“For almost a decade, the Playboy Mansion was my home. But it never really felt like a home”
– Crystal Hefner
Last night I dreamed about the mansion again. In the dream I am driving, racing to get back before curfew. The sun is already setting, the LA light turning golden in my rear-view mirror. I’m panicking because while I don’t know what will happen if I arrive past my curfew, I know I can’t be late, and the terror claws at my throat. I press on the gas pedal, desperately trying to go faster, to make it back to that ivy-covered Gothic house before the clock strikes six. In my dream I know I’m not going to make it in time.
I wake up with old familiar feelings: sick, anxious, afraid. It’s been years since I lived in the mansion. I haven’t been back to the mansion since my husband died. He died, I left, and I never went back. But I seem to go back there in my mind all the time.
In a lot of ways, I am still trying to get out of that mansion.
I always had to be home by six o’clock. If I wasn’t, it was a problem.
