Clandestine Man

Cue the Mission Impossible theme song.  Then, switch your mental image from Tom Cruise doing some death-defying spy awesomeness to Gene Hackman’s very capable character in Enemy of the State.  No, wait.  He’s too deleteriously capable.  Shift to the image of the used car salesman wannabe spy in True Lies.  Yes.  Perfect. 

For those not well versed in spy movies, think of your typical house wife out to dinner with a guy who tells intriguing tall tales of the narrow scrapes he’s managed to survive.  Picture him driving her around in a peppy convertible sports car and then, after dropping her off from her risqué, but non-intimate interlude, be bopping back to the small used car lot where he actually works and putting the ‘for sale’ sign back in the window of said convertible. 

An international man of mystery?  Perhaps it was his dream to be.  I met Mr. Clandestine online after he responded to my profile.  This guy excelled at putting just enough information out there to make a flood of questions run through my brain – none of which he would answer, of course.  Yet somehow he managed to be a good conversationalist, despite the fact that he wasn’t revealing much of anything about himself.  He did say that he had moved to Austin from New York state and was working as a drummer with a local band.  He also said he had worked for a bank up east and had done well enough to get his own place. 

I asked him for photos of himself; he sent me an artsy, slightly grainy one of him wearing sunglasses.  It was several years old, but still looked like him, he claimed.  Why not new photos?  Apparently, he insists on using an old flip phone that doesn’t do pictures. 

While he clearly wasn’t transparent, he was articulate, intelligent, and cute.  I figured that if we wound up meeting it would at least be an interesting interaction.  Most importantly for me, what he said he was looking for in a partner seemed to match with what I was seeking.  However, keep in mind that I had armed him with that information in advance with my profile page, so that doesn’t amount to much.  At this point you might be wondering why I was having this non-conversation with the nondescript conversationalist.  The answer is simple.  I wasn’t really talking to anyone else. 

After a few weeks, as I was tiring of the banter, I asked him several direct questions about himself.  He didn’t want to put the answers in email.  I asked about texting and he said that texting on his phone was tedious because he wouldn’t upgrade to a new cell phone due to the ease of tracking that newer phones had embedded in their software. I threw up my hands.  You can’t get to know someone who won’t actually communicate.  I told him so.

He invited me to meet.  I didn’t have much else going on for the particular weekend in question so I agreed.  Call it my version of people-watching.  I insisted on meeting in a public place.  We agreed to meet on a Thursday evening at a casual neighborhood bar on the east side. 

I appear at the appointed time and place, and park.  The bar has a generic façade on a poorly lit street and next to where I’m parked there’s a construction zone for a new high-rise building.  There aren’t many people around and I’m uncertain that this “public place” is a good set-up.  As I’m considering the situation I watch several people come and go from the bar.  They are up-beat, professional-looking types with an average age in the 30’s, which suggests that this place manages to pull of the aloofly understated vibe common in many of Austin’s trendy watering holes.  Fair enough. 

I go in and scan the room, as my eyes adjust.  There are a few people sitting at the tables up front, and one of them looks a little reminiscent of Mr. Clandestine in his grainy sunglasses, but I’m not certain whether it’s him and he doesn’t display any recognition to me – I had sent him my photos. 

I walk to the bar and order one of their signature drinks.  As the bartender makes it, I look around the room again and I don’t see anyone looking at me.  The man at the table near the front is staring at something in front of him, not looking around like he’s waiting for someone.  I conclude that my date isn’t here yet.  As I choose a place to sit the door opens and closes and when I look up I see that the man from the front room has left the building.

I slowly consume my drink, waiting for Mr. Clandestine.  He doesn’t appear.  I feel a bit like an unclaimed passenger waiting in a forlorn terminal as I finish my beverage.  I have a rule: one drink and I’m out.  I understand that sometimes things happen and someone can be a few minutes late, but if I’ve had enough time to have a drink or an appetizer and my date hasn’t shown, it’s done. 

I’ve been stood up.  I set my empty glass on the bar as I leave.

As I close my car door, my phone rings, but when I pick it up to answer the screen says “No Caller ID”.  I don’t answer those calls.  As I drive away, my voicemail beeps.  I check the message and it’s from Mr. Clandestine.  He claims that he was there and I didn’t show up.  I’m annoyed, but I can relate completely to the feeling of being stood up.  We could still meet, however, I have no ability to call him back because there is no phone number.

We exchange several emails over the rest of the evening.  I’m reluctant to meet him now.  However, he describes where he was sitting and what he was wearing and I realize that he was the man sitting alone at the table in the front of the establishment.  I ask why he didn’t approach me and he claims that he didn’t recognize me either.  I’m nonplussed, but we re-schedule for Friday.

When I arrive after work for happy hour the next night, the street and bar are much busier.  The place is bustling and he greets me when I arrive.  I note that he is dressed all in black, with nothing to distinguish his appearance.  We get drinks and he spends the next 10 minutes explaining why he doesn’t drink the type of beverage that I have selected.  We chat politely and he asks several questions of me about my previous relationships and my circumstances.  I’m open and genuine, but his questions seem a bit outside the norm for usual get-to-know-you conversation and I hold back information.  I turn the conversation toward him.

What are his used car salesman tall tales?  First, he tells me how he saved his ex-girlfriend from her cycle of getting high and having sex with whoever happened to be present and shaped her into a woman who was able to maintain a stable job at a local hotel.  While this is admirable, the manner in which he tells it belies a certain co-dependence that I’m not seeking.  Nor, thankfully, am I in need of the same variety of salvation. 

Next he tells me about his travels in his van across the United States from New York to Texas and that he transitioned from living in the van to renting a room.  The room is out from town and his rent is bartered for handiwork on the house.  However, the landlord is not an ideal roommate and he feels has asked him to do too much work for his rent so now he’s looking for somewhere else to alight while he sleeps in his bandmate’s garage between practices.  What happened to the place he did well enough to afford?  He claims that he bought the house, but put it under his ex-girlfriend’s name because he didn’t want his name recorded on the title.  Then, he gave it to the ex-girlfriend when they parted ways.  Hrmm. 

I’m skeptical in more ways than one.  Throughout his escapades, he insists on living off the grid, with no text or email, and clandestine caller ID.  Somehow the one thing I’m certain about is that I know nothing about him – probably not even his real first name. 

The best I can tell, he is a fringe individual with delusions of paranoia who lives in his van when he can’t mooch a place off someone else.  The worst, is that his bank success involved some kind of heist and now he’s on the lam.  Or, maybe he’s up to some other nefarious no good.  Either way, I’m not interested.  Mr. Clandestine, the great written conversationalist, has nothing to offer me, and more than that, sounds ripe to latch on to my life if I’m so willing.  I am not. 

Duh-duh-duh-da-na .  Duh-duh-da, NO. 

Nope.  Nuh, uh!