All images courtesy of Materia Magica LLC

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The internet is a realm of text. This is true from the way we communicate with one another via typing to the code underpinning the whole thing. It's also effervescently visual, with elaborately layered website graphics, colorful online games right down to the simple act of touching a point on your screen to scroll through an article.

This is especially true of one of the internet's earliest and longest-lived game genres: the MUD. "MUD" stands for Multi-User Dungeon, and these precursors to the MMORPGs were worlds largely mediated by text alone. Picture World of Warcraft distilled down only to text and code, a combat log come to life, and you're on the right track.

Materia Magica, a MUD with a 20 year history, is undertaking a project as ambitious as it is surprisingly straightforward: It wants to make this most visual of genres accessible to the visually impaired. The effort came about due to the dogged efforts of a player who is blind, Lilah (an in-game name; she wishes to remain anonymous), and a receptive community of players headed by the game's staff. She and a sighted partner, a coder by trade, used text readers to level the Materia Magica's playing field.

"zipMUD (a version of the zMUD client; MUDs use third-party-connection clients to log in) had nothing in it to really help us, but we could hear what was going on in the game ," Lilah says. "So I had to make myself sound triggers, so I could hear when somebody sent me a tell and a different one when someone replied to me. And I was getting more and more elaborate—I made one to tell me when I got poisoned, one when I got plagued. Gosh, I had maybe 2,000 triggers and aliases I used to play the game."

Essentially, where sighted players saw colored text—perhaps red for a bleed effect, for example—Lilah heard a trigger word or sound, one that she set on her end. But this wasn't enough to even up the odds with her sighted compatriots, so the Materia Magica developers stepped in.

"There were always people who had to figure out how to use text readers to play these games, so some people developed add-ons for MUSHclient because it's so easy to script," the game's general manager, Beth Carrigan explains. "One of our blind players is an accessibility professional in real life. She was friends with a sighted player who's a programmer. The programmer helped Lilah get her plugins set up so she could play, and over time, they were just like, 'We can clean this up and share it with other players.' This was all unofficial at this point. The administration realized that this was pretty great, so we helped out and ran with it."

Lilah also wanted her project to be accessible in economic terms. As she points out, "a lot of the blind players are underemployed for their education levels. They'd be afraid to go get zipMUD just to see if it worked or if they liked it and still have to spend money."

When you log into Materia Magica and make a new character, you're presented with the option to plug into the visual impairment code. When it's fully on, it sounds something like this fight between Lilah and a high-level enemy:

It's a lot of auditory information coming at the player at once, but it's not substantially different from the way sighted players read. The visual information provided by read text comes at players really fast, even slower readers. In the case of a blind player, training auditory intake allows for a comparable rate of information processing, simply in a way that sighted people are unfamiliar with.

Carrigan provides context to the clip. "All computers come with screen readers now, and you can also buy nicer ones," she explains. "So what Lilah and her partner have done is use two screen readers: The built-in one, to read all the background scrolling text—like in combat, there's a constant stream of information—and that one's turned up to something like 300 words per minute. Then they use a second one, which kicks out more important things, read over the top of the background noise."

In Carrigan's words, the Materia Magica team's job is to enhance the process started by Lilah by providing "hooks" for visually impaired players to plug into: extra sounds, a tweaking of code, and the like. MUD dev teams can't control the player clients directly; it's different from online video games, where the player and game clients are fully subject to dev control. Materia Magica helps facilitate the translation of visual information to a primarily auditory format through the use of various plugins in a visually impaired package on its website. It includes a host of MP3 files, means to capture map and channel information for later listening, and support for concurrent sounds, among other quality of life additions. Because of the work done by the team on its end, Lilah's work has been streamlined and expanded upon for the easy use of anyone who might wish to access it in the game. It is, in all ways, the same game as the one sighted players interact with. It's as fast as you can read. It's auditory, and it's dense.

A map of Alyria, the world of Materia Magica

Sean Lyons, the MUD's tech lead, places the effort firmly as a community effort. "A lot of the underlying tech was planned for a long time," he explains. "One of our most accomplished PKers is blind, though he wasn't born blind. We realized that we could leverage some of the work we were already doing to better facilitate his gameplay."

The sheer age of the game, the way it lingers from a bygone era of internet ideology, makes this process possible. It's coded in C, with character logs preserved in old binary code, and there's something undeniably compelling about a new game based around social interaction that came about through code that was written in a time when technology wasn't something to be feared or jaded about, but provided hope.

"I think if people just think outside of the box a little bit, there are ways to make things accessible without spending a fortune."—Lilah

This makes sense, as MUDs have aging populations, leftovers from college geeks and roleplaying nerds from the days of DOS and Pretty Hate Machine. When the primary subjects in this play—Lilah and the Materia Magica staff—speak, it's with a reverence for the community that has persisted for so long in silicon and wires. And without a dedicated group interested in evolving the confines of the current game, none of this would have happened.

According to the MUD's financial manager, Anthony Roma, the blind MUDders have always been a vital part of Materia Magica, but they feel welcome with open arms now, forming sometimes 50 percent of online users some nights; even though the MUD populations have all diminished in the post-MMO world, it's still a testament to what a bit of effort can do in a game.

The lessons to be applied to the world of modern video games is mixed. One of the operative parts of the term is "video," and this isn't an accident: They are visually oriented in the extreme. Still, Lilah has wellsprings of hope that anything is possible.

"I think if people just think outside of the box a little bit, there are ways to make things accessible without spending a fortune. But most people can't even imagine being blind, much less playing a game like Materia Magica while blind," she says. "It's an intricate game that even sighted people find too hard. So instead of saying, 'This is too hard,' I ask 'How can we do it? If it's inaccessible, how can we make it accessible?' If you're blind or visually impaired, deaf, or anything else, instead of thinking you can't do it... Materia Magica is showing that it can be done."

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The PS4 Pro (photograph courtesy of Sony)

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The Neo is no more. Despite everyone in the world calling PlayStation's next console by that name since it sort of, kind of leaked earlier in 2016, it turns out that the successor to the PS4 as we know it is simply the PS4 Pro. Makes sense, doesn't it? It does. Don't overthink it. It does.

At the system's reveal at the PlayStation Meeting in New York, a range of Sony personnel and third-party studio heads came onstage to sell the system's tech specs. Long story considerably shorter than it probably should be: All games that support HDR (high-dynamic range) and 4K displays are going to look a lot prettier on the Pro than they will a regular PS4. Not that the regular PS4 is hanging around—as of September 15, the standard PS4 becomes the "slim," as reported here. No more sharp corners; it's all curves from here. (Note that the console isn't formally called the "slim," but we've all been calling it that—it's sold simply as the PS4, as per the previous model.)

Both the "slim" and the Pro—which looks a lot more like the "outgoing" PS4—will support Sony's PlayStation VR, but certain games will appear sharper in your headset when the studios behind them choose to take advantage of the Pro's capabilities. Likewise, any game that is designed to look super sweet on PS4 Pro will play just fine on an original PS4—all of which will, via a firmware update in the coming days, become HDR compatible. Which makes all of those (showcased, no less) neon effects in Infamous First Light so sparkly that you can almost overlook that it's not so hot a game.

Sony's Mark Cerny said of the Pro, "It's not intended to blur the line between console generations"—basically, this is very much the "PlayStation 4.5" that a lot of the games media was anticipating, and not a fully blown next step into a new console generation.

Amongst the games showcased at the PlayStation Meeting were Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Watch Dogs 2, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Insomniac's forthcoming Spider Man title. They all looked very splendid indeed—although whether aesthetics alone will turn the heads of those already playing through other means, I don't know. PS4 Pro games running on HDR screens, in all their glorious 4K crispness, feature some amazing-looking fire, that's for sure, so pyromaniacs should form a disorderly line.

Those wanting to put off the HDR not-yet-a-revolution can pick up the slim model PS4 for $299. Wait a couple of months, and the blockier, bigger PS4 Pro comes out on November 10, priced at $399. There wasn't any significant mention of PS VR at the meeting at all, beyond a little PS4 Pro Farpoint footage, but that's also a thing that you can spend money on this side of Christmas. Because that's what we're all made of, obviously.

Any tech-spec questions? Tweet at Mike Diver, who really didn't want to fill this article with numbers.

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Donald Trump talks to Matt Lauer during Wednesday night's event. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci). Lead image by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Presidential campaigns in many ways are like middle school. You have a single enemy who you despise with all your being, and you spend nearly every waking moment convincing anyone who will listen that they are trashy liars who can't be trusted with the nuclear codes, but you hardly ever get into a situation where you have to say those nasty rumors you've been spreading to Becky's—or Donald Trump's—face.

So even though Hillary Clinton and Trump have been giving speeches within miles of each other in Ohio, and denouncing each other furiously in aggressively negative television ads, they are rarely close enough to smell each other's breath. On Wednesday, however, NBC gave the two candidates a chance to at least occupy the same space, if not at the same time, when it hosted something called the "Commander-in-Chief Forum," an arena where the duo would be asked questions about national security and veterans' issues by morning show host Matt Lauer and veterans themselves. They went onstage one at a time, but it was the closest we'll get to an actual debate until, well, the actual debates.

From the beginning, however, the format seemed designed to disappoint. The whole program was only an hour long, and 30 minutes per candidate wasn't enough time for anything approaching a substantial discussion of anything. Sometimes Lauer followed up on questions; sometimes he obviously felt the need to move on to the next topic. And "national security" is an incredibly broad area to focus on, so naturally quite a bit ended up on the cutting room floor—we barely got anything about Russia, nothing on climate change, surprisingly little on domestic terrorism or cybersecurity, nothing on North Korea, and nothing on nuclear proliferation apart from a short discussion of Iran.

So what did we get? Basically a rehash of the major themes of this interminable election season. Lauer's first substantial questioning of Clinton zeroed in on her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, and the first audience question (pre-selected, presumably, by NBC), also asked Clinton about her emails. "Secretary Clinton," a former Navy officer with top secret clearance said, "how can you expect those such as myself who were and are entrusted with America's most sensitive information to have any confidence in your leadership as president when you clearly corrupted our national security?"

Clinton's use or misuse of email is a scandal, but it's one that has been written and talked about extensively, and given half an hour and an entire world to cover, you might imagine less time devoted to it. More pointed were audience queries about Clinton's support for the Iraq war and the intervention in Libya that attacked the candidate for being overly hawkish. She was also asked about comments she made that appeared to minimize problems at the notoriously dysfunctional Veterans Administration, which provides healthcare to vets, or at least is supposed to. Clinton did what any experienced politician facing tough questions and a limited amount of time would: stall for time with platitudes.

She would work at fixing the VA until it was fixed. The Iraq war was a mistake, as was her vote for it. As for overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, "I think taking that action was the right decision. Not taking it, and permitting there to be an ongoing civil war in Libya, would have been as dangerous and threatening as what we are now seeing in Syria." ISIS? ISIS is bad, we should beat them. Terrorism? Also bad. The Iran deal? A good deal, we just have to make sure it's honored. Any more questions? Oh, we're out of time.

Given the time crunch and Lauer's reputation as a relatively soft interviewer, however, Clinton's treatment might count as a grilling. Trump got off a little easier.

Most notably, the alleged billionaire said he was "totally against the war in Iraq," which as anyone who has covered or followed the campaign knows is a straight-up lie—yet one that Lauer didn't follow up on. But more often Trump just did his usual tactic of talking pure nonsense and forcing his questioner to move on or risk getting bogged down.

Take, for instance, Trump's contention that the US should "take the oil" out of Iraq or ISIS-controlled lands. How should we do that? "Just we would leave a certain group behind, and you would take various sections where they have the oil." So... Large quantities of ground troops back in Iraq to defend oil operations? The US would just extract another nation's resources? Like an old-school colonial power? I guess so.

Moving on, Trump continued to say he had a secret plan to defeat ISIS, but he wouldn't reveal it because it was a secret, but he'd also ask generals for their ideas, and maybe he would take those ideas and use them, or combine them with the secret plan, or maybe there would be "different generals" than the ones the US military has now. Who knows what the fuck Trump is talking about at this point, honestly?

Lauer ended the evening by asking Trump about the weightiness of the decision to launch a military operation as president. Trump replied by saying, "I think it's the most difficult decision you can possibly ever make. You're talking about death. And we're talking death to not just our side. We're talking death all over. I would be very, very cautious. I think I'd be a lot slower. She has a happy trigger... I've been preparing this for a long time. And, you know, my theme is make America great again. We're going to make America great again. But, Matt, we've also got to make America strong again. And right now, we are not strong. Believe me. We have a depleted military. We have the greatest people in the world in our military. But it is very sadly depleted."

I can think of a few follow-up questions. Weren't you just saying minutes ago you'd send troops to take oil? Now you're saying you'd go "slower" than Clinton? And how do you attack Clinton for being overly hawkish and demand a military buildup in the next breath? What would you actually do if faced with a situation like Libya? If the military is so great, why were you just shit-talking its generals? What are you even TALKING about?

Maybe Lauer was about to ask those questions. But, oh, will you look at that, we're out of time.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

A screenshot of 'Battlefield 1' (all screenshots captured in-game by the author)

If its current beta is anything to go by, Battlefield 1 is shaping up to be a great addition to EA's shooter franchise. Aside from looking gorgeous, the game also conveys its First World War setting with an impressive amount of detail. The bygone weaponry looks particularly authentic, and riding a horse into battle is only ever going to give off a historical war vibe.

I especially enjoyed the array of trains, planes, and automobiles available in the beta. Well designed, their realistic portrayal showed just how much effort developers EA DICE have put into making Battlefield 1's setting feel genuine, however much it mashes together technology of the era. And it's more than just a pretty face: the online multiplayer modes that the beta showcased displayed some entertaining substance behind its stylish surroundings.

The flagship of the Battlefield multiplayer experience, Conquest was for the most part as much chaotic fun in the new game as it's always been. The amount of all-too-familiar snipers kills that I endured during this mode, however, was not. A wild, 64-man conflict, dogfights, tank battles, and straight up solider-on-solider shoot-outs were all ways to play, giving gameplay the variety the large map demanded. I tried the tanks a few times, and while I enjoyed running over everything in my path, I felt their overpowered nature made it too easy to take an objective or kill an enemy.

During Rush, the other mode available, the issue of the tanks was even more prevalent—having played both, I definitely preferred Conquest. Most of the time I stuck to being an infantryman, and I found this to be the most rewarding way of playing the game. One moment that I found particularly gratifying while on the ground was when I randomly came across a flamethrower. Donning my old-school gas mask, I obliterated all the enemies in my vicinity, the ring of fire I surrounded myself with being one that Johnny Cash would have been proud of.

A screenshot from 'Overwatch'

But while I've enjoyed my time with the Battlefield 1 beta, I can't see myself buying it. All the while, I felt a barrier, something stopping me from getting enough out of the experience to commit my money to it in October. And that barrier was another game: Overwatch.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened. Every since I got my hands on Blizzard's online shooter, which came out back in May, I've found it hard to love another online FPS anywhere near as much. Old favorites have been pushed to the side, with Call of Duty: Black Ops one example. After the springtime confirmation that the 2010 game would be available to play through the Xbox One backwards compatibility feature, I swore I would pick it up again. It was my go-to game in college, and I wanted to relive my Hardcore Team Deathmatch binges, a part of me almost certainly eager to return to my youth. However, once I picked up Overwatch, a week after the Black Ops announcement, my urge to revisit Treyarch's title was extinguished. The upcoming Modern Warfare Remastered is another blast from the past I considering buying, only for Overwatch to hold my attention so tightly over recent months that this thought has been put to bed.

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Related: Watch VICE Gaming's short film on the competitive world of 'Smite'

That this one game, so different from other shooters, could have this effect on me might seem bizarre to anyone but me. I can see that. I have my reasons, however. One is simply how vibrant the world of Overwatch is. Varied in style and color, each map is so obviously, unmistakably different from the next. After playing in such a vivacious setting, it's hard to go back to the dull, realistic environments of other FPS multiplayer modes—they're just so bland in comparison.

There's also the lack of personalities that these other, I dare say "grittier" games have when compared to Overwatch. Boasting a roster full of individual and unique characters, it's the heroes and villains you play as which represent the soul and life of Blizzard's team-based shooter. In Call of Duty, Battlefield, and many others, you are mostly destined to play as a nameless grunt, their body acting as nothing more than a vessel with which to get you kills. In Overwatch, the characters are much less disposable, and it's because of them that I now find it hard to go back to playing FPS games where my character has less personality than a damp cloth.

I've definitely developed an emotional attachment to my Overwatch favorites, and this is partly down to the work that Blizzard has done outside of the game. The studio's produced animated shorts centered on select characters, and with their Pixar-like quality these clips give us an insight into the individuals' lives before they were forced to fight for us, all in the name of video games. I've felt empathy, sadness, and joy when watching these shorts—the most recent one, about Bastion (embedded above), totally changed my perspective on the turret-touting war machine.

The lore for Overwatch goes fairly deep, too, with even the maps themselves getting some in-depth treatment. Becoming sucked into the world Blizzard has created is hard to resist, and it's mainly because of the media that surrounds the game that I feel so connected to Overwatch, regardless of whether I'm in or out of it, playing, or simply perusing the associated facts and fiction. As a result of such extensive efforts, I sincerely feel invested in the characters I'm playing as, and the world they dwell in, with matches feeling more intense as a result of my immersion. I want to win because I actually care what happens to the Overwatch inhabitants, a feeling that no other online FPS multiplayer has ever given me.

If it had not been for Overwatch, I would more than likely have bought Battlefield 1 in a month's time—but now I feel there's no need to do so. As much as I'd like to play the campaign, it's the extensive use I'd get out of the multiplayer modes that would warrant me spending RRP money, an expenditure I can no longer justify. For better or worse, Blizzard has ensured that for the near future my online FPS gaming will be dedicated to their game alone, and while I'm sure I'll tire of Overwatch one day, I can't see it happening anytime soon.

Follow Emma Quinlan on Twitter.

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Photo by Elizabeth Renstrom

This story appeared in the September issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

In the past few years, podcasts have crept back into the mainstream and captivated listeners—there have been crime-driven broadcasts, such as Serial, or advice series, such as Death, Sex & Money. Personally, I got into them by listening to The Read, a show on which two black hosts discuss hip-hop and popular culture using irreverent banter and black vernacular. Since then, I've only listened to podcasts that featured hosts of color. They're the perfect antidotes when I'm working a long day, or I need to pass the time when there's no one around. I love the parlance, inside jokes, and rawness that these hosts deliver, and Phoebe Robinson, one of the hosts of 2 Dope Queens, is no different. Whenever I listen to that podcast, I imagine I'm in someone's living room, drinking sangria with Robinson and her co-host, the former Daily Show senior correspondent Jessica Williams. I wanted to interview Robinson for this profile at Corner Social, my favorite haunt in Harlem, but plans changed because she didn't have much time. Once we linked up, I could see why: Robinson is having a moment.

The 2 Dope Queens podcast was born of "Blaria LIVE!," Robinson and Williams's monthly Brooklyn-based stand-up performance, named for Robinson's reputation as being like a "black Daria." The shows—a mix of storytelling, traditional stand-up, and candid conversations with a diverse range of other comedians—address everything from when the hosts lost their virginities ("I was trying to give it away. It was like a Bed, Bath, & Beyond coupon," Robinson told the audience), to their Backstreet Boys preferences ("I was into Kevin. You know, the oldest- looking one? I was like, He looks like he pays his child support on time!"). I consider myself a bit boy-crazy, so I was drawn to how open Robinson was when talking about her dating experiences and the rest of her personal life with rapid-fire wit and ease.

I arrived for our interview at L'Express, a French bistro located in Gramercy, about ten minutes early, and I needed every minute to prepare. I wasn't necessarily nervous, but the amount of perspiration I had accumulated during my trip downtown made it seem otherwise. It was 78 degrees, incredibly humid, and I was worried that my sweat stains and glossy face would read as unprofessional. While I wiped my body with paper towels in the bathroom, I thought about all the questions that I'd like to ask. I hadn't prepared a strict script, because I assumed that since we are both black women who love versatile hairstyles, we would have enough in common that the conversation would go smoothly—and luckily, I was right.

Robinson was already sitting in the far back corner of the bistro with three of her female colleagues at WNYC, the broadcaster that backs 2 Dope Queens as well as Robinson's new solo talk-show-format podcast, Sooo Many White Guys, which premiered in July. SMWG is executive produced by Ilana Glazer, a Comedy Central fixture and star of Broad City, for which Robinson used to be a consultant. When I found her she was fresh-faced and lovely, sidestepping a professional handshake for a warm hug. She sported a sew-in with blond highlights and was rocking a hilarious shirt that said, Dorothy in the streets/Blanche in the sheets—homage to The Golden Girls. I settled in at another table and waited for her to finish the potatoes she'd been eating and say goodbye to her colleagues. She left their table, brought her near-empty glass of rosé sangria over to where I sat, and said, "Are you going to order the rosé sangria? I think you should. It's delicious." How did she know that sangria was my favorite drink? I was hesitant to order any alcohol during our interview, because I'm a lightweight and I had nothing in my stomach but popcorn and strawberries. But I honored her request (along with an order of roasted half-chicken and fries to ward off tipsiness).

She's a workaholic who has built her profession around finding what she enjoys and figuring out how to market it. And it's working.

These days, there is a proliferation of people of color on podcasts, such as Crissle and Kid Fury of The Read or Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton of Another Round , but white men still dominate the medium, and that's something that Robinson is adamant on changing. Between 2 Dope Queens and SMWG, she gets to enjoy making that difference. "I've been doing stand-up stuff for the past eight years, and it feels really cool to be like, Oh, finally I'm getting used to the career that I've envisioned," she told me. "I'm soaking it all in."

I first came across Robinson through 2 Dope Queens. Besides her talent for playing off Williams's topic of choice—a skill they both acquired through years spent in improvisational troupes—I admired her absolute candor, especially in regard to sexual positions and the perils of dating through Tinder. She told me the dating landscape has changed so much since the beginning of the four-year-long relationship she'd recently ended, and she admitted that discussing it publicly with a friend in an honest and funny way has been cathartic for her. SMWG is a bit different but still provides catharsis. On the show, she interviews other artistic women of color, such as Janet Mock and Nia Long, and with those conversations, she's hoping that she can help to dismantle the idea that black women can't simply be actors or comedians like anyone else. "I'm asked, 'What's it like to be a woman in comedy or a black person in comedy?' I don't want to validate that stupid-ass question. People get so hung on gender, sexuality, and race, and they don't see you as a creative as they might, say, Jerry Seinfeld." It's the kind of project that, in addition to adding one fewer "white guy" voice, she hopes will allow people to see that marginalized celebrities are human and do not have to be relegated to only discussing their otherness.

Growing up in the 90s, Robinson saw firsthand how women of color were able to tell their own stories, and she believes that the kind of creative autonomy embodied by TV shows of that era, such as Living Single, is becoming in vogue once again. "One time, I had someone come up to me after a show and she was teary-eyed, and she thanked me for showcasing black-woman representation," Robinson told me. "We're making people feel less alone. That's awesome." It's one of the memorable moments of Robinson's life that she doesn't take for granted.

As we drank, she confessed to being obsessed with Orange Is the New Black and the Hamilton soundtrack, but she also said she's a workaholic who has built her profession around finding what she enjoys and figuring out how to market it. And it's working. In addition to her two podcasts, Robinson wrote for MTV's Girl Code and currently contributes to Vulture.com and VanityFair.com, where she writes about some of TV's juiciest dramas. Her debut essay collection, You Can't Touch My Hair, will be published by Plume next month. In short: She is a Jill of all trades. When asked about how hair relates to her identity and presentation, Robinson cheerfully relayed that her hairstyles are just as flexible as her creative endeavors. "Right now I have a sew-in, before I had red twists, and then I'm gonna go back to an Afro after this." The subject of hair ignites a passion that dates back to her Blaria blog. In 2012, she posted about the significance of Olympian Gabby Douglas's hair, in which she wrote, "Okay, black women are not to wear their hair natural AND if a black woman chooses to straighten her hair, let's still attack her if her straight hair isn't looking perfect. Enough is enough!" And even now, on the 2 Dope Queens podcast, Robinson and Williams constantly discuss black people's hair.

Periodically, Robinson checked her watch, and I was certain that I was going over time and she would have to hustle to another commitment. I asked her if I was keeping her from something. "No, I'm just checking to see if I got any water on my watch," she warmly assured me. "You're fine."

She is a Renaissance woman, able to fold popular culture into works that carry a serious message, the way Roxane Gay did when writing about rape culture and abuse by picking apart pop songs and pop stars in the best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist. This balance between the serious and not so serious, the highbrow and the accessible, strengthens her art. In a few years, Robinson said she imagines herself writing a novel or perhaps another essay collection. She's looking at trying her hand at on-screen work after filming a pilot, too. Whatever happens, Robinson is not planning to slow down anytime soon. She'll only be saying "no" to the opportunities that don't excite her: "At first, I was auditioning for everything like sassy assistant and funny black friend to white ladies. Now I'm like, 'I'm gonna pass on that.'"

This story appeared in the September issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

The author poses with his husband and boyfriend. Photo courtesy the author

I have been with my husband, Alex, for four and a half years. And our boyfriend, Jon, has been with us for a year and a half.

Before I found myself in one, I resisted the idea of a polyamorous relationship—I made fun of my friends who were in "triads." I thought the whole concept was ridiculous. But when we met Jon, my perspective shifted.

As Jon entered our life, Alex and I tried to control the situation as best we could. We agreed to only text him in a group, so everyone could see everything we discussed with him, while Alex and I maintained our own separate conversations. Alex and I would confer together on the major decisions of our relationship, and then we would bring the results of those deliberations to Jon.

Basically, we tried to treat a relationship developing between three people like it was developing between two, with Alex and I as one party and Jon as the other. This, of course, is untenable. Equality is essential to making relationships work. If we were really going to do this new thing with Jon, Alex and I would have to change how our own relationship operated. But I had no role models to teach me how to do this thing—a problem I hope to address in writing about our relationship publicly.

People reach out to me all the time with questions about open and polyamorous relationships based on pieces I've written. A disproportionate number of them revolve around jealousy and insecurity: How do you avoid becoming jealous if your partner is sleeping with other men?

I've found that if I ever feel jealousy, the root of that emotion almost always comes from not feeling good enough for Jon or Alex. Jealousy always equals insecurity for me.

And jealousy is normal—it happens all the time, no matter what kind of relationship you're in. It's part of being human. But at the end of the day, it's how we react to that jealousy that matters. I constantly have to remind myself to shift the focus of my thoughts back to me: What am I really afraid of? Why do I not believe I am deserving of all this love?

Falling in love with Jon—and watching Alex fall in love with Jon—taught me that there is more love out there in this world than I had ever imagined. But we struggled in the process. Three-way fucking is hot; three-way fighting is a nightmare.

Once, I received an email from a reader who had started dating a new guy with his partner. The three of them had their first fight, and he felt like his partner and their boyfriend were ganging up on him—had I ever experienced that?

Sure I had. In a relationship between three people, it is almost impossible for someone not to feel like the odd man out.

I remember a fight Jon, Alex, and I had in Vancouver. Alex was about to go away for six months to work on a TV show, and we were spending a few days together, just the three of us. We were on Granville Island, and I remember a moment where I caught their hands touching. It was a romantic and beautiful image, but for some reason, it made me feel jealous, insecure, and afraid that they were falling more in love with each other than they were with me. That's when we started fighting, and though I can't remember what we fought about, I'm sure I started it. Even though all I needed to do to feel included was reach out to hold their hands, I closed off, shut down, and created what I was afraid would happen.

Later that night, I pretended to fall out of bed (in reality, I threw myself onto the floor). I stormed out of the apartment we were renting and marched to the elevator, waiting for one of them to come stop me, to prove they loved me.

People often ask me how we handled "coming out" as a polyamorous couple to our family and friends. There's no easy answer for that.

Alex and I introduced Jon to our family and friends at our wedding. It seemed, at the time, to be a good idea—everyone would be in one place at the same time, and we wanted Jon there, to be part of that experience with us.

Looking back, I can only imagine how hard that was for Jon, and for those closest to Alex and me. And today, my advice is to use caution and not open yourself up too quickly to the scrutiny and judgment of those who love you. While they may seem normal when you're part of them, polyamorous relationships are far outside the norm, and it's hard to expect everyone to just accept what we know: that love is vast, and that there are many ways to experience and express it. Polyamory scares people. For some, it challenges everything they believe to be true about love.

Once, someone told me I was proving every right-wing religious conservative's wildest fears about gay people true—that we were all amoral sluts, incapable of monogamy or serious relationships, who couldn't take marriage seriously. And this dude was gay. My response was: So what? Why can't I live my life on my own terms? Isn't that what we're fighting so hard for—the right to live how we choose? To not have my love and sex dictated by some arbitrary social structure? Why should anybody tell me how and who to love?

Then, there is the ultimate question: With all the complications and struggles, why do it?

I don't have a simple answer. I have been called greedy and selfish, even psychotic and monstrous. I don't think I am those things. Maybe this is just part of my nature.

I don't believe this kind of relationship is for everyone, and I don't think that polyamory is better than monogamy, or vice versa. I just think we find what works best for us.

And I am happier this way. I am happier with Alex and Jon, and I am happier that we are in an open relationship, and I get to meet and spend time with other guys. I am happier knowing that Jon and Alex get to explore and play and fall in love, too.

Being poly will not save your relationship. It won't solve any of your problems. Everything that scares you about it might come true. But it will also open doors inside you that you never knew existed—and it may even bring an opportunity to grow.

Follow Jeff Leavell on Twitter and Instagram.

During a Morning Joe interview on Thursday morning, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson stumbled when a panelist asked him about what he would do about Aleppo—the city at the center of the Syrian civil war—if he were elected president.

"And what is Aleppo?" Johnson said, looking a bit dazed.

"You're kidding," the panelist, Mike Barnicle, replied. When Johnson said he wasn't, Barnicle explained that Aleppo "is in Syria," and that the ancient city is "the epicenter of the refugee crisis."

At that point, the former New Mexico governor apparently remembered which Aleppo they were talking about and launched into his presidential plan for handling Syria, saying that the country is "a mess" and "the only way that we deal with Syria is to join hands with Russia to diplomatically bring that at an end."

Johnson is currently polling at 7 percent of voters, according to a recent national poll from CNN. Hopefully he will remember his geography better if he winds up on the presidential debate stage later this month.

Read: Here Are Some People You Can Vote for Not Named Trump or Clinton

Illustrations by Joel Benjamin

FYF Fest in Los Angeles is pretty much the only time I leave the house. Each year the list of artists is announced, and I'm like: I'm going. Then the weekend comes around, and I'm like: Oh no, this means being in public.

This year, I felt especially resistant when a crop of chin acne sprung up just days before the event. I envisioned my four giant zits headlining the festival, caked in crusty concealer, spotlit by the LA sun.

Music festivals are supposed to be a time of freedom, fun, and happiness. But I'm scared of personal freedom, not naturally great at fun, and tend to find happiness elusive. Part of the problem is that I am always on the alert for something to beat myself up about. If it's not the acne, it will be something else. But happiness—the ability to let oneself just be with effortless ease—seems to elude a lot of other people too.

This year at the festival, I decided to interview musicians whose work is deemed "sad," "dark," "nostalgic," or "melancholic," about happiness: what it is, what it means to them, how to get it. The first person I spoke with was Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys, whose album Big Black Coat I fucking love for its longing-y sounds.

"Define happiness?" said Greenspan. "I'm pretty easy to please, I'm pretty Even Steven. If you think about the types of things that would make a 70-year-old woman happy, those are generally the types of things that would make me happy. My idea of a perfect day is like going antiquing in the country, a day at a farm, that kind of thing. I don't like thrills. I like easy."

"Does that factor into your music in any way?" I asked.

"I'm not a dour, melancholic person in my daily life, so all that stuff comes out in music I think... it's like, that's the nice thing about doing music, you have something to do with your anxious energy when you're in a bad place... Often good music comes out of bad moments in your life. Generally I can work through things through music a lot of the time."

Greenspan seemed pretty content to me. I wondered what his reaction would be to a sudden large crop of acne appearing on his chin. Would he let it disturb his flow? I didn't think so. Wild Nothing's Jack Tatum, with whom I spoke next, seemed reassuringly more self-conscious and less at ease.

"There is something about music festivals that is somewhat surface level that I feel like, as an artist, I have to make it seem like I'm happy or having more fun than I might be. Which isn't to say I'm not having fun... but I have pretty bad social anxiety, so I would never go to a music festival if I wasn't performing," he said.

Interestingly, Wild Nothing's music reveals little of the frenetic energy of anxiety, projecting instead a more dreamy, womblike energy. It's where you might go to hide from anxiety.

"Do you have a trailer? Have you been hiding in it?" I asked. "Because I like to hide. I've been hiding in the bathroom tweeting."

"If given the chance I would be," he said. "I'm ready for that chance... When I'm onstage, it's different. I don't create another persona, but I do put on the act of 'I'm cool with being here.' I do enjoy it on one level, but I always have that feeling like, oh shit. I think about what everyone else is thinking."

"When you experience social anxiety," I asked, "does it feel more physical, like a panic attack, or more of a thought manifestation—racing thoughts, like general anxiety?"

"It becomes more physical when I'm in a big crowd like this," he said. "Last night, I came here to watch some stuff, and then I was like, 'I can't do this.' I always have to pull back... Whenever I get into my own head, I go deeper and deeper down and start to wonder what someone else might be thinking. It's hard to remember that no one else is thinking that much about you."

Next I talked with Munaf Rayani and Michael James from Explosions in the Sky, a band known for its dramatic and emotional sound, or what the members call their "cathartic mini-symphonies."

"I used to be a little more cynical about happiness, like contentment was happiness, just not wanting anything, but I don't really feel that way anymore. I feel like I do need something to be happy... certain fulfillments," said James.

But Rayani felt differently.

"I feel like for myself, happiness used to come through an if / then formula. If I acquire this, then I'll feel this. But as I grew older and figured out more and more that you can eliminate that and just kind of live in the now and be happy as you are... when you're in happiness, it's kind of easy to be like, 'Well this is missing, or that is missing.' I think you have to be willing to want happiness first," he said. "Our music over the years has had that sadness in it, moments of anger, those moments that we're chasing and trying to relay through melody. But it's not our full definition as people. It's an interesting thing to think about some of the artists we've met along the way and who, in my mind, matched the music and who didn't. And those who didn't, how much better they were than those I was hoping for. And those who did, it was like, hmmmm, well I wish I hadn't met them."

"I don't meet my idols, I don't do it," said James. "I've played festivals with my favorite bands and avoided them. I don't want to ruin it."

Gold Panda

At FYF, I got to meet one of my musical idols, Gold Panda, a UK producer whose work I often immerse myself in for creative inspiration. Sometimes Panda is dance-y, and other times, as with Kingdom—the EP he put out quickly this summer following his LP Good Luck and Do Your Best—he sulks and broods. But as it turns out, Panda himself is darker and more of a loner than some of his music might even bely. These qualities only made me like him more.

"I wish I didn't have to play," he said. "It's harder for me when I'm on tour. It took me about five years to learn how to relax. I'm happiest when I'm in my routine. I like to wake up, have some exercise, go get something for lunch... Do you know potato waffles? I take potato waffles and grill them, not fry them, and put them on some bread with some salad. I use mayonnaise and English mustard. This makes me happy."

That's the Gold Panda sandwich, an original. He also said that his recording schedule is based around food rituals from childhood as well. When he was young, he would come home from school, and his mother would have tea and cake for him and his sister. Now, 4 PM is when he settles in and makes music.

"I've been playing 'You' at shows recently, and people love it," he says of an old favorite of his. "It makes them happy. But then I wonder why am I doing this? Who am I doing this for? Or, at a show, this guy came up to me and said, 'I didn't have a very good time tonight,' and I was like, 'Is that my fault?' I don't like anyone I know coming to shows, because they come up and bother me. Birthdays, holidays, I like to be by myself. I'm happy when I'm by myself, you can do what you want to do."

"I'm the same way," I tell him. "There's nothing more beautiful than when a friend cancels plans. But sometimes, if I don't have plans, I feel like I'm supposed to have them."

"That's why you should always make plans and cancel them," he says. "A few months ago, I made plans to go see a show in London. And when the day came I was like why did I do that? I don't want to go out. What was I thinking? So I canceled right before. And it was the greatest feeling ever. It was freedom."

"That's perfect," I tell him.

"We should have both canceled this interview," he says.

Buy So Sad Today: Personal Essays on Amazon, and follow her on Twitter.

On the premiere of the second season of our VICELAND show GAYCATION, hosts Ellen and Ian spend some time in Ukraine meeting with the LGBTQ activists fighting for visibility and equality two years after the country's revolution. They talk to openly gay journalists and drag performers, as well as the founder of a violent far-right nationalist group, about the experience of living in a transitional country that's still trying to find its political footing.

Watch the full episode above and catch GAYCATION Wednesdays at 10:30 PM ET/PT on VICELAND. Find out how to watch here.

Sarah, with a very fancy landline. Photo via Twitter.

Anyone who ever stayed up past 1 AM watching late-night TV during the 1990s is likely well-acquainted with the ubiquity of skeezy lo-fi ads for phone sex operators. The commercials were typically just endless b-roll footage of women in bikinis or lounging in lingerie, backed by tinny on-hold versions of soft rock hits and breathy invitations to "calllll nowwwww, because I'm loooooonely." In the isolated days before chatrooms and Tinder, the options for connecting to random strangers was fairly limited, especially if you didn't want to leave the comfort of your underwear/couch. But many companies made great sums of cash by enticing people to use their phones for talking dirty to anonymous women for dollars a minute.

While hardly the industry it once was, a small market for phone sex still exists. From her home office outside of Toledo, OH, 32-year-old Sarah* works as a phone sex operator. She's logged hundreds of thousands of minutes having sex while assuming different characters (herself, teens/barely legal, role plays). She's also had her share of orgasms while providing the ultimate in customer service calls. We chatted about what it's like to have phone sex for money, and who the hell pays for this service in the age of webcams.

VICE: How'd you get into this?

Toronto cops seize weed during the Project Claudia raids. Cole Burston/Canadian Press

An Ontario police officer co-owned a medical marijuana dispensary and is now debating whether or not he wants to keep policing or sell weed full time, according to a Toronto Star investigation.

Const. Phil Edgar, of Durham Regional Police, was co-owner of Port Perry-based dispensary Living On Medical Marijuana.

Phil Edgar is torn between remaining a cop and selling weed. Photo via Twitter.

Edgar, who has reportedly been a cop for 22 years, filed an application with the police force to help head up the pot shop near the end of last year.

"His application was approved," Durham police spokesman Dave Selby told VICE.

Read more: While Trudeau Figures Out How to Legalize Weed Cops Will Continue to Fight the War on Drugs.

According to the Star, Edgar co-owned Living On, which advertises everything from Juju Joints to Chrontella on its online shop, for six months but has now "stepped back" from the company.

"From my view everything Living On was doing was ethical and legal. If we're helping people, and it's all ethical and legal, then I have no problem with it," Edgar told the Star, noting his role was primarily promotional.

Thing is, dispensaries are 100 percent illegal. In May, Toronto police raided 43 dispensaries and laid 186 charges as part of a crackdown called Project Claudia. According to Statistics Canada, a Canadian is arrested every nine minutes because of marijuana.

Selby told VICE Durham police, responsible for the area just east of Toronto, are "monitoring dispensaries that we're aware of in the Durham region."

"It's not a simple black and white issue," he said, noting he hasn't heard of anyone involved in a dispensary in the area being charged. However, he also said the cops would "be enforcing the existing laws."

Selby wouldn't comment on the specifics of Edgar's case, claiming it's a private personnel matter, but did say that a police officer being involved in an illegal business is contradictory to the Police Services Act.

Edgar has been commended for busting more than half a million dollars worth of weed while conducting traffic stops, the Star reports. But he said there's a difference between the black market and medical weed. He appears to be torn on whether or not to ditch policing for the weed game.

"I have to do some serious soul searching to decide: do I stay in the policing industry or do I want to branch out into businesses like this?"

Honestly, why bother choosing when you can do both?

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Counterfeit fentanyl pills, pictured above, are commonly referred to as "beans" by users in Alberta. Still via 'DOPESICK'

The Alberta government stated Wednesday that it still will not be declaring a public health emergency over fentanyl. Despite urging from Liberal leader Dr. David Swann, Associate Health Minister Brandy Payne said in an interview that the province is standing its ground on refusing to label its opioid crisis as an official emergency.

Image via Hey Paul Studios/Flickr

In a recent survey of 1,000 British women, 44 percent were unable to identify the vagina on a medical illustration of the female reproductive tract. Even fewer were able to identify the vulva, with 60 percent failing at this task. Overall, only one third of the women questioned could correctly place the six labels—vulva, vagina, cervix, uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries—on the diagram.

While the scale of this ignorance might seem startling, it's certainly not restricted to the UK. A smaller study of 236 US college students conducted in 2010 found 74 percent of men and 46 percent of women questioned were unable to identify the cervix, while a startling 80 percent of men and 62 percent of women in the study were unable to locate the vagina correctly. In contrast, 73 percent of women and 56 percent of men in the US cohort were able to identify the clitoris—on a diagram, at least.

The British survey was carried out this summer on behalf of The Eve Appeal, a UK charity raising awareness and funding research into gynecological cancers. The charity is worried that this lack of knowledge among women about their bodies puts them at increased risk.

"The lack of basic knowledge about the female body is extremely worrying," Tracie Miles, a Specialist Gynecological Cancer Information Nurse at the Eve Appeal, said in a press release. "How can we expect women to know what to look out for in terms of unexpected changes in their vagina or vulva, or to be aware of the signs and symptoms of a gynecological cancer if they're not body-aware?"

Not everyone agrees that vocabulary is so vital. "Whilst it's concerning that so few women have a basic knowledge of their own bodies, it's more important that people feel comfortable talking to their doctor about their bodies, whether or not they know the correct names for body parts," Helen Stokes-Lampard, spokesperson for the Royal College of GPs in the UK, told VICE. "It is vital that people understand what is normal for themselves, so that when they notice changes in their bodies and their health, they are aware and can seek help."

Sex education has been part of the National Curriculum—the compulsory program of teaching—in UK schools since 1993. While a minority of schools retain the freedom to opt out and parents are allowed to withdraw their children from classes, science-based sex education is delivered to the vast majority of UK students. Despite this, there seems to be a huge gap in basic knowledge about reproductive anatomy and health. The confusion is everywhere, as evidenced by a headline earlier this summer from mainstream British news outlet The Independent: "Woman Makes Man Apologise After Punching Her In The Vagina.

The most important thing, perhaps, is to know our own bodies and what is normal for us. And then maybe we should all just relax and enjoy our reproductive parts, whatever we call them?

Follow Kate Watson on Twitter.

The label of Dr. Bronner's eponymous soap

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Emanuel Bronner had a simple goal: To create a revolutionary moral philosophy that would forever upend every aspect of society—through pure castile soap. To spread his "Moral ABC," Bronner used an eye-catching bottle design that differs from your focus-grouped, corporate soap packaging in two key ways: It features approximately 10,000 more exclamation points, and it promises an amazing 18 uses. It's like a Leatherman tool of personal cleanliness—if the CEO of Leatherman had telegrammed Franklin Roosevelt more than 200 times about a peaceful end to WWII and campaigned against water fluoridation.

So I tried to use Dr. Bronner's Pure-Castile Liquid Soap for everything—including most of the 18 recommended by the official Dr. Bronner's website, "killing ants and aphids" excluded. I improvised where needed, and in doing so, I joined the ranks of the countless customers who "have told us over time about many more uses they have found for our soaps."

Washing Your Face, Body, Hands, and Hair

I picked up a bottle of Dr. B's popular peppermint scent—and by "picked up," I mean "picked up the bottle I'd had in my shower for the past six months."

Efficacy: 8/10. I dare any of you to come up to me and tell me I don't look and smell fucking fantastic. I do. Good work, Dr. B.

Bathing

What the hell is "bathing" if it's not washing your face, body, hands, and hair? That's all bathing is! Am I literally supposed to take a bath? My bathtub is too dirty for that. And I've been using Dr. Bronner's for a long time now, so any dirt that built up in my tub is the soap's fault, not mine.

Efficacy: 0/10 or 10/10, depending on how you look at it.

Shaving

I use an electric razor because I have the facial hair of a 13-year-old boy who won't hit puberty until he's 20. You don't need a shaving lubricant when using an electric razor, but I rubbed some Dr. B's on my face anyway. The shaving results were identical, though the peppermint caused my face to tingle, which is also a symptom of multiple sclerosis.

Efficacy: 5/10 for making me feel like less of a man.

Photo by Sam Weiner

Brushing Your Teeth

I was sure this one was going to be gross. Here are some of the thoughts I was prepared to write:

• "Now I know what my armpit tastes like after a shower."

• "Fuck me—I just ate soap."

But I was wrong! Using a single drop of Bronner's on my toothbrush worked shockingly well. My teeth got just as clean, and my mouth felt just as fresh as using real toothpaste.

Efficacy: 10/10. I'm a convert to organic oral hygiene. I'll never again support Big Toothpaste's (alleged) army of child slaves, toiling feverishly in Colgate's (alleged) underground paste mines. (PS I am the one alleging those things, for the first time, right here.)

Rinsing Fruit

This added a lot of work to my normal fruit-rinsing routine of not rinsing my fruit before I eat it. But rinsing grapes with Dr. Bronner's worked fine. I think I detected a slight peppermint taste, but that might have been a remnant of my recent tooth-brushing.

Efficacy: 10/10 if you're one of those namby-pamby types who likes to make sure your food doesn't have any dirt or poison on it before you put it into your body.

Aromatherapy

Aromatherapy is listed on Bronner's website as one of the 18 uses, but I couldn't find any specific aromatherapy recipe or usage. I tried pouring some of the soap into a dish and lighting it on fire to make a homemade Air Wick, but the soap snuffed out the match instantly.

Efficacy: 4/10. I suppose you could sniff yourself after a shower, but I wouldn't really count that as aromatherapy.

Photo by Sam Weiner

Washing Dishes

This worked well, as expected. But using the same soap you just cleaned your genitals with to wash your dishes feels like something out of an 18th-century erotic novel called, like, The Chambermaid's Peccadilloes, or something.

Efficacy: 5/10. It worked—but I didn't like it.

All-Purpose Cleaning

This is like "Bathing" all over again! What is "all-purpose cleaning"? This is a blatant attempt to pad the number of Dr. Bronner's uses, and although I'm still only about halfway through Bronner's Moral ABC, I would bet L stands for "Lying—Don't Do It."

Efficacy: 0/10.

Mopping Floors

Now we're back on track! Dump a half cup of Dr. B's in a bucket with some hot water, grab a mop, and you're just a few minutes away from Shimmer Town, population: Your Floor.

Efficacy: 11/10. Afterward, my kitchen floor may have been too shiny and smooth!

Photo by Sam Weiner

Frying Up Some Potatoes O'Brien

At this point, I started feeling pretty great about this overall experiment. Immediately after this point, I started feeling incredibly sick. Do not use Dr. Bronner's as a replacement for olive oil. The peppermint scent will throw off the flavor profile. Also, you will throw up everywhere because of all the soap you've just eaten.

Efficacy: 3/10, because the soap did technically fry the potatoes.

Scrubbing Toilets

I got the perfect chance to try out this use after I turned my bathroom into a putrid hellscape of mint, bile, diced onions, and soap-coated potatoes. Dr. B's made the cleanup process simple, though I had to scrub pretty hard and left the bathroom feeling extremely woozy.

Efficacy: 4/10? 9/10? Again, I was pretty woozy.

Conclusion

All-in-all I was pretty impressed with Dr. Bronner's pure castile soap and its versatility. Clearly some of the 18 uses suggested on the label are duplicates, but my apartment, body, teeth, hair, toilet, and floor have never been so clean. The downside: I fear the smell of peppermint is just a permanent part of my life now, and that it will never leave my nostrils. I can't taste food. I constantly tingle. My home makes my eyes water. I am ruined.

Follow Sam Weiner on Twitter.

Photo courtesy of Penguin Random House

Intellectuals get a bad rap. Long gone are the days when you could call up your favorite poet/theorist for a night of discussing German philosophy over absinthe and indoor cigarettes. In 2016, pretentiousness—which has come to mean, basically, making references to films or New Yorker articles or really any book that your conversational partner might not be familiar with—relegates you to a place of shame, or at least to a weird corner of Twitter. This is America, after all—we like the gym, and pop music, and war, and reality TV.

Yet, this prejudice against the pretentious exists simultaneously alongside the idea that sports and pop music and reality TV can be legitimate topics of analysis. This is where things start to get messy: Isn't it elitist to talk about punk as if it were a text? To juxtapose Rousseau with a dating show? To say an intense workout is reminiscent of Kafka?

Who cares! The fact is, everything can be kind of bad, depending on how you look at it. That is the premise (sort of) of Against Everything, a new essay collection by Mark Greif that approaches populist topics like exercise, food and pop culture from a decidedly not-populist perspective in order to deconstruct them, see how they work, and understand what they really mean to us. While the collection's title is delightfully antagonistic—and its first section, which contains critiques of the way we exercise ("Against Exercise"), think about and have sex ("Afternoon of the Sex Children"), and pursue healthy eating ("On Food"), might be considered really highbrow trolling—the contents are not necessarily so. Greif's point is not to tell you how to live, but to encourage you to really think about how you're living ("The Meaning of Life," Parts I–IV).

Thinking may be a hallmark of pretentiousness, but Greif—who is best known for being one of the founding editors of the literary and political magazine n+1—where many of the essays in Against Everything were first published—does it in a very fun way. I wanted to talk to him because after reading his book, I think he is extremely smart.

VICE: OK: Do you think the world is doomed?
Mark Greif: If there's a single idea running through the book, to me, it's that we actually live in an incredible age of freedom. Paradoxically, we are encouraged to make up new necessities and new obligations—we have to exercise, and we have to watch everything we put in our mouths; we have to worry about how long we'll live and everything to do with the health of our bodies.

It is kind of an amazing situation, to have had so many things that caused people so much pain and labor and trouble made really easy for us. It's easy to get food, and it's easy to cover your body with cloth, and it doesn't cost much. You ought to be able to step back and say, "Do I really believe in the things that people say are most valuable? If I run or go to the gym, am I doing it for the reasons that everybody tells me I am? Or could I have reasons of my own?" But the question of what you do after that is a really tough one, because it's really hard to say to yourself: What am I going to do with my moral freedom? What am I going to do with my time?

A lot of people right now would argue that you should be using that moral freedom to argue on behalf of marginalized groups on the internet.
It's a funny moment now—I think it's an incredible, wonderful moment. I think it's the best moment ever, insofar as the Republican Party has utterly destroyed itself, the chickens have come home to roost, and there are people in the streets. However, it's also very illuminating, because when you finally live in a bit more of a world you wanted to see—where people are arguing about really serious things, and shit is happening—it turns out that you have to live with an incredible quantity of sanctimony. Particularly, as it turns out, online. People being like, " I know the privilege that I have, but you don't know the privilege that you have."

You mention college as this kind of pleasant hiatus in various points of the book. But how do you, as someone who went to Harvard and who advocates an approach to the world that you learned there, view the American university system?
There is a crisis in university education in America. University education costs too much—much too much—and it creates a falsehood and a kind of evil weight around all the things I like and believe in about universities. One thing I wish had known when I was going there was that really combined, under a spotlight, a number of very different things. Because I was a nerd, I experienced it as a place where you could go and just sit at the feet of old people who have spent their whole lives researching something and hear them talk about it, and just totally lose yourself in this world of ideas. At the same time, there's this whole world of wealth reproduction passing on the torch of power from one undeserving generation to another undeserving generation. This is really said by the sheer expense of college.

But there's this other really mendacious level of promising that your future earnings and your future job will be tied up with what happens to you in college—and not really by anything you learn there. It's a very, very messy—and I think kind of terroristic—promise that colleges make in an era where jobs are shifting around.

"I really do think there is something that makes life meaningful—or just tolerable—in the perfectionist approach of asking, 'What do the behaviors of other people tell me about how I might be different, or how I might live differently?'" —Mark Greif

There's not necessarily very much practical application to your book—it's a lot of questioning without answering—and you mention self-help as a "debased form" of perfectionism. Could you explain that?
I really do think there is something that makes life meaningful—or just tolerable—in the perfectionist approach of asking, "What do the behaviors of other people tell me about how I might be different, or how I might live differently?" Perfectionism is dwelling in a kind of ceaseless process of trying to make yourself something other than what you are, or "becoming" what you are. Self-help, which I like a lot, is "debased" only insofar as it is prepared to stop [once you reach your target weight or attitude or whatever], or to say that there is a single answer that works for everyone.

A lot of spiritual movements right now take that kind of philosophical language and put it next to astrology, or things like astrology.
Dayna Tortorici (an editor at n+1) did a piece on astrology, and her answer was that there was a special value to astrology because it offered predictions about your life without making any kind of judgment. Its very arbitrariness and its way of shifting your life, focus, and mode of introspection onto the furthest objects away—the stars—rather than onto concerns about identity was liberating for people.

Do you think that the internet has had something to do with allowing people to recognize how arbitrary—or pointless—things are?
One of the challenges of the internet is that it makes you even more aware of the bankruptcy of generalizing from your own experience because people seem to be in such different tiny corners. One thing I find myself preoccupied with is that, in an era of cell phones, everyone seems to have someone to talk to. The fact that people are able to produce someone to talk to, about nothing in particular, whenever they want, gives you a very different sense of how human society and loneliness work.

There are some momentous historical events that you don't know about at the time. Your grandchildren say, "Where were you when Public Enemy was playing?" And you're like, "I don't know, I missed it!" And then there are momentous events that involve everyone saying, "Wow, we're living through a momentous civilizational change!" but that's all they can say. And that seems to be something about the internet.

"There should be a rule on the internet where people should have to say, 'I object!' before many of their categorical statements, because at least it would situate the whole thing as a kind of contest or adversarial game." —Mark Greif

What do you think about "trolling"? It seems to have suffered from some form of critique drift; people will say any critical comment about something popular is trolling. Some of your work might be considered "trolling" by some real genuine, wide-eyed, earnest people, because it criticizes things that are widely considered to be good.
A very, very angry letter writer to n+1 said something about me like, "You think you are undertaking thought, but it is mere dysphemism." I did not know that word; I had to look it up in the dictionary. It's the opposite of euphemism. So euphemism is where you use falsely nice words to put a happy face on something awful, and dysphemism would be taking something perfectly benign and choosing words that make everybody feel like it's horrible.

This is not the most unfair accusation for this kind of writing. Yet I have to say: I feel pretty OK with it. I have a lot of time for trolls on the internet. Name-calling and vulgarity—not so good. But there is something really valuable about a kind of unbridled ridicule that also drills down to the things that people seem to really stick to and be proud of and asks them whether they really believe in those things and whether they really should feel so proud of them.

But being surrounded by opinions on the internet all the time—mostly people saying, "This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong"—can be disconcerting, especially if you're not totally sure what you believe, because many of these people assert very strongly that they are right when actually they don't know what they're talking about.
I think a lot of what is weirdly called critique really functions in the way of legal point-scoring and legal objection. Really, there should be a rule on the internet where people should have to say, "I object!" before many of their categorical statements, because at least it would situate the whole thing as a kind of contest or adversarial game.

One of the pieces I'm proudest of in the book is the reality TV piece. I came to think that reality TV is about judgment much more than people acknowledge. Not about voyeurism, not about watching suffering, but about the ability to sit beside people's lives and judge: right from wrong, a good performance from a bad one, etc.

Do you walk around critiquing everything all the time? Are people defensive towards you?
I do! The exercise essay especially has always gotten this one remarkable reaction, where people come up to you and say, "Oh, man, that essay is so true! I completely agree with all of your critiques—except for the one thing that I do." And then they tell you, "I just joined a boxing gym, and boxing is, like, totally free of all these problems." In a way, I'm sympathetic, because it's a weird position to always feel like you should be finding the flaws or corruptions or dishonest motives in the stuff you love. I wanted to try to be only going after things that I do or things that I've done or things that I felt like I understood from within.

Do you complain a lot?
I think that, the author of this book, I'm actually an embarrassingly cheerful person. I was raised to be extremely polite and find it very hard in life not to try to have good manners and mind however people feel, even when they're doing something horrible—murdering a rabbit or something. I find it hard not to be like, "Oh, I see you like to kill rabbits—I understand!"

Follow Lauren Oyler on Twitter.

Against Everything by Mark Greif is available in bookstores and online from Penguin Random House.

Some people displaying a range of emotions at the SHAFTAs in 2012 (Photo: Jamie Lee Curtis Taete)

Last night was the SHAFTAs, the annual UK porn awards, where golden dicks are handed out to the industry's best and brightest. From MILF adventures to porn parodies like "Poldick" and "Gobblecocks", plenty of stars, producers and fans were out in central London to celebrate the best in non-internet smut.

I went along and cornered a few adult stars to ask them about the weirdest things they've ever been asked to do for a scene. Unsurprisingly, a lot of their answers involved shit.

Michelle Thorne

"In one photo shoot I was asked to pee in a glass, and then they drank it. It was the photographer who drank it. Then he told me that my pee tasted sweet. There's also a lot of requests to eat poo. There's no way I'm doing anything like that. There's a lot of weird things – some are so bad I can't mention them."

Sienna Day

"The most embarrassing thing I've ever been asked to do for a scene was to walk around and pretend that I had a limp. I also had to pull my mouth open and show my fillings in a photoshoot in Budapest."

Princess Paris

"The latest one, I had to act as someone's daughter. It was a proper incest thing. That was fucked up."

Pascal White

"The worst one was I was fucking a girl up the arse... I was laying down on the floor and she was on top of me. When I came out, she shit on my belly. Like a proper shit. I just wiped it off and went for it. Just get on with it."

Carmel Anderson

"On I'm a Porn Star... Get Me Out of Here there was insects on a plate and I was like, "No, I'm not eating them." I didn't eat them, but one of my co-stars ate all of them. When I first saw the bugs, I told them I hated bugs, and they were like, "Right, that is your challenge." Apart from that, it was alright."

Jada

"I do cam work, and I'm often asked for golden showers and shitting. They'd be the weirdest things to do on camming; you're not allowed to do that on camera. But everyone has their fetishes."

Benedict Garrett

Benedict Garrett in the middle, with Jada (left) and Michelle Thorne

"Nowadays, nothing is particularly weird, but I'm quite vanilla. I was asked to do a golden shower scene, where I had to piss in a girl's mouth. The only reason I did it was because the woman who wanted to do it was also the producer of the scene. I was like, "Are you absolutely sure you want me to do it?" and she was like, "Yeah, it's fine." When I started pissing in her mouth, it was only supposed to be 30 seconds, but it lasted for a minute-and-a-half. I didn't realise I needed to piss so much. She was on her knees with her mouth open and it was just dripping all the way down her, floods and floods of piss."

@TooManyEmmas

More on VICE:

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Why Is the UK Suddenly So Obsessed with 'Chav Porn'?

(All photos via Zoopla)

What is it? A house you will never be able to afford, scum
Where is it? In Leytonstone, home to, let's see here... ah. 'LEYTONSTONE: Man charged with pub murder', so
What is there to do locally? Be slaughtered in a pub, go and watch Leyton Orient play with a load of football hipsters who go "actually, this is real football, like. None of your Premier League, Sky money, actually good crap. Hey: which one of Garrincha's legs was your favourite?"
Alright, how much are they asking? One point two of your million pounds, good sir!

Well you see what we got here is £1.2 million worth of prime real estate property, six bedrooms, 20+ photos thereof, and to truly consider the majesty of this building we have to ask the question:

YO: WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED IN EVERY ROOM OF THIS DREAD HOUSE?

And so welcome, friends and enemies alike, to this very special edition of the London Rental Opportunity of the Week series, called, nominally, 'Yo: What The Fuck Happened In Every Room Of This Dread House?', in which we ask the question: yo: what the fuck happened in every room of this dread house?

Starting as we must with Photo #1:

PHOTO #1

Oh, just a... just a normal house. Nice, actually. What colour is that, would you say? Sort of grey-y purple, I guess. A... would you go so far as to say 'mauve'? It's a colour, anyway. Yes. Nice house. Pleasant. Yes.

PHOTO #2

Load of DVDs? Check. Massive murky fish tank? Check. Men in Black memorial framed print? Check. Black sheets? Check. Two what look like coiled cobra bookends? Check. Aggressive red-and-black colour scheme? Check. I can tell you exactly what happened in this room: a 17-year-old boy practised his nunchuks really intensely before watching Scarface on Blu-Ray one thousand times in a row then stalking every girl in his year's Facebook profile pictures as far back as 2008. That is what happened in this room.

PHOTO #3

See Photo #3 sort of gives you a clue as to what the house was, rather than what it might be: the hallway is filled with the exact kind of junk and ephemera (too-thin hallway rug, Alsation dog print w/ motivational quote, door with loads of glass in it, massive fuck off roll of bubble wrap), that suggests to me this house was split by the room and rented out to students or recent graduates from disparate London universities, the kind of student house where nobody interacts and everyone eats in their room, and is sort of weirdly harmonious because nobody really shares a native tongue to write passive-aggressive notes out in, and everyone has a PhD, and—

PHOTO #4

AND THE DEVIL DID COME TO ME, MY BOY, AND DID IMBUE ME WITH HIS POWERS, AND I DO COME TO EARTH TO SLAY YOU, AND SINNERS OF YOUR KIND, AND YOU SHALL BOW TO ME, MY BOY, BEFORE THE TERRIBLE POWERS OF ALL THAT IS WITHIN ME, YOU SHALL BOW AND TAKE THE OATH, AND I SHALL STEAL FROM YOU YOUR BLOOD, AND YOU SHALL DIE BY MY VERY HAND, MY BOY, YOU SHALL DIE BY THESE CLAWS AND FINGERS—

PHOTO #5

Just a very useful room, a very useful box room. It is unlikely anything unreasonable happened here. A bit of storage for empty suitcases, maybe a nice place for a box freezer to go, for storing, you know. Severed human arms and legs.

PHOTO #6

The door is padlocked shut from the inside and there's an armchair up against it, which is the fucking most haunting thing I've ever seen. So what happened in this room was: an old man lived his entire life in this room and then died in it, alone and in silence, sat upright, in that chair he always sat in, without anyone really knowing he was ever there at all. The BBC wrote an article about how nobody knew his identity. Police had to go to his funeral because he had no living relatives. That sort of thing.

PHOTO #7

There's no way the carpet in this room hasn't been ripped up seven, maybe eight times to wrap and roll bodies up in. "Why... why does the carpet keep going missing?" the landlord's saying. Hands on hips, he doesn't understand it. "How can a carpet go missing?" The guy who lives in this room and does murders doesn't seem to know. "I'm going to have to add on £200 across the house to the rent, now," he's saying, and the man just nods. "You know. For all the fucking carpet."

PHOTO #8

THINGS THAT ARE IN THIS ROOM:

11 x pictures of boxers
2 x posters idolising the Krays
Like a hundred fucking cookers, there is no house on earth that has as many cookers as this one
Luggage, old lamp shades, a shit bike, &c.
Floor-to-ceiling mirrors
Framed telephoto lens photographs of every woman who has been murdered in this room, which totals by the guess of it in the hundreds
1 x haunting glimpse of the photographer sent here to document this crime scene

PHOTO #9

This is the room your uncle – on a break from Aunt Lynn – tried to start his hip-hop career in.

PHOTO #10

Nobody has stepped foot in this room for years, ever since the bodiless screaming started.

PHOTO #11

Nothing says 'this house is worth £1.2 million' like a kitchen door with whoever was locked in here for months as punishment's fingerprints clawed into the very wood of it. The bleach, of course, is for all the blood.

PHOTO #12

'Hmm,' the previous occupant said. 'How can I make this ultra creepy nan-died-here room even more ominous?' They thought for a second. 'I know: a fucking eerie portrait of the scariest woods on earth, steeped in fog and mounted on the divider wall.'

PHOTO #13

Note how the carpet on the stairs is worn down where all the bodies got repeatedly dragged thru it.

PHOTO #14

This shot is often the last glimpse of the world the escapees got before a tire iron came down on their head.

PHOTO #15

Notice the lock on every door and doorway. Soothing, isn't it? Almost like human remains haven't been melted down that bath with strong acid, sometimes. Almost.

PHOTO #16

What happened here: this is where the only normal member of the household, Brian, used to lay on his bed in silence, after brushing his teeth and washing his face and cooking his little dinner, before huddling by the brick fire for a few precious minutes, double-locking his door, and staring eyes open at the ceiling all night while the sound of screaming filled the basement floors.

PHOTO #17

The person who lived in this cupboard-cum-room was also the sort of person who has a fridge-freezer in their room and has to play Tetris with an armchair to get into their wardrobe, and thus is definitely, definitely a murderer. Notice how nobody has the telltale blu-tak stains on their walls that might suggest print mounting, poster hanging. No. They are too preoccupied with killing people to have interesting walls.

PHOTO #18

DO NOT CHECK UNDER THAT LAWN FOR SKELETONS. DO NOT CHECK INSIDE THAT FURNACE FOR TEETH.

PHOTO #19

Things That Happened Here: the three murderers and one normal dude who lived in this house met to have a cheery, if overcast, BBQ, and when Brian asked, "What... what meat is this? It's so... chewy" the three murderers just laughed and laughed and laughed.

PHOTO #20

What Happened Here: this is where a murderer went to relax and listen to Goldberg Variations really, really, really loudly, while softly stroking a portrait of Heath Ledger as the Joker.

PHOTO #21

This kitchen has a bunch of teatowels carefully arranged over the hob and oven (???), two washing machines stacked on top of one another (???), someone whose diet seems exclusively to be white bread rolls and dried herbs (???) and, squint up there in the corner a little bit, and I'm pretty sure that's a portrait of Gaddafi (???). Still: proof that even a group of murderers' blood-stained mega-mansion isn't too good to have a couple of Sports Direct mugs.

What is the moral of this story? There is no moral. 'Don't do murders,' I guess. 'Don't make your bedroom a shrine to both Freddy Krueger and stabbing.' 'Why the fuck are there teatowels all over the cooker,' you know. 'Why are there so many cookers.' No morals, only questions. And for £1.2 million and a deep police-led exhumation of the garden, all this could be yours.

@joelgolby

More from this series, bleak as it is:

Wanking Banter Bros in Tooting!

A Bed in a Kitchen in Euston!

A Windowless Prison in Brixton!

All photos by Jake Lewis

I once caused a stir in a pub by saying that I didn't think I should give my seat up to a pregnant woman with a 'baby on board' badge if her bump wasn't visible. My reasoning was that if the foetus was the size of an orange, it wasn't worthy of a seat. I mean, you wouldn't give up your seat to a man with an orange in his pocket would you? Naturally everyone I was with called me a "stupid cunt" and a "wanker", and rightly so. I never enact that theory/policy in real life, but it's fun to dream.

Anyway, pregnancy fascinates me. I think it's interesting how little we (and when I say we I mean fucking idiots like me who've never read a book) know about the process. After sex education you kind of forget it exists until it happens to you or your spouse or whoever, then it's brought crashing back into your life. I didn't feel I had enough empathy for the daily grind of the pregnant woman, and how could I? There was no sentience growing inside of me, nothing sucking all my precious minerals through a tube made of skin, nothing rumbling inside my stomach kicking out at my supple gut dermis. No, the miracle of life was nowhere to be seen in this hairy vessel. But what if I could simulate the feeling of being pregnant to better understand the plight of the preggo?

Life Choice UK are a company which provides baby models and dolls for infant simulation-based education. One of the things they use to educate both children and adults is a bump which is strapped onto the person using clips and velcro. The bump weighs 12 kilos (or just over 26 pounds). The kind people at Life Choice lent me their bump so I could acutely experience the day-to-day life of someone up the duff.

Applying the apparatus requires one to sit down, an action that I would soon be begging for every single second. Two velcro straps under the arms and over the shoulders, plus three adjustable clips around the back, hold the bump in place. Luckily the 'baby on board' badge that I ordered from TFL arrived just in time. But would it work on the sympathetic hearts of London's tube train denizens?

Before I cut my eyes at city boys pretending not to see my pregnant belly by burying their head in a book called 'The Success' or something on the Central Line, there were a few challenges I had to complete. These challenges are suggested by Life Choice, to let you experience the physical struggle of having had some heavy beans blown up your muff. The first task was to ascend and descend some stairs.

It was a trial, for sure, but no greater a task than carrying a box of T-shirts or a heavy jug or two of orange juice. Your steps are certainly more pronounced, and the pressure on your back is noticeable, but all in all it was a fairly easy exercise.

Next up was removing my shoes and putting them back on. Sitting down this was a piece of piss. It would be the same if I had a particularly hardened football in my lap. Standing up and attempting it however was a different kettle of fish. Your balance is all fucked up because of the tumescent growth protruding from your abdomen. Also, I wear silly shoes that are basically like socks that a robot would wear so they're kind of hard to get on. Still I managed to get my shoes on and laces tied. Easy as pie.

After that I was told to lie on my back and then get up. Of all the challenges Life Choice offered, this was the most difficult. I felt like a turtle unable to rejig itself after landing shell-down. There was a lot of grunting involved in this particular endeavour. Yet still, like dust, I rose up, with my baby undamaged by my careless kneeing of its head or arse (depending on which way up it is) as I got up.

With all the tasks finished (or should I say, destroyed with my hot testosterone-riddled bloke bod) it was time to do some real pregnancy shit. I had to prepare for when the bump was gone, the next step in my journey, so I went to Mothercare.

But to get to Mothercare I had to ride the goddamned tube. The Central Line was unusually busy for the time I went on, apparently because of a 'passenger incident' at Tottenham Court Road. Most likely it was one of my fellow preggers, weep-screaming and lying on the floor of the platform demanding that someone feed her coal and stroke her hairline.

It was a shocking state of affairs. Not one person offered me their seat on the train, even though I had my 'baby on board' badge clearly displayed. All I got was glances from feckless, barren men who would never understand the struggle my feet were currently experiencing. Sickos.

When I did eventually get a seat, no one asked me about my bump, when it was due or anything. I was being ignored by the commuter class. The weighted velcro mirage hiding 'neath my shirt got no plaudits from the train people. Well you know what? Those guys can go fuck themselves.

Stairs truly are pregnancy's worst enemy. Every time I saw a flight of stairs I sighed a very pregnant sigh. You really have to hold on the railing to maintain your balance. It was becoming more and more of a chore as the day wore on.

Mothercare was a delight, though. Look at all these tiny little shoes! And these little one piece suits for winter! So cute!

They even had a Diesel-branded buggy that was made of denim, which I don't mind telling you, readers, is the fucking coolest thing I've ever seen.

I was beginning to get excited about the baby I wasn't even having. I wanted to buy all the stuff in the shop for my bump. This must be the sort of semi-madness that takes over all soon-to-be parents – you want to shower them with stuff before they're even out, out of love and maybe a little bit of fear. I didn't want to drop £595 on a pram, but I did buy this new badge for a pound, a little memento of me and the bump's time together.

I wasn't quite getting the full SP of the range of pregnant experiences. One thing I was missing out on grossly was the nausea. The morning sickness, which people tell me lasts all day, which, if that's the case, should be renamed 'all day sickness'. To simulate this I thought I should find a nice patch of green and just spin around on the spot for a bit and then walk in a straight line.

As you can imagine, spinning around with 12 kilos of weight strapped to your body is fairly dizzying, and after two rounds of it I felt sufficiently sick. It was the perfect time to have lunch.

The emotion took over and my Pret pesto chicken and mozzarella salad became a bath of tears. My hormonal imbalance, nausea, fear of the unknown, aching feet and pressurised bladder became all too much for me to handle. I was done with the bump.

Let me tell you, gents: being pregnant is a bit of a pain in the arse. I realised that for the women who experience it, the growth is gradual, and not just produced in one backbreaking lump for one day, but still. By the end of it, my dogs were well and truly barking, and on a hot day, even a few meters felt like miles. If, like me, you ever thought twice about giving your seat up on the train, don't. Pregnant women need it. Old people can get fucked though. If you can carry a tartan shopping trolley around all day then you can stand up while I finish my chicken-flavoured Walkers.

@joe_bish

More from VICE:

How Britain Beat Its Teenage Pregnancy Epidemic

The Women Who Smoke Weed While Pregnant

Catholic Hospitals Are Still Denying Women Pregnancy-Related Care for 'Moral Reasons'

Narcissists are suddenly everywhere. Thanks in part to Donald Trump's media diagnosis, Narcissistic Personality Disorder has overtaken "psychopath" and "bipolar" to emerge as our number one label for others' perceived psychological failings.

As part of the Chosen Ones series, Gavin Haynes attempts to peel the pop back away from the psych, and see what's left.

He visits the experts, quizzes the YouTube gurus, hangs out with the well-varnished girls dating on hotties-only site BeautifulPeople.com, and the support groups for the victims of the narcissists, all the while hunting for a real-life narcissist

Illustration by Dola Sun

This article was published in collaboration with the Marshall Project.

I shake. I scream. My heart pounds. I jump out of bed, and immediately the steel walls are closing in.

Thick bars are in front of me. I reach for them.

"Someone help me."

I hear a voice and struggle to respond.

"It's OK, Jason... breathe... it's only a nightmare."

Suddenly, I'm awake and in a room roughly the size of a king-sized bed, fronted with a steel gate that opens and closes by an unseen hand. My bed is a slab of metal, cushioned only by a thin, plastic mattress. The walls are layered in green enamel, punctuated by a constellation of unidentifiable stains.

I'm still afraid to go back to sleep, but I don't want to look at the walls of this cell, either, so I pull the covers over my head and try to nod off. I choose a nightmare over this place.

Four hours ago, the steel gate slammed shut behind me, as it has done every day for the past 18 years. But I'm still not used to that sound—it reminds me of how I got here in the first place.

Each assault left me feeling that my life was not my own.

It was July 1997. I was 18 years old, living in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and I didn't have a criminal record. I had a stepfather who had a serious cocaine and alcohol addiction. Just knowing he would return home from work filled me with fear.

If I was watching TV when he wanted to, he'd slap me across the face, choke me, punch me in the stomach so hard that it would leave me on the floor crying and gasping for air. When I couldn't finish my dinner, he'd smash the rest of it in my face and make me kneel in a corner, stripped naked, face hard-pressed against the wall. He'd force me to repeat, "I admit my wrong. I'm sorry, sir."

My stepfather didn't ease his guilt by offering gifts or affection, like you may have heard some abusers do. Instead he forced me to do things for his sexual gratification.

Each assault left me feeling that my life was not my own.

I started using drugs to feel numb, and two years before I went to prison, I met a kid named Steven, a.k.a. Drama.

When Steven began singling me out, bullying me for being skinny and because of the way I dressed, I didn't defend myself. I was used to dealing with abuse silently, no matter how much rage I felt. He would call me a coward and threaten to "rearrange my fucking face" if I even looked at him wrong. He stole my money, slapped me, threw rocks at me, beat me with a steel pipe—anything to demonstrate his dominance. The more I pleaded with him to leave me alone, the worse he got. As the months passed, I tried avoiding him by hanging out on another block. But he sought me out.

I became depressed. Paranoid. I started questioning my reason for living. I contemplated hanging myself from the light fixture adjacent to my bathroom, slitting my wrists, or jumping off a bridge. I settled on placing a gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger.

On the night I planned to kill myself, I contacted two friends—one to buy alcohol, and the other to bring marijuana. They said they would pick me up at 8 PM.

My mother was nodding in and out of a heroin-induced slumber when I entered her room. I opened the closet door and began rummaging through her clothes until I found the wooden box. Inside was the same gun my stepfather used to threaten me if I ever talked back to him or told anyone about the abuse.

I closed the box and stood for a minute. Then I opened it again, removed the gun, and placed it in my pocket. I could feel the weight of it against my leg.

When Miguel and Israel arrived, we drove to a liquor store, where Israel bought a half-gallon of Bacardi. Israel then dropped us off at a nearby park while he went back to finish his shift as a livery cab driver*. Before long, I had nearly finished the whole bottle. Then we started smoking blunts.

I start thinking about my sister, Lenamarie, who always washed and ironed my clothes, and made sure I never went to bed hungry. She told me stories at night. She even tried to protect me from our stepfather's abuse, but he'd just slap and threaten her, too. I wanted to tell her how much I loved her, and to thank her. Maybe I needed to say goodbye.

When I got to her house, she realized how drunk I was and demanded I stay for the night. As soon as she went to the bathroom, I left.

The thoughts of suicide felt overwhelming.

Miguel and I rejoined Israel, and I told them to drop me off at the park. They first stopped at a corner store to buy some beer and cigarettes before going home.

I got out of the car to get some air. My mind was spinning from the marijuana and booze.

As I slowly took in my surroundings, I noticed a crowd of familiar faces from childhood. Monsters seemed to lurk. I felt terrified. That's when I saw what seemed like a hybrid of Steven and my stepfather, punching and kicking me. Their faces shifted and melded in my mind. I heard the rush of blood in my ears.

I took out my gun and closed my eyes. There was a loud pop—a sound I still think about to this day.

I opened my eyes expecting to see my soul departing or a bright light. Instead, I saw someone lying on the ground.

Today, I think, maybe he had an abusive parent. Maybe someone was hurting him, too, and that's why he hurt me. I don't know.

Sitting here in this dark, cramped cage, unable to sleep, haunted by these reminders of what brought me here, I can't help but hate myself for what I did. For becoming one of the monsters.

I think about him, Steven, and the fact remains that he bullied me. But I killed him. Today, I think, maybe he had an abusive parent. Maybe someone was hurting him, too, and that's why he hurt me. I don't know.

But I'm broken. And no matter how much I wish this was all just a nightmare, the steel gate slamming shut reminds me of the truth.

*Note: Israel disputed the author's version of events. He claimed that he wasn't friends with Rodriguez or Miguel before he drove them away from the scene of the crime, and that Rodriguez kidnapped him and stole his two-way radio following the murder.

Jason Rodriguez, 37, is incarcerated at the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Wallkill, New York, where he is serving 37.5 years to life for a second-degree murder he committed when he was 18. He was also convicted of criminal possession of a deadly weapon and first-degree robbery. Rodriguez claims he did not commit the latter offense.