Love makes people do all kinds of crazy things, from the irresponsible to the downright criminal. But perhaps no one has gone quite so far to achieve romantic bliss as Christian Desgroux, a man authorities say impersonated a three-star US Army general, rented a helicopter, and took to the skies on a bogus top-secret mission, all to impress a potential suitor.
According to the Associated Press, the date kicked off last November when Desgroux reportedly hired a chopper to pick him up from his house in North Carolina and fly off to the headquarters of SAS Institute, a major software company where his date worked. After the pilot landed the thing on the company's soccer field, Department of Homeland Security special agent Tony Bell testified that Desgroux disembarked dressed to the nines in "full military battle dress uniform"—all to sweep his date off her feet.
"He saluted the security officers, and they actually saluted him back," Bell said. As for the married woman who Desgroux was there for—"she had no idea that he was flying a helicopter to pick her up," he added. "She just went along with it."
Desgroux allegedly explained that he'd flown in to pick up the SAS employee for a classified briefing at an Army post nearby, a meeting approved by President Trump himself. But agents say that was a load of BS—Desgroux hasn't served in the military, and, according to Bell, he'd actually just shown up to take his crush on a joyride. They ended up taking a roughly $1,500 trip, spending a total of three hours flying around Raleigh, the Washington Postreports.
When they landed back on the soccer field, security called the cops and a joint terrorism task force got involved to figure out what Desgroux's aim was, the AP reports. The helicopter pilot told the Post Desgroux hired a chopper last year, wearing full Army regalia, wanting to land the thing at the Pentagon. Now it appears the guy was just interested in pulling off a Bachelor-worthy date.
Other than the few times a year I tell a partner in advance to wake me up by penetrating me with their lubricated penis (I get off on the psychological aspects), my crotch is lifeless in the morning. It's like someone who won’t wake up no matter how hard you shake them. My current partner and I have a communicative, healthy, and balanced partnership, and unlike in past relationships, I don’t find myself being taken advantage of in any sense. But lately I’ve been wondering how he manages to be so horny every morning, while I feel like a schlub with a reliably limp clit.
Mismatched libidos come in all forms, from the amount of sex we desire to the ways in which we desire to have it. I’m 25, and while my sex drive is absolutely lower than it was five years ago, I don’t think I’ve ever really been into morning sex. On the other hand, the primo, primetime jizz hours for my partners always seem to coincide with the time of waking up. Recently, I was out with a couple of girlfriends who remarked that they too detest morning sex. As I began to bring it up more frequently, I noticed that almost everyone, one way or another, had strong feelings on the subject.
"Everyone has different rhythms in their body—different flows of desire, different kinds of arousal. While studies show that all kinds of genitals experience erections while sleeping—clitorises and penises both—how people react to that when they wake varies widely," fellow sex educator and writer Sinclair Sexsmith told me. As a morning person themselves, Sexsmith offered a new perspective. “Some folks are just morning people, and want to get their day on as soon as they wake. Some folks are cuddling people, and want to snooze for an hour so they can have close skin-on-skin time. And some feel that itch of arousal in their bodies and want to scratch it, if only for a quickie.”
While I know that, regardless of genital configuration, we’re all more alike than different, as a sex educator I’m constantly wondering what causes us to have such a variety of preferences. Is there a physiological difference between people who wake up and immediately want sex, and people who don't?
I spoke with Dr. Candice Nicole, a sex psychologist who both counsels and directs scientific research teams, and asked her to explain why partners can have such dramatically different morning libidos. “In a person with no health conditions, the act of sleep provides bodies with rest and restoration," she wrote to me in an email. The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), the part that helps us feel calm and experience sexual arousal, is more likely to be active during sleep. When we're just waking up, the PNS may still be active. That means your body is less stressed and more open to sexual arousal, including optimal circulation to the genitals. Testosterone levels are also higher in the morning, decreasing as the day progresses.”
But that swelling isn't so simple. For vulva-owners, wetness, not hardness, is emphasized as the sign of horniness—and wetness doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with arousal, Dr. Nicole noted. “A physiological response does not automatically suggest a sexual imperative. Just as [there are] various forms of vaginal discharge throughout the month, it doesn’t mean that we automatically want sex because we notice we’re a little wetter on a specific day. Morning wood can be, but isn’t always, a sign of sexual arousal. For [some], it can actually be a nuisance.”
“My morning boners are sometimes pee boners,” my partner confirmed, as I thought out loud about writing this article. “You have to watch out for those. Sometimes you think you’re hard, but it’s just your penis stiffening up when your bladder is full.” I thought back to all the times my morning sex was interrupted by partners realizing midway through that they had to pee. It made a lot of sense, and I wondered if I’d ever had a clit boner that was, in fact, just a pee stiffy.
Except on those rare occasions where I’m dehydrated and my bladder isn’t ready to burst, I personally can’t have morning sex unless I scurry to the bathroom first, anyway. The bladder sits right along the vaginal canal on the belly side, and for me, having vaginal sex with a full bladder is a recipe for discomfort. But I have heard some people say that they enjoy the pressure it puts against their g-spots—maybe this partially works in favor of arousal in the mornings, too.
Thankfully, Dr. Nicole had even more good nuggets of science to explain this phenomenon. She cited a study from 2014 that examined how gender and chronotype—the genetics that determine one of four sleep patterns—influence the time of day you’re most turned-on. “For women, regardless of chronotype, most prefer sex from 6 PM to midnight, although women with a morning chronotype had a second wave of sexual interest from 6 AM to 9 AM.”
I've seen several articles claiming “men are hardwired for sex” in the morning, and wondered if this study could explain that. “From the same study, men were more likely to desire sex in the morning (6 AM to noon) regardless of chronotype, but chronotype determined which part of the morning,” Dr. Nicole explained. “Men with an evening chronotype preferred sex from 9 AM to 12 PM, which might correspond with their normal wake up times. Men with a morning or ‘neither’ chronotype were likely to prefer sex starting at 6 AM.”
It makes sense: Hormones and bodily cycles vary a great deal from person to person. Knowing this makes me feel a lot more at peace with how I’ve compromised my lazy stirrings to let my partners drop a load in me many-a-morning. "It’s the BEST way to start the day," my partner remarked to me as I further investigated his personal morning needs. “It’s like how exercising first thing in the morning makes you feel good—it’s a release!” I had to agree. It was a great way to get me going in the morning, and I do love the feeling of cum slowly dripping out of me throughout the course of the day. (Obviously, my partner and I are fluid-bonded. But I am not encouraging you to forego condoms for the sake of the sensation.)
So how does someone like myself, whose morning libido differs from their partner’s libido, best navigate the mismatched needs? Dr. Nicole has a very straightforward approach: scheduling! “If the couple chooses to schedule two sexual experiences per week, they can choose times that correspond with each person's libido,” she noted. “They can fill in any potential sexual needs with spontaneity for the rest of the week, but the two sessions set an equitable compromise.” For sluggish morning folks like me, she additionally recommends the spooning position since it allows both parties to be horizontal.
Sexsmith shared some anecdotal personal experience to give me added perspective, too. “I’m most awake in the morning—my body winds down in the evening and I have less energy. Personally I could have sex every morning, but my partner is not so into it. So we negotiate—I make note of mornings where neither of us has to be anywhere and hint at it or talk about it overtly the night before, and I take it slow and concentrate on sensual touch and slow turn-ons, rather than being goal-orgasm oriented.”
Right? It shouldn’t be that hard to suss out whether your partner is onboard, no matter how sleepy you are. “Just touching and kissing and sliding against each other is often enough to satisfy the craving my body wants,” they added. “If it isn’t, and my partner still isn’t into it, I get off on my own and then go about my day.”
María is 28 years old and doesn’t want to have sex. Not because she's unhappy, traumatized, insecure, or saving herself for marriage—as many people she meets assume—but because she's asexual.
Around 1 percent of the British population self-identifies as asexual—a sexual orientation that broadly means someone doesn’t feel sexually attracted to other people. When María was a teenager and noticed she wasn't attracted to guys, she assumed she was gay. When she realized she didn't like women either, she briefly thought she felt so different from everyone else because she was born in the wrong body—but that didn't seem to be the issue either.
It wasn’t until she was 24 and, after a night out, started thoroughly searching online, that she found the term that resonated with how she'd always felt. Her discovery of asexuality also led her to the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN)—connecting her to other people with little or no desire to have sex.
I spoke to María to find out what it's like to be asexual in our hypersexualized world.
VICE: Hey, María. What does being asexual mean, exactly? María: Being asexual means never feeling sexual attraction, or feeling it only slightly, or rarely. There's a lot of diversity within the community—we have asexual people who do feel a romantic attraction to people, which means they have a nonsexual desire to share their life with someone. We have people who don't feel that at all. And there are gay and trans people in the community, too, of course. The only thing that asexual people have in common is that we don't really feel the impulse to sleep with other people.
Do asexuals ever have sex, even though they don't or hardly feel the desire to? You have to distinguish between two things: sexual attraction and sexual behavior. Attraction is the impulse that you feel. The impulse that drives you to a person or situation, which in our case is very low or nonexistent. But our bodies still respond to certain stimulations—we can get horny and have an orgasm. So there are asexual people who decide to have sex, either because they enjoy pleasuring their partner or because although they don’t feel that desire, they still know that they are going to have a good time.
There are also asexual people who are in committed relationships just because they feel the social pressure to conform. They might be married with children, but are unhappy because they've never been able to explain to their partners how they truly feel.
WATCH:
But are there couples where both partners are asexual? Yes, of course. There are asexual people who still go searching for a partner because that romantic ideal is just as much ingrained in us as it is in anyone else. There are thousands of ways an asexual and sexual person, or two asexuals can make a relationship work. But the most important things are consent and communication—which are obviously crucial to any relationship, but maybe even more so when one person doesn't ever feel the urge to have sex.
Do asexual people masturbate? There are those who do, and those who don’t. There are people who don’t feel a strong attraction to others but still get horny, so they masturbate. Being asexual is all about how attracted you are to others, but pure libido works independently from that. I know some people through AVEN who've told me they masturbated during exam term because it relaxed them, and I know girls who do it before their periods because they say it helps prevent menstrual cramps.
Do you ever watch porn? Yeah, lots of asexual people watch porn and have their own fantasies. Watching people make out or have sex is basically part of our culture. If I’m watching a film where two people are in love, for example, I root for them to have sex—though in my personal life, I don’t relate sex with love at all. I’m not really sure why I do it, but that's just the way it is. Also, I've been turned on by scenes in porn and regular films, but when those same situations happen in my own life, they never end with me wanting to have sex.
Are asexual women and men judged differently by society? Yes. Asexual men are accused of not being manly enough, or it's assumed that they don't want to admit they're gay. Girls are often told they must be lesbians but are also said to just be frigid and bitter.
How do people react when you tell them you’re asexual? People often think I'm celibate, which is a completely different thing. Celibates do feel sexual attraction but choose not to have sex, while us asexuals have no or very little sexual desire but can still have sex whenever we want. And people are often very patronizing toward asexuals—they tell us that we're just going through a phase, that we'll change our minds when we eventually meet the right person. I've even been told that the reason I don't have sex is because nobody wants to sleep with me.
WATCH:
Do people treat you differently when they find out your sexual orientation? Yes, definitely. Some will completely ignore me on nights out as soon as they realize that sleeping with me isn't an option. Others fetishize it. There was this one time, when a friend of a friend found out I was asexual, and she started asking tons of questions. While I answered them, she interrupted me to tell me that she was feeling an immense urge to fuck me. There had been no sexual tension between us until she saw me as some sort of challenge.
It's bad enough for those of us who never feel sexual desire, but it’s even worse for asexuals who have felt desire at some point in their lives. Once people know that, they naturally assume that they have the magical powers to make us feel desire again.
Are you less affectionate with people you meet because you don't want to give them the wrong idea? I was 17 years old when I started to realize that I didn't feel the same desire as most people, but back then, I didn’t know that being asexual was even a thing. All I knew was that I didn’t want to sleep with anyone, so I became a very cold person. I wouldn't kiss or hug anyone, and I wasn't affectionate with people because I thought it could send mixed signals. I thought eventually they would expect something from me, and when they didn't get it, I'd be accused of leading them on. But I got older and wiser, and once I was able to put a name to my feelings, I became a lot more open and honest about it with the people close to me.
Is it strange to live in a hypersexualized society and not feel sexual desire? I grew up in it, so I'm used to it. Sure, looking back, I can remember times when I felt awkward because I didn't react to certain sexual cues the way I was expected to. For example, I remember hanging out at a bus stop with some friends when they started talking about the advertisement right next to us that showed this guy in his underwear. I became so deeply aware of the fact that I hadn’t even noticed him. Even now, when I watch a film and two characters have sex for no reason —completely unrelated to the plot—I find it hard to stop thinking about what the point of it all was.
With our new documentary Steel Town Down, VICE sought to shed a light on one of the many small communities across Canada right now that are struggling with a rise in overdoses linked to fentanyl.
While in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario (aka “the Soo”) filming the documentary, we met 20-year-old Kylie Greco, who almost died last year from an opioid overdose. When she OD’d at a friend’s home, she said, someone she was using with dropped her unconscious body off next to a dumpster in an alleyway—presumably out of fear they’d get in trouble (although, you'd be legally protected when reporting ODs in Canada, with some exceptions). Emergency medical responders revived Greco with naloxone after she was found by the dumpster.
Following the incident, she went to a treatment program in Sudbury, Ontario. While there for about a month, Greco lost eleven friends to fentanyl. "Everybody's dying," she said when we filmed with her in the alleyway where she was left during an overdose.
She has been trying to stay sober since she finished treatment last spring. VICE caught up with Greco today in a phone interview.
VICE: What made you want to share your story? Kylie Greco: I wanted to share my story to get across to everyone that drugs aren’t just in big cities. Just because big cities have drug overdoses, it doesn’t mean it’s not affecting small communities like Sault Ste. Marie… There’s no place in smaller communities for people like me, as an addict, to go to. There’s a detox facility in the Soo, but it’s not comfortable and is co-ed. You want to feel comfortable when you’re getting sober. You don’t want to feel out of place.
When you’re sick you do things you don’t want to do. But when you want to get better, it’s hard when there’s no one to reach out to.
What was it like to go away for treatment? Going away to treatment, it wasn’t something that I wanted to do at first, at all. It came down to the point where I had OD’d—I had to realize that it’s something you put yourself through. Addiction is a choice, but it’s not at the same time... You truly have to want it in order to actually succeed.
I can’t say I succeeded that first time going to treatment, but it’s definitely worth it in the long run. You get to go places you never thought you’d be. You get to see things you never thought you’d see. Where I was a long time ago, I never thought I’d have a job now. I never thought I’d be going somewhere, going to school. But it takes those times falling. I still fall, but to get back up and do it again is the whole point—to keep trying, not keep yourself down, and believe in yourself.
I went to treatment in April and was there for 31 days. I went to Monarch [Recovery Services] in Sudbury. I wasn’t sure what I was walking into. It was my first time going to treatment. But going into a place like that, it was amazing: the people I got to talk to, the things I got to let out.
Did you feel like it was good for you to get out of your normal environment and go to a treatment facility hours from home? It was good for me, but honestly it doesn’t matter where you go—drugs are everywhere. For me to think about it now, in a situation of being an addict, I just want everybody to get help. I want a [treatment] facility in Sault Ste. Marie. It would probably help a lot of people.
Once you came back to Sault Ste. Marie, how did you stay on the path you wanted to? Even if you go to treatment, it doesn’t mean when you come back it’s going to be OK. You just have to learn to teach yourself how to say no. That’s hard. It’s hard to push away people who were your friends who you were using with because you don’t want to have to push them away due to what they’re using, because you know what it’s like.
Now I just try and stay busy. If I keep my mind busy, it keeps me centered and it doesn’t make me go and run to something that’s going to fix my problems. Writing has been really good for me lately, music, meditation, just breathing and centering myself, trying to find nature. That’s helped me.
When you do “fall down," how do you get back up? I have to deal with the humility. I have to walk in shame, but raise my head because I know I can get through this if I really want to.
Some people in Sault Ste. Marie are upset that their city was the subject of a documentary about the overdose crisis because that isn’t the reality of the Soo for them. But for you, as a person who has struggled with addiction in Sault Ste. Marie, how does that make you feel? It actually makes me feel pretty crappy because people don’t realize that if we had more help in Sault Ste. Marie that maybe this wouldn’t be such a problem. As a younger person, for me seeing that there’s people of all ages who have to go through this, is sad. It just makes our community look horrible. Maybe if everybody worked together and stopped judging, everything would be perfectly fine.
I’ve noticed some people are coming out of the shadows now in Sault Ste. Marie and are telling their stories of how the overdose crisis has affected them, such as on social media, following the film. Yeah, it takes one addict to be able to help another, to be able to help another. There’s not just people who are struggling—there’s people who have done it and stayed sober for many years. It didn’t just take them a day, it didn’t just take them a month; it took them years to accomplish.
If you could say something to people who are still judging and don’t think this is really a reality in their community, what would you say to them from your own experiences? I would say take a step back and look at the bigger picture. It’s not to be rude or anything. This community is small. Everybody knows everybody... As an addict, I find that no one should be judging other people except for themselves.
I just feel like if this can help people everywhere, including the Soo and other addicts, it would be awesome. I’m not the perfect person, I’m still struggling—but to be able to talk to people and get myself out there and not isolate myself, it’s something better… I just want to get across to everybody that we all struggle in life; to get back up, breathe, and be able to find people who want to help you can actually get you somewhere. My parents have helped me, detox helped me—but it’s to be able to accept that help.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
To learn about how to prevent, identify, and respond to an opioid overdose, click here. There is a law in Canada that offers some protections for people who report and/or seek medical help for overdoses— read about it here.
After the cops finished illegally searching the house, they un-cuffed Ronald and Nancy Hamilton, walked outside, and turned things over to Maryland State Police, who actually had jurisdiction to search the suburban Baltimore home in the first place.
Ronald Hamilton, who had a history of drug-dealing but said his recent income was from car sales, rental properties, and gambling, had around $70,000 stashed in his bedroom that day. He quickly noticed some of the cash was missing and rushed back outside to stare down Jemell Rayam of the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF). Rayam, wearing his vest marked “POLICE,” ultimately made off with at least some of the missing $20,000.
“What you doing?” Rayam’s fellow detective Momodu Gondo testified asking him right there in the driveway.
“Yo G, I'm taking it,” Rayam replied, according to Gondo.
The way Gondo—who pleaded guilty to racketeering and drug conspiracy last year—told it in court, his problem wasn’t that Rayam took the money, but that they hadn’t discussed the theft ahead of time. Meanwhile, the Hamiltons were never charged with anything, but the raid helped tear the family apart, with the kids to this day scared to be in their house alone and the couple en route to divorce.
“They came in my house and destroyed my family,” Ronald Hamilton screamed from the stand last month.
The family is just one of many victimized by the GTTF. Six members of the task force—Rayam included—pleaded guilty ahead of the trial for detectives Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor, which ended with their own convictions Monday. Jurors found the men guilty of robbery, racketeering conspiracy, and racketeering. The latter two face up to 60 years in prison.
“This verdict is not so much a case of the criminal justice system working, so much as the system taking a rare beat from being totally broken, only to remind us of how broken it really is,” Baltimore City councilman Ryan Dorsey said.
A dozen other police officers were implicated throughout the trial, and GTTF left in its wake thousands of cases called into question due to the specialty gun unit's illegal searches and seizures and callous shakedowns—all while filing outrageous amounts of overtime.
“We’d use law enforcement tactics to target big-time dealers,” Gondo explained plainly when he was on the stand.
The outrageous revelations during the trial—including that cops carried fake guns around to plant on people they shot—made waves across the country at a time when Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions have been doubling down on old school, "Anglo-American" cop worship. But almost none of it was news to black residents of Baltimore, the people who’d been saying cops plant guns and introduce drugs into their neighborhoods for decades.
“The Baltimore Police Department is fundamentally a white supremacist organization that hurts Black Lives,” said Lawrence Brown, a professor at Morgan State University who has called for the BPD to be entirely disbanded. “The GTTF trials reveal the ways by which BPD officers have increased crime in Baltimore City.”
In a written statement released to the press after the verdict, recently appointed acting BPD commissioner Darryl DeSousa said, “We recognize that this indictment and subsequent trial uncovered some of the most egregious and despicable acts ever perpetrated in law enforcement. Our job moving forward is to earn back the trust and respect of the community.”
These cops' victims spanned the economic spectrum, from people with large houses in the counties to city folks scrapping in a rustbelt town that no longer has rustbelt jobs. Some were dealing dope on the side or out of the game but with friends still in it—faces the cops remembered and thought they could hit up for information on big scores. There was Sergio Summerville, who was homeless and selling $10 bags of coke and heroin out of a storage locker; Antonio Santiful, who had a few gun charges in the past (some legit, he admitted; some planted, he alleged), working construction and cleaning office buildings overnight for under-the-table pay; and Herbert Tate, an HVAC technician who was detained while walking through his old neighborhood and had $500 snatched and heroin planted on him, too.
“Hersl always lying on me,” Baltimore rapper Young Moose told me back in 2015 at his Out Tha Mud store in East Baltimore. Moose, as Noisey reported, was caught up in a series of charges and probation issues due in part to Detective Hersl singling him out for scrutiny. Among other things, Detective Taylor, for his part, was arrested with a fake gun on him.
“Those people were often our clients,” veteran public defender Todd Oppenheim told me of GTTF's victims, adding that he had, like many other attorneys, warned the city about these crooked cops. “The verdict merely validates grave concerns with this group of officers—and beyond—that we've raised to both prosecutors and judges for years to no avail.”
Ralikh Hayes, a community organizer in the city, noted that while these anecdotes remain shocking to some Americans, they happen every day in Baltimore. So the focus should be on local accountability.
“I am more interested in what this means for the long term and the wider range of implications of corruption this trial brought to light such as people in the [State’s Attorney] office knowing that some officers can’t be trusted and using them anyway to tipping them off,” Hayes said, referring to someone yet unnamed in State's Attorney for Baltimore Marilyn Mosby's office who allegedly tipped GTTF off about the investigation.
Among the reporters and family of Hersl and Taylor pacing outside the courtroom on the day of verdict was Alex Hilton, who said he was harassed repeatedly by Hersl in the mid-2000s.
“I relocated because of him, and I'm poor, I don't have any money,” Hilton told me, near tears.
After Hilton stepped into the courtroom and saw the verdict come down, he relaxed. He shook and he had tears in his eyes, but his step was lighter. He was no longer stomping mad.
“I'm glad I came out today, I can get on with my own life,” Hilton said.
The trial may have provided a dose of temporary relief for Baltimore's pain. At the time of its conclusion, there had not been a homicide in the city since February 1—a period coinciding with the most explosive revelations in the GTTF case, as well as a popular, community-oriented initiative called Baltimore Ceasefire.
The FBI made clear in public statements and throughout the trial that the investigation into Baltimore Cops remained ongoing. After the verdict, Mayor Catherine Pugh, state's attorney Mosby, and other local officials offered statements about the future. But Hayes stressed that it was a federal investigation that exposed this mess—not the city's own reformers.
“I don’t believe the city or the administration is prepared to truly grapple with the widespread corruption—nor has the guts to fully purge it so that the black people of Baltimore can finally trust their government," he said.
Sophia Hadjipanteli has long, wild hair, two piercing ice-blue eyes, and one thick smear of jet-black hair stretched out messily across her brow.
At first glance—or prolonged, ogling gaze—Hadipanteil is a demure Tara Leigh Patrick (a.k.a. Carmen Electra) in the peak of the late-nineties. But with a soft thatch of soot thumbed out on her forehead (the humanity!)
She is drop-dead gorgeous, embodying the pinnacle of all typical, even hyperbolized traditional western beauty standards: a long mane, big eyes, small waist, great ass, and perfect lips, teeth, skin and cheekbones. And then, there in the centre of her face: a big metaphorical “fuck you” growing out of the dark follicles that connect her right and left eyebrows—as if each coarse, disheveled sprig was a counter-culture protester, linked hand-in-hand with another on either side, standing in unison against society’s arbitrary rules.
Th 21-year-old first graced Italia Vogue’s website when she was 15 years old, and then again three years later. Until recently, she’d been carving out her place on the cyberspace runway before being thrust into overnight social fame when one of her selfies appeared on Instagram’s explore page, reaching more than a million people.
The daughter of a Greek (Cyprian) father and British mother, Hadjipanteli grew up in Maryland, was bullied by her peers, and always felt a little out of place.
Today, the moonlighting model/marketing major has about 150,000 Instagram followers and receives just as much praise and support as she does hate messages and death threats.
VICE: So, your eyebrows, or your unibrow—obviously a very significant part of your look. Why do you choose to have the unibrow? Did you always have it? Have you ever waxed or plucked before? Sophia Hadjipanteli: Growing up, the reason I always paid so much attention to my eyebrows was because my mom would always tell me, ‘do not over pluck your eyebrows—your eyebrows are gorgeous the way they are.’ In most cases, we kind of look to a certain role model in our lives, and for me it was my mom, and she has really nice eyebrows, so I kind of idolized her in that sense. It wasn't until recently—I think it was about two years ago—I just kind of decided to stop [waxing them]. I don't think it was anything in particular that happened that made me want to boycott doing my eyebrows, I think it was just a preference thing.
Growing up, I was always different, I was known to have really quirky outfits—and I was really bullied for it. I hate to throw that word—bully—around, because it’s so loosely thrown around these days, but it was so horrible in high school. And I guess that is how it is for a lot of people. But if anything, it just made me want to wear even quirkier things, because I did grow up in a really conservative area in Maryland, so I think that sort of stubbornness has followed me through to this day. Even at the time I was deciding to let my eyebrows do their own thing, it really was a stubbornness thing, like: well, I like myself and I don't know why I have to do this if I don't like it.
I was in Cyprus and I wasn't plucking my eyebrows because I didn't really have time—I was always swimming or something. So when I got back to my grandmother’s house in London, she told me how pretty she thought I looked, and I kind of realized I had a unibrow at that point. And I just left it. I never really thought twice about it until recently when everyone [started making] the biggest deal out of it. That’s kind of the story.
Do you think it’s kind of ridiculous how society puts so much weight and emphasis on this little bit of hair that’s on your face? Yes. I’m constantly asked, ‘how do you deal with the negative criticism?’ Definitely take this at face value—but a part of me loves having that control over someone that they get so annoyed and mad. It’s laughable at first. I was a little taken aback because the attention I did get online did come all at once for me [though]. I was put on the Instagram explore page one day when I was going to a motocross show—right before I posted this selfie and it reached, like, a million people, and there were hate comments I've never seen in my life before. That day I remember feeling really down. It took me quite a few months to understand why people have this [disposition].
A lot of people will say, ‘well how come you groom the rest of your body?’ And I think it’s just a preference thing. I genuinely can’t describe it as anything else.
Do you think it’s almost like a fashion statement or an accessory? Yeah. I think it definitely looks kind of cool on some people. I love having mine black. Even before I had the unibrow, I tinted my eyebrows black. People always say its so harsh [looking] but [my eyebrows] have always been harsh and I just love the shock factor.
Some days I think it looks so good on me, and other days I'm like, I think I should put glasses on because it doesn't quite look good with this look. But I love it whatever way it is and if I decide to change it tomorrow, I will on my own terms. But if I don't want to, I won’t. I think it has to do with not feeling pressured do so anything because of society. And it’s also about control. You want to make sure you have your own sense of control.
“I think this is kind of just an ongoing battle against some beauty standards that have stuck around too long.”
Do you think that overnight internet thrust into more followership put you in this funny place where you're now an eyebrow or body-positive activist, whereas before that wasn’t really something you thought of yourself as? Before I had a unibrow, I was very big on anti-bullying. Growing up, me and my brother, we were severely bullied, especially me. From elementary school [being bullied] for having a foreign dad, to middle school for being chubby, to high school for being different —I was always bullied. I did have quite a large platform before I really blew up online and I always used to talk about how to just be yourself, ignore people being mean to you and this and that. But there was never anything specific driving it. As I did begin getting more followers online, I started paying attention to it. It just kind of got worse and it took me back to the place where [I thought], well, no, this is not a conversation I'm going to grow out of—I have to keep talking about it.
I know so many amazing people who are online promoting body positivity and equal rights and I commend them so much and they’re so bold. If I can have any sort of impact—anything—as much as just having a unibrow [then that’s positive]. Even though I have a lot of followers and I'm getting shamed every single day for having a unibrow, I'm not changing. I'm not being pressured by thousands of people to change either. I don't know, I think, in a way, I don't like the criticism, but I also feel that you always get critiqued if you do things that are quite different.
Your unibrow is obviously your most discussed asset. Is that necessarily your favourite asset or is there a part of you you wish people saw more? I think the frustrating thing about social media is it’s kind of visual-based. Although a lot of people do think of me first and foremost based on my appearance, which in a way is kind of discouraging, another part of me [thinks] if I have to draw them in with my appearance, I'm going to keep them with my determination and how close I am to my culture and how motivated I am.
I think this is kind of just an ongoing battle against some beauty standards that have maybe stuck around for too long. I think beauty in itself is great because it’s so subjective across cultures but I also think there’s a big community that shames people for certain types of beauty and I think that’s wrong. So instead of just getting rid of beauty standards, it should just be more inclusive. There’s nothing wrong with filling in your eyebrows and plucking them—nothing wrong with that at all, it’s gorgeous. But I think there needs to be change when the people are so fixated on the one beauty [norm] they pursue and they're not accepting of what someone else wants to do. They don't [even] really need to be accepting, but they have no right to bash them and make them feel like any less of a person.
So you're almost using your followership and your connections with these people, and with the world, to start really making a shift in what traditional beauty standards are and how we perceive those. Yeah, and it’s not going to be a tomorrow thing. It’s like a movement. If it’s going to be gradual, I hope to speed up the pace. I just really hope if it’s a celebrity or an incredible professor or an older woman or an older man or just a social activist, someone that is of power and influence, I hope they make the move on a grander scale than what I have, to do something to kind of speed up this process.
I just want to continue this thing about accepting people's preferences, not bashing people. I think the internet has been a bit too mean these days.
Do you ever receive death threats from people? Oh, for sure.
How do you reconcile that? I got into this bad thing the other day. Someone—in my area that I live in—sent me a death threat. It was so instinctual for me to just: click, block, swipe, delete. [But] someone said, ‘Sophia, why did you do that? You need to report that to the police.’
For every beautiful and really heartwarming comment that definitely changes my whole week around, there’s a bunch of comments [that aren’t]. Like, very descriptive [comments]—not just comments that say ‘ugly.’ I don't care if you call me ugly. Ugly is beautiful. But for someone to say very detailed things, it definitely kind of shakes me a bit. But I do also realize I'm never going to know who they are. A part of me used to always want to respond to these comments and a part of me still does, but I don't want the negative comments to outshine the positive ones.
I definitely don't have it the worst online, so I try to consider that, but it shouldn't be like this to begin with.
Do you think you’ll ever ditch the unibrow? I don’t know. I don't have plans to do that now, and when people ask me, I’m like, should I say no? Because in the future, I may want to. But I feel like in the future it’s going to become more a part of me. I just want nature to take its course.
Ahead of Atlanta's return to FX in March, the network finally dropped a full-length trailer for Robbin' Season, leaving the rotation vibes and floating alligators of the firsttwo surrealistic teasers behind to reveal what we can expect next from one of the bestshowsonTV.
Things are looking up for Donald Glover's Earn: He climbs out from the storage unit he's been crashing in, seems to be back in Van's good graces, and—judging by the wad of cash he gets ahold of—finds a way to start making some real money. His cousin Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry) is making progress on his rap career, though still having to deal with corny radio producers, but it's not clear if he's still thinking about taking that tour. And a goggle-wearing Darius (Lakeith Stanfield) warns Earn that "robbin' season" is in full swing.
"It's a very dangerous, uncertain time in the city," Donald Glover's brother Stephen, co-creator of the show, told Variety, explaining "robbin' season" as the time when crime skyrockets leading up to Christmas. "So everybody’s shaken up a little bit this year, and everybody has to make important decisions."
For all the new details the trailer offers up, there's still no sign of any "sketchy moms" or the "VERY TAN caucasians" Glover put out a casting call for during production. Until we find out what the hell that's all about, give the full trailer a watch above.
On an all-new episode of VICELAND'sHATE THY NEIGHBOR, comedian Jamali Maddix takes a close look at the anti-abortion activists going to extreme lengths to protest the procedure. Then he meets up with two pro-life preachers to hear why they're so passionate about the issue—including one man who thinks anyone who terminates a pregnancy should get the death penalty.
Earlier this month, a prospective landlord asked Toronto resident Mark Dublin for a criminal background check with his rental application. Skeptical about the legality of this unusual request, Dublin took to Bunz, a popular local Facebook group, for a second opinion. Over 30 commenters slammed the landlord’s actions and many accused him of racism because Dublin is black.
By now we all know that finding housing in Toronto is about as dreadful as dragging your feet through a bed of rusty nails for weeks on end. For people of colour and other marginalized communities, that experience is often amplified due to discrimination.
The Ontario Human Rights Commision explicitly prohibits this kind of behaviour, stating that housing is a human right and that people cannot be harrassed, treated unfairly or refused an apartment because of factors that include race, ethnic background, religion, gender identity and sexual orientation. But that hasn’t stopped a lot of landlords within the city.
Matthew, a Toronto-based nurse who’s Jamaican and Portuguese, empathizes with Dublin’s experience, calling it “unacceptable.”
Before finding his current place, Matthew himself had difficulties being accepted as a tenant. While condo-hunting with his cousin, who’s also black, they faced several roadblocks when condo owners used photo ID to screen potential tenants.
“Every time we would give photo ID, we would hear back right away [from the landlord saying], ‘Oh no, we're going to go with somebody different,’” Matthew told VICE. After getting turned down from five out of seven places (the other two being unreasonably pricey), they questioned if it was a racial issue and briefly shifted their interest to Regent Park, a neighbourhood further from their work but with a larger black community.
“It feels awful,” Matthew said. “We didn't meet these people, they didn't get to know us, they didn't speak to us, they just saw photos of us. I don't know what the landlords looked like, but it made me feel like crap regardless. And if it was a racial issue, that's fucked up.”
Obviously, landlords are rarely ever explicitly racist, so it can be hard to accuse a landlord of discrimination without any real evidence. In 2009, the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation actually produced a report on housing discrimination in Toronto, indicating that race and ethnicity were widespread factors of discrimination (along with mental illness and marital status). Drawing on hundreds of interactions between landlords and potential renters, CERA found a single black parent was 26 percent more likely to encounter significant discrimination.
Due to the nature of the issue, researchers noted that their numbers “likely underestimated the magnitude of the problem.” As for today, where Toronto is ascending the worst housing crisis in years, we don’t yet know how those numbers have changed.
Ruth*, 22, says it’s her intuition that usually tells her when something is wrong. When she was studying at Humber College and viewing a house to rent nearby, Ruth recalls the landlord asking her and her mother where they’re from.
“I knew what he was trying to get at. My mom said, ‘We're Canadian.’ And he asked again like, ‘No, no, where are you from?’ And she said, ‘We're from Rwanda.’ He then asked Ruth to show him her student ID.
“At that point I felt uncomfortable because first you're asking me if we're from here and then all of a sudden you're asking for my student ID because you don't think I'm a student?”
Ruth says she’s experienced this on multiple occasions, including when her family moved back to Toronto after living in Rwanda during the 2000s.
Vic Natola, a legal worker at Parkdale Community Legal Services, says this is a recurring pattern they’ve seen throughout 15 years of working to provide equitable housing.
“There are countless examples of racialized folks applying for an apartment where everything's going well, they show up in person to see the apartment, the landlord looks at them and suddenly the apartment isn't available anymore,” Natola says. "And these are major corporate landlords who own a lot of buildings across Toronto."
The problem is, there’s not much recourse for tenants in these situations.
“The Landlord and Tenant Board doesn’t have the power to force a landlord to house [a tenant] who is wronged because they are racist,” Natola says. “Or if there is some kind of monetary compensation, it’s usually not enough for proper regress.”
Sandra*, a Toronto landlord who works with other landlords to provide better housing options, was appalled when she heard about Dublin’s experience.
“I am of the opinion that every single person has the right to housing,” she says. “There's nothing that I would need to know in a criminal background check that would affect your legal right to rent. It's none of my business.”
Sandra recognizes that this kind of discrimination is not limited to just people of colour—it’s also LGBTQ people, Indigenous folk, those with disabilities, or of certain ages, marriage statuses or religions, to name a few.
“The first issue that we need to talk about would be discrimination as a human race. That, as a whole, needs to change,” Sandra says.
As Toronto and other big cities become more unbearingly expensive, we look to community action, as seen in movements like the Parkdale rent strike, as the only efficient way to take control of the rental market. By banding together we can debase the landlords who are steadily ruining it for us all, because at the end of the day, the rent is just too damn high for this shit.
When Typhoon Haiyan made landfall on November 8, 2013, Joanna Sustento wasn’t all that worried. Tropical storms are common in the Philippines. But this one was different. Water surged to chest level in her family’s house and forced her and six relatives to evacuate. Outside, the water kept rising. Sustento remembers feeling like she was inside a washing machine. The wind was cold as crushed ice. Waves swept her older brother, sister-in-law and nephew away. She saw her dad gasping for air. Currents kept dragging Sustento underwater. Finally she was able to grab a large piece of wood. She tried to pull her mom onto it but realized it was too late. Her mom had drowned. Sustento had to leave her mom’s body to make it to safety. “No words can explain how I felt,” the 25-year-old later recalled.
Haiyan destroyed the city of Tacloban and many of the surrounding communities. It killed over 6,300 people, including Sustento’s mother, father, brother, sister, and nephew. She remembers “crying my eyes out, screaming my heart out.” Susento doesn’t think it was a random tragedy. She blames climate change for intensifying the storm. And she blames 47 of the world’s worst corporate polluters for causing climate change. These companies, Sustento is convinced, are morally responsible for what happened to her family. She wants them held legally responsible as well.
“That’s one myth that the big polluters have been feeding us, that [climate change] is everyone’s fault,” Sustento told me in a Tacloban coffee shop that had been underwater during the typhoon. “We need to go directly to the people who started it.”
Most of the discourse around climate change has to do with either convincing people that it is real, or talking about how to slow it down and mitigate its effects. But a human rights commission in the Philippines is trying to settle once and for all the issue of blame. It will be holding public hearings in the US, Europe, and the Philippines this year is to answer a potentially explosive question: Should the 47 “carbon majors,” the biggest investor-owned greenhouse gas emitters in the world, be held accountable for fatalities and destruction linked to their business model?
Here is some of the evidence the commission may consider: These companies (which include top producers of oil, gas, coal, petrochemicals, and cement) are responsible for almost a quarter of all the greenhouse gases emitted since 1751. An Exxon scientist warned the company back in 1981 that climate change could cause “effects which will indeed be catastrophic—at least for a substantial fraction of the earth’s population.” Exxon, Chevron, BP, Shell, Peabody Energy and other fossil fuel producers spent years denying that global warming was real. And the industry to this day pressures Republican politicians in the US to reject the science.
“As the research shows, they already knew the climate risks [of their business model] but they didn’t do anything about it,” Sustento said.
The Philippines Commission on Human Rights is not a court. It can’t make legal rulings. All it can do is provide an opinion about whether these 47 corporations committed human rights abuses—and map a path to justice for the victims. Yet several of the companies have tried to shut the investigation down. “[We] have made various legal challenges to the Commission’s activity,” a representative of ConocoPhillips acknowledged in 2016. But the Commission on Human Rights is not backing down. “We are determined to proceed,” Commissioner Roberto Cadiz explained to me last December in Quezon City at the investigation’s opening.
Legal observers in Europe and the US are watching closely. Some believe this case has the potential to transform our understanding of climate change from a distant scientific threat for which we are all partially responsible to deadly chaos accelerated by 47 corporations. “Lawyers learn from each other,” John Knox, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, told me. “If the Philippines Commission on Human Rights is able to make a persuasive case… then you would expect to see those arguments appearing in other forums.” For companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP, it increases the risk of lawsuits and regulations that could cost them trillions of dollars.
The story of this investigation begins on the first day of the 2013 United Nations climate talks in Warsaw, when Yeb Saño, the diplomat heading the Philippines delegation, stood up to deliver a speech to more than 1,000 delegates from around the world. Three days earlier, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical storms ever recorded, had made landfall. It destroyed more than 280,000 homes and left nearly 2 million Filipinos homeless. Saño’s father grew up in Tacloban, the city hit hardest. Family members still lived there, and Saño spent hour after excruciating hour waiting to hear if his brother and other relatives survived. He eventually got news that his brother was safe. But on opening day of the Warsaw negotiations Saño was still unsure about the others. Philippines President Benigno Aquino III had told Saño’s delegation to “show a picture of strength to calm fears.” Yet as he addressed the UN delegates he felt overcome by emotion. “I chose another path,” he told me.
Saño knew that back in Tacloban his brother was pulling dead bodies from the wreckage while tens of thousands of newly homeless Haiyan survivors struggled to find food and water. “I had the choice to… follow what diplomats are supposed to do and be unemotional and impersonal and thank the world for their sympathy,” Saño recalled. Instead, he began to weep. “What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness,” Saño told the conference. He said he’d stop eating food until the talks produced meaningful progress. “We can stop this madness,” he said. Saño wiped away tears. He received a standing ovation.
Video of the speech has been viewed more than a million times. His tears had communicated something that decades of high-level bureaucratic meetings and scientific reports could not. “Real lives are at stake,” he said. “Climate change is not just words and numbers and figures.” Saño resigned from his diplomatic position and got hired as head of Greenpeace East Asia. He didn’t see the suffering his family and countless other Filipinos endured during Typhoon Haiyan as an unexplainable disaster. Not only could it be explained, Saño he believed that it could ultimately be traced back to the fossil fuel business model.
Greenpeace and other civil society groups presented their argument in a 2015 petition to the Commission on Human Rights. They pointed to calculations from climate researcher Richard Heede showing Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, BP and several dozen other “carbon majors” are responsible for 22 percent of all human carbon emissions. And they cited science linking those emissions to crop failures, rising seas, ocean acidification, and disasters like Haiyan. “Climate change interferes with the enjoyment of our fundamental rights as human beings,” the petition reads. “Hence, we demand accountability of those contributing to [it].”
The Commission on Human Rights reviewed the petition and agreed to hold an inquiry. In doing so it was making history. “This kind of case has been filed before other national human rights institutions but they all rejected it,” Commissioner Cadiz explained. “But [we] said, ‘Alright, we are willing to be the first.’” Reactions from the companies under investigation were varied. Many ignored a request in 2016 to provide input. Some listed their investments in clean technologies. And others—including ConocoPhillips, which made several legal challenges to the commission’s jurisdiction—effectively tried to shut the investigation down.
In a narrow sense, the “carbon majors” have little to worry about—they’re being investigated by an under-funded commission with no binding legal power. But moral questions loom as large as legal ones. Society has not yet reached a consensus on who is responsible for climate change. Do we blame the companies that dig up fossil fuels, the utilities that burn them to make electricity, the people who pump them into their cars? “These are really difficult questions, difficult in the sense that you don’t have a right answer,” said Benoit Mayer, an assistant professor of law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who writes extensively on climate change. But the Philippines investigation is rejecting ambiguity. Mayer thinks “it can give a very strong signal” about who is morally at fault for global warming. And it provides a grim reminder of the human lives at stake.
Sustento was in shock after the water receded. “Everything was lost,” she told me. She now sees what happened as a violation of human rights. “Our right to a safe environment, because our homes were washed away. Our right to life, because our friends and families lost their lives.” Schools were badly damaged, churches destroyed. People lost “even the mental space to grieve,” she said, “because we needed to prioritize survival.” Tacloban is now physically rebuilt, but psychological damage remains.
The question of who’s to blame for the violations is less obvious. Some people in Tacloban saw Haiyan as god’s punishment for their sins. Sustento quickly rejected that explanation. “Children don’t have sins,” she said. “If it’s god’s punishment, what kind of god is he?” The more she learned about Haiyan, the more she believed that humans were responsible for what happened. Haiyan registered 8.1 on an intensity scale only designed to go up to 8.0, with winds nearly 195 miles per hour. Though it’s difficult to link any one disaster to global warming, scientists who’ve studied Haiyan think warmer and higher seas made the typhoon more destructive. “I really believe it is an effect of climate change,” Sustento said.
But it took several years for her to go from seeing climate change as something everybody is equally at fault for to seeing it as the deadly result of decisions made by fossil fuel executives. Two things helped move her in this direction. The first was her growing involvement in the cause. Before her brother died in Haiyan, he had been close friends with AG Saño, the brother of the diplomat. AG Saño went to the 2015 Paris climate talks and painted a mural of Sustento’s brother, calling it “the face of climate change.” Greenpeace later asked Sustento if she would share her Haiyan story on the group’s website. Last July, she joined a Greenpeace protest against Statoil.
The second thing was the release of hundreds of documents over recent years suggesting Exxon and other oil companies knew internally about the “catastrophic” risks of climate change—including its potential to increase the destructive fury of storms—while publicly discrediting the science. Sustento thinks this strategy is so immoral that she “cannot believe there are really people who exist” capable of executing it. To her this settles the question of responsibility for climate change. “Yes, we all do have a contribution, but it’s not as big as compared to these big polluters who have known of the climate risk for many, many years,” she said.
This narrative is important for Sustento. It means that her family, friends and community didn’t suffer for nothing. It’s given her moral agency during a time of indescribable despair. But is the legal system also willing to accept it? That’s the question at the heart of the Commission on Human Rights investigation. And it’s hard to answer.
“It’s important that the law… recognize that climate change does have these impacts on human rights,” Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told me. And though the investigation “provides a very powerful storyline to motivate ambition on climate change,” he added, “legally it’s less clear what the end result [will be.]”
Taclaban City on November 17, 2013, after Typhoon Haiyan. Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty
It was a muggy December afternoon when I arrived at the Commission on Human Rights headquarters in Quezon City to attend the investigation’s opening. The media presence consisted of just a few local reporters and me. The purpose of the day was to figure out the types of details—including witnesses, exhibits, and timelines—that would allow public hearings to proceed. As Comissioner Cadiz said, “How are we going to navigate this process?” All 47 companies under investigation had been asked to send representatives. But as the conference got started nobody I spoke to was sure which, if any, of the “carbon majors” would actually attend.
I spent most of the afternoon outside, where dozens of Haiyan survivors from Tacloban and the surrounding region had gathered in front of a temporary stage. One by one they got up and told stories. It seemed to be somewhat of a catharsis: Laughter turned to tears turned to anger turned back to laughter. Midway through the day, Sustento took the stage. She spoke mostly in Tagalog. But I could guess what she was saying. On either side of me, men and women wiped their eyes and there was a heavy silence when she paused to check her notes. “Climate change,” Sustento finished in English, “is one of the biggest injustices in human history.”
Joanna Sustento. Photo by author
Not long after, news came that the conference was done. I went inside to a small room where officials were discussing the day and eating plates of spaghetti. I saw Cadiz at the back and asked him if any of the 47 corporations had shown up. Just one, he replied, the cement maker CEMEX. “And they came to question the jurisdiction of the commission,” he said. Cadiz shrugged it off. “We do not have territorial jurisdiction over these companies,” he said, “we can’t award damages against them, but that’s a very narrow view.” The commission will hold hearings across the Philippines in 2018. Top universities in the US and Europe have also offered to host them. An official report is due in early 2019. “It can be a jumping point for further cases brought before any court or jurisdiction,” he explained.
This is just one of many legal proceedings against carbon producers related to climate change. A German court decided last year that a Peruvian farmer’s lawsuit against the coal power giant RWE is admissible. New York, San Francisco, and Oakland are currently suing big oil. Los Angeles is considering it. The number of climate lawsuits in the world has tripled over the past three years. Organizations such as the World Economic Forum are warning “companies can expect to face increasing regulatory risks.” The threat to big oil may be as high as $2.3 trillion.
“In public, the oil majors dismiss what they see as political theatre, but there is growing concern that scientific work linking hydrocarbons to climate change and climate change to extreme weather could produce judgments against the industry as a whole and perhaps individual groups.” wrote Nick Butler, a Financial Times columnist who spent 29 years working at BP.
Yet none of the 47 corporations participated in the Philippines investigation. I went outside to find Sustento. I wanted to know how she felt about the companies ignoring the case. “At first I thought it’s kind of bad news because it means that they don’t care about the people here or maybe they think it’s just a joke, or they’re underestimating what we can do,” she said. But spending the day with Haiyan survivors had been invigorating. “I truly believe that the stories we heard today and the stories of my community… can make people realize, S hit, these things could also happen to us,” she explained. “And then maybe they’ll be moved to do something about it.”
She smiled: “I think what happened today is good news.”
“Pill Line, Pill Line!” The the PA system blared the summons twice a day throughout my two-plus decades in federal prison. In response, inmates did the “thorazine shuffle,” making their way to the pharmacy for a fresh dose of meds. It's been several years now since I was released, but that routine remains emblazoned in my mind. Early on, fellow inmates often struck me as zonked out on meds in some kind of sweet escape from the drudgery of life inside. Growing up in 70s and 80s suburban sprawl, I had become vaguely familiar with many of the drugs fellow inmates took for various ailments. But I never tried any—I thought of myself as more of a weed guy—and didn’t have a real sense of what depression felt like to whose who grappled with it.
The world I re-joined in 2014 has required me to play catch-up in a big way. More people than I imagined possible—one in six, according to a major study—were taking prescription medicines for depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses. And right now, there's fresh hope out there—Jeff Sessions notwithstanding—that drug prohibition is in its last throes, and that after weed legalization could come the acceptance of psychedelic drugs as promising treatments for people who need help.
In her forthcoming book, Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds, Lauren Slater—who previously wrote Prozac Diaries about her own experience with depression—explores the strange history of psychopharmacology in America. From the explosion of modern psychotropic drugs like lithium in the 1950s to the rise of antidepressants like Prozac to the ongoing (re)discovery of psychedelics’ medical potential to drugs that can literally erase your memory, her account is a comprehensive one. I called her up to find out how doctrine has changed from the era of insane asylums of the 19th and 20th centuries, how Prozac turned depression into a sort of superstar syndrome, and why drugs like MDMA and LSD may be closer to legal use than you think.
Here’s what she had to say.
VICE: You've been taking these drugs or dealing with related conditions for 35 years now. What stands out from all that experience that non-users wouldn't know? Lauren Slater: Well, it's taught me, first of all, that you can't really rely on them [because] they are time-limited. I started off taking Prozac at 10 milligrams, and then I had to raise my dose to 20 milligrams, which is the standard dose. But then I had to go up to 40, and then 60, and then 80, and then 100, and then 120, which is way over what you're supposed to take. I was building up a tolerance to it. I had to go off that drug, and onto another drug. It's not only that the drug wears off. The other way of looking at it is that the symptoms that you're taking the drug for break through.
A psychotropic drug, even if it works, is no guarantee that you're not going to have episodes of whatever is it you're taking the drug for. It's a tool to use, but it's not a cure. It's definitely not a cure. With real mental illness, it tends to get worse as you get older. Each time you have an episode, it's oftentimes worse than the one before. In some respects, you learn how to deal with it. I think what you learn is that it's going to go away. It's not forever, even though it may feel that way at the time. But I wouldn't say that it gets easier to deal with. A breakdown is never really easy to deal with.
It's perhaps common in our culture to critique young people or recent generations as being overly inclined toward medicating. But the reverse was also true—we treated people terribly when they had mental-heath problems in decades past, right? In the old insane asylums, before there were medications, or the kinds of medications we have today, we used physical restraint. We used isolation rooms. We used electric convulsive therapy- shock therapy without any kind of benzodiazepine—the person was conscious and it was terrifying for them. We had all kinds of [so-called] cures that were horrible for people. We used to shoot people up with insulin until they fell into a coma and then hope that when they woke up from the coma, they would be more cognizant. We used to use something called deep sleep therapy, where we would essentially put a person in a coma for weeks at a time and hope when they woke up, they’d be better.
We used to tie people to beds. We used to plunge them in ice-cold baths. We did unbelievable things in the name of pursuing a cure. We used to do lobotomies, cutting out a piece of people's brains. All of that is pretty much gone. We still do a form of lobotomy, called the cingulotomy, but it's very rare. Very few people have that. The treatment [today] is much more humane. As we learn more about the brain and how it goes awry, our treatments get more refined. [But] we still have a really long way to go, in terms of understanding the causes of mental illness, and discovering treatments that really work.
You have a long and well-known history with Prozac. Can you talk a bit about your conception of the drug as having molded depression its own special kind of illness? It used to be that people understood their distress in terms of nerves. That was the word that was used in the 60s and 70s. People were anxious. They would complain about anxiety. They wouldn't complain about depression. You’d say you had a bad case of nerves and you’d be treated with one of the benzodiazepines, Valium or Klonopin. Then Prozac came along, and it got featured on the cover of Newsweek and on the cover of TIME. And Peter Kramer wrote his runaway bestseller, Listening to Prozac.
All of a sudden, everybody knew about Prozac and it was written about in these glowing terms as a drug that could not just help with your depression, but could change your whole character. Take irritability and turn it into sweetness. Take low feelings and turn them into high feelings. It could take shy people and make them confident and outgoing. It could enhance your attractiveness at cocktail parties and dances or whatever. Suddenly everybody wanted to take it. But you couldn't take Prozac if you had nerves. Prozac wasn't for nerves, it was for depression. So people started saying that they have depression. It’s not that there's any more distress than there was 50 years ago, we [just] went [conceptually] from nerves to depression.
I took a lot of LSD, and always felt that it kind of opened my mind and made me more creative, or just made me see things in different ways. Mushrooms just kind of made me laugh, and Ecstasy was a whole different realm. But that was all recreational. Do you really have optimism about those drugs as medical treatments for people suffering? I think MDMA or ecstasy will get approved for the treatment of severe trauma, probably by 2021. It will be approved as a prescription medicine for people with severe trauma, because it's worked so well in trials. It's not going to be approved for people with just run of the mill trauma, if there is such a thing as that, anyway. But it will be approved for people whose trauma has devastated them, has made it so that they can't function.
There may come a time when hallucinogens or psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin are approved for the treatment of pain, for anxiety relating to terminal illness. But that's further away. I don't think we're going to see the psychedelics approved for just humdrum problems. Or for enhancement, or as aids to spiritual growth, or something like that. Even though they really can do that. But I don't think that the DEA and the FDA and the government are going to ever really approve those drugs for that kind of use.
How close are we to Men In Black-esque memory wipes or drugs that are capable of completely erasing a frightening or traumatic event? There is that drug called ZIP, which can erase memories in rodents. I don't think we're anywhere near getting that approved as a treatment, though. The ethical conundrums that accompany a drug like ZIP are just so snarled and complicated.
People who’ve been raped or who’ve been to war and seen horrible things—they would benefit from having those memories erased. But on the other hand, those experiences, as horrifying as they were, have a role to play in their lives and in their understanding of the world. And I don't know that trauma survivors would [necessarily] want them erased. Especially when you have something like MDMA, which can deal so effectively with trauma, without erasing it. That seems like much more sensible approach.
If the 50s and 60s were the golden age of the psychopharmacology—when treating the mental suffering of the human brain was kind of coming into vogue—how do you see the present moment, when old-school prohibition is less credible than ever? Some psychiatrists are discovering that psychedelics have a powerful ability to remake the human mind. And slowly, the stigma surrounding the psychedelics from the 60s as, like, hippie drugs and just drugs to use if you wanted to tune in and drop out or whatever it was [Timothy] Leary said—slowly that stigma is going away.
The more studies that are done that show that psychedelics can really change a person and open a person to new ways of being, the closer we get to a real revival of these drugs. I mean, it's not just psilocybin and MDMA. There's ayahuasca and there's LSD and there's a whole bunch of psychedelics that are potentially useful for a whole range of human problems. I predict that that will be our next golden era.
Learn more about Slater's book, out February 20, here.
In Draw the Circle, now playing at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre in New York, playwright Mashuq Mushtaq Deen tells the story of his transition by taking on the voices of his family and friends. Over the course of 90 minutes, Deen performs the central characters of his life—including his Muslim mother and father, and lesbian-identified partner—as they struggle to accept his gender identity. Deen never performs as himself; his body is instead represented by a white chair, the only object that appears on the otherwise empty stage. It’s a funny, emotionally charged and deeply vulnerable work, in which Deen explores not only his familial and romantic conflicts but the violence and trauma he’s endured.
Deen's work has been presented or developed at institutions including New York's Public Theater, and the New York Theater Workshop, and has received awards including a 2017 Kilroy List Honorable Mention, and a James Baldwin Award.
I spoke with Deen about the play, audience reactions, and the state of trans-inclusion in the theater world.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Stahl: When did you first decide to write about transitioning? What prompted that idea? Mashuq Mushtaq Deen: Well, I transitioned, so it was a life experience that I was having that so many people were unfamiliar with. I really started writing this play in earnest in 2009 when I was in the Public Theater's Emerging Writers Group, and I remember my mentor said, "You have to write a play about your transition," and I remember I thought, I don't want to. I realized I didn't want to because I was scared of it—and I feel like my job is to move towards things that scare me.
As a writer, I was going be inhabiting all these characters who are frustrated at Deen or angry at Deen. Probably a part of me that would've liked to have closed the door and never thought about some of that stuff again. But I also know that sometimes, in challenging my own fears and walking there, I discover something that maybe opens something up and makes it less frightening for me in the end.
When you decided to write about your transition, did you immediately envision it as a one-man play? Early on I felt like it should probably be a one-person play, and I imagine there's two reasons for this. One, the intimacy of a solo play is so different and specific, so the relationship you're having with the audience is very intimate and I felt like the story was very intimate, and so those two things went together well.
I think also I was coming out of grad school at the time, and my thesis play had a butch, South Asian woman in it. And it was really hard to find actors to be in those roles, especially back then. And so I can't help but think part of that decision might have been thinking, "I don't know how we'll find actors to be in this, I might have to be in it."
And did you always imagine yourself to have a ghost-like presence in the show, present but not there? I had the vision of not being in the piece early on. There was one draft, I think my second or third draft when I experimented putting myself back in, and I hated it, and so I took it back out.
I found two things. One is that I already lived this journey, and so for me to write it from my point of view felt redundant, I wasn't discovering anything. But to write it from the points of view of the other people that struggled with it was an act of discovery for me as a writer as well. In that one draft where I was a character, I could tell that every time my character spoke, it felt like I was defending myself, it felt like I was trying to prove something to the audience, or serving my own needs instead of being true to the writing, or being true to the emotion of it.
Were there any audience responses that were particularly memorable to you? There was one audience response that was really moving to me. After the show, a mother spoke, and I don't know how old her kid was, I think they were going through a transition, or they had just transitioned, and she started to cry. And she said that she felt it was the first time she felt like her struggle had been [portrayed,] that she had seen it, and she felt kind of understood in it. And how she wanted to help her child through this, but it was hard. It was hard for her. She just felt like some part of her could relax and let go, and be there with us and have tears run down her face, I guess 'cause it felt safe to do so.
And I often think that in some way, when parents are in the audience, they say things to me that my own parents could not have said, probably, in that moment, and I can respond to them in ways that I could not have spoken to my parents at that time. I feel like in some ways I'm a conduit.
Those parents are talking to other people in the audience. And everyone in the audience is somebody's kid. And so, they're starting to have a conversation with each other, maybe conversations they can't have with their own kids or parents, but they're able to start having it with each other here.
I know this show gets talked about as the transgender story and it has specifics of that, and it has specifics of an immigrant family and parents. But to me, at its heart, it really is about parents and children. And how hard it is to be both.
Let’s talk about trans-inclusion or exclusion in the theater world. How do you think it is now? Do you think it's getting better, and what do you think needs to change? When I first wrote this play, certainly people were self-producing plays about trans folks and people of colour, and trans people of colour, and that was happening, but it was happening very under the radar. And in mainstream theater there really wasn't much. And then in the past few years, there have been more, but sadly, a lot of these plays have trans characters in them but are not written by trans writers.
And I'm not one to necessarily police and say, "Oh, you can only write something if you're from that community," but I do think that if you do write that, you have an obligation to really do your work and go beyond stereotypes and really question yourself and I don't always think that those plays have done that successfully.
I think there is a strength in the story that trans writers tell about their communities and their world, because there is nuance and complication and authenticity to a degree that is just lived. And it is hard to compete with that.
But I do think, certainly now, there are more trans writers getting produced, but are those trans writers mostly trans-masculine? Yes, mostly, right now. Are they mostly white? Yes, mostly white, so far.
Actors really come into this too. Who gets to play trans characters and are trans actors getting to be seen outside playing trans characters? Are casting directors able to see us as more than just one small piece of our identity?
Anything else you want to add? Whether I'm acting or writing, I can't judge my characters. I have to really understand their back stories and where they come from. And so I think there's a way in which it's very hard for me to encounter the world without also imagining what people's backstories are that bring them to a moment or to a decision. I personally find the nature of our social discourse—which I think can get very right or wrong and black and white—and especially on social media, we're not looking at each other.
It's disheartening because it feels like sometimes we are made an "other" by people who would like to take our rights away from us, but I feel like sometimes we respond by then making a whole other group of people an "other" and it feels dehumanizing to me. I'm always hopeful that part of what theater does is really make that story so complicated that it's hard to say, "us" and "them." It’s just "us."
I hope that theater helps people embrace the mess of it, 'cause I'm always very suspicious of the super easy simple answers of right and wrong.
Draw the Circle is playing at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater until February 18. You can purchase tickets here.
Dating is always evolving. Once, it meant writing letters, trying not to die in a war and maybe eloping. Later, it meant mixtapes, make-out point and marriage. Later still, it meant signing into MSN to get our crush's attention and then ~accidentally~ sending them a message about them which was actually "meant for my friend, I honestly don't know how that happened".
For this reason, not every generation agrees on the "right" way to date. My mum thinks everyone I meet on Tinder is going to kill me, and she’d rather I went out and actually spoke to people instead of swiping endlessly through their mugshots. Gross.
The latest dating shift has come with Gen Z'ers – anyone 21 or younger – who are supposedly all isolated by their mobile phones and having less sex than previous generations. Of course, those statements, based on a number of academic studies, aren't exactly representative: lots of young people are still very much meeting people – with the help of their mobile phones – and then maybe having sex with them.
Because it's Valentine's Day, we asked some Gen Z'ers what dating is like for them, and what they think of the way older generations used to date.
Indyah, 19
Older generations didn’t have as much freedom as us to experience the diversity of dating. But thanks to the internet, my generation has been given more accessibility to different people. I think it’s such a good thing that we get to connect with a variety of people from all over the world. But, sadly, it means that a lot of authenticity has been lost. It’s hard to gauge if someone’s intentions are pure or not, because they’re showing and telling you what they want you to know, and you just have to take their word for it. It’s changed dating. A lot of people have expectations of you to give them attention – give them sex, even – without them having put any effort in to court you. It’s that instant gratification that our generation is so used to, because it’s so easy to move on to the next one and have someone lined up on social media. So I do think it’s beneficial for us to take back some of those "old fashioned" values.
My generation is less inclined to compromise, because in the digital era everything feels temporary, so people are more disposable. People used to see dating as a long-term thing, so they were happier to compromise. But for older generations I would say they should realise that today we all have a lot more independence and options, so be more selective and don’t settle for what you know deep down is not truly right for you.
Lauren, 19
I think most dates are based around social media – Instagram, Twitter, Tinder. I don’t really like that, but that’s the way it is. But in my generation there’s a growing lack of communication and enthusiasm because we’re distracted by our phones. I’ve done that in the past, but it has made me realise the amount of missed opportunities you could have experienced with that other person.
I think we’re a lot less faithful as well, because you’ve got such easy access to talk to other people on social media while being mutually exclusive. Older generations didn’t have the option to hit people up as and when.
WATCH:
Jordan, 18
I can’t afford to take anyone on an actual date right now. But I’d save for a bit if it was someone really special, I think. With the girl I’m seeing now, I just DM’'d her on Instagram after I had seen her around uni a few times, and we knew some of the same people. And then we just chilled at mine, watched some really bad films and talked for a while.
We’re less worried about doing "proper" dates. Now, you can say anything is a date if you’re spending time with each other. There’s less pressure when they are more chill. My parents think it's weird that I go on a lot of dates, because they’ve been together since they started uni. But I think older generations should just accept that we have a more relaxed approach to dating now. It doesn’t have to be flowers and chocolates every day.
Zoë, 19
I don’t think that much has changed between us and millennials, just the platforms we use. If you want someone to notice you now, people will usually just put up a Snapchat story where they look really good. Then they hope that their crush will see and will maybe even send them a message.
But a lot of people say that romance is dead because people text a lot more now. I’d say that older generations should embrace new technology, because texting actually isn’t such a terrible thing. It actually makes everything a lot easier, especially when you’re planning stuff or meeting up with people. It means that you can text someone you’ve never really met for a bit before actually meeting them. But I wouldn’t do that for too long or you’ll run out of things to talk about. And they should also embrace our more positive attitude to sex! I think it’s good that people feel more free and confident about what they want in that respect.
Léonard, 18
I think my generation is more relaxed when it comes to dating. But older generations weren’t because they were mainly focused on finding a partner. They just wanted to start a family, so they were less picky when it came to choosing who they dated.
So now, going on dates has become more important than it was before. As, now, we aren’t necessarily looking for someone to stay with forever, dating is less of a headache. We can meet a lot of other people before we settle down with someone for a lifetime, but I do think that makes it less romantic. And although it’s good that attitudes towards sex are more free, it has made dating a little bit harder. Sometimes relationships aren’t actually based on anything more than sex, and that’s not what makes a relationship.
I do think that when our grandparents had chosen their partner, it was because they really loved them. But now we look for the little things that bother us and go onto the next person. Older generations would send letters or run away together, and this is lost with the multiple encounters which we’re doing now. It may be seen as "old school", but it’s still something that is really important to me.
Josie, 19
For Valentine’s Day this year, I was surprised to hear that my boyfriend had actually planned a spa hotel day and night. Often men are shit and don't care about it, so the girl would have to plan what you do and where you eat. But compared to my grandparents' generation, there is more pressure to come up with very impressive date ideas rather than focusing on simply enjoying each others' company. Instagram can make you feel like other couples are doing more and are better than you. I feel like it's taken away the essence of what dating is.
We are much better at catching people cheating than older generations. But apart from that I think, before, relationships felt more real and natural, because these days people are a lot more desperate to be in a relationship. That’s the same reason I don’t like dating apps – people are forcing themselves to find someone because there’s so much pressure. I think it's rubbish how they put people together, because having similar interests isn't what makes people fall in love with each other.
Also, with older generations it was quite frowned upon if the women were to be the instigators in any way, because it was seen as the "man's job" in the relationship. So that's something that has improved with my generation. Girls don't have to be scared of being seen as easy or whorish for sleeping with people or making it very obvious that they like someone any more. I do believe these ideas do still exist in some people’s minds, it just isn't as acceptable to talk about it.
This week, Sony and the makers of the new children's movie Peter Rabbitfaced criticism for a scene about food allergies. In the film, Peter Rabbit attacks his human nemesis with blackberries, forcing him to use an EpiPen so he doesn't go into anaphylactic shock. Given that many kids have dangerous or deadly allergies, activists and concerned parents were upset by the scene and took to social media to start a boycott.
On Tuesday's episode of Desus & Mero, the hosts discussed this "allergy bullying" controversy, along with Peter Rabbit's lack of pants.
You can watch the latest episode of Desus & Mero for free online now, and be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.
Deep down, we all know other people's lives aren't as fabulous as they may appear to be on social media. Still, it can be hard to remember this when we're flicking through Instagram Stories, watching people have fun, and subsequently feeling lonely and isolated.
In cities especially – where the majority of us live today – feelings of loneliness can be compounded by the fact we're surrounded by millions of people who all seem to be having a great time with each other, while we're at home alone, binge-watching Netflix until it asks us if we're still there.
Research has shown that loneliness is an important mental health issue and a potentially bigger public health risk than smoking and obesity. The UK government recently appointed a minister for loneliness to help fix a problem that affects around 9 million British people, young and old. Breaking out of a cycle of loneliness can be hard, because the fewer people you speak to, the sooner you'll feel like you're the only person in the world dealing with it – which is why many campaign groups are pushing for a more open, society-wide discussion about the issue.
VICE Netherlands spoke to five international students who moved away from their friends and family to Amsterdam, to start what they hoped would be a thrilling new chapter of their lives. Instead, they found that making new connections in a strange city is a lot harder than they'd anticipated, and that their loneliness affects every aspect of their lives.
Nguyen, 24, from Vietnam, Studies Language Technology
"Maybe it's because I watched too many American movies when I was younger, but I had such high expectations of what university life was going to be like. But the reality just isn't as exciting as I had hoped. I spend all my time working and don't have many friends. When I’m not studying, I watch cartoons – a habit I picked up since moving here, because I spend so much time alone. I even spent my birthday just sat inside, watching cartoons all day.
"My first month in Amsterdam wasn't that bad. I kept busy, and everything was new and exciting. But things soon changed for the worse. I failed a lot of my initial exams because I wasn't used to the system here. On top of all this, I was trying to build a new life in a new city, without anyone to confide in when I was feeling stressed and lonely. It really was the worst time of my life. There were evenings in those first few months when I would lock myself in my room and just cry and think to myself, 'If I died here, nobody would know.' That's pretty fucked up.
"I think what makes me feel especially lonely in Amsterdam is that I’m constantly surrounded by other people having fun in this huge, vibrant city. And when I hear people talking about all the parties they’re going to, I’m left wondering why my life here isn't as exciting."
Irina, 23, from Russia, Studies European History
"I moved to Amsterdam to be with my boyfriend, even though I didn’t really know anyone else or have a job lined up. For the first few months, my boyfriend went to work while I just stayed at home doing nothing. I didn’t really try to reach out to new people because I was worried my English wasn't good enough and I'd end up embarrassing myself if I tried.
"I soon started to feel completely lost. I tried finding things to occupy myself with, like babysitting for a Russian family, which was a complete nightmare – the kid was uncontrollable. I knew I needed to find some proper personal connections of my own, so I applied to university and got accepted. But even after starting uni, I was reluctant to talk to people and didn’t make many friends, which only got worse when my boyfriend broke up with me. I was left here completely alone. He moved out, and after that, for a few months, I was just devastated. I could barely eat or leave my apartment. I ended up losing weight. It was a very scary time for me.
"In this city, most people just do their own thing. If you don’t have any specific interests that fit into a particular scene, you end up on your own. And it’s obviously a lot easier to make friends if you speak Dutch, which I don’t.
"I think it’s important to talk about it openly, because there are lots of lonely people in cities who think they're the only ones, but they're not at all. In that sense, they’re not alone in being alone. Maybe it can motivate them to change something in their lives."
WATCH:
Mario*, 27, from Italy, Works for an Architecture Company
"All my friends in Italy are jealous of my new life in Amsterdam. They assume everything must be great because I have a good job, my English is improving and I live in a great city. It sounds amazing from the outside, but it's not really true for me.
"Most people look forward to the weekend, but for me, it’s the other way around – I look forward to Monday so I can speak to people at work. I feel really down on Fridays, because I start thinking about how I’m going to spend another weekend alone, mainly cleaning my room and playing on my computer. When I do venture outside, it’s almost always just for the sake of it – I go to a bar or grab a quick coffee, then I go home and feel alone again. It’s the same every weekend.
"Humans are social animals, we need other people to survive. I’m like that animal – I can’t remember the name, but it looks like a sheep – that can die from loneliness. I know I won't literally die of loneliness, but life doesn't have much meaning when you’re lonely."
Maria*, 31, from India, Works as a Lecturer
"This isn’t my first time living abroad – I studied in Leicester for six years. But here, it’s like being thrown into a completely different world. I didn't know anyone before I came here, and I didn’t know much about Dutch culture. I found meeting people easier when I was a student in England and we had all the time in the world to just hang around and make new friends. It’s different in Amsterdam, because all of my colleagues have families.
"Most days, I just want to be at work, because then I get to actually speak to people. I couldn’t wait for the Christmas holidays to end; I didn’t know what to do, where to go or who to hang with. I was just locked up in my flat. My flatmate went home to Spain, so it was just me.
"Loneliness makes me feel worthless, like I can’t accomplish anything, like I’m not a valuable part of society. And it feels like I’m the only person in this city dealing with it. I know that's unreasonable, but it's just how I feel."
Ioana, 20, from Romania, Fashion Intern
"I started feeling lonely almost as soon as I arrived in Amsterdam to work as an intern for a fashion company. When you find yourself in a big new city with no friends, it can be really difficult. It's nice talking to my friends on Skype, but then the call ends and they go back to their busy lives, while I'm stuck in this sad cycle.
"Every weekday is the same: I work from 9 to 5, then head home to watch TV. I might go grocery shopping at some point, but without friends there aren't really any other options for me. Being stuck in this routine makes me feel really anxious and powerless. It’s a vicious cycle – I feel weak because I don’t do anything, and because I don’t do anything, I feel weak. Also, my friends are far away and have their own stuff to do, so they don’t really know that I’m so alone in this city.
"I actually feel loneliest when I'm commuting, on the Metro. I just stare at people with families and friends, and wish that I, like them, had something to do and people to do it with. Their happiness and general well-being triggers my loneliness."
Jeff Cully has a unique window into an exclusive world of obscene wealth, marauding development, and breathtaking beauty. He’s been hanging out of helicopters as an aerial photographer for nearly three decades. Now, shooting primarily over the Hamptons, Cully enjoys the view while he gets paid to capture the sprawling summer playgrounds of billionaires and celebrities.
Cully got his start working as an assistant for acclaimed photographer Thomas Kelly. “I had just turned 19 and was in the back of an army helicopter—a French Alouette that probably should have been mothballed decades earlier—with the big bay doors off, cruising over Kathmandu. That hooked me,” he said.
VICE talked to him about the close calls, eccentric clients, and why even the most intimidating rollercoaster has nothing on a helicopter.
VICE: How do you end up an aerial photographer in the Hamptons? Jeff Cully: I had done summer sessions [in photography] at the Rochester Institute of Technology starting in eighth grade. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I ended up overseas for a few years after high school—I went to South Asia and the Middle East. Then San Francisco, East Village… and then moved out to the beach. I summered there growing up and always had wanted to live there. Plus, it’s a rather beautiful area both photographically and to live in. The money is great in season but it’s much more about the area itself than the money.
Who hires you? In recent years, I was flying three to four times a week—[working for] real estate, advertising, film work, custom builders, home owners, the news (ABC, NBC, CNN, Bloomberg TV, Business Insider, NYT). People love aerial views/footage. The Hamptons are always a hot item in the summer.
How does a typical shoot go? You plot your route, double-check the night before, go over the route with the pilot on the laptop before you even get in, preflight the helicopter with the pilot. Load in your gear, take the door off, strap in, and hope the weather stays good.
Most aerial photogs get a list of locations, fly them, shoot/film them and that’s it. I take my lists and then add everything/anything in between the assigned locations and never stop shooting or filming during the flights. That led to being known as the “Hamptons stock” guy for news outlets, magazines, TV, etc. I have a 63TB collection of “all things Hamptons” that many have drawn from over many years.
What’s it like? Trust in thy seatbelt is the motto. You’re strapped in a seat and leaning almost completely out with the camera in your hand. Occasionally you’re sitting on the floor with no seat, feet on the skids. It’s sensory overload. Even as you’re filming, you’re watching the gauges, you’re looking for places to land, just in case. I’ve been flying with the same guys for over 20 years—they’re agricultural aviation guys. The communication [with your pilot] is critical. The coordination of the movement is almost like a ballet.
What are some memorable residences you’ve photographed? There’s a lot of excess out here. [Industrialist and junk bond king] Ira Rennert’s Fair Field Estate in Sagaponack, NY. This place is nuts. It was America’s biggest residential compound—it’s sprawling and ridiculous. Multiple pools, gardens that go on and on, multiple tennis courts side-by-side. It’s completely over-the-top. Though his gardens create some really cool patterns so it photographs beautifully.
And David Tepper—he tore down the house because he didn’t like the view of the sunrise or something. He wanted to rotate the angle of the house about a degree and a half from what was there before. I caught Tepper and his girlfriend on the upper deck of his house a couple of times. The man probably hates me, but that’s OK. Yep, that’s me again, coming over your house, running circles around it at 8 in the morning with that whup-whup-whup. If you look down at his compound, his pool looks like a penis with two giant balls. You get a mix—from the extremely eccentric to wealthy people who are extremely normal. It’s the full range. Any client that puts me in the air, I’m pretty happy with.
Any weird occurrences? One time I saw smoke, so we diverted and headed towards it. It was like this gazillion square foot house on fire. We were there before the fire department. We stayed up top and went around and around. They were some incredible pictures of this (relatively new) monstrosity of a mansion burning down.
I was working on this campaign for Hustler Powerboats, these million dollar plus, 50-foot race boats that go incredibly fast. We were filming this brand new model out on the ocean, probably five or six feet off the deck—right over this boat. And we blew the primary hydraulic system. What we realized when we got back, was that we coated the boat from bow to stern (and the owner and his wife and best friends) with hydraulic fluid. Things like that happen!
Any close calls? Yeah. It’s an occupational hazard. We refer to them as “in-flight incidents.” It’s not a lot of fun. In tight turns—downdrafts, crosswinds, mechanical failures—you get those oh dear god moments. Even as the photographer, you’re always looking around for a place to land if everything goes to hell. Auto rotation is an interesting experience—that when you lose all power. So you point the stick all the way forward, drop the nose so you’re going straight towards the ground, building up enough power in the rotors. At the very last minute, you jack the stick back, release the transmission, and (hopefully) land softly. That’s not something I would wish on anyone.
What was your weirdest assignment? The first time Anthony Weiner screwed up—I don’t normally do paparazzi stuff—but what that shot would have been worth if we’d got him out on the deck or something. We went from location to location around the Hamptons, and ended up buzzing around Jon Stewart’s house in Sag Harbor, where he was supposedly staying. We went searching for Weiner, but we got nothing.
How expensive are your shoots? More photographers like working from [fixed wing] planes. It’s safer, it’s slower and it’s a quarter of the price. But I consider planes a pain in the butt. It takes a lot longer and you’re limited to your angles. A helicopter is high energy, but it’s not cheap. If you take up an R66, you’re looking at $1,200-$1,800 an hour, just for the airframe. No peanuts or drink service, obviously. You can easily spend $30,000-$40,000 a year on helicopter rentals, on the low end.
Drones are increasingly used for aerial footage now. What’s lost? At some point, they’ll probably be able to emulate the movement of a handheld in a helicopter, but right now—you can almost always tell its drone footage. Between a good pilot and what I can do with a handheld camera—you just can’t get that with the drone.
Jeff Cully.
What traits do you need to be a great aerial photographer? You need a really good eye. Gotta be able to multitask on a level most people couldn’t dream of. You gotta know the equipment. Situational awareness. And you better be a pretty damn good photographer. You have to be willing to get into a helicopter. They don’t glide—they drop like stones. I’d never take a girlfriend or significant other up in a helicopter with me—never have, never will. Not going to put both of us in that situation at the same time.
If you're going to participate in the yearly monetary mad dash to someone's heart—also known as Valentine's Day—please steer clear of celebrating your loved ones with stale candy and played-out rose bouquets! Handcrafted arrangements that are both personalized and functional to show you care are the way to go. Try arrangements inspired by their favourite bodega snack or greasy dinner, or get straight to the point and use your butt as a vase! Revisit childhood pranks with their favorite flower or completely smother them in a sea of petals! This year, avoid boring and generic arrangements, and think of a more thoughtful approach to gifting dead flowers!
Jessica Pettway is a photographer based in NYC. You can follow her work here.
Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.
US News
Stormy Daniels Got Money Directly from Trump Attorney, He Says Michael Cohen revealed he gave Stormy Daniels $130,000 of his own money shortly before the 2016 election. “Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly,” said Cohen. He did not explain why he paid her the sum.—The New York Times
Democrat Wins Special Election in Florida Margaret Good beat Republican James Buchanan by seven points in the contest for a state legislative seat in the 72nd district—an area that favored Donald Trump in 2016. The victory marks the 36th time a state seat has changed from red to blue since Trump was elected. Good said people “still have hope that there’s going to be something better than our current administration."—The Washington Post
ICE Lawyer Charged in Identity Theft Scheme Raphael A. Sanchez, the just-resigned chief counsel for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Seattle, has been indicted on identity theft and wire fraud charges. Sanchez was accused of using names or documents (or both) belonging to at least seven immigrants to swipe money from credit card companies.—AP
Intelligence Chiefs Warn of Russian Threat to Midterms Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and other US spy chiefs told the Senate Intelligence Committee the Russians will likely meddle in this year’s congressional elections. Coats said he expected the Kremlin to use “social media, false flag personas," and "sympathetic spokesmen” to try to “exacerbate social and political fissures in the United States.”—CNN
International News
Netanyahu Faces Possible Charges in Corruption Probe Investigators are gunning for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust charges against Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, claiming they've dredged up “sufficient evidence” of corruption. Israeli’s attorney general will now decide whether to indict Netanyahu, who insists there is “nothing” in the claims. He is accused of accepting expensive gifts and conspiring with a newspaper editor to thwart a rival publication.—VICE News
French President Threatens Air Strikes in Syria Emmanuel Macron said he would authorize strikes on Syrian facilities provided there is clear evidence Bashar al-Assad’s forces continue to use chemical weapons against civilians. The threat came amid reports that the regime used chlorine gas to attack the fading rebellion over the past two months.—BBC News
South African Police Raid President's Business Associates Three people were arrested after officers searched the Johannesburg home of the Gupta family, who are closely tied to embattled President Jacob Zuma. Police confirmed the raid on the Gupta home—as well as that of the managing director of one of the family’s companies—were linked to a corruption investigation.—The Guardian
Dozens of Immigrants Killed or Hurt in Libya Truck Crash At least 19 people were killed and 78 others injured when a truck packed with immigrants rolled over about 50 miles outside Bani Walid. The Libyan town is known to be a focal point for human traffickers and African immigrants attempting to reach Europe.—Reuters
Everything Else
Shaun White Wins Landmark Gold Medal, Blows Off Harassment Question The US snowboarder came out on top in the halfpipe at the Olympics in Pyeongchang, becoming the first male athlete to win three golds in snowboarding events. It’s also the 100th gold medal claimed by the US in the history of the winter games. But sexual harassment allegations against the athlete stemming from a 2016 suit loomed over the accomplishment.—NBC News / AP
Minnie Driver Resigns as Oxfam Ambassador The actress cut ties with the NGO amid a scandal over staffers patronizing young sex workers in Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. Driver said she was “horrified” by the allegations and disappointed by the “abhorrent mistakes of a troubling organization.”—CNN
The Lonely Island Sign Up for Clusterfest 2018 The trio will perform live at the Comedy Central festival in San Francisco this summer. Jon Stewart, Desus & Mero, and Tiffany Haddish are also set to appear at the three-day event in June.—Pitchfork
‘Atlanta’ Debuts a New Trailer The FX network dropped a full-length trailer for the second season of Donald Glover’s acclaimed show. In it, Paper Boi moves up in his rap career, Earn gets his hands on some cash, and Darius warns that “robbin’ season” is in full swing.—VICE
New Kendrick Lamar Collaboration Out The rapper features on a new track by Nipsey Hussle called “Dedication,” which premiered on Beats 1 radio Tuesday. The song is off the Californian artist’s upcoming album Victory Lap.—Noisey
Transgender Player Accepted into Australian Football League Endures Online Scorn The Australian Football League (AFL) approved Hannah Mouncey to play in the women’s league at least at the state level, having blocked her entirely last year because she is trans. Mouncey was hit with a barrage of abusive online messages in the wake of the decision.—VICE
Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we'll hear about five powerful black women who are creating spaces for other women and people of color across a range of industries.
My cousin recently called me from Loddon Prison and told me with adolescent enthusiasm about his preparations for his girlfriend's Valentine’s Day visit. I imagined Valentine’s Day in jail would be less material, because it’s an environment undiluted by the merchandise of romance; the obligatory fine dining, bouquets of roses. But I was wrong.
Inmates are cashing in on the business of Valentine’s Day by creating gifts for their fellow inmates. The items for sale include flower bouquets arranged from the prison yard, custom cakes baked in the kitchen, and illustrated portraits, all of which are permitted inside the visit rooms.
VICE spoke to some of these prisoners about the romantic rackets providing their fellow inmates with gifts to bestow on their partners.
Andre, 27 Serving four years for aggravated burglary I met my girlfriend Christy through a mutual friend inside. Christy is best mates with his missus. She would visit him and I twisted his arm to introduce us on a visit. She was wearing nike tracksuit pants with volleys and these flashy rings I complimented her on but she told me they were fake. It was funny as. I was obsessed with her as soon as I’d seen her. Jail makes you like that, a bit loopy, you think of things over and over again.
I’m a leader in the kitchen so a favour for me gets you a long way. I wanted to become a chef and got my certificate from Holmesglen. But what I’m famous for is baking all the cakes on Valentine’s Day for the inmates to [share] with their partners during their visit.
Inmates can order special items for their visits on Valentine’s day and usually if they’re from a separate unit, they will call me to the fence or come passed my cell to make custom requests. Some blokes will look after me with shit you can’t get like buep, smokes or usb sticks. Unfortunately, I’m pretty limited with my ingredients, we just stick to sponge cakes but I’m a bit of a magician with the icing and that’s all that counts in the end.
I’ve made cakes for a well-known underworld hitman; this year he wanted a cake that had him and his wife on a boat off the portsea pier. I baked a cake for a Bandidos bikie that had a Harley Davidson with love hearts coming out of the exhaust pipes. I even baked a cake for the warden that had a heart surrounded by a barbed wire fence and cameras looking at it. Doubt he gave it to his missus though.
Mohendra, 32 Serving five years for fraud My wife is in Hyderabad. I don’t have a chance to email her or hear from her on the phone so I write to her a lot. It’s hard because I get very excited about Valentine’s day and I know back home no one really cares about it. But in here we think about love a lot, even though everyone is busy at the gym looking tough.
The week before Valentine’s, I will go through the gardens and have friends from other units collect [flowers] from their yards for me. I collect all the old newspapers and paint them in bright colours in the art room. I’ll take everything back to my cell and begin arranging the flowers and wrapping them according to colours and shapes of the flowers. One of the prison officers bought me a book about flower arrangements in Japan. It talks about flower giving as pulling nature and humanity together, which in hinduism we believe too. No one in here is really into specific types of flowers unless they are roses, they mainly just look for the colours and see which ones work with the others. But they understand how important receiving flowers are especially when you find them in a shithole like prison.
I’m proud because it makes me feel really good when the boys come out from their visit and tell me how their wife started crying when he gave her the flowers. I do the same thing when a relative of someone inside passes or gives birth. Shame I can’t send any to my own, but that’s life, you reap what you sow.
Nathan, 22 Serving six years for aggravated assault I was into graffiti as a young teen. My parents weren’t around so I’d always be out and about with the boys running amuck on the train line. [Then I] started fucking up and caught some weightier charges. When I finally got settled inside, I started decorating my cell with drawings of comic book characters fucking each other. I thought it was funny. But everyone liked my drawings; they’d all always say the same thing: “The drawings were mad but the ideas were fucked.” But they were funny.
Soon enough, blokes were getting me to tag their names and draw pieces at the bottom of their letters. The word spread faster than a rumour and before I knew it I had a line of blokes outside my cell wanting me to make shit for them. So I capitalised on it, and [in exchange] got all sorts of weird and wonderful shit, a lot of which you aren’t supposed to have. The month before Valentine's day is the busiest time for me, I’m basically in my cell the whole time and the time really flies, its grouse.
I drew some kinky sex drawings last week that some blokes were sending to their girls on Valentine’s Day, saying they were going to do it to them which made it really awkward because I had to imagine his girl naked and being fucked while he describes it to me. I’ve done some portraits of the guys in their cells, they are probably my favourite because naturally I’m into the darker side of prison life. It’s the side that doesn’t get shown I think, like the overdoses, the officers fucking over inmates and taking away our smokes. Bit of a grim reminder to be sending your loved ones though, but the blokes in here want the world to feel sorry for them, the blame the world and think it was society that put them in here when in reality they ran out of drug money and stuck up a milk bar.
For my girlfriend, I drew a picture of me in my room at home, smoking a ciggy while my girlfriend is on my bed ripping a bong, while the speakers blast our song, “Passenger” by Powderfinger. I think when I draw snapshots like that for the boys it makes their girlfriends feel that moment in their heads. I put a lot of thought into it. Keeping busy and drawing out my dreams, you do really easy time man. And it connects you to your partner every time they look at it because it came from your head.
Last Valentine's I wrote about breakups. It was about all the misshapen, tear-soaked hedonism you experience in the first year after a breakup, and it was easy to write because I’d been in character. Method writing, if you will. But then some of you said you liked it. Some of you even said it was relatable, which I guess was kind of sad. But this Valentine’s I’d like to try something different. And I hope that some of you will find it just as relatable, but for better reasons.
So here’s some stuff that happens when you fall in love.
The First Date
All dates start the same. You give your hair one last glance in the reflection of a perspex menu board, inhale, and step inside a bar. You’re nervous because you’re about to be judged. But then you’re also about to judge the shit out of someone, so it’s equal.
You see your date across the room. They’re sitting at the bar, fiddling with their phone, and not wearing a hat. So far so good. Then as you approach you do a kind of full body scan to see if they’re hot, while also trying to predict the future. Is this person smart? Optimistic? Funny? You imagine yourself squirting them in the face with a garden hose—would they laugh? And now they’re looking up as you approach and your eyes are meeting. Does this person have kind eyes? Blue eyes? Are they wearing so much mascara that your own eyes water? Do they have those really long eyelashes that remind you of woodland animals and posters of boy bands?
And now they’re standing to hug you and just before you lean in you glance down and wonder to yourself, would I?
Usually judging is disappointing, but this time it’s not. This time you sit down without wondering how you’ll leave, but instead you feel terrified that they might. And you’re terrified because your date is deeply, aggressively beautiful and you really, really, really don’t want to fuck this up.
So you start talking but it’s rough. You’re both talking over the top of each other and swerving between topics. No topic lasts more than 45 seconds. You find yourself saying something deep and meaningful just as the other person is asking, you got much on for the weekend? And then you’ll try to backtrack and tell them about your weekend—but they’ve committed to saying something deep and meaningful. It’s a total bloodbath, but it doesn’t matter because you’re both laughing riotously and bumping kneecaps. And you both know it’s on.
After drinks you get dinner. You can’t really taste anything so you don’t eat much but the bill somehow comes in at $470 and you don’t even care. You stumble outside and kiss furiously next to some bins until someone—not you—says they’d better go. And then you watch their cab pull away from the curb and recede into the distance before finally allowing yourself to burst into flames.
The Day After the First Date
You wake up feeling fantastic even though you drank 30 bottles of wine. You go to work and spend the whole morning looking at Instagram photos, then going through all of their Facebook photos, and then circling back to Instagram, and then you repeat this process until lunchtime. There are photos of parents, holidays, foods, sisters, friends, beaches, and millions of dogs. Millions and billions of photos of dogs, and oh boy, do you appreciate dogs. I just can’t believe this person has exes, you think. Like, why would anyone ever break up with you? But then there they are, halfway down the Insta archive—the ex.
You look at the ex carefully. They’re wearing nice clothes. They don’t seem to have that blinking in photos problem that you do. In fact, they look… professional, which now feels like a reflection on the person you’re trying to date. Maybe they’re out of your league, you think. Maybe you’re kidding yourself.
But in the time it’s taken you to get halfway through Instagram, you’ve received three new texts. One of them is reference to a conversation you barely remember because you were looking at the way your date had an incredibly endearing dimple, but only on one side. The next text is a meme you don’t understand at all. The last is an invitation: “Look, I know I’m being ridiculous and optimistic” you read off the phone. “So seriously just say no, but maybe, possibly, maybe, perhaps, maybe you’d like to get dinner tonight?”
You wonder if this is what heroin feels like. And then you reply: “I’d love to.”
Seeing Their Place After the Second Date
The second date sees communication channels open up. You discover you like the same books. You do voices from the Mighty Boosh. You tell all your best embellished stories and they call bullshit, and you realise that they’re smarter than you and you feel intimidated and aroused. And then someone calls an Uber and you’re going to see their place.
In the spectrum of human emotion there is no better feeling than being impressed. And when you step inside the strange, unfamiliar-smelling home of someone you’re falling in love with, impressed hits you like a frozen ham.
Their home features layers of style and creativity and overall cleanliness you’d never imagined possible. Giant rainforest plants, the colour of limes. A wooden desk featuring some kind of arts and craft project, half-finished. A bed, nicely made. And then a song starts up and it’s the perfect song—instantly catchy but the right amount of obscure—and again you feel intimidated because even their music is cool. But there’s something else too, something that takes you a moment to place. What’s that smell? And you realise it’s a smell you’ve been smelling for two days but you’ve only just noticed. And it’s the smell of deodorant, laundry detergent, coffee grinds, and a person’s soul, all together, turned way up. And you stand there inhaling and exhaling and inhaling like an idiot.
And then you have awkward but spectacular unprotected sex because you both figure you’re about to date anyway.
The Weeks After
The first month of dating is the funniest you’ll ever be. Whatever you think, you say, and you say it with the kind of irreverent conviction that comes with knowing you’re saying it to your number one fan. You start doing funny voices together. You push each other over in long grass. You make funny faces and crack jokes about each other’s genitalia. You go to the park on Saturdays and criticise other couples because they not as unique and special as you are. And the cracks about the other couples are some of the funniest things you’ll ever hear.
The days move past like you’re on holiday. You go to more places, you eat more food, you drink more wine and far less beer. You go camping. You go driving. You take long walks together after work. You suddenly you feel like you’ve been together for a trillion years but it’s only been a month. And then one day...
You Realise it Actually Might Be Love
Of course, you’ll have been suspecting this for a while. But one day something happens which would have sent your ex bonkers, but leaves your new partner unperturbed. And as you watch this new person shrugging and smiling, you realise how you feel.
Like you’re late. Or the car breaks down. Or it rains. Or someone was cracking onto you at a dinner party. Or you forget to ask “how’d the meeting go?” Or you left in the morning without putting your plate in the dishwasher. Or you insist on talking about a topic they’re not comfortable discussing. Or you feel vulnerable when you’re supposed to be strong. Or any number of things that your ex would have faced with three days of frowning of determined silence. But that doesn’t happen. This new person just smiles and says, “Yeah it’s all good, I understand” and just like that, you’re in love.
You Say “I Love You”
You’ll raise this with your best friend a few days before: “I think I’m in love,” you’ll say, kind of running your words together because you’re embarrassed. “And I want to say it—but what if they don’t say it back?” And your best friend will tell you to stop being a baby and just go for it, which is what all best friends say about everything.
So you decide they’re right, and you’ll say it that night, and you practice a few versions in your head. You know what the thing about you is..? Look, I have to tell you something... Hey this might sound weird but.. And you’re still practicing that night over dinner when somehow you just slip the word love into a sentence that was meant to contain the word like.
The person across the table will smile. “I didn’t mean that!” you protest but they’re now grinning and you know the game is up. “Alright, fuck it,” you say. “I do love you.”
