HE HAS modelled himself as a cool, calculated leader of the free world. But at the age of 22 Barack Obama had a strong “ sexual warmth” that overwhelmed his girlfriend at the time, according to a new book that identifies her for the first time.
Vivid diaries written by Genevieve Cook reveal she was driven wild by the smell of sweat, smoking and deodorant that emanated from his bedroom.
In a controversial claim she also recounted how he was deeply confused about his racial identity and “ felt like an imposter because he was so white”. In the end Obama, who was raised in Hawaii by his white mother, decided that he needed to “ go black” because it was best for him.
Cook has long been hailed as the “ mystery woman” from Obama’s days in New York that he wrote about in his own memoir.
This is the first time she has been identified or revealed her extensive diaries from the time she and Obama dated.
The disclosures are from a forthcoming book, Barack Obama: The Story by David Maraniss and features in the June edition of Vanity Fair . The extracts reveal Obama and Cook met at a Christmas party in New York in December 1983 when she was 25, three years older than him.
Obama was still in his “ cocoon” phase and figuring himself out while working a dull job and living in a modest Manhattan apartment.
The two began seeing each other every Thursday night and on weekends and Cook instantly found herself drawn to her “ startling” new friend.
In one diary entry she remarks: “ How is he so old already, at the age of 22?” The book reads: “ She remembered how on Sundays Obama would lounge around, drinking coffee and solving the New York Times crossword puzzle, bare- chested, wearing a blue and white sarong.” “ His bedroom was closest to the front door, offering a sense of privacy and coziness.”
The two eventually moved in together and spent their days cooking — Obama loved to make a ginger beef meal or tuna sandwiches the way his grandfather had taught him.
Cook was also with him when he had the dream of about his father, for which his first memoir Dreams from My Father was named, in which the already- dead and barely present anyway Obama Sr says, “ Barack, I always wanted to tell you how much I love you.” Cook recalls the morning he woke up. “ I remember him being just so overwhelmed, and I so badly wanted to fix him, help him fix that pain. He woke up from that dream and started talking about it. I think he was haunted.” Obama went on to write about Cook in the memoir, but did not by name. Their relationship was part of a composite girlfriend he created to protect his previous lovers’ privacy.
During their relationship Genevieve and her lover did often talk about race. The book reads that it was part of his “ inner need to find a sense of belonging” and Cook encouraged it.
The book reads: “ If she felt like an outsider, he was a double outsider, racial and cross cultural.
He looked black, but was he? He confessed to her that at times: ‘ He felt like an imposter. Because he was so white. There was hardly a black bone in his body’. “ At some point that summer she realised that: ‘ In his own quest to resolve his ambivalence about black and white, it became very, very clear to me that he needed to go black’.” By the autumn of 1984, Cook began teaching at a primary school and Obama had set his sights on Chicago where he would work as a community organiser before going to Harvard Law School.
They broke up and in her diary she claims he was too cold and not giving her the level of emotional involvement that she needed.
Of the breakup she wrote, “ I was not the person that brought infatuation. ( That lithe, bubbly, strong black lady is waiting somewhere!)”
caourtey Daily mail