It was the deep darkness of a moonless night as I crept through the open glass doors from the rooftop patio into the open bedroom. I was barely able to see the bed and slid my feet carefully across the unfamiliar floor as I made my way towards it. Then I froze as I heard the sound of movement, and observed a bunching in the dark shadow of the bed. I hesitated about continuing, not want to be discovered,
It had been three months since I had first seen him climbing the staircase at the corner of the house. I had been glancing out of my window on a hot evening and had noticed the unfamiliar flickering image of a man walking upstairs behind the glass brick stairwell wall. I would not have seen him if it had not been dark and his house and the stairwell had not been so well lit, but I was immediately captivated by the shimmering broken image of a gracefully moving body. He moved smoothly and easily as he climbed and he was obviously straight and lean and tanned. He was a golden shimmer going - to where - I wondered, to his bedroom?
I observed him often after that and noted, with some difficulty without the benefit of the internal lights, that in the mornings he made the same naked trip down the stairs. I had become fascinated by my new neighbour. I took to walking by his street in the mornings and again in the evenings and once saw a man emerge from his house who I thought must be him. Another time I saw another man enter it, but he was not my neighbour I knew, he was wiry and blonde and though good looking did not move anything like my neighbour did. But I hesitated there deep in thought, and it was then I saw through the frosted glass door that inside he embraced another man and they were locked together for some time before moving from my sight.
After that vision I became even more obsessed and I had time on my hands. In that hot Mediterranean city the flat roof of my house connected to another, which connected to another. Eventually, - if I jumped a narrow alleyway, the roofs' led to my stair-climbing neighbours rooftop patio. My first trip there gave me a lot to think about.
Now here I was standing in his bedroom in the dark, afraid he'd wake. The shadowy bed was still again and I resumed my careful silent approach to it. My eyes were well adjusted to the gloom now and as I got closer I began to make out his body lying there. When I stood near enough for my knees to touch his sheet I looked down at him in fascination.
He was long and lean and well defined, the feint shadows showing his muscles as a pattern of ridges and mounds that I followed over his chest and arms and spread thighs as I ran my eyes over his sleeping body. The dark shadow of his pubic hair was visible at his crotch, broken by the pale mass of his soft, but surprisingly long, hairless flesh. I greedily gazed my fill, but in the shadows of the room he remained more of an impression than a body I could memorize and recognize in daylight. I hoped that I would also be unrecognisable.
Finally I leaned over, and in a moment had covered his body with mine. He jerked awake under me and I felt how strong he was as he yelled out, "Hey get off me. Get out of here. Bastard."
