A quick warning. This episode has language that listeners may find offensive.

In 1980, Lulea McEwen had an important job on Capitol Hill. She worked for Joe Biden on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

But that November, the Democrats got trounced at the ballot box, and McEwen was worried about her future.

When you lose control of the Senate, you lose one-third of your budget.

So that means one-third of the staff had to be fired.

So there was panic in the streets.

One day, in the waning hours of Democratic Party rule, McEwen and her colleagues came up with a plan.

What we were going to do was we were going to make friends with the Republicans,

so that if we lost our jobs, then we'd work for a Republican, because the Republicans would have the money.

In the middle of that conversation, she caught a glimpse of someone in the hallway.

Clarence Thomas, an aide to Missouri Senator John Danforth.

And I said, there is one now.

So I literally jumped up out of the seat, and everybody that I left behind was laughing as I ran down the hall after him.

McEwen had met Thomas before.

It'd get together of black congressional staffers, but they weren't exactly friends.

I caught up to him, and I said, you want to go out for coffee?

It's the first thing I could think of.

Of course, I don't even drink coffee.

And he was completely and absolutely bewildered, because I don't think I'd ever said a word to him before.

Thomas agreed to meet up, and after that first get together, the two of them started a routine.

Thomas would go to McEwen's apartment after work, and throw back whatever she was born.

And he would just drink all the liquor that I had, and then he would just kind of stumble out and go home.

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