The Voyeur

Artists – painters, musicians, writers, all of them – often get a bad rap for being voyeurs; watching the world, even one they created, instead of living in it. Of course, Michael Herr, a hell of an artist in his own right, once said that he didn’t know an artist worth a damn that wasn’t a voyeur. No, I don’t consider myself a hell of an artist, but I do, naturally, at least in my mind, fall into that mode; so it’s not uncanny to find myself watching things – people, people doing things, my eyeline lingering here and there. And I wouldn’t mention any of this if I meant merely an absent-minded glance on a Summer’s afternoon at the beach, or out shopping at the Farmer’s Market, or on the way to Tengu on Ocean for sushi. (Great absent-minded glances, all.) No, I’m talking about the tangible lingering, catching yourself lingering that one does every so often; or, in my case as of late, more often than not. At least when I’m home. Or, rather, at least when she is.

Across Beverly Glen from our apartment windows, a flight down in a two-story building, her apartment running lengthwise over the garage so her three windows – bedroom, living room and kitchen – face me like a 50s breakaway set, is a tiny flat where a young woman lives. She’s in her twenties, blond, is fashionable though not in a bad way; just in that way twenty-somethings who live in L.A. can’t help but be. And she works for a living in a nice enough place so that if I see her leaving in the morning or coming home at night she’s dressed smartly, not always in heels, but never without style. When I see her casually, at night or on the weekends, the attire’s something out of The OC, though not in a bad way, all tank tops and flips flops, Juicy sweats and Abercrombie hoodies. As far as I can tell she lives alone, though friends come and go, and I’m not certain her weekends are Saturday and Sunday, per se, as often as he’s home – and gone, for that matter – for days at a time. Work related? Possibly. Boyfriend? Possibly, though I’ve never seen one stay over. Even as I write this I realize just how little I know about her. Almost nothing at all. Just what I can infer from these Rear Window-esque glimpses once in a while, if I realize she’s home. Come to think of it, I don’t even know how long she’s been there. Was she already living there when Anna and I moved two years ago? Maybe, but I honestly don’t know. Look, it’s not like I’m stalking her, tracking her, keeping track. In fact, not knowing simple things like her name, what she does for a living, who she really is, is part of the attraction. The absent-mindedness of people watching mixed with catching your favorite TV as it airs. “Ooh, there she is! I like this show!” “What’s it about?” “I’m not really sure. But I like it!” Thinking more about her, I’m not even certain what she really looks like, having only seen her from across Beverly Glen, from above, looking down on her, in her apartment, like a living train-track town; similar to the world we know, but smaller and not quite real. She just got a cream-colored Mini Cooper and I remember when she and a friend – brunette and cute even if slightly on the heavy side – put the new license plates on, their beach bags at the ready, and as soon as they were done they hopped in and sped off. About a week later I saw the Mini at our local Trader Joe’s and I knew it was hers, she was there, in the store, at the same as me, and I felt a flutter in my chest like a schoolboy’s crush. I took a cautious pass through the store, edging around aisles, trying not to look silly, probably looking foolish, but I never saw her; and was actually glad, the blurred illusion remaining intact. Alive. In fact it’s that very elusiveness that I’m attracted to. The glimpses, almost glimpses, shadows, silhouettes. When I see nothing but the smoke from her cigarette float from the little balcony off her kitchen. When I see nothing but the light from the TV on, late at night. When the garage door opens, and the cream-colored Mini Cooper pulls out, and I get an almost wraith-like fleeting glimpse of blond hair and sunglasses as she speeds toward Olympic. And then, perhaps most attractive of all, when her apartment is empty for those days at a time, like a locked-up museum, a placeholder for this young woman I don’t know. Where is she? And, so, back to the ever-relevant who is she? Wondrously, I still don’t know and, so long as I’m sheltered by the security of probably never knowing, I anxiously keep asking. Tuning into the snippets of my TV show without seeing – or even missing – “previously” or “next week on.”

One time … one time on a bright warm morning, Saturday or Sunday because I was home, having coffee and reading in the living room, I looked out and across the boulevard to the curtains open in her bedroom, and she rose out of bed, tired and stretching, her back to me, wearing nothing but bright turquoise cheekies. She sat there a long moment, the warm summer air billowing the curtains, and then she stood and paused another long moment, all but nude, poised like a Roman statue, and then walked into the shadows of her bedroom, too far from the window, the intangible wraith disappearing once again. The entire vision didn’t last much longer than it took you to read about it here, but what an indelible image for yours truly – or any voyeur, for that matter – to carry into all the worlds, created or lived in.