On the Outside Looking In
I have to preface this by stating that I am a guy. I used to run quite a bit—five miles every day without fail. One day after finishing my run, I got a knock at the door and it was a young man about my age, like 27, asking about the duplex next door, as it was for rent. Typical questions about the neighborhood and the street and whatnot.
I was cordial and informative, but I had some food cooking and needed to get back inside. I told him to call the number on the sign, but before I could excuse myself inside he interjected. The conversation went something like this: Him: Wait…do I smell pot? Dude, do you have weed in there? Me: No, I’m cooking salmon. Him: Oh, cause if you were, I’d be totally down with that. By the way, you’ve got really nice pecs. Do you work out a lot?
Me: Yeah, I guess…look, I really gotta go. If you have questions about the duplex, call the number on the sign. Him: Cool, thanks. I go back inside the house and he drives off. I instantly call my landlord and tell her to under no circumstances let that guy rent the property, because he gave me the creeps. Well, fast forward two days.
It’s a Sunday night around midnight. I’d just finished watching a movie on the couch and I had played a lot of soccer that weekend. Generally, I’ve found that if I can soak in a hot bath for about 20 minutes, my knees feel better in the morning. So I get up from the couch, walk by my bedroom, and notice that, since I’m kind of a restless sleeper, I must have knocked the blinds and curtains adjacent to my bed askew.
No biggie, I’ll fix it tonight before I go to bed. Then I get into the bathroom and notice that someone must have opened the window to the bathroom when I had friends over several days ago. I don’t have a bathroom exhaust fan, so it only makes sense to raise the window and blinds a bit. I close the window and shut the blinds.
I’ve got one of those nifty kitchen timers that I set to 20 minutes and I just sit in the bath, waiting for the time to expire. During this quiet time, my mind starts replaying the weekend’s events, and I start to get an uneasy feeling. Subconsciously, I felt something was wrong, but maybe I was just being paranoid. Then I thought about the bedroom window and the bathroom window both having blinds askew.
And come to think of it, I believe the blinds behind the TV had one little slat that was sort of peeled up, too. But, no, now I’m really just being paranoid. And I hadn’t even thought about the weird encounter from two days ago. But now, I’m sitting in a bathtub and the darn timer seems frozen at this point. I tell myself that I’ll get up when the timer is done, put on some clothes and take a look around the house. Well, I snapped.
Five minutes left and I couldn’t take it any longer. I don’t know how to rationalize what I did next. It just seemed purely instinctual. I hopped up and got a towel around me. I turned off the bathroom light, made my way quickly through the bedroom door and then the living room area. I then cut the kitchen and living room lights. In the darkness, I pulled a pair of pants up so that I was at least wearing something.
I wasn’t going to go back into the bedroom for a shirt. The only light on in the house was my bedroom light. I went over to the front door and flung it open quickly to peer out. Nothing. Crickets. This was the middle of the summer, and the crickets were overwhelmingly loud. Louder than the sound of my squeaky storm door opening.
I decided I was definitely being paranoid, and turned to go back in. I turned, but at the last second I had that thought: I won’t be content to sleep tonight unless I properly dismiss the paranoia with a walk around the house. So I barefootedly and cautiously make my way down the front porch stairs, and down the sidewalk to the side of my house where the bedroom windows glow.
The front of the house is definitely clear. I then tiptoe to the corner of the house to get a view of the side of the house. As I peer around the corner, not 20 feet away from me, I see the stranger from two days ago, his face glued to the bedroom window. His hand is in his shorts. I’m instantly enraged. Apparently, he is completely unaware that I have exited the house, much less flanked him.
I decided in that instant to surprise him. The following conversation was a mix between my anger, his fear, and most strangely of all, the feeling of amusement that this is actually happening to me. Keep in mind, the conversation doesn’t really make a lot of sense because the guy didn’t really have time to think. It really couldn’t have been more than about 15-20 seconds before the ordeal was played out.
Me: YOU SICKO! Him: (Surprised and mortified) AHHH!! Me: I’m going to catch you and beat the heck out of you. Him: You don’t know me!?!? (backing away) Me: (Aggressively approaching) I know exactly who you are, and I’m going to catch you. Him: (Transitioning from backing away to turning away and starting to run) Please don’t hurt me. I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry! Please don’t hurt me!
At this point, it’s an all-out chase across a neighbor’s yard. I’m wearing nothing but a pair of warm-up pants, but I’m gaining on him. I was playing soccer daily at the time, so I was definitely going to catch him. But he made it easy. I chased him across one gravel driveway, which wasn’t fun, but I was on his heels by the time he reached the second one, and he took a nasty fall right into the middle of the gravel.
I very nearly kicked him across the face with my shin, but I suppressed the urge. I tell him to get up. At this point he knows he is caught, so he is completely compliant…well, kind of. I ask him where he parked, and he lied and said a few blocks down. I ask his name, and he gives me one. I take his keys from him and tell him we’re going to his car. We walk about 30 feet and he stops and says, “Actually, this is my car.”
Wow, ok, so you parked basically right next to my house. So, I open his car and he’s like, “What are you doing?” I explain to him that there’s no way for me to know who he is, since he has no wallet with him. I open his glove box hoping to find some real ID. Bingo. I found a receipt for tire rotation or something. The car shown on the receipt matches the car he’s driving. But the name doesn’t.
I call him by the name on the receipt and he starts crying again and apologizing about lying about his name. I’m convinced I have him scared, and now I just want to go to bed. I know the authorities will take hours and it’s already like 1:00 and I’ve gotta be up early. So, I take the little folder thing the receipt came in and I told him to write down a confession of what he did.
It was only just becoming apparent to me that not only was he a peeping tom, he had come into my house when I wasn’t there to adjust the blinds in order to see in. Now I’ve got a written and signed confession. I write his license plate down and then I decide to make sure I never have to see this guy again. I take his phone and write down numbers of obvious relatives: Mom, Dad, etc.
Just a few. And then I tell him “I never want to see you again.” I made it clear for him that if he saw me somewhere, he’d better make sure I don’t see him. Anyway, at this point he’s sitting in his car. I toss the keys and his cell phone into his car and tell him to get lost. He sits in the car sobbing for a while as I’m walking away, but he’s got the engine started and leaving by the time I’m back in my house.
At this point, I sit down and pour a drink. And then I decide I wished I had called the authorities because I’m not getting any sleep, so I call the officer to show them the confession and all the information. The officer who shows up writes a few things down and tells me I should have detained him. Two days later, I call them and ask them about a report.
No news, and no news would come. No report. Oh well, he’s never coming back. Wrong! He knocks on my door about a year later. I open the door, and he must have seen the anger. He backs away from the door with his hands up and says he came to apologize. He said he was very sorry. I told him I accepted his apology and to not screw up like that again. And then he said thanks and walked away. Very strange.