IT WAS A beautiful June day in LA and I, dressed in my
finest duds with my ubiquitous polaroid bag with the cassette recorder stuffed
inside, headed out in my mom's Mercedes with Stephen to the Playboy Mansion.
Jerry Brown, the current governor of California was running for president with Linda
Rondstadt by his side. There was going to be a fund-raising party there at the
almost 22,000 square foot edifice, and we were going. I can't tell you how we
were invited, but things like that were happening all the time. You would be
hanging out at a friend’s place and the next thing you knew you would be
whisked away to some crazy party.
The musical theme was Taking
It To The Streets by the Doobie Brothers. Even though
the Mercedes was still in decent shape, we parked on the street at the end of
Charring Cross Road and happily walked the quarter mile up to the mansion. The
high green hedges were perfectly trimmed as we rushed ahead toward the palace
that loomed larger than life in the distance. At the front gate there were gobs
of security, and I was surprised nobody checked my bag strapped around my
shoulder. Today you couldn't get near any public venue wearing anything like
the sort of stuff I was carrying; but our names somehow were on the guest list,
and we got in.
The first thing we came to was the pool
with the waterfall and we saw a flock of flamingoes strutting around the path
that winded its way through the grounds. It was only around one o'clock in the
afternoon and already the place was packed with all sorts of politicians, movie
stars, people that tried to look like movie stars, bunnies and bunny wannabes,
rock star types, and a couple of real rock stars; in other words, all the glitz
and glamour mixed in with power and wealth. What in the world were we doing
there? Were we hanging out like guitarists at the C. F Martin factory
in Nazareth, PA, or baseball players visiting Yankee Stadium for the first time?
After rambling our way through the thicket of bamboo trees and other foliage we
couldn't even name, we edged our way into the house itself moving ever so
slowly past all the blonde, brunette and red-headed fantasy girls. Finally, we
saw him sitting cross-legged on a striped plum-colored couch smoking a pipe
surrounded by the most beautiful women we had ever seen—Hef himself.
I couldn't see then that
this was another distraction from my true purpose, and to quote Roshi Phillip
Kapleau, in his book, Awakening To Zen, I was “subject to whim and
caprice, like a weathervane blown in different direction by every kind of
emotional wind.” I could say the same thing for Stephen who was especially
intrigued by what society was calling the ultimate in female anatomy, playmates
and models and actresses. Like autumn leaves in a zephyr, we were being tossed
and turned by our senses and desires and would willingly go wherever they would
take us.
This reminds me of a story
a few years earlier in early 1972 when I was still driving my Karman Ghia, the
one Susan had bequeathed to me a year or so earlier. With Stephen in the
passenger seat heading east down Fountain near La Cienega, we spied a beautiful
young lady at the wheel of a British Racing Green MGB-GT a few cars ahead of
us. Fountain is a two-lane black-top, (one lane in each direction)
nevertheless, I was determined to catch up to this dark-haired beauty while
Stephen was edging me on. We weaved our way past the next vehicle barely
avoiding the parked cars on the right as we were approaching Sweetzer. I was
hoping the light would change to red so I could pull up next to her, but it
didn't. She was two cars ahead now as we came up to Crescent Heights; that
light stayed green as well. I floored it and was able to circumvent the VW in
front of me. We were only one car behind now. Traveling at fifty-five mph now
we barely made it through the yellow light at Fairfax and we were able to pull
up beside her. We both smiled at her, and she tried to ignore us, but the sting
of Cupid's arrow would not let us give up that easily.
She eventually,
either out of fear or curiosity, made eye contact with us and she couldn't help
but smile. We were that charming in a silly sort of way, I guess, and convinced
her to pull over at the Mobil station on the corner of La Brea and Fountain. We
got out of the car and approached her in the friendliest of manners we could
muster. She rolled down her window and we told her she was gorgeous and blah
blah blah, and after a few minutes with my heart pounding in my chest so loudly
that I thought she could hear it, we had her phone number.
She told us her name was
Renee and was just barely eighteen, still living in an apartment with her
mother. She also said she was a model who had a contract with the Ford Modeling
Agency, one of the top agencies in the city. We watched her disappear into the
bustling traffic as she headed north on the 101 back to Burbank. Well as it
usually goes, we both started calling her. If the phone was busy for prolonged
periods of time I knew she was on the phone with Stephen and visa-versa
whenever he got a busy signal. This went on for what seemed like weeks, but was
probably only a week, when I asked myself how much time and energy I wanted to
spend on this girl, especially when Stephen told me how hopelessly in love he
thought he was with her. I said, “Go for it, man; she's all yours.” This was
the beginning of a courtship that lasted almost ten years. Unfortunately, or
fortunately for him, the timing was off (as we all know, timing is everything);
it turned out to be a completely platonic relationship he had with that angelic
beauty by the name of Renee Russo.
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