Rear window. Or any window, really.

From my desk we watch the girls across the street. They are unaware of the fact that I watch them, we watch them. That their lack of curtains has opened up their lives to us, and that we have created for them another life, a soundless life, narrated by us as we stand unobserved in my small dorm room.

The girl in the red is Carmen. She has many male callers, and we assume that she is a Londoner by birth, a girl of the city, comfortable enough with her body and her life that she doesn’t need to shut the blinds to change her clothes. Or to make her tea. Or to slam a man onto her bed.

The blond who lives below her is Mary. Mary is a cardigan-wearing spinster. We say spinster, or rather, I think it to myself, but age is hard to measure when you’re staring from a window across a courtyard. She does nothing much. Watch TV, chat on the phone. We lose interest in her easily.

They aren’t there every night, and this is nowhere as near as creepy as it sounds. After all, my windows are open as well. What’s the point of shutting the blinds when you’re in a city of millions? You’re anonymous to everyone, anyhow, what does it matter if a few people spot your b-cups from fifty yards away?

That was then, giggling in the windows, hoping for something exciting to happen. The boys hoping for a boob, any boob, to reveal itself.

The fascination didn’t last long. After all, the lives of others are just as mundane as our own.

That was two years ago. Now, I’m staring out another window, getting acquainted with another fictionalized family across another yard. Breakfast, dinner, and awkward pre-shower moments. It’s hard to avoid the urge to look out the window as you pee, but when you can feel the eyes of an entire family as soon as you pull down your pants, you learn to avoid it. Yes, we COULD buy curtains, but come on, couldn’t they? We’ve only been here for 3 weeks and besides, we’re fun-loving young professionals, not a FAMILY.

The other morning I saw a familiar man walking toward the subway. I’d seen that shirt before, hadn’t I? And I had, indeed. That morning, as the man made breakfast and unloaded his dishwasher and we did the same thing in our kitchen. There was an eye contact. An awkward , awkward eye contact. One in which this man seemed to be saying, “please, for the love of God, at least put a curtain up in your bathroom so I don’t have to give my children the facts of life talk. Please.Please. I’m begging you to cover the naughty bits.”

I responded in the only way I knew how: by averting my eyes and rushing toward the train, effectively responding “No, sir. No. The hoo-has stay. You go.”