Balcony Babes
The summer I turned fourteen, a guy moved into an apartment where the back of his building, and therefore his balcony, faced almost across from mine but one floor down. It was enough of a view to stay obscured from the subject without having to try. Patty and I tested this out at the very end of freshman year when we decided to sunbathe on my balcony and he didn’t look up once from watering his tomato vines. Even though Patty and I didn’t really start connecting until that spring, when we realized we lived in the same complex but on opposite ends opposite floors, she insisted that she come over more often – around her lacrosse schedule - to study this man. Once Patty deemed his more potential status as more bachelor (or “fuckboi” as her more preferred crass synonym). She insisted she not only come over more frequently but that I take her place, as well as meticulous notes, every time he stepped out on his balcony, which was not often when he didn’t have people over. Perhaps it was the limitations within the fenced borders of the buildings’ concrete yards on the ground that made one realize there were no other places to look but up or around, and around could be a nice distraction when it felt like the sky is falling in a way that is only felt as a teenager. The more simple, less abstract reason is that he was an attractive man, they were horny teenagers, and no one else who dwelled in the complex was nice-looking enough for the two girls to want look at regularly. Though as much as we thought we gave our souls to him whole-heartedly back then, practicing our kissing with the Polaroid Patty took of him, we knew, the way all girls knew, that these boy-crazy man-crazy phases was just childhood playing and pretend time packaged in an older, more grounded sense of reality that the mind can run wild with the help of hormones.
