Don't Look Now...

Alison Tyler



Oh, wait. I don’t mean that. What I mean is: Do look. Look at me. Right now. Oh, yes, I like when you look.

And then, stop. Wait. Turn around, and let me look at you. Why? Because I am both sides of a single fetish. Voyeur/Exhibitionist. Have been since before I knew the words to describe this slippery little turn-on. Maybe this is why my most treasured movies are Rear Window (all watching, right?) and Apartment Zero, which lets viewers into a host of different apartments, to see what other people are doing.

One of my favorite jobs was cleaning at a bed and breakfast, where I got to snoop through other people’s belongings (don’t think for a minute that maids don’t do this). I found porn, and sex toys, and Polaroids, found letters to ex-lovers, and journals nobody else was supposed to see. And I reveled in my finds like a treasure seeker on the beach who has uncovered a shiny gold coin.

I am fixated.
I want to know, see, hear everything.

Goes beyond simply being nosy, of course, because of the sexual thrill I get when I do spy a sexy bit of action, or when I honestly am put on display. But I think, truly, that everyone has a bit of this fetish inside of them. Who hasn’t stared at a couple kissing through a peripheral glance and paused, to see if something more would happen?

Yet, I understand my fetish has become a bit extreme. I take myself out to cafes in hopes of catching bits of sexy conversation. I watch all the time, everywhere I go. Hoping to spot some sight that will fill my needs. I read people's blogs, addicted to knowing what goes on in the lives of others. Luckily, my sneaky side has come in handy.

I’ve written about the fetish from both angles. Late Bloomer, in Caught Looking, featured a character who eavesdrops and watches for most of the story—who exposes herself only after the story actually ends.

Without a thought to what might happen if I got caught, I moved away from the wall, slid silently out of my bedroom, and padded quietly down the hall. As I’d expected, the door to Joe’s room was open. Only a sliver, but enough. I walked toward the open doorway as softly as I could, but I probably needn’t have bothered. They were busy, consumed by their own actions. They didn’t notice when I made my way right outside his bedroom door, positioning myself so that I could see Nina, ass upwards, and Joe, spanking her hard.

The fact that the door was ajar wasn’t too surprising. Nina was always a proud exhibitionist. At parties, she made sure to be seen kissing the cutest guy center stage, letting him put his hand up her top or down her skirt, closing her eyes as she became the pure definition of ecstasy. She didn’t think being on display made her look like a slut—she thought it made her look wanted. In demand.

Once, when we were on a double-date together at a drive-in, she actually made love in the back seat with her lucky man of the moment. I held my breath as I stared at the screen through the front window, not seeing the movie at all, captivated instead by the sultry noises coming from the back seat. First the wet sounds of Nina delivering a world-class blow job, slurping sounds punctuated by the moans of her man. Then the undeniable noises of her slipping on his lap and pumping her body until she reached her own personal Nirvana. My date stared straight forward, too, realizing from the start that he was going nowhere with me. Not that he would have wanted to. I was in head-to-toe black, hair in my face, as always. Nina was in a sunburst sundress, low in the back, low in the front.

There was nothing Nina ever found too revealing.

Good, I thought as I watched Joe’s hand make sweet contact with her sublime ass. Spank her harder. Spank her for me.

***

In Hide & Seek, my story Not a Voyeur features two people who are adamantly not voyeurs, or exhibitionists. Except, of course, when they are.

“I’m not a voyeur,” I told my boyfriend Courtney.

“I never said you were,” Courtney murmured from behind the Sports section of the newspaper. This was his favorite place to spend every Saturday morning.

“Really,” I insisted. “I’m not.”

“Why do you keep saying that, Lora?” he asked, sounding part bemused, part annoyed.

“Because of them,” I told him, my voice low.

“Them, who?”

“Those people out there. Fucking.”

Courtney set down his paper. He looked at me with his great green eyes as I pointed out the window, at the apartment across the street, and at the people in the apartment who were screwing each other silly. Without a word, Courtney stood and came to my side, so that we were both pressed against our own window, looking out.

I heard him suck in his breath as he took in the vision.

The girl was tall with blonde curls that fell past her shoulders and a tight, athletic physique. She looked like someone who never missed a workout. The man was well-built, with thick red hair cut short and several vibrant tattoos decorating his muscular arms. He had the girl in a tight embrace, and he was lifting her up and sliding her down on his cock, over and over and over.

“Oh, man,” Courtney murmured, gripping tightly onto my hand. “Just look at that.”

I felt myself getting wetter as I watched. Apparently, the vision was having a similar effect on Courtney. Not that he was getting wetter, of course, but that he was getting hard. He took my hand and placed it over the bulge in his drawstring pajamas, and I sighed when I felt the hidden treasure there that awaited me. Well, not quite so hidden. He’d completely tented the thin plaid fabric.

“How long have they been doing that?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “I wasn’t watching. I’m not a voyeur, you know.” I managed to sound just the slightest bit indignant.

“That’s right,” he agreed, nodding. “Neither am I.”

I haven’t searched out the reason for my desire to see and be seen. I’ve left it simply as one of my (many) little fetishes. But I am not alone in embracing (or writing about) this turn-on. Check out Mathilde Madden’s Peep Show, or Hide & Seek and Caught Looking, which feature Lust Biters Shanna Germain, Gwen Masters, Dayle Dermatis, Teresa Noelle Roberts, and Portia DaCosta, as well as a host of other stellar erotic writers.

Now, fulfill my erotic fetish and confess your own sultry voyeur/exhibitionist fantasy to me. I’ll be right here, listening.

XXX,
Alison

P.S. Hide & Seek is the second collection I collaborated on with the divine Rachel Kramer Bussel. To satisfy any of your voyeuristic inclinations, watch her read from the book. And comment to win a smorgasbord of erotica: Hide & Seek, Caught Looking, & Exposed, all published by Cleis Press, as well as a copy of Peep Show by award-winning author Mathilde Madden.

I always feel like
Somebody’s watching me…
—Rockwell