CHAPTER FOUR
(The Voyeur's Path )
(The Voyeur's Path )
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| But the night sky also revealed my dark desires, a twisted side of my quiet and innocent side |
I couldn't tell any of my friends I was still a virgin. I wouldn't
survive that mockery and if i did, I would lose the feeling of belonging and my
only source of answers as well. If you've blazed the trail of teenage years, you
would understand. You know it’s not just me, it’s not a male thing. It’s the
status quo. You know it without seeing it. I often cook up dumb stories to
sound hard core but I’ll avoid being explicit because i still lacked knowledge
of the chemistry of sex and human sex organs. This trying time as I count them
to you Diary, brings tears down my cheeks. If only someone was there, if my mom
had seen the invisible lines and if my dad wasn't only interested in discipline
but my body too.
I was still a good boy and my dad received commendations always. I
feared my dad so by instinct I obeyed him. But my obedience was separated from
my enchanted world of puberty. Dad never gave me a guideline how to live in
that world so I couldn't define what obedience was. I played by my own rules
and my fantasies dictated them. Dad addresses us generally on two kinds of
occasions, when we had offended and when he needs us to run an errand. There
were evenings he smiled, I remember now, those evenings were rare as diamonds.
Dad would be near yet his voice roars like an army General. Even mom was not
spared such vocal tremble. He sternly warned us not to be like those children in
our ghetto neighbourhood. By “Those children” he meant my cliché of friends at
school.
He’ll threaten us with corporal punishments and sometimes slap us
to show us how it’ll feel if we disobeyed him. The difference between home and
the army barracks was dad. When he is not around I am home but when he is
around, especially during weekends, we all live in a barrack. I had obsessive
hatred for Saturdays and Sundays because of him. I could hear the echoes of his
voice like whispers of an enchantress in my ears, after hours he had addressed
me. But he was so distant he didn't even know the miles. He perhaps thought
that the discipline he saw in me made him part of my life -the truth is, he was
wrong.
In the evenings, I see such beauty that makes me loathe the day.
It was my ally. Outside of school and without running errands, I could finally
be alone and wonder at the stars. Does each star feel as lonely as I do? Can they
speak or hear my thoughts racing through their sky? The night hides my face and
the cool night air brushes across it like an archaeologist brush over loose
soil. Often I sat on a wooden stool, lean back against a wall. I tilt my gaze
to the world up there, reflecting on who I am or supposed to be. I love the
night sky and I loved to be alone to sing to it.
But the night sky also revealed my dark desires, a twisted side of
my quiet and innocent side. (Pause)
It’s so dark my pen paused for it to receive the courage to
proceed, and perhaps my heart too. The dark things done during those years were
insane stunts. If I had been caught, I would be a visible portrait to be mocked
at. Even in the ghetto, scandals were breaking news told raw. It travels fast
across the streets through human transmitters known as Amebo(s). But what made the night dark for everyone made it darker
for me.
I hid amidst the night’s darkness, somewhere in the backyard, crouching
behind broken wooden furniture. With predatory instincts I’ll listen to those
who approached the backyard of our big but often dark compound. If it is the
voice of a male, I’ll turn away and fade into the night with no one noticing. But
if it’s a lady’s footstep and voice I hear, adrenaline course from the soles of
my feet to my head, like bubbles rising from the depth of a coke bottle till
they reach the top. If the lady is not married and she is about to bathe, I’ll
go behind the bathroom wall to peep through a hole I had carefully covered with
ruffled newspaper to avoid the hole being easily noticeable.
I didn’t bore the hole on the bathroom wall. It is a product of
poor maintenance of property which is the bane of many houses in my
neighbourhood. I just took advantage of it.
Watching a naked woman in the bathroom started first as a
suggestion. I hear all these stories in school from my friends that got me
excited. Most of my friends could describe the symmetry of a feminine body like
each stage of a Nintendo game. I wanted to see if what they said was true but I
also wanted to find out what drives my friends crazy about a woman’s body.
Many times I endured the putrid smell behind the bathroom, I
defied rodent's traffic, and I risked being caught. All of which I considered
little sacrifices for a great view. But how could I see into the events of a
dark bathroom?
The infamous neighbours our ghetto are rats. They are of different
shapes and sizes. Very old, not so old, white tails, black tails, bald, hairy,
fat and long. They climb the walls like Chinese ninjas, they squeal from the
roofs and ceiling, they are fearless funambulists on high tension cables. They
are the ghetto version of Aladdin and the forty thieves. Rats were literarily
everywhere due to careless disposal of food, lack of proper waste management, and
a clean drainage. All ghettos have two similar problems, first is the poverty
and second is the rats. Typically, almost all women are scared of rats, so they
take a native lamp or torch with them into the bathroom to scare away rodents.
That was why I could see within the bathroom walls that robes an unrobed woman.
I never found out what made my friends crazy about a woman’s body.
But I became obsessed with it as well. It’s like a spell nature cast on men.
Yes all men, of different age and creed. A trait most parents don’t seem to
notice in their male kids very early though it is right before their eyes. That
attraction to a woman’s body must be the first magnetic field ever in
existence. Only men can fully describe it and only us knows that feeling. Do
you feel it too? Have you ever felt that way before? Perhaps you did, and still
do.
What first became a suggestion matured into a hobby and finally it
escalated into every night’s adventure beyond my own compound. I would wait
close to other houses, stalking young females going for a bath. Then I would go
peeping through the holes in the walls. But as it is with appetizers and the
stomach, so was my desire, it only grants temporary satisfaction that resulted
in a greater appetite. The urge took control of my mind and I soon find it
useless to resist as soon as it knocks on my heart. The pictures I saw at night
were saved, what was saved I recall to heart and fantasize about during the day.
I wished and kept wishing that I could share with those women their private moments.
Dear Dairy don’t be shocked. Compared to my many friends I was the
only one that didn't take his inner cravings too far. I was the only
saint with a halo, in a dark and secret cult of teen boys with dark desires....
But soon I delved deeper, deeper into the pit of a dungeon with golden bars. I
became my own jailer…
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