As I rushed through the rooms pulling down what shades I had and hanging bed sheets where there were none, my heart racing, cheeks burning, the sour taste of adrenaline in my mouth, the man stood seemingly unfazed, touching himself.
What the man and I have in common is this: two large, arched bedroom windows that mirror each other perfectly from opposite sides of my street. Almost all of our windows face each other, as if best friends built the buildings with being able to see each other from every room in mind. When I lie in bed with my head towards my window, I face him lying in bed. When I sit on my couch in the living room, I face him sitting on his couch, the TV’s blue light flickering on his thick legs.
Having moved to New York from the Berkshires, where I could see cornfields and the edge of forests from my room, I would not enjoy living with closed blinds. I loved the view from my fifth-floor apartment—the pointed church bell tower, the green tops of the gingko trees, clumps of people gathered on the sidewalk corner waiting for the light to change. So for a few days I left the drapes up, hoping he would be intimidated by my staredowns and my giving him the finger. No luck.
One night while washing my dishes, aware of being watched, I looked over my shoulder to find him standing in his living room wearing nothing but a shower cap, hands out of view.
I called the police. They came half an hour later and told me that since he was staying on his own property and not making threats, he wasn’t doing anything illegal. Just looking, they said.
New York has long been considered a voyeur’s paradise. In August of 2007, a man positioned himself under the steps of an elevated subway stop in Queens. He stood there all day, tilting his head back and staring up into women’s skirts as they walked across the slatted metal platform above him. Complaints from the regulars at this stop prompted the City council to propose legislation that would make voyeurism a misdemeanor in New York, punishable by 90 days in jail or a $500 fine. The bill defined voyeurism as “deliberately viewing another person without that person’s knowledge and consent, at a place and time when a person has reasonable expectation of privacy.”
But when is it reasonable to expect privacy when you live in a cramped city, home to over eight million people? In certain situations, just having adequate sight or hearing can make voyeurs out of pedestrians. The other day I was walking down Broadway when a girl in front of me paused in the middle of the sidewalk to rifle through her backpack. As she bent over, the top of her thong rose above the back of her low-cut jeans and her breasts nearly spilled out of the front of her V-neck while she cradled a phone against her ear and crooned, “Did I eat your apple?
I’m sorry, I thought it was mine, and it had been on the counter so long it was getting soft.” That same day on the subway I saw a teenage boy rub his hands in circles on his girlfriend’s tight-jeaned butt. She sat straddled on his lap, petting his face. I saw two men peeing by the side of Central Park West in the middle of a bright afternoon.
But the concentration of New York’s population can also turn the intersections of lives into intimate encounters between people who in other places might never meet. A few mornings ago a repairman came to work on a window that wouldn’t close in my bedroom. He rang the buzzer and I came to the door wearing a loose tank top and boxers that had belonged to my brother when he was 11. Although I would normally only appear in this outfit with a boyfriend, I turned the lock on my front door and welcomed him inside.
While he worked on my window, he talked to me about his life in Romania; how he holds a master’s degree in opera which is not recognized in this country; how he came to America for love and got burned. I sat on my bed eating a bowl of cereal, listening to him and also realizing that this was just what I lock my door against: a strange man alone with me in my apartment while I’m barely dressed. But this is New York—we respond to the proximity of bodies by making public that which with more space stays hidden.
In fact, being seen seems to be what attracts some people to the city. They live in apartments with glass walls, making a cube of light and visibility of their private lives, they dye their hair pink, they pierce their faces, they make out on the train. As if being seen keeps them un-alone, safe.
And I understand this. It has become somewhat of a ritual that each time I come home the man across the street steps up to his window, cupping his hands around his eyes to eliminate his own reflection, and stares into my apartment.
Although I don’t like to be spied on, I have grown strangely comforted knowing that someone is always watching me. If I fall, if I choke on my cereal, wouldn’t he call 911? And although in the evenings I still walk through my dark apartment pulling down blinds before my hand falls on the dimmer switch for the lights, I have to admit that I now track my neighbor as much as he tracks me. I watch him from darkened rooms, or from the sliver between shade and wall so he can’t see me looking, a seer to not be seen, a tracker to not be tracked.
Gila Lyons is a writer living in New York City.
