I tripped on the cat in the moonlight. I didn’t fall over, but still felt embarrassed, like when people trip on the footpath and look back at the spot they tripped on, as if to indicate to others that there must be something wrong with the path, coz I’m no spaz. Anyway.
Some people live a life where Tuesday is unremarkable, a day like any other. I pity those people, but I’m glad they don’t know. Don’t know that Tuesday night is laundry night at the Bertram household.
I live in an older suburb, a leafy one. The streets are lined with oaks that reach across and held hands with each other, turning the streets into surreal green tunnels, where moonlight filters through shattered and intermittent. The streets in the area have cobbled little back alleys like the one I was walking down. In the years before the city’s sewerage system, the Poo Man would use these alleys to collect everyone’s Poo. I guess you can’t blame people for not wanting to see the Poo Man walk down the middle of their street, complaining loudly about the unusual stench of the Joneses. So they built back alleys – Poo Man Lanes.
Last night was one of those much too beautiful summer nights, about a degree or two warmer than a comfortable room temperature, and with a full moon to boot. The stink of magic everywhere – I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the streets turn to canals bearing massive decorative barges from which ancient Egyptian Goddesses would throw rose petals. Or something.
This particular part of my suburb lies in a weird little valley at the base of three hills. Its tucked away from the rest of the planet by those hills, supersaturated with these massive trees that overshadowed everything. Even the streetlights can’t compete, instead becoming embroiled in the branches slow little twisting games, engulfing them with leaves, thereby blanketing the area with a grid of soft green lights. The houses here are like the trees, wide and sprawling. They were built back in the Age of the Poo Man, when for whatever reason, people liked the higher ceilings, the multiple levels, the attics, the cellars, all the good old stuff that has somehow since been weeded out of house construction. Beth lives in such a house with her father. Her house has three storeys, a large backyard with fairy lights and a swimming pool.
I know a lot about Beth’s back yard.
The activity I refer to as ‘peepsniffering’ has been going on for over three months, since late 2004. Every Tuesday. Before this time, I had been merely peeping on Beth. Then I happened to peep on a Tuesday, and found, in the backyard, the Bertram clothesline (a Hills Hoist), full to the brim with lacy white underwear. The underwear of Beth Bertram, the object of my peeping (and undying pathetic stalker love).
So do I need to explain how ‘peeping’ became ‘peepsniffering’? Surely you get the idea. I didn’t mind that the underwear I’m sniffing is clean - having thought about it, I actually prefer it that way, the alternative is altogether too mind-blowing, something so darkly appealing that I can’t handle contemplating it.
Its gotten to the point where its my Number One Reason to live. It takes me out of my animal body into oceans of art and love and purity. Its not that the underwear is expensive, or even silk for the most part. Such material values are irrelevant in the face of my loser sentimentality. Its just HERS.
So, with cats tripped over and senses of reasonable Behaviour completely eradicated, I arrived at my destination. Its the accepted tradition to begin by sitting in the alley with my back against her fence. Here I would smoke a cigarette and ready myself. I observed this tradition last night, although last night was something special – it was Day Minus One. Today is Day Zero. I’m nervous.
Even now I’m looking at it again – the invite. It bears my sacrifice-blood, my overcome-tear and my fever-sweat stains, but the original crappy inkjetted words are still legible – “Paul is invited to Beth’s birthday party next Saturday night.” The address and phone number follow, as if I don’t already have them burnt on my brain, carved into my cortex with a blunt tool, interfering with my normal thought processes, my speech patterns, my very depth perception. Where my name, ‘Paul’ appears on the invite, it is in fact hand-written, by HER, onto a blank line created with the intention of later individualisation. How I’ve studied that handwriting, desperate to find some sort of hidden message in the base of her P and the backstroke of her L. She’s never spoken a word to me before. Why, then, would she invite me to her party? How does she even know my name, if not by accidental observation? Maybe it means nothing, maybe she just wants as many people to be there as possible, maybe I’m merely filler.
Maybe.
But maybe it means something. Thats a “maybe” that will certainly spell the end of my sanity. That’s the only definite thing about that particular maybe, that it’s gonna fuck me up. (For a stalker, I’m very much aware of the ridiculousness of my psychology, but I don’t care, I like it).
The cat followed me down the alley from our original meeting place. It stared at me as I sat there with a stupid grin on my face, letting the cigarette burn unattended.
I came back to my senses (not all the way back, just to where I usually am, a fair way off ‘sensical’), took a final puff of the cigarette and turned to climb the fence.
The sheer beauty of the vista over that fence made that dangerous “maybe” seem a definite “yes”. If my thoughts mean nothing to the universe, I surely would not have been rewarded like this, prodded into action by this splendour, too rich for sane human consumption. The full moon shone on the Bertram back yard like a marshmallowy spotlight. A baby breeze spun the underwear laden clothesline around slowly slowly, its rusty mechanism squeaked quietly quietly. The underwear gently float-flapped in the summer breeze, light shining off and hiding in its shimmer surfaces. Even the spider-web in the window of the garden shed glowed invitingly in the moonlight. The fairylights scattered throughout the garden were reflected wobbly-wrong and blue in the whispershift of the swimming pool waters.
Too much, it’s too much, it’s too much, jesusicantdothis. It was a sight that could have spelled the end of my peepsniffery. I don’t think of myself as a Bad Person, but I know my habits are base and motivated by sexuality. These were elements I didn’t feel I could willingly introduce into the Bertram backyard last night. Better just to leave, go home and die happy than risk polluting this moment. At the end of the day, shit, there will be other girls. But this was too much.
Too.
Much.
Then her bedroom light came on.
Her hand touched the switch, (one assumes), and electrical current travelled at the speed of light to the bulb, which lit the room. That light, in turn, travelled at the speed of light into my retina. Along my optic nerve, into my brain. This had never happened before during previous peepings.
Before this instant, things were too much. Now, the concept of volume, of things being too much or too little, was lost to me. It was all I could do to remain on the fence, keep my eyes open, and, in all seriousness, try and remember what planet I was on. I was no longer able to mentally process the experience as it happened, instead I was reduced (or heightened) to only being able to experience it raw.
The too-muchness of things just would not stop intensifying last night. Everything just kept multiplying exponentially. Alright. OK - getting out of hand. Let’s just be matter of fact for a while and I’ll leave you to surmise how I reacted.
Shortly after Beth’s light came on, she drew her bedroom curtains apart, and put on some light jazz music on an old LP player she had (I’ve previously used high-tech night-vision goggles bought on the internet to ascertain the contents of her bedroom). The summer night carried the music with an alarming degree of clarity. Of course it did. Of course I could even hear the semi-regular scratch of the needle on the vinyl. The Day Zero Committee wouldn’t have it any other way, would they? The music carried with perfect clarity, and co-existed peacefully with the creak-creak of the clothesline, lap-slap of the swimming pool.
Remember how I said it wouldn’t stop intensifying?
Beth came to her bedroom window – now she had taken off her dressing gown and was clad only in a bra and underwear. A matching set of underwear that had little flowers on it. Little flowers on the cheapest cotton beats the purest silk hands down. She started slowly dancing to the slowly music in front of the bedroom window in the slowly night. The kind of dancing where you stand in one spot and gently sway.
Where was my mind when this was happening? No one knows, least of all me. Can anyone else really have any idea of the effect all of this had on me? I guess it could be compared to what a witness to Moses’ parting the Red Sea might have felt (if it wasn’t a bullshit myth). I mean, you live your life, you’re told that this God exists and everything is, at its centre, beauty and light, and there is justice and love everywhere, all that crappy religious stuff, and yeah, you THINK you believe in God, but you still have to shovel your donkey’s shit. Then Moses parts the Red Sea and you realise all the things you have barely dared to believe are actually true, that there is shit happening on a level about a million floors up from what you thought was the roof.
But I didn’t lose my mind. After she’d been dancing for a while, there came the familiar voice in my head. It said “you are watching a girl dancing in her underwear. That’s all it is. It’s not a sign of the end of this world or the beginning of the next one. It is, in fact, devoid of meaning. It’s consistent with the nice weather, it fits in with how she would be happily anticipating the party tomorrow night. That’s it. No star crossed lovers, only physics, jazz and biology. Just a girl dancing. They like dancing, girls. You know this.”
Despite the voice, I was unable to process thought while the dancing went on. Finally, the record stopped and Beth, grinning euphorically by way of goodbye to the night, turned back into her room. The yellow glow of invitation that her room spilled out was replaced, as she turned the light off, with the moonlight’s reciprocated silver invitation in her room, asking her to come outside. Which she didn’t do, much as I willed her to.
Instead, in light of recent jazz-related events, I resolved to forget my earlier worries about beauty pollution, and complete the peepsniffery. (leaving without performing this act was never really an option, as you have no doubt guessed).
The cobwebbed garden shed stood against the fence, a narrow gap between them is where I climb down, and crouch hence, waiting for a self-granted psychological all-clear. I never steal any underwear, so no-one is suspicious, no-one is on the lookout for anything. I’ve always come and gone without a trace. So the all-clear is always a mere formality. Again last night, I crouched, waited a few seconds until it was apparent I hadn’t alerted authorities to my presence, and began the short but oh-so-agonizing journey from the shed, across the lawn, around the swimming pool, to the clothesline. One step. Two. No sign of trouble, just the heartbeat, the adrenaline, the sheer joy of anticipation known only to the serial panty-sniffer. Better to move quickly, silently. Remember a ninja movie, draw from it. The first bit is the most dangerous, where you are the most exposed, right in the middle of the well-manicured lawn. In fact, when I looked at the lawn in the full moonlight, it wasn’t just well manicured – it was incredibly well-manicured. Each blade seemed to be the exact same width and length and have the same angled fold in its middle...more about that later.
Distracted you fool! Keep moving…
Right in the middle of the lawn, that’s where I was standing when the alarm went off. I’d done this many times before, stood in this exact same spot. There had never been an alarm before. But it wasn’t an alarm after all – it was the damn telephone ring-ring-ringing. Jesus. I decided to return to the shadowy crawlspace and wait. But I found that I could not move. I was frozen to the spot. Completely terrified. Through Beth’s open window, over the sound of my double-time pigeon heartbeart, I could hear everything transpiring in the house.
The phone kept ringing. There were heavy footsteps. The phone stopped ringing. A muffled voice. More footsteps, this time ascending the stairs. A knock on Beth’s bedroom door.
“Beth! Phone call!”
“Okay, coming!” the singsong Beth voice replied.
“Tell your friends not to call here so late! It’s past eleven!”
“Okay, Dad. But if you let me have my own extension this wouldn’t happen, would it?”.
“Don’t start with me on that issue again, young lady, or there won’t be any party at all tomorrow night.”
“Good one Dad” – singsong sarcasm. Beth gets up and hurries down the stairs.
The light in Beth’s room came on, and I, rooted to the spot on the lawn, was drenched in that yellow light, that somehow didn’t seem so inviting anymore. Now it exposed me and my crimes. Still I could not move.
Silence. I looked up at Beth’s bedroom window. No sign of life. OK, now things could calm down, now I could start to move again..
It was like a car accident. You can see it is going to happen, that collision is inevitable. This was how it was for me as he saw the man, Beth’s father, approach her bedroom window. Why would a man do this? Why would he, upon being unexpectedly called to his daughters room and having completed his business there, linger in the room, go to the window and look out of it? Why? Goddamnit, it’s not fair. I looked down at my feet, the perfect grass beneath. There was the answer. The lawn. The man was checking on his perfectly manicured lawn, whose very perfection any self-respecting Muslim would consider an insult to Allah. How dare a mortal soul attempt to create perfection? they would have cried. Well, Mr Bertram is one soul who attempts it, and as far as I can tell, attempts it pretty damn successfully.
These thoughts occupied the few fractions of a second it took for Beth’s father to see me through the open window. Absurdly, counter-productively, I still could not move. But I knew, as soon as that man spoke to me, acknowledged my presence, I would be able to flee. I just had to wait out this moment while Mr Bertram tried to comprehend what he was seeing. It wouldn’t take long, it was only a wayward stranger in his backyard, by all outward appearances nothing more than a slight bit of trespass.
Bertram spoke, in a voice barely more than a whisper, “You’re not him…”
You’re not him? Not who?
“Who the hell are you?” – that was louder, better. A bit more of a normal response. Enough to unlock me from my statue pose and send me piss-bolting back to the fence. As I did so, the moon quicky dipped behind an immense cloud bank. Surely that can’t be a coincidence, I thought. I knew the Firmament was on my side.
“GET THE BLOODY FUCK OFF MY LAWN!” – Bertram had processed his initial shock and disbelief, and had now advanced to rage. He turned from his daughters window and ran downstairs, grabbing a poker from the fireplace as he dashed through the living room on his way to confront me.
This gave me precious seconds in which to make my escape, and I approached the fence like a startled gazelle, was almost there, began to leap..
..it was the same cat as before, under my feet again. The cat got trod on, yowled angrily and was back over the fence into Poo Mans-Land in a flash. This time though, I not only tripped, but tripped and fell, fell badly. I felt a crunch of things that shouldn’t crunch inside my left foot, and a surge of pain as I attempted to climb the fence despite my injury. I heard Bertram slide open one of the glass doors that opened into the yard, and yell, “YOU ARE DEAD YOU LITTLE SHIT!”.
As I tried to climb the fence, my foot was forced to remind me that it wasn’t currently in operation. The initial surge of pain I felt was a gentle warning compared to the harsh rebuke that ripped up my central nervous system now. Damn you, climb the fence! I thought, but the pain screamed worlds of “NO. FENCE NO CLIMB NOW.” The sound of bare feet sprinting across lawn. Seconds left in which to act. The poker being wielded menacingly.
Somehow, I managed to drag myself into the narrow gap between the shed and the fence and dry-retched with pain in the pitch black gap.
Bertram patrolled the perimeter of his lawn for a good 20 minutes before being satisfied that order had returned, during which time I crouched and concentrated on fading the pain. It was already a lot better, now that I was trapped in the dark. But the darkness wasn’t quite total. Light was coming from somewhere. A small crack in the shed wall. Why would there be a light on in the shed? The idea of Mr Bertram as a hydroponic marijuana enthusiast doesn’t seem realistic. Even as the nasty poker man was winding down his search for lawn-befoulers, my interest in the shed overcame my fear, and I shifted position slightly so as to be able to peek through the crack in the wall…
Remember how I said it didn’t stop intensifying? CONTINUED
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