Rictor

Playmates without the staples

BY JOHN JURGENSEN
The Hartford Courant

(KRT) - When a man finds himself on a circular bed with three Playboy centerfold models, the smile stretching across his face reflects something between bliss and bewilderment. This scenario resembles my ultimate fantasy, his grin seems to say, but now that it's happening, what do I do?

Then a camera flashes, the small talk ends, and it's time to get off Hugh Hefner's bed to make room for the next guy.

Although brief and supervised by bouncers, such encounters seemed to satisfy something deep for the hundreds of men who paid up to $146 to experience the Playboy Club Tour when it came to Brickyard Cafe in Hartford, Conn., recently. The 50-city tour is part of the iconic men's magazine's 50th anniversary celebration. It's also meant to conjure some of the atmosphere of the Playboy Clubs, the last of which closed in 1988.

In bustiers, bow ties and bunny ears, 10 Playmates stepped off their tour bus at 7 p.m., waving to the dozens of men in line who had paid the VIP fee to get in early (regular admission was $65, without drink tickets).

With cameras around their necks and magazines in hand, the men filed into the bar behind the Playmates, who were rubbing their arms against the chill. An aluminum salesman from West Virginia named Steve Mosser huddled with the two business associates hosting him. They had warmed up at another bar, and their eyes were darting.

"The strategy is to not get kicked out right away," Mosser said.

They rightly sensed that the event was strictly PG. Despite the magazine's once-racy reputation, the women representing it at the club revealed less skin than some of the women who had come with apparent hopes of being discovered.

The Brickyard's zoning laws aside, the Playmates' appearance fit the magazine's preferred image of "the girl next door."

"Once you're a Playmate, you're not allowed to be a stripper or to pose in other magazines," said Stephanie Heinrich, otherwise known as Miss October 2001. "They keep tabs on that kind of stuff. You wouldn't be allowed to go to the mansion or anything. They want the girl next door, not the stripper next door."

Of Penthouse, Hustler and the breadth of more hard-core pornography on the Internet, Heinrich said, "It's just dirty."

A sunny blonde whose bustier simultaneously squeezed her waist and cradled her breasts, Heinrich said she smiles so much during these events that she ends up wearing one to sleep.

At her shoulder was Nicole Wood, a Playmate from 1993 who briefly lived in Hartford when she was dating a Whaler. They pivoted in a circle, posing on the elbows of one man, then turning around to greet the next one, waiting behind them with a camera.

Wood and Heinrich explained that each Playmate is responsible for the outfit she has been issued, from the floppy ears down to the cuff links and powder-puff tail. It's a change from the days of the Playboy Clubs, when bunnies were cocktail waitresses only and rarely posed nude for the magazine.

Today, the colors of their costumes represent their seniority. The black bunny outfits are reserved for Playmates like Julie McCullough, 39, whose photo spread in the magazine in 1986 got her kicked off the popular sitcom "Growing Pains."

"They call me a classic Playmate, but it's just a nice way of saying I'm old," said McCullough. Blond and gregarious, McCullough was a magnet for the many men who remembered her from their pubescent years.

"I still have that issue," said Craig Witzke, a liquor retailer from South Glastonbury, Conn.

Standing nearby was Frank, 38, a new father.

Frank was supposed to be at a Mets game. He had been polishing this alibi for his wife since last fall, when he learned that the tour was on its way. His story seemed less than airtight, however, because Frank had brought his neighbor, whose wife knew full well that her husband was ogling Playmates that night.

At the moment, he was too smitten to be concerned. One of his favorites, Miss August 2001 - Jennifer Wolcott, a deeply tanned brunette - stood next to Hef's bed, a few feet from Frank. With two digital cameras and backup memory card, he was free to gaze upon her all night if he chose to.

For him, it was the culmination of more than two decades of arms-length intimacy with the Playboy standard of beauty. It's a relationship, for many men, baptized in adolescent hormones and nurtured among the stacks of magazines hidden in fathers' closets and basements.

As many men do, Frank carries the mental image of a patron Playmate, the first he fell for.

"I can actually picture her on the bearskin rug, looking back at the camera. I actually drew a picture of it," he says, remembering when he was 13. That was about the same time his mother discovered his stash of Playboys and made him write an apology letter to Hef.

"I wonder if there's a file somewhere of all the letters like that that came in from teenage boys," Frank muses.

If so, the folks at Playboy could have displayed them near the letters from Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., or with the other memorabilia, such as Hef's pipe, ashtray and smoking jacket.

m00d

zzgundamnzz

Damn I wish I was old enough to go to a Playboy Club before they all closed down in 88

BTW there needs to be pictures

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wdsguy

man playboy has awesome brand loyalty

gideongallery

"Once you're a Playmate, you're not allowed to be a stripper or to pose in other magazines,"

don't a lot of playmates have there own nude site.
and didn't at least two playmates become penthouse pets as well.

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“When crimes occur through the mail, you don’t shut the post office down,” Steve Wozniak