Down the Rabbit Hole (8 page)

As I pulled up the iconic driveway on Charing Cross Road, it couldn't have felt less like “home.” The gates opened for me, and just like that, I was the newest resident of the Playboy Mansion. I pulled my car through the driveway and gave the keys to one of the staffers, who then made a call to one of Hef's secretaries. She directed me to my room and presented me with my room key.

Less than an hour later I had moved my belongings into the bedroom that Hef's secretary designated for me, and that was that. None of the girls even poked their heads out of their bedrooms, let alone offered to help. I was pointed to my room and left alone.
Now what?
I thought. It was entirely bizarre.

I didn't tell many people about my decision to move into the mansion—I quickly learned that not everyone had the most positive reaction. I had naïvely thought of myself as an adult who was free to make her own decisions, out of high school, away from small-town Oregon, and far from the type of people who would judge me for my personal decisions. I was so wrong.

When I told Nora I was moving into the Playboy Mansion, her jaw dropped so quickly I thought it would hit the ground. Nora was hyper-materialistic and wasn't expecting me to go from “rags to riches” faster than her. In my excitement, I also told the first acquaintance I had run into while doing errands. His reaction wasn't what I had expected, either.

“You hooked up with an old dude?” he cried, his face scrunching up. “Gross!”

All I had said was that I was moving in—nothing about being intimate with anyone. I guess not everyone was as naïve as I had been. Seeing the angry look that appeared on my face, he quickly switched gears.

“So,” he said, his voice much friendlier, “can you get me on the list for the parties?”

This guy clearly had no shame. Needless to say, I told him no.

After my friends' less-than-supportive reaction, I was too terrified to tell anyone else. I was naïve enough to believe that the decisions I made in the relative privacy of that dark cave of a bedroom would remain just that: private. I was by no means prepared for the large scarlet letter that had been branded on my chest.

I knew my close friends and family wouldn't approve, but I had already made the decision. Listening to their words of warning and disappointment would only make me feel worse. To be totally honest, I was already ashamed enough and I wanted to delay any further conversations until I had a better understating of what my life would be like.

Any remaining doubts about my decision vanished when, on an early morning about a week after I had moved in, Vicky stormed into my room screaming: “We've been bombed! We've been bombed!”

It was September 11, 2001.

“New York and the Pentagon,” she shrieked. “We've been bombed!”

I hobbled into the bathroom feeling sick to my stomach and paralyzed with fear. I imagined that terrorists had bombs aimed at every major city in America. Were we next? In that instant, I couldn't have been more grateful to be inside this great big, safe house.

Of course I soon discovered that we hadn't actually been bombed: but the reality was no less scary. Terrorists hijacked four American airliners and crashed two of them into the World Trade Center towers in lower Manhattan (as well as one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and one in rural Pennsylvania).

Thank God I'm here,
I thought. I would have been so much more scared had I been out on my own, couch surfing or worse.

The first few nights I slept in Bedroom 3—one of the biggest guest rooms in the mansion with three beds and a private bathroom, but like all the other guest rooms in the house, relatively plain. Strangely, it also doubled as a bedroom for Hef's two sons Marston and Cooper (who were 9 and 10, respectively, at the time) if they ever were to spend the night in the mansion. Though they never stayed over while I was there, there were still toys scattered across the bedroom floor—which made for an incredibly odd and, frankly, creepy juxtaposition.

April was also residing in Bedroom 3, and she intimidated the hell out of me. She was taller and bigger boned than Hef's usual type and had an in-your-face personality. I had heard she used to be a stripper even though
Playboy
has a somewhat hypocritical “no stripper” policy when it comes to Hef's idea of the wholesome Playmate image. She also had a constant need to be the center of attention—and would do whatever she needed to keep the spotlight on her, no matter how raunchy. She also made zero effort to hide the fact that she felt I was intruding on her space.

That week, another girlfriend, Adrianna, announced her departure. It was assumed that April would move into her old room (Bedroom 5) and I would be staying in the shared room. April was new to the mansion herself, but since she had moved in several months before me, still had seniority when it came to rooms. Bedroom 5 was one of the smallest rooms, but it was private. And as I would quickly learn, privacy was
key
when it came to surviving the mansion mayhem.

April, however, had another idea. She asked Hef if she could have Bedroom 3 to herself. The mansion was not without its fair share of politics, and when it came to the girlfriends, you had to put in your time and work your way up the totem pole when it came to certain privileges, particularly rooms. New girls who immediately began demanding certain luxuries were seen as “pushy” or “ungrateful.” Bedroom 3 was meant to house three girls; April scoring it for herself would have been a major coup.

Surprisingly, Hef approved her request.

I moved out later that day—along with the toys. (For months to come April complained that Marston and Cooper were hostile towards her for taking over their room. I must say, I couldn't really blame them.)

April taking Bedroom 3 meant that I would be moving into Bedroom 5. I couldn't have been more thrilled to be getting the privacy of my own room in my very first week at the mansion. The arrangement wasn't without its downside, though. Bedroom 5 shared a bathroom with Vicky's room. Little did I know that she had a love of laxatives that made sharing a bathroom—with thin walls—pretty disturbing.

It was standard practice for girls to redecorate their rooms when accepting an offer to move in, but I was grateful simply to have a roof over my head. Even if I had wanted to redecorate, I would have been disappointed. Hef's idea of “redecorating” a girl's room meant replacing the carpet (which he always insisted on being white, despite all the dogs constantly relieving themselves everywhere) and having the walls repainted. The girl could choose the color, as long as it was one of the chalky, matte pastel shades he favored.

All of the bedrooms contained mismatched, beat-up furniture. Bedroom 5 had an old wooden dresser tucked into one corner, a small TV mounted on the wall, and a bed so large that there wasn't much space left to move around the floor. Faded pink curtains covered the small windows that looked out onto four parking spots next to the outdoor kitchen. There was a tiny walk-in closet that housed the few clothing items I owned, plus a black Playboy-brand dress Adrianna had left behind. Clearly, I had a clothing complex and was terrified that I would quickly run out of club-appropriate attire, so finding this little black dress was a huge relief.

But that wasn't Adrianna's only parting gift. She had also worked as a Hawaiian Tropic girl and we had met on a few occasions before she had moved in. While we were by no means close, she made it a point to find me before she left to wish me well. When I asked her why she was choosing to leave, she said, “I don't really feel like it's the right thing for me anymore.

“I know you're just moving in, but this place can be kind of rough,” Adrianna went on, offering me just a bit of warning. At the time, I wasn't quite sure what she meant, but I later learned that since she scored a centerfold almost immediately, the other girls were pretty hideous to her.

My first day in Bedroom 5 was quiet and uneventful. I remember it was a Thursday, which was the only night of the week there was nothing planned on Hef's agenda. When I asked Vicky if she wouldn't mind filling me in on the schedule, she acted as if it were some big annoyance. It's not like anyone handed you a pamphlet when you walked through the door and I was terrified that my “trial period” would come to an abrupt end, so I wanted to make sure I was playing by all the rules. I chalked it up to a bad mood, but she didn't seem that excited to have me as a neighbor.

After some coaxing, she finally offered me the rundown:

•  Monday was “Manly Night.” Hef would have his guy friends over for a buffet dinner and a movie in the mansion's screening room.

•  Tuesday was “Family Night.” Hef's wife and two sons, who lived next door in a house Hef had purchased for them, would come over to all spend time together.

•  Wednesday and Friday were “Club Nights.” We were all expected to be ready by 10
P
.
M
. to be shuttled off with Hef to exclusive nightclubs all around Los Angeles.

•  Thursday (like Monday and Tuesday) was an “Off Night.” While we had the evenings free to do as we pleased, the girlfriends were still required to be inside mansion walls by 9
P
.
M
.

•  Saturday was a buffet dinner and movie with Hef.

•  Sunday was the “Fun in the Sun” pool party during the day and dinner and a movie at night.

No one gave me a tour of the mansion when I arrived, either. I knew my way around the grounds and most of the main house, but for weeks I kept discovering new places on the property. There was an underground secret passage that led from the main house to the gym, which was in the basement level of the bathhouse. The mansion itself had a large basement, full of employee lockers, storage closets, and laundry facilities. A panel in the wall of the living room could pop out to reveal a secret wine cellar, which was used as a speakeasy in the 1920s when the house was built. The master bedroom had an attic level where Hef kept a personal office, of sorts. The adjacent bathroom truly looked like a time capsule or the land that time forgot. Gold shag rug covered the floor. A tray of toiletries from the 1970s sat untouched on the counter. The sink handles were carved to look like naked ladies.

There was a four-bedroom guesthouse on the grounds that hosted Playmates and Playmate candidates when they were brought in from out of town to shoot at Playboy Studio West in Santa Monica. I assumed the Playmate guesthouse would be plush and clean, like a hotel, with perhaps some Playmate memorabilia strewn about to give it a sense of atmosphere. In reality, the guesthouse could have been described as “Grandma's attic meets rent-by-the-hour motel.” In the '70s, Hef's girlfriend Barbi Benton had decorated the guesthouse as a charming early-American cottage, but over the years the theme fell apart. What was left was dark, dingy, and depressing.

There were many rules to living in the mansion, but most of them I had to figure out on my own. Like I said, no one handed me
The Playboy Mansion for Dummies
when I arrived. I also learned that the other girlfriends weren't so eager to help out the newbies, since it was in their best interest for us to stumble around in order to make all of them look better.

First, there was a curfew. For being an older man, Hef stayed up reasonably late (usually tucking in around 11
P
.
M
.), but he required his girlfriends in by 9
P
.
M
. Apparently, we couldn't get into too much mischief outside the walls before that hour. I had been present once when Vicky and Lisa had rolled in a half hour past curfew and got a major dressing-down from Hef (no pun intended). He kicked his feet, mustered up some questionable crocodile tears (
was he really crying?
I thought), and told them that if they wanted to “stay out late” they could move out. Needless to say, his temper tantrum made a lasting impression on me.

Next, the girlfriends were not allowed to “fraternize” with the staff unless
absolutely
necessary. This rule was not to be taken lightly. Hef would totally lose it if he caught one of us talking with anybody on the service team (and I eventually witnessed his irrational freak-out firsthand when future girlfriend Kendra Wilkinson spent too much time in the butler's pantry). According to mansion lore, there were two instances of girls having relations with mansion staffers. First, his ex-wife allegedly had an affair with one of the members of the security team—and Hef found out. Second, one of the girlfriends had supposedly been caught sleeping with a butler. Now, I can't prove that either of these things happened, but it would explain why he was so overly sensitive about this particular rule. In the beginning, I'm sure the staffers thought I was terribly aloof and cold, but I was honestly just scared shitless. If I got kicked out, I had nowhere to go. I couldn't risk it.

Each girlfriend was given a weekly “clothing allowance” of $1,000 for expenses. It was expected that we use this money to purchase clothing to wear for evening events as well as beauty treatments (hair, nails, waxing, etc.) that weren't covered by his in-house account at José Eber Salon in Beverly Hills. This was a welcome relief for me. It was clear that Hef preferred we dress in a particular way when we were out on the town with him, and I was desperate to revamp my wardrobe and fast! Hef made it abundantly clear that he preferred us in very over-the-top, sort of trashy outfits (think BeDazzled rhinestone bustiers and skirts so short there was barely a point in wearing them). When he would compliment a girl on a particular dress, pair of shoes, or even the way she wore her hair, we all felt the need to replicate it for our next evening out.

The last major requirement was that girlfriends attend the events designated on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. While the girlfriends were always eager to party at the hottest Hollywood nightclubs on Wednesdays and Fridays, it was clear they used whatever excuse they could to get out of “dinner and a movie” nights. Oftentimes, it would just be April and me flanking Hef at the main dining table. We were still the two newest girls, so paying our dues was part of the program. The other girls stayed out until 9
P
.
M
. on the nose, not wanting to miss even a single minute of freedom—which usually meant visiting the boyfriends that they kept on the side.