Dominique Strauss-Kahn said when he stepped naked from the shower to see the Manhattan hotel maid who later accused him of rape, their eyes met and he read an invitation to "precipitous but consensual" sex, says a new biography out today. But he still considers the encounter "stupid" because it was the beginning of the end of his political ambitions, he tells author Michel Taubmann. "That day, I opened the door to all the other affairs. I could have been in a position to be president," Strauss-Kahn is quoted as saying in excerpts from Affaires DSK in Paris Match. "Now, I'm no longer in that position." He admits that he has enjoyed an "uninhibited sex life," but adds that's not unusual in politics and business, and that he has done nothing illegal, reports Reuters.
New York prosecutors eventually dropped all charges against Strauss-Kahn, and some believe he was framed as part of a conspiracy to ruin his reputation. In a separate case, French authorities decided that too much time had elapsed to levy charges for an alleged sex assault on a French writer. Now DSK is apparently part of an investigation eyeing him as a possible client of a prostitution ring. "In the press, they link my name to prostitution. It's unbearable," he says in the book. "I did go to sex parties, it's true, but usually those who came to these soirées were not prostitutes." (More DSK stories.)