American Rhapsody

by Joe Eszterhas

  Everything that Gennifer wrote about him turned Monica on. “His stamina amazed me,” Monica read; “we made love over and over that night, and he never seemed to run out of energy . . . . He proved he could go on all night.” Bill, according to Pookie, was a wild man who kept dope in his pockets and casually lighted up, who liked Pookie to meet him at a hotel wearing nothing but a fur coat, who loved phone sex—“Bill loved to talk dirty and to have me say things back to him”—who liked pouring catsup and milk all over her body and licking it off, who liked oral sex. “With Bill, oral sex seemed like the natural thing to do.” Pookie also made Monica wonder about his relationship with Hillary, whose friendship with Walter Kaye had gotten Monica her job. “Bill said he had known for a long time that Hillary was attracted to women,” Gennifer wrote, “and it didn’t really bother him anymore. His first clue came from her lack of enjoyment of sex with him. He said Hillary was cold and not playful at all in bed. Hillary didn’t like to experiment and insisted on the missionary position and nothing else. Because she wasn’t enjoying herself, neither was he. Sex with Hillary became a duty, nothing more.” Bill told Gennifer, “She’s eaten more pussy than I have.”

  Monica laughed when she read that he called his penis “Willard.” Willard? Willard! What an odd name for a penis. Wasn’t there an old movie called Willard? About a boy and his rat? But she liked his explanation to Gennifer of why he called it Willard: “It’s longer than Willie.”

  She was off from work the next day, but she never left the apartment. She was sure she was going to get a call from the Secret Service telling her the president wanted to see her. She had heard that that was what the Secret Service had done for JFK. The phone rang a lot that day—she felt her heartbeat race each time—but it was never him.

  Her six-week internship was nearly over and she went to her supervisor and asked to re-up for a second six weeks. She was, her supervisor felt, conscientious and enthusiastic, and so her second internship was approved.

  She started reading everything she could find about him. Her heart broke for him. To have had to grow up in that awful racist state, where black people had been lynched as recently as the 1920s! To have had to be brought up by his grandparents for two years because his mom could only find work in another city! She could just see his mom as he had: kneeling on the ground and sobbing after a visit with him. And her heart broke for herself, too. He was the fat boy. The only pair of jeans that fit him in the waist were so long that he had to roll them halfway to his knees. He had a cute little Hopalong Cassidy outfit and the other kids made him jump rope in his cowboy boots—he couldn’t jump rope, either!—and they pulled the rope out from under him. He broke his leg and the other kids yelled at him as he lay on the ground: “Sissy! Sissy! You’re a sissy!” And he, too, had cowered alone in his room as his parents yelled at each other.

  She remembered how, in grade school, she had said she was going to be the president of the United States, and she smiled when she read that when he was in grade school, a teacher said that he was going to be the president of the United States . . . and now he was.

  The moment of his life that touched her the most took place when he was a little boy and he was singing “Frog Went A-Courtin’ ” with his music teacher.

  He sang, “Miss Mousy will you marry me, uh-huh! uh-huh! Miss Mousy will you marry me, uh-huh! uh-huh!”

  His music teacher sang, “Without my Uncle Rat’s consent, uh-uh! uh-uh! Without my Uncle Rat’s consent, I wouldn’t marry the President, uh-uh! uh-uh!”

  She held the image in her mind: a clumsy little fat boy with a crew cut, his jeans rolled up, his tummy sticking out, singing, “Miss Mousy will you marry me, uh-huh! uh-huh!” It made her feel close to him. S-o-o-o close to him.

  She went to another departure ceremony in August with a group of interns, and when he stopped and chatted with the group, she introduced herself and made sure to say that she was staying for a second internship term. He smiled and nodded. A week or so later, she was in the basement lobby of the West Wing, talking to a member of the Secret Service, when he came by with two women guests. He turned away from the two other women and turned to her.

  “Hi, Mr. President. I’m Monica Lewinsky,” she said.

  “I know.” He grinned, looking her up and down, undressing her with his eyes again. She sucked in her tummy. She was happy she was wearing black.

  She went to her supervisor and applied for a paid White House job after her second internship was up. She didn’t see him then for more than two months, but she thought about him all the time and told her girlfriends about him, too, describing the way the president of the United States had undressed her with his eyes. Her friends were wary. One of them, who worked at the White House, even warned her there were rumors he was leaving the White House late at night to meet someone at the Marriott downtown.

  As she was telling her friends about the crush she had on the president, she flew across the country, back to Portland, to see Andy Bleiler again. He sneaked away from his wife to spend a few hours in bed with her, but then he told her once again that it was over, that he was feeling too guilty about cheating on his wife.

  She was crushed and hysterical. She had flown all the way across America just to make love to him . . . and now he was giving her the same old awful, hurtful, duplicitous song and dance. She sobbed her way back to Washington.

  She got good news the morning she got back. There was a job opening in Legislative Affairs at the White House. She interviewed with senior officials and she got the job!

  There was, though, a temporary glitch. Newt Gingrich and his Republicans were causing a budgetary impasse and there was going to be a government shutdown. It meant that senior staff were forced to go home, that the 430-person White House staff would be cut down to 90 while the impasse lasted.

  But it also meant that interns, who were unpaid, could work and would have additional responsibilities. Since she had not officially begun her Legislative Affairs job, she would work during the shutdown—technically, still as an intern.

  On her first day of work during the shutdown, she wore a navy blue pantsuit. She was working in Chief of Staff Leon Panetta’s office, answering the phones, which kept ringing off the hook because Rush Limbaugh had given Leon’s phone number to the dittoheads who wanted to complain about the shutdown.

  She saw “Handsome” as he walked past her office in the hallway. She mouthed Hi at him while she was on the phone. He said, “Hi,” smiled, and kept going.

  Later that day, there was an informal birthday party for another aide, and he unexpectedly showed up, smiling and looking at her as she kept dealing with the loony-tunes on the phone.

  He went into Leon’s inner office, and she got up from her desk and waited for him to come out. When he did, she turned her back to him and lifted the back of her jacket with her thumbs, letting him see the thong underwear showing above her waistline. From reading Gennifer’s book, she knew how much he loved underwear and other lingerie. As he passed her, he looked at her and smiled.

  Throughout the course of the evening, he kept coming back to Leon’s office as she worked at her desk, looking at her every time, claiming he was trying to find aides who he knew weren’t there. Going to get something to drink, she passed George Stephanopoulos’s office and saw Handsome sitting there . . . all alone.

  “Come on in here for a second,” he said.

  She went in.

  “Where did you go to school?”

  “You know,” she replied, “I have a really big crush on you.”

  He laughed and looked at her for a long moment, staring at her breasts. “Come into the back office,” he said.

  In George’s inner office, he put his arms around her and held her tightly. His eyes were “soul searching, tender, very needing, very wanting, very loving.” She also thought there was a sadness about him she hadn’t expected.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said. “Your energy just lights up a room.” And he asked, �
�Can I kiss you?”

  He kissed her—“softly, deeply, romantically.” He stroked her hair and her face.

  “I’ve done this before, you know,” she said. “It’s okay.” She was talking about her affair with Andy Bleiler, a married man. She wanted to put Handsome at ease.

  “I knew when I saw you on the line out there that I’d kiss you,” he said. He looked at her a long moment, smiled, looked at his watch, then said he had to get back to work.

  She was sitting alone in Leon’s outer office three hours later, around ten o’clock at night, when he came in. She was expecting him. She had written her name and phone number on a piece of paper, and when he came in, she handed it to him.

  He smiled and said, “If you’d like to meet me in George’s office in five or ten minutes, you can.”

  “Yes.” She smiled. “I would like to do that.”

  She waited ten minutes and then walked down to George’s office. She went into the outer office, where the lights were on, and he wasn’t there. Then the door to the inner office opened and he was standing there in the darkness, aiming that slow, sexy smile at her. He gestured for her to come in.

  He kissed her as soon as she stepped into the inner office. She unbuttoned her jacket and he touched her breasts, her bra still on. He lifted her bra up and he felt her breasts and he kissed them. He explored her body with his hands and moved a hand under her panties. A telephone rang. He picked it up and started to talk to a congressman about Bosnia while he kept moving his hand between her legs. She had an orgasm as he talked, and she knelt down in front of him. She tried to unbutton his pants, but, used to zippers and not buttons, she was having trouble doing it. He unbuttoned his fly for her, still talking on the phone. Willard was suddenly there. She began nurturing Willard with kisses while he was still on the phone, still talking about Bosnia. When he finally hung up, he stopped her.

  “Please,” she said. “I want to make you come.”

  “I don’t know you well enough,” he said. “I don’t trust you for that.”

  He pulled on the pink intern pass around her neck and said, “This could be a problem.” She told him that she had just been hired as a legislative aide and would soon have the blue pass, which would give her access anywhere in the White House.

  “That’s great.” He smiled.

  He looked at her and then he said, “Well, I’ve got to go, kiddo.”

  She said, “Okay,” and he was gone. She felt that she had found her “sexual soul mate.” When she got home, she woke both her mother and her aunt Debra and told them the president had kissed her. She didn’t say anything about Willard.

  He ignored her the next day. The day after that, she waited all day for him, but he never came around Leon’s office. She stayed late with some others, still waiting for him, among them the president’s secretary, Betty Currie. They ordered a pizza. When the pizza arrived, she went down to Betty’s office to tell her it was there.

  She saw him then, finally, talking to some people. He didn’t even glance at her. Betty came back to Leon’s office, and so did the others who were working late. One of them bumped into Monica and smeared pizza all over her new red jacket. She went into the bathroom to clean it off, and when she came out, Handsome was standing in the doorway of Betty’s office, as though he’d been waiting for her.

  “You can come out this way, kiddo,” Handsome said, smiling, and he led her into the Oval Office, toward his private study.

  He stopped her in the hallway, where there were no windows, and kissed her. He felt her body with his hands.

  “You’ve got such a beautiful smile,” he said.

  She asked him why he hadn’t called her at home.

  “What about your parents?”

  “It’s okay. I’ve got my own line. You don’t have to worry. I told you—I’ve done this before.”

  He kissed her again, feeling her, pulling her closer to Willard.

  “I bet you don’t even remember my name,” she said.

  He grinned and said, “What kind of a name is Lewinsky, anyway?”

  “Jewish.”

  He started to kiss her again, and she said, “I’d better go. They’re going to wonder where I am.” She wanted to show him that she was on his side, that she didn’t want anyone to get suspicious.

  He grinned. “Why don’t you go get me a couple slices of pizza?”

  She went back to Leon’s outer office and grabbed two slices of vegetarian pizza. When she returned, Betty Currie was sitting at her desk outside the Oval Office. She told Betty that he’d asked her to bring him some pizza. Betty opened the door to the Oval Office and said, “Sir, the girl’s here with the pizza.”

  She went inside, and he led her back to the hallway and started kissing her again. He unbuttoned her blouse and he kissed her breasts. She unbuttoned his shirt and she kissed his chest. She felt him suck his stomach in. She said, “Oh, you don’t have to do that—I like your tummy.”

  Betty Currie was suddenly at the door leading to the hallway. They froze.

  “Sir,” Betty Currie said. “You’ve got that call you were expecting.”

  He said, “Thank you, Betty.” His voice was hoarse.

  He led her into the bathroom off the hallway—it was dark in there—and he picked up the telephone. He was speaking to another congressman about Bosnia. As he spoke, he unbuttoned his fly and Willard came out to see her. She knelt down and . . . He pushed her head away and made her stop again.

  “Please, just let me finish.”

  “No. I told you. I don’t know you well enough.”

  She didn’t understand the distinction; he knew her well enough to let her nurture Willard, but he didn’t know her well enough to let her bring Willard to closure.

  He told her again that she had “a beautiful smile” and “great energy.”

  “I’m usually around on the weekends, when there’s hardly anybody here,” he said. “You can come see me, kiddo.”

  “Okay.” She smiled. “Call me.”

  “I will.”

  He didn’t call her. She saw him in the corridors sometimes and he smiled and said hi, but he always called her “kiddo.”

  Late in November, she went to see Betty Currie. She asked Betty whether she’d pass a necktie on to him if she got one. She explained about her jobs at the Knot Shops and told Betty how much she’d always loved ties. Betty said sure.

  She bought a beautiful hand-painted, hand-stitched Zegna and gave it to Betty for him. A few days later, Betty told her he’d loved the tie so much that he’d had himself photographed wearing it and that he was going to give her a picture.

  Early in December, she was walking through the West Wing, when she saw him with a group of people. He turned away from them when he noticed her and said, “Did you get the picture of me in that tie?” She told him no and walked away. Later that day, Betty called her at her desk and asked her to come over. Betty told her to go into the Oval Office so he could sign the picture for her.

  As soon as she walked in, he said, “God, you look really skinny.” She knew she wasn’t skinny. She’d never been skinny. She’d never be skinny. But she was trying s-o-o-o hard to lose weight and he was s-o-o-o sweet to say it. He gave her the picture of him wearing the tie and signed it for her. Betty came in then.

  Monica said, “Thank you, Mr. President.”

  He said, “Okay, kiddo,” and then she left.

  She told her mother and her aunt Debra and her friends that she was falling in love with him. They didn’t take her seriously. If nothing else, she thought, Handsome was getting her over Andy Bleiler. Finally. She knew that women sometimes needed one man to get over another, but she’d never thought that it would take the president of the United States to get her over Andy.

  [3]

  The Uproar Is Deafening

  “Every President,” Monica said to Linda Tripp, “every President we have ever had has always had lovers because the pressure of the job is too much. Too much! Too much to
always rely on your wife, with whom you have too much baggage—which you inevitably will if you get to that point.”

  The Comeback Kid knew this one was going to be tough. The uproar from this would hurt his ears. Turning down the new hearing aid he’d recently gotten at Bethesda wouldn’t help. The uproar would be loud and painful, louder than the uproar over . . .

  O.J.’s acquittal . . . Nixon’s tapes . . . Gennifer’s tapes . . . Carter’s attempt to free the hostages . . . Chappaquiddick . . . Ford pardoning Nixon . . . Bob Packwood’s diary . . . Tyson biting Holyfield . . . Vince and Hillary . . . Nixon and Bebe Rebozo . . . Ronald Reagan and Selena Walters . . . Bob Dole and Meredith Roberts . . . Nelson Rockefeller and Megan Marshack . . . Nancy Reagan’s “three-hour lunches” with Frank Sinatra . . . Nixon and Bob Abplanalp . . .

  Jimmy Carter’s chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, grabbing at the front of the dress of the wife of the Egyptian ambassador and saying, “I’ve always wanted to see the Pyramids” . . . Hamilton Jordan spilling a drink of amaretto and cream down a young woman’s dress at a Georgetown bar . . . Elton John saying Keith was “a monkey with arthritis trying to go onstage and look young” . . . Tip O’Neill saying George McGovern was “nominated by the cast of Hair” . . . Donald Trump saying, “I have seen Darryl Hannah on many occasions and she is simply in need of a shower or bath” . . . Senator John McCain saying Newt Gingrich’s poll numbers were “worse than mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer’s” . . . Prince and Kim Basinger . . .

  Bush throwing up on the Japanese prime minister . . . LBJ saying, “Gentlemen, I’ve got a hard-on for the presidency” . . . Dukakis wearing that silly helmet in the tank . . . Hugh Grant and Divine Brown . . . Carter admitting “lust in his heart” . . . Nancy whispering into Reagan’s ear . . . George Bush and Jennifer Fitzgerald . . . Ford falling down all the time . . . Bob Packwood singing Sinatra songs . . . George Bush commenting on his television debate with Geraldine Ferraro, saying, “We tried to kick a little ass last night” . . . Carl Bernstein and Elizabeth Taylor . . . Bob Dylan and Elizabeth Taylor . . .