Voyeur

The view from our apartment, from all three windows of our apartment, is... other apartments. Other people, other rooms, other candles flickering over other lives. I cannot tell you how seductive this is, how very much I want to look.

From the sink, as I wash dishes, there are two or three lives that specifically draw my attention. There's the family across and below--the baby there just graduated to a "big kid" bed. They have colorful dishes, which the father always washes in a separate dish pan. I wonder why.

There is the couple down to the right. He wears boxer shorts; she is small and pretty and dark. They don't often cook, but they entertain friends now and then, congregating in their kitchen with beer in bottles--never cans. And then there is the young woman above them, whose bedroom is also visible. She likes espresso, and has no qualms about being naked in front of her open windows.

They all have one thing in common: they never look back. Is this part of the Danish "mind your own business" personality? I suppose I'm being terribly rude. I suppose I should keep my eyes on the sink, on the cars in the street. But how human is that?

Maricris, who probably doesn't look much herself, tells me that if we were in Puerto Rico, everyone would look. You couldn't stop them; grandmothers would be swapping stories about how the people in the adjacent apartment probably couldn't afford that big screen TV... how if they spent less time in front of it, they might have a baby or two by now...

Honestly, I can't believe the Danes don't look. They must. They must look up from their sinks every so often and wonder about the strange girl who sits at her computer so much of the day. The girl with the crazy hair and the Polo shirts. "Bet she's not Danish," they say. "I wonder why she never looks back..."