"Do you like what you see?" Donald Trump asked me.
True story -- as true as those thousands and thousands of Muslims in Jersey City, New Jersey he saw cheering on TV as the World Trade Center came tumbling down.
It happened at Mar-a-Lago, not long after Trump bought the place. He wasn't asking me about the real estate, though. He wanted to know what I thought about Li'l Donald.
Back then, I could never have imagined he'd be running for president one day, or that I'd be privileged to vote for him. Or that Li'l Donald was the pet name that he'd given his d*ck, or that its size would turn out to be a campaign issue.
The size of his fortune? Sure, anyone could see that fight coming. If you don't release your tax returns, some total loser is bound to say you're stuffing a sock in your package.
But this Rubio salvo about Trump having small hands: That one took me by surprise.
You'd think Trump's answer would have put away any doubts about how he measures up. "I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee it."
What's not good enough about that? For millions of people during the primaries, that's worked just fine for every other issue.
Believe me, Mexico will pay for the wall. Believe me, torture works. The world is going to respect us again, believe me. I'll bring those jobs back from China, India, Vietnam and Mexico, believe me. You're going to see Merry Christmas in the department stores, believe me. Believe me, I'm a unifier.
I hate to say it, but when it comes to his size, I'm afraid "I guarantee it" just isn't going to stifle the suspicions. You know what's bound to happen: When some network offers some former arm candy of his a reality show, she's going to break the nondisclosure agreement he made her sign about Li'l Donald. Or maybe some embarrassing picture is going to go viral, and it won't matter how many times he says, "It's been Photoshopped, believe me."
America needs Trump. The only way to pre-empt attacks like that is the truth, whatever it is. And better that truth come from a supporter like me than some lying loser trying to bring him down.
When Trump bought Mar-a-Lago, it was a wreck. This was in the '80s, when I used to go there to visit my girlfriend. He'd hired her to turn it into a swanky spa, and one of his conditions -- I wasn't crazy about it, but the money was good -- was that she live on the property during the renovation. I didn't want our relationship to suffer more than it had to, so I flew down to Palm Beach every month or so and stayed with her in a little cottage on the grounds.
It was dilapidated, but tolerable, except for the plumbing. If you wanted a decent shower, forget it. In those days, I was running two or three miles a day, and the last thing I wanted to do was clean the sweat off with a washcloth and water from a kettle on the hotplate. So I took to sneaking into the men's locker room over by the tennis courts, where the pressure and the water were good and hot, and no one was ever around.
But one morning, after a good long run, when I pushed open the locker room door I found myself face to face with two guys peeling off their sticky tennis whites. I didn't recognize the big blond guy -- a tennis pro? -- but the other one was Trump. He had on a Lacoste shirt and a chain around his neck, and nothing else.
"Who the f**k are you?" he asked.
"I'm Katrina's boyfriend," I said. "Nice to meet you, sir." I almost put my hand out to shake his, but under the circumstances it didn't seem right to get any closer.
"Katrina?" the pro asked.
"My spa designer," Trump told him. "The ---- this putz is f--king." I tried to keep my eyes locked on his, but I must have glanced downward, and he nailed me. Guys don't like to admit it, but we can't help checking each other out. It's kind of an alpha thing.
"What are you looking at?" Trump asked. It was actually the whiteness that had caught my eye. No, really. It wasn't just that he wasn't spray-tanned down there. It was also hairless as a baby's butt.
"Nothing, sir." I was looking straight at him again, but I'd heard that shaving is supposed to be a way to make you look larger, and I couldn't get what I'd seen out of my mind.
"You calling Li'l Donald 'nothing,' boy?"
"No, sir, I'm not. I'm, I'm --" I stammered.
"Go ahead. Look at it."
"No, really, I -- "
"I said, look at it."
You know how, when he was asked in the debate last week what he would do if the military refused to obey an order from him to use torture, he said, "They're not gonna refuse me, believe me" -- do you remember that? That's how I felt right then. I couldn't refuse him. So I looked.
"Do you like what you see?"
They say that some guys are growers and some are showers. Trump was definitely not a shower. But it wasn't obvious that he was a grower, either. There just wasn't enough to go on to say.
"I said," he repeated, "Do you like what you see, you little ---- ?"
Talk about trick questions.
No way could I say no. But yes? Based on what was visible, yes was manifestly unbelievable. Worse, it conveyed a level of enthusiasm that could only get me in more trouble.
"Yes, sir," I lied. Double lied. "I do."
"Liar. You're lying. He's lyin', Ivan," he said to the pro.
Trump fixed me with that squinty look he sometimes has. I felt as though he were x-raying my mind. "There's only one right answer."
"Sir?"
"'I have to see all of it,'" he said. "'Show me all of it.' That's the right answer. Isn't that right, Ivan?"
"Da," Ivan said.
"Did I show you all of it?" Trump asked him. It was clearly a rhetorical question. "Tell him, Ivan."
"Da."
I should mention that during all of this, Ivan had not stopped undressing. By now I could see that Ivan had an enormous -- well, that his hands were yuge. It gave him some real standing on the topic.
"And did you like what you saw, Ivan?"
A dreamy smile suffused his face. He turned to me. "Tre-men-dous," he said, lingering on each syllable. "Belief me."
I did. It was like a command relayed from the commander-in-chief, an order I couldn't refuse.
The two presidential candidates this fall are likely to be Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. There's going to be a lot of back and forth about immigration and trade and all the other hot-button issues. But in the end, the presidential vote always comes down to, Which one of them do you believe? Do you believe she's really going to take on Wall Street? Do you believe he'll really make China roll over?
Clinton's supporters can speak to the question of her credibility. But as a Trump guy, I can't think of a better sign of his trustworthiness -- and I'm speaking from personal experience here -- than what he's been saying in this campaign about Li'l Donald. True, I may not have seen all of it, and I certainly didn't whip out a ruler to measure it. But the smile that day on that tennis pro's face is all the affidavit I need. Trump really is going to make America great again. I guarantee it.