“The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
- Henry Kissinger
It was probably 1984, maybe 1983. A long time ago. I was working as a room service waiter at a downtown Minneapolis hotel. One of those weird jobs that you get after foolishly dropping out of the university because it seemed like a good idea at the time but before it occurs to you that you might want a career rather than just a job.
I'd been there about a year. As a room service waiter in a big city, you see it all. Meet all kinds of people, famous and obscure. You learn all kinds of strange bits of information and odd insights into people, meeting them in the intimacy of their hotel rooms. The heaviest-drinking group of conventioneers I ever saw was beekeepers. Whodathunkit? The best cash-only tippers by far were high-end prostitutes. Willie Mays is the consummate gentleman. Up close, Dick Clark looked not entirely human, an android-appearance caused by too much plastic surgery? Tina Turner likes her coffee really, really strong.
And then one day Dr. K showed up. He and Gerald Ford were both in town on business. I think they were on the Board of Directors of IDS Financial Services (does it even exist any more?). Staying on the top floor of the hotel in suites that were next to each other. Ford of course had a Secret Service escort. He was an early riser and one of my first runs of the morning. The Secret Service agent at the door looked under my service cart (okay, so we've all seen caper movies where there's a dwarf assassin hidden down there) and used his key to let me into the President's room (I of course had a hotel pass key, this being way back when, when hotel rooms had physical keys).
Chevy Chase played Ford as a bumbling klutz on Saturday Night Live, but in person he was quite coordinated and actually rather charming. Looked me in the eye and dealt with me as a fellow human being, rather than as a peon as did some others of the high and mighty I'd met. Signed the check, tipped me a couple of bucks, and I was on my way back down the hall to the service elevator.
Maybe a half hour later as the breakfast cycle was in full swing, Kissinger called down for breakfast (oatmeal, orange juice, coffee), and I happened to be the next waiter in the queue.
If you ever order room service, don't order oatmeal. And don't order eggs over easy. They just don't transport well in what might be a 5 or 8 minute ride up a service elevator that stops on a bunch of floors along the way to let maids on and off with their big clunky carts. The whole time, your food is in a metal box under the room service waiter's cart with a can of Sterno burning. During that time, your over-easy eggs become over-hard and your oatmeal gets a nasty crusty top to it. At least your coffee doesn't get cold. The metal pitcher it's in is kept in the box too, keeping it piping hot.
Yeah, I should probably mention that I wasn't a big fan of Henry Kissinger. That comes into play.
I finally made it up to the top floor, then down the hall. Said hello to the same Secret Service agent and knocked on Dr. K's door, announcing myself.
“Room service.” No response, tried again. “Room service.” No response, tried again. This quickly got old. The Secret Service agent pulled out his pass key (um, I could have used mine) and opened the door. Right then some cryptic squawk came over his walkie talkie, got a “Roger that.” response and he turned his back on me to head for Ford's room. Um, okay, an armed federal officer granted me entrance, so in I go in. “Room service. Doctor Kissinger?” Still no response.
Head into the suite, turn the corner, and what do I see? A dripping Henry Kissinger waddling out of the shower, butt naked. Completely nonchalant, he puts on his bathrobe and comes to the table and sits down for breakfast. If a customer does that, we're trained to of course wait on them. Which I do.
And then time almost stops. Some of you may have experienced this. An almost out of body experience when everything seems to go in slow motion and you see things in hyper-reality. My experience with Kissinger was one of only three times this has happened to me, the two others were a time when I was nearly killed in a skiing accident, and a car crash when the airbag seemed to deploy in ultra slow motion.
I despised Kissinger for several things he had done up to then, but for that split second the one that leapt into my mind was him giving the green light to Suharto to invade East Timor in the wake of the collapse of the Portuguese colonial empire. Yeah, I'm a history/geography nerd, I knew that his cavalier attitude in that case had led to the deaths of at least a hundred thousand civilians.
I stood over him and for a split second thought of accidentally dropping a scalding hot metal pitcher of coffee onto him. And reasoned that I would likely lose my job for having done so, but maybe not, maybe I'd just get written up. And calculated that I would almost certainly not be charged with assault. After all, accidents happen.
And then time shifted back to normal. All of those thoughts had been contained within less than a tenth of a second. Maybe less than that.
I asked him if he wanted cream or sugar. No thank you, black.
He tipped me three dollars.
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