“I’m coming in,” she texted.
I hurried to the backyard, climbed the waist-high wall separating my apartment and hers. There was little effort for me to do this for my body almost responded immediately: she’d text that she’s coming in, I’d climb the wall, jump down to the back of her apartment, search for that stool she used when she does her laundry, step on the stool and finally pry on the window.
As I placed the stool on a specific spot just beneath the window, I could hear her shower, pouring like rain on a silent evening. The scent of rust reeked from the thin, steel bars barring the window. The lights inside made everything crystal clear. Especially since the evening was on its early hours.
She turned down the shower and massaged shampoo on her shoulder-length hair, the black strands merging with milky-white suds which smelled like flowers. White saps stained her shoulders, her breasts—those swells on her chest healthily bouncing as she moves about. With a loofa, she scrubbed her neck, her body, her armpits, and scrubbed more on that hairy pit between her legs which looked like an ominous creature, ready to devour anything that comes to it. Right there and then, I wanted to pull down my shorts and release everything, shooting all this build-up of desire on the concrete wall separating us right now like I did so the first time she asked me to sneak out of my apartment and watch her, but I suppressed the urge, biting my lip which almost bled.
She turned the shower back on, and glimpsed at me through the window. Our line of vision, blocked by a metal screen and steel bars, weren’t foggy obstacles for me to not know that our eyes met for a few seconds. She winked at me. My hard-on pressed close on the concrete wall. She knew that this was my favorite part of her show: when she rinses away the soap, where her hands would smoothly glide across her skin, the water and her thin fingers sweeping away the white, scented soap she’d been spreading all over her body. The pearl-white sheen on her hair dripped from the ends of the black strands, as if darkness had won over the light, until they’ve dispersed completely, mixing with the water. Blood rushed through my head, filling me with warmth, and my eyes avoided blinking, fearing that I might miss something, while at the same time trying to be eidetic about it all, just as I did so in the past. I wanted to rush in through her front door, and make my way to her bathroom and fuck her right there, with soap residues clinging on her skin to make things lubricated, and the lingering scent of freshly-rinsed shampoo clutching still on the strands of her hair that would probably whip back and forth as I enter her with the agility and strength of a wild man.
Once more, she glimpsed at the window, at me, and showed me something she was clasping on her hand. Focusing on it, I saw that it was a thin bar of soap. She flashed her teeth, her grin full of desire. My lips nearly let out a drool as she put the soap between her legs, and she started moaning. She faced the window and did that with one hand, while her other hand massaged her breast, her fingers wrapping on it too hard that I could make out a reddish hue starting to coat the skin, her eyes were closed and her face was a painting of all the lust in the world. She did this for a few minutes, with instances wherein her moans increasing in pitch. My erection wanted to rip apart my underwear and shorts, hell, I was so hard I think my penis could drill a hole through the wall and fuck her right there and then.
When she was done, she smiled, and then went out of the bathroom without wrapping a towel on herself. The sways of her hips made her booty shake, that when you turn your head sideways, they were like closed, silent lips trying to say, “Come, get me now!”
I went back to my apartment. I unlocked the door with my key. I always lock the door whenever I step out—to attend my classes at the university, to buy something at the market, or even when I’d just smoke at some street-corner. Not that I couldn’t smoke inside my apartment, but sometimes I yearn for taking walks while looking at people and nature of the world outside. I sat on the sofa, switched on the TV, surfed a few channels, but I couldn’t remove the image of her while in her shower. My hard-on hasn’t calmed down. It wants release.
How many times have I watched her? I couldn’t remember anymore.
Hey, could you do me a favor? was the question she asked through a text message. The same question that sparked it all. She asked me to come to her apartment and help her assemble the new plastic bookshelf she had bought. I told her it was all right, as long as there was an instructional manual of sorts, then there was no problem. When I knocked on her front door and she asked me to come in, I was surprised to find her standing in the middle of the room, completely nude.
“What—?” was all that I managed to mutter.
“I’m taking a shower,” she said. “Watch me.” And there, she explained how I would do so. Since then, every time she’d text, I’d climb the wall, step on the stool, and watch her. I’ve ceased counting these favors. I couldn’t understand completely why she wanted me to do such a thing, and honestly, I less cared for it was a delight to both my mind and my dick. Every time I would watch, I wanted to put her on the sack. I’d get some rope or duct tape, join her arms together and stick them on the headboard of my bed, spread open her legs and tie them on the ends of the bed, and I’d do all sort of things with her. I’d bite her lips until it bled and pinch her nipples until they’re swollen and hard. I’d do it with her real good while listening to the cacophony of her moans and gasps, and shoot inside her. I’m tired of wasting my precious release on cotton bed sheets or dirty concrete walls. These thoughts remained in my head, of course, for not once, even when she goes to my apartment to talk about my assessment of the show, did I ever manage to do it with her.
And I guess it was time that I ask her. I know she wouldn’t refuse. Some girls just wait for the guys to pop the question. I mean, if she doesn’t want it, then why would she ask me over and over to watch her?
“Coming over?” I texted her, excitedly. While waiting for her reply, I stared for a while on the TV screen where a drama series, about some girl who fell in love with a guy she used to hate, was playing. Tonight was the confrontation scene: the guy was asking the girl about her feelings towards him.
There was a knock on the door. I unlocked it and there she was, wearing a sleeveless tee matched with shorts which revealed 90% of her legs, the remaining ten percent left in the imagination of whoever’s looking. I let her in and locked the door behind her. As she passed me to come in, I hurriedly grabbed her arm and pinned her against the door. Her soft breasts touched my chest. “What are you doing?” she asked.
I snuffed the scent of shampoo from her hair as I put my lips close to her ear. “This,” I whispered, as I dug a hand underneath her sleeveless tee and bra, where my index finger found her nipple.
“What the fuck—?” she exclaimed, struggling from my binds. She pushed away and I backed.
“Come on!” I replied. “I know you want me to!”
“Duh, I never said anything like that,” she said, looking at me with irritated eyes. “I just want you to watch me. That’s all. God, I would’ve kicked you on the nuts if you weren’t any use to me.”
“Just what the hell is that?” I asked.
“What?”
“You’re using me for what?”
She didn’t answer. We just eyed each other for a few seconds, her eyes still spelling something between irritation and anger.
I let out a sigh. “I’m sorry. I just thought that maybe it meant something.”
She gave a laugh. “It didn’t mean a thing, come on, don’t be such a baby.” She settled on the sofa and crossed her legs. The white hue of her legs shone beneath the fluorescent light. “And besides, I have other people for that.”
“One for watching, and another for fucking?” I said.
“Yes,” she replied, with the coolness a person telling you to wipe off dirt from your nose. “Say, do you have a cigarette?”
I dug through my pocket and took out a half-empty pack of Marlboro Lights. She took one and lit it with my lighter. I took an ashtray from the kitchen and we smoked. None of us spoke for a while.
We first met at the nearby 7-eleven store. I ran out of cigarettes and coffee, the substances that I couldn’t miss while completing my research paper which was a requirement on a major subject. Trouble was, deadline was fast approaching and it was after midnight.
Only the two of us were in the store. The other people were the chubby girl handling the cash register, and the pot-bellied security guard outside the store. When I arrived, she was having an argument with the chubby girl. From what I had heard, she was a victim of a pick-pocket, some ominous guy wearing a hooded jacket who was right behind her as she paid for the stuff she bought, took her wallet and cellphone. What drove her to argue with the chubby girl was when the latter could not show her any video feed of the hooded guy. Her argument went like this: first, every establishment was obliged to put CCTV cameras not only for the security of the store, but also of every customer walking in and out of the establishment; second, that the pick-pocket found the store very vulnerable because of his knowledge that the store was not secured with a CCTV camera, and found it easy to commit such a petty crime; and lastly, that the security guard outside wasn’t too vigilant, wasn’t fulfilling his duty in fact, because all he did was flirt with the young woman selling balut outside.
The chubby girl at the cashier repeatedly apologized, and also argued that there was nothing she, or the management, could do. Really, what could they have done? Run after the hooded guy? It was like that sign one usually sees in some establishments: Please don’t leave your things unattended. The management will not be responsible for any losses.
I stepped in line behind her, cleared my throat. She gave me one look, and then smiled, a forced one, as if to say “Hey, sorry, I’ve just lost my wallet and my phone, so feel some sympathy and stay in line.”
“How am I supposed to pay for this now?” she said to the cashier. I eyed the stuff she was going to buy: some sanitary napkins of a particular brand, a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of ketchup, and some chips.
I cleared my throat again. She looked at me, as if disturbed by my throat-clearing. “Um,” she muttered. “Hi.”
I smiled. “Troubled?”
She gave a gentle laugh. “Yeah. You know how it is these days.”
I nodded in agreement.
“I’m sorry if I have to ask, but, do you mind lending me money to pay for all this?” she asked. “I’ll pay you back, I promise.”
I checked my wallet. I didn’t have much, but I agreed. The total price of the goods went close to two hundred pesos. She told me she’d pay me back when we return to her apartment which was just a few streets away. To my surprise, of course I didn’t know back then, she was living on the street right behind my apartment. She too was surprised when I told her about this, although now I know better that there was something more to her reaction upon knowing that our apartments were almost adjacent, at least vertically, separated only by a waist-high concrete wall.
She invited me in, paid half of what she owed me, all the while telling me that she’d pay the other half some other day, and she even asked for my contact number so that, whenever she manages to buy a new mobile phone, I’d be assured she won’t run away. But of course, I told her I knew that she wouldn’t go anywhere, especially now that I know where she lives. Plus, I’m not the type who’d run after what—fifty, sixty pesos?
She asked me to stay for a while and offered me a beer, which I hesitated to drink considering I have some stuff to do. I took slow sips, not intending to finish off the whole bottle. We drank while we sat on her couch.
“Damn 7-eleven,” she said, lighting a stick of Marlboro.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t like CCTV cameras,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Well, when I’m shopping, and someone’s watching, I feel like they’re spying on the things you’re gonna buy.”
Her eyebrows narrowed. “You’re weird.”
I let out a laugh. “No, what I mean is, I know it’s for security and all, but what the hell, I feel like I’m trapped in that frame, you know? Say, you’re a fat man buying some of those carb-burning drinks, and they’d start thinking that you’re some slim-body-wannabe, when in fact you’re just after the taste of the drink, something like that.”
“You’re point being?”
“My point is,” I sipped some beer. The taste stabbed my tongue. “What does a CCTV camera see? Does it see the real you? Take that pick-pocket guy at the store who took your phone. Of course it’s bad. Stealing’s bad. But what if he took it to feed his family or something?”
“Wow, what d’you do for a living? You’re like one of those guys from those self-help books,” she said and then laughed.
“Just explaining,” I replied. Again, I took a sip of beer, my last. I placed the half-empty bottle on a glass table in her living room. Silence sat with us for a while, and when I looked at her, she was like thinking about something, my words, or about some other thing.
“But you know, for security purposes, CCTV’s the best. Without your, um, philosophical shit,” she said.
I just smiled, but I didn’t say anything. I lit a cigarette.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m in a movie, you know,” she suddenly added. “A long-running movie and I’m being watched by some audience, somewhere. And of course, I have to perform well.”
“How?”
“By doing the things I want.”
“I wonder what kind of things you want,” I said, followed by a chuckle. Back then, I was joking.
“Oh, you don’t have any idea,” she replied. She let out a straight stream of smoke, looked at me and then laughed.
Of course, I would know in a much later date just what she was talking about.
“It really turns me on,” she told me. If it was the beer talking, or some other self she’s projecting every time she is talking to me, I have no idea. Her eyes were bloodshot, while I was just listening, the images of the early hours of evening shuffling inside my head like a poorly done pornographic montage, except in these images, she was alone. There was just me watching her outside the frame.
“It’s the only way I’d get wet, the only way I can get someone to do it with me,” she continued.
“Yet you don’t want to do it with me,” I managed to say, putting insecurity in my voice, my own sort of way of desperately begging.
“You don’t understand. It turns me on when I know someone’s there. That’s all I need you for.”
“I need release too, you know,” I said. “Why can’t you let me?”
She eyed me, and I stared at her as well, trying to make my eyes talk and her eyes to perceive them.
“Do you really want to know why?” she said.
“Been listening to you talk all night,” I said. I stood and took a bottle of beer for me, and another for her. She drinks like a fish. I wonder, if ever I’d get lucky tonight and somehow convince her to do it with me, would she swallow when I release it on her mouth? Or should I shoot inside?
I sipped from my beer, its frigid touch on my tongue sent slight shivers throughout my body, a surge of anticipation that the images inside my head would soon come to the fore.
At some point there, as her eyes glistened like wondrous gems beneath the artificial light, the perspiring beer bottle on her hand began dripping its condensed essence, I knew something was terribly wrong: she bent her head forward, placed the beer on the table, and placed a palm immediately over her eyes—she cried, yet somehow managed to hide it from me as the first drops of tears oozed from her eyes.
“Are you all right?” I asked, motioning to stand. A part of my mind felt worried, while another was thinking that this was the opportunity. I have no idea which one is a lot dominant.
“I’m sorry,” she suppressed a sob with a laugh. “I’m a total fucked-up bitch, huh?”
“No, you’re not. You’re beautiful,” the moment the words came out of my mouth was the same moment I wished I could think about things before saying them. Even her eyebrows narrowed, but she didn’t say anything. She took a deep sigh, drank from her bottle. I didn’t break the silence, but just waited for her to continue.
“I took the operation,” she said. “That’s why I can’t.”
My heart skipped a beat. “A baby?” I muttered.
She nodded. I gulped down some beer, and lit a cigarette.
“Who’s the guy?” I asked.
“Some jerk,” she replied. “He’s gone now. Dunno where he is” She drank more beer, before stretching on the sofa, her skin shiny beneath the light.
Now, of course, I know I should have asked her a lot of things. But all questions seemed to have already been answered, whether I ask them or not. Why did she let somebody else fuck her and not me? Because she only needed me to watch her. Why did she even ask me to watch her? No reason. She needed someone to turn her on, and I just happened to be there, this self I project dwelling inside a carnal shell—a shell, nothing but a decoration for visitors to ponder on. Why did I even agree? Because I thought it meant something—or that maybe it will mean something, but now I know: there was nothing to it. I was like a CCTV camera, placed on some corner of her life, just there, hanging, revolving every few seconds, ominously keeping an eye out for her, watching her take a shower, just like that, and do nothing. Hell, she could slip and fall down on the tiled bathroom floor, and I’d be there to watch, but do nothing.
“What if I watch you getting fucked?” I suggested.
She laughed. It was a loud laugh, the kind of laugh I’ve never heard from her before. “You’re crazy!”
“If it turns you on when somebody’s watching you, then wouldn’t it be good if somebody’s watching you in bed also?”
“I wonder,” she said. “Let’s try it next time.”
“What if I’m the one who’s watching and fucking you?” I said.
“Cannot be,” she said.
I sighed. She laughed. I finished my beer.
“If I sleep here, don’t rape me,” she said with a smile on her face.
“Are you that drunk?”
“I trust you,” she mumbled.
“I won’t.”
When she finally slept, I sat on the foot of the sofa and admired her legs. I raced my fingers over their smooth surface, they were like bowling alleys, newly polished wood.
I slowly raised her sleeveless tee until her bras were exposed. Her navel was like an eye. To my luck, her bra unhooks at the front, which I undone in careful movements. I just want to see her breasts one more time. They were round, their shapes more alive to me up-close. Her pink nipples were flat like withered plants, yet I licked them, and for a while, caressed these generous swells on her chest. She moaned for a second, but she didn’t wake up.
Next, I slowly pulled down her shorts, only a few inches, enough to expose her panties, which I also pulled down. In the mound of hair and warmth, I groped down there searching for her hole, which was dry and somewhat rough. Her left leg twitched, and soon I realized that I’ve had enough. After all, I just wanted to see them one more time. I stood, and looked down to her, lying there on the sofa, sleeping and drunk. She was like a helpless animal in mercy of a hungry hunter, except that the hunter is not me, but only my dick, wanting to penetrate her to the deepest of my fantasies. But I can’t.
There is, however, one thing I could do.
I stripped down my pants and let out my fly, and began stroking it while staring at her slightly nude body, and her innocent sleeping face, my hand going faster and faster until I came, avoiding the sofa, putting it all to the floor.
Taking a breath of relief, I put my pants back on, placed a cigarette to my lips, and went out of the apartment, locking the door behind me. I planned to smoke outside, to feel the midnight breeze, and later come back, and sleep it all over, where I’d forget about everything, and stop fooling myself anymore about this. I wonder if it was me thinking, or if it was the beer helping me think about this, helping me arrive at the epiphany that I wasn’t special for her, and that all those things we’ve been into really meant nothing.
I walked on empty streets as silent as death itself, the tip of my cigarette a glowing star in a universe of everybody’s hopes and dreams and desires. I smoked two cigarettes, before I finally decided to retrace my steps, and go back to my apartment.
Entering my premises, I reached for the doorknob. My eyes were puffy, and I started feelings sleepy.
But the doorknob wouldn’t turn.
I turned it again, and again, until I remembered that I locked it from the inside. I frisked myself for my keys, going through my pockets again and again, but I found no trace of them.
I looked at the window, saw the living room, saw the sofa where she was still fast asleep, her breasts exposed and her panties still down; on the table sat empty beer bottles, and my apartment keys.
I tried pounding a trembling fist on the door, hoping to wake her up and open the door for me, but I couldn’t find the strength to do it. From where I’m standing, I couldn’t move a muscle. I couldn’t breathe.
Calm down, I told myself. Calm down. It’s gonna be all right.
Author's note: Please help this post reach at least $1.00. If you read my previous post, I'm in dire need of a new laptop. Help me write more and continue honing my skills. I can't do that without my own hardware. Thank you so much for the time you spent reading this story!
