Prelude

Another Hot Pants, Motorcycles and K Street excerpt

Once upon a time….

There was a little girl who became a woman who thought she was invisible.

The reason she thought she was invisible was because she had stopped “seeing” most of what was right before her eyes when she was a little girl.

Then one day when she had already become a woman (and a mother too), The Washington Evening Star newspaper, which preceded the Washington Post as the Washington newspaper, wrote a feature story about her that brought, even her, to take note.

Still, although she noticed what the newspaper had written, she couldn’t quite comprehend how that could be about her.

Because she believed she was INVISIBLE.

Nonetheless, she bought a lot of those newspapers that day and kept them safe for many years (until the mice started eating them).

Over the years she would look at this newspaper article (and others that would become a part of her future), trying to understand the connection between her and what was written, as it definitely had her name in the story/stories -- and -- a picture/pictures that could have been her, especially as she kinda, sorta recalled it/them being taken.

In spite of her not knowing or understanding all of this, soon she was appearing everywhere, in newspapers, on radio and television and magazines and as a public speaker, still believing she was INVISIBLE. And, not really feeling as if she was truly there or not there.

In a town, such as Washington, known for its celebrities, she was becoming one herself.

People stopped her on the street, asking for her autograph. Fancy restaurants rolled out their red carpets for her. And congressmen and others close to the White House pursued her.

Although she didn’t quite understand it, she liked all the attention. It was like being back in the nest of her family where she had once been an adored little princess. The attention made her feel loved and like she belonged somewhere.

So…she got better and better at playing a new, grown up version of her childhood peek-a-boo game, although she still believed she was invisible.

Next she played her game more and more deliberately.

She was calling the shots now. The media was putty in her young adult hands.

Pretty soon the stories about her making such impact that she moved herself and the business she had started that was the topic of these articles into a fancy office suite in the prestigious high-rent district (1812 K Street, N.W.) of Washington that would, in years to come, become infamous for the political power players it housed.

Before you know it, she was being noticed around the country and around the world.

And the game kept getting bigger and bigger.

And, BIGGER and BIGGER.

However, there was one most important (actually two) things that this

INVISIBLE, very VISIBLE young woman was ignoring:

• 1.       Her young daughter and;
• 2.      The fact that she was going BLIND.

You see she had started “seeing” less and less when she was only eight years old, especially of yourself, coping with a tragedy in her family, and much had become invisible to her, beginning way back then.

Thus it came to pass that in the midst of all this BIGNESS, she almost lost her eyesight!

How very strange! Can it possibly be that needing to survive, emotionally and psychologically, by not seeing what one sees, can bring about physical blindness in a child, grown to adulthood?

That might just be so.

This is the story of the VISIBLE young woman who thought she was INVISIBLE, trying to live without seeing what she was seeing until she, at last, learned to speak the truth, at least her truth, about what she saw and, now, sees -- and turn that truth to the good.

Hot Pants, Motorcycles and K Street: In The Era Before Watergate is her story.