The Vegas Diaries: Romance, Rolling the Dice, and the Road to Reinvention (27 page)

“Ladies, I’ll walk you to the car,” Doug said, suddenly a gentleman. “I’ll be back!” he said to me with a gleam in his eye.

I conversed with the nightclub staff over champagne until Doug returned. He was actually surprisingly well behaved that night. He listened to me complain about Nancy and offered good advice. He wasn’t coming on as strong as he usually did and mentioned a girl he had started seeing. He talked about the stand-up shows he had signed on to do in Vegas and the great house he rented in the same golf course community in Summerlin where Hannah’s new boyfriend lived. Suddenly, I felt better about being in his company.
Perhaps we could be comfortable in the friend zone,
I thought.

When my gig was over, Doug walked me out to valet, where he had a limo waiting, complete with a cheesy, neon-lined interior. We laughed a
little about it as we got in and he quickly started telling me stories about his latest European jaunt. I had had a few drinks that night and was quite distracted by my anger toward Nancy, so the car ride flew by in a blur.
This drive is taking a while,
I thought. I cracked the tinted window to get a better view.

“Where are we going?” I shot at Doug, interrupting his sales pitch on Ibiza in August.

“We’re gonna go by my place real quick,” he responded. “I gotta pick something up.”

I could see where this was going from a mile away as he scooted closer to me. I pretended to be fascinated with his stories as I whipped out my phone and BEGGED Hannah to drive over to Doug’s house to pick me up. I had known Doug was renting in the area before he even told me. I remembered Hannah mentioning to me that she was soon to be “neighbors with the douche bag” back when she started spending more time at her man’s house. The douche bag in question was too busy telling me how much money he had spent furnishing this new pad to notice that I seemed more than casually interested in my phone.

Hannah’s Mercedes was idling in the driveway when we pulled up.

“Who’s here?” Doug asked, squinting his eyes at the beat-up car.

“Hannah. She’s staying around here,” I explained. “She’s picking me up.”

“But . . . hey,” he stumbled, grasping at straws. “She can hang out, too!”

“Thanks for the ride!” I shouted, throwing my hand up into the air for a distant wave as I trotted over to Hannah’s car.

“Goin’ back to Doug’s, are we?” she playfully admonished, backing out of the driveway.

Doug was left staring at us, his arms out in an exaggerated shrug.

“No!” I cried. “You heard him offer to take me home. I didn’t know he meant
his
home.”

“Gross, what a tool,” Hannah said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve heard he has a big dick, though.”

I swatted Hannah on the shoulder and we laughed all the way back to my house.

When I awoke later the next day, I pointed the remote toward my windows to lift the blackout shades.
The same blackout shades Eric convinced me to buy,
I thought ruefully. I didn’t even need them. I could sleep through anything. The bright sun poured in, bouncing off the crystal chandeliers and illuminating my baby-blue damask-covered walls and mirrored furniture. Napoleon took the cue to wake up and started barking and jumping around wildly. I reached over to the nightstand to grab my phone and the first text I saw was the kind you just don’t want to start your day with. Hannah had sent me a screen shot of an Instagram photo Nancy had posted the night before. It was a picture of Nancy and three women I had never seen before crowded into a diner booth with one dainty piece of cheesecake in the center of the table. Under the photo, the caption read: “I love these ladies! Friends worth having! #MyTableIsFull #NoBasicsAllowed.”

I rolled my eyes. I wondered if this was a passive-aggressive dig aimed at me. Even though it wasn’t a very masterful burn, it still hurt. Not to mention, once I checked Twitter, I realized that that post was the least of it. Nancy and Lindsay seemed to be subtweeting about me like crazy. They weren’t mentioning my name, but I believed they were talking about me, and slamming me pretty hard, at that. Well, Nancy appeared to be slamming me. Lindsay seemed to be agreeing. My heart was in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t know how I was going to concentrate on the show tonight. Here were two of my closest friends appearing to hate on me, suddenly and viciously. My emotions plunged. I couldn’t wait to get backstage to tell Josh about what was going on.

So now I’m
basic, I thought. I suppose she thought she was just the epitome of wild, crazy, fun—the opposite of basic. If I had been speaking
to her then, I would have had news for her: having a drinking problem doesn’t mean you aren’t basic. In fact, it had made her horribly predictable and boring.

What had gone wrong between Nancy and me?

Was I bad at communicating? Sure, but I couldn’t remember ever not being straightforward with Nancy. Her open-book mentality was what I admired about her, so I naturally tended to mirror that when I was with her. If anything, I should have staged an intervention by now.

And I’d always been there for Nancy when she needed something. I was confused and couldn’t understand where her resentment was coming from.

And why am I basic?
I wondered. Since when did
basic
become the go-to insult? And is anyone on the same page about what it means? Is a basic just someone who likes what’s popular? Are you basic if you like pumpkin spice lattes, Ugg boots, and infinity scarves?

How was I to interpret this insult?
I wondered as I threw back my baby-blue satin comforter and rolled out of bed. Instead of brushing off the post, like I should have, I proceeded to turn it over and over in my mind, analyzing it to death.

Napoleon trailed at my heels as I descended the staircase en route to the kitchen to get his food.
I was never basic,
I thought to myself. I was always the kid getting suspended from the cheerleading squad for dying my hair purple or ruining the vintage prom dresses I wore to school by “hemming” them with a lighter. I wasn’t popular. I always had my nose in a book or my head in the clouds and would find joy in random small details other people wouldn’t notice. I was a Phoebe in a world of Rachels and Monicas. Oh, whoops, I made a
Friends
reference! How basic of me.

As I showered, I contemplated why I always had a natural aversion to doing what was popular or what was expected of me. It wasn’t that I thought I was cooler than anyone else, it was more instinctual than that: I simply wasn’t interested in dipping my toe into a flooded market.
Strangely enough, I think the search for the offbeat is what led me to Playboy in the first place. I saw it as vintage glamour with an illicit twist. Nothing basic about that! Of course, as I went deeper and deeper down that rabbit hole, I started losing myself in the quest to become the “perfect Playmate.” Sure, the platinum-maned, spray-tanned, blow-up doll look might not be the norm in most social strata, but it was definitely, at the Playboy mansion, basic. I was a Playboy basic bitch. But I also knew that those days were well behind me.

I couldn’t stop thinking about this as I got dressed. After I laced up my shoes, I picked up my phone and looked at the mean post one last time. As I stared at it, I told myself,
You know you’re not basic. Don’t let this insecure woman get to you
.
Why is this bothering me so much?
I wondered.

Maybe it hurt because I felt like she was trying to say I was not special. And deep down, perhaps I didn’t feel like anyone thought I was special. Maybe the “basic bitch” insult hit an unexpected nerve. Clearly it went deeper than how I was feeling about Nancy to how I was feeling about my life in general. All of us want that person who makes us feel like one of a kind, and I had thrown Mark away, the only guy who ever had.
Good luck finding another one,
I thought to myself as I grabbed my giant tote and walked out the front door.

After work, I met Lindsay at the Chandelier bar at the Cosmo so we could speak in person and get to the bottom of whatever our overblown misunderstanding was. I ran through what I wanted to say to Lindsay in my mind as the escalators pushed me up amid the million Swarovski crystals of the giant chandelier that encased the bar like a massive spider web.

I spotted Lindsay on one of the royal-blue damask sofas with a lemon drop martini in her hand.

“Nancy told me you called me a bitch for not telling you why I was mad,” Lindsay blurted out self-righteously as I sat down next to her.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, “but I was frustrated. How am I supposed
to know why you are mad or what I did wrong if you just go silent?” I said, pausing to order a vodka soda from the bartender.

“You’re one to talk!” Lindsay exclaimed, practically spitting out her drink. “That’s what
you
do to people! Don’t even get me started! You are the queen of going silent!”

“Well, that’s not what I’m doing now,” I shot back, though I realized that what she was saying was totally spot-on. “I’m trying to fix this. What’s the problem? And what’s Nancy’s problem?”

Lindsay opened her mouth to say something, but I wasn’t finished.

“I know you’ve been friends with Nancy longer than me,” I continued, “so you can believe what you want, but she was telling me that you were saying all these nasty things about me. It’s like she doesn’t want us to be friends.”

“You are totally right about that,” Lindsay agreed after a few moments. “She has been complaining for a while that she thinks you are trying to steal me from her.”

“Who steals friends?” I said, throwing my hands in the air with exasperation. “This isn’t high school!”

“I know,” Lindsay said quietly. “It’s ridiculous. To tell you the truth, Nancy and I have been growing apart for some time now. She just gets so wasted whenever we go out together that I end up having to babysit her. Remember when I told you she kicked my car a few months back and left the dent in it? That was kind of the last straw. But I think she blames you for us growing apart when really that’s not it at all.”

“So she’s going back and forth between us . . .” I started.

“And playing us both,” Lindsay finished. “I kind of suspected that in the back of my head, but I didn’t want to believe it. It pisses me off.”

“It makes me really mad, too,” I agreed. “The one thing I liked best about Nancy was that she was always so honest. No matter how much of a hot mess she was sometimes, or no matter how unconventional, she just didn’t give a shit. She was straight up about it. I loved that about her.”

“I know,” Lindsay said. “But let’s face it, that’s been changing for a long time.”

“You’re right,” I said, “I didn’t want to see it. I’m slow to let go sometimes, but it got to the point where she’s so mean to people . . .”

“. . . that it’s embarrassing,” Lindsay finished. “It was only a matter of time before she turned on us.”

“Yeah, I guess I just stupidly thought I was, like, special and immune to her wrath or something,” I reflected, crumpling up my cocktail napkin.

“Well,” Lindsay said, lifting her martini glass, “here’s to letting go.”

W
HO’S CALLING ME
?
I
wondered. I could hear my phone buzzing before I was ready to wake on this hot summer’s day.
This must be important for someone to be calling over and over again,
I thought.
It’s the Fourth of July weekend, after all.

I finally reached over and grabbed my phone, peering out from under my comforter to see who the persistent caller was. It was a producer from
Holly’s World
.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Holly, we’ve got some unfortunate news,” he began before going on to tell me that with a new network president at the helm of E! and the Playboy-related advertiser problems that had lingered since the
Girls Next Door
days, the decision had been made to not renew the show.

I expressed my disappointment as I let the news slowly sink in.

“You seem to be taking this well,” my bearer of bad news said. “I think I’m more upset about it than you are.”

“It’s not that I’m not upset about it. I knew it would come to an end sometime, I just wasn’t expecting it to be so soon,” I replied, trying to sound strong.

In truth, I wasn’t taking it that well. I’ve never been a very outwardly emotional person and I didn’t see the point in throwing a pity party over
the phone, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be bummed about this for some time to come. I tried to reassure myself that it wasn’t that bad. Sure, it would have been fun and productive to do another season, but I never planned on doing reality TV forever. Hadn’t I got everything I wanted from it anyway? The TV program had helped make
Peepshow
a hit, I had established myself on television as a single woman, I’d attracted several endorsement deals, and the show had bought me time to figure out my next step. The only problem was . . . I hadn’t figured out my next step yet! This made me feel terrified and not ready for the change. I felt uninspired and out of control of the situation, two feelings I was terribly uncomfortable with.

After we hung up, I wallowed in sadness by taking my vintage Corvette out in the blistering heat (no air conditioning in a 1960!) and ventured to the nearest McDonald’s drive-through. I proceeded to load up on junk food and stuff my face like the proverbial girl who’s just been dumped. Only instead of a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, I had my favorite McDonald’s Extra Value Meal and a handful of barbecue sauce packets. I drove back home feeling sorry for myself. It was the Fourth of July and I desperately needed to get out of the house and forget my troubles. I knew Hannah’s boyfriend was having a barbecue and a few other people we knew were throwing parties in his neighborhood. When Hannah invited me, I hadn’t committed to anything. But after being on the receiving end of a rough blow, I was eager to get out of my house.

“Hannah!” I texted, noticing that it was already noon, “I’m on my way!”

As I drove across town to the party, I let the news sink in. Then it hit me. So many of my friends depended on the show.
Friends,
the word echoed in my mind. Were they my friends? What if they wouldn’t be now that the show was over? I felt a sinking feeling worse than the one I had when I got the news. After all, hadn’t most of my former Play
mate “friends” exited stage left once I was no longer first lady of the mansion?