Baxter Finley

vice magazine: where the wild things are; production designer kk barrett

A COKE DEALER IN MEXICO, WHO IS WAY BADDER THAN THE ONE IN NEW YORK WHO YOU JUST READ ABOUT THIS MORNING

It's about time for another vice interview on B.F. Thanks to vice for coming correct and interviewing the people that we are curious about, and those who we did not know we were curious about until you do us about them!

INTERVIEW BY EMMANUEL COBOS AND MARCO TULIO VALENCIA

Julián is a coke dealer. He’s 44. He’s been working Mexico City for two decades. He agreed to take us on a ride-along as he worked. The phone never stopped ringing, not for a minute.

Vice: You couldn’t see us yesterday because you had a really important poker game. How was it?

Julián: Great, man. I won. We split the pot. I got 1,000 pesos. It was relaxed. There was a tournament today, but I won’t be going.

Do you have contacts with the police or politicians?

Of course, with the AFI [Mexican FBI]. Everyone is well connected, and everyone is so full of bullshit—epecially over there in the organized crime and anti-kidnapping units. I take care of the heavyweights from the AFI. They send their bodyguards to me in armored cars and shit.

At this point, Julián pulls up to a drugstore.

You buying medicine?

No, just candy for my diabetes. Oh, yeah, I’m diabetic. If you do not complicate your existence, fuck, life is worth shit. I won’t be long, hang in there.

Ten minutes later we are driving south of Mexico City.

Julián: Look at that guy [pointing at a trannie]. Shit. It’s a shame he’s got an antenna.

Have you ever gotten a blow job from one of them when you were really coked up and horny?

With hookers, of course. At my age, I can’t be judged if I do a guy or I don’t.

Do you work all over the city?

Yeah, but I don’t get near downtown. More cops. More probabilities. It’s basically that, not that I’m afraid. If a guy calls me from down there and asks me for only one bag and tells me he’s paying by check, I say, “Buddy, go fuck yourself.”

Have you ever been in a gunfight?

Sure, years ago when I was powerful and moved a lot of kilos. But I’ve never been to jail. The thing is, you get caught and you get kidnapped, fucking kidnapped. They don’t get you like in the US, where you get arrested and go to jail. Here, they grab you with the intention of getting your money. They just take you in a car and do all sort of things to you so that you shit your pants.

Anyway, I used to carry weapons, but not anymore. They only get you in trouble. That was in the 90s when I made 10, 15k daily. But so much dough goes to your head. The cops fucked me up three times in two years.

They had you on a short leash?

No. Remember, all great empires fall on account of women. Women fucked me up. But the first rat was an asshole who worked with me. He ratted me out.

So you don’t want to be the next Tony Montana?

Not anymore. There’s an old saying: “It’s better to be the president’s brother than the president.” I don’t want anyone looking at me.

Do you sell to anyone?

Not to rapists and kidnappers, not me. Not to that kind of asshole.

How about 13-year-old kids?

No, not at all. It would look like pedophilia. You don’t sell to a kid. No kids or pregnant women. But the thing is, generations change. You have to adapt to your times. Sometimes, someone kind of young calls me, and they get the vibe, so they never call me again. It’s better that way. And where do they get the money? They steal it from their parents. I mean, you make your money, you buy your drugs, it’s your own problem. But if you’re stealing from your parents, that’s when problems come. I have a lot of clients my own age, and I don’t give a shit about them. It’s like, when I tell them, “Take care,” it’s like, yeah, take care because you’re the source of my income.

Do you have new clients every day?

No, not anymore. I have my client base. I’ve got some really strong ones who spend between 5,000 and 8,000 pesos a week. Even I have to tell them, “Man, what do you do with so much shit? You should invite me sometime, you fucking asshole, you’re going to have a heart attack.” I don’t like selling to crack users. I hate it. They’re a pain in the ass. They’re on my case all night, and it’s business, sure, but I also need to get my rest.

You don’t take care of crackheads at all?

Not anymore. It’s not the same as before. I used to have a lot of fucking energy, health, and balls. I still got the balls and the energy, but I lost my health. I need to get my rest. I don’t sleep, but I need to lie down, be at home, watch a movie. I don’t usually drive around waiting for calls.

What kind of movies do you like?

Extreme violence. Cops and robbers.

Do you have vacations?

That’s the problem. Everyone tells me to go to Acapulco, “Let’s go there, let’s go to this place” and shit. I could go to Cuba or the States or wherever the fuck I want to go but the only thing in my mind right now is my kid, Fatty. He has autism. He was deaf, but now the little fucker can hear thanks to a cochlear implant. I’m sending the little asshole to China for some really expensive therapy and then I’m buying a house with a pool, because the fucker loves water. My motivation, my goal, and my project is my kid. That’s it.

A WOMAN WHO MADE A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT VAGINOPLASTY

Another great vice interview

INTERVIEW BY ANDY CAPPER, PORTRAIT BY ALEX STURROCK

Heather Leach is a filmmaker from Rochdale, in the north of England, which is most famous for being the birthplace of 80s “soul” singer Lisa Stansfield. Recently, Heather plunged herself headfirst into the murky world of vaginoplasty, or “voluntarily having a plastic surgeon chop off your labia.” We talked to her about what she found, and it was quite revealing, if not something you should read if you’re eating lunch right now (especially anything with roast beef or pastrami in it).

Vice: Hi Heather. Why did you make this movie?

Heather Leach: Well, Channel 4 asked me to. After that, I researched it and found out that, in the UK at least, the number of women getting surgery on their labia has doubled in five years. More shockingly, the number of women getting the procedure has gone up by 300 percent in the last two years. Even girls as young as 16 are having these labiaplasties.

Crikey.

I would hear girls complain of awful comments being made to them all the time. Things like “Your vagina is fucking disgusting” or “Going down on you is like going down on the Mersey Tunnel.” Then there was one girl who was bullied by her sister and she’d say stuff like, “It looks like hanging ham down there.”

That’s not a very nice thing to say.

There are different physical and psychological reasons for operating on vaginas and there are differing methods, but the majority of doctors reshape the vulva by amputating and trimming. They do this by slicing the inner labia off so they don’t hang below the outer labia.

I’m wincing.

Yeah, they slice it all off with a scalpel. But some surgeons cut open the labia and tie up the nerve endings so they will still have sensation. Then they fold it over in and restitch it all together. One thing people don’t realize is that the nerve endings in the labia are connected to the clitoris, so they stand a chance of permanently hampering their sex lives. But I guess teenage girls don’t think about this because they just want a “perfect fanny.”

This sculpture/cast is called “Design a Vagina” and is by British artist James McCartney.

Some of the girls in Heather’s film had their vaginas cast especially for this piece.

We should say for our readers in the States that over here “fanny” means “cunt” and “bottom” means “ass.” “Fanny” doesn’t mean “ass” here like it does there.

Yeah, well, anyway, people used to think that if you had a tit job it meant having “perfect tits” back in, say, 1985. And now they think having a stranger hack away at your fanny is going to mean the same thing: perfect flaps. They’re also going in for things like vaginal liposuction.

Oh come on.

They suck fat out of the pubic bone area to make it flatter. They’re also doing a Botox injection that goes into where your G-spot is supposed to be. It’s a called “G-Shot.” You have to keep going back every three months to have it refilled with Botox. It’s about $1,600 a session and you have to get it through private cosmetic surgeons.

To what do you attribute this sudden increase in teenage girls getting their labia sliced?

There are the things like the big advertisements in women’s magazines from large cosmetic surgical corporations. Then you blend that with peer pressure from teenage peers, particularly boys.

How so?

It’s teenage boys who are watching pornography all the time. As far as I’ve seen, you don’t see any kind of modern pornographic imagery that contains what I would consider to be a normal vagina. People start to think that the perfect fanny should not have the inner labia protruding and that it should be completely hairless.

Before and After

Right.

Bikini waxing has a role to play in all this. When Bill Clinton reduced the laws regarding porn, the porn producers pushed for total waxing so that viewers could see the whole vagina for the first time, close up. Now these images are everywhere and making young girls think that it’s some kind of natural ideal, to have a hair-free tiny-lipped fanny.

It’s becoming like, “I’m going to have somebody cut my fucking labia off. No biggie.”

Yeah, but what people don’t realize is how harrowing it can be to have the operation. The recovery period can take up to six months. I filmed a surgery and it was horrendous. Once they’re chopped off, the pieces are flung straight in the trash can and thrown away with the rubbish.

Click here to watch her documentary.

A 74-YEAR-OLD JAPANESE PORN STAR

Another great interview from VICE

INTERVIEW AND PHOTO BY TOMOKAZU KOSUGA
TRANSLATED BY LENA OISHI

How long into his life can a man keep fucking? Here in Japan, there is one brave grandpa who is using his own body to answer that question. His name is Shigeo Tokuda and he is a 74-year-old porn performer. He often stars in movies staged in old-age homes—like, as in “gramps fucks his hot little nurse”—which frankly we have no clue who would want to watch, save for the morbid chuckles factor.
Regardless, we headed over to meet this geriatric pussy master and ask him questions about his ancient cock.

Vice: Please tell us how long you’ve been working as a porn star and how many films you’ve been in.

Shigeo Tokuda: I’ve been doing this for 14 and a half years, and I’ve been in around 250 films so far. That said, there’s only been a handful, maybe 10 percent, where I’ve starred one-on-one with an actress. Usually I’m in a supporting role. But all of them are adult films. I’ve never acted in any other genre.

What sort of roles do you play?

I’m over 70 years old, so I don’t necessarily have sex in all of my films. I often don’t do anything sexual myself at all, like for example if I’m playing an authority figure like a father forcing his child to have sex with some other guy. Lately I’m also starring as the main actor in a porn series set in a senior-care home. The girl that I’m costarring with might play my son’s wife, a daughter of a relative that I happen to be looking after, or a helper at one of the care homes. I shoot about one episode of this series per month. The other day I played a ceramic artist. He was very strange, totally obsessed with women. He’s a professional craftsman, but all he thinks about is girls.

And how often do you shoot?

Some months I go without a single shoot, and other times I have as many as nine. It’s pretty erratic, as the production companies usually come to me when they have a project, rather than vice versa.

What started you off in the industry?

About 20 years ago, I wanted to buy a porn film that specialized in kissing. It was full of kissing scenes. What drew me to it even more, though, was the fact that it was structured like a real TV series, with a story and everything. Back then, I couldn’t face buying something like that in a huge video store, so I actually went directly to the production company that distributes the software and bought it there. As I began to frequent the place, I eventually became friends with a director there. One day he asked me to star in a film because the demand for “old-people porn” was increasing. I had never dreamed of actually being in one myself, though, so I initially refused. But as I got to know the director more, I gradually began to understand his ideas and intentions. After two or three years, I said yes. That’s how my career started.

Are there many elderly actors in this industry?

When I began working as an actor, there was one other man who was around 12 years older than myself. We often starred alongside each other. I’ve never met any other performer apart from him who is in his senior years. In that sense, I believe that I am a rare breed in the industry, and I guess there is value in that.

Does your family know about your job?

I have told my family that I work as an extra in videos and on TV, and I occasionally get called in for adult movies. Neither my wife nor my daughter pursues the subject any further. So I guess my family thinks that the fact that I am healthy and am continuing to work is a good thing in itself.

Didn’t you get into trouble with your family when you first brought up the subject?

No, not really. It’s great that I can continue to work at my age, and I think that both my wife and I agree that our relationship will last longer if we keep a certain distance, seeing as we have different interests and hobbies and so on.

Have any of your family members seen your films?

No. They’re all porn, so I highly doubt that they’ll ever come across any. And there’s no way I’m going to show them myself, that would just be digging my own grave.

Are the actresses that star alongside you usually younger or older?

I’m guessing that from the production companies’ perspective, it looks better and is more commercially salable if they couple an elderly person with someone very young. So most of them are young actresses. But frankly, I don’t have much in common with the girls in their teens and 20s, and I am more relaxed and can find more to talk about with people in their 30s and 40s. I prefer the sexual charm of mature, middle-aged women, so I’m especially enthusiastic when I shoot with those kinds of actresses. Such occasions are rare in reality, though, which I find quite sad.

Is there anything in particular that you do in order to get your penis ready to go on cue during shoots?

Personally, a big factor is whether or not the age, appearance, and physical attributes of the actress suit my taste. In other words, it basically comes down to what kind of girls turn me on, so my performance is often affected by my costar. Depending on who they are, I’ll instinctually think, “Yes, this one’s going to be good” or “I might have a little trouble today.”

Do you penetrate for real on set?

In general, all penetration shots are real and unsheathed. Just before they cut to the next shot, we wear condoms. Of course, the genitals are blurred out in the entire sequence so theoretically you shouldn’t be able to tell if we’re already wearing one or not, but actually the rubberiness and texture of the condom shows through the blur, which is why we penetrate unprotected first. I guess in this sense they’re trying to make it look as realistic as possible.

No rubber? Won’t you catch STDs that way?

I’m not sure if I can say this for every single person, but most actors and actresses are regularly tested. On some shoots you even have to show proof that you’re clean. It may only be a formality, but I get the impression that most sets are sensitive to these issues. Personally, I’ve never caught any diseases through sex.

CONTINUE READING MORE AFTER THE JUMP

Vice Magazine - THE (EX) BIGGEST HEROIN DEALER IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Pulled this from Vice Magazine - it's really great.

INTERVIEW BY GRAHAM JOHNSON, PHOTO BY STUART GRIFFITHS

By the time Suleyman Ergun was 21 years old, he was the world’s most prolific and powerful seller of smack. Known throughout the junkie and police communities as the North London Turk, Ergun and his gang flooded Britain and Europe with heroin for five years.

For his pains, the former factory worker got mansions filled with cash and unlimited underworld cachet. At the height of his powers he was a multimillionaire and his favorite tipple was a bottle of champagne with eight grams of cocaine dumped into it. Today, he is almost penniless and lives with his mum. He’s 39. What happened?

Vice: Tell me a fond memory of your drug-dealing days.

Suleyman Ergun: There’s nothing like the feeling you get when you’ve got 100 kilos of heroin in the trunk of your car. Just to be near it, to smell it. Driving along at 120 mph in France somewhere and thinking: “I know what I’ve got in the car.” Police stopping beside you. A gun under my seat. Wouldn’t think twice about shooting them. Taking the risk. At the end of the day that’s why I became a drug dealer. Not the money or the power, but the buzz.

Did you serve an underworld apprenticeship?

At 15 I was an errand boy working in the Turkish rag trade in North London. I was earning £70 a week. At 17, I started selling coke, E, and pot, and I was earning £1,000 a week. Then I muled a couple of kilos of coke direct from Colombia and sold it in the clubs, along with tablets. Someone tried to rob me in the toilets of the Camden Palace once—I shot him in the leg.

How does one go from selling coke in a bathroom in Camden to being the king of all heroin in Europe?

Me, my former brother-in-law Yilmaz Kaya, and an Istanbul babas [godfather] named the Vulcan founded the Turkish Connection—that’s a network that smuggles heroin from Afghanistan across Turkey into Europe. Up until the early 90s, Turks had been bringing it in piecemeal. An immigrant would bring in ten keys, sell it, buy a shop in Green Lane and pack it in. We were the first to start bringing it in 100-kilo loads. Stack ’em high, sell ’em cheap….

It’s that simple, eh?

No, that’s only the supply. On the demand side, we bypassed all the usual gangsters and crime families in London. We fucked the Adams family off when they asked us to serve up to them. Instead, we sent it all to one distributor in Liverpool who sold the lot.

What was your role?

I was hands-on. The gear was driven from Istanbul to Paris in, say, a coach load of Turkish folk dancers. I coordinated the handover to the Scousers in France.

Then I’d drive up to Liverpool a few days later and come back with black bin bags full of cash—£140,000 one week, £100,000 the next, £68,000 the next, £150,000 the next, and so on. Then I’d count it, stack it, and box it in cereal packets and send it back to Turkey using a former Turkish Army colonel disguised as a bone-china collector as a courier.

After a while, we rolled out the same system across Europe—Spain, Italy, Holland, and Germany. We dealt with the Mafia, all of that. At one point we could afford to buy our own oil tanker.

Where did it all go wrong?

One of our workers was having an affair with a woman who was a police informant. He got nicked. Customs put us under surveillance for a year, and then bingo. The whole thing got walloped in July ’93.

What was the upshot?

Fourteen years, nine months. The gang got 123 years between them.

Did that teach you a lesson?

Did it fuck. I started dealing in prison within two days, trading heroin and coke for phone cards, food, tobacco. In September 1995 I used heroin for the first time, out of boredom and curiosity. It felt lovely and warm, like somebody putting an electric blanket over you. But the best thing about it, and this is why the jails are full of heroin, is that it makes time go by very quick. Twenty hours on heroin is like two hours normal. I got out ten years later and I didn’t know I done the bird [prison time].

How did you get your heroin in jail?

Before I got nicked, I had five kilos of pure heroin straight from Turkey buried along with two Berettas, an Uzi, and four shotguns at St. Pancras graveyard in North London. Every week I’d phone a girl up and use the word “brandy,” which was code for brown—heroin—and she would go and get it. She dug up the stash and shaved off some, and then it was given to a second girl who had a boyfriend in my prison. It was wrapped in a condom and nylon sheeting, shaped up proper like a dildo. She stuck it up her cunt. On the visit, they’d snuggle up close, and her boyfriend would put his hand slyly down her knickers, get it, and then stick it up his arse. Back in my cell, he’d get 60 grams and I’d get 60 grams.

Didn’t the prison wardens ever find out?

I had the DST—Dedicated Search Team—permanently on my case. They even used to take apart my batteries in the radio. But they never found gear in my cell because I used to hide it in my vegetable plot. I hollowed out an onion and put the gear inside and buried it. When the stalk wilted, I just taped a fresh one on. Take three grams out a day. Sell half a gram for my phone cards and that, and smoke the rest. Sometimes I would put it up my arse wrapped in tape so if the screws made me squat during a search, it wouldn’t fall out.

Couldn’t anyone smell you smoking it?

As long as you’re not causing trouble, cutting people over deals, and fighting, then the screws turn a blind eye. They know you’re on it because your pupils are like tiny pinholes and you start scratching and go red and raw. But the authorities let it go because if you stop the heroin it causes murders and they can’t handle that. Withdrawal symptoms. Kicking doors. Drugs will never be stamped out in jail.

How many bent screws did you know?

About six all over. They approached me because I was rich. I never ate prison food. They brought me in Marks and Spencer salads. In one prison the screw brought me in four ounces of weed, half a carrier bag full of phone cards, half a bag of tobacco, a TV, a phone, and two bottles of brandy, every week, for £500 a week, plus the bill for the food. He’d wink and say: “Your box is under your bed.” Then I’d pay another inmate to look after it. If you don’t have money, you have nothing.

I suppose when you got out of prison in 2003 you gave up drugs?

No, it got much worse. I discovered crack cocaine. The world had changed so much. I couldn’t cross the road—it was too fast. I used to see people talking to themselves on their hands-free and think they were off their heads.

What’s crack like?

It’s great. It blew my fucking head off. Over the next four years I blew half a million pounds on it. Sold my flat. My jewelry. Spent the few hundred grand I had stashed away.

What was the lowest point?

My mate robbed a rock off my table. I dragged him into the kitchen and chopped his little finger off with a knife on a chopping board. Then I flushed it down the toilet.

Some people would say that it was natural justice—that you were being punished for selling heroin by becoming a drug addict.

An eye for an eye. I’d created thousands and thousands of addicts. My past had caught up with me. I got depressed and then I took more crack and heroin to stop thinking.

How did you finally get off drugs?

I went for treatment in Turkey twice. A detox where they put you to sleep through withdrawal. It cost £20,000. My family paid. But when I got back onto the streets here in London, I kept slipping. Finally, I fell in love. It’s as simple as that. I haven’t touched a stone since.

Would you ever go back to being a heroin baron?

Not in a million fucking years. I’ve been offered a million pounds in cash to start up again. I could fly to Turkey now and get 100 keys and be away. £100,000 in cash by tomorrow. Mine. I get approached every week by someone or other, some of the country’s biggest gangsters, to go into business. But I can’t do it.

Why? Are you scared?

Fuck off. D’you want a smack?