What Really Happened (3 page)

But, I did not say what I should have said because it did not even occur to me. I was a moth fluttering helplessly toward a flame. Naturally, because he was the most charismatic man I had ever met, he eventually persuaded me to join him on the bed, where we sat and talked. And talked. And talked. We talked about everything—his relationships, his political career, his family. What became clear to me very quickly was that this was a man whose whole self didn’t fit in his marriage, which happens a lot. But instead of repressing the parts that didn’t fit, he split himself in two and created a double life. A politician who compartmentalizes was not really a shocking development to me because that is one of the abilities that contributes to making a great politician. It had taken him many years to get where he currently was. He told me that he had an entire hidden life that had gone on for decades and that he was currently involved with three different women. One lived in Los Angeles, one in Florida, and one in Chicago. Clearly this behavior of his was not going to change overnight.

I could also easily see the fear—infidelity stems from fear—but I was blinded to the extent of it. I believe that I couldn’t see it, partly because I was so blown away by his ability to disclose all the parts of his life to me so openly. The depth of his immediate trust in me was a bit overwhelming.

I remember telling him that the key to being authentic is total honesty with yourself—not hiding anything from yourself. I also told him that if I was going to help him, he couldn’t lie to me. He needed to have one person in his life that was safe for him.

He said that wasn’t a problem, and when he said that, I felt a wave of total relief roll off of him. He needed this safe space.

Somewhere in the midst of our talk, long after I realized how far off the rails his marriage was, and for how long it had been that way, something happened between us. The connection I felt when I walked in the door had only grown, and the amount of energy between us was huge and unstoppable. And then a moment came while we were talking when something in my heart clicked and I surrendered. I took off my teacher hat, let go of all my resistance to him, and let him lead.

And lead he did. He led me toward the most extraordinary night of my life.

There was a lot of talk, a lot of laughter, and zero sleep.

When I left, I really didn’t expect that I would ever hear from him again. From our conversation the night before, I knew that he was a very busy man and because I had forfeited the teacher role, and I am not remotely the type of girl that would ever fit into the role of mistress, let alone occupy the space of girlfriend number four, I just couldn’t imagine how our lives would ever intersect again. I honestly thought that I’d just be left with memories. I gave him my phone number but I never asked for his, and he never offered. Walking out of the hotel, I was sleep deprived and walking on air.

On the train back to Jersey that early morning, if my Lenny/Bono GOD sat down next to me and said, “At this exact time, on this exact date six years from now, you will be in North Carolina driving your daughter to school and that man is your daughter’s father,” I would have ERUPTED with laughter. Because to me, in that moment (especially with all the information that I had acquired in the previous ten hours), that would have sounded just plain stupid. Funny, but stupid.

TWO

Becoming a Mistress

“People say I make strange choices, but they’re not strange for me. My sickness is that I’m fascinated by human behavior, by what’s underneath the surface, by the worlds inside people.”

—
J
OHNNY
D
EPP

I
REALLY HAD NO IDEA whether or not John Edwards would call me. So when he called around 9:30
P.M.
later that night, my response was, “I can’t believe you are calling me!”

He told me that he had left New York that afternoon and was at his next hotel. He informed me that he had just canceled his previous plans—“the Florida ones I told you about last night.” He went on to say, “In fact, I permanently canceled. That one is all done. Which speaks volumes about how I feel about you.”

I swooned.

We talked for two hours. He said repeatedly that he couldn’t believe how easy it was to talk to me. He asked if he could call me on Saturday night from Davenport, Iowa. It would be around 11:30 my time. Would I wait up for him?

I said yes. I was completely fascinated by him. Where could this possibly be headed? And was he really already changing his behavior, based on our one night together? Love does evolve you and encourage you to behave differently. Was he in love with me?

I was in the kitchen when my cell rang late Saturday night, February 25
^th
. The first thing out of his mouth was, “I miss you! I can’t believe how much I miss you. I miss you so bad.”

I couldn’t believe how vocal he was about his feelings! A man expressing his feelings? I loved that! He came across as open and fearless, though I would learn later that this was not exactly the case.

“You know how bad I missed you?” he continued. “I almost broke all my rules yesterday. I went to my phone; I had it in my hand and just about called you before I stopped myself. I thought, ‘What are you doing?’”

I wondered to myself: what are his “rules”?

He paused and sighed. “By the way, I’m in Iowa. What am I doing in Davenport fucking Iowa?” The way he said it cracked me up, like he was completely bewildered to find himself mired in the crazy political landscape of Iowa. It was like he knew he didn’t belong there.

I burst out laughing. And just like that, I was head over heels in love. My heart had a reaction to him like no other man, ever. His sense of humor sealed the deal. I couldn’t believe it—I had absolutely no control over my heart—not that I wanted any, but oh my God, this was CRAZY!

That night began our frequent extended phone conversations, usually four hours in length.

It felt to me like he was starved for authenticity and he was finally getting fed. He had the freedom to say anything and not get punished for it. He told me that I didn’t have the negative reactions that most women had when he said things that were a little off the wall. He said that he found me to be so refreshing and couldn’t believe how easy I was to talk to. He also told me that I was the first person in his life that gave him energy instead of taking it.

I loved how much he needed and wanted more awareness, joy, and love. I had a lot to give and I very much wanted to give it to him.

The problem with our relationship is pretty obvious: someone who is living a life devoted to spiritual truth is probably not going to be the best mistress. Mistresses are supposed to be a secret. It’s a hidden relationship by nature, but given that I had never been a mistress and because I never set out to be one, I did not attend mistress school, I never read any mistress handbooks, and therefore didn’t realize how important it is (outside of your relationship, of course) to
keep your mouth shut!

I also find it very ironic, given I am actually somewhat knowledgeable and talented in other areas, that I would become world-famous for something that I am
not
very good at.

If you have ever been in love, you know that when it happens, you are bursting with happiness. It is very difficult to contain yourself, so everyone who crosses your path will instantly realize that something is different about you.

Johnny told me that many people he worked with around that time said to him, “What’s going on with you?” And he would tell them, “I’m happy. It makes a big difference.”

Because I had no experience at this type of thing, when I was asked about my over-the-top happiness, I stupidly said a little too much.

It was during this same time period that I was attempting to fix my website with a woman named Pigeon O’Brien.

I met Pigeon on October 25
^th
, 2005, at an anniversary book party in New York City for Jay McInerney’s book
Bright Lights, Big City
. Pigeon approached me and acted as though she was my long-lost friend. I did not know her so I asked Jay, my ex-boyfriend, who she was. He said Pigeon was in love with him and was around him a lot after I dated him in the 1980s and that she built websites. I asked around and, with the exception of Jay, none of my old friends from the 1980s knew her either. Despite her odd insertion into my life as my long-lost friend and disclosing many of her emotional problems in the first few minutes of chatting, she seemed quite harmless and very quickly offered to help me with my website. She spent a month or so in 2005 building the initial site and then disappeared before it was completed.

In 2006 I reached out to Pigeon again and asked if she could fix her original work. And like our original verbal agreement, instead of a money exchange for her work, I was helping Pigeon with her problems, one of which was a situation where she found herself chasing after a guy. In my bursting-with-love state I (stupidly) used my life as an example and mentioned to Pigeon that I had seen a guy in the Regency who seemed interesting, different to me than most men, but I never went after him. And then later I just magically bumped into him on the street. But then (bad mistress) in response to her inquiry, I revealed that the guy from the Regency was from North Carolina, his name was John, I had fallen for him, and the hard part for me was that he was (still) in a bad marriage and he had small kids. I (stupidly) answered questions, offering too many details that would enable her to later put the puzzle together. Yet, at the time, she expressed her joy over my newfound love and over those first few weeks, when I was falling hard, she sent my some examples for the splash page, which, to put it nicely, were not at all what I was going for. I thanked her anyway and stopped talking to her. I never spoke to her again nor did I retain her last name. Unfortunately, Pigeon didn’t forget about me and would show up in my life later, in a much more sinister aspect.

Johnny came back to New York for two days at the beginning of March. He phoned me in the late afternoon to confirm our plans to meet later. He was totally in his work mode, which to me felt cold and a bit guarded. He told me if I could just be somewhere near his hotel around 8:30 that night, he would call me when he was done.

I wasn’t accustomed to his work mode and asked him if he was nervous. He replied no, not at all, and that he was really looking forward to getting together. I was feeling a little nervous, after so much intimate phone time and not a lot of face time, but because he didn’t ask, I kept my feelings to myself.

The “state of affairs” of his life made me very uneasy and scared for him. He seemed to want to clean it all up and not hurt anyone in the process, yet, like a lot of very successful men who compartmentalize, he had not, in his fifty-odd years, acquired the tools needed to handle any kind of deep emotional territory. And from what he told me, his other girlfriends would understandably not be very happy with this new development in his life.

I was really impressed with his strong desire to clean up his life, and at the same time, the mess of it all seemed so dangerous to me. Apparently, though, not too dangerous to stop me from going forward with him, partly because I really thought I could help him and if he didn’t change his ways, his life was bound to implode. Secondly, and more importantly, I was already madly in love.

Around 8:15, I went to the Four Seasons and my phone rang just as my glass of wine arrived.

“What are you doing?”

“Having a glass of wine.”

“Get your butt over here right now. I can’t wait to see you.”

I paid my tab and didn’t drink my wine.

I walked into the hotel, right through the lobby, and up the elevator. His door was ajar, and when I walked in, he ran over to me as he said, “You are even more gorgeous than I remembered.”

I was blown away, not because of him, or that comment, but I just couldn’t believe the charge between us. The force of it! I had never experienced anything like it and it was increasing, not diminishing.

If you have ever wondered whether that movie magic, that mysterious love connection, beyond your wildest fantasy, really exists? I can tell you unequivocally:
it exists
.

While I was there, the hotel phone rang a number of times, but he did not pick it up. I assumed it was the LA woman who had his alias but not the room number. There was never a knock on the door, and his attention stayed focused on me the entire night.

I left the hotel in the morning; he left New York later that day. We continued talking frequently on the phone.

We would talk on the phone until we both had zero energy left. But even then it was still difficult to hang up. We really could not get enough of each other. We were like a pair of teenagers, completely attached, and it felt awful to separate.

And at some point during this time, he told me that LA was done. We’d only seen each other a couple of times and hadn’t been talking for very long, and already he’d broken off two of his other relationships.

The following week Johnny went out to the beach with his kids and told me that he needed to go out to dinner with an old girlfriend. I was very upset about this. I asked, “Why are you opening that door again?” He gave excuse after excuse: “I can’t get out of it now. She has come all this way to meet me for dinner—dinner only.” Clearly he wanted to go. Why would he be doing this? How could he be going out to dinner in a public place? I told him that this was a big mistake; none of it made sense to me. He went and called me when he got back to say what a mistake it had been. She wanted to stay, wanted to get back together, she cried, and so on. He was acting so weird—drunk, in fact. That’s it. He was drunk.