Two decades after her affair with Bill Clinton, Gennifer Flowers reveals they’d be together now if it wasn’t for Chelsea and how former president confided in her that Hillary was bisexual.
*Flowers’s 12-year affair with Bill Clinton was exposed in 1992 during his presidential campaign
She bitterly regrets rejecting him when he last begged to see her and says he’s the ‘love of her life’
Launching a career as a sex columnist she says Clinton taught her everything she knows
Bill told her Hillary was ‘bisexual’ and that he had ‘no problem with that’
Their 12-year affair made Gennifer Flowers one of the most high profile mistresses in America. Now, two decades after they split amid scandal, the former news reporter from Little Rock, Arkansas wants to ‘sit down and talk’ with Bill Clinton.
In an exclusive interview with MailOnline, Gennifer has spoken of her deep regret at turning down Clinton’s pleas to talk some eight years ago and revealed her belief that they would still be together today, were it not the birth of Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea.
She said: ‘We have some unresolved issues that it would be nice to sit down and talk about now. He was the love of my life and I was the love of his life and you don’t get over those things.’
As well as speaking candidly about the affair and its ongoing impact on her life, Gennifer has released previously unseen images from her Penthouse shoot to MailOnline. She was featured in the magazine’s December 1992 issue.
By then all lines of communication with Clinton had been severed and she had no contact with him for 13 years when he called out of the blue. She said: ‘He called me back in 2005 in New Orleans. He wanted to put on the hoodie and jog on over like he used to.
‘First I was just shocked. He was so adamant about wanting to sit down and talk to me in person.
‘It almost seemed like what I had heard of people who were going through a 12 step program and wanted to atone to people for various things.’
At the time Gennifer, 63, was recently divorced after a ten year marriage.
She said: ‘I was scared. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see him in my heart of hearts. I was just afraid. But there’s going to be an attachment forever.
‘If we had the opportunity to sit down and visit with each other in person, I’m not saying the romance would be rekindled but we will always have something. Whatever you might call it.
‘Bill and I would be together today if it wasn’t for politics. It was me, Bill and Hillary. Then they had Chelsea and the stakes got too high.’
It is 21 years since Gennifer’s allegations of a long-running affair with then Democratic candidate Bill Clinton became the most sensational event of the 1992 campaign.
The Madonna of Little Rock, Arkansas: Gennifer Flowers at the time the scandal of her affair with Clinton broke
The Madonna of Little Rock, Arkansas: Gennifer Flowers at the time the scandal of her affair with Clinton broke
On 23 January 1992 tabloid, The Star named Gennifer as Clinton’s mistress. Three days later he and wife Hillary appeared on 60 minutes, side by side, flat denying the claim.
Six years later Clinton admitted to having sexual relations with Gennifer ‘one time’ in 1977 in his deposition to lawyers representing former Arkansas State employee Paula Jones in her sexual harassment lawsuit against him.
By then Flowers was already well and truly defined by the scandal which had made both her, and Clinton, household names.
Apparently driven on by the belief that the ‘truth will set you free,’ she proceeded to tell her story in a best-sellling book and pose for Penthouse magazine.
Penthouse alone reportedly earned her close to $1million in the aftermath of the scandal.
She said: ‘I was singing in nightclubs, wearing very sexy outifts and gowns, a very independent liberated woman. I was the Madonna of my day – in Little Rock.’
On posing for Penthouse Gennifer said: ‘I made the decision to do it.
‘No-one made me do or asked me to do anything that made me feel uncomfortable.
I knew Bob (Guccione) would be making me look as good as possible and what woman doesn’t enjoy that?’
Of the infamous publisher, whose website boasts his favorite pictures from the Penthouse archives, she said, ‘Bob was just a stud.’
But while some might assume that, all these years later, Flowers – who has established herself as a cabaret singer in New Orleans – would want to shed herself of those associations and of the ‘mistress’ title, she has chosen instead to embrace them.
She said: ‘Why not? I was a mistress for many years.’
And so as part of what she refers to as ‘the extended liberation of Gennifer Flowers’ her latest incarnation is as a sex advice columnist.
Ask Mistress Gennifer’ will run daily on the Guccione Collection website – a site devoted to the archives of Penthouse publisher, Bob Guccione.
Demonstrating something of the playfulness that saw her snare the then Governor of Arkansas she said: ‘I’m going to have to thank Bill for some of the advice I’m going to be giving.
‘It will be based on experiences I had with him.
Gennifer in 1996: No longer in Clinton’s bed but still in the spotlight in 1996
Gennifer in 1996: No longer in Clinton’s bed but still in the spotlight in 1996
She added: ‘I wish he would write to me.
‘He could do it. People don’t have to send their name.
‘Really he taught me a lot.’
Clinton, now 67, also shared a lot of intimacies regarding his marriage to Hillary.
They left Gennifer in no doubt that the union is far from ‘traditional.’
She said: ‘What they have is very strong.
‘It obviously worked for them but I’ve never considered theirs a traditional marriage.’
When rumours surfaced recently of an affair between Hillary Clinton and her transition office chief, Huma Abedin, 37, Gennifer was not surprised.
The rumours concerning Huma, wife of disgraced former Mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, 49, emerged as she stood by her husband in the wake of his recent ‘sexting’ scandal.
Revelations that he had sent intimate pictures of himself and steamy messages to 23-year-old Sydney Leathers – a girl he had only ever ‘met’ online – finally did for his New York Mayoral campaign last week.
The scandal broke almost exactly a year after the shamed congressman suffered a public mauling for the same behaviour. Then, as recently, his wife Huma Abedin stood by him.
This time round Huma’s loyalty raised eyebrows and questions over why a woman of such accomplishment would stick by a man so apparently incapable of change.
Gennifer said: ‘I don’t know Huma or the Weiners. I just know what Bill told me and that was that he was aware that Hillary was bisexual and he didn’t care. He should know.
‘He said Hillary had eaten more pussy than he had.’
Yet however much their roles as mistress and wife cast Gennifer and Hillary Clinton as natural rivals Gennifer claimed to feel a sense of solidarity with Hillary, 65, and would support Hillary’s candidacy for President.
She said: ‘The support I would give Hillary is as a woman. I’m one of those women who in so many aspects of my professional and personal life I’ve been out there making strides for women and allowing them to go down roads in which they were not welcome.
Closing ranks: Clinton is embraced by wife Hillary and daughter Chelsea following the final Presidential debate in October 1992
Closing ranks: Clinton is embraced by wife Hillary and daughter Chelsea following the final Presidential debate in October 1992
‘I would love to see a woman president.
‘And she seems to be the only one that’s getting close to it.’
According to Gennifer, the promise of the Presidency for herself one day was what bound Hillary to her faithless husband across the years.
She said: ‘Absolutely that was her reason for sticking by him and he’s going to stick by her because he owes her that.
‘I would have thrown his clothes out on the front lawn but that’s just me.’
Reflecting on her affair with Clinton she said: ‘The whole experience changed my life forever and everything went in a different direction.
‘I don’t regret telling the truth. It was a defining moment in American culture absolutely.’
The only difference now, she said, with advances in technology Clinton would have been unable to deny the affair as he did for several years.
She said: ‘I had recorded telephone conversations thank God. But if I hadn’t had them and Monica [Lewinsky] hadn’t had that blue dress we would have been cast out as crazy stalkers.
‘I think today Bill and I would have texted every opportunity we got. So I would have had tons of texts from him.’
She also believes that they would be together today were it not for the birth of his daughter, Chelsea, in 1980.
She said: ‘for a long time he was able to have it all. Then when they had Cheslea and he became Governor the stakes became higher.’
Today Gennifer is single. She has been engaged ‘a couple of times’ since her divorce in 2005. She lives in New Orleans and sings regularly, though no longer owns the cabaret club where she used to perform nightly.
‘I love singing,’ she said. ‘It’s who I am. That’s who I am today I’ve had the opportunity as time has gone on to put things in their place in my head and move forward.
‘But,’ she admitted. ‘I’m still affected by it, the Clintons in some way every day and every day something happens that sparks a memory.
‘It was a defining moment in American culture absolutely and to an extent I paid a high price for my honesty.’
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