When Playboy Called

What happens when a small-town teacher gets a call from one of the world’s most infamous magazines.

Note: I’ve been digging through my old reporter’s notebooks lately, the ones from before I became a teacher. This story still buzzes like that old wall phone.

The intercom cracked.

“Ms. Countryman, you have an important phone call on the line,” the secretary—my friend—said. She lowered her voice, adding, “It’s Playboy Magazine.”

The room froze. Even the clock stalled a tick. Every ear leaned my way. I gave them all the stink eye. Pages turned. Pens clicked. Nobody breathed right.

I walked to the wall phone by the cinderblock door and lifted the receiver. The cord had a kink in it that always caught my wrist.

I don’t remember the woman’s name on the other end of the call. She said she was an editor for Playboy Magazine and was interested in a story I had written for The Texas Observer and produced for a Dallas news magazine about George W. Bush, one-time governor of Texas.

But at the time Playboy called—President of the United States.

Twenty teenagers tried to look busy. One girl stared so hard at Fahrenheit 451 that she could have burned a hole in it. A boy lined up his pencils like fence posts. Another watched me through his bangs.

The woman I don’t remember asked if I’d be interested in writing a piece about President Bush’s ties to an exclusive private hunting and fishing club for the ultra-rich, the kind that went back generations. Members put their firstborn sons on the waiting list at birth and hoped they’d be approved by forty. A place with a shadow sister-club beside it, whispered about as the Billionaire Boys’ playground.

“I can’t write for Playboy,” I said, aghast. “I’m a teacher. I’d lose my job.”

A beat.

“Would you share your notes, then? Everything you found? We will pay you well for it.”

I set a stack of pop quizzes on the front desk. Ten questions. No curve. “Take one and pass them back,” I told the room. “No talking.”

Back to the receiver. “Yes,” I said. “You can have the notes. My name stays out of it.”

We spoke in nouns. Dates. Places. Who said what under oath.

The spine of a story that had started years earlier with a neighbor, some loose cows, and a private club that liked its taxes theoretical and its signs freshly repainted. It was about rich folks getting the kind of tax breaks that regular people never saw—land declared agricultural because it was called a hunting and fishing club, though only members could go. Down the same country road, a disabled veteran living in a run-down single-wide paid seven times the property taxes as the then-governor.

None of that belonged on a bulletin board in a public school. It belonged in a magazine that could take a punch.

Truth is, I liked George Bush. Still do, in that old-Texas, handshake kind of way. But liking a man and liking what money hides are two different things.

I hung up. Turned around. Collected quizzes. My friend at the front office buzzed again just once—her way of saying you good? I was. Mostly.

I sent what I had to the magazine. Time passed. I’d almost forgotten about the whole sordid affair.

My son was in sixth grade at the time. He’d gotten the mail and walked in with a magazine wrapped in brown paper. “What’s this?” he muttered, about to rip the paper off. Instinct kicked in. I hurdled over my couch to snatch that brown-wrapped magazine from his sweet, innocent hands.

There was something else, too. An envelope with a check large enough to float the light bill and fill the gas tank. I opened it at the kitchen table while a loblolly leaned in the window. I folded it into my wallet and put the beans on low. Then I graded essays about courage and hypocrisy and tried not to smile at that wall phone for the rest of the month.

I believe the piece ran with someone else’s name. The kids never knew why I gave a pop quiz on a Wednesday. My friend at the front desk never told a soul. She and I kept each other’s secrets.

This was a long time ago. Memory fogs at the edges. Some tiles are missing from the floor, but the hallway stays true. The room. The buzz. My friend saying “Playboy” like she was reading the lunch menu. My no, then a different kind of yes.

Folks say nothing happens in a small-town classroom.

Bless them.

Everything happens.

It just lowers its voice.

—Carol

© 2025 Carol Countryman. All rights reserved.
This piece is part of Psalm of Lies and the ongoing series Tales from East Texas.
Please share the link, not the text. Reprints, excerpts, or readings by permission only: carolcountryman@gmail.com.