Long Legs and Tall Tales: A Showgirl's Wacky, Sexy Journey to the Playboy Mansion and the Radio City Rockettes (29 page)

But not as scary as our descent. It felt as if the pilot had been daydreaming and flying on “autopilot” so to speak, only to suddenly realize we were directly atop our destination. “Oops…there’s Singapore. Almost flew right past it. Better land this baby pronto!” He abruptly proceeded to nosedive the plane straight down. In a matter of seconds, the plane went from a comfortable horizontal position to a hair-raising vertical one—the world’s longest rollercoaster plunge. All you could see whizzing by outside the windows were green-gray clouds the color of our petrified faces. I really felt as if we could be plummeting to our deaths. Porsche was a fearful flier to begin with and this was taking her fears to an entirely new level. I would have been twice as terrified myself had I not needed to be strong for her and keep her from panicking. Porsche sunk her fingernails into my arm and didn’t let go until we were safely on the ground. 

I was thrilled that I lived, albeit with nail puncture wounds in my arms, because Singapore was absolute heaven. Our hotel was gorgeous and we got our own, plush rooms. We swam in the palm tree-lined pool and dined on fresh, tropical fruits. The restaurant had an exquisite international menu. We no longer starved. I was on an exotic vacation.

Our show venue was The Heartthrob Club (Wasn’t the name apropos?)—a trendy, tiny disco bar within a stylish high-end hotel complex. Monday through Friday we had a 9 p.m. and a 12 a.m. show; on Saturday we had only a 12 a.m. show. Let me tell you, it’s not easy getting cranked up to perform at midnight, especially if that’s the first show of the evening. By that time, I was ready to snuggle up in my p.j.s in my cozy bed. But such is the nocturnal life of a performer. You have to find a way to turn it on at all hours. Actually, that’s a great life skill: no matter how tired, sick, depressed, bored, or afraid you may be feeling, when the show must go on, you have to find a way to look entertaining. Most of the time, I found a way.

The stage, a four-foot-high carpeted, raised platform built to house a few musicians, was barely big enough to fit the eight of us at one time. Had the puny Heartthrob seen the ample Dynasty in Jakarta, it would have certainly had stage envy. Once again, we had to creatively adjust our choreography to fit the reduced space. 

The house band didn’t even bother to move their instruments so we had to perform in front of their setup. This left us with a depth of about four feet—an extremely tight squeeze for dancing. Depth-wise we could maybe fit three people standing one behind the other if we held our breath (possibly only two people if Mallory and her protruding D-cups were in the back row). This made passing each other and changing locations like two cars going in opposite directions on a one-lane mountainside road. You must travel with care or risk falling off the edge. Width-wise we could just fit the whole cast if we stood straight with our arms to our sides like pencils. Not exactly ideal for a dance show. It was a challenge not to whack your neighbor in the face or step on each other’s toes when doing the moves. 

If you wish to experience something similar, try cramming as many people (all in bathing suits and high heels) as you can into your smallest bathroom, and then do jumping jacks as you switch places (without hitting each other, of course). Now try to look sexy enough doing it that people would pay lots of money to watch. 

Even more of a challenge was our “dressing room,” which had probably once served as a small storage space. We needed a shoe horn to wedge all eight of us in. Changing costumes in such close quarters gave the term “press the flesh" a whole new meaning. Talk about the cast becoming close.

The bigger problem was that the dressing room was located on the opposite end of the club from the stage, so we had to push through the patrons to get to and from stage as our body guard, Malcolm, cleared a path and fended off touchy-feely fans. This was no easy task as the bar was packed so tightly with people that there was barely room to walk. Bodies were even pressed against the stage. The fire marshal must have been paid off, because there were far more people packed into that venue than could legally be served. People could easily reach out and grab us at any time. Plus, it made it difficult to time entrances—you never knew for certain how long it would take you to reach your destination. You just had to change costumes as quickly as possible and get right back out there.

Being a Bunny certainly had its perks: Wealthy businessmen presented us with $400 bottles of Dom Pérignon, which we felt obligated to drink or risk offending them. Not that I had a problem with sipping some of the world’s finest champagne now and then. We were also given dozens of roses, brooches made of real orchids dipped in twenty-four-karat-gold, and gold pens inscribed with our names. We even signed autographs. I felt like a star.

The gifts, all the spoiling, and having men wrapped around our little fingers were fabulous fringe benefits of being famous (mind you, this was low on the totem pole of fame). Star treatment was not always amusing, however. Did I actually say presents, pampering, and men at my mercy weren’t enough to keep me blissfully happy at all times? I can hardly believe it myself. But the truth is, being “famous” meant that, when we were in public, we had to be careful what we looked like, did, and said. We were essentially on stage all the time. 

People never left us alone. We had about an hour of free time in between our 9:00 p.m. show and our midnight show, and since all eight of the cast members plus Malcolm and Val in the dressing room would have been about as comfortable as ten people and eight piles of laundry jammed into a phone booth, the only place we could hang out and put our feet up was at the restaurant downstairs. That being the case, we were in the public eye and fervent fans would barge in on us throughout our breaks. We had to be “on” even when we were off. It was exhausting. While extremely thankful for the enthusiasts (they bought tickets and were the reason we had a job after all), we would have preferred they give us some space to rest and rejuvenate before our second show.

We also felt like we had to be made up and looking attractive every time we left our hotel rooms, for we never knew when a crazy fan would show up at the hotel to snap pictures of us. There was no jumping out of bed, throwing on a wrinkled T-shirt and jeans, putting the hair in a ponytail, and grabbing a quick breakfast. Not unless we were okay with being the subject of one of those tabloid-type photos where the unsuspecting star is caught looking—God forbid—anything less than perfectly coiffed and gorgeous. Then the truth would be out that we were human and had bad hair days and the occasional zit. We even had to have our calls screened. It was my little taste of fame. I now understand why celebrities end up punching paparazzi.

*******

In Singapore, too, we were subjected to government censors. They watched our show during rehearsal to make sure everything was kosher. It wasn’t. We had to tame down certain moves they considered too sexy, like Kylie’s deep knee bend with legs apart in front of a bar stool. In ballet, it’s a standard warm-up step called “plié à la seconde” but it is done at the
barre
, not the
bar stool
. It hardly seemed a bend worth banning. Then again, Kylie could make even the ultra goofy Chicken Dance look seductive (and I mean to humans, not just to chickens), so maybe the censors had a point. Regardless, it was frightening; you never knew when you were going too far or what you would do that would offend or be illegal. 

The police also objected to Satin going into the audience and greeting men during “Making Whoopee.” No physical contact between performer and patron, they told us, and please keep the action on stage. Like the M.C. Hammer song, “You Can’t Touch This,” one newspaper article title summed it up: “You can see, but you cannot touch.” Rhonda, too, caused a big ordeal when she indecently exposed herself, according to the government censors: For our finale we wore gold bikinis with gold blazers over top and her blazer button came undone, thereby revealing the bikini. We were in trouble and had to talk our way out of it by claiming it was an accident—a spontaneous costume malfunction of sorts. 

Later Rhonda admitted, “I did it on purpose just to tick them off!” She wasn’t about to be told what she could and couldn’t do by some foreign guys with ridiculous rules and regulations. While I certainly admired her spunk, I wouldn’t have pulled that stunt for anything. If chewing gum was illegal, I wasn’t about to risk getting thrown in a foreign jail for purposely antagonizing officials. Wanting to make sure I safely returned to the good, ol’ U.S. of A., I thought it prudent to follow the laws when in another country, so I vigilantly checked the security of the buttons on my blazer every show. What I learned: I LOVE OUR COUNTRY! We truly have freedoms other countries don’t. God Bless America! And let me pop my buttons in peace!

The hoopla over the inappropriateness of our show continued to dumbfound me, as it was   much more tasteful, decent, and mainstream than what one might expect of Playboy. It wasn’t a show a teenage boy would have to hide under his mattress for fear of his parents finding it. The performers got high marks for sex appeal, certainly, but Playboy wasn’t giving it all away in their stage show; you had to buy the magazine to get the entire package. And yet the government censors preferred it even more watered down. Some of the audience members, however, were hoping for more excitement. One newspaper quoted a “disappointed banker” who lamented, “I thought the girls would take their tops off. Now that we have R-rated movies, I thought maybe the authorities might let the girls go topless.” 

The poor guy. I felt for him. But not enough to dispose of my shirt. Just thinking about all those poor Singaporean men who are missing out on those “Hot, Live, Nude Girls!”-type of establishments brings a tear to my eye. Or not. I bet the native men in those “primitive” villages in Africa where the women have never worn a shirt in their lives (You know the ornately bejeweled females with free-range bosoms who are always photographed for
National Geographic
?) are not obsessed with breasts. They get a free peek 24/7. No need for topless dancers.

Newspaper articles also devoted column inches to wondering whether or not the wives of the husbands who attended the show knew they were there. “No, she doesn’t, but I’m not doing anything wrong!” one man angrily defended himself. Many claimed their wives had given permission. A small contingency of wives even joined in on the fun.

Not all of them were impressed. Some newspaper quotes included “I expected something more. I thought the show would be more erotic and the girls more gorgeous,” and “The girls are very attractive, like the contestants for Miss World, but I thought the show was only just passable.” I’m sure I would have come in with high expectations myself.

In general the newspaper reviews were positive, most agreeing that we were stunningly beautiful (I’ll take the compliment!) and that there truly was talent among us. As if physical beauty precludes any other abilities. Although, maybe it should. It doesn’t seem fair for some to get not only jaw-droppingly good looks but talent as well. Perhaps the “beautiful” people should naturally be dumb as a donut just to even the score a bit.

The title of one article read, “Song and Dance Bunnies: Who says Playboy bunnies can’t sing and dance? We talk to seven who can. And their sizzling show bears testimony.” (Side note: It wasn’t that only seven of the eight cast members had talent and one was a dud; rather, the night the article was written, we were down a performer—see below.) Kylie and I were pictured in our black leather outfits combing our hair in the dressing room, serious looks on our faces as if we were about to go out and prove we were more than just pretty.

Another paper claimed the audience was “mesmerized by the leggy, voluptuous and scantily-clad women.” Yet another read, “Playboy Girls bowl over a mostly-male crowd.” The accompanying photo was the revealing rear view of Jasmine in her open-air chaps during her country and western solo. Perhaps not Jasmine’s first choice of how she’d like to see herself represented in print but, lucky for her, she was extremely photogenic from all sides.

My antibiotics had finally started kicking in and I was feeling much better. Unfortunately, our lead singer, Rhonda (the missing performer I mentioned above) had become frighteningly sick with malaria, probably contracted from a mosquito during our trip through the countryside to Bandung. Let’s not even entertain the idea that her purposeful bikini exposure had given her some sort of bad karma. She truly looked like death—ghastly white with blue-gray lips. Malcolm sent word of her grave illness to her church back in Vegas, and before we could even find a doctor who made house calls, there were faithful Mormons praying at her bedside.

The combination of the Church of Latter Day Saints and
Playboy
seemed odd. “Let us pray for sister Rhonda, so that she will quickly be back on her feet dressed like a tart and gyrating to rock and roll, spreading the good news of
Playboy
throughout the land…”—but I gave the Mormons a lot of credit for suspending judgment and offering her loving support in spite of what some might consider a sinful career. 

Not only were we deeply concerned about our dear friend’s health, but we were also down a lead singer. Remember how I had yearned for the singer’s spot? Well, be careful what you wish for; you just might get it. I did. “Kristi, you’ll be taking over Rhonda’s track,” Val informed me, and I immediately began rehearsing her lyrics and choreography for that night’s show. It was a crash course—like cramming for a test in school. Talk about pressure.

Luckily, Val had the foresight to bring a backup vocal tape in case of just such an emergency, so all I had to do was lip sync, thank goodness. I was in no position to learn to sing like Aretha Franklin if I practiced for a lifetime let alone just one afternoon. I felt conspicuous, however, because no one with decent hearing and eyesight would believe Rhonda’s raspy rock voice was coming out of my mouth. But the show must go on.