Wednesday, May 19, 2010

The Voyeur in All of Us

It's not unusual to see a neighbor in a bathrobe fetching a newspaper from the front yard (except for the fact that very few people subscribe these days). But what if it's an evening newspaper?

St. Pauli Girl and I have lived next to some interesting neighbors in our time, but perhaps the neighbors from our previous house are the most exotic. Seeing him in a big fluffy white bathrobe get the mail or newspaper every day at about 4:00 p.m. may have been different, but I'm open minded. Or maybe close minded because I simply minded my own business.

St. Pauli Girl who is more social than I am went over to meet them one day. Actually, I think she just wanted to see if their cable tv link was down like ours was. And probably at my urging so I could watch my nightly dose of cartoons. After all, she is more social than I am.

Not to my surprise, he wore his white bathrobe when he answered the door. During some small talk, St. Pauli Girl asked what he did for a living.

He answered, "There isn't really a word for it in English. The closest thing to it is guru. I help people with problems. A lot of it is common sense. Someone might ask how to get more money, and I might suggest getting a job."

"Guru? Oh, so he's an investment banker," I said after hearing of the conversation. (Our neighbor on the west side referred to him as a witch doctor.)

A few months later, we had some plumbers doing some work on the house. The guru (in his bathrobe) came over and asked if they would come and give him an estimate on some work. Later I talked to the lead plumber.

"How well do you know your neighbor?" he asked.

"About as well as you do."

"Interesting fellow. He's got an entire bedroom full of guns. I mean big ones. Not sure I wanna do any work over there."

"This is Texas," I said only slightly disturbed by visions of the guru in a bathrobe wandering down the street shooting at anything that moved.

Then summer came when the guru brought his scooter out from storage and left it parked on the front porch. Every now and then, he would come out in his bathrobe and take one of his many chihuahua dogs out for a ride on the scooter. "I see nothing," I told myself.

Later that summer, our old worn down fence finally caved in at one spot where our dog managed to find a way to get into the guru's backyard to chase his many chihuahuas. Unfortunately, our dog cornered a chihuahua in a storage shed behind the guru's house. St. Pauli Girl and I debated what to do. Normally we would have just gone back there and retrieved our dog, but then I remembered the plumber and realized that there was probably a pillbox back there with a .50 caliber machine gun aimed at trespassers. St. Pauli Girl broke down and called the guru.

We met him (in bathrobe) by the broken fence. Irritated, he pointed out that he had expensive things in that shed. "You know you could fix your fence," he said as he handed over our dog.

"That's why you're a guru," I thought. Then I said, "I know, sorry. We're having some guys come out and fix it on Monday."

"No, let's just fix it right now," he answered. "I'll go get a hammer."

I politely declined; I could not envision working on a fence with a man in a bathrobe. Too Brokeback Mountainish for me.

Then came the fall when I had to make my annual trek to the roof to clean gutters and rake leaves off the roof. It was a beautiful Saturday morning, and I enjoyed being able to gaze into other backyards that were cordoned off by the standard Texas wood fence. I glanced into the guru's backyard. I saw him walking around talking on a cell phone. Only this time, he wasn't wearing a bathrobe. He just wore a t-shirt. Nothing else. I had to do a double take; surely I was mistaken. Nope, that was definitely a bare ass. Then he turned around. I looked away, then nearly tumbled off the roof in my haste to get to the ladder.

St. Pauli Girl asked how I finished so fast. "I'll finish tomorrow," I said. "The guru is walking around bottomless in his backyard."

"What? Are you sure?"

"Oh yeah, it's all right there. I think he even pointed at me. You know. Pointed?"

During the summer, we sat on the east side of our backyard for happy hour where there was more shade. Our property was separated by said fence, but--well, there's just enough space in the cracks to give you a glance at the neighbors’ back yard. I heard the chihuahuas scampering out, followed by Mrs. Guru chasing after them. I glanced.

All I saw was flesh. Lots of it.

"She's naked," I said to St. Pauli Girl.

"No way. Are you sure?"

"Yep. She's a 44D."

Finally the picture was coming together. Our neighbors were nudists. I'm all in favor of doing what you want in your own house but please, just let me know when I shouldn't go on the roof.

We sat outside plenty of times and many times the gurus were about in the backyard. This usually resulted in this conversation:

"She's out there naked again, isn't she?" St. Pauli Girl would ask.

"How'd you know?"

"Because you're looking at the fence instead of me."

"I can't help it. I don't know why. Naked people demand to be ogled."

Eventually, we would tell friends and relatives who would then all want to sit in our backyard to try and catch a glimpse of them. I could have sold tickets. Sex didn't matter; male or female they all wanted to see the nekkid neighbors, even though neither one was centerfold material. Not even close. Apparently there is a voyeur deep within us all that can't resist looking at the naked flesh when presented to us.

So the next time you want to use that well-worn phrase: "It's like a car accident; you can't help but look" try using "It's like when a naked person walks by--you can't help but look.”

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