Billing and cooing in Seattle

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How do you solve a problem like Maria Cantwell's?

You call in Bill Clinton and get him to work the room for $1,000 a photo, $125 a plate. Then you stand back and watch your campaign coffers fill up like Rumplestiltskin was spinning hay into gold.

And hay is just what Clinton is to some folks. His Southern-fried smooth kept the rest of us from pushing back his plate of lies and asking for a more nutritious, moral leader, right?

"Maria, you're hanging out with a bad joke," read one protester's sign across from the Sheraton Seattle Hotel and Towers yesterday.

You couldn't miss it.

At the same time, I couldn't miss how banquet-bound women looked at the protesters the way the girls who smoked in my high-school bathroom eyed the ones who changed the rubber bands in their braces.

Was it a show of sisterhood for Maria? Or was it Bill?

"I think it's Bill," sniffed one state Democratic Party staffer.

"It's a strange affliction," said a Seattle police officer posted in the hotel lobby.

Upstairs, Clinton was escorted to a private reception.

In his wake, Sheraton staffers Jennie Rose and Jennifer Marshall stood giggling and flushed, like they had just been bussed. Instead, they had just met Clinton.

"It's just an amazing experience," said Rose, pulling her hair back. "I'm speechless."

"I don't know what it is," said Marshall. "The power he has over people."

Rose's husband had sent her an e-mail that morning: "Be careful. Watch out. Remember Monica."

It fell on deaf eyes.

"He's an attractive older man," Rose said. "I'll give it to him."

Being Billed looked like being shot out of something.

I wanted that. I wanted that like I wanted a "Brady Bunch" lunchbox in grade school, like I wanted two tickets to "The Exorcist" when I was 13, like I wanted a fake ID when I was 17 and a Kate Spade bag last year, all before I came to my senses.

So I sneaked into the room where people had paid to be photographed with Clinton, got on the Monica side of the rope and watched.

Men got a nice greeting, a firm handshake, a turn toward the camera. Women got a nice greeting, a firm handshake, a turn toward the camera — and a hand slipped around their waist.

"Hi, thanks for being here." Squeeze. Slip! Click.

I was feeling pretty smug until Clinton looked at me.

"Hi," he said.

I morphed into a high-school sophomore, a college freshman on two cups of Everclear.

"Hi," I said. My toes itched.

The room started to thin out, so I hid behind the wait staff. But then the wait staff lined up for a photo with Bill.

Really, I had no choice.

"I shouldn't be here," I told the waiter behind me.

"Well, you can't get out of line now," he said.

I turned, and there was no one in front of me.

"Hi," Bill Clinton said.

Squeeze. Slip! Click.