacency after once
lauded humanitarian Aung San Suu Kyi took
office as state counselor in 2016.

“Their reasoning was that Aung San Suu Kyi
was elected democratically. It’s what the peo-
ple wanted, so what is there left to protest?”
says Zin Linn, a Yangon-based musician and
activist on the fringes of the punk scene.

Since Aung San Suu Kyi’s election, the

Tatmadaw, the military arm of the Myan-
mar government, has maintained consider-
able operations countrywide. In August, the
United Nations called for Myanmar’s mili-
tary leaders to be tried in the International
Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes
committed during the 2017 crackdown on
the Rohingya. By September China had an-
nounced its opposition to “internationaliz-
ing” issues surrounding the Rohingya crisis,
effectively saying it would vote against extra-
diting Myanmar’s military leaders for a trial.

Aung San Suu Kyi has proven reluctant to
denounce the government’s scorched-earth
campaign in the Rakhine state; as a result,
she’s been stripped of human rights prizes
including the Elie Wiesel Award from the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
the Freedom of Oxford award and the Free-
dom of the City of Dublin award.

“She’s the same as all the others,” Zin Linn
says. “It doesn’t matter how they get power.”

The Pirate Bar stage feels like the only place
in Yangon where popular opinion doesn’t fall
blindly in step with the government’s propa-
ganda newspapers. Endless Western media
reports that Rohingya Muslims continue
to flee government-sanctioned violence in
Rakhine, along with news of a spike in mili-
tary assaults in Kachin, have created a sense
that Yangon is an alternate universe. Silent
while war is all around. Silent except for this
beer-soaked bastion of free expression.

Kyaw Kyaw says that Shway passed down his
primary tenet of punk in 2004: “Solidarity,”
he said, “is number one.”

Those words have echoed between Kyaw
Kyaw’s shaved temples for the past 14 years.
In that time he has become the charismatic,
English-speaking face of the Yangon punk
scene. He and Rebel Riot are the focus of the
documentary My Buddha Is Punk, released last
January on Vimeo on Demand. Another ru-
mored project, a crowd-funded narrative film
about a female filmmaker from Europe mar-
ginalized because of her fetish for Asian males,
began production in the summer of 2017; Kyaw
Kyaw plays the pierced love interest.

But visibility alone doesn’t pay the bills,
so Kyaw Kyaw converted his apartment,
perched in a walk-up in the Hledan district,
into a screen-printing shop. (The Rebel Riot
shop sign being difficult to see from the
street, it’s much easier to follow the sound
of Bob Marley, Cannibal Corpse and Pantera
upward to the third-floor balcony.) The sale
of Rebel Riot shirts pays for rent and food for
the transient musicians between gigs. More
important, the shop is where everyone meets.
When I walk in, a metal guitarist and a Vice
journalist visiting from Hamburg are smok-
ing and talking about politics and the punk
scene in Germany. Punks from the coun-
tryside wander into the shop for drunken

The pit at Pirate Bar last April, on the night of the Outcast show.

jam sessions and family-style meals. Out-
cast drummer Japan Gyi celebrated his 22nd
birthday there over a meal of Myanmar Beer,
dried crickets and sautéed chicken heads.
Kyaw Kyaw appears to have taken Shway’s
philosophy of solidarity to heart while dodg-
ing corrupt police and protesting the con-
flicts that encircle Yangon. Focusing on the
idea that political change in Myanmar must
be generational, for the past three years he
has been on a mission to expose schoolchil-
dren in rural villages to punk (not to mention
pop) music, the arts and the international
media before they get hooked on government-
controlled television news. Through crowd-
funding, Rebel Riot has toured Thailand,
Indonesia and much of Eastern Europe,
building a roster of promoters and paving the
way for Outcast and other third-wave bands.
Solidarity was number one with Shway be-
cause he knew the punk community would
suffocate without it. They are a generation
on the margins of a traditional Buddhist so-
ciety that often sees artists as people too stu-
pid or weak to pursue careers in business.
Their country is by turns maniacally paci-
fist and militaristic, a new democracy and
an old colony. Individual rights are deter-
mined by the ethnicity listed on a person’s
national identification card. A tightly knit
punk community—and vocal opposition to
the government war machine—could grow

if musicians and fans had one another’s tat-
tooed backs, if they lived as though punk
were their listed ethnicity.

Meanwhile, Kyaw Kyaw and his band are
at constant risk. Threats rolled in over Face-
book after Kyaw Kyaw posed as a punk-rock
version of Buddha while other members of
Rebel Riot dressed as Jesus and the Hindu
goddess Shiva for a photo shoot in Thailand.
When the threats intensified and found their
way to Kyaw Kyaw’s cell phone, he signed an
agreement with a Yangon governing body
stating that he would never again punkify the
Buddha. But that didn’t stop him from writ-
ing a song called “Fuck Religious Rules”:

Fuck religious rules

There are no human rights by religious rules

There is genocide by religious wars

Religious rules fuck off!

Religious conservatism isn't the only thing
threatening to snuff out the Yangon punk
scene. Min Sid began his path to punk
rock enlightenment—and his descent into
addiction—in the blackest, moldiest con-
crete tenement on Lan Thit Yeit Thar, astreet
on the west side of the city. Here, scraps of
thick, construction-grade bamboo, browned
palm fronds and the silhouettes of passed-
out drunks decorate the sidewalk. When it
rains, cigarette butts roll into the awnings
and tumble down, floor by floor, into black

puddles on the sidewalk. The older buildings,
with their porous concrete under-muscle ex-
posed, grow another layer of mold, wide black
patches that fade out like reverb.

In the stairwell leading up to his home,
in the shadows cast by the rebar security
door, Min Sid shot heroin into his arm for
the first time. As a teen, he was getting paid
to turn his sketches of animals into tattoos.
Sometimes kids in the neighborhood paid
in cash; sometimes they paid in drugs. Min
Sid quickly learned his place in the world's
second-largest opioid-producing drug econ-
omy (Afghanistan being number one). Opi-
oids and amphetamines produced in Kachin
state and in the Wa region of the Shan state
make their way to Yangon, according to Min
Sid, and beyond the borders to Bangladesh
via a network of corrupt statesmen, tribal
leaders and police. Use of the product as cur-
rency is a testament to its popularity and its
casual tether to daily life. Workers who pro-
duce heroin and other drugs, and those who
distribute them, are often paid in kind and
encouraged to use or sell, Min Sid says.

According to Nang Pann Ei Kham of the
Drug Policy Advocacy group in Myanmar,
there were 83,000 injection-drug users in
the country in 2016. In 2017, Myanmar jour-
nalists reported that authorities had seized
4.6 million methamphetamine pills in Feb-
ruary in Rakhine's Maungdaw township,
near the border of Bangladesh, and 400,000
additional pills that May. The same year,
$220 million in opiates and amphetamines
were seized and burned by the government
for show. The Associated Press took a video.

Two of Min Sid's close friends died
heroin-related deaths. His addicted cousin
disappeared into the countryside and has
been missing for the past three years. Min
Sid didn't feel right screaming “cunt au-
thority” while he was lining the authorities”
pockets, even as a small-time addict. On
top of tragedy and hypocrisy, there were the
relentless beatings—though not ones deliv-
ered by gangs or other druggies over money
or territory. Min Sid's traditional Burmese
mother whupped him silly every time she
saw him high, including the time she and his
father carried him to the hospital, shitting
his pants and choking on his own vomit.

“Tt was hard on my family, so my mom was
hard on me,” he says, his hand instinctively
moving upward to cover the back of his head.
A few days after the Pirate Bar show, Min Sid
and I are walking around diamond-topped
Shwedagon Pagoda, his country’s most sacred
temple. Somehow he’s the one who looks like
a foreigner—a guy in black sneaking off to
smoke cigs, a huge breach of pagoda etiquette,
while everyone else is lighting incense, pray-
ing and washing the Buddha statues for luck.

“These people forget that Buddha didn’t

PLAYBOY 93

need anybody else,” Min Sid says. “He went
his own way, like Johnny Cash.”

Many of the families here most likely don’t
believe that more than half a million people
have been forcibly uprooted from the north-
western part of their country, or that the mil-
itary crackdown on the Rohingya has been
called genocide by the UN. The state news-
papers, The Mirror Daily and The Global
New Light of Myanmar, don’t run photos of
the burning Muslim houses in Rakhine’s
Maungdaw township.

“We trust our government to handle ter-
rorists,” one man says between prayers.

Last April, a young Rohingya citizen jour-
nalist was my eye inside Maungdaw. He de-
scribed a black skyline outside his window,
caused, he said, by around-the-clock house
fires. They stopped burning only if a Euro-
pean dignitary was coming into the Rakhine
state, he said. After his third dictated report,
the journalist fled to Bangladesh.

That same month, Thingyan, the annual
water festival, began under a clear blue sky
in Yangon. It was four days of fire hoses soak-
ing the crowds at outdoor concerts. Drunken
water fights between cars on gridlocked
streets welcomed Myanmar’s New Year. Hav-
ing left Bangladesh a month earlier, I knew
that right across the Naf River at Tulabagan,
the newest Rohingya refugee encampment,
Rohingya families had their jerricans lined
up around one dry well, waiting for rain.

Within the Yangon state-media twilight
zone, many locals believe the official nar-
rative that the Rohingya have killed one
another, set their own houses on fire and dis-
placed themselves en masse in order to gain
sympathy from the Western media. Others
say the government assault on Rohingya
families is a well-deserved retaliation: In
August 2017, a group of Rohingya extremists
attacked 30 police stations in Rakhine, kill-
ing at least a dozen policemen. According to
Matthew Wells, a senior crisis advisor with
Amnesty International, that same month,
the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, a
Rohingya Muslim extremist group, executed
nearly 100 Hindu men, women and children.

The punks look at the military crony gov-
ernment, organized Buddhism and the gov-
ernment education they received with a
skepticism that’s hard to find elsewhere in
Yangon. They’re unafraid to scream their
doubts onstage or to have sympathy for those
ignored by the majority of ethnic Burmese.
The punks may be hazy on the nuances of
the current Myanmar conflicts, but based on
their childhoods spent within an aging pro-
paganda machine, they suspect the state nar-
rative isn’t the full story. A lot of what they’ve
learned in Myanmar just doesn’t jibe with
the rest of the world, suggests Kyaw Kyaw.

“For example, in Myanmar Hitler is a
national hero,” he says.

94

Japanese generals founded the Tatmadaw
during World War II, and government edu-
cation in Myanmar still delivers an Axis ver-
sion of history. According to a local, world
history textbooks for grades eight and 10
make no mention of the Holocaust. Descrip-
tions of Nazism and fascism don’t go far
beyond “strong” and “unifying.” When I ap-
proach a university student for a quick man-
on-the-street interview, he describes Hitler
as a “determined artist who, with hard work,
made himself into a world leader.” Pop your
head into a café and you'll likely glimpse a
few Hitler screen savers. If you share a ride
with a traveler from Germany, odds are a
Yangon taxi driver will give a thumbs-up and
say, “Germany good! Hitler good!”

The silence in Yangon crackles. After New
Year, an uptick in clashes between the gov-
ernment and Kachin state insurgents dis-
placed 6,000 people. Starving families
caught in the crossfire near Hpakant spent
the summer hiding in the bush, living on
banana stems. Reports from aid agencies
in the region read like screams from a dis-
tant point in the sea, though Google shows
Hpakant to be around a day’s drive away.

The illusion of Myanmar is as convincing
as the ragged sparrow handlers who sit on the
curb with their caged birds. For a few kyats,

< `

VC

a handler will release a bird into the air,
freighted with tourist wishes. But they don't
release the birds for long; the cage is their
home. The sparrows will return for seeds, to
be released and caged again for more money.

“Many things in Myanmar are like this,”
Kyaw Kyaw says. "It's hard for foreigners to
see my people. When we are happy we smile
at you. When we are angry we also smile."

At Shwedagon Pagoda, Min Sid and I sing
"I've Been Everywhere" and “Folsom Prison
Blues" while mantras fill the air around us.
It isn't the first time the Man in Black has
come up: After the Pirate Bar show, Min Sid
stayed drunk for two days, visiting punk-
rocker friends and playing music. At one
point the punks got into a fistfight with
some locals from a village on the outskirts
of Yangon—"redneck Burmese," he called
them. When the police asked for the punks'
names, Min Sid slackened his jaw and in a
comically deep voice said, "I'm Johnny Cash,
and this is Tennessee Two."

Here at the pagoda, every voice connects to
the next. The hum bouncing off the ancient
inlaid walls and countless ivory statues of the
Buddha brings out the vestigial drug tremor
in Min Sid's cheek. In that moment, in his
weary, tattoo-fringed face, I see what Kyaw
Kyaw was talking about: angry,smiling. M

A traffic jam, Yangon-style, with Shwedagon Pagoda looming over it all.

“Га feel more comfortable if my safe word was at least eight characters long
with one number and an uppercase letter.”

PLAYBOY 95

—

96 209

. Cookie both on

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_ The powerhouse actress

and star of What Men Want
(who has gone by the name

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICAIAH CARTER

Q1: In What Men Want, you play a woman who is
able to hear what men are thinking. Do you actu-
ally want to know what men are thinking?
HENSON: I don’t want that. I have too much shit
rattling around in my head already. We shouldn't
need that anyway. If men were just honest and
put their shit on the table, we wouldn’t need no
voodoo. We need more communication. Once
you start talking, you realize that men and
women want the same goddamn things: They
want someone they can trust with their heart,
they want protection, they want security. That’s
what we all want as humans. It’s not deep.

Q2: The movie’s premise is that men think they
know everything about women, but we actually
have no idea. So what do guys not know about
women that we should?

HENSON: Women get emotional or upset when
we're pushed. It doesn’t come out of nowhere; it’s
provoked. Just because I’m emotional doesn’t
make me crazy. Men have to own their part in
that. You have to listen, listen, listen to your
woman. It goes both ways: When my man drives
me up the wall, I try to think about what hap-
pened and what I did to add to it. You've got to bea
grown-up to be ina relationship. It can't be “Ilove
you as long as you're doing right by me.” Love is “I
love you even when you fall. I love you even when
I hate your ass. You piss me off, but I made din-
ner for your stank ass anyway ’cause I love you."
ОЗ: You're getting married this summer to former
NFL player Kelvin Hayden. Are you ready?
HENSON: I'm still learning how to be ready.
Every day I'm learning how to be better in a re-
lationship. I just found out, in our therapy ses-
sions, that men have fewer words than women. I
didn’t know that. They run out of words. Because
women are emotional, we want to talk through
everything. Of course we have more words; we're
the communicators. Kelvin, he thinks he’s aco-
median. Anytime we're inadisagreement or I'm
like, “We need to talk about this,” he'll look at
me and say, “Baby, I done ran out of words.” He’s
joking, but I’m starting to accept that it’s true.
Q4: Speaking of listening to each other, your
next film, out in April, is The Best of Enemies, in
which you play civil rights activist Ann Atwater,
who forms an unlikely friendship with Klan leader

98 20Q

ee

ONCE YOU START TALKING,
YOU REALIZE THAT MEN AND
WOMEN WANT THE SAME
GODDAMN THINGS.

C.P. Ellis. Did making this movie make you want to
leave your bubble?

HENSON: I do it through my art. That’s why this
movie is so important. Me talking to one per-
son is not going to be as effective as the movie,
because it takes a big old mirror and says, “Hey,
America, look at yourself.” Although Atwater
was on the right side of history, she had the
same intolerance as that man. They were both
radical in their beliefs. They had to sit across
from each other, look each other in the eye to
really see themselves. We all need to get to that
point with each other. We need to look at the
people we disagree with and say, “You ain’t bet-
ter than me. We’re the same person.”

Q5: Atwater couldn't be more physically different
from you. What was the biggest challenge in that
transformation?

HENSON: I knew I had to be padded. When I came
in for my fitting, the suit they gave me had these
perky little tits. I was like, “Um, I don’t know if
this is gonna work.” Physicality is very impor-
tant to me, especially when I’m taking on some-
body who's real. I needed big breasts, the kind
that change the way you walk and that you have
to think about when you sit. I mean, the boobs
on this suit, they were like my boobs. I was like,
“Can you all please call Tyler Perry and ask him
what Madea got in her boobs?” All the pictures
Гуе seen of Atwater, this woman looked like
she ate pork chops, ribs, corn bread, smothered
chicken, fatback, neck bones. When she sat down
for a meal, those titties got to rest on the table.
Q6: This is our Freedom of Speech issue. Is there
anyone in the world right now you wish would just
shut the hell up?

HENSON: You know who I wish would shut the
hell up. He wears a wig and does way too much
tanning. [laughs] Just be quiet, just shhh, take
anap. Just put his finger in a muzzle so he won't
tweet anymore. Do they have finger muzzles?
[both our phones start blaring] Holy crap, is that
the president? Oh my God! [checks phone and
sees it’s an Amber alert| Oh shit, I was about to
freak out. I seriously thought that was the presi-
dent telling us to stop talking about him. I was
about to change my name and move somewhere.
That is funny as hell. I know they’re spying on

us. On our phones, on everything. Sometimes ГП
say something and Siri will just come alive, and
I'm like, “Bitch, I didn’t call for you!” I'm going
to become Amish, that’s what the fuck I'm going
to do. Just get all this technology out of my life.
Q7: You grew up in a rough part of Washington,
D.C. Did you ever feel unsafe, or were your parents
able to shield you?

HENSON: It was what it was. You acclimate to your
surroundings if you want to survive. My mom
was robbed twice, and I was with her both times,
once when I was six and again when I was seven.
I’m sure she was petrified. It definitely trauma-
tized me. But her strength is what made me feel
safe enough to leave the house again and not be
afraid. She didn’t give me achoice. The next day,
she woke me up and said, “Come on, let's go. Time
for school.” I couldn’t believe it. There she was,
getting ready for work with a black eye, trying to
cover it with makeup, combing over the bald spot
where the guy had pulled out one of her plugs.
That’s strength. She instilled that in me.

Q8: Did growing up like that give you street
smarts?

HENSON: Not really. Listen, not everybody
from the hood got street smarts. I know some
dumbass motherfuckers in the hood, let me
tell you. [laughs] What gave me street smarts
was getting out of the hood. Every weekend, my
mom took me to a predominantly white neigh-
borhood in the suburbs to see my cousin Kim.
I played with Mary Beth and Karen and Josh,
all the kids with the suburban names. It made
me well-rounded. You could drop me off any-
where, this little girl from the hood, and I could
get along with anybody. That's why I always tell
kids, get out of your ZIP code. Education is get-
ting to know other people and other cultures.
Most inner-city kids never even get downtown.
Q9: Were you a rebellious kid, or did you follow
the rules?

HENSON: I followed the rules, because my
mother didn’t play. She did not play. She put the
fear of God into me. And that’s what you should
do; if you fear your parents, then you ain't going
out in the streets acting an ass. The worst I ever
screwed up was in seventh grade. I had some
girlfriends over, and we started calling phone

sex lines. It was a 999 number. We thought it
was like 888—it’s free! So we called these num-
bers, and then a week later my mom got a phone
bill for $600. That’s more than she paid in rent!
I thought she was going to murder me.

Q10: You grew up idolizing comedians like Carol
Burnett and Richard Pryor. What made their com-
edy so relatable?

HENSON: I think it’s because so much of comedy
comes from trauma. That’s what drives me some-
times. I’ve had alot of trauma in my life. You gotta
laugh to keep from crying. It just felt so impor-
tant to watch this stuff when I was younger. I re-
member begging my father, “Please, take me to
see Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip!” I
was 11. He said, “Okay, but ifyou tell your mother,
this never happened.” We got in there, and my
dad had abeer and fell straight asleep. I’m sitting
watching Pryor talk about dick and pussy. I was
mortified. I had to process that shit.

Q11: On Empire you play a character named
Cookie, which was also your nickname in college.
How were you first christened as Cookie?
HENSON: One of my dearest friends in the world,
Guinea Bennett, and I started this group called
Soul Nation, which later became the Dallas non-
profit theater Soul Rep. We were kids who came
of age in the 1970s and were proud of it. When
we were at Howard University, Guinea and I and
all our friends bought our clothes at thrift stores
and wore bell-bottoms. We gave each other new
names, like Leroy, Tyrone, things that sounded
like the 1970s. Mine was Cookie. The full name
was Cookie Gwendolyn Jones. I don’t know why
they picked Cookie for me. I think it’s because I
reminded Guinea of her aunt Cookie, who was a
spitfire. When I got the job on Empire, I called all
my college girlfriends and told them, “You will
never fucking believe this. I'm Cookie again!”
Q12: You moved to Los Angeles after college with

an infant son and 700 bucks in your pocket. Was
that as terrifying as it sounds?

HENSON: It wasn’t really. In your 20s, you're not
scared. You feel invincible. I was an artist with
a dream, and now that I was a mother I felt like
it was do or die. Being a parent is what kept me
focused. I didn’t go to the clubs, even though they
say that’s how you're supposed to network. I have
common sense, and nothing about that seemed
right to me. What networking happens at a club
where people are inebriated? Tell me, what con-
tracts are being signed? That’s stupid. I knew
what I had to offer; I just had to find somebody
to hear me. Anytime I felt scared, I'd call my dad.
Q13: What would he tell you?

HENSON: He would be like, “Don't you dare give
up!” He would just be continuously sowing seeds.
He used to tell me Га get an Oscar someday for
playing Diana Ross. [laughs] That was his
dream. And I believed him. Not about playing

66

IF PEOPLE GET
OFFENDED

BY MY
CHARACTERS,
[DID MY JOD.
BUT DON T
BEAT ME UP,

Diana Ross, but being an actor. He knew I could
do it, and he wanted it so bad for me. Just by ex-
ample, he showed me that nothing can hold you
back. He was homeless for a while, but he didn't
hide that from me. He'd drive by my school in the
van he was living in, give me 50 cents and tell me
everything was going to be okay. “Watch me, I'm
going to bounce back,” he told me. “I’m going to
get a motorcycle. I'm going to get a house with a
garage in the back so I can work from home.” Не
was proof that whatever doesn’t kill you makes
you stronger. If you fail, you just get back up.
That’s what he did. And in the end, he got his
house with the garage and his Harley.

Q14: Did he live to see your dreams come true?
HENSON: He saw Hustle & Flow happen, and he
saw it get the Oscar nominations. He was like,
"You're just getting started. You haven't seen
nothing yet.” He was gone by the time I sang
[the Oscar-nominated song “It's Hard Out
Here for a Pimp”] at the Oscars. He died just
two weeks prior. I was with him in the room
when it happened. He was spitting up blood,
and then he died. So that was fresh in my head,
and I didn’t really have time to process it. I com-
partmentalized that pain and sort of numbed
myself out. I went through the motions. It was
surreal being at the Oscars and looking at all
the faces out there, Helen Mirren, Nicole Kid-
man. And I’m up there singing about bitches
and hos, trying not to think about my father’s
face. [pauses as eyes water] As soon as it was
over and I went backstage, I just turned off. I
had nothing left. They were trying to take me to
parties, but I was like, “No, just take me home."
Q15: Why do you keep the middle initial in your
name? Is the P meaningful to you?

HENSON: My publicist used to tease me about
it: “Not to be confused with Taraji S. Henson or
Taraji C. Henson.” I was like, “Shut up!” Most
people feel like their middle name doesn’t mean
anything, but mine actually does. The P is for
Penda, and together with Taraji it means “hope
and love” in Swahili. How could I not keep it?
016: It's hard to think of another actress more
deserving of her own superhero movie. Have you
ever been tempted?

HENSON: Oh my God, yes! I want to do that so
bad! Do you know anyone we can call? There's
got to be somebody reading this who can make
it happen, one of those superhero movie pro-
ducers. Hello, I know y'all read PLAYBOY! I don't
care what the character is, ГИ take it. Just give
it to me. I don't give a shit what she looks like;
she don’t have to be sexy. She can be the bad girl.
I don't have to be the hero. I’ve played a lot of
heroes; all my characters are heroes. Cookie is a
hero. She's tough, she says the shit you can't say,
she stands up for everybody. So I wouldn't mind
playing a bad person—like the Joker. They've had
like six guys play the Joker already. Time to give
a female a chance at it.

017: How are you similar to Cookie? Is there a
part of you that could bust up a studio with a
baseball bat if somebody crossed you?

HENSON: My clothes are too expensive, honey.

I'm not breaking my nails for that. No, if I’m
that mad, ГП see you in court. Or better yet,
bye. Just bye. ГИ start new and fresh. I don't
need the drama. But there’s a lot about Cookie
I can relate to: I understand her fight for her
family. I understand her love for her boys.
I have a son. If someone tried to hurt him, I
would find the strength to knock you through
a brick wall.

Q18: Your son has struggled with depression, and
your dad had depression and PTSD. What gets
you out of the emotional quicksand?

HENSON: I get depressed sometimes, but for me
it’s not excessive. It’s the normal amount of sad-
ness, I think, when there are some days you just
can’t deal. When I feel it coming, that’s when I
need to attack my craft. I deal with so much in
my performances. Some actors lose themselves
in their characters and use it to cover up what
they’re really feeling. But for me it’s just the op-
posite. Every role, I’m constantly dealing with
me, with my issues. It’s how I relate to these
characters and make them more truthful. It can
be very therapeutic. After 20 takes of the same
scene, when I’m dealing with these things that
are troubling me, it lifts those dark clouds. You
go, Wow, I think I’m over that now. I used it and
dealt with it, and now it’s good. Ican move on.
Q19: Have you ever had a role that nearly killed
you emotionally or physically?

HENSON: I can already tell that the hardest one
ГЇЇ ever do is playing Emmett Till’s mother, and
I haven’t even finished reading the script yet.
John Singleton wrote it, and it’s just brutal.
Every page is making me ugly-face cry. What's so
daunting is you knowthe outcome. The way John
has magically and beautifully written his story,
yougetto knowthis kid, and that makes it worse.
Why did they have to do this to a child? What
threat was he that they had to mutilate him like
that? What's so hard is that it gets me think-
ing about Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown
and that nine-year-old kid in Brooklyn a white
woman accused of touching her ass. That's what
got Emmett Till killed! We're in 2018 and that
shit is still happening. I don't know if people are
ready for this movie. I don't even know ifI am.
Q20: Do you worry about cultural responsibility?
Even if a role is meaty, what if it's perceived as
insensitive to the African American community?
HENSON: What if it's too “hood” or “ghetto”?
Yeah, I get that. I worried about that with Cookie
when I first got offered the part. I was scared of
her. I was like, “What are people going to say?”
You have to put the judgment aside. When that
fear comes up, it’s usually judgment. Everybody
may not like these images up on the screen, but,
baby, they exist. We didn’t pull it out of the sky.
If you feel moved by it, go do something. Go to
the hood, donate your time so maybe we can
start seeing some changes. If people get of-
fended by my characters or feel they’re reflect-
ing something back at them they don’t want to
see, I did my job. I did it so well that it hurt your
feelings. [laughs] But don't beat me up. Don't
kill the messenger. E

PHOTOGRAPHY BY

108

EM
SHIRO

FROM AN UNASSUMING FRENCH CITY, A RISING
YOUNG ARTIST IS TAUNTING THE BOTS OF
INSTAGRAM IN AN EFFORT TO NORMALIZE (AND
RETHINK) NUDITY. GOOD NEWS: HE'S GETTING
AWAY WITH IT

в, KEVIN E.G. PERRY

n one collage, Kim Kardashian’s
perfect ass is perfectly perched on
Kanye West’s cracked-open calvar-
ium. In another, titled Oh Yeezus
Christ (Original), a snippet of Kar-
dashian’s famous bosom intersects
the habit of a Catholic nun. Else-
where, the president of the United
States dons a white baseball cap
stitched with the phrase MAKE YEEZY GREAT
AGAIN. While the Kardashian-West family
aren’t the only muses for 27-year-old artist
Emir Shiro, within his catalog of some 200
outré art pieces they no doubt reflect an ob-
session with simultaneously criticizing and
celebrating pop culture’s bleeding edge.
Through Shiro’s eyes, the world’s most well-
known personalities are better understood
as composites than at face value. They’re also
funnier this way and, dare we say, sexier.

It makes sense, then, that Instagram has
become Shiro’s preferred exhibition space.
The platform provides a main line to so-
cial media’s culture-focused crowds and
also serves as а critique-worthy subject it-
self, be it via his celebrity portrayals or his
increasingly popular erotic work. Beyond
the fun Shiro finds in appropriating Amer-
icana, including the McDonald’s golden
arches and the Nike swoosh—and even the
faces and bodies of the Kardashian-West
clan—Instagram’s infamous fervor for
censorship motivates his exploration of
the naked human body. His goal? Edit just
enough to elude the bots while still allow-
ing the imagination to soar.

The end products—pieces in which gen-

Born and currently residing in Grenoble,
France, a city nestled between natural
parks in the French Alps, Shiro speaks
English coated in the kind of accent that
suggests he spends his nights smoking
Gauloises and pondering Foucault. His style
looks borrowed from Zayn Malik; his chis-
eled face sports a short, well-kept beard. To
complete the romantic impression, a quote
from Plato is tattooed across his arm in
French: L'essentiel n'est pas de vivre mais de
bien vivre. The essential thing is not to live
but to live well.

“It's important for me to fight taboos,”
Shiro says. “I don’t understand why Insta-
gram accepts the publication of a man’s
nipple while the publication of a woman’s
nipple is banned. Artistically, I think we’ve
jumped backward.”

Shiro’s creative journey began in 2012
when he enrolled in his hometown’s art
school. From the beginning, he was fasci-
nated by the potential of the human body.
He began to upload minimalist yet sugges-
tive illustrations of naked bodies to Insta-
gram. “There were a lot of erotic visuals,” he
says, “and I was banned because I didn’t cen-
sor. That’s why I started using collage, so that
I could keep making work about the human
body. Collages allowed me to be reborn.”

The discovery of his own “graphic iden-
tity,” as he calls it, came in 2016 when he cre-
ated his first collage, Féline. The abstract
composition shows the lower half of a naked
woman kneeling, her torso merging with the
front half of a cat, which stretches forward to
complete the pose. It’s disturbingly seductive

subtle diamond. Although the image is pro-
vocative, the viewer’s imagination is largely
responsible for its eroticism, as Shiro has
effectively censored the vulva.

To Shiro’s surprise, Instagram’s modera-
tors deleted the artwork moments after he
published it. “I found it funny that it’s liter-
ally called Senses ored. It doesn't show any-
thing sexually explicit,” he says. “My collages
can have such a strong trompe l'oeil effect
that the moderator—or the bot that is sup-
posed to do the policing—deletes it even
when it doesn’t break any rules. To me, that’s
a perfect example of abuse.”

Last April, the Lyon, France-based arts
and culture magazine Ninki hosted at a local
café one of the first public exhibitions of
Shiro's work. “He knows how to hijack the
codes of pop culture,” says the show's cura-
tor, Karim Bah. “His pictures are like a rap-
per's punch lines; they speak directly to our
consciousness. To me, Émir Shiro is freedom
of expression. He denounces and challenges
society without harming people. He also
knows how to have fun.”

That might explain why his collages fea-
turing reality-TV celebs read so well next to
those that reappropriate fine art: No matter
the source material, the result amounts to a
response to society's views on sex.

The upside, of course, is that sex sells. As
Shiro’s work has gone viral (he has an online
following of more than 110,000), brands,
advertisers and collaborators have come
calling. “It's crazy how big companies con-
tact me directly. Eighty-five percent of my
contracts originate from my Instagram,” he

“We live in an era when everything is subjected to excessive control.”

italia and breasts are replaced by classi-
cal art and asexual inanimate objects—are
more evocative than the unaltered nude im-
ages. He pixelates the peduncle of a lemon
and replaces labia with the clean lines of
a kayak floating in a dark expanse. Mona
Lisa wears a leather harness; a woman
bends over, and her hips flow seamlessly
into the pages of a book.

His work is a witty review of our sexual-
ized, saturated but ultimately PG-rated cul-
ture of oversharing. Shiro demonstrates an
appreciation for Instagram as his genera-
tion’s proverbial fourth wall: always watch-
ing yet permanently invisible. While the
app's rigid policing of nude images frus-
trates many artists, Shiro flirtatiously
winks back.

110

and delightfully cheeky. Art fans will notice
in Féline allusions to two of Shiro’s heroes:
British painter David Hockney, a progenitor
of the 1960s pop art movement, and Ameri-
can artist George Condo, master of decon-
structed portraits.

“It was through creating Féline that I
learned to play with censorship and how that
relates to publishing my work,” he says. “The
body of a woman is interesting to work with
because there are many lines, curves and
reliefs to exploit. I see it as a landscape.”

But Shiro also sees how social media
threatens those landscapes. He recalls
Senses ored, a collage he created that shows
a woman with her knees spread; layered over
the space between her legs, two women kiss,
the shape of their mouths forming a not-so-

says. Swatch is one such partner. Last May,
the Swiss watchmaker launched its Skin
Irony collection in Paris by inviting Shiro
to create images that symbolize its slogan,
“Future Classic.” He led a workshop on how
to merge contemporary images with ico-
nography from the past. With his art earn-
ing him thousands every month, he credits
Instagram with opening the door to finan-
cial opportunities.

And yet, as if locked in a perverse yet beau-
tiful dance, the app still sometimes deletes
his images. His response to the suppres-
sion? Don’t stop. Keep pushing boundaries,
keep testing limits. “We live in an era when
everything is subjected to excessive control,”
Shiro says. “People need to smile—especially
in the world we live in.” a

li
B E

Q3HO.S3SN3S 'NHOd GOOF AHLIVIH ЗІПМІМ У LIM '3NI133 'NOLLVHIdSSV 'NOO TTV8 HIV LOH ‘L441 dOL МОЧУ 3SIMA9O19

111

PLAYBOY

ІШЕ
NOT SOR

Getting to know one of our most important and accessible cultural
commentators—a woman who can call out rape culture and sing the praises
of Law & Order: SVU in a single op-ed

Sitting on an Eames-style bar stool next to a
white marble kitchen island in her Los Angeles
home, Roxane Gay swipes through a music
app, searching for something to set
the mood and singing the praises of
her in-house sound system.

“Oh my God, it’s the world’s best
speakers,” she says. Settling on Beyoncé’s
Lemonade, she hits pLay on “Hold Up” and
the song comes washing in from all sides. Gay
is an avowed fan; she all but live-tweeted the
Carters’ On the Run II concert at the Rose
Bowl in Pasadena, California last September.

Dressed in aslate-blue shirt and jeans, Gay is
addressing a makeup artist, PLAYBOY’s photog-
raphy team and me. She’s relaxed and chatty,
her honey-smooth voice edged with a wry wit.

It’s an outgoing side of the 44-year-old
author and columnist—one that is not al-
ways on display. When we first meet, a few

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN PFLUGER

ву) ESSICA P.
OGILVIE

days before, Gay is decidedly more reserved.
Opening the door with a warm hello, she
pads quietly past two carefully curated book-
cases, offering me water and a
seat on the couch. She joins me,
sitting beneath the slanted Пу-
ing room roof and across from a
sliding glass door that looks out onto a sun-
drenched patio, and we chat about John
Branch’s book The Last Cowboys, a copy of
which is on the table.

But Gay keeps her legs and arms crossed,
responding to my attempts at small talk
with single sentences capped by faint
smiles. I don’t know whether to read this
as innate shyness or a practiced technique
to avoid revealing too much to journalists.
After all, over the past several years Gay
has put her opinions and her personal life
on display through her writing, becoming a

go-to critic on the most urgent cultural but-
tons: rape culture, #MeToo, gun control,
racism, Louis C.K., Brett Kavanaugh and
Roseanne Barr. Unafraid to call out priv-
ilege, hypocrisy or entrenched social in-
justice, Gay has an ever-growing corpus,
530,000 Twitter followers tracking her
every move and legions of fans lined up at
her events, clutching books for her to sign.

So it’s understandable if she’s tired of say-
ing what she thinks—or wary of what might
be made of her words.

"I'm still a work in progress,” she says. “I’m
giving myself permission to be human and
to be flawed and also to protect myself. It’s
taken a long time to get to a place where I’m
willing to do that, but Iam.”

Roxane Gay emerged as a public thinker
to reckon with sometime around the early

PLAYBOY 13

“MEN NEED TO START
HOLDING EACH OTHER
ACCOUNTABLE AND SAYING,
“YOU KNOW WHAT? THIS
IS UNACCEPTABLE. "

2010s with an explosive essay published on
an indie blog. But she was a fiction writer
first, beginning at a very young age.

Raised primarily in Omaha, Nebraska by
Haitian parents, Gay traveled frequently
thanks to her father's work as an engineer.
She routinely started over at new schools
with new friends, returning to Omaha be-
tween her father's projects. This constant
change, along with what she describes as
her naturally *not super social" tempera-
ment, fanned her love of storytelling—a
love she discovered around the age of four,
when she would pen short fables on nap-
kins. She followed this passion through
high school, college and graduate school,
eventually landing a job teaching English
at Purdue University in Indiana.

Gay wrote essays and reportage in addi-
tion to her fiction, but it wasn't until she
penned a 2011 piece for The Rumpus that
demand for her voice began to intensify.
The essay, “The Careless Language of Sex-
ual Violence,” was a response to a New York
Times article about the gang rape of an
11-year-old girl that focused on the after-
math of the event and the way it affected
the town and the perpetrators’ lives—
seemingly more interested in those con-
cerns than the way the horrific crime
affected the victim.

“The article was like, ‘Oh, the poor town
is reeling, ” she says, “and I was just like,
‘Huh, really? I’m pretty sure the child is
reeling.’ I was just incensed, and so I wrote
this essay in about two hours.”

Her response took the newspaper to task,
speculating as to how the writer, James
McKinley Jr., could be “more concerned about
the 18 men than one girl,” and concluded that
as a society we have become “anesthetized or
somehow willfully distanced from such bru-
tal realities” as gang rape. The essay became

114 PROFILE

part of a teeming online conversation about
how newspapers cover sexual assault—and
put Gay on the map as a fearless and incisive
cultural commentator.

“That was the first moment in this stage
of my career,” she says. “After that, there
was an audience for what I had to say, and
so I just kept writing my opinions."

Those opinions have since appeared in
the pages of the Times itself, where she is
a contributing writer, as well as in dozens
of other publications. In 2014 she published
a book of essays entitled Bad Feminist; it
became a New York Times best-seller. She
co-penned a Marvel comic, Black Panther:
World of Wakanda, and 2017 saw the pub-
lication of her memoir, Hunger, as well
as Difficult Women, a book of short sto-
ries. In 2018 she edited two books, The
Best American Short Stories and Not That
Bad: Dispatches From Rape Culture, plus a
series of essays on the publishing platform
Medium called Unruly Bodies.

Gay is known for her formidable output—
in addition to the above publication sched-
ule, she clocked at least 58 speaking
engagements in 2018 alone—but she’s most
recognized for her singular way of wielding
a pen. Her opinion pieces are pointed and
unequivocal and yet delivered with keen
self-awareness. She says what she means
in clear, concise sentences, the English
professor brought to bear. And she’s not
bashful about using herself as a reference
point: She talks openly about the chal-
lenges of being a black woman, a bisex-
ual woman and, in her own words, a “fat
woman” in a society that would punish her
for all of the above.

More recently, Gay has written multiple
Times columns on the #MeToo movement
and all its twists and subplots. A primary
thread in her writing is our country’s outsize

concern for the welfare of the accused men,
which tends to far exceed concern for the
victims. In an August 29, 2018 op-ed enti-
tled “Louis C.K. and Men Who Think Jus-
tice Takes As Long As They Want It To,”
Gay wrote that public figures like C.K. who
have been accused of sexual misconduct
have “fallen from grace, but they have had
mighty soft landings.” The victims, though,
“have been disbelieved. They have had to
withstand accusations that they are seeking
attention. Justice has been grandly elusive.”

She continued her train of thought fol-
lowing the Brett Kavanaugh Senate hear-
ings, in an October 5, 2018 piece, “I
Thought Men Might Do Better Than This.”
On the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey
Ford, Gay wrote, “Despite everything we
know about the prevalence of sexual as-
sault and harassment, women are still not
believed. Their experiences are still mini-
mized. And the male perpetrators of these
crimes are given all manner of leniency.”
She went on to note that a handful of ac-
cused men are beginning to complain about
their treatment by the public, calling jour-
nalist John Hockenberry’s Harper’s essay
examining his life after sexual harassment
claims “aggressively self-pitying." For-
mer CBC Radio host Jian Ghomeshi “pres-
ents himself as the misunderstood hero of
his own narrative” in his New York Review
of Books post-accusation essay, “Reflec-
tions From a Hashtag.” And Kavanaugh,
she wrote, was “a self-indulgent brat” dur-
ing his confirmation hearings. (It’s worth
noting that her article, with its careful
analysis and focused anger, begins with a
meditation on Law and Order: Special Vic-
tims Unit; few critics can juggle politics
and pop culture as deftly as Gay.)

When I ask her what drives this willing-

ness to say what so many women—and, I
presume, men—are thinking, Gay responds,
“T just try to be as honest as I can and as
open as I can.”
For her opinions, Gay attracts frequent
dissenters, many of whom confront her
on Twitter. But Gay, whose Twitter bio
includes the line “If you clap, I clap back,”
seldom hesitates to respond. A brief scroll
through her feed will turn up several such
exchanges. With her talent for well-aimed
ripostes, she has learned to enjoy the plat-
form’s famously indecorous tone.

“In general, I just try to engage with peo-
ple who are interesting or funny, and then
of course the occasional troll, and that’s just
for fun,” she says. “It’s like a pressure re-
lease. I mean, you have the audacity to speak
to me that way? Well, then whatever hap-
pens next is on you.”

For the most part, Gay says, she has no
regrets about what she writes. Indeed,

her thoughts seem to roll out of her mouth
fully formed; as our conversation contin-
ues, I often feel as if she’s dictating an op-ed
directly into my tape recorder.

“People are going to respond to my work
how they respond, and that’s fine,” she says.
“But I know I can handle the consequences
of having my opinion.”

I wonder aloud if Gay has ever experi-
enced fear or regret with regard to her
work—as most writers do—and by now I’m
expecting ano.

“Yeah,” she says, “only once. I mean, I
always experience fear, because I write about
fairly volatile topics, but the one thing I was
afraid of and that I regret not doing more was
writing in support of Hillary Clinton during
the 2016 election.”

At the time, she explains, it felt danger-
ous. Clinton supporters were picked apart, as
was the candidate herself. And in an unchar-
acteristic moment, Gay let that outside pres-
sure affect her.

“T really thought that Hillary was an

outstanding candidate, but people have so
many very vocal and very deeply entrenched
opinions about her, and when you support
her publicly, there’s a lot of backlash,” she
says. “There were definitely times when I
thought, Oh, I could write an op-ed about
this, and I just got overwhelmed. And I
thought, I don’t have the time to deal with
this, and I do regret that.”

After Trump was elected, she says, she
promised herself she would never again hold
back out of fear. “ГИ just live with the fear

PLAYBOY 115

and make myself uncomfortable,” she says,
“and say what needs to be said.”

Gay’s followers might fervently agree with
her politics, but her work also resonates
with many on a deeper level. A large part
of her writing in recent years has centered
around self-revelation, around publicly dig-
ging through the darkest parts of her past
and the darkest corners of her mind. In
Hunger, she writes frankly and heartbreak-
ingly about the gang rape she suffered at the

age of 12. She writes about how she used food
as a way to take back a semblance of control,
to make “my body into what I needed it to
be—a safe harbor rather than a small, weak
vessel that betrayed me.”

In doing press for the book, Gay repeatedly
explained that she didn’t really want to write
it but felt compelled to do so.

“Т was just reluctant to write the book
because I knew it was going to require a
level of vulnerability that was going to be
difficult,” she says, “and it was going to
make me feel very exposed out in the world.
But I also knew that I wanted to write a
book about fatness that I would have loved
to have read at any point in my adult life,
and one that wasn’t grounded in inspira-
tion and weight loss.”

116 PROFILE

It’s that ability to be so raw in her prose,
says actress and author Amber Tamblyn,
that’s behind the zeal of Gay’s fans.
Tamblyn hosts a reading series with Gay
called Feminist AF, and she believes that
Gay possesses a combination of intellect
and openness rare among Ph.D.s—and that
she’s one of the very few academic writers
willing to descend from the ivory tower.

“She comes from this high-status world
as a professor, as a woman of that stat-
ure, which I think often is a world that

talks down to people,” says Tamblyn. “But
Roxane writes and speaks from the heart.
When you read her work, you feel like, ‘Oh
my God, I am sitting in the living room
with this dope-ass woman who is really
funny and really smart and I’m learning a
lot from her.’ But it feels like you’re getting
to know her on a deeper level too. She’s just
a really down-to-earth person, and that’s a
breath of fresh air.”

As willing as she is to put herself in the line
of fire through telling her story and speak-
ing her truth, Gay recognizes that doing so is
not for everyone, particularly at a time when
speaking one’s truth for the greater good
does not necessarily result in change.

“Tt’s women and marginalized people who
consistently do things for the greater good,

and the greater good tends to be widely
indifferent to that,” says Gay. “I think it’s
a personal choice [to tell your own truth]. I
think you don’t have to.”

What she would like to see is more men
leading the charge to change the climate.

“Men listen to other men,” she says. “They
don’t listen to women. We clearly see that,
so men need to start holding each other ac-
countable and saying, “You know what? This
is unacceptable. You don’t get to be out in
the world acting any old way.’ And until men

hold one another accountable, I don’t think
we're going to see any change at all."

Back at the shoot, Lemonade continues
to fill the room as Gay gets her hair and
makeup done. She's still bantering with the
photo team when the opening strains of
another song come on—the taut, insistent
beat of *Sorry."

As I get up to leave, the chorus begins. It
could be a direct response from Gay to any-
one who would ask her to keep her truths, in
all their pain, rage, humor and complexity,
to herself:

Sorry, I ain't sorry

Sorry, I ain't sorry

Iain’t sorry

No no, hell nah. m

I knew wed be together again!

PLAYBOY 117

The

Modern

A WOULD-BE WRITER HAS TROUBLE PLOTTING THE OUTLINE OF HIS OWN
ROMANCE; IT’S FEAR AND LOVING IN LOS ANGELES

I had no intention of marrying Maryanne.
Six months with her was long enough. Six
months was longer than I wanted to be with
any woman, even one as pretty as Maryanne.

We were not a decade out of college, my
friends and I, and no one was in any hurry
to pair up. We liked to drink. That was our
primary activity. We drank at brunch, and
we brunched several times a week, and we
drank at dinner, and we ate out together
most nights. Maryanne was not one of us. She
didn’t drink, or go to comedy clubs or bars, or
want to be an actor or a writer or а comic. She
had not gone to college. She was the recep-
tionist at my dentist’s office.

I loved my dentist. His name was Dr.
Guerra. He had an exceedingly quiet voice
and slow, methodical hands, and he was
tall and trim like a dancer. I admired the
linen wallpaper in his office and his glossy

18 FICTION

в, SARAH
BRAUNSTEIN

succulents. His receptionist too, who sat
behind the desk looking faintly alarmed.
You could say she dressed like an immi-
grant, Kmart jeans and generic athletic
shoes, but she was white from Nebraska.
Her bras were tiny yet industrial. She was
the only person I knew who'd grown up in
a trailer park, and the only person I knew
who sent money home.

“Not a trailer park,” Maryanne said. “A
motor home lodge.”

The distinction struck me as noble and
pitiful. I feared going to this place. I did not
want to meet Maryanne’s parents.

On the day I planned to break up with
Maryanne, I woke with an erection that
was not for her. A blurry figure swayed in
my mind, dream residue, a redhead, and
I thought, Good, a redhead. I want to say I

invented her, and I suppose I did, but she
resembled a TV star of the moment because
I was not very original. The TV star was on
billboards all over the city, lit from beneath
at night.

I messaged Kyla and Chris S. and Chris K.
and Lucy that I was going to break up with
Maryanne and meet them afterward for a
drink. Aww, really? Poor Maryanne! Such
a sweetheart! But they didn’t know her well,
had said hello only a few times, and Lucy
said: We'll drink to your sorrows. We've
missed you, baby.

Га missed them too. It would be good to
be back in the fold. We were like sitcom
friends—raised on sitcoms, now audition-
ing and writing for them, we modeled our
lives on these shows. Our friendship group
had its own cultures, traditions, holiday
specials, ancillary friend groups. Some of

ILLUSTRATION BY SPIROS HALARIS

us had trust funds. Most of us were white.
We dated each other sometimes, or dated
a member of a side group, and then came
back and cracked jokes about it. Maryanne,
I knew, was a short arc. She didn't have a TV
or acomputer. She had no aesthetic, and she
was not funny. She thought stand-up was
“braggy.” My friends had understood, had
not begrudged my nights away, because she
was sexy, they agreed, in a complicated way,
like a sexy Anne Frank.

I called her at work.
“Can I pick you up at
four? I think we should
go for a walk.”

“Yes, please,” she said.
“Га like that very much.”
Maryanne was wrong to
have had it bad for me.
I was the oldest of three
blonde boys from the sub-
urbs of Philly. I had been
given an Audi on my 16th
birthday, which I crashed
three weeks later. I kept
a list of the women I
slept with, most of whose
names I remembered.
Maryanne’s name, on the
day I prepared to break
up with her, wasn’t the
last one.

Maryanne had no
list. She kept a diary.
She read historical nov-
els and Time magazines
from Dr. Guerra’s office.
I had never known some-
one who wasn’t a grand-
mother to read Time.
She slept in a long night-
gown, a column of non-
working buttons on its
bib, and she would never
try cocaine, or bubble
tea, and she would not
come to the nude Ko-
rean baths, which I con-
sidered one of the great
wonders of Los Angeles.
In bed she was shy, hot
with shame. Sometimes she snorted with
embarrassed laughter. She hadn’t gone
down on me yet or let me go down on her.
It’s the modern era, I wanted to say. Her
goodness de-sexed her. I didn’t want the job
of her.

“Don’t you want to be something?” I asked
her once, early on. I felt I could be bold with
her—nothing I said seemed to hurt her.

“T have a job,” she’d replied, shrugging.
We were in her apartment, on a street in
Hollywood. She was sweeping her buckling

120 FICTION

linoleum floor and I was sitting in a chair,
drinking a beer, watching her. She wore
pink canvas sneakers. She had a cheap
corn-husk broom that disintegrated as you
swept, so that you ended up sweeping the
broom pieces, so that the chore just went on
and on.

“Don’t you want more than a job?”

“I have more than that,” she said, and
rested the broom against the wall, came
over to sit on my lap. She wore tiny golden

earrings, like Puerto Rican babies. When
I sucked one between my teeth it felt like a
bullet.

But we couldn’t even watch TV together.
She had the worst taste, loved the battling
pastry chefs, ninjas on the monkey bars.
At night she rubbed Vaseline on her elbows
and on the soles of her feet. She washed her
face with a bar of orange Dial. When she
called Nebraska she spoke to her father in
low, soothing tones. A drunk, I presumed.
I knew that voice. That was how you talked
to a drunk. But I didn't ask because I didn't

want to know. I was not interested. I smoked
cigarettes outside.

I liked the drive to Dr. Guerra’s office. I liked
seeing the Santa Monica pier, the Ferris
wheel turning over the ocean, liked know-
ing there were sharks out there—not a lot of
the time, no, but there could be sharks, and
a person could theoretically be mauled or
eaten. That this horror might happen in such
proximity to Dr. Guerra’s office disturbed
me pleasantly. Maryanne
was waiting out front,
standing on the curb
slightly pigeon-toed, her
big purse hooked on her
elbow.

I kissed her hello. This
would be the last time Га
kiss her.

In the car she told me
about a boy who'd come
to the office that day. He
was under the impres-
sion that the dentist was
going to remove his teeth.
Clean them, Maryanne
had explained, but he
hadn’t seemed to under-
stand. The kid looked so
sorrowful, she told me,
so resigned, when the hy-
gienist came to take him.

Dr. Guerra gave his
Thursdays to the under-
served community. Sanc-
tuary dentistry, he called it.

“Poor kid,” she said,
gazing out the window.

“Well, that poor kid has
the best dentist in L.A.,” I
said. “He’s got that.”

She said, “I didn’t go
to a dentist until I was
14.” There was no pity in
her voice and no expecta-
tion for pity. Sometimes
she did that: leveled an
awful fact on me with a
kind of bemused indiffer-
ence. She never saw a den-
tist. Or: The bus driver
fondled her. Other rotten things spoken so
calmly, acceptingly, it made me almost sick.
Where was her sense of violation?

We were driving to Griffith Park. That
would be a good place to do it, I thought. She
would not make a scene there. But the ride
was too long and traffic was worse than usual,
several roads shut down for protests or festi-
vals, and I realized halfway there that I should
have found a nearer park, but then it was too
late to turn around. I considered doing it right
there, in the car, in steamy traffic, except
that struck me as indecent. And so we went

on. And since Maryanne never had too much
to say—I was the talker—we passed the ride
mostly in silence.

When we arrived at Griffith Park there was
a sign: PARKING FULL. NO PARKING BEYOND
THIS POINT! SHUTTLE TO OBSERVATORY
25 CENTS.

I had been hoping to find a spot close to
the top. I didn’t like this extra step. Com-
plicated transit would make the breakup
harder, add to the awkwardness. But there
we were, and so I parked and we walked to
the place where the shuttle came, a dusty
cutout on the side of the road.

A Chinese family with an ancient grand-
mother stood there waiting. There were six
of them. The grandmother wore beautiful red
silk shoes covered with roadside dust, like
something you'd see on a movie poster.

“Only a quarter? Nothing costs a quarter
anymore,” Maryanne said to me. She seemed
genuinely happy.

“Nothing indeed!” said the man whose arm

The shuttle arrived and we all crammed on.
There were only a few seats on the sides, and
the old people and children took them. Mary-
anne was too short to reach the handrail so I
held her. In this way I took responsibility for
us both. I wanted to be a good boyfriend to
the end—to look like one.

The shuttle smelled of gas and industrial
cleaner. It wheezed its way up the moun-
tain switchbacks. I had been on this road
many times and so did not participate in
the appreciation of nature along with every-
one else. I prepared what I was going to say.
Then, to gather my nerve, I thought about
the redhead.

But I forgot that Maryanne had never
been to the observatory before. I had failed
to realize that this iconic place would be new
to her. And so when we arrived, when we got
to the center of the courtyard, to that high-
est place above the city, Maryanne stopped
walking. She blinked, turned in a circle. It
was only then, watching her take in the view,
the Hollywood sign, the telescopes, the sun

she wanted back there. Any doughy ex-
quarterback would kill for her, any sweet-
heart cop. I wanted this for her. I wanted
her to go away and also, somehow, to re-
main the receptionist.

We paused at an overlook. “A postcard,”
Maryanne said. “Isn’t it?” She made her
hands the shape of a postcard and looked
through them.

The slashes of light on the ground were the
streets where I met my friends. Love for the
city filled my heart. Love for the city van-
quished her winsomeness. I said what I had
prepared to say.

I’m sorry. You deserve better. Not ready
for commitment. Not ready for monog-
amy. Monogamy: I used that word several
times. It was such a welcome addition to
the breakup toolbox. An ideological word,
something to consider strenuously. Peo-
ple were polyamorous those days the way
they were vegans. It was a way to ethically
sleep around, to feel honest and devious
at once, and I said, “Look, I don’t think

I thought about holding off. Going down
after sunset, grabbing dinner at a Chinese
dive. We could break up over lo mein.

was linked with the ancient woman’s.

Maryanne held a quarter between the
thumb and index finger of each hand.
She had a wary smile on her face, and red
cheeks, like a child in the line for the scari-
est ride at the fair.

More people joined us to wait. Two women
spoke loudly about the national darkness.
The crowd hummed with agreement. Even
the grandmother lifted a bony ancient fin-
ger in solidarity. The impeachment hearings
were in their infancy in those days, and ev-
eryone in Los Angeles walked around peace-
ably raving.

“Т wish we could go someplace and not
hear about him,” Maryanne whispered in
my ear. “Can you take me to the desert this
weekend?”

“Гуе got a busy weekend.”

“Someplace where he’s not screaming.
Take me there.”

“There’s no place like that left,” I told her.

She had not voted for anyone. Neither had
I. But her parents in Nebraska had voted for
him. Mine did too, but I didn’t tell her this,
because I never spoke of my parents.

beginning its descent, that I understood
how unkind it was to do it here. It was a land-
mark. I would ruin it for her. What had I
been thinking? Who orchestrates a destina-
tion breakup?

Which was funny, actually. I made a note to
use that.

“Oh, Tanner!” she cried. “Tanner!” Be-
cause she had come from the plains, of
course, she had never seen such a view. She
pointed to Spanish roofs. She pointed to City
Hall, to all the cars below, to downtown. She
marveled at the color of the sky. Like a jelly
bean! Like sherbet! Oh, Tanner! And yes, I
thought about holding off. Going down after
sunset, grabbing dinner at a Chinese dive
I liked in Los Feliz. We could break up over
lo mein. I considered this, but would it have
been kinder? I imagined the awkwardness of
the fortune cookies.

I didn’t expect she’d stay in the city for
much longer. Surely she’d return to Ne-
braska and lick her wounds. There’d be
a new receptionist at Dr. Guerra's of-
fice. Maryanne would find a much better
match back in Nebraska, could pick anyone

monogamy is working out for me right now.
I feel I should be honest. I tried it, I gave it
a shot....” I went on and on and she listened
without expression.

Then she said, "I wanted to go to the desert
this weekend. Are you saying you want to see
other people? Like, along with me? Me and
other people too? Or you want me gone? I'd
really like to go to the desert."

"I don't want you gone, Maryanne. That's so
extreme. Why do you have to say it like that?"

She raised and lowered her bony shoul-
ders. Her expression was baleful, pale. She
looked exactly as I'd feared, prettily stricken.
It's easy to get sentimental about pretty peo-
ple, I told myself. Be done. In and out. But I
found myself dissembling. I said, “I need
some space. That's all. I need to think. Give
me some time. I'm not saying we should end
it permanently. But a break. We're just so un-
alike, you and me."

She blinked. “But you're just like me,” she
said.

Youre a goddamn extraterrestrial, I
wanted to say, and then I did. I held my
breath, waited for her response, but it didn’t

PLAYBOY 121

seem to faze her, which only made me more
committed to ending it. She said, “If I
drank, if I went to bars with you, would you
keep me around?”

“Why do you put it that way? You want to be
kept around? Jesus. You're way too pretty to
be so needy.”

“T used to drink,” she said finally, resolv-
edly. “I can do it again. I used to. Beer in my
bedroom. All alone. And then vodka.”

“You realize how compliant you are? Why
are you like that?”

“Tm like you,” she said. “I keep telling you.”

I wanted her eyes to leak, wanted those
tears to spill over, so I told her then about
the two women I'd slept with during the six
months we'd been dating. I told her about
Vivian, about Vivian's private piercings,
and about the woman I met atthe Magic Cas-
tle whose name I never got, who appeared on
the list only as Magic Castle. I told her about
the list. I was a pig, I swore to her. I substan-
tiated my argument.

to die. Oh my God he’s going too fast. Oh
no, no, this isn’t good. Oh no. Oh hell. Too
fast.” No one else spoke. The shuttle de-
scended. And it did feel treacherous, the
pitch steep, brakes whining, but people do
not fly off the road in Los Angeles. “Much
too fast!” the crazy man said. “This thing
can’t handle it. I know machines. This is
not а safe machine.”

One of his kids was very young, elementary
age, and played with his phone. The other boy
was a teenager. “Okay, Dad,” the teenager
said. “We're safe. Everything's good.”

“Do you hear that? Too fast.”

Maryanne could reach her handrail now,
the handicapped one, so I didn’t have to
hold her.

“We'll fly off,” the insane man said. “That
lady,” and he gestured toward Maryanne,
closest to the door, "she'll fly out."

I felt my chest get hot. I was angry that he
put her in his imagination, that he would
throw her out of this vehicle, even in his mind.

around. That seemed the very best thing in
the world. I wanted it for all of us, for me and
my friends. I wanted to get it and confer it
onto them, or for someone, any one of them,
to confer it onto me. You couldn't date a girl
like Maryanne if you were a person like this;
you certainly couldn't marry her.

A soon as we were back in my car the moun-
tain wasimpossible to fathom. Neither of us
spoke. I felt like I was driving my daughter
in a car without seatbelts. No one seemed
safe or out for anyone but themselves. I felt
that I'd been assigned the task to care for
this girl, and that I was too jealous to give
the task to another man but couldn't do it
myself.

The protests had settled down. It was
dinner time. Food trucks everywhere. No-
where wasn't a restaurant. Crowds of people
milled around, jaywalking, collecting spare
change, screaming epithets or singing, or
being trailed by cameras, and it took forever

When the redhead moved toward the
bathroom, I found myself following her.
She stopped. She turned.

“Oh,” she said, taking a step back. “You
did those things?"

“I did,” I said. “I do.”

"I misunderstood,” she said. “I thought——”

She began to cry but fought it, pawed
ruthlessly at her eyes. She made a bleating
sound, covered her mouth, looked down.
She stayed like that for a bit. When she
raised her head again she looked calmer.
She said in a calm, tired voice, “ГРИ miss
you, Tanner.”

“РИ miss you too,” I told her. And maybe
I would miss her, but Га never have to go to
Nebraska, never set foot in the double-wide.
A glorious never thrummed in my body. I
would never have to bring her to my par-
ents. She would not see the picture of me on
the piano, never see my child face, helpless
before an ice cream cone, in a silver frame.
Good riddance, Maryanne, you pathetic
creature. Those words passed through my
brain. I believed I was owed more.
There was an insane person on the shuttle
down. A middle-aged man, two kids with
him, Indian, or maybe Pakistani, and he
said things like “Oh my God we're going

122 FICTION

“No one’s flying out,” said the teenager.

“She might!”

And I put my arm around her shoul-
der, around Maryanne’s shoulder, but she
pulled away. The crazy father saw this. He
smirked at me.

Maryanne surprised me. She looked at the
man, and she did not smile, and she said, “I
will not fall out.”

The man was still smirking at me. So was
the son.

It’s over, I told myself. Let it be over.

The Chinese family, they were there too, all
of us hurtling down. I willed us to crash. On
my phone I found several messages from my
friends inquiring about the state of things,
hurrying me along. They were leaving Good
Luck Bar and heading to Bigfoot.

Sometimes a celebrity would appear at Big-
foot and everyone would suck in their guts
and throw back their shoulders and per-
form normalcy. I wanted that. That was
what I wanted forever. To be coming up. To
wonder every morning how it would turn
out. Maybe I would be one of those people
someday, someone you couldn’t feel normal

to get to Maryanne’s street.

"I'm fine, Tanner,” she said when I pulled
up in front. She unbuckled her seatbelt. “You
shouldn’t worry about me. You shouldn't feel
guilty. Okay? I’m fine.”

I said I was glad she was fine. I said,
again, I was sorry. I was sure I would never
see her again.

Then she said, “What about your boots?”

My boots! I had forgotten. My favor-
ite boots—brown leather lace-ups, leather
soles, Italian. Very expensive. She called
them my Civil War boots. Which might have
been funny.

Maybe she was funny.

They were by her bed, the boots. All at once
I didn’t trust myself. Why would I leave my
boots there? I felt sick, suddenly, sour air ris-
ing into my sinuses.

She said, “Stay here. ГИ be right back. ГП
get them——” and she leapt from the car and
hurried up the walk, took the stairs two at a
time to her studio apartment.

Her twin bed was up there, her purple
sheets, her dresser top scattered with pen-
nies. She had almost nothing. Just an alarm
clock, a water glass, her sad communion

cross on a gold chain. She lived like a survivor
of a natural disaster in aroom at the YMCA.

She was not funny.

I gripped the steering wheel and took long
deep breaths until the nausea began to fade.

On our first date Га taken her to sushi.
She had some sort of allergy to the wasabi
and later said her mouth hurt too much to
kiss. In the morning the skin around her
lips was raw and scabbed, and Dr. Guerra
gave her some prescription cream. “Wasn't
that nice of him?” she kept saying, gazing
at the tube in her hand. “Га have paid a
hundred at the clinic for that. Wasn't it aw-
fully nice ofhim, Tanner?”

Did she have a crush on the dentist? I
wondered but I didn’t worry. I admired Dr.
Guerra, trusted him, and I knew he was
too decent to exploit her. He was like a fa-
ther. The way he tilted his head and exam-
ined her poor sore burned mouth was how a
father does, how a father is supposed to do,
which made him, I sometimes joked, my
father-in-law.

When Maryanne came back to the car she
had my boots in a plastic bag. The bag was
from a Mexican place where we sometimes
got takeout. I gave her the empty bag, but
I still felt like I might throw up, so I said,
“Give it back?” and stuffed it between my
thighs. She looked at my crotch, expression-
less. Her face was empty of feeling. I did not
like this face.

“Don’t worry," she said. “ГІ get over it."

“You will?”

“Doesn't everyone?” She shrugged. “It's a
breakup. ГП move on.”

I did not know this practical Maryanne. I
didn’t know her at all.

“Don’t go, Maryanne,” I said.

“What?”

“Please don’t.”

“You're the one who's going,” she said.

It was true. It was plain to see. I was sit-

ting in the driver’s seat, buckled in, the car
running. My beloved boots in the passenger
seat. Nothing felt truer than this. Nothing
was holding me back.
I love my wife so much. It amazes me that I
almost gave her away. I turned off the car.
I unbuckled. I got out, and I knelt down, I
rested my knee on the oily pavement, and
I asked her. Her face was calm and blank.
No fold between her eyebrows. She said, “I
don’t know.” And we looked at each other
until, finally, she spoke.

“T will,” she said.

I felt so sorry for her. I told her so.

“Feel how you like,” she said.

We went together to Bigfoot and an-
nounced our engagement. My friends were
stunned, but after a few drinks it all seemed
pretty hysterical. We clinked glasses and
danced and Lula played the songs we asked

for, gangster rap and Dolly Parton, the last
blast of irony for a very long time. Because I
didn’t know we'd actually move to Nebraska.
I didn’t know that before too long I'd find
myself in a cul-de-sac with three daugh-
ters. Three girls and an aboveground pool,
in which two sisters would swim in a cir-
cle, creating a whirlpool so that the little
one, in her inflatable pink vest, could spin.
I didn’t think we’d really get married. I only
knew I didn’t want her to go, that I had to fix
the cruelty of the evening, and that’s what I
came up with because I am not very original.

It was barely nine o’clock, night just be-
ginning. I drank and she drank, we drank
a good deal, and soon they set upon her, my
girlfriends, these waifish and fey women,
actresses, would-be models, women with
head shots and podcasts. I had slept with
half of them. All night they circled Mary-
anne, gazed at her with new attention,
stroked her sleeves, her hair, examined her
with comic reverence, professing their sis-
ter love in high, parodic voices. Maryanne
looked so anxious again, being touched like
that. I liked that she looked anxious again.
Go down on her tonight, I told myself.

I was starting on my third drink when
the redhead walked in. There she was. Not
the dream figure or the celebrity but a bet-
ter amalgam, real and not-real, herself and
made-for-me. And everyone was busy with
Maryanne and no one was paying attention
to me, so when the redhead moved toward
the bathroom, I found myself following her.

A woman like the redhead knows when
she is being followed, which is all the time.
She stopped. She turned. We stood facing
each other, there in the dim back hall of
Bigfoot, and I felt a voice call out to me—
my voice but not mine, a future me, a graver
me. Hold steady, champ, is what the voice
said. And I said back, Why should I?

There was an old pay phone still mounted
on the wall. Next to it, a framed needle-
point sampler said CALL YOUR MOTHER. I
had not called my mother in a very long
time and I did not want to. The presence of
that sign aroused my will.

I said, “You look familiar.”

She had a lovely neck, long and white, a
mole marking the spot you'd like to kiss.
She tilted her head. Her eyes were green.
She had done something complicated and
geometric with her eyeliner.

"I'm no one,” she answered, a coy smile.

"I'm sure that can't be."

^well, actually and now her smile
turned lopsided, abashed, "I'm a doctor."

"On TV?"

"Nephrology. IRL." She spoke, it seemed
to me, lustily. “Kidneys,” she said, and ges-
tured to her own, and never had a more
erotic word been uttered.

“You operate on people?"

“Sure,” she said, took a step closer. “And I
do other things too."

My betrothed waited for me.

Don't make me be with Maryanne, I
wanted to say. Stop me. Save me! I don't
want to meet Maryanne's pastor, I wanted
to say, I don't want to hold her hair when
she vomits in the parking lot, or to see her
discount shampoo on the edge of my bath-
tub or her cans of chili in my cabinets. Doc-
tor, please. There was that feeling in the
air that precedes touch. We looked at each
other. The camera held. Do it, I thought. I
spoke to her with my mind. Do it.

“Do what?" she said, startling me, for I

had spoken aloud, and whether it was fear
or love that stopped me, whether it was that
low voice in my mind, hold steady, hold
steady, I don't know. All I know is that I
could not say a word.
I extricated myself, which I know does not
deserve a medal. I know it is disgusting
that men want praise for behaving with the
barest decency. And yet I do want praise.
That's what I want. I didn't think I had the
strength to turn away. And I knew if I could
turn away from this nephrologist, if I could
find that in me, then I could really marry
Maryanne.

I did. We did. We drank for a few years,
together, hard, until she got pregnant, and
then, one dawn, with a firm, solemn hand-
shake as between scouts, we quit. Cold tur-
key, I say proudly. She says nothing about it.
And soon the world exploded, a new era an-
nounced itself, but by then we were in Ne-
braska, where nothing changed too much.
But of course kids are curious. My oldest
daughter asked my wife what it had been
like. Back then, she meant, during the na-
tional darkness. She is interested in chaos
and perversion, like all teenagers. She col-
lects the paraphernalia. Did you resist? my
daughter wants to know. Did you knit a hat?
Did you march?

“No, I didn’t,” Maryanne says. There is
neither pride nor apology in her voice.

The girls are disappointed. They are so
civic-minded, this generation, they cannot
fathom our inaction. My wife shrugs. She is
a hygienist now. She serves another dentist,
this one less magnanimous, less glamorous,
not yet 35. We invite him to our block par-
ties. We want to set him up with someone.

“Iwas busy with other things,” is all she says.

They are disapproving of her, but my
wife doesn’t let it get under her skin. She
is placid, wears a faint smile. It’s me who
pushes back. You should be thankful, I tell
my daughters, that your mother didn’t re-
sist. You wouldn’t have made it here, I say
to them. You wouldn’t exist. A woman like
that would never have saved me. и

PLAYBOY 123

“Was it good for you?”

— Celebrating 65 Years of —

PLAYBOY S

PARTY JOKES

Along with compelling fiction and provocative pictorials,
cocktail-hour chuckles stretch all the way back to the magazine's
inaugural issue. Here, a six-decade sampling of some of our

favorite laughs from the past

JANUARY 1956

The dean of women at an exclusive girls’
school was lecturing her students on sexual
morality.

“We live today in very difficult times for
young people. In moments of temptation,”
she said, “ask yourself just one question: Is an
hour of pleasure worth a lifetime of shame?”

A young woman rose in the back of the
room and said, “Excuse me, but how do you
make it last an hour?”

MARCH 1957

You've undoubtedly heard about the number
of magazines required to fill a baby carriage:
a PLAYBOY, a Mademoiselle, a few Liberties
and Time.

MARCH 1968
“Hey, man,” one hippie said to another, “turn
on the radio."

"Okay," the second hippie answered, and
then leaning over very close to the radio, he
whispered, *I love you."

DECEMBER 1968
A Chicago salesman on a business trip to
Boston had a few hours to kill before catching
a plane home. Remembering an old friend's
advice to try some broiled scrod, a favor-
ite fish in Boston, he hopped into a cab and
asked the driver: *Say, do you know where I
could get scrod around here?"

“Pal,” replied the cabbie, “I’ve heard that

question a thousand times, but this is the
first time in the pluperfect subjunctive.”

JULY 1979

A story is circulating about the flaky
botanical geneticist in southern California
who is trying to cross a Mexican jumping
bean with a cucumber in order to produce the
world’s first organic vibrator.

OCTOBER 1989
What does Dan Quayle think Roe v. Wade is?
Two ways to cross the Potomac.

JUNE 1992

We understand there's a dyslexic rabbi who,
when consternated, exclaims, “Yo!”

DECEMBER 1999

Scuttlebutt in D.C. is that Bill Clinton has al-
ready written his presidential memoirs. He’s
calling it The Johnson Years.

FEBRUARY 2006
How is poker like sex?

Everyone thinks they are the best, but most
people don’t know what they are doing.

NOVEMBER 2006
A man walked into a bookstore and asked a
saleswoman, “Can you direct me to the self-
help section?”

“Sure,” she replied, “but wouldn’t that de-
feat the purpose?”

JUNE 2008
“I have to be very careful not to get preg-
nant,” awoman told her friend.

“Т don’t understand,” said the friend. “I
thought your husband had a vasectomy.”

The woman answered, “Precisely.”

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018
The trouble with political jokes is that they
sometimes get elected.

FEBRUARY PLAYMATE PLAYBOY 127

)
l
M

The radiant Megan Moore returns to our pages, this time as our February Playmate
and to share her views on “fitting in”

Being in the modeling industry has been hard, but it has turned out
to be one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. I was 16 when I
was scouted by a local agency at the summer fair in Vancouver. Model-
ing had never, not for a moment, crossed my mind. Honestly, I thought
they were making a mistake. At first I resisted, but after they scouted
me two more times, I decided to give it atry.

You're already going through self-image issues as a young girl;
when your body is naturally curvy and you're told to lose weight, the
magnitude is immense. I did juice cleanse after juice cleanse, but
nothing stuck. Eventually a “plus-size” agency in New York wanted
to sign me. My body type wasn’t right for them either. I still booked
little jobs here and there. Clients would use to me to model their
bras, but they weren’t necessarily in love with my actual body—or
me, for that matter.

Finally, in 2017, I signed with my first Los Angeles-based agency.
We did a test shoot, and when my head shot came out on their web-
site, I saw my appearance had been completely photoshopped. My lips
were bigger, my back thinner—everything. When I confronted them,
they lied: “We don’t know what you're talking about.” I dropped them.
I said, “I’m sorry. I can’t have an agency that doesn’t love me for me,

so I’m out.” It’s hard, because aesthetic perfection, which is subjec-
tive anyway, is something that’s kind of embedded in our brains now.
When you see flawless, cellulite-free skin in an image, your reaction
is to look at yourself and think, I have to cover this up.

When I found out I was cast in PLAYBOY, I couldn’t believe it, because
I still wasn’t 100 percent confident with my body. This was my turning
point. I went into the shoot expecting someone to say, “Her hips are a
little too big.” Nobody said anything. It was a revelatory moment.

I was always sure of myself as a kid. I never doubted anything about
myself. In the industry, that assurance was gradually ripped away
from me. I had to relearn how to love myself—and, more important,
to love myself no matter what anybody else has to say. I’m grateful, be-
cause I couldn’t learn this anywhere else. Literally everything related
to my appearance was torn down, and I’ve built myself back up. I’m
unbreakable now.

This level of self-love can never be taken away from me. As cheesy
as it sounds, it’s true and it’s powerful. Now the industry is chang-
ing in the best way possible. Models are becoming more authentic. All
these girls and boys are stepping up and saying, “Hey, this isn’t real.
This is real. This is who I am.” And that's beautiful. m

PLAYBOY 129

DATA SHEET

BIRTHPLACE AND CURRENT CITY: Vancouver, Washington

ON BOUNDARIES

| simultaneously try to keep my personal
life private while sharing as much as |
can with people on Instagram. Having
followers is something that I’m adjusting
to. | want to include more than beautiful
pictures while maintaining at least some
of my privacy.

ON SIMPLE PLEASURES

I'm about to sound like such a grandma,
but | really just love a good book. And |
love to draw. Or I'll sit on the couch, hang
out with my dog—a golden retriever
named Apollo—and watch some HGTV
and be completely happy. Problem is,
when people ask you what your idea
of fun is and you say, “Watching HGTV,”
they're like, “All right... I’m good.”

ON COMFORT FOOD

My favorite food is a classic pepperoni
pizza. | go to Rally in Vancouver. It’s my

Meyer Nm

all-time favorite. l'Il order a whole pizza and
| can finish the whole thing if I’m feeling it.

ON HAVING A VOICE

Freedom of speech is being threatened
at the moment, but social media is shift-
ing things to the point where we can't be
ignored. It’s an amazing time to have this
kind of platform because it might be the
only way our voices get through. It’s also a
portal into the rest of the world for people
in small towns—like me.

ON GAMING

I'm really into video games, which people
find hard to believe. | had a little brother
growing up, and wed always play Xbox to-
gether and Id just destroy him. It's funny:
When | play online, everybody thinks I’m a
guy because | have a generic user name.
Nobody ever finds out. That's the cool
part of it—in the online gaming commu-
nity nobody assumes you're a girl.

ON ANIMALS

| love orcas, and | am really passionate
about getting them out of Sea World.
l've watched the documentary Blackfish
| dont even know how many times—l
think more than 16. I feel really strongly
about these animals.

ON THE GREAT OUTDOORS

| don't know what it is about being out-
side and sweating, but | feel sexiest
when I've just finished a really tough
hike. There's no more empowering feel-
ing than when | have accomplished
something that's really hard on my body.
It makes me feel like a badass.

ON NEW HORIZONS

I'm trying to explore more of Europe.
| want to go to Ireland. There’s some-
thing about all the lush green hills and
centuries-old castles that has me hooked,
and | haven't even been there yet.

PLAYBOY 141

FEBRUARY 2019 PLAYMATE

MURDER,

From platinum stars to local heroes, hip-hop artists are seeing
their lyrics used against them in criminal trials; heres a look at a problematic
and growing trend through the eyes of the accused

There was no discernible reason for the
police to follow Drakeo the Ruler that af-
ternoon. As he later told me, no traffic vi-
olations were committed; no weed was
smoked. But constitutional questions of
rightful search and seizure don’t seem to
trouble the cops patrolling South Central
Los Angeles, and so a brief drive to the li-

142

ву) EFF WEISS

quor store last winter ended with L.A.’s
most original rap stylist since Snoop Dogg
handcuffed, accused of illegal posses-
sion of a firearm and looking on as law en-
forcement showed him his own videos and
rapped his own lyrics at him. Things only
got weirder from there.

Over the next several weeks, other mem-

bers of Drakeo’s crew, the Stinc Team,
were also arrested. The charges ranged
from first-degree murder to commer-
cial burglary, enhanced by the threat of
lengthy mandatory sentences due, accord-
ing to Drakeo, to the district attorney’s
accusation that the Stinc Team is a gang
rather than one of the West Coast’s most

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MAURIZIO DI IORIO

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popular young hip-hop collectives. As far
as evidence goes, his attorney has claimed
that the case largely hinges on a jailhouse
confession allegedly obtained by an in-
formant. So in an effort to demonize the
25-year-old artist, prosecutors are using
Drakeo’s music and flashy, carefully culti-
vated image against him.

“That’s bullshit. I can say whatever I
want,” the rapper born Darrell Caldwell says
from inside the Men’s Central Jail in down-
town Los Angeles. During Drakeo’s months
of incarceration, the judge has refused to
grant him bail. “They’re only doing this be-
cause I’m a rapper—and a black rapper at
that,” he says. “I go hard to make sure that
you can interpret my music in 20 differ-
ent ways, but they’re still trying to use it to
paint a false picture of me.”

Since emerging in 2015, Drakeo has de-
veloped a diamond-encrusted and cryptic
universe with an anxiety-riddled mutation
of gangsta rap called “nervous music.” His
lyrics are full of comic exaggeration and
coded lingo in which a single phrase can
yield multiple meanings depending on con-
text. In his case, prosecutors have cherry-
picked several verses in an attempt to
depict him as a menace to society. Before

a grand jury indicted him, they listened to
2016’s “Bully Breaker,” a song full of semi-
automatic braggadocio:

You know we keep the bully breaker

Fuck you talking about

Choppa on my waist

Lil nigga ain't finna talk it out

Bully who?

Nah my niggas we finna chalk him out

Disrespect the gang any way

We finna spazz out.

For all the lyrical complexity of Drakeo's
catalog, authorities have singled out some
of his more boilerplate verses, ones that fit
squarely within the 30-year legacy of Los
Angeles gangsta rap—which began with
Toddy Tee’s “Batterram” and Ice-T’s “6 ‘N’
the Mornin’,” both dueling narratives of
the Daryl Gates-era police force breaking
down their doors. Nor is Drakeo’s lyrical
content dissimilar from N.W.A’s “Gangsta
Gangsta,” іп which Ice Cube raps, “I got a
shotgun/ And here's the plot/ Takin’ nig-
gas out with a flurry of buck shots."

But that was in 1988. The ensuing three
decades of new anti-gang laws in Califor-
nia have strengthened prosecutors' ability
to brand almost any gathering as a gang. As
defined in the California Street Terrorism

Drakeo the Ruler, shown here on the outside, was still in custody at press time.

144

Enforcement and Prevention Act, a “crimi-
nal street gang" is “a group of three or more
people which: has a common name or iden-
tifying sign or symbol." In the hands of
prosecutors seeking big-name convictions,
this can be used to define just about any
street rap crew.

Drakeo's defense attorney, Frank Dun-
can, considers the case against his client
to be flimsy—the result, in part, of earlier
burglary charges for which he was never
convicted. Drakeo's lyrics focus far more
on small-time burglaries than on murder,
but prosecutors tend to leap at the oppor-
tunity to scare juries with stereotypes of
sociopathic gang members.

"It allows them to poison the jury pool

and makes it a lot easier to prosecute;
everyone immediately dislikes you if they
think you're a gang member," Duncan says.
"Removed from context, these songs can
sound very incriminating. But the reality is
that this is L.A. gangsta rap. It has always
been about violence and crime."
The First Amendment's safeguards have
historically done little to shield rap-
pers from obscenity charges or character
assassination. In 1989, the Detroit police
arrested the members of N.W.A after the
group played “Fuck Tha Police” in concert
despite a warning from law enforcement.
The next year, members of 2 Live Crew were
arrested at a Broward County nightclub for
performing raunchy songs from their album
As Nasty As They Wanna Be. (A jury later
acquitted them of obscenity charges.) In
1992, 2Pac was forced to defend himself in
a civil suit filed by the family of a murdered
Texas state trooper whose killer claimed
that the rapper’s 2Pacalypse Now spurred
him to commit the crime. No less than Vice
President Dan Quayle demanded that Time
Warner Inc. yank the album from stores—
mirroring what was done earlier that sum-
mer to Ice-T, whose song “Cop Killer” had
incited a national furor.

During the past decade, this constitu-
tional right to free expression has been
called into question for both platinum
artists—including Young Thug, accused
of playing a role in a 2015 shooting of Lil
Wayne’s tour bus—and obscure aspirants.
And as the 24-7 nature of social media and
Instagram Live erases the already blurry
line between real life and public persona,
police surveillance has only increased, im-
periling rappers’ ability to satisfy the oft-
voyeuristic interest of their fans.

The intractable need for authenticity,
the visceral qualities of the art form it-
self and outright racism have led to rap-
pers’ own words being used against them
in courts of law. The injustice is specific to
the form, even though, in a culture riven by

gun violence and blood-soaked mythologies,
rappers are merely the latest in a lineage that
stretches back to well before Billy the Kid. In
some instances, attorneys have argued that
the creative fictions of rappers are little dif-
ferent from Johnny Cash’s musical boast of
shooting a man in Reno just to watch him
die. No one arrested Bob Marley for shooting
the sheriff. Handcuffs were not slapped on
Jim Morrison for the patricide depicted in
“The End” (instead, Miami police waited to
get him on an obscenity charge).

“The desire of the police to conflate rap

groups and gangs is partly ignorance, but
there’s also something more nefarious at
hand,” says Andrea Dennis, a professor at
the University of Georgia Law School and
co-author of the forthcoming book Rap on
Trial. “California law makes it easy to fit
rap groups into the definition of a gang,
but calling yourself a gang dates back to the
early gang roots of hip-hop, where groups
would often call themselves posses, crews
or gangs.” Dennis continues, “People have
gotten familiar with rap; their kids listen
to it and it has become more artistic an
creative. You might think that would lead
to anti-rap sentiment dying down, but it
has only intensified. People think they’re
surrounded by it.”
A similar argument was made by Boosie
Badazz (born Torrence Hatch) and his
attorneys during his 2012 murder trial.
Over the previous decade, the Baton Rouge
rapper had burnished his legend as the
2Pac of the 21st century South. A brazen
and raw artist raised on the impoverished
South Side, Boosie released his rap titled
“Fuck the Police” in 2007, and that version
became part of the protests that sprang up
along with the Black Lives Matter move-
ment. Unsurprisingly, it did little to endear
him to law enforcement.

According to the Baton Rouge district
attorney’s office, Boosie paid a teenage hit-
man, Michael “Marlo Mike” Louding, to
murder the brother of his baby’s mother.
The authorities successfully petitioned the
judge to admit as evidence several songs
they claimed had been recorded the night
of the killing.

In front of the jury, lead prosecutor Dana
Cummings played a cappella versions of
two compositions. She cited this passage
from “187” as one of the most damning:

Yo Marlo, he got a Monte Carlo
That bitch grey
I want that bitch dead today

Defense attorneys successfully argued
that none of the lyrics conclusively tied
Boosie to the slaying. Although Boosie used
the name of the alleged murderer, his law-
yers said the dead man didn’t drive a Monte
Carlo—a reminder that art often borrows

from real life and even autobiographies
may create composite characters, compress
time sequences and generally exercise cre-
ative license for the sake of the story.
Prosecutors often counter that presenting
lyrics can be essential to proving motive,
intent, identity and absence of mistake.
Yet in Boosie’s case, the jury—intimating
they agreed with the defense’s position that
his songs were merely reflections of the
hyper-violence of Baton Rouge, a city with
a murder rate that eclipsed Chicago’s in
2017—unanimously voted for acquittal.
The problem is more pressing than just
celebrity cases. According to Dennis, sev-
eral hundred similar cases exist out-
side the limelight. Arguably the most
extreme example of prosecutorial over-
reach is that of San Diego rapper Tiny

scrutiny that a Superior Court judge ruled
that Duncan was being wrongly prosecuted.

“There are black kids serving 25 years
to life for lyrics that they’ve written,” says
Duncan, who is currently suing the San
Diego Police Department and two of its de-
tectives for violating his First Amendment
rights and for unlawful search and seizure.
“People think that everything we’re speak-
ing about is real, and they’re completely
taking the entertainment value out of it.
Sometimes it’s based off real situations,
but sometimes it might be about something
that happened to someone I know. We’re
just trying to paint an accurate picture of
the urban landscape.”

Nonetheless, the war between rap and the
fundamental right to free speech figures to
intensify in the coming years. Prosecutors
and lawmakers are considering something

“THEY'RE ONLY DOING
THIS BECAUSE I'M А
RAPPER—AND A BLACK
RAPPER AT THAT.”

Doo (a.k.a. Brandon Duncan), who served
seven months in prison for a crime that, in
a sense, no one even accused him of com-
mitting. It concerned his 2014 mixtape No
Safety, which a district attorney’s office
seized upon to test a rarely used California
law that says anyone who actively partici-
pates in a criminal street gang and “who
willfully promotes, furthers, assists or ben-
efits from any felonious criminal conduct
by members of that gang” can be found
guilty of conspiracy to commit that felony.
The case involved a string of shootings
that prosecutors claimed were the work of
San Diego’s Lincoln Park Bloods. Brandon
Duncan had once been affiliated with the
gang, but at the time of the crimes he was
working a full-time job laying tile. By citing
a relatively little-heard album with a cover
photo of a pistol with the safety off, prose-
cutors claimed he was promoting the gang
and therefore culpable of any act of wrong-
doing any other member of the gang may
have committed. It was only after seven
months in prison and significant media

called “true threat,” a type of communica-
tion for which artists can be incarcerated
simply for lyrically threatening a rival.
And the explosion of social media has only
made it easier for law enforcement to track
every move of the rap community.

According to Erik Nielson, a professor at
the University of Richmond and co-author
of Rap on Trial, the head of the police gang
unit in Newport News, Virginia told him
that his officers spend half their time mon-
itoring gangs (and presumably local rap-
pers) online.

“Tt feels Orwellian, but just as scary as
that is the sheer incompetence of people
performing these Orwellian functions,”
Nielson says. “These people have no idea
what they’re talking about. And it’s only
going to get worse. Social media offers both
a low barrier to entry and the opportunity
to get famous without a record label. These
artists might write sophisticated raps, but
their business acumen and awareness about
these issues might not be on par. And the
police are watching their every step.” И

PLAYBOY 145

SYMPOSIU

A collection of provocative pieces that probe the inner
workings and outer limits of freedom of expression

Allow us to introduce a new series: a loosely themed collection of essays and reported pieces chosen by our editors
with an eye toward covering a lot of ground in a few pages, provoking debate among our readers and allowing osten-
sibly separate issues to intersect one another. (To the dedicated PLAYBOY reader, it’s something like a cross between
Forum and the Playboy Panel series, with the odd satire piece thrown in.) What does religious liberty have to do with
freedom of speech on college campuses? How can social media be equally effective for glossy brands and doomsday
militias? It’s our hope that the following pages will inspire you to consider these questions and America’s changing
relationship with the First Amendment. So come to the table; we’re waiting.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SARAH MAXWELL PLAYBOY 147

FICTION, FACTS
AND FEMA CAMPS

DN |»

Social media has proven that even the most outlandish
conspiracy theories are impervious to reality.
Leah Sottile questions whose job it is to make sure

they don’t turn violent

ack in 2015 I was working on a story

about preppers—the folks who

stockpile doomsday essentials such

as canned food, water, guns and

gold—and I talked to a woman who

ran a store that sold supplies one
might need at the end of the world.

“America is under a judgment from God,”
she told me. “My belief is we’re going to go
to bed one Friday night and wake up Satur-
day morning, and we’re going to be ina bank
holiday. And when the banks open a week
later, the dollar will be devalued by 50 per-
cent. It’s set up like a house of cards—and
when it comes down, it’s going to come down
all at once.”

She explained that Americans would be
rounded up and taken to massive concen-
tration camps that the Federal Emergency
Management Agency had been building all
around the country. In fact, there was one
right by my house in Spokane, Washington,
at the county fairgrounds. Her proof? “The
fencing at the fairground now leans in,” she
said. “It’s to keep people in.”

It was the first time Га ever heard such
a thing—the idea that the top section of a
fence would turn its barbed-wire face in-
ward to prevent those within its bounds
from escaping—and I drove directly to the
fairgrounds, made two quick loops around
and saw that, no, the fences did not demon-
strate any sort of inward lean. I didn’t have
the heart to call her back and tell her.

Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow
at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on
Extremism, says the theory that Americans
are being forced into government camps is a
foundational tale of the militia movement.
It’s part of the broader idea that “the whole
rest of the world has been taken over by a
globalist, socialist, tyrannical government
that they describe as the New World Order,”
Pitcavage says. “The United States is the
last bastion of freedom.” For now.

Pitcavage read about the FEMA camps in
a pamphlet as early as 1994. Around 2008 he
noticed a resurgence of interest in militias
and the FEMA camp theory.

148 SYMPOSIUM

“This is the time when social media really
takes over the internet,” he says. Just like
everyone else, the members of the militia
movement flocked to the new platforms.
“The internet allows things to spread very
far, very fast,” Pitcavage adds. “It also al-
lows many more people to accidentally come
across aconspiracy theory.” Once restricted
to paper flyers and dubbed VHS tapes, the
FEMA theory was suddenly virtually bound-
less. And though the delivery method might
have changed, the verbiage hadn't.

"I found that fascinating,” Pitcavage
says. "If this started in 1994, how could all
these alleged hundreds of concentration
camps not have been exposed over the fol-
lowing 15 years?"

He tells me it probably wouldn't have
mattered if I had informed the prepper
lady that the tops of the fences at the fair-
grounds weren't actually leaning inward.
Local militias often “investigate” sus-
pected FEMA camps and other hot spots,
reporting their findings to their follow-
ers. Last summer, after a leader of a local
vigilante group claimed he had discovered
evidence of a “sex camp" that victimized
children in Tucson, militias including the
Three Percenters allegedly planned to drive
there from all over the country to look into
it. Along with local police, the group found
it was, in fact, an abandoned homeless en-
campment. But even that didn't dissuade
those who wanted to believe.

That's common, Pitcavage says. Inves-
tigations often prompt conspiracy theo-
rists simply to look elsewhere for evidence.
"'They set up an almost impossibly high bar
of proof," he says.

So where does it all lead? Obviously the
government's not going to cop to building
FEMA camps, offering a sheepish Walter
White-style *You got us!" Nor can the the-
ory be curbed legally—and Mike Wood, a
lecturer in psychology at the University of
Winchester, argues that we shouldn't want
that. It’s not a bad thing for a citizenry to
be skeptical of its government. It's when
those theories turn violent—such as when a

man brought a gun into a Washington, D.C.-
area pizza joint because he believed it to be
the center of a Hillary Clinton-supported
pedophile ring—that they become an issue.
At that point, when theories devolve into
threats, social media platforms have the
power to act. Last August, loads of content
from conspiracy-theory godfather Alex
Jones was banned from YouTube and several
other platforms for violating rules about
hate speech and bullying. Perhaps his most
virulent—and viral—theory questioned the
very reality of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elemen-
tary School shooting, which led to endless
harassment of the victims’ parents.

“As private companies, Apple, Facebook
and Spotify can decide what content ap-
pears on their platforms,” Lata Nott, execu-
tive director of the First Amendment Center
at the Freedom Forum Institute in Washing-
ton, D.C., told USA Today after the ban. De-
spite the earth-spanning influence of social
media, it isn’t the public sphere—and the
First Amendment (theoretically, anyway)
rules only over the latter.

But even forced off the internet, conspir-
acy theories can be impervious to evidence
thanks to their own logical loophole. Rob
Brotherton, author of the 2015 book Suspi-
cious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy
Theories, tells me, “I’d go so far as to say
that, logically, it’s impossible to disprove
a conspiracy theory. They are inherently
about secret knowledge. If the conspiracy
was real, and if it was as good as the con-
spiracy theorists think it is, then of course
there would be no definitive proof—that just
means the conspiracy is working.”

So when someone like Jones is banned,
or when fake news is removed from Face-
book, it’s all too easy to say, “Of course they
took it down. They know we're right.” Social
media allows the proliferation of good ideas
and totally harebrained ones alike. But it’s
belief, especially in our digital cacophony,
that’s ultimately more powerful than truth.

Leah Sottile is a Portland, Oregon-based
writer and host of the Bundyville podcast.

THE OTHER

CAMPUS CRISIS

Conservatives argue that liberal students are stifling
their right to speak at colleges and universities. But is

it all an act? Caroline Orr investigates

If you were to listen solely to Tucker Carlson
or Laura Ingraham, you might be inclined to
believe America’s educational institutions
are in the grip of a full-blown free-speech cri-
sis. The refrain is familiar: Colleges, once
hailed as bastions of free expression and open
debate, are devolving into insular safe spaces
where liberal professors coddle students with
trigger warnings as right-of-center speakers
are chased off campus by hordes of intoler-
ant, indoctrinated snowflakes. Recent stud-
ies, however, suggest otherwise. Of note, a
2016 Knight Foundation survey found college
students who support speech restrictions on
campus are outnumbered more than two to
one by those who don't.

That said, a threat to the free expression
of ideas at colleges and universities is loom-
ing, but it isn’t coming from students, pro-
fessors or leftist indoctrination. It’s coming
from organizations that fund a so-called
“free speech” movement that aims to exploit
on-campus confrontations for political gain.
With campuses doubling as breeding grounds
for the next generation of political leaders, a
network of right-wing groups has ramped up
their targeting of these institutions to further
sow national discord and inject conservative
ideology into student groups and campus cul-
ture. At the same time, they support legisla-
tion that shuts down any pushback.

One of the most prominent players is Young
America’s Foundation, which spent more
than $8 million on campus events in 2015.
Described as a “conservative youth organiza-
tion” that seeks to “restore sanity” on college
campuses, YAF has been a fixture of the main-
stream conservative movement for nearly half
a century. Author Ann Coulter, White House
senior policy advisor Stephen Miller and Na-
tional Rifle Association senior advisor Chuck
Cunningham are all part of the YAF network.

Between 2005 and 2015, YAF spent more
than $50 million on campus speaking events.
In 2016 the group funded 111 speakers on 77
campuses nationwide. As it operates nation-
ally, YAF has made a name for itself by de-
ploying controversial public figures—from
anti-Islam hard-liners such as Robert Spen-
cer, Pamela Geller and David Horowitz to

mainstream conservative figures such as
Ben Shapiro and Rick Santorum—to speak
on liberal campuses, knowing it could pro-
voke a backlash that can later be exploited as
“proof” of a free-speech crisis.

In addition to paying for speakers, YAF
coordinates with campus organizations to
host “free speech” events and sponsor “boot
camps” where students are taught to confront
liberal classmates and professors with aggres-
sive tactics. These activities earned at least
one university-based YAF chapter, at Michi-
gan State University, the official designation
of a hate group—the only student hate group
in the country. The chapter was designated as
such for hosting white-supremacist speakers,
organizing a “Koran desecration contest” and
creating “Catch an Illegal Alien Day.”

While YAF may be the most well funded and
deeply connected of the conservative groups
participating in the campus free-speech wars,
it isn’t the only one. The Leadership Insti-
tute positions itself as an activism-centered
group that trains foot soldiers, or Campus
Correspondents. The organization is linked
to James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, which
tried to discredit sexual-harassment allega-
tions against Alabama Senate candidate Roy
Moore in 2017 by providing false testimony
to The Washington Post. According to a let-
ter penned by O’Keefe requesting donations,
the Leadership Institute’s Campus Corre-
spondents are “freedom fighters” tasked with
learning “how to defeat the radical left.” They
seek to “bring down professors and school
officials,” “stop the advance” of “dangerous
leftism dead in its tracks” and “fight back
against” the “growing insanity” of liberalism
on campus “before it destroys our country.”
The institute also runs the Campus Reform
project, which calls itself a “watchdog to the
nation’s higher education system” focused
on “expos[ing] bias and abuse on the nation’s
college campuses.” On its website, Campus
Reform enthusiastically recruits students to
join it in fighting back against the “evil em-
pire” of leftism in higher education.

Turning Point USA, which brands itself as
a “24/7-365 activist organization,” is another
key player in the battle to redefine free speech

on campus. The group, led by communications
director Candace Owens, has been accused
of organizing staged confrontations. It has
launched Professor Watchlist, a database of
professors tracked for their supposed liberal
or leftist ideologies. Professors have report-
edly faced harassment, threats and calls for
their dismissal after being added to the list.

In a cynical twist, the same conservative
donors backing these organizations are also
pouring money into efforts to stifle campus
dissent, with such investments already pay-
ing off in the form of draconian anti-free-
speech legislation. In the first few months of
2017 alone, Republican lawmakers in at least
eight states introduced so-called campus
free-speech bills that prohibit students from
engaging in protest in a way that “disrupts”
the speech of anyone who has been invited
to speak on campus. By March 2018, similar
bills had been introduced in at least 16 states,
half of which have already passed. In total, 25
states have introduced legislation purporting
to protect free speech on campus by cracking
down on student protests, encouraging harsh
punishment for banned categories of protest
and mandating how universities deal with
issues related to hate speech and harassment.

Many of these states have passed legisla-
tion based on a model bill, the Campus Free
Speech Act, designed by the Goldwater Insti-
tute. The organization is bankrolled by the
Koch brothers and the Mercer family, two of
the country’s most prominent megadonors,
and the legislation’s implications are chill-
ing. In states where the model bill is passed,
colleges can impose academic and legal sanc-
tions on student protesters for “shouting
down” a speaker or engaging in other expres-
sive acts, including chanting and singing,
during demonstrations. In Wisconsin,
which passed a particularly harsh version of
the bill, students who are found to have dis-
rupted the free expression of another person
(including non-members of the university)
can be expelled after a third strike. The
model legislation also seeks to effectively
force universities to allow any and all speak-
ers on campus and prevent administrators
from disinviting speakers.

Under the guise of free speech, conservative
donors are pumping millions into an orches-
trated effort to force their political agenda
onto college campuses. And when they run
into pushback, they cynically accuse their
critics of censorship and cite it as evidence
of a free-speech “crisis.” In fact, it exists only
because they manufactured it. So yes, free
speech on campus is facing a reckoning. But
as with all things political, one need only fol-
low the money to find the real threat.

Caroline Orr is a behavioral scientist and

an editor at Shareblue Media, a progressive
news outlet.

PLAYBOY 149

N BAD FAITH

Christopher Stroop points out
some unseemly similarities in
the weaponization of the First
Amendment when it comes to
religious liberty and free speech

The theocratic Christian right, alongside
fringe alt-right voters, is at the core of the suc-
cess of President Donald Trump, whose pres-
idency has been marked by GOP-enabled
disinformation campaigns and a brazen dis-
regard for democracy. In the 2016 presidential
election, 81 percent of white evangelicals voted
for Trump. That may be why the MAGA crowd
seems to weaponize bad-faith arguments for
religious liberty as often as it does for free
speech, with the ultimate goal of restricting
the freedom of others. How do we counter dis-
honest appeals to democratic values?

In the first volume of The Open Soci-
ety and Its Enemies, published in 1945, the
Austrian-born British philosopher Karl Pop-
per warns that “in order to maintain a toler-
ant society, the society must be intolerant of
intolerance.” In his seminal 1971 A Theory
of Justice, however, American political phi-
losopher John Rawls argues that those com-
mitted to justice should extend tolerance to
“intolerant sects.” Yet even Rawls concedes
there should be limits “when the tolerant sin-
cerely and with reason believe that their in-
stitutions of liberty are in danger.”

According to Frederick Clarkson, a senior
research analyst at the think tank Political Re-
search Associates, “the demagogic statements
by President Trump and his allies who call the
media the ‘enemy of the people’ are the most
serious threats to free speech” in our current
political environment. Melissa Hooper, a di-
rector at the nonpartisan organization Human
Rights First, similarly argues that we should
be concerned that “leaders like the president
and other influential figures are confusing
facts they don’t like with false information.”

People who are quick to decry what they per-
ceive to be restrictions on their speech tend to
use rhetorical strategies similar to those who
decry encroachments on religious liberty. The
former conflate First Amendment rights with

150 SYMPOSIUM

unregulated access to prestigious platforms,
as demonstrated by the brouhaha surround-
ing Milo Yiannopoulos’s canceled appear-
ance at the University of California, Berkeley
in 2017, The New York Times’s 2018 firing of
Quinn Norton based on her ties to white su-
premacist Andrew Auernheimer, and The
Atlantic’s termination of Kevin Williamson
for a 2014 podcast in which he expressed sup-
port for hanging women who've had abortions.

Williamson’s statement—and his subse-
quent firing—neatly illustrates how the battle
over “religious freedom” waged by the Chris-
tian right (which may finally achieve its goal
of overturning Roe v. Wade now that Brett
Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court) inter-
sects with bad-faith arguments about freedom
of speech. This is ironic, given that evangeli-
cal colleges such as Pennsylvania’s Grove City
College and Kentucky’s Asbury University in-
voke “religious liberty” to justify their censor-
ship of student newspapers and suppression of
support for LGBTQ rights. For all the concern
in our public sphere over liberal students and
college administrations supposedly rejecting
free speech, this serious campus free-speech
crisis remains little-known.

When it comes to abortion, Clarkson notes
that religious-liberty rhetoric has already
trumped freedom of speech in some juris-
dictions. “There are laws in many states that
require health care workers to read scripted
statements to patients with misleading
claims that abortion would increase their
risk of breast cancer and suicide,” he says.
“Government-mandated false scripts are not
only a violation of the free speech of health
workers but a violation of a patient’s right to
receive unbiased medical information.”

Just as he sees “the best answer to disagree-
able speech” as “more speech,” Clarkson be-
lieves we must embrace a robust concept of
religious freedom in order to counter the
Christian right’s attempts to claim it as jus-
tification for censorship and discrimination.
He notes that in the case of marriage equal-
ity, “many Christians, Christian institutions
and non-Christians honor the love of same-
sex couples.” In other words, religious liberty
should not preference anti-LGBTQ religion
over affirming religion.

“Bad-faith arguments with respect to free-
dom of religion often fail to account for the
fact that the argument denies the rights of
another person,” Hooper says. Given that
the rise of American authoritarianism is
occurring in an era of bots, trolls and social
media manipulation, it will take more than
more speech and the embrace of pluralism
to restore civil society. Clarkson prescribes
deeper involvement in electoral politics and
a renewed emphasis on the practice of demo-
cratic citizenship. Hooper agrees, suggesting
that to counter disinformation, we need to
focus on teaching civics and media literacy.

The first step is admitting we have a prob-
lem. Living with authoritarian-identifying
leaders in power is like being in an abusive rela-
tionship: We’re subjected to continual gaslight-
ing. If we want to preserve democracy, we must
recognize that not all arguments that invoke
democratic values aim to protect all citizens.

Christopher Stroop is a senior researcher
with the University of Innsbruck’s Postsecu-
lar Conflicts Project.

SCIENCE SAYS

Debra W. Soh asks, What
happens when social justice
warriors reject scientific data?

In the discipline of sexology, the study of gen-
der dysphoria, or when one’s gender identity
doesn’t match their birth sex, has become a
controversial area of research. Consider the
backlash last August when PLOS ONE, a peer-
reviewed scientific journal, published the first
study to examine rapid-onset gender dyspho-
ria, or ROGD, a phenomenon the study claims
is growing among adolescents who come out as
transgender. This coming out, as described by
the study’s author, Dr. Lisa Littman, “seemed
to occur in the context of belonging to a peer
group where one, multiple, or even all of the
friends have become gender dysphoric and
transgender-identified during the same time-
frame.” Littman, a physician and assistant
professor at Brown University, conducted the
online study, a 90-question survey of 256 par-
ents, and concluded that ROGD may be an
effect of “social contagion,” or “the spread of
affect or behaviors through a population.”

The study ignited the internet almost im-
mediately after publication, with some left-
leaning media outlets calling it everything
from “junk” to “anti-trans.” Think Progress’s
LGBTQ editor, Zack Ford, wrote, “All she did
was anonymously survey parents from the
exact same anti-trans online parent groups that
invented the concept, codifying their totally
bogus myth in the guise of a scientific study."

Instead of defending Littman's research,
Brown University rescinded its corresponding

press release five days after publication,
which happened to be the same day PLOS ONE
announced it would review the article to seek
“further expert assessment on the study’s
methodology and analyses.” Bess Marcus,
dean of Brown’s School of Public Health, said
“removing the article from news distribution
is the most responsible course of action.”

Speaking as a former sexual neuroscientist,
it has been my experience that those who point
out the existence of ROGD are often labeled
transphobic, whether they’re researchers,
journalists or parents. Regarding Littman’s
study, it’s disturbing that opponents criticized
the sample group—parents of transgender
teens who answered the survey on one of three
selected websites—because they obviously
hadn’t read the research. Of note, roughly 86
percent of the parents endorsed gay marriage
and 88 percent stated transgender people
deserve equal rights and protections. About
бо percent of parents reported their children
had at least one mental health disorder, such
as anxiety or autism, prior to announcing they
were transgender. Many reported a history of
trauma or self-harm. Most important, none
of the children met the diagnostic criteria for
gender dysphoria in childhood as defined by
psychiatry’s DSM-5 guidelines.

In addition, many parents reported their
kids came out after spending vast amounts
of time online, including watching transi-
tion videos on YouTube. For about 37 percent
of parents who reported about friends, more
than half of their kids’ friend groups had also
come out as transgender. This is more than 70
times the prevalence of transgender people in
the general population. The study also showed
how young people might receive social benefits
for identifying as trans, such as increased pop-
ularity among peers and greater protection
by teachers. Some of the websites accessed by
young people even provided instructions on
getting approved for hormone therapy.

Opponents of the study argued that trans
people weren’t consulted as part of the re-
search. This complaint is naive. The role of a
scientist is to be objective, and a well-designed
study—along with institutional review boards
that ensure research is executed ethically—
operates with this in mind. Whether or not sci-
entists consult with or identify as part of the
population they are studying is irrelevant.

Littman agrees that more research on ROGD
is required but stands by her findings. So do
many academics, stemming from the fact that
it’s rare for an academic journal to place an al-
ready published scientific paper under review,
considering its methodology has already been
vetted during the peer-review process.

I worry that, given the negative press—
Slate wrote that Littman’s “anti-trans study
mischaracterized a real condition,” for
example—PLOS ONE was influenced by a fear
that the findings were politically incorrect.

For one, public capitulation only promotes
the idea that ROGD is a made-up condition
fabricated by bigots to invalidate transgender
people. Secondly, reconsidering the method-
ology of a peer-reviewed study after publica-
tion isn’t just a question of academic rigor; it
can amount to censorship of findings.

I don’t deny that the transgender commu-
nity has faced discrimination and hardship.
Although transitioning can be beneficial for
some adults, the same cannot always be said
for children. Based on my experience, in the
case of ROGD in particular, a girl’s procla-
mation of gender dysphoria commonly has
nothing to do with gender. There are a host of
reasons why a young woman may feel discom-
fort around being female; they don’t necessar-
ily mean she’s gender dysphoric.

The way the chips have fallen around Litt-
man’s study could set a precedent and broad-
cast a wider message that academic journals
can be swayed if a particular group deems an
article's findings unpalatable. In a time when
the president’s administration is attempting
to ignore the research of climate scientists,
we must also protect science that—while not
immediately comfortable—can lead to a bet-
ter understanding of the human condition.

Debra W. Soh holds a Ph.D. in sexual neuro-

science research from York University and
writes about the science and politics of sex.

JUST LOVE
CONTENT!

An unabashed and totally not
satirical valentine from Scott
Dikkers, founder of The Onion

Hello—you've just met the biggest fan of con-
tent ever! I love consuming content from a
variety of content-delivery mediums. I love
written content; that one’s my favorite, prob-
ably. But I also like video content. Podcast
content too. I can’t decide! As long as it’s an

effective content strategy, I’m hooked!

I really love content that interacts meaning-
fully with my demographic group—when rele-
vant content takes me on an emotional journey,
starting with increased brand awareness and
culminating in a positive end-user experience
that leaves someone statistically similar to my
age, race, sex, income level, years of college ed-
ucation and credit card ownership with a rich,
satisfied feeling of elevated brand interest. I
want a brand interaction ГЇЇ never forget!

The other day I saw this amazing content
in my feed. It beautifully took up the space
between the advertorials and pop-ups and
commercial messages. It might have been
integrated branded content, or maybe it was
a celebrity-endorsed sponsored post. What-
ever it was, it was awesome, because content
is just the best!

I recently read this piece in the opinion-
mercial section of the newspaper. Talk about
a high content-differentiation factor! This
was content guaranteed to have excellent ROI
for the marketing professional who served
it. I was impressed! I always make it a point
to contribute to good open rates and click-
throughs. I just want to give a little back to
the content I love so much!

On а more serious note, content doesn’t just
infotain me; it keeps me up to date on the is-
sues I care about. I follow important events
like politics. My content platforms know all
my opinion data and send me the best content
tailored to what I think, which means it’s true!

Did I tell you I have a poster of content in
my bedroom? I love going to sleep looking at
content on my wall!

Oddly, I never dream. My nights are just a
dark abyss with no content.

We're living in the Golden Age of content.
Nowadays, there’s so much content on cable
TV and in theaters and on all those great OTT
platforms—I can’t possibly consume it all,
but I wish I could! Maybe someday the content
creators will figure out a way to inject content
directly into my mind. Then I won't have to
think at all! My most basic responses to sen-
sory input will be replaced with content no-
tifications. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Ding!
Time for content!

However, as a responsible consumer of con-
tent, I believe it’s important to protect my
content from hackers. If they invent that
content-plugged-into-your-brain thing I men-
tioned, I would hate to have my brain hacked!
Then people could make me believe anything
they wanted, and that would be terrible!

At least now I control my own thoughts. And
you knowwhat I’m thinking? I just love content!

Scott Dikkers’s books Outrageous Market-
ing: The Story of The Onion and How to
Build a Powerful Brand With No Marketing
Budget and Welcome to the Future Which Is
Mine are out now.

PLAYBOY 151

Hera
Miller

The game-changing star of two Hollywood franchises helps redefine masculinity with his totally
expressive, completely liberating style—Bunny ears and all

TEXT BY

RYAN GAJEWSKI

“It’s funny when an interview starts and you suddenly realize you're
talking about stuff you’ve never talked about with anyone,” Ezra
Miller tells me. The Hollywood It boy, who lately has been busy blur-
ring the boundaries of masculinity in men’s magazines (including
this one) with his enthusiasm for gender-bending, has just shared
with me his first-ever sex dream, a memory from the age of four of
a witch imprisoning him on a waterspout. “It was tantalizing and
delightful,” he says. He points out how appropriate that dream now
is, given his role as Credence Barebone in the bankable Fantas-
tic Beasts films, a big-budget franchise that is certainly cinema’s
witchiest and also its queerest, thanks to its buzzy exploration of two
wizards’ gay romance.

The 26-year-old New Jersey-born actor and musician, who earned
his cred in 2011’s We Need to Talk About Kevin and has since gradu-
ated to blockbuster top billings, also playing the Flash in DC’s big-
screen universe, says that being in PLAYBOY has been his “dream for
a while now.” (To be frank, it has also been our hope to feature more
men who are comfortable posing the question, What does the future of
masculinity look like?) His comment about stumbling into deep per-
sonal revelations pertains to almost everything we discuss after his
PLAYBOY shoot, in which he flaunts Bunny ears, fishnets and size-14
heels. This includes: his crush on a boy in kindergarten that led him
to ask his older sisters if he was gay; his painful adolescence due to

152 STYLE

PHOTOGRAPHY BY

RYAN PFLUGER

STYLING BY

RYAN YOUNG

“weird bones” in his arm, chest and neck that still cause soreness, and
a childhood stutter that he conquered through singing; and his com-
panionship with a group of sexual partners he calls his polycule—a
portmanteau of “polyamorous molecule.”

Highly spiritual, energetic and loquacious, Miller delivers these
stories with nods to history, philosophy and political theory. He’s
attracted to men and women, he says, and is a “sexual being,” though
the roles of love and sex in his life can vary. It would be reckless to sug-
gest his career hasn’t impacted those realms. “I’ve been attacked by
fucking bigots,” he says. “And then in the industry? Of course I’ve
been in auditions where sexuality was being leveraged. It’s important
to acknowledge the diversity of voices who have experienced this shit.
Everyone is victim to it. Everyone is a survivor of it.”

As he enters a new phase, one in which some of this country’s most
masculine magazines are inviting him to become the face of the
new normal, and when a children’s tale about wizardry embraces
homosexuality, Miller’s queerness seems to balance him—as does
his drive. “I’m trying to find queer beings who understand me as
a queer being off the bat, who I make almost a familial connection
with and feel I’ve been married to 25 lifetimes ago from the moment
we meet,” he explains. Tearing up, he adds, “If I didn’t have art, Га
be so fucking dead, so long ago. I probably would have done it myself.
Art—that’s all I know.” Е

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Sofia Barrett-Ibarria

Taylor Ferber

-
>
27

Bruna Nessif

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATASHA WILSON

Andrea Nerhun

From a young age, fascinated by the human psyche and the ability to
reach the masses with my words, I dreamed of becoming a reporter.
Today, I am one. I visit movie sets around the world, report from
the most glamorous red carpets and interview celebrities such as
Timothée Chalamet, Gal Gadot and Oprah. My site, Talk to Me Taylor,
is a place where I challenge celebrities with unconventional interviews
that attempt to go deeper and pull out something more meaningful.

Here’s the thing about being a reporter: People like to tell you what
to ask and how to do your job. Ironic, given journalists are supposed to
be protectors of free speech, right? VH1 once “suspended” me for being
critical of a celebrity in an article. My words have been stifled by pub-
lications that claim to be progressive and feminist but are intolerant
of views outside their editors’ comfort zones. Last year, The Blast, in
a piece called “Morgan Freeman Openly Objectifies Female Reporter
During Press Interview,” attempted to portray me as another #MeToo
victim. The story was widely reported, but Freeman, though accused of
harassment by other women, didn’t make me feel uncomfortable during
our interview. I published an op-ed piece denouncing the article.

And so, throughout my career I’ve adopted one consistent message:
Don’t tell me what I can and can't say. In this era, too many people are
torn down, devalued and ruined for saying something others don’t

agree with. People attempt to silence one another under the belief that
opposing views don’t deserve equal consideration. Many probably per-
ceive this very story as something female journalists shouldn’t do lest
we risk our reputations, our professionalism.

Yes, we're showcasing our bodies and inviting you to look. No, none of
that discredits our intellect, womanhood, integrity or ability to tell a story.
I can no longer feed into a narrative that says displaying one’s beauty,
brains and body are mutually exclusive. There’s nothing wrong with aspir-
ing to be a Centerfold or a woman who can bring a story to life with pen
and paper. They’re different forms of creative expression. A woman’s abil-
ity to exhibit either form, or both, without judgment? That’s freedom.

I hope you see in these photos the beautiful female form in all its
glory. Go ahead, call these women sexy. When you do, remember we
are all writers, journalists and thinkers helping to shape the world you
live in via what you read, armed with nothing more than our intelli-
gence and an unapologetic love for words.

Taylor Ferber writes about pop culture and entertainment, with bylines
on Vulture, Bustle, UsMagazine.com and Fandango.

I'll go out on a limb and say sexologist wasn't a job anyone considered
on career day in high school. Incidentally, that is what I've become.

After years of study and obtaining certificates and degrees, I now have
the privilege to educate people about sex every day. Га even argue I
know enough to be dangerous.

I’m sure you’ve seen my breasts by now. If not, take another look
above—I’m standing there, in the middle, holding the handbag.
Nice, right? Has your opinion of me changed now that you've seen my
breasts? Unfortunately for some of you, it may have.

Such judgment originates with critics who don't want to live in a
world where women have nipples and own their bodies. Despite my au-
thority on the topic, this story may reduce me in some people's minds
to nothing more than another woman who got naked for attention. In
fact, I’m honored to be featured in PLAYBOY for both my words and my
flesh. To be part of this iconic brand, and to have the reach of its plat-
form for sharing my ideas, is truly amazing and affirming.

In a society starved for honest, accurate information about sex,
sexuality, relationships and body image, it is my mission to provide
a fresh lens through my reporting. Shining a light on complicated
topics such as the increase in male infertility and rising male inter-
est in anal sex, being mindful of inclusion and bringing a sensitiv-
ity to ethnic diversity rooted in my own complex heritage are at the
forefront of my work as a sex educator turned journalist. It's wrong
to relate my comfort with baring my flesh—no, owning it—to my in-
tellectual worth.

As feminists, it's our right to determine what empowers us. For
some, that may be modesty; for others, it may be nudity. Neither is
right or wrong. It's about individuality. If the thought of seeing some-
one nude diminishes your opinion of his or her worth or authority, Га
encourage you to ask yourself why.

Even with all this said, some will be displeased with me. That’s okay.
I’m not here to make you happy. I’m not a problem.

Megan Stubbs is a board-certified sexologist and public speaker who
writes about sex and relationships for Playboy.com.

In late 2017, I became a pivotal voice in the #MeToo movement within
the journalism community. At the time, my parents warned me that
if I leaned too hard into activism against domestic violence, it might

become expected of me; it might become what I was known for in the
industry. I fell into a yearlong depression, struggling to comprehend
my new reputation as the girl who got raped and decided to speak up
about it. I hated being lauded for my bravery. Coming forward was
simply the right thing to do, and I happened to have the platform and
the freedom to do it. Not all women do.

Most men, I believe, imagine that feminism imbues every fiber of a
woman’s existence. Those men don’t understand feminism. It is equal-
ity and freedom, but it also allows for imperfection—the ability to be
flawed, both clothed and unclothed. I’m now attempting, through my
writing, to make feminism more accessible to a Gen Z audience that
may be alienated by modern media’s lack of consideration for them. It
is important to tell young women today that being a feminist doesn’t
mean blindly voting for any woman who runs for Congress. Or any
woman who runs for president.

Coming into 2019 I’m no longer accepting the role that has tried to
confine me since 2017. I have too many components, too many con-
tradictions and complexities. In my teens and early 20s, I struggled
with my mental health. At one point I was simultaneously a postgrad
academic and a stripper. Today, I’m a writer who has the freedom to
publish my thoughts even though my editors know they'll trigger a
backlash. No one will ever be able to identify me as this or that.

Knowing myself, I'll continue to enrage and surprise people. I'll
continue to bring attention to wrongdoing, especially when minori-
ties’ rights are threatened. I’ve abandoned much of the terminology
that compromised the 2016 election—SJWisms such as smash the
patriarchy—to speak directly to young people, who I hope read my
op-ed pieces without pigeonholing them as feminist arguments. We
need to let the next generation know that women (and men) are not
just falling in line. We'll speak up, write and report whenever we de-
tect fissures in particular arguments. I want people to see that femi-
nists can be intelligent and not take everything seriously—but take
the correct things seriously. We can also choose to be naked. That's
the beauty of it.

Helen Donahue has written for Vice and Quartz and is a contributing
writer for Playboy.com. She previously served as Super Deluxe’s social
media director and as an editor for Hearst Digital Media.

PLAYBOY 163

ANDREA WERHUN, MODERN WHORE

Why, hello there. Welcome to my naked body. Greetings from
the lovely lady lumps of this fertile flesh, presented to you with-
out shame in unabashed two-dimensional Technicolor. Groovy.
Although “assume” makes an ass of you and me, you may have
guessed that I made a choice to show you the truth of these curves—
and you, my friend, would be correct. I mean, why wouldn’t I? Look
at my tits! Here today, at my bellybutton tomorrow. I might as well
immortalize my sexual apex with a tasteful PLAYBOY spread along-
side a gaggle of incredible women.

Like the other women featured in these pages, I’m a writer. My book,
Modern Whore: A Memoir, published in 2017, is about the two glamor-
ous and grotesque years I spent working as an escort in Toronto. It fea-
tures 27 short stories that run the gamut from funny and thoughtful
to erotic and disturbing, sprinkled with some 60 (mostly nude) film
stills of yours truly taken by filmmaker Nicole Bazuin. Come for the
provocative pictures, stay for the pro-sex work feminist manifesto.

As a sex worker, I’m no stranger to the argument that I can’t make
decisions about my body, especially decisions pertaining to sex and
money. My body is literally my business. Sex work is how I’ve made
money while pursuing my career as a full-time writer and performer.
Sex work is flexible, well-paying and, yes, fun. It’s not for everyone,
but it’s ideal for me, and I’m not alone. I’m not an exception to some
rule; I'm part of an ever-growing chorus of voices that demands we
recognize sex work as work and sex workers as people worthy of love,
respect and full protection under the law. I use my privilege to tell my
story because so many of us cannot.

So, yes, you bet your ass I consider myself a feminist, and posing
nude—whether for PLAYBOY, for my book or as a sex worker—poses
no contradiction. My body is mine, after all. I can do whatever I want
with it, which happens to include putting its glorious truth on display
for all to enjoy. You’re welcome.

Andrea Werhun is an author, performer and columnist who writes
about sex and consent for Playboy.com. She has been featured in The
New York Times and The Guardian and on CBC.

SOFIA BARRETTIBARRIA, PROFESSIONAL SEX PLORER

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t uncomfortable with my body
or itching to get out of my own skin. That’s not because there’s any-
thing wrong with it, but because for as long as I can remember, my
body hasn’t really been mine. Lingering stares, hugs that lasted too
long, catcalls and comments from men taught me early on that I was a
sexual object before I could understand why or what that even meant.
I never had room to define my sexuality, because it had been defined
for me. By men. Later, as I attempted to reimagine myself as a sexual-
ized body, I realized such efforts were attempts at emotional survival.

For many women, our entire existence is politicized. Who we have
sex with, when we have sex, how often, whether we procreate, whether
we talk (or write) about it in the media, whether we take off our clothes
for money—all the above decisions are political in today’s climate.
We'll always be sexualized without consent and shamed once we capi-
talize on that. That's all the more true should we enjoy it.

I can't imagine a time when I won't feel painfully uncomfortable in
my own body because of this. That is why I’ve devoted some of my jour-
nalism career to writing about sex for men's magazines. It's also why
I’m taking off my clothes for one. I’m a hairy, bipolar bisexual with
cellulite, stretch marks, self-inflicted scars and some strange moles.
I'm not supposed to be in PLAYBOY, but here I am. If I'm not making
people uncomfortable, or making them question their views on sex,
sexuality and human attraction, I’m not doing my job well. Aside from
that, I think I’m hot, and I want you to look at me. It's only human.

I see my work as a writer and my position in the media as ways to re-
claim the narrative of my sexuality and define it in new terms. It’s a
way to take back my image, body and voice in the medium I choose. As
the Trump administration works to redefine sexuality, citizenship,

164

ІРІ М NOT MAKING
PEOPLE QUESTION
THEIR VIEWS ON
SEX AND SEXUAL-
ITY, ГМ NOT DOING
MY JOB WELL.

the free press and countless other things, I recognize that the freedom
to define my own existence is an incredible privilege. And I feel it’s my
responsibility, and the responsibility of anyone working in journalism
and news media, to preserve that freedom for others as well.

Sofia Barrett-Ibarria is a journalist who writes for Esquire, The Cut,
Allure, Glamour, Dazed and Broadly.

BRUNA NESSIF, MULTIHYPHENATE MOGUL

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fed the limiting belief that I
could be either smart or sexy. Never both, because one would discredit
the other. So I chose to be smart. I buried my face in books. I became
a top student. I graduated with a broadcast journalism degree, pur-
sued writing, became an entrepreneur, launched a website, spoke at
the Women’s Empowerment Expo and published a self-help book, Let
That Shit Go. Through many of these accomplishments, I continued
to internalize, perhaps subconsciously, a narrative that said I couldn’t
exude sex appeal because then people wouldn’t take me seriously. This
caused mental conflict; I knew it was fucked-up. Why did I have to
stifle myself as awoman to be accepted?

A turning point for me was remembering when I found a stash of
PLAYBOYS in our garage as a kid. I opened up the pages and admired
how the Playmates oozed confidence in their bare skin and how
unabashed they were about their bodies. Those feelings have stuck
with me throughout my life. When I moved into my first apartment,
I covered my bedroom walls with photography of naked or scantily
clad women because I wanted to become one of those women. Proud.
Confident. Sexy. I was envious of their ability to embrace their bodies
without feeling they had to sacrifice dignity.

It became obvious to me that I had been waiting for someone else
to give me my freedom. I was waiting for permission to be sexy and
smart, among many other things. After years of searching for exter-
nal validation, I woke up. Yes, I can be a multidimensional woman.
But the only person who can allow that is me. So I’ve granted myself
the ability to explore and exude all parts of me.

Know this: It hasn’t always been easy. Even on set for this shoot, I
found myself wondering if I would lose respect and credibility after
this issue’s release. But you know what? It became easy to stop car-
ing. I fought to become this woman. I’m proud of this woman. I always
wanted to be this woman, and by giving myself that freedom to be-
come her, I know now that no one can take her away from me.

Bruna Nessif is founder of The Problem With Dating, a website that
covers the dating lives of young people. She's a former entertainment

journalist and editor for E! Online.

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PLAYBOY 1/3

March Playmate Miki Hamano grew up in rural
Japan—but as you'll see, this free spirit is as
American as they come

When you're young, you can do anything.

I came to the United States as an exchange student when I
was 19 years old. Until then, I had never been outside Japan. I
first went to Palm Desert for three years, then I moved to San
Francisco and got my business degree. It was really difficult be-
cause I didn't speak any English—but at the same time, it was
an adventure, so I loved it. I learned so many life lessons and Im
much stronger mentally. Still, I don’t think I could do it now, so I
want to say “good job” to my younger self.

People ask me, “What do you want to do 10 years from now?
What do you want to be?” I don’t know. I don't make life plans. I live
each moment as it comes. What’s meant to happen will happen.
Maybe you don’t know why now, but you will later. I think super
positive thoughts; I constantly say, “This is going to be good.” It’s
all about your brain. It’s all about how you think.

I used to be hard on myself—a result of comparing myself to

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other people. All the girls in L.A. are so gorgeous, I thought I had to be
like them. I worked out constantly and did all these injections, which
are gone now. I felt like I was trying to be somebody else. Now I know
there’s freedom in being in your natural state. That’s why everyone
should be allowed to speak their mind and express themselves without
fear. Being comfortable in my own skin doesn’t mean I want to be ob-
jectified; it means I'm loving myself and embracing who I am.

The technology we have access to now makes it easy to share our
ideas, and good ones are being shared a lot faster. It’s amazing to see
strong women, and men too, from all over the world speaking up for
what they believe in and making a huge impact on issues that have ex-
isted for probably every generation before ours. I’m thankful I live ina
time and place when people can express themselves so freely. It’s rel-
atively recent that people started talking about feminism. We have a
long way to go; it all takes time. m

DATA SHEET

BIRTHPLACE: Sapporo, Japan CURRENT CITY: Los Angeles, California

ON INDEPENDENCE

When | was growing up, my parents were
always busy, so | never really saw much
of them. | learned to be self-sufficient at
a young age. | have always been inde-
pendent. | don't expect anybody to do
things for me. | just want to be myself—
that’s the goal.

ON CRAVINGS

Lately l've been eating raw. | love Japanese
food, and Mexican too. Burritos, tacos,
ceviche—l eat Mexican food every day.

ON GOALS

My life is here now. | don’t want to go
back to Japan. Where I'm from is just a
lot of trees and nothing much happen-
ing. But | still love nature! San Francisco
is my future home. | want a dog and a
big yard surrounded by trees. | want to
have apple trees and a garden. That's my
complete life.

ON FINDING IT

| definitely appreciate art, and | have a
lot of respect for artists. I’m not a very
good painter or sculptor, but Гуе done
everything. You just need something, one
thing you love, something you're good at.
Every one of us can find it.

ON VISION

| intentionally never wear glasses or con-
tacts when I'm shooting. | like not being
able to see everything. | guess | still get
a little nervous sometimes, so | prefer
not seeing everyones facial expressions.
| can just do my own thing, go into my
own world.

ON WHAT'S REAL

| get it: People feel uncomfortable with
nipples, but we all have nipples. | hope
people get more comfortable with what
we have. | don't feel uncomfortable being
naked. It's a natural thing. It's soothing

when my bare skin touches the earth; it
reminds me what's real.

ON EARTHLY POSSESSIONS

| just don’t own expensive things. | get
scared that I'm going to lose them.

ON ICONS

When | think about what's sexy, | envi-
sion Marilyn Monroe—that classic ideal.
That's the kind of sexiness | don't have,
and that's perfectly fine. l'm content with
being myself. The best compliment is
being told you're not trying too hard.

ON ATTRACTION

| like guys who are straightforward,
smart and kind to others. For me, sexy
is not only how you look but how much
you're connected to your true self. | feel
sexy when "т being true to myself and
living boldly!

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MANHATTAN

Bringing the Playboy Club back to New York City wasn't all cocktails
and cottontails. Peek behind the curtain and meet a new generation
of Bunnies as they ramp up to opening night

PLAYBOY 189

n a humid late-summer after-
noon, a group of roughly 60
women and men have assembled
in a midtown Manhattan hotel
conference room. It’s a glass-
roofed atrium space, tucked into
a courtyard, and if the inhabit-
ants of a nearby skyscraper were
to peer down they’d likely con-
clude that this was just another run-of-the-
mill business meeting.

Inside the room, though, there’s a sense of
history being made. In three weeks, everyone
here will play a part in the launch of the new
Playboy Club New York—the Rabbit’s first
Manhattan pied-a-terre since the previous
location closed its doors in 1986.

“We have waited literally three decades
for this day,” says a dapper silver-templed
man named Al Lopez, addressing the
group. Lopez, whose background includes
working with culinary icon Danny Meyer
and orchestrating dinners for the
United Nations General Assem-
bly, is the club’s director of op-
erations. He’s joined at the front
of the room by two others: Kristi Beck, a
brand-strategy and product manager at
Playboy, who travels the country overseeing
venues and events; and Richie Notar, the
club’s creative director, best known as a co-
owner of Nobu.

Once Lopez has wrapped up his remarks,
Notar explains to the people in the room
what they’ve signed on for. It’s something
like Broadway, he says: “When you go to
Broadway, you’ve paid a lot of money for

sy SIMON
DUMENCO

those tickets. Matthew Broderick hits it. He
hits that note every day. The curtain goes
up? Showtime.”

The “stage” of this particular show is
right next door, a 14,000-square-foot space
in which swarms of workers are busy carry-
ing out the vision of star interior designer
Cenk Fikri.

And the inductees in the conference
room? Playboy Bunnies, along with as-
sorted bartenders and barbacks. At the mo-
ment, everyone is incognito, studiously
taking notes in his or her Playboy-issued
notebook. It feels like a graduate seminar
in nightlife, hospitality and...something
harder to pin down.

And yes, Lopez says at one point, there will

bea quiz.
A few days later, the Bunnies and their col-
leagues are engaging in a staff bonding ex-
ercise. They’ve broken into groups of eight
or nine, seated at round tables, to
talk about their backgrounds. If
you were picturing the Bunnies as
an assortment of vapid and indis-
tinguishable blondes, this exercise would set
you straight.

One volunteer at each table is asked to
stand and introduce her colleagues to the
larger group. A woman named Regina goes
first, revealing that she’s a New Jersey
native who does stand-up comedy, which
prompts applause and a collective laugh.
Regina then goes around her table: “Here we
have Jerri. She’s originally from Williams-
burg, Brooklyn, and she’s a criminal justice

student. Aleah is originally from Michi-
gan, and she’s a professional ballet dancer
in the city. Here we have Sammi—she’s
from Harlem and she’s a competitive boxer.
Gia is from Staten Island, and she’s a dance
teacher and a studio owner....”

At other tables there are more
performers—dancers and actors and even
another comedian—as well as graduate stu-
dents, but no one gets a louder round of ap-
plause than Ashley, a Long Island native
who’s a former W WE wrestler.

“How do we follow that?” someone in the
room exclaims, prompting another wave of
laughter.

With opening night looming, the staff train-
ing intensifies. For the first time, the Bun-
nies are in full Bunny regalia all together.

Having met once again with Irene Juhasz,
the club’s master tailor, small groups of
women enter the room wearing an updated
version of the very first company uniform to
be registered by the U.S. Patent and Trade-
mark Office. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner
hired African American designer Zelda
Wynn Valdes—who worked with the likes of
Ella Fitzgerald and Mae West—to create the
Bunny costume back in the 1960s. Today’s
version remains faithful to the original,
though the look is now supplemented with
accessories (a cummerbund, a nameplate)
designed by Roberto Cavalli.

Once every Bunny is fully dressed, there’s a
break in the training session. Virtually every
Bunny’s immediate instinct is to huddle into
groups of three or four to pose for selfies.

Opening spread, clockwise from far left: Bunnies Jordan Emanuel (also our December 2018 Playmate), Illeana Pennetto and Rosana Hernandez in Times Square; the front bar—and
the calm before the storm; chef Tabitha Yeh adorns caviar-stuffed beggars’ purses; a Bunny in training; last-minute finishes on a Bunny costume. Below, clockwise from left: Bunny Aleah
Gani glows on opening night; hospitality legend and Playboy Club creative director Richie Notar; popping bottles.

190

Above: Playmates Shelby Rose, Cassandra Dawn, Dana Taylor, Brande Roderick and Raquel Pomplun hold court; Cardi B and her crew party as some of the club’s first guests.

“Т love your hair,” one Bunny tells another
as she adjusts her colleague’s ears. “It’s so
1920s—so Josephine Baker,” she adds, ref-
erencing the Jazz Age icon who, incidentally,
was also dressed by Zelda Wynn Valdes.

“A little farther back,” Kristi Beck is telling
a Bunny-in-training. “A little farther. Yeah,
that’s good.”

In an early-afternoon session, Beck is
teaching the group about the Bunny Dip, a
distinctive serving method dating back to
the clubs’ early days—and a handy way to
swoop in with an order without, say, bopping
a guest with a cottontail.

I’ve been drafted to be a guinea pig—a
stand-in guest seated at a conference-room
table—and a series of Bunnies are, one by
one, greeting me and serving me my pre-
tend drink order from a tray. I notice that
the camaraderie among the newly cos-
tumed Bunnies is now accompanied by a
note of tension.

“Here’s your Ketel One and soda,” a Bunny
improvs (it’s actually tap water, alas) while
doing the Bunny Dip. It seems like a pretty
good Bunny Dip to me, but Beck has notes.
Across the table, a Bunny serving Lopez fum-
bles, narrowly avoiding him but splashing
water down the front of her outfit.

"It's all right, it’s all right,” Lopez says.
“Now, let’s try that again. I’m going to bring
out some red wine.”

There’s nervous laughter in the room. Is he
kidding? (He is kidding. For now.)

The challenge at hand is sinking in:
Playboy Bunnies have to be not only fast
and efficient servers but the glamorous

and graceful gatekeepers to the world of
Playboy—and to hit that note every day.

The weekend before opening night, The New
York Times devotes much of the front page
of its Sunday Styles section to the club, with
the subhead “A defiant time capsule surfaces,
smack in the middle of #MeToo country.”
And though it includes criticism from femi-
nist leader Gloria Steinem of the very concept
of the Playboy Club—echoing her 1963 take-
down in Show magazine, for which she worked
undercover at the original New York Playboy
Club—the story largely focuses on the endur-
ing bond shared by the original Bunnies. The
now 75-year-old Bunny Kathryn Leigh Scott
told the paper about “the caring and selfless
reaching out that exists among this sister-
hood of Bunnies.” (Scott authored a 1998 his-
tory of Bunnydom titled The Bunny Years.)

Lauren Hutton, the actress and proto-
supermodel, also spoke fondly of her days as
a Bunny. “I think it's a great job for a girl if
she’s got no training in anything, like me,”
she told the Times, which noted that she had
been rejected by “several fast-food joints” be-
fore landing her Bunny gig.

That's one detail from the early history
of the Playboy Club that seems particu-
larly anachronistic. Today's Bunnies strike
me as preternaturally confident and char-
ismatic pros. Virtually all of them, in ad-
dition to their mainline career paths, have
hospitality-industry backgrounds. Beyond
that, these new recruits are already deep into
their Bunny sisterhood. Maybe that's the elu-
sive energy I sensed back at the orientation.

Meanwhile, the Times coverage is a big hit

with the club team; they promptly share a
photo of the article on Instagram.

“The Playboy brand is obviously one of the
great American treasures,” Robin Thicke says.
It’s opening night and were talking in his
dressing room, the rapidly filling club sending
low, pulsing vibrations through the walls. He
adds that he once hitched a ride on Hef’s pri-
vate jet, and that his father, the late actor Alan
Thicke, was a regular at Mansion West.

Thicke is set to perform tonight in the
club’s event space, the Black Box. “New York
City, the Playboy Club grand opening? That’s
an easy yes,” he says.

Outside, aline snakes down the block despite
persistent rain. A moist scrum of paparazzi do
their thing at the edge of the red carpet, where
they'll remain until the wee hours.

Thicke plays a six-song set and closes,
of course, with “Blurred Lines,” one of the
best-selling singles of all time. “Everybody
get up, everybody get up,” he croons, and
the crowd, their energy spilling beyond the
Black Box and filling every one of the club’s
freshly burnished chambers, completes the
verses: “Hey, hey, hey!”

At the moment, all eyes are on him, though
earlier all eyes were on Martha Stewart—
one of the most head-turning arrivals of the
night—not to mention Ice-T and Coco and
Kelly Bensimon and Dierks Bentley and....

But wait. Honestly, those celebrities don’t
come close to the alchemical star power of
Regina, Jerri, Aleah, Sammi, Gia, Ashley and
the other Bunnies.

Everybody—seriously, everybody—wants a
selfie with them. a

PLAYBOY 191

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THE ART OF
IHE REAL

AS A POLARIZED AMERICA CONTINUES TO DEBATE WHETHER TO BRAND HER A HERO OR
A WHORE, STORMY DANIELS FORGES AHEAD WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT SHE'S NEITHER

It took me longer than I care to admit to connect the name “Stormy
Daniels” with the names she’d given her double-D breasts: “Thunder”
and “Lightning.” Perhaps this is my own idiocy—a blonde moment in
an otherwise brunette life?—but perhaps this is the first time you're
putting it together too. I think I know why. Although Stormy Dan-
iels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, is one of the most award-
winning stars of adult film and, she says, one of porn's highest-paid
directors (she wrote, directed and starred in several adult block-
busters), she entered the mainstream American consciousness only
in early 2018, when the existence of a nondisclosure agreement and a
corresponding $130,000 payment between her and Donald Trump's
then lawyer, Michael Cohen, came to light. By the time I knew who
she was, the sex she'd had on camera was not as meaningful as the
idea ofthe sex she'd had on camera. Not to mention the idea of the sex
she'd had with Donald Trump. Which, on a deeply unfortunate note,
puts me in the same logic league as Rudy Giuliani, who dismissed her
“value” because she sold “her body for money." Republicans and Dem-
ocrats may have come to vastly different conclusions about the mean-
ing of this woman, but we are all responsible for using the same math
to get there: We saw her as a certain kind of person.

Overnight, Stormy—and Thunder and Lightning—were thrust
into the political spotlight and placed into a kind of subject-object
gender-studies centrifuge. For liberals she was (and still is) a brassy
bullet point for the reality-television series streaming from the White
House: Stormy the Warrior. Stormy the Neoliberal Feminist. Stormy
the Hero America Deserves. It would be a porn star who screws over
Donald Trump. Oh, the dirty irony! It would be someone prone to self-
promotion and mass generalizations about herself (on Twitter: “I
never do shit the easy way"; in Rolling Stone: *Standing up to bullies
is kind of my thing"), someone who has wrestled far scarier pigs than
this one. ^Horseface"? That's it? Her lawsuit was going to take down
the president, and she was going to expand the reach of the #MeToo
movement. For conservatives she was (and still is) the embodiment

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SASHA SAMSONOVA

of everything that's wrong with a loose-morals America, a capitalist
harlot come to besmirch a man whose only crime is wanting to make
America great just one more time before his own policies cause it to
fall into the ocean.

But back to her breasts. No, really.

While we've been busy objectifying Daniels, she has spent the past
two decades beating us to the punch. In her 2018 memoir, Full Dis-
closure, she says that when she got the call to visit Trump in his hotel
room, she gave Thunder and Lightning “a wake-up call and went over."
She knows her augmented assets are an integral part of what people
imagine, if they choose to imagine. They are also emblematic of who
she is. Most porn stars do not name their body parts; it's not in their
contracts. But Stormy Daniels named her breasts like some men name
their penises. This is a power move unto itself, and because she is a
woman, it has a less blustery meaning. She is not trying to improve
them by naming them. Instead, their names reveal the funny, confi-
dent, savvy person underneath, the one who dares you to slut-shame
her. Go ahead, see what happens. Do you think she doesn't know what
she does for a living?

This cheekiness—the idea that any kind of sex worker might have a
brain—should no longer come as a shock. Sasha Grey has done more
than her fair share to fix that with her activism and hipster appeal,
Tera Patrick has a microbiology degree, and seemingly half of female
porn stars have nursing degrees. But unlike them, Stormy Daniels
is not angling for her chance to become something else. A second
career does not equate to an apology for the first one for those other
women either, but in Stormy's case, there's nothing to be condemned
to or redeemed from. You will not find Thunder and Lightning hid-
den under a lab coat anytime soon...except maybe on set.

This is the essential and perhaps most enduring truth of Stormy
Daniels: There's not an inch of her that she doesn't own. She is not a
woman who does anything by accident. Which is why, I believe, people
put so much stock in her opinions even as she declines to give them.

PLAYBOY 193

She has managed to be the cool center of a salacious hurricane without
becoming host to anyone’s agenda. The result, when she speaks, is a
kind of Stormy-specific feminism. It’s not that she doesn’t care about
other women, but she may be the one female public figure who refuses
to be in conversation with this moment in history. It’s as if she’s trying
to pass through it like a bullet—and for her, it’s working. She’s an opt-
out anti-feminist feminist. Confused? Well, then perhaps it’s time to

get it straight from the horse’s mouth.

Before Stormy’s manager puts us in touch,
he wants to be sure our conversation won’t
be “a rehashing of the Trump night.” When
I realize what he means, I think of hot
blades, windowless bunkers, unrated ver-
sions of The Human Centipede—images
that, like details of the president in bed,
I would pay good money to never experi-
ence. I assure him he has nothing to worry
about. Even if I did want to know, I sus-
pect Stormy herself is fuzzy on the play-
by-play. For America, there may have been
trauma, but for Stormy, there was not. She
has repeatedly stressed that this was a con-
sensual dalliance. I doubt she so much as
thought about it after that appearance on
The Apprentice didn't pan out. . э“

“Yeah,” she says over the phone, laughing.
“T keep thinking, Oh, guys, you're not going
to be the reporter who suddenly makes me '
remember this epic thing I forgot and some-
how didn’t put in my book!”

If she had something unique to sell, she
would have sold it herself. Stormy is often
positioned as Trump’s counterweight. Al-
though she is transactional (she has
referred to her “free” бо Minutes inter-
view), she is not amoral. She’s just a woman
who knows her value, who is sick of the
“Madonna-whore complex.” But while I
think she has face-planted into Feminism
101 (on the Kavanaugh hearings: “I found
it really frustrating that [Christine Blasey
Ford] is automatically more credible and I’m
automatically not as credible just because of
our professions”), she does not agree.

“It's not that I don’t identify with femi-

Y

nism," she says. *I just think it's gone way 一

too far. It has lost its original connotation.

I love men, and I think they’re kind of get-

ting a bad rap right now. I don’t want to be s.
a part of that. I don't know a single guy who

should be punished because your great-

grandmother didn't get to vote."

This is a cauldron of generalization (polar bears should not be
punished because of gun control?), but I see her larger point. The
dialogue presented to her about this stuff is presented largely
through the internet, which is not a bastion of subtlety. There's a lot
of screaming, and because the dismissal of women's anger as exag-
gerated or self-righteous is part of the problem, it can be tricky to
navigate the conversation.

"There's just no middle ground. There's no one on the internet say-
ing, 'Stormy Daniels is a cool chick.' It's either I'm a hero who's going
to save the universe, and a patriot—I haven't gone to war!—or I'm а
disgusting disease-ridden whore and I should be shot in the head and
my kid should be euthanized. Literally, my Twitter time line is You're

`,

my hero’; ‘I’m gonna murder your child’; ' You're my hero’; ‘I’m gonna
murder your child.’”

Can you blame her for not wanting to be part of the conversation?
She can’t remember the last time she googled herself. And as for poli-
tics? Well, no thank you to that too.

“My contribution to society is to provide people an escape. A large
portion of my fan base is guys in the military or people going through
difficult times, and the last thing they want to think about is that
stuff. My job is to give these guys 12 minutes where politics don’t exist.
And the last thing you want to do is get in an
argument with a customer.”

This was ingrained in her when she was
| “18 and working at the local titty bar.” If

men attempted to engage her in a political
4 discussion, which they would, especially
around election time, she would change
the subject with “Let’s talk about sex!” In-
deed, it is capitalism and not feminism that
drives her current club tour, Make America
Horny Again.

“But now,” she concedes, “I’m in too deep
and I’ve seen too much. I’ve been put in this
\ position that goes against everything I’ve
believed in my 20-year career. Being in the
adult business is really strange culturally.
Nobody wants you to do it, but pretty much
everyone has been a consumer in some way.
They all think you should stop, but they
won't allow you to do anything else. If you
leave porn and try to get a different job,
е either you don’t get hired ог you get fired.
That has happened to so many girls I know.

It’s not a thing that happens to men.”

She concedes that it’s getting better for
sex workers in general but it’s “like baby
steps up a mountain.” Still, the time she
spends thinking about her legacy is more
personal than national. For one thing,
she’s convinced she’s “probably going to die
alone,” which she drops when we start talk-

A ing about relationships. She is recently di-

` vorced from her third husband and knows
% that “the second any олу 8 friends and fam-
ily and strangers find out who he's dating,

he's going to get shit. He's going to get told
to get an STD test and ‘Oh, don't get her

~ pregnant; the baby’s just going to fall out

of her giant pussy.’ Who wants to deal with
that?” Meanwhile, her daughter is “not in
a stroller anymore”; if someone approaches
Stormy and “says something fucked-up,”
her daughter will ask about it. Stormy is
also a competitive equestrian..and even
that seemingly innocuous space is no longer safe.

“Tm not anonymous anymore,” she says. “Who knows when I ride
into the ring if the judge isn’t a big Trump fan? Everything is skewed.”

When I ask if she identifies with a female heroine, fictional or oth-
erwise, Stormy pauses for amoment before answering: “Jodie Foster’s
character in The Accused,” she says, referring to the parallels in the
film to the sexual abuse she suffered as a child and the fact that she
wasn't believed “because I was poor and my mom was white trash.”

But make no mistake: Stormy’s allergy to the word victim is ex-
treme. Her life, though tumultuous, is full and successful. And that
predates Donald Trump. We will not remember her as the woman who
took down the most misogynistic president in U.S. history because,

PLAYBOY 195

well, she didn’t. But she also wasn’t trying. She just wanted to tell the
truth. And though she foresees bottomless notoriety, her role here is
hardly fixed. Like tabloid croquet, something more salacious could
come along any minute and knock it out. Who knows what scandals
lurk in the shadows? What we do know is that Stormy Daniels will be
remembered as the woman who brought the thunder and the light-
ning to this presidency.

Before we hang up she casually mentions a less famous legal battle
in which she’s currently embroiled.

“There was this trainer in Texas who was abusing and killing
horses,” she explains, “and I was the first one to say anything. Then
hundreds of other people started coming forward. I just got this text
forwarded to me from some little girl’s mom. It said, ‘I don’t know
Stormy, but my daughter could’ve ended up at the wrong place and she
could’ve gotten really hurt. I want to thank her for using her voice and
doing what was right.’ "

"That must feel good,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. “Of course it does."

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From the world of
PlayboyCenterfolds.com—
a bookish afternoon with
Russian stunner

Taya Vais

so `

PHOTOGRAPHY BY
DAVID
MERENYI

—

SEE MORE OF TAYA ON
PLAYBOYCENTERFOLDS.COM

THE BIG BUNNY + PLAYBOY AFTER DARK + MARILYN COLE + LENNY BRUCE + JAMES PETERSEN • CARTOONS

HERITAGE

In 1999, former PLAYBOY editor
Murray Fisher flew to the East
Coast to speak with legendary
American poet Maya Angelou.
Their conversation, intended to
be a Playboy Interview, never
ran, the copy at some point
misfiled and forgotten. Nearly
20 years after it took place, the
dialogue was discovered by our
archivists. Covering everything
from religion to racism and, of
course, writing, this remarkable
piece of history is as relevant
today as it was two decades ago.
Novelist Edwidge Danticat
introduces Fisher’s once lost, and
thankfully now found, Playboy
Interview with Maya Angelou.

I first met Maya Angelou in print. I arrived in
the United States from Haiti at the age of 12
and, after reading all the books by Haitian and
French writers I could find at the main branch
of the Brooklyn Public Library, resolved to
start reading in English. One afternoon, on
a display table at the library entrance, I came
across I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the
first book in Angelou’s multivolume autobiog-
raphy. On its cover, a barefoot little black girl
stood, completely lost in reading, in front of a
modest wooden cabin that looked like the one
where I had spent my childhood summers.
Even before I cracked it open, I knew Га found
a kindred spirit in the author.

Maya Angelou and I were born and raised
in different countries during different eras,
but we had much in common. She too had
been left as a young girl in the care of rela-
tives, in her case her grandmother in tiny
Stamps, Arkansas, and in my case my aunt
and uncle in Port-au-Prince. She too survived

A Phenomenal
Woman

sexual abuse as a child, though her abuser
was punished in a way that made her feel she
should punish herself by not speaking from
the ages of seven to 13. In Angelou’s silence,
however, were planted the seeds of a power-
ful writing voice. She devoured great works
of literature, from Thomas Wolfe to Gustave
Flaubert to Charles Dickens and many oth-
ers. When Angelou was 17 (having returned
to her mother’s care a few years earlier), she
had a baby, left home with her infant son
and undertook an eclectic and extraordi-
nary breadth of pursuits—dancer, madam,
actor, civic organizer, playwright. She even-
tually flourished, blossoming not just as a
nuanced and commanding writer but also
an extraordinary orator.

In person Maya Angelou was tall and
elegant, looking every bit the regal aging
dancer she was. She had a booming, musi-
cal voice that sounded as though she might
break into song at any time. When I first

heard her speak, at Brown University, where
I was a graduate student, I wept as she de-
scribed her childhood rape and how speak-
ing about it had led her uncles to kill her
attacker. I remember Angelou closing her
remarks by reciting, as casually as she might
say “Good morning,” a few lines from “Phe-
nomenal Woman,” one of her seminal poems:
‘Tm a woman / Phenomenally. / Phenomenal
woman / That's me.”

We met again a few years later, after my
first novel was published. We were together
on a panel about migration, and she reminded
the audience of how her ancestors had been
brought to America in the holds of slave ships,
yet this diaspora had given the world the gift
of beauty through jazz and other art forms.

I would add to the list of gifts that Afri-
can Americans have given the world Maya
Angelou herself, who transformed her per-
sonal pain and the agony of her people into so
many different artistic endeavors, including

PLAYBOY 205

poetry, prose, song, dance and theater, as
well as the movies she directed and acted
in. Her abundant gifts to us continue in
this “lost” interview, conducted in 1999 by
Murray Fisher at Angelou’s sprawling North
Carolina home. By that time, Angelou was
well established in the literary firmament,
having received countless honors, including
being chosen to recite her poetry at President
Bill Clinton’s first inauguration.

Since Angelou’s death in May 2014 at the
age of 86, I have occasionally wondered what
she might say about certain recent events in
the U.S. and around the world. What would
she say, for example, about cell phone videos
of black men, women and children having
the police called on them for existing while
black, or about the documented police and
vigilante killings of innocent people of color,
or about the election of Donald Trump and
the false equivalencies made between peace-
ful protests and white supremacist marches?
What would she say about the #МеТоо move-
ment, or the various threats to our environ-
ment and increasingly endangered planet?

I don’t think it’s accidental that this inter-
view has been discovered now, uncovered
from deep inside a box of decades-old corre-
spondence, writers’ contracts and expense
reports. I believe that Maya Angelou wants
to speak to us from the land of the ancestors
and somehow managed, with her trademark
eloquence, to convince those in charge of the
great beyond to deliver her words to us.

“Quite often one falls into the same role as
the brute that you're opposing. And I don’t
want to do that,” she tells Fisher. “If I'm
just one good guy and there are 5 billion bad
guys, I still want to have the courage to be
the good guy.”

I can't imagine better advice for the
times we live in. From the distant and great
unknown, Maya Angelou's unwavering voice
continues to guide us well.

PLAYBOY: As you've moved from one epi-
sode of your life to another, you seem to have
taken on new personas with each chapter you
were living. And yet somehow they manage to
come out of a piece.

ANGELOU: I suppose everybody's life is
really a living patchwork quilt. There are
those who would like to think that their lives
are long tapestries. The truth is that every-
body's life is a matter of happenstance,
mis-happenstance, intention and accident,
courage and cowardice. No matter how dis-
parate the segments are, somehow it works
as a quilt, the same way that colors in nature
work graciously. Red, blue, orange, purple
and yellow—nature throws it all out there
and it works wonderfully.

PLAYBOY: As you reflect on the pattern of
your life and your accomplishments, what
does it all add up to in your mind?

206 HERITAGE

Previous page: Angelou, circa 1995. In 1998, she read at the presidential inauguration; in 2010, she received the Medal of Freedom.
Above: Publicity still for the 1972 feature Georgia, Georgia, for which Angelou wrote the screenplay. Her many writing credits include
the TV adaptation of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She was also an actor, director and producer. Right: Angelou, circa 1980.

ANGELOU: It depends on what time of day
I’m asked or if I’ve slept well the night before,
read something that really pleased me or
displeased me. Sometimes I agree with the
preacher—vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
And at other times I think I’ve been wonder-
fully blessed to be able to say something or
write something, to live a certain way that
makes life a little better for someone else.

I’m writing a piece that will be sung by Miss
Jessye Norman at Carnegie Hall in 2000.
I’m writing the mature woman. Miss Toni
Morrison has been asked to write the young
woman, and Clarissa Estés has been asked to
write the middle-aged woman. When I spoke
with Miss Norman, I realized that what peo-
ple think happens to the mature person is
romance—that you think you know some-
thing, you’ve come to certain conclusions,
deductions have been made and tested—but
it’s just the opposite. I know for a fact that I
know absolutely nothing now. And I feel more
like a young person as I prepare for this next
great adventure, which is life after death—
or whatever it turns out to be. And so just as
a 10-year-old is anxious and excited and avid
and eager and wondering, so am I.

I can't really see the wisdom that people say
I have. I’ve taken a lot of chances and I've come
through. I’ve learned the hard way—if you go
in the dark just beyond that tree, there’s a big

hole. You can fall in that hole and break your
ankle. I’ve done that, so I’ve learned how to
fall without breaking my ankle. That’s simply
the result of having lived and tried and missed
and finally found my way.
PLAYBOY: But it doesn’t feel like wisdom?
ANGELOU: It doesn’t to me. I’m so busy liv-
ing, I haven’t yet come to the place where I
feel like I know everything.
PLAYBOY: You have described yourself as
“always talking about the human condition—
about what we can endure, dream, fail at, and
still survive.”
ANGELOU: It’s amazing that we are able not
only to survive but to do better than that.
We endure and we thrive—with passion and
compassion and humor and style. We are
people to match the mountain.
PLAYBOY: After all you’ve accomplished, all
you ve been through, what do you still want?
ANGELOU: I want to laugh, and I would like a
love in my life. But I don’t expect it. I’ve had it.
Га like to write better. I have the dream to
write so well that a reader is 50 pages into a
book of mine before he knows he’s reading. I
think it was Nathaniel Hawthorne who said,
“Easy reading is damned hard writing.” And
it is. To write a sentence so gracious it slips
off the page, that’s it. Some critics review my
work by saying, “Maya Angelou is a natural
writer.” Being a natural writer is much like

being a natural open-heart surgeon. So what
I have to do, and will spend the rest of my
life doing, is trying to write the most grace-
ful and gracious English ever. And whatever
the story, my mode of telling it is through
writing. It’s a good thing I love English. I just
have to pray for the intelligence and courage
to ask of it everything I want.

PLAYBOY: Have you thought about where
your skills come from?

ANGELOU: Well, for about six years, from
when I was seven to 13, I was a mute. And
I loved to hear people speak. I still do. I've
heard things they said which were painful,
but I’ve never heard a voice, a human voice,
that didn’t please me—never. I used to think
I could make my whole body an ear. And I
could walk into a room and absorb sound.
I’ve been able to speak 10, 11, 12 languages; I
can get around in six or seven now. It’s really
because I love to hear human beings talk and
sing that I’ve listened so assiduously, and out
of that came the love of language.

PLAYBOY: Did you feel lonely growing up?
ANGELOU: Yes. I still feel it. Living is lonely.
PLAYBOY: How do you overcome it?
ANGELOU: I don’t know if I really overcome
it. I live with it. I get a book of poetry or walk
around looking at paintings and sculpture,
or listen to a little Ray Charles, or sometimes
a little Chopin, maybe some country-and-
western music. It lifts my heart and reminds
me that I’m not out here alone, that there are
other people just touching my shoulders who
are just as lonely. And somehow I’m able to get
up the next morning and start all over again.
PLAYBOY: What do you feel was the effect of
not having a father?

ANGELOU: Well, I can’t say, since I didn’t
have one. I had my brother Bailey. He was
very bright and he was my best friend. And I
had Uncle Willie, my father’s brother.
PLAYBOY: Are you reminded of a husband’s
absence now and then?

ANGELOU: At first I guess I missed having a
man to love, but now I’m not aware of it fre-
quently. My life is very full and my responsi-
bilities are many and my delight is plural, so I
don’t think about it often. I’ve had somebody
funny and mad, somebody who had his own
life, and I had my own life. My last marriage

ended in 1981, and I would have sworn that
by 1984 or 1985 I would be amenable to
some new approach. But I’ve met no one who
caught my fancy. Га rather be alone than in-
volved in a relationship that doesn’t serve
either me or a husband.

PLAYBOY: Why do you think your relation-
ships haven’t worked out?

ANGELOU: I don’t know but that they have
worked out—in what they were meant to be.
I think my best marriage was my last mar-
riage. And it was wonderful. We simply wore
the marriage out.

PLAYBOY: How would you like to spend the
rest of your life?

ANGELOU: Writing. I’m working on a book
now and it’s being difficult, but it will turn.
What I’ve been able to do with my life is take
lemons and use them to make lemonade and
lemon pie, lemon tarts, even lemon candies.
This book is very hard. I have to deal with the
death of Malcolm X, and I have to write about
Martin. I’ve written that I was very close to
breaking down. Now I have to write about Dr.
King's death. And out of those horrors I have
to find...not a raison d'étre, but maybe an
answer to questions I'm not yet ready to face.
PLAYBOY: How well did you know Dr. King?
ANGELOU: I was the northern coordinator
of the Southern Christian Leadership Con-
ference, and when Dr. King came to New
York, I traveled with him to speak at different
churches and congregations. I would not claim
closeness. Friendliness, but not friendship.
PLAYBOY: What was the role of the black
church in your early life?

ANGELOU: Well, I loved to see black people
together. I really love the way black people
look, so I've always enjoyed church, just to
see the people. There's a lady in peach and a
man in a dark suit and a woman in white and
then somebody else in purple and green, and
all those colors against the colors of the skin
tones still make me catch my breath. I love
the music and I loved the poetry of the ser-
mon and the poetry of the lyric. Sothe church
was a gathering place and an artistic center.
And as I began to become religious myself, I
began to love the Lord for the beauty of the
world he's given us. So I loved the church. IfI
don't go, it goes with me anyway.

PLAY BOY: Do you ever feel reluctant to con-
tinue writing about your deepest feelings?
ANGELOU: No. I wrote honestly about the
end of my marriage in All God's Children
Need Traveling Shoes. There are no real ro-
mantic relationships from which I learned
anything or was able to teach anything. Noth-
ing is supposed to last forever; I don’t spend
a lot of time bemoaning that. I’m proud and
happy for those who have those relationships.
I look at them like new flowers coming up ina
blanket of snow.

PLAYBOY: What’s something that you learned
from your mother?

PLAYBOY 20/7

ANGELOU: One of the things my mom did
for me, all those years ago, was to inform me
that even life had no right to grapple me to the
ground and put its knee in my throat. I won't
stay in a relationship that is not productive
and kind and funny and supportive. I won't.
No, no. I won’t live with that at any cost.
PLAYBOY: When you were growing up, you
and Bailey seemed to be a family unto yourself.
ANGELOU: When he was 13 he introduced
me to Thomas Wolfe and Kenneth Patchen
and Aldous Huxley. I give him a lot of credit
for what Га like to claim is my psychological
balance, if not sanity. I was six foot. He was
small and he was older than me, but very cute.
He took a lot of ribbing, and people laughed at
me. But he’d take me aside and whisper, “You
know I’m smarter than you.” But I could talk
to him better than anybody else.

PLAYBOY: Looking through your life, you
have more than enough reason to have devel-
oped a real distrust and hostility toward white
people. But you don’t seem to have done that.
ANGELOU: I thought that the white peo-
ple in Stamps, my little village in Arkansas,
were very different from the whites I read

ANGELOU: Not at all. I don’t know if I made
any wrong choices. I’ve had some good times
and some bad times, but that’s just what life is.
PLAYBOY: Have you at any point lived a life
beset by fears?

ANGELOU: Since I was about 20 I’ve been
painfully aware that I was mortal. And I
feared death.

PLAYBOY: Why?

ANGELOU: I don’t know. That was when my
wisdom teeth grew in or something. I didn’t
even know for the first six months or so that
that’s what I was fearing. When I closed my
eyes I could see incredible creatures. Crea-
tures that don’t live anywhere except in my
imagination—and I could hear sounds. I
knew it was madness. I talked to my mom
and to my brother, and it was Bailey who said,
“What you're really fearing is death."
PLAYBOY: Do you think he was right?
ANGELOU: I knowhe was right. I realized this
was the one promise that would not be broken.
Once I got that clear in my mind, by the time
I was 25, I could relax and live because I knew
I could die and would. That was the end of the
dread and the presence of fear in my life, like

tablet. So that was my kit and that went in my
skirt, and that’s how I made my way through
life. When anybody asked me questions, I
would write on this tablet.

PLAYBOY: That’s the period when you
weren’t speaking?

ANGELOU: Yes. I would go up to Mrs.
Flowers, and her house smelled like vanilla
because she’d made tea cookies. She always
had the curtains down, and it was so cozy,
and she would read to me. I thought she was
the grandest thing.

PLAYBOY: You must have touched some-
thing inside her.

ANGELOU: In the 1970s I met a black lady
who led the children into the high school in
Little Rock that caused Orval Faubus to act
stupidly and gave Eisenhower a chance to
send down the National Guard. This lady and
I became friends. I was telling her about Mrs.
Flowers, and she said, “I know her; she lives
down the street from me.” So when she went
back to Little Rock, she told Mrs. Flowers
that she’d met me, and Mrs. Flowers wrote
me a letter. She said, “Of course I remember
you. I always knew you were going to do great

You develop courage by doing the small things that take courage.
Like not sitting in a room where racial pejoratives are used. Each
of us should always be ready to stand up for what’s right.

about in Dickens and de Maupassant and
Flaubert; those were likable people. I under-
stood that if they knew me, they’d like me a
lot. And I loved Edgar Allan Poe at that time;
I was crazy for Poe.

When I went back to live with my mom I
was 13, and she had white friends and they
were to be called Auntie and Uncle, as her
black friends were called, and that seemed
to me to be right. It didn’t strain my believ-
ability. I think that those trained attitudes
of hate built upon differences are given to
young people at somebody else’s whim and
for someone else’s convenience. It doesn’t
help the young person at all. Nobody in my
family, even in the South, said you had to
hate white folks.

PLAYBOY: You seem to have made up your
own rules about life as you went along.
ANGELOU: That’s very true. But I had a lot of
encouragement, and I still do. Bailey and my
mom really encouraged me to be bodacious.
I think I would have let them down had I not
been creative, and even when I made mis-
takes, nobody put me down for making them.
PLAYBOY: At a certain point, people who
have been unlucky in love begin to blame
themselves for making the wrong choices.
You don’t do that.

208 HERITAGE

an uninvited armed guest sitting in my liv-
ing room. Once I thought “No”—what a relief;
now I don’t have to fear anything.

PLAYBOY: How would you like things to go
from here on?

ANGELOU: Id like not to have this pain in
my hip; that’s for openers. And closers too. Га
like to finish this book and to direct a couple
more movies. Га also like to continue develop-
ing my relationship with my grandson. And
Га like to see my son in better health.
PLAYBOY: Three important women have
helped shape your life—your grandma Annie
Henderson; your mother, Vivian Baxter
Johnson; and Mrs. Flowers. Could you talk a
little bit about Mrs. Flowers?

ANGELOU: Mrs. Flowers was the mother of
two men from Arkansas—one leading doctor
and one leading civil rights lawyer. She was
so grand. She was very, very black, very beau-
tiful and she spoke very softly. Mrs. Flowers
spoke with great diction and great elocution.
She would come to my grandmother’s store
and say, “I will receive you this afternoon at
five o’clock for tea cookies.” And I would go up
there. My grandmother would take a pencil
and a knife and cut a groove in the pencil, tie
a string onto the pencil and then tie the other
part of the string to the spindle of a nickel

things. And I remember your brother too.”
PLAYBOY: Tell us about your mother.
ANGELOU: My mother raised me and then
she freed me. I remember when I was 17 and
burning with rebellious passion, Vivian Bax-
ter stood before me, a pretty yellow woman
seven inches shorter than my six-foot bony
frame. Her eyes were soft and her voice was
brittle as she said, “You’re determined to
leave. Your mind’s made up.” I was her daugh-
ter, so whatever independence I inherited
from her had been increased by living with
her and watching her for the past four years.
She declared, “You’re leaving my house.”

I collected myself and said, “Yes. I found a
room.”

“And you're taking the baby?”

“Yes.”

She gave me a smile, half proud, half pity-
ing. “All right. Youre a woman. You don't
have a husband, but you've got a three-
month-old baby. I just want you to remem-
ber one thing. From the moment you leave
this house, don’t let anybody raise you. Every
time you get into a relationship, you will have
to make concessions, compromises, and
there’s nothing wrong with that. But keep in
mind, Grandmother Henderson in Arkansas
and I have given you every law you need to live

by—follow what’s right. You’ve been raised.”
PLAYBOY: And since that time?
ANGELOU: More than 50 years have passed.
During those years I have loved and lost,
raised my son, set up a few households and
walked away from many. I have taken life
as my mother gave it to me on that strange
graduation day all those decades ago. When
I have extended myself beyond my reach and
come toppling humpty-dumpty down on my
face in full view of a scornful world, I have
returned to my mother to be liberated by her
one more time.
PLAYBOY: It’s been said that
you've followed your heart to
many misadventures.
ANGELOU: I have followed
my love and had good times
and crummy times. I’m very
happy that I dared to love.
One of the reasons older peo-
ple are short-tempered and
impatient with young people
is that the older people didn’t
enjoy themselves when they
were young. So when they see
a young person enjoying her-
self or himself, they say, “Sit
down, shut up, go in the cor-
ner.” I feel just the opposite.
I love to see young people en-
joying themselves because
I’ve really had a wonderful
time myself.
PLAYBOY: How do you see
your role now in life?
ANGELOU: I can answer you
best with a wonderful spir-
itual, really a gospel song.
[singing]

I want to live the life I sing

about in my song/

I don’t want to go to church

on Sunday /

Go out, get drunk and talk

about people on Monday/

I want to live the life I sing

about in my song

I want to be present in my
life. I want to be exactly what
you see. That’s what I want to
do. I want to combat evil.
PLAYBOY: Like Malcolm X said, “by any
means necessary”?
ANGELOU: That’s a scary statement, “by
any means necessary.” That’s as dangerous
a statement as all grass is green, so every-
thing that’s green is grass. A lot of people say,
“Well, I'm brutally honest." I mean, you don't
have to be brutal to be honest. What are you
really telling me when you say “by any means
necessary”? Quite often one falls into the
same role as the brute that you're opposing.
And I don’t want to do that.

I want to be in the good guy’s camp. And if

I’m just one good guy, and there are 5 billion
bad guys, I still want to have the courage to
be the good guy. If I’m one voice crying in the
wilderness, that’s what I want to do. As long
as I live, I want to be the one to say, “Here am
I.” Again, a gospel song. I’m amazed at black
people who were in chains and yokes and
had no right to move one inch beyond the
prescribed area. “If the Lord wants some-
body, here am I, send me, I will go.” I like
that. It’s so brave and noble of heart. I want
to be able to say, “Yes, ГП go. ГП go.”

In 1957, Angelou danced professionally as part of the Caribbean Calypso Festival.

PLAYBOY: What do you still want from life?
ANGELOU: I'm very keen to be a Christian.
I’m always amazed when people walk up to
me and say, "I'm a Christian.” I always think,
Already? Really? It's a lifetime pursuit. But
as a Christian, I'd like to be hospitable and
generous. And fair—not only fair but merci-
ful and quick to forgive.

PLAY BOY: Do you prefer living in the South
tothe North?

ANGELOU: I love the rhythm of the South. I
like the pace. I have an apartment in New York
and I enjoy it because of my friends there, but

New York is a big city, and you have to do it in
your youth. I don’t have to do that again.
PLAYBOY: Is there any adventure in life, any
pursuit, that you haven’t tried?

ANGELOU: Not that I wanted to, no. If you
don’t take chances, you get to die anyway.
Why die without first living? I’m sure life
loves the liver. You’ve got to be willing to take
chances. That takes courage. People think
that’s something you’re born with or you’re
not. That’s ridiculous; you develop it, just as
you develop biceps and triceps.

PLAYBOY: How would a per-
son do that?

ANGELOU: You develop
courage by doing the small
things that take courage.
Like not sitting in a room
where racial pejoratives are
used. Like not sitting in a
room where gay people are
being bashed. I won't do it. I
just get up and leave.
PLAYBOY: There’s no point
confronting it or arguing?
ANGELOU: Oh, sometimes.
It depends on the situa-
tion. Sometimes you can
say, “Hey, everybody,” and
you knock heads together.
Other times it doesn’t be-
hoove you to do that, and
you don’t even tell them why
youre leaving. Say, “I’m
wanted in Bangkok in about
three hours. So excuse me.”
PLAYBOY: You once stood
up to a group of racists back
in Stamps.

ANGELOU: Each of us
should always be ready to
stand up for what’s right.
Whether it’s to a racist or
somebody who looks down
upon someone else because
he’s poor or because he has
no education.

PLAYBOY: You have been
everything from a madam
to a streetcar conductor.
Have you ever known any-
body who has lived her life
more fully than you have?

ANGELOU: I didn’t know I had achoice.
PLAYBOY: Do you feel that this is our only
time around?

ANGELOU: Sometimes I do and sometimes
I don’t. Sometimes I think this is a trip
from which no traveler returns. And on the
other hand I feel that I have come back—as
something else.

PLAYBOY: What could you come back as?
You ve tried everything.

ANGELOU: Oh no, not everything. Stick
around, though. I’m just getting started. №

PLAYBOY 209

AJAOA dav H

BY LORRAINE BOISSONEAULT

The Playboy empire hit cruising altitude in the early 1970s with the Big Bunny, a private
jetliner that embodied luxury and indulgence—and, on occasion, embraced charity

210 HERITAGE

v
^

IT WAS THE FRIED CHICKEN
that scared flight attendant Gwen Wong
Wayne the most. Not the turbulence, or the
passengers who drank one too many glasses
of wine, but the dish she and other Jet Bun-
nies prepared from scratch for their boss,
Hugh Hefner, on the Big Bunny, his per-
sonal plane. The recipe was simple: chicken
pieces, a handful of flour, Lawry’s season-
ing salt, garlic powder and dried parsley, all
shaken together in an air-sickness bag and
then fried. The location—a tiny forward gal-
ley in a DC-9 jet flying at 30,000 feet and
cruising at a speed of 565 miles an hour—
was not. Decades after her stint in the skies,
Wayne says she always prayed they wouldn't
hit an air pocket that might jolt the plane
and send hot oil spattering.

“He liked to eat certain things,” Wayne
remembers about Hefner, whose tastes,
when it came to food, were famously consis-
tent and unadventurous. Boxes of Twinkies
were stashed so they'd never run out on long
flights. A bottle of Pepsi had to be waiting
for Hefner when he boarded (to be refreshed
every hour) and a glass of cold milk served
with his meal. Meal preparation was the only
nerve-racking part for Wayne, a Playmate

212 HERITAGE

Left: Jet Bunnies received
extensive flight-attendant
training. Above: A DC-9 fan
jet underwent considerable
renovations to become the
luxury vehicle Hefner had
in mind. Right: Sumptuous
fare and comfortable
quarters were on display in
this promotional image of
the Big Bunny s interior.

(April 1967) who had been work-
ing at the Los Angeles Playboy
Club when she traded in her ears
for wings and became a Jet Bunny.

“Was it a hard job? At times it
was, but also it was something
that was just...almost like you have to pinch
yourself to know that this is real,” Wayne says.
Painted solid black with a white Rabbit Head
logo on its tail fin, the Big Bunny was one of
the most recognizable planes of its time. It
shuttled Hefner and his coterie from Chi-
cago to Los Angeles and across the Atlan-
tic for excursions to Europe and Africa.
It incited envy among other executive-jet
owners. It acted as the brand's winged am-
bassador, spreading the message of lust and
luxury. Behind all the opulence—and oc-
casional charitable undertakings—a flight
crew including a pilot, first officer, flight
engineer and two to three Jet Bunnies like
Wayne worked to keep passengers happy and
flights safe and seamless.

The challenges of finding the perfect sky-
high bachelor pad began almost as soon as
Hefner expressed an interest in having а plane.

“One day in the late 1960s he came to me
and said he wanted a large corporate jet,"
says Dick Rosenzweig, who was then an
assistant and eventually became an execu-
tive vice president at Playboy Enterprises.
Rosenzweig initially looked into the Lock-
heed JetStar, the largest corporate jet

ізі, UY Е BOY

available at the time. But when he reported
back on his extensive research, Hefner waved
the suggestion away.

“He said to me, ‘Oh no, that’s not what I’m
talking about. This is going to be a flying
mansion. And I need a dance floor and a bed-
room with around bed. I need something with
international capability,’ ” Rosenzweig says.

More searching turned up the McDonnell
Douglas DC-9 fan jet. The aircraft manu-
facturer agreed to create a special model of
the plane: a stretch version with extra fuel
tanks that could take it across the Atlan-
tic. Hefner approved the plane but wanted
nothing to do with the standard two-aisle,
100-plus passenger configuration. He hired
designers Daniel Czubak and Gus W. Kos-
topulos to create an aircraft every bit as
lavish as his mansions.

“Through the use of soft, flowing con-
tours, sculptured forms and controlled light-
ing, we are shaping the interior to eliminate
the tunnel effect you now get in a standard
aircraft,” Czubak reported in 1968 after the
plane was ordered.

But things didn’t go quite as smoothly
as the designer might have hoped. Fitting
custom-made high-end furnishings and
cutting-edge audiovisual equipment into a
functioning mechanical package wasn’t easy.

“As it was under construction, the FAA
took a look at it and said, ‘Wait a minute, this
does not meet our specifications,” Rosen-
zweig recalls. Everything that had been done

PROCED T] URI ES FO

to that point had to be ripped out, costing
more time and money. From then on build-
ers followed the precise weight and design
restrictions set by the Federal Aviation Ad-
ministration. Even the plane’s unmistakable
paint scheme and array of lights shining on
the Rabbit Head design required approval.
But the final result was well worth the effort.
Taking its first test flight in February 1969,
the Big Bunny debuted as the world’s largest
and costliest business aircraft, at 119 feet and
$5.5 million (about $38 million today). Fewer
than a dozen other people owned similarly
large business jets at the time; their ranks in-
cluded Howard Hughes, singer James Brown
and MGM owner Kirk Kerkorian.

Everywhere it flew, the jet was instantly
recognized and clamored over. Reporters in-
vited aboard for promotional tours sipped
drinks from crystal glassware and dined on
Spanish prawns, oysters Rockefeller and sir-
loin steaks served on fine china. The plane
was equipped with special ovens to cook
roast beef and duckling, plus grills for crepes
and waffles—not to mention fryers for the
chicken. A fully stocked liquor cabinet en-
sured guests would stay well lubricated.

The sumptuousness extended far beyond
the meals. The plane included movie pro-
jectors that showed films in CinemaScope.
Seven built-in screens situated throughout
the jet played color videotapes, at atime when
only about 33 percent of households had color
televisions. The Big Bunny included a disco-
theque dance floor (rarely used, according to
Wayne), a lavatory with a full-length mirror, a
seating area where the chairs could transform
into comfortable sleeping areas and even a
“sky phone” for making mid-flight calls.

The crowning glory was Hefner’s private

suite, complete with an elliptical bed cov-
ered in satin sheets, an electric blanket and
a striped bedspread made of Tasmanian pos-
sum fur. His bathroom held a shower with
two showerheads and recessed seating.

“The plane was really a very glamorous
adventure for us,” says Rosenzweig, who was
a regular passenger. “There were other cor-
porate jets, but they weren’t like that.”

Completing the tableau were the Jet Bun-
nies: trained flight attendants chosen from
among the hundreds of women working
as Bunnies in the Playboy clubs. They co-
ordinated with the pilots—hired through
an airline company—to comply with FAA
regulations and to cater to their guests’
every whim. In addition to passing flight-
attendant training courses, the women
followed stringent rules regarding their ap-
pearance and presentation. They dressed
in Bond-girl-esque outfits designed by cou-
turier Walter Holmes; with the exception
of their regulation Jet Bunny watches, no
jewelry was permitted, and wearing white
scarves when greeting guests was required.
Their hair was to be sleek, their makeup

Far left: The Big Bunny was a powerful marketing tool

for Playboy Enterprises. Bunnies, including Gwen Wong

Wayne at left, pose by the nose of the plane ina promotional
image. Left: Bunnies unveil the Rabbit Head design on

the plane’s tail fin. Above: Walter Holmes (foreground)
designed the sleek “wet look” uniforms Jet Bunnies were
required to wear.

natural, their underwear black and their
behavior amiable.

“If you go over five pounds above your
ideal weight, you will automatically be sus-
pended from flying until you have reached
your ideal weight again,” warned the 130-
page Jet Bunny manual. “At no time can you
display boredom or irritability. You must be,
above all, the epitome of a charming, well-
mannered young lady.”

If the standards sound impossibly high,
the women at least felt well compensated.
For Wayne, being a Jet Bunny meant taking
a break from the even more exhausting work
of serving in a Playboy Club—and it came
with the bonus of travel adventures. She re-
members being a crew member on a two-
and-a-half-month-long trip to Europe and
Africa. Although she worked when the plane
was in transit, her days and nights on the
ground were filled with sightseeing; she and
the other Jet Bunnies were invited to every
exclusive club that Hefner’s traveling party
visited. She saw one of the Beatles in Lon-
don, marveled at the Parthenon in Rome and
dined on fresh fish in Kenya in the shadow of
Mount Kilimanjaro.

“Every place we went, it was like something
that you read about in books,” Wayne says. “It
was far more than I had expected, ever. It was
the trip of a lifetime.”

But the Big Bunny didn’t just serve as a fly-
ing palace. It also extended the philanthropic

PLAYBOY 213

arm of the Playboy brand. This was achieved
through various high-profile missions, be-
ginning in July 1970 with the transport of a
male gorilla named Jack. A resident of the
Baltimore Zoo, Jack had been promised to
the Phoenix Zoo as a breeding companion for
its female gorilla. But when other methods of
transportation fell through, actress Amanda
Blake put a call through to Hefner to request
a loan of the jet. He happily complied in the
name of primate love.

“The flight was by no means the ‘fun trip’
the newspapers or persons might imagine.
The whole thing was very last minute and
hectic,” Playboy vice president and promo-
tion director Nelson Futch wrote to John
Dante, another of Hefner’s assistants, after
the ape transfer had been completed. Futch
praised the Jet Bunnies who worked on the
flight for their ability to handle the situation
with aplomb. “I am sure there are any num-
ber of young ladies around who would refuse
to board the plane, even with the assurance
that the gorilla would be ‘sedated,’ since such
an undertaking had never occurred before.”

In his tranquilized state, Jack spent the
duration of the flight on Hefner’s own bed
and successfully arrived in Phoenix to meet
his new mate.

214 HERITAGE

Left: Jet Bunny Sharon
Gwin tends to a child
aboard the plane during
Operation Babylift in 1975.
Above: Cher chartered the
plane for her concert tour
with Sonny. Right: The
Big Bunny is treated to a
regal welcome in Rabat,
Morocco, one port of call
among many on Hugh
Hefner's 1970 Africa trip.

Much more impactful was the Big Bunny’s
involvement in what came to be known as
Operation Babylift. The Vietnam War-era
effort to bring orphans from the war-torn
country to families in the United States re-
quired more planes than the military easily
had at its disposal. Once again Hefner of-
fered to provide assistance, this time at the
behest of actor Yul Brynner. In April 1975
the plane ferried some 40 infants across the
country, from San Francisco to Denver and
then New York, with assistance from the non-
profit group Friends of Children.

“Each and every person on the plane
worked so hard—it is a night I will long re-
member,” wrote Constance Boll, director of
Friends of Children, in a letter to the Chicago
Playboy Club. “Our thanks to you and all the
crew you rounded up who helped us move the
babies a little closer to their new homes.”
When the jet wasn’t busy ferrying Hefner
between L.A. and Chicago, or transporting
kids and wildlife, other celebrities occasion-
ally leased it for their own travels. Elvis Pres-
ley took the Big Bunny on tour in the summer
of 1974, and Sonny and Cher chartered it for
their international tour. Other A-list passen-
gers included Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, Shel

à аш.

Silverstein, Roman Polanski and Rod Ser-
ling, creator of the Twilight Zone, who filmed
aboard the plane.

“The plane was all part of the Playboy
dream, just as the mansions were,” Rosen-
zweig says. “There were people who thought,
until Hef’s passing, that the plane was still in
the company.”

Despite its comfort and allure, maintain-
ing the jet grew too costly to justify after
Hefner decided to make the Los Angeles
Mansion his primary home in 1975. Around
90 percent of the flights had been between
Chicago and L.A., Rosenzweig estimates,
and Hefner was no longer making that trip
on a regular basis. And so the Big Bunny
was sold, first to Venezuela Airlines, then
later to Aeromexico. It continued its ser-
vice as a commercial aircraft—albeit with-
out the black paint job—until 2004. After the
plane languished for several years in disuse,
its fuselage was finally donated to a park in
Querétaro, Mexico in 2008.

The iconic plane and its sophisticated, pro-
ficient Jet Bunnies had helped Playboy En-
terprises reach new heights. Long after the
jet was grounded, the winged symbol of sex
and prestige lives on as a reminder of the
Playboy fantasy. m

- /% ЕЧ 7 ^ z
' ж. /
y -. 4
SS : `

I Welcome to

On Playboy After Dark, the host with the most
invited viewers into his (faux) home for intimate
performances bythe era's top entertainers

ev STEVE PALOPOLI

PLAYBOY 215

THE DOOR OF A BLACK LIMO

opens, and the chauffeur beckons you in-
side. Suddenly you're rolling down Sunset
Boulevard, city lights flashing outside as
champagne flows in the backseat. A jazzy
tune plays as your destination looms in the
sleek, shiny cityscape—the penthouse of
Playboy’s Los Angeles headquarters. Ele-
vator doors open to reveal a star-studded
party in full swing, guests mingling, danc-
ing and drinking.

An American playboy’s fantasy come
true? That’s exactly what the opening se-
quence of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy After Dark
variety show sought to embody.

Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year,
having run in syndication for two seasons,
from 1969 to 1970, Playboy After Dark was a
heady unraveling of the traditional talk show

series right then and started making plans
for the television show.”

Five decades later, despite the show’s brief
run, it has become legendary in certain cir-
cles, enjoying a level of recognition that
reaches beyond cult phenomenon without
quite achieving mainstream awareness. An
early performance by the Grateful Dead has
made Playboy After Dark a fixture of Dead-
head lore; that status was cemented in 2017
when the show was discussed at length in the
exhaustive four-hour documentary about the
band, Long Strange Trip.

It’s not hard to see why. The 1969 seg-
ment not only showcases the Dead at their
Aoxomoxoa-era best—performing “St. Ste-
phen,” “Mountains of the Moon” and “Turn
on Your Love Light”—it also highlights the
playful charm of a young Jerry Garcia in

taping that episode the band’s sound engi-
neer slipped some homemade acid into the
on-set coffee.

That’s coffee that Nanci Roberts very likely
would have drunk. The former model and
actress—who went on to be a successful Holly-
wood art director and production designer on
shows like Arrested Development and films
including the Taken series—was 18 when she
was hired as an extra for Playboy After Dark
and wound up appearing on all 52 episodes.
A number of Los Angeles models circulated
among the party guests on the show; one of
them, Barbi Benton, would go on to be one of
the most important women in Hefner’s life.

The show’s blend of high society and flower
power could be disorienting, but Roberts
doesn’t recall anything becoming literally
lysergic while filming with the Grateful Dead.

Previous page: James Brown performs on a 1969 episode of Playboy After Dark. Left: Dancers get into the groove. Right: Barbi Benton on the Playboy After Dark set.

and variety formats. Each episode was struc-
tured as a party hosted by Hefner, at which
musical guests, comedians, writers and
celebrities of all stripes mingled with models
and other stylish young people. Every party
ended with a fade-out to a winking Rabbit, as
if to say, “See you next time.”

The idea for the show came about in 1966,
when Playboy opened its London club.
Hefner had been burying himself in writing
the Playboy Philosophy series for the maga-
zine, but a firsthand glimpse of the British
scene changed everything.

“The miniskirt had just arrived; swinging
London was really swinging,” said Hefner
in a 2006 interview with Bill Zehme. “I saw
the future. Га been writing about it in The
Playboy Philosophy and making a case for
the sexual revolution, and I felt it was time
to come out from behind the desk once again
and start living the life. So when I went back
to Chicago, I stopped doing the editorial

216 HERITAGE

his interview segment with Hefner.

“T notice that with your own group, you’ve
got kind of a stereo effect going on here with
drums—two complete sets of drums and
two drummers,” Hefner says to the serape-
wearing Garcia before the band plays. “Ob-
viously for a purpose.”

“Right,” replies a smiling Garcia. “Mutual
annihilation.”

“Т see. In other words, the guys kind of
compete with one another?”

“Well, they more chase each other around.
It’s like the serpent that eats its own tail.
And it goes round and round like that,” Gar-
cia says, twirling his finger. “If youcan stand
in between them, they make figure eights on
their sides in your head.”

With dialogue like that, it’s easy to believe
Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann’s
claim in his 2015 autobiography, Deal: My
Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams and
Drugs With the Grateful Dead, that while

“T don’t remember anything like that,” she
says of the alleged LSD incident. “I was try-
ing to think, Was there ever a show that was
really odd and off? I don’t know! A lot of peo-
ple were a little bit out there anyhow.”

The Dead weren’t the only musical act that
left an impression; in fact, the dozens of killer
musical performances—especially from then
up-and-coming rock bands like Deep Purple,
Steppenwolf and the Grass Roots—might be
Playboy After Dark’s most lasting legacy.

“For me, being a teenager in the 1960s and

getting to see every great rock band—that
was probably the greatest gift I ever got,”
says Roberts.
Hefner’s original television show, Playboy’s
Penthouse, which ran from 1959 to 1961, had
stirred up controversy by inviting people
of color to the party, and it wasn’t shown in
some markets because of it.

“Tt was very much like a real party at the

Mansion, so distinctions of race were sim-
ply not there. And in portions of the coun-
try, that was not acceptable,” said Hefner
about Playboy’s Penthouse. “Segregation was
still the way of things in major portions of
the South. We broke that color line, and I’m
proud that we did.”

Though Playboy After Dark came a decade
later, it was still far more racially integrated
than most shows of its time. It featured per-
formances from R&B and jazz greats includ-
ing James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Smokey
Robinson, Buddy Miles and Lou Rawls.

The show also drew from the folk explo-
sion, with sets from the likes of Pete Seeger
and Joan Baez. One of the most unexpected
bookings was singing family the Cowsills, for
which Roberts takes responsibility: She was
engaged to lead singer Bob Cowsill.

and having you watch it from an audience, we
turned it into a party,” Hefner said.

Musicians had their band setup, or at least
a piano to lean on, but when it was a comedi-
an’s turn, he or she would simply start their
act in the middle of the room.

“It was interesting, because you didn’t per-
form to an audience; you performed to the
people around you,” says Ullett. “It was a dif-
ferent look, and it had a different feel.”

Designed to appear as if it were shot in the
luxe bachelor-pad penthouse of the Playboy
building at Sunset and Alta Loma, which
housed a Playboy Club at the time, the first
season of Playboy After Dark was actually
shot on a soundstage on the CBS lot, the set a
remodeled version of the one from Playboy’s
Penthouse. The second season of Playboy After
Dark was shot at the KTLA studio on Sunset.

of the show remain impressive. In one epi-
sode, Hefner sits across a coffee table from
journalist George Plimpton—who would
later pen several PLAYBOY pieces, includ-
ing an essay on attempting to be a Playmate
photographer—and talks to him about his
unorthodox research style. In another, he’s
chatting with comic Sid Caesar, who sud-
denly points out a piece of art by Everett
Greenbaum, launching Hef into a tangent
on kinetic sculpture. With Tommy Smoth-
ers he discusses the increasingly conserva-
tive political atmosphere in the U.S., which
Hefner calls “frightening.” He also seems to
have anticipated television’s sketch-comedy
revolution, introducing audiences to Chica-
go’s Second City improv troupe years before
Saturday Night Live.

Through it all, Hefner plays the role of

Left: The Grateful Dead, anchored by Jerry Garcia, playing a set still venerated by fans. Right: Tina Turner turns ina powerful rendition of “Proud Mary” on the show’s second season.

“That was a surprise for me. At the end of
the show, they brought out the Cowsills, who
would never have been on the show other-
wise,” she says. “We weren't really married
yet, but we pretended to be. Our wedding was
the week after the show ended.”

Playboy After Dark also spotlighted come-
dians such as Bob Newhart, Mort Sahl (who
was married to Playmate China Lee), Shari
Lewis, Tommy Smothers and David Stein-
berg. Nick Ullett, who performed on the show
as part of a British comedy duo with Tony
Hendra (who would go on to play the band
manager in This Is Spinal Tap), remem-
bers how unusual the show’s premise and
set were. Host Hefner escorted the camera
through the gathering, chatting with the ce-
lebrity guests and introducing them to one
another. The absence of a stage made the set
unlike other productions.

“The concept behind the show was really
instead of simply putting the talent on stage

The real Playboy building did get some use—
after the tapings. “Every time we would wrap a
show, Hef would have a big party at the pent-
house,” says Roberts. “All the guests would
show up, and all the kids from the show, and
anybody else who wanted to drop in who was
somebody. It was definitely the place to be.”

That electric ambience extended beyond
Playboy’s properties. Ullett remembers one
memorable night after taping an episode that
also featured musician Jimmy Webb.

“Tony and I went back to Jimmy Webb’s
place—he was living off Hollywood Boule-
vard. We sang and smoked dope and hung out
for a long fucking time. That atmosphere en-
gendered that sort of thing,” says Ullett. “To
give Hefner credit, he had complete confi-
dence in himself and his vision. There wasn’t
another talk show around like that. I mean,
this was a party.”

Fifty years later, the ambition and scope

consummate host, always the straight man
to his guests, endlessly solicitous.

“Well, it wasn’t really a role,” says Roberts.
“That was him. He was very, very smart, and
he was incredibly interested in everyone and
in everything.”

“He loved the whole idea of celebrities,”
says Ullett. “But he was very generous, and he
didn’t try to hog the limelight at all. He’d say,
“Well, look who we've got here!’ And then he’d
let them just go.”

For Hefner, Playboy After Dark was a
deeply personal project. Having grown up
in the Midwest in a strict household, he was
intoxicated by stories of the Roaring ’20s
and longed to be swept up in the Jazz Age.
“Throughout my life, both in the television
shows and also life at the Mansion, parties
really are thematic,” Hefner said. “It's а sym-
bolic way of celebrating life, of saying “We're
just here for a little while; let’s make the most
of it.” And the Rabbit winked. im

PLAYBOY 217

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218 HERITAGE

I GREW UP IN PORTSMOUTH,
a historic port city in the south of England.
By the time I was 16, I couldn’t wait to leave
school and earn money. In my family it was
tradition to work for either the Civil Service or
the bank—a respectable office job. I went into
the Ministry of Defense and worked in the
dockyard as a clerk and then at a bank. Then I
broke the family mold.

A friend had moved to London. She said,
“There’s this place called the Playboy Club.
All you have to do is smile and you make lots
of money!” Now, this ended up being far from
the truth. I wrote the Playboy Club in London,
and they replied with a typed letter on headed
notepaper: “Please come in for an interview.”
The only requirement? Bring a bikini.

So I left my parents’ little house and got on
the train with a cooked chicken and a loaf of
bread in my handbag that my mum had given
me. I was 21.

I walked in for my interview and saw this
glossy blonde apparition. Her name was
Lindy, and she was the Bunny mother. Her
hair was swept up; her eyelashes were perfect;
her lips were lacquered. My first reaction was,
Girls in Portsmouth don’t look like this. To be
hired as a Bunny was like being in the army:
the precision, the detail. It required a healthy
discipline, and either you had it or you didn't.

I was still in training when I met my future
husband, Victor Lownes. He was a Playboy
executive. We were standing dutifully in
line, waiting for Frank Habicht, the resident
photographer, to take our photos, when this
whirlwind, this force of nature appeared.
He said to the photographer, “Ask this girl if
she’s ever done any beauty work.” He didn’t
talk to me. “No, I haven’t,” I said. Victor said,
“Well, test her for Playmate,” and walked out.
Frank took me aside. “You'll earn $5,000 for
one photograph.” That was it for me. I wasn’t
stupid. I knew PLAYBOY magazine and knew
I’d been singled out.

Days later a chauffeur picked up Frank and
me in a silver Cadillac convertible with red
leather seats. I didn’t even ask where we were
going. It happened to be Victor’s house, but
he left as we arrived.

An obvious question is “How did you feel
about taking off your clothes?” We didn’t dis-
cuss it. I was committed. I knew it was pro-
fessional. I was ushered to the dressing room
and given a robe. I said to myself, Okay, you go
in as Marilyn Cole and you come out as some-
body else! I was suddenly a model and an exhi-
bitionist. But I was never inhibited. You take
off your clothes and then you have to act. I
came out of the bathroom hoping the photog-
rapher would be blown away. Luckily, Frank
looked very pleased. “Stand by that book-
case,” he said. It was near a window, so there
was natural light. Later on, Hugh Hefner kept
coming back to that shot, saying, “This is
what I want.” Eight months later, Alexas Urba

PLAYBOY 219

220 HERITAGE

had to re-create the bookcase setup in Chi-
cago, and that became my Centerfold photo.

But before going to the States, I needed
my passport, which was back home in Ports-
mouth. I whizzed into the house and said, “I
have to go to Chicago! They’re going to photo-
graph me for the magazine.”

“Oh no,” my mum said. “It’s one of those
magazines.”

“Yes. But don’t worry, Mum, they drape you.”

Off I went to the Playboy Mansion. About
two months later I had to show my par-
ents the Polaroid of me standing completely
naked, no draping. Nobody had necessarily
intended full nudity when we went into the
shoot, but it evolved as a business decision.
The dilemma was to go pubic or not. Hefner
considered himself a romantic, but it was all
about timing. That initial black-and-white
test shot we'd taken in London had been
haunting him, and he decided it could be
PLAYBOY's first foray into full frontal.

I said to my parents, “I’m going to be Miss
January 1972.” My mom looked at the Polaroid
and said, “Well, doesn’t your hair look nice.”
My father’s response: “This is like a Rubens.”
He saved me in that moment. Other Play-
mates had parents who wouldn’t talk to them.

I started dating Victor seriously in late
1971; we married in 1984. You might call it
a love story. We were at the Playboy Club in
London when I found out Га won Playmate
of the Year 1973. I gasped. My first thought
was, Another $5,000—bring it on! There was
a lot of tabloid attention. The British press
loved that a working-class girl from Ports-
mouth had gone to America and had success
in PLAYBOY. Today I work as a journalist.

When I walked into the Playboy Club, I
knew Га found my people. What I didn’t
know was how much it would change my life.
There had always been something in me that
wouldn’t be confined by society’s expecta-
tions. No one was going to stop me. ш

Previous spread: “Alexas
Urba shot me on Crete draped
injust a piece of chiffon,”
says Cole. “How many people
can say they've stood naked
in the cave where, according
to Greek mythology, Zeus
was born?” Opposite page,
Jar left: Thad a swift and
real sense of the hugely
talented, extraordinary,
creative people I had landed
amongst at Playboy. I am
very privileged and proud
to be apart of all that."
Opposite page, bottom
right: Cole and Victor
Lownes at the Playmate
of the Year luncheon in
London. Left and right:
Cole was training for her job
as a Bunny at the London
Playboy Club when she was
asked to do atest shoot to
become a Playmate. “My
red velvet outfit trimmed
in gold was our Reception
Bunny costume. The blue and
silver was the VIP restaurant
costume.” Below: “My hair
and makeup on these shoots
were both natural, as inno
professional help. Itwas
always the photographer and
me working together.”

PLAYBOY 22]

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Opposite page: Cole's January

972 Centerfold was Playboy ’s
“first foray into full frontal.”
She recalls of the August shoot:
“It was very hot when we shot the
Centerfold. We had to keep
taking breaks, as the fire was
constantly being stoked to get the
flames just right.”

\ h |
/

Above: Cole’s test photos
by Frank Habicht. “These
early shots mark the first
time s naked in front
of a camera. We were in
Victor's elegant townhouse
in Connaught Square,
London. He had great,
eclectic taste. I posed
amongst custom-made
Italian furniture and

fantastic paintings by the

likes of Francis Bacon,
Egon Schiele and Picasso.
The photos are evocative,
with a real 1970s vibe." Left
and right: Outtakes from
Cole's Playmate of the Year
photo shoot.

PLAYBOY

223

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Left: More memorable
outtakes from Cole's PMOY
shoot. Right: “This was
taken on the balcony outside
my room in Greece. Alexas
loved to shoot in daylight,

so there Iwas т an unmade
bed, as though having slept
outside." Below: “The
Playmate Pink’ car was

my prize as Playmate of the
Year 1973. The car and Iwere
flown to Miami Beach for
that single shot.” Opposite
page: “Alexas saw us all as
goddesses, whether in Greece
or elsewhere. l'mwearing
avintage Moroccan dress
along with a necklace of
antique coins—allfrom the
casbah. I loved collecting
exotic jewelry and clothes
on my travels."

1

224 HERITAGE

LENNY BRUCE TRANSFORMED
STAND-UP COMEDY

INTO A VEHICLE FOR SHARP
SOCIAL COMMENTARY—

AND PAID THE PRICE FOR
HIS BOLDNESS

spy SASCHA COHEN

226 HERITAGE

THE FIRST TIME COMEDIAN
Lenny Bruce was booked on obscenity
charges, it was for saying the word cock-
sucker onstage in San Francisco in 1961.
The second time was in Los Angeles, and
the words in question included schmuck
and motherfucker. The next time: tits and
balls in Chicago. And the final time, the
one that ultimately turned the bohemian
provocateur into a martyr to free speech,
was in 1964 at Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich
Village. Bruce joked about sex acts with
animals, among other things, as under-
cover agents in the audience took notes on
his material. The district attorney’s office
decided to make an example out of him, be-
ginning one of the most notorious obscenity
trials in U.S. history.

Despite the best efforts of his lawyers
(who were First Amendment experts) and
support from public intellectuals includ-
ing James Baldwin, Susan Sontag and Gore
Vidal (who, along with dozens of others,
signed a petition condemning the arrest),
Bruce was found guilty and sentenced to
four months at Rikers Island, the infamous
New York City jail. The comedian, already
on a downward spiral after years of police
harassment and now banned from perform-
ing on many stages, descended into self-
destruction. He died of a morphine overdose
in Hollywood in 1966 while his case was out
on appeal. In one last indignity, the police
photographed his naked body posed on the
toilet. He was 40 years old.

Although Bruce’s legacy as a philosophical

Left: Bruce was searched by a policeman and arrested on charges of obscenity during a 1961 performance in California.
Above: An undated photo of the comedian. Middle right: Bruce appeared, along with Nat King Cole, as a guest on а 1959
episode of Hugh Hefner’s first television show, Playboy ’s Penthouse. Lower right: Using shocking language in his act was

one way that Bruce tried to make a point.

genius, hipster shaman and truth-teller
has been enshrined in late-20th century
American culture, from Bob Dylan lyrics
to Beat poetry to the work of comedic suc-
cessors like George Carlin, he hasn’t been
in the news much since 2003, when New
York governor George Pataki granted him
a posthumous pardon. But lately there has
been something of a Lenny Bruce resur-
gence. The Emmy-winning Amazon se-
ries The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, about an
Upper West Side housewife striving to be a
stand-up in the late 1950s, features a Lenny
Bruce character. And the one-man show
I'm Not a Comedian...I'm Lenny Bruce re-
cently opened off Broadway after a success-
ful run in Los Angeles.

"I'm so glad that people are discussing him
again,” says actor Ronnie Marmo, who wrote
and stars in the play. “Lenny fought for the
rights that we love and take for granted now.
He believed, in a very hopeful, naive way, that
he was going to be heard.”

Bruce was both ambitious and ahead of
his time. Early in his career, the media pre-
sented him as a law-breaking lowlife ob-
sessed with dirty words. But Bruce had a
lofty goal, Marmo says: holding a mirror
up to society. That meant drawing atten-
tion to America’s darker, uglier impulses—
something the mainstream wasn’t ready to
accept. Time magazine famously described
Bruce as “sick,” a label that stuck for years.
To this, the comic responded, “The world is
sick, and I’m the doctor. I’m a surgeon with a
scalpel for false values.”

“Certain things back in the day just
weren't said,” says Bruce's daughter, Kitty,
about her father’s bold observations on rac-
ism and religious and political hypocrisy.
“The intent of the word, what’s behind it,
makes a big difference.”

Bruce used vulgarities strategically; there
was an objective behind his shocking lan-
guage. In one famous bit, he enumerated
racial slurs for blacks, Jews, Italians, Mex-
icans, Poles and Irish people. “It’s the sup-
pression of the word that gives it the power,
the violence, the viciousness,” he then ex-
plained. To freely speak such epithets until
they lose all meaning would create a better
world, he insisted.

It is perhaps not surprising that one
boundary-pushing pioneer fascinated an-
other. Bruce first caught the attention of
PLAYBOY publisher Hugh Hefner in 1958,
during a set at Ann’s 440 in San Francisco.
An immediate fan of the comic's jazz-
inflected urban style, Hefner arranged a
gig for Bruce at the Cloister in Chicago.
From that point on, Hefner aided Bruce's
career when he could, featuring him as a
guest on a 1959 episode of Playboy 8 Pent-
house and several years later serializing
his autobiography, How to Talk Dirty and
Influence People, in the magazine. After
Bruce professed in a letter to being “dread-
fully poor,” Hefner offered him $500 to
help fight his New York conviction. The
men were brothers in arms in the war on
censorship; Hefner had faced (and beaten)
obscenity charges in 1963.

“The point is not whether any one of us
agrees with all, or any part of, what Bruce
has to say, but whether a free society can
long remain free if we suppress the expres-
sion of all ideas that are objectionable to
a few or to many,” Hefner once wrote. Fol-
lowing Bruce's unexpected early death,
PLAYBOY extolled him as a hero, with writer
Dick Schaap perfectly memorializing the
groundbreaking comedian: “One last four-
letter word for Lenny: Dead. At 40. That's
obscene.” m

I STARTED WORKING AT

PLAYBOY magazine in 1973 at the age of
25. As the youngest editor, the low man on
the totem pole, I inherited the job no one
wanted: writing “girl copy”—the stories
that accompany the Centerfolds. For a de-
cade or so I interviewed the Playmates,
meeting them for lunch or dinner in fancy
restaurants, dark bars, beer gardens, tiny
apartments, coffee shops—all expenses
paid. In what world could this possibly be
considered grunt work instead of a dream
job? Well, if you were a serious journalist—
as PLAYBOY editors often liked to think
of themselves—then interviewing Jimmy
Carter for the November 1976 issue, not
cover girl Playmate Patti McGuire, was the
plummier assignment.

I viewed the girls as slightly younger ver-
sions of myself. We faced the same culture,

are not Playmate material.” I was surprised
by the number of models who told me they
were posing nude to get revenge.

I learned what women looked for in a
man—or at least one woman in particu-
lar. “I want King Kong,” she told me, “the
black-and-white King Kong, the one who
climbs up the Empire State Building look-
ing for Fay Wray, reaches through a win-
dow, pulls out a screaming woman, sniffs
her, then tosses her over his shoulder to her
death because she's not ‘the One.’ Іп other
words, her message to suitors was: Know
what you want and accept no substitutes.

I learned the full depth of love, of cour-
age, of loss. One Playmate had just re-
turned from a heartbreaking journey. Her
brother had died and she’d gone to retrieve
his body. She looked at the job the funeral
home had done and said, “That’s not my

What I Learned
From Playmates

the magazine came out. The lesson was
clear: Let the woman make the first move.

During my time producing Centerfold
copy in the 1970s and early 1980s, some
feminists argued that the magazine re-
duced Playmates to mere sex objects, that
we presented the women in our pages as
being all the same. That could not have
been further from the truth. My job, after
all, was to discover the individual, to cele-
brate the person. The magazine let the Cen-
terfolds tell their own stories, in their own
voice, using me as a medium. Some spoke
in a shy whisper, others with a defiant au-
dacity. These women had turned away from
their mothers’ scripts—housewife, secre-
tary, teacher—which took courage and con-
fidence. They would make their own way,
thank you. You didn’t have to burn a bra if
you weren't wearing one to begin with.

A FORMER PLAYBOY EDITOR SHARES SOME OF THE WISDOM HE ACCRUED OVER
YEARS OF CONVERSATIONS WITH CENTERFOLD SUBJECTS

the tumult of the sexual revolution, and we
were making it up as we went along. They
were rebels, willing to put themselves in
front of the world without shame. And they
taught me a lot.

I learned to listen. (Try it sometime.) For
many of these young women, I was the first
man—perhaps even the first person—to be
deeply curious about them, who wanted to
know who they were, what they thought.
Who asked sincere questions, who took
notes. I found that when your subject sees
you writing something down, she begins to
believe that what she says counts. (It works
on men too.)

I learned that beauty could be a curse.
The world reacts to you whether or not you
are ready. The same wave of hormones that
turns girls into women turns some boys
into assholes, future Supreme Court jus-
tices and presidents. High school jocks
thought they deserved the cheerleaders.
More than one jerk had said to a girl, “You

228 HERITAGE

spy JAMES К. PETERSEN

brother.” She asked for makeup and worked
on her brother’s face until he was the boy
she remembered, the boy her parents would
recognize. That story didn’t make it into
the magazine article, but it changed my
heart. Imagine putting aside your grief to
perform that act of love.

I learned how to approach a beautiful
woman. One of the editors I worked with
said her brother had always wanted to meet
a Playmate; would I mind if he came along
on an interview? The three of us met at a
power restaurant in Washington, D.C. The
brother made the reservation, dealt ele-
gantly with the staff and listened quietly
throughout the interview. At the end, he
slid his card across the table and said to the
Playmate, “In a few months the whole world
will be hitting on you. If you ever need to
talk to someone, I’m available.” She called
that weekend. They went to Europe for a
couple of weeks, were married by the end of
the month and had started a family before

I heard academics even wrote doctoral
theses about the Centerfold stories. My
copy! One Playmate had brought me home
to her apartment, where she kept a stash
of a certain controlled substance that
she thought might make her more articu-
late. But she had locked herself out of her
place. I helped her take out a screen and
open the window, and I watched her crawl
through the opening, blue-jeaned ass in the
air. I started my article with that image.
One scholar wrote a whole thesis based on
that paragraph, saying it demonstrated
PLAYBOY’s attempt to wed the furtive, the
criminal and the forbidden with the image
of the girl next door in order to heighten the
sexual. No. She had just misplaced her keys.

Eventually I moved on to other assign-
ments at the magazine, and younger editors
took over the task of interviewing up-and-
coming Centerfolds. The Playmates had
given me an uncommon education, and I
had graduated. al

ILLUSTRATION BY SPIROS HALARIS

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230 HERITAGE

CARTOONS

“Winter has come, babe. Time to cover it
all up until next summer.”

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"I always thought they flew South!” “Incidentally, what religion are the Davidsons?”

PLAYBOY 231

Vintage Advisor

Good advice is timeless, so we called on our Advisor to revisit a question of eternal
interest (one a reader asked іп 1975): how to keep a woman's attention in bed

FROM THE JULY 1975 PLAYBOY

Have you ever noticed how hard it is for some women to
concentrate on sex? My girlfriend has the opposite of
a one-track mind—she can get derailed by noisy neigh-
bors, unfinished chores or the proverbial bread crumbs in
bed. Once she loses her momentum, it takes her a while
to get started again and, frankly, I can’t always post-
pone my own pleasure for that long. Is her wandering at-
tention a sign that she is inhibited or that she just isn’t
interested?—E.Y., Portland, Oregon

The man who said don’t eat crackers in bed never dated
anyone from Georgia, but he did have a point—possibly
the same one made by the grim tale “The Princess and the
Pea.” Mistresses on mattresses are easily distracted dur-
ing sex. Psychologists may see the evasive action as an
“anxiety-motivated defense” or a “culturally induced in-
hibition,” but Kinsey suggested that such behavior goes
beyond the bedroom: “Cheese crumbs spread in front of
a copulating pair of rats may distract the female but not
the male.... When cattle are interrupted during coitus, it
is the cow that is more likely to be disturbed, while the bull
may try to continue with coitus.” Furthermore, female
cats have been known to investigate mouse holes dur-
ing intercourse. (We had a partner who used to do that—
damn irritating, but new baseboards broke her of the
habit.) Many women rate “privacy and freedom from in-
trusion” second only to “quality of relationship with part-
ner” as a factor in their sexual satisfaction. Bear that in
mind and find an appropriate setting for your next tryst
(bank vaults and fallout shelters are great favorites).
Also, you may find that if your girlfriend concentrates on
something—music or an erotic fantasy—she can “distract
the distracter” and mainline on the cannonball express.

OUR ADVISOR REFLECTS

Omnipresent smartphones, social media, e-mail,
internet—we have a lot more to be distracted by today
than we did in 1975. Frequently our minds are elsewhere,
focused on just about everything besides what we’re
actually doing—even when we re engaging in the most in-
timate things possible.

Personally, I’ve never noticed a woman’s attention wan-
dering during sex (then again, I’ve slept with only a handful
of women). I admit that I’ve occasionally found myself dis-
tracted during sex with men—suddenly contemplating the
general absurdity of existence, trying not to laugh when my
partner makes that weird noise or noticing my six-pound
Brussels Griffon staring at me from inches away with judg-
ment in his eyes—but then I’m right back in the moment,
absorbed in the throes of passion and racking up orgasms.

What makes one go from fully engaged to sidetracked
by the proverbial cheese crumb? I turned to an expert to
find out. “If you’re going to have sex, you may as well show
up for it. It’s not sufficient for your body to just go through
the motions,” says psychologist Lori Brotto, who literally
wrote the book on the topic: Better Sex Through Mind-
fulness. “Tf it’s not satisfying, it makes sense that you'll
lose interest. It doesn’t mean you're losing interest in sex.
It means you're losing interest in the sex you're having.”
Ideally, sex is a permeating and immersive experience,
with mind and body working in unison. Just as communi-
cation is essential to a successful long-term relationship,
so too is a figurative dialogue between your brain and
body. If one is not engaged, the other will check out too.
Plenty of guys worry about how they look mid-thrust, but
women are more prone to anxiety than men are and have
higher instances of depression and lower rates of desire.
It's no surprise that these issues slip between the sheets
in the form of distraction.

How to quell our restless minds, if only for a solid seven
minutes? The better you get at compartmentalizing, the
better sex you'll have.

“Science tells us mindfulness is the most powerful way
of cultivating sexual desire in people,” says Brotto. In
other words, you can meditate your way to better bang-
ing. If you or your partner is having trouble being in the
moment, pick a time to practice meditation for 10 or 15
minutes every day. Apps like Headspace or Calm can help
guide your progress; for the unplugged version, try a med-
itation class. The important thing is to work toward cre-
ating the right mind-set to enjoy and find pleasure in sex
as it’s taking place.

Still worried your partner may have lost interest in
you? Begin a conversation with her and talk it out. This
is a chance to examine your relationship, in bed and
as a whole. Just as in 1975, studies still show that rela-
tionship quality has a major impact on a woman’s sex-
ual function, and in solid relationships, people talk.
They talk about sex, from favorite fantasies to poten-
tial fetishes to specific proclivities and preferences.
(Could you write a thesis on her orgasms? If not, do
your research. Thoroughly.) They also talk about every-
thing else, including banal things such as who does
what housework. If a happy relationship is the ultimate
goal, perhaps you should take it upon yourself to tell the
neighbors to keep it down. Better yet, help out more with
those chores. She’s picking up on your energy as much
as you're noticing hers, so make an effort to set the right
tone and be as attentive as possible. Now that’s advice to
last the ages.—Anna del Gaizo

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MANHATTAN, EARLY 1960s
Celebrating the Chinese New Year at the New York Playboy Club.

Y

SAM HARRIS TARAJI P. HENSON
BLAISE CEPIS VENDELA
MEGAN MOORE MIKI HAMANO
ROXANE GAY SASHA SAMSONOVA
TREVOR PAGLEN EMIR SHIRO
PAUL W. DOWNS JANICE GRIFFITH
STORMY DANIELS EZRA MILLER
CHUCK PALAHNIUK SCOTT DIKKERS
URAKEO THE RULER RYAN PFLUGER
ERIC POWELL MARILYN COLE
MAYA ANGELOU EDWIDGE DANTICAT