The Inuit Who Loved Me

It was just another day like any other day. Going to work. Picking up the kids. Keeping the snowmobile totally pimped out. I live a simple life. Quiet. I stay in the background. I'm nobody special. My wife, Sarah, she's the star. So I just hang loose. No one needs to know who I am. No one needs to know what I do.

And no one needed to know who I once was.

It was decades ago when I was recruited and seduced by a very aggressive, intelligent and covert secret agent. I knew her as Suzy Q. You probably know her as CNN's Suzanne Malveaux.

She said she had a thing for snowmobile racers.

I said, what woman doesn't?

It was lust at first Tesoro Iron Dog race.

She claimed she was in Anchorage on vacation. I was was young and foolish then, seduced by a life that would make me a covert agent for the Secret Council of American Negroes. I didn't know a lot about them, but I did know I liked having lots and lots of sex with Suzanne Malveaux, although it was hard at times to discern her feelings for me. Especially when she would take a phone call from the Washington Bureau without either putting out her cigarette or getting off of top of me. She would actually just talk like I wasn't there, ashes flicked down on my chest.

All business. Never personal, with Suzy. I couldn't tell if there was something real there or just head games.

SCAN likes to keep its nose in everything, including Alaska. Who cares if I could count the entire black population of Alaska on one hand? Suzy Q knew all she needed to know about me.

I was ripped. I was a rebel. I wore the Union label. I had a rocky relationship with the US of A and was part Inuit. If it was good enough for her, it was good enough for SCAN, making me their man in Juneau.

After lots of hijinks in the first few years, sometimes with Suzanne in tow, my role in covert ops faded into the background. Budget cuts kept Suzanne from traveling outside of the lower 48 as she covered political news in her day job.

I often thought of her when staring at the aura borealis or while moose hunting with Sarah. Every river and creek echoed her name as I wondered how many fucking kids me and Miss Almost Alaska were going to have already. And CNN? I couldn't even watch it. Hearing her speak in that dispassionate tone, reminding me of those nights we'd laughed over how she hated my moose burgers and how I hated her spraying everything with Lysol and hand sanitizers. Laughing at how I'd never read Chaucer or Dostoevsky or Octavia Butler or anything.

"If your wife ever wanted you to not to know something, Todd, she'd put it in a book," Suzanne said as she put on the earrings she left on the motel dresser in Anchorage, glancing over her shoulder at me for the last time.

"Is my skirt straight?" she asked.

I wanted to say something witty, but I knew I was out of my league the minute I heard her drop "antidisestablishmentarianism" in a casual conversation.

"Your ass looks awesome," I said. "It rocks."

She laughed. I couldn't tell if she was mocking me or not, but I was a simple man living a double life, in love with two women. I grabbed her arm and pulled her close.

"When are you coming back, Suzy Q?"

"Don't touch me," she said, walking away, forever.

Years passed. No word from headquarters. Alone masturbating to Suzanne subbing for Wolf Blizter on "The Situation Room" I get a call out of the blue. The HNIC wants to know what's my status. Can I report in and how soon. Something big is going down, I thought, but what?

Soon I was in Anchorage in an old hotel by the airport. I came alone. I entered under an assumed name and there she was.

"It's the governor," Suzanne said.
"The governor of what?"
"I don't have time to play ring around the stupid with you, Todd."
"Your ass looks fantastic."
"I'm not here for that. This is about your wife."
"Who?"
"Your wife Sarah ... the governor?"
"Sarah's the governor? No way. She's like the mayor or some shit."
"Sit down and shut up."
"Yes ma'am," I said excitedly.
"Sen. John McCain is going to pick your wife as his vice presidential nominee."
"Sarah?"
"Yes, Sarah. He has no choice. He needs a woman to make a go for the Hillary crowd and a staunch anti-abortionist to pacify his base. Tomorrow he'll be flying you, Sarah and your kids out to Ohio. She's going to accept. They always do."
"So what do you want?"
"I want you to do what you do best, Todd," Suzanne said with a glint in her eye. "Take her down. Hard. We're not taking any risks in Operation David Palmer."
"What?"
"Operation 'The Real David Palmer.' It's SCAN's mission to make sure Agent First Class Barack Obama becomes the 44th president of the United States. We have a mole inside McCain's campaign. He's been pushing your wife for months. He saw the success of the Democratic Convention as an opening for mayhem. An opening for your wife. Do you love your wife, Todd?"
"I dunno. I guess."
"It's a yes or no question."
"She's hot. Yeah, sure. Why not? She's fuckin' awesome."
"Will that interfere from us doing what we have to do?"
"Us?"

Suzanne pulled me down to the bed and sat next to me. She smelled like dusty leather-bound books and really expensive shoes.

"SCAN isn't leaving one stone unturned, Todd. Everything is fair game in Operation David Palmer. Including your family. If you're not up for it, let me know now. With or without you, it's going to happen anyway."

As she looked me in the eye and tried to sneak a peak down her blouse. My God. She was so hot when she was being serious.

"Is this about the whole 'Juno' in Juneau situation?" I said.
"Maybe?"
"Or is it about us trying to get my brother-in-law fired?" I said.
"Could be?"
"Or is this about us trying to get the librarian fired, books banned, me being in that Alaskan separatist party, that whole rumor our baby is really our granddaughter stuff? That stuff?"
"You know as well as I know, Todd, that all is fair in love and presidential politics," she said.
"And you and me," I said grabbing her arm. "Is this love or politics?"
She snatched her arm away ... again.
"The bitch is going down. Your mother is already on board. Are you in or out?"
"This is my family. I don't know."
"I have on videotape every sexual encounter we've ever had, including the ones in your marital bed, the mayor's office and on your snowmobile."
"You bitch. You wouldn't dare."
"You don't want to know how far I'd go for SCAN, Todd."
"Rat on your sister?"
"If she got in the way."
"Take out Wolf Blitzer?"
"In a heartbeat."
"Seduce Roger Ailes?"
"It's just a job."
"Was I just a job?"

Suzanne laughed, "Get to work."

And then she walked out, just like she always did, only this time -- no sex. I was mad.

But I did what she asked, what SCAN asked. I suggested that my daughter use the large blanket to cover herself and hold the baby, adding to speculation. I wrote the infamous DailyKos entry on our youngest being our grandson. I fucked up her Wikipedia page. I sent SCAN the pictures from the kids' MySpace pages.

Suzanne said it wasn't personal. It had to be done. This way the McCain campaign could be destroyed and my wife would "go back to where she belonged," by resuming life as she knew it in Alaska. There was no reason for a little political campaign to come between my permanent slacker lifestyle. She had nothing to lose, Suzanne told me.

Or everything.

Sarah was in over her head, but it never once occurred to her that this was all a game. How much a game I didn't realize until I met SCAN's "inside man" in the McCain campaign.

He was there, in secret, in Ohio. He was all too eager to meet me. He knew everything about me before he even opened his Cheshire cat mouth.

"You're Deep Throat?" he said approaching me backstage.
"I'm going by Redneck Eskimo," I said.
"Eh ... I'm going to call you Deep Throat anyway."
"I have to say I'm ... surprised?"
"That I'm working for SCAN?" he said with a smirk. "No one knows about it. I haven't told Ann or the boys. Nobody."
"It's just you're ..."
"A Republican? That I hate Barack Obama? That SCAN derailed my senate race a few years back? The enemy of my enemy is my friend, Todd."
"I thought you and John were friends?"
"God teaches us not to hate, but we practice it anyway. I figure that if we get Michelle hosting 40 ounce tea parties with Farrakhan and Barack ruining the country with his backwards Liberal policy stances voters will be looking for a son of Joseph Smith, the real American hero, me, to save their asses in 2012. I'm really, really, really looking forward to John McCain's demise. Really. Really, really. Teach that fucker to not pick me! SCAN and I had a deal. I'd become a double agent if McOld-As-Hell didn't pick me. Now I'm taking him down and his little bitch too."
"Dude. That's my wife."
"Oh ... um ... sorry."
"Why does SCAN trust you?"
"My father marched with Dr. King."
"No he didn't."
"He marched in spirit."
"You have no soul."
"You're stabbing your wife in the back in the hope Suzanne Malveaux will have filthy, sinful, premarital sex with you. Everybody's got their something."

It was hard to look Sarah in the eye, even though we were trapped in a suite at the Airport Hilton in Minneapolis-St. Paul for almost three days. I'd managed to ruin so much, with the help of Mitt in such a short time. My daughter was catching the brunt of it. You think that would have slowed Sarah down, but nothing stopped her. She was drunk on potential power.

She was pushing for the kids to get hitched. My daughter was looking to me for guidance. All I could do was turn the other way and watch Rome burn.

"They'll just get married," Sarah said. "It'll make it all right. Hands will be all clean. They just have to get married."
"But she's only seventeen ..."
"They're getting married, Todd! God, I swear! What is wrong with you? First your drunk mother tells the press she's NOT voting for me and now all these photos of the kids drunk on the internet? How is this happening to me?"
"Haters."
"Damn right, they are haters! This country is so sexist," she shrieked.
"Totally."
"I've come too far to put those 18 million cracks in that glass ceiling to go back now."
"I thought Hillary Clinton did that?"
"Hillary Clinton, me, Wonder Woman, who cares!" she yelled. "She's not running anymore. Those cracks are mine! I'm the crack queen of the RNC!"

So she thought.

Suzanne, taking a break from the trail to brief me on operations, met me in a suite not far from where anarchist protesters were grappling with cops in St. Paul. As we went through the motions she explained to me the many moving parts of Operation David Palmer. How even the Clintons, looking for redemption, had joined the fight once Hillary Clinton saw Sarah co-opting her cracks.

So many people were in on it. The protesters, Ron Paul, Jenna Bush, Angelina Jolie. The list went on and on.

And there was me. In the middle of it.

When Sarah practiced her speech I was holding Suzanne close, knowing both of us would be dead if anybody saw us. I asked her if she loved me. Suzanne just said it would all be worth it once the operation was over. Six months after the inauguration I would leave Sarah and she said she'd wait for me. But I knew she was lying. Suzanne and I will never be together because she hates the cold and I'm not Wentworth Miller and I don't even know what antidisestablishmentarianism means. I'm just some redneck Eskimo fisherman snowmobile racer from Alaska who made her laugh once when I bragged about the time I bitch slapped a polar bear.

I told her I'd be her Robin Thicke if she'd be my Paula Patton. But Suzanne was Suzanne in her response.

"Your fly is unzipped," she said as she walked away.

I nodded my head. So it is, Suzy Q. So it is.