Hef's Little Black Book Read Online Free PDF Page B

bathrobe!”

    And what he wore under that bathrobe, of course, would become for him what a hat was for Sinatra. The signature silken ensemble—legendarily, indelibly all his own.
    P ajamas Are a Playboy’s Best Friend
    One of the key moments of my life was the discovery that I could get away with wearing pajamas most of the time. It simplified that first decision of the day: What am I going to wear? The answer is black when I’m working during the day, and brighter colors at night. I wear them for both the comfort and the style. I have about twenty different colors, but I tend to favor purple. It has a nice kind of elegant quality and goes well with the smoking jackets, which are usually red satin or black velvet.
    The first pair of pajamas I had made to order was satin. That didn’t work very well because satin wrinkles and my sheets are also satin. There was a lot of sliding off the bed and pillows flying in all directions. Ever since, I’ve had them custom-made in silk. I wouldn’t care to ever go back to cotton.
    “We like our apartment,” he wrote in the introduction to Volume 1, Number 1, of Playboy magazine, December 1953. By then, ensconced with wife, Millie, and baby daughter, Christie, he had turned an apartment in Hyde Park, at 6052 South Harper, in the shadow of the University of Chicago, into a rarefied bohemian den that boasted Hans Knoll tables and Eames chairs and grass walls and bamboo shades and a nursery wallpapered with Pogo cartoons.
    “He did it all,” said Millie. “He controlled every aspect of it.” It became a salon for thinkers, for those rethinking their lives. He instigated talk and games and randy notions, and friends were intrigued. Said one woman, who would show up with her estranged husband (bohemian!): “Being in that apartment—the furnishings, the people and the good conversation—all of it made me feel on the cutting edge of an exciting world. I could always count on a good discussion taking place, besides the stag movies and the banned books.”
    Next sentence from Volume 1, Number 1 (re: “We like our apartment”): “We enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph, and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.” He wrote from real and imagined experience. He would only experience more. Meanwhile the phonograph beckons…
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    H ef’s Music to Woo By
    The best songs for seduction are the ones that your date responds to, and these can be as different as day and night. Some respond to Sinatra and some like hip-hop (“Head down, ass up, that’s the way we like to fuck…”). As in all matters of taste, you need to choose what you think your companion will find most pleasing. That may seem obvious, but many potential relationships go astray at the outset because you don’t make an appropriate connection.
    The list of my favorites is endless. Each song evokes a different memory, a yearning, a dream.
    “Stardust” —Hoagy Carmichael classic, sung by almost anyone
    “As Time Goes By” —a favorite song from my favorite movie
    “Sophisticated Lady” —Duke Ellington
    “Dream”—Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers
    “Candy” —Johnny Mercer
    “Is That All There Is?” —Peggy Lee
    “Something Cool” —June Christy
    “It’s a Blue World” —Mel Torme
    “One for My Baby” —Frank Sinatra
    “If You Were Mine” —Billie Holiday
    “It’s Like Reaching for the Moon” —Billie Holiday
    “Let’s Get Lost” —Chet Baker
    “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars” —Astrid Gilberto
    “Misty” —Errol Garner
    “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” —Frank Sinatra
    “It Never Entered My Mind” —Frank Sinatra
    “But Not for Me” —Jackie Gleason Orchestra with Bobby Hackett
    “Wishing” —Vera Lynn
    “We’ll Meet Again” —Vera Lynn
    “Hold My Hand” —Al Bowlly
    “Love Locked Out” —Al Bowlly
    “Midnight, the Stars, and