Dodgeball movie invitation

PROLOGUE
Izabella reflects on meeting a "$20 million-a-movie club" actor at a restaurant who finds her "astounding", he calls her the next day and they talk forever. He's extremely into her until he learns that Izabella lived at the Playboy Mansion, she says he was livid and couldn't be associated with her as her Playboy past would taint his reputation.
She feels defensive about his judgment of her Playboy Mansion past, she was letting go of the steering wheel of life and exploring herself and freedom. She says to understand each other we should know where each other has come from. So here she is to set the record straight and let you be the judge if she really did ruin her life by living as one of Hef's 7 girlfriends.
1: MADE IN POLAND
Izabella was born in Krakow, Poland. She has a handful of paragraphs talking about the beauty of Poland, the spirited and resilient character of Polish people, and she lists notable people of Poland. She writes about how Poland was the most devastated eastern European country of World War II, and is home to some of the most horrific places in the world, including Auschwitz. Her dad was a baby when his family had to flee their home after catching fire during crossfire between Germany and Russia, and he lost his brother later to a landmine. Izabella's grandpa was arrested and sent to Auschwitz for helping Jewish people - he survived but was a ghost of himself.
After WWII, she says Poland fell on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and became a communist country - this was the setting of her childhood until age 11. She says her dad had a high up, well-paid position at a factory and their family of three had a better life than most people. TVs, cars, clothes etc. were scarce and expensive, but Izabella's family had a car, considered a luxury, and she was spoiled by her parents with lots of toys and a snack bar in her room. She's loved animals all her life and has never wanted to eat meat.
Izabella goes on many vacations with her parents in their car to other eastern European countries, but are put through unbearable screenings when they cross borders. Her dad is pressured by the Communist party to reveal names of anti-communist staff at his factory and his job is threatened. They manage to secure a special visa to visit Greece on a bus, and they plan not to return. They have to leave their possessions and everything behind as to not raise suspicions, so Izabella has to say goodbye to her dog and it breaks her heart. She lives in Greece with her parents for a year and she loves it, she learns to speak Greek. Her parents struggle with making money and starting over, and Izabella appreciates their sacrifices so that she can have more opportunities than communist Poland could offer - she's sure moving into the Playboy Mansion is not an opportunity her parents had in mind, but she's about being receptive and exploring new opportunities with the freedom her parents helped secure for her.
2: CANADA, EH
Izabella's family's immigration request is approved to move to Canada. They are sent to Prince George, British Columbia - a small lumber town in the Rocky Mountains. They all have to learn English, now Izabella's third language. Her parents don't see a future there so they get a van and the three drive across Canada to Toronto, where they've heard of more opportunities. They settle in Kitchener-Waterloo and Izabella starts grade 8 (age 13-14), she says even though she missed grades 5-7 moving around the world she was not behind as the Polish communist curriculum was so advanced. She starts to learn French, her fourth language. She makes friends, dates lots of boys, loses her virginity, and gets straight A's. She can't do frog dissection, and realizes she can't be a doctor, so she decides to enter the "only other traditionally prestigious and respectable profession", and become a lawyer.
She turns down scholarships to other universities and chooses McGill University in Montreal, "widely regarded as the 'Canadian Harvard'". She lives with 2 of her best friends and says they were legends in their neighborhood as 3 tall blonde housemates. She enjoyed experimentation and parties and trips with her friends. She says 'never a shortage of men' for her and her friends, and one guy she dates Keith is head over heels for her but they break up due to school demands for her and pilot training demands for him - they remain close friends. She dates a footballer Ryan from another university but they break up due to distance. She dates a guy named Sean who dotes on her, but hooks up with Ryan secretly whenever they are in the same town - Sean finds out and calls Ryan's new girlfriend and tells her too. Izabella swears off dating for a while after this fiasco.
Izabella is a double major in political science and history. She adds humanistic studies to be a more "well-rounded person" – studying Spanish, philosophy, classical music, and geography. She dreams of becoming an ambassador, a diplomat, and decides on law specializing in international affairs. She finds out Keith, her pilot ex - died in a plane crash flying his girlfriend on a snowy night. There is a major ice storm of 1998 with 5 days of no power in Montreal, she's had enough of the cold winter weather. Her grandmother passes away in Poland. The deaths of Keith and her grandmother make her consider life, and that there is more out there to experience and enjoy than just studying. She wants a change and to be somewhere warmer. When considering law schools, she weighed reputation and the lifestyle of the area equally - and applies to 2 schools in California. Pepperdine University in Malibu is the first to accept her application, her parents co-sign for her student loans, and she makes the move.
3: LEGALLY BLONDE
Izabella says her first year of studying at law school is a mix of satisfaction and disappointment. She’s not dated since the Ryan-Sean drama, but starts to notice a tattooed tall guy at Pepperdine “only in LA can you find a hot tattooed guy who is presumably intelligent”. The guy manages to introduce himself to Izabella after a few sightings, his name is Justin and they fall in love. This other girl wants to date Justin, and one night after Izabella drives home from a bar where that girl saw Izabella with Justin - she smells burning rubber and discovers someone ripped off her cars’ windshield wipers and stuffed them in the exhaust pipe. She believes it to be that girl but can’t prove it so lets it go.
Izabella says there is not a large international law market in LA, so she connects with someone in entertainment law who works for Playboy for an interview. It goes well but she decides to go study law in Spain over the summer where she can also work on her Spanish skills. She applies for another school loan and is off to study in Madrid for 2 months capped off with a 2-week vacation in Italy, Justin joins her and they have a great time but are “ready to kill each other” by the end of the trip. She returns to Pepperdine for her second year, she stays on top of her studies but also hits the Malibu beaches and hottest clubs in Hollywood all the time. She only makes 2 friends in law school as she says everyone is competitive, thinks they are the smartest, and if you are attractive as well as smart people will resent you.
Izabella is out with one of her two hot-confident-smart-but-also-has-personality friends from university, Vivian, one night, when they go to the same restaurant as Hugh Hefner. It was the year 2000, and in 1.5 years time Izabella will be part of Hef's ‘party posse’ – but at the time of this first sighting she would never believe that was in her future. Hef is sitting with Buffy Tyler, Katie Lohmann, and Doctor “Feelgood” Mark Saginor. Izabella says she sees a lot of girls going to introduce themselves to Hef and she thinks it is embarrassing, but Vivian wants to go say hi so Izabella reluctantly goes with her. They are invited to join the table, Izabella is fascinated by Buffy and Katie and wonders what their life and setup with Hef is like. Mark Saginor takes Izabella and Vivian’s numbers and invites them ‘Fun in the Sun’ on Sunday.
Izabella is nervously excited to visit the Playboy mansion. She says her ex, Sean, always said she should be a Playmate, and at McGill guys called her “Pam Anderson’s little sister” – not that she looked like Pamela Anderson at all, just because Pam was huge in Canada and “any girl with blonde hair and boobs was always compared to her”. At ‘Fun in the Sun’, it is not as wild as she had imagined. She says hi to Buffy Tyler who she finds cool and friendly. Izabella asks if she lives at the mansion and Buffy says she shares a room with Katie Lohmann and that it’s a lot of fun. Later on, Izabella notices one of Hef’s girlfriends “surrounded by a group of wanna-be Girlfriends”, the girlfriend comes over to Izabella and tells her she is pretty – Izabella says this girlfriend will later be her roommate at the mansion and partner in adventure. (Most likely Tiffany Holliday).
Izabella and Vivian are invited to mansion parties and attend many together – Vivian says they should call and ask to be invited back to Fun in the Sun, Izabella does not tell Vivian that she has been receiving invites to Fun in the Sun all along. Izabella doesn’t go to the Sunday ‘FITS’ as to not upset Justin, and she is fine with just going to big mansion parties. Izabella is working for a professor helping with a book on international business transactions, but she realizes she would have to move East where there is a broader international law curriculum to continue her studies as planned.
By the end of her second year at Pepperdine, Izabella and Justin take a break as he will be studying for the bar this summer and Izabella is ready to travel again. She gets another school loan to study at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland – “one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Europe”. She studies in cafes, visits the underground salt city Royal Salt Mine at Wieliczka, and has a deeply memorable and heart-breaking trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps where her grandfather had been sent. Justin calls her over the summer and it’s nice, but she decides she is not ready to jump back into their relationship.
She returns to her last semester in LA and is excited to resume attending mansion parties, and Fun in the Sun again now that she doesn’t have to worry about upsetting a boyfriend. Justin remains close and she draws comfort from that. Attending the parties at the mansion is her only plans in regards to Hef. “I never imagined what the future would bring”.
Chapter 4 coming soon