This story features topics and language that some may find NSFW. So, if you are a boss or an office girly I would recommend reading this piece at home.
The realtor recommended he find blackout curtains for the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the shared courtyard. “From here,” he told Adam as he toured, “your neighbors will be able to see into your bedroom. And you wouldn’t want that.” And you shouldn’t want that is what he meant to say. Only, Adam had a hard time knowing what exactly he did want.
Had his neighbors in the building next-door been anyone else, he would have likely ordered the cheap grey curtains from Amazon that his mother repeatedly sent him the link to. Had the neighbor been some fiber-artist named Claire, perhaps he would have become her friend, invited her over for a quick game of Apples to Apples and a glass of two buck chuck. Afterall, Adam had always had a knack for making friends with women. He was so much like a man, they’d always tell him, and if he didn’t think about it too hard he actually saw this as a compliment.
But Claire didn’t live next door, and most nights Adam drank alone.
In the time when he was still new to the city, before he’d had his first bodega food-poisoning or lost his jacket to the coat check at 3 Dollar Bill, Adam was a regular at the bar on his block. In those green months, he’d order whatever was on tap and sit in a booth by himself, acting like he wasn’t waiting for anyone. Which he wasn’t, but he was still acting nonetheless.
Adam knew the power of “faking it till you make it.” He knew that half the people in this city were curating their personality as much as he was, and the other half probably ought to. He knew that in order to seem interesting one merely had to go to interesting places and be. He knew how to select an outfit which portrayed adequately a sense of effortless style in just under forty minutes, and how to create an air of intrigue in the same amount of time. Whenever one of the bartenders or waitresses, toughened by years of fighting in this difficult city so many call home, questioned if he needed anything, Adam would close out his tab, bundle up his coat, and only ask for the check and a lighter.
He didn’t smoke, but occasionally someone at the bar would turn around and offer him their treasured zippo from some upscale vintage reseller. This was how he’d meet the patrons, ensuring they saw him and all the work he’d put into creating himself that night. This ensured whatever this night’s character was got a little play. Some nights he was a young Ridgewood dad or a SOHO fintech boy. Sometimes he’d even try out something a bit more eclectic or even try to portray someone more bright-eyed and new to the city. Which of course he was, but to accept that would be deeply uncool, and so he instead incorporated it into a different persona which was basically his own, but just different enough—just far enough removed to maintain his own necessary sense of distance.
But, that was usually as far as he was able to take things. As soon as the patrons started to speak to him, Adam would get floaty and lose track of what he was meant to be saying. He was no expert improviser, and though he had taken just one course at NYU in 2018, this far exceeded the basics of yes and. The simplest questions could trip him up, anything ore probing than “where are you from” sent Adam into a tailspin of uncertainty. As a result the conversation would stall painfully under the outdoor awning as he grasped at the straws of a personality created whole cloth. He’d stare back, unlit cigarette in his mouth drawing out a single long “ummm…” until the unwilling patron would politely excuse themselves and return to the bar. He kept the cigarette, a little moist from the corners of his mouth, in his jacket pocket, and fingered it the entire walk home. A prop cigarette from an off-Broadway stage performance that closed prematurely.
When he got back to his apartment, he felt sick to his stomach—unsure if it was from that skunky bar, or from the sheer embarrassment of falling on his face. “Good show,” he said to himself, sounding a bit like an announcer for a British dog competition. Sometimes he used different voices to chastise himself. It was easier to pick on yourself when it could come from the imagined voices of your detractors. He gamified his self-blame in that way as he placed three frozen taquitos from Trader Joe’s in the shared air-fryer on his kitchen counter while balancing his laptop on his hip. Queued up was yet another episode of America’s Next Top Model. It was comforting, at least in some small part, to see that in the world of that episode, no time had passed. There was no blundering at the bar, no embarrassing cringe he’d have to wash off in the shower, just a perfect pause—picking up exactly where Adam had left it.
He brought these spoils back to his lofted bedroom, and plopped himself down on the dorm room couchette he’d now brought with him to three separate apartments. In between the links for blackout curtains, his mother would occasionally send him listings for new couches. Ones that folded up for storage or had a chaise lounge option, “for if people ever want to visit,” she’d write. She meant if she was ever invited to visit, Adam knew this, and yet, he still couldn’t bear to part with the couchette. Or rather, and yet, he still couldn’t bear to let her stay with him. He convinced himself that it was because there was not enough space, and that his couchette was fine for what he needed it for actually. But this was never entirely the truth, and they both knew it. Adam was incredibly skilled at keeping people an arm’s distance. And even better at avoiding that truth.
The well-worn makeover episode played, and Adam looked on in horror as Tyra menaced the naive women who dreamt of being models. One girl cried over the loss of her beloved locks, while another began a painful bleach treatment that singed the top of her skull. She cried and the camera pulled in on her tear-soaked face.
Telling the audience what exactly?
Was he meant to feel she had suffered enough for her passion, or that she ought not to cry at all and just be grateful for the experience? Adam never knew what people wanted him to feel, and that exhausted him.
It took so much out of him, guessing all day long. Trying to be and trying not to be all at the same time. For his roommates he was a man, which came with its own privileges— leaving the toilet seat up, forgetting birthdays, walking home from the train station at night like some sort of bodyguard. To the women at work he was a spinning twirling pinwheel; reflecting light like a disco ball. They huddled around him in rapt-awe as he recited his previous night’s shenanigans.
“And you didn’t even know his name?” they’d ask unable to believe the words even as they came from their own mouths. Anonymous sex is entirely novel to this kind of woman, whereas to Adam it was utterly commonplace. He tried not to think about the implications of that either. To the waitresses he was a mystery, to the patrons he was a bore, to Tyra he was something to be improved upon, and to himself he was a lie.
The pain in his stomach worsened, so to distract himself he began massaging his cock. This was about the one thing that came naturally to Adam. The one thing he never questioned. The one thing that still felt like him.
He gave in to this urge and continued to work himself over, a red fire starting in his cheeks. Right as he was about to finish, hastening the pace ever-so slightly, he threw his head back with a bead of sweat starting to form under the bridge of his nose. Then he saw it. Across the courtyard, Adam made eye-contact with his neighbor.
Immediately, Adam stopped. He covered himself up with a blanket in shame. It must have looked like he was trying to put out a fire in his lap. The neighbor, a man in his late-thirties was mostly silhouette, but even from a distance, it was clear he had been seen. For a frightening moment Adam was paralyzed, he considered turning off the lights and hiding under the covers of his bed. Perhaps he could move out of the apartment altogether, it wouldn’t be too late to break his lease. He catastrophized for what felt like a lifetime, all the while his neighbor refused to break his stare. Was he mad? Was he disgusted? Was he a pervert? What was causing this staring contest, Adam swore not to be the first to blink.
Then, his neighbor started to nod his head. It was slight, and the distance made it hard to discern the expression entirely. But he watched as the older man began to unbutton his stiff denim pants, and there, in full view of Adam and the rest of their courtyard, the man took out his own member and began to stroke it. He didn’t break eye-contact even as he turned to the side to show off his full size. He was inviting Adam to continue, inviting him to indulge. Adam closed his laptop and opened his legs in full view of the tall window in his room, and the two men had sex with each other from forty feet apart.
When the women at work asked Adam if he was seeing someone he laughed. Seeing was just about all he was doing. Each night, after dishes and after the arbitrary hallway conversations with the roommates, “What do you do for work again?” He’d retire to his lofted bedroom and wait for his neighbor’s light to turn on. He considered getting a telescope, but ruled the endeavor a bit on the nose. Besides, there was something more exciting about the soft edges of his hard silhouette.
On occasion, the neighbors would bring home with themselves a real life man— one who actually existed in their apartment and not merely across the courtyard in that nebulous mirror-world. These days brought with them a new interest for Adam, the sneaking around, the voyeurism, the showing off—it all made him feel incredibly performative. Having someone else to fuck, all while catching his neighbor’s eye from the window. His dark furrowed brow, like a Cabanel painting, exhilarated Adam. It was, and it embarrassed him to say it, the best sex he’d had in his life.
He was playing for the cheap seats, and though his broad emphatic choices didn’t go over quite as well in the room, from far away it was all just miming. He read better at a distance anyways. Possibly because there was no shame in it, no body beneath his awkwardly squirming to get their sock off or readjusting for better positions. There was no bad breath or embarrassing sounds of sex. Just two shadow puppets knocking against each other’s bodies. And best of all, when he was done with his neighbor, there was no uncomfortable conversation. No asking for a towel, or what the weekend looked like. No small talk about work or life, no question of staying the night.
If distance makes the heart grow fonder, forty feet is perhaps the optimal range.
Not only was this the best sexual relationship of Adam’s life, but it too was the longest. Through seasons the two men watched one another, creating an unspoken connection that—though sexual in nature, started to become something more, something Adam doubted he could live without.
…
Blonde Twink was what Adam called the new man Neighbor was seeing all throughout the month of November. The first night he came over, Neighbor faced himself towards the window and placed both hands against the glass while Blonde Twink kneeled before him. This was one of their favorite positions, and Adam didn’t last long watching. Still, he wasn’t quite ready to turn off the light and stop the show, so he sat on his beat-up couchette and marveled at the view. What was a November to Adam and his neighbor anyways? In the scheme of things, Blonde Twink was hardly a blip. Just an effigy to be used in the interim.
“Have you ever actually spoken to him?” One of Adam’s friends asked over the phone. “You already know where his apartment is, you should just go over.”
And it was true. In fact, just about all he knew about his neighbor was that he was just that—a neighbor. And was Adam really ready to change that? It seemed to go against some unspoken agreement, a breech of privacy.
“I don’t think that I should.” Adam would reply. And there was that word again: should. It rolled around in his mouth every time he’d watch his neighbor have what seemed to be glorious sex with Blonde Twink. I should go over there. He thought. I should introduce myself. And finally, I should be the one he’s fucking right now.
That was what brought him to the steps of Neighbor’s apartment. The building was unsurprisingly much like his. So many of the buildings on this street were, and yet still the resemblance was uncanny. Store that away as a sign, he thought to himself. The universe works in funny ways, and this could’ve been a limited run series on HBO. Secretly, Adam hoped for a little more rom in his com, but he’d never admit that out loud.
A call box with a single row of buttons rose before him with name cards announcing the residents of the building in hard-to-read Landlord chicken scratch. He half expected one of the names to jump out at him, as if he’d know it as soon as he saw it. He often thought this way, that the answers to all of life’s questions would reveal themselves to him in some act of providence. Pop-psychology and the dozens of pop songs sung by blonde girls with Brigitte Bardot bangs supported this notion. They reinforced the idea that to find the answers, one only needed to trust their own intuition. Listen to your gut, it’s always right!
But there was no such luck, so instead of letting fate guide him, he counted up the floors and pressed the coordinated call button.
There was a tinny buzz like a fire alarm, and he waited.
“Hello?” the voice responded.
“Hi, this Adam,” he paused wondering if adding the last name would make it sound too formal, too much like he was going in for a job interview, “I live across the courtyard at 65.” He trailed off.
“Oh, you’re looking for Seth, his unit faces the courtyard. He’s in 6B.” His teeth now vibrated and the blood in the tips of his fingers pulsed like sound waves— his anxiety had become corporeal. He scanned for 6B and saw the scrawl announcing Seth. Seth the neighbor. Neighbor Seth, Seth. Seth. Seth.
“Hi, Seth? This is Adam. I live across the courtyard.” Long pause. “I wanted to—I was wondering if—I don’t know. I wanted to come by and see if we could talk. Maybe I could come up?” The pause continued, threatening to choke him right there on the front steps.
“Are you still there?” Adam asked.
“Yes, I’m here.” The voice cracked through. More robotic than 6A. “Listen…” His tone gave it away, Adam considered leaving right there or perhaps melting on the spot. “You shouldn’t come here again. I’m sort of seeing someone at the moment.”
“Some other time then.” He stammered. “I didn’t know you had someone over right now.”
Then the realization settled in. It wasn’t that there was someone over. In fact, there was no one else in Seth’s apartment. No one there simply waiting in the other room. No one to ask, “who was that at the door?” while gesturing for Seth to return to the couch to resume their Netflix show. But Seth wanted that, and he wanted it with someone other than Adam. He wanted it with someone who was evidently more than just a November, and who was certainly more than just some neighbor he occasionally peeped on from across the courtyard— someone two screens removed from reality.
By the time Adam got back to his apartment, ready to throw himself down on his couchette, ready for Taquitos and America’s Next Top Model —ready to wallow in his defeat—he saw something across the courtyard that left him speechless. It was, without exaggeration, the single most surprising and upsetting thing he’d seen in all the months since he started peeping. More than the silhouettes, and hands on glass, and blurry obscenities, what Adam saw actually scandalized him. Like the women in his office, he was in complete shock. His understanding of life was completely turned on its head. Any notion that he knew what he should do, that he could trust his own intuition was gone. All because across the courtyard, the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked Adam’s apartment had been covered over with blackout curtains.
All because, even with all that distance, somehow he was still too close.
I GASPED at the blackout curtains!!! This is so good