The Bunny Years (6 page)

I continued to write home several times a week, breezily informing my parents and two younger brothers of the worldly life I had been adopted into in New York. The letters must have struck them as news bulletins from Pluto.

I will need my birth certificate immediately for the cabaret license—it seems strange that I have to have a “performing artist” license to wait tables! Because I'm 19, state law prohibits me from working past 10 p.m. and I'll be off the floor before 7 p.m. Therefore, it will interfere less with school than Bloomingdale's did.

I won't really be a short-order girl. We have busboys who do most of the lifting and carrying. We pay them out of our tips. The training is excel-lent—we really will have classes on exotic and gourmet foods and wines. I was told that Bunnies are supposed to be as elegant and knowledgeable as a “garçon” in an expensive French restaurant.

Cigarette Bunny Kay, 1963.

As a Cigarette Bunny, I would wander throughout the Club, roaming into every room on every level. I walked to the beat of the music—an endless loop of jazz and easy listening. I lingered wherever I found a customer who caught my interest and wanted to talk. Whenever I sensed there was a business discussion or private meeting, I
smiled and moved on. The best part was the anonymity. I could perch anywhere, put a smile on my face and watch. Bunny Kay had no last name, if indeed that was her first name. I could have called myself Phôebe or Salomé. I could play any role I wanted to invent, or be myself. And it was all part of the job.

I made friends among the Bunnies, bartenders and busboys. Bunnies were free to stop and chat with anyone on a break. I soon discovered that the Club was full of young women just like me. We came from places like Baltimore, Seattle, Tampa, Laramie, Green Bay, Mason City, Newark and Butte. We all needed bread-and-butter jobs to tide us over until we finished school or figured out what else we wanted to do.

I confided in Lauren Hutton, who was stationed at the end of the Playmate Bar serving king crab, which was displayed on a bed of cracked ice. For $1.50, Bunny Lauren handed out a plate of king crab and was almost always told to “keep the change.” Two 19-year-old acting students really did have the best jobs in the Club. The worst jobs, we figured, were Gift Shop Bunny (no tips) and Door Bunny (no tips and you had to stand in the draft). The job to be avoided at all costs was Hatcheck Bunny (drafty, boring, strenuous, no chance to sit or perch and you couldn't keep the tips). My one great fear was that someone would find out how much money I was making and take my job away from me. I didn't dare miss a day of work.

January 26, 1963, was my birthday. It was also the day that Gloria Steinem applied for a Bunny job, using the alias “Marie Ochs.” As she waited in the Playmate Bar, I roamed the Club with my cigarette tray. Despite another birthday, I was still too young to work later than 7 p.m. I didn't notice her; my thoughts were on the dinner Sheila and I were serving in our tiny apartment that night for 20 friends from the Academy.

Sheralee Conners, 1962.

Marty and his brother-in-law came in
[to the Club]
yesterday to check me out
, I wrote home.
I passed muster. They said I had a clean, wholesome, kid sister sort of look—well, I was hired, so they must want that image.

Four days later, Gloria Steinem returned to the Club at 6:30 p.m. for her interview with Bunny Mother Claudia. It happened to be Claudia's last day on the job at the New York Club. With her was Sheralee Conners, a Bunny from the Chicago Club and a recent Playmate centerfold, who was replacing her. Sheralee had very long, very shiny chestnut-colored hair, porcelain skin, enormous clear brown eyes and looked more like a big sister than anybody's mother. She spoke in a rushed, little-girl voice, punctuating her speech with faces—happy, sad, perplexed and surprised.

Her face registered all four expressions when I raced into the dressing room to announce to her that a man who said he was an executive with Phillips Milk of Magnesia had given me a generous tip for a pack of cigarettes. Steinem would record the moment in her
Show
magazine article: “He gave me 30 bucks, and I only got him cigarettes . . .” At the time, Sheralee then frowned and told me I had better study my “Bunny Bible” for Bunny training, which would begin the following week.

I was now earning enough money at the Club to pay my expenses and even open a savings account. My first major discovery had been the welcome sight of an employee lounge that served what I thought was free food. Free food! Even better than at Bloomingdale's, where I had had to pay up to 50 cents for a bologna on white with lettuce and mayo. In the Club's employee lounge, I was overwhelmed by the choices on the steam table, usually some kind of fish and some kind of meat, and some kind of mélange with a red sauce. I loved the corned beef, long before I knew what it was. It was months, perhaps a year, before I realized the food in the employee lounge was rather ordinary cafeteria food. Even after I was issued a meal ticket and knew that the cost was deducted from my wages, I was still dazzled by the price.

I wrote home:
My expenses are few since I eat at the Club. My bus and cab fare account for only a dollar a day. Ten hours a week and perhaps an occasional weekend day as a substitute is all I need. I've even bought the Academy-required makeup kit, tickets to two plays and a couple of books I needed.

On Monday afternoon, February 4, eight of us who were ready to become floor Bunnies, including “Bunny Marie,” met in Sheralee's office in the dressing room for the Bunny Mother's lecture. Sheralee's office was
tiny, and there weren't enough folding metal chairs. I perched on the edge of a filing cabinet and hoped we wouldn't be asked any questions. I hadn't studied my Bunny Manual at all.

Much of the meeting was devoted to Sheralee's admonition that we “not appear to” push drinks. However, since customers tipped us according to the amount of the bill, it was in our best interest (and certainly the Club's) to serve as many drinks as possible. Sheralee pointed out that customers would order more drinks if we gave good service. She impressed upon us that “pushing drinks wouldn't look nice” and that Bunnies were above doing that. Her explanation satisfied me; urging customers to drink up and have another did not appeal to me.

A Bunny sitting near me was more succinct. “They don't want us to look like B Girls hustling drinks.” Right. We were not B Girls. The difference was clear to me, but the significance of Sheralee's comments had everything to do with the fact that the Club still had not been granted a cabaret license that permitted entertainment. New York City's license commissioner contended that our costumes were indecent and that the Bunnies might be mingling with the customers to increase liquor sales, in violation of the law.

In fact, the problems with the State Liquor Authority had made the New York Playboy Club unique. It was not allowed to operate as a private club. The general public had to be admitted. Customers entering without key-club membership were issued paper cutouts in the shape of keys and permitted to pay cash.

Almost everything discussed at the afternoon meeting had to do with discipline. All of the rules were strictly enforced to protect the Bunnies and to ensure that the Playboy Club would not only retain its liquor license but also acquire the permit for entertainment. At that time, there were three showrooms on the premises—and no entertainment. The Chicago, New Orleans and Miami Playboy Clubs, meanwhile, all had entertainment.

The rules for us were many. According to the Bunny Manual, they included:

We were instructed to meet husbands or boyfriends at least two blocks from the Club, and to do so discreetly. I envisioned groups of men skulking in doorways in a two-block radius. Mostly, I felt relieved hearing these rules. I didn't want to date Keyholders, room directors or busboys, and I wished it were always that easy to come up with a solid excuse to decline a date. At 19, the best I could come up with was, “I'm sorta going with someone back home.”

There were exceptions, however. The “No. 1 Keyholders,” those Very Important Playboys who were company executives, had the privilege of asking us out on a date. But they couldn't force us to go out with them if we didn't want to.

In case there were lapses, we were told that the Club had hired a detective agency called Wilmark to keep the Bunnies under surveillance. We never knew when these Wilmark detectives might appear in the Club, posing as customers trying to tempt us to meet for a date. Wilmark agents were also on the lookout for Bunny ears that didn't match, snags in the black hose, tails that needed fluffing and dirty fingernails. The former violation cost you your job; the latter transgressions resulted in demerits.

Counter to the custom at the other clubs, we would not be working for tips exclusively; New York State law required we be paid a minimum hourly wage. In turn, a portion of our charged tips would be withheld by the Club. We could keep all of our cash tips, but we were not allowed to state that preference to the customers. Again, Wilmark would be watching us. During the early days of the Club, there was a variety of changing rules regarding our earnings and charge-backs to the Club, but it was always clear to me that my real earnings would be the cash tips.

Sheralee wrapped up the Bunny Mother meeting by letting us know that we would be working in a very protected environment.

Then we got down to business. In one of the showrooms, we watched a film that Keith Hefner had prepared. A training guide to highly refined
and highly guarded Playboy Club esoterica, it revealed such signature moves as the “Bunny Stance,” the “Bunny Dip,” the “High Carry,” the “Bunny Crouch” and the “Bunny Perch.” The “Stance” was a model's pose with one foot behind the other and a hip slightly thrust out. The “Dip” was a graceful backward arch with knees together, employed while serving drinks to keep the girl's overstuffed, overextended breasts from popping out of the costume. The “High Carry,” a tray full of drinks carried on the flat of the palm high over the head, made perfect sense when I saw the most naturally buxom in our group of trainees struggle not to topple the Tom Collins glasses on her tray. The “Crouch” was mandatory for taking drink orders during shows (should the Club ever have entertainment), preventing Bunnies from having to lean over a customer, exposing themselves while trying to hear an order. The “Perch” was designed to allow Bunnies to remain on display near their stations, when not serving drink orders, without giving the appearance of mingling. A Bunny could rest a hip on a banister or sit on the back of a chair—but not in it!