The bane of my old studio apartment was the bathroom. Tiny, almost no light, decrepit fixtures that brought to mind third world prisons, someplace Brad Davis would vomit after being tortured by sadistic Turkish jailers. The one smallish casement window was odd, it swung out on a rusty vertical hinge, a creepy little door, and its panes had long ago been painted over. This was probably just as well since it opened onto an indentation in the side of the building, a narrow vertical shaft that looked down eight floors, a mere ten feet from the corresponding bathroom window in the apartment across the hall. So even if the windows were usable the lack of bathroom privacy would necessitate blinds or curtains. But still, it was gloomy. My place had several other microbanes, for instance my bed, in which I suspect the previous tenant had died, but the bathroom was The Bane.

One summer I got a new neighbor in that apartment across the hall, a comely lad who replaced the sullen girl with the hook nose. From the first time I saw him I was compelled to learn everything I could about him, furtively, and to orchestrate sham "accidental" meetings in the hallway, share elevators, whatever I could manage. From misdelivered mail I learned his name, Craig, and that he worked at Urban Outfitters. Of course he did. How could he not? Either there or the Body Shop or Abercrombie and Fitch, it had to be. I was drawn to him so strongly it was ridiculous, shameful and exhilarating and a little damp. I'd never spoken to him except to say hello, exchange mumbled banalities by the mailboxes, that sort of thing. But every time I got near him I thought I was having a coronary, there was a kind of surging in the bloodstream, screaming capillaries. This made me unable to utilize my one weapon, a kind of chatty charm and competence with ingratiating gestures. I was useless, smitten and clumsy and just basically a sweating dork trying to slip stolen mail back into the box of the rightful owner.

One day after showering I opened my bathroom window to let steam escape, and there he was, in his bathroom, brushing his teeth in front of the mirror, more naked than a man of his criminal pulchritude has a right to be, the nakedest person I'd ever seen, perhaps the nakedest person who ever lived. I pulled my window partially closed so he'd be less likely to catch me staring, and stare I did. I was born staring and I'll die staring. I was treated to a full run-through of urban homosexual self-pampering, a hygienic ordeal of impressive ritualistic thoroughness. At one point he glanced right in my direction. It was too dangerous, but the way the window opened, it was all or nothing if I wanted to see. I closed the window to regroup. Think, I told myself, what would Parker Stevenson do? What did that even mean?

After giving the matter some thought, naturally I did what any sane person would do. I scratched a small peephole in the paint on the window, and several times a day, when I went into the bathroom, I turned off the light and peeked out. Sometimes he was there, and sometimes he was naked, and this went on for several months, until he moved out. This was a lot of peeping. I was completely, utterly pathetic, but I regret nothing. It's important to take advantage of life's little pleasures, no matter how degrading they might be. A life of modest thrills, that's the life for me. Modest thrills and moist towelettes.