Odds

Whenever I think of Playboy magazine, two things immediately spring to mind.

No, not those two things.

First is the ubiquitous black-tied rabbit logo and second are the stars appearing on or near the letter “P” in the publication’s masthead.

“Listen, man,” a buddy whispered conspiratorially during study hall. “Those stars represent the number of times Hugh Hefner slept with the centerfold.”

“Bull,” I responded. “No one is that lucky.”

“Seriously,” my friend insisted. “I heard it on the CBS Evening News. And you know Walter Cronkite never lies.”

So I took my friend’s rumor as fact. No one ever doubted Walter Cronkite’s veracity, and it never dawned on me to question why on earth CBS News was trumpeting Hugh Hefner’s sexual conquests. In those days my friend could have sold me a handful of dried beans if he’d told me they’d grow into money trees.

My friend had a great collection of Playboy magazines stashed in his “cabin” (a converted storage building behind his parents’ house), including every issue from mid-1962 until 1971 (later continuing through 1984, when he declared the magazine was no longer worth having).

Now, before I make a statement that will almost certainly elicit readers’ groans, let me assure you that, like most males of my generation, I didn’t even realize Playboy had words in it until I had seen it a half-dozen times or more. Yes, that’s hyperbolic. I sometimes read the jokes on the back pages of the centerfold, but for the most part Playboy was all about its airbrushed images and my masturbatory fantasies. Why lie about it?

But eventually I started reading Playboy — really reading it (contrary to popular belief, one cannot masturbate forever). And even as I envied Hugh Hefner’s rumored sexual prowess, I admired his editorial skills. Sure, he was undisciplined and erratic, and much of his early success was a combination of naked women, hard work, brilliant marketing, and sheer luck. But sometime during the middle ’sixties, Hefner found his voice, and his urbane eclecticism carried the magazine through the so-called Sexual Revolution well ahead of mainstream media (some might even argue that Playboy was instrumental in bringing it about).

It was a smart read. The fiction pushed envelopes (incidentally my first reading of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan), the articles were insightful and timely, and the monthly interview became legendary (Alex Haley one-on-one with George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, comes to mind). Hefner lost his focus after 1979 and my friend was right: By the middle 1980s Playboy was merely going through the paces, buoyed mainly by its reputation and its stunning women. I don’t believe I’ve seen an issue in the past four or five years. Maybe I’ve outgrown it. Hef should have.

*

Of all the women who ever graced the pages of Playboy, my favorite was not one of the airbrushed Barbies with staples through their navels, but LeRoy Neiman’s Femlin, the nearly naked black-and-white moppet who appeared on the Party Jokes pages. Whether the attraction is her shock of hair (the cut hasn’t changed in more than 50 years), the black gloves and hosiery, her pale, full-breasted and hipped physique, or her effervescent spirit I cannot say. All I know is if she appeared on the wing of my plane (she is a female gremlin, after all), I’d crawl out after her, aeronautics be damned.

She and I are the same age (to be sure, she is 3 months younger).

Funny, she has aged much better than I. Must be all those martini baths.

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