Back in the Swing

By Joel Stein

I first contemplated using this column for evil purposes when TIME agreed to shell out $10,000 to adopt a stretch of highway for me. If they'll do that, I reasoned, imagine what other people will do. I dreamed of strong-arming mayors to give me keys to their cities, persuading a minor league team to let me throw out the first pitch and getting women to talk to me. Then it struck me: I needed to see the Playboy Mansion.

Sure enough, Hugh Hefner agreed. After driving up the driveway of the estate and giving my name to a talking rock that I didn't particularly think screamed sexy, I approached a construction sign that read PLAYMATES AT PLAY. I was entering the world's most expensive frat house.

After I had lunch with some Playboy execs in the dining room, where the waiter was summoned by the push of a button on the table, Hef joined us. He was wearing the smoking jacket and silk pajamas. He looked extraordinarily young for 72, especially his wrinkle-free hands, which made me worry that he had struck some deal with the devil. Then I realized that if he had, he cut the best deal ever.

But Hef, as I enjoyed calling him perhaps a bit too much, was amazingly introspective about his hedonistic life. He said he thought his legacy would be having shown "that there's another ethical way of living your life without being married." So I asked him if he thought his was a life well lived. Had he chosen the right American Dream--the mansion and the babes--or should he have chosen the suburban house and the nuclear family? "This is better," he said without hesitation. "Because you're not living your life through other people."

Hef said that the past year, when his wife divorced him and he reopened the mansion to parties, was probably the best of his life. I suspect that may be due to the invention of his beloved Viagra--I'm sure it's all related. "Now all I have to do is adopt a highway," he said. "I've adopted a couple of twins. That's more expensive." I had no idea what he meant. But joking about twins seemed like a cool, International Playboy kind of thing, so I laughed.

It was later, in the gallery, that I found out what he meant. I had mistakenly thought, after seeing a de Kooning, a Dali and a Pollock in the greeting room, that the gallery would be a small museum. It turns out it's an endless hallway filled with pictures of Hef and his Playboy guests. Many of the recent shots were of young stars making the pilgrimage: Leo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, Jim Carrey, Courtney Love. But in most of the new pictures, Hef is flanked by a pair of twins, Mandy and Sandy Bentley, who, I was told, "are his girlfriend." I wondered how even an International Playboy breaks it to a woman that he's also seeing her identical twin sister. This seemed to be a pretty liberal interpretation of an ethical alternative to marriage. Men, for those who are wondering, don't sow their wild oats and then settle down. Men keep sowing at least until they are 72. Look at that Quaker guy. He's got to be at least that old.

Hef then gave me an hourlong tour of the grounds. And what impressed me most--besides the grotto, the monkeys and the Western-inspired bungalow designed by "this girl I was going with named Barbi Benton"--was the fact that there were jars of Vaseline everywhere. Hef, I figured, must have some weird phobia about chapped lips.

On the drive home, I realized that I do want to live my life through someone else. I want to share someone else's experiences and put her ahead of me. I wasn't sure I wanted that more than a mansion, monkeys and naked twins, but it seems more attainable. Plus, Hef also said, looking out over the house on his property where his ex-wife and kids live, "The divorce wasn't my choice. Maybe it's not over. It's not over until the fat lady sings--and we don't allow fat ladies on the premises."