Sex & Marriage in Prison

What are conjugal visits really like? [View in Browser]( [Esquire Sunday Reads]( [Sex, Love, & Marriage Behind Bars]( Sex, Love, & Marriage Behind Bars In 2004, I was sentenced to twenty-eight years to life. The minimum was longer than I’d been alive. Early on, I didn’t think much about the implications for my love life. At twenty-four, I’d had plenty of sex but never a real relationship, or even healthy intimacy. Besides, there were more pressing concerns: appealing my conviction, learning how to survive in this place. I first saw the trailers at Clinton Correctional, a maximum-security prison a few miles south of the Canadian border, in Dannemora. By then I’d learned that New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision didn’t actually call them conjugal visits. Only Mississippi did. While the word conjugal simply means “related to marriage,” these visits began to carry lewd implications, and other states opted to rebrand: In California, it was known as “family visiting.” In Connecticut and Washington, they were referred to as “extended family visits.” In New York, it was, and still is, called the Family Reunion Program, or FRP. [Read the Full Story]( [MORE FROM ESQUIRE]( [Zoë Kravitz's (Shocking! Twisted! Brilliant!) Mind]( Zoë Kravitz's (Shocking! Twisted! Brilliant!) Mind You have an idea in your head of who Zoë Kravitz is. Edgy. Boho. Hippie. Cool. She probably says “Perú” with an accent. Maybe it’s the tiny tattoos that curl around her hands and arms that signal something, or maybe it’s her striking resemblance to her mom, Lisa Bonet, who exudes the mystical energy of a shaman or healer. Maybe her dad is the defining factor. After all, Lenny Kravitz has been synonymous with the concept of “cool” since he broke big in the nineties. Some want to believe that Bonnie, her breakout role on Big Little Lies, is the truest window into the real Zoë. Kravitz has denied it on several occasions. She has said that her HBO character would drive her insane in real life, and she’s even getting some of her ink removed. The ice-cool image sticks all the same. The idea of having her own fame felt good at one point, Kravitz admits. She wanted to taste what it was like to be known as more than just someone’s daughter or partner or friend. But it wasn’t long before, as she says, “I got a lot of anxiety around ‘Do I feel confident enough to go outside?’” With Blink Twice coming into view, however, Kravitz is confronting a different type of vulnerability. “I feel like my brain is being exposed to the world,” she says. [Read the Full Story]( [Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff Embraces the Memes in “Explain This” Video]( Will Nicolas Cage Avoid the Madden Curse in David O. Russell's Biopic? Who could have guessed how much John Madden news we would read in the last 24 hours? After initial reports suggested that Amazon was circling Will Ferrell to play the NFL legend in a new biopic, director David O. Russell confirmed that the role will go to... Nicolas Cage?! He's certainly an interesting choice for Madden's larger than life personality, but I'd pay big bucks to see him frantically draw X's and O's any day. After Longlegs, Pig, and Dream Scenario, it feels like Cage can do anything—including growing four inches and gaining 100 pounds to play the (literal) football giant. Will we see Cage's Madden barking at Ken Stabler? Will Cage hire Austin Butler's voice coach so he can nail Madden's TV-ready vocal cords? My most important question is: Can Cage avoid the famous Madden curse? [Read the Full Story]( [Ben Sasse Appears to Have Turned the University of Florida Into a Gravy Train for His Pals]( Ben Sasse Appears to Have Turned the University of Florida Into a Gravy Train for His Pals Back in the Before Times, Young Ben Sasse was the dauphin prince of the Promising Young Republicans who were going to bring the GOP back from the far reaches beyond sanity at some undefined point in the future. He was an Eddicator, the way Mike Lee was a Conztitooshunal Skolar and Paul Ryan was somehow more than a zombie-eyed granny starver. Members of the elite political media flocked to his side. He was as slick as a Siberian cowpath in the winter. He had this ability to create a kind of plasticine gravitas that so attracts Ivy League reporters who feel guilty that they haven’t spent more time in Omaha. He bragged about his kids reading Aristotle over their Pop-Tarts and, besides all that book-larnin’, they were learning about working the farm and all them good heartland values. Meanwhile, as El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago assumed the presidency and everything started going to hell in a gold-plated handbasket, Young Ben Sasse was one of those insufferable Republicans in the Senate who were Deeply Troubled by the state of the nation but who were also a reliable vote for the president* most responsible for said state. When he left the Senate in 2022, he left a trail of banality two miles wide between Washington and Gainesville, Florida, where he became the president of the University of Florida until he, ahem, “abruptly retired.” And now, thanks to the intrepid staff of the University of Florida Alligator, we have found out why. [Read the Full Story]( [The Best Sci-Fi Books of 2024 (So Far)]( The Best Sci-Fi Books of 2024 (So Far) The opening page of Malka Older’s new book says simply, “There are other ways to live.” That idea carries through so many of this year’s best science-fiction books, which are full of questions about how we might live differently with one another, on our troubled planet or in the furthest reaches of space. Science fiction, as Ursula K. Le Guin once wrote, is not predictive but descriptive, and what contemporary science-fiction authors are so often describing is a world that seems to be less and less built for humans to thrive in it. We are still close enough to 2020 that we’re reading books that have their roots in that particularly tumultuous year—roots that dig deep into surveillance, capitalism, protest, inequality, and failures to learn from the past. But there are other worlds, other ways to thrive—and other ways to replicate humanity’s worst failings, too. This year’s best books don’t shy away from who we’ve been and who we are, but they also brim with a fierce curiosity about who we might become. As Martin MacInnes writes in the glorious In Ascension, “The original science-fiction story—the impossible adventure full of wonder and awe—was merely the existence of the species, all the movements she and her sister and their family and every other living person had shared.” Below, listed in publication order, are our favorite science-fiction books of the year (so far). [Read the Full Story]( [Why Does Every Netflix Show Look the Same? An Investigation.]( Why Does Every Netflix Show Look the Same? An Investigation. Netflix shows have a certain look. I can guarantee I’m not the only one who’s noticed—but if you haven’t, hear me out. There’s a striking sameness to the streaming service’s offerings, making everything from Wednesday to Cobra Kai look like a Hallmark Christmas movie produced by The CW. Is it an intentional branding statement by Netflix? I’m not sure. I can’t tell you why 3 Body Problem seemingly shares costumes with Avatar: The Last Airbender, why One Piece looks like the Bridgertons with newly developed superpowers, or why you could absolutely convince me that the Love Is Blind pods are placed just a room away from Squid Game’s glass bridge. And yet, with each and every debilitating binge, I find myself learning more about Netflix’s bizarre visual language. The streamer makes a point of putting every character in the brightest room imaginable. It’s more willing to throw questionably awful CGI at me than to simply film outside, and it really wants to ensure that my eyes are constantly assaulted by a kaleidoscope of color. Choices! They were made. But what is Netflix’s visual oeuvre, exactly? I’ve assembled a few of Netflix’s most glaring quirks below, which you’ve probably noticed as well. And if Bobby from Queer Eye designed every damn set himself, it wouldn’t surprise me either. [Read the Full Story]( [LiveIntent Logo]( [AdChoices Logo]( Follow Us [Unsubscribe]( | [Privacy Notice]( | [CA Notice at Collection]( Esquire is a publication of Hearst Magazines. ©2024 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This email was sent by Hearst Magazines, 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019-3779