The Clandestine Meeting

And so we were off to the Renaissance Center in Detroit for a drink. This was the least likely place, but we were going to meet friends from out of town and this was a good meeting spot. We were to go to the bar at the top of the hotel which spins around and lets one watch the skyline of Windsor and Detroit spin around every hour or so. This was sometime in the mid-eighties and my friend and I were set for a night in the town.

We made our way to a table and we came upon a couple, who least expected to see us. Here, they were a very unlikely pair from our perspective, bent on having a drink where no one they know would run into them. Here we were the last people they expected or wanted to run into.
It was a standoff, as they looked embarrassed, and looked like they had been caught. While there were probably ways to ignore us or the situation, it was evident that we had run into something secret, a clandestine meeting. This couple had been caught!

My wife and I were having lunch at the exotic Wendy’s, stopping by sometimes about 10 to 15 years ago, when I ran into a friend having lunch with his employee. This would not have been even noticed beyond a hello had we not been approached by our friend who said, “We’re not having an affair here” even though neither of us had asked or even looked strangely at them. The denial of the non-event made the event memorable, and clearly indicated a clandestine meeting to us.
The late morning wandering through Ann Arbor Michigan by myself with my new girlfriend was interrupted by running into an old friend on the street, sometime in 1984. I had been out of my house for a month or two at the time, and living in an apartment. My oldest son was a local vitamin specialist at one of the area health food stores and was at work that morning. I met my friend and introduced him to my girlfriend, who I introduced by name and not by the title girlfriend. However, as I remember, this was a post-coital morning and we may have exuded pheromones indicating a relationship or something.

He left us and ran off to find my son and see what was up, and if I was secretly having an affair he was outing me to my son, I guess. I was not having a clandestine meeting; he just seemed to believe it so.

As it is said, “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive”. - Sir Walter Scott