a bad idea for window placement

My neighbor is nude. I know it isn’t her fault. She’s just trying to shower. It isn’t her fault she has a feebly-frosted window IN her shower. I understand the need for natural light in a bathroom setting (without it, how would we pluck our eyebrows properly?), but I’d like to know who thought this window arrangement was a good idea. An unassuming, natural light-loving, bathroom-remodeling homeowner? A torso fetishist architect? Either way, I think it’s a He. My other guess is that he used to live in my house. He probably stood at the top of the stairs (like I do sometimes) staring out at the building across the yard… ogling. Only I wasn’t ogling at first. I was noticing the stand-up cardboard figure of Legolas in the apartment downstairs. I thought, “My neighbor looks like one of the Nelson twins!” Needless to say, I was a little disappointed. I was really hoping for Gunnar.

I realize I just said “at first,” which suggests that my initial “noticing” of Gunnar downstairs eventually turned into legitimate ogling upstairs. I don’t think it did. Or has. But you just try to tear your eyes away from a nude neighbor (NN). It’s impossible. Plus, it looks like she has a cool tattoo. I think it’s a dragon. Or Yosemite Sam playing basketball. Hard to tell. The frosted window succeeds at obscuring tattoos, but (sadly, for my NN), not nipples or back fat.

As NNs go, it could definitely be worse. I had an across-the-street neighbor in San Francisco who must have been some kind of public speaker. He would pace around his apartment (curtains drawn wide) in his unreasonably tight white briefs and tucked-in undershirt, chastising or lecturing or conducting an invisible orchestra. Again, hard to tell. Not because his windows were frosted, but because I couldn’t read his lips. Clearly, this sight wasn’t particularly pleasant, but I couldn’t look away.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I invite nudity. Maybe my neighbors feel really comfortable with me and they don’t mind dropping the proverbial towel. They know I’ll accept them, with their many flaws and strange arm movements and their pacing. That makes me feel better about ogling, which I wasn’t doing, but might now that we’ve established they don’t mind.

P.S. If you live on Third Avenue in a brick building with green shutters… I have a question for you: dragon or Yosemite Sam? Call me.