The first time he saw her, he felt his body recoil and quickly warm to a dull burn under the heat of his shame. It was an instant sensation and, in retrospect, it was comforting how organically it occurred. He left his fingers on the windowsill to steady himself, allowing the heat to cool to a slight ache. In that brief moment, he answered both his nature and society's command to mask it—his mind unknowingly repelled into a chasm of stifled desire. Too embarrassed to consider acknowledging those feelings at the time, he stood up, needlessly coughed out loud, and picked up his coffee mug from the kitchen table to drain the dregs. He refilled the mug from the kettle on the gas stove and took a scalding gulp, pointlessly trying to cover up his reaction as if someone else stood there with him, silently judging. After another gulp and what seemed an adequate amount of time to wait, he sat back down at the little fold-out table. With calculated measure, he glanced over his left shoulder toward the window.
Directly across the courtyard and through a dirty pane of glass, he saw her kimono spilled into a pink, silk puddle on her living room floor. The sting in his mouth from the hot coffee had mysteriously disappeared in the wake of a new tingling on his tongue. Albeit the shame was still there; he'd been taught his entire life to exhibit a carefully constructed social caution and respect for other people, particularly women, but the sight across the courtyard was too magnetic to ignore. Over the next several weeks, he would become a frequent visitor to this precise spot in the kitchenette, to watch and cultivate his embarrassed attraction.
She appeared to be in her early twenties and had been living at the apartment complex for the last six months or so. He had seen her plenty of times unloading groceries from her car, chatting on the phone, and so on. She had a bright, open face and a cleverness in her eyes that coupled harmoniously with the confidence in her body language. On a subconscious level, perhaps, he knew that she intimidated him, and so she naturally fell into his mental box of "unattainable female." She frequently entertained in her studio apartment, hosting small parties with what looked like artistically-inclined groups of friends, split large bottles of wine with other single girlfriends (at least, she appeared to be untethered to any one man), liked to sing to loud music when alone, and smoked the occasional spliff. All this he observed in passing from his kitchenette window, rather innocently, he had always thought.
Her presence today, however, kimono-less at the window, was a new kind of compelling visual. She was standing in her corresponding kitchenette—he had full view of both her living room and kitchen from his position. Her complete nudity was a sunbeam from across the courtyard, leaving him slick with sweat and sending slight ripples from his gut down to the now gently throbbing mass in the valley of his pants. He felt himself parched for some reason. He watched over his shoulder as she went about casual kitchen affairs; scrubbing grime from dishes, wiping down the counter, and stirring a pan of something that made her smile with delight as the smell wafted up to her petite nose. What prompted her to perform these tasks as she stood there, so vulnerable...exposed like a wound? She clearly had no fear. This concept excited and ruthlessly intrigued him.