Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Naked and Exposed

I think the neighbor saw me naked. It was just an unintentional flash as I walked past the window which, for some inexplicable reason, had both the shade and blinds drawn up. Fortunately, I think he just saw the top half of me which I’m more comfortable and confident about than my bottom half, but still, I’m a little embarrassed and concerned that we might develop a reputation as the weirdo, nudist flesh-flaunting neighbors.

Usually, the window has horizontal blinds that we leave down even during the day, although we open the louvers to let in some daylight. At night, we close the louvers and also pull down a hefty, opaque shade that totally blocks the light when the morning sun hits the window, allowing me to sleep like a baby, at least past a few snooze alarms.

So why in the world did I have both of them drawn up? And why in the world did I decide just at that moment that I needed to get something from the end table? And why did I think, ‘Hey, I’m going for it because what are the chances that, just as I walk past the window, the neighbor will be outside, which he rarely is, and look up?’” But I did, and he did, and in one mortified moment, I realized that he had probably seen me flashing my chubby, white self, or as I prefer to say, my ample assets of a certain ripened vintage.

As soon as I realized what had happened, I did a drop and roll on the bed to get to the other side of the room, ducked and did a guerilla warfare-style crawl out of eyesight. Still, I held out hope that maybe the light was such that, from the outside, I would just look like a vague, amorphous shadow. Intense light can be merciless, but diffuse or backlit light can be kind, and maybe the time of day and year and the quality and direction of the light would all coalesce to somewhat conceal me and protect me from myself, or—best case scenario—project an enhanced version of myself as a shapely and alluring but sufficiently modest silhouette, you know, like those on trucker’s tire flaps.

Over breakfast the next day, I told Vince what had happened, especially since I needed his help to test my hypothesis. But maybe in the back of my mind I was also thinking that I needed to tell Vince to alert him just in case my neighbor became so inflamed with lust that he would venture to commit a crime of passion like Scripture’s usually devout King David who impregnated Bathsheba and connived to have her husband Urriah killed after he saw her bathing on the roof. Ha, like that would happen! More likely, he could report me to the police for public, or at least quasi-public, indecency.

“I want to do a test,” I told Vince, “I’m going to go outside and stand at approximately the same angle as the neighbor and I want you to stand in the window and I’ll look up and see if I can see anything.” He agreed.

Later that morning, at about the same time of day as “the sighting,” I looked up at the window. Vince stood there shirtless and plain as day. He pranced around a little and did a Gypsy Rose Lee striptease-style chest shimmy that made me laugh, but it blew my hypothesis to smithereens because I could almost count the hairs on his chest—and he’s not even a gnarly, hairy guy.

If it’s true what Blanche DuBois said in A Streetcar Named Desire, then I’m in a heap of trouble. “After all,” she said, “a woman’s charm is 50 percent illusion.” So now, when it comes to my neighbor, I guess that whatever mysterious charms I once possessed are neither mysterious nor charming, but they just are what they are.

But I’m just thankful for God’s gift of a body that can enjoy so many things.

So dear neighbor, I apologize and, someday soon, I may actually be able to look you in the eye again, as long as you’re not looking back lasciviously because that would be just “Ewwww.”