Bunny Tales (21 page)

With Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray

With rocker, Kid Rock, and fellow Canadian Pamela Anderson

The dashing Hef

Halloween (3rd from right)

Justin and I at a friend’s wedding

The night of the final fallout (4th from right)

Me and my ex

I actually think he is a nice guy and we are friends. I asked him about Roxy. He told me he really
was
her boyfriend. He told me he dated her for a year and a half, and that she almost got caught because of me. He told me she felt I made her life miserable. I never meant to make anyone’s life miserable, I was just defending myself. He said she was the kind of girl who knew what she was doing and had managed to get what she wanted out of him. He confirmed many of my personal impressions, and I felt vindicated. Besides those two instances with Roxy, I never had any problems with anyone. The third fight I was ever in came at the very end of my stay at the Mansion.

Somewhere along the way the line had been drawn and the group was divided into two camps. Holly was the mark. It seemed to me she was always the start of any conflict because there was always someone on her hit list. She wanted everyone gone, but she always focused on one girl at a time. For example, first it was Tammy and then it was Emma. I don’t think it was a coincidence that it was whichever girl had moved into bedroom two. It was Tammy’s role to recruit new girls, an unspoken agreement she had with Hef. But new girls were the last thing Holly wanted in the group. Whenever a new girl came around, Holly would list all of the things that were wrong with her—her favorite was that she was a “drug addict.” She would give girls dirty looks, and she and Bridget had a system at the clubs that when one left for the bathroom, the other had to guard Hef and make sure no new girls got close to him. They even asked me, to my sheer amusement, to “watch him” a couple of times.

When Tammy left, her big room became available. I didn’t bother trying to get it because I knew it meant more involvement in the group than I wanted. Emma acted like she didn’t want it either, but then I found out that she had promised Hef that she would do whatever it took to have the room. This was the first time I found out that Emma was not always honest with me, and though it didn’t affect our friendship, I remembered that later and was a little guarded with her. In any case, because of her promises, Emma had to deliver, so she brought in new girls for Hef. Of course Holly noticed and began resenting Emma. But we realized that when Holly was waiting for Tina to leave, she was friendly with Tammy. When Tina left she began her battle with Tammy, and when Tammy left Emma preoccupied her schemes.
That room is cursed
, I thought. It was a lose-lose situation for Emma; if she brought new girls into the bedroom or into the group, Holly was angry. If she didn’t, Hef was displeased. And so she brought girls in and expressly told us Hef asked her to. Holly then would run to Hef and ask him why he would tell Emma to bring so and so into the bedroom. Hef would deny it and then of course Holly called Emma a liar, and the vicious circle continued round and round.

Holly and I had a civil relationship. She didn’t get in my face and I didn’t get in hers. There were many times when we got along, and even times when I really liked her. I remember when she was organizing Hef’s bedroom and came to my room to give me this Cuban sculpture of a woman because she knew I had a similar one from Cuba (I had visited Cuba a couple of times when I lived in Canada). She also came by to give me a beautiful scroll of a tiger print that Hef had received from a Chinese ambassador because she knew I liked tiger and dragon motifs. I thought that was very sweet of her, and I reciprocated those gestures when I could by giving her a new shirt I thought she would like or giving her treats for her dogs.

I knew she didn’t want any of us there, and she knew I was good friends with the girls she wasn’t fond of, but we were polite to each other and sometimes agreed on certain issues. We had a little unintended ritual: on the weekends when I took my dogs out on the front lawn, she would come down with her dogs and join me. We would have a short but honest conversation about some recent drama, and then move on to our opposing sides of the group—returning to status quo. Emma’s room looked out directly onto the lawn, and she always got mad that I spoke with Holly. As soon as I got back to my room, the phone would ring.

“What did you and your new best friend talk about?”

I just laughed. “Now don’t be jealous, Emma!”

But I didn’t hate Holly like Emma did. I just didn’t have anything in common with her. I really wished things had been different. I have seriously thought about why I wasn’t better friends with the girl, but I realize it was impossible because we had such different goals and perspectives. The main reason the group was divided into two was because our tastes, interests, and personalities were so different. We could not be friends; we could be friendly, but not real friends. Holly and Bridget wanted to go see
Finding Nemo
when the rest of us wanted to see
8 Mile
. We wanted to stay out late at clubs; they wanted to come home early. We wanted to go out to cool Hollywood events; they wanted to go to Disneyland. On our Christmas wish list were designer purses and Jimmy Choo boots, and on theirs collectible Barbies and Department 56 items. It was impossible.

We were young women who wanted to go out, meet boys, and have a good time. In my eyes, the other two were like children. We couldn’t understand it. Holly had an obsession with Disneyland. She and Ashley, her other friend besides Bridget, had annual passes and went all the time. Every year for her birthday, that is where she wanted to go. I could never figure out why Hef agreed to go so many times; at seventy-eight, it was a lot of walking around for him, and if he was going to make the effort shouldn’t it be for his children, not his twenty-five- to thirty-year-old Girlfriends? I love Disneyland, and I enjoyed the times we went because we got special tours, but at twenty-eight, I didn’t feel the need to be there every month. It was fantastic not to have to wait in line, and at the end of our trip, Hef would let us go to the stores and shop; I always picked out a bunch of stuff I would later give away to family and kids I knew, while Holly and Bridget decorated their rooms. I actually ended up spending one of my birthdays there because I happen to share it with Bridget. I could not for the life of me understand how Bridget, my least favorite person in the group, and I shared the same birthday. We were nothing alike. Nothing. Luckily, the one birthday we spent together was planned by me—although we did go to Disneyland right before it as a special treat. The next year I was out of town, and she celebrated it at Shakey’s pizza parlor, while my idea of a birthday celebration was dinner at Asia de Cuba at the Mondrian hotel and then drinking and dancing.

Another thing about Holly and Bridget was that they collected Barbies, which I can understand as a lifelong hobby, but it wasn’t like that with them. She and Bridget seemed to have a strange interest in toys and childish things. We always speculated that it was related to a deprived childhood; maybe they weren’t able to have those things as children and so it brought them joy, even in their twenties—or thirties for Bridget—to finally have those toys. We heard that Holly came from a small town in Oregon, and she always spoke in unflattering terms about her family. Bridget apparently came from a town called Lodi in Northern California and grew up in a trailer. I never asked them about it; I figured it was a sensitive subject. But we thought that explained their fascination with toys and costumes. On a positive note, Bridget had a talent at decorating her room for the holidays—she was very good with themes. Also, she is the most creative present wrapper I have seen to date; every present from her came wrapped in a whimsical and original manner.

In general we wanted to stay out all day and hang out with boys, and they wanted to stay in and play Monopoly with Hef. I got talked into playing with them one Tuesday night, and the butlers made fun of me forever. Every Tuesday when I was out and about, the butlers would call me and say, “They are starting Monopoly early tonight. Hef is looking for you—he’s pissed you’re not here.”

I was confused and disturbed. “Are you serious? What the hell . . .”
What had I gotten myself into?