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Some Guy Drove a Car Into Oklahoma’s Ten Commandments Monument, Satanic Statue’s Future Is Uncertain

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Photo by the author

Last night an Oklahoma man who reportedly heard voices in his head drove a car into the Ten Commandments monument at the Oklahoma State Capitol building. As you can see in the picture below from Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, he got it pretty good.

If this had been any other Ten Commandment monument on any other government property I probably wouldn't care about this news. Hell, I might even like it. But because this guy rammed into the larger-than-life tablets standing on the Oklahoma Capitol building grounds, the likelihood of the Satanic Temple's Baphomet monument becoming a reality is in jeopardy. If you recall, the hell beast, which we published the first pictures of in May, was specifically designed for the Capitol building as a response to the Ten Commandments. The Baphomet was meant to serve as a counterweight to the Commandments and a symbol of religious tolerance. Were it installed today, it would just be a ridiculously wicked statue standing all on its own, and that's not what Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucian Greaves wants.

In a statement issued a couple of hours ago, Greaves said, "The Satanic Temple will not seek to erect its monument unless the 10 Commandments is restored. Oklahoma City has the option to wait until the ACLU’s case regarding the legal status of the 10 Commandments is resolved before it permits its replacement. However, if the 10 Commandments is immediately reconstructed, our monument will be ready for unveiling quite soon."

The ACLU's case against the Commandments, filed in August of 2013, was based on their belief in a "constitutional prohibition on using state property to support particular religions or sects." Last month a judge in Oklahoma county ruled that the biblical tablets were constitutional. The ACLU responded by taking the matter up as an appeal with the state’s Supreme Court.

But none of these legal battles matter if the Commandments aren’t rebuilt, and, more importantly, the Baphomet will never make its way down to Oklahoma. Thankfully, Governor Fallin is committed to helping resurrect the monument.

According to Fox 25, “Governor Mary Fallin today condemned the violence against the Ten Commandments Monument at the Oklahoma State Capitol and volunteered to help raise private funds to restore it.”

For his part, the man suspected of crashing into the tablets was arrested today by the Secret Service after showing up at the Oklahoma City Federal Building and threatening Obama. He also claimed Satan told him to run over the monument, and that he took a piss on it before mowing it down, which is actually pretty fucking metal. He is currently at Oklahoma County medical facility.

You can read the Satanic Temple's statement on the incident below. In the meantime let’s all hope the Commandments make a comeback so the Baphomet can find a home in Oklahoma City.

The Satanic Temple Publicly Condemns 10 Commandment Monument Destruction in Oklahoma
 
Following reports that a stolen car was driven into the 10 Commandments monument in Oklahoma City, The Satanic Temple condemns the action as “deplorable”
 
This morning, October 24, The Satanic Temple (TST) received reports that a driver in a stolen car rammed into the 10 Commandments monument at the Oklahoma state Capitol and fled the scene. As of this writing all that seems to be known of the culprit, now in custody, is that he is bi-polar, claims to have been motivated by voices in his head, and he allegedly identifies himself as a Satanist. Expressing concern for the individual’s apparent mental illness, TST spokesperson, Lucien Greaves, also wasted no time in assuring the public that such rogue, destructive actions enjoy no support whatsoever from the Temple.
 
Greaves states, “The Satanic Temple was appalled to learn of the act of destructive vandalism laid upon the 10 Commandments monument in Oklahoma today. As many are aware, we are seeking to have a Satanic monument erected alongside the 10 Commandments -- and only alongside the 10 Commandments. We do not want our monument to stand alone. If our monument stands at the state Capitol, we want it to compliment and contrast the 10 Commandments, with both standing unmolested as a testament to American religious freedom and tolerance. We hope that by respecting religious liberty in allowing our monument to be displayed, Oklahoma will help ameliorate any animosity between differing perspectives, not cultivate them.”
 
“Ever since we began construction on our statue of Baphomet, we have received many angry letters from self-identified Christians who have sworn to destroy our monument immediately following its erection. We have also received no small amount of letters of support from self-identified Christians who approve of our efforts to assert our American Constitutional values of religious liberty. Zealots, acting under the label of any religion, are zealots just the same, and we hope everyone realizes how crass and deplorable even the suggestion of actions, such as that witnessed today, are. Reports currently maintain that the culprit was acting at the behest of voices in his head, and his actions seem to be a product of personal disturbance. Vandalism finds no support within the Satanic community.”
 
“To be clear, The Satanic Temple will not seek to erect its monument unless the 10 Commandments is restored. Oklahoma City has the option to wait until the ACLU’s case regarding the legal status of the 10 Commandments is resolved before it permits its replacement. However, if the 10 Commandments is immediately reconstructed, our monument will be ready for unveiling quite soon.”

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A Few Impressions: Some Books That Defy the Straight White Male Tradition

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Image by Gerry Weber

Last week I published a portion of my reading list for grad school. Looking back on it, I realized how few women or writers of color I included, and I think it misrepresented the type of work that I’m interested in. So this week, I’ve compiled a list of writers who aren't straight white dudes. I know I've now left out a bunch of other groups, but this is at least an alternative list of books that have been important to me.

1. Walt Whitman – Leaves of Grass (1855)

The godfather of queer lit. I got to study Whitman with the master of Whitman studies—Michael Warner. Check out his “Whitman Drunk” essay.

2. Emily Dickinson – The Poems of Emily Dickinson (1891)

The lonely master. With Whitman, she's one of our American foreparents.

3. Marcel Proust – Swann’s Way (1913)

Just about the best study of a man obsessed (both the character and the writer of the book). I read this thing at least once every three years.

4. Virginia Woolf – Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

A classic.

5. Virginia Woolf – Orlando (1928)

Queer studies at its finest.

6. Hart Crane – White Buildings (1926)

There are some great poems in here. I particularly like,“My Grandmother’s Love Letters” and the “Voyages” series. It was before he got weird and opaque.

7. Hart Crane – The Bridge (1930)

There are some great poems in here too—this is after he got weird and opaque.

8. Jean Genet – Our Lady of the Flowers (1943)

9. Jean Genet – Querelle (1947)

Queer rebel.

10. Dorothy Hughes – In a Lonely Place (1947)


A great mystery/serial killer story that uses perspective in a great way. It was turned into a Bogart film that was directed by Nicholas Ray, starring his ex-wife Gloria Graham. The film's subject is especially interesting, considering that Ray divorced Graham after finding her in bed with his son.

11. Patricia Highsmith – Strangers on a Train (1950)


This is the old "switching places" idea, later turned into a Hitchcock classic. Raymond Chandler worked on a version of the script but didn’t get along with Hitch and was let go.

12. Patricia Highsmith – The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)


The sociopath that we want to love.

13. Carson McCullers – Ballad of the Sad Café (1951)

Classic.

14. William Burroughs – Junky (1953)

Before Burroughs got weird, he wrote about what he knew the best—heroin. This slim book was published by Carl Solomon, who was institutionalized with Ginsberg, and to whom “Howl” is dedicated.

15. Allen Ginsberg – Howl (1955)

The most famous poem of the 20th century. There are other poems in the book, too.

16. Allen Ginsberg – Kaddish (1961)

A disturbing and moving portrait of his mother going insane.

17. Flannery O'Connor – A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955)

One of the best short stories around. Haunting.

18. Flannery O'Connor – Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (1957)

Essays on writing from a master.

19. James Baldwin – Giovanni’s Room (1956)

A classic.

20. James Baldwin – Sonny's Blues (1957)

A wonderfully structured story, recommended by one of my best teachers, Robert Boswell.

21. Truman Capote – Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958)

Very different from the movie. A beautiful little gem.

22. Truman Capote – In Cold Blood (1965)

The prose master turns his sights on true crime and creates a new genre.

23. Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)

Classic.

24. Sylvia Plath – The Colossus and Other Poems (1962)

The poems—great.

25. Sylvia Plath – The Bell Jar (1963)

The prose—great.

26. Sylvia Plath – Ariel (1966)

More great sad poems.

27. Sylvia Plath – Crossing the Water (1971)

I think these were published after her suicide.

28. John Reichy – City of Night (1963)

A classic of street hustling, and an influence on Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho.

29. Frank O'Hara – Lunch Poems (1964)

The best of the “I did this, and then I did that,” kind of poems, like “The Day Lady Died.” A beautiful confection of a book that could be read once a day.

30. Frank O'Hara – The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara (1971)

More great poetry.

31. Michel Foucault – Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (1964)

Some theory that influenced everything after.

32. Michel Foucault – Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975)

Some theory that influenced everything after.

33. Susan Sontag – Against Interpretation (1966)

Sontag is the master reader of art and life.

34. Susan Sontag – On Photography (1977)

A early examination of how we live now—in order to photograph. We take trips, do things, meet people, in order to photograph everything and to have a record.

35. Susan Sontag – Illness as Metaphor (1978)

Classic.

36. Susan Sontag – AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989)

An extension of the above, dealing with AIDS.

37. Susan Sontag – The Way We Live Now (1991)

More about AIDS.

38. Susan Sontag – Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)

An extension of the above.

39. S.E. Hinton – The Outsiders (1967)

How did she write this in high school?

40. Marianne Moore – Complete Poems (1967)

A master poet.

41. Toni Morrison – The Bluest Eye (1970)

One of our living masters.

42. Toni Morrison – Song of Solomon (1977)

Wacky, poignant, disturbing, and moving.

43. Toni Morrison – Beloved (1987)

A classic as important as The Grapes of Wrath or Moby Dick.

44. Frank Bidart – Golden State (1973)

The first book by my dear friend, it contains “Herbert White.”

45. Frank Bidart – The Book of the Body (1977)

The second book, it contains the great “Ellen West.”

46. Frank Bidart – The Sacrifice (1983)

More good stuff. Dark.

47. Frank Bidart – In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965–90 (1990)

You can see the Ginsberg influence in the title. He has Lowell in one hand and Allen in the other.

48. Frank Bidart – Desire (1997)

More good stuff. Still dark.

49. Frank Bidart – Music Like Dirt (2002)

More dark.

50. Frank Bidart – Star Dust (2005)

Dark.

51. Frank Bidart – Watching the Spring Festival (2008)

The master still has it.

52. Frank Bidart – Metaphysical Dog (2013)

An incredible book that should have won every award out there.

53. Louise Gluck – The Garden (1976)

54. Louise Gluck – The Triumph of Achilles (1985)

55. Louise Gluck – Ararat (1990)

56. Louise Gluck – The Wild Iris (1992)

57. Louise Gluck – Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry (1995)

58. Louise Gluck – Averno (2006)

59. Louise Gluck – A Village Life (2009)

60. Louise Gluck – Poems: 1962-2012 (2012)

Bidart's dear friend and a master lyricist.

61. Elizabeth Bishop – Geography III (1977)

Bidart’s other big influence. Her best book—a game changer.

62. Elizabeth Bishop – The Complete Poems: 1927–1979 (1983)

More goodness.

63. Marilynne Robinson – Housekeeping (1980)

An old school practitioner of great American writing.

64. Vito Russo – The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (1981)

A history of gay representation in film.

65. Mona Simpson – Anywhere But Here (1986)

My old teacher at UCLA. This is her own childhood, told through fiction. Great.

66. Lorrie Moore – Like Life (1990)

Some of the best short stories around.

67. Judith Butler – Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

A classic in gender studies and my mother’s childhood friend in Ohio.

68. Michael Warner – The Letters of the Republic (1990)

My teacher’s old dissertation turned into a book.

69. Michael Warner – Fear of a Queer Planet (1993)

Great.

70. Michael Warner – The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (1999)

An alternative take on where we’re going with all this gay marriage stuff and beyond.

71. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick – Epistemology of the Closet (1991)

A master of queer theory.

72. John Cheever – Journals (1991)

The master short story writer writes about his own life.

73. Tony Kushner – Angels in America (1991)

A classic in line with Death of a Salesman, Streetcar, Long Day’s Journey, and August: Osage County.

74. Thom Gunn – The Man with the Night Sweats (1992)

One of the best contemporary poets.

75. E. Annie Proulx – The Shipping News (1993)

A master.

76. E. Annie Proulx – Close Range: Wyoming Stories (1999)

Dark stories.

77. E. Annie Proulx – Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 (2004)

More.

78. E. Annie Proulx – Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3 (2008)

More.

79. Grace Paley – The Collected Stories of Grace Paley (1994)

A New Yorker through and through. You’ll fall in love with these.

80. Mark Doty – Atlantis (1995)

One of the best contemporary poets.

81. Chris Kraus – I Love Dick (1997)

A great bit of cross genre.

82. Michael Cunningham – The Hours (1998)

The Pulitzer-winning classic by my old teacher and friend.

83. Anne Carson – Autobiography of Red (1998)

Cross-genre genius.

84. Anne Carson – Nox (2010)

Longer.

85. Katherine Hayles – How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (1999)

Theory about how we interact with technology.

86. Katherine Hayles – How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis and Writing Machines (2012)

A follow-up to the above.

87. Alice Munro – Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001)

A master of short stories.

88. Gabrielle Calvocoressi – The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart (2005)

A great young poet and teacher. What passion.

89. Amy Hempel – The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel (2006)

One of my favorite teachers. A protégé of Gordon Lish.

90. Wendy Chun – Control and Freedom (2006)

Theory about the internet and how it frees us and enchains us.

91. Antonya Nelson – Some Fun Stories and a Novella (2006).

A very serious writer.

92. Deborah Eisenberg – Twilight of the Superheroes: Stories (2007)

Great short stories.

93. Deborah Eisenberg – The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (2010)

She’s married to Wally Shawn—you know, the little guy from The Princess Bride and Gossip Girl.

94. Maggie Nelson – Bluets (2009)

Experimental and moving.

95. Lydia Davis – The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (2009)

A master of the short form. These are almost like little performances on paper.

96. Stacey D’Erasmo – The Sky Below (2009)

My former teacher. So good.

97. Stacey D’Erasmo – Wonderland (2014)

Her newest. Also read her book on intimacy.

98. Jennifer Egan – A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010)

The Pulitzer-winning new classic about the music business.

Why Madonna's Unapologetic 'Bedtime Stories' Is Her Most Important Album

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Why Madonna's Unapologetic 'Bedtime Stories' Is Her Most Important Album

VICE News: VICE News Capsule

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The VICE News Capsule is a news roundup that looks beyond the headlines. This week, Turkey shifts its position on helping Kurdish fighters get to the Syrian town of Kobane, an investigation reveals an 18-year academic scandal at the University of North Carolina, South Korean scientists solve the mystery behind a "weird" dinosaur, and top drug manufacturers may collaborate to speed up production of an Ebola vaccine. 

Why Is Talking About Miscarriage Still Taboo?

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An ultrasound image of a fetus in the womb, viewed at 12 weeks of pregnancy. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

I started to miscarry nine weeks into my pregnancy. After two weeks of bleeding, the baby was gone.

Right from the beginning the pregnancy hadn’t felt right—in my head, at least. I'd been paranoid that something was wrong the whole time, experiencing a rushing feeling between my legs a few times a day. I’d dash to the toilet expecting to see blood and wouldn’t see it, but the fear would remain. It’s something I still can’t explain. Then, one morning, I woke up knowing instinctively that things were fraying, like the aura you get before a migraine. There was a small show of blood when I went to pee and I was starting to get slight cramping pains.

When I first realized I was spotting I went into a complete panic, frantically googling my symptoms day and night, reading every single story that contained the words spotting and miscarriage. I hardly slept, spending my days laid in bed playing Candy Crush (if I hear the theme tune now it makes me feel very sad). A few midwives and friends reassured me that it could be very normal, but advised me to keep an eye on the color of the blood. If it became bright red (fresh), I was to call the hospital.

Apart from the odd, crampy twinge here and there, nothing seriously worrying manifested until the end of the second week, when the blood came hard and fast. I was in agony. I called the hospital, telling them I was sure I was losing my baby, and they sent an ambulance to my house, monitoring me on our way to the hospital.

When I arrived, I was put on a stretcher right by the reception area and was waiting for about five hours to be seen. They brought me gas and air for the pain—which didn’t work—and, every time I went to the toilet, I lost more clotted blood. I was terrified.

Finally, they got me in a cubicle, put me on a drip, and did lots of tests. “Lots of women can bleed like this throughout their pregnancies,” the nurses told me. I was in an unspeakable amount of pain by this point. I knew I was losing the baby and just wanted it to happen as fast as possible. 

About eight or nine hours later I was taken up to the maternity ward, where they wanted to do an internal examination. I was brought to a small side room and asked to lie down, but before they started I had what felt like an overwhelming urge to use the bathroom. This time, when I sat down on the toilet, I knew that whatever had slid out of me (I was too scared to look) was the embryo. I walked back into the room in a complete daze for the examination, where two lovely nurses got my legs up in stirrups. I took a lot of deep breaths and just held onto my boyfriend’s hand. I had no idea what was going on.

After they’d cleaned me up, the medical team explained that the embryo was very small and that, even though I’d had a miscarriage, it didn’t mean I wouldn’t have children in the future. “It’s just very unlucky,” they said. “There was probably something wrong with the baby.” We were asked to sign a form that allowed the hospital to cremate the remains of the baby. I was in complete shock. Too shocked to cry even.

We left the hospital with a huge bag of codeine and walked, in a daze, to the bus stop, where I began texting and calling friends and family about what had happened. Then I switched my phone off. Once off the bus, walking home, I had to duck into bushes every so often to sob. The tears came in violent, retching heaves. It was a huge relief, knowing that the nightmare I knew was happening had finally happened, but I also felt completely stripped of my femaleness. It was a very odd, alien feeling. I felt like viscera. Nothing more.

Despite managing the grief by talking to a handful of friends and family each day, I became convinced that my womb was poisonous, that I could never carry a child. It became an obsession. I felt horrible and huge—the little bump that had swelled was still there, as well as the big, veiny boobs, and every time I looked in the mirror and saw my silhouette, I was reminded of the loss.

Somehow, I found the impetus to start exercising again, and that’s what pulled me from my pit of despair. Changing my physicality felt powerful. I ran and swam in the sea every day, edging my way back to the body I recognized before all the pain. Still, even though I could control my body, my mind carried on speeding.

The author, finding power in exercise

Being around friends who were pregnant, or had young babies, was impossible. My jealousy raged. Every baby I saw who was born around last November (when I was due) would stop me in my tracks. I became quietly obsessive again, looking up online how big my bump would have been on a certain week—even images of what the embryo might have looked like. To this day, I wish I’d looked down the toilet.

My partner helped me focus on the future and we talked about trying again at some point. I had to believe I was fertile, that I was just unlucky. I wanted to rush, but he helped me not push it—I needed to get my mind, if not my body, back into shape. My impatience couldn’t eclipse my need— both our needs—to process the loss. When I went to sleep at night, I thought, I'd pay every penny I had—sell all my possessions—to be nursing a big, snuffly baby. But I knew that couldn’t happen.

At the beginning of this year I began taking folic acid again and carried on with my life, knowing that, one day, I might get—and stay—pregnant again. And, if I didn’t, that we could adopt, and that would be fine, too. I recently gave birth to my first child, my beautiful daughter, on my living room floor, with no drugs and barely any input from the midwife (the gas and air stayed in a huge sports bag in the hallway). She said I was a warrior. And, despite a few despairing moments where I felt unable to carry on another second—let alone another few hours—I felt like a warrior. Writing this piece while breastfeeding my big, snuffly baby, I still do.

If I could say anything to a woman who has recently miscarried, it would be one word: talk. I still talk openly about how traumatic the whole experience was, even though I have a child, because it cannot be removed from the dialogue of my life.

For every person reading this who says, “Ew, that’s disgusting, too much information! Keep it to yourself!” there will be a woman lying in a hospital bed (or not) somewhere, bewildered and in pain, as the new life she held inside of her—that pure magic—bleeds away. And for anyone who thinks these things shouldn’t be talked about on a public platform, there is a woman carrying the guilt, shame, and confusion of losing a baby around her neck like an anvil, who might want to relay the story, blow-by-blow, so she isn’t just reliving it in her head, alone.

Everyone processes trauma in a different way, and everyone has the right to share as much or as little as they want or feel comfortable to. That's a given. Like the Miscarriage Association says: "There should be no shoulds." But the fact that it took being open about my miscarriage to make women I know share such a staining, emotional experience also made me believe, firmly, that the tabooness surrounding discussion of miscarriage must be removed. It happens every second, every minute, every day, all around us, in around 15 to 20 percent of recognized pregnancies. It's a sad act of nature that is not dictated by creed, race, or age. It's universal. 

When I began talking about what had happened with people, friends shared experiences I’d never known they’d had—how they, too, had miscarried, or had someone close to them go through it. Shared experience is an enormous comfort, even if you’re raw with pain. It’s a flicker of sunlight through the storm clouds, a little voice that says, “You’re in hell, girl. But you will recover.”

Jenna Jameson Is Writing Books and Telling Men to Stop Victim Shaming

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Jenna Jameson during the 2006 AVN Awards at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Photo by Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic.

Over the past 15 years, Jenna Jameson has gone from being the world’s most famous porn star to being a best-selling author and a mother of two. Her first memoir, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, topped the New York Times best-seller list for six weeks, and she followed that up with an erotica trilogy, the conclusion to which, Spice, comes out November 18.

Although Jameson spends her time promoting books and raising kids, she continues to prompt controversy. Last year, her messy breakup from Tito Ortiz, the father of her children, dominated headlines. While discussing the breakup and 50 Shades of Grey on Good Day New York, she infamously slurred her words. Around the same time, she said she was returning to porn via webcam to support her kids even though she had previously announced she would “never ever, ever spread my legs again in this industry.”

In the last few months, though, Jameson has made news for her advocacy work. After War Machine assaulted his ex-girlfriend, porn star Christy Mack, Jameson appeared on Dr. Drew on Call to advocate for domestic-violence victims and discuss victim blaming. “[Men] shouldn’t be taught to kill,” Jameson said. “If you’re out there on social media, support [Mack] and tell her she's a hero and a survivor.”

After reading Jameson’s erotica novel Honey, I called Jameson to discuss writing, domestic violence, and why girls refer to How to Make Love Like a Porn Star as the Bible.

VICE: What inspired your new erotica series?
Jenna Jameson: It’s a fictional book, but there’s no way that I can’t possibly derive some of the story from who I am and my experiences. At 18, I went to London to model—all by myself, scared shitless—and when I came back, I felt like a woman. I told myself, “One day, I’m gonna move to New York, even if it’s just for one year, all by myself, and just reinvent myself, and be someone else, and [learn] how that feels.” So I started this story with this girl who had that kind of a dream, and everything just kind of fell into place. I had read the whole 50 Shades of Grey deal, and you know me—I’m Jenna—so to me that was like a fluff story. It was interesting—it was sexy—but it was a fluff story. It’s kind of like watching soft porn as opposed to watching [real sex].

What will you write next?
Right now I’m working on my follow-up to How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, and I am—like always—scared shitless. [When you write] those kind of books, you’re just so raw. It’s weird because my life at the end of How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, you thought it was a fairytale ending, and my life started over again. It was so weird.

Girls love that book.
Everywhere I go, girls are like, “Jenna, come on. We need the second half of the Bible!” They call it the Bible. It’s very flattering.

Do you think girls relate to your books?
I’ve had a lot happen to me in my life, so I parallel with a lot of women. They get it—they understand the pain. They understand some of the hilarity of things like my ten commandments, deal breakers, stuff like that.

You’ve experienced drug addiction and severe trauma. Is writing therapeutic for you?
It’s a good outlet. Let me tell you—you know me, 100 percent honest—it took me about four years to write [How to Make Love Like a Porn Star]. I knew that if I was gonna write this book, I wanted it to be so real and so raw. I just wanted everything to pour out because therapy just doesn’t do it. It doesn’t do it for me because I end up debating the therapist.

Why did you decide to go public with your drug problems and about being sexually assaulted?
I can’t explain my life without the drugs. I can’t explain my life without the fact that I got raped or all those things—it’s part of me. It made me this strong girl who can get knocked down and get back up every time. I think it’s a good message to girls out there that you can get knocked down, but just get the fuck back up.

Why did you decide to start advocating for domestic-violence victims?
I have been speaking out lately about domestic violence because one of my best friends [Christy Mack] was nearly killed about a month ago. It’s sad that you have to have fame in order to get national media attention, but the same thing is happening to her that happened to other women—she’s being victimized all over again. A quick message to people out there on social media: Think before you say stuff. Because no matter how funny you might think it is, people feel those things. I remember Christy calling me from the hospital saying, “Why are they saying I deserved it because I’m a porn star?” I just couldn’t believe it. I think people really need to start changing their minds. Let’s move forward. Let’s be evolved.

You’re a big advocate for women. Does it bother you when feminists criticize you?
Feminism doesn’t have one definition. There are many, many definitions of feminism. At 18 years old, [I noticed] that this industry—the adult industry—is incredibly misogynistic, all run by men who are making the shots, telling the women what to do, and paying them next to nothing. So, I said, “As a feminist, I’m gonna go in there, and I’m gonna crack skulls, and I’ll show them how to do business.” I thought that that would empower women. I’m doing what I want, and I’m getting paid what I want, and I’m changing the industry so [men] no longer have the power—I do.

Is there a double standard when it comes to female nudity? I’ve seen people give me funny looks when I breastfeed in public.
It makes you want to get a brick and smash those people. It makes no sense to me. Why can a man go to the beach and take off his shirt and we have to worry about, “Oh my gosh, too much leg, too much this. Gotta wear pantyhose!” You know what? I’ll shove these pantyhose in your mouth and duct tape them. 

Besides advocating for women’s rights and working on your next book, what else are you working on right now?
I am actually working on an art gallery opening, so I’m painting. I’m so excited about it. I’ve always been able to draw. My dad drew, and my brother's a tattoo artist. I just never really thought about it, but when I found my sobriety, I found that painting and writing really, really helped. It calms you and lets the creative juices flow.

I’m also working on a documentary, and I’m doing it all myself. I’m shooting the whole thing myself in mixed media. I just want people to know the real deal. I really just want people to see the raw, real stuff that us girls go through, because trust me, just because I’m “Jenna Jameson the porn star” does not mean I don’t have the exact same shit: the insecurity, the worries. I haven’t got laid in nine months, you know?

Your life is way different than what people imagine.
I have hours [of footage] of me just looking into the computer crying and going, “What am I doing?” This is the stuff that girls need to see; it’s not all rainbows and butterflies and unicorns. I’m scared of it, but I’m proud of it, and I’m already thinking of my next book after that. Now that I’m older, writing is so important to me. I think every girl and every guy out there should keep a journal next to their bed. It’s so important.

Check out Jenna Jameson's erotica trilogy here. 

Follow Alexis Neiers on Twitter. 

The New Mental Health Treatments That Might Save Our Athletes

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The New Mental Health Treatments That Might Save Our Athletes

The Film That Made Me... : How 'La Dolce Vita' and 'The Great Beauty' Taught Me to Embrace Chaos

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Image by Marta Parszeniew

As a young, childless man whose job involves a lot of getting drunk with lunatics, and whose personal life is largely the same, it’s very easy to have a lot of those “What the fuck am I doing with my life?” moments. Like when you’re lining up outside a nightclub, in a shopping center in a bid to meet a reality star. Or when one of your friends throws a shopping cart at a North London rap crew during a mass brawl on New Year's Eve.

When we experience these revelations, incidents, waking fever dreams—call them what you want—sometimes they can make you wonder if life would be better if it were slightly more sedate. If you should've just gone to a middling university, met a serenely empty blonde girl named Ellie, or Jess, or Hannah at a party and stayed friends with people who have poker nights in their living rooms and take drugs once a year.

But in all this madness, this weirdness, this never-ending circle pit of bad decisions and splitting headaches, two films have been there to steer me through. Two Italian films, weirdly: Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and, more recently, Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty. Films that were made over half a century apart but could be sequel and prequel, so closely linked do they seem.

I first came across La Dolce Vita when it was given away free in a Sunday paper—fitting, as for me, the film is one of the defining chronicles of modern media. (The term "paparazzi" didn’t exist before Fellini made it the name of the snap-happy photographer in his film; a word chosen because it represented to the director "a buzzing insect... hovering, darting, stinging"—an annoying prick who can't mind his own business, basically.) For those who haven’t seen it, the film tells the loose, bewildering story of Marcello Rubini, played by Marcello Mastroianni. The Italian cinema icon is an actor whose face can veer convincingly and at any minute between suave and crumpled, classical and effeminate—helpful, given the apparently infinite facets of Rubini's character. In the most reductive terms, Fellini's lead is an intelligent, shallow, miserable, sensitive, drunk, womanizer, and throughout we are given the impression that he should really be doing something more worthwhile with his time on Earth.

Instead, he spends his late nights and early mornings getting caught up in the whirlwind of post-war Roman life: trying to chat with girls from a helicopter, driving around the empty streets with depressed heiresses, getting slapped up by American actors he’s cuckolded, drinking heavily, and going on weird assignments, like checking out falsified sightings of the Madonna.

Marcello is a journalist, a good one, but one whose work remains stuck in the superficial side of Roman life—the parties thrown by obscure royals and the holidays enjoyed by visiting American stars soaking up the massively decadent, Caligula-in-shades lifestyle of the time. With his sharp suits, great hair, and slightly bemused expression, Marcello is a pissed, lost Adonis who’s way too far through the looking glass. He’s cool, but in a totally human, flawed, and often embarrassing kind of way. He’s a weird cross between James Dean and a divorced dad.

Before you get it twisted, the reason I’ve found the film so inspiring is not that it tells the story of a handsome young writer who spends his time fighting off film stars and society beauties, but because of the way it tells you to embrace the chaos and uncertainty that life inevitably throws at you. Fellini was a great humanist, and even when he's working to depict the self-obsessed or morbidly pretentious, he manages to endow them with a real compassion and humanity. For every beautiful and batshit Scandinavian film starlet, there is Marcello’s suicidal fiancée, his ill father, the ageing prostitute whose house he visits. 

Marcello is a smart, thoughtful man whose life has come to something of a crossroads, yet while the film deals in ideas of personal crisis, there is little redemption for him, no woman there to save him. That would be far too American. So he continues to make the wrong moral choices, even as he's admiring what seem to be the right ones: a friend of his now settled into the rhythms of family life. But the moral universe and the real universe are very different things, and Fellini isn't afraid to show us this. As it turns out, Marcello's friend isn't too happy with his domesticated lot and ends up killing himself and his children. At the end, though, no great moral judgment is passed down. Just an acknowledgment that life is often hard, but sometimes sweet. That and a giant manta ray, washed up on a beach. 

The film is a bittersweet ode to chaos, its message perhaps being that while partying too much can make you miserable, lots of other things will make you miserable, too. And that, essentially, life is a great wind that carries you. (A sentiment later expressed in one of my other favorite Italian things, The Sopranos.) The first time I saw La Dolce Vita I was about 19, working in a factory that made component parts for wind turbines. Granted, not many people would think of that as a job for life, but the film forced me to consider the idea that maybe I shouldn't feel ashamed of the urge to get out and find a less rigid life. 

Another film with a love-hate relationship with “the whirlpool of the high life" is The Great Beauty, which is set in the last days of what historically was Berlusconi's Rome.

Its lead—played magnificently by Toni Servillo—is Jep Gambardella, the ultimate ageing playboy, a 65-year-old journalist who wrote one great novel in his youth but now spends more time getting off with models and doing blow with TV producers than anything to do with his career. Gambardella is the party king of Rome, like Marcello Rubini but 40 years older. For me, The Great Beauty tells the story of what might have happened to the Dolce Vita generation, if everyone grew older, and more drunk, without really changing their lifestyles at all—what that lack of redemption shown in Fellini's film meant for the rest of everyone’s lives. In Italy, there's a cliché about middle-aged bachelors still living with their mothers, and in The Great Beauty everyone is still single (even if they’re legally married), clinging onto Mother Rome in an attempt to never let the glory days slip away. In my mid-20s, this is something I feel I’m already beginning to see in my own life.

The first time I saw the trailer, I knew it was my movie. A fantastical Eurotrash cacophony of Fellini, Berlusconi, Cassano, Sarkozy, and Pavarotti. The men had crimped hair, calzone bellies, cokefaces, pinstriped shirts, and red pants. The women looked like they could ruin your life with the flick of their hair. It was loud, it was brash, it was Italy.

The first time I saw the actual film, I fell in love within minutes. It kicks off with an extended rooftop party sequence somewhere in the Roman skyline. I wanted to live inside it. For some, the aspirational life depicted in American teen films—a life of big houses, close families, and grid-like coming-of-age moments—is the cinematic ideal they lust after most. But for me, it’s 200 shitfaced Italians dancing on a roof.

The whole scene is just so wildly, brilliantly perfect. The fact that the song they're all dancing to is by Bob Sinclar, hands down the most ludicrous DJ on earth, was the icing on the cake. It is pure, pure chaos—a riot of spousal aggression, lechery, dilapidated glamor girls, dogs in bags, and a mariachi band.

In essence, it's a bleak scene, full of people doing stuff they seem way too old to be doing, but the hedonism is so raw, the aesthetic so devoid of anything approaching credibility, that it somehow immediately became the coolest thing I’d ever seen. When, later on in the film, Jep states that, “I didn’t just want to live the high life, I wanted to be the king of the high life... I wanted not just to go to the best parties, but to have the power to make parties fail,” you know that this is not just a film about people going through a phase. It's about people whose lives are defined by disarray.

In fact, the film suggests that hiding behind every great party is an even greater sadness, and that some people, no matter how hard they try, may never be able to escape from that. There’s a cliché that if you get drunk a lot, your life is shallow, and you’re probably seeking to fill some kind of gaping hole with alcohol. Both films seem to believe this, but with their typically European lack of interest in redemption or closure, it's never really said what that hole might be. (Something about girls, perhaps.) Instead, we come closer to the idea that maybe chaos is just what some people are, no matter how much they try to pull clear of party gravity. And in doing so, both films suggest that such a life is not devoid of meaning, not free from redemption, nor depth, but rather something to share with others who also can’t quite function in a world of order.

Towards the end of The Great Beauty, there’s a moment in which Jep is having some kind of profound episode at a party, watching the rest of his ageing bohemian friends dance further towards the abyss—but in an instant, that moment is shattered when he is forced into a conga line to the sounds of Yolanda Be Cool’s “We No Speak Americano.”

And I realized then that that’s how I see life: as brief moments of reflection shattered by chaos. The only thing to do with it is get stuck.

Follow Clive on Twitter.


Comics: Campfire Friends in Spellwich

A Synthetic Drug Called Spice Is Ravaging Russia

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A Synthetic Drug Called Spice Is Ravaging Russia

'Dinner with Igor' Will Make You Wish You Ate Brunch with More Porn Stars

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Last month Nate "Igor" Smith—probably best known for running the party- and girl-centric photo blog Driven by Boredom—set up a Kickstarter to raise $1,000 for a book that would feature photos of his friends during meals. Amazingly, he hit his goal in a single day, and is now nearing the $3,000 mark with just a few days left. What sets Igor's photos apart from all those terrible foodie Instagram posts? Igor may just be shooting pictures of his friends eating, but his friends are all porn stars, actors, and celebrities.

We feel partly responsible for the project, because in 2012, VICE published a collection of Igor's photos called "Dinner with Porn Stars." An image of future VICE contributor Stoya drinking a milkshake went viral, and the internet erupted in demands for the photos to be turned into a book. Now, following the success of Igor's first Kickstarter (which raised $3,300 to print a book called Get Your Kicks), he decided to see if people were still interested in a "Dinner with Igor" book. They were.

Igor's Kickstarter rewards involve everything from copies of the book, signed prints, and even a dinner with Igor himself if you give more than $500 (no one's taken him up on that yet). He may have already hit his initial goal, but if he raises $3,000, he's planning to throw a big party in NYC.

It sounds pretty cool, so I got in touch with Igor to ask some questions. Igor answered them in the midst of photographing Iggy Pop in Miami. I need some different friends.

VICE: When'd you start snapping photos of your friends during meals?
Igor Smith: In 2008 I made an effort to start carrying a point-and-shoot 35-mm camera with me everywhere I went. I tend to meet up with friends over food, so I started shooting food photos pretty much as soon as I started carrying around the camera. 

Who's picking up the check? Are you buying the burgers because you're taking photos, or are you guys going Dutch?
If I shoot a model or something and we go eat after, I will usually pick up the check. A bunch of these photos are from dates, so I usually pay then, too. But I don't think I bought anyone food specifically so that I could take a photo of them eating.

Don't people kind of hate to be photographed with their mouths stuffed full of food?
It depends on the person. Some people hate it, some people think it's funny. The better friends I am with them, the less I care what they think. 

Instagram and Facebook are already full of shitty photos of people smiling over plates of eggs benedict. No one is giving those guys money for a photo book—but they're giving it to you. How'd you end up buddying up with so many porn stars and celebrities?
I shoot naked babes and music festivals and parties for a living, so I tend to hang out with a lot of interesting people—but not everyone in the book is a close friend. I just took a photo of Aziz Ansari eating a burger backstage at his Madison Square Garden show and I think I'm going to find a place for it in the book. I know Aziz a little bit, but it's not like he and I get brunch together. 

What's the draw to seeing famous people eating? Does it make them seem more real and human or something?
There are people that probably feel that way, but those people are reading US Weekly and not collecting arty hipster photo zines. The celebrity shit is the media hook, but the book is less about famous people and more about sitting across from someone bonding over a meal... Then doing that 200 times and making a book out of it.

When you're not shooting porn stars drinking milkshakes, what kind of photography work do you do?
I like to think of myself as some sort of documenter of subculture. Really I just take photos of drunk people, naked women, juggalos, and whatever I can convince people to pay me to photograph. 

You crowdfunded Get Your Kicks too, right? Tell me about how that went. 
I wanted to do a serious photographic road trip, but I didn't know how to pay for it. I decided that if I brought some naked ladies along with me, I could get people interested. Really, I just wanted to travel the country taking photos and emulate people like William Eggleston and John Margolis. But the fans of my photography seem to be a lot more interested in naked women than roadside attractions.

I pitched people on the idea of doing a black-and-white photocopied zine with most of the donated money going to pay for a Route 66 road trip. I ended up loving the stuff I shot so much that I found a printer who could do short-run books, and I was able to print 250 copies of a photo book from the trip.

The book sold out in a month and inspired me to keep doing these self-published, small-run books. I also loved the crowdfunding experience, where I could gather a bunch of people who were interested in the project and walk them through the whole thing. I have backed a ton of photo books on Kickstarter and I love seeing them come together. It's been great being on the other side of that. 

Donate to the Dinner with Igor Kickstarter here.

Follow River Donaghey on Twitter.

The Early Days of London's Fabric Nightclub

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DJ Skitz (left) and Rodney P playing Fabric sometime in the early 2000s. All photos courtesy of Fabric

Meat market. That's probably the single most scathing phrase you can use to deride any nightclub, instantly summoning images of freshman college students' Jägerbomb disasters, overly handsy door staff, and the projectile vomit splash zones you have to avoid as the lights come up and you're herded out the door.

So it’s a weird irony that London’s best club is a building originally constructed as an actual meat market.

Anyone vaguely plugged into the UK's club scene—or just dance music in general—will know Fabric, the labyrinthine meat-and-poultry-storage-facility-turned-dance-mecca at Smithfield Market in London. It's the clubber’s club—a place for dance music fans to lose their minds over dubplates and drops, rather than a glorified speed dating venue with bottle service and a bag search policy.

Co-founder Keith Reilly (far right) with the rest of Fabric's founding PR and promotions team

The venue celebrates its 15th anniversary this week, but I'd doubt that many of the drum 'n' bass pilgrims or 8 AM teeth-grinders realize how much of its sustained success is bound up in the story, ethos, and character of the man I'm interviewing today, co-founder Keith Reilly.

The story begins in the name. The Reillys are one of Britain’s most notorious organized crime families, second only to north London’s infamous Adams Family—with whom they held regular battles up-and-down Caledonian Road for much of the 80s and 90s. When Keith’s Uncle John was arrested at the age of 65, he was holding 12 pounds of cocaine and, in the words of the arresting officer, “enough automatic weapons to take on the Taliban.”

But Keith insists that none of his immediate family were ever involved in that kind of business. His father was one of 15 brothers, and there was only so much armed robbery and racketeering to go around, so Keith grew up in the (mostly) legitimate world of trucking and distribution. "This is significant," he says, "as it meant that I had access to a lot of empty warehouses." 

So Keith did what any Bowie and Velvets-obsessed young man would do given the chance: He started putting on warehouse parties.

"Those nights were absolutely wild—pure garage. Not as in UK garage, but the spirit of old garage—no rules! We played anything from James Brown and Fela Kuti to Chaka Khan and the Stones... all totally illegal, but this was the late 70s, before the warehouse rave scene even existed; the police wouldn’t have known what to do even if they could catch us."

It was the anarchic spirit of those early warehouse parties, fuelled by the rise of acid house, that, in 1992, inspired Reilly to quit his CD/vinyl duplication business and start his own club. "It was a reaction to the shit that was around then," he says. "The dance scene had degenerated into happy house or handbag house, or whatever the fuck they wanted to call it. It was all stack-em-high-sell-em-cheap: stuff as many DJs on the flyer, get as many punters to the bar as possible… really nasty crap."

So Keith sold his family home and invested everything he had into creating the club he would want to go to. It took seven years—with innumerable false starts—for Fabric to become a reality. "Farringdon back then was just a shitty old industrial zone, but very central—which was perfect," he recalls. "The space itself was unrecognizable—it took two years of structural work to turn it into a club, but I had the eye from doing warehouse parties… I walked in and I just knew."

But a gift for spotting the perfect location doesn't necessarily mean guaranteed success. "Everyone else in the industry thought we were mad," says Keith. "There was this big West End club called Home that was opening a month before us. I remember one agent, who’s actually a good friend now, came down and was like:

"You do realize Home is opening a month before you?"

"Yeah."

"And you do realize their resident DJs are Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling."

"Yeah."

"Well, who are your residents?"

"Terry Francis and Craig Richards."

"Who the fuck are they?"

"They’re my friends."

Carl Cox (left) and Craig Richards onstage at Fabric

"I realized as I said it that I must sound like a child, but I just knew I was right. You see, guys like Craig couldn’t get a decent gig then—it was all focused on the cheesy house shit, and anyone trying to do anything more sophisticated or soulful was out in the cold. So when we started Fabric our one rule was that we would never ever compromise on the music—and we never have."

As it turned out, Home folded two years later, while Craig Richards and Terry Francis’ residency at Fabric is still going strong 15-years on—making it one of the longest continuous club residencies in the history of British popular music.

Goldie onstage at Fabric

One thing that was clear from the opening night was that Fabric was answering a real demand on the London scene.

"Those first nights were carnage," recalls Cameron Leslie, the other Fabric co-founder and Reilly’s right-hand man from day one. "We had lines running around the block, and we didn’t know how to work the tills or the alarms or anything. Before opening, we didn’t have anyone to run our cloakroom—which is seriously important, as it controls the flow in and out—so I ended up calling my dad, the only person we knew who wasn’t a drugged-out lunatic, and he ran it like a military operation for the first three months."

"The only thing we did know how to work was the sound system," adds Reilly.

And it’s the sound system that sets Fabric apart as much as the booking policy. "In most other clubs, the system is the last thing they put in—it’s horrible," Reilly says. "Fabric is built around the system... it’s a constant labor of love. Even now our guys are in there all week, tinkering, trying to get it better and better. It’s another thing we’ll never compromise on."

As anyone who has danced there will know, the magic of the system at Fabric is that, in room one—along with the usual speaker set-up—there are 400 bass transducers under the floor. You feel the bass through your feet as much as you hear it. This "body sonic" system turns everyone in the room into their own little resonating chamber. Your forehead vibrates with the sound, and on a good drum ‘n’ bass night it’s an indescribable feeling.

“Yeah,” laughs Reilly, “the only problem was that, in the early days, at some of the loved-up raves, you’d get these girls who’d taken too many pills and were just sitting on the floor with big smiles, getting themselves off. It was like, ‘Fuck, we’ve just built the world’s biggest vibrator.’”

With Fabric’s immediate success came new dangers. The dealers running the UK drugs business saw a million-pound-a-month market and tried to take over. Reilly started getting serious threats, often to his home, from the kind of people you don't want to receive serious threats from.

So he was faced with a choice—call his uncles and start a gang war, or try to stay legit, facing off the gangsters on his own. "Well, you run with the hounds, you become a hound," he explains, "and I didn’t think I could run that fast. Besides, that nasty business just isn’t me. I made it very clear that I’d go to the police—which is usually something you just didn’t do with these people. It worked out alright, but it meant wearing a bulletproof vest for the first year of Fabric, and it cost me my marriage—my wife didn’t take kindly to calls in the middle of the night saying that she and the kids had to pack bags and get out of the house."

When asked the inevitable question about “one night that stands out” from those early days, Keith gets slightly misty-eyed. “Having John Peel DJ was special,” he says. “He didn’t want to do it at first—he’d had bad experiences at clubs before. But he finished the night with ‘Teenage Kicks’ and the crowd just kept chanting, then carried him out over their shoulders. He was in tears, and so were we; he was like a god to all of us—as a kid I went to sleep with his show in my ears every night.”

Talking to Keith Reilly and his team—many who are still the original lot who started Fabric 15 years ago—that John Peel spirit of musical exploration shines through. Reilly is emphatic: "All these dance music fashions and genres have come and gone, and we just keep doing what we do. Our rule is that we never try and spot trends, never try and second guess what’s going to be popular and never ever put on an artist we don’t believe in. That’s a mug’s game. You’re always going to get it wrong eventually.”

"I’m obsessive: If I love a great tune, I want you not just to hear it, but to feel exactly the same excitement I do—it drives my friends bloody crazy. I think my only job in the world is to find beautiful things and show them to people—that’s it."

Mampi Swift

This may seem grandiose for what is essentially a large building with people, music, and alcohol, but Reilly’s enthusiasm is infectious, and the consistent quality of Fabric’s programming is pretty unique on the London scene. And that attention to detail, and refusal to follow trends, is apparent in everything they do—not least in the fact that, in 2014, they still run a successful subscription record label, based on CDs (remember those?), each presented in that iconic, hand-stamped metal cigar box.

Fabric opened as a stand against the tacky clubs of the late 90s, dominated by names like Judge Jules, Lisa Lashes, and Seb Fontaine. It carries on 15 years later as an island in a sea of Steve Aoki, Guetta, and Avicii. And long may that continue—a former meat market against the meat markets. 

Why Don't We Have a Female Version of Viagra Yet?

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Photo via Flickr user Arbyreed

According to a National Center for Health Statistics report, women are two and a half times as likely as men to be prescribed an antidepressant. I am one such woman, so my doctor gave me SSRIs, which unfortunately caused an array of sexual side effects, the most annoying of which was that I had a tough time reaching orgasm.

So, as they say on TV, I talked to my doctor about Viagra. Instead, he prescribed me Cialis, warning me never to take the drug with poppers because amyl nitrites and boner pills mix poorly. At first, the medication sounded like a dream solution to my problems. Cialis lasts in your bloodstream longer than competitors like Viagra, which, in theory, means if you take it Friday night, you’ll still be good to go by the time you want to have morning sex on Saturday. But the Cialis hit me the wrong way: I spent the weekend with a migraine and flu-like symptoms on my bathroom floor throwing up.

After the drug had worked its way out of my body and I was able to resume normal sexual activity, I wondered why as a woman I had to try a penis pill in the first place. There are plenty of erectile-dysfunction medications on the market, but zero that treat sexual dysfunction in women. What's the deal with that?

A company called Sprout Pharmaceuticals has been developing a pill, Flibanserin, to fight what's called Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD), for years now, but its facing several roadblocks. For one thing, HSDD is no longer listed in the DSM-5, which means it doesn't technically exist according to the medical establishment. (Flibanserin fans believe it could possibly treat what's called Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder as well—as that condition's name suggests, that's when women don't want sex or don't like sex when they have it.)

The other difficulty facing Flibanserin is that the FDA has declined to approve the drug, a decision that Sprout President and COO Cindy Whitehead has implied is because of sexism. 

“One in ten women suffer from HSDD, and to this day they don’t have a single medical treatment,” she told me. “Sexual dysfunction is actually more common in women than it is in men and it can take a variety of different forms. It can be arousal, it can be orgasm, or it can be pain disorders. By far the most common sexual dysfunction in women is low sexual desire and that affects about a third of women.”

According to Sprout, the German company Boehringer Ingelheim discovered the drug 12 years ago. It was originally studied as an antidepressant until the drug’s potential as a sexual stimulant was discovered—just as researchers once thought of Viagra as a potential cardiovascular medicine until someone noticed it had the odd side effect of giving subjects rock-hard erections. Unlike erectile dysfunction medications, which send blood directly to the sex organ, Flibanserin works on the brain, Whitehead told me. Many antidepressants can decrease your libido by changing how the brain absorbs the neurotransmitter serotonin; Flibanserin essentially reverses that effect.

The medication has been tested on over 11,000 women and produced relatively minor side effects like dizziness, nausea, and fatigue. But the FDA declined to approve Flibanserin—a decision Sprout formally disputed in December.

At that time, Whitehead said, “the FDA approved what was the 24th drug now marketed for sexual dysfunction [in men], and it was significant because it was the first of its kind and it was studied on only 832 patients and it has serious side effects including penile rupture. Many started to think, do we have a different risk tolerance for women?”

Whitehead sees the difficulty Flibanserin has had making it to market as an expression of latent societal sexism. “When [Boehringer Ingelheim] hit a roadblock with the FDA, they sort of threw their hands in the air and were going to walk away from all that development,” she said. “I think that was a reaction not only to difficulty in the process but also this societal reaction that is reticent to accept the biology of sex in women.”

Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz, an obstetrician and gynecologist who has been following Flibanserin’s progress for years, agrees: “It’s completely sexist. Women are sexual, and not just sexual objects, but sexual in their own right. It scares many people.”

For now, women who have problems with their sex drives will have to turn to medication intended for men, which, as I found out, can have mixed results. Gilberg-Lenz considered the research a sign of progress, but finds the FDA’s denial of Flibanserin frustrating. “There’s like no major side effects that I’m seeing,” she said. “So what is the issue? I don’t get it.”

But some women’s health organizations doubt sexism motivated the FDA’s decision, citing Flibanserin's lack of effectiveness and possible side effects.

“We like our feminist sisters who think the FDA is just being sexists and know that we have to watch for that; however, we’re also FDA watchdogs,” said Cindy Pearson, the Executive Director of the National Women’s Health Network. “Our opinion is that this time [Sprout] just hasn’t finished answering the question about what the side effects and risks are so women can make a full, informed decision.”

While the debate surrounding the FDA’s motives continues, the agency has made it clear it's paying attention to the lack of treatments for female sexual dysfunction (FSD)—it's holding a public workshop on the subject on October 27 and 28. 

Until the FDA approves a drug to combat the problem directly, aside from off-label uses of erectile dysfunction meds, testosterone will remain a common treatment for women. Various herbal remedies also exist, and some doctors tell women to try therapy. (Some doctors may feel uncomfortable discussing sex, but foreplay and sex toys, like vibrators, can also help increase blood flow to the pelvic region and increase desire and orgasms.) While we consider men’s limp dicks a physical problem and therefore dismiss possible psychological factors, women’s sexual woes have often been dismissed as psychological issues until recently, when doctors started analyzing biological causes of FSD.

“The FDA is committed to supporting the development of therapies for medical conditions related to female sexual dysfunction,” said Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the FDA. “Additionally, the FDA has also identified female sexual dysfunction as one of 20 disease areas of high priority and focused attention.” Regarding the Flibanserin decision, he said the FDA can’t comment on any drugs that haven’t been approved.

In five to ten years, Pearson predicts the FDA will approve a product to solve FSD. “There’s a market there and that’s going to drive investment,” she said. “I think we’ll celebrate.”

Follow Sophie Saint Thomas on Twitter

VICE News: Turkey's Border War - Part 5

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When Islamic State militants attacked the Syrian border town of Kobane, some 180,000 civilians fled in fear to neighboring Turkey. The Turkish government responded by closing most of its Syrian border crossings. Thousands of people remain in a precarious position between the town and the closed border. VICE News met with a smuggler who risks his life trying to get people across the border, and joined him on a night operation as he helped to get families away from Kobane and into Turkey.

My Grandma the Poisoner

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Illustrations by Matt Rota

When I was four or five, sometimes I’d walk into my grandmother’s bedroom to find her weeping. She’d be sitting on the side of the bed, going through boxes of tissues. I don’t believe this was a side of herself she shared with other people; she may have felt we had a cosmic bond because I had her father’s name as my middle name and his fair features. She was crying for Martha, her daughter, who died of melanoma at the age of 28. Ten years later, after Norman—her youngest child, my uncle—died, also at 28, she would weep for him.

People were always dying around Grandma—her children, her husbands, her boyfriend—so her lifelong state of grief was understandable. To see her sunken in her high and soft bed, enshrouded in the darkness of the attic, and surrounded by the skin-and-spit smell of old age, was to know that mothers don’t get what they deserve. Today, when I think back on it, I don’t wonder whether Grandma got what she deserved as a mother; I wonder whether she got what she deserved as a murderer.

A few months ago, I loaded the wife and kids into the car and went out to visit Grandma. I hadn’t seen her in more than a year and a half, and in that time she had moved from her house to an assisted-living place to another assisted-living place. There was no good excuse for my lapse—I guess I couldn’t quite deal with the way we’d left her house. A catastrophe. Full of stuff. The buyers said they’d take care of it, and they did; they tore the whole thing down. My brother had a friend from the neighborhood (out on Long Island, a.k.a. Lawng Islund) who said it was the scandal of the year.

That house, where I spent so much of my childhood visiting Grandma, was disgusting. In the late 90s, my brother and I dedicated three days to cleaning it up. Joe, my grandmother’s last boyfriend, had died, and his stuff was there. He was one of five dead people whose stuff was there, was everywhere. My aunt’s stuff, my uncle’s stuff, my grandfather’s stuff, and Grandma’s second husband’s stuff filled, I’d estimate, about half the total volume of the house. Driver’s licenses and important papers and half-finished projects and mementos like the rusted bolts my uncle Norman, on his diving trips, had dragged out of sunken wrecks. In the basement library, we uncovered a vial of red viscous fluid. The vial, sealed with a hard wax or plastic, was handblown and quite beautiful, and the box was neatly jointed hardwood. We thought the thing might be valuable. It could have been old—we weren’t sure. So we tried to sell it to an East Village curiosity shop, which advised that we dispose of it via the Poison Control Center.

In the basement’s woodshop we found a sprinkling of half-melted heroin spoons (Grandma had let some pretty questionable characters crash with her), and in the backyard we found a big black garbage bag full of dead animals. You could tell it was animals from the outside of the bag; you could see the shapes of the corpses. We both peeked in but were so quick about it that all we confirmed was the presence of dead bodies, not what kind. My brother says he saw turtles, which seems likely, since my mother had owned half a dozen turtles that all perished in a sudden, inexplicable cataclysm. I saw an owl, which is less likely, but also possible, since there are owls on Lawng Islund. Most likely, we decided, the bag was full of cats and raccoons, which were always getting into Grandma’s garbage. She’d yell at them from the back porch. The last time I saw the bag it was on the lawn waiting for the trash pickup. In the shining black plastic you could still see the rounded shapes of haunches.

In that house, even the stuff worth keeping was depressing. Once-beautiful oak rocking chairs and cherrywood secretary desks had been covered with white porch paint. Bookshelves were lined with mouse-eaten library cast-offs. The carpets were thriving with mold. Dishes were stained or flecked with dried food. The toilets were full, unflushed, and dusted with baby powder. Grandma would say not flushing saved money, but really, she just wanted to remind you that everything was about saving money.

In Grandma’s defense, she came to consciousness during the Great Depression and never mentally left the era. When the economy turned sour, in the 90s and 00s, she would point out the cultural similarities, laying it all out: During times of scarcity there’s a turn to mystical thinking, self-help, and the occult, she’d tell us. I have no doubt that she was right. Even in her old age, she was insightful and informed. She’d rattle around her disgusting house with public radio blaring in every room. She knew everything, for instance that prune juice could be employed as hair dye (to this day, her hair is prune-brown). She had heard a dentist advise on NPR that it was very important to rinse your mouth out with water and to floss, even if you didn’t have a chance to brush your teeth, and as of this writing she’s 94 and still has all her teeth in her head. Only now they’re all loose. Her whole jaw looks like it’s loose in her mouth.

When we went to visit her at the assisted-living place, I fixed her hearing aids, and my wife went out to get some adult diapers. Grandma barely knows who I am, and when I asked her about her children, she didn’t remember Martha at all. I hadn’t exactly missed her during those months of not visiting, so I didn’t expect the visit to upset me. But Grandma not knowing Martha’s name, Grandma lying in bed sucking on her unmoored jaw, Grandma with all of her teeth about to fall out—I almost lost it. The kids sat there, unblinking, their mouths hanging open in stupefied horror. For them, the last year has been a tour of deathbeds: Gigipop. Poppa. Abuelita. Granmaman. And now Grandma. It was obvious—she was next.

They managed to buck up when Grandma asked them to sing. They knew some German songs from school, and she joined in. She said that when she sings she returns to her childhood. She lives in it, she said, like it’s the present moment. And maybe in her mind, when she sings, her childhood is still there—but I don’t think there’s much else there. Sometimes she points to her head and jokes about her “forgettery.”

It’s strange to see a parental figure get like that. As a kid, I’d stay at Grandma’s house so my too-young parents could get a break, often for weeks at a time. She’d tell me that Jews invent things, that Jews don’t drink, that Jews are smart because the philosophy of the Jews values thinking, and that I’m not supposed to call them Jews. She would say, “Even when we argue, you have a good mind.” When I announced my engagement to a Gentile, Grandma dropped to her knees and begged me not to get married in a church. The wedding took place on a tennis court, and Grandma was the belle of the ball, flirting with my wife’s uncles, who were 20 years younger than she was. Grandma was always a good time, but when she wasn’t the host, wasn’t responsible for the food, it was like a weight was lifted from her, like she could really be free.

Grandma’s expertise in nutrition dates back to the 60s. By the mid 70s, she had written several self-published mimeographed books on nutritional intake and vitamins. Around then or possibly earlier, I think, she started to poison people.

I can’t pin down exactly what she did with what ingredients. I can’t even be sure that she really did the things I think she did. All I have, really, are pieces of circumstantial evidence and hunches that have coalesced over the years. In my narrative of suspicions, she preferred to use vitamin A (which can cause sleepiness, blurred vision, and nausea, among other things), then she used laxatives, and then, as she got older and lazier, she moved on to prescription drugs.

Grandma never cooked the same thing twice, and her creations were greasy beyond belief and usually really weird. For example: chicken baked with apricots and canned tomatoes, or mixed-up ground meats with prunes, or pickled things. She was infamous at the local grocery store. They saved the shark livers for her.

In later years, her meals featured courses of ready-made, or nearly ready-made, food, and eventually that became her favored methodology. She had this effective strategy of finding the food you loved most, buying it in ridiculous amounts, and feeding it to you unrelentingly. You’d eat it—the imported Jarlsberg, the ice cream. And you’d pass out on the couch, or on the train back to the city. Of course, the longer you stayed with Grandma, the more likely something bad would happen to you. If you visited her for a week, you’d suffer from the shits, you’d be exhausted, and your vision would start to blur.

At first, my mother was the only one who’d refuse to eat Grandma’s food, and I thought she was being paranoid. Then I started noticing that every time I went to Grandma’s, I’d pass out on the couch or on the train on the way back to the city. When I stopped eating Grandma’s food, my brother thought I was paranoid. But I stopped passing out, and pretty soon he stopped eating Grandma’s food too.

But here’s the thing: You don’t want to believe your grandmother is poisoning you. You know that she loves you—there’s no doubt of that—and she’s so marvelously grandmotherly and charming. And you know that she would never want to poison you. So despite your better judgment, you eat the food until you’ve passed out so many times that you can’t keep doubting yourself. Eventually, we would arrive for holidays at Grandma’s with groceries and takeout, and she’d seem relieved that we wouldn’t let her touch our plates. By then, her eyesight was starting to go, so she wouldn’t notice the layer of crystalline powder atop that fancy lox she was giving you.

So the question became: How did we explain to guests, outsiders, that they shouldn’t eat grandma’s food? One time, maybe on Passover, my brother brought his new girlfriend, an actress. Grandma had promised not to prepare anything, and it seemed she’d kept her word, so we didn’t mention the poisoning thing to the girlfriend, but after we’d eaten lunch, Grandma came out of the kitchen with these oatmeal raisin cookies that looked terrible. They were bulbous, like the baking soda had gone haywire. My brother’s girlfriend ate two of them, maybe out of politeness. We looked on, aghast. She had a rehearsal in the city, but she passed out on the couch and missed it.

So why would Grandma poison us? Well, for some time, my mother has postulated that Grandma has Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a condition that causes caregivers to poison or injure their charges. Me? I’m sure that Grandma wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. If she slipped you a Mickey it was because she didn’t want you to leave—she loved to make people miss their train. “Stay the night, stay the night,” she’d coo.

Other times, Grandma’s concerns seemed more practical. My mother, when she moved back to Grandma’s for a brief time, had many pets—turtles, dogs, hamsters, cats—that successively took ill and died. And there was Joe, the ex-paratrooper who was Grandma’s last boyfriend. He got into the habit of blowing his pension checks in Atlantic City and mooching off Grandma until the next check arrived. Then he got a broken leg and we got all these hysterical calls from Grandma saying she was forced to wait on him hand and foot—and then he was dead.

And what would Grandma say? Well, even if she was inclined or in a condition to tell me why she did what she did, I don’t think she’d be able to. She’s always been a mystery, even to herself. There’s this story she would tell: When she was a very young girl, a boy tried to kiss her in a closet, so she shoved him away and ran home and cried and cried. “Why, Grandma?” we would ask her. “Because,” she would say, “I was in love with him!”

Grandma’s father was an older man, tall and handsome, a widower who had been an equestrian back in Russia. Her mother was 17 when she married him. The couple had four daughters and one boy, who died very young. When the Depression hit, the father was called in to the office of the Brooklyn factory where he worked as a foreman: They had no choice; they would have to let him go. He begged for a job, any job, to support his family, which was how he became a “fireman,” shoveling coal into a furnace. An explosion, a backfire, I think it’s called, injured him badly, and he didn’t come home. He disappeared. Three weeks after the accident, my grandmother went out to talk to a man who was sitting on the stoop across from their house. His face was covered in bandages. She asked why he hadn’t come home, and he said, “I was afraid you wouldn’t love me anymore.” He was scarred for the rest of his life. I never met my great-grandfather Benjamin, my namesake.

Grandma’s first husband, Irving—she was married to him through the 50s and 60s—was adored by everyone, just like her father. He was in business with some Italians, which is one way to describe his trade. After 20 years of marriage, she divorced him, and it wasn’t until much later that I got the inkling it might have been because Irving had a frightening side.

In 1982, when he was 70 years old, Irving was in a car accident. He drove his Cadillac off the highway. He might have fallen asleep, or it might have been the fault of the screwdriver that was discovered in the steering column. His head was smashed up in the wreck, but he was a tough old Jew, and after four years he woke up and spent ten more fighting his paralysis before dying in his late 80s. Meanwhile, his money became the object of a convoluted lawsuit that resulted in Irving’s business partners and second wife (who cared for him) getting most of his fortune. Throughout all that, Grandma would bemoan the fact that she’d left Irving. She’d say, “The kinds of things he did all day, you can’t come home and be Mr. Nice Guy, no way.”

Martha, Grandma’s oldest child and my aunt, got cancer in her 20s. Grandma cared for her. Martha’s disease might have killed her, but… well, I don’t know. Aaron, Grandma’s second husband, also died of cancer back in the 1970s. He was deaf, he hated television, and he yelled at children—Grandma said that she married him because “he was the only one who would have me.” He smoked pipes. After his first operation, for throat cancer, he played ping-pong with me; he seemed happy and was less of a monster. He took up gardening. But no matter how much he ate, he kept losing weight and withered away. Or… Again, it could have just been the cancer.

Next up in the funerary procession was Norman, Grandma’s youngest child and only son. So let’s talk about him: Norman was a piece of shit. He was only eight years older than I was, and he tortured me when I was a kid. He had the most hideous laugh, like a pig squealing. Not a happy pig. Like a pig in pain. He’d threaten me with knives and steal and break my things. He’d try to convince me that he was going to kidnap me in the middle of the night and sell me to “the Arabs.” Maybe all that was because he was envious of me; he was chunky and Jewish-looking, so Grandma, with her blue eyes and blond hair, found him repellent. In sharp contrast to Norman, the fleshy failure, I was a natural athlete with Gentile features and, therefore, her favorite. Once, I saw Grandma punish Norman by standing him in front of the open stove, turning up the broiler flames, and threatening to burn off his dick. He was maybe 12 at the time. She’d also cook him huge plates of food and offer them to him. He’d say no because he didn’t want to get any fatter, but she’d keep pushing the food under his chin until he finally ate—and then berate him for being so fat.

Norman liked weapons. He collected things that killed, like crossbows and axes, and everyone was terrified of him. He would sometimes storm around the house with a bowie knife or machete, and the rest of us would cower in our rooms. When I was maybe seven, he covered my arm in methane and set it on fire, just to show me how powerful methane was and how lighting it wouldn’t hurt me. It’s true that I didn’t feel any pain, though it did burn all the hair off my arm. Another time, when I was visiting Lawng Islund as a teenager, a bunch of other kids tackled me and kicked me over and over. My mother thought Norman had sent them.

Should I mention that he was a genius? He was; he could do anything. When I was eight, he walked me to Canal Street, just a few blocks from where I lived in Tribeca, to show me how he could buy computer parts and assemble a working machine in an afternoon, which he did.

In the late 80s, when he was 28, Norman was still living with Grandma, but he was kind of figuring things out: He had lost weight, he had a girlfriend, and he was thinking about some kind of career in computers, “networked computers,” as they called what would become the internet back then. He was way into scuba diving too. He would sleep underwater in the tub with his equipment on, and sometimes he’d rent a boat and dive down to some wreck and take photos.

The day of the accident, he was scheduled to go out on a rented boat, but Grandma didn’t want him to go—she always complained about how expensive it was—so she slipped him something. I think. He was feeling pretty out of it that morning; he thought maybe he was sick. His partner persuaded him to go out anyway, and then there was a problem with the configuration of Norman’s equipment when he was underwater. Maybe it was a malfunction, or maybe it was his own fault; he had customized all his gear (because he was a genius). His diving partner swam to the surface alone, instead of sharing his tank with Norman in a “buddy-system” ascent. We don’t know exactly why Norman stayed down there. It might have been that he thought he didn’t have enough oxygen to attempt a “controlled emergency” ascent, which is when you exhale all the way up. Or it might have been that he was entangled in the U-boat wreck he and his partner were investigating. Or he might have just been too out of it to save himself. There are these flags that divers can fire up toward the surface to alert the rescue diver, who’s supposed to be ready to go on the deck of the boat, and Norman did send up his flag. But this was Lawng Islund, where rules about keeping rescue divers on boats aren’t taken too seriously, and Norman died down there, watching that fucking flag wave.

Then there was my wife’s miscarriage. Funny thing about that. Or not “funny,” I guess, but I forgot about it until I decided to write this story and I was going over some old notes. When we announced my wife’s pregnancy, Grandma freaked out about how there’d be another mouth to feed and we couldn’t afford it. We visited her just before my wife miscarried, and even though my wife knew to stay away from her food, everyone slips up a little from time to time. And, well… it was late in the pregnancy for a miscarriage. And the dates line up. But it could be a coincidence.

Later, when we did have a child, Grandma came over to celebrate, bearing a present for the baby: a pair of medical scissors—sharp, pointed, big medical scissors. On another visit, she brought us beets she had bought. I was like, “Grandma, why are you giving me 15 cans of beets?” She had recipes, beets this and beets that, and lots and lots of them included sunflower seeds too. She was enormously proud of one invention: beet-and-sunflower-seed ice cream. You couldn’t top it, nutrition-wise, she said. Look it up. I did: “Canned beets and sunflower seeds,” I typed into my computer. “URGENT PRODUCT RECALL,” Google spat back. Everything she gave us should have been pulled from the shelves.

Sometimes when I tell these stories, I have the feeling that people think I should have done something. Well, it was difficult psychologically to piece all of this together, and as a kid, I didn’t understand what was going on. Before Grandma put me to bed she’d sometimes serve me this really rich hot chocolate that looked oily and thin. And when I woke up it would be 24 or even 72 hours later. Three or four times we rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night because I was having trouble breathing. But it wasn’t until my 30s that I connected all this and it dawned on me that sleeping for three days is not normal or OK, and that the only times I woke up in the middle of the night unable to breathe, I was at Grandma’s.

And even when I did figure it out, so what? After Joe, Grandma’s last boyfriend, died, I went to the cops and told them I thought Grandma was involved. They said, “Whaddya want us to do about it?”

And now, once again, I feel like I’m supposed to care. Like there should be closure. Either I purge my past, forgive her, and arrive at a higher vibrational state, or I find proof of what she’s done over the years and expose her once and for all. I’d always planned to search her house one last time, but now the house is gone. And nobody is exhuming any bodies, and Grandma doesn’t even know what Grandma did. And there’s not going to be any grand finale. And as I sat there listening to Grandma sing with my children—not quite crying, I wasn’t quite crying—I realized that I didn’t care what had happened, that nobody cares what happened, that caring is for cops on CSI and doctors on ER and muscle-bound Marines in the movies.

Not long ago, I was talking to a friend I’ve told about Grandma. My friend casually mentioned that Grandma could have accidentally killed me, which surprised me. That wasn’t accurate, I said.

“But didn’t you have trouble breathing? Didn’t you rush to the hospital in the middle of the night? She wasn’t trying to hurt you, she was trying to manage you, but she could have hurt you.”

“I suppose that’s true,” I said, nodding, slowly and in disbelief, because Grandma never would have hurt me. We had a cosmic bond.


A Nighttime Visit to LA's Notorious Los Feliz Murder Mansion

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Photos by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

Los Angeles has a few of America's best murder houses. The house where the unsolved murder of Bugsy Siegel took place is still there, as is the lavish and supposedly haunted palace where actor Ramon Novarro was tortured to death (with a silver dildo, they say).

But ask any seasoned Angeleno for a seldom-heard deep cut, and they'll take you to the Los Feliz Murder Mansion at 2475 Glendower Place. It holds a special place in their hearts because in addition to the prerequisite—a tragic murder—it also offers a crowd-pleasing combination of creepy location, abandonment, rumors of ghosts, dilapidation, and a shrouding of mystery that neighbors unwittingly maintain to this day.

But this national landmark of sorts might be in danger of being razed sometime in the next few years if no one steps up. Jude Margolis, a former neighbor, told me the place is "just an old empty house that was at one time beautiful, that is now a teardown." By "teardown," she means the place is worthless as a house, and only has value as a piece of empty real estate, and a "Los Feliz Murder Empty Field," wouldn't be as exciting. "When the owner dies, I am sad to say that is probably what will happen," she wrote in an email.

A clipped version of the original 'Los Angeles Times' story

It's not clear why, on December 7, 1959, sometime between midnight and dawn, Dr. Harold N. Perelson, a Los Angeles physician, went crazy and attacked his family. Coverage in the Los Angeles Times the following morning said very little about a motive, and their 2009 update only added a little clarity: His daughter had written to a friend that she was worried about her parents' finances, and Dr. Perelson had been brushing up on his Dante, like a movie serial killer. He was perusing Canto 1 of The Divine Comedy on the night of the murder. I looked it up, and the words on that page would have included the following:

So bitter is it, death is little more;

But of the good to treat, which there I found,

Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
 
 
I cannot well repeat how there I entered,
 
So full was I of slumber at the moment
 
In which I had abandoned the true way.

So there's that. 

But having debt and thumbing through your Penguin Classics in the wee hours of the morning doesn't cause most people to do what he did next: Perelson flipped out and went after his wife, Lillian, with a hammer, bludgeoning her to death. Then he turned his attention to his 18-year-old daughter Judye, getting a few hits in, none of which were fatal. 

Around that time the horrible screams woke up his tween kids, Debbie and Joel, who came out to see what was going on. Dr. Perelson shouted at them, "Go back to bed! This is a nightmare!" which must have seemed accurate to two kids looking at their wounded, screaming sister and dead mother. The freshly scarred kids fled the house, and—one can only assume—never slept again.

With the house empty, apart from the body of his wife, Dr. Perelson resumed reading Dante, then got thirsty and had a glass of acid, which killed him. 

That was the last moment anyone would ever consider the house their home. Since 1959, the house has changed hands a few times, but no one has moved in. The current owner, Rudy Enriquez, inherited the mansion from his parents, who bought it at auction. They used it for storage, a tradition Rudy carries on to this day. 

But the consequence of owning an abandoned and dilapidated murder house is that people get curious about whether it's uninhabited because A) the crime that took place somehow damaged it, or B) the bleeding walls and moaning ghouls make it uninhabitable. In 2009, the Times re-examined the house and its legend, because neighbors were getting annoyed by the mansion turning into a place for—no joke—goths to have picnics and hookers to bring johns. 

According to the Times, a friend of neighbor Sheree Waterson decided to barge in one night, and a black widow sneakily bit her hand, something she didn't notice until she was fleeing from the burglar alarm she had triggered. Afterward, her own burglar alarm kept going off, which she joked was evidence that some of the excess Murder Mansion ghosts had abandoned their stations after she visited, and were now stalking her. To my knowledge, that was the first time a major news publication had implied that the place was haunted.

It was also the first thing I read about the murder mansion. Jude Margolis, the former neighbor I contacted, told me I wasn't alone. "Someone writes a story about it, and then looky-loos start coming around. It's on a cul-de-sac, and it annoys everyone who lives there." That seclusion is both part of the draw and part of what keeps the house a hidden treasure for people like me. "Mr. Enriquez will never speak with you," Margolis added. "The house has been locked and closed forever. I lived next door. There is nothing to tell."

She couldn't have seemed more like a shady character at the beginning of a Scooby Doo episode if she had tried.

Margolis was absolutely right about one thing: Rudy Enriquez wouldn't speak with me, even after many attempts to reach him by phone and email. According to the Times, he and his family have visited often over the decades, using it exclusively for storage. He told the writer of that piece in 2009, "I still go there often—I was there last night, in fact. I think now I'll be going more often," adding, "The only spooky thing there is me."

But I couldn't get anyone to confirm that Enriquez does still visit, or that—at 81—he's still alive. I tried the LAPD office in Los Feliz, where officers told me they hadn't heard of any "Los Feliz Murder Mansion." The only people who definitely still visit the place are internet randos.

Since it's a cul-de-sac, the street is silent when you visit after midnight. The mansion itself sits in a place of honor at the end, on top of a hill. The front porch offers a breathtaking view of the city, but it also leaves you feeling exposed, and visible. From there, a raccoon rustling in the shrubs at the bottom of the steep front walkway sounds like either a shambling ghoul, or—equally scary—a neighborhood security goon.

As if it were designed to look like horror movie set dressing, the place is still full of what appears to be Dr. Perelson's furniture with cloth draped over it. Cowardly daytime visitors have glimpsed the retro furniture, including what's thought to be Perelson's old timey black and white TV. Spots where the wood is rotting and peeling are especially visible when you point a flashlight beam at them, but since the place would have at least been spot cleaned before it was sold to the Enriquez family, what look like bloodstains are probably just my imagination.

There's a charge in the air that comes from knowing the Murder Mansion's history, and that's the experience people no doubt refer to as being "possessed" there, or feeling a "presence." That charge is especially acute because this is California, where recorded history is short, and buildings haven't changed hands dozens of times. In other states—and especially other countries—having someone die in a house probably isn't such a big deal.

Some of the windows have just the right kind of screen to keep you from seeing in, and it makes them look like they're covered with some kind of eerie silk drapery. Behind that you can make out some tantalizing outlines, but nothing identifiable. Rudy Enriquez's jumbled odds and ends just on the other side of the windows amplify the sense that you can almost sort of make out what's in there, but you can never quite be certain.

In addition to being creepy, the place is just trashed. The window frames are starting to come apart, and couldn't possibly seal shut anymore. In 2009, Enriquez had to be summoned by the city to make repairs because parts of the exterior walls were peeling off. The roof must leak when it rains.

I asked the Los Feliz Improvement Association whether it was true that there was no one looking out for it as a piece of Los Angeles history, but the only answer I got was that they "were not aware" of any effort to tear it down.

It's no mystery why people who find it interesting come and visit in spite of the neighbors' wishes: They have to see it before it's gone.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

We Talked to the Director of 'Dear White People' About Race, Identity, and Black Cinema

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Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions

Dear White People, the debut film from writer/director Justin Simien, has become a talking point for those of us concerned with race matters in America since its Sundance debut in January. It's been out in limited theatrical release for over a week now, and people are seeing that it's less the controversial screed they expected and more of a nuanced look at how we deal with the racial divisions—both personal and systemic—that plague our culture.

It's a true ensemble piece, but focuses primarily on Lionel, a socially awkward, gay budding journalist, and Sam, a biracial activist and aspiring filmmaker—two students caught up in the racial tension at a fictional Ivy League university. Justin and I spoke recently about his work, fitting in, staying true to yourself, and, of course, Tyler Perry.

VICE: What I got from the film is that we’re forced to accept identity, whether we like it or not. You’re born into it. I’m from a biracial family, and I could see my struggle with not knowing where I fit in displayed in every character. Is that where you’re coming from with this, or is that me projecting myself onto the work?
Justin Simien: First of all, you’re welcome to project yourself into it. That’s the fun thing for me about multi-protagonist stories: you can kind of put a few different things out there and have the characters sort of net out in different ways, and have everyone respond to it in a way that makes sense specifically to them. I found it kind of impossible to talk about race identity—or identity at all—from one singular point of view, which is why I have four of them in the film. I think, ultimately, my focus for the movie is that there’s a relationship between identity and self. In America, it’s impossible—at least as far as I have seen—to make maximum use of your potential if you don’t make decisions about your identity.

The idea is that you’re either going to have an identity decided for you or you’re going to have to pick one. I have characters, when you first meet them—Lionel, in particular—who have actively not checked any boxes of identity. [Lionel] doesn’t even have a major. He’s incredibly precious about who he really is and what he’s really about, whatever that might be. Then you have a character like Sam, whose identity is so hardwired that she’s actually denying half of who she is throughout most of the film. So I think it’s certainly not my intention for the film to be a morality play, or terribly dogmatic. I think it’s just to sort of talk about the relationship between identity and self, and to get into the conflict between those ideas and what happens on either side of the extreme.

Tyler James Williams as Lionel. Photo by Ashley Nguyen

Do you think there is that need to not play into what the world wants you to do?
I mean, I don’t take an all-or-nothing view on it. I think it has to be a balance. What’s interesting about your reading of the film is that [Sam]—and I don’t want to give anything away to your readers who may not have seen the film—she makes a decision and it feels like one of those movie moments, but the scene also quickly reminds you of the reality that she’s stepping into, which is bound to be uncomfortable. There will be, probably, social repercussions for the decision that she makes. Whereas Lionel, who I actually think steps into an identity and, at least for the moment, kind of has an uncomplicated, warm reception to his stepping into an identity.

The funny thing is, I actually think the harder thing to do is to be authentic, especially when you’ve had some success as whatever it is that you are. This is coming from a person who has had some success in publicity for some time, before I stepped out to make my own movie and also as a person who I think, especially after this first film, people are going to see me a certain way and expect me to make certain kinds of movies. It’ll be interesting to see what happens if and when I don’t make certain kinds of movies. I think that my personal belief on it is that it’s probably always better to go with your self, if your self and your identity are in conflict. But expect it to be pretty hard. That’s the bleak truth of the matter.

The world kind of knows where it wants you to be, and you either accept it or you don’t.
Yeah, because ultimately you are in control, but to not have any identity at all will also leave you left behind. It’ll just completely leave you out of the conversation about what you can or can’t be. You're sort of at the mercy of others if you make certain non-choices. So at least make the ones that are best for you.

Tessa Thompson as Samantha White. Photo by Ashley Nguyen

People have been talking about this movie a lot, but what I often see in the articles and reviews about it is a need to put you into a box of “this guy is the black Whit Stillman,” or “he’s the black Woody Allen,” or “the black whatever.” Spike Lee had to go through that whole thing, too, when She’s Gotta Have It came out. Does that grate on you? Do you feel like you want to do something similar to what Spike did, where he violently rejected it and basically said, “I’m going to go out and I’m going to make School Daze and you’re going to hate it and I don’t care”?
I don’t have an angry reaction to it. Someone brought up the Spike Lee thing, in particular, saying “How do you feel about being compared to Spike Lee?” The truth is, it’s great until it’s not great. It’s not great to stay in any kind of box, but if I had to be put in a box, the Spike Lee box is not a bad box. The Woody Allen box is not a bad box.

At the same time, I’m sure at a certain point when I’m not making my first movie and trying to get my second off the ground, I will feel perhaps boxed in. I also think that, you know, Dear White People is a special movie. I don’t think it’s arrogant to say that. There hasn’t been a movie like this in a really long time. So, I’m also excited to see that a lot of the people that I talk to on a one-on-one level are open to me doing things that are totally outside of this particular box, because they see the potential in me as a filmmaker. So, I don’t have a violently negative reaction to it at all. I think it’s a little suspect, comparing me to the other black filmmaker. That kind of thing is a little lazy. At the same time, there are other filmmakers I could’ve been compared to that would not have been favorable at all.

Tessa Thompson and Justin Simien. Photo by Ashley Nguyen

One of those filmmakers might be Tyler Perry, who is referenced in your film. Is he the victim of being put into a box, where he has to make these commercial films that maybe we think of as absurd or silly? And are we giving him too much of a hard time, compared to, say, Adam Sandler—who, by definition of being a white male, is not responsible for holding up the self-esteem of an entire population of people?
Well, I don’t think Tyler Perry is a victim at all. I think Tyler Perry is, of anyone we’re talking about, a master of his own fate. Tyler Perry actually resurrected black movies from what they were, which was really nothing. They were almost completely gone, they weren’t making any money at all, and he came in at a time when—with the exception of a few stars—there really wasn’t a lot going on. He brought with him a ready-made audience from his plays, and he spoke to that audience really well, and he’s done so for a really long time now.

I think Tyler Perry is making the stuff that he wants to make. I mean, he owns an island! If Tyler Perry really wanted to do something different, I think that he would. And I don’t know Tyler Perry and all I have to answer a question about his inner workings is the interviews he gives, but I think he’s happy making his audiences happy. I think the tricky thing is that the gatekeepers—the people who decide what is green-lit and what’s not, and how to promote it and all that—they decide not to investigate any other aspect of the black audience, and they really stopped promoting and supporting work that’s out of the Tyler Perry box. They decided that was the whole of the black experience, and that is all that we would pay to see, and that’s all we were interested in.

After 12 Years a Slave did really well, they were like, “Oh, people are into slavery again? Great!” and I saw all of these stories about the next slave movie and the next slave television series. Hollywood is just interested in making more of whatever made money before. I think really, if we’re going to be frustrated at anything, we have to be frustrated at that particular system. But on the other hand, you talk about someone like Adam Sandler, and the reason why it’s different is because there are so many different variations of a white man in culture. Whereas when it comes to the way black people are presented—even in the “year of black film”—there’s still only a very limited version of the black experience that’s being put out there.

I’ve talked about this often: You more often than not get the tragedy of the black experience; the extreme, tragic pain of being black in this country, whether it’s through the eyes of a slave or a maid or a slain youth. Or you get, sort of, the Ebony cover or Essence cover version of being black, where it’s just fabulous and they’re upwardly mobile, and they’re happy and they’re sassy and have great jobs. The complexity of the black experience is sort of absent from that conversation. That’s why I think it’s easy to sort of pick the one or two players in that field in a given year and attack one or two of them, but I also think that conversation is one that black people are always having. I thought it was worth putting [Tyler Perry] in the movie, because ultimately, the way we feel confined by the culture around us is a part of our experience.

Teyonah Parris as Colandrea Connors. Photo by Ashley Nguyen

Is it hard for black filmmakers—as someone who now is considered a leading light of black film—to feel that responsibility of, “There’s only going to be three of these this year, so mine better be super good!”
I guess so? I guess there definitely is an added pressure when you’re dealing with black subject matter. Not only do you want it to be successful, but you want people to dig it. The truth is that in terms of “black movies”—and I put black movies in air quotes—in terms of movies that are about the experiences of black people or made by black people, there has been so consistently one or two kinds for so long that any attempt to do something other than that, there’s a fear that, “What if people just don’t get it because they haven’t seen anything like it in a really long time?” There’s that fear, too. There’s the same conversation that I think black artists have been having since the Harlem Renaissance, of like, “Is it OK to air the dirty laundry about the black experience?” I mean, if white people are watching this, shouldn’t we always put forth incredibly positive images of black people and successful and happy and beautiful and clean and pretty and intelligent versions of ourselves?

There are lots of pressures. But ultimately, while I think that there is some responsibility to do with representation, my responsibility tends to lean more toward being authentic and saying something truthful, saying something about the human experience, holding the mirror up, challenging… Those are the kinds of films that I want to see. And no matter what the subject of my films are—whether it’s the black experience or not—those are the kinds of movies I have to make. Movies that sort of say something about the human condition.

Just to go back to how we started with identity and whatnot, is there a third way? With my reading of the film, I felt like you were saying there is a third way. You don't have to be incredibly, fiercely protective of your black identity, but you don’t have to completely whitewash yourself. Is there a time—post-Obama—where we won't have to say, “This is a black movie.” We can just say, “This is a movie with black people in it.” Because I feel like we’re still not there. We’re still having these interviews where it’s like, “So you made a black movie.” White people can go see your movie, and they should.
I think the third way is to embrace the contradiction and to show up as yourself. This movie is me showing up as myself, you know? Necessarily, the movie is going to be considered a black film because that’s the paradigm that we’re in. Maybe three films from now, it won’t be, and maybe we’ll see it differently. I don’t know. But at a certain point, it’s not really up to me what the culture decides, how the culture decides to define this film, or film in general. But it is up to me what kinds of things I want to contribute to the culture. This idea of either rebelling against or assimilating into—that dichotomy that those are the only two choices we have—is why we get so stuck and so caught up. This movie wouldn’t have been the same movie if I decided to get caught up in only one of those two. So, this movie for me is a middle way. 

Follow Dave Schilling on Twitter.

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