Now Hef partied — Hef made the scene. Behind him at all times stood his bodyguard, a representative of the balding, gum-chewing, bodyguarding caste. Don’t be a bodyguard, if you can possibly help it. You have to stand there all day with your arms folded, frowning watchfully. If you don’t look grim and serious, you aren’t doing your job. Diversified only by a bit of Pepsi-ferrying to the boss, that’s what Hef’s bodyguard does all day: look serious, while Hef horses around. A teenage playmate nuzzled Hef’s chest and giggled. The bodyguard watched her watchfully.
As the thrash thrashed on, I slipped out of the tent and strolled the grounds. The man-made, bloodheat rockpool, the Jacuzzi-infested grotto, the mini-zoos with their hunched, peanut-addict monkeys, smiling parrots, demonic macaws, the tennis court, the vast satellite receiver, curved like a giantess’s brassiere, which enables Hef to watch even more TV than he does already … Hef would later describe an average day in his life. ‘Get up in the early afternoon, have a meeting, there’s a regular buffet, a couple of movies, go upstairs around i a.m. with a girlfriend or whoever, make love then, have a meal, watch a movie or two.’ Now that’s four movies a day we’re looking at. In the early Seventies Hef left the ‘controlled environment’ of his sealed and gardenless mansion in Chicago and moved out to California — itself a kind of controlled environment. Here the sun’s controls are turned up all year long, and the girls are bigger, better, blonder, browner. But Hef isn’t much of a fresh-air buff, even now … On the edge of the tropical fishpond stands an ornamental barrel, full of feed. Scatter a handful of the smelly pellets, and the fish — gorgeously shell-coloured — will rush to the bank, scores of them, mouths open, like benign but very greedy piranha. ‘God, that’s so gross,’ said a passing partygoer. It is, too. The fish mass so tightly that for a moment, a special moment, there is no water beneath you — only squirming suicide. They look netted, beached, like a fisherman’s haul.
2. The Playboy Salad
Keyholder turns Bunny Back cards into Bunny for issuance of desired Certificate. (This offer is not valid in conjunction with any other special promotional offer.) — Playboy Club Leaflet
To the Playboy Club in Century City, just off the Avenue of the Stars. In the foyer of this desperate establishment you will find a squad of strict-faced, corseted Bunnies, a gift shop featuring various ‘celebrity purchases’, and a big TV screen showing a big Playmate as she soaps herself in the tub…This is hot footage from the Playboy Channel — yes, a whole channel of the stuff, nine or ten hours a day. Playboy Inc. is changing its act: once a paunchy conglomerate kept afloat by gambling profits, it is now a solid publishing company nursing high hopes for cable TV. Hef believes that this is the way forward as the trend of American leisure increasingly shuns the street and huddles up in the home. Hef ought to know. He is home-smart, having put in thirty years’ experience of never going out. In the submarine sanctum of the club itself you will find a Playboy pinball machine (the artwork depicts Hef flanked by two playmates in their nighties), a video game with a handwritten Out of Order notice taped to its screen, some backgammon tables, a wall of framed centrefolds, and an oval bar where two or three swarthy loners sit slumped over their drinks, staring at the waitresses with an air of parched and scornful gloom. The wine glasses bear the Playboy logo: the little black rabbit-head does such a good imitation or a drowned insect that the young woman in our party shrieked out loud as she raised the glass to her lips. A 747-load of Japanese tourists in modified beachwear filed cautiously past. The manager or greeter, who looked like the rumba-instructor or tango-tutor of a Miami hotel, showed us to our table with a flourish. The Playboy Club, we knew, was LA’s premier talent showcase, and tonight’s act, we learned, was straight in from Las Vegas. When questioned, the manager proudly agreed that the club did a lot of package-tour business, as well as ‘Greyline Tour bus groups. But the bus groups are very minimal tonight.’ We gazed over the shining mops of the Japanese, and over the coiff, frizz, rug and bald-patch of the bus groups, as tonight’s act did its thing: three girls in tutus, singing popular hits. At the incitement of the lead singer, the audience clapped its hands to the beat. The sound they made was as random as weak applause.