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him was appealing to them; and at times he saw himself as a fantasy provider, a mental matchmaker between his male readers and the females who adorned his pages. Each month, after a new issue had been completed under his personal direction, he could predictably contemplate the climactic moments of solitary men all over America who were aroused by his selections. They were road salesmen in motel bedrooms, soldiers on bivouac, college boys in dormitories, airborne executives in whose attaché cases the magazine traveled like a covert companion. They were unfulfilled married men of moderate means and aspirations who were bored with their lives, uninspired by their jobs, and sought temporary escape through sexual adventure with more women than they had the ability to get, or the time to get, or the money to get, or the power to get, or the genuine desire to get.
    Hefner understood this feeling, had experienced it in the early years of his marriage when he would slip away from his sleeping wife at night to take long walks through the city. Along the lake, he would look up at the luxurious towering apartment houses and see women standing at the windows, and imagine that they were as unhappy as he was; he wanted to know all of them intimately.During the day he would mentally undress certain women he saw walking in the street, or in parks, or getting into cars, and although nothing was said or done, not even a glance was exchanged, he nevertheless felt a quiet exhilaration, and he could revive the impression of these women weeks later in his cinematic mind, could see them as clearly as he was now seeing the photographs of the nude dancer on his desk.
    Squinting through the magnifying glass, he focused on Diane Webber’s upraised chin, her sensuous lips, and her large hazel eyes which looked back at him with an expression both inviting and distant. This intrigued him, her way of looking directly at him and yet remaining remote from the response she was inspiring. It was as if she were appearing nude for the first time, was still naïve about men, which was exactly the attitude that Hefner wanted nude women to convey in his magazine, although few playmates so far had achieved this look. Beginning with Marilyn Monroe in the first issue of December 1953, all of the Playboy centerfolds had been professional models, and they had the look of self-assurance and experience; they were women who had been around. Still, they had lured new readers to the magazine each month to a degree that had astonished even Hefner, and it was likely that Playboy’s early success had less to do with the actual magazine than it did with the men who bought it.
    Prior to Playboy , few men in America had ever seen a color photograph of a nude woman, and they were overwhelmed and embarrassed as they bought Playboy at the newsstand, folding the cover inward as they walked away. It was as if they were openly acknowledging a terrible need, a long-repressed secret, admitting their failure to find the real thing. Although the Kinsey report revealed that nearly all men masturbate, it was still a dark deed in the early 1950s, and there had been no indication of its association with pictures; but now the strong connection was obvious with the success of Playboy , a magazine that had climbed in circulation within its first two years from 60,000 copies sold per month to 400,000. Little of this interest could be attributed to the articles, which were unexceptional, or to the cartoons, the satire,or the reprints of stories by Ambrose Bierce or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was rather that Hefner, in founding a magazine that each month presented a nude woman who appeared to be sexually approachable, had discovered a vast audience of suitors, each privately claiming her as his own.
    She was their mental mistress. She stimulated them in solitude, and they often saw her picture while making love to their wives. She was an almost special species who existed within the eye and mind of