Tim Bosma (photo via Facebook)

After a harrowing trial that often bordered on theatre, a jury has found Dellen Millard and Mark Smich guilty of first-degree murder in the death of 32-year-old Tim Bosma following a week of deliberations.

Photo via Flickr

Remingtons Men of Steel is the only fully licensed male strip club in downtown Toronto, and within the last decade, they made some changes to their previous clientele rules that only allowed men: They began allowing female customers "to help pay the bills," according to Bruce, a bartender who has worked there for 21 years.

Since the change in clientele, the venue on Yonge Street has hosted countless bachelorette parties—and with those, its staff has accumulated a number of ridiculous stories. Whether you can blame the unrealistic expectations set by Magic Mike or the unpreparedness of women who attend a male strip club for the first time as part of a bridal party, one thing seems to be certain: Their etiquette tends to be not quite on par with their male counterparts.

Here's what VICE learned.

A bridal party in its natural habitat, a booze-filled limousine. Photo via Flickr user Monica D.

Julio
Job: Dancer

Bachelorette parties get pretty intense. Women are all different. Usually the younger ones will scream more but throw no money; the older bridal parties will scream but throw money at us—so I focus my attention on those. The young ones—20, 21 years old—I don't really look at.

Male customers are much more relaxed, more straight to the point. They come here for a dance, and they go for a dance. Girls are much more likely to beat around the bush, and if you're lucky, you'll get like $20, $40 tops of out them. Women are not usually used to having to pay for men.

I've had women during , it's the worst. I went in the bathroom and just tried to clean as much as possible, and I went home. It was nasty. They didn't even tip me.

I have to deal with people saying unacceptable stuff to me all the time. It ranges from guys saying "big guerilla with steroids" or the word "faggot." I'm really laidback, right? I'm calm, I'm relaxed, and I say, "Just leave." But I'll get security if I need to.

Photo via Flickr user Sarah Traver

Devon
Job: Head of Security

Bachelorette parties tend to be hit or miss. There's no middle ground: They're either really really well-behaved, or they're the worst people in the club. They tend to think they own everything once they come in, and they think they get free reign—say if they purchased a VIP package and get to come in with no cover and get bottle service.

I've carried brides out on my shoulder before. I was raised very morally, so what I see some of the bachelorettes do here is not something I would want my future bride to do. They like to go on stage, which is a liability because if they fall off and hurt themselves, then we can be sued. You're only allowed on stage if you're directly accompanied by a dancer.

There was one bachelorette problem party that involved the limo driver as well. The girl went on stage, went up with a dancer, so at first it was fine. But once the dancer was done doing the show with her, she had to come off. After a warning, she didn't want to leave, she started dancing around the pole (which they're not allowed to do), so I ran onstage, threw her over my shoulder, ran her out the front door, put her on the sidewalk standing, and said, "Please don't come back in." All of her bachelorette party followed me, maybe 15 girls, and they chased me out. I had my other guard corralling them so that they couldn't hit me. They were very clawy and violent. That's what happens when you grab the bride; the rest of them tend to get very defensive. The limo driver for this party saw me carry the girl out, and he wasn't happy with it because I was treating a woman "incorrectly." Once you've done something like what she was doing though, you are no longer a boy or a girl, you are a person, and you broke the rules. He thought I was being ungentlemanlike, and he punched me in the face. Then the police showed up. It was a big mess.

Normally our biggest issues are with straight guys who come in. This club doesn't exactly pander to a straight male audience. A lot of straight guys come in here thinking they're going to pick up girls, so they'll come in, they'll talk to the girls, but the girls obviously aren't here to be picked up—they're here to see a show. We explain to the guys, and we'll have to take them out so that nothing happens, for their safety. I've had to pull customers and dancers apart because they were being aggressive with each other.

Justin
Job: Dancer

Like lots of the dudes here, I'm straight, but I'm comfortable enough with my sexuality to the point where I can dance for men or women. Bachelorette parties are the best. Dancing for girls downstairs, they cheer, they scream, clap, they'll tip you. It makes going onstage fun because you feel appreciated. When you dance for men they're not really into the show, the dancing, they don't really clap when you get off stage. My opening song is "Boyfriend" by Justin Bieber... If I style my hair and shave, I look like Bieber.

A woman came here with her daughter's bachelorette party. Her daughter was like 40, and her mom was 81. Her mom loved me and came up on stage, tipped me, and I did a little dance for her onstage. That was like within the first two months I started. She loved it, she even slapped my ass in front of everyone, and she was in her 80s.

Photo via Flickr

Bruce
Job: Bartender

I've been at Remingtons for 21 years... I work during the times when the main floor is men-only, which is on purpose . Down on the lower floor where it's all women, they're loud, they're screaming bloody murder—up here, it's a little more sedated.

Downstairs, they get a lot of bachelorettes. These people, I don't know where they come from, but I would assume they don't get out much and don't know how to act. I also blame the movie Magic Mike because ever since that started, the women have gone crazy, screaming, carrying on. Up here, I never have a problem. Down there, there's fights, they get thrown out, drunker than a skunk.

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In April, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) effectively banned prisoners from using social media accounts. The new rule, in the Offender Orientation Handbook, stated that inmates "are prohibited from maintaining active social media accounts for the purposes of soliciting, updating, or engaging others, through a third party or otherwise."

"Offenders have used social media accounts to sell items over the internet based on the notoriety of their crime, harass victims or victim's families, and continue their criminal activity," a TDCJ spokesman told VICE. "The agency will take all of the necessary steps to prevent that from happening."

Inmates don't usually have internet access themselves, of course—to maintain an active social media presence or answer emails, they generally communicate by sending letters to their friends and families, who run their accounts for them. (Some inmates have smartphones smuggled into prison.) The TDCJ rule was meant to stop this sort of proxy facebooking and tweeting, and the censoring of the activities of non-incarcerated people was one reason some civil rights activists oppose the rule.

Texas isn't the only state cracking down on social media. Last year, the South Carolina Department of Corrections made the news for punishing inmates with Facebook accounts with solitary confinement; California officials have been accused of deleting records of Facebook censorship in prisons; Maine now prohibits inmates from publishing their writing on blogs.

When I was in prison, I used Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram—through mailing hard copy letters to my wife—to build a career as a writer and stay in touch with my family, friends, and the world in general during my incarceration. Social media gave me hope and inspiration for a better life. It made me realize there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and that I could form and rekindle relationships with law-abiding citizens, instead of the criminals I was locked up with.

I think that aggressive bans on social media use by prisoners seriously hurt inmates' chances to rehabilitate themselves, and I'm not the only one who feels that way.

"These policies are unnecessary, short-sighted, and bad for public safety," David C. Fathi, the Director of the ACLU's National Prison Project, told me. "More than 95 percent of prisoners are ultimately coming home to be our neighbors, and research overwhelmingly shows that prisoners who remain connected to the outside world while they're incarcerated are more likely to succeed and remain crime-free after release."

Fathi believes correctional institutions should be encouraging prisoners to engage and connect with the world, not punishing them for doing so. Social media can prepare an incarcerated person for success. Michael Santos, who served 26 years in federal prison for a nonviolent cocaine conspiracy charge and now works to provide educational opportunities for prisoners, is a perfect example.

"Through a wide following that I built indirectly on Facebook and Twitter under Earning Freedom, I succeeded in getting publishing contracts," Santos, who has written for VICE, said. "Within three weeks of being released from 26 years in federal prison, San Francisco State University hired me as an adjunct professor. If I didn't have access to social media, even indirectly, I wouldn't have had the strong support system." Three years after his release, he's a homeowner, a landlord, and an employer.

Erik Jensen is a former prisoner who served 12 years in the New York state prison system and now appears as a criminal justice reform advocate on CNN and MSNBC. He too believes banning social media for prisoners can be damaging to their reentry efforts.

"The benefits of social media outweigh any perceived security measures," Jensen said. "It's a great tool to keep prisoners active and up to date with what's going on in society. Why wouldn't we want those who are in correctional facilities to be involved and know what is going on outside?"

The other issue, some experts say, is that stopping prisoners' loved ones from posting messages on social media is unconstitutional.

"Prison policies banning prisoners from social media violate the First Amendment rights of both prisoners and the ordinary citizens on the outside who maintain accounts for them," the ACLU's Fathi said. "The Texas prison system has no business telling a free person in New York or Canada or Sweden what she can or can't post on the internet."

Jeffrey Ian Ross, a criminologist at the University of Baltimore, agrees.

"Forbidding inmates to use social media, through third parties, smacks of unnecessary censorship," Ross told VICE. "The recipients of the messages that the social media may reach, may be able to assist those who are incarcerated with their legal motions, appeals, etc, and may assist in their possible rehabilitation."

Some prison systems are experimenting with providing prisoners with access to email and tablets. The federal Bureau of Prisons lets inmates use a monitored email system, and states like Ohio and Michigan allow prisoners to buy tablets made by a company called JPay, devices that give them limited access to the outside world. This is a more humane direction for prisons to go in, even if monitoring their online communications is more work for officials.

"Policing social media would require both additional resources and individuals who are skilled in monitoring and collating these communications, both of which are in short supply," Ross said. "If social media is used by inmates and their supporters on the outside to mock or insult the victim of a crime, then the social media use should be vigorously opposed. These sorts of activities typically violate community standards and after a handful of complaints, social media websites usually remove these. But if the social media communications are used to educate and/or solicit legal support and/or relief, I see nothing wrong."

The bottom line is that if we want inmates to be able to return to society, we need to give them ways, limited though they may be, of communicating with that society.

"I think all that enables incarcerated people to function in post-prison life is vital, including internet usage," added Dr. Baz Dreisinger, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "For educational programs like the Prison-to-College Pipeline , access to the internet would be a vastly powerful thing."

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For this installment of First-Person Shooter, we handed off two cameras to a porter, janitor, and apartment maintenance man named Ryan who works in the Bronx. Ryan currently cleans two co-op buildings, nicknamed Tower 1 and Tower 2, every weekend, and hopes to get assigned his own building to maintain in the future.

On top of snapping a few POV pics of mopping and sweeping the floors of both buildings, Ryan also captured a few exposures of him using the compactor, a mechanized pump that compacts the tenants' trash and deposits it into ten-foot-long trash bags that resemble body bags. Here's what else he told us about the day he spent shooting, as well as his biggest pet peeves about the tenants whose buildings he cleans.

VICE: As a porter, what are your main duties?
Ryan: My main duties as a porter are to maintain the appearance of the building inside and out, dispose of the trash properly, and report anything that needs to be repaired. My job is pretty straightforward: Keep the buildings looking good and smelling good, and the co-op will remain happy.

What happened during your day with the cameras? What did you get up to?
Being a weekend porter is pretty chill. You have to walk back and forth a lot, and lift quite a lot, but after a while your body and mind adjust so you can coast. Being a porter is pretty straightforward work, but it requires some elbow grease. I have a convenient gig because I happen to live and work in the same area.

I arrived at the office at 9 AM, checked the bulletin for any memo's addressed to the porters, clocked in using my thumb, and grabbed the keys to my buildings. My partner Noel and I have two buildings assigned to us. At my job, these buildings are referred to as "the Towers." They are infamous among the employees due the the volume of garbage that accumulates.

In the afternoon, Noel and I made our way to the cement receptacle to begin moving the trash to the street. This is what we dread. There's almost always rats scurrying around the trash. Some bags are torn open, so we have to re-bag them. Plus, the number of bags that have to be lifted over and over again is difficult. Our backs take one for the team every Sunday.

What's the strangest thing you've ever taken out to the trash?
There are a lot elderly people in my neighborhood, and there is definitely a number of hoarders. Im always coming across really old books, newspapers, old furniture, paintings, shit like that. All that is cool, especially the books. I'm always taking books home. Another man's trash is truly another man's treasure.

The strangest thing I've thrown out has got to be those beds made for those who are bedridden. I've had to do this on multiple occasions. Laying eyes on those beds and the machinery intertwined with the bedsprings gets my imagination going. It makes me confront death and realize that it's a part of life.

What's the number one thing someone can do to make your job easier?
The number-one thing someone can do to make my job easier is be a decent tenant. If the tenants follow the rules for when and where to dispose of their trash, keep their littering to a minimum, and don't treat the building as if it's a hotel, everything goes smoothly. Some will literally take the elevator to the basement and just fling their shit in the direction of the bins, or throw their trash in the wrong bins. I know it's my job to sort trash but that irks the hell outta me. I have to do double the work if they don't dispose of it correctly.

Looks like there is one huge trash bag, what are you doing with that?
When the trash gets thrown down the chute and is pushed out the mouth of the compactor, it's compressed and makes it way through these long, sausage-like bags. Its like, exactly how hotdogs are made. When my imagination gets rolling, its easy to think "body bag," when really it's just full of diapers and leftovers.

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Cassandra Butts died of leukemia on May 25, 2016, 27 years after she met fellow Harvard Law student Barack Obama and struck up a friendship that would change her life. She was close friends with Obama, working with him on his 2004 US Senate campaign and on his 2008 presidential campaign, before joining his White House team as deputy counsel.

Butts was also an international diplomat who served as an observer in the 2000 Zimbabwean parliamentary election. In 2014, Obama nominated her to be the ambassador to the Bahamas. But she was never confirmed. Butts spent the last 820 days of her life waiting for a confirmation that never came.

What happened? Norm Ornstein, political scientist and resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute, says, "Here you have a person who is, by every standard, extraordinarily qualified and talented, a terrific representative for the United States. And yet she had to sit twisting in the wind for an extraordinary period of time, for no reason whatsoever, nothing that had anything to do with her qualifications, with moral turpitude, with scandal of any sort, but just to keep Obama from getting his nominees in place."

Cassandra Butts' story illustrates the depth of Republican congressional obstruction during Obama's presidency. You cannot truly understand the Obama era without understanding that the GOP has used its legislative power to mount attacks on the president. The party has tried to make government grind to a halt. Sometimes the Republicans have shut it down altogether. They have tried to stop the president from being able to do anything. That includes halting legislation, refusing to approve judges to the Supreme Court, and other crucial federal seats, delaying key appointments like the director of the ATF for years, and ignoring the nominations of ambassadors to popular vacation destinations.

It's not that they are opposing anything on ideological grounds; it's that they're trying to keep government from functioning so that they can say, "See! Obama cannot govern! He cannot accomplish anything! The problem is him!" "It's a conscious effort to undermine government," Ornstein says. Throughout the Obama administration Republicans have tried to delegitimize the president and his actions and his people. It's true that politics ain't beanbag, but when you reach the point where you're undermining the entire foundation of the system, that's really regrettable."

Part of the privilege of being president is getting to name foreign ambassadors. At the same time, it's the right of every senator to place an indefinite hold on any nomination. That said, in matters of ambassadorial nominations, it's the Senate's job to advise and consent. Senators are not supposed to use the ambassadorial nomination process as part of a war on the president.

"When it comes to appointments, you're only supposed to make sure that it's nothing egregious," says Erika Knuti, former communications director for Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat. "You're making sure that there's no one who is highly unqualified. It's a check on patronage. Not to be used to block further legislation." But in the modern GOP, that's how they roll.

Ornstein says, "The way the nomination confirmation process works and has for a long time is any individual senator can hold a nominee for any purpose. A lot of times it's done in a hostage-taking way. Sometimes the ransom can be getting a bill released or getting money to your district or state. Other times it's personal animus toward the president for no good reason at all. This time part of it had to be personal animus toward President Obama. Something Senator has in abundance. You gotta believe that watching a friend of yours be unable to complete her mission or achieve this goal just because somebody has it in for you just makes the terrible nature of the system worse."

Photo by American Progress via Flickr

Butts' nomination process was stopped at first by Senator Ted Cruz, who placed a hold on all of the president's nominees for State Department positions. It was a way for him to retaliate for the Iran nuclear pact that Obama negotiated. What does the Iran deal have to do with the ambassador to the Bahamas? Nothing.

Now some might say this is not a big deal if we don't have an ambassador to the Bahamas for a few years. It's certainly not like they're ever going to attack us.

"Ambassadors are there to represent Americans abroad," says Knuti, whose parents worked in the State Department and who spent years living in Russia. "Americans live all over this world and just because you're not on American soil doesn't mean your government stops serving you. These ambassadorships are part of our functioning government. When you're blocking a job from being filled, you're now essentially shutting down a core function of the government that is to have representatives from America in these countries to represent American interests. It's not just a political war. It's 'I'm going to take my trucks and go home.' It's more than just fighting; it's not doing your job. It's almost worse than not doing your job."

If the Butts' story was merely about her getting caught up in a wide net of holds that would be bad enough, but, as Ornstein said, part of this is about a deep-seated animus toward Obama. Cotton is known for his anger toward the president. He's the senator who spearheaded the open letter to the leaders of Iran sent by 47 Republican senators meant to publicly disrespect the president—they were essentially going over his head and talking directly to the leader of another nation. They also hoped to somehow scuttle the nuclear deal with Iran that was then being negotiated.

Cotton placed a hold on Butts' nomination and on the nominations of potential ambassadors to Sweden and Norway. Cotton ended up releasing the holds on the ambassadors to Sweden and Norway, but not on Butts. According to Frank Bruni of the New York Times, Cotton once told Butts why he was blocking her nomination.

"e explained that he knew that she was a close friend of Obama's—the two first encountered each other on a line for financial-aid forms at Harvard Law School, where they were classmates—and that blocking her was a way to inflict special pain on the president. Cotton's spokeswoman did not dispute Butts' characterization of that meeting, and stressed, in separate emails, that Cotton had enormous respect for her and her career."

You can see the sort of bloodsport that DC politics has become. And is largely driven by the modern Republican Party. This is not a both-sides-do-it phenomenon, and to say it is is part of the problem. The Republican Party is, as Ornstein writes in his political science classic It's Even Worse Than It Looks, "ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition... all but declaring war on the government."

Obstruction is a core part of the modern Republican toolbox. Has it worked? Every political expert I spoke with said no. Political science professor Jason Johnson says, "At the end of the day, none of this gets Republicans what they want. They don't have anything to show for it. They haven't gotten Obama out of office. They haven't tanked his approval ratings. This behavior doesn't really hurt Obama; it just hurts the country. Blocking one appointment is fine, that's statecraft. But when you see dozens and dozens of examples of this, it creates a tsunami of dysfunction. They're creating the dysfunctional government that they're complaining about."

Obstruction has failed the Republican Party in more ways than one. It was meant to ensure that the Obama government appeared dysfunctional and broken and prove the argument that Obama is ineffectual, weak, and unable to reach across the aisle. It was also meant to underline the modern Republican thesis that government itself is the problem.

But years of hearing that government is the problem, and seeing their elected officials get nothing done, led Republican voters to think, if politicians are the problem then why vote for a politician when you could choose a non-politician like... Donald Trump. "What you've done," Ornstein says, "is convince the largest group of Americans, including your own partisans, that you're all a bunch of idiots and what that resulted in is Donald Trump. Trump is a self-inflicted wound by a group of people who enraged their own constituents and convinced them that anybody could run government better than they have."

It looks like obstruction ended up obstructing the Republican Party from rational thought. And now it has a nominee who could destroy the party as we know it.

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Several years ago, while looking for ways to earn money, I got into writing true-crime memoirs for retired villains. It became one of the most interesting jobs I've ever done and provided me with a window into the lives of all manner of different criminals. From petty thieves to small-time gangsters, I became curious about why they do the things they do. So when I recently came across a YouTube video that claimed to show a hypnotized ex-con recalling the childhood roots of his law-breaking, my interest was immediately piqued.

I expecting to gain an insight into the ex-con's psyche, since hypnosis can supposedly surface deeply repressed emotions, but I was left underwhelmed. The video didn't reveal anything that couldn't have been uncovered during a normal conversation. The participant spoke about the jealousy he'd felt as a child towards people whose parents were still together. Hardly groundbreaking stuff.

What I did find interesting was the hypnotist introducing the session by saying that he was going to explore the subject's "present-life memories." Hang on, did he mean he sometimes probed events that he believed happened before his clients were born? I checked his website out, and sure enough, there was a section dedicated to "past-life regression." There's my next story, I thought.

This is past-life regression hypnotist Nicolas Ajula's casual look

I imagined bringing together three cynical ex-cons for a past-life regression session would likely end with a good laugh, or that we'd learn some new some mumbo jumbo. I managed to persuade two men I'd spoken to for previous articles to sign up: reformed Glaswegian gangster Kevin Dooley, and Marcus "Paradise" Dawes, who served time in the US for firearms offences. Kevin's twin brother Brian was also up for it. He'd been involved in the Soho underworld before packing crime in to become an artist and clothing designer. With the session booked, we all just had to turn up at past-life regressionist Nicolas Ajula's house and let him take over. Here's what went down.

Marcus: "I had no control over my arms and legs"

Marcus told me that he was open to the idea of past lives, but didn't seem to hold high hopes for the regression. When I asked him whether he thought it would work, he smiled and said: "We'll see." The hypnosis mostly consisted of Nicolas talking in a calm, relaxing tone, instructing Marcus to breathe in and out while visualizing different things.

After a while, Marcus went into a trance, and Nicolas asked if he could see himself. After a pause of at least 30 seconds, he murmured that he saw a tall male. He sounded as if he found it hard to speak, and had a strange tone to his voice, as if he was struggling to make himself heard from another world. I'm not going to lie, it was pretty odd stuff, and at this point, I began to consider the possibility that I'd underestimated all this past life shit.

Marcus went on to describe three scenarios from his former lives. The first was vague, and basically amounted to a man hanging about in some woods. There were no details about the time period, country or who the man was.

The second saw him as a teenager in a medieval town, with chickens running about the place. He told us he was planning on taking one of the chickens to give to a girl he liked.

His final past life saw him as a homeless nine-year-old, who was hiding from the townsfolk because he'd stolen something. He was vulnerable, and often needed to fight to protect himself. After describing this, Marcus started to become quite agitated, and asked Nicolas to stop the session. Nicolas told him to breathe in and out, and imagine himself walking up a staircase of 10 steps. Upon reaching the tenth step, Marcus burst back into consciousness with a sudden fit of laughter. He seemed ecstatic that it was all over. Whatever had taken place, it definitely felt convincing, even to a cynical journalist like myself.

"I was surprised that anything happened at all, to be honest," Marcus told me when I asked him about the experience. "Whilst the regression was taking place, I felt as if I had no control over my arms and legs, which was unnerving. Given the chance, I wouldn't choose to do it again!"

Kevin: "I could actually feel myself inside the people"

Kevin gave detailed accounts of several different past lives, including as a New York villain who was involved in gun-smuggling, and a child who witnessed his mum shoot his dad after finding out he'd been unfaithful. He became quite emotional when he described the shooting, and his eyes began to water. Nicolas identified the trauma caused by this incident as the root cause of Kevin's current-life criminal behaviour, and got him to undergo some exercises aimed at reducing its impact.

Kevin Dooley, after what he called his intense experience

After he'd been brought back from the trance, Kevin revealed that his dad had died when he was young, and his mum had had a nervous breakdown as a result. He told us that he'd never fully understood why he'd been unable to get over the death of a parent when so many other people manage to cope with similar experiences. The idea that his grief had been compounded by apparently losing his dad in a previous life seemed to provide him with an explanation. He gave the impression that he'd gained some form of closure from the experience.

"That was intense," Kevin told me once he'd been brought out of the trance. "I could actually feel myself inside the people, and feel their shoulders as a solid object."

Brian: I'd have liked to have been a Dick Turpin-type guy

Brian Dooley, not quite sold on the whole thing

Brian didn't experience any past-life regressions, which was surprising, given his twin's vivid, emotional recollections. "I'd have liked to have been a Dick Turpin type guy, but wasn't going to lie and say I experienced something I didn't," he said. "I never went into a deep sleep. I noticed that Nicolas spent longer on the others, so maybe that was why." This was partly my fault, as I'd cocked up the timing, and Nicolas had had to cram Brian's regression into 50 minutes. He apparently usually allocates two hours to a session.

What did I make of it all?

If you stuck me in a room with an ex-con and told me to convince him that he was a homeless nine-year-olds or medieval villager, I'd probably end up making a tit of myself. With that in mind, I'm begrudgingly impressed. Irrespective of whether Marcus and Kevin genuinely regressed to a past life or simply explored previously untouched aspects of their subconscious, it was an intense, visceral experience that Kevin in particular seemed to gain a great deal from. Do I believe in past lives now? Who knows? All I can say is that it was a fucking weird day.

@Nickchesterv / @CBethell_Photo

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It's one thing to imagine 18 years without clean drinking water, it's another to grow up in that reality, not knowing any other way.

That's business as usual for youth living on Shoal Lake 40, a remote First Nations reserve on the Manitoba-Ontario border that was literally cut off from the mainland when the government excavated a massive trench to serve as the Winnipeg's fresh water reservoir. They don't remember a time when their small community didn't have to haul jugs of water out of boats and pickup trucks by hand. And up until Canada's prime minister visited the reserve earlier this year, the kids hadn't had a real opportunity to ask why.

Shoal Lake 40 youth and residents met Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in April during his visit to the First Nation for a special VICE Canada documentary. VICELAND host Sarain Carson-Fox was there to witness the historic meeting and to talk to Canada's leader herself. Before that, she met with young people living on Cross Lake reserve in northern Manitoba, one of several isolated Indigenous groups dealing with a wave of suicides this year. The resulting documentary, CUT-OFF, that airs this Sunday on VICELAND in Canada, accepts a challenge raised by these communities: to see and feel their struggles up close, and to sit with the uncomfortable questions these kids raise.

Hailing from Bowating First Nation just outside of Sault Saint Marie, Carson-Fox counts herself among the same generation of Indigenous youth rising up and making themselves heard after more than a century of division, neglect and silence imposed by Canada's residential schools. She's spent the past year travelling around the world to learn more about the experience in other Indigenous communities for an upcoming VICELAND show called RISE. Ahead of the June 19 release of CUT-OFF, Carson-Fox took us back to her time at Shoal Lake 40, and her experiences meeting with Indigenous groups around the world.

VICE: When you visited Shoal Lake 40, did you have an idea of what you were going to hear, going in?
Sarain Carson-Fox: I went in thinking the community was prepared to really hammer out the issues they've been lobbying the government for, and it was so not about that. I mean yes, Freedom Road came up over and over again, but for Shoal Lake 40, they were more interested in being able to be heard, to talk about the whole picture, about everything that has happened to the community—not just the fact they want a road. It was really about having an opportunity to interact with the leader, especially for the young people.

You have Trudeau on record making big, long-term promises in this film, like ending boil water advisories within five years. How do you feel now about capturing that?
That is so tough, because just like with any other human being, there's that yearning to trust, to be inspired and excited. It's a natural response, but for me, the more I hear him promise, the more nervous I get about what the reality of these outcomes could be. Especially when you're making promises to the youth. Young people have a way of remembering and holding you to your words. The interesting thing about promises from the government is that on our side, the Indigenous side, there's never been any broken promises. When you look from that perspective, it's like, we're only used to broken promises from the government, but we've kept our word.

Trudeau answers questions from Shoal Lake 40 youth

You've been visiting a lot more communities than just Shoal Lake 40 and Cross Lake, can you tell me about that, about your journey as a host and storyteller?
Oh my goodness. So the other work I do with VICELAND is co-host a show called RISE and it's focused on Indigenous resistance and resilience all across Indian country. I haven't even found the right words yet to describe the immense respect I've gained in the last year from being surrounded by incredible, selfless, wise people and communities who are just willing to put their lives on the line and do whatever it takes to not only save their people, but to make way for this Earth to be available to future generations. I know that might sound really cheesy, but those are the stakes. They're fighting against big business to remain sovereign Indigenous people—and that's worldwide, the situation is the same worldwide. For me that has just been eye opening, and it's scary and overwhelming and also just beautiful. Because the common thread is the resilience.

How does what you saw and felt on those isolated reserves compare to your own experience growing up Indigenous in Canada?
From an Indigenous ideology, we are all one. It's a colonial view that forces us to see each other as "other." The one amazing thing about visiting one of these communities, is you're almost immediately respected as being home. But on the other hand, I grew up privileged, because I was close to the city, I grew up in the arts, I went to boarding school for dance. So in a lot of ways I grew up seeing those things, but have always had the idea to get out—the option to see something else. What's happening with a lot of these young people is they're surrounded by this situation all the time. It's hard to see a way out, hard to see another side or to imagine that your community could be whole, could be functioning.

Trudeau visits Shoal Lake 40 elementary school

Is there a moment in the film that's stuck with you?
The same night I did all the interviews, I watched the entire cell video of Joni Ross . It's quite long, it's the whole song. That was the first time I got to see her and hear her on my own, and that was taken just before she took her own life. Seeing that, and hearing her mom and dad talk about her life, that will stick with me forever. What will stick with me is how they so freely and openly talk about her life in the face of the most tragic of events in time. They're still willing to tell their story. Indigenous people are naturally so open. I think about that all the time—how part of what's happened to Indigenous people worldwide is that they've opened their hearts, and have always been willing to engage in dialogue, and I think that's been to their demise. Generosity and kindness that's been used to colonize and create so much damage.

CUT-OFF airs at 10pm ET/PT Sunday June 19, in Canada, on VICELAND, City, and VICELAND.com.

First-time actress Marilyn Lima, in Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)

You can't really tell what you're looking at, initially. You're upstairs. A cluster of leaves shakes in the breeze outside. Someone runs across the garden naked, long hair swishing, while slightly menacing ambient music builds. At this stage, this could either be a scene from a horror film, or a fashion ad. You swivel away from the window and pass two teenage girls snogging on the landing, with someone slumped in his pants at their feet—so, this is a house party?

Not quite. Right before everything goes dark, you catch a glimpse of a young guy in a baseball cap standing shirtless in a bedroom, holding up his mobile phone to film two people fucking. But this isn't amateur porn either. It's the discombobulating opening scene from Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story), a new French film out this weekend about teens in a non-descript town during a heatwave who end up shagging their way through a series of orgies filmed and posted on a Snapchat-like social media platform.

There's group sex, penis "helicoptering" and lots of close-up shots of the bare skin of women portraying GCSE-age girls. But it turns out the final edit—rated PG-12 in France and R-18 in the UK—is actually a censored version of what director Eva Husson originally had in mind.

"I couldn't really put too many drugs in the film," she says, "because there was already so much sex. It was going to be too explosive in terms of censorship in France, so I toned that down." Really? This is the softer version? "Yeah—you can talk about sex in film, you can talk about drugs, but sex and drugs together? It becomes really high-risk." Be that as it may, Husson's still made a film that's likely to spark a visceral reaction, in everything from its blase approach to full-frontal nudity to its portrayal of young people as sex-mad robots glued to their screens.

The plot comes from a series of true stories Husson remembers reading, back in the 90s, about teenagers fucking en masse in the US—or maybe it was Belgium? Or France, or Germany—and creating a sort of moral panic. Bang Gang isn't autobiographical, but draws a line between those news snippets and the universal teenage longing for freedom. It has extra potency given Husson's background.

She came of age at the advent of rave culture, when "one day you'd find someone and become completely smitten by them, and two days later you'd hardly remember their names. It was like, 'Who are you again?'" she says, mock-squinting behind her thick frames. And she's translated that sense of abandon into the film. It feels carefree, even if Husson did have to take the drug references down a notch in comparison to what she'd experienced after running away from home at 14 and floating through the rave scenes of Ibiza, Paris and ... Guernsey.

"There was a lot of partying in Guernsey at the time," she says, laughing. "I remember going to a rave in a castle there, and I had this boyfriend from Ireland—Glen. I was really high and I saw him kiss another girl and I was crushed for days." She's over it now, but that little moment runs parallel to one in the film, where a character's sense of being cheated on ends up igniting the entire group sex craze.

Pretty girl George is buzzing off half a pill, trying to block out the fact that her classmate Alex is now ghosting her and getting off with her best friend, when she gives the sex parites their name. "It's like a big bang," she says, giggling and curled up in the lap of Alex's floppy-haired sidekick Nikita as people strip and cop off around them. "All this magic exploding. A banging gang ... the bang gang."

The notion of people freaking out about teens having sex—and I mean with each other rather than much older adults and pedophiles—is nothing new. In the UK, we still haven't figured out the vocabulary needed to understand teenagers as sexual being. It feels as though every few months another story comes out about a teen being criminalized for sexting their peer, or porn creating a dead-eyed swarm of adolescents who becoming numb to sexual intimacy and pleasure.

For that reason, filming the "bang gangs"—from casually filmed fellatio to girls getting eaten out while their friends go at it a few steps away—ended up being the biggest challenge. "The things that scared me most were the collective sex scenes, because however open-minded I am, I've never been that comfortable with collective sex," Husson says, cringing slightly. "I couldn't sleep for days—I was like, 'what have I done? This is going to be a fucking disaster.'"

She avoided a mess by choreographing the most intimate sex scenes and chatting extensively to each cast member in the months before shooting, she says. She also had a bit of first-hand experience, having been filmed nude as a teen herself in films. "On the first day, I had them all gather in one room and get naked in front of one another. And it was very sweet because they all started running around in the naked, just having fun. In contrast, on the last day I almost had to pay the extras more for them to get naked"—and she laughs. "I was like, 'oh guys, just the last effort,' while they were thinking 'ugh, I can't stand the sight of naked people any more.'"

By the end of Bang Gang, you may well feel that way too. There's a lot of moody slow-motion and a heavy dose of Gus van Sant and Harris Savides' joint approach to lighting teen tedium. But it's beautifully shot—with help from Danish cinematographer Mattias Troelstrup—and likely to make your stomach lurch remembering the tug of school-age infatuation. Even if you didn't hit puberty when people were sending each other mobile phone photos of their dicks, you can still identify with the film's visual representation of the way everything feels so unbearably powerful at that age.

"It's more about reflecting the way a teenager sees the world," Husson says. "It's poppy, it's very bright, it's dense and intense. I wanted the movie to reflect that. It's about five degrees to the right, a heightened reality. And I wanted that."

@tnm___

More film stuff on VICE:

Remembering Alan Clarke, the King of Bleak, Violent British Cinema

What It Was Like to Be Stanley Kubrick's Assistant for Three Decades

Revisiting 'The Craft', the Movie That Realised the Monstrous Power of Teen Girls

Convicted terrorists John Nuttall and Amanda Korody. Photo via RCMP

Recovering addicts John Nuttall and Amanda Korody, already convicted on terrorism charges last year, had their mental capacities thoroughly mocked once again in court this week.

Islington, London

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Ali Mobasser had an unsettled childhood. Born in the US, by the age of eight he'd lived in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica, and the UK. Fleeing the Iranian Revolution of 1979, he was sent to London to live with his aunt Afsaneh and his father, later turning the city into the subject and inspiration of his award-winning photography.

His series "Afsaneh: Box III" documented photographs of his aunt's ID cards and school reports, earning an award back in 2014. But "Reflections," his most recent work, is a series of street photography shots inspired by his "son's fearlessness to engage with the world around him." It narrates a journey of acceptance and mourning after his Aunt Afsaneh passed away in 2013. Ali told me the series has been tactically hidden on his website, to give him the opportunity to perfect the concept.

While Ali fiddled around with his Rolleiflex camera, we talked about his dislike for genres within photography, his son's involvement in "Reflections" and dealing with the people he pissed off along the way.

VICE: You studied fine art, so what led you to photography?
Ali Mobasser: I was too scared to become an artist. I didn't feel like I had enough issues because artists need "issues" to deal with. And I was 20, issue-free. I was doing a lot of photography in a darkroom the whole time, so after university I thought I should just go down the photography path and start assisting. And then through that, I can try to be an artist. But I took a while to call myself a photographer.

Why was that?
I saw myself as an artist who uses photography. Fine art was mixed media, so it was all about the idea. You would have a concept and then you would use whatever medium you want to conclude that idea. I was always looking at photographers like Hiroshi Sugimoto and Duane Michals who never identified as photographers, so I always respected them. When I saw you could do conceptual storytelling with photography, and people could find their own stories within that, that's what really what attracted me.

I read on your website that your late aunt raised you in Putney. How did that influence your work?
I didn't want to go to Putney. I was sent there on a holiday when I was eight years old from California, where I lived with my mother. At the end of that summer, there was a phone call where my mum told me I was staying. So I was stuck. I had this really sort of strange upbringing where I never knew what was going to happen.

I felt like Putney didn't have an identity, and I had never photographed London. The challenge for me was to photograph a home that didn't really feel like my own. Putney's always felt like a place with an identity crisis. All the old people disappeared, all the people from the estates disappeared and now it's this place that's quite posh.

You've said the "Reflections" series was inspired by your son's "fearlessness" and "unabashed willingness to engage with the world around him." Can you tell me more?
When he was out of the pram, I really started taking these photographs. What happened was he'd go out with a scooter and dive into these social situations. I would never stand in front of someone just like that and take a photograph. So I would go in and be like, "Farris, come here! Sorry about that." Then as this was happening, I'd take their photograph.

When I started taking photographs in London, my home environment, I discovered the work of Vivian Maier . She was using kids as a decoy as well, also shooting on the Rolleiflex.

I think street photography is the hardest kind of because you're vulnerable. You get caught. The most powerful images for me are the ones where they've caught me and they're looking at me like, What are you doing? It's like doing something naughty, something sneaky. You can hold the Rolleiflex one way and be pointing the lens another and people don't know what you're doing because they don't know what the camera is.

Finsbury, London

Has anyone got really angry?
Yes. She did . I kind of just killed her with kindness and had a laugh with her afterwards. But she still wasn't happy. I explained to her how amazing she looked. Another guy came and pulled her away, but she was like "Delete that. Delete that now!" Then I started explaining that it was on film, and just a mirror thing I look into. So I kind of got away with that.

Do you ever feel you've crossed a line?
I go into the situation and I take the photograph. Sometimes I question, Am I taking the right photograph? Is this something I should be showing? But I don't think about that when I'm taking the photograph. I just take it and that's what becomes a reflection of myself. Then afterwards I decide within the edit whether I'm going to use that photograph or not. There's images I don't feel are me. I try not to be mean. I still might take that mean photograph, but then I'll look at it and decide, No I can't use that if it doesn't feel fair, however good the photograph is. But there are still a few images in here that I'm questioning.

How so?
In one photograph, I think the mother wasn't well. I was in the area with my friend and his daughter, who were having fun. My friend asked me to take his photo, then to the right was this situation. My wife thought it was a powerful shot, but I questioned whether I was exposing someone's life that maybe they don't want to be exposed like that. So I find that one quite tough, and I will probably will get rid of it. That's why "Reflections" has been taken off my website, because I'll have to re-edit this.

Street photography is described as a saturated market. How do you stand out?
Street photography wasn't something that was that attractive to me. I was never a big Cartier-Bresson fan. I just found I enjoyed taking photographs of what's around me. Sometimes I find it hard calling it street photography because a lot of it's not on the streets, and there's personal stuff drifting into it. And that's why instead of calling it observations it's called reflections.

I'm kind of battling with this series at the moment and I know it's getting to where I want it to be. Once, there was a woman wearing a pink sari and behind her was a pink double decker bus. What are the chances? But I took it out of the series because it's really obvious. It's just a color thing going on. If I've seen it before, it's a perspective trick, a color trick or visual trick, and there's nothing being said, then I pull it out. And that's why my work isn't street photography—street photography is always visual play.

Thanks, Ali.

This interview has been condensed for clarity and length. Here are some more photos from the series.

@sxphia_h

Check out Anna Haifisch's website and Twitter.

Check out Nick Gazin's Instagram.

David Shapiro isn't exactly the spitting image of a streetwear head. He works at a corporate law firm, doesn't know how to skate, and is essentially banned from the original Supreme store in New York City. Despite all that, he knows the price of every Supreme item on sale by heart—and claims to have spent close to $15,000 on the skate and streetwear clothes in his ten-plus years as a super fan. (He also claims to know how much of each material is used to make each item, an almost impossible-to-verify assertion.) In other words, Shapiro worships the brand even if he can't really hang.

Shapiro's new book Supremacist is a fictional account of the trip he took to visit every Supreme store in the world (minus the location in Paris, which opened after his return). The narrator—a tweaked version of Shapiro—travels to the nine mostly-identical storefronts, accompanied by a friend who doesn't really get the brand's appeal. During this streetwear pilgrimage, Shapiro copes—poorly—with substance abuse issues. (At one point, he comments, "It was hard to tell which of the things I was addicted to was the source of my discomfort.") He also mortifies himself in front of a variety of skaters, and attempts to articulate why Supreme hasn't lost a bit of its magical aura or authenticity since being founded in 1994.

The novel is not the first book the 27-year-old has written, nor is it his first piece of writing on Supreme. But the faux-memoir of Shapiro's voyage to Supreme LA, Harajuku, Daikanyama, Shibuya, Nagoya, Osaka, Fukuoka, London, and New York is probably the best thing he's published, and is arguably the most intimate dissection of the brand and its hierarchy of fandom to date. In a way, it's like a millennial Annie Hall, but instead of depicting a couple falling in and out of love, the book is the author's love letter to the one thing his feelings have never wavered about, even though the thing he finds meaning in doesn't love him back.

Fittingly, during a recent interview, I asked Shapiro if he ever wished Supreme founder James Jebbia would accept or just hang withhim. He replied, citing Woody Allen, "You know the quote, 'I wouldn't want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member.' Like, how lame would they be if they liked me?" Over the course of several hours and six-packs, Shapiro and I talked about his globe-trotting mission and why he puts the brand on a pedestal, regardless of the fact he'll never learn to skate or even feel comfortable walking into the shop on Lafayette Street in Manhattan. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Photo by Zach Sokol

Gordon Bishop, the author's father, in the early 70s. All photos courtesy of the author.

Dad created myths and lived them. He'd take me on 3 AM walks in strange cities and tell me wild stories about how he helped overthrow the Suharto regime; how he was blacklisted in Indonesia; how my mother's death was a possible murder plotted by the regime, and that's why we had to sleep with a baseball bat under our pillow.

But recently, I learned this: Gordon, a.k.a. Dad, and his ex-girlfriend Una, a countess and a model, travelled the world on stolen plane tickets. If it weren't for these stolen tickets, and the journey they took him on, I wouldn't exist.

Dad told me about all of his adventures—including the crime of the stolen tickets—again and again like bedtime stories, though I'm aware that just because his self-fulfilling folktales were vivid doesn't mean they were necessarily accurate. I gathered them from the memory bank he shared, as well as from the journals and photos he left behind. I've spent the years since my father's death traveling across the world chasing truths about his life and spreading his ashes. That was his dying wish: for me to deliver him across oceans and continents—smack dab in the heart of every city, every beach, and every memory.

The stolen plane tickets arrived on a rainy summer evening in 1971, when a Black Panther fugitive showed up at his doorstep in Berkeley, drenched and desperate for a place to hide. A gun was tucked inside the sleeve of his leather jacket. Gordon invited him in for coffee and a joint.

"Can I crash here?" the Black Panther asked.

"Sure, man. You got money to chip in?" Gordon asked.

"I've got something better than money," the Black Panther said. He drew a lockbox from his wet backpack. Inside were 60, 90, maybe 100 sets of blank airline tickets. "So-and-so's friend works for Qantas. She brought these home," he explained, "These are good for getting you anywhere in the world. You go to the airport and have the agent write out the ticket. One destination at a time. But you can't stay longer than three weeks. You have fun. You lose track of time. If that happens, tear up the first pack and start over with a fresh pack. Don't let anyone catch on. You see, these tickets are..."

"I catch your drift," Gordon said.

"Take as many as you'd like. But be careful, man, that's how folks end up having three babies in each continent."

Gordon smirked, snatched four blank ticket books, and built a makeshift bed for his new guest in the walk-in-closet. He spun a globe he kept to watch where his finger would land—a nightly routine that calmed his frenetic thoughts.

"Let's run away," his girlfriend Una said shortly after my dad received the tickets. "Somewhere new. Somewhere far and exotic."

So, my father and Una zigzagged across nations and time zones and cultures. Gordon's charm and Una's regal beauty opened doors; together, they befriended royalty, politicos, artists, businessmen, shamans, and Indigenous folks around the world. On the stolen tickets they'd eventually hop to France, Italy, Mexico, Australia, Tahiti, Fiji, Nepal, Brazil, Afghanistan, Singapore, and Indonesia. At each destination, Gordon would buy a small souvenir and slip it into his pale green attaché case, which I was eventually gifted.

A Black Panthers symbol with photos of People's Park, Berkeley, gifted to the author by her father.

At LAX in 1971—prepared for their first journey—my father let Una do all of the talking while he hid. Una wore a floor-length cream dress and hoop earrings. She spoke to the agents without hesitation. Her English, tinged with French and German overtones, made her seem worldly, and she was quick on her feet—handy traits for negotiating at international airports. Meanwhile, my father, with his long hair and blue eye shadow (which he wore almost daily), hid in a kiosk, sweating profusely, in a velvet bellbottomed tuxedo and cowboy boots, one gold and the other silver.

"The next flight to Paris is in six hours," the agent said, handing Una two tickets.

"You're a sorceress," Gordon said to his partner. "Just like all the other fairytale witches from the Black Forest."

They made it through security without raising an eyebrow, and shared a high from the rush of not getting bagged. On board the plane, they ordered champagne and toasted, "To Unzarella and Gordonzolla."

Gordon added, "Don't things taste better when they're free?"

Gordon Bishop and Una

In Paris, they hitched a ride to Hotel Le Meurice to pay an unannounced visit to their mutual friend, Salvador Dalí, who they'd lived with in an artist commune years prior.

"Ahh, it's The Man Who Plans to Eat a Car! Enter," Dalí said, twisting his wispy, gelled mustache into tiny knots. He was referring to the title of the collage book Gordon had made for Dalí: a pictorial story about a German auto-enthusiast who planned to eat a car. It was still prominently displayed on Dalí's coffee table, its pages now browned from touch. "It is a masterpiece," Dalí said.

My father let Dalí in on the secret about the plane tickets.

"Go to Bali," Dalí said decisively. "There's magic there."

Dalí tore out some drawings and handed them to Gordon. "For you."

Gordon put the sketches in his pale green attaché case, wedged between the blank tickets.

Una's scrapbook from their time in Tahiti.

Next stop: Kabul.

Afghanistan, at the time, was facing a wave of freedom—a golden era of modernity and democratic reform—women attended universities (often in miniskirts) and worked for Parliament. Tourists flocked to Kabul, curious about the "mystic east" and lured by the beauty of the city's ancient sculptures, its surrounding snowcapped mountains, and sprawling gardens.

Gordon and Una followed the Silk Road and visited the Bamiyan Buddhas. They frequented Sigi's on Chicken Street to exchange ideas with fellow travellers. They bathed in the Kabul River. They slept in a large room on thick carpets, along with 20 or 30 other tourists. They made love in secret. Hedonistic hippies, freaks, heads, and other tourists came to Afghanistan for spiritual quests and adventure, or else to escape the humdrum of convention. Painted VW vans purred down the streets. Kabul was a destination on the infamous overland hippie trail, deemed the "Paris of Asia." Most people with stolen plane tickets ended up there. This fact made Una nervous.

"We should leave," Una urged, "We'll get caught."

"Relax," Gordon said, "We won't."

Gordon was having fun. He'd lost track of time. He grew a beard and walked around barefoot until the soles of his feet grew tough, like elephant hide. He took mescaline and wrote poetry under the pen name Dubjinsky Barefoot. He haggled at the market and bought a knife inlaid with mother-of-pearl. He wrote postcards that he never sent—no money for stamps. He picked fights with Una about nothing in particular. Three weeks had ticked along. It was time to board the plane again. Just as they were heading for the airport, the ground shook. A damaging earthquake. The northern region was in ruins. Air travel was suspended.

Una in Afghanistan

They flew to India. In their hotel in New Delhi, the phone rang. It was the airline agency. "Madame, you better come into the office. There's a problem with your ticket."

Una's voice shook. "I want to leave New Delhi now." Her throat felt tight.

"Yes, madame, but you must first come into the office." The agent's tone intensified and became threatening.

"They're on to us," Una told Gordon.

They shredded the first ticket book and headed to the airport. With frantic fingers, Gordon handed Una the unused tickets. She approached the ticketing counter. Behind the desk where the agent stood was a poster that read:

DO NOT ACCEPT ANY STOLEN PLANE TICKETS WRITTEN OUT AT QANTAS IN SAN FRANCISCO ON 10 MAY 1971.

That was exactly what was written on their tickets. Una willed herself to appear calmer, more regal.

"I'm sorry, Madame," the agent said, "I cannot issue you this ticket. You'll have to go to our office in New Delhi."

"Please, sir," Una begged, "There's a flight to Bali in one hour. I have some dignitaries I must meet."

The man's face softened. He placed the tickets on the counter.

Una and my father got through security. At customs, someone tapped Una on the shoulder. Her heart fell to her knees. "Madame, you forgot your hand luggage," a stranger said.

Phew.

On the flight, as they were celebrating the close encounter over wine, the captain announced: "Ladies and gentlemen. Please prepare for landing. We are making an unscheduled stop in Mumbai."

"The plane is landing so they can arrest us," my father said, certain.

They rehearsed what they'd say to the officers. Escape routes mapped in their mind. Each magnified the other's anxiety. They snapped their eyes shut as they landed.

It was just a stop for fuel.

Photo of a trance dance in Bali, Indonesia in the 1970s.

According to my father's journals, they happened to land in Bali, Indonesia, on Kuningan, a day marked by ancestral spirits descending from the heavens.

Whenever someone would ask his profession, Gordon would say something outlandish with a serious face, like, "I'm a traveling Merkin salesman—a booming business of vaginal wigs." Most of the time, they believed him. By this point, they'd burned through the stacks of stolen tickets the Black Panther had gifted them. His mother wired him a monthly stipend, but he made the bulk of his cash by grifting at airport bars on the journey, selling harmless, phony "language pills" to strangers after claiming they were the reason he spoke so many languages.

Gordon and Una rented a motorcycle in Bali. They bought traditional sarongs. Una tucked a red hibiscus behind her left ear. They went to trance dances where villagers would stab their bare chests with steel blades and, protected by black magic, remain unscathed. They attended cremations and ceremonies, slaughterings, exorcisms, and long meditations. They fought and made love in the dense jungle that clung to the hillsides, along the serpentine streets, on rice paddies, near ancestral temples, and sacred Banyan trees.

As their spiritual search deepened, their paths diverged. Una was content to stay in Bali. Gordon was getting antsy; he craved a change of pace. They fought more, about trivial things like the way the other's hair was parted.

"Find yourself a patient Javanese," Una said to Gordon, her tone bittersweet. "I'm not your girl anymore."

They made love one last time. Sad but resolute, in 1973, he left her in Bali with her new Balinese boyfriend, amid the land of gods. He found a map and let his fingers decide his next steps: the Special Region of Yogyakarta, a city on the Indonesian island of Java.

Gordon 'Joyo' Bishop, a.k.a. Dubjinsky Barefoot

In 1974, Gordon found himself in the midst of Indonesia's independence day parade in the ancient city of Yogyakarta. He was surrounded by thousands of villagers who gaped at him from afar, who inched closer to touch his unprecedented white skin or else gasped as they watched him eat a chicken skewer with his left hand, the devil's hand.

A group of dancers unfolded their limbs like petals. Gamelan music vibrated. Gongs sounded. Skinny horses and ancient-looking men sat lazily in parked pedicabs, bare and filthy feet peeking out from batik sarongs. Teenagers jammed to Bob Dylan. Sultans were hoisted above the crowd in gilded carriages. People shouted, "Merdeka!" "Independence!"

Gordon heard a laugh, like wind chimes. He followed the sound to a woman with smiling red-stained lips in a hip-hugging minidress—a sight far too modern and incongruous in a city renowned as the heart of traditional Javanese culture, where many women, including the one accompanying her, resisted Western influence by continuing to wear the classic batik sarong and lace blouses.

A purple orchid was pinned to the brazenly dressed woman's hair. Her cheekbones were high; she was a ghost of a woman whose force was so overpowering that looking at her turned him on, but also kind of hurt him. She was strolling arm in arm with another woman who was carrying a baby in a batik sling.

They walked toward one another, standing inches apart for the few moments their paths intersected. Sweat beads trailed Gordon's brows. His hands shook. She turned her gaze toward him. Their eyes locked. She blushed, but didn't look away. The loquacious and never shy Gordon stood transfixed and mute as they flirted with their eyes for pregnant minutes. All of the pickup lines he'd ever used, and some he hadn't, flashed through his mind, but none seemed appropriate, especially after translating them into his far-from-fluent Indonesian. When he got up the nerve to introduce himself, he was so tongue-tied that he couldn't speak. Instead, he went to buy loose cigarettes at a nearby kiosk. From the corner of his eye, he saw her leaving the parade. He sped toward her, elbowing passersby, but she vanished into the crowd.

For the next 34 days, Gordon waited where his roommate Jono thought he'd seen her, atop the highest perch of Taman Sari castle, now ruins, legs and binoculars dangling high above Jogjakarta's bustling bird market.

Word about the foreigner in the watchtower looking for love spread. Curious kids joined him. Others came and brought him daily offerings of magic love potions made of reptile blood and minced ginger, which he drank, happily and hopefully. Several times he thought he'd seen her, mounted his bike, and peddled off in hot pursuit with his heart thumping a mile a minute, only to find out it was someone else.

Nanies Bishop, the author's mother

Rainy season came and left. It was 1975, and my father had been in Yogyakarta for two years, roughly four years since his trip with Una first began. He walked along a quiet lane during sunset; his head hung low. His thoughts wandered to life in New York City. His parents had offered to pay for the 10,000-mile journey home. Penniless and heartbroken, he weighed this option. He had a yen for a hot dog from Gray's Papaya, a cheesecake from Carnegie Deli, a midnight subway ride.

Gordon looked up. At that moment he spotted a familiar woman. He took out his binoculars. To his astonishment, it was the other woman from the parade who was accompanying his love with the same baby slung onto her hip—only now doubled in size. He ran up the staircase, panting. The woman gasped; a look of shock struck her lips, which quickly morphed into a smile.

"You're that foreigner from the Merdeka parade," she said immediately.

Gordon was surprised that she remembered. This gave him a boost.

"We thought you were just passing through, like most white guys, bules," she said.

"Please," Gordon begged, lapsing into his unpolished way, "Gimme her address."

"I can't," she said. But then she took out a pencil and a pink receipt and began to scribble. "Here."

NANIES, it read.

"If you love her enough, you'll find her."

He liked this game.

Above, Nanies and Gordon at their wedding in Jogjakarta, Indonesia. Below, the couple's marriage certificate.

Gordon and Nanies's auspicious wedding date was set by local Javanese mystics. I still find it kismet that Dad died on the 32nd anniversary of my parents' wedding day, July 21, 1975.

Una received word of Gordon's impending marriage and flew from Bali to halt the wedding. She appeared as a tall blonde apparition in a lemon sundress. As soon as Gordon saw her, he felt the deep glow of old friendship. When Una met his new bride—a princess and dancer from the royal court—she surrendered. She found Nanies's beauty to be poetic and non-threatening—the rare kind of beauty that made you want to look more like yourself instead of her. Una saw how he guarded Nanies like treasure. He'd grown up, moved on. He'd even cut his hair.

"Nanies centres me in my deepest soul," he told Una. "She gives balance to my tight-roping spirits way up there in the rainbow-filled sky of my universal being. She turns my shitty aspects into gold." Seeing Nanies and Una together in juxtaposition—contrasting and complementary—was almost a visionary experience for Gordon: two hemispheres of his heart, two worlds, peacefully colliding.

Nanies, with her Javanese celestial-like peace, seemed a perfect match to temper Gordon's volatility. What more did Una really want for her great love than to wish him well. It was time for her to leave Indonesia, to close this chapter, and to travel home—overland through Asia and Europe—back to Paris. Visions of them floating hand in hand in the Red Sea looped in her mind. There'd be no more Unzarella. No more Gordonzolla. Una exited the scene.

Nanies and Gordon Bishop

But Una never left the scene entirely. When I was a teenager—motherless—dad flew me to visit her twice a year. He wanted me to taste mother love. He said Una was his gift to me, that without her I probably wouldn't exist. I visited her in 2007 at her home in Ibiza. It was six months after dad died.

"I have something for you," I said, reaching into dad's pale green attaché case. "These are dad's ashes. I want you to have some."

Before I said another word, Una reached across the table, swiped the baggie from me and dunked her finger inside. She lifted her dusty finger to her lips and sucked on it.

"Now he's inside me. He'll never leave me," Una said.

I laughed. "Cancer stole his eye, his breast, and his leg. But he still came to you. Flew here. You were his final destination."

"He was haunted and charmed," she said. "Destiny can play dirty tricks."

We ate paella and looked out at the Mediterranean Sea twinkling and fading in the evening sky.

"I can't taste the food. I still taste him," Una said, "He doesn't want to leave."

He'll never have to leave. Dad's ashes are now across 39 countries—and counting—scattered among the people and places he loved. Even death wouldn't stop him from travelling, stolen plane tickets or not.

This story is excerpted from Naomi Melati Bishop's memoir-in-progress. Follow her on Instagram.

Just a couple of mates being mates in a park (Photo: Tshepo Mokoena)

There are few things more unsettling—and recognizable—than the realization you've started to fancy your best friend. It doesn't matter if it's your best mate in school, your "work husband" or that someone you've known since before you could walk: crossing the line from being close friends to getting into each other's pants can be a disaster.

The silver lining is, of course, the possibility they might feel the same way. The caveat? Getting rejected and realizing the best friend you would've turned to is the one person you can't deal with talking to.

I spoke to three people about their experiences of falling in love with their mates, from the cases where romantic love destroyed the original friendship to ones where they're probably going to stay together forever.

Anisha Laing, 20: "I found out he'd cheated on me at Reading Festival"

We met in year nine, and I remember he told me one of his favourite bands was Taking Back Sunday—I had never listened to them, but I lied and said they were my favourite band too. We got really close over that, but he ended up going out with two of my good friends and were really good friends for a couple of years.

Eventually, he and I kissed at a party. I was really confused as to what we should do after that, because I didn't want to lose him or my mate, who he was dating. To make matters worse, everyone at school found out and thought I was a really horrible person.

We eventually decided we shouldn't be friends anymore and didn't talk for a couple of months. Then we gave it a try, spending nearly a year together. We were each other's firsts for a lot of things, but it things started to go to shit because we both had a lot of problems, and because we were 17 we didn't know how to deal with them.

We always said that no matter what happened, we'd stay friends, but you can't go from waking up next to someone, feeling like they're everything you want in the world, to not being able to touch them ever again. It doesn't matter if they're your best friend or not. When we broke up, I couldn't even look at him at parties. And then I found out he'd cheated on me at Reading Festival. We had resolved a lot of our issues before he went and I was really happy with everything, and then when he got back, he brutally dumped me in the street.

If I was to do it again, obviously I would do certain things differently, but there are some things you can't help when you're 17.

Brittany Stewart, 24: "I went outside and saw her making out with a girl"

I met a woman at work—let's call her Sophie—who was cool, attractive and interesting to be around. I gradually started to have more feelings for her. On the one hand there was quite a lot of chemistry, but at the same time, I didn't know how to make a move and wasn't really sure that was the right thing to do.

I cared a lot about the friendship, but still entertained the idea of a relationship. We'd have sleepovers all the time and share each other's clothes and all that sort of couple-y stuff, but at the same time, I had no idea how she felt. And then, because I was trying to do my own thing and follow my ambitions and stuff, it all became too much so I started to ignore her because I didn't want to go through it, and she knew how I felt. I 'd spent a lot of time chasing girls in the past, and I made the conscious decision not to do it that time with her—although I kind of did in the end, really.

It reached a critical point when I was training for a charity boxing match and she came to watch it, which was really cool. After the fight, we went to our mutual friends' house party. I didn't know at the time, but she wanted to go because her friend was trying to set her up with the girl hosting it. We got there and she disappeared, off flirting with this girl. I was exhausted after the fight, so I went to drown my sorrows.

Not long after, I went outside and saw her making out with the girl, which got me really angry, so I left the party without saying anything. A couple of weeks later, at a house party at mine, she ended up fooling around with one of my oldest friends in my bed. So yeah, I realized then it wasn't on the cards and I was quite frustrated.

This all happened about a year, and we're still good friends. I didn't want that to change. Although I fell in love with her for a while, I guess it just wasn't really meant to be.

Alex Watson, 41: "Although he was straight, he wasn't horrible about it"

I met a guy when I was in my first year and he was in his second, and we got on really well. It wasn't really a physical attraction I felt for him at first. He was very unlike me but we were both Northern, and had a bit of a rapport because of that. He also tended to get sexual in a way that was a bit of a bad idea, but straight men do that, don't they?

Falling in love with him killed our relationship, but only because I made the mistake of telling him, and he rejected me. I was full of hormones, and there was nowhere else for my affections to go but him. Even though he was straight, he wasn't horrible about it, and looking back, it was positive in the sense that it was useful to learn not to do that again. If you're gay and you're only spending your time in the company of straight friends, it's kind of an occupational hazard.

We fell out nearly 20 years ago and haven't spoken since. I wrote at least one crazy letter to him a few years back, and I think that scared him off for life. That's the bad thing about falling in love with your best friends; you go a bit nuts. Now I'm older, I know the only thing you can do in a situation like that is remove yourself. If you develop friendships that can't go any further, you have to be rational. You have to get out of it entirely, including the friendship.

Eric Spano, 25: "The idea of being 'just friends' felt like settling"

My cousin introduced us at a school dance, and before long we became best friends in secondary school. I sort of always had feelings for her but sucked them up, because she just wanted to be friends and I still wanted to be in her life. It was a bit obvious so we just didn't address it for years on end.

It was fine until four and a half years ago when we went on a road trip to New York from Montreal and it was a disaster. There was just so much tension because she didn't want to be with me. We were trying to be friends, so we got into a huge fight and actually didn't talk for five years. It was really disheartening, because we'd been friends for a really long time.

At that point I was very narrow-minded. The idea of being friends felt like settling. Throughout the years, none of my other relationships really felt like "the one." I was always using her as a baseline for what a relationship should be, and I never really found anybody that made me feel as happy as she did. But then, very recently, after not speaking for four and a half years, I got a message from her on Instagram.

I remember driving home from hanging out with her one night and I stayed up until around 3 AM. I called one of my good friends and told him that I'd started speaking to Vanessa again and that I was going to end up being with her, and that I wouldn't stop until it happened. And she wanted it to happen too. Within a few weeks of us hanging out, she broke up with her boyfriend at the time.

We've been together for four months now, and it's awesome. It's not without its struggles and difficulties, but it's easier to deal with when you're doing it with your best friend. You already know this person accepts you for being yourself, because no one really knows you better and you're not moulding yourself into the way someone wants you to be. It's been better than either of us expected, so we kind of feel stupid for not getting together earlier and not speaking—but at the same time, our collection of experiences brought us to where we are.

Some names have been changed to protect people's pride.

@yasminajeffery

More couple-y stuff on VICE:

How to Make a Long-Term Relationship Work in Your Twenties

People's Awkward Stories of Hooking Up with Their Flatmates

We Asked People How Drug Use Affected Their Relationships

All illustrations by Heather Benjamin

"Your cum tastes like candy," an ex once told me after she swallowed some of my boy butter. It was true; I kissed her and my semen tasted like fruit juice. During the previous few days, I had eaten pineapple and berries for lunch and was drinking more juice than usual. I had heard that food with natural sugars made your cum taste better, but I was surprised to find any truth to the urban legend.

"Any kind of intake, whether it's food, medication, or drink, can affect the flavour of your semen or vaginal fluid," Dr. Carol Queen, a sociologist and sexologist whose practice focuses on sex-positivity, among other sex-related topics, recently told me over the phone. "Anything we smell or taste on the body is part of an excretory process... If you can tell a difference in someone's body odour, then the likelihood is that you can tell about their sexual secretions, as well."

In other words, if your farts or armpits smell weird after you eat a lot of meat or dairy, chances are your jizz or vagina will reflect the same. Try eating only asparagus for a few days; your pee won't be the only bodily fluid that's affected.

"If you want your bits to taste good, fruits like pineapple, papaya, and citrus will make a difference," Dr. Queen said. "Semen is known for having a bitter flavour, and that's what your partner was likely noticing—the absence of bitter flavour, not necessarily a sweeter flavour."

That said, there isn't peer-refereed research to totally confirm that caffeine and cigarettes spoil the taste of your junk, as some suggest, or that pineapple sweetens your swimmers. Dr. Queen provided a possible explanation as to why: "Part of the reason there are urban legends and a lack of proper research is because there is no money to be made off it," she said. "These days people who get funded to do sex research are often funded through pharmaceutical companies so they can claim ownership of something like 'the next female Viagra' or capitalize on a medical model—not pour money into sex and lifestyle stuff."

Instead, it makes more financial sense for a company to make products that simply mask a body's smell, from deodorant and douches, to pills that make your cum taste like Jamba Juice. But there can be repercussions from society's disregard from talking or learning about how what we consume affects our stank.

"There are teenagers now that have never heard that bodies do smell good; they're taught that you should hide your odour," said Dr. Queen. "But scent is part of the natural attraction among partners. If people believe genitals should not smell or taste like anything, and when they taste them and they have flavour, they think something is wrong—and that's not the case at all. Some people like funk!"

To that end, my senior editors asked me to organize an experiment, and a married male-male couple and a married female-female couple volunteered to participate. They were asked to follow strict diets for three weeks while writing observations about how their partner's cum and vaginas tasted each time they had sex.

During the first week, the control, the couples would eat however they typically eat. During the second week, they were asked to only eat healthy food, with a focus on food that's rumoured to make body excretions smell better than normal, such as fresh veggies, ginger, and citrus. And on the third week, the couples were to follow a diet featuring food that makes your body excrete foul odours, such as cheese, meat, and stuff with lots of corn syrup and artificial flavours. Plus, caffeine, alcohol, cigarettes, and other things that generally fuck up your system. Pseudoscience or not, this would at least get us talking more openly about our bodies. Here's what went down when the lovers went down. All names have been changed to protect anonymity.

Couple One: Amanda & Stella

A writer/producer and tech engineer who've been married for one and a half years.

Regular Diet Week

Foodstuffs Consumed: Fresh juice of various varieties, various fancy smoothies, cheese sandwiches, salads, broccoli, kale, tuna tartar, octopus, haddock, Arctic char, Shigoku oysters, clam roll with pickles, meatballs, deviled eggs, cookies, tequila, wine, cigarettes.

Regular Diet Sex Observations

Amanda: On the first night I wrote observations, her taste was pretty L I T E. My hand didn't even have a lingering scent. She's been working out a lot and eating healthy, so maybe that was it. Two major taste notes: East Coast oyster—maybe a Blue Point or Quahog or something similar—topped with nutritional yeast, making her taste a bit briny and a bit savoury.

The next time we had sex, I wasn't sure if it was the lemonade she drank or the remnants of the Energizer grapefruit juice frolicking around on my tastebuds, but there was a noticeable sweetness, despite a super mild taste overall. Have you ever had the Trader Joe's seasoned kale chips with cashew butter and tahini? Well I have, and if they made a light version I would say it's a reasonably good comparison to my day two cunnilingus experience.

During the third trial of this control experiment, my wife tasted decidedly different than the previous two days. There was something much more citron about her taste. Sort of like a bruleed grapefruit, a sweet bitterness, not bittersweet though, if that makes sense. The flavour felt like a distant cousin to a Sour Patch Kid. Overall, a pleasing morning.

Stella: During my first observation of the regular diet cycle, my wife tasted very sour and there were notes of ammonia. This was not the normal taste I am used to. These were just the top notes. While the main bouquet (I don't know what I'm talking about) was still a bit sour, the taste was closer to the neutral, creamy flavour I am accustomed to. I couldn't tell if I was tasting the Manouri cheese sandwich she had for lunch, her 15-hour workday, or the fact that she had not had one drop of water in hours.

Things went better during the next trial. I remembering thinking, This. Thiiiiiiiiissss. This was the taste I know and love. The mild tanginess that reminded me of Chobani or 2 Percent Fage. There was this delicious, smooth texture combined with a pungent but mostly-neutral taste, like a really expensive and mild cheese. Don't make that face, everyone loves cheese.

Healthy Diet week

Foodstuffs Consumed: Various fresh juices including grapefruit and cucumber, various fancy smoothies, scrambled eggs with veggies, almond milk matcha latte, coffee, eggs in a cup, kombucha, fruit salad, Sweetgreen salads, trout, various vegetables, various fruits, fish tacos, Arctic char, cookies, tequila.

Healthy Diet Sex Observations

Amanda: This time, her scent and taste was noticeably sweet, with more than a suggestion of pineapple. I also noticed she got wet more quickly than the previous week. Maybe related? Beyond the pineapple were super faint, herbal notes. I know that might sound odd, or like I'm talking about a Sauvignon Blanc, but it was there. Overall, a totally pleasing oral sex experience.

Stella: The taste today was very specific, and the first time in all of these experiments where her taste was truly sweet. It was almost reminiscent of cake batter, or Soylent. It is actually crazy that human beings can produce tastes like that, now that I think about it. Bodies are insane.

Unlike my wife, a trained chef, I have a pretty unsophisticated palate. There are three flavours I can discern: sweet, salty, and Chipotle (the restaurant). As such, I'm a bit at a loss to come up with a new, profound, overly-detailed way of explaining how her vagina tasted on this day. It tasted good, it tasted creamy, it tasted balanced. TBH, it just tasted like pussy usually does: Not anything super crazy, but the way a really well made gin and tonic tastes on a hot day—just right.

Gluttonous Diet Week

Foodstuffs Consumed: Frittata with cheese, chicken wings, shrimp quesadilla, garlic fries, prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich, chicken gyro, more garlic fries, meat and cheese plate, olives, cheeseburger, asparagus, potatoes, buffalo wings, blue cheese, wine, tequila, cigarettes, cookies, cacio e pepe, more alcohol, more cigarettes.

Gluttonous Diet Sex Observations

Amanda: From what I remember, she tasted like rose and salt, which on one hand seems ludicrous and on the other actually seems pretty accurate. All together not unpleasant. If anything, the flavour was perfectly pleasant.

During this unhealthy diet, her vagina's taste didn't come across as acerbic, but definitely a bit more pungent than usual. Overall, the fattier and dairy-filled foods were more noticeable and present. She tasted much less sweet, but instead weightier in both flavour and scent.

Stella: When I'm drunk, the more flavourful, the better. This time, she tasted strong, deep, warm, and caramel-y in the best possible way. It filled my mouth and tasted like a meal. Remember that scene from Kids where Casper makes Telly smell his fingers? Like that.

Later in the week, I tasted garlic and experienced a similarly 'weightier' taste and scent like my wife observed about my body. It was definitely the bodily fluid equivalent to our diet. This diet was my favourite because everything going into my mouth was flavourful, savoury, and awesome.

Conclusions

Amanda: I think through all of these "experiments," I was expecting her taste to be drastically impacted by diet, but truly what I found was that her water consumption is the keystone of the whole operation. If she was well hydrated enough, there was a mildness to her taste that borders on flavourless. When she was dehydrated, I was able to tell a huge difference in the taste, and it seemed to really showcase the foods she'd eaten.

Couple Two: Adam & Matthew

A videographer and producer who've been together for nine years, married for one. Matthew did not review Adam's semen.

Regular Diet Week

Foodstuffs Consumed: Various fruits (emphasis on bananas, strawberries, and apples), various vegetables (including eggplant, green beans, and cauliflower), coffee, eggs, gluten-free toast, tuna salad, pickles, hummus, mozzarella, feta cheese, pasta, chicken, Korean BBQ beef and chicken, kimchi dumplings, Thai curry, brownies, Prosecco, red wine, beer, tequila, cigarettes.

Regular Diet Sex Observations

Adam: After giving my husband a blowjob, he ejaculated in my mouth, followed by a hesitant swallowing on my part. The cum was slightly sour and more watery than usual, meaning he probably ejaculated in the past day. There was a nasty aftertaste, including lingering sour notes in the back of my throat. I consumed excess water in an effort to relieve myself from the taste.

Later in the week, I gave him a blowjob/handjob into my mouth (different than coming in my mouth during a blowjob). The cum felt weirdly void of taste, not at all like the sourness I noticed earlier in the week. It was thick with a salty aftertaste. I could have swallowed, but didn't. Then I went on with my day as usual, no palate cleaning needed.

Healthy Diet Week

Foodstuffs Consumed: Rice milk, elderflower tea, Kombucha, many fruit and vegetable smoothies (wheatgrass, sweet lupin, etc.), tons of fruit like pineapple, papaya, banana, strawberry, apples, kiwi, grapes, blueberries, coconut; tons of veggies like kale, spinach, beets, zucchini, mushrooms, and edamame; yogurt, salmon burger, Tom Kha soup with chicken, Thai coconut curry with tofu, Udon noodles, wakame salad, kimchi, fried shrimp wontons, glass noodles, non-alcoholic beer.

Healthy Diet Sex Observations

Adam: I gave him a blowjob and swallowed slowly to get a better palate-read. This time, his cum went back to being a bit funky. Earthy and gamey, though—not sour. It tasted mammalian and thick, and was one of those times when I couldn't get the taste out of your mouth for hours.

Later in the week, I jerked him off into my mouth so the cum hit air before reaching my tastebuds. I hope that didn't mess up how it would taste. It was significantly less funky this time, but also went back to being weirdly devoid of taste. It wasn't at all sweet, and had average texture and minimal aftertaste.

Gluttonous Diet Week

Foodstuffs Consumed: Eggs and smoked salmon, eggs with stinky cheese, chia pudding, fried rice, potatoes, chocolate and caramel ice cream, beer, more stinky cheese, asparagus, yellow curry with rice noodles, cabbage, fried onions and chicken, tuna salad, sausage, sushi, cheeseburger, beef patties with cream sauce, more asparagus, fried halloumi, lamb and peanut sauce, beef roulade, cigarettes, vodka, wine, beer, cocaine.

Gluttonous Diet Sex Observations

Adam: One day this week, I gave him a blowjob and swallowed. It wasn't as gross as I was expecting, but maybe the cocaine from the night before hadn't moved through his body and affected his cum machine yet. I would even say it was a little bit salty. It wasn't too bad and kind of nice (for cum).

Another night, I gave him a blowjob and he ejaculated into my mouth. This time it was funky and a bit earthy, with an aftertaste that wouldn't quit.

On a different day, he jerked off into my mouth. At this point, we were both a little sick of this. I was literally checking Instagram and then rolled over he was ready to aim his cumshot into my mouth. It was fucking funky this time and sour for sure. It was like a shock to my oral system.

Conclusions

Adam: The fourth experiment during the gluttonous week is pretty indicative of this whole experience. My husband jerked off into my mouth and I expected it to be the most nasty-tasting cum I've ever been granted. But it wasn't so bad. It was still a bit earthy, but I couldn't pinpoint the exact food that made it taste funky or dirty. That being said, it still had to have been something he ate.

Follow Zach on Twitter

Don't, dad. Photo via Flickr user Jeff Egnaczyck

Let's face it: dads get a lot of undue praise these days. Congratulations, you put the diaper on the right end. Way to go, you bought some mushy carrots, and later you'll swear a blue streak while dabbing at the resulting vomit. Holy shit, you stopped a flying baseball bat from straight-up murdering that baby you made. (OK, that last one is pretty impressive.)

Portrait from the series Just Me and Allah by Samra Habib

It's been a week since 49 people were gunned down at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. A week where my mom asked me not to go to Pride events in Toronto this year.

Photo by Gage Skidmore.

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

Trump Thinks Racial Profiling is 'Common Sense'
Donald Trump has said the US should consider racial profiling as a security measure in the wake of the mass shooting in Orlando. "I think profiling is something that we're going to have to start thinking about as a country... We have to start using common sense," he said, adding that Israel was using profiling "successfully." —VICE News

50,000 Gather for Vigil to Orlando Victims
Around 50,000 people gathered at Lake Eola Park in Orlando on Sunday to mark a week since the Pulse nightclub shooting that left 49 victims dead. "While the whole world is watching, it is our time to show how love will conquer hate," said Barbara Poma, the owner of the club. —Orlando Sentinel

Supreme Court Considers Gun Control Challenge
The Supreme Court may hear a challenge this week by gun rights advocates over a semiautomatic weapons ban in two states—Connecticut and New York. The Supreme Court could decide as soon as Monday whether it will hear a challenge to these bans, which opponents say violate the Second Amendment. —The Wall Street Journal

Wildfire Rages in California for Sixth Consecutive Day
Firefighters are preparing to battle the Sherpa Fire still raging in Santa Barbara County for the sixth consecutive day. California officials said 7,811 acres have now burned. A new wildfire that broke out Sunday forced the evacuation of hundreds of people from Potrero, a small town near the Mexico border. —CBS News

International News

Global Refugee Numbers Reach Record High
The number of people displaced by conflict around the world has reached 65.3 million, an increase of 5 million in the past year. In its annual report for World Refugee Day, the UN Refugee Agency said it marks the first time there have been more than 60 million refugees around the world. —BBC News

Suicide Attack Kills 14 Security Guards in Kabul
A suicide attack on a minibus in Afghanistan's capital Kabul has killed at least 14 people and injured several others. The attacker waited for the bus as it left a security compound, and all the victims are believed to be foreign security guards from Nepal. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack. —Al Jazeera

Five Star Movement Makes Breakthrough in Italy
Virginia Raggi has been elected as Rome's first female mayor in a major victory for the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S). The M5S party, founded only seven years ago by comedian Beppe Grillo, also defeated Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's center-left Democratic Party (PD) in Turin. —Reuters

Six Killed at Teacher Protest in Mexico
Six people have been killed in southern Mexico after protesting teachers clashed with police. Members of the CNTE union had been blocking roads in Oaxaca since union leaders were arrested last week. Riot police were reported to have fired on protesters, but the federal government claims that unknown gunmen began firing at both sides. —The Guardian

Anton Yelchin (right) with Charles Mintz-Plasse

Everything Else

Star Trek Actors Mourn Anton Yelchin
The Star Trek cast has paid tribute to Anton Yelchin, 27, the actor who played Chekov, after he was killed in a freak car accident at his home Sunday morning. Zachary Quinto described Yelchin as "generous of heart," while John Cho said his friend was "curious, beautiful, courageous." —USA Today

Cavaliers Win NBA Finals with Historic Comeback
The Cleveland Cavaliers completed the biggest comeback in NBA Finals history as the team won their first ever NBA title, beating the Golden State Warriors 93-89. It is the first time any team has won after falling behind 3-1 in a finals series. —CNN

Cops teargas LGBTQ rally in Istanbul
Turkish riot police used rubber bullets and teargas to break up a gathering of about 50 people celebrating Trans Pride in defiance of a government ban on the event. Next weekend's Gay Pride march has also been banned. —VICE News

Skygazers Locate US Spy Satellite
It has taken amateur space enthusiasts only a few days to locate the US National Reconnaissance Office's NROL-37 spy satellite after its launch last week. Bloggers charted it in the skies over the Strait of Malacca, near Malaysia. —Motherboard

Done with reading today? Watch our new video 'DOPESICK: Fentanyl's Deadly Grip'

All photos by Romain Mader.

This article originally appeared in VICE UK.

The camera never lies. Except when it does. Which is all the time in this heady age of social media. Sometimes a picture tells a little fib: an Insta filter on your holiday pics to make you look more tanned; a smile that says, "best party ever" when it should say, "I was actually in bed by 10PM". Sometimes photos are meant to fool. Other times, the truths they cover raise troubling questions about the world in which we live.

Artists have long explored and questioned the nature of photography and it's relationship with reality. From Marcel Duchamp's photos of his alter ego Rrose Selvay, to Amalia Ulman using Instagram to document her (fake) life as a wannabe LA starlet to highlight how femininity is a construct, the ways in which photographs have been used to distort reality are myriad.

Swiss artist Romain Mader is another photographer to use his camera to blur the lines between fact and fiction. His latest project, Ekaterina, which is on show at the Tate's Performing for the Camera exhibition, tells the story of a lonely sex tourist who comes to the Ukraine to find a woman. The photos look like the holiday snaps of a new young couple. Except, of course, they're not. I caught up with Romain to talk selfies, sexism and pretending to be on the hunt for a mail-order bride.

VICE: Hi Romain. How did the series come about?

Romain Mader: The idea was to do a documentary about sex tourism in Ukraine. It's an issue that's been done a lot already by other photographers, so I decided to write a piece of fiction about the topic and use the aesthetic of documentary photography. That way, you don't really understand what is real and what is not.

You put yourself into the story – does it bother you that some people might think that you really are a sex tourist?

It doesn't matter to me whether people like the person in the work or not – nobody knows how I am in the real world. I don't necessarily want to paint myself in a bad way, but I think it's interesting how people judge me. It shows a lot about what people think about sex tourism.

There's a deadpan humour to your work – some of the pictures are really funny...
Yes, intentionally. There is humour and irony in most of my work. In 2009, I did a project at the car show in Geneva and posed with the hostesses so I could pretend to my friends that I was a success with women. Since then I've gone to do these stories about myself. But they're not really just about me – they touch a larger public too.

From your past projects, it seems that you're interested in relationships, and in particular the way men relate to women.

I always like to work on subjects that I find disgraceful or silly or that make me angry. For example, for my series The Girlfriend Experience, I hired a seduction coach who had written a lot of books on the topic that are all really stupid. I find these kinds of topics really interesting, so I kept on going with them.

Is that what prompted you to look at sex tourism?

Well, I'm not sure. I went to Ukraine for the first time in 2009 – around the time the Femen movement was starting to grow in France. I took a train around the country and I thought it was a really nice place. The people are really friendly, there are lots of things to see and do. I was struck by how different the reality was to how people from western Europe think about Ukraine – that you only go there to find a girl. I decided to do something with that.

In your book, you publish your pictures alongside your own short story, which shows how photos can only really tell part of a story.
Yes. 
I started this project by going to Ukraine and writing the short story that is in the book, then I took the pictures to illustrate the story. But I realised that if you just looked at the pictures, you could see a very different story. What is really interesting with photography – and this is not a new thing because of social media – is that it always lies and it always has done. It's a selection of the truth or reality. You never show everything.

Your project De Noveaux Amis also looks at tourism, but it's about the kind of photos we take as visitors. Where does that interest stem from?

It's exoticism. Like when you go to a place you don't know and you take pictures of monuments that you can find on the internet. You don't go deep into a place, you don't try to to understand what's really going on – you stay on the surface. I also think it comes from seeing all my family holiday pictures before the internet. I think it's interesting this need to show these happy moments.

Have we always performed for the camera? And do you think we always will?

Whenever we take a picture of ourselves or our friends, we act in some way. You can't smile for the entire day – it's just for that moment. In some way, we are all performing.

Thanks Romain.

Romain's book Ekaterina is out now.

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