Bunny Tales (10 page)

The attic is also where all of the movies are kept, as well as the video department. Hef is a huge fan of classic movies and documentaries and is a dedicated film collector. He currently has more than 4,000 movies in his library on three-quarter tape or DVD. There’s a full-time staff of people in a control room, who TiVo and tape better versions of old movies, documentaries, history programs, etc. There’s also a staff whose primary job is to transfer film from three-quarter tape to DVD. The video department also videotaped shows for all of us when we we’re gone, so that we could watch them later; they also kept an eye out for any news regarding, or mention of, Hef and Playboy.

There is also a basement area used for the laundry, and storage, with a creepy underground walkthrough to the gym, which itself is located underground. Besides the main house, the property also has a guesthouse, a four-bedroom cottage with shabby décor that houses Playmate hopefuls and Playmates who visit. The guesthouse is really outdated and needs a makeover; I heard that Holly was undertaking a remodel, and I certainly hope she was successful. Located beside the guesthouse is an aviary, which is home to many exotic birds—as well as fish—which I am sure served to wake the guests bright and early. On the other side of the guesthouse is the beautifully maintained tennis court, with benches and a bar area and tables. That is were the haunted house is built for the annual Halloween party. I used to take my pugs to the court every day and play soccer with them using one of the tennis balls.

If you follow the path running through the front yard from the guesthouse, you will find the game house, with the infamous padded-floor room (the carpeted floor has a very thick pad underneath to make it bed-like), which is surrounded by mirrors and TVs. The floor in that room is soft, but it is by no means a mattress. Maybe it was at one time, back in the swinging ‘70s, but it has been worn in and worn out long ago. Besides pinball machines, a pool table, and several video games, the game room also has two other connected bedrooms; the red room and blue room—named after the color of the sheets and accessories. All you will find in these rooms are a bed, a ceiling mirror, and a phone. These rooms are very popular during parties, when they provide mischievous guests privacy for sexual liaisons or other interesting activities. Beside the game house, among the trees and shrubs, is the pet cemetery, where metal plaques commemorate the lives of beloved pets such as Mama Dog and Dior, Kimberly Hefner’s beloved Doberman.

On the other side of the main house is the backyard. The grounds of the Mansion are definitely the most beautiful things about the entire property. When you walk out of the great hall into the backyard, you find yourself in paradise. Hef always told us that this is not what the grounds looked like when he bought the house, and it took a while for him to transform it into his own Shangri-la. First there is a large green lawn where the exotic birds roam. In the summer, a volleyball net is set up in the middle of the lawn, and there is also a large trampoline out there all year round. To the right is a tropical lagoon pool with a waterfall. Hef said he chose a naturalistic pool with rocks to blend in with the beautiful property because he just could not imagine putting a square cement pool back there. The pool is a variation of a kidney shape, and it wraps itself around a small hill; if you go all the way back around the pool you will find a path that leads to the top of the hill from where waterfalls plunge into the pool. Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, girls used to suntan there naked and couples snuck out there to make love in the sun or under the stars. Maybe that is why helicopters still fly over the Mansion grounds almost every day, often circling repeatedly over the pool area. Also, on the top of this hideaway, embedded into the ground, is a large piece of stained glass, which, if you peek through, shows you the grotto underneath.

The pool is connected to the infamous Grotto by two passages: one is a few feet under the water through a rock—I never swam through it because it gave me a claustrophobic feeling. And the other entrance is under a waterfall. The grotto is amazing. It feels like a romantic cave. It is warm, cozy, quiet, and seductive. The grotto is a combination of the pool with its cold waters and five hot-water whirlpools—you can walk right from the cold water into the hot water of the whirlpools. The whirlpools are all different; there is one that is like a bed—the water is only a foot or so deep so that people can lay in it. Another is very small but deep, a full body space—you just stand in it, and the pressure massages your entire body. Yet another is a cozy little sit-down, and the main, largest whirlpool is about waist-deep with the sitting area all along the side of it. Big white candles are scattered around the grotto. There are also green mattress pads (like you would find on a futon) conveniently placed in the remote dark nooks of the grotto.

The pool and grotto are connected to a series of bathrooms, changing rooms, and showers that feel like they are outdoors—one wall of the shower is glass that faces the outside but is blocked from public view by luscious tropical plants. This area leads to a narrow winding staircase, down into the basement area connected to the house, where you find a well-equipped gym, as well as a steam room and a room with two professional tanning beds. On the other side of the pool is a Koi pond, also the favorite hangout of many ducks. One of my favorites was Zeus the goose (he was a Canadian goose, so I felt a particular bond with him), who passed away when I lived at the Mansion. We all loved him; he used to cruise around when the girls were tanning and hang out with them. I think he had a thing for Bunnies. He kept quacking at you as if he was telling you something. Hef wanted to get another goose, but we were afraid we could not find another like Zeus. There were several other birds that became favorites such as the trumpeter who loved being around people; the trumpeters are a small family of birds restricted to the forests of the Amazon basin in South America. They are named for the trumpeting call of the males. They are dumpy birds with long necks and legs and chicken-like bills. There was also the nutty African crane that would stalk us. I was always afraid he was going to nip at me. There are also pink flamingos and beautiful peacocks walking the grounds, as well as many other rare and exotic birds in the aviary. My favorite was Corolla, a Moluccan cockatoo usually found in the Philippines and the Moluccan and Indonesian islands. Moluccans are light pink to salmon colored with a beautiful large orange crest. Corolla is darling; she would say hello and always put on a show, which consisted of wing flapping and exaggerated head movements, when you came to visit her. She stuck out her foot to indicate that she wanted you to take her with you, but once you did she refused to go back to the other birds; she was happy to stay with you. I always told Hef that I would steal her some day.

Next to Corolla’s day hangout (the birds spent the night in the aviary but were brought out during the day into the backyard, where they had tree posts with umbrellas to hang out on) was the zoo. Hef is one of the very few individuals in the country who is lucky enough to have a private zoo license. Most of the occupants are monkeys, such as the squirrel monkeys that you can hand feed. Grapes and bananas are placed in a little container by the cages, and you can walk in and they will gently take the grape out of your hand with their tiny little hands, peel off the skin, and eat the juicy inside. There were also two bigger monkeys, Coco and Pepe, who tried to scare you off when you walked by, hurling themselves at the bars of the cage. We also had bunnies and an owl that had been injured and was living out her last days in the safety of the Mansion grounds. We had a kinkajou—a nocturnal animal which lives in trees and looks like a cross between a monkey and a raccoon—which we used to sneak down and take a peek at nightly. (Though they are usually found in rainforests, a kinkajou named Baby Luv has recently been spotted on the red carpet with Paris Hilton!) Whenever things got stressful and chaotic in the main house, it was so relaxing and wonderful to walk around the grounds and spend time with the animals.

Last but not least, on the roof of the house are two huge gargoyles. I think they are awesome, but they stay covered the entire year; they only get uncovered for Halloween. At the Halloween party, they flap their wings and breathe smoke. I asked why they stay covered most of the time, and I was told that they are unsightly and would scare people. More unsightly than two blobs on the roof covered and wrapped in cloth? Yeah,
that
doesn’t look ugly. I know they look ferocious, but they are there to ward off evil spirits and are nothing to be afraid of. Plus, with all the characters always coming to the house, Hef needs all the help he can get keeping the bad ones out.

As for the furniture in the house, it is an eclectic collection. There are some nice pieces such as the desk in the great hall and the hand-carved throne chairs, and the furniture in Hef’s formal office is quite nice; however, the rest of it is just worn out and shabby looking. It has been around since the ‘70s and maybe even longer. I imagine some pieces came with the house. Certain things have been replaced as need arose, and so the house is furnished with a random collection of things that do not necessarily belong together. It is not what I imagined it would be like. If they ever liquidate the estate and auction off the furnishings, I would advise the Smithsonian to put a bid in early on some of these ancient treasures. I have been to houses of celebrities and wealthy businessmen, houses that are beautiful and spectacular as expected. The Playboy Mansion, however, is just shabby inside, much to my surprise. The most beautiful parts of the Mansion are the architectural built-ins, such as the wood carvings in Hef’s room or the staircase. In my opinion, the greatest accessory of the house is a small Salvador Dalí painting hanging in the alcove between the dining room and the great hall. I am a big Dalí fan, and I was fortunate enough to see his works, my favorite piece among them, when I studied in Spain. I always thought if the Mansion was on fire, I would grab my two pugs and the Dalí. I just could not understand why Hef did not care as much about the general appearance of the interior of the Mansion as he did about the outside. I suppose he was more focused on the beautiful women surrounding him than he was on his actual surroundings. Maybe it’s because the Playboy Corporation wants to maintain it in its “original” décor, to keep it the way it was during Playboy’s heyday so that after Hef passes, it can become a museum. Hef has said repeatedly in interviews that he would like the Mansion to be purchased by the Playboy Foundation and used as a Graceland-type attraction. He wants to perpetuate the legend and mythology related to Playboy.

Or maybe it’s because Hef does not own the house and the company keeps a tight budget on furnishings? Many people do not realize that Hef does not own the house; Playboy Enterprises and its shareholders own the house. I was shocked to learn that. Before we moved in, the other girls and I learned that the reason Hef was so particular about who moved into the Mansion was that he had to pay rent on each of the rooms. And the rent is ridiculously high: at one time he mentioned he had to pay something like $8,000 to $10,000 a month for my tiny room, and even more for the two bigger ones! If I remember correctly, he pays $25,000 a month for his own bedroom. You could rent a gorgeous beach house with that amount of money, even here in the over-the-top housing market of L.A.

The bedrooms were in an even more inferior state than the common areas downstairs. Each bedroom had unmatched pieces of furniture; the bed frame, dresser, table, and desk were all different colors, types of wood, and even period styles. It was like someone went to the Goodwill and bought what she could in order to provide the basics for each room. I give credit to each Girlfriend for her decorating skills and being able to give each room some personality. Besides our mismatched furniture, our bed mattresses were old. I don’t know how old they were, but they were worn out and stained; it was disgusting. You would think Hef could buy new ones so that we did not have to sleep on soiled mattresses. It simply wasn’t in the budget, I guess. The sheets were also used. When Emma and I moved in, we asked Hef if we could have some money to furnish our rooms, to get mattress pads and new bed sheets that would be used only by us, and get a few things to decorate the rooms. Thankfully he agreed to give us a few hundred dollars; we had to turn in all of the receipts for things we bought and were reimbursed. Because I had to give up my own apartment when I moved into the Mansion, even though I was still paying rent on it, I brought over some of my personal belongings to fill the room. In the end we managed to turn our Mansion rooms into livable and cozy spaces.

Hef also permitted us to have the rooms painted and recarpeted. For some reason he strongly preferred creamy white-colored carpet for the Girlfriends. We asked for darker carpets, but we were refused. He liked our rooms to look like little girl rooms, white carpet and pink walls. The white carpet looked great at first, but with two dogs and butlers delivering food in dirty shoes and occasionally spilling things, the carpet was gray and stained in a matter of three months. And even though we lived there for more than two years, we were not allowed to replace the carpet again. We had to live with that dirty stained carpet until we left. But I am not surprised Hef did not care about our carpets: the one in his bedroom had not been changed for years. It was literally the color of diarrhea. It became significantly worse when Holly moved in with her first dog and then got another. The dogs were not housebroken and relieved themselves on the carpet. Many a late night or early morning we stepped in her dog’s pee, or worse, poop. When we used to go to see Hef on Friday morning to get our allowances, we always had to wait a few minutes as he walked around to pick up the poops. Holly finally talked him into having the carpet replaced when we went away on a trip. Unfortunately, the carpet chosen for him by the staff was dark blue with different colored patterns, which made poop-spotting much more difficult. Poor Hef used to strain his eyes looking around in the mornings, and our accidental step-ins increased. I saw on their reality show that she got two more dogs—that’s four dogs! I imagine it’s just one poop landmine after another in Hef’s room.