I rented this apartment twelve years ago after my wife divorced me. It was the view from the living room that attracted me. There were three bowed windows facing north. They made a kind of trapezoid, with the center window about two feet farther out. From the window you could look down on a small vest-pocket park. The park was maintained by the city, so it was full of blooms year-round. Colorful bushes and flowers. Dogwood trees that flowered in the spring. A nice view. It occupied the back half of the block.

Across the little park was 2^nd Street and a sidewalk. Then there was an apartment building. I was on the fifth and top floor or our building, and the other apartment building was the same five floors though at a lower elevation.

I put my chair in front of a window with the desk against the wall to my left. From my chair I could look down on the nice little park, or see the sky, clear or raining. I spent a lot of my evenings reading a book in front of the window; it was like being outside, but without the rain, or wind, or winter cold, or summer’s heat. For the first ten years, there was a window that stayed covered by a white curtain in the other building. I guess the light came on and went off behind the curtain. Who noticed? It was just a white space that interrupted a brick wall.

One day, there was no curtain covering the opposite window. That attracted my attention, because I could see inside the apartment. So I looked left and right to see if I could see in any of the other apartments. I couldn’t see anything, and I reasoned that nobody could see inside ‘my’ window. It wasn’t really my window; it was the window opposite my apartment.

There was a double bed in the apartment, and the couple had pushed the head of the bed right up against the window. The couple were naked from the moment they entered the room. She was tall and slender with cropped hair. He was long and lean, and well-muscled. He had a mustache and beard around his mouth, like young men do sometimes to make themselves look older. They appeared to be in their twenties. An attractive couple.

They wound up on the bed and I found myself watching as they made love in numerous positions. They were at it for about four hours, so I assumed they were enjoying the freedom of their new apartment. Perhaps they were a new couple.

I was watching, riveted to the scene. They didn’t do anything that would make history in the Kama Sutra, but they were energetic and he had marvelous recuperative powers. They must have seen every porn movie or had superior imaginations. As the sun went down, they turned on the lights, as if they knew someone was watching.

The next morning, they were at it again, from the time they woke up at 6:30 for another two hours. I had gotten up at 6:00, just to watch.

They were fucking every morning and every evening for the next six months. Every damn day. Maybe they were trying to have a baby. I don’t know. Or they couldn’t afford cable.

Not that I was obsessing, you understand. Sometimes I read a book. I mean how many times can you watch a guy slipping the salami into a girl, no matter how attractive they were. Hour after hour after hour.

They apparently took a vacation over the Christmas holidays. When they got back, she wore a strap-on dick in a harness, and she mounted him. And they did a repeat of their first night, with her on him.

That’s when I bought the binoculars at lunch the next day.