The Official Bathtub

In the United States, there was a time when you either recounted your own Vietnam adventure stories or someone else recounted theirs. Nowadays that subject is passé; what seems to be all the rage is telling erotic White House war stories, ultimately resulting in an honorable retiree airing her romance with JFK during a Washington internship. And according to her account, as far as glamour is concerned, Clinton and Lewinsky had nothing on her.

Mimi Alford lost her virginity at the hands of John Fitzgerald Kennedy when she was 19 years old and he was 45 (perhaps it wasn’t exactly at his “hands” but the metaphor still stands). The fact of the matter is that, right in the middle of the Cold War, they were splashing about in a hot bathtub complete with rubber duckies.

Indeed, the mere thought of the most powerful man in the world and his intern sloshing around with yellow ducks should give us cause for reflection. The legend of JFK lies in the gutter: Up until recently we knew that the image of Marilyn publicly whispering to him before a birthday cake was favorable; on the other hand, that of corny rubber ducks is devastating. Mimi (not Marilyn) has besmirched JFK’s memory.

There are things that, despite being true, should just not be told. If we have managed to go 50 years without knowing that Kennedy liked rubber ducks in the tub, we could have easily gone another half a century none the wiser. In response to Mimi’s memoirs, the CIA would have us believe that they weren’t really rubber ducks but on-duty agents assigned to assist during the president’s bath. Anything occurring within the White House walls enjoys a special category of secrecy; that must also then apply to the official bathtub. We can also be thankful that back then there weren’t cell phone cameras; if the images of Kennedy and the ducks had reached the Kremlin there would have been guaranteed laughter. In a tense bipolar world, smack dab in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Comrade Nikita Khrushchev would have split his side laughing. If Mimi had told what she knew back then instead of now, she would have had a street named after her in the old Moscow, former capital of the USSR and Rome to all communists.

According to her story, the relationship went on while Jacqueline, oblivious to the entire affair, was away in Paris trying on hats and negligees. In reality, the only lingerie her husband was interested in was that of intern Mimi while they shared the White House master bed. And while it’s true that since then a century has gone by and a millennium was crossed, just maybe a dense curtain was also drawn. But Mimi didn’t forget, and now she conjures up visions of a president active from the waist down and fond of baths with rubber ducks. Mrs. Alford, now after all has been said and done, you would have been better off just having a good old soak.