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This article originally appeared on VICE UK

It's been one hell of a week for slavery nostalgia. The transatlantic slave trade—which made it perfectly legal for slave-owners to sell, beat, or kill their "property"—was a good time for the European countries that profited from free labor, and quite the inspiration for a bar that's due to open in London in September. Bar and restaurant operator The Breakfast Group planned on naming their new upmarket rum bar The Plantation, before they were called out by an activist group.

A petition against the plans said the "grossly offensive" name choice "constitutes a grave offense to the African descent communities in London and elsewhere." It continued: "Plantations were places where people suffered and died, where Africans suffered unimaginable violence and terror at the hands of their slave masters. Imagine, if you can, how African people would feel having to work at this venue, much less eat at it?"

And so, after liaising with "the community," the Breakfast Group doubled back, opting instead to call the venue Burlock, having realized the "negative connotations associated with the original name." But a couple of questions remain: would Londoners have stayed away from a bar based on principle alone? And do people think the original name choice is even that big of a deal? I hit the streets to get the lowdown on when slavery got cute and marketable.

Dami, 26

VICE: Would you be up for drinking in a bar named after slave plantations?
Dami: Probably. I don't see any issue with the name, because we're now in the 21st century and I don't think what happened in the past should matter.

What do you make of the choice of name, though?
I don't mind it, as long as it doesn't have a meaning behind it that would affect or upset black people.

A lot of black people were quite hurt by it—does that bother you?
No, I'm just very open-minded and I wouldn't be affected by anything like that.

Do you think it should have been a news story at all?
No, I think it's probably an overreaction, to be honest. As long as the owner doesn't go out saying, "This is why I've done it," for racial reasons, or whatever, then it shouldn't be a massive issue.

How much do you know about the UK's slave trade?
Not very much, to be honest. It's 2016—I don't need to seek that information out, because it's over.

It's a bit of a grey area. What would be the worst name for a bar, in your opinion?
Um, I think "The Freemason" because that's just such a no-go area.

Elisa, 27

VICE: Would you ever go to a bar called The Plantation?
Elisa: Hmm... no, because of all of the things that were associated with that word in the past. The initial idea just puts me off. I've never heard that word in a positive light.

Interestingly, a Jamaican woman in Bristol ran a restaurant called the Plantation—what do you think of that?
Yeah, I guess that's a better idea, if someone's reclaiming that word and it's more about their history. My feeling is that the Breakfast Group were just taking that word and using it. There's something that makes me feel really uncomfortable about it.

Would you go so far as to boycott it?
I think it's always tough. You tread a fine line with cultural appropriation, between what is right and what isn't. I think I would boycott it until I could see something positive coming out of it, but I think everyone's entitled to their own opinion, and I think it should definitely be spoken about. People have to realize the history and the weight behind words, rather than plucking them out of the sky.

Steve, 22, and Richard, 20

VICE: Do you see anything wrong with calling a rum bar The Plantation?
Steve: No, I'd probably still drink there—it wouldn't really bother me. The name and everything is kind of bad, but I don't think the name represents the kind of place it is.
Richard: Yeah, I feel the same. If they've got 200 different types of rum, I'm a big rum drinker, so while it's a bit dodgy, it's not that bad, and I probably wouldn't be able to resist it.

What would the worst name for a bar be for you?
Steve: Like, The Holocaust. Or The Pedophile, yeah.
Richard: Mine would be Rape Station. That would be the worst.

Loads of news organizations have turned it into a story—do you think it deserves so much coverage?
Steve: I don't, no. I think people are just bringing up stuff from the past that should be remembered—but not in a way like that.
Richard: It is a pretty dodgy name, but in terms of a big deal? I don't think so, no. Not in 2016. Obviously questions should be raised as to why they actually chose the name, though.

How much do you guys know about the UK's history with slavery?
Steve: Quite bad, innit. It was awful, like the whole empire and everything. I'm not going to dig myself a grave, but everything we've done in the past with the Indians and everything—obviously Jamaica, Africa ... the slave trade was awful, but it was so long ago.
Richard: No comment on this one.

Louis, 27

VICE: Would the name The Plantation stop you from drinking at this new bar?
Louis: No, definitely not. I'm guessing it's got juices and stuff there, which sounds nice.

Mostly rum, I think.
Oh, I don't drink! So I wouldn't go anyway. I'm actually a vegan. I also haven't been to any of the other ones, so I don't really care for it—I don't think they're much good for vegans anyway.

What do you make of the name's connotations?
Well, it sounds like a vegan shop to me, off the bat. But yeah, plantation... the slave connotations don't sound so lovely; can't wait to go there, not!

Do you think it should be a big deal?
It's just a name, at the end of the day. It doesn't really matter that much. If it's got a good vibe and good people, good food and good drinks, that's what counts, right?

What do you think the worst name for a bar would be?
Probably something to do with meat, like the Meat Cleaver or The Slaughterhouse.

Lauren, 24

VICE: Would you have a drink in a bar called The Plantation?
Lauren: Yes.

Do the word's connotations to slavery bother you?
Oh, I didn't know it had links to that... that's affected my opinion now, so I guess I wouldn't. With that in mind, I'd definitely boycott it; it hasn't really been thought out well .

Do you think it should have been made into a big deal, or not so much?
It would obviously be a big deal to those whose lives its affected, like the black community, but maybe the person who was doing the whole name thing didn't really think about it properly and should have thought about it more, because it obviously upset people.

Do you know much about Britain's involvement in the slave trade?
No, I'm quite ignorant, to be honest, because I think it would just upset me if I knew lots about it.

Patterson, 49

VICE: Does the name The Plantation offend you?
Patterson: I never had much interest in it in the first place, but I wouldn't go there because the word plantation is basically from slavery days with cotton and the whole slavery movement. Using the word now is all about provoking people, so I feel like it's probably a marketing thing.

Can you explain the significance of the name in relation to the British slave trade?
Basically, the way I see it, imperialism—the empire—are why this nation's alive. This country is still living off slave money, so it's all about labeling and the empire. This is why they're in a better situation: they're around 300 years ahead because they got boosted financially by black people.

You're one of the only people I've spoken to who has said they wouldn't go there.
Yeah, a lot of people don't see it as important, but I think people need to check themselves. On the other hand, there's more important shit than this in the world that we need to sort out, you know? This is just a drop in the ocean for brown and black people. We've got to gel, and everyone's got to understand where we're coming from.

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Commissions can get weird fast. Illustration by Owen Gieni

When you mention Comic-Con to most people they think of the big yearly event in San Diego overflowing with cosplayers, big celebrity guests, and predictable superhero movie announcements. The actual comic books—you know, the namesake of the event—have taken a back seat to the spectacle. But the reality is that there are thousands of comic conventions around the world, and they aren't anything like the human zoo that is Comic-Con International: San Diego.

Most conventions actually celebrate comics, offering a sweaty space for fans to buy collectibles and meet their favourite creators. Comic book artists set up tables for attendees to buy their prints, or commission them for original art pieces to add to their private collection. If it sounds like a perfect storm for awkward interactions, that's because it is. While requests tend to stay pretty innocent—though I imagine repetitive requests to draw other people's boring families or busty Harley Quinns would be a gruelling exercise in patience—sometimes commission requests get real weird, and real fetishized. Some have even reached the status of legend in the artist community, like the dude who asks artists to contribute to his book of "naked Catwoman covered in glue."

Most artists don't make enough money to support themselves on book sales alone, so commissions are an important part of making a living. Drawing bizarre, detailed requests from strangers is a right of passage in the life of comic artists, so I set out on a mission to find out artists' worst and weirdest commission stories.

Tom Fowler, artist and writer of 'Rick & Morty'

Sometimes you get stuck in situations at cons where if you've paid for a hotel and such, you need to make money at the table. So when someone makes a particularly creepy request, you can suggest something else, say no outright, or swallow it hard because you need the money.

The one time I was in this situation of needing money, I didn't quite know what I was agreeing to when I accepted the commission request. What he wanted from me was a drawing of Rogue and Sauron from X-Men. Sauron is some pterodactyl villain in the antarctic jungle land called Savage Land. I agreed to this because it didn't seem horrible, but then he pulled out the reference photo and I realized what I had gotten into. This was a period in X-Men continuity when Rogue was wearing almost nothing, and she was supposed to be like 17 or 18 years old. And of course, she was to be drawn like a porn star, with just swatches of fabric dripping off her body. In the scene the dude wanted me to draw, Sauron had hypnotized her into becoming his slave. This is one of the great moments of metaphorical Marvel rape. Marvel was all ages at the time and so they couldn't get into rape, but there were a bunch of scenes like this where women's choices were taken away from them. So I wound up doing the least salacious version I could. It was Rogue from behind wearing way more clothing, looking like a normal teenage girl, and Sauron was coming out of darkness toward her... I'd robbed this creep of his boner, and that's the real satisfaction that a cartoonist should feel.

Tristan Jones, artist of 'ALIENS: Defiance'

There was this guy that asked me to draw him, which is usually an immediate no from me on the spot at conventions, but as Jack Skellington (whatever that meant, I assumed it meant drawing Jack slightly heavier set and with this dude's hair) as a Ghostbuster, busting the ghost of his mother (who he had a photo of) from Jack's reindeer sleigh.

Another time saw a guy (and these sorts of "sexy ones" are relatively common) wanted himself basically blowing his load on Janine's tits (from Ghostbusters). Except by "load" he wanted me to draw him in cosplay with one of those slime blowers from Ghostbusters 2, doing a rocker salute with one hand and Janine loving it.

I kind of deliberately avoid weird shit. Working in comics is weird enough.

Carrie Potter, artist of 'Juniper'

Someone approached me at a convention wondering if I could sketch her original character. I said sure, I can draw anything if I have a reference. She e-mailed me an image of her character... which was a naked furry. A cross between a mouse and a wolf. She explained that she didn't like this artist's design, and she was looking for someone to do it better.

She detailed the changes she wanted, and I agreed to do it. She paid, and I told her to come back in 30 minutes. The main thing she didn't want was her character to have a boxy snout like the last artist had done. Simple enough. But I discovered that putting a petite mouse nose on a wolf's large face was extremely problematic. A flatter face to accommodate a mouse's snout wasn't working. A longer canine face with a tiny nose lost its mousey-ness. Nothing I did was helping the face come together. I realized that this design, if it was even possible, would require specific, dictated adjustments. I was running out of time, and every few minutes I had to stop to hide the naked commission from passing kids. When I finished, I felt my interpretation was as close to her request as I could get. But when she returned to pick up her artwork, she looked at it appraisingly, thanked me, and walked away. She didn't smile, and she didn't say that she liked it. I felt that I'd essentially been paid to feel awkward and ultimately disappoint someone. After that, I decided it wasn't worth the stress, time, and disappointment to do any more nebulous original character sketches.

Katy Farina, artist

When I was 18 and just starting to sell my art at a local convention, I had a guy come up to my table asking if I took commissions. He was pretty friendly, so I figured, why not? I had a bunch of Digimon products on my table, and he asked if I would do a Digimon-related commission. I tentatively said yes, wanting to know more details. Unfortunately that set him off on a very long rant about how much he loved Veemon, and it ended in his commission proposal: Veemon having sex with child-aged Goku from DBZ, but if Goku was also a pig (looking like Oolong from DBZ, I think). It was so blunt and unexpected that I didn't know what to say other then "no thank you." He asked for just SFW Veemon instead, which was fine. I drew it with markers and sent him a scan after the convention—the method of delivery we had agreed upon—he paid me, I thought we would be done with this transaction.

Several months after the delivery of this artwork, he got really aggressive about getting the tangible artwork from me. I was away at college and that piece of artwork was at my parents house... He got so aggressive about it that I ended up blocking his email and figured he wouldn't bother me anymore...

He made a new email and emailed me occasionally for the next year. Unfortunately the coordination to get this very specific piece of artwork that I had no idea if I still even had from my parents house was too much, and I couldn't get it to him by the next year's convention. He made a point to visit my table, ask me about it, asked me if I would reconsider his original idea, then left. This cycle repeated for three more years, until FINALLY I was able to coordinate things enough to get this stupid piece of paper with old artwork on it to this dude.

Total pain in my ass. I stopped doing convention commissions soon after this, and I no longer go to that convention.

Andy Belanger, writer and artist of 'Southern Cross'

Well, there is a famous story from the Toronto area where I used to live when I was coming up in the industry. There was a guy who had a jam packed sketch book full of the who's who of comic artists. His book had one theme and he would approach you like this. "Okay, I want a Wonder Woman sketch but... She has to be naked and trapped in glue." We would say, "So you want a naked brunette trapped in glue." "NO! Wonder Woman!" he would say. And we would say, "Well without clothes it's just sort of a naked lady! He would say, "Well, you can leave the tiara on, I guess!"

This guy had everyone in that book. Amazing artists that just thought the whole thing was so weird but when you saw all the other big artists in the book, you felt compelled to do it. Paid of course but it was totally strange. The story had a creepy end where he came to a con one time where they had a kids day care for the day area and he would stand there staring at the kids. I think it was Chip and I that went over to say something and I think Chip chased him outta there never to be heard from again!

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Lax Kw'alaams photo by Ash Kelly

It's official, Lax Kw'alaams First Nation voted 65 percent in favour of "successful outcomes." At least that's how negotiations for a massive liquefied natural gas terminal were characterized in a recent poll conducted by the band's council.

Pacific Northwest LNG is planning a $36-billion LNG pipeline and shipping terminal for the northern British Columbia coast, an area where up to a billion salmon pass through every year. Lax Kw'alaams is the last nation that is legally required to give consent, having voted near-unanimously against the project in May 2015.

The new poll asked members if they supported "concluding agreements" without mentioning LNG or the company: "Provided the environment is protected, do you support council concluding agreements to maximize benefits for Lax Kw'alaams members and continue discussions with government and proponents to achieve successful outcomes for Lax Kw'alaams?" reads the ballot.

Of 812 ballots received, 532 were in favour of continuing talks with Pacific Northwest LNG, 65.5 percent of voters. When asked for comment, Mayor John Helin wouldn't say how the poll would be used, or whether it counts as consent from the band.

Lax Kw'alaams members opposed to the project called out the compressed voting timeline, and lack of participation from about two-thirds of members. "We have at least 3,000 members in Lax Kw'alaams and only 800 voted," band member Dean Febbo told VICE. "What a joke."

Sandra Ohman, a band member living in Surrey, said she didn't know a vote was happening until late last week. The vote was announced August 16, with polling stations open on August 22, 23, and 24. "I wasn't even expecting a voting package, I was expecting an information package," Ohman told VICE. "Who would have thought they would try to get a vote done on a week's notice?"

Ohman said she only heard about the vote through her older brother, who received a ballot in the mail. Ohman immediately called the band office, and told them she had moved in the last year, but didn't receive the voting package before ballots were due on Wednesday, August 24.

Ohman said she managed to get an extra ballot from another family member, but worries other off-reserve members would be left in the dark. "They didn't give enough time for something like that."

Read More: Did This First Nation Band Consent to a Massive Gas Terminal or Not?

Since the vote, VICE reviewed the information package that came with ballots. It includes a personal appeal from Helin that suggests the project will go ahead with or without consent.

"We have been clear with all levels of government, plus Petronas, that we do not agree with it being built at this site," Helin wrote. "With that being said, in our meetings with the government and the proponent the feeling was that they could push it forward without our consent, and where would that leave us."

"My fear is that they could do this without us... To that end we have undertaken the task of engaging with the governments and the proponent to see what we would benefit if members agreed to look at this project further."

Previously, Premier Christy Clark told media the band already voted "massively in favour" of the $36-billion pipeline and terminal in spring of 2016. A six-week investigation by Discourse Media found no vote took place.

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Nearly two decades ago, in the midst of her husband's intern sex scandal, Hillary Clinton went on the Today show and infamously lambasted the barrage of allegations against the Clinton White House as a "vast right-wing conspiracy"—a claim that, though perhaps hyperbolic, was not entirely wrong either.

So its perhaps not surprising that as she wrapped up one of the worst weeks of her own presidential campaign Thursday, Clinton returned to that playbook, linking Donald Trump to the alt-right movement and fringe conspiracy theorists, and accusing him of stirring up racism and bigotry with his dystopian presidential campaign.

"From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia," Clinton told an audience in Reno, Nevada. "He is taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party. His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous."

"Trump's lack of knowledge or experience or solutions would be bad enough," she continued. "But what he's doing here is more sinister. Trump is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters."

Billed to reporters as "a speech to address Donald Trump and his advisors' embrace of the disturbing 'alt-right' political philosophy," the address was basically a highlight reel of Trump's personal and political history of coded racism and flirtations with fringe right-wing figures like Alex Jones, David Duke, and a Twitter user "who goes by the name 'white-genocide-TM.'"

"A man with a long history of racial discrimination," Clinton declared, "who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far, dark reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military." Just to make sure voters got the message, Clinton's campaign released a video highlighting support for Trump among the alt-right's more well-known white nationalists and robed members of the Klu Klux Klan.

It wasn't until the end of her speech that Clinton launched into her attack on the alt-right—a movement, she said, quoting the Wall Street Journal, that "rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity"— calling Trump's appointment of Breitbart editor Steve Bannon as his campaign CEO "a landmark achievement" for the right-wing group. Noting the strange cameo by Brexit leader Nigel Farange at a Trump campaign rally in Mississippi this week, Clinton declared the Republican candidate's campaign part of a "broader story" about "the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world."

"All of this adds up to something we have never seen before," she concluded. "Of course there's always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, a lot of it rising from racial resentment. But it's never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone. Until now."

Trump was, predictably, outraged. "Hillary Clinton is going to try to accuse this campaign, and the millions of decent Americans who support this campaign, of being racists," he told supporters at a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, Thursday. "It's the oldest play in the Democratic playbook."

He continued later on Twitter:

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This article originally appeared on VICE Australia.

I'm in my disability employment services listening to a career officer have an earnest conversation with a fellow jobless-type about "the Muslims" trying to "ban Christmas." It's a conversation I've heard before in a Sean Hannity fever dream.

This is the person in charge of helping me find work.

I find myself between jobs frequently. At best, my employment history would be described as "patchy." Bipolar, depression, anxiety—these don't seem to be conducive to employability, outside of SERCO prison officer or Immigration Minister.

Coupled with hypomania, my propensity to shit-stir often goes uninhibited: my brain lacks the filters that will stop me from telling my boss things like that his wife reminds me of those stories you hear of "midget gladiators being torn to pieces by lions in Columbia." Or that our main client has the "chewed nose and politics of a young Joh Bjelke Petersen."

It might not come as a surprise that I've been fired a bit. A lot. And I've quit a lot too. Or really, I've "left" a lot. Looking back on the big hits, a clear pattern emerges:

The Lemonade Stand

I grew up in Menzies' Australia—the golden 1950s—by which I mean I grew up in Howard's Australia—the mid- to late 90s. Sorry, the two are indiscernible to me.

Hoping to make a quick buck, either for buying zoopa doopas or tucking away in our superannuation accounts, a couple of mates and I tried our hand selling lemonade. Our first venture into the business world was going great until my friend Ed went to get more supplies. Left alone, I intentionally poured sugar all over our sales table and traced "FUCK COKE" in it. To my nine-year-old brain this was my contribution to the cola wars. I guess I wasn't a natural capitalist.

Anyway, my mates asked me to leave.

Record Store

Do you know who the saddest men in the world are? Dads who get banned from Saturday sport for sledging the other under-11s soccer team run a close second. But it's actually men who are in their mid- to late 30s, working behind the counter at record stores.

I know this because I was the only kid working alongside these guys. They did absolutely no work. They'd just lurk there, using their piddly amounts of cultural capital to hit on 16-year-old girls, getting aggressive with 14-year-old shop boys who don't have a worthy collection of bootleg Triffids cassette tapes.

One day, I mistakenly told my "boss" that his band sounded like the John Butler Trio if their audience was emotionally stunted men in their 50s—as opposed to their 40s—and if John Butler couldn't play guitar.

Anyway, he asked me to leave.

Water Cooler Salesman

Image via

I was 21 when I took a ridiculous job as a water cooler "salesman." I saw the ad on Gumtree, and called up the number on the listing. A German guy answered, and almost immediately let me in on his scheme: I'd be signing up businesses to get this water filtration leasing system installed. In the long run, it would cost them five or so times more than buying a water filter outright. What could go wrong?

I spent one record-breakingly hot 43 degree day walking around Perth's industrial district of Kelmscott asking people to sign up to this scam. Quite rightly, I was alternately told to "get fucked," "fuck off," and "take that bullshit elsewhere." The only people I signed up were the Scientologists, and let's face it, you could sell those guys asbestos macaroons.

Midway through my shift, the sun beating down, I took my shirt and pants off, and laid down under a droopy gumtree. Gazing up at the venous branches, I had a good long think re: "What the fuck has happened to me that I am here?" Never underestimate the existential foresight that crippling depression offers.

Anyway, I walked into a pub, got loaded, and never answered that mad German's calls again.

Magazine Freelancer

Freelancing is kind of bullshit. You churn out content that contributes to the dilution of societies hive mind, you talk to crummy bands about their crummy EPs, and you don't get paid very much. When a voice in your head is constantly saying "kill yourself" it's hard to churn out another 350 words on the latest psy-rock circle jerk to pop out of Christchurch Grammar.

I was on job trial at a magazine when the owner dug up a photo of me wearing a black strap on and hanging a toy baby (long story). He made an odometer w his hand and said "You are here" (roughly 180kmh) and "We want you here" (approx. 30kmh).

Anyway, he asked me to leave.

Personal Assistant

Oh boy. This was the one time my boss was definitely madder than me. I could fill a book. I remember sitting shotgun while he sped along, blasting the unmastered soundtrack of the high school musical he produced, literally called Cruisin' the Musical. My boss was bragging to me about how he'd opened for the Rolling Stones when they visited Australia in 1961.

In the next moment, he was pretending to be on the phone with tennis icon Pat Rafter. For lunch, he bought me two double scoop ice creams. I remember trying to eat them fast enough as they melted down my hands at Mandurah fishing boat harbour.

At "meetings" he scribble notes on coffee cups and napkins. I spent hours trying to decipher what looked like a tin-foiled hat attempt at cracking the Kennedy assassination. Our "product" is a grammar video game, designed by a Ukrainian—with a Ukrainian's grasp on English.

One day my boss called me and asked "Where are you?" I replied "I am in America and will be for three months... Uh... Bye?"

Anyway, I...

Image via

These are just a few cherry picked examples. I've played them for laughs because, hell, I don't want to lose this job too (haha, just kidding but seriously). Mental illness—be it mania, invasive thoughts, anhedonia, high anxiety, PTSD etc—makes steady employment about as reliable as steady mental health: it's no sure thing. The reality is that keeping a job is hard when just getting out of bed is a major achievement.

I'm one of the lucky ones though. The work for the dole system is brutal enough when you are "sane." Couple it with mental illness and its something else. As a severe depressive, my mandatory 12 job applications per fortnight and the subsequent 12 rejections take a severe toll on me. The subtext laden dialogue of the disability support workers takes a toll. Watching people who are way worse off than me health-wise also get churned out by this process takes a toll. I can play it for laughs because I have a family that supports me. Few are so lucky.

Our society already heaps a lot of guilt and shame onto the mentally ill. Couple that with the guilt and shame of being young, unemployed, and seemingly "able," and you've got something messier than two double scooped icecreams at an outdoors work brunch. Like Cruisin' the Musical, you've got a disaster.

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Lead illustration by Lia Kantrowitz

Anyone into kinky sex invariably ends up with "battle wounds," so to speak. Marks on your wrist if you're into restraint play, bruises if you're into flogging, flesh wounds if you and your partner are into more extreme BDSM acts such as branding, scarification, or other body modification. The vast majority of these injuries fade, but a few people want to get something a bit more permanent out of their sex lives—so they've turned to tattoos.

"It's a big turn-on to give my pet kitten tattoos," says Allan Crowder, a 33-year-old from Georgia who has given his 24-year-old wife, Virginia, multiple tattoos in the bedroom as part of their foreplay ritual. "It's something about her being helpless yet so strong at the same time, her breathing and moans of pain and pleasure... that get me in the mood." Virginia says that being tattooed by Allan brought them closer. "I feel that it strengthens my trust with him in our play. At the end of the day, my heart swells with happiness of the love we share," she explains.

Anyone with ink on their skin can attest to the sensuality of being tattooed. Being penetrated by a needle is an intense experience wrought with endorphins, where the "pain" or fear factor can be thrilling and even erotic. But in a dominant-submissive relationship, the arousal of being tattooed by a dominant goes beyond physical sensation. "They like the interaction," says Dulcinea Pitagora, a New York–based kink-friendly therapist. "They like the intimacy of that experience. Another reason could be the permanence of it, the bonding aspect in terms of making a long-term commitment." According to Pitagora, tattooing is the "most common" way for a domme to mark a sub today, with "scarification" as a close second.

"The person giving a tattoo hopefully is really into needle play or tattoo play, and the feeling of penetrating their partner's skin."

"There's nothing like having Daddy tattoo me," says Candie, a 38-year-old from New Jersey who identifies as a both a domme and a sub, also known as a "switch." Five years ago, a man she's been in a longterm kinky relationship with tattooed the back of her thighs with cherries and a banner that read "Daddy's Girl." Since then, "Daddy" has given her several other tattoos, including the word "slut" above her crotch.

That sort of ink play may be outside the mainstream, but it's maybe not as rare as you think. In D/S relationships, sometimes the submissive will identify as being "owned" by their partner. A tattoo, as well as non-permanent body modification, such as wearing a collar, can symbolize this agreed-upon ownership. " become a canvas for my domme came after a long, emotional journey of self-exploration," says Cynthia, a 24-year-old student in Colorado I emailed with. For her, the desire to be tattooed is intertwined with a desire to be owned in a relationship. She's currently searching for a female partner—a mistress—for whom she would act as a canvas.

Human canvas play is not a one-sided experience of arousal, either. "The person giving a tattoo hopefully is really into needle play or tattoo play, and the feeling of penetrating their partner's skin. You can feel the needle penetrate the skin, it gives a tiny little pop," says Pitagora. "Also there's probably blood... so these people could be excited by blood play."

Not everyone interested in ink play will have access to shop-quality tattoo guns or the skills to use the gear on a partner. Some may purchase cruder tattoo machines online, or use stick-and-poke equipment. Wolf is a 22-year-old from Detroit who was given a tattoo machine as a Christmas present and is currently teaching herself how to use it. "A friend showed me how to turn it on," she says. "Most of my practice is done on fruit, but I have given three tattoos to date. I have one girl that wants to come visit me all the way from Cali and has offered her whole body as a canvas."

That kind of devotion and submission isn't for everyone, of course. But with tattoos becoming more and more accepted—along with other mainstream forms of body modification, like plastic surgery—it's not hard to imagine it becoming more common. And of course, changing one's appearance for the sake of a sexual relationship is nothing new.

"People who receive body modification for their partner, like breast augmentation, the kink world is really not that different from the rest of the world."

But wait, what happens when kinky partners who tattoo each other break up?

"I wouldn't worry about any tattoo I received from a domme if we separated," says Chloe, a 41-year-old submissive. "I would either keep it as a memory, or just get it removed."

Follow Sophie Saint Thomas on Twitter

This article originally appeared on VICE Denmark

When the first rays of sunshine reach Copenhagen halfway through April and the temperature reaches highs like 16°C, the same thing happens every year: the streets fill with white bellies over khaki shorts and white socks in sandals, making their way to the beaches and fields along the Lakes in Copenhagen.

But we're deep into August now, so soon the Danes will have to wait for almost a year before the city is once again filled with the scent of after-sun lotion on skin turned a deep and painful shade of red. To celebrate the last days of Danish summer, photographer Sarah Buthmann went out with her analogue camera to document some sweaty Danes during a heatwave.

More on VICE:

Photos of Greek People Dealing with Their Heatwave

Summer Finally Came to Zurich

Photos of Romanians Burning in the Summer Heat

Mugshot of Stanley Vernon Majors

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Stanley Vernon Majors was obsessed with the Lebanese American family next door. The Tulsa, Oklahoma, man stalked the Jabaras, called them "dirty Arabs," and purposefully ran over the family matriarch with his car last year. And on August 12––a mere eight months after that initial felony assault––cops say he succeeded in killing one of them.

On Tuesday, 61-year-old Majors was charged with first-degree murder and a hate crime in the death of 37-year-old Khalid Jabara. The story became national news due to the apparent Islamophobic motive, but for many, the most disturbing part was that the authorities didn't keep Majors locked up as he waited to go to trial for vehicular assault. Instead, they let him out on bail and sent him straight back to the woman he allegedly tried to murder.

"My family lived in fear of this man and his hatred for years," the family said in a statement posted to Facebook on August 15. "Yet in May, not even one year after he ran over our mother and despite our repeated protests, he was released from jail with no conditions on his bond––no ankle monitor, no drug/alcohol testing, nothing."

Haifa Jabara, Khalid's mother, echoed those sentiments in a statement on Thursday, saying, "We never imagined that a man who had exhibited such cruelty and violence towards us over a five-year period would be released from prison on bond. I felt unprotected and helpless. We did everything we could to keep our family safe and our tormentor was set free. Today my son is gone, and I feel betrayed by a system that I believed in."

Majors has pleaded not guilty to the murder; a preliminary hearing has been set for October 5.

Major's ugly grudge against his neighbors had reportedly been simmering for years. By 2013, Majors's campaign of harassment against the Jabaras was so severe that the mother, Haifa, filed a restraining order, the Tulsa World reported. She told authorities Majors knocked on her windows late at night, sexually harassed her, and made racist remarks. Khalid Jabara, her now-deceased son, also issued a protective order against Majors in early 2015, saying he had left notes on the Jabara house and even vandalized its interior.

Majors violated his protective order against Haifa in early 2015 by screaming, "Fuck you, and I want to kill you." He finished chugging a beer just before officers cuffed him.

"He repeatedly attacked our ethnicity and perceived religion, making racist comments," Khalid Jabara's sister wrote on Facebook. "He often called us 'dirty Arabs,' 'filthy Lebanese,' 'Aye-rabs,' and 'Mooslems.'"

Majors was apparently unaware the Jabaras are in fact Orthodox Christians who came to the United States in the 1980s, as the New York Times noted.

In September, he ran over Haifa with his car, giving her a bevy of injuries including a broken shoulder, a collapsed lung, and fractured ribs. When police found him, he was so drunk that he was urinating through his pants. Although he said that Haifa had jumped in front of his car, and that he fled because he was scared, he offered up a motive that might have something to do with the the fact that he had married a man in December 2014.

"Majors remarked that Mrs. Jabara and her family were filthy Lebanese and they throw gay people off roof tops," an officer wrote in a report, according to the Washington Post.

The notion that Muslims are inherently homophobic and immigration from majority-Muslim countries should be limited has been advanced by Donald Trump in speeches. "Ever since the Orlando massacre, the far right has been going on and on about how Muslims hate gay people and how liberals wont accept that," said Mark Potok at the Southern Poverty Law Center. "I think there's been an attempt to stir up animosity toward Muslims on the part of American gay people."

No one makes that attempt more explicit than Milo Yiannopoulos, a gay Trump supporter and provocateur who has become infamous for supporting a grab bag of far-right causes. "It's a significant portion of Muslims who simply find our way of life completely unacceptable," Yiannopoulos recently told VICE. "It's become dangerous to be gay in America for one simple reason, and that reason is Islam."

But if it's dangerous to be gay in America, it's also dangerous to be a Muslim, or even hail from a Middle Eastern country, as the Jabaras did. According to the Counsel on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), in the aftermath of November's Bataclan massacre in Paris, Islamophobic violence was the highest it had been since 9/11. Specifically, it called out the rhetoric of Trump and then candidate Ben Carson. The advocacy group pointed to six incidents of violence against American Muslims in the days immediately following Paris attacks. Violence against Muslims remains a constant threat: Earlier this month, an imam and his assistant were shot execution-style, allegedly by a 35-year-old janitor from Brooklyn.

"I definitely believe that tragic incident was symptomatic of the overall rise of Islamophobia in our country," says Ibrahim Hooper, the national communications director at CAIR. "It's all part of the same package of hate promoted by Trump and Gingrich and Ben Carson."

A case with eerie similarities to the Tulsa killing is the shooting in February 2015 of three young Muslims by a neighbor who reportedly picked fights with them over their faith. Mohammad Abu-Salha, the father of two of the victims, told Talking Points Memo, "We felt it's a copycat case... It's the same story in detail: the angry neighbor, who is racist, bigoted, mad, picking fights for nothing, and then planning his murder on a day when there was no issue or problem or conflict with the family."

In Major's case, after he ran over Haifa, prosecutors argued that he was a danger to society. Despite this, he was allowed to post a $60,000 bail and was released. America's criminal justice system has been increasingly criticized for trapping nonviolent offenders behind bars just because they're too poor to afford bail, but here is the mirror image of that problem: A violent and clearly disturbed man was allowed to go right back to living next to the family he was fixated on because he was able to buy his way out of jail.

On August 12, Majors knocked on the Jabaras's window. Khalid, who was home with his father, called 911 and said he had heard his neighbor had obtained a gun, which violated the terms of his release. About 30 minutes later, according to police, Major fired four bullets and killed Jabara. This time, the cops found Majors hiding behind a tree with a six-pack of beer.

"Today, in our pain, we are also keenly aware that this is not just another murder to be added to crime statistics," Jabara's sister wrote in her Facebook statement. "Our brother's death could have been prevented. This is troubling at any time, but profoundly disturbing given the current climate of our country and the increase nationally in cases of hate crimes."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Photo by Pixallia via

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

My client's on his back, legs wide open, and I'm standing between them, looking disapprovingly at his cock.

"What a tiny cock," I say. "Don't you have a tiny, useless cock?"

"Yes, Mistress," he replies.

"Yes, what?" I ask.

"I have a tiny, useless cock," he whispers.

I look down, and smile: he's hard. That's because he's into small penis humiliation, or SPH, meaning he gets turned on by the idea of his dick being small, useless—even unmanly.

SPH is a form of verbal humiliation and of sexual masochism, where a painful sensation or experience is eroticized. As a professional dominatrix, I understand that some of the most powerful kinks are in the mind, and that they're popular among kinksters: a 2002 Finnish study of people recruited from kinky sex clubs reported 70 percent of them engaged in verbal humiliation.

For some cisgender men, who make up the majority of my clients, humiliation that undermines their sense of masculinity or subverts the social expectations imposed by manhood can be particularly potent and erotic. But in the wake of last week's news, where statues portraying a naked Donald Trump with a minuscule dick and no testicles appeared in cities across the US, I've been thinking about where our obsession with small penis humiliation comes from.

WANTO, painting a fill-in. All photos by the author

To understand Asia's graffiti scene you have to go to Tokyo, the region's graff mecca and a source of so much of the styles you see in the alleyways and walls of Hong Kong, Taipei, and Seoul. The most important crew in Tokyo graffiti is called 246—it boasts members from Japan, the US, Mexico, and Taiwan, including MQ, SODUH, PEAR, RESQ, SAYM, YU, and ZOMBRA—and arguably the most important man in the scene is 246's founder, WANTO.

WANTO is known for his spiky "W" and characteristic tag that's equally effective vertically and horizontally. His style is a product of the mid 90s, when, inspired by American writers, WANTO turned from painting colorful pieces to bombing with tags and throw-ups.

In 2004, the Tokyo native traveled across the US with one-time writing partner, SECT, and became associated with the prominent US graffiti crew MSK. (The duo's exploits are chronicled in the book Who am I. Where am I.) NOE, a 246 member I spoke to in Taiwan, told me that WANTO wanted to be more than just an Asian offshoot of MSK, so he started his own crew, 246, in 2008, named after a major traffic artery in Tokyo. The group soon included other graffiti writers with similar aesthetics and boundless ambitions, writers with bold, readable throw-ups who were already considered to be among the most active in their respective cities.

WANTO tagging

I met WANTO in a local Tokyo neighborhood izakaya one night in hopes of catching up on the current state of Tokyo graffiti. He was calm, confident, a bit mischievous, and very humble—not wanting to speak for all of the Tokyo graffiti scene on the record, he declined to be quoted for this article. Instead, he suggested that I accompany him on a nighttime bombing run.

WANTO in action

It had been raining heavily all afternoon and Tokyo's ubiquitous see-through plastic umbrellas dotted the streets. A wet evening might not be ideal for sightseeing, but it was perfect for our purposes. The streets were largely empty, and any unsuspecting pedestrians and drivers were likely to be preoccupied with the rain. WANTO used his umbrella to cover his movements as he finished a double throw-up on a shutter at a busy intersection and crouched on corners to catch tags.

After we had zig-zagged our way through dark streets and along a local train line toward Shibuya, we eventually reached the crew's namesake street, Route 246. Tags and throw-ups by the crew's far-flung members lined almost every block, some hidden and faded, others screaming for attention with bold, high-contrast letters on well-lit walls and shutters. WANTO moved along the road with swiftness and determination, hitting spots with markers and spray paint. Eventually he abandoned his umbrella for the sake of greater mobility, and, under the advancing cover of night, didn't stop bombing until all of his cans were empty.

WANTO doing a throw-up

I retraced our steps the next day, the rain having cleared up. Tokyo is a graffiti connoisseur's dream, The city's walls, doorways, and shutters were like the world's biggest guest book. Practically every writer of note in Asia has visited Tokyo at one time or another, and some spots were covered in the names of American writers. On my trip through Asia, I had been trailing UFO—a New York writer who founded the notorious 907 crew—in several cities by just a few weeks. He had been in Tokyo for an art show just before I arrived, and I found his distinctive alien character wherever I turned. The wholly anonymous KUMA and street-vandal-turned-gallery-sensation NECKFACE still had a famous ledge spot in Shibuya that remained unscathed, while the bi-coastal American bombing legend MQ also seemed to maintain a constant presence.

BLAKE, YK, RESQ, WANTO, and MQ

But the streets were dominated by the locals. Graffiti by WANTO's 246 crew-mates TOM and RUST, as well as Japanese writers like HENKA, DART, MINT, and SECT, was everywhere in sight. A flurry of writers from nearby Osaka with their distinctive (albeit almost illegible) flared throw-ups were also covering the city's graff hot spots with paint. Ultimately it was the Japanese vandals, not Tokyo's international visitors, whose presence dominated—the locals are the ones who put the city on the map, and they're the ones who will keep it there.

See more photos from Ray's Tokyo trip below.

Ray Mock is the founder of Carnage NYC and has been documenting graffiti in New York and around the world for ten years, publishing more than two dozen limited edition zines and books. Follow him on Instagram.

RUST, TOM, MQ, ZOMBRA, HYPE

UFO 907

YU

WANTO, TOM

WANTO tagging a trashcan

KUMA, NECKFACE

Harajuku

Shinjuku

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

When Rudy Bustamante first started taking photos on the streets of Rio, strangers tried to get him to stop. "People would constantly come up and tell me to 'put the camera away,' that I was 'asking to be robbed,'" he says. "When I told them I didn't care about the camera, out came the horror stories about being stabbed, shot, kidnapped, killed. It took me a while but I learned to just ignore them, say thank you, and move on."

The results are a batch of film photos taken over a two-month period last year, before the summer Olympics descended on the city where he was born and shone a global spotlight on all the celebration and stereotyping woven into hosting the Games. As someone who lived in both "Rio proper" and Niteroi, across the bay, Rudy's seen a side to life that doesn't quite fit the City of God favela imagery so often associated with Brazil's capital.

When he was eight years old, he and his family left Rio for London, and he's lived in the UK ever since. What's he heard people from outside Brazil say about Rio? "It seems to differ according to age—older people have this golden-agey Carmen Miranda stereotype mixed with an assumption that everyone's a lovable street scamp," he says. "Whereas younger people—at least the ones I come into contact with—talk about corruption, sport, and traveling there to party, in that order. I've also had people be very surprised that I'm white, shit at football, and had enough money to travel to the UK."

Living that pseudo third-culture kid life has left Rudy in a sort of cultural limbo, which he uses his camera to explore. "I always feel alienated when I'm there," he says of Brazil. "I straddle the cultures in a way—I end up fitting in just well enough that everyone expects me to know the ways of the city, but not well enough to actually be a part of it."

He ends up approaching his photos from a perspective that tries to be sensitive to possible generalizations about what life is like for people in Rio who live on opposite sides of a wealth gap. It's been funny to see how the country marketed itself to outsiders for the Olympics, for example with the "'spicy Brazilian barbecue sauce' promotions every food outlet is doing. I don't know if they've just not consulted any Brazilians or are playing to stereotypes, but Brazilian food is, at its spiciest, remarkably mild compared to the UK; and slathering pungent sauce all over your meat is pretty much anathema."

Sauce aside, Rudy says he does his best to let the photos speak for themselves, capturing the day-to-day mundanity of a suburban life that's more universal than the average tourist might think. "I won't pretend I have any kind of objective point of view of the country—rather, the attempt with the project was to show an entirely subjective, gut-feeling profile of an area. It's not how all Brazilians view the country by any stretch, but it is at least how one Brazilian views the country—probably with an uncommon dose of outsider's perspective." Not even the well-meaning suggestions to put his camera away was going to hold that back.

When Graham Kidd started converting Little Chefs on the A1 into sex shops, he was sure the local farmers would be the first to complain. It was a few years ago, and Graham, whose firm Pulse and Cocktails owns 21 stores across Britain, had just opened his inaugural shop on the A1 (he now has three along the road). Like any new business, the first few weeks were slow. Cars whizzed by and locals didn't want to know. Then, one day, a tractor pulled into the forecourt.

"The farmer wandered in," says Graham. "After browsing the magazines and blow-up dolls, he picked up a Fleshlight and asked what it was. When our staff explained that it's a male masturbation tool disguised as a torch, he was amazed. 'Wow,' he said. 'This'd be great for when I'm working the fields.'"

The farmer bought the device and the staff thought nothing more of it, until the next day. "The following lunchtime, literally five tractors drove in from the A1 and all five farmers each bought a Fleshlight," Graham says. "They couldn't get enough! We had to ring central office to ship more down to cope with the demand."

To this day, he says, that shop is Pulse and Cocktails' biggest seller of imitation Maglite vaginas. "I won't tell you which store it is, only that it's surrounded by fields," he adds. "I wouldn't want to scare off our best customers."

Welcome to the A1 – the mothership of the motorway sex industry.

Motorways should not be sexy. Nothing says "it's not you, it's me" like a cold, emotionless strip of tarmac. They are portals of frustration, designed for the sole purpose of getting you from a place to another place. It's about the destination, never the journey. They aren't fun like high-streets, or picturesque like country lanes. That's why kids watch TV inside cars – because there's nothing to see outside them.

Then there is the A1. Haven't you ever noticed one of the half-dozen roadside sex businesses dotted along the 165-mile stretch between Leeds and London? I did during a drive north a few months ago. On the way back, I counted them – four sex shops and two dedicated swingers clubs. If you're looking, they're near-impossible to miss.

Then I looked online. "I drive past these all the time," wrote "Rubberduck" on one forum I stumbled across. "Anyone been in one? ... Surely better to just order stuff online than from one of these seedy places? Would have thought they would have gone out of business years ago but what do I know?"

Rubberduck got me thinking. Are they seedy? Why are they there? Who visits them? And why is the A1 a good place to sell sex? I drove from Leeds to London to find out.

Before the Pontefract branch of Pulse and Cocktails sold sex, it sold breakfast. It was a Little Chef until it underwent the change two years ago, becoming the A1's first "adult superstore" south of Leeds, tacked onto the forecourt of a Shell garage. Two long-haul lorries are parked outside. One driver is asleep in his cab. The other, it turns out, is buying porn. The hum of traffic here is constant, until you step inside.

The shop itself is like any high-end adult store in Britain. Its bright white walls are festooned with sex aids, from PVC costumes, bondage masks, whips and chains to sex dolls, vibrators, medieval stocks and penis pumps, not to mention the usual staple of smut material. A Mediterranean-looking man in work-boots and a high-vis jacket – his lorry is presumably the empty one outside – is perusing the girl-on-girl section. He buys a stack of DVDs and leaves without a word.

"That's called the Big Fist," the store clerk tells me when I ask about a terrifying 13-inch dildo shaped like a punch. "Y'know, I've never once sold one to a woman. Only men. In fact, about 50 percent of the fetish costumes are bought by men in this store, too. That's the A1 for you."

The A1 is cobbled together from bits of the old North Road. Snaking from Edinburgh to London, it starts slowly, caressing the North East's coastline, flirting briefly with Newcastle and Sunderland, before penetrating North Yorkshire as it picks up speed. In and out of Leeds and Sheffield, it plunges into Nottinghamshire, through Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire before climaxing in London. It's Britain's longest road, and Britain's oldest road.

Hunter-gatherers used its mud-tracks to find food about 10,000 years ago, before the Romans paved it in parts from around 400AD. It's taken various forms since then, until the Department of Transport awarded it numbered status in 1921.

It has always, like many A-roads, been a site for illicit sexual activity like dogging. But its sex appeal didn't go mainstream until the hot summer of '92. It was after a boozy day at Ascot races that Eastenders star Gillian Taylforth was arrested for giving her husband, Geoff, a blowjob in a Range Rover parked in a lay-by. She was arrested but the charges were dropped. Then The Sun caught wind and ran the story, spawning a libel case which Taylforth lost. It was the beginning of a sexual revolution that would sweep the A1.

A mile south of P&C, Pontefract, there's a lorry parked in a field. On it are the words: "PREPARE TO MEET YOUR GOD," and some other Bible bombast. No sign of the farmer who put it up. I wonder if he has a Fleshlight in his tractor.

Still, no time to find out. Pulse and Cocktails, Grantham, is next – and it looks exactly like Pulse and Cocktails, Pontefract. The only real difference is that this one was a McDonald's (though, it was a Little Chef before that). It has the same cornucopia of sex gear as Pontefract, and the staff – a man and a woman – also wear black. Three couples, all in their forties, browse the shelves, whispering earnestly about what to buy.

"We get all kinds of customers here," says the female staff member. "Couples, singles, old people thinking it's a coffee shop, young people thinking it's a strip club..."

Her colleague cuts her short: "Don't forget the man last year who tried wanking in the DVD section. I had to confiscate his laptop. We get way more customers since they put up speed cameras on the road. Cars don't just fly by any more. Though, people still do come in asking for bacon and eggs. They think we're still a Little Chef."

Pulse and Cocktails owes its success on the A1 largely to Little Chef's failure. In 2007, the roadside diner went into administration, forcing the closure of 28 branches across Britain. Pulse and Cocktails pounced – converting Grantham in 2008, then Sawtry (40 miles south) two years later, followed by Pontefract in 2012. "The three that we've converted are ideal sex shop premises," says Graham Kidd. "They are the perfect size, enabling us to stock a large selection of toys, lingerie, bondage items etc; they have excellent parking and are in great locations."

But most importantly, it's about anonymity. "Because we're British – and you don't get this on the continent – a lot of people are frightened to death of being seen going into a store," says Graham. "That is changing, but in converting redundant roadside diners we've found a niche, but also a place where people can go and shop discretely and safely."

In other words, you're less likely to bump into your mother-in-law in a sex shop on a remote piece of A-road than you are in the one on your local high street.

"The internet has had a massive impact on the adult industry," Graham adds. "I can't remember the last time a sex shop opened anywhere. But because we've saturated the A1, people see us on their way to work or holiday. It's basically free advertising."

A fair point – according to the Department of Transport, between 50,000 and 100,000 vehicles drive the A1 every day. "And we've got some incredible products. So people can come in, hold the product in their hands, see how it works. You can't do that on the internet."

You know what else you can't do on the internet? Have no-strings sex with strangers. Swingers club Tease II is next, a hotel in a truck stop at Alconbury Services (technically P&C Sawtry is next, as the crow flies, but because it's on the other side of the road it makes sense to visit Tease II first and go back to Sawtry later).

Tease II is run by a husband and wife called Stu and Nikki Hobbs. Stu, 49, is fixing a water pipe in the ceiling at reception when we arrive. "The jacuzzi's bloody packed in and taken all the hot water with it," he growls, standing on a ladder with a spanner. "You want a tour? I'll give you a tour."

The first thing you notice is the smell – leather and old smoke, but mostly lavender Febreze. "Smell's very important in a place like this," says Stu, winking. "You can imagine why." There are about five rooms, including a cinema (currently showing an eye-watering amount of anal-fisting) with a viewing area behind glass under a bed; a jungle room with a sex swing and a fetish room with a bondage cross and a spanking bench. The main bar has a dance-pole and some sofas, as well as a well-stocked bar with a baseball bat mounted on the wall.

"We've got 8,500 members, including Premiership footballers, judges, barristers, coppers, firemen, road workers, carpenters... you name it, from every background," says Stu. "Here you're all on one level; when you're all naked, you're as good as the man standing next to you."

Tease II opened in 2011, after the Hobbs' first club, Xscape, was sued for trademark infringement by the indoor adventure park of the same name. Stu insists the lawsuit ended amicably. Now, nights have names like Greedy Girls Gangbang and Wednesday Hump Day Party. Entry costs £20 for couples and £35 for single men (single women, known as "unicorns" in swinging circles because they're so rare, go free).

There was a time when the UK's swinging scene was the reserve of bored middle-aged couples putting their car keys in a cowboy hat and riding their luck. But the death of religion, plus sexual liberation and the internet, has fuelled a boom in sex parties among couples of all ages. Stu insists the scene is far from seedy. "People who think that don't know the business," he says. "People expect keys in a bowl, naked orgies; they think they're guaranteed a shag. Women run this scene, let me tell you. I got more sex when I worked on the buses."

What about the A1? It must bring some surprising customers. "We don't like passing trade," says Stu, shaking his head. "We prefer word of mouth. Though, last year we had one of our gang bangs on during the day – 22 men and three women at it in the cinema. I'm out front smoking and this guy of about 55 pulls up. 'Tease?' he asks. I sent him upstairs to where the action was. Five minutes later he comes back white as a sheet. 'I meant do you serve teas, not... that,' he says. Then he leans in and whispers, 'But have you got any cards?'"

Business is booming at Tease II. Though it does look a little worn in places, Stu insists that's all part of its charm. "We're more a venue for the working man," he says. "If you want to see the higher end of the market, go see Jules and Scott at the Vanilla Alternative down at Tempsford. Lovely couple. Their cliental are a bit la-di-da."

The Vanilla Alternative is 20 minutes south. Jules Davis, the venue's proprietress, answers the door. She's a tall, attractive woman with blonde hair, jeans and a cardigan and fluffy slippers on her feet. She offers us a cup of tea just as her phone rings – her ringtone is "Sex on Fire" by Kings of Leon.

If Tease II is a house of sex, The Vanilla Alternative is a sex Narnia. A converted roadside inn – once a grandiose place called The Anchor Lodge – the VA opened in 2011. It now has 10,500 registered members. Its décor is all lavish purples, burgundies and blacks. It's got Chesterfield sofas in the bar area, a disco dance-floor and a 15-foot jacuzzi. Two of the communal rooms are wall-to-wall with beds, all ready-made for tonight's action. "Oh, it's nothing special tonight," says Jules, "just our usual Frisky Friday."

Jules, like Stu, can tell a story. For the next 45 minutes she regales me about the time a woman went into labour at a sex party; how she once threw another stark-naked onto the side of the A1 for starting a fight in an orgy. There was the father who almost walked in on his daughter giving a blowjob in the jacuzzi, were it not for some quick-thinking diversionary tactics from Jules and Scott, and the time a man asked her to sneak him out because his dentist was at the bar and he had an appointment the following Monday. "So I said, just make sure you don't have pubes between your teeth when you go, in case they're his wife's." She talks, we listen, all to that gentle hum of passing traffic outside.

"Most people either think it's fat old ugly guys who've stepped out of the 60s with hairy armpits and pubic hair down to their knees," she says. "Or they think you've got to be 26, blonde, blue eyes and big boobs. In here, yeah, we get both those sets of people, but it's mostly normal bods who fancy a bit of excitement."

The VA, like Tease II, is fully licensed and above board. Sexual health charity The Terrence Higgins Trust even sends a nurse to every event to give STI checks and hand out free condoms. "We always say, there are two classifications of swingers," Jules continues, "those who want to and those who need to. If you need to be doing this to fix your relationship, it will destroy you. Repair your own relationship before you involve anyone else in it."

She's also keen to point out that her's is one of the few swingers clubs in Britain where drugs are strictly banned. "I've seen clubs destroyed by drugs," she says, "but the police just don't want to know."

Why? She gives a knowing glance: "Let's just say there are a lot of police involved in this scene. So if you report it to the local force, the chances are someone there goes to the club and it tends to get lost in the paperwork." That's all she'll say on the matter. "We take client confidentiality very seriously," she says. With that, some guests arrive – a good-looking couple in their early thirties. I'm politely asked to hit the road.

There's nothing confidential about Happy Lovers A1 – the penultimate destination of my journey. The A1's first ever sex shop, it's bang on the northbound carriageway outside the village of Sandy, next to the Bedfordshire BBQ Centre and an Esso garage. It was never a Little Chef, but a Happy Eater, then an Indian restaurant. "We've been here 14 years," says shop manager Irene Busby. "I think Pulse and Cocktails only came to the A1 because they saw how well we were doing here. They wanted a seat at the party."

But there's one thing Happy Lovers has that Pulse and Cocktails will never have – a hole in the wall where a brick used to be. "Oh, that's where Jimmy Savile's brick was," says Irene, way too flippantly for such a statement.

In 1981, Savile made 100 commemorative bricks, to be auctioned off for his charity. One ended up in the wall when it was a Happy Eater. "When we took over," says Irene, "this local councillor launched a campaign to have it removed, claiming it was an insult to Savile's memory. We saw no reason at the time to take it out, so we left it. Then Savile's crimes came to light, and we realised we had to get rid of it sharpish. No business wants an association like that – especially not a sex shop on the A1."

Nobody knows how the roadside sex industry has changed better than Irene. "Originally it was just sales reps and lorry drivers who came in," she says. "The reps had the money and the truckers were on the road alone for long periods of time. But then the internet killed the sales business and the recession killed the truckers' spare cash."

Now, local porn stars are key to Happy Lovers' daily business (apparently there are a lot in rural Bedfordshire) and come in as much for a chat with Irene as to buy a new vibrator. Local fetishists play a part, too. But mostly, she says, it's "normal people": couples en route to a dirty weekend, men over 50 who don't get the internet or single women with an itch to scratch. "We do get people led in on dog leads and a lot of bosses with their secretaries," she adds. "Last month I had a guy come in because he'd broken his penis pump through over-use and wanted me to fix it."

Did she? "Nah," she says. "I sold him another one."

My final stop is a little way back up the A1 at Sawtry. It's also the final Pulse and Cocktails as you drive north to south on the A1. Again, it's exactly the same as the other two. There are no customers, just an affable blonde attendant behind the counter.

No wonder it's quiet; this is the shop that almost sent the local village into meltdown when it opened six years ago. There was an outcry, public meetings, a petition; a local councillor promised to "remain vigilant". One condition of granting the licence was that the shop must not use the village's name in its title or any advertising literature. "No one wants Sawtry to become synonymous with a sex shop," said the angry councillor.

"You've no idea how difficult it is to get a license for a sex shop," says Graham. "They can't be in built up areas, near schools or homes. That's another reason why a motorway is a good location. Still, at Sawtry we had over 2,000 objections."

The ire didn't last. Soon, he says, the shop was employing people from the village. "Now they use the shop all the time," he says. "It's become part of the community."

It's no real surprise that village communities freak out at the thought of a sex business opening on their doorstep. Every business I speak to faced initial backlashes from the villagentsia: fears that they would attract doggers, paedophiles, rapists and other undesirables. "YOU WOULDNT THINK PEOPLE WERE GETTING RAPED EVERY DAY WOULD YOU (sic)," harrumphed one commenter under a MailOnline story at the time.

"It's nonsense," says Graham. "Our customers are no different to those who go to supermarkets or anywhere else."

As I drive back to London, the A1's orange street lights beginning to fizz and flicker on, I spot the corpse of a badger lying on the hard shoulder, its legs stiff and straight like a Pass the Pig on its side. It reminds me of one very dangerous side effect of a motorway sex shop, which I learned about during breakfast at DD's roadside café, directly opposite the first Pulse and Cocktails at Pontefract.

"You'd be amazed at how many people park in our carpark and run across the motorway to the sex shop," said the waitress, also DD's mum, as she cleared away my plates. "Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose. The sex toys in there must really be to die for."

Then, handing me my bill, she added: "You know, we never had this problem when it was a Little Chef."

@mattblakeuk / @CBethell_Photo

More on VICE:

Here's Everyone You're Going to Have Sex with at University

My Life as a Sugar Baby

We Spent 24 Hours with a Pornstar Couple

According to the Council of Arab Islamic Relations (CAIR), about 70 percent of American Muslims voted for George W. Bush in 2000. Twelve years later, only 4 percent voted for Mitt Romney.

Those numbers underscore just how badly the Republican Party has estranged itself from what one of its natural constituencies. The industrious, fiscally conservative, family-oriented values of American conservatism should give the GOP a lot of in common with religious Muslims, but after the war on terror and more than a decade of having their faith demonized, not too many Muslims have decided to remain in the party of Bush. Donald Trump's call for a ban on Muslim immigration may have put an exclamation point on the trend, but the Muslim exodus from the GOP started a lot earlier than that.

VICE tracked down a handful of Muslims who once identified as Republican but have leaned Democratic in recent elections. Here's what they had to say about why they left the party—or why they feel the party left them.

Sarah Cochran

VICE: What's your background like?
Sarah Cochran: I was born and raised in the Kuwait by expat parents from India. As a child, I always looked forward to moving to America because it was the place I could finally belong. I was 18 when I arrived—four days before Saddam invaded. I ended up staying here because I couldn't go back, and there weren't any universities in Kuwait anyway. My dad ended up losing everything because of the invasion, so I worked a graveyard shift and put myself through community college.

After that I had an arranged marriage and moved to Texas with my new husband, and spent about ten years sitting at home and having kids. But I had a change of heart, got divorced, and applied to Georgetown's master's program in conflict resolution. As I was graduating, I got a job on Rick Snyder, but on a national level, I don't think they're ever going to be able to come out of the hole that Donald Trump has dug for them. Right now, for Arabs and Muslims and minorities, to support the Republican Party is like cockroaches supporting Raid.

Follow Luke Winkie on Twitter.

Colten Boushie, killed August 9. Photo via Facebook

I was in Grade 7 the first time I remember a group of adults making "Indian jokes." A handful of kids—all white, including myself—were downstairs sneaking drinks while they celebrated New Year's Eve upstairs.

These jokes are ubiquitous across the Canadian prairies: formulaic put-downs that rely on stereotypes of Indigenous people. The parents were laughing, and they were our role models, so we started making them too.

For too many years following, even around Indigenous friends and classmates, I continued to make those jokes. It likely wasn't the first time I let the racism of my home province shape my actions, it's just the first one I remember.

I feel shame now for many reasons. I think about the people I hurt—the Indigenous people who were degraded by my attempts at fitting in—but also because younger kids heard me, looked up to me and, just like I mimicked the adults at the party, those kids started to make the jokes too.

This was in Prince Albert, which according to the 2006 census had the highest concentration of Aboriginal people of any city in Saskatchewan. The racism is so normalized that a parent wouldn't think twice about making a disparaging remark about Indigenous people in front of their children. I didn't think it was wrong to degrade my classmates, friends and neighbours.

That's systemic racism. That's Saskatchewan. That's the cycle that left Colten Boushie murdered on a rural road. The 22-year-old First Nations man was shot dead on a Saskatchewan farm on August 9, and farm owner Gerald Stanley has been charged with second degree murder.

Since Boushie's death, questions of racism bubbling beneath the surface of the prairie roads and northern forests have filled newspaper columns and social media feeds across the country. Ben Kautz, a councillor for the rural community of Browning, Saskatchewan, resigned from his position after posting on Facebook that Stanley's only mistake was "leaving witnesses."

Read More: Why Are People Defending a Politician Who Incited Race-Based Murder?

Kautz certainly wasn't the only one. The online commenting became so bad that the RCMP warned some "could be criminal in nature." Premier Brad Wall went on Facebook asking for people to stop with "racist and hate-filled comments." Unfortunately his comment section enabled more racism to spew, uninhibited and with ownership from people's personal profiles.

Understanding the hateful climate and the role I played in it in my youth was difficult, but for my Indigenous peers the stakes were much higher. While I was dabbling in discrimination, Eagleclaw Bunnie Thom was learning about the other edge of that dangerous sword in my hometown, Prince Albert.

"It was hard at times. I didn't realize we were poor until I was much older, which is a sign of good parenting I guess," the Indigenous photographer told VICE. "We always had enough food and a roof over our head. I grew up with two older sisters who are half black and one younger sister who is Saulteaux, Cree and Scottish."

He remembers his sister being chased home from school being called derogatory terms because she was black and because she was Indigenous. He says he was held back in Grade 1, not because of his academics, but because of the racial taunting which made it hard to get along with classmates.

"I remember being carted into the principal's office because I got in an argument on the playground and the principal at that time beating my knuckles with his leather belt after he heated it on the radiator," Thom said. "I've talked with other students from that school and no one else experienced that ever."

Nickita Longman grew up wary of walking home alone. Photo submitted

Indigenous writer and activist Nickita Longman says racism "really came to the surface" when she moved from reserve to Regina. She attended a community school with students of different racial backgrounds. Like Thom, her first experience with racism was "where most forms of bullying take place: the playground."

"I wasn't ever prepared for it," Longman told VICE. "I was unable to vocalize the way it made me feel."

"Growing up Indigenous has meant that my mother has had to have challenging conversations with me that non-Indigenous parents don't," she added. "My mother has come up with safety tips regarding cab rides, walking home alone at night and, as of late, what my sister and I would do if our car ever experienced trouble in rural Saskatchewan."

Andre Bear grew up both on reserve in Little Pine First Nation and within the inner city of Saskatoon. While many rural kids were taking a truck for a "rip" or shotgunning their first beer, Bear got fed up with the stereotypes that were imposed on him—that he wouldn't graduate high school or that he was a criminal. He also learned as a young adult how inequality contributed to racism.

"The provincial and federal government does not equitably support First Nations communities and ignores Treaty obligations made specifically to overcome social injustices," Bear told VICE. "Many First Nations communities in Saskatchewan are drenched within fourth world living conditions without water, power, food, proper education and housing."

The last federally-run residential school closed in Saskatchewan in 1996. For First Nations children living on reserve, they get at least 30 percent less funding for their education than children living in the provincial jurisdiction, a former chief economist with the TD Bank, Don Drummond, told CBC in March. As of July 2015, 93 First Nations across Canada had a total of 133 drinking water advisories, some of them for two decades. That number doesn't include the 25 other First Nations in British Columbia who are also under boil water advisories.

"Non-First Nations people in Saskatchewan are uneducated about these socially imposed inequities that enable an internalized dehumanization of First Nations peoples," he said.

In Bear, many people might see Boushie—a young Indigenous man. In fact, Bear has been pulled over or stopped on the streets on different occasions. But after the shooting, and the racist outrage online, he still has hope.

"This is most important—to identify that racism is evident before we begin finding solutions to a problem that is not only systematic but needs to be addressed through education and compassion on an individual level," he said.

Today, Thom lives in a different Saskatchewan city, but the racist sentiment of his formative years hasn't gone away. He doesn't go to small towns and avoids many parts of cities for fear of getting his "teeth kicked in."

"That's a direct quote from a recent encounter at one of my old favourite bars in Regina," Thom said. " said 'I don't want to hear your dirty brown mouth talk again or I'll kick your teeth in.' This was a place I frequented for a very, very long time, but only recently have had to deal with this stuff."

It's the Saskatchewan he grew up in and unfortunately it's still the atmosphere of the province, but Thom said he is hopeful a different one will await his children.

"The children are where we need to spend our energies in terms of education," he said. "Building cultural competence. Awareness. It will be their relationships that will be affected and their lives that have to negotiate the cultural landscape that we leave for them. So we all need to do better in that respect."

I wonder if my parents, my friends' parents or my teachers thought the same thing a couple decades ago. In the province that brought to light the "starlight tours" and the last residential school, how can we move forward?

You can still meet up with some of my "old crew" and have a few "too many brews" and hear the "Indian jokes." But you won't hear it from me. You won't hear it from most of the non-Indigenous people I know. That doesn't mean it's not still around, but maybe it represents a slow cultural shift.

For non-Indigenous people, like myself, our shame is on the line, but it needs to move faster on this beautiful land for people like Boushie, who lose their lives to bullshit Saskatchewan cycles.

Follow Geraldine Malone on Twitter.

Art by Brian Wallsby

Billy Name was a magical guy who had a profound affect on Andy Warhol, and therefore, the entire culture. Billy was the one who decorated Warhol's original Factory in silver. Billy was a fantastic photographer who captured those beautiful 60s moments seen on a US Post Office commemorative stamp of Andy Warhol, as well as the first two Velvet Underground album covers.

Billy was many things to many people, but everyone considered him a friend.

Billy was so much fun that when Gillian McCain and I went to interview him in Poughkeepsie, New York in the mid 1990s, we had to go to Friendly's to have an ice cream–eating contest. Billy and Gillian both gobbled down a "Reese's Peanut Butter & Cookie Dough Hot Fudge Sundae," of which the results of the contest are still being tallied.

What was even better was that Lou Reed and John Cale's magnificent album, Songs for Drella had just been released, and we listened to it on Billy's awesome stereo while he provided hysterical commentary. Gillian and I both agree this was one of the best interviews we ever did.

Billy was a great interpreter of the insane, intelligent, drug-fueled, and fascinating world that was Andy Warhol's Factory. So much so, that Gillian and I included Billy in Please Kill Me: Voices from the Archives, our two-hour NPR radio documentary on the roots of punk rock that we produced to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Please Kill Me. Voices from the Archive has been playing on NPR and college stations across the country all summer and fall, and Billy is one of the highlights of the show. He really was that special.

Billy Name (born William Linich Jr. on February 22, 1940) died on July 18, 2016 of natural causes, and we thought it would be a fitting tribute to let Billy tell his story in his own words.... Enjoy, it's a great one!

Andy Warhol came to one of the hair-cutting parties at my apartment, and he said, 'I just got this new space, this loft on 47th Street. Would you decorate it like you did with this apartment?' And that's how the Factory started.

Billy Name: I met Andy Warhol when I was working as a waiter at Serendipity, the hip dessert restaurant on the Upper East Side. Serendipity was this real cool place; Kim Novak used to come in all the time because she was being kept by the young Aga Kahn in his apartment up the street, ha, ha, ha! And Andy Warhol used to come in all the time, so we were on a first name basis, you know, "Hi Andy, how're you doing?"

There was a waiter at Serendipity named Ron, who used to go down to the bar the San Remo in the West Village on Saturday night after we got off, and one night, he invited me to go along. Greenwich Village was still very bohemian then; it was filled with jazz clubs and jazz musicians who were really into heavy heroin, and there was really great grass around. It was this whole new world of magic, mystery, and intuitive intelligence—that went beyond explaining about things—you know, smoke some grass and immediately get turned on to the chromatic waves of the music!

So the Village was like being in a Middle Eastern country, like Turkey, and it was so cool to be out of that middle-class, America-Eisenhower, new-refrigerator scene, you know?

The San Remo wasn't the literary crowd like at the White Horse—or the painterly crowd like at the Cedar Bar—it was sort of this hybrid of the arts. More like some existential, hip, cool place, but where you're not really doing anything, ha, ha, ha!

See, I got hooked up with some people through the crowd hanging out there, and that's how I met Nick Cernovich, and he and I got to be very good friends. He taught me how to do theatrical lighting, so I ended up being the lighting designer for the Judson Dance Theater Company. And another thing I would do is have salon hair-cutting parties at my apartment, because we never went to barbers, since we never had the money in the first place, ha, ha, ha! So during the time I was working with the dance companies people were also coming over to my house to get their hair trimmed.

This is very important—I had also covered my new apartment on East 5th Street with tinfoil, painted everything silver, and installed theater lights. It was like walking into a diamond, this great gem of a place. So I would be trimming somebody's hair, and there would be like 125 people there—all the dancers, artists, and musicians. It was just a cool place to hang out. Andy Warhol came to one of the hair-cutting parties at my apartment, and he said, "I just got this new space, this loft on 47th street. Would you decorate it like you did with this apartment?"

And that's how the Factory started.

When Andy moved into the Factory, it was this huge loft space. It had been a hat factory, I think. It had three arching ceilings, with columns in between, and it was in a state of disrepair. There were electrical outlets in the ceilings, but there were no fixtures. When I first went up there, Andy was painting by the front windows because there were no lights. So being experienced with theater lighting, I knew about electricity, so I went to a hardware store and bought all these fixtures and got the wiring down. I installed lights all the way down the rows of the arched ceilings with these long pull strings and then put spotlights in. Then I covered the whole place in tinfoil and painted everything silver.

In those days, in the avant-garde world, there was still the habit where older artists kept younger artists. The hetero artists always had a chick, and the gay guys always had a young guy with them. So when I first started being with Andy, it ended up that I was "his boy." He was keeping me, even to the point where I moved into the Factory. When he started to become famous, we were doing so much work and were so busy. I mean, we really loved each other, and we got along great, but I wasn't just this beautiful boy who wanted to be kept just for sex. So it only lasted until after I moved in. Then Andy got written up in Time , and all the attention that came with it just switched us over to a complete work relationship.

Andy would get to the Factory anywhere between 11 AM and 1 PM because he would first do things up at his house on Lexington Avenue. I had a whole setup at the Factory, with all these different areas—like the painting area, the filming area, and the music area. And then Andy hired Gerard Malanga to help him with his silkscreens, which Andy had been doing up at his house before we got the Factory. Gerard was a very cool guy and a with-it poet, but he was always this great social climber, you know?

Gerard knew who to be seen with, and when, and how, and he was pretending to be kept by Andy because it was chic. So I got really pissed at him. When Andy wanted Gerard to come to the Factory and help with the silkscreens, I wouldn't let him in! If Andy wanted Gerard to work with him, he had to do it at his house. I was definitely very jealous, and not only jealous, but offended that Gerard had the audacity to pretend to "be kept" by Andy. I mean, that could've been real, if he wanted it to be real, but that was real for me, you know? It was like somebody ripping off your reality. So there were times when I would put up a sign in front of the elevator door that read, "Gerard Malanga Not Allowed In!"

Eventually, though, Gerard and I became good friends.

We actually had an opening party after Andy's first one-man show at the Stable Gallery, where he did the Brillo boxes. Afterward, the woman who owned the gallery, Eleanor Ward, paid for a reception party at the Factory. We even had Pinkerton guards with a guest list—you had to be on the guest list to get in. And there were hundreds of people there. It was THE event. So everybody came, and the Factory became immediately famous because it was such a stunning place.

I had met Ondine back in the days when I was still doing the lighting design for dance companies. Around that time, I had a car accident where I crushed a vertebra in my neck, so there were a lot of times where I had a very low-energy level. I would just collapse on my floor after doing one of my lighting shows, so one day Ondine said, "Hey, try some of this stuff..."

It was amphetamine-crystal stuff, and all of a sudden I had energy and could just get up and start working and do everything. From that point on, I just took it all the time.

So I brought Ondine and Brigid Berlinand and all the people who were on amphetamines into the Factory. A lot of people nudged one another and said, "Oh Billy was really the one who was the cause of Andy getting shot" because I introduced all those wild elements into the Factory. And it's true. I introduced the "danger factor" into the Factory because when you walked in—not only were you knocked out by the beauty of it and the fact that there were artists just working all over the place—but there was a feeling of danger. You felt like you may not get out alive, ha, ha, ha!

I was a dangerous person.

People have written about Andy as taking in these young people, using them up, and then dropping them or throwing them out... and then they kill themselves. But that is just wrong, you know?

I was dangerous in the sense that I would associate with people on the Lower East Side who were into the criminal element—like a woman named Dorothy Podber who was the one who shot Warhol's Marilyn Monroe paintings. Dorothy just walked in with her Great Dane, Yvonne, with her black gloves on and a black bag, and said, "Hi, Billy..."

Then she took her gloves off and opened her bag and took out the gun. There was a stack of ten Marilyn Monroe paintings leaning against the wall that we'd just finished. So she took the gun and shot Marilyn right through the forehead—and it went right through all them, ha, ha, ha!

And then she put the gun away in her bag and said, "Bye, Billy," and left.

It was like a performance piece.

After that, Andy asked me, "Please tell Dorothy not to come over anymore," because Andy knew that if he let people like Dorothy into the scene, then most of the people who were buying his work wouldn't come around anymore. They would've been traumatized, devastated, and wouldn't buy his artwork, ha, ha, ha!

The only amphetamine Andy took was Obetrols, which he got from a doctor's prescription. They were supposed to be like diet pills because they were mellow, and they didn't over-excite him or over-aggravate him. Andy would have to work and have a congenial way about it, so the Obetrols worked for him. But Edie got into the amphetamine-crystal stuff with me, Ondine, and Bridget.

Edie had come from Boston with Chuck Wein, who was her director, mentor, and producer, and he really cut her the wrong way. Edie was young and beautiful and ripe, and should have been cut by a classic diamond cutter who knows how to cut stone. Chuck knew how to cut a stone, but also how to destroy it as well. Chuck was very difficult because he had his hand in the pie all the time. He was attempting to be her mentor, but she didn't need a mentor; she needed someone building her and presenting her and promoting her. But Chuck would get very picky with her and say bitchy things like, "Well, I thought you were so brilliant, how come you can't answer that question?"

If you watch Andy's film, Beauty No. 2, Chuck is off screen making comments to provoke Edie. They're like cutting, jibing remarks that she's supposed to respond to with genius comebacks, but it really ended up more destructive than a creative. Edie throws an ashtray at Chuck at the end of the movie. Chuck wanted her to be competitive with him, with those witty remarks, but she really needed somebody who would foster her along and move her to the next stage and cut her the right way.

But then, Ondine, I believe, turned Edie on to speed, and that really devastated any possibility of a career, because she would stay in her place and get ready for six hours, ha, ha, ha!Edie really got into amphetamines—you know, you can live in a dream world, assuming that things are just going to happen, because they should happen, instead of somebody making them happen. Also, Andy was working on several projects simultaneously, so we weren't only Edie. We weren't like Edie's managers or producers or agents. Edie was in Andy's films. She was one of Andy's stars, and he didn't give single individual attention to any of them. I mean, he was still working on his paintings; he was still trying to get somebody to invest so we could buy really great equipment. He was still arranging things. And Edie had to take what she could get.

She wasn't the single center of focus.

Edie wasn't happy with the way her career was progressing with Andy. I mean, she was so nonchalant about money in the first place, you know? She came to the Factory with her Mercedes, and she'd just park any place she felt like. Eventually, her car got towed away because she had so many summonses on it. So money wasn't the focus, she could still get money from her father, while Andy was scrambling to get money for our different projects. So Edie really dropped us. In the book, Edie: American Girl by Jean Stein and George Plimpton, they write sympathetic toward Edie and make Andy look like the villain, but it wasn't like that. People have written about Andy as taking in these young people, using them up, and then dropping them or throwing them out... and then they kill themselves. But that is just wrong, you know?

Edie dumped us. She walked out on us, and we didn't talk to her for a long time. We were really pissed when she went off with Bob Dylan and Albert Grossman, and just started working with other people. See, Dylan had come to the Factory because Andy was an artist who had gained international recognition, and it's always cool to meet other artists, you know, to see if it's somebody who's going to be a peer or a compatriot, who you can play with and hang around with or not. Andy was doing a series of screen tests for his films, and we wanted everybody to do one: Dylan, Nico, Dennis Hooper, Susan Sontag, Donovan—everyone famous that came up to the Factory. We'd just film 16mm black-and-white portraits of the person sitting there for a few minutes. So our purpose was to have Dylan come up and do a screen test, so he could be part of the series. That was enough for us.

But Dylan didn't talk at all when we filmed him. I don't think he liked us, ha, ha, ha!

Supposedly Edie had an affair with Dylan, but it was really Dylan's pal, Bobby Neuwirth, that she fell for. Edie and Bobby Neuwirth were having this real torrid love affair, to the point that it ruined her career because they spent so much time in bed together! They couldn't disentangle themselves from each other because they were so hot for each other.

At that point, Edie was dissatisfied with what Andy was doing with her in his films and didn't like Ron Tavel's scripts. So Andy said to her, "Well, you've gained notoriety and recognition now, so maybe it's the time if you want to go on to a bigger career, where you get yourself a manager or an agent who knows how to handle this, and get you into the Hollywood thing..."

Which is what he told all the people who worked for him: "You know, you're not really gonna go beyond this, and if you want the next step, you'll have to find the person who's gonna do it for you..."

So Edie played around with having Albert Grossman and Dylan manage her, but I guess that didn't work out. Paul Morrissey became her agent, but nothing happened with that. She wanted to move to the next level, but that didn't occur either. But we didn't live or die by what Edie did. She was just one of the people in our stable, one of the projects we were working on that didn't work out, or rather, that came to an end. So she was gone.

It wasn't any less glamorous at the Factory after Edie left, because once she left the Velvet Underground came in. See, the idea for the multimedia thing happened because we were going to do an Andy Warhol Film Festival at Jonas Mekas's Cinemateque, and we decided we didn't wanna just show all of Andy's films; we wanted to have people who were in the films be on the stage... while their films were projected on them. And then we decided we should do more lighting things. After that, we said, "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we added music, too? And then everyone could dance in front of their movies?"

That's where the idea of getting a music group came from.

Lou Reed was like a guy who grew up on your block who played in a band in your garage. He was a real cool guy from down the street who was just like you.

Let me backtrack. When I was still working with Nick Cernovich at the Judson Church, we became very good friends with La Monte Young, the minimalist composer, who was also the best drug connection in New York City. La Monte had chemist friends, so he got these big acid pills that were actually two colors, green on one side and yellow on the other. It was knock-out stuff where you would get really spaced out with the greatest wackos in New York City, ha, ha, ha!

La Monte would do these whole tortoise performances that would go on for days where he'd have people droning, which is the art of a holding a single tone for a long time. I would drone with La Monte's wife, Marian Zazeela, and people would be assigned to drone, and they would just come and go. John Cale was playing with La Monte then, plus Tony Conrad and Angus MacLise, who were the foundation of the original Velvet Underground. So I knew John, Angus, and Tony before the Factory scene, and before the Velvets were actually formed.

Rewind back to our idea to expand the multimedia thing to include music and dancing. That's when Gerard said he had seen this band that we should check out. I don't recall going to Cafe Bizarre to see the Velvets, but Andy and some others went. It turned out that we were going to do something with them. When the Velvets came up to the Factory, I recognized John Cale because I already knew him from La Monte Young's. So the Velvets fit right in because they were what Andy wanted—and it was like cementing the blocks right in place.

John Cale was cool. John is Mr. Cool. He's Mr. Welsh Ghost, who's into the mysticism of Wales—like coolness beyond life, beyond death. John's like the essence of coolness, so if you're a real cool person, you're automatically in tune with him. The most we would say to each other was, "Yeah," or "Uh huh," because you really didn't need to converse with John because he got it.

Lou Reed was like a guy who grew up on your block who played in a band in your garage. He was a real cool guy from down the street who was just like you. So Lou and I really got along as guys who, like, grew up together. It was almost like he was my brother. Lou was just so neat and charming and friendly and adorable. In a sense, he had a lot of what Edie Sedgwick had—that magic personality that was always poised and always right. He also had a little genius that came with these great ideas. But Lou was even more natural and more playful than Edie. I knew guys like Lou when I was a little kid, growing up in Poughkeepsie, but I never thought I woulda met them again. But I did with Lou. It was just like having a buddy again, you know?

Mo Tucker was very quiet, very rigid, and straight in her ways. She was a no-nonsense girl, but very easy to laugh. If something funny was going on, Mo was always willing to give you a little wisecrack—"Hey, what the fuck are you doing?" Because she knew what you were doing. Mo wasn't personable like Lou, or cool like John, but she had a knack for being attentive to everything around her and was able to give a funny little nudge to make you laugh.

Sterling Morrison was an intellectual who seemed to bridge the art scene of John Cale with the rock 'n' roll world of Lou Reed.

Nico was too much really, let me tell you, and we were just so taken with her. So anything that we could think of for her to play a role in our scene was what we were going to do.

Then one day we were all at the Factory. Andy was at his table painting, I was doing something, Ondine was there, and Gerard comes waltzing in and says, "Hi, everybody, I have this record from my friend Nico, who I just met in Europe, I wanna play it for you, she's coming to New York..."

And Gerard had a 45 RPM single in his hand and put it on the turntable.

We all listened to it, saying, "Oh yeah, that's cool, that's cool...."

Then Nico came over from Europe, and we were all very taken by her. She was just this fascinating creature, who was totally NOT flamboyant or pretentious, but absolutely, magnetically controlling—and this Nordic beauty, too. And she didn't wear all the hippie flowers, she just wore these black pantsuits or white pantsuits, you know? Nico was too much really, let me tell you, and we were just so taken with her. So anything that we could think of for her to play a role in our scene was what we were going to do.

We wanted Nico to have a starring role in what we were doing, and since she was a chanteuse, Andy or Paul thought it would be great to have her sing with the Velvets. Of course, that was the total wrong thing you could say to them at that point in their development, because they were new and fresh on the scene, too, and now they're supposed to work this other person into their musical arrangement and set up?

But it just squeezed together and worked out... and was magic.

I always felt that Andy wanted Lou Reed to be his Mickey Mouse. Andy's studio was like the old Renaissance studios, and all the art went out under the name of the master, Andy Warhol, just like the Walt Disney studio. Walt Disney didn't invent Donald Duck; the people who worked for him created those Disney characters. And all this stuff we did at the Factory was under the aegis of Andy Warhol. So I always felt that Andy really wanted Lou to be his Mickey Mouse, this really big thing that everybody could latch on to because Lou was so adorable, and he was a rock star and a lead singer in a rock group. It would've been so right and so workable for Lou to have been Andy's Mickey Mouse, and do for Andy what Mickey did for Walt Disney.

But it didn't happen.

The single biggest factor that fucked up [ The Velvet Underground and Nico] when it came out and started to climb the charts was that Eric Emerson sued Verve, the Velvet's record label, because his image was on part of the collage on the back of the album cover. Eric wanted money for that, and nobody was willing to give it to him. So Verve pulled the record from all the stores, and it fell of the charts because it was no longer available. And it couldn't be saved.

Eric was a really beautiful person who hung out at Max's Kansas City and was in the stable of Factory performers. He was like one of your kids, or one of your brothers, a really nice guy, but he sued Verve, which was the wrong thing to do. We got really pissed at him because he really fucked up the album. It was like when you're lighting a fire and you get your spark, and the fire starts to build, and then Eric just pissed on the fire. So the magic was gone. That's what happened to the Velvets' first album. So Andy started thinking about other projects.

If that album had continued to go up the charts and was allowed to go as it had started to go, it might've changed the whole picture completely. The Velvets might have had a hit album, and Lou might've become Andy Warhol's Mickey Mouse.

So it wasn't Lou's fault that it didn't continue to work—it was Eric Emerson's.

And then Nico went off on her own. She still did club dates in Manhattan and around; she had these other guys playing with her. And John Cale made a tape for her, so she had music behind her to play at nightclubs. But she couldn't always get the tape machine to work, ha, ha, ha!

So with the second album, White Light/White Heat, the Velvets did it on their own, not with Andy. But they were still around the Factory, and I went over to Lou's loft and listened to the first pressing, and Lou came to the Factory to go through my negative file to choose something for the album cover. So the Velvets were still around, and we went to Max's Kansas City to see them play.

It was the end of an era—and then, just to punctuate it—Andy got shot.

At that time, the Factory building on 47th Street got sold, so we had to move, and Paul Morrissey found this space in this building at 33 Union Square. He liked it because it had all this great woodwork inside, and the front of the building had this great terra cotta front. It wasn't huge, but it was big enough. So we took that place.

See, at the first Factory, I had always been like the manager or the foreman, like the guy who ran it. But when we moved to the second Factory, Paul now moved into the front position as the space operator, and people now had to go through him rather than me. I was still photographing and doing darkroom work stuff, but the second Factory wasn't the same. So I was in the back most of the time.

And then we heard that John Cale left the Velvets.

John was really stronger than Lou once he made a decision. John felt the Velvets were too restricting for him—that the band really wasn't letting him develop his full talents anymore. So he left the band. He had started in classical music and wanted to experience a broader range of experience, and the Velvet Underground was too limited and too tight for him. So it was really John's doing. The whole thing of "Lou firing John" or that "Lou fired Andy" was cute stuff for storytelling. In actuality, John felt too limited and restricted, and he was much too talented. He just needed more room to work out all the other stuff he wanted to do.

It was the end of an era—and then, just to punctuate it—Andy got shot.

I was in the dark room when I heard these bangs. I didn't know what the sound was. I was thinking, I can't figure out what's making that sound, but I know Fred is up front and Paul's up front, so whatever it is, I'm sure they'll be able to take care of it, so I'll just finish this up, then go out and see what's going on...

So I opened that door and walked into the front part, and there was Andy on the floor, lying in a pool of blood.

I went right over to him. I was immediately down on my knees kneeling over him, I had my hand under him, I was just crying, and Andy said to me, "Don't, don't, don't make me laugh, it hurts too much..."

Then the ambulance came, and they put him in. I wasn't really paying attention to anybody else, so I didn't notice what Paul and Fred were doing.

We all went to the hospital and were all just traumatized. They were going to let Andy die, until Mario Amaya—a gallery owner who'd also been shot by Valerie Solanas, but he was just grazed—told the doctors that Andy was a famous person. Mario was in the emergency room with Andy and heard the doctors over Andy's body, saying, "Oh this bullet has gone through so many organs. We can't do anything about it. There's nothing we can to do..."

Mario popped up and said, "You can't let him die. He's rich. He's gotta a lot of money, and he's a famous artist...."

So they operated on Andy for five hours and saved him. Actually Mario saved him by telling them Andy was a famous artist, because they were gonna let him die.

We had a contract with the Hudson Theatre to provide films for them, so when Andy was in the hospital, Paul took over as the director and started making all those Paul Morrissey movies, like Andy Warhol's Frankenstein and Andy Warhol's Dracula . Paul had a very strongly developed personality that was almost antithetical to the avant-garde, conceptual art, and to cool, hip, funny pop art. So once Paul started to get control, they were no longer art films. The art went out the window. The art disappeared.

Everybody really hated him for being like that, but he was so good at it. Paul was a nice-looking guy, very charming, and he was really good at his cutting style. So everyone said, "Well, it's really like crazy having a guy like that here in our scene, but he's probably the best of his style that we could find...."

Paul also had a really good sense of Andy and where Andy wanted to go, so they immediately linked and set about achieving Andy's goals. But Paul liked to trash everything, including Andy. Paul was like a male Katherine Hepburn, with that type of voice—very witty and cutting. He just had the right remark for every occasion. I mean, he'd just tear people to shreds—like the hippies and the whole California movement. So he was totally antithetical to all the other personalities who were pro-art.

After Andy was shot, the Factory became more business-oriented. I wasn't really into it, and I was feeling that I had lived in the Factory long enough. I had to get out and see what was going on in the rest of the world, you know? And if Andy needed anything, Paul Morrissey and Fred Hughes were both there. Andy didn't really need me anymore, so I just left a note on the door. It read, "Dear Andy, I'm not here any more, but I'm fine. Love, Billy."

And I was gone.

By Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain

Art by Brian Wallsby

Dissertations are these things that you have to do to get a degree. But unlike the other things you have to do to get a degree – going to lectures, reading books, taking a wider interest in your subject – there is no way of getting out of them.

Most people spend about nine months panicking about what their dissertation is going to be about, then two weeks frantically reading for it, before staying awake for a final three nights to write it up. After that, you pretty much block it out of your memory forever.

With that in mind, we approached some people on the street to ask them if they could remember anything about their dissertations.

TERENCE, 43

VICE: What did you study?
Terence: Furniture and Product Design, a very long time ago. I graduated in 1996.

Do you remember what your dissertation title was?
Uh, it was something... it was completely not about design at all, actually; it was about 80s British soul music or something random like that.

What was your central thesis?
It was a little bit about club culture at that particular time, and the historical waves of British soul music from the 70s up until the 90s, because it was actually quite a good time for music, and so I compared that with the States.

Yeah, but what was the overall argument?
Um... cool music!

Do you remember what mark you got for it?
Yeah, I think I got a 2:2.

Congrats!

MARIANA, 26

What did you do at university?
Mariana: I studied Psychology four years ago.

Do you remember much about your dissertation?
Fuck. Um... it was something like the transfer of knowledge from implicit to explicit memory.

Explain what that means without googling it.
So, it's kind of like subliminal stuff – so how you can learn things implicitly. There's different stimuli you can pick up, so it was about how that can then translate to things you actually start applying explicitly.

Nope, still don't understand.
Okay, so you know when you're playing with something and you see, maybe, a red toy, and you learn how that red toy fits into a building block, or how you stack it up, and then later on you're playing with something else, and maybe the toy isn't red, but... wait, actually, this doesn't make any sense.

No.
Yeah, let's say later on you're playing with something else and you're attracted to the red toy for some reason, and you kind of try and focus on the red toy. This isn't clear at all! Sorry.

Seems like you could do with some help with your explicit memory. Do you remember what you got for it?
I got 73 percent.

Oh nice.
Yeah, I'm proud of that.

Chris, 30

What was your degree?
Chris: I studied Politics and Economics. I think I graduated in 2009, but it's been a while so I honestly can't remember...

What did you write your dissertation on?
Uh, I don't know the exact title because it had loads of words in it, but it was... actually, I've really forgotten it. It was about technology in Africa, I think, mostly looking at Ghana and comparing it to other places which are quite backwards.

What point were you trying to make?
I was just relating it to South Korea's growth with the Pearl River or whatever it was called, and relating it to Ghana and how that could be the next feasible country for it to happen with Africa, and looking at some of the economic and political problems in a few different areas and judging them.

How did that go?
I got a 2:2.

SAMANTHA, 35

What were you all about at university?
Samantha: I studied Management Marketing a long time ago. I graduated in 2003. I was really into my dissertation, though; it was on the representation of women in the media on magazine covers.

Why did you choose that?
I wanted to do, like, a visual kind of discussion or exploration of how women have been presented on different magazine covers over the years, and what's changed over time, especially looking at black women, ethnic minorities and the slow growth of that.

Okay, so in a sentence...
I wanted to look at beautiful pictures of beautiful women on magazine covers.

Were you rewarded for that?
I got a 2:1.

Good job.

REECE, 25

What did you study?
Reece: My course was on Media Studies. This was only last year; I graduated in 2015.

What was your dissertation title?
It was on the representation of women in TV in the 1980s.

That's very similar to what the last person I spoke to did. Why did you pick that?
Just because I'd studied sociology in the past and I like studying inequality

Could you explain your dissertation in terms I would understand?
I would say that my dissertation shows a contrast between men and women, and a progressive trend for ladies, really.

What grade did you get for it in the end?
I ended up with a 2:2. It wasn't that great, but the thing is with uni, you don't learn initiative or common sense there, so it's all about applying yourself in real life.

If only someone had told me that then.
University is only a moment in time and it passes eventually. It'll all work out in the end.

Thanks, Reece.

ANA, 28

What did you study at uni?
Ana: Business Administration, about six years ago.

What was your dissertation title?
I chose to do it on events management.

But what was it actually about?
It was about promoting events in the club scene in Romania, which is where I'm from. It was about getting money from sponsors and stuff like that.

Did you do alright in the end?
Yeah, I think I got a 2:1 or something.

Great! Thanks, Ana.

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This is the VICE Interview. Each week we ask a different famous and/or interesting person the same set of questions in a bid to peek deep into their psyche.

When a teenage Matt Skiba ditched his job as a bike messenger, he began to focus on crafting the blunt, gory metaphors that would soundtrack many emo teens' miserable adolescences. By the release in 2001 of From Here to Infirmary, his band, Alkaline Trio, were being widely hailed for making death, despair and heartbreak a catchy proposition. Now, 15 years on, they're often up there in lists of the best punk-rock bands of the 21st century.

In 2015, Skiba joined Blink-182 as Tom DeLonge's replacement and wrote their new album California with them. While Blink were over in London recently, we spoke to Skiba about acid, transcendental meditation and living a life completely without fear.

VICE: What memory from school stands out to you stronger than anything else?
Matt Skiba: I had this really bad habit of punching people in class. I used to take a lot of acid. There was this one time as a sophomore in high school, I was in art class tripping my balls off and I saw this kid take the American flag and throw it on the ground, and I charged over the desk and just started beating the shit out of him. Both my parents were Vietnam veterans – they were medical people. My mum was a nurse and there was a TV show in the States about her. She doesn't talk about the war; they're leftist, very beautiful, peaceful, artistic. I'm so blessed I still have my folks. They're still together – been together for 50 years and they're my favourite people in the world – so when I saw that flag hit the ground I took it so personally. The principal didn't think it was that funny, nor did my parents, but I don't think they realised I was on acid at the time.

What was your first email address?
My first email address is the same one I have now. But I'll refrain from sharing my email address because I never check it. I'm 40 years old, so I remember when somebody was explaining email I was in my early twenties. I would go on tour and everybody would share a code for the pay phones because we didn't have cell phones. And I went to art school before there were computers in the classroom. We did everything cut-and-paste.

What would your parents have preferred you to do for a career?
Well, I dropped out of arts school because I didn't wanna stare at a computer all day – I get headaches. I said, "I'm gonna follow this punk rock dream that I have and piss my dad off!" Lucky he's a wonderful guy and he's really proud now, but, of course, when your kid says, "I'm going to drop out of school and go on a tour with my rock band!" they're like, "What? That's never going to work!"

What was your worst phase?
I was always a punk rock skate kid from a very young age. I never had a mullet, though. I think my worst would be when I was doing a lot of drinking. A lot of drinking, a lot of drugs and I was going through some difficult things in my personal life and not handling them very well at all, so I'm really glad to be sitting here today. I have some friends that didn't make it, so I'm very blessed that I made it through those stormy waters, and I think I'm a stronger person for it. I had to do that, and I'm glad nothing really terrible happened.

How many people do you think have been in love with you?
I can only say the people that I've been in love with and when it's been reciprocal, and that's three people. It takes two to tango. I might have some dude in the tree over there in binoculars that's in love with me but I don't know about it.

How many books have you read in the last year?
I'm a bookworm, so I read about a book a month. The last great book I read, actually, Mark gave to me. There's this writer called Erik Larson that we both love, and he wrote Devil in the White City. It's all non-fiction, and Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio are making the film version of it. It's about the first serial killer in America. Read it, do yourself a favour.

I have an iPad that I'll get books on when I'm travelling, but every room in my house is filled with books. I collected records for a long time, and I had to sell a bunch of them to make room for more books on the shelf, and I have a collection of antique books and ones that are signed by authors to me. I'm a romantic, and although I feel like a kid and still behave like one a lot of the time, I just like things that stand the test of time, and I think books do that.

When in your life have you been truly overcome by fear?
Never, really. Fear is sort of like jealousy. It's an unnecessary emotion. There's the old saying that there's nothing to fear but fear itself, and it's true. Fear is a product of ego, which is absolutely unnecessary, and I think that truly becoming a man or a woman, or whatever – becoming a better human is shedding as much of that ego as you can.

I remember when I was married, my ex-wife would read all these crappy magazines, and one of them had this quiz about fear. Are you afraid or sharks? Are you afraid of heights? Are you afraid of normal things that people are afraid of? And I said no to every single thing, and at the end of this survey it said, "If you have said no to every single thing, you're a liar," and I can honestly tell you that I'm not lying. I'm not scared of anything and I've not really been, especially since I started doing transcendental meditation. I started doing it for the same reason as David Lynch. He said it helped him so much with his art. I was already kind of a fearless kid, always went my own way and made my own choices, but now more than ever, what's there to be afraid of? There's nothing. I'm prepared, but I'm not afraid.

Blink-182: (from left to right) Mark Hoppus, Travis Barker and Matt Skiba. (Photo by Willie Toledo)

Do you believe in any conspiracy theories?
I do. I think the really smart conspiracies are the ones that explain "this is why this is plausible", not "this is what happened". If it makes sense and if it's possible, I'd investigate it. A lot of the books that I have are about WWII and the Wonder Weapons – or the "Wunderwaffes", as the Germans call them. I have a photo of one – I could show you on my phone. Is it extra terrestrial? I don't know, but it's there! There are flying machines that land in the ocean, I've seen it! As far as, like, the moon landing... did we go there? I believe so. Is it everything that we're told? I don't think so.

What would be your last meal?
My last meal would be from Crossroads, which is a restaurant in Los Angeles that Travis Barker is a partner in, and it is the best food in the world. I've been vegetarian for so long and this is sort of like a Mediterranean vegan fusion thing. The chef, Tyrone, is a fucking genius. He cooks for Oprah, he's probably cooked for the Queen, and he's like one of the most in-demand chefs, especially now that veganism is so huge.

Do you ever cry at films or TV shows?
All the time. I've caught myself crying at the dumbest shit, but I'm a pretty emotional person – in a healthy way, I think. I don't sit around crying about negative things, but beauty is something that will bring tears to my eyes. You know, like seeing human kindness and real beauty is something that I like seeing... I'm getting choked up now thinking about it.

If you had to give up sex or kissing, which would it be?
Oh, Jesus. I wouldn't have anything to live for! I really enjoy both. I don't know – I can't answer that question. I think it's such a natural human thing. I couldn't live without either. But if I had to, I guess if you grow old with someone, there's going to come a time when your body shuts down. Sexually, you're going to stop working. So I guess I'd say sex, but god, I never thought I would say that in my whole life!

@hannahrosewens

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A gym, that looks a lot nicer than your gym, which is probably 80 percent toenails by now. (Photo via)

Going to the gym is a crushing inevitability that you're just going to have to get over at this point. Unless you're bang into running (enjoy your incoming arthritis), these tacky monuments to health and vanity may well end up hosting you at least once a week for a large portion of your twenties.

Maybe you like it – maybe going to the gym is keeping you out of trouble; maybe the thrill of exercise is enough for you. Or, more likely, you're scared of having a heart attack on a pub toilet, a sullen landlady having to fireman's-lift your pathetic, lifeless, flabby millennial body out of the bogs and into the private ambulance.

I started going to the gym in my mid-twenties, i.e. last year, and have so far learnt a few things about these pantheons of sad buffness. These nuggets of knowledge include, but are by no means limited to, the fact that:

LONDON GYMS ARE BASICALLY BORING CLUBS

London's club scene is nearing death, and if it's not spurious drug raids closing them down, it's ongoing gentrification making them too expensive to run. More often than not it's overpriced coffee shops and brunch houses that move in, but if not, it's gyms that have come to fill the void.

Now look: there's a time and place to drop tabs and enjoy Skrillex. In fact, as we all know, that's the only way to just about enjoy Skrillex. If there's one place that isn't the time to listen to Skrillex, it's during that precious 8-9AM Monday morning hour in which you convince yourself it's still the weekend, before you return to your shit office job to work on spreadsheets. Yet, in a bid to score millenial memberships, London gyms seem to insist on employing in-house DJs to pump a steady stream of EDM while you struggle to lift a 15kg dumbell. Listening to dance music first thing in the morning tells you two things: first, dance music really does suck. And second, the London gym you're paying £55 a month for is actually a boring club, where the only drugs available to you are overpriced creatine shakes

PERSONAL TRAINERS ARE VULTURES

So you've managed to drag yourself out of bed in the middle of a wet dream to get yourself to the gym. Half awake, you reluctantly pick up a pair of light weights and start lifting them according to a Men's Health magazine you bought from the WHSmith next door.

All of a sudden, two hands grab your waist. "If you don't have your form right you'll end up a cripple," says the man with gelled-back hair, dressed head to toe in lycra. He squeezes your love handles while demanding you keep curling the weights. "You're doing it wrong!" he shouts. "Come on! My grandma can lift more than that!"

There's something weird about pitching your services to potential customers by insulting them, but somehow it works. Ten minutes after he first groped you, you're doing squats for him. "Ass to grass!" he shouts, even though you're on tarmac. "Stop being a little bitch!" He makes you run laps around the gym while cranking up that Skrillex track. "Stop being weak!" he screams in your face. Not only are you reliving your days in secondary school PE, when everyone called you "bitch-tits" and laughed directly at you, you're paying an extra £500 a month for the privilege.

The author, being a gym mirror wanker

INSTAGRAM HAS MADE GYMS UNBEARABLE

Anyone with an Instagram account knows about the mundane fitness hashtags, or the one guy who takes them way too seriously. Like the guy you used to play Warcraft with at school when you skipped PE, who's now posting pictures of his "traps" with captions like "No pain, no gains! #Instafit #fitfam #justdoit". And when he's not posting pictures of his traps, he's photoshopped inspirational quotes from Rocky, Fast and Furious 2 and, er, Martin Luther King, on top of pictures of him lifting weights.

As a result, many people's gym routine includes a fierce battle for territory in front of the mirror. You'll have guys taking up more gym space than they should trying to perfect their poses, and others who'll shout at you for "ruining their YouTube channel" when you're accidentally walk in front of their camera. And while you're trying to lift a 10kg dumbbell, there'll be a whole bunch of amateur Instagram fitness freaks seething because you've taken the place with the best lighting.

THERE WILL BE A GUY WHO USES THE HAIRDRYER ON HIS BALLSACK

The one place worse than the gym itself is the gym changing room. This is a fact and always has been. And while London gym changing rooms have been getting fancier, there'll always be that one guy – probably your personal trainer – who'll dry his balls with a hairdryer. He'll do it while you stand next to him, waiting to use that hairdryer for your actual hair. He will take longer than he should drying them, massaging his balls as if this was a normal thing. Then he will pass you the hairdryer and pat you on the shoulder. "All yours, buddy!" he'll say. "By the way, you need to start eating more protein, or else you'll never be able to move to the big boy weights."

YOU THINK NO ONE WILL BE THERE ON FRIDAY, BUT YOU'RE WRONG

The problem with the metropolitan gyms is that they're constantly packed with people attempting to better themselves. In an attempt to seem egalitarian, they've lumped all the fatsos (me, probably you) in with the fitsos. So you have a row of ten treadmills where every other person is a slob and not a rakish, ab-covered ubermensch. You're embarrassed about your body, but you're trying to fix it. You don't want anyone else to see you trying it fix it, though, so you go on a Friday night, because who the fuck goes to the gym on a Friday night? Right?

Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, mate. Wrong as fuck. The gym is chock-a-block with ultra-cunts on Friday. These are the gym-iest gym people you will find. These are the people who do that terrifying exercise where you hold yourself aloft on a bar with your feet in the air and twist like you're weightless. People going hard on the rowing machine for a solid 30 minutes with no break – not even a sip of water. I don't want to work out next to these guys! I could be in the pub right now, but instead I'm trying to hide in the back of the cross trainer section to get away from all the big boys!

THE GYM IS THE UNSEXIEST SEXY ENVIRONMENT

The gym is so fucking unsexy it's unreal. It's a room full of grunting weirdos in shit clothes. And yet, there is something about the pheromonal level of human essence, coupled with the large amount of flesh either on show or contoured by Lycra, that does something strange to the libido. It's like skinny dipping in a swamp – inherently unsexy, but somehow impossible to resist.

@HKesvani

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Julien Johnson. Photo by author

A few weeks back on the first day of August, an outraged post from a friend appeared in my Facebook newsfeed:

"Just called BMO and they wouldn't let me access my account cause my voice is too deep."

The friend, Julien Johnson, who identifies as non-binary, had triggered a fraud detection procedure through which banking call centre operators can flag a call as fraudulent, if they think there's a mismatch between the caller's voice and the gender stated in the bank's records. In this case, the problem disappeared with a call to a more sympathetic operator; but nonetheless, it's indicative of a broader problem which can create inconvenience, anxiety and emotional distress for transgender people.

Enok Ripley, an artist based in Montreal who is also transgender, had a similar experience which was not so easily resolved.

"I had to call my bank regarding a question about my credit card, and I was calling with some trepidation because it was the first time I'd called since my voice had changed information you do give, their perception of you seems to take precedent over anything else."

Read More: On the Front Lines of the Struggle for Trans Health Access

In the process of writing this story, a call centre operator working at BMO contacted me through a mutual friend to offer a background perspective on how gender perception is used as an antifraud measure. Speaking on condition of anonymity, she said that she had raised concerns about discrimination in the use of perceived voice gender as an antifraud technique during her training, and been told that it was an issue BMO was aware of and looking to resolve. Assessing a caller's voice against their listed gender is a standard procedure, she said, but should not on its own be enough to refuse service to a client: in her opinion the operator who had locked Enok Ripley's account would have been deviating from protocol, since correct responses to further security questions should have been enough to cancel out the initial suspicion.

But it's important to understand that for call centre workers, much more is at stake in providing fraudulent access to an account than in wrongly refusing a client: giving unauthorised account access is considered a serious offense and is often grounds for the termination of a job contract, while denying a legitimate customer would rarely if ever be; thus their incentive is to always err on the side of caution if any doubt exists—even when doing so causes distress or financial disruption to a client.

I contacted BMO for a response to the story, and spoke to Ralph Marranca, head of corporate media relations, to ask how the bank was dealing with issues specific to their gender nonconforming clients. Among other things Maranca highlighted that BMO convenes "enterprise resource groups," small focus groups of employees from various minority backgrounds, who can bring their experience and insight to bear on shaping policy within the bank.

"We do have an enterprise resource group made up of LGBTQ employees, and my understanding is that we've had discussions around challenges like this, and are trying to be more sensitive and overcome them," Marranca said. "Call centres are one of the cases where we did have this kind of a conversation with an enterprise resource group, and I can say that some of the authentication protocols were adjusted to help overcome some of these challenges."

Besides BMO, I reached out to TD, RBC, CIBC and Scotiabank by email for this story, asking for details on whether their call centre operators were made aware of special considerations that might apply to transgender clients. CIBC and Scotiabank both sent short statements outlining that customer security was a priority, but that they were also committed to creating an inclusive environment for all customers and employees. RBC sent a longer statement, which, besides discussing the need for strong anti-fraud measures, also pointed to their Diversity and Inclusion Learning Curriculum, a company-wide initiative that encourages employees to address barriers to LGBT inclusion.

TD Bank also referenced a similar diversity programme, but of the four email statements, was the only one to directly address the fact that certain customers may have problems with the voice authentication system. "In each situation, if a customer has not been able to authenticate via phone, we would work with them to identify a solution that meets their needs while protecting their personal privacy," a spokesperson said. "If a customer chooses to self-identify, it can be noted on their account and voice authentication will no longer be used as one of the security measures when they call, but TD will not note information that our customers want private."

In the opinion of Bouchard, the idea of doing away with the voice authentication for all customers is the best response—and one which might be brought about through legal means.

"We've now seen the addition of gender identity and gender expression in the Canadian Human Rights Act. Banks are bound under this act, and I promise you banks will be brought to court because of this," Bouchard said. "So either they will fight against their trans clients in court, or they can be pro-active and fix it before it happens."

We're still waiting for the kind of test case that will set precedent in this arena, but as Bouchard indicates, it's more likely a case of when, not if. Until then, more people will undoubtedly fall afoul of a security system that relies in part on a call centre worker's subjective judgement of gender characteristics—a judgement which, arguably, is less and less relevant in the modern world.

For Corin on Twitter.