Death, Sex & Money - Life and Death Inside the Playboy Mansion

Slate Books

Slate Podcasts

Arts

3.8 • 546 Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2024

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Crystal met Hugh Hefner when she was 21 and he was 81. They spent 10 years together at the Playboy mansion before he died and she became a widow. In this episode she reflects on their marriage, and how she’s changed since.

Crystal Hefner’s memoir is called Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself.

Podcast production by Zoe Azulay

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Is there a romantic relationship in your past that you look back on and see that what once felt exhilarating, sexy, and validating was actually built on some pretty disturbing foundations?
0:14.6	How do you make sense of your choices and the memories that once felt really right, but don't any longer. That's what Crystal
0:24.3	Hefner, widow of Hugh Hefner, is working out in her recent book called Only Say Good
0:30.9	Things, Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself. There's a lot to unpack, a 60-year age gap between herself and her husband,
0:41.2	or how she was surrounded by sex and sensual titillation while feeling pretty bored herself.
0:48.6	There was also a sudden catapulting class transition, but the access to luxury came with rigid conditions.
0:57.6	Crystal also became a reality TV star and was watched closely as she was figuring out how she
1:03.7	felt about all this. And now it's over. He's gone. She had a pre-nup and has financial comfort from those years and a mess of
1:14.7	feelings, including that during her years in the Playboy Mansion, she now considers herself
1:21.0	a victim of abuse. You know, I was so hounded by the media all the time. Like it would be,
1:29.7	Huff was so hounded by the media all the time. Like it would be, Huff was so praised.
1:37.8	And then when he had the girls with him, we would be completely attacked.
1:41.1	Like, what's it like having sex with an old man?
1:43.2	What do old balls look like?
1:51.2	It's like, why aren't you asking this 81-year-old man why he's sleeping with 20-year-olds and 19-year-olds?
1:57.6	This is Death, Sex, and Money.
2:06.6	The show from Slate about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more.
2:09.1	I'm Anna Seyeth.
2:24.7	Crystal Heffner lived in one of the world's most notorious party houses for 10 years.
2:26.7	But she says she's an introvert.
2:35.1	While she was married to Hugh Hefner, she spent as much time as she could in the only place she could be alone in the Playboy Mansion, her little vanity room right off of Hugh's bedroom. Now, seven years after Hugh Hefner's death, Crystal
2:42.5	is 38 and she lives alone. I guess, you know, I prefer being at home or I prefer being with one person instead of a big group.
	...

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