The Bunny Trip

My night at the Quaalude-drenched Uni High Swim Team Banquet at the Century City Playboy Club

I was a high school swim team score-girl before I was a commie.

I’m glad things ended up that way, because otherwise I never would’ve been able to touch the Playboy Bunny, and carry on my sensual, if guilty, disposition.

The high school swim team was my ticket to an almost-prom, to halcyon schooldays, to a bartended, dress-up affair. 

The Trotskyists, the Yippies, the lavender pinkos— they gave me guns and a good deal to think about, but nothing soft or fluffy.

I went to a school called University High— a white, mostly Jewish school in West Los Angeles. Its public face was one-part Hollywood Colony, one part UCLA professors' kids.

In the ‘70s, there was no truly integrated school in the district. A discreet number of black students from South Central Los Angeles were bused into white schools from the time they were in Kindergarten.

(C) Joel Levine -Red Tide graffiti on the Uni High Bungalows

It was not a two-way street. It was a cradle-to-cap affair.

The neighborhood Chicano and Japanese-Amer…