Voyeur

My friends were strolling past the display windows laughing. I stopped in front of hers and, by the way she looked back at me, I knew that night wasn’t for them.

When he saw the door ajar and recognized his sister inside, against the wall, the last thing he expected was to stand there watching, unable to move.

She was fifty-two, trapped in a lukewarm marriage, and wearing lace stockings for the first time. She didn’t expect the man who would board two stops later.

I turned off my bedroom light so I could watch him better without being seen. One dawn he turned toward my window, smiled, and I knew I’d never been the only one watching.

At three in the morning, I asked her to open the tent door. I never thought she’d say yes—or imagined what would happen afterward on the beach.

I recognized her the moment she crossed the threshold. That twenty-three-year-old girl had been undressing for me on screen for months and didn’t even know it.

When she got out of the car and every man in the ballroom turned his head, I understood that my wife wasn’t mine that night: she belonged to whoever dared look at her.

I’d only been in the alley for a month when I was put in charge of the punch with house 207. I didn’t expect the woman who opened the door and her husband to change my idea of desire that very night.

I turned off the music and pressed my ear to the wall. My mother’s moans came from the other side, and I understood why she moved in silence during the day.

When the hallway lights went out, the moans started on the other side of the wall, and I knew I’d never forget that week at my aunt’s house.

When I saw his naked body on the blue towel, I knew I wouldn’t leave without fulfilling your dare. I hadn’t touched him yet and he was already starting to react under my gaze.

For two days I had been lowering the curtains to hide what I was doing. That last morning I decided to leave them open, and the woman in uniform stayed planted on the other side of the courtyard.

I thought the back row at the premiere would let me be alone with him. It took me a while to realize no one is really alone in a dark room.

When we got there that night, my wife was already wearing the plug. What we didn’t expect was to run into a nineteen-year-old who would change the routine.

We’d sworn the playroom would be oral sex only. We hadn’t counted on the man next to us watching—or on his wife’s hands on my back.

When I saw my underwear on the glazier’s nightstand, I knew he’d been watching me for weeks. Instead of exposing him, I decided to give him something better to remember.

I slipped into the hallway without making a sound. The whispers were coming from the kitchen, and they weren’t from the person I expected. What I saw after that I never told anyone.

For days I hid among the bushes, watching her ride another man every night. When he was laid up with a fever, I took his place.