On being a voyeur that lurks in the shadows
I see you when you're sleeping, I know when you're awake.
I’m a voyeur for depravity. But I wasn’t always this way. People-watching was instilled in me quite wholesomely, in fact. Well, in a more wholesome form than it is now, anyway.
When I was around 10, my mum bought three binoculars for me, my sister, and herself. And as a bonding activity, we’d turn off the lights in our apartment at night and use them to watch our neighbors.
I’d take on East, my sister West, and my mother North, and together, we were on neighborhood watch; our unpaid internship.
“Second floor, fourth window.” She’d say, and my sister and I would shift our binocular gaze to the fourth window on the second floor of the Northern flat. And the commentary would begin.
Do you think her kitchen decor is better than ours?
What is she’s making?
Do you think she lives alone?
But that soon became mundane, and I have since taken a turn for the worse.
Nowadays, my voyeuristic kick comes from seeing people at their lowest, their most decrepit selves. And watching them throw up on a night out is part of it. Call me demented, but I think it’s fun to see how hard people try to maintain appearances even when their system is forcibly ejecting out toxins.
So, it seems God has noticed my morbid fascination with human despair and extended his giant helping hand to give me something worth appreciating: an apartment in Istanbul, a three-minute walk away from a club-like venue.
The venue is open every single day. People get in at about 8 p.m., have dinner with their friends, drink raki (sweetly pungent Turkish liquor), shimmy around with belly dancers, and get out by 1 a.m., inebriated.
The best part isn’t my apartment’s proximity to the venue, no, it’s the fact that there’s a late-night cafe right across the venue that overlooks its exit.
So, on my nights off, when there’s not much to do, I indulge in my guilty pleasure.
Come midnight, I sit at the cafe, facing the club’s exit head-on, order a piping hot cappuccino, turn the infrared heater on, and turn the world off—well, most of it, except for the club. That’s, like, mega on.
So I wait. And wait. Watching closely, like a shadow in the night, a filthy little rat that for once isn’t the prey but rather the one laying the cheese trap.
And at about 12:30 a.m., I am rewarded. People start tumbling out of the venue; a conveyor belt of the beaten down, the vomitters, and the unstable. They are uninhibited, rowdy, horny, sick, confused, and on edge. A train wreck waiting to happen—a train wreck that I’m waiting to happen.
Alcohol has worn them down to the bone, and they’ve just started to notice it now that they’re in the open air.
Some are holding onto a tree—the only thing not spinning in their world—and others are doing the Slav squat, back leaning against a wall, smoking a cigarette. The calm before the storm.
I like to observe the moment it all clicks in their minds, the moment they realize they have to succumb to their humaneness, acknowledging that it still reigns supreme, even if they’re adorned with their best clothes.
A couple of weeks ago, for example, I watched as a woman—sparkly sequin dress, long trench coat, sleek back ponytail—clawed her way out of the club. She beelined for the bin, her friend trailing behind her.
The scene was quite poetic, actually, a testament to girlhood. The sequined sweetie had her head halfway down the trash can while her friend was soothing her, half holding onto her hair, half stroking it in support. It was clearly neither of their first rodeos. It seemed like they were used to taking turns; one week being the carer, the next being the cared for.
But those who own what’s happening aren’t as fun to watch as those trying to hide it.
They know they can’t stop the inevitable. Still, they at least want to do it privately to maintain a semblance of self-respect, turning what would’ve otherwise been a spectacle into a solitary purge, their dirty little secret.
And while it may be dirty, it can’t be their secret. It’s our secret. Because my ratty little gaze trails right behind them.
"Wherever you go, there
you areI am."
–Jon Kabat-Zinn– Derya
They cower away into a hiding spot, behind a bin or tree, to splash out their innards.
Pathetic.
Their guard may be down, but mine is sky-high. I’m watching them from my high horse, a morally superior high ground, shaking my head in disapproval.
“I would never.” I think.
And maybe, if I repeat it to myself enough, I can forget that I, too, am just like them, having been on all fours, clawing at the dirt beneath me as I vomit into a bush, hiding from the watchers that are just like me.