“No!” I exclaimed through a fit of laughter. “Are you serious? Did she really say that?”
The night before we’d gone to the Saddle Ranch on Sunset Boulevard for dinner. Whitney had quite a few cocktails and decided to ride the mechanical bull. While no one really thought twice about it, she was apparently mortified by the decision and desperately searched for a reason to excuse her behavior.
“Yes,” he said. “She feels silly about last night and says she would never have done it normally and believes you and Bridget drugged her drink.”
The smile disappeared off my face as I realized that he was taking her insane accusations seriously.
Bridget and I were so square we wouldn’t even have known how to get drugs, let alone be tricky enough to slip them into someone’s drink unnoticed. In front of a whole table full of enemies, no less. I made this immediately clear to Hef.
Come on, Whitney, I thought. At least go for something somewhat believable.
“That’s what I figured,” Hef said, a smile slowly cracking on his face. “But you know, I just had to be fair and ask.”
Phew. Luckily for me, it was Whitney making the allegations. I don’t think things would have gone so smoothly if his beloved Dianna or Daphne had made the claims.
Why can’t Hef see how awful they are? I wondered.
I started questioning who would last the longest: me or the Mean Girls? I wasn’t sure how much more of the absurdity I could take. After more than two and a half years at the mansion, I felt no more surefooted than I had on the day I arrived. I felt like I was constantly walking on eggshells, trying not to set off a land mine of drama each day.
At the time, I had no idea that their days were numbered. But I wouldn’t be the one who took them out. It would take someone else to get rid of them. Someone a little bit more Hef’s type than I was: someone younger, blonder, and much, much ditsier.
CHAPTER 7
Alice felt so desperate that she was ready to ask help of anyone.
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
It was April 2004 and the air had grown stale at the mansion. Bridget and I were constantly at odds with the other girlfriends. I could sense that even Hef felt he was ready for a change. It was only a matter of time before Hef started spring-cleaning and invited in a new girlfriend.
And just who would it be?
Please be someone nice, I prayed.
As you might imagine, Hef is both meticulous and exceptionally picky when it comes to his women: girlfriends, Playmates, etc. He has a picture of every girl that’s ever come to the mansion—mostly Polaroids. If you were visiting the compound for the first time, a designated staffer would snap a photo of you before you entered the party (as they did to me years earlier), and those Polaroids were compiled for Hef to review the next day. He would label them A, B, or C (based primarily on their looks but also on how scantily clad they were) before having them catalogued in his social secretary’s office.
The A category was the most elite—meaning those girls were allowed to be invited back for all events or perhaps even a Playmate test or an evening out with Hef. The B category was reserved for girls Hef would be comfortable inviting back for larger mansion parties (like Midsummer Night’s Dream) as well as some of the smaller Fun in the Sun pool parties. The C category was the label bestowed on girls that were to be invited back only if they were absolutely desperate for more warm bodies.
Whether it’s for his scrapbooks, his parties, or his magazines, Hef is obsessive about photos. When I lived there, he still reviewed most of the magazine submissions himself—and always gave his final sign-off on an issue. He also felt it necessary to see pictures of every model that would be working one of his parties.
Inside his room there was a calendar of upcoming events, and next to it was a wooden box. Inside the box were photos of Playmates and potential Playmates attached to a notecard with the girl’s information printed on it. This was a distinctive pile, because these were the girls Hef was considering inviting out for a night. Occasionally there would be a pile in front of the box with photos of girls that had attended a mansion party or girls that had submitted photos to the magazine and weren’t being considered as Playmates, but were still cute enough for Hef to consider taking out. For so long, this box was my nemesis, as I dreaded possible new additions to the harem. This time, however, I was determined to finally use the box to my advantage.
Bridget and I were beyond tired of the Mean Girls, but we knew Hef wouldn’t be content with just the two of us. We just got along too well for his taste. How could Mr. Drama King feel fought over, coveted, or interesting if his girlfriends actually got along? I knew Hef felt he needed to be seen with a gaggle of women in order to keep up his macho Playboy image, and since he viewed Bridget and me as virtually the same person, I knew a new girlfriend would have to move in in order for us to have a chance at getting rid of the others.
The Mean Girls had already checked out, mentally. Daphne, Dianna, and Elizabeth had been at the mansion for more than two years—and by this point probably assumed they’d never be offered a pictorial. They each began focusing more on their lives outside the gates (aka other boyfriends, in some cases), so it was only a matter of time before they moved out or Hef asked them to leave. But even that wasn’t soon enough. Bridget and I knew that if we wanted any sort of influence in kicking these girls to the curb and figuring out who their replacements would be, we’d have to act quickly.
A few days before Hef’s 78th birthday party, I noticed three pictures stacked in front of the wooden box in Hef’s closet. I grabbed the photos and info sheets to scope out our options: Tiffany, Nicole, and Kendra. Apparently, the girls were auditioning to be “Painted Ladies” at the party, and the body paint artist had submitted the images to the mansion for approval. The photos eventually made their way to Hef’s private “consideration” pile, which meant he would definitely be keeping his eye out for them at the party.
The day of Hef’s soiree, Bridget and I went downstairs to the gym to meet the “Painted Ladies” as they got ready (it took most of the day for these girls to get covered head to toe in body paint). All three girls seemed nice enough, but Bridget and I decided that Tiffany was our favorite. She was easy to talk to and seemed really smart—plus, she had a knockout smile, long ash blond curls, and a gorgeous naturally curvy body. More than hot enough to be Hef’s girlfriend, but a refreshing change from the bleached-blond Fembot look.
Unbeknownst to us at the time, Hef had also made a pilgrimage down to the gym to check out the prospects and made a beeline toward Kendra Wilkinson—the most platinum and plastic of the bunch.
Preparing for a mansion party took an entire day. The large parties were the highlights of mansion life, so the girlfriends were expected to look flawless. Couple that expectation with the fact that we girls had a lot of time on our hands, and you get marathon “beauty days.” All of the girls started their day visiting the salon to spend hours on an elaborate hairdo. That year I had purple streaks clipped into my long blond extensions. Costumes were customized down to the tiniest detail and diets were strictly observed in the weeks before a big party. I was so critical of my appearance—particularly my weight. A girl could rarely be too skinny at the mansion. After all, there were expectations that we become the Playboy fantasy everyone expected us to be. And in order to be that woman, it was essential that we looked the part.
Plagued by self-doubt, I was constantly troubled by an imaginary belly and would often add a single garter to my costumes to hide a tiny dot on the back of my left leg. God forbid, someone might think I had cellulite. These days I look back at photos from my mansion days and marvel how a girl that skinny could ever think she was fat, but I suppose I was a product of my environment. After spending much of my adulthood as nothing more than a trophy girlfriend whose sole occupation was to look good, I guess I can’t really blame myself.
On the night of Hef’s 78th birthday party we made our entran
ce into the great hall around nine o’clock. Hef’s photographer Elayne snapped our obligatory photos. As was customary, Mark Frazier, the body painter, brought the “Painted Ladies” over for a photo with us as well. Kendra was already carrying a tray of Jell-O shots and she nervously offered them to us. Bridget, Hef, and I happily took one each as the Mean Girls just ignored her with an icy coldness.
Hef wasted no time inviting the “Painted Ladies” up to his bedroom. Nicole was physically the least Hef’s type, with her curvier body and strawberry-blond hair, so I knew right away that she wasn’t making the cut, despite her participation in the sack.
Tiffany was the only one who wasn’t willing to go all the way (Good for her!), so even though I really liked her, I knew she wasn’t going to be invited back.
Through the process of elimination, the 19-year-old platinum blonde from San Diego was in position to be Hugh Hefner’s next girlfriend—if she played her cards right. In Kendra’s book Sliding into Home, she describes Hef asking her to be a girlfriend and handing her a house key before he invited her up to the bedroom. Now, I don’t know if Kendra is trying to sound extra-desirable, innocent, or if her memory is just super rusty, but of course that’s not how it really went down. Hef isn’t stupid. He never asked anyone to become a girlfriend before they joined him in bed. And he never made a habit of carrying around extra sets of room keys.
Because Kendra seemed pleasant, Bridget and I started encouraging Hef to ask her to move in. We openly (and loudly) chatted about how nice we thought she was.
“I don’t know . . . she doesn’t seem to have much personality,” Hef responded.
I rolled my eyes. Since when did he care about personality? Only a positive comment from Bridget or me could turn Hef off to this girl who was so clearly his type. Did I mention he hated it when his girlfriends got along? I could see what he meant, though. In the early days, Kendra wasn’t the bubbly, bouncy loudmouth you may remember from The Girls Next Door. Her personality could best be described as “deer in the headlights.” It was difficult to get a word out of her, and she seemed to have fried her brain somewhere along the course of her life. At the time, I just assumed she was shy or afraid of making a misstep while trying to navigate Hef’s world.
Despite his supposed reservations, he did continue to have her as a guest at the mansion. Kendra was still living in San Diego at the time, so Hef invited her to stay through a whole weekend and join us for the big Easter celebration that Sunday. Bridget and I had gone down to Melrose to pick out matching dresses for the festivities—including one for Kendra. I knew she didn’t have a ton of clothes and was probably stressing out just like I used to.
Usually I wouldn’t be so eager to dress like anybody’s twin, but I knew how adorable Hef thought it was when the girls dressed alike. After nearly three years at the mansion, I was pretty attuned to Hef’s preferences. I imagined him seeing the three of us together in matching outfits and thinking, “Oh, how cute.” By getting Kendra to dress the part of a new girlfriend, I hoped it would help Hef make up his mind and set us apart from the Mean Girls, who would most likely show up to the Easter event wearing jeans and bored looks on their faces.
When we got back to the mansion, I went out to the room in the guesthouse where Kendra was staying, holding the new blue dress. I told her it was hers to wear if she wanted and that Bridget was wearing a pink one and I had a pale orange version.
“Oh my god, girl!” she said, I could see the relief on her face as a big toothy grin emerged. “You have no idea. I was going nuts.” She thanked me profusely. For the first time in a long time, I felt as though I could relax. I had a good feeling about this one. Just because Hef didn’t want another Bridget or Holly didn’t mean we couldn’t all be friends. I wanted her to feel welcome.
Realizing that the opportunity might soon present itself, Kendra began asking questions about life as a girlfriend as she changed into the dress. She had already hooked up with Hef, so that part was no mystery.
“Can I bring my dogs when I move in? I have to bring my dogs,” she stated. “I have two dogs. I need a really big room.”
“I don’t know what room you will get if you move in,” I said. “That’s up to Hef.”
I have to admit, I envied Kendra’s sense of entitlement. I had felt so lucky just to scrape by when I moved into the mansion, and here was a rookie who had just gone all the way with an old dude and her only concern was how big her room was going to be.
Though she wasn’t as cunning or sophisticated as the other girlfriends who had inhabited the mansion in recent years, she seemed to have that same hustler mentality. Kendra was a stripper but had told Hef she was a college student, because the body painter gave her the heads-up that Hef didn’t like strippers and preferred college girls. When Hef put a caption under one of the first photos of her that entered his scrapbook, he referred to her as “Hef’s new sweetheart: a 19-year-old coed from San Diego.”
“I need a car, too, if I’m gonna live here,” she barked. “I don’t have one. And I want to get my teeth fixed. They are the only thing about me that I don’t like.”
The balls on this girl, I thought.
“Oh, you’ll have to talk to Hef about that,” I responded, shrugging my shoulders. I barely had the nerve to ask for anything for myself—I certainly wasn’t going to ask for her.
The Easter ensembles worked. About a month after Hef’s birthday, the Mean Girls were finally given the boot and Kendra was officially asked to be a girlfriend. After three years of misery, which at the time I felt was largely due to those bullies, it was over. They were gone—and I’d never have to see or hear from them again! It didn’t really feel real. I actually went down the hall and peeked into each of their former bedrooms to make sure they were really gone.
“What did you say to them?” I asked Hef when he told me the girlfriends were leaving. I couldn’t be certain that my prompting actually had anything to do with Hef’s decision, but I silently congratulated myself either way.
“I told them that Kendra’s moving in and Kendra had confided to me that she used to have a drug problem,” he said, nonchalantly thumbing through a file folder he had in his hand. “Kendra told me they took her out to a club and offered her drugs. I told them I couldn’t have that around her.”
Of course, I thought. I wasn’t sure how they managed to sneak out of the house with Kendra, but according to her story, they did. If the story was true, the Mean Girls must have seen exactly what was happening and made a last-ditch effort to save their asses and sabotage Kendra’s chances. Thankfully, it backfired.
Kendra’s arrival was the best news I had in a while! I was ecstatic to have those days of drama and backstabbing permanently behind me . . . or so I thought.
JUST AS HE HAD done with me when I first arrived, Hef quickly made Kendra his “golden girl.” After all, she was the youngest and newest member of his harem.
Immediately, Kendra acquired a black Escalade that she “pimped out” with rims, speakers, and every extra accessory possible. She also snagged the room she wanted, Bedroom 2. It was the largest, most luxurious, and most plush of all the bedrooms—and she would instantly trash it. Kendra’s room turned into a junk-dump of possessions and reeked so badly of dog urine that you could smell it down the hall. I always tried to avoid staying in her room longer than a few minutes.
Since the house was virtually empty, I decided to ask Hef if I could use Bedroom 5 again so I could have more room for my things—and a little privacy when I needed it. Living in the “Vanity” made me feel on edge. Hef’s secretaries were constantly in and out of there throughout the day, adjusting his calendar and wooden box full of pictures. I liked all of Hef’s secretaries, but I would have liked a little solitude, too.
“Absolutely not!” Hef squawked, setting down his reading glasses. “Do you have any idea how much those rooms cost to rent?”
Actually, I did. Playboy Enterprises (a public company at the time) owned the mansion. Not Hef.
In order to live there, he had to pay a monthly rent on every room he and his girlfriends occupied. People may find it surprising that Hugh Hefner is nothing more than a tenant renting his room at the mansion, but that’s exactly how it is. At the time, he paid approximately $25,000 a month for the master suite, $12,000 a month for Kendra’s room, and $10,000 a month for Bridget’s room (Bedroom 3). The three smaller rooms were priced between $5,000 and $7,000 a month. Should any of the rooms be vacant, Hef wouldn’t be charged for them.
So Kendra’s worth $12,000 and I’m not even worth $5,000, was what I took away from the conversation. Since I lived in the “Vanity” corner of Hef’s closet, he didn’t have to pay any rent on my account.
Despite these little annoyances, things were actually going smoothly in the house between Bridget, Kendra, and me. To my great relief, Hef mentioned to his immediate circle that he was “downsizing” to “just” three girlfriends. Just when I thought this new “quality over quantity” arrangement might mean less drama, Hef decided to drop a bomb on us all.
During a Fun in the Sun pool party, Bridget and I were reading and sunning ourselves on side-by-side lounge chairs while Kendra sat on a floatie near the edge of the pool. As Hef shuffled along the flagstone walkway between us carrying his backgammon board, he paused and looked around at each of us.
“You know,” he began, taking a swig from his bottle of Pepsi, “I’ve decided I’m going to do a pictorial on the ‘Painted Ladies,’ featuring you and Tiffany.” He nodded towards Kendra, but spoke loudly enough for us all to hear.
“Oh, wow!” Kendra shouted. “Thanks!”
Pretending we didn’t hear a word, Bridget and I kept our noses buried in whatever we were reading. We didn’t know what to say.
“I just want to put my book down and leave,” I said defeatedly. “He knows how badly you and I want to be in the magazine and he just had to make that awkward announcement in front of us?”
Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny Page 14
