Even with the staff to entertain me, nights were hard because while my Playmate friends got to go out and party, I would have to be home by nine P.M. I’d get a text message from a girl that read, “Having so much fun in Vegas. Wish you were here! Partying with all these football players,” and that was devastating. I felt so trapped and angry when I was missing out on something good.
However, sometimes when I would get out of the house, I would end up in bad situations with Playmates who were up to no good. One of those girls was former Miss United States Teen Kari Ann Peniche, who was staying at the Mansion for a few weeks while she shot a spread for the magazine.
Most of the girls at the Mansion were good girls, but Kari Ann had a different agenda. Her IMDB credits currently include Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew and a sex tape with Rebecca Gayheart and Eric Dane, but at the time I didn’t know anything about her and I thought we could be friends. She seemed to know everyone in L.A., and all the fun places to hang out.
One day we were driving around Beverly Hills and she said she wanted to stop at her friend’s house. We pulled up to a big apartment building on Doheny Drive and made our way to the unit where her “friend” lived. We rang the bell and an older guy answered the door and invited us inside. Although I thought he was a little weird, I just went along with it. Then he broke out a plate of cocaine.
Oh, no! I thought. This isn’t good.
I felt very uncomfortable. I had been clean for so long and since then had never really been tempted to do real drugs. There was a stripper at Cheetah’s who I was friends with who did coke, but for some reason it was easy to say no back then. This time felt different. I was so far removed from the whole drug scene. I really had moved on in life. I smoked weed from time to time, but that didn’t count. This was serious, and I was nervous.
Without the slightest hesitation, Kari Ann leaned over and did a line. Then she asked me if I wanted some. What’s one time really going to do to me? I thought.
So I did it. I leaned over and snorted a line of cocaine. For the first minute or two it was the best damn feeling in the world. So much time had passed that I’d almost forgotten how it felt—it was amazing.
“This is some of the best shit,” Kari Ann said.
I agreed, but when we left and I got in the car, I started getting paranoid. All these bad moments from my past started running through my head, and I started bugging out.
“What did I do?” I asked Kari Ann.
“Isn’t it great?” she said.
“No, but I used to do it and—”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s pure stuff. You won’t get addicted. Nothing is going to happen to you.”
“But you don’t understand . . .”
I didn’t bother explaining. What was I going to do, tell her my whole life story? She wasn’t going to understand.
We went to SkyBar at the Mondrian Hotel on the Sunset Strip and I was miserable. I felt so fucked up. The night finally ended and I tried to block it out of my mind. I knew I’d made a mistake, and I was never going to do it again. I just wanted to forget about it and move on.
For Kari Ann, it was a different story. Somehow word got out that she had coke around the Mansion, and eventually the news made its way to Hef. I’m not sure who ratted her out, but drugs were a big no-no at the Mansion. Hef was very strict about it. He was a big supporter of legalized weed, but when it came to coke and other drugs he wouldn’t stand for it. It was bad for Playboy’s image. Holly and Bridget were against it, too. They were real goody-goodies, and I think that’s why Hef trusted them so much.
I, on the other hand, was always right on the edge of going off and doing something bad. The only way for me to survive was to cut Kari Ann out of my life completely. Later, when Hef had whatever confirmation he was looking for, he called Kari Ann into his office and told her she had to leave.
I was happy that she was leaving. But my involvement with her wasn’t over just yet. Everyone knew that she and I had become friends and I started to worry that Hef or the girls would connect the two of us and think I was doing drugs, too. People seemed to know everything about everyone at the Mansion, and I was sure Holly and Bridget knew I’d done coke with Kari Ann that day.
Soon after Kari Ann left, Mary O’Connor, Hef’s personal secretary, called me into her office and started asking me questions about her. They wanted to know if I was still talking to or texting her. She had been texting me, but I always ignored her. Normally I would stand up for a friend, but with Kari Ann, I understood. They didn’t want her near anyone involved with Playboy. Her departure was the best thing that could’ve happened to me, because if she had hung around I’m sure I would have been tempted to do coke again.
Kari Ann wasn’t the only crazy one hanging around at the Mansion, though.
There was also a Playmate from Atlanta, and when she came to the Mansion I thought she was so beautiful, and she seemed like a fun girl. We ended up going out one evening, again to SkyBar, and everything was fine. I was drinking, and there was no sign of drugs.
We were supposed to go to The Improv comedy club on Melrose Avenue for the night; we’d told the staff at the Mansion that’s what we were doing, and I wanted to stick to the plan in case someone came to check up on us (which was always a possibility).
I don’t know if she drank too much or was on something else, but all of a sudden she began grinding up on this random nasty-looking, blond-haired dude. Meanwhile, I just stood by myself at SkyBar counting the minutes until we had to leave for the comedy club.
Eventually she came up to me and gave me some bogus story about how the guy didn’t have a ride home, and she asked if we could take him. I tried to say no but she kept insisting. We drove him to a house all the way up in the Hollywood Hills, and when we arrived she got out of the car and went inside with him, leaving me outside alone. What the fuck?
After about twenty minutes I went inside the house and started shouting her name and looking all over for her. I wanted to get to the comedy club, and I was sick of waiting. I opened a door to one of the rooms, and there she was with the guy, butt ass naked and doing lines of coke.
I yelled that it was time to go. Looking a little drugged-up and out of sorts, she got dressed and we went to the comedy club without the guy. A few years earlier, I probably would have stripped down and joined them—but not anymore. I just wanted to get to that comedy club and fucking laugh before I got even madder.
Of course once we arrived, she started falling all over the place, hitting on every guy there, and was just a completely gross mess. That chick was out of control. I’m not sure how she eventually ended things with Hef, but a few years later I heard she was arrested for cocaine possession.
Girls like these really made me skeptical about the people at the Mansion. I had a hard time figuring out who was good and who was bad, so after trying to make friends for a while and getting burned, I just sort of shut down and started living in my own world and keeping to myself.
I still didn’t really have much of a relationship with Holly or Bridget at that point. We didn’t have a lot in common, so we tended to go our separate ways. The two of them would spend some time together, but I was rarely invited to be part of their fun. Maybe they didn’t like me back then; maybe they saw me as a threat, or maybe I was just not enough like them, but either way we were hardly friends.
Of course, when it was club night, we would all go out and then end up in the tub together before all taking turns with Hef in his bedroom. But even there we had no relationship. You’d think three girls who spent their Saturday nights together naked in a bathtub would find something to talk about during the week, but not us. When we were in that room with Hef we each did our own thing, and it was like the other girls weren’t there. I usually got very drunk as I sat around waiting for my turn to do what I had to do. Then it was in and out and I was out of there. Very few words were said.
The best times in Hef’s room were actually when other girls
came up with us. Whenever there was a hot Playmate in the room, I would always have a good time. It brought more life to the party. I would be belligerent and act like a total fool, but the girl and I would usually mess around, smoke some weed, and kiss a little. That was fun. Bridget, Holly, and I had a different relationship; we never touched one another.
One time a crazy Russian chick came upstairs with us, and she was totally wild and kinky. She literally attacked me up there. Everyone was having a good time and out of nowhere she just bit me. I was like, “Bitch, get off!” She was insane, but most of the girls were fun.
That first night we went to Hef’s room, when I didn’t know anyone or anything about what was going to happen, I was scared, but as time went on I didn’t care as much. There was always a fear of diseases, though. After that first time I ran to the doctor to get checked out and came back with a clean bill of health. Then as I got more comfortable in the Mansion I asked around about some of the new girls and it seemed like everyone was clean. I still got checked every few months, however, and in the back of my head there was always that fear. But since I was usually very, very drunk during those evenings, I tended not to care so much until the next day. I had to be very drunk or smoke lots of weed to survive those nights—there was no way around it.
I would spend the Sunday after club night hungover, and by Monday I would be recovered enough to get back to sitting on my ass. The rest of the week would be okay, but the cycle was taking its toll on me and getting boring. I had to get out.
Instead of finding Playmates to hang out with, I decided I wanted to go to school. After all those years of skipping class and being forced to go to different schools because of my terrible behavior, I was actually deciding on my own that I wanted to enroll and apply myself. It’s amazing how things can change over time.
I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to go to school for, but I knew I had to get involved in something. I looked online at different options and came up with physical therapy classes at Bryman College. Hef was very supportive. He always wanted us learning and experiencing new things, so he paid for the entire program.
I loved school. I went for a few hours every day. I spent half the time massaging a person in class, and the rest of the time I learned about the anatomy of the human body, CPR, and various types of massaging techniques.
It was fun and interesting, but more important, it got me out of bed. I was up by 6:30 A.M. and in class by 7:30 A.M. every morning. Sure, I was late a lot for various reasons (I always found a way to get away with it), but still, I was there, which was pretty impressive considering we were going to the clubs with Hef two nights a week and staying up until three A.M. most nights. I was exhausted but I went to class.
I had my share of mishaps at school, of course. One day after I had been constipated for about five days, I took a laxative the night before class. It was the first time I’d ever taken one—I had never even heard of such a thing before—and I was told that it should work in three or four hours. The next morning I woke up and still nothing was happening down there. Then, about halfway through class, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I had to shit so bad, and the bathroom was practically in the classroom—it was set up like an elementary school, so the bathroom was tucked into a corner and not down the hall or far, far away, as I had hoped.
“I have to poop!” I announced to the class, and I ran to take care of my business. It was so gross. I was in there for about an hour and stunk up the whole classroom. I even made a sign once I got out that read DO NOT GO IN THERE and taped it to the bathroom door.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, on my ride home from class I got a second stomachache. I drove back to the Mansion at approximately 105 miles per hour, and if a cop had come after me I wouldn’t have pulled over. I flew west on I-10 and up the 405 North, weaving in and out of L.A. traffic, and made it back to the Mansion just in time to avoid shitting my pants.
While that was a rough day, school as a whole was definitely not shitty. It forced me to wake up early, it gave me my own thing to care about, and it made me start feeling good about myself again. It also kept me at the Playboy Mansion during a time when I was definitely thinking about leaving, which shortly after turned out to be a very good thing.
CHAPTER 13
Playing the Role of Kendra Wilkinson
Taking classes was the best decision I ever made at the Mansion. It gave my life some meaning and allowed me to start enjoying the incredible opportunity I’d been given. I mean, it’s not every day that you get asked to live in the Playboy Mansion. I liked the parties and hanging out with Hef and everything else the Mansion had to offer, but school made me feel like I was doing something with my life, and that was important.
After school I continued to work out to get myself back into my pre-all-you-can-eat shape. I worked out like a maniac; I took martial arts classes at the Mansion, hiked Runyon Canyon regularly, and climbed the stairs in Santa Monica—a set of nearly two hundred steps that locals use for a workout. (At my best I could do the fifteen sets of stairs, which is pretty damn good.) I even took tennis lessons and played tennis with Ray Anthony, the inventor of “The Bunny Hop,” and some of Hef’s other friends. I loved Hef’s friends. I thought Walter Ralph, the heir to the Ralph’s grocery company, was the biggest celebrity ever. I’d hang out with all of Hef’s buddies after movie nights, teaching them slang terms and getting these old guys to say things like “What it is, ho” to girls at parties.
Thanks to all the work I was putting in, I got in really good shape. I was going to sleep at normal hours, waking up early, and doing something with my days. I felt great, and with the workouts I was looking great, too. It’s not easy to have high self-esteem when you’re surrounded by all the hot-ass girls walking around that mansion. For a long time I compared myself to everyone else and nearly lost my mind because I felt like I couldn’t compete. But with school on and the flab gone, my confidence was back to normal.
Soon after I’d declared victory over the chili cheese fries Hef came to us and said they were going to be filming a documentary at the Mansion. At the time I didn’t know who “they” were, but eventually I found out it was producer Kevin Burns and his team. The film was going to be called Holmby Hills, after the area of Los Angeles where the Mansion is located, and it was going to be about Hef and his family. It seemed like a good idea for a documentary, but I wasn’t sure at the time how—or even if—the other girls and I were going to be involved.
Somewhere along the line, the concept changed and it was decided that the documentary was going to be a reality show about Hef and his girls. We were all weirded out by that idea. Where were they going to film? How were they going to make us look? Holly, Bridget, and I didn’t like it at all, and initially we all said no.
Despite the fact that we were very skeptical, we ended up going along with it anyway. Hef wanted to do it, and I could have said no if I really didn’t want to be on the show, but we trusted Hef and knew he wouldn’t steer us in the wrong direction. Plus, I was just starting to really enjoy my time at the Mansion so I wasn’t going to just pick up and leave over something like a little reality show.
A week or two later the camera crew came and shot the pilot, which was called “The Girls Next Door.” They filmed me at therapy school for that episode. I was about to graduate and classes were over, but they liked the idea of me being in school so we rented out a chiropractic office for the day and filmed a pretend therapy school class with some friends of mine playing the roles of the teacher and students. It was so weird to me because it was supposed to be a reality show, and I assumed it would all be real, but instead the pilot was sort of just based on reality.
After the school scene, the producers sat me down and I did a twenty-minute interview on camera in which I talked about Hef and the Mansion and everything we do as girlfriends. I was wearing my Terrell Owens jersey because I was a die-hard TO fan and they wanted us wearing clothing that represented who we were.
Everythin
g was going smoothly until the producers told us that they wanted to film us in Hef’s room, where the action happened after club nights. When I heard that, I was pissed. There was no way they were filming me in there, or even walking in that room implying anything was going to happen. I was prepared to take a stand.
Holly, Bridget, and I talked it over even though we weren’t very close at the time. We knew we would have to stick together on this issue or we would get pushed around. I started getting aggressive about it and really rallied the girls into fighting for our privacy. Eventually, we agreed that our personal lives (which obviously included nights with Hef) should remain personal and we wouldn’t be filmed anywhere near the room. We went to Hef and he agreed and told the producers that it wasn’t going to happen.
Even with that win under our belts, the three of us were still very nervous about the show. We didn’t know how they would portray us or how people who didn’t know us would view us. But all the people behind the show loved it, so we were moving forward. Well, Bridget and Holly were moving forward. I soon realized the girls had other plans for me.
Even though we’d banded together to preserve our privacy, I still wasn’t that close with them then, and by that point they were best friends. Since I wasn’t fitting in to their little group, they thought the show might be better with another girl instead of with me. So Holly and Bridget went to Mary and told her that I was dating another guy behind Hef’s back.
After living in the Mansion for a year I did miss dating, and there were times when I was out during the day (before my nine P.M. curfew) or at therapy school or even at Playboy parties when I met guys. It’s only natural. I needed to have my own life or I would have gone crazy. But at the same time, I didn’t want to disrespect Hef or the Playboy name—that always came first. So if I did meet someone, I kept it a big secret and made sure, especially when the show was filming, not to be photographed with them.
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