I remember being a kid and opening my first Playboy Magazine in my friend’s basement. His dad kept them tucked in the back of an old dusty bookshelf, covered by arduous novels about the Vietnam War and grilled meat marinade recipes.

As I peeled open the cover, my eyes scanned the glossy pages, devouring the first bare breasts I’ve ever seen (besides the one time I stayed up late to catch a soft-core porn on some hot-box premium cable network when I was 12). It was utopian. It was Adam taking a bite of the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden.

My euphoria was cut short when we heard the stairs creak and my friend’s dad began to descend down into our makeshift man cave. We quickly ditched the magazine haphazardly into it’s hidden spot and grabbed PlayStation controllers to look busy. I reached for a blanket with an embroidered wolf on it to cover my prepubescent boner and hurried into a determined stare at the pause screen of a Crash Bandicoot multiplayer video game. His dad walked by as we nervously shifted back and forth, looking guilty as hell on a brown suede pullout couch. He grabbed a Coors Original from the fridge and, without more than a few grunts, disappeared back upstairs.

After the shock, we were too afraid to fire back up our paper pleasure receptors and venture back into the bush and perky nipples of his old man’s Playboy collection.

A few days later, we all but forgot about losing our innocence in 2D. We were back in his basement with red popsicle stains on our lips, watching some obscure grind-house horror movie that only his parents would let us watch. My parents instantly said “no” to anything with an R-Rating and the presence of a chainsaw mutilating a cheerleader on the DVD cover at the video store. We heard the familiar rhythmic thuds of his dad’s moccasins tapping down the stairs. We thought nothing of it. Our guilt long dispersed like the pre-cum in our K-mart tighty whities. But we knew we were fucked when the stench of his filterless Marlboro red filled the room like agent Orange.

“You girls become men the other night?” he mumbled through a shallow drag.

My friend and I erratically exchanged “did you says something, I didn’t say something” glances. Before we had a chance to mutter a string of consonants and vowels, his old man walked over and expertly snaked the aged paper pages of a Playboy Magazine from its deep-set, private hiding spot. He threw it on the coffee table between our half-eaten bag of cheese puffs and a couple of black cherry cola cans.

“If you’re gonna jerk off to my magazine in my fucking house, at least read the articles.”

He ashed his cigarette in my half empty soda, grabbed as many cans of beer as he could carry with one hand and escaped upstairs to catch the opening monologue of that night’s SNL.

Years passed and since then, I’ve read some of my favorite authors like Hunter S. Thompson and discovered new writers like Margaret Atwood in between the centerfolds and male enhancement ads of Playboy. Hugh Hefner started an entertainment revolution beginning with that first cover of Marilyn Monroe. His legacy has touched decades of models, photographers, art directors and writers (and helped truck drivers, dentists and writers touch themselves before internet porn).

I lament the sputtering crash-and-burn of this American media staple as their content turns into the cheap clickbait our ADD generation feeds on. I lament the death of the man who forever made a bunny synonymous with pop culture, silicon tits and bleach blonde hair. And now that I finally made my journey to Lost Angeles, I lament the fact that I’ll never get to party in a hot tub full of classy cocaine and buoyant breasts at the Playboy Mansion.

But when one old dirty bastard dies, a new 20-something-year-old dirty bastard comes to life. It is our job to capture the art of nudity on 35mm film. To write what is too edgy and obscene for rags like USA Today, too perverted and crude for politically correct editors in horn rimmed glasses at Buzzfeed. To empower. To provoke. To disturb and relate.

R.I.P Hef. We can take it from here. The kids are alright.