The Bad Flasher

Girl Watcher

I like to watch.

I watch women all across the city.  I watch them in hospitals, hotels, office buildings, restaurants, elevators and parking garages. I watch them in clothing stores, grocery stores, book stores, drug stores and hardware stores. I watch them on college campuses, in office parks, in classrooms and in public parks. I watch them bending into, and folding out of cabs and limousines, and I watch them stepping, prancing, skipping, trotting, cantering and gliding up and down the thousands of differently configured staircases and escalators of Manhattan. I watch them sitting on public benches made of wood, cement and granite in public parks and I watch them leaning and teetering on their heels on street corners as they hail taxis, wait for crosswalk lights to change in their favor and I watch how they posture when standing on the street, poking and stabbing at the tiny screens of their Blackberry’s, I-Phones, Palm Pilots, Cell Phones and Sidekicks.

I’m not watching – ever – any one woman in particular. That’s too limiting for me. I’m watching women as a gender mass.

Doesn’t Matter to Me

Walk, sit, run, trot, prance, canter, step, preen, skip...doesn't matter to me.

I like to see what they wear, and how they move in their clothes. I watch how they walk in different styles of shoes, and how different lengths of skirts and dresses control the way they walk and sit. Over the years, through observation, I’ve learned what excites me sexually about women by the fabrics and fibers that cover their skin. Women in clothes are, for me, exceedingly more appealing and sexual than women without clothes on. By only watching, day after day, week after week, month after month, season after season, year after year, I’ve amassed an awesome payload of knowledge which I apply toward my sexual dreams and toward other people’s sexual nightmares.

Block Head

Manhattan: There are millions of women in this image. You can't see them, but they're in there. To me, an image like this is sexually arousing.

Women, and the clothes they wear, aren’t all I observe to educate myself and to hone my craft. I also observe and catalogue the things around me on the streets that can aid me in my deviant social efforts; things which can give me shelter, or which I know will cause a pedestrian to divert their path. Some of these aids protect me from casting shadow, while some others allow me to see but not be seen. Some allow me to sit and rest while I wait, watching.

The streets of Manhattan are a toolbox. These are some of my tools: stoop configurations, street light posts, parking signs, pay phone kiosks, subway entrances and exits, dumpsters, construction site plywood barricades, building entry awnings, Jersey barriers, trees and shrubs, cab stands, street vendor carts, twenty-four hour diners and delis, traffic patterns, parked cars, panel vans, headlight beams, loading docks….

In late night and early morning hours, when the city’s streets are still and quiet, each block opens itself and offers itself as a unique creative workspace for those so inclined to explore, examine and exercise.

Stillness. Unique beauty. Good acoustics. Opportunity.

See you. Later.

I’m intimate with over a dozen favored neighborhoods in Manhattan in a manner I’d imagine a postman, or a UPS driver is. I know who arrives home late, and who arrives home later. I know which buildings have doormen, and which don’t, and in which buildings doormen sleep on the job. I know who walks a dog, and in what direction, and for what distance and when. In my favorite neighborhoods, I know which women come home by subway (walking down a block) and which come home by cab (walking up a stoop), and from which direction they’ll arrive.

See you between here and there, next to the thing, by the place, around later on.

I’ve trained my eyes to examine sight lines as long as three city blocks, and I know how street lights, headlights and residential and commercial lights and lamps illuminate and shadow sidewalks. I know where security cameras hang, and in what direction they face. I know what buildings have motion detecting lights, and at what point they illuminate sidewalks when a pedestrian breaks their sensor beam. I know who stays up late and who smokes in a darkened window, and who smokes on the sidewalk before bed. I know where it’s safe to pee, where I can shelter from the rain without sacrificing sight lines and where to hang or rest my clothes should I need to undress quickly. I know where to quickly warm in cold weather and where to cool when it’s too hot.  I’m familiar with where the bums like to camp and sleep, drink or take drugs. I know how to scan a block quickly to see if a witness is sitting in a parked car at a curb.

When I go out at night, I cover more ground with my eyes and memory than with my feet.

Rule: Never Run

I never know what any night will bring me, but I'm fairly certain there will be a tomorrow night, so I keep going

When I go out at night, my intent is criminal. But on most nights, my behavior isn’t. You see, I never know what I’ll do because I never know what or who I’ll encounter. And I never know what it will take to set me off on any given night. It can be brutally boring, all the hours I spend just walking and waiting and watching and listening. But when I turn a corner, and spot a woman seventy yards ahead of me, walking away from me, and lost to any chance of my doing something to her because of distance and direction and my rule to never run after or away from someone, my interior voice reminds me: “There, you see? You never can tell…”

So I keep walking, and I continue watching. And I wait.