I was a teen-age Playboy model…

Yes, you read that right. Here’s the story, and it’s not as sordid and you might have been wanting.

In my freshman year of college at the University of New Mexico, my fraternity brothers learned that Playboy magazine was going to be on campus to do a photo shoot for next year’s male college fashions. The magazine was conducting interviews at the UNM Student Union for student models to wear clothes that were expected to be the “in” look for the following fall.

I went to the interview with another member of my fraternity and spent a few minutes talking to a rather voluptuous woman from the magazine staff, then left. After my fraternity brother completed his interview, he told me that the woman confessed to him that she had found me “darling” looking. I would have hoped for “handsome” instead.

At any rate, I got a call the next day that I had been selected for the photo shoot and would be paid a whole $50 for my services. That was about a semester’s amount of beer money at the time, so I jumped at the chance.

The clothes they gave me to wear were hideous. It was a moss green corduroy set of pants and a matching top, with leather lacing on the chest. I looked like Robin Hood without the triangle cap and a protruding pheasant feather. Errol Flynn would have laughed hysterically.

I was matched with two young, wholesome looking, fully-clothed coeds and stood on a rock while one of the girls twiddled with my lacing and the other hugged my arm. I struck a serious pose while hiding disdain for my sartorial trappings. I am attaching a photo below to prove this actually happened. I often wondered what happened to the two coeds who posed with me. Having to explain that they had been in a Playboy photo shoot carried much more baggage for them than me.

The magazine came out the following fall and I was a bit of a celebrity in my family and in the fraternity for a brief period of time. Then the memory mostly went away and the beer money was long gone.

However, it was always a useful topic in later years when at “get to know your co-worker” sessions, you would be asked to reveal something about yourself that others would never suspect.

I had told the story about 40 years later to one of my skeptical co-workers, Valerie, who thought it was hilarious. While I had no proof of my claim, she set out on a mission to find a copy of the magazine with my photo in it. Some time later on a business trip to Seattle, she came across a store that kept old magazine issues and after digging through stacks of musty publications found the September 1966 issue.

I still have it as proof of my hidden salacious background. And if everyone has one minute of fame and this was mine, it was pretty lame.