Monica Lewinskyis known for her love affair with former PresidentBill Clinton, but her first impression of him was less than flattering. InThe Clinton Affair, an upcoming A&E special, the anti-bullying activist reveals she originally viewed the president, who is 27 years her senior, as an “old guy with wiry, gray hair.”
“Early on, there was this period where I had these strange encounters with these other interns, one in particular, of this girl gushing about the president, talking about how handsome he was,” the former White House intern, now 45, says in the special, which delves into their courtship in the 1990s and how Clinton became mired in scandals during his presidency. “I just remember thinking to myself, ‘Ew, he is this old guy with wiry, gray hair! How could she find him attractive?’
Brian Doben
“Filming the documentary forced me to acknowledge to myself past behavior that I still regret and feel ashamed of,” she writes. “There were many,manymoments when I questioned not just the decision to participate, but my sanity itself. Despite all of the ways I tried to protect my mental health, it was still challenging.”
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Her crush developed and during November 1995, at a staff birthday party during the government shut down, her crush turned into something more.
“I realized the top inch or two, oh my God, of my underwear was showing, my thong underwear, and I thought, ‘Well I’ll up the game.'” Lewinsky explains. “I knew [Bill] was walking out of a room and instead of pulling my trousers up as I would have done in any other instance, I didn’t. It was unnoticeable to anyone else in the room, but he noticed.”
Shortly after, Clinton beckoned her into an office and they talked about her schooling and other light-hearted topics.
“I don’t think that at that point in my life my heart had ever beat as fast,” she says. “I blurted out, ‘You know I have a crush on you?’ And he laughed and smiled and then asked if I wanted to go into the back office. And I did. It was dark and he eventually asked me if he could kiss me and I said yes.”
Seth Wenig/AP
“I don’t talk about this very often and I still feel uncomfortable talking about it because I think it’s one of those things where it’s not as if it didn’t register with me that he was the president. Obviously, it did,” she says in the series. “I think it meant more to me that someone who other people desired, desired me. However wrong it was, however misguided, for who I was in that very moment at 22 years old, that was how it felt.”
But their affair wasn’t all romance. The meetings — which usually took place in the private rooms off of the Oval Office — were always on the president’s terms, Lewinsky explains.
“I had no way to reach him. If he called me, I couldn’t call him back. I was completely at his mercy in that way,” she says inThe Clinton Affair. “But it’s really sad to me when I look back. I was this 22-year-old girl working in the White House for my very first job out of college. I should have been out on the weekends, meeting people my own age, enjoying myself. And instead I very often stayed in my office on Saturdays and Sundays, hoping he would call.”
“It was a rollercoaster of a relationship,” she later explains, “that led to this sort of slow emotional unraveling on my part.”
The Clinton Affairpremieres on Sunday, November 18, at 9 p.m. ET on A&E.
source: people.com
