The Art of Putting Truth in a Lie

As I walked out the door that warm Tuesday night in August, I looked back over the thresh hold at him as he stood in the small kitchen in the very little house.  The way he held his jaw in profile in the late evening shadows, he looked for a moment like the Audio Thief.  They taste the same.  They smell the same.  They even screw the same.  “If” was the only thing going though my mind as I caught a glimpse of the Audio Thief out of the corner of my eye.

you could’ve had me
Right there beside you
you could’ve had me boy

He caught the look as my emotions betrayed me.  All the old nostalgia of a lost love came rushing back, and he turned to face me from across the room “What was that look?”  He took a step around the kitchen counter and another into the very little living room, “That was the look of someone in love.”  He stopped in the very center of the small room, “Don’t fall in love with me”.

The statements caught me off guard.  He correctly read the emotion and in narcissistic fashion assumed the emotion was directed at him.  Since he was so arrogant, and this was nothing more than a summer fling to press people’s buttons because he was married and I was bored, I simply smiled and told the truth.  I told the truth because it was a much nastier barb than anything I could make up.  I flatly admitted that he reminded me of someone I used to love, that he reminded me of the Audio Thief.

It was the first red flag.  A man I had known collectively for 3 months time over a period of 2 years knew me well enough to read me.

The next Friday, I moved on the flag.  In my house in Paradise, we lay together naked in my bed, in my room with the music and swimming and free flowing alcohol and people dancing in the cabana just outside the window.  We lay there in our bubble, speaking meaningless words, in the dim ambient light from the pool deck, he rolled us over so that he was on top of me.

“I know you” I whispered to him.  It was imperceptible, a fraction of a millisecond, the tiniest skip in his rhythm.  And so it began, the story, the fantasy, the romance, all based on a lie.  1991.  Mexico.  The second time I ran away from the Audio Thief.

Oh yes, he smells like him
Yes, he tastes like him
Yes, he looks like him

And yet,
Still, not him.

Another week, another Friday, back at the very little house in the late evening desert sun, we sat on the worn little bench smoking together and sharing a JB Black. He leaned forward and put his head down as he asked me “Is this love?”  The alarms went off in my head and for the first time I was just a little worried.  I sat on the bench next to him and told him the warmest non-committal reply I could muster, “I think this is bigger than love, don’t you?”

My head was spinning.  This stranger comes into my life as a professional work acquaintance, and as I sit in his family’s vacation house in the Las Vegas Desert, I am surrounded by material items that are identical to my Grandfather’s belongings.  Material things which disappeared from the Perris, CA Smith Family vacation home after his death in 1978.  Paintings that hung on his living room walls in Perris, and furniture that smelled like him, and like Perris.  I thought about how hard this man, this stranger pursued me, nearly every day telling me we would have an affair.  I considered his insistence that we not separate, and how he came to my house everyday within an hour of my coming home from the workday.

As we sat there in the August desert heat, he continued to speak about love and destiny and missed timing.  I really have no idea what else he may have said, because as my Grandfather’s essence surrounded me in that little house, and the Audio Thief’s memory danced about the tiny yard, I thought about the odds of running into a man I met in a bar on a beach while I was a 24 year old girl lost in Mexico… 18 years later on a job at a Las Vegas Casino.

While romance novels and TV series and Oscar Winning movies portray this sort of thing on a regular basis, the plain truth is that it does not happen in real life, and it certainly does not happen to me.

My mind became very still as I decided that night, on the bench, to follow this through.  Over the next week I acquiesced to his declarations of love and destiny.  I returned his astonished joy over the miraculous reunion of Lost Loves.

By the next Saturday, he had moved full swing into the game “This is your Life”, dropping tid bits of information about me from years gone by.  He told me stories from my past about events that happened to me.  Events that were years in the past, that were so far removed from Las Vegas and the context in which I knew this strange man, that I was taken aback.  I had never seen him before, he did not look familiar.

When Mom was caught in the 2009 California Wildfires, he insisted on travelling with me.  Adamant is more like it.  He insisted we drive through Edwards AFB to Pine Mountain.  He bought me a Love Knot at a village fair in Pine Mountain over Labor Day.  When we got back to Las Vegas, he dropped the bomb regarding my military past.  He had all the details correct, including one that is in a sealed file somewhere in South Carolina to my knowledge.

I did not hide nor recover well from that revelation.  Everyone around me was livid.  Some knew I was digging, some did not.  It was those who did not that caused the most trouble.  Meanwhile, for the second time I become worried and now just a bit concerned.  He admitted that night, and explained through out the coming days, that he had done an extensive background on me before approaching me at the Wynn.  It is over the next few weeks that interspersed between the stories of horror and woe about his wife and marriage, he declares he is leaving her divorcing her so he can be with me full time.  He mixes his stories of our future together with little admissions about my past.  1976, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1997, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007 through present day.  During one of his little admissions, he seemed to be reading from a script as he revealed yet another event from my past.

The information this man has is so personal, it is as if he was living with me, so personal that he had to be close enough to touch me on a regular basis through out specific periods of my life.  The only interesting gaps he had were my periods of illness.  How could this stranger, this man know me so well and yet be so far removed from my inner thoughts?  How could he know such intimate details of my life, and yet not know me at all?

He quickly incorporates himself into my life and established a routine with me.  The week of October 1^st, he tells me he has met with an attorney and filed for divorce.  He talked of plans and our future together, and all the while I agreed and planned along with him.  I wasn’t in this for a husband, I was in this for answers.  How did he know so much more than just the black & white data of a background check?  And why have I never seen him before Las Vegas?

Each time I kissed him the Audio Thief danced through my head, his sing-song playground voice echoing back to June of 2006 when, lying together in my bed in the Tree House Apartment, he asked me

“What are you going to do when you find out that it’s really not me and you have a real Stalker?”

Over and over, as this man who knew me kissed me and professed his love to me, I was left with the dread in my heart that the Audio Thief was right.  Four years after I had last seen himlast in my Tree House Apartment, two years after I finally put a stop to all contact, I discover, the Audio Thief was right.

Just because the break ins coincided with the Audio Thief’s schedule did not make him the Stalker.  No, it was this man, this stranger who stole from me, who watched me.

What you stole, I would have given freely
Code Red you’re staring Code Red staring Code Red staring at me

And the lies.  On and on they went.  Bigger and grander at each turn.  It became harder and harder to extract the information I was after.  I had to sift through the lies and half truths.  His revelations about my past began to slip:  a year off here, a small detail off there, where as in the previous weeks every detail and nuance was captured in his retelling of the events of my past.  He had truly mastered the art of skating just this side of the truth.

I steal the art of putting truth in a lie.
I still want the girl that really caught my eye.

I do know that everyone, regardless of their level of understanding, was put off and thoroughly repulsed by all the lies – the manipulation and perceived emotional blackmail.  Yes, it looked really bad.  But I had to keep going.  I could not stop.  Seven years I had been plagued by a man who came into my home while I was away, who watched me while I was at home.  I wanted to believe it was the Audio Thief.
I realize now, I needed it to be the Audio Thief, because the alternative was….. well the alternative is what happened to me the Summer of 2009.