BETTER THAN WATCHING LENO
by Joris K. Huysmans

The new apartment was fine.  Not nice, not really great, it was fine.  By now Burton had lived in enough three-flat buildings in this city to recognize that they were all basically the same-- a living room up front with big windows, skinny hallway with a dining room and bathroom along one side, then a kitchen and the bedroom in back.  The long narrow lots pretty much forced the design, that and the fact that your neighbors were so close on either side that you could practically reach out and touch them.  So the living room and the bedroom had to go at the ends, where the only available sunlight was.  Everything else existed in the shadows and twilight of the buildings next door.

Burton had landed in this latest of many new apartments like he'd landed in the latest of many new jobs, like he'd passed through the latest of many relationships.  All of them seemed to pass more quickly now, at his age.  His level of commitment to them, of interest in them seemed shallower each time.  Worse yet, he knew that he was incapable of hiding that fact; fresh-faced bosses, desperately hopeful dates would look to him for a reflection of their own enthusiasm, and see none of it coming back at them.  He knew this, yet he couldn't seem to change it.  Any more than he could force sunlight to skip over the buildings around him, and suddenly flood the long dim hall of his apartment with a trumpet blast of bright golden light.  

The third or fourth night, Burton was laying in bed, watching The Tonight Show, and sufficiently uninterested that he walked out on Leno's monologue to take a pee, which he did without bothering to flip the bathroom switch.  Standing there in the dark, hitting the water accurately by sound, his gaze was drawn to the louvered window in his shower, where the window opposite his bathroom on the building next door was lit up like a TV set: a perfect square image of someone else's home shining in the darkness, framed by black on three sides and a half-drawn shade at the top.  

It was a bedroom-- the bed lay in front of the window-- and unlike his featureless white rooms, these walls were a rich red and decorated, in the area he could see, by some sort of tribal mask or sculpture and a wrought iron candle holder.  Burton gazed idly at it, trying to make out the sculpture-- a bird? a leopard?-- when suddenly a pair of legs entered the picture, striding along the edge of the bed.  He turned hurriedly away just as the blur of a female form flopped onto the bed; vaguely embarassed, even though he had done nothing and been seen by no one, he tucked himself back in his boxers and went back to his bedroom.

The next day, walking to the bus, he checked out the building next door without admitting to himself why he did so.  It was a squat brick building, much larger than his, at least four or even six units per floor, U-shaped with porches on the back; big enough that in the summer a real social life probably developed there, unlike in his building with its three individual, separate floors.  He vaguely watched for someone he might associate with the woman he'd seen-- well, half-seen-- but of course the odds of her coming out just that moment were not that great, even during the time that everyone was leaving for work, and in any case, he hadn't really seen her, he'd never recognize her again if he did see her. 

*  *  *

Some blonde actress was telling Leno about some movie that Burton would never see, or if he did catch it on cable a year from now, he'd never remember that she'd once told him and 30 million other people how wonderful the making of it had been.  He got up and went to the bathroom, pretending he wasn't going to see if there was anything more interesting happening on that other TV set with only one channel.

He gazed idly over at his louvered window.  The shade was lower this time; the show was letterboxed tonight.  But there was no show that he could see.  He could make out a portion of the bed, a sliver of the red wall, a fragment of the mask.  Quietly he stepped from the toilet and into his bathtub, and then peered more closely through the open spaces, trying to make out parts of the room.  Curious about the life being lived elsewhere in the city.  Suddenly conscious of what he was doing, he held his hand up to the window to see if enough light was reflected to make him ever so slightly visible from the other side.  He didn't think so.

He inspected the room for a minute or so, imagining life on the other side from the few visible clues.  Then a shadow fell across the room and he shrank back from the window.  He saw only legs, upper thigh, a peach colored T-shirt or perhaps a nightie above that.  Well, if that was all he could see, she couldn't see him, so he pressed his face against the screen again.  Now he saw that she was somewhat heavyset, thick yet firm thighs, and when she bent-- reaching up for something, maybe-- he saw a broad but pleasingly rounded behind, a little crescent moon of butt flesh visible on either side of the panties revealed as she stretched.  

Uh-oh, he thought.  Somehow looking at her ass from across the way forced him to think about what he was doing in a way that just glimpsing her thighs-- from the bathtub-- had not.  I've crossed some sort of line here.  This is beyond an accidental glimpse, he thought.

Or is it? he asked.  I'm in my own apartment, what I'm watching is visible to the outside world-- admittedly, not to very much of it, but still.  He quickly rationalized that what he was doing was, if not innocent, at least permissible.  If she didn't want to be visible, she could put down the shade.  It wasn't up to him.  Can't blame a guy for looking.

While he was thinking his way through this, the lights went off.  At first he thought the show was over, but quickly his eyes adjusted to the fact that the candle had been lit, casting a flickering orange glow over the room and throwing grotesquely elongated shadows from the mask.  She pulled back the sheets and lay down on the bed-- without pulling the sheets up.  Her head was out of view, but he had a complete view of her body.  She was big, but pleasingly curvaceous in her own way.  The satin peach nightgown sloped over statuesque breasts, two pyramids rising from the desert; her belly curved more gently, other curves like love handles occasionally showing themselves as she shifted around.  Her thighs were sturdy, thick, yet her legs were still long and shapely in their own way.  Her hands--

Her hands were starting to reach between her thighs.  Could this be true?  No way, things like that didn't happen-- she was.  There was no mistaking the fact, she was reaching around her belly and into her panties, lightly moving her hand up and down.  Then-- as she lubricated herself-- pushing a little deeper inside.  Now the rubbing picked up speed and Burton, barely conscious of what he was doing, took his hard cock out of his boxers and began to jerk himself.

Her pace continued to accelerate, her body contorted as she strained to jam fingers further and further inside herself.  Her ass ground into the bed, her legs pushed up and down as if she were being fucked, and a series of rhythmic moans, kept down but not down enough, came from her with each thrust.  Poor fat girl, can't find anyone to fuck her, was the thought that flashed through Burton's mind, immediately followed by a sense of how ridiculous that would have sounded coming from a single guy jerking off at his bathtub window.  Forgive me, he thought, as he watched her and dreamed of being the one between her big meaty thighs, bouncing off her bounteous belly, licking at those ample round breasts.

That did it and Burton shot all over the tiles on the wall.  Cum ran down into his soapdish.  Even after he had relieved himself he stood there, cock growing limp in his hands, as she continued to rapidly rub herself.  A cry, some more moans, subsiding slowly, and then she lay there, spent.  Burton's cum grew cold on his fingers but he couldn't break away from the sight of her, flushed, sweaty, pleasured.

Then she sat up, and again Burton shrank, fearful of discovery, from the window.  Yet even if his vision had been trimmed to just a sliver, he could see enough to know that she was coming around the bed, toward the window.  Oh God, she couldn't have seen-- of course not.  He saw her silhouetted on the blinds as she fiddled with the louvers.  His last vision as the shade came down was of her top being hiked above her panties, revealing the curve of the bottom of her belly, and below that her panties bunched up into the folds of her pussy, her fuzzy mound easy to make out even in the shadows.

*  *  *

Burton gave his car a long, loving wash on the street in front of his building the next Saturday morning; but if the woman from the apartment opposite his ever came out, he failed to spot her.  He developed a much higher frequency of urination during the next several nights watching TV, too, but he never saw her, in fact he never noticed her light coming on.

He was lying in bed one night, falling sleep, when he heard a kind of short, squeaking noise, repeated over and over.  At first he thought he had a mouse, but as sleep cleared from his mind he realized that the noise was actually too loud for that, loud at its point of origin but distant, muffled by things in between.  He got up to pee and as he walked down the hallway he realized the noise was growing louder.  And then he realized what the cause of the sound had to be, and he stopped his hand from switching on the light at the instant before he would have spoiled it.

He stepped into the tub gently, so as not to make a sound.  The louvers were shut and so he turned the knob slowly, patiently, until they rotated open.  Then he moved his face into position, having already seen the flicker of the candle on the frosted glass.

First he saw her ass, big and round, up in the air.  Then, her hanging breasts, bobbing back and forth; then, no mistaking it, someone was pounding her from behind, it took him a moment but he soon made out the dark shape of a man, holding onto her other haunch and slamming into her.  Burton felt a strange disappointment at the reality that she had a boyfriend.  Somewhere in his head there had been the funny idea that he might eventually meet her, get to know her.  It was absurd, but lots of absurd possibilities float in fantasies-- until they meet the reality of a boyfriend, present in the flesh.  

Yet there was something funny about the way she was reacting to the man fucking her from behind-- like her body was out of sync with the rhythm of his humping.  An odd thought came to him and he slid down to the far right of the window to get the best view of the opposite end of her room.  It almost looked like-- he couldn't see for sure, but the way her upper body and head were moving-- god, it had to be-- she was sucking somebody else while getting fucked from behind.  She actually was, she had to be, by her movements.  And that was why the noise was so different-- muffled-- from what it had been the other night.  She had one cock in her mouth, and another in her pussy.

And with that realization, his furious fisting of his cock ceased, and he spurted up onto his shirt.

*  *  *

He looked at the mailbox labels in the foyer.  A regular United Nations, 4A, Reilly and Pinkowski, 4B Nishiwara, 4C, Crews Shapiro Becker, 4D Thorsen.  Well, she looked a little blonde to be Nishiwara but any of the others could fit, he didn't know how the building was laid out.  And even if he did-- what did he plan to do with the information?  Hi, I watched you fucking the other night, I was wondering if you needed someone to serve refreshments?  Or lube?  

One apartment was for rent, the thought of moving in-- or at least using that as a pretext to get further into the building-- crossed his mind.  Then he remembered that the word for someone who'd do that was "stalker."  It was one thing to look out his own window, it was another to con your way in the other person's front door.

A couple of days passed and then one night as he passed the bathroom he saw the lights on across the way.  He flipped off his own lights and then gently stepped into the tub.  On the other side, he saw boxes stacked in the room-- and his heart sank.  

She was the one whose apartment was for rent.  She was the one moving out.  

He told himself he was silly to even be affected by something so trivial, but he watched TV in an even more than usually morose state of mind.  He wasn't even thinking about her when he went into the bathroom-- but then he saw something aqua blue laying on her bed.  He flipped off his light, then stood still for a moment.  No movement on the other side.  Again, he gingerly moved toward the tub, lowering one foot into it slowly, then the other.  By now he left his window opened to as far as the louvers turned, and he pressed his face toward the screen.

Good lord, it was.  It was a bright blue shiny dildo, left on the bed.  Was the woman insatiable?  Then, slowly, the thought occurred to him-- did she leave it for him to see?  Was it an announcement that there will be a show tonight?  Has she seen me here, beating my meat, night after night?   

He went back out and quickly turned off all his lights, front to back.  If she was waiting for a signal, that had to be it.  Then he got back into his tub and began absent-mindedly stroking himself.

A couple of minutes passed, then he saw her come into the bedroom, fully dressed.  She lit the candle, then went out again.  When she came back she was in a slinky black peignoir which didn't just call attention to her curves, it sent out an APB.  She lay down on the bed-- still with her face just out of range, dammit-- and started running her hands up and down her legs, stroking from her chubby little toes and feet, along her ankles, up sturdy calves and meaty thighs to her broad, round ass.  Then her hands went up to her tummy, grazing her nipples as they pushed against the fabric, then cupping her abundant breasts, smashing them together and releasing them to roll to each side.

She slipped her panties off and then picked up the dildo.  Burton could see the head rubbing against her, and he imagined it tickling her clit, burrowing its way in deeper as her lips began to spread open with moisture.  Now it was sliding up and down, glistening with the wetness it had found inside.  And then it was inside her, fucking her, like her lover had the other night, like Burton had imagined doing so many times as he whacked off alone in his bed.

She let out little cries as the blue toy plunged inside her, then she arched up onto her side, revealing her big round ass to him.  The dildo still inside her, she took her hand away, and then a finger, lubed, began to run along the crack of her ass, rubbing her little brown hole, working its way inside.  The finger went inside and her body racked with the delicious agony of so much sensation as Burton tried not to let himself cum so soon from the show she was giving him.  As she jerked and spasmed with pleasure, her face came into view at last, though upside down.  Her thighs seemed to seize around the dildo with a series of shudders as her finger plumbed her ass and she looked at him, right at him, there could be no doubt about that, and moaned for him to fuck her, fuck her, fuck her.

That was it for him and he came violently, visibly, as she watched him.  When he had ceased the spasms of his orgasm, she-- never unlocking her eyes from his-- rubbed herself furiously until she too jerked and racked with the powerful sensations.  Then, still keeping her eyes on his, she lifted her finger from her pussy to her mouth, and licked her juices off her fingers.  

When she had finished, she looked at him and nodded.  He didn't know what she meant.  She reached down into her wet snatch again and pulled up another wet hand, smeared with her juices, and put it to her mouth, then nodded to him again.  She wanted him to... she looked at him to say, now or never.  He lifted his hand, still covered with strings of cum, and put it to his mouth.  She nodded.  He stuck his tongue out, and licked between his fingers, tasting his own cum.  She gripped her pussy with one hand, and closed her eyes, losing herself in her private reverie.

Burton, confused, waited for her eyes to open again, hoped against hope for an invitation to at last come over, cross the invisible barrier between the two apartments, between two people having all but sex together.  But her eyes didn't open again that night, and at last he gave up, and went to bed.

*  *  *

The day after next he had to go out of town on business; and when he returned at the end of the weekend, her apartment was empty, in fact the red walls were being painted over for the next tenant.

He moped around for a few days, he checked from his bathroom to see if he could see the new tenants-- the shade was pulled down completely, and never budged from that position.  His life settled back into gray uneventfulness.  He watched Leno, frequently without bothering to get up to pee.

Two weeks passed and then a purple envelope arrived in the mail, addressed with an unmistakably feminine hand.  He opened it and it said: 

YOU ARE INVITED TO A HOUSEWARMING
FOR ANDIE THORSEN

He didn't recognize the name at first.  Then it hit him.  My god, it's her.  It has to be her, who else do I know that's moved?  His knees nearly gave out from under him.

*  *  *

It was a more modern twelve-story building, closer to downtown.  The doorman buzzed him in and he rode to the tenth floor.  And there, as he stepped off, flowers in his hands, was... her.

She greeted him as if they had never had any interaction of any kind before-- like a blind date.  It was his first chance to see her, well, normally.  She was round and juicy like a piece of candy, buxom breasts, curvaceous hips, strong legs.  Her round, chubby-cheeked face was cheerful and sweet, almost innocent, blonde hair with a flip at the end making her girlish, bright blue eyes and voluptuous lips smiling at him.  She wasn't young, exactly, 40 or at most a couple of years shy of it, but the chubbiness meant she didn't have the drawn and desperate look of so many women he met.  She seemed open, cheerful, like a well-loved grade school teacher.

She welcomed him inside.  The place was empty-- not of furniture, of other guests.  Who else is coming, he asked warily.

I hope we're both coming, she said, and she put her arms around his neck and pulled him to her.

They kissed, hotly and enthusiastically, tongues probing each others' mouths.  He ran his hands up and down her big round ass, squeezing and cherishing the ample flesh he had glimpsed and dreamt of.  She unbuttoned his shirt, he pulled the straps of her dress down, he took her heavy breasts in his hands and sucked on them, squeezed his face between them.  Yet even as he lost himself in the reality of what he had imagined so many times, he couldn't help but wonder-- why?  Why does she want me?  Is it sex, or romance, or what?

Clothes hit the floor, she ran off in the nude, capriciously, into the bedroom.  He followed, kicking his pants off of his legs, a sheepish grin breaking out on his face.  He was here and she was ready and that was all he cared at this point.  There were candles all over the room, filling it with an orange glow; she was lying back on the pillows, one leg bent, the other stretched out, a thatch of fur visible in between.  She clearly knew what she wanted first.  He dove in, burying his face against her soft belly, then working his way down until that first metallic taste of her pussy, salty and sweaty as he licked up the slick rubbery flesh, forced his tongue inside her and his nose against her, and her ample ass wriggled with excitement.  

He licked her for a while and then suddenly she was up again, pushing him over; she straddled him, her big ass in his face while her warm mouth enveloped the head of his cock.  She pulled his legs back, then licked his balls and wet a finger to tickle his ass.  All he could do was hold onto the big ass in his face, embrace it, hang on to it for dear life as her finger went inside him.

He was hers, she could do anything to him now, he was so happy to be here with her.  As she fucked his ass with her fingers, his head rolled to one side and he saw that the candles cast shadows of their writhing bodies against the wall, her round body and his prone figure outlined on the wall.  His head turned the other way-- and for the first time his eyes adjusted to the candles and he realized that the drapes were open, wide open.  The wall was nearly all window, and beyond it he could see three or four large apartment buildings, 30 stories tall, facing her building.  And here and there on a balcony or at a large picture window, he could make out the silhouettes of others, some with binoculars, others with telescopes or zoom lenses, gazing out of their apartments at... tonight's show.