Mysteries of the universe baffle me: Is there life on other planets? Which came first: the chicken or the egg? And how does someone as grandpa-looking as Hugh Hefner score all that young tail? Thanks to Izabella St. James’ BUNNY TALES: BEHIND CLOSED DOORS AT THE PLAYBOY MANSION, I can cross the latter off my “to ask God” list.

According to St. James, who was part of Hef’s live-in pussy posse for two years, it sounds like cold, hard cash is the reason behind the old man’s skill at roping in the breasty blondes, because any girlfriend who lives under his roof gets a $1,000 cash allowance every week, not to mention free plastic surgery. All you have to do for it is abide by his strict code of rules and occasionally service his aged member. Eww.

You’d think St. James would be too smart to fall into such a trap, what with her Pepperdine law degree and all, but this “nice Catholic girl” just succumbs to the glitz and glamour. She outlines exactly how in BUNNY TALES; skip the first couple of chapters that deal with her – yawn – childhood in Poland (complete with lots of book-report-ready facts) and upbringing in Canada, and then you’ll get to the good stuff: her recruitment into Hef’s circle, staffed with catty, jealous women and stuffed with bizarre rules that amount to a quasi-form of slavery or prostitution.

And then there’s the sex. You read a book like BUNNY TALES simply wanting to get the goods on whether Hef nails all those women at the same time. St. James doesn’t disappoint, giving you an entire chapter devoted to those nights in the bedroom – a blow-by-blow (pun marginally intended), 10-page account that’ll reshape your entire perception of Hef. As much I’m trying to forget, the images just keep flooding back to me. Baby oil. 69. “God damn it … wow.” Make it stop!

St. James describes all this with a fair amount of disgust and/or disbelief, watching as her roomies climb on and off of Hef one right after the other for less than a minute each. Yet at some point, she gave in, ditching the panties and mounting the publisher herself. Why? Curiosity, she writes, but I’m not buying. Especially given her revulsion at Hef’s lone form of protection: a damp towel for between-the-bumps clean-up.

The book reads almost like someone stuck a tape recorder in front of her and transcribed the result. In other words, it’s entertaining, but empty, and I get the sense that we learned a little more from it than St. James did. For dishing the dirt, BUNNY TALES wins; expect nothing loftier. However, it is a much better, more credible and less annoying read than Jennifer Saginor’s PLAYGROUND, another recent manse tell-all. –Rod Lott

“Holly would start off the festivities by orally pleasuring Hef until he became erect. … As soon as she got him hard, some new girl would be ready to have sex with him. That was the thing about Hef; he was always on his back, so whoever had sex with him would have to get on top. I guess this was good because the girl was always able to control the length and the involvement of the encounter. Occasionally he would get up and get on top of a girl. It’s sad to say, but this usually happened when he wanted to have sex with some new girl who was shy or hesitant to have sex with him.”

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