Mimi is speaking out. That would be 69-year-old Mimi Alford, author of Once Upon a Secret: My Hidden Affair with JFK published by Random House. She has been making the talk show rounds and answering both hard and easy questions. She is soft spoken and has her white hair cut in an attractive bob.

Barbara Walters clearly disapproves of Mimi spilling the beans. What about the Kennedy's who are still here? Won't this story hurt them? Babs wanted to know. Well let me say, I don't think it is a secret any longer that JFK dallied. He apparently rode beautiful young fillies like a cowboy at a rodeo. Ye ha!

Did Mimi feel guilty "sleeping" in the first lady's bed? Barbara wanted to know. Oh Babs. Babs, Babs. The girl was 19. A virgin. She was dewy eyed, star-struck, and it was Jack Frigin' Kennedy in all his suntanned glory. It was well before the bad behavior of politicians was something we all knew about. Mimi was a sheltered girl who had attended private schools, was an intern before Monica-the-Intern was even born, and she had been sipping on Gimlets in the private residence with the president and a few friends. Again Babs, 19!

Did Barbara Walters do nothing foolish when she was a teenager? I know I did, and sometimes still do. I know that had Jack Kennedy looked deeply into my baby blues when I was a teenager and made me feel as if I were the only person in the room, in the world, I would have done cartwheels in a clown costume if he had asked.

If on a cold winter night he called my college dorm and in a disguised voice asked for me, then sent a car, a plane, and another car to whisk me to the White House, I would have swooned. Swooned twice. I would have fallen, as deep and as hard as Mimi did into what I would have believed was love. Everlasting, don't-worry-about-tomorrow, love.

I have watched Mimi carefully during her interviews. There are glimpses of that young girl that rise to the surface as she recounts her time with the president. She gets sad as she talks about one act in particular. A presidential dare made which she accepted. And I understand that sadness. She is grown now. Finally happy in her life after holding onto an overwhelming secret for so many years. She feels tenderness towards the girl she once was. She understands the imbalance of power. Perhaps Mimi wishes she could go back and take that girl by the hand and tell her she was better than that. That she didn't need to prove anything to the president or anyone else. Didn't need to take that dare. It was, she said, the only thing she would change about her time with JFK. The affair, she does not regret.

Why now? People ask her about writing the book. Because, she replies, she was so tired of keeping the secret. And she had actually been "outed" in another writer's book a few years ago. But it was the weight of the story, which grew and grew over the decades. So she took control and told her tale. All of it. She doesn't care if you judge her. She is prepared for finger wagging. It has been worth it, claims Mimi. She feels free. Unburdened. It was her load to carry and she has put it down. Finally.

To those who would criticize her I would only say, have you never been 19 and in love? I have. And 19-year-olds in love do the craziest things. Mimi just did them with the president.