Undercover Lover

"Your resume is over twenty pages long!" Ryanne shrieked as she sat down to lunch with me at Joey's Café.

I remember in high school and college how my parents used to tell me, "this will be a good experience for you." It wasn't long after graduating from college that I submitted my one-page resume to a public relations company, based on all the freebie jobs I had participated in with a smile on my face and a song in my heart for my first "real" job. I remember in those olden days when the evening news covered stories about how sometimes people have more than one career in their life time. Sometimes they have two! Or even three!

That wasn't so long ago. That was less than 15 years ago and today 12% of California is unemployed. I've watched as my freelance gigs have dried up and the companies that I've loved working for have dissolved.

Ryanne flipped through the small novella that is my resume exclaiming, "It's too long!"

How can it be too long? It's not my fault that as a freelancer you find yourself working for dozens of people a year. Tax season sucks for people like me. I can't help that in addition to event planning and freelance writing gigs, I've have worked for producers and talent, have taught yoga and elementary school, and worked in art administration. Not to mention numerous non-profit organizations across the country.

"Wait, homo hold up," she said, stopping around 2002. "You were an undercover operative?!"

Oh. And I was a spy.

I double majored in college with a degree in Criminal Psychology for the simple reason I wanted to be Clarice Starling from The Silence of the Lambs. I wanted my own Hannibal Lector to call me and ask, "Are the lambs still screaming?"

My senior year in college, I started working as a decoy for an undercover private investigator. The ad in the back of my college newspaper said they were looking for "actors for a unique job." That could have described anything from dinner theater to a bukakke gang bang porn movie. That said, I was down for either. I applied and got a phone call asking me if I had a gun permit.

While I'm quite excellent on the firing range, I never wanted an engagement or gig that was so dangerous that it required me shooting my way out or having to kill if the situation should get out of hand. However, I had been trained to kill with bare hands if need be. I may look dainty and sweet, but I can beat a bitch down.

My job mainly consisted of engaging the "target" in conversation, wearing a small recording device and extracting information. Tame stuff. This was not Jennifer Garner in a Dubai power plant trying to defuse a bomb for the CIA.

I always traveled with an investigator or "handler," who observed from a distance. I always had a fake name, fake addresses, fake everything. On occasion, I even had a fake accent. I communicated with my handler, via hand signals, communicating if I was "okay" or needed an "extraction," which was usually a ringing cell phone, which usually went, "Hello? Oh my God! I have to go."

I took assignments from different firms over the years. When I moved to Los Angeles, I found a great firm and I was the only gay "operative" but I didn't get a lot of work. The firm got a lot of suspicious cheating spouses. However, very few were "I think my husband is cheating on me... with a dude."

One of my targets was a man who was stalking his much younger ex-boyfriend. The client was afraid for his safety and I was sent in to gather information. This was a simple fishing expedition to see where his head was at the moment.

The target and the client both lived in San Francisco, but I came on board when the target was on business in Los Angeles and staying at a hotel in West Hollywood. I did a "run-in" with him in the hotel lobby by playing the jilted and dejected boyfriend. He offered to buy me a drink in the hotel bar.

The rules were always the same: if they don't take the bait, do not engage. My handler and I were both surprised how quickly he took the bait. Within five minutes of small talk, he began talking about the client and didn't stop for the next two hours.

He was certifiable.

He never looked at me, instead just stared at his jack and coke and talked non-stop about the client, his current whereabouts and what he was planning on doing to surprise him. I knew that I had everything I needed on him, but I was surprised when he wanted to take me up to his hotel room to show me a hidden camera video of he and the client having sex on his laptop.

Because I knew I could physically handle myself, I signaled to my "handler" that I was fine and I went to his room. As we walked in, I switched off the tiny recording device in my jacket, for fear it would start beeping.

He opened his laptop, went to a folder on his desktop marked "Fun Times" and showed me the footage. It was certainly raw and clearly our client had no idea he was being recorded and flipped around like an order of Waffle House hash browns.

And that's how I met Adam the First. The client.

While the target went to the bathroom, I deleted the file. When he walked back in, I closed his laptop and said, "I can't believe you brought me all the way up here to show me bad porn when you could have just as easily had me. You know, a real boy."

I taunted him. I told him I wanted him to strip for me. He got completely undressed, I laughed and said that I should be going and walked out.

Suddenly it was totally Jennifer Garner in a power plant in Dubai. I raced down to the elevator and kept hitting the down button. I saw the stairs and hit them instead. I raced down ten floors and burst into the lobby, where I found my very unhappy handler.

He was furious that I had turned my cell phone off in the elevator on the way up. We walked outside, I pulled the electronic recorder from my jacket pocket and handed it to him. "You have everything you need," I said and quickly took off down Sunset Boulevard, afraid that the naked target was going to run out, screaming and pointing, "He deleted my files!"

I never took another gig and I never heard another word from the firm. I was completely unnerved from the evening. I've never met someone who was so psychologically off his rocker.

Going into assignments, I would have some information. In this case, I knew the client was a sculptor living in San Francisco. I knew his name. I knew that he had an interest in older, successful men.

I knew the target had a thing for younger men. I knew what he liked to drink. I knew his turn ons. And the irony is not lost on me that I've been able to "seduce" a dozen targets in play, but can't get the time of day off a guy in West Hollywood when I want it for personal reasons.

But this assignment was different. That night as I sat there for two hours while my target told me the deepest, darkest secrets about my client, I couldn't help but feel deeply sorry for Adam. He had a rough childhood and had been taken advantage of in his youth.

I thought...I felt...that I could save him.

I found Adam on the internet and a month later found myself in San Francisco. I visited the gallery where he had a piece and ran right smack into him.

It was exciting and terrifying. I guess in a way it would be like meeting someone from a reality show. You follow them on their show and you think you know them. But they don't know anything about you. Nor do they know that you know their deepest and darkest secrets and have seen them have sex on-camera and destroyed all evidence in a way to protect them.

He came right up to me as I was standing in front of his sculpture. He introduced himself and I introduced myself.

Adam hired the agency. The agency hired me. I stood there in fear he would recognize my voice from the digital recording. But he didn't.

After some small talk, I mentioned I was from Los Angeles, just in town for a fashion show (which wasn't exactly a lie), and eventually found myself saying "Why yes, I'd love to go out to dinner."

We went out for a great dinner and walk around the city. I asked him if he was dating anyone. He said, "No. Just out of a relationship. It was messy."

Many phone calls, many e-mails, and many SouthWest flights later, we were boyfriends of convenience. He came to Los Angeles. I went to San Francisco and we made many small trips to Vegas and Seattle. It's like I was in a gay Robert James Waller story. 600 miles away I could tell you what he was thinking at any given moment.

We had a connection that I hadn't felt with anyone else before. He trusted me. And that's why it killed me that I couldn't tell him how I really came to know him.

Adam continued to date other much older men. I knew he was dating a few people, but when we were together, we were together. During one visit, his current "daddy," a producer named Don, wanted to take us out for supper. Don looked good for sixty, but I firmly believe that just because you've had several face lifts, does not mean that you should still wear Abercrombie t-shirts and low-rise Diesel jeans.

It was an odd meal, kind of like when Princess Leia walks in to find Darth Vader at the dining room table in Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back. I don't know if Don thought we were going to go back to his palatial pad in Twin Peaks and have a threesome, but I don't do antiques.

Intellectually, Don couldn't match me. Sure he was rich and connected, but I was younger, smarter and again, I can kill with my bare hands.

Adam broke up with the old man the next morning. Years later, I would see Don at Here Lounge and he would punch me in the face for causing the break-up. I would be too drunk at the time to feel it.

Adam and I continued to see each other for a few more months and then he suddenly went completely off the reservation. He stopped returning phone calls and e-mails.

A short time later, I learned from a mutual friend he was moving in with a new (much older) boyfriend, who was involved in the fashion industry. They were serious.

When I called him to verify my new intel, he had a tone in his voice that was angry as he said, "Look, I'm sorry, but..." I hung up.

A year later I found myself in New York at fashion show which he and his now partner were attending. We made pleasantries, but something had crossed over in him. There was a darkness. I thought I could pull it out of him and I asked him to meet me for coffee later that night.

He met me and as he sat down and removed his leather gloves he said, "Look, I don't know what you want from me."

I considered telling him I was the decoy. I considered telling him how I came to know him, but I realized that telling him that wasn't going to change anything. I also knew that I couldn't give him what he wanted, which was a daddy. I couldn't give him wealth and a weekend home in the Hamptons. I couldn't give him fabulous weekend soirees with socialites on yachts in the Mediterranean.

When we were together, we were on. But when we were apart, we were the very definition of "out of sight, out of mind."

I loved him. Over the years, we may have been boyfriends of convenience, but I loved him. But as I sat there, staring at his sighing frustration for being summoned to a Starbucks in Chelsea in the middle of the night, I realized this was goodbye.

I didn't say anything. I took my coffee, stood up and said, "I thought I knew you. Goodbye, Adam." I got to the door and I turned around. All I could say was, "I loved you once." That's all I had.

He just stared at me, blankly. That was the last time I ever saw him.

There have been many men through the years. I'm not sure what hold Adam the First had over me. We had passion. This small column doesn't begin to do our time together justice. But I wonder if I'll ever find that again.

Ryanne started crossing off huge sections of my resume, deleting parts of my past. "No one cares about that," she muttered under her breath looking at a portion of my life.

It was at that moment, watching her take a thick black sharpie to pages of my life that it hit me: I have to leave Los Angeles.

Tears started pouring. It wasn't the boo-hoo kind of tears with snot. More like a silent rainfall.

She looked up and saw me crying. "I have to move," I choked out.

"Is this about Davis?" she asked.

"No, it's not about..." I sat there, feeling like every nerve in my body had snapped.

A flood of faces hit me all at once: Cooper, Adams Two Through Eleven, Ben the Mortician, Morgan the Gossip Columnist, the "other" Alex, Sean the Flake, Chris the Bisexual, the Vegan Lawyer with nice arms, strippers, go go boys, actors... and yes, Davis the Australian.

"This city hates me. Everyone hates me, Ryanne. I try to stand up for myself and I get kicked in the teeth. And I've been kicked in the teeth for so long. Nothing is real here. Nothing is real. I feel like I'm living on the backlot of a studio with millions of psychotic extras." I couldn't decide if I was having a nervous breakdown or a case of divine intervention.

All I could say was "nothing is real." I decided in that moment, that while I may have twenty five pages of life experience, my life is clearly over here. I want a single job that I love. I want a home. I want a husband. I want a family. I want love. And none of that exists for me here. I've tried looking for it. I've looked up one side of this town and down the other.

But it's time for me to say goodbye.

e to say goodbye.