Instead of being greeted every morning with a bag of dirty letters, I now found on my desk packages addressed to “Service Editor, Penthouse:” bottles of booze, walkie talkies, cameras and lenses, turntables and speakers and pre-amps, and yes, a Fuzzbuster radar detector, which I turned over to Jim Goode so he could speed his pups out to Shelter Island in his Lincoln Continental without being pulled over by the man. I didn’t mind I knew that if I were plopped behind the wheel of a souped-up car with a helmet smashed on my head I would immediately drive into a ditch. These invitations I was required to turn over to my boss, Jim Goode, the executive editor. There were also invitations to test drive cars, sometimes at day-long events out of the city and sometimes really out of the city, at bashes thrown at the Greenbrier or in Palm Desert, all expenses paid.
#Penthouse magazine women driver#
The already drunken Car & Driver editor next to me nudged me in the side with his elbow and asked “Is your soup empty too?” 21 Club. In between the mountainous wedge of iceberg lettuce topped with a glacier of blue cheese dressing and the Flintstone-sized T-bone, we were served a palate-cleansing consommé. In 1980 it was après moi le deluge for the automotive industry a company couldn’t bring out as much as a new spark plug without a press conference, always held at a suitably masculine restaurant with plenty to eat and drink to sweeten their spiel.Ī short-lived competitor to STP took over the top floor of the 21 Club to hype their doomed product to the car press, which was 99.9% male and then me.
#Penthouse magazine women free#
My favorite perks of this new gig were free meals at lavish press parties, thrown by PR agencies that seemed to be wallowing in money.
Despite my shortcomings, I was bequeathed the lofty title of service editor of Penthouse magazine, the best job in the world. I just couldn’t believe Paul would willingly give up such a plum, especially to someone who could barely drive a car, had no idea how a stereo worked, and had trouble focusing a camera. I was the woman for the job of service editor. My short stint at Viva had been all about coming up with punning headlines and appeasing advertisers. Donleavy and I’m stuck editing an article on radar detectors,” he groused. “I’m flying to London tomorrow to meet with J.P. Paul was as eager to dump his unwanted editorial task as I had been. It didn’t matter if what you produced was a lemon purchase a full-page ad in Penthouse and your Isuzu or Yugo would be written about and photographed as lovingly as if it were a Pet of the Month.
In reality the service we provided was for the advertisers, plugging their products in glowing terms. Service supposedly meant consumer services, as if we were doing the readers a favor by running reviews of cars, motorcycles, electronics, and cameras. Paul had literary taste of the first water backed by the deep pockets of Penthouse, which let him purchase stories and book excerpts by Gore Vidal, Philip Roth, James Baldwin, Paul Theroux, and other high flyers.īy rights a fiction editor who worked with five-star authors should be above dealing with humdrum service articles. I was sent off to talk to Paul Bresnick, who had the competing titles of fiction and service editor. Now that I was sprung from my smutty epistolary prison, the question was what I would do for those six hours a day I was not at lunch. North Country Girl: Chapter 67 - The Best Job in the Worldįor more about Gay Haubner’s life in the North Country, read the other chapters in her serialized memoir.Īs editorial assistant at Penthouse magazine, my duties were editing the vile Letters section, a daily dose of saltpeter to my own sex life (a task I finally ditched on someone else), and taking my boss out to three-martini lunches (slugging back a few glasses of life-and-sanity-saving white wine myself).
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