An erotic story of obsessive voyeurism
"Phoebus Apollo: A Goldfish Story" erotica by Benjamin Smith
The first morning I really sat and watched him it was a Tuesday. I know that because Tuesday is trash day for our neighborhood. Unlike me, he leaves gathering up his trash for the morning of pickup instead of doing it the night before. My alarm went off at 6 AM and I went in to start the coffee maker, and as I went about selecting a bit of fruit from the bowl on my kitchen table I looked out the window. It was just a casual glance, and the human eye is attracted to movement.
He immediately caught my attention. He was moving through the apartment, clad in only a tight pair of black undershorts. From the bathroom he emerged carrying a little white trash canister under his arm which he dumped into the larger receptacle in his kitchen. He left the bathroom canister on the kitchen counter and then moved on to the waste basket under his computer desk.
Several things ran through my head as I watched this silent ballet: First, I was running low on pears, my favorite morning fruit. Second, I, as a woman, am much smarter than men, I having displayed foresight this male apparently lacked in regards to trash day. And finally, I desperately needed to see more of this man in his boxers.
To describe my neighbor physically is a blasphemy. It is like trying to relate the artistry of the Sistine Chapel or the architectural splendor of Versailles. Without use of visual aides it is empty words. He is not tall, average height bordering on the short. I’d place him at about five foot nine inches. His hair is cropped close to his head in a way that makes me think he was once in the armed forces. This is a suspicion reinforced by the organization of his apartment, his personal habits, and his physique.
His physique. Were there ever such abs sculpted for the god Apollo?
From that first morning, when finally I watched him jump into a pair of blue jeans and dash out his door down to the street level just in time to catch the trash men before they pulled away from the curb, I was smitten with this man’s body. Lustful and lascivious, I felt my palms become warm with the idea of kneading the sinew that stretched tightly over his chest, ribs, stomach, and ass.
“What,” I wondered as I showered that morning, smelling the aroma of my coffee brewing, “would it be like to have that body... on top of mine?”
Ours was a healthy love affair. We were up together at ten minutes to six on weekdays. I would do stretches while looking out the window at him doing a million and a half flawless pushups. By the time I pulled out my Pilates ball, he’d be on to crunches, only a million of those.
His shower would come next. He’d leave the door slightly ajar and I could usually see the steam billowing as I moved into my kitchenette to put two slices of toast in the slots of my GE four-slotter. I would pour my first cup of coffee and lean my head against the window, feeling the cool glass against my face. I waited like a cat eyeing a goldfish in its bowl. “Come closer to the surface,” I would say with a purr, hearing my toast pop behind me.
The door opened and he was wearing a towel, he rubbed a smaller towel through his hair in that rapid shaggy-dog way men have of drying their hair. He moved through the living room, water dripping over his chest, running in little rivulets down his calves over his ankles. I imagined his feet made wet slapping noises on the kitchen tile as he walked to the refrigerator for his protein drink. Every once in a while he would eat a bit of exotic fruit; I imagined he picked it up earlier in the week at some grocers he passes on his way home from work.
He likes papaya, mangos, dates... the Muscle Milk is the main course, however, chugged without ceremony, washed down with a glass of water from the tap. I would wait for the towel to slip. It never did. I imagined that he knew in his subconscious that I watched from my perch one floor above and across the street; and he kept his hand clasped firmly to the hem of the towel as a way of defying my voyeuristic domination.
“You may have a good seat,” his hand on the towel seemed to say. “But I am still the show.”
“Too true, Phoebus. You bastard, how I love you.”
The shake container would go into the bin, the water glass rinsed and put back on the counter beside the sink. He would stride from kitchen, through living room, past bathroom and broom cupboard, into his bedroom, where the sheets and pillows would be torn off the bed and then he’d enter the walk-in closet only to emerge seconds later in his tight black shorts.
In the six months of my watching, I have never seen him in boxers of any other color but black. He wears matching black socks during the week, but changes to whites on weekends when he wears his sneakers.
Now in his domestic uniform, he would go about domestic chores. The sheets he had ripped from the bed are now lovingly returned in order. Mattress cover, bedspread, bottom sheet, fleece, comforter—the corners squared, the surface smoothed, the pillows arranged properly “just so” all of it taking less than five minutes with great ease and facility.
From Monday through Friday the routine varied little. After making up the bed, he’d return to the closet to fetch the day’s attire. He prefers grey suits or black. His shirts he has delivered from the cleaners every Saturday afternoon after sending them out on Friday. My favorite was a powder blue which he invariably wore with a dark grey, three-piece suit, black lace-up shoes, and a smart dark blue or lush purple tie. The color and cuffs of the shirt were stark white in contrast making him look like someone very important indeed.
He packed up his lap-top on a shoulder bag that was very slim and smart, just like him. He grabbed keys and wallet from a table by the door and would leave in time to catch the bus at the corner at just a little past 7 AM.
In reading over my little confession I realize I must sound like some awful stalker. I assure you it is not so. I did not sit watching him every morning, a strand of drool dangling from the side of my mouth, my fingers a blur between my legs. It was only through simple casual glances out the window during my own morning routine that I had come to know this man’s habits so well. I had ample time to observe him, while munching my toast or slicing my morning pear into eighths. I like to feel unrushed in the mornings and have no qualms about an unmade bed. My outfits for work are laid out the evening before just after I switch off the late show and before I brush my teeth.
His weekday activities were much to me like the radio or television set may be in your home. Accompaniment, background noise, something to break up the monotony of waiting for the water to boil on the stove and then for the eggs to cook properly so they aren’t runny when you crack them open. He was something to focus my gaze on as I took my first sip of morning Sumatra dark roast. I would time my morning work outs to his. When he finished with pushups I’d finish my squats and lunges. When he finished his crunches, it’d be time for me to plug in my Pilates DVD.
Of course, I will not say that my mind didn’t wander occasionally to him during the day. Often I fantasized about being in that shower with him in the morning, feeling the heat and steam around the two of us as he ran his fingers up the back of one of my thighs, the moisture all around sweetly suffocating. I would become an orchid sometimes in this fantasy of mine, in a greenhouse with the firm hands of the diligent gardener tending to my petals, murmuring sweet things as I was allowed my drink of cool water. The gardener’s hands on the orchid’s fleshy petals would be his hands on my flesh. Though I had never heard his voice, the gardener’s sweet whispers were perfection to my ear and caused pollen to drip from the inner folds of my flower.
Saturday mornings I became truly sick with need to simply sit and watch.
He never set his alarm on Saturdays, but he didn’t sleep in by much either. I used to sleep in on weekends until about 8 AM, before one morning I woke up a little earlier to discover what I’d been missing out on.
I had finished a bottle of wine the night before, a celebration of major sale at the gallery where I work.
I awoke, naked in my bed, with dryness on my tongue and a dull ache in my head. I’d trudged to the bathroom in the half-light of morning, rubbing my temples as I took the little cap from the top of my mouth-rinse, filling it with some cold water from the tap. I studied my reflection a bit, pinching the bridge of my noise only slightly to try and relieve some of the tension at the front of my head. I turned in the darkened bathroom, and made to go back to bed. It was just a casual glance, and the human eye is attracted to movement.
He lay on his back in bed, the sheets thrown slightly to one side so that only one of his legs remained covered below the knee. One of his strong arms was up under his head, a natural pillow angling his head forward so he could look down at his other hand moving up and over the shaft of his turgid cock.
I craned my neck, looking at this beautiful scene before me unfolding in splendor. Long strokes, not at all fast, his shaft lengthening, curving upward toward his abdomen, stiffening, the large rounded head gaining color as blood flowed into it. His chest moving up and down slowly as his eyes closed in a silent exhalation that I imagined to carry a moan of pleasure. It all made me very aware of my own nudity in the morning.
“If he opens his eyes he will see me,” I thought. At first I made as if to back away from the window, but instead I stood my ground. My hand having moved to cover my breasts stopped in mid-motion to instead rest on my stomach just above my navel. “Look at me,” I said.
His strokes became shorter, more rapid. His chest and stomach moved up and down with quick inhalations and exhalations. I let the hand at my navel drift down further to brush against the top of my opening just as he let go of his prick. From it shot a stream of cum, spattering his chest and stomach as his face morphed into an expression that was part ecstasy and part animal rage. The power of it, I collapsed to the floor, folding my legs and leaning forward on my hands to watch him lay there, still for minutes afterward, the pools of his ejaculate forming in the little divots and dimples of his perfectly toned flesh. I imagined being there beside him in the bed, lapping at his cum as though I were a cat and his navel were a little saucer into which rich cream had been poured just for me.
Saturdays became a regular event with me. My alarm would go off at 6 AM just as if it were a sixth day in the work week. Forgoing clothes I would take a chair from the corner of my bedroom and position it beside the window so that I was neither hidden from view nor on display. I would watch him sleeping and then stirring slightly from sleep, imagining the faint strains of some unwritten concerto beginning to break the silence of my apartment, as his hand would move under the covers and rest where it was wont to rest. And then with a mighty clash of an imaginary cymbal, the covers would be kicked aside and I would watch as for five to ten minutes, a once a week ritual conducted with almost military precision, my Phoebus would bring himself off. He caressed himself unaware of my watching him, unaware of my wanting him, unaware of my matching him stroke for stroke and pace for pace until the end that would leave us both spent in our respective bedrooms separated by the gulf between our two buildings.
When the concert ended he would lie and I would lie watching him from my chair, my legs still slightly parted, my hand resting against my inner-thigh, the moisture on my finger tips drying until it was time for one or the other of us to move and shatter the moment into a million pieces. At first I lacked the courage to be the first to move. But in time I found the strength. He would strip the bed afterward and packing the bedclothes into a basket along with a few odds and ends. Then he would dress in his black boxers, white socks, blue jeans, white tennis shoes with white laces, and an Annapolis tee shirt or hoodie supporting my military suspicions with official evidence.
After laundry, perhaps a book, or a sports talk show on his large flat screen television. Often he would go out for the afternoon, leaving me in my own apartment with my own dishes or laundry or heartache to manage.
Six months, four of them spent in constant anticipation of Saturday morning, I could not help but see parallels with my childhood and the palpable want to fast-forward through the week to get to time when I was allowed my treat. At 29 I look forward to spying on an Olympian masturbating, my lips wrapping around a bit of peeled orange or banana. It is the same as when I was seven, when I would await a morning with My Little Pony while munching Alphabets cereal by the sugary handful.
This particular Saturday was like the ones preceding it. My alarm buzzed and I hit the off button, rolling over and out of bed to get the chair, a Pavlovian experiment personified, by my naked, salivating anticipation. I had already positioned the chair and sat before I realized that he was not in place, prepared, ready for our session. Insult added to injury, his bed was made, unslept in.
It was not anger that overtook me in that moment, or sadness, or fear even. To feel those things would have meant I was obsessed with a man whom I’d never met, or spoken to, and I most definitely was not in a mood to find myself obsessed. Instead, I rose from the chair with poise, and moved it back to its place in the distant corner.
I glanced once more to the vacant alter of my Phoebus Apollo. I had not watched him the night before, I’d spent the evening at a gallery function—a show opening for a ceramic artist. When I’d come home his lights were out and I assumed I’d miss his evening strip-down and sack-out.
I turned on the bathroom light and in turn the water jets in the shower so that they would heat up properly. As I sat on the commode, I felt very dirty indeed. I had come to view this man’s personal time as my own entertainment. I felt cheated and hurt and I had no right to feel cheated or hurt. I finished at the commode and stepped into the stream of the shower, drawing the curtain around me, letting the hot stream envelop me, and allowed the flow of the droplets to run like a hundred little fingers down my body. I imagined my gardener watering my orchid petals but could not bring myself off with this fantasy alone.
I shut off the water and left the bathroom, resolved to do something drastic—still dripping, I crossed to the nightstand by my bed. Taking my cellular from its charger I went to stand at the window, naked, looking down to street-level to confirm the number on the edge of the building. I dialed information.
“What city please?”
“New York, New York.”
“Hold.”
I terminated the call as I saw the door to his apartment open and the lights come on. I pressed my palms to the glass in elation. He was home. He was alone. He had his computer bag under his arm and a hang-dog look on his face. My worst fear—that he had been stolen away to another location for some other woman to enjoy—is debunked.
“All-nighter, honey?” I cooed, feeling my eyebrows knit in pity for my Phoebus.
He flung the computer case onto the couch and walked into the kitchen—frustration, agitation, all these things I longed to sooth away from his body as I watched him walk, his shoulders slightly slumped, into his kitchen. I am trapped behind glass looking in at his life, relishing every action as though it is pornographic.
He took a beer out of the fridge and opened it, tossing the cap on the counter, disregarding his usual neatness, putting his head back and draining the bottle quickly. He finished and then angrily tossed the bottle in the bin under the sink. I imagined the sound of glass breaking. He ran a hand over his face and down the back of his head.
I became suddenly aware of being exposed, naked, in plain view. I backed away from the window, looking around at all the other windows in the face of his building, hoping no one had seen me. I sighed in relief and considered moving to the linen cupboard to get a towel to cover myself, but his rapid movement toward the bedroom stopped me. He was removing his tie, his jacket, his shirt, letting them fall on the floor. In an instant I imagine I am there, in his apartment, lying naked on his bed, watching him charge through the rooms and down the little corridor toward my sex, his clothes falling away from his cut body until he comes into my arms.
I parted my legs, and—standing, feeling the cold and damp on my body—I began to work on myself with my fingers, my head burning with images of my Phoebus fucking me hard, releasing his frustrations with his firm hands clenching my breasts, his lips sucking hard at my neck, my shoulders, my nipples, my mound. Opening my eyes, I saw him falling into the bed, lying on top of the sheets, his naked body on display as from a distance I watched him lapse into sleep as I let out a soft sigh as my climax erupted and then subsided in the silence of my bedroom.
Panting—I stood quite still as my fingers withdrew from my sex and I kept my gaze focused on the sleeping man across the way.
As the moisture between my legs slowly dried along with the rest of my naked flesh, I found myself stepping closer to the window, looking down at my sleeping Phoebus—planning something.
Giving in to my obsession.
Originally published March 2010