In spite of his words, these underlying worries preyed on Monica’s mind, especially as he had failed to keep an earlier promise to call her. The following Sunday, January 21, as she was leaving work to meet her mother in order to buy her a coat, she saw the President, accompanied by a bodyguard, in the Residence hallway. They talked together amiably as they walked along the corridor; then, as she was about to leave, he told her that she could go out through the Oval Office, at the same time dismissing the Special Agent. Once inside, however, Monica stood firm when he indicated that they should go to the inner office, where most of their intimate encounters had taken place.
Before their affair went any further, she was determined to have a showdown with him, and where better than the Oval Office?—especially as she was wearing a black military-style beret because she was having a “bad-hair day.” She complained that she hadn’t heard from him, and that she had little indication about how he felt towards her. As she reproached him, all her fears and anxieties came spilling out, and she told him that if he wanted her to be shy, to stand on ceremony and treat him purely as the President, she would do so. If, however, he wanted her to treat him like a man, there had to be a little give-and-take.
Smiling gently, he put his arm round her and took her into the inner office, where he gave her a hug, complimenting her on her beret because it framed her “cute little face” so well. He was in pain not only physically—he suffers from chronic back problems—but emotionally: that day, he had received news of the first killing of an American serviceman in Bosnia. So while he and Monica once more indulged in their form of making out, it was an emotional occasion for both of them, particularly for the President, who, as Commander-in-Chief of all US forces, was feeling his heavy responsibilities especially keenly.
“You have no idea what a gift it is to me to get to spend time with you and talk to you,” he told her. “I cherish that time we spend together. It’s very lonely here and people don’t really understand that.” Misty-eyed with emotion, and with the news of the American soldier’s death fresh in his mind, he went on to tell her about the difficult decisions he had to make. “I’ve been sick about it,” he said. “It’s really hard to know that someone died because of your executive order.”
His distress touched Monica deeply. “At that moment I thought we were so lucky as a country to have such a caring and sympathetic man as the President, and I felt much closer to him. Our relationship, which had started as a physical attraction, was now becoming a genuine emotional bond. That day was a milestone, in that it brought me one step further to falling in love with him.”
Certainly the President did little to discourage the process, calling her at the office and at home every few days, arranging to meet her at a going-away party for a White House staffer, and flirting with her at public events. At times he acted more like a lovesick teenager than the President of the United States, constantly telling Monica that she made him feel twenty-five again. He frequently complimented her on her beauty, her energy and her mind, and was sometimes amused by remarks of hers that she found mundane or commonplace.
There were numerous examples of the President’s newfound, almost boyish ardor. On one occasion she was returning from the staff mess when he started waving to her from the Oval Office. Other visitors, thinking it was them he was targeting, waved back. Shortly after she got back to her desk he called her—a risky act as her phone might have been answered by one of the other staffers—and told her, “I saw you in the hall today. You looked really skinny.”
What had started as a flirtation, little more than a bit of fun between Monica and the man she now called “Handsome,” seemed to be developing into something altogether more serious. On the first Sunday in February they again met in his office, having once more engineered a casual encounter outside. Although, as was by now almost a matter of course, the meeting had its intimate side, for most of the time they chatted about a great variety of topics, serious, sexual and funny. They talked about when they had lost their virginity, about her combat boots—“Just like Chelsea’s,” he noted, referring to his teenage daughter—and about Monica’s unhappy relationship with Andy Bleiler. “He’s such a jerk,” the President opined.
Monica even felt confident enough to voice her unspoken fear about the foundations of their affair, asking him in a lighthearted way if his only interest in her was because of the sexual side of their relationship. The President seemed genuinely shocked that she could think such a thing. With tears filling his eyes, he told her emphatically, “I don’t ever want you to feel that way. That’s not what this is.”
Certainly both the tenor of that meeting and the tempo of their relationship had begun to suggest otherwise. Monica now felt so affectionate and comfortable with the President that, as she prepared to leave, she put her arm around him as he sat at his desk and gave him a hug. He kissed her arm and said that he would call her. When she asked if he had her numbers he reeled off both her home number and her work extension without missing a beat. “OK, you pass,” she said gaily as she left to return to her office. Just a few minutes later he called her to say that he had really enjoyed seeing her, describing her as a “neat” person. “I was elated, just elated,” she recalls. “In the beginning it was this very raw, sexual connection, which had now developed into romance and tenderness as well.”
While the physical encounters and the telephone calls were important, equally sustaining was the private communication they developed when they were on public parade. Because she knew his daily schedule, she was able regularly to engineer matters so that they could pass each other in the corridor simply to say “Hi.” On public occasions such as an arrival ceremony, they would make sly eye contact and smile. Such behavior is by no means unique. During her affair with Captain James Hewitt, Diana, Princess of Wales, used to wear red nail polish as a signal to her lover that she was thinking of him, and herself found a certain bleak amusement in watching Prince Charles and his mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles, making eye contact at public events.
For Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton, it was the neckties she bought for him that formed a running commentary on their relationship. She often said to him, “I love it when you wear one of my ties because then I know that I am close to your heart.” Invariably he would wear one of them on the days after they had been together or for significant events. On one occasion Monica gave him a multi-colored (bright blue, black and white) Hugo Boss tie a couple of days before he was scheduled to have his picture taken with White House Legislative Affairs office workers, herself included. She asked him to wear it for the occasion, and when he did she acknowledged to herself that he had passed a private test. “I wondered if he was thinking of me that morning of the office picture, and lo and behold, he was,” she says. Unfortunately—and ironically—the photo call itself was canceled.
He too was aware of the importance of her ties. On October 26, 1996, at a public rally in Virginia, he answered a joshing question she put to him about where he had got that tie, with the words “A girl with a lot of style gave it to me.” Monica believes that he once deliberately cut a tie she had sent him, telling Betty Currie that it had been ripped in the mail. The ruse gave him a reason to summon Monica to his office, and thus to be alone with her for a while without anyone suspecting.
So when his steward, Bayani Nelvis, testified before the Grand Jury wearing one of her ties, Monica took it as a significant sign, just as she did when the President himself sported one of her ties on the day she appeared before the Grand Jury in August 1998. She felt that it was a gesture of support and, while in his own Grand Jury testimony he denied attaching significance to the ties, Monica is unshakable in her belief that he knew exactly what he was doing. “I will go to my grave, in spite of what he said, knowing that he wore my tie on that day for a reason.”
Back in February 1996, such eventualities were unthinkable. Even so, sooner or later the sentimental bubble surrounding what was to become the world’s most famous offic
e romance was inevitably going to burst. Monica sensed the change of mood almost immediately after that last phone call on February 7, when the President stopped calling her. She hoped that he might call her on Valentine’s Day but it wasn’t until February 19, President’s Day, that she heard from him again. He called her at home—the first time she had spoken to him in fifteen days. He was hesitant when she asked if she could see him, and so for the first and only time she went to the Oval Office uninvited.
Leaving her mother’s Watergate apartment, Monica made her way to the White House (President’s Day being a public holiday, she had not gone to work that Monday), arriving sometime after noon. Once there, she armed herself with a sheaf of papers, ostensibly for the President to sign, made her way to the Oval Office, and was admitted by the ever-present Secret Service agent on duty outside the door. Already anxious and near tears, she realized immediately that something was wrong. Sitting at his desk, the President told her that while he liked her as a person he felt really guilty about their affair: he didn’t want to hurt Hillary and Chelsea, and he wanted to work at his marriage. “I don’t want to be like that schmuck [Andy Bleiler] up in Oregon,” he added.
He brushed aside her pleadings, saying, “You know, if I were twenty-five years old [in fact, he would be fifty that year] and not married, I would have you on the floor back there in three seconds right now. But you will understand when you get older.” Indeed, the theme of the difference in their ages and of how she would see life differently when she was older ran throughout their relationship. He gave her a farewell hug and told her that they could still be friends. Monica tried to put a brave face on it, but she was distraught. On the way home, as a fitting end to a day of tears and depression, she had a flat tire.
She shed bitter tears that night. For her mother and Aunt Debra, though, the ending of the affair came as an enormous relief. They had watched Monica’s involvement with the President first with mild amusement and then with mounting concern and anxiety. Initially, when she had placed a picture of him in her bedroom and talked about his wonderful eyes and how handsome he was, they had dismissed her chatter as the result of a harmless infatuation. Over the next few weeks, however, like blood seeping out from under a closed door, the awful truth began to dawn. Now, they felt a gut-wrenching fear, made up of anxiety for Monica’s well-being, concern that she was once again involved with a married man, and above all a nagging dread that this affair was too big for any of them to comprehend, let alone to deal with sensibly.
Marcia says, “It took months before I realized that her admiration for him had changed to something personal. You have to remember that she never talked to me about the sexual side of their relationship and I shut my eyes to that aspect of it. When I realized that something not good was happening I was disappointed and demoralized.
“I felt it was wrong, not so much in a biblical sense, but wrong for her as a young woman. It was such a dead-end relationship and it frightened me because of the enormity of it. It was a terrible secret to bear.
“She knew how concerned I was, but part of me was hoping that it would blow over. In reality, though, what do you do? March down to the White House, say I’m Monica’s mom and I’m here to see the President, and shake my finger at him? Tell him to leave my little girl alone? That’s absurd.”
In December 1995, Monica had told her closest friend, Catherine Allday Davis, about her fling with the President. At first Catherine had seen the relationship as a wild, exciting but short-lived experience that would help her friend get Andy Bleiler out of her system. However, knowing Monica’s capacity for acting as her own worst enemy, Catherine grew more and more concerned as the weeks went by. “I started getting upset for her. I was afraid it was becoming another relationship like she had with Andy, that it would monopolize her emotions and energy and that she would end up falling in love with him.
“What really horrified me was that this wasn’t the relationship she needed or wanted at that stage in her life. She needed someone’s undivided attention. She ended up with the world’s most unavailable man.”
Inevitably, Monica didn’t see it that way, whatever Clinton might have said when he ended their affair. Tearful, sad and depressed, she mooned over what might have been, dreaming of her “Handsome.” She continued to do her work, but the fact that his smiling picture beamed down on her from the White House walls only made matters worse. While she saw him as the President, with the most important job in the world and all the difficulties that a packed schedule entailed, she had never really considered that he was a married man until that fateful meeting on February 19. Apart from seeing Hillary Clinton at the White House staff Christmas ball, the First Lady was, for Monica, a marginal figure, and in consequence her feelings towards her lover’s wife were confused and contradictory.
On the one hand, she subscribed to the commonly held belief that the Clinton marriage was purely a business arrangement, and one, moreover, that would end once his presidency came to a close. On the other, she acknowledged that the President and First Lady were two intellectually “brilliant” people who connected on a level which mere mortals had difficulty comprehending. Moreover, any feelings of guilt Monica may have had were muted by the exhilaration of the affair, as well as by the occasional idle daydream of the future. “At this point,” she says, “I wasn’t thinking that we had a future together. There were days when I thought that maybe they [the Clintons] won’t be together when his term ends and he will be free. Other times I just accepted that they would be married forever.” In the midst of her despair, she nursed a dim hope that, as had happened with Andy Bleiler, she would one day find herself back in Bill Clinton’s arms. This hope was rekindled soon enough.
A week or so after the breakup she chanced upon the President walking through the west basement lobby with a number of senior aides. Abruptly turning on her heel, she beat a hasty retreat, not wishing to be seen in his company by Evelyn Lieberman, then Deputy Chief of Staff, who was known for her sharp tongue and irascible temper and who she suspected was growing suspicious about her behavior. That night, however, he phoned her at home to say that he had seen her, and that he had in fact called her in her office because he wanted her to visit. She offered to return to the White House but he declined, saying something about helping Chelsea over her homework. Monica was bemused, if elated. “I thought this was odd behavior for someone who had just ended a relationship. That phone call made me think that he was still interested. But I wasn’t sure.”
For the next few days she used the well-worn feminine tactic of feigning lack of interest to stimulate attention. So if, for example, she saw the President in the corridor, she would greet him with formal reserve. On one occasion she deliberately turned her head away when he passed by. This gesture had the desired effect—he subsequently called her and complimented her on the fact that she had lost weight, a comment, whether true or not, he knew she would find flattering.
There were a couple of occasions during that period, in March 1996, when she and her erstwhile lover met by chance. One Sunday Monica was showing her friend Natalie Ungvari, who was again visiting with her, around her section of the White House when she spotted a familiar figure dressed in blue jeans, blue shirt and baseball hat walking back to the private movie theater, where he was watching a film with his wife. Monica shouted “Hey!” and the President stopped and turned around. She introduced Natalie to him, although her friend, whose head was spinning with the names of all the people she had met, didn’t immediately recognize the man holding out his hand in greeting. As Monica affectionately picked out a piece of popcorn that was lodged in his shirt, Natalie was astonished to discover that the President already knew where she was from—the result of earlier conversations with Monica. The latter was inclined to be proprietorial, for, she says, “During our time apart I realized that I had developed very strong feelings for him. Absence had truly made my heart grow fonder.” Although the President soon returned to the theater, Monica found that she
felt somewhat irritated by Natalie’s interpretation of their conversation with him.
Monica and the President soon bumped into each other again, this time during office hours. She had grazed her hand and knee one night, and had been to see Dr. Mariano, the White House doctor. The next morning as she crossed the hall she encountered the doctor with the President. He had been out jogging and was feeling unwell. As Monica passed them, Dr. Mariano asked her how she was doing and the President asked what had happened. Afterwards, when he went upstairs to dress for work, he donned one of Monica’s ties (the tie that his steward, Bayani Nelvis, later wore when testifying before the Grand Jury). Monica saw this when she passed him that evening in the hall. The President was with Harold Ickes but he stopped her to say hello. Around eight o’clock that night, he called her in her office and when she answered said, “I’m sorry you hurt your hand.” In the ensuing conversation he invited her to join him and his guests to watch a movie in the White House Theater, but when she learned that senior staff would be present, she declined his invitation and asked if she could take a raincheck on that one. However, she did ask if she could see him on the weekend.
Thus, on Sunday, March 31, just six weeks after the President had ended their affair because of his sense of guilt, they were back in the old routine: Monica went to his office at lunchtime, carrying a folder of papers. In the past she had brought pictures of herself as a child, the President commenting of one of them that she looked rather too pensive for a two-year-old. This time she hid a Hugo Boss tie and a silly erotic poem among her batch of papers. It was after this encounter, which led inevitably to kissing and sexual caresses during which Monica—famously, thanks to the Starr Report—moistened one of the President’s cigars in a most intimate fashion, that she realized that she had fallen in love.
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