“Only say nice things,” Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner told his third wife, Crystal Hefner, before he passed away in 2017 at age 91. 6 years have passed since her death, and Crystal has recounted in a book, which is entitled Only say good things: Surviving Playboy and finding myself (I only said good things: surviving Playboy and finding myself). They are the memories about the reality of the marriage – which lasted a decade – with the magnate of the magazine and what it was like to share the world of Hefner, a man 60 years older than her and recognized for his big parties full of sex and excesses.
The widow claims that she is “on Hef's team” because she admits that there were happy moments in her marriage. However, now 37 years old, and looking back on everything she has experienced, she is aware of all the evil she suffered but "looking back, I think I had some kind of Stockholm syndrome."
Due to the launch of her book, scheduled for January 23, 2024, the former Playmate has given several interviews. In one of them for the British outlet Daily Mail, he revealed that Hefner exercised total control over almost all aspects of his life: from his diet to his clothing, including the color of nail polish he should wear or reminding him to dye his hair blonde. every time the roots showed up.
In addition, it prohibited him from traveling and established a curfew at six in the evening so that his wife could accompany him at dinner. When Hef – that's what Crystal calls him – finished his chicken soup, the nights of debauchery and orgies began in the Playboy mansion.
Crystal recalls that “it was embarrassing. I don't know how many people would have been in our room at the same time, but... a lot. Pretty bad. We thought, 'Oh, now it's your turn. No one really wanted to be there, but I think in Hef's mind she still thought that she was 40 years old, and those nights, the people, the mansion, solidified that idea.”
The editor's third wife remembers the Sundays fundays -parties with more than 200 women- in which the tycoon took so much Viagra that he ended up going deaf, a side effect when this drug is consumed a lot to combat erectile dysfunction. “Hef always said that he would prefer to be deaf and still be able to have sex”, Reveals the former bunny.
Crystal Harris was a 21-year-old psychology student when she applied to attend a Halloween party at the famous mansion. There, Hugh Hefner took an immediate interest in her, and that same night they already had sex that she describes as "nothing remarkable."
Crystal reflects on how her childhood and her need to belong influenced her decisions: "If you come from a loving, happy, perfect childhood, you don't normally end up with someone who was almost 60 when you were born." And she adds: “'When your family is broken, you feel like you don't really belong anywhere. When I met him I was like, 'Wow, I could belong in this.'"
Since her husband's death, Crystal Harris-Hefner (as she is now called) has focused on deconstructing the big-breasted, blonde-haired Playmate she became herself. She has left California to move to Hawaii. And although she holds the chairmanship of the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation, she has resumed her college studies.
