“So,” POTUS asked, “are we funny?”
This was less a question than an invitation to make small talk. Cody didn’t miss a beat.
“Well, Litt’s pretty funny,” he said, nodding in my direction.
A brief hint of confusion crossed the president’s face. He clearly wasn’t sure he’d heard right. But after a moment’s pause, he decided to keep going.
“Yeah,” POTUS said. “Lips is funny.”
As you might imagine, I have replayed this moment frequently in my head. Perhaps I simply misheard the president. Perhaps time has warped my memory. But I don’t think so. I’m fairly certain Barack Obama called me Lips.
Here’s why I’m so sure. Number one, POTUS enjoyed banter. Going out of his way to extend pre-meeting small talk is exactly the sort of thing he would do. Second, while I wish I could say otherwise, President Obama had no reason to know my name. I’d written scripts for tapings. I’d helped him with a Correspondents’ Dinner. But lots of people pop in and out of a president’s orbit each year. At most I was a familiar face, the barista at your local Starbucks, the robber who wasn’t Joe Pesci in Home Alone.
Finally, it was not the first time this sort of incident had occurred. One friend, a fellow comms staffer who started at the White House in 2009, was named Jason. POTUS loved his work and would often ask his boss to pass along a thank-you. “Tell James, ‘great job,’” he would say. There was nothing anyone could do about this. After a few years, the president figured out Jason was Jason. Until then, James was James.
So Lips it was. And to be honest, as I settled onto the couch in the Oval, I wasn’t embarrassed. I was thrilled. The president of the United States had referred to me by name! True, it wasn’t my name, but no need to get nitpicky. Besides, I liked having an alter ego. Litt was shy. Litt was timid. But Lips? Lips could be bold. Lips could be daring.
Lips didn’t give a fuck.
What better way to describe the growing sense of liberation I’d felt since the second term began? After the inaugural ball, for example, the wait at the coat check had stretched for ninety minutes. This wasn’t surprising; the coat-check line at the first inauguration was similarly dysfunctional. But back then, I would never, under any circumstances, have cut in front of Obamaworld’s elite. The building could have been on fire. The ballroom could have been swarming with killer bees. I still would have waited my turn.
Now, things had changed. Thanks to a well-connected friend, Jacqui and I had tickets to Rahm Emanuel’s after-party at an underground blues club. And thanks to my spot on the Presidential Inaugural Committee, I had a plan. Ducking into a staff room, I grabbed a curly rubber earpiece, the kind used by Secret Service, and switched off the walkie-talkie. Then I held my hand to my mouth as though a microphone were clipped to my sleeve.
“Four-zero-niner, we have a garment situation in progress. Over.”
An older lady in an expensive gown gave me a look suggesting I had recently crawled out of a sewer. Then she saw my earpiece, apologized, and immediately stepped aside.
“VIP coat retrieval, roger.”
“Priority jacket acquisition, ten-four.”
Five minutes later, I was at the front of the line. Five minutes after that, I returned, bearing my girlfriend’s coat. And five minutes after that, we were zipping through the freezing night air in a pedicab, on our way to watch Chicago’s mayor sway awkwardly as a lineup of living legends played the blues.
Classic Lips.
WHICH BRINGS ME BACK TO THAT OVAL OFFICE MEETING—MY FIFTH, Lips’s first—during which the Gridiron Dinner was discussed. In 1885, when the Gridiron Club was founded, most of its members were grouchy old print journalists. Today, they still are. At their annual spring meeting, guests wear white tie. Reporters don costumes and perform parody songs about the politicians they cover. Petits fours are eaten. The evening ends with a chorus of “Auld Lang Syne.” It’s a four-hour homage to what people did before TV.
While nothing compares to journalists in Elvis wigs singing “Block Barack Around the Clock” (this actually happened, in 2011), the evening’s real highlights are the guest speakers. By tradition there’s a Republican, a Democrat, and, if the invitation is accepted, the president of the United States.
Like the rest of the program, these monologues are a throwback to a simpler time. Even the Gridiron’s motto—Singe, but Never Burn—is an artifact of a happier, pre-Internet age. The draft I sent to POTUS included such scintillating topics as “Budget Cuts,” “Press Conferences,” and “Guys Named Gene.” I can’t say he laughed uproariously at any of the jokes. But he understood his audience. Pronouncing himself satisfied, he showed us to the door.
I never dreamed of grabbing an Oval Office apple. Even as Lips, my cockiness had limits. Still, as I left the meeting, there was brashness in my step. I had been back at the White House less than a week. Already, I was meeting with the president himself!
As if that weren’t enough, the building was being restocked. Eager twenty-two-year-olds, fresh off their first campaign, were filling the entry-level jobs. Shyly, the newcomers would ask if I could get coffee sometime. When I agreed to, they practically melted with relief.
“Don’t worry,” I’d tell them. “Networking’s only bullshit if you’re bullshit.”
To my surprise, however, I also had real pearls of wisdom to dispense. These had nothing to do with career ladders and everything to do with the unique environment in which we worked.
“Don’t tell them I sent you, but the fifth-floor librarians keep a bowl of candy by the reference desk.”
“Steer clear of the gym on Tuesdays. It’s Zumba night.”
“You know the medical unit in the basement? You can take all the free Advil and Band-Aids you can carry. They’ll even give you Sudafed if you sign for it.”
The wide-eyed youngsters would thank me. Then I’d return to my desk, the drawers stocked with candy and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, to continue working on my Gridiron draft.
By the middle of the week the jokes were almost finished, and I turned to what we called “the serious close.” These are staples of humor speeches, two or three paragraphs of sincerity at the end of otherwise lighthearted remarks. Since the audience was full of reporters, I took the occasion to praise journalists who embodied the best of the free press.
“They’ve risked everything to bring us stories from places like Syria and Kenya,” I wrote, “stories that need to be told.”