The lecturer, who was slim and angular, allegedly quick-tempered and also reputedly brilliant, stalked up to the lectern and immediately began reading aloud, while we fumbled for a copy of the handout being passed along the rows.

At one point, Ms. Lewinsky and the President talked alone in the Chief of Staff’s office. In the course of flirting with him, she raised her jacket in the back and showed him the straps of her thong underwear, which extended above her pants.

He was reading from the Starr Report. He looked up, made a joke about the American versus the British word for undergarments and paused for laughter. Everyone, myself included, obliged. Carry on, he said suddenly, pointing at a blushing boy with steel-rimmed glasses near the front.

Ms. Lewinsky testified, the boy recited, ‘I believe he took a phone call … and so we moved from the hallway into the back office …. He put his hand down my pants and stimulated me manually in the genital area.’

Straight out of the Haynes Manual on Sexual Intercourse, he said, and we all laughed again, though I didn’t know what the Haynes Manual was. 58

Let’s hear that passage again, he said, and picked on someone else.

I believe he took a phone call … and so we moved from the hallway into the back office …. He put his hand down my pants and stimulated me manually in the genital area.

I’m still not getting it, he said. Again.

In the third or second row, I was desperate not to catch his attention. If he called on me to read aloud, or give an opinion, I’d freeze, I knew I would, and make a mockery of myself.

After the fourth time, he took pity on us, or maybe just got bored.

The ellipses, he said. Why am I not hearing the ellipses? The ellipses are the most important part of it.

He read aloud himself, then, in a falsetto voice.

I believe he took a phone call – dot, dot, dot – and so we moved from the hallway to the back office – dot, dot, dot, DOT. Poor prim, flustered, trying-to-be-dignified Monica, he said. I mean, look at those ellipses AGAIN – dot, dot, dot – dot, dot, dot, dot. Think about what they’re saying, or trying not to.

While I tried to make myself invisible, while the president continued talking on the phone, while the lecturer strutted and joked, she dropped to her knees and performed (‘performed’, the lecturer said, how much of all this is a performance, and for whom?), she performed oral sex. 59

He finished his call, and, a moment later, told Ms. Lewinsky to stop. In her recollection: ‘I told him that I wanted dot, dot, dot to complete that. And he said dot, dot, dot that he needed to wait until he trusted me more. And then I think he made a joke dot, dot, dot that he hadn’t had that in a long time.’