So there I was, bent over backward in a marble cistern, two Aryan bodyguards holding my arms down, while Todd Palin shoved my face underwater. I could hear people singing and clapping, behind me a Kenyan preacher shouting about witchcraft and python spirits while I thrashed my legs and tried to keep air in my lungs. 

Jewcy, I've never been so frightened - as Todd held me down I could feel water spilling into my nose, my heart thudding, my chest almost bursting with panic and oxygen deprivation. With a mighty wrench I lifted myself up. "Sarah!" I screamed, but Todd's big, meaty hand clamped over my face and shoved me down again. There was water in my ears, in my mouth - they held me until I felt water pouring into my lungs and a bright white light burst in my head. My muscles wrenched and cramped, my back spasmed, a silent scream filled my skull. I may have wet my pants, but it was hard to say.

How had it come to this?

Only that morning, Sarah and I had been hiking on Gravina Island, enjoying the view of sleepy Ketchikan and beautiful Deer Mountain. Though stopping every hour or so to fuck, we still covered a lot of territory, Sarah pointing out the various places where illegal immigrants, Muslims, teachers, scientists, journalists, and anyone of French descent would live, once she was elected.

Timidly, I asked, "What about writers?" hoping to God we wouldn't be put in the camps, too - or at least that my high-octane, well-lubed connection to Her Babeness would exempt me.

She didn't answer. "And this," she said, sweeping her arm to point out a deep gorge below. It was several hundred feet down, the river that carved it long dry; a place where the sun never shone, impossible to get into or out of. "This is where we'll put the community organizers." She made a face of such venomous disgust that it reminded me of our first night in the Baranof Hotel, when I'd said I needed a break from going down on her.

"I'm not really sure what you have against community organizers," I said. "Don't you think they do important work?"

"It's not the organizers." She arched her eyebrows, as though sharing something on which we agreed. "It's those communities."

Then she threw her arms around me, jumping up and down like a charming girl. "Oh Andrew, let's not ruin this beautiful day by talking about people Jesus hates," she said. "I want you to do something for me."

"Anything, my spotted fawn."

"I want you to be saved."

This gave me pause. It's not like I'm an observant Jew or anything - I had to Google the date of Yom Kippur this year - but I'd never thought about taking Jesus as my personal savior. PJ Harvey, maybe - but the Son of God?

"I just can't stand the thought of you being left behind," she said, tearing up. "I can't stand the idea of you being struck down by the avenging sword of Christ and having to spend eternity with demons chewing on your ball-sack and Satan shoving his flaming fist up your ass while I eat grapes and read the Washington Times in a shady bower in Heaven. Who will I sled-dog with if you're not there? Oh please please please, novelist? For your wittle Sarah-Warah who woves you so much?"

That's how I found myself submerged in the baptismal fount at the Wasilla Assembly of God, with a Kenyan preacher waving a big heavy book over my head - and you can be sure it wasn't Lady Lazarus!

Fountain of deathTodd yanked me briefly out. "Tell us!" he screamed in my face. "Tell us what we want to hear!" Then he plunged me into the water again. My arms, twisted over the sides, felt like they were breaking, my guts churning with Holy Water. "Tell us, motherfucker!"

"I don't kno-" Down I went again. I was sure now that I would die, a lapsed Jew in the Wasilla Assembly of God. I remembered Sarah's last words as she kissed me goodbye: "It's just a little dunk in the water. Then you'll be one of us."

When he pulled me out again, I gasped, "Okay!" The music and the clapping stopped. Everyone stared at me, the two goons brandishing their fists. The preacher's eyes rolled back in his head and he shook and made unintelligible sounds, like George Bush trying to read a sixth-grade vocabulary test. "Um... I love Jesus?" I said. Everyone cheered, and balloons with crosses printed on them fell from the ceiling. Sarah rushed forward and squeezed me while I coughed and sputtered and shook and eventually passed out in her arms from relief.

They took me back to their house and sat me at the kitchen table, wrapped in a blanket, while Willow, the middle daughter, made tea. Other than some urgent thumping coming from Bristol's room upstairs, it was a peaceful afternoon, and while Sarah took a long bath - she'd mentioned something about a mysterious rendezvous that night - I asked Todd about something that had been bothering me.

"Weren't you supposed to give testimony in the Troopergate affair today?" I said. "Weren't you under subpoena from the Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee?"

He laughed. "Yup."

"Did you go?"

Another laugh. "Nope." When I looked puzzled, he said, "Look, it's like, no big thing. You don't have to testify when you get a sup-... serb-..."

"Subpoena? That's the whole point - you have to testify."

"Not if you're like famous or something, or Christian, or you don't like the people who issued it." I said I figured that he and Her Babeness would want to set the record straight about whether she had pressured the Public Safety Commissioner to fire her sister's ex-husband, and whether she fired him when he wouldn't do as she asked. I asked why, if she hadn't done anything wrong, she'd want to make it look like they were stonewalling, perpetuating the scandal through Election Day.

He scratched his crotch. "Dude, of course that's why she fired Walt. Duh!"

From upstairs, we heard water sloshing, and then Sarah's voice. "Honey, are you talking about the trooper thing again?" 

"That dude was like a total douche," Todd told me. "What was Sarah supposed to do?"

When I said government officials weren't supposed to fire subordinates just because they didn't see eye to eye on personal matters, and weren't supposed to use their office to carry out vendettas, he looked at me as though I were speaking another language. With a bang on the kitchen table, he stood and went into the next room.

"You think you're so smart," he said, unrolling a parchment scroll. "Just cause you wrote that really cool book, Lady Lazarus, you think you know everything. Well, this here legal opinion says different. It says if someone under your power is uncool you can fire them. It says, and I quote, ‘conventions regarding the abuse of power are quaint or obsolete.' So there, writer guy."

"Who wrote that?"

He bent over the parchment. "It's signed by Al... Albert Gozo..."

"Alberto Gonzales?"

"Yeah, that's it! And someone named John Yoo."

"Figures," I said. That's when Her Babeness, fresh from the bath, her skin radiant as a spring peach, swept into the kitchen. Her hair was wrapped up in a towel and she wore leopard-skin panties and nothing else. "Todd, baby, you're going to be late for your secessionist meeting," she said. "Andrew and I have an appointment to keep."

"Yes, Mother," he said.

All the way from Wasilla to Anchorage, Sarah was keyed up and distracted. After Todd left, and we slaked our lust on the kitchen table, Sarah had put on a stunning little black number and stiletto heels. She borrowed one of Levi's suits, which fit me pretty well, and we sped off toward our secret assignation. From the passenger seat, I stared at Her Babeness, once again marveling at the strange events that had led up to this night. There was something new in the air, a charge I didn't recognize. When I put my hand on her knee, she sucked on my fingers and floored the accelerator.

Jewcy, it's a good thing I have some experience with powerful women who are detached from reality. My novel, Lady Lazarus, deals with a confessional poet who is, shall we say, a couple french fries short of a Happy Meal. But it's her mother, a punk rock star, who most reminds me of Sarah Palin: smoking hot, with some kooky religious ideas, married to a man who can't quite keep pace. Sarah was beyond me every step of the way - smarter, better looking, more skilled at conspiracy, hornier. As the Anchorage skyline grew up out of the tundra, I started to feel a strange dismay, the sour certainty that, wherever she was going, I might not be able to follow. Would my Wasillan Love Machine be willing to stay behind?

"So, I have something to ask you," she said, her words a little shy, one finger twirling her hair.

"Anything, dear heart."

"Do you think you're ready? To take the next step?"

How my heart leapt! "Yes! Yes, I am, Sarah. Oh, sweetheart, I thought you'd never ask."

"I'm so happy," she said. She pulled up in front of the Millennium Alaskan hotel, the lights spangling on the surface of Lake Spenard, dancing like the very spirit of love. "I can't wait!"

"When will we do it?" I said.

Her Babeness leaned over and kissed my ear. "Right now. He's waiting for us. I booked the penthouse suite." She got out of the car and, as a valet trotted over, dropped the keys on the pavement. He? What the hell was she talking about? Who was he, and what did he have to do with our future?

I followed Sarah through the lobby and into the elevator. "What's going on?" I was nearly hysterical.

"I just thought it was time to spice things up a bit, novelist," she said. "I thought I'd bring someone else into the mix."

"You mean -" I swallowed hard. "A ménage à trois?"

She looked at me strangely. "No, I mean a threesome. Now straighten your tie."

The elevator rose and I nearly crumpled to the floor with anxiety. Whoever was waiting for us in the penthouse suite, whatever happened tonight, I would never be the same. We would never be the same. I looked over at Sarah and wanted to weep - for what we once were, for what we might have become.

The elevator slowed. With a lurch and a bright, ominous "ding," the door slid open.

Tomorrow: The mysterious man in the penthouse suite; Lady Lazarus's biggest fan; is there life after Her Babeness?

Andrew Foster Altschul, author of Lady Lazarus, is guest blogging on Jewcy.  Tomorrow he'll publish his parting post.  Stay tuned.

Dear Jewcy,

Thanks for inviting me to be a guest blogger! I have to admit, at first I wasn't sure what to write about. I mean, I do post every so often on The Huffington Post--but those are usually impassioned tirades about the calamitous political situation. You know: how George Bush and the Republicans have destroyed the country, and the Democrats have let them do it, and how if Obama doesn't get on the stick we're in for four more years of it? But let's face it: that stuff's just no fun! 

Between the occasional HuffPo rant, and co-organizing San Francisco's Progressive Reading Series, and teaching creative writing, and promoting my new novel, Lady Lazarus, I've been pretty busy lately. Which is why I recently decided I needed a vacation. Somewhere beautiful, quiet, maybe a little on the chilly side. Somewhere slightly exotic, but not foreign, somewhere people wouldn't constantly be talking about literature, or yammering on about elections. Somewhere far off the political map.

That's how I wound up in Alaska.

And that's how Sarah Palin and I met, and fell in love - if that's what you call the hot, slippery, sexually supercharged relationship we're carrying on in secret - and how, at last, I found something to blog about.

It all started at the Baranof Hotel, a dignified old establishment on Juneau's North Franklin St., just a few blocks from the capitol. On weekday evenings the Baranof's almost-swanky lounge, the Bubble Room, bustles with legislators and staffers in snow shoes and Armani parkas, hunting rifles slung amiably over their shoulders, talking policy over scotchcicles and bowls of moose stew. Light jazz tinkles from hidden speakers, but can't drown out the baying of the sled dogs tied up outside. Everything about the Baranof says "romance," and when I made the reservation, I'd told them I wanted to splurge - what with the tsunami of royalties from Lady Lazarus, and the exorbitant salary of a creative writing teacher, I figured, sky's the limit. They gave me Suite 604, a nicely appointed suite with plush couches in the sitting area and a beautiful view of the Gastineau Channel and Douglas Island. "Home, sweet home," I thought, flipping through the television menus to see what my late-night porn choices would be. Little did I know, I wouldn't have to choose.

When I walked into the Bubble Room, I was greeted by waves and back-slaps and high fives. It seemed a little odd, but I figured Alaskans must just love left-wing Jewish artists from San Francisco. Everyone wanted to buy me a drink, and to talk about Lady Lazarus - again, I was surprised; I had no idea a book about poetry, punk rock, celebrity, and suicide would be such a hit on the Last Frontier. By midnight, when the sun had started to slant through the windows, I was in my cups, feeling pretty proud of myself for having chosen Juneau for my getaway. All that was missing was female companionship, so I called the bartender over and asked him if he knew where I might find some.

"Funny you should ask," he said, with a strange look of concern. "Someone's been trying to get your attention." I started to turn around, but he lunged across the bar and grabbed me by the shoulders.

"Be careful," he said. He squared his jaw and leaned closer. "Be strong."

At a table near the back sat the brightest bubble in the Bubble Room. She was wearing a red leather jacket, tightly belted, with big black buttons and wide lapels. Her hair was swept up and shimmering under faux-tiki torches. When our eyes met, her smile flashed with the kind of megawattage that can only be generated by fossil fuels. I was paralyzed. I tried desperately to think of how to introduce myself.

Jewcy, it was love at first sight.

Before I could come up with an introduction, hands grabbed my elbows and lifted me off the stool. Two tall, blond men in hunting jackets stood at my sides. Their sunglasses reflected the torches; their earpieces buzzed with secret instructions. They had identical clefts in their strong chins. "Time for your appointment," one said.

"Appointment?" I croaked.

"Her Babeness doesn't like your game. She wants to talk to you," snarled the other.

I looked over to where my beautiful bubble had been. Seeing a flash of red disappearing into an adjoining room, I suddenly understood.

They ushered me through the bar, slowed only by the many people trying to get me to sign their copies of Lady Lazarus. "I'm sorry!" I called back, as they dragged me through a door. The room was cold, windowless, concrete. There was a steel table on an incline, with a complicated network of tubes and pulleys overhead. Somewhere, the sound of water slowly dripping.

"If you wanted to impress me, staying in Suite 604 isn't the way." Behind me, in a high-backed leather chair, sat my lovely bubble. Her smile was the only source of heat in that chamber. She wrinkled her nose - so adorable! - as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves.

"W-why?" I said. "What's wrongwith Suite 604?"

The two Aryan goons started to snicker. "Like you don't know," one said. "Why else would you be here?" said the other. "All you New York journalists come here because of 604." In the chair, Her Babeness tilted her head and blinked a lot. I said I wasn't from New York, and I wasn't a journalist - which seemed to confuse the goons. "But... you look like a New Yorker."

"I'm a novelist," I said, somewhat indignantly. "From San Francisco. I'm on vacation."

"Boys," said the bubble. "Maybe you should take a lunch break."

When they had left, she motioned for me to have a seat on the steel table. I said I preferred to stand and she giggled, then stood and shoved me backward. I sat.

"See, not many people request Suite 604. It's got what we Alaskans call ‘a history.'" That's when she explained about VECO, the oil pipeline company that bribed basically the whole state legislature, not to mention Alaska's only U.S. congressman, Don Young, the ornery senator, Ted Stevens, and for good measure, Stevens's son Ben. The Feds had caught them by bugging Suite 604 and capturing some pretty incriminating discussions on tape. Suddenly I understood the warm welcome I'd gotten from all the government staffers: they thought the gravy train was back!

It turned out that my bubble of charm and sex appeal was none other than the governor of Alaska, who'd made much of her reputation by denouncing Alaska's good ol' boy system of corruption, even while she worked hard to help Stevens continue to extract pipelines full of pork spending from the federal government.

"Not a bad trick," I said. I pressed my palms against cold steel. It may have been the chilliness of the room, but I was shaking like a kid at the eighth grade dance.

"I know!" she said, biting herlower lip. "I like to play both sides."

I was sure now that Her Babeness was flirting with me. How I longed to pull her close! But I didn't dare.

"Governor of Alaska," I said. "And so smart, and so, um, physically, you know, attractive. You're doing pretty well for yourself."

That's when Sarah Palin put her hand on my chest, leaned close, and said, "It gets better than that, even..."

Jewcy, I'm sure you're reading this with your mouth wide open. I'm sure it's as hard for you to believe as it was for me - but I swear every word of it is true! As she led me out through a back door, and up a hidden staircase to the sixth floor of the Baranof, she told me something that blew my mind: She'd been chosen to run for Vice President. Of the United States!

Needless to say, by the time we arrived at Suite 604 the governor and I were weak-kneed and frothing with desire. She shoved me into the room and dimmed the lights and we fell onto the couch in a sweat. I fumbled with the belt of her jacket, but she pinned my arms under her knees and whispered in my ear, "Is it true about Jewish men? Are you really the Chosen Ones?" How to describe the look on her face? She was still smiling broadly, but her eyes pierced me with intensity, drilling into my skull as though I were a coastal plain in the ANWR, and she'd just caught a whiff of light, sweet crude.

Sarah unbelted her jacket, undoing each button with an unblinking wrinkle of the nose. What do you think she was wearing underneath?

"I like novelists," she said. "I like them a lot. In my administration, we're going to outsource the fiction to professionals. That way, we can privatize, and keep our hands clean, at the same time." Stark naked except for her mukluks and the latex gloves, dazzlingly beautiful, Her Babeness glanced around Suite 604 with a proprietary, satisfied look. "You know," she said in a husky voice, "a lot of people have gotten royally fucked in this room..."

Somehow, though my throat was parched, I managed to whisper, "Why do you think I requested it?" Sarah threw back her head and laughed. Then she picked up the remote control and tossed it in my lap.

"Stop talking, novelist," she said. "Save your words for the next war. They comped us the all-night porn package. You'd better conserve your strength."

Tomorrow: Sarah takes me on a moose hunt; the Secret Service roughs me up while Sarah watches; First Dude Todd Palin suspects something...

Andrew Foster Altschul, author of Lady Lazarus, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and he'll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

The House passed a bill yesterday that would outlaw "extreme interrogation" techniques, which is another way of saying it decided to confirm the Geneva Conventions and ban torture as an acceptable state act of war. We'll get to one of the occluded problems of the bill in a moment, but for now it's worth considering that the president, who repeatedly claims that "we don't torture," has already promised to veto the bill and has helpfully provided his reason for doing so:

The White House vowed to veto the measure. Limiting the CIA to interrogation techniques authorized by the Army Field Manual "would prevent the United States from conducting lawful interrogations of senior al Qaeda terrorists to obtain intelligence needed to protect Americans from attack," the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.

As it happens, the Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation cites the Geneva Conventions in Appendix J; it not only states that the U.S. is a party to the 1949 covenant but it reaffirms the explicit contents of that covenant that ought to apply in our conduct of war. The following are cited as being prohibited:

• violence to life and person, in particular, murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
• outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;

Chapter 1, the Principles of Interrogation, states:

The use of force, mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind is prohibited by law and is neither authorized nor condoned by the US Government. Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear. However, the use of force is not to be confused with psychological ploys, verbal trickery, or other nonviolent and noncoercive ruses used by the interrogator in questioning hesitant or uncooperative sources.

The psychological techniques and principles outlined should neither be confused with, nor construed to be synonymous with, unauthorized techniques such as brainwashing, mental torture, or any other form of mental coercion to include drugs. These techniques and principles are intended to serve as guides in obtaining the willing cooperation of a source. The absence of threats in interrogation is intentional, as their enforcement and use normally constitute violations of international law and may result in prosecution under the UCMJ.

Additionally, the inability to carry out a threat of violence or force renders an interrogator ineffective should the source challenge the threat. Consequently, from both legal and moral viewpoints, the restrictions established by international law, agreements, and customs render threats of force, violence, and deprivation useless as interrogation techniques.

As for permissible interrogation methods involving physical contact with the subject, here's what Chapter 3 has to say:

The successful application of approach techniques eventually induces the source to willingly provide accurate intelligence information to the interrogator. The term "willingly" refers to the source answering the interrogator's questions, not necessarily his cooperation. The source may or may not be aware that he is actually providing the interrogator with information about enemy forces. Some approaches may be complete when the source begins to answer questions. Others may have to be constantly maintained or reinforced throughout the interrogation. The techniques used in an approach can best be defined as a series of events, not just verbal conversation between the interrogator and the source. The exploitation of the source's emotion can be either harsh or gentle in application (hand and body movements, actual physical contact such as a hand on the shoulder for reassurance, or even silence are all useful techniques that the interrogator may have to bring into play).

So here are the too-constrictive rules to which that the president does not wish to hold the nation's notorious spy agency. Whether or not it's true, as CIA Director Michael Hayden maintains, that fewer than 100 suspects have been interrogated since 2002, whether or not Abu Zubaydah has copped to Al Qaeda cronies and plots under torturous interrogation methods, and whether or not you agree that the United States ought to continue to be a party to the "outmoded" and "quaint" Geneva Conventions -- it's quite clear that, at the very minimum, "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment" are seen as allowable by this administration. Just so we're clear on that. Let there be no euphemisms.

As for what's problematic in the bill, it:

blocks spending 70 percent of the intelligence budget until the House and Senate intelligence committees are briefed on Israel’s Sept. 6 air strike on an alleged nuclear site in Syria.

Mooring 70% of the intelligence budget to the full skinny on military operations undertaken by a foreign government against another is both bizarre and stupid. This is especially true in light of the fact that, as Michael Young reported and I blogged earlier, the Congress hardly cares what Syria does anymore, and our being able to even find out is now hostage to Israel's willingness to share what it knows. Yet what it knows about Iran, we couldn't give a good damn about.

Our last line of defense, ladies and gentlemen.

Michael’s recent post on Mitt Romney’s religious stance made of the later a ‘political enemy.' If his disdain for the separation of church and state wasn’t enough, Romney’s stance on torture should help make him utterly abhorrent to anyone.

During theCNN/YouTube debate, Romney stupidly attempted to spar with McCain on the subject of ‘water boarding.’ The question, as McCain eloquently puts it, is very much about what distinguishes ‘us’ from ‘them’:

My friends, this is what America is all about. This is a defining issue and, clearly, we should be able, if we want to be commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, to take a definite and positive position on, and that is, we will never allow torture to take place in the United States of America.

(By the way, this seems one of only two occurrences of the word ‘defining’ in that debate.)

A quick note on the stupidity of believing that life is “24 and Jack Bauer”, as it seems many politicians seem to do on this issue (for the credibility of Romney’s reference, see here). The Atlantic has some interesting pieces about this, pitting Mark Bowden (in favour of the use of torture; credentials: wrote a coolbook; “author, journalist, screenwriter, and teacher”) against Sherwood Moran (against torture; credentials: U.S. Marine Corps Major, responsible for the interrogation of Japanese prisoners during WWII) , through Stephen Budiansky. Moran’s memoir on interrogation of prisoners was posted online by the Marine Corps Interrogator Translator Teams Association, Budiansky writes

because "many others wanted to read it" and because the original document, in the Marine Corps archives, was in such poor shape that the photocopies in circulation were difficult to decipher. (A MCITTA member) denies that current events had anything to do with either the decision to post the document or the increased interest in it.

I liked Black Hawk Down, the book as well as the film, but somehow I would tend to trust professionals of interrogation on this subject more than a blockbuster author –Bowden may have talked to people on the frontline, but what you’re reading anyway is his interpretation–and dramatisation (so if you buy the book, don’t forget to go support the actual heroes).

Ideology is what has made the U.S. distinctive all along –an ideology of freedom and of progressive moral, the individual aetiology of which (e.g., religious or not) doesn’t matter. To be certain, everything isn’t rosy and good, but unlike what’s happening in many other places, Americans are generally trying to improve things. Despite what justified critics may have been saying, for example, the conditions in Guantanamo are incredibly better than what you would find in many other places. Take France, for instance, a vocal critic of American practices in all circumstances. This year again, the European Council notes the “inhuman and degrading” conditions in French prisons. Prisoners are routinely chained to their beds in the prisons' infirmaries, where guards are present during any and all medical procedures. “Isolated” detainees receive medical treatment under constraint, and are placed naked in their cells. One prisoner had been placed in such solitary detention conditions for nineteen years. Other than the usual account of the European report, little stirs in France against such blatant injustices.

To get back to the torture question and its supposed use for intelligence purposes, one of my personal heroes wrote this back to me after I sent him Budiansky’s piece:

Thanks for the article. The claims are quite true. I interrogated/interviewed (quite different acts in my view) hundreds, perhaps 1,000+ Japanese repatriates from China, Manchuria, & Siberia; NK POWs; as well as a number of Soviet and NK espionage agents. The soft touch was always my approach. I don't think I have ever heard of Moran, but one of the Marine interrogators landed on Guam and the chief of the army interrogation team landed on Saipan were (both deceased) personal friends and both subscribed to Moran's philosophy.

I am surprised by the article's claim that so many inexperienced people were employed as interrogators. Some of the fatigue and apprehension inducing techniques they used were, in my opinion, useful and acceptable, but application of pain or bodily injury are not only personally repugnant -those techniques can cause the subject to say just anything the interrogator seems to wish to hear. Totally counter productive. One wants to extract the truth, not fabrication.

To sum up, rejecting torture as a means of interrogation is not only defining for the U.S. as a country; it is also more efficient in terms of intelligence-gathering. McCain is scoring a lot of points with me on this one.