None of this would have happened if I didn't have a weakness for betting on my Jets and blindly laying the points each time they were a favorite. You'd think after all these years I would have learned to bet with my head and not my heart, but each Fall it seems like I slip face first into the same enticing trap. I'm not going to tell you just how much I was in hoke for, I'll just say that there were a few people out there that would have been content turning my knee caps into those crumbs you see at the bottom of a potato chip bag.
I did have a good job in a large metropolitan city, one where I made enough money that it perpetually kept me in trouble. The more the accelerant, the bigger the fire....
I was in upper management of a worldwide hotel and resort chain, and in the position I worked I was privy to most of the comings and goings at the hotel, not to mention having full access to every nook and cranny of the place. What's the old saying about giving someone too much rope?
We got a memo one morning last Summer that one of the presidential candidates might be staying at our hotel while they were in town giving a speech. Needless to say the trouble of going through the security protocols and getting enough rooms secured for the entourage wasn't a walk in the park, but it was the marquee type event the board members loved. About 72 hours before the mystery guest was supposed to arrive, we found out that it was going to be Sarah Palin making one of her first solo visits on her campaign to become McCain's Vice-President.
While I'm in 'coming clean' mode, let me also say this situation wasn't exactly the first time I'd done something of a similar nature, just not with someone quite so famous.
A long time acquaintance of mine is a private investigator. He's done me several favors over the years, and on more than one occasion, really opened my technologically inept eyes to some of the neat gadgets and gizmos people can use when doing surveillance. That's not to say the benefits of our friendship haven't been reciprocal. My P.I. friend has always had somewhat of a problem over the years staying faithful to his Wife. With me being a longtime worker in the hospitality game, I've always been there to fix him up with a nice room free of charge, so he can discreetly impress the lady he was seeing at the time.
About two years ago, the PI friend I spoke of showed me the neatest little contraption, a small lighted vanity mirror that fit perfectly on a bathroom sink. The mirror also happened to have a small camera built inside.
Against my better judgment, and every bit of morals I'd been raised with, I placed that mirror in the room of a couple of girls from a college volleyball team staying in town for a game. It was probably the worst thing that could have happened because the sick endeavor went off without a hitch.
The resulting footage of the three girls sharing the room that night was quite vivid. After successfully trying this technique several more times, the biggest concern I started to have was that one of the women I was secretly filming might steal the mirror because of how cute it was. While that device did provide hours of perverted glee, like any adrenaline junkie I eventually found myself pushing the envelope for an even higher high.
Even easier than filming the random attractive and unaware woman in her room, capturing some of the goings on between the newlyweds in the Honeymoon Suite was like stealing candy from a baby. Granted, most couples these days aren't sharing each other for the very first time on their wedding night, but there were still a definite passion and intensity to their efforts once they were alone, behind closed doors. An intimacy they certainly wouldn't have felt comfortable sharing if they knew they were being watched.
Instead of the vanity mirror trick, in the Honeymoon Suite I used a tiny remote camera mounted in the chandelier light fixture hanging above the bed. When the light was on, it was impossible to discern because of the brightness surrounding it and when the lights were off, it didn't give the slightest hint of its presence.
If I'd just been content pulling off those self gratifying voyeuristic capers, I could have lived happily ever after. Instead, the lure of trying such a thing on a celebrity became an overriding and all consuming challenge. The overwhelming urge to set up something in Palin's room before her arrival was too much to fight.
Considering the attention to detail needed, and chaos created, when a guest of that importance made a visit, I was pretty much run ragged during the Governor's entire stay. All I could hope for was that the camera that I aimed was pointed for maximum effect inside her room.
To my utter shock, my efforts paid off better than I could have ever imagined. I'm not gonna go into detail about the ingenious camera set-up I used in then Governor Palin's room, but it was amusing, if I do say so myself, watching her security detail make a thorough sweep through the suite and not find a damn thing. The subsequent footage was, on a multitude of levels, amazing.
The initial cavalcade of handlers, speech writers, aides and image consultants was seemingly never ending. Palin's entourage filled up the largest suite in the hotel to the point where it simply looked like a cramped subway car at times. It didn't take David Gergan to see if a candidate needed that much help putting a positive face forward, that same face would likely melt under the harsh glow of the world spotlight.
Palin, and her hive of worker bees, left the room for dinner and a scheduled speech in town that was set for 6 pm. Fast forwarding the tape through all that dead time once I was finally able to sit down in private and watch, the Governor returned to the room a little after 10 that night, this time with a much smaller cast of characters. Thankfully she'd made the trip without her Husband or her dozen or so kids, so at some point I was confident everyone else would leave and I'd get her on film, all by herself.
The cadre of advisors sat with a visibly tired and somewhat aloof Palin until just before Midnight when they all called it a day. I guess like any other normal wife and mother who was stuck several time zones away on a business trip, Palin pulled out her cell phone and appeared to call home for 15 minutes or so. After hanging up, she flipped open her laptop for a few minutes and did a few things online before exhaustedly dragging herself off to the bathroom.
For just a few seconds as I sat there and watched the content I'd taped the day before, the guilt that welled inside of me almost caused my finger to click the stop icon on the monitor. Even though she was one of the most famous women in the world now, she was still just an average and unsuspecting woman going about her nightly routine, oblivious to the fact her every move in that room was being recorded. I was about to press my finger down on the stop button when the decayed and diseased marrow of my psyche screamed 'NO...NOT YET'.
That internal battle was still raging when Palin stepped out of the bathroom, with nothing but a towel wrapped around her freshly showered body. A large puff of steam billowed out behind the Governor as she made her way across the room to the large suitcase sitting on her bed.
Leaning forward anxiously in my seat as I watched the grainy pixels on the screen, I literally felt my entire body grow numb as my chin dropped down like a rock against my chest.
There wasn't a drum roll, or even a hint of fanfare for what was to come. Sarah Palin simply dropped the moist towel from her body as she stood beside the bed, her rear end exposed towards the camera as she dug through her luggage for a night shirt to wear.
