eyes back
adolescent summers, lying, and the contract of voyeurism.
I wanted you to believe in a reality where I am good, so I said I was, and it was true to you. I said so because I wanted it to be true to me, too. I needed you to believe it.
I wanted you to understand that there is a place in me that is overgrown— the paths are dead and covered by rotting logs, pond scum grows in puddles, wildflowers bloom in secret— because no one has been there for a long time. It’s all gone wild. The mist and the rivers moving deep under thick ice are products of my heart. They keep me safe by keeping me impossible to traverse.
I wanted you to understand that this place is deadly, and you will not be entering it, because it is not designed to be entered. But I’ll let you see some of it from the outside.
I wanted you to be satisfied with how much/little of it you can see, and I wanted you to believe me when I tell you about it without needing me to provide evidence to back up my claims.
I wanted to lie to you.
I was fourteen years old when I was, to my memory, the most afraid I’ve ever been. It was over something foolish. In a whirl of social intricacies, I was chosen to accompany a girl to a lake house her parents were renting. It was the type of friendship that came on quick and intense— we called each other “best friends”, despite having not known each other for very long. She was only allowed one guest, and there were other girls she could’ve taken, but I was the one she wanted that summer. I’m sure that it would’ve felt good to be chosen if I had the presence of mind to try and muster up the feeling.
She had long, curly brown hair and straight teeth. I knew within weeks of meeting her that she would not be in my life by the time I left grade school, and I did it anyway. She’s still the one that comes to my mind when I think of the archetypal American girl— her life consisted of suburban family dinners, Taylor Swift CDs in her mother’s minivan, soccer practice, dance recitals. She assumed that the lives of all her friends ran parallel to her own experience. And why wouldn’t she? This was normal. All her friends were normal, too, and the whole world was normal, and all the abnormalities could either get normal or get ignored. I never said anything because I liked to sit at her kitchen table and eat ice cream and pretend her life was mine, and so she was mine, in that strange, possessive way that young girls sometimes have. What she knew about me could become normal and it was fine. I occupied the aesthetic position of a romance-novel bad boy for her. I did it gladly. It was easier to be that than it was to be myself.
I don’t remember how we passed our time at the lake house. I remember moments, mostly, because it felt anthological in the way that days spent doing nothing often do— the secret, juvenile erotics of being close enough to smell her unwashed hair, of watching her arm muscles as she swam, of occupying the perpetual limbo of crush-hood together. We shared a bed in a room with no windows and we went to sleep with our foreheads pressed together, waking up in the exact same position and knowing that neither of us had moved away from the other. The days moved by with a pastoral verbosity.
The light was starting to go thick. We were alone on the dock— I was in a swimsuit that I had borrowed from my sibling because none of mine fit anymore, and she had her legs crossed and semi-expensive sunglasses on. I was standing over her body but not covering it with my shadow. She was lying on her back as if she was trying to tan, legs bent slightly so her thighs would seem thinner, back arched like she was pushing up her chest, hip bones jutting out from where she had sucked in her stomach. I was well acquainted with her natural posture, at that point. This wasn’t it. It was strange and impractical and looked uncomfortable. And she had razor burn on her upper thighs. It crawled out from under her panty line in ugly red blooms, hellbent on destroying the picture she was trying to cultivate.
I was asking her to come into the water with me. I stood over her and I begged her, without letting her know that I was begging, to come swim and turn somersaults and hold races with me. She would’ve said yes if she wasn’t so intent on lying like a mannequin. I know she would’ve. I wanted to be a girl with her, a normal girl, because I didn’t have nearly as many opportunities to do that back home as I should’ve. I wanted to do it now while I still could, and she was starting to get annoyed with me. She never would’ve expressed it because it would’ve ruined the picture she was trying to project, one of placidity and effortless beauty, but I could see it in the way she held her mouth. I was asking for an affirmation of my childhood. She, posing for sex in a body that had just begun to slough childhood off, was asking for an affirmation of her womanhood.
I watched her run her fingers through her hair and flick it over her shoulder, and I felt something die a little. I knew that move. Of course I did— it was the coy, pseudo-seductive, plausible-deniability dance I danced when I was in front of a man who I wanted something from. I’m sure she felt like an adult. Being on the receiving end of it felt like I was being asked to be the kind of person that sees a child as an adult, though, and it horrified me. It was horrifying to see her do it, as if my mannerisms— all my secret filth and all the heaviness she didn’t know it came with— was rubbing off on her. It occurred to me that she might want to fuck me. I dove off the dock from the shame of having thought it. A terrible, desperate fear had welled up in my stomach, strong enough to almost make me sick. I somersaulted while she feigned sunbathing, adjusting herself ever-so-slightly to maintain her forced serenity. She didn’t look at me once as I moved through all my best tricks. I felt alone and aggressively aware of my developing chest and very, very frightened of something I couldn’t name. I was certain that I would die if I was pulled out of the water. It was the closest to naked that I would ever see her.
That October, she asked me out. We went on cheerful teenaged dates and to school dances and exchanged I love yous until we broke up and, like I predicted, she slipped right back out of my life the same way she came in. We never progressed past awkward pecks on the cheek. I never told her that I had lost my virginity to a man two months after the lake house trip, or that I wasn’t sleeping at night because I thought I would wake up to a dead body, or why I almost failed math.
It was all very normal. This is what I have always wanted, I’d been told. This is how life should be. I watched the normal happen to me. I was a voyeur to it— I ate it up and was hungry for more. And why wouldn’t I be?
I wanted you to understand that things do not cease to exist when we avoid looking at them. In turn, things are not created when we do deign to look.
I wanted you to understand that the best I can do is to reciprocate. I will act when you do. I will dance the steps you give me.
I wanted you to understand that people are susceptible to suggestion, and that there will be times where you think you understand things you don’t really know at all. I am out of cigarettes and black eyeshadow and ginger ale. Don’t you know who I am?
I didn’t want you to know who I am.
I wanted to lie to you.
There are certain times in my head when I can feel the Teen Angel— the female consumer, the beauty ideal, the sexed-up virgin next door— hovering over me. Now, laying on the table I’ve repurposed as a window seat, is one of those times. It’s hot in the sunshine. I’m in my underwear. Although I’m not overtly visible from the street below, it wouldn’t be difficult for someone on the sidewalk to look up and get an eyeful of girl-flesh, especially because my legs are hanging out of the window like Rapunzel’s hair. Two flashing neon arrows say, this way to a view you won’t forget. It’s not so bad— I’m not promising anyone anything except for something to look at. It’s the touching I don’t like. So why not let the curve of my hip be seen by the outside world? I’m being watched even when I’m not on display, aren’t I?
A man running with his dog takes a conspicuously long breather on the corner. The dog has run out smells to sniff; it loses its patience, making attempts to continue the route, but the man isn’t moving. He’s got his hands on his thighs and his face tilted towards my window. Two dark eyes. Yeah, alright. I let him do it for a minute longer, then make eye contact— they don’t like it when you do that, but I like doing it. I like the way it makes them squirm.
The contract of voyeurism, at least in the contexts I’ve encountered it in, is reliant on the observer watching and the observed pretending like they aren’t being watched. As someone being observed, you need to create a fantasy for the observer where they feel like their presence hasn’t altered your behavior. Both sexual and societal voyeurism rely on the same processes. And yeah, it was fun for a little while, but in addition to being a little vain, I’m a stubborn son of a bitch and I don’t like people thinking they’re getting away with something. So I started looking back. If you’re looking at me, you’re inviting me to look back; that’s the terms you agree to when you start looking at me. It’s only fair. Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.
Back on the sidewalk, the runner can’t take it. He turns away so quickly he knocks himself off balance, stumbling to the side a bit, and takes off again. His dog surges forwards like it’s been waiting for an excuse. I watch them go. I hope he knows that I’m watching him leave. I hope he can feel my eyes on him. I hope he feels ashamed of it, of not even being able to admit that he was looking, of having been caught.
I don’t know why I do it, really. Because I’m bored. Because I’m just that vain. Because I have a sadistic streak when it comes to men (and men are always the ones who are looking), something that’s been abundantly clear since high school, where I’d make boys crawl across dirty floors for the privilege of making me laugh. Because I like to let people teach themselves lessons. Because I want them to take whatever story they had of me in their head, whatever narrative they conjured out of basic context clues, and I want them to give up on it. Because I like an excuse to watch people. Because, in this body, I’m always being looked at anyways. But I’m looking back. I’m not wearing sunglasses or anything to hide my gaze— I want them to look me in the fucking eyes and admit that they were looking at me. Because I want them to admit it.
I wanted you to understand that my God is Isn’t, and when someone’s God is nothing, they become nothing, too— they are empty, or reaching for emptiness, or some other sentiment about a black hole that we won’t ever have the words for.
I wanted you to understand that, objectively speaking, goodness and fear cannot exist in nothingness. The only thing that can exist in nothing is nothing.
I wanted you to understand that the closest you can get to a non-thing is the number zero.
I wanted you to try to get close anyways, because I wanted to get out of myself, and that means I needed someone else to go into. I wanted you to try to get close because I wanted to swallow you.
I wanted to lie to you.
this has to be one of the best pieces i have read lately. thank you for sharing and letting us look.