Say Only Good Things by Crystal Hefner and Legacy
I recently got the audio book version of “Say Only Good Things.” I put a positive review on Goodreads. Her story is interesting and there is a hopeful end for her. Perhaps you will never hear of her and she may be fine with that.
This post is about Hugh Hefner. Many years ago he was portrayed as this suave guy surrounded by women and money. Playboy magazine had nudity and that for many was the point. However it wasn’t a smut magazine because Playboy also paid the highest rates for writers. They got articles from Michener and Alex Hailey. Joyce Carol Oates had stories in Playboy. They had interviews with politicians and celebrities.
By the 2000s the magazine was secondary to the Hefner image, reality shows, and logo marketing. Hefner had girlfriends a third his age.
The image was a facade. The women were surgically enhanced to get noticed. Women around Hefner were there just to be seen. Being seen by Hefner could mean modeling jobs or meeting a celebrity sugar-daddy. The men around him were there for the women. The employees were there for the women or be seen.
When Crystal gets involved with Hefner, his house is old and it looked old. The famous grotto was neglected and falling apart. Walls had paneling from the 1970s. He held movie nights watching and re-watching movies from decades earlier. People with him on those nights were hoping to meet other people not because they were movie buffs.
He had boring sex with women because he was supposed to. He needed pills to do that. He didn’t care about the women and they didn’t care either. Being with Hefner was the price for potential rewards. They just had to last whatever amount of time before he gave out. He recorded them without their knowledge. The book doesn’t say if this was blackmail or more for Hefner to watch later. The videos were proof of how it didn’t matter to anyone there.
He didn’t own his house. Someone bought it with the agreement that Hefner could live there until he died. His money was tied up in foundations and trusts.
When he died, the owners of the house wanted his stuff out immediately. No memorials or tours. There was too much cleaning to do.
His daughter and sons gave bland corporate eulogies. They talked up his magazine. There were no stories of family events or special moments. The supposed friends moved away. The women that lived there or “dated” Hefner “wrote” tell all books about how misogynistic he was.
Hefner hoarded articles and gifts because he believed that someday the reporters and biographers will write about the suave revolutionary who freed people from sexual oppression.
Did he know the women around him didn’t care about him?
Did he know the parties at the house were filled with just attention seekers and not friends?
Did he care?
So the revolutionary who was an idol in the 1950s, 1970s and maybe early 2000s died while living in someone else’s home. Employees stole from him. The house was a relic of the past. People didn’t call him revolutionary, they just called him a creepy old perv.
That’s the legacy.