Bunny Tales (22 page)

“Ha ha ha . . . we got you,” they would say.

“That’s it, I am getting all of your sorry asses fired when I get home,” I would joke back.

Even if I wanted to play Monopoly again, I couldn’t. It wasn’t worth dealing with all of the butlers, not to mention Emma when she found out—she never let me forget that one time I played Monopoly. In the limo while we talked to Hef about a possible trip to Miami or about company news, Bridget and Holly would talk about another trip to Disneyland.

But they were not the only ones who were immature. Because Holly appeared to be preoccupied with her breasts, Emma would always comment on how huge my or other girls’ breasts were to irritate Holly. I was so mad at her. Emma was trying to get to Holly, but at the same time, she was involving me in a conflict I could do without. I did not care who had the biggest or best boobs in the group. We all had different bodies, looked differently, and made decisions that suited us, individually. But Emma could not pass up an opportunity to unnerve Holly, and sometimes even I served as the means to that end.

The division within the group grew stronger with time. And Hef did not help the situation. We heard that they were called the A group and we were the B group. The A group apparently were the nice girls who really loved him, while we in the B group were the rebels who had their own agendas. Holly put this idea in Hef’s head and tried to make it a fact by doing a little article in the
Globe
. But as much as he liked the good girls, Hef also like the “bad” girls. Men are always drawn to what they can’t have. And even though we lived in his house, he did not “have” us. We were not devoted to him the way Holly and Bridget were. We reminded him of other girls, the ones that had fun and split. He could never make us Playmates, because he knew as soon as he did we would be gone. We were more fun; we had interesting ideas. We were the ones that always got all of the attention from boys and men. And Hef always gave us whatever we asked for.

There was a constant battle between the two sides; in our eyes it was a battle between good and evil. Some would say it was a battle for power, but for me, it wasn’t about power. For me it was about getting what we deserved and staying under Hef’s radar. For the other girls, it was about making us miserable, making sure we didn’t get our way, and ultimately, getting rid of us. It was like
Survivor: The Playboy Mansion
, with every girl scheming behind the others’ backs, trying to build the strongest alliance to make sure she wouldn’t get voted off. At one of the Mansion parties, I actually saw Jeff Probst, the host of
Survivor
, standing at the bar, and I decided to speak with him. I introduced myself and told him I wanted to try out for the show. He told me I had no chance of surviving, but I begged to differ. “I have lived here for over a year, Jeff, and have battled many beasts, and that doesn’t even include the animals. I can handle mental torture; I still live here after all. And I am used to the wildlife . . . . We have monkeys, fish, African cranes that like to chase us around.... I can do it.” Entertained but unconvinced, Jeff told me to send a tape in, but I never did. I have become friends with Tommy Lee lookalike
Survivor
alum Robb Z, and he told me that it was much more difficult than it appears on television. I took his word for it and resigned myself to simply watching the show.

There were the rare times when we all got along, when we actually had fun as a group. Usually it involved doing a project we were all excited about like when we did a photo shoot for Italian
Vogue
or
Paris Match
. It was glamorous and exciting, and we all had fun with it. And there were tender moments such as when we all went to see the decorated houses on Candy Cane Lane. It was all of us girls, Hef’s sons Marston and Cooper, and even Roxy’s daughter and Emma’s son came along. We had hot chocolate and cookies and a lot of Christmas spirit. We stuck our heads out of the limo rooftop and cheered for the houses we liked the most. Those times were special and I treasure them, but they were few and far between. By and large, the relationship among the girls was so ridiculous and emotional and crazy that it would have made for the best reality show ever, a
real
reality show, not something packaged. It was by far the worst thing about living inside that demented bubble.

I would like nothing more than to believe that Holly’s feelings for Hef are genuine and not motivated by money. However, I have reservations. I know Holly admires and loves everything about
Playboy
magazine, and she is dedicated to Hef inasmuch as she spends her time with him and does whatever he wants her to. But I specifically remember when I first moved in she talked about not wanting more girls to move into the Mansion, because it affected the amount of things she received from Hef. She said she used to get more when there were fewer girls and wanted to make sure that new girls did not move in so that this would continue. She cited specific possessions that led me to believe that she was very much aware and very focused on the material aspects of the relationship. There was also a rumor that she was going to stop taking the spending allowance, supposedly to prove that she was there for Hef and not the money. In my opinion, the motivation behind that was getting rid of us; if Hef really stopped giving us an allowance he would see who was there for the “right” reasons. She continuously repeated to me and the other girls that she was not going to leave, ever. “What am I going to do, go back to Hooters?” she said. She found her gravy train, and she was not getting off. In the meantime, it looked like she intended to make the ride bumpy for everyone else.

11: In Da Clubs
.

“I drink to make other people interesting.”

—George Jean Nathan

W
hy, you may ask, does a seventy-eight-year-old accomplished businessman want to go out every other night to nightclubs with people a third, or even a quarter, of his age? Why would this inveterate jazz fan, who actually launched the Chicago Jazz Festival, subject himself to blaring, pounding hiphop music made by people he’s never heard of? How can he possibly get any satisfaction or pleasure out of this? Sure there’s the self-promotion angle—Hef is the living, breathing embodiment of the Playboy brand. Publicity is one of the main reasons he continues to go out. Everybody likes to be seen and noticed and catered to. But there is another motivation for going out: girls.

Out in the clubs is where Hef can meet new Girlfriends—and he’s always looking. Outside of Holly and Bridget, he wasn’t really getting much action at the Mansion. And if he went out, then he could have an after-party in his room and invite girls back. And you’d be surprised how many girls we met who, inside of two minutes, would want to come home with us. They wanted to ride in the limo, go to the Mansion and drink champagne, and have sex with Hef. Most of those girls had the illusion that he’d make them Playmates if they slept with him. Many others wanted to become Girlfriends, but there were some who simply wanted to sleep with an icon or were just curious and sexually adventurous. And so it is not a coincidence that the two nights a week that we went out, usually Wednesdays and Fridays, were also the two “sex nights.”

The night would start off with all of us meeting downstairs in the great hall. Most of the time, it was the seven steady Girlfriends (if we didn’t have seven official Girlfriends, then there were usually “potential Girlfriends”), as well as guests such as the girls who came to test for
Playboy
or girls shooting their Playmate centerfolds. The girls who came to shoot their centerfolds usually stayed in the guesthouse for a couple of weeks and were always invited to go out with us, and many times they ended up coming to the bedroom as well. Sometimes other Playmates came out with us; after her very public divorce, Shauna Sand came out with us regularly. I think she just needed to be cheered up.

When we were all gathered and after taking pictures (the first of
many
pictures taken throughout the night), we would hop in our limo, where Hef would take pictures again. Our limo was awesome, a white Hummer with spinners, leopard-print interior with Playboy bunny logos sewn into the seats, Dom Pérignon champagne, apple martinis, and a booming stereo system. In the limo, Hef would also hand out Quaaludes to whichever Girlfriends wanted them; he always broke them in half so that the girls didn’t get too rowdy. Quaaludes were supposed to give you a nice buzz—make you feel like you had a couple of drinks without the bloating. The problem was that some of the girls would also drink, and the combination was toxic. I would always accept one from him because I didn’t want to seem like a party pooper, but I very rarely took them, and to this day I have some left over. Hef confessed to me once that they used to call them “leg-openers” back in the day, because they made girls feel horny. That explained a lot. On the ride to the club, things were usually tame in the limo; we were just listening to the music and having a drink, getting warmed up for the club.

When we arrived and got out of the limo, an on-staff photographer and sometimes paparazzi would be there waiting and we would pose for pictures again. In the club, we would make our way to our usual roped-off area. We ordered drinks and scoped out the scene. I would laugh at Bridget and Holly’s dancing. I can’t tell you how many times girls came up to Emma and I and asked why, with all his millions, has Hef not paid for dance classes for Holly. The funny thing is that he did, but I think she took ’50s dancing (part of her plan to turn herself into Marilyn Monroe). Then there was Hef, so endearing doing the sprinkler and the shuffle, or pumping his elbows to the sounds of Eminem.

Hef had a lot more energy than all of us when it came to going out frequently and staying up late. It was always us who complained about being tired and feeling run-down, never him. Going out to clubs was a blessing and a curse. If we did not go out to clubs, we would not see the world as it existed after 9 p.m. That is a weird thing for anyone, let alone young women who crave attention. On the other hand, the fact that we
had to
go out,
always
on the same nights and to the s
ame
clubs, did get a little tiring. There were certain clubs we went to that were cheesy Hollywood clichés—the ones that attracted the rich older men crowd, the men who thought that their money could buy them young girls, and often it did. The girls who attended these clubs were suited to these expectations. Then there were clubs like Las Palmas or Concord, which had hot, funky young crowds and cute guys. This was where we thrived. From behind the velvet ropes, we flirted as much as we could. However anticlimactic the situation might have been, it was all we could do, and it got us by.

The thing that sucks about going out to clubs with Hef is that he gets comfortable with going to the same places for as long as they are operational. When I started out, it was Las Palmas on Wednesdays and Barfly on Fridays. After Las Palmas closed down, we alternated between Purple Lounge at the Standard, Ivar, and finally the Concorde when it opened. By the time Barfly closed, we were so sick of it. But Hef loved his Barfly. It was usually Emma who sat to the left of Hef, and then next it would be me and then Susan on my other side. We liked sitting on his left side because his left ear is the good ear, so it made talking to him much easier. Most people don’t know that he is deaf in his right ear, and there were many awkward times when he would turn his head so that they could talk into his left ear, but they didn’t get the hint and kept speaking in to his right; he would get frustrated and just yell, “I can’t hear you!” We always ordered this delicious thin-crust cheese pizza at Barfly (besides the previously mentioned edamame, it was the only thing he ever ate that was not prepared at home), and he always insisted on eating it and talking at the same time. Emma used to complain that he would spit little bits of pizza on her and, in fact, when I looked at her black outfit, I saw little bits everywhere. I laughed so hard. Next she noticed that her face would break out on the same side that he was sitting on and spoke to her from. Every time thereafter, when he started eating his pizza and turned to her to speak, we would just burst out laughing. She learned to quickly get up and dance. Needless to say, when Barfly closed down, Hef was disappointed. We started going to Bliss, but he would still reminisce about the pizza. Emma didn’t miss it.

Most people think it’s cool to be in a VIP area, so exclusive that it must be marked off with that crimson velvet rope—we didn’t. Oftentimes, we felt isolated, and we took every opportunity we could to go walk around; Emma even pretended to take up smoking. We wanted to mingle, we wanted to flirt with the cute boys that would be staring at us from afar, we wanted to be young and wild. Eventually Emma did take up smoking at the clubs so that she could have an excuse to get away from the table and go outside to the smoking area, and of course Susan and I would join her. Or we kept going to the bathroom every half an hour and we would walk through the whole club to get there. That was our time to talk to guys and exchange numbers or make plans or whatever. And while our/Hef’s security was constantly at our side, waiting for us outside of the bathroom doors, they never reported to Hef that we talked to guys, and if they did, he never did a thing about it.

Though it was nice to have the security most of the time, sometimes it was just too much. They were all cool guys, but we had too many with us all the time. Sometimes we would go to these small clubs and sit at the corner table or booth and they would line up around us like a wall. We couldn’t see a damn thing; people-watching was the reason we liked to go to clubs in the first place. Instead, on many nights we just sat there and stared at the backs of men in black suits. Wild times with Hef! It was ridiculous; you’d think the president was there instead of Hef. I couldn’t figure out the reason: was Hef in danger? If so, I would have liked to know about it.