Cool people like cool things, which is why we asked Zach Sokol to share a taste of his taste on Perfectly Imperfect.

Zach Sokol is a writer, editor, and photographer based in NYC. He and Asher Penn run the incredible Sex Magazine that’s featured everyone from Paul Schrader to 100 Gecs. Their 13th issue is for sale now and it has a great Drain Gang cover, a cool PI ad, and interviews with people like RXKNephew, Miyako Bellizzi, The Perfume Nationalist, Allie Rowbottom, and Tom Tuna. Zach is also the founder of Cash Only, a new-ish interview series that’s kinda like if Perfectly Imperfect was focused on drugs. Previously, he ran editorial at Snoop Dogg’s weed media company MERRY JANE and before that he was a writer/editor at VICE. He’s written for publications like Playboy, i-D, The Paris Review, Fader, and High Times. Lucky for us, Zach is here to tell us what he’s been into.

Without further ado

Zach Sokol (instagram, twitter, website)

🚬💨 Cigarette Snuffers

A few years ago, my friend Sara gave me this big Ziploc that was full to the brim with lighters, which a pothead like me can never have enough of. There was also a ceramic cigarette snuffer in the bag. In case you’re not familiar, you place these tchotchkes in the middle of your ashtray. They’re made of porcelain, ceramic, or resin, and have a hole in the center that you put your cigarette or joint inside of when you want to extinguish it without snubbing it out for good.

I chainsmoke. Marlboro 27s or Amsterdam Shag during the day, non-stop spliffs after sundown (I’m a vampire stoner). It’s a nasty habit, but smoking alleviates my OCD symptoms and prevents me from, like, counting in my head or doing other magical thinking rigmaroles. Before my cigarette snuffers, I would rip through smokes and waste a good 50% of each. Now, I can take a couple drags or have a lil cheeky toke and then put the bastard out. This has probably saved me ounces and ounces of weed over the years. 

A couple times a year, I’ll buy a new pack of snuffers on eBay — like this clown one, or these translucent skull guys. They make smoking a more efficient and less ashy process. Plus, I use these Santa Fe incense (the Hickory-scented ones) which fit neatly on the snuffers, and help cover the smell of smoke. 

📚 Alissa Bennett’s Zines

I don’t personally know Alissa Bennett, but I think she is a brilliant and funny person who has clearly lived a vibrant life. A friend of mine once said about himself, “I’m not a journalist; I just live this shit.” I think this mantra (with the tweak, “I’m just really interested in this shit”) applies to Bennett’s writing and various projects — from her burner IG @regret_counter and podcast, to the next-level zines she publishes. Those zines though, wow! The writing is so intimate, confident, and, well, perfectly imperfect (sorry, sorry…).

I like that every other paragraph has a typo, that she will frequently and flagrantly use cap-locks, and that she essentially unpacks the indiscretions of fringe tabloid figures in order to exhume her own demons and make sense of her past and present. It’s got a very “warts and all” vibe, and I respect that she’s willing to air her own dirty laundry in service of establishing a spiritual connection to the subjects of her texts. That’s not to say she goes easy on them, but it all feels empathetic instead of exploitative or solipsistic. 

Rarely do I audibly laugh while reading, but Bennett’s work consistently makes me LOL. Generally, I prefer when people write the way they talk. Her essays feel like the coolest girl at the bar is whispering (and occasionally shouting) a very good story directly in your ear, but she also doesn’t really care whether you like the story or not. She already knows it’s good.

Start with “Bad Behavior,” which is a series of essays/love letters to various semi-public figures who engaged in specific, scandalous acts. Then hit “Pretend You’re Actually Alive.” Most of the zines are sold out, but I’m sure she’d send you a PDF if you ask nicely. There’s also a new one on the way.

🍄💊🚿 Drug Showers

One of my best friends, Julia, lives in Berlin. She used to send me a selfie on Sunday evenings after she had returned home from a Berghain bender and taken a shower. Her pupils would always be gigantic, but she’d look so fresh, clean, and downright happy after washing away the sins from The Big House. Over the years, I took a note from her playbook, and would always make it a part of the party process to take a shower after a night consuming drugs and shuffling the feet on a sticky dance floor. 

That said, this is a tricky line to walk that can easily lead to a broken neck or bad trip. And no one wants their bloated corpse to be discovered in a cramped Brooklyn bathroom with the water still running (RIP Brittany Murphy). So I have a few tips for ensuring that your drug shower will be a rejuvenating success, regardless of what substance(s) you’re on:

1. Make sure the bathroom is clean prior to getting in the shower. The last thing you want is to be staring at a moldy shower liner or some bathtub grime while you’re coming down. Just be wary of going speed freak mode and wasting an hour or three cleaning grit with a toothbrush — been there!

2. Do NOT look in the mirror prior to your drug shower. Trust me. When you’re tripping on mushrooms, or your heart is ker-thumping from a pressed pill — and you’re still all sweaty and nasty from the function — looking in the mirror will only lead to an existential crisis. You’ll see a skull with skin stretched across it, not a face. Your pupils may scare the shit out of you. There’s even the risk of Beelzebub himself appearing in the reflection. Wait until after the shower, and then give yourself a good stare — only then will you think you’re glowing, not rotting away.

3. Decide what you want to do after your drug shower while in the middle of your drug shower. While I endorse the idea that you should figure out what you want to do after you’re high before you get high, this is an exception to the rule. The shower will drown out all the chemical-spurred noise in your head and you can clarify to yourself how you want to spend your come down, all while doing something tranquilizing and hygienic. I also feel like setting a goal or making a list in your head while on drugs/sudsing your body can lead to some mental tangents that just may spark a mini-epiphany — or, at the least, a terrible startup idea. Drone haircuts, anyone?

4. Brush your teeth. You’ll really get in there! Remember the scene in Adaptation where Meryl Streep snorts that green orchid powder and the drugs kick in while she’s scrubbing away at those pearly whites? She calls Chris Cooper shortly after and says, “Very happy now…” and then they make a dial tone using their voices. Doesn’t that look like fun? Man, do I wish I still got that stoned…

5. Put on clean clothes after your drug shower (duh). “Orgasmic” feels a bit much, so let’s say you’ll be “snug as a bug,” without bugging out!

⏳🌀 Embracing “Time as a Construct”

This may sound like some stoner shit, but bear with me here. People like to talk about “constructs,” whether gender or the indica/sativa binary. Yes, sure, that’s all accurate. But to me, TIME is the biggest construct of them all. Lots of people in New York sometimes get wrapped up in “hustle culture,” blocking out our calendars with hour-by-hour tasks, and late capitalism/globalization/etc. We tend to forget time is an abstract thing we’ve all embraced. It may be a dimension, but its societal function is still made up! Time rules my brain and my OCD stuff is deeply entrenched in things pertaining to seconds, minutes, hours. So it’s a huge relief to remind myself that this organizing principle of human life can be bent and molded. 

My buddy Dan and I have this ongoing project that documents instances of traditional EST time being warped. Years back, he worked at a salmon cannery in Alaska. He claims that one day he went into his boss’s office and saw either a 60- or 100-hour clock because the workers would have something like 60 hours on the clock, 40 hours off. It supposedly had a psychological effect that made shifts feel shorter, or prevented employees from losing their marbles and killing the foreman with one of those big serrated knives they use to gut fish. 

Over the years, we’ve found lots of instances of time being messed with, from this Wikipedia page on calendar reform ideas, this odd clock, and this 28-hour watch, to Val Kilmer flat-out saying he doesn’t subscribe to the idea of time. I also think about this drug delivery service I once copped from in Mexico. You have to plan your day around making an order because the dealer is “not true to time,” as my connect warned. But that makes sense, since it’s considered a “polychronic” country and dealers don’t operate within a 9-5 work structure. Anyway, there are definitely like-minded time benders out there.

Finally, I would be remiss not to mention the Norwegian “Island of No Time,” which declared itself a “time-free zone” because Sommarøy doesn’t have sundown for something like three-month stretches. The townspeople said they wanted to opt out of the global clock because locals “cut the lawn at 4AM” anyway. The whole thing was mostly a publicity stunt to attract more tourism, but one day I intend to visit the Island of No Time and make some sort of project about all this stuff I’m describing. I will prove that time flies when you’re having fun!!!

🔊🔊🔊 SoundCloud Mixes

I prefer to work while listening to music, but I get distracted if there are too many lyrics. As a result, I listen to a lot of electronic music, and SoundCloud (and sometimes Mixcloud) is the best platform to hear a DJ set. I made a few mixes during the pandemic, which you can listen to here. I’m not great at physically mixing records — CDJs are easy enough, but beatmatching on wax is a truly difficult craft I respect! — so I often sample a movie quote or YouTube deep cut to transition between tunes. If you want to hear real DJs, below is a collection of sets, mixes, and a couple radio shows I’ve been hitting as of late. Vibe-wise, they lean towards 303s, Drexciya-era electro, early UK dubstep/bass, and film score gems — in other words, downright slappers left and right.

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