*This article originally appeared in [Volume Six](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/volume-six-garbage “Volume Six - Garbage”) of our magazine.*

The first attack came out of nowhere.

I was sipping a latte at my local coffee shop one morning when suddenly I had to throw up. Slicked with sweat, I barely made it to the bathroom before projectile vomiting into the sink. Once the floodgates had opened, the vomiting wouldn’t cease.

Somehow I made it home, discreetly puking into potted plants along the way. I spent the rest of the day in the bathroom, evacuating the contents of my stomach into the toilet every few minutes with clockwork precision long after there was nothing left to retch but bile. It felt like dying or, less hyperbolically, like the worst stomach flu I could imagine. In between waves of nausea, I laid on the cold bathroom tile and cried.

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Two months later, it happened again, sabotaging a trip for Thanksgiving. Then I got sick on New Year’s, and the symptoms lasted for several days, obliterating any possibility that I just had a particularly nasty hangover. I had a working theory that the episodes were related to my birth control, so I had my IUD replaced—and then removed—on the assumption that hormonal fluctuations were to blame, but no dice. I kept getting sick, again and again, seven times total in the span of a year.

While I really, really didn’t want to believe it, I eventually figured out that the culprit was weed. It wasn’t actually hard to deduce. When I finally mustered the courage to google “heavy marijuana use”and vomiting, the answer was right there: cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS), a rare illness that afflicts some stoners, wreaking havoc on our digestive systems and causing the violent, cyclical bouts of vomiting I’d been experiencing. 

Like plenty of anxious millennials who entered adulthood in the era of legalization, I became a bona fide weed smoker in my twenties. The emotional and creative release felt like a mental health revelation. In those early days, an eighth would last me ages. But gradually my tolerance increased, and by the time I was 30, I was smoking a lot.

I was a high-functioning stoner, though the weed seemed to take the edge off everyday anxiety and even helped me be more prolific in my day-to-day job as a writer. Other than worrying about my wallet and lungs from time to time, I felt no real impetus to cut back. That is, until I developed a chronic, debilitating illness from my habit.

Hyperemesis is just a fancy medical term for intense vomiting; morning sickness, for example, is technically called “hyperemesis gravidarum.” At the most basic level, we know CHS is caused by prolonged exposure to THC, and that there are three phases of the disease.

Before experiencing a full-blown puking attack, people with CHS go through an initial “prodromal” phase where they might feel a little nauseous in the morning but are otherwise fine. At this point, most people have no idea that they’re sick. In fact, lots of folks wind up ingesting more weed, thinking it’ll alleviate their symptoms. And that can work for a while—until it doesn’t.

It might take days, weeks, or months, but eventually, your body enters the hyperemetic phase. My puking episodes often came on midmorning. Like many CHS sufferers, I intuitively took hot baths to ease my nausea, but nothing I tried—Dramamine, PeptoBismol, a heating pad on my stomach—could stop the vomiting. It felt like my guts were scraping themselves clean from the inside and wouldn’t rest until the offending toxin had been purged.

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My attacks lasted about 24 hours on average, but some people can’t stop throwing up for days or weeks, which is when CHS can easily turn deadly. In the CHS recovery groups on Facebook,you’ll find harrowing accounts of people who experienced kidney failure, seizures, and medically induced comas, mostly as a result of extreme dehydration. Hyperemesis can continue until you stop smoking weed, which is when the recovery phase starts and symptoms disappear. But if you fall back into your habits, the cycle is likely to start all over again. 

CHS is hard for people to wrap their heads around, especially because cannabis is widely celebrated as an anti nausea drug. It’s one of the main reasons Marieka DeVuono, a researcher at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, started studying the disease in the first place. Her advisor, Dr. LindaParker, is one of the foremost experts on the link between weed and nausea. (Dr. Parker’s work focuses on therapeutic uses for chemotherapy patients.) CHS was first identified back in 2004, but as weed became both more potent and easily available, the number of cases exploded. People turned to Dr. Parker for answers, and she tasked her assistant, DeVuono, with investigating why cannabis was making some users gravely ill. 

As DeVuono patiently explained to me over Zoom, understanding the connection between our brains and our guts—and how THC interacts with both—goes a long way toward explaining what might be happening to people with CHS.

Basically, cannabis alters the normal functioning of the body’s endocannabinoid system, known as the ECS, which regulates things like mood, sleep, stress response, appetite, memory, digestion, and even fertility. While there’s a lot we still don’t know about the human endocannabinoid system and how it works—scientists only discovered it in the 1990s—experts hypothesize its job is keeping the body in homeostasis and thus running smoothly. 

> My attacks lasted about 24 hours on average, but some people can’t stop throwing up for days or weeks, which is when CHS can easily turn deadly.

To send messages throughout the ECS, your body naturally produces molecules called “endogenous cannabinoids” that mimic those found in the cannabis plant, like THC and CBD. (The compounds found in weed—and in the tinctures, edibles, topicals, and other products we now have on the market are called exogenous cannabinoids.) Both types of cannabinoids, endo and exo, bind with receptors found throughout your body to signal to the ECS that it needs to take action. THC specifically has an affinity for one particular receptor—known as CB1 and that interaction is essentially what makes you feel high.

As you might imagine, there are tons and tons of these endocannabinoid receptors in your brain, but DeVuono noted there are also scads of them in our guts. Humans have something called a vagus nerve, which connects your stomach, intestines, and esophagus to your brain. For some, when THC binds with the receptors in their guts, they stop digesting food properly, which over time can cause the gnarly digestive issues I’ve been talking about.

“One of the big questions is, why does this not affect all stoners? Because it doesn’t seem to be everyone, and we actually don’t know the percentage of cannabis users with hyperemesis. That still hasn’t been pieced apart,” DeVuono noted.

We do know that everyone’s distribution of endocannabinoid receptors is different. That’s one of the reasons “it’s kind of hard to know what kind of experience someone’s going to have when they take cannabis, depending on how their receptors are spread out,” DeVuono told me. In other words, this is the science behind why some people prefer certain strains over others it all comes down to how cannabis molecules are tickling your endocannabinoid receptors. DeVuono hypothesizes that CHS could be closely related to anxiety disorders, which tracks, personally.

The Facebook groups preach abstinence as the only “cure” for CHS, and they’re technically right. The only way to make sure you don’t trigger an attack is to abstain. After my latest bout of sickness, I gave up my stash and went cold turkey for a while.

The first few days were rough. I was weepy as hell, having vivid bad dreams and night sweats. Then, with thesage guidance of Brené Brown’s podcast, honestly, I pushed through it and started to feel much better. Things were in focus. I felt calm and present in a way I hadn’t for a while. I had lots more energy, too.

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To celebrate a sobriety milestone, I decided to smoke a single joint, pure and simple, on a Friday night while carving a pumpkin and listening to records. It was such bliss. I had so much fun being goofy and dancing around my apartment, terrorizing my dog with my antics. This is why I love weed: for the uninhibited, creative, childlike behavior it helps unleash in me.

I haven’t been perfect, but the path I’m pursuing is what I’ve taken to calling “mindful moderation.” I conscientiously consume on the weekends and holidays, mostly, andI’m buying a lot less from my guy than I used to.

I called Dr. Alex Capano, the first person to earn a Ph.D.in cannabinoid studies, for a gut check about my continued use, since I’d been met with some judgement from family and figured that by putting my behavior in writing I’d be shunned by the Facebook groups. But Dr. Capano was extremely compassionate: “First of all, I’m sorry you’re dealing with that.You’ve found something that’s almost always safe, that was effective in helping you feel better and manage your anxiety. And then you’re one of the unlucky few who gets this side effect. So that sucks,” she said.

Dr. Capano was excited about my “mindful moderation” idea and thought it was a wise treatment plan for CHS provided I could stick to it. “I like that. I think that is appropriate and reasonable and probably going to be a successful solution if someone can, in fact, maintain mindful moderation,” she told me.

She added that research indicates you need chronic, high doses of THC to trigger CHS, so as long as I’m taking regular breaks, I should be okay. “You build a tolerance fast, and you lose it fast as well. So if you are conscientious of that and are really using in moderation mindfully, then I think that makes sense scientifically,” Dr. Capano said.

As they say, “knowledge is power,” and I’ve found everything I’ve learned about CHS and the science of weed to be both empowering and humbling. Understanding what THC does to my body on a molecular level has made it easier to push away cravings and “reset” every week. I want to live a long and healthy life. I also want to reap the benefits of the drug, understanding that it can have side effects.“People really want weed to be this miracle drug, but that’s not the case,” DeVuono told me. “They say you can’t die, so there’s no limit on use.” And so it’s adhering to limits—even if they are self imposed—that I am most hopeful will help me experience cannabis to the fullest.

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Harshed Mellow

I’m a cannabis activist, choreographer, and creative director, but I’m best known as a female illusionist from *RuPaul’s Drag Race*.

I consider myself an artist first and foremost, but I like to wear many hats—or many shoes, if you will. Quarantine really pushed me to test my skills and I found out that I can run a light board and do my own set design, and that I really am a one-man band. I feel lucky that my art as a drag queen has been pretty much accepted by the masses and that I’ve been able to create a name and a brand for myself that way.

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>Since I was probably seven years old, as Lady Gaga says, I’ve been living for the applause.

I’m originally from Dallas, Texas, and I was very lucky to have extremely supportive parents. I grew up in musical theater and was touring professionally around the United States by the time I was 14. I took it very seriously from an early age, and I was so blessed to have parents that really encouraged this. Whether it was a dance shoe or being able to travel with a company, they made my dreams happen at such a young age. But in a way I was also cursed, I think. As I get older, I think my parents sometimes wished that I could find a normal job and settle down, but I just can’t because this is in my blood. This is what I believe in. Since I was probably seven years old, as Lady Gaga says, I’ve been living for the applause.

[[1]]
[[2]]

My cannabis use began when I was a senior in high school. I had a really great friend, Lauren, who wanted me to explore cannabis with her. She had smoked for several years, but I was always a good boy: I had straight As and parted my hair and wore colored t-shirts. I never broke the rules, but for some reason I really trusted Lauren. I knew that she wouldn’t expose me to something that was dangerous. Her way of introducing me to the plant was for us to go get stoned after school, before our rehearsal. While I didn’t use the term “medicinal,” from day one, cannabis was already in my eyes something that was used to elevate and propel you forward. I fell in love with the plant immediately. In fact, we choreographed a piece together that we ended up performing at the Kennedy Center in front of the president. I became what’s now called a [YoungArts](https://www.youngarts.org/our-alumni) member and a presidential scholar. 

Right away, it was like, *Okay, cannabis equals success*. I never saw it as a bad thing, but I didn’t really see it as what I see it as now. That exploration began in college, because in California, I was able to legally gain access to the medicine and to the knowledge. During a dance piece my junior year of college, I fell and hurt my back. A chiropractor suggested I get my medical license because at that point, I’ll be honest, I was just seeing dealers on campus. And while I knew dispensaries existed, I was still from Texas so that world just seemed like something I’d seen on the TV show *Weeds* and not a real possibility. But once I had a doctor, an actual person in the medical field, tell me that cannabis would really help with pain while getting realigned, I began to take it more seriously. As someone who grew up on antidepressants, things to help with sleep, and all kinds of pharmaceuticals, finding this natural plant that gave me not only the same benefits but more, it became crucial to me to spread this knowledge. 

![13](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/V2T8305fgkKZ0XKfs8WXN/eed18d8cfd00ef1612e05230736cc8a5/13.jpg)
>I prefer to dab because I view this as medicine and so I treat it like medicinal intake.

Growing up as a queer person in a small town with small-minded people was definitely difficult, but I can’t even imagine what it would have been like had I been exposed to cannabis earlier on. I didn’t have to come out of the green closet until I was here in California where most people accept what I do. But back home in Texas, when Laganja became a thing, it was an issue. For many years, I taught children in the dance world and some of the mothers just didn’t understand. I definitely did face conflict, but my activism didn’t really start until I had been on *Drag Race* and got my foot into the cannabis industry.

I would describe myself as most likely manic-depressive, though I’ve never been diagnosed that way. I assume if I were to see Western doctors, that’s what they would say. I find that cannabis really keeps me regulated, it keeps me level-headed. I prefer to dab because I view this as medicine and so I treat it like medicinal intake. I don’t really smoke joints anymore. I will occasionally, but prefer to get my medicine and go. This is not to say that I’m not consuming recreationally—I am. I’m surrounded by people who see me as Laganja and who want to get high with me. But I really do think of it as medicine. I take my dab in the morning, I take my dab in the evening, and I take my dab at night. Yes, I’ll smoke in between here and there, maybe I’ll vape pen a little bit, but it’s really about getting those three dabs throughout the day and utilizing it as medicine.

In fact, the only time I’ve ever been without cannabis was while filming *RuPaul’s Drag Race*. I sent them my medical license under Prop 215 at the time, but due to the company’s laws, it was taken away from me. This ultimately resulted in me having my first and only—knock on wood—panic attack on national television. That’s why I’ve been vocal about it. But I am happy to say that even though it’s not written anywhere in black and white, I know that girls on the show are able to have access to cannabis now. I definitely think I had something to do with that.

[[3]]

I prefer sativas. My favorite brands right now are [Maven](https://www.mavenmvn.com/home), which sponsored my music video “Daddy” and [3C Farms](https://3cfarms.com/), which works with my incredible friend [Adam iLL](https://adamill.com/), who is an amazing straight ally. I like those companies not just because their cannabis is great, but because their morals and their staff all reflect things that are very important to me.

When I came into this, I really didn’t know a lot about the history of cannabis. But I did my research, because as someone who takes this very seriously, it’s important to me to be able to back it up. So, I will just go ahead and say, yes, the reason we have cannabis in California is because of the LGBTQAI+ community. That is a proven fact, it is known. West Hollywood was the first city to relax the laws on cannabis. I believe the Rainbow Bar and Grill was one of the first places that allowed smoking. The lineage of the queer community in cannabis is absolutely there. That’s always something that I try to remind people of because there is so much homophobia in the industry. It really shocks me because the industry wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for the queers.

It’s been challenging. I’ve had people boo me off stage, I’ve had companies only hire me one time so that they can say, “Well, look, we did something for gay people.” But I feel very hopeful and very excited for the future. I work with a lot of women and people of color and I think together, their voices plus the queer voices, really are going to outweigh the people in power. 

[[4]]
>The reason we have cannabis in California is because of the LGBTQAI+ community.

What being an activist looks like now is so different from what it looked like in the beginning. It used to be just smoking pot publicly and talking about how it didn’t deter me from doing any activities, but in fact helped me get through my day. Whereas now, I think activism is much more about creating safe spaces. Visibility is one thing, but it’s about taking action and partnering with organizations like the [Last Prisoner Project](https://www.lastprisonerproject.org/) to free people who are in jail for cannabis. I’m trying to not just be a public figure, but to be someone who’s actually in the field doing the work. Obviously, as an entertainer, there’s only so much I can do while trying to keep my audience entertained on the daily, but I always try to infuse my work with my activism. That can be about cannabis, or breaking down sexual stigmas, like I did with a [recent song called “Daddy.”](https://www.lastprisonerproject.org/) I’m always trying to infuse a message into my glamour and my art.

I believe I’m political in just showing up in a room and being who I am, which I think is unusual for most activists. They have to get up on stage, they have to talk, they have to present, but me just showing up in full glam at a cannabis convention is saying a lot. I’ve always felt my strongest suit is my dance. I think I am pretty good with words—my parents are very educated and taught me to care about these things—but I’ve always known that my most powerful form of language is movement and showing up as myself. 

[[5]]

I feel very grateful to be a part of the *Drag Race* franchise. I think it has changed the landscape for queer people forever. Once upon a time, when it aired on Monday nights, it gave people a reason to go to the bar that night and to get together. I’ve always referred to it as gay church because there really is a sense of community that the show has built. I’m so grateful to be a part of that and to have made a lasting impression on the brand. I’m very, very proud.

Drag is incredible. I think it’s one of the hardest art forms out there because it combines not only performance, but also makeup, hair, wardrobe, and sometimes comedy. It’s very much like musical theater in that it is the culmination of so many forms of art. I think that’s why so many people, especially now that they have public access to it thanks to a show like *Drag Race*, have fallen in love with drag. It’s really about expressing your inner diva, and regardless of your gender identity, I think everyone has one. Drag allowed people to explore this. 

It’s been a very powerful thing for me, exploring my gender. Now I identify as non-binary, but who’s to know if that’s going to stay the same. I think the future of drag is non-binary and non-gender. It’s not about what you’re born as, it’s about what you feel and what you want to express. I would have never discovered these things about myself had I not taken on this art form.

![2](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/5kGj7UZBoRKpdeoppEYQFh/1dbdcd8f09452d91f65d80ce7c303886/2.jpg)

***

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. [Laganja Estranja](https://www.instagram.com/laganjaestranja/?hl=en) photographed by [Jasmine Durhal](https://www.instagram.com/jassieuo/) at her home in Los Angeles. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. [Subscribe to our newsletter here](https://www.gossamer.co/subscribe).*

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I also began exploring drag at a very young age. Growing up in musical theater, I always gravitated towards the female leads. By the time I was 14, I’d been in one of my favorite musicals, Gypsy, maybe six or seven times, and I’d always dream of being Gypsy, the girl who was the stripper. So naturally, when I moved away from Texas to California to get my BFA in dance and choreography from the California Institute of the Arts, I started to explore drag much more seriously. I’d put on dresses and played in my sister’s clothing, but I took it more seriously when I moved to college and was given a landscape in which to explore my gender.

CalArts is one of the best art schools in the country. I’m so lucky that I got an education from that school and was able to not only learn about my art, but also about gender expression and myself. We had a weekly party—every Thursday night—where people would get together in the gallery to see the different art that had been made that week. It was during those parties that I started dressing up. In fact, I would host a *RuPaul’s Drag Race* party where everyone would come to my house in drag and we would view the show. At that point, it was still just a hobby and something that I did for fun. I don’t even think I had a drag name. But by the time I became a senior, I was taking it much more seriously. I entered my first amateur contest out here in Hollywood which kind of launched my career. So, by the time I was presenting myself in public, outside of CalArts, I had already created Laganja and the character of the Queen of Green.

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>It’s really about expressing your inner diva, and regardless of your gender identity, I think everyone has one.

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On the beauty of drag, dabbing, and the LGBTQAI+ influence on cannabis.

Laganja Estranja

I’m originally from Queens, so I’m a born and raised New Yorker. 

I’ve never left, not even for college. During the pandemic, my fiancé and I had this fever dream of relocating to LA, but that didn’t work out, and now I’m like, “I’m glad we stayed here. I love New York.” 

That’s what New York does to you: You hate it, but you just stay because there’s no place like it. Especially at the start of the pandemic. It was really, really bad here. But now it’s back alive, and I have this weird pride. I see a bunch of people coming back and I’m like, “You didn’t stay here. Don’t come back.” I get really annoyed when people are like, “New York is back.” You all left. I’m going to be here forever, I think. However, I do feel like I need to live in LA at *some* point in my life.

[[1]]

My day job is partnerships manager in the news lab at Google. I work with newsrooms and news associations to come up with different programs. A lot of what I do is focus on diversity. I was a journalist in my previous career, so newsroom diversity is really, really important to me. And not just who is telling the stories, but who they’re telling the stories about.

As a journalist, I did a lot of work around women’s issues. I covered topics like abortion, gun violence, domestic violence, and politics as they relate to women. But I wouldn’t consider myself a political reporter. I just fell into it. I worked at *Refinery29*, and before that *Mic*, the *New York Daily News*, and other local news outlets. So, I’ve been all over the map. 

I still freelance. I like to write more lifestyle things now, or things I’m really passionate about like the intersection of culture and beauty. For instance, I recently [wrote about hair discrimination](https://www.glamour.com/story/the-crown-act-september-2020-cover-story) for *Glamour*. I love all that stuff. And I’m glad I’m out of politics right now. I just felt like I needed to do something that’s not my day job, something fun and creative for myself on the side. 

[[2]]
>Working in news for years—it’s just unhealthy for your soul and your body. Especially breaking news.

I think my friends would describe me as the one who’s really into wellness and self-care. I care about the things I eat. I’m always trying to optimize and be a healthier person. Working in news for years—it’s just unhealthy for your soul and your body. Especially breaking news. It really weighs on you. I also found myself becoming really desensitized to disasters, because I was covering them all the time. It’s like, *Oh another shooting*. I didn’t like that it was making me desensitized to those things.

My fiancé says I’ve become a really big hippie, but I don’t think that. My parents are from Antigua, and in Caribbean and West Indian culture, we are into a lot of the stuff that’s becoming cool now, like the herbs and the different teas and things like that. These are things that I grew up with, so it’s very normal. I’m definitely not a person who’s anti-science, but I’m always looking for a holistic thing, within reason, to treat whatever’s going on with me. It’s just how I was raised. And now that stuff is trendy. A lot of cultural things that were made fun of or seen as weird are fashionable now. Like Shea butter—smelling like Shea butter was a racist thing people would say. And now Shea butter and coconut oil is in every beauty product and everything. So I don’t think I’ve just become a hippie. I think I’ve just grown into more of what I was before.

Weed is having that renaissance as well. CBD kind of started it, and now people are starting to see you don’t have to be a “stoner” to enjoy weed. As a woman of color, if we’re into weed, I think we’re sometimes viewed as deviant. Or like we don’t have our lives together. But I credit weed with helping me be productive in a lot of ways, helping with my anxiety, and helping with my creativity.

![4](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/7hbLsZZsBKaK0MiINrqTHo/19bb86ef804a50f4543d2f9cfef3751a/4.jpg)

It’s really weird how drinking is so glamorized and normalized, especially with women. There’s t-shirts that say, like, “Wine O’Clock” and wine this and wine that. I’m not judging, but alcohol has very known negative effects, and yet it’s seen as a normal thing. But if you wear a shirt with a pot leaf on it, people will just automatically think certain things about you. 

I personally don’t smoke. I’m an edibles person, which is a little weird because people think edibles are really scary, and they 100% can be. I didn’t smoke weed in high school. Didn’t really smoke weed in college, either. It wasn’t really my thing. That makes me sound like I was straight edge, but I wasn’t. I just didn’t do it. I think it came more in my 20s when I tried edibles. It really started with [1906](https://1906newhighs.com/). They sent me a sample of their Go Beans, which have caffeine, and I was like, “Oh, so I can do edibles and not freak out.” I have pretty bad anxiety sometimes, and after a long day of work I just want to chill out. So I tried their [Chill drops](https://1906newhighs.com/products/introducing-1906-drops), and those were really good. When I was writing the cover story for *Glamour*, it was a lot of work and research, but I had their [Genius drops](https://1906newhighs.com/products/genius), and they helped me focus and be able to sit down and write and think creatively. They’re not paying me!

People often have the misconception that you can’t take edibles and work or get anything done, but that’s not true. On a regular day, I’m definitely not doing weed during work. But if I’m writing my newsletter and I’m trying to be creative, it definitely, definitely helps me. The misconception is that weed is only a recreational thing. 

[[3]]
>Weed helps me relax and actually think things through.

Anxiety is such a hard thing to describe sometimes. I feel like my brain is always going, and I always feel like I have to be doing something. I don’t necessarily think things are going to go wrong, but I’m always in my head and in my thoughts. That works in your favor sometimes. You’re able to do a lot of work. But then I get burned out. Weed helps me relax and actually think things through. The quality of weed you have is really important, because I’ve had instances where I felt like I’ve had sketchy edibles or something—those made me feel worse and give me that weird weed hangover. 

I’m a Black woman, but I definitely have a lot of privilege—the neighborhood I live in, the job I have. So me saying, “Oh I take edibles,” if I were a different person in a different neighborhood, different job, or if I looked different, people would code it differently. They would obviously have some different assumptions. So I think we need to have these open conversations about weed so we stop stigmatizing it. When it’s stigmatized, look who it hurts. It doesn’t necessarily hurt you or me—it’s other people. And talking about it more definitely helps. 

When people don’t want to talk about it, they make it into this big, scary, secretive thing. And it’s like, me doing weed, does that make you think of me differently? What does it change? It doesn’t change anything. So I think being secretive about it just makes things worse. Why is it weird to say I’ll take an edible after work or on a Saturday? What’s wrong with that? I don’t think anything.

[[4]]

I always say my dream job would be to work in the weed industry in some capacity. I see the potential it has to change people’s lives. It’s a huge industry that could transform the economy. Right now, my newsletter is the main thing I’m working on, besides my day job. I also signed with a small modeling agency, and I just got pictures done, so we’re trying to see what we can do with that. 

It’s weird to be getting into modeling at 30, but I actually used to do pageants. So modeling was always around, but when I was grinding and working all the time, I couldn’t really pursue those opportunities. Influencers have really democratized what modeling is now. You can be a normal looking person who’s not six feet tall and super thin and be a model now. That’s what brands want. They want people who are relatable.

People are really surprised when I tell them that I did pageants. I did my first one when I was 14, and I did my last one when I was 26. I started out doing these preteen pageants. You couldn’t wear makeup, so it wasn’t those *Toddlers & Tiaras*-type pageants. Then I started to do Miss New York, Miss Teen USA, and Miss New York USA. I was Miss Long Island. The highest I got was third runner-up at Miss New York USA. After that, I lost interest and stopped doing them. But it was a lot of fun. 

[[5]]
>People think pageant girls are stupid or whatever, but you have to work so hard to do all that.

People think pageant girls are stupid or whatever, but you have to work so hard to do all that. All these women who I would compete against are in med school or they’re lawyers or business owners and also training for the pageant. You have to be really focused and dedicated and on your game to do all that. When I think about it, I’m like, *I can’t even believe I ever walked on stage in heels*. To have that bravery. Honestly, I don’t know if I could do it now. 

But I think it was really good for me when I was younger. It helped me with public speaking skills, how to write speeches, and how to do interviews. When you think about it, those are really great skills for young girls to learn: how to be confident and assertive and how to work a room. When you have that confidence about yourself, it’s really important. Especially when you’re in a male-dominated industry.

They did have their downsides, though. I think it’s better now, but you always had to wear your hair straight, and you always had to be really thin. That has definitely changed in the past five years. You’re seeing pageant winners with their natural, curly hair, and who aren’t a size two. When I was competing, even in 2017, you would’ve never seen that. So the industry has evolved a lot. And they need to, because people think pageants are irrelevant. They kind of are right now. So I do think they need to change for people to care about them again.

![8](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/6RA67oLNeyJgsEs3pBAtSZ/5c9e3f637bb0e3f0884a44824d36c79d/8.jpg)

For so long, it’s been like having a bunch of Barbies, but in different shades. I think that’s why it became irrelevant—people don’t want to see that anymore. It’s like what happened to the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. No one wants to just see all the same looking people. So I do think that was a negative aspect of it. My hair was so damaged because I had been straightening it and doing weaves all the time, and now I see girls competing in their natural hair and I’m like, *Wow, I love that*. I wish I had the guts to do that when I was competing. 

It’s crazy, but in a lot of states, it’s perfectly legal to fire someone based on their hair. It really is something that happens, and cases have gone all the way up to the Supreme Court. They were like, “Oh no, they’re within their right” or whatever. So that’s why the CROWN Act is really important in order to get a federal law on the books that hair discrimination is tied to racial discrimination. Just like how it would be illegal to fire someone because they have a disability, or because of their sexual orientation—it should be the same for firing somebody because they have natural hair or they’re wearing braids. This is very common within private schools, as well. You can’t have dreadlocks, you can’t have colors in your hair or whatever it may be. It’s a really important issue, and I’m hoping with this Congress maybe something will happen. We’ll see.

Honestly, I had never really worn my hair natural until like three years ago. Even when I was doing my hair for pageants, I would have these moments where I was like, *I just really wish I didn’t have to do this. I wish I didn’t have to straighten my hair and burn my hair, or wear a tight weave*. Because you just want to be yourself. I always thought about it, but I knew that I had to wear my hair straight or I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. I’m glad for the girls who are like, “No, I’m just going to do this.” Because that’s how things change.

![9](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/6pdh9edBfJFf0AC2bITTCt/a34f6a63841c7d52f07d5f549ada5303/9.jpg)

***

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. [Ashley Alese Edwards](https://www.instagram.com/ashleyalese/) photographed by [Meghan Marin](https://www.instagram.com/meghanmarin) at her home in New York. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. [Subscribe to our newsletter here](https://www.gossamer.co/subscribe).*


2 copy

On the unhealthiness of journalism, beauty pageants, and the wonder of edibles.

Ashley Alese Edwards

I am so proud that I’m from Korea. But that’s something that only developed at a later stage of my life. 

I grew up in Seoul until 12 or 13. I went through all the rigorous academies that the traditional Asian education provides—you know, with the tiger mom, tiger dad. But my parents also had a very open-minded and forward-thinking mindset. They wanted me to be able to play on a bigger field. The three of us mutually decided that I would spend my high school years in America. I came here by myself, and I was the first person within my extended family to ever live in a different country. Boarding school was a very new experience for me. It was the early 2000s, and there wasn’t much of an Asian presence in suburban Pennsylvania.

I think it also gave me a different perspective: I was able to become as creative and as athletic as I wanted to be. Sports isn’t something that a typical Korean education puts much emphasis on. Having a high school education in America was a nurturing ground for me. 

![20210413 Marin MiaPark 128](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/2sWo5mw3aMLAjye2EKogyv/12b89b94d68925b1264a5917c7887949/20210413_Marin_MiaPark_128.jpeg)
>I came here by myself, and I was the first person within my extended family to ever live in a different country.

The flip side is that while, of course, there were other Korean and Chinese students, I was definitely in the minority. I was very eager to integrate and assimilate into the main crew: white American kids who were considered cool and pretty. So there’s some complexity to my identity.

It was a very preppy boarding school. I tried to be a white girl. I tried to wear my polo shirt, I tried to play lacrosse. That’s not to demonize things that are not traditionally Korean. I absolutely think the experience opened my eyes to a wider set of possibilities. 

A lot of my Seoul community and my American roots are founded in New York, where I went to college. Because it’s so diverse and active, New York has been a great place for me to explore my Asian identity. Everyday, I feel like I am growing with my identity. Like a tree, I’m going deeper into my roots and into Korean tradition, while at the same time branching upward to see what my present world has to offer and what I can contribute. But it’s almost like this shoebox that I keep tucked away. I know it exists, but it’s not something I’ve really opened up yet and gone through photo by photo.

![20210413 Marin MiaPark 073](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/496UV6PG5mbbOh5S0L90AW/88202a2721977d9701a564812b765a76/20210413_Marin_MiaPark_073.jpeg)

That’s really the main reason my co-founder Dae and I started [Sundae School](https://sundae.school/). We wanted to build a platform for these minor voices, whether for Asian Americans or other POC. I won’t ever assume that someone’s individual experience is the same as my own as a POC woman, but I think being empathetic toward other people’s experiences is very important. Even within the Korean American experience, there are so many different levels and complexities. I try not to generalize or make blanket statements, like, “Oh, the Asian American experience is *this* or *that*.” We’re very fortunate to live in a time when we can be even more granular and focus on how experiences are shaped by aspects of your own history.

As a “dutiful daughter,” I majored in finance and worked in investment banking for two years, followed by another two years or so at a consulting firm. Those two experiences gave me a really balanced view of how to become an entrepreneur. Although we definitely started Sundae School as a side hustle to mitigate the risk.

Dae and I have been friends for a long, long time. We met when we were 13. We grew up with tiger moms in the same neighborhood, so they placed us in an afterschool academy together, like “Okay, you guys are going to be study buddies now and learn the SATs and ACTs together.” I did so many of those courses with Dae. That’s where the foundation of Sundae School comes from—we really grew up together. On weekends, we’d go out and do our own thing. But during the week, we would study together. So we’re on a similar level in terms of how we frame and tackle a problem. Having that long lasting relationship with him definitely helps as we navigate through this very nascent and dynamic industry.

[[1]]

The first time I smoked weed was at boarding school. I don’t think we got high, because you seldom get high from your first joint. You also have to be comfortable with the whole experience. But it left an impression on me. It didn’t really become my drug of choice until I started working in a super corporate environment. 

My weeks were so busy and I had so little time to give myself, let alone the things I was interested in. So over the weekend, Dae and I would smoke a joint to try and get some creativity juice in our brains. We were both interested in fashion, and in the branding and marketing side of things. But as neither of us actually had a background in those, creating a fashion brand was very intimidating. 

Smoking became a part of our ritual as we worked on Sundae School over those weekends. We thought, *How great it would be if we actually had our own weed business? How great would it be if our clothing was stocked at these prestigious stores?* Cannabis is the way we dreamt, and we made those dreams come true. 

[[2]]

Cannabis is a very emotional product, just like fashion. You smoke with an intention. There is a sense of yourself imparted in the plant as you smoke, and as you share it with other people. There is an aspect to this plant that is quite magical and that makes it more than a product and more like a medium, a passage to get to a greater something. In my case, I wanted to be more creative, and cannabis enabled me to do that. become more creative. For other people, they might need to be more relaxed, or more sleep-oriented, and that’s the aspirational function of cannabis that I find so mesmerizing.

Cannabis is so demonized in Korea, and part of our mission is to break down that wall in Asia, to normalize the plant there. The normalization we have here, we want to bring that over to our home countries. 

I only recently told my parents I smoked—and about Sundae School. I didn’t even tell them that I was full time on Sundae School for a little over a year. I hope they don’t read this article!  While we were deep in building the operations and foundation and going out to California almost every month, they thought I was working at my consulting job. I even lived out there for some time. I just always referred to Sundae School as my “California project.” That’s still true on some level. 

[[3]]
>I only recently told my parents I smoked—and about Sundae School.

I sat them down over a dinner, and said, “Listen, I haven’t been doing my consulting job for the past year or so. I’ve been building this thing called Sundae School.” I had to emphasize that we were a legal business entity, that I wasn’t a drug dealer. Because all parents worry about that. I also had to be a little strategic in terms of sharing a lot of our accomplishments at that point, like, “Hey, we were able to raise this much. We are on the *Forbes* 30 Under 30 list.” But to be honest, my parents didn’t really care about all those accomplishments. They just saw how passionate and motivated I was to really build this brand out. At the end of the day, they didn’t care that Sundae School was about selling weed.

Now, they love hearing about the progress we make, as well as our future plans. I wonder if one day that I’ll be able to sit down and smoke with them. But I’m just grateful that they’ve been so supportive.

Fashion is one way people communicate their values and beliefs. And there’s a correlation there with cannabis, too, because with cannabis, you actually create a community. People who you share a joint with, you actually share a little bit more of a special bond than people you might normally interact with.

![20210413 Marin MiaPark 100](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/V0AMe6WDdYzi8xQ5mnf4d/74b43d73ffa26200f3ab258c0008f0e4/20210413_Marin_MiaPark_100.jpeg)

So ultimately, both mediums are community building for us. And there’s a lot of overlap. We can clearly picture somebody who’s really into fashion and very creative also engaging in recreational cannabis consumption, and vice versa. For people who first experience our brand as a fashion consumer, which is often outside of California, as soon as they land in California, the first thing they look for is [our edibles line](https://sundae.flowers/).

Dae and I really try to be storytellers. We see cannabis and fashion as the way that we can tell our stories. Dae spearheads our creative process, which basically entails us sitting down and saying, “Okay, for our next collection, we want to focus on, say, the hyperfetishism of Asian women.” So it starts with a deeper thesis beyond just, “This is how I want my merchandise to look.” It’s almost like writing a novel, where you have a theme or a message that you really want to convey.

Then we ask ourselves what it is and why. How is that fetish propagated? What makes it even worse during these times? We’re able to then translate those ideas into our visuals. That process is something beyond my knowledge. I love being involved in the storytelling aspect, and Dae is so good at translating that thesis into visuals. That’s why when you see a piece of clothing from us, you get a sense that it’s part of a bigger campaign, a bigger story that we’re trying to curate here.  

![20210413 Marin MiaPark 205](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/3zFDVF0RckKZgY0NeWb9ws/c1a414da3fb3c6aad91891c4d95a237b/20210413_Marin_MiaPark_205.jpeg)

If it’s just about selling a piece of fabric so you can make a profit out of it, consumers these days are smart enough to figure that out. But if they understand that there are bigger themes within these collections, they become such loyalists. Beyond supporting us, they’re endorsing what we’re trying to put out there as our mission.

This year, and thanks to the recent efforts of my friends, I’m trying to read more books. I love being an entrepreneur, and doing something of your own at a small but very rapidly growing scale is always super exciting. But you can also get stuck in being too much in the weeds. As in, too focused on execution or those tiny details. In trying to read more books, I’m really trying to help myself see the forest rather than the trees. 

One of the books I’m reading is about the circular economy, meaning everything is within a closed loop system in terms of manufacturing all the way to consumer end-users. The future of this earth has to be sustainable, and I think the cannabis industry needs to really focus on that. Like any other industry, we need to start thinking about water in a sustainable way, especially with the imminent federal legalization. This is something I would recommend for anybody who is trying to start their own company or is interested in working in a very entrepreneurial environment: the ability to step out a bit and be able to see the bigger picture. 

![20210413 Marin MiaPark 287](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/5FjLsIHG3ZEpmsGURcWOAs/440fa7e19e34fafbafe0a8bbe840883b/20210413_Marin_MiaPark_287.jpeg)

Michael Pollan’s *How to Change Your Mind* has become one of the anthems within Sundae School. It was really eye-opening in terms of the bigger trends amongst psychedelics as well as cannabis. And there’s so much actual biology and science behind it.

I’d say I’m an avid dabbler in psychedelics. Maybe not avid. I’m not a beginner. But I’m not an expert. The power of psychedelics as I’ve seen documented, as well as studies that show how they can allow you to break free of those old fears that are engraved in your brain and let you leap forward—that’s something so powerful that I think everyone should at least consider.  There’s so much that we don’t know about the brain and how psychedelics can stimulate the brain when used properly in the right setting. I’m fascinated by that from a neuroscience perspective. It’s so understudied, and we have so much to learn. 

![20210413 Marin MiaPark 301](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/15fkywir3s3pXCW3r09kRO/b7410b240e8f5c25239f570eafd77ba8/20210413_Marin_MiaPark_301.jpeg)

***

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Mia Park photographed by [Meghan Marin](https://www.instagram.com/meghanmarin) at her home in New York. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. [Subscribe to our newsletter here](https://www.gossamer.co/subscribe).*


Sundae School co-founder Mia Park on representation in cannabis, fashion storytelling, and smoking with intention.

20210413 Marin MiaPark 109

20210413 Marin MiaPark 054

![20210413 Marin MiaPark 014](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/5CUXrRtNDmTKBXYHksJWXc/80aaaa131aab30c8a0ad88d3f0b75087/20210413_Marin_MiaPark_014.jpeg)
>Smoking became a part of our ritual as we worked on Sundae School over those weekends.

20210413 Marin MiaPark 026

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The Sundae School co-founder on representation in cannabis, storytelling through fashion, and smoking with intention.

Mia Park

I moved to New York in 1978.

I was looking in SoHo forever, because that was the neighborhood then. SoHo was  cheap, but I couldn’t find anything under $300. People kept telling me to look in the East Village, and I finally did. I think the first apartment I got there, on 13th Street, was $178 a month.

You had to get the *Village Voice* on Tuesday night at midnight, because that’s where the apartment listings were. I showed up to see the apartment at 8:00 AM. There was a whole line of people waiting but I was the only person who brought cash with me, so I got it. But when I came back that night, there were all these trash cans set up with fires in them and all these drug dealers going like, “Smiley face. Smiley face.” You know, “C and D. C and D.” I realized then that I’d moved into a drug building. Three floors were processing, and two floors were shooting galleries. It was weird. Me and two other guys moved in at the same time. None of us had any idea, but we got these giant apartments for dirt cheap. I’m from a small town in North Carolina—I had no idea about all this shit. 

![011821 RICHARDKERN 0239](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/28wmZ6FcapxJsNeVNaIKir/9f86400ee8c94a08d33a2e7c15d5ebc1/011821_RICHARDKERN_0239.jpg)

When I moved here, it was in that era when Ford told New York to “Drop dead,” or whatever he said. It was a recession, and everything was very similar to the way it is now as far as, like, boarded up buildings everywhere and no employment. Except I wasn’t aware of this, because I had just moved into it. As a young kid, it just seemed like a normal life to me, as I imagine it will to my son. But the crime was really bad. I got mugged four or five times—like violently mugged. It was a lot of crime. Now it seems like it’s going back to that era where tons of people have left the city. And the violence. Someone told me someone was killed on my corner two days ago. 

I think it’s the first time in forever that rents have gone down. During the pandemic, another apartment and mine were the only two occupied apartments in my whole building. All the rest of them left. They either had places to move to, or they were students who just picked up and left, you know?

>Living around all those drug dealers, I became a heroin addict.

I can look out my windows and see empty apartments in the buildings behind me. Just tons of them. It’s looking very similar to when I first moved here, but there was this whole period in between where my landlord—who, of course, would like me to move out so he could raise the rent—would say, “This is no place to be raising a son.” And I’d say, “Look around. It’s all rich kids living in these apartments now. It’s not a bad scene anymore.”

I left New York in 1987. I was a junkie. Living around all those drug dealers, I became a heroin addict and I decided to move to San Francisco to get clean, which is the worst place to move to get clean. When I moved back, I lucked out and got another cheap apartment on 3rd Street.

[[1]]

I sold pot in the early years before I moved. That’s how I financed all my old movies and shit. I had done it in high school, too—that’s how I paid for my college. Is it okay to say that or is this going to get me in legal trouble somehow?

I was around 22 and I had a job working for an artist. When you’re working all day doing some kind of physical labor, and then try to do your own thing at night, it’s really hard. A friend of my girlfriend said, “Hey, do you know anybody that would like to buy some pot?” And this guy pretty much set me up in the biz.

For years people kept saying, “You better get out of this business, dude. You better get out.” I only got out when I got clean. The last time I tried to do a drug deal, it was probably around ‘88. I came back from San Francisco but I knew a guy who was making and selling acid there. I said, “Can you send me a little ounce of LSD to my P.O. box?” But he never did it. And thank god, because I later found out I was being investigated and people were going through everything I was receiving at that P.O. box. I would have really done some serious time for that.

![011821 RICHARDKERN 0327](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/5fT6M2uiUanBqMv69YrApN/8fbb7de9253efe942f11769a2d5f5c34/011821_RICHARDKERN_0327.jpg)

This was around when I started making my first movies, and one of my films got seized at the Canadian border. They said it had bestiality and pedophilia and all this shit, which was just total bullshit. But that started an investigation into me. People I knew in Europe and some friends of mine in Switzerland got picked up by the police and questioned about me because they thought I was running some kind of international snuff ring or something. 

One of my friends in Sweden called me and said, “Hey, do you know you’re being investigated?” I eventually got some papers about what they were accusing me of and it was all this crap based on this one film, *The Evil Cameraman*. They thought that a woman who was 30 years old was underage in the video.

>There’s no place like the art world to find super conservative people posing as open minded people.

Most of the old films and stuff I did were pretty direct responses to the art world. I was trying to piss them off. And I was hugely successful at doing that because there’s no place like the art world to find super conservative people posing as open minded people. But what’s so funny is that even though these films—*Fingered* in particular—were so hated back then, and now they’re in the MoMA collection. It’s just turned completely around.

And the same films that were called misogynist and everything—those movies are seen as feminist now. People I worked with became feminist icons. The way it works is if you’re doing something that adults hate and kids love, those kids grow up. They get in a position of authority and they are nostalgic about the stuff that influenced them in the first place. That’s how it becomes part of the status quo.

[[2]]

I have trouble with the term “artist.” It’s derogatory. I would say I’m just a photographer. We used to make fun of our friends who were “artists,” you know, and give them so much shit. A couple of them went on to be huge artists and they were like, “Who’s laughing now?”

Growing up where I did, the only artist I’d ever heard of was Andy Warhol. Maybe Jackson Pollock. Just like kids today, when I was in school, I had no clue what I wanted to do. Zero. I basically went to college to get out of the draft because I didn’t want to go to Vietnam and get killed.

When I moved to New York, I was so naïve. I guess I still am naïve, but I had this really utopian version of the art world. That art was a pure, untouched-by-money kind of endeavor. When I got here and saw what it was really like, I soured on it quickly. But I also moved here because of the music. It was Sex Pistols, the Ramones, and all that shit. And I got heavily into that whole anarchy thing.

>I have trouble with the term “artist.” It’s derogatory.

I was really disillusioned with the way the art world worked here. I had done sculpture in school—that was my thing. And conceptual art. I didn’t even know where to begin here but I thought, *Okay, I always wanted to make a movie. I’ll just get a camera and make a movie*. 

The first one I made was *Goodbye 42nd Street*. I was spending a lot of time up on 42nd Street, going to the grindhouse places with my friends. And then whoever the mayor was announced that they were going to close 42nd Street and redo the whole thing. So *Goodbye 42nd Street* was like a goodbye to this area. I was good friends with this woman Beth B, and she encouraged me and loaned me equipment and everything.

I sent it to be screened at this place ABC No Rio, an artist collective that was supposed to be really cutting edge. But they rejected it. They said it promoted all the wrong social or ethical or moral values. And I was like, *What? How can they reject something from an open screening? How is that possible?* That just pissed me off even more. 

[[3]]

So, a lot of my old stuff was just driven by, “I’ll show you,” that kind of thing. Beth would say, “The more controversial the stuff is, the more attention you’ll get.” And around that time I met Nick Zedd who came up with the idea of the Cinema of Transgression. He said, “You know, we should just call ourselves this. If we call it a movement, people will  have something to refer to, and when they’re complaining about it they can just call it that, and everybody will start talking about it.” And he was 100% right. It started as a joke and now it’s taught in film classes.

I also met Lydia Lunch around that time through this artist David Wojnarowicz. She was already really notorious and was looking for someone to make films with. She had some ideas, I had some ideas, and that pretty much just launched everything.

We did *The Right Side of My Brain* together, and then we did *Fingered*, and *Fingered* was a huge, huge success. I mean, it was really despised, but that’s what made it. It was kind of like the Sex Pistols’ *Never Mind the Bollocks* in the sense that when I was in school, I had heard about the Sex Pistols saying “Fuck the Queen” or whatever, and I just had to have that album. It didn’t matter what was on it. I just had to have it. And it worked that way with *Fingered*, too. All the negative press just made people want to see it that much more. 

I never paid for an ad, but the films got all over the place in fanzines. Fanzines were really huge at the time. They were a nice alternative to *Rolling Stone* or whatever else was out there. Before the films, I had made some fanzines. One was called *The Heroin Addict*. One was called *The Valium Addict*. One was called *Dumb Fucker*, and then a bunch of others with pretty much the same themes. Total negativity. The subtitle of *The Heroin Addict* was something like “The Magazine For People Who Hate Everything, But Are Afraid To Do Heroin.” Of course, I actually got around to that eventually.

![011821 RICHARDKERN 0299](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/60oVhvQdn3wXBCcQfH8oNi/9c38135a584924b0ed80163b1409ce7e/011821_RICHARDKERN_0299.jpg)

The films were super nihilistic. The main objective with all of them was just to mess up your way of thinking about sex and relationships, because at the time it seemed to me that the root of all problems was relationships. The drive for some kind of romantic attachment. Especially while you’re young, you’re just insane about that stuff. 

When I got into drugs more, they got darker. *Submit To Me Now* is probably the darkest one. I don’t even know what dark is, but that was when I was really a bad junkie. And that’s when I left New York. I was like, *Okay. This is it. I’m done. I’m getting out of here. I’m going somewhere else*. And, then, I got off drugs.

When I moved back to New York, I had zero money, but I still had some notoriety. I started working as a handyman at this place called Time Café. It’s gone now, but it was like the first big organic restaurant. It was owned by Eric Goode, the guy who would end up making *Tiger King*, and they hired me because they remembered me from night clubs and stuff.

>When I moved back to New York, I had zero money, but I still had some notoriety.

I remember one time I was on the floor in the restaurant, scraping and replacing some tile down on my knees, and this guy that I had worked with a few years before comes up and goes, “So, this is what’s happened to Richard Kern.” But it paid like 10 bucks an hour, so it was great.

The only thing I could afford to do back then was take black and white photos. So I started out doing that, and shooting my friends and friends of friends. Like I said, I didn’t really want to be in a relationship, so I liked the idea of shooting naked photos of people because you could be in an intimate situation without anything bad happening. Without any involvement or anything. Intimacy without risk or attachment.

Someone from *Film Threat* magazine asked me if I’d like to do a book of my photos. I went through my photos and I realized, man, I only had like 20 good photographs I considered good. So I started really shooting. I really got into it. And it took off from there.

![011821 RICHARDKERN 0326](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/6O64PRGBlxhoc5drmH4JEI/ab2bfe6c81e2c4b42411a9943e5ec4b9/011821_RICHARDKERN_0326.jpg)

Sometimes for money, in addition to these construction and handyman jobs, I made music videos. I did one for [Sonic Youth](https://vimeo.com/69466865), which got a lot of airplay. But the one that got the most attention was “[Detachable Penis](https://vimeo.com/87372422),” because Beavis and Butthead talked about it on their show. Then I started getting more jobs.

Anybody who’s ever done music videos, they’ll tell you that it’s a lot of work. And just like in fashion, unless you’re way up there at the top, you’re not making much money. The best paying one I got—and it still wasn’t good pay—was Marilyn Manson’s “[Lunchbox](https://vimeo.com/69466864).” That was right when he broke big. 

At the same time, this friend of mine was the editor of *Hustler* called and said, “Hey, I know you shoot naked women. We’re starting this magazine called *Barely Legal*. Can you send us some photos, because we want girls that look like real girls.” At the time, it was like fake breasts and big blond hair and everything.

![011821 RICHARDKERN 0343](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/7BgQxLLXelIFU6XX5E9VGC/d29fa9c692fde56db4f0b9b2c27474f0/011821_RICHARDKERN_0343.jpg)

I sent them some photos and he paid me two grand for 10 photos. Back then, that was a considerable amount of money compared to working construction. He said, “If you’ve got other stuff, or if you want to shoot stuff, go right ahead.” So I just went off on this tangent, shooting for all these sex magazines for maybe five years. It was the golden age of that stuff, where I could work maybe a week out of the month and then have plenty of money to do the other stuff I wanted to do. 

At the end of the time I was shooting for *Barely Legal*, I was using colored gels. This was really popular in rock photography at that time. I was shooting naked women and trying to make these arty looking photographs. 

>My dream back in the ‘70s was to have a pot farm.

At that time, there had been zero nude photography books for like 20 years. It was the time of Reagan. Jesse Helms was in the senate. And they were saying, “The arts are paying for things like this” and showing Robert Mapplethorpe, showing David Von Rohr’s work. It was that whole era of the moral majority and it was pretty bleak. But then Benedikt Taschen published this book of nude photos by Eric Kroll, and Kroll told Taschen about me.

People were dying for this kind of stuff. It was like putting a cup of water out in the desert. They were hugely successful so he paid really well. Taschen is the best publisher I’ve ever worked with. Still is to this day. He’s really loyal. 

![011821 RICHARDKERN 0282](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/6Nz4o1lFyG15F1sETsYSut/c5d6e9f046ba7ace6da20a7659c8e6b0/011821_RICHARDKERN_0282.jpg)

I got out of the porn biz, because, for one thing, it was going nowhere. I had a pretty good gallery career going but some of the galleries were like, “Dude, you’re turning into a pornographer. We can’t show porn.” So that also made me step back. And then the internet started up and that just killed the porn book business. 

I shot this woman in South Carolina, I guess back in 1999. She was 19 and her ambition was to own a head shop. It was fascinating to me that this young woman had the same ambitions I had back in the ‘70s. My dream back in the ‘70s was to have a pot farm. Like an indoor pot farm. That was my big dream. And that was her ambition, too.

Her whole life revolved around getting stoned. So I started shooting her smoking pot, and she had some little pot plants in her closet. This is going to sound super sexist, but there’s something about a woman getting stoned that is just really, really sensual. This comes from when I was a teenager and we were getting stoned and then we’d have sex. It’s like a nostalgia thing for me. I thought, *Wow, it’d be so cool to just have a whole book of that*. I also knew that potheads—people that read your magazine—would be perfectly content to sit around looking at photos of naked or almost naked girls smoking pot.

That became *[Contact High](https://www.artbook.com/blog-featured-image-richard-kern-contact-high.html)*. The book was hugely successful. I've just published a sequel of sorts to it called *[Extra High](http://www.richardkern.com/books-1/extra-high)*. It’s more like a zine; it’s really tiny, but it’s a nice size and it only costs $10. I still have loads more photographs, and I imagine sometime down the road I will put them all together in one complete edition. 

[[4]]

The thing to do used to be to get really stoned and go to 42nd Street and watch slasher movies. My son, who’s like a skater kid and who just recently started smoking pot at 21, he talks about the same stuff. How it’s really cool to watch this when you’re stoned. Unfortunately, I have to tell him, “Okay, how much are you smoking? You’ve really got to keep a handle on that because you have the addiction gene, and it can go other places.”

I don’t work with anybody except this gallery in Switzerland now. I pretty much dropped out of that scene. Nobody wants to take a chance on an old white guy who shoots women or shot young women—that’s just not going to fly these days, which is fine. I totally understand. So, I pretty much pulled out of that biz.

>The way it is with most galleries, your value to them is based strictly on how much you sell.

The way it is with most galleries, your value to them is based strictly on how much you sell. It has nothing to do with what kind of work you make or anything or what your work means or if it’s socially responsible or any of that crap. It only has to do with if you sell. That’s the bottom line. They’re not interested beyond that. They might like your work, but if it doesn’t sell, they could care less about you.

I had smoke going up my ass from these galleries that I really respected and then they’d do a show and if they didn’t sell stuff, boy, you’d get the cold shoulder like you wouldn’t believe. It’s just amazing.

![011821 RICHARDKERN 0335](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/4WFDjl00LZ2CgXJCSvfdVM/cf553ea50535d915b9bb30017d09fe08/011821_RICHARDKERN_0335.jpg)

***

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. [Richard Kern](https://www.instagram.com/richardkernstudio/?hl=en) photographed by [Meredith Jenks](https://www.instagram.com/meredithjenks/?hl=en) at his home in New York. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. [Subscribe to our newsletter here](https://www.gossamer.co/subscribe).*


Richard Kern on addiction, international investigations, and winding up in the MoMA collection.

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![011821 RICHARDKERN 0253](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/3BCYKjHK3Otl4uZNCIyfW3/3a0174c956852225bf0186f8394eb054/011821_RICHARDKERN_0253.jpg)
>It started as a joke and now it’s taught in film classes.

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The photographer on addiction, international investigations, and winding up in the MoMA collection.

Richard Kern

Gossamer looks at the world—travel, design, art, culture, and food—through a green lens.

Open plan offices for new media companies, beautiful as they are, contain few physical pleasures.

There are no opaque phone rooms for naps or crying, just glass boxes with doors that don’t lock. No coffee pots, just a cumbersome robot that spits out diesel-scented “espresso,” and milk substitute. No room for a plant on your desk, which is more like designated space at a table.
 
The office I worked at in the summer of 2017, which was situated on two floors of the graveyard of Goldman Sachs, offered a few things worth having: narrow windows with views of the East River and the Stone Street meat restaurants, proximity to a neighbor’s helicopter pad, and an array of Fresh Direct-supplied snacks. La Croix in 10 flavors, single-serving discs of hummus and guacamole, pita chips of every stripe, slimey packages of hard-boiled eggs that came in pairs, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, hundreds of dollars worth of cashews and almonds, apples and oranges and one or two rock-hard green pears, and, most importantly, Babybel cheese. I ate it every day.

I spent that summer thinking about a crush, and complaining about my job, which was to pay attention to Tumblr and *Game of Thrones*. I thank god that we are not all bloggers, and that we have not all spent time in Manhattan’s Financial District, but I imagine you still know what I am talking about: each day is the same. An iced coffee drips condensation next to your laptop, an idle conversation about going to the beach this weekend ends with no one making a plan, and a music video or two breaks up the hours by giving you something to tweet about. Mercifully, the day will end when the sun is still out, the way it doesn’t for three-fourths of the year. It’s not all bad.
 
Plus, Babybel cheese. After breakfast, but before lunch, the same little red wax guy. Originated in France, manufactured at a factory in South Dakota, one of an estimated 1.5 million wheels per day. Driven to a 30-story office building in lower Manhattan at five in the morning. You can pop them like pieces of gum while you stew in the the languid but fizzy energy of waiting for a day to end.

It’s the perfect snack. For staring into space and dreaming of never returning another email. For doing something, anything, with your hands, while you recite a fraught iMessage conversation from memory to whomever sits next to you. For swallowing a low-calorie placeholder in two bites and, synched with the crouch to the trash can, subtly dipping your chin to find out if you remembered to put on deodorant.

 
The red cellophane wrapper makes the whole package look like a Valentine. The Valentine weighs exactly 20 grams every time, which according to some reliable-enough internet resources, is the same as a mouse and twice as much as a human eye. The wax shell looks like something that’s been hatched out of and discarded in a weird place, as chilling as a cicada husk dropping into an open pitcher of sangria. You can warm it in your hand and make a tight, shiny ball. But it’ll leave a pink film on your skin, so why would you?

The experience is sensual, like the slow drag of a zipper that you’re opening mostly for effect. The wax resists. It’s basically alive. Then there’s a two-centimeter gasp of bright white, appearing like a not-yet-tan belly peeking out from the narrow, moving gap between jean shorts and crop top. It is pretty much as close as you will get to a strip tease in a work environment.

The experience is also a little bit gross. Like peeling anything is a little bit gross. Like the word “peeling,” which is gross. Depending on your mood: a little bit like in *Black Swan*, when Natalie Portman peels back a frayed strip of the skin around her cuticle until there’s a bright red bloody line all the way down her finger.

And then there’s the cheese itself, which, bitten into, looks like an orthodontist’s upper jaw mold, and tastes like nothing.

***

*Kaitlyn Tiffany is a writer living in Brooklyn. She co-authors a [weekly newsletter](https://famouspeople.substack.com/) about terrible parties.  *

GreenBabybel

Babybel

The first time I fell in love, we bonded in the early stages through phone Scrabble. “Scrabble back,” he’d text me, if a few hours passed without my next move. This was pre-Tinder, and our matches got heated. We eventually spent enough years together to re-download the app for a burst of nostalgia in our long-distance monogamy.

As our relationship wore on, Newtoy’s then-wildly popular Words with Friends became available on my Android, like the Snapchat app we’d use to sext. Then came Scramble with Friends (renamed Word Streak), which really spiced things up.

To me, word games will always be kind of romantic: a throwback to simpler times. They’re nerdy, but nobody really cares that much if you underperform. There’s space to slack, to try too hard, or to embarrass yourself only in front of a bot.

On Wikipedia, a website predicated on people volunteering to write and edit words, “word games” [are categorized by type](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_game). There’s letter arrangement (Scrabble), puzzle (crossword), structured (Mad Libs), or linguistic recreations (spelling bees).

These games predate artificial intelligence by eons, well before Siri had all the answers and Merriam-Webster Dictionary started dragging people [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/MerriamWebster).

Words, one of the most basic forms of communication, can be primal. Like puzzles—or a budding relationship—they can leave us vulnerable or confused. Choosing the right word could win you millions of dollars, grant you acceptance to a prestigious school, or earn you 10 whole seconds of glory on a dimly lit stage before a crowd of boozing spectators.

We may be post-truth, but a word well-played still brings people together. On a recent Galentine’s Day, I watched a group of grown adults in a Manhattan speakeasy compete in a spelling bee. “French from Latin,” the moderator read. I sipped my beer. “Can you please define the word?” Plot twist! In line for the restroom, I learned one very good contestant spoke only English and Portuguese, the latter not much help here. More were eliminated. No mercy was spared. Only one speller—who asked to hear a word in a sentence—behaved as a “douche,” at least according to the moderators.

For the same reason I go to estate sales, word games have retro appeal. They’re a haven from the noise, and from a president who does not open books. They’re a cerebral flex in a society that keeps telling me how to fix my face, company for a “lonely generation.”

If we match in a Scrabble game, thanks to some algorithm that connects people all around the globe, your choices tell me something about you. Maybe you learned a word from reading The Hobbit as a kid, which totally changed your life. Maybe you’re really into Shakespeare, or you’re a jackass who keeps making two-letter combinations until one finally sticks.

People separated by time or distance or language can play word games. True to form, most Americans are unwittingly more limited: notorious for only speaking English, and often afraid to look silly. It’s a humbling thing to admit that you can’t make a halfway decent play in a word game.  

Maybe you’re like my younger brother, who at age 10 won a round of Scattergories, the 30-year-old board game that includes pencils and paper in a box. For the category of “medicine” and the letter of “M,” he chose Midol, much to our mom’s and aunts’ delight. Obvious victor.

Maybe work is boring and unchallenging and you’ve been entertaining fantasies of quitting, but there’s some temporary spontaneity in the daily crossword—or whatever the frequency, depending your source.

In a culture that thrives on superficial connections, when your next lay can be only a few swipes away, word games can be intimate. An opponent’s assemblage of letters is suggestive, tells me something different than the 280-character tweet you spent an hour crafting and retooling.

On a recent early-morning bus ride to Manhattan from Philadelphia, I passed time by redownloading the word game apps I deleted forever ago. Delirious from little sleep, I felt slightly self-conscious and rusty playing against random players or bots. I remembered that I preferred Scrabble, because the virtual instructor would tell me if I chose the best possible word based on the tiles given. Uncertainty can be thrilling, until it’s not.

I drag the tiles: “F-I-R-E.”  Best word! “R-I-D-S.” Best word! An analog-looking, starry popup appears on my screen, a form of congratulations.

Is this as hard as it gets? Maybe I’m taking the easy way out. Or maybe, I still got it.

***

*[Natalie Daher](http://www.nataliedaher.com/) is a writer and journalist based in New York. She co-authors a newsletter, [Clipped](https://us16.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=469667a58e33374cf748297f7&id=4e1050af80), about women's media.*

Finding common ground one letter at a time.

scrabble

Word Games

In 2016, I moved into an apartment outfitted with a panini press, a clunky appliance I used exactly once and which then served as an ersatz modern art installation for the remaining 364 days of my lease. Its worthlessness was solidified when, on a camping trip with nary a press in sight, my roommates and I placed hunks of cheese-stuffed baguette on a grill and flattened them with large rocks. Me, dependent on a single-use appliance? I scoffed as I bit into my panini. Please. I was practically Bear Grylls.


My ambitions — at least when it came to eating sandwiches — may not have been lofty enough to capitalize on a panini press, but its existence served as a gateway gadget, paving the way for what I now consider to be the holy grail of single-use appliances. It sits in my kitchen. It is small. It is sharp. It cuts without hurting and slices without contrition. Friends: meet the egg slicer.

 
Invented in the early 1900s by a German man named Willy, the egg slicer was created for the sole purpose of — this isn’t hard, folks — cutting eggs. The device itself is composed of two parts: a slotted base and a hinged frame strung with taut metal wires. To wield this contraption, all one has to do is place a peeled, hard boiled egg on the base and lower the top, allowing the wires to cut through the membrane and separate the orb into equal segments. As Willy was clearly aware, no one wants to accidentally coat their egg with fingerprints or deal with buckled whites, two common hazards of holding an egg and cleaving it with a knife. Best yet, these slicers transform the yolk (which I’ve always found slightly repellant) into manageable, aesthetically appealing ribbons of chalky yellow fat.

 
There is something pleasingly democratic about an apparatus that elevates an egg from an inexpensive, ubiquitous form of protein to a delicacy with one quick sever. The devices are also widely accessible, with myriad brands, styles, and price points from which to choose. While I prefer the bare bones, 100% aluminum version that sells for [$2.81 online](https://www.tigerchef.com/tigerchef-round-aluminum-egg-slicer.html), egg-eaters with upscale taste can purchase fancier instruments. Williams Sonoma offers a [$14.95 BPA-free "Egg Slicer and Wedger](https://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/williams-sonoma-egg-slicer/),” which one online reviewer bought "on a lark" and then loved so much that she ordered another for the kitchen in her lake house.

 
The egg slicer may be my favorite, but a brief tour of my pint-sized Brooklyn apartment reveals that I now own a small army of single-use appliances, all honed to execute one task perfectly: there is a [milk frother](https://www.amazon.com/Bellemain-Stainless-Steel-Frother-capacity/dp/B010E1ZQVC/ref=sr_1_20?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1529576025&sr=1-20&keywords=milk+frother), which I use every morning and a [rice cooker](https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-SR-G06FGL-1-Step-Automatic-Cooker/dp/B01DGQVX46/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1529575340&sr=8-3&keywords=panasonic+rice+cookers), whose services I employ on occasion; on the table sits a [small wedge](https://www.amazon.com/Bobino-LATOFTQ-Laptop-Foot-Turquoise/dp/B0758161RQ/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1529575443&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=bobino+laptop+foot&psc=1) that serves no purpose other than propping up my roommate’s laptop and which she claims stands between her and a lifetime of carpal tunnel; and in the back of my closet is a [sweater razor](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015RN9JN8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1), which I drunk-ordered last winter after reading that it would slice the fuzz off all my sweaters and, thus, “change my life.” I still believe this although I have yet to prove it true — in my aforementioned state I forgot that I own only one sweater and zero of the batteries the device requires.

 
The beauty of single-use appliances is that, unlike Pokémon or sexual harassers, it doesn’t behoove anyone to catch ‘em all. Unless you happen to inhabit a mansion of Versailles-style proportions, collecting these contraptions forces one to prioritize. Would you rather be greeted every day with the dead-eyed stare of a [hot dog steamer](https://www.amazon.com/Nostalgia-HDS248RD-Extra-Large-Steamer/dp/B01LVWIIVR/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1529576752&sr=1-1-spons&keywords=hot+dog+cooker&psc=1) or a [strawberry huller](https://www.amazon.com/Chefn-27466-StemGem-Strawberry-Huller/dp/B002XOHZWC/ref=sr_1_4?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1529575061&sr=1-4&keywords=strawberry+huller)? Are you the sort of person who values flawlessly [spiralized zucchini](https://www.amazon.com/OXO-Grips-Handheld-Spiralizer-Green/dp/B013KAW5IQ/ref=sr_1_8?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1529682126&sr=1-8&keywords=zuchinni+spiral+noodle+maker) over a properly [scraped coconut](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D59NVXH/ref=sspa_dk_detail_0?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B07D59NVXH&pd_rd_wg=iz3Tv&pd_rd_r=SGF4GQ8K4JYKWNKRHBV0&pd_rd_w=PPENA)? At some point, the questions become nearly existential: in the vast scheme of things, do the rewards of a [banana bunker](https://www.vat19.com/item/banana-bunker-protects-bananas?adid=gshopping&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&adpos=1o2&scid=scplpbanana-bunker&sc_intid=banana-bunker&gclid=CjwKCAjwma3ZBRBwEiwA-CsblIot5ie4bOdhlrGp7z1XY6XwEvJyHjmvyPgJiWZMXMWQXpNZe5JBShoCsrcQAvD_BwE) trump the spoils of a [hamburger press](https://www.amazon.com/Weston-Express-Hamburger-Ejector-07-0310-W/dp/B000XB45DO/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1529576579&sr=8-3&keywords=hamburger+press)?

 
I was speaking with a friend recently who admitted that she has a rule against owning single-use kitchen appliances, her reasoning being that in most instances you could probably use a knife to accomplish the same task. Does she have a point? Sure.


But sometimes “good enough” just isn’t good enough. And if anyone needs me, I'll be in my own (slightly more crowded) kitchen, with my slicer, basking in that rare flavor of joy that accompanies placing a perfectly mathematically bisected egg atop an otherwise mundane salad.


***


*[Luna Adler](http://www.lunaadler.com/) likes to think of herself as an agreeable Scorpio. She lives in Brooklyn.*

Features

Harshed Mellow

Laganja Estranja

Ashley Alese Edwards

Mia Park

Richard Kern

High Minded

Babybel

Word Games

Egg Slicers

High Praise

Street Appeal

Go With The Stream

Have An Art

For people who also smoke weed.