Hunter Biden's Baby Mama's amazing memoir about the president's son

Hunter's first goal

Every woman has that man she wants to save; for me it was Hunter Biden.

My friends joke that I'm a little dead inside. I wouldn't entirely agree. I have feelings, and when I love, I love hard. But I'm clumsy in the way I show it. Avoiding feelings is my go-to. But one feeling I find impossible to ignore is empathy. Remember when the Grinch's heart grew three sizes? That's me when I see suffering. I transform from an uncomfortable death inside to someone who can't hold the worry inside. On cold days in the city, I've bought more blankets at CVS to give to people on the street than I keep in my own home. I have always believed that if you do enough good, good will come back to you.

So tonight I'll pass out a few hot dogs and chat with friends while I drink my Gatorade, trying to rid myself of the lingering vodka tonic breath. My Uber is four minutes away. My phone is buzzing. It's my friend Kelsey. She's been invited to a small afterparty and is hoping I'll be her wingman. I'm anything but tired, and she knows which 7-Eleven to go to. I'm canceling my Uber.

DC is insane. Connections, parties, powerful people, lots of drinking, drugs, did I mention parties? It's nothing like my upbringing, and you might get lost in the sauce. I marinate in the sauce.

As I climb into Kelsey's dark gray Chevy Malibu, I quiz her with the usual questions. “Where are we going? Who are these people? Is this a good idea?” The answer to the last question is always no, but we laugh because no matter how bad our ideas are, we somehow manage to survive them. The only thing I understand is that we go to an embassy penthouse at the waterfront, and there will be a guy with the last name Biden who is apparently quite important.

A few minutes later we park our car at K Street and walk to a simple, cube-shaped building made of glass, elegantly lit at night and sitting on a deep green lawn that separates it from the waterfront. Large sculpted letters peek out at me from behind enormous glass windows, spelling out the words HOUSE OF SWEDEN.

Kelsey pulls me into a dim parking lot at the side of the building, where we retrieve a key fob from the glove compartment of an unlocked black Chevrolet truck with the entire side dented. It gets pretty vague.

“Keep the door open,” she whispers as I stand in the light of the security camera at the back of the building, and she zips the key fob back to the truck and closes the door. And we're in. We just officially invaded Sweden.

We walk up the long stairs to the penthouse, apparently having to avoid the elevator, and I'm grateful that the vodka tonics are still keeping my anxiety from skyrocketing as I wonder what we've gotten ourselves into. Finally we reached the landing on the fifth floor. I catch my breath, straighten my dress and we enter.

It's definitely more of an afterparty for adults, not the loud college parties I've been going to lately. It is quieter, with calm music in the background. Well-known music. Could it be my birth state, Johnny Cash? I love this place, and someone here has great taste.

A large glass room with a long conference table is surrounded by a balcony and offers the most beautiful views of the city I have seen so far. A yellow velvet sofa under the bar separates the meeting room from the kitchen, with a sign above it that reads “Rosemont Seneca.” Noted. Thank God for iPhones. I google the name and discover that we work at a high-end management company. Consider us safe.

I wander down the hall looking for the bathroom. There are maybe five people in the apartment, including me. They are quiet, sitting on the couch, having a drink, taking some casual drugs. No problem. It's DC. I pass an office that someone nearby says belongs to John Kerry's son. In the bathroom at the end of the hallway, the heated towel rack has my full attention until something else catches my attention. Across the hall is a half-open door leading to a smaller back office that is less inviting and lit only by a desk lamp.

“F—,” I hear from the other side of the doorway.

I sneak in, push the door open a little further, and see a man sitting in an office chair, leaning over a small desk, painstakingly arranging a series of small glass tubes and copper strands. He looks determined. He doesn't wear after-party clothes like everyone else; instead he sits there in brightly colored boxer shorts with parrots everywhere. I'm intrigued. He turns in his chair and catches me in his gaze, his gaze intense with furrowed brows and the most beautiful blue-gray eyes I have ever seen. Then a quick and sincere “Hey.”

I introduce myself, and his eyes never leave me. He sets down a smoky glass tube, slowly rises from his chair and greets me with a hug. I am shocked. I didn't know city men could even hug. I thought that was a southern thing.

When I look closer, I'm even more shocked by the paraphernalia on the desk. I try to pretend I'm not stunned, but my eyes keep bouncing back down and staring at them without my control. His name still rings in my ears: “Hunter Biden.” So this is the man of some importance that everyone seems to know. He acts like this. . . humble.

I sink into an expensive leather chair with bronze detailing on the nailhead, and he wants to know where I'm from, why I'm in DC, why I wanted a degree in CSI, what my family is like, what my plans are. When he finds out I was born in Arkansas, he goes to a bookshelf in the front room and comes back with a signed photo of Johnny Cash addressed to him. So he's the one with the good taste in music. I never thought it. When he's not asking me questions, he makes funny comments about my answers, makes fun of my southern accent which makes us both laugh out loud, or just nods like he knows something about what I'm talking about but should he? do not? rather listen to me than let him talk about himself. He definitely doesn't want the spotlight on him, and this appeals to me even more.

In the first five minutes he learned my entire life story, and all I know about him is that he is suffering. I see he's brilliant, and he's got a demon on his back. Other people come into the bathroom for a quick fix, but Hunter's demons keep him in this dark back room so they can get him at any moment. I feel his pain.

I look at the nice chair I'm sitting in and see on the arm a small label that says “Senator Barack Obama 2005-2008.” This is typical DC, even the furniture brags about the connections.

“Um, this is President Obama's seat,” I say with slow realization.

“Uh, yeah, that's his chair from when he was in the US Senate,” he says, as if it's no big deal.

The wheels are turning in my head. “Wait, so you have Obama as Senate President and your last name is Biden.” Tree. “Are you related to Joe Biden… like Vice President Joe Biden?” I look now to see what his face can tell me. It's a slow grin, a proud acknowledgment that I could tell he'd done before. “Yes, he is my father.”

I sit in the Senate seat of our former president and look into the eyes of our former vice president's son as he organizes and uses things I never expected him to participate in.

With everything Hunter uses that night, it's easy to think of him as your usual junkie. But he isn't. He may smoke crack cocaine and drink vodka straight from Tito's one-liter bottle right in front of me, but he's not a crackhead. He is well composed and intelligent; he listens when I speak. In my first twenty minutes with Hunter Biden, I know he is the most charming human being I have ever met, even in his parrot boxer shorts. He's one of the few real people I've met since moving to the big city. He's someone I want to get to know better.