Still, I wasn’t giving up. I had one final shot, the joke with the earbuds, and I was determined to make it count. The moment Hope was done filming, I walked back up to the desk, reached into my pants pocket, and withdrew what looked like a hair ball made of wires.
I still don’t know what happened. Somewhere, probably in that waiting room, I had worried this thing into a hopeless tangle. Now I had no idea what to do, and so I did the only thing I could think of: I handed the whole pile to the president of the United States.
If you work in the White House, you will hear a saying: There is no more valuable commodity on earth than a president’s time. I always thought it was a cliché. Then I watched Barack Obama untangle headphones for thirty seconds, while looking directly at me. He untangled and untangled. Finally, the president turned to Hope and sighed.
“Shoddy advance work.”
He said it in a way that let me know that (a) he was just joking, and (b) he was not even a tiny bit joking. And in that moment, my heart sank. This was my third chance to make a second first impression on the president. I had let myself down. President Obama asked a question, but I heard it only faintly, as though a layer of gauze had been placed between us.
“I should probably bob my head back and forth as I’m listening. Wouldn’t that be funnier?”
“Yeah, it would,” I replied. But there was no rescuing my life-changing moment. I was in the Oval Office with the president, and all I wanted was to slink away. I stood in silence while Hope readied the final scene, knowing I would never get another chance. President Obama looked toward the camera.
And then, he paused.
“Hang on,” he said. “If I’m going to bob my head in time to the music, I need to know how the music goes. Does anyone know the Golden Girls theme song?”
There was silence. President Obama looked at Hope. Hope didn’t say anything. I looked at Hope. Hope didn’t say anything. So President Obama looked at me.
And suddenly, I knew exactly what I could do for my country.
I planted my feet on the Oval Office carpet. I cast a brief glance at the Emancipation Proclamation behind me. Then I looked the commander in chief straight in the eye, and I began to sing.
Bah-bum-bum-bum, thank you for being a friend. Bah-bum-bum-bum, traveled down the road and back again. Something, something, you’re a pal and a confidant.
Patriotically, enthusiastically, I continued.
And if you threw a party, invited everyone you knew-ooh-ooh . . .
President Obama gave me a look that indicated, politely but firmly, that we were encroaching on the president’s time.
But it worked! The president bobbed his head in time to the music. NBC got their video. Betty White got her card. I left the Oval Office that day with my head held high, knowing that the president was just a tiny bit better at his job because I was in the room.
It’s not as if I shed all my doubts that afternoon. I still wondered if we were race penguins. I still worried our hard work might never pay off. But as 2011 drew to a close, I felt a renewed sense of confidence. Our approval ratings were heading in the right direction. Smokey was nowhere to be seen. And I finally had an answer to the question on everyone’s mind.
“So, have you met Obama yet?”
“Met him? Well, I don’t want to brag or anything. Let’s just say I’m thankful he’s a friend.”
5
THE SALMON IN THE TOILET
I never set out to become a connoisseur of White House men’s rooms. It just kind of happened. You move into a new apartment, get to know the area, and one day, to your surprise, you have strong feelings about every pizza place in the neighborhood. That’s what I went through, only with porcelain and liquid soap.
My favorite restroom was on the ground floor of the residence, next to the ceremonial library. The white marble floors and sinks radiated luxury, yet their muted, opaque quality kept them from showing off. “It’s honestly no big deal,” they seemed to say. “Some of us were just born pretty.” The overall effect was both stunningly impressive and refreshingly humble, the best of American democracy superimposed upon a WC.
West Wing men’s rooms offered unique charms of their own. For proximity to power there was the stall tucked against the Roosevelt Room, just footsteps from the Oval. For retro quirkiness, there was the restroom across from Valerie’s office. Urinals there were large and basinlike, like bathtubs sawed in half. (Even stranger, they flushed via bulky foot pedals placed twelve inches from the floor.) At ground level, the bathroom near Favs’s office boasted the building’s only shoe-polishing machine, the kind that looks like two Muppet scalps attached to opposite ends of a stick.
Not surprisingly, the facilities in the EEOB were less distinguished. If anything, their defining feature was a trigger-happy automatic flush. I won’t go into too much detail. All I’ll say is that I was the frequent victim of an impromptu bidet.
Yet despite these shortcomings, when it came to personal significance, no restroom could match the one in the southwest corner of the EEOB’s ground floor. This was because of something unforgettable (in advance, don’t worry, not gross) that happened six months after I started my new job.
It was a special time. I could finally navigate my surroundings, but the novelty of the building had yet to fade. Even the most routine pee break glowed with history. Descending a spiral staircase to the ground floor, I remembered that FDR had worked here during the 1910s. That was before polio claimed his mobility, and I imagined his shoes clicking and clacking on the steps. The EEOB was also home to the vice president’s ceremonial office. Tugging on the engraved metal knob of the men’s room door, I wondered if Nixon or Johnson had ever strained against its weight.
Then I entered the bathroom, and found the sole urinal occupied by someone in a bulletproof vest. This too was a kind of wonder. For the vast majority of my twenty-four years, I would have been stunned to see a real-life Secret Service agent. Diving in front of bullets. Driving through red lights. Sniping bad guys from rooftops. They were as mythical as X-Men, and no less devoted to saving the day.
Now, after a few months at the White House, I still thought of Secret Service agents as heroes. But they were also people I peed next to. Not wanting to wait for the agent at the urinal, I scooted past him and opened the door to the stall. Stepping inside, I closed the latch behind me and turned around.
And that’s when I saw it: a fillet of grilled salmon, unblemished by a single bite mark, sitting in the toilet bowl.
This was not the most historic thing I witnessed at the White House. It was not the most profound. But it was, without question, the most remarkable. Think about it. How many people have met Barack Obama? Tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. How many people have found a salmon in the toilet at work?