One of the fun things while living in the city is that you get to spy on your neighbours without necessarily going out of your way and be called a freak in the process. I live in an area where most immigrants establish themselves, which means I get to see people from all walks of life.
Take the building in front of my balcony: three families, all from the same country as me, my Chinese neighbours whom I "share" my balcony (there's a waist-high metal fence between us, not enough to create any privacy), the Arabs beneath me and another family on the same floor, past the Chinese; I got to know a bit about every one of them. The Arab guy from my floor seems to have mental problems; on occasion I hear him bail like a woman, yelling at some unknown person to leave them alone and stop bitching at him. The Chinese are students at the university nearby, they don't speak English and can barely understand their French and his wife just recovered from some sickness that stroke during their vacation back in their country. The guys in front of me are a bit older than us, in their mid-thirties, and keep to themselves a lot. The ones above them never, ever open their windows or balcony door. The ones above are "the lesbians", a couple who's woman is very manly and the man has long hair and sort of looks womanly. They became "the lesbians" from the first day they moved in, when I noticed them on their balcony and confused them with two women. On the last floor there's a family that we called the small-time Sopranos family, the type of person that you associate with petty crime.
All in all, my neighbours are fun to spy on. Every time I go out for a smoke on the balcony there's something happening which teaches me a bit more about their life. They are my personal reality show.
The guys directly in front of me have caught on, it seems, and are trying to shut the doors and window blinds as soon as they see us watching them. There's not much of a view from my balcony, so obviously they're the first we lay eyes on if we go out. I can't stop but think of them as prudes, covering everything and probably undressing under the covers just we don't catch a glimpse of their private life. One night, I happened to see the wife undressing in the bedroom, in front of their mirror-covered closet doors. She got as far as showing her bra before realizing I was out on the balcony and her blinds were open. She quickly covered her bra with one hand while closing the blinds with the other.
She's not a sexy woman, pretty average, but her tiny figure, small stature and ponytail give her a certain charm; besides, who am I kidding, seeing a woman undress is sexy just about every time. What makes it even more exciting is the idea of seeing them even though they take almost every precaution to hide.
I once thought about this: if they stopped hiding, I'd probably stop looking. There's nothing interesting about them; they don't party, they don't fight, they're fairly quiet (except their stupid AC which is loud as hell and makes me want to break their windows in revenge) and they're bland.
So you can imagine my surprise and delight this last Sunday morning when I got another glimpse of their ordinary life, more satisfying than any of the gossip me and my wife had concocted on their behalf until then.
I stepped out on the balcony, with my morning coffee around 10. I had just woken up and decided to sip the coffee on the balcony, in my chair, with Friday's newspaper in my hands. As I sat down, I heard what sounded like a woman's sigh and cringed at the thought of the Arab dude crying again. Nothing followed, so I opened the newspaper and light up a cigarette.
Another sigh, more pronounced and unmistakeable, made me almost choke on the coffee sip I had just taken: somewhere, someone was having sex. It sounded as if it came from above my head; I looked up, almost hoping this to be the first sound to emerge from the ever-closed windows, but I was deceived. The "lesbians" also had their windows closed.
I thought about the ground-level garage windows; I've seen young people do drug deals and smoke up in there before, why not have sex? Before my eyes lowered to the garage's windows, my jaw dropped when I saw the prude's couple windows open and window blinds half-open.