Presidente

Presidente is the novel’s powerful political figure and Marilyn Monroe’s secret lover. Their relationship is decisive not as a romance fulfilled but as an exposure of the distance between Marilyn’s imagined intimacy with a celebrated man and the vulnerability she experiences in private. The President appears both as a distant public symbol and as a physically present man whose authority shapes the terms of their encounter. In the novel’s treatment of him, the language of glamour and historical importance cannot conceal the coercion beneath their affair.

Public Power and Private Longing

The relationship is framed by Marilyn’s long-standing desire to be seen and recognized. During her first year of fame, she receives a flood of letters from admirers, including people who are ill, disabled, elderly, or alone. She reads them and answers some personally, understanding the attention as both a responsibility and a form of emotional connection. Yet the correspondence she most hopes for is from her absent father. She imagines that he follows her career, but no letter arrives, even as her name and photographs become almost impossible to avoid. This contrast helps establish why the attention of a powerful, seemingly romantic man can carry such force: public recognition is abundant, while the intimate recognition she longs for remains uncertain.

The novel also sets the affair against the manufacture and circulation of Marilyn’s image. Otto öse’s photographs help her gain access to an important agent and a renewable studio contract, but her first film appearance is reduced in the edit to a few seconds in the distant background. Years later, one of his nude photographs appears on the front page of a tabloid, and Marilyn says she did not authorize its publication and does not own the negative. Her public identity is repeatedly produced and used by others. Against this history, Presidente’s desire does not stand outside the systems that make her a spectacle; it becomes another intimate setting in which she is valued through her body and her performed image.

The Secret Meeting in New York

The New York encounter is staged as a performance before it becomes an intimate meeting. An agent from the United States Secret Service guides Marilyn through a corridor into a large, dim bedroom, which she experiences as a darkened stage. Heavy brocade curtains keep out the April sun, and the room’s luxury contrasts with the familiar scale of her home in Brentwood. Presidente lies naked on a canopied bed, holding a telephone conversation. Used dishes, coffee cups, wine glasses, newspapers, and a bottle of Scotch make the scene feel already in progress rather than prepared for her arrival. Marilyn reads her entrance as a moment of historical importance, imagining herself as a leading performer before an immense, unseen audience.

The welcome is intimate, but its terms are set by Presidente. He beckons Marilyn to sit beside him, draws her close with his legs, and strokes her hair, shoulders, and body while continuing to speak on the telephone. When he guides her hand onto him, she experiences the move as abrupt, familiar from their earlier meeting in Palm Springs, and uncomfortable even as she tries to read intimacy into it. She tends to him while he remains absorbed in the call. The scene thus places her physical attention beside his political attention, which she cannot command.

Politics, Coercion, and Silence

The telephone conversation turns to Cuba. Marilyn recognizes Castro as a figure whose public image has changed from that of a revolutionary hero to that of a communist enemy close to the United States. The narrative contrasts the romantic legends surrounding Castro and Presidente with their power, ambition, and political authority. Marilyn, still in the bedroom and without knowing the full context of the call, tries to ask whether an embargo would make ordinary Cubans suffer and increase hostility toward the United States. Presidente gives her questions no meaningful response. After the call ends, he remains silent and physically exhausted; Marilyn, anxious for something to say and without a script, tries to continue the conversation.

The scene then turns from sexual intimacy to physical violence. As Marilyn attempts to speak, the narration describes her suddenly sinking into emptiness, with a hand over her mouth and an elbow pressing into her throat. She is too weak to resist. The shift makes the encounter’s imbalance unmistakable: she has treated the meeting as a romantic scene and a chance to be heard, while Presidente’s power leaves her exposed to harm. Her effort to ask a political question is followed not by discussion but by a bodily threat. The novel does not resolve the contradiction by making her desire unreal; it shows that longing and danger coexist in the same encounter.

The Birthday Performance

The relationship returns to public view through the Madison Square Garden birthday fundraiser. The Ruffiano del Presidente tells Marilyn that seeing Presidente again will cost her five thousand dollars. She does not have the money, but organizers promise to reimburse her expenses. She prepares for the performance in a glittering, nearly transparent dress, planning to wear nothing beneath it. The costume turns her body into part of the event’s spectacle before she reaches the stage.

Under the lights, Marilyn struggles through a dry mouth and roaring in her ears, gripping the microphone to steady herself. The master of ceremonies applauds behind her and leers at her bejeweled body. Presidente watches from the box, surrounded by companions; the First Lady is conspicuously absent. One of the men makes a crude sexual joke about Marilyn, and Presidente answers with a joke at her expense, drawing laughter from the group. The exchange sharply separates the lovers’ supposed private intimacy from the President’s public company: before his entourage, Marilyn is a sexualized object of amusement, not a partner whose feelings require protection.

Despite the strain, Marilyn sings two precarious stanzas without an obvious wrong note or loss of her place, and the audience rises at the end. The performance demonstrates her ability to hold a public scene together even while experiencing fear and physical distress. Presidente’s presence helps make the occasion feel personally charged for her, but the crowd and the political gathering turn that charge into spectacle. Her success onstage cannot undo the private encounter’s violence or secure the recognition she seeks.

Characterization and Narrative Significance

Presidente is presented through the collision of public stature and private conduct. His call about Cuba places him inside consequential political business, while his treatment of Marilyn shows how little that public importance guarantees in personal relations. At the birthday fundraiser, his participation in a sexual joke confirms that the tenderness she hopes to find is not matched by a willingness to defend her dignity in front of others. The narrative does not make him merely a distant symbol: it gives the affair concrete settings, gestures, and consequences, then sets those against the political and celebrity images surrounding him.

For Marilyn, the President can appear as a romantic prince and as a man who makes her body available to his desires while disregarding her attempt to speak. That division is central to the relationship’s significance. She enters the New York bedroom imagining a role in history, yet the encounter leaves her vulnerable and unheard; later, she performs beneath the lights for an audience that celebrates her while laughing at her. Presidente therefore embodies the gap between being desired and being recognized. The novel uses that gap to show how power, celebrity, and intimacy can converge without producing reciprocity or safety.