NY Post

By CYNTHIA R. FAGEN

It was a chilling insight.

When the president wasn’t keeping the world from descending into war, there was plenty of wild partying. One instance was a raucous Hollywood bash at Bing Crosby’s desert ranch.

“I was sitting next to him in the living room when a handful of yellow capsules — most likely amyl nitrate, commonly known as poppers — was offered up by one of the guests. The president asked me if I wanted to try the drug, which stimulated the heart but also purportedly enhanced sex. I said no, but he just went ahead and popped the capsule and held it under my nose.”

He didn’t try it himself.

“This was a new sensation, and it frightened me,” Mimi recalls. “I panicked and ran crying from the room.”

It wasn’t her first glimpse of Kennedy’s dark side.

“He had been guilty of an even more callous and unforgivable episode at the White House” during a noon swim. Powers had rolled up his pants to cool his feet in the water. “The president swam over and whispered in my ear. ‘Mr. Powers looks a little tense,’ he said. ‘Would you take care of it?’

“It was a dare, but I knew exactly what he meant. This was a challenge to give Dave Powers oral sex. I don’t think the president thought I’d do it, but I’m ashamed to say that I did . . . The president silently watched.”

Mimi Alford

Alford, then Mimi Beardsley, says that later the president apologized to them both.

Another time, she writes, while back at Wheaton, she thought she was pregnant and told Powers. Obviously, this could explode into scandal. Abortion was illegal in 1962. Powers put her in touch with a woman who had a contact for a doctor. In the end, it was a false alarm.

There were tender moments, too.

Kennedy, alone and grieving the death of his infant child, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, reached out for his young confidante.

“I had never seen real grief in my relatively short life,” she writes.

While Jackie was still recovering in Cape Cod, Kennedy was back at the White House.

“He invited me upstairs, and we sat outside on the balcony in the soft summer evening air. There was a stack of condolence letters on the floor next to his chair, and he picked each one up and read it aloud to me. Some were from friends and others from strangers, but they were all heartfelt and deeply moving. Occasionally, tears rolling down his cheeks, he would write something on one of the letters, probably notes for a reply. But mostly he just read them and cried. I did, too.”

One of their last times together was at a Boston Democratic fund-raiser. Ted Kennedy, the president’s baby brother, was in the room with them.

“I could see that mischievous look come into his eye. ‘Mimi, why don’t you take care of my baby brother? He could stand a little relaxation.’

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she replied firmly. “Absolutely not, Mr. President.”

About to be married to her college sweetheart, Tony Fahnestock, she met Kennedy for the last time at The Carlyle hotel in Manhattan on Nov. 15, 1963, just seven days before his assassination in Dallas.

“He took me in his arms for a long embrace and said, ‘I wish you were coming with me to Texas.’ And then he added, ‘I’ll call you when I get back.’ I was overcome with sudden sadness. ‘Remember, Mr. President, I’m getting married.’

“ ‘I know that,’ he said, and shrugged. ‘But I’ll call you anyway.’ ”

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cynthia.fagen@nypost.com