Down the Rabbit Hole - Holly Madison

Slowly he made his way to his newest girlfriend to more closely scrutinize her face. My jaw
clenched as he inched toward her.
What horrible thing was he about to say? I thought. I looked down at my hands and squinted my
eyes. After what felt like an eternity just waiting for him to erupt, he finally let out a big guttural
laugh.
My eyes sprang up to make sure I was hearing this correctly.
“Why, that red lipstick looks absolutely wonderful on you, Kendra!” he boomed, grabbing her
arms and kissing her on the cheek. “You look like you just stepped out of a 1940s movie!”
I looked over to Bridget, who had the same surprised look plastered on her face that I was sure I
had on mine. Surely he was being facetious and was about to unload on her, right? Not only did he not
despise the look, he thought she looked “wonderful.”
My head was spinning. Kendra and I were not so unlike that red lipstick could have looked that
much better on her than it did on me. What about Bridget? Tina? Vicky? April? Or any of the other
five dozen girls who were told never to wear the hue?
I was waiting for the other shoe to drop when the house photographer gestured for us all to line
up for a photograph, but nothing more was said. Did I somehow manage to stumble into an episode of
The Twilight Zone?
“Are you kidding me?” I whispered to Bridget when we finally piled into the limo. I could feel
the hurt boiling inside me.
She just shook her head.
“So he just loves red lipstick now?” I asked sarcastically. How could his decades-long opinion
transform so suddenly with one girl? I was crushed. That was the reaction I had thought I would have
received years earlier. Over such a minor thing, I was belittled and made to feel like trash. But
Kendra did it and gets praised? I didn’t resent Kendra; it wasn’t her fault. It was Hef who made me
mad.
All the Playmates who were waiting to go out with us noticed how taken aback I was. That’s one
of the things about Hef: when it came to humiliating his girlfriends, the larger the audience, the better.
“I think he was trying to get to you,” one of the girls whispered, pretending to search through her
purse. “I don’t think he really likes it.” It was her way of trying to comfort me.
Seriously? I thought. Sure, Hef had a habit of pitting the youngest girl against his main girl; that
tradition had been going on since the days of “Mama Hen” Tina and “Baby Face” Buffy, but this was
sick. Was he really trying to stir up my feelings of inadequacy by praising a 19-year-old? I was only
25, which was hardly ancient (unless you’re talking to Hugh Hefner).
“There’s no way he remembers,” I said, only half believing my own lie. “It was like two years
ago.”
“Holly,” she said, taking a moment to meet my eyes. “You know he remembers everything.”
I stared back at her and let this sink in. She was right. He knew exactly what he was doing. He
catalogues shit like that for just these types of moments. Men don’t achieve his kind of power and
success by being idiots. He didn’t want a big, happy family of girlfriends that all got along. He
wanted multiple women frothing with jealousy and animosity towards each other. It was a part of his