The first line of Crystal Hefner’s memoir echoes the first line of the gothic novel Rebecca: ‘Last night I dreamt about the [Playboy] Mansion again… The terror claws and scrapes at my throat. I press on the gas pedal, desperately trying to go faster, to make it back to that ivy-covered gothic house surrounded by redwoods before the clock strikes six.’ That was when Hugh Hefner, founder of magazine, and possibly the 20th century’s most famous sex addict, required his young third wife back home.Crystal had met Hefner on in 2008, when she was 21 and he was 82. She sent her photograph to the mansion and was invited to a party. He beckoned her over, and they went to bed with other women, as was the custom in the mansion: a few weeks later she was living with him and the rest of the harem. Crystal stayed for ten years, until Hefner, who she married in 2012, died in 2017, a few weeks short of the #MeToo phenomenon. Her presence in front of me on Zoom – austere, contained, very beautiful – is the evidence that she survived. She is 37 now. She called the memoir because that is what Hefner wanted to hear.Crystal begins the interview in a whisper. She pauses and says ‘I don’t know’ a lot, but she has spent a lifetime looking for her voice. Later, when she is more relaxed, she will laugh, for instance when I tell her I met Hefner in 20 years ago for the , and my only strong recollection is that he smelled nice. Playboy cologne, she says: he always wore it. Hefner was a brand, and the mansion was not a home but the headquarters of a company – and a cult.
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