A Washington Barman Tells All - Tacky Politicians Afoot In The Capitol's Playground

The Town & Country bar at the Mayflower, one of Washington's oldest, most favored, high-end hotels, was the venue for deals, trysts, and affairs for decades.  Late at night, the bar scene was especially animated - open season for overtures, offers, and connections.  

 

The bartender, 'Bill' was master of ceremonies, magician, and vaudevillian personality.  After 10pm, people went there for Bill, his antics, his legerdemain, and his ability to create an atmosphere of insider intimacy within a larger context of political anonymity - no mean feat in a town where information is power. 

Bill had been the evening barman at the Mayflower for decades and retired only when the hotel was sold and it was clear that the new ownership intended to make changes. The bar would go, or rather it would be reconfigured into something more welcoming to young aides, interns and tourists.  

It would lose the heavy oak and mahogany cachet that lent itself to a particular type of older, more established, steak-and-martinis clientele, suits and ties, worsted and English wool; and replace it with something more in tune with the times. 

Bill was contacted by a literary agent who encouraged him to write a memoir of his three decades at the Town & Country. Who better than he to tell the real story behind the headlines?  He had heard confidences, proposals, threats, and seductions all of which had some political inference, and his book would go through three printings in a month. 

 

At first Bill hesitated.  For years he had been the hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil invisible man - a clown, the happy barman, the man in whom any man could confide without fear that his story would leak out onto Connecticut Avenue.

Yet the agent's offer was tempting - an advance worth more than Bill would see in five years' of emoluments and gratuities, a promise of the kind of Washington stardom that only few achieved, and a bevy of New York lawyers who would create a legal firewall around his stories.  'Give it a try', said the agent, 'and let's take it from there.'

Ah, but where to start? It was closing time, only two patrons were still at the bar, and Bill had wiped the counters clean, spiffed up the array of whiskeys and gins behind him, opened the back door for the cleaning ladies who would work until one, poured himself a brandy, and began to think about the past. 

He immediately thought of the former Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer who had come here for assignations with one of Madame LaFourchette's girls but would always stop in for a dry martini before she arrived.  He was in mufti and dressed more like a Midwestern tourist than an important politician.  He lost the severe dark suit, white shirt, and tightly-knotted tie of office and became an ordinary Joe. 

 

After many late nights at the bar, Spitzer had become a regular, and like most confided in Bill.  'This is not really me, Bill', the Governor said.  'It's just that I don't have time to chase women'. 

Bill, no stranger to the trade, looked at the governor - a tightly-wound, rabbinical, obsessive to whom none of the American beauty roses that came into the Mayflower would ever give a second glance.  The Governor knew that Madame LaFourchette was his only recourse; and when the high-toned, tall, bejeweled woman caught his eye through the swinging doors of the bar, Bill smiled.  His long career at sussing out infidelity and the male ego had not failed him.  She was attractive, but still a tart - from what he now understood, a good match for the Governor. 

The Governor was a man of eclectic tastes.  If you were paying for it, you could pick and choose, and Madame LaFourchette was well known for her stable of diversity.  There were silky, dark, brooding Palestinian girls, blonde, blue-eyed Norwegians, and creamy coffee octoroons from New Orleans.  Mme. LaFourchette stopped the color palette there - none of her customers wanted black, even Southerners who were tempted. 

So, every time that the Governor took his seat at Bill's bar, a different woman would come calling. It was like his own personal harem, women of unique charm and beauty, to which he could motion and they would come to his bedchamber. 

Bill was old enough to remember the young John F Kennedy who was a frequent patron of the Town & Country.  Bill was only an apprentice in those days, but not too young to appreciate the goings on.  Kennedy was always with a beautiful woman captivated by his charm, wit, and unmistakable sexual interest.  Not a tart among them, such was the man's attractiveness.  

His brother Bobby was just a kid, and Jack's women treated him like one, tousling his hair, putting their arms around him, and giving him affectionate pecks on the cheek; but Bobby was no innocent, and before long he was in the back room of the bar entertaining the same women that his brother had. 

There was very little buggery at the Town & Country - or at least very little.  There is something about the pheromones that fill the air in such a place - almost stiflingly masculine and feminine - that gay men once they opened the door knew immediately they did not belong.  Only once or twice - perhaps when the air was thin or the weather outside damp and dreary - did Bill witness a gay flirtation.  

A well-known Congressman, closeted and strictly conservative to provide cover for his sexuality, but as queer as a three dollar bill, could not restrain himself, and after three martinis it was clear that he had intentions for the young aide sitting next to him.  The aide, impressed that such a well-known politician would pay him any mind, especially when the bar was filled with men seen on the nightly news, responded warmly. 

But when the Congressman, uncommonly drunk and irresolute crossed the line and slipped his hand down the aide's inner thigh, the aide stood up, and yelled, 'Keep your hands to yourself, you fucking faggot', and with that coup de foudre the Congressman was outed once and for all. 

'We were right’, whispered a fellow Congressman from across the aisle. 'Knew it all the time', and from that time forward the outed member lightened up on his family values routine, shifted lanes to the climate, and managed with a generous public contribution to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Iowa, to stay out of the Des Moines Independent. 

 

There was always something strange about the beautiful blonde woman who always sat by herself at a corner table of the bar reading a book.  That alone caught Bill's attention. No one came to the Town & Country to read Proust.  Her posture and attitude tended to keep potential suitors away - there is some indefinable but impermeable barrier that beautiful women can put up when they want to be left alone that men instinctively understand. 

However, the most savvy, practiced, and experienced men do not see this as indomitable, and never hesitate to at least offer some pleasant, inviting remark; and so it was that a gentleman of some obvious importance but off the radar screen of known celebrities found a way to sit with the young lady.  At first her indifference was evident - she reluctantly agreed to his overture but had no real interest - but indifference changed to diffidence and then to interest.  They shook hands, clearly intending to see each other again. 

Bill, after so many years observing the Washington scene, knew that when a man of obvious influence was anonymous, he must be in one of the clandestine services.  The CIA was particularly careful about screening their recruits for personal secrecy.  It should be enough for these men to do the nation's most important work without recognition. Because of this posture unusual for Washington, Bill immediately assumed his true profession. 

There was no way that Bill or anyone could have known that the young woman was a Russian spy.  Her English was perfectly unaccented, her mannerisms middle American and familiar. Nothing about her raised questions, doubts, or alarms. 

So when she disappeared from the Town & Country and Washington and was seen in Moscow; and when it was revealed that the gentleman in question was none other than the Deputy Director of Operations in the CIA and that he had revealed state secrets, Bill like everyone else was surprised. 

Bill, however, was pleased.  Once again the Town & Country - his bar - had been the scene of sexual intrigue.  Pillow talk in Washington was always of the highest order, and if it began over cocktails at the Mayflower, a feather in Bill's cap.  He, the chef d'orchestre, the maitre d', the master of ceremonies made it all happen.  Pheromones notwithstanding, this was his show. 

This was the stuff of the sample chapter delivered to the literary agent from Simon & Schuster, immediately approved, the advance check cut, a ghost writer assigned, and a publication date fixed. 

There were some legal glitches here and there, questions of fiction vs fact which challenged genre experts at the publishing house, and unusual delays because of health and family issues; but everyone was confident that the book would soon hit the street. 

Once Bill got going, he was a virtual fount of recollections, observations, and insights.  His stories could have filled volumes, and the ghost writer could barely keep up.  While his editor urged him on, the job of trimming the exposé was daunting.  

At the same time the Editor-in-Chief himself brought the manuscript home with him at night and read until after midnight.  It was more than a memoir, more than a tell-all.  'It couldn't be', thought the editor, but his staff had vetted what they could and it seemed that Washington was indeed this smarmy, unholy place only before alluded to. 

The book never came out.  The delays were such that Bill's insider tales were already old hat; but there were those at the publishing house who felt there was still life in the idea - a historical memoir, perhaps, the way the Washington crowd used to be before the censorious, penitential days of today. 

'Remember Wilbur Mills' chippie, Fannie Fox, the Argentine firecracker?' laughed a colleague of Bill's who came to Florida to visit.  'Now that was a real tart.  I miss the good ol' days'. 

With his advance, Bill bought that condo in Sarasota he had always wanted, and whacked away on his memoir from the balcony overlooking the Gulf.  Sipping his sundowner, he said to the passersby below, 'I am a happy man'.