American Rhapsody (15 page)

He told her about Arkansas, about the Toad Suck Daze Fair and the Hope Watermelon Festival and the Hot Springs Shriners Parade. As they got to know each other, she saw that he mostly subsisted on peanut butter sandwiches. He had a slow southern drawl, read voraciously, and made her laugh. He told outlandish stories, one about Lyndon Johnson on the Oval Office floor having sex with a girl who, at Johnson's insistence, wore a peace symbol around her neck. “Come off it, Bill!” Hillary would say, and “Cut the crap, Clinton!” They got an apartment together and he visited her parents' home, amused that Hugh and Dorothy forced him to sleep separately from Hillary, in another bedroom.

Hillary and Bill went to work for George McGovern in Texas. Bill was in Austin, working phones at party headquarters. Hillary was in San Antonio, registering Hispanic voters. They saw each other on the weekends. She didn't know that during the week he was sleeping with other women—once, three in one week.

Bill made a campaign swing with McGovern and his wife in Arkansas while Hillary stayed in San Antonio. When McGovern gave a speech at a fund-raiser held in a contributor's home, Bill bumped into his old girlfriend Dolly Kyle. They started kissing as McGovern spoke, then went outside when the candidate's speech ended and had sex in the yard.

But Bill was also telling other women how strongly he felt about Hillary and how much he missed her, away from him down there in San Antonio. He started crying to a young woman one night about how much he missed Hillary, and the young woman began consoling him … and one thing led to another … and soon he was enjoying her on top of the big conference table, with the phones going off at campaign headquarters.

Hillary was getting deeper into feminism, and Bill encouraged and supported her. She was reading a book called
The Female Eunuch
by Germaine Greer, and he flipped through it one weekend when they were together in Austin. He didn't tell Hillary that he had already met Germaine Greer in England. He had attended one of Greer's lectures. Greer said that having sex with middle-class men was always overrated and unsatisfying. When she was finished, Bill Clinton got up and asked a question. “About the overrated orgasm,” he said to the future feminist icon, “in case you ever decide to give middle-class men another chance, can I give you my phone number?”

As she spent that weekend, and so many others, with him in Austin, the future First Lady of the United States was happy. Gone was her girlhood, gone the terrifying images of willards and butcher knives flashing at her, of men who forced her to the ground and got on top of her. For the first time in her life, finally, thankfully, after all these years of platonic dates, Hillary, the chubby young woman with the overbite, was in love.

There was a man making his way into her heart who would unzip himself and flash his willard … lots of times, to lots of other women—but not very much to her—through the course of her life.

[12]

Monica, Andy, and Butt-head

“It's more than adequate,” Monica said. “It's not, oh my God, like Andy's was, but it's—it's sizable.”

“You said it was on the slender side,” Linda Tripp said.

“I was comparing it to Andy's,” Monica said. “Andy's is huge. Andy's is humongous.”

M
onica was telling one of the White House stewards, Bayani Nelvis, that she had smoked her first cigar the night before. Nel asked if she'd like one of the president's Davidoffs from his private stash.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Cool!” Nelvis opened the door into the president's private dining room . . . and there
he
was, standing right at the door, about to come out.

He handed some papers to Nel, asked him to take them to Leon's office, and asked her to come in.

As soon as she was inside, she stuck her hand out and mock-introduced herself.

“Monica Lewinsky,” she said, “President Kiddo.”

He laughed. “I know your name.”

He told her he had tried to call her but had lost her phone number. Then he'd looked in the book, but he couldn't find it.

“I even spelled Lewinsky right.”

“I'm unlisted.”

He gave her that slow, sexy smile and said, “Well, that explains it.”

“What are you doing here anyway?” he asked.

She told him about the cigar she'd smoked the night before and how she had told Nelvis and how Nelvis was going to get her one of the president's.

“I'll give you one.” He smiled. He led her to his stash and handed her one.

“It's big,” she said.

“I like big cigars.”

“So do I,” she said, looking into his eyes.

He kissed her and lifted her sweater. He fondled her breasts with his mouth. She put her hands on Willard and empowered him. She knelt down . . . and after a while, he stopped her again. This time, at least, there had been no phone call.

“Happy New Year,” he said, buttoning himself up. He gave her a long, soulful kiss.

She gave him her unlisted phone number again.

“This is the last time I'm giving it to you,” she said.

He went into the bathroom. She started out. She saw him through the open door. Willard was in his hand. He was bringing Willard to closure over the bathroom sink.

A week later, another Sunday afternoon, her phone rang at home. She picked it up, but there was no one on the line. It rang again minutes later, but her answering machine clicked on. The caller said nothing. She picked the phone up and said, “Hello?”

“Ah. I guess you
are
there.”

She thought it was a college friend. “Yeah, I am,” she said casually. “How are you? What's goin' on?”

“I don't know. You tell me.”

“Holy shit!” she said. “It's you!”

He really laughed.

“Where are you? What are you doing?” she asked.

“Well, I'm going to work in about forty-five minutes.”

“You want some company?”

“That'd be great.” He laughed. She gave him her office extension number, and he said he'd call her. She drove through a blizzard to get there, then sat at her desk and waited. When he called, he said that she should pass by his office, casually carrying papers. He'd be out there and it would look like they'd bumped into each other.

But when she got to the Oval Office door, he wasn't there. A Secret Service agent was.

“I've got some papers for the president,” she said.

The Secret Service agent led her inside. He was sitting behind his desk, smiling.

“You can close the door,” he said to the Secret Service agent. “She'll be here awhile.”

He asked her if she wanted something to drink. She knew what that meant by now—a move into his bathroom, off the hallway leading from the Oval Office to his private study.

He led her into the bathroom, held her, and kissed her.

“I want to go down on you,” he said.

She felt as if she were going into shock. “No,” she said. “Please.”

“I want to go down on you,” he said again, more insistently this time.

Oh my God! Oh my God! This was
s-o-o-o
unreal! The president of the United States wanted to go down on her! Her!
Big Mac and Pig Mac and all the other awful names they had called her. She knew from reading Gennifer Flowers's book how good he was at cunnilingus.

“You can't,” she said to him.

“Why not?”

“I've got my period.”

“Oh no!” he said.

“I know,” she said. She knelt down . . . and after a while, he stopped her.

Afterward, he was chewing on a cigar. Then he had the cigar in his hand and he was holding the wet cigar the way she'd seen him hold Willard when Willard was a little wet.

She looked at the cigar and she looked at him and she said, “We can do that, too, sometime.”

He smiled.

Four or five days later, around midnight, he called.

“What are you wearing?” he asked her.

She knew what he wanted. Gennifer's book recounted how much he liked phone sex . . . how much he liked Gennifer talking dirty to him.

She talked dirty to him in her Marilyn Monroe voice. She started touching herself, and she knew he was playing with Willard. His breathing became heavier. She thought they almost came together.

“Sweet dreams,” he said, and hung up.

The Sunday after they'd had phone sex for the first time, she bumped into him by the elevator in a West Wing hallway. She was having a bad hair day and wore a black beret. He asked her to join him in the Oval Office.

When they got there, she said, “Is this just about sex? Or do you have some interest in getting to know me as a person? If it's just about sex, it's okay. But you have to let me know.”

He said, “What?” and laughed a little bit.

“You never even ask me questions about myself.”

He looked deep into her eyes and said, “I cherish the time I have with you.”

He put his arm around her and said, “I love your beret. It frames your cute little face so beautifully.”

He said, “You have no idea what a gift it is to me to spend time with you and talk to you. I cherish our time together, I really do. It's very lonely here. People don't understand that.”

He told her how much pain he was in—his back was hurting again, but worse than that, he said, he had just been informed of the death of the first American serviceman in Bosnia.

She felt suddenly reassured. He was such a caring and sensitive man, so obviously moved that a soldier had been killed as a result of an order he'd given.

As he moved her toward the hallway and the bathroom, she started to tell him that. But he kissed her suddenly and passionately, before she could say anything.

“I feel so stupid standing here in this dumb hat.”

“It's not a dumb hat. It's a cute hat. I like it.”

She knelt down . . . and then they heard someone in the Oval Office. He shoved Willard inside his pants, zipped up quickly, and hurried into the Oval Office. She had to laugh as she watched him go. Willard looked like the Alien, ready to burst through his clothes.

He ducked back out of the Oval Office and said she had to leave because he had a meeting. He whisked her through a back door to his aide Nancy Hernreich's office and gave her a deep and passionate kiss good-bye. She left and tried to go into the West Wing hallway, but the door was locked. She went back into Nancy Hernreich's office.

She was startled to see him still there, sitting on Nancy Hernreich's couch, alone, staring at nothing. He had Willard in his hand and was closuring himself. She watched him with Willard a moment and then she smiled and stepped to her Handsome and kissed him . . . as he kept moving Willard back and forth with his hand.

The next Sunday, February 4, she was sitting at her desk when he called her from the White House residence and told her he'd be going to the Oval Office in an hour and a half.

He said he'd call her when he was leaving the residence upstairs in the White House. She watched the clock. An hour and a half passed, then two, then two and a half . . . and just when she thought he'd blown her off, three hours later, he called.

She suggested they bump into each other “accidentally on purpose,” like they had before. They “bumped into each other” in the hall and went through the Rose Garden and into the Oval Office. He walked her right back to his private study and kissed her. She was wearing a long dress that buttoned from neck to ankle. He unbuttoned all the buttons and took the dress off. She took her bra and panties off and was naked for the first time with him. But she still had her black combat boots on.

“They're just like Chelsea's,” he said.

He told her how beautiful she was and put his hand between her legs. She had an orgasm and then she knelt down . . . and after a while he stopped her. They got dressed and they went back to the Oval Office.

“Are you sure this isn't just about sex?” she asked him, smiling.

His eyes seemed to her to tear up. He said, “I don't ever want you to feel that way; that's not what this is.”

She told him then about Andy Bleiler. She told him that Andy was married and that she sometimes felt he was just using her sexually.

He listened closely as she talked about Andy, and when she was finished, he said, “He's such a jerk.”

She felt that he really cared, that he had really listened. Before she left, she went around the side of his desk and gave him a long hug. He kissed her arm and said he'd call her.

She said, “Yeah, well, what's my phone number?”

He rattled off both her home and office numbers perfectly.

“Okay,” she said, “you got an
A,
” and left.

When she got back to her desk, her phone rang.

“I just wanted to tell you,” he said, “you're a really neat person.”

She felt, for the first time, that they had become friends. So she didn't understand, in the days afterward, why he didn't glance at her or smile at her when he saw her. She felt something was wrong. She was hoping he'd call her on Valentine's Day, but he didn't. When he called her at her apartment on the Monday after Valentine's Day, February 19, and she heard his voice, she knew for certain something was wrong.

“Can I come and see you?” she asked.

“I don't know how long I'm going to be here.”

She drove to the White House quickly, gathered a bunch of papers at her desk, and headed for the Oval Office. She told the Secret Service agent outside his door that she had papers for the president to sign.

Handsome was sitting behind his desk. He looked pale and depressed.

He said, “Sit down,
dear.
” She hated the word
dear.
It was a word, she thought, that only old people used.

He said he had been thinking and that what was going on between them “wasn't right.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I don't want to hurt Hillary and Chelsea. I want to work on my marriage.”

She started to cry and plead with him, telling him how strongly she felt about him, telling him they were good for each other and needed each other.

“No,” he repeated, “this isn't right.” And then he said, “I don't want to be like that schmuck in Oregon.”

Andy Bleiler,
she thought.
Here was the president of the United States comparing himself to Andy Bleiler!
She was sorry now she'd ever told him about Andy.

“You know,” he said to her, “if I were twenty-five years old and not married, I would have you on the floor back there in three seconds.”

“I don't understand!” she cried.

“You'll understand when you're older,” he said. “We can still be friends.” He gave her a hug and she tried to kiss him.

“We can't do that anymore,” he said.

The telephone rang and he picked it up. “I've got to take this call,” he said to her.

It was a sugar grower, he whispered to her, and he was about to sign legislation that would hurt the sugar industry.

“When I screw somebody”—he smiled at her—“I like to tell 'em first.”

She left then, crying. She'd knelt down for him three times, she'd let him play with her body, and now he'd dumped her.
But she was in love with him!
He was Andy Bleiler all over again, saying he felt guilty about cheating on his wife and child. But that gave her some hope, too. As many times as Andy Bleiler had broken up with her because he felt guilty about cheating, he'd always come back to her to cheat some more. Her only hope now was that the president of the United States would turn out to be like Andy, who'd treated her terribly for years.

She told her mother and her aunt Debra that Handsome had ended their relationship, and, while they could plainly see her pain, they were relieved. She hadn't said a word to them about Willard; all she'd mentioned was the flirting and kissing. But they'd seen the color photograph of the president of the United States next to her bed and were worried for her.

A week after Handsome told her it was over, he called her at home. He had seen her in the hallway, he said.

“You looked so skinny,” he said.

She offered to drive down to the White House right away to see him.

“I've got to help Chelsea with her homework,” he said.

A week or two later, she saw him again as she was giving a girlfriend a White House tour. He was wearing blue jeans, a denim work shirt, and a baseball cap. He had been in the White House theater with Hillary. She introduced him to her girlfriend and picked pieces of popcorn off his shirt.

In late March, she cut her hand on a file cabinet and went to see the White House doctor. Next morning, she saw the doctor with Handsome, who'd been jogging and was feeling nauseous. The doctor asked her how her hand was and Handsome asked what had happened to it. He called her that night at her desk and said, “I'm sorry you hurt your hand.”