Peeping Toms

 

Writing coaches caution anyone from starting a story with: It was a dark and stormy night, but I’ve always wanted to begin a tale with these words and now you know what I think of writing coaches. Anyway, Mrs. Chatterbox and I had only been married a few years and were living in a duplex in Oxnard, California, so close to the beach that our driveway was covered in sand.

      

One stormy evening, Mrs. Chatterbox phoned to say she was leaving work late and was in no mood to fix dinner. “I’ll pick up something on the way home,” she said.

      

 I  felt guilty that she was the one caught in the storm. “It’s raining pretty hard. Be careful,” I said, just as the electricity went out.

      

As I waited in darkness for her to reach home, I lifted a blind and glanced out our front window to check on the storm. Without street lamps I couldn’t see much, but I could hear the wind howling like a banshee in heat, along with the sound of swirling sand scratching the world raw.

      

A light winked on across the street, the golden glow of an oil lamp. I could clearly see into the bedroom of the young couple who’d recently rented the bungalow across the street. I’d yet to speak with them; for some reason I’d been put off by their attractiveness and athleticism. They stood beside a large bed. He leaned toward her, bent down and kissed her long and hard. She unbuckled his jeans.

      

It felt wrong to be ogling them as they undressed, their perfect bodies reflected in the circular mirror of an old vanity hugging a wall. I considered lowering the blind, but couldn’t. It was like watching a porn movie being filmed before my very eyes. What if

they needed extras?

     

 As the wind whipped sand around the edges of their window, I watched as they pleasured each other. I’d been married a few years to a woman with healthy sexual appetites, and I’d read Everything You Always Wanted To know About Sex*But Were Afraid To Ask, not to mention my familiarity with the Kama Sutra, whose illustrations I’d committed to memory. I wasn’t without a certain expertise in this area and considered myself a competent swordsman, but the Olympian aerobatics and exuberant gymnastics of this energetic couple were far beyond anything I’d imagined, much less attempted. Whereas I’d be huffing and puffing with sweat dripping from me in unsightly fashion, this couple was clearly not out of breath. Instead of sweating like railroad workers shoveling coal into a blazing furnace, their naked bodies glowed like burnished gold in the lamplight.

      

Minutes passed as I lost track of time, the window steaming over from my hard breathing. A noise alerted me to the fact that I wasn’t alone. Mrs. Chatterbox was standing behind me, a boxed pizza in her hands. I could feel my face turn scarlet and I wondered what she was thinking: I’ve married a voyeur, a Peeping Tom!

     

 But her eyes weren’t on me; she was watching the couple across the street, the marathon pair into their second hour of lovemaking. I took the pizza from Mrs. Chatterbox’s hands and walked it over to the kitchen. When I returned she was still standing there, watching as intently as I had been. I tried to remove her coat but she was transfixed by the show and wouldn’t budge.

      

Fine, if she was going to enjoy the performance I saw no reason why I shouldn’t as well. At that moment, we witnessed something taking place in the bedroom across the street that shocked both of us. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing; neither could my wife, whose jaw was hanging as low as mine.

      

Mrs. Chatterbox finally tore her eyes from the window. She swung her purse at me, yelling, “You told me that was IMPOSSIBLE!”

      

She stomped off.

      

Back in the bungalow, the dude who’d made me feel like an incompetent kindergartener was no longer naked. He and his lady had donned terry robes, and they were waving at me.

Submitted to Yeah Right.