We Read Monica Lewinsky's Authorized 1999 Biography So You Don't Have To

Rumors began in September that Monica Lewinsky, now 39, would be penning a $12 million tell-all about the almost 20-year-old (!) affair with then-POTUS Bill Clinton—which began, famously, when she was just a 22-year-old intern—but we tend to forget there was already a book about the infamous affair, the Starr report and the trial. Monica’s Story was written in 1999 by schlock biographer Andrew Morton, best known for the equally-pulpy Diana: Her True Story, after having a number of conversations with Lewinsky and doing his own research.

Lewinsky is now supposedly writing her own version that will include all manner of graphic details (“Bill went on and on about his insatiable desire for three-way sex, orgies and the use of sex toys of all kinds”) omitted from the soft-focus, corny 1998 Morton biography. But first, some highlights from that tome of great literature.

Tori Spelling, a nine-year-old classmate at her Bel Air private school, invited everyone except Monica to her birthday party, which featured:

pop superstar Michael Jackson and the world’s smallest pony.

A few days after her parents divorced:

on October 1st, Los Angeles was rocked by an earthquake which left six dead and a hundred injured. To Monica, it seemed as though nature itself was mirroring her life. “It was symbolic,” she says.

That whole Hugo Boss ties-as-gift thing?

in her mind’s eye Monica saw a tie that was “classy and presidential,” yet one that was “young, a little kicky, with pizzazz”

It has a genesis.

She [worked] at a tie store called the Knot Shop to pay off a loan on the Jeep her mother had leased when she was in high school.

She wrote emo poetry.

One of her poems, called The War of Emotions, gives an insight into the turmoil of her adolescent soul.

I crouch in a corner all by myself fighting the war of emotions,

Battling against FEAR, ENVY, DEPRESSION and REJECTION,

I struggle.

I am trying to survive but they tug and yank me.

The more they pull, the weaker I become.

I hope and pray for my survival.

Like many teens who write emo poetry:

She put her expressive nature to good use when she won a talent show singing “On My Own” from Les Miserables.

Bill Clinton wasn’t her first affair with a married man. Related: College drama departments have had/will always have a rich history of creepy, inappropriate faculty.

The newly married drama technician continued to flatter and flirt with her, on one occasion asking her to leave his panties for him. […] It was not until December 1992 that they became lovers [and this is how] Monica lost her virginity to a man whose wife had recently become pregnant. A few years later, during a conversation about teenage sex, she told the President she was glad she had waited because she was much more familiar with her body’s responses. He said that he, too, had been a late starter.

For [the drama technician’s] birthday party, which was held at the school, Monica organized a surprise cake in the shape of an iguana, his favorite reptile. Later, they had sex in the light booth of the auditorium.

Later, Clinton weighs in on this douche nozzle:

“He’s such a jerk.”

II.

Miscellaneous Clinton nuggets, in no particular order:

As he moved off, his arm, casually but unnecessarily, brushed against her breast.

She decided to wear a new sage-green suit her mother had bought her from J. Crew.

She was standing with her back to the office door, and when he returned, she put her hands on her hips and with her thumbs lifted the back of her jacket, allowing him a fleeting glimpse of her thong underwear.

She told him she had this vision of them together as ‘Little Bill and Little Monica,’ walking hand-in-hand in the sunlight.

Monica: “People have made it seem so demeaning for me, but it wasn’t, it was exciting, and the irony is that I had the first orgasm of the relationship.”

Soon, in the intensity of the moment, the encounter had become a good deal more intimate, their clothing unbuttoned, their hands exploring each other.

Clinton: “What kind of a name is Lewinsky, anyway?” Monica: “Jewish.”

She shed bitter tears that night.

Monica was always there for him, hoping and yearning, just waiting for him to call.

“My favorite line that reminded me of us and our situation so much was ‘I’ll be seeing you, in all the old familiar places that this heart of mine embraces.”

she was upset when she heard he had been out carousing with actress and singer Barbra Streisand

Over the next few weeks, like blood seeping out from under a closed door, the awful truth began to dawn.

Where Monica was concerned Tripp now scented innocent blood. The older woman, who emerges as the wicked witch in this tragic fairy story, constantly dangled the rosy-skinned apple of romance in front of a trusting and gullible Monica Lewinsky.

he also invariably called her “Kiddo.” *

They talked about her combat boots—”Just like Chelsea’s,” he said.

The President told her that while he liked her as a person, he felt really guilty about their affair. “You know, if I were twenty-five years old and not married, I’d have you on the floor back there in three seconds right now. But you’ll understand when you get older.”

It was after this encounter, which led inevitably to kissing and sexual caresses during which Monica moistened one of the President’s cigars in a most intimate fashion, that she realized that she had fallen in love.

(Tori Spelling’s birthday party once again raises its tiniest pony head.)

She angrily refutes suggestions that she was a Presidential “hanger-on” who went to events at the White House and elsewhere uninvited. Correct form matters to Monica-case in point being her decision not to go to Tori Spelling’s birthday party because she had not been properly invited.

At the party they enjoyed a secret erotic encounter, for in the crush of people around him she was able to briefly brush his crotch with her hand as he was greeting well-wishers.

The President [was] enthralled, actually sexually aroused, by her excited description of her visit to Bosnia.

She told him that she “cared about him so much” and they hugged. It was then that he agreed to go on with their embrace until, for the first time in their affair, the President found sexual completion in her presence.

during which time they enjoyed brief genital contact “without penetration”

Then he started singing the popular classic “Try A Little Tenderness,” looking directly into her eyes during the soulful line “She may be weary.”