'Playboy' captures angst of an unforgettable trip

By Libby Copeland
Washington Post

It is a little tough to feel bad for Leif Ueland.

"I really got tired of writing about sex," he says mournfully.

When Ueland decided to write "Accidental Playboy," about the six-month bus trip he took in 1998 documenting Playboy's search for the Playmate of the Millennium — during which he was dragged to strip joints, obliged to photograph topless women and forced (well, maybe not forced) to sleep with two tryouts — his publisher wanted to use the subtitle "Living the Ultimate Male Fantasy."

"I just wanted to shoot myself," says Ueland, descendant of feminists, recovering sexual neurotic, gay-seeming straight and all-around Sensitive Male. He made a counteroffer: "Caught in the Ultimate Male Fantasy." That, he felt, more accurately captured the angst of his journey.

Ueland, 37, a struggling writer, was living in Los Angeles and working on a novel when he was offered a job writing daily dispatches for Playboy.com about the Playmate tryouts. The great-grandson of a suffragette, Ueland worried the job would turn him into a "pig." But he accepted the offer, eager for cash and adventure and egged on by his shrink.

Once on the bus, he met his subjects: small-town girls and strippers, young mothers and even grandmothers, with gorgeous faces and worn-out faces, dream bodies and botched boob jobs. He saw the leers of one of the other Playboy staffers, watched the way a set of muscled hustlers tried to latch onto the bus to score dates, and felt "guilt by association," "embarrassed to be a man."

'A poodle among pit bulls'

"Accidental Playboy" is perhaps too honest, the kind of honest that makes you feel itchy. It details Ueland's sexual hangups, his dating humiliations and his frank discussions with his therapist. When he began the job — handsome but perhaps a little too nice, with no job, no money and no car — he hadn't had sex in five years. (Then there's the gay-seeming thing. Ueland is well-aware of it, but he has little explanation for the slightly effeminate voice and expressive mannerisms. It may be relevant to mention, however, that he was a child underwear model.)

On board the bus, he was at first a poodle among pit bulls. Acutely self-conscious and tortured by "a nonstop inner narrative," Ueland hesitated to approach women even for the clothed pictures required for his Web site dispatches. When charged with the task of filing the semi-nude Polaroids taken of the tryouts, he couldn't seem to find his libido. "Shouldn't I be feeling something other than numb?" he writes.

But Ueland's sensitivity is what saves "Accidental Playboy" from being a mere chronology of blond hair, breasts and bright smiles. While he was biased toward the unusual-looking tryouts, like the one whose "nose is the tiniest bit bulbous," as well as the ones who seem to feel a bit cynical about Playboy and its mission, he was surprised by the unquestioning enthusiasm many tryouts seemed to feel for Playboy. For many, making it onto those glossy pages would mean refuge from the smallness of their lives.

He listened to the women's very American stories (Divorced at 21? Inhabitant of 70 — 70?! — foster homes?), noted the sense of humor that strippers tend to have, wondered what it's like to possess the open-sesame beauty that provokes instant marriage proposals and wildly exorbitant gifts. (As if to provide evidence, the Hooters waitress serving Ueland tells of a customer who regularly tips her $100 for his $10 meals.)

He watched countless women undress.

"I've never forgotten this," he says. "You would see a pattern of a bruise." With his right hand, Ueland cups his hand around the inside of his left upper arm. He saw that same bruise, over and over — men grabbing their girlfriends, as in "Don't leave until I tell you."

He observed, too, how for himself and his cohort — the Playboy photographers, the PR woman, the various staffers — those six months on the bus resulted in a disappointing dissection of beauty. Women became parts, no longer Dolores or Daisy or Cynthia but formless legs or too-close eyes. They became grades: 1, 2, 3. As humble appreciation turned into the expectation of perfection, the tiniest flaws became deal-breakers. The strongest candidates embodied the Playboy ideal of the blond kewpie doll. They seemed "almost slightly higher than human." (The search, however, ultimately yielded two brunette Millennium Playmates, Peruvian-raised twins Darlene and Carol Bernaola.)

"The mindset of the search — there are very few people that measure up," Ueland says. "It's not what is beautiful, it's 'No, this would prohibit.' "

The tryouts — well, like women everywhere — dissected themselves, too. Someone would give compliments, and the reply would be, "Oh, no, I have this weird thing on my thigh."

Going with the flow

Here's what's troubling or heartening about Ueland's journey, depending on your point of view. During its course, he became more comfortable with his own desire. When the women flirted with him, he flirted back. So many would-be Playmates turned out to be strippers, the revelation ceased to faze him. He stopped questioning the women's remarkable disinhibition and just went with it. He started inviting his photographic subjects to strip, even though his dispatches weren't supposed to contain nudity, pushing the envelope so far he earned scoldings from his boss. He mentally compared himself to Hugh Hefner. As the trip neared its end, he slept with two tryouts: first with a veteran stripper, then with a college student and Wal-Mart greeter.

All the while, he worried, Am I becoming that kind of guy?

"Whereas we all became increasingly disillusioned with the bus ... Leif really started getting going towards the end," says Nadine Ekrek, who did PR for the bus and witnessed Ueland's transformation. She describes him like a "kid in a candy store," who slowly became aware that the candy was his for the taking. On the last day, Ekrek says, "He was singing, like, an Alanis Morissette song, and he had tears in his eyes."

Ueland's ambivalence about his journey is evident on every page of his book. He says he wouldn't want to repeat the experience, but he's glad he had it. By the end of the trip, he was burned out, but he'd found his libido. He'd embraced his own maleness.

World-weary Ueland says, "I think I do feel like a veteran of the sex industry, like it or not."

Like it or not. The question, of course, is which one it is.