Down the Rabbit Hole (25 page)

I was hyperaware of the public perception of Hef's harem of blondes, so part of me was convinced that Kendra, Bridget, and I were a total laughingstock. While promoting the show in New York, we were invited to be guests on the ABC daytime talk show
The View
. A producer placed Hef on a chair and strategically organized the three of us to perch around him. It was uncomfortable and awkward, but we were new to the game and wanted to be amenable. As soon as the cameras started rolling, Barbara Walters asked the three of us, “Do you always sit like this?” As if it had been our inane idea. In case I had somehow managed to drift off into blissful ignorance, Barbara Walters was there to remind us of how ridiculous we all appeared—and what a joke we were. Bridget and I wanted to crawl inside our own bodies and die. But Kendra . . . she just responded in an episode of
GND
that the hosts were all “haters” who needed boob jobs.

J
UST A FEW MONTHS
after the final episode of our first season aired, E! renewed
GND
for a second season. The premier of the second season would end up scoring a three-year ratings high for the network. In a way, I got what I had wished for. The fame for fame's sake I had grown to desire was now mine. It didn't make me happy, though. It was the emptiest kind of fame, not gained by producing quality work, but by being a curiosity: one of Hugh Hefner's three girlfriends.

During the filming of season one, a Playmate named Kara Monaco had come to live across the street from the mansion at the Bunny House. Kara and I had become close friends over the year and she even made quite a few cameos throughout the first season of the show. When 2006 rolled in, Kara was bestowed the highest honor a Playmate can receive: “Playmate of the Year.” She was on the cover of the June 2006 issue and featured in a gorgeous Cinderella-themed pictorial. Of course I was beyond happy for my friend, but I was also melancholy. Not only was a friend moving away, but her success reminded me of the dreams I had had when I moved in five years earlier. As Playmate of the Year, Kara would be graduating from the mansion and traveling the world for appearances and promotions. She was moving on with her life, in the same way I had once hoped to do.

At 27 years old, I felt positively ancient. It didn't help that with every batch of Playmate test shoots that trickled through Mary's office, I'd see memos on certain photos denoting a girl who was deemed “older.” “She's 28” was always something the Chicago photo editor (a male contemporary of Hef's) had to point out as if a prospective candidate was at death's door. After 28, according to them, a girl might as well put herself out to pasture.

As production crews rolled back in to shoot season two, I reluctantly decided I would do my best to accept my lot in life and aspire to one day be the only girlfriend at the mansion. After all, that is ultimately what I wanted. Wasn't it?

C
HAPTER
9

“It's rather curious, you know, this sort of life!

I do wonder what
can
have happened to me!”

—Lewis Carroll,
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

A
s
The Girls Next Door
continued on to season two, everything got . . . well, better. Filming occupied most of our days, so our evenings were pretty quiet. With all the attention Hef was receiving from the show, his ego was fully satisfied. He felt both famous and relevant again, and therefore didn't need to drag us out to nightclubs twice a week so the “adoring public” could ogle him. That was a huge relief for me. Not only was I sick of nightclubbing and drinking, but with the club nights now off the schedule, the post-club bedroom ritual also went out the window. It was definitely an unexpected bonus. It was the first time Hef's girlfriends could say “we don't sleep with him” and it would actually be true. Surprisingly, even though sex was out of the equation, Hef seemed happier than ever. I guess there is something Hugh Hefner loves more than sex, and that's fame.

Needless to say, for me, sex was never the highlight of the relationship. I was more than happy now that our evenings were spent eating dinner in bed while watching
The Sopranos
or with Hef fretting over a Sudoku puzzle while I did a crossword. We were like a typical old married couple. The only difference was, only one of us was actually old.

For a time, the show's success really bolstered spirits at the mansion. The three of us girls were now getting paid for being on the reality TV hit and could finally start saving up some real money.
Playboy,
as a brand, was hotter than ever. We were on our way to achieving that long-desired harmony among the girlfriends.
GND
had become a project we bonded over. Many of the plotlines became memorable common experiences, and the times the episodes would spotlight our individualities made us feel special.

During season one, we visited Bridget's hometown, Lodi, California. It was so cool, getting to see her and her family in their “natural habitat,” i.e., outside of the mansion. We visited Kendra's hometown of San Diego as well. She and her family went out of their way to make us feel at home. Kendra even coordinated a fun tour of her favorite spots and showed us her old home videos. Although, I have to admit, watching Hef fawn over her childhood videos and threatening to take one home made me really uncomfortable. When you're 80 years old and dating a trio of 20-somethings, you already look like a dirty old man. He didn't need to give viewers any more ammunition.

For me, the last episode of season one was really special. We visited the Palms casino in Las Vegas where they were readying the new Playboy Club, set to open the following year. Knowing what a fan I was of the Bunny costume and of Roberto Cavalli (who had designed the new Bunny ensembles for the club), Playboy PR tapped me to model one of the new prototypes in a fashion show (along with several Playmates). Not only was I able to wear this amazing costume, but I was able to do it without the other two girlfriends. It was one of those small instances where I could feel like I was my own person. I savored the moment and it became one of my all-time favorite episodes.

Less than a year after our first magazine appearance, Hef ordered our second pictorial and cover for the September 2006 issue. The cover would be on stands as season two premiered—and I even got to develop the concept! I sketched the idea out on a cocktail napkin while at a Dodgers game. Taking the notion of “the girl next door” literally, the cover showed the three of us peeking through a white window with frilly drapes—and it became the first time the magazine photographed a corresponding back cover (which, naturally, was a view of our butts as we were peeking out the window). Both images were shot simultaneously to ensure continuity. And while this time we were finally able to star in individually themed shoots, it was mandated that the other two girls appear in the background of each. We still felt frustrated that Hef seemed to think we were only worthwhile as a threesome, but it turned out that casting us as a team wasn't making us jealous and turning us against each other; instead it was turning us into a team in real life.

Just like the first shoot, we had a blast modeling together. Being in the magazine was a dream come true for all of us, so being able to do it
again
was icing on the cake. But just like the first time around, Bridget's emotions started to get the better of her. She began to feel like the photo editor, Marilyn, was singling her out and nitpicking every detail. If there was a hair out of place, it was Bridget's. If someone needed to move, it was Bridget. It kept up like this for most of the shoot. Eventually Bridget reached a breaking point and needed to take a moment in the makeup room. Surprisingly, Kendra went in to comfort her and put her in a better mood. I couldn't have imagined that happening a year earlier, when things had been more strained between the three of us. We had made huge progress with our friendships.

Other changes were afoot as well. Prior to the show, we'd almost never traveled—Hef was a creature of habit who despised any sort of variation from his routine. Once he finds a comfortable one, he's bound to stick with it for at least the next few decades. So when we learned that the second season would see us not only on multiple trips to Las Vegas, but also on a two-week-long European getaway, we were flabbergasted. Paris, London, Cannes, Barcelona, Munich, Rome . . . for us, it was unheard of!

It was on these trips that Bridget and I finally found something we had in common with Kendra: we all loved sightseeing. The three of us were very different, but we all came from working-class backgrounds. I think at one point we each believed that moving into the mansion would give us the opportunity to see the world, but the truth is, we rarely left our neighborhood. After a while, we gave up hope that we would ever travel. Now that Hef knew the world was watching, he had to be the “playboy” everyone believed he was. We were finally getting the experience we thought we had signed up for!

It was the opportunity of a lifetime, to be able to travel around the world in style, so we didn't waste a single minute. From Pompeii to the Paris catacombs, Bridget and I were checking things off our bucket lists left and right! Kendra said she felt like she was finally learning about history for the first time, in a way that made it feel real. The three of us were up at the crack of dawn, trying to pack in as many outings as we could before Hef finally rolled out of bed and started his day (usually after noon). He would join us for a few of the landmarks (mostly for filming purposes), but he was more interested in doing press and attending parties in his honor than in seeing the sights.

The second season rounded out by celebrating my and Hef's five-year anniversary. Bridget set up a dinner party in the living room, transforming it into a replica of one of my favorite restaurants, The Melting Pot, complete with their signature fondue pots. I couldn't believe five years had passed since I moved into the mansion—a half decade of my life had been sucked into the Playboy vortex.

“I think a lot of people would look at being together for five years as a turning point,” I said to the interview camera, an empty smile on my lips. “But I know it's not a turning point for us because I know nothing is going to change in this relationship any time soon.”

When we all gathered around the table for our anniversary dinner (because it could never be just the two of us), I presented Hef with the sort of sap-filled greeting card he adored. I'd even scribbled the pet name “Puffin” across the top. As he read it aloud, I burst into tears. Hef put his arm around me and gave me a kiss on the head. He was positively glowing! Not only was he surrounded by a bevy of beauties, the cameras were also there to catch this public display of affection.

I tried to play off my outburst as having been touched by the romantic moment (and I think most people bought it!), but in reality I was crying because of what a farce this whole thing was and how stretched thin my nerves were at that moment. Hef reading off the flowing words of love from the card reminded me again what a joke this whole situation was and made me feel like I had missed out on my chance to ever have anything real with someone; to ever meet a man who really deserved a card like that. I had sold my soul to the devil and felt that there was no way out.

As the show continued to grow in popularity, we became more and more valuable to both the network and the brand. We even got to have a tiny bit more say in what kinds of things we filmed.

“D
O YOU LIKE IT
?” shouted a network exec, referring to the holiday-themed episode we had just seen a cut of called “There's Snow Place Like Home.” The mansion was in utter chaos as E! executives, along with a few hundred other of our nearest and dearest, descended onto the grounds to celebrate E!'s upcoming season, which consisted of the season three premiere of
GND
and the premiere of Ryan Seacrest's first produced series,
Paradise City
.

“Yeah, I think it's really fun,” I replied, with a big smile as the party buzzed on around us. “People are going to love it!” I had been angling for a Christmas episode since season one, but the producers had always refused. Holidays were a big part of mansion culture and one of the few breaks from the otherwise monotonous life there, so we looked forward to these large-scale events.

Historically, seasonal episodes hadn't performed well in reruns, which the network ran a lot of. During those years, you couldn't turn on E! for more than a few hours before bumping into the three of us, and the execs understandably didn't want to air a Christmas episode in July.

Just then, Hef appeared next to me. Seacrest had arrived and network execs and upper management were clamoring for his attention. Earlier that year, Seacrest agreed to a hyper-lucrative megadeal with the network and was quickly christened E!'s resident Golden Boy.