Across the Courtyard

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.

Although he was in full rapture of her lovely form, he could not deny the creeping humiliation that injected itself into his lust-heavy thoughts. To watch a woman, without her knowledge, in total privacy and enjoyment? The experience was laced with a dark, titillating pleasure but also heralded his obvious insecurity in his own desires. He wanted to watch this woman. He stilled himself, and sipped the hot coffee again, making a concentrated effort to control his thoughts and allow himself what was surely a basic instinct to observe the object of his attention. He balked slightly as he realized he was mentally equating her to his prey. He shook the thought from his mind and turned his attention back to the goddess across the courtyard. Fuck it. Why not indulge a little?

Through the window pane, he could see that her figure was wholly pleasing and feminine—she bore the luck of a woman born into a beautiful and natural body with soft, suggestive curves like a Tuscan hillside and a slight musculature that defined the strength in her frame. There was a pleasant fleshiness that banded across her stomach, thick thighs and buttocks, rippling like milk in a saucer when she moved about the kitchenette. This provoked according currents to his now stiff member. Like the careful sculptures of antiquity, she was broad and solid as a marble Athena, and her chestnut hair fell in spiraled pieces down her sloping back. Her breasts were rounded and more than ample, like heavy citrus fruits on the sturdy trunk of her torso. His eyes traced down to the wide plushness of her behind, a beautiful bow to the peak of her inner thighs, and then fell on the small, dark, and inviting fuzz that protected her secret lushness. He imagined himself inside of her.

He watched her there, that day, for almost half an hour while she enjoyed her domestic tasks. He simply stood and watched, hiding himself in the shadows of his kitchenette, holding his breath so as not to move and attract her attention. To be caught at this voyeurism would demolish his dignity. His hard-on begged him to stroke it, but he thought better of it when he imagined her disgust if she caught a glimpse. After her naked stint, she wandered into her bedroom and did not come out. He too went about his day after it was clear she would not be giving another show, but the vision of her haunted him in the best way.

He saw her twice that week after that. He paled when he past her in the parking lot or on the street, terrified that she knew. As always, she gave him a tight-lipped smile, or perhaps graced him with a 'hello.' Their interactions were never intimate and she didn't appear interested in him, and he had to admit that he preferred it that way. Of course, he would love to be with her to some degree, but he knew his nerves would never allow it to go smoothly. Eventually his lack of talent for entertaining would kill it, like it always did.

At night, before he drifted into sleep, he always found his thoughts on her curves, the picture of her kimono on the floor, and then found his hand in his shorts, choking the life out of his poor, needy cock. He found himself engaging in this ritual four, sometimes five times a day. Occasionally he imagined fucking her, seeing her ass bounce against his lower abdomen, or her strong legs wrapped around his back, but mostly he thought of watching her. Praying to see her decide to pleasure herself by the window, as if slipping her fingers inside of her sex was just another kitchen task. He could see her laying on a lounge chair, like a woman from a French painting, her body spilling across the fabric as she used a basket of toys on herself, plunging them in, out, and around her pussy until she fell asleep from exhaustion.