I Spent the Evening Looking Through Other People's Windows
On the things you see when you leave the house with nowhere to go.
The evening had gone nowhere - nowhere at all, but not in the way in which one’s evening might go nowhere, only to find that, in fact, it had gone somewhere. It had gone nowhere in the sense that, come ten o’clock, I could not account for the hours that had passed since I last checked the clock.
I had eaten something, I am almost certain that I had eaten something. This was largely backed up by the plate now sitting on the drying rack in my sink. After that, I confess to confusion, and little more can be recounted.
The flat looked much the same as always, which is to say that I had not moved much since I last decided that it was time to move things around. You will surely understand that such a lifeless place will sometimes require some life to move it into a new form of lifelessness? A chair sat by the ajar window, the same place it had been sitting since I purchased it some three years prior. There were books still finely pressed together in my bookshelf that I kept acknowledging, but never pulling out. My honest intention was to use the chair as a designated reading area, the way one will often set parameters to follow through on wants that, beyond all reason, must still be regimented.
I went into the kitchen (although it is worth noting that these flats can be rather small, and to walk into the kitchen means merely taking two paces from the centre of the living room). I stood there, and then walked the two paces back, and then back again to the kitchen, moving aimlessly in search of something to fill my time. Neither offered much to this endeavour, and like most who seek something but cannot place what or where it may be, I felt disgust for these two rooms that, for all certainty, did not possess it.
“Right.”
I grabbed my coat and tapped my pockets out of habit. Turning to look down the tight hallway into my living room, it all looked fine. It always looks fine. There can be nothing wrong with a room such as this: each object is placed, and any complaint can only be directed at my poor interior design skills. It was mine, but it could be anyone’s.
I pulled the door shut and carefully meandered down. Outside, the cold came all at once, and I must confess that, for all my wants to not appear feeble, I had to take a mere moment to adjust to its bitterness. I turned left for no other reason than the fact that I could. The street was quiet. I walked with my hands firmly placed in my pockets for long enough that, when I turned around, the flat was far enough away that it blended in with the rest of the buildings surrounding it. Not far enough, but far enough.
I had been walking no longer than ten minutes when I came to a stop. Across the street from me, a first-floor window with the blinds pulled up an inch or two, despite the cold. I focused my gaze and at once noticed the yellowish-green light that illuminated what I had realised was a kitchen.
“No one of sane mind would pick such a bulb” I thought to myself, but realised that, perhaps, who ever was inside, had not chosen this bulb. I had a similar issue the first few weeks I moved into my flat: money was tight, and a bulb seemed like the least of my worries, so I resigned my accusation to a potentially similar situation.
A man hovered over a pot on the stove. Much older than me. Grey at the sides with sunken eyes that looked entirely disinterested in whatever it was that was within the pot. He stirred it, slowly, as if lost in thought or a daydream. His movement seemed to have been decided: the body moved whilst the mind sat elsewhere. I was quite taken with this man for reasons I cannot find the words to describe, but you should know that I stood there for long enough for a worry to creep in that I, too, had entered his daydream.
Although the window sat open, no sound came from the room. No music, no voices, nothing but the occasional tapping of the spoon against the pot, and once, albeit briefly, the clicking of the dials as he adjusted the heat.
He did not look up at any point, nor did he feel the weight of my gaze. After a while, he turned the heat off, stood for a few moments longer, before shifting himself out of view. The window stayed open. The light stayed on. I waited to see if anything would change, but after a few more moments, I accepted that the show was over, and continued onward down the street.
I stopped a few streets later under an awning where the wind dropped and lit a cigarette. The street lay empty. Across the road there was a flat above a closed shop, with one of those metal stairwells running down the side of the building, with the door at the bottom of the stairs was propped open with a bin: warm light was coming out of it, and from inside, faintly, music - a party that had been a party earlier in the evening and was now whatever a party turns into at this hour. I don’t attend many parties now, but I do recall how, as the night dragged on, the enthusiasm and joy would slowly creep into something more suited to a room where joy had once been, and where idle conversation now reigned.
I had been standing there perhaps a minute when the door pushed wider and the two of them came down: a man and a woman, both, I should think, in their thirties, although I am no judge of these things. Here, though, I must add that the gentleman looked rather worn, whilst his companion embodied youth that had been confined. His face appeared scrunched, though not through effort, whilst her cheeks appeared smooth under her wide eyes.
He stumbled down the stairs, closely followed. Once at the bottom, he took a few steps forward, setting the perimeter for what I had rightfully assumed would be their colosseum. She set her drink down on the pavement a few paces back, appearing to forget about it once she had placed it. The young gentleman spun himself around to face her, and by the erratic placement of his hands - by his side, then out in front, then upon his hips - it was clear that he had something to say but had no knowledge of how to say it. Both stood silent for a moment, with her facial expression unchanged from the moment she left the door.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered.
Silence, again, filled the space between them.
“I’m sorry”, he repeated.
“I know”, she hastened to reply.
Again, silence. She said nothing further, although it appeared as though the gentleman had been waiting for her to say something more. He began to speak at a pace which one speaks at when they feel the conversation is nearing it’s end, with more yet to say.
“I’m going to stop,” his hands came up behind his head, “I mean it this time. I know what it looks like, and I know I’ve said it before - I know I’ve said it many times before, but I mean it this time”
He took a short, deep breath. Talking seemed to be a struggle, for reasons unknown to me, but his quivering body seemed less to do with the cold than the conversation at hand.
“I believe you,” she said. Her face still showed no change.
The conversation paused again.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me”, he stuttered, “I look at you and - I don’t know. I don’t know what you see. I don’t know if you see the good of it, or - I don’t know if you see - I see -”
He didn’t finish. His hands fell from his head and bounced from his side. She reached out and put her hand against the side of his face. He closed his eyes, and they stood that way for several seconds. The door behind them was still open, and the music was still going.
Then she took her hand away.
“What happened to us,” he said.
She looked at him for a long moment.
“I don’t know,”
They walked away from me down the street, not touching, but close - he said something to her that I could not hear, and she nodded, or shook her head, I could not tell which.
Then they turned the corner, and they were gone.
I finished the cigarette. The door was still open. The light was still coming out. I dropped the cigarette and stepped on it before walking the other way.
I had turned a corner when I almost walked into someone - or rather, he almost walked into me, since I think he was the more careless of the two, although I will allow that I was not paying particular attention either.
He was a large man, drunk in the sad way rather than the angry way, although there was some anger in him too. I could tell by his glaring at me that he was in two minds: to either confess something to me or to take out his frustration on me. In the end, he chose neither. He stumbled back from me and put one hand against the wall to steady himself, and said, more to the air than to me:
“People don’t know where they’re going. None of them. None of them knows.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Have you got a light, friend? I’ve lost mine. I had one earlier, and now I’ve lost it.”
I gave him the lighter. He cupped his hand around it and lit his cigarette. He nodded gratefully as he handed the lighter back, standing for a moment with the cigarette in his mouth, not yet drawing on it.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Home,” I said.
“I can’t go home,” he said, before I had finished, as though my answer were not relevant to the question he had asked. “I can’t go home. I need away from it. You understand. Just away from it.”
“Yeah,” I said.
But he was already nodding, and turning, and he raised one hand without looking at me, and walked off down the road in the direction I had come from, the cigarette glowing between his fingers.
I watched him go for a moment. Then I walked on.
I walked home via the longer route. I could not tell you why, other than I was both done with my walk for the evening and yet still unable to accept the idea of being home. I both rejoiced and resented each step I took down the still, often quiet streets.
I thought, as I was wandering, about the man at the stove, and the couple from the party, and the drunkard who could not go home. I tried to find a word for what I had seen: the word loneliness came to mind, but that seemed misplaced. Loneliness is a feeling, and this was more than mere emotion. It appeared to me as though these people, whilst sharing the same night, some even sharing company, could not have been further apart.
Disconnect was the word I landed on. I am no psychologist, just someone who enjoys observing, but what I will say is this: a man can live a long time inside a world, side-by-side with those in a similar setting to himself, and come the end know no one.
When I got back to my street, I stopped on the pavement opposite my building and looked up. The light was still on, leaking through my half-drawn blinds. I had left it on when I went out. In fact, I always leave it on. It gives the impression that I am there, even when I am not. At least, that’s what I want people to think. I can only say what I prefer, as not once has anyone asked me about it, and so not once has anyone been able to tell me what they think.
I stood there for some time, and then for some time longer, before, if just for a moment, I wondered what might be inside.
Mood board for this piece:
Eerie. Really interesting balance of loneliness & community wrapped up all together
This is great. I’m getting off work late tonight but getting off the subway a few stops early on my way home and taking in the Brooklyn late night dwellers in their menageries sounds like a pleasant way to unwind.