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The Rediff Special/Anvar Alikhan

Sex, Drugs and Bill Clinton

David Allen was a quiet, silver-haired Englishman I bumped into at a small Konkani sea-food restaurant in Mumbai recently. In the course of our conversation it turned out that he had been, among other things, a banker, a commodities trader, an art gallery owner and a property dealer. And now he was on his way to an ashram near Bangalore. It also turned that he'd been at Oxford in the late '60s.

"Wasn't Bill Clinton also at Oxford around that time?" I asked.

"Yes, of course," he said, "He was up at University College. In fact, I knew him fairly well. You see, his girl friend at the time was a class-mate of my girl friend, so we got to see a fair bit of one another."

He now had my undivided attention. "What was Clinton like in his college days?" I asked.

David thought for a bit. "Well, my main recollection of him is that he was extremely bright. He was a Rhodes Scholar, after all. He also happened to be extremely articulate, extremely charming and extremely ambitious. It was a formidable combination. I suppose we all knew that he'd go far in life. I had imagined that he'd end up as a top lawyer, or as attorney-general, or something. But I didn't realise that he'd go a lot further than that."

All that was fine, but what I was really curious about was what was the legendary Clinton sex drive like back then, in its post-adolescent hormonal hey-day?

David smiled a slightly embarrassed little smile. "Ah well, let's just say that Bill used to throw some of the wildest parties in town," he said. "They were legendary. Everybody wanted to gate-crash them. Don't forget that this was circa 1968. The era of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. The era of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Sergeant Pepper."

"So did he have lots and lots of girl-friends?" I asked.

"Well, he had a girl-friend called Sarah, who's now a fairly well-known writer. They seemed pretty close at one time. But that apart, it was a fairly permissive period. England was filled with gorgeous, mini-skirted "dolly-birds". And given all this, if someone stayed celibate, there was something wrong with him. And, believe me, there was nothing wrong with Bill Clinton."

"Speaking of sex and drugs, what about Clinton's claim that he smoked grass, but didn't inhale?"

"Oh, everybody smoked grass in those days. But, if I remember correctly, Bill had asthma. So, silly as it might sound, if he says he didn't inhale, it's probably true -- simply because he was allergic to the stuff."

"What are your other recollections of the guy?"

David smiled. "Well, he looked like a bit of a hippy. Long hair. Beard. Bell-bottoms. One of his closest buddies was Strobe Talbott, who's now something big in the State Department. I remember Bill being in a moral quandary over the Vietnam issue. But we took part in a couple of anti-war rallies, marching down Hyde Park, shouting peace slogans."

"What?! The future president of the US taking part in anti-US demonstrations?"

"Don't forget, it was circa 1968. The time of Che Guevara and the Paris students' uprising. A time of idealism, anger and great political ferment among the youth. It was one of the turning points of this century. And we were all part of that phenomenon."

"Do you still keep in touch with him?" I asked.

"No." David shook his head sadly, "Oxford is like that, I suppose. You share a few years there together. You share the same interests, ideals, ambitions. And then you go out into the real world, and that really sorts you out. Someone ends up becoming the president of the US and someone else" he smiled ruefully, "ends up making his way to an ashram in South India to figure out the meaning of life."

The Rediff Specials

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