Now You See Me

As dusk settled on the busy, but cold skyline of Toronto, the residents of the 1501 Bridge Street Condominiums filtered in and out through the brass framed ornate turnstile glass doors. Some on their way with revelry on their minds, and those entering, perhaps had already finished happy hour and were going in to settle for the evening.

Kent Crimson was a resident at 1501, and he was one of the latter.  He had stayed after work with some of the other architects at their happy hour gathering, but he was glad to be blanketed by the earth's black time and be home.

The residents at 1501 were almost all highly successful professionals - as the rent was high and the amentities were exclusive.  Kent lived on the 18th floor which was part of the "penthouse" group of top floors that enjoyed floor-to-ceiling windows, Italian marble throughout, two floors of living space, and vast views of the city skyline.

He entertained guests often enough to be considered an affable and inviting fellow, but in large, lingering dinner parties he was usually waiting patiently for his solitary time.

What is extraordinary about the views from his residence is the visibility he has into at least five neighboring high rises that are in close proximity to his building.  With proper magnification, one could see within all of these concentrated homes with amazing detail.

Some men play pickup artist games at nightclubs, some men pay for it (dearly), some men marry for it - but Kent gets off by spying on others. When he was a teenager living in New York City about 30 years ago, he was living in a townhome in the Upper West Side in an affluent neighborhood. The townhomes were architecturally interesting and although each were similar in size and possessed similar features, they were made of different brick or stone. They all had large bay windows that stuck out of the bedrooms and living rooms.

One day, he was lying and reading within a mountain of throw pillows he had stacked near the bay window of his room. While in this spot, while surrounded by pillows as a sort of hidden fort, he could peer through some pillows and see into neighboring bay windows from his own. On one occasion, only once, his blinds were closed, but he could peer through a slit into his neighbors house. His neighbor was an acquaintance of his mother, a widow, and she must have been around forty years old at the time. He never really particularly noticed her or saw her as a sexually attractive person. However, as he peered through his window, without intending or searching, he saw, clearly, that his neighbor was undressed, and lying on her bed using an object that he had never seen before to obviously please herself. Her blinds were down, but he could see through a slit between her blinds and the windowsill. Her breasts heaved as she rhythmically moved the object in circles between her legs.

This secret film went on for what felt to be seven to with minutes. At one final point in the observation, it appeared that she reached some physical plateau, and she thrust her hips and held her ass up in the air for maybe seven to ten seconds, and then she collapsed back on her pillow and didn't move. It was the most interesting and magnificent thing he had ever seen. To this day, it was the most erotic moment he had ever experienced. Not in spite of precisely what he had seen, but due to the exquisite notion that he was not meant to see it.

Ever since that moment, despite having normal sexual relationships and leading an otherwise normal and successful life, he has sought out to view sexual encounters from a secret observation point. Defying quantum physics as much as he could by avoiding detection and not impacting that which he observed.

Now, in his modern life at 1501 Bridge Street, it really is a matter of statistics and probability that on any given day or evening, Kent will find a couple in the throws of passion who happened to leave their light on in their bedroom and happened to leave their curtains open.  One can never know if their exposure was mistaken or purposeful - it didn't matter for Kent's purposes.  But for certain, there is never a shortage of exhibition and Kent is there to see it all.  Sometimes he will spend hours, and these voyeur sessions are not always about getting off. He was insatiably obsessed with watching - and the best evenings are when he finds a new couple or individual.  A mad biologist discovering a new species.

Kent uses a fairly expensive telescope that is almost exclusively used for seeing far off planets and astronomical artifacts - but nobody could really fault his off-label use of the German optics.  This particular night, the air was cool but exceedingly clear.  It was December, and Decembers in Toronto are chilly.  Kent has had luck during the day in finding copulating neighbors, but it's a bit more risky. But tonight was a perfect night to relax and go on his hunt.

Before settling in to his self-produced peep show, he prepares his condo with a few rituals.  First, he narrows the blinds to a slit just wide enough for the telescope to find its prey.  Second, lights out - completely.  Third, phones and devices on silent.  This is his time to enter the worlds of others, and escape the desert of the real.

After adjusting his living quarters for his nightly hunt, Kent poured a glass of aged bourbon over some ice in a lead-crystal glass, placed it on his wooden coffee table on a heavy brass coaster that was set up next to his massive leather chair. He brought the bottle with him as well and placed it near his glass. His telescope was heavy and stationary, and it was moved using precise mechanical controls with automatic servos that permitted him to 'save' particular coordinates.  For astronomical viewing, these functions could be used to automatically find particular planets, but for his purposes, such functions served to let him automatically check the coordinates of condos with high chances of viewing a good galactic fuck.

On a good night he may go two hours and see at least fifteen separate sex acts.  It often is the same set of "windows" that offer the fleshly mayhem - and all varieties. The coup de grace of all prey has always been a woman masturbating herself - though those events have always been rare - but it's the only scenario that brings him back to that moment in the Upper West Side brownstone.  He surmises the rarity is because masturbating is a bit more deliberately planned in the minds of women and men and he assumes many close their curtains or they tryst with themselves in the bathroom with their favorite toys or high pressure removable shower-heads.  In any event, it is not often he will find a beautiful woman in a solo act on her bed with the lights on and curtain open - but it has happened.  However, this night through him a curveball that would be the astronomical equivalent of a double detonation supernova; an exceedingly rare event.

As Kent sipped his bourbon, he plugged in one of the coordinates of a high payoff condo into the telescope's remote control pad - figuring this was prime time for finding the "bunny" couple at 1522 Bridge Street on the 10th floor.  He calls them the "bunny" couple for reasons that do not need to be further explained.

Damnn.. lights off.  "ah, well", Kent mutters to himself.  "They'll be at it later, probably having extra drinks because of the holiday." He enters the coordinates for another high batting average condo and just like clockwork, the "come from behind" couple was just getting started.  Kent thinks very highly of spoonfuckery as much as the next guy but he isn't sure he has ever seen them have sex in any other position.  Sometimes the woman is on all fours, sometimes laying stomach down on the bed - but for Christ's sake he honestly does not believe this man has ever actually seen this woman's face.  No matter, this couple gets hot and heavy and they go long, and they are both in great shape. It's fantastic amateur porn as far as Kent is concerned, and he's gotten off by watching it countless times - but like other voyeurs, Kent is always on the hunt. You always prefer fresh and new just the way one's eyes dart eagerly around a well stocked candy store.

Kent got up to grab a few jalapeno-stuffed olives from his fridge, and made his way back to his sinner's throne. Unfortunately, his left foot caught the wooden leg sticking out of his couch and he almost fell face first into his coffee table.  Miraculously he saved the bourbon and his face, but he had to brace himself against the heavy telescope - knocking it out of its configured location.  Now, it'll take a few minutes to get it back in the exact spot in order for the auto-coordinates to be useful.  "FUCK", Kent exclaimed - feeling the pain in his ankle from the couch.

As Kent sits down he squints into the viewfinder before forgetting that he has to reposition the large instrument for his "coordinate bank" to be useful. But before pulling his eye away, something catches his attention. "Wait...no fucking way", Kent argues within himself.  He peers back through the viewfinder and there she was, a woman peering into her own telescope.  Kent's throat went dry. Her lights were down, but he could see the tiniest glint of light reflecting a deep red swirl of hair. She was dressed in dark pajamas - nothing risque. She had, from what he could see, a sultry figure.  From this distance, she could be thirty-five to forty years old - it was too hard to tell. What was most fascinating to Kent was that her telescope was pointed to one of the same buildings on which he was just spying.  "Holy fuck..." Kent quietly whispered to himself.  His throat tightened at the thought that Ms. "Ginger" was in the midst of watching people fuck.

He immediately reached for the control pad to 'save' the coordinates of this rare 'anomaly'. "Shit", Kent quietly exclaimed. Just remembering that his telecope was out of alignment and he can't necessarily save the coordinates easily.  He frantically searched for a pencil in the drawers of the coffee table to no avail - he bounded out of his leather chair to his kitchen junk drawer - retrieved the needful and ran back to his telescope.  Kent is normally unflappable and in control of his nightly spy sessions, but he had never planned for this contingency. This was outrageously interesting to him.

Kent quickly shaded lines in his marble flooring carefully around each foot of the precision tripod that cradled his pornscope.  This would give him a rudimentary placement reference just in case. It'll do.  Immediately he saved the coordinates. He will have to figure out later exactly in which window and which building this muse resides so that he can then find the proper coordinates again with the telescope positioned correctly on his floor.

He bent down to look through the viewfinder; she was gone. "Nooooo...goddammit". He pulled his face away. Did he move it? Bump it? No, this definitely looks like the same room and...oh my god, the telescope is right there. Where the....  and she walked back and sat down at her scope.  Dear god, Kent thought to himself - thought I lost you! Calming down, he sipped his bourbon, looked out to the city skyline, and noticed the full moon blaring its white light. He gained his composure and leaned over to see what Ginger would do next.

As he peered at her, he tried to contemplate what he was feeling.  There was something exquisite, something quixotically more exhilarating seeing a woman engage in the same depravity as him than actually watching people screw. Suddenly, everything he had been spying on for months became stale and moldy in an instant after finding this kindred kink spirit, and it reminded him of that moment in his childhood back in New York. More exciting, in fact.

He watched her as she watched sex. He also noticed that her telescope was no flimsy catalog gift, and could see it was interfaced with a control pad that was connected to her laptop similar to his.  Figuring she had watched enough, he saw what appeared to be her keying in coordinates to move to a different window.  Yes, that's exactly what she's doing, Kent thinks to himself.  It's so dark, but he can make out, just barely that her telescope is moving on its precise tracks and gears to its intended target.  Where could she be turning to? There isn't a building for a mile in that direction. Confused, Kent watched on.

As the scope kept turning, the blood ran out of his face as he noticed the front lense swinging slowly and coming to a rest facing, without a doubt, directly at his window. "Holy mother of god....what the fuck?", Kent asked himself with true inquisitiveness and horror combined. He pulled his face from the scope, looking around. What did he miss?  What light is on?  Like a prisoner trying to escape Alcatraz with nine lightbeams on him with a blaring siren; he could do nothing but freeze.

What comes next?  Do I just close my blinds?  Promise to God I'll never watch people fuck again the way a hungover teen swears off alcohol after their first hangover morning is spent praying on the porcelain throne?   Panic...pure panic!!

Think, THINK. She had coordinates.  She clearly has seen him before. She knows what he is doing. Fucking hell!

There is nothing left to do now but peer at his fate through the tiny viewfinder and wait for whatever he had coming to him.  As Kent sat down, he exhaled a resigned sigh. Reached over to his ornate, lead-crystal bourbon glass, stared at the prismatic colors - mesmerized for a moment, took a long draft and placed it down on the heavy brass coasters bought for him however many fucking Christmases ago by whoever the fuck. He leaned over to his viewfinder to see what she was doing. The thick, expensive, reflective coated glass of her spy hardware stared back at him from her apartment like a cold un-flamed eye of Mordor.  Her red hair teasing him. She knows what floor I'm on, she knows my building, she knows my window. Fuck's sake, she probably knows what bourbon I drink.  As his mind performed the calculus, he almost jumped when the light in "Ginger's" apartment flicked on.  Kent's pulse raced, and he felt sweat bead on his forehead despite the 21 degree celcius setting on his central heating unit. It's two A.M. Jesus, he thought. What the fuck is this?

He now had a full view of this marvel of a woman. He thought of her as maybe his last meal before execution. She had curves, but she worked out. She was tall - looked smart. Her pajamas were not skin tight, but they revealed at least a 34C cup, and hips that could grind all night like a locomotive - he suspected. She was looking right at Kent through the scope. His lights were off, but he always suspected on clear nights when the moon was full, one could, if they intended to, see into Kent's apartment and see what he was doing.  What is she doing now? Kent asked himself as she reached down to her coffee table to retrieve something.  Some sort of placard, it looked like. She held it up. It was written in clear English with a thick enough marker facing right at him - "Now you see me". Holy fucking god. Kent was paralyzed.

Ginger now pulled her face away from her telescope, and was now peering in Kent's direction. She had an almost stoic look on her face; perhaps the tiniest, almost undetectable smirk of a smile. She began unbuttoning her pajama top, slowly. When she reached the bottom, which felt like it took an eternity to reach from Kent's perspective, she let the anticipation hang in the air. She knew she was torturing him, and for the first time Kent forgot the gallows he was envisioning and only focused on the tiny sliver of skin that he could see where her pj bottoms didn't quite meet the shirt.

Kent's throat was drier than a twenty-five year old tumbleweed that was on its ninth mile in the Mojave desert. He had been holding his breath for nearly forty-five seconds before he reminded himself to breathe. The fine hairs were standing on the back of his neck as high as the gooseflesh could push them. Then, at that moment, Ginger opened the right side of her pajamas revealing pale skin, a perfectly rounded but perky breast with a slightly upturned, pencil eraser tip shaped nipple with a crimson colored areola that matched her thin wry lips. Her facial expression hadn't changed. Kent has probably seen over two hundred and fifty mating and solo self-fucks through his telescope, and the electricity he felt through his body in this moment eclipses them all. The potential exposure of his own activities mixed with the thought that she may have seen him jerk off a hundred times sitting in that chair turned him on like he was leaning against a 15,000 volt electric fence. It was at this moment that his parasympathetic pathways fired in full, and his cock began to stiffen - even to his own surprise. Good old science sending him a telegram that he is decidedly more excited than scared.

Ginger then pulled the left side of the pajamas over her left shoulder with her delicate right hand revealing, in full view, the Michelangelo of any tits he has ever seen. She wasted zero time exiting the bottoms and kicked them toward him in a playful gesture - Kent would swear on it. He was fully erect now - and he loosened the draws to relieve the pressure that was building against the front of his fitted pants. She had a defiantly red bush - not unruly; definitely manicured. My god, if this is how I go down in flames, Kent thought, so be it. I'll meet the crimson king with gladness after this is over.

She then sat down in her chair in full view. My god, others are probably watching her, Kent realizes, but she's only watching one other person - me, Kent thought. She then gracefully slid what appeared to be a thin, black lacy apparatus that held, what looked to be, a vibrator bullet on her clit; tiny, but effective. After she adjusted, likely to position it properly within her personal sex geometry, he felt he could almost touch her through his lens. She then appeared to lean over her table and write something else on a new placard. WTF, Kent thought. She appeared to be writing quite a bit. Probably "The police are coming, don't run" or "YOU SICK FUCK, I'M RECORDING THIS"...... Kent grew impatient.

Ginger then slowly lifted up the placard, and it was a URL. To what? What the fuck is this? And a password that simply said "Password = the expiration date of your bourbon" Dear fucking God. Kent fumbled for his phone, broke his 'no devices' rule, and carefully typed in the url. A website popped up in and asked if he wanted to download an app. You bet your ass I wish to proceed, Kent thought. He didn't even read the name of the software and downloaded it... the install progress circle seemed to take an eternity. 0%.....5%....25%......60%.....97%....installing...... He launched it, and it asked whether he had a password for remote control. He reached over to his bottle of bourbon and found the expiration date printed vertically. He typed in the date.....CONNECTING..... the screen said ominously. My god, she really can see everything. The app then loaded an interface with controls for vibration mode and intensity. "Holy shit", he eeked out of his parched throat. He took a sip of bourbon, and peered through his viewfinder. She had the tiniest glint of anticipation on her face and her eyes were closed. Kent tapped the mode button for basic vibration. Like a marionette, he saw Ginger's hips respond in a surprised movement like an invisible person had just lightly brushed a feather on her exposed clit. Her eyes opened, and she peered stoically in Kent's direction.

Kent moved the digitized "intensity" meter from one to four. With this, he now saw Ginger's hips moving in a circular and thrusting motion, back and forth on her dark brown leather couch. He her toes extending and contracting. Kent's cock was now standing at attention like a soldier ready for battle. Kent deftly reached for the lube, of which she probably knows the brand, in the top right drawer of his coffee table - conveniently and tactically placed. It was a high quality lube with a pump dispenser for just these occasions. He extruded a healthy helping, spread it over his head and shaft and began a slow and slightly tight stroke. Oh my god, this is not going to take long. Ginger had now swung her leg of the arm of her couch and was dry fucking the cured hide of her pricey loveseat. Kent changed the mode to what was labeled "pulse", and moved the intensity to eight out of ten.