The Pickup Artists
The Big He, the Titanic lover, the flight promoter, and the Giff.
Sometimes when a man and woman first meet, the man speaks words so true, so stirring, that the woman is helpless to resist. See if you can identify the world-class smooth operators who spoke these opening lines:
1) "I could get lost in those blue eyes."
2) "You've got eyes like Julia Roberts'--they're so big." [If this fails, follow with:] "Your eyes haunt me."
3) "You're really beautiful, you know that? ... Call me, it'll be fun."
4) "You're as pretty as my wife."
Sure, you were tempted to guess Bill Clinton for all four, but the answers are: 1) Clinton; 2) Leonardo DiCaprio; 3) Jerry Springer; 4) Frank Gifford.
This month the tabs explore the sexual gambits of famous men. Chief among them is the commander in chief. The Star breaks news this week with an account by a flight attendant on Clinton's 1992 campaign plane of an alleged sexual assault by him. The plane was called Longhorn One (Clinton had to settle for this name; Long Dong Silver and Monkey Business were already taken) and is described by the National Enquirer as the "lust-crazed Bill Clinton campaign jet." The plane has figured prominently in the tabloid universe in recent weeks. The Enquirer quotes an "insider" as saying, "Bill Clinton had his own 'Mile-High Club' up in the front of the plane." And the Star last week ran pictures of Clinton arm in arm with, and with his hand on the leg of, flight attendant Debra Schiff, who later went on to become a White House receptionist.
But it is the account of flight attendant Cristy Zercher that fleshes out the Clinton seduction style. His opening comment to her was Answer 1, above. And Zercher claims that late one night, while almost everyone was sleeping--including Hillary, who was about six feet from Zercher's jump seat--Clinton came over to talk. He laid his head on Zercher's shoulder, asked her to talk about herself and, for 40 minutes, on and off, rubbed the side of her left breast. "I thought, 'Is he really doing what I think he's doing?' " she recalls. While feeling her breast, he also wanted to feel her pain. When she mentioned she was divorced, Clinton began asking repeatedly of the marriage, "Was the sex at least good?"
On another occasion, Zercher says, she pushed open an unlocked lavatory door to find Clinton standing there, unzipped. She says he said to her, "Well, why don't you come in and shut the door?" Then there was the time he saw the flight attendants reading Gennifer Flowers' interview in Penthouse. Zercher says Clinton kept asking them what the best part was. Schiff finally said that it was Flowers' comment that he was good at giving oral sex. "That's pretty accurate," Zercher recalls him saying. "It's one of my favorite things."
He also told them that one thing he was afraid of reporters uncovering was a story about a couple who were friends of his. They were getting divorced because the wife found the husband cheating on her with barnyard animals. Zercher recalls her reaction: "My God, can you imagine if he becomes president that we were sitting here talking about farm animals--and he's the one that brought it up."
Emily Yoffe is a regular Slate contributor. She writes the Dear Prudence and Human Guinea Pig columns. You can send Dear Prudence questions for publication to prudence@slate.com. (Questions may be edited.) Subscribe to Emily Yoffe's Facebook page.


